“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Certainly my life has been vastly enriched by an odd subjective mobility. I write this book during the day in my study, looking out the wide bay windows at the street and at the mountains and river just beyond. But when I want new material for a particular chapter, I turn the focus of my attention from the exterior world to the interior one. Then my physical environment does not concern me, and my normal waking life is the dream.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that in dream life I’m writing a book about waking consciousness just as, with my waking consciousness, I’m writing about the reality of dreams. It wouldn’t astonish me either to learn that Seth in an entirely different dimension speaks for a personality called Jane. In fact, I sometimes amuse myself by imagining a situation in which Seth wonders if Jane is a secondary personality with an obsessive belief in some improbable physical reality. Seth, however, is far more knowledgeable than I am, so if he were speaking for me, then I’m afraid he would get the lesser end of the bargain.

Following Seth’s instructions, my husband and I first learned to recall and record our dreams. Through later experiments, we discovered that we could bring our normal waking consciousness into the dream state and “come awake” while dreaming. Later we began to take bolder steps into these inner areas, learning to manipulate consciousness in what was for us an entirely new way.

The locations that you visit while dreaming are as real to you then as physical locations are to you in the waking state. What you have is this: In the waking state, the whole self is focused toward physical reality, but in the dreaming state, it is focused in a different dimension. It is every bit as conscious and aware.

If you have little memory of your dream locations when you are awake, then remember that you have little memory of your waking locations when you are in the dream situation. Both are legitimate and both are realities. When the body lies in bed, it is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell. But this, dear friends, has nothing to do with space, for the dream location exists simultaneously with the room in which the body sleeps.

In other words, while most books are written about events that occur in waking reality, this one will be mainly concerned with events that happen precisely when consciousness is turned away from normal objective life. Much more is involved than even the nature of the dream state and man’s fascinating ability to withdraw consciousness from the body. These phenomena are only evidences of the greater creative consciousness that is inherent and active in each of us — the interior universe of which we know so little.

This is most obvious in dreaming, of course. Dreams may well represent us at our most creative, for not only do we process the past day’s activities, but we also choose tomorrow’s events from the limitless probable actions that are presented to us while the waking self is still.