Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Welcome to Lessons from the Helpful Dead, where you'll learn the world is not what it seems and you are much more than you think you are. Here you'll learn about positive and reassuring messages from supposedly dead people whose main purpose is to help us find out what happens after we die, why we're here, how we got here, where we're going, and discover that you are really a powerful, eternal spirit. I'm Dan McEnany. Today we'll talk about double dreaming and our limited concept of ourselves. Jane Roberts'husband rob woke up one day realizing he could recall bits of two different dreams simultaneously. That was a strange experience for him. And so he talked to the close friend of Robin Jane Sue Watkins, who had some psychic abilities as well. He talked to her and found out that she had often had, and for quite some time had double dreaming and more than one. In other words, triple dreaming. So that you'll understand what we're talking about, I'm going to read here Sue Watkins'description of one of her multiple dreams. Here's what she said as a dream self. I'm sitting in my living room with a friend, Stephen, when suddenly self knowledge, connections among events, symbols, and the inner logic and fabric of my life and experience became crystal clear. They began piling up in a strange way, like cell on cell or lines of freight cars crashing into each other just outside my awareness. It's as though my dream self can only handle so much at once.
[00:01:51] And the stuff heaps up, and I get up and walk to the kitchen. What's going on? Stephen asks me. But all I can say is that I'm on the edge of bursting. I don't have time to explain further. As I walk into the kitchen, the head of my dream self fills with vivid scenes like other dreams, interpretations of each cell of this new awareness. I project all of this outward around me into literally hundreds of brilliant scenes. They were expressions I knew of probabilities past and future events, sideways events I can't even understand, all happening at once. With perfect comprehension of that by the anchor dream self. I feel that while all of this is still coming from this anchor self, the selves in these dreams are equally as focused, each of them being dream selves existing in their universes and with each of their own connections expanding outwards in much the same way that mine do. I literally become the experience of being myself contained in all of these selves, while being these selves contained by me. In at least one of these selves, the knowledge of this entire event comes to consciousness like a half recalled dream of its own. And the experience of recalling and being recalled is like liquid electricity in me, the anchor self.
[00:03:29] Upon waking, I can remember clearly but three of these dreams. Yet the feeling of containing experiences simultaneously in this manner stays with me. Well, sue was quite advanced in that regard. And very briefly, I'll give another example of someone having a much less complex double dream experience. Here is this man's account.
[00:03:52] I'm on a troop train in World War II traveling to Karachi, India. And in the other, I'm asleep in a cold barrack.
[00:04:02] I was conscious of every movement, sound and odor on the train yet conscious that I was in a barrack that was very chilly. I was also aware that both the train and the barrack were dreams and that my body was in the chilly tent at Leesburg, Florida.
[00:04:22] Then later, as in one of these dreams, I got off the train, then went back inside looking for myself.
[00:04:30] In the other dream, I got up, dumped coal in the stove and spread my overcoat over the blankets on the bunk in the barrack and woke up in the tent. So I do have these double dreams, and the Karachi dream was a true dream. The men aboard the train and the dream were Air Corps men I knew in waking life and they were sent there within the month. When he said they were sent there, he meant sent to Karachi. Okay, so there are two examples. Now, let's take a look at what Seth says about the dreams and the dreaming self. The big self, what I call the big self, he's referring here to as the entity. He says the entity is aware of the experiences of all of its personalities to the entity and that's like to the big self, your own consciousness could be likened to one stream of consciousness in your terms. The greater part of your own identity, then, is completely aware of all your conscious and unconscious living material. It's also aware of the same kind of data from all of its and your parts. You'll remember in recent sessions we talked about the consciousness of consciousness units and cells that make up our bodies. All right, Seth goes on. He says, because you identify your experience with the regular line of consciousness with which you're familiar, you are rarely able to, quote, bring in any, quote, other self material and hold it while retaining your own sense of identity. Such material may at times bleed or intrude into your own thought where it blends and is not recognized. In such cases, it takes on the coloration of your own thought patterns. It adds to the overall atmosphere of your being.
[00:06:25] Without understanding or training, you would have to, quote, lose your own consciousness in order to perceive this other consciousness. Now, in the dream state, your specialized focus need not be as precise or time oriented as in the waking state. All right, then. Seth continued speaking to Rob about his experience in your case, he said, you did perform an excellent accomplishment. You were aware of the simultaneous dreams, each being experienced in alternate realities. You could not at this point remember both dreams because the physical brain apparatus could not handle the simultaneous data.
[00:07:11] This has reference to portions of the brain not used at certain levels. The brain can handle simultaneous material, of course, even though you may be conscious of only a smattering of it.
[00:07:24] The body is aware of multitudinous simultaneous stimuli that constantly escape you and is able to act on the information.
[00:07:35] This includes all kinds of sense data that are not consciously pertinent. Now, that's an interesting statement there that our body is aware of multitudinous simultaneous stimuli that we're not conscious of. In my own case, I've always wondered about these super fast reflexes I seem to have. Whereas something might start to fall, might even be 5ft away from me, and instantly I'm there catching whatever it is that's falling before I even realize that I'm doing it.
[00:08:13] It's as though some part of my body was aware that I had to go and move and stop that thing from falling before I was consciously aware of it. All right, let's go back to what Seth says, especially as it relates to the entire human race. Because of the particular kind of ego orientation that the race decided on, however, many probabilities of development that are inherent in the species have been latent. Inherently, the physical brain is capable of dealing with more than one main line of consciousness.
