Mike's commentary · The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 11

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

Introduction

This chapter begins with dreams and emotional fear, pointing out that life is given by All That Is and that consciousness precedes matter; species did not evolve step by step but appeared simultaneously, the visible universe manifests from an invisible inner reality, and multiple parallel probabilities exist. The latter half revolves around human good and evil, primary and secondary experience, emphasizing that people should trust their present sensory experience, use creativity from their own reality, rather than being dominated by negative expectations and external information.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Life is not given by the parents, but is given by All That Is through the parents, and without conditions attached.
• Consciousness precedes matter; the visible universe emerges from an invisible inner reality, and species are not linearly evolved but simultaneously present.
• Human beings are essentially well-intentioned; evil acts arise from ignorance or mistaken methods, not from an inherently evil nature.
• One should trust direct sensory experience in the present moment and avoid being dominated by the fear brought by secondary experiences such as news and media.
• Spirituality cannot be defined; its vitality can only be experienced through exploring one's personal subjective reality and present life.

Main Text

Chapter Introduction

This chapter is the eleventh and final chapter of The Nature of the Psyche, titled "The Universe and the Psyche."

This session began on the evening of Monday, March 7, 1977. Before entering the first part of this session, Seth first talked about a dream Jane had last night. Today Jane herself added an interpretation to this dream. Although this part appears on the surface to be unrelated to the content of the book, we still present here some of Seth's comments on that dream, because this passage has universal significance and also fits with his earlier material on dreams.

The rest of this session is a response to a discussion Jane and I had before the session about the question of evolution. This discussion was triggered by a note I wrote in Volume 2 of The "Unknown" Reality, and I may quote this session's Seth material in that note.

We did not expect Seth to discuss these two topics in tonight's session, because we had not asked him to consider these questions. But Seth's presentation clearly explained Jane's dream, as well as our questions about evolution. First he talked about Jane's dream, and then he continued as follows.

Emotional fears need to be faced directly in dreams

Regarding Jane's dream, Seth said this:

A deep emotional fear that appears only once or twice is often not enough. In fact, it is rarely enough.

That is to say, for this kind of emotional fear to appear once or twice in your dreams is often not enough; it may need even more times. This fear must be faced directly to some extent. Otherwise, old habits will bury this fear again--and once the fear is buried, it will reappear later.

The fear he is talking about is not the rational kind of fear, but emotional fear. For example, loneliness, powerlessness, feeling abandoned, and so on. Fear itself is emotional. He does not mean the rational kind--I am afraid of losing my job, I am afraid of something--that is a rational fear. He means the emotional-level kind.

Session 796

This kind of fear can only be truly resolved on an emotional level after it has been reflected many times at the dream level, if you are able to face it squarely. If you cannot resolve it emotionally, it will surface again later. So:

Therefore Ruburt's dream allowed this fear to have a conscious emotional embodiment.

Here we must pay special attention to "emotional embodiment." If the fear cannot be properly experienced on an emotional level, it can easily be buried again, and then it cannot be thoroughly released. But more importantly, it provided a release of that fear, letting the fear out, or gave an answer to a deep emotional equation.

Life Is Given by All That Is, Not by Parents

On this matter, Seth's answer was as follows:

Life is not given by the parents, but through the parents, by life itself, or rather by All That Is. And it is given without any conditions attached.

Even now, we do not know exactly what Jane's dream was. But through Seth's analysis, we can roughly guess what Jane's dream was about. It was probably a situation in the dream: her mother wanted to take her life away. Her mother said, your life was given to you by me. If you do not do such and such, I will take your life back -- if you keep wasting your time and squandering your life, I will take your life away. It was probably a dream of that sort. Since she did not describe it in detail, I cannot be certain either.

The second part of her dream, that is, the resolution, had never before been known to Ruburt on the conscious level or on the emotional level. Ruburt did not know, whether on the conscious level or on the emotional level, that such a problem existed. Intellectually, on the level of reason and logic, he had the answer -- for example, that our life is not given by our parents, but by nature, and that parents are only the means through which it is given to us. He knew this theory. But he had not made it part of an emotional equation, had not identified with it from a state of emotional resolution. He only identified with it theoretically, not emotionally.

This dream put the two together, putting the rational and the emotional aspects together for you to consider.

You cannot explain this kind of emotional reality through logic or mathematics.

I Understand the Logic, but I Still Can't Move On

When we look at the process of interpreting Jane's dream, we can see that many of our emotional problems simply cannot be solved through intellectual analysis alone. You may have experienced this yourselves. For example, when one of our female students goes through a breakup, or a male student goes through a breakup, the buddies or close friends around him will try to give him all these grand principles. And he will tell you: I understand the logic, but I just can't move on.

What does he mean when he says this? It means that theoretically he agrees with what you are saying; he knows he understands the principle. But emotionally he does not accept it, and so he has not brought it into his emotional equation.

What do we mean by an emotional equation? An emotion is a problem. What is the first thing we do when we are given an equation? We have to solve it, give it an answer, right? So where does the answer to this emotional equation lie? You cannot simply give it theoretically or rationally; you must give the answer emotionally, within the emotional equation itself. Only when the emotional equation and rationality work together, when these two are brought together, can the person move out of it. Otherwise, there is no way for you to use logic, principles, mathematics, analysis, or probability to analyze and solve his emotional problem.

So what can be done? There is a very good way: solve it through emotional means. As they say, the best way to deal with a breakup is to start a new relationship. Why start a new relationship? Is it because the person is fickle, loving the new and discarding the old? Or because the new thing dilutes the old thing? Not entirely. It is because his emotional problem has been solved on the emotional level. It is as simple as that.

Dreams Are the Best Preventive Medicine

For example, some long-term illnesses really can be resolved suddenly through a single dream, and some chronic illnesses can be resolved suddenly through a single dream. But in most cases, dreams prevent such chronic illnesses—by means of small treatments, they provide a constant series of small but important, personal cues.

The way human beings handle this kind of chronic, serious illness, normally, if a person is physically healthy and normal, it is resolved for you bit by bit in dreams. Before the illness has even broken out, when it has just begun to show signs, it treats you through a series of very small dream treatment plans, and you do not even know it. This was already discussed in the previous two sessions; Seth has talked about this issue: on the physical level, you do not even know you had this illness, and it has already been cured for you.

So dreams are the best preventive medicine. They are not here to treat your illness; they cure you before the illness even occurs, preventing you from getting it, adjusting you in advance, adjusting you from all three aspects of body, mind, and spirit. Just as the ancients said, the highest-level doctor treats illness before it arises—that is, cures you before you have even fallen ill.

Psychological difficulties do not necessarily require conscious participation to be resolved

Some psychological difficulties need to be clearly, consciously, intelligently, and with understanding.

That is to say, some of your psychological problems require clear recognition of them -- how they came about, what their causes are, why such psychological difficulties exist.

But others operate even without the participation of consciousness, and at that same level, those difficulties are often resolved and remedied without disturbing the conscious mind.

That is to say, psychological difficulties need to be clearly recognized and understood, and need to be understood through wisdom. But without the participation of consciousness, on this same psychological issue, some other remedial work is going on. The difficulty is thus remedied and resolved, and this work of resolution and remedy does not even let your consciousness know, does not disturb you, and you do not even know about it.

Just as the body handles many physical manipulations, and you never consciously know what it did or how it did it. For example, how muscles operate, how the lungs breathe, how the heartbeat adjusts its speed -- you do not know any of these, but they are indeed operating physically, and it is an operation you cannot see.

So:

Therefore your own psychological system operates, through these dreams that you do not perceive, and automatically resolves their own problems.

Some problems of your psychological system are resolved through these dreams that you do not perceive -- you do not even know about these dreams, and within the dreams you have already resolved all these psychological problems.

Why You Cannot Remember All Your Dreams

You cannot physically handle anything like a complete recollection of dreams.

You have no way of remembering all the dreams you have on the physical level; it cannot be done. He even chuckled a little here -- he is interesting, sort of mocking the limits of human ability.

He says you cannot consciously handle the psychological depth and richness revealed by that activity.

You cannot, on the conscious level, handle the psychological depth and richness of your dream activity. One of the reasons -- there are many reasons, this is just one of them -- is that, physically speaking, your concept of time, as it is used in dreams, would become harder to maintain in normal life. The concept of time in dreams and the concept of time in reality are two completely different sets of things; they are two entirely different time systems and concepts. In dreams, what is used more is psychological time, while in our reality what we use is physical time.

This does not mean that recalling more dreams would not benefit you.

I am not saying that recalling your dreams is of no benefit, because it is indeed intentional and beneficial. I only want to explain why so many dreams are not remembered by you. It is because, at the level of that dream activity, the psychological depth and psychological richness involved are things you cannot understand or recognize on the conscious level, so you cannot remember them.

Dream Fragments Manifest in Life as Impulses

However, although most of this dream remains quite obscure, ordinary people often encounter these fragments of the dream just below the threshold of normal consciousness, without recognizing what they are. Because the consciousness you have while dreaming is below normal consciousness. You see some dream scenes in the dream, but you do not recognize what these scenes are.

As a result, one day it surprises you -- for example, one day you suddenly want to do this or do that, or want to eat this, or suddenly do not want to eat that, or do not want to do another thing. This impulse is you, on the subconscious level, encountering some dream fragments in real life. It gives you an inspiration, an intuition, an impulse.

Seth gives an obvious example:

A person has no memory of a dream at all, and decides suddenly to cancel a flight trip on a certain day.

He has already booked the ticket and the itinerary, but suddenly he does not want to go, and he wants to cancel. Then later it is discovered that the plane crashed. This kind of thing happens occasionally, not very often, but actually it can be seen in many newspapers.

The impulse to cancel the trip may or may not have an acceptable rational explanation. If you ask him why he canceled, he has no reason, no reasonable explanation. This person may simply feel a premonition on impulse, and he does not need any reason -- he just suddenly feels he does not want to go.

On the other hand, this impulse may manifest as a normal logical change of plans. In some respects this impulse is not so obvious -- he suddenly changes his plans, or suddenly someone makes a phone call, or suddenly some thought comes to him to go do something. This sudden change of plans appears as if there is a normal logic, and then it makes you change your plans and not take that plane. Such a process makes you feel that this is not an intuition or inspiration, and it does not seem that you have any magical ability of precognition. This situation also exists.

Unconscious Decisions and the Acceptability of Death

A forgotten dream spoke of a possible disaster. We take this for granted. Because in dreams these things often occur without the limitations of our time and space, and dreams often show you future events. This is very normal. But this information was processed unconsciously, and we did not consciously deal with it. The possibility was considered or rejected -- much of it you process unconsciously, and you may not have considered this possibility at all, or you rejected it.

Psychologically and physically, this person was not ready to die. So in body and mind, he was not prepared to die. His inner soul level rejected death, so the dream also gave him a forewarning, allowing him to escape this disaster.

But there is another kind of person who had the same dream and received the same knowledge, yet felt that death was acceptable. Why would there be such people? You may not understand -- how could a person be willing to die?

He says:

This does not mean that any of these individuals could bear to consciously know their own decision.

He certainly could not consciously make such a decision -- knowing the plane would crash and still boarding it. He would not do that. Even if his soul had decided to die, he would not be allowed to know it, because if he knew, he would absolutely refuse to board that plane no matter what. This is a very interesting thing.

Such an inner decision was not forced upon the conscious individual either. This kind of thing happens because the person had already come fairly close to accepting the concept of "death at a particular time in life." He had already developed a view of life and death being up to fate. He felt that when a person dies in life is an arrangement of destiny, and he did not want to get involved in it, or intervene further.

This person is not committing suicide. Suicide is when I myself choose to take pills or jump off a building -- he is not that. He is under a special kind of psychological manipulation, in which he no longer clings to life the way he used to. He is simply no longer attached, and has handed his fate over to fate. Before he said "I want to live," but now, life and death are up to fate. If a person has nothing weighing on his heart, he often feels that life and death are up to fate, and it does not matter.

Perhaps he used other words rather than the word "fate." But what matters is:

The personal, direct, affirmative intent for life was not there.

That is, the belief of "I want to live" is already gone. He would think: if fate wants me to die, I die; if it wants me to live, I live. In this situation, his dying rather than committing suicide is simply handing it over to fate.

They were oriented toward another matter -- he was ready to hit the road. The word "hit the road" is actually a kind of pun. He means that in this world he is going to die, and in another world he is going to begin a new journey. He is already prepared, and his attention is already oriented in that direction, no longer in our world. He no longer has any attachment to our world, and whenever fate takes him away, he can accept it. Because he has already turned his attention toward another reality, and he is ready to begin a new stage of his life there.

The Conscious Mind Can Only Grasp So Much

But the conscious mind can only grasp so much. If you let the conscious mind know everything -- if you let yourself know everything, its causes and consequences, its inner meanings, the reasons it happens -- then this life as you know it could not exist.

I have told you that physical existence is sweetly wrapped, resting upon the experience of you that it does not include, as much as upon that which it does include.

Your physical body exists in this three-dimensional world depending on two parts. One part is the life experiences we are conscious of and can perceive; the other part is the experiences we can never perceive, never become aware that they happened or existed. On the conscious level, we consider those things as never having happened. Yet those things are just as important to your life, to your physical life, as the experiences that did happen.

Why do I say this? Every single thing that happens in your life, from your birth to your death, every single thing is rehearsed in advance on a deeper level that you do not know. It is evaluated and chosen from among numerous possibilities by your body, your soul, your cellular level, and the one most beneficial to everyone is selected before it is carried out, before it is manifested. Every little thing in your life is just one among hundreds and thousands of possibilities.

If those hundreds and thousands of possibilities did not exist, how could this one thing of yours be manifested? If that platform of possibilities were gone, how could the thing chosen from among them ever happen? So the experiences of possibilities in your life that you cannot perceive -- your life is born from them. Do not think that your life is only the events you perceive; there is also a large portion of events you cannot perceive, and they support the existence of your real life.

Dreams Make Your Life Possible

In a very important respect, by making your psychological life automatically self-regulating, your dreams make your life possible.

Dreams allow the possibilities at your unconscious level to be practiced, rehearsed, and tested. Dreams make your present life possible, because they allow your psychological life to automatically self-regulate. Without the regulation of your psychological activity, your life would not exist.

By understanding and recalling this dream, and by consciously participating more deeply in this dream, you can make great progress.

You know how this event happened, how your life came to be, and this is of great help to you. But you cannot become fully aware of all your dreams. You might say, would it be better if I knew all my dreams? If I knew all the possibilities, would I then know that my future life is certainly one of these possibilities?

You cannot become fully aware of your dreams and still maintain your normal physical stance.

"Physical stance" can be understood as maintaining a normal state in ordinary life, including the physical state and the psychological state. Why is it impossible to maintain? Because if you were to know all the knowledge of your dreams, then among those possibilities -- the occurrence of those disasters -- the fright alone would scare you to death. You would see danger everywhere. Behind every action of yours there could be danger arising: crossing a street, you could be hit by a car and killed. Does that possibility exist? Of course it does. If such risks were all made known to you at the conscious level, would you still dare to cross the street? Would you still dare to drive? Would you still dare to board a plane? No, you would not.

So it is very good that we live in a simple, happy-go-lucky way. Why? Because that is how it is designed. Only in this way can you maintain a physical stance in this three-dimensional world -- maintain a stable, normal physical state and psychological state.

Gaining Greater Benefit from Dreams

As a civilization, you have not been able to gain the greater benefit of dreams. Because from childhood you are taught that dreams are of no use. But:

The conscious mind can handle far more dream recall than you allow it.

This kind of training will infinitely deepen and expand the scope of your life. Why? Because these experiences in your dreams are also experiences, the same as the experiences you have while awake. Suppose you sleep eight hours a day, you only have sixteen hours of life time. But suppose in your dreams you also begin your life with awareness, then in one hour of dreaming you may have already lived several years or even decades of life. If you keep this up over the long term, aren't you living dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times more life experience than others?

Tonight in your dream, you are a scientist, or you are a person of another gender, or in your dream you go to another time-space or another dynasty, and you begin a new life — aren't all of these expanding the scope of your life? Others live one lifetime, you have lived several hundred lifetimes, you have gained far more than others.

Dreams give you instruction even in spatial relationships, and are far more connected with the organism's posture in the environment than you realize.

For example, children learn spatial relationships in dreams. Our cognition of space — for a small child, exploring this world is exploring an unknown space. In dreams he learns how to explore space, including how to walk, how to run, how the hand can grasp an object. Look at a small child: at first he cannot grasp things, the coordination of eyes and hands and muscles is not in sync, he often drops things, hands and feet do not cooperate. But as he gradually becomes more skilled, he becomes more and more proficient. What is he doing? He is sensing the positions of objects in space, and his own position, and the coordination of his own body's muscle movements. This is coming to know the relationship between himself and space.

Jane's Fear: Death

He said that Jane's question was a good question, and he gave her a very good answer. Jane had to know what she was afraid of, and the interpretation of her dreams gave her that knowledge. Therefore she could deal with the things she feared -- that was both the fear of death, and of course not a death by choice.

Actually, through this sentence you can also tell that the fear Jane had in this dream was a fear of death. Because Jane's health was not particularly good, she was afraid of dying. In the dream, she was afraid that if she did not "deliver the goods" -- meaning if she did not finish the novel on time or finish the book -- if she did not work hard, did not finish her work on time, did not write her books on time, then she would have no way to repay that mother who "magically and grudgingly gave her life." Because her relationship with her mother was not good, and life was given to her by her mother, grudgingly given. So in that "magical release room," the mother could take this life back.

But what Seth said was this: this life was not given by the mother; life comes from All That Is, from the spirit of life itself, and it is given freely. It cannot be taken away by anyone, cannot be threatened by anyone or any force, until that life has fulfilled its own purpose. If that were not the case, no one could take it away, and it would not be subject to any threat.

Seth said this with tremendous force -- he was saying it for Jane's sake. Jane truly felt that relaxing was unsafe. Look at Jane's entire state of life: she was never relaxed, she was always very tense. She always had to write and write and write, working every day, writing novels, writing novels. She was afraid that the moment she relaxed, she would die. Why was she so tense? She was afraid that the moment she relaxed, she would die.

Life is expression. To be alive is to express. You do not need to work so hard to accomplish this or accomplish that.

Life exists by its own force.

This sentence must be underlined. Life exists by its own force; you do not need to do anything in order to be qualified, to have the face to live in this world. The existence of your life is guaranteed by its own force. There are no conditions attached, no requirement that you must achieve such and such before you have the face to go on living. There is no such rule.

It has no force opposed to it or threatening it.

Your life does not have something standing in opposition to it, threatening it at every moment, saying that if you do not do such and such, I will take your life away. There is nothing, no force, standing in opposition to life and threatening it.

Death to you does indeed seem like an ending, but on the other hand, it is life transferring into another form. Death is not truly death either, but rather a continuation in another form.

Moving to the Next Topic: Evolution

After finishing the discussion of Jane's dream, Seth said that this very naturally led into the next topic -- the question of evolution that the two of them had been discussing. After the preceding explanation of Jane's fear of death in the dream, he followed this question directly into the next one: the question of where life comes from.

First of all, regarding the definition of life, there are difficulties in language. From your perspective, there seem to be living organisms and nonliving matter, and this gives rise to the question: how could nonliving matter become living? He used the word "matter" there, meaning physical substance.

Seth said:

There is no such thing as what you call nonliving matter.

There is no such matter that is without life.

There is only a point that you recognize, a point that meets the requirements you arbitrarily set, by which you attribute to it the characteristics of life or a living state.

All matter has life. It is only because you have set a standard for the characteristics of life and living states that the point you have defined becomes such a dividing line in your world. Such a dividing line of life, from your perspective, splits the world into two parts: the living and the nonliving.

But this kind of discussion is extremely difficult, because there is no specific point there. Humans can now give many, many definitions and standard criteria for life. For example, humans believe that only organic matter counts as living organisms, and inorganic matter is not living. Then what is organic matter? It is that which is centered on a carbon base, whose molecules must contain carbon in order to be called organic. But not all organic matter is alive -- for example, plastic bags are organic matter, and rubber and plastics are all organic matter. These organic substances can only prove that they are organic, that they possess a basic condition for life, but that does not necessarily mean they have life.

If life is defined as this kind of carbon-based macromolecule or the like, that standard is human cognition.

There is no such point where life is inserted into nonliving matter and then becomes living matter.

There is no such point. In human understanding, before reaching this point there is no consciousness, and after passing this point consciousness begins to emerge, and there is life. But as for what life actually is, the human definition is extremely vague and general, and even now there is no precise definition.

There Is Consciousness in Even the Smallest Units

But he said, consciousness has consciousness in even the smallest units. No matter what its state of living may look like, no matter whether it looks like what we consider to be alive, in essence it exists as consciousness.

This world is composed of the smallest units of consciousness -- CUs. CUs themselves are nonphysical existences, and they can never become physical. But when units of consciousness aggregate, after aggregating they become EE units. These EE units straddle both the physical and nonphysical sides, in an intermediate state, and they have the potential to materialize into matter. Under the impetus of specific energy, desire, emotion, thought, and belief, they can materialize into matter. So fundamentally speaking, all matter is composed of consciousness. Its most core units are all EE units, and EE units themselves are composed of units of consciousness. So all matter is alive; there is not one thing that is without consciousness.

If you must define life as that kind of continuous existence -- a person is alive while living, and life ends when the person dies -- then Seth said:

Then I am truly sorry.

If you think life is only that kind of continuous existence, then in that way:

You can say that life began spontaneously in the physical universe, on your planet, with a specific number of species at the same time.

He spoke very slowly, so that such information would be as clear as possible. Jane transmitted this part of the material very slowly, pausing many times, some of them quite long. Her eyes were closed most of the time. What Seth said about the spontaneous beginning of life surprised Rob.

What does this mean? It means, if you insist on using continuity, then I will tell you: all life on your earth -- the many millions of species that you humans now recognize, from something as small as a bacterium or virus to something as large as a dinosaur -- all began at the same time. They did not evolve; they appeared simultaneously.

Many people cannot understand this. This is completely wrong, they think; this is entirely different from what the theory of evolution says. The theory of evolution says: life began from a most primitive inorganic substance, and under the early cosmic conditions of the earth, with thunder and lightning and specific electrical forces, the stimulation of lightning produced the earliest organic body. This organic body then went through continuous change and combination, and became a larger-molecule single-celled organism, and then the single-celled organism became a multi-celled organism, and then the evolution of life began.

This is humanity's current understanding. But humanity no longer believes that the theory of evolution is correct. Because the biggest problem with the theory of evolution is that it cannot find the intermediate states in this evolutionary process. For a species to come into being, it says it must have evolved from something, but humanity cannot find the evidence of this evolution. What humanity finds is that cats are cats, dogs are dogs, wolves are wolves. They cannot find any evidence of one thing evolving into another. Take humans, for example: they can find ancient ape-men, and they can find ancient humans, but they cannot find the most core, direct evidence of evolution between apes and humans. They can find ancient apes, ancient Homo sapiens, ancient hominids, but they cannot find a fossil of a species between ape and human. What they find are all already fully evolved.

If you look into it, you will know that ape-men are ape-men; ape-men are not the intermediate process of evolution between apes and humans. Darwin's theories have long been overturned by science, one after another -- not in recent years, but decades ago. They are all different species. Apes are the species of apes, ape-men are the species of ape-men, and later they developed into Homo sapiens. The ancient human Homo sapiens, including Peking Man and cave dwellers, these people actually already had very high intelligence, already close to modern humans. But between modern Homo sapiens and ancient ape-men, there is no intermediate transitional state at all. By all logic, evolution should be gradual change: the mouth less protruding, the brow ridge shortening bit by bit, the body hair changing little by little. No, none of it can be found.

The Simultaneous Emergence of Species

All species came into being simultaneously, all at once. Seth says here -- and this is extremely subversive to human understanding -- that he wants to explain this as clearly as possible, but because time is short, he can only unfold it briefly. I think it may be that when he got to this point, it triggered in him a determination to explain this matter thoroughly, which is why he later produced that two-volume, very thick book -- the most difficult book in the entire Seth material apart from The Early Sessions -- Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. At the very beginning of that book, he introduces in detail the birth of consciousness and the birth of human life. But here he cannot go into such detail, and can only unfold the question briefly.

Let us look at what he says:

Fully developed man -- with full intellect, emotion, and will -- lived at the same time as those creatures supposed to be man's evolutionary ancestors.

Human beings are already fully developed now, the same as we are today. And those creatures we have assumed to be the ancestors of human beings -- those apes, ancient apes, and other primate creatures -- are only our assumption; they are not the ancestors of human beings. They are closer to today's apes and orangutans, and have absolutely no relation to human beings. In ancient times, there were human beings just like us now, living at the same time as those creatures we have guessed to be our ancestors.

This species of which you do not know, it came and went.

In the developmental history of our earth, there are some species we have never known about, which once lived and then departed. Here he is referring more to some early human civilizations. As he has said before, our present human civilization is already the fourth human civilization on this planet. The previous three have all gone -- they came and went. So it was only when we humans entered the fourth civilization that we began to study where we came from.

There was a parallel development.

That is, they were all developing at the same time. Those apes also achieved their own ape civilization, and also used tools, but they were not future man.

These apes were not future man; they were not the ancestors of human beings. They did not evolve into human beings.

It is not that they did not develop, nor was their progress organized incorrectly. Their reality explored the branches of animality in a completely different way. They developed more on the biological level, on the animal level, rather than on the level that human beings can understand. In many respects, their development was parallel to human development. They were also continuously developing their own civilization -- a civilization that, for human beings, should be put in quotation marks. They lived on this earth at the same time, sharing the same earthly environment.

Seth says that at various times he has mentioned them. For example, he mentioned something called "animal medicine" -- that is, animal healers. What does that mean? It means a civilization among the apes, and within that ape civilization there was an individual -- like the doctor in an ape group -- an animal shaman, who treated other animals' illnesses just like a doctor, and also treated himself. Human beings did indeed learn a great deal from these animal doctors, including how to treat illness and how to heal. Interesting, isn't it? In the period of ancient civilizations, in early human times, people learned a great deal from animals.

So although apes seem to have no civilization, their level of medical skill was very high -- so high that we humans had to learn from them. The point I am making with this example is this: do not assume that the development of apes is more backward than human civilization. You are simply developing in different directions; there is no question of who is higher and who is lower, only that the directions of development are different.

Let me give another example. Ants -- you think they are very lowly, but the skill and level of ants in building their tunnels, that sense of space and three-dimensionality -- if you have watched an animal documentary analyzing an anthill, that enormous anthill is simply breathtaking. If you convert the ant's body length proportionally to the proportions of its underground tunnels, you will find that with such a small body, how did the ant construct, design, and gradually build such a magnificent underground structure at such a tiny scale? Suppose you were asked to be like an ant, without any modern tools, and given one hundred thousand people, one million people, ten million people, to dig an underground tunnel -- could you construct an underground project as exquisitely refined, interconnected in all directions, and complete in every functional part as the ant's? You certainly could not; as you dug, you would dig through, dig leaks, dig collapses. That is very likely -- not just very likely, it is absolutely certain.

So this is a core point: we should not mock other animals and other species, as if they were somehow stupid. You are developing yours, and they are developing theirs. Take the migration of migratory birds: without access to any satellite navigation or positioning, can you fly several thousand kilometers without getting lost? Go ahead, fly one for me to see. What about the migratory journeys of fish in the ocean? These biological things far exceed our human understanding of them. Yet we human beings are especially foolish in measuring them by our own standards, always mocking them, saying, look, they are not as smart as we humans. You are using your own strength to attack another's weakness -- comparing your own strengths to someone else's shortcomings. Why don't you compare their strengths with your own shortcomings? Birds can fly -- can you? Why don't you compare that? This is human arrogance and conceit.

The impact of many of my past statements has not been recognized. I have said many things before about civilizations in ancient times, but this impact has not received enough attention from you. Those words sounded appropriate and reasonable enough, and in that context you did not think much about them. There are indeed many conditions of life that you do not know about, sometimes because your time sequences are too different.

In your terms, before the smallest cell appeared, there was already the consciousness that formed that cell. Before what we consider the most primitive single-celled life appeared, before that era, there already existed the consciousness capable of forming that cell. Then where was this consciousness? When there was not even a cell, where did this consciousness exist? What carried this consciousness? And where did this cell come from?

This is because our understanding of time sequence is different. We always think that first there is one thing, then another, arranged according to the order of time -- there must first be a single-celled life, then it gradually develops bit by bit into complexity, and only then does consciousness appear, right here. We exist according to our human three-dimensional timeline, and we always look at the universe and the world this way, believing that time is something constant and eternal. This is a misconception in human cognition.

In fact, before that cell was born, there already existed the consciousness that could give birth to it. So which came first and which came later? If you can understand that all of this happens simultaneously, you will not have such questions. But in the three-dimensional world, you will certainly have such questions, because you will always ask first: which came first, the egg or the chicken? Because in your logic, there must be a sequence or logical relationship in between. If I tell you that the egg and the chicken exist at the same time, you will certainly not know what I am talking about -- because that statement itself already does not conform to your understanding of time and logic in this world. They simply exist at the same time, for no reason. It is your misunderstanding, your narrowness in understanding time. You think there must be a before and an after -- that is your cognition, and your cognition does not represent the cognition of this universe.

Life Comes from a Dream

He said that words, really, had almost abandoned him. Words really were of no use to him anymore; he could no longer use words to describe it. The semantic differences were so great, the deviations in words were so great—he said I cannot use this language to explain it to you.

For example, he said:

If I told you that life came from a dream, such a statement would sound meaningless.

If I told you that your life came from a dream, you would surely say: What did you say? Whose dream? What dream? How could life come from a dream? And a whole series of questions would be waiting behind that. Yet our life truly does come from a dream, and our entire universe also comes from a dream.

