“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. …

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.

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.

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.

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. …

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.

One eye looked out upon the form —
The thigh’s spread galaxies — and saw
The burst of each cell-star that plunged
Into instant shape within the flesh.
The other eye, turned inward, glimpsed
New webworks and cocoons
Spun from thoughts and dreams that spread
Images outward with each breath.