“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.

In other words, a dream allows the inner self to view itself within the spacious present. Now, chemically the physical body does need to dream. That is, dreaming is a necessity if the physical body is to survive. This is the result of certain chemical reactions and chemical necessities, chemical excesses that build up during the days, inciting the mental dream mechanism.

Without dreams the outer camouflaged self would lose all touch with inner realities, or would be in danger of thus denying its own heritage; and therefore the physical body is so constructed that excess chemicals must be discharged and transformed into human action, or the physical mechanism would be clogged with poisons.

When I spoke of the fine discrimination used in the construction of a dream, I had reference to the amazing work done by the inner self in the choice of its individualized symbols, which would have meaning to the many and various levels of the subconscious.

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.

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.

The idea that sparked the book came to him, though he may forget, in two ways. First as intuition; in other words from his inner self as he sat down to write poetry, and in a dream the following night.

Intellectually he followed the ideas, but his inner self gave him the all-important initial message. His poetry does not spring from the conscious self, yet he would not disinherit it for that reason. Intuition represents the directions of the inner self, breaking through conscious barriers.

Messages from the inner self if strong enough will pass through the conscious barriers, and the conscious ego is only too happy to receive them. But such intuitions have usually first appeared in dream form, appearing to the ego later; and many such messages appear in dreams ahead of time, to be released to the conscious mind when situations demand it.

(It might be interesting to quote here the first paragraph of notes Jane made that evening: “Basic idea is that the senses are developed not to permit awareness of an already existing material world, but to create it. The inner image [idea] is projected by the senses outward to create the world of appearances. [Camera in reverse, for the eye, for example.]”

The dreaming self, dear friends, is not aware of the conscious self. The whole self, the entire inner self alone, holds knowledge of the direction in which it moves. The directions can be likened to conscious selves. Any individual on the physical level who has achieved great things has done so because his so-called conscious self was intuitively (and underline the word intuitively) aware of the selves of which he could not be consciously aware.