On this question, there is a detailed explanation in Seth's book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. Why is that book called "Dreams"? Why is the word "dream" placed in it? Earlier he had already spoken a great deal about dreams, all of them human dreams. So what kind of dream does he discuss in that book? We will not go into it today; let me keep you in suspense for now. When we get to that book, we will explore that question—it is an extremely profound and subtle principle, something very, very difficult to describe in words.

Seth really did give it everything he had. Sometimes I feel that Seth is truly the kind of person who knows it cannot be done and yet insists on doing it anyway. He clearly knew this was a principle that could not be clearly explained, yet he refused to accept that. I think perhaps he felt—it was not easy to get Jane, a person who could channel him, and it was not easy to have such an open channel of communication. On top of that, after such a long period of transmitting material, Rob and Jane had already accumulated such a rich foundation of prior knowledge, and he felt confident that he could describe this matter clearly through language and words. That is why he later made such a firm resolution to present that book. The presentation of that book was truly of epoch-making significance, surpassing the benefit and framework of all his other material. But the core premise of that book is this: if you do not have much interest in the origin of the universe, in the origin and development of the entire universe, then you do not need to read it, because it is too vast—it is about how this universe came to be.

Seth used two entire large books, as thick as The Nature of Personal Reality and Seth Speaks, and only then was he able to speak of it to a certain degree. He spent about two years or so transmitting that book. How could anyone explain to you in one sentence how this universe came to be? Even Seth, a spiritual being living in multidimensional space, found it so laborious and so strenuous to speak of it—so if you ask a person living in a three-dimensional world to tell you how the universe came to be, it is very difficult to explain clearly.

Speaking of this, do not blame Shakyamuni, do not blame the Buddha, and do not blame those prophets and seers. It is not that they did not want to tell you, not that they deliberately wanted to hide it, not that they deliberately refused to make these things clear. They truly could not explain it clearly. The same is true of Laozi's Tao Te Ching—at this level, language in the Tao Te Ching is already pale to the extreme; he could not explain it clearly. They did their utmost, with their great wisdom, to leave us the material we now have. So you should cherish it and comprehend it well.

The First Cell's Manifestation

He says:

However, because your personal physical reality is largely dependent upon your dreaming state, without it, it would not be possible.

Your present physical world is largely dependent upon your dreaming state; without dreams it would not be possible.

Therefore, likewise:

The first cell was physically materialized and actualized only because of its own inner reality of consciousness.

All right, listen to what he says here. This is an extremely concise statement. How did the first cell come about? The first cell came about precisely because of its own inner reality of consciousness, and then it was physically materialized and actualized.

What does this mean? The first cell is just like our three-dimensional world. How did our three-dimensional world come about? For the most part, it came from our dreams. How are our events produced? In Chapters 8 and 9, especially Chapter 9, he has already explained this very thoroughly — he has been telling you all along how the environment and events around us are manifested step by step from dreams, and he has said a great deal about it already. All the things that happen in what we now call the three-dimensional world, including objects and events, are for the most part produced from dreams. We have already accepted this and acknowledged it by now; we have studied so much of this in the previous lessons.

So what he wants to say now is this: the first cell was also born from the inner consciousness of that cell. At the very beginning, the cell had its own consciousness with an inner reality — you might say, the cell does not even exist yet, so how could it have its consciousness? Then you still have not fully grasped the material. Before your life existed, was there not already a spiritual existence? That spirit does not depend upon the existence of your cell. So the consciousness of this cell likewise does not depend upon the existence of this cell. Therefore, before this cell existed, there was first a consciousness of the cell, and within that consciousness of the cell there was already a self-image of the cell itself — just as you have your own image before you are incarnated. And then you come into incarnation. The cell is the same: it took its cognition of the reality of this cell and materialized it, actualized it, and manifested it in our three-dimensional world.

He says:

But, if we go by the above explanation, it seems as though there is a point, from this angle.

From this angle, it seems as though there is a point in time. At that point in time, that consciousness, through its own intent, implanted itself into this matter — "implanted" meaning it burrowed into the matter, causing this matter to have consciousness. Or, he says, it might be better to put it the other way around:

It itself formed this matter.

The latter statement is closer and more reliable.

The same applies to our human life. It is not that we first had a physical body, first had a brain, and only then had consciousness. It is that first there was this consciousness, first there was this spiritual thing — that is, first there was the existence of the soul — and only then did we have our physical body. Our physical body is gestated within the soul, rather than saying that first there was this physical body, and then our soul "whoosh" slipped into it. You can also imagine it as slipping in, like incarnation: the soul is drifting around everywhere, and then while you are being gestated inside your mother's body, it "whoosh" slips right in. Either way you put it, both are correct; both possibilities exist, and it is not absolute.

All right, let us not expand on this issue, because if we expand on it here, if we get into nitpicking, there are points to quibble about everywhere. Do not nitpick. The nitpicker should take a rest for a moment and not nitpick here — in this place you can find countless points to quibble about, and I cannot out-quibble you, and no one can out-quibble you. It is inherently a contradictory thing: do you say that matter existed first, and it implanted itself, it burrowed in on its own, or do you say that it itself formed this matter? Seth says these two statements, and they look almost the same, but actually they are far apart — they are two completely different things. But he puts them together, which shows that both possibilities exist.

The Metaphor of the Light Source

He said that breakthrough cannot be explained logically -- how exactly it manifested, how exactly it got into matter, how the soul got into the physical body of this child, or how the soul generated the physical body of this child -- none of these can be explained to you logically. He could only make an analogy. Is this analogy a good one? You can judge for yourself. Personally I don't think it's that great either -- you still don't know what he's talking about.

For this analogy he gives, translating it here as "illumination" isn't very good; translating it as "light source" is better. Illumination should mean a light source. He says suppose there is such a light source. You know what a light source is -- is the sun a light source? Yes. Is a flashlight a light source? Yes. Is a light bulb a light source? Yes.

So he says suppose there is such a light source. This light source is different from other light sources -- it is a light that occurs everywhere simultaneously, with light in every place. It's better to imagine it as the light of the sun, illuminating the whole earth, the whole world, not like a flashlight's beam that only shines on one small patch. And then, this light source was originally a light, it was simply a light source, and it became -- don't ask me how it changed, I can't explain this part here; later in that book there will be a more detailed explanation -- the light emitted by this light source suddenly became a medium for life.

What does "medium" mean? It means something that is indispensable. Life relies on it for transmission -- that's what a medium is. Just as sound needs to travel through air, or through water, or through other substances -- when there is no such medium, in a vacuum sound cannot be transmitted, so a vacuum is not a medium for sound. Air is the medium for sound, but air is not sound itself. The source where sound originates is called the sound source, and the sound source transmits outward through the vibration of air. Can a telephone work without air? It involves something else -- it involves electromagnetic waves and the vibration of a speaker to transmit, and electromagnetic waves are a medium for sound. Same principle.

So this light became a medium for life. In your human terms, he said:

It had nothing to do with the reproductive properties of cells in any sense.

It was not like the reproduction of cells as we imagine it, not that kind of reproduction through biological properties, but rather an all-encompassing light source. It set up a condition -- this light source existed, and wherever the light reached, it arranged a condition, set up an influence. In the existence of such a condition, the life that you think of became possible.

And within that imagined point, all types, all species became a potential existence, and they were all already implied in existence. That is to say, from the day that cell was born -- suppose there was such a point, such a point in time, such a momentary point, under the illumination of this light source the first cell was born -- at the same moment that cell was born, it already contained, already implied, the possibility of the existence of all things in this world.

He said:

There was no point, though, where consciousness was introduced. Because consciousness was the illumination from which the first cells came.

There was no point in time where consciousness said, "Now let consciousness make its entrance, and life on earth begins from here" -- there was no such moment. Because this consciousness was that light source itself, and the cells were produced from this light source, or rather the cells came from this consciousness. That is how it came about in between.

So that light source was everywhere, aware of itself in every place. If you replace this light source with consciousness, it becomes easier to understand -- that consciousness was everywhere, present throughout the entire universe. The consciousness in every place could be aware of its own existence, and aware of the conditions formed by its presence. In your terms, each species was aware of the conditions of every other species and of the entire environment. In other words, the environment formed this race, formed the species, and the species formed the environment.

When I get to this point, I have nothing else to say except two words: male and female. I don't know how to put it; language really has a hard time expressing this. Because this consciousness itself formed all things in the world, and all things in the world themselves are the environment for every other species -- it belongs to the concept of "you are within me and I am within you."

Let me give a simple example. Plants came first, and then animals came -- that's our understanding. So for animals, are plants their environment? Yes, animals have to eat these plants -- eat grass, eat trees. But plants also have life; without plants, how would those grass-eating animals survive? They couldn't survive. So they are mutually dependent on each other. The carbon dioxide that animals exhale is what plants need, and their dung, their corpses after death, provide nutrients for plants -- they are part of a larger environment, part of the overall cosmic structure.

Isn't it the same for cells? Those bacteria, those viruses -- for the whole universe, for the earth, don't they also have a necessity for their existence? They are also a microbial environment for our survival. Inside our bodies there are countless bacteria, both beneficial and harmful ones, both good and bad viruses. If your intestines didn't have these microbial communities, you couldn't survive. Animals cannot live without plants, plants cannot live without soil, and the inner interconnectedness between the entire environment and all things in the world -- they all know each other -- every single one knows -- and that is why we now see such a harmonious world. It was not created one by one, not developed one by one; it all emerged at once and all knew. That is why he used a light source that can shine upon all places in the world to explain this matter.

As I implied, Seth once said there were various mixtures of animals and humans, and also mixtures of humans and animals. The distinction in between is very hard to define -- if the human component is a bit more, it's a mixture of human and animal; if the animal component is a bit more, it's a mixture of animal and human. We didn't know any of this before. Your science knows nothing about them. You found a pile of bones and thought they belonged to some creature that was both like a human and like an animal, and then archaeologists went everywhere looking for such fossils and bones, as if they had found an evolutionary process between humans and animals. In fact, there was no such evolutionary process at all.

Then Rob asked: Are you talking about Afghanistan? The English for Afghanistan is Afghanistan. Jane in her trance state had difficulty pronouncing that word, and Rob quickly prompted her. Indeed, this was Jane picking up on Rob's words -- here Afghanistan came to mind as a particularly favorable environment. In the development of ancient civilizations, Afghanistan was a very favorable environment for ancient human survival.

I imagine many people have never been to Afghanistan; it is a very beautiful place. The Hindu Kush mountains are to its north, and it borders Pakistan -- the part at the border on the Pakistan side is called Peshawar. All of Afghanistan has its own ancient civilization and development, and among them there is a very famous Bamiyan Buddha, which was later destroyed by the Taliban¹. That Buddha was at the time the tallest standing Buddha statue in the world², as tall as an entire cliff face. He said that in ancient times, Afghanistan was a very favorable environment for ancient human survival.

The Uniqueness and Limitations of Human Consciousness

He says that this conscious awareness of yours is excellent and unique. Our human intelligence and consciousness, these are all very good and unique. However, it causes you to interpret all other kinds of life according to your own uniqueness and experience -- and that is not good. You cannot use this narrow human perspective of yours to look at all life, using your human-specific viewpoint to look at other animals. The complex nature of animal consciousness is completely ignored by you, and you think other animals are all stupid and have no consciousness.

We always compare them to humans and say: a dolphin has the intelligence of a three-year-old child, a smart dog has the intelligence of a child of some age... You use human standards to measure other beings, and this way of thinking is not right. And when you take your technology, your learning processes, your capacity for logical thinking, your culture, your art, and compare them with the animal experience as you understand it, it seems without doubt that you are that highly superior flower of evolution -- the apex of evolution, the jewel at the crown of evolution, and your existence surpasses all other life. We compare our own strengths with the weaknesses of other life, and then we find ourselves standing at the pinnacle of all living things. Because what you are comparing are all the things you excel at.

So you are closed off to the complex, pleasure-loving sensory social experience of animals and even plants. Animals and plants do have social experience, and their social experience is complex and also pleasure-loving -- animals and plants are better at ease and enjoyment than humans. They are not like humans, who live miserably day after day, under so much pressure, scaring themselves every day, unable to live in the present every day -- living instead in fear of the future and regret over the past. Animals are not like this.

And we are also unable to perceive the emotions and sense of belonging of beings of a different kind. Toward beings that are not of our own species, we cannot understand or perceive their emotions and their emotional sense of belonging. Their rich and sensual knowing of the earth -- this "sensual" is not translated well; the original should mean based on richness and the senses, not carnal. "Rich" means abundant, "sensory" means of the senses, and on some levels it can also mean sexual, but here it does not mean sexual; it refers to that kind of finely textured feeling. The identification with the earth's rich and finely textured emotions, we humans do not know.

Let me go through it again: we humans are closed off to the complex, pleasure-loving sensory social experience of animals and plants; we cannot feel it. Their social nature, the social relationships between their groups, are complex, not as simple as you think. We cannot perceive the emotions and sense of belonging of different kinds of beings -- their emotions are very rich, and their sense of belonging is a belonging to Mother Earth, a belonging to the natural world; for plants it is to the earth, for animals it is to the natural world. Their sense of belonging to this great nature is extremely rich and intense, an identification with the earth's rich and finely textured emotions, and this is a perception that we humans have closed off.

And then we consciously -- we ourselves have closed off and abandoned our biologically oriented culture. As a molecule of nature, we also have this same capacity, but we ourselves have shut it down. That which is forever a major part of plant and animal life -- this identification with the earth and nature's rich and finely textured emotions. Their emotions and their sense of belonging are extremely rich and intense, but we humans cannot recognize this; we have shut off this part. Having shut it off ourselves, we then assume others do not have it either -- because a person thinks that what he does not have, others do not have either. He cannot feel the emotions that all things in the world have toward nature, and he himself does not have them either. Humans do not have much of this kind of emotion toward nature; occasionally it does come up -- when seeing beautiful scenery, when seeing the grandeur of nature, it occasionally surfaces, but on the whole it is not intense, unlike in animals and plants.

You are also a part of it, but the conscious mind, with its own specification -- our human consciousness needs clarification and certainty; the English word is "specification." It needs this way of considering problems -- logical, clear, with definite meanings. This specification of human consciousness is unable to manipulate that kind of knowledge -- what kind of knowledge? The knowledge of this biologically oriented culture, the deep emotion toward Mother Earth and toward nature. We humans do not have it, not because we cannot manipulate it, but because our ego consciousness demands too much specification. And those emotions are not definite; they are emotional things, so we simply ignore them.

The Fallacy of Evolution

He went on to say that there have also been human beings who, by your human standards, were more advanced than you. Why? Because your concept of evolution is very mistaken -- we think evolution means technological development, civilizational development. We think that material development, civilizational development, and technological development are the most important achievements of human development. We do not think that spiritual development, the development of wisdom, and the development of the psyche are more important. We do the opposite, placing more emphasis on material civilization and technology.

He said this is a fallacy. Even so, the human beings who once existed surpassed you technologically as well -- if that is the yardstick by which you judge. If you humans believe that the level of technological development is the only way to measure the progress of human civilization, then even by that comparison, those earlier humans surpassed you. What is more, the degree and direction of their evolution was completely different from ours. They not only surpassed us in technology, but also surpassed us in spirituality and in spiritual pursuits.

Compared with animals and plants, you are indeed stronger than them in certain respects, but that does not mean your evolution is higher than theirs -- what they are developing is a biological culture and biological experience, which is not the same direction as your evolution. So when humans laugh at these animals and plants, you actually have nothing to laugh at them about; they have things that you do not yet have.

He said that compared with the three previous civilizations that once existed on Earth, human civilization is still far behind. Why is it far behind? Because our concept of the direction of evolution is wrong. This statement seems casual, but it is actually very crucial -- he points out that the direction of human evolution has now gone astray, and we are going further and further down the wrong path.

Then you say, so we humans should not develop technology? No. Seth did not tell you not to develop technology; he told you to grasp both, and grasp both firmly -- both spiritual civilization and material civilization must be grasped. This issue was pointed out sharply by Deng Xiaoping long ago. What did he propose at the time? Grasp both, and grasp both firmly. It seems Deng Xiaoping may have studied Seth back then -- I am joking. It happens that we can borrow this phrase, can we not? Deng Xiaoping said that spiritual civilization and material civilization must both be grasped, and both grasped firmly³. But the actual development later was not like that; we paid too much attention to material civilization and did not achieve much in spiritual civilization. The whole of human society has the same problem, the same issue.

Then you are surely not convinced, saying, what is there to say about this kind of spiritual development? Is this not going back to religion and those things, to believing in all that mystical stuff? If humans did nothing every day but sit in meditation, how would human society develop and progress? Many people will discuss it this way. Seth did not say not to develop technology -- you must remember that these two must be developed at the same time, advancing side by side in the spiritual and the material. But we humans are now too inclined toward the material level, focusing only on the material and treating spiritual things as if they did not exist at all, feeling that these spiritual things can only soothe the mind and offer comfort, with no substantive effect. They do not see that it has an effect just as great as material civilization.

He said:

I have many examples I originally wanted to give, and I have hesitated, because they are too easily misunderstood.

I have many examples about ancient humans and prehistoric civilizations that I wanted to share, so that we could recognize where our fallacy lies and return to the correct direction. But he said he was hesitant, unsure whether he should speak of them or not -- because speaking of them in that way would be easily misunderstood. The level of your human consciousness right now cannot reach it. If I point out certain things, for example what the second civilization was like, what the third civilization was like, what their strengths were, and what direction we humans should develop toward, then you humans would easily misunderstand and be led in another direction. If I told you to what degree their technology had reached, to what level their science had reached, that would also produce misunderstanding. If I told you that science is not more important than spirituality, and that spirituality is what truly understands the essence of the truth of events, then you humans would be led in another direction -- and would disregard science altogether. So he said he was very hesitant about whether to tell you and how to tell you. He hesitated again and again, and did not speak of it.

So you see, he spoke very little about matters of ancient times. In the early period he did speak of some, and in Seth Speaks he also spoke of some. Later on he basically did not bring it up much; he found that speaking of it this way did not really do much good.

The Purpose of Consciousness

When you ask whether this world is produced by consciousness, whether the universe is produced by consciousness, whether all of life is produced by consciousness, then you will certainly ask one question: What exactly is the purpose of consciousness? All things in the world are produced by consciousness, so what is the purpose of consciousness producing this universe? Where is the purpose? It is the question that comes out of your mouth immediately.

When you ask this way, of course you assume there must be a purpose -- you think everything in the world should have its own purpose, that existence should have its purpose. But you overlook that existence is itself the purpose, and existence is also itself the meaning. Yet you insist on asking what purpose this existence actually has. It is like that comedian Xiao Shenlong -- as soon as he went in, the troupe leader asked him: What special skill do you have? Human beings must be purpose-oriented; they pursue a sense of purpose in everything they do. When you tell him there is no purpose, he is stunned and at a loss. Because having no purpose is inconceivable to him -- how could there be no purpose? Since there is a direction, there must be a purpose; since time has flowed from ancient times to the present, time has its directionality, and that necessarily implies it points toward a direction -- is that future not our purpose, our destination?

Yet Seth tells you:

From the larger truth, consciousness itself cannot be aware of all of its own purposes, but instead continually manifests itself through itself, and discovers its own essence.

Make sure to highlight this sentence. This sentence is also the final viewpoint of the book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment -- this value fulfillment that consciousness pursues, where exactly does its purpose lie? Here he has already pointed out: this value fulfillment itself does not necessarily have to have a purpose; it simply wants to manifest itself, to create, to experience. Through the process of creating and experiencing, it discovers its own essence -- it is that simple.

He does not know all of his purposes; he does not know all of his essence. He knows a part -- the part he has created and experienced, he knows; the part he is creating and experiencing, he is knowing; the part he has not yet created or experienced, of course he does not know. In such a process of "becoming," he continually experiences and continually creates. If you insist on asking what his purpose is, this is his purpose -- this process of continually seeking his own essence, in the process of continual self-manifestation, self-creation, and self-value realization, continually discovering his own essence. If you ask what the essence of this universe is, it is this; if you ask what his purpose is, it is this.

This answer is very interesting. Let me insert a personal experience of mine. It is very close to, and consistent with, the answer I arrived at when I explored the purpose and meaning of human existence in elementary school -- no, in the first year of junior high school. My earliest contact with spirituality was in the first year of junior high school, around age twelve. At that time there was a classmate named Zhao Xidong, and the two of us often did not pay attention in class, spending every day researching these vague and intangible things. At that time the two of us raised a question that neither of us had an answer to, and we researched it every day, probably for about two or three months.

What was this question? It was very simple: What exactly is the purpose and meaning of the development of humanity as a whole? Every person has their own purpose -- you may want to live a good life, earn more money, live in a big house, or want to contribute to humanity and realize self-worth, those Maslow things -- setting aside for the moment whether each individual's value and meaning of existence is ultimate or not, those are easy to find. But humanity as an entire species, as a race, what is the purpose and meaning of the existence of humanity as a whole? Surely it cannot be like those cats, dogs, mice, and cockroaches, just for reproduction, right? If at that time we believed that the meaning of animal existence was reproduction, then what is the value and purpose of human existence?

We spent two or three months researching this whenever we had free time, reading all kinds of worthy books, looking for all kinds of materials, making a great show of it. In the end we did not arrive at a very satisfactory answer, but we did arrive at a unanimous answer, which was: the purpose and meaning of human existence is to find out where its own purpose and meaning of existence lies. This is the driving force behind humanity's continuous development.

The two of us were extremely dissatisfied with this answer at the time -- because this answer simply returned to the question itself; it was not an answer at all, it was the question. You say the purpose and meaning of humanity is to find the purpose and meaning of humanity, then what kind of answer is that? But on this basis we reasoned through all kinds of answers and found them all unreasonable; only this one answer seemed to have no grounds for refutation. Later we stopped researching it, after just those two or three months.

Now thinking back, it seems as if something was destined in the unseen -- a child pondering such a question, finding it simply fascinating. Looking at it today, the answer to this question seems quite close to what Seth says in the presence of the larger truth and creativity: through self-realization, to seek the essence of one's own existence -- this is the purpose and meaning of existence.

For those who want a simple answer, he says:

I admit this is not an answer.

Indeed, if someone gave you this kind of answer, you would want to slap them twice -- what kind of answer is this? With your high level, with Seth's high wisdom and level, you give me this answer? Are you kidding me? Seth says there is no way around it.

He says:

I know there is a heroic kind of love, knowledge, and compassion, and creativity, that can be assigned to All That Is.

People often assign this heroic kind -- that tragic and heroic love, knowledge, compassion, and creativity that saves the world, saves heaven and earth, saves all things -- to the characteristics of All That Is. This is a kind of human cognition. Just as when I first came into contact with Buddhism, we would also discuss: What kind of state is a Buddha? I remember reading some material, though I forget which, that said after attaining Buddhahood there is a certain state -- it is omniscient, omni-intelligent, omnipotent, and also all-compassionate. Omniscience and omni-intelligence mean knowing all wisdom; omnipotence means possessing all creativity, able to accomplish everything; all-compassion means having compassion, having that kind of pitying heart toward all things in the world.

He says you may also have this kind of feeling toward All That Is, assigning these love, knowledge, compassion, and creativity -- knowledge is omniscience, compassion and love are one meaning, and omnipotence is this creativity -- all assigned to All That Is, saying that All That Is possesses these attributes. But he says:

That, however, is within every creature.

These attributes that you assign to All That Is, you yourself also have them, animals also have them, plants also have them, every one has them.

He says:

I know that every smallest particle of consciousness can never be divided. Each contains infinite abilities of creation and development.

Even the smallest unit of consciousness cannot be destroyed; each is eternal and everlasting; each carries infinite potential for creation and development. And every particle, even the smallest particle, is inherently served -- if you say the entire universe is an architectural design, then there is such a design, and there is also such a designer. Suppose this designer set up this framework, and all things in the world operate according to this framework. But how are the two combined? One is within, one is without, such that it is impossible to separate them. You cannot separate this designer from the things he designed -- because this creator is also within his creation, and this created thing itself is also endowed with a creative power; it itself is also a creator.

Is this not like the Klein bottle? What is a Klein bottle? Go online and search for the Klein bottle -- it is a bottle with no inside and no outside, no beginning and no end⁴, both inside and outside, both end and beginning. This is like the example they gave earlier of the painter and his painting: the creator created a world, and every created thing in this world is itself a分身 of this creator, and it can also create -- a creator transforms himself into all things in the world he created, and each one has the same ability as the creator, and can create new things. It is a mutually nested world where you are in me and I am in you.

He says he knows you may have many questions about this:

If you have more questions on this subject, do not discuss them today; in our next session you may ask me. Do not bring them up today, because it is already very late.

Then Rob said: Seth, thank you, that was wonderful, you spoke wonderfully. Seth said playfully: Of course. That is a little aside. Then he said to Rob: You had a very good winter last year, because you missed the illness that might have affected you -- in previous years Rob might have had an illness every winter, and you dodged it. Very interesting; Seth is very humorous.

Rob said at 11:40: I was surprised by Seth's words, because as far as I can remember, my experience seemed to have always been quite good. Later he did cite Seth's material in Volume 2 of The "Unknown" Reality on evolution and time -- you can find the relevant citation in Appendix 12 of that book. At this time he was still discussing The "Unknown" Reality, and had not yet begun the part on Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. This chapter -- Chapter 11 -- discussing the psyche and the universe, actually opened a small beginning for that book, but he did not continue it later.

Session 797: From the Invisible Universe to the Visible Universe

Tonight Rob mentioned that the mailman had delivered the proofs of Jane's book Paul Cezanne's Worldview⁵, and after receiving them he had been busy correcting, checking spelling, punctuation, and omissions. At this point Seth came through and continued from the previous question.

Session 797

When you ask about the origin of a universe, you are speaking of a visible universe.

When we ask how the universe came to be, how it began, how it was created, what we have in mind is this visible universe. We are not referring to an invisible universe or a universe of consciousness. Every point within every universe, all the hypothetical points you can possibly imagine -- what this sentence means is everything you can imagine.

You can look up a video on YouTube that specifically explains what a ten-dimensional world is. It starts from one dimension and goes all the way up to ten dimensions, and that is the limit of human imagination -- by the time you reach ten dimensions, it already encompasses everything, including all possibilities and so on. If you are interested, you can take a look; it is called "The Ten-Dimensional Universe"⁶. That is not something observed or theoretical; it is the universe you can imagine. Beyond ten dimensions is already beyond the scope of your imagination; in your imagined world there is no higher dimensional space. He says that even at any imaginable point within that universe, there is consciousness.

Therefore there is an invisible universe. Apart from this visible universe of ours, there is also an invisible universe. And the visible, or objective, universe springs forth from this invisible universe. He says he does not want to overemphasize how difficult this material is to explain -- he has already emphasized it several times, and does not want to overemphasize it again, but he says no amount of emphasis would be too much. It is indeed difficult to explain.

Your universe did not emerge at some point in time or some point in space, nor did it emerge from any initial cell. Take the Big Bang theory⁷, for example, which holds that the universe began from a single original starting point. In actuality, it was when the inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached a certain intensity that it spontaneously -- and you must remember, spontaneously -- gave birth to the entire material system. This process is not the same as the kind of gestation we humans understand; it can only be used as an analogy. Your universe began to exist everywhere at once. With this one sentence, he gives an extremely simplified description of the birth of the universe. He has no way to explain it further; it is indeed difficult to explain.

In this situation, light appeared first. This is very interesting. You see, this is similar to what the Bible says -- when God created the world, He said let there be light⁸, and there was light. Light came first. Light is a very magical thing in our material world, and it is itself also a kind of spiritual enzyme. In the early sessions, it is also discussed that light itself is a spiritual enzyme.

What is a spiritual enzyme? This question is rather complex, so let us not expand on it for now. Specifically speaking, a spiritual enzyme is something like a catalyst -- or rather, an enzyme is itself a catalyst -- that facilitates the transformation from the nonphysical world to the physical world. Without it, would the event still happen? It would, but it would be much slower. How much slower? Possibly dozens of times slower, hundreds of times, millions of times, or even hundreds of millions of times slower. Spiritual enzymes are an indispensable element in the process by which energy manifests from the nonphysical world into the physical world.

To give a simple example, in concrete terms, chlorophyll itself is a kind of spiritual enzyme. Think about it: chlorophyll is in the leaves, in the plants, and through photosynthesis -- and here, humanity's research on chlorophyll is actually fairly thorough. Under light, chlorophyll absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and generates a form of energy called ATP, adenosine triphosphate. This ATP energy can be possessed by the plant's cells, and plant cells need ATP as their energy. Without chlorophyll, there would be no plants. Plants absorb carbon dioxide, convert the carbon base within it into a form of energy that cells can use, and in the process of photosynthesis they also release oxygen. And oxygen in turn supplies the needs of the animals on Earth, including us humans; all animals need oxygen. So plants, under the action of chlorophyll, absorb carbon dioxide, and under light convert light energy into energy, allowing the entire cell to obtain the corresponding energy, while simultaneously releasing oxygen. The design of all this is so exquisite and miraculous, it defies comprehension.

Our human bodies also have similar functions. For example, you can think of it in terms of hemoglobin or red blood cells -- red blood cells carry the carbon dioxide released after our bodies have consumed energy, transport it to the lungs to be expelled, then bind with oxygen, and at the same time deliver oxygen to the various organs and cells of the body. Hemoglobin and chlorophyll are both things of this kind. Of course, human cells also need ATP; all cells need it, not just plant cells. Human biological cells also need ATP. ATP is a unit of energy.

