Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 889

The "Reading Guide" and "Key Points of This Chapter" in this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter centers on units of consciousness, explaining that they are the building blocks of all perceivable and imperceivable matter and of space itself, and that they operate simultaneously in two ways, as particles and as waves: the particle state forms boundaries, identity, and space-time continuity, while the wave state can exist in all times and places at once. Units of consciousness can operate as entities, as identities, or as fields of force, and once an identity is formed it does not disappear. This chapter also discusses how early humans learned through dreams, shared dreams, and created civilizations, and how, regarding news events, one should focus on the ideas rather than on whether one watches them.

Chapter Highlights

• Units of consciousness are the building blocks of both perceivable and imperceivable matter as well as space itself, and they operate simultaneously as both particles and waves.
• In particle form, units of consciousness establish boundaries, identity, and spatiotemporal continuity; in wave form, they can exist in all places and times at once.
• Units of consciousness can operate either as entities or identities, or as forces or fields; once a sense of identity is formed, it does not disappear.
• Units of consciousness are faster than the speed of light, and only when they slow down do they form matter; there is more than one kind of physical reality, and other unfocused physical realities also exist.
• Early humans learned in dreams how to walk, speak, use fire, and so on, and through shared dreams they exchanged information about locations and cultures; one's views on news events matter more than whether one watches them.

Main Text

Today we continue sharing Seth's book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Volume 1, Session 889. This session was held on Monday, December 17, 1979, starting at 8:40 p.m. -- it began rather early. Rob came up and said:

I believe last night was the coldest since winter began.

He felt it was the coldest, because it was about 9 degrees -- that is Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Nine degrees Fahrenheit is roughly minus 13 degrees Celsius, what people usually call more than ten below zero; it was very cold at night, and windy too. And tonight, as we sat waiting for the session, it was not much warmer. However, Rob said that in their area, this winter had been especially mild; although today was colder, the winter as a whole had been relatively warm, and so far there was still no sign of heavy snow on the ground -- because they were in New York State, and for there to be no snow on the ground by December, that counts as a fairly warm season.

Rob said he had been called while he was especially relaxed, and he said he had better begin, otherwise I might postpone. He felt that when he was this relaxed, he could not hold a session either, and when he was too tense, he also could not hold a session. His state was quite interesting -- being overly relaxed would not work. He said he had received a great deal of good material from Seth about this book, and that was the reason they had not held their regular session last Wednesday night, because last Wednesday night he had been too relaxed, too lazy to pay attention to the matter of entering the trance state; he did not even want to enter that state of being connected with Seth, and he had kept wanting to remain in that relaxed state.

Units of Consciousness: The Material That Makes Up Everything

Seth came right out and said, with no preamble at all, he said:

We call the building blocks of matter CUs -- units of consciousness, which form the matter that exists within your understanding and experience.

He has introduced this concept in other books as well, and here he brings it up again. Because this involves the birth of the universe, you cannot avoid mentioning it -- the process of going from the dream world of our universe to our physical world. Whether from belief, from thought, or from consciousness, to matter, there must be an intermediate process in between, that is, how it becomes matter. So understanding units of consciousness here is very helpful to us. In English it should be consciousness units, and writing it the other way around is the same thing, units of consciousness.

Regarding units of consciousness, he has a complete introduction devoted specifically to them, and we have also mentioned them in earlier sessions. Here let me make another distinction: units of consciousness are called CUs, and there is also another kind -- EE units -- Emotional Energy, emotional energy units. Actually in English both are called units, but in the Seth material these are two different important concepts, so one is called units of consciousness, and the other is called emotional energy units.

Units of consciousness form everything that you can understand, and all matter is composed of units of consciousness. Units of consciousness also form other matter that you cannot perceive.

Simply put: everything you can perceive is composed of units of consciousness; the things you have not perceived are also composed of units of consciousness.

He said:

These units of consciousness also operate in the manner of particles or waves.

Remember this is a key point: units of consciousness operate in two states at the same time. We know that quantum mechanics tells us that everything in our world operates in a quantum state, that is, it operates simultaneously as waves and as particles. Whichever way they operate, they are aware of their own existence.

In your terms, when units of consciousness operate as particles, they construct a continuity in space and time. Here we need to add a premise -- why does he say "in your terms"? Because this involves the concepts of time and space. Within the framework of time and space that we humans can understand, when units of consciousness operate as particles, they create a continuous existence within our space and time. For example, an atom, an electron, a photon, are all continuous existences within our space and time, and our scientists can use instruments to mark the space and time where they appear on our coordinate axes. But all of this is said from our perspective.

Then they take on special characteristics. What characteristics? Their particle nature and their material nature -- just like the feeling of those little granules we usually talk about.

It establishes its own identity by setting up clear boundaries.

Any particle has boundaries. This atom and that atom are mutually exclusive, precisely because they have their own boundaries, their own borders. Between two people, between two things, between two objects, there are boundaries. At the smallest units they are mutually exclusive, and this is their boundary. It is by these boundaries that their identity is established.

Just as we humans usually take the skin as our boundary, we think that everything within the skin is our own existence, and outside the skin is the external world and the universe. Two people are each within their own skin, and this forms our sense of identity, our recognition of two individual identities.

Seth said:

When units of consciousness operate in the particle state, they take on a certain form, and from the center of those forms they experience their reality.

When they operate in the particle state, they must have a shape -- if there is a boundary there is a shape, whether round, elliptical, or whatever shape. At this time their consciousness focus is at the center of the form, and from within that they experience their reality.

Just like our human consciousness focus is the same. Everyone can try this: close your eyes, take a deep breath, and sense where this thing that represents your consciousness is located in your body. Go by intuition, do not use your mind to think. Everyone feels it differently: some people feel it is in the brain, some people feel it is in the area of the heart, some people feel it is outside the body, about a foot in front of the body. You will find that your consciousness focus is not where you thought it was -- it is where it should be -- it is in a place you may not have noticed. For most people, as long as you do not use your mind to analyze, and go by intuition, you will find that your consciousness is not in your brain. Very interesting.

Operating as Waves

He says that when these units of consciousness are in their particle state, they experience the world from the center of their form, and they concentrate on or focus upon their own unique particularity. In your terms, they become each individual—we identify it as one separate individual existence after another, like one particle after another, one atom after another, we call this atom and that atom, and it is each different individual.

But as I just said, units of consciousness also operate in the form of waves, and they are operating in both ways at the same time—remember, these two states occur simultaneously.

When they operate as waves, they do not establish boundaries around their own self-awareness.

Do sound waves have boundaries? Do water waves have boundaries? Of course, water waves in a container do have boundaries, because when they reach the edge of the container they are blocked, but they reflect back, then reflect to the other end and back again, through several reflections until the energy is exhausted. This process is actually meant to tell you: as a wave existence, it does not have a definite boundary and shape the way a particle does; it is an energy, an energy wave.

When it operates as an energy wave, this unit of consciousness can indeed be in more than one place at the same time. This is easy to understand: as a wave existence, can you say where it is? Isn't it in many places at once?

Let me give you an example and you will understand instantly. We have all listened to the radio. The radio host's voice is converted into electrical waves through a microphone, then transmitted as electromagnetic waves from a broadcast tower, and then your radio receives the signal, decodes it back into sound waves, drives the speaker, and you hear his voice. From the moment this voice leaves the host's mouth, to the sound heard by millions of listeners—would you say this sound wave exists in one place? Certainly not. At the live broadcast site, the guests can hear the host's voice coming from his mouth; at the same time, in front of every listener's radio, this voice also exists. So when we say his voice exists both in the radio station's broadcast studio and beside the radios in thousands of households, is that statement valid? Of course it is.

Including right now as you listen to me speak—whether you are listening through YouTube or a WeChat public account, or someone downloaded it and gave it to you to listen to—the voice of mine you are hearing is no longer the voice of this time and space. When I recorded it, I was in a place in Los Angeles, America, but when you listen to it, you are in different places all over the world, at different times and different locations. Doesn't this sound wave also exist in different places? I used the live radio broadcast to help you understand simultaneity, and the recorded broadcast to help you understand that time can also be out of sync.

So when an entity exists in the form of energy, it can exist in any place at the same time—it is not that because it exists there, it does not exist here. When an entity exists in particle form, this is not possible: this physical body of mine is in Los Angeles, America, and you in Europe, in Southeast Asia, in Africa cannot see this physical body of mine. But if I shoot a video and put it online in the form of electromagnetic waves, you can see my image all over the world. Can those people on television stand in your living room? No, because that is particle-state. But its energy state can appear on your television screen.

