“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.