The "Introduction" and "Key Points" for 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 blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter begins with Seth's response to Rob's dream, pointing out that the waking state is a specialized extension of the dream state, and that the physical world is formed from the inside out, out of dream reality; the spontaneity and inner order of dreams are consistent with the creative processes of the universe, computers do not dream, and after death a person lives on subjectively. The notes section discusses body consciousness as being like animal consciousness, arguing against the mechanical model of aging. The opening of Session 889 uses the dream body and the sequence of waking to explain that the earth's environment is composed of consciousness, and that human thought is a division of labor within earth consciousness.
Key Points of This Chapter
- The waking state is a specialized extension of the dream state; the physical world is formed from the inside out, and becomes concrete reality out of the reality of dreams.
- The universe was created in the way that dream thoughts and dream events come into being; dreams are spontaneous, yet they possess an inherent order and organization.
- Computers do not dream, and therefore lack the unspoken innate knowledge contained in even the smallest plant or seed.
- The body consciousness is close to animal consciousness, focused on the present; the body is influenced by beliefs, rather than necessarily declining mechanically with age.
- Plants awaken before animals, and animals before humans; the earth's environment is composed of living consciousness, and human thought is a natural division of labor within the earth's consciousness.
Main Text
Before We Begin
This session was held on Wednesday, January 30, 1980, beginning at 9:28 p.m. Rob said that since the last session, Session 897, nine days earlier, Jane had channeled three remarkable private sessions for Seth. Tonight she was fairly relaxed, and somewhat inclined to play hooky and go paint. I told Jane that if she wanted to go paint, she did not have to hold a session; but if she did go into trance, I hoped Seth would discuss my dream from this morning. In that dream, I was a woman the same age as my father. The fact that my father was already dead did not enter into the dream; in the dream I did not know that my father had died.
Seth came through right on topic, without missing a beat. He said—
The state of consciousness you consider wakefulness is a specialized extension of the dream state, a surface that emerges from it into your perception. Just as your geographical locations are definite extensions of locations that first exist in the realm of the mind.
This session is not long, but the difficulty level is very high throughout, which is characteristic of Seth. He holds that what you call the waking state is actually a specialized extension of the dream state. It is like when you think geographically that this thing is over there and that thing is over here—this sense of space and this sense of cognition, he says, are all extensions of a psychological distance within you.
What does that mean? It means that if you feel a place is very far away, then for you that place really is very far away; if you psychologically feel that a place is very close, then it is very close. This has no definite or direct relationship to geographical location. In other words, it is a kind of mapping.
For example, suppose there is a place where you work that may be quite far from you, maybe about 50 kilometers away, but there is a highway, and you drive at 120 kilometers per hour, and you get there in a little over 20 minutes, less than 30 minutes, so you feel that the company is actually not far from you. But if you go downtown to shop, it may be only a dozen or so kilometers away, yet the whole way is full of traffic lights and full of traffic jams, and it takes you 40 or 50 minutes to drive there, and at that point you feel that going downtown is no simple matter. Although you also know that the distances are different—one is 50 kilometers, the other is a dozen or so—in your mind there is a certain cognition. Anyone who has driven a car knows that in the era before GPS, you had a map in your mind, and that map rotated as you went. Everyone who can drive without looking at a map has a map in their head that can rotate at any time. That map is what Seth is talking about—an extension of a mental location.
The source of the waking state lies in your dreams. That is, our waking state is actually an extension of a certain state of the dream. And in the waking state, all the objects you are familiar with, all the environments, and all the experiences originate from that inner dimension of dreams. We have times when we are awake, and times when we dream. The state we are in when awake has its source in dreams; its origin is in dreams. So when we are awake, our cognition of the environment and our surroundings, and our cognition of this dimension, also comes from that cognition in dreams. That is, our waking world is an extension, or one might say a projection, of the dream world.
