“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

However, with the ego at rest in sleep, the individual often allows communications and dream constructions through — past the ego barrier. For example, if his present expectations are faulty, when the ego rests, he may recreate a time when expectations were high. The resulting dream will partially break the circle of poor expectations with their shoddy physical constructions and start such an individual along a constructive path. In other words, a dream may begin to transform the physical environment through lifting inner expectation.

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.

Then there are the endless varieties of actions within the dream which is, in itself, a continuing act. The images within a dream also act. They move, speak, walk, run. There is, at times, a dream within a dream where the dreamer dreams that he dreams. Here, of course, the dimensions of action are more diverse.

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.

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.

Using hypnosis, you can get good dream recall with a good operator. You can suggest ordinary sleep and dreaming and then suggest that without awakening, the subject give a verbal description of his dreams as he experiences them. … Another alternative is to suggest that the subject under hypnosis repeat the dreams of the night before.

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.

No man can find
Where he has been,
Or follow in flesh
Where the self tread,
Or keep the self in
Though doors are closed,
For the self moves through
Wood and stone.

My dreaming self
Walked through
The framework of my soul.
He switched lights on as he passed.
Outside the night
Was dark and cold.

My dreaming self
Lay on the bed.
I stood aside with awe.
“Why, both of us are one,” I said.
He said, “I thought you knew.”