“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are also what I will call genetic dreams, which are inspired directly by genetic triggering. These help form and direct consciousness as it exists in any given individual from before birth.

The fetus dreams. As its physical growth takes place in the womb, so the shaping of its consciousness is also extended by genetic dreams. These particular fetus-oriented dreams are most difficult to describe, for they are actually involved with forming the contours of the individual consciousness. Such dreams provide (pause) the subjective understanding from which thoughts are developed, and in those terms complete thoughts are possible before the brain itself is fully formed. It is the process of thinking that helps bring the brain into activity, and not the other way around (all quite intently).

Such thoughts are like, now (underline “like, now”), electrical patterns that form their own magnets. (Long pause.) The ability to conceptualize is present in the fetus, and the fetus does conceptualize. The precise orientation of that conceptualizing, and the precise orientation of the thinking patterns, wait for certain physical triggers received from the parents and the environment after birth, but the processes of conceptualization and of thought are already established. This establishment takes place in genetic dreams (again, all intently).

(Long pause at 9:22.) Give us a moment…. The ability to use language is also genetically built-in, through the precise orientation, again, with the physical triggering of the parents’ native language. Children learn such languages mentally long before they are physically capable of speaking them; but again, in genetically inspired dreams, children—or rather, infants—practice language. Before such infants hear their parents speak, however, they are in telepathic communication, and even in the fetus genetic dreams involve the coding and interpretation of language. Those dreams themselves inspire the physical formations necessary to bring about their own actualizations.

Genetic dreams of one kind or another continue throughout your lives, whether or not you are consciously aware of them. They were of prime importance in “man’s evolution,” as you think of it. They were the source of dreams, mentioned earlier, that sent man on migrations after food, that led him toward fertile land. Those dreams are most closely related to survival in physical existence, and whenever that survival seems threatened such dreams arise to consciousness whenever possible.

They are the dreams that warn of famines or of wars. Such dreams, however, can also be triggered often, as in your own times, when the conscious mind is convinced that the survival of the species is threatened—and in such cases the dreams then actually represent man’s fears. Overanxiety, then, can confuse the genetic system, and in a variety of ways. The existence of each of the species is dependent upon trust, indeed a biological optimism, in which each species feels the freedom to develop the potentials of its members in relative safety, within the natural frameworks of existence. Each species comes into being not merely feeling a natural built-in trust in its own validity, but is literally propelled by exuberance in its ability to cope with its environment. It knows that it is uniquely suited to its place within life’s framework. The young of all species exhibit an unquenchable rambunctiousness. That rambunctiousness is built in.

10:20 P.M. I told Jane that the session is excellent. Her delivery had often been rather fast and intent—even impassioned. She laughed. “See, I wanted him to come through and say something about me, without my asking, but he didn’t.” She hadn’t mentioned such a desire to me. “I got something about genetic dreams while I was doing the dishes tonight—just the phrase,” she said. “Anyhow, I feel better after the session than I did before it.

3. I’ve been saving the following untitled poem of Jane’s for a spot like this. She wrote it on November 7, 1979, almost a month before delivering Session 886 for Chapter 2 of Dreams (in Volume 1) on December 3. I suggest that in connection with the poem the reader review the opening paragraphs of that session.