I use this crude example to help you understand that when an entity exists in particle state versus energy state, there is a fundamental difference from our cognition in essence: the energy state can exist simultaneously in different times and spaces. This is the most essential difference between operating as waves and operating as particles.

Seth says this material is not easy to understand. He says:

However, in its purest form, a unit of consciousness can be in all places at once.

Remember this sentence. Through the examples I just gave, understanding this point should not be so difficult for you—as long as it exists in the form of energy waves, it can be in all places, and remember, it is in all places at the same time.

Although many people do not understand this, in spiritual circles people often say: "I am you, you are me, there is no one else in the world, there is only you alone, all things are one." And then they think this is just a slogan, a bowl of chicken soup. When you learn this knowledge, you will know why the underlying principle says this—because the units of consciousness that make up this physical body of yours and the units of consciousness that make up this body of mine are essentially one unit of consciousness, or one group, one category, of units of consciousness of the same nature, and they exist simultaneously. It is not that they first formed you and then formed me, first formed Mom and Dad and then formed the child; they simultaneously formed you and formed me, simultaneously formed the people of hundreds of billions of years ago and the people of hundreds of billions of years from now. For units of consciousness, all of these exist simultaneously. This already transcends much of human understanding and cognitive range, but he wants to tell you that whether or not you can understand and accept it, you had better try to understand it, because this is how the universe operates.

This point is consistent in many places with the latest scientific research in quantum mechanics. For example, quantum entanglement: no matter how far apart two particles are, if they were initially in a quantum coupled state or entangled state, when one of the quanta changes, the other quantum undergoes a fundamental change. The spin directions of two electrons—through experiments it has been discovered that no matter how far apart they are, even trillions of light-years apart¹, as long as the two of them were originally an entangled pair, if you turn one of them upward, the other becomes downward; if you turn one of them to the right, the other automatically becomes to the left. No medium of transmission is needed in between. Many people say there must be some information transmission in between, right? Even if this signal were transmitted at the speed of light, if the distance is several light-years, it would take several years for the signal to reach the other side, so why are they changing at the same time? It is not subject to any limitation of time and space. At this point, it has actually already revealed that in this world there is an inner concept that is extremely subversive, subversive of all human cognition—the matter of this world is not what we imagine it to be. This is the most famous quantum entanglement in quantum mechanics.

Existence Beyond Time and Space

Back in class, Seth went on to say:

Since this unit of consciousness has the ability to be in all places and all times at once, then to say that when it operates like an energy wave, a unit of consciousness is precognitive or clairvoyant would be redundant.

Because it exists in all places and all times -- to say it has precognition or clairvoyance is simply unnecessary. It already exists in all times and spaces simultaneously, so there is no such thing as precognition, because it is right there, it exists in the future. How can it see a distant place you speak of? For it there is no limitation of distance, because at point A and point B, it exists simultaneously.

Seth said, the limitations of your time and space, the so-called precognition, the so-called clairvoyance, are all things you cannot do under the limitations of your time and space. But for units of consciousness, these are their basic attributes and basic functions. It is like many people saying, how did I suddenly gain such a spiritual ability? Why did the Buddha, after cultivating to the end, open up so many supernatural powers? Why do certain people have these special abilities? The so-called special abilities are all things that, under the time-space limitations of our three-dimensional time and space, we regard as special things that transcend time and space. Actually that state is the normal state, and this limited state of ours is the self-limitation of our own brain's consciousness. You treat this self-limited state as the normal state, and treat those special abilities as special -- actually those are the normal ones, and we are the special ones. So do not think those are so miraculous; actually everyone can do it. As long as you enter the state of energy form, enter the state of energy waves, you automatically possess this ability. Yet this ability is utterly incomprehensible in the material state; only when you reach the energy state do you instantly understand it.

Building Blocks of the Physical World

Seth said:

Those units of consciousness are like building materials. They construct your actual physical bodies, your trees and rocks, your oceans and continents, and the very prominence of space itself as you understand it.

The earlier part is easy to understand -- everything in space is constructed from units of consciousness. But even space itself, as we understand it, is constructed from units of consciousness. That is very hard for many people to grasp. Note that he does not mention time here. Time is not created by units of consciousness. As for how time comes about, we covered that earlier, and he will talk about the issue of time again later. Remember: units of consciousness are the precondition for constructing our physical world. The space of our physical world, and everything within that space, is built from units of consciousness as the foundational material. So whenever we talk about the birth of our physical world, we must talk about units of consciousness.

Rob said that when he failed to understand the first time, Seth repeated the last sentence very loudly -- the sentence "the very prominence of space itself as you understand it" was the part he did not catch, because he found it hard to believe. You say these things are constructed from units of consciousness -- that I can understand. You say our space, our dimensions, these too are constructed from units of consciousness -- that he did not understand. So Seth emphasized it once more.

Entity, Identity, and Fragment Personality

He went on to say:

These units of consciousness can operate as separate entities and as identities.

These units of consciousness can exist in wave form, omnipresent, pervading all time and space, and at the same time they can exist as an independent entity or an independent individual. Entity, a being, is translated as "cunyou"; identity is called "benti." If I put it another way, it will be easier for you to understand -- identity is your sense of self.

Each unit of consciousness can not only exist simultaneously, creating all of this space and everything in it, as if it were a whole; at the same time it can also operate as an individual, as a being, as a cognition of a sense of identity. Your sense of identity is made up of units of consciousness. This thing you call "I" is your sense of identity. Why don't you call it "we"? Precisely because you can distinguish yourself from others, and this "you" that is different from others is your sense of identity.

According to Seth's theoretical framework, you are a branch under an entity. An entity is a larger unit, and under an entity there are many, many identities. Seth also had another term, used more often in the early sessions, called "fragment personality" -- why is it called a fragment personality? Because you are one segment of a complete personality. For example, in this life you are called Zhang San, and you die at sixty; in your next reincarnation you are called Li Si, and you die at forty. Zhang San and Li Si each consider themselves independent individuals, and that is fine. From their perspective, Zhang San is Zhang San, and Li Si is Li Si. But from the perspective of the entity they share -- many people equate entity with soul, and that is fine; if you understand it as soul, that works too, but Seth was afraid you would misunderstand it if you used the word soul, so he specifically coined a new term called entity -- whether Zhang San or Li Si, both are parts of one larger personality under the entity.

This larger personality wants to experience things in the human world, so it manifests as Zhang San and Li Si, appearing in this physical world. Zhang San and Li Si are only the smaller personality identities within this entire larger personality that want to experience that experience. When the term "fragment personality" is used, it is spoken from the standpoint of the entity: the entity has a large personality, and each reincarnation is only one fragment within this larger sense of identity. Later he basically stopped using this term and replaced it with "identity."

All of these -- all of our identities reincarnating in the world -- added together -- note that the original text uses the plural, identities -- all of these reincarnations combined are what constitute the personality of that entity, that complete personality, and we are only one small segment of it. You need to have this concept, otherwise you will not understand the deeper meaning he wants to reveal later.

Like a Force, Like a Field

Seth says:

These units of consciousness can also merge together like a force within a vast, harmonious wave of activity.

It can operate as an individual entity, and it can also operate like a force, like a field. Using "field" to explain it is better—a consciousness field, an energy field. In any energy field, things external or internal will be influenced by this energy field. This force is vast, boundless, harmonious, and working within a harmonious field involves no conflict. Does it have power? It is very, very powerful, because All That Is is brewing within it. The power you can experience as an individual is merely insignificant; it is the sum of the power of all of you as individuals. But this power within the energy field is also harmonious, with no conflict among its parts.

What does this feel like? Use the ocean to understand it. Is there power in the depths of the ocean? Of course there is. The most advanced submarines we have seen, with steel plates several meters thick—one or two meters thick—and made of special steel, with two layers of hull—can you imagine how thick steel plates of several dozen centimeters are? Even this special steel would be crushed and destroyed in the depths of the ocean. Currently, conventional submarines can only reach depths of 300 to 600 meters; nuclear submarines can go slightly deeper, but not much more, because the hulls are the same, only their endurance is greater. Yet the fish living in the deep sea are safe and sound, free and at ease. Why are they not flattened or crushed?

