Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 900

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 his lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

Rob recorded two experiences involving intense light and color: in a dream he saw a crystal glass wall in a cheap store, and before sleep while awake he saw a strong light in a lampshade. From this Seth discusses the nature of light: light comes from the inner universe rather than the sun, space is filled with units of consciousness and the light of awareness, and the inner senses can perceive a larger spectrum. Seth interprets Rob's dream, pointing out that it reflects anxieties about male virility and aging, that the crystal wall of light represents the source of life and sexuality, of which sex is only one aspect; and he responds to Rob's difficulty with painting, suggesting that he need not translate so literally.

Key Points of This Chapter

• One of Rob's dreams and one waking experience both involved intense light and color beyond the range of the naked eye, which Seth connects with the light perceived in near-death experiences.
• Light comes from the inner universe in its own way, not from the sun; the inner light is stronger than any physical light, and all colors emerge from it.
• Space is filled with units of consciousness, brimming with the light of awareness, and the physical senses filter out this perception.
• Rob's dream reflects anxieties about male virility and aging; the crystal glass wall in the dream represents the true source of life and sexuality itself, of which sex is only one facet.
• There is unseen light, unheard sound, and unfelt sensation, belonging to the inner senses; the inner senses work together, perceiving all synchronicities.

Main Text

Rob's Two Dreams

This session began on Monday, February 11, 1980, at 8:47 p.m. Rob began by saying that after dinner Jane had reread his record of his own dream from the previous Saturday, as well as a waking experience he had had the following night. Both events involved intense perceptions of color and light, and Rob told Jane that he welcomed Seth discussing them. He was especially interested in the similarities between his two explorations and the near-death experiences we had recently been reading about -- in those near-death experiences, people often report the intense white light they come into contact with. Obviously, in his own experience, he had not been near death, but he truly felt that through them, he had caught a glimpse of the cosmic light that has been so intensely sought after throughout history.

Let's take a look at what these two experiences were -- one a dream, and one a waking experience. Both of these will run through the rest of this session.

First, Rob's dream. He only excerpted the parts of the dream concerning light and color; he did not write down the other parts. He remembered being with his friend, a man named Flo, in a discount store in their hometown of Sayre -- the kind of 99-cent store in America, or a dollar tree, a dollar store kind of place. Both of them were wearing clothes, yet they knew they had to carry out some kind of sexual potency experiment. They were both standing very close to the storefront's glass window, where almost everyone could see them, including the people dining at nearby tables, but although the two of them felt awkward, no one seemed to notice them. Then Flo had to be tested first, and he stepped into a small booth like the kind cashiers use. While Rob was waiting for his turn, he turned to look out the window and suddenly found himself surrounded by three glass walls. The walls extended from the floor all the way to the ceiling, made of the most beautiful diamond-like glass crystal, intricate and richly colored.

I don't know whether you have ever seen crystal glass -- leaded glass, with a very high lead content. The crystal chandeliers you can buy nowadays are all made of this kind of glass, because its refractive index is very high, and it especially resembles the effect of diamonds. When light shines on it, it produces a dazzling array of colors.

Rob said he could not describe the innate sparkle and brilliance of those multifaceted walls. The crystal glass walls were glowing and quivering in gentle orange-yellow, brown, red, and purple. Each color was set within a very thin black frame, just as, on a much rougher scale, a piece of stained glass can be wrapped in twisted lead strips -- just as stained glass is wrapped in a metal strip, and then piece by piece assembled into a colored glass. And when he wrote this record a few hours later, he could still see the light and color from that dream. He had wanted to paint one of his most beautiful dream images, but he did not know how he could possibly do it.

The second was the experience from the following night. After Jane and he had watched a television film, they went to bed at around 1:15 in the middle of the night. The film's subject was about the Second World War. Jane lay quietly on her right side, sleeping, with her back to him. Rob was lying face up at the time, waiting to fall asleep in a very comfortable and calm state, when he became aware of two extremely bright lights beyond Jane's form -- one extremely bright light, within the corner of his eye. He knew the lights came from ordinary table lamps with cylindrical white cloth shades, lamps placed on a small round table like the kind in a living room. The shade of the nearer lamp was larger and taller than the other one, but this seemed irrelevant. He found that very quickly the two lights became so bright he could hardly keep his eyes open. The light was so strong that although he very much wanted to turn his head and look at them directly, he restrained himself, because he was not sure whether he could withstand that intensity. However, he understood that the lampshades were both comforting and protective, and he was neither afraid nor uneasy about this adventure.

