Mike's commentary · The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Chapter 3

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

Guide

This chapter unfolds around the relationship between "myths" and Framework 1 and Framework 2. Myths are incomplete mythological expressions of inner reality, originating in Framework 2, and serve as the medium through which facts become manifest. Physical events, natural phenomena, and personal emotional beliefs interact with one another, and both religion and science are classified as myths. At the end of the chapter, Framework 3 is introduced, and it is explained that the ego and the inner self interact through undifferentiated areas such as dreams, and that chance and coincidence are actually the results of organization and communication within Framework 2.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Myths are not errors, but mythic, incomplete expressions of the inner reality of Framework 2, and they are also the medium through which facts become manifest.
• Physical events and natural phenomena are manifested from Framework 2, and human emotions, beliefs, and intentions participate in this process.
• Both religion and science are myths, different interpretations of the same inner reality.
• The ego and the inner self exchange information in undifferentiated regions such as dreams; chance and coincidence are actually the results of organization and communication within Framework 2.
• Life is like a work of art; beliefs and intentions determine which possibilities are selected from Framework 2 and formed into reality.

Main Text

Myths and Concrete Events: The Inner Medium in Which Society Exists

Today we begin introducing the content of Part Two, Chapter Three of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. The theme of Chapter Two was "Framework 1 and Framework 2," and this chapter is "Myths and Concrete Events, the Inner Medium in Which Society Exists." Starting from the larger framework of Framework 1 and Framework 2 as a whole, this part is slightly more difficult than what came before. But this part is the foundation of the entire book -- if we cannot get this issue clear, we have no way of truly understanding the nature of how mass events occur, or the role we play in them. So this part establishes the basic knowledge for the whole book.

Seth Gives the New Chapter Title

This session was on January 30, 1978¹, a Monday, beginning at 9:35 p.m. You can see that this session again spans a period of time from the previous one. Session 816 is not related to this book; it was a private session, so it was omitted.

Seth came straight to the point and directly said: a new chapter, Chapter Three. What was the title? -- "Myths." That word, and concrete events. Then he paused for a moment and added: "the inner medium in which society exists."

The Meaning of the Word "Myths"

Let us first briefly talk about this word, because many people find it hard to understand. To be honest, it took me a very long time to get even a general understanding of it.

Let us start from the original English meaning -- because Seth uses words very precisely, so he does not use words carelessly. In English this word has two main original meanings: one is "myth," and the second is "wrong thinking, wrong ideas," but not deliberate incorrectness, not knowingly pretending to be confused; it is the kind of incorrectness that comes from not understanding, wrong ideas caused by not understanding. That kind of thing is also called a "myth."

Teacher Wang Jiqing rendered this word as "mi si," which is very well done, because the pronunciation of the two syllables "mi si" is almost identical to the pronunciation of the English word. However, as a Chinese rendering, many people find it hard to understand. Later we will slowly unfold what a myth really is.

Why Events Seem Solid and Real

Seth continued: "Before we discuss the individual's role in mass events -- whatever they may be -- we must first explore the medium in which events appear solid and real."

Let us extract the key point from this sentence. This book discusses the individual and mass events, and what we mainly consider is the role each person plays in mass events -- do we appear as a victim, or as a rescuer? This is crucial. If we want to discuss this issue clearly, we must explore how an event appears solid and real.

For an event to appear solid and real, it must have a framework and structure in which to exist. In other words, for us as humans, there has to be the existence of time and space. Only with such time and space can this event appear solid and firm. Why do you feel that dreams are not real? Because in that realm, there is no time and space that you are familiar with. But merely having time and space is not enough; how it is produced is the core.

Session 817

Seth said:

To understand the great impact of the phenomena of natural events, you must explore that part of the matter which does not appear obvious to you. (Session 817)

So-called "natural events" are the things that happen around us -- not only things in nature; anything can be called a natural event. An event, from its initial brewing, to its final climax, to its end, is a process and a cycle. But what we perceive are only the obvious phenomena, while the things that are not obvious are precisely what deserve our exploration.

Scientists Do Not Look for Nature's Heart

Seth went on to say that a scientist who investigates nature only studies the exterior of nature, observing the outside of the natural world, even involving investigations of atoms and molecules, or of particles theoretically faster than light. There are many particles faster than light, but you must remember, that remains only in theory; there is no way to discover them in the laboratory. Scientists are also concerned with this particle nature of reality, believing that our reality is composed of tiny particles.

But scientists generally do not look for nature's heart, nor do they pursue the study of nature's soul.

All things are a manifestation of energy, an emotional manifestation of energy.

Energy has an emotional quality. The first emotional quality is knowing what it is, knowing its own existence. When energy knows its own existence, this energy is called a consciousness. Therefore all things are a manifestation, an expression, of this energy that possesses consciousness.

All things come from energy -- this point scientists can now already prove. The innermost core of what we call particles, the smallest unit that produces particles, what quantum mechanics calls the string in superstring theory -- that is a segment of energy, not a particle. The vibration mode of this string determines which particle form or attribute it can manifest, but it itself is not a particle; it is a high-speed vibrating segment of energy, and its vibration speed already exceeds the speed of light. But when it wants to become a particle, it will not exceed the speed of light; at its fastest, it is the same as the speed of light.

Seth's rigor lies right here. Why must he add that last sentence? Because scientists also acknowledge that all things are manifestations of energy; on this point there is no difference from the scientific community. The only difference is that Seth believes this energy has emotion, or rather has consciousness; while scientists believe energy has no emotion whatsoever, no consciousness whatsoever -- energy is just energy.

Weather, Earthquakes, and the Human Psyche

Human beings can interpret weather by means of air pressure or air currents -- because when there are changes in air pressure, air currents are produced; when air currents are produced, there is convection in the atmosphere; this interaction produces what we call weather. The root cause of weather changes never departs from this principle: changes in air pressure lead to changes in air currents. We also look at fault lines in the earth to understand earthquakes, using various seismic instruments to detect them.

To a certain extent, this is useful. Weather forecasting can now be quite accurate, very accurate. Earthquake prediction still cannot reach that level of accuracy, but at best it can now predict one or two minutes in advance, because changes in geological faults can be detected, or early changes in the faults. Therefore, changes in weather and changes in geological faults are useful in certain fields and to a certain degree.

But the human psyche, emotionally speaking -- that part of us that is spiritual -- is not merely a part of the physical environment. All your emotions, inspirations, and spiritual aspects are not products of the physical, not products of the brain's physical cells. They are also intimately connected with all phenomena that appear in the guise of nature. The most core emotion of our human spirituality is tightly connected with nature -- not only is it not a product of nature, it is even a part of nature, a part that constitutes the whole of nature, mutually influencing one another.

Framework 1 and Framework 2

Seth said, let us use the terms we began discussing in the previous chapter. If you have no impression of them, you can go back and listen -- although the previous chapter only made a beginning, it already made clear the entire framework of Framework 1 and Framework 2.

The human being's emotional identification with nature is not obvious in Framework 1, but in Framework 2 it is a strongly felt reality.

The connection between our human psyche's emotions and nature cannot be seen clearly in Framework 1. We cannot see what influence our moods have on the weather, and even less can we see clearly what kind of relationship exists between psychological emotions and social phenomena, mass events -- including natural disasters, plagues, social movements, and various political activities. But in Framework 2, you can see it very clearly, and feel it especially strongly. We must look in Framework 2 for the answers regarding the relationship between humanity and nature.

In Framework 2, the nature of the psyche is shown so clearly that its scope and rhythms are understood. (Session 817)

Only in Framework 2 can we see the essential attributes of the human being as a spiritual existence. In Framework 1, what we manifest more are physical attributes, bodily attributes; spiritual attributes can only be seen in some of their expressions. And the scope and rhythms of the spiritual -- in that macroscopic world of Framework 2, the influence and rhythms of the spiritual upon the surrounding environment -- can only be seen clearly in Framework 2.

Physical Energy Follows Emotional Rhythms

The next sentence is very core:

Physical energy only apparently follows emotional rhythms. (Session 817)

What is the energy of the physical world? It is the matter we want to materialize, these events, the things of this three-dimensional world that we want -- these are all physical energy. How does physical energy manifest? It follows emotional rhythms. In the physical world, what can manifest for a long time, and where manifestation does not last long -- the durability of matter has a great deal to do with the emotion we invest in it.

Let me give an example that is easy for you to understand. I often like to use the example of a boyfriend and girlfriend, because everyone can understand it easily. In a romantic relationship, the more emotion both parties invest, the more lasting the relationship is, and the longer it can continue. If both parties do not invest enough emotion, or one invests and the other does not invest enough, when the emotional investment is not much, the manifestation of physical energy is insufficient, the time will not be long, and the manifestation will not be so obvious.

When two people's feelings become intense to a certain degree, and manifest to a certain degree, they will manifest marriage; further down, they can manifest children. With marriage comes the need to buy a house, and a physical house will also manifest; a new family will be born, and there will be a continuation of the family line. And their beginning was the emotional rhythm of those two people at the very start.

Then how do tables and chairs manifest? In the same way. The people who produce tables and chairs invest these tables and chairs with emotion -- they may be based on obtaining profit, obtaining income; they have emotion toward money, and then they have emotion toward chairs and tables, because these things can bring them income. Including construction workers and so on, all are investing emotion in these things. No one wants to make a bad chair or a bad table, because that cannot be exchanged for money and brings no benefit.

The matter of our three-dimensional world -- you may see it as one object after another, but in fact behind each one there is a corresponding emotion. The energy propelled by emotion is the fundamental inner force by which our physical world manifests. Then where does nature's emotion come from? Mountains and rivers, the universe, heaven and earth, stars and galaxies -- all things have emotion; it is not only you who have emotion. Conscious energy all has emotion. Did we not say earlier? All things are an emotional manifestation of energy. In this way it all connects, and there is no more confusion.

So in many previous lectures I have told everyone the importance of emotion; you absolutely must not say that emotion is unimportant. In many religious practices, they have everyone cultivate themselves until they have no emotion, saying that emotions are all wrong, that you should not have any emotions at all. Now you know where their conflicts with the Seth material lie on many issues -- many of them are right here.

You say that is not right; they say emotions are things that disturb spiritual practice, and only by cutting off the six sense roots and cutting off worldly emotions can one concentrate on practice. Then I want to ask you: when he goes to practice with concentration, is this concentrated practice not an emotion? He can abandon home and career for the sake of practice, can become a monk, can give up all worldly things -- is that persistence, that emotion toward that matter, not far greater than romantic love?

You can look at Li Shutong, that is, Master Hongyi. After he became a monk, his Japanese wife brought their child to find him and asked him: since you say you became a monk to deliver all sentient beings, and you love all sentient beings -- I am also one of all sentient beings, so why can you not love me? You exclude me and go love all sentient beings; is loving me not loving all sentient beings? Master Hongyi said nothing; he thought for a long time, then turned and walked away.² We will not discuss this question today. I only use this principle to say that whether it is Master Hongyi or any other monk, their determination to practice is also an emotion; their love for the Buddha, their love for the thing they believe in, far surpasses romantic love. Tell me, what in this world is without emotion?

Why Some People Die and Some People Live

Seth said that this emotion, no matter how exquisite and ingenious human instruments may be, cannot be determined; our human instruments and meters cannot measure it.

Why is one person killed in a natural disaster while another is spared? The current pandemic is very special -- the same virus, why is it fatal in some people, and so rapid and decisive? Up to now, there is still no truly effective drug for treating COVID. Yet some people are fine, and there are even more and more asymptomatic infected people, without the slightest symptom, exactly the same as normal people, not even knowing they were infected, yet they transmit the disease to others, and some people die from it. Why is this?

In the same tsunami, the same earthquake, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people die, while many people are saved. Some people are buried under rubble for eight or ten days and are rescued; some people drift in the ocean for a long time and are finally saved. There is a legend that Jet Li, during the Indonesian tsunami, was vacationing with his family on an island in Indonesia, and when the tsunami came, he was swept into the tsunami waters. It is said that at that time Jet Li made a vow: as long as I can save my two daughters, as long as we do not die, I will devote the rest of my life to doing good deeds. In the end he really did not die, and he rescued both daughters. Afterwards, his main energy was devoted to charity work, and he founded the One Foundation.³ Just like this, why in the face of the same disaster do some people die and some people not die? What is the reason behind this? What determines whether he dies or not, and what determines his role in this event?

The Source of the World

Before we begin to consider these questions, we must first look at your own world and determine its source. If this question is not made clear, how can the later questions be made clear?

For there is no doubt that its source and nature's source are the same source. (Session 817)

We human beings believe that we are on a platform of nature called Earth, and upon it we have created and developed human civilization -- cars, airplanes, technology, all kinds of products of modern civilization, all produced, invented, and created by human beings. What we do not know is that all these things created by human beings are the same as nature creating mountains and rivers, the same as nature creating a grain of sand, a stone, or a flower. The source of our human civilization and the source of nature are one source.

We human beings do not think this way on this issue. We believe that human beings are alive, have emotions, and have special human attributes, while nature is a dead, cold, lifeless thing. But it tells us they are the same -- if you acknowledge that human civilization has warmth, then nature also has warmth; if you acknowledge that human beings have emotions, then nature also has emotions. It is impossible for an emotional human being to be born from an emotionless nature. Even if this person's brain were a pig's brain, he could still figure out this principle. It is impossible that the thing from which we are born does not have our attributes. We have emotions precisely because nature has emotions; we have the capacity to love because nature has the capacity to love.

Distinguishing Between Interpretations of the World and the Truth

Seth said that all along the way -- over more than ten years, twenty years of speaking -- he has been making distinctions between events and your interpretations of them.

I now understand that your world undoubtedly appears solid and certain, and its daily life is built upon known events and facts.

Our human cognition of the world is like this. We make a clear distinction between fact and fantasy -- the thoughts in the brain are fantasy, and what the eyes can see and the hands can touch is fact; they will not be mixed up. We take it for granted that as a people or a race, our current knowledge is at least built upon impeccable scientific data, and technological development appears to be most safely built upon a large body of solid facts.

But all that you know or experience has its source in that dimension of creative existence that I call Framework 2. (Session 817)

You think that fantasy, concepts, myths, and such things are very far removed from real society and the physical world, and have no relation at all. But what is the fact? What we know and what we experience all have their source in that creative dimension of existence called Framework 2. Framework 2 is a multidimensional dimension, while Framework 1 is a three-dimensional world.

In a manner of speaking, your real world is born from a bed of fantasy, myth, or imagination. (Session 817)

What we call the real world, the physical world, is born from these things. All your complete equipment emerges from within it.

Now, fantasy and imagination are easy to understand, but what is myth? From this point on, it becomes a little mind-bending. Let us go through it step by step.

Fantasy is your longing for a good life, the expectation and yearning in your heart for the things you want -- what kind of life you want, what kind of world you want, that kind of longing. Imagination is what makes your fantasy concrete. You fantasize about living a very happy life, but that is a vague concept; imagination begins to make it concrete -- what kind of house you live in, what kind of country you live in, what kind of life you lead, what kind of job you have; these all begin to become concrete, and at this point it reaches imagination.

The Definition of Myth

Then what is myth? Seth said:

A myth is not a distortion of fact, but the womb from which fact must come. (Session 817)

The "fact" referred to here means the events that happen in Framework 2. Framework 2 gestates the whole of Framework 1 -- everything you know and can experience has its source in that creative dimension of Framework 2. Therefore Framework 2 is the fact we ought to recognize. And what we consider the facts of the physical world of the three-dimensional world all come from Framework 2 -- they are not the true facts; they come from the source of Framework 2. You may call it a projection downward -- Teacher Liu Feng especially likes to use the word "projection," believing that the three-dimensional world is a projection of higher-dimensional worlds⁴; this is the core idea of Teacher Liu Feng's theory. In terms of wording, Teacher Liu Feng is completely correct. Indeed you can understand it as a kind of projection: what happens at the level of Framework 2, projected into the three-dimensional world, is what happens in our three-dimensional world.

Just as Teacher Liu Feng says, if you want to change something in the three-dimensional world, but you do not change the projection source and only change this side, you cannot change it. When you look in a mirror, there is a black mark on your face in the mirror; if you wipe the mirror, you cannot wipe it away; you can only turn back and wipe the thing on your face. Although you see a black mark in the mirror, that black mark is not on the mirror; it is on your face.

So what is myth? Myth is our cognition of the world, but this cognition is wrong. Why is it wrong? Because the reality of this world happens in Framework 2, but we cannot understand Framework 2, so we use a distorted way to understand it. After this distortion, we conclude that the event that happened is fact. This erroneous cognition is the womb from which our facts are born -- facts must come from it.

You say, can I not do without this distortion, without this myth, and directly cognize the facts, directly experience the things of Framework 2, and let one of the many possibilities in Framework 2 be experienced by us? No. Because we have a physical body and a brain, our consciousness and our capacity for understanding are insufficient to understand the things of Framework 2 -- your thickness is not enough.

Two States of Consciousness

The consciousness we currently live with in the three-dimensional world is one state of consciousness. And the spiritual you who lives in Framework 2 -- the inner self, the inner self, or you may call it the soul, whatever you call it -- that spiritual you living in Framework 2 has a state of consciousness that is different in nature from your current state of consciousness in the physical body; they are not even the same kind of consciousness.

Let me give an example. Do ants have consciousness? Yes. Do flowers have consciousness? Yes. The consciousness of a flower, the consciousness of an ant, and the current consciousness of a human being are three different kinds of consciousness. Although their roots and sources are all one -- all come from All That Is -- the consciousness of an ant and the consciousness of a human being are not the same kind.

Using this example you can understand: the kind of consciousness we have living in the three-dimensional world, and the kind of consciousness living in the spiritual world of Framework 2, are completely different. Therefore human consciousness has no way to understand what happens in Framework 2, and will inevitably use our human consciousness to force an explanation, using human logical thinking and conscious feeling to understand it. Is this understanding a distortion? It must be a distortion. Because you cannot fully understand it; you can only understand it partially or one-sidedly. Seth's wording here is extremely precise -- myth is the thing you want to understand but cannot understand.

In Buddhism, the thing the Buddha always wanted to express, he used a word called "ignorance." You can understand myth as this kind of ignorance. But this ignorance or myth is not malicious; it is not a deliberate distortion. The thing he cannot understand -- this thing is called myth.

Myth and the Nature of Reality

Myth involves a human understanding of the nature of reality. The nature of reality lies in Framework 2, but our cognition of Framework 2 can only be felt through myth, gaining a slight understanding, without the ability to truly grasp it thoroughly. That is to say, our cognition of Framework 2 can never be completely correct or fully transparent. But without this myth, you would know even less what is true -- you cannot even see Framework 2; you can only see Framework 1. Through myth, you can still gaze from afar at that source, already closer to the truth than those who do not know that Framework 1 is actually produced by Framework 2.

Our understanding of that thing cannot be very thorough, so we express it in imaginative terms. Myth is our hazy understanding of Framework 2, and then the thing, the feeling, expressed through a kind of imaginative vocabulary or wording.

The subtlety of Seth's wording lies right here. Often as we read, we have that kind of ecstasy of sudden enlightenment, and it depends on the accuracy and subtlety of his wording. So why did he choose Jane to transmit it? Because Jane was a novelist and poet, with an extremely large vocabulary. An ordinary American's vocabulary may be only a few thousand words, while a truly good writer's vocabulary should be above twenty or thirty thousand⁵, and some excellent writers can reach thirty or forty thousand. In expressing many issues, compared with ordinary people who have only three or four thousand words, the precision of expression is fundamentally different. Seth chose Jane with such considerations in mind.

The Power of Myth

What is myth? Myth is a human understanding of the nature of reality, but this understanding is not thorough, and can only be expressed in imaginative terms. It carries a powerful force that is one with nature itself -- because this myth comes from Framework 2; you can regard it as the limit of what our human beings can understand of Framework 2.

For example, fully understanding Framework 2 requires one hundred percent capacity, and we human beings currently only have five percent capacity to understand it. But if you use this five percent capacity to the fullest, what you get is also five percent of the truth -- it is also truth, just incomplete truth; it is the blind men touching the elephant; it is a part of the truth. Because as physical beings, in this lifetime of reincarnation, our capacity for understanding and cognition is truly limited. But even if this five percent of cognition comes from Framework 2, does it not come from that real world? Since it comes from that real world, is it not the same as the source of nature's creator? All things come from here.

Just as the light or heat the sun shines on the earth is only a few thousandths or a few ten-thousandths of the energy the sun emits. Do you say, because this heat is too small I do not want it? Impossible. This little bit is enough for the reproduction of all humanity and the vitality of the whole earth. Those spiritual glimmers, those things of Framework 2, if they let you understand only five percent, are enough for you to obtain the same infinite power as nature.

Myth Is Not Bad

Here you must remember: myth is not bad; you absolutely must not think that myth is something bad. This ignorance is the only thing we can use, the only thing we human beings can make use of. You absolutely must not throw it away as something bad.

In Buddhism, one cannot say they did badly; it is that their understanding was not correct -- not that the Buddha did not understand, but that later people distorted him. They treat ignorance as a kind of garbage, an obstacle on the path of practice to be thrown away, because they have not seen the flash of wisdom within ignorance. They think that only by removing ignorance can there be wisdom, not knowing that the wisdom is right there inside ignorance -- not outside ignorance, nor in some other place apart from removing ignorance. If you throw away all ignorance, then there is no wisdom either. Many, many people practice for a lifetime and cannot succeed; the more they practice, the more confused they become. Why? They threw away the raw material. It is like refining gold: you must pan gold from sand; if you throw away all the sand, the gold is also gone.

Myth Is a Natural Spiritual Attribute

The formation of myth is a natural characteristic of the psyche -- essential, spiritual, a spiritual essence that nature has endowed among all things. Our spirituality itself lives in a multidimensional world, a multidimensional space, and in the three-dimensional world it cannot fully manifest or materialize all its possibilities.

Your spirituality is in a five-dimensional or six-dimensional dimensional space, while we live in a three-dimensional world; your possibilities are far greater than these possibilities. If you cannot understand, just imagine how the three-dimensional world, relative to a two-dimensional world on a flat piece of paper, is indescribably rich -- immeasurably, infinitely greater. Not to mention how higher dimensions are relative to our three-dimensional world; all possibilities are endless and infinite.

Your spirituality originally exists within endless and infinite possibilities, but when it arrives in the three-dimensional world, limited by our time and space, it can only manifest a portion. Such a state, Seth calls a "dilemma," and it inevitably produces myth; this is a very natural phenomenon. This is a natural spiritual attribute.

It is a psychic component, combining with other such components, then to form a mythological expression of inner reality. (Session 817)

Your spiritual components -- remember, they are yours -- combine with the spiritual components of the surrounding flowers, grass, mountains, water, air, atoms, and molecules, together forming a mythological expression of inner reality -- that is, Framework 2. Because you cannot express these endless and infinite abilities, you can only regard them as myths.

In human society we have many mythological stories, about heavens, gods, the Jade Emperor, and in the West, Greek mythology -- are these myths not all descriptions, longings, or admirations of abilities that we human beings do not possess? Our inner world is extremely powerful, with unlimited abilities, the same abilities as the source of the universe and the creator of the universe. But in the three-dimensional world, we must attach ourselves to this earth and exist like an animal. Although we have a spiritual core, and that inner self, relative to our little self, is a godlike existence. How do we express the sacred, godlike existence of this inner self? This myth comes out.

Myth is a mythological expression, a mythological version, of the inner world, of Framework 2, which cannot be fully described and fully interpreted. So now you know the subtlety of Seth's use of this word, and the cleverness of Teacher Wang Jiqing's translation of it as "迷思." It is only a pity that the Seth material is too difficult to understand, so many people only understand the surface meaning of myth and have not truly understood what myth is. My attempt today is to make this matter clear within one class session.

Myth Becomes Belief Models and World Patterns

That kind of mythic expression is then used as a model—a model of our beliefs, or a pattern of thinking, a pattern of behavior. At first it is our mythic description of the inner world, and then this expression forms a pattern, a pattern for thinking about, judging, and viewing the world. Once this pattern is formed, our civilization is organized upon it, and human civilization is born from it.

Myths are used as a tool of perception—treat it as a lens; telescopes, microscopes, and nearsighted glasses are all lenses. Through this myth, we are able to interpret the personal world of your lives within the scope of history. Our reading and interpretation of the personal world depends entirely on this myth.

If you still do not quite understand at this point, keep reading, and I will soon let you understand just what a myth really is. It is very normal not to understand the first time through; go back and listen again.

Accepting myths and calling them facts

When you accept myths, you call them facts. (Session 817)

Myths are not facts; they are a distortion of facts—but this distortion is not a deliberate distortion; it is a distortion caused by insufficient capacity for understanding. When we accept it, we take this distorted fact as fact, because we cannot see the real fact. These mythic, nameless things, these obstructions of knowledge, form part of your life, your society, and your profession, so much so that their foundations seem self-evident.

To put it simply, when this myth is accepted, it becomes your worldview, your outlook on life, and your values—commonly called the three views. But where do the three views come from? Your three views come from myths; myths are the source from which the three views arise. Once you have the three views, a core value system is formed—what is good, what is right, what is wrong, what is fragrant, what is foul. This core value system then becomes a belief system—a belief system is the thing your brain reacts to automatically without thinking, that is, your fixed pattern of thinking. When something is judged automatically, without deliberation, as good or bad, right or wrong, this automatic way of judging is the belief system, and you can call it the three views.

For example, as soon as the Zheng Shuang incident came out, many people said that abandoning a child like that was absolutely unacceptable, that it was bad. This is a kind of three views, a kind of value, a kind of judgment. But suppose this had happened a hundred years ago, in a Chinese village in the 1920s; many mothers gave birth to children they could not afford to raise, had no means to do so, and deliberately threw them away, abandoned them. And with the Zheng Shuang incident, what people were angry about was not that she could not afford to raise the child, but that she treated it like a game—wanting a child, she used surrogacy, and when she no longer wanted it, she discarded it like a kitten or a puppy. What I mean is, we feel only sympathy for a rural woman a hundred years ago who could not raise her child because of poverty, yet we are extremely indignant at an entertainer a hundred years later who used surrogacy and then neither raised nor wanted the child. The thing behind this, at the core, at the bottom layer, is myth.

Once a myth is accepted by us, it becomes a fact of our three-dimensional world. Why is it that many people cannot be persuaded? Because in their cognition, those things are facts. If you tell them it is not a fact, they will get upset with you—you are overturning their facts, overturning their belief system, overturning their values, overturning their three views. If their consciousness is not flexible enough, they cannot accept it.

Myths are large-scale psychological dramas

Myths are large-scale psychological dramas—that is, spiritual theater, spiritual dramas continually enacted in the inner world, and they are more real than the facts we consider facts. (Session 817)

This "facts" refers to the facts of the three-dimensional world. Myths are more real than the facts of the three-dimensional world—the reality and events of our material world are all generated from Framework 2, and Framework 2 is where the reality of events truly lies. In Framework 2, there is a spiritual stage whose curtain never falls, where the extrapolation of all probabilities is continually performed.

I am pointing out the nature of those psychic events. (Session 817)

Although myths are a distortion that cannot fully display psychic events, or a mythic legend about real events—like "Bro is no longer in the jianghu, but the legend of Bro still circulates in the jianghu." Myths are not a true description of real events, but an approximate description. They cannot fully display the nature of psychic events, but they can point out those things—they cannot fully present them, but they can point out that the truth is there. The truth is in Framework 2, not over here, not in your material world. As for how things actually happen over there, I really cannot explain it to you clearly in words, but I know the truth is there.

The questions of two kinds of people in natural disasters

The events that occur in our material world have a longer-lasting, more enduring reality in Framework 2, and they form the patterns that are subsequently interpreted in our world. To manifest in our three-dimensional world, they must be interpreted in our three-dimensional world, becoming the appearance of facts or the appearance of events as we know them.

If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following kinds of questions may arise. This person may ask: Am I being punished by God? Why am I being punished? What is the reason? What did I do? Is this disaster God's revenge on me? This is a question people often ask—this is a religious person.

On the other hand, a scientist would not ask this question. The scientist would think: With better technology and information, could we predict this disaster and save many lives? He may try not to let himself be affected by emotion, and from a scientific spirit and an objective attitude, see whether technological means can be used to avoid this natural disaster—because being able to predict a natural disaster means treating this disaster merely as a natural phenomenon unrelated to individuals. He believes this natural disaster has nothing to do with people; it is a natural phenomenon that neither knows nor cares what it sweeps over along its path.

You see, these are two completely different viewpoints. A person of faith asks whether the natural disaster is God's punishment on me, with a strong anthropomorphic coloring, considering the problem from a human perspective; a scientist does not consider the problem this way.

Does the scientist think: Is this not a natural phenomenon? How could there be so many interpretations involving strange forces and spirits? No, it is just a natural phenomenon, unrelated to individuals, and has nothing to do with any revenge or whether humanity has received some punishment. It is simply a natural phenomenon. How many people this natural phenomenon affects, whom it affects, and which people it affects are all irrelevant, and none of that is what I need to consider. This is the scientist's angle, right? Is the first way of considering it right? It is not right either. Both of these ways of knowing are wrong.

Let us continue reading.

Facing Natural Disasters, How People Interpret Them Through Beliefs

But in all of these examples, this kind of situation immediately brings some questions to mind. He gave two kinds of examples, and they immediately make you think of questions. What questions? Our own reality and direction as human beings.

What does one's own reality mean? For example, the first type of person believes this is a natural disaster, a punishment from heaven upon me. I have suffered divine retribution, because I did some kind of bad thing before, so you see, heaven has come to take revenge on me, to take me away. If the King of Hell summons me to die at the third watch, he will not keep me until the fifth watch -- that is the feeling. Is this not this person's reality? This is his personal reality. Is the scientist's reality the same as his? Completely different. The scientist says, what does this have to do with you personally? Can you decide whether a volcano erupts or not? Can you decide whether there is an earthquake or not? If heaven wanted to take revenge on you alone and flattened the whole region, then what about the others? Are the others also people who are affected? Should the others also be punished and killed by the earthquake? The scientist would absolutely say you are talking nonsense.

So what question does this raise? When people face the same natural disaster, our understanding of this natural disaster within the event is completely different, and the directions from which we consider the problem are also completely different. And then, his relationship with God -- that is, the relationship between a religious person and God -- and his relationship with the planet and with the universe itself, are also different. He interprets those questions according to his own beliefs. Scientists interpret them through scientific beliefs, and people with religious faith interpret them through religious faith. Can you understand this?

For these two extreme types of people, he gives two extreme examples: one is the Protestant belief, and the other is the concept of scientific belief. The world means completely different interpretations to them.

Let us look at some of these explanations below.

Myths Are Natural Phenomena

First he says:

Myths are natural phenomena, rising from the human psyche just as great mountain ranges rise from the physical planet. Yet the deeper reality of myths exists within Framework 2, and becomes a raw material for the world you know.

Isn't this passage interesting? Haven't I said something similar before?

Simply put, myths are natural phenomena. You say, why can't I be without myths? You cannot be without myths; myths are natural phenomena. They arise from our psyche, just as our mountains and rivers arise from the physical planet. So where do our myths arise from? Of course, they arise from Framework 2. Our mountains are ranges uplifted by the crustal movements of the earth; if myths are these mountain ranges, then what creates these ranges? It is Framework 2.

So, although myths are an incomplete or incorrect way of perceiving the world, they also come from Framework 2 -- they contain the raw material of all the world we know.

In those terms, the great religions of your civilization arose from myths. Religion is also myth, and it also comes from Framework 2. The characteristic of myths is that they change with the generations; they are not unchanging, just as the rising and sinking of mountain ranges is also constantly changing. You can see mountain ranges, so it would be ridiculous to ignore their reality. That is, we see the mountains, yet we do not see the planet -- the mountains are merely products of the earth's movements. We humans can see myths, yet we do not see the inner changes of myths; just as mountain ranges also change, our human myths also change with the development of the ages.

You see your myths less directly. We generally cannot see our own myths; we cannot see what lies beneath our worldview, the source of our beliefs; we do not know where it comes from. That is why Jung often used "the collective unconscious of humanity" to describe it -- that is a collective myth of humanity, placed there.

But they are obvious in all of your activities. Obvious? Of course they are obvious; you just have not noticed them. You live in this world, and your ability to walk in this world is necessarily supported by your belief system -- you must have a worldview. Some people say whether one's worldview is correct or not, but that may be speaking from certain angles; yet whether your worldview is correct or not, do you not still have to have a worldview? Whatever your belief system is, do you not still have a belief system? What is a belief? It is your way of looking at things, your judgment of things; you have all of that. And in all of your activities, these things are at work, only you have not become aware of them. Your worldview determines how you live; for our three-dimensional world, it almost determines everything about it.

And with their many portions, they form the structures within all of your civilization. Myths have many other portions; for example, as I just said, there are myths within fantasy and imagination, there are myths within belief systems, everything has them. The inner structure of our civilization is formed by these many portions of myth. Let me go through it again: the mythic outer expression of Framework 2, or of our inner world, the spiritual world or the divine world, is the foundational structure of the framework of human civilization.

All right, think about this on your own; I cannot explain any further, or another hour will pass.

Religion and Science Are Both Myths

In that sense, Christianity and your other religions are myths. Of course, this needs no further explanation.

It actually arises because of an inner knowledge that is so vast that it cannot be covered by facts alone.

Because they are too vast, because it is a multidimensional existence, of course it is vast. How do you understand multidimensionality? I cannot make you understand it, because your mode of thinking is the consciousness state of the three-dimensional world. How can I use the language of the three-dimensional world to make you understand how the consciousness state of that multidimensional existence operates? It cannot be understood. So that kind of inner knowledge, which is too vast to be expressed in a way that can be covered by the facts of our three-dimensional world, formed the Christianity and other religions we see today, including Buddhism -- they are all the same. Inwardly they are a spiritual, very powerful thing. It is not that the inner thing is bad or wrong; rather, it is right. It is just that when it cannot be fully unfolded and manifested in our three-dimensional world, or when it cannot encompass all of its inner knowledge, it becomes a myth, and what is manifested is a religion.

Every religion is a myth. So then you understand that religion is not the ultimate truth, because it is a mythological expression of the truth. This is especially obvious in Christianity, and other religions also have it -- they are all mythological expressions. In Hinduism and Brahmanism and some other pantheistic religions, they all deified it. Buddhism did not deify him, but Buddhism also said many things that we understand as mythological. You see, Buddhism was originally a person -- Shakyamuni was a person, and Jesus was actually also a person, but later they were both deified.