What is the "wave of activity"? All things in the world exist as energy waves. Every entity, from the perspective of individuality, is a separate individual—atoms, molecules, people, animals, cats and dogs, each one distinct. But from the perspective of the energy field, each one is an energy wave, with its own vibrational frequency, with primary frequencies and secondary frequencies, all kinds of frequencies superimposed together. All the energy waves combined are like the deep ocean currents. The great ocean circulation is one of the main factors determining our Earth's climate, including the El Nino phenomenon we are familiar with—when the ocean circulation operates in an abnormal way, extreme climate events appear. But when you are in the ocean, you cannot feel the existence of the currents. It is somewhat like the Chinese idiom "still waters run deep"—the surface of the water looks quiet, but underneath there are currents, and you cannot feel their existence.

These examples and analogies are all meant to help you understand the feeling that units of consciousness can exist in two states simultaneously. Otherwise, without a precise understanding of units of consciousness, it would be very difficult to understand the basic properties of the material world they will construct in the future. Because our material world is composed of units of consciousness, just like cement and sand. Without sufficient understanding of the nature of the most basic units that construct the universe, it is impossible to understand the nature of this universe.

The Sense of Identity Never Disappears

Seth said:

In fact, units of consciousness have always been operating in these two ways. No identity, once formed, has ever been destroyed, for its existence is an indelible part of the entire wave of consciousness to which it belongs.

Note that "formed" is in quotation marks -- its formation is not the material formation you understand; your sense of identity does not depend on a material foundation. You think your sense of identity needs to depend on the existence of this physical body, but actually it does not.

You think a physical body establishes your sense of identity, and then when the body dies, the sense of identity also disappears. Seth says it will not: your physical body dies, but your sense of identity will never disappear. Why will it not disappear? Because it is an indelible part of the entire wave of consciousness to which it belongs -- it is part of the ocean's circulation; how can you separate a single water molecule from the great sea? You cannot separate it. Once the sense of identity is formed, it becomes part of your entity and exists forever. As a particle state it seems to disappear, but as an energy state it exists forever -- did we not just cover this earlier? All energy states exist permanently.

Seth paused again -- one of many times. He said:

Each particlized unit rides upon the continuous impetus set up by the field of consciousness to which both wave and particle belong.

The meaning is: when a unit of consciousness operates in the manner of a particle, in material form, it is actually subject to two influences at the same time. One is the influence of the particle state -- the influence of all the laws of the material state; the other is the influence of the forces within the field of consciousness to which it belongs. You should not only see its material existence, as if it were subject only to material influences, just as we only study Newtonian mechanics and use Newton to explain everything in the world. At the same time, it also belongs to the field of consciousness in which it exists, and is subject to the influence of that field of consciousness.

We humans can generally only feel the first kind of action, and cannot feel the second kind. Remember, these two act simultaneously.

Mutual Knowing

Seth said:

Every particle-ized unit of consciousness inherently contains within itself the knowledge of all other such particles.

Although units of consciousness operate in particle-ized form, because a field of consciousness exists, they also know the knowledge of all other units of consciousness within this field of consciousness. Every particle not only knows itself, but also knows the others. Why? Because the unit of consciousness that makes up the particle itself exists within this field of consciousness, and those others are also formed from its combinations. All things know one another—not the kind of knowing where we ordinarily meet and greet each other, but the understanding and recognition of "I am you, and you are me."

Why does every particle know the knowledge of other particles? Because on another level, these particles all operate like waves within the unified field of consciousness. Operating like waves means that each one exists simultaneously in all times and all spaces, so they necessarily know each other's knowledge.

Seth said:

Basically, these units of consciousness move faster than light, and in your terms, they slow down to form matter.

Note that he deliberately adds "basically" and "in your terms." Why? Because essentially, it cannot be understood through our human concepts of fast and slow—when you speak of fast and slow, do you not have to bring in the concept of time? It itself has no time. So Seth here can only speak in a way that we humans can understand. In terms that we humans can understand, when units of consciousness operate in particle form, it feels, relatively speaking, as though they move faster than all material motion in this world, surpassing the speed of light. According to our human three-dimensional world's understanding, something surpassing the speed of light cannot exist within our three-dimensional world—even if it exists, you cannot see it; it is not a matter of whether you can see it or not, it is that it does not exist in your world.

Seth tells you: they are things faster than the speed of light, and when they slow down, dropping below the speed of light, you can see them, and they can form matter.

This point is exactly the same as the explanation in superstring theory within quantum mechanics. Superstring theory says that this string is a segment of energy, vibrating, like a rubber band—when you pluck it with your hand, it has a frequency, vibrating from this point to that point, and from that point back to this point. The speed of this vibration, according to calculations in quantum mechanics, all operates at superluminal speeds².

This is also the core reason Einstein could never accept quantum mechanics³. The first thing he could not accept was that time does not exist—he could accept that spacetime deforms, changes, and is distorted under the influence of gravity; that was what he discovered and what he could understand. But if you say all of that does not exist, then what was he researching? He researched a lonely void. Because he spent his entire life researching the unified field of spacetime unity, how it changes under the action of gravitational fields, and you tell him that the thing he researched fundamentally does not exist—then what was the thing he devoted his whole life to? The second was the matter of superluminal speed; he could not accept it. He believed superluminal speed only existed in theory and could not possibly exist in the material world. But the people in quantum mechanics say: everything we see today is essentially moving at superluminal speeds, and only when it slows down do we see it become particles and matter.

To put it in a colloquial phrase—remember this cannot be taken too literally; when not taken too literally it is not ultimate, but as a colloquial statement it is correct—motion slower than the speed of light forms matter, and that which is faster than the speed of light cannot be perceived by us humans.

Metaphysical and Scientific Perspectives

Seth paused again, and went even deeper once more. He said:

These units can be considered as entities or as forces, and they can operate in either way.

An entity is individual and materialized; a force is a field, a consciousness field, an energy field.

Seth said:

Metaphysically speaking, units of consciousness can be considered as the point at which All That Is takes action to form your world. The immediate contact of never-ending creative inspiration, entering into mental focus. The transformation of the truly divine origin, which brings the material world into existence from the greater reality of divine fact.

This passage is all metaphysical language, speaking from theory and philosophy. Units of consciousness can be seen as the point at which All That Is takes action to form our world -- which point? The one entering into mental focus, a transformation of that truly divine origin.

If All That Is wants to create our world, there must be a contact, and this transformation is the unit of consciousness. All That Is has a thought to create this world -- how is this creation embodied? Through units of consciousness. The unit of consciousness is the focus of its ultimate creative action. It is perfectly normal if this is hard to understand, because it is discussing the issue from a philosophical angle.

Let me try to help you understand: if All That Is wants to do something, it needs a focus, a grip, a point of attention. This unit of consciousness is the point of attention, the point of force, the point of contact through which All That Is wants to materialize and form our world -- the point of contact where the subjective world of spirit becomes an objective world of matter, the point where something comes from nothing. From the "nothing" of our material world's perspective, from the spiritual state that has not yet formed matter, to the final material state -- the point in between is this unit of consciousness.

You can think of the unit of consciousness as a transformation of the source's material form, or as creative action. When the source wants to manifest the material world, it must rely on something, and that something is the unit of consciousness. So the unit of consciousness is the transformation, focus, point of attention, grip, tool, means of All That Is, this spiritual source -- call it whatever you like.

Seth then continued:

Scientifically speaking, these units can be considered as the building blocks of matter.

From a scientific perspective, what you humans can discover is that these units of consciousness are the smallest units that construct our material world -- the strings that scientists now observe, the strings in superstring theory.

Ethically speaking, CUs represent the magnificent foundation of the world in value fulfillment.

Notice why does he speak from an ethical perspective? Have you thought about this question? Our universe is a subjective world -- carrying its own intentions, its own thoughts, its own desires, its own aspirations, its own expectations; this is called a subjective world. Since it is a subjective world, for the subject of this subjective world, is there not an ethical question? Is this thing you are doing something your will wants you to do? Is it within your own will? This is the most basic ethics.

The reason value fulfillment can be magnificent and can be completed is that its foundation cannot be separated from units of consciousness. Units of consciousness are the foundational basis upon which our world can realize its value fulfillment from a holistic perspective, so brilliant, so magnificent. Without these insignificant units of consciousness, there would be no value fulfillment for us.

Why speak from an ethical perspective? He said:

Because each unit of consciousness is related to every other, being a part of another unit of consciousness, each participating in the entire gestalt of the experience of birth and death.

The whole of All That Is is a gestalt, a divine gestalt. Within this divine gestalt, the birth and death of every existence participates in the birth and death of others; between them is a relationship of mutual fulfillment, mutual nesting, you within me and I within you.

To put it plainly: a small unit of consciousness can join with others of its kind to form a larger unit of consciousness, and these larger units of consciousness can form even larger units of consciousness. Our universe is formed by layer upon layer of gestalts of units of consciousness. What does "gestalt" mean? It means small units combine together to form a large unit, and once this large unit is formed, it has a new consciousness, and this consciousness transcends the consciousness of the small units.

