“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:10.) The dream state provides you with a preliminary stage in which working hypotheses can be creatively formed and tried out in a context of playfulness. Still, the dreams that you have and recall, and the resulting solution of many problems, represent only the surface layer of dream activity. To follow yourself into your own dreams is a fascinating endeavor, and there in the dream context you can become aware of the working of your own consciousness. [...] If you do not trust your waking self you will not trust your dreaming self, and the landscape of your dreams will appear threatening. Your belief that dreams are unpleasant can make them so, or at best you will only remember frightening dream events.

Your dreams are private, as your waking life is, and yet there is a mass waking experience and a mass dreaming experience in which each individual finds his or her own place, and accepts or rejects events. In your terms, the race at any given “time” simultaneously works out problems in the dream state, and those solutions are then physically materialized. Because there is more freedom from time and space in the dream state, there is greater overall perspective; many solutions that may appear poor in the short range — as they are physically activated — will in the longer range be seen as highly creative.

In the dream state you allow yourself greater freedom, trying out certain ideas and beliefs in this more plastic framework. You may therefore accept new beliefs initially in the dream state, and the intellectual or emotional realization may only come “later.” In dreaming, the conscious mind itself is far more lenient and playful. [...]

[...] In the dream state consciousness ignores space-time relationships to a large degree, and yet it is still firmly based upon the body’s corporeal mechanism. Dreams then are physically experienced. [...]

(2. Much of Jane’s trance material on how individuals use dreams personally came through in answer to a question of mine that we’d often speculated about lately: If most people do not remember their dreams most of the time, of what use can their dreams be to them? The question was really based upon our belief, indeed our certainty, that everything in nature is intentional and useful; therefore dreams must fulfill important roles in peoples’ lives—but how, in ordinary terms? [...]

“Because dreams are such a perfect combination of stimuli from the inner environment and the exterior environment, other events are often used to trigger inner dream messages, just as the opposite occurs. And in a gathering of three people watching the same TV drama, say, each of them might be interpreting different portions of the program so that those portions correlate with their individual dreams of the night before, and serve to bring them their dream messages in ways they can accept....”

“You might dream of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that a tire blew when you were driving too fast. You may never remember the dream. [...] Even then, you might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to your attention might make you check your tires, decide to put off your trip, or instead lead you to inner speculations about whether you are going too fast in a certain direction for your own good at this time. But you will get the dream’s message.”

“Great discrimination is used so that, for example, one newspaper item is noticed over others because a certain portion of that item represents some of the dream’s message. Another portion might come from a neighbor—but from the dreamer’s interpretation of the neighbor’s remark, that further brings home the dream message.”

I have told you that you create your dreams, in actuality, not in theory alone. You create an actuality, a dream universe, as real as the physical universe. [...] You can perceive the dream experience, you can receive its particular intensities, because you have created the dream experience within the universe of those intensities. But the dream universe and the dream experience, like thoughts and emotions, are independent of you in existence. You influence the dream universe but you cannot stop a dream experience after you have created it, and you must create it within the small range of intensities available for its existence, for there are no other conditions or agreeable ranges of intensity within which the dream experience can exist.

Various portions then of the entire self are attuned to their own intensities, picking up signals, interpreting only portions of the whole dream experience. I am using the term dream experience because it is a familiar word to you. However, the dream experience, you see, represents only a portion or particular range of intensities from a larger experience. In dreams you perceive but part.

We were speaking, among other things, of intensities, and this is connected with both dream symbols and other such data. Dreams, having an electrical reality as I explained, must be decoded to have meaning to various levels of the subconscious and the personality. [...] And much of this significant material that he will observe from his predictions will also apply to dream symbols.

[...] Or in case, in the case, of a dream, it is changed into a dream symbol. The dream as perceived by the mind then, is a pattern of electrical impulses, all more or less within a particular range of intensity.

Unknown characters within the dream action, persons unknown to you in everyday life, should be given careful attention also, and the roles which they play within the dream drama. The primary colors of a dream should be noted. It certainly goes without saying that all remembered dream events should be checked against reality, as you have been doing, so that any clairvoyant dreams are clearly checked and recorded.

I would suggest however that the first recalled dream for any given evening be compared with the first recalled dream from other evenings, that the second recalled dream from any one evening be compared with the second dream from other evenings, and so forth. [...]