Also in that sense, your science is also quite mythological in its essence. You say religion is a distorted and incomplete expression of reality, so is science also like that? Of course it is. Science embodies its myth in another way -- it also cannot express the things of Framework 2 in that multidimensional world.

This point is somewhat harder for some of you to see. For those who believe in materialist scientism, if you tell them religion is a myth, they can accept it and applaud: right, religion is a myth, all religions are myths. Then when you shift your tone and Seth says science is also a myth, they immediately jump up and say: no, science is not a myth, science is built on a complete and solid foundation of facts and experiments, how can it be a myth? That is how they will talk to you. Of course, we all know that it is certainly also a myth, because science seems so self-evident.

Others will be very willing to see the mythological nature of science -- for example, religious people will say you are absolutely right that science is a myth, science has gone in the wrong direction, this world was created by God, and although science seems very precise, it has never grasped the essence of the world. But they will be extremely reluctant to look at the religion you know in the same way. They are willing to admit that science is a myth, but if you ask them to say religion is a myth, they are very unwilling.

However, to a greater or lesser degree, all of these concepts limit your interpretation of reality. Whether it is religion, whether it is science, whether it is our subsequent human cognition and interpretation of the world, they are all myths, all on the level of myth. Because myth is a natural phenomenon -- unless you do not live in this natural world and have already leapt beyond this material world, only then can you remove this myth. As Buddhism often says, when your cultivation reaches a certain level, and your cognition and wisdom reach a certain level, ignorance naturally disappears. Ignorance is not some substantial thing; when you reach the consciousness state of Framework 2, ignorance no longer exists. But if you live in the three-dimensional world, you cannot remove ignorance even if you want to -- all of your cognition is ignorance, and even if you have reached the ultimate and are just a hair's breadth away from the ultimate, you are still in a state of ignorance.

Two Polarized Interpretations of Natural Disasters

He says that in Part Two of this book, we are more or less dealing with the natural world as you know it. Part Two mainly addresses natural events, with the emphasis on natural disasters, and does not say much about human events. Social movements and politics, he will discuss later. Part Two focuses on natural events.

Once again, to some people it may seem obvious: a natural disaster is brought about by God's vengeance. Including this pandemic when it arrived, many, many people came out and said, this is because you humans do not care for nature, humans have done too many bad things, this is nature's revenge, God's revenge -- or at least a divine reminder calling you to repentance. Many people feel this is all too obvious.

Others, however, will take it for granted that such calamities are completely neutral in character, that they are impersonal, and that they are far removed from human beings' own emotions and reality. He says this has nothing to do with humans; it is simply a natural phenomenon of nature. With the pandemic it is a bit better, since it can still be somewhat connected to humans, but with things like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and forest fires, many people feel these have nothing to do with people; they are normal phenomena of nature.

Scientists who are Christians are caught between these two positions. There are some scientists who, although they studied science and do scientific research, are also religious believers, and this leaves them stuck in the middle. You see, those who are religious are also quite forthright, saying this is God's will, God's manifestation; those who believe in science say this is a natural phenomenon. The religious scientist is stuck in the middle, not knowing what to do.

Because you have separated yourselves from nature, you have no way of understanding this phenomenon that nature materializes. He again uses the word "materialize" -- nature materializes, that is, the phenomenon of physical manifestation. What does it correspond to? What is it inwardly, in fact? It is emotion. Do not forget what this chapter discussed at the very beginning -- the physical world moves in accordance with the rhythms of emotion. You must understand this point.

When Myths Are Bound Too Tightly, You Misunderstand Them

Because myths often create obstructions -- they are barriers of ignorance, you see. When myths become standardized and are too readily believed as truth -- when you bind myths too tightly to the world of facts -- then you completely misunderstand myths.

Myths are the closest thing we have to truth, the closest thing to reality. Although they are a distortion, if you take myths too much as reality, or if you bind myths too tightly to the events and facts of our physical world, then you have misunderstood myths.

Let me explain this point: myths themselves are not errors; they are simply our incomplete understanding of truth, or our insufficient capacity to understand. But they are not wrong -- their source is not wrong, the root is not wrong; it is only that our capacity to understand is insufficient.

Let me give you a vivid example. Say you look at a lamp, and it is emitting white light. Now you put on a pair of green-tinted glasses, and the lamp appears green to you. Ignorance is this very thing, and myths are also this very thing. Without this myth, you would see the lamp as white; with this myth, you see the lamp as green. So you should understand that the real world and this myth do not have an absolute relationship -- it is not that the lamp is definitely green; it is only because you put on these green glasses that the thing looks green to you. And you see, it is not just the lamp that is green -- everything you look at is green.

What does it mean to bind a myth too tightly? It is like always wearing these green glasses when you look at things -- that is what binding too tightly means. If you wear these green glasses to look at everything, then you are done for; life just stays a stretch of green.

What does it mean to bind not too tightly? It means you are able to know that you are wearing glasses, and when you look at things you are not so rigid about it. But if you are not rigid, does that mean you treat it as illusion, as false, thinking it is all just dreamlike bubbles? No. It is not dreamlike bubbles; it is merely that a pair of glasses has been placed between you and reality, and you can only observe through these glasses. So would you say that what the glasses show you is false? You can only say it is not real, but you cannot say it is false. It is a distortion of reality, a deformation, a one-sided expression -- but it is not unreal. This thing is called myth. If you throw it all away, saying this is not real and I do not want it -- then you are done for; without it you cannot see anything at all. Because myth is a natural attribute of nature itself; without it there is nothing, not even this world.

So in Buddhism there is a common phrase, "borrowing the false to cultivate the true," and that is exactly what this means. You can only observe more, understand more, and reflect more, and not bind yourself too tightly to the glasses. Put the glasses on for a while, take them off for a while, try on different pairs and see. When you look through different glasses, your perception and cognition of the world will differ. The more angles you stand at, the broader and higher they are, the closer your view comes to the essence of reality. At that point, you are no longer bound too tightly to the myth.

When a myth becomes most like fact, it has already become less real. Myths have power; they are as powerful as nature itself, because they come from the real part, from Framework 2. But when you cling more and more tightly to physical reality, to facts, with no flexibility, and treat myths as absolute truth, then they become unreal. The more you treat them as real, the more unreal they become. Conversely, if you treat a myth only as something incomplete and partial, and shift your angle more often, and come to know it from more levels, you will actually get closer to reality. When you insist on only one fixed notion, it becomes unreal, it becomes wrong -- and not only can you no longer perceive reality, its sense of power is also gone.

Myths and Spirituality

So, most people are able to interpret the real aspects of their lives -- their victories and defeats, health and illness, good fortune and misfortune -- in terms of a mythic reality, yet without realizing that it is mythic. This sentence is very philosophical: a person interprets all the circumstances of his life in this mythic manner, and they all carry a certain unreality. What you think you think is not really what you think; it truly is not the way you think it is. Because you are within the myth, within the attributes and patterns of the myth, interpreting your life in a mythic way. And the most interesting thing is, you have not discovered that it is a myth.

A vivid example would be that you are looking at your world through different colored glasses, but you have not noticed that you are wearing these glasses. You believe that what you recognize and what you feel are all real, and you forget that they are all seen only after being tinted by your different glasses. You say, can't I just take the glasses off? You can't take them off. If you take off one pair of glasses, you will put on another; you are just constantly switching. You can only say that after looking through many pairs of glasses, you might be able to guess what the truth looks like.

Living in the three-dimensional world, you cannot leave this myth. You say, then what do we do? Then we will never know the truth of things. Right, you will never know. You must recognize this; you must accept this fact. You cannot say, I will never know, so I am in pain and misery, rolling on the ground, insisting that I must know the truth. It is not that he will not tell you the truth; it is that the truth is an existence in multidimensional space, and what you see is only its manifestation in the three-dimensional world.

Let me say a bit more. The event you see, for example, the occurrence of a plague, cannot be explained merely on the level of the earth, or from the angle of human civilization in your time and space. Of course, it is also a product that satisfies the conditions of humanity's current civilization, but its most fundamental attribute is that it arises within a four-dimensional or five-dimensional space, possibly under the constraints and influences of other times and spaces. To put it in terms of science or science fiction, it may be that something happened in another dimension or another time-space, and in our time-space it is produced in this manner.

Let me give a concrete analogy so you can understand. Perhaps in another dimensional world -- I am just making up an example -- a great awakening of consciousness occurred, and that great awakening of consciousness required some new consciousnesses to enter into this awakening. And at this time, in the three-dimensional world of the human realm, there are many consciousnesses who, within their thought-space, want to participate in that great awakening of consciousness, so they must detach from this three-dimensional world, detach their conscious focus from this physical body in the three-dimensional world, and return to the level of that four-dimensional or five-dimensional world, to participate in the great event of the awakening of consciousness happening in that world. Then in our world, this manifests as a great disaster, a great war, a great plague. I am giving an example; I am not saying this is really how it is, I am just giving an example. Can you understand what I mean?

This example tells you that you can never know what happened in that multidimensional world. You can only, at the level of our cognition, with our little brains, barely manage to think about these few matters on the three-dimensional earth. You are even less able to imagine the influence of events occurring in those endless, infinite multiple time-spaces upon our three-dimensional world; that has already surpassed the limits of what the human brain can bear.

Alright, we have digressed too far. We look at this life of ours, and we look at it through colored glasses, but we do not know that we are wearing colored glasses. What are those colored glasses? They are your three views. You use your three views to evaluate this life of yours, and you even use them to evaluate others. Then how did the three views come about? The three views come from myths.

You say myths are the source of the three views, then where does the source of myths come from? Look at this Seth, he really does not get tired; actually, I am already tired, pursuing the origin of things all the way down. Since he wants to talk about it, then let us continue downward.

Facts Are a Bland Kind of Reality

He says:

Facts are a very convenient, but bland, kind of reality.

You humans always want to pursue facts. Why are they convenient but bland realities? Because they immediately divide a certain kind of experience into true and false.

What do I mean by convenient but bland realities? Let me give an example. If you want to determine facts, if you want to pursue truth, pursue reality, and you are a very exacting person, then tell me how the universe actually came into being. If I say there are ten thousand ways the universe came into being, you would say that is wrong, tell me one way. Why do I say this is convenient but bland? Because thinking that way means your level of consciousness is still stuck at a very low level: you think things are either black or white, either right or wrong, either correct or incorrect.

Is there anything wrong with that kind of cognition? Of course there is. In the three-dimensional world, that kind of cognition is fine, but once you get to the multidimensional world, that cognition is immediately wrong. You only need to rise one dimension—not high, just from three dimensions to four—and the correctness or incorrectness you perceive, the black and white, right and wrong, all cease to exist. All things are one. What does "one" mean? It means Schrodinger's cat: before you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive.⁶ Can you accept that? You cannot accept it. You say the cat is either dead or alive, how could it be both dead and alive? If you still think that way, then you are still stuck at the level of three-dimensional consciousness, and you simply cannot understand the existence of the multidimensional world. The cat being alive and the cat being dead—both are facts. If you cannot understand that, then you cannot enter a higher state of consciousness.

So when you are asking what a fact is, you are still stuck at that level. You immediately divide things into true and false. But your spirituality—here he uses "psyche," and I find "spirituality" easier to understand—at the level of spirituality, it cannot be subject to that kind of limitation. Your psyche does not live in the three-dimensional world; it is not subject to that limitation. Your psyche exists within a medium of reality, within a realm of existence. In it, all possibilities exist. The psyche creates myths the way the ocean creates waves.

This passage that follows has real depth; every word is a classic among classics. You will gradually be able to experience it.

Let me say it again: your spirituality exists within a medium of reality. What medium of reality? Our bodies can exist in the three-dimensional world, so in what dimensional world does our spirituality exist? Is it four-dimensional, five-dimensional, six-dimensional, or very high-dimensional? The physical body we can understand, and the soul we can say exists in the bardo after death. But spirituality—or your soul—where does it exist? It exists within a medium of reality. He uses "medium of reality." What is this medium like? It is a realm of existence. Mark this phrase as important—a realm of existence.

In other words, your spirituality exists within existence itself. This may sound like saying nothing—as if the statement has no meaning—but that is how it is. Your spirituality exists within the state of existence, and it is called a realm of existence. In English it is called "being," or an even better way to say it is "being in." "Being" is still static, while "being in" has a dynamic quality; it is a very good description. Its most basic meaning is "presence." It is very hard to use any other word to explain what existence means.

In other words, the essence of your spirituality is a state of existence, and this state of existence is itself a medium of reality. So what is a state of existence? It is the state in which all possibilities exist. If you insist on using a grand scientific term to explain it, you could describe it as a "field of all possibilities"—that is existence. This existence includes the field of all possibilities; you can call it whatever you like. If you want to sum up in one sentence this state in which the field of all possibilities exists simultaneously, it is called existence.

And your spirituality exists within such a state. In that state, how could there still be any talk of facts? Everything is a fact: his being alive is a fact, his being dead is also a fact; his being born is a fact, his not being born is also a fact; your drinking this glass of water is a fact, your not drinking this glass of water is also a fact. Can you understand that? Because these are all possibilities, and these possibilities all exist simultaneously.

Is this getting a little mind-bending here? Many people want to ask what dimensional space feels like. You have now touched the edge of it, touched the door, and are beginning to step into the state of dimensional space.

How Myths Create Our World

Then he goes on. You see, his analogy is very good. He has made everything clear earlier, and then he says your psyche creates myths. Myths are changing all the time; they are not fixed. Why? Because a myth is you using your consciousness to look at that inner world, that field of probabilities, the truth of that world. The truth of the world is existence, is the field of probabilities, is the inner world, is the spiritual world, is Framework 2 -- all these terms I am throwing out refer to the same thing. A myth is the process of you using your consciousness to try to see that thing clearly, and that process is called myth, because you cannot see it clearly, and that is why myths arise.

Your psyche produces myths the way the ocean creates waves -- endlessly, one after another. Do you now understand another attribute of myth? Myth is an expression of your psyche, and that is why myth has such great power. He said earlier that myth has great power: when you put some distance between myth and fact, its sense of power shows itself; when you take myth to be fact, it no longer has much sense of power.

Myths are psychic structures of such power and strength.

Of course they are. It is a wave of the psyche, and the power of the psyche is the same as the source of the universe. Although this myth is not the ocean itself, it is still a wave of the ocean, and it carries the attributes of the ocean within it. So myth is from the very beginning a psychic structure of tremendous power and strength, so much so that our entire civilization has risen from this source.

Myths also involve symbols, and know the effectiveness of emotions.

Myth comes from the psyche, so it knows how to produce symbols and how to use them. It also knows that emotion is the ultimate source in your life, that emotion is what can move energy and move the sense of power, so it knows how to use emotion.

Then the interesting part comes: when these symbols and emotions are connected with the physical world, they make that world never the same again. What is being described here is an interaction, a mutual interplay. And to explain this would again take a long passage.

The emergence of our physical world is caused by our incomplete cognition of the inner world. Because our cognition of the inner world is incomplete, or because we have myths, we produce our own interpretation, our own understanding, and we form our own core beliefs, our belief systems. And our reality is created by our beliefs. Has not Seth always said "beliefs create reality"? That is how it is created. You must first have a belief before you can create, but where does your belief come from? Your belief comes from myth.

The belief that comes from myth then creates reality -- and reality is our physical world. But once this physical world is created, do you not then have a cognition of it, a feeling about it? And then based on this physical world you produce new cognitions and feelings, produce new myths, new ideas, and feed them back into this physical world.

In other words, you have a fantasy or a dream in your inner world, and this fantasy and dream has symbols and emotions in the three-dimensional world. For example, you want to live a happy life, and at that point a symbol has to appear. What does a happy life mean? Does it not involve the existence of a partner? Suppose you hold a traditional view, and you believe that a happy life means having a happy family, a happy beloved, and so on -- then all of these are your symbols, symbols of a happy life. And then there is feeling -- love is part of your happy life, but it must involve concrete emotional investment. If you do not attach emotion to a specific person or a specific matter, then this love cannot be experienced, or it remains very abstract.

What is being said here is this: in the process of taking something from your inner world -- which is a myth -- and manifesting it in the three-dimensional world, you must use symbols and emotions to connect it with the physical world of three dimensions. For example, you feel that this car represents part of your dream, so you connect this car with your physical world, with the emotion of your dream, with the things that bring you joy. Once you have made that connection, once you look at the world through myth, through your interpretation, through your way of reading the world, the things of this world are no longer the same: this car is no longer that ordinary car of steel, that person is no longer that person, that rose is no longer merely a rose, and that woman is no longer simply a woman.

So exhausting. Really exhausting.

Myths cast their light on historical facts.

This is understandable. We interpret history through the lens of myth, and interpreting history through myth is the same as casting its light on historical facts. See how poetic his language is: just picture it -- countless historical events have occurred, and you have your myth, which is how you view these historical events, and in an instant they are illuminated, and then they are multicolored and dazzling, strange and bizarre. The same historical facts present completely different pictures in different people's eyes. This is because each person's myth is different, but we do share a common myth, a basic agreement about facts.

Because those events were caused by them.

Of course they were caused by them. They are a projection of part of our inner world into the physical world, so they must be caused by myths.

Myths blend the inner, invisible, yet perceivable, eternal psychic experiences of the person with temporal worldly events, and form a combination. From one civilization to another, that combination structures thoughts and beliefs.

Look at this language, this writing -- it simply compels assent. The rigor of the structure, the precision of the logic, and the beauty of the language all fused together -- truly breathtaking. Let me explain it briefly, though my explanation is really superfluous.

Myths blend together those things in our inner world that are invisible yet perceivable. Do you have things in your heart that are invisible but perceivable? Of course you do. Let me use the same example: when you were a teenager, the stirring longing for love and the beautiful ideas about it in your heart were invisible and intangible. Until a person you loved appeared beside you, and you placed your feelings on that person, projected them onto that person, and you believed that person was the symbol of your love, and your love became concrete because of that person's appearance. What was originally an abstract love, an invisible and intangible emotion, became concrete because a specific person appeared. And then you were like a volcano erupting -- boom -- and this invisible emotion burst forth.

So it can feel that eternal psychic experience -- love is eternal, and such eternal experiences are all inner to the psyche. And then you blend it with temporal worldly events. What does temporal mean? Love can be long or short; even if it lasts a lifetime, to the psyche it is as fleeting as a flower that blooms for a moment. And within your own lifetime, you may love more than one person, and each time that love blends with temporal worldly events and forms a combination -- that is, a combination of myth and event. Myth is your cognition of outer reality -- not complete, but you want to display it. Inner reality is your inner world, and you can only display a part of it, like a myth, or a simplified version, a condensed version, an abstract version, and display it, forming one worldly event after another. For each person it is a personal event; for humanity as a whole it is a historical event. It is that kind of combination, a blending and joining of the inner world and outer worldly events.

And then our civilization, our world, is produced from this. So he says, from one civilization to another, that combination structures thoughts and beliefs. It combines our thoughts and beliefs into this world, into the whole of human civilization.

Everything in Framework 2 Is Interacting

In Framework 2, the natural inner forces are constantly changing; it is not dead. Framework 2 is alive, changing at every moment. People's dreams, hopes, aspirations—that is, desires and fears—are continuously interacting, and then they form the reality of your world: first realized in Framework 2, then manifested in Framework 1.

That interaction does not only include human beings. Be sure to remember: Framework 2 is not only about human affairs; it also includes all the consciousness on Earth. From a microorganism to a scholar, from a little frog to the emotional reality of a star—all of it evolves in Framework 2 with complete clarity and in full detail, and it is the evolution of all probabilities. Be sure not to overlook this: whether a microorganism, whether a scholar, whether a frog, whether a sun—what they are all speaking of is their emotional reality.

You interpret the phenomena of your world according to the characteristics of the myths you have accepted.

We interpret according to the characteristics of the myths we have accepted—the premise being that they are accepted. A myth you do not accept, you will not use. You only use the characteristics of the myths you do accept to explain our world. That is, you use them to form your three views—values, worldview, and outlook on life—to explain this world.

You organize physical reality through beliefs.

We first explain through emotion, and then I will reverse it. This is a key point to remember: in Framework 2, what is included is the emotional reality of microorganisms and scholars, the emotional reality of frogs and stars. Then we use myths to interpret the phenomena of this world, and that forms our belief system. Then when you use this belief system to explain our world, our world is born from it. It is through these beliefs that we organize our physical reality. Our physical world is born from beliefs—that is "beliefs create reality." So now do you know where the source of beliefs is? Its source is in myths.

You only use those perceptions that give validity to those concepts.

We only use those physical realities that are realized through our beliefs. Our inner world is a multidimensional world. Through myths, we can only reveal a part of the inner world, and the part that is revealed is the myth—that is, its interpretation of this world. The inner world is originally a multidimensional existence, and what it reveals is actually quite a lot. But of these revealed multidimensional attributes, we humans cannot perceive all of them. We can only perceive the part that is valid; the part that is not valid, we cannot perceive. What is this valid and invalid relative to? It is relative to our physical world.

In other words, the projection of our inner world into the outer world is not a simple three-dimensional object; what is projected is also a multidimensional object. It is projected from the multidimensional world, only it is not projected completely, but what is projected is still a multidimensional reality. Unfortunately, we humans only pay attention to the attributes that can function in the three-dimensional world. Our five outer sensory systems can only perceive the attributes that can be operated, worked with, felt, and used in the three-dimensional world. As for the attributes that do not function in the three-dimensional world, our human sensory systems cannot perceive their existence. So the feeling it gives you is that this multidimensional object only has three-dimensional attributes in the three-dimensional world. It is not that it only has three-dimensional attributes; it inherently has multidimensional attributes. It is just that our sensory systems can only recognize these three-dimensional attributes.

Do you see how much knowledge and content is contained in this short sentence of Seth's? You can only perceive these concepts of validity. What are concepts? They are the cognitions of your myths in the three-dimensional world—that is, your belief system. You think you cannot walk through walls, so you perceive that you cannot walk through walls; you cognize that you cannot fly, so you cannot fly. What you think is how it is—through the perception of the validity of these concepts.

The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in a way that is different from the one with which you are familiar.

The physical body itself has far greater abilities than you are familiar with. The physical body also has nine inner senses, and these nine inner senses are present in every person. The functioning of the physical body is entirely a multidimensional ability. It exchanges with our nature in real time: exchanging information, exchanging matter, exchanging emotions, exchanging energy, and even influencing the weather. The weather has an interactive relationship with human beings. These things completely exceed our cognition of the three-dimensional world.

The Consequences of Separating from Nature

You have separated yourselves from nature and its intent. This is the most foolish thing we have done to ourselves. Humanity has separated itself from nature and nature's intent, when in fact we are one, we come from the same source, but we think we are not, so we cut ourselves off from it.

Far more than animals have done. Animals have done some of it too, but humans have gone further than animals, separated from nature even more.

Nature in its storms appears to be an enemy.

When nature produces thunder and lightning, storms and rain, we think nature is an enemy, and we have to fight against it. At such times, your view of nature seems malicious or unkind. We often say, "Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs⁷," so we think heaven and earth are not benevolent. Is that saying correct? No. Is the Tao Te Ching ultimate? Part of it is ultimate, part of it is not. Where it is not ultimate, is the Tao Te Ching wrong? I don't think so; it is the people who understood it later who understood it wrong. We will talk about this separately when we get to the Tao Te Ching. But when we understand this line as "Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs⁷," that is wrong; it is your understanding that is wrong.

You think nature is evil when it produces these natural disasters, and then you look outside yourselves for reasons to explain it -- it is a natural calamity, it is a human calamity, it is something we did, and all sorts of other things. What is it really? Actually, you can find it by looking within yourself. Why can you find it within yourself? Because nature and you are from the same source, and this source takes the rhythm of your emotions as its keynote. These material things are all produced according to the fluctuations of your emotions, the pulse and rhythm of your emotions. You don't know why nature is the way it is; look inward and you will know. Look outward and you will never find the answer. Because you and nature are one; you are both products of that source, and both are influenced by the emotions of that inner reality. These outer natural phenomena are merely a manifestation of that inner natural phenomenon.

Science often says that nature cares little for the individual.

Scientists certainly say this: nature is neutral; it does not deliberately try to harm you, but disasters may still affect human survival. It only cares about humanity as a whole; it takes fairly good care of the whole human race, but it does not care about the individual. Therefore you must often see yourself as the victim of a larger struggle for survival -- you certainly feel that if nature is like this, if it does not care about you as an individual, then you have to struggle on your own, and nature is dangerous everywhere. In this, your own intent has not the slightest effect; that is what you think. You think you are nature's victim, a creature parasitically living within nature. When natural disasters come, you can do nothing at all, because you are a victim, and your intent has no effect whatsoever.

You think it is this way. Is it really? Of course not. Your intent certainly affects your inner world, and your inner world and nature's inner world are both within the same Framework 2. You cannot operate Framework 2 at this level, but you can consciously perceive and become aware at this level, and then let yourself change your cognition, change your intent, and thereby change your myths.

It can work in reverse: your consciousness can change your subconscious, and the subconscious can continue changing downward, changing your core beliefs. When you change your core beliefs, it is equivalent to changing your myths. Myths are the source of your core beliefs. When you cannot see your myths, but you can see your core beliefs, then you change your core beliefs -- and isn't changing them equivalent to changing the myths as well?

What are myths connected to? The power of myths comes from Framework 2. Myths are the process by which your inner multidimensional world manifests outward, and it is only because they cannot fully manifest that they are called myths. It is not that they are wrong; it is that your inner world wants to manifest ten thousand things, but in your reality you can only do three things, and the three things that manifest are not the same as those ten thousand things, so this is called a myth. But you can return to the source in Framework 2, and through this myth, choose a different thing you want to manifest -- those ten thousand things are all laid out there. You say, I don't want these three; can I exchange them for three others? Yes, you can. So he tells you that your intent does have an effect; it is not without effect.

Then he says the dictation is over:

Unless you have questions, we will end here.

Please, no more questions; this has already been long enough. There is a lot more good material ahead. See, Seth even left a little cliffhanger, and that is all for today. Seth is really something. This material is truly good. When I can really explain it clearly and make it clear to everyone, I think that whether it is me or you, we will all know that this session of Seth's -- and I will just speak of this one session for now, out of all the Seth material -- is truly good. If you understand this, then you have truly reached a higher level in your degree of clarity.

If there is really a place you could not hear clearly or did not fully understand, I suggest you listen to it again once or twice, or take paper and pen and draw it out.

I drew a simple little diagram for everyone to make it easier to understand, but this is only a simple representation. At the top is Framework 2, and inside it is the theater of probabilities, which is also the theater of your psyche, and also the field of probabilities, and also the true reality we have always wanted to explore -- real events all happen there. Framework 1 is the big circle below, and inside it is what we call events and objects, material events. And this material event is actually a camouflage reality.

Between Framework 2 and Framework 1, there is an undefined zone. Why is there an undefined zone? Because Framework 2 is multidimensional existence, and Framework 1 is three-dimensional existence, and between three-dimensional and multidimensional there is a transition. For now we will call this transition the undefined zone; you cannot define it, because one end of it spans the multidimensional and the other end spans the three-dimensional. Within Framework 2 is true reality; within Framework 1 we have our own core beliefs and our own worldview, and only through these can we manifest our camouflage reality. And in the middle, in the undefined zone, there are dreams, there are fantasies, and there are myths. Myths are something between Framework 2 and Framework 1.

If we shift to the level of consciousness, Framework 2 operates almost entirely at the level of our human unconscious. It is very hard for you to enter it consciously, because even if you enter, you cannot understand it. Our dreams occasionally enter the undefined zone, and occasionally touch some things from Framework 2, but not entirely, because when you wake from a dream and bring consciousness back with you, it is already incomplete. Fantasies are the same; sometimes when we daydream, some of it is actually intuition giving you things from Framework 2.

This undefined zone is actually more the stage of the subconscious. The subconscious spans between the two -- between the inner self and the outer self. It can receive some unconscious knowledge and unconscious information given to it, and it also clearly knows the information given to it by the conscious mind's outer five senses, so the subconscious spans across them. Sometimes Seth also draws out something in this middle called the "conscious mind," and the conscious mind is just this kind of thing. And what are myths? Myths are in the process by which the subconscious is about to form the conscious mind -- how the subconscious forms your conscious mind, and the intermediate state of that formation is myth. Let us understand it this way for now.

I will say again, this is only a structured way to help you understand the simple relationships, but you must remember not to treat these relationships as fixed. Once you understand the deeper inner meaning, you should forget and discard this framework and structure; this framework is only to help you understand. The diagrams and words I just drew are not real; you must remember that they are definitely not real.

Why not? For example: among the unconscious, the subconscious, myths, and the conscious mind, you cannot separate them; they function together. You cannot pick one out and say this is the unconscious and that is the subconscious; you cannot separate them. The objects we see in Framework 1 are all three-dimensional objects, but a three-dimensional object itself is not a three-dimensional reality; it itself possesses multidimensional reality, only we humans cannot see its multidimensional reality. Using our five outer senses, we can only feel its three-dimensional reality, so we conclude that it is a three-dimensional object. In fact, that object is a multidimensional existence; it is itself the manifestation of an energy body, but you cannot feel its energy body; you can only feel the material parts. And we humans also have nine inner senses; when you use these nine inner senses, you can perceive the multidimensional existence of that object.

What I mean is that there are not such strict divisions and boundaries between them; they are one, they are a single mass, they have no boundaries. But in order to help you in the process of learning and understanding, you can use this structure to understand it better. Once you have understood it thoroughly, then throw the structure away -- only when you can truly merge them all into one will you have truly learned it thoroughly. Do not cling to any one concept, any one structure, any one level, or cling to whoever says Framework 2 and Framework 1 are different -- do not cling to these places.

The content of this session is a very crucial point. I hope I have explained it clearly, and that everyone has understood it. I wish you all a magical and beautiful day.

Waiting Through the Snowstorm Night

Seth book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Chapter 3, Section 2, which is Session 818 (Session 818).

This session began at 10:19 p.m. on Monday, February 6, 1978, later than usual. Before it is an introduction by Rob. Rob says that a major snowstorm began at noon today, and by 9:15, when the session was supposed to begin, the snow was falling harder and harder, piling up several feet high on the north side of the house and outside the newly enclosed back porch facing west. The weather forecast said the storm would continue all night.

Session 818

They waited for the class to begin for an hour and four minutes -- something that had never happened before. Because in the past they had waited at most a few minutes, ten-some minutes, and it was rare for Seth to be over an hour late. The two of them sat in silence for a long time, and at 10:05, Jane said:

I feel as if there is a whole pile of material over there being organized, but he just has not been able to get here yet. It is so strange, I have never had this feeling before. I really want to say forget it. But if I do not hold the session tonight, then in the next session I will want to know why this one did not happen, as if I might wake up at two in the morning and say: oh my God, the material is here.

What he means is, if the session does not happen now, what if she suddenly feels the material arriving at two in the morning? And those strange feelings of Jane's are precisely the reason he placed this session in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Although it is not part of the dictated material for this book, Seth transmitted some very interesting information about the relationship among the three of them, and about the communication between his reality and theirs. This session contains exactly the insights they had been seeking as they tried to understand the entire environment of Seth's experience. When they received this kind of information, they also wanted others to know it. Yet they had not expected Seth to discuss Framework 3 at all -- they were still digesting the material he had given on Framework 1 and Framework 2.

As they continued sitting there, Jane said:

If it were not for the fact that everything feels so timeless, this kind of waiting would really be upsetting. Do you have that feeling?

Rob said yes. There was soft lamplight warming the living room, and outside the blizzard seemed to continue forever. Their house on the hillside was so well insulated that they seemed to hear the raging wind and snow from a very great distance, except for the occasional sound of the metal awning over the window vibrating in the cold wind. Yet finally, Seth came.

After such an environmental setup, the content of this session has a particularly distinctive atmosphere. On a blizzard night, already past ten in the evening, with a snowstorm raging outside, but inside the house warm and quiet, with warm lamplight and a quiet living room, just the two of them sitting there quietly, waiting for Seth to come. They waited for over an hour and Seth still had not come, and after more than an hour, Seth arrived.

Seth's Travels

Seth said:

I do not know how to phrase this to explain it. But in a certain manner of speaking, I have been traveling.

He said I went traveling, but what I traveled through were psychological realities and the realms of the psyche -- not what you would call traveling in space, but traveling in psychological reality, or in this realm you call the psyche, the world of the psyche, the spiritual world, rather than physical travel.

He said in your terms, from our human perspective, this kind of travel takes no time, it does not require the time of our three-dimensional world. But in order to hold the session, I had to allow many activities to happen simultaneously, so that on certain occasions I am with you while also being elsewhere.

This point is very interesting. Seth said I do not know how to explain it to you, I can only say that I went traveling, traveling in the world of the psyche, in the spiritual world, but from your perspective this travel takes no time. Logically I could come to give you a session at any time, but in order to hold this session, I had to allow some activities to happen simultaneously -- at this session time I come to give you the session, while at the same time, in other reality spaces, in other times and spaces where I am needed, I am still elsewhere.

He said:

You have a storm, and the weathermen speak of local conditions and merging air currents. But this place where I travel is a realm where consciousnesses merge with one another.

Here he establishes an analogy. Why do you have storms locally? It is because of the merging of air currents; when cold air and warm moist air meet, that is when storms or blizzards form. Seth borrows a piece of knowledge from human meteorology to tell you: the places I travel to are like the meeting of cold air and warm moist air in the natural world of you humans; in our spiritual world, consciousnesses merge with one another in the same way. He uses this example hoping to help us understand the phenomenon of consciousnesses merging in the spiritual world. Seth has done his utmost to give us a glimpse of the spiritual world he lives in, but it truly cannot be described in words, so he uses examples like this to help us understand.

The Psychic Library

Then he said:

I do not know whether I have specifically mentioned him -- you should understand my state of continual growth, expansion, and development.

What state is he referring to? Seth is saying I do not know whether I have told you, but I am actually in a state of continual growth, continual expansion, and continual development. I am not an old pedant with only dead knowledge. My knowledge is alive, my wisdom is living, and I am constantly developing and expanding, just as each of you is.

Then he said:

Do you remember Ruburt and his psychic library episode?

