Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 906

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).

Guided Reading

Viruses are part of the body's overall health maintenance system, and the viruses the body carries are usually harmless or beneficial to balance. The immune system periodically cleanses and activates itself through means such as raising its temperature; when a person is under stress, fear, or threat, the body releases latent viruses as a biological declaration and self-defense. Health is dominant, and illness is a natural adjustment. At the end of the chapter, advice is given on taking vitamins intermittently, and through notes from the early sessions, the relationship between pets and their owners' emotional stress is discussed.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Viruses are part of the body's overall health system, and the viruses the body carries are usually harmless or beneficial to the overall balance.
• The immune system periodically cleanses and activates itself through means such as raising body temperature; fever can enhance immune activity and inhibit viral activity.
• When a person is under stress, fear, or threat, they will mobilize latent viruses within the body to release outward, as a biological declaration and self-defense.
• Vitamins should be taken intermittently: take them for two or three weeks in a row, then stop for two or three weeks; long-term continuous use is not beneficial to the body as a whole.
• Pets are influenced by their owners' emotions and psychic power; when the owner is under great psychological stress and unable to provide reinforcement, it will affect the pet's health and survival.

Main Text

Viruses Are Part of the Body's Health Care System

Today we continue sharing Seth's book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 906, which began on Thursday, March 6, 1980, at 8:52 p.m.

First, Rob introduced their recent situation. He said that Jane and he had both caught bad colds, transmitted by one of the visitors who came last weekend. Last night, because they both felt quite serious, they did not hold the regular session. To be honest, they could no longer remember when they last had a cold. This afternoon Jane said she had learned from Seth that they got sick because they wanted to use the body's immune system -- in other words, those structures needed exercise.

This morning I (Rob) had some vague similar thoughts, which reminded me of the feeling from Saturday night -- our friend kept sneezing in the group. In fact, that was a prolonged aggressive act. He thought sneezing was like viruses being spread out, like an aggressive act. Later we will talk about why it was an aggressive act; actually that person was being defensive.

Jane said that while washing dishes, she kept thinking back and forth: tonight, if her voice could support it, she would like to try to hold a session. Besides, sitting and watching TV all evening also made her feel bored; two evenings a week was already enough.

Tonight's session is not very directly related to the content of this book, but Rob placed it here mostly because the ideas in this session convey useful insights into our social behavior and the health of society. And as I indicated in Note 1, these states can also include our interactive relationships with animals.

When Jane began the session, her voice was a bit hoarse and very soft, but listening carefully, very carefully, I could hear her clearly. Then Seth said:

Tonight's subject is that viruses are part of the body's overall health care system, and are biological statements.

Seth said this is not spiritual life; this is biological life -- biologically speaking, viruses are also part of the body's overall health care system. Seth's discussion of the life of viruses appears in many books and chapters, most extensively in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and it was also touched upon in The Early Sessions. In this session, he specifically talked about the relationship between viruses and the body. I once made a special topic out of this content -- right when COVID first broke out, around February or March of 2020, I made an episode gathering together all of Seth's discussions on the subject of viruses. If you want to find it, you can search for the relevant material on the internet.

He said:

As I have said before, viruses have many uses.

He had said this more than ten years earlier, back in the 1960s; this was 1980 now.

The body contains viruses of all types.

Each of us carries all kinds of viruses in our bodies, including those we consider to be very deadly. But those are usually not only harmless or inactive, but also beneficial to the body's overall balance.

The body maintains its vitality, not only through the physical motion and agility that you perceive, but also through the extremely minute agility, and the extremely subtle inner action, that you do not perceive.

The body's vitality is not only external -- you are very agile, very energetic -- but it is also something you cannot see or perceive, yet it is equally the foundation of your body's vitality.

Within the body's internal environment, and when the body meets the external environment, there is just as much motion, stimulation, and response.

When our body operates in the external world, not only does the external world have many sensations -- cold, wind, temperature changes, climate -- he said the inside of your body is also producing intense changes, with a great deal of motion, but you do not know it.

The body must from time to time cleanse its system.

The body must regularly clean itself, take inventory of its stock, see what is there; raise its temperature, and more strongly activate its hormonal activity. The body often does this -- sometimes it raises its temperature precisely to test its own system, adjust its own system, and cleanse it.

I have talked about a similar topic before. When our body temperature rises by one degree -- for example, normal body temperature is around 36.5 degrees Celsius -- when your body temperature rises by one degree, the activity of the immune system inside the body increases by roughly three to four times, while the activity of viruses is suppressed by three to four times. One is enhanced three to four times, and the other is weakened three to four times. So when you have a fever, you can help your body and boost its immune system. This is why many people get a fever when their immune system is facing an important defense, and why some people have fever symptoms after getting vaccinated -- it is actually your immune system at work, or helping your immune system work, or helping build a stronger immune system, all of which can be achieved by raising the temperature.

