“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dream Locations, Dreams, and Creativity
Electric Reality of Dreams
Moment Points

As there is in actuality no beginning or end to a dream, so there is no beginning or end to any reality. A dream does not then begin or end; only your awareness of a dream begins and ends. You come into awareness of a dream, and you leave it, but in your terms of time, the dreams that you seem to dream tonight have been long in existence. They seem to begin tonight because you are aware of them tonight.

You do create your own dreams. Nevertheless, you do not create them during a specific point in time. The beginnings of dreams reach back into ‘past’ lives of which you are not aware and beyond even this; the origins are part of a heritage that was before your planet existed.

What you will be, you are now, not in some misty half-real form but in a most real sense. You simply are not aware of these selves on a conscious level any more than you are aware of ‘past’ lives. But each of you creates a dream world of validity, actuality, durability and self-determination, in the same way that the entity projects the reality of its various personalities. As there is usually no contact between the entity and the ordinary conscious ego, there is usually no contact on a conscious level between the self who dreams and the dream world which has its own independent existence.

And in the same way that the dream world has no beginning or end, neither does the physical universe with which you are familiar. No energy can be withdrawn, and this includes the energy used in the continuous subconscious construction of the dream world. You continually create it — have always created it. It is the product of your own existence, and yet you can neither consciously call it into existence nor destroy it.

This point is extremely important. As you know, animals dream. What you do not know is that all consciousness dreams. Atoms and molecules have consciousness, and this minute consciousness forms its own dreams even as, on the other hand, it forms its own physical image. As in the material world, atoms combine for their own benefit into more complicated structures, so do they combine to form such gestalts in the dream world.

I’ve said that the dream world has its own sort of form and permanence. It is physically oriented, though not to the degree inherent in your ordinary universe. In the same way that the physical image is built up, so is the dream image. You can refer to our previous discussions on the nature of matter to help you understand, but the dream world is not a formless, haphazard semi-construction.

The dream world, then, is a by-product of your own existence [from your standpoint]. It is connected to you through chemical reactions and this leaves open the entryway of interactions. Since dreams are a by-product of any consciousness involved with matter, then trees have their dreams. All physical matter, being formed about individualized units of consciousness of varying degrees, also participates in the involuntary construction of the dream world.

I mentioned the Crucifixion once, saying that it was an actuality and a reality, although it did not take place in your time. It took place where time is not as you know it… in the same sort of time in which a dream takes place. Its reality was felt by generations and was reacted to. Not being a physical reality, it influenced the world of physical matter in a way that no purely physical reality ever could.

The Crucifixion was one of the gigantic realities that transformed and enriched both the universe of dreams and the universe of matter, and it originated in the world of dreams. It was a main contribution of that field to your own and could be compared physically to an emergence of a new planet within the physical universe. …

The Ascension of Christ is … also a contribution of the world of dreams to your own universe, representing knowledge within the dream system that man was independent of physical matter. …

Many concepts, advancements and practical inventions simply wait in abeyance in the world of dreams until some man accepts them as possibilities within his frame of reality. Imagination is waking man’s connection with the world of dreams. Imagination often restates dream data and applies it to particular circumstances or problems within the physical system. Its effects may appear within matter, but it is of itself not physical. Often the dream world possesses concepts which will one day completely transform the history of your field, but a denial of such concepts as actualities or possibilities within reality hold these back and put off breakthroughs that are sorely needed.

As an individual creates his physical image and environment according to his abilities and defects, and in line with his expectations and inner needs, so does he create his dreams; and these interact with the outer environment.

“The ‘Electric Reality’ of Dreams and Dream Locations”

We have seen that all experience is retained in electrically coded data within the cells and that the material of the cells forms about this coded experience. We have seen that the ego begins, sparked into being by the inner self, greatly influenced by heredity and physical environment; and that this ego, as it continues to exist, builds up an electrical reality of its own and forms its experiences … into the coded data within the cells.

At any given ‘point,’ the ego is complete within electrical reality as it is psychologically complete within the physical universe. This includes the retention of its dreams as well as the retention of purely physical data. …

The gradations of intensities are so minute that it would be impossible to measure them, and yet each field contains in coded form the actual living reality of endless eons; contains what you would call the past, present, and future of unnumbered universes; contains the coded data of any and every consciousness that has been or will be, in any universe; those that have appeared to vanish, and those which, seemingly, do not yet exist. …

The electricity that is perceivable within your system is merely a projection of a vast electrical system that you cannot perceive. So far, scientists have been able to study electricity only by observing the projections of it that are perceivable within their terms of reference. As their physical instruments become more sophisticated, they will be able to glimpse more of this reality, but since they will not be able to explain it within their known system of references, many curious and distorted explanations of reported phenomena will be given.