Ruburt’s dream notebook has come along very well. In most cases however he writes down only those dreams which he remembers upon awakening. Suggestion will allow him, or will allow you Joseph, to awaken yourself as soon as a dream is completed.

The dream will be fresh. If your recorder is suitably situated with the microphone easily at hand, then you can speak your dream with less effort than is required to write it down. [...] The simplest part of the experiment will involve the use of self-suggestion in dream recall.

[...] In the same way you give birth to dream images of your own — hardly aware that you have done so, unconscious of the fact that you have provided impetus for a kind of psychological reality that quite escapes your notice. The dream stories you begin continue on their own. No dream is stillborn. Each chapter of this book is written in such a way that the ideas presented will activate your own intuitions, and open pathways between your dreaming and waking states.

If in your waking hours you playfully make up a dream for yourself, and then playfully interpret it without worrying about implications, but for itself only, you will unwittingly touch upon the nature of your own nightly dreaming. Your regular dreams and your “manufactured” ones will have much in common, and the process of manufacturing dreams will acquaint you with the alterations of consciousness that to a greater degree happen nightly. [...]

The playfulness and creativity of dreams are vastly underrated in most dream studies. [...] Dreams often serve the same purpose. [...] This is not an explanation for all unpleasant dreams by any means, yet it is a reminder that not all such events are neurotic or indicative of future physical problems.

[...] To some extent, I am like a particularly vivid, persistent, recurring dream image, visiting the mass psyche, only with a reality that is not confined to dreams — a dream image that attains a psychological fullness that can seem to make ordinary consciousness a weak apparition by contrast, psychologically speaking.

(Our dream discussion before the session led me to voice a question about dreams that I don’t think Seth has covered in just that way. Sue Watkins visited us last night, and related several recent dreams in which she saw Jane functioning normally physically. [I’ve also had others in which Jane was okay physically – walking well, and so forth.] “But what happens,” I asked, as we waited for the session to begin, “after I have the dream about you, for example? [...] How come, with all of these positive dreams, you aren’t improving physically to any observable degree? If you get the messages we sent you, do they do any good at all?” The questions would apply in any dream exchange among people, of course.

(At 9:30 she told me Seth might go into my dream of May 27—yesterday—in which I drove an automobile down West Water St. at 90 miles per hour, without harm. I also mentioned my Boy Scout dream of May 22, in which I saw her walking normally, and my vivid dream impressions of my father, of May 15, in which I woke up crying. [...] All dreams are on file in dream notebook #2.

(10:35.) Such dreams on Ruburt’s part bring one vital message: that he can walk normally, and that this can be easily (underlined) brought about. In some of the dreams he is surprised that he can perform so well. In others he takes it for granted, as in your (Boy Scout) dream. [...] In the dream state he holds no such beliefs. [...]

[...] Privately and through your dreams and Sue’s, Ruburt with your help in the dream state sees that motion can be and is easy. He responds telepathically to your dreams.

The investigation of dreams, then, must be accomplished in or on a subconscious level. In order to study dreams properly you must indeed immerse yourself in that medium in which dreams occur. The intense but limited focus of usual consciousness will itself distort the true nature of dreams, and the ego will hold any such conscious examination of dreams within rigid bonds.

The dream objects and activities will then be interpreted at other subconscious areas, so that to understand a dream properly we should first discover at which subconscious area it originates. Individuals can be enabled to find this point of origin for themselves, after an attempt is made to recall any given dream or dreams.

Now during the dream drama the inner self may focus at various, or at one of various subconscious areas which it uses as a point of departure. This area, whichever one it may be, will be the one in which the main dream sequence originates and in which the dream activity occurs.

The basic and originating dream sequence occurred in that area of the subconscious having to do with past lives, and of course expanded into other areas. The dream was partially triggered, as is often the case between closely related individuals, by Ruburt’s own dream in which the leaking vessel was featured.

Dreams, then, come from various levels of what you call the subconscious. But as a rule any particular dream, although it originates in a particular level, will nevertheless have meaning on all levels. [...] That is, the particular dream may be a method of saying different things or bringing different messages, the one particular dream automatically being translated by the various levels of the subconscious in terms of the interpretation given by any particular subconscious level to the dream symbolism.

In other words, a dream allows the inner self to view itself within the spacious present. Now, chemically the physical body does need to dream. That is, dreaming is a necessity if the physical body is to survive. This is the result of certain chemical reactions and chemical necessities, chemical excesses that build up during the days, inciting the mental dream mechanism.

