“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 density is extremely important, for it is a density of intensities. And it is the infinite variety and gradations of intensity that makes all identities possible and all gestalts, all identities in terms of personalities and fields and universes. It is this density, with this infinite variety of intensity, which allows for both identity and change. …

In many respects, actions within the dream world are more direct than your own. It is because you remember only vague glimmerings and disconnected episodes that dreams appear often chaotic or meaningless, particularly to the ego which censors much of the information that the subconscious retains. For most people, this censoring process is valuable, since it prevents the personality from being snowed under by data that it is not equipped to handle. The ability to retain experience gained within other fields is the trend of further developments. … Nevertheless, every man intuitively knows his involvement here. …

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.

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.

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.

The reality of dreams can be investigated only through direct contact. … REM sleep or no REM sleep, your dreams exist constantly beneath consciousness, even in the waking state. The personality is constantly affected by them. It is impossible to deprive a person of dreams even though you deprive him of sleep [as in certain dream laboratory experiments]. This function will be carried on subconsciously. …

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.

It is impossible to study dreams when an attempt is made to isolate the dreamer from his own personality, to treat dreams as if they were physical or mechanical. The only laboratory for a study of dreams is the laboratory of the personality. …

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.