So in current thinking, when a fever has not reached too high a temperature -- for example, below 39 degrees Celsius, roughly below 100 degrees Fahrenheit¹ -- basically below this temperature, it is not recommended to take too much physical cooling. But above this temperature, appropriate physical cooling should be done. Why not take physical cooling too early? It is precisely for this reason -- your body needs such a high body temperature to carry out a cleansing operation on the body's immune system, clearing out all the things that need to be cleared. In this way, it keeps the immune system clear, frequently raising the temperature, frequently exercising its own immune system, moving it around, so that it clearly knows whether its defensive range and defensive capability are still effective. This is a very, very effective method of self-regulation.

That system is always in operation, and to some degree, that is one of the ways the body distinguishes itself from non-self.

The immune system is always in operation. It needs to distinguish which are the body's own normal cells and which are foreign things, and it must expel the foreign things. So-called immunity means preventing external invasion; this is the most primary immunity. Therefore, the immune system periodically activates itself to confirm its defensive range, much like an air defense identification zone in the military. Every military aircraft has an identification transponder used to identify the identity of an opposing aircraft, and the country and region it belongs to. In some sensitive areas there are air defense identification zones; once an aircraft not on the approved overflight list -- especially a military aircraft -- approaches, an alert is triggered. Our immune system is very similar to such an air defense early warning system; it periodically needs to run tests to prove that this early warning mechanism is effective. It is not that we have this system but never use it, so that when a military aircraft really invades, it fails to provide early warning and air defense -- would that not be disastrous? So periodic mobilization serves exactly this purpose.

In a certain fashion, that defensive system also saves the body from wasting energy, to maintain biological soundness.

Do not let the immune system be overly active, and do not overuse its power. Just like soldiers in an army, do not over-consume them when there is nothing going on. Raise soldiers for a thousand days, use them for a single moment -- let the immune system be well maintained; do not keep wasting its energy. Otherwise, it would be like not knowing where the boundaries of your house are, and trying to heat up the entire street. You want to get warm, but you cannot distinguish the boundaries, so you heat up the whole street and heat up other people's houses too. In other words, your defensive range is too broad, and that is not right.

So some of those caused by viruses (in quotation marks), are not accepted by the body as a welcome trigger.

Some bodily discomforts that seem to be caused by viruses are actually not caused by viruses; they can be called a trigger mechanism of your body's immune system, using this trigger mechanism to activate and cleanse the immune system.

Viruses Are Biological Statements

He said, Rob and Jane, the two of you are right now in this state -- feeling unwell, but actually the immune system is cleaning itself out, activating itself. However, there are always many more things involved; being sick involves far more than this, it is not so simple.

Because those viruses that you regard as contagious do indeed represent, to some degree, a communication on the biological level. They are biological statements.

They really do achieve social communication on the biological level.

And they have many varieties.

Between virus and virus, between virus and environment, between virus and your body, between cell and virus, there is a social exchange mechanism, just like our human society. In ways unimaginable to us humans, they also communicate with one another according to the manner of social communication, and this manner of communication has many varieties.

When a skunk is frightened, it releases a very foul-smelling gas. A skunk is something like a weasel, but not quite the same -- fatter and plumper than a weasel, and commonly seen in North America. And when humans are frightened, sometimes they react in the same way.

When we humans feel threatened, we produce stimulation, and we also produce a reaction. What kind of reaction?

We humans will release a great stream of foul-smelling viruses ("foul-smelling" is in quotation marks).

Just as a skunk releases its foul odor, when we feel threatened we also release a kind of foul-smelling virus. For example, what is meant by a foul-smelling virus? That is to say:

They actually collect and mobilize from within their own bodies those potentially harmful viruses.

They activate and mobilize all those bad, latent, harmful viruses in the body that had never been activated, biologically stirring up those dormant harmful viruses. And every person carries these viruses in their body -- it is not that you caught them from somewhere; every person carries such viruses. Only when you are not stimulated and your body and mind are in balance do these viruses not flare up; otherwise they will flare up. They are a reaction to threatening stimuli in the environment -- so the more fear, the more sickness; the more dread, the more illness. That is how it comes about.

This novel coronavirus in particular is very interesting. Scientists have discovered through research that the spikes on the novel coronavirus connect with the ACE2 protein protrusions on human cells², and only then find a breach through which to enter the cell. And these spikes or contact points on a person's ACE2 cells have a great deal to do with that person's fear. The higher the fear, the higher the density of those spikes on the cells. That is to say, ordinarily after the novel coronavirus enters your body, if you have no fear, then only a very few cells, an extremely small number of cells, have these spikes, and it can only infect a very small number of cells, and is very quickly dealt with by your immune system. But if the fear in your heart increases the proportion or amount of cells with ACE2 protrusions, then under the same viral exposure, the fearful person's probability of getting COVID is far higher than that of a person whose heart is at peace.

And in self-protection, they release them into the environment to repel others.

That is, the human body releases a kind of foul-smelling virus, gathering up all those bad, harmful viruses in the body and releasing them into the environment, trying through this to frighten off enemies. Because when a person encounters environmental threat, fear, and dread, this is a self-defense system. Amazing, right? Scientists to this day have not discovered that humans have such a mechanism; this is something Seth pointed out. I hope this also becomes a new field and a new direction for scientific development and research -- that fear causes us to activate those harmful viruses and then release them into the air.

