“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At the end of your seventh dream you will be acquainted with your immediate environment after death. [...] The seven dreams were incipient once your own psychic education began. They will also represent culminating experiences, in that you have been progressing in other levels of reality in the dream state, for some time.

[...] During break I described for Jane a very vivid dream I had on Sunday evening, July 6, 1969. It was almost a nightmare—in fact Jane woke me out of it to prevent this seeming reaction on my part, I was fairly sure the dream concerned my father’s approaching death, but certain elements in it were similar enough to Seth’s suggestions about contacting Dr. Pietra, above, to make me tell Jane about it—on the off chance the dream had been more than it seemed.

[...] Both of you will have a series of highly vivid and memorable dream experiences, seven in number, and you will remember them. [...] Each dream will mark a point of advance.

(The dream is recorded in my dream book in the usual way. [...]

There is a chemical necessity, as I have said, that makes dreaming inevitable. But then these dreams in turn affect the personality in general, and affect the actions of that personality in a physical universe. It goes without saying that telepathy operates within the dreaming state quite as effectively as it operates while the individual is awake. [...] Nevertheless one man’s dreams affect another’s, and that man is in turn affected by the dreams of his neighbor.

[...] But then, dreams would be equally impossible. For in the dream state the personality is molded and changed through actions that do not exist within the physical universe. The personality reacts to dream experiences as it reacts to any other experience. [...]

I will discuss our dream material for a short while, for it is important that you understand it. For in the same way that dream images are projected outward from the personality, so also are thoughts projected, and all influences that extend from one personality to another.

[...] Dreams and dream images are then projected by the individual in sleep, and also in the waking state, although on a subconscious basis.

When I began putting together Seth’s dictation for Dreams, and adding Jane’s and my own notes, plus excerpts from other relevant sessions, it soon became obvious that the entire work was going to be too long for one volume. [...] So with the help of our editor, Tam Mossman, and others at Prentice-Hall, the decision was made to publish Dreams in two volumes. At first I was sorry for the reader’s sake to think of Dreams being interrupted, yet glad for myself, for in addition to presenting Seth’s book dictation I was given the space in which to develop those other personal and secular themes of Seth’s, Jane’s, and my own that I think add even more dimensions of meaning to Dreams.

Those “properties” are the faculties of the imagination, creativity, telepathy, clairvoyance, and dreaming, as well as the functions of logic and reason. You know that you dream. [...] The subjective evidence of dreaming, for example, is far more “convincing” and irrefutable than is the evidence for an expanding universe, black holes, or even atoms and molecules themselves. [...]

(Seth used Session 909 as a bridge between chapters 6 and 7 in Dreams. [...] And Jane and I look forward with intense interest to the final version of Dreams, for as always this work will be as revealing and educational for us as it will be for anybody else. I thank each reader for his or her patience in accepting the publication of Dreams in two volumes. [...]

[...] Therefore, dreams will be considered throughout the book in various capacities as they are related through genetics, reincarnation, culture, and private life. [...]

Your dreams affect your cellular reality, even as that reality is also largely responsible for the fact that you dream, in your terms, at all. Dreams are a natural “product” of cellularly-attuned consciousness. As fire gives off light, cellularly-attuned consciousness gives off dreams.

In dreams the preparations for experienced events take place, not only in the most minute details but in the larger context of the world scene. [...] The “future” history of the world, for example, is worked out now, as in the dream state each individual works with the probable events of private life. [...] When a person constructs various probable realities in the dream state, he or she does so also in this larger context, in which the probable status of the world is known.

[...] In the dream state you work intimately with the “inner grammar” of events. In dreams you find the unspoken sentence and the physically unexperienced act. [...]

(9:53.) These events and responses continue to operate, however, particularly in the dream state where they do not intersect directly with full physical experience, as waking events do. [...]

The role-playing in the dream drama would be one in which you creatively worked out the problems that caused the imbalances to begin with. Dreams of a strongly aggressive nature in this context may be very beneficial to a given individual, allowing the release of usually inhibited feelings and freeing the body from tension. By such constant dream therapy, both body and mind regulate themselves to a large degree. So your flesh is affected by your dreams.

As the creation of any art is intimately connected with the dream state, so is the living art of your body. Its breathing form is influenced by the great therapy of dreams. If there are chemical imbalances they are often corrected quite automatically in the dream state, as you act out situations calling up the production of hormones, say, that would be summoned in a like waking situation. [...]

In them of course one object may be a symbol, but there is no such thing as an overall statement of dream symbolism, in which a given symbol will have a general meaning. [...] It is true that in dreams you do reach some of the deepest sources of your being at times, but even there, the expression of that being is far too individualistic to assign the same kind of “unconscious” meaning to overall symbols.