So light itself is also a spiritual enzyme. Without light, we could not see the myriad things of the world -- and it is not just a matter of seeing. Without light there would be no plants, and without plants there would be no animals. Light itself is extremely magical. Its speed is 300,000 kilometers per second⁹, a constant speed. In the human material world, this is what we observe, but we humans do not know why it is this way; we can only know that it is this way. Light is extremely important to our human society, and it is crucial to the balance of the material world -- we will discuss this in the relevant chapters; today we will not go into detail. Light is a key factor in the energy balance and transformation of the entire material world.

Why did Einstein discover the mass-energy conversion law, E equals mc squared¹⁰ -- energy equals mass times the speed of light squared? Why is it the speed of light squared that is used here, and not something else? Why must it be the speed of light squared? The design in this, if you think about it carefully, is truly miraculous. The role of light here, its significance, far exceeds human imagination.

At the same time that light appeared, this EE unit -- that is, the electromagnetic energy unit -- became prominent.

This electromagnetic energy unit, the EE unit, existed before, but previously it was not prominent. Only with the appearance of light did the EE unit become prominent. Is this not perfectly natural? Without light, even if the EE unit manifested into a materialized entity, could you see it? If this world had no light, even if electromagnetic units became materialized entities, you still could not see them. It is not that they did not exist; they existed before. It was because of the appearance of light that you could see them, and so they became prominent. The EE unit intrudes from the invisible universe into our physical universe, and the key core element in this process -- it spans both sides. And the units of consciousness that compose the EE unit are purely nonphysical units, purely things of the invisible universe. Units of consciousness can only make the crucial transformation between the invisible universe and the visible universe through the EE unit.

He says I must bypass many of your concepts. Because we all have certain fixed preconceptions; for example, we have preconceptions about things like the universe. He says I do not want to be influenced by these preconceptions of yours; I want to find a way around them. He says in much of the material I have clearly hinted at what I am saying now -- I have often hinted at these things, but those hints must not have been noticed by you.

At this point Rob quickly interjected, saying, "No, not at all, we noticed. From Jane's perspective and mine, we noticed." Seth directly interrupted him, saying:

For example, I have said that the expansion of a universe is like the expansion of an idea, the same.

The visible universe also sprang into this existence in the same way -- the expansion of the universe, like the expansion of consciousness, directly sprang into our existence. This whole matter is extremely complex. You must not think that because I have explained Seth's viewpoint to you here, and because Seth spoke here, that the birth of the universe is so simple -- first there was light, and then the EE units manifested into form. You absolutely must not think that. I emphasize again, you must not think that in the slightest. The entire process is extremely complex; he is only deliberately making a simplification here.

How complex is it? It is so complex that every point and every moment in this world springs anew into a new creation. This present universe is in a state of constant transformation, forever in a state of "becoming," always creating.

He says that regardless of your views on creation or the creation of the world, you are all stuck on the question of "where does this energy come from." That is why we hypothesized the Big Bang theory. The main problem this Big Bang theory actually seeks to solve is where the original energy of the universe came from. Where does this continuous creation, this energy that continuously generates all things in the world, actually come from? Scientists hypothesized that the Big Bang came from a single point, and this point contained infinite, boundless energy, so vast it cannot be described. All the energy of the universe came from this, as if an unimaginable amount of energy was released at one moment, and then this energy would inevitably be exhausted.

According to our human biases and preconceptions, we believe the universe must necessarily have been born from a single original energy, and this energy burst forth and was released from a certain point, and then as it was released -- like an explosive, whether a grenade, an atomic bomb, or the fireworks and firecrackers we play with -- after the explosion the energy diminishes accordingly, until it returns to stillness. This is our human understanding of the universe. We humans believe that in its final stage, the universe will become a dead silence.

He says this is incorrect. But that same energy -- the energy that gave birth to the universe -- is still again and again giving the universe new life. It has always been creating new life for the universe. Put that way, the universe is still being created, still -- this is a progressive tense. The universe was not created at the moment of the Big Bang as scientists say; the universe is still being created. This is a present progressive tense, an ongoing state.

According to scientists, the universe was already formed in the first thousandth of a second, the first ten-thousandth of a second -- because the initial explosion took place within an incredibly short time of 10 to the negative 35th power seconds¹¹, and then scientists began to extrapolate according to models. Basically, the state of the universe we see today was already formed within a few minutes after the Big Bang occurred. This is human understanding.

The EE units are electromagnetic units, added onto a probable physical field.

The EE units placed themselves onto a physical field, and then they began to manifest -- manifesting a kind of latent knowledge of all the various species that could appear under those circumstances. Remember, what they manifested was not necessarily all species, but all species were implied within their manifestation. Just like the language we speak is implied by the parts that are not spoken -- the same idea. Those species may not have manifested at that time, but they were all already implied.

For example, at the same moment the earliest cell was born, it also foreshadowed the later birth of the millions upon millions of species of the world; all of them were implied at the moment that first cell was born. I am not saying that this world was produced from a single cell in the beginning; I am only making an analogy. Seth's meaning is this: whatever species the Earth's environment at that time was suited to produce, those were manifested; but it is not that there were only those species. Those possible species were all implied and latent within the manifestation of those species, and when conditions matured, they would manifest one after another.

Just like what was said in the twenty-four weeks of The Master Key System that we discussed a while ago: evolution is like a process of gradual unfolding, a process of gradual unfolding within all possibilities. I think that wording was used exquisitely -- a process of gradual unfolding. But before the unfolding, it already contained everything.

And its result -- all the myriad things of the world that it contained, these species -- all "began" (in quotation marks -- "began"; the quotation marks mean there was no beginning) from this invisible universe.

In order to use our human language, he used the word "began," but in fact there was no beginning. You could say that after who knows how many centuries -- from our human perspective, that is, over millions and millions of years -- the EE units began to combine. Here he also uses quotation marks, because the "beginning" we think of does not actually possess temporality; this is our human cognition. From our human perspective, after millions and millions of years, the EE units began to combine, forming the various categories of matter -- the fundamental particles of the material world -- and then began to form the various species, animals, plants. But you could also say that this process happened instantaneously. It depends on which perspective you are standing in. But the physical universe was seeded and gestated everywhere simultaneously. In another respect, this is still happening. There is no true point of entry, no moment at which the universe truly began -- from a certain moment the universe began to be born, from a certain moment all things began to gestate; there is no such point in time, because it was born instantaneously. Such a viewpoint is very difficult for us humans to fully accept and understand.

You distinguish between consciousness and your own version of it -- even as you are considered to be a consciousness of the self.

What does this mean? When you say "consciousness," you identify it as a kind of consciousness of the self. When I speak of the consciousness of atoms and molecules, I mean that they have a consciousness of their own entity.

We humans can distinguish our own consciousness, but we only understand the version of consciousness that is our own. Different species have different consciousness: cats, dogs, plants, flowers, grass -- their consciousness is different; stones, mountains, metals -- their consciousness is also different from ours; the consciousness of molecules and atoms has its own version. When I refer to the consciousness of molecules and atoms, I mean that they have a consciousness of their own entity. I do not mean that they love or hate, that they have the loves and hates and emotional entanglements that humans have. Molecules and atoms do not have these.

In your terms, they are aware of their own separateness, and are also aware of the way in which that separateness cooperates to form other organizations.

Every molecule, every atom, knows that it is independent. But at the same time as they are separate, at the same time as each one is aware of itself as an individual entity, they can also sense that they can combine together, that they can cooperate to form other organizational patterns. This is what is called the consciousness of atoms and molecules. In fact, they are intimately aware of all such possible cooperative adventures -- all the possible combinations between molecules and between atoms.

So when we do chemistry experiments, we often wonder why this substance reacts with that substance. Of course, we attribute it to the action of chemical bonds -- in chemistry there are chemical bonds, and molecules have molecular bonds. But that is a manifestation. If molecules and atoms did not have the inclination to combine together, they would not display such properties. Since they do display such properties, it indicates that molecules and atoms themselves have this willingness to cooperate and combine. They want to form the various myriad things of the world. That is why we can see simple molecules and atoms forming today's colorful, infinitely wondrous world. There are only a little over a hundred kinds of atoms; the periodic table has only a little over a hundred elements¹², and these hundred-plus elements, through repeated permutations and combinations, present the myriad things of our world.

Moreover, molecules and atoms are innately endowed with value fulfillment. Why do they have the impetus of value fulfillment? Because the EE units themselves compose these molecules and atoms, and what composes the EE units are units of consciousness, and the driving force of units of consciousness is value fulfillment. Value fulfillment is like the fact that all things in our world grow; it is the same principle. It is a fundamental law of the universe. If all things in our material world follow such a law of growth, then in the spiritual universe, in the universe of the soul, in the universe of consciousness, their fundamental law is value fulfillment.

Every known species was innately present at the time when the visible universe was gestated in its entirety.

Every species was already present at the moment the universe was born. Although it may not have been gestated and manifested at that time, it was already present. Because every atom and molecule has its driving force of value fulfillment. This value fulfillment means that, like a kaleidoscope, they will inevitably use limited power -- atoms and molecules -- to combine into infinitely many possible patterns and designs -- pursuing as many possible adventures as possible. This is the most fundamental attribute of atoms and molecules.

He gives an example:

The universe is like a painting. The painter did not first paint something dark, then paint an explosion, then paint a cell, and then the cells clumped together, formed groups, combined together to form a simple organic organism, and then that organism multiplied into all kinds of things -- or followed the simplest single-celled life pattern of an amoeba or paramecium and extrapolated upward from there.

It is not like that. On the contrary:

It was first painted with a wash of light, and then a background began, in which all the world's organisms were included -- all of them, although the details had not yet been painted. Yet within the painter's own creativity, the colors would become ever richer, the species gained their outlines, the wind blew and the seas rose in waves.

What a poetic image. Although the details had not been painted, in the painter's mind, in his creativity, the colors would certainly become ever richer, the outlines of the species ever clearer, and when the wind blew across the sea, it would inevitably produce wave after wave.

The actions and energy of the universe still come from within. Seth says, I can understand that this does not sound like a scientific statement to you. However:

The moment All That Is conceived of a physical universe, it was invisibly created.

From the moment All That Is conceived of it, the physical universe was invisibly created. First there was the invisible creation, and then it was endowed with creativity. This physical universe itself has creativity -- it is not that once it was created it was dead, that whatever All That Is arranged for it is all it would ever be. It is like a living universe with its own creativity. To put it bluntly, All That Is gave it a grand framework, a pattern, a prototype for development -- or, to use today's AI computing terms, gave it some original basic algorithms -- and afterward it could create endlessly in its own way. This physical universe was not created as a dead universe; it is a living universe with its own creativity.

And it was destined to emerge -- at the moment He conceived of it, it was destined to emerge. Is this not especially like what we call the law of attraction, or what Seth discusses as beliefs creating reality? Why does he repeatedly mention this? Because our universe came into being the same way. All That Is endowed the universe itself with the creativity to create the universe, and this universe itself possesses infinite, boundless creativity.

Because every hypothetical, imaginable portion of the universe is conscious. Any part of the universe, any possibility, any event, any power -- all the parts you can imagine -- are all conscious. The universe emerged within consciousness; its core is consciousness. There is no place that is without consciousness.

The planner (in quotation marks) exists within the plan itself in the grandest manner.

The "planner" who constructed the universe -- but is there actually such a planner? There is no such planner. But he says it this way so that you can understand it in human terms, like a creator. There is no such creator, but if you insist on speaking of one, he will assign one for you, in quotation marks. This planner exists within the plan itself in the grandest manner -- he is a part of the plan. How is this to be understood? The example of the painter he gave before is the most vivid: the painter is painting the painting, and within the painting there is also a painter. That is how it is. The planner himself is also within the plan.

I am afraid that to you, this is inconceivable -- how can a creator place himself within his own creation?

There is no outside into which an invisible universe is materialized.

What does this mean? It is not as you might think, that there is an invisible universe, and then this invisible universe manifests a visible universe, and this visible universe is outside the invisible universe. That is not the process, and that is not the logic. Why does he emphasize this? Because he is afraid that without emphasis you will fall into another misconception -- as if there is an invisible universe, and then a visible universe was born from it. It is not like that. The invisible universe and the visible universe are one; there is no talk of outside or inside. There is no visible universe established outside the invisible universe. There is no outside, no inside; they are all together.

There is nothing outside the universe that created our universe. That which created our universe is within this universe -- within every point of this universe, within every power, within every grain of sand, within every flower, within every person. We ourselves are the very thing that creates this universe. Do not go looking outside the universe for "since the universe was created, there must be a creator outside the universe" -- there is no such outside. You must remember, there is no such outside. Absolutely do not go looking outside. Because the planner who created this universe is himself within his plan, within this universe.

Because all that is, indeed exists within a spiritual, psychic, or soul realm.

This is quite difficult to describe. All of this -- what you can see and what you cannot see, All That Is and the branches of All That Is, and those entities, souls, oversouls, individual personalities, fragments, and so on, including us humans, and those indescribable other reality spaces, other universes, three dimensions, four dimensions, five dimensions, six dimensions, seven dimensions, other higher-dimensional spaces and multidimensional spaces -- all of it, all of it, exists within a spiritual, psychic, or soul realm. This realm is very, very difficult to describe in a way that lets you understand what it is. And our physical universe manifests within it. You say it manifests within it -- then is there something even larger outside? There is nothing larger outside either. It is just this universe; it is all here. To understand this sentence, it is very, very difficult to understand through words. I hope you can understand it.

To you, your universe seems objective and real.

We feel that the universe is real -- we can see it, touch it, and even send probes into outer space to explore it. But for you, it seems that at certain moments, at least, it is not so. When is that? When dreaming, when meditating, when out of body, when you have those miraculous experiences of contact with your own soul -- at those times you will discover that in certain specific moments, it is not actually so objective and real.

Therefore you ask about its creation and the evolution of species -- because you feel that these objective facts, this physical universe, are all objective and real, you are bound to ask such questions.

And my answer is given in the terms in which the question is usually asked.

What does this mean? The birth of the universe is very difficult for me to describe to you. But when you ask me how the universe came to be, I answer along the lines of your words -- using the context in which you asked the question. If you ask me from a three-dimensional perspective, I answer from a three-dimensional perspective; if you ask me from a higher level of consciousness, I answer from a higher level of consciousness; if you ask from the perspective of biological evolution, I answer from the perspective of biological evolution; if you ask from the perspective of the production of matter, I answer from that perspective. This is what Seth means. He does not have one definitive answer; he can only answer along the lines of your question.

Since you believe in and experience the passage of time, then you will naturally give rise to such questions, and ask them in such a way. Within that framework, they make sense.

Asking from the perspective of the three-dimensional world makes sense, because you necessarily experience the passage of time; time truly passes for you. But when you begin to ask about the nature of time -- when you ask what time actually is -- then when the universe was born is no longer the key point.

Almost anyone would agree that the universe is the most splendid example of creativity.

When I want to give an example of creativity, this colorful, endlessly changing universe is the best, most splendid example I can give. When you ask what creation can create, what consciousness can create, this universe is the best example.

But few people agree that by examining your own creativity, you can learn more about the nature of the universe than by examining the world with instruments.

Here is a most brilliant irony. Because you created the instruments of creation -- these instruments were themselves created by you, microscopes, electron microscopes, astronomical telescopes, and so on -- even while, at the same time, you hope to propose theories that hold that apart from the most mechanistic reactions, human beings possess no abilities whatsoever.

We often think that the universe can only be known through scientific instruments, scientific experiments, or scientific methods, and we do not believe that we can know the truth or essence of the universe through ourselves, without instruments. Is this not ironic? You yourselves created these instruments, created this thing, and then you say that human beings have no abilities other than mechanical reactions, and you still want to use these instruments to observe how the universe was created. He says all of this in itself is a very great irony.

In other words, the universe gradually comes to know itself — that is, the world gradually comes to know itself, discovers itself. Because the planner left room for the sacred banner, and nowhere in this plan is predetermined, nor does it in any way agree with your theory of survival of the fittest.

The universe seems to have been created, and yet a sacred margin is left, completely open — we ourselves were created, and at the same time we ourselves are creators, and we creators were also given an infinite, unrestricted creative space in which we can freely give full play. Nowhere is predetermined. Many people ask this question: since we have a higher soul, a higher spirituality, then is this life of ours predestined? Where is our free will? Here, in essence, it has already been explained very clearly — you have complete autonomy, complete freedom, you have complete creation according to your heart's desire, and nowhere is predetermined.

Nor does it in any way agree with the theory of "survival of the fittest" in the process of evolution as we understand it. Survival of the fittest was proposed by Darwin's theory of evolution¹³, survival of the fittest¹⁴.

The Balance of the Universe and the Calculations of Consciousness

Seth goes on to say that the theory of "survival of the fittest" was put forward by Darwin's theory of evolution¹⁴ -- the fittest survive. But the universe as a whole has no such theory. These are a creative distortion on your part, that is, specializing consciousness specifically on this physical plane, cutting yourselves off from the larger confluence of existence, species, and the land that exists on other planes. That is, you limit yourselves to considering problems from the perspective of humanity alone, excluding the larger confluence between yourselves and other species.

You may remember that earlier, in Chapter Nine, he talked about a form of consciousness organization that spans species. He emphasizes once again that consciousness pervades the entire universe and is aware of all situations. Remember, it is aware of all situations.

The balance of nature on your planet is no accident, but the result of constant, instantaneous calculations by every most minute consciousness, whether that consciousness forms part of a rock, a person, an animal, or a plant.

Our world is so harmonious because it has been precisely calculated. Every most minute unit of consciousness in all things is making precise calculations, and only then does it form the harmonious world that we recognize today.

Each holds space together in an invisible way.

What does "holding space together" mean? Each consciousness has its own independent world and its own independent perspective, but through a shared operation, they form a world that we hold in common.

For example, the cup you see in front of you is one cup, and the cup I see in front of me is another cup. Although they both seem to be the same cup, the cup in your eyes and the cup in my eyes are not the same cup. This cup is one cup in my world, and another cup in your world. But because the spatial positions of our two worlds overlap, the cup in my world and the cup in your world happen to overlap exactly at that point in space. In other words, we both consider it to be a cup. And how does that happen? There is a shared attribute of that cup at that spatial position, and it can also perceive its own existence, and it also perceives its own state of existing as a cup. So among you, me, and the cup, there is this shared, complex spatial overlap. Whether you understand it as an overlap of quantum states or whatever kind of overlap, that is the state of it.

So all consciousness collectively holds space together, and only then do we have a spatial cognition of this world. No matter where its own position is in space, it can locate itself at an appropriate position in space to manifest. This is a cooperative venture, and the space we see today is the result of the close cooperation of all these consciousnesses.

Your own consciousness has its own unique quality, and like other longer-living species, you rather rigidly identify your identity with your shape.

That is, our identity is consciousness, but we tie our body, our flesh, our outer form, tightly to our own identity, believing that this body is the self. You forget that the consciousness behind the body is you, not that the body is you -- the body is only borrowed for a time.

Other species move with the greatest mobility, in a state of jumping in and jumping out.

Apart from humans, other species are in a state of jumping in and jumping out. They jump into the body, and when they die they jump out again, constantly jumping in and jumping out. Some spiritual traditions call this body a "vehicle," using the English word "vehicle" -- which actually means a means of transport, a carrier. It is like us getting on and off a car: when you get on, you and the car become one. The car was originally a dead thing, but because a person jumps into the car and drives it, the car seems to come alive, driving all over the road as if it had eyes, with an astonishing degree of precision.

When one animal kills another for food, there is a biological understanding, and under the impact of a stimulus unknown to you, the consciousness of the prey leaves its body.

There is a kind of stimulus impulse unknown to us, and under this impulse, the consciousness of the animal that is killed will instantly leave its body, and it will not feel that pain. There are many such examples -- when you watch a cheetah hunting a gazelle on the African savanna, when it catches the gazelle and bites it to death, you see no terror or fear in the gazelle's eyes. It dies with that calm, indifferent gaze. Most animals that die in nature have this kind of expression; they have no fear, no dread.

I once watched a short clip of a wild cat living outdoors. It was about to die, and it walked toward the root of a large tree, and the root of that tree was especially thick. It was swaying, staggering, walking toward that tree root. Before it reached the tree root -- almost there, but not yet at the tree -- it collapsed headfirst, and the moment it fell it was already dead. That is the state of it: the life of nature jumps in and out of the body with great vitality.

Rob's Anger

Here Seth says, I want to be very careful. Why be careful? Because he is talking about the natural interactions among animals, and in no way does he mean to rationalize the cruel slaughter of animals by humans in many situations. What he is talking about is the natural interactions between animals in the wild, not the idea that when humans hunt and kill animals with such cruelty, the animals feel no pain. No, he says he is not excusing them. He is talking about natural circumstances. Regarding the issue of artificial guilt and natural guilt, he has discussed this before -- in The Nature of Personal Reality, I think it was Chapter Eight or Chapter Nine, he discussed this issue.

Then there was a break. The material Seth gives below was all triggered by the negative thoughts Rob had during the break.

Rob spoke very candidly: in fact, I am filled with a kind of anger at the seemingly universal chaotic state of the human world. Rob's viewpoint represents the viewpoint of many people. The two book reviews he read before the session also affected him -- after his book was published, there would be some book reviewers evaluating their book. One of the reviews was written by a brain researcher, and they felt this person seemed to know pitifully little about the human condition. And yet, he went and reviewed the Seth material that the two of them had written. Rob said we could hardly help but find it rather comical -- you know so little about the human world, and yet you come and comment on the book Seth wrote, that is just too naive. There are many such people today as well. Look at the comments under my videos: there are a few people who think this theory is utterly ridiculous, when in fact they themselves are the ridiculous ones, but they do not realize it. This reviewer himself had also written books about the brain, and he had been attacked by other book reviewers, so he was attacking others.

Rob then went on to say, he said I am sure Jane has really been fed up for a while now -- Rob often complained to Jane, and Jane was already quite tired of him. What did he keep complaining about? He said that in just a little more than half a century, that is, in fifty or sixty years, humanity has already had at least three major wars. He was referring to World War I¹⁵, World War II¹⁶, and the Vietnam War that the United States was involved in at the time. In between there was also a war we call the Korean War. In fact, the United States has never stopped waging war, right up to and including the present, and it has been at war in various places all along.

He said since we are in such an actual world of ours -- let us set aside spiritual questions for now, in our three-dimensional world, we generally hold beliefs that deny all things like reincarnation -- let us not talk about reincarnation, people dying and being reborn, the eternal validity of the soul, and let us not talk about any religious matters either, let us just talk about the affairs of every living person in the real world. He said under such circumstances, in these three wars, sending our young people to the battlefield and taking from them this one priceless, irreplaceable attribute of their lifetime -- life itself -- seems to be the worst crime imaginable. Do not tell me about the eternal validity of the soul or people going to heaven after death; just say that this young person has only one life, and you send him to the battlefield, and he is killed in war before he has even begun to experience society -- that is one of the worst crimes.

During the Vietnam War, the anti-war wave across American society was extremely high, because mainstream American society did not understand why we had to fight this Vietnam War, and for what. He did not understand, he could not comprehend.

He said he also said many things in the same mood. He also knew that saying it this way oversimplified the human condition -- looking at the development of human civilization only from his single point of view was too much of a simplification.

Seth's Response

The following passage from Seth is entirely directed at the complaint Rob voiced in the middle of all this. And this was not a one-time complaint; it was Rob's overall cognitive stance toward society as a whole. You see, after Rob had studied Seth for so long, after studying spiritual material for so long, by March 1977¹⁷ he still carried this much resentment, anger, and emotion toward the world. So you can understand that our present society also has its own contemporary problems -- our pandemic has not yet ended, and the global economy has begun to enter the greatest recession in the history of human civilization. Where we go from here, many people still cannot see a clear and beautiful future. So we are facing problems different from theirs, but similar in kind. Every era encounters the problems of its own time.

The following answer from Seth is absolutely brilliant, and it has a very important reference value for how we think about our real lives. So Seth says, regarding this discussion of yours --

I will give you a fair but careful answer.

Keep in mind that his answer below is fair, and it is careful. Careful means taking into account all possible aspects.

Of course, as you know, this historical and cultural world, this world that appears to be the only objective one, with its already written history, its present, and the possible future it hopes to have.

This is the world that humanity now sees -- with its already written history, the world history that has developed up to now; and its present moment; and then the possible future it hopes to have, if the earth is not destroyed.

That future must necessarily be built upon a known species and a past world.

It seems as though our future must be built upon the species as we humans define ourselves, or upon this past world, in order for there to be a future at all. We think that the future of this world must be a future built upon the foundation of humanity, a future world based on the past. But when we humans speak of the destruction of the world, we do not mean that this earth will cease to exist -- what we humans mean by the destruction of the world is that humanity will become extinct. We think that if humanity is gone, the world is gone. No, if humanity is gone, other species will still be here. The world would simply be without humanity. He is speaking from a very macroscopic perspective. When we speak of the future, we always mean a future in which humanity exists; we never imagine what a future without humanity would look like, because humanity has no interest in that.

When we speak of probabilities, it often seems to be only a figure of speech.

When we speak of probabilities, that is, the world of probabilities, parallel worlds, you feel that this is just a metaphor, just an analogy -- that humanity has these probable existences, these parallel space-times, as if they have nothing to do with you, as if you have always lived in this present world and have not the slightest connection to those parallel worlds. But in reality, that is not the case.

In many ways, to think that there may be more than one earth, or many earths, each one so similar that it can be recognized.

What does it mean that each earth is so similar? It means there are many parallel worlds, parallel earths, parallel universes, and within them are earths that look very much like ours -- so similar that we can recognize them as earth at a single glance. But in the most important respects, they are different.

Each one is almost staggering in its difference.

When I say this, you will feel it is too shocking, too frightening -- how could there be countless earths in existence?

This particular house exists. Yet on any given day you might open the door and, from your point of vantage, step into a probable world, without ever realizing the difference. This happens all the time.

This house, right here, right now, exists in different parallel worlds as well, but you do not perceive that. Then one morning you get up, you open the door and walk out, and at the very moment you open that door, you do not realize that you have actually already entered another parallel world, already stepped onto another earth's developmental trajectory. You do not notice it at all.

So parallel worlds are not as different as you imagine. They differ in certain key and important places, but in many small details, you cannot see much difference. And this state of affairs is happening all the time -- it is not that you only cross over occasionally, it is constant. This "all the time" does not mean you only cross over every morning; no, that was just an example. It means that in your life, this state occurs frequently at every moment. When does it frequently occur? For example, when your mind wanders, when you enter a dazed state, that is, in the half-dreaming half-waking state, in a moment of absent-mindedness, you may very well enter another space-time.

Traveling Between Parallel Worlds

What do we often run into in reality here? Many people have experienced "ghost walls" -- a very familiar road, the way home, a road you have walked countless times and are certain will get you home, and then suddenly one night you cannot find your way back. Nothing is right; this building is not right, that building is not right either. Many drivers have also encountered this: driving along a very familiar road, and no matter how they drive, they just cannot get there. In the days before GPS, they would simply get lost. I think everyone has heard of this kind of thing in real life, and some people have experienced it. How do you resolve it? Traditional people will tell you, when this happens, do not panic -- when you find yourself caught in a ghost wall and cannot find the way no matter what, stop. Do not keep walking, and do not keep driving. You have already entered that world, and the roads are all different, so how can you get back? At this point you need to get out -- get out and do what? Have a cigarette, go to the bathroom, or do something else to distract yourself. Do not keep thinking about how to get back or how every way you go is wrong. Make a phone call and chat, relax a little. Then get back in the car or start walking again, and you will instantly feel as if you have returned to the familiar world -- as if that world has suddenly come back to you. And then you can very easily find your way home.

There are many even more amazing examples. I mentioned one earlier: a netizen in our group wanted to buy a hand soap when he was shopping, and he liked that particular fragrance. So he went to the supermarket to look for it, and among the hand soaps there was none with the fragrance he wanted. Then he looked up and saw, on the very top shelf, one bottle with that fragrance -- just that one bottle. He took it and put it in his cart. At checkout he even looked at it deliberately, quietly congratulating himself, thinking, look, the last bottle, and I managed to get it. At checkout there was no problem -- because at checkout you have to take the items out of the cart and scan them one by one. Then when he got home and was putting it away, he suddenly realized that this hand soap was not at all the fragrance he had always thought he wanted to buy; it was a fragrance he did not like or did not want to buy. He had consciously confirmed twice during the process that the item was correct, so he was a bit dazed and did not know what had happened. This kind of thing, in fact, means he had already entered a parallel world.

The most typical example of this is a case reported in the United States a while back: a woman claimed she came from a parallel world. Once she arrived here, there was no way for her to prove it. Her account was that one morning she woke up and suddenly noticed that the sheets and duvet cover did not seem to be the ones from before she went to sleep, but she did not take it too seriously and thought it was not a big deal. She got up, washed her face and brushed her teeth, and noticed that the position of the toothpaste at home and the little cosmetics laid out all seemed a bit different from usual, but she still did not pay much attention. Then she went downstairs to the garage, drove to work, and everything was normal at the office, but after arriving she found that the work badge she was holding -- generally large companies have a name badge proving which department you work in -- she found that she was no longer in her original department; she had arrived in a new department. At that point she was completely baffled, but there was nothing she could do, so she went to the new department for meetings and work. All that day she was out of sorts, feeling that she was not from this department at all. But she did not dare ask. After muddling through until the end of the workday, she went to find her boyfriend -- they had known each other for over a year -- called his phone and no one answered, went to his apartment and no one opened the door, asked the neighbors, and they said no such person lived in that apartment. Then she went to the company where her boyfriend originally worked to ask around, and the company said there had never been such a person in our company. Her boyfriend seemed to have suddenly vanished from this world, vanished completely, without a trace. Yet she had been with her boyfriend just the day before. So she posted everywhere, asking on forums what was going on, whether she could return to her original world, and whether there was any way to get back to her original parallel world.

