Mike's commentary · The Magical Approach, Session 13

The "Introduction" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter records the evening session of September 24, 1980. While taking an afternoon nap, Rob conceived of a story about long-lost brothers reuniting, and later discovered that the front page of that day's evening paper reported on triplets who had been separated for many years and reunited, with a similar plot. Seth used this as an example to explain precognition: the story idea came simultaneously from medical books read in the past and from a newspaper not yet seen in the future, with the mind organizing past and future information through intuition while in a relaxed state. He also extended this principle to world events, the reunion of the triplets, and Jane's physical recovery.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Before reading the evening paper that day, Rob, while half asleep and half awake, conceived a novel whose plot closely resembled the front-page report about triplet brothers separated and reunited, constituting a precognitive experience.
• The novel idea came simultaneously from medical books he had read in the past and from newspaper content he had not yet seen in the future; the mind organized past and future data in an intuitive manner.
• Precognitive responses are often not recognized because they are separated from the actual events by a relatively long interval, and science mostly attributes them to coincidence.
• In observing world events, one should expand the scope of the intellect, regarding current events as reactions triggered jointly by the past and the future; the future has a suggestive effect upon the present.
• The reunion of the triplets came from continuous communication among the cells and the creative tension between separation and reunion; Jane should apply this understanding to her future recovery.

Main Text

Background Before the Session

This session took place on Wednesday evening, September 24, 1980, at 9:24 p.m. Rob's experience in this session was using the magical approach to precognitively know the contents of a newspaper.

At the beginning, Jane's condition was not so good, because there had been muscle changes, and she had pain in many places, and her whole body began to ache. At first she could not decide whether to have the session, and by 9:10 she had decided not to. But when Rob said he was going back to record and transcribe Monday night's session, there was a rather humorous change of heart, and Jane decided to have the session tonight after all. Jane said that if he came, he would handle it very well—if Seth came, Seth would handle it very well. Jane said that although right now I do not feel that he is nearby, by the time I wrote these notes at 9:20, she began to feel Seth's presence. Rob said to Jane: you have not been abandoned.

Before we sat waiting for the session to begin, Jane had just finished reading Rob's description of his cosmic light experience on Sunday night, September 21, which was the content of the previous session. There was also Rob's clairvoyant experience during his nap today, his precognitive experience, and a novel Rob had thought of, and an article in tonight's Elmira Evening Star and Gazette—Rob had described both of these things in his dream notes.

Rob said that he wished he had other words available besides the two terms clairvoyance and precognition, because he was somewhat reluctant to connect them with the newspaper experience. At the time, he did not feel at all that those qualities or terms might apply to what he was feeling, and he still does not feel that way now—he is not certain that this is clairvoyance or that this is precognitive ability. But he said that in cases like this, his vocabulary is very narrow in certain indescribable ways. Rob's newspaper experience is appended after this session.

Rob also had to say that he did not expect Seth to discuss this matter tonight, nor did he ask him to do so. At the same time, for a Jane who was initially unsure whether she wanted to have the session, Jane's delivery was excellent, generally quite fast, and the emphasis was strengthened from beginning to end.

Rob's Newspaper Experience

Because the Chinese translation of the book does not include this experience as an appendix, we can look at the original English edition, where there is such an appendix. On September 24, 1980, at four o'clock in the afternoon, which was when this session began, Rob was lying in bed. After Jane herself had gotten up, he wanted to take a short nap. He then had the following experience: as he lay there, in a state between waking and sleeping, in that half-asleep, half-awake state, he found himself conceiving a very good idea -- a very good idea for a novel.

The novel he conceived went like this: the protagonist is a woman, written in the first person. In a shopping center, as she passes through a double revolving door, she happens to catch sight of a young man, around twenty years old, about the age of her son. She says she knows her son is not in the mall, so it could not be her son, but the young man looks almost exactly like her son, like a complete replica of her son. So she wants to follow him, to ask him some questions, to find out what is really going on. She says she has to sit down on a bench outside to recover, and by the time she recovers, the young man has already left.