For example, at the atomic level: a hydrogen atom has the consciousness of a hydrogen atom, and an oxygen atom has the consciousness of an oxygen atom. When two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom combine, in addition to having consciousness at the atomic level, they upgrade and gain a consciousness at the molecular level -- the consciousness of a water molecule. The consciousness of a water molecule is different from the consciousness of a hydrogen atom, and also different from the consciousness of an oxygen atom. It has upgraded; it is greater than the consciousness of the two of them. When small things form a larger thing, and this larger thing is greater than the sum of the properties of the small things added together, this property is called a gestalt.

Just as our bodies are composed of cells, and cells all have cellular consciousness, but the cells compose you as a person, and this person has a human consciousness that far transcends the consciousness of cells and the consciousness of organs and tissues. Yet it is generated by these cellular consciousnesses -- without these cells, how could you have human consciousness? But once human consciousness is formed, it transcends the sum of all cellular consciousnesses. You might say, can so many cellular consciousnesses added together not match the consciousness of one person? They cannot, because they are not on the same level. Can the consciousness of a cell understand a person? It cannot. Does that mean it knows nothing? No, it knows even more than you as a person do. Is this contradictory? Yes, it is exactly this contradictory.

Every unit of consciousness becomes a part of another unit of consciousness -- as I just said, a hydrogen atom is part of a water molecule, a water molecule is part of a drop of water, a drop of water is part of a cup of water, and also part of a river. Each participates in the birth and death of the others; water molecules also change, becoming hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, reducing back to hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms.

Influence on Attitudes Toward Matter

Seth said:

We will see how this applies to your attitudes toward matter, and to the relationship between humans and other conscious beings and the planet they share.

After I have finished telling you all the properties and characteristics of units of consciousness, let us look at this: will it affect your attitude toward this physical world? When you know that the basic units composing this physical world are units of consciousness, and that they have such properties, of course it will. Will it change your relationship with all things? When you look at every animal, every plant, every being, including planets, including the Earth, will your attitude change? Of course it will.

The Method of Transmission

At 9:17 he paused. As often happened after Jane began dictating this book, when she transmitted for Seth she revealed a charged, electric, highly passionate flavor of excitement. If you have seen the state in which Jane transmitted the Seth material, you will know what kind of state she is talking about—the words in the passage above came out of her mouth in a powerful, almost solemn manner, and it was clearly obvious that she enjoyed doing this. If necessary, she allowed herself to forget her own form—forgetting her own form means forgetting her own existence and speaking as Seth.

Rob said the state Jane was now showing matched what Seth had declared in his preface three months earlier. What did Seth say?

This book will be my most ambitious work to date.

It is indeed his most ambitious work, and also a work that reflects his highest level. Although The Early Sessions is difficult, it is not systematic, not organized into a system, and it came before this book. At this point Seth's statement was absolutely true—by then he knew how to organize the material and how to organize the content.

Here let me insert a personal observation: in the process of transmitting the Seth material, Seth himself possesses very great wisdom, energy, methods, and skill. Many things conveyed in the Seth material look similar to statements in other materials, and many people say they are actually more or less the same. But where do they differ in essence? The difference lies in Seth's way and method of transmission.

As he speaks, he erases at the same time—he gives you a concept, then erases it; then he gives you another concept, builds a new concept on top of that new concept, and then erases that too. This is not a simple method; there is tremendous wisdom here. He does not want to carve anything into your mind, because he knows that whatever is carved in is limited, rigid, and will become a new cage and shackles, keeping your consciousness from being flexible and beginning its own exploration. So as he speaks, in ways you do not know and without your noticing, he uses his wisdom to erase what he has carved into you. But a thing that has been carved and then erased is not the same as one that was never carved.

After reading the Seth material, you will have a feeling: "I seem to know something, but I cannot say it." This is exactly the state Seth wants you to reach. Many people do not understand why, after reading so much of the Seth material, when they want to explain it to others, they open their mouths and do not know where to begin—why, when I try to say it, every word is so pale, and why it is not as full of energy and surging with excitement as when I was reading the Seth material? The reason is right here.

Many people want to transmit these spiritual materials. I am not saying that the Seth material is the only one or the best; I have never said that, and I do not want to say that. I am only telling you that its greatest difference from others lies right here. I have also read many other materials, and there is no criticism or denial intended here. I am only telling you: some other materials seem very distilled, seem very classic, but when they are transmitted in their own way, their influence on others is not good, and it can even lead astray people who lack correct understanding.

For example, works like The Book of Taisha and The Law of One⁴, including many similar materials. Can you say what they say is wrong? What they say is all correct; every sentence in them does not conflict with the Seth material; they are all talking about the same thing. Many people suggest, why don't I go and teach The Book of Taisha or The Law of One—they say how good it is, especially The Book of Taisha, which was also channeled by a Chinese person, and one book explains the matter thoroughly. The reason is right here: they say nothing wrong, they say nothing incorrect, but the transmitter's wisdom and energy are insufficient, so the effect of the transmission is different. It does not mean that if you take a truth and transmit it, you can transmit it very well.

Seth as a transmitter—his own wisdom, his own energy, and most centrally his unconditional love for humanity, played a very great role in it. Wisdom, energy, and love, these three are combined together—without wisdom it cannot be done. Therefore the Buddha could give teachings, but when other people take what the Buddha taught and go teach it to others, it becomes what we see in Buddhism today: many schools, mutually incompatible, each speaking their own language, rigid and stiff. The reason is right here—it is not that the Buddha spoke wrongly, but that the later disseminators do not possess the Buddha's wisdom, energy, and compassion.

Here let me give everyone a reminder: why do I say this kind of material is not good? It is because it is too condensed, too absolute; it says a sentence to the fullest and wants to carve that thing into your mind, and fearing that it has not been carved deeply enough, it carves it over and over again. If the Seth material were to carve things into your mind in a way like cutting with a knife and chiseling with an axe, then I would say it is not good. If you summarize the Seth material into an essence called "Seth Essentials," and it contains all the core ideas of Seth's theory, and you take this essence to transmit it, I tell you that book would be a poisonous weed—the most reactionary, the most dangerous, and the book most likely to make people go astray. It is not that what Seth said is wrong, and it is not that the theory is bad; it is that over-condensing it and turning it into quotations and an essence-style way of carving things into people's minds violates Seth's most fundamental original intention—to return each person to each person's own hands. He does not want to carve a Seth imprint or shackles onto you, and he does not want to trap you inside the deep cage called Seth. He wants to give you freedom, to let you become yourself, the true self, without any imprint; it would even be best if you forgot who Seth is.

The Buddha also said many things: "I taught the Dharma for forty-five years and did not teach anything; I have not spoken a single word." He specifically instructed, after I die, do not compile my words into scriptures. But his disciples did not listen to him and insisted on doing it. Why did the Buddha not organize these essential things he had said to educate future generations? Now you know why—because he knew that the later people who would transmit the Dharma would lack sufficient wisdom, energy, and compassion. A transmitter of truth, if he does not possess these three basic conditions—sufficient wisdom, compassion, and very positive energy as support—then what he transmits will not have good effects. If you ask me to say exactly what is wrong with it, I cannot say—what he says is not wrong, but it just feels strange. That is all.

The Very Beginning of Creation

We can see that after more than ten years of transmission--from 1963 to the end of 1979, seventeen or eighteen years--Seth had gradually matured, and the content he transmitted had also gradually matured, so that he could finally discuss these very deep questions. And throughout this process, he never forgot his theme--he was talking about what the universe was like at the very beginning.

Seth said:

In the very beginning, these units of consciousness existed within a sacred psychological gestalt.

Remember, none of these are ultimate statements; they are all expressed in a less rigorous way so that we humans can understand. If we were being rigorous, even the word "beginning" would not be rigorous. This sacred psychological gestalt, is it not All That Is?

He said:

They were endowed with that unimaginable creativity that transcends the noumenon.

Here, what does "noumenon" refer to? Whose sense of identity is it? It is the sense of identity of All That Is. These units of consciousness were endowed with an unimaginable creativity that transcends the sense of identity of All That Is--this sentence is very subtle: the creative ability possessed by the units of consciousness surpasses All That Is's ability to exist as a noumenon, as an entity, as a sense of identity. In human terms, the creative ability possessed by the units of consciousness exceeds the scope of the imagination of All That Is. No matter how much All That Is imagined, it could not imagine what these units of consciousness would later be able to create. All That Is endowed the units of consciousness with a creative capacity that could create beyond its own imaginings.

