“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dreams are not just psychological events. There is a dimension of reality (an “objective” dimension, if you prefer) in which all dream events happen. There are rules; Seth calls them root-assumptions that operate in all realities, our own included. We have to learn what root-assumptions govern dream reality. I know that we can on occasion manipulate dream events; my students and I do this frequently. If we follow certain “rules” given to us by Seth, we will get more or less predictable results in the dream state — an indication that an “objective” dream dimension exists quite independently of us or our dreams, a dream dimension in which my dreams and yours have their being.

People who have always remembered many of their dreams may be less than impressed with the idea of recording dream activities, but others for whom sleep means oblivion will find dream recall a fascinating endeavor and the variety of dream acts almost astonishing. Even those with good dream-memories will find that persistant dream recall experiments are invaluable. As we discovered later, it is the effort required to remember dreams, and the resulting stretching of consciousness that finally opens up dream reality.

Records of individual dreams are not enough, nor are studies of the physiological effect of dreaming. Most psychologists would not admit the existence of a definite structured universe in which dream acts, rather than physical acts, happen. Therefore, at this time, they will not consider dreams in this larger context. Seth maintains that we will understand ourselves as dreamers only if we are also aware of the larger environment in which dreams take place, that we interact in the dream state as we do in the waking one and that we form mass dream events as we form physical events on a mass basis.

As there is in actuality no beginning or end to a dream, so there is no beginning or end to any reality. A dream does not then begin or end; only your awareness of a dream begins and ends. You come into awareness of a dream, and you leave it, but in your terms of time, the dreams that you seem to dream tonight have been long in existence. [...]

Then there are the endless varieties of actions within the dream which is, in itself, a continuing act. The images within a dream also act. [...] There is, at times, a dream within a dream where the dreamer dreams that he dreams. [...]

I used the term, pass out of the dream world purposely, for here we see a mobility of action easily and often accomplished — a passing in and out that involves an action without movement in space. The dreamer has, at his fingertips, a memory of his ‘previous’ dream experiences and carries within him the many inner purposes which are behind his dream actions. On leaving the dream state, he becomes more aware of the ego and creates, then, those activities that are meaningful to it. As mentioned earlier, however, dream symbols have meaning to all portions of the personality.

In following Seth’s dream recall instructions, we found ourselves collecting some excellent examples of precognitive dreams. [...] Still others were so interwoven with other dream material that we just marked them as indicative of precognition and let it go at that. Sometimes dreams that seemed nonsense contained one clear, important image that shortly — within a few days — would appear in a different context entirely. In several cases, two or more future events would be condensed into one dream.

If possible, read your dream records at night, checking them against the day’s happenings. [...] Often, you must learn your own way of handling dream symbolism to make sense of dream. Not every dream is precognitive, nor is there any reason to waste much time with interpretations that seem too nebulous. [...] However, as a few of my own dreams will clearly show, if you do not know the meaning of a symbol, give yourself the suggestion that it will be made clear to you intuitively — thus trust your answer.

Each recaptured dream is not only a highly personal document but a clue into the nature of dream existence. Precognitive dreams are most evocative from this standpoint. The dreamer is baffled at his own ability to forsee a future event, and this makes him more than ordinarily curious about the nature of dream life in particular.

(This afternoon Jane finished typing her analyses of my dreams of March 29 and 31. The dreams were excellent ones and she did an excellent job interpreting them. [...] This dream made a considerable impact on Jane—so much so that it’s led us to some interesting new dream material that is dealt with in today’s session. Both dreams are on file in my dream notebook, of course. An extra copy of this dream is attached to my own notebook that I’m letting grow all by itself into ideas that may be used in a work of my own, similar to Seth’s original suggestion forThrough My Eyes.

(Rather often lately we’ve speculated about why most people don’t remember their dreams. [...] Since we certainly think nature has given our species—and probably most others—a dream life for a reason, we take it for granted that the dream material is put to good use in ways we may not understand. Dreaming could hardly be a useless creation on nature’s part. Nor did we want to wait for science or psychology to explain dreams, since here we were having them all of the time. [...]

