“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We will find in many cases, first of all, dreams originating in that layer of personal subconscious, the most simple being those that have immediate reference to daily conscious life. While such a dream is less complex than others, it is nevertheless an amazing construction, and when we break down the obvious perceived objects or events of such a dream, we will find that the immediate objects and events that have application in daily life, that may be rehashed versions of the day, have nevertheless been carefully chosen.

For out of a seemingly endless number of possibilities, our individual dreamer actually discriminates with great care, choosing only those dream objects or symbols that have meaning to him; and those dream objects that can best serve his purposes. And even a simple dream that would seem to be concerned with trivial daily events is in reality concerned with much more.

The dream objects are in fact chosen with such precise discrimination that in many instances, on deep examination they will be seen to embody not only data concerning the dreamer’s daily conscious existence, but one and every dream object may be seen to apply on many levels at once.

The dream objects, then, are so cunningly, and if I may say so, almost slyly chosen, that the simplest of them may refer to instances in this existence, to personally subconsciously desired or feared objects or instances, to desired or feared objects or instances in past lives. They, such dream objects, may be the method or means with which the inner self warns the personality of future possible disappointments or disasters.

One dream object may represent simultaneously a simple daily and familiar portion of conscious life, a strong feared or desired portion of the immediately subconscious layer, an event or object from a past life, and a feared or desired future event or future possibility, as the case may be.

An equation exists here. One dream object has reality then in four or five different levels of reality simultaneously, the one object being more than itself, and equal to realities that have existed or will exist in your past or future; the past and future being therefore contained simultaneously within the dream object, by virtue of a quite real psychic contraction and expansion.

The expansion is the dream. The contraction is the return of the dream elements back into the original single object, that is dream object, from which the equation originated, as for example all numbers originate from the number one.

It is only according to where you happen to come in this time, so to speak. Each dream, first of all, begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms not into physical matter but into a reality every bit as functional and as real. He forms the idea into a dream object or event with amazing discrimination, so that the dream object itself gains existence, and exists in numerous dimensions.

It does not seem to exist in various dimensions. It does in actuality so exist. If a dream object or event does so straddle what you call not only time but space, and if as I say dream objects and creations maintain some independence from the dreamer, then you must see that although the dreamer creates his dreams for his own purposes, selecting only those symbols which have meaning to him, he nevertheless projects them outward in a value fulfillment and psychic expansion.

Energy projected into any kind of construction, psychic or physical, cannot be recalled, but must follow the laws of the particular form into which it has been for the moment molded. Therefore, when the dreamer contracts his multi-realistic objects backward, ending for himself the so-called dream that he constructed, he ends it for himself only. But the reality of the dream continues.

It is therefore only in a world obsessed with objects, and to some extent necessarily obsessed, that the question of what comes first has any meaning. Your conscious energies are focused upon the physical field, and the distortive cause and effect theory holds sway.

I can hear anticipated objections. Even those who are familiar with our material, and know the various means by which individuals create a fairly cohesive body of physical data and call it the physical universe, even these persons will say that while they agree that the individual creates the physical universe with the cooperation of others, that universe has a unity and permanence and recognizable form that the dream world does not have.

Telepathy could be called, indeed, the glue that holds the physical universe in precarious position, so that anyone can agree upon what a particular object is, or where it is at any given time.

The same sort of psychic agreement holds the dream universe together as holds the physical universe together. If a man could actually focus his concentration upon those hidden, feared, mainly unknown, unrecognized elements in the physical universe upon which men simply cannot agree; if he could focus upon the dissimilarities rather than the similarities in the physical universe, he would wonder what gave anyone the idea that there was even one physical object upon which men could agree.