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 portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter is the final lesson of the book's main text. Seth points out that Ruburt's technique for transmitting the material is as old as human civilization, and that humanity's inner knowledge spontaneously translates itself into external achievements such as art, science, and culture. Seth explains that his material must be translated and "distorted" in order to fit the materially oriented structure of human beliefs. He also discusses how worlds are interconnected, with no higher or lower distinctions, that no great catastrophe can destroy consciousness, and gives Jane a memorandum on trusting spontaneity.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Ruburt's skill at transmitting the Seth material is as old as human civilization itself; all of humanity's artistic, scientific, and cultural achievements are concrete realizations of the spontaneous translation of inner knowledge.
- The Seth material must be translated and "distorted" in order to fit into the human belief structure that insists matter is superior to mind.
- Worlds are connected to one another; no world is more highly evolved than another, and there is no great catastrophe that would destroy consciousness or end life on Earth.
- Within existence there are great pulsations that have nothing to do with time and everything to do with intensity; worlds exist forever, only changing their patterns of activity.
- Trust the universe's power to form images and the body's natural impulses, and let them reveal themselves at their own pace.
Main Text
Jane's Technique Is as Old as Humanity
This session was held on Wednesday, October 15, 1980, at 8:55 p.m., and it is the last session of the main body of this book. After it there are still four appendices and an afterword. Let us first look at the content of this session's main text.
Before the session began, Rob wrote: Today at lunch, I read some of Jane's recent poems for her forthcoming poetry collection. I had just typed the last few pages of Monday night's session, and I asked Jane how she felt about my final notes. Then Rob himself was thinking: whether there was any reincarnational connection between Jane's ability to speak for Seth without any modern aids, and the abilities that ancient people had displayed. According to Seth, ancient people would often be able to carry all their history in their minds. Just as ancient people did not have the news media we are so accustomed to, Jane also spoke for Seth without all those modern aids. Rob had not expected that Seth would talk about this related material tonight.
Then Seth came through. Seth said good evening, and Rob said good evening, Seth. Seth said:
Now Ruburt's technique is as old as humanity itself.
That is to say, the technique by which Ruburt is now transmitting the Seth material is as old as ancient humanity, as old as human civilization. And indeed there is no mistake:
All of your achievements in the arts, sciences, and cultures are an offshoot of spontaneous mental and biological processes.
Seth said, at times I choose my words quite carefully, because I understand the various interpretations that can be placed upon them. Perhaps the following explanation will express my meaning more clearly.
When Seth transmits the material, every word he uses is very careful and very particular, trying as much as possible to avoid words that easily cause ambiguity—that is, words that have many interpretations, and for which human society already has fixed understandings of their connotations or meanings; he tries to avoid this kind of word as much as possible. The words he uses must also be consistent from beginning to end, in line with his logic. This is indeed difficult, because some things are truly hard to express in words.
Below he gives the explanation:
First of all, I have often mentioned lately that the reasoning mind is spontaneously activated.
The human reasoning mind, that is, our capacity for logical thinking, is spontaneous.
Man contains within himself all of the knowledge, all of the content, for example, the spontaneous attributes necessary to form a civilization.
In other words, each of us carries the spontaneous attributes needed by an entire civilization. The external things of what we call civilization—whether our social systems, national systems, or all aspects of art, culture, and literature—are all external displays of this inner attribute, and this inner attribute is something we are born with. To put it more bluntly: if you were dropped alone onto a barren planet, one person might not be able to reproduce, but suppose there were a few people, then each of you possesses—indeed with just these few people—the ability to expand the whole of human civilization. The information and material within you is sufficient; you could completely start a new civilization from scratch.
Of course, all of your rational activities—your governments, societies, laws, arts, religions, sciences—are the concrete realizations of innate inner abilities within the human framework.
All the external manifestations of human society today, whether scientific or artistic, social or humanistic, are all external embodiments of our inner abilities. Without these inner abilities, there could be no such external manifestations.
The Ancient Tradition of Acting
Take the movies in your theaters, for example. Film is the concretization of humanity's natural talent for acting in our era. Acting is an extremely important characteristic of human behavior. You humans nowadays love watching movies; there are movie theaters everywhere, and all kinds of films are made for you to watch. What is this really? It is the primal, most fundamental, and extremely important characteristic of humans wanting to act, or being willing to watch acting. You should know, in ancient times when there were no movies, was there still drama? Drama can be traced back to very ancient times, so the emergence of film is not strange at all; it follows naturally, and is merely a new form of expression.