In the past, if people didn’t remember their dreams, they’d project their dream events upon natural events, or read objective events as symbols that would actually express the dream itself. Now, even though people might forget their dreams, they often react to certain portions of TV dramas, or events that correlate with the dreams of the night before.

“Many illnesses could largely be avoided through such dream therapy. Rather harmlessly, aggressive tendencies could be given freedom within the dream state. Suggestions would be given that the individual involved would experience, say, aggressiveness, within a dream. It would also be suggested to him that he learn to understand his aggressions by watching himself while he was dreaming [watching the dream as he would a play]. If I may indulge in a fantasy, theoretically you could imagine a massive experiment in dream therapy where wars were fought by sleeping, not waking, nations.”

“If you have little memory of dream locations when you are awake, you have little memory of ‘physical’ locations when you are in the dream state. When the physical body lies in bed, it is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell. But this distance has nothing to do with space, for the dream location can exist simultaneously with the room in which the body sleeps.

According to Seth, we do have shared dreams or mass dreams. [...] Are our dreams private? [...] 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.

(Seth has discussed dreams to some extent in many sessions; too many to list here. He was discussing nightmares as far back as the 15th session, dream locations in the 44th session among others, the layers of the subconscious and dreams in the 92nd session. For a few examples of the manner in which Seth interprets dreams, see the 85th, 93rd and 94th sessions. See the 151st session for material on dreams, moment points and time, the 162nd for dreams and the electrical field, the 164th for dreams and impeding actions.

In this particular context however the dream world will be considered in its relationship to the personality. In many ways the dream universe does operate within this context, and is part of the personality framework. As the personality is changed by any experience or any action, so it is changed by its own dreams. [...]

A particularly vivid dream is every bit as real to the inner self as a vivid psychological experience that occurs within the waking state. [...] The personality creates its dreams; the dreams are then experienced. [...]

In the dreams of children this same activity continues, so that the boy may have many dream experiences as a girl, and the girl as a boy. More than this, however, in children’s dreams as in their play activity, age variances are also frequent. The young child dreaming of its own future counterpart, for example, attains a kind of psychological projection into the future of its world. Adults censor many of their own dreams so that the frequent changes in sexual orientation are not remembered.

Your beliefs about dreams color your memory and interpretation of them, so that at the point of waking, with magnificent psychological duplicity, you often make last-minute adjustments that bring your dreams more in line with your conscious expectations. The sexual symbols usually attached to dream images are highly simplistic, for example. They program you to interpret your dreams in a given manner.

[...] Yet the development of dreams follows inner patterns that activate the child’s growth, and stimulate its development. There are even key dreams in infancy that serve to trigger necessary hormonal functioning. The child crawls and walks in dreams before those acts are physically executed — the dreams serving as impetus for muscular coordination and development.

You dream, each of you, but there are few great dream artists. Many of the true purposes of dreams¹ have been forgotten, even though those purposes are still being fulfilled. The conscious art of creating, understanding, and using dreams has been largely lost; and the intimate relationship between daily life, world events, and dreams almost completely ignored. The “future” of the species is being worked out in the private and mass dreams of its members, but this also is never considered. The members of some ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, knew how to be the conscious directors of dream activity, how to delve into various levels of dream reality to the founts of creativity, and they were able to use that source material in their physical world.²

Because you have in the past convinced yourselves that the conscious mind must of necessity be cut off from inner reality, you think that it must be alienated from the dream state. Following such beliefs, you find yourselves thinking of dreaming as chaotic, unreasonable, and as completely divorced from normal conscious direction, purpose, or function. It often seems that sleep is almost a small death, and psychologists have compared dreaming with controlled insanity.⁵ You have so divorced your waking and dreaming experience that it seems you have separate “lives,” and that there is little connection between your waking and dreaming hours. [...]

