The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This session begins with early humanity's awakening to physical identity, pointing out that this process brought with it a sense of separation from the inner world. It then discusses the snake as a symbol that combines yin and yang as well as rebirth through shedding its skin, the purpose and intent of units of consciousness, their relationship to action, and the flexible connection between the inner and outer selves; it also explains that war and competition are not inherent to human nature. Humanity's purpose lies in enriching the quality of existence in all dimensions, and abilities such as language and walking are learned automatically in dreams. In the notes, Rob's optometry experience shows that his vision improved.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Early humans, in awakening to identification with the physical body, became separated from the inner world; the snake was seen as a symbol that embodied both yin and yang and the meaning of rebirth through shedding its skin.
- All units of consciousness have purpose and intent, but action comes first; purpose and intent arise in response to the suggestions of action.
- The inner self and the outer self are not a fixed dichotomy; the subjective inner realm gives different meanings to concrete experiences; humans are not innately warlike or necessarily competitive.
- The purpose of humans is to enrich the quality of existence in all dimensions, to understand love and creativity; abilities such as walking and language are already learned automatically in dreams.
- Rob's optometric examination showed that his vision had improved compared with two years earlier, and his original prescription was too strong; this came from relaxation and suggests an overall renewal of the body.
Main Text
Session 901 (Monday, February 18, 1980, 9:20 PM)
Before this session began, Rob mentioned that Jane had been feeling much better physically lately, with some very good spontaneous relaxation periods. She was able to relax on her own now, and her walking had improved considerably. She had also been producing a good deal of creative work, continuing to write her poetry collection If We Live Again, in which the longest poem is called "I Am Reborn Again." That day they had also gone to see Jane's optometrist, and the results were very interesting to both Jane and Rob. This is covered in Note 1.
The First Awakening and Identification with the Physical Body
Seth said that at this awakening — he was referring to the awakening of identification with the physical material body. This was the second of two awakenings: the first awakening was coming to know, from the world of dreams, that there was a dream body; and now this one was the awakening of recognition of the physical material body.
At this awakening to the physical body, man did indeed experience a certain sense of separation from his dream body, which was very similar to it, and from his own inner reality, from his dream world.
He felt that his physical body was very similar to his dream body, but with differences; yet he began to separate from his inner world.
But he was still far more aware of that subjective existence than you are now.
Although he was much less aware of the subjective dream world than he had been in the dream body, and the sense of separation was very obvious, he was still far more cognizant of the inner world than modern humans are. The actuality of his own dreams was relatively obvious to him, and dreams had practicality. For example, dreams would give him a precise image telling him where he could find food. For centuries upon centuries, human beings migrated the way you see wild ducks migrate, and those migratory routes really did follow the paths that had been given to them in dreams — how did they know where to go?
But people began to identify more and more with the external environment. He began to think of the inner self almost as a stranger, unfamiliar. As he identified more and more with the external, the inner self came to be regarded by him as a kind of soul-like existence, as if there were a duality: one self that acted in the physical world, and one spiritual soul that acted in the nonphysical world. It seemed to man that he had two selves, one physical and one soul. He had split himself apart.
The Symbolism of the Serpent
Those early humans regarded the serpent as the most sacred, the most secret, and the most knowledgeable. Early humans really did — you can see now that on many coins, on many staffs, and on some of the symbolic objects of the highest authorities and courts, there is a serpent coiled around a staff representing power. Ancient China also placed great importance on the serpent, considering it to be highly spiritual and very mysterious.
Why was this so? Because in the experience of early humans, the serpent seemed to be a living part of the earth itself. Why? Because they emerged from the belly of the earth, crawling out of snake holes. At that time, humans did not understand what snakes were. It seemed that every spring, snakes emerged from the caves within the earth, born from the hidden source of the earth. People watched with curiosity as snakes appeared out of their holes.
Even now, the serpent is simultaneously a symbol of the feminine and the masculine. In ancient times and now, people have believed that the serpent possesses both attributes. The feminine comes from the womb of Mother Earth, representing the feminine aspect; the masculine is that it can also survive on the surface of the ground. And the elongated shape of the serpent is also a phallic symbol — a symbol of the male reproductive organ. In Freudian interpretation, dreaming of a snake, especially a woman dreaming of a snake, signifies a need and desire for sex. So the serpent possesses the characteristics of both yin and yang.
The shedding of the serpent's skin is also important, because man innately knows that he will shed his own body. The serpent sheds its skin, and man also sheds his skin — but man does not shed his skin the way a serpent does. For man, it is like reincarnation after reincarnation, each reincarnation like shedding a skin.