Then she begins to daydream, to fantasize, returning to the mall again and again to see whether she can run into this young man once more. Eventually she does run into him, follows him back to his car, then chats with him for a while, and then goes home with him and talks with his parents. But she does not know what his relationship to her son is, nor does she know what it means for two young men to look so alike, but she feels she has to find the answer.

She keeps following the trail, all the way back to when the two children were born. She can see herself in the delivery room, as if returning to that state in the delivery room -- in the Elmira hospital. In the nursery she can see many visitors; parents can go to the nursery to see their own children. Rob said he had never seen what a delivery room actually looked like, because Rob and Jane did not have children.

The story began to unfold. The mother discovered some evidence: in this hospital, babies were frequently mixed up. One possibility was that she had given birth to two children, that she had a twin son, but the hospital mixed them up and only gave her one; another possibility was that when she went to the hospital to adopt, she only adopted one. Either way, she discovered that the whole business of babies being mixed up in the hospital was not an accidental phenomenon. Throughout the Elmira area, there were often parents who raised children who were not their own, raising them into their twenties before they found out.

Rob felt this was a very good idea, because all these clues were tangled together, mixed together, and the whole process of these children growing up with parents and the emotional entanglements, the lost children reuniting again -- he felt it was excellent material, something that could be written into a very good novel.

He said he felt the business of the hospital mixing up babies came from a book -- a book he and Jane had read the previous week, written by a doctor who was opposed to the existing medical system. The doctor said that in actual medical practice, many babies were mixed up, far more than could be attributed to chance.

Then, while sitting on the sofa, Rob suddenly remembered: over the past few months, he had never once forgotten to get the newspaper. He would usually bring in the evening paper before his nap, so that after Jane got up she could read the newspaper first. But this was the first time in months that he had forgotten to get the paper. At dinner, while discussing the novel idea with Jane, he remembered he had not gotten the paper, so he went and brought it in.

He discovered that on the front page of the newspaper, and also inside the paper, there was a very long report, with photographs. The story was about triplets who, through a chance occurrence, had been separated and only reunited the previous weekend -- and in New York, no less. New York is such a huge metropolis, with people coming and going, a vast population; for three long-separated triplets to be able to reunite was very rare, so it became a news story. Rob had never heard of this until he saw the news.

The newspaper had certainly been printed the day before or that very morning, but Rob had not looked at it. When he was sleeping, he had no idea what was in the newspaper. After he finished describing the novel idea to Jane at dinner, he brought the paper in, and the front page carried this story of triplets separated for many years and reunited.

He was astonished by this synchronicity: he had just conceived a novel, and the novel was very similar, very close, to the article in the news.

The first two brothers had met through a friend of theirs, while in Rob's novel the discovery came through the mother's pursuit -- running into someone in the mall who looked like her son. The third one in the report had been adopted, adopted at birth. They knew they were adopted, but they did not know they belonged to the same family -- actually they were quadruplets, and one of them had died at birth. The two characters Rob conceived in his novel were around twenty years old, while the three triplets in the real news report were around nineteen -- very close in age as well.

Rob was shocked by this immediacy, this synchronicity, and felt it was amazing -- he had just conceived a novel, and then discovered that a similar plot was already written in the newspaper.

Jane said this was because Rob had forgotten to bring the newspaper in before he lay down. So Rob had been paying attention to that newspaper all along. Rob said he had no feeling that he wanted to pay attention to the newspaper, to see what was in it. But he said, in the end he discovered that he had actually gotten something from the information in that newspaper.

He said he usually lay down at four-twenty, and the newspaper delivery motorcycle would usually put the paper in the mailbox between three-fifteen and three-thirty. The mailbox was within sight of his bedroom; from the bedroom window he could see the mailbox, at a distance of about forty-five to fifty feet. When he slept, he pulled the curtains shut, so he actually could not see whether anyone had delivered the paper. He rambled on at length, wanting to emphasize: he had not gotten the paper first; he only saw the paper after he woke up, and he had not particularly paid attention to what was actually in the newspaper.