The dramas of earlier times were no less intricate or brilliant than today's films. A couple of days ago I talked about The Peony Pavilion; everyone can go look it up. The twists and turns, the strangeness of the story in The Peony Pavilion, and that love which transcends life and death and transcends time and space -- even if people today were to create it, I think it would be very difficult to reach the same artistic level. So you can see that in fact, in remote antiquity, in ancient times, people already had the tradition of watching drama.
Seth then gives examples: for instance, early humans spontaneously played the roles of other animals. They would act out a tree, a stream, a rock. Acting became a method of teaching; at that time acting was a form of teaching, and also a method of transmitting information. In ancient China, drama was also used to transmit many shared social values. Those ancient dramas, act after act, scene after scene, volume after volume. Why are they called "zhezixi," or excerpted scenes? A zhezixi only performs one scene; in fact, if an entire play were to be sung through, some plays would take several days to perform. The Peony Pavilion also requires three nights, three full nights, to be performed completely1; it cannot be finished in one night. Other ancient dramas are the same, whether Peking opera or other types of opera; the complete plays are all very long.
Humanity Always Possesses the Knowledge It Needs
Humanity always possesses the knowledge it needs.
Remember, humanity always possesses the knowledge it needs. What is the essential task? The important core is to make all the knowledge he possesses concretely available to the person. This knowledge is innate, carried by every individual, and the key is that it must be concretely accessible to people. It is like having a piece of knowledge that has not yet manifested, so others do not know about it.
So, people like Ruburt -- people like Jane -- translate inner knowledge in many ways, and then actually put this information to use by acting it out, by singing or dancing, by painting murals on cave walls, and this is the work of the intellect. Thus intuition and intellect can work hand in hand. At that time, humanity dealt with spontaneous knowing in a more direct manner.
In ancient times, there were many people like Ruburt who translated inner knowledge and expressed it through various means such as singing, dancing, and painting murals. After expressing it, humanity then used its own intelligence -- the intellect, that is, the capacity for reasoning and logical inference -- to apply it in practical situations. So at that time, much of what we used was intuition and intellect working hand in hand. In that era, humanity used a more direct way to handle our spontaneous, heartfelt knowledge.
It is very difficult to explain the various shades of psychology involved. In your terms, early humanity did indeed act in a more spontaneous, more automatic, yet not mindless manner.
Early humanity was like this: they acted in a more spontaneous, more automatic, yet not mindless manner. Do you think they foolishly acted on intuition, as if they had no intelligence? No, it was not mindless.
If you remember the earlier portions of my recent book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, then this information should also be exactly appropriate. For consciousness emerges from the inside outward.
The earlier part of that book also discusses this content, but since that book has not been covered yet, I will not expand on it here.
Animals Love Drama
Animals love drama, and they put on their own performances in their own way. Only human beings can freely translate their inner information.
What does it mean to translate freely? Let me give an example: it means they are able to form many different cultures. The inner information is consistent; the information that human beings carry is the same. But when this information is translated outward, it can very freely display different cultural characteristics and cultural features. He organizes his science, religion, and language in many different ways, but there must always be an inner information translated outward into the sense world.
Human beings have many ways of reorganizing their science, religion, and literature. In different periods or different societies they are completely different, displaying different cultural characteristics. But no matter how they are presented, first there must be something inner, only then can it be presented through the outer senses. Whether it is presented through drama, literature, opera, painting, or dance, first there must be something inner. There must be something inner. If there is nothing inner, how can it be translated outward? But what is translated outward from this inner source is vastly different -- this is the diversity of our cultures and the diversity of our societies.
This is still true today. In this respect, and in that respect, human abilities have not declined.
You must remember that human abilities have not declined. It is not that, as history has developed, everything inner in human beings has already been expressed, already been displayed, and there is no more drama left to perform. No. Because this process of translating inner information outward is completely free, this creative ability of human beings has not diminished in the slightest. Today we are still using modern methods to display the inner things of the human psyche. The Internet is one very good expression of this. In the past, people spoke of clairvoyance or hearing from a thousand miles away; now the Internet can achieve all of this -- you pick up your phone and can speak directly with someone tens of thousands of kilometers away, and it is as if he is right in front of you; information is instantly available; one piece of knowledge connects all knowledge through the Internet, and with a single search, knowledge linked to knowledge all comes forth. Including the way you read this book today through electronic means, or watch explanations of this book through various video platforms -- all of this is displaying the inner things of the human psyche across time and space.
Thinking, for example, is as automatic as it has always been.