The Purpose and Intent of Units of Consciousness
Regardless of the degree of consciousness, whether consciousness is large or small, whether it is the consciousness of an atom or the consciousness of a human being, all units of consciousness possess purpose and intent. They are endowed with the creative desire, and the desire to enhance the quality of existence.
The small have small intentions, the large have large intentions. From the atom to the earth, everything has its own consciousness, its own purpose and intent. And such intentions, under the blessing of creativity — under the blessing of this creative desire and the desire to enhance the quality of existence — give them the ability to respond to all kinds of suggestions for action.
What should be noted here is this: action is the essence, but when you act, there is purpose and intent driving it behind the scenes. But remember, it is responding to the suggestion for action. Do not get this backwards — do not think that you act because you first had purpose and intent. It is because you want to act, and then you use intent and purpose to respond to the underlying drive of that action. That is, you want to act, and then you give yourself a reason and an excuse. Human understanding is reversed. Humans think that action comes only after purpose and intent exist first — it is not like that.
On deeper levels, their behavior and their motivation have great flexibility.
For example, human conscious experience can be said to be combined in almost endless ways. Human conscious experience is infinite and inexhaustible. Each person is infinite and inexhaustible, and all of them together are even more infinite and inexhaustible. Therefore, purpose and intent can be interpreted by you in endlessly varied and inexhaustible ways. This is the nature of our purpose and intent.
The Inner Self and the Outer Self
The inner and outer selves do not have a cement-like fixed relationship.
The inner and outer selves do not have a cement-like fixed relationship.
They are not as clearly separated and definitively distinguished as you think. The two of them are joined together, yet can relate to each other in almost infinite ways while still preserving the reality of specific experience. The inner self and the outer self continually relate to each other in infinite ways, while at the same time maintaining your specific experiential experience, yet through the inner realm of subjective life, adding different colors to specific reality.
You experience many things externally, using your body and outer senses to experience them, but your inner self will color them — giving different colors to external experience, that is, giving it different meanings, different purposes, and labeling it differently. This is subjective.
Even seemingly unadorned historical facts will be experienced very differently because of the symbolic content in which they are inevitably immersed.
The same period of history that you consider to be beyond doubt — yet because the people who experienced it were themselves different, their interpretations and experiences of that history are completely different. You may remember that during our study of Busting Loose from the Money Game1, we watched a film called Vantage Point2 — the director used a fixed, specific historical event, one scene, and then different characters within the same historical event had different feelings, different perspectives, and different influences and pushes on the event. That film is actually a very good illustration of this point.
In your terms, a war can indeed be experienced as a terrible catastrophe, a triumph of human savagery, or it can also be taken as a noble victory of the human spirit over evil.
The interpretation of war is completely different because the positions and experiences of the participants are different, and the meanings assigned to it are therefore completely different.
Then he paused for a long time, and said very earnestly: We will return to the subject of war later. But here I would like to mention that man is basically not endowed with warlike characteristics. This is something that modern science or evolutionary theory has imposed on man — imposing on man the idea that he must be warlike and competitive.
He does not naturally seek the destruction of his own life or the lives of others. There is no war of survival of the fittest.
But when you project such a concept onto the reality of nature, then you will interpret nature in that way, and interpret your own experience of living with nature in that way. Man is not born with warlike attributes, nor does he need a war of competition with nature, nor does he need to emerge victorious from competition in order for humanity to survive. There is no such need. But once you accept such an idea and viewpoint, then when you look at the world, it really does appear that way. You really will feel that you are in a competitive relationship with nature, and that you are also in a competitive relationship with other species — for no other reason than that you have accepted such a viewpoint.
And Seth emphasized again: essentially, there is none.
Man does have an instinct and desire to live, and he also has an instinct and desire to die.
Humans only know their instinct and desire to live. What they do not know is that they also have an instinct and desire to die. And this applies equally to other living beings.
Each creature, in its own life, engages in a cooperative adventure with its own kind and with other species.
This is a phrase he often uses — that all of us together, with all species, are engaged in a cooperative adventure. What kind of adventure are we undertaking? We are experiencing and tasting, creating and feeling this adventure. While alive, man is in a cooperative adventure with all of his environment and with the species around him — remember this phrase, it appears many, many times. And when he dies, he also acts in a cooperative manner. Why? Because he returns his physical body to the earth, and his death provides living energy for countless other lives. The most famous term for this is "whale fall" — the whale fall of a whale. You can look it up. Whale fall is the most classic and most incisive demonstration of this matter: when a whale dies, its body of dozens of tons becomes a treasure trove of energy and food upon which countless marine organisms depend for survival.
