(On March 6, 1984 I wrote this in the daily notes I make each day at the hospital: “This afternoon I described to Jane my dream last night about Joe Bumbalo. I dreamed he was taken very ill with heart trouble — that all he wanted to do was lay on his back in bed — I think in a trailer environment. [...]

A comment about your dream. [...]

(I then more or less forgot the dream. [...]

[...] As I drove John to the hospital, he said the date of my dream checked with developments Margaret had described. [...]

[...] The dream material is highly important because it signifies his acquiescence to the inner authority of his own being. There are correlations still to be understood between the dream messages and physical recovery, however.

Ruburt is just beginning his own dream endeavors—which could not seriously begin until he learned to have faith in his own being. [...]

[...] If certain other beneficial alterations occur, and further understanding on Ruburt’s part, we may be able to meet at other levels of consciousness, in the dream state, when he is not cooperating in the production of our material. [...]

[...] I did not do so because I remembered a dream Jane had had recently, in which I had picked up the mail, then teased her about an optimistic letter from a publisher, concerning the dream book. The thought had crossed my mind that by deliberately waving the card at her from my second-floor studio window, I could almost make that part of that dream come true.

(On Friday, June 21, 1968, Jane sent the manuscript of her dream book to Parker Publishing Company Inc., Village Square Building, West Nyack, N Y. On Saturday, June 28, a card arrived from Parker with this message:

This will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript for Dreams, Astral Projection and ESP. [...]

The dream accentuated Ruburt’s determination to achieve normal motion, and his insistence in the dream that he depend upon his own mobility, rather than, say, a vehicle or conveyance. [...]

[...] I told her about my very vivid and colorful dream of last night. [...]

(I also told Jane that beside the dream I’d like Seth to comment on the fact that I’d awakened this morning with Maude Cardwell on my mind, including the letter I’d written her a couple of weeks ago. [...]

(“What did you think of my dream about him last night?”)

The difference noted in this respect between the dreams of men and women are only differences apparent within your own structure of civilization. In your social framework women are afraid of reptiles, and they do not consciously remember dreams involving these. [...] They remember the mammal dreams more easily however because mammals are warmblooded creatures whose reproductive systems bear similarities to your own.

[...] In sleep cellular consciousness often intrudes into the dream process, appearing in the form of dream images. Cellular consciousness is highly codified in actuality, much more emotional than visual, and the visual dream images are but translations of inner comprehensions. [...]

Even if they are recalled as dreams however, they may appear meaningless, for they are unfamiliar to the ego. Yesterday’s events reenacted in a dream touch off familiarity. Tomorrow’s events in tonight’s dreams do not, not at least to the ego. [...]

The bird dreams are in this same category. No generalizations can completely answer these questions however, for despite them individuals, regardless of their sex, will show great variations in the dream images that they recall or forget entirely.

Your certainly cannot pinpoint a dream location, even if the location corresponds to a familiar one in the camouflage universe. The dream itself is not experienced in the specific camouflage location. [...] Though you recognize in a dream the complete furnishings of an actual house, still the dreamer lies in his bed. The two locations, the dream location and the camouflage location, appear the same but they are not the same.

The dream of the tree? I do not know if it was merely a dream or not at this point. [...]

In some ways you see, your dream world is actually much closer to the direct experience of reality than is your waking world, where the operation of the inner senses is shielded so from your own awareness. This is not to say that the dream world is more important to you in your present situation, merely that it contains more truth about the source of your own existence.

(“How about my dream of the tree branch falling? [...]

[...] Creative function is related to the dream state. Painting is as natural to you as dreaming. You do not need to be told how to dream, or to question your dreams. [...]

[...] He is to make an effort to remember his dreams, get up and record them, and anticipate projection dreams. [...]

You may, along with your dream suggestions, suggest that you see me on a dream projection, and I will tell you that I am I so you will know me.

Your own projection attempts can be achieved now in the dream state, for you can take advantage of the time that you do not have in waking existence. [...]

[...] There are at least three different kinds of projections that you should experience in the dream state, that will facilitate waking experiences. [...]