Today we are still like this. It is just that your culture emphasizes what you call the rational mode of thinking, to organize all kinds of different factors. Our modern culture, our present society, emphasizes rational thinking, using the rational mode of thinking to organize and summarize the various materials and elements of reality, and to process them in what is called a scientific way. But the process of thinking itself is automatic; you cannot make human beings stop thinking.
When human beings need certain abilities, they come to the fore.
When human beings need a special ability, these abilities rise up from the hidden potentials in the background, just as Ruburt is now. When human beings need this kind of knowledge, people like Ruburt will appear and transmit the Seth material to us.
Painting, Dreams, and Poetry
When you paint, you are also translating inner knowledge.
This is about Rob. When Rob paints, he is expressing inner knowledge.
Early painters painted to share with others the images they saw in their dreams. In other words, they practiced dreaming in their sleep, and thus learned to think in terms of the image sizes of objects. And before they actually moved objects, they had already moved them around in their minds.
Ancient painters all painted this way. In his dreams, he had already moved the scenery he wanted to paint around—tree here, mountain here, water here—he had already arranged them countless times in his mind. Chinese landscape painting in particular is entirely expressive, unlike the realistic painters of the later Western tradition. Realistic painters focus on sketching from life, which is a reproduction and re-creation of actual scenery; but Chinese ink painting is a completely different approach—the mountain exists in the mind, the water exists in the mind, the scenery exists in the mind, and then it is expressed through the brush, not a reproduction or re-depiction of actual scenery. So Seth says that before he paints, the images in his mind have already been moved around many times.
Poetry itself is an art, and also a science. It conveys quite necessary information about man and the universe.
You should not always think of poetry as a purely artistic thing; it is also a science in itself.
The same can be said of many cave paintings. What you had then, you still have now—although you are not so aware of it—an excellent give-and-take between the inner and outer senses.
The abilities you had in that era, you still have now, only you are not so aware of them. What does give-and-take mean? It means what you actually want between the inner senses and the outer senses, what kind of inner things you want to express outwardly, what kind of inner senses you decide to express through yourself into the part that the outer senses can perceive—this is an excellent relationship of taking and giving between the inner and outer senses. This is poetry, this is art, this is the way they express themselves.
Through chanting, dancing, acting, painting, drama, and storytelling, people spontaneously translated the inner senses' (data) into physical actualization. The body's senses only present you with clues of their own sensitivity.
People always spontaneously turn the information of the inner senses into an actualization in the physical material world. This action can be called manifestation—giving the data of the inner senses actual physical realization in the material world. Then, the body's outer senses will only pick out what they themselves are sensitive to, capturing those sensitive clues and letting you perceive them. This is a typical example.
Seth's Translation: Everything Has to Be Bent Out of Shape
Ruburt translates the images Seth gives him, but without consciously perceiving it. He is receiving the data in a general form, and then it has to be broken down, analyzed especially according to a time framework, and then turned into concepts that can make use of the worldview held by your culture. To put it simply: Seth says, when I transmit material to you through Jane, it may be an image or a kind of information, and Jane has to translate it, take it apart, and then analyze and reassemble it within the framework of human time, before it can become a concept that our existing culture can understand.
The following sentence is very important:
Everything has to be bent out of shape in order to fit the characteristics (viewpoints) of creatures who firmly believe that matter is superior to mind.
Those creatures are us -- human beings firmly believe that the importance and superiority of matter exceeds your mind, exceeds what is within you. This is a viewpoint held by human beings. And this viewpoint is immersed in a particular biological framework -- this bodily framework of human beings, which is composed of both soul and flesh. To put it simply, the material obtained from Seth has to go through Jane's translation and interpretation, and be turned into concepts that a human society oriented primarily toward materialization, with its subjective value system, can understand and accept. That is the Seth material we see today.
But in this process, Seth says: everything has to be bent out of shape. If you do not bend it, you simply cannot understand it, nor can you accept it. So do not keep emphasizing which one is true, which one is real, what the truth actually is. If it were the actual truth, I think first of all we could not understand it, and second, we could not accept it. We can only make an approximate understanding and perception at our own level.
So many people keep asking: what dimension of space does Seth actually live in? Is he the ultimate truth? Between what the Buddha said and what Seth said, who is more correct? Can the two of them have a debate? Is what God said correct? And those masters, eminent monks, and prophets -- who among them is actually right? Can you use your own experience to tell us which one is the most real, the closest to reality, the closest to the truth? I will just study that one directly. Why do you have to go over these long-winded, verbose things again and again? Can you not simply explain the whole of Seth's theory clearly in a tree-like structure, a knowledge structure, or a mind map? If it can be made clear in a few hours, why does it take months or even years?
