“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This will serve as a further connective to our discussion of the dream universe, and its interaction with the world of physical matter. It goes without saying that your definition of reality is extremely limited, and excludes more than it includes.

Even within the experience of men there are realities that are entirely different from the realities of physical objects. Psychological experience is one such indisputable reality. Ideas are another, and dreams are still another. Secondary effects of such realities may appear in material form, but the original reality of such experiences cannot be captured within physical matter.

If such experiences appear less real than more obviously material realities, they also have at times a peculiar vividness that cannot be overlooked. Their nature is simply different from the nature of physical realities. If they seem occasionally insubstantial, it is because their substance is of a different quality.

They appear to lack the apparent physical durability of, say, a table or a chair, the table and chair being examples of physical realities. And yet their effect is much more durable, and they impress and to some extent manipulate physical realities, in their strong and sometimes explosive emergence into your universe. Such realities do not bow to the artificial time measurements which so often limit you in daily life.

You do indeed give them energy, as they also give you energy. Dreams, or the dream universe, exists even while you wake, and you only become aware of certain portions of it even while you sleep. You do create it, but it is also to some degree independent of you. As your ego experiences changes in its relationship with the physical world, so do you change aspects of the dream world accordingly, and enrich it.

Dream locations do not exist like physical objects in your head. How could your small skull hold a replica of a cement building, for example, even though the skull might be a rockhead? You need not take that remark personally, Joseph. I couldn’t resist making it, however.

These dream locations are realities. They do exist, even though they do not exist in space as you know it, and certainly they do not take up space in the skull. There would be no room for anything else. As a brief byline here, I mentioned once the Crucifixion, saying that it was an actuality and a reality, although it did not take place in your time. It took place where time is not as you know it. It took place in the same sort of time in which a dream takes place, and its reality was felt undeniably by generations, and was reacted to. Not being a physical reality, it influenced the world of physical matter in a way that no purely physical reality ever could.

(See the 81st session for Seth’s statements on the Crucifixion. This session and the 96th, among others, dealt much with the God concept, psychic gestalts, myths, etc.)

The Crucifixion was one of the gigantic realities that transformed and enriched both the universe of dreams and the universe of matter, and it originated in the universe of dreams. It was a main contribution of that field to your own, and could be compared physically to an emergence of a new planet within the physical universe.

The reality, the physical reality, of fire was such a contribution made by the physical universe to the universe of dreams. Physical man, observing fire, dreamed of it, thereby immeasurably enriching the universe of dreams. His discovery in the physical universe of domesticating fire was another such contribution to the dream universe.

The ascension of Christ did not occur in time as you know it. It is a contribution of the universe of dreams to your own universe, representing knowledge within the dream universe that man was independent of physical matter ultimately.

Now, and this can hardly be called a controversial statement, the imagination is waking man’s connection with the universe of dreams. Imagination often restates dream data, and applies it to particular circumstances or problems within the physical universe. Imagination is never basically destructive. In some cases the ego construction may be weak, or incapable of holding its own, in which case the imagination is often said to be too excitable, and to be at fault.

It might be said then, that in many ways the dream universe depends upon you to give it expression, in the same manner that you also depend upon it to find expression, although in this case you have other outlets, and it has few. The impact of any given dream has physical, chemical, electromagnetic, psychological and psychic repercussions. These are also actual and continuing, and they not only represent a part of your environment in all of these cases, but they affect most deeply the ordinary channels of everyday life.

The type of dream, or the types of dreams experienced by any individual, is determined by many factors. I am speaking now of the dream experience as it occurs, and not of the remnant of it that his ego allows him to consciously recall. As an individual creates his physical image and environment according to his abilities and defects, and in line with his expectations and subconscious and inner needs, so does he create his dreams; and these interact with the outer environment which he has created.

However, with the ego at rest the individual may allow communications and dream constructions through, past the ego barrier, in such a manner that he becomes in some ways free. If for example his present expectations are faulty, when the ego rests he may recreate a time when expectations were high. The resulting dream will then partially break the circle of poor expectations, with their shoddy physical constructions, and start such an individual along a more beneficial path. In other words, such a dream may begin to transform the physical environment through lifting inner expectation.

(My enlarging sensation began on backs of hands and in feet quite soon. I believe I then either dozed briefly, or attained a very good state. I had been telling myself I would visit Ed Robbins. I became aware that my whole body felt as though it were gathering itself together, charging itself with some kind of energy, in preparation for travel. The sensation was very strong and expectant. My stomach felt empty or gone, my arms and hands elevated. Arms and legs felt enlarged. This was the peak of the experience as I waited to see what developed. Briefly, and I could be mistaken, I thought I had a sensation of being suspended perhaps a foot or so above my body.