“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The fact remains that much basic material should be comprehended in order for us to continue in the line of suitable explanations. You construct the dream universe in the same manner that you construct the physical universe. For various reasons that have been discussed there is no need, in the dream universe, for the permanence of image, or the apparent permanence of image that occurs in the physical universe.

You construct the dream universe, again, on a subconscious basis. The dream universe is as permanent in its way as the physical universe. You construct dreams whether you wake or you sleep. You are only familiar with your dreams when you sleep, for then your perception and your energy is focused in that direction.

I will here repeat an old definition of many sessions back: Consciousness is the direction in which the self looks.

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.

As you create physical matter constantly without knowing that you do so, so also you create constantly a dream universe, and this dream universe is as individual as your environment in the physical world. There is also a chemical reaction here, for without dreaming the physical organism could not exist.

With your outer senses, you perceive but the camouflage physical reality which the physical senses are equipped to perceive. In the dream universe you are however free, and familiar, with both space and time in a manner which is denied you in the waking state. Where indeed are your dream locations? Where in space is the street upon which you walk in a dream?

(Among others, Seth talked about the direction of focus of consciousness in the 94th session. Volume 3.)

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.

(The value climate of psychological reality has been designated by Seth as the first of the basic laws of the inner universe, and was first discussed in the 44th session, in Volume 2.

There is a necessity to discover and understand the inner self. There is much material concerning the construction of atoms and molecules that will enable you to understand not only the physical world, but also the dream universe.

Speaking earlier concerning the dream universe, there are many things I left of necessity unsaid. I was saying that any dream location exists in actuality, when you experience it in a perspective which has nothing to do with your idea of space, but which has a depth and a reality at least as valid.

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.

Nor are you indeed fully conscious, in your terms, even in your waking state.

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.

The following basic subjects are necessary for an understanding of what we are trying to say, particularly for any practical application: the construction of physical matter; the psychological and electrical gestalt that results in the formation of a self; the nature of the dream universe; the electrical system, as it is related to both the physical universe and the inner psychic gestalt; the nature of action; mental enclosures; mental genes; and again, all of these subjects in relationship to their reality as action.

You do not hold them. They are indeed transmitted without your conscious knowledge, and the self expands. Nor is the self limited physically. Again, this idea is the result of your own habit of perception, for chemicals and air and nutrients that you consider not your self, enter the self constantly from the physical environment; and that which you consider yourself, leaves through the pores of the body.