“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The moods of relaxation that Jane has been experiencing often since early this month seemed to have passed, at least for now. The evening was very warm as we waited for tonight’s session to start. I reminded Jane of the two questions I’d put off from Monday’s abbreviated session, but Seth made only a brief reference to them at the end of tonight’s material.)

In usual circumstances you may remember the emotions that you felt at the time a picture of yourself was taken, and to some extent those emotions may show themselves in gestures or facial expression. But the greater subjective reality of that moment does not appear physically in such a photograph. It completely escapes insofar as its physical appearance within that structure is concerned. In the same way the past or the future is closed out. The particular focus necessary to produce such a picture then necessitates the exclusion of other data. That certainly is obvious. Because you must manipulate within specific time periods, you do the same kind of thing in daily life, and on a conscious level ignore or exclude much information that is otherwise available.

A remembered dream is a product of several things, but often it is your conscious interpretation of events that initially may have been quite different from your memory of them. To that extent the dream that you remember is a snapshot of a larger event, taken by your conscious mind. There are many kinds or varieties of dreams, some more and some less faithful to your memories of them — but as you remember a dream you automatically snatch certain portions of subjective events away from others, and try to “frame” these in space and time in ways that will make sense to your usual orientation. Even then, however, dream events are so multidimensional that this attempt is often a failure. It might be easier here, perhaps, if you compare a scene from a dream with a scene in a photograph. A photograph will show certain events natural to the time in which it was taken. It will not show, for example, a picture of a Turk at the time of the Crusades. A dream scene might portray just such a motif, however.

In those normal, generally accepted terms, the images in photographs do not change, move, or alter their relationships. The living subjective photography of dreams, however, provides a framework in which these “images” have their own mobility. They represent creativity in far different terms than you usually understand. You know what physical issue is (intently), because you see the children of your loins, but you do not experience the children of your dreams in the same physical way, nor understand that your dream life is continuous. It has organization on its own levels that you do not comprehend, and from its rich source you draw much of the energy with which you form your daily experience. Your conscious mind is the director of that experience.

The picture is a relatively simple one, all in all — one in which each consciousness is assumed to be directed toward a particular focus, is ensconced in one body, with its existence bounded by birth at one end and by death at the other. (Pause.) Unfortunately, that picture is as limited as any one of your photographs. You are used to examining your dream state from the viewpoint of your “waking” condition, but some time in the dream state try to examine your normal waking reality. Simply give yourself the instructions to do so. You may be quite surprised with the results. Speaking as simply as I can, and using concepts that you can understand, let me put it this way: From the other side — within what is loosely called the dream state — there is an existence quite as valid as your own, and from that viewpoint you can be considered as the dreamer. “You” are the part of you concentrating in this reality. You form it through information and through energy that on the one hand has its source outside this system, and that on the other constantly flows into this system — and so in that respect the systems are united.

In your terms, obviously, atoms do not dream of cats chasing dogs, yet (intently) there are indeed “lapses” from physical focus that are analogous to your dreaming state. Give us a moment … In those conditions the atoms pursue their own probable activities, and indeed make astounding calculations, bringing into your actuality the necessary probable actions to insure official life forms. But neither are they limited otherwise, for their other probable directions are also actualized. Period. On different levels in the dream state, then, you are also subjectively aware of other probable realities. Your conscious intent is unconsciously brought into the dreaming condition, and that intent helps you sort the data. (See Note 4.)