I think by now everyone can understand: why does he speak this way? Because every single thing he brings to you is not correct; it is already bent; he has already bent it out of shape. But he is also afraid that this bending will lead you astray, so he tells you again from another angle. Yet that other angle is also not ultimate; it is another kind of bending. He speaks of two different kinds of bending, or three, four, five, six, all sorts of bending, with one single purpose: to let you know or approach that thing which is truly not bent.
But as for that truly unbent thing, you might say, why go to all this trouble? Just tell me the unbent thing directly and that would be enough. The only answer is: if the unbent thing were told to you directly, first, you could not understand it, and second, you could not accept it. It cannot be understood and accepted by the current culture and worldview. This is the core of the problem.
This is also why the Buddhist scriptures are so vast and extensive. If you understand Buddhism, the Buddhist canon, the Tripitaka, is simply immense beyond description2. Why is this so? The reason is very simple: because what everyone is speaking is distorted reasoning and distorted teachings -- all distorted reasoning, yet they are also afraid that what you learn will be distorted reasoning. See how tangled this is. They clearly know that what they are saying is distorted reasoning, but they still have to tell you. They both have to tell you and are afraid of leading you astray, so they keep using all sorts of methods to circle around the truth, speaking endlessly through these outer distorted reasonings. So you need to understand this about them, and stop asking what the truth actually is, what reality actually is. This is something you need to understand and experience yourself. Others cannot give it to you, cannot teach it to you; you need to realize and verify it yourself. This is a typical issue in Seth's teaching.
Another point is that Seth's level, within all of these transmissions, is actually already a very high one. The Buddha was also a person of very high wisdom. They all share a basic characteristic: when transmitting knowledge, they try to give you as few concepts as possible. Look at Seth's books from Seth Speaks up to now. Think carefully: if you have been reading along the whole time, what concepts does he have, what theoretical system? It seems like there are many and they are very complex, but at the same time it seems like there is nothing you can actually articulate. This is his characteristic. The one point he repeats over and over across such long, verbose passages is this: he speaks and erases at the same time, erases and speaks at the same time. He sweeps away the things he has said like sweeping the floor with a broom, leaving no traces behind.
So when you look back over the Seth material, you often have a feeling: as if in a daze you have understood many truths, but when you try to analyze or describe them specifically, you open your mouth and cannot say a single clear thing. For example, someone asks you: you have been studying the Seth material lately, tell me what Seth actually said? At that moment your biggest feeling is probably that you open and close your mouth, and apart from "beliefs create reality," you cannot come up with anything else. Yet that sentence is so pale and powerless, like something a charlatan would say. To others, you sound like someone who has fallen into a cult. But deep down you know that this is absolutely a real thing, not a cult, yet you cannot explain it clearly to the other person, and then you have no choice but to say: oh, go read the books yourself, or go listen to Mike's commentary, I cannot explain it clearly to you.
Why is this? This is the cleverness of Seth's way of teaching. It is always like this: he speaks and erases at the same time, speaks and erases at the same time. He would rather use very complicated language to say a whole lot, with the purpose of letting you understand the matter while not being fixed and limited by the framework. He is not like some traditional sciences and theories, which give you knowledge while also giving you a framework, where the framework is the premise, and without this framework nothing holds true. What Seth wants to tell you is: there is no framework, there is no limitation. But when you study a body of knowledge that has no framework and no limitation, you do not know where to begin. So Seth first has to build a basic framework, and he hopes this framework is as simple and clear as possible, and not made too complicated for its own sake. If it becomes too complicated, people will end up only studying the framework itself, and ignore the truth that the framework is meant to reveal.
So he tries to keep the framework from being too complicated, too flashy, and especially not too exquisite. Once it becomes exquisite, flashy, and ornate, people will focus on the framework itself, on the knowledge structure and architecture itself. But this knowledge itself has no architecture and no framework. Seth knows perfectly well: since it is something without framework, without knowledge, without structure, if you build it into a very exquisite structure and framework, that can only mislead people, only cause greater misunderstanding and waste of time. People spend a lot of time studying the framework, and then you tell them that this framework does not exist at all. So his framework appears very loose, seemingly messy, seemingly unclear and hard to articulate. This is exactly the effect he wants to achieve. Do not think that he is incapable of speaking as clearly as other sciences and theories do. No, he deliberately makes it this way.