[00:08:50] The physical brain is capable of dealing with more than one main line of consciousness. I never thought about that before.
[00:08:58] This does not mean the development of dual personality, by the way. It means the further expansion of the concept of identity.
[00:09:07] You would not only be aware of the you that you have always known in the same way that you are now, but a deeper sense of identity would also arise. That identity would contain the you that you've always known and in no way threaten it. The new you would simply be more than you are now.
[00:09:29] You would just have another expansion of consciousness, another self who is aware of being so there. Seth has talked about what we as a human race, what we could become as we advance and develop, as we're able eventually to become aware of more than just one self at a time. And that seems confusing and strange, but as he explained, it makes us more than we are now. And as he also explained, it's not a mental illness, as in the three faces of Eve, with different personalities arriving from the one. So Seth then continues to talk to Rob about his experience. You are, in a rudimentary fashion, beginning to open up those unused areas of the brain, or you would not have been aware of the fact of two simultaneous dreams. Language and your verbal thought patterns make such translations highly difficult. However, even in the best of circumstances, a multilingual individual, in that regard at least, might have some idea of how concepts are structured through verbal pattern and hence possess some additional freedom in such translations, provided, of course, that he or she was aware of the possibilities to begin with.
[00:10:46] Now, one experience was a dream of your own in usual terms. The other, quote dream experienced simultaneously was instead your muddled interpretation of vital experienced reality on the part of another portion of yourself in another reality entirely, a dimensional bleed through.
[00:11:12] Once you're aware of such experience, most likely you will also have others in, quote, your close quote dream state. Now, Seth does not specify here whether the other self was a probable version of Rob or whether it was some counterpart, some other individual that was also part of the big self.
[00:11:36] Nor did he specify whether it was a past, present or future version of one of these cells. Now, Seth goes on to address the natural concern that any of us would have the natural fear we would have if we had no understanding and no training. Here's what he said to Rob now, in the waking state, you would find such an experience highly threatening without some suitable preparation. And I must be very cautious in my treatment of your concepts of the self and your ideas of one personhood.
[00:12:17] I'm not speaking of you personally, Joseph. That's what he called Rob, because that was Rob's bigger self was Joseph. I'm not speaking of you personally, Joseph, so much as I am emphasizing that the race at present identifies its individual being with highly limited concepts of the self.
[00:12:38] And that's one of the major points in this session. So I'll repeat it. The race at present identifies its individual being with highly limited concepts of the self. And he goes on to say, that's fine for our purposes right now. He said, those ideas are vigorously protected and indeed must be understood and given honor even while attempts are made to expand them.
[00:13:06] Certainly the quality of consciousness has changed through the centuries in many different ways and sometimes in what would appear to be contradictory ones.
[00:13:17] But in your present you have nothing against which to compare your current consciousness of experience.
[00:13:25] So he's saying that we have to honor and protect our current understanding of ourselves while we also begin to expand the notion of precisely who we are. He then goes on to explain that even now on the Earth, different cultures and tribes do experience reality differently. He gave some details there. He said, to a very limited extent, the different civilizations and cultures with which you are historically familiar represent a dim glimmering of the various qualities of consciousness and their varieties of experience.
[00:14:07] But as there are physical species, so there are what you may call species of consciousness.
[00:14:16] There are even now in your species a number of different kinds of consciousness.
[00:14:21] Different in that the physical life situation is qualitatively experienced in ways that are not native to you in your culture different in that the entire fabric of meaning, interpretation, experience and life itself is, quote, alien to the kind of experience with which you are familiar.
[00:14:43] This does not mean that such differences occur as the result of cultural backgrounds or situations. For some, such individuals exist within your own culture and some with your kind of consciousness exist in cultures where they are a minority.
[00:15:04] I'm simply saying that on your Earth now there are species of consciousness though that's probably not the best term. You've been so obsessed with exterior differences, especially of color and nationality that you've completely ignored these other far more important variations in the form that consciousness takes in relation to physical life within your race, the race of man.
[00:15:31] Even. Now, in some tribal societies, for example, the self is experienced far differently so that while so called individuality as you understand it is maintained each self is also experienced as a part of others in the tribe and as part of the natural environment.
[00:15:53] Now, to some, this seems that seems to mean that individuality is stillborn or undeveloped.
[00:16:00] You protect your ideas of selfhood at all costs even against the evidence of nature which shows you that all are related. It's interesting here. One of my sons recently had to go to the Philippines on business and it involved dealing with some people that might be called tribal by our standards and how different they seemed and how life itself seemed to be different to them than it would be to one of us in today's United States. Now, in this last statement of Seth that I'll mention today, he points out that uniqueness is not only not lost but uniqueness becomes truly its best version of itself when we realize the connectedness.
[00:16:50] Here's what he says. He said uniqueness private experience and individuality attain their dimensions of being and their true grandeur only when the inherent relationships among all elements of being are understood.
[00:17:09] You fight against your own greater individuality and the spacious dimensions of your own being when you overprotect your ideas of selfhood by limiting the experience of the self.
[00:17:24] So as we begin to experience and become aware of the connectedness of ourselves with other parts of reality and indeed with all reality as we begin to experience that we need not fear the loss of our own individuality. And with that, I'll conclude today's rather lengthy session. And once again, I'm Dan McEnany bringing you lessons from the helpful Dead.
