Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 902

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 parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter centers on the relationship between bodily abilities and beliefs. Using the improvement of Rob's eyes as an example, Seth points out that the deterioration of the senses is not a natural inevitability, but is influenced by beliefs such as "the body is a machine." He talks about how ancient humans lived long lives because they were unrestricted and needed, whereas modern society simultaneously pushes aside both the elderly and the young, depriving them of meaningful work and vitality. He emphasizes that people of every age need meaningful work with a playful quality, and that the body's spontaneous abilities can be restored as a result. He also uses Rob's dream to illustrate that inner progress is going well.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The deterioration of the senses and aging are not natural inevitabilities of the body, but rather the result of social beliefs such as "the body is a machine."
• Ancient humans once lived for several hundred years because they had no limiting beliefs, and because their knowledge and experience were needed and respected.
• Modern society simultaneously pushes aside both the elderly and the young, leaving them without meaningful work, which causes life force to be suppressed and even brings life to an early end.
• At any age, meaningful work is needed, and this kind of work carries a playful vitality and possesses healing and creative qualities.
• Using the body in a playful manner can strengthen the body's natural abilities, while taking symptoms too seriously actually hinders spontaneity.

Main Text

Today we continue sharing Session 902 of Volume 1 of the Seth book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. This session began on Wednesday, February 20, 1980, at 9:08 p.m. Although Seth suggested that part of tonight's session could be placed later in the book, Rob felt that the book should still be presented to him word for word, with the material about dreams removed. Seth continued from the previous session, which ended with the mention that Rob's eyes had begun to reverse and improve, showing improvement as he approached sixty.

Seth said:

Let us speak a few words about the eyes.

He said, you have shown yourself an important example of the natural person's abilities. The natural person's abilities are the abilities that require no external intervention—that is what a natural person is. He said you have shown yourself what kind of magical abilities such a natural person possesses. I have said before that so-called magic and miracles are simply the natural results of unhindered nature. And clearly that example is just that—your most natural way, unblocked by anything, is itself a miracle.

You are now provided, in this physical world, with a body and a picture of its bodily activities, and that picture seems to be taken for granted, as if self-evident. We live in the physical world, and we have a general picture of our body image and how the body moves. Why is it said to be self-evident? For example, we are provided with a picture of the human body, and our physical body reflects human beliefs and is shaped by the influence of human beliefs. The picture of our physical body is actually created by our beliefs and influenced by our beliefs, but we only see the final picture.

For example, doctors expect that vision begins to deteriorate after the age of thirty, and countless cases prove that this deterioration is indeed a biological fact. Then you see such a picture as natural and self-evident, and you think there is nothing more to discuss—when people get old, their vision deteriorates. But in fact, the deterioration of vision with age is the result of being influenced by your beliefs; it is not the natural result of your body. If your beliefs do not interfere with it or influence it, your body will maintain a very good normal state.

Again, your beliefs tell you that your body is primarily a mechanism, a kind of machine-like mechanism, like a machine. Your beliefs tell you that your body is a most admirable machine—scientists repeatedly marvel at it, but no matter how much they marvel, they still think your body is just a machine. As a machine, your body itself has no purpose and no intent, other than being alive, other than the desire to survive, it has no other purpose or intent. As a machine, this machine is a mindless factory assembled from various parts. The "mindless" here refers to the fact that scientists believe the human body has no purpose or meaning of its own (apart from being alive, of course). And the body simply grew together in some predetermined way, with no such thing as willpower, no sense that our body wanted to grow together. Yet science assigns the will to survive to natural survival—scientists also tell you that our body has a primitive drive to naturally want to survive. But that is a survival that has no meaning beyond itself—survival for the sake of survival. Scientists believe that humans have this survival instinct, but apart from survival, they do not acknowledge on a scientific level that the body has any other meaning or purpose. Being alive is the only purpose of this body-machine, and that is the concept scientists have instilled in us. So "no meaning beyond itself" means no meaning beyond survival itself. And because the body is a machine, it is expected that after long use it will inevitably decline—as a machine, its functions naturally decline after long use.

In such a picture, consciousness has very little role to play; consciousness cannot decide anything, because a machine is just a machine.

