Mike's commentary · The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 1

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" in 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 block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter uses the process by which Seth began dictating The Nature of the Psyche to show that spirituality is not something that can be defined by ordinary nouns. It has no beginning or end, it is invisible, yet it runs through and transcends time and matter. Using metaphors such as television programs, inner journeys, time clusters, and the canvas and the painter, Seth points out that the psyche is a multidimensional, constantly forming existence; a person is both the painting and the painter. Everyday material life is not outside the psyche, and even the most ordinary actions contain clues to the nature of the psyche.

Chapter Highlights

• The psyche is not a thing and cannot be defined in ordinary terms; all attempts at classification and definition are pushed aside by its creativity.
• The psyche has no fixed boundaries and is not a finished place; rather, it forms as you move forward in your exploration, and it creates mutually with you.
• Bringing the concept of time into the psyche gives rise to understandings such as reincarnation and cause and effect, which actually limit and distort the recognition of the psyche.
• The psyche is at once the painting and the painter; its multidimensional levels are interconnected, and everyday experience is not separate from the larger reality.
• Secular activities and the physical environment are within the psyche itself, and even the most ordinary bodily actions contain clues and hints of the psyche's essence.

Main Text

Title of the Book and Chapter One

Today we begin introducing the Seth book The Nature of the Psyche. We translate it as "the nature of the psyche" or "the nature of the soul, and its expression in the human being"; this is the name of the book. If one gives the full title, it can be called "the nature of the psyche, and its expression in the human being," or "the nature of the soul, and its expression in the human being." Today we begin introducing its Chapter One—"The Environment of the Psyche," that is, the environment in which psychic existence takes place. This chapter is divided into three small sections, and we will begin with the first section.

First is Session 752, the session of July 28, 1975, Monday evening at 9:25 p.m. At dinner, Rob told Jane that he had a hunch that Jane, in a trance state, would speak for Seth (that energy personality essence), begin dictating a new book, and that he would write notes for it. Rob said:

I will record these sessions and add the time and date, as well as other basic data, so that Jane can construct her own notes from them.

Session 752

Rob's original idea was: once the initial shorthand was typed up, while the scene of that session was still fresh in Jane's mind, she could add any material she wanted about her trance state, her feelings, and her thoughts. But in the end he did not add it, because Jane had already said in the preface: starting with this book, she did not want to add too many notes. Jane said:

I told him I didn't care whether this book was short, medium, or long, or whether it took six months, a year, or five years to finish. If he held Seth sessions once or twice a week, or even once a month, he could still produce a Seth book, which was a comfort to him.

Jane said that if Rob would rather not have notes, she had no objection either. But Rob had already become addicted to writing notes — he had written a great many pages of notes while working on The "Unknown" Reality, so he wanted all future books to have plenty of notes. Later this matter was directly rejected by Jane. Jane's meaning was: don't write so many notes; if readers are interested in a particular topic, they can explore and research the connections between that topic and the rest of the Seth material on their own, rather than having the two of them do it.

We can imagine that in that era, without computers, to search for material written several years or even ten years earlier, dig it out, and then connect it with related content was actually very difficult and extremely draining. If it were done today it might be easier: you enter it all into a computer, search directly within the text, and link together chapters with the same or related vocabulary, making it easy to produce these notes. But at the time it was very hard.

Rob's point was that Jane might write a book, and he did not know how long or short it would be, but he said it did not matter, because Seth was completely unaffected by time intervals. He could hold one session a week, three sessions a week, or one session a month, or once every few months — none of this affected the stability and continuity of the Seth material's transmission. This was something they had discovered over the more than ten years they had already been transmitting it.

Seth had finished his previous book, The "Unknown" Reality, three months earlier, on the evenings of April 22 and 23, in Session 744. This book was meant to come after The "Unknown" Reality. Earlier today, Jane finally admitted: since that time, three months later, she had held only seven sessions, basically about two sessions a month, sometimes only one session every two weeks. Because Rob was busy writing the complex notes for that book, and Jane did not want to give Rob too much extra work — writing the notes had already consumed too much of his time and energy.

When Rob understood why Jane was dragging her feet, he immediately decided to let her continue working on the Seth material. Rob discovered that the reason Jane did not want to write a new book was that she felt Rob was expending a great deal of energy writing the notes, and she did not want to make him even busier. But Rob felt this was not right — the notes could be set aside for a while, but the new Seth material should continue to be transmitted and should not stop.

Jane was still writing her own book. Rob said that at dinner he suddenly brought up the idea of writing a new book — actually you can sense that this was a kind of intuition on Rob's part; he simply felt that Seth should write a new book. Jane said nothing. At 9:10, when they were waiting to begin, Jane said, "You really surprised me." Why? Because in the past, proposals to write a new book had always come from Jane (Jane would say, "I sense there may be a new book coming"), and Rob had rarely — in fact never before — said, "I think there's a new book." And this time it was precisely Rob who brought it up, so Jane said, "You really surprised me; I didn't expect you to think that." Rob said, "Just as I planned" — after three months of rest, it was time to write a new book. Jane said:

You'll have to be lenient with me. If I were the one writing the notes, I wouldn't write very many. I didn't know there would be a new book tonight either; I didn't know, because we didn't have any concept of one in our minds at all.

Rob said jokingly, "You don't need to have one — Seth does. Starting a new book, or having a baby — which would you rather do?" At this point Rob was teasing her. Jane immediately said, "I'll write the book, do this." She pointed at the Seth session. So you can see, Rob still had the thought of wanting a child, but Jane did not want one at all.

Jane immediately said (you see, she didn't even have to think about it): "I don't want to have a baby. But you can have nine months — to get used to the idea of having a child. But I'm not ready for the two books Seth mentioned — the book about Christ, and the book he mentioned last month about the reality of culture." Neither of these two books was ever written. Seth had once proposed writing a book about Christ; it was not written. The one about the reality of culture was later probably classified into The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Jane said she was not ready for those two books Seth had mentioned, so what might this new book be about? She did not know yet. She immediately steered the conversation toward book-related matters and did not mention having a baby at all — not a single word.

Seeing Jane stalling, Rob laughed. After chatting for a while, Jane said somewhat hesitantly:

I think I know the title. The title is The Nature of the Psyche, or The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression.

Its English title is The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression — "I'm not sure, but I think that's it."

About the Word "Psyche"

The most controversial point here is the word "psyche." Let's look at the dictionary explanation. The core meaning of psyche is "Soul," the meaning of soul. It is a noun with many, many meanings. The first capitalized word Soul is its most original meaning, followed by Spirit, Inner Self, True Being, Essential Nature, Life Force, and a whole bunch of others that can all be called Psyche. Here we take its most original, most fundamental meaning.

This word originally came from Latin, and the word existed as early as 1509¹. When it first appeared, it referred to the soul in Greek, and its original meaning was soul. So the original meaning of this word should be "soul," and translating it as "soul" is more fitting. Look at how the dictionaries call it: the Concise Dictionary calls it "soul-mind"; the Oxford Dictionary calls it "soul, mind, spirit, mentality," referring to "the human mind," and so on. So there is nothing wrong with Teacher Wang Jiqing translating it as "mind," but the original meaning here refers more to "soul." I have already explained this in the translator's note in Chapter 1, Section 1.

Let's also look at what it means in the Rhino Sutra dictionary: whether in English or Chinese, it refers to mind, wisdom, spirit. Its etymology is from the mid-17th century², transmitted through Latin, and the Greek means "breath, life, soul" — that is its root. Webster's Dictionary tells you that the word comes from the Latin for "soul," and its earliest discovered use was in 1509. Collins Dictionary calls it "mind."

That is all we will explain about this word. Everyone's understanding is different, and it does not matter. You can translate it however you like; what matters is that you know what it is, not what it is called — the name is not important.

Rob's Intuition and Jane's Preparation

So it seemed that we were about to receive another excellent product from Seth, with Jane's considerable, truly indispensable help. Seth began a new book without any advance notice—no notice at all. Rob said he understood Jane might be somewhat worried, but on the other hand he had no doubt that Seth and Jane could do it. He said:

I want her to participate creatively in an ongoing project, and I think this can serve as a cornerstone for her daily life.

Rob hoped Jane would deliver a Seth book every week on a continuous basis, and that this pattern could serve as a keynote in Jane's life. Jane said, "Once I get it, we'll start." They sat waiting and drinking red wine; it was 9:23. Jane lit a cigarette, and they fell quiet. Jane said:

I am receiving it now, but it may only take a few minutes to put them together.

So you see, the Seth material Jane received came in clumps and chunks, piece by piece, and it needed assembling. That assembling drew on a great deal of Jane's linguistic ability. When Jane transmitted, the precision of her word choice and the things she expressed were entirely on the level of a literary writer. If you carefully study Seth's English material, you will find that its precision of word use and richness of vocabulary are very great.

Seth's Opening

Below, Jane begins speaking on Seth's behalf. Without any preamble, she starts Chapter 1. The theme he wants to address in this chapter is the following passage:

You enter the condition you call life, and you go out of it again. You hang suspended between birth and death. You question the nature of your own existence. You ponder your experience, and you study the formalized history of the past, hoping to find there clues as to the nature of your own reality.

During this period "from birth to death," you experience a lifetime. "You hang suspended between birth and death" -- you hang there in the middle, questioning the nature of your own existence. Many instances of "you" are used here, and each "you" carries a different meaning. The three-dimensional-world "you" begins to question what the essence of its own existence is; you ponder the things you have experienced, and you look for clues about the essence of your reality's existence in formalized history.

What this chapter really wants to tell us is this: What kind of existence is your soul? What kind of environment does it exist in? In what state does it enter our life and leave our life? It does not depend on life in order to exist. So now you will understand why I insist on firmly changing this term to "spirit" or "soul" rather than using "psyche" -- because "psyche" is necessarily tied to your life. In the ordinary human understanding of the word "psyche," it is intimately bound up with your life. But the spiritual thing he mentions here has nothing to do with life; it hangs within your life, and it comes in and goes out again.

Let us continue:

Your life seems to be the same consciousness as your consciousness. You think that your consciousness is your life. Therefore, it seems that your knowledge of yourself grows gradually. Just as your own self-consciousness began developing before your birth.

When we are first born we do not understand things; knowledge is learned bit by bit, so you feel that your consciousness grows gradually, and this consciousness is your -- only when there is consciousness is there your existence? Like Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am" -- that is the feeling you have. Seth says: Just as your self-consciousness, this consciousness, began developing before your birth -- that is to say, it is not the case, as you imagine, that it was learned bit by bit only after you were born.

Taking it a step further:

It seems that your consciousness will meet death. Then past that point of death, your self-consciousness will not survive.

Toward the religion of your childhood, you may harbor an almost hopeful nostalgia -- because the religious system of your childhood gave you a faith that guaranteed eternal life (in Western society this is more often Christianity, which says that after you die your soul can ascend to heaven and so on). However, most people hope not for something like the fairy tales and religion of childhood, but for a further, so-called intimate and private, more concrete, more specifically tailored to you as a person, more personalized guarantee, and they seek an inner affirmation to ensure their own individuality. Your individuality is this personality of yours, this personhood -- the part by which you call yourself "you." You hope to obtain some kind of affirmation: that this person you call "you" will not vanish with death. This is a longing that exists within every person.

Each person knows intuitively that his or her experience has importance, and that some meaning connects the individual with the larger pattern of creation. Each person then occasionally perceives a private purpose, yet many people are filled with distress because they have not been able to consciously know or clearly perceive that inner goal.

Each person occasionally and faintly perceives a personal purpose -- as if you vaguely know that this life probably has some mission and goal to accomplish, but it does not seem very clear. Without consciously, very clearly knowing or clearly perceiving that goal within us, we are filled with confusion. This is a question many people ask: How do I know which is the ego's goal and which is the inner goal? What Seth means is that every person actually has a vague feeling of this, but no one is certain.