This episode is mentioned in The "Unknown" Reality. Ruburt, in his own spiritual world, also in that spiritual world, within his own mind -- he was not building it alone; he brought together some of the students from his ESP class, and together, in their own minds, that is, in the shared spiritual world, they constructed a psychic library.

He said:

That psychic library is an example of a much smaller version of my activities.

Ruburt could build a psychic library, and the place I travel to is like a much enlarged version of that library. To use Ruburt's psychic library as an analogy:

I travel to many -- remember, not one -- many great universities of the mind.

He said once again, most of these things are very difficult to explain. Why are they difficult to explain? Because this knowledge and information is constantly transforming; it is not like a physical library we imagine, where the knowledge sits there and I, Seth, go in, study, and come back. It is not that simple.

He said:

Through certain characteristics inherent in thought itself, almost completely regenerated.

What does this mean? It means that this knowledge and information in the spiritual world is constantly transforming, even regenerating, and knowledge becomes entirely new knowledge. In such psychic universities, universities of the mind, the knowledge and thought there are constantly transforming, even regenerating into something entirely new. That is to say, Seth's own knowledge structure and knowledge system, his own wisdom, are also constantly developing. Much knowledge has already been regenerated for him.

In other words, the knowledge Seth is transmitting to us now, starting from this session, may differ somewhat from the knowledge he transmitted before, because he too is constantly developing. In the Datre material, Seth also said something -- he said I am still constantly learning and improving, and I am no longer the me you imagined from before. In other words, Seth is no longer the fixed person you imagine, just staying there forever, with his thinking never changing, his wisdom never changing, his knowledge never changing -- no.

If Seth were to give a session today, he certainly would not use these examples, and he certainly would not present it this way. He would use new ways of presenting it, he would make extensive use of quantum mechanics, quantum computers, the internet, the super-internet, even brain-computer interfaces, and even some biological knowledge we are not very familiar with, and some new human research and understanding of the brain -- he would use the latest knowledge to teach us, or he would have better ways of expressing it according to his understanding. Just as we now think what the Buddha taught is dead, but actually he too is developing. Shakyamuni is also constantly evolving, constantly transforming, and much of his knowledge can almost be said to be regenerated.

This thing is not dead; everyone absolutely must not treat it as something dead. Saying oh Seth said such and such, the Buddha said such and such, so this thing can never change again, not one bit can be changed -- because the Buddha said it, or because Seth said it, or because God said it, or Jesus said it, so it cannot change. This kind of thinking is wrong. No matter who said something, knowledge always gives the people who receive it an opportunity for regeneration and extension.

The Transformation of Knowledge

He said:

Information and knowledge are constantly being transformed.

And there are certain characteristics inherent in thought. What characteristics does thought have? Thought has the characteristic of being indescribable. Moreover, thought and the subject being thought about -- what is a subject? It is the thing you are thinking about, such as your work, your career, your company, your collaborations, your contracts -- these are all subjects you think about. Yet this thought and the subject interact with each other. In this interaction, the original thought undergoes change. This newly changed thought then has new feelings and new perceptions about the subject it perceives, and this new perception and feeling causes the subject's influence on the thought to produce new changes. This is a mutually influencing, mutually changing characteristic inherent in thought.

Therefore you can never fully describe a thought; when you try to describe it, the thought itself has already been expanded and extended. This point has been made very, very clearly in Buddhism, in the Consciousness-Only school -- regarding the relationship between what you can think and what you think. One day when we discuss Consciousness-Only, we will analyze this with everyone. Buddhism has long had relevant discussions on this: the thing thought and the thinking are in a mutual relationship, which Buddhism calls "perfuming" -- this is a Buddhist term, and it is used very well, called perfuming.

Let us return to a level we can understand: the thing you are thinking about and the thought itself interact with each other, and this interactive characteristic is inherent in thought; you cannot make it disappear even if you want to. This is what leads to the regeneration of your knowledge and information.

Knowledge, then, is automatically transformed through the temporary residence of each consciousness that perceives it.

What this sentence means is: for example, the Seth material is a body of knowledge. When we study it, are we not perceiving its existence? Whether you have heard me lecture, or read the books yourself, or heard others lecture, or your own understanding and insight -- all of this is perception of this knowledge. Is not each person's perception of this knowledge somewhat different? This differing perception, or the effect the knowledge has on you, and your own personal realization, will cause the knowledge itself to be expanded.

For example, in the Q&A exchanges, many people shared their experiences and feelings in studying the Seth material. When others hear their experiences and feelings, does that not enrich the knowledge itself? People will say, that day I heard some people who study Seth share material, and some said that during the pandemic their income increased tenfold, and so on -- then does this case, or this person's experience, become an expansion of the Seth material in certain areas?

So this sentence is very direct. Knowledge must pass through the temporary residence of each consciousness that perceives it, and this consciousness that perceives the knowledge will cause the knowledge to transform, and it transforms automatically -- the knowledge is no longer the original knowledge. The Seth material we are studying now is actually already a transformation of the Seth material; it has already changed.

Knowledge is magnified and made more precise. Is it magnified? Of course it is magnified. After several decades we are still studying the Seth material, so Seth's knowledge has influenced our lives, changed our lives, and even changed your past lives, present life, and past. Each person adds their own experiences and insights to this knowledge, and each person adds their own feelings and realizations when sharing this knowledge, so the knowledge itself becomes richer and larger. As the number of learners increases, with each consciousness sharing and temporarily residing in it, the knowledge itself becomes more and more precise, more and more detailed, more and more abundant.

It is a constant language, but a language that transforms itself.

This knowledge and information, in the process of transmission, is a constant, ongoing language. But it is also a language that transforms itself -- in the process of dissemination, it is transforming; each person understands it in their own way and articulates it in their own language, and that is transforming it.

The Buddhist scriptures are a typical example. After thousands of years of development, the Buddhist scriptures have now become a vast ocean of knowledge. The scriptures themselves have developed a great deal over time, and we now do not even know whether some scriptures were actually spoken by the Buddha in his day. The scriptures the Buddha spoke back then -- after a few years someone would say a scripture had been lost, then later it was discovered, and then someone would say this was something the Buddha secretly transmitted back then, only passed on to certain disciples, unknown to many disciples, and now it has emerged again. Now we are not even sure of the authenticity of some scriptures.

For example, the most controversial scripture is the Shurangama Sutra⁸. If you understand the history of the Shurangama Sutra, you can look it up yourself; whether this sutra was actually spoken by the Buddha is still highly debated. The Shurangama Sutra is a very famous sutra, and if even such a famous sutra's authenticity is hard to determine⁹, then the other scriptures need not even be mentioned. So many times when people discuss this issue, as long as something has the word "sutra" attached to it, they prostrate themselves before it.

The Buddha was aware of this problem long ago. During his lifetime the Buddha often spoke of this issue: when we discuss matters, we should rely on the Dharma, not on the person -- you should not believe something just because I said it, or because someone told you I said it, and believe it without doubt. What I say may be wrong; you must first see whether what I say is correct. No matter who said it, as long as it is correct, then it is in accordance with the Dharma; theoretically if it is correct, then it is correct. You cannot rely on the person; relying on the person leads to trouble. We now do not know what is true Dharma and what is right Dharma; we now rely on the person and not the Dharma -- as long as so-and-so said it, then it is correct, and that is worship, personality cult.

I am only saying that through the example of the Buddhist scriptures, we can sense that, including the later treatises, no matter how many treatises there are, because of later understandings of Buddhist knowledge, Buddhist knowledge has become increasingly magnified and increasingly precise.

A More Complex Reality System

Then Seth said:

When I come to these sessions or speak, I exchange with others a more complex reality system than any computer could handle.

When Seth himself comes to these sessions, speaking through Jane's channeling to transmit material, he said at that time I exchange with others a reality system more complex than any computer could process.

What does this mean? He means that in the process of coming to the session to give you this knowledge, I am not only communicating with Rob and Jane in your reality space; I am also communicating with others in my own reality space, and that communication and perception is something you cannot understand. The second layer of meaning is that while transmitting this material, I also cross time and space -- for example, you sitting before your computer or phone today, right now. He said I am also communicating with you people, except that such a communication across time and space is something you humans cannot understand, because it does not happen within your reality space. On the evening of February 6, 1978, those present could not possibly have participated in this; many people had not even been born at that time. But when Seth was transmitting this material, for him, on his level and in his space, there is no limitation of time and space. In other words, he was able, in that time and space, to perceive all the people who have read his material, and to communicate with their thoughts and their consciousness.

Many people have this kind of feeling: some people cannot quite understand the Seth books when they read them, or after reading they find them too vast, forgetting the front when reading the back and forgetting the back when reading the front, finding it very difficult to form a complete system out of the Seth material. Many people just leave the books there, and when they have time they open one and glance at it. They discover a characteristic: when they encounter some problem today, or have some doubt in their hearts -- sometimes this doubt is not even noticed by themselves, or they have not even realized it -- when they open the Seth material and randomly flip to a page and start reading, they find that what Seth says seems to be exactly the question they want to ask right now. This is not something that happens to one person; many, many people have told me about this.

Because the lectures I give are not heard by you the same day I give them; I record them and put them on YouTube for you to see, then convert them into WeChat public account recordings, or disseminate them on other platforms. The time you hear them is no longer synchronized with the time I gave them, yet strangely, it seems this material has a certain resonance with you. And the Seth material is something from decades ago, yet it seems to resonate with you. Many people treat this as a coincidence, but Seth here addresses it -- this is not deliberate mystification; he is simply telling you that there is a more complex system, a system so complex that no computer could process it.

He said:

You do not understand and perceive how your reality participates in the foundation of the reality of the mass world you experience.

To put it in plain terms: you do not know that these social phenomena, group phenomena, this country, this political system, this culture, the entire mainstream thought -- you do not know that the emergence of these things is actually something you are all participating in. But unconsciously, every person -- each of you participates in the formation of this world.

There are seven billion people in the world; if one person were missing, it would not seem to matter much to the world, but if all seven billion people were gone, would this world not also be gone? So each of us participates in the formation of this world. However, in what Seth experiences, on his level:

I perceive the same kind of activity, but related to many realities, and not only to one.

The difference between me and you is that you cannot perceive it, and I can. You cannot perceive your component part in the formation of this world, and you do not know how you participate in this world. I can perceive my role in the formation of my world, but more than that, I am also in many other realities, and these are all related.

What does "all related" mean? It means that a decision Seth makes in that world, in his reality, can not only affect his reality, but can also affect our three-dimensional world, the four-dimensional world, and perhaps even matters in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth dimensional worlds. Likewise there are several three-dimensional worlds, and several four-dimensional and five-dimensional worlds as well, and these realities all influence one another. No system is closed, and no dimension is isolated from other dimensions. Between the third and fourth dimensions, between the fourth and fifth dimensions -- these dimensions are only a human cognition; they can actually interpenetrate one another. The influence of one event is far more complex than we imagine.

As I try to increase the capacity of your understanding, I expand the range of your abilities.

When I expand the knowledge and abilities and capacity you did not have before, your abilities expand accordingly. Therefore:

In other kinds of worlds.

Other kinds of worlds -- this must be understood; it is not necessarily other three-dimensional worlds, other physical worlds, or other parallel spaces. Those worlds may be entirely different worlds from ours.

If you are interested, you can look at Bashar's book. I introduced it a few months ago; Bashar published a book called The Observer of Earth¹⁰, looking at Earth from the perspective of an observer of Earth¹¹. The original title is The Master of Limitation¹² -- I am not sure how to translate it, something like the master of limitation, with the subtitle being the record of an observer of Earth. Its opening focuses on describing the states of existence of some other interstellar civilizations; if you read it carefully, it is very interesting. It is simply -- I cannot say it subverts our cognition; it simply shatters our cognition into dust. You can never imagine what kind of life forms exist in other worlds, or what kind of state of conscious existence they have; it is extremely, extremely wondrous, and even difficult for us to comprehend.

That is some description of extraterrestrial worlds, which is also a way of speaking about other kinds of worlds. In other words, in other kinds of worlds, Seth is doing the same thing -- expanding the capacity of his own understanding. Seth also needs to broaden his horizons; he also needs to travel through different worlds to increase his knowledge and wisdom, just the same.

Framework 3

Let me interject here to analyze something for everyone. When the worlds you have traveled through are vast enough, and the places you have been are numerous enough, your cognition will no longer be so limited. Let me give a simple example and you will understand immediately: the less a person has traveled, for example many people in rural mainland China who have never gone out -- this is rare now, as everyone goes out to work -- the stronger the exclusivity of people from small places. People from Zhang Village look down on people from Li Village, and people from Li Village think people from Wang Village are no good. Expand one level up to the county seat, and people from this county look down on people from that county. One more level up, people from this city look down on people from that city; southerners look down on northerners, and northerners look down on southerners. Further up to the big cities, first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen still have their limitations -- Shanghainese look down on people from other places, and Beijingers look down on people from other places.

But if this person has done business all over the country and all over the world, and has companies and offices all over the world, he will no longer look down on people from various places, because his perspective and angle have changed. Observe carefully and you will see this phenomenon -- the less worldly experience a person has, the stronger their attachments, the narrower their thinking, the more shortsighted their views; everyone else is no good, people from every place are no good, and they say it with absolute certainty. It is simply because their exposure is too limited.

Continuing. Seth said:

Although our meeting occurs within your time, within the specific space of this house, yet such a meeting of ours, this meeting in your time and space, its original contact must necessarily be a subjective, inner contact, a meeting of consciousnesses, concretely experienced.

Simply put: I, Seth, at this moment, through Jane, am transmitting this material, on the evening of February 6, 1978, past ten o'clock, in this house of yours, in the city of Elmira, in your little house on the hillside, transmitting at this point in time, in this space, I come to transmit to you -- this transmission is only a surface phenomenon, only an event occurring in your time and space. Behind it there must be an original, initial contact, and that contact does not occur within your time and space; it is not an event of your time and space. But this inner contact, this meeting of consciousnesses, is what can form a concrete experience in your three-dimensional world.

Do not think that things happening in the three-dimensional world just happen that way; behind them there is always an inner, deeper, prior event -- we should not use "prior," because with prior there is after, and that would invalidate it; Seth did not use "prior" either, he only said there is an original contact, a subjective inner contact that happens first.

Those original contacts themselves occur within a Framework 3 environment.

Note this: here Seth discusses Framework 3 for the first time. What he discussed before was Framework 1 and Framework 2. Framework 1 is our three-dimensional world, the place and scene where concrete events occur. Framework 2 is what we call a field of probabilities, or a space of probabilities, the spiritual world, the mental world, the inner world, an invisible world. Events must first be rehearsed in Framework 2; only after the probabilities in Framework 2 are all present do we choose in Framework 1 which ones to manifest and experience, choosing whichever we want to experience. This is the relationship between Framework 2 and Framework 1, which we already have a general understanding of from before.

Now the question arises: he says there is also a Framework 3. What is Framework 3? Framework 2 only contains the occurrence of probabilities; so what determines which probabilities will occur and which probabilities cannot occur in Framework 2? That is determined in Framework 3.

Does your head feel like it is buzzing? Before you have even figured out Framework 2, here comes Framework 3. Seth is just like that, always challenging the limits of human cognition and thinking. Later he also has Framework 4, but let us set that aside for now and first talk about Framework 3.

To put it simply in easy-to-understand terms: what was Seth trying to say in that long passage just now? He was saying, I went traveling, I went traveling inside Framework 3. Inside Framework 3, our consciousnesses merge with one another. The things that happen in your Framework 1, the things that happen in your time and space, not only exist as probabilities in Framework 2, but their source is in Framework 3. Without this subjective inner contact in Framework 3 - and be sure to remember that this is subjective, which is crucial - nothing would be concretely experienced in Framework 1.

Then he began to describe it. Once again he used an analogy, and be sure to remember it is an analogy.

That framework exists one step further away from your own Framework 2.

Framework 2 is already somewhat far from us. We experience Framework 1 every day, so of course we know it, but Framework 2 is somewhat far, because it involves probabilities, yet we can still reach it, we can imagine it - the self who joined the army or the self who went to college, whether you ended up with Zhang San or Li Si, these are all probabilities, and these are all easier to understand. Framework 3 is one step further than Framework 2, and this is only an analogy.

He said, right now I do not want to talk about higher or lower levels, and there is no question of Framework 2 being higher or lower than Framework 3. Be sure to remember, there is no question of which is higher or lower among Frameworks 1, 2, and 3. We generally tend to think that way - as if Framework 2 were somewhat more advanced than Framework 1, and Framework 3 more advanced than Framework 2 - but there is no such thing. From the very beginning he cuts that off, so do not think about it that way.

Because these frameworks represent a range of action. Framework 1, the range of action is limited within this time and space, a range of action with the limitations of time and space. Framework 2, still above our reality of Framework 1 - let us use "above" for easier understanding - is free from the limitations of time and space. Within a range free from the limitations of time and space, is the range of action not much larger? And what kind of level is Framework 3? Not only is it free from the limitations of time and space, it even begins to cross realities - you cannot say it crosses time and space, because once you reach Framework 2 there is no longer any talk of time and space, only Framework 1 has time and space. Framework 3 is a kind of blending, a kind of interaction across realities, where different realities influence and interact with one another.

If you want to understand what Framework 3 is, you can understand it this way: within Framework 2 there are many, many probabilities, and any one of those many probabilities can not only influence changes in our three-dimensional world, the material world of Framework 1, it can also have an influence on Framework 3, and in turn influence Framework 2. Framework 3 can influence downward, but the influence of what is below on what is above is unknowable. We do not know what influence one of our actions has beyond the three-dimensional world; we only know what influence it has within our three-dimensional world, and beyond that range we do not know.

But if you stand at the level of Framework 2, you know all of it - such a choice of yours will set off a chain reaction, giving rise to all the subsequent choices among probabilities, because all probabilities are clearly visible within Framework 2. But if you change to another reality, another world, no longer in this world, no longer on this planet, or even no longer in this solar system, what influence does your action have on them? You do not know, and at the level of Framework 2 you also do not know. But do you have an influence on them? Of course you do - all these frameworks and dimensions are one, all interconnected. Such influence cannot be understood at the level of Framework 2, but Framework 3 can understand it.

So these frameworks merely represent differences in the range of their action, not differences in their levels of hierarchy.

The Tape

Seth went on to explain the reason for the wait tonight:

Our contact first takes place in a realm beyond that which deals only with your physical world, or beyond the mental and psychic realms from which your present experience originates.

The place where this contact first takes place goes beyond our material world, and even beyond the mental and psychic realms from which our experience originates, which is the range of Framework 2. That is to say, the matter of Seth transmitting the material has already gone beyond Framework 1 and Framework 2; it takes place in Framework 3.

In past years, on very few occasions, when a session began, Ruburt has felt that there was a distance between us, or that our material was not yet fully prepared.

Jane had had this feeling before, that the material was not yet ready. Seth explained that sometimes what he left them was a tape - Seth left his own tape in that time and space, and then Jane, at the level of her consciousness, could access this material. He said:

Sometimes I leave you a packet of material.

Seth used this tape to let Jane transmit the material - meaning Seth was not present at that time. Then he said, you will have a feeling about it. And the tape will take any circumstances into account - the tape is not dead; it is not that if you ask it something it will not answer. Although it is a tape, it will also answer your questions, and it will also take into account the various probabilities you encounter in the process of transmitting the session.

Tonight, however, what Ruburt sensed to some degree was not only a distance, but also a relatively greater distance - and this also reflects the greater complexity of my activities, meaning I was farther away from Jane than usual.

He said:

Do you understand? To some extent, both of you were involved.

The two of you living in the three-dimensional world - these "two of you" refer to Rob and Jane in the three-dimensional world - you were both involved in this Framework 3 matter, though in a way I cannot explain. How did the two of you in Framework 1 participate in Framework 3? He said I have no way to explain this to you.

Let me briefly explain Framework 1, Framework 2, and Framework 3 again. Let us use time as the point of description: in Framework 1, in our world, time occurs linearly, like a line, going only from the past to the future, a one-way straight line. We now live in this world, and if we use the timeline as the standard, we live in a 0.5-dimensional space - why call it 0.5-dimensional? Because our timeline cannot go backward; it can only go in one direction, so that is 0.5-dimensional. If it were 1-dimensional, it could go forward and also backward, but we cannot go backward. Taking time as the reference, in the dimension of time, our present world is a 0.5-dimensional world.

Once you reach Framework 2, it immediately upgrades to a two-dimensional world. Taking time as the standard, Framework 2 is a two-dimensional world, where time can not only go forward and backward, but also sideways and vertically, and can move freely in any direction, because it is a matrix of probabilities, and all the curves of probability are within it. It is not like our three-dimensional world, where only one line develops outward. If you have seen the example of the discharging ball that I gave in The Nature of the Psyche, you can understand what I just said.

And what is the state of Framework 3? In terms of time, it is a three-dimensional time - not only can it move without restriction on such a plane, it even has influence in other realities. So can we, in a 0.5-dimensional time world, influence a three-dimensional time? Remember that by this point I have already shifted the concept; I am looking at it with time as the standard.

Part of Consciousness Lives in Seth's Consciousness

He said, in a way that is almost impossible for me to explain, you are all already involved in this Framework 3 time. He said, do not take what I said above literally. You must not explain what I say in words; you can only grasp it intuitively. He does not allow you to explain it in words -- the so-called "embodiment" means that Ruburt and Jane participated in it. It was Seth's original contact with them that made possible our later contact with this physical world, this time-space world.

Some parts of your consciousness live within my consciousness -- that is, Ruburt and Jane, some parts of your consciousness live within my, Seth's, consciousness. This is even harder to understand. For example, we often say, does your consciousness live within your higher self's consciousness? Yes. But how do you understand this? What does it mean for your consciousness to live within someone else's consciousness? It is very abstract.

Let me give a simple example so you can understand it easily. When you are dreaming, the protagonist in the dream, the character in the dream -- say you dream that you did something -- does that little person in the dream have consciousness? Of course he has consciousness. He knows who he is and what he is doing, and it feels very real and very exciting. Let me ask you: does the dream character's consciousness live within your consciousness? Of course it does. I am only using this analogy so you can understand that Rob's and Jane's consciousness partially -- not entirely -- lives within Seth's consciousness.

Therefore, to a certain degree -- remember, "to a certain degree" means a degree we cannot currently understand -- wherever I go, you are taken along. It is like how tiny dust particles are swept away by a gust of cold autumn wind, from one place to another. He said again, I am by no means comparing you to tiny dust particles, not saying that you are as insignificant as dust; I am only giving this example: the wind carries the dust to various places. You do indeed share my journey; you share it. Because wherever I go, I take you with me, because you live within my consciousness. You are taken beyond the land you ordinarily perceive, beyond the physical world.

Therefore, a part of your consciousness, the part that goes with me, catches a glimpse of a subjective landscape. What is a subjective landscape? We currently consider our three-dimensional world to be an objective world, but in fact it is also an objectified expression of a subjective world. The so-called subjective world means that the world arises from you, that you and the world are one -- that is the subjective world. When one day you return to Framework 3 -- the place I take you to -- that is a subjective world. Framework 2, strictly speaking, is not a subjective world either; Framework 2 is merely the superposition of countless objective worlds. The truly subjective world begins at Framework 3; only beyond that can it be called a subjective world, where you and the world are one, with no distinction.

In that state, your curiosity was aroused. A part of your consciousness followed me to Framework 3, took one look at the subjective world of Framework 3, and you became curious. Even when you are not consciously aware of what you saw, that curiosity forms a driving force. Although your conscious mind does not know, the part of your consciousness that saw does know, and it has curiosity. This curiosity brings a driving force, a desire to know what the truth of this world is really like. And because of this driving force of curiosity, your imagery and attention, your interests, your needs and desires, your characteristics and abilities, directly influenced our material.

Seth said, how did this Seth material come about? It came about because you caught a glimpse of those wondrous subjective worlds, you became curious, you had a driving force, and then you became interested, you formed intentions, you began to pay attention, and you wanted to know. And you have these characteristics and these abilities; all of this together directly formed the reason why the Seth material is presented to you in this way. Very interesting, isn't it?

You wanted to make this material work in your world, so a natural and very understandable desire arose. What does "very understandable" mean? It means an attainable desire. Some desires are unattainable; those are called unattainable desires. This longing for inner knowledge, if it were merely empty talk, would be better replaced by transmitting the reality itself -- empty talk is not as good as actual demonstration. So they began to transmit the Seth material.

You Are the Natives of That Larger Drama

But of course, you are all also participants in a very great drama. You are not the only protagonists, as you like to think; you are merely participants in a larger drama. The main action takes place outside your world, in the realms from which your world originates — the realm from which our world comes from that source. And what matters most? What matters most is that you are the natives of that other realm. Just as every individual is, just as every living being is.

This passage is very important; mark it. It is said with great poetry and philosophy. You do not know that you are participants in a larger drama — the drama that takes place in Framework 3. Framework 2 is already more magnificent, and Framework 3 is even more magnificent. All the things that happen in our world — their main core takes place outside this world. But do not think that you are merely passersby or observers in Framework 3. Quite the opposite: you are the protagonists in Framework 3; you are the natives there. What does "natives" mean? That is where your home is.

Framework 3 is the home of all of us. This physical world of ours, these Framework 1 things, are nothing but a dream of that world. Our Framework 1 is a dream of Framework 3 — merely a materialized dream, a dream of a three-dimensional world so real. In the dream many conditions are set, many principles, many camouflage rules — for example, there must be gravity, there must be universal gravitation, there must be light, you cannot exceed the speed of light, how energy transforms, and so on. Under the establishment of these rules, such a lifelike great dream is formed. And where do we go after we wake from the dream? After waking from the dream, we go there. Framework 3 is our source.

And every living being — are cats and dogs all there? Are flowers and grasses all there? They are all there. Many people do not understand why bodhisattvas or Buddhas make vows to deliver all sentient beings, why they must deliver all beings. Wouldn't it be enough to save people? Why deliver all beings? Why deliver these ants, bacteria, and microorganisms? What does that have to do with us? Do you understand now? Because we are all together; we are all residents of that place. Every living being comes from there.

Framework 3: Spiraling States of Being

He begins to describe those realms—many people have always wanted to know what that world is really like. Is it the stillness and peace of unmoving suchness described in Buddhism, where there is nothing and nothing happens? Or is it like the heaven described in Christianity, where you eat, drink, and have fun every day without having to worry about anything? He says that in those realms—at that level, he uses the word "realms" because he does not know what word to use to describe them—there is certainly not just loneliness, nor darkness, nor chaos.

They are also very different from any notions of nirvana and nothingness. You must remember this: the state of Framework 3 is very different from notions of nirvana and nothingness. This is a misconception shared by all spiritual practitioners. Many practitioners believe that ultimate nirvana is a state of stillness, emptiness, and clarity, and that reaching that world means entering utter emptiness and nothingness. That is not so. At that level, your consciousness is truly and completely liberated and free. You truly use all the senses of your consciousness to experience what happens in that world, rather than using only the physical senses as we do. At that point, you use all the senses, all the perceptual systems of consciousness.

They are composed of states of being that continually spiral upward. Here is the core: the essence of Framework 3 is a kind of existence, a state of being, and there is no way to explain it further. This state cannot be described in language. So the Tao Te Ching, Buddhism, all religions, all philosophies, and all spiritual study reach a point at that level where they can say no more, because they truly cannot describe it in language. Seth presses on and puts it into words anyway—he insists on telling you what that place is like—and says that it is a state of being. What kind of state of being? One that spirals upward.

The key here is "continually"—does that show that the state is fixed? That it is dead? The state is alive. He uses "continually," which shows that the state is alive, composed of states of being that spiral upward. If you have watched Samadhi or related spiritual films¹³, you will know that one installment specifically discusses this spiral. It tells you why there is a spiral, and why so many things in the human world are spiral-shaped, including our DNA. Why is that? Because their source is a state of being that spirals upward.

When he says "they" here, "they" refers to those realms. Is there one world within Framework 3? It is not one world. Is it one reality? It is not one reality. So those realms—he does not use "reality," because even reality is inadequate to stand for it; he uses the word "realms." In those realms, there is no loneliness, no darkness, and no chaos.

When someone asks you, what exactly is the highest state that you spiritual practitioners reach through practice? I am telling you, this is not the highest state. This is only Framework 3; beyond it there is Framework 4, and still more Frameworks. What state are you in when you become enlightened? Becoming enlightened is like being a chick that was previously inside its eggshell, not yet hatched, with only a dim awareness. People who have not become enlightened are all chicks inside eggshells. Becoming enlightened means you have pecked through this shell and emerged from it. The world outside, the world beyond this shell, is the state you should truly explore. At that point, you are only a newly hatched chick; you have not even begun to explore that world. So never treat enlightenment as something so impressive or so miraculous. But even so, becoming enlightened is not easy; many people may go their entire lives without becoming enlightened. My hope is that through long exposure to the Seth material and his teachings, many people will become enlightened and come to understand many things.

The eggshell that confines you is like those limiting beliefs surrounding your consciousness. It is not a shell in the physical world; it is a shell in consciousness. What you need to break through now is the shell in your consciousness—to move from a state of consciousness centered on the three-dimensional world into a higher-level state of consciousness centered on spirituality and spirit. That is an invisible shell. So you can see how many more worlds there are to understand and experience once you reach that world. Do not worry; there are more than enough, more than enough, more than enough worlds for you to explore and experience.

Here I will borrow a remark from Teacher Liu Feng, which I think is wonderfully put: every time you rise by one dimension, the joy it brings is beyond description in words; it is always something you could not describe in words in the previous dimension. So that gives you some sense of what those higher dimensions feel like. Many people wonder, why do these spiritual practitioners abstain from intimacy with women or men? The same goes for eating. Our ancestors always said, "Food and sex are human nature." Eating and sex are people's two most basic needs, so why do those spiritual practitioners have no taste for them? It is not that these people have no taste for them; it is because there are feelings that are more exciting, more beautiful, more joyful, and happier. Those feelings far surpass the two things you know as eating and sex. That feeling of bliss surpasses all your worldly physical pleasures, so they no longer need them—they are not restraining themselves; they do not need them. Let me put it very crudely: if someone is having an orgasm in the brain all the time, do they still need that little physical orgasm of yours? They simply do not need it.

But the people who come along afterward to study with the master do not know what state the master is in, and the master has no way to describe that state to them—even if he told them, it would be no use, and they still could not attain it; it would only make them more anxious. The followers look at the master and think, oh, the master attained spiritual fruition by abstaining from intimacy with women. We will abstain too, and attain spiritual fruition—can you really attain it that way? You are in your twenties, full of vigor, in the prime of life, and when you cannot control your desires, you forcibly suppress them. Without replacing them with a higher joy, you strip away all the joy currently available to you. When we talk about spirituality and spiritual practice, we always say to pursue the highest joy within your heart. If you take everything that brings you the most joy and snip it all off in one stroke, and then still want to practice spiritually, how are you going to do it? You can only transcend it, move beyond it, rather than cut it off or block it. It is not about disabling this function of yours; it is about transcending this function—this is the state you should work toward in spiritual practice, rather than going in the opposite direction. Since we have come to this point, I will just mention it briefly.

Merged, Yet Each Distinct and Clear

Within it, different kinds of consciousness meet and communicate. It is very interesting that, within a spiraling upward state of existence, different kinds of consciousness meet and communicate, and even merge. Many people do not understand what "oneness" is. Oneness is precisely this state of existence in which these consciousnesses meet, communicate, and merge.

But here he reveals one point: it is not an impersonal realm. Although they meet, although they communicate, although they merge into a shared state of existence, within it they remain distinct and clear. Their merging is not the merging we understand in the three-dimensional world — like water and milk mixed together, where you can no longer tell the water from the milk, and if you then drip in a few drops of blood or add some ink, it becomes even more indistinct and impossible to separate. Its kind of merging is not like that.

What he means by this sentence is that, in that realm, every different consciousness, every different kind of consciousness, is itself distinct and clear. In this merged state, they have not lost their own identity, nor have they lost the existence of their own essence. Yet they have still merged with others, still enriched themselves, still expanded themselves — on the premise of not losing their own essential nature, they still communicate, interact, and merge with other consciousnesses, forming a state of existence, and this state of existence continually develops, continually expands, and continually spirals upward. I can only explain it to this extent.

They are indeed involved in the most intimate interactions, and that interaction has always existed all around you, and I hope that in your thoughts you hold an ardent longing for them. Many people worry: after I die and return to unmoving stillness, or after I return to nirvana, then where do I go? Isn't spiritual practice supposed to reach no-self? If there is no self, then what am I practicing for? Seth here breaks this notion for you — in that place, there is still you, you are still there, clear and distinct, perfectly lucid. If you were not there, then what would you be going there for? Framework 3 would also be meaningless. So you do exist — not the existence of this person you are, but the existence of the essence of this personality.

They are not an impersonal realm — be sure to remember, they are a realm of individuality. Very interesting, isn't it? They both communicate and merge, yet each carries its own strong individuality. He deliberately uses the word "not" rather than "is" — there is a subtle cleverness in his choice of words here.

At the same time, they are involved in the most, most intimate interactions — note that he uses "most" twice. You might say, am I intimate enough with my soul? I am a personality fragment that came down from my soul, a part of my soul, so are we intimate enough? It is far more intimate than that. So that intimacy cannot be described; he uses "the most, most, most intimate interactions."

He says that interaction has always existed all around you. In our Framework 1, this also exists, only we do not understand it, do not acknowledge it, and we deliberately separate them. You and the environment around you are themselves in this most, most, most intimate interaction. Because Framework 1 is a projection of Framework 3, and Framework 3 is the source of Framework 1, therefore this most, most, most intimate interaction has always existed — we just pretend not to know, or we have not recognized it, or we have not felt it.

He says he hopes that in your human thoughts, you hold an ardent longing for them — longing for this state of Framework 3, longing for this most, most, most intimate interaction — and that you try to stretch your perceptive abilities, to some extent sensing their existence. That most, most, most intimate interaction is right around you. It is not mysterious at all. You say Framework 3 is so far away from me? It is not far away, not far away at all — it is right here within our Framework 1.

All Realities Interpenetrate One Another

The following passage is very important. Although I talk about Framework 1 and Framework 2 separately, and I discuss them separately, they actually exist one within the other. It is not that Framework 1 exists within Framework 2, and Framework 2 exists within Framework 3 — they exist within each other, mutually nested, you within me and I within you, with no distinction between inside and outside. Each one interpenetrates the others — he used the word "interpenetrate," and interpenetrate means they influence one another; these reality worlds influence one another.