[...] You are far more lively, even our table moving Edgar over here, in the dream state than you recognize. Now you are having many experiences now that are vital to you in the dream state, and I want you to tell yourself that it is easy to remember them. [...]

It takes effort to inhibit your memory of your dreams. [...] So you no longer need to use the effort to inhibit the memory of your dream. [...]

[...] Now I would like you again to be alert both with the people that you meet during your daily lives and to the people that you meet in the dream state. [...]

([Sue:] “In the dream state?”)

Jane, then, wrote those two poems 16 days before she dictated the last session for Seth’s The Nature of the Psyche on April 4, 1977; one month before she began dictating Mass Events on April 18, 1977; two years and two months before she began God of Jane on May 6, 1979; two years and six months before she began dictating the Preface for Dreams on September 25, 1979; two years and eight months before she came up with the idea for If We Live Again on November 15, 1979; three years and five months before she began dictating Seth’s material on the magical approach to reality in Dreams on August 6, 1980; four years before she began dictating Seth’s sinful-self material in that book on March 11, 1981; four years and three months before she began coming through with her own sinful-self information on June 17, 1981; and four years and five months before, on August 26, 1981, she wrote the poem in Note 6 for Session 936 of Dreams: “Something in me / ebbs and tides, / as if I let myself / for a while / be washed away / out to sea / while leaving / some spidery shell / upon the shore /….”

[...] You continued that companionship, however, at other levels of activity, levels that are still open and that must be taken into consideration whenever we approach any discussion of dreaming and the dreaming world (intently.

[...] /
So I’m making / imaginary ones / which snip /
the dream leash / into a thousand silver / pieces— /
that melt before my / dream-real eyes.

[...] When you dream, however, you often come in contact with these cousins of consciousness. [...]

[...] Now you do this to some extent in the dream state, but even then in many dreams you still tend to translate experience into hallucinatory physical terms. Most of the dreams that you recall are of this nature.

[...] You do not remember them as dreams. Dreams, however, may later the same evening be formed from the information gained during what I will call the “depth experience.” These will not be exact or near translations of the experience, but rather of the nature of dream parables — an entirely different thing, you see.

[...] During it, energy is generated that makes the dream state itself possible. It is true that dreams allow the physically oriented self to digest current experience, but it is also true that the experience is then returned to its initial components. [...]

“My memories of those dream events are just as real as the memories of anything else I’ve done lately,” I said. [...] I’ve always been intrigued by the simple observation that for me at least, once they begin moving into the past dream events assume an increasingly important place in my life. I think that upon awakening in the present, one is much more likely to call a dream “just a dream,” and not assign to it a reality and validity equal to one’s “real” experience in the waking state.

Next, Jane quickly went over my recent batch of “Sayre-environment dreams,” as Seth called them. I’ve recorded six of those long and complicated dreams, set in my hometown, since December 22; in them I explored my various, sometimes contradictory beliefs about writing and painting, my relationships with society and the marketplace, and with my [deceased] father as he represented certain other beliefs. [...]

Tonight Seth did comment—and very perceptively put all of the dreams together. [...]

[...] “I’ll tell you,” Jane said as I congratulated her, “I just glanced at those dreams in your notebook. [...]

[...] She said that Seth didn’t mention one part of the dream: that after it she became aware of herself saying “You’ll have to say goodbye to your cats.” [...] Jane has written her own account of the dream of May 28. [...]

(“Do you want to say something about Jane’s dream about her mother, on Monday—the one that upset him?”)

[...] The earlier portions of the dream did, however, represent fears that Ruburt was, say, dying of suffocation—not physical suffocation, but from being bound too tightly.

The telepathic message picked up in dreams under such circumstances will of course be interpreted by the dreaming self in its own way, symbolically, so that the dream actions may not appear to be the same. If it were possible to examine two such allied dream communications however, the connection between them would be very clear.

[...] Let us return to our discussion on action, and tie this in with action as it is seen within dreams. Your own dreams greatly affect the actions that you take within the physical situation, and as you know telepathy operates within dreams.

[...] On those evenings however when you dream of a certain individual, you may strongly suspect that the same individual is dreaming of you. The trouble is that the other individual most likely has not trained himself to recall his dreams, and so we can prove little.