When you were a child, you knew you were growing toward adulthood. Because you believed that the abilities you would have in the future would enable you to sustain your existence. Therefore, no matter what you encountered, you lived in a kind of lofty, spiritual air.

In the process of growing from childhood to adulthood, you never worried about the matter of starving to death when you grew up; you always firmly believed that you could sustain your own existence. And in the process of learning and growing -- many of us are nostalgic for our student days, because student days were basically carefree -- in this process, he calls it "a kind of lofty spiritual air":

In which your existence was charged and shone. You knew you were in a state of becoming, and in that way, the world was also in a state of becoming.

Why do so many people feel nostalgic for their adolescence, for that stage of learning? Here you can find part of the answer. You were in a kind of spiritual radiance -- you knew you were full of hope for the future, you knew you would eventually become an adult, you knew you would eventually begin to have your own life. Every young person in adolescence is full of longing and beautiful hope for the future. He knows he is in a process of becoming, and he also believes that the world is in a process of becoming -- whether in personal life or on the world stage, action is always taking place.

You observe about you, and see yourself so hypnotized by your present state of life that all change or growth seems impossible.

After growing up and entering the adult world, these things change. You seem unable to see your own change and growth; you discover that life is unchanging. You are being hypnotized by the state of your own life and your present living environment, as if your life will just continue on like this, and you no longer have that adolescent feeling of "becoming." You see the world in the same way -- you feel the world has not changed much. Of course, this year is a bit different; the changes happening in the world this year have been far too great.

Generally speaking, you do not remember your birth. Certainly, it seems you do not remember how the world was born either. Before your birth, you already had a history.

"Generally speaking" does not mean absolutely -- some people may remember. "Before your birth, you already had a history," meaning your soul has always existed; before you came, it was already there. It is just like how, in your view, the world already had a history before you were born: from your perspective, you will discover that the world already existed before the moment of your birth, and that a very complete, recorded history exists. It is the same with you -- you think that your history only began on the day you were born, but in fact your history already existed before your birth.

Various Scientific Views of Time

The various sciences are still concealing things from one another. Physicists assume that one century exists after another, yet at the same time physicists realize that time is not only relative to the perceiver, but that all events occur simultaneously.

The various sciences conceal things from one another and keep themselves closed off from each other. Physicists know that time is only useful and relative in relation to the person who perceives it. If there is no object of perception, then simply talking about time is meaningless.

Many people may not understand this statement. I won't expand on it here, but I'll give a simple example. Say you live on Earth, and you have a certain perception of time. Suppose you now live on Mars, your perception of time would be different from your perception of time on Earth. This difference is not only because Mars's orbital and rotational periods around the sun are different, not only because the times of sunrise and sunset are different — the other difference is that you have lost a common frame of reference. At that point, you can no longer use Earth time as the standard; you would have to use a standard time for the solar system as the basis. Because you live on Earth, you can only use Earth time, or a standard time for the solar system, or you could come up with a cosmic time — it doesn't matter.

So you might say, if I come up with a solar system time, would that be correct? Yes, you and Mars would then be synchronized. But what time does the person outside the solar system use? You say, I'll come up with a galactic time — fine, galactic time can solve the uniformity of time for people on all planets with intelligent life around all the stars in the galaxy. But what time do you come up with beyond the galaxy? You could use cluster time — the galaxy belongs to some large cluster. If you keep extrapolating infinitely like this, can you derive a cosmic time? Only if the universe is infinite.

What this reasoning is meant to tell you is this: physicists know better than anyone that time is relative. Why did Einstein's theory of relativity³ propose the integration of space and time? Time only has meaning in relation to the person observing it; for another person, this space-time framework is different. And the reason we haven't encountered this kind of chaos and these problems is that we have always lived on a very stable time — all of humanity lives on Earth time, so we think it's perfectly normal. But this doesn't hold up under any scrutiny — physicists study the universe and the whole world, and they have long known that time is relative.

Seth says the various sciences are separated from and conceal things from one another. Actually, it's not that they conceal things — it's that they only consider problems from their own perspective. If it were pointed out that time is not an absolute value and has no absoluteness, then the current sciences built on the foundation of this space-time system would all become unreliable. If you have studied Einstein's theory of relativity³, or read Hawking's A Brief History of Time⁴, you can understand what time is in the eyes of physics.

Archaeologists happily date the relics of past civilizations.

Archaeologists do this every day: which artifact is from how many years BC, how many hundreds or thousands of years ago. But these archaeologists never ask themselves: what meaning does that past have? They only examine the time of those artifacts and those ancient ruins, but they never ask themselves about the time of their own past — what meaning does their past have? What meaning did those past events have in the time when they occurred? Yet they are obsessed with studying things from hundreds or thousands of years ago, poring over ancient texts and materials every day, spending years in the field discovering these ancient records.

What Seth is saying about archaeologists means this: the information of each of our scientific disciplines is not communicated with the others. In other words, we humans lack a unified understanding of the world — physicists speak of the world as physicists see it, biologists speak of the world as biologists see it, astronomers speak of the world as astronomers see it, archaeologists speak of the world as archaeologists see it, not to mention those writers and artists — it's like blind men touching an elephant. And now it's not five blind men — it's fifty, five hundred, five thousand, fifty thousand. The more finely these scientific disciplines are divided, the more blind men there are, and each person can only touch a small part of the elephant, so you are even less able to piece together the appearance of the whole elephant.

The Inner Encouragement Within Each Person

Then he talks about astronomers talking about outer space:

This outer space and the galaxy that makes your own world seem small... in the world as you perceive it, there are also wars, and rumors of wars, prophecies of destruction.

What astronomers are most concerned with is the matter of outer space -- in the world as you perceive it, the moment the galaxy is mentioned, we seem especially tiny. In this world there are still many wars and rumors of wars, prophecies of destruction, things like 2012, the millennium bug, and so on, and now all sorts of end-time prophecies have appeared. Yet despite this:

For this world, the unknown, unnamed individual -- each one of us, man or woman -- stubbornly feels within the heart a kind of encouragement, a firm affirmation.

Although astronomers tell you how insignificant you are in the universe, and then the politicians and news media of reality tell you the world is full of wars and uncertainty, that a new world war is very likely to break out, that the earth will be destroyed, and so on -- even though all these things tell you of your smallness and uncertainty, none of them can hinder every nameless nobody -- each of us is a nameless nobody, each of us is a nobody -- from having within our hearts a kind of encouragement, firmness, and affirmation: I am important, I have a purpose, even though I do not understand what my purpose is. But this life of mine, which seems so unimportant or ineffective, is in some aspects I have not yet recognized absolutely crucial.

In the vast sea of humanity, every ordinary, ordinary person has within his heart this kind of firmness, encouragement, and affirmation, knowing that this life of his is destined to be an extraordinary existence. Although he seems to be one member of the multitude, as if of no consequence; if placed on the cosmic level, then even more of no consequence. But he knows -- he knows it in some deep, unspoken way -- he feels that this life of his, which seems not very important, not very effective, in certain aspects, in certain aspects he has not yet recognized, is indeed crucial and vital. This is each person's inner awareness and self-knowledge.

Although trapped in a life that seems to be one of defeat, we may be entangled by family problems, afflicted by illness, and as far as practical purposes go, seem to be utterly beaten down. Yet some part of each person will still rise up against all disasters, all frustrations, and at least occasionally catch a glimpse of that undeniable, enduring validity.

In the face of real life, each of us may have once faced difficulties and worries, faced a life without goals, without knowing where the direction lies. But even so, in some part or some area of each person's inner self, you have never given up resisting, you have never given up pursuing the truth. When you resist all disasters and all frustrations, you will occasionally catch a glimpse of the existence of that eternal validity -- that is your soul, your inner self within, that part of you that is larger than yourself. You seem able to glimpse some of it, but not feel it with complete clarity.

To Whom Does Seth Speak

Seth says:

I am speaking to that part within every person, that knowing part within each individual. I am speaking to the part that every person knows.

Are the words I am about to say, or the content of this book, addressed to the person you are right now in your waking state? I am speaking to that part of every person that can glimpse that eternal existence, that can sense the existence of its own inner soul. I am not speaking to a person in a merely physical world. I am speaking to that part within you that can perceive, that can partially perceive, that there is a larger self existing within.

On the one hand, I am not an easy author to get along with, for I speak from levels of consciousness with which you are unfamiliar. On the other hand, my voice is as natural as an oak leaf blowing in the wind -- as natural as the seasons are to your soul -- and I speak from levels of perception that are equally natural to your psyche.

I am not an author you can easily accept, because I speak from a higher level, or a level you are unfamiliar with. But the things I say are as real to us as an oak leaf in the wind -- just like that most natural inner part of our spirituality speaking to us from that level.

Seth says:

I write this book through a person named Jane Roberts. She shares with you the triumphs and travails of physical existence.

Jane is the same as all of you, because we all have physical bodies. Physical existence necessarily involves triumphs and travails -- this is normal. If we exist in a three-dimensional world, it is necessarily a dualistic world -- where there is suffering there is joy, where there is happiness there is sorrow, and all of this is natural. Jane is the same. She faces a life that seems to have begun from the moment of her birth, and this life is suspended from that point of birth all the way to the moment of departure at death.

She has asked the same questions that you have asked in your quiet moments: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

These are the three common questions. Jane asked the same questions too. But she asked them so fervently that she broke through the barrier that most of you have erected -- her obsession with these questions exceeded that of ordinary people, so she broke through what we think of as this barrier, and thus began a journey, which is this process of channeling. She undertook this for herself, and also for you. Because every experience of yours, no matter how subtle, how small, how tiny, or how seemingly insignificant, becomes part of the collective knowledge of your human race. Where you come from, where you are going, what you are -- what the nature of the psyche or the nature of spirituality is, or what the nature of the soul ultimately is -- that is what this means.

The Key Sentence

Seth said:

I can only write part of this book, and you must complete the other part.

This is a very key sentence, be sure to remember it. The book he wrote, The Nature of the Psyche, only wrote one part of this book. The other part is something each person must go explore within their own inner self -- what exactly is the nature of your own psyche, and it is different for every person.

Because this larger psyche itself is meaningless, be sure to remember that. If you insist on asking what meaning this larger psyche, or greater soul, or oversoul, or entity ultimately has -- it tells you that it itself is meaningless, unless it is connected with the individual psyche, unless it is connected with each individual's psyche. In other words, to discuss the meaning of the higher psyche apart from its union with each person, apart from its realization within you, is meaningless. Its meaning can only be embodied through you, through every person, through its realization within you. To discuss its meaning apart from you is meaningless.

I speak to you from those levels of yourselves that you have forgotten yet have not forgotten... I speak to you through the printed book, yet my words will reawaken within you -- re-evoke -- the voice that spoke to you before you were born and in your childhood.

"From those levels you have forgotten yet have not forgotten" -- so did you forget or not? What he means is: you think you have forgotten, but actually you have not. I speak to you from that level which you think you have forgotten, but which your inner self has in fact never forgotten. I will evoke the voice within you -- the voice of your own inner self, or the voice of your own soul. That voice may have spoken to you in your childhood, and it may already have existed before you were born.

This will not be a dry treatise... but will evoke from the depths of your being experiences you have long forgotten, and from boundless time and space will unite the body of the temple -- that is, yourself -- into a whole.

I will not write a dry treatise for you, tirelessly telling you what kind of hypothetical structure the so-called psyche actually is. Instead, from the depths of your being -- from those depths where your own consciousness seems to have forgotten -- I will evoke experiences you have long forgotten, and from boundless time and space and the boundless universe, I will unite your experiences with yourself. In other words, this book will lead you to know the real you.

Then Seth said, "Take a break."