(As Seth states, Jane did have a dream about the idea the following night, September 11,1963. [...] However she has no written record of the dream, since this was before she had cultivated the habit of keeping a dream notebook. As mentioned many, many sessions ago, however, her poem The Fence, written in May 1963, clearly foreshadows the Seth material, dealing with [but not always by outright name] such subjects as reincarnation, dreams, unperceived worlds, etc. [...]

[...] None of us knew of any such meeting at the time of my above dream of September 24, simply because the meeting had not been scheduled yet, or indeed even thought of. And I must admit that such was the involvement in the problem at hand when the family did convene on October 4, that I completely forgot the dreams at the time, never realizing that I had dreamed of a family get-together 10 days before it took place. This clairvoyant aspect of the second dream is discussed by Seth in the following session.)

With some individuals some of these dreams may also represent personal symbolisms, but the original dream in the raw, unembellished, is a root dream. The embellishments are added after the dream is completed, just before the point when you remember it on a conscious level. The embellishments may be portions of other dreams, recalled now out of context, and attached to your memory of the original root dream.

Dreams in which psychic instruction is given: here we have another example of a root dream. [...] Past life dreams are root dreams. This is not to say that upon awakening the direct experience is not automatically intermixed with other dream elements.

[...] On one level dreams deal with objects and dream images. [...] At deeper levels however in the dream state there is direct experience, and objects are not used.

There are root dreams that represent basic inner experiences. [...] If you remember the dreams, you remember them with images however. Flying dreams are an example here. [...]

The dream world operates as a creative situation in which probable acts are instantly materialized, laid out in actual or symbolic form. [...] There are other important reasons for dreaming, but here we will confine ourselves to this particular issue and to the dream landscape itself, period.

It is only because you seem to expect dream experience to be like daily life that you find so many dreams chaotic. [...] If you remember such a dream event, comma, it seems meaningless in the morning.

In the same way each of you form an overall dream world in which there is some general agreement, comma, but in which each experience is original. The dream world has its reaches as the physical one does. [...]

(For some of Seth’s earlier material on dreams, dream symbols and healing, nightmare therapy, etc., see sessions 639–41 in Chapter Ten.)

The Christ drama is a case in point, where private and mass dreams were then projected outward into the historical context of time, and then reacted to in such a way that various people became exterior participants — but in a far larger mass dream that was then interpreted in the most literal of physical terms. Even while it was, it also got the message across, though the inner drama itself was not recalled; and as the dream merged with historical events, and as it was interpreted by so many, its message also became distorted — or rather, it mixed and merged with other such dreams, whose messages were far different.

2. Much of Jane’s trance material on how individuals use dreams personally came through in answer to a question of mine that we’d often speculated about lately: If most people do not remember their dreams most of the time, of what use can their dreams be to them? The question was really based upon our belief, indeed our certainty, that everything in nature is intentional and useful; therefore dreams must fulfill important roles in people’s lives — but how, in ordinary terms? [...]

“Because dreams are such a perfect combination of stimuli from the inner environment and the exterior environment, other events are often used to trigger inner dream messages, just as the opposite occurs. And in a gathering of three people watching the same TV drama, say, each of them might be interpreting different portions of the program so that those portions correlate with their individual dreams of the night before, and serve to bring them their dream messages in ways they can accept….

“You might dream of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that a tire blew when you were driving too fast. You may never remember the dream. [...] Even then, you might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to your attention might make you check your tires, decide to put off your trip, or instead lead you to inner speculations about whether you are going too fast in a certain direction for your own good at this time. But you will get the dream’s message.”

(Long pause at 8:50.) You are bound to have, then, many larger dream formations that can only be called group dreams—subjective events in which your own dreams happen, and in which your own dreams take part. [...] It should be no surprise, then, that this same kind of “fitting together” includes subjective life also—or that, say, your private dreams are also fragments in a vaster dream reality. [...]

There are dreams of different import, some triggered genetically, that serve as sparks for particular kinds of behavior—dreams, in other words, that literally span the centuries in that regard, coiled latently in the very chromosomes; and no level of consciousness is without some kind of participation in dream states. In that regard even electrons, for example, dream. Dreaming touches upon both microscopic and macroscopic events, or realities, and is not simply a human characteristic, appropriately appearing within your own range or within your own species. [...]

