“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

But what about that location, the Turkish hall? How real was it? How real are the places we seem to visit while we sleep? Here’s what Seth has to say: “You think that you are conscious only when you are awake. You assume yourselves to be unconscious when you sleep. The dice are indeed loaded on the side of the waking mind. But pretend for a moment that you are looking at this situation from the other side.

“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.

“If you have little memory of dream locations when you are awake, you have little memory of ‘physical’ locations when you are in the dream state. When the physical body lies in bed, it is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell. But this distance has nothing to do with space, for the dream location can exist simultaneously with the room in which the body sleeps.

“Dream locations are not superimposed upon, say, the bed and chest and chair. They exist composed of the very same atoms and molecules that in the waking state you perceive as bed and chest and chair. Objects, remember, are the results of your perception. From energy you form patterns which you then recognize as objects and use. But the objects are useless unless you are focused within the dimension for which they were specifically formed.

“In some dream states you form from these same atoms and molecules the environment in which you will operate. While dreaming you cannot find the bed or chest or chair; and awake you cannot find the dream location which was there only moments before.”

This does not mean that we do not sometimes leave our bodies and travel in our dream or astral bodies to other physical locations. According to Seth we do so often, whether or not we remember. Some of my students, for example, have frequent out-of-body experiences from both the waking and the dream states, and on several such occasions we seem to have met in my living room.

Then, without any warning, I felt myself pulled away. There was a terrific whooshing sound and I was back in my body. I really felt tricked. Usually its quite difficult to go right back to the same location, but I was so angry that I willed myself back. Not that it did me much good. I “landed” on the same corner, but the young man was nowhere to be found. Then I set out to find the hotel, and while I swear I walked the block three times and recognized the other buildings, I just couldn’t find the hotel. Finally I returned to my body.

“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.