To some degree — again, "to some degree," a degree you cannot understand — you are immersed in all realities. That is, you are immersed in all realities. You do not only live here in Framework 1; you also live in Framework 2, and you also live in Framework 3. It is just that you can only perceive yourself as living in Framework 1. Your existence in Framework 2 and your existence in Framework 3 — your present consciousness cannot perceive them. Just because you cannot perceive them does not mean you are not living in those worlds.

It is like when you are dreaming, and you wake up from the dream, and you think what happened in the dream has already ended. No, the events in the dream are still continuing to happen; the you in the dream is still there, continuing on according to the plot from when you were awake. Conversely, when you are dreaming, the you in the dream also does not know what is happening in the three-dimensional world — you also do not know that you are living on a bed in the three-dimensional world; you just feel that in the dream world you are doing whatever you are doing, and that is a real world. So do you not live on the bed in the three-dimensional world? Of course you live on the bed in the three-dimensional world. And do you not live in your dream? Of course you also live in your dream. Does the you living in the dream know that the three-dimensional you is still living on the bed in the three-dimensional world? No. So are you living in two places, two worlds, at the same time? Yes, that is exactly the feeling.

Therefore, the story of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of the butterfly is not a simple philosophical topic; it is a real question. Zhuangzi realized this point, and that is why Zhuangzi's whole life was a carefree wandering — today someone in the group asked me what state this is; it is actually a state of carefree ease. If you have not read it, I suggest you read Zhuangzi's "Free and Easy Wandering"¹⁴. Zhuangzi is divided into several chapters, and "Free and Easy Wandering" is one of them.

Rob's Note: Two Worlds Exist Simultaneously

To a certain degree, you are immersed in all realities at once -- immersed in them in a strange way, a way that is not easy for us to understand. In this particular example, he cited an instance from a note Rob once wrote, about a conflict related to "notes."

Rob once wrote about a conflict in a note, a conflict between you and the note itself, related to a sense of order brought about by the need to gather facts, and this sense of order was then carried over. Therefore you kept your reincarnational Roman-era world separate from the present world, rather than blending them together through association, as you had done in that instance back then. So when you were doing your sketches, it was hard for you to realize this -- subjectively, you wanted to put the two worlds together to explore their similarities, but in actuality you separated them for the sake of your note.

To put it simply. Rob wrote many notes for the book The "Unknown" Reality, and this was one of them. In that note, he felt that he had once lived a life in the Roman Empire as a minor officer in the army, and it was a memory from that life that he then wrote into his note. When he felt that Roman-era life and his present life as a painter, he wanted to find commonalities between the two reincarnations -- because as an officer there certainly had to be order and discipline, while as a painter he had to be very emotional, very loose, not concerned with order, yet in his paintings he still embodied some order -- Seth said, you often blend these two worlds together in your thinking, but sometimes you separate them, and for the sake of writing this note you separated them.

What does Seth mean by this passage? It means that we live within all realities, including all our reincarnations, which exist simultaneously and occur simultaneously. That Rob in the Roman era is still alive, living in that Roman era. Our connection to the realities around us is far closer than we imagine, but we do not think so; we separate them all.

If you can, try to sense the larger context in which you exist. How can you? Your perceptive ability must extend; only when your perceptive ability extends can you do it. If you can, then try to sense it. Your reward will be astonishing -- Seth is now beginning to entice you. If you can merge and connect the you in Framework 3 with the you of the present, the reward you receive will be beyond description.

But of course, the opportunity he speaks of -- the emotional realization is what matters most.

I mean an emotional realization, not merely an intellectual acceptance of the concept.

It is not that after listening to me explain this, or after reading the Seth books, you theoretically accept the concept. No, it is an emotional realization -- you can emotionally perceive the existence of all your reincarnations. For example, in Little Flying Insect's second enlightenment experience, as he was moving backward he saw that in his past lives, many times he had also reached the state of his first enlightenment experience, and as a result he fled. This event itself was actually him making an emotional connection between his experiences across lifetimes and his present self. Why call it an emotional connection? Because it was all about fleeing -- the feeling of fleeing was present in all of them -- so this is an emotional connection.

The Source of the Seth Material

Rob (Jane) wanted the material for this book -- The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events -- and that is perfectly understandable.

But do not forget: the broader context from which these sessions come.

This book is of tremendous significance to your three-dimensional world, but do not forget where this book came from. Where did this material come from? It came from Framework 3, passing through Framework 2.

This type of information can at least trigger reactions on your part, and can further increase the range of knowledge you can receive from me.

I am telling you that these things that trigger your reactions can increase the range of knowledge you can obtain from me. If I did not talk about these things, the knowledge you might obtain would be limited to our Framework 1, or the physical world. When I tell you about the vast background and source from which this knowledge comes, you will then want to know that greater knowledge.

In your world, knowledge must be translated into specific details.

In our reality, in our physical world, knowledge must be made concrete. Knowledge that cannot be made concrete, we do not consider to be knowledge. But you also deal with emotional realities that cannot be so easily interpreted. He handles those emotional things very well too -- love, the affection between parents and children, the bond between brothers, the bond between sisters. These things are not knowledge either, yet you handle them very well. You do not need to process them into something like a textbook before you can learn them.

In this session, within the words I speak, but more importantly, in the atmosphere of this session, those realities that cannot be interpreted but are powerful are implied. Then in your time, those realities will gradually be described in words you can understand.

Seth wrote this passage very well. He said, in this session of mine, within the words I speak, but more importantly, it is not the words I speak -- it is the atmosphere conveyed in this session. Especially with the blizzard outside, and inside the warm and quiet living room, under the warm lamplight, with two people transmitting such magnificent material -- you can imagine that atmosphere. He said this atmosphere is more important than the words I speak. It hints at those realities that cannot be interpreted, cannot be described in language, yet are very powerful. Then in your time, in our human time, these realities will gradually be described in words we can understand.

You see, am I not also interpreting today -- using my understanding to make further extensions and more detailed explanations? Has it not been several decades since then? And in the future, several more decades from now, there may be people who will describe it even more clearly and better, or use the technology of that time -- virtual reality, 3D printing technology -- to let people of that time understand at any moment. The reality that our beliefs create reality, as our human time unfolds, these realities that cannot be described in words can then be described in ways you can understand.

He said there is still more knowledge of realities, not just Framework 3, but much, much more, but he must wait, because right now it cannot yet be transferred. You cannot even understand it with your current understanding -- how could you understand what comes next? There is no way to understand it.

According to the impact of this session, this session is indeed a kind of impact for us. Through studying this session, our own consciousness has been expanded without our even realizing it. Many people say, why is it that after studying the Seth material, many things in my life have changed, my mindset, my thoughts, my beliefs have all changed -- it is because Seth is expanding your consciousness without your realizing it, expanding the width, depth, breadth, and depth of your consciousness.

Your own understanding and perception will bring other clues.

When you are impacted by the knowledge of this moment, what will it bring? It will bring other clues. Whether you are awake or asleep, it will bring clues. Keep your mind open to these clues. But do not have any preconceived notions about how they might appear -- do not preset that it will appear in my life in a certain way, as a dream, or meeting a white-bearded old man who tells me. Do not have that kind of preset.

Ruburt himself developed and triggered certain psychic activities, and those in turn triggered further growth. For example, he has been participating in his own library -- whether or not he is aware of it.

Ruburt built a psychic library, but in the later period he no longer managed it. During that time, every day, often during meditation, during mental wandering, he would go take a turn in his library, even build it -- and he was not the only one building it; others were helping him build it together. He said Ruburt now no longer pays attention to that library, is no longer aware of it, but when he himself does not know it, he is still building it, still participating in the construction of his library all along.

So what he means is, you do not need to manage it. You have studied the Seth material, heard me speak or read the book, and the depth and breadth of your consciousness has been expanded. It may not necessarily manifest in some way you expect in the three-dimensional world, but that expansion is in realms you cannot understand, or realms you cannot yet perceive, and it has been developing all along. So do not cling to the idea of, oh, I have not had any specific changes -- there may not necessarily be specific changes. Some people will have changes, very obvious ones; some people may not.

He said this session is over. What a great session this was. The entire transmission time was also very short, only one hour -- it ended at 11:15, with no break in between, over an hour in one stretch. But this material is truly wonderful.

Jane's Feelings

After the session, Jane said:

During the session, I really did feel different. I had a sense of strength (a feeling of power) that I don't usually have.

Why? Because Seth had taken him into Framework 3.

I felt as though I were somewhere else, or something like that. I had a feeling there was something new in this session, but I have to figure out what it was about.

He now felt that his trance state in this session seemed to have entered a farther place, or a place he had never been before. So this feeling of his was the same as what Seth described in the session—because Seth had taken him to other places.

In The Politics of the Psyche, Jane thoroughly described her discovery and use of her invisible library.

In this book, and in other sessions as well, she had also mentioned how she went about constructing her library. The second note, in Volume 2 of The "Unknown" Reality, says that in Sessions 715 and 716 she wrote some notes, in which she described a series of episodes:

In those, I saw myself in the early first century A.D., as a captain in the Roman army.

That is her explanation of that note.

Rob's Opening Introduction

Monday, February 13, 1978, 9:40 p.m. He said that Session 819, held last Saturday night, had nothing at all to do with the book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, but for several reasons that will become obvious when you read it, they considered tonight's session to be related, although Seth did not call it a dictation.

Because at lunch today, Rob suggested that Jane organize all the material Seth had given since September 17, 1977, when he introduced the concepts of Framework 1 and Framework 2 in a four-person session, into a small book. Since then, they had had 31 sessions that were not book sessions, but some of them contained information about Framework 1 and Framework 2, much of which was related to what was discussed in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events.

In response to Rob's idea, Jane was more interested than expected, and spent an afternoon browsing through those private sessions. As time passed, her reaction to the Seth material became very loose -- she felt strange, but she still wanted to try having a session. They waited from 9:30, yet there was no greeting; Seth simply came through directly.

Session 820

Why the Material on Framework 1 and Framework 2 Is Scattered in Different Places

Seth said directly, without any preamble:

You are thinking of Framework 2 again, and that is excellent. To some extent, the material on Framework 1 and Framework 2 is, of course, an example of that entire idea.

Rob wanted to gather all the material on Framework 1 and Framework 2 together into a small book, because he felt the concept of Framework 1 and Framework 2 was too important. The "entire idea" mentioned here refers to the idea of wanting to publish a small book. That material was scattered piecemeal throughout 31 private sessions, along with some material mentioned in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events.

Seth said that this idea itself is an example. Because in the sessions that were not book dictation -- that is, the private sessions -- they received a great deal of material about Framework 1 and Framework 2. Why?

Simply because while our books are extremely free, they still must necessarily be colored by your ideas of what a book is.

Although this book is very free, you still have expectations about what content this book should contain, and those expectations of yours will necessarily produce a kind of coloring of the book's content.

Of course, even your ideas about creativity must necessarily be affected by Framework 1 ideas.

That is to say, you have a certain idea about creativity, and that idea exists before the creative process or during it. And that idea, in our three-dimensional world, within Framework 1, is necessarily influenced by Framework 1 ideas. Because this creativity itself is the creativity we see in this three-dimensional world -- whether it is a painting, a poem, a book, or some piece of writing, a poem, these are all creativity. But creativity does not happen in our three-dimensional world; it happens at the level of Framework 2. In other words, all of our creativity comes from our inner world, from our inner self. And this creativity of ours is also influenced by Framework 1 ideas.

What Seth wanted to say is that the theoretical system of Framework 1 and Framework 2 itself comes from the creative, inner Seth material. But because Rob and Jane wanted to gather it all together, that idea would itself produce a certain coloring of the material.

Our sessions therefore do indeed follow a larger pattern than that, giving you certain views from different angles in the book dictation and in the other material.

What is the most essential point of Framework 1 and Framework 2? Its content does not come only from this three-dimensional world; it comes from a much larger background. This knowledge that comes from beyond the three-dimensional world, through the book dictation and the dictation of other content, is essentially expounding the same concept from different aspects and different angles. Different angles, different ways of expressing it, but what they are talking about is the same thing, because they are talking about that larger pattern.

Nevertheless, to some extent, the larger creative pattern of this material does indeed exist and is also felt, but it is not directly perceived. Because you necessarily view them piecemeal.

Your idea of wanting to integrate Framework 1 and Framework 2 into a complete body of material was felt by the larger creative pattern that created the concepts of Framework 1 and Framework 2. He could feel it, and then he would change accordingly, and it would also influence people. But that feeling was not truly understood by us. You still think he is passing the material to you in a scattered way -- look, sometimes a little is given in the private sessions, sometimes a little is given in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events.

This is the reason Jane felt it was very loose. She felt Seth's responses were very loose, because she could not grasp the main point. And at this moment Seth was actually explaining to them why she had that feeling. The Seth who wanted to clearly explain Framework 1 and Framework 2 felt their idea of wanting to present Framework 1 and Framework 2 as a complete system, and then he spread it out and wove it into many sessions in many ways. And Jane and Rob could not feel that, because they could not see the whole, could not see the whole behind the theory of Framework 1 and Framework 2.

Creative Acts and Framework 2

I have said that creative acts are one of the closest functions to Framework 2.

Our creative acts all function within Framework 2.

For those acts always involve a leap of faith and inspiration alone, and the breaking down of barriers.

When we do any kind of creative work, it necessarily functions on the level of Framework 2. What do creative acts always involve? Only a leap of your faith and inspiration, or the breaking down of a barrier, and your creative act comes into being. It is that simple. A truly creative act is just that simple. And such a leap of faith and inspiration, or a breakthrough, or the breaking down of your barriers, is itself a creative act. But none of these things happen within this Framework 1 or three-dimensional world of ours; they come from Framework 2.

Each of our books has added to all of our other books, and that includes Ruburt's own books, and that of course also includes, in your terms, the books that have not yet been written.

Therefore future books will also influence the books you consider to be in the past. Although the content of the books appears within your time, it comes from outside your time. Once we have studied the spiritual theories, this is very easy to understand, but ordinary people find it very hard to grasp. The books of the present will influence all books, even influencing books that have already been published in the past. And if the books of the present can influence books published in the past, can we extend this further and say that future books can also influence the books of the present? Of course they can, and that is certain. This is a whole theory.

So this is one reason why another translated version of Seth's first book, Seth Speaks, after Wang Jiqing and the others translated it, was given the title Beyond Time and Space. The other reason is that it is called Seth Speaks. In mainland China, the title Seth Speaks might encounter some publishing problems, because mainland China is very reluctant to have a book that specifically discusses the soul.

Seth continues:

When you write an ordinary book, as every writer does, you draw upon associations, memories, and events that are known to yourself or others, things that you may have forgotten but that suddenly pop into your mind. Those things respond to your intent, and follow your associations.

I mean, what do you use when you write a book? You use the associations, memories, and events of others or yourself — some of your own and some of others. Those things that you may have forgotten but that suddenly pop into your mind respond to your intent to write the book, or your intent to create the content of the book, and then they follow your associations. Because when you write a book, you certainly have to associate. The book contains a fictional world, fictional scenes, fictional plots — these are all your associations. And within these fictional scenes and fictional plots, there are necessarily some real things — some of your past experiences, or the experiences and stories of others, which you piece together and weave into your novel. As you describe the plots and scenes of the novel, they fill themselves in. That is how novels are written.

Seth's point is that these ordinary books you write, although they seem to happen within your present timeline, their material also comes from outside of time, from outside your present moment.

The Artist's Creation and Visual Experience

When a painter is painting a landscape, or when he is searching for a new creative combination, he may unconsciously compare the hundreds of landscapes he has seen in the past in all their variety, as well as those tones that seemed to have been forgotten, splashed upon the grass and the trees. Art is his focus, so he draws from Framework 2 all the relevant material his picture requires, but that is connected not only with technique, but also with the entire visual experience of his life.

This is very classic. Before a painter begins to paint, he has already had countless flashes of hundreds of landscapes in his mind, a summation of experience. At the same time, he has also seen countless times these tones of nature -- splashed upon the grass, splashed upon the trees. These tones and colors, together with his memories of this natural world, constitute his overall visual experience. It is within this overall visual experience that he then creates.

If you do not quite understand this, you can look at how the Spring Mountain Fuji Painting¹⁵ was created. Before that painter began to paint, he spent several years observing the entire mountain, and not only observing -- he also had to climb the mountain, climbing every climbable part of the mountain, deeply experiencing it -- he had already become one with the mountain. Why could that painting become a national treasure? Because during those several years, this painter had always wanted to paint this painting, and then he painted it. It is not like what you imagine, just using a camera -- many people say, well, wouldn't it be fine if I just took a photo? That is different. What a camera captures and what a painter paints are different things, because the painter's secondary creation is at the level of Framework 2, adding in the experience and insights of his entire life. Therefore, the impact of such a painting is sometimes much greater than that of a photograph. And in this painting there is also a section of blank space left unpainted, and that blank space is even more meaningful -- he painted nothing in that section, yet that section contains infinite depth of meaning. Regarding that painting, there are many introductions online; you can go take a look.

Framework 2 designs a far broader creative activity, in which the art involved is your life, and all the ingredients needed for its success can be found there.

When you as an artist are creating, you are actually creating with your entire life. Many artists say, "I create with my life," and many people do not understand, thinking it is just a formulaic phrase, as if it only means how much hardship he endured, how he poured his heart and soul into the creation -- that is only the external form you see. He truly, really is creating with his life. This is not a metaphor, nor an adjective; it is truly condensing the essence of his entire life into his work within Framework 2. This is artistic creation.

When you are creating a product or a work of art, your idea of what that product or work of art will be has a great influence on the result.

How you imagine your work of art has an influence on the final finished piece.

Your Life Is Your Work of Art

But what Seth wants to talk about here is not artistic creation; what he wants to talk about is how we should live our lives. So he turns it around and extends it, which is why the passage that follows is the important one:

When you experience your life as a living art, your ideas about your life or about life itself will also have a great influence on your experience.

Everything he said before this was actually just to arrive at this final sentence: you can imagine yourself as an artist, and then what is your work? Your work is your whole life. Your life is your work. You spend a lifetime painting a picture, and the name of that picture is "My Life." When you think about things this way, your view of this life of yours, your understanding of it -- how you imagine this life of yours -- has an enormous influence on your experience of this life.

Many people do not understand this passage, so let me put it bluntly: if you imagine yourself as a suffering, toiling common person, that is your positioning of your life, then your whole life will be colored by your definition of your own life -- you will look at your life through these tinted glasses, and all the events and experiences that occur in your life will be validating this view you hold of your own life. Conversely, if you believe that your life is successful, abundant, and prosperous, then such a definition of yours will manifest in your life, or the same events in your life will all appear to you as a kind of abundance.

For example, suppose your monthly salary is eight thousand yuan. If you have an attitude of scarcity toward life, then you will feel that eight thousand yuan is not enough to spend, and life is unbearably painful, because you feel it is insufficient in many, many places. But if you change your angle, then this eight thousand yuan is already extremely abundant and prosperous for you. I am only giving a simple example like this, not to discuss the issue of wealth itself. Your view of your life directly influences your experience of your life, just as an artist's view of an artwork will influence the final expression of that art.

Beliefs as an Artistic Technique

If you believe in a law of cause and effect such as is generally accepted, or if you believe in the laws of duality as they are generally accepted, then you will be bound by those laws, and you will accept them because they represent your artistic technique.

Creating this life of yours, treating your whole life as a work of art to be created, requires artistic technique. A painter needs to know how to paint, to practice his brushstrokes, his brushwork, and his methods of painting. A writer has his own descriptive style and way of writing, and a musician has his as well. And when you are creating this life of yours, you have your own artistic means and artistic techniques. Whatever belief you accept, that is the artistic technique you adopt.

You will believe that you must use them to paint the living portrait of your life.

If you believe in karmic retribution, then you will certainly use the painting style of karmic retribution to paint your life. If you believe in duality -- that this world is either black or white, either right or wrong, either poor or rich -- then you will certainly view your life from the perspective of duality, and use this painting style to paint the living portrait of your life.

Thus you will draw from Framework 2 only those things that are suitable for structuring your experience, and you will not have the technique to attract other experiences. And as long as you cling to one technique, the picture of your life will appear more or less monotonous.

You only know one way of painting, so your life can only have one tone. All kinds of possibilities exist in Framework 2, but you can only attract the kind of results you want. If you think life is gloomy, Framework 2 contains both gloomy tones and bright tones, but you will not attract the bright tones, and you will feel that those bright tones have nothing to do with your life. So you draw from Framework 2 -- Framework 2 is a field of possibilities, all possibilities are in it -- and you select only those gloomy events, and use them all to compose and depict your life.

Writers and painters do not bring only the simple ability to write or paint into their work, but all of their experience is involved to some degree.

Whether a painter paints well or poorly depends not only on the purity or proficiency of his technique, but also on his life experience and breadth of experience. He will bring his life experience and breadth of experience into his paintings as well. It is the same when we are constructing our lives.

When you pay attention primarily to Framework 1, it is as if you are neatly placing one word in front of another to learn to construct simple sentences.

When your attention is focused only on Framework 1, that is, on our physical world, it is as if you are learning to make sentences -- making sentences word by word. When we were children learning to make sentences, starting from first and second grade in elementary school, we began by forming simple sentences and built up little by little. Because the things you could choose from were too limited, you did not really learn to express yourself. True expression always lies beyond words; it is always your life experience, your life realization, and your life insight fused into it. A person who only knows words but has no life experience cannot express himself accurately. That is why the things that machines and computers automatically write do not contain any of this.

You are writing something like "See Tommy run" -- that is a simple sentence.

"See Tommy run" is a simple declarative sentence, a description of a fact. When your attention is focused only on Framework 1, what you write will always be this kind of plain chronicle -- like someone writing a diary, who only ever records what happened today, what he ate in the morning, what he saw on the way to school. Your mind is not really processing your ideas; you are merely describing a fact, yet you are processing simple perceptions of objects. Tommy is running, but you cannot see why Tommy is running -- is Tommy running with emotion, or running with fear? What is the reason Tommy is running? What feelings does Tommy's running evoke in you? You do not care about any of this; you can only see that Tommy is running. Imagination is rarely involved, and you do not use your imagination to think about why Tommy is running. You can show the position of objects in space, and you can also communicate with people in a similar way.

Normally, when we focus only on the three-dimensional world, on the physical world before our eyes, we communicate with others in this way -- a simple description of an event, without using our imagination. You say Tommy is running, and the other person says yes, Tommy is running; the other person can see this too, and there is no real meaning in it. But for most of our lives, if you do not seek to understand and elevate yourself, the life we live is this kind of plain-water existence, a daily chronicle, day after day of daily chronicle.

In such terms, a recognition of Framework 2 would carry you from that point to the production of great art, where words are used not only to express what is visible, but to express what is invisible -- not just facts, but feelings, and emotions. There, words themselves escape their sequential patterns and send emotion into realms unbound by time and space.

If you can only use this kind of very simple, chronicle-like language to express descriptions of facts, then you necessarily do not touch upon emotion or feeling, nor do you touch upon your imagination. What kind of work can "I see Tommy running" become? It cannot become any kind of work; it is merely a statement of fact. If you want to live your life as a work of art, as a truly rich and flavorful work of art, then you must seek its materials from Framework 2, and consider your life from the perspective of Framework 2. Although the life you ultimately present may still appear to be in the three-dimensional world -- a painting, a scene, or your whole life, and from another person's perspective looking at you, what they see may still be a process like "Tommy is running" -- but for yourself, this life of yours is already a work of art, and moreover a great work of art. Because you came from Framework 2, you created it with emotion, with feeling, with imagination, with millions of possibilities, and you chose this one possible presentation. This is true artistic creation.

It is precisely because of your recognition of Framework 2 that you are carried from an ordinary elementary school composition to a great literary work. If you want to go from an elementary school composition to a great literary work, you must have a clear recognition of Framework 2 -- you must understand that all possibilities are within it, and then you must add in those invisible things, the emotions and feelings.

That Instantaneous Point

People sometimes have such a moment. Yet every individual's reality exists within an eternal creativity, and once again, your world leaps out from it.

Everyone in life sometimes has such a moment—sometimes we are very emotional and sentimental, and we can feel what he describes as living life like a novel, living your life like a work of art. Yet every individual's reality exists within an eternal creativity. This momentary feeling and perception of yours exists within an eternal creativity, and it is always creating, no matter what you are experiencing. And your world leaps out from this eternal creativity.

What he is trying to say in this passage is this: when you enter this state of Framework 2—at certain times in your life, you may have such a moment, such an instant, when you can feel that state. What state? At that moment, you detach from your physical world, you transcend this world, you feel that you have withdrawn from all the limitations and constraints of your current physical world, and it seems as though you have thousands upon thousands of possibilities—thousands upon thousands of possibilities laid out before you, and you can become whatever you want to become. He says everyone encounters this feeling at some point in life. And that kind of momentary feeling is what it feels like to be in Framework 2. Your world is created in that state of feeling, only you do not know it, and you have lived it as a mundane account, as plain water. You think that moment is only a temporary, trance-like, sentimental thing that does not conform to the laws or norms of the physical world, and you treat it as some hazy moments or absent-minded moments in life.

Actually, if you could live in that kind of moment at all times, then your life would be created by you. If you sustain that moment, and if every moment of yours felt like this, then your life and your world would be created by you.

Every individual's reality—private and personal, which in English is one word, your private reality—is produced by this kind of creativity. Your world, your personal world, and your collective world all arise from that kind of moment. Our personal world, our own life, arises from this; the entire macroscopic world, the events of the world, also arise from it.

The reality of Framework 2 is not absolutely closed to your perception, and to some degree it is everywhere clearly evident in each person's individual experience.

When your level reaches a certain point, when you attain a certain state, you will see its traces everywhere in your daily life.

And it is also clearly expressed in your very existence in this world.

That is, our physical world, our three-dimensional world, every aspect of the physical world, reveals or displays its existence. In other words, Framework 2 is not some ethereal thing located in some particular place; it is right here in our physical world, latent within Framework 1, and you simply have not seen it.

I remember reading a book the year before last, I think it was called The Bridge Between Mind and Science¹⁶. The author, on the one hand, studied Seth-related material, and on the other hand he was himself a physicist, and on yet another hand he studied some other spiritual knowledge, combining knowledge from these three areas. He proposed a concept, one called the explicit and one called the implicit. He believed that everything displayed in this world is explicit, and beyond the explicit—the explicit being what our physical world displays—within or hidden inside this explicit physical world, there is an implicit world, and that implicit world is the most important, because it is what gives birth to this explicit world. There is also a super-implicit world, which is part of his theory. This viewpoint is not particularly magical; it is just his own understanding, but it is quite popular in the Western world, because Western understanding of such things still leans toward science, and especially since he is a very famous physicist, his viewpoint has gained recognition from many people. Actually, this is very much like the Chinese theory of yin and yang. The things we can see are all yang, and the things we cannot see are all yin. Now yin and yang have other meanings as well, but I am only talking about this one meaning—that which cannot be seen is what matters.

Religious Distortion and the Multidimensional Creative Adventure

Religion has always, to some extent, been able to sense that reality. However, it tries to interpret it using the facts already recognized in this world.

Religion can sense the existence of that reality, but it uses the facts already recognized in our world to interpret it, using things from our material world to interpret that thing, which inevitably distorts that reality. That is, regardless of which religion, they all sensed the existence of such a reality, but they insist on using three-dimensional world things to interpret it, and the moment they interpret it, they distort it.

For example, the Buddha also recognized the existence of this reality, but if you try to explain that reality using the three-dimensional world, you will feel that the things of this three-dimensional world are meaningless -- because your cycle after cycle of reincarnation has no real meaning, and only when you return there is the fundamental thing. So if he only looks at it from the perspective of the three-dimensional world, distortion arises, and he loses an understanding of the meaning of the three-dimensional world's existence, producing a bias, thinking that the three-dimensional world is not important, and that the spiritual world is more important. You cannot use three-dimensional world things to understand the things in Framework 2, because they are different levels and also different forms of consciousness. If you insist on using the theories of this form of consciousness to explain the theories of another form of consciousness, that is completely like a donkey's lips not matching a horse's mouth. For example, if a little ant insists on using its cognition to understand human behavior, how can it understand it? Everything it understands is wrong.

So your world is the result of a multidimensional creative adventure, a work of art that is almost impossible for you to understand at present.

Your present material world is the result of a multidimensional creative adventure -- three dimensions, four dimensions, five dimensions, six dimensions, seven dimensions, the result of many dimensions creating together. Your world is a work of art, but it is a work of art created by a multidimensional world, not created by the three-dimensional world.

In this, every person and creature, and every particle, atom, and molecule, plays a living role.

In Framework 2, every event is known. From the fall of a leaf to the clouding of a star; from the feeling of the smallest insect in summer to the terrible killing of a person in the world -- each of those events has its meaning within a larger pattern of activity.

This is somewhat like what is often said in the Bible and in Buddhism -- he knows when a single sparrow falls, and in God's eyes it can be seen. The feeling of a small insect and the killing of a person, these two things in our world are considered two ordinary three-dimensional world events, but in higher dimensions, they have other meanings, and within that larger pattern of activity there are meanings they cannot understand. And that multidimensional world, when manifested in our three-dimensional world, appears like this.

That pattern is not separate from your reality, nor is it imposed upon you.

This point is very important. It is not that the pattern of the multidimensional world is higher than us and must be imposed on us, that their thing is above us, and we are like something passive -- that is not the meaning. This is also a limitation of Professor Liu Feng's theory: he thinks that our three-dimensional world is a passive projection of a higher-dimensional world. He only saw this one level, and this level is correct, not wrong. But he overlooked one point -- he overlooked that our three-dimensional world and the multidimensional world themselves exist as one, and we will in turn influence that projection source, rather than being passive. This is the most core point.

Nor is it separate from your experience. It often seems so only because you divide your experience into compartments in such a way that you automatically separate yourselves from this knowledge.

Framework 2 is not separate from our experience. It is in our world, in the little things of daily life that we deal with every day. It is we humans who, using the limitations of our own knowledge, divide it and Framework 1 into two different compartments, as if there were no intersection at all.

Creativity has nothing to do with compartments; it casts aside these barriers. Yet even most people involved in creative work often apply their extra insight and knowledge only to their art, and not to their lives. In this way, you fall back into the so-called paradox of cause and effect.

This artist knows that the inspiration for creation comes from a higher level and higher dimension, but he obtains creative inspiration and wisdom from there, yet does not use it in his life, only in his works of art and artistic creation. He does not use a higher perspective to look at his life, only at his works. What does such a result become? He falls back into worldly viewpoints.

So many artists, except for a very few who truly live with clarity and understanding, many artists actually live very twisted lives. Why are they twisted, why are they in pain, why are things so difficult for them? Because on the one hand they live in the spiritual world, and on the other hand they live in the material world, and they do not understand that they can apply their ability for artistic creation to their lives. They think these are two separate things, but actually they are one thing. His life is the final work that this artist should most focus on throughout his entire life. He only thinks his works are works, and he does not know that his life is also a work, so he only creates his works and neglects his life, or still lives his life in the traditional way, and so he is in great pain.

The Limited Viewpoint of Framework 1

Life in Framework 1 is based on these concepts: that you only have so much energy, that you will become exhausted; and that a certain amount of energy will be expended to produce a specific amount of work; in other words, applying a certain kind of effort will produce the optimal result.

These are all mistaken notions that only we people focused on the three-dimensional world, on Framework 1, would have. These viewpoints are all wrong.

Likewise, people believe that the energy of the universe will eventually be used up.

These are all our viewpoints. All of these presuppose the fact that no new energy is being replenished into this world, so the source of this world appears to no longer exist. According to the physicists' viewpoint, at the moment of the Big Bang, all the energy of our world was already exploded out, and for the more than fourteen billion years¹⁷ since then, our world has been consuming the energy produced by the Big Bang, with no new energy being replenished. Is this viewpoint correct? Of course it is not correct. But if you ask any physicist now, he will tell you that this world observes the conservation of energy, that no new energy can be born, and that the production of any kind of energy is a conversion from one form of energy—for example, matter converted into energy, light energy converted into electrical energy, biological energy converted into electrical energy, and so on. There is no new energy.

The cause has already exhausted itself in the effort of producing physical phenomena.

Because in the process of manufacturing material planets, galaxies, and the expansion of the universe, they have already used up all the energy from the birth of the universe. According to this kind of thinking, Framework 2 would be an impossibility. How could it be possible? Framework 2 contains infinite events and all possibilities.

There is a song called "A Million Possibilities¹⁸"—the one that was extremely popular on Douyin last year. The lyrics are really interesting. Any single thing has a million possibilities¹⁸. But we think it is impossible, because a million possibilities¹⁸ would require a million times the energy to sustain the existence of those million possibilities¹⁸. Our universe only has this one kind of energy, and it is not even enough—then you would also have to sustain a million kinds, and each kind gives birth to another million possibilities, and then another million times the energy—that would be a million times a million times a million. Where would such an enormous amount of energy come from? So this is something scientists cannot accept or understand. But our world is exactly like that, Framework 2 is exactly like that, and we also have many parallel worlds all existing simultaneously—this is something we humans cannot comprehend.

On the contrary, in a manner that has nothing to do with the physical laws you speak of, the energy of life is constantly and continually being inserted into your world.

The physical laws you speak of say that energy is conserved—yet your life energy flows continuously into your world. Where does this life energy come from? Where does this vitality of life come from? But our scientists will explain that this is simply the union of reproductive cells from an adult male and female, and then normal biological reproduction begins, and in the middle of this process, energy and nutrition are needed. He will tell you with absolute certainty that this is how the world is, and that the energy of life is not mysterious at all.

But if you ask him another question, he will immediately be dumbfounded. You say, I will give you all the energy—all the energy in this world is at your disposal—but I will not give you sperm, and I will not give you an egg. Just create a life for me to see. You may create anything you like—you may create a cell, or create an egg cell on your own, or create a sperm, and then combine the two together, and create a life. Do not use the existing forms of life; create a brand-new life for me to see. Did you not say that life is just energy? Give it energy and it will be born—so go ahead. You have studied DNA thoroughly, you have figured everything out—so create a life for me to see. You will find that he is immediately dumbfounded, because he cannot even create a single cell. He cannot even create a single cell—he cannot even accomplish something that simple. He will discover that the energy of life is actually not as simple as scientists imagine; there must be a kind of life vitality above the material level, and this life vitality is something our scientists cannot recognize.

