“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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 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. …

“The Dream World, Dream Images and Actions, Dreams as Actions”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Though each person progresses differently, generally speaking, the more advanced dream work follows the earlier stages of simple recall, to more frequent self-knowledge within the dream state and from there to manipulation of dream images and projection. The following chapters deal, then, with our experiences with different kinds of dreams and their effect on daily life. Later chapters will be concerned with the expansion of consciousness that results from the earlier experiments.

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

No man can find
The post or sign
That led the self
Through such strange land.
The way is gone,
The self returns
To slip its bony
Image on.

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.