“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The dream experience is felt directly by the inner self. Dreams have an electric actuality, as I have told you. In this electrical actuality they then exist independently of the dreamer, although he still applies the dream to himself. [...] Therefore, within the electric system, dreams, thoughts and emotions exist as actualities, and in what you may call a tangible form, though not in the form of matter as you are familiar with it.

[...] Dreams have a definite effect within the physical system. [...] They are not directly experienced by the physical system, but only translations of the original dream experience is felt by the actual physical system.

Even the electric reality of a dream is decoded, so that its effects are experienced not only by the brain, but in the furthest reaches of the most minute cells in the human body. Dream experiences long forgotten are forever contained as electrically coded within the cells of the physical body. [...]

[...] The same applies for dreams.

[...] I also described to her another dream I’d had in which I did commercial artwork. This time I’d been hired to draw a comic strip featuring Tom Selleck, of the TV show Magnum, P.I. I saw the Sunday page of the strip quite clearly in the dream, several times. [...] I’d wanted Seth to comment on my first art dream, the one involving greeting cards, but he hasn’t done so yet. Jane also had a dream involving the death of Sue Watkins that I wanted a word on. [...]

The dream representing the card with the double message can also be applied in a different manner to your painting. The dream involving Magnum showed that like a detective you are making a search—only your search is in the larger area of creativity. The dream also says that like a private eye you are on a search, but the private eye also stands for your own private eye, or your own world view, so that you are in a process of enlarging your own private way of viewing reality. Ruburt’s dream that Sue was dead represented the death of old beliefs about women writers. [...]

I repeat, I wanted to comment upon your dreams, Joseph. [...]

[...] I told Jane the session was very good, that Seth had done an excellent little job of interpreting our dreams. [...]

Suggestion given before sleep will greatly add to your chances of conscious projections from the dream state. It is not necessary, basically speaking, that you notice some small incongruous detail in order to realize while dreaming that you are dreaming. [...] The suggestion “I will realize while dreaming that I am dreaming” can also be used, as another method, or both of these may be utilized together.

[...] When you realize that you are dreaming, and if in the dream you are with another person, then tell him that you are both dreaming, and note his response.

[...] Whenever you find yourself in any potentially dangerous dream situation during a projection, immediately terminate the dream. [...]

It is the same with the conscious retention of dreams in general. [...]

[...] A dream involves action. Not only the action within the dream, but the action of dreaming itself.

We shall have to consider, later, color as it appears in dreams, but this is not the time for such a discussion. Identities exist within dreams also, and here the same nature of identities applies, as those given earlier. The laws of action also apply here in the dream reality.

In dreams also, where no space as you know it exists, you have complete freedom of space. When the ego gives up its hold upon what it considers control of action, then as in dreams almost any action is possible. And when the ego gives up its claim of space in a dream, all space is available.

[...] It can be perceived most directly, and with less distortion, in the dream state. [...] In the dream state the tendency for this vitality to materialize meets with little resistance. [...]

[...] So while this book is devoted to Seth’s theories on the nature of dreams and his instructions on their use, it is not meant to be a definitive statement. Seth continues to deliver material on dreams, along with other subjects. Those of you who want a more general idea of Seth’s views can refer to The Seth Material. Here, I’ll give the material on dreams as it was given to us in succeeding sessions — particularly in the early part of the book. This automatically presents the material in order, preserving the sense of continuity, and serves as a progressive, subjective journal of dream experiences as Rob and I, and later my students, followed Seth’s suggestions. [...]

Before Seth began a discussion of dreams, and as a preliminary, he explained the natural mobility of human consciousness and outlined the main features of the “interior universe” that could be glimpsed in both waking and dream states and which underlie physical reality. This introduction offers a natural pathway into the area of dreams (part of the interior universe) and to the other states of consciousness possible within the dream framework. [...]

Time and time again, the inner centers of our being come to our aid through subjective promptings — either in waking, dream or trance states. Through the dream experiences related later in this book, this will become quite clear. Dreams, inspirations, experiences in mystic consciousness — all, I believe, have their prime source outside of our usual consciousness and mode of activity.