With dreams the same is true. [...] You will feel alienated from your dreams since you are trying to make them follow a pattern that is not yours.

(Even though he said he was through with Mass Events for the evening, the first subject Seth touched upon now — my dream of early yesterday morning — certainly was related to statements he’d made just before break, like this one: “When you enter time and physical life, you are already aware of its conditions.” I think my dream is an excellent example of that philosophy; I’d discussed the dream with Jane yesterday, and intended to ask Seth to comment upon it this evening if he didn’t voluntarily do so. I’m not claiming the dream inspired his material for tonight’s session, or that it was precognitive, in that I’d “picked up” on his subject matter for tonight, and constructed the dream around a portion of it in order to give myself that particular information. [...] From my dream notebook, with age data about all involved added for the reader’s convenience:

(“Very vivid, and in color as usual: I dreamed that I was in the kitchen of our hill house in Elmira, preparing to go outside into the back yard. [...] She was of an indeterminate age in the dream, as I was, and I believe she was telling me what to expect out there. [...]

(“I don’t recall having had any other dreams of this kind. [...] Jane was sleepily stirring beside me, and I told her I’d had quite a dream. [...]

(The dream suggests numerous subjects that Seth didn’t go into, and that I’ll leave for the reader to consider: reincarnation, the shifting of ages and the independence of memory from time in the dream state, and so forth. [...]

[...] Yet many people are frightened of remembering dreams because they fear that a dream of disaster will necessarily be followed by such an event. [...] In fact, such a dream can instead be used to circumnavigate such a probability.

There is no need to divorce the waking and dreaming states in the particular fashion that currently operates — for they are complementary states, not opposite ones. A good deal of life’s normal dimensions are dependent upon your dream experience. Your entire familiarity with the world of symbols arises directly from the dreaming self.

Often the seeming meaninglessness of dreams is the result of your own ignorance of dream symbolism and organization. [...]

In certain terms, language itself has its roots in the dreaming condition — and man dreamed [that] he spoke long before language was born (intently).

It cannot be too strongly stressed that these dream locations are actualities. [...] However mass dreams do occur (underlined). There are dreams that you share with others. There are dream environments that you share, as you share your physical environment. [...]

For Ruburt then: When the physical body lies in bed, that physical body is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell. [...] For the dream location exists simultaneously with the room in which the body dwells.

[...] If you have little memory of your dream locations while you are in the waking state, then remember you have as little memory of waking locations when you are in the dream state. [...]

When, in the dream state, you are focused in a different dimension, then you see you form from these same atoms and molecules the environment in which you will operate. Yet while you dream you cannot find the bed nor chest nor chair, and when you wake you cannot find the room or city or location which was there moments before.

[...] Then tried to sleep, thinking that it might be easier for her if I were in a dream state. [...] Instead fell to sleep at once to have the following strange dream. [...] It involves some projection, I think, and is one of those dreams where I was now and then aware of my dreaming condition. [...]

FEBRUARY 2, 1967 DREAM

(Strange: Later in the afternoon I finally made an important connection about the unexpected value of dreams. I told Jane that I suddenly understood that in the dream I’d experienced paternal feelings — genuine ones — that I’d never known in conscious life, or had access to. It followed that in the dream state, then, I’d actually enlarged upon my experience in this life, and in a most meaningful and strong way. [...]

(I might as well add that in Chapter 5 of Dreams I deal with a couple of my intense experiences with the “light of the universe” back in 1980. Frank had been involved in one of those, too, in the dream state, and Seth had explained how I’d picked up his concerns about age and sexuality and worth, and so forth. So last night’s dream also involved elements based upon data I’d picked up from Frank. [...]

[...] As she ate lunch I told Jane about my very vivid and colorful dream of last night. [...]

[...] The dream ended here, or faded into other levels.

[...] Those that escape you in the dream state. Therefore, I want you to take particular notice of people in your dreams who are strangers to you. You may encounter them in class dreams. You may also encounter them, however, in dreams that seem to have no great meaning. [...] Helping people who have died, in your terms, speaking to others who are quite alive, in the dream state, learning to understand and manipulate subjective realities. [...]

Now this requires some study and means that you will have to remember your dreams much more effectively than some of you are doing. [...] You may find several of you involved in the same work in the dream state. And so, also, keep track of whatever class members may appear within these dreams. [...]

I welcome those who are new this evening, but I have some remarks for our regular students having to do with your dreams. [...] Other portions of the experiment, however, are concerned with your dream states and those individuals that you are meeting. [...]