But in the very early history of humanity (in your terms, after the awakening described in our book—that is, after human consciousness and the body had a greater identification with each other), for several centuries people lived healthily for much longer periods. In some cases, people could live for several centuries, for several hundred years. This is the first time Seth has formally mentioned in his books that humans can transcend modern humanity's understanding of the limits of lifespan—such beings did indeed exist in ancient times. For one thing, no one had ever told them it was impossible. Why could they live for several hundred years? Because no one told them they could not live for several hundred years, so they felt living for several hundred years was normal.

Their sense of wonder in the world, their curiosity, their creativity, and the vast fields of vivid spiritual and physical exploration kept them vigorous and strong.

First, they had no limiting beliefs; second, their sense of wonder, their wonder at this new world, their curiosity, their creativity, and the vast fields of spiritual and physical exploration all kept them vigorous and strong.

Look at the very beginning of the Huangdi Neijing, which asks why the people of high antiquity all lived very long¹, and why modern people cannot live that long—the answer is similar: people's seven emotions and six desires are too many, there are too many limiting things, and these prevent people from returning to a natural state.

On the other hand, the elderly were very much needed and respected because of the information they had acquired about the world.

In addition to their curiosity, their exuberance, and their physical strength, they were needed and respected by others, and this was also a major reason for their longevity. If they had been constantly despised and loathed, they could not have lived that long. They were needed, and they taught the later generations, generation after generation. Suppose they all lived eight hundred years, with one era every twenty years—think about how many generations of descendants they would have to educate? Forty generations. In China we say "four generations under one roof," but they had "forty generations under one roof." In such experience, in educating children, how much richer would that experience be—the best teacher only teaches a few cohorts of students, but if one person taught forty cohorts of students, each student brought up from birth to adulthood at twenty, what kind of wisdom would such a teacher have in educating children. So in those times, advanced age held a position of being honored and cherished.

With it came new responsibilities and activities, and the effectiveness of the senses did not fade.

They would have a greater sense of responsibility, and there were activities suited to them that only they could do. Their senses remained as effective as in their youth.

Biologically, renewals of that nature are quite possible.

Biologically speaking, just as your eyes could recover around the age of sixty, such renewal was a very common thing for them; they often renewed themselves.

Seth turned to Rob and said:

You spoke this evening of politicians in the world who are not young at all, and of people who in their later years not only achieved but also opened new horizons.

You mentioned in casual conversation tonight that many politicians are no longer young, yet they still participate in such complex election campaigns and bear the enormous workload that only politicians have. Look at the United States now—Biden is already seventy-seven or seventy-eight², and when Trump ran again he was also seventy-seven or seventy-eight³. By traditional standards, such ages would be considered old even in a nursing home, yet they are still active in politics, campaigning everywhere, giving speeches, debating, meeting with voters again and again, and delivering rousing speeches to inspire others. A man approaching eighty is still inspiring others—what kind of concept is that? Think about the grandparents around you: when they are eighty, do they still have that much energy? Rob's point was, I feel politicians seem to have especially abundant energy. Seth here tells him why—because they are opening up new achievements and opening up new horizons.

People are able to do this because of their individual abilities, and because they are responding to the needs of the world.

The world needs them. Biden is what the Democratic Party needs, and Trump is what the Republican Party needs. No younger candidates could be chosen—it is not that young people did not run, it is that they were not elected. So these seventy- and eighty-year-olds are still needed by their parties and their voters, and they have no choice but to rise to the occasion—the world needs them. When so many people in the world need you, your age is no longer an issue.

And in a way that in many situations a younger person could not manage.

This way of being needed by the world and responding to the world's needs is something many young people cannot manage. What does it mean that young people cannot manage it? Look at their work intensity and their abundant energy. You think you are young, right? Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty—fine, compare your daily workload with the workload of these people, and you will instantly see the gap between you and them. Do not assume that because you are young your energy should be more abundant than theirs, or that your workload should be greater. Look at the workload of these people, and you will know how big the gap is.

In your society, old age is almost considered a state that is not very honorable.

Old age seems not to be a very glorious state. "Not honorable" actually means "not glorious." The dishonorable beliefs about old age often lead people, before reaching the so-called end point, to make the decision—sometimes quite consciously—to end their lives. Because under the influence of such collective social beliefs, people feel that there is nothing glorious about being old, as if they are rejected by society—whether by their own children or by society.

