“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I had intended to cover this earlier but we were sidetracked. The preliminary discussion of the subconscious layers was necessary, since dreams originate in these various levels, and should therefore be interpreted according to the particular symbolisms inherent in the realm of reality to which they may belong.

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.

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.

Friends knowing of our sessions have asked at one time or another that I explain what appeared first in the universe, what started it all, and they ask with such ponderous voices. They want a first thing, or a first person. In this discussion on dreams we have indeed an excellent example of how creation is achieved.

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.

It is your focus, intensive, that of itself blots out other perceptions that would allow you to see that the question “What comes first?” is meaningless.

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.

You know that many, but not all by any means, dream symbols approximately mean the same thing, but only approximately, and only for a particular group of human beings who experienced reality on the physical plane for a comparatively short period. The symbol of fire for example as a dream symbol, simply did not exist in the way that it does now to men born before mankind learned to use fire for warmth, or to cook his food.

I want to make a point however, that the dream universe is as real and cohesive as your own, and that the same glue of telepathy holds it together, and gives it not only as much reality but validity in actual terms.

Their dream worlds are not then so diverse in some ways as you might have supposed. Certain symbols are constructed into realities in the dream universe, then, in much the same manner that certain ideas are constructed into matter in the physical universe.

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.

He would wonder what collective madness made or permitted man to select, from a virtual infinity of what would appear as chaos, to select a handful, a mere handful, of similarities and call it a universe.

So do you, viewing the seeming chaos of dream reality, wonder how I can say that similarity here occurs, and cohesiveness and actuality and comparative permanence. The dream means something to the individual who originates it, selects its elements most carefully, but in order for him to use it he must create it.

But the legs do walk, and the dream universe does exist. As the entity expands and originates new personalities, and these personalities then become independent individuals, so do the individuals create dream or so-called dream realities and individuals of the dream universe, which are independent.