Seth's Interpretation

With this background in place, let's see what Seth says:

If you had read the article in the newspaper first, then in a half-dreaming, half-waking state you created the idea for a story, filled with the characterization of that mother, then you would say the whole thing involved cause and effect.

Seth means: if you had read the newspaper first and then conceived this story, that would be a normal logical relationship, a cause-and-effect relationship. But you conceived this story before you saw the newspaper, and seeing the newspaper came later, which makes it seem magical to you.

Scientists would immediately claim that these two events were not connected at all, and that it should be considered a pattern of coincidence.

Science does not acknowledge this kind of relationship; it considers it coincidence.

And in your terms, whether only one minute in advance was involved, or ten minutes, or one hour, or two hours, you reacted ahead of time to a headline that you had not yet actually encountered. You reacted creatively, using the precognitive story as the basis for a story you would write, and you turned it to artistic purposes.

Even knowing something one minute in advance is precognition. One day in advance, three days in advance, all of it is precognition. Although this event was only a few hours ahead of you, it was still a form of precognition—you knew the content of that article in advance, and then you conceived such a story, and you responded to that headline. Although the event had not yet happened to you, that inner self of yours knew it, and you shaped it into a story, with art as the purpose.

As you lay there, Rob, just beneath your consciousness, you were aware that you had not brought the newspaper in before your nap.

Seth begins to describe this activity just beneath Rob's consciousness, and this activity was something Rob was not conscious of. All those tedious details in Rob's afterword—what time the paper was delivered, what time he usually brought it in—were actually all meant to show that the mental activity described below was something Rob was not conscious of.

Almost at a dream level, you lazily wondered what stories the newspaper contained.

Rob, in that half-dreaming, half-waking state, entered into something like a dream level. In the dream he would think: I didn't bring in the newspaper today, what stories are in it today. And then he could see the story on the front page of the newspaper. That is why Rob was uncertain whether he should use the term clairvoyance—he had not seen the newspaper, but in fact he had already seen it through the house, through the walls.

As you suspected, the hospital confusion contained in the story was connected with your recent dealings with medical concepts.

Because Rob was about to write The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and he had to write notes for it, which involved a lot of medical questions, so he had looked at some medical-related materials. At that time he saw a book written by a doctor—the one mentioned in the English footnote earlier, which he and Jane had happened to look at a week before. That doctor was against the medical establishment, and he mentioned that mixing up babies in the maternity ward was very chaotic.

And you also saw that there was an excellent story idea here.

But this was something Rob did not feel at the time.

The Idea for the Novel Came from Both the Past and the Future

Next is a very key core point of this session:

So the idea for this novel came from both of these events, the past and the future, at the same time.

What does "the past" mean? The past was that a week earlier he had just read the book written by that doctor. And the future event that had not yet happened was the front-page headline in the newspaper about the triplets -- actually quadruplets, with one having died -- who had been separated and then found each other again. When Rob was telling Jane about the idea for the novel, the idea came from a book he had read the previous week, and from a front-page headline he was about to see in the evening paper maybe ten minutes later, or half an hour later. Both of these pieces of information gave him excellent material. So the idea for his novel came from both the past and the future at the same time.

Even though you will soon catch up with those future events, your intellect intuitively organizes all of that data in an entirely new way.

Your intellect organizes the data of the past and the future intuitively -- be sure to remember to add "intuitively" -- not according to the normal logical and cause-and-effect manner. It puts them together in an entirely new way, bringing together the past and the future, which are entirely two different times and spaces.

Sometimes when such a thing happens, when the precognitive trigger is physically activated, it is not even recognized, because it happens too far ahead of time.

In actual life, this kind of precognitive thing often happens, but when it happens you do not recognize it. What is the reason? The reason is that when it actually happens -- when you catch up with that real future event -- it may already have been several weeks, several months, or sometimes even several years. You have already forgotten that earlier process, so you do not remember that you had once precognized this event.

You organize mental and physical events in a highly creative manner.

