“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It has been known throughout the ages that dreams can give us clues to all kinds of behavior. Psychoanalysts use dreams to delve into subconscious motivations, but few people know how to utilize dreams creatively: to improve health, gain inspiration, restore vitality, solve problems, and enrich family relationships.

“On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream constructions … and often gives freedom to actions that cannot be adequately expressed within the confines of waking life. If the attempt fails, then the problem or action [as we’ve seen before] may materialize as an illness.

“Consider, for example, a situation in which a personality needs to express dependency, but feels such expression inappropriate. If he is able to form a dream in which he plays a dependent part, then the problem may be solved within the dream state. In many instances, this is precisely what happens. The individual may never recall such a dream, but the experience would be valid and the dependency expressed.

Seth says quite firmly: “There are other considerations that must be understood. … When aggressiveness is the problem, for example, the preliminary dream suggestion should include a statement that the aggression will not be directed against a particular person. In all cases, it is the intangible element [aggressiveness, here] that is the problem, and not the person against whom the individual may want to vent it.

“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.”

One reason, I think, that dreams seem so chaotic and meaningless at times is simply that we only remember dim fragments of them and forget the unifying factors. Another reason is that dreams have an intuitive, associative “logic” that has to be interpreted, and in which time, as we know it, has little meaning. According to Seth, some dreams are simple enough, dealing with unresolved present problems or events. Even in these, however, the dream event may also represent events from past lives.

Each dream object is actually double- or triple-decked, a symbol for other, deeper data. A dream involving reincarnational information, for example, may also serve to help us face a present-day problem by reminding us of other unused abilities inherent in our personalities. I’ve had two particularly vivid reincarnational dreams. One, occurring shortly after our sessions began, really frightened me because I was afraid that it might be precognitive, I dreamed that I was an old woman in a very poor hospital ward of some kind. I was dying of cancer and knew it, but wasn’t a bit frightened. An old man beside me was also about to die. I told him not to worry, that I would be there to help him. Then I died, but there seemed to be no break in consciousness. I helped the old man out of his body and kept telling him that everything was all right.

“Pretend that you are in the dream state and concerned with the problem of waking consciousness and existence. From that viewpoint, the picture is entirely different, for you are indeed conscious while you sleep.

“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. …

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.

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. …”