The Purpose of Man
Specifically speaking, the purpose of man — remember, this "purpose" is in quotation marks. Why quotation marks? Because it refers to a higher purpose, not the purpose as we humans understand it.
Is to enrich the quality of existence in all of its dimensions.
The purpose of human existence, or the meaning of life, is not to improve the quality of you in this dimension, in this world of yours, but to improve the quality of existence in all dimensions. You need to understand this. Fundamentally speaking, this is one of its basic attributes — it is a multidimensional attribute.
Spiritually speaking, its purpose is to understand the characteristics of love and creativity.
From the perspective of spiritual learning, it is learning to understand what love is, to understand how to create, and to use love and creation to experience this love and to experience this process of creation. So you can see the importance of love, and the importance of creation.
And intellectually and psychically, to understand the source of its existence.
Through such exploration, on the rational level, on the intellectual level, and on the psychic level, it simultaneously seeks to understand the source of its existence — one through reason, one through the psyche. Then:
And to lovingly create other dimensions of reality of which it is presently unaware.
It carries love, and creates worlds in other dimensions that it itself is not aware of. Do not think that in this physical life, you only create the environment and world around you — every thought and idea of yours, without your knowing it, creates other universes, other worlds, other times and spaces.
In its musings, in the quality of its thoughts, in their flow, it is indeed experimenting with a unique and a new kind of thing, forming other subjective worlds, which then grow into consciousness and song.
This passage of his is written like poetry.
And these consciousnesses and songs then bloom in a dream dimension into other dimensions, other parallel worlds.
Man is learning to create new worlds, and in order to do so, he accepts many challenges. Simply put, in the arising and passing of his own thoughts, without knowing it, without being conscious of it, man has already created countless parallel worlds. This is what Buddhism often says: in a single instant, a single thought contains myriad thoughts, and every thought becomes real — this is what he means here. But at this time, it is impossible for us humans to follow our own thoughts.
He paused again for a long time.
You all have physical parents, and some of you have physical children, but you are all — "one day," in quotation marks — also the psychic parents of dream children.
In the worlds you create with your beliefs and with your thoughts, the people in those worlds, the creatures, the beings — they are like your psychic children. You not only have physical children, you also have many psychic children.
Those dream children in the psychic worlds will also awaken in a new world. They will awaken in their reality, and they will also look around for the first time, and at the same time feel isolated and afraid.
Just as we humans felt when we first awakened in the dream world — but also triumphant. Why? Because their very existence is a triumph.
All worlds have an inner beginning... so your dreams all awaken somewhere.
Our dreams, somewhere, will awaken, and they will become a world. When they awaken, they awaken carrying the desire to create. They are born with a pure new intent — what intent? The desire to create, to create.
Then he said at the end:
Anything that is in harmony with nature and with All That Is has a natural, innate impetus, and this impetus will dissolve all obstacles. So as far as nature is concerned, it is much easier to flourish.
The worlds you create unconsciously awaken carrying the desire to create, and they automatically bring about flourishing. This is an ability that all things in harmony with nature and with All That Is automatically and innately possess. So wanting to flourish is the easiest thing — if you do not interfere with it at all, what it inherently carries is flourishing. Do not artificially control it.
Language Is Learned in Dreams
You all now know of activities such as automatic speech and automatic writing, and sleepwalking... these in modern times all give man very important suggestive evidence of his earlier relationship with the world and with himself.
Automatic writing, automatic speech, including automatic bodily movement and sleepwalking — these actually hint at how early humans interacted with the world and how they moved. At that beginning, at the very beginning of the universe, sleepwalking was once a very common experience — he has said this many times before, far more common than now. There was a sleepwalking period, and we were all sleepwalkers.
In it, the inner self was really teaching the physical body to walk, and thus it prevented the newly emerging, physically oriented reason from asking too many questions, which would have hindered the smooth spontaneous movement of the body and gotten in its own way.
In the sleepwalking state, your inner self was teaching your physical body how to walk and how to use the body. This is very important — because in the process of the inner self teaching the body to walk, it avoided the conscious ego having to mobilize every muscle, every blood vessel, every bone's movement, and it also prevented the rational ego from constantly asking questions: How can I walk? Which muscle do I use to walk? How do I mobilize them? Such prevention was actually to allow your consciousness to develop better. Otherwise your consciousness would not have time for anything else — just dealing with all these trivial matters of eating, drinking, and bodily functions would have kept it utterly overwhelmed. But you do not need to. This is the meaning of dreaming and sleepwalking — in the development of humanity, there had to be a sleepwalking period. Its function was to let your body and inner self control your body, to give your body a body consciousness, so that it could automatically accept the control of your consciousness.