[...] I don’t know what, but I feel there is something there that should be worked out, so I gave myself the suggestion for a dream concerning this, and I got one which dealt with my older brother Tommy. In it I was telling him to sit down, and I was trying to talk to him, but I couldn’t, but finally I did and what I’m wondering, because I’ve had this three or four times in the dream state, trying to talk. [...]

(Long pause in a steady, rather fast delivery.) Man’s dream body is still with him, of course, but the physical body now obscures it. The dream body cannot be harmed while the physical one can—as man quickly found out as he transformed his experience largely from one to the other. In the dream body man feared nothing. The dream body does not die. [...] In their dream bodies men had watched the spectacle of animals “killing” other animals, and they saw the animals’ dream bodies emerge unscathed.

3. At first, as I typed this session from my notes a couple of days later, I thought that Seth had contradicted himself here, for earlier in the session he’d stated that “the other creatures of the earth actually awakened before man did, and relatively speaking, their dream bodies formed themselves into physical ones before man’s did.” Then I came to think that Seth actually meant that man has consciously separated himself from his dream body to a greater degree than other creatures have—that even though those other entities became “physically effective” before man did, they still retain a greater awareness of their dream bodies than man does. [...]

[...] They watched the drama of the “hunter” and the “prey,” seeing that each animal contributed so that the physical form of the earth could continue—but the rabbit eaten by the wolf survived in a dream body that men knew was its true form. When man “awakened” in his physical body, however, and specialized in the use of its senses, he no longer perceived the released dream body of the slain animal running away, still cavorting on the hillside. [...]

THE “GARDEN OF EDEN.”
MAN “LOSES” HIS DREAM BODY
AND GAINS A “SOUL”

(See the copy attached of my dream of this morning. To my surprise the dream led to this session. [...] As we discussed the dream I began to make connections on my own about my early days in NY City with Ralph Ramstad, as well as about commercial art, my parents, doing illustration, and so forth. [...]

Now that material lay in your dream, a part of its message. You showed the dream to Ruburt after typing it up. [...] The meanings began to come to Ruburt, and the dream itself stirred your own waking associations, so that the two of you discussed those days and the early days of your marriage. [...]

(But the dream, innocuous as it seemed to be, carried a big charge. [...] I’d even thought of not bothering to write down the dream in the first place.

Now: the dream is a continuation and a clarification of issues discussed in your own two previous dreams—the one about the magazine stores, and the one about the granary. [...]

There is no substitute for the training that you receive as you learn the knack of remembering your dreams. The very training helps you manipulate more effectively in both ordinary waking and dream conditions.

If you call on me to help you in a dream projection, I will help you, though you may or may not remember the dream projection or my help. [...]

[...] Your projections do involve you in extensive levitations from the dream state, but you recall only a few. The most extensive traveling is done in nightly excursions, but it is easiest to remember those dream projections that occur during naps in the day, simply because the waking consciousness is more alert.

When dream elements combine to cloud a projection, this is the work of a certain level of consciousness, trying to interpret the strange conditions. [...] Some of the dream elements will be thought-forms.

[...] Your own knowledge of dream symbols and their personal meaning is so opaque simply because you are not used to examining them with your conscious mind. [...] The great interconnections between waking and dreaming experience then escape you. You do not realize the many physical problems that are solved for you, and by you, in your dreams.

[...] These will include both waking and dreaming events. If you remember having certain dream experiences and waking refreshed, then before sleep consciously think about those dreams and tell yourself they will return.

Your dreams and the physical events of your lives constantly alter the chemical balances within your body. A dream may be purposely experienced to provide an outlet of a kind that is missing in your daily life. It will mobilize your resources and fill your body with a rush of needed hormones, creating a dream state of stress that will bring the organism’s healing abilities into combat and result in an end to particular physical symptoms.

The dream state provides you with a trial framework in which you explore probable actions and decide upon the ones you want to physically materialize. Not only nightmares, as mentioned earlier (in the last session), but many other dreams follow rhythms of a therapeutic nature far more effectively than any that are drug-induced. [...]

(Long pause.) In your terms of time, however, we will speak of a beginning, and in that beginning it was early man’s dreams that allowed him to cope with physical reality. The dream world was his original learning ground. In times of drought he would dream of the location of water. In times of famine he would dream of the location of food. That is, his dreaming allowed him to clairvoyantly view the body of land. [...] In dreams his consciousness operated as a wave.

[...] What you now think of as the dream state was the waking one, for it was still the recognized form of purposeful activity, creativity, and power. The dream state continues to be a connective between the two realities, and as a species you literally learned to walk by first being sleepwalkers. [...] You dreamed your languages. You spoke in your dreams and later wrote down the alphabets—and your knowledge and your intellect have always been fired, sharpened, propelled by the great inner reality from which your minds emerged.