Why has no one suspected that dream locations have not only a psychological reality but a definite actuality? A study of dream locations is most important. Dream locations are composed of electrical mass, density and intensity. Here is another point: Definite work may be done in a dream, but the physical arms and legs are not tired. This would seem contrary to your known laws, but no one has looked into this. …

It is most difficult to even hint at the myriad complexity and dimension of the electrical actuality as it exists. When you consider that each of your own thoughts is composed of a unique intensity of impulse, shared by nothing else; that the same may be said for every dream you will have in your lifetime; and that all your experience is gathered together in particular ranges of intensity, again completely unique; and that the summation of all that you are exists in one minute range or band of intensities, then you will see how difficult this is to explain. …

This not only applies to your physical field but also to all others. Your field is contained within its own range of intensities, a tiny band of electrical impulses a million times smaller than one note picked at random from the entire mass of musical composition that has ever been written or ever will be written. I am not going too deeply into this now because you are not ready. But because of the infinite range of intensities available, each individual has limitless intensities within which he can move.

All motion is mental or psychological motion, and all mental or psychological motion has its electrical reality. The inner self moves by moving through intensities. Each new experience opens up a new pulsation intensity. … To move through intensities within the electrical system gives the result, in the physical field, of moving through time. We will also discuss this later, in connection with so-called astral travel.

Many of these actions performed by dream images are muscular ones, physical manipulations. But many of these actions are also mental manipulations or aesthetic realizations and even aesthetic performances. These dream images are not one-dimensional cardboard figures by any means. Their mobility, in terms of perspectives and within space, is far greater than your own.

You perceive but a small portion of these images which you have yourselves created. You cannot bring them back into the limited perspectives of your present physical field and are left with but glimpses and flimsy glimmerings of images that are as actual, vivid and more mobile than normal physical ones.

I have said before that the dream world is composed of molecular structure, and that it is a continuing reality, even though your own awareness of it is usually limited to the hours of your own sleep. There is a give-and-take here. For if you give the dream world much of its energy, much of your own energy is derived from it. …

Nor is the dream world a shadow image of your own. It carries on according to the possibilities inherent within it, as you carry on according to the possibilities in the physical system. In sleeping, however, you focus your awareness in altered form into another world that is every bit as valid as your physical one. Only a small amount of energy is focused into the physical system during sleep, enough simply to maintain the body within the environment.

In many respects, actions within the dream world are more direct than your own. It is because you remember only vague glimmerings and disconnected episodes that dreams appear often chaotic or meaningless, particularly to the ego which censors much of the information that the subconscious retains. For most people, this censoring process is valuable, since it prevents the personality from being snowed under by data that it is not equipped to handle. The ability to retain experience gained within other fields is the trend of further developments. … Nevertheless, every man intuitively knows his involvement here. …

Some dream events are more vivid than waking ones. It is only when the personality passes out of the dream experience that it may seem unreal in retrospect. For [upon waking] again, the focus of energy and attention is in the physical universe. Reality, then, is a result of focus of energy and attention.

I used the term, pass out of the dream world purposely, for here we see a mobility of action easily and often accomplished — a passing in and out that involves an action without movement in space. The dreamer has, at his fingertips, a memory of his ‘previous’ dream experiences and carries within him the many inner purposes which are behind his dream actions. On leaving the dream state, he becomes more aware of the ego and creates, then, those activities that are meaningful to it. As mentioned earlier, however, dream symbols have meaning to all portions of the personality.

Within the reality of the dream world, fulfillment and dependence, then, are not dependent upon permanence in physical terms. Bursts of developments are possible that have matured in perspectives that are not bound up in time.

The reality of dreams can be investigated only through direct contact. … REM sleep or no REM sleep, your dreams exist constantly beneath consciousness, even in the waking state. The personality is constantly affected by them. It is impossible to deprive a person of dreams even though you deprive him of sleep [as in certain dream laboratory experiments]. This function will be carried on subconsciously. …

Quite simply, the self travels to areas of reality that are far divorced from the physical areas of mobility. The muscles are lax then because physical activity is not required. The energy that is not being expended physically is used to sustain mental actions. The chemical excesses built up in the waking state are automatically changed as they are drained off, into electrical energy which also helps to form and sustain dream images.

This could be studied if proper suggestions were given to an individual that he would awaken at the exact point of a dream’s end [as in our own experiments]. The dream state and conditions could also be studied legitimately using hypnosis. Here, you are working with the mind itself and merely suggesting that it operate in a certain fashion. You are not tampering with the mechanics of its operation and automatically altering the conditions.

It is impossible to study dreams when an attempt is made to isolate the dreamer from his own personality, to treat dreams as if they were physical or mechanical. The only laboratory for a study of dreams is the laboratory of the personality. …

While Seth was delivering this material we had embarked upon our own dream experiments. Later, in 1967, I started my ESP classes, and my students began their own work in dream recall and experimentation. As you will see, these led to dream manipulation and, in many instances to projection of consciousness from the dream state.

Our interest in dreams spilled over into my own creative work also. The following poems were all written in 1964, when Rob and I first began our own experiments in dream recall and when Seth first started his sessions on the dream world.

Dreamers make their own sidewalks,
Webs stretched out from thought to thought,
Extensions of the restless skull,
Invisible and dark and still.