“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. The “I” who dreams, who is aware of motion, action and participation in a dream, this “I” is of course the inner self, focused momentarily upon the particular subconscious layer at which the dream is originated.

In dreams the inner “I” changes its point of focus, and this is important. It is therefore able to view the self as a whole, with its past and present life. And because the focus brings it outside of camouflage time and space, it is also able to project itself into what you call the future.

You must again realize that we speak of the self as being so divided only for simplicity’s sake. While the self is whole, it is however compartmentalized for efficiency’s sake, but beneath consciousness the doors are open. Again, the conscious self is most necessary. However it cannot be stressed too strongly that consciousness is merely a state of focus, and not a self.

That is perhaps the most important sentence of this session, and many others. For the direction or the focus of the self does indeed change, and even in your own daily lives you experience the fact that what is conscious today may not be tomorrow.

The self, in this manner, looks about. The direction in which the self looks is not the self. In dreams the self looks elsewhere, and the “I” is a conscious “I”, and the working ability is tremendous. The inner self perceives realities that it observes in many directions, being free from the intense focus within limited directions of camouflage existence.

It then constructs its dreams in such a way that the symbols within will sift through all areas that are themselves less able to survey large vistas, but whose energies are focused along specific lines.

Another man in an airplane above sees the whole landscape, and through radio communicates to those below about those conditions which they cannot perceive. The man in the airplane, then, can be compared to the inner self, sending messages to other areas of the subconscious, whose energies and focus are necessarily used in limited fashion.

I am, again, not minimizing the practical necessity for the conscious self as it appears to be. But man is much more than the conscious self, and what he calls the conscious self is merely the whole self as seen through the direction in which the whole self chooses to direct its energies and focus.

A man stands in the center of a room. When he looks to the right you say “This is my conscious self.” When he looks to the left, we have something else again. You say “This is the dreaming self.” The dreaming self, or if you will, the left-handed self, indeed is as important as the so-called conscious self. The whole self merely changes direction and viewpoint, and focuses its energies along a particular line.