Mike's commentary · The Magical Approach, Preface

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Key Points" in this chapter were summarized by AI editors based on the main text below, not things Mike said during the lecture; the main text comes from Mike's commentary, and block quotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).

Reading Guide

This chapter is Jane's preface to The Magical Approach, recording how the book's sessions began. In August 1980, after the Seth sessions had been interrupted for nearly two months, while Jane was reading Rob's notes on magic and letters from readers, she experienced the coincidence of "wanting to take a photo, Rob appeared with the camera," which led them to discuss the magical approach, Framework 2, and telepathy. That evening she entered a trance state, Seth resumed speaking, and began discussing magical connections. The text also explains the sequence of the Seth books and this book's place within it.

Key Points in This Chapter

• On August 6, 1980, Jane experienced the coincidence of "wanting to take a photo, and Rob appearing with the camera right then," and saw it as an example of magical association.
• What is called magic is the surfacing of distorted versions of the psyche's attributes, such as clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognitive ability.
• The magical orientation directly conflicts with modern cultural training, but it is part of a natural way of viewing the world, covered over by rational beliefs.
• Seth's Framework 2 can be used to explain magical events, but Jane had previously had no feeling for Framework 2; only through this event was she ready to understand it.
• That evening the Seth session resumed after an interruption of about two months, and Seth began to discuss magical associations.

Main Text

We are beginning an introduction to Seth’s new book, The Magical Approach. This book was completed around the summer of 1980. It is quite short, but the core ideas and concepts it touches on, as is clear from the title, have very important guiding significance for our lives. Its difficulty is actually not low; it requires us to think carefully. If we can apply it well in practice, then we will be able to genuinely realize, in our actual lives, the magical approach that Seth emphasized—letting miracles appear everywhere in our lives as if by magic, and making miracles a normal thing.

This book is divided into seventeen small sections, plus four appendices and an afterword, about twenty-two parts in all. We used to be in the habit of introducing it one lesson each day, but recently we have been interspersing the practical exercises of The Master Key System¹, so I have slowed the pace. I plan to share it at two sections a week, finishing in roughly ten weeks. You can use that to set your own pace. Much of the material in this book is very significant for our practical application of the theory and meditation exercises of The Master Key System¹.

Let’s begin with this short poem at the very beginning:

We are all such magical magicians, turning darkness into light, turning invisible atoms into the world’s dazzling theater, pulling objects out of secret microscopic closets—people as well as rabbits—turning winter into summer, and letting many moments disappear through the trapdoor of time. We learned these methods so long ago that they became unconscious, and we hypnotized ourselves into believing that we are the audience. So we are curious: where did we practice? Under which master magicians did we learn to form reality so smoothly that we forgot to tell ourselves the secret?

What secret? You are the magician, not the audience. You are not sitting below the stage watching—wow, how magical, this magician is so amazing—you are that magician.

Next is the preface, written by Jane herself. Because the preface is directly related to the sessions that follow, we have to introduce it. The preface is titled “A Day in Which Magic Comes True.”

Seth Describes What the Magical Approach Is

Two evenings a week, as most of my readers know, while our neighbors went to the movies, shopped, or watched television with visiting friends, I would enter a trance state, become Seth, and present what might be called a second life, or another life within a life. In fact these sessions usually lasted from about one to three hours, and I know that many people spend far more time than that playing golf or tennis. The difference is that, in our case, Rob and I usually had no live audience, at least none that we could see.

She noted in parentheses -- are there not also many audiences we cannot see? For example, now that we are reading this book some fifty or sixty years later, are we not audiences separated by time and space?

Yet the impact those hours spent in that trance state had on my husband and me together, and on the world, was out of all proportion to the actual time spent.

She means that the impact of the Seth material on people, and on the world, was far greater compared with the time spent two evenings a week, one to three hours each evening -- she is pointing to this disproportion.

As Seth, when she transmitted material as Seth, she had already produced five books: Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality -- we have just finished these two. After that came The "Unknown" Reality, in two volumes, a thicker book, about our whole process of exploring unknown fields and unknown realities. Then came The Nature of the Psyche, which we will also cover later; after finishing this introduction to The Magical Approach, I will share that with everyone. Then came The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, also a very thick book, introducing the nature of personal and mass events. Then there was the sixth book, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, a book of relatively high difficulty. Only after that book was completed did he write The Magical Approach.