In our world today, and in other times and spaces, everything we create surpasses All That Is's initial recognition of itself at the very beginning. To use a crude example: the student surpasses the master. The achievements your children make far exceed those of their parents--what All That Is gave to the units of consciousness is this state: it gave them the ability to create that achievement, but it did not give them the achievement itself; that achievement had to be created by them.

So why are the units of consciousness so remarkable? The reason is here. Once they possessed this transcendent creative ability, they began to create, explore, and fulfill the innate values that make them uniquely themselves. At the very beginning, all of this existed within their knowledge of the innate values of their own uniqueness--they knew it innately. How do you know that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom will become water? They know it innately. Do not ask how it knows; it simply knows.

If you insist on asking, then I will tell you: it tried all possibilities. It tried three hydrogen atoms, and it did not work; it tried six hydrogen atoms and three oxygen atoms, and they could not combine, or were unstable. After trying all possibilities, the final structure of H2O turned out to be this. Saying it this way is only to help you understand and convince yourself. In essence, it is not like this; it knew innately. In its dreams it tried all possibilities, and finally the combination emerged, and in our physical world it manifested at once--with water, plus sunlight, all things began to be born.

Seth said:

They operate as both waves and particles. They are directed partly by their own creative restlessness and partly by the insatiable creativity of All That Is.

They receive two kinds of direction at the same time. "Creative restlessness" refers to the particle state--units of consciousness form all kinds of matter, mountains and rivers, birds, fish, insects, all things in the world, and each one of them is restlessly continuing to create. It is like every one of us right now: you are creating every day, and this creation is driven by that restless, unsettled impulse within you. You will not just lie flat every day; inside you there is constant restlessness and creation--meeting more people, doing more things, encountering certain people, marrying, having children, creating new life--all of this is your inner restlessness.

On the other hand, the insatiable creativity of All That Is--this is a field of consciousness, a unified field of consciousness. This creativity is not restlessness; it is very stable, but its power is even greater. All matter exists within this field of consciousness. In addition to the restlessness of individuals, there is also a holistic force. This holistic force lets every individual know that they are connected to one another, and that they must also fulfill All That Is once again.

The Two Attributes of Units of Consciousness

As I said earlier, besides the creation centered on each individual, the entire universe also has an overall creativity. Our individual creativity is a part of this overall creativity, but saying it that way is not quite complete either, as if there were some kind of subordinate relationship. There is no subordinate relationship between them; it is not a matter of who commands whom, who is subordinate to whom. Here Seth used the word "command," but actually he is telling you where your inner driving force comes from, where this universal creativity, this creative power, comes from. He points out two directions for you: on the one hand, it comes from the creative restlessness of matter itself at the individual level; on the other hand, it comes from the creative desire of the overall field of consciousness of All That Is. The entire universe is influenced by these two forces, and they act simultaneously, prompting you to create.

This overall force brings time and space, and your entire universe, into the work of existence. So where did the very first entity come from? You can think of an entity as an individual that exists, or a kind of being. The very first entity that appeared at the birth of the universe was composed of units of consciousness. This sentence is the central idea of this passage.

Seth said, I want you to try to imagine a situation in which there is a psychological force that contains within its properties the ability to act simultaneously on the microscopic and macroscopic levels—it can form within itself hundreds of millions of separate, inviolable, unique identities.

He paused for a long time in the middle, eyes closed. At this moment Seth was also exhausting all his vocabulary—he could not use a word Jane did not know; he had to use a word Jane could understand, while still accurately expressing what he wanted to say. This is not an easy task. They had been transmitting for over a decade, and even so, when it came to such profound questions, Seth also paused for a long time. In this one short sentence, he used two long pauses.

Actually, a more accurate expression here should be a force of the psyche. You can imagine a kind of psychic force, and within this force is contained the ability to act simultaneously on the microscopic as well as the macroscopic levels. Microscopic means the level of atoms and even smaller than atoms; macroscopic means transcending the universe and the stars, among the interstellar spaces, within the sea of stars. This force is not just a matter of being large; it is a force that pervades everything. In Buddhist terms, it is called "so small it has no inside, so large it has no outside"⁵—there is nothing smaller than it, and there is nothing larger than it.

Such a force can form within itself countless, hundreds of millions, hundreds of billions, trillions of separate, independently existing, unique identities—this is what the universe was like at its beginning. And he can still operate as a part of those identities. He formed those identities, and then he can simultaneously still be a part of those identities. So are these identities a part of this force, or is this force a part of these identities? It is both at the same time. You can only understand this through the changing diagram of the four-dimensional cube—it is nested inside and outside; the inside is also the outside, the outside is also the inside; the part is the whole, and the whole is also the part.

As a larger initial unit, these identities all originate from it, and it is the larger unit from which these identities emerge. It is a wave out of which particles emerge—that description fits our units of consciousness.

Units of consciousness have two attributes that exist simultaneously. One attribute is that it is a boundless field of consciousness. This field of consciousness, or force field, or energy field—whatever you call the field—at this time it exists in the form of waves, in the form of energy. How large is the energy field? From infinitely small to infinitely large, the energy field pervades all space and time in the entire universe, all within this field of consciousness. This field of consciousness, expressed by another term, is called units of consciousness.

And then within this energy field are contained countless small particles, small units, each with its own independent, inviolable identity. This person, this atom, this tree, this molecule—all are these identities. This atom is not that atom; atom after atom, person after person—are they not all identities? Yes. Once they are separate, they have identity. A person is inviolable, an animal is also inviolable, an atom is also inviolable.

Then what are these animals, these people, these atoms composed of? They are all composed of the smallest units of consciousness. In terms of modern physics, are they not all composed of the strings of superstring theory? Yes. Therefore this unit of consciousness also incarnates as a component of any one of the countless identities within this field of consciousness. This passage deeply explains that saying in Buddhism: so small it has no inside, so large it has no outside⁵—all of it is units of consciousness. The smallest, smallest place in this universe is the smallest power, and it is units of consciousness; the largest, largest, boundless thing is also units of consciousness. The largest contains the smallest, and the smallest also contains the largest. If you want to ask what constructs our universe, it is this unit of consciousness. Remember that it has two attributes: an attribute of being so large it has no outside, and an attribute of being so small it has no inside, and these two attributes exist simultaneously. This also tells us why every single thing in our material world possesses all the knowledge of the entire universe—because its constituent unit is the unit of consciousness, and the unit of consciousness is this energy field, this field of consciousness. Do you say it knows everything? Yes. But it can also incarnate as such a small component—every material component of ours.

Building the World from the Inside Out

Units of consciousness build your world from the inside out. What does it mean to build from the inside out? It means that when units of consciousness build our physical world, in their mind—let us suppose a unit of consciousness has a mind—they already have the blueprint of our entire world. Whether it is the sun existing as an identity, the moon existing as an identity, the galaxy existing as a life, or each one of us, every animal, every atom existing, all of it is already within them. So why is an atom an atom, a molecule a molecule, a person a person? Why can it be cut so precisely? Why do they not conflict with one another? Why are they so harmonious? Because every single thing in the world, every one of them knows what its own position is within the whole universe, and how it should present itself. From the inside out, from within, it knows the knowledge of the entire universe, and it knows what it should do and what it should become. The words I am saying are all not ultimate; they are all anthropomorphic expressions, but they help you understand.

Then is there still free will? Yes, there is. He is completely free, and yet he can still conform to the sense of identity of each thing in the whole universe, and still not conflict—this is what is miraculous about him. He has both wholeness and individuality; he is a unity of wholeness and individuality. Why can they be unified? Because this individuality is his essential nature, it is his wholeness, and that is why he can unify them. He cannot destroy his own wholeness, because he himself is wholeness; wholeness is also his individuality.

Why has your personal will not been affected? Because your personal will is one among millions upon millions of its possibilities; it has already exhausted all possibilities. You think your free will is unique, but actually this uniqueness is also just one of its infinite possibilities. It can gestate all infinite possibilities within this tiny unit of consciousness. So you do have free will, and your free will is built on the premise that infinite possibilities all exist.

As physical creatures, as material beings, these units of consciousness are focused upon what you call physical identity. As a material existence, because this sense of identity exists, the unit of consciousness, in order to satisfy the existence of this sense of identity of yours, focuses its attention on the places you focus on—whatever you focus on, it focuses on. What you are able to create depends only on the feelings and experiences of your physical world. You use your five senses to experience this world, and so your units of consciousness are directed by the consciousness of your individual ego, focused on your physical identity, focused on this material world.