He was fully awake at the time, and he knew he was not dreaming. The experience was extraordinary. He also knew that, if he wanted to, he could use willpower to move the light in front of him -- rather than looking at it from the corner of his right eye. He tried doing that, and he succeeded. The light moved in front of him and became even more intense, so much so that he quickly decided he did not want to face its blinding radiance, even with the lampshade. The lights immediately reminded him of his dream from the night before. In the dream he had seen many colors, and this light seemed to be only white, but it was both warm and cool at once, its intensity indescribable, and it truly contained all kinds of colors -- within this white light he saw all sorts of colors, and the brilliance of those colors could be compared with the colors in his dream from the day before.

Many people cannot understand this. Actually, last time when we took everyone on an offline study trip, at the foot of a snowy mountain we did an exercise of looking directly at the sun. Many people looked directly at the sun with the naked eye for the first time, and for the first time saw the multicolored light within the sun -- green, purple, blue, all kinds of shifting colors. Some of the others even saw the sun directly in the palm of their hand. Their feeling was just like Rob's feeling -- although he did not look directly, he could sense that within the white light there was multicolored light.

While Jane slept beside him, Rob enjoyed the experience for a while, and then he himself slowly fell asleep. The next morning, Jane added some quite unexpected insights to his own understanding of what those lampshades represented, which surprised Rob. Seth also discussed Jane's remarks in the latter half of this session.

On Light

Rob then said that this morning he had tried to paint a small oil painting, depicting himself standing before the crystal-colored glass wall he had seen in a dream. Painting the self-portrait itself was not the problem, but in the end he found it deeply frustrating—using oil paints alone, he simply could not capture the iridescence of that dream wall of light and color. By the time the Seth session began, he was stuck there. Should he throw away the half-finished painting, or try to complete it? Of course he could try again tomorrow morning, but somehow he was unwilling to admit tonight's failure.

At that point Seth came through. Seth said good evening in a whisper, and then said that the topic for now would be light. Seth was also very considerate; he knew Rob was interested in light.

Seth said, as I have told you before, there is an inner psychological universe, and your own universe emerges out of that psychological universe. And that inner universe is likewise the source of Framework 2; it is the cause of all physical effects—the occurrence and origin of all events in the material world come from there. And behind all physical laws, it transcends all physical laws. Such an inner universe is not only different from your own universe, but it requires an entirely new physics before its reality can be truly and practically explained. This inner world cannot be explained or understood with your present physics; you need a new physics.

And such a development, in turn, must first be preceded by the birth of an entirely new philosophy. He said, do you understand—physics cannot develop first; philosophy always walks ahead of physics. In a certain sense, philosophy and physics are the same; both are different ways of explaining the world. But why must philosophy walk ahead of physics? Because it is not limited by physical experiments and environmental conditions. It first gains a cognition of this world from its inner thought, and then it guides science to explore in that direction. It is like a searchlight, saying, first shine the light here, and then those scientists, like actual workers, follow the direction of the searchlight to seek out the questions people are interested in. And without the illumination of philosophy's searchlight, scientists would not even know in which direction to develop.

This is what people often say: when scientists struggle to climb to the top of the mountain, they find that philosophers have long been sitting there enjoying the view; and when philosophers are feeling pleased with themselves, in fact at an even higher place, theologians have long been watching this farce of theirs. This is only a vivid analogy, but what it wants to tell you is that philosophy is far ahead of science.

Seth said, rather than saying that such a development exceeds human ability, it would be better to say that, from humanity's present standpoint, this involves a manipulation that is actually impossible to carry out. Rather than saying it exceeds human ability, it would be better to say that human beings simply cannot do it—at humanity's present level of science and technology, they simply cannot do it. Relatively speaking, theoretically, people could in the blink of an eye move to a more advantageous standpoint—the moment your beliefs change, the moment your value system or your cognition of this world changes, you can stand upon a very advantageous standpoint, one that would allow you to understand those things of the inner world that your present science can never understand. Theoretically, it is possible.