But we do not understand it that way. When you examine your dreams, you usually examine them from the framework of your waking state. When you go back and look at what happened in your dream, you use your waking logic to examine it, and you use your waking cognition of reality to examine the events in your dream. You say that the dream seemed to happen in a certain stadium, or seemed to be in such-and-such a place—you always use the experiences and realities you have been to, are familiar with, and understand to interpret the world of your dreams. But you forget one thing—the things you call your waking experiences actually have their source in your dreams. It is not that you use your waking experiences to interpret your dreams; you have it backwards. In other words, we take the experience of a reality derived from dreams and turn back around to use it to explain the source itself.
You try to apply your usual standards for judging events, the rules of reality, to measure the amplitude of dream experience, and therefore you are unable to perceive the true characteristics of dreams. Because you are using one specialized branch of the dream state—your dream state is assumed to have many kinds of feeling, and one of those feelings is being very lucid within the dream. We have all had those very lucid dreams, where inside the dream you know with total clarity what you are doing. Our everyday life is an extension of that kind of dream. But our dream state has many different states, and we only pay attention to that one state—the state of lucid consciousness. And then we take the experience gained in everyday life from that one state—say, one of 16 states within the dream, the lucid state—and turn back around and try to use it to explain what the dreams in those other 16 different states of consciousness are trying to tell you. Do you think you can explain it clearly? You cannot explain it clearly, because you are using a smaller experience to explain a larger experience.
Except on those rare occasions when you suddenly become awake within the dream state—we will discuss this later.
Unless you can have a lucid dream, and this lucid dream is very rare; it is not the case that everyone can frequently have lucid dreams. Being able to bring your waking consciousness into your dream is what is called a lucid dream.
In a manner of speaking, it is true that the universe is created in the same way that your dream thoughts and dream states occur.
Seth says, why am I telling you this? What I actually want to tell you is that how this universe of ours came into being is actually the same principle as how your lucid waking reality is derived within your dream state. If you can figure out what dreams are all about, you can figure out how the birth of the universe works.
For example, he gives an example. Are your dreams spontaneous? Do you prepare for them? No, right? They happen automatically and spontaneously. Do the people and scenes inside them all appear automatically and spontaneously? Yes, but there is an innate, astonishing order within them. Although the scenes in dreams often change, within a particular scene, is there not still a particular order to it? Trees do not grow in the sky, right? Cars do not eat pizza, right? These are things that do not happen in your dreams. Why? Because this is a kind of order; this is the most basic kind of order.
So you may find it strange that although the dream is spontaneous and not under your control, it still has an inner order to it, and still has an inner organization to it. Between thing and thing, between event and event, between person and person, there is still a certain inner connection.
Then you think your thoughts, and you dream your dreams, without any clear knowledge of the incredible entire process involved.
Your thoughts and your dreams are not formed by your knowledge. When you think, you do not say, I have to have the ability of a brain science expert before I can call upon my brain cells to make me think—no, you just think directly. So your thoughts are also spontaneous: today you have this idea, tomorrow you have that idea, one moment you think this way—it is entirely spontaneous, and entirely has a certain order and inner organization. Your dreams are the same way; you do not need to have any knowledge about them. How they are spontaneous, how they are inwardly organized, how they establish their inner order—you do not need to know; it automatically is that way.
Yet this process of being automatic and spontaneous, having inner organization, and having a certain order—the occurrence of this process is the very process behind the existence of the universe. How your dreams are made is how this universe is made; it is one process, one principle—a process that is automatic and spontaneous, has inner order, and has the capacity for self-organization. The fact that you do not understand how the universe was born is just like the fact that you do not understand how your dreams come; it is perfectly normal.
In a manner of speaking, you yourself are the ancient dreamer who dreams your own world into existence.
You are the maker of this world, you are the creator of this world, you are that most ancient dreamer. This universe is dreamed into being by you.
You must understand that I am not saying you are fleeting dreamers, not a dreamer within some divine mind, nor a unique creative manifestation of a divine intelligence. That divine intelligence whose creativity is responsible for all reality—no. Reality itself is endowed with its own creativity, and carries within it the potential and the desire for fulfillment, is itself the inheritor of that divine process, spontaneously knowing its own order.