[...] His physical action, his refusal, was based upon a telepathic communication with you, in the dream state, on those evenings when you had the dreams which I interpreted for you.

[...] On June 16 and June 23, Jane’s notebook shows that she had vague, encouraging dreams about writing and publishing and New York City. The dream book was not mentioned specifically in her notebook.

(On July 5, however, Jane had a very vivid dream in which she saw the dream book published in paperback format.

(Jane talked to Don Wollheim of Ace Publications on the phone today, and he requested that she send him her book on dreams. [...]

(“Do you want to say something about the dream book and the Parker impressions?” See The Early Sessions, Volume 8, pages 329-330.)

[...] When you are ill, in the dream state you often have experiences in which you seem to be someone else with an entirely healthy body. Often such a dream is therapeutic. [...]

REINCARNATION, DREAMS, AND THE HIDDEN
MALE AND FEMALE WITHIN THE SELF

Now: Our next chapter will be called: “Reincarnation, Dreams, and the Hidden Male and Female Within the Self.”

The male will often dream of himself, therefore, as a female. [...]

[...] Dreams of health are of great benefit. He can tell himself that his dream self becomes his physical image. He knows his dream self is real. [...]

[...] You can also suggest dreams in which you are flying in an airplane, and tell yourself you will awaken to project. You will know the plane is a dream image but be able to retain it for your convenience, so that you do not fear falling.

[...] You have both traveled together in such a fashion often from the dream state, without your knowledge. [...]

If you try to do this from a dream state then you must set aside two and one-half hours, for the first portion will be used as preliminaries. [...]

[...] Early this morning I awakened, quite sore, and with the vague memory of a dream. [...] There were things I could do to rectify this though; and in the dream I did this, and awakened....a card table was involved somehow. [...]

[...] [Also see healing dream later in the day].... [...]

(A note by R.F.B.: The following quotations are from sessions Jane delivered for her trance personality, Seth, just before and during the time she worked with him on Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment. One is from a private session, two are from “nonbook” regular sessions, and one is from Dreams itself.)

—FROM SESSION 917, MAY 21, 1980, IN CHAPTER 8 OF DREAMS     

[...] In March, Tam signed her to a contract for Seth, Dreams … on behalf of Prentice-Hall. [...] She kept changing and adding to the portions of Seth, Dreams … that she hadn’t used in The Seth Material, while at the same time her new work kept crowding it out. Finally, in 1971 Tam converted her contract for Seth, Dreams … into one for Seth Speaks. Jane didn’t keep on trying to sell Seth, Dreams … Neither did I, and somehow that perfectly good book ended up packed away. [...] When at his request I rediscovered Seth, Dreams … three months ago, and examined it, I couldn’t believe that that finished manuscript had never been published. [...]

[...] But for convenience’s sake, in Seth, Dreams … I bring together certain events in chronological time; I feel that its having been written some time ago makes this book the ideal place for me to discuss Jane’s death, to unite the “past,” the “present,” and the “future’; I regard it as being next in line after Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, which Prentice-Hall, Inc. [...] In Dreams, “Evolution, “… I stuck to Jane’s production of the Seth Material for that work, plus a strict chronological account of our personal lives while she delivered it. I made no leaps in time to write about her physical death, for to me that sad event lay too far in the future — over two and a half years — from the time she finished dictating Dreams, “Evolution,” … in February 1982.

How Seth, Dreams … eventually came to be issued by Stillpoint Publishing, how it can even be thought of as a “lost manuscript,” makes a most interesting account that I’ll just outline here. [...] That manuscript is Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness. As soon as he’d reviewed it back then, Tam had asked Jane to do a book on Seth himself. [...] The book came out in 1970; and in it she had used certain portions of Seth, Dreams …

I began thinking about and working upon this Introduction for Seth, Dreams … late in October 1985. As I reread the book I learned that Jane devotes considerable portions of several chapters to material involving our friend, Sue Watkins — her adventures with dreams, projections, and probable realities — and also refers to her in other chapters. [...] Two nights earlier, Sue had had a very strong precognitive dream concerning her mother’s death; she plans to discuss that event in the book she’s writing. [...]