“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation (whispering). Now, if you take a physical camera with you today and snap pictures as you go about your chores, walk, or talk with friends, then you will have preserved scenes from the day’s activities.

Your film, however, will only take pictures today, of today. No yesterday or tomorrow will suddenly appear in the snapshots of the present. The photographer in the dream world, though, will find an entirely different situation, for there consciousness can capture scenes from entirely different times as easily as the waking photographer can take pictures of different places. Unless you realize this, some of your “dream albums” will make no sense to you.

When you awaken with a dream photograph in mind, it may appear meaningless because it does not seem to correlate with the official order of activities you recognize. You may make one particular decision in physical and waking consciousness, and that decision may bring forth certain events. Using your dream camera, you can with practice discover the history of your own psyche, and find the many probable decisions experienced in dreams. These served as a basis from which you made your physical decision. There is some finesse required as you learn to interpret the individual pictures within your dream album. This should be easy to grasp, for if you tried to understand physical life having only a group of snapshots taken at different places and in different times, then it would be rather difficult to form a clear idea of the nature of the physical world.

The same applies to dream reality, for the dreams that you recall are indeed like quick pictures snapped under varying conditions. No one picture alone tells the entire story. You should write down your description of each dream picture, therefore, and keep a continuing record, for each one provides more knowledge about the nature of your own psyche and the unknown reality in which it has its existence.

Now, using an analogy only, let me explain that your thoughts and feelings also give off shadows (intently) that we will here call hallucinations.² They are quite valid. They have as strong a part to play in dream reality as shadows do in the physical world. They are beautiful in themselves. They add to the entire picture. A shadow of a tree cools the ground. It affects the environment. So hallucinations alter the environment, but in a different way and at another level of reality. In the dream world hallucinations are like conscious shadows. They are not passive, nor is their shape dependent upon their origin. They have their own abilities.

When you, a dream tourist, wander about the inner landscape with your mental camera, however, it may take a while before you are able to tell the difference between dream events and their shadows or hallucinations. So you may take pictures of the shadows instead of the trees, and end up with a fine composition indeed — but one that would give you somewhat of a distorted version of inner reality. So you must learn how to aim and focus your dream camera.