But at present we must for the most part use analogies, yet we have no choice but to use analogies to help you understand it. Because those analogies may perhaps guide Ruburt, or guide a few other people, to a more favorable viewpoint, so that a certain kind of leap becomes possible—your consciousness can arrive at a new, higher, more advantageous platform, and through that you can better understand the inner world. But you cannot do that yet. He said that the reason he uses so many analogies is that he hopes to guide you and Ruburt, and also the few people who read the Seth material, to reach such a height, so that that kind of leap becomes possible. Only by standing at that point can we gain a deeper understanding of our inner world.

But do you understand, those leaps are not only intellectual leaps—not only leaps in your logical reasoning and intellectual understanding, but also leaps of your will and intuition, all fused and concentrated together. In terms we can ordinarily understand: if we want to understand our inner world, our consciousness must ascend in dimension to a certain degree. This leap of consciousness must depend on three things—first, your knowledge, wisdom including the understanding and practice of knowledge; your wisdom must be sufficient. Second, your willpower must be firm, because in this process of exploration, you are exploring in an entirely new and unknown territory; you must firmly believe that the thing is there, otherwise you will be unable to see it or perceive it. Such firm willpower, including the willpower to face setbacks and difficulties, is extraordinary. And then there is a kind of intuition—you trust your inner perception, you trust the intuition and inspiration your inner self gives you, and you combine intuition with knowledge, logical reasoning, and these abilities, and then add unwavering willpower, all fused together, and you can reach that point. Only at that point can you have a preliminary cognition and exploration of the inner world; otherwise humanity cannot get to that place.

The Source of Light

Then Seth said, the light you asked about -- Rob, weren't you wanting to ask about light? He said this light, in its own way, comes from that other inner universe. The light we see in this world -- its source comes from the inner world. Remember this sentence -- the light we see, its source comes from the inner world. You might ask, why is this important? It is different. Our science believes our light comes from the sun, but Seth tells you that all light, in its own way, comes from that inner universe, not from the sun. This sentence is not easy to understand all at once.

He said in your world, light has certain properties and limitations. It can be perceived by your physical eyes, and to a lesser degree, it is also perceived by the skin itself. You humans sense light with your eyes, and the light you sense has many limitations. For example, only within a certain range of wavelengths can it be perceived by your physical eyes -- beyond this wavelength range, your physical eyes cannot perceive it. You cannot see infrared with your naked eyes, nor ultraviolet, let alone what lies beyond infrared or beyond ultraviolet. But now we humans have invented many instruments that can see infrared and ultraviolet, and of course we can also see many things our naked eyes cannot, like radio telescopes. Usually our skin can also sense the presence of light to some degree -- this is true -- many people's skin reacts to light exposure. Although your eyes cannot see it, that feeling of sunlight on your body -- many chemical reactions take place in your skin, and these chemical reactions themselves let you feel whether you are in sunlight or not.

In your world, light all comes from the sun; it is an external source. And in your world, light and darkness clearly appear to be opposites -- where there is light there cannot be darkness, and where there is darkness there cannot be light. But he said when you were still living in the apartment, Ruburt caught glimpses of some of the laws involved. Once when he was trying to write a poem about something that cannot be put into language, something language cannot understand... He said Jane once wrote a poem that could not be explained in words. But neither Jane nor he could find that poem later; they remembered there was such a poem, but they could not find it.

He said, in your terms, within darkness there is light. I do not know how to explain this to you -- this explanation is very difficult -- but what I want to tell you is that within what you consider darkness, there is light. This is something our cognition simply cannot comprehend.