Just like the Buddha said to his disciples at the end: I have been transmitting the Dharma for forty-five years, but have I ever spoken any Dharma?3 He himself said he never said anything, never spoke any Dharma -- the same principle, the same meaning.
Belief Structures That Cannot Be Ignored
This final session of Seth's is actually a simple summary.
I cannot ignore those belief structures.
What belief structures? It is this material-oriented belief structure of us humans -- the belief that firmly holds matter as superior. He says, if I were to ignore this material-oriented belief structure of you humans, then what I say would truly become incomprehensible.
All of these are automatically taken care of.
That is, when Seth gives you this knowledge, he has already automatically taken into account the level of human acceptance and the characteristics of humanity's own belief framework. So when you read Seth Speaks, when he talks about the previous life, the next life, the life after that, he often discusses issues from a human perspective, and at the same time he tells you that time does not exist and is simultaneous. At every point of knowledge in between, he has already taken into account the material-oriented characteristics of humanity and the level of human acceptance.
Now humanity has all kinds of talents, each one necessary, each one adding to the overall accomplishments and attributes of your whole.
We have many talents, and each one is needed. Including our current technological progress, which is also something we need and which is also necessary.
Some people choose specialization, and in many existences they have a particular direction of talent.
In many cycles of reincarnation, their talents have a particular direction, focusing only on certain fields. For example, he has always been engaged in artistic creation, so across several reincarnations he has been an artist.
However, all of these are matched with the era into which they are born.
They must also fit their era. For example, if you are an Islamic painter and you go paint nude models, then you have only a dead end ahead of you, and there will be no good result. So you must fit the era and society in which you live.
Speakers
For that matter, both of you have been Speakers.
If we go by this specialization, Rob and Jane, both of you were once Speakers. So what are you doing in this lifetime? Speaking as well.
The methods can change. You may speak through painting or music, or through trance activity, but you will specialize in the use of the inner senses, and in the translation of mankind's inner knowledge.
You are skilled in the application of the inner senses, and you specialize in bringing humanity's inner knowledge to the level of ordinary consciousness that is considered the official level of consciousness -- bringing it before the public, getting it published. Isn't that the official level of consciousness? It has already been published as books, and it has even entered the university research system, so that is bringing it to the official level. Actually, it originates from one person's experience of the inner senses.
He mentions the two of them in passing.
You know what sound is, as Ruburt once did. What you think of as sound is only one of the many spectrums of sound.
You think sound is only one spectrum? In The Nature of Personal Reality it was also said, and it was also discussed in regard to our flesh-and-blood bodies, that within our bodies there is also a body composed of many, many inaudible sounds -- a body composed of inaudible sounds.
For example, in addition to translating inner images into paintings, you may unknowingly translate sounds that are invisible to the senses into images.
In addition to painting the images in your minds, you also unknowingly turn those sounds that are invisible to the senses into images.
In a manner quite impossible to describe. It is also no exaggeration to say that our sessions are actually multidimensional images translated into words.
In a way that humans cannot describe. Our sessions can actually also be said to be a kind of multidimensional image translated into words -- understand it that way.
The Inner Dimension
For those images I spoke of, you have no words to describe them. Because they are not objects, nor a picture of an object, nor an image of an image. Instead, they are inner dimensions, each one separate and luminous, prisms of connected knowledge. Within them there is far more reality than you can presently begin to imagine.
Many people say, well, if it is an image, then just describe it, right? Those multidimensional images, you have no words to describe them. They are neither objects, nor pictures of objects, nor images of images, but inner dimensions -- each one separate, luminous, a prism of connected knowledge. Within them there is more reality than you can imagine. Reality can be understood as a dimension or a kind of world. That is to say, what humanity can presently imagine -- far more worlds than you can even imagine -- all lie behind this multidimensionality.
So he is saying, I cannot describe it to you in language. Whatever can be described is only a very, very small part. On this point, do not keep pressing him -- pressing him is useless. It is not that he does not want to tell us; it is that we cannot understand it.
To a certain degree, I must travel from those realities into your comprehension, and then disentangle myself, in order to form an ever-changing, ever-active, ever-moving entity that can simultaneously speak here and appear there.
Seth says, in order to transmit this book, to a certain degree I must travel from those realities -- those reality systems that are more than humanity can imagine, within the prisms of connected knowledge -- into the level you can comprehend, and then disentangle myself from the original reality, entering the level humanity can understand, in order to form an entity that is forever changing, forever active, forever moving, speaking here and at the same time existing in his own reality.