What Seth said in 1978, he had already said much earlier—back in 1960:

The universe expands in the same way that a concept does, and that is exactly what I mean.

The universe expands like a concept in our mind, like an idea, like a thought. If you cannot understand what the universe is, cannot understand the operating mode of the universe, cannot understand how the universe expands and how new planets and new worlds are produced, then just think about how a single thought of yours expands. How do you expand from one tiny thought into an enormous thing? The process is the same—exactly the same. So the expansion of the universe is not a material expansion; it is an expansion of concepts, an expansion of consciousness, an expansion of thought.

Each living being, the larger life, exists within that framework which first gave it life.

Every life has a larger life system, and that life system exists in the place that first gave this living being its life—he put it in quotation marks, because there is no such thing as "first," but according to our human way of speaking, according to the three-dimensional world, there is a temporal sequence. In our human terms, the framework that first gave this living being its life—we all came from there.

In a broader sense, every living being, regardless of age, is in fact constantly being reborn.

Every life, every living being, is constantly being reborn. It is not the kind of rebirth after death that you speak of—it is within the very process of your living—within each day of your life, you feel that your life is continuous and unbroken, but actually your life is like a fluorescent light, flickering on and off, on and off, on and off, every minute, every second, in a process of flickering, yet we cannot perceive it; we feel that our life is continuous. Every living being is constantly being reborn.

I am expressing all of this in terms of the known reality of your world, and I am speaking only of the partial attributes of Framework 2 that have an impact upon your experience.

He is only taking the things in Framework 2 and giving a simple description in language you can understand, and he is only discussing Framework 2—he has not yet discussed Framework 3, Framework 4, or Framework 5. Everything he says is expressed in terms you can understand, but do not treat it as the truth—it is still very far from the truth.

Seth Ends the Session: The Difficulty of Translation

You may rest your hand, for I am most likely going to end this session, because in some places the translation has become very difficult. Personally, the two of you are ready to go further, but I now feel that the transmission has become very difficult, and the material already given is enough for what you deserve. Therefore at this time there can be a fresh burst of realization -- dream experiences and other such things.

Seth means that this material has already been given to you, and you will have a fresh burst of realization in your understanding. In dreams there will be some new experiences, or other kinds of psychic perceptions, that will give you a new cognition of the entire content of today's talk. Because he cannot go on speaking; if he goes on, the transmission of the material has already become distorted, and it is very hard to continue conveying it.

When Jane ended the brilliant transmission she had done for Seth, she said:

It was really extremely strange. I was very surprised to find that I looked quite uncomfortable.

Jane looked quite uncomfortable, which was a very rare thing. In the more than ten years that Jane had been transmitting material for Seth, she had never once felt uncomfortable during the transmission process, but this time she was extremely uncomfortable.

She said that was the first time such a thing had happened:

I began to feel very nauseated.

She felt nauseated and sick to her stomach, as if when Seth was conveying it this way, this material really made her feel awful.

Toward the end there was a pressure involving something I could not translate.

This pressure was because he could not translate it. It was as if she had almost been about to receive some great thing she had never heard before, but she still had that feeling at the time. A tremendous pressure, as if there was some great thing she had never heard before that wanted to be given to her, yet she could not receive it, and at that moment her body instead felt very uncomfortable and in pain.

Perhaps my feeling was not caused by anything, but it was as if a state I could not reach was accelerating forward, rather than making any great revelation for this world.

She said there was also a feeling that was not caused by anything -- as if she was about to reach a state she could not arrive at, accelerating forward. That state she could never reach, yet she was still speeding toward that state, and it was not that she was making any great revelation of truth for this world that caused the discomfort.

Jane said a little later that she really was uncomfortable at that time. Her comments coincided with Seth's statement about the difficulty of translation; otherwise, we would not be able to find in these materials any reason for her reacting that way. Rob suggested that the necessary insights would probably become known to her later. Her strange state did indeed seem to come from how she had felt in the afternoon and at dusk -- in the afternoon she had gone through all the private session content in the Seth material, wanting to pick out the knowledge of Framework 1 and Framework 2 and integrate it into a relatively independent body of material. She felt that material was too loose and could not be organized. To put it simply, she had difficulty understanding the material on Framework 1 and Framework 2, so she could not see clearly the larger reality behind the words of Framework 1 and Framework 2 -- the place from which the theory of Framework 1 and Framework 2 came. So she felt she could not put it together. That was how she felt in the afternoon, and then Seth came through and directly began speaking the passage above.

This session's content is now fully explained.

The Dark Side of Myths and Natural Events

This session began on Monday, February 20, 1978, at 9:30 p.m. At the very start, Seth came through and said:

Session 821

Of course you are a part of nature.

That is to say, we humans are a part of nature. But that is not all. The next point is crucial:

But you are also a part of the source of nature.

This is quite magical. We are a part of this great nature — that is easy to understand. The key point is that we are also a part of the source that created this great nature. We are both a part of the creator of this great nature, and a part of this great nature that the creator of nature created. It is just like the story he told in the last lecture of The Nature of the Psyche — the story of the painter who painted himself into the painting: we are both the painter and the figures in the painting the painter painted.

Then Seth goes on to say:

To grow from an infant to a full adult is perhaps the most difficult and yet the easiest feat that you will accomplish in this life.

This "feat" must be a typo in the transcript. Growing from a little baby to an adult seems to be the most difficult thing in this life, and yet also seems to be the easiest — a feat. Why is it both the most difficult and the easiest? He explains below:

As a child you identified with one of your own natures. You intuitively understood that your existence was immersed in the process of growth, and was a part of it.

When we were little children, we knew we would certainly grow up. We innately knew that one day we would grow up. And the most magical thing is that we were immersed in the very process of growing up, and were a part of that growing up — we children were constantly changing, growing from small to big.

No amount of intellectual information, no amount of knowledge, no amount of accumulated facts, can give you the necessary inner knowledge involved in the specific events that accomplish that growth process.

That is to say, no matter how much knowledge you have learned, no matter how much experience you have, this knowledge and experience are still not enough to provide the necessary inner knowledge involved in the process of growing from a little baby to an adult. For example, how the organs develop, which develops first, which develops later, how they develop simultaneously, how the various organs function, how the various tissues coordinate, how life is maintained — this inner knowledge, no matter how much you learn, you will never master it. This is simply knowledge you cannot master.

Then, it seems that whether you went to school or not, you learned to read. You can read books, you can recognize words. But:

Seeing itself, however, is a far greater accomplishment.

You think reading books is impressive, you think learning to write is impressive, but do you not realize how impressive the mere act of seeing is in itself? How magical it is in itself?

One that seems to happen completely by itself.

Seeing seems to happen automatically. You are born able to see. No one taught you how to see, no one told you that you should see this way, should control your eye muscles this way, should form images this way, should adjust this way — there is no need. You seem to be able to see from the moment you are born. This is an innate ability, and that knowledge is something you never learned.

Again, its occurrence — the occurrence of seeing — happens because each of you is indeed a part of nature and a part of the source of nature.

The reason you are able to see — the very occurrence of the act of seeing — is already proof that you are nature, and a part of the source of nature.

Religious Distortion and Myths

This great accomplishment, in many different ways, your religions have always been hinting at your relationship with the source of nature. Religion has always brought up your relationship with the source of nature -- the source of nature is the Creator. But:

Even though they have often isolated nature itself from any specific position of importance.

The various religions have isolated nature from all the important matters. What does that mean? It means that we humans, including religion, often say that the results we have achieved today, our miracles, all seem to have nothing to do with nature -- they are all God's achievements, God's great works. He never mentions nature. Nature seems to exist only as a background, as a stage. It is as if nature did nothing, and we humans just popped out of the rocks, and then we arrived at today, with this kind of development of human civilization.

Why is this so?

Because religion often attaches itself to some very reasonable perception, and then distorts it.

What is a reasonable perception? It is the feeling that one can sense the source of nature, or the feeling of being one with nature. This kind of feeling is a very reasonable perception. Religion intensifies this perception greatly -- this perception is normal; you can feel that you are part of nature, and also part of the source of nature. But then it distorts it: it first attaches itself to this perception, then distorts this perception, and excludes anything else that does not seem to fit, removing from this perception anything that does not conform to its religious beliefs, anything that does not conform to its religious theoretical system. And it does not fully trust this perception either. This is one of religion's greatest distortions.

You are the children of the universe.

This is a phrase one often hears. But:

The point of the Christ story is not Christ's death, but rather his birth, and the often-stated assertion that every person is a son of the Father.

He says the emphasis of Christianity should be on Christ's birth, or the birth of this world, rather than repeatedly emphasizing how Christ died. But present-day Christianity treats Christ's death, his atonement for others, and the process of washing away humanity's original sin as the focus of Christianity. He says you have it wrong. What should you always be asserting? That you are sons of the Father, sons of nature, sons of the source of nature.

In the Bible, there are many supplements added later.

Remember this: in the Bible, many passages were added later and were not originally there. For example, the story of the fig tree¹⁹. In this story, nature is belittled -- it says nature is no good, and miracles are powerful: figs can bear fruit without flowers. But:

Christ's father is that God who indeed perceives every falling sparrow, and he also knows the existence of every living creature.

The Bible writes that God knows the rise and fall of every swallow or sparrow, and also knows the existence of every living creature, regardless of its kind or species.

The story of the shepherds and the flocks comes closer to the intent of Christianity.

He says this story is closer to the intent of Christianity, because in this story, every creature watches over other creatures. The fig tree story was added later.

The officials of the Roman Catholic Church altered many records, and in their terms, they did away with anything that hinted at pagan rituals and what they considered nature worship.

The Roman Catholic Church removed anything that did not conform to their religious rituals -- other pagan rituals, such as the worship of nature, fire worship, deity worship, sun worship, all these things of nature worship. They removed them all, leaving only the worship of the one God, and they could not accept the worship of anything else.

As far as your civilization is concerned, nature and the psyche became separated.

We are clearly part of nature, yet we do not admit this. To the extent that most of you live your lives within that framework -- we live our lives within this kind of cognition.

Then to some degree, you necessarily feel that your bodies and the natural world are separated.

After being influenced by such ideas for decades, centuries, millennia, humans truly came to believe that they are separated from nature.

Therefore, you cannot maintain the great comprehensive emotional identification with nature itself.

You cannot maintain this sense of identification. What kind of identification? It is a great comprehensive emotional identification. It is not a theoretical identification; it is an emotional identification.

You study those processes as if you were standing outside of them.

You study the processes of interaction between you and nature as if you were outside of nature studying this matter. Then:

To some degree, the beliefs of your society allow you enough freedom, so that most of you trust your bodies.

Later, society became more and more open-minded, open-minded enough to allow you sufficient freedom to trust your own body. Until you grow into adulthood and begin to believe that you are an adult, with your own sense of power. But:

Then, many of you no longer trust the life processes within them.

Although we trust our bodies and trust our freedom, we do not trust the life processes within our bodies. We do not know where this life process comes from.

Certain scientific treatises often make you believe that, except for ensuring the further existence of the species through parenthood, there is no purpose in growing up.

That is to say, certain scientific viewpoints hold that the main significance of human existence is to reproduce offspring. Like other species, reproduction is our main purpose. And then it seems that apart from bearing children and reproducing, we humans have no other value.

Do not forget that human civilization has only changed in the last few hundred years. Before that, as males and females -- especially females -- people really were reduced to being tools of reproduction. Look carefully; open the history of humanity and look at the entire process of development. Is it not like this? It is truly sad. It seems that apart from reproduction, humans could not find anything more important to do, and so they were reduced to the same role as animals.

Nature is quite willing to relieve you of your task, relieve you of your service.

What is service? The service of reproduction. They tell you directly that you have no other purpose. Because if we understand it that way, then that is how it is. Then:

The species itself, except for an unintentional determination to survive, necessarily appears to have no reason to exist.

We humans seem to have only an unintentional -- unintentional meaning purposeless, not knowing why we do this -- determination to survive. That is, we do not know where the meaning of human existence lies, nor where the meaning of the existence of the human race as a species lies. We only know that we must reproduce, that we must keep human civilization going endlessly. Such a firm belief does exist, but why? We do not know.

The Dilemma of Religious Teleology

Those religions did emphasize that human beings have a purpose. But what purpose? In their own confusion, they often spoke of this purpose as if it were something to be attained -- yet religion itself was vague about this purpose, not even sure of it, speaking in ambiguous terms.

For example, Christianity tells you to go to heaven, and then says humanity will ultimately perish. After this perishing, it contradicts his own present life: since humanity will sooner or later perish, what is the point of all the struggling now? Since the Last Judgment is bound to come sooner or later, and the Last Judgment is the final ending, and on that day God decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, then we might as well not bother now. After struggling for thousands of years, no matter how high humanity develops, this is still the ending. So this is what he says -- he himself is not even quite sure, he himself is somewhat vague. He has to say it this way, yet he cannot convince himself.

Other religions are all the same. Buddhism says you must be liberated from reincarnation, leap out of the three realms, be beyond the five elements, escape the sea of suffering. But if reincarnation is suffering, if the human world is suffering, then why did you come here to be judged? You could simply not have come at all. Then who made you come? Who is it that came? You cannot even explain this clearly. The subject itself has not been figured out -- is it this "I" who made myself come? Did I come? Before I came, where was I? Who was I? And where does suffering even come from? Since you know life is suffering, why still come? Go around once, announce that life is suffering, and then leave -- there is no such logic.

For example, if you know that jumping into fire will burn you to death, would you insist on jumping in just to know what being burned to death is like? You can just stand to the side and look, and you would know, wouldn't you? If you know that falling into the sea will drown you, do you have to drown once to know it? No need. Then if you know life is suffering, do you have to come and experience it once to know it is suffering? There is no need. Then just don't come, that is all. I originally came from that place, I suffered for decades, and then I go back to that place -- what for? He himself cannot explain it clearly either.

Of course he will find a bunch of far-fetched reasons to explain it to you. I am only saying that from my perspective, the religious people's reasons are more than sufficient -- in their eyes, what I say is heresy, completely evil cult nonsense. Their own theories come one set after another, but they can never avoid those simplest questions I just mentioned.

He must then deny the body in which he has his existence.

In order to attain that purpose -- to return you to heaven, to leap out of reincarnation -- what do you do? You have to deny the body, you have to deny your own body. And yet you are still living in this body -- isn't that interesting? Or you must transcend those coarse, worldly characteristics, cast off our worldly habitual tendencies -- various religions call them habitual tendencies; Buddhism calls them habitual tendencies, Christianity may call them something else.

Various religions all find us human beings unpleasant to look at. Either they think you are born with sin, that none of you are good people, that deep in your bones you are sinful, that you come wanting to commit crimes -- there are the seven deadly sins, the ten sins, these are humanity's original sins, and once you come you will commit them. How filthy, sordid, and vulgar this worldly realm is. So religions all think this way -- only in this way can their purpose be attained.

Thus, in both instances.

Either cast off your body, or cast off your worldly vulgarity, habitual tendencies, and human nature. Are these worldly things not all part of human nature? Eating, liking things, lust -- these are human nature. "Food and sex are human nature" -- Confucius said this long ago. Human nature -- if you look at Maslow's basic human needs, these are human nature. To deny it, to stand on the foundation of denying human nature while grandly discoursing on how human beings should evolve -- is that not ridiculous? Is that not abnormal?

Don't use human beings as an example; use a cat, a dog, an animal as an example: first deny its nature, first go against its nature, and then tell it this is for its own good, so that it can be elevated -- do you think that is possible? Try it with your cat or your dog: whatever it wants to do, you insist on not letting it do it. When it is in heat, you hit it; when it wants to eat, you starve it, giving it only a tiny bit each day, just enough not to die -- "harden its body, starve its sinews." You deny a thing's nature, and then you still want to achieve greater elevation on that basis -- how is that possible? You strip away what makes it what it is -- what makes a human being human -- and then you still say you want this person to be elevated on the basis of being human -- how is that possible? If you have negated these attributes, is what is being elevated still a human being? It is no longer even human.

So Seth here puts it very bluntly: you treat human nature and nature itself heartlessly -- and much of that is the very stuff of nature itself.

The Dark Side of Myths

He says this kind of story is itself a myth. Do you remember the myths we talked about in Chapter 3, Session 1? Both of these stories are myths. They:

Do have power and force.

Myths themselves have power and force, because a myth is a distortion of truth. It comes from truth itself, so it carries the power of truth. However:

In that telling, they represent the dark side of myths.

A distortion of truth has a bright side and a dark side. But the churches, and religions too, only saw the dark side of myths. Yet:

Through their mother and son -- the mother and son of that dark side of the dark myth -- you presently view your world in this way.

You will interpret the world of your life and the grand scope of history according to that kind of assumption about reality. We look at our lives, our reality, our history from this dark, shadowed angle. Think carefully: is this not how we humans perceive history? We humans believe that human society is greedy. Open the history books and that is what you see: wars, invasions, doing anything for profit.

They have not only colored your experience.

The darker side of this dark myth has also colored all of our experience. And moreover:

You have created so many events that conform to those assumptions.

The most remarkable thing is that you have also created many events that match this. Why? Because you look at problems through such a myth. You look at the world from the dark side of the myth, so you will inevitably create events that conform to it. Myth is the layer beneath your beliefs, and it is very hard to dig down to it. A belief system built on the dark side of myth will inevitably be dark as well. So, according to the principle that you create reality through your beliefs, you will create the dark world that you assume.

Those who lost their lives in natural disasters became victims of nature.

Nature became a perpetrator, a villain. In these stories you see examples of meaningless death, because you do not know why they died. In the three-dimensional world, you cannot explain their deaths. It seems they were all innocent -- this person died innocently, it was all an undeserved calamity. We call such deaths undeserved calamities: I did nothing wrong, yet I died. In fact, he does not know the reasons these things happen in Framework 2, but from Framework 1, it looks like an undeserved calamity. So he says these are all meaningless deaths, and further proof of nature's indifference toward humanity.

You see, how many people have these natural disasters killed -- a great flood, a great fire, an earthquake, and now this great plague. How many people have died. So he says nature is indifferent to humanity. Does nature want to put humanity to death? If nature wanted to put humanity to death, all of humanity would not survive an hour. I will say it again: if nature wanted to put humanity to death, counting all of humanity together, people would not survive an hour.

That is not how it is. It is just that you do not understand nature's meaning, you do not understand nature's love for humanity. You do not understand these natural disasters, just as a person sometimes gets sick for the sake of your overall health. Just as your cells need to undergo metabolism so that the whole body can survive longer. You only look at it from the cell's perspective: this cell of mine was killed. But if you do not die, then the other cells cannot live, and the whole person cannot live either. If every cell refused to die, then every cell would become a cancer cell, and the person could not survive.

So this is the core of it. But it depends on whose perspective you take. From the cell's perspective, of course it does not want to die. Standing within a very small framework, within Framework 1, you cannot understand the reasons these natural disasters happen.

Another Understanding of Death

On the other hand:

You might, in such an example, see the avenging hand of an angry God.

If you are a religious person, you would say that God is once again taking revenge on humanity, that Heaven is punishing all the evil deeds in this world. Many people are saying now that this pandemic is God's anger, the gods' fury, nature showing its power. Here the gods once again use nature to make people submit -- as if the immortals, the gods, God, once again use the power of nature, natural disasters, to make humanity yield. Interesting, but is that really the case? Certainly not.

Man is meant to live and to die.

People are born and then they die; this is a normal phenomenon, just like flowers blooming and withering in nature. What is abnormal about it? Why is there suffering? Is death really that painful? Without death, how could there be birth? Isn't this very simple? Earlier he talked at length specifically about death and life, so I won't repeat it.

So many people are afraid of death. Why are they afraid of death? It is a natural phenomenon. Because we are human, can we escape the constraints of nature? No, we cannot. The Tao Te Ching says, doesn't it:

Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Tao, the Tao follows nature.

How do we explain this? As a being existing in the three-dimensional world, as a human, you must follow the laws and rules of this earth. This "earth" refers to this ground, this planet, this physical world. There are many, many rules in the physical world. To put it most simply, from the perspective of physical rules, is there not gravity? Without gravity you could not live, and this physical world would not exist. There are other fundamental things I don't need to elaborate on one by one. For example, the existence of the speed of light -- why the speed of light is a limitation, we will expand on that later. And there are other laws we have all encountered: for example, psychological laws, the law of growth -- all things grow. We have studied psychological laws many times over, the "24-week golden medicine" and so on, including the "21-day abundance journey" meditation -- all of these deal with psychological laws. These are all natural laws, and birth and death are also natural laws.

So why can't people die? People say, no, we can use beliefs to create reality, I can create a reality where I don't die. You are entering a paradox: since you want to exist in the physical world as a human, yet you don't want to follow the laws of the physical world -- how is that possible? The game isn't played that way.

You say, why must there be death? You are still considering the question from the human perspective. From the soul's perspective, the human being is merely a vehicle, just a materialized manifestation of the soul in the physical world. So man is meant to live and die:

Death is not an affront to life.

It is not that because death exists, it is a great insult to life, as if ultimately you will still die, and that is an insult to life. No.

Death is instead life's continuation.

This sentence is very important. Not only that:

Within the natural framework that you understand, but also within the source of that natural framework.

Death exists not only in this natural world of ours, but also at the source of the natural world -- that is, the source that created this natural world -- death also exists there. Of course, that death is not the kind of death we understand, but what he wants to tell you is that this is a natural law of the development of things; don't think of death as such an extraordinary matter.

The natural contours of your psyche are quite aware of the inner sweep of your life.

The contours of your inner psyche are able to perceive the inner rises and falls of your life -- the ups and downs of your life experience, favorable and adverse circumstances, from youth or from childhood growing up all the way to old age -- these are all the rises and falls of your life.

And its relationship with all other living creatures.

He also knows the relationship between the rises and falls of your life and other living creatures, all sentient beings. Intuitively -- every person is born with such knowledge; we are born knowing our relationship with all things around us.

Even if it is not only valuable, but also conforms to the overall plan of the universe in the most precise and beautiful way.

From the inner perspective, our connection with all sentient beings conforms to the overall, holistic plan of the universe in the most precise and beautiful way. Whether it is valuable to you is only one aspect of the consideration, not the entire consideration. For you personally, some things may seem inexplicable -- for example, death may seem to have no value to you, but from the perspective of the entire universe considered comprehensively, is death an extremely valuable thing? Of course it is.

Each individual's life and death involves the most noble of timing.

Every person's birth and death is a most noble moment, not that only birth deserves celebration while death is especially sad. Both birth and death are the most noble moments.

The exquisite workings of your own inner nature inherently allow you to identify with all the general aspects of nature, and that identification will lead you into a deeper understanding of your own role as a natural source.

Your inner nature has an inner perceptual system, that is, the unconscious perception of the inner self. It inherently allows you to identify with the aspects of nature, and that identification can bring you into a deeper understanding of your identity as being yourself a source of nature. Including death as well -- this gives you a deeper understanding of yourself as the creator, as the source.

The Limitations of Myths: The Unseen Connections

You build your life upon that myth.

Our lives are built upon those myths. You might ask, can I choose not to build my life upon myths? No. Because it is a distortion in the three-dimensional world of something that comes from the multidimensional world, from multidimensional space-time. Since we live in the three-dimensional world, this distortion is bound to exist.

It so presupposes your existence that you will often verbally deny what you inwardly know.

Your inner world knows one thing: it knows that you are a part of nature, and that you are also a part of the source of nature. But you deny it verbally, you deny what you inwardly know. The outer self keeps denying what the inner self knows -- saying no, that is not how it is, I am just an ordinary person.

For example:

When some people are injured in a natural disaster, you will often claim that they were completely unaware of such involvement.

When some people are injured in a natural disaster, their first viewpoint or perception is: we are innocent, I do not know why I was injured in this natural disaster, I did not do anything, I did not do anything wrong, I did not do anything bad, so why did I have to suffer this injury.

They will ignore or deny those inner feelings.

They feel it has nothing to do with them. There are inner feelings telling you that this natural disaster seems to have some connection with you, that it is because you yourself chose such a natural disaster. They do not think so, they deny it. But:

In fact, only those feelings would give those events any meaning in their lives.

It is precisely because you deny those inner feelings that tell you why you needed to experience this natural disaster, that your life is given meaning. But if you deny it, then there is no meaning, then there really is no meaning.

Let me put it another way: the reason you suffered this natural disaster must be an inner choice of yours. And why would your inner self choose to undergo such a natural disaster? You have to look for the meaning in it. You have to look for that feeling -- why did this happen to me? Why did I choose to experience this typhoon, this earthquake, this flood, including this pandemic? What does my inner self actually want? Do not push it away, saying it has nothing to do with me, I do not know how I got this illness, I do not know how I got caught in this earthquake.

You ignore those feelings, you ignore the inner feelings you should have gained in this contact with nature. When you deny it, when you deny its deeper inner touch and influence upon you, you deny the meaning of these events in your life. These events happen in your life with important meaning, but you deny it, you portray yourself as an innocent victim, as if this matter had nothing to do with you at all.

Of course, the reasons for such involvement are countless, but all of them are valid.

Why would you be involved? The reasons may be countless, far too complex, but all of them are valid.

Yet in each case, man and nature meet in an encounter in that fashion.

Just like a certain natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, you and nature meet in this kind of encounter. And:

That meeting is meaningful from the largest global effects down to the smallest, most private aspects of the individuals involved.

This sentence must be highlighted. The natural event you experience -- whether a typhoon, a flood, an earthquake, a pandemic -- for you, whether in terms of global influence or in terms of its influence on you personally, it is all meaningful.

Let me say it again: every intimate contact you have with nature does not only mean sightseeing, immersing yourself in shaded paths with flowers, birds, and fragrance -- it may also be that you and nature meet in a state of disaster. In such a meeting, he emphasizes again, it takes care of both the personal and the global, world-level influence, and it all has meaning.

You do not see that as your limitation, because your myth, you make certain distinctions that make such explanations extremely important and difficult.

It is precisely because of the existence of this myth that you do not understand the relationship between you and nature, or between a natural event and you personally, nor can you understand why this natural event and you would arrange for such a possibility to exist in Framework 2 and manifest in your Framework 1. If you do not understand it, then explaining the importance of this event's occurrence becomes extremely difficult.

For example:

You think of rain or earthquakes or rainstorms as natural events, while in a different way you think of thoughts and emotions as natural events.

You acknowledge that rain and earthquakes are natural phenomena, but you do not acknowledge that your thoughts and your emotions are also natural phenomena. There is an inner connection between them and the rain and the earthquakes.

Therefore it is difficult for you to see how emotional states and physical states can reasonably interact.

Rain and earthquakes are physical phenomena; emotions, feelings, and thoughts are what you consider emotional states. But there is interaction between them, and you cannot see it. Because of a limitation imposed on you by the myth, you cannot see it.

You may say, of course, I understand that weather affects my mood.

You would certainly say that weather affects your mood, you know that. But:

Very few of you ever think that your emotions have any effect upon the weather.

You always say the weather affects your mood -- on cloudy or rainy days you feel low, when the sun shines you feel happy. But what you do not know is: is this weather itself the influence of your own emotions? Do you not feel that you have cut yourself off from nature? You think nature is the objective existence of the natural world, and you can only be affected by it.

You are so engrossed in categorizing, describing, and exploring the objective world that it certainly seems to be the only real world.

We humans use all kinds of categorization -- this is wind, this is rain, this is lightning, this is a natural phenomenon, this is a human phenomenon, this is the subjective world, this is the objective world -- we use our cognitive methods to understand it, and then we even treat our human understanding of this natural world as the only real world. We are so stubborn as to think that this world can only exist according to our human explanations. If this world does not exist according to our human way of explaining it, then it is unreasonable.

Is that not ridiculous? Since when have humans become so arrogant as to make nature exist according to your understanding and explanation? If there is something you cannot understand or explain, then it is not real. Anything that does not fit human categorization, that humans cannot categorize, is not real -- for example, UFOs, flying saucers, these cannot be categorized, no one knows where to put them. Things humans cannot explain, cannot describe, cannot categorize, are also not real. Things that cannot be explored either -- things that physical experiments or instruments cannot detect -- are also not objective. What does "not objective" mean? It means this thing happened to you, I admit it happened to you, but if it happened to another person it would be different. Science considers that not objective. If it happened to you and you feel it was a certain way, that might be your subjective judgment; only if this thing happens to everyone in the same way is it considered objective. What happened to you really happened, I admit it, but it is not objective, and if it is not objective then it is not real. Is that not ridiculous?

So the way we view our world has reached this very laughable point: we only acknowledge our human cognition, we use this cognition to understand this world, and we even believe that the world really is this way.

It seems to press upon you or invade you, or at least to happen almost on its own, not beneficially. Therefore you sometimes feel quite powerless before it.

We have depicted a natural world in this way, as if it were an objectively existing nature, but as if it were pressing upon us, invading us -- all kinds of natural disasters are invasions and pressures upon us. Or happening on its own, not beneficially -- how did this natural world suddenly produce such a great flood? We feel quite powerless before it, with climate warming, climate change, and so on.

Your myths give great energy to external events.

All of this is caused by our myths. What myth? It is that in Framework 2, this natural world is closely connected with human emotions and feelings, and they interact. Why do we experience these things, why does this natural world happen in Framework 2, what role do we humans play in it -- there is an inner connection. But because of the myth -- in the three-dimensional world, from the perspective of the three-dimensional world, these multidimensional world events appear to have no connection in the three-dimensional world -- we think there is no connection.

Because such a myth holds that there is no connection between them, we have endowed this external natural world and the things that happen in it with tremendous energy. We now feel that the energy of nature is terrifying, whether volcanoes or earthquakes, the energy that erupts is too immense, it makes people afraid. Who gave it this power? We did. We endowed it with energy, we endowed it with power. If you regarded it as connected with your emotions -- whether the natural disasters of this world or the climate -- then you would not endow it with such great power, it would be within your control. But we humans do not think this way, so we have given the power to them.

Seth's Irony: Inverted Perception

There was a long pause in the middle, and then a very restrained kind of irony. In the passage that follows he wants to be ironic, but Seth still has professional integrity. As someone who educates and spreads knowledge, he wanted to be ironic but felt awkward about it, so he held it back. Remember, this description of his is very interesting. He began to say:

In the heat of your emotions, some of you see nature as good and enduring. Nature is full of an innocence and joy. At the same time, on the other hand, you view man as a species of lowly origin, a kind of pest on the face of the earth, a creature that, no matter how strongly good its intentions, is bound to do everything wrong. Therefore you also do not trust human nature.

Seth says this passage brilliantly, very interestingly. He is speaking about humanity with suppressed irony.

We humans give the sense of power that originally belongs to us in the present moment to nature. After giving it away, we are then bullied by it, oppressed by it, invaded by it, and we are powerless to resist, because we feel that humanity is too insignificant. And at this point, what do we humans do? Humans are especially strange—they cannot afford to provoke nature, they really cannot. They do not dare to struggle against it. So then they regard nature as good and kind, and regard humans themselves as lowly. They think nature is innocent and joyful, that nature makes no mistakes, and that what makes mistakes is—people. Because people always do things wrong, nature punishes us—and nature is absolutely right to punish us.

Why do people always do things wrong? No one knows. Although people harbor very strong desires to be good—look, are we not all quite good to people? Are you not quite good to the people around you—leaving aside those you cannot reach, just the ones you can reach—are you not quite good to them? Do you not even buy a colleague a milk tea or help them out, right? Even with strangers, when you meet someone weak on the street, do you not still help them? Does not every one of you harbor such good wishes and good intentions? Why? Of course there are a few bad individuals, but leaving those aside, why does a human society in which the vast majority of people harbor good intentions repeatedly do these wrong things? This does not make sense; it defies common sense.

Why are most people good, and why do they still do these bad things? Then they tell people that good intentions lead to bad outcomes, that this is just how we are. Human nature is often unreliable, so it easily does bad things, and therefore human nature is not to be trusted. Why is it proven that people have done bad things? Because nature punishes us—if nature had not done anything wrong, why would it punish us? It is precisely because we have done bad things. Through natural disasters, these things that happen naturally, he treats them as a punishment upon himself, and then he begins to doubt his own human nature, no longer believing in human nature, thinking that if humans are not disciplined and not restrained, they are bound to do bad things.

Humanity will surely poke a hole in the sky; carbon dioxide emissions will surely cause the greenhouse effect, and in the end the whole earth's temperature will rise, sea levels will rise, and so on and so forth—they paint some very terrifying pictures of the future. Why is it that humanity developed for several thousand years without these climate treaties? Why is it that only in the last one or two hundred years, without these climate treaties and carbon emission treaties, we humans seem unable to go on living? Is your premise not an added distrust of human nature? You do not believe in human goodness, and that is why you feel you must restrain it with laws.

This myth gives great value to ordinary natural phenomena.

We assign great value to natural phenomena, yet in a story that is otherwise edifying, we alone regard man as evil. We set nature up as very powerful, as something that edifies us and punishes us, while we portray ourselves as the bad ones, as having done wrong.

A true identification with nature, however, would roughly show man's position within the physical planet's framework, and would also bring to the forefront the achievements he has almost unknowingly accomplished.

When you have a true identification with nature—what does true identification mean? It means you know you are a part of nature, that nature and you are one, and that there is no nature outside of you that constantly deals with you and retaliates against you, watching you like a parent and punishing you whenever you do wrong. There is no such nature. Because you are a part of nature. Not only are you a part of nature, you are also a part of the creator of this nature, a part of the source of this nature. You are the father of nature, its mother—you are nature's dad, so why would you still be afraid of nature? Nature has to call you father. What are you afraid of it for? Nature is your child; what are you afraid of it for?

So at this point, when you have a true sense of identification with nature, when you consider that you yourself are nature, that nature is also you, and that you created nature and nature has also fulfilled you—when you are in this kind of relationship—then you can roughly see the position of us humans within the framework of this physical planet, the earth.

What position does humanity hold on this physical planet? If we regard the earth as a person, then our human species, our race, is equivalent to the earth's brain. We come to watch over this earth; we are its caretakers and guardians, not its rulers. At the same time, between us and all the other myriad beings living on this planet, there is a relationship of brothers and companions, a relationship of equality and mutual assistance.