In the same way, man is innately endowed with the propensity for language. Man is innately able to speak, and innately endowed with the propensity for symbolic communication through drawing and writing.
Man is innately able to communicate through writing and through drawing. Man is innately so. First of all, in his dreams, he began to speak in an automatic manner.
In a way, you could almost say that he was using language before he consciously understood language.
From a certain angle, before he could speak, he already could speak — he had been trained in dreams. It was not learned only through action — unlike what human scientists' experience holds, that language was produced through labor. All scientists now believe that language was produced through labor. I tell you again: no. Language was learned in dreams. You do not need to learn it through action. And the action itself was teaching him — that is, the action itself was teaching him, rather than him learning through the action. You may not quite understand the difference here, so I will not expand on it further.
He had actually learned it all in dreams. Action was merely practice. He had long since learned it — learned it in dreams. The action itself was simply handing back to him what he had learned, letting him practice it in real situations. It is not, as scientists believe, that humans produced language through these actions and long-term labor communication. It is not that.
If there had been a sharp, rational, overly curious person asking how words were formed, or which movements were necessary, then he would not have been able to do this speaking.
If a person were especially rational and insisted on asking: When I say this sentence, how do the muscles of my tongue move? How do my vocal cords move? How are my lungs and breath adjusted? How can this sentence be spoken through the coordination of these muscles, breath, and vocal cords? If you were such a person, then fine — you would not be able to say a single word. Reason should not play a role at this time. Reason should take a back seat and let your automatic body consciousness operate automatically. Your reason is not for this. If it tries to do this, things go wrong.
But man's drawing is also automatic. You could almost say that he learned language in spite of having reason.
You should find it curious — that man, having reason, such a rational being, could still learn language. Why? If it were done according to the rational method, humanity could not have learned language. Remember what he said. If it were according to scientists' understanding, according to rational development — scientists say that man gradually gained intelligence, the brain developed to a certain degree, and then through reason, through monosyllabic words and then to complex polysyllabic words, language formed step by step — this is what modern scientists say. Look up any linguist and they will say the same. Seth is joking with you. He is asking you: You should be curious about this matter. Why could man, having reason, still learn language? Logically speaking, reason is the greatest obstacle to language. Although when you later learned English or a second foreign language, what you used seemed to be rational things, you actually forgot one main point: you still needed a great deal of time for immersion, and your language learning at that time was only learning grammar and words. You did not learn how to speak or pronounce. So Seth is joking with humanity. He is teasing you — since you have reason and can still learn language, do you not find it miraculous? In other words, having reason, you actually should not have been able to learn language.
So language possesses almost magical qualities.
This point is very important. You must not regard language as merely language. Language itself has very deep meaning within it. In the Chinese Tao Te Ching, it was said very early on: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name3." Here it begins to explain — having a name is the beginning of all things, having no name is the beginning of heaven and earth, step by step. What it wants to tell you is this: when man began to have language, after having this thing, you were actually already on the Tao. The manifestation of the Tao in our human world is expressed through language.
He also cited the words of the Bible:
And the Word was considered to come directly from God.
The word "Tao" in the Bible is the word "word" — that is, the word for "character." But in Bible translations, in the Book of Genesis, it is generally translated as "Tao." For example, in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, it says "In the beginning was the Tao" — in the early classical Chinese translations, the very first sentence of Genesis was: In the beginning was the Tao. The original word for this "Tao" is "word." So at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, it tells you: at the very beginning, there was language. Then, at 10:09 PM, after some other material was given, the content of this session came to an end. So you can see: language is learned in dreams, just as your actions are learned in dreams. And the importance of language is far greater than you think.
Note 1: Rob's Optometry Experience
In the notes, Rob talked about his optometry experience. He said:
Simply put, when I was a teenager, my mother took me to see our family optometrist. My parents had known this man for many years. That kind gentleman, with the best of intentions, fitted me with bifocals at an early age.
This kind of glasses is very common — the top is for distance, the bottom is for near vision. The prescription was not very strong, but once you have the habit of wearing glasses, you cannot take them off. Rob said:
Once I had the habit of wearing glasses, I wore them pointlessly for more than forty years.
