“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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 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. …

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.

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.

I would like to discuss dreams in relation to action. We mentioned earlier that all action does not necessarily involve motion that is apparent as such to you. To one extent or another, all actions are unfoldings. The action of dreaming itself is partially a physical phenomena. There is, then, the outside action that makes dreaming possible, the action that is dreaming.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

I saw myself stretched out among the stars.
My skin, an open mesh,
Was hung with seeds and moons and fish.
Birds flew through my flesh
Which rose in continental mass
From seas of space. One arm,
A universe, was flung
Akimbo. My third left fingernail
Was earth, pearl tipped and turning
With the measured motion of my wrist.

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.