People were not nearly as isolated as it now appears, for in their dreams early men communicated their various locations, the symbols of their cultures and understanding, the nature of their arts. All of the inventions that you often think now happened quite by chance—the discovery of anything from the first tool to the importance of fire, or the coming of the Iron Age or whatever—all of that inventiveness was the result of the inspiration and communication of the dream world. Man dreamed his world and then created it, and the units of consciousness first dreamed man and all of the other species that you know.

In those early times all species shared their dreams in a way that is now quite unconscious for your kind, so that in dreams man inquired of the animals also—long before he learned to follow the animal tracks, for example. [...] Man explored the planet because his dreams told him that the land was there.

1. My dream represented a reaffirmation of a stand I’d taken early in this life—one that perhaps I’d felt since birth. Very simply: I dreamed that I was a youth, and that even though there was snow on the ground I’d been given the task of taking care of a beautiful young tree growing in a large field next to the Butts family home in Sayre, Pennsylvania. [...] Nearby in the dream were old industrial buildings, in which I became lost—but I found my way out of them and returned to the tree. [...] Jane was inspired by the dream to write a series of excellent short poems about it today.

(9:30.) Now (underlined): When he dreamed—when he dreamed (underlined)—man actually returned to a state prior to waking, from which his physical life itself had emerged—only now he was a new creature, a new kind of consciousness, and so were all of the other species. In dreams all of the species familiarized themselves with their old affiliations, and they read their own identities in different fashions. [...]

For some time, in your terms, the sleepwalkers remained more or less at that level of activity, and for many centuries they used the surface of the earth as a kind of background for other activity.Their real life was what you would now call the dreaming one. [...] Those units of consciousness are indestructible and vitalized, regardless of the forms they take, and while men’s forms were dream images, consciousness spun forms into physical material.

(9:05.) Initially, then, the world was a dream, and what you think of as waking consciousness was the dreaming consciousness. [...]

In many instances you travel outside of three-dimensional reality while dreaming, but your experiences must then be recalled in physical terms or you would have no memory of them. Even your dreams, you see, must come through that point in the present — of spirit’s intersection with flesh. Dreaming does represent an open channel through which the material environment is transcended. There are as yet undiscovered, bizarre changes in the brain during certain dream states, an acceleration that quite literally propels the consciousness out of its usual space-time continuum into those other realities from which it comes.

(Pause.) This bouncing back of energy into itself is the meaning of the dream state, in which experience that is basically nonphysical is embarked upon, and is then interpreted as a dream through the brain. Your deepest dreams involve nonmaterial comprehensions, however. Your dream, though clearly remembered, is already a translation of the physical brain. [...]

[...] These accomplishments still operate through the focus of your present, since you are physically aware of but one line of probable events, so the meaning of many dream events escapes you. But in dreams you often do work quite as valid as any performed in the day, and in the dream state you meet and interact with your own reincarnational selves.

[...] In the dreaming condition there is a great interchange of information with these other portions of your selves. Your physical brain automatically converts such data into temporal terms so that many of your significant, remembered dream experiences are already translations by the time you recall them. [...]

[...] Some females will identify in the dream with the bull. In dreams many females will have what you would call male reactions. Some males in dreams will have what you would call female reactions. [...] A bullfighting dream might be formed. [...] The generic image does not only color the dream state, however. [...]

They are not pure, as they appear within the dream, therefore. They will be charged with emotional energy according to the individual’s own experience, but they will form the base from which such a dream at that particular level is formed. [...] It will in this case be seen as the dream’s basic form, but it will be used in the dream drama according to the makeup of the dreamer.

Returning to our last discussion, I want to make it clear that these generic images, activated during certain levels of consciousness, are then interwound into dream drama.

[...] Dreams at the deepest level will not respond necessarily then to your present sex identity.

It is important that you realize that the dream world is a by-product of your own existence. [...] Since dreams are a by-product of any consciousness involved with matter, this leads us to the correct conclusion—that trees have their dreams, that all physical matter, being formed about individualized units of consciousness of varying degrees, also participates in the involuntary construction of the dream universe.

[...] As you know, animals dream. What you do not know is that all consciousnesses dream. We have said that to some degree even atoms and molecules have consciousness, and this minute consciousness nevertheless forms its own dreams, even as on the other hand it forms its own physical image.

I have said that the dream world has its own sort of form and permanence. [...] In the same manner that the physical image is built up of an individual, so is the dream image built up. You can refer to our previous discussion on matter if it will help you here, but the dream world is not a formless, haphazard, semi-construction.

Dream interpretation will be an occasional but continuing proposition, and the general discussion of dreams will then serve as a guidepost.