“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This afternoon while painting I had a vision. With my inner eye I saw the face of an older man, facing to the left in full color. I made two pencil drawings of the image. It was quite clear, especially about the eyes, nose and mouth; and later I realized that I had been “seeing” it for at least a few moments, almost absent-mindedly, before I understood what was happening.

(For what it is worth, earlier in the afternoon I had been wishing I had a model handy, for I felt like doing some quick sketches as a relief from the constant oil painting. It is difficult for me to get models when I have the time to use them. For some other material on my visions, see the 22nd and 47th sessions, in Vols. 1 and 2.

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.

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.

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.

The intellect chooses from the total physical situation those elements with which the personality will ultimately have to deal. The intellect is discriminating and selective. An ego that is overly rigid will inhibit the intellect from perceiving various portions of physical reality, and therefore distort the appearance of reality, limiting the intellect’s abilities.

When the ego is of such a rigid nature that it distorts physical reality out of all context, then however the personality had better rely upon the subconscious even in this respect, for the subconscious will at least perceive those elements of physical reality that immediately threaten the whole self.

I have the following impressions, that are somehow connected with what we have here.

I also get the impression of a string, of what I do not know. Did I mention the number five?

(Thus it seems that Seth traveled through the thickness of the paper, picking up impressions as he went along, and did this at least twice. He also mentioned “two people...perhaps a dress.” There were no people on either side of the test paper. Checking the whole calendar however, we noted there was a drawing of a man and a woman on the upper section of this particular page, but that I had left them behind in clipping out the test section. They would be about four inches removed from the clipping, and stood before another drawing of a house. We do not know if this is a legitimate interpretation of something “somehow connected with what we have here.”