“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Projections from the dream state intrigue me because in them I believe we encounter the inside of our own consciousness in a most direct fashion. In a way, we are completely on our own, manipulating in a subjective environment, aware of the workings of consciousness when it is not soaked up or fastened upon objective specifics. Such exploration is full of surprises. In these states, consciousness operates within definite conditions, within an ordered system of experience. But we must struggle to discover what these are as opposed to the hallucinatory images we set up ourselves against or superimposed upon this reality.

While we may “come awake” spontaneously within a dream, certain procedures do help, and these can induce projections from the dream state. They have been mentioned before in previous chapters, but here I’ll give them as briefly and simply as possible. First you must realize that you are dreaming. Suggestion to this effect, given before sleep, facilitates this recognition.

This knowledge automatically changes the dream state into another in which the critical faculties are aroused and operating. Dream actions are no longer taken for granted. Experience is scrutinized. You may “awaken” in your house, for example. If so, check your rooms against their normal arrangement. Anything that does not normally belong there may be an hallucination, part of the usual dreaming process. If you will such images to disappear, they will, leaving you within the basic unhallucinated environment. If you rationalize any such elements or accept them uncritically, you may fall back into normal dreaming.

Objects may appear and disappear in these other systems. Using the root assumptions just mentioned as a basis for judging reality, an observer would insist that the objects were not real, for they do not behave as he believes objects must. Because dream images may appear and disappear, then, do not take it for granted that they do not really exist.

Elements from past, present and future may be indiscriminately available to you. You may be convinced that a given episode is the result of subconscious fabrication, simply because the time sequence is not maintained, and this could be a fine error. In a given dream projection, for example, you may experience an event that is obviously from the physical past, yet within it there may be elements that do not fit. In an old-fashioned room of the 1700’s, you may look out and see an automobile pass by. Obviously, you think: distortion. Yet you may be straddling time in such an instance, perceiving, say, the room as it was in the 1700’s and the street as it appears in your present. These elements may appear side by side. The car may suddenly disappear before your eyes, to be replaced by an animal or the whole street may turn into a field.

‘This is how dreams work,’ you may think. ‘This cannot be a legitimate projection.’ Yet you may be perceiving the street and the field that existed ‘before’ it, and the images may be transposed one upon the other. If you try to judge such an experience with physical root assumptions, it will be meaningless. As mentioned earlier, you may also perceive a building that will never exist in physical reality. This does not mean that the form is illusion. You are simply in a position where you can pick up and translate the energy pattern before you.

These root assumptions are so a part of your existence that they cloud your dreams. Beneath them, however, portions of the self perceive physical reality in an entirely different fashion, free of the tyranny of objects and physical form. Here you experience concepts directly, without the need for symbols. You have knowledge of your ‘past’ personalities and know that they exist simultaneously with your own.

The ego can exist only within the context of these assumptions. The primary dream experience is finally woven into a structure composed of these assumptions, and it is these you remember. These serve you as basic information but the information is in symbolic form. Objects, you see, are symbols. Dream objects are often symbols of realities that the ego could not otherwise perceive.

I fell asleep and dreamed that Rob had just come home and had begun to redecorate the room. Though I was surprised to see him, I accepted without question the fact that he was home early and did not realize I was dreaming at this point. Instead, I found the room transformed with spectacular color such as I’d never seen before — brilliant, shimmering, alive and richer than I ever imagined color could be. Everything in the room took on this fantastic other-color life. I felt myself drink it up, absorb it, in a way that’s most difficult to explain. The white walls were replaced by intricate colored wallpaper and drapes of velvet. The colors seemed to have a natural life themselves, glowing from within, throbbing with vitality.

I went back into the front room, now almost realizing my state. “Rob, this isn’t really our apartment, is it?” I asked. I looked around again. “I must be dreaming. That plant by the window sill isn’t ours. It must be an hallucination.”

Actually, I was only remotely aware of the difficulties of my hand. Instead, my mind was filled with memories of the spectacular colors I had seen. For a moment, I was almost enthralled as I partially recalled them out of the nowhere into which they had vanished. I had to go downtown to meet Rob for grocery shopping, so I dressed quickly. But it seemed that all the color had drained away from the world. Walking downtown, I was depressed. It was weeks later before I regained my normal feelings for our apartment. In the meantime, it seemed insufferably dreary. For that matter, so did the rest of the world. I’ve had normal dreams that were in vivid color, but nothing like that, and at no other time has my usual earthly environment been bathed in such iridescence.

Seth has more to say about hallucinations and objects in Session 287 for September 21, 1966, and perhaps the first part of the following excerpts helps explain my experience. Seth was talking about basic reality in the dream state.

There is constant translation of inner reality into objects in the waking state and a constant translation of ideas into pseudo-objects in the dream state. Within a certain range of dream reality, ideas and thoughts can be translated into pseudo-objects and transported. This is what happens when you adopt a pseudo-form in projection, though I am simplifying this considerably.

Nor do such projections necessarily involve journeys through space as you know it. There are systems, vivid in intensity, that have no existence in physical reality at all. It is now thought, I believe, that time and space are basically one, but they are both a part of something else. They are merely the camouflage patterns by which you perceive reality. Space as you perceive it in the dream state comes much closer to the reality.

Projections within your own system will, of course, involve you with some kind of camouflage. If none is present, you will know you are out of the system. The dream universe is obviously closely connected with your own, since pseudo-objects are present. Even there, you are to some extent free from the space-time elements of your own system. Within the dream state, then, you are in the ‘outward’ areas of the physically oriented universe.

That experience is far more vivid than anything else that happened to me that day or during that entire month so far. It will be remembered long after I forget what else I did that day. It does no good to call such episodes hallucinations. They are, above all, valid psychological events. They enrich normal experience, broaden the usual restrictions of daily perception and encourage creative thought. The same applies to all of the dreams and projections mentioned in this book. These dimensions of experience and consciousness co-exist with normal reality as we know it, and I believe that in them we exercise abilities that are ours by right and heritage.