He went on to say, light does not only manifest in concrete forms -- light is not only what we can see, luminous bodies, reflective things, these are all manifestations of light, manifesting in concrete forms. So even when it has no concrete form, light is still everywhere. And inner light is fundamentally far stronger than any physical kind of light, and all colors emerge from within it. When light has concrete form, your physical eyes can see it; when light has no concrete form, your physical eyes cannot see it. But just because you cannot see it does not mean it does not exist -- it is still, like the light in our natural world, everywhere and omnipresent. And this omnipresent light that has no concrete body or form is stronger than any concrete physical light -- stronger in terms of energy. And all colors are contained within that light which has no concrete form.

He said the colors you perceive represent only a very small part of the entire physical spectrum -- we all know this, our visible spectrum occupies only a very, very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But the physical spectrum you recognize also represents only an unimaginably small part of another, more complete spectrum -- a spectrum that exists beyond the laws of the universe. The light our human eyes can see has wavelengths only within a narrow range of a little over 480 micrometers to a little over 700 micrometers¹. What is longer than that wavelength is called infrared, and what is shorter is called ultraviolet. Whether longer or shorter than that wavelength, our naked eyes cannot see it. If the entire physical spectrum occupies only an unimaginably small part of the larger spectrum, then what we humans can perceive is truly beyond description.

Then he went on to say, the so-called empty places -- the places you consider empty, whether it is the space in your living room between objects, or the seemingly void space between the stars and galaxies in the cosmos -- these are all a kind of concrete image of space, or a false appearance. Because all space is filled with units of consciousness, suffused with a kind of light, and the fire of life itself is ignited by this. All empty places, these so-called vacuum, pitch-black regions of the universe, are everywhere filled with units of consciousness. And these units of consciousness themselves are suffused with a kind of light, a light invisible to the naked eye, and our fire of life is ignited by this light. You ask where life comes from? This is how it comes.

The physical senses must filter out this perception -- we must not be able to sense these things; we can only sense what is visible to the naked eye. But just because you have filtered it out does not mean that light does not exist. It is simultaneously omnipresent, and it is a knowing light -- a knowing light, a light of awareness.

Just as Ruburt perceived in the posthumous journal of an American philosopher -- The Worldview of William James² -- in Chapter Ten of that book, if you are interested you can go look it up -- it discusses this knowing light. On certain occasions, such as in near-death experiences, but often only during conscious out-of-body experiences, a person can perceive that kind of light. So why do some near-death experiences involve feeling that intense white light drawing them in, or being bathed in an intense white light -- that light is what Seth is talking about here. Why? Because you have already died; at that moment there are no eyes, no physical senses; it is entirely your consciousness that is sensing, and the content comes from the light of the inner world.

For example, in some out-of-body experiences, Ruburt saw colors more dazzling than any colors in the world, and you see the same colors in dreams. He said once Ruburt went to the supermarket, and after he entered that kind of extrasensory experience, he said, how beautiful, every person is so beautiful, like angels, and this thing is beautiful too, and this tree is beautiful too, the whole way was just like having taken a psychedelic drug -- everything looked so beautiful, and those colors were indescribable. It is the same in dreams.

Some people in some dreams -- I do not know if anyone has experienced this -- when you have studied some spirituality, or you have simply read the Seth books, some of your dreams will be extremely vivid, even more vivid than things you experience in waking life, and some of the colors and things in the dream are indescribable. Sometimes even when you are meditating, or during an out-of-body experience, the colors you see cannot be found in the real world. That kind of purple is not the purple you understand, and that kind of blue and yellow are not what you can understand either -- they are richer, denser, more textured, more like a living color. It radiates its color from the inside out, blooming with the vitality of life.

He said that is the kind of color Rob wants to paint, a part of the larger spectrum perceived by your inner senses -- that is only a larger range of color that your inner senses can perceive. Your physical eyes can only see such a narrow range of colors; your inner senses can see a much broader spectrum of color, and those colors are far more vivid and more beautiful than what your physical eyes can see. And in dreams, you do not rely on your physical senses at all -- in dreams you do not see with your eyes; you see with the inner senses, so those colors exceed the range of color your physical eyes can perceive.