This is also something Seth discussed in one of his earlier books. He said that when the great plague swept through Europe, the virus was not, as people imagined, transmitted from one person to another. He said the virus was more like jumping from one person's heart to another person's heart, from one sickbed to another sickbed -- not that one went outside and came into contact with some virus, but that the virus within oneself was activated. You must understand this principle.

In a manner of speaking, this is a kind of biological aggression.

From a certain angle, this is a person's self-protective function -- he releases all his toxic viruses, releasing them into the surrounding space, using them to threaten and frighten his enemies. However:

The virus also represents the person's ridding himself of stress.

When he has this kind of stress, this kind of anxiety, this kind of emotional depression, or environmental threat, he will do this. So we know that stress is in fact the main cause of our illness. I have said on many occasions that stress is simply not being at ease -- the English word "disease" means illness, "ease" means relaxation, and "dis-ease" means being unable to be at ease; people who lack the ability to be at ease will get disease. So here Seth emphasizes again: when you are under stress, you are gathering these viruses, activating the harmful viruses in your body one by one.

It is a statement.

Every time he says "this is a statement" -- statement, in English -- he is telling you that this is an objective fact, an objective fact that we humans could detect if we were willing. So here he says:

It is true.

In times of war or great social upheaval, when people feel afraid, the statement is often made in a very strong fashion.

This release of viruses is like humans making a statement to the outside world -- a statement that we want to rid ourselves of stress, that the stress is too great, that we cannot bear it. Then we mobilize the body's viruses, activate the body's viruses, release them into the surroundings, and make such a statement.

Your friend once went to see the Olympic Games, last month at Lake Placid in New York³. The person who infected them had gone to watch the Olympic competition live. Seeing those athletes push their bodies to the limit filled his own body's vitality with a tremendous charge; he was very excited.

I do not know whether any of you have ever watched a sporting event live. If you watch it on television, you may also have this feeling, but I want to tell you that watching it live and watching it on television are completely different feelings. If you have experienced it you will understand; if you have not experienced it, you will say, oh, isn't it clearer to watch the live broadcast on TV at home? No, the feeling on site is different -- being on site really gives your body a feeling of being fully charged. This is also why tickets to live sporting events are expensive and still sell out, while everyone could sit at home watching the live broadcast on TV, yet so many people still go in person. People who have never been on site do not quite understand; those who have been there understand intuitively -- they get the feeling of being fully charged.

For that and other personal reasons, the person could not discharge the intense energy he felt.

After watching the live competition, that kind of vivid display before your eyes of the explosive energy or physical limits of someone who is also human like you automatically fills your body with energy as well. So in order to rid himself of it, to protect himself, to rid himself of this intense energy, he threw out his threatening biological self-view -- those viruses, which were his defensive weapons.

So returning to the very beginning of this session, Seth said it was a long attack, and that attack refers to these things -- this person released energy he could not bear, in a way he himself did not know, in the form of viruses.

Then Seth smiled slightly:

Your two bodies have not received such good things for quite some time.

Seth calls viruses good things. You two have not had a cold for a long time; this cold virus is just right for exercising your immune systems.

So they eagerly used this thing as a trigger to reactivate the immune system.

So your body eagerly began the action of reactivating the immune system with this virus, and you felt that you had caught a cold.

Many people, after watching the Olympic events, will also have reactions like your friend's.

Not only the Olympics; any live sporting event will produce this reaction. Because they do not know how to use and release their own energy; this exuberant energy that was transmitted to them, they do not know how to use it. It is as if, compared with such threatening achievement, they feel themselves greatly inferior -- there is a feeling of being ashamed of one's own inadequacy.

Many people who watch live competitions are enthusiasts of that sport, to a greater or lesser degree, amateur or relatively professional. But at the Olympics or at a world-class venue, they see that the level of those athletes is far above their own, who knows how many levels higher. At that moment their first reaction is: why is it that I do the same sport, I also like the same thing, why is the gap between me and them so great? There is both a longing admiration and a feeling of being ashamed of one's own inadequacy. Many people watching the Olympics will say a stock phrase: oh, when will I ever be like him? Or, we could never reach his level. Only a very few people will say: I can do it too, I also want to compete in the Olympics.

There are all kinds of unnoticed biological reactions between bodies.

The parts of the body react to one another; note that these are biological reactions, and they are basically social in nature, dealing with biological communication -- between cell and cell, between virus and virus, it is a kind of social communication.

Again, viruses are a method of dealing with or controlling the environment.

When a person feels uncomfortable with the environment, he will release some viruses; when he feels unsafe, threatened, or under great stress, he will do this. This is a natural interaction; do not blame it for being this way -- nature designed it this way, just as a skunk releases a foul odor when threatened.

Since you live in one world... then in the overall, mankind can be healthy, and contribute through labor, experience, and concepts.

We are interconnected with the environment and the people around us. We should naturally and healthily contribute to the whole world through our labor, through our experience, through our concepts. In other words, our contribution to the whole world requires that we have a healthy body. Because if you want to contribute to this world (this "contribution" is in quotation marks), it is not forced; it is something you spontaneously want to do.

So health is the dominant portion.

Normal people are all healthy; this is the mainstream. Health is dominant; you are naturally born to be healthy.

