“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The ego is not aware of the manner in which dreams are created. Neither is it aware of the manner in which the inner self creates physical matter. Neither, therefore, is it aware of those distortions that cause it to construct faults within physical matter, for in all cases the physical matter of the human body will be subconsciously created in line with inner conditions.

In sleep, when the ego is quieted, then the self looks in other directions. In sleep the self becomes conscious of its dreams, but this does not mean that the dreams have not existed while you were not conscious of them. Nor does it mean that they cease to exist when you are no longer conscious of them, for they have their own sort of molecular and electrical construction. But the ego cannot tune into that perceptive range.

You may in a dream experience two or three hours in a flash of physical time. You have not aged two or three hours. The experience of space and time within the dream universe comes very close to the pure expression of the inner self. For here, free from the ego, the self is relieved of the necessity of constructing ideas into physical reality.

Nor is the dream itself a chaotic action, but a complicated and unique action by which symbols are chosen with such precise and careful attention that they have meaning to all levels of the inner self, and various levels of the subconscious. Here you will find clues as to many of your own conscious problems. Here with study and attention you will find information concerning your own previous lives, which the ego is not familiar with.

Through dreams the self communicates with the self, and with all layers of the self. For the self is not one concrete thing. The self has no boundaries, the self is not limited. Consciousness is the direction in which the self looks, again, but the ego is not aware of the whole self. The ego is not even familiar with the context or the meaning of your own dreams.

The ego cannot make your heart beat. Why then do you find it difficult to believe that you are more than the ego, for in dreams you meet portions of yourself. You construct realities, and you are indeed familiar with the dream universe that consciously you ignore. And your experience within the dream universe is as vivid and as valid and as real, in every respect, as your waking experience.

You shut off stimuli to concentrate on other stimuli. This is a simplified example of how in the dream state you shut out stimuli usually accepted by the ego, and become conscious of other realities that you usually ignore in the waking state.

You create the dream world continuously. You are familiar with it and intimate with it, and you know it well. In this discussion there should be some remarks made concerning the existence of the inner ego, of which I believe you are not familiar.

I do not want to give you too many details too quickly. The inner ego, however, you may think of as another face that looks inward. We are using an analogy, and an analogy that is for simplicity’s sake only. We may say therefore, starting from the outer environment, that you would have first of all what you consider the ego, which I will call the outer ego.

At the furthest or innermost area then, we come to the inner ego, which would then be separated from the outer ego by the buffer of the subconscious. Now it goes without saying that we speak here merely for convenience’s sake, for all these areas are not indeed so neatly divided; but to explain their various purposes we must therefore speak of them in this manner.

For, because you perceive reality in a limited fashion only, this in no way affects the basic nature of reality itself. The ego attempts to stand apart from action, to view action as the result of ego. However, again, the ego’s attempt to stand apart from action in no way changes the basic nature of action itself, and the ego merely limits its own perception.

There are no limitations to the self, for the self as a part of action has no boundaries except those imaginary boundaries given to it by the ego.