When you have this kind of understanding, the achievements that humanity has almost unknowingly accomplished—we have managed the earth very well, making the world so thriving and flourishing—will be brought to the forefront, allowing us to truly see them, to recognize this burden anew and carry it on our own shoulders. You and nature are one.

Seth paused briefly here. Jane was in trance, moving in step with him, the pace quite slow, with many long pauses. Rob felt the material was simply wonderful, highly stimulating. At 10:51, the session continued in the same manner. Seth said that later he would return to those achievements—the achievements humans have accomplished unknowingly; for now, he wanted to bring up other questions, about the relationship between individuals and natural disasters or certain epidemics, which by definition involve large groups of people.

You form your own reality. If you are tired of hearing me stress this—he also knows that saying it over and over, you are probably tired of hearing it—I can only say that I hope this repetition will make you understand that this statement applies to the most minute and the most important events that you experience.

He stresses again: You form your own reality. You may have heard this sentence so often your ears have calluses, but I still have to repeat it. What I emphasize is that this statement applies not only to ordinary matters, but also to the most minute matters, and to the most grand matters—because in this chapter he is discussing mass events, which are the most grand matters.

Some people believe that they must be punished, and so they search out unfortunate conditions. They search for those unfortunate conditions in their Framework 2, and they rush from one event to another, in which they receive their retribution.

Some people simply believe they must be punished. They believe in karmic retribution—not just karma created in this lifetime, but karma created in previous lifetimes, over many lifetimes, and this karma must be punished. If you think this way, then everything you see will be of this kind. You will say that Zhang San created verbal karma and so his mouth is covered with sores, that Li Si created some other karma and so received retribution. Everything you see is this, and you firmly believe it. You rush from one event to another, and in each of these events you receive retribution, and then you believe even more firmly: karmic retribution is truly real.

They may seek out those areas of the country where natural disasters are frequent, or their behavior may be such that it attracts others into producing an explosive reaction.

You see where earthquakes always happen, where tsunamis always occur, and they say that place really is like that. Other people think the same way; everyone believes that place is prone to earthquakes, and then that place really does become prone to earthquakes.

Individuals, however, will often use disasters for their own purposes, as an exterior force that brings their lives into clear focus. Some people may toy with the idea of death, and in one final act choose a dramatic encounter with nature, while others change their minds at the last moment.

This passage is somewhat revealing of the truth, and many people may not be able to accept it. Many people are not using disasters to profit from national misfortune; rather, they involve themselves in the disaster, bringing themselves into the public spotlight or into their own focus, making themselves seem more important. To put it bluntly, it adds a bit of color and a bit more excitement to their otherwise plain lives. So very often in the face of disaster, a person's first reaction is not to flee, but excitement—only afterward may they begin to feel pain. If you really examine it carefully, that is how it is.

There are also people who commit suicide, or people who die in disasters, who are toying with the idea of death. They want to have a dramatic encounter with nature through a natural disaster—for example, dying in a tsunami. A tsunami is a natural phenomenon, but they want to involve themselves in it, to make themselves the focus of the public and of the event, to become the brightest point in their own lives. Because this life has been unremarkable, dying in some natural disaster at the end actually becomes the highlight of their life. Some people change their minds at the last moment; they do not really want to die. Some people really do die. Seth's use of the phrase "toying with the idea of death" is very interesting.

In group chats or in private, you also see some people saying every day, "I don't want to live anymore, I want to die," that living is meaningless. Some people have experienced similar things around them. We do not advocate this approach, but Seth does point out: some people, through death, want to pull themselves into the public spotlight. As some people say, those who really want to die do not make a sound; they just go and die. Only those who want to attract others' attention will say they want to die.

Survivors who are involved in such disasters often use these large-scale situations in order to participate in events that seem to possess greater importance than their previously tedious existence.

Simply put, their previous life was too plain. They get involved in a disaster, and in the end they are rescued and do not die, immediately becoming the focus of the news, becoming heroes, miracles of life. This includes the gold mine in Shandong a while back, where the rescue ultimately saved many people.

Regardless of the consequences, they become more or less a part of history. Their own lives, at least once, are identified with a larger source. And many people derive new strength and vitality from this.

At this point, when you open the local news or national news, their names will be there, written in bold strokes. Their subconscious mentality—Seth has dug it all out—their lives have at least once been identified with a larger source. So "those who survive a great disaster are bound to have good fortune later" speaks to exactly this principle: they are reborn.

Social barriers are broken down, economic status is forgotten, and the scope of personal emotion is given a larger and more complete space.

This refers to some survivors in major disasters. No matter how difficult their previous life was, no matter how humble a small figure they were in society, at this moment they are watched by the whole society, and help, donations, and aid from all sectors of society flow in continuously. Economic status no longer matters; what they did before no longer matters. Having survived, they have already become miracles of life and heroes of humanity. The scope of personal emotion is also expanded: before, they only knew a few friends and relatives, but now suddenly the whole society pays attention to them, and many people find their other half through this, find happiness, and love also arrives.

Man's desires and emotions merge to some extent with the physical phenomena of nature as you understand them. Such storms or disasters, therefore, are as much the result of psychological activity as they are the result of weather conditions.

People have desires and emotions, and these are merged with the physical phenomena of nature. So such storms and disasters are the result of psychological activity—why would he do this? Because there are desires and emotions, there is the need for the expansion of emotional scope, the need for a change in economic status, the need for social barriers to be broken down. Humanity's most basic desires and emotions can bring about the occurrence of an entire disaster.

What is said here is at least half and half: weather physical phenomena, atmospheric circulation, these climatic conditions play half the role, and human desires and emotions play the other half. Seth is also very crafty—since saying it all plays a role might be unacceptable to you, then saying half and half, surely you can accept that.

Whatever their appearance, storms, earthquakes, floods, and so forth are all necessary to the health of the earth.

No matter how ferocious and terrifying the phenomena appear, for the whole earth, for the whole planet, these are all necessary. The human purpose is achieved—becoming the focus of attention within a natural disaster; the purpose of nature is also achieved—through storms, earthquakes, and floods, the normal balance of the natural world is maintained. They fit together perfectly.

Generally speaking, however, man's myths make him blind to those interactions. Whenever illness is involved, people's thoughts and emotions always give you a clear clue, but most people ignore such information.

We will not say that when a typhoon hits today, you cannot find any connection between it and your feelings and emotions; but the illness in your body, its relationship with your thoughts and emotions, could not be more obvious. Yet most people ignore this information—you think illness comes from outside, that you ate something bad, that you were infected by viruses and bacteria, or that it is hereditary, or due to your living environment, and so on.

They could examine and prune their own thoughts, and then they would be cured. Many people, therefore, become victims of certain epidemics because they want to, although they may deny this quite vehemently.

This sentence is very interesting: many people become victims of certain epidemics because they want to—but they absolutely will not admit it. "How could I want to catch an epidemic?" Including the current pandemic, no one would say they want it.

I am speaking particularly of those that are dangerous, but not necessarily fatal.

For example, influenza, the flu, has a mortality rate of a few in ten thousand, and it can kill people too. The current COVID is the same: very dangerous, but the mortality rate is not that high either.

In your times, you must understand that hospitals are an important part of the community. They provide a social service, just as they provide a medical service.

In our current society, hospitals are an important component of the community, providing not only medical services but also community services. "Community services" is very interesting; keep reading and you will understand.

Many people are simply lonely or overworked, and some are in rebellion against the generally held ideas of competition. Influenza, therefore, becomes a socially acceptable excuse for needed rest, and a face-saving method used so that those individuals can hide their inner difficulties from themselves.

Seth often strips away all the disguises hidden deep in the human heart, without any mercy. Hospitals provide not only medical services, but also the function of community services—it is just that we humans have not recognized it. When people are excessively fatigued, or tired of excessive competition, by catching influenza they can legitimately rest for a few days, and this is a very dignified social excuse. But this flu, this rest, actually hides the inner difficulties—loneliness, overwork, rebellion against competitive ideas—it does not face these difficulties directly, but covers them over through an illness, while still achieving a similar purpose.

In one form or another, such epidemics provide their own kind of intimacy, giving people in different circumstances a common meeting ground.

All the people who hold this kind of thinking gather together. Everyone has caught the flu, and they sit together in the hospital getting IV drips and chatting, sympathizing with one another: "Look, our work pressure is too great, our bodies' resistance has been poor lately, that's why we caught the flu." "I've been working overtime for days." Everyone has plenty of common ground for conversation.

Epidemics are used as acceptable states of illness, in which people receive the rest they most need, but feel they should not have.

They need rest, rest they most need, but they feel they should not have it. Under the pretext of quiet and self-reflection, they find a time of illness to properly reflect on themselves: Do I really want to live this kind of life? Is this kind of life my goal and my idea for my life?

So this COVID pandemic will also make many people reflect, and even force all of humanity to stop and reflect. Some people have already begun reflecting through this event—why are there especially many people studying spiritual knowledge this year? Because many people are at home with nothing to do. Normally they have no time or energy to study, but with the pandemic keeping them at home in quarantine, they read books and listen to materials, and once they study and reflect: "Oh my god, this is exactly a portrayal of my current life; I just hadn't recognized it clearly." Then you begin to think: What kind of life do I want to live from now on? A human life, or a spiritual life? Do I want to live a true carefree wandering like Zhuangzi, or a step-by-step social life—in mainland China we have a term, "corporate livestock," the livestock of society—do you want to live the life of corporate livestock, or the carefree life of Laozi?

Seth says that epidemics provide an opportunity for self-reflection. I think the current pandemic is very good—it does not require everyone to get sick, but everyone can rest at home. Getting the flu is not comfortable; it is very painful, sometimes even more painful than a mild case of COVID. The flu is not a cold; the flu has symptoms similar to COVID, sometimes even more severe than COVID, and it can be fatal, with a mortality rate. But we do not need to get the flu, and we do not need to get COVID, in order to rest at home with a clear conscience—the government will not let you go to work, the city is locked down, so just reflect properly and rest properly.

Many people say their income is affected, their business is affected, their factory cannot keep running, their restaurant cannot open—yes, only when you are affected will you reflect. If you were not affected, would you not still be bending over and working hard? Because you are not allowed to work, you have to think: After I can no longer work, what will I do? After I have no income, what will I do? What is life ultimately for?

I do not mean to imply any accusation against those who are involved in this manner.

Seth puts it very reasonably, without any intention to accuse. For example, a while back in mainland China, that 23-year-old Pinduoduo girl died suddenly on her way home from work²⁰—if she had had a minor illness before that and spent a few days in the hospital, perhaps what happened afterward would not have occurred. A couple of days ago I also saw surveillance footage of a bus driver: while driving, the driver suddenly had a myocardial infarction. He pounded his chest while quickly stopping the bus, rushed out, collapsed, and never got up again. If he had had a minor illness earlier that allowed him to rest and recover, it would not have come to that later.

Seth says he does not mean to accuse these people, only to explain some of the reasons for this behavior—why people derive certain lessons from these mass events—epidemics and natural disasters are all mass events.

If you do not trust your own nature, then any illness or crisis will be interpreted as an assault upon health.

What is your nature? You are a part of nature, a part of the source of nature, one with nature. Epidemics are also a part of nature; are viruses not also a part of nature? Yes, viruses are also a part of your body. If you cannot understand your nature, if you cut yourself off from nature, then any illness or minor discomfort will be interpreted by you as a fierce attack on your health. Your body faithfully reflects your inner psychological matters—because you think this way, your body really does believe that someone has launched an attack on your health, and it rises up to resist.

Your emotional nature means that in the course of a lifetime you will experience the full range of emotions. Your subjective states are characterized by diversity.

Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, love, hate, passion, and enmity can all be experienced; this is our nature.

At times sad or despondent thoughts provide a refreshing change of pace.

Its use of "refreshing" is very clever—a feeling of something new and refreshing. This kind of despondency and sadness will bring you into a period of quiet reflection, the body settling down so that it can rest. Right now, we can regard it as God watching us humans working too hard, giving humanity a collective vacation, and this vacation is quite long—lasting a year, a year and a half, possibly. We normally think this is impossible to achieve. Someone posted a joke: I used to think that doing nothing at all, lying at home, with no one criticizing you—such a life would simply be too happy, but it could never happen; I never expected that this year it actually happened, and it happened several times. You do not have to do anything, just sit at home, no need to go to work or school, no one criticizes you, and you feel perfectly at ease. Some local governments even give you subsidies—the United States has been handing out money very aggressively; those with truly low incomes receive more in benefits than they did from working. The United States has so far given 4 trillion US dollars to its citizens²¹; at an exchange rate of 6.5 or 7, that is 28 trillion RMB already distributed. These people are very comfortable; they do not even want to go back to work. They stay at home every day with the money, which is not one bit less than their salary, and even more.

See how good heaven is—why do you keep saying the pandemic is bad? Normally, if you wanted to rest for a day, would your boss agree? Of course not. Now you can rest at home with a clear conscience. Why not reflect and think about life?

If you have been too listless, or caught in a psychological or physical bind, fear—even seemingly irrational fear—can be used to arouse your body.

Many people just go through the motions day after day, muddling along, too listless; or they are caught in a psychological or physical bind—they do not want to continue their current state, but they do not dare change jobs; they do not want to continue their current life, but they do not dare change their way of living. This dilemma is fear.

Sometimes, seemingly absurd events—a natural disaster, a great plague—throw your existing life into complete chaos and bring you fear. In the face of this enormous fear, it can awaken your body, so that you no longer muddle along. Over the past few hundred years, under the development of industrial civilization, we humans have been unable to stop the pace of industrialization. All seven billion-plus humans are working ceaselessly, day and night, under the great model of mechanization, industrialization, globalization, and financialization, without knowing what it is all for, without time to stop. We often joke: Please stop your steps, so that the soul can catch up with the body. We move too fast; we have no time at all to think about the purpose and meaning of life. Every day we are busy going to work, making money, eating. Now, God has suddenly intervened: None of you should work anymore; all pause, all rest, stop and think about why you are alive.

Some people are afraid, afraid of death, saying what if I catch it, what if I die. Only at this point do you think: What if I catch it? On TV it looks so terrifying, dead within days, and my life has not even properly begun. This kind of fear will produce an awakening of the body.

If you trust your nature, then you can trust such feelings, and following their own rhythms and paths, they will change into other feelings.

If you believe in your own nature, believe that you are a part of nature, believe that in the end you will surely be safe and well—nature will surely ultimately return to calm—then if you follow their steps and rhythms, they will surely bring you out of fear and into some other state.

Ideally speaking, even illness is a part of the body's health, representing necessary adjustments, and it also follows the needs of the individual at any given time.

In a special period of your life, when you get an illness—do not complain about heaven or blame others; just rest well. Your body knows better than you do that it needs a rest. This is a part of the interaction among body, spirit, and psyche. When you do not understand how the underlying operations work, you are forced to accept it; just rest well for a few days. Since you do not know, what we should do is go along with it—on the premise that you trust your own nature.

Most of our readers have at one time or another suffered from some disease usually considered very dangerous, and never knew it at all.

Do not doubt it. Most people in this lifetime have at some point had some disease usually considered very dangerous, but never knew it, because the body healed itself normally and naturally. That illness was never labeled, never recognized as a condition, never stirred up anxiety and fear; it came and went, even escaping your annual physical examination.

In such instances a natural healing takes place, and this is seldom the body's doing alone.

That is whose credit then? For example, this kind of healing does not only involve changes within the body. The body's self-healing may originate from events that seem completely unrelated -- certain events that happen in Framework 2, and you simply do not know what they are. Your body may just be a necessary arrangement for certain other events. You do not need to worry about it; in Framework 2 it naturally gets better. So you will find that many people emphasize that one must have a physical exam every year, or even many times a year. I am not denying the impact physical exams have on people, but from this angle, physical exams actually also have their downside -- originally this illness would come and then go away on its own, but when you happen to catch it during your exam, you find a nodule, or some index is off; if you did not know, it would be gone in two months, but once he tells you, you get nervous: "Oh no, oh no, I am going to have a myocardial infarction." Then all the problems come flooding in.

The key point here is that each of us may have had such a fatal illness at some point in our lives, yet cured ourselves without knowing it. What cured you was not your body -- it was not the body's credit.

Every individual has some portion that is in direct contact with the very source of his or her own existence. Each person is born with the innate knowledge that help is available in every situation, and that information does not necessarily come only through the physical senses.

A portion of every person is in direct contact with the source of his or her own individual existence -- in Framework 2, or at the level of your entity, your soul. Much information does not come only through the physical senses, and does not come only by making you ill.

Many illnesses, then, are cured through quite natural methods, methods that require no effort at all, and no treatment. This involves not only the healing of the body, but also the use of other events, events that have a great deal to do with the psychological components involved behind the scenes.

So some illnesses, if you leave them alone, will also get better -- that is what this means. Those interactions can only be found in Framework 2 -- in Framework 1 you cannot find why the illness came, nor can you find why it got better; most likely they are all caused by changes in certain psychological components in Framework 2 and the events related to them.

This session ends here, and Seth wishes everyone good night. Near the end, Jane's delivery slowed down, and Seth mentioned the recent science about the "selfish gene" -- a topic Jane and Rob had discussed earlier that day.

There are some biologists, zoologists, and psychologists who have recently published some very highly praised books. They claim that our genes consider only their own survival, and manipulate our individual behavior. Even when we think we are displaying a trait such as altruism, the inner impetus is still the genes manipulating each of our behaviors for their own survival.

They have elevated the selfishness of genes to a very high level. Jane and Rob felt that this idea of self-centered gene behavior was overly narrow, simplistic, and mechanistic.

Using currently accepted scientific terms, the concept of the selfish gene implies that the gene has a plan of its own, which is therefore very dangerous, and contradicts several basic scientific dogmas. Life arose by chance, and it perpetuates itself through random mutation and natural selection, and basically life is meaningless.

The selfish gene theory goes like this: life arose by chance, perpetuates itself through random mutation and natural selection, and basically life has no meaning.

As I occasionally do while writing, I have simplified science by portraying a multifaceted discipline in simple, humanized, personalized terms. But now it seems that when science claims it understands the workings of the DNA molecule, scientists then claim they have uncovered the secrets of DNA, and reduce our functions to a mechanical function that is easily understood.

Scientists think we humans are very simple, and that once they have studied DNA they understand the entire secret of humanity. Have they actually understood it? No. Human scientists' current understanding of life is extremely superficial, and even wrong.

But Jane's and my contention is that understanding the miraculous workings of DNA should increase our sense of the wonder and mystery of life. All the parts of DNA have been exposed, but the question of the life within it still remains unanswered.

DNA has been fully decoded by humans -- in that era it was not only understood, but now even the entire human genome map has been drawn²². So what? Does drawing the map mean you understand life? Still no. The question of what life is has still not been resolved.

Why does science want us to believe that we are creatures involved for the sake of the survival of our selfish genes?

Is this not nonsense? Even those biologists and other scientists who insist on our mechanistic basis also do so with emotion, going further and further down the wrong path. This school of theory is called genetic determinism and the selfish gene theory: genes determine everything about humans, and genes themselves are selfish -- human reproduction is for the reproduction of genes; after the X chromosome and Y chromosome combine, they make a combination and transmission of the parents' genes, driving the reproduction and development of the entire human society.

But in that period, this argument was extremely popular -- at that time the great power of genes had just been discovered, and people regarded genes as the root solution to all problems, as if solving the gene problem would solve the problems of humanity and life. Yet several decades have passed, and human genetics has achieved unprecedented development, but humans have actually become more and more bewildered by genes. The complexity of genes far exceeds human imagination. It is not like you think, that changing one gene changes one thing -- indeed changing one gene may change one thing, but the gene segment you change works in combination, and you do not know what other effects it produces when combined with other genes. It may cure your diabetes, but it may also affect other changes. This kind of permutation and combination works as a whole, and cannot be quantified and analyzed the way humans imagine.

This is why all scientific research today has placed very strict limits on genetic research -- genetic research cannot be conducted on human embryos. Two years ago, in 2018 or 2019, a so-called scientist in China announced that he had successfully performed genetic modification on a pair of twin baby girls, making them immune to HIV infection for life²³. He thought it was a major breakthrough, and the domestic news initially reported it with great fanfare, but it was immediately discovered that this violated the worldwide common agreement on genetics. China had also joined that organization, the agreement that genes must not be used for embryo research. Why openly violate it? Because your genetic modification of these twins, making them immune to AIDS, is acknowledged by the scientific community as correct; but do you know what subsequent effects this will have on the entire human gene pool? This gene segment can prevent you from being infected with AIDS, but what other effects does it have? What effects will its combination with the other ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine gene groups produce? Humanity still does not know. If these twins grow up, marry, and have children, what changes will occur in the children's genes? If such genes spread throughout human society, they are not natural, but modified by humans, and the consequences would be unimaginable. Therefore research on embryonic genes is strictly prohibited by all countries in the world.

You can do targeted drug therapy and gene modification therapy on adults. As Elon Musk has also said, in the future pharmaceutical companies will all go bankrupt, and only one kind of mRNA pharmaceutical company will remain. mRNA is the production method used for this COVID vaccine. The American vaccines are all produced with mRNA technology, called third-generation vaccines; China's is the first-generation inactivated vaccine. mRNA technology can not only produce vaccines, but can even treat many diseases; many diseases can be directly cured under mRNA technology. But it can only be used on adults -- this person has an illness, and you give him a genetic modification and repair, which will not affect others; it ends with him.

Scientists are extremely fascinated by the modification and function of genes, but they fundamentally do not understand life. DNA is only the part of life that ultimately manifests and functions on the material level; behind it, those life information codes invisible to the naked eye and invisible to instruments -- those intangible things -- are the most important. Human DNA can change; in a lifetime DNA is not dead, it undergoes changes, and the mechanism of those changes is also unknown to humans. The more genetic research is done, the less clear it becomes; instead, researchers increasingly marvel at the miracle of life, and do not know where to begin. Although achievements can be made in certain fields, on the question of life, the answer has still not been found.

Framework 2: The True Medium in Which Our World Exists

Today we are reading the fifth subsection of Chapter 3 of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which is Session 822. This session began at 9:27 p.m. on Wednesday, February 22, 1978.

At the beginning Seth had no classroom preamble at all; he came straight out and said:

In the terms we have been using, Framework 2 is the medium in which your world exists. It represents the larger psychological reality in which your own subjective life resides.

Simply put, this means that Framework 2 is the medium in which our world exists. How should we understand this "medium of existence"? For example, in our three-dimensional world, space is one of the mediums in which we exist. Without space, our three-dimensional world would not exist -- you would not be able to define anything. Imagine it: if space did not exist, it would be like that. And without time, our three-dimensional world also could not exist. Because without time, we would have no way to define the occurrence of events. In our lives, an event necessarily happens at a certain time and a certain space -- where it happened and when it happened, just like that. If these two preconditions no longer exist -- if an event happens and we do not say where it happened or at what time it happened -- then that event would be incomprehensible to our three-dimensional world.

Therefore, time and space are the medium in which events in our three-dimensional world exist. The world is made up of events; our world is made up of events. You may ask, how is that object, that thing, the world? Things and objects are also the world; they are a motionless world. For example, a stone that remains still is an unmoving world, or an unmoving action -- let us understand it that way.

Then what is Framework 2? Framework 2 is the true medium in which our material world exists. Time and space are not its medium; time and space are an illusion of ours, a kind of illusion of humanity, a camouflage and illusion constructed in order to build the existence of this three-dimensional world. They are not real. And the thing from which our world was actually born, or the place from which it emerged -- where our material world, this three-dimensional world, came from, the place from which it came -- Seth calls a medium. That is where we came out from.

That is to say, Framework 2 represents your own subjective life. What is subjective life? We have two kinds of life: one is objective life, and the other is subjective life. Objective life is the material world we are living in now, which we feel is objective. Although we have learned about spirituality and know that it should be subjective -- our reality is created by ourselves -- in our actual lived perception, you still feel that it is objective, because outside your body there are objects. And what does true subjective life refer to? Subjective life is life in Framework 2, or your inner life. Within your inner mental world, everything is centered on you. This kind of life is called subjective life.

So he says that this inner life of yours is your inner self, the place where your inner self exists. The life of your inner self is called subjective life, and it is in Framework 2.

Session 822

From Plato to Religion: Different Perspectives on Framework 2

Over the generations, many people have caught a glimpse of that framework. That is to say, since ancient times many people have seen that framework and given it many names. But:

If you visit a country, you will often describe the whole country only in terms of the small area you have been to, even though other parts may be quite different geographically, culturally, and climatically.

For example, say you have been to the United States, and this time you went to the East Coast, to cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. When you come back, your impression is that America is all big cities, modern cities. If you visited cities in the West, like Los Angeles or San Francisco, you would find that they are quite different from other cities -- the high-rises downtown make up only a small part, and most of it is very sprawling. Many people say Los Angeles is basically one big village, and some people happily call Los Angeles "Shanji Village," because it is like a rural village, very, very large. The entire Los Angeles area is roughly 5.5 to 6 times the size of the entire administrative area of Beijing -- including its suburban counties²⁴. So it is huge, which is why they call it Greater Los Angeles.

This is what happens when we go somewhere and then use the place we visited to stand in for the whole. The one place you went to is only a small part of that country, but when you come back and tell others about it, you say America is basically one big village; if you went to New York, you say America is all big cities, about the same as Shanghai. But is your understanding complete? No, it is not. Every American city has its own character -- Austin, Memphis, Salt Lake City, each city has its own unique features. But we do not perceive it that way. We only have an understanding of the places we have been to, and that cannot represent the whole of America.

The same logic applies to going to China. A foreigner goes to China and only visits Chengdu in Sichuan, and when he comes back he tells everyone that Chinese people all eat spicy food, that Chinese people are especially good at eating spicy food. But some places cannot eat spicy food at all -- the Jiangsu and Zhejiang region, for example, rarely eats spicy food. But you do not think that way. This is exactly what Seth means -- using a part to stand in for the whole.

So those people who more or less perceived Framework 2:

Described it according to their own brief visit, using their own brief perception, taking it for granted that the part they saw was the whole, that it was a representative sample of it.

They took the part for the whole, which is the principle of the blind men and the elephant I just mentioned.

Plato, for example, caught a glimpse of Framework 2. Plato depicted it as the world of ideals -- he wrote a book called The Republic²⁵, which is actually a description of Framework 2, but limited only to the part he perceived. In Framework 2, Plato could see that behind every imperfect physical phenomenon there was a perfect model, so he described it as an ideal republic. He thought of that realm as eternal and unchanging:

A perfect, ice-like composite.

In one respect, the Framework 2 he referred to does indeed inspire people to achieve, and it does show its perfect side, motivating people to reach that perfect state; but on the other hand, it also reproaches them for their failures, because their achievements, by comparison, must seem very humble. What does that mean? It means that when you compare things against those perfect results in Framework 2, everything you do is imperfect, everything is very humble -- because in contrast with that kind of perfection, nothing is perfect.

But is that correct? No, it is not. Plato only saw the perfect side of Framework 2. He described and praised that perfect side to the utmost, and then he caused other people to develop a misconception about the whole world of Framework 2: that Framework 2 is full of perfect things, and that everything in our world is imperfect, bad, and very humble. So Plato regarded Framework 2 as an admirable absolute model, a template -- a future vision that humanity should strive for and develop toward, an absolute idol. All human achievements were supposed to have their original source in it; all the achievements we humans have attained were supposed to have their roots in the perfect inner nature of Framework 2.

But this is Plato's idea; do not take it as truth. According to Plato, human beings themselves cannot influence that ideal world in the slightest, but can only use it as a source of inspiration. We have no influence whatsoever over that ideal republic -- everything in it is perfect, and people can only develop according to that ideal goal, so that one day we can build a society of great harmony. They are already perfect, so what constructive role is left for you? Just study obediently, and if you can learn to be like that, that is already good enough. That is one of Plato's viewpoints. Although this perfect template can give us a great deal of inspiration, we can use its perfect form to guide our present lives.

As for building a great harmonious society for humanity, he was not the only one with such ideas. For example, in ancient China, Confucius wanted to establish that society of great harmony²⁶, a civilized human society full of poetry, ritual, and music, where everyone would put propriety first. For example, in ancient China, Confucius wanted to establish that society of great harmony, a civilized human society full of poetry, ritual, and music²⁷. Ancient China had many such eras.

Those ancient religions placed their deities in that place. Some ancient religions placed their gods in Framework 2, believing that every living being has a soul, and that our souls are all in Framework 2, all in heaven. Thus Framework 2 has always been regarded, to some extent, as the source of your world -- our souls are there, so does our world also come from there? This is the understanding religion gives us.

Christians regard it as heaven, the dwelling place of the Heavenly Father, his angels and saints, and the faithful departed²⁸. Christians regard it as heaven, the dwelling place of the Heavenly Father, his angels and saints, and the faithful departed²⁸. Our Buddhism also has a similar view; Buddhism calls it the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss. Maitreya Buddha established a Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, and there you can be free from the suffering of reincarnation and just peacefully devote yourself to practice. In modern terms, that place has extremely strong energy, an extremely good field; one lifetime of practice there is equal to practicing for millions of lifetimes in the human world. So after death you go there. But the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss is not your final destination; it does not mean that once you get there you are enlightened or in heaven. It is only a place for practice, a good place for practice. That place is clearly not in our physical world; it is clearly in a world after our death -- in fact, it is even more in a space of our psyche, a space of our psyche.

There was a time when scientists theorized that the ether was the medium through which the physical world existed²⁹. There was a time when scientists theorized that the ether was the medium through which the physical world existed³⁰. This is Seth explaining, from different angles -- philosophical, religious, and scientific -- how different kinds of people, after seeing a part of Framework 2, understood Framework 2.

Ego and Inner Self

Seth went on to say that Framework 2 is the psychological medium in which world consciousness exists -- not individual consciousness, but world consciousness. Then he talked about the word "ego." This word is quite controversial; people do not like the ego -- in English it is called ego, and in the Western context ego is not a good word, suggesting that a person is overly conceited, arrogant, and obstinate. To say someone has a big ego is to say that person has something of this kind of character. So ego has a bad reputation in many circles.

But Seth said, I use the word ego as a neutral expression. Ego is actually somewhat like what we in Buddhism call the small self, or what other spiritual courses call the small self, the "I" within this "attachment to self," this physically oriented I. Seth said:

I use it to express the self -- that "self" in quotation marks -- the portion that is ordinarily consciously oriented.

This "self" is the entire, complete self, and it has a conscious portion and an unconscious portion. The consciously oriented portion is what we call the ego. This ego is a conscious version you have of yourself -- each person has a cognition of themselves: who I am, I am a man, I live in such and such a place, I am so-and-so's father, so-and-so's parent, I am such and such a person -- this is a conscious version. If I may say so without boasting -- Seth himself said -- he treats the word ego as a neutral expression, and it is a splendid thing.

This ego is outwardly directed toward the physical world. The ego is a self of a multidimensional world, merely a manifestation of that self directed toward the physical world. However, it is also aware of some of your unconscious activities; it is not as if it knows nothing at all. For example, it is the you that you recognize as you; it is the you that you feel is what you are. Therefore it is as aware of your dreams as you are -- right now we keep saying "I am like this, I am cultivating, I am learning, I am improving"; the "I" we keep referring to is this ego. It is one with you, and it can also sense that you are dreaming, and it is quite aware of the fact of the dream.

That is, its existence is such a fact: its existence is built upon knowledge that it itself does not possess. What does that mean? To put it more plainly, it does not know where it came from at all. Regarding its own existence itself, its knowledge is lacking -- it does not know where it came from, nor what sustains its existence, nor how the interior of this physical body operates. It seems as though it can control this physical body, as if someone built you a mechanical skeleton of a body and handed it over to your consciousness for you to control. You can only give it commands, such as walk, lift your leg, do this or that. But the internal operations of the body's skeletal structure involved in this -- which muscle, which nerve transmits what, how tense the body's muscles must become, how every muscle in the whole body must coordinate in movement to achieve the state you want -- this you seemingly cannot control, and you do not know how it operates, yet it operates on your behalf. So you will find that the knowledge of your own existence is something you do not possess.

You have a fully conscious ego directed toward the physical world, and you also have an inner self directed toward inner reality. In other words:

There is a portion of your fully conscious self that is in Framework 2.

You are in both of these worlds at the same time. In your ordinary world, we call it Framework 1. Within Framework 1, the ego is specially equipped to deal with that environment. It manipulates with the sequential moments of cause and effect; it deals with an objectified reality. So we call this an objectified life and an objectified world. We have two portions: one portion is the inner self, living in Framework 2, where there are no concepts such as time and space; the other portion of us lives within this physical body and is materially oriented. Within this material orientation, we fully follow the cause and effect of this world and follow the physical laws of this world. It deals with an objectified reality -- the objects around us, our table, environment, life, the corresponding counterpart characters -- these all objectively exist; this is an objective reality.

This ego can extend its own abilities and become more aware of the inner world than usual. Are we not now studying this Seth material precisely to expand this ability? To explore that inner world we previously did not notice. But its main purpose is to deal with the world of effects, to make contact with the world. This point is very important -- many people, after cultivating to the end, no longer know what they are supposed to do. We live in this physical world, we have such a physical existence, and we must necessarily make contact with the things that happen in our physical world. The things that happen in the physical world are all results, not causes. Where are the causes? The causes are all in Framework 2. Framework 2 contains the causes, but in Framework 1 you cannot find the causes; they are simply results.

But we who live in the three-dimensional world do not think this way. We ordinarily believe there is cause and effect: one action is the cause of the next action, and the next action is the cause of the one after that -- this is how we understand cause and effect. But all the actions you see in the three-dimensional world are not causes; they are all effects. The true cause lies in the very moment your thought arises; that is the cause.

Therefore what we deal with in the three-dimensional world is all related to the world of effects; it is called the world of effects, the world of results, not of causes. We make contact with the world, we feel the world -- this is normal. We make contact with the inner world, with a spiritual world, with the space of Framework 2, and from within it we come to understand how the effects we experience today came about. But if you say, since I know how this effect came about, do I no longer need to experience this effect? No, you still have to turn back and make contact with the effect. It is just that your cognition of this effect is very calm and accepting, because you know where it came from and why it happens in your life. You no longer feel, as you did before, that these things all happen by chance, that these are all accidents, that these are all impermanent. You will find there is no impermanence, no accident, no chance -- anything that happens in this world has its inner cause.