But there are biological interactions between all physical bodies... I do not deny that those biological interactions do indeed exist; those are the foundation of health. And this mechanism includes the interactions of viruses that are not understood, and even during periods of illness.

It includes the interactions between viruses, and also includes illness as a state or a period. For example, if you are sick for three days, this period of illness is also an indispensable link in your interaction with the surrounding environment. In other words, it is impossible for a person never to be sick; being sick is a very natural state. But the vast majority of your life, almost all of your time, you are healthy. Occasional illness is for self-regulation and a mechanism of interaction with the environment; it is a normal reaction.

So do not think: oh, I have studied mind-body-spirit, how could I get sick, I should not get sick -- this view is incorrect. However, if you have studied mind-body-spirit and you are still always sick, then that view is also incorrect. If you are still always sick, that means you have not yet learned well; there are still problems in your beliefs and your cognition. But if you say, I have studied mind-body-spirit and I occasionally get sick, or even sometimes get a serious illness, is that normal? It is normal; this is normal. Never think that you should not get sick -- why should you not get sick? Being sick is a normal, natural reaction.

All of this has to do with man's intent and his cognition and understanding.

Whether he gets sick, how he gets sick, how he interacts with the environment -- all of this has to do with the person's own intent and his own cognition.

But of course the same relationship exists not only between human bodies, but also between man and the animals and plants of the environment.

It is not only this way between person and person; between person and environment, person and animal, animal and plant, there is also communication.

And in the overall, that is also part of the endless biological communication that produces physical experience and vitality.

These illnesses are also part of your endless life experience, because only when you have a physical body can you be sick. In other words, this is an indispensable part of the diversity of your experience; do not regard it as suffering and torment, just treat it as an experience.

So in this regard, the Buddha originally used birth, aging, sickness, and death as the four sufferings to represent human suffering; this is incorrect -- these are normal phenomena of human existence, they are not called suffering. Later Buddhism added four more sufferings to these four, making eight sufferings⁴ -- things like not getting what one seeks, being separated from loved ones, and so on -- these are the eight sufferings of Buddhism. We have discussed this before; Teacher Xiyu jokingly called them the "eight joys of life." He took each of the eight sufferings and gave you an interpretation using a different belief, telling you that in fact these eight sufferings are eight different experiences of life, eight things worth rejoicing in, worth savoring, worth experiencing -- not suffering at all. This is a replacement of cognition and belief.

Advice on Taking Vitamins

This section should be from one of the sessions in The "Unknown" Reality; I can't remember exactly which one. Seth gave Ruburt a tip about vitamins, and this is also very helpful for everyone. This is a piece of advice given to us from a higher dimension:

If you take some vitamins, taking them for two to three weeks is the most effective.

For example, if you are deficient in vitamin D, or vitamin C, or vitamin B, and so on, taking them for two or three weeks is very effective -- in that way they can stimulate and remind the body to get to work, that is, remind your body that you are lacking this thing. But, you need to stop for two or three weeks in between; you cannot take them continuously. In this way, the body will rely on itself to produce those elements that you reminded it it wants.

For example, if you are deficient in vitamin B, and you take it for two or three weeks, that tells the body: you are lacking this thing, and I have supplemented it for you. Then at this point you should stop, stop for more than two or three weeks, to give the body a chance to recover, so that the body can develop the ability to produce vitamin B on its own. This is the most effective method.

Any long-term use of vitamins, on the whole, is not good for you.

If you keep taking a certain vitamin year after year, for several years at a time, this thing is not good for you. Why? Because you have given your body what it needs too easily, and your body's ability to produce this thing on its own becomes sluggish and weakened; we would call that a degeneration. So the more you supplement, the more deficient you become.

Then Seth said: Do you understand? Rob said he understood.

The Body Is a Superb Regulator

Next Seth says:

Certain diseases have the effect of preventing other diseases, and the body itself is a superb regulator of them.

Some illnesses exist to stop other illnesses. You should not think that all illnesses are bad. You may get this illness precisely so that you do not get a more serious one, so you have no choice but to have this illness. There are many examples of this in modern medicine. For instance, tonsillitis actually serves to prevent some other, larger illness, and the thyroid is another example.

Obviously when you believe in those abilities, when you trust those abilities, they work very well.

Trust what abilities? Trust that your body has its own superb ability to regulate itself. You can even regard getting sick as a form of self-regulation -- first believe in it, do not feel that something has gone wrong with the body, do not feel that it is broken, that age, environment, or your own mental state has caused the body to enter a stage of decline. If you think that way, it is very dangerous. If you treat every illness as a process in which the body activates itself, adjusts itself, and sorts itself out, and if you believe that your body has the ability to make itself better through illness, if you have that kind of trust, then your body will get better very quickly.

The body's systems, so to speak, know what illnesses are brewing, and often set up countermeasures in advance.

Your body is extremely intelligent. It knows long in advance what illness is brewing, before it has even broken out. It gives you something that you experience as a certain illness, but in fact it is preventing another condition.

In a city there is a great flow of traffic, and in an instant the body knows how to dodge a car rushing toward you.