I have dealt with this extensively here because creative, unconscious energy is so often a part of the dream state. Apparently, in my case at that time, the “intrusive” unconscious material had to be propelled through to my consciousness during my waking state, since I never regained memory of the initial dream in which the information was originally given.

[...] How many miles do you cover in a dream? How many things do you learn in a dream? You learn more things in a dream than you learn in this classroom. You learn your identity in a dream state. You have experiences even while you dream that are more real and more valid than any that you have while your eyes are wide open.

[...] The dreams that you dream are as real as the classroom in which you sit. The dreams that you dream form your today.

[...] Your dreams appear as illusion to your normal waking self. Shall I tell you how your normal waking experiences appear to your dreaming self? [...]

The self that sits in class is not the self that wonders in a dream state, and the self that wonders in a dream state is, my dear friends, far more educated than the, self that sits in the classroom. [...]

This of course is obvious, but the same sort of symbol changing may occur within dreams. The dog’s accident may be a dream experience, for that matter, that then changes your conscious symbolic feeling toward dogs in the waking state. One person may symbolize fear as a demon, as an unfriendly animal, or even as some perfectly simple ordinarily harmless object; but if you know what your own symbols mean, then you can use the knowledge not only to interpret your dreams but also as signposts to the state of consciousness in which they usually occur.

Seemingly nonstable mental objects appear in the dream environment at certain levels. [...] As mentioned earlier, again, the dream universe is as “objective” as the corporeal one. The objects and symbols within it are as faithful representations of dream life as physical objects are of waking life.

[...] In normal dreaming within the context of an ordinary dream drama, the objects seem permanent enough to you. [...] You project upon dream images the symbolism of your waking hours.

[...] I wanted to be sure that the material given on the Speakers, so far, adequately dealt with the methods by which they were able to contact others in both the waking and dream states. I wanted to know more about the Speakers’ training, by whom it was conducted, and their intuitions and dream experiences.

One individual however is more important than you have ever dreamed, for the intensity and emotion and intent is important here. [...] In the dream state too, you see, leaders can be born and make themselves known. The people already know them in these mass dreams, before they are ever known in physical reality.

Now, your physical universe is obviously composed of shared perceptions, and mass dreams would of course be of the same nature. Mass dreams are indeed a reality. [...]

[...] For now we will be concerned with mass dreams that have an almost universal nature. That is, dreams that are shared at one time or another by the majority of living persons on your planet.

[...] He asked why he did not dream of me. (Jane smiled, eyes open.) I do not dream of him, either.

[...] Last night I had a very interesting, and at the same time almost a bothersome dream: I dreamed that while I was with Margaret and Joe Bumbalo and their son John, I discovered I was a latent homosexual. [...] In the dream also were an Oriental-looking mother, not too old, with a nice-looking daughter who had beautiful slanting eyes and a very quiet demeanor. It was the kind of dream one returns to several times, and I assume I’ve forgotten portions of it. When I got up at 6:15, with the dream still on my mind, I thought at first that it might have reincarnational overtones, yet I didn’t really think so. [...]

(I described the dream to Jane before she had lunch, and asked that Seth comment if she had a session. [...] I told Jane the dream contained no sexual acts at all. [...]

[...] I told her that Seth had done an excellent job of analyzing the dream. I reminded her of the Oriental woman and daughter in the dream, since Seth hadn’t mentioned them. [...]

About your dream: (Pause.) You were telepathically picking up some of the thoughts of Joe Bumbalo as he suspiciously wondered about John, because John’s talents and abilities struck him as being too feminine. [...]

[...] It came about because of a dream I had during my nap this afternoon. [...] The short dream was so vivid that I was jolted wide awake out of a deep sleep. See the account in my dream notebook.

[...] Your dream merely reflected fears about Ruburt. [...] The dream reflected your deep concern, and your fear that he might not make it, but get worse after all. [...]

[...] You are therefore aware of your dreams only in a consecutive manner. You are hardly familiar with all of the dream experiences of your dreaming self, and barely familiar with any of their implications. The dreaming self is to some considerable degree conscious of the self which we shall here term the probable self. The probable self is somewhat like a twin self to the dreaming personality, for neither the experiences of the dreaming self nor the probable self occur within the complete radius of physical reality.