So you see, he had completed five books earlier, plus the sixth, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, and then the seventh was The Magical Approach.

After The Magical Approach was written, there was a pause, and then they began writing The Way Toward Health. By the time they wrote The Way Toward Health, Jane's body was already very uncomfortable; you can see this in the book. The Way Toward Health mainly revolves around Jane's body and how human beings should maintain a healthy belief, a healthy concept, in a healthy life, so its content centers on the health problems of Jane's body, and its difficulty is not very high.

Why do I bring this book forward to discuss now? Because its difficulty is not very high. After Seth finished Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, a book of extremely high difficulty, he felt that what needed to be said had all been said. That book mainly discusses the birth of the universe, what the most primordial first cause of all things in the world is, how the most primordial consciousness and All That Is came into being, and how they created this world; it is extremely difficult. After that was completed, these next two -- The Magical Approach and The Way Toward Health -- suddenly dropped in difficulty, down to a level similar to the earlier The Nature of Personal Reality and Seth Speaks, so they are suitable to be covered after those.

As for The "Unknown" Reality, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, I will share those with everyone later, probably next year or at some other time. As for The Way Toward Health, I do not plan to cover it -- the book itself has no difficulty; you can simply find it and read it. It has no deeper theory or hard-to-understand parts; it is more a narrative, plus some emphasis and repetition of previous ideas, without much new content. If you have health issues, or want a deeper understanding of health, you can read that book yourself.

So, the books Seth himself was willing to bring out as published books are only these eight; everyone must remember this. Let me repeat: these eight books are Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, The "Unknown" Reality, volumes one and two, The Nature of the Psyche, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, volumes one and two, plus this The Magical Approach, and the next one, The Way Toward Health. By the time The Way Toward Health was being written, Jane had already passed away before it was finished -- the week before Jane died, she was still dictating The Way Toward Health, so Jane basically transmitted up to the last moment of her life.

Besides these materials, Seth also had other material. For example, before Seth Speaks, he spent seven years transmitting material to Rob and Jane, and that material totaled five hundred ten sessions. Later Rob published it, and after it was published in the English-speaking world it was called The Early Sessions. The Early Sessions is divided into nine volumes, each with more than forty sessions, totaling five hundred ten sessions.

The difficulty of The Early Sessions should be the highest among all the Seth books -- do not assume that because it was early, it would be simple; it is not. How difficult is it? In the early transmissions, Seth actually did not know to what degree human beings could understand and accept his knowledge, and he did not yet have a good handle on the right level; he often went unevenly, sometimes very difficult, sometimes very simple. Therefore it contains much theory and knowledge of very high difficulty that ordinary people find hard to understand. At that time he discussed many issues more from a higher-dimensional perspective.

And at that time Jane and Rob were not yet very skilled at the transmission itself, especially in the first volume of The Early Sessions; because of the transmission, many misunderstandings and erroneous things arose, which further led to later problems of understanding. But starting from the middle of the first volume of The Early Sessions, the transmission was already very stable, and such problems rarely appeared again. However, because the entire transmission process needed to be conveyed through Jane's own language, vocabulary, and her own understanding, some higher-dimensional theories involving science and engineering -- including math, physics, and chemistry, physics knowledge, mathematical knowledge, fields, space, dimensions, and even higher-level trans-dimensional theories -- often Jane could not express them; she had such knowledge in her mind, but could not describe it in words.

In fact, in Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, everyone can also sense that Seth, as an extremely excellent speaker and transmitter, spent a very long time and great effort transmitting that book, often speaking a passage and then pausing for a long time, thinking about how to say the next sentence. Through studying the Seth material, we will know that this kind of material and information from higher dimensions is indeed very difficult for us humans to understand; we can only consider it to the degree we can understand it.

So I put The "Unknown" Reality, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment later, because they involve deeper knowledge and no longer have much guidance for personal life. Many people ask whether The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events has much impact on personal life. Actually not much either. As for the impact on personal life, the four books I will cover have already covered it -- Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, The Magical Approach, and The Nature of the Psyche. These four books basically cover all the issues concerning you personally.