[...] Now: Dreams occur at so many levels of reality that it is quite impossible to describe their true scope. [...] (Long pause.) Dreams serve as backup systems also, for example, in the important communications between various peoples or nations—and, particularly when physical communication is cut off between such groups, dreams provide the continuation of information’s flow from one part of the species to another.

There are certain kinds of dreams in which the various species then communicate, and in which the energies of the environment and its inhabitants merge. These include a kind of horizontal psychological extension, the translation of one kind of dream into another kind—the transference of information from one system to another, in which the symbols themselves come alive.

[...] Called “A Third Stage of Existence”, it deals with REM sleep, or the rapid eye movements that have been shown to occur during dreaming. Since Seth has dealt with dreams to some extent Jane and I have a somewhat different slant on sleep and dreaming, and what is involved.

The reality of dreams themselves can only be investigated through direct contact. Their reality cannot be probed by scientific devices, for dreams in this respect are as nebulous as the spirit, or soul, or inner self. Dreams are directly experienced. [...]

The eye movements noted in the beginning of REM sleep are only indications of dream activity that is closely connected to the physical layers of the self. These periods mark not the onset of dreams, but the return of the personality from deeper layers of dream awareness to more surface areas.

The chemical excesses built up in the waking state are automatically changed as they are drained off, into electrical energy, which also helps to form and sustain dream images. Your scientists would learn more about the nature of dreams if they would but train themselves to recall their own dreams, and then study them in relation to their own normal activities and physical events.

It is cast for you so that it bridges the perception of the psyche and the perception of the dreaming self. Dreams serve as dramas, transferring experience from one level of the psyche to another. In certain portions of sleep, your experience reaches into areas of being so vast that the dream is used to translate it for you.

[...] Your beliefs, cultural background, and to some extent your languages, set up barriers so that this dream dimension seems unreal to you. Even when you catch yourselves in the most vivid of dream adventures, or find yourselves traveling outside of your bodies while dreaming, you still do not give such experiences equal validity with waking ones.

[...] At certain times some behavior has been primarily expressed in the waking state, and sometimes in the dream state. The emphasis is never static, but ever-changing In some periods, then, the normal behavior was “more dreamlike,” while more specific developments occurred in the dream state, which was then the more clear or specified of the two. Men went to sleep to do their work, in other words, and the realm of dreams was considered more real than waking reality. [...]

In larger terms it is futile to question whether or not dreams are true, for they simply are. You do consider a dream true, however, if its events later occur in fact.

Now, when Ruburt dreams that he has discussed a dream with you, in most cases he has done so. [...] With enough traveling, these conversations can be recorded in both of your dreams. The amount of work to be done here is astounding, but you can both do this, and in so doing, you can increase man’s knowledge of the potentials of the dream state.

During this period, of course, we were recording all the dreams we could capture. [...] During a series of dreams I seemed to be working to perfect my “flying technique,” and was taking lessons from others. Then, in the middle of several dreams such as this, I dreamed the following, according to my notes:

Following Seth’s instructions, I was learning to recognize when I was dreaming while I was dreaming, manipulate dream events if I wanted to, leave my body and separate halluncinations from reality.

Now, when you project from the dream body, consciously you are already outside of the physical one. [...] The mass of valid projections are made from the dreaming body. When the excursion is over, the return to the dream body is made with no strain, you see, for the ego is little concerned. [...]

(On September 9 Jane dreamed that she spoke to two sick men, saying to them, “Don’t worry. [...] Jane said the puzzling thing about this little dream was that in spite of its unpleasant content she felt no sense of alarm or danger or worry, that indeed she spoke to the two men quite cheerfully. She is concerned, though, wondering if the dream might be precognitive.

This dream is a sequel to another, in which Ruburt was aware of the death of an old woman who was a medium, and I will need to explain the first dream, that is the earlier one, to make the other dream comprehensible.

He threw this thought back to his personal subconscious, but by association it triggered memory of a previous death by cancer, which was then played back through the dream. But even then the reassuring dream came first. In the first dream, he was aware that the woman worked and was constructive until the last, and also that she passed the transition with little personal jolting.

It was only after this dream that the knowledge that the woman had died of cancer was allowed to emerge. The fact that Ruburt experienced in the dream, or following it, no sense of either fateful predestination or even fear, was a tip-off that the dream was not clairvoyant in terms of a future prediction.