(There follows a copy of Jane’s dream of Saturday, February 12, as taken from her dream notebook. Jane believes the dream to be a significant one, and had hoped Seth would discuss it this evening:

If you recall, we mentioned the fact that the dreaming self has its own memories. It has memories of all of its dream experiences. [...]

There is a constant give and take between the probable self and the dreaming self, for much data is received, particularly by the dreaming personality from the probable self, or the self that experiences what the ego would term probable events.

He has used the materials of your culture—the television programs and so forth—to excellent advantage in the dream state and otherwise, so that messages of his own psyche come through. The TV programs become like dreams, and indeed they appear rewritten in the dream state also, as the psyche seizes upon different kinds of vehicles for its own therapeutic expression. [...]

Our late sessions helped bring about several important dreams that I have mentioned, and also activated other therapeutic layers, so that different kinds of messages have been received while Ruburt was in the sleep or dream state. [...]

[...] The natural person is of course the natural dreamer, and it is for that reason all the more unfortunate that psychology managed to divorce the world of dreaming from natural healthy psychology. In the natural person, dreams always serve a balancing function, leading toward self-illumination, self-instruction, self-help. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, it is amazingly difficult to verbally describe the connections between the dream state, health, cultural stimuli, and the way all of these are put together in the interrelationship of body and mind —but Ruburt’s notes on his dreams and other experiences, being specific, can offer some excellent clues. [...]

Dreams, the dream world, these do not exist to any real degree in time as you know time. Weeks may be experienced in a dream, and the dream may take but a split second of your clock time. The inner thoughts of the mind exist but briefly in time, and even this small tinge of time that touches both dreams and ideas is not basic to either the dream or the idea.

Again, the dream world exists in a very personal, vivid and valid manner, but the dream world does not take up so many inches or feet or yards or acres. [...] If the dream world exists, and it does, and if it does not exist in space, then in what, or where, does it have its existence, and what paths if any will lead us to it?

This tinge of time is an attribute of the physical camouflage form only, and even then the relationship between time and ideas, and time and dreams, is a nebulous one. As I have mentioned, though you experience two days in a dream, you are while in that dream free from the time involved, in that you do not age two days, although you have psychologically experienced that apparent time.

[...] I was in fact going to speak about dream locations, in that you definitely experience these locations in your dreams, which take up no room in your space.

[...] The unconscious, the color black, and death all have strongly negative connotations in which the inner self is feared; the dream state is mistrusted and often suggests thoughts of both death and/or evil. But changed wake-sleep habits can, again, bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state. [...]

When you find yourself as alert, responsive, and intellectual in the dream state as you are in waking life, it becomes impossible to operate within the old framework. This does not mean that in all dreams that particular kind of awareness is achieved, but it is often accomplished within the suggested wake-sleep pattern.

[...] Important therapeutic information that is given in dreams, and meant to be recalled, is not remembered because your sleep habits plunge you into what you think of as unconsciousness far too long.

[...] This need is also a signal to awaken so that unconscious material and dream information can be consciously assimilated.

[...] They alternated between the waking and dream states (long pause), and while asleep they did not age as quickly. [...] Although this was true, their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. There was a much greater communication in the dream state, so that some lessons were taught during dreams, while others were taught in the waking condition.

(I described an excellent dream I’d had last night. [...] In the dream I was involved with painting, but not writing.

[...] I’d started roughing out a note this morning having to do with Seth’s statement in a session for Chapter 5 of Dreams. [...]

(After our talk about religious questions, I wrote a short note quoting Jane — one that I may use in the note for Dreams — and got her okay on it.)

(After eating an excellent lunch, Jane told me of her own long and complicated dream of last night. [...] She was very pleased in the dream at her success. [...]

(“Well, you can say something about the dreams if you want to … How about Jane’s dream?”)

Give us a moment … In Ruburt’s dream, he is completely re-educating the part of himself that he once considered an authority. [...] In the dream he triumphs over those beliefs.

[...] I told her about my dream of last night: I’d been in my writing room and I heard Jim Baker, our optometrist, in my studio. [...]

