“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The ego skims the topmost surface of reality and experience.

This is not the result of any inherent egotistical quality. It is true that the ego’s responsibility is with the relationship between the self and the physical environment. It must of necessity be focused within the confines of physical reality.

The ego itself in many instances cannot experience directly certain intuitions and psychological experiences, but it can experience them insofar as it can be aware of them on an intellectual basis. When training forces the ego to become too rigid, and to limit its perception of other realities, then the intuitions will not be accepted by the ego because intuitional experience will not fit into the framework of reality as the ego sees it.

The ego, because of its responsibility, will therefore fight against what it then considers an unknown threat to survival. Struggles are therefore initiated which are entirely unnecessary. We want to bring intuitional comprehension to a point where the ego will accept it.

In our dream experiments therefore, this is one of the purposes that we hope to achieve. The ego is not equipped of itself to delve directly into nonphysical realities. If the ego is trained to be flexible however, it will accept such knowledge from the subconscious, and other wider horizons of the self.

Our ego must have its feet upon the solid earth, it is out of its element, naked and in an unfamiliar environment, outside of the normal characteristics of physical existence. Its basic distrust of dream experience is necessary for the overall balance of the personality. Physical reality is a rock to which the ego must cling, and from which it achieves its power, energy, position, and reason for existence.

In our dream experiments then, we will allow you to bring such messages to the ego. We will attempt to map this exotic country in such a way that the ego can understand what is there in terms of resources, that can be used for its own benefit. We shall map this dream state from various perspectives, until you know it very well.

I want to give you some more material to further fill out our outline for future sessions dealing with dream reality. I have intended to give you both an evening off entirely, out of the goodness of my heart, and because we will be concerned very soon now with relatively significant discussions, and a break will do you good.

We will be involved with a study of the characteristics of the dream world in general, and attempt to isolate it as a separate reality simply for the purposes of examination. Then we shall consider it rather carefully in its relation to physical reality, using comparisons and dissimilarities.

Usually the dream state is considered from a negative standpoint, and compared unfavorably with waking reality. Emphasis is laid upon those conditions present in the waking condition, and absent in the dream state.

We shall however consider those aspects of consciousness which are present within the dream environment, and absent in the physical environment. No study of human personality can pretend to be thorough that does not take into consideration the importance of the dream reality.