What he says in this passage is a negation; remember not to understand this as an affirmation. Seth's logic here is very strong; if you want to savor his logic, you can read this passage over several times. The main point he wants to make is just one thing: there is no larger divine existence of which you are a derivative, or of which you are an incarnation—none of that is the case. You are that divine process itself; you are the dreamer. There does not exist a larger dreamer; there does not exist some All That Is that dreams you into the world, and then you are born within the world.
At this point he is again covering for you, because he is afraid you will fall into another illusion. What illusion? After studying the previous few sessions, you might suddenly think, are we a dream of All That Is? According to what he said before, has he not been saying that all along? At this point he quickly corrects you—you are not a dream of All That Is; you are your own dream. In other words, your universe is formed within your own dream; your universe is born within your own dream. It is not the dream of some so-and-so or other; it is your dream. He is afraid you will develop that mistaken understanding; he is afraid you will again go looking outside yourself for the origin of the universe. You say, well, since All That Is has a dream, then let us go study what this dream of All That Is is all about—if you think that way, you have misunderstood again. What he wants to tell you is that this is your dream, just like the principle of how you dream. You know how dreams happen, and that is how the universe is born. But remember, he also emphasized earlier that this dream is not the same as the dream you ordinarily talk about.
I have said many times that the various parts of the world basically violate the smaller order of cause and effect, or sequential order.
Seth says, I have told you before that the law of cause and effect as you understand it does not actually exist; it is inverted; it is a smaller violation of cause and effect. What does "smaller violation" mean? It means that on a larger scale there is still a law of cause and effect. What is the law of cause and effect? It is that our world comes from dreams. If you look at it from this angle, then the dream is the cause and this world is the effect; that is cause and effect. It is not the cause and effect we ordinarily understand—the cause and effect we ordinarily understand is that this world proceeds step by step from the material world, or that it is a divinely created world, or the Big Bang; that is the kind of cause and effect we have. Seth says, your cause and effect is inverted; first there were the dreams of you humans, and then there was this world. But you think that first there was the material world, first there were atoms and molecules, and then there were people. He says it is actually the reverse; it is that kind of inverted order.
But if you ask whether there is cause and effect at all, from a larger perspective, if you insist on speaking that way, then the dream is also a cause. But if you look at it from the nonexistence of time or from simultaneity, then there is no cause either. In other words, we humans live both in the world created by our own dreams—we are both within our own dream, and we are also within the reality within the dream. At this point, if you insist on asking which is the dream and which is real, I think after reading this passage you can probably understand—both are real, and you could also say both are dreams; you cannot say which is real and which is dream.
We spontaneously gathered together—remember, spontaneously; this is how this entire world came into being.
Your dreams bring you many clues about the source of your own life, and the source of your own world.
If you study your dreams, you can know how your life came to be, and you can also know how your world and your universe came to be; they will give you many clues.
No matter how great or how complex a computer may be, a computer does not dream. Therefore, for all its incredible storage of information, it necessarily lacks that unstated innate knowledge possessed by the smallest plant or seed.
However vast a computer's knowledge may be, however powerful the internet may be, neither has that knowledge within a seed that cannot be expressed in words; this is something they do not possess. What is that knowledge that cannot be expressed in words? It is that all these things can dream, while machines cannot dream.
The ability of any computer to process any data cannot compare with the unstated innate knowledge possessed by the molecules and atoms that compose such an instrument.
A computer has superhuman processing power, but it can never compare with the knowledge possessed by any one of the atoms and molecules that compose it and manufacture it. Although a computer is composed of countless atoms and molecules, and although a computer has superhuman computational power, it is still not equal to the knowledge of any one of those atoms and molecules—and that knowledge is innate, unstated knowledge. The computer is not equipped to perceive that kind of knowledge; the computer is not made for that; the computer is made for us to compute with; it does not itself have this ability. Because it cannot dream, it is not equipped to do this kind of thing. If you bury a computer in the ground, it will not grow another computer, because that is not what it is made for. But if you plant a seed, it can grow countless seeds; the two are not the same.