Look at what our society is discussing today. Every day we discuss the problem of population aging, the problem of an aging society. We use the proportion of people aged sixty-five and over in the total population as an indicator of whether a population has entered aging. What is our society doing? It is as if once you get old, you are dragging society down, and you are making a negative contribution to the aging of society as a whole—because as your age increases, the aging of society becomes more severe. What does that imply? It implies that you would be better off dead, so that society could become younger. Society is transmitting such beliefs. This is also why many people die in old age in various ways—illness, accidents, various forms of degeneration—when in fact they are trying to save face for themselves, because they do not want to be rejected. Live to eighty and be rejected, live to ninety and be rejected even more, live to one hundred and be rejected even more, because our society believes they are useless and wasting social resources. This is a voice within our entire society that no one dares to speak aloud.

Yet as soon as humanity needs the knowledge accumulated by its older members, that situation almost immediately reverses, and people live longer.

This is a very typical example. When these elderly people are needed, their lifespan immediately increases. To increase the lifespan of the elderly, and of humanity, is to give them more things to do, to make them needed, to let them do things suited to them. It is not to let them retire at home and do nothing—those are two completely different concepts. Do not think that letting them retire at home will make them live longer; on the contrary, it is exactly the opposite.

In your society, some young people are excluded from the mainstream of life, not given meaningful work, and therefore their adolescence is unnecessarily prolonged.

Seth shifts the topic—after talking about the elderly, he talks about the young. In our society, it seems we do not only push out the elderly; we also push out the young. Look at what kind of work these young people are doing. In America, the workers at McDonald's, KFC, supermarkets—the servers, the cashiers—the people doing the most basic work are basically young people. The places where you see the most young people are Starbucks, bubble tea shops, restaurants. In China, young people are delivering packages, working as junior clerks in companies, doing the most basic jobs. Of course, this does not exclude those with advanced professional skills who are white-collar workers and managers in companies, but these people make up only a very small minority. Most young people are doing meaningless work. Do you think delivering packages has any meaning for him? Can he find the value and meaning of his own existence in it? He cannot. We say that delivering packages is just a different division of labor in society, with no distinction of high or low, and we can all understand that intellectually, but for the person involved, he cannot find his own meaning in it.

Look at all the recent talk about the metaverse, and the future worlds described in books like Cyberpunk and Snow Crash—in the future world, couriers become the most important job, because packages must be delivered on time, and they have very cool vehicles, extremely fast, and weapons to protect the vehicles from being stolen. That is a scene from a futuristic science fiction novel. Coming back to the point, it means that our young people are all pushed out of the mainstream of society, doing very low-level, meaningless work, even though they have the most energy and vitality. The elderly have wisdom and you do not use it; the young have vitality and creativity and you do not use it either. The ones you use are the middle layer—the so-called middle-aged people, the so-called social elite—those between thirty and fifty-something. These people hold all the important positions and posts in society, kicking out the old above and suppressing the young below, sitting securely at the point of greatest social benefit.

This leads to a phenomenon among young people: adolescence is unnecessarily prolonged. So they can only play video games, hang out in nightclubs, and drift around aimlessly. Why? Because they have not found the meaning of life, so adolescence extends from the teenage years all the way to thirty. Look at how many young people around the world are still living off their parents. Seth here points out the reason directly: because you have not given young people meaningful work.

As a result, some young people also die, for the same reasons.

How can young people be like this? Look at how high the suicide rate among young people is now. Why do young people die? It is very simple: they cannot find the meaning of life, and merely being alive is not enough to sustain them in continuing to live.

You believe that the state of being young is somehow also dishonorable.

You also regard the state of being young as dishonorable—young people know nothing, and we often say "a beardless youth is unreliable in handling affairs," meaning young people are not dependable. People used to say the post-90s generation was a lost generation, and the post-00s are also a lost generation, and before that the post-80s were a lost generation. In any case, we are always hostile toward and disparaging of young people, unconsciously assuming they know nothing and can do nothing, and can only do the lowest-level things.

These young people are then coaxed and placated, sometimes treated like amusing pets, and then given high-tech products to distract them, while not being allowed to use their energy.

Look at our society now—is this not exactly the case? Coaxing them, placating them, not talking to them about serious matters. When they ask what the meaning of life is, our entire society chooses silence and gives no answer. A young person living in human society asking about the meaning and value of human existence—is that not the most normal thing in the world? But whether it is traditional education or mainstream media, who responds to the call of young people—what on earth is the point of living? No one. They just coax him, give him a reason to be placated, a reason to be deceived. At the time when he has the most spirit of exploration, you coax him and placate him, treating him like an amusing pet. How many parents treat their children this way: doting on them, indulging them, satisfying them greatly in material terms but giving them nothing in spiritual terms. They think that is already enough.

