“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(2. Much of Jane’s trance material on how individuals use dreams personally came through in answer to a question of mine that we’d often speculated about lately: If most people do not remember their dreams most of the time, of what use can their dreams be to them? The question was really based upon our belief, indeed our certainty, that everything in nature is intentional and useful; therefore dreams must fulfill important roles in peoples’ lives—but how, in ordinary terms? Here are quotations from the answers Jane gave while in trance:

“You might dream of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that a tire blew when you were driving too fast. You may never remember the dream. One way or another, however, you will hit upon some kind of situation—a portion of a TV drama, perhaps—in which a tire is blown; or you will see an item of that nature in the newspaper, or you will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. The magnitude of the physical stimuli with which you are surrounded makes it possible, of course, for any number of like situations to come to your physical attention during any given day. Even then, you might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to your attention might make you check your tires, decide to put off your trip, or instead lead you to inner speculations about whether you are going too fast in a certain direction for your own good at this time. But you will get the dream’s message.”

(Rather often lately we’ve speculated about why most people don’t remember their dreams. And if they don’t, how can they make use of them? Since we certainly think nature has given our species—and probably most others—a dream life for a reason, we take it for granted that the dream material is put to good use in ways we may not understand. Dreaming could hardly be a useless creation on nature’s part. Nor did we want to wait for science or psychology to explain dreams, since here we were having them all of the time. All of the material referred to in these notes, then, came together and furnished a foundation for the session to follow.)

In the past, if people didn’t remember their dreams, they’d project their dream events upon natural events, or read objective events as symbols that would actually express the dream itself. Now, even though people might forget their dreams, they often react to certain portions of TV dramas, or events that correlate with the dreams of the night before.

In these cases the individual will scarcely be aware that a dream is involved. Before such communications, the normal world of social concourse and natural phenomena always provided a great backdrop, in which the dreams of the night before would speak their messages—and the exterior circumstances then become recognizable for inner insights.

You might dream, for example, of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that there were difficulties and a tire blew when you were driving too fast. You may never remember the dream. One way or another, however, you will hit upon some kind of situation—a portion of a TV situation—in which a tire is blown. Or you will see an item of that nature in the newspaper, or you will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. The magnitude of the physical stimuli with which you are surrounded, makes it possible, of course, for any number of like situations to come to your physical attention during any given day. Even then, you might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to your attention might make you check your tires, decide to put off your trip, or instead lead you to inner speculations about whether you are going too fast in a certain direction for your own good at this time. But you will get the dream’s message.

One was that because objects just originate in man’s imagination anyway, there’s always a strong connection between objects and man’s dreams. They act as symbols of inner reality, so it’s only natural that whether he’s aware of it or not, man perceives objects in such a fashion that they also stand for symbols that first originate in his dreams.

Nuclear power stands for power, plain and simple. Is it good or bad? It stands in man’s dreams as belonging to God: the power of the universe (intently). Man has always considered himself, in your terms, as set apart from nature, so he must feel set apart from nature’s power—and there must be a great division in his dreams between the two.

Some of the scientists equate nuclear power with man’s great curiosity, and feel that they wrest this great energy from nature because they are “smarter than” nature is—smarter than nature, smarter than their fellow men—so they read those events in their own way. The probabilities are still surging, of course, and in private and mass dreams people try out all kinds of endings for that particular story.