“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The joy stretches out, so to speak, into the future, sheds also its light into the past, and may cover greater areas of expansion than could be shown in physical terms at that moment. Now imagine that our individual from his reverie falls either into a trance state or into a deep sleep. (Long pause.) He may see images that are highly symbolic to him of joy or exuberance. Logically there may be little connection between them, but intuitively the connections are clear. He now enters into his mental experiences far more deeply than in the reverie state, and may have a series of dream episodes in which he is able to express his joy and share it with others.

He is still dealing with physically oriented symbols, however. Now since we are using this discussion as a case in point we will continue to follow it even further. He may form images of dream cities or people that are of a very joyful nature, translate the emotion itself into whatever symbols are pertinent to him. An exuberance may be translated into images of playing animals, flying people, or animals or landscapes of great beauty. Again, the logical connections will be lacking, but the entire episode will be connected by this emotion.

(At break each of us mentioned a question. I wanted to be sure that the material given on the Speakers, so far, adequately dealt with the methods by which they were able to contact others in both the waking and dream states. I wanted to know more about the Speakers’ training, by whom it was conducted, and their intuitions and dream experiences.

Now these efforts go on whether you wake or sleep. Once you are aware of these activities, however, it is possible to catch yourself in various stages of consciousness, and even at times to follow your own progress, particularly through dream states. Your body is your most intimate symbol at this point, and again your most obvious.

Obviously you cannot become aware of that stage of consciousness now, but you can keep track of the way symbols appear to you in both waking life and the dream state, and learn to connect them with the feelings they represent. You will learn that certain symbols will appear personally to you at various stages of consciousness, and these can serve as points of recognition in your own explorations. When Ruburt is about to leave his body from the dream state for example, he will often find himself in a strange house or apartment that offers opportunities for exploration.

This of course is obvious, but the same sort of symbol changing may occur within dreams. The dog’s accident may be a dream experience, for that matter, that then changes your conscious symbolic feeling toward dogs in the waking state. One person may symbolize fear as a demon, as an unfriendly animal, or even as some perfectly simple ordinarily harmless object; but if you know what your own symbols mean, then you can use the knowledge not only to interpret your dreams but also as signposts to the state of consciousness in which they usually occur.

Even the symbols, then, at various stages of consciousness will appear differently, some seeking to have stability and permanence as your physical objects, following the principles or root assumptions of corporeal reality, and some changing much more quickly, as in the dream state, these being more immediate and sensitive indicators of feeling. Various states of consciousness seem to have their own environments in which these symbols appear, again, as objects appear in a physical environment.

Seemingly nonstable mental objects appear in the dream environment at certain levels. The symbols follow rules then in both cases. As mentioned earlier, again, the dream universe is as “objective” as the corporeal one. The objects and symbols within it are as faithful representations of dream life as physical objects are of waking life.

The nature of the symbol, therefore, can serve as an indication not only as to your environment but your state of consciousness within it. In normal dreaming within the context of an ordinary dream drama, the objects seem permanent enough to you. You take them for granted. You are still physically oriented. You project upon dream images the symbolism of your waking hours.

(11:10.) In other states of dream consciousness, however, houses may suddenly disappear. A modern building may suddenly replace a shack. A child may turn into a tulip. Now the symbols are obviously behaving in a different manner. In this environment, permanency is not a root assumption. Logical sequence does not apply.