Human instinct has this ability. And within the body's internal environment there is also a great flow of traffic -- he means the flow of information -- and in a span of time so short you cannot imagine it, decisions have to be made, reactions that are almost finished before they have even begun.

And when the body reacts to the reality of its inner environment, and to all the stimuli coming from the outer environment, those reactions are so fast that you cannot perceive them.

Whether the body is processing information coming from internal cells or information coming from the external environment, the sheer volume of information it processes exceeds your cognitive capacity. In other words, we human beings do not have the ability to fully control and understand the massive exchange of information within the human body.

The body is an open system, even though it seems so solid to you.

You think the body has such clear boundaries and is very solid, but the body is constantly communicating with your environment.

Between it and the world there are constant chemical adjustments, electromagnetic adjustments, changes in balance, and shifts in relationship.

Between the body and every other physical event, changes are taking place: from the positions of the planets, the sun, and the moon, to the position of the tiniest grain of sand, to the tiniest microorganism in any person's intestines -- your body knows about the changes occurring in all these relationships.

Now you can understand why Chinese medicine pays attention to the time of day and the seasons when diagnosing and treating illness, right? Because the cells and tissues of your body all interact closely with the external environment. Those methods of Chinese medicine are things handed down over many years, insights from their early research.

So is the environment important to the human body? Of course it is. We in China have an ancient textual culture. The most classic text in traditional Chinese medicine is the Huangdi Neijing, but what we have lost is the Huangdi Waijing⁵. Everyone who has studied Chinese medicine knows that we lost the Huangdi Waijing, and to this day no one knows what it was. I once told this story in a distant connection. But there is a person I know who was able to obtain knowledge of the Huangdi Waijing during a certain meditation, but he himself is not trained in medicine, so he could not describe or record it.

That is to say, around our body, not on our body, there is something invisible to us, operating just like the meridians and networks inside our body -- around the outside of our body there is another set of meridian networks, and they are connected with the meridian networks inside our body. This kind of connection and interaction between inside and outside happens constantly and changes at any moment. This is a major part of the Huangdi Waijing. It is a great pity that it was lost.

But there is one possibility: it may well be in the underground palace of Qin Shi Huang that has not yet been excavated. Because legend has it that before Qin Shi Huang burned the books and buried the scholars, he had already sent people to copy all the classical texts -- he made a backup first. He was not foolish enough to burn all of them in one go. Not allowing them to circulate among the common people does not mean he was foolish enough to burn them all. He made a backup and kept it in his national library. But this national library was later burned down by Xiang Yu. When the Epang Palace, or the capital of Qin, was burned, everything was destroyed, and so some ancient documents disappeared.

But there are also legends that some of the most important classical texts, such as the Huangdi Neijing and the Huangdi Waijing, were said to have been taken by Qin Shi Huang into his tomb as burial goods. So if one day we humans can successfully open the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, we might discover knowledge that humanity has so far been unable to obtain.

Then you might say, let us just go open it. What is so difficult about opening Qin Shi Huang's tomb? Is it not just as big as the Terracotta Army? Then you have misunderstood. If you truly understood Qin Shi Huang's tomb, you would not say that. Qin Shi Huang's actual tomb is not where the Terracotta Army is; that is only its outer perimeter. His actual tomb is beneath Mount Li, said to be about 500 meters deep⁶. You may think, what is so impressive about that depth, 500 meters? Think about it: the most advanced nuclear submarines we have today can only dive to 500 or 600 meters. And the area of Qin Shi Huang's underground palace is roughly 7.5 kilometers by 7.5 kilometers, nearly 60 square kilometers⁷. Almost the entire area beneath Mount Li is his underground palace, so it is extremely difficult to excavate.

Moreover, it is filled with a large amount of mercury. Apart from mercury itself being toxic, mercury vapor is also highly poisonous. How much mercury do outside observers estimate there is? According to the Shiji, Qin Shi Huang had a replica made inside his underground palace of the mountains, rivers, and terrain of the entire land of China⁸ -- all the rivers and mountains were filled with mercury, and it flowed continuously. Then he placed his own bronze coffin inside. The density of mercury is higher than that of copper; the density of copper is 8.9, and the density of mercury is 13.6⁹, so copper can float on top of mercury. Qin Shi Huang's bronze coffin floated on his underground mercury rivers and mountains, drifting and touring within them. This also prevented many possibilities of tomb robbing, because the highly toxic mercury vapor makes it impossible for humans to approach. In the past it was impossible, and now even with gas masks, such a vast underground mercury river system covering dozens of square kilometers is itself full of wonders.

The amount of mercury alone would have been almost impossible to obtain in that era -- one hundred thousand tons of mercury¹⁰. To this day, in 2020, the entire world's annual mercury production is only a little over 3,700 tons¹¹. Today humanity can only produce a little over 3,000 tons of mercury in a year. Think about how, in the Qin dynasty, they could have obtained one hundred thousand tons of mercury.

All right, we have digressed too far. The reason we have said all this is to tell you: our connection with the external world may very well have been recorded in the Huangdi Waijing, and the Huangdi Waijing may very well be inside Qin Shi Huang's underground palace -- though this is only a folk legend.

All these adjustments are made without your conscious attention.

