“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

They are not pure, as they appear within the dream, therefore. They will be charged with emotional energy according to the individual’s own experience, but they will form the base from which such a dream at that particular level is formed. (Long pause.) Take for example the generic image of a bull. It will in this case be seen as the dream’s basic form, but it will be used in the dream drama according to the makeup of the dreamer.

Now. Some females will identify in the dream with the bull. In dreams many females will have what you would call male reactions. Some males in dreams will have what you would call female reactions. The bull could come also to represent a person the dreamer considers bullheaded. A bullfighting dream might be formed. The variations are endless. Some generic images will have strong personal significance because of past life experiences. The generic image does not only color the dream state, however. These images are the first basis from which thought evolved. This would almost amount to a cellular thinking process, but it is actually a gestalt of relatedness in which cellular comprehension was, and is, passed throughout the physical organism.

This process continues beneath conscious and even subconscious awareness. It is not dependent upon the ego, but predates it. These are the first and the last images. The individual cells are the first animals possessing innate awareness of their environment with rudimentary sense mechanisms, to your way of thinking.

These still exist, but latent. Your knee can see, every portion of the body responds to light. The specialized development of animal life led to and brought about specialization of function. The brain’s necessary focus required more specific, less diffused and more concentrated methods of perception.

The other, older perceptive mechanisms still linger on however. The ego does not and cannot make use of them. Indeed the ego is almost entirely formed by the physical senses method of perception. Other layers of the self biologically respond to the older, more generalized but less limited perceptive mechanisms.

Inhabitants of other systems have their own generic image patterns. Even within your own system these generic images vary. The predominating image for an individual is that of his own species, but the ancestral patterns are strongly supportive. You are not only male or female as you know, but both, with one temporarily predominating. Almost (underlined) without exception, there are male and female lives either in your past or future. Dreams at the deepest level will not respond necessarily then to your present sex identity.

In time, you see, the (smile) various ego memories will become part of these. As such, incidentally, they can also be activated. (Long pause.) The ego is not snuffed out, however. Now in some cases it continues to operate, though in a slightly different fashion, at its own levels, closely connected to but apart from, physical existence. I am speaking now of survival situations.

This incidentally is the least acceptable survival pattern. The ego may be strong enough to insist upon its old prerogatives of control, yet too inflexible to adjust to the new conditions. It may accept the challenge of great change on the other hand, and allow a reorganization of psychological processes, in which case identity is not only saved but renewed. The ego is then in command after some struggle of generic frameworks, in a way not possible to it earlier.

The generic images are like lifelines. (Long pause) They seem to lead into your past, but these lifelines are spirals, and only the limitations of physical perception lead you to think of them in that manner.