And your personal issues are the first thing you need to resolve well. Other things -- mass events, the birth of the universe, how to explore unknown worlds -- there are many unknown worlds on the level of our consciousness, including the exploration of extraterrestrial life and other times and spaces; these have little to do with your personal daily life. If you are not someone who wants to treat Seth as theoretical and scientific research, or if you do not want to study the truth of this universe, and only want to live your life better, more comfortably, more happily, and more joyfully, then you do not need to read the later books; the first four books are enough for you to live the life you want in everyday reality.

As for The Early Sessions, I plan to introduce them to everyone separately later, after finishing this introduction to these materials. The content of The Early Sessions is more purely research-oriented, a study of the universe and the truth of this world, though woven throughout there is also much that relates to the individual and is not very difficult.

At this point Jane says that, in addition to completing the previous six books, Jane herself also wrote twelve books -- never forget this; you can see how strong their creativity was in this process. However, because Seth did not write letters or type, Rob and I spent a great deal of time and energy dealing with the various results produced in those trance states. Readers would write letters asking questions, just as our friends leave comments under videos and ask questions in the group, and Seth would not answer these questions -- of course he occasionally wrote a letter, and he would answer some specific questions, but most of the time he did not handle them.

She says in the summer of 1980, I had not held a Seth session for almost two months. Remember that Jane passed away in 1984, so this was roughly four years before Jane died -- you can get a general sense of the book's date. She says during those two months, she was working on her own book The God of Jane, while Rob was preparing Seth's The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events for publication -- his work on publishing that book only became busy at this point; the sixth book had been spoken, but they had not yet begun organizing, transcribing, correcting typos, and typesetting.

During that June and July, the two of us were caught up in the same events most other people were caught up in. What events? Nights and days hotter than usual -- that summer was a bit hotter than usual, and it was a drought in New York State²; plus the news fever created by the political parties' arguments and plans for their respective elections. 1980 happened to be an American election year³, and the campaign was very lively that summer. As people living in America, they were also affected by this; they would watch live broadcasts, televised debates, and presidential campaign speeches. So the arguments of the parties and the conventions had an influence, and the news had its waves; the weather was hot, and the news was hot too.

On those evenings, the sound of insects in the little woods behind the slope was louder than the sound of the television.

By this time they had already moved to a new home -- they no longer lived in that apartment in Elmira. Their books had been published one after another and sold very well; after they had money, they bought a new house, living in a single-family house with its own yard, choosing a house on a hillside where the neighbors were farther away. This also reflects that these two preferred a more reclusive state of living. So the sound of insects on the hillside was even louder than the television.

But the summer heat that made me restless and uneasy turned Rob into something like a South Pacific islander.

The South Pacific natives refer to the people on those small island countries. Rob wore a pair of cut-off jeans -- at that time there did not yet seem to be such a thing as denim shorts, so he simply cut off the legs of the jeans, and they looked like today's long denim shorts; he looked very cool. His long hair was curly with natural tight curls, and his sturdy yet fine-featured body seemed to enjoy the heat. At that time Rob was always quite thin, both sturdy and fine-featured.

And I turned into a sponge.

This refers to Jane. At that time Jane's body was already very uncomfortable; she had gained ten pounds of weariness -- she used such an adjective.

After finishing The God of Jane, I had a gap, so I reread the seventeen chapters of my still-unfinished novel The Prophecy of Time, and glanced through many sets of notes.

She had not yet finished The Prophecy of Time; she had written seventeen chapters. Writers have many notes before writing -- if you have been a writer you will know that a writer does not just bury their head and write from beginning to end as you might imagine. Before completing the creation, they need a great deal of inspiration and material; ordinarily they make a large number of notes, so that when they need them they can draw on them with ease. She looked through these notes, wanting to see whether there was any material she could use for a book, but found nothing.

From this detail you can see that Jane was not a person willing to be idle. After writing so many books, in this gap she still did not want to rest; she was still looking for new creative inspiration and wanting to write something new. So Jane asked herself -- asked the naturally spontaneous self -- to provide some ideas.

And on August 5, 1980, earlier than expected, I dreamed that I was sitting in a trailer, and that vehicle was being towed by an even larger vehicle.