They are all done without your awareness, automatically.

Yet they are in keeping with the purposes and intents of the whole.

Although you do not notice them, they are in keeping with the intents and purposes of your whole self. So here, do not go blaming others. Do not blame others for anything that happens in your body -- although it is not under the control of your conscious mind, it is in keeping with the intents and purposes of your whole self. Never say, "How could I possibly want to be sick?" Yes, you do not want to be sick; your conscious mind does not want to be sick, but the purposes and consciousness of your inner whole self are not necessarily the same -- he is not doing it for the sake of illness; he has other purposes.

About The Way Toward Health

Seth said this session was over.

Rob said thank you, that was really wonderful, good night. Because what the two of them most wanted to hear Seth talk about was the topic of illness, since Jane was sick at the time. The two of them desperately wanted Seth to talk about illness and health, so after this book ended, Seth specifically gave a book called The Way Toward Health, which in fact fulfilled their greatest desire and wish.

That book itself is not very difficult, partly because Jane was already very ill by then, and each session was relatively short. Most of the content in that book consists of Rob's records of the whole process of Jane's illness, or the records before and after each session, making it more like a realistic account of Jane's last year or two of life. If you want to understand how Jane lived in her last two years, that book is an excellent reference. Seth gave a great deal of introduction on health, but there was no newer knowledge in it -- much of his knowledge had already been fully explained in the earlier books, and he was merely repeating it over and over, emphasizing it over and over, hoping to help Jane and Rob overcome these physical illnesses.

The content of this session ends here, with Seth giving Rob and Jane his greatest blessing. Then at 9:53, Jane said:

"My God, I don't know if I can do it." Because he still had a fever, had just recovered from a cold, and his voice was still hoarse. Jane said: "But I feel that all those things are in a huge garden, and I simply have to get them out. When I do that, I feel very happy, and when I don't need to do that, I am also very happy."

This statement is a very spiritual one from Jane -- when I receive that material from Seth I am happy, when I finish getting it out I am also happy, and when I cannot get it out I will also be happy. But sometimes he was not like that; when he could not get the Seth material out, he would also be very angry with himself, very anxious and angry. So Rob said: "I once again witnessed his delivery." Even when Jane felt terrible beforehand, he still managed to give a successful session. Although his voice was still very hoarse, as the session progressed into his transmission, it gained vitality and intensity -- he got better as he spoke, as if he had received a surge of energy from Seth. However, as soon as the session was over, he immediately announced that he was going to bed to rest, very tired, because his bad cold had just cleared up.

Note 1: Viruses and Pets in the Early Sessions

Seth first mentioned viruses in Session 17 of The Early Sessions, on January 26, 1964. At that time, Rob wanted to ask Seth to comment on their dog Misha, and on a pair of kittens Jane had gotten from the art gallery where she worked part-time as a receptionist; they had died not long before.

At the time Rob was 44 and Jane was 34. In 1921, I have the impression it was the anniversary of Rob's hundredth birthday—Rob was born in 1921, I think. So in 1964 he was about 44, and Jane was 34. In more ordinary terms, they were both struggling—struggling to make a living. Rob was painting artworks and selling them to advertising companies for a meager income; Jane had to do part-time work in some art galleries—there was not much work to do in the galleries, which basically meant watching the place for them, going a few days a week for a few hours each time, and also earning a meager income to keep the two of them going.

And their regular work alone was still not enough to support them. Whether it was the little books or poems Jane wrote, or the paintings Rob did, none of it could be exchanged for any stability in their lives as creative work.

Even under these circumstances—remember this—even under these circumstances, the two of them still resolutely decided to transmit the Seth material, and they spent a great deal of time on it; later, they spent almost their entire lives doing this one thing. At the time, they could not see at all how this material, or transmitting this material with Seth, could bring any material change or material improvement to their lives—there was no sign whatsoever that it would.

Because in 1964, unlike now—if I were channeling, I could go on a livestream, on Douyin or TikTok, and instantly have a huge number of followers. If you also know a little marketing, have a bit of thick skin, and dare to say some big words—say you are linked to a higher dimension and can help people—then you would really be something.

But in 1964, in an era when many people still found channeling very strange, they were not even willing to publicly admit they had this ability. So they simply did not know that this thing could make money or solve their livelihood problems. That is why they were still worrying about making a living at that time.

Think about it: at 44 and 34, the two of them were still renting a very small apartment. It was not until many years later—I have the impression it was not until 1975—that they bought their first house, a house on a hillside. By then a full twelve years had passed since they began transmitting the Seth material, and during those twelve years they had always lived in that tiny apartment. Later, when they had a little money, they still did not rush to move; they rented another apartment across from their apartment—so they had two small apartments at the same time, one used as a workroom for the materials, and the other where they lived.

Why am I describing their living situation? Because it has to do with the deaths of the animals that came later. Their dog Misha died, and the two kittens they had gotten from the gallery also died.

Not only learning about ourselves and our world, but also searching in that world for our ways of creating.

They were creating—one painting, one writing poems and novels.

Seth's answer to my question not only surprised and saddened us somewhat, but also opened up some insights. In Session 17 of The Early Sessions, they asked Seth why their dog and cats had died, and Seth's answer exceeded their expectations.

