At different levels, consciousness works with different kinds of symbols. Symbols are a method of expressing inner reality. Working in one direction the soul, using its consciousness, expresses inner reality through as many symbols as possible, through living, changing symbolism. Each symbol itself then is to its own extent conscious, individual, and aware.

At one point it will vanish with the other symbols. Now there was a time, speaking in your terms, before the making of symbols; a time so divorced from your idea of reality that only in the most protected areas of sleep does any memory of it ever return. It seems to you that without symbols there would be nonbeing, but this is a natural enough deduction since you are so symbol-oriented.

This of course is obvious, but the same sort of symbol changing may occur within dreams. The dog’s accident may be a dream experience, for that matter, that then changes your conscious symbolic feeling toward dogs in the waking state. One person may symbolize fear as a demon, as an unfriendly animal, or even as some perfectly simple ordinarily harmless object; but if you know what your own symbols mean, then you can use the knowledge not only to interpret your dreams but also as signposts to the state of consciousness in which they usually occur.

Therefore, you have greater use of symbolism in the dream state, for you are aware of past and future symbols. [...] Such multidimensional symbols will appear then in many ways, not simply visually. [...] In a manner of speaking the symbols that you know are but the tail end of greater symbols.

(10:11.) The final and more specific interpretation is done in areas of dreaming closer to the waking self, when the symbols grow more and more specific. There is a much more narrow aspect to symbolism, therefore: The closer you get to waking consciousness, the more limited and narrow the symbol. The handier it is in a given physical circumstance, the less valuable it is as a waking lifetime characteristic symbol.

(Pause at 10:20.) There is a great unity between your daytime symbols and your dreaming ones. In a miraculous shorthand, many symbols carry the burden of far more than one experience, of course, and one symbol will therefore evoke not only one given experience, but similar ones. Personal association, therefore, is highly involved with your personal bank of symbols, and it operates in the dream states precisely as in waking life — but with greater freedom, and drawing from the future, in your terms, as well as from the past.

The symbols can come together or fly apart, can be perceived separately or as a unity. As each event has its own symbol for you, so you have your characteristic way of combining these. These symbols can be translated and perceived in many terms; as a series of notes for example, as a combination of senses, as a series of images. At various stages of consciousness you will perceive the symbols in different terms. The multidimensional symbol in its entirety, then, has a reality in other states of consciousness, but also at other levels of reality entirely.

Aggressiveness and passivity are both behind symbols of birth, for both are needed. They are both beneath symbols of death, though this is not understood. Inertia results when aggressiveness and creativity are not in the proper proportions, when consciousness leans too severely in one direction or another, when the flow of symbols is either too quick or too slow for the particular psychological environment in which you dwell.

[...] On the other hand, within these other systems there is a strong innovative group consciousness developing, in which identity is retained but greater inner play allowed between individuals, a large creative interchange of symbol-pools, a drawing upon mental and psychic symbols with greater facility. [...]

The mind then formulates meaningful psychological symbols, but still in terms of electric symbol, and only in the brain are the particular symbols then sent to the various levels of the human personality.

One symbol will be meaningful to many portions of the personality. The symbol will be the same. That is, any given symbol will be the same, but it will be so chosen by the mind that it will have definite meanings to various portions of the self, and the meanings may be quite different. [...]

This form is the electric symbol. It is received by the brain and changed into a more or less pure psychological symbol. Or in case, in the case, of a dream, it is changed into a dream symbol. [...]

[...] You think of thoughts, images, and dreams sometimes as being symbolic of other things, but the truth is that physical objects are themselves symbols. They are the exterior symbols that stand for inner experience.

The whole nature and structure of physical life as you know it, is a symbolic statement made by groups of entities who choose to work with physical symbolism. So the body is a symbol for what you are, or what you think you are — and these may be two different things indeed.

[...] (Very quietly): Once you understand the symbolic nature of physical reality, then you will no longer feel entrapped by it. You have formed the symbols, and therefore you can change them. You must learn, of course, what the various symbols mean in your own life, and how to translate their meaning.