This thing actually already transcends human imagination. The very process by which Seth comes from his reality, his dimension, his dimensional space, into the range that we humans can understand -- in that process he has already changed, already transformed. He is no longer in his reality space; when he arrives in this dimension, he uses what our world can understand to communicate, and in that process he is in a state of change. In his dimension, suppose he is a real existence, yet he himself is on a higher dimension. When he changes from a higher dimension into our dimension, he becomes a constantly changing, constantly moving, constantly active, indeterminate entity -- not a fixed existence.
What I say next is not the truth; it is just something to help you understand: in their dimension and space, he is a concrete person, and maybe he is just called Seth -- just as an example. When he arrives in our human reality, he becomes countless分身, countless possibilities, countless existences -- understand it that way. So he says that in the process of explaining how he transmits the material, he is just such an existence: both here and there, speaking here while his true existence is there. So I am simultaneously far and near.
To say he is far: he is in a completely different dimensional space and reality world from us -- a reality we cannot even imagine, not some heaven, God, or fifth dimension you might picture; it is not like that; it is a place you cannot even conceive of. That distance is so remote you cannot even imagine it -- how far would you say it is? And then to say he is near: he is very near -- through Jane he speaks so much here every day, turning it into words, into books, into videos, into audio, and so many people come to explain it -- is that not right by your ear? So he is both far and near; understand it that way.
However, that distance from you also represents the range that the human psyche can reach.
This distance, this so-called far and so-called near -- what is it? If we think from a physical standpoint, could we board a spaceship and reach the planet or the space where Seth lives? Then you have misunderstood. If you are still asking that kind of question, then you have not learned at all what these Seth materials are about. The distance between you and Seth is not a matter of spaceships, not a matter of light-years, hundreds of light-years or tens of thousands of light-years; the distance between you and him is only the range that the human psyche can reach. In other words, it is a place our human psyche can also reach, but a place our outer world can never reach -- no matter how far our technology develops, even if we build faster-than-light spaceships, we still cannot reach those places, because those places are not outside at all; they are within our own minds.
And the vast corridors of psychological activity formed from it.
This range of the psyche leads to a vast, expansive space of psychological activity. You can imagine it as a very long corridor within your mind, and in the corridor there are countless doors, each door leading to a different reality space -- you can visualize it that way.
Your world also emerges from this.
Our world also emerges from within the human psyche; from within the vast corridors of human psychological activity, the human world appears. So our world also comes from this psychological activity.
Worlds Are Interconnected
Seth is making a summary:
Because the world is composed in this way. Every world is a part of another world, and there is no psychological or psychic place or space where those worlds exist separately from one another.
Every world is a part of another world, and no world is unconnected. There is no such place psychologically, and there is no such place physically either. Whether material worlds or non-material worlds, all worlds are connected and interlinked; there is no place that is completely closed off from others, with no contact with anyone.
Therefore you cannot say that one world is more highly evolved than another.
Because everything is connected, you cannot say that one world is more highly evolved than another. It is like how our Earth is all connected, and we can travel by plane to all parts of the world. Suppose we go to a very underdeveloped people, whether a primitive tribe in South America or some tribes in Africa; indeed their life is very primitive, and their civilization is not as developed as ours. But can you say that you are much more highly evolved than they are? Can you fly? You cannot fly, and neither can they. You eat, and they also have to eat; you have not evolved to the point where you no longer need to eat. What you eat is only slightly better than what they eat; you also have to sleep, and they also have to sleep. So how much more evolved can you say you are than they are? Not at all. From the perspective of evolution, if you strip two people naked and throw them into a laboratory to study them, there is no essential difference between you and them.
So from this angle, if the whole Earth is connected in this way, and if the whole Earth is also connected with other reality spaces, then are we really that much lower than other so-called alien civilizations or higher beings? No. We are also a part of them. If they claim to be much higher than us, then they have not attained that kind of wisdom at all, because we are a part of them, and they are also a part of us; we are each other's inside and outside, each other's existence. How can one say that this is higher than that, or that is lower than this? We are all one.
So when you have learned this, you will understand: any of those theories that tell you that extraterrestrial planets control the Earth, that some civilization controls the Earth, that the Earth is such and such, that humanity is enslaved, and so on, do not listen to their nonsense. Those levels are completely unworthy of being called spiritual at all; they are just another kind of superstition with a new outer packaging, exactly the same as using devils to frighten people, using God to frighten people, using Satan to frighten people, using hell to frighten people. They have merely swapped the outer packaging, replacing those things with more fashionable aliens, and in terms of thought they are extremely childish and ridiculous.
