Dream Reality and Suggestions

From Session 187 (Volume 4 of Seth's Early Sessions)

Dream Reality and Suggestions

"We will here consider the dream reality in an isolated manner, as if it were a thing disconnected from normal consciousness, although in reality it is not so disconnected.

"I spoke in a recent session concerning the connection between distance and emotions.  The true reality of distance as you know it is dependent upon the intensity of emotion, and has nothing to do with your idea of space.  The emotion which is intense is felt at its peak as present in time, and immediately here in terms of distance.

"Emotions take up a certain amount of what we call psychic space within the personality's awareness.  As the intensity of the emotion fades, so it seems to you that it recedes in time.  But this is an illusion caused by the limitations of your outer senses.  Now, in the dream state the outer senses are to a large degree restrained in their activity.  Therefore the dream state more clearly represents the actual nature of time.  Intense emotions within the dream state are experienced as present time, and the personality moves easily through these emotional intensities without experiencing the sense of passing time, although any given dream may contain within it its own time element.

"The dreamer is not aware of the actual passing of physical hours.  He is only aware of the interior time element as it appears within the framework of his dream.  The personality will be seen to operate in some manners that would be considered quite normal, if he were in the waking state.

"He acts, speaks, walks, talks, makes certain deductions.  He responds to interior stimuli.  The personality also operates within the dream state in ways that would not be considered normal in the waking state.  He travels through space in moments.  He speaks with those who do not exist within physical reality.  He sees parents who have died in physical ways, and in his dreams he knows, on many occasions, what other characters think within the dream context.

"You see, then, that while the personality can act in a more or less normal manner while in the dream state, he can also act in ways that are denied him in periods of so-called normal consciousness.  He has freedoms and abilities and talents in the dream state of which his waking self may be unfamiliar.

"It would seem to be that the waking personality could learn much from his sleeping counterpart, and this is indeed the case.  Theoretically speaking, and in theory only, anything that a personality can do or achieve in the sleeping state, he can do and achieve in the waking state.  The limitations are those adopted by the ego, in many cases for good reason.

"However the limitations can be diminished, and the waking personality can avail himself of many characteristics shown by the sleeping self.

"The sleeping personality is as close to the inner self as you will come in this existence, for here the personality is soon free of the camouflage concerns with which it must be involved in the waking condition.

"In the sleeping state we see the personality as it is in operation.  We see its abilities and its limitations.  [the reader] will do well to read our dream material, for dreams are a reflection of the needs of a personality and of the abilities.  The focus of attention and concentration are magnified a thousandfold in the dream state, and dreams form the basis for your physical environment.

"First, problems are worked out within the dream framework.  Answers and solutions are arrived at.  These answers and solutions are then transformed into physical reality.  No dream is meaningless.  No dream lacks purpose.  Each dream has meaning to all levels of the personality, and one dream object is a symbol which is translated by all layers of the self, in a mathematics which is more complicated than any dealt with by your physical computers.

"As we have suggested in the past, the dream state can indeed work for your benefit in a more efficient manner, if proper suggestions are given before sleep.  The dream fabric itself, the dream drama, is woven of many threads, and all aspects of the personality contribute some of the ingredients.

"One dream will enable the ego to solve pressing immediate problems.  The dream drama will enable the personality to act out various possibilities which are experienced as reality.  The most effective drama is then reacted to in physical reality.

"This same dream, however, will deal with many other actualities.  It will serve as a method of communication between the various portions of the self.  It will deliver information concerning past and future, and if proper suggestions are given it, then the self will use the dream drama particularly to better the overall condition of the personality.

"There are chemical and electrical connections that cannot be ignored here.  For a dream has a chemical reality and an electrical reality.  It is built up, on one level, of chemical components that have an electrical basis, and it is through these connections that transformation within the nerve structure of the physical organism is made.

"The pituitary gland is of great importance here, and the thyroid gland of secondary importance.  Negative electrical charges are responsible mainly for the durability of any given dream.  The mind, as you know, does not appear within physical reality, although the brain is indeed of physical origin.

"Our dreams therefore occupy the same space as is occupied by the mind - no space at all.  There still must be a connection with the physical organism, and here our chemical and electrical components enter in.  Each dream is actually built up through a chemical synthesis that follows strong electrical pathways.

"You recall that all experience has an electrical reality, deposited from birth within the physical cells of the body, so that at physical death we have an electrical counterpart of the physical being with all memory and experience intact.  Were such experience a part of the physical self, and dependent upon it, the personality could hardly survive physical death.  And were dreams so connected to the physical self, then whole areas of personality would dissolve with physical extinction.

"As it is these dreams, having an electrical reality, are deposited in coded form, with all other experience, within but independent of the physical cells.  Dream experience is as real to the personality as waking experience.  Only the ego makes any distinction.  Therefore the personality that has survived makes no distinction on its own.

"We have said this often.  However, suggestions should always be given before sleep, that the subconscious will maintain the organic integrity of the physical organism.  This is basic.

"Suggestions should also be given so that a harmonious relationship be maintained among all levels of the personality structure.  Suggestions should be given that constructive tendencies are given free reign.  Perhaps more important, suggestions should be given that only constructive suggestions will be reacted to.  These suggestions give you a leeway.

"These simple suggestions will serve to guard the personality from many unfortunate circumstances, and if they are given nightly they will serve as an adequate protection against organic disease, such as ulcers.

"Because suggestions do have an electrical and a chemical reality, they can therefore change the framework within which you operate.  Theoretically there are no limitations to what any of you can do.  Practically the limitations are your own, and practically it is within your province to change them or not to change them.

"Because suggestions are formed of the same stuff that forms your physical reality, suggestions can indeed change the framework within which you operate.  This is no Pollyanna hogwash.  Many of the ways and the means have been given.  My suggestions, if followed, will be fair enough proof of the validity of our material."