“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Close your eyes. Imagine a photograph of yourself (in parentheses: Yes, we are finally back to photographs).³ In your mind’s eye see the photograph of yourself on a table or desk. If you are working mentally with a particular snapshot, then note the other items in the picture. If the photograph is strictly imaginary, then create an environment about the image of yourself.

Before you go to sleep, tell yourself that you will mentally take a dream snapshot⁷ of the most significant dream of the night. Tell yourself that you will even be aware of doing this while asleep, and imagine that you have a camera with you. You mentally take this into the dream state. You will use the camera at the point of your clearest perceptions, snap your picture, and — mentally again — take it back with you so that it will be the first mental picture that you see when you awaken.

Now this is a mental camera we are using. There is a knack about being a good dream photographer, and you must learn how to operate the camera. In physical life, for example, a photographer knows that many conditions affect the picture he takes. Exterior situations then are important: You might get a very poor picture on a dark day, for instance. With our dream camera, however, the conditions themselves are mental. If you are in a dark mood, for example, then your picture of inner reality might be dim, poorly outlined, or foreboding. This would not necessarily mean that the dream itself had tragic overtones, simply that it was taken in the “poor light” of the psyche’s mood.

Next, I ask myself how such a marvelously structured being can think of its image as inferior to anything, especially since we’re far from understanding it even on a “mere” physical basis, let alone from any sort of nonphysical standpoint. Jane’s own abilities, for instance, raise questions about certain biological attributes as well as mental ones; in large part our society still doesn’t want to contend with such challenges at this time.