The Creativity That Units of Consciousness Bestow Upon Humanity

In terms of separateness and individual difference, each of us as individuals is distinct and diverse. With so many people in the world, no two look exactly alike -- that is difference, that is separateness. We want to experience this, so he lets you experience this.

He bestows his own creative variation and creative potential, as well as the opportunity to gain wholly creative experience, upon the consciousness of every physical body, and provides him with a viewpoint and a platform from which to participate in reality -- a viewpoint that, at that level, no other individual can experience in the same way.

What this passage is saying is that when units of consciousness create our world, they build our universe from the inside out. As material biological beings, units of consciousness focus themselves upon what we call this physical body, this material body. Then the "I" of self-identity within this identity -- each one is independent. The creativity that All That Is bestowed upon units of consciousness, to whom did units of consciousness then bestow it? Upon our human consciousness -- the consciousness of this identity, the consciousness of this bodily sense of identity. It then possesses the same abilities, the same creativity, the same creative power as units of consciousness.

The potential of units of consciousness is immense; it is inherited from All That Is. Units of consciousness take their own original creativity, that inexhaustible creative ability, and the opportunity to experience the process of their own creation -- creating on one hand while feeling and experiencing their own creation on the other -- and bestow both of these abilities upon our human consciousness. And they also provide a viewpoint and a platform from which to participate. What is meant by viewpoint and platform? It is your conscious mind, your focus of consciousness. To put it simply, it is our human consciousness, experiencing the difference between oneself and others within such a focus of consciousness. Experiencing that you are Zhang San and he is Li Si; experiencing Zhang San's creation, Li Si's creation, and also experiencing the joint creation of three people together. This is infinite combination, infinite possibility, and infinite creation.

This is the exclusive, ever-new, private and intimate, direct experience that any species, or any individual of any degree, enjoys uniquely when it encounters the objective universe.

This platform of consciousness is not unique to humanity; other species have it too. Species refers to living things, and "any degree" includes individuals at various levels of development -- some have already developed very high intelligence and consciousness as we humans understand it, while others possess what we humans consider very low consciousness. That is to say, all things in the world, when their consciousness encounters the objective world, naturally generate such a sense of identity and a conscious mind, and through their own focus of consciousness they experience and feel creation in this objective world.

This experience of creation is itself exclusive -- if Zhang San creates something, it is exclusively experienced by Zhang San; if Li Si did not create it, Li Si will not feel it. Ever-new -- you create one thing today, and another tomorrow; even eating, you savor it with relish every day, and every day is different. Why is it ever-new? Because you are always creating. And it is private -- if you do not share it with others, others cannot experience your creation or the experience of your creation. And it is intimate -- why intimate? Because it all takes place within probability; although you feel it is new, it is also within a probability, and that is what is meant by intimate. And then it is direct experience -- it is your own direct experience, not secondhand experience. When others tell you what state or what feelings they enter in meditation, none of that counts as direct experience; only your own direct experience is yours.

The Unity of Wholeness and Individuality

After talking about individuality, Seth immediately moves on to wholeness. The wisdom of the Seth material lies in this: it does not dig deep into one topic and carve a deep, indelible mark into your mind. He has just carved a mark for you, and when it is not yet very solid, he immediately jumps to the other side of the matter and talks about the corresponding opposite. After talking about individuality, he goes on to talk about wholeness. When the concepts of wholeness and individuality are in your mind at the same time, both sides have been marked, but neither side is strong—this is the state he wants you to reach, the state that Buddhism has always wanted you to enter, called "non-duality." You should neither strengthen individuality nor strengthen wholeness; you are at once both individuality and wholeness. This is called non-duality.

On other levels, although each individuality is still maintained, it nevertheless anticipates the wave-like and structural aspects of consciousness—each of us has our own sense of identity, each of us is creating our own world, our own universe, our beliefs form our reality, and at the same time this sense of identity exists within the entire field of consciousness. Units of consciousness exist in all places at the same time, so do not be deluded by your sense of identity; you also have other senses of identity in other places, and they are simultaneous. And the units of consciousness that make up your cells know the positions of all other such units in time and space. Why? Because they exist simultaneously.

So why do many people not understand that the present can change the past? Do you understand a little now? How can you use the present to change the past? You cannot change it on the physical level; you can only enter the energy state, enter the field of consciousness, where there are no longer any limitations of time and space, and thus you transcend time and space. There you can change it directly, and the change takes effect. As for how to change it, you can go back and look at the point of power in Chapter 16 of The Nature of Personal Reality as Seth discussed it.

In the beginning, these units operated simultaneously as identities, or as particles, or as waves. At the very beginning of the universe, these units of consciousness operated simultaneously in three states: the particle state, the energy wave state, and the sense of identity they formed. At the very beginning, what they focused on was clearly not the particle state; they focused more on the sense of identity and the energy state. At this time, the sense of identity did not depend on material existence.

Early Humans in the Dream World

What you now think of as the dream state was, in that period, the waking condition, because it was still a recognized, purposeful activity, creative and powerful in its workings.

At the very beginning of the universe's birth, had this human form taken shape? Had it materialized? It had materialized as well. Was it stable? It was not stable. What do I mean by not stable? He was in a stupor day after day. From the perspective of our three-dimensional world, he was asleep, yet within that sleep he considered that to be the real world. The humans of ancient times lived day after day in the world of dreams. They did not need to eat, nor did they need to drink; their energy all came from nature. They did not reproduce either; they did not reproduce through the physical body -- when their thoughts formed a new sense of identity, the moment that new sense of identity took shape, a new individual emerged from them.

So you see, they were like sleepwalkers. Why is this book called Dreams? Why is Chapter Three called "Sleepwalkers"? They were like people walking in their sleep. You look at them and they seem to be doing some simple things -- tending the campfire, adding a bit of firewood -- but actually they were roaming in their dream world. Their outer forms were like those sleepwalkers we see; they themselves had no conscious awareness, for their consciousness was entirely focused within their dream state.

And this dream state was not the same as the dreams we ordinarily understand. The dreams we usually have are uncontrolled, whereas their dreams were controlled, guided by their subjective consciousness, just as when we are awake and going about our work and daily life. It was entirely directed by their consciousness, just the same as in our daily lives.

The dream state has always been the connection between two realities -- the connection between physical reality and inner reality. That is to say, the connection between the particle state and the normal state of consciousness, through the dream state.

You humans truly did sleepwalk first, and only then learned to walk. You humans first learned to walk in dreams; you learned to walk in your sleep. You dreamed of your languages and your writing; you learned to speak in dreams, and then wrote down the letters. And your knowledge and intellect were always initiated, sharpened, and propelled by the great inner reality from which your minds emerged.

To put it simply, you learned all these things in dreams. Whatever it is you learn, you first learned it in dreams. The great inner reality refers to that inner world within the dream, because the dream is the place where these two worlds connect. All the things you humans have -- civilization, language, all of it -- were first learned in dreams.

Matter by itself can never produce consciousness. A mind alone cannot come into existence merely through probability. What probability? According to modern scientists, it is a kind of chance. If matter itself were not first alive because of consciousness, filled with the intent to exist, a single thought could not cross over from the countless, innumerable nerve endings.

The nerve transmission that science studies involves the appearance of a medium for nerve conduction, through which signals are passed between neuron and neuron, similar to the transmission of electrical signals, which requires a conductor. The meaning here is that it is not that matter came first and then consciousness, but that consciousness came first and then matter. Without the powerful intent of this consciousness, matter could not possibly exist.

A person who believes life has no meaning will soon depart from life. Look at those who commit suicide, because they feel life has no meaning. He offers this as counter-evidence: a living person who feels life is meaningless will commit suicide, will lose his life. So when no meaning exists, how could a life possibly be born? A life that is born, because it has no meaning, will go to its death; if there were no meaning from the very beginning, why would this life come at all? He is using proof by contradiction to tell you that consciousness came first, and only then did life come.

The True Creator

The universe was not created for a single species by a god who is merely a super version of that species -- as willful and destructive as human beings at their worst. He is describing the God in human mouths. Because you have to understand the Western description of God: it is extremely wrathful. One moment humans disobey and he sends a great flood to drown them all, leaving a few obedient ones; the next time they disobey he sends down natural disasters and so on. He says, what essential difference is there between this god of yours and human beings at their worst -- vengeful, willful, destructive, and ruinous? Is this not all a manifestation of the baser roots of human nature? And you go and attribute it to God.

