“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.

You agree to accept certain data in the physical universe. You agree to form this into certain patterns, and you agree to ignore other data completely. These now, called root assumptions, form the main basis for the apparent permanence and coherence of your physical system.

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.

There is a cohesiveness to the inner universe and to the systems that are not basically physical. But this is based upon an entirely different set of root assumptions and these are the keys that alone will let you manipulate within other systems or understand them. There are several major root assumptions connected here and many minor ones:

To a large extent in the physical system, your habit of perceiving time as a sequence forms the type of experience and also limits it. This habit also unites the experiences, however. The unifying and limiting aspects of consecutive moments are absent in inner reality. Time, in other words, cannot be counted upon to unify action. The unifying elements will be those of your own understanding and abilities. You are not forced to perceive action as a series of moments within inner reality, therefore.

Root assumptions represent the basic premises upon which a given existence-system is formed. These are the ground rules, so to speak. Your physical mechanisms are equipped to function in such a way that reality is perceived through the lens of particular root assumptions, then. Using the physical senses, it is almost impossible for you to perceive reality in any other way.

Physically speaking, you will find nothing to contradict these assumptions, since they are all that you can experience or perceive physically. These root assumptions are the framework of the camouflage system. As you explore other realities, you almost automatically interpret such data in terms of the root assumptions of your own system.

This highly falsifies such information. The inner senses are not bound by those assumptions, however. … This is why so many psychic or subjective experiences seem to contradict physical laws. You must learn the ‘laws’ that apply to other systems.

The root assumptions that govern physical reality are indeed valid, but within physical reality alone. They do not apply elsewhere. There is a natural tendency to continue judging experience against these assumptions, however. With experience, the habit will lose much of its hold. Inner experience must be colored to some extent by the physical system, while you exist in it. In order for such data to rise to conscious levels, for example, it must be translated into terms that the ego can understand, and the translation is bound to distort the original experience. …

The whole physical organism of the body has been trained to react to certain patterns, these based on physical root assumptions. The nervous system reacts definitely to visual block images. Such images are received through the skin, as well as through the eyes. The whole system is highly complicated and organized. This is obviously necessary for physical survival. …

The organization however is, biologically speaking, artificial and learned. It is no less rigid for that reason. This organizational structure of perception can be broken up, as recent LSD experiments certainly show. This can be dangerous, however. The fact that this does occur shows that the systems of perception are not a part of over-all structure biologically, but learned secondary responses. It is disturbing to the whole organism, however, to break up the strong pattern of usual perception. Inner stability of response is suddenly swept away. Changes that are not yet known occur within the nervous system under these circumstances, both electromagnetic and chemical.

The inner senses alone are equipped to process and perceive other reality systems. Even the distortions can be kept at a minimum with training. Indiscriminate use of the psychedelic drugs can severely shake up learned patterns of response that are necessary for effective manipulation within physical reality; break subtle connections and you disturb electromagnetic functions. Ego failure can result.

It is not bombarded, as with the drug experiments, and forced to experience chaotic and frightening perceptions that can terrify it into complete disorder. Survival in your system is dependent upon the highly specialized, focused, limited but specific qualities of the ego. It should not be rigid. Neither should it be purposely weakened.

When you travel beyond a certain range of intensities, even psuedo-objects must vanish. They exist in a cluster about, and connected to, your own system. The lack of these, obviously, means that you have gone beyond your own camouflage system. If it were possible, you would then travel through a range of intensities in which no camouflage existed. Then you would encounter the pseudo-camouflage of the next system. This would or would not be physical matter, according to the system. You would then encounter the heart of the camouflage area. The completely uncamouflaged areas at the outer edges of the various systems should remind you of the undifferentiated areas between various life cycles in the subconscious. This is no coincidence.

The sentence is really meaningless, however, because the physical senses are themselves camouflage. There would be nothing to translate. It is only the inner senses that will allow you to perceive under these circumstances. Theoretically, if you can bridge the gap between various reincarnations, then you can bridge the gap between your system and another.

Once more: The undifferentiated layers are composed of the vitality that forms the camouflage of all systems. Such an area is not really a thing in itself, but a portion of vitality that contains no camouflage, and is therefore unrecognizable to those within any given system. You are in touch with infinity in such areas, since it is only camouflage that gives you the conception of time. …

Now, during some projections, you may be aware of nothing as far as surroundings are concerned. There will only be the mobility of your own consciousness. If this occurs, you will be traveling through such an uncamouflaged area. You could then expect to encounter next a more differentiated environment, that seems to become clearer as you progress toward the heart of another system.

If a certain intensity is reached, however — a peak of intensity — then you could perceive the spacious present as it exists within your native system. You could, from this peak, look into other systems, but you would not understand what you perceived, not having the proper root assumptions. I have used the idea of neighboring systems for simplicity’s sake, as if they were laid out end to end. Obviously, such is not the case. The systems [of reality] are more like the various segments of a tangerine, with the uncamouflaged boundary areas like the white membrane between the tangerine sections.

The tangerine, then, would be compared to a group of many systems, yet it would represent in itself but one portion of an unperceived whole. The tangerine would be but one segment of a larger system. You can see, then, why some projections would lead you in a far different direction from your linear sort of travel and why time as you know it would be meaningless.

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.

One point: There are other systems all about and within your own. The undifferentiated areas move out like spirals, through all reality. Little resistence is encountered within them. They represent inner roads that connect systems, as well as divide them. The traveler must leave his own camouflage paraphernalia behind him, however, or he will get nowhere.

It is possible, theoretically, to travel to any system in this manner and bypass others, you see. Such a traveler would not age physically. His body would be in a suspended state. Only a very few individuals have traveled in this manner. Most of the knowledge gained escapes the ego, and the experiences cannot be translated by the physical brain.