“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Each symbol in an alphabet stands for therefore unutterable symbols beneath it. [...]

(Long pause at 10:24.) Cordellas are invisible symbols that surface. [...] In a very limited fashion alphabets do the same thing, for once you have accepted certain basic verbal symbols they impose their discipline even upon your thoughts, obviously since you think in words so often.

[...] At the same time a few lines were used to hint at a variety of unseen, apparently unstructured objects, so that in that regard the line became in the hands of a master a strong symbol, hinting at other realities that lay within the seemingly distorted portrayal of objects.

Now the last dream looks for the causes behind the situation, and the main key to it is the needle symbol, which on the one hand is a symbol for the penis. But it is not a phallic symbol, which has wider and deeper symbolic and racial implications than this one.

To some extent also the water symbol of the previous dream represented your mother’s womb, and was a connection to the penis symbol of the next dream. [...] The execution, which you feared, was a symbol for the death of many hopes, both financial hopes and artistic ones. [...]

[...] Since the outcome of the dreams left me whole, however, it seemed their symbolic meaning concerned conflicts other than the physical, and I was interested in pinning these down.

Timewise and symbolically, the third scene brings us to the point where Ruburt is determined to defend his art, his dedication, to such an extent that he hides from the world, and symbolically crawls on his belly, all the while seeking to escape the dilemma by finding an open door, or by hiding from pursuers in the shadows. [...] One portion of himself is a character, male, with bound hands, and Ruburt must help this person over barriers, of course because his hands are tied symbolically behind his back.

[...] Ruburt used painting as an art in the dream rather than writing (pause), because it symbolized your joint ideas of art—to some extent, now—and allowed him to have you in his mind as he viewed the dream events.

What I want to emphasize here is the paranoid’s misinterpretation of innocuous personal or mass events, and to stress the ways in which physical events can be put together symbolically, so that from them a reality can be created that is almost part physical and part dream.

[...] With most mental aberrations, you are dealing with people whose private symbols are so heavily thrust over prime sense data that even those data sometimes become almost invisible. [...]

[...] Often, however, they have less of a solid foundation than others in dealing with a mass-shared reality, and so they attempt to impose their own private symbols upon the world, or to form a completely private world. [...]

First of all the landscape and the surroundings were, indeed, symbolic but they represented to you several things. [...]

You felt, you see, that on entering this institution or this culture or civilization, that something had been taken from you symbolized by you as the fluid that was taken from the brain. [...]

[...] Now you exaggerated the dilemma to some extent, but the whole symbolism represented your fears. [...]

When Ruburt’s mother went to the hospital in his high-school years, he had a symbolic way of ridding the house of her psychic presence, and to add to his own sense of inner freedom. [...] This also has a therapeutic symbolism for him in connection with his grandfather, that is the feeling that cleansing nature rids the air of impurities. [...] There are other reasons for the housecleaning suggestions also, involving individualistic symbols that have strong value for him.

[...] Through motor activities he rids himself of identification in a vigorous and aggressive matter, the symbolism worked out in physical terms. [...]

There are symbols I have not gone into, nor is there reason to. [...]

[...] The images, again, are only the symbols, the physical symbols, of inner knowledge. They are not the knowledge but the symbols of them.

[...] You take its usual transmission in daily life for granted, overlooking the fact that all the physical aspects of its transmission and appearance serve to hide its basic non-materiality, and that words and printed data and moving pictures, all visual or physical symbols, are not the knowledge itself. [...]

[...] The brain is responsible for these physical symbols. [...]

[...] All symbols have a meaning therefore in themselves also, and a reality apart from that which they are meant to display. [...] The painting of a tree, while a symbol for the tree, nevertheless has its own consciousness and reality.

[...] Words on a printed page for example are not dead, nor are they merely inert symbols. [...]

[...] You could say that you are merely symbols of your own greater reality, since your own greater reality exists in as many other dimensions as the tree exists from a rendering of it. [...]