In dreams, the innate knowledge of atoms and molecules is combined and transferred, and this is used in the creation of perceived information and knowledge, and the dream state is born from it into its physical form.
Atoms and molecules, these seeds, themselves possess innate knowledge. Then in their dreams, they transfer this knowledge into a form that can be materialized in our physical world, and then our dream state becomes a process of materialization. This is a basic process by which our universe comes into being.
Before your birth you live subjectively; after your death you will also live subjectively.
Before we are incarnated, we are a subjective existence. Subjective existence means that whatever you think is immediately obtained; whatever you think of, you have; this is called living subjectively. Your environment is all created by you. After your death it is the same; when you no longer exist in the material world, you are an energy body, and when you exist as an energy body, you are living subjectively.
Your subjective life is now interpreted through that specialized state of consciousness that you call wakefulness.
Is your present life subjective? It is a subjective life—that is, before your birth you are subjective, and after your death you are also subjective, and your present life is actually also subjective. But once it is interpreted by this consciousness that you consider wakeful, it makes you feel that your life is an objective life. What is an objective life? It is that external things are all separate from you; you cannot decide them; they exist objectively, and are not decided by you. Actually that is not so; actually it is still subjective; between you and them there is a relationship of mutual connection and mutual existence.
In other words, your environment is all created by your dream state, but you do not feel that it is, and the reason is that you use your waking consciousness to interpret your subjective life.
In it you regard as real only those experiences that fall within certain coordinates of space and time.
You only regard experiences within the framework of space and time as real. And experiences outside of space and time—what, for example? Dreams, for instance, which are your experiences outside of space and time—you consider unreal. So this is a judgment made by your waking brain, a division it makes. Your greater reality actually exists outside those coordinates of space and time, and the reality of the universe is the same; the reality of the universe also exists outside the space and time of our cognition, and the source of the universe's reality also exists outside the space and time of our cognition.
You create for yourselves lives, subjective worlds, and as you go along you change them, just as an author might change a book, alter the environment, and alter the plot within the book.
You are like an author, changing the environment of the book, the plot of the book, the content of the book, yet you do not feel it. You can change it; as you go along you create, and as you go along you change.
The writer only knows that he created his life, his plot, created the plot and environment within the book, but he does not understand where the spontaneous order upon which his creativity depends comes from. That process occurs on another level of consciousness, not on the level of space and time that he understands.
Simply put, a writer can rewrite any novel and can create any novel, but the writer does not know where the source of his own creative consciousness is. He thinks it came from the knowledge he learned in elementary school, from taking Chinese classes, from later loving to write novels and keep a diary, and gradually joining a writing group—he thinks that is how it happened. But when you really try to investigate where the source of his creativity is, he cannot find it. In other words, he does not know where his consciousness comes from.
In the most basic way, the world is formed from the inside out, and is formed from the reality of dreams into concrete reality.
Just like your dream state, you also do not know where it comes from; it is the same. It is from dream reality that physical reality is formed. Those processes occur on another level of reality. You say, how does dream state become reality; can you show me? Sorry, it is not within this reality; it is on another level of this reality, not on the level we can see, so you cannot see it. "Another level" means a place we cannot touch, that is, a level we cannot contact or perceive.
Regarding the explanation of levels, I briefly explained it to everyone once. Levels are like airplanes; Seth often uses the English word "plane" to indicate a level; he does not use "layer" or "level"; he uses "plane," and there is a pun intended in his use of this word. What is called a level, in a reality level, is like the passengers in two airplanes; the people on the two airplanes actually have no intersection. But the pilots can communicate by radio with the ground or with nearby airplanes, but only through the limited communication of radio. And the passengers on the airplanes—this airplane corresponds to this level, and the passengers on that airplane correspond to being on another level—when they are flying in the sky, they can never have any intersection; if they did intersect, that would be the end, the airplanes would collide and crash. But after they land, in the terminal of the same airport, they do have intersection. This is the concept of levels relative to space and time.