Dream Interpretation

Seth began interpreting Rob's dream. He said your worries were reflected for the first time. Both of you were concerned about this issue of male virility and aging, because Rob was no longer young at this point, around sixty years old. So you said you saw the two of you in a cheap store -- that merely represented the commercial world, where goods are sold. Did you still have value there? Why did you appear in this cheap-store dream? Because you felt like a commodity yourselves. What kind of commodity? Your male virility. In this physical world of yours, that is what determines a man's value. So when you worry or fret that your male virility is gone, you identify with that, or subconsciously believe that your value is gone too, and so you become cheap, and you end up in a cheap store.

Each of you had to undergo an experiment, a test to see whether you actually had value. Other people saw you, but they did not care about you -- this shows that you yourselves were worrying, but it also expressed your feeling that the world perhaps did not really care about you. This "others do not care" has two layers of meaning: one is that only you yourselves are worrying, and others are not worried at all; the second is that others simply do not care about you, no one cares whether your virility is there or not. In other words, your wives do not have greater expectations of you either, and other people are not that concerned about whether this virility is there or not.

As a result, you did not carry out the experiment. You saw a vision of glittering glass. Seth said, you actually had no concept of this experiment; you only knew that you had to take this test again, but you had not thought about exactly how to test it, and it was not your turn yet. But you saw this glittering glass -- it had luminous colors and a seven-colored spiritual light, rich and complex, representing the true source of life and sexuality itself. The very source of life and sexual energy comes from this multicolored spiritual light. In this expanded multidimensional puzzle, sex is only one facet -- letting you see that within this colorful inner world, sex occupies only a very small facet, just one facet among many. You should not treat it as a reflection of your value. And that colorful glass wall reflecting so much brilliant, dazzling light represents the fact that you yourself are a representative of just such a multicolored light, and your sexual ability is only one part of it, not your whole.

Then he spoke about the lamp episode -- when he woke up, did he not see two glowing lamps? He said here you did what you were supposed to do -- you observed that inner light, saw the inner light within the white light, saw the colors; those were all things you were supposed to do. And that lampshade had two purposes. Why could you clearly sense that the light was coming from inside the lampshade? Why did you not feel it was a direct light source? Why put a shade over it?

As you surmised, he was giving you an image that made you comfortable -- because that life comes from the light of the source of life, and you worried it was too strong, so you yourself added a lampshade to it, and then you felt it would be safer this way, not shining directly into your eyes, as if you were wearing sunglasses.

However, regarding the connection between the lampshade and the Nazi experiments in World War II using human skin to make lampshades, Ruburt was correct. Because last night they were watching television, and they watched a Nazi film about World War II, and in that film it was mentioned that during World War II the Nazis had made lampshades out of human skin³ -- they flayed human skin and made it into lampshades. He said Ruburt's analysis was right. Last night on television he also saw films about asexual reproduction and Nazi atrocities, which made you curious again about the nature of life and human immortality -- you discovered that life could reproduce asexually, and the association with asexual reproduction arose from the old news story about lanterns and lampshades made of human skin. Although your lampshade merely represented those human-skin lampshades, and it was made of cloth, the association was underneath, and it also represented your feeling -- even though those people were tortured to death, they did indeed live again. They were not annihilated; their consciousness did indeed turn on like a lightbulb in a new lamp.

So that light connected life and death, and that light also represented pure awareness. Once Seth explained it, this experience immediately rose to a higher level. You knew inwardly -- those people who had died from abuse, who had been flayed alive and made into lampshades, although they died physically, their consciousness did not die. When you turned on the light of this human-skin lampshade, it was as if they came alive again, as if their consciousness was revived at the very moment the light shone out from this human-skin lampshade. Although in your feeling you did not perceive it as a human-skin lampshade, but as a white cloth lampshade, inwardly you did have this connection. This is also connected with what was said in the previous session about the dream body's feeling -- that when an animal is killed and eaten by another animal, it does not actually die; its soul, its spirit body still exists.

The Inner Senses

Seth explained Rob's dream in terms of color and light, but not completely, though he already spoke quite thoroughly. Then he said, when it comes to an inner psychological universe, it is very difficult for me to explain what I mean -- at this level, Seth himself did not know how to explain it either. But in that reality, psychological activity is not limited by any physical laws you know.