As soon as Jane came out of it, she even forgot the book title. She said she had reached an excellent state of trance and dissociation. Finally Rob said, "Congratulations, dear." She had delivered it very well. Jane laughed and said, "You asked me to do something and I did it" -- because Rob had said at the beginning that he wanted to write a new book, and right away it was written. Jane said, "Now I need to go to the bathroom," and besides that, she felt so tired she could go to bed and sleep for several hours. Rob said, "Sure, go ahead," and joked, "If you want to slip away, just slip away."

Rob reminded Jane of the title of this book, told her what the name was, and suggested how she could write down her comments on the book -- emphasizing that she could handle it in whatever way she liked.

Jane said:

Apart from the minimal notes between sessions, I really don't have time to write more notes.

Because Rob was still writing the notes for The "Unknown" Reality and had not finished them yet. But Rob honestly told Jane that he could not really expect Jane to produce this book through Seth on one hand, while also writing notes involving all that work. Rob told Jane: I don't think you can transmit the Seth material and still find time to write these notes -- that really would be too much of a waste of time. So Jane simply did not write them.

The Television Analogy

At 10:41, Jane began again at a fairly fast pace. Seth said:

Now the earth has a structure. In those terms, your psyche is the same; it also has a structure.

You live in a particular area on the surface of your planet, and at any given time you can only see so much of it. Yet you take the existence of the ocean for granted -- even if you cannot hear the sound of the waves or the tides, you still sense that the sea exists. Even if you live in the desert, you acknowledge on faith that those lush green rice paddies and wheat fields exist, and you also acknowledge that torrential rain does occur. Your faith is actually based on knowledge: you have studied geography, you have studied climate, and you believe that while the desert has no rain, other places rain often. People have been to places you have not been to -- perhaps many people have never actually been to a desert in this lifetime, and television provides you with images.

But even so, your senses only bring you images of your immediate environment.

You are watching a documentary about the desert or some animal world, but you are still not living in the desert. Your felt sense of the desert is not the same as your felt sense of your present physical environment. The firsthand data your outer senses bring you is still the environment you live in, unless they have been cultivated in a rather unusual, specific way -- that is, unless you have opened up some other capacities of the senses, for example, if you have opened up more of the inner senses. If you have not been configured in a rather unusual, specific way, then you can only perceive the physical environment of the three-dimensional world you are currently in.

You take it for granted that the earth has a history.

We humans now calculate that the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago⁵. Seth said:

In those terms, your own psyche also has a history.

If you think the earth has a history, then the psyche should also have a history.

You have taught yourself to look outward into physical reality, but there you cannot find the inner validity of your existence, only its effects.

We are born with a pair of eyes that look outward, not inward. You want to search the outside world for evidence of your inner existence -- evidence of your soul's existence. You vaguely sense that you have a psychic existence, and you want to look for evidence of it in the outside world, but you cannot find it. But you can find its effects: the manifestations of your outer world are all manifestations of your inner world. You can find the effects or the results, but you cannot find the inner soul itself -- it is not in the outer world.

Seth used the television as an example:

You can turn on a television and watch a play, but the inner activity and experience of your psyche is not only mysteriously wrapped up in the outer act of turning on the television, it also gives you the ability to understand the images presented. Therefore, ordinarily you do not catch hold of even one activity of your own psyche.

You take the action of turning on the television -- whether in the past it was pressing a switch, or now pressing a remote control -- either way, you have to take an action. This action is an outer display of your psyche, but your psyche not only enables you to move, your psyche can also understand what is being acted out in the TV drama -- that is another part of your psyche. You have not grasped your complete psyche at all. The soul is the sum of all these.

The television drama is there before it is presented on your channel. When you turn off the television, where does it go? How can it exist at one moment and end at the next?

Before you turn on this drama, it is already playing. But before you turn it on, where is that drama? It is just there. When you finish watching and turn off the television, where does it go? You could say the drama is the signal -- but that is not the question Seth wants to ask. What he wants to ask is: why is it that when this drama begins, you can feel the plot of the character in the drama, and you watch the drama with your feelings and your emotions, crying and laughing along with it -- what is your emotion reacting to? The thing your emotion is reacting to, where did it go? Before you reacted to it, did it not exist? Where did it exist?

When the conditions are right, it can be played again. When you understand the mechanics involved, you will realize that the program obviously did not go anywhere; it simply exists -- and given the proper conditions, it will be triggered for you.

At a particular time, on a particular channel, tuned to a particular frequency, through a particular receiving device -- a television set -- you can see the content of this drama. And when the specific conditions are fully met, it can even be replayed. This is the same as the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination -- there must be certain causes and conditions coming together; without these conditions you cannot see this drama: without a television it will not work, without an antenna it will not work, if the channel frequency is wrong it will not work, if the time is wrong it will not work either -- perhaps the show has already ended, and when you turn it on there is nothing left to see. So all these conditions must be in place for you to see such a play.

Seth continued:

In the same way, whether or not you are playing out an earth program, you are alive. Whether you are within time or outside of time, you exist.

Here "you" refers to the real you, that is, the soul, your entity. To use the television drama as an analogy: suppose what you are acting out today is a television drama, except this drama is set on the stage of earth, a three-dimensional holographic drama, and you are the actor in this drama. Relative to you, your soul is as if it is performing such a play -- under specific conditions and at a specific time, you come alive and perform it. When these conditions do not exist, this play does not exist -- that is, you are not living on earth, but you still exist.

It is not that when you stop watching the drama, the people and the story in it cease to exist -- the drama is still there. When the circumstances align and the conditions are met, this drama will be performed again, but perhaps the setting has changed and the actors have changed. Perhaps you are still one of them, but your role may have changed too: in the last episode you played a man, in this episode you may play a woman; in the last episode you may have played a prince, in this episode you may play a beggar. The one who comes out to act at different periods of time -- the real one -- that is you. The existence you now think of as yourself -- your existence on this earth -- is just a play.

Their era was 1975, and televisions were already extremely widespread, so using the television as an example made sense to everyone right away. If today you used the internet as an example, or a website, or cloud services, it would be the same, and perhaps even more vivid and fitting. For example, you could use a character in a game, or an online game -- all of these could serve as examples. At the time they used the television -- because it was something very common then. Young people today may no longer even watch television.

To put it simply: under the premise that the conditions on earth are met, at a certain time and place, at a certain frequency, under certain conditions, you come to earth to perform such a play. Your whole life is the title of this play -- this drama is called "Your Life." It is just that this drama is rather long; it may run for 99 years, with content every day, performing for a dozen or so hours each day, until you sleep and there is nothing left to perform, so you turn off the lights and go to bed. But perhaps while you sleep, in your dreams there is yet another play going on. After this play is over, where do you go? You are still alive, you still exist -- not in this earth's space-time, but in another space-time. When the circumstances and conditions align again, you reincarnate and come back, and perform another play. Seth is telling you about the environment in which the essence of the so-called soul or psyche exists -- what kind of larger environment it exists within, that is, the background in which the soul exists.

I hope that in this book we can put you in touch with your own existence, even though it exists outside the context in which you are accustomed to observing it.

Of course -- it is an existence that is not in the three-dimensional world.

The Inner Territory of the Psyche

Seth said:

Just as you live in a certain state or a certain town or a certain village, you presently also live in a small portion of the inner planet of the psyche.

Just as in your life you live in a certain place, a certain province, a certain city, a certain county, a certain village, you presently also dwell in a certain place of your soul, or of your spirituality. You regard that region as your home—geographically we call such a home a physical home, but in your spirituality, in your psyche, you have a home:

Your own self.

You call that physical house your home, and you call that home in the psyche "I."

Humanity has learned to explore our outer environment. But when they joyfully and courageously set about probing the inner territory of the psyche, they have only just begun that greater inner journey.

We humans have always been exploring outward, landing on the moon, landing on Mars. Seth said there is nothing miraculous about exploring the outer world. When they turn around and begin to explore the inner territory of the human psyche, that is when the truly greater inner journey begins, one greater than the exploration of the outer world.

In such terms, it is a psychic land. This virgin territory, however, is a person's natural right. And no portion is identical to any other. But there is indeed inner communication that takes place.

Using this analogy, it is as if you are exploring a completely unknown land of the psyche. This virgin territory belongs to you personally—the territory of your psyche is yours, and the territory of another person's psyche is theirs. No two territories are the same. But although they are different, extremely unique, there is communication among them internally.

Just as the outer continents arose from the inner structure of the earth, in the same way, this psychic land of yours has emerged from a greater, more invisible source.

Our present continents came about because of the earth's crustal movements—the inner movements that raised up mountain ranges, plains, deep trenches, rivers. All of these things are products of the earth's inner structure. That spiritual land which you can now explore within the psyche—its source lies within a more invisible, greater source, and it emerged from there.

This is Session 753, August 4, 1975, 9:21 p.m.

Seth said that just as the earth is composed of many environments, so is the psyche. Our spirituality also has different regions: on the earth there are continents, islands, mountains, oceans, plains, deserts; spirituality also has many different forms.

Session 753

Put in this way, the psyche encompasses many other dimensions of reality. From your viewpoint, these may appear unfamiliar. (Session 753)

If you live in one country, you often regard the local people in other parts of the world as foreigners, and others see you the same way. If you have never been abroad, the outside world will feel unfamiliar to you; but a multinational executive who travels constantly to dozens of countries on business finds no place unfamiliar. The regions of the psyche are the same: we are familiar with some parts of ourselves and unfamiliar with others; though unfamiliar, they are still part of your psyche, just as countries you are not familiar with are still part of the earth, part of the entire earth's ecosystem.

Different countries follow different constitutions. Even within any small region, there are all kinds of local laws, followed by the local people. (Session 753)

This is quite normal. Every country's legal system and constitution are different; in the United States, every state's laws are also different, and below the state there are counties, and below the counties there are cities, and every city has different regulations. Some cities require that when you park, the front of the car must face inward and the rear outward; if you do not park that way, you may get a ticket. In some cities, street parking is no big deal; in some places, street parking is not allowed overnight, and you have to get a permit; without a permit you cannot park there, or you will get a ticket. In some places the speed limit may be 50 miles per hour, while in others it is only 35. For example, when driving through a small town, you may be annoyed to find that the speed limit here is much lower than in another small town; this is especially obvious when the highway passes through a town. On some highways, when passing through a small town, the speed limit suddenly drops very low; if at that point you still rush through at 65 or 70 miles per hour, you are very likely to get a big ticket, because the local speed limit may be only 50 or 45.

Likewise, the different parts of your psyche have their own local "laws" -- Seth says they are actually not laws, but rules -- as well as their own different "governments," each with its own geographical features. Our psychic world is as complex as the physical world, with its own systems and provisions, and its geography and climate are also different.

Traveling in Spiritual Territories, Time Gets Squeezed and Distorted

If you travel around the world, you constantly have to adjust the time. With an iPhone or Apple Watch, it automatically switches to local time; but if you wear a mechanical watch, you have to manually set it forward or back on the plane or before landing. In this process, time itself gets squeezed for you. When you travel into spiritual territories, you will also find that your time automatically gets squeezed out of shape.

You can try to imagine: on this trip you carry your own time with you, packed cleanly inside a watch -- a watch that does not change with the time of the region you enter, but always keeps the Earth time you understand as its standard. Then what happens next will surprise you considerably.

As you approach the boundaries of some psychic world, your watch might run backward. (Session 753)

If you have seen that recent movie called Tenet⁶, you can understand this feeling. When entering other kingdoms of the psyche, your watch may run faster or slower; different spiritual regions have different time variations. If time suddenly runs backward, you might notice it; but if it runs very fast or very slow, you might notice the difference. Yet if time runs backward very, very slowly -- so slowly that it takes you a full Earth year to experience one second of backward movement in the spiritual world -- you probably would not detect that it is running backward. Instead, you would only feel that things seem familiar: this restaurant looks familiar, this dish seems like something I have eaten somewhere before. Seth uses this example to show that in those different spiritual worlds, your feelings will be completely different -- time may not only run backward, it may run backward very slowly, or it may run backward very fast.

