“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause; the pace was still slow at this point.) Consciousness can be turned in many directions, obviously, both inward and outward. You are aware of fluctuations in your normal consciousness, and closer attention would make some of this quite clear. You expand or narrow the scope of your attention constantly. You may focus upon one object almost to the exclusion of everything else at times, so that you literally are not conscious of the room in which you sit.

There are several exceptions, however, in which pure knowing or pure feeling is involved without the necessity for symbols. These stages of consciousness are infrequent and seldom translated into normal conscious terms.

Let us take a particular feeling and follow it through as it might be expressed at various levels of consciousness. (Pause.) Begin with a feeling of joy. In normal consciousness, the immediate environment will be perceived in a far different manner than it would be, say, if an individual were in a state of depression. The feeling of joy changes the objects themselves, in that the perceiver sees them in a far brighter light. He creates the objects far more vividly and with greater clarity. In feedback fashion, the environment then seems to reinforce his joy.

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.