In this example, a novel was involved. Although the idea strongly involved an image -- a mother in a shopping mall running into a young man who looked exactly like her son, which was a very strong image -- it extended over a period of time, making a written description necessary.

You mentioned that you are natural in your behavior and in displaying your abilities, abilities that are largely unrecognized in your society.

Whenever this kind of thing happens, science gives you a two-word explanation: coincidence. No matter how miraculous the event, it will tell you it is just a coincidence. Because it has no way to explain it, it can only explain it as coincidence; otherwise, that edifice of science would be overturned. If it did not use coincidence to explain things by force of argument, then the edifice of science would collapse in an instant. So in order to maintain the stability of the edifice of science, it can only say that all of these are coincidences.

That kind of lightning-swift organization is constantly going on in the body, as it deals with possible images that you will or will not respond to.

This sentence is said in reverse order. In plain words, it means that this precognitive ability is constantly happening in you, in ways you know or do not know, in ways you feel or do not feel -- it is happening all the time.

The events dealt with in the newspaper article themselves point to the same kind of magical connections.

What Seth is saying now is that for those three young men in the news story, the same kind of magical approach was also happening in their lives -- he wants to say that the magical approach is everywhere.

In that event, the young men's cells were forever in communication with each other.

The three triplets, their cells were forever in communication with each other. That is why they were able to meet again in a metropolis as large as New York -- three children sent to three different families, able to meet in New York, and finally come together. You could also say it was a coincidence; of course scientists will always say it was just a coincidence. Fine, it was a coincidence. But Seth says no, it was because their cells were always communicating with each other.

And all of the factors needed for such a reunion were happening at that magical level of activity.

The possibility of the three brothers finally meeting and reuniting -- at that magical level, it was always happening, or it had already been happening.

Intellectually, consciously, the boys were completely unaware that they were triplets. You personally live in a rich world of creative ideas, and your intellect is aware of that point.

Although rationally and consciously they did not know, the intellect was able to be aware of that point -- that there was an invisible bond connecting them.

Accustomed to creative work, the focused intellect does indeed activate intuitive abilities, as well as healing abilities. So you can get what you concentrate upon.

Why is our intellect important? Because what we can use is the intellect. When the magical approach is at work, we do not need to control it; it is effortless for us, and you do not need to do any work for it. But intellectually, there is actually a great deal you can do. The intellect is your reasoning ability, your wisdom, and this can be trained. Just as Seth said earlier, like a person's muscles, it can be trained. When your intellectual ability, your logical reasoning ability, and your wisdom are higher, when you focus upon your wisdom, you can activate intuitive abilities. So you must have wisdom; without wisdom it will not work. Having spiritual ability alone is not enough; you also need the ability of wisdom. It can activate not only your intuition, but also your healing abilities. It is because of this that you can get what you concentrate upon; this is how the law of attraction works.

Your intellect is an important organizer, even though it is not itself aware that its best ideas often come from the magical level of activity out of which they emerge.

Even if the intellect is not aware of these magical levels of activity, that does not prevent many of its best ideas and thoughts from coming from there.

Observing World Events

When you observe world events, for example the current situation in the world today, try to expand the scope that your intellect involves itself with.

A few days earlier the Iran-Iraq War had just broken out¹ -- that is, the war between Iran and Iraq in the Middle East. He says you should try to expand the scope that your intellect involves itself with, meaning use your logic, wisdom, and reasoning ability, but expand the range it covers. Do not just look at the surface things. You need to be able to see, through what is happening now, its past and its future.

In other words, the event happening right now is inevitably influenced by both the past and the future. These three are actually connected. Just like the novel Rob was conceiving -- he was influenced by that doctor's book from the previous week, and by a front-page story in an evening paper he had not yet seen.

Use your knowledge and your reasoning ability. This is the only thing you can use; if you do not use this, you have nothing else available. Expand the known conditions you use to reason about and view this event. Have a sense of history, and have an equal perspective on both the past and the future.

Therefore, you will be able to recognize world events as a response to the triggering of future and past.