He wore glasses all along, until Jane began to transmit the Seth material, which contained these concepts, and only then did he begin to question his need for glasses. Through the Seth material, he discovered that there was actually no real need to wear glasses. He did not deliberately say "I will not wear glasses" — he simply stopped wearing them regularly. Because after coming into contact with the concepts of the Seth material, his beliefs had changed. And when he was writing and painting, the glasses often got in his way. However, because his driver's license noted that he needed to wear glasses, he had to wear them when going out. Other than that, he usually only wore them when he felt tired. At the same time, even though his beliefs were progressing, he also avoided giving himself negative suggestions that his eyes were still imperfect.
Last week, he received a routine notice from his current optometrist — let us call him John — saying that he had not come in for an eye exam in two years. Rob said to himself: ignore this, do not go for the exam. He did not make an appointment, but he began to feel discomfort in his eyes. Although he did not want to go for the exam — he absolutely did not want to — his body suddenly became uncomfortable, whether he wore the glasses or not. Then he felt that the power of suggestion was at work.
So, because someone had canceled an appointment to see the doctor, a time slot opened up, and that afternoon there was time to see John. But he got a surprise:
Because the results of his examination showed that since my last exam — two years ago — my vision had improved. My current glasses were too strong.
This is very interesting — his vision was recovering, and he no longer needed glasses with such a strong prescription. Out of habit, he had assumed the opposite: he thought the prescription was no longer strong enough, and that was why the glasses were uncomfortable. Actually, his eyes had recovered, and the glasses were too strong. John was also very surprised.
At this time, Rob was already in his late fifties, almost sixty. Think about it — how could his eyes suddenly get better? According to traditional science, a person's eyes reach their peak in their twenties and then gradually decline. They cannot get better, only worse. Maintaining the status quo is already considered good. How could they get better and better? So John was also very surprised. Before ordering the weaker lenses, afraid that he had made a mistake, he re-examined the eyes once more to make sure he had not erred.
Rob said:
When I left his office, my spirits were lifted.
Why? Because he discovered that what Seth had said was indeed real — that our bodies can indeed be changed by our beliefs — that even at sixty-something, he could make his eye prescription weaker and let his eyes recover. So after he explained the situation to Jane, he said: "I must be doing something right." And in the private session portion that evening, Seth gave him some very interesting comments about his eyes.
You wanted some affirmation of the vitality, flexibility, and recuperative energy of your body.
Seth said, why did your eyes get better? Because you had always wanted an affirmative confirmation of your body's vitality, its flexibility, and its ability to recuperate. And you also wanted to gain proof once again — that as long as you choose to be an artist, you can do it for your entire life. To be an artist, he must have good eyes. How could he paint without good eyes? So he wanted to prove: you can be an artist for your whole life, no problem.
He said that using the optometrist to tell you this was a very good method.
Because why?
Because you do vaguely worry and wonder whether your eyes are getting worse. Under ordinary circumstances, those symptoms would be interpreted as signs of a problem.
Once we get past our twenties, with any issue involving the eyes, our first suspicion is "Are they getting worse?" You never think "Are my eyes getting better?" This is an ingrained pattern in how we think about things. But in fact it was the opposite -- you found that the so-called symptoms were signs that your eyeglass prescription had become too strong. Because your vision had not merely held steady, but had improved in a most astonishing way, and in a manner that could be proven medically. Through the optometrist, you were told that your eyes were getting better and better.
Then Seth goes on to say:
Your eyes improved because you did learn to relax more. And that improvement occurred first in the area of your primary interest, in your work.
That is, you have already begun learning to relax in your work, and so your eyes also got better. But this represents that you have reached a time for an overall renewal -- he says that your eyes getting better is actually giving you a hint that your entire body is becoming younger.
Do you remember what he was doing in the previous session? In the dream, he went to check on his sexual potency. In fact, he did have concerns about the aging and deterioration of the body. Seth is telling him here: the time has come -- your body has already begun an overall renewal, and your body is getting younger and younger. It is just that your eyes are on your head, and it is not only your eyes that are on your head -- Seth's statement here is a pun. Your beliefs have changed, your thoughts have changed, your brain is also renewing itself, and the other organs of your entire body are also renewing and restoring themselves. So Seth gave him a definite, affirmative answer: the eyes are just something that can be measured. Other parts are hard to measure -- you cannot measure whether your skin is getting younger, and you cannot measure whether your hair is getting younger, or whether your muscles and your bones are getting younger. Of course there are many ways of measuring, but none is as direct as the eyes, because they involve a matter of prescription strength -- a reduction in prescription strength is straightforward evidence.