Therefore, how the dream state becomes reality is on another level of our world, or of our reality—a level we cannot perceive.
Break
At 9:50, I thought the break came rather early. Seth came back at 10:10, and he did discuss my dream until 10:30 before saying good night.
Notes
Rob noted why Seth gave three very deep private sessions, or deleted sessions, in the preceding nine days. Why were they meaningful? Because they arose from our own responses to David's challenge -- still the problem of their friend's illness -- to the playful antics of our cat Billy, and of Billy's littermate Little Mitten, as well as to several other personal issues. Yet all of that material had a general appeal; beyond discussing specific individual animals and people, it also had a general significance. And Rob hoped in these few lines to show the versatility and depth of the Seth material. He did not include those three sessions here because there was too much; he only excerpted a passage so that you could get a sense of the depth and range of Seth's thought in those three sessions -- that is, the breadth and depth of Seth's thought, so that you could catch a glimpse of it.
For example, Seth told us on January 23rd --
Your body consciousness, like the consciousness of any animal.
This passage is very important; since he excerpted it here, it is very meaningful. Each of us has a body consciousness, an inner self consciousness, and an ego consciousness, as he discussed in the preceding sessions. In Sessions 893 and 894, he focused on how your body consciousness and ego consciousness come into being.
If you do not understand what your body consciousness is about, just think of animal consciousness. Animal consciousness is very close to, very similar to, body consciousness; they share certain common traits. For instance, they both respond to immediate reality -- you get burned, and you immediately pull your hand back; you get hot, and you immediately feel it. They respond to reality and do not worry about things later or earlier. For example, the body will not say that the temperature will drop tomorrow, so I will put on my padded jacket today; no one does that. It can only say, when it is cold tomorrow, then put it on. You cannot say, I might get burned tomorrow, so I will put on gloves today; that will not happen. This is the basic thing about animals and humans -- living in the present, to put it simply, they all live in the present. They are inwardly connected with all surrounding objects and things, and they themselves have no concept of time and space, only a concept of the present.
Your kitten, running up and down the steps, is an example of the natural love of excitement and activity with which humans and animals are endowed.
This is innate, something both humans and animals have: the love of excitement and activity. When we humans are happy, do we not jump and bounce, wave our hands and dance, and start singing? How did dance come about in ancient times? It came from this joyful emotion that could not be expressed, so the hands danced and the feet danced -- that is how it came about. When the emotion in the heart is too excited to express, one jumps up. Small children are often like this; when they are happy they jump and bounce. Why? It is automatic. Animals are the same; why do animals jump and bounce, why are they constantly active? It is the same: their inner joy is innately endowed. If you do not artificially control it, humans are just like this, jumping and bouncing, very happy.
Animals like to be patted, touched, and loved, and they respond in their own way to suggestion. And for that matter, your body consciousness also responds to how you consciously respond to it, how you consciously treat it.
People who keep cats know why cats like to be stroked. Of course, unless a particular cat does not like being stroked, most cats like being patted, touched, and stroked. Just as a little kitten likes being stroked and touched, your body also likes you to consciously treat it well. That is to say, you should chat with your body a bit; when you have time you can hug it yourself, you can soothe it, you can give it something good to eat, give it some enjoyable things. Treat your body as a small animal -- that is what he means: you can treat your body consciousness as a small animal, as your little pet, and you should not ignore its existence. In other words, whatever attitude you have toward your body, it will respond accordingly. It is very interesting.
For the purpose of this discussion, think of your own body as a healthy animal, and each moment of your body consciousness as young.
Just imagine that your body is a young, very healthy animal. Then your body will certainly be young in its state of mind.
I think you certainly understand that I am speaking of the mental attitude of animals and of the body consciousness. By young I mean the mental attitude.
