“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. You form your dreams on many levels, as you know. In some of them you spread your own root assumptions outward, creating dream images based upon these assumptions. I must use these assumptions in interpreting our data during experiments. If you give me for example a card that was sent with love, then the love is far more real to me than the card. I follow these emotional charges most minutely, using great discrimination in order to let myself be led to the specific object.

I mentioned that objects are symbols to express a basic reality, the reality of direct experience. On one level dreams deal with objects and dream images. Here they are still being used as symbols. At deeper levels however in the dream state there is direct experience, and objects are not used.

There are root dreams that represent basic inner experiences. Initially no images are involved. If you remember the dreams, you remember them with images however. Flying dreams are an example here. They are not symbolic of anything, basically speaking. They represent direct experience.

If you recall the dream it may seem to you that you were in your physical body. Your physical root assumptions in this case would be so strong that you could not imagine yourself, even in a dream, without a physical body. We have discussed the various forms actually used, however.

Falling dreams also belong to the root dream category. They also represent direct experience, as the inner self once more reenters the physical body. No up or down really exists, you see, but the root assumptions take these directions for granted, and the fear of falling is a learned response. It is learned early, but it is learned.

Dreams in which psychic instruction is given: here we have another example of a root dream. Again, not symbolic but actual experience. Past life dreams are root dreams. This is not to say that upon awakening the direct experience is not automatically intermixed with other dream elements.

With some individuals some of these dreams may also represent personal symbolisms, but the original dream in the raw, unembellished, is a root dream. The embellishments are added after the dream is completed, just before the point when you remember it on a conscious level. The embellishments may be portions of other dreams, recalled now out of context, and attached to your memory of the original root dream.

I have only given you a few of the basic root assumptions. Countless minor ones follow from these however, and serve to direct the line of inquiry, exploration and perception. You will remember your own root dreams much more clearly simply because you are familiar, now, with root assumptions, and therefore freer to divest yourself of them within the dream situation.

There is a strong connection between what I have been saying and the way in which you translate inner reality into symbolic form, either in the waking life, as objects, or in the dreaming state as dream images. I am working from the other end, you see.

The physical body as an object is, among other things, a symbolic representation of your own emotional reality. (Long pause.) Your dreams and your waking experiences both closely mirror your psychic condition. Symbols may be individualistic to some small extent, but physical bodies are your main symbols. While they are all amazingly different, the basic symbol within your system is universally accepted as a reality.

The world as you know it is mankind’s creation, and his abilities and limitations are all in evidence there. Within the dream state all mankind knows the outcome of any given dilemma. No predestination is involved. The problems have already been worked out on a mental or psychic level, but not yet physically materialized.

Precognitive dreams therefore are precognitive only in line with your own accepted root assumptions. Decisions have already been made, but have not yet caught up to you within the physical system.