And then they give them the most advanced technological products—our most advanced graphics cards and computer CPUs are all used to assemble the most high-end gaming computers. What are these things for? To distract them, to let their energy be consumed in games. There are so many young people in the world—out of seven billion people, nearly two billion are young people. What are these people doing? They are being consumed by these games. If these two billion people were all doing things meaningful to the human world, what an enormous treasure that would be. But they are consumed by games. Game companies want to make money, and every company wants to make money, and none of them ever thinks about their mission, their meaning, or what kind of valuable life to give them. They simply do not want them to use their energy, as if they are afraid of their energy being used in the right places.

We keep saying "you should do something proper," but you do not even know what "proper" means. What you call proper is taking the civil service exam or the graduate school entrance exam in China. After passing the graduate exam, people ask you what is next, and you say you will take the civil service exam. After passing the civil service exam and getting into a state-owned enterprise or government agency, the child is already over thirty, and then they ask what is next, and you say next is getting married and having children. Do you think it is bearable to coax a person from his teens to his thirties? You yourself have not even figured out your own life, living in a muddle, and you continue to deceive your next generation with this ignorant lie. Put your hand on your chest and ask yourself, how can you bear it? But our society is just like this.

So we need to make some changes and do some things. Including the work we are now doing with these spiritual homelands, we all want to change the current situation, to use these new ideas and values to re-examine our society and our understanding, including whether there is something wrong with our view of the world and whether it needs adjustment. Does the entire society's ideas and understanding need to be sorted out and upgraded? If our beliefs and ideas are not upgraded, how can our civilization be upgraded? Remember, the upgrading of civilization must be built on the upgrading of worldview and values; otherwise there is no upgrading of civilization. Many people think that the upgrading of technology, the development of technology, will bring about the upgrading of civilization. It will not. Only the change of values and worldview—in Seth's words, only by first upgrading and improving and changing on the philosophical level—will bring about the subsequent upgrading of technology, culture, technique, and civilization.

The old system of sons following their fathers' trades had many unfortunate misuses.

"Following the father's trade" needs no further explanation—it means ranking by seniority, looking at qualifications and age rather than ability.

The young son was given meaningful work, felt he was part of the mainstream of life, and was needed.

Young people should be made to feel, from an early age, that they are needed by society, that their lives have meaning, and at the time when they have the most vitality and creativity, they should be given the mainstream role of driving social development, rather than having their energy consumed in meaningless things.

This session of Seth's is not difficult in itself, but it is very difficult in terms of social understanding.

The so-called youth-worshipping culture, for all its seeming exaggeration of the beauty and achievements of the young, actually results in belittling them, because few people can live up to that picture.

Society glorifies youth culture—how beautiful young men and women are; look carefully at those beautiful girls and boys. Seth's words cut to the heart: it seems you are glorifying youth, glorifying their vitality, beauty, and achievements, but in fact you are belittling them. Why? Because the young people you glorify and exaggerate are not what young people really look like at all—how many of them are like that? Abroad, for example, Justin Bieber became famous at fifteen or thirteen⁴, I cannot remember exactly. Let me ask you, how many people are like him? He seems to be an idol of youth—so do all of you have what he has? In China too, those "little fresh meats"—let me ask you, how many boys actually look like that? If all men looked like that, that would be very interesting. They are glorifying a deformed culture. The same goes for women—everyone goes for plastic surgery, gets an internet-celebrity face, all made to look exactly the same. Because if you do not get surgery, it will not do, because the social mainstream does not allow it. The propaganda put out by this youth-worshipping culture does not show a single normal, healthy image of young people; it is all surgically altered, retouched, even photoshopped—legs made so long, but in real life whose legs look like that? Whose body looks like that? Every girl wishes she could become like a Barbie doll, with curves in all the right places, an S-shaped figure, but how many people in reality can be like that?

Well, if you are not like that, are you not diminished? You feel you are not the spokesperson for this youth culture, not the typical representative being glorified—do you not then feel that you are dragging things down a bit—look, I am a little fat, my height is a little below standard? Now young men are all 185 centimeters and young women 175—what about me? So Seth points out sharply: our excessive propaganda, our excessively exaggerated propaganda about the beauty, sense of power, and achievements of your so-called young people—earning tens of millions a month and hundreds of millions a year as internet celebrities in their teens—how does such excessive exaggeration and propaganda make young people who are truly doing creative work feel? So remember: the exaggeration of beauty and achievement is a deliberate belittling of young people; it does not have the motivating effect on young people that people imagine—it only belittles them.

