“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob and Jane look at each other. Jane says, ‘No.’ But somehow they both seem more like themselves, as I know them in daily life.

Carl nods. At once I realize that somewhere — I don’t understand where — Carl does not own a cycle and that the two of us are man and wife, and have a baby. It is as though I am remembering physical life as a dream, and yet I have the feeling that Carl and I have done this cycle bit before, that we are doing it still in another place and that we will do it even as we are doing it now. The all-at-oneness seems perfectly natural.

Were it not for the experience of this probable self, and for its information given via the dreaming self to the subconscious, then it would be most difficult for the ego to come to any clear decisions in daily life. The ego does not realize the data that is being constantly fed into it. It cannot afford to, generally, since its focused energy must be used in the manipulation of physical actuality.

If you would have some idea of what the probable universe is like, then examine your own dreams, looking for those events which do not have any strong resemblance to the physical events of waking existence. Look for dream individuals with whom you are not acquainted in normally conscious life. Look for landscapes that appear bizarre or alien, for all of these exist somewhere. You have perceived them. They do not exist in the space that you know but neither are they nonexistent, mere imaginative toys of the dreaming mind, without substance.

You may act out many probabilities within dream reality and try out alternatives, and not necessarily short-term ones. You would have made an excellent doctor, for example. In your terms, you worked out this possibility by weaving, over a period of three years, a dream framework in which you learned exactly what your life would have been, had you gone into medicine.

In your present life, the same process continues. Most of these dreams are very disconnected from the ego and will not be recalled. The self who pursues these divergent paths is actual, however. The doctor you might have been once dreamed of a probable universe in which he would be an artist. He continues to work out his own probabilities. He exists in fact. You call his system an alternate system of probability, but this is precisely what he would call yours.

The dreams you will have and have had in shared experience are root dreams. They serve as a method of maintaining inner identity and communication. Projections can also occur from these — that is, you may, for example, project into the life of the doctor. (I am using you and the doctor as an example. Art, you see, is also closely connected with healing. The projections of which I spoke happen occasionally and spontaneously on both of your parts.)

All of these probable systems are open. In your system it seems as if you chose one course, one main line of probabilities, and that is the end of it. In your system, only one ego predominates and you think of yourself as that ego. In other systems, this is not necessarily the case. In some, the inner self is aware of having more than one ego, of playing more than one role at a time. As an analogy, this would be as if you lived, say, the life of a rich man of great talent, the life of a poor man and the life of a mother and career woman. You would be aware of each role and find abilities being developed in each. This is an analogy, and in several respects it could lead you astray if taken too literally. In such a system, there would be no breakup of time, you see. …