“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We have been reading the article on sleep in the September 18th issue of the New Yorker. Called “A Third Stage of Existence”, it deals with REM sleep, or the rapid eye movements that have been shown to occur during dreaming. Since Seth has dealt with dreams to some extent Jane and I have a somewhat different slant on sleep and dreaming, and what is involved.

With yourself and Ruburt, I was amused to think that a scientist was conducting experiments on a serious level in order to discover whether or not dreams actually exist.

The reality of dreams themselves can only be investigated through direct contact. Their reality cannot be probed by scientific devices, for dreams in this respect are as nebulous as the spirit, or soul, or inner self. Dreams are directly experienced. They have no meaning outside of their relationship with the personality.

As far as your system is concerned, they cannot be suddenly made flesh, to dwell among you. REM sleep or no REM sleep, your dreams exist constantly, beneath consciousness, even in the waking state. The personality is constantly affected by them. Their existence has its own dimension which is connected to the physical organism. It is impossible to deprive a human being of dreams, for even though you deprive him of sleep, this necessary mental function will be carried on subconsciously.

Dreams are an example of mental activity that has its origin within the physical organism, but exists in a dimension which is not mainly physical. Dreams are an example of the inner self’s basically independent nature.

The eye movements noted in the beginning of REM sleep are only indications of dream activity that is closely connected to the physical layers of the self. These periods mark not the onset of dreams, but the return of the personality from deeper layers of dream awareness to more surface areas.

The self is actually returning to more surface levels of consciousness, to check upon its environment. There is a transference of main energy in deeper dream states, from physical concentration to a mental concentration, actually quite separated from physical connections.

Quite simply, the self travels to levels of awareness, and to layers of the self that are far divorced from the physical areas of mobility. The muscles are lax because activity of a physical nature is not required for the physical organism. Actions are indeed being carried on, and actions which would be considered physical if the body was moving, and if the individual were awake. These actions, walking, talking, working, any conceivable dream action, these require energy. The energy that is not being expended within the physical system is used to sustain these mental actions.

The chemical excesses built up in the waking state are automatically changed as they are drained off, into electrical energy, which also helps to form and sustain dream images. Your scientists would learn more about the nature of dreams if they would but train themselves to recall their own dreams, and then study them in relation to their own normal activities and physical events.

He has worked with human beings and cats. The very attempt to deprive an individual of sleep, however, will automatically set into mechanism subconscious dream activity. The tampering will then change the conditions. The direct experience of the developing dream is what they should be concerned with.

This could be studied to some degree if proper suggestions were given to the individual that he would awaken at the exact point when a dream ends. The dream state and dream conditions could also be studied quite legitimately, and to more purpose, using hypnosis. Here you are working with the mind itself as your material, and merely suggesting that it operate in a certain fashion. You are not tampering with the mechanics of its operation, and therefore automatically altering the conditions.

Dr. Instream might find such a study would bring him much satisfaction. Through hypnosis you can get complete dream recall, with a good operator. You can suggest ordinary sleep, and then suggest that the subject, in his sleep and without waking, give a verbal description of his dream or dreams.

This however would involve many a nightly vigil. A better procedure would be to hypnotize a subject, and you would need a good one, and suggest that under hypnosis he repeat the dreams of the night before. There are many opportunities for an investigation of dreams along these lines, and the results would yield more legitimate information.

The dreams of the mentally ill, using these methods, could also be studied if the affliction, of course, was not too severe. The dreams of children could be investigated in this manner without too much difficulty, and these could be compared, generally speaking, with the dreams of adults. Many differences between the two would be noted.

Children dream more vividly and more often. They return more frequently however to periods of near wakefulness, in order to check their physical environment, since they are not as sure of it as adults are. In deep periods of sleep children range further away, as far as their dream activities are concerned.

The ego, not yet fully formed, allows them more freedom. For this reason also they have more telepathic and clairvoyant dreams than do adults. They also have more psychic energy, practically speaking. That is, they are able to draw upon energy more easily. Because of the intenseness of their waking existence, the chemical excesses build up at a faster rate. Therefore children actually have more of this chemical propellant to use in the formation of dreams.

They are actually more conscious of their dreams, for the ego does not prevent awareness at this stage to the same degree that it will do later.

I have said often that any action changes that which acts, and that which is acted upon; and so in the sort of experiments that are now being carried on to study dreams. The acts of the investigators are changing the conditions in such a way it is easy to find that which you are looking for.

For the investigator himself, through his actions, inadvertently brings about, in specific instances, those results for which he looks. The particular experiment may then seem to suggest conditions which are by no means general ones, but which may appear so. In hypnosis the subject is not as much on guard as a subject of an experiment when the subject knows in advance that he will be awakened by the experimenter, when electrodes are attached to the physical organism, when the conditions of the sleep laboratory are substituted for his ordinary nightly environment. It is impossible to study dreams when an attempt is made to isolate the dreamer from his own personality, to treat dreams as if they were physical or mechanical. The only laboratory for a study of dreams is the laboratory of the personality.