Now, in your experiences this evening you have been dealing with symbols and you bring them to life. This is exactly what you are doing every day of your life in your normal hours of activity but you do not recognize the symbols. You simply perceive the objects that come from the symbols. When you are working with your consciousness, as you did this evening, you become aware of the inner symbols in your own mind. Now, there are symbols that are personal but there are also symbols that are, in your terms, universal and you build with these. [...]

[...] The knowledge is symbolic in terms that you do not yet intellectually understand. Automatically in daily life you translate symbols into what you call reality. [...] You form appearances from symbols but you are so lost in the world of appearances that you forget the symbols upon which you have formed the reality. [...]

[...] Very briefly this evening some of you dealt with the reality of symbols, and this is extremely important for the physical body that you know is a materialization of symbols that you have created. You do not know the symbols for yourselves but you can discover what they are, and I will expect you all to do so. [...]

The physical body as an object is, among other things, a symbolic representation of your own emotional reality. [...] 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.

I mentioned that objects are symbols to express a basic reality, the reality of direct experience. [...] Here they are still being used as symbols. [...]

[...] They are not symbolic of anything, basically speaking. [...]

[...] The letters upon the page are symbols, and you have agreed upon various meanings connected with them. You take it for granted without even thinking of it that the symbols — the letters — are not the reality — the information or thoughts — which they attempt to convey.

Now in the same way, I am telling you that objects are also symbols that stand for a reality whose meaning the objects, like the letters, transmit. [...]

[...] You do not consciously know how you manipulate a staggering pyramid of symbols, picking from them precisely those you need to express a given thought. [...]

You know that many, but not all by any means, dream symbols approximately mean the same thing, but only approximately, and only for a particular group of human beings who experienced reality on the physical plane for a comparatively short period. The symbol of fire for example as a dream symbol, simply did not exist in the way that it does now to men born before mankind learned to use fire for warmth, or to cook his food.

The old symbol of fire still does exist, fire as mysterious grandeur or destruction. Only later did it become a symbol of hearth and warmth, so that to some extent dream symbols are cultural.

[...] The preliminary discussion of the subconscious layers was necessary, since dreams originate in these various levels, and should therefore be interpreted according to the particular symbolisms inherent in the realm of reality to which they may belong.

[...] In time the Sumari language will be replaced, you see, by symbols, hopefully fairly faithful representations of symbols used in some ancient manuscripts. [...]

[...] Your interest in painting and your abilities do not only spring from the Denmark life, for example, but also arose out of your quite legitimate life as Nebene, when you were focused upon the visual symbols and their correct inscription. The slightest error in copying a symbol could change its meaning completely, hence your concern over details, and hence now your great trust in objective painting, and your occasional distrust of work that seems to come too easily.

Ruburt’s proficiency with rhythm and words and your proficiency with visual symbols will be put to use therefore. [...] You may be able to translate the verbalized sounds into pictures or into miniature pictures that later turn into symbols. [...]

Ruburt’s new clothes are highly important symbolically and practically. [...] Again, highly important, because of the symbolic meanings attached, for each of you. [...]

[...] You interpreted it symbolically through your work. [...]

[...] I am merely encouraging you to focus your joint energies in that direction … You will be dealing with symbols, yet you will learn that symbols are reality, for you are symbols of yourselves that live and speak. You do not think of yourselves as symbols [but] there is no symbol that does not have its individual life.

[...] Everyone was overly nice to the dog, so no one would know consciously, what they knew subconsciously—that you considered the dog the symbol of failure. [...] No one wanted the dog killed, but it was not coincidence that you yourself loosened the dog’s collar, or that your wife was the one who left the dog; for symbolically the two of you were connected here. [...] The act itself was symbolic, and the dog picked up all of your attitudes through its own sense of communication.

[...] Symbolically you have always equated hunting with a man’s work in modern society. [...] You would not feel free to hunt successfully with the animal, for he was, you felt, the symbol of an unsuccessful hunt in the work world.