On the Buddhist Analysis of Cause and Effect

But this cause is not the cause and effect spoken of in Buddhism. Everyone, remember this: it is not that cause and effect, not that karma and retribution or anything like that. Why do I say this? Because the karma and cause and effect spoken of in Buddhism refer precisely to your arising thoughts and stirring intentions -- your arising thoughts and stirring intentions are the cause, and the cause will bring about the effect. So Buddhism says, how can there be no cause then? Then you must not have arising thoughts and stirring intentions. You must be like stillness, like water, like a pool of still water, or like a stone, with a heart utterly calm within. Once you have no activation of thought, no arising thoughts and stirring intentions, you will not create karma, and there will be no effect, no karmic force, and no such reincarnation -- because without karmic force there is nothing to pull you into reincarnation. This is the understanding of most people in Buddhism.

But this understanding is actually wrong. Why is it wrong? The error of this understanding lies in the fact that it only considers the problem from a three-dimensional standpoint. It separates Framework 1 and Framework 2 and looks at the problem in isolation. From the standpoint of Framework 1, this self in Framework 1 has only come out to experience the effect -- and as for how this effect came about, the person in Framework 1 simply does not know. You think you know, so you make up a reason for yourself, saying that this event happened because of such and such a cause -- but none of these reasons hold up. Truly, from a higher perspective, what you do in Framework 1 is handle one completed event after another. What you handle is the effect; what you feel is the effect.

In Buddhism's view, since you can only feel the effect, since you are passive and cannot actively resolve anything, then your existence in this three-dimensional world is rather meaningless -- you are like a passive character, thrown into a role, like playing a game where the scenes and everything have already been set, and you just go through the experience and that is all. That is how they see it.

But the error of this premise lies in this -- what they do not know, or what they knew but later people did not understand correctly, is this: the effect in this three-dimensional world can actually influence the cause in Framework 2. The two are in a relationship of mutual influence and mutual containment, not, as the common understanding of Buddhism would have it, cut off from each other. So you want to leap out of this reincarnation and return to that thing beyond reincarnation -- but you yourself are already in Framework 2. You yourself have already left reincarnation behind. How else do you want to leave reincarnation? Your lifetime after lifetime in this three-dimensional world -- you think you have not left reincarnation, but in fact you are leaving reincarnation -- because one part of your life is half here and half there. You are already in the state of having left reincarnation. What reincarnation do you want to leave?

You say, I want to exist purely in Framework 2 and live there, purely live in Framework 2 -- this is an attachment or a kind of thought you have in your state in Framework 1. Why? Because not only are you living in Framework 1 and Framework 2 at the same time, you may also be living in Framework 3, Framework 4, Framework 5, Framework 6. We ourselves are beings of a multidimensional world. We ourselves are a conscious existence that exists simultaneously in every reality space. How can you say, I do not want to exist in one state of consciousness, I only want to exist in another state of consciousness? They influence each other and interpenetrate each other. When you live in Framework 2, it will inevitably stir up your life in Framework 1; and your life in Framework 2 will also trigger certain behaviors of yours in Framework 3. These frameworks are not separate. They are layered and overlapping together -- a kind of quantum-state superposition, not, as you understand it, like separate compartments, like rooms, where you walk from one room to another, or upgrade from one level to another level, and once you have upgraded to that level you no longer regress, no longer come back. Buddhism often uses the word "regression."

This is because you have not understood this matter thoroughly. You still carry fixed views, you still carry a discriminating mind. High and low, good and bad -- are these not all the discriminating mind? The Buddha told you from the very beginning that the first thing to remove is the discriminating mind. But in the end, after all your study, you have thrown away the worldly discriminating mind, yet you have picked up the discriminating mind of spiritual practice -- you still have distinctions of high and low, noble and base, good and bad levels. Is there any essential difference? There is no difference. What difference is there between this discrimination and that discrimination? There is no difference at all. For example, you like the beautiful and the not-beautiful in female appearance, and you divide beauty into several grades and pursue it; and you divide the states of spiritual practice into several grades and pursue them -- there is no essential difference between these two discriminations. They are exactly the same.

So this is a core issue. We originally live in a multidimensional world, and this world itself is mutually influencing, mutually interlocking, and simultaneously existing -- remember this point: it exists simultaneously. So in this state, how do you leave reincarnation? From which point do you extract yourself? You cannot extract yourself. You are all together. It is not that the Buddha taught wrongly; it is that we who came later understood wrongly.

The Inner Self's Duties and the "Reciprocal Transfer"

Alright, let's return to Seth. He says:

The inner self is fully conscious. However, it is a part of you that is responsible for the formation of events, and it delightedly immerses itself in a highly resilient creative activity that is specifically excluded by your particular space and time.

The word "delightedly" here is very interesting. He uses a very anthropomorphic expression. What he means is that your inner self -- your inner self -- is responsible for the formation of events. You have two parts: an outer self and an inner self. The outer self deals with the space-time relationships of the three-dimensional world, causal relationships, the natural laws of the human world -- these are what your outer self handles. What is your inner self doing? It is responsible for the formation of events -- how it generates events, it is the cause behind the occurrence of events. And when it is handling events, it is delighted. Why delighted? You can imagine how your inner self, with a certain smug satisfaction, creates one event after another -- not in our space-time, but in another realm of activity that our space-time does not recognize. It carries a certain smug delight, and it is also immersed -- fully focused, its energy wholly devoted to creating this world.

The so-called unconscious is quite conscious. Seth says:

The so-called unconscious is quite conscious.

He has said this before. What do we think the unconscious is? The unconscious, the inner self -- remember the relationships among the inner self, the outer self, the entity, and All That Is that we discussed in Chapter 1 of Seth Speaks; you can go back and review it carefully. The unconscious part is actually the part where our inner self is active, but our conscious awareness cannot perceive it, so we call it the unconscious. Seth says the unconscious is conscious; it is simply that part of consciousness that we humans cannot understand -- it is indeed active in another realm of activity, and its consciousness does not operate within our three-dimensional world.

However, between these two parts of the self -- which two parts? The inner self and the outer self -- there must be a small psychological space, a psychological space. Seth says:

These seem to be undifferentiated areas.

Between the inner self and the outer self, between the unconscious and the conscious, there is a transitional space. This space is undifferentiated -- you cannot say it is conscious, nor can you say it is unconscious; you cannot say it is in Framework 1, nor can you say it is in Framework 2. It is such an in-between zone. During this period, a reciprocal transfer takes place. What is a reciprocal transfer? It is a mutual transfer -- the data of Framework 1 goes to Framework 2, and the data of Framework 2 goes to Framework 1; they are engaged in a two-way exchange of information.

Why use "transfer" instead of "exchange"? Because distortion occurs in both directions. When information from Framework 2 passes through this in-between zone to reach Framework 1, it has already undergone transformation and distortion. Why can't it tell us directly, clearly, and plainly what Framework 2 is really thinking, what it really wants us to do? Because the information from Framework 2 is something you cannot comprehend. To use Seth's later words, its psychological thickness, the depth and breadth of its consciousness, is something that the conscious self in our three-dimensional world simply cannot bear.

Let me give you a simple example. Framework 2 considers your role within the entire world -- remember, the entire world. It considers the interactive relationships among all consciousnesses in the whole world, and then, through precise calculation and deliberation, it points out the most effective and wisest action you should take in your present circumstances. But this computational process cannot be told to you, because it is too vast. For it to tell you "you should go eat a hamburger right now," it has already gone through countless calculations to discover that eating a hamburger at this moment is the best choice. You might say, well, wouldn't eating noodles right now be fine too? Its calculation result is that eating a hamburger at this very moment is better than eating noodles. Fine, you say, then tell me why eating a hamburger right now is better than eating noodles. If the consciousness of Framework 2 could tell you the result of that calculation, you would not have to do anything else for the rest of your life -- you would spend your entire life trying to understand its computational process, and you still might not fully understand it. Would that be meaningful? No, it would not.

You might say the hamburger versus noodles example is too simple, so let me give a more complex example: should you join the military or get a job? You do not know how to choose, and it will tell you how to choose. As for what deductions went on behind the scenes, it cannot tell you -- because you would not understand. The reason you would not understand is that it is too complex; you do not have the wisdom or the intelligence, and your computational capacity is insufficient.

You might say, what difference does it make whether I marry this girl or that girl? You think you are fumbling around blindly, you think you chose at random by chance, but in fact it has already made the choice long ago. You say, wait, why is the choice not the life I wanted, with fancy cars, beautiful women, and wealth? Because what it chose for you is a state you can accept right now -- that is, the best state you are capable of experiencing in your life. You say, no, if I had money, that would be the best. Fine, then I give you money, but what if you die tomorrow? Suppose after you become rich you start taking drugs, and the first time you overdose, and just like that you are gone -- dead. Do you think having money is good or not? You say, no, I do not want that; I want money and health. Fine, add health. You want money and health, but you are unhappy your whole life, and no one will ever love you -- do you want that kind of life? No, you want money, happiness, and love. Fine, add love. You keep adding more and more conditions, and the final combined result is the life you have right now.

So the life you are living right now is the best arrangement your inner self has made for you; it is already the best arrangement. It is just that from your perspective you cannot understand it; sometimes you really cannot understand it. Many people say, "I tell you to surrender, to accept the present moment" -- is that not just a kind of Ah Q spirit? Is that not just passive acceptance? I remember someone put it very well: surrender is built on the premise of your recognition of his abilities. When you truly recognize, from the bottom of your heart, the subtlety and the wonder of Framework 2, then this surrender is not passive surrender; it is not the state of "I am not good enough, you are better." Rather, you can recognize the difference between the two of you. That you who exists like a god, who can foresee the world, who can change heaven and earth, who can arrange all these things -- that is also you. What is there to be dissatisfied about? The miraculous abilities I just described -- the person who possesses those miraculous abilities is none other than you. It is just the you that you cannot perceive -- the you living in Framework 2.

So when information from Framework 2 reaches you, it is necessarily a translation; it is necessarily not the real thing. It is a distortion of the information being transmitted. This is also what we discussed earlier about the origin of myths -- myths come from this, and ignorance comes from this as well. Buddhism says that from the moment a person is born, they are in ignorance; ignorance is innate. Where does it come from? It comes from this. If you insist on asking, "Why do I do this and not that?" that is a form of ignorance. You do not know why life makes these choices, so it is called ignorance. But as for why life makes these choices, the inner you knows -- the inner you arranged this life for you only after precise calculation.

Free Will and the Stage of Dreams

In this in-between zone, there is often a back-and-forth transfer. You have to tell Framework 2 what happened in Framework 1, and Framework 2 will make a correction. But when Framework 2 wants something to happen in Framework 1, it is not the case that once it arranges an event, that event is one hundred percent realized in Framework 1 -- no. So where does the free will of your little ego show up? It arranges one thing, but in the course of that thing, these "troublemakers" appear. There are many people like this: deep inside, the inner self has an impulse to go do something, but the person himself refuses to do it -- I insist on going against it. In between, he may be constrained by his traditional culture, ideas, humanistic values, morals, all kinds of restrictions, so he goes along all twisted up. The inner self cannot do anything about him either, because this outer thing still depends on your outer ego to carry it out. The inner self arranged a whole series of scenes for you, a whole series of chance encounters, a whole series of opportunities so that this thing could happen, but you just cannot let it happen completely. So what happens in Framework 2, at the level of Framework 1, is very often not one hundred percent carried out -- there are variables and deviations.

Interesting, right? Of course it is interesting. If everything were carried out one hundred percent according to Framework 2, then this kind of life would be no fun at all. So with this kind of deviation, Framework 1 has to tell Framework 2: what actually happened in reality, how it differed from what was planned, how to adjust next, and what kind of new adjustment to make based on your present situation. So they are constantly going back and forth, back and forth, over and over -- very interesting.

It is not that simple. Many people always want to describe this matter clearly within the framework of a scientific theory, as if it operated like a precision instrument, but they always overlook the primary role that the human being, or consciousness, or subjective consciousness plays in the middle of it -- they always overlook this attribute of consciousness, free will. Once they understand that there is Framework 2, they say, well then I do not need to do anything, I will just wait for Framework 2's arrangements -- is that okay? No. Framework 2 watches how Framework 1 performs. Framework 2 hopes you can perform brilliantly, perform beyond Framework 2's design -- that is what Framework 2 wants to see. Framework 2 does not mean that it sets something for you and you just go achieve it and that is enough. Framework 2 hopes that Framework 1 will surpass it, that on your level of creation you will complete it beyond Framework 2's expectations -- not like what we imagine, where we are just like a worker, and the boss assigns a job and we just do it according to him. Then what would they need you for?

The time of dreaming provides that kind of service -- the work of transferring back and forth between Framework 1 and Framework 2 is accomplished in dreams. This is really magical. Why do we dream? Can we just not sleep? No, you cannot -- remember this: a person can go without eating, but cannot go without sleeping. Because Framework 2 and Framework 1 need the time in dreams to interact.

In dreams, these two selves meet -- the outer self and the inner self run into each other in dreams, and merge to some extent. Seth gave a very vivid example: it is like on a night bus, two strangers might meet on the bus, exchange some opinions -- "Hey buddy, how was your day?" "Today was miserable, this and that happened." "Things are pretty good on my end." The two of them chat on the bus for a long time, and then when they reach the stop, each gets off, and from then on the two never cross paths again. After they talk for a while, they are surprised to discover that they are actually very close relatives -- so you are the child of a distant uncle on my mother's side, so we work in the same city but did not know each other. Only on this night bus did they see each other -- where is your hometown, where is my hometown, and as they talk they get closer and closer, and finally when they get down to the village they realize, oh, we are relatives, distant relatives.

But both of them are on the same kind of journey -- the journey of young people struggling in a big city. They seem to be traveling alone; after getting off the bus, each lives his own life, as if each were traveling on his own. But in fact, what are the two of them? They are one person -- one living a life in the physical world, and one living a life in the nonphysical world, in Framework 2. But neither of them knows the other; you could say they are two sides of one person. When do they get to know each other? Only on the night bus can the two of them meet and exchange their thoughts and feelings.

This is dreaming. In terms of dreams, as it is said:

In the undifferentiated zone, there is actually a great deal of activity.

According to this, the night bus is not quiet at all -- it is actually very lively. There, psychological transfers and shifts are made -- shifting from the state of consciousness of Framework 2 to the state of consciousness of Framework 1, and then shifting again from the state of consciousness of Framework 1 to the state of consciousness of Framework 2. What does transfer mean? Transfer means, for example, in Framework 2, within the space of your probable realities --

The Psychological Transference: The Interaction Between Framework 2 and Framework 1

Let us continue from where we left off. What is meant by psychological transference? Here is an example: in Framework 2, you married Zhang San. That is one possibility within Framework 2. In Framework 2, you might also have married Li Si, Wang Wu, and Zhao Liu — all of these could be happening simultaneously. But in Framework 2, when you married Zhang San and lived your life with him, you had a certain psychological feeling.

Once you come into Framework 1, suppose you really did marry Zhang San. Do you not also have a psychological feeling? We often say whether a marriage is happy or not, only the foot knows whether the shoe fits — whether your life with Zhang San is good or bad, the sweetness and bitterness in your heart is known only to you. Is that not a psychological feeling? And is this psychological feeling exactly the same as the feeling of that self in Framework 2 living with Zhang San? Not entirely the same. So this is where it gets interesting: there is a mutual transference — you influence him, and he influences you. The you in Framework 2 influences you, and you also influence the you in Framework 2, and there is often a process of correction.

Here is a simple example: you had a fight with your husband, a huge, earth-shattering fight, and you could not wait to go file for divorce the next day. But after sleeping through the night, without doing anything in particular, you just had a dream, or maybe you did not dream at all and do not even remember doing anything, yet when you woke up in the morning you found that the thought of wanting a divorce was gone, your mood had changed, and he no longer seemed so annoying to you. At that point you also noticed that your husband seemed to be treating you a little better than before, a little more gently. Then you completely changed and no longer wanted a divorce. I am giving this as an example, and not every case is like this, but at such a time it is possible that in the dream, the you in Framework 2 had an exchange and communication with you, and he transferred the psychological state he had in Framework 2 into a part of your psychological state. The reverse is also true — this is a process of mutual interaction.

So it is only in dreams that these two selves merge with each other, transfer back and forth, and finally come closer and closer together — you transmit your feelings to him, and he transmits his feelings to you. That is why sometimes you wake up with a brief, elated feeling, or wake up with the feeling of having met a very dear old friend in a dream. When we get up in the morning, we sometimes have a strange feeling, and that feeling is sometimes transmitted from the inner self in the dream, from that inner self. When I explain what psychological transference means, this is what I am referring to.

Events Are Already Completed in Framework 2

Seth says:

Your world is inhabited by people who focus on concrete activities and deal with those finished-product events.

In our world, there are people who only deal with those finished-product events. But not entirely finished products—they have openness to them—he is afraid that if you say "finished product," it loses its flexibility and variability. Every event has its own possible directions of development, but relatively speaking, they are dealing with finished-product events.

Your inner selves, however, reside in Framework 2 and deal with the actual creation of those events, which are subsequently objectified.

Since the rules of Framework 2 are different, that reality is not at all limited by your physical assumptions—physical assumptions being time and space—therefore it contains the inner selves of everyone who has ever lived on earth or who may ever live in the future.

What does this passage mean? The people living in this material world refers to us, the ordinary masses, and we deal with the finished products of these events, the results of events. Where is the event completed? It is already completed in Framework 2. But in Framework 1, we seem to watch with delight as these events go from beginning, to development, to climax, to conclusion, watching it as a process of gradual manifestation—yet this event is already completed at the level of Framework 2, so it is called finished-product-like.

But we also have an inner self, and our inner self lives in Framework 2, dealing with the creation of these events—how the event is created, dealing with the actual creation. One person plays two roles: we continue to be the screenwriter—the screenwriter is the one who creates how the event comes about; and we also play a role within the script. For example, during the day you are an actor in a theater troupe, playing this role; when you go home at night, you take off your costume and start writing the script, writing the play for the next day. The other actors do not know who the screenwriter is—very mysterious. I once saw a TV drama like that, I forget which movie, where the screenwriter was very mysterious, no one knew who it was, but actually the screenwriter was one of the actors in the troupe, yet no one knew which person. This actor himself knew: during the day he acts, at night he writes the script, how the next day's plot will unfold. You are just such a person.

The rules in Framework 2 are different from Framework 1. Framework 1 must be performed in chronological order—there is a beginning, there is sequence, the storyline proceeds that way. Framework 2 is completely free from the limitations of time and space, so it is not limited by any of our assumptions, and it contains the inner selves of everyone who has ever lived on earth and everyone who may live in the future. The people we meet in this lifetime can only live in the present era. But in Framework 2, all those who have lived in the past and all those who will live in the future are right here. The cast of characters in Framework 2 is extremely broad—you can even form a theater troupe with people from ancient times or the future—not limited by our restrictions, and that play is incredibly rich.

Seth says that what he is discussing now is only that aspect of the framework that relates to your world. Framework 2 is not merely oriented toward our three-dimensional world; it is a multidimensional existence, and our three-dimensional world is only one aspect of its manifestation. Are there also Framework 3, Framework 4, Framework 5 above it? Framework 2 is not only aimed at our three-dimensional world; its relationship with other realities, of course.

Creative Branches and Free Will

Seth mentions that, in Ruburt's own experience, Ruburt described this framework as a heroic dimension -- in the book The Politics of the Psyche³¹, Ruburt portrayed Framework 2 as a kind of heroic dimension:

He saw quite correctly that there is a great interplay between these two frameworks -- Framework 1, in which you ordinarily operate, and this more comprehensive reality.

But Ruburt did not thoroughly understand the creative branches involved, because at that time he had not yet realized that the main work of your world is in fact already done in the larger aspect of your existence.

There is something very subtle here. When the matters of Framework 1 and the matters of Framework 2 manifest in Framework 1, there is an interplay in between. It is not that Framework 2 designs something and Framework 1 fully realizes it -- there is an interplay in between, and this interplay itself influences the direction of the event. When it influences the direction of the event, it can actually only be counted as one of the creative branches. A branch of the main plot of a storyline splits off, like two flowers blooming from one stem, each telling its own story. And then you think this is a change, a branch of a Framework 2 event in the process of Framework 1; you feel it is changing, that it is no longer the complete thing from Framework 2. But what you have not understood is that such a change of yours was already designed long ago at the level of Framework 2; it is just one of its many branches.

But if it is one of many branches, then how does this interplay and this creativity happen? Is even this interactive action, this interactive effect, this interactive behavior also designed in Framework 2? This question is very subtle. Yes, it is designed in there. But in Framework 1, at the level of your consciousness, you cannot perceive this design. You think that it is because of your interaction with Framework 2 that such a branch, such a creative possibility, such a change has come about, and you think this is the greatest expression of free will. And at this level, it indeed is the greatest expression of your free will. But at the level of Framework 2, it sees you as merely one of the many creative branches of an event.

I do not know whether I have made this clear; this is really not something that language or words can fully articulate or grasp. Let me say it again from another angle. This matter easily confuses many people, and they easily fall into a kind of paradox that torments them, unable to distinguish between predestination and self-determination. In Liao-Fan's Four Lessons³², did we not discuss this? How long Liao-Fan could live -- was it calculated according to the Shaozi divine method, or was it something he changed himself by altering his fate in the end? Can one actually change one's own fate? Many people get confused here. That book explains it very well; you can understand it according to its explanation. Now I will only speak from Seth's perspective: the outcome of Liao-Fan's second kind of life was also designed in Framework 2; it just depended on his choice. If he chose the first kind, then he would follow the original path; if he chose the second kind, he would walk the second path. But from Liao-Fan's perspective, the second fate was something he fought for himself, something he created himself, an expression of his free will, the result of his changing his fate and refusing to accept it.

This is exactly the result that is wanted, exactly this feeling that is wanted: at the level of Framework 1, let every person have their own free will. But at the level of Framework 2, you indeed do not have free will. But then you say, does that mean I really have no free will? Wrong, you do have free will, but your free will cannot run outside the field of all the possibilities in Framework 2. This is like Sun Wukong, no matter how much free will he has, still cannot escape the palm of the Buddha's hand -- it is actually the same principle.

Do not think that, from a higher level, Framework 2 has decided everything, and has even taken into account this kind of possibility, this kind of creative branch, and even the interaction between the inner self and the ego, so what is the point of us still struggling? Should we just do nothing at all? This view is wrong. You cannot say that since I have seen the existence of all the possibilities in Framework 2, Framework 1 should do nothing. If Framework 1 does nothing, then nothing will appear, and no possibilities will exist. If you do not believe it, just try it: lie there like a vegetable, eating and waiting to die, hooked up to a nutrient drip, doing nothing at all -- what will you have? You will have nothing. You say, is being a vegetable also one of the settings of Framework 2? Yes. Framework 2 is inexhaustible and endless; it contains within it all the possibilities you can think of in Framework 1. When all the possibilities of Framework 1 are contained within it, then do the people in Framework 1 have free will? Of course they do. Your infinity is only a subset within their infinity, but to you it is infinity, and to you it is free will.

Information Has Already Been Unconsciously Processed by You

Specifically:

The accumulated knowledge readily available to you, those experiences, those records passed down orally through the ages in books, and the objectified information transmitted through television -- now you use computers to help you process information -- you have more or less directly obtained concrete knowledge because of all this. You acquire this knowledge through the operation of your senses, whether it is knowledge or information, it is all the same.

It is not that only theoretical things count as knowledge; gossip is also information. Once you obtain these things, knowledge becomes systematized. People accumulate facts within a particular field of study, then process them in a certain way. Your own senses are giving you information every moment, and that information, in a certain sense, has already been invisibly processed according to your own beliefs, desires, and intentions.

You think that the knowledge you have acquired, your feelings, your life experiences, your information -- a certain sentence you heard someone say, the books you have read, including what you hear me talking about here today -- you think these are all the results of incidental events or a series of events in the physical world. Seth wants to tell you that these things have all already been processed by you at the level of Framework 2. At the level of Framework 2, you select which information to let the Framework 1 you know about.

You humans use pens, paper, books, television, computers, and networks to record this knowledge, but within Framework 2 there is a network you cannot see, a knowledge base you cannot see, a vast system you cannot see, and all information and knowledge are in there. The Framework 2 you, according to its own choices, has invisibly processed it without your knowing. You cannot see the traces of its processing; what you see is one piece of information after another, one piece of knowledge after another, one piece of information after another. But they have indeed already been processed by you at the level of Framework 2. What are the principles of processing? They are processed according to your beliefs, your desires, and your intentions.

For example, if you believe this world is good, then all you see are good people and good deeds; if you believe this world is evil, then all you see are murders and arson. This is your belief.

Let me give a few simple little examples. You buy a new car of a certain brand and model, and then you find that when you go out on the street and look around, all you see are these cars, one here and one there. Before you bought this car, you seemed unable to see the existence of these cars. This is a typical real-life example.

Another example -- a few days ago someone shared a story in a WeChat group. A cultural exchange organization had a director in New York make a film about a modern New York-style city, and took it to Africa, wanting to do cultural exchange with the local tribal people. After the screening, the director saw that everyone was very excited, animatedly whispering and discussing among themselves. He thought the urban scenery of New York had made a very deep impression on people living a primitive life. Then he asked the translator: What are they discussing? Are they interested in my filming techniques or in certain things in the city? The translator went to ask those people, and they said: We found that chicken in the film so interesting; that chicken is the real protagonist of the film. The director was completely baffled: What chicken? I did not film a chicken; I filmed urban scenery, and there is no chicken in this film from beginning to end. But the deepest impression those people had was of this chicken; all the skyscrapers and neon lights held no interest for them, they only cared about that chicken. The director went back and watched his film frame by frame, and finally found a chicken in the corner of one video frame. That chicken appeared in only eight frames of the entire film -- one second of film is twenty-four frames³³, so eight frames took up only one third of a second -- yet this chicken became the main topic for all the Africans.

Why did these people only see the chicken? In a film with so much information, why did they only see the chicken? Because these people's beliefs, desires, intentions, and even their knowledge all determined that they could not understand anything else, but they could recognize and understand a chicken, because they also have chickens. So our information has been invisibly processed. In abstract terms, it is the Framework 2 you doing the processing; from the perspective of the three-dimensional world, it has been filtered out by your beliefs, desires, and intentions -- but these three things are also existences that are not in the physical world; they are all activities of our thought.

Seth continues:

You may ignore a stimulus that another person would immediately seize upon and regard as information.

This sentence is quite convoluted. It means you may tightly seize upon a piece of information, but another person ignores it. The chicken just mentioned was ignored in the director's eyes; the director could not see that chicken. But in the eyes of the Africans, that chicken was a piece of information they seized upon very tightly; it stimulated them greatly.

Even within your own world, your interests and desires are used as organizing processes that screen out certain information.

Your interests and desires are a sieve; they filter out the information you want. The information available in Framework 2 is, in your terms, inexhaustible. Whatever information you want, just use your interests, desires, and beliefs to filter it out.

It is the source of your world.

Who is it? Framework 2. Framework 2 is the source of our world.

It therefore contains not only all concretely available knowledge, but far more.

What Framework 2 contains is not merely a sum total of our existing world. If the amount of information in our three-dimensional world is represented by one, then the amount of information in Framework 2 is a multiple of ten to the power of several tens, or even more. Do not try to make analogies; it is so vast that you cannot imagine it -- not only inexhaustible, but unimaginably vast.

In any case, I do not want to compare the inner self with a computer.

Why does he bring up this example? Because a computer does not possess creativity, while the inner self is creative; a computer is also not alive.

You certainly think that the life you know is the only life. Yet that version of yours is only a manifestation of what you can only call a larger life.

The life you now think is the only one you have is only a materialized manifestation of that which can be called a larger life. Your present life has jumped out from within that larger life.

This is not meant in a derogatory sense, comparing the reality you know with the existence that is its source.

He says that in saying this, he does not mean to belittle your present life, the world in which your present life exists, compared with Framework 2, the source of your life -- he is not making a comparison, nor does he intend through this comparison to belittle your world, because you are only a part of the larger life.

For your own world contains, as does every other world, a uniqueness, an originality.

I do not mean to belittle you or your world. Including this materialized life of yours, and the world you experience, everything you experience in this world carries a uniqueness and originality unique to this world. That quality does not exist anywhere else -- it exists nowhere else; only you have it, only your world has it, only this life of yours has it. Because no world exists in the same way as any other world. Your world is your world; you are a unique existence in this universe. Not only in this universe, but in other universes and in other realities, you are also a unique existence.

The Inner Self, the Ego, and the Body's Operation

For example:

The inner self is that part of you that is aware of your reincarnational activities.

Only your inner self can be aware of this part of reincarnation. Your outer ego, once it dies, is simply dead, and cannot perceive reincarnation. But your inner self can perceive it.

It is the part of you that exists outside of time, and yet lives within time at the same time.

What does it mean to live outside of time? When you die, don't you separate from the physical world? Once you separate from the physical world, you separate from time. So your inner self does not live within time -- it is in Framework 2, and Framework 2 is not within this time either. But you also live within time -- when you reincarnate and go through the cycle of rebirth, you live within this time again. You live both within time and outside of time.

You form your own reality.

However:

The ego that you are aware of obviously cannot form your body for you or grow your bones.

The ego that you are aware of right now, this ego, has no way to grow your body and bones. All of that is formed by the inner self.

But it knows how to assess the conditions of the world.

This ego knows how to assess the conditions of the world. It can reason, it can move through the physical world with ease, exercise its own free will, and like a creator, create the heavens, create the earth, create everything.

Your reasoning abilities are extremely important.

You must remember this. Many people say, since Framework 2's computational power is so strong, then do I not need my reasoning abilities anymore? Framework 2 has already arranged everything -- what comparison is there between a personal computer and a quantum computer? I should just obediently go along with it. That is incorrect.

But alone it cannot pump your blood or tell your eyes how to see.

Your reasoning ability is very important, but it is not used to generate your body, grow your flesh and blood, or control how your eyes see. None of that requires your management; it all forms automatically.

The inner self does the actual work of those events that have been decided upon.

The inner self lets your eyes see, the inner self lets you experience events, the inner self generates how these events are concretely realized in the physical world -- you do not need to manage any of it, you cannot manage it, and you do not have the ability to. Even the matter of how you see things -- you cannot decide that, you cannot accomplish that. So what else could you possibly solve?

To put it in very simple terms:

If you want to pick up a book, and then do so, you consciously experience that event. Yet you are quite unaware of all the inner events that occurred as a result of that action.

You want to pick up a book, and you pick it up. But first, you do not know why you wanted to pick up that book; second, you also do not know the movements and processes involved in picking it up -- what motions your muscles, blood, and bones produced, what commands were issued -- you know none of it. You only know "I want to pick up this book." But your inner self not only knows why you picked up the book, it also operates the action of your picking it up, directing your body to pick up the book.

That is a simple example involving the body. Now let us talk about something bigger:

If you want to change your job, and you hold that desire within you, a new job will enter your experience in exactly the same fashion.

In what fashion? In exactly the same way that you picked up a book without being aware of how it happened. The manifestation of this world is just that simple -- it enters your experience. The inner events will be arranged by the inner self.

A physical event involves the action of many muscles and joints, and an event involving a change of job concerns the actions of many people, and implies a network of communication between all of the inner selves involved.

Something as small as changing your job involves a very complex communication at the level of Framework 2 between your inner self and those of other people, finally reaching a consensus that allows you to change jobs. Then when a mass event occurs -- such as a global pandemic, political activity, economic activity, including the stock incident that happened in America a while back, the GameStop case, that huge event of retail investors harvesting the institutions³⁴ -- do these mass events not imply the existence of an inner communication system at the level of Framework 2 that is far more complex than our modern internet technology? Of course, the complexity of that communication is far greater than anything we can understand.

Seth said he took a break in the middle.

Again, you may unknowingly catch a disease and recover from it, without ever realizing that you had been ill. And you are cured because of a series of events that seem to have nothing to do with that illness. For in Framework 2, I know the reasons for the illness and the recovery, and bring about the appropriate circumstances that will remedy those conditions.

It is like when you get a serious illness, but you recover without even noticing. During the process you do not know why it happened, nor why you recovered. But in Framework 2, he knows the reasons, knows why this event happened, and will also bring about the appropriate circumstances to remedy that condition. If nothing obstructs the recovery, this kind of thing will happen automatically -- automatic illness, automatic recovery. But if there is an obstruction, then it is over. For example, you go for a checkup and discover you have some kind of disease, and medically it is indeed that disease, and then you actively treat it, pouring all your energy and attention into that illness -- that self-recovery gets blocked, and it becomes very difficult for it to happen normally.

Maintaining Clear Communication with the Inner Self

Seth says:

The communication between the inner and outer selves should obviously be as clear and open as possible.

The communication between the inner and outer selves should be clear and open.

Generally speaking, the inner self relies upon your estimation of specific events. Your concern with the private aspects of your life, and your participation in mass events, are both highly connected to your estimation of specific situations, and to your beliefs and desires regarding them.

Let me put this in terms everyone can understand: your inner self, regarding what it wants to manifest, relies upon your beliefs to manifest things in the three-dimensional world—whether you want this thing to happen or not, and then you manifest it. After it is manifested, you may not actually like it; once the thing happens, you discover it is not what you imagined. At that point you will have feedback, and that feedback tells the inner self: this is not what I wanted, or not entirely what I wanted; if it were such and such, it would be better. The inner self will receive your feedback, and this applies equally to personal events and mass events. It is constantly estimating, and what does this estimation rely upon? It relies upon you, upon your evaluation, upon your degree of satisfaction with the matter.

In other words, what you need to do is this: figure out what kind of life you want to live, then tell the inner self, and the inner self will go and manifest it for you. You tell the inner self whether this manifested life is what you imagined, whether it is what you wanted—because before it is actualized, you cannot fully experience it. For example, you want the life of a rich person, but you only have a vague idea of it. Suppose the inner self gives you the life of a rich person according to your request, but then you discover that being rich also brings many troubles you had not noticed before, and it is not actually the life you wanted. At that point you need to give feedback to the inner self.

Here, your own estimation of specific situations is very important, and it is all connected to your beliefs and desires about them. The inner self very faithfully does these things according to your beliefs and desires.