Look at the current world situation -- it is jointly triggered by the past and the future. Remember this firmly: it is jointly triggered. If you have this kind of historical perspective and this kind of view for assessing situations, then the way you look at things will be completely different from others.

And in the living multidimensional novel being formed in the present, in your terms, the impact of future and past -- or rather, the future's suggestion to the present -- is extremely important.

You can regard what is happening today -- whether it is the pandemic, the economy, the confrontation between China and the United States, and so on -- as a living novel, a living multidimensional novel. It must be a multidimensional novel. Within this living multidimensional novel, it is impacted by the past and the future. Or in other words, the future's suggestion to the present -- what is happening today can all be understood as the future's suggestion to the present.

When you look at the current pandemic, if you have this perspective, you can deduce the social changes of the coming years, the changes in the larger social landscape. If you look at today's China-U.S. relations, and you can expand it, extend it outward, and see the deeper and broader meaning, that is also very good. Do not only see the surface of events in the present era; you need to be able to see them in history, past and future -- this suggestion of the future to the present. Present events are all a suggestion of future events.

And this precognitive response is just as important, numerous, and real as the responses you usually attribute to past events.

This kind of precognitive information, this kind of suggestive information about the future, is just like your response to past events. What does response to past events mean? It means that when we look back at a historical event, we say, oh, that thing that happened back then was a fuse. But at the time, when that fuse was lit, no one felt it was a fuse. When you look back at the past, step by step it all came about this way. Every turning point, every key point -- in other words, China-U.S. relations reaching where they are today was composed of one step after another from the past, each small step carrying within it a strong suggestion. If you cannot look at this issue from a higher vantage point, if you cannot look at it from a macro-historical perspective, if you only look at the state of things at that moment, you would not know it would develop into today's situation. As for what it will develop into later, if you analyze it along this line of thinking, you can figure it out. You can guess the changes in the entire social and political situation, and you will guess very accurately.

Seth has already told you here: as long as you boldly make use of these present suggestions, as long as you give all this information to your intellect -- your wisdom, your reasoning ability, and your analytical ability -- it will naturally arrive at a very clear result. And at this time you must give it enough information, not just the little bit of information right in front of you.

This places present world events in an entirely different perspective. People, then, act according to events that have not yet happened historically. Those events that occur in the future, in a certain manner of speaking, according to the characteristics of those events, either cast their shadows back into the present, or illuminate the past. There is always more going on than ordinary sensory information reveals.

This passage is very important. If we look back at history today, we know that history proceeded along this course. Since history has come along this route from the past, can we then predict future developments? To put it in Seth's words, to say it more poetically: a huge shadow of that future event is cast back into the present. Are we not heading straight toward that shadow? That event that will happen in the future inevitably has an influence on present events. In other words, your present event is a suggestion -- a suggestion, or a symbol, or a prophecy of what will happen in the future. If you can read these suggestions, you can foresee the future. If you cannot read them, then these are just complicated and confusing international affairs that you cannot see through or understand.

Seth uses very poetic language. He says future events are like shadows that can be cast into present events, and can also illuminate the past. What does illuminating the past mean? It is actually also an influence on past events; it has long been prepared.

If you can understand the integration of past, present, and future at a deeper level, that is understanding on another level, and that is one level higher. If we understand it according to human linear time, then since we are talking about precognition, we are talking about time, and talking about time means calculating according to Earth time. If you insist on being pedantic and saying, did not Seth say that time is simultaneous, so what is there to foresee? As I often say, Seth often discusses issues on two levels: one is human Earth time and our three-dimensional world, and the other is the world of higher dimensions. What he is talking about here is matters within the three-dimensional world -- in our real life, how we apply our magical approach.

The Creative Tension of the Triplets

But within your simpler experience, you can see hints of this kind of activity.

Rob's experience of half-dreaming, half-awake while conceiving his novel is a very simple matter, but it gives you a very good hint. Although it is not some major international event, the principle behind major international events and this matter is the same.