[...] Symbolically you do not feel that you have freedom of motion, and you are expressing this through the body mechanism. [...]

[...] The vessel becomes a masculine symbol. The first symbol was built around Ruburt’s dreams, which involved a female symbol; that is, the present Ruburt interpreted vessel as tub, hence washing machine, the leaking vessel becoming a leaking washing machine.

A state of dissociation is necessary, a letting down of egotistical barriers in order that inner symbolisms can be appreciated and distinguished. [...]

[...] The symbol changed then to a woman: she who carries men within her. [...]

He saw himself as rising above the serpent, which was a symbol of unconscious knowledge. Yet the serpent would always mystify and attract man, even though he must stand upon its head, symbolically speaking, and rise from its knowledge.

[...] On the side of consciousness, it is a tale symbolically representing the birth of the conscious mind in the species as a whole, and the emergence of self-responsibility. [...]

The refusal of particular foods, therefore, became a symbol for the avoidance of certain beliefs, so that for a while the beliefs were not faced while the foods were not eaten. [...]

Consciousness forms symbols. [...] Symbols are great exuberant playthings. [...] Symbols are as natural to your minds as trees are to the earth. [...]

[...] That birthright has long been clothed in symbols and mythologies.

(10:09.) If you mistake the symbols for the reality, however, you will program your experience, and you will insist that each forest look like the pictures in your book. [...]

In them of course one object may be a symbol, but there is no such thing as an overall statement of dream symbolism, in which a given symbol will have a general meaning. [...] It is true that in dreams you do reach some of the deepest sources of your being at times, but even there, the expression of that being is far too individualistic to assign the same kind of “unconscious” meaning to overall symbols.

[...] Afterward the critics may point out patterns, assign the work to a certain school, connect the images or symbols to those in other paintings — and then make the mistake of believing the symbols to be general, always apt, meaning the same thing wherever they are found. But all of this may have little to do with the artist’s interpretation of his own symbols, or with his personal experience, so he may wonder how the critics could read this into his work.

[...] If you read books in which you are told that a certain object always represents such and such, then you are like the artist who accepts the critic’s idea of the symbols in his own work. [...]

(Sue sat just opposite Jane, and I gestured for her to number the symbols when Jane lay the pen down and began to describe them for Seth. [...] Tracings of the symbols are shown below, numbered in the sequence in which Seth-Jane produced them.

(Some weeks after this session Jane and I were interested to read that the St. Mark’s Isaiah Scroll, from the Qumran find, contains marginal symbols that had still not been deciphered by the 1960’s; this according to the last printing of the reference work we consulted. Some of the symbols, which were illustrated, bear more than a little resemblance to those Seth-Jane drew — especially the last one.)

Since these are meaningless to Ruburt, it is difficult to get the symbolism across to him clearly. [...] In actuality the signs would appear as tightly concentrated symbols, and thicker in line.

In dreams you deal with symbols, of course. Yet symbols are simply examples of other kinds of quite “objective” events. [...] One so-called event, therefore, may be a container of many others, while you only perceive its exterior face — and you call that face a symbol.

The psychological symbols with which you are familiar in natural terms rise up like smoke, inherent in cellular structure itself. In deepest terms animals and plants also possess symbols and react to them.

The other events within the symbol are as legitimate as the one event you perceive.

Now: The symbolism of ascent or descent, or of light and dark, would be meaningless to other realities with different perceptive mechanisms. While your religions are built around an enduring kernel of truth, the symbolism used was craftily selected by the inner self in line with its knowledge of those root assumptions you hold as valid in the physical universe. Other information, in dreams for example, will also be given to you with the same symbolism, generally speaking. The symbolism itself, however, was simply used by the inner self. [...]

PROBABILITIES, THE NATURE OF GOOD AND
EVIL, AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM

The chapter heading: “Probabilities, the Nature of Good and Evil, and Religious Symbolism.”