Let us not worry for now about whether this is true or false -- it was news reported a few months ago, and its truth cannot be verified. How would you verify such a thing? It is all just what she alone said. But speaking of this matter, since the media reported it, every one of us in real life has also experienced similar things. So you realize that in reality many people also have this feeling: waking up in the morning and feeling that the world is very strange, that there is a sense of unfamiliarity with what they have to do, with themselves, and even with the people they know. It is very interesting. At the same time, you are completely unaware of it -- when you enter a parallel space-time, you do not feel that you have entered it.

At the same time, you move through probabilities without knowing it. You do not see the transitions, although they may appear in your dreams as clues.

You have gone from this world into another world, and in real life you cannot see that transition. So the fact that this woman could see it is a very amazing thing.

Just as a diamond has many facets, your reality, in terms of those facets, also has many facets. It is the same.

We have many parallel space-times.

Then he began speaking to Rob:

Since your birth, there has been a probability you could have followed. In one of those probabilities, your war did not happen.

In that world, the war did not happen. You could have followed that probability.

There is also a probability in which World War II ended in nuclear destruction.

In another kind of probability, Germany and the United States both invented the atomic bomb, or Japan -- let us suppose, in the later stages of World War II, both sides had already fought to the point of seeing red; otherwise the United States would not have dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. By that point it had already entered unrestricted warfare. In a probable world of that kind, your human world would no longer exist.

And you did not enter that probability of nuclear war, nor did you enter a world without war. You chose this probable reality in order to ask certain questions about the nature of humanity.

The reason you chose this reality -- in which World War II occurred¹⁶, but did not destroy humanity and the earth -- was precisely to understand what the core questions about the nature of humanity are.

You see him poised equally between creation and destruction, between knowledge and ignorance.

You see humanity, with its civilization, art, technology, science, harmony, and society, and also with its cruelty, war, and self-destruction; with its side of knowledge and its side of ignorance. All of humanity is poised in this kind of hesitation. So for you to study the nature of humanity, this is an excellent subject, an excellent source material.

But at this one point, it contains what in your eyes is one of the most awesome potentials for development.

And this hesitation between ignorance and knowledge, between creation and destruction, precisely contains an awesome potential for development. That is why you chose such a probable reality, and the same applies to Ruburt as well -- otherwise the two of you could not have met here.

A Species That Runs Across

Once you hear this part, you will know that this world is not at all the way we think it is.

In a certain respect, at this point of probabilities, the human being is a species that runs across.

What does "a species that runs across" mean? Our consciousness can contain the consciousness of many species -- the human being exists across species. I translate it as "cross-species."

This is a time and a probability that requires all the help it can get, and your talents, abilities, and biases make the two of you particularly suited to be in such a drama.

You are the present stage, and only the present world suits you. He regards the present world as a kind of stage, a kind of drama. Then the following part of the answer is very important:

Do not become too obsessed with the conditions of the world, for your focus upon your own nature and upon the physical nature of your world -- the changing of the seasons, the blooming and fading of flowers, and so forth -- allows you to restore your own energy and frees you to make use of that clear vision which is so necessary.

What does he mean? What is he trying to say with this poetic language? What he means is that this stage is particularly suited to the two of you. This world is what you carefully chose. You wanted such a stage, such an environment, and such a stage and environment happen to be the most beneficial for you. But he says, I remind you, do not become too obsessed with the present conditions of the world. If you become too obsessed with the wars, disasters, plagues, and such things happening in the world -- these are external matters -- then you will neglect your focus upon your own nature and upon the physical nature of the world. And it is precisely because of your focus upon these two aspects that you can restore your energy, allowing your energy to refresh again -- the original word used was "refresh" -- and also release your freedom, gaining a clear vision that cannot be obtained any other way.

In other words, the events happening in the material world, combined with your contemplation of human nature, will together give you a unique insight into the world, a clear vision. On the one hand, consider the nature of humanity, the nature of human nature, the nature of the psyche; on the other hand, observe the actual conditions of this world. Consider these two together, and do not focus only on matters at the physical level of the world. But can you do without these? No, you cannot -- without such a stage, how could such clear insight be aroused in you? So this is very necessary. This is the result of what the two of you chose.

Rob's Question

He said, while I was resting I mentioned a point: what humanity as a species is actually trying to do is very hard to see clearly. This is a question many people consider. When I was little I also considered a question: what on earth does humanity want to do? It is very hard to see clearly. Looking at the human species from a God's-eye view, looking at the development and evolution of human civilization, you cannot tell what it is actually trying to do. One moment it fights wars, the next moment it contends over things — originally it is just one global village, and there is no real difference between people, yet it insists on dividing itself into countless small countries, dividing a tiny earth into more than 200 countries, and then splitting into many different skin colors, ethnicities, languages, and religious beliefs, and then fighting back and forth over these trivial matters. A virtual national border becomes incomparably sacred, and for the struggle over one inch of land, people do not hesitate to shed their blood. Do those lines have meaning? If you say they have meaning, then they are incomparably sacred; if you say they have no meaning, then they are nothing at all. So what does humanity actually want to do? This question, Rob said, I cannot see clearly either.

Then Seth said:

You involve yourself in this probability precisely in order to use it as a creative stimulus, so that you seek some kind of understanding.

You enter into such a world — one that has both peace and war, both wisdom and ignorance, both creation and destruction — precisely in order to give you creative stimulation, so that you seek some understanding.

Between the individual and his world, there is always a relationship of mutual give and take.

That is, you need this world, and the world also needs you. Between you there is mutual giving and mutual fulfillment — you have to give something to this world, and you also have to receive something from this world.

Each person involved in this probability chooses to do so for his or her own reasons.

Each person, for his or her own reasons, chooses to experience such a three-dimensional world, or chooses to experience such a probable reality.

But after he said this, he went on to say — does it mean that once I enter this time and space I can never go back, that I will always have to remain in this time and space? He said no:

Many people, when they themselves have learned, and have contributed, can leave this probability and go to another one.

You are in this parallel world because you yourself chose it. After you have learned what you were supposed to learn here, and after you have contributed the strength you were supposed to contribute, you can leave this probability and enter another probability, to continue experiencing and going through new things. This world is made more splendid by your existence, and you have also painted your own rich colors onto this era; you have also learned from this world what you were supposed to learn, and experienced the rich sources of creation and stimulation that it provided for you. Then once you have finished doing what you were supposed to do, you can leave. Isn't that interesting? Hearing this, it seems like acting in a movie or playing a game, moving from one scene into another scene.

Dream Recall

Then he said, I wish you all a good night, unless you still have questions. He also said one thing to Rob:

You yourself have inhibited your recall of dreams, because you do not want to take the time to remember those dreams and interpret them.

Rob, why can't you remember your dreams now? Because you have inhibited it, you don't want to remember them -- because you are afraid that recalling these dreams will take up your time, time you need for organizing the books, writing, and taking notes; and you also don't want to interpret every dream, because many dreams he would have to share and interpret with Jane. So he deliberately says, I can't remember my own dreams. Now that you know this, you understand -- do you want to make a change? You need to change; this is something you yourself decide.

Then later Seth gave them some other material, and the session ended.

The content of this session is very interesting and very practical, resolving for us many basic guiding principles about how to think and how to conduct ourselves in reality. When we learn of the existence of parallel worlds, don't feel afraid or terrified. Remember, these are all the results of your own inner choices, not a world and reality imposed on you that you do not want. Once you understand this, then think about your present environment, this world you are in -- why does it appear in your world? Why did you choose it? What do you want to learn from it? And at the same time, what do you want to contribute to this world? You did not choose this world without purpose -- this world needs you, and you need this world; that is the relationship between the two of you. What have you contributed to this world? Have you contributed what you should contribute? What have you learned from this world? When you have thought this through, then go ahead boldly and do it -- do what you should do, do what you should take responsibility for, bravely take up what you should take up, and live this life without regret.

I hope that after everyone finishes reading this chapter, you will have a deep understanding and realization: how exactly should we live, and how can we live out a more brilliant version of ourselves in the present world.

The Universe and the Psyche: Seeking the Origin from Within

This is the third part of the interpretation of Chapter 11 of the Seth book The Nature of the Psyche, which is Session 798 of the book. This session began at 9:54 p.m. on Monday, March 21, 1977. There was no other introduction before it started; the session began directly.

Seth said that the previous two sessions were more or less about evolution, and they could be included in this book as the opening of a new chapter. The title of this new chapter is "The Universe and the Psyche."

Then he said, your next question is easy to guess -- because you would wonder, what is the origin of this inner world of ours. Our outer world emerges from the inner world, from a nonphysical world, so we must say goodbye to this so-called objective world that we hold so dear, and enter into a realm of the psyche.

In this realm of the psyche, what is the greatest point? It is that he can understand that contradictions are not errors. This sentence is very crucial -- contradictions are not errors. What he means is that when things contradict each other, it is not that one opposing side is right and the other is wrong. In other words, the existence of paradox is not an error. In the realm of the psyche, we must say goodbye to the objectivity of the objective world. Because in the realm of the psyche, there is no such objectivity as we have in the physical world -- for example, if something is black, in the objective world it cannot be white, but in the world of the psyche there is no such problem; the thing may be both black and white at the same time.

In an inner realm large enough to contain contradictions on one level -- this realm is large enough, large enough to what degree? Large enough that it can contain all contradictions -- because on another level, these contradictions appear to be not contradictory at all. From a certain angle, a question is contradictory, but from another domain on the psychic level, it is not contradictory. This is something we must learn in studying spirituality: we must never take the things of our three-dimensional world and physical world and use them to judge our world of the psyche and the spiritual world. They simply do not apply.

As far as present-day science is concerned, self-contradiction must not occur. From the scientific point of view, there is no such thing as self-contradiction -- either one is right and the other is wrong; it is impossible for two contradictory things to both be right. Because if we assume that one has been proven correct, then it can no longer be proven incorrect. But in fact, essentially speaking, when we assume it is correct, it has actually never been correct at all. What does this passage mean? It means that the things we consider correct in the three-dimensional world have actually never been correct; we merely assume them to be correct -- remember, assume, we merely assume.

So the things we consider in the three-dimensional world to be facts, to be truth, to be correct, have never been correct on the psychic level. So here, this is what the Diamond Sutra¹⁸ keeps saying at the end about "inverted dreams" -- saying that your entire human world is all inverted dreams, black and white are inverted, right and wrong are inverted; the things you consider correct have never been correct.

So, to put it that way, if the universe did not have a creator, then it simply would not exist -- that is, from our objective point of view, from the so-called scientific point of view, if this universe did not have a creator, then there would be no universe. Or, according to the Big Bang theory¹⁹, it began to exist -- starting from a single point; this is the view of modern science. Moreover, if it is not constantly expanding, then it is not expanding. The scientific viewpoint holds that things are either black or white; if something is correct it cannot be wrong, and if it is wrong it cannot be correct. If you say this universe is not constantly expanding, then what is it? It is nothing -- only expansion and the Big Bang theory can fit together, which very nicely proves the existence of the Big Bang theory.

How was this discovered? People discovered the redshift phenomenon²⁰ of light from other stars in the universe, proving that the universe is constantly expanding, constantly swelling outward like an explosion. Based on this observed expansion of the universe, we conclude that the universe came from this point of the Big Bang. Therefore evolution exists or does not exist -- evolution either exists, or it does not exist. This is the general view of our science.

Session 798

Usually, a theory is proven true by the simple process of excluding anything that seems contradictory. (Session 798)

How does science now go about proving things true on many questions? It generally calls this "discarding the tail to keep the truth." Many things cannot be verified, such as how the universe came to be. So what does it do? It removes all the contradictory elements from various theories, leaving behind one that is reasonable, non-contradictory, and logically self-consistent, and then declares it true. Thus, generally speaking, your scientific theories are regarded as extremely effective within their own framework. Indeed, all the achievements we have made today are within the framework of scientific theory, and each one is effective. But do not forget this premise -- it must be within his own framework. He cannot step outside this framework, because once he steps outside it, everything resets to zero.

Within that framework, you have made many classifications -- you have made many kinds of classifications of science, many classifications of species and living things, and many classifications of matter. We know very well that we have divided science into various disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. Usually ordinary common sense supports such classifications, and it seems impossible to imagine reality being any other way. We divide the world into the living and the non-living, the organic and the inorganic, and so on and so forth, as if without dividing it this way we would not know how to understand this world at all.

Yet because of their nature, such classifications organize your experience of the nature of reality to such an extent that any other way of perceiving life seems not only unreliable, but completely impossible. (Session 798)

We rely completely on the scientific method of classification and the so-called scientific method of division, and to a certain extent this leads to the result that any other way of perceiving life outside his scientific framework seems not only unreliable, but completely impossible. What scientists tell you is this -- you can only understand this world through the scientific method. If you do not use the scientific method, you cannot possibly understand this world. It is not a question of reliable or unreliable; it is that you simply cannot understand this world at all. This is where you can see the limits of science.

In this way, your classification of species appears to you to be the only logical way of distinguishing living things -- as if it were the only reasonable biological method of distinction for human beings: dividing living things into animals and plants, then animals into various classes, orders, and genera, and plants into various families and genera and so on. But in fact the opposite is true. That particular overall method of division leads to this kind of problem: which species appeared first on Earth, which species evolved from which other species, how the various different species came into being, how one evolved out of another -- these questions are further brought about by your temporal divisions.

If you understand the study of ancient life and human evolution, you will find that they divide the geological ages of the Earth into many geological periods -- the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, and so on. These different geological ages correspond to the specific geological and climatic conditions of that era, and then specific species lived in that specific era. Then we say that such-and-such a species came after such-and-such a species went extinct, under the evolution of such-and-such a species, and so on -- this is our so-called scientific understanding and comprehension of species. This is how everyone understands it now. Then Seth tells you that in fact none of this is correct; all of it is something human beings have inferred on their own based on their observations.

Your classification methods establish an exterior boundary in such places, which can serve as a very convenient reference, but basically they have no effect whatsoever on the basic experience of the various living beings that you call other species. (Session 798)

That is to say, as for the basic experience of the various living beings of other species besides human beings, we humans basically neither know anything about it, nor does it have any effect on them. Our classification methods have not the slightest influence on nature.

As long as you remain within such a framework, your specialization is useful, although you must therefore wrestle and struggle with some of the problems automatically caused by such distinctions. (Session 798)

When you artificially divide species, it inevitably produces some confusion, and this confusion and these problems will lead you to become entangled with the issue. Perhaps it is hard for you to realize that these classifications are written down by so-called scientists, a kind of linguistic grading that divides living things into however many species, but he has not really told you anything about the actual experience of any other living being. He only records what he observes: he observes the growth and living habits of these animals and plants, and writes down with his pen their external tendencies and their most outward natures -- whether it be their appearance, their living habits, their ways of life, their characteristics, and so on. But as for their real life experience -- the experience of these living beings themselves -- we know nothing at all. We can only observe.

If your purpose is to understand what the perception of other living beings is, then the method you are now using is at best shortsighted; at worst, it can completely destroy your purpose. (Session 798)

What does this mean? If your purpose is to understand how these other living beings perceive, then using your current approach -- observing, recording, dissecting, analyzing -- even at your best, it is nothing more than a shortsighted act. You still cannot see the actual feelings of these animals. If you do it badly, then it completely destroys your purpose. How does it destroy it? You dissect him, so how can you still know his perception? You kill him and lay him out in the dissection laboratory, wanting to see how he perceives -- how can he tell you? He is already dead.

Whether you experiment with animals or dissect for scientific purposes, no matter how valuable the results may seem, the consequences of such methods are so distorted that you understand less about life than you did before. (Session 798)

Our understanding of life is regressing, not, as we imagine, drawing ever closer to the truth along with scientific progress. Science, in its study of life, is moving in the opposite direction.

Let me give a few simple examples. Many people say that the development of Chinese medicine seems to have no scientific or theoretical basis, but they completely misunderstand the process of Chinese medicine. From its very beginning, by the later period -- for example, by the Han dynasty or even earlier -- Chinese medicine was already extremely well developed, including Zhang Zhongjing's Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders²¹ and so on, and it had already become very systematic and complete. How did the brilliant doctors of that time improve their skills? Generally, every year the imperial court had some death-row prisoners sentenced to the most extreme punishment, such as death by lingchi, and every year there would be some. The court would hand over these prisoners condemned to death by lingchi to these doctors, and the doctors would, under what today's science considers extremely cruel vivisection, observe the functioning and operation of the various organs of the person's body. Because by that time human beings no longer had the ability of the inner senses from ancient times; they could no longer see through and perceive things, and had lost this ability. So there was no choice but to use this most primitive and most cruel method. You may say it was cruel, but at the time these people were going to be executed by lingchi anyway; they had already been sentenced. They would either be dissected by these doctors, or dragged to the execution ground to be put to death by lingchi -- the result was the same either way. So in using this method, they actually made a final contribution with their lives. Therefore, the understanding of the human body in ancient Chinese medicine was far more advanced than in modern Western medicine. Because what Western medicine dissects and studies are corpses -- bodies that have been dead for a long time, soaked in formalin for a long time²² -- it does not know how life actually operates within the body; it cannot understand it, or cannot observe it in such fine detail. Although this method is no longer needed at all today, I want to use this example to tell you: our current human understanding of life is not greater than that of ancient people; on the contrary, it is less.

I am afraid that the answers to the origin of the universe and of species lie in the areas that you have largely ignored, precisely those areas that you consider the most unscientific, and those areas that seem to you to produce no practical results. (Session 798)

The origin of the universe and of species lies in these areas that we have ignored, or in those so-called unscientific areas. Your current approach will only bring you suitable, manufactured results and answers -- whatever you want, it will bring you. They can satisfy neither the intellect nor the soul. What does it mean that they cannot satisfy the intellect? The intellect is the capacity for logic and thinking. Through wisdom, logic, and thinking, these questions of life cannot withstand scrutiny. The moment you press further, the scientist gets angry with you -- because you have asked him questions he cannot answer, and he either keeps silent or turns hostile. So it cannot even be logically self-consistent; for example, how life came to be -- these questions he cannot explain. Nor can it satisfy the soul -- from the spiritual side, he is even less able to satisfy it.

Since your universe leaped out of an inner universe, and since that inner universe pervades every crevice of your own existence, you must look in places where you have never looked before. Look into the reality of your own mind or emotions. (Session 798)

Since this physical world of ours leaped out of a universe that is non-physical, and since there is no other universe outside this universe, then this non-physical universe must be within this universe of ours. It must be hidden in those places we usually ignore; it is everywhere. So you must go look for them elsewhere -- for example, by looking into the reality of your own mind or emotions, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of it.

You must look to the natural universe as you know it, and you must look at the living beings around you with your intuition and creative instincts. (Session 798)

When looking at all things in the world, do not regard them as some special species with certain characteristics and habits, and do not treat them as a kind of secondary property of the Earth -- thinking that humans are the superior property of the Earth, and that animals are all one level lower than humans, so we can dissect them as we please. We should regard these other living beings, these other species that are not human, as living particles of the natural universe -- their lives are living particles that manifest the universe and nature, in constant, unceasing existence and change.

He has spoken about this before: it is not that these living beings and animals are less advanced than human civilization; it is just that they have chosen different paths of development. They have chosen to develop themselves in a more biological way, while we humans have chosen science, philosophy, culture, art, tools, and these aspects. The paths of civilizational development are not the same, but there is no distinction of high and low, noble and base among them. We often take the strengths of us humans and compare them with the weaknesses of other animals, to prove that we are more civilized, more intelligent, and more excellent than they are, and therefore they are inferior, so we can slaughter them at will and enslave them at will; they are just meat to us. You use your own strengths to compare with others' weaknesses. If you were to compete with animals in running, I doubt you could even catch a rabbit, let alone a lion or a tiger. Using your own strengths to compare with others' weaknesses, and then feeling smug about it -- this is the ignorance of human beings.

You must study the quality of your life, and you must dare to follow the patterns of your own thoughts and emotions, and ride that activity. (Session 798)

Thoughts and emotions are active; they are a kind of activity. We must learn to ride our own thoughts and ride our own emotions. Do not treat thoughts and emotions as if they were floods and wild beasts, thinking you must make your mind as still as water and free of a single thought. That is wrong. You must follow your own thoughts and emotions, follow their patterns, and find the laws of their inner operation. When you understand how a thought leaps out of your mind, then you will be able to understand how the universe leaped out of this world -- they are the same mechanism, the same principle.

Because within the activity of thoughts and emotions, there is a hint of the origin of the universe and of spirituality. When you look inward, at the operating patterns of your own thoughts and emotions, at how they operate and in what manner they operate, when you have completely understood your own thoughts and emotions through and through, then you will be able to understand how the universe and spirituality originated, because they give a very good hint in this.

So in other words, the poet's view of the universe and nature is more scientific than the scientist's, because they understand more of nature, while what scientists see in their eyes are all unnatural things.

A child who sees a violet, and smiles with joy and awe, understands far more deeply than a botanist. (Session 798)

Remember these two words: smiled with joy and awe. What is he joyful about? He is joyful that he sees the beauty of the universe, the beauty of the world, the beauty of life; he sees the blossoming of life -- and he also knows that his own life is blossoming in the same way. And what is he in awe of? He is in awe of the wonder of the universe, the marvel of nature, the miracle of life. He appreciates this flower with the most natural state of mind, and he understands far more than a botanist. Perhaps that botanist has long forgotten what kind of experience it is to see a violet. Although in his mind he has the names and classifications of all the flowers in the world, only these names and classifications remain; he can no longer feel a flower with his heart. So his understanding of the universe and of life is not even as good as a child's.

To put it simply, we know that back at the assembly on Vulture Peak, when Shakyamuni held up a flower and smiled as he held it, Kasyapa beside him smiled in understanding²³. Everyone was waiting for him to teach the Dharma, but Shakyamuni did not speak; he just held a flower and looked at it, holding it up and looking at it. Then beside him there was a disciple named Kasyapa, and when everyone saw it, they smiled in understanding -- that kind of knowing smile, a smile of great joy. Then Shakyamuni handed the flower to him and said, you have received my true transmission -- you have received my mind-seal. This Dharma is not established on words, and has no school; it is transmitted directly from mind to mind. At that time Shakyamuni transmitted it directly from mind to mind; I have already transmitted it to you, and you have already understood. This is the beginning of Zen; Zen began with Kasyapa and was passed down from there. They emphasize gradual awakening and sudden awakening, and emphasize this kind of understanding within nature.

By the time it was passed down to the twenty-eighth generation, it reached the line of Bodhidharma, and Bodhidharma came from India to the dynasty of that time. It seems it was during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang, and the emperor received him, having heard he was an eminent monk. Emperor Wu of Liang asked him: Look, I have built so many temples, established so many monasteries, supported so many monks, and I myself have done so many good deeds and kind acts; I also practice the Buddhadharma. Do I have any merit? Bodhidharma looked at him and said: no merit to speak of. Because as a monk, there was no need to flatter anyone; he had already reached that state. The emperor was baffled: What? I have no merit? I have done all these things to spread the Buddhadharma.

This Emperor Wu of Liang was quite amusing. From time to time he would renounce the throne and become a monk -- he would go into some temple and become a monk, and once he became a monk he would no longer be emperor. But the country could not be without an emperor, so the civil and military officials and ministers would have to go to the temple to bring him back. The condition for bringing him back was that you had to make large donations and offerings to that temple, to broadly form good connections -- otherwise, look, I am a monk now, and it would be so improper for you to take me away. Then the court would have to give that temple a great deal of money, and then bring Emperor Wu of Liang back to be emperor. After a couple of years he would run off again, to some other temple, and he made this kind of trouble several times, until the ministers were fed up. He did not really want to become a monk; he just wanted to demonstrate his aspiration to be devoted to Buddhism. He certainly did many good deeds and set a good example at the time, but from Bodhidharma's point of view, this really had no merit and was meaningless. Then the two of them did not get along -- for the specific details, you can look in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch²⁴ and other Zen stories, so I will not go into it here. In the end, Bodhidharma left, went to Shaolin Temple, found a cave, and sat facing the wall by himself.

The point I want to make now is this: why did Shakyamuni hold up a flower, and Kasyapa smile in understanding, and the Buddha say, you have received my true transmission? We need not interpret it too deeply; I am just telling you that from what Seth says here, you can understand a little of it -- why the Buddha said he had received his true transmission.

Information is not necessarily knowledge or understanding. (Session 798)

Data and information are neither knowledge nor understanding. Knowing the name of a flower is useless.

Thoughts leap into your mind as the objective universe leaped into our world. (Session 798)

That is to say, how this physical universe leaped out of the formless universe is the same as how consciousness directly pops out of our brain -- the method is the same. If you understand how your thoughts come out, you will understand how the universe came to be.

A diagram of a sentence tells you little about the spoken words. (Session 798)

When you try to diagram a sentence by means of pictures -- for example, I say, "This apple tree is growing really well," and you draw an apple tree -- this method of diagramming cannot express all the content of the words, and even less can it depict the miraculous physical and mental performance that allows you to speak. At the very moment you speak, how your thoughts operate, how the various organs of your body coordinate and cooperate, how your mouth, tongue, oral cavity, vocal cords, lungs, muscles, and so on all work together -- this miracle itself is a miraculous performance, and you cannot separate out these miracles when you break down this sentence. In the same way, diagramming any species in the world has nothing to do with any real understanding.

You take an animal, dissect it, dismember it, analyze it, and say this animal is such and such, as if you now understand the animal. Do you understand it? Of course not. Let me give another real-life example -- it is not easy to talk about this using animals, so let us use people. If you dissect a person, can you know what his thoughts are? Can you know what kind of person he is? Whether he is loving or not, can you tell from dissection? You can only see that this person's basic structure is the same as other people's. Maybe this person has fatty liver, maybe he has cholecystitis, maybe he has kidney stones -- what is the point? All this data is recorded very completely, and no matter how finely you dissect this corpse, is it still this person? It is certainly not this person. Since you can understand this from a person, then when we dissect an animal, after you have completely dissected this animal, is this animal still that animal? You dissect a little kitten -- can you know why the kitten meows? Why can a dog not meow? Can you know what the kitten is thinking? Can you know why one kitten is very mischievous and another is very timid? You certainly cannot see this from dissection.

This kind of dissection is meaningless -- under what premise is it meaningless? When you want to understand the essence of life, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, what can dissecting them give you? Of course, if you say you want to understand the biological structure and body of cats and dogs, then it is useful.

Your own subjective feelings, your intimate experience of each moment, these possess the same mysterious nature that you feel the universe possesses. (Session 798)

Your own subjective feelings and your actual personal experience -- these themselves possess the same mysterious nature that you perceive the universe as possessing. When you want to investigate what the universe is, you might as well study how your own subjective feelings come about, and how your own personal experience is experienced.

You are mortal, and everywhere you encounter so much evidence of mortality. So within this framework, your feelings and thoughts have a reality for you personally that transcends all such classifications. (Session 798)

Biologically, within this framework of birth to death, your feelings and thoughts have a reality for you personally that transcends such biological classifications. You know that your body will die, but every person has secretly known -- that he will not meet such a fate, and that life is somehow eternal. You seem to vaguely, secretly, inwardly know that you will not really die; you can more or less feel that life seems to be eternal. This is a feeling.

Through such a feeling, your spirituality breaks through all objects, and at the same time hints at the nature of yourself and of the universe. (Session 798)

When you have such a feeling, when you can more or less feel that your life is eternal, when you feel that besides this physical existence there is a greater self, then your spirituality breaks through the material explanations mentioned earlier -- the material explanations of species, of the world, of nature. When you break through this material explanation, it simultaneously hints at the nature of yourself and of the universe -- and the nature of the two of you is the same. When you discover your own nature, you also discover the nature of the universe; the two of you are identical.

Thus, on a greater level of certainty, the universe is without beginning or end. (Session 798)

On that kind of level there is no contradiction, and your spirituality is also without beginning or end. That is certain.

You might say: Well, I will grant that for now, but I still insist on asking, in our terms, when did the world begin? Everything you say is right; I will hypothetically admit that this physical world leaped out of a non-physical world; I admit all of it. But can you tell me, in human terms, according to our human history with its recorded time, when exactly did our world begin -- counting backward from now, how many years? Is it 500,000 years, one million years? Can you give me a precise time? And in what manner did it begin?

This is the question we humans always want to press. When you explain it to him, he says he understands, that the world all happens simultaneously, but after a while he asks again -- he will ask again, just from a different angle. Getting him to abandon his fixed perception of time and space in the three-dimensional world all at once is not easy; this has become a fixed thinking pattern in his brain.

Your attempt to place such a beginning in our time distorts almost any answer. (Session 798)

When you want to place the origin of the universe within the scope of human temporal cognition, then this attempt itself makes any answer meaningless; it has already been distorted.

The fact is that the answer is within your own experience. (Session 798)

The answer is within your experience. Do not go around pressing the question everywhere; it is within your spontaneous behavior. He will explain below -- that is, within the miraculous activity of your body and mind, the origin of the universe and the process of how it began are already hinted at.

How is it hinted at? For example, you can walk very well -- you do not just randomly trip and fall as you walk; not only can you walk on ordinary roads, you can also walk on very complex mountain paths, uphill and downhill, and many girls wearing very high heels walk swiftly and steadily.

You need have no conscious knowledge of the activity of its inner mechanisms. (Session 798)

You walk well without needing to understand any knowledge of anatomy, biology, neurology, or the various mechanisms of human body movement. Perhaps someone has told you, or you have read about the anatomy of the body or the interactions of its various parts -- muscles, nerves, movement, and so on -- but whether or not you have such information, you can still walk quite well. Such data is of no help whatsoever to the act of walking. In that respect, an athlete may be extremely passionate about sports and have no patience for reading -- he does not care about the organs inside the body, or the muscles and bones and movement; he does not want to read books at all, yet his body moves extremely well, and that is enough. At the same time, suppose there is a physically disabled person who possesses extensive book knowledge of the various parts of the body; he understands all this knowledge, but he cannot move his body in a normal way. One person knows nothing and moves perfectly well, so what does the movement of the body have to do with knowledge? Nothing. Who directs your movement? No one knows. Do you need to learn the knowledge of how to move? No. When your body is healthy, you can move naturally; when your body is not healthy, no matter how much knowledge you have, you still cannot move.

