“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For one thing, association is not clearly understood by any means. It cannot be clearly understood simply because at present psychologists believe that association works only in connection with past events.

They also underestimate dream events, for many associations in your present are the result of events which have occurred in the dream state. The mind is hardly shut off when you dream. It continues to use its associative processes. Therefore any given personal association may originate from a dream event as well as from a past waking event.

Take an example here. Frederick Y. becomes ill whenever he smells a certain perfume. He does not know the reason. A psychologist would explain this reaction by presuming some kind of unpleasant event occurred in the past. An event that was connected with his sensual perception of this particular perfume.

The explanation is a good possible one. However, it is the only one that your psychologists would consider, and at least two other possible explanations exist. Frederick may be reacting to an unpleasant event experienced within the dream state, where in the dream the upsetting situation was accompanied by the odor of a particular perfume.

Frederick however could also be reacting to the same sort of event that has not yet occurred, however, to his perception—that is, to an event in the future. For the mind does not divide time into a series of moments. This is done by the physical brain and the physical senses.

The ego is not as a rule aware of this broader time experience. The subconscious however is so aware, and the associative processes of the mind can, and do, react to a future event, while the ego is closed off to it. Therefore it is possible for Frederick, this year, to become ill at the smell of a particular perfume because subconsciously he knows that in 1980 his mother will be wearing that perfume when she dies.