“Another great dream of Rob’s. In our sessions lately Seth has been talking about the natural self or natural person, saying that it is also the magical person. In this dream Rob is in the process of working out that idea, visually. [...] In the dream he sees himself returning to the comics, only the Sunday edition (special), and the superhero character is much more prominent than the comics would ordinarily have it; the smaller head representing, I think, the idea that the intellect’s place is smaller or of a lesser nature than he earlier supposed. At dream’s end Rob says that the head was almost too youthful for the body he’d drawn — maybe a reminder that the natural person is younger in ways than the intellectual self. I think that Rob is himself in the dream, represented by the super character as the magical self; and also that he is the assistant who had prepared the figure’s head.

[...] Seth’s abilities remind me of material I’ve written recently on how certain portions of the personality or psyche must very shrewdly and carefully construct dreams in advance, so that when the dreams are played back they render just the right message to the parts of the psyche that need it. I’m not being contradictory here when I write that the dream is a spontaneous production, also.

“I was not conscious of my age, 61, in the dream, nor do I remember anything about being committed to draw a daily strip also. [...] In the dream, I’d left certain areas blank in the panels making up the Sunday page, and my nameless assistant had done the art to fill in those places. [...] My dream character stood confidently facing the reader — except that I’d omitted drawing his head! [...]

3. From my dream notebook: “Dream, very early Wednesday morning, August 13, 1980. [...]

(Seth told us the Seth book which is now at Jane’s publisher would be published, and that her dream book would also. Jane sent the dream book to another publisher last week. [...]

You may not dream of me, but I will be in your dreams, you see. [...]

[...] Once again, I am with you more often than you suppose, and I shall be with you this evening when you dream.

(“Are we going to dream of you?”)

The fetus dreams. As its physical growth takes place in the womb, so the shaping of its consciousness is also extended by genetic dreams. These particular fetus-oriented dreams are most difficult to describe, for they are actually involved with forming the contours of the individual consciousness. Such dreams provide (pause) the subjective understanding from which thoughts are developed, and in those terms complete thoughts are possible before the brain itself is fully formed. [...]

Genetic dreams of one kind or another continue throughout your lives, whether or not you are consciously aware of them. [...] They were the source of dreams, mentioned earlier, that sent man on migrations after food, that led him toward fertile land. Those dreams are most closely related to survival in physical existence, and whenever that survival seems threatened such dreams arise to consciousness whenever possible.

[...] Children learn such languages mentally long before they are physically capable of speaking them; but again, in genetically inspired dreams, children—or rather, infants—practice language. Before such infants hear their parents speak, however, they are in telepathic communication, and even in the fetus genetic dreams involve the coding and interpretation of language. Those dreams themselves inspire the physical formations necessary to bring about their own actualizations.

They are the dreams that warn of famines or of wars. Such dreams, however, can also be triggered often, as in your own times, when the conscious mind is convinced that the survival of the species is threatened—and in such cases the dreams then actually represent man’s fears. [...]

(I’d temporarily forgotten the dreams about Bill and Sue, although I have them selected for inclusion in Through My Eyes; they’re on file in that notebook. [...] This was a period in which I had a series of potent dreams that Jane has done a lot of work interpreting [including my famous dog dream of March 31, 1979], and which could easily make up several chapters in a book on the subject, if we had the time to produce it. These dreams have been operating as a series, as Jane has pointed out, which increases the value of a person’s dreams in unexpected ways. [...] Jane has interpreted the Bill and Sue dreams, and Seth has commented on them also. [...] All of Seth’s dream material has been excellent, by the way. [...]

[...] We talked about the dream involved with tonight’s session material. I wondered if it was legitimate to say that the group of dreams was a precognitive insight into the one event—the Friday night gathering. [...] Not that the dreams presaged Friday night’s event per se, but pointed toward some sort of event like it taking place. [...]

(Then while doing the dishes before this evening’s session, Jane said she “got” that Friday night was the “playout” of my dreams involving Bill Gallagher and Sue, which had taken place separately. [...] But I picked up that Seth would go into those dreams tonight, and I asked that he give the best information that he could.”

Now: let us see how recent events reflect the dream, and how they appeared in the dream in symbolic form. [...]