For example, thoughts have attributes you do not perceive. In that inner world, thoughts have other attributes as well. We know what thoughts are like, we know what ideas are like -- these are all things we understand. But thoughts have other attributes too, and Seth said, I do not know how to tell you -- I cannot put into words what other attributes thoughts have, because everything you can think of, you have already thought of, but what you cannot think of, I also cannot tell you in words. I can only tell you that those attributes of thought not only affect matter, but also form their own larger patterns outside your reality.

Let me just make up a random example to blow your mind a bit. Say you want to eat pizza -- just that one thought, so simple it could not be simpler, might mean that in another space-time, you have already become the owner of a global pizza chain -- all because of that one thought of wanting to eat a certain kind of pizza. Or you might have created a planet, and that planet is entirely covered in pizza. This is to help you understand the so-called "larger patterns" -- far beyond anything you can imagine. And they follow their own physical laws. In that inner universe, thought has its own physical laws, unaffected by any laws of our material world.

He said that throughout your life, in other dimensions you add to or build up your own thoughts -- from birth to death in this lifetime, in other dimensions you are constantly adding to and constantly creating your own reality. But you cannot perceive it. The you in this world cannot perceive the realities you create and build in other dimensions.

After a long pause, he again did not know how to say it. He gave an example: the paintings you see exist there, and every aspect of them is as real as the paintings in your studio. He said to Rob -- Rob is a painter -- the paintings you are thinking of creating in your mind, the ones not yet painted, all exist in that inner world. Although it is only a conception, you saying, I want to paint a picture, and it is not yet painted, in your inner world it has already come out. That painting is as real and as valid as the paintings in your studio in this physical world.

Then he went on to say his most classic line -- there is light you cannot see, there is sound you cannot hear, and there are sensations you cannot feel, but they all truly exist. All of these belong to the realm of the inner senses.

The inner senses represent your true power of perception, represent your inherent nonphysical perceptual equipment. The inner senses are your true perceptual system, and what they perceive is what you truly should be perceiving. From a certain angle, your inner senses are like a nonphysical apparatus -- you have a set of such equipment, just as you have eyes, nose, and ears, treating the outer senses as a kind of perceptual equipment; you have these inner nonphysical perceptual devices, and they are the inner senses.

You can fairly easily distinguish physical perception -- you can see, you can hear, and it is easy to distinguish; everything you see and hear, you can tell apart. If you close your eyes, you cannot see. Although in the past I have described the inner senses by separating their functions and characteristics -- Seth said that previously the inner senses were divided into nine kinds, introduced in detail at the end of the first volume and the beginning of the second volume of The Early Sessions -- basically they operate in such a way that, from your way of thinking, it would be very difficult to separate one from another; they operate together as one.

It is not like your outer senses, which can function separately and can also function together. For example, when eating something, your taste and smell work at the same time -- when you have a cold, food does not taste good, because your sense of smell is gone and only taste remains; if even taste is gone and only touch remains, with your tongue and the food churning in your mouth, eating becomes even more unpleasant. One symptom of this COVID pandemic is that many people lose their sense of taste and smell⁴. Those people have shared -- when eating, it is like chewing plastic pellets, impossible to swallow. Because there is no taste and no smell, many people in this situation lose weight rapidly, because they truly have no appetite to eat. Would you say that when he is hungry, he does not eat? Do we eat because we are hungry? Or do we eat because we smell that delicious aroma? Or because our mouth is craving, wanting the taste of that food? This is a metaphysical question. In any case, the actual result is that when a person loses taste and smell, he becomes very averse to eating and loses a lot of weight in a short time -- many people lost twenty or thirty pounds, because they truly had no appetite to keep eating.

But the inner senses are not like this; they cannot operate separately, they can only operate together. Although when Seth explained them, he described the nine inner senses separately, when they are used, they work together -- they act in a perfect spontaneous order, aware of all synchronicity. In your inner world, the entity can be simultaneously everywhere at once, and it is aware of all synchronicity. So it can feel the entity's simultaneous omnipresence -- it is present in all places, and your inner senses see this world in that way. Your inner senses can perceive everything at the same time, unlike us, who experience one thing after another according to the sequence in which events occur; they feel everything simultaneously.