[...] It is quite possible to take your normally conscious “I” into the dream state, to your advantage. When you do this you will see that the dreaming “I” and the waking “I” are one, but operating in entirely different environments. [...] You acquire a true flexibility and expanded awareness of your own being, and open channels of communication between your waking and dreaming realities. [...]

Disconnected from their usual daily attraction to physical events, your emotions will often form their own landscapes, utilizing dreams as their creative medium. [...] (See Chapter Eighteen.) In somewhat the same way, you have a part to play individually in the creation of the dream landscape. [...]

(Pause.) This does not mean that dreams can be deciphered by the use of any given [general] symbols. As you create and experience your daily life through your personal feelings and beliefs, so the same applies to dream reality.

[...] The dream world exists in terms of energy also, of course, but simply at ranges that are not physically obvious. [...] There must be some differentiation between dream and waking experience just so that you can manipulate in the more narrowly focused daily life.

The reality, the physical reality, of fire was such a contribution made by the physical universe to the universe of dreams. Physical man, observing fire, dreamed of it, thereby immeasurably enriching the universe of dreams. His discovery in the physical universe of domesticating fire was another such contribution to the dream universe.

The type of dream, or the types of dreams experienced by any individual, is determined by many factors. I am speaking now of the dream experience as it occurs, and not of the remnant of it that his ego allows him to consciously recall. As an individual creates his physical image and environment according to his abilities and defects, and in line with his expectations and subconscious and inner needs, so does he create his dreams; and these interact with the outer environment which he has created.

[...] Dreams, or the dream universe, exists even while you wake, and you only become aware of certain portions of it even while you sleep. [...] As your ego experiences changes in its relationship with the physical world, so do you change aspects of the dream world accordingly, and enrich it.

However, with the ego at rest the individual may allow communications and dream constructions through, past the ego barrier, in such a manner that he becomes in some ways free. [...] The resulting dream will then partially break the circle of poor expectations, with their shoddy physical constructions, and start such an individual along a more beneficial path. In other words, such a dream may begin to transform the physical environment through lifting inner expectation.

(On Tuesday night, June 22, I had five dreams which I wrote in my dream notebook the next morning. Dream number five was a very short one, in color. [...] In the dream I sat waiting for some little time for the light to turn green, giving me access to the main highway, Lake Street. [...] Anyone approaching it as I did in my dream can wait for up to a couple of minutes for it to change.

(When I was a few car lengths from the light, the dream suddenly popped into my mind. Just as in the dream, I found myself stopping for a red light. The effect was so startling that I at once began to wonder whether it was possible to act out dream suggestions in waking life. My self-questioning was particularly intriguing because I could have chosen from a half-dozen routes to work; yet I had picked a course that enabled me to act out the dream of the night before, while not being consciously aware of the dream.)

Abilities unused by the waking personality are utilized in the dream state. A study of dream activities will often allow the waking personality to recognize abilities of which it is not aware, to discover talents that are not being used. [...] There is no doubt that the whole self is a composite formed by the various aspects of the personality as it is seen in the waking and dream states, and at other levels of operation.

(Since Seth began discoursing on dream suggestion and health in the 172nd session, both Jane and I have been experimenting with these ideas. Jane has had quite a few interesting dreams since then, as a result of her suggestions.)

When people profess an interest in the nature of dreams, they usually have certain set questions in mind, such as: “How real are dream events?” “What do dreams mean?” “How do they affect daily life?” Each person is aware of the astonishingly intimate nature of dreams. [...]

(Pause at 10:23.) All of the elements of physical experience at any given time are present in the dream state. Practically speaking, however, the species accepts certain portions of dream reality as its so-called real events at any particular time, and about those specialized events it forms its “current” civilizations. Historically speaking, early men dreamed of airplanes and rocket ships. [...] But in the dream state, then as now, all such issues were contemporary, acting as models from which the species then chose the practical events that formed its physical experience.

(Long pause.) If you numbered each aspect of a dream, then each number would represent itself in a different numerical system entirely. The surface numbers, or the familiar ones, would still serve to explain the dream in the context of your own world. [...] To some extent in the dream state you can perceive such entities more clearly, as at night the stars become more apparent, physically speaking. [...]

Such issues, however, while obviously of concern, do not touch upon the greater events behind dream activity, or begin to touch upon the mysterious psychological actions that are behind the perception of any event. Dreams are primarily events, of course. [...]