So both the young and the old often feel excluded from your mainstream culture, and both also share the possibility of accelerated creative vitality.

They are excluded, but their creativity is still there. The most creative people in this world are these two groups: the elderly and the young. They are both at the most creative ages, because the elderly no longer have family burdens, and the young have not yet begun to have them.

The great aging artist or politician always chooses that kind of activity, and uses it to amplify his own abilities.

This continues from what was said about elderly politicians. Why do elderly people like to participate in political campaigns? Because in this way they can demonstrate their abilities—saying I am not old yet, I still have ability. And what about young people? Young people dissipate and scatter their creativity and energy elsewhere, because their age is not yet enough to run for office. Although the law stipulates that anyone over eighteen can run for office, no eighteen-year-old goes to run for election.

There will be a time when the experience of such persons will click together, forming a clearer, more defined new focus, and providing a new psychological structure from which its most splendid abilities can emerge, to acknowledge their achievements in a proper way, or for proper reasons.

One day, the creativity of the young and the creativity of the old will come together, forming a newer focus, allowing our society to see their achievements and their abilities, and only in this state can their splendid abilities be recognized by us.

The human will to live contains a sense of meaning and purpose, and a concern for the quality of life.

The human will to live is not merely about survival; it also carries a sense of meaning and purpose. We do not live merely to be alive; we care more about the quality of living, and more about the meaning and purpose of life—this is the deeper need beneath our will to survive.

You are indeed given a very obvious picture, a picture that seems vividly to suggest the fact that humans steadily deteriorate.

Society has indeed given you a picture: people deteriorate as they age. Yet even in your world, if you look for it, you can see plenty of contrary evidence. There is so much contrary evidence. Rob's eye recovery is only one aspect. Let me tell you a real example of my own: when I was ill in the hospital, I bought many nutritional supplements, and after taking these supplements, many elderly people's hair even turned from white to black. You might not even imagine it. Although in the end, because of the treatment, they may not have pulled through and may have passed away, during the course of treatment, because they took many good nutritional products, their bodily functions did indeed reverse. This is something I saw with my own eyes—a head full of white hair began to grow dense layers of black hair. If you observe carefully, such things are everywhere in our lives. But we do not see them, we do not believe them, we think these are all special cases—that aging is normal and rejuvenation is abnormal.

The Olympic broadcasts on television show us evidence of the great abilities of the young, showing you how good their physical strength is, how good their abilities are, how good their physical fitness is. The contrast between the activities of those athletes and the activities of normal young people is very strong.

Ordinary young people also participate in various activities, sports, and exercise, but the sports at the Olympics are so professional and reach such heights—whether running speed, swimming speed, or high jump height—that ordinary people cannot attain them. This strong contrast is abnormal.

You believe that only through rigorous training and strict discipline, years upon years of training, can those Olympic-level results be brought about, and that seemingly special physical ability merely represents the innate capability of the human body.

That is simply the ability of the person himself. Yet humanity tends to think that this is an ability that requires years upon years of training to attain. In examples like those, athletes through training are finally able to let people catch a slight glimpse of the body's spontaneous ability -- that kind of training is necessary because they believe that kind of training is necessary. Seth emphasizes again: you can attain the same physical ability as an Olympic athlete without training. But you have been indoctrinated with a belief that says you cannot do it, that only those gifted athletes who trained from childhood, training for eight or ten years, could possibly attain such achievements, and that ordinary people simply cannot. Such beliefs cause our bodies, under the influence of our beliefs, to show us the way they are supposed to be -- the way they become after being influenced by belief.

In the material where I talked about suffering, for example in Session 895, I mentioned that illness has its purposes. In your society, it has a face-saving quality -- telling you, "I am sick, I am not incapable, my body is ill." So what I am talking about here is your body's own ability. It is not that for the sake of saving face, or under the influence of society's group beliefs, you have no choice but to end your life through illness, or tell yourself, "I have already aged." That is not necessary.

Your body's original ability is not affected by this. In that respect, the senses do not deteriorate. Age alone does not cause any decline in the body's flexibility, or in your mental abilities, or in your desires.

