“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The electricity that is perceivable within your system is merely a projection of a vast electrical system that you cannot perceive. So far, scientists have been able to study electricity only by observing the projections of it that are perceivable within their terms of reference. As their physical instruments become more sophisticated, they will be able to glimpse more of this reality, but since they will not be able to explain it within their known system of references, many curious and distorted explanations of reported phenomena will be given.

Yet the inner self offers so many clues. … It operates outside of physical references. It is, of itself, free of the distorted effects peculiar to the physical system. A study of dreams, for example, would make many of these points clear, yet many scientists consider such work beneath them.

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. …

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 these methods, the dreams of the mentally ill could also be studied if the affliction was not too severe. The dreams of children could be investigated in this way and compared with those of adults. Children dream vividly and more often. They return more frequently, however, to periods of near wakefulness in order to check their physical environment, since they are not as sure of it as adults are. In deep periods of sleep, children range further away, as far as dream activities are concerned.

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.

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. …