“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dreams, for example, were once as clear, vivid, and real as waking life was. People did not expect their dreams to be vague, or unreasonable or chaotic, any more than they expected waking experience to be. Men and women in fact learned how to deal with daily life—daily waking life—by studying the lessons they received in the dream state. To a large extent the young species relied on dreams to teach them all they needed to know, just as in your time people rely on schools instead. [...]

[...] Knowledge came from experience, and that experience was a product of both the waking and the dreaming states. Man tried out in waking life those lessons that he received in dreams. [...]

(As she ate a good lunch I told Jane about my very vivid dream of last night—in which Jane, myself and her deceased father, Del, had driven to Bemidji, Minnesota, in the summertime. [...]

(I thought the dream was another very positive one, and meant that Jane and I have left behind the old dead beliefs represented by Del. [...]

[...] The dream said “Do not wait too late to set up the legal mechanism,” and affirmed that Yale was at least a good idea. (Pause.) The old man also stood for old man time in the dream, and reinstated the fact that an executor is important, for the old man also stood for —in the dream, now—Ruburt’s father acting as his own executor—meaning that his nature led him to leave ends loose.

(As we sat for the session Jane gave me a copy [which is attached] of the dreams she had while taking a nap this afternoon. [...] In fact, I just got the last part of the second dream as I was sitting here....”

Are you ready for the dreams, or do you want a brief break?

Dream one is in answer to Ruburt’s wondering whether or not it was a good idea to make out a will now, rather than to wait until a later date.

A study of dreams, of dream locations, is most important. Dream locations do not take up any space physically, it is true, but they are composed of electrical mass density and intensity. [...] Energy is expended in work in dreams. Definite work may be done in a dream, but the physical arms and legs are not tired.

[...] The study of dreams—your scientists consider such work beneath them. Why has no one suspected that dream locations, for example, have not only a psychological reality, but a definite actuality?

We have seen that dreams and thoughts and psychological experiences all have an electric reality.

[...] This includes of course the retention of its dreams, as well as the retention of purely physical data.

Greet the now-realization of all of your dreams, for they also participate in the probable system. As your dreams bleed into your normal conscious life, so do they bleed into other probabilities. A dream act is actualized by a waking you, as a waking you is actualized by a dreaming self.

I half waken and then drift into a recurring scene from an old childhood dream: There is a killer fog behind us, and we must get down a snowy path to home before the fog gets us. We are struggling past a large factory, when all at once I am sitting with Jane as Seth again, watching the snow dream as if it were a movie. [...] We all make the safety of the house, and I wish all the characters in the dream peace and safety from the killer fog. [...]

In the meantime, Sue began to have a series of dreams dealing with probabilities, the first of them in August, 1970. She wrote the dream down as usual, and called me on the phone to tell me about it. [...] As she read the dream, all kinds of images and ideas came into my mind.

(NOTES CONNECTED WITH DREAM: I had the feeling that this was a demonstration of the many ramifications of probabilities in physical reality and in the dream state. [...]

[...] I described to Jane a very strong, vivid dream I’d had last night of her being fully recovered and in excellent health. [...] I knew this was an excellent dream. [...]

(Yesterday I finally remembered to tell Jane about another vivid dream I’d had last week. [...]

(“Will he discuss my dreams?” I asked. [...]

Ruburt’s dream of last evening, and your own, both draw excellent probabilities into the realm of physical actuality. [...]

The dream state is (underlined) a statement of perception and communication. Men in one section of a continent dreamed of animals they had never physically seen, that inhabited other geographical areas. They dreamed of more fertile lands, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of miles in the distance. Their dreams incited them, then, toward physical exploration of their world. [...]

[...] When several different persons of a given tribe, say, dreamed of and drew similar animal images, then the people began to look for the physical materialization. Men dreamed their own maps in the same fashion, one man dreaming perhaps a certain portion, and several dreamers contributing their versions, drawing in sand in the waking state, or upon cave walls. [...]

[...] There is indeed a kind of communal dream life, then, in which each individual contributes—a dream life in which both living and dead play a part, in your terms. [...]

I told you that dreams played an important part in what you think of (underlined) as evolution. [...]

Our instructions will begin with the use of these dreams whenever they occur. [...] These are dreams when at first you are certain that you are awake. It is sufficient to keep this in mind, so that in the middle of a dream you can realize what it is.

A large variety of dreams are the memories of this nonphysical existence that constantly occurs, though in waking life you are seldom aware of them. This cycle that psychologists have recently discovered, having to do with the various dream levels, corresponds to the ebb and tide of consciousness as it appears within and disappears from physical reality. [...]

[...] You are doing the same thing when you realize you are dreaming, and decide to explore, say, a distant landscape that appears within the dream.

[...] We will deal with dream projections in detail, and then we shall discuss conscious projections literally from the waking state. I will give you my directions for projections from within the dream state first.