Seth said, just before those animals died:

That particular atmosphere surrounding your personalities is destructive, short-circuited, and filled with inner panic.

Why did these animals of yours die? Why did your pets die? Because your own inner field was unstable; your state was not good. The state of your whole person can bring an adverse influence on these little beings in your environment. So here Seth used fairly direct words—he did not say "not good"; he directly said destructive, short-circuited, and full of inner panic.

The two of you had problems in your own survival, yet you kept a dog and two cats. He did not say it outright, but that was the meaning. Actually, keeping pets costs a lot of money, especially when a pet gets sick. If they do not get sick, it is simple; once a pet gets sick you will know—the cost of veterinary care is not small, whether in China or abroad. So under their financial conditions, they actually did not have the ability to keep pets—to put it bluntly, they did not have the financial conditions. But the two of them just liked keeping them.

He said, "I do not want to hurt your feelings... but I am sorry to say, that is a natural phenomenon on your plane."

Indeed, saying such a thing is very hurtful, but it was a very natural phenomenon in that environment of yours—that is, the deaths of the animals had a certain relationship to your emotions.

The fact is that those animals were infected by your emotions, and according to their lesser abilities, they diverted that emotion for you.

Pets know the state of the two of you, and they also know that your mood is relatively low. Under the premise of your hand-to-mouth living conditions, your instability and uncertainty about life, and your total lack of a sense of security, you will transmit this emotion to your animals. To put it bluntly, those three little animals of theirs—one dog and two cats—all knew they were a burden. You surely could not bear to send them away, nor to abandon them. So they had no choice; they felt that since you could not afford to keep us, we might as well die—dying might be a better relief for the two of you. Although you would grieve for a short time, and indeed you did. After this dog Misha died, they never kept another dog; they only kept one little cat named Willy.

Seth was still fairly direct in the early sessions. In that period, after he had just made contact with Jane, he was rather blunt; he did consider their feelings, but not as tactfully as later. Later he had become very, very high in emotional intelligence; in the early sessions he was not so good at that yet, and he would often say some plain truths and very direct words. You can see it in this session.

Of course viruses and infections do exist. For example, some parvoviruses, these do indeed exist. These viruses are always present... they themselves are a kind of fragment personality.

Viruses also have their own consciousness. This "fragment personality" refers to a fragment personality of consciousness.

Small fragment personalities in struggle, with no intent to harm.

These viruses have no intent to harm; they themselves are also struggling. Every virus is also an independent consciousness, a small fragment personality striving on its own. For them, occupying cells and replicating themselves is their goal.

Believe it or not, you have a general immunity to all such viruses and infections.

Whether you believe it or not, you have a general immunity in the face of viruses. In other words, you can coexist with viruses without being attacked by them. Ideally speaking, you can live on the same plane with these viruses without fear, without needing to worry at all about their influence on you; this is one of your general natural immunities.

Only when you give silent consent can these fragment personalities cause you harm.

Only when you consent by default—this silent consent is not your conscious consent; your conscious mind would not agree; it is a silent consent beneath your conscious awareness—can these virus fragment personalities cause you harm. In other words, you allowed it, but this "you" is not the conscious you.

To some degree, these smaller dependent lives such as family pets depend on your psychic strength.

Our kittens and puppies, those relatively weak little animals, need the psychic strength of us their owners. If your life is very vital, they will also be very vital; if your life lacks vitality, they will lack vitality too. That is right, they have their own consciousness, and they do not entirely depend on you, but your consciousness will affect them; this psychic strength of yours will affect their energy and health.

When I say this, what can you think of? Besides small animals being like this, is it not also the same with the children in your home? Your subtle influence on your children actually begins from this very moment. By the same principle, yes—if your influence on small animals is this great, then your influence on a human little baby is also enormous. So whether you can live well, whether your body, mind, and psyche can develop in a balanced way, and whether you can be in a state of great peace and joy, has an important influence on your whole family, including your children. If you live day after day in this sense of insecurity, irritability, agitation, and instability, your child does not need to say a word, does not need to say a single sentence—he understands it; he gets it.

So the simplest point here is to love yourself and let yourself live in joy. You do not need to specifically look after your child; he will automatically be affected and influenced by your vitality, and be inspired by the little flame within you. You do not need to do anything else; you only need to be yourself well. And you cannot expect to make him understand by reasoning with him or laying out the facts; that does not work. You must lead by example.

When your own personalities are more or less balanced, you have no problem at all in caring for these small creatures... and in fact you strengthen their existence with the residue of your creative and sympathetic energies.

When your body and mind are balanced, you usually play with it, and you are usually creating—one painting, one writing—this creativity itself has abundance; within this abundance of creativity you will nourish them.

In times of psychological pressure or danger... you unconsciously hold back, and you do not give this intense reinforcement.

When you yourself have enormous psychological pressure and a sense of crisis about your living conditions, you do not have the psychological capacity to care for your pets. It is useless to try to persuade them with reason; you say to them, "Ah, there is no problem, I can take care of you, even though my life is difficult right now"—these words cannot replace it. Your inner psyche knows everything; you really cannot help them. This is very subtle.

