“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Here, however, the “reflections” do indeed speak, and take their own form. In a certain sense they are freewheeling, in that they have their own kind of reality. In the dream state your joys and fears talk back to you, perform, and act out the role in which you have cast them.

The reflections of your ideas and intimate emotions are then projected outward in a rich drama. You can observe the play, take a role in it, or move in and out of its acts as you prefer. You will use your own private symbols. These represent your psychic shorthand. They are connected with your personal creativity, so dream books will not help you in deciphering those meanings if they attach a specific significance to any given symbol. Symbols themselves change. If you had before you your entire dream history and could read — as in a book — the story of all of your dreams from birth, you would discover that you changed the meaning of your symbols as you went along, or as it suited your purposes. The content of a dream itself has much to do with the way you employ any given symbol.

There are jet travelers and those who have never seen a train, so your own system of reality contains vast contrasts. The dream state, however, involves you with a kind of communication that is not physically practical, for there (intently) no man or woman is caught without a given role; no individual’s ideas in the dream state are limited by his or her cultural background, or physical experience.

The creativity of any given entity is endless, and yet all of the potentials for experience will be explored. The poor man may dream he is a king. A queen, weary of her role, may dream of being a peasant girl. In the physical time that you recognize, the king is still a king, and the queen a queen. Yet their dreams are not as uncharacteristic or apart from their experiences as it might appear. In greater terms, the king has been a pauper and the queen a peasant. You follow in terms of continuity one version of yourself at any given “time.”

The fact is that the basic nature of reality shows itself in the nature of the dream state quite clearly, where in any given night you may find yourself undertaking many roles simultaneously. You may change sex, social position, national or religious alliance, age, and yet know yourself as yourself.

13. The “constant interaction” that Seth mentioned as involving myself, Nebene, the Roman soldier, and the black woman, Maumee, obviously takes place on other-than-usual conscious levels — at least in my case, that is. For while I was having experience as the Roman, for instance, I had no feeling for Nebene, or Maumee — no idea of reincarnation, or of counterparts either. Each “time” I tuned into one of those personalities I was too caught up in that particular role to be aware of any of the others. Now, however, as I write this I can at least feel ideas about them in the back of my mind….