Your body knows how to walk, and this knowledge is innate and put into practice. (Session 798)

The body knows how to heal itself, how to use nourishment, how to replace cells -- the body does all of this on its own. Yet in your terms, the body itself has no way of obtaining the materials, the information, the data that the mind possesses. Your body does not need that data to manage itself extremely well -- your nourishment, your cell replacement, your heartbeat, your lung capacity, all run perfectly well without learning any knowledge.

Since it is so ignorant, how can it perform so well? If you think your body can run this well while knowing nothing, do you think that is possible? If you think "knowing nothing" is just instinct, just naturally operating this way, then why don't you build a robot that operates like it does? Why don't you build a robot that can run after being fed some flour, some bread? One that can run all day on two or three meals a day -- why don't you build one like that? So this is a very interesting matter. Humans do not need this knowledge yet can perform so well, but would you say humans are just stupid, just ignorant, all instinct? If you think that way, that only proves you yourself are stupid; it does not prove that your body's inner mechanisms are stupid. The precision, coordination, and perfection of the body's operation -- not only the human body, but other animals as well -- even now scientists are still baffled and bewildered by it.

If he had a scientific inclination, if the body operated in the way you imagine science does, then it could not express itself so spontaneously -- that would be impossible. (Session 798)

If you think the body manages itself well by learning these experiences, by learning how to operate the body's various systems -- the circulatory system, the digestive system, the immune system, the respiratory system, and so on -- then how could it express itself spontaneously? So this body does not have a scientific inclination; this knowledge is not learned, it is innate. Just like the example he gave earlier: a beaver, not long after it is born, once it grows up, will build a dam in the river to catch fish²⁵ -- who taught it that?

Science cannot explain the reality of life itself in the present moment. Every living being -- science cannot explain humans, and it cannot explain other living creatures either. It cannot truly understand why a person is alive. It seems to understand a great deal -- humans need oxygen, humans need energy -- but when a dying person is about to die, give him oxygen, give him energy, and the person still cannot live. What is really going on? Its understanding of life is very, very superficial. Seth has a slightly mocking tone here: you scientists cannot even explain the living being standing right in front of you, yet you still want to investigate where life came from using scientific methods -- do you think that is possible? You don't even know what it is, so how can you study how it came to be?

The body's inner consciousness knows that its existence is within the body's scope, and at the same time separate from it. (Session 798)

The consciousness within our body knows that its existence is within the body's scope, and at the same time separate from this body.

In the ordinary life of a day, consciousness is often on vacation. (Session 798)

In the ordinary life of a day, your consciousness is often separate from your body; it often goes on leave, goes on vacation. For example, it does its own daydreaming, it slips away -- in the moment your attention wanders, or in your state of trance, your consciousness goes out on vacation by itself. It experiences itself in a way that is more or less separate from your body, and the degree of separation varies. Out-of-body experience is an even more typical example -- some people go out of body while awake, some while dreaming. When going out of body while awake, it is very typical: your consciousness separates from your body. Then at night during sleep, your own consciousness leaves physical reality for even longer, more freely on vacation. And when it does this spontaneously, it does not need your participation -- you don't say, "I will arrange for consciousness to take a vacation, arrange for consciousness to have a dream." No, it does this on its own. Just as your body itself knows how to walk, your consciousness is the same way; it arranges things for itself.

These experiences are not hypothetical; they happen to everyone. (Session 798)

What I said above -- your consciousness leaving your body during the day to slip away, or leaving your physical body at night for a longer vacation -- I am not telling you a hypothesis or a possibility; it is something that happens to every person every day.

Each person, to some degree, is aware of an understanding. (Session 798)

In this process of your consciousness separating from your body, your consciousness has a kind of awareness, a kind of awakening, a kind of understanding. Is this based on the accumulation of data? No, it is not based on the accumulation of ordinary learned knowledge, but on a deeper experience, and on a direct encounter with the reality from which the world emerges -- he has come into contact with such a reality, the reality from which the world is produced, and he has come into contact with that reality, so his experience is a deeper kind of experience.

This is a wordless knowledge that the body possesses.

The wordless knowledge that the body itself has. It brings about your body's movements and produces the spectacular precision of the body's responses. Your body's movements are extremely, extremely precise -- if you have seen pilot recruitment, for example, they now test the precision of a person's three-dimensional perception by having the pilot use both hands to manipulate two mechanical devices, with two lasers between them, each emitting a laser beam, and having the pilot manipulate these two moving lasers to overlap them. You can see that the precision and refinement of human motor function is very considerable.

It is also very practical, and in your terms, it forms the same force that forms the world. (Session 798)

This wordless knowledge is not something vague and intangible -- our body's daily movements all come from this knowledge, and the body's normal functioning all comes from it. And this force that makes your body move, makes your body coordinated, keeps your life in existence, is the same force that forms this universe, that forms this world. When you understand your own situation, you understand this world, because they are the same force that forms the world. You search everywhere for how this world came to be, what made this world be born -- you have this energy within you; you just don't know it yourself.

It now forms a subjective phenomenon of yours, and is a source of the natural universe. (Session 798)

Your present subjective reality, your subjective perception of the world, is right in this present moment, and is a source of the natural universe. Where does the natural universe come from? It emerges from this present moment of ours. In other words, apart from this present moment, there is no universe. What you can possess, what you can grasp, what you can experience within, is only this present moment of yours.

If you explore those realities with love, it will bring you into direct contact with an inner dimension of your existence, and provide a most important intuitive understanding. (Session 798)

You are not learning a book about the inner world, not learning the theories and knowledge of that world, but truly contacting it, experiencing it, walking into that world and feeling it firsthand.

The motion of the universe appears within the motions of your own intimate experience. (Session 798)

How does the universe move? The laws of the universe's motion are just like the movements in your own ordinary life -- every little bit of your life contains the motion of the universe. And in that region that seems most obscure, you will find the answers, find the origin of the universe and the origin of life.

This session's content is not long; by this point he had finished. He then gave two more pages of other material, and then Seth ended the session. He said the previous two sessions would be included as part of this book, and their questions happened to lead him exactly to where he was going. Over the years we have also found that our questions often reflect the questions of many readers at any given time -- that is, the questions Rob and Jane often ask are also the questions many readers want to ask.

All right, regarding the third part of the interpretation of the last chapter, we will stop here for today. I wish everyone a magical and beautiful day.

Human Good and Evil: A Fundamental Perspective

For us, understanding whether this world is ultimately good or evil is a matter of fundamental importance. At the beginning of this session, Rob and Jane were looking through a 1977 combined journal and calendar before class, something like the efficiency planners we used to use, which quoted a line from Seth and also included quite a bit of news and famous sayings. But as Rob flipped through it, he found that this new edition no longer introduced Seth's content, and instead had put in a lot of jokes satirizing the government's foolish spending and corruption. This was very common in 1970s America; during the Vietnam War, arms dealers ran rampant, and there was no shortage of corruption. Rob read a few of these to Jane, and the two of them felt these things were both laughable and lamentable -- laughable because of the foolish behavior itself, lamentable because, if you think about it carefully, this kind of thing happens endlessly in any era and in any country.

I saw a similar piece of news just a couple of days ago. Because our country's chips are restricted and sanctioned by the United States, many chip projects have been launched all over the country. The most famous of these is a project called Wuhan Red Chip, which has now been exposed as an unfinished failure. The Wuhan government can no longer afford to keep investing in it; the total investment was 123 billion²⁶. And among this 123 billion investment, the shareholder holding the largest share is a semiconductor company called something like Blue Quantum -- this company was established just a few days before the Wuhan joint venture was founded, yet it became the largest shareholder. The most laughable part is not even this; the most laughable part is that the four shareholders of this Beijing company are the famous "Four Heavenly Kings" -- those four Hong Kong singers²⁷, clearly written in the business registration records. When you see news like this, you find it extremely laughable, but you also find it extremely lamentable. The country has already reached a point where the enemy is at the gates; after being subjected to a technology blockade, chips have become strategic materials and strategic resources, and at a time when they are in extremely short supply, there are still government officials colluding with unscrupulous merchants to keep swindling the country's money. This kind of thing belongs to the example he mentioned -- both laughable and lamentable.

Rob and Jane also happened to be considering the question of human behavior -- why human beings always do such foolish things, why they keep fighting wars, from World War I to World War II to the Korean War to the Vietnam War, one after another. And this matter also happened to fit exactly the theme Seth was going to discuss in this session. Jane and Rob both decided to place this session, as a matter of course, in the book The Nature of the Psyche.

Session 799

Seth began to speak with exaggerated humor. He is already a being of pure energy, detached from this physical world, so he spoke with the mindset of a spectator watching the drama unfold:

Today's discussion of human nature is for your enlightenment.

You recognize that a tiger, following his nature, is not evil.

Do we look at a tiger and think it is evil? No, we don't. We are afraid of tigers; if we encountered one in the wild, we would be afraid, but when we see a tiger in the zoo, we only think it is majestic and powerful. Tigers also eat people, but we have never associated tigers with evil.

But when you look at your own kind, you are often far less charitable. You often imagine certain types of people to be extremely evil.

Our understanding of human beings is actually less compassionate than our understanding of tigers -- we think tigers are merely dangerous, not evil. Yet condemning our fellow human beings often comes very easily. We readily say that a certain group of people has committed crimes, that government officials in some country are corrupt, that certain people have done wrong to other countries.

Perhaps it is difficult for you to understand, but you human beings are well-intentioned.

You understand that a tiger lives within a certain environment and reacts according to his nature.

A tiger lives in the forest or in the mountains according to its own nature, hunting, ruling over the other beasts. There is nothing sinful in itself about that. Human beings are the same:

Every one of his atrocities is an attempt to reach what he considers a good end.

When human beings do bad things, their original intention is not necessarily to do bad. They think they are achieving a good end; it is just a distorted attempt. They often fail to reach that end, and do not even understand how their methods themselves prevented their present achievement. When they do wrong things, when they botch things, it is the result of a lack of understanding -- it is ignorance and the misuse of methods.

Nevertheless, he is as blessed as the animals.

He confronts a far more complex world of consciousness more directly than other animals do, especially in having to deal with symbols and concepts. And when these symbols and concepts are projected outward into reality, they will be tested there -- their concepts and symbols must be verified in actual reality. In other words, if an idea could be tested mentally within your sphere, then there would be no need for physical human existence. If testing could be completed on the mental level, if there were no need to manifest it in reality, then there would be no existence for us human beings in the physical world. It is precisely because we need to manifest it in real life, to experiment with whether our ideas and thoughts are workable, that some ideas -- whose original intent is not bad -- end up producing bad outcomes because the methods are wrong, the knowledge is insufficient, and the level of skill is lacking. This is a very fundamental, very core concept. Seth hopes to make you understand why we must understand this concept.

Let me tell a true story. In the 1960s, a student at Princeton University got the opportunity to interview Einstein²⁸. He spent a long time thinking about what question to ask; the opportunity was too rare. On the day of the interview, he posed his carefully prepared question to Einstein:

"As the greatest scientist of the modern age, what do you think is the most important scientific question of this era? I don't need you to have an answer; I just want to know what the question itself is."

Einstein thought seriously for a full fifteen minutes. He had not expected this student to ask such a question; he probably expected something about relativity or other specific scientific questions. Then he said to the student:

"I think the most important scientific question is whether this world is benevolent or malevolent."

The student was puzzled: "Isn't that a philosophical question?"

Einstein said: "No, it is a scientific question. Because if a scientist believes this world is malevolent, he will spend his life inventing weapons, creating walls, and separating people further and further apart. But if a scientist believes this world is benevolent, he will spend his life creating connections, bringing people closer and closer together."

The student knew he had gotten the answer he wanted. Later, this student became one of the founders of the Internet.²⁹

This story, it seems, did not give a clear answer afterward. We human beings have built walls and have also separated people further and further apart; but at the same time, we have also built the Internet, bringing people closer and closer together. It seems both sides have manifested. So you can see that for a scientist, the question of whether this world is good or evil is not a simple philosophical question; it is a very significant scientific question. And in this session, Seth gives a very good answer to this question.

There are too many complex themes involved here, so at most I can only speak of them in a simplified way.

Any great social, scientific, or religious concept -- these strange derivatives of the human mind -- to what extent are they actually workable?

They must be tested in practice. It is like someone saying, how about this idea? What can we do with this idea? We throw it physically into reality and see what happens. Any great social, scientific, or religious concept -- what results will it actually produce in reality, to what extent is it workable, which parts work and which do not -- must be verified in reality.

Again, if these questions could all be answered abstractly on a nonphysical drawing board, on a blackboard, then the great challenge of physical existence would be neither necessary nor meaningful.

If we could solve it on a purely theoretical level, or solve it within the space of imagination, then we would not need human existence. So we must truly experience it in real life, and not merely remain in the realm of hypothesis and theory.

For example, to what extent can nationalism work? This was the question America was most worried about during the Cold War -- the Soviet model, where the state controlled everything, how far could it actually go? Could it cause a series of disasters in the world? At what point could it treat the world as an objective existence external to humanity, to be handled like an object?

By treating the body as an applied machine, by treating it as a mirage, by treating it as driven by blind instinct, or by treating it as possessing a soul -- what can human beings learn?

A mirage means something illusory, not truly existent. Human beings are entirely animalistic, driven by blind instinct. There is also another approach: they are animalistic, but given a soul, and we see what human beings can learn under the premise of animal nature, driven by the soul. All of these things need to be practiced in real life, in our three-dimensional world. This is also the main purpose and meaning of our coming into this world through reincarnation, of entering this three-dimensional world. If everything could be realized in the space of imagination, in the brain, then we would not need physical bodies, nor would we need reincarnation.

To some extent, these are all unique and creative considerations. Even the animalistic part alone can be considered among the strangest and most suggestive intellectual achievements.

We are not even mentioning the spiritual part; just talking about human biology, from the biological perspective, these questions are also highly creative, very strange, and suggestive.

Animals must of necessity play, mate, hunt, or eat wild fruit within the physical context of sun, land, trees, clouds, hail, and wind.

Animals cannot be separated from the land, and neither can human beings. But human beings do it in a different way.

Man must also pursue his concepts.

He is different from animals. Animals only need to pursue the things of nature, and that is enough. Human beings cannot do that -- human beings have consciousness, have ideas. Is happiness a concept? Is love a concept? Human beings want to pursue higher ideals and values, and these are all concepts. He does this by clothing these concepts in the basic reality of the earth, by treating them as events. We treat the pursuit of concepts as one event after another: we treat the pursuit of happiness as an event, the pursuit of love as an event, the pursuit of career success as an event. These are concepts in themselves, but we concretize them in the physical world, turning them into events.

When he is destructive, man does not seek destruction itself.

When those external events are sometimes good and sometimes bad, when some events are destructive, human beings do not intend to destroy. He is indeed desiring to achieve some particular end that he considers good, but he forgets to examine whether his methods are good or bad. When you see evil deeds, you must understand: his original intent was not to pursue this destruction. He wanted to do good, but he forgot that methods can be good or bad. Like Hitler, he wanted humanity to be more purebred. He felt the Germanic people were too excellent, and those other inferior races had no need to exist, or at best should serve as slaves to the Germanic people, so that under the Germanic people's direction, the whole of human civilization could develop more rapidly. That was his ideal at the time. He gave speeches everywhere and wrote a little booklet; his ideal was lofty beyond measure -- it sounded right wherever you heard it. His purpose was not to make humanity regress; he wanted humanity to be good. But his methods were completely wrong. He believed purity was good, that one race should dominate alone; his method was wrong and deserved condemnation.

An animal chases and kills its prey, fulfilling a larger purpose of maintaining nature's balance, whether or not that purpose is consciously perceived... He does indeed balance nature.

When animals hunt and kill prey, on the small scale, it solves the problem of not starving to death; on the large scale, it balances nature.

Let me give a simple example. There was a place (I can't remember exactly where) where the grasslands were nearly ruined. The reason was that the local hunters were too skilled and had wiped out all the prairie wolves³⁰. As a result, without the wolves, the herbivores -- wild rabbits and the like -- multiplied in huge numbers, and in the end the entire grassland was almost destroyed, because rabbits dig burrows, eat grass, and gnaw at the roots. Humans tried many remedies without effect; the grassland deteriorated day by day. Finally they consulted an ecological expert. The expert said it was simple: release a few wolves -- I think it was eight or ten, not many, just a few would do. After they were released, the wolves began eating rabbits. For the wolves, that was pure bliss; rabbits were everywhere. The wolves multiplied, and once they reached a certain number, the rabbit population began to decline, and the grass grew lush and beautiful. Once the grass was lush, for the remaining rabbits, it was actually a good thing. In just over a year, the entire grassland recovered its former exuberance.

So for the rabbits, the wolves were absolutely a bad thing. But for the balance of the entire ecosystem, this is a very, very important point. The wolves may not have been aware that they carried such an important mission, but the result was exactly that.

What about human beings? Human beings digest concepts. We have long passed the stage of hunting prey for resources on the animal level. We no longer chase prey; we chase concepts -- and in doing so, we contribute to a different kind of balance. This balance is one he is usually unaware of. Just as the wolf does not know it has contributed to the ecological balance of the entire grassland, when human beings pursue their own goals -- such as wanting to live better, wanting their families to be happier -- without knowing it, they make their due contribution to a kind of balance in the entire human and natural environment.

No one really has the intent to do pure wrong or to be evil.

No one truly wants purely to do bad things, or to commit evil.

A thunderstorm shakes the summer sky, bringing thunder and lightning. An earthquake may ravage our countryside. You may deeply regret the great destruction caused, knowing full well that the thunderstorm or the earthquake is not evil.

Nature is not evil. Thunderstorms, floods, earthquakes -- they cause great destructive power to humanity, but we do not feel they are evil. Not only do they have no bad intent, but the overall situation actually corrects the earth's balance -- earthquakes happen because of imbalance between tectonic plates; once the quake is over, the stress is released, and it will not accumulate into an even larger earthquake.

Jane delivered this passage faster and more forcefully than usual, and many paragraphs were spoken loudly. Rob interjected from the side: "I believe she could deliver the data at a much faster rate, if my hand could keep up with the notes." Below is Seth continuing:

This requires some unique understanding.

I am aware of that. The destructive storms caused by man, however, can never be said to be more evil than an earthquake.

The bad things human beings do, in the final analysis, cannot be said to be more evil than an earthquake. Are they destructive? Yes. Are they bad? Indeed they are bad. But can you say they are evil? No.

While man's actions may indeed appear destructive, you must not blame his intent. Nor can you make the mistake of confusing man with his actions.

Do not confuse a person with the things he has done, saying, "You did this bad thing, so you are a bad person." This is something we human beings commonly do. There is no necessary connection between a person and the things he does. Many people do not understand: how can there be no connection between a bad person and the bad things he does? If you think that way, then you still have not grasped Seth's intent in this world. You must separate the person from what he does; these are two different things. Because this person himself did not do bad things with the purpose of committing evil; his original intent was also to do something good, but his methods were wrong, and his ignorance produced such results.

Because many well-intentioned artists, with the best of intentions, sometimes produce very inferior works.

Many artists have the best intentions, yet sometimes produce very poor works. And precisely because of the original good intent, they feel even more disappointed and saddened -- they wanted to make a good work, but it turned out badly, and they feel very disappointed themselves. Human beings are the same: the intent is good, but in practice they have done many bad and wrong things. These results, for them, are like the inferior products produced by an artist. Human beings are also very disappointed, very sad, very remorseful. These bad things done by human beings are like the inferior products produced by an artist -- all made with good intent, but the results are not good, because of a lack of knowledge, technique, and method.

Because you pay too much attention to the world of the newspapers and to the negative reports of human behavior, it is truly easy to overlook what I am saying -- that every man and every woman is basically well-intentioned.

The news media of this world report bad things; good things rarely make the news -- "bad news travels far," as they say, and especially in the current Internet age, bad things from all over the world appear before your eyes in the blink of an eye. In the past, when information was underdeveloped, you only knew about the bad things in your neighborhood, your village, your town; now, bad things from every corner of the world appear on your phone at the speed of light. You might say, can't the news media write about good things, bring some positive coverage? There are such positive media outlets, but often their ratings are poor and their sales are poor, not as good as those media that report bad things every day. And such media affect many people who see them.

I remember a long time ago, I told everyone a secret about the media. Many years ago, a friend of mine was working for Murdoch. Murdoch wanted him to be the head of the China region; it didn't work out in the end, but he had deep contact with Murdoch. He once asked Murdoch: "You have been in media for so many years; what is the key to success in media?" Murdoch did not hesitate at all and told him directly: to do media well, you need three things -- three S's: Sex, Scandal, and Sport³¹. Get these three S's right, and your media will definitely survive. You can see that Murdoch's rise began with newspaper media doing exactly this. Why report scandals instead of positive images? Because no one wants to watch.

Because we pay too much attention to bad things, when I tell you that every man and every woman is basically well-intentioned, you often do not accept it, or you ignore it -- because what you see is all negative news.

That intent may be confused, it may be poorly executed, it may be entangled in contradictory beliefs. Many times, it is strangled by the bloody hands of war and murderers.

But he continued:

Yet no man or woman has ever lost it. Because that represents the hope of the human race.

Goodness is the most basic hope of humanity, and it is continually kept alight. It is as if every member of the human race has a brilliant inner light of spiritual clarity. And that well-intentioned impulse is passed down from generation to generation; that light is far stronger than any inherited hatred or resentment between nations.

The following sentence is very important:

If your psyche is to have any peace, you must believe that there exists in man an innate well-intentioned intent.

If your soul is to attain any peace, you must believe in humanity's innate well-intentioned intent. This is a foundation. If you do not believe this, then wanting to attain peace of mind is something you will never be able to achieve. This is also precisely the answer to the question Einstein wanted to ask: whether this world is ultimately good or evil.

This is shared by all other animals as well.

Not only human beings; all animals are well-intentioned by nature.

Each animal knows that under certain conditions, another may fight, or take an aggressive stance, or defend its home. Each animal knows that when hungry, it may be killed and eaten by another animal. But except for the conditions mentioned above, animals do not fear one another. They know that each other is well-intentioned.

If you provoke an animal, it will fight you; if you enter its territory, it may attack; if you try to take eggs from a mother hen, she will certainly fight you with her life. Animals know that these situations may lead to fighting. They also understand that when other animals are hungry, they may be hunted and killed. But under normal circumstances, animals are not afraid of one another. They believe that other animals, like themselves, harbor deep good intent. Look at the African savanna: at a waterhole, lions come to drink, antelopes come to drink -- not far apart -- and they do not feel afraid. But we human beings cannot do that. If a lion were drinking there, I doubt you would dare go drink beside it. But animals dare. Even though they know a lion will eat them when hungry, when it is not hungry, they are not afraid of it at all; there is no fear whatsoever.

Give the same faith to your own kind.

You human beings must also have the same faith in one another -- that people are originally well-intentioned.

Now, in your minds, distinguish between a person and his actions. You may argue against his actions, that is, you may disapprove of his behavior.

You may oppose his behavior; you may say what he did was wrong; you may punish the things he did. But you cannot negate the person himself; you cannot say he is bad, he is evil, he is guilty.

I am not speaking only to you and Ruburt (you two especially love to collect material of this kind), but to anyone who seeks truth, any hint of it, peace of mind, or creativity.

You may do everything you can to refute those wrong actions, but you cannot judge the person himself as evil.

Collecting books about humanity's failures... I personally do not understand why anyone would collect an artist's worst works, and take pleasure in tearing them to shreds.

You human beings record the stains and misdeeds of your own history, as if recording the worst works an artist ever painted -- you ignore all the good ones and only collect the bad ones, and then find pleasure in the process of collecting.

Man has also produced some exquisite works.

Human beings have very high-level language and communication abilities; our various kinds of emotional exchange and cultural exchange are highly developed. We can also communicate across races and across regions. Our proficiency in externalizing concepts and ideas, the range of our imagination -- all these and many other human merits are unique in the universe. Do not only record the killings, wars, crimes, and plagues; human beings have many good things.

To identify man with his worst works is to deliberately find fault with a good artist, and then to judge him beyond redemption. In doing so, you also judge yourself as beyond redemption.

You say human beings have done these bad things, as if you only look at an artist's worst works and say that is his level. You have judged humanity as beyond redemption; have you not also judged yourself as beyond redemption?

If a scientist says that consciousness is the result of chance... or Darwin says that basically man is the son of a murderer who was victorious. Many people would object.

Modern science claims that the origin of human life is accidental -- even the existence of the earth is accidental, and the existence of the moon is even more accidental. Darwin tells you that human beings are where they are today because of survival of the fittest, standing at the top of the food chain, having murdered many other species. You would certainly object. But if you say people are idiots, or that they do not deserve to walk upon this earth, then you are saying the same thing -- you say that human beings, these greedy animals, do not deserve to walk upon the earth, with their reproduction and greed, their possession of resources, their destruction of nature -- if you say this, then your view is the same as Darwin's and the others'; it is just a different way of phrasing it.

You must be concerned with the reality that you know. In these terms, to judge man as guilty is to judge the humanity you know as guilty, and to judge your actual world as guilty.

If you judge one person as guilty, as sinful, then you have judged all of humanity as guilty, and judged the entire world as guilty.

Seth also responded to a question here -- he had previously spoken about the existence of many probabilities, and people wondered: when disasters occur, when human society falls into suffering, can I jump into another probable world, another parallel world? Seth said:

I am not here to discuss with you whether you can jump over. This is irrelevant to the reality of probabilities. I am speaking from the viewpoint of your emotions.

I am not talking about whether you can jump into probabilities -- even if you jump over, that is only a form of escape, and you still have not solved the present problem. Many people say: Seth says all probabilities exist, so I will just enter that peaceful world without war and corruption. Seth says this is you escaping. Today we are not discussing the question of how to get to probabilities; we are looking at how you face this world from the emotional perspective, from the human perspective.

Your actual body has a stance in space and time.

This stance is a stance of combat, of struggle, of unyielding perseverance -- a stance of continually exploring and striving.

I will speak of primary and secondary experience.

The following are two terms he coined to facilitate the later discussion.

Let us call experience that exists directly in sensory terms in this moment of your time primary experience.

That is, what you are personally experiencing in this present moment, the direct contact between your body and the actual environment -- this is called primary experience.

I will call the information that comes through reading, television, the media, or discussion and letters from others secondary experience.

The information and experiences you obtain through news, newspapers, media, discussion, communication, chatting -- these channels -- are called secondary experience.

Secondary experience is largely symbolic.

For example, on a quiet, sunny afternoon, you discuss war with a friend -- whether a past war or a possible future war. You drink tea and chat, discussing what you would do if war broke out -- is that the same as actually being on the battlefield, with shells exploding all around? Not at all the same. Being on the battlefield is primary experience; discussing war with others is secondary experience. No matter how vividly it is described, it is completely different from the feeling of being on the battlefield.

When you read in the newspaper that there is now a worldwide energy shortage -- that is different from sitting in a cold, freezing room with truly no heating equipment. Only then can you truly experience what energy shortage means. When you sit calmly in your living room, reading an article saying that if humanity does something foolish, a full-scale nuclear war will break out and humanity will be collectively destroyed in nuclear war -- when you read such an article, it is completely different from actually being in that environment.

On the level with which we are concerned, the body must primarily respond to the immediate, primary existence in space and time.

The body first must respond to the present moment, to existence in this present space and time. On other levels, it is equipped to handle many other kinds of data—things not on this present level, such as possible future events or matters not in this physical environment. Your consciousness has other ways of processing these; it does not need your present perceptual system to experience them directly. Seth mentions that at the cellular level there is this kind of precognitive ability; cells have their own way of processing it, like a kind of apparatus or equipment.

The body relies on the conscious mind to give a clear assessment of the precise conditions of the space and time it occupies. It depends on that knowledge.

Your body relies on your conscious mind—your waking brain—to make a clear judgment about the precise conditions of the space-time environment it is in: whether it is cold, hot, hungry, in danger, or not in danger. It needs a clear assessment, not a vague one. So it needs to depend on this knowledge, on direct responses to existence in the present, immediate space and time.

If you are not completely safely nestled in a comfortable room, with no danger in sight, your senses transmit that information very correctly; your conscious mind should understand it and should easily look around.

If you have a clear conscious awareness, you should understand that you are safe at this moment and can look around without worry.

On Fear and Trust

Your consciousness gives you an assessment, and this assessment is often very complex. It is called the state of culture. In other words, your danger and non-danger are not like those of animals, such as whether there is a natural predator nearby, or whether there are enemies, murderers, or killers around you in human society. More often, this assessment depends on your cognition of culture.

For example, you go to a rival's place. You are in business, and you go to a rival's place, so you inevitably feel uncomfortable and feel bad. At this time, there is no life-threatening danger, but you feel very uncomfortable. That is to say, your assessment of the environment is not merely biological; it involves more cultural, conscious, and social elements.

If, in terms of primary experience, you are in a naturally safe state, yet you are frightened by unsafe signals from secondary experience, that is, from reading or whatever other information. You show a lack of discernment. You cannot distinguish between the physically safe condition of the present moment and the situation you imagine might be unsafe, and this triggers danger alarms.

When you misjudge, what problem arises? It is that you are clearly in a safe state—with gentle winds and bright sun, light clouds and a calm sky—yet you insist on taking that secondary material, such as watching a news report: Armenia and Azerbaijan are at war right now, and you imagine yourself on that battlefield with shells flying everywhere—what does that have to do with you? I give this example—and then you feel very endangered. Including the current pandemic. The pandemic may indeed be dangerous; many people did get sick and die, losing their lives. Then you think: what if I get infected? What if I catch it? What if I do get it? This state is: you are clearly in a safe environment, yet you insist on thinking about unsafe things, and then you scare yourself half to death.