You must never think that the inner self is some kind of leader over you or some kind of guru. In Buddhism, people often talk about having a guru, and everything the guru says is right; you cannot resist, you cannot talk back, whatever the guru says goes, and you even have to make offerings to the guru every day. Your inner self is not a guru; it is not someone you have to bow to several times a day and make offerings to. The inner self is in close communication with you; there is no question of who leads whom between the inner self and the outer self. They coordinate with each other and communicate with each other. You need to make this communication clear. How do you make it clear? If you like something, you like it; if you do not like it, you do not like it. You cannot be ambiguous. You cannot give the inner self a vague instruction—if it is vague, the inner self does not know what you actually think, and cannot figure out which one you actually want.

For example, you want a boyfriend, and the inner self gives you a boyfriend. Then after you put this boyfriend on, you are both satisfied and dissatisfied, hemming and hawing, dragging things out, and in the end the inner self does not know whether you are satisfied or dissatisfied, and you just drag it out for a whole lifetime and that is that. If you are satisfied, you are satisfied; if you are not satisfied, you are not satisfied. State it clearly and boldly, and then I will know how to adjust things going forward.

How can the information the inner self gives you be open? The inner self gives you information through hints, intuitions, and impulses, and sometimes also through dreams. When you are awake, it gives you information through various impulses, intuitions, and inspirations. At these times you need to remain very keen in order to recognize the inner self's communication. And for your own clear communication, you need to boldly, actively, and directly tell the inner self, in clear and explicit language, what kind of things you want and what kind of life you want. You need to say it concretely—placing an order with the universe, that is what it means. There can be no vagueness in the middle; you absolutely must not be vague, and you must not be too embarrassed to ask. If you do not say it, how is it supposed to know? Here you must remember, it is connected to your beliefs and desires—what exactly you want is connected to this.

Going further, Seth gives a very simple example:

If you want to write a letter, then you will go and do it. Between your desire, your belief, and that action and its concrete execution, there is no conflict.

You just go and write it. Therefore the action itself flows out very smoothly.

If for some reason, through a poor estimation of your present circumstances, you believe that such an action is dangerous, then you will obstruct the flow between the desire and its execution.

For example, you want to write this letter, but you estimate your present circumstances very poorly, saying, I should not write this letter right now; will writing this letter disturb someone, will others think badly of me? You believe that such an action is dangerous, and feel that writing the letter is worse than not writing it. Then you will obstruct the flow between the desire and its execution—you do not go and write it, but you still want to write it, and the creative flow that began with the inner self is blocked.

So I often tell everyone: satisfy your inner impulses; whatever you think of, go and do it. Act according to your inner impulses, and your flow of energy, your creative flow, will be opened up and will flow very smoothly. Once this small matter flows smoothly, the later big matters are the same as the small ones. Remember this: for the inner self, accomplishing a small thing and accomplishing a big thing—letting you eat a delicious ice cream and letting you become a billionaire—are the same thing to the inner self; there is no difference in complexity or difficulty. But if you are awkward from the very beginning, if you are even awkward about eating an ice cream—oh, is it too cold, is it bad for my health, is it too high in calories—do you think the energy and creative flow of wanting to become a billionaire can flow through you later? It cannot, because you blocked it from the very beginning. Do not say, in regard to big things, that you want such and such, while in small matters you keep being awkward with the inner self. You need to start with small things, act on the tiniest impulses and thoughts in your daily life, and only then can you attract greater fluidity later on.

The inner self and you will become more and more matched, more and more communicative. The two of you will be like best friends, like close buddies; it is telepathic—whatever you think, it knows; whatever you want to achieve, it can help you achieve. It is like having a very good close friend: you have had your heart set on a certain lipstick for a long time, and you could never find that shade, and then your friend sees it and buys it for you as a gift—and it is the very shade you had been searching for for so long. Your inner self is just like that. If you can reach this kind of psychic state with your inner self, then in your life everything will go as you wish, as if you had turned on a cheat code.

Ether: The Myth That Attempts to Make Framework 2 Concrete

The oral commentary on this chapter ends here. Later there was some private material, and some more talk about ether, which we will not go into. In that era, ether was a very popular concept, especially in the 1900s and 1890s, when scientists had a very obsessive³⁵ state regarding ether. Scientists could not figure out what our world actually exists within; some things they could figure out, some they could not, so they used ether to explain it -- our world exists within ether, and ether is invisible and intangible. This is an outdated theory; things that have already been rejected from a scientific standpoint are no longer discussed, and in the end ether simply does not exist. By 1905, with Einstein's publication of the theory of relativity, this theory was finally abandoned forever³⁶, and in the end it was completely given up.

But Seth says that he considers this concept of ether to be a very good, an excellent example. An example of what? It shows how humanity has always been trying to take its innate knowledge of Framework 2 and make assumptions about it, to concretize it, within physical reality. This innate knowledge within Framework 2 is itself a multidimensional knowledge, but when we want to concretize it in the three-dimensional world, we fabricate all sorts of reasons for it, and ether is one of the most excellent examples. Scientists at that time really wrote countless papers and scientific treatises about ether³⁷; he was not joking. Today we laugh it off, but at the time scientists really believed ether existed and conducted countless experiments to find evidence of ether's existence.

So Rob was very insightful here; he said this is actually a very good example. In other words, ether can be said to be a kind of nameless state of humanity, or a manifestation of a human myth. When we cannot properly understand that kind of truth, we fabricate something and then forcibly explain it -- that is how ether came into being, but later it was also disproven and abandoned.

That is all for our interpretation of this session. You will find that the more you study the Seth material, the more interesting it becomes, and the more deeply you feel it.

The Myth of Consciousness

This session has no preamble at all; Seth goes straight into the content.

Session 823

Yet the main myth through which you interpret your experience, through him.

What does this main myth tell you? It tells you that all your perception and knowledge must come through the physical senses. This is what the myth tells you, and you still have to use this myth to interpret your experience. This main myth tells you that your primary sensory perceptions all come through the physical senses. This can be called "the myth of externalized consciousness."

You are told that this consciousness is open only when it relates to objective reality. Seth used a very interesting phrase -- "you are told," meaning other people tell you this. Told you what? Told you that this consciousness you have now is open only when it relates to objective reality; when there is no objective reality, you have no consciousness. What this means is that consciousness must have an object of reference, must have something it is thinking about. You must have the thinker and the thought -- in Buddhism, the thinker is you, and the thought is what you are thinking about. You say, I can think, but can you do it without something to think about? No, you must think about something.

He says this seems to be at the other end. In those terms, that represents your birth. Consciousness, the consciousness you are told about, exists only when it comes into contact with objective events or objective reality; without objective events, you have no consciousness. In these terms, the birth of this consciousness also represents your birth -- only after life begins do you have consciousness; without a beginning, there is no consciousness. So conscious awareness, conscious perception, represents that you have life. And this is closed: before birth, how could you have consciousness? Only after birth do you have consciousness. It is as if your consciousness sprang into being out of nowhere, sealed within your life.

This is a myth. This myth tells you that consciousness can indeed have no source -- because the myth excludes everything; apart from a physically oriented, physically based consciousness, it does not acknowledge any other consciousness. This consciousness not only cannot exist before birth or after death -- because without a body, it cannot exist -- but quite obviously, it also cannot obtain knowledge that does not come through the physical senses. This is all what the myth tells you.

This myth, more than anything else, blocks your understanding, shutting you out from the larger nature of those events most closely connected with you. It separates those events from their original nature, their causes, their sources. This myth also makes your connection with mass events sometimes seem incomprehensible -- you do not know why you get drawn into these events, because you can no longer find the inner connections. Generally speaking, many mass events seem to make no sense -- how did you get drawn into them? Because the complex inner communication system of consciousness is not recognized at all -- in the previous session he mentioned that consciousness has an inner, complex communication system, which we cannot perceive on our conscious level.

The Consciousness of the Inner Self

Seth says that he is, for the most part, speaking to a Western audience. The Seth books were transmitted through Rob and Jane, so Seth knows that most of his content is addressed to Western listeners. Therefore, here, for specific reasons, he chooses certain terms, selecting terms on a level that Western listeners can understand, to make it easier for them to grasp. In other words, if Seth were speaking to an Eastern audience, he might use a different set of terms in order to explain the concepts in a way that could be understood. What is the term that suits his purpose? It is "inner self" -- the term "inner self" is a perfect fit.

Let me emphasize once again that this unconscious is indeed conscious.

He stresses again that the unconscious is conscious. The inner self is all unconscious; to say "unconscious" actually refers to the workings of the inner self -- to the outer self, it feels as though it is unconscious, but the inner self is actually conscious.

When I say that it is conscious, I mean that its reasoning is not irrational, its methods are not chaotic, and that its characteristics are not only equal to those of the known self, but are also more flexible and more knowledgeable.

What does this mean? What he wants to say is that, within the operations of this unconscious inner self, many of us understand this unconscious to be chaotic, irrational, and without logic. He says it is not so. When I say the unconscious is conscious, the consciousness I refer to is not the consciousness you understand. What I mean is that when this inner unconscious operates, it must also have its own inner logic and rationality; it is not chaotic. This logic and rationality of its own is not only equal to the characteristics of the known self -- the self being the characteristics of our present, conscious level -- but it is also more flexible and more knowledgeable.

To put it simply, the inner self, when it operates, has its own reasoning, logic, and rationality. Moreover, this reasoning, logic, and rationality is the same as the logic, reasoning, and rationality of your outer self, except that it is more flexible, more knowledgeable, capable of faster computation, and richer in information. It is not, as you might imagine, that the inner workings are utterly devoid of rationality. This viewpoint needs to be corrected. Therefore, the operating mechanism of your inner self is almost the same as that of your outer self, except that it operates faster, more efficiently, more flexibly, and with more knowledge.

Framework 1 and Framework 2

In normal terms, Framework 1 and Framework 2 obviously represent different kinds of reality -- that is certain -- and they also represent two different kinds of consciousness. This point is key. Framework 1 and Framework 2 not only represent two different worlds, they also represent two different kinds of consciousness. You must remember this. What does "different kinds of consciousness" mean? It means consciousness is not all one kind. For example, an ant's consciousness and your consciousness -- the two of you do not have the same kind of consciousness.

To keep the discussion as simple as possible --

Think of the consciousness states of these two frameworks as being connected by an undifferentiated area.

Between these two states of consciousness, there must be an undifferentiated area that connects the two states of consciousness together. And sleep, dreaming, and those trance states -- trance states are the kind of state you enter during meditation -- operate within that area. In this undifferentiated area, there exists a constant shifting of one kind of consciousness into another kind of consciousness, and energy is also converted back and forth. The energy of Framework 2 and the energy of Framework 1 are constantly being converted.

Seth said that he also often deals with information from your private lives, including your news broadcasts and news reports from all over the world. He said that when Rob and Jane ask him personal questions, he needs to obtain certain information about your private lives, and some of this information comes from broadcasts, and some from news reports around the world. What he means is that these things originally belong to Framework 1, but he also incorporates them into the considerations of Framework 2. This is what is meant by the exchange of information between Framework 1 and Framework 2.

The inner self can encounter a far greater amount of knowledge.

Its amount is far greater. It is not only aware of its own personal position -- just as our outer ego is aware of our own personal position -- the inner self is the same. And it is also familiar with the mass events of its reality. It knows how the mass events in its world come about. It is intimately involved in the process of creating your personal experience -- however your personal experience comes about, it is intimately involved behind the scenes.

He said, I say that the inner self itself can reason, but its reasoning is not limited by the restrictions of cause and effect. This is something we need to change. At the level of Framework 2, the way this consciousness operates is different from ours, but that does not mean it lacks order or logic. It can also reason, but the biggest difference between its reasoning and ours is that it is not limited by our cause and effect. We say "because of this, therefore that," "given the known conditions, we can deduce this result" -- these are the conditions we often use in our reasoning. But at the level of the inner self, when it reasons, it is not subject to these restrictions.

The inner self acts within the broader context of Framework 2.

It acts within Framework 2. This explains many events in your world that originally seemed unreasonable, as well as apparent coincidences. The inner self, within Framework 2, explains the events that seem unreasonable to us in Framework 1, or what we call coincidences.

Many realities within Framework 2.

Here you must remember that within Framework 2 there are many realities. Within Framework 2 there is not just one reality -- you can think of one reality as one event -- Framework 2 contains far more than just one event. All these many, many realities within Framework 2 cannot be properly explained to you in Framework 1 as facts. In Framework 1, they can only be understood by you as a kind of possibility.

Only because they involve a psychological thickness of fact, as you think of it, that cannot be translated.

Why can these many mass events within Framework 2 not be understood by us as facts? It is because the "psychological thickness of fact" they involve is greater than the thickness our psychology at the level of Framework 1 can comprehend. In other words, our psychology, intelligence, or consciousness in Framework 1 cannot bear the kind of feeling that exists in Framework 2. Its feeling far exceeds ours; we cannot feel it.

Let me give you an example to make it easier to understand. For instance, in this life of yours, you are either a man or a woman. You can only feel the feelings of being a man or being a woman. But within Framework 2, you can be both a man and a woman at the same time, feeling the feelings of both a man and a woman simultaneously. In that state, your mind in Framework 1 cannot comprehend it -- you cannot understand the psychological feeling of a person who is both a man and a woman at the same time. Let us not use the man-woman example. Say this person is both a king and a beggar at the same time. That kind of psychology is a wonderful feeling within Framework 2, but here in your framework you cannot understand it. You can only understand being either a king or a beggar.

Those two states are still easy to talk about. Let me give you a deeper example: suppose you simultaneously have one hundred states, one hundred roles, one hundred lives being experienced at the same time? You have one hundred possible worlds, one hundred parallel space-times, and you are experiencing all of them. Your mind, your little heart -- do you think you could handle it? You cannot understand it. And one hundred of you is still a small number. What if I say ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? A hundred million? Could your heart handle it? It could not. Your psychology could not bear it.

Therefore, the things within Framework 2 can only be treated by us in Framework 1 as a kind of possibility. That is why there is that superposition state in quantum mechanics -- that state is a kind of possibility. But within Framework 2, is it a possibility? No. When we look at Framework 2 from Framework 1, it is a possibility; but at the level of Framework 2, each one of them is a living fact, each one is a living world, each one is being played out vividly.

That you within Framework 2 -- it participates in all these different realities. So now you know how powerful you are -- the powerful one is that inner self of yours.

The Role of Dreams

These things that cannot be expressed through ordinary reasoning are often expressed through the symbolic language of art. Because they cannot be represented through words or through the conscious mind, they are expressed through the symbolic language of art. And many of your dreams are a kind of translation -- events in Framework 2 appear in symbolic form.

On any given day, the events of your personal life fit within a larger pattern of the world events in which they exist.

On any given night, the intimate world of your dream life also exists within a larger context of the world's dreams, in which they have their reality.

In other words, in our physical world, this world operates according to its own larger pattern, and our lives must merge into the operation of this entire world. And in dreams it is the same: within dreams there is a dream world, and this dream world is also always operating. The things that happen to us in dreams must also fit within a larger context of existence in this dream world, and it has its own rational existence -- just as our personal lives have rationality in their existence within our world.

As psychologists usually describe it, in a strange way, the consciousness you see is like a fruit with a shining outer skin but no flesh inside. A consciousness with a bright surface that responds to sunlight or rain or temperature or environment, but nevertheless a psychological fruit with no flesh and no core, containing a hollow at its center. In such terms, you experience only half of your consciousness, the portion attuned to the physical body. The fruit tree has roots, but you give this consciousness no ground for its existence.

What does he mean? He is saying that psychologists tell you about this consciousness of us humans -- that is, the consciousness we usually understand, our thoughts and ideas and thinking -- that it is empty inside. Consciousness is just consciousness, below it is the subconscious, and below the subconscious there is nothing more. That is what psychologists currently believe, and they have also proven it through various experiments. Because at the unconscious level, they cannot obtain any information from it. At most they have now reached the stage of the subconscious, but as for what lies beneath the subconscious, no psychologist has a correct answer.

But many psychologists, through experimental research, have discovered that beneath the subconscious there is a void. I previously talked about a book called Micropsychology³⁸; you can look it up. It was written by a Dutch psychologist, and in the end he proved through experiments that beneath the subconscious there is a void. This is what Seth is saying: we believe that beneath our consciousness there is emptiness, that consciousness is like a shining fruit skin with nothing inside, empty. He says that if you perceive it this way, then you have only experienced half of your outer consciousness, and the other half of your consciousness you have not grasped at all.

Jung, in the collective unconscious, attempted to give your world its psychological roots.

Jung -- the second-generation psychologist Jung -- used the theory of the "collective unconscious." Jung believed that humanity has an overall collective unconscious, or collective subconscious, and at this level he wanted to find a root for your world and for your consciousness. But Jung was unable to perceive the clarity, organization, and deeper dimensions in which the collective unconscious itself exists. Jung could not understand that humanity's collective unconscious possesses clarity, organized structure, and even deeper dimensions. Jung only vaguely recognized that humanity has a collective unconscious.

Framework 2's Way of Reasoning

The reality of Framework 2, and the reality in the world of Framework 1, are organized in a different way.

Framework 2 and Framework 1, their ways of organization are not the same; these two worlds are different. And its reasoning process is much faster. The reasoning process in Framework 2 is much faster than the reasoning process in Framework 1.

In Framework 1, the reasoning process mostly operates by deduction. What does it mean to operate by deduction? It means this reasoning process must constantly check its own results against the experience of seemingly solid, concrete events. We reason something out, and then we see whether it matches the facts -- if it matches, we think it is right; if it does not match, we think our reasoning was wrong. In Framework 1 we all think this way; we need to check against the facts.

But the inner self's reasoning involves the creative invention of those experiences. What does that mean? In Framework 1, we need to check our reasoning about something against the events, experiences, and feelings we experience in Framework 1 -- whether our reasoning and our experience match. But in Framework 2, it directly invents and creates these experiences. Can you understand that? Framework 1 feels these experiences; Framework 2 creates these experiences.

It involves a world in a different category, because it deals closely with probabilities. It has to take the probabilities in Framework 1 and deal with all probabilities. It has to imagine: what would it be like if I lived with him? What would it be like if I were with him? What would happen if this matter developed this way? What about if it developed that way? It keeps working through all these things, and then manifests what it has worked through in our three-dimensional world, in our Framework 1.

Framework 2's reasoning does not need to see the result. The probability it reasons through is its result. It does not need, as in Framework 1, to see it with its own eyes or feel it personally in order to prove that the reasoning is correct. In Framework 2 there is no need for such a verification process; it only needs to keep reasoning onward. In other words, Framework 2 is the collection of all probabilities; it does not need to verify whether these probabilities can be realized, can be obtained, or what would happen after they are obtained. It simply exhausts all the probabilities, runs through all of them. This is the difference between Framework 2 and Framework 1 -- and that is why Framework 2 computes so fast; in Framework 1 you cannot keep up with it.

Each of you, with beliefs and intentions, tells the inner self.

What do you tell the inner self with beliefs and intentions? Among the immeasurable possible events, which one do you want to encounter? Among the endless possible events, which one you want to encounter is what you must tell the inner self. So in what way do you tell it? You must use your beliefs and intentions to tell your inner self: among all these probabilities, which one you want most.

In the dream state, events from both frameworks are to be processed. The dream state involves not only a state of consciousness that exists between two frameworks of reality, but also involves, in your terms, a connecting reality itself.

What he means is that in the dream state, events coming from Framework 1 and events coming from Framework 2 both have to be processed, because it is a middle zone. Framework 2's events are probabilities -- the warehouse of all possible events; Framework 1's are the feelings of events. For example, if you fall in love with Zhang San, that feeling can be brought into the dream state. Your feelings about events and all the probabilities of events, in this shared region of Framework 1 and Framework 2 -- that is, in the dream state -- they meet. Here, they begin an interactive process, deciding which one actually manifests, based on the current situation in Framework 1 -- because Framework 1 has already selected some probabilities, so which subsequent probabilities to select to match them is all completed in the dream state. And this completion is based on your feelings in Framework 1.

So Seth says here that in the dream state, it is not merely a connection between two states of consciousness -- Framework 1 is one state of consciousness, Framework 2 is another state of consciousness, and the dream state is the connection between these two states of consciousness. In these terms, the dream state itself is not only a connection between two states of consciousness; it is also a new world, which we call the dream world. Because the worlds involved in these two frameworks form a dream world within the dream state.

I want to emphasize that all kinds of plant and animal life, all plant and animal life dream.

They all dream. Why? Because they all need to make an adjustment between Framework 2 and Framework 1. Seth put "dream" in quotation marks here -- he means that their dreaming cannot be exactly the same as our human dreaming, but the nature is the same: they all have an intermediate state between two states of consciousness, an undifferentiated state.

The same applies to atoms and molecules, and to the psychological activity of any particle.

Atoms dream too, molecules dream too, any particle dreams. Because they all must connect with the source from which they came -- these particles, atoms, and molecules, they also come from Framework 2.

The intensity of behavior, in which the inner activity of any life or particle is directed toward those physical forces, participates in a cooperative venture that forms your physical reality.

What we call the intensity of action -- any action has intensity, the degree to which we like something, the depth or force with which we do something -- all lies within this intensity of behavior. The inner activity of any life or particle -- actually these two are the same kind of thing, but our physical world does not see it that way; we think there are living things and non-living things, but in fact they are all alive -- the inner activity of any life or particle is directed toward those physical forces, and when it manifests, that is the intensity of this behavior or action. This intensity of behavior is the intensity of action in the three-dimensional world; it is determined by the intensity of the inner activity.

What is the "cooperative venture"? It is manifestation. Inner activity is directed toward the physical level, participating in forming your reality, forming the manifestation of your physical reality. In Chinese terms, this is manifestation.

However, when this activity is turned back inward toward the inner nature of reality, there will be certain variables.

What does this mean? After this action occurs, it will in turn affect the inner activity. Let me give a simple example: say you want to go work out. This is an inner psychological activity. Then you go work out. After working out, you will have a different kind of feeling -- some people feel very comfortable and think working out is great; this will feed back into your inner psychological feelings. Some people feel working out is very unpleasant, very uncomfortable, very tiring, ineffective, very boring; then this will also feed back into your inner activity.

Does this process produce some variables? What are variables? When you started exercising, you certainly thought this exercise would bring good results and that going to work out would be a great thing, but then you found it was not. The variables brought by this action will have some influence on the original motive that produced the action -- it may be better than you originally imagined, or it may be worse than you imagined. He uses the word "variables" here because there is no good or bad; there are only variables.

The Inner Communication System

You have an inner communication system in which all the biological cells are connected with one another.

You have an inner communication system, in which every cell communicates with one another, telling each other or telling the whole body how it feels, and every cell's feelings are constantly fed back.

In those terms, it is a continuum of consciousness.

This inner communication system is the continuum of consciousness. You feel that your consciousness is continuous—you want to do something, then you do it, and the feeling of having done it in turn affects the inner activity of your original wanting to do it, and then produces the next step of thoughts and ideas, and it goes on like that. Seth takes it apart and tells you in detail that in order to form such a mechanism, there must be an inner communication mechanism: your inner biological cells have to communicate with the ideas of your inner Framework 2. Because Framework 2 is a probable event that has to be actualized in the physical world, and after it is actualized, doesn't the result have to communicate back to Framework 2? So how does it communicate? It does not communicate through your consciousness—because your consciousness has no way of communicating with Framework 2—it communicates through an inner communication system within you, that inner network communication system. In this inner network communication system, the cells of your life all participate directly. Your cells all have the ability to communicate with Framework 2, whereas our consciousness does not—not that it doesn't, but it is not that direct. We can only communicate with Framework 2 indirectly through beliefs, thoughts, and desires, whereas our living cells can communicate directly with Framework 2 within this inner communication network. And this inner communication network, this network in which all things are connected, is the continuum of your consciousness.

To truly understand the relationship between you and the events you personally encounter, as well as its relationship to other people, you must become familiar with the event itself and the medium in which it is formed.

He is talking about the nature of personal and mass events. Now we know how this event is produced, where it occurs, and what its carrier is. If you don't even know the carrier on which the event occurs, then you have no way of understanding personal and mass events, and the role other people play in mass events.

Chance and Coincidence

Seth gives examples of chance. What role do coincidence, or chance, play in your life?

For example, you arrived too late and missed your flight, and then that plane crashed. Does that count as chance? In your life, of course it counts as chance -- it is too coincidental. You say, I really never thought I would miss the flight, and then the plane actually crashed.

Maybe your lateness was due to a chance encounter with a friend at the last minute -- maybe you ran into an old friend, and this old friend insisted on grabbing you to chat for a bit, so you ended up late. Or because you misplaced your ticket and could not find it -- nowadays with electronic tickets this is not an issue, but one possibility is that you could not find your phone, and so you might not have been able to board the plane. Or it was caused by a traffic jam that seemed to have nothing to do with you -- the road was jammed, and it had nothing to do with you; the road just got jammed. All of these possibilities could cause you to miss that flight. So what exactly caused you to miss that flight? How did these chance events happen?

You may have been part of the drama of a natural disaster, or you may have escaped it because of other seemingly chance occurrences.

For example, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes -- these are all natural disasters. You may have been part of the drama of a natural disaster. You may have escaped it -- for example, there was an earthquake somewhere, and originally you lived right there, but that day you happened to be away on a business trip, so you escaped that earthquake.

Yet those things that appear to you as chance or coincidence are actually the results of astonishing organization and communication within the psychological reality that is active in Framework 2.

You think these coincidences, these chance events, are actually the results of astonishing organization and communication within the psychological reality that is active in Framework 2. All of these have already been arranged internally, at the level of Framework 2. It has truly miraculous communication and organizational abilities, arranging these things into your life in Framework 1. You look at them and feel they are one chance event and accident after another, but in fact there is not a single chance event, not a single accident -- they have all been rehearsed in Framework 2.

Let me say it again: you form your own reality. Where is it formed? It is formed in Framework 2, and it is manifested in Framework 1. But how is it formed? Many people ask me how we form our reality. And how does your own existence touch others, and thus form these events? How do you interact with the world, and how do you mutually trigger the events that form this world? For example, why did that pilot experience a crash -- was it because someone did not inspect the plane properly, or because there were terrorists on the plane -- how did all these things mutually cause one another?

Before going further, we must first explore what the nature of Framework 2 is. Before studying these questions -- how you form your reality, and how you come into contact with other people and other events in this world, forming a world event in which everyone participates -- that is, you form your reality, and others form their realities, so how is a shared reality formed? How is this shared reality actualized? This is what he will introduce later. But he says, before I introduce this content, we first have to stop and get clear on how Framework 2 operates, and what the mechanism of Framework 2 is.

The Beginning of Exploration

This will not be a dry, rational exploration.

He said, what I am about to discuss is not a purely theoretical, very dry exploration. Why is that?

Because the very intent of this exploration will begin to trigger in your life the emergence of hints and clues concerning your own intimate immersion in the creativity of Framework 2.

What he means is, the theory about the nature of Framework 2 that I will discuss later will not be a dry, purely rational study. Because when we explore the nature of Framework 2, such an intent itself will allow you, in your life -- within Framework 1 -- to trigger that creativity in which you yourself are intimately immersed within Framework 2, those clues and hints you had not noticed before, and they will emerge right there in Framework 1.

That is, things you previously considered coincidental -- now you will give them a second thought and ask, is it really a coincidence? When you think that way, you will begin to feel that maybe it is not a coincidence, and that is where it gets interesting. So when we explore how Framework 2 operates, this process must be considered in close connection with matters relevant to your present life. What we are learning is not a purely theoretical thing; you must combine it with your life and your life experiences. The things that happen in your life -- whether they happened in the past, are happening now, or happened to others -- previously you could not see the inner clues and connections among them, but through your intent to explore the principles behind how Framework 2 operates, these clues and hints become more apparent, and you can see them. Then you find it interesting, and it is no longer dry, nor purely theoretical.

This chapter's content ends here; there will be specific introductions later. This book is quite thick, and it will present and introduce things to everyone step by step.

---

注释与核实

1. Source: Jane Roberts, "The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events" (The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events) (https://archive.org/stream/PdfsSethMaterial/Jane-Roberts-A-Seth-Book-The-Individual-and-the-Nature-of-mass-events_djvu.txt) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. According to Mike's original words, "There was a legend that Jet Li was vacationing with his family on an island in Indonesia during the Indonesian tsunami, and when the tsunami came he was swept into the tsunami water. It is said that Jet Li made a vow at that time: as long as I can save my two daughters and we do not die, I will devote the rest of my life to doing good deeds. In the end he really did not die, and he rescued both daughters. Afterward he devoted his main energy to charity and founded One Foundation."; upon verification it should be: "During the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Jet Li was vacationing in the Maldives (not Indonesia). He, his wife, and their two young daughters (4-year-old Jane and 1-year-old Jada) were in danger and rescued, and this experience prompted him to found One Foundation in 2007." (Source: Wikipedia "One Foundation", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Foundation) ↩

4. Source: Liu Feng, "Opening Your Higher-Dimensional Wisdom" (China Youth Publishing House) (https://weread.qq.com/web/bookDetail/07c321b0813ab7730g010b98) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia "Schrödinger's cat" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat) ↩

7. Source: Laozi, "Tao Te Ching, Chapter 5" (Chinese Text Project) (https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing) ↩ ↩²

8. Source: Jia Jinhua, "Translation and Interaction: A New Examination of the Controversy over the Translation and Authenticity of the Śūraṃgama-sūtra" (Religions) (https://mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/6/474/htm) ↩

9. Source: James A. Benn, "Another Look at the Pseudo-Śūraṃgama Sūtra" (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies) (https://www.academia.edu/12082377/Another_Look_at_the_Pseudo_%C5%9A%C5%ABra%E1%B9%83gama_S%C5%ABtra) ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. This claim could not be verified. ↩

13. Source: Awaken The World, "Samadhi Film Series - About Us" (https://awakentheworld.com/about-us/) ↩

14. Source: Wikipedia "Zhuangzi (Book)" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-sg/%E8%8E%8A%E5%AD%90_(%E6%9B%B8)) ↩

15. This claim could not be verified. ↩

16. This claim could not be verified. ↩

17. According to Mike's original words, "more than fourteen billion years"; upon verification it should be: "The age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years (the European Space Agency's Planck satellite determined it to be about 13.8 x 10^9 years, i.e., 13.8 billion years), not more than fourteen billion years." (Source: European Space Agency (ESA), "Planck science highlights", https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_science_highlights) ↩

18. According to Mike's original words, "a million possibilities"; upon verification it should be: "The correct title of this song is 'A Million Possibilities', sung by the American singer Christine Welch. It was written in Taiwan in 2013 and became popular in mainland China through Douyin in 2018." (Source: Wikipedia "Christine Welch", https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%85%8B%E9%BA%97%E7%B5%B2%E5%8F%AE) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

19. Source: Wikipedia "Parable of the barren fig tree" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_barren_fig_tree) ↩

20. This claim could not be verified. ↩

21. According to Mike's original words, "The United States has been extremely aggressive in handing out money. Those with genuinely low incomes received more in benefits than they would get by working. The United States has so far sent 4 trillion U.S. dollars to ordinary people."; upon verification it should be: "The three rounds of COVID-19 stimulus checks paid directly to American households totaled about $814 billion (476 million payments), not $4 trillion; Congress appropriated more than $5 trillion for pandemic relief in total, but the vast majority went to businesses, state and local governments, health care, and so on, not directly to individuals." (Source: Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), "Update: Three rounds of stimulus checks. See how many went out and for how much.", https://pandemicoversight.gov/data-interactive-tools/data-stories/update-three-rounds-stimulus-checks-see-how-many-went-out-and) ↩

22. Source: U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), "2003: Human Genome Project Completed" (https://www.genome.gov/25520492/online-education-kit-2003-human-genome-project-completed) ↩

23. Source: Science (AAAS), "CRISPR bombshell: Chinese researcher claims to have created gene-edited twins" (https://www.science.org/content/article/crispr-bombshell-chinese-researcher-claims-have-created-gene-edited-twins) ↩

24. This claim could not be verified. ↩

25. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The Republic | Summary, Significance, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Republic) ↩

26. Source: Wikipedia "Great Unity (Datong)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Unity) ↩

27. According to Mike's original words, "For example, the Great Unity society that Confucius in ancient China wanted to establish, a civilized human society filled with poetry, documents, rites, and music."; upon verification it should be: "The 'Great Unity' (Datong) society described in the 'Li Yun' chapter of the Book of Rites, attributed to Confucius, is characterized by the words 'When the Great Way was practiced, the world was shared by all. The worthy and able were chosen, and good faith and harmony were cultivated.' Confucius also said, 'I have not lived to see it, but I have set my mind on it.' The society characterized by 'using ritual and righteousness as the guiding principle' (establishing order through rites and music) is the next lower stage, the 'Moderate Prosperity' (Xiaokang) society." (Source: "Book of Rites, Li Yun", https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/%E7%A6%AE%E8%A8%98/%E7%A6%AE%E9%81%8B) ↩

28. Source: Catholic Encyclopedia, "Heaven" (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07170a.htm) ↩ ↩²

29. According to Mike's original words, "Scientists' theory was to use ether as the medium for the existence of the material world"; upon verification it should be: "The ether (luminiferous ether) proposed by 19th-century scientists was hypothesized as the medium required for the propagation of light waves, not the medium for the existence of the material world; the hypothesis was abandoned after the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887) and special relativity." (Source: Wikipedia "Luminiferous aether", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether) ↩

30. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ether (theoretical substance)" (https://www.britannica.com/science/ether-theoretical-substance) ↩

31. Source: Jane Roberts, "Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book" (1976) (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4890737M/Psychic_politics) ↩

32. Source: Wikipedia "Liao-Fan's Four Lessons" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E4%BA%86%E5%87%A1%E5%9B%9B%E8%A8%93) ↩

33. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Motion-picture technology: Introduction of sound" (https://www.britannica.com/technology/motion-picture-technology/Introduction-of-sound) ↩

34. Source: CNBC, "Melvin Capital, hedge fund that bet against GameStop, lost more than 50% in January," 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/31/melvin-capital-lost-more-than-50percent-after-betting-against-gamestop-wsj.html) ↩

35. Source: Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., "The Ethereal Aether: A History of the Michelson-Morley-Miller Aether-Drift Experiments, 1880-1930" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/720008) ↩

36. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ether (theoretical substance)" (https://www.britannica.com/science/ether-theoretical-substance) ↩

37. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ether (theoretical substance)" (https://www.britannica.com/science/ether-theoretical-substance) ↩

38. This claim could not be verified. ↩