“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now Seth said: “Our friend [meaning me] attempted to choose a different battlefield last night. He decided to think of all negative feelings as enemies, and to give them form in another plane of reality where he could do battle with them. This was not an astral plane, but a lower one.

“The energy behind his ‘black thing’ was the energy of hidden fears, but such a thing could be formed by anyone, since there are fears in any man. Ruburt tried to isolate them, give them form, and fight them all at once. The thing was actually a rather clumsy lower-dimensional animal, a provoked dumb dog of other dimensions who then attacked him, symbolically enough, by biting. Any ‘thing’ so created entirely of fears would be frightened and particularly angry at its creator. It could do nothing but attack to protect whatever reality it had, for it knew Ruburt created it only to slay it, if possible.

“It did have reality, therefore. Ruburt leapt back to safety and normal consciousness. The thing then dissipated [as far as Ruburt was concerned]. For when Ruburt ‘ran home’ he automatically withdrew the energy [of his attention] from it. … Ruburt tried to separate from himself all those elements he considers negative, and fight them at once, almost as if in so doing he could remove evil from the universe.

“But this fact is Ruburt’s safeguard in his out-of-body travels—as long as he remembers it. The words ‘May peace be with you’ will get him through any difficulty in other layers of reality—for as he formed that image, others also form images and he could encounter them. To wish them peace will give them some comfort, for they do have a kind of reality. To fear them is to put yourself into their realm of reality, and then you are forced to fight on their terms. There is no need for this.”

This episode was an out-of-body experience from the dream state, though, and it will serve to make one point: dream reality is as valid and real as waking reality. Dreams definitely affect daily life. They can improve our health or help deepen a mood of depression. There are ways to use dreams purposefully, however, to improve our existence, even though I admit that the last instance was not a very good example.

He starts off by saying: “The personality is composed of energy gestalts. As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by its dreams; and as an individual is molded by his physical environment to some extent, so is he molded by the dreams which he himself creates. … The self is limitless. When your perceptions fail, it seems to you that boundaries appear. For example, it seems to you that dreams cease when you are no longer aware of them. This is not so.

“Much work has been done to interpret dreams, but little to control the direction of activity within them. Upon proper suggestion, this can be an excellent method of therapy. Negative dreams tend to reinforce the negative aspects of the personality, helping to form vicious circles of unfortunate complications. Dream actions can be turned toward fulfilling constructive expectations, which can themselves effect a change for the better.

“We do not want an individual to suggest that he dream of harming another. There are several reasons for this, including telepathic realities that you do not yet understand, and guilt patterns which would be unavoidable. We are not talking about substituting dream action for physical action. We are discussing particular problems that need treatment.”

While all of this is of practical interest, Rob and I are even more intrigued by Seth’s explanation of dream reality. Since I’ve had many out-of-body experiences from the dream state, I was rather concerned about the reality of the environments in which I found myself. Seth began his discussions on the nature of dream reality very soon after the sessions began, and they still continue. Until I learned from Seth to “monitor” my own dreams, and awaken my critical faculties, I was simply astounded by some of his statements.

Consider this early passage from session 92, which I now accept as basic: “Each dream begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms not into physical matter, but into a reality every bit as functional and real. He forms the idea into a dream object or event with amazing discrimination, so that the dream object itself gains existence and exists in numerous dimensions. …

Still speaking of dreams, Seth says: “Energy projected into any kind of construction, psychic or physical, cannot be recalled, but must follow the laws of the particular form into which it has been for the moment molded. Therefore, when the dreamer contracts his multi-realistic objects backward, ending for himself the dream he has constructed, he ends it for himself only. The reality of the dream continues.”

“For one thing … those who know existence on the physical level now, have, because of certain cycles, lived before at approximately the same historical periods. They possess an inner familiarity, a cohesiveness that belonged to a more or less specific period and to periods before, where they inhabited the same sort of reality. Their dream experiences, then, are not so diverse as you might suppose. Certain symbols are constructed into realities in the dream system, then, in much the same manner that ideas are constructed into matter in the physical system.

“He would wonder what collective madness permitted man to select from a virtual infinity of chaos a mere handful of similarities and make of it a universe. So do you, viewing the seeming chaos of dream reality, wonder how I can say that it contains cohesiveness, actuality, and comparative permanence.”

“The locations that you visit while dreaming are as real to you then as physical locations are to you now. Let us speak no more of a conscious or unconscious self. There is one self and it focuses its attention in various dimensions. In the waking state it focuses in physical reality. In the dream state it is focused within a different dimension.

Seth told us that this was possible long before I had any such experiences on my own and before I had read about them. But his ideas of the interrelationship between waking and dream reality are fascinating.

