Mass or Shared Dreams and the Self

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 6, Session 254

Now.  As you know, all aspects of physical reality first exist within the framework of nonobjective reality.

In certain areas of mass shared dreams, collective mankind deals with the problems of his political and social objective structure.  The solutions which he makes within his dream reality are often, however, not the same solutions that he accepts within physical reality.

The dream solutions are held as the ideals, however.  Without for example mass dreams, your United Nations would never exist.  This type of mass dream is one of several varieties.  It is true indeed that all dreams to some extent are shared, for the privacy that you imagine exists within them is, as Ruburt correctly supposed, an illusion.

It is of course necessary at this stage of your development that selectivity be used, and that some standards be drawn that will effectively define apparent limitations and boundaries.  The area within these limitations and boundaries you call the self.  The self expands as your ability grows, as you learn to retain identity in the midst of diversity.

Practically speaking you see, if you were aware of the constant barrage of telepathic communications that do impinge upon you, it would be most difficult to retain identity.  Identity would suffer if it were forced to perceive more impressions than it could effectively handle.  Shared dreams are therefore well beneath awareness.

Identity could be called a strong organizing characteristic that perceives impressions in definite ordered form.  As identity is strengthened through experience then it automatically expands itself to add further realities which it is now able to manipulate.

I have told you that dream reality is more cohesive than you may have supposed.  Such characteristics as shared dreams go a long way to stabilize dream reality.  When you dream of others they know it.  When they dream of you, you know this.  There would be nothing to be gained however in conscious awareness of these conditions.

This is a slight aside.  Many people dreamed of Jack Kennedy’s death in advance, as you know.  On one level this knowledge was available to the man himself.  This does not mean that the death had to happen.  It was a vivid possibility.  It was also one of many solutions to several problems.  While it was not the most suitable solution, it was the closest man could come at that particular time in physical reality.

All events are known in advance, but still there is a selectivity that is unknown.  Dreams as you know have their own electric reality, their own psychic energy, and their effect upon physical events is extremely strong.  The effect is undiluted, so to speak.  The emotional intensity of a dream is very seldom recalled in its full strength.

Psychic action is being directed in a way not possible in the ordinary waking condition.  Shared dreams present their own historic organization, for the shared memory of your race does not only include physical events, but reaches much further than this.

Dreams you see are also imprinted within the cells electromagnetically.  We will take a simple example, those who are not prejudiced against those races who are kept downtrodden.  They dream individually and collectively of changing the situation.  They act out in their dreams the various ways in which such a changeabout could occur.  These dreams actually bring about the resulting change that will then happen in a historic manner.  The very energy and direction you see of the dreams themselves help change the situation.

You see, in the waking state you direct your energy into the manipulation and construction of objects.

In some respects this dissipates the energy, of course.  In the dream state you manipulate energy more directly.  This is what you are doing of course in self-hypnosis: But, used for therapy, you are still trying to affect or change something physical.

In the existence of what you call the radio stars you have energy that is being manipulated more directly than you can imagine – energy knowing itself, highly individualized.  You have self structures so intense that you are able to handle an infinite variety of impressions, share them, use them, and still retain individual identities.

You understand that the radio stars are merely the projection of something else.  That is, your scientists with their instruments perceive only the appearance that these structures take when they fall within the physical system.  This has nothing to do with the nature of their own reality, for you cannot perceive that in any direct manner.

You cannot for that matter perceive yourselves directly, but only through the sense apparatus which has been adopted by the self.  You perceive directly psychological experiences, but you do not perceive these in their undiluted form.  You protect yourselves and automatically sift out what is too vivid or intense at any given time.

You do not even perceive sense data with a third of the vividness of which you are capable.  This has to do again with the self-protection used.  The self does not perceive any impressions, you see, which are so vivid that it could be overwhelmed.  As the self learns then it allows greater and more intense impressions.

In most instances the full and uninhibited use, even of the outer senses, could sweep an insecure self into fragments.  The strength and intensity of any impression cannot be stronger or more intense than the perceiver.

Full and uninhibited use of even the outer senses would lead you to inner reality.  Usually only a strong and disciplined self, a well-structured identity, can perceive in this manner, and then only occasionally.  Full operation of inner and outer senses, you see, in your present stage of development as a race, would be blinding, as you can see in your reading of drug experiences.

An occurrence only remotely approaching this can be disastrous.  Not because it is basically undesirable, for such an experience has the greatest potentials for development of the self.  Such experiences can be disastrous simply because the self structure is not yet strong enough to assimilate and contain the intensity of the experience.  In many cases dream experiences, as I have mentioned, are much more vivid and intense than waking experience.  You do not even remember the majority of these.  But the inner self is more flexible, you see, than the ego, and it can therefore contain greater intensities without undue alarm.