Animals and the human body consciousness each have their own mental attitude. Since it is consciousness, does it not have a mental attitude? Yes. They all have a young mental attitude, because they do possess their own spiritual attributes, such as psychological coloring, an optimistic outlook, and especially emotional states. If you keep a pet, you know that the pet also has its own mental state, its own mental attitude; sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy, animals have their own little moods, and they all have their own psychological coloring.
What Seth wants to tell you is this: your body consciousness -- remember, not our ego consciousness, nor your inner consciousness, but body consciousness. If you do not know what body consciousness is, you can go back and look at Sessions 893 and 894. Our body consciousness determines our physical health issues. How do you keep your body consciousness in a healthy state? You keep the mental attitude of your body consciousness in a young state, and that is very good.
The Seth material largely opposes the scientific, mechanistic model that the body will deteriorate at a certain age limit. That model, which holds that the body will deteriorate, is fueled by the power of belief.
Seth opposes this claim that "when you get old, your eyes will blur, your ears will go deaf, and you will degenerate." He says this is all because your own mental attitude has changed; you believe that everyone in society thinks this way, so you believe it, and once you believe it, it becomes real. That is, you have issued such a command to your body consciousness, and it follows your wish: when it should go deaf, it goes deaf; when the eyes should blur, they blur.
How, through our projections of fear of the future, we add unnecessary stress to ourselves.
We worry about what will happen when we get old, and that adversely affects my body consciousness, which is focused on the present. Our body consciousness focuses only on the present; in the present it is healthy. You insist on saying what you will be like when you get old -- it is not old yet, and you start instilling this belief into it, so naturally it responds according to your belief, and your body consciousness responds according to your belief.
Seth said a great deal about these matters, including telepathy, the mental states of molecules, and the consciousness of cells, all deeply involved in all of these discussions. That is all in those three sessions, but those were private sessions. Later, when we have time to go over the private sessions, we will read this passage, but for now, we still have a lot of content that has not been unfolded, so for the time being we probably will not read the private sessions yet.
Session 899
Because the next session has only a very small opening, he began the next chapter, so we are covering this session together with it, because on its own as a session it is too short.
Session 889 began on Wednesday, February 6, 1980, at 8:11 p.m. On Monday evening Seth did not hold class, so they were able to rest.
Rob said, I estimate that I have already completed two-thirds of the notes I wanted to write for The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. While Jane was working on this book, she also went back to writing the two creative works If We Live Again and Jane's God. For the book Jane's God, she was in a creative high. Yesterday and this morning, Jane scribbled down what she had received from Seth and put it in the session notebook; if I had time I could type it up, but I did not. Later today, Jane read Seth's material for this book again, and this afternoon Jane read through the earlier sessions that Rob had already typed up. Then Seth came through.
Seth said directly—
Of course, when people had only their own dream bodies, they enjoyed great freedom, because those bodies did not need to eat or dress, and they did not need to operate under gravity; they could fly if they wanted to fly, and walk if they wanted to walk. People roamed through the landscape as they pleased. They had not yet identified themselves to any great degree, or separated themselves from the environment and other living beings.
Early humans did not have a great recognition of their own bodies, or even of themselves; their sense of connection with all things was very strong. They knew who they were, but their sense of bodily identity was not as closely tied to their physical form as it is now. Because the physical body did not yet exist, their identification with form was not that strong.
But the dream world had to wake up, because that was the direction he had set for himself.
If you call it a dream, then it means it must wake up, otherwise it would not be called a dream, right? So this was something he set for himself.
The awakening from that dream happened spontaneously.
You might ask, who woke him up? No one woke him up; he woke up automatically, a spontaneous awakening. You might ask, how could it be spontaneous? Think about it: every day, apart from when you set an alarm or someone else wakes you up, most of the time in your life do you not just drift awake on your own? Do you know exactly how you woke up? You do not know either. So this spontaneous awakening is just like not knowing how you wake up—it is perfectly normal.
And yet it has its own order.