People may unconsciously translate future events into paintings or movies. They may react by taking certain political steps that seemed unreasonable or even incomprehensible at the time. Only in hindsight does the logic of those steps appear.

The most classic example here is the American animated show, The Simpsons² -- especially regarding the matter of Trump being elected President of the United States, it was absolutely incredible. It was even able to predict Trump's election, yet right up to the day Trump ran, the mainstream all believed he could not possibly win, that Hillary Clinton would surely come out ahead. But this animated show had foreseen years earlier that Trump would be elected. The key is that after Trump was elected, including his speeches, his hairstyle, even the images of protesters holding signs during his visits abroad, all matched the later television footage exactly. Those who are interested can look up The Simpsons prediction about Trump's election.

Including after this pandemic broke out, the Korean film Contagion³ became very popular -- that was actually also a prediction. When SARS broke out last time, was that SARS a hint about this one? Humanity perhaps did not understand it at the time. If they had understood it and established a very good defense mechanism, it would not have led to such serious consequences today. But humanity did not seem to take that hint seriously. So what kind of future result will today's novel coronavirus lead to, and what future event is it a hint of? You can carefully unfold your own imagination, and use your intuition and your inspiration to judge -- today's state is a hint from some future event to present-day society.

People will unconsciously turn future events into a kind of painting or movie, and they may react by taking certain political steps that seemed unreasonable or even incomprehensible at the time -- that is, at the time we did many things without knowing why we did them, making decisions that were very strange for that era or that situation, yet those decisions in hindsight were so wise, so in line with how things developed.

Let me give a simple example: after this novel coronavirus broke out, Wuhan was quickly locked down. This had never happened before in our country -- since the founding of New China, there had never been a process of completely sealing off a city⁴. Why was the decision made at that time to lock down the city? Many people certainly did not understand at the time, and did not know why that decision was made. Perhaps even the person who made the decision at the time did not know why he chose such a decision. But when we look back at this matter afterwards: if Wuhan had not been locked down at that time, it was only three days before the New Year, exactly the peak period of visiting relatives and friends during the Spring Festival, and during the Spring Festival travel rush all means of transportation were operating at full capacity -- you can imagine what kind of scene that would have been. Today we are not discussing current political issues, so do not get too caught up in this question. I am only giving a few simple examples to tell everyone that it has profound implications. Only afterwards can we see why such a decision was made at the time.

Of course the same thing happens in all areas of human behavior, and it also happens in the behavior of animals and even plants in the same way.

This projection of the future into the present, or the illumination of the present by the future, represents an important factor in the formation of things perceived within time.

Looked at in another way, the triplets were, in their past, reacting to their future event. Every action of any given moment of their past was the result of a tension, a creative tension, between their original separation on the one hand, and their future reunion on the other.

The triplets were separated at birth, and did not live together -- whether they were mixed up at the hospital or adopted out, in any case they were not together. It was only later, when they grew to nineteen, that the three reunited. From the moment they were separated, every action and every behavior of every moment was a necessary step leading toward their final reunion. If any single link had changed, the three of them could never have come together. If you say it was coincidence, then this whole chain was coincidence. In New York, a city of constant coming and going, the largest metropolis in the world, three people who did not know each other at all -- although they were triplets -- were ultimately able to run into each other and reunite again after nineteen years.

After the three of them were separated, they sensed that they would meet again. So the many, many things they did over those nineteen years were, for the people involved, just everyday life, just normal daily living. But viewed from a higher level of history, every action they took was an indispensable behavior and step leading to their final reunion. This is a tension -- between the event of separation and the event of reunion there is a tension. If there were no reunion, there would be no separation. If the three of them could never reunite in this lifetime, they would not feel they had ever been separated. If they never reunited before death, then in their lives there would be no concept of separation. Only with separation can there be reunion. In other words, it was precisely because of the reunion nineteen years later that the separation nineteen years earlier had its meaning. So this is an inner tension.

I do not mean that the reunion was inevitable and predestined to happen, but you could say that the vitality of that probability magnified the original tension.