There are as many unexplored frontiers now as there ever were before.
It is not that humanity has now explored almost everything and there is nothing left to explore; no, humanity still has many unexplored frontiers.
There is no great catastrophe that will destroy consciousness or end life on Earth.
Human beings are always wondering whether there is something that could destroy all of humanity, destroy the Earth, destroy consciousness. No, he has already told you: there is not. So remember, never be taken in by this kind of end-times theory, catastrophe theory, or the idea that the Earth is splitting into two levels, with one part of people ascending and another part falling into a permanent hell. Such theories are very popular right now. No, there is none at all.
When you think in terms of the destruction of the Earth or the end of the world, you inevitably involve the question of time. What you are thinking of, of course, is the continuity of time, with a beginning and an end.
From your viewpoint in time and space, it seems as though planets come and go. And when you look outward into space, it seems as though you are looking inward into time.
When we look outward at the whole universe, it is somewhat like looking inward into time. I will not explain this. If you have read A Brief History of Time, or if you understand the basics of Einstein's theory of relativity4, you can also get a preliminary understanding.
This subject is very long and complicated to explain. To put it simply: for example, when you look outward into space, at what speed are you looking? The space you see is the speed at which the light from those luminous bodies travels to your eyes. Is it not entering your eyes at the speed of light? All right, this is the limitation of the speed of light. When you take the speed of light as the limit, time is unchanging, constant, and unaffected. But suppose now you are not looking at the light from outer space projected onto your retina, but instead you want to look outward, suppose you use your inner senses to look outward. At this moment, the speed of this gaze looking outward has already exceeded the speed of light. What happens when you look outward at a speed faster than light? If you have studied relativity, you will know that at this time time will flow backward. When you exceed the speed of light, when you approach the critical speed of light, time will stop5; the closer you get to the speed of light, the more time stops, until it almost does not move at all.
Many people ask, when a person enters a black hole, what image do people outside see? They see him infinitely approaching the black hole, until his shadow remains at the mouth of the black hole. Why? Because at his level, time has already stopped. That is what happens when you approach a black hole at a speed close to the speed of light, because all the light is being sucked in. Conversely, if you look outward at twice the speed of light, or ten times the speed of light, a very strange phenomenon occurs: time is flowing backward. This question involves some concepts from physics and relativity; this is a fact, not a theory, not a poetic depiction from philosophy.
If we look at the problem from the perspective of time, from the perspective of our space, from the perspective of space-time as one body, then space-time as one body is Einstein's theory of space-time, the theory of space-time relativity6, including the idea that space can warp, time can warp, and so on. When the speed at which you look outward into space exceeds the speed of light, time will flow backward. So he says, it is as if you are looking backward into time. Only those who transcend space-time can truly see these phenomena occur.
If you do not understand, you can watch many movies. The hottest movie currently showing is the one called Tenet7. TENET, this word reads the same forward and backward, ten. In China it may be translated as Tian Neng or Xin Tiao, directed by Nolan, and it is also this kind of time-space traversal. It fits both a Hollywood blockbuster and brings great reflection, similar to the feeling of Interstellar or The Matrix8. If you are interested, you can take a look; I will not spoil it. This movie is extremely stunning, and you will have a completely different understanding of time.
The Throb of Existence
However, within existence there is a great throb, a throb that has nothing to do with the time you understand, but is related to intensity.
Within each of our existences there is a rhythmic kind of thing, and it has nothing to do with the time you understand, but is related to intensity. Why does he not call it rhythm but throb? Because rhythm is definitely something related to time, regular, periodic, so here he uses the word throb. Related to what kind of intensity? He does not say here; he leaves it as a teaser. If this were to be expanded upon, it would be the content of another book. You can think about this question yourself—it must be unrelated to time.
In the deepest terms, the world has always existed, and always will.
From a higher perspective, from a broader perspective, the world has always existed, and will always continue to exist.
It changes the patterns of its activity. It comes and goes, but in between its coming and going, it is always itself.
The world changes its own patterns of activity; it comes and goes, but in between its coming and going, it is always itself.
To me, that is extremely simple. But in terms of your concepts, it may seem to imply incompatible entanglements.
Seth says, to me this is simply a matter of course, but to you it seems like incompatible entanglements—this transformation of the world's form seems incomprehensible to us. A new world must replace a destroyed old world, but in Seth's view it is still that same world, only changed into a different pattern.