She was talking about sitting in a U-Haul. A U-Haul is a moving trailer; anyone who has lived in America knows it can usually be rented, with a base price and then a per-mile charge. Americans usually move by themselves, putting furniture and so on into the trailer and towing it behind their pickup truck or SUV to the new home. She dreamed that she was sitting inside this kind of trailer, and the trailer was being towed by an even larger vehicle -- and they also had an argument about the seating arrangement. Because you cannot ride inside a U-Haul, but this was a dream, so in the dream it did not matter.

But it was finally resolved. I interpreted this dream as meaning that I would soon have a new creative project.

She interpreted the dream's hint and influence in this way, so she needed to get ready. Therefore she asked Rob to help her move all her writing materials from the airy little room where she had finished The God of Jane to a room in the courtyard behind the house -- she had a new room in the courtyard behind the house, which showed that she was ready to begin.

So this was August 5; on August 6, with a stack of freshly bought manuscript paper, a new typewriter ribbon, and what I hoped was a fresh mind, I sat in this courtyard room, looking over the interpretation I had written of Rob's recent dream.

At that time typewriters still needed typewriter ribbons. What was she sitting there doing? She was looking at some interpretations she had written of Rob's recent dream. That dream of Rob's is not introduced in this book; it will be introduced in another book -- he dreamed that he returned to the place where he grew up, and that his old hometown had been polluted. In the 1970s and 1980s many industrial cities in America were severely polluted, so he dreamed that his city hometown was polluted; it was roughly such a dream, though I don't remember the details clearly.

It was a very hot August afternoon; everything in the world was in its proper place, and the picture of each moment clicked into position, just as they usually do. Each moment led precisely into the next moment.

Look at the words she uses -- the picture of each moment, as if each moment of time were a painting, or like a film frame, and then these frames all click into the place where they should be. Here you can see that Jane, as a literary writer and novelist, had a very deep literary foundation; even a casual description from her carries poetry and is also very spiritual. Each frame leads you into the next frame, and in this way the world flows. Jane could perhaps feel them like one frame after another, click, click, click, clicking onto the axis of time, each in its own place.

All the activity seemed to happen outside, from the too-hot wind blowing into my little study from the back hill, to the shadows of the outside trees swaying across the floor. I was reading a few pages of Rob's notes, about something mentioned at lunch: a reader who wrote to us hoped he might have instant magic.

You see, at this point something magical happened. A reader wrote them a letter saying he hoped for instant magic -- what is instant magic? Many people who study Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality encounter this problem: since it is said that our world is created by our own beliefs, or if we understand it a bit more deeply, if all probable selves and probable times and spaces exist, then can we directly switch to a different time and space, or if we create what we want through belief, can we make it happen immediately?

This is a question many readers ask, including many who have finished this book or the first two books.

On this question, Bashar has a particularly interesting answer. A listener asked Bashar: since you say we can manifest the external material world and environment, then I want a crystal ball; tell me how to manifest it. Bashar's answer was very interesting -- he said, then why don't you just go to a store and buy one? Why must you sit there watching and waiting for it to appear out of thin air? The person said, only if it is materialized does it show that it is magical, that it is meaningful like magic -- this is what many people think.

Bashar said to him, you want a crystal ball, you have money in your pocket, and it is not that you cannot afford one; just go buy one -- isn't that also created by you? Are you trying to fool the universe, or fool yourself? You clearly can go buy one, but you insist on sitting there saying, let God materialize one for me, or let All That Is manifest one for you. Do you want the crystal ball, or do you want this magical ability? You are treating this heaven-given ability to create all things as magic to perform -- are you performing it for yourself, or for whom?

The core point is, you do not believe it. You do not believe that all things in the world are created by you, you do not believe that you yourself are created by you, and you even less believe that you can create a crystal ball, so you need such a performance to show yourself. I think these words have a lot of insight for many people. After studying these spiritual materials, many people are always fantasizing about miracles and hoping for miracles every day. They actually do not know that every moment of their lives, every minute and every second, is a miracle manifesting, is a time when miracles are revealing their sacred signs. But you cannot see it, and you do not recognize it; you think that only if a crystal ball appears on the table out of thin air is it magical, and nothing else is. That is your own cognitive problem.

So this reader was the same; he wanted a kind of instant magic.

As I read these notes casually, some parts especially attracted my attention. Rob wrote -- what we call magic represents or reflects a basic part of our natural heritage; we allow distorted versions of the psyche's attributes -- clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition -- to rise into being as magic.