And it is not just time. In other areas of the psyche, even stranger things can happen. The watch you bring out may itself become distorted: a round one may become triangular; it may become heavy as a stone, as if you were wearing a big rock on your wrist; or it may become light as air, so that you cannot feel its existence at all, and you may even be unable to read the time -- it may become transparent, it may become a blur, it may stop showing time like a stone, or the hands may never move. But the different parts of your psyche, of your soul, are actually accustomed to all these situations. Do not underestimate your psyche; it can handle all of these. The psyche rides above any local laws and camouflage; it can fully conform to the local rules, laws, and root assumptions. Just as when your psyche came to Earth, it instantly adapted to Earth time -- the way you now adapt to Earth time is exactly this; yet on Earth, when you dream and enter the dream state, it adapts again to the time in dreams, which is time in another dimension, another level of consciousness, completely different from here; and after you die and leave the body, it will adapt to the time there as well. When you meditate, when you concentrate on one thing, time also changes. The psyche has the ability to deal with an infinite number of realities and experiences. Be sure to remember: infinite. All kinds of time and space, all kinds of realities, all kinds of worlds.

At this point Seth says, earnestly and quietly:

Your own physical body has abilities that are seldom utilized to their full extent. But beyond that, the human being himself possesses the possibilities of adjustment that would allow him to survive and continue in the physical environment under drastically different circumstances. (Session 753)

Within our physical bodies there already exist such abilities and differentiation. Although the soul, the psyche, is nonphysical, it has branches and differentiation oriented toward physicality, and that is why humanity can continue under physical conditions.

And it has taken into consideration any changes of the planet that might occur for whatever reasons. (Session 753)

Remember this point. For whatever reasons, all possible changes to the Earth that might occur -- our psyche has taken them all into consideration. So it is not the case that if the Earth warms, humanity will surely die, or that if the environment deteriorates or cools, some certain outcome must follow. Seth even considered more extreme forms, which he will discuss later -- for example, suppose only one sex remained on Earth, or even only one person remained; humanity would still not go extinct. In that extreme situation, humans would develop the ability of parthenogenesis, with no need for the other sex. How that would be achieved, we will discuss when we get there. Here it is only an introduction, telling you that any environmental change that might happen to the Earth, he has taken into account, so that humanity can still survive in the physical world.

While in your terms the psyche is Earth-tuned, it has many other systems of reality to contend with. (Session 753)

You think your psyche is oriented toward Earth, toward the physical, but it also has other reality environments to face. Seth says:

Each psyche contains within it the potential, energy, ability, and power that are possible under any conditions. (Session 753)

In other words, the psyche you perceive is only the one aspect of it that faces Earth; in the other parts of the psyche, it is simultaneously facing other aspects that you do not yet know. Your psyche is a multidimensional existence -- one could also say a multi-spatiotemporal, multi-universal-system existence; it does not face only this one physical world of Earth, but also other worlds we do not yet know. Therefore the potential and power you possess are unlimited, because you can also draw upon the abilities and potential of other spatiotemporal dimensions.

Your psyche or soul can record and experience time backward and forward, can move sideways through alternate presents, or can maintain its own integrity in a timeless environment. (Session 753)

The "alternate presents" here were discussed in Seth Speaks, around Chapter 16 -- that is, probable selves. You do not have only one present, and your past is not only one past; you can have a present that is parallel to your current present, an alternative present. That is the alternate present. Your psyche can not only move forward along the flow of time, but also move backward against the flow of time, and it can also move sideways through all possible presents; it can even maintain its own integrity in an environment without time.

Maintaining integrity in a timeless environment sounds like nothing, but actually it is quite remarkable. Generally speaking, when we talk about existence, about integrity, time is necessarily involved; without time, there is no such thing as existence. But Seth tells you that your psyche, your soul, is an existence beyond time; its existence has nothing to do with time, and therefore it can exist independently in an environment without time.

Time Clusters: A Moment Is Eternity

The psyche is the creator of time clusters.

What is a time cluster? That moment, that single instant that flies by in your day, extended infinitely—that is a time cluster. Suppose you photographed that moment with a camera; it would be as long as forever. But you must not understand this as a static stretching: it is not like a photograph, where one image is permanently fixed in the camera. Seth says every second can be extended infinitely, and this extension is vivid, it is alive; go deep into that moment, and the scene is still playing out. Within that moment, all the time you can think of—past, future, and all possibilities—manifests.

Let me put it another way and see if this helps you understand. Suppose from your birth to your death is simplified into 100 seconds. These 100 seconds are your entire experience from birth to death. Each second is a block of time. In the first second of birth, this block of time contains what happens in that second, and also what happens in the next second, the countless seconds before, and the countless seconds after. That is to say, in the first second you have already lived a whole life, including everything before and after this life. In the second second you also live a whole life, and in the third second too—in every second is your entire life. This is a time cluster. It is both a moment as eternity, and yet not the kind of static moment we imagine permanently fixed on the historical timeline; that moment is still developing, developing laterally. Looking into any point in the entire course of a life, you can see the whole life, and it is alive; that point is merely an entry point.

This is indeed a bit mind-bending.

Seth goes on to say that if you are reading this book, you have already grown tired of conventional ideas. You should already have some awareness of the greater dimensions of your own existence; you are ready to leave behind the worn-out "isms," ready to overturn traditional values, impatient to examine and experience the naturally flowing nature that is your birthright. Out-of-body experience, the inner senses, clairvoyance, telepathy—these abilities are your natural gifts, yet they have been obscured by symbols and myths for a long time. People always say these are abilities only gods possess, or that one must cultivate through spiritual practice to a certain level to attain them, but in fact everyone has them.

Your consciousness forms symbols, not the other way around.

Symbol and Reality

What is a symbol? Everything you see around you is a symbol. Symbols are great, rich toys. You can use them to build, just like a child's building blocks; you can also learn a great deal from them, just like in the old days when schools used alphabet blocks to teach spelling and reading.

Symbols are as natural to your psyche as trees are to the land. (Session 753)

Just as trees grow out of the land. But telling a child a story about a forest, and that real child actually being in a real forest, are two completely different things. The forest in the story and the real forest are both real: the story itself is real, and the forest is also real. But a child who truly enters a forest takes in the life cycle of the forest. He steps on leaves that fell yesterday, rests beneath trees far older than his memory; at night, he looks up at the sky and sees a moon that will soon disappear. On the other hand, the pitch-dark forest at night may give the child an excellent imaginative experience; that kind of experience belongs to another category, and the child knows the difference.

But if you mistake imagination and symbols for reality, you will arrange your experience in that way, and insist that every forest looks just like the pictures drawn in your book. If you think symbols are real, you will assume that all forests in the world are more or less the same, because they are all as depicted in books or as described by others. Yet in fact, every forest in the world, and every region within a forest, is completely different. You insist that "a forest is a forest" because you have not come into contact with a real forest, only with the abstract symbol of "forest."

If you mistake imagination and symbols for reality, then you will arrange your experience in that way, and insist that every forest looks just like the pictures drawn in your book. (Session 753)

In other words, you will expect the various different portions of your own psyche or spirit to have more or less the same experiences. You will carry your local laws and local guidebooks with you, and you will try to measure spiritual time with a wristwatch. (Session 753)

When we speak of a mountain, that is an abstract concept; speaking of a tree is also an abstract concept. But when we truly feel a tree, or truly walk onto a mountain and feel it beneath our feet, those are completely different.

We must use certain of your terms. Especially at the beginning, there are other terms familiar to you that we will squeeze until they are completely unrecognizable. (Session 753)

In other words, in another spiritual realm or on the territory of the soul, the trees there may already be unrecognizable.

Your Reality Can Only Be Interpreted by Yourself

This world in which you yourself exist, this reality can only be interpreted by yourself and not by others. (Session 753)

Your own inner world can only be explained and interpreted by yourself. But Seth also says:

And then, your own interpretation can at best be understood only as a reference point. (Session 753)

Even your own interpretation is still not that reality itself.

Only when those experts—psychologists, priests, physicists, philosophers, religious teachers—forget that they are experts and deal directly with the sources of all the differentiations of the private psyche, can they explain to you the spiritual part of yourself. (Session 753)

The psyche has many differentiated sources: there are differentiations on the earthly material level, and there are also non-material differentiated levels, as well as levels on other planets and in non-material worlds. These are all sources of the different differentiations of your own psyche. Only when these experts forget that they are experts, break down the boundaries between disciplines, directly contact your psyche, and deal with the sources of all the differentiations of your psyche, can they explain to you the present state of your psyche. So the cognition of the psyche is not such a simple matter.

At this point, Seth said we could take a break. The rest of the time was spent asking Seth some personal questions, so this session ended very quickly.

Session 755

This session began on Monday, September 8, 1975, at 8:59 p.m.⁷

Rob spoke first: after Session 753, because they were busy with other things—Rob was writing notes for Seth's book The "Unknown" Reality, and Jane was writing a new preface for a new hardcover book of her own that was about to be published, plus a series of unexpected visitors—they had not held a Seth session for several weeks. There was a gap of more than a month or so. That hardcover book of hers was The Coming of Seth, originally titled How to Develop Your ESP Power. Now when this book was published in Taiwan, it was called The Practicing Deity, and it was released as a hardcover edition.

Then, on August 25, in Session 754, Seth gave a brilliant discourse on what he called "the stamp of identity," explaining how an individual stamps the outer forms of certain realities with the imprint of his own psyche. This session was about how each person, in certain realities—for example, in the reality of Earth, in each reincarnation, or in other realities not within this Earth time-space—then stamps his outer form, if he has an outer form, with the imprint of his psyche. That is, how he stamps this spiritual imprint onto his outer form. In some worlds without physical bodies, he will have a kind of spirit-body existence, meaning he does not possess a physical body. When existing in some nonphysical worlds, he will have a spirit-body existence, and that spirit-body will also have a form, and he makes these his own—that is, he connects the outer forms of these other different realities with himself, combining them with the individual's inner symbols. He has an inner symbol. During the session, Jane later felt Seth guiding her on a journey to Jerusalem, in the first century A.D. However, none of this involved the work of writing the book—there was no book writing—so this session was kept in their files. In Session 754, he introduced the material of Session 754, and this book would later be introduced in other material, placed together with other material they hoped to publish someday. Then, an hour before Jane entered trance, Jane told him that she could receive several different channels from Seth, each concerning a different subject, and they had better wait and see which one would come through tonight. Then, just before the session began, she said it would be Seth's dictation for the new book.

Now let us look at Seth's introduction to the third part of the first chapter of this book.

When I use the word "psyche"—when I use the word psyche—when I use the words "soul" and "psyche," many of you will immediately be curious about my definitions.

Many people say, why do you use this word? Because there are many other words you could use—for example, the word "soul," or "self-confidence," "inner self," and so on. Why must you use this word psyche?

Then Seth began to explain:

Any word, simply by being thought of, written, or spoken, immediately implies a specific statement.

This is a characteristic of us humans. Any word, as soon as you think of it, write it down, or speak it, it implies a specific statement—very specific. Its definition, the extension and intension corresponding to that word, are already fixed. Basically, in your daily lives, it is convenient for you to give everything a name to distinguish them. When we use names to express things in life—for example, when we say "a mountain," we just say "there is a mountain over there" and that is enough. We do not describe it as "there is a pile of rocks, with a certain shape of something or other," because one word "mountain" represents all of its meaning.

But:

When you are dealing with subjective experience, such definitions often limit rather than express any given experience.

