On the Ego and Dream Recall
Dreams and projections of Consciousness
Seth/Jane Roberts
The ego skims the topmost Surface of reality and awareness. This is not a result of any inherent egotistical quality. It is true that the ego’s responsibility is with the relationship between the self and the physical environment. It must necessarily focus within the confines of physical reality. Nevertheless, it is fully capable of perceiving far more than Western man allows it to perceive. Fear, ignorance, and superstition limit its potentials and, therefore, limit even its effectiveness within the physical universe.
The ego itself cannot directly experience certain intuitions and psychological experiences, but it can experience them in so far as it can become aware of them on an intellectual basis.
When training forces the ego to become too rigid and to limit its perceptions of other realities, then the intuitions will not be accepted by the ego because intuitional experience will not fit into the framework of reality that it accepts as valid.
The ego in that case will therefore fight against what it then considers an unknown threat to survival. Struggles are initiated then there are entirely unnecessary. We want to bring intuitional comprehension to point where the ego will accept it. In our dream experiments, this is one of the purposes we hope to achieve. The ego is not equipped to delve directly into non physical realities, but if it is trained to be flexible, it will accept such knowledge from other wider horizons of the self.
And the ego must have its feet upon solid Earth. It is naked and out of its element outside of the normal environment of the physical existence. To some extent, its distrust of the dream experience is necessary for the overall balance of the personality. A physical reality is, after all, the rock to which the ego must cling; from it, the ego achieves its prestige and reason for existence. . . This provides the necessary balance and control and results in the sturdy anchorage of the personality in the environment in which it must presently survive. You have here of one of the main reasons why you must request the subconscious to enable you to recall dreams. The ego would see no reason for such a memory and on general principles attempt to repress them.
Again, however, this excellent balance and these fine controls exist. The ego will accept knowledge derived from the dream state as a man might accept a message from a distant land in which he does not care to dwell and whose environment would both mystified and astonish him.
In our dream experiments, then, we will allow you to bring such messages to the ego. We will attempt to map this exotic country in such a way that the ego can understand what is there in terms of resources that can be used for its own benefit.
“What’s the purpose of the whole study exactly? “ Rob asked. And this was Seth’s answer,
We will be involved with a study of the characteristics of the dream world in general and attempt to isolate it as a separate reality for the purpose of examination. Then we shall regard it in its relationship to physical reality, using comparisons and dissimilarities.
This will then allow us to proceed into the relationship between the waking and sleeping personality and discover the many ways in which the personality’s aims and goals are not only reflected but sometimes achieved in and through the dream condition.
Usually the dream state is considered from a negative stand point and compared unfavorably with the waking condition. Emphasis is laid upon those conditions present in the waking state but absent from the dreaming experience. We shall consider those aspects of consciousness which are present in the dream environment and absent in the physical one. No study of human personality can pretend to be thorough that does not take the importance of dream reality into consideration.
In some discussions we will state the ways in which conscious goals can be achieved with the help of the dreaming self. All this material will be reinforced with experiments that, I hope, you will conduct yourselves.
It is amazing how man regrets the hours spent in sleep. He does not realize how hard he works when the ego is unaware. We hope to make this clear. We hope to let you catch yourself in the act of doing so. You will realize how productive dream experiences are and the ways in which they are woven into the tapestry of your entire experience.
As mentioned previously, we will also deal with the nature of space, time and distance, as they appear in the dream environment. Some of our experiments along these lines will be most illuminating. Here the ego cannot go, but it can benefit from the affirmation, and perhaps in time, even a shadow of the ego may pass to this strange land and feel in some small way at home.
End of Session 181, August 25, 1965.
The Electric Reality of Dreams and Relocations
We have seen that all experience is retained in electrically coded data within the cells and that the material of the cells forms about this coded experience. We have seen that the ego begins, sparked into being by the inner self, greatly influenced by hereditary and physical environment; and that this ego, as it continues to exist, builds up an electrical reality of its own and forms its experiences . . . into the coded data within the cells.
At any given “point, “the ego is complete within electrical reality as it is psychologically complete within the physical universe. This includes the retention of dreams as well as retention of purely physical data. . . .
The electrical system is composed of electricity that is far different from your idea of it. Electricity as you perceive it is merely an echo emanations or sort of shadow image of these infinite varieties of pulsation which give actuality to many phenomena with which you are familiar, but which do not appear as tangible objects within the physical field. . . .
This electrical system is vastly dense. This is a dense mass that does not take up space, a denseness caused by an infinity of electrical fields of various ranges of intensity. Not only are no two of these electrical fields identical, but there are no identical impulses within them.
The graduation of intensities are so minute that it would be impossible to measure them, and yet each field contains in coded form the actual living reality of endless eons; contains what you would call the past, present, and future of unnumbered universes’; contains the coded data of any and every consciousness that has been or will be, in any universe; those that have appeared to vanish, and those which, seemingly, do not yet exist. . . .
This density is extremely important, for it is a density of intensities. And it is the infinite variety and graduations of intensity that makes all identities possible and all gestalts, all identities in terms of personalities and fields and universes. It is this density, with this infinite variety and intensity, which allows for both identity and change. . . .
The electricity that is perceivable within your system is merely a projection of the vast electrical system that you cannot not perceive. So far, scientists have been able to study electricity only by observing the projections of it that perceivable within their terms of reference. As their physical instruments become more sophisticated, they will be able to glimpse more of this reality, but since they will not be able to explain it within their known system of references, many curious and distorted explanations of reported phenomena will be given.
Yet the inner self offers so many clues. . . . It operates outside of physical references. It is, of itself, free of the distorted affects peculiar to the physical system. A study of dreams, for example, would make many of these points clear, yet many scientists consider such work beneath them.
Why has no one suspected that dream locations have not only a psychological reality but a definite actuality? A study of dream locations is most important. Dream locations are composed of electrical mass, density and intensity. Here’s another point: Definite work may be done in a dream, but the physical arms and legs are not tired. This would seem contrary to your known laws, but no one has looked into this. . . .
It is most difficult to even hint at the myriad complexity and dimension of the electrical actuality as it exists. When you consider that each of your own thoughts is composed of the unique intensity of impulse, shared by nothing else; that the same may be said for every dream you will have in your lifetime; and that all your experience is gathered together in particular ranges of intensity, again completely unique; and that the summation of all that you are exists in one minute range or band intensities, then you’ll see how difficult this is to explain. . . .
This not only applies to your physical field but also to all others. Your field is contained within its own range of intensities, a tiny band of electrical impulses a million times smaller than the one note picked at random from the entire mass of musical composition that has ever been written or will ever be written. I am not going too deeply into this now because you are not ready. But because of the infinite range of intensities available, each individual has limitless intensities within which he can move.
All motion is mental or psychological motion, and all mental or psychological motion has its electrical reality. The inner self moves by moving through intensities. Each new experience opens up a new pulsation intensity. . . . To move through intensities within the electrical system gives the result, in the physical field, of moving through time. We will also discuss this later, in connection with so-called astral travel.