Rob's passage explains magic this way: the magic in our everyday life is actually some abilities we already have, but we think we no longer have them. The magic tricks we see -- making a person appear, crossing time and space, making a pill come out of a bottle, making a coin pass through a bottle -- these things are actually witnessing abilities we originally possess. Like that person just mentioned who wanted a crystal ball, why stop at a crystal ball? You manifest the whole vast world, yet you insist on saying those are not it; I need to materialize a crystal ball for me to see before I will admit it. If you cannot materialize a crystal ball, that proves you do not have this ability, and your theory is a lie.

Something in Rob himself, in a new way, touched Jane.

The passage Rob just wrote moved Jane in a new way.

Rob and I often discussed this topic. He had said that we are immersed in magic, no matter what we call it, and that manifestations such as telepathy are only places where our magic shows itself.

This is a feeling Rob had, and the two of them often discussed it. In our group and in the video comments, many listeners and readers also have this kind of question. I remember that in our QQ group, the one who said it most was Dagong -- he often said the world is getting faker and faker; the whole world feels fake. Why fake? Because there are too many miracles, too many coincidences, too much magic. Especially after studying these spiritual materials, he suddenly discovered that this world is actually made up of so many magical things that it seems fake, as fake as magic. His catchphrase was "this world feels fake" -- meaning it is becoming more and more magical, and more and more things are happening just as he wishes.

Everyone in the group knows the story about his parrot. He wanted to keep a hawk, but he could not keep one at home, so he said if he could not keep a hawk he would keep a parrot; he likes macaws. Then one day a parrot landed on the outdoor unit of his air conditioner, stayed all day, and would not leave. He opened the window to see what was happening; the parrot was not afraid and jumped directly from the window into his room, and then stayed in his home and did not leave. There are too many things like this, a great many. If you are in the QQ group, every day you can see other people sharing such magical things that happened to them.

And at this time Rob also had this feeling, so Rob would say that many of the things we ordinarily consider magical in daily life are places where magic shows itself.

When I read his notes, I did not know why, but I was inspired, or rather I sensed that an inner psychological movement was taking place. This movement was as definite and subtle as the tree shadows swaying on the floor; a change in balance was broken, and an important but usually hidden action of the psyche, in an instant, changed me and that afternoon.

Be sure to remember, what was happening was an inner psychological movement. The change in her psyche was greater than the outer, physical kind of movement.

When I sensed the surge of inspiration, I glanced lazily toward the kitchen. The image of that table, the front porch, the green leaves seen through the open door -- all of these stirred my heart.

This scene, as they often say in comedy sketches, "with such a scene before me, I compose a poem." Jane was touched by the scene before her, because the inspiration in her heart was bursting forth. After the inspiration burst forth, she was in a state of heightened psychic sensitivity, so she suddenly had a feeling of insight about the scene before her, and she especially wanted to paint that scene. She was not a professional painter -- Jane had already begun trying to paint by then, and Rob was a painter and may have taught her some things -- but before painting she needed to photograph it first, to use the photograph as a reference.

But within two minutes, I saw Rob appear at my desk with his camera.

She had just thought of photographing this scene, but had not told Rob, because Rob was at the other end of the house. Rob had bought the flash and the camera only a few months earlier and had not even tried them yet.

And now he told me he had one exposure left, and he wanted to take a picture of me.

Isn't this magical? Jane had just been thinking, I want to take a picture, and two minutes later Rob came over with the camera. Moreover, on that afternoon Rob should have been busy with his typing, organizing the proofs for the publisher, and all sorts of tedious tasks; he had barely used this camera since buying it, and had not used it for months, yet at that moment he suddenly ran out with the camera and said, I have one picture left, do you want me to take one of you? Before this he had been at the other end of the house, and Jane could not possibly have seen any actual clues of what he was doing -- she was in another room.

This was actually a very small matter for Jane. We often encounter such things in life; "speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives" is everywhere in our lives. There are a great many such little miracles, and we usually do not take them seriously. But at that moment this event had a very great impact on Jane; she felt it was truly magical, magical to the extreme.

On that afternoon, she said my feeling was right; this event was significant.