Your world is composed of such entities -- the units of consciousness that form your body. What forms your body are units of consciousness, and what forms this world are also units of consciousness. And your inner senses, by feeling these entities' constant, simultaneous omnipresence, can feel all things and all existence. This is the most essential difference between your inner senses and your outer senses -- your outer senses can only experience things one by one according to the order in which events unfold, while the inner senses experience everything simultaneously.

He said you have information that the conscious mind cannot retain -- the information obtained by the units of consciousness, the information they store, is something your conscious mind cannot understand and cannot retain.

Please wait for us a moment; there was a pause of one minute. But these units of consciousness accumulate on their own, forming psychological beings -- these small units of consciousness accumulate, units of consciousness become EE units, EE units become atoms and molecules, step by step growing larger and larger, forming all kinds of physiological beings, whose number is far greater than the number of stars in your galaxy. The Milky Way has roughly four hundred billion stars⁵ -- only one sun counts as a star; a stellar system like the solar system has only one star. He said the beings formed by these units of consciousness are far more numerous than the stars in the galaxy. Actually, they are far more numerous than that; this is just to give a concept. The Buddha often used the sands of the Ganges as an example -- the sands of the Ganges are extremely numerous, and Ganges sand has a natural purifying effect, which is especially miraculous, because sand has the function of filtering and purification, so the water of the Ganges itself has a self-cleaning function. The abundance of Ganges sand is common knowledge among Indians, and when the Buddha taught, he often used the sands of the Ganges as a metaphor. Same principle here -- do not get hung up on the numbers; it only tells you that they are infinite.

And every such psychologically formed formation -- every unit of consciousness, and every larger composite unit formed by units of consciousness, such as atoms, molecules, cells -- has its own identity; each one has a sense of identity. If you like, you could also say each one has its own soul. Within the structure of all existence, each has its own purpose -- every soul, within the existence of the whole universe, has its own purpose.

Here it circles back to the very beginning of this chapter -- this chapter began by discussing this question. You ask what the purpose of this universe's existence is, what the purpose of every reality's existence is, what the purpose of every dimension's existence is. Seth said, this purpose I cannot explain to you in your human words, just as the purpose of every person's existence is the same -- because this purpose is existence itself. Since you cannot understand its existence, how can I explain its purpose to you? You cannot even understand the existence of human beings and this physical universe, so how can I explain to you the purpose of the existence of other universes and dimensions? So do not go probing into others; each one has its own purpose of existence -- atoms have the purpose of atoms' existence, kittens have the purpose of kittens' existence. And do not use human thought to speculate about it; it is not something the human mind can understand.

Yet what is truly strange is that we humans insist on using our own thoughts to explain the existence of others -- to explain the existence of the universe, of the stars and the seas, of the atomic micro-world, of biological cells, to explain the existence of every animal and every species, and we ourselves have made up many, many stories for them. Just treat it as a story; none of them is the true purpose of their existence -- all of it is what we humans have assigned to them.

About That Painting

Seth said, but tonight we have reached the limit of what we can discuss on that subject—tonight's subject is light, and this has already reached the limit of what I can say about the topic of light. Then we need some new examples to explain those concepts. I have run out of words, let me think, I will find some new examples, hoping to help you understand those concepts—the concept of the source of light, the concept of the nature of light.

Then Seth said, what I want to tell you is that light itself represents that inner universe, and the source of all understanding. You can think of that light—not the light our eyes see, but that formless light that all units of consciousness radiate, that has no concrete form yet contains all inner potential—as the field light of the entire web of consciousness. That light represents the entire inner universe. Where does your inner universe come from? From that light. What is that light? That light is the light of consciousness radiated by all units of consciousness. All understanding—not just all human understanding, but the source of what all conscious beings can understand—comes from this light of consciousness. But if you keep pressing further, Seth has no more words.

He said this session is over. Rob said, can I ask you a question. Seth said no problem, go ahead. He said, why did that small painting not go very well this morning—still struggling with why I could not paint it.