What is meant by subjective experience is the experience of your consciousness, your psyche, your thoughts, or your perceptions—not objective experience. When you deal with objective experience, using nouns as substitutes is relatively simple. But when you deal with the issues of your thoughts, this definition has great limitations. Because in the description of your thoughts—that is, the description of your consciousness, this subjective description—the meaning represented by a single word is entirely different from person to person. Although in real society, when we say "a mountain," the image of the mountain in each person's mind may be different—some people's mountain in their mind looks like that, some people's mountain looks like this—but no matter what, they all possess the basic outline and features of a mountain. Its basic attributes will not change too much. In other words, although the specific image of the mountain differs in each person's mind, the intension and extension it refers to, the true meaning, is the same. But on your subjective level, on the level of your consciousness and thoughts, a feeling you experience at that moment cannot be fully understood by others. In other words, at this point it is no longer appropriate to use nouns to represent it, because it limits those things of your subjective feeling.

He continued:

Obviously, the psyche is not a thing.

It is not a thing, so you cannot use a noun to represent it. It has no beginning and no end—this psyche has no beginning and no end—and you cannot see it or touch it either. You cannot see it and cannot touch it. Therefore:

To describe it in usual terms is futile.

Using ordinary vocabulary to talk about it, to explain it—what is the psyche—this is very difficult. Because this thing has been discussed by countless people from ancient times to the present. For example, in Buddhism it is often called self-nature, dharma-nature, suchness⁸, and so on and so forth—many, many words to describe this thing. The eighth consciousness, the ninth consciousness, above the ninth consciousness, and so on—we need not concern ourselves with its descriptions. Many schools also have many disagreements on this description. In ancient China there were many descriptions—things like the Dao and so on—including the Neo-Confucianism of the Ming dynasty, with Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming both having discourses on these matters⁹. So we need not concern ourselves with what its specific name is. This vocabulary is all very difficult to describe, which is why they all used long passages of discourse to talk about this thing. And Seth, in this book, actually also wants to use such a book to tell you what the true psyche is—what the essence of this soul really is.

Because your language mainly allows you to identify physical rather than nonphysical experience.

What was our language invented for? Our language was invented to face this three-dimensional world. It is only in the three-dimensional world that we need language. In higher dimensions we do not need language—it is all known through telepathy and intuitive understanding. But in the three-dimensional world we cannot do that; we must have language. So the invention of our language must refer to the needs of our physical world; it arose because of the needs of the physical world. For example, we point and say, "What is this? This is a tree. That is prey. Which animal is that? This is grain. Can this be eaten or not?" and so on.

He said:

I am not saying that words cannot be used to describe your psyche, but they cannot define it.

You cannot define it. Never try to define this thing—what is the soul, what is the psyche?

What is the difference between my psyche and my soul? My psyche? Or my entity? Or my "hitting me"? My inner self?

Many beginners in spiritual matters ask such questions. They will ask you very seriously, saying what exactly is the difference, what is different. Seth said:

It is useless to ask such questions.

It is useless if you come asking such questions, because all of these terms are an effort to express that greater portion of yourself that you feel within you, that you yourself experience. All of these are an effort at description of that other you that you can perceive within yourself, besides this physical body. We humans can feel that we are not only a physical body—outside the body or inside the body there is another you. And the descriptions of that you are strange and varied, from different disciplines—psychology has psychology's description, mysticism has mysticism's description, philosophy has philosophy's description, science has science's description.

But your use of language may be because you are eager for a definition. We humans are often accustomed to defining things; we always want a definition.

It is hoped that this book will give you some intimate awareness, some definite experience, that will acquaint you with the nature of your own psyche. Then you will see that its reality escapes all definitions. You will find that it defies all categories, belongs to no category, and with exuberant creativity pushes aside all neat attempts to package it.

He said something very interesting—any attempt to categorize, package, classify, or define the psyche is pushed aside. Pushed aside with what? With exuberant creativity. Why? Because it is constantly creating. It is a living thing; you cannot define it.

When you begin a physical journey, you feel yourself distinct from the land you travel over.

That is to say, in our three-dimensional world, when you go out traveling, the land beneath your feet is distinct from you. He gave a similar example before, in Seth Speaks, where he talked about a similar example. He means that when you run across a piece of land, the contact between your feet and the land—this kind of perception—is something you can be aware of: the land is the land, you are you. Such an awareness.

No matter how far your journey takes you—by motorcycle, by car, by plane, on foot, by bicycle, by camel, by truck, or by ship—you are the wanderer, and the land, the oceans, and the deserts are the environment through which you travel. They are not you. You are the subject of the journey.

He says this is how it is in the physical world. But:

When you begin a journey into the inner world within yourself, everything changes. You are still the wanderer, but you are also the vehicle and the environment.

He says this is the biggest difference. When you travel in the outer world, you are you, the environment is the environment, the scenery is the scenery, the vehicle is the vehicle. But when you travel in the inner world, you are one—you are still you, and you are also the vehicle, and you are also the surrounding environment. As you go, you form the road; the road is all formed by you. That is, you form your method of travel—how you want to travel—as well as the hills and mountains, oceans and hills, farms and villages of the self and the psyche. He is speaking spiritually—as if on the land of the psyche, on the land of your psyche, there will likewise be these hills, mountains, oceans, hills, farms, and villages. And all of these are you.

He said:

In early colonial America, when men and women migrated westward across the North American continent.

America developed from the East Coast all the way to the West Coast. The famous Route 66 runs from Chicago all the way to Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles¹⁰. Many people first arrived from the East at Chicago, in the Great Lakes region, using Chicago as a transfer station for a brief rest and pause, and then drove horse-drawn wagons, pulled ox carts, or walked in various ways, all the way from there to the West Coast of Los Angeles. Along the way, the American land at that time was vast and largely unoccupied. The land policy then was similar to a kind of enclosure—you just had to go and enclose it, cultivate it, and not let it lie fallow, and the land would be yours. But if you enclosed a piece of land and did not use it, just occupying it—that would not do; you had to cultivate it. Of course, in this process I am only speaking roughly; it was actually very complex, with certain norms and rules. For example, the land had to be divided into blocks of 36 acres, 36 square kilometers per block¹¹, and then subdivided and divided within, developed piece by piece.

At the same time:

Many people did not doubt that the land did indeed continue beyond the mountains.

That is, after crossing the Rocky Mountains in the middle of America, they firmly believed in their hearts that beyond the mountains there was still land.

As you travel through your inner reality like a pioneer, you create each leaf, each inch of land, each sunset and sunrise, each oasis, friendly cabin, and encounter with enemies as you go along.

That is to say, when you pioneer, travel, explore, and adventure in your inner world, the environment around you—every blade of grass, every tree, including the people you meet and the events you encounter—are all created by yourself. Remember, it is created as you go. So it is said that you are both the scenery and the road.

If you are looking for a simple definition of the psyche, I cannot help you. But if you want to experience the splendid creativity of your own being, then I will use some methods to stir up your greatest sense of adventure. I will stir up your adventurous heart for exploring this inner information. I will stir up your curiosity, give you courage, give you confidence. If you want, I will give you a picture of the psyche.

Seth means that within the scope of your psyche, in this place you are not yet familiar with, if you truly want to explore it, I will give you a rough map-like thing, telling you the levels of this psyche—how many levels and layers it is divided into, how many territories or tiers. In The "Unknown" Reality he talks about this more; he will give you a general picture of where to explore and how to explore.

He said:

Your psyche is not a known land. Nor is it simply a strange land to which you can travel. Nor is it a completed or nearly completed subjective universe.

It is not fixed, not dead. It is not like a place in the physical world you have not been to, just lying there waiting for you to explore it. It is not what you think—that there is an inner world, and although it is not physical, that world already exists, just waiting for you to explore it, the door already open, waiting for you to come explore. It is not like that. There is no such thing. All of this must be discovered in the course of your exploration. It is somewhat like those computer strategy games you have played—the places you have not explored are covered in black fog, and you have no idea what they are. Only the places you have explored are revealed to you. But this revelation is also different from the game—in the game, someone else has set it up, and the places you have not walked through are just blocked from you, and once you walk through they open up. But in this place, the places you walk through are all created by yourself, not set up by someone else. So I am only using that as a figurative analogy.

Instead, it is a state of being in constant formation. Your present sense of existence dwells within it. You create it, and it creates you.

Very interesting. It is not one-directional, fixed, or unchanging. It is a process of mutual influence and mutual interaction. So in Buddhism, in the Consciousness-Only school, they often talk about seeds perfuming manifest activity, manifest activity perfuming seeds, and seeds giving rise to manifest activity¹²—that is, they are the result of mutual interaction.

It creates in the physical manner that you recognize.

It creates in the material way that you can understand—that inner world. Do not think it is虚无, as if it were empty nothingness. No, it creates in a material way. In other words, it is the same as the way we create material things in the three-dimensional world.

On the other hand, you create physical time for your psyche, because without you there would be no experience of the passing of spring into autumn.

Not only that—you also create physical time for your own psyche. Including our perception of time—all of it is created by this psyche. In other words, without your existence, you would have no experience of the four seasons, of time. It is not that the four seasons and time or the changing of seasons do not exist, but that the experience of them is gone. Because you do not exist—when I say do not exist, I mean do not exist in this physical world. When you have no physical body and do not exist in the physical world, your perception of time is also completely different. So our perception of time in the physical world is all created by your psyche.

Then you could not experience—if you no longer exist, after you cannot experience time—then there would be no such thing as what Jane called this "private moment." "Private moment"—private means a time that belongs only to oneself. Jane said there is a private time, a time that belongs only to herself. This translation is not good; it is not "privacy" in the abstract sense. She is saying there is a time with a private quality. Understand it this way: each of us will say, "Give me some time to be alone," or "Let me be by myself for a while." Many people feel this time is very private—with himself, only himself there—meaning the self he perceives as being there. This period of time belongs to himself, not to anyone else, only to himself. This is called private time. It would not exist, and you could not experience this private time.

Therefore, if one portion of your being wants to rise above those moments—that lonely march—

The original text says "long march," not "advance." The original text here is also not "transcend" but "rise." This passage differs from the original in terms of translation understanding—it is not a matter of right or wrong, just that the translator's understanding of the original differs. If you are interested in this passage, you can check the original text. It is "rise," and the later part is also the meaning of "long march," using the word "march." This part is not particularly easy to understand; I will try to explain it clearly for you.

Other portions of your psyche plunge joyfully into that particular time focus of your moment.

What does he mean by this passage? He is saying that if this portion of your psyche, or a certain portion of your existence—we know that your existence has many facets, some facing the physical, some facing the nonphysical. Your existence itself is a multidimensional, multi-dimensional existence—then one portion of this existence of yours wants, within this time that you yourself consider private, within this portion of time that you yourself consider belongs to you and only to you, to experience and feel being alone in this period of your time—it is called the lonely long march, meaning only yourself. You are not spending time with friends; you are quietly alone by yourself, and you consider this moment lonely, with only yourself. When you are moving forward alone in such a lonely moment of your own.

He says one portion of you rises from this. Do not use "transcend" here, or you will not know what he is trying to say—it is not transcend, it is rise. That is, at a certain moment, you have a self-consciousness that emerges from within this moment. It is as if this moment and your self are the only two there. Within this moment there is only your own existence; this period of time belongs only to yourself. That is to say, you yourself are born from within this moment—because without this moment, you could not perceive your own existence. So as I said earlier, you and this world are interactive. Without you, this moment would not exist; and without this moment, you could not feel your own existence within this period of time. Your existence in the physical world depends on time. Without time—if there were no time in the physical world—there would be no you; and without you, there would be no time. It is such an interdependent relationship.

All right, so here he is saying that you think it is just you and time spending time together—this is what you yourself think. You think it is a portion of yourself, the self-aware portion, or the self-conscious portion. He says actually:

Other portions of your psyche—the nonphysical, possibly extraterrestrial portions—plunge joyfully into that particular time focus of yours.