Your senses do not deteriorate. Age alone does not cause any decline in your body's flexibility, mental abilities, or desires.

Death inevitably comes to every living person. Yet in terms of time and manner, it basically varies from person to person.

Everyone who lives must die, but how long one can live and in what manner one dies differ from person to person.

At any age, meaningful work is important.

You must highlight this sentence. Not just for the elderly, but for young people as well. Young people of seventeen or eighteen, eighteen or nineteen -- you should give them meaningful work. The same goes for the elderly. The retirement age in mainland China is truly too early: for women, if they are workers, they retire at 50⁵; if they are in cadre positions, at 55. For men it is 60 and 65⁶, something like that -- I do not remember precisely, but you get the general idea. You cannot satisfy elderly people with hobbies. Hobbies mean interests and pastimes -- you cannot say that once elderly people retire, just let them do a few things they enjoy, like playing chess, playing mahjong, traveling, and use that to satisfy them. That does not work, just as you cannot satisfy young people with hobbies -- let young people just play games for a while, go clubbing and dancing for a while, burn off all your excess energy -- these things do not work.

And meaningful work means work that also possesses the vitality of play.

What is meaningful work? It is work that in itself carries a quality of play, carries the vitality of play.

And it is in that play itself that there is contained a great quality of healing and creativity.

Here Seth emphasizes again that so-called meaningful work must be work that carries a certain quality of play, not work as a worker on an assembly line. Work that has the vitality of play and creativity -- that work itself carries the great quality of healing and creativity, and it will allow your body to heal itself automatically.

Did everyone hear that clearly? How can you make the body -- suppose you want to do something about extending the body's lifespan -- then find some meaningful work to do. Among those of us who listen to the Seth material, there are many who are quite old, some even already retired, who suddenly came across the Seth material, and then their whole person changed, radiating youth, very young. Because the Seth material ignited the passion within them, letting them see anew the meaning of life and the value of their own existence. They discovered that the decades of life experience they had accumulated were of great help in understanding this spiritual material, because the things they had experienced aided them in understanding these things. When they combined this material with the things they had experienced, they gained deeper insights, and those insights could ignite their inner vitality and creativity. Many people have mentioned in the comments that after retiring they muddled through a few years, and then suddenly found the meaning of life.

In a playful manner, practically speaking, your eyes improved their abilities in a playful manner.

Seth goes on to talk about Rob's eyes -- remember, it is a playful manner. The senses want to surpass themselves, always wanting to see farther and more clearly, and they also learn through experience. For example, you have been drawing more lately, and your eyes have become more engaged -- drawing requires the use of the eyes, and your eyes enjoy their role in that activity. As an artist, the importance of the eyes goes without saying; in the creation of a painting they are immensely important, and the eyes feel that they are needed. Just as the ears enjoy hearing, that is their purpose -- they want to be used, to be needed. Scientists have discovered a characteristic of humans: whatever is not used tends to degenerate. Here Seth expresses the same principle in another way of speaking.

Your own desire to paint joined and reinforced your eyes' natural desire to see.

Your strong desire to paint reinforced your eyes' natural desire to see. The eyes originally want to see, originally want to see clearly -- that is their natural desire.

Of course, when most of you think of the body's symptoms, you look at your bodies with a deadly seriousness, which to some extent hinders inner spontaneity. You place your limiting beliefs above the natural person.

We humans become extremely serious the moment we talk about health issues, extremely serious the moment we talk about health preservation. Let me give an example: it seems that when it comes to health topics, if you are not a doctor or a scientist, you are not even qualified to speak -- you can only shut up. You say you have nursed your own body back to good health, but no matter how well you have done it, you still have to shut up, because you are not a doctor or a scientist, and you have no right to speak about your own body -- only doctors and scientists have the right to speak. Is that not overly serious? When we ourselves feel something wrong with our bodies, the first thing we think of is to seek authority -- only serious matters are treated this way. He will not first think about relaxing and seeing how it goes, or try other approaches -- no, he first runs to the hospital and registers with a specialist. Why? Because he treats this matter with a serious attitude. This seriousness of ours, this so-called rigor, this excessive tension, places our negative beliefs about the body above the body's natural, self-healing system -- you reinforce it by saying, "You are done for, you need to see a doctor, you need the hospital to fix you up, replace the parts that need replacing, take the medicine that needs taking, undergo the surgery that needs doing." That is the kind of belief you hold.