Once awake, this world has its own order, because it woke from the dream, carrying the order of the dream with it.
As far as this discussion is concerned, the other creatures on earth actually woke up earlier than man did.
If you look at it from the angle of waking from the dream, you could also say that the other creatures on earth woke up earlier than man. By "woke up earlier," I mean that their cognition of, or recognition of, the physical world came earlier; they woke from this dream world sooner. And comparatively speaking, before man woke up, their dream bodies had already formed into physical bodies.
When man was waking up—man's waking process took a very long time—before he truly woke up, man already had a physical body.
The implied meaning of this sentence is that when other creatures woke up, some had physical bodies and some did not yet have physical bodies; he has also said this before.
Animals became physically effective in their operations. And at the same time, to some degree, man still lingered in dream time.
When animals had already begun to operate their bodies, man in that period still often lingered in dreams, reluctant to leave.
Plants woke up before animals, and these different degrees of wakefulness had their reasons.
Animals woke before man, and plants woke before animals; these different degrees of wakefulness had their reasons.
Basically, that had nothing to do with science's outward definitions of material classifications.
He is saying, was it because science defined plants first and then animals? It has nothing to do with that. Who woke first and who woke later has nothing to do with scientists' classifications of species.
It had to do with the inner alliances of consciousness, and with the races or families of consciousness.
Consciousness is also divided into types, consciousness is also divided into races, and consciousness is also divided into families. Do you remember the nine families of consciousness? It is related to that, and has nothing to do with the phyla, classes, orders, and genera that our scientists use to divide animals and plants.
When all the consciousnesses that stepped onto physical reality—plants woke first, animals woke later, man woke last—had all woken up, had all stepped onto physical reality, and they shared that incredible creative achievement of bringing about a physically effective world, then that alliance occurred.
What alliance? That is to say, the degree of wakefulness of these animals or plants—when they woke, how much they woke, how much time they spent in dreams, how much time in so-called identification with the physical world—this degree of wakefulness was not divided according to our scientists' species, but was related to their inner alliances and combinations of consciousness.
For example, when these consciousnesses that exist in the physical world began to share—share what? The incredible creativity that brings about a physically effective world. In other words, when they began to create in this physical world, rather than creating in the dream world, an inner alliance formed among them. That is, who woke first, or how much each one woke, was formed automatically through an inner tacit understanding after their manipulation of the physical world. They themselves knew who should wake first, who should wake later, and how much each should wake.
The environment as you think of it is composed of living consciousness.
We think the surrounding environment is objective, but actually it is not; it is all composed of these consciousnesses. For example, ancient religions spoke of nature spirits. Ancient myths and legends all tell you that trees have tree spirits, flowers have flower fairies, all things in the world are spirits, and even the land has its earth deity. Why? Because this kind of saying represents prehistoric memory. Why would ancient myths be written this way? If these things had never happened, they would not appear in myths. I have discussed this issue before—anything you see in myths or legends only hints at one thing: this thing once happened. If it had never happened, it would not have survived in humanity's oral transmission over millions of years.
Part of consciousness transformed itself into what you think of as the stuff of nature—the endless continents, the oceans, the rivers, the mountains and valleys, and the great expanses of land.
A portion of consciousness transformed itself into what you think of as the stuff of nature, which is what he calls a great state of trance. Some consciousness became mountains, rivers, and the natural environment around us; they are also consciousness. Some consciousness became plants and flowers, some became animals, birds, fish, and insects, and some consciousness became beings like us humans.
The creativity of the physical world had to rise up from that living structure.
If we want to create in the physical world, we need a stage, and that stage is this natural environment, which is borne by this consciousness. So this living structure is the environment of nature—the mountains and the seas.
Then Seth said with emphasis—
In one way of speaking, birds and insects are indeed part of the earth flying, alive.
From a certain angle, when birds fly, they actually represent the earth flying, represent the entire earth flying, represent all those things on the earth that are not flying, flying.
Again, in a way of speaking, bears and wolves, cattle and cats, they all represent the earth becoming living creatures upon its own surface.