They will very happily rush into, burst into that time focus you are currently attending to. When you are there enjoying yourself, whether sitting in meditation or meditating, and you think this thing is only you being there—actually it is not. Because you have focused your attention on this time focus, the other dimensional portions of your soul, the other dimensional portions of your psyche, will also rush into this time focus.

You might say, if they rush into this time focus, then what about their lives in other realities, in other worlds? What about their lives on other planets? This is your misunderstanding. You think this psychic thing can be here but not there, there but not here—no, it can be both here and there. This is the first limitation you must break through. So his meaning is that you think that in physical time, the physical you is only spending time with yourself, but actually those nonphysical yous are likewise brought into this present moment of yours.

Just as now you want to understand the timeless, infinite dimensions of your own greater existence, so even now that non-earthly identity—the nonphysical, non-earthly identity—also yearns to explore the dimensions and biological nature of our earthly existence.

What does "non-earthly identity" mean? He used "non-earthly identity." "Earthly" means of the Earth, of this world. You can translate it as "non-earthly," and this translation is actually quite apt—meaning those other identities, other entities that are not on the level of our Earth. Identity—you can understand it as a kind of identity, a kind of other personality fragment, any of these. Those multiple components also yearn to explore the dimensions and biological nature of our earthly existence. What does this mean? Those nonphysical, non-earthly yous—because you yourself are a multidimensional existence—your other identities, just as you want to explore the realms of their existence, they also very much yearn to explore the realm of your existence. Interesting, right?

So when you are in this kind of solitude, it is not only you who are there—all of those are there. All of those identities are there. They are equally curious: what is Earth really like? You actually have biological nature, and your reproduction requires two sexes—how interesting. Including other living things, other species, and all things in this world—they all want to experience it, just as you want to experience theirs.

A vivid example of this is that we often go to a place as tourists, and then the locals will look at us with disdain and say: what is there to tour here where I live? We live here now, and we do not feel there is anything worth touring here, do not feel it is beautiful. When you go to a small mountain village, to Bamei, to Bama Longevity Village—these very primitive tourist spots—the locals will look at you blankly and say: what are you doing here? You say: we came to tour, it is so beautiful here. They say: we really want to get out of here; we are trapped here and cannot leave. Especially a place like Bamei, where you have to row a boat through a cave to get out. They say: for generations we have wanted to get out, and you people travel over mountains and rivers to come live here, and even stay for a while. That is just how it is. The world is like this—you want to travel elsewhere, and others want to come travel to your place.

Earlier I mentioned some of the bizarre effects that might occur if you tried to bring your watch or other timepieces into other levels of reality.

This was mentioned earlier. Now:

When you try to interpret your own identity in terms of other types of existence, the same kind of surprise or distortion or alteration may seem to occur.

His point is that when you use the way other entities exist -- that is, the ways of other nonphysical levels, of extraterrestrials -- to interpret the self-nature you have right now, you will likewise be very surprised and distorted, or change may seem to be happening, completely different. In other words, let me give a vivid example, like a joke -- an alien observed Earth for a long time, then went back and reported to his headquarters. He may have observed America; this joke is American. He reported to the alien headquarters: on Earth there lives a kind of creature called "cars," and inside cars there lives a kind of parasitic creature called "humans." Humans parasitize these cars every day, and without a car they will not go out; there is also the house, and humans are parasites of both, and so on. That is his angle, so from an alien perspective this world is completely different. He thinks that cars -- if you look at America from a satellite map, it really seems like a kingdom of cars, as if cars were the things in this world that have exuberance and life, while humans sit inside cars, like parasites of cars. So his point is that when you look at our present existence from different dimensional angles and different realities, that distortion, that surprise, that change are all happening.

When you try to understand your psyche and define it in terms of time, then the idea of reincarnation seems to make sense.

When you want to understand your psyche, and then you want to understand it from the angle of time, then you immediately think of the idea of reincarnation, and it feels very reasonable. Why? You will think: of course, my psyche, my soul has lived through many physical lives, one after another. If my present experience is dominated by my childhood -- your adult life is dominated by your childhood experiences, because you grew up from childhood -- then my present life must be the result of an earlier life. So when you look at reincarnation from a time-based viewpoint, that is how it is. That is why in our Buddhism or other religions it is often mentioned, this karma in reincarnation, cause and effect, karmic force -- karmic force pulls you and causes your reincarnation, everything is karma, "all dharmas are empty, only cause and effect are not empty," and so on. These are all taking the Dharma out of context to understand it, and these views are all wrong.

Where is the mistake? It is wrong in only one place -- he uses time, he brings time into the world of the psyche. When you define it in terms of time, when you define the psyche in terms of time, this kind of error appears. Be sure to remember, this error is a mistaken cognition produced by humans bringing time into the world of the psyche. So if you understand this, you will understand why these reincarnation problems are right here -- once you use time to think about the world of your psyche, once you use time to think about the soul, the result of reincarnation will inevitably appear. This is natural.

Thus you try to define your psyche in terms of time, but in doing so you limit your understanding of it, and even your experience of it, and it is even a distortion and a twisting.

So here, I have made this issue clear for everyone -- why there is no cause and effect, no reincarnation, no karmic force, that is what it means. On the level of the psyche, on the level of self-nature, on the level of the Dharma-nature in Buddhism, on the level of suchness, there is no time. If there is no time, how can there be any talk of reincarnation? And if there is no reincarnation, how can there be cause and effect, how can there be karmic force? None of these exist.

However, Buddhist practice emphasizes stages; it proceeds step by step. If you said this kind of thing from the very beginning, many people would be unable to understand and accept it, and they could not even imagine it. Therefore, it emphasized the immortality of the soul, and then added the concept of time that humans can understand, and produced from it, generated from it, a story of reincarnation. This is something most people can understand. At least most people can, through this method, accept the matter that "the soul can be immortal," and accept the reality that beyond themselves there is a higher, farther-reaching, more multidimensional existence. This is something they can understand and accept. So on the basis of reality, on the level of not changing humanity's understanding of time and space, it added a concept like "the soul is immortal." This is very easy to understand. If it also broke time and space, if it also emptied time and space -- actually the Dharma empties everything, so certainly time and space are both absent -- if from the start it said that time and space do not exist and reincarnation does not exist either, then for practitioners, they would in the end suddenly fall into an emptiness, into a black hole, and they would not even know what to practice anymore, nor what to cultivate or uphold. They also -- if all dharmas are empty, everything including the Buddha-Dharma is also gone, then they would not even know what to uphold. You say, well, then upholding nothing is best, but then how does he practice? He no longer knows what to practice. So this is a process of stages in practice, just like becoming a bodhisattva requires going through exactly these 52 stages, step by step. We will stop here on this issue.

So do not bring the concept and notion of time into the world of your psyche. If you bring it in, you are wrong. But it is very hard for us not to bring it in, because from childhood we have lived in a world that has time and space.

Let us try another analogy: an artist facing the pains of the soul's birth. Before you is a canvas, and you are working on all of its areas at once.

What does "facing the pains of the soul's birth" mean? It means this painter wants to paint, he has inspiration but has not yet painted it out, so he faces the birth pains of inspiration. Oil painting requires canvas, and you are working on all of its areas at once -- a relatively large canvas. In your terms, each part of this canvas, from our human angle, can be seen as a period of time. For example, at a certain moment, say we divide this canvas into nine sections. The upper left represents the 17th century, the upper middle represents the 18th century, the upper right is the 19th century, and then it begins to arrange the 20th century, 21st century, 22nd century. Let us first suppose that each part of the canvas is a period of time, a century, one hundred years. Then you try to maintain in your mind an overall balance and purpose, because you want to paint one whole painting, not nine small paintings; you are painting one whole painting. But each part represents a different time segment, and the time blocks are relatively long, one hundred years.

Therefore, when you apply your brush to any particular part of this canvas, the relationships within the entire field may change.

When you paint in a certain area, it will inevitably affect the other areas. Because this painting is a whole, in order to achieve such an overall balance and purpose, each part must necessarily conform to the overall balance and the overall sense of wholeness. And when each part must conform to the overall sense of the whole painting, then it inevitably cannot consider only its own part, so it will change for the sake of wholeness. And when you have painted a certain part, then another part naturally changes. What does this mean? For example, when you paint the sun in the upper right corner, then it is absolutely impossible for you to paint another sun anywhere else in the picture. In other words, the upper part of this painting has already been given to the sky; you cannot paint a lake in the upper part anymore, it can only have clouds painted above. So when you paint a certain part, it inevitably exerts a subtle influence on the other parts of the whole, and it has already been decided. For example, when the upper part you painted is a high mountain, then the lower part can no longer have white clouds painted in it. You understand what he means.

However, on this mysterious canvas in our analogy, no brushstroke is ever truly erased.

That is, the things you have painted, the things you have drawn, they always remain there. Maybe later you changed it again; for the sake of an overall purpose you changed the painting again, but when you changed the painting, that old stroke of yours was not erased; it still exists. It is like some painters, some use a scraper to scrape it off -- when they paint something wrong or want to repaint, they scrape off a certain area. Others do not scrape it off; they directly paint over it and cover it, which is also a way of painting. Well, in any case, he tells you that what you have painted, even if you scraped it off, even if you used a scraper to scrape it off, that stroke is no longer on the canvas -- he says it is actually still there.

This painting can be understood in connection with the concept of "time bundles" he mentioned earlier. In the time bundles of the previous session, it can be understood that every moment, every second exists eternally, extends infinitely, and is alive.

Furthermore, it changes all the relationships within this particular picture.

The most magical thing is that those old brushstrokes or old painted things, although covered by new things, still influence all our present relationships. What does this mean?

Let me make it a little more vivid. For example, this canvas is being painted as a whole, and each section represents a time period. In each time period, for example, the upper right section represents the 19th century, from 1801 to 1899, all of it the 19th century. In this entire 19th century, many, many, many things happened. I mean what this painter experienced, not the whole world and universe, just what the painter himself experienced in this 19th century. The things that happened in this 19th century, they are like painting, layer upon layer upon layer -- the moments in which they happened have been overlapping all along. In that time period on the canvas, the things that happened are all overlapping together; every event is still there, still exists. It is that kind of feeling. Although at any given moment, what you see is a complete, whole picture, beneath the whole picture at that arbitrary specific moment are overlapping all the things that were ever painted.

Someone earlier reminded me that you can use Photoshop¹³ to understand it -- if you have drawn pictures and used Photoshop¹³, you will understand. It is somewhat like the concept of layers. Layer upon layer, you can hide certain layers, but when you hide a layer, the layer becomes invisible, but that does not mean the layer is gone. You can reveal this layer at any time; you click the eye and it appears, and it can be composited with other layers, or you can choose not to composite it. It is similar to this concept of layers.

But:

These magical brushstrokes are not simple drawings on a flat surface.

Extending this further, let us imagine that this canvas is not a simple flat surface; it is three-dimensional, and not only three-dimensional but also alive. You are Ma Liang with the magic brush; whatever you paint can come alive. Imagine you are that kind of painter.

They carry within them all of the artist's intent, and these paintings themselves carry all of the artist's intent, and this intent is made manifest through the characteristics of each individual brushstroke.

This is very simple, right? The painter's intent must necessarily be expressed through every stroke he makes. But in this there is certainly manifested the painter's own intent, not the intent of another painter.

If the painter painted a door, all the laws of perspective he could feel opened up, and added ten far deeper dimensions.

He says, if a painter painted a door on such a living, three-dimensional, holographic canvas, then this door would really become a door of a true three-dimensional world. And through this door of the three-dimensional world, you could use the perspective method of a painter in the human three-dimensional world to look out from this door -- it would open up a new dimension and a new space, and beyond that door would be another world.