I will end the session shortly, after mentioning briefly an example of how various levels of the subconscious interpret a symbol. We will take Ruburt’s dream that we have already interpreted on some levels, and one symbol only, that of a tub, t-u-b.

The tub was next interpreted as a washing machine in a secondary level that was in itself a symbol leading to the next interpretation, belonging to a past life, that of an old tub that leaked. In his dream the washing machine leaked, leading him into a third level, where the tub was a symbol for the old ship that leaked when you, Joseph, were a passenger on your way to Boston in a past life.

[...] So here the symbols coincided. He obtained subconscious information concerning your past life, the one symbol of the tub serving three purposes. [...]

Finally your way of life became not a symbol of what you were, as it was for a while, but more largely a symbol of what you did not want to be, jointly and together.

Part of the difficulty is that it has become a symbol of Ruburt’s disabilities at this point. At home the stairs are the symbols. [...]

[...] As you know, spontaneously Ruburt would state your position to your family as a symbolic statement to the world at large for those reasons.

In the past the crucifix was to you a symbol of the Roman Catholic church, and distasteful. [...] You did not have, in the past life, any idea of joy connected with religion, however, the cross being then a symbol of death, leading to a Puritan afterlife.

[...] (Pause.) The crucifix always appalled you, but not the bare cross symbol.

[...] It is a symbol of who you were in your last life.

[...] Disinfectants and the symbolic chase after germs—these simply serve as a symbolic but helpful aid in ridding the atmosphere of the idea of illness.

[...] Ruburt should brush his animals; all of this for its symbolic meaning, but symbolism reinforced on the sense data level.

He often projected these onto his mother, so that she became the symbol of all evil, at various times in any case. [...]

The objects in the physical universe are but symbols to express other realities existing within private realms. [...]

[...] It does you little good to know that physical symptoms or inadequate physical surroundings are symbolic unless you realize that the inner situation can be changed.

Now it appears to you that a difference is worked when you exchange a poor physical symbol for a constructive one. [...]

The hand development came last when the personality realized that the problems were not being solved, and that symbolically, his hands were tied. [...] The answer, symbolically, is that movement can be toward, and not away from.

[...] This way he cannot run, you see, symbolically. [...]

The conflict between the ego and subconscious, as given, was symbolically expressed in the tying of the hand symptoms. [...]

[...] The feelings of desire therefore are symbols also of other inhibited feelings. [...]

The desire then becomes a symbol, and is in any case, of spontaneous feelings and energies. (Pause.) They bring release in themselves, and the system also clears itself in other ways as a result. [...]

She was vital to you as a symbol but not a symbol of independence, but as a symbol of dependence. [...]

[...] I wanted to tell you that symbolically, you (Brad) are winning, you are making adjustments, in more than weight. For the weight was indeed symbolic. [...]

[...] It is your symbol of knowledge, and you can trust where it leads you. [...]

[...] Words are always symbols for emotions or feelings, intents or desires. Direct cognition did not need the symbols. [...]

[...] The symbols of the words stand for your own or someone else’s experience, while protecting you or them from it at the same time.

[...] Objects as you see them are also symbols.

The dream world operates as a creative situation in which probable acts are instantly materialized, laid out in actual or symbolic form. [...]

(For some of Seth’s earlier material on dreams, dream symbols and healing, nightmare therapy, etc., see sessions 639–41 in Chapter Ten.)

[...] The belief prevented him from following through, so that the symptoms became a symbol, in a way, because he still did not trust himself sufficiently. They also became a symbol to others: “Look—I am not that sure.” [...]

A few clear moments of belief, again, on both of your parts will let unimpeded nature free Ruburt, and also release other abilities of yours which you symbolically see as Ruburt’s physical symptoms.

The experiences at these various levels may be interpreted symbolically. [...] Any or all of these may take symbolic form, and may appear beneficial or threatening according to the attitude of the personality involved. [...]

[...] These ideas and concepts, having their own electromagnetic identity, nevertheless appear as “the symbolic landscape” at this level of consciousness. [...]

Almost all experiences from this level will be symbolically represented, for otherwise they would have no meaning to you. [...]