She recalled her earlier thoughts -- the letter from the reader who wanted instant magical ability, her interpretation of Rob's dream, her reading of Rob's recent notes about magic; all of this connected together gave Jane a very great touch and insight.

It seemed to fit the earlier events too perfectly and meaningfully.

Just as our friend Dagong said, fake, this world is too fake -- so fake that even a screenwriter would not dare write it this way. This perfection and this fittingness seemed to say one thing: yes, you are indeed operating magically. It wanted to tell her, the world is just this fake, just this magical; it was as if through this event it gave her proof that it is so. Were you doubting whether the world operates like a magician? Let me tell you, it operates exactly like a magician.

As for this mind-reading, do you say it exists or not? You can say it does not exist, but why did Rob pop out at the moment Jane wanted to take a photo? If Rob were someone who ran around with a camera every day, this would not be magical -- but Rob was someone who had not touched the camera for months, and he suddenly popped out at that point in time, saying he wanted to take a picture of you. To Jane this was a tremendous touch; this event itself was like a declaration.

This is an example of how those perceptions work, for if Rob had not come in at that instant, I would not have known that my thought about the camera had any connection with his simultaneous thoughts and activities.

If Rob had not come in with the camera at that moment, she would not have thought of anything related to the camera, nor would she have thought that this thought had any connection with Rob's action itself or with her earlier psychic stirring and inspiration. But what actually happened allowed her to connect it instantly to the inspiration she had just felt—she had just had a burst of inspiration, discovering that the attributes of our psyche, the so-called mind reading and telepathy, manifest in daily life in the manner of magic.

The Magical Orientation

So let's continue.

So how often do our thoughts actually connect in some way with the thoughts of others?

How often does our telepathy happen?

I often tell Rob what I was thinking before he came in. My intuition was due to my state of mind.

What kind of state of mind? She was interpreting Rob's dream and reading his notes -- precisely while she was reading the notes Rob had written and his dream, so she had a special exchange, a special contact and connection with his state of mind, which facilitated this inner communication. This is a precondition: the need for this connection and communication.

We began to discuss these topics.

She said to Rob, how magical this is: the moment I thought of this magical thing, thought of magic, thought of wanting to take a photo, you came in, and so on. They were discussing this matter.

Suddenly I had a whole flood of ideas to write down about what Rob had called the magical orientation (Magical Orientation).

At this point she suddenly had a whole flood of ideas to write down. She thought that Seth's Framework 2 would of course be this magical region. Seth had brought up Framework 1 and Framework 2 very early on, and in many books we have briefly introduced them, but never systematically.

Simply put, Framework 2 is equivalent to the world of all possibilities -- all possibilities are in it. If you understand Framework 2 as a kind of quantum state, that is also acceptable. How we understand it and how we define it are conceptual matters; they do not affect its actual essence. In other words, how we describe, define, or understand a thing does not affect what it really is.

What exactly is Framework 2? It can only be apprehended intuitively; it is very hard to convey in words. If we have to put it into words, we simply describe it as something undetermined, with all possibilities existing in Framework 2. A simple example: if you buy a lottery ticket, there are countless results -- you may win, you may not; you may win five dollars, ten dollars, or the jackpot -- all of these are possibilities. And the line that follows each possibility -- for example, the whole series of things that would happen after you win the first prize, versus winning only five dollars or not winning -- all of these possible variations exist in Framework 2.

Then which things do you choose to actualize in Framework 1? Framework 1 is the three-dimensional world we live in, this physical world, this earthly world. So which possibility do you actualize? It depends on what you want to actualize; you actualize what you want to actualize.

Many people say, I want to actualize the life of a rich person, so why hasn't it actualized? The reason is: what are you actualizing it with? It is not actualized by the conscious awareness in your head, not by your thinking; it is actualized by the thing you truly believe in your heart. As for this point, we have discussed it many times in many places, so I won't elaborate here. Only the thing you truly believe in your heart is actualized; you cannot fool anyone else, and you cannot fool yourself.

Framework 2 is just this kind of thing; you can simply understand it as the existence of all possibilities. If you have studied physics or something related to quantum mechanics, you can use quantum states to understand it: when the wave function is not yet determined -- whether it is wave or particle -- when no observer has appeared, it is very hard to determine whether it is wave or particle, and the appearance of the observer determines how this material thing manifests. This is also very interesting. But we must remember, this is only an analogy and a metaphor, not the actual truth -- it is not saying that Framework 2 is a quantum state or a unified field; no. Just take it as an analogy, to make it easier for you to understand.