(9:41.) Cellular life is affected by your dreams. Healings can take place in the dream state, where events at another order of existence alter the cells themselves. Ruburt has been exploring the reality of dream levels,³ and in so doing he is beginning to glimpse their significance. [...] They will, these dream expeditions, throw great light on the nature of personal daily experience, and they will also provide personal knowledge of the ways in which probabilities operate.

(Early last week a friend sent me a copy of a “double dream” experienced by his lady. Then as Jane and I were discussing the episode last Friday night, I found myself saying that one explanation for double dreams — that is, the awareness of experiencing two dreams at once, or a dream within a dream — could be that each half of the brain has its own separate dream, the two dreams then try to emerge together into ordinary consciousness.

Then pretend you are having a dream that begins with the image of an orange. Follow the dream in your mind. Next, pretend that you are waking from the dream to realize that another dream was simultaneously occurring, and ask yourself quickly what that dream was. [...] And the last question — what else were you dreaming of? [...]

Many people are aware of double or triple dreams, when they seem to have two or three simultaneous dreams. Usually upon the point of awakening, such dreams suddenly telescope into one that is predominant, with the others taking subordinate positions, though the dreamer is certain that in the moment before the dreams were equal in intensity. Such dreams are representative of the great creativity of consciousness, and hint of its ability to carry on more than one line of experience at one time without losing track of itself.

They were of great aid, of course, in human politics, so that through dreams the intents of tribal leaders, say, were known to the others. Some people within the tribe specialized in such dreams, and again, dream content was and is directed by the individual intents, purposes and interests of the dreamer. [...] certain manner dreaming, then, helped sharpen such individual tendencies while still directing them toward the public value fulfillment. The person interested most in herbs and plant life would also find that nightly dreams mirrored that daytime preoccupation, so that nightly dream excursions might find the dreamer examining strange herbs in another location than the native one. [...] People are natural mimics, as are some animals and birds, so when tribal members related their dreams, they did not just tell them but acted them out with great mobility, carefully mimicking whatever animals or people or elements of land they may have encountered.

(9:05.) One person’s dreams, therefore, while his or her own, will still fit into an important notch in the dreams of a given family. One person might, because of his or her own interests, seek largely from dreams warnings of difficulty or trouble, and therefore be the family’s dream watchguard—the one who has, say, the nightmares for everyone else. [...]

In the dreaming state, then, the needs and desires of families, communities and countries are well known. The dream state serves as a rich source for the world’s knowledge, and is also therefore responsible for the outgrowth of its technology. This is a highly important point, for “the technological world out there” was at one time the world of dreams. The discoveries and inventions that made the industrial world possible were always latent in man’s mind, and represented an inner glittering landscape of probability that he brought into actualization through the use of dreams—the intuitive and the conscious manipulation of material that was at one time latent.

You have a dream memory, of course, though you are not aware of it as a rule. [...] You perform this craft well when dreaming. Event-making begins before your birth, and the dreams of unborn children and their mothers often merge. The dreams of those about to die often involve dream structures that already prepare them for future existence. In fact, towards death a great dream acceleration is involved as new probabilities are considered — a dream acceleration that provides psychic impetus for new birth.

Creativity connects waking and dreaming reality, and is in itself a threshold in which the waking and dreaming selves merge to form constructs that belong equally to each reality. You cannot begin to understand how you form the physical events of your lives unless you understand the connections between creativity, dreams, play, and those events that form your waking hours. In one respect dreams are a kind of structured unconscious play. Your mind dreams in joyful pleasure at using itself, freed from the concerns of practical living. Dreams are the mind’s free play. [...]

In the dream state, with your body more or less safe and at rest, and without the necessity for precise action, these psychological intrusions become more apparent. Many of your dreams are like the tail end of a comet: Their real life is over, and you see the flash of their disappearance as they strike your own mental atmosphere and explode in a spark of dream images. [...] They fall in patterns, forming themselves naturally into the dream contents that fit the contours of your own mind. The resulting structure of the dream suits your reality and no other: As this intrusive matter falls, plummets, or shifts through the levels of your own psychological atmosphere, it is transformed by the conditions it meets.