“I mentioned the Crucifixion, saying once that it was an actuality and a reality, although it did not take place in your [physical] time. It took place in the same sort of time in which a dream occurs and its reality was felt by generations. Not being a physical reality, it influenced the world of physical matter in a way that no purely physical event could.

“The Crucifixion was one of the realities that enriched both the universe of dreams and the universe of matter, and it originated in the universe of dreams. It was a main contribution of that system to your own, and could be physically compared to the emergence of a new planet within the physical universe.”

Seth is not saying here that the Crucifixion was “just a dream.” He is saying that though it did not occur historically, it did happen within another reality and emerged into history as an idea rather than a physical event—an idea that changed civilization. (According to Seth, of course, an idea is an event, whether physically materialized or not.)

“Many concepts and practical inventions simply wait in the dream system in abeyance until some man accepts them as possibilities within the physical frame of reality. … Imagination is waking man’s connection with the dream system. Imagination often reinstates dream data and applies it to particular circumstances or problems within daily life. …

Some Seth sessions tell us precisely how we form dreams, what chemicals are built up during waking consciousness and then released in dream-making, and others deal with the electromagnetic composition of dream reality. But all through is the insistence upon what we would call, I suppose, the “objectivity” of dream life.

“There is form within dream reality,” he said, “but form is first of all potential existing within psychic energy. The potential form exists long before its physical materialization. The house that you may live in within five years may not yet exist in your terms. It may not have been built yet, therefore physically you would not perceive it. Still, such a house does have form, and does exist within the Spacious Present.

“Now in certain levels of dream reality, forms such as this can be perceived. Within dream reality you can come into contact with many other kinds of phenomena with which usually you do not have to deal. With the projection experiments you have in mind, this information becomes highly practical. I would like to give you some idea, you see, of what to expect.

“When you are manipulating within physical reality, you have a fairly simple set of rules to serve you. Within dream reality there is greater freedom. The ego is not present. The waking consciousness, dear friends, is not the ego. The ego is only that portion of waking consciousness that deals with physical manipulation.

“Waking consciousness can be taken into the dream state; the ego cannot, as it would falter and cause immediate failure. In your experiments you will meet with various conditions, and until you learn control it may be difficult to distinguish between them. Some you can manipulate, some you cannot. Some dream locations will be of your own making, and others will be strange to you. They will belong to other dimensions of reality, but you may blunder into them.

According to Seth, we do have shared dreams or mass dreams. These actually act as a stabilizing force in our daily lives. Are our dreams private? Apparently not nearly as private as we suppose. In the 254th session Seth had this to say: “In certain areas of mass, shared dreams, collective mankind deals with problems of his political and social structure. The solutions he reaches within dream reality are not always the same as those he accepts in the physical world.

“The dream solutions are held as ideals, however. Without mass dreams, for example, your United Nations would not exist. … At this stage of your development it is necessary that selectivity be used. If you were aware of the constant barrage of telepathic communications that do impinge upon you, it would be most difficult for you now to retain a sense of identity. Shared dreams, then, are also usually well beneath awareness. … As identity is strengthened through experience, it automatically expands itself to add further realities within which it can manipulate.

In this session Seth also mentioned John F. Kennedy, and had some comments to make connecting racial problems with dreams. “As you know, many people dreamed of Jack Kennedy’s death in advance. On one level the knowledge was available to the man himself. This does not mean that the death had to occur. It was a vivid possibility. It was also one of many solutions to several problems. While it was not the most suitable solution, it was the closest man could come at that particular time in physical reality. …”

Seth went on to say that the emotional intensity of a dream is very seldom recalled in its full strength. Then, briefly, he mentioned mass dreams as a way of bringing about historical change.

Those who are concerned about the present racial situation “dream individually and collectively of changing it. They act out in their dreams the various ways in which changeabouts could occur. These dreams actually help bring about the resulting change that will then happen. The very energy and direction of the dreams will help change the situation.”

Through our dreams we change physical reality, and our physical daily experience alters our dream experience. There is constant interaction. Our consciousness is simply directed in a different kind of reality when we dream, a reality as vivid as waking life. We may forget our dreams, but they are always a part of us, even though we may not be aware of their entire reality.

According to Seth there are many other systems of reality in which we operate, all unknown to the waking ego. Not only are there universal systems composed of matter and antimatter, but there are an infinite variety of realities in between. Apparently there are also “probable realities,” in which we follow paths we may have taken, but did not, in physical life.

“The electric reality of a dream is decoded, so that its effects are experienced not only by the brain, but in the furthest reaches of the body. Dream experiences, long forgotten consciously, are forever contained as electrically coded data within the cells of the physical organism. … They exist within the cells [along with all an individual’s experience] … The cells form about them. These electrically coded signals form counterparts of complete experience, and the pattern is then independent of physical reality.”