And your dream, that is Rob's dream, the second helper would say, in its own way also conformed to this.

You see, that ship of life sails swiftly and beautifully beneath the surface of consciousness, swimming through the waters of the psyche -- very beautiful. You are progressing very quickly at the level beneath the surface, with few obstacles. Beneath consciousness, you could say you sail without hindrance. And that dream indeed signifies an inner indication of your progress -- that second dream tells you that your inner development is going very well right now; beneath your consciousness, the inner development is excellent, unhindered, sailing without obstruction. That dream is a revelation to you. Then Seth says that part of this session can be placed later in the book. Rob says, I was just about to ask you about that. After discussing another dream, Seth said good night at 10:11.

This session's key points about our health, body, and lifespan, as well as our social attitudes toward the elderly and the young -- the main text ends here.

Let us look at Note 1. When Seth told them that some people in ancient times had lived for several centuries, Rob's first thought was of the longevity of the ancient patriarchs in the Bible, and his second thought was to delete Seth's words entirely so that he would not have to trouble himself over the matter, because it was far beyond human cognition. Those things recorded in the Bible could easily be regarded as ancient myths and legends. But Seth, as such a rigorous and wise being, affirmed the reality of this matter here, saying that indeed in ancient times there were people who could live for several hundred years. Rob and Jane's meaning was that it would be best not to mention it, because the book still had to be published, and once published, how would they face people. But Seth felt no unease about his own statement. And Rob could understand the humorous side of his own initial reaction -- why humorous? Because Seth had been transmitting material for seventeen or eighteen years, and he had never once mentioned that people could live for several hundred years.

Then Rob looked up several Bibles. One only needs to read Chapter 5 of Genesis⁷ to know the recorded longevity of Adam and his nine descendants up to Noah, or the people of the Great Flood era. You do not need to flip through the entire Bible; just turn to Chapter 5 of Genesis, and it will tell you clearly how many years each of Adam's descendants lived after him. Adam really lived 930 years⁸. Adam and Eve's third son was named Seth, and he really lived 912 years. Why is Eve's age not recorded in the Bible? The fifth long-lived person listed after this Seth was called Enoch, and Enoch lived only 365 years⁹. But his son Methuselah lived 969 years¹⁰, the longest-lived person recorded in the Bible. Methuselah's son Lamech lived 777 years¹¹, and Lamech's son Noah lived 950 years¹².

If you turn to Chapter 11 of Genesis¹³, the list of Abraham's ancestors -- starting from Shem, Noah's eldest son after the Flood -- they lived for more than six hundred years. Before the Great Flood, human lifespans were generally eight to nine hundred years. Abraham's ancestors did not live as long as Adam's descendants; after Shem, their ages ranged from about 148 to 460 years. Abraham himself lived only 175 years¹⁴.

Rob's questions about the ancient long-lived people led Seth to spontaneously provide a great deal of material in two private sessions. Seth's first point: in those ancient times, people indeed lived to ages that would amaze us today; many lived for several hundred years. One reason was that their knowledge and experience were extremely urgently needed -- needed by the people of that era. The second reason: they were treated with reverence. They also cast their knowledge into poetry or stories that could be passed down to later generations. Because they lived so long, they were like living fossils, and therefore could pass history down.

Beyond that, their energy was utilized in a different way from yours. They alternated between waking and dreaming states, and while asleep, they did not age as quickly. At those times their physiological processes slowed down. Although this is true -- they slept more and woke less in those times -- their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. The physiological processes slowed, but the mental processes did not. Why? Because they were not idle in their dreams. What were they doing in their dreams? In the dream state there was a far greater communication; those lessons were taught in dreams. He taught his descendants in his dreams, giving them lessons -- that is, these ancient humans taught their descendants while sleeping. As physical existence continued, more and more knowledge was transmitted. They did not only transmit private information, private knowledge, but also transmitted the entire knowledge of the whole group -- not just one-on-one teaching, but also passing on the entire knowledge of the tribe, of that group.