So everyone must remember: when you go to keep a pet, it is not that you just keep one because you like it and want to; you have to see whether you yourself have the capacity to care for it. If you are a person who often travels for work, then do not keep one; if you do not have abundant time, if you work a 996 schedule every day and work overtime until midnight, then do not keep a pet either. First take good care of yourself; give yourself a warm and comfortable environment, a warm and comfortable home. When you have energy, free time, and surplus energy, then go keep a pet. Just raise a pet as you would raise a child—when you have the time to have another child, then you have that energy. If you do not want to have children, then you can keep a pet. Do not feel that because you are empty and lonely, you should go keep a pet; that is extremely irresponsible to it.

About Misha and the Two Kittens

In the death of the cats, both cats inherited the strange disease that killed them.

Those two cats were strays; the doorman found them and gave them to them. Both cats had a hereditary disease. The two kittens were probably born from the same mother cat, and both had the same strange hereditary disease, an illness caused by a virus.

In the first cat's case, you were still able to strengthen its power and maintain its health for a while.

You poured too much attention into the first cat, so when the first cat got sick, you still had the energy to take care of it. When you had the energy and the confidence to care for it, it would be healthy, it would improve, and it would hold on for quite a long time. But then you yourselves needed that energy -- later, with the pressures of life, you did not have much energy left to care for it, and you could no longer attend to that first kitten, let alone the second one. The second kitten had not yet gotten sick at that point, and as a result it hardly ever enjoyed that kind of reinforcement, and it was finished very quickly.

And the dog's illness was almost congenital... but in any case, you could not have maintained their health for many years.

That dog was born with this illness, so this lifetime was not going to be very long.

What I want to make clear is that animals certainly do have energy to maintain their own health.

Seth says, it is not that animals are completely dependent on us humans. Animals have their own energy to maintain their own health; there is no need to question that. But generally speaking, these animals are emotionally attached to human vitality, and they strongly need humans to pour vitality into them, to pour energy into them, in order to further strengthen their own life force.

The fact is that when your dog most needed extra emotional vitality, you were unable to give it to him.

You kept a dog, but you had no energy to care for it, nor could you play with it, nor could you pet it. Every day you just tossed it some dog food -- you thought that as long as it stayed alive, that was enough. Then Seth felt that saying this might make the two of them blame themselves, so he said:

You need not blame yourselves; there was nothing you could have done about it.

That dog was not going to live very long anyway, but I had to point this issue out to you.

Just like people, animals sense when they are a burden.

That dog sensed that it was a burden, and also an annoyance, so the best place for it to go was death. It is the same with people -- sometimes we feel that certain people are burdens, especially some elderly people. Nowadays many young people are unwilling to support their elderly parents, and they always treat the elderly as burdens. In that kind of family environment, the elderly will quickly fall ill and quickly pass away. Although this is not their wish, it is a latent perception of theirs -- the perception of being disliked, of being treated as a burden.

I wish you had not asked me this question... but since you did, and since you both loved that dog very much, the question is worth answering.

Misha was a mixed-breed Shetland sheepdog. This is what Rob said later -- Misha was the last dog we ever kept, and we never kept another dog after that.

He was indeed a good companion to us. Even now, as I write about this dog sixteen years later, I still feel a strong emotion toward him.

What Rob means is that sixteen years later, when he thought of that dog, he still felt a pang in his chest, an emotion that cannot be described in words.

This is Seth's final, relatively complete discussion of illness, viruses, people and animals, people and the environment, why people release these viruses, and why they activate these viruses, presented as a separate session of its own, given to the two of them.

注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, it was "below 39 degrees, roughly below 100 degrees Fahrenheit"; upon verification, it should be "39°C is approximately 102.2°F; 100°F is approximately 37.8°C." (Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Approximate Conversions from U.S. Customary Measures to Metric," https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si/unit-conversion/approximate-conversions-us-customary-measures-metric) ↩

2. Source: Jun Lan et al., "Structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain bound to the ACE2 receptor," 2020 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2180-5) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Sun Li and Su Sensen, "Seeing the Outstanding Characteristics of Chinese Civilization from the Tianhui Medical Slips" (https://www.cdutcm.edu.cn/info/1080/7481.htm) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. Source: Xu Weimin, ed., Shaanxi Provincial Local Records Office, "Records of Imperial Mausoleums in Shaanxi" (https://dfz.shaanxi.gov.cn/zslm/fzzlk/dqcs/xas/201803/P020250630548327427771.pdf) ↩

9. Source: OpenStax, "Physics: Reference Tables" (https://openstax.org/books/physics/pages/a-reference-tables) ↩

10. According to Mike's original words, it was "one hundred thousand tons of mercury"; upon verification, it should be "research estimates that the underground mercury reserves in the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor could reach 22 tons or more, not one hundred thousand tons." (Source: Chen Kuangyu, "The Cinnabar and Mercury Industry of the Qin Empire," 2017, https://www.xuebao.snnu.edu.cn/info/1072/6164.htm) ↩

11. Source: U.S. Geological Survey, "Mineral Commodity Summaries," 2021 (https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021.pdf) ↩