Action In Relation To Dream Reality

From Session 149 found in Volume 4 of Seth's Early Sessions:


"Now, regarding again the nature of action, I would like to discuss action in relation to the dream reality, for you are intimately familiar with action in dreams, and your practical experience will enable you to understand the true nature of action more clearly.

"We mentioned that there are always actions within actions, and make it clear that all action does not necessarily involve motion that is apparent as motion to you. Actions may be thresholds or openings for other actions. To one extent or another all actions involve unfoldings. The action of dreaming itself is partially a physical phenomena. There is then, comparatively speaking, the outside action that makes dreaming possible, the action that is dreaming.

"There are then truly endless varieties of actions within the dream, which is itself a continuing act. There is, most simply, within a dream the creation of images. These images then also act. They move, speak, walk, run. There is at times a dream within a dream, where the dreamer dreams that he dreams. Here of course the dimensions are even more diverse.

"Man of these actions performed by dream images are muscular ones, physical manipulations. But many of these actions are also mental manipulations, or aesthetic realizations and even aesthetic performances. These dream images are not one-dimensional, cardboard figures by any means. Their mobility in terms of perspectives and within space is far greater than your own.

"You perceive, however, but a very small portion of these images which you have yourselves created. You simply cannot bring them back into the limited perspectives of your own present field, and are left with but glimpses and flimsy glimmerings of images which are actually as actual, vivid, and more mobile than those in the physical field.

"I have mentioned that what I call the dream universe is indeed composed of molecular structure, and that it is a continuing reality, even though your own awareness of it is most usually limited, for quite necessary reasons, to the hours of your own sleep. There is a give and take here, for if you give the dream universe much of its continuing energy, much of your own energy is derived from it. There is, between the physical field and the dream universe, an interdependence that is not at all unusual, for all fields are indeed dependent one upon the other.

"(Seth began talking about dreams as far back as the 15th session, about dream locations in the 44th session, about the subconscious and dreams in the 92nd and 93rd sessions, etc., among others.)

"Nor is the dream universe a shadow image of your own. It carries on according to the possibilities inherent within it, as you carry on according to the possibilities that exist within the physical field. The possibilities for action vary, however, within these two fields as they vary within all other fields. You may say that in sleeping you focus your energies to form a different reality than the reality of waking physical matter.

"You focus your awareness in altered form into another universe, that is in every way as valid and permanent as your own. It is also as changing as the physical universe. A small amount of energy only is focused upon the physical field during sleep, enough simply to maintain the physical body within its physical environment.

"The dream universe and the events within it are, therefore, as meaningful as those events that occur within the physical universe.

"In many respects actions within the dream universe are indeed more direct than in your own. It is because you remember but vague glimmerings and disconnected episodes that dreams appear, sometimes, chaotic or meaningless, particularly to the ego, which censors rigidly much of the information that the subconscious does retain.

"For most people this censoring process is valuable, since it prevents the personality from being snowed under by data it is not equipped to handle. The ability to retain experience gained within other fields is the trend of further development. You are at least however to some extent familiar with this field of dream action, and every man intuitively knows his involvement here.

"The feeling of unreality is not felt when the dream experience is being participated in by the dreamer. At that time the experience is felt to be real, and some dreams indeed are more vivid than waking experience. It is only when the personality passes out of the dream experience, or the dream universe, that the dream experience in retrospect may appear unreal. For now, again, the focus of attention and energy is in the physical universe. Reality then is a result of the focus of energy and attention.

"I used the term "pass out of" the dream universe purposely, for here we see a mobility of action easily and often accomplished, a passing in and out that involves an action easily and often accomplished, a passing in and out that involves an action without movement in space. The dreamer is acquainted intimately, and has at his fingertips so to speak, a memory of his previous dream experiences, and carries within him the inner individualistic purposes which are behind his dream actions.

"On leaving the dream state, he becomes more and more aware of the ego, and creates then activities which have meaning to it. In the deep dream state the inner purposes are more involved. As I have mentioned however, all dream symbols have meanings to all portions of the personality.

"(See the 92nd session in particular, in Volume 3.)