He is negating the creationism in our religions. The universe was not created solely for human beings by a god who is a superhuman being more advanced than humans -- there is a great deal of sarcasm in this statement.

Quite the contrary, you have an inner unit of activity, a vast creative realm of multiple spacious dimensions, a creator that becomes a part of each of its creations yet is far greater than the sum of all its parts.

If you ask who created this world, it was created by units of consciousness. Such a creator knows itself as a mouse in a field, or as the field across which that little mouse runs, or as the continent upon which that field depends, or as the planet that supports that continent, or as the universe that supports this world. A force that is whole yet divisible, whole and at the same time divisible. It is one, and it is also infinitely many.

Here I have to say, those doctrines that only acknowledge this unified field of conscious energy and deny these infinitely many existences, deny that each of us, each physical existence, is also that one. They think that only by casting off this sense of physical identity can a person return to that one. They precisely forget that the identities of these infinitely many existences are also that one. We are born existing in this state of unity. We do not need to unite with it; we are already united. If someone tells you that you need to unite with it, just toss that aside -- it is nonsense. Because you cannot possibly not be in a state of unity; you cannot possibly not be within this universal field of conscious energy -- you are created by units of consciousness, so you are certainly within this field of conscious energy. You are that field of conscious energy, so who are you going to unite with? You are riding a donkey while looking for a horse.

A force that is at once eternal and mortal. What is eternal? It is the field that is eternal. Once your sense of identity is created, once your individuality is created, it is never extinguished; it exists forever within the energy field. But as the material existence of you as an individual, you will die -- your physical body will cease to exist, will be destroyed, but your individuality will exist. And it is a force that plunges headlong into the seasons of its own creative formation, and experiences the seasons.

Glorified in individualization, yet forever aware of the great unity within, behind, and amid all individualized experience. Individualization refers to the sense of identity. It has the glory of its own unique individuality, yet it also knows the unity that exists within, behind, and amid the one. "Within" means that experience comes out from this inner source -- that is "within." "Amid" refers to the process itself. "Behind" refers to after the process, after death. A force from which each moment of the past and the future flows outward in every conceivable direction.

Each moment point, in all possible directions -- whether forward or backward, inward or outward, the flow of time has many directions, not just the single direction that we humans understand. Regarding the directions of time's movement, this was specifically discussed in the previous book The "Unknown" Reality: time has many kinds of movement directions. Each moment point has the force to develop in all possible directions; every possibility of every probability is explored once -- this is its inner force.

Early Humans Survived by Dreaming

Rob said that Jane transmitted that entire passage with remarkable fluency and enthusiasm, and I punctuated it as best I could the moment he came through. I don't think I've ever heard him speak for Seth with more eloquence and certainty than this time. This book invigorated him. You can imagine Jane's state while transmitting this passage -- certain, invigorated, unimpeded, eloquent as an orator. If you have time, after I finish explaining, you can read this passage aloud. When you read it with that kind of passion, you can feel how powerful Jane's energy was.

But in your terms of time, we will speak of a beginning. Early man, dreams allowed him to cope with physical reality. The dream world was their first learning place. How did they cope? In times of drought, he would dream of where water sources were; in times of famine, he would dream of where food was. That is, his dreams allowed him to see large expanses of land through clairvoyance. In dreams, his consciousness operated in wave form, which could transcend all limitations of time and space, so he knew where there was water and where there was food. So you see, in ancient myths and ancient works, it is often said that so-and-so had precognition, so-and-so had a supernormal ability. Because in that period, people were still relatively skilled at using this method. Although by later periods most had forgotten it, there were still a few individuals who retained this ability.

Do we modern people no longer need this? Why? We invented our own clairvoyance. We use satellites in orbit to see every corner of the entire earth. And precognition? We use computer model analysis and data models to predict changes in weather and so on. We use artificial intelligence, big data, plus models to do predictive analysis. As long as we keep optimizing these models, we will get relatively precise results.

In those earlier times, in ancient periods, all species shared their dreams in a way that is quite unconscious to present-day humans. Early humans could know the dreams of other creatures. Early humans still had this ability -- they could share dreams. In his dreams he would ask the animals where water or food was, long before he learned to track animals.

We modern people think that humans found these water sources and food by following animals, because humans didn't know and animals did, so we followed the animals. Actually, that's not so. Early humans asked animals in their dreams where water was and where food was. Humans explored this planet because their dreams told them where the land was. People back then were not as isolated as they seem now; humans and animals were all connected.

Early humans in their dreams exchanged their respective locations, reported their cultures and the symbols they understood, and the nature of their art. Now you know, early humans distributed across different continents communicated through dreams.

All the inventions that you now often think of as quite accidental, from low-level tools to the discovery of the importance of fire, to the Iron Age or whatever came, all those inventions are recorded as the result of inspiration and communication from the dream world.

For example, once one human learned to use fire, all humans in the world could use fire. There was no need for that human to travel to another continent to tell the people there how to make fire by drilling wood. No, in their dreams they taught other humans how to use fire. Many people don't understand how this collective unconscious works. Seth here has actually revealed the internal communication mechanism of the collective unconscious -- it is through this shared dreaming. In the dream world, they are interconnected, without the limitations of time and space. Wherever you want to go, you go.

Man dreamed his world, and then created it. And the units of consciousness first dreamed man and all the other species they knew.

You had a dream, and you dreamed that a jar of gold was buried underground somewhere. Then you went there, dug it up, and it was indeed a jar of gold. Wouldn't you feel that you created reality in your dream? Actually, you don't know that the gold was already there; you just dreamed of it and came to know it. It wasn't created by you at all, but doesn't it feel as if you created it? That's the meaning. At that time, humans created their world through dreams. And how did the units of consciousness create humans? It was because the units of consciousness first dreamed of humans, and all the other species we know, all existed within the dreams of the units of consciousness.

The Wisdom of Dreams

Before I go too far, I want to emphasize one point here: the world of dreams is not a purposeless, illogical, or unintellectual field of activity. That is your human understanding, but the world of dreams is actually not like that. It is only that your own field of vision has shut off the greater part of its vast reality. Because the intellect at work in dreaming can surpass your computers.

The wisdom in dreams, the knowledge in dreams, that level of wisdom is far more intelligent than all of your computers. I am not placing the thinking ability in an unimportant position -- the thinking ability does not only appear when you are awake, only through thought and logic. In dreams your thinking ability can also appear, and at that time the thinking ability that appears in dreams is countless times stronger than your thinking ability when you are awake. It is just that you feel it is not there, so you shut it off.

It is because the dreaming self, without interruption, makes use of the combined full power of the united intellect and intuition. In dreams you make use, without interruption, of the full power of intellect and intuition combined together. While when you are awake, you automatically screen out the power of intuition, and you use only the single tool of intellect. But in dreams, you combine the two powers together, and it forms a more powerful super ability where one plus one is greater than two. The thinking ability as you know it cannot compare with those greater faculties that are even a part of your own inner reality.

How to Watch the News

After the dictation ended, Seth asked Rob, do you have any questions? Rob said, about my watching the TV news every day, I would like to know what you think. Because during this period the two of them watched TV every day, watching that kind of negative news—shootings, violence, Iran taking American hostages again, and so on, all of it like that.

Seth said, whether you watch the news or not makes no real difference. But your thoughts about events are extremely important. Watching the news or not watching the news is not important, but your view of the events that happen is important. This is something we can learn from, because in our society now, cell phones are so widespread and there is so much news that every day you cannot avoid it even if you want to.

Your view of the world is more important; the perspective from which you look at world events is extremely important. Now the mass media brings to the conscious mind far more of a hail of bullets than ever before. Nowadays the news media prefer to report these conflicts, wars, hail-of-bullets events, where some violent incident has happened. But that is also a hail of bullets that lets people see their own activities, even including the new nationalism growing within the Third World. Those countries do indeed begin from a new perspective watched by the eyes of the world.

What he mainly points to are countries like Iran; they have a very strong new nationalism. Remember, no matter what country or what people, nationalism is never a good word. Within the universal values of the world, nationalism is not a good adjective; it refers to a narrow, extreme depiction that considers only the interests of one's own people, a civilization that has not yet reached a certain level, a derogatory description.

Your country is faced with the consequences of its own policies—its greed as well as its good intentions. American policy has two directions: one is greed, the other is good intentions; on one side it does bad things, on the other side it does good things. But they are being made public in a new way. The world should actually be seen as one, but perhaps there will be changes in the assessment of the overall tax burden, and those who paid little tax in the past will now pay more. The consequences of fanaticism are also being made public.