The three children were mixed up and separated, which foreshadowed that in the future there was a possibility the three children could come together. It was precisely because of the existence of this possibility, the existence of this probable vitality, that it magnified the original tension -- the vitality of the possibility that the three of them might reunite enlarged this tension.

A Reminder for Jane

Now for Jane, whether in Jane's creative endeavors or in her physical condition, I want Ruburt to apply all of this to his own situation. Thus he will also begin to understand that he can now begin to respond to a future recovery and healing.

What Seth is saying seems to go around in a big circle, but actually it is all meant to be of real help to Jane. Between Jane's current poor physical condition and her complete recovery in the future, is there not just such a tension? Only with the premise of Jane's poor physical condition is there the possibility that Jane may recover in the future. The existence of such a possibility and the present state form a tension.

If you place your focus on the matter of future recovery, and focus on this possibility, then it will inevitably open up the path for your present body to move toward that possibility of recovery -- it will clear that path. Just as the three children were ultimately able to reunite, because the vitality of the possibility of their reunion illuminated their life trajectories, causing the three life trajectories to move toward that point of intersection -- the point where they could reunite. If Jane can place her focus on the matter of her recovery, then all the functions of her present body, including every aspect of her daily life, will move toward the path of her recovery. It will amplify this tension and strengthen this tension.

He can see, Ruburt can see how important some periods of letting go are.

If Jane could stand at that future time of her recovery and look back, if she were to give her present self one very good piece of advice, she would certainly say to Jane: do not be so busy, do not be so tired, rest and rest, let go when it is time to let go, do not write so many novels, do not write so many poems, do not sit here every day from morning to night writing nonstop when your body is already in this condition. That is how important some periods of letting go are.

How the Intellect Uses the Magical Approach

Your experience happens when you are nearly asleep, but only relaxing, without worry, and your intellect flows freely. You do not block them, and the intellect temporarily escapes the constraints of limited beliefs, and it naturally makes use of, or rather chooses to make use of, the magical approach to answer a very simple or already forgotten intellectual question.

Rob's question was: What news might be in today's newspaper? This is a very simple question, but this simple question cannot be answered by reason -- he had not read the newspaper, and he was lying in bed in a half-dreaming, half-waking state. But at this point you find that the magical approach has kicked in. The magical approach at this point begins to transcend time and space -- it is not limited by time and space.

It directly gave Rob something: it did not tell Rob the content of the newspaper; what it told Rob was what your thoughts or feelings would be after you read the content of that article in the newspaper -- it gave that directly to Rob. Rob asked what the content of today's newspaper was, and the magical approach did not directly tell Rob the content of the newspaper. Instead, it told Rob the reaction, the inner thoughts he would have after reading the content of that newspaper -- that he would want to conceive a novel. Rob received it, and in that half-dreaming, half-waking state he was conceiving this novel.

How does the magical approach operate? As long as you relax, and do not try too much to constrain it with logic or rational things, if you relax, it will naturally answer the question. And the same goes for complex questions.

The usual answer, or the usual method used to obtain an answer, was inconvenient at the time, because you had no intention of getting out of bed, going outside to get the newspaper. Therefore, you could say the intellect itself pressed the button of the magical approach and obtained this information in the fastest and easiest way possible.

It did not just give you the headline. Even the headline and the story could have been perceived in a way so fast that you could not keep up with it -- although your intellect could quickly obtain the headline, even the content of the entire story, it could do all that, but it did not give you the headline, nor did it give you the story. What you perceived was only the creative fantasy generated by your own reaction to that material. What it gave you was not the headline, nor the article; what it gave you was your own creative fantasy after reading that article. It gave this creative fantasy directly to you, so you would have such a result in your dream.

And if left alone, the intellect will often solve problems in this way.

He used an excellent example here to tell you how the magical approach solves problems. Of course, this question of his was a very small matter, and he wanted to extend it -- including problems like the world situation, all of which are solved in this way.

When you forget what everyone assumes is possible and what is impossible, when you forget what your mind assumes should be ordinary and narrow.

