“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

For every consciousness existed simultaneously and in essence, even before what you may call the beginnings of your world. And what you are yet to be existed then and still exists now — and not as some still unfulfilled possibility but in actuality.

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.

The dream world is, then, a natural by-product of the relationship between the inner self and the physical being — not a reflection, but a by-product — involving not only a chemical reaction, but also the transformation of energy from one state to another.

In some respects, all planes or fields of existence are by-products of others. For example, without the peculiar spark set off through the interrelationship between the inner self and the physical being, the dream world would not exist. But conversely, the dream world is a necessity for the continued survival of the physical individual.

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.

It does not exist in bulk, but it does exist in form. The true complexity and importance of the dream world as an independent field of existence has not yet been fully impressed upon you. Yet, while your world and the dream world are basically independent, they exert pressures and influences one upon the other.

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.

The electrical system is composed of electricity that is far different from your idea of it. Electricity, as you perceive it, is merely an echo emanation or a sort of shadow image of these infinite varieties of pulsation which give actuality to many phenomena with which you are familiar, but which do not appear as tangible objects within the physical field. …

This electrical system is vastly dense. This is a denseness that does not take up space, a denseness caused by an infinity of electrical fields of varying ranges of intensity. Not only are no two of these electrical fields identical, but there are no identical impulses within them.

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. …

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.

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.

The dream world has a molecular construction, but this construction takes up no space as you know it. The dream world consists of depths and dimensions, expansions and contractions that are more clearly related, perhaps, to ideals that have no need for the particular kind of structure with which you are familiar. The intuitions and certain other inner abilities have so much more freedom here that it is unnecessary for molecules to be used in any imprisoning form. Action in the dream world is more fluid. The images appear and disappear much more quickly because value fulfillment is allowed greater reign.

This is not to say that structure does not exist within the dream world, for structures of a mental and psychic nature do exist. But structure is not dependent upon matter, and the motion of the molecules is more spontaneous. An almost unbelievable depth of experience is possible within what would seem to you a fraction of a moment.

One of the closest glimpses you can get of pure action is action as it is involved with the dream world and in this mobility as the personality passes into and out of the dream field. Within the physical world, you deal with the transformation of action into physical manipulations — but this involves only a small portion of the nature of action, and it is my purpose to familiarize you with action as it exists, more or less, in pure form. In this way, you will be able to perceive the ways in which it is translated into other fields of actuality that do not involve matter as you know it.

These developments are the result of actions that occur in many perspectives at once and not developments that happen as within the physical system through a seeming series of moments. Basically, even the physical universe itself is so constructed, but for all practical purposes, as far as perception and experience is concerned, time and physical growth apply. As a result, the ego portion of personality is, to a large extent, dependent for its maturity and development upon the amount of time that the physical image has spent within the system.

A certain portion of physical growth, in terms of a series of moments, is, therefore, necessary for value fulfillment to show itself within a physical organism. But in the dream world, ‘growth’ is a matter of value fulfillment which is achieved through perspectives of action — through traveling within any given action, and following it and changing with it.

Now, you experience action as if you were moving along a single line, each dot on it representing a moment of your time. But at any of these ‘points,’ action moves out in all directions. From the standpoint of that moment-point, you could imagine action forming an imaginary circle with the point as apex. But this happens at the point of every moment. There is no particular boundary to the circle. It widens outward indefinitely. Now, in the dream world, and in all such systems, development is achieved not by traveling your single line, but by delving into that point that you call a moment. … Basically the physical universe is at the apex of such a system itself. …

The eye movements noted in the beginning of REM sleep are only indications of dream activity that is closely connected with the physical layers of the self. These periods mark not the onset of dreams but the return of the personality from deeper layers of dream awareness to more surface ones. The self is actually returning to more surface levels to check upon physical environment. There is a transference of main energy in deeper dream states from physical to mental concentration.

I have said often that any action changes that which acts and that which is acted upon; and so in the sort of experiments that are currently being carried on to study dreams, the acts of the investigators are changing the conditions in such a way that it is easy for them to find what they are looking for. The investigator himself, through his actions, inadvertantly brings about those results for which he looks. The particular experiment may seem, then, to suggest conditions which are by no means general, but may appear to be. Under hypnosis a subject is not as much on guard, as is the subject of an experiment who knows in advance that he will be awakened by experimenters, that electrodes will be attached to his skull and that laboratory conditions are substituted for his nightly environment.

But every self
Sneaks out alone,
In darkness with
No image on,
And travels freely,
All alert,
Roads unlisted
On a map.