[...] In 1967, I finished the dream book manuscript, and did much more on the Seth Material. [...] It wasn’t until February 1, 1968 that I sent the dream manuscript out to a publisher. On February 17, I dreamed that it was returned and that the person to whom I had addressed it no longer worked there. [...] The letter was dated the day before my dream and written by a different editor than the one to whom I’d written.

In the end, I combined portions of the dream book manuscript into a new book called The Seth Material, which was published by Prentice-Hall in September, 1970. [...] Seth’s interpretation of that first dream, some three years ago, had been correct. In a series of dreams, I also knew that the unused portions of the original dream manuscript would appear in another book — and they are — in this book you are now reading.

I’m making good progress with the suggestions for dream recall. Now I can remember at least one dream every two days. [Previously, he’d recalled dreams very seldomly.] It’s unfortunate that I can’t keep a notebook in the service, but I do make a quick note of dreams when I can.

(After supper this evening Jane told me she thought Seth might talk about dreams and the subconscious at the session. In the event that Seth might do this, and also discuss our dreams, as he has mentioned doing by way of illustrating the material, I read to Jane just before the session began two very vivid dreams that I have had within the last two weeks, involving my father and other members of my family. The material I read to Jane was from my dream notebook, which I have finally begun.

But the legs do walk, and the dream universe does exist. As the entity expands and originates new personalities, and these personalities then become independent individuals, so do the individuals create dream or so-called dream realities and individuals of the dream universe, which are independent.

Considerable confusion can result if a dream from one level of the subconscious is interpreted in the light of data which belongs to another level entirely. Many individuals feel easier with certain such subconscious aspects, with the result that they may be more aware of dreams that originate in particular subconscious areas, and be relatively unaware of dreams originating in other areas, which they may consider either fearful or at best unfamiliar.

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 dream scene might portray just such a motif, however.

In your terms, however, you dream whether you are living or dead. When you are alive, corporally speaking, what you think of as dreaming becomes subordinate to what you refer to as your conscious waking life. You always examine your dreams then from an “alien” standpoint, one prejudiced in favor of the ordinary waking state. However, the dreaming condition is consequently experienced in distorted form. [...] This does not always apply, because in some dreams the state of alertness is undeniable.

Give us a moment … Some inventors, writers, scientists, artists, who are used to dealing with creative material directly, are quite aware of the fact that many of their productive ideas came from the dream condition. They see the results of dream activity in practical physical life. Many others, though untrained, can clearly trace certain decisions made in waking life to dreams. Few understand, however, that private reality is like a finished product, rising out of the immense productivity that occurs in the dreaming condition. [...]

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. [...] Using your dream camera, you can with practice discover the history of your own psyche, and find the many probable decisions experienced in dreams. [...] There is some finesse required as you learn to interpret the individual pictures within your dream album. [...]

The same applies to dream reality, for the dreams that you recall are indeed like quick pictures snapped under varying conditions. [...] 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.

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 must learn how to aim and focus your dream camera.

There are then truly endless varieties of actions within the dream, which is itself a continuing act. There is, most simply, within a dream the creation of images. [...] There is at times a dream within a dream, where the dreamer dreams that he dreams. [...]

The feeling of unreality is not felt when the dream experience is being participated in by the dreamer. At that time the experience is felt to be real, and some dreams indeed are more vivid than waking experience. It is only when the personality passes out of the dream experience, or the dream universe, that the dream experience in retrospect may appear unreal. [...]

[...] The action of dreaming itself is partially a physical phenomena. There is then, comparatively speaking, the outside action that makes dreaming possible, the action that is dreaming.

(Jane is in her second year of keeping records of her dreams, and has written down several hundred. Since September of 1965, a period of 11 months, I have recorded 185 dreams. Jane recorded 103 dreams for 1964, and so for 1965 has recorded 303 dreams, for a total of 406 dreams to date.)