Jane said that Seth's Framework 2 theory should be able to explain this magical event very well. However --

Except for the very beginning, that part of the Seth material -- Framework 2 -- never really moved me.

This is an honest remark by Jane. She says that except when Framework 2 was first introduced at the beginning, this theory or this framework system was fundamentally something Jane felt nothing about -- Seth talked about Framework 1 and Framework 2 for a long time and none of it moved Jane; Jane did not understand its deeper meaning, and she merely spoke it as a channel. But those few words Rob said about magic, and the camera incident just now, deeply touched Jane.

Maybe I was just ready.

Now she was ready; before she was not. This is very normal -- when we study spiritual knowledge, some books or materials feel one way when we read them then, another way now, and still another way a few years later. Depending on whether you are ready or not, your understanding of a passage or a concept is completely different.

As for the magical orientation toward reality, intellectual activity goes without saying, but the way it relates to life is different as well. Dealing with difficult problems or health issues, and the goals to be achieved, and so on, would all be very different.

She means that when you discover this magical orientation, when you discover that such miracles can appear in life, your way of viewing the whole world becomes different -- toward events, toward problems, toward health, toward the life goals you want to achieve, all completely different. You discover that magical things actually happen and exist in this world.

Then the word "action" would also take on a different meaning from the one it has now.

If nothing magical has happened, then action is just action. When you discover that this world is full of magic, when you discover this magical orientation (Magical Orientation), you find that your viewpoint on this matter has fundamentally changed; you will believe there are miracles in this world, so your understanding of action will also be different.

Rob's notes helped me understand that all of this is not as alien as it usually seems. The magical orientation may directly conflict with our training in this and most modern cultures, but it is part of our natural way of viewing the world, covered over by our belief in the rational way of doing things.

What she means by this passage is: when you believe in the magical orientation, it is completely opposite to and incompatible with the education we received from childhood. We were taught from an early age that this world exists objectively and really, that there are no magical events, no magical things, no gods or spirits; all such things are nonsense, chance, and coincidence -- that Rob happened to hold the camera, happened to come over, happened to want to take a photo of Jane, and that it had nothing to do with telepathy, magic, or the magical. All materialists think these are accidents and coincidences; they even think the emergence of human beings and life are accidents and coincidences. We won't go into that here.

Incidentally, that rational way has turned out to be not so rational after all.

She goes on to say that even from the materialist's point of view, what we call rationality, in its essence, turns out to be not so rational. The rationality we believe in, the so-called science, the so-called logic, cannot withstand scrutiny. If you have seen the video Taking You into Four-Dimensional Space ⁴, you will know that about eight to ten seconds before we humans can consciously perceive that we are making a decision ⁵, your brain has already made the decision -- and who made that decision? It was not the conscious you who made it, and you don't know who did. Of course, that experiment was a very small experiment.

If you have seen the American TV series Pioneers, in it the world's smartest people use the most advanced quantum computer and can predict the future direction of events ⁶ -- when you give it all the information and data, it can predict. So you think it is rational, but in fact you are not sure what rationality really is; this question does not hold up under scrutiny. Don't think that science is just science, facts are just facts; this cannot withstand scrutiny. When questions reach a certain depth, all scientists will say we will no longer answer this question; this question is beyond our scope -- in this way they dodge these questions. So she says, what you think is rational may not actually be so rational.

But I think in every person's life there are always a few events that can serve as signposts for arriving at a magical orientation.

She says that in our life experience, in every person's life, there are always some events -- we always encounter such magical events, not very many, and maybe you aren't even aware of them. But when you are aware, you will find that there are always such things that can serve as signposts, as markers telling you that magical events do happen in life.

I carried the fan into the bedroom, the coolest room in the house. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and began to write down my feelings about Rob's notes, the camera incident, and what I called the magical connection.

She went back into the bedroom and began to write down her feelings -- writing down the events she had experienced that afternoon and her feelings about them.

No matter how oppressive the heat had been before, I couldn't help noticing that the room already seemed to leap into a sea of green. The leaves were trembling, and the firs were so close to the window that if you left the window open long enough, a tree trunk could grow right in.