Seth said, first of all, you feel you cannot express that understanding; those colors are far more brilliant than any physical colors—you cannot express the colors in your dream. So in another way, you are trying to do too literal a translation. Too literal, because a true translation requires colors, even symbols, that you do not have on a physical basis. If you think of that color as being within you, even within your own cellular understanding, then you will not be so careful. Do you understand?

To put it simply: the colors you saw in your dream are actually that inner light, or light of consciousness, which is the source of all physical things. And that light—you cannot find any color in the physical world that matches it or can express it—you cannot even find a symbol for that light. But you are being too literal, insisting on using a concrete color in the physical world to represent that light, or to paint it. You are too careful; you are afraid of painting it wrong.

Let me add what Seth did not say out loud: you do not need to think so much; just boldly paint that color according to your intuition, because every cell in your body can understand it. When other people see this painting, even if their physical eyes see only limited colors, not the colors you painted from your dream, that color is known within every person's cells. In other words, what you feel inwardly, expressed through outward means—you think others can only feel it through outward means, but actually when other people look at this painting, they are also feeling it with both their outer senses and their inner senses. What you paint from intuition already transmits the thing—those who see the painting, on the surface at the conscious level, cannot get that color, but their inner world can get it. You do not need to be so careful about reproducing that color exactly; you only need to put your intent, your energy, your intention to paint this painting onto the canvas, and others will feel it—it does not have to be exactly that color—and besides, that color simply cannot be found in this world.

Seth said, Rob said yes, yes. Then Seth said this session is over. At 9:59, Rob told Jane that Seth's suggestion to regard the dream colors as part of his cellular structure was a wonderful idea. But he did not give up his dream painting. Do you think Rob understood? He said the idea was wonderful, but I have not given up; I want to paint my painting, and he went on painting. So you know how much he understood—it is not that he did not understand, but he did not fully understand.

There are more notes after this. Note twelve is that poem he could not find; we will skip it. The third note tells you that the introduction to knowing light—the light of perception, the light of awareness, the light of consciousness—can be found in The Worldview of William James², Chapter Ten, where there is some specific discussion.

All right, this session is Seth separately bringing up the topic of light to discuss. There are still some details about the topic of light that he did not discuss much. He touched on some of it in the early sessions, equally obscure, even harder to understand than here—because here he was actually preparing for publication, so he lowered the difficulty considerably. Regarding why light is really the way it is, have you ever thought about this question: why is the conversion relationship between energy and matter in our physical world necessarily the square of the speed of light, and not the square of the speed of something else? Why does the speed of light become a conversion constant between the physical world and the world of energy? Why is the speed of light a constant, and why is this constant accurate and precise no matter how we calculate or verify it in our physical world? Why does the speed of light become a key parameter in the conversion between matter and energy? What role light actually plays in our physical universe far exceeds our imagination. Without the light of the sun, would there be our lives? Without light, could you see anything? Without light, could you perceive the existence of this world? What exactly is light?

When we discuss the early sessions later, we will touch on this question. Let us stop here for today. In your understanding of light, if you can understand that the source of light does not come from the sun, but from your inner world; that light pervades all directions; that light is the light of consciousness, not the physical light you can imagine—if you can understand this much, you are already quite remarkable.

注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, it was "such a narrow range of wavelengths between over 480 micrometers and over 700 micrometers"; upon verification, it should be "the wavelength range of visible light normally seen by the human eye is approximately 380 to 700 nanometers, not over 480 to over 700 micrometers." (Source: NASA, "Visible Light," https://science.nasa.gov/ems/09_visiblelight/) ↩

2. Source: Jane Roberts, The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James (1978) (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Afterdeath_Journal_of_an_American_Ph.html?id=zWElAQAAIAAJ) ↩ ↩²

3. Source: Buchenwald Memorial, "Small lampshade" (https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/kleiner-lampenschirm) ↩

4. Source: Akosua Adom Agyeman et al., "Smell and Taste Dysfunction in Patients With COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis," 2020 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32753137/) ↩

5. Source: Pat Brennan, "Our Milky Way Galaxy: How Big is Space?" 2019 (https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/our-milky-way-galaxy-how-big-is-space/) ↩