Let me give an example that is not quite apt: some insects cannot survive the winter; they can only live through the summer season. We say an autumn grasshopper does not last long; by autumn it dies. So winter does not exist for the grasshopper, and the next year does not exist for it either. But the next year the grasshopper appears again; the grasshopper always exists. Last year's grasshopper and this year's grasshopper may already be completely different grasshoppers, but this world is still this world. For that grasshopper, its whole life has already ended. This example is not quite apt; I am only straining to give you a rough sense of what he is hinting at—the patterns of the world's existence undergo constant change, and it also seems to come and go in its transformations, but no matter how it comes and goes, it is always this world, always itself, unchanged. From Seth's perspective, from a higher dimension, the world is still that world; but for us humans, there may be many incompatible entanglements in between—if this world exists, that world cannot exist.
Memorandum
Once again, I would like to give our friend a memorandum:
Below is a memorandum.
Trust the great power of the universe that forms their own images. Trust his spontaneity, and his body's natural impulse to relax, move, and create.
Trust the great power of the universe -- the world you have now is formed by this great power of the universe. Trust his spontaneity -- the information within us can create the external world we now have, and this is all spontaneous. No one is forcing you to do anything; human beings spontaneously create the civilization we now have. So where does this spontaneous, primal thing come from? That inner something must exist -- without it, how could anything spring forth? So you must trust this spontaneous thing, trust your source, trust your roots.
Here he is referring to Jane, speaking to Jane. Actually, it is the same as speaking to each of us: his body's natural impulse to relax, move, and create.
When they display themselves in their own rhythm.
Jane should follow her own natural impulses. When they display themselves in their own rhythm, you should pursue these impulses and act in accordance with them. If it wants to rest, then rest; if it wants to relax, then relax; if it wants to move, then move; if it wants to create, then create -- these are all natural impulses.
I wish you a dear and comfortable evening in your sweet house. There will be a basketball game to watch later. And all the lovely things so specific to your time and space.
All the lovely things in our world, in our time and space, including the basketball game.
Jane's After-Session Feedback
This book ends right here, and the ending seems quite abrupt. Seth gave a final summary. Then Jane herself said:
She said, "I really went out" -- she went very far out in trance. She said it really shook me. She said you can know that you are this far outside the world, carrying all this energy, and yet you cannot run any farther. You know you are far out there, but you cannot run any farther.
What she meant was, she was telling Rob about this feeling of being out in trance: she felt she had gone out very, very far, into some unknown kind of time and space, and yet she also felt she could not run any farther. At the same time, it was so simple. In some respects, this session was somewhat different -- indeed it was different. The height and angle from which this session was delivered were completely different from the previous sessions.
She said, "My feeling is that I am different" -- she herself was different. Although I do not know what different things you recorded, right now as I look at the clock, it is as if you are so far away. She looked at the clock and felt she had not yet come back, that she was still in another time and space. Looking at the clock, looking at Rob, she felt it was all so far away that it seemed it would take me four hours to come back. But during the session I had no sense of time at all.
Then Rob said: This was really a very good session.
Through Jane's own ability, Seth expanded into a discussion of the whole of human society, including the overall macro concept of the formation of our entire world and universe; he also systematically and formally explained why, in the Seth material, he has to twist everything askew, and why he delivers it to us in this way. All of this information is very well articulated in this session.
注释与核实
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Source: Beijing Municipal People's Government portal, "Youth Edition of The Peony Pavilion Performed in Full, Three Days and Nine Hours of Immersive Kunqu Experience" (https://www.beijing.gov.cn/renwen/sy/whkb/202302/t20230202_2911113.html) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, "Taishō Tripiṭaka" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%A4%A7%E6%AD%A3%E6%96%B0%E8%84%A9%E5%A4%A7%E8%97%8F%E7%B6%93) ↩
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Source: Red Pine, trans., Excerpts from The Lankavatara Sutra (https://www.mountainrecord.org/teachings/from-the-lankavatara-sutra/) ↩
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Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Relativity | Definition, Equations, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/science/relativity) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, "when you approach the critical speed of light, time will stop"; upon verification, it should be "a more accurate statement is: the closer the speed is to the speed of light, the slower time passes for the moving object relative to a stationary observer (the factor √(1−v²/c²) approaches 0), and time only approaches stopping infinitely without ever truly stopping—only when the speed exactly equals the speed of light does this factor become zero, and objects with mass cannot reach the speed of light." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Time dilation," https://www.britannica.com/science/time-dilation) ↩
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Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Space-time | Definition & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, "Tenet" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/TENET%E5%A4%A9%E8%83%BD) ↩