“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Maturity has nothing to do with the meaning of the reptiles and mammals mentioned as dream images. There is generic imprint stamped within the cells, and at various levels of cell consciousness. These are reactivated. The reptilian images do not represent maturity nor immaturity, but are simply designations natural to a particular level of cellular consciousness.

The difference noted in this respect between the dreams of men and women are only differences apparent within your own structure of civilization. In your social framework women are afraid of reptiles, and they do not consciously remember dreams involving these. Except in strong nightmare situations, they repress those images. They remember the mammal dreams more easily however because mammals are warmblooded creatures whose reproductive systems bear similarities to your own.

Men repress many mammalian images in your particular civilization, because they do not want to be reminded of the female’s reproductive advantages. But these apply to your social frameworks alone. The level of sleep is the real indicator. The individual becomes aware of cellular consciousness at certain sleep levels.

Children recall animal dreams more frequently simply because they are closer to cellular consciousness to begin with. Such dreams do carry the individual out away from ego identity, and at the same time closer to an inner identity that the ego usually attempts to deny.

Such dreams do not basically imply a return to a distant past, for to the cells all things are present. (Long pause.) This reality is a basic part of your present existence, and simply represents a dimension of actuality that the ego cannot, by its nature, admit.

Now, the future is also present in cellular consciousness. The ego, again, simply censors dreams from the cellular consciousness level when they deal with time that is not yet physical in your terms. Cellular consciousness is usually considered as simply a repository for past knowledge having to do with personal or racial existence. Because of the spacious present however, cellular consciousness also contains blueprints of the future.

The organism is the center of this happening, then, the core. The ego attempts to stand apart and observe, but in order to do so it narrows the available field of perception. Once it has formed its characteristics, it has already become too specialized to do more than observe certain limited fields of activity. It is of course itself observed by the inner ego, which has managed to maintain its position securely within subjective reality, where it has a wider though somewhat less intense viewpoint.

You know that this is distortive. You recognize elements from the past, since your ego is familiar with them. You accept them into the organization of your perception on a conscious level, usually. The ego does not recognize elements of the future when they do appear within dreams, and it does not therefore admit them into perceptive patterns. The ego does not perceive their significance. It is only for this reason that certain events seem to be always in your future: this lack of recognition, identification, acceptance and organization into patterns that can be used and manipulated.

In your dreams, in other words, you are familiar with images like the mammals and reptiles, that would seem not to belong to the present. These however would seem to belong to the future rather than to the past, and these you forget almost instantly, as a rule. This does not mean that some individuals do not recall them.

Even if they are recalled as dreams however, they may appear meaningless, for they are unfamiliar to the ego. Yesterday’s events reenacted in a dream touch off familiarity. Tomorrow’s events in tonight’s dreams do not, not at least to the ego. Generic codes apply in other words to the future as well as to the past, but mankind does not generally perceive them as such for they appear meaningless to the ego, because of the ego’s inherent nature and limitations.

Do you have an envelope for me, Joseph?

It seems some connection with cars or transportation. My fair lady—I do not know to what this refers. (Pause.) A string, as of lights, or pearls, in a string of succession, of items in succession.

The photograph connection is strong (pause) but I do not believe the item is this precisely. (Pause.)

Do you have questions?

(Seth will occasionally comment about the lack of emotional impetus surrounding an object if I pick one that happens to bear little charge. I cannot be sure that I am choosing an object that carries little charge, however, for Seth’s data will often shoot off at an angle entirely unexpected by me. This data can be related to the envelope object in a variety of quite valid ways. I make no conscious effort to dwell on the object chosen for an envelope experiment, and when I do choose an object it is usually a spur-of-the-moment decision.

(Wendell’s letter of May 26 is two typewritten pages long, and at the moment we do not plan to include a copy of it with these notes. If necessary we will do so; in the meantime the letter remains on file with other envelope-related material. Other background material may be necessary to fill in the relationship between Wendell, myself and our friends discussed in the letter, and this will be included in our interpretations of the envelope experiment data. Some geography is involved also.

(The negative mention in the data is interesting, and has several connections, both here and in the rest of Seth’s data. Jane and I did not think of negative in connection with the word no, for instance, but in relation to pictures or visual images. On page two of his letter Wendell tells about a friend who works for the Neilson TV survey people—having to do with pictures. But also, negative, meaning pictures, is called to mind because Wendell’s letter deals with a group of artists who worked together in a studio, drawing comic strips, in 1941-3. In addition I personally have a studio here in the apartment, and the envelope used as object was kept in this studio. These references about studios, pictures, and the object crop up again later in the data also.

(“My fair lady—I do not know to what this refers.” In his letter Wendell makes no reference to this in any way. Seth begins to clear this up after break but an interruption interferes.

(“Some connection with a February event.” Wendell’s letter of May 26 was in answer to a letter I wrote him last February. I do not have a copy of my letter, but am sure it was written in February because Wendell discusses my references to snow and poor weather. Our weather last winter was quite peculiar—we had no snow at all until the massive three-day storm of February 1, one of the worst in local history. Seth has more to say about February in answer to my first question.

(“The photograph connection is strong [pause] but I do not believe the item is this precisely.” [Pause.] Seth tried to help Jane discriminate here, as he often does. Tonight’s object of course is not a picture or photo, but an envelope that contained a letter about people who make pictures. Also, I was taking pictures of Jane last week, as explained. Thus it can be seen how all such related data, even though separated by much time, comes together in these session experiments. This particular chain of association was not anticipated by me when I picked the Crowley envelope as object for tonight. The two studio settings—the studio I worked in with Wendell Crowley in 1941-3, and my present studio, are separated by as much as 23 years.

(This is a good description of my main job in Jack Binder’s studio in 1941-3. I do not recall now whether I had ever described it to Jane in this manner, but may have.)

(We of course have no idea whether Wendell wrote someone in Michigan just before or after writing us on May 26,1966, nor do we know anything about the names given above. These will be points to ask him about if I decide to explain the envelope material to him.

(This passage may be somewhat distorted. I do not know that it is possible to travel part way through a tunnel, then park. Seth/Jane may have meant that Wendell drove to New York City via one of the tunnels, then parked at the tunnel exit, which is possible, and took a subway to the restaurant, rather than one in New Jersey. Another point to check out with Wendell.)

(“Do the two studios account for the twin data?” See page 78.)