The Painter and the Painting Analogy

Since this is our analogy, we can stretch it as we please according to our thoughts and consciousness, more than any painter can stretch his canvas. We imagine that this canvas can extend infinitely, can be infinitely large. Since it is an analogy, this canvas can be infinitely large—just like when you paint on a computer, and many people now paint on iPads, this canvas can be set very, very large, or very, very small.

He says there is no need to limit ourselves. So when painting, you have no need to limit yourself—the canvas itself can change size as well as shape; not only the size can change, but the size and shape can both change. At the same time, in the painter's painting, the figures are not merely depictions. The figures are not dead, not with forever frozen, glass-like eyes, looking back at the painter with exaggerated smiles—isn't that how traditional paintings always are? When painting a person, the eyeballs are always crystal clear, and then with that kind of exaggerated smile, wearing their best holiday attire, they turn back to look at the painter. He says humorously, actually it is not like that.

Actually, on the contrary, they can face the painter and answer back. The figures in the painting can talk back to the painter, can turn sideways, can look at their companions, observe the environment they themselves are in, and even go beyond the dimensions of the painting itself to question the painter. For example, if this painting is flat, two-dimensional, and the painter is three-dimensional, then the figures in the painting can even come alive from this two-dimensional world, jump into the three-dimensional world, and question the painter, saying, "How could you paint it like this?"

And if this painting is a living, three-dimensional world, then the painter must be in four dimensions—only from four dimensions can he paint a three-dimensional thing. At this point you can imagine that the figures in the painting can not only look at their companions in the painting within the environment the painter gave them, they can even rise up to the dimension where the painter resides and question the painter: "Change it for me, I don't want this scene, I don't like this, change it for me."

All of this is an analogy, to help you understand what the psyche is, what the soul is.

Spirit Is Both the Painting and the Painter

In our analogy here, the psyche—that is, your spirituality, your soul—is at once those paintings and also that painter. Interesting: in this analogy, the psyche is both that painting and that painter.

Because the painter discovers that all the components in the painting are parts of himself. Is the world in the painting the painter's imagination? Is it the thing he conceived that he wanted to paint? Well, what the painter conceives is of course a part of himself—without this painter, how could there be this painting? So, all the things in the painting are parts of himself, parts of his conception.

But there is even more. When our painter looks around, he discovers a strange phenomenon: he finds that he is truly surrounded by the very painting he is creating. That is to say, when the painter is absorbed in painting, he suddenly looks up, glances around, and discovers that he is right there inside the environment within the painting he has been painting.

Let me give an example. Say this painter wants to paint a self-portrait: he paints himself in a room, talking and chatting with friends. He paints intently, on and on, and when he finishes he says he will take a break, looks up, and discovers that he is right there in that room, with a friend beside him calling out, "Stop painting, come over and have something to eat." And the figure in his painting also happens to be in just such a room—that figure is also painting a picture, and is also just looking up, with his friend calling to him, "Come and eat." In that instant he has that "wow" kind of magical feeling: he is surrounded by his own painting.

When he observes further, he discovers an even greater masterpiece: he himself is inside another painting. The painter himself is painting a picture, and the act of the painter painting that picture, within another painting, may be only a very small part, a detail—perhaps in that larger painting he occupies only a small corner, appearing in the posture of a painter. And the figures in that painting are also creating the very paintings that he himself is beginning to recognize.

Does this kind of nesting layer upon layer make one's head feel slightly dizzy? Having taken the example to this extent, I think everyone can understand: you are painting a picture, and there is also someone painting you. During the break, Rob said Jane felt elated about what happened today—she received the galley proofs of six copies of her new poetry collection, The Soul and the Mortal Self: Dialogues in Time¹⁴, sent by the publisher.

The Painter's Realization

Our painter then understood. He saw all of this, and he had a realization: all the people he had painted were also painting their own paintings. These figures in his painting, each one of them was actually painting their own painting, and they were moving about within their own reality in ways that even the painter could not perceive. Although the painter had painted these figures, these figures were creating their own paintings within their own paintings, opening up different dimensions and spaces, all of which lay beyond the painter's own perception.

In this flash of insight -- akin to a sudden enlightenment -- the painter thought: he too was being painted by someone. He not only saw that the figures in his painting were creating their own respective paintings and living within their own respective realities, he also suddenly realized that someone else was painting him, and that he too was living within someone else's reality space. There was another painter behind him, and from that painter, his own creativity flowed forth. And he began to see beyond the frame.

At this point, the painter began to look beyond the frame. To use the analogy from before, this was when he began to explore from the fourth dimension toward the fifth dimension. If what this painter painted was a three-dimensional world, then the painter himself existed in a four-dimensional world; when the painter became aware that he himself was actually inside someone else's painting, then the painter who was painting him actually lived in the fifth dimension, and so on. This is a process of nested layers, endless and infinite: every person in the painting is also creating their own reality, so the painting itself is four-dimensional, the painter is five-dimensional, the painter behind that painter is six-dimensional -- seven-dimensional, eight-dimensional, nine-dimensional, it does not matter.

What he wants to tell you is this: these dimensions are connected to one another, they are linked, they are open -- you can cross a threshold, cross a frame, and enter a new dimension. This is a characteristic of your spirituality. What is spirituality? All of this -- all these people in the paintings, all these painters, all the landscapes, figures, and events in these different dimensions -- all of it, all of it, is your spirituality, it is your soul. If you want to define it, it is itself a multidimensional existence.

Breaking Through Old Views

Seth says, if you are confused by this analogy, that is fine, because it means we have already broken through the old viewpoint. After this analogy, anything I say from now on will seem quite simple by comparison. Because up to now, at least it must seem as though you have little hope of discovering your own greater dimensions.

Why do we say we have little hope of discovering our own greater dimensions? Because we still have a physical body right now. While we exist in a physical body, we may only occasionally glimpse this higher-dimensional world, but it is very hard for us, unlike Seth, who has no physical body at all and can travel back and forth to experience different dimensions and worlds. We have little hope — note, "little," not absolutely none — and the reason is not that our ability is lacking, but because of the limitations of the physical body, which is natural.

He says, once again:

Rather than trying to define the psyche, I would rather try to arouse your imagination so that you can leap beyond what you have been told you are, and gain some kind of direct experience.

Do not let others tell you who you are; you have to experience who you are for yourself. To a certain degree, this book itself provides its own demonstration — this book itself is a kind of demonstration, a living demonstration of the multidimensional psyche.

Ruburt: A Living Portrait of the Psyche

He said he calls Jane "Ruburt" because this name indicates another portion of his reality. The name Ruburt refers to another part of Jane's reality, another part of his psyche. At the same time, he also considers himself to be Jane, and he is certainly real too, and he writes his own books as well -- though he does not sign the books as Ruburt. Why not use Ruburt as his pen name? Because he cannot see that larger reality. Seth can see it; Jane cannot. She can only catch an occasional glimpse or an occasional impression.

Jane lives the same everyday life as we do, just like us. He has his own unique loves, hates, characteristics, and abilities, just like each of you. He lives in a small town called Elmira in upstate New York.

He is a living portrait of the psyche -- in and of himself, and independent within the given framework.

Within his own physical body in this lifetime, within a particular environment of his, within this given environment, he is completely independent and autonomous. This point must be remembered: Jane is independent and autonomous. Even though his multidimensional psyche has many other dimensions, none of these dimensions affect his present identity. He has complete free will.

Seth says, as for me, I come from another portion of the picture of reality -- another dimension of the psyche, within another dimension of the psychic world. From there I can observe your existence, just as you can see a normal picture. From his dimension, he sees our human existence at a glance as well. He puts it this way:

I am outside your reference framework.

"Reference framework" is a concept from physics -- we first establish a reference frame, and only then can we discuss space and spacetime, and only then can we discuss certain physical phenomena. Without such a reference framework, nothing can be discussed at all. Seth says, if we put it that way, I am outside your spacetime framework. Within your own picture of reality, you cannot see things from my perspective.

He says I write my books, including this present one, because my primary focus is in a reality somewhat larger than your own -- the angle I stand at is higher than yours, the angle of my reality is larger than yours. Within your reference points, I cannot appear fully as myself -- I cannot manifest in the way you would want, in a physical form.

Therefore Ruburt's subjective perspective opened up because of his desires and interests -- Ruburt's interest is in exploring these very philosophical questions of "where do I come from, where do I go." At the same time, it also revealed my own desires and interests. The production of this book came about because Ruburt's exploration of these philosophical questions and Seth's desire to transmit his material -- these two intentions from different times and spaces reached an agreement. Only then could this book come into being.

Within Ruburt himself, he opened a door leading to other levels of his existence -- that level of the soul, of the psychic existence, that made it possible for Ruburt to incarnate into the physical world. He opened a door at that higher dimension, but that existence cannot be fully expressed in your world. On the other side of reality, at that level of reality, it is expressed through my experience. I must write my books through Ruburt.

This kind of door across time and space is not the same as a simple opening leading from one room to another. When you enter a door to the physical world, you can see everything in that room. But he says I am not in the same time and space as you. Although I have opened a door so that Jane can contact me through it, and I operate, experience, and perceive within my own reality space, yet through this door -- whether it is Jane or you through Jane -- you can only take a slight glimpse of my room, my time and space, my dimension. You cannot live in that reality space as fully and concretely as Seth does. You can only take a quick look. And that is already quite good.

However, all of you have this kind of psychological door -- not only Jane, but every one of you. If you want to go to more dimensions or higher dimensions, you can open this door of the psyche and go. Therefore, in a certain sense:

I speak for those other aspects of yourself that do not appear within the scope of your daily life.

I write this book, and you can understand it this way: I am speaking on behalf of that other level of each of you that exists outside of your daily life. The you on that other level -- the one you cannot perceive within the scope of your life -- I am speaking for them. To put it simply, I am speaking for the inner you. In simple terms, this is easier to understand. Do not quibble over it.

Seth Two

Seth says that beyond the existence I consider to be myself, there are other realities. To a certain degree, I share in their experience -- and occasionally I also share things from those worlds. For example, to a degree far beyond the extent to which Ruburt shares my experience.

For instance, on certain rather rare occasions, Ruburt was able to make inner contact with what he calls Seth Two, the second Seth. In the last chapter of Seth Speaks, Seth acted as a kind of translator -- a linker between different dimensions -- allowing Ruburt to connect with Seth Two. Seth Two said something very profound at that time; if you are interested, you can look at the last chapter of Seth Speaks.

This opportunity does not come often; contact with Seth Two happens very rarely. Yet that level of reality, the level of Seth Two, is even farther removed from your own reality -- farther than the level between me and you. In your terms, it represents an even more distant extension of the psyche.

Seth Two and I have a much closer relationship. In that I recognize my own identity as a clear part of his existence.

Seth says that my identity -- this identity of Seth -- is actually a clear part of Seth Two's existence, and can be called an earlier part of Seth Two. Ruburt, however, did not feel that Seth and Seth Two had any connection -- although Seth felt that he himself was a part of Seth Two, Ruburt felt the two had no relation.

In a certain way, Seth Two's reality contains my own.

Yet my contribution to his experience -- it is not that because his world contains my world, I am of no use to him. He says my experience contributes to his experience. In other words, his experience in the three-dimensional world is also helpful and contributive to our higher entity.

In the same way, every one of my readers is connected to this same level of the psychic world. The different levels of each person's psyche are all interconnected. So there is no strict boundary between dimensions -- we say "dimensions" only for the convenience of your understanding. Just like the example I gave earlier, the painter and the person in the painting: from the perspective of dimensions, one could say one is three-dimensional and the other four-dimensional, and it seems that in physics and mathematics, the relationship between these dimensions has no direct connection other than projection. But in that analogy, the painter can enter the painting at any time, and the figure in the painting can also come out at any time and enter the painter's dimension. There is no clear boundary between them. So in a broad sense, all of this happens simultaneously.

Ruburt's soul contributes to and forms certain parts of my experience, just as I also contribute to his -- it is all mutual.