In ancient times, this was called "the man of Qi worrying about the sky"³². You see, an ancient idiom depicts this person very vividly. It makes your body's mechanisms severely lose their bearings. That is, this excessive worry actually makes the body lose its bearings. You might say, how can there be such people? There are. Many of us are like this, just to different degrees. Remember, to different degrees. Everyone has some of this. Your worries about the future, your worries and fears about the uncertainty of the future, are all of this kind.

Then the signals you give your body are very contradictory. Because on the one hand, the body is in a very safe environment, and on the other hand, you frighten it by saying: you are going to suffer in the future, you are going to have bad luck, you are very likely to be infected with the novel coronavirus, you may have difficulty breathing, respiratory failure, and so on. You keep scaring yourself. You might lose your job; the economy is so bad right now, what if you lose your job? How will you pay the mortgage, how will you get by? You keep scaring yourself. Scaring yourself makes your body very conflicted. Clearly you have no worries about food and drink, you are carefree, yet you keep stimulating it and frightening it.

Therefore, after a while, if this situation continues, if you keep scaring yourself, keep worrying like the man of Qi, you will no longer know whether you are in real danger or imagined danger. You will not know whether you are really in danger. So your mind forces your body into a state of constant vigilance, constant alertness. But even more unfortunately, you train yourself to ignore the direct sensory feedback of the present moment.

He says the frightening thing is not only that your body is constantly in a state of vigilance or alertness, constantly in fear of future dangers. That is not the most frightening thing. The most frightening thing is that you repeatedly train yourself to ignore the most direct sensory feedback of the present moment, and you place yourself in an imagined situation. That is the most dangerous thing.

Clearly, the feedback your physical body gives you right now is that there is neither wind nor rain, neither hunger nor danger in your environment, yet you insist on scaring yourself, insist on imagining yourself in a world heading toward collapse and the edge. You think about what to do if the world's energy is exhausted in the future, what to do if this great plague never ends, what to do if the economy collapses, what to do if war someday reaches your side. What are you doing? You are putting your body in a state of extreme inner conflict. On the one hand, it is clearly safe; on the other hand, you tell yourself it is extremely unsafe.

So you might say your body is safe, and your senses show no immediate danger, but you have already begun to rely so heavily on your secondary experience. Your primary experience tells you there is no danger, but your secondary experience tells you it is very dangerous. At this point, you begin to rely on your secondary experience and ignore your primary experience. This is a very dangerous thing—so much so that you no longer trust your biological responses. Even in a quiet environment, you are anxious and fearful all day long.

But because of the great gift of human imagination, because human imagination is too powerful, too formidable, the alarm does not only intrude into a safe present moment. It not only affects your present, but continues to harass the next moment and the moment after that, and is endlessly projected into the future. You not only worry about the present, you also worry about tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and every day in the future. This is the power of human imagination, but you do not think good things; you think bad things. You are thinking about the most terrible things of the future.

No matter to what degree or in what way, every person, through such a manner, is deprived of confidence in his or her present ability to take meaningful, purposeful action. Because of this extreme fear of the future, he feels he can do nothing now. Originally, the present is his point of power; he could use this point of power in the present to solve problems, but because of his fear and worry about the future, he does not act. He loses the confidence to act. In extreme fear, he can do nothing.

Your body cannot do tomorrow's work today.

And his sensory information must be clear. This feeling of inability to act causes varying degrees of hopelessness, and that mood is not tied to specific details but pervades the emotional life. If allowed to, to whatever degree, that condemning message of accusation often becomes self-prophetic, because those who believe those messages, those who accuse, allow it to cloud their reactions.

What does this sentence mean? He says your body can certainly only do today's work; you cannot prepare tomorrow's work for the body. Yet this fear—of scaring yourself—is extremely frightening. But you cannot prepare anything for the future, and you can do nothing. At this point, you develop a very great sense of powerlessness, a mood of hopelessness, that is, powerlessness, helplessness. Because this thing will only happen in the future, yet you are here today. Even if it might happen in the future, you can do nothing now, you can accomplish nothing. So are you not very afraid? That is how it is.

Because you know the future will happen, and you can do nothing about it. That is the mentality. And that mood is not based on specific details; it is not about a particular event, but this mood affects the entire emotional life. It does not only affect one thing; it makes your entire emotional life, or your entire mood, very low, very negative, and pessimistic. Because you are thinking that the future is surely a bad outcome, that the earth will be destroyed, that humanity will perish, and so on. Then you will always be like this.

So when this reaches a certain intensity, it often becomes self-prophetic. He begins to self-predict what the future will be like, what the future will be like, and this prediction is always what? Always bad. He starts issuing his own forecasts, starts prophesying to you: do you know, in the future—many people are already prophesying now—saying next year will surely be a bad year, this year's economy will surely be bad. Where did you get this experience, where did you get this data? You say, I analyzed it, I read these reports, experts say so too. Is this not all given to you by newspapers and media? Are you really affected by this? Are you eating chaff and swallowing vegetables right now? Or are you eating one meal and not knowing where the next comes from, with no rice left in the house to cook? Does it have any real impact on you? No. Yet you still impose a very negative judgment on the future.

And you cannot even see such foolish behavior in yourself, because it clouds you, clouds your reactions. You think this is real. You think a bad future is surely a real event, an unquestionable fact.

So in your terms, while you are alive, in the most relevant and personal sense:

Your reality must be perceived within your time framework and created within your experience.

He emphasizes again: in your terms, while you are alive, in human terms, from our three-dimensional world, while you are alive, in the most relevant and personal sense, your reality must be perceived within your time framework. Then he always adds a premise: in our world, from our perspective, your present reality must be perceived within your present time framework, and it is created within your present experience.

Therefore I beseech you—Seth has become anxious. Seth says, I beseech you humans:

Do not act as though man will destroy himself in the near future, do not act as though man is a near-idiotic, half-mad, half-insane animal with a frenzied brain, doomed to exterminate himself.

Do not act as though humanity is so stupid as to destroy itself, so stupid as to drop atomic bombs on itself, so stupid as to drive itself to extinction. It is not like that. Why would you think of humanity this way? Are you yourself this stupid? You are not this stupid. Why do you think others are this stupid? You say, I am not that stupid. If you are not stupid, would others be this stupid? Is Putin stupider than you? Would Putin want to destroy all of humanity? What benefit would he get? To have his name recorded as a merit in the next civilization? What benefit would he get? If he destroyed all of humanity, would he be stupid to that degree?

So you must remember that what he said had its historical background at the time. At that time, he had just experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s and so on, when the United States and the Soviet Union almost had a nuclear war.³³ If the Soviet Union had not withdrawn its missiles from Cuba at that time, a nuclear war could really have happened. That was the situation then. So this matter may seem very laughable to us today, but is it laughable? It is not laughable. It is not laughable at all.

Many people are peddling this view now. A couple of days ago, when things between China and the United States were very tense, there was a so-called well-known blogger—I do not know whether he was seeking attention or what—who was also a scholar, extremely stupid and ignorant. He proposed three plans, three plans of so-called unrestricted warfare. He said if war broke out with the United States, there would be no need to drop atomic bombs on American soil; even without dropping atomic bombs on its homeland, it could be destroyed. He proposed three plans: one was to blast open the Himalayas, another was to drill a ten-thousand-meter-deep hole underground and put atomic bombs in it to melt the earth's core and make the whole planet collapse, and another was to drop however many atomic bombs in the Pacific Ocean to cause tsunamis that would directly submerge America, and so on.³⁴ Extremely laughable. Are there many such people? No, there are not many such fools. As soon as his article came out, he was scolded so badly he did not dare to speak again. Utterly childish, beyond description, both ignorant and foolish.

The prophecies of destruction that mankind fears so much will not come true in your era. All the harsh prophecies and doomsday prophets throughout history will not cause your creativity to destroy itself in that way.

At this point, Seth gives humanity a reassurance. Humanity, in the era you know, the things you imagine—human destruction, the extinction of the earth—cannot happen. They will not happen. He says it will not destroy itself in that way. He actually gives us a reassurance; there is no need to worry.

Is he being reasonable? How dare he assert this? What ability does he have? History has so many possibilities; how can there not be one possibility like this? That is because you completely do not understand the current level of science and technology. Actually, if you look carefully at many popular science articles online—for example, I suggest you search a keyword, and you will find it—about how many atomic bombs are needed to destroy the earth. The atomic bombs humanity currently possesses, including those of the United States and the Soviet Union, number perhaps a few thousand; whether there are even ten thousand is uncertain.³⁵ How many atomic bombs are needed to destroy the entire earth? Go search online yourself. Even if humanity used all currently available resources to build atomic bombs, it would mean nothing to the entire earth; it is simply impossible to destroy the earth. Whether it could destroy humanity is another question. So the number required is not on the order of a few thousand or tens of thousands.

He continues:

Some people take it as their duty to condemn others or the errors and failures of humanity itself.

Some people condemn others every day, and at the same time condemn humanity, their fingers always pointing at others, saying: look at you people, look at you humans—as if they themselves were not human. They treat pointing out errors and failures as their duty, as if it were their job. Every day they spread this negative information, every day they use this terrifying information to frighten everyone. What is their purpose? I do not know. Perhaps they have a persecuted psychological state.

It is precisely because such people exist, with this daily attitude of accusation, that humanity's great experience and goodwill remain hidden. Because there are always such people constantly bringing up the errors of others and the errors of humanity, humanity's great experience and goodwill remain hidden and invisible. Because there are always people who treat this as a profession, as their own duty, constantly talking about it, so people cannot see the good side.

In the process of becoming, if humanity were an artist, the flaws in its works would be like the errors we humans make. But it is a budding genius artist, a flawed practice work.

Although humanity has made some mistakes, it is equivalent to comparing it to a genius artist; this genius artist of humanity will also have some practice pieces in between. Before becoming famous, before becoming a genius artist, he makes some bad works, flawed works, and this is all acceptable. Genius has always guided him forward. Humanity can feel that, like a genius, it is always guided forward by its talent, becoming a better person. And its failures indeed only appear important and grotesquely laughable in comparison with that genius. It is precisely under the illumination and comparison of genius that these flaws, these clumsy works, appear both important and extremely laughable, grotesquely laughable.

But he is not evil. Just like a painter before becoming famous, he always had a time of learning to paint, a time of growing up from a child, a time of practicing, a time of not painting well. Those works will not prevent him from becoming a genius painter in the future; rather, they are an important process in his becoming a genius painter. Without these grotesquely laughable works, without these immature, comical, flawed, even erroneous works, how could the divine masterpieces of his later genius ever appear? So when you look at the paintings a painter made as a child, you only find them very funny, very amusing, very cute, but you do not feel distressed to death. Because he has already proven to you now that he is a genius painter.

When you consider your so-called future, constructive achievements and destructive achievements are equally real.

When you think about your future, achievements in both directions are equally real. One school believes the future is constructive and developmental; another school believes the future is destructive and humanity is bound for extinction. In those terms, each year of humanity's existence in fact makes a more optimistic or a more pessimistic view more reasonable. Each year of humanity's existence makes the more optimistic rather than the pessimistic view more reasonable.

You cannot place human goodness outside the physical realm.

He says you cannot discuss human goodness outside the material world, as if goodness were something ethereal and intangible. You cannot avoid considering it in our three-dimensional world. Because outside that realm, there are no creatures as you know them. If you do not consider goodness at the human level, then outside this three-dimensional world there is no human existence, so where does this goodness exist? If it does not exist in humans, where does it exist? You say goodness exists in human thought, in our lofty realms, in our spiritual essence. If it does not exist in humans, where does it exist? Because apart from this three-dimensional world, there is no such thing as humans. Of course there is spirit, there is soul, but there is no physical human existence. So this goodness must exist in humans.

You cannot say that nature is good, and that man, born of nature, is not good, and that man is a tumor upon it, a cancer.

This is a view many people hold. They say humanity is the cancer of the earth—humanity keeps multiplying, multiplying without control or restraint, becoming a burden on the earth; we are plundering the earth's resources, and nature will surely take revenge on us. This is a concept many environmentalists instill in you, seemingly full of compassion and mercy. But think about how much evil this idea itself contains! Do not be influenced by them. Do not let them off just because they wave the banner of environmentalism, or the banner of so-called world unity and love of peace. Do not. Many of their ideas are very evil.

What is evil about them? They tell you nature will take revenge on you. Very strange, is it not? Why would nature take revenge on you? Just because you have exploited nature's resources without limit, nature will take revenge on you? Do you then believe that nature is a very magnanimous, or very petty, vengeful person? Because you took its resources, it will take revenge on you? Are you separating yourself from nature? Are you a part of nature? Are you nature? Does nature include you? Have you set yourself in opposition to nature? Do not pay attention to such laughable views.

For nature is more reasonable than that.

You also cannot say that nature wants to destroy humanity. Many people say: humanity is now suffering the revenge of this plague; this great pandemic is nature's counterattack, nature's revenge on humanity because of humanity's destruction of nature. This view even became mainstream in some places for a time. People opened their mouths and said: it is precisely because of our destruction of nature that today's pandemic is spreading. How vicious this statement is! Think about how vicious it is. It seems very reasonable, as if saying we humans should protect nature. But are you not setting humanity and nature in opposition? Do you not admit that humanity is a member of nature? You take nature and humanity, which are originally one, and forcibly set them against each other. So do not be deceived by them. Many seemingly reasonable things, if you analyze them carefully, conceal a great deal—either ignorance or stupidity, that is all one can say, or else malice.

Or they say nature hates its own species, hates humanity, thinks humanity multiplies like lice. Yet it only wants to cherish life and allow other species to survive. This capitalized word is an abstract concept. Many people hold the view that humanity is like lice on nature, parasitizing nature, and will sooner or later drain nature's resources dry, so nature must eliminate humanity, and only then can the world be returned to peace and quiet, allowing other species and other lives to grow naturally. Is this not ridiculous? Is human life not life? Other species' lives are life, so humanity must make way for them? What kind of view is this? The entire natural world coexists in harmony; why would one species have to make way for another? You wave the banner of cherishing life, yet you are destroying another kind of life. What kind of laughable logic is this? Nature wants to destroy humanity in order to promote the cherishing of more life?

For nature is within every member of every species, and without every member of every species, nature would not exist.

Humanity is a part of nature. If every member of every species in nature did not exist, where would nature be? Of course, he says "practicing his natural finger"—he is joking; his hand is indeed very sore from writing.

Let us look at the following content:

Because you are natural creatures, there is within you a natural state of being, and that state can be one of peace, vitality, and understanding—an ever-present storehouse.

Because you humans come from nature, within you there inherently exists—there is within you a natural state of being, and this state of being is itself peaceful, vital, and mutually understanding. It is an ever-present storehouse.

No matter what your scientists think, your body, your consciousness, and your universe constantly leap into actualization.

No matter what your scientists tell you, your body leaps into our three-dimensional world, your consciousness also leaps in, and even your universe is brought in by you. Therefore, by clearly experiencing your own consciousness and living in the present moment, you can draw upon a greater available vitality and strength. As long as you live in the present moment and clearly experience your own consciousness, you can exercise the function of your point of power and make use of greater vitality and strength, which is your inner strength and vitality, and this is also the strength and vitality of nature.

To do this, you must rely on the data of your immediate senses, not on described secondary experience. You must use your primary experience, that is, the direct experience and direct feeling of your body. Simply put, live in the present. Do not be affected by those secondary experiences—what the future will be like, what is happening in other corners of the world—what do those have to do with you? Let us use an internet expression, a crude one: does it have even a dime's worth of relation to you?

The primary sensory information, though correctly aimed at the present, provides a necessary stance within your time.

Although focusing on the present, on the sensory stimuli of the present, seems to focus only on your present temporal state, it can nevertheless open to you the timelessness that emerges from all time, and bring you intuitive hints pointing to the true nature of the universe as ever-present, ever-entering into existence.

I ask you to focus on the present moment, on this now. It seems that you use all your senses and consciousness to focus, or place the focus of consciousness only within your present point in time. But you must never forget that once you enter this point in time of the three-dimensional world you call the present, you can open up all the timeless possibilities of existence; they are all in here. In other words, when you enter the present moment, you enter a state of eternal, timeless existence. And that can bring you more intuitive hints.

When you enter this timeless inner perception, you will have a more intuitive hint. A hint of what? A hint that the universe is always in the present, always entering into existence—its true nature. The universe is something that is entering into existence; it is always entering—always in the state of becoming. This is the nature of the universe.

What does this sentence mean? It means your universe is always in your grasp, under your control. Your universe unfolds in your present moment; all possibilities are in your hands. How you want it to develop in the future is entirely within your control.

That experience will let you glimpse the larger patterns of human creativity.

When you enter into this kind of experiential understanding, when you rest in the present moment, you can see that human creativity has a larger pattern, not simply the kind of creative pattern of the material world that we ordinarily see in the three-dimensional world. Our human creative pattern is far vaster than this. And you can also see the role you play within it, and what function you serve within it.

You have been too focused upon the criticisms and errors of your society, and in your era it seems as though everything will turn out wrong. If left alone, everything will turn out wrong. If the world is left alone, it will ultimately be destroyed. The universe will also ultimately perish, as long as no one tends to it. Humanity will also destroy itself.

This is all part of our current cognition: if left alone, everything will turn to ashes and vanish. These beliefs have so thoroughly permeated your behavior that, without your realizing it, they have seeped in, and they organize the greater part of your experience. You remember that in The Magical Approach it was said: behind all of your experience there is a belief. Belief determines how you experience the events of your life; behind it, it is determined by belief. And this kind of belief -- that the world will fall into ruin, that the universe will perish, that humanity will destroy itself -- this kind of belief will organize the greater part of your life experience.

It robs you of the benefits that nature itself everywhere offers you directly through primary experience.

It robs you of the real benefit of resting in the present moment, of already being favored by nature, already being favored by this universe. You are not in this kind of danger. The destruction of the universe, the destruction of humanity -- what does that have to do with you? You do not enjoy the happiness of the present, the favor of the present, the peace and joy of the present, yet you keep thinking about what will happen to humanity in the future. So everything he says afterward is about that kind of groundless-worry mentality. Look at how remarkable our country's ancient forebears were: they discovered this kind of person and this kind of mentality long ago, and they even invented an idiom for it and told a story to laugh at such people. So when someone thinks this way, they say you are worrying like the man of Qi who feared the sky would fall.

By stressing the importance of secondary experience as defined in this discussion, then, you often ignore the sense reality of your world -- the rich vitality and comfort of the daily moment.

You overemphasize this kind of secondary experience -- that is, what comes from the news, the media, the newspapers; when we open our phones all we see are these bad things -- and you ignore the sense reality that is in your world. Every day you live in this world, with birds singing and flowers fragrant, an infinitely beautiful world, yet you cannot see it. You are worrying about the future.

The most negative projection or intent seems to be the most practical.

The most negative projection and prophecy always seems to be the most practical; it will frighten you in reality. For example, when you are reading about the world's epidemic diseases. For example, right now we see that the plague has broken out a second time, or that the plague is spreading everywhere in other countries. When you see this information about a great pandemic, you are absolutely very serious, you are completely sincere -- saying, without a trace of humor -- how could I ignore the reality before my eyes? How could I ignore this destructive reality? You absolutely discuss this issue very seriously, with a solemn face and a grave expression. Look, this fact that the virus is raging all over the world -- this is a fact. But does it have anything to do with you? Did you get sick? Did you end up in the ICU?

But then:

In the most practical and immediate terms of physical reality, you and your world were in that moment naturally and physically safe, as your senses could directly perceive.

You are indeed living in a very comfortable and pleasant environment. What does the world's plague, which you think about every day, have to do with you?

If you could think that way, then in the most basic physical terms, you are not reacting to the present situation.

When you think about this disease, this epidemic, and discuss it very seriously and solemnly, your senses are no longer reacting to your present moment. You are reacting to that secondary experience, to that secondhand experience.

If you were really reacting in terms of bodily experience, you might be reading about that situation.

If you really contracted COVID-19, if you really experienced that epidemic, if you really went through this event, then this point would become very clear. If the world really stepped onto your shoulders, you would understand very clearly that those so-called secondhand experiences you had earlier were, for you, merely reactions to an imagined rather than a real situation.

If you really got it -- I will use his example -- if you really contracted COVID-19, that is completely different from reading this material every day and imagining what you would do if you got it in the future. When that time comes, react however you need to react. Before you get it, should you not acknowledge that you do not have it right now, and that this illness has nothing to do with you? Should you not still live your life normally, instead of frightening yourself every day?

It is like what they say -- a speck of dust in the torrent of the times, when it falls on any individual, becomes a mountain. But the question is: before it has fallen on you, why are you carrying this mountain? If it falls on you, and you carry it as a mountain, then you are a real man, no problem. But before it has fallen on you, you already hoist it up like a mountain -- are you not being foolish?

We do not deny this -- and Seth did not deny it either -- that when this thing really falls on you, it truly is like a mountain. No one in the whole world can deny that. The point is: when it has not fallen on you, why do you carry this mountain every day? Imagining that this mountain is about to fall, hanging over your head every day -- would that not frighten you to death?

I am afraid that you -- Ruburt and even Joseph, yourselves and others -- still do not quite understand.

Because the two of them, Rob and Jane, read negative news and negative reports every day, and they did not have an optimistic view of the world's future. This was not unique to the two of them; it was in that era in America -- the Vietnam War seemed not yet completely over, and even if it was over, it had just ended -- in that whole American social environment, and at that time AIDS was also possibly erupting rapidly or something. In that period, America was dominated by sexual freedom and money worship, the whole society was utterly degenerate, and drugs were rampant. So the two of them were always very pessimistic about the future of humanity. That is why here he specifically points out the two of them; he was afraid that if he did not point them out, they would not understand.

But though the disasters -- imagined, secondhand, or encountered -- might indeed later happen, they are still far different from those personally experienced.

That is, when you watch an interview with someone who has COVID-19, or read an analysis someone wrote, or a reporter's interview, you vividly apply it to yourself. In fact, it might indeed happen later -- none of us can guarantee that we will not get COVID-19 -- but has it still not happened right now? When it truly happens to you, that is personal encounter, and it is what it is. When you have not encountered it, do not keep thinking about what you have not encountered.

By having a negative attitude, or by dwelling upon what might happen in the future, you only reinforce their unfortunate nature, and destroy your own position.

You only reinforce their unfortunate nature, and destroy your own position. What position? The one you have as an existence in the three-dimensional world -- you have your own position: you have the essence of creativity, you have the point of power in your hands -- and this position of yours has been destroyed by you. Because you are worrying about future events.

Your position in time is extremely important.

This position can be understood as your present way of handling things, your state of mind. That is, with what kind of state of mind, with what kind of principles of conduct, you walk through this three-dimensional world -- this is extremely important. If you cannot evaluate your present environment in a very positive, active, or objective way, then you are living inside a fear of your own imagining.

For it is your practical base of operations.

What is your base of operations? Your present position -- your position in this moment of time, within our human framework of time -- that is your present state of mind, your present thoughts, your present beliefs; all of these are called your position. If you do not understand position, it is this: if your beliefs are positive and affirmative, then your position is a positive and affirmative one, the position of a striver; if your beliefs are negative, then your position is a very decadent one, prostrate on the ground, perhaps already collapsed on the floor, in need of oxygen.

Why is your position so important? Because it is your practical base of operations. We need to operate on top of this position. Whether it is the point of power in the present moment where we reclaim our own strength, or whether it is in practice where we create a new future, we all need a good position -- that is, we all need a good state of mind, we all need good beliefs. If you destroy this, then what do you have left? You have destroyed your own state of mind, so what do you have left? Tonight we would say your state of mind has collapsed, and then there is nothing left.

In that respect, you must trust the information of your senses, for otherwise you confuse your psychological and physical stance.

You must trust the feeling of this present moment. If you are sick, you are sick; if you are not sick, you are not sick. If you feel good, it is good; if you feel bad, it is bad. Do not confuse your psychological or physical stance.

For the body cannot be in a state of safety and danger at the same time, and it will waste its resources fighting imaginary battles.

When you imagine that danger is right before your eyes, your body has to prepare, and for this it must mobilize all of the body's resources. But you have not -- your body has not -- yet you are fighting an imaginary war, and you are wasting all your resources. You are using all your energy, resources, vigilance, and this state of alertness on this imaginary, nonexistent war.

For some people, war, poverty, murder, intrigue, corruption are primary experience, and must be dealt with.

For some people this is a fact. Some soldiers, some people in slums, some poor people, some murderers, some conspirators, some corrupt people -- for them this is primary experience; this is what they deal with every day, and they must cope with it in this way. Soldiers must prepare for battle every day; they need immediate action. For them, their bodies must react. Whether it is carrying out a conspiracy or corruption, they must react.

Such persons are wounded or robbed. Those are immediate sense data.

Whether such a person is wounded or robbed, these are immediate sense data. They do indeed begin to react in some way; however weak and powerless, they react. Their point of power immediately corresponds to their point of danger, and they use their point of power to confront the point of danger. Their bodies react immediately to this danger, murder, intrigue, war, corruption.

What he means is: if you are one of these people, if you are in this kind of state, then go and deal with it; that is perfectly normal. If you are not in this kind of state, then do not make this kind of reaction.

You cannot react in the same way, personally, to projected or imagined dangers.

You cannot react in the same way -- personally, to real or imagined dangers. You cannot imagine that you can deal with an imagined danger without your body reacting. Your body does react, and because of this you become confused. You should be dealing with your immediate, primary experience, and in so doing, you fulfill your responsibility, and you can act within your own experience, thereby influencing others.

You can act within your own experience, using your primary experience to deal with your primary experience. For example, if you are dealing with an epidemic, this is all your primary experience. Whether you are a doctor, a nurse, or a patient, you are all experiencing it directly. In this, you may be the one helping others, or you may be the one being helped; neither matters, but you are all going through this event through your own direct action. You must fulfill your responsibility: if you are a patient, then cooperate with the doctor's treatment as much as possible and recover soon; if you are a doctor, then do your best to save lives and heal the wounded, and save as many patients as you can; if you are a nurse, then you may have to work very hard, taking on much of the responsibility of caring for patients, even taking over much of the doctors' work.

You do not have to be ignorant of a war in another corner of the world, or close your eyes and refuse to look at it.

Here Seth speaks from another angle. He says you cannot, because of what I have said, then say: well then the world has nothing to do with me, I will just mind the things before my eyes, I will only tend my own little plot, each sweeping the snow before his own door, and I will not care about other people's affairs. Seth immediately corrects this, because otherwise you will go astray again and swing to the other extreme.

He says that is not what I mean. I am not telling you to be ignorant of a war in another corner of the world, or to close your eyes and refuse to look at it -- as if other people being slaughtered has nothing to do with you, and you say it has not killed me, this is not my primary experience, it is only a secondary experience for me -- that is not what I mean.

But if you allow those experiences to give a shadow to the effective present-oriented teachings, then you are speaking and acting from a position that is not your own, and refusing to help the world in your present reality according to your abilities.

At this time, when you see those wars, when you see those disasters, it is not that you should not see them, but rather that you should think about how to help the world from your present position, instead of imagining yourself as a victim of that disaster or that war, or as someone caught up in it. If you think that way, you are considering the problem from someone else's position, not from your own position. When you consider the problem from someone else's position, no matter how miserable you imagine yourself to be, that is after all someone else's position. You cannot truly empathize to the point of mobilizing all the energy and resources of your body or your inner self to be of any help in this matter.

You might as well return to your present moment. You are not caught up in that war, but if you want to offer your help, then do everything you can from your present position to help. But do not let that matter cast any shadow over your present reality. You cannot be gloomy for a period of time just because a war broke out somewhere. What are you doing? The war did not happen in your home, nor in your country, nor in your region, so why should you be gloomy? Be as you are; help them if you want to help them, do whatever you can. But ordinarily you should still normally attend to the most direct, primary experience of your body in the present moment. What you directly feel is what you are. You do not need to imagine yourself as an African refugee or a starving child; you do not need to do that. You can stand in your own position and provide them with more help, that is enough, but you cannot, because you think every day about those starving children among the African refugees, be unable to eat your own food, feeling that what you are eating now is all waste and guilt. Then you are letting their reality cast a shadow over your reality.

This is what Seth means. Do not let the intersection of these two realities be shadowed; just live within your own reality. Do not let their reality affect you or bring you shadows, and then within your own reality do what is within your power, using your abilities to help the world, rather than standing in someone else's position.

The natural biological integrity of your senses must remain clear.

If you exist as this biological being, then as this biological being, your existence itself is effective, and it is certain, it truly exists; it must remain clear. Only in that way can you fully utilize that intuition or inspiration.

That must come through your own private intersection with space and time.

This ability must be obtained through your intersection with this three-dimensional world. Your intersection with this three-dimensional world is this point of the present, this moment point of the present, which is also your point of power in the present. It is this point where you intersect with the world; only through it can you obtain these abilities that follow. Apart from this, there is no way for you to obtain anything.

In that respect, nature is always a sure completeness, surrounding you everywhere.

If we put it that way, nature's eternal effectiveness, its complete effectiveness, always surrounds you. Nature is always complete, completely effective. It represents one of your direct experiences -- what experience? An ever-sure completeness -- this is a direct experience of nature, and you can feel it.

If you allow secondary experience to replace your daily, moment-by-moment intersection with the physical earth, then you block the comfort, creativity, and inspiration that nature gives.

If you cannot live in the present, you block the comfort, the creativity, and the inspiration that nature gives you. Only by living in this present moment do you have the ability to receive these.