"The dream universe has molecular construction, but this molecular construction takes up no space as you know it. The dream universe, while composed of molecules, is not composed of matter as you know it. The dream universe consists of depths and dimensions, expansions and contractions, that are more clearly allied, perhaps, to ideals that have no need for the particular kind of structure with which you are familiar.

"Obviously, time in terms of continuity, is not an element of importance in the dream universe, and this is one of the reasons for the lack of physical structure. The intuitions and certain inner abilities here have so much more freedom that it is unnecessary for molecules to be used in any imprisoning form or structure. Action is more spontaneous within the dream universe, more fluid. The images appear and disappear much more quickly because value fulfillment is allowed greater reign.

"The slower physical manifestation of growth that occurs within the physical field involves long-term patterns filled by atoms and molecules which are, to some extent, then imprisoned within structure.

"(See the 71st session [in Volume 2] among others.)

"In the dream universe however the slower physical growth process is replaced by psychic and mental value fulfillment, which does not necessitate any long-range imprisonment of molecules within a pattern.

"This involves, simply, a quickening of experience and action relatively unhampered by the sort of time necessities inherent within the physical universe. Action itself therefore is allowed greater freedom. This is not to say that structure does not exist within the dream universe, for structures of mental or psychic nature do exist. But structure is not dependent upon matter as in the physical universe, and the motion of molecules is more spontaneous, and an almost unbelievable depth of experience is possible within what would seem to you a fraction of a moment.

"I will have more to say concerning the connection between the two fields and their manifestation in action, for one of the closest glimpses you can get of pure action is action as it is involved within the dream universe, and in this mobility as the personality passes into and out of the dream field. within your own universe you deal with the transformation of action into physical manipulations, but this involves but a small portion of the nature of action, and it is my purpose to familiarize you with action as it exists more or less in its pure form.

"In this way you may be able to perceive the manners in which it is transformed into other fields that do not involve matter as you know it.

"Your own universe expands as an idea expands, in ways that have nothing to do with space.

"The whole reality of the dream world, or of the dream universe, lies along these lines. Within it fulfillment and development are not dependent upon permanence of physical matter, however, and are not at all dependent upon any concept like that of your physical time. There [are] therefore possible bursts of developments, that have matured within perspectives that are not bound up in time, and that would appear spontaneous to the waking self.

"But these developments, nevertheless, are the results of actions that occur in many perspectives at once, and not developments that occur as within the physical system, through actions that happen in a series seemingly strung out moment after moment.

"Now basically even the physical universe itself is so constructed, but for all practical purposes, as far as general perception and experience is concerned, time and the physical growth development apply, so that we find the ego portion, particularly of the human personality, is to a large extent dependent for its maturity and development upon the amount of time that the physical image has spent within the system.

"A certain portion of physical growth, in terms of a series of physical moments, is therefore necessary for value fulfillment to show itself within a physical organism. Within the dream field and within many other systems, this series of moments is unknown. Development comes not from a series of actions strung out along a single line, one before the other in lengthwise fashion. Instead development is largely a matter of value fulfillment, which is achieved through the perspectives of action, through traveling within any given action, and following it and changing with it. To make this clearer, I have said that action exists within limitless perspectives, and that you are mainly familiar with it as it is materialized along a single line of continuity within the physical system. You experience action then as if you were moving along a single line, each dot on the line representing a moment of your time. But at the imaginary point on your line that represents any given moment, action moves out in all directions. From the standpoint of that moment point, you could imagine action forming an imaginary circle with that point as an apex. But this happens at the point every moment.

"There is no particular boundary to the circle. It widens outward indefinitely. Now, in the dream universe, in all systems of such nature, development is achieved not by traveling your single line, but by delving into that point that you call a moment. The physical laws simply do not apply here, within such a value fulfillment system. Basically your own physical universe is at the apex of such a system itself, and it is only because of the purpose and nature of the particular apex that experience appears, from my viewpoint, to be so slowed down. The particular point, in one manner, is being pursued by you in such slow fashion that it appears to be a series of happenings strung out in a thread of continuity. You experience action as one happening after another, not because of the nature of action itself but because of the nature of your own structure and perception.

"This is in itself, you see, a form of value fulfillment, since you are perceiving one simultaneous action as if it were a series of separate actions You are delving into one action, and within it continually creating action within action. This is however or this can be, while fulfilling, also limiting."