In your terms, never before could a private individual see the world in this way, or be forced to identify with the policies of other governments. If it were not through the news media, you could not possibly know how those extremists and fanatics view this world. Because now you can look through many different angles—the news media will report, will interview, will analyze, will dig deep—you have never had such a close, such a private angle from which to view this world. And then you are also forced to identify with the policies of the government of the country you live in. Because how the media of your country reports this world is actually guiding—the government's position is also your position, and you are swept along by that government's policies. This is the same in every country in the world.

That in itself is a creative achievement. To be able, through media and public opinion and propaganda, to make its people approve of its policies—that in itself is a creative achievement. What that means is, do not look at it only from the negative side; it has its positive side. It shows that people have not closed their eyes to the inequalities of their world—some fanatics have done some fanatical things, extreme things, violent things, and from a certain angle, that also proves that certain people have not closed their eyes in the face of this world's injustice. But they have no better way, so they resort to violent means. Violent means are the last resort in the face of injustice, because they have no other way.

Seth's angle and perspective on these terrorist acts and these violent events far surpass those of ordinary human beings and politicians. To sum up: the hail of bullets you see, the violence—ordinarily you will be led and misled by the media, and you launch into verbal condemnation. Seth tells you that these people are actually one of the most extreme challenges to this world's injustice. We do not approve of their methods and means; these are all unacceptable and should not be adopted. But you should see what is behind them: in the face of this world's injustice, they have not adopted endurance, acquiescence, or closing their eyes; they have adopted an extreme way of resisting. So when you see news of violence, you should change your angle, or re-understand it from a higher angle, and not let the traditional media lead you along.

Jane's Reaction After the Transmission

The dictation ended, and Seth said good night to you all. Then Jane came back, and she exclaimed -- she actually shouted it out: What tremendous energy! This session, yes, if you listen to this session carefully and repeatedly, you will know that the energy in it is immense. Jane said, I just feel that we are getting some wonderful material, some wonderful things, and I don't quite remember what he said, but I can feel that wonderful conviction. Rob said, Of course I understand, and I think I should congratulate him for this session, for being able to transmit it so well.

Later, Rob asked Seth to comment on this most intriguing statement of his. Seth's reply was very brief, but although Rob very much wanted to ask him to elaborate further, Rob did not ask him to. However, Rob was certain that some other kind of matter -- this subject could almost be extended indefinitely.

Because Seth had said that units of consciousness can form all the matter that we can know, and they also form other matter that we do not know. Rob wanted to ask, then what are those other things that we do not know? Units of consciousness do indeed form different kinds of material realities. There is not only one kind of material reality, not only this one kind that is our present universe; there are others as well. As Ruburt himself indeed hinted in some of his poems -- one could say there are many dimensions that are just as substantial as your own world. Many other worlds, parallel worlds, are just the same as our world. But if you do not focus upon them, you will not perceive their existence at all, and will only sense empty space.

Besides this physical universe of yours, there are other physical universes, and they are not the same as this physical universe of yours. But when you do not place the focus of your consciousness upon them, they do not exist for you. Even though they are also material in existence, because the focus of your consciousness is not upon them, they are nothing at all to you.

In the universe, nothing is ever lost, thwarted, or wasted. Nothing in the universe is ever wasted, nor is anything misplaced, nor is anything lost. Therefore the energy of your thoughts, although they are still your own thoughts, nevertheless helps form the natural attributes of material realities that you do not perceive.

Your thoughts have energy, and although the energy of these thoughts is yours, it does not disappear. The energy of these thoughts, in places you do not know -- in other worlds, in other material worlds -- will form other things. To put it simply, your thoughts will form other worlds. Without your perceiving it, the energy of your consciousness and the energy of your thoughts will not be wasted. The universe does not waste a single bit of energy; all of your energy will go toward producing new worlds, new environments, new matters. That is, with a single thought arising, a world is created.

Therefore, your own world is also formed by units of consciousness, and its natural components are the glittering remnants of other units of consciousness that you do not see.

Here is a very good explanation of the question many people want to ask: We say this world is composed of units of consciousness, so where do these units of consciousness come from? He tells you: your units of consciousness are the glittering remnants of other units of consciousness that you cannot see. Just as human thoughts also have remnants of human consciousness, and these will form new worlds. How does this thought of yours produce that world? The units of consciousness within your thought become the raw material of that world. In the same way, the units of consciousness of this world of yours are the remnants of other units of consciousness that you cannot see. It is just that these remnants are glittering -- do not think of remnants as rags or garbage just because of the word. Although they are the residual matter of other units of consciousness, they are still glittering, and this is incomparably precious.

If you want to know where the units of consciousness of our world come from, then you can imagine the appearance of another world. For example, suppose you liked a girl, and at the time you did not confess your feelings to her, and you did not get married, but you especially wanted to live together with her. Then in another world, your living together with her is a real reality. And how did all the things in that reality come into being? They were all produced by this one thought of yours, by the remnant of this one consciousness.

Framework 1 and Framework 2

Rob was asking Jane why we use all that bad news on television during dinner every day -- the endless gunfire -- against ourselves? The hostage crisis in Iran⁶ was one example. I said that most of the problems in our world seem to come from Framework 1 ways of thinking, and we humans are so addicted to this kind of conscious behavior -- regionally, nationally, and worldwide -- that we seem to have very little chance to break out of that iron cage.

Framework 1 is oppositional, dualistic -- there is good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine. That is what is called Framework 1. Why do people fall into the cage of Framework 1 and cannot get out? Rob further told Jane that our history reflects our stubborn refusal to adjust our deep dependence on manipulating Framework 1. We always look at problems only through Framework 1 methods, and when we want to change the world we also use Framework 1 methods to change it, as if we were manipulating it.

Even though I admit that there are many complex reasons for various long-term group behaviors, and of course it is not just the Framework 1 way of thinking alone -- there are other reasons as well. I also feel that my questioning comes from the efforts Jane and I have been making recently -- we want to improve our habitual thinking patterns and draw more elements from Framework 2 to help us create the results we truly want every day. Rob said, we want to live in Framework 2, but we do not know how to get ourselves into the Framework 2 mode of thinking, so that we can get the results we want every day, instead of being swept along and held hostage by Framework 1.

I used the set of motivational affirmations Seth gave us on January 1 as an aid. On January 1, 1979, Seth specifically wrote a passage for them, like a year's worth of motivational words, for the two of them to read every day. But Jane was not interested, which was strange. However, both of us noticed that our own recent state of mind and inner peace had improved. Even though we did not read it, we could feel that our state of mind and inner peace had improved. So Seth's New Year's Day motivational text was still quite helpful.

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注释与核实

1. Mike's exact words were "the spin directions of two electrons, as experiments have shown—no matter how far apart they are, even trillions of light-years"; upon verification, this should read: "The experiment observed entanglement correlations and a violation of Bell's inequality between electron spins separated by 1.3 kilometers, but did not experimentally establish that these correlations persist at arbitrary distances or across trillions of light-years." (Source: B. Hensen et al., "Loophole-free Bell inequality violation using electron spins separated by 1.3 kilometres", https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15759) ↩

2. Mike's exact words were "the speed of this vibration, according to quantum-mechanical calculations, is always faster than light"; upon verification, this should read: "Transverse waves on relativistic strings in string theory propagate at the speed of light, c; they do not all travel faster than light." (Source: Barton Zwiebach, "From Vibrating Strings to a Unified Theory of All Interactions", https://physics.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/physicsatmit_04_vibratingstrings.pdf) ↩

3. Mike's exact words were "the fundamental reason Einstein absolutely refused to accept quantum mechanics"; upon verification, this should read: "Einstein did not reject quantum mechanics; he primarily opposed the Copenhagen interpretation's treatment of wave-function collapse and quantum randomness as the ultimate description of nature, and regarded quantum mechanics as incomplete." (Source: George Musser, "What Einstein Really Thought about Quantum Mechanics", 2015, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-einstein-really-thought-about-quantum-mechanics/) ↩

4. Source: Xinhua Bookstore, "The Book of Great Folly (Black Miracle Limited Edition)"; L/L Research, "The Law of One" (https://item.xhsd.com/items/110000100114274；https://www.llresearch.org/library/the-law-of-one) ↩

5. Source: Shi Zhengjue, "Extensive Record of Chan Master Hongzhi: Verses Requested for Portraits by Chan Practitioners and Fundraising Monks" (https://www.kanripo.org/edition/CBETA/KR6q0070/009) ↩ ↩²

6. Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "The Iranian Hostage Crisis" (https://history.state.gov//departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises) ↩