“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, before we plunge into the nature and characteristics of dream reality, let us briefly consider the relationship between emotions, space, and distance as they occur within the waking conditions.

There are electrical connotations here also that are important, electrical components that compose the emotional experience, and that tend to show themselves in certain auras of color. Within the dreaming state however inner experience is not limited as it is in the waking condition, so that the time barrier can be largely dispensed with. There is an additional psychic space to be filled.

Experiences are more directly felt, although the same sort of differences occur here as far as intensities are involved. In the dream state as in the waking state, experiences vary in their intensity. There is however a more mobile element and an easier movement through experiences. Transitions are more rare in the dream state, since physical time lapses are not necessary.

Spontaneity is more the rule. Images appear and disappear, for there is no necessity to construct them as continuous physical constructions. There is therefore greater opportunity for new creations. These dream experiences take up psychic space, as do waking experiences. Their intensity is immediately felt however without any reliance upon physical time.

They are felt according to their intensity only. You might say, returning to our analogy, that there is more color-mixing within the dream state, and the materials are immediately at hand. Distance is then seen in its true light, not in relation to physical space but in its basic relationship to emotional intensity. As you seem in the waking condition to travel out of an experience, or as you seem to separate yourself from it, then physical time enters into your awareness.

When you directly experience an emotional event, when you are at its heart, so to speak, then you do not seem to experience physical time. Only as you move to the outskirts of the experience does such time realization enter in. The dream experience however is always free of the realization of physical time, practically, for you experience dream events directly from the center of awareness.

You move from the outskirts of one dream into the core of another without a change of intensity, and therefore without the sense of physical time passing. It goes without saying that a sense of time may or may not be interwoven in any given dream sequence, but you as the dreamer are not conscious of the physical hours that pass as you sleep.

In the dream reality you have the opportunity to work out solutions to problems within a larger framework in a psychic environment, where there is no immediate necessity for physical construction.

The creative abilities have full reign within the dream state, and it is here that the personality first tests its creative intensities and methods. The personality’s physical environment therefore is greatly colored and formed by his dream existence. There is some leakage from waking-life experience to dream experience, but this leakage usually represents the material needed, or the problem to be solved. Mental events and dream events are primary. The individual first manipulates situations within the dream reality, and then transposes his characteristic method of handling them upon the physical reality.

It is true, as Ruburt has discovered, that these dream elements are interwound. Events are indeed clairvoyantly perceived in the dream state. On the other hand in many instances the sleeping personality solves a problem, and therefore causes the physical event because it is the result of the dream work involved.

In many cases he perceives in a dream a future physical event, and then within the dream situation acts out various possible solutions, until he hits upon the most agreeable one. In the dream state the personality actually has at its command a stupendous amount of subconscious information of which the ego is not aware. It is actually more practical therefore to seek the solution in the dreaming state, or in periods of dissociation if you prefer. The amount of data available to the subconscious is simply superior in quality and larger in quantity to that available to the ego, and this information can be used effectively through suggestion.

The subconscious in sleep has great freedom, and has at its command information gained through past experience in this life and in other lives. In the intense focus of awareness that occurs within the dream state, the inner self is able to direct all of its energies for the purpose of solving a given problem.

Computerlike, the data is instantly made available exactly when and where it is needed. The ego is indeed equipped to handle physical reality. Its purpose is the manipulation of the personality within the physical universe. Its most effective method of procedure however is to form the problem concisely, and then to feed it to the subconscious before the personality enters the dreaming state.