She no longer felt the oppressive heat; she felt this greenness. Her literary description here -- if the window were left open long enough, the trees could grow into the room -- is meant to show that this greenness had already entered the room. Jane is indeed a novelist.

As I wrote, the fan hummed softly, stirring the air and caressing my skin, while the green leaves blinked, and I felt a trance state finally approaching my mind.

She began to enter a trance state, approaching that trance state.

I knew Seth would begin the session that evening.

She just knew.

She said if I was willing, I smiled. I was willing.

This is especially interesting. She said she was willing to have the session.

However, after a two-month break, I was also very nervous, as I always am after any long vacation from the trance state. Suppose -- I was just supposing -- that I could not begin again, or that Seth would no longer come through me, that I had lost the ability just as suddenly as I had acquired that skill seventeen years before.

She would often -- if she stopped speaking for Seth for a period of time, when she spoke again she would be nervous. From 1963 to 1980, she had suddenly acquired the skill of communicating with Seth; she said, suppose I suddenly lost this skill again...

Or suppose Seth said something that no one could understand.

You may think this sounds funny, but it isn't -- in some early sessions, Seth said things that I guess Jane really may not have understood; Jane and Rob may really not have known what Seth was talking about. She said, what if Seth says something that others cannot understand? She says she wasn't really worried.

But I was uncomfortably aware that they could also happen.

She felt that such things were not impossible either.

I muttered to myself that it was only the heat that made me restless.

She said all this restlessness was caused by the weather being too hot.

Since I knew Seth would talk about magical connections (Magical connection), I forced a smile.

She guessed that Seth would probably talk about something related to the magical. The meaning of her other smile was --

Who could know more about magic than Seth?

Because Seth himself is a magical existence. He has no physical body at all; he is an energy being, an existence beyond our three-dimensional world. Seth himself represents magic; his existence is a manifestation of the magical, so isn't it all the more fitting for him to speak about magic -- didn't he appear magically in the first place?

At around four o'clock, the temperature shot up to ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit.

Ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit is already very hot, roughly equivalent to thirty-eight or thirty-nine degrees Celsius.

I wanted to postpone the Seth session because it was too hot.

However, she took a nap with Rob; they started napping at four o'clock -- these two lived quite comfortably, eating when they wanted and sleeping when they wanted. But actually they were very diligent; I'm only joking. They napped for an hour, and ate dinner on the coffee table -- not the dining table, but the coffee table. At the same time, they watched the evening news.

As cool as a cucumber -- when Rob said how fine the weather was today, that was Rob's description of the day.

But she kept twisting and turning, trying to make herself comfortable. She was actually uncomfortable, and felt hot again -- because Jane's body was already not very mobile at that time, and she had to sit in one place for long periods, so the hot weather was not comfortable for her.

Just after eight-thirty, she finally began to feel Seth around her. Everything went smoothly, after an interruption of nearly two months. Seth -- once again, for more than the thousandth time -- calmly and composedly, at the threshold of my mind, in the psyche's gearbox, began to turn there. Rob got paper and pen ready. I sipped a glass of wine with ice, the fan whirred, through the open door and window a slightly cooler breeze came in, and then I took off my glasses, became Seth, and began to speak. Rob sat with his bare legs propped on the coffee table, holding a pen. The session began.

"The psyche's gearbox" -- that is like the gear position we use when driving a car, the car's transmission. You can see that Jane even writes a preface so tightly connected to the later sessions, and at the same time introduces the background of this session so clearly, and with such fresh, literary description. Over more than ten years, her writing level improved by leaps and bounds, unlike her level in the very beginning -- this skill has to be cultivated through practice.

注释与核实

1. Source: Wikipedia "The Master Key System" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_Key_System) ↩ ↩²

2. Source: American Meteorological Society "The 1980–81 Drought in Southeastern New York" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/66/7/1520-0477_1985_066_0788_tdisny_2_0_co_2.xml) ↩

3. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "United States presidential election of 1980" (https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1980) ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Soon, Brass, Heinze, Haynes "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain" (Nature Neuroscience, 2008) (https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia "Developers (2020 TV series)" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E8%80%85_(2020%E5%B9%B4%E9%9B%BB%E8%A6%96%E5%8A%87)) ↩