It should be emphasized however that dream experiences can have a more lasting and vital effect upon the personality than many so-called physical experiences, for the dream experiences are not blocked nearly as much as waking experience is blocked. The suggestion that also occurs within the dream state works even more effectively upon the whole personality than any suggestion works under ordinary circumstances. And dreams certainly do contain suggestions, and they are reacted to by the personality, not only on a subconscious basis and a psychological basis, but they affect the whole system.

[...] The dream, any dream, fits neatly within certain and definite electromagnetic boundaries, and at the same time helps to form the electromagnetic field itself.

[...] This of course includes his dreams. It may be well to remember here that dreams exist even for an individual in the waking state, though he is not aware of them. [...]

These dreams go unrecognized by the conscious ego; but they do not go unrecorded by the inner self, and they therefore exist, and they form electromagnetic channels of their own to which—make that by which—the physical body itself is affected. [...] Therefore, the physical organism reacts to this continuous unconscious mental activity in the form of continuing dream experiences, whether or not the individual is awake or asleep. [...]

[...] I now have my dream notebook in full swing, and since I had more dreams on the order of the two already discussed by Seth, I had my dream notebook open on the table as session time approached, in case these dreams were used in the material.

[...] During break I wondered aloud whether the inhabitants of another plane might be able to tune in on our dream world from the other side, you might say, and through the dream world thus locate our plane. [...]

[...] The mechanics are not important, but as dreaming is partially caused by chemical poisons that make dreaming a necessity for physical survival, so there are other mechanisms of this kind that are actually doorways, built within and natural to the physical mechanism, that at the same time necessitate experience upon other fields of reality.

[...] The closest field or plane is that one that you create, that you call the dream world, and that you imagine to be unsubstantial, impermanent, fleeting, having no reality except during your own contact with it.

[...] Before the session I showed her a copy of my dream for last Monday morning—one that had been so unpleasant that I’d avoided writing it down until after supper tonight. [...] In the dream I saw myself as a rather corpulent older individual wearing robes as they do in the Middle East; at an elaborate feast I watched mice being burned alive in a special gadget, before we skinned and ate their corpses. In the dream I swore off doing so ever again. The dream has stayed very vividly with me ever since I had it. [...]

You have been considering the nature of good and evil, and in your dream you presented yourself with a capsule demonstration. [...]

Your dream was an excellent rendition, for here you have men unaware of the mouse’s dilemma to such an extent that it was beside the point—so taken for granted that it became invisible. [...]

In the dream you make a decision never to partake of such a feast again, and the decision simply represents the multitudinous like decisions that are made by individual people, when they finally recognize the fact that a given act, considered acceptable in the past, does not fit in with the overall intent of life at large. [...]

[...] When you create you dream. Creativity, again, thrives on dreaming, and dreaming serves as a conduit for Framework 2’s activity. [...]

In the dream state you deal with objects that may or may not have a physical reality. You mix times and places, and the dream itself is a kind of completed act. [...]

[...] The idea for the book may come from a dream, or in that state of creativity where dreams reach toward physical actualization. [...]

[...] It can, in fact, involve waking dreams. [...]

(In the dream, all of which was in brilliant color, I’d combined many elements, which I described in more detail to Jane than I’ll give here. [...] In the dream I was drawing foot-high oval letters in black ink, but was worried about doing a good job because my hand was shaky. [...]

[...] I also felt that the idea of authority was somehow connected with my shaky right hand, and since this aspect of the dream wasn’t discussed today, I’d like Seth to comment on it tomorrow if he has a session. I seem to remember from old pendulum sessions, that my mother is involved with the shaky hand, although she wasn’t in this dream. [...]

[...] The other was Seth’s comments on a very vivid and long dream I’d had last night.

[...] The entire dream had made an impression on me, I told Jane.

Jane held Session 900 for Chapter 5 of Dreams, in Volume 1, some 20 months ago. In Note 1 for that session I described a most vivid dream experience—one in which, Seth told me in the session itself, I had viewed the many-faceted light of my own being and of the universe. [...]

[...] It can instead appear as a series, say, of frightening dreams. [...] An adverse physical situation, such as an illness, may turn into “a frightening dream,” yet in all such cases the necessary standards of self-integrity are maintained.

(Jane hadn’t operated well yesterday.¹ She did tell me that she was somewhat surprised to realize Seth might be closer to completing his work on Dreams than she’d thought he was. [...]

[...] Dream actions can indeed—and often do—affect genetic alterations, acting as triggers for altered cellular action. [...]

Now in dreams you also form your environment. The dream locations that you visit you form in precisely the same manner as atoms and molecules, but they are of briefer duration, for you do not focus your energy upon them for the same amount of physical time. These locations and these dreams appear private to you. [...] The fact is that you do to a certain extent share them and telepathically, dreams can be dreamed by more than one person. [...]

[...] In dreams you communicate with your own past lives. In dreams you often know who you have been. In dreams you often realize what you have learned. In dreams you restate your challenges and problems. [...]

[...] Dreams help form your personality, but they do not take up physical space. [...]

[...] You form your own dreams and you form your own physical reality. [...]