He says I know you have questions about portions of earthly life and the waking and sleeping states, and I will answer those questions tonight or in the next session, as you prefer. He will still leave it for next time. He says all of this material tonight applies to people in general, applies to all people, and also applies to the two of you yourselves, and it was also spoken especially for Ruburt.

Regarding the interpretation of this part, let us think about it one last time. On the question of whether humanity and this world are good or evil, Seth gives a clear answer: the whole world is good, and the people in it are also part of the world, so they are also good; the whole universe is also good. If this benevolent existence were not present -- he said in other books -- we could not survive for even one minute. If it were not good, we could not survive for even one minute.

Because this session does not have much difficulty, but its content is very important, and it truly plays a very crucial role in our real lives, and it also confronts some of the problems that many of us face in daily life. That is, it pulls us back from the spiritual world into the real world, letting us know how we should conduct ourselves in real life and how to attend to our present moment.

Next is the fifth part of the interpretation of Chapter 11 of the Seth book The Nature of the Psyche, which is also the final session of the entire book, Session 800. This session began on Monday, April 4, 1977, at 9:43 p.m. At the beginning, Rob said they waited more than twenty minutes for the session to begin, and several times Jane felt somewhat strange; this was Jane's feeling. But Seth continued some material on human behavior, even as he simultaneously brought The Nature of the Psyche to a close. By the time he said this, Seth had already arrived.

You Form Your Own Reality

Seth says:

You form your own reality.

He emphasizes once again, be sure to remember this sentence. You form your own reality; you cannot form someone else's reality. You can form your reality, and of course within someone else's reality, you are also a supporting actor, and you will participate in it as well. But you form your own reality; what kind of role you play in someone else's reality is that other person's reality. You only take care of the matters within your own reality. You do contribute to other people's experience, but you are in your own world.

Session 800

Each of you possesses a unique, initiatory posture in space and time.

Each of you, in this space and time, in the space and time that each of you personally possesses -- what we call space and time is within the life we have -- has a unique, initiatory (that is, original) posture, the posture that you call yourself. This is an actual, a very actual way of putting it, and it is uniquely yours, regardless of the relative existence of time.

This posture of your existence in life seems to depend on the existence of your life -- when your life is gone, perhaps this posture is gone too. But Seth says no. You feel that it is so, but in fact it is not, because it exists regardless of the relative existence of time. You have existed in this universe, and the posture of that existence will continue to exist forever; it is an eternal posture. You must remember this: whatever your life is like, however you leave your imprint in the universe, that is eternal, and it will not cease to exist just because you die. It escapes the limitations of space and time.

Operating from Your Present Posture

Only when you operate from your own posture can you help others to the best of your ability.

You can understand this posture as your state in the present moment. Only by standing in your own perspective, resting in this present moment, can you help others to the best of your ability. This is crucial.

To anticipate danger, you can anticipate many dangers, and you may also imaginatively take on other people's problems, and then you rob yourself of the very energy you could have used to help them.

What does he mean by this? Only by resting in your present posture can you help others as much as possible. You cannot misplace yourself into someone else's perspective to anticipate danger, to anticipate dangers that have not yet arrived in the future, or to imagine carrying other people's problems. All those disasters, diseases, plagues, starving children around the world -- if you take on their problems, that is not your posture, not your present. You are in your own position, at your own point in space and time, and you have your own unique posture, and this posture is your present. Only by making good use of this point in the present do you have the strength to help others. If you misplace yourself, putting yourself in a poor mountain village in Africa, taking on the perspective of African refugees, carrying their problems, you lose the very energy and ability to help them. You are not resting in your own present; you are resting in someone else's present, anticipating dangers that have not yet arrived.

So what this passage means is: do not anticipate dangerous things, do not think about what the future will be like, how terrible the future will be, do not anticipate this danger. And do not imagine taking on other people's problems, do not carry this burden on yourself -- that is his problem, that is his lesson, not your lesson. He chose to come into this life, to accept such an environment; this is what he chose, what he wants to feel, what he wants to experience.

You might ask: so we should not help them? We should become so cold and heartless, only caring about our own affairs, only focusing on our own present? Yes. This is what you should do most of all. Only within your own world, within your own present, can you help others. Once you leave this position, leave this point, leave this posture, you cannot help others, and you even lose your own strength. Because your strength can only be obtained in this moment, in this posture, in this one step of the present. Without it, you do not even have your own strength -- how can you help others?

Focusing on the Favorable Factors of Civilization

Then Seth says, he is not saying to turn your eyes away and not look at the unfortunate conditions in the world, not pretending the world is wonderful and escaping from reality.

Practical help is needed in all areas of human life.

Seth's meaning: I am not saying you should not help others, only that the angle from which you help others, the position you stand in, the posture you adopt, is very important. Do not learn it backwards, saying that Seth says not to mind other people's business and only take care of your own affairs. This kind of dialectical thinking exists at all times; never lean too far to one side.

But it is far better, and in the end more practical, to concentrate upon civilization's constructive elements.

In real life you provide concrete help to human life, and this is always needed; Seth does not deny this. But he says there is a better way. What way? There is a far better way, which in the end may be more practical. What can truly help them is to focus attention on the favorable factors of civilization—to place attention on those positive, active factors that promote human civilization.

It is far better to organize your thoughts in the areas of accomplishment than to begin to make mental lists of man's deficiencies or lacks.

Rather than helping others, there is a better way, which is to focus on those effective or favorable factors of human civilization, and not to focus only on those insufficient, missing things in human society. You are making a list of failures for the development of human society: "Our climate problem has not been solved, our problem of natural destruction has not been solved, our hunger problem has not been solved, our problem of uneven human development has not been solved, our politics are still not free enough, not enlightened enough..." Listing a series of problems. Rather than focusing your attention on these things you consider problems, it is better to focus your attention on the achievements humanity has already made, on those good aspects. Put your effort into these good aspects, and then those bad problems can be solved. These are two completely different points.

When your eyes see only problems, and you think solving problems is the most direct, most effective method, it often backfires. This is not a wise method; it seems direct but is not wise. The better way is to spend more energy on the positive issues. Everyone develops better on the positive side of human development, putting attention, energy, creativity, and vitality there—when all of humanity acts this way, will those problems not then be solved as a matter of course?

Real-Life Examples

Here I will talk about a similar situation regarding American political issues. When I recorded this episode, there were still about twenty-some days until the U.S. election, and I did not know who would be elected next. But by the time you hear this episode, the result may have long since passed. I am not making any prediction now, but I will just say that four years ago, Trump, as part of his campaign theory, said something very interesting. He said America has many problems, such as the wealth gap, the widening income gap, unemployment, and so on, and these problems are all tangled together. But from his point of view, there are many, many ways to solve these problems, yet he wanted to focus on only one issue: making American businesses more profitable. If the business problem is solved, if businesses are made healthy, then the country's other problems will be solved along with it. If you do not make businesses healthy and make companies more profitable, and you go directly at solving poverty, educational imbalance, unfairness, and health care problems, then by only working on the problems themselves, you cannot solve them at the root.

So one of his main policies after taking office was tax cuts. Many people say Trump's tax cuts were for the rich. If you look at the issue that short-sightedly, it is true that tax cuts are certainly relatively more beneficial to people who run companies. But besides cutting corporate taxes, Trump also cut personal taxes. Corporate taxes were cut the most. He brought the U.S. corporate tax rate down from the common, average 34 to 35 percent all the way down to 21 percent³⁶, and it was fixed, with the same rate regardless of company size. The U.S. corporate tax is very simple, with only one item: income tax, the tax a company pays on the money it earns. For example, if you earn one million in a year, you pay 210,000. Before, earning one million meant paying 340,000 to 350,000, and on average it differed from company to company. Previously it was progressive at various levels, so the more you earned, the higher the proportion of profit you paid.

This is a simple real-life example.

Such an approach, where you focus on all these problems of human failure, where there is famine in Africa so we go aid the African victims, where war breaks out somewhere so we go focus on the war, will lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. The more you go about solving these very difficult problems, the more you will feel helpless and hopeless, because effective action within them seems impossible.

As an aside, mainland China has been working on poverty alleviation over the past few years, and poverty alleviation has become a major point of the ruling government. In the process of poverty alleviation, they used all kinds of poverty-relief measures, including assigning responsibility for production to individuals and households, with every civil servant having a designated person to help lift out of poverty, and they had to formulate a series of poverty-alleviation guidelines, poverty-alleviation plans, warmth-delivering visits, and so on. The problems were already broken down into actual situations, and the actual results are visible to everyone, and they are not good.

Actually, let us think about it: before the reform and opening up, mainland China was far poorer than it is now. In 1970, by today's standards, every single person back then was poor, all below the poverty line.³⁷ But how did everyone later become prosperous? One of the main reasons is that after the reform and opening up, all kinds of small self-employed businesses, enterprises, companies, and factories flourished and needed large numbers of workers and laborers. Urban employment also developed, and then large numbers of rural people, besides the rural household responsibility system where everyone had their own contracted land, which liberated the farmers' initiative, were also carried along in the process of urban development, which drove the process of rural people becoming prosperous. It seems that without special poverty-alleviation policies, simply along with economic development, the development of enterprises, companies, and self-employed people's own businesses, the problem of poverty in the whole society was naturally solved. In just a few years, a dozen or so years, China went from being a very poor country in the world, with a per capita GDP counted from the bottom, to rising in a straight line, and now per capita GDP has already passed ten thousand U.S. dollars³⁸. For a country with such a large population, that is already extremely commendable.

The best way to solve poverty is to develop the economy, and then poverty is naturally solved.

Life Itself Is Abundant

Life itself possesses a richness and abundance.

Life itself is a state of abundance; it comes with it. Life itself is abundant -- period, an affirmative declarative sentence.

If this richness of life, this being cherished, nourished, encouraged, then this experience is multiplied.

The richness inherent in life itself should be nourished and encouraged. Every person is born with an innate richness; the universe is abundant toward them. But if this person cannot take back their abundance, cannot take back their richness, then no matter how much you help them, it is useless. Your external help means nothing to them. Only when they truly one day believe that they themselves have power, believe that they can take back the abundance that belongs to them, that the universe has given them, can they truly turn things around and solve the real problems they face.

So what is it that we should nourish, cherish, and encourage? It is the abundance that every person is born with, the richness and plenty inherent in your life. Simply put, it is abundance -- the English word is "abundance." If we cherish it, value it, and encourage the abundance inherent in every person's life, then do you still need to solve their problems for them? No, they solve it themselves. The best approach is to let them bring this out. When you help a poor place, region, or person, the way to help them escape poverty is to let them know that they themselves have this ability.

On this topic, our country made a TV drama quite a while ago, Tian Dao ³⁹, starring Wang Zhiwen. This drama never seemed to become popular afterward; I do not know whether it was not broadcast or what, but it only aired once. Actually this drama is very good. Setting aside the romantic parts, it very realistically shows -- around the eighties or nineties, it seems -- how the male lead Ding Yuanying solved the problem of leading some rural poor people to start making handmade speakers, competing with world-class speaker companies, surviving in the cracks, and leading these rural people to prosperity. Of course this is the background and main storyline of the story. I think everyone should find time to look for it and watch it; this drama is called Tian Dao. It is one of the rare Chinese TV dramas that gives a very profound depiction of real society and people's livelihoods ⁴⁰, unlike those traditional internet-famous dramas -- as if everyone lives in a virtual scene full of tall, rich, handsome men and overbearing CEOs falling in love with me, with no reality at all. In this drama, you can see that in the process of rural poor people becoming prosperous, they faced many, many struggles, pains, and challenges.

Proliferating Abundance

That which is not needed for the purposes of ordinary daily personal life.

This proliferated experience that he generates is not something we need in our ordinary daily lives — that is to say, the abundance and richness it brings forth far exceed what you need for daily living. It is a surplus abundance, an abundance that surpasses what daily life requires. This abundance is immense; it is not merely about solving your basic survival problems and being done with it.

It can then be effectively directed into those areas of the world where help is most needed.

This proliferated abundance can then go to help those areas that need help. Only when you pay attention to, cherish, encourage, and nourish the very abundance of each person's life will he generate additional experiences, and these additional experiences can help both himself and the places and people that need help. Only in this way can you help others. If it is not like this, if you simply use your own wealth to give to these impoverished populations, using your own creations to give to others, trying to solve the world's poverty problem or other problems in this way, you will find no way forward, and the more you help, the more helpless and hopeless it becomes. Because you see no hope, and the people being helped also see no hope. You are giving them external things; you are helping them through external means — not that external help is unnecessary, but there is a better way to solve the problem: let each person find their own inner abundance. That is the root of solving the problem.

If you only help from the outside, they will also feel a sense of powerlessness, because they feel they need your help and depend on your help, and if this help no longer exists, their lives will sink back into poverty. This is the problem we often encounter in real life, and it is also the problem many people on the spiritual path encounter in their lives: Should I do charity? Should I do good deeds? Should I do a good deed every day? Should I release animals, donate, give these people a certain amount of money every month? Here Seth gives a very clear and direct answer to these questions, without the slightest ambiguity.

The Power of Thought

The power, vitality, or effectiveness of thought is seldom taken into account.

When you help others, you rarely think in terms of thought; you think more about giving them money, food, or tools for prosperity on the external, material level. But help on the level of thought is more important. In other words, rather than giving someone money, it is better to make their thinking more beneficial, more creative, more vital. You might say, "What problems can thought solve? You talk nicely, but giving money is more practical." You might say thought cannot stop a war.

Yet what do you think started such a war?

You say thought cannot stop war, and you believe that only war can resolve war, only violence can stop violence, only military deterrence can stop military force—yes, this is a mainstream idea in society, so every country is developing its military strength, and humanity is taking a large portion of its limited resources and putting them into an arms race. The most serious case was the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both the United States and the Soviet Union poured enormous wealth into the arms race, imagining that the other side would attack and destroy them, imagining that a third world war would soon break out, and that once it broke out it would be catastrophic. When this fear was placed above all national strategic considerations, the only best and wisest approach was to develop military force, to possess the strength to deter the other side's attack before they attacked. Both sides thought this way, so they frantically developed military force.

We all know the final result: in 1989, because of this prolonged, decades-long arms race, the Soviet Union was directly dragged down and ultimately collapsed, leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union⁴¹. In his final televised address, Gorbachev directly declared the Communist Party of the Soviet Union an illegal organization and dissolved it across the entire Soviet territory⁴². This is a very typical case. Perhaps in mainland China there is not much news or reporting about him; we know about this event, but we do not know very precisely how it happened or how the process unfolded.

Seth's point is this: you say thought cannot stop war, but how did war come about? War is caused by problems in thought. You could say war is about the plundering of resources, that it is a matter of resources—that was true in the past, during the early stages of human civilization or in the course of its development. But look at the wars of modern times: how many were truly fought over resources? You could say the U.S. war in Iraq was for counterterrorism, for seizing resources—that is your own understanding. If you understood the actual situation at the time, you would find... we will not discuss current politics today, just touch on it briefly. All wars—this is not Seth speaking, this is me speaking—all wars originate from problems in thought. You want to fight this war, or you feel you are forced to fight this war. There are many ways to stop war, and the power of thought is the most crucial force. If you think thought has no power, then there is no need to use thought to solve it; just use war to solve it. If you think only war can solve problems, then only war can solve them—if that is what you believe, then that is the only result you can have.

In the end, regardless of who won or lost, the Soviet Union dissolved through a peaceful means, resolving the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and lifting the fear that had hung over the hearts of all humanity—the constant fear that these two countries would erupt into a super nuclear war and destroy all of humanity in an instant. Through the collapse and dissolution of one country, without firing a single shot, this was resolved, which was actually a good thing for the whole of human civilization.

The Trampled Become the New Power Holders

Throughout history, the trampled have often gained power and then used violence to rebel against their oppressors, yet they learned little from that experience, and they turned into the new elite, the new power holders.

This statement is very direct. Those who were trampled, those who were bullied, were formerly the ruled class, the bullied underclass, but after they truly had no way to survive, they rose up, and riots or revolutions broke out, overthrowing the existing regime. The most typical example is the succession of dynasties throughout Chinese history. We are more familiar with the Ming Dynasty -- how did Zhu Yuanzhang become emperor? The book Those Ming Dynasty Stories⁴³ is extremely widely read in China; most young people have read this book, so we know very clearly how Zhu Yuanzhang went from being a person at the very bottom, on the verge of starving to death -- he did not even have a proper name, Zhu Chongba, the eighth child in his family -- his father and mother literally starved to death⁴⁴, so he was extremely resentful toward those in power. Later he rose up and overthrew the rule of the Yuan Dynasty at that time.

The Yuan Dynasty at that time was actually very powerful, militarily very strong -- the Yuan Dynasty was the descendants of Kublai Khan and Genghis Khan, and at that time they occupied not only all of China's territory, but also fought all the way into most of Europe⁴⁵; basically half of Europe was occupied. The Central Asian countries today were all territories occupied by the Mongols at that time. Yet a small figure like Zhu Yuanzhang rose up in resistance and overthrew this tyranny, finally establishing his own dynasty and becoming emperor.

Since he became emperor, and since he was someone who climbed up from the poorest, lowest class, should he not have solved these problems? But if you look carefully at Ming Dynasty history, did he solve them? Although he himself was very diligent and wanted to solve them, did he solve them? In the later Ming Dynasty, by the time of the Wanli Emperor, there was extreme isolation; the closed-door policy began with the Ming Dynasty⁴⁶. Before the Ming Dynasty, China was not closed off or isolated, and it traded normally with the world. By the late Ming Dynasty, for various reasons -- the invasion of Japanese pirates and so on -- the Ming government finally issued orders that not a single plank of wood was allowed to go to sea, and all fishing boats capable of going to sea were destroyed, completely isolating China from the world. While all the countries of the world were vigorously developing, we had already entered a state of closed-door isolation.

When Zheng He sailed to the Western Ocean, there was a certain purpose behind it, but apart from the official missions, after Zheng He's six voyages to the Western Ocean, the late Ming Dynasty no longer allowed anyone to go to sea for trade or commerce⁴⁷. If we had taken advantage of the strength and opportunity of Zheng He's voyages at that time, and begun maritime trade or a maritime economy, opening up the Maritime Silk Road, we would have integrated into the map of world civilization. Because Spain and Portugal at that time were just beginning their ocean exploration, including the discovery of the American continent⁴⁸ and so on, all of which began in that era. In that era we had very strong capabilities; the fleet led by Zheng He was very powerful, but later we destroyed our own skills -- it was not that someone attacked you; it was that we ourselves said, I will not explore.

So you see, after an oppressed lower class rises up through revolution or violent resistance and overthrows the existing regime, they become the new elite, the new powerful, the new power holders, and they continue to promote the very things they used to hate most -- corruption and graft. Zhu Yuanzhang later established many severe policies to punish corruption, and the Ming Dynasty was not at all ambiguous in this regard, including the later establishment of the Eastern Depot, the Western Depot, and the Embroidered Uniform Guard, many of which were for catching corrupt officials⁴⁹. He did not trust the anti-corruption agencies that already existed within the government itself, because he felt that they themselves would also be corrupted -- the anti-corruption agencies would also be corrupted -- so he established his own group of trusted confidants, like secret agents, called the Eastern Depot and the Western Depot, to secretly investigate the corruption of officials, and once discovered, they would send secret reports by carrier pigeon to the emperor.

Zhu Yuanzhang killed corrupt officials whenever he saw them, to the point that it reached an extreme. Once during morning court he said to those below him: "You civil and military officials, I do not know why, but you clearly know that I hate corrupt officials the most, and whenever I catch one I have them beheaded directly, and every day I receive memorials with information about corrupt officials. Basically you commit corruption during the day, and by night my secret reports arrive -- I use carrier pigeons, which are very fast; at that time there was no telegraph or telephone, and the next day I would issue an imperial decree to kill you, and even confiscate your entire family's property and exterminate nine generations of your relatives. Even so, you clearly know that corruption cannot escape my surveillance system, so why do you still commit corruption? You studied for so many years and passed the imperial examinations, you studied the classics of poetry and ritual, the Four Books and Five Classics, so why do you still take this path?" He himself was deeply pained and could not understand. But talking was useless; everyone continued to commit corruption just the same.

What is the reason? The reason is very simple: the system itself creates corruption. The root of corruption is actually power -- only power can lead to corruption; without power one would not commit corruption. If you have power and still want to stop corruption, this in itself is impossible; it is impossible to let a person have power and not commit corruption. Of course you can add supervision and oversight and so on, but this is a very typical political topic.

Modern Western society also does not know how to solve this, and later they came up with a solution that, relatively speaking, from the current perspective cannot be called perfect but partially solves the problem: separating power -- the separation of the three powers. Legislative power, judicial power, and executive power are separated. Those who make laws do not enforce them; they cannot both make laws and execute laws. The legislators are like the Senate, the House of Representatives, the parliaments of various countries; in China it is the National People's Congress. After laws are made, the judicial system enforces them, including courts, procuratorates, and so on. Apart from legal matters, the administrative power for the normal operation of the country is given to the government. The government is responsible to the parliament, like the management team of a company; the president is the CEO, and cabinet members are senior executives. They do not have absolute power; they only have administrative power, subject to the constraints of the parliament. They are always servants of the country, service personnel, serving the country and the constitution.

Through this method, the problem of corruption has been solved as much as possible, but it cannot be completely eliminated. Administrative agencies also have their own power, such as land allocation, so they continue to use public opinion supervision to oversee administrative personnel -- the eyes of the people are sharp. A couple of days ago it was discovered that a city council member in Los Angeles had colluded with land developers in land transactions, and was directly arrested by the FBI. They had been tracking him for a full five or six years⁵⁰, collecting a large amount of evidence, including phone calls, emails, communications, private meetings, trips paid for by others, and so on, and through five or six years they caught them all in one sweep.

This separation of the three powers cannot solve all problems, but at least it fundamentally solves part of the problem: separating power, putting power in a cage, placing power under the supervision of the people. If this problem cannot be solved, then the method of someone like Zhu Yuanzhang, who killed corrupt officials whenever he saw them, fundamentally cannot solve the root problem of corruption.

So Seth says that in the succession of historical dynasties, the new power holders are actually all the formerly oppressed, and the actual situation may completely change -- from an oppressed person to a person in power, with the government institutions and wealth all becoming theirs. It seems that the conditions that caused the rebellion are gone, because the oppressed have risen up and become masters, but they struck out in revenge, using violent means to overthrow the existing regime. What result does this kind of revenge-driven strike lead to? It creates a new trampled class, a new social underclass appears, and they will inevitably be retaliated against in their turn and rise up in revenge, just as they overthrew the previous class that oppressed them. Chinese history, including the history of other countries around the world, is basically such a cyclical, repetitive process. If you look carefully at human history, it is exactly this kind of process.

The Roots Are Inner

Regardless of all appearances, an outwardly situated condition will not cause war, poverty, disease, or any of the obvious unfortunate events in the world.

Do not look at the outer appearances. No matter how they are depicted, no matter how they are fabricated, the roots of war, poverty, disease, or the obvious unfortunate events in the world are not external. The roots of all these difficulties we humans face are inner. Be sure to remember, none of these are external.

Your beliefs form your reality, and your thoughts initiate actual experience.

When these change -- when our beliefs change, when our actual experience changes -- the situation also changes.

Your shared beliefs form your shared reality, your collective beliefs form your collective reality, and your collective thoughts initiate the events you actually experience in life.

All of these are ultimately brought about by your inner collective beliefs and collective thoughts. When these change, the situation also changes. What he means is to start from within, not to start from without.

Focusing the attention of your own experience upon the deplorable conditions in other parts of the world does not help, but instead intensifies the situation.

Putting all your attention on those deplorable conditions in the world does not help the whole matter in any way; on the contrary, it strengthens the occurrence of such situations.

Seth's viewpoint differs from that of many people. The height and angle from which he stands considers the entire development of human civilization and the whole planet, completely different from the perspective of ordinary political groups or various institutions.

Closing your eyes to them in a naive manner, or saying they are none of your business, is equally shortsighted.

You say, "Since all of this is caused by their own collective beliefs, what does it have to do with me? I am not in that region anyway, I do not need to concern myself with it, I do not see it, out of sight, out of mind." Seth says this is wrong, and equally shortsighted. Why?

Because your fear of them -- your fear of such tragic events -- will only bring the reality you fear closer.

Pretending that such situations do not exist will only bring the reality you fear closer. The more you fear this reality, the more it will bring itself to you. Seth said this long ago: wherever you place your attention, that is what will manifest in your life. The more you fear tragic events happening around you, the more you focus on such events, the closer you bring that reality to you.

Place Yourself Firmly Within Your Own Reality

You should place yourself firmly within your own reality, acknowledging it as your own.

Place yourself within your own world, your own reality, and acknowledge that this world is your own. What does that mean? It means you need to take up the responsibility you ought to bear for this world. Your own reality is created by you yourself; in this world of your own, you are the greatest bearer of responsibility, the only bearer of responsibility. What you want your world to be like is entirely up to you. So you must acknowledge that it is yours; this is a core point. Do not push it away by saying, "This is not mine, I cannot decide anything about this world, I cannot decide anything about this country, and if they want to fight wars, there is nothing I can do" — you are still evading and shirking.

In our everyday lives, there are two states: either we say, "I did not do this, it has nothing to do with me," or we say, "This has nothing much to do with me." These two forms of evasion and shirking will never acknowledge that this world is his, that it is his own world. He always says it belongs to others, that he is just passing through, that this world is already very well organized, and that he is only an insignificant little molecule. He has never once considered that the world he is now experiencing is created by his own hand. When you cannot take back this initiative, your handling of many things in life remains passive.

Acknowledging it as your own is far better than that.

Then encourage your strength and creativity, and from that perspective look at those areas of the world that need constructive, helpful work.

Acknowledge that this reality is your own, encourage your own strength and creativity, and from your own perspective look at which regions of the world need constructive help. Be sure to remember here that it is "constructive" or "creative" help for others, not that if someone lacks grain you give grain, or if someone lacks something you give it — that is direct help, but it is not the best way.

Strengthening the Power of Others

In your own life, in your daily conversations with others, in your interpersonal relationships through groups, associations, or organizations, you deliberately do your best to strengthen the power and ability of others.

This is about how we should ordinarily help this society in our daily lives, and what proper role we should play for the whole world. In your daily conversations with others, in your interpersonal relationships within your organization and other organizations, you all deliberately -- and remember this, it must be deliberate, conscious -- do your best to strengthen the power and ability of others. In this way you can help others, and also help the whole world. You must strengthen the power of others, strengthen their ability, and encourage them to reclaim their own power and ability. When you do this, you are helping the whole world. It is not that I give you a little money, I give you a little food, I find you a job -- those are all the most elementary level.

Your strengthening of the power and ability of these people will strengthen the power of all other individuals whom those people come into contact with.

After you encourage and strengthen one person's power and ability, once that person gains their own power and ability, they will influence the people around them, using the same method to help the people around them find their own power and ability. It is like a relay baton, and moreover it is a power that expands outward layer by layer, exponentially. If everyone in life behaved and conducted themselves in this way, if you strengthened the power and ability of every person around you, then they would inevitably influence the people around them, causing those around them to strengthen their power and ability. If this continues, would not the whole society, the whole country, the whole world become more powerful and more capable?

They should find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate circumstances.

When you do this, these people will be able to find what the beliefs behind these unfortunate events are. The circumstances you encounter now are all determined by some kind of personal belief or collective belief. When every person does this, and every group does this, they will be able to discover why they have created today's situation, and this group or society will also be able to discover their problems -- to discover what the beliefs are that, behind those external conditions, internally truly brought about this situation.

If the concepts in this book are thoroughly understood, then each individual will be able to practically assess his own reality, and will no longer need to arm a nation in advance against another nation's anticipated, but imagined, attack.

This book was written in the 1970s, when it was still the time of the US-Soviet arms race, the two countries in a Cold War, both worried that the other side would be the first to launch a nuclear strike. When you truly and thoroughly understand the concepts in this book, each of you can assess your own reality, assess your present reality, rather than making preparations for those anticipated, future terrible events. He already said in the previous session that you do not need to take precautions against terrible events that have not yet arrived.

Nor is it needed between major powers. Many people say, "That is not right. If I do not prepare, what if he attacks me? How can a small country like mine resist him?" That is an excuse you make for yourself. If you want to engage in an arms race, of course you will hold such theories and excuses. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, you did not see the United States invade the Soviet Union, nor did you see anyone carve it up. The various republics became relatively independent, which was their own choice, and it was also agreed to and recognized by the regime at the time. Nor did what they imagined come about -- that because the Soviet Union was gone, and the confrontation with the United States no longer existed, the Soviet Union would have no one to protect it, and would be invaded, bullied, and attacked -- no. The countless small countries in the world have no military strength to resist any country's invasion or threat, but are they not living perfectly well? Do not use these as excuses, as if without military force of your own, other countries will come to bully you and attack you. Such thoughts and beliefs of yours are the root of this problem.

There are only a few countries in the world that truly have strength, and most countries do not have this strength. Have they all been bullied? Your belief says, "Without strength you will be bullied, this world is a world where the weak are prey to the strong, survival of the fittest, whoever has the biggest fist is listened to" -- if the world were really like that, would not all those small countries be finished? This is a typical example.

Individual Questions

A person's resentment will not accumulate, and that kind of resentment makes people so afraid of further hurt that they try to escape life or relationships, or shrink from contact with others.

Personal resentment does not accumulate. Because of hate, one becomes afraid -- if the other party poses no threat, how could you be afraid of them, how could you hate them? Because of hate comes fear, and fear leads to further hate, step by step. And then, in this way, it makes you try to escape life and relationships, because you are afraid of others, feeling that they are all attacking you, competing with you, being unkind to you. This goes back to the topic of the previous session: is this world ultimately good or evil? If you feel that others are all full of malice, how can you settle down in this society? How can you obtain even a moment of peace in your psyche?