[...] It will even add to the beneficial nature of your own dreams. You do not have to sleep to dream. [...] Ruburt can request levitation dreams, and he will have them.

I have mentioned before that in its own way the dream universe is as permanent as the physical universe. [...] The inner logic is much more consistent within the dream universe, and action is permitted greater freedom in several important respects.

Dreams can not only eliminate symptoms (as in Sue’s case) or completely alter moods (as in my dream) but they can give us warning of incipient health difficulties — as happened to me several years ago. One night, in the early days of our psychic experience, I dreamed I saw Rob standing by the kitchen sink. [...] The dream frightened me so much that as I awakened, I caught myself saying, “That dream scares me. [...] In other words, I found myself in the act of trying to censor the dream. [...] I didn’t even tell the dream to Rob.

The above portions therefore were actually not dreams but experiences happening while he was dissociated. They shocked him; hence, the shock later on when he turned this into a dream. When he heard the voices, instead of becoming confident, he fell into a dream state. He did not want to accept the responsibility that he felt his abilities put upon him, and so in the dream, he looked for an outside source for the voices and dreamed the radio sequences. In the dream, however, the voices continue [after he switched the radio off] because he knows he is picking them up from a channel that is not physical.

In dreams, you give freedom to actions that cannot adequately be expressed within the confines of normal waking reality. If the personality handles his dream activities capably, then problem actions find release in dreams. When the ego is too rigid, it will even attempt to censor dreams, however … and freedom of action is not entirely permitted, even in the dream condition.

(The five dreams occurred on the evenings of October 27, November 19, December 1, December 3, and December 8. Since Seth deals only with dreams of November 19, December 1, and December 8, only these will be presented here from my dream notebook. Seth calls them dreams number 1, 2, and 3. The two dreams not given here are closely similar to the three presented below.

(Dream # 3; December 8,1965: Again in color. A long involved dream; believe part of the beginning of it escaped me as I woke up. The dream had to do with the fact that for some reason I was to be executed, by painless injection. [...]

(I believe that my own feeling was one of sadness that I wouldn’t be with her, more than anything else in the dream. [...] I believe the dream ended on this note. At no time in the dream did I actually see my father; I merely knew he was there, and involved.

(But not only had she done it more than once, Sue said: She could recall portions of the simultaneous dreams she’d had on some of those occasions, which was a lot more than I could claim. Grinning, she proceeded to confound me further by describing the double dreams of another class member — since, obviously, the individual in question had also had certain dream adventures that Jane and I didn’t know about. I ended up thinking that my own little experience hadn’t amounted to so much after all; but still, it had made Jane and me aware of another facet of dream life. See Note 2 for any other information on double dreams that I may assemble, as well as for an excerpt from the description Sue wrote [at my request] of a multiple-dream happening of her own.

Already it seems that without too much difficulty an investigator could acquire enough material on double dreaming for a most interesting study. The variations mentioned above are intriguing in themselves, and range from an account of an “overlapping double dream” — that is, the individual’s second dream began in the middle of the first one, and extended beyond the end of the first dream — to one in which the dreamer told me, “I knew I’d been having two dreams at once, but I remembered them almost as one dream.”

“As I walk into the kitchen the head of my dream self fills with vivid scenes, like other dreams, interpretations of each cell of this new awareness. I project all of this outward around me into literally hundreds of brilliant scenes; expressions, I knew, of probabilities, ‘past’ and ‘future’ events, sideways events I can’t even understand … all happening at once, with perfect comprehension of that by the ‘anchor’ dream self. I feel that while all of this is still coming from this anchor self, the selves in these dreams are equally as focused — each of them being dream selves, existing in their universes, and with each of their own connections expanding outwards in much the same way that mine do. [...] In at least one of these selves, the knowledge of this entire event comes to consciousness like a half-recalled dream of its own, and the experience of recalling and being recalled is like liquid electricity in me, the anchor self.