As leaves drop from the tree, so finally do dream images depart from close connection with the personality. [...] Dream images are often images which cannot be created for various reasons within physical reality at any particular time. Dream images may appear later however as physical images.

There are seasonal variations, temperature variations, electromagnetic and chemical reactions that all influence the production and efficiency of dream images, and that also influence the effect of dream images upon the individual. There is also, as I mentioned, a close relationship existing between dream images and other materializations, that are not ordinarily regular physical occurrences.

Dream images are in a most vital manner extensions of the self. [...] And as branches are composed of all those elements that make up the whole tree, so indeed dream images are composed of those elements that make up the personality.

It is obvious that the dream images are not responsible to the ego, however. [...] As leaves bring vital nutrients to the tree trunk, so also do dream images bring nourishment to the personality.

On many occasions then you set yourself a problem — “Shall I do this or that?” — and form a dream in which you follow through the probable futures that would “result” from the courses available. While you are sleeping and dreaming, your chemical and hormonal activity faithfully follows the courses of the dreams. Even in your accepted reality, then, to that extent in such a dream you react to probable events as well as to the events chosen for waking physical experience. Your daily life is affected, because in such a dream you deal with probable predictabilities. You are hardly alone, however, so each individual alive also has his and her private dreams, and these help form the accepted probability sequence of the following day, and of “time to come.” [...]

[...] Your private psyche is intimately concerned with your earthly existence, and in your dream state you deal with probable actions, and often work out in that condition the solutions to problems or questions that arise having to do with probable sequences of events.⁴

I also suggest a rereading of the material on dreams and probable realities in chapters 14 and 15 of The Seth Material.

On February 1, 1968, I sent Dreams to Doubleday on suggestion of Reverend Crosson. [...]

On February 28, 1968—I sent Dreams to McGraw Hill.

On April 17, 1968—I got request from a Tam Mossman to do a book on Seth Material, using portions of the best chapters from dream book that deal with Seth.

My own role in the physical production of Dreams is far from over, however. In notes at the end of this session I’ll briefly consider the latest expressions of large-scale consciousnesses concerning Three Mile Island¹ and the countries of the Middle East,² and then will unify those discussions by explaining how I think those great events of consciousness have counterpart relationships, just as “living” entities do.³ I’ll also refer to our country’s space-shuttle program.⁴ Next, I have to put into final form the complicated notes I began for a number of sessions for Dreams as Jane delivered them. [...] And therein lies another reason for our somber moods: Our dear friend and editor, Tam Mossman, almost certainly will not see Dreams through the publishing process. [...]

[...] No matter what other challenges we had created for ourselves over the last two years and four months, the knowledge that Dreams was in process had served as a comforting foundation in our lives. [...] And we know that as the creation of Dreams begins to recede from our immediate perception other challenges will inevitably move forward. [...]

In Volume 1 of Dreams, see the first session in the Preface. [...] Although she considered resuming work on Seven Three at various times while she was producing Dreams with Seth, she never did; the status of that novel remains the same. [...]

A note added a month later: Jane’s journal entry is indeed a last one, for on the 26th of February, 18 days after finishing her work for Dreams, she was admitted to a local hospital for treatment of hearing difficulties, rheumatoid arthritis, and several other afflictions. Jane’s and my hospital experiences have already become so involved that I’ve begun to think of describing them—and whatever they may develop into—in a series of chronologically ordered introductory essays for Dreams, instead of the more conventional introduction I’d been expecting to write. [...]

The practical nature of his own dreams was also more apparent, for again, his dreams sent him precise visions as to where food might be located, for example, and for some centuries there were human migrations of a kind that now you see the geese make. All of those journeys followed literal paths that were given as information in the dream state. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) At the time of this awakening man did experience, then, some sense of separation from his dream body, and from his own inner reality—the world of his dreams—but he was still far more aware of that subjective existence than you are now.

[...] Some of you have physical children as well—but you will all “one day” also be the mental parents of dream children who also waken in a new world, and look about them for the first time, feeling isolated and frightened and triumphant all at once. [...] All of your dreams somewhere waken, but when they do they waken with the desire for creativity themselves, and they are born of an innocent new intent. [...]

[...] When she lay down for a nap yesterday afternoon she picked up from Seth hints of subjects he’s going to discuss in Dreams: “man migrations,” and “inside and outside cues” as pertaining to man’s consciousness. [...]

We come here also to one of the other causes of the dreaming state, beside those of which we have spoken in the past. [...] Since action of any kind, being composed of inner vitality, must seek materialization, the dreams become the constructions of that dream universe of which, again, we have spoken. [...] The dream once begun continues, and the dream universe itself forms anew other constructions.

[...] Your idea of action as it occurs within dreams comes closer to the real nature of action than does your idea of muscular force. For in dreams the ego makes little attempt to impede action. Though in dreams you see or feel your arm move, your legs run, still the arm and the legs of the physical body may not move.

[...] It was as though the idea “came” to her, rather than anything she deliberately dreamed up herself. [...]