The second note is that the Bible is a conglomeration of prophecy and story. The Bible itself is a mixture of prophecy and story, in which are mixed unclear memories from much earlier times. The Bible as you know it is not the first one -- before it there were many Bibles, formed from several earlier Bibles when people of those times tried to look back, reshape their past, and prophesy their future. The existence of those early Bibles was not written down; they were passed down orally by the Speakers mentioned earlier. He discussed the question of the Speakers in Seth Speaks -- these people could pass down content and wisdom through language. It was only much later that this material was written down, and by that time much of it had already been forgotten. Because the earliest writing and writing tools were not as convenient as they are now -- everything had to be carved into stone, tree bark, or sheepskin, and writing was not as easy as we imagine -- so it was not enough to record all of the Speakers' eloquent, poetic language; most of it was forgotten, and only some core essence could be written down, a simplified version, with all the details gone. This does not even include the fact that when various factions used that material for their own purposes, there were falsifications and fundamental misrepresentations -- many political groups and social groups, for their own purposes, altered, appropriated, even fabricated, and deliberately misled. This is the reason why the Bible we see today looks the way it does.

Seth first mentioned the Speakers and the oral transmission system in the appendix of Seth Speaks.

The following is Note 2, condensed from Rob's dream notes, about his dream of the ship. Rob's dream was like this:

In brilliant transparent colors, I dreamed of a ship, a cargo ship in warm tones and iron orange-red, sinking to the bottom of the sea. I leaned over the surface of the water, observing everything as an observer. I watched the ship pass flatly through the blue-green seawater and sink to the flat yellow-brown sandy seabed. It sank, but the ship did not lie still; instead it began to move, breaking through the sand, almost like a car driving along a road. I saw wisps of yellow sand rise gracefully from the stern of the cargo ship. The fact that the ship could sail underwater like this was a revelation to me. I knew that in some way this was a good omen for my future. I felt very happy. The colors were beautiful, and I really wanted to paint a picture of this dream.

Seth explained the reason: because his inner self beneath the subconscious was functioning very well. The ship still being able to sail beneath the seawater was telling him -- at this time when you think it impossible, your mechanisms are still functioning very well; this was a hint given to him.

注释与核实

1. Source: Chinese Text Project, Huangdi Neijing: Suwen, Shanggu Tianzhen Lun (https://ctext.org/huangdi-neijing/shang-gu-tian-zhen-lun/zhs) ↩

2. Source: The Guardian, "Happy birthday, Joe: 78-year-old Biden to be oldest US president to take office" (2020) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/20/joe-biden-birthday-78-oldest-president) ↩

3. Source: AP News, "Trump marks his 78th birthday with a towering 'MAGA' cake and attacks on his 81-year-old rival's age" (2024) (https://apnews.com/article/260917979ae034f72415f415e8935be6) ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. According to Mike's original words, "If a woman is a worker, she retires at 50"; upon verification, it should be "Starting from January 1, 2025, for female workers whose original statutory retirement age was 50, their statutory retirement age will be delayed by one month every two months, gradually postponed to 55." (Source: Chinese Government Website, "Adapting to Population Development Trends and Making Full Use of Human Resources—Four Departments Explain the Measures for Delaying Retirement" 2024, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/202409/content_6974508.htm) ↩

6. According to Mike's original words, "For men it is 60 and 65"; upon verification, it should be "Starting from January 1, 2025, the statutory retirement age for male workers in China will be gradually delayed from the original 60 to 63, not 65." (Source: Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, "Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Implementing the Gradual Delay of the Statutory Retirement Age," https://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c2/c30834/202409/t20240914_439634.html) ↩

7. Source: Hong Kong Bible Society, Genesis Chapter 5 (https://search.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%E5%89%B5%E4%B8%96%E8%A8%98+5&version=RCU17TS) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. Source: Hong Kong Bible Society, Revised Chinese Union Version: Genesis Chapter 5 (https://www.bible.com/zh-CN/bible/140/GEN.5.RCUVSS) ↩

10. Source: Bible Gateway, "Genesis 5:27" (https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis5%3A27) ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. Source: Bible Gateway, "Genesis 9:29 NIV;KJV" (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+9%3A29&version=NIV%3BKJV) ↩

13. Source: United Bible Societies, Today's Chinese Version 2019: Genesis Chapter 11 2019 (https://www.bible.com/zh-TW/bible/3283/GEN.11.TCV2019T) ↩

14. Source: Bible Gateway, "Genesis 25:7" (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%E5%89%B5%E4%B8%96%E8%A8%98+25%3A7%2C%E5%88%9B%E4%B8%96%E8%AE%B0+25%3A7%2CGenesis+25%3A7&version=CUVMPT%3BCCB%3BERV-ZH%3BNIV) ↩