These animals can also be understood as manifestations of the earth's overall consciousness living on its own surface, as surface living beings. And birds are the manifestation of the earth flying, an embodiment of the flying consciousness.
And again, in a way of speaking, man became the part of the earth that thinks.
Man became the earth's thoughts. And when man thinks his thoughts, man in his own way specializes in the world's meaningful work, conscious work.
And that work is supported by the indispensable unconscious work of the rest of nature—a nature that surrounds his existence.
This passage has a very grand, epic quality, using a series of parallel structures—again in a way of speaking, again in a way of speaking—this is language with great impact.
To put it in our simple terms, the earth, as a great conscious existence, in relation to our physical world, dreamed a part of itself into birds, dreamed a part of itself into living creatures and animals, and dreamed the thinking part of itself into humans. When humans think, they are actually thinking about all the affairs of the entire earth. And for it to think effectively, it must rely on the existence of nature as a whole. And this whole of nature, to human thought, seems to operate unconsciously, because you feel it is lifeless, as if operating without consciousness. But he says that human thought is born precisely on the support of this unconscious work of nature.
That is to say, our human consciousness is born from the unconsciousness of nature, but "unconsciousness" is in quotation marks—actually it all has consciousness, it is just that we humans think it is unconscious.
Seth delivered this entire passage with great fervor—
When man thinks, he thinks for the microbes, for the atoms and molecules, for the smallest particles within his body, for the insects, for the rocks, for the creatures of the sky, and for the air and the oceans.
The flight of birds is like flying on behalf of the earth's overall consciousness, and human thinking is like thinking on behalf of the earth's overall consciousness—it is the same principle.
What Seth is saying here is that consciousness has different families, and consciousness has different divisions of labor; they form a whole, constituting the existence of the entire universe—or let us just say the earth—the entire physical world of this earth, which is our earthly home. And within this, humans are one branch of consciousness. Why do we have the ability to think, while other animals do not have such complex consciousness? It is because in this process, humans naturally took on the conscious part among all species—we are thinking for them, we are considering for them, just as birds fly for you.
Man's thoughts are as natural as the flight of birds.
Why do humans think? It is just like why birds fly—it is simply natural.
Man looks at physical reality for the rest of physical reality.
This is very interesting. Man observes this physical reality on behalf of the rest of physical reality—why does he use "look at"? Because the rest of physical reality handed this task of observation to humanity. Humans have their own thoughts; you have this ability to observe, reason, think, and use logic, so this work was given to you. Man is willing to ponder these things, so let him ponder them; the others just need to be themselves, and they do not need to consider the whole world or universe at all. In this world, apart from humans, no other species studies the universe, flight, or interstellar exploration; only humans are willing to do this. Since you are good at this, then you do it—it is just a different division of labor, right?
Man brings the earth to life, looking at itself through conscious eyes.
Humans bring the earth to life, because with human thought, the earth comes alive, looking at itself through conscious eyes—through the eyes of human consciousness, looking at the earth itself, observing this earth anew.
Do you not find this very vivid? When we talk about images of the earth, are they not all taken by human-invented satellites photographing the earth from space? Before that, without human observation, without human consciousness, how could the earth observe its own appearance from space? How could it see that it is such a beautiful blue planet? From a certain angle, is this not the earth, through the consciousness of humanity born and nurtured upon it, creating astronomical telescopes and then turning back to gaze at itself?
But that consciousness is blessed in so doing, because it is so intimately a part of the earth's framework.
He says that this consciousness is blessed when observing itself, because this consciousness refers to all human thought, and this thought is an inseparable part of the earth's framework.
These last few passages from Seth are very much like a grand epic, depicting the entire process by which humanity, or the entire universe, was born from the dream state. The key point here is the relationship between human consciousness and human dreams, and so on. This part actually does not need excessive verbal interpretation; it already carries profound meaning and magnificent grandeur in itself. Everyone just needs to savor it carefully.