You must forget entirely what is possible and what is impossible, blur them out, let there be no such thing. You must forget the ordinary and narrow things your mind has been taught by society in daily life. If you only use your reason to analyze, your life will certainly be ordinary and narrow, and nothing surprising will happen. Only when you do not constrain it with reason, when you let it go, when you believe that this world has the magical approach, and you also believe that it is operating, then it operates in a magical way. Then it is not narrow, nor ordinary; it will certainly be an extraordinary result of infinite possibility.

After-Class Discussion

Seth said: That is exactly what I think. I wish you a good night. This session ends here. At 10:09, Jane quickly came out of trance. Rob told her that this session was wonderful. Although this session was very short, its content was truly excellent: it gave you a perfect example of how the magical approach works, and how we can foresee our future. It said just two things: first, how the magical approach works; second, how people generally foresee the future.

Jane was very pleased. For someone who had been hesitant about whether to hold a session, she did really well, and her delivery was fast and emphatic. Rob told Jane that it seemed as if Seth had used the matter of Rob's newspaper to summarize, in a concrete yet subtle way, using a very simple, very small matter, the recent series of personal sessions he had given them, namely this series of sessions on the magical approach. Rob said, you could not ask for a better demonstration of the whole event; there could not possibly be a better example than this. Although this example is small, although it is subtle, concrete yet subtle, the principle contained within it is by no means simple. It contains the principle by which all things in the world operate, including even animals and plants, which all operate in this way. If you can understand what he meant to say in this story, the explanation Seth gave to everyone in the middle of it, then you can understand how this world operates.

Rob planned to condense this session into one or two pages and add it to the suggested notes he was writing for Seth's recent book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. He said he was referring to this information about time. Rob said that they should also at least make an effort to remember this session in their minds, and not let it slip away in the passage of time. This remark of his is very interesting. He was speaking of himself, but really it was Rob and Jane, the two of them, who should not forget this session. He was in fact also reminding our readers, our listeners, that everyone who sees this session must remember it. As time passes, you may forget it. When you forget this matter, just think of Rob's story about the newspaper, and you will be able to recall it. Using such a story as a retrieval cue for your memory, you will be able to recall the entire way in which Seth explained how the magical approach works. This is also one of the reasons Rob wanted to use part of it in Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, because it is very important. Otherwise, since it was a personal session, that is, directed at Rob and Jane, it could not have been published quickly. At the time they thought that The Magical Approach would not be published too soon, because it was a private session, a private session Seth had written specifically for the two of them, not a standalone book.

Finally, there is one small note. This session was held on Wednesday evening. The next day, Thursday morning, Jane and Rob saw the three young men mentioned in this article on a famous variety show. This was truly amazing. The night before, Seth had lectured on this matter until after ten o'clock, and the very next day, on a television variety channel, these three people appeared on screen.

One of the triplets said that he had once had a dream about having brothers. The other two, although not so certain and having had no such dreams, did not feel that they were a single person alone. They had an intuition, which is what Seth said earlier, that their cells had been in contact all along. Although it was not as obvious a hint as a dream, they vaguely felt as if they were not one person. The television host did not mention the fact that these triplets were actually three of quadruplets. The three brothers did not mention this point either. Rob also mentioned that the two adopted brothers had a similarity between their surnames.

The content of this session has now been fully covered. Although it is very short, it is also very important.

注释与核实

1. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Iran-Iraq War" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Iraq-War) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. According to Mike's original words, it was "the Korean film Contagion"; upon verification, it should be "Contagion (2011) is an American film directed by Steven Soderbergh, not a Korean film." (Source: Wikipedia, "Contagion (2011 film)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film)) ↩

4. Source: Changjiang Daily, "Responding to Extraordinary Events with Extraordinary Measures: A Megacity of Ten Million People 'Locked Down' for 76 Days" (2020, reprinted on the Wuhan Municipal People's Government portal website) (https://www.wuhan.gov.cn/sy/whyw/202012/t20201207_1529219.shtml) ↩