“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The interrelationship between the waking state and the sleeping state has never been clearly understood. One of the main differences between the waking and sleeping states is merely the almost complete change of focus that is involved. When you are using intellectual methods alone you will necessarily fall short in any study of the dream reality. Man is indeed his intellect, but he is much else besides.

The experience involved in learning to change your own focus of awareness will be most beneficial. It will even add to the beneficial nature of your own dreams. You do not have to sleep to dream. Every individual has had his daydreams, and here you can see more clearly this change of focus. I meant to mention this earlier. Ruburt can request levitation dreams, and he will have them.

In this sort of an investigation instructions then can be given before sleeping, and a portion of the self will indeed continue to work for you in this manner. You can indeed learn much concerning events; but what we are mainly concerned with here is the stuff of dreams, and the framework within which they have their existence.

For the framework is the same framework in which you have your physical existence. We will make you investigators even in your sleep; and you can see now how your very investigations are bound to change the nature of your dreams themselves. Only in this case nothing will be lost, and much gained. It is unfortunate that medical men who deal with the mind as a specialty have not thought of some of these connections more thoroughly.

For once more, to the basic personality an experience is important according to its vividness or significance on an intimate basis. The personality does not differentiate between a waking or a sleeping experience in any real manner. This also is not clearly understood. Dream therapy could offer great advantages, but here again it could be dangerous in the hands of unscrupulous or rigid personalities.

If I may indulge in a fantasy, theoretically you could indeed imagine a massive experiment in dream therapy, where wars were fought by the sleeping and not by the waking nations. We will discuss this whole question very thoroughly, as I have been leading up to it for a while.

There would still be repercussions, however, though less disastrous, that would be unavoidable. For again, basically the personality does not differentiate between a waking and a sleeping experience. The importance of any experience is judged by the personality according to its personal vividness and significance. It is only the ego who makes other distinctions.