Your identity is not something that is already finished. Your most minute action, your most minute thought, every one of your dreams, all add to your psychic world.

No matter how you imagine the psyche to be lofty and grand, how removed from worldly concerns, how it looks down upon us from a higher dimension, it still needs your contribution. Between you and it there is a process of mutual giving -- you contribute to it, and it contributes to you. Do not think of it as something so high above; it needs you, and you need it.

So in your daily life, every move, every thought, every belief, every action, in the trivialities of eating, drinking, and daily living, you are contributing to that other higher-dimensional psychic world.

To put it more bluntly: you do not need to accomplish any great deeds, you do not need to achieve any earth-shaking accomplishments, you do not need to invent anything, you do not need to change the fate of human history, you do not need to become a famous scholar or an expert in some field -- none of that is necessary. Your very existence is already contributing to that higher dimension. It is in the little bits and pieces of actual conscious life that you are contributing, not that you must achieve some accomplishment for it to count as a contribution.

The Turn After Class

When Seth got to this point, he said we would take a break and then continue. He said this part of the dictation was finished. At 10:39, Seth gave the two of them some personal material. Usually after this, the session would end. But tonight Jane was so full of exuberance, so energetic, that Seth came back and gave us some more dictation -- as far as he could remember, this was the first time a session had turned out this way.

Normally, once Seth said the dictation was over, the session was over. After that, Seth might talk with Jane and Rob about some of their personal issues, and all of that was called personal material or the private session portion. But this session was different: after Seth delivered some personal material, he came back and continued with the content that followed in the session. From 10:39 all the way to 11:20, forty minutes passed in between.

He said: "Since I gather you do not intend to continue with our first chapter, I will wish you a pleasant evening." Before he even finished speaking, Rob quickly said: "I can continue for about another half hour." Seth said, well then, take a break for a bit, and we will keep going. As it turned out, they did not really take a break at all -- he just started speaking again. This Seth is also an impatient one, because it was already very late, already 11:30.

This Book Differs from Previous Books

Seth said that Ruburt specializes in studying consciousness and the psyche, and those of us who study Seth are all interested in these things. But they also had other pressing matters—their own pressing matters made it impossible for them to begin such a broad study. You cannot study the Seth material full-time; you still have your daily life to live. You all have to deal with physical reality—as long as you exist in a physical body, you have to deal with this physical reality. The same was true for Ruburt and Joseph.

Up to now, all my books have included the long notes written by Joseph. These notes formed the background, formed a backdrop for the entire course—what time the sessions were held, what Jane was like before the session, what Rob was like, just like the backdrop of a performance. However, my books have already transcended these boundaries. In your terms, only so much can be accomplished in time—from our human perspective, in a given amount of time, I can only transmit this much material, because after all, you live in a physical world constrained by time.

He said that even now, Joseph is still typing my earlier draft—The "Unknown" Reality. That book was also written in such a way:

So as to connect Ruburt's and Joseph's personal experience with a larger theoretical framework, so that the two are in fact inseparable.

He connected Ruburt's and Joseph's personal experiences—whether dreams, out-of-body experiences, or other extrasensory experiences—to a larger theoretical framework. What theoretical framework? It is a spiritual, unknown world. It takes us into a broader world, and within that world, Seth used a highly theoretical framework to give an excellent exposition of it. So you can see that book was basically not oriented toward the earth; it no longer had much connection to our ordinary lives; it was more like an adventure of consciousness.

In this new book—that is, The Nature of the Psyche—I will sometimes provide my own scenery, meaning that Rob's notes are no longer needed as the background in which this story takes place. In other words, this product of the psyche has escaped the boundaries of physical reality. Because this book discusses entirely nonphysical things—the nature of the psyche, the nature of the soul—therefore, from my level of reality, I can no longer expect Joseph to do more work than taking notes. He can only do the work of recording now; the rest of the work has to be done by me—I have to prepare the presentation of the entire content of this book, and he asks the readers to be patient with him.

In my own way, I will try to provide the appropriate references.

Because Rob can no longer help, Seth will use Seth's way to provide the relevant references, so that you can understand what this psyche really is. Therefore you will know that when this book was written, the things happening in your time—the events occurring in our three-dimensional world—could all be perceived. Broadly speaking, the writing of this book took place in a nontemporal realm, outside of time. Yet in substance, Ruburt and Joseph did indeed use a great deal of time to produce it—the transmission of this book itself opened a door on the level of the psyche, on a higher dimension, and then Seth communicated with Ruburt through that door. This process itself was timeless, but because it had to be transmitted, it necessarily used the time of our three-dimensional world, and a great deal of time was used in its production.

Jane's Smoking Past

He said that Ruburt and Joseph had moved to a new home and bought a new house. While I was speaking, Ruburt was smoking as usual -- Ruburt was still smoking.

You see, by this time Seth had stopped urging him about it. In the early sessions, Seth had been anxious several times about Jane's smoking, but Jane never changed, resolutely refusing to change. There was even one time when Seth was about to speak about Jane's smoking, and Jane blocked what Seth was going to say -- because Seth had to speak through Jane's mouth. When Seth poured that consciousness into Jane's mind, if Jane did not speak it, who would know? So no one knew that Seth actually already had strong opinions about Jane's smoking, and she deliberately blocked him.

But one time, Seth caught her off guard. While speaking about other matters -- Jane was in a trance state at the time -- Seth blurted all of it out at once. He practically gave Jane a thorough scolding: "You, smoking and unable to quit, and when I try to tell you, you won't let me speak, you even block me from speaking -- that is truly outrageous." He told her the whole background of her smoking and the possible adverse consequences it could lead to, but Jane would not listen, so Jane kept on smoking.

So when Seth said this sentence, it actually carried a certain sarcasm. He said Ruburt was still smoking as usual. As he sat in his rocking chair rocking back and forth -- you can imagine it -- his feet were propped up on a coffee table, the complete image of a man, and he was drinking beer. While I was speaking, the time was approaching midnight. Earlier, a great thunderstorm had raged, as if it would shatter the sky; now it was quiet, with only the hum of Ruburt's new refrigerator, like the low growl of some mechanical beast. Seth was describing this scene -- the scene he was in.

Spirituality Is Right Within the Physical World

He goes on to say:

As you read this book, you are also immersed in such immediate, substantial, physical experience of matter.

When you are reading this book, you are also within the scene of your own physical world -- you might be sitting at a desk, might be walking on the road, might be listening while riding a bicycle, might be lying in bed, might be sitting on the subway, on the bus to work, or listening while driving. These are all your actual physical environments.

Do not think of them as separate from that larger reality in which you exist, but recognize them as a part of it. These physical environments and that larger reality space where your spirituality dwells -- there is no separation between them. Your present physical environment is a part of that larger reality.

In other words, do not leave your physical life to go outside and look for some higher dimension, some larger space. The so-called higher dimensions you speak of -- four-dimensional space, five-dimensional space, these things -- where are they? They are right within your three-dimensional world. Your three-dimensional world is a part of the larger four-dimensional world, and they are mutually inclusive, nested within one another in a layered relationship. So there is no need for you to seek outwardly, to search everywhere for a pure land, for a paradise, for a higher level of the psyche. You are right now on this level, just at a different position, just at a different part of it.

He says:

You do not exist outside of your psyche's existence.

If you can feel your existence, that means your spirituality exists through your expression, through its being. Your present existence -- whether your physical body, your thoughts, your consciousness, or the environment around you -- is all a part of that higher spirituality, that larger you, existing. You are not outside of it; you are within it.

This reminds me of that saying: take you into the fourth dimension, and once you go in, you can never come back. Many people do not understand this, interpreting it with three-dimensional consciousness. What does it mean? The so-called fourth dimension is your three-dimensional world; it is just that your cognition has not reached it. If you realize that your three-dimensional world is your four-dimensional world, once this cognition opens up, you can never go back to a purely three-dimensional world again. That is what "can never come back" means -- it refers to this inability to go back.

He says, but within it -- the world around you, including yourself, including your environment, all exist within your psyche's existence. You are a realization of its existence; you are within it.

As you read these sentences, some of you have just put your children to bed -- many of you still have very young children; some of you are perhaps sitting at the table; some of you have perhaps just been to the bathroom. These seemingly mundane activities -- the activities of eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, and sleeping -- may seem quite irrelevant to what we are about to tell you. How can discussing the soul, discussing spiritual matters, be mentioned in the same breath as these trivial affairs of daily life? Such lofty and noble matters -- what do they have to do with these things?

Seth says:

Yet within every simple action, and within the most necessary bodily acts, there is great, miraculous, unknown nobility.

Suddenly, right within your daily life, right within your firewood, rice, oil, and salt, within the trivial matters of life, there is great, miraculous, and unknown nobility within them. You dwell in the midst of this great, miraculous, and unknown nobility. Within your most ordinary actions, there are clues and hints about the nature of the psyche and its expression in human terms.

How thoroughly this is said. It is right within your daily life that there are hints and clues everywhere, everywhere reminding you that you are a multidimensional, multi-dimensional being. As long as you observe attentively, within every action of daily life you can find it. So the so-called spiritual practice is not about going to a temple, going into the mountains, going to some uninhabited place and locking yourself in a dark room -- it is right within your daily life that you can find it, can feel it, can perceive it -- as long as you are attentive enough, sensitive enough, and your perceptive ability is strong enough.

Seth says, this chapter ends here, and this session also ends. This part is exceptionally well said: regarding the entire environment of the psyche and what the psyche actually is, although there is no precise definition, he uses many analogies and many descriptions, giving you a very deep and intuitive understanding of it. And he also pulls you back into real life, allowing this spiritual thing to truly be grounded, intimately connected with our lives -- rather than being lofty and remote, somewhere outside of us. It is right within our lives.

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注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference: Psyche (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100352533) ↩

3. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Relativity | Definition, Equations, & Facts (https://www.britannica.com/science/relativity) ↩ ↩²

4. Source: Stephen Hawking official website, A Brief History of Time (https://stephenhawking.co.uk/books/a-brief-history-of-time) ↩

5. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, How Old Is Earth? (https://www.britannica.com/story/how-old-is-earth) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia, Tenet (film) (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/TENET%E5%A4%A9%E8%83%BD) ↩

7. Source: Timeanddate.com, September 1975 Calendar (https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/monthly.html?month=9&year=1975) ↩

8. Source: Wikipedia, Suchness (Buddhism) (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E7%9C%9F%E5%A6%82_(%E4%BD%9B%E6%95%99)) ↩

9. According to Mike's original words, "Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism, and Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming both discussed these"; upon verification, it should be "Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was a Southern Song Neo-Confucian, not of the Ming dynasty; the representative figure of Ming Neo-Confucianism (School of the Mind) is Wang Yangming (1472–1529), whose teachings were a response to and challenge against the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism descended from Zhu Xi." (Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Song-Ming Confucianism, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/song-ming-confucianism/) ↩

10. Source: U.S. National Park Service, Route 66: National 2025 (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/route-66-national.htm) ↩

11. According to Mike's original words, "taking 36 acres, 36 square kilometers as one piece of land"; upon verification, it should be "The U.S. Public Land Survey System typically divides land into townships 6 miles square, about 36 square miles, and each township is further divided into 36 sections of about 1 square mile (640 acres)." (Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Do US Topos and The National Map have a layer that shows the Public Land Survey System (PLSS)?, https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/do-us-topos-and-national-map-have-a-layer-shows-public-land-survey-system-plss) ↩

12. Source: Xuanzang, Cheng Weishi Lun, fascicle 2 (https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&remap=gb&res=489974) ↩

13. This claim could not be verified. ↩ ↩²

14. Source: WorldCat, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time (1975) (https://search.worldcat.org/fr/title/dialogues-of-the-soul-and-mortal-self-in-time/oclc/1324568) ↩