Counting your failures is not a virtue.

Many people say, I want to record all my failed experiences so as to avoid making mistakes in the future. Listing out and counting all your failures is not a good thing, not a virtue. Do not think that listing out all your shortcomings is somehow a good thing.

A self-conscious sense of righteousness can be a very narrow road.

There are many people who carry a very strong sense of righteousness, and here he specifically emphasizes "self-conscious" -- the ego feels that it is so righteous, representing the embodiment of justice every day. No matter in any society or any place, stirring up nationalism or ethnic hatred is a very narrow road. This self-conscious sense of righteousness feels that "because I belong to a certain ethnic group, our ethnic group is righteous, everything our ethnic group does is right, and as long as it benefits our entire ethnic group, it is right" -- this kind of righteousness, Seth says very clearly, is a very narrow road. Do not walk this road.

The Pure Beauty and Integrity of Human Nature

If each of you understood and perceived the pure beauty and integrity of your own individuality, just as you try to perceive the beauty of all other natural creatures, then you would allow your own creativity greater reign. There is order in all the elements of nature, and you are a part of them.

This passage is very beautiful. If you recognized the pure beauty and integrity of your own human nature, just as you understand the pure beauty and integrity of other creatures in the natural world, then you would allow your own creativity greater reign — you would believe in yourself more, trust yourself more, and also trust other people, because other people are just like you; they too possess the pure beauty and integrity of human nature. When you believe in yourself and affirm yourself, you simultaneously affirm other people. When you deny others, when you say other people are all bad, all harboring ill intentions, in denying others you are actually also denying yourself, and also denying the whole of human nature and even the entire species, and by extension denying all other species in the world.

You should affirm its beauty, affirm its pure beauty and integrity. If you have this understanding, you will occupy a very correct and proper position in this society — giving play to your own creativity, letting creativity take the lead, letting it guide you to where you should go. If everyone released and gave play to their own creativity in this society, then our society would be very beautiful.

There is order in all the elements of nature, and we humans are only a part of nature.

The greater scope of the seasons represents the scope that your souls reach.

The scope that is greater than what the changing of the seasons can reach is the scope that your souls reach. Beyond the changing of the seasons, beyond nature, throughout the entire universe — all of this is the scope that our souls can reach.

Turn your eyes away from nature, or try to disentangle yourselves from its involvement, and you will not gain spirituality.

When you do not look at nature, do not look at the material world, and say, "I will not look at this material world; I want to pursue spiritual things" — this material world is too chaotic, full of wars, poverty, and suffering every day; human existence is all suffering; I will not look at this suffering; I will pursue spiritual things — or when you detach yourself and escape from it, going deep into the mountains to practice, finding a secluded place to live a hermit's life, feeling that you are so noble — "I am different from others; I do not get entangled in worldly affairs; I have already transcended the troubles of the mundane world" — he feels that in this way he can obtain the true things of spirituality.

Seth tells him directly: you will not gain spirituality. If you do not engage with society, do not engage with reality, do not cultivate yourself within this society, escape from this society, or refuse to look at the real problems you actually face before you — you simply cannot obtain spirituality; you simply do not know what spirituality is.

Attempting to deny your present life — many people deny their own lives. What kind of people? Monks and nuns. Many people renounce the world, feeling, "I have had enough; I have seen through the illusions of the mortal world; I do not want this life anymore; I am renouncing the world." You will not catch a glimpse of eternal life either.

You think that by leaving ordinary life behind, by denying the mundane life of daily necessities, you will be able to see eternal life and attain immortality? You think you can go to the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, or that when you die you can ascend to heaven? Seth speaks very directly, without leaving any room for ambiguity: no, you simply cannot obtain it through this method. Why?

Because that life is your own unique path, and it provides its own clues for you to follow.

That life is your own unique path. If you leave it, what do you have left? Your own life is your own path; you can only explore through this path, and it will give you clues.

Follow This Path Onward

Let yourself follow this path, keep going along it, and explore within it. You say, I will jump off it, I will not walk this road, I will not go on, all right. I have seen clearly that it is an illusion, that the physical world is all camouflage. I want to pursue the true spiritual world, I will not play with you anymore, all of this is illusion, this physical world is all created by my beliefs, so what more is there for me to keep walking down? What need is there to keep walking down? This is what most people think. Only by abandoning this can I pursue that pure, spiritual, undisturbed spiritual pursuit and life.

But I tell you again, that idea is wrong, it does not exist. Once you leave your present life, there is nothing left, there is no longer any thread of exploration to follow, and there is no longer any road beneath your feet. When you have no road, what are you still exploring? You say, there is no road, so I will explore the road of the psyche. Where is your road of the psyche? Is your road of the psyche not on your present road? Apart from your present road, what road of the psyche do you still have?

You say, wrong, only by leaving my present road can I find the road of the psyche. Then try it: if a child from birth had never walked a single day on the road of real life, had never experienced any of the ordinary worldly life, and from birth was made to live a life cut off from the world, do you think he could find the true truth of life? Could he discover the true meaning of life? Could he become enlightened?

If you think it is the trivialities of the human world that keep you from becoming enlightened, then you have understood it exactly backwards. It is precisely this kind of life in the human world, precisely this kind of worldliness, that allows you to truly realize and experience from within it. This is precisely the path you need for enlightenment, it is precisely a condition you need for enlightenment, it is a material for your enlightenment, it is a course for your learning. If you throw all of this away, then by your logic, a newborn infant, locked away in a place with no contact with people, could become enlightened all by himself?

If you deny that, then why do you deny your present life? If you do not think a child cut off from the world from birth could become enlightened all by himself, then why do you deny your present life in the human world? Do you think that by growing up and then leaving the human world, you can attain enlightenment? Then throw away all the experiences from the earlier part of this life of yours. If you throw them away, can you become enlightened? Just like the example I gave a moment ago, just like a child, without these things can you become enlightened? Then you have understood it exactly in reverse, you are walking on a completely opposite road, and yet you do not know it.

On Zen Poems and Leaving the World to Practice

In this passage I remember a lot of content about Zen, and Seth is very clear in it that Zen is a philosophy of practice that engages with the world. I very much hope everyone will find time to read the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch; I have recommended it several times already. I remember there was a poem in it, a short poem, I forget who wrote it, but it is very interesting. The meaning of that kind of poem is that you run off to a temple and put on the monk's robe, but inside the robe there is no purity. The first line is "The monk's robe originally has no purity⁵¹," so do not think that when you put on the robe, run off to a temple, or retreat into the mountains to practice, you will be able to find purity. Purity is not there, not in the temple, not in the robe; it is in your own heart. If your own heart cannot be still, then no matter what you put on, it cannot be still.

What was the next line? I forget what it was, something about not being stained by the red dust of the world -- that is, your original nature, your spirituality, your true soul, is not stained by the red dust. Even if you stay in the red dust every day, dealing with the daily matters of firewood, rice, oil, and salt, it will not be polluted by these things. Do not think that the red dust is something that pollutes your spirituality; your spirituality simply cannot be polluted by it.

What was the line after that? "The ancient temple with its thousand-year lamp, all of it is the talk of fools in their dreams⁵²." That is, you run off to a temple and think that by facing the ancient lamp and the ancient temple every day, studying these historical scriptures and Buddhist texts, escaping from the things of the human world, you will be able to penetrate the truth of human life? Quite the opposite, that is wrong, all of it is the talk of fools in their dreams. This seems to have been a poem from the discussion of Zen at that time, and it tells you not to leave the world to practice, because those things have no meaning at all.

Seth mentions the same principle here. True masters do not leave, do not live this kind of isolated life and consider that to be practice.

Desire Is the Source of the World

Continuing on, he said:

All That Is, the source of this world, throbs with desire.

It is precisely because of desire that there is throbbing, and because of throbbing that the world we know today was created—not only the visible world, but also the invisible world, creating all worlds, dimensions, and spaces. So All That Is created everything because of this throbbing. Seth deliberately emphasized this, saying even more loudly:

Denying desire will only make you listless.

Even the birth of this world came about because of desire; desire produced the throbbing, and then this world emerged from it. And now, after just a few days of studying spirituality, you begin to deny desire. You feel that desire seems to disturb you, that it is the root of distraction, preventing you from concentrating. You think that if you eliminate desire, you will be able to go further on the spiritual path. Seth says directly: it will only make you listless.

Remember this, be sure to remember: those who deny desire are precisely those who are most easily overwhelmed by desire. The person who denies desire is exactly the one most easily knocked down by desire. Because he is afraid of this desire. Those who fear desire and deny desire are often the ones most easily overwhelmed by desire. If desire posed no threat to a person at all, would he go and deny it? Would he take it seriously? No, he would not. Why don't you go and deny your breathing? Why don't you think of your heartbeat as a kind of desire too? Because it poses no threat to you, you are not afraid of it.

Then why are you afraid of desire? If desire were as normal as your heartbeat, as normal as your blood flow, as normal as every breath you take, why would you be afraid of it? Are you afraid of your breathing? Of course not. Then why are you afraid of desire? Desire is just as natural as breathing; it is the most fundamental thing in your life. When you deny desire, it is like denying breathing, like denying your heartbeat—your whole person immediately becomes unwell, immediately listless. If you have no desire at all, how could you have energy and motivation? Where would your motivation come from?

You say, my motivation is to become a Buddha, I want to practice, I want to ascend to higher levels, to raise my state—is this not also desire? Of course it is also desire. But I am only at the early stage now; later on I will extinguish this desire too. I will no longer want to become a Buddha, I will no longer want to practice; I will just be in this natural state, and then I will have reached a truly desireless state. But compared with those who treat desire as air, as breathing, you are still not as good as those people. Why do you insist on taking a huge detour, only to end up back at the state of an ordinary person's life, treating desire as something very normal, acceptable, and commonplace? This is the simple truth.

From the very beginning, you should think about this question. You cannot wait until you are halfway through your practice before thinking about it. You need to think about what desire really is, whether desire is good or bad. Do not let others influence you, saying that the Buddha already said desire is unacceptable, that you must abstain from desire, keep the precepts, that the precepts are the core, and so on. That is someone else's viewpoint; you need to think about your own for yourself.

The Story of a Monk Who Returned to Lay Life

This section is the last one in this book, and it is very important, very crucial. It is not difficult at all; it is all plain talk, but its depth of thought is very high. It resolves the problems many people face in real life today: whether to do good deeds, whether to help others, how to help others better, how to handle one's own desires, one's relationship with the world and with society, how to conduct oneself in this society in a spiritual way while also living one's life well and making spiritual progress at the same time — this is a process many people have never known how to balance. In this section, Seth explains all of it very clearly.

He says that if you deny it, then you have nothing left, you become listless. And you might say, well, that is fine too, in the end I will have no desires and no demands — no, that is not it. One day you will be defeated by desire.

I remember watching a movie once, though I cannot recall the name. The story took place in a temple in the Tibet region or the Qinghai region. A child was taken in by the monks of the temple when he was very young. This child was extremely intelligent, and from a young age he grasped the Buddhist theories as soon as they were taught, so the masters and monks especially liked him and taught him from early on. He also learned very quickly, became a monk as a child, remained a virgin, and his mind was very calm. Until one day, when he was about seventeen or eighteen, he suddenly saw a girl come into the temple to offer incense. Before that, he had first seen a young woman bring her child to offer incense, and in the middle of it the child got hungry. At that time there was no other way, so the young woman simply opened her clothes and breastfed the child. As he passed by, he saw it — he saw a woman's breast in the state of feeding a child, and for no reason he felt this kind of stirring, and this primal desire arose.

He was in great pain, so he went to his master and said, how could I be like this? A mother feeding her child — how sacred, how loving that is. How could I produce such filthy thoughts? Seeing a woman's snow-white breast, I would have such lowly thoughts. The master looked at him and said nothing, because the master knew he had reached that age.

After a period of time, because he had this thought in mind, he began to pay attention to these things — you see, the more you focus on something, the more that thing appears. A few days later, another girl came to the temple to perform a ritual and offer incense. He took a fancy to that girl. Her brilliant smile in the sunlight, her bearing, that feminine charm — she haunted his dreams, and he could no longer concentrate during morning or evening recitations. Every day he thought of the girl's every smile and frown.

So he went to his master and said, Master, I want to return to lay life. The master said, why? He said, I have been in the temple since I was little, and I have never experienced the things of the human world. Now I cannot calm my mind; my head is full of that girl. Even Shakyamuni, before he became a Buddha, first started a family, married and had children, and only in the end realized the path of renunciation. I have never experienced any of that, and I feel I need to go and try it. The master said, since you want to return to lay life, then return to lay life. Although your spiritual roots are very good and you could have been an excellent successor to the lineage, now that you want to return to lay life, I cannot stop you.

So he returned to lay life. After returning to lay life, he searched everywhere for that girl, and the story after that turned into a love story, and in the end he married the girl and started a family. Many years later, after marrying and starting a family, living this ordinary worldly life, his heart became restless again, and he began to long for the days he had spent in the temple in his youth — the life of single-mindedly turning toward the Buddha, with no distractions, a purely spiritual pursuit. He constantly longed to go back, but here he had a wife and children, and he could not abandon them. In that era, a man was the labor force of the whole family, and if he left, it would be very hard for them to make a living.

Then one time, one of his fellow disciples came to find him and said that the master was about to pass away and wanted to see him, perhaps wanting to pass the mantle to him. This happened to be an opportunity, and he wanted to use it to return to the temple. As he was walking toward the temple, his wife caught up with him — the girl of those years, now his wife and the mother of several children, rode up on horseback and blocked his way, refusing to let him go. She said, why do you want to go back? You left here back then, returned to the human world, found me, and wanted to marry me. Now you want to leave — what is this about? He said very firmly, I must leave, I belong to the Buddha. He spoke a great deal of high-sounding reasoning.

At that point his wife said something very classic: You left the temple back then and returned to the human world; now you are leaving me and returning to the temple. You have never truly understood life, and you do not know at all what spiritual practice is. You think you are a person of spiritual practice, you think you are a person of wisdom, with spiritual roots and wisdom in practice. She said, you have never truly understood life, you are nothing at all. Go, go pursue these so-called things of yours.

That is roughly the story, though I cannot remember the specifics clearly. This story does not prove anything in particular, but it can give many people very deep food for thought. This young monk, in his whole life — at that moment the man stood there stunned, and I cannot remember whether he left or not in the later part of the plot. His wife's words truly struck him and made him begin to reflect on what spiritual practice is, what spirituality is, and what exactly it was that he was pursuing. I have forgotten the name of that movie; perhaps those who have seen it will know it, and you can tell everyone the name in the comments below.

Your Life Is a Unique Microcosm

He said, each of you, your life is both a microcosm and a colossal episode. Your life is like a very condensed microcosm, a microcosm of your entire soul. It reflects not only the entire condensation of your spirituality, but also the condensation of the whole society and the whole era. But at the same time, it is also a very huge episode -- an indispensable piece of music for the whole society and the whole world, and also an important component in the chord of the entire universe. Without you, there would be no chord of this universe, no concerto of the universe. So when he says colossal, colossal means it can be compared with the universe.

At the same time, you, in the same moment, will both die and are eternal. This is a fact. Our physical bodies will die, but our souls are eternal. You are both mortal and eternal.

Providing you with the experience of this conscious formation.

That is, within our memories, our experiences, our consciousness -- our conscious mind, our waking consciousness -- form our experience. And then it opens up a dimension of reality that no one else can access. You open up a world that belongs to you. Others cannot enter your world; your world can only be experienced by you. Because no one can look at existence, look at your own existence, look at the existence of this world from your perspective. Your cognition of the world, the world's cognition of existence, is only seen from your perspective, and your perspective is unique, belonging only to you. Your cognition of your own world must start from your angle, your viewpoint, your thoughts, your experiences, your ideas, your realizations, your emotions, your feelings. These are all yours; no one else can stand in your position and live your life. Your life is unique in the universe, and your life experience is also unique.

He said, besides you, no one can be you. In this world, besides you, who else could be you? Who could stand in your position and live your life?

He said that on other levels there is communication. Although on other levels -- for example, the level of dreams, the deep level during sleep, or on the spiritual level -- you do communicate with others, your experience of existence is entirely original. Your experience of your present existence, that is, the experience and perception of life, is entirely original, entirely creative, entirely unique to you. In this universe there is only this one copy. The universe is vast, it can be boundless, yet in the universe, as your perspective, your experience, your emotions, your realizations, your memories, there is only this one copy. No one will repeat you or be identical to you. Yours is unique.

Spirit Cannot Be Defined, Only Hinted At

Then he went on to say:

No one can write a book from any psychological threshold and give a definition of the psyche, no matter how vast that psychological threshold may be.

He said no one can write a book the way I do and give a definition of the psyche. No one, including me. Seth said I can't do it either, I can't define the psyche. No matter how vast your psychological threshold is, no matter how broad-minded you are, no matter what level of attainment you have reached — even if you have reached the level of the Buddha, reached the state of Buddhahood, and you say, let me give a definition of the psyche, let me define spirit — you can't do it. No one can.

You can only offer some hints. If he can't define it, then what can he do? He offers some hints, some clues, some words, some symbols. Some people offer hints — for example, the Buddha held up a flower and smiled — isn't that a kind of hint? Isn't that a kind of symbol? Much of what appears in your dreams is also symbolic. You can only give hints, telling people roughly what the psyche is like, telling them how to discover their own psyche, how to experience and live their psyche through the events of daily life — but you cannot say what the psyche is.

The words and concepts in this book all represent an inner reality. He said that all the words and concepts in this book are not the thing itself; they all represent that inner reality which he has not spoken aloud. You cannot understand it by grasping the words, by grasping the concepts. Earlier he also said some things about the psyche being this and the psyche being that, approaching it from various angles, but in every case he said: do not cling to these words and concepts; you must understand what inner reality they represent.

He said, they are like piano keys, striking other strings, and I hope those strings will be the strings plucked in each reader's heart. He said, these words and these concepts of mine actually represent their inner reality. It is like when you play the piano, you press the keys, but behind each piano key there is a small hammer, and the hammer strikes the steel wire, strikes the string, and only then does that beautiful sound emerge. He said these words and these concepts are like the keys of a piano; I hope I can pluck the heartstring within each of you, that through these external, hinting, clue-like things of words and concepts, you can be moved by me. This is what Seth most wants to do. He will not tell you what it is, and he cannot tell you what it is; he can only pluck the heartstring within you.

Your Spiritual Roots Are Safe

His writing is so beautiful. He says, each of you now lies reclined in the natural world. Each of you is very much at ease, lying in the natural world as if lying in a cradle, lying there very comfortably. And this natural world itself lies reclined within the inner reality from which nature emerges. Where does nature come from? Nature emerges out of an invisible universe. You lie within nature, and nature lies within the embrace of an invisible universe. The word "reclined" means leaning back and lying down in a very restful, comfortable way -- you lie in nature, and nature lies in the embrace of the universe. This is not only the physical universe; it is the invisible universe.

He says, your spiritual roots are safe. Your spiritual roots, like a tree, draw nourishment for its spirit from the soil of existence. The source of spiritual power is within each person, within the invisible material of personal existence. The roots of your inner spiritual being are safe; they are the same as the source that generated the entire universe -- the whole universe emerges from it, and your roots also come from there, so this itself is safe. Just as a tree obtains nutrients from the soil and nourishes itself, your spirit is also rooted in All That Is, grows out of it, and you will inevitably obtain resources and nourishment from it. This safety comes from this -- it is forever nourished. You do not need to worry about whether it will dry up, whether your spirit will run out of energy or power; it never will. The source of your spiritual power is within each person, coming from something like the soil of spirit, constantly nourishing it.

Nature's expression is rich and lavish; nature's expression is extremely abundant and lavish. And the greater invisible reality from which nature emerges is even richer. And within that multidimensional experience, no one is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or abandoned.

Nature is abundant and lavish, forever abundant and lavish. And the invisible world that gives birth to nature is even more abundant, even more lavish -- certainly, if it were not abundant enough, how could it give birth to this abundant nature? And our roots, the roots of our spirit, are rooted in that greater reality from which nature emerges. Therefore we have energy and power even more abundant, more lavish, more endlessly inexhaustible than nature, and the roots of our spirit are forever nourished. Within multidimensional experience -- multidimensional means transcending our three-dimensional spacetime, multi-dimensional -- within those dimensions, which are the reality where the roots of our spirit reside, no one is ignored. Remember this: no one is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or abandoned. Every person within it is exceedingly precious, unique, and cherished.

A tree does not need to beg the soil or the sun for nourishment. It does not need to plead desperately, saying, O earth, nourish me; O sun, give me sunlight and rain -- it does not need to. Just as you do not need to either. The roots of your spirit are planted in this spiritual soil, and you do not need to beg it every day to nourish you; it will nourish you automatically.

Everything you need can also be obtained in your practical experience.

"Practical" means our three-dimensional world, the things in our real life. Everything you need can be obtained in your real life. You do not need to plead desperately. Many people say, I must chant scriptures every day, I must cultivate, I must keep precepts, I must follow the religious rules; if I do not do these things, I will not receive favor, nourishment, or compassion. How could that be? Does every great tree, every blade of grass, first have to perform a ritual and plead with the earth and the sun to nourish them? If they do not chant scriptures, will the earth and the sun stop nourishing them?

It is the same for every person. If you do not keep precepts, do not chant scriptures, do not do these things, will the universe abandon you? Will it forsake you? Will it despise you? Just because you have desires, you broke a precept, you do not believe in it, you did not treat it with reverence, it abandons you? Then is this still the universe? Is this not a petty person who bears grudges and seeks revenge? You must treat it with reverence before it will treat you well? This is a human idea; this is not at all the idea of the universe or of God. If a god still requires you to treat it with reverence before it will help you, then what kind of god is that? That is a petty person, not even qualified to be a human being.

If you believe you do not deserve nourishment, if you think you are not good enough and do not deserve nourishment -- because you have all kinds of desires, and you are not pure enough, and not loving enough -- if you think you do not deserve nourishment, if you believe your life itself is dangerous, feeling that you must struggle every day, struggle for life, struggle for survival, struggle for everything, and that if you do not struggle others will snatch away your resources and make it impossible for you to truly survive -- if you struggle for life every day, then your own beliefs will make it impossible for you to fully utilize or fully employ the help that is available.

If you have this kind of mindset, you cannot obtain true nourishment or true help. It is not that it does not nourish you; it is that you do not accept it. You feel that this nourishment does not exist, and then you cannot use your own creativity, and you cannot help other people either -- if you cannot even manage your own life well, how can you help others? Therefore you cannot fully utilize the help that is available. This help is available, but you have not used it.

For the most part, since you are alive, you are of course being nourished. Your being alive is itself being nourished; you do not need to obtain more nourishment through some other means. In other words, as he says in his other books, you are graced -- your being alive, your existing, is being graced by the universe, being nourished by the universe. You do not need to be nourished by anything more. The grace the universe gives you, the nourishment the universe gives you, is fully evident simply because you are alive.

You cannot so easily shut off the vitality of your own existence. You cannot easily shut off the vitality of your own existence; you cannot block off the channels through which you receive nourishment by yourself. You say, I have none, no one will nourish me, this world is miserable and dangerous, everyone deceives everyone else, nature is also dangerous, we plunder resources every day and it will take revenge on us -- tsunamis, storms, climate warming, severe weather to take revenge on us. If you are constantly in this kind of mindset, you shut off the vitality of your own existence. You live every day in fear and anxiety, and at the deeper levels of depression, you have what are called flare-ups of squandering your vitality. You are not exerting your vitality in the right places -- in your creativity, in truly resting in the present moment, to exert the creativity and inexhaustible ability you should have. In the deeper flare-ups of depression, you are depressed and remorseful every day, squandering your vitality in your own sense of powerlessness and helplessness.

This word is used very well: "squander" -- wasting desperately; "squander" means to throw away. Desperately wasting your own vitality, wasting it on worry, complaint, self-attack, complaining about others, complaining about the environment, complaining about society -- all of this. You put your energy and vitality into these things, and not into things that are truly valuable, creative, positive, bright, and beautiful, because all you see in your eyes are the bad things.

It often takes more energy than creative pursuits require.

The energy you squander on this kind of depression is far more than the energy you would spend on normal, creative endeavors. Most of the energy of this type of person is wasted on these things, and not put into creativity.

The Universe Is Inclined in Your Direction

He said, you are a part of All That Is, therefore the universe is inclined in your direction. You yourselves are a part of All That Is; the entire universe, All That Is, is created by it, so the entire universe will be inclined toward you. Why? Precisely because you are a part of All That Is. This is where we receive favoritism; there is no way around it, because this is simply your nature.

It is like the passage at the very beginning of the Bible: God so loved the world that he sent his child to help⁵³. Why does he love the world alone? The Bible's explanation is that God made man in his own image⁵⁴, so he loves man all the more. He used an example like that to tell you that the deeper meaning is actually the meaning of this sentence: because you are a part of the universe, you are a part of All That Is, therefore this universe, this All That Is, is inclined toward you. The Bible used a story, a personified approach -- a kind of love that a God has for his own child -- to turn this profound truth into a simple little story for you. Because you look like God, God likes you; because God created you, God loves you; just as you are your parents' child, so your parents love you. He used this method so that everyone could immediately understand that God's love for man is this deep love, like the love of parents for their children. Although this example itself is a bit too shallow, a bit too anthropomorphic, a bit too worldly, the principle within it is not wrong, the emotion is not wrong, the matter is not wrong. The universe is like this toward every one of us; it is inclined toward us, and you receive its grace and favor.

Then it gives to you, gives you thoroughgoing vitality. The vitality of the universe is inexhaustible, that energy. So, abandon that opposite belief. Throw away all those negative beliefs, the kind of thing he mentioned above about erupting in despondency and squandering vitality. Within yourself, within each of you, seek that overflowing feeling of delight. Seek within yourself that kind of joy, the inner joy, your happiness.

Even if it only happens occasionally. For many people this joy does not happen all the time, but it does happen occasionally; everyone has experienced this inner overflowing feeling of joy. What should you do? You encourage the things that cause them to happen. Whatever events or whatever thoughts can make your inner being overflow with this feeling of delight, go do those things, go do them, think in that way. Some are events, some are thoughts. What we often call dharma joy is this feeling -- when you hear some truths about life, the true meaning of life, and it suddenly opens things up for you, as if awakening from a dream, you will have this feeling of joy.

Then listen more, read more; it is very simple. Whatever can bring you a feeling of joy, go do it. Whatever kind of thought can bring you a feeling of joy, go think in that way, draw near to that thought, make that thought your own, and then you will constantly dwell in joy. To put this sentence in the words of Bashar, it is to always pursue the highest joy of your life. Bashar summed it up more directly and more plainly: live according to the highest joy of your life as your guiding principle.

You say my feeling of delight is not as lofty as what you describe, I have not thought about the welfare of humanity or anything like that; my feeling of delight is just finding a handsome guy, I just want to fall in love, I just want to get married, I just want to live a simple little life -- then go live it, then go find it; there is nothing wrong with that. It is not saying that everyone must go be God, that everyone must carry world peace on their own shoulders. That is not what you are being asked to do.

Did Seth not say at the very beginning of this session that you must not get it backwards -- you must stand at your present point in space and time, that is, wherever you are right now, whatever time it is. Only on the premise of maintaining that posture can you bring into play all of your states. You are in your twenties right now, you are a young person right now, in such a stage of social development, in such an era and environment, so do what you should do at this present moment, maintain the posture you should maintain at this present moment. If one day you become the richest person in China or the richest person in the world, then you should do what that richest person should do at that present point -- only then would you consider whether to establish some health research foundation, whether to solve some problem for the whole world; when you have that actual strength and ability at that time, then you should do that thing. If you want to do that thing right now, is that not either madness or foolishness? That can only make you more hopeless, and make you feel even more that you lack actual ability. At this present moment, maintain your present posture, your present state, and then within this state, whatever can make you joyful, make your inner self truly joyful, go do that thing, or those thoughts, go put them into practice.

You Cannot Find Spirituality; You Can Only Explore Your Subjective Reality

He says, you cannot find your spirituality, that is, your soul. You cannot find your soul, and you cannot find your spirituality—if you think of it as some separate, individual thing. If you treat spirituality as a thing, you cannot find it. If you imagine it as something like an exquisite jewel kept in an eternal cabinet, then you will never find it. It is not a thing.

You can only experience the power and vitality of spirituality by exploring the subjective reality that is yours—you can only explore this world that belongs to you, your subjective reality. In other words, only by settling into the world you are in right now, into your life, into your existence, can you experience the power and vitality of spirituality. Because only through this way can it guide you, unerringly and without mistake, to that greater source of existence that transcends both time and space. You may call it the sea of spirituality, or the land of spirituality, or the source of spirituality—whatever you call it. It is a greater source, one that transcends time and space.

How do you get there? It is very simple: by exploring the subjective world that you yourself possess—this is your only way. Explore the life you yourself possess, the world you yourself possess, the experience you yourself possess, and then in this process of exploring, creating, and experiencing, feel and experience the power and vitality of your spirituality. This is your only way to feel it. It is not some thing that you can find; you can only use it, experience it, and feel it. And through this, it will guide you, unerringly and without mistake, to its own greater source, its own greater origin—the source of spirituality, which exists beyond time and space, transcending time and space.

The Sleep-Wake Pattern of Humanity as a Whole

Then Seth said, this session ends, and this book ends. See how clean and neat Seth is, he just ended the book like that. Then he paused for a moment and said:

Because our next one will be a good book.

Look at Seth keeping us in suspense, how interesting. This book is over, but there is an even better book coming next. At this point Rob was being clever, using a bit of reverse psychology, saying, will it? Will there be a good book? You see, he was trying to egg Seth on -- no, not egg him on, it was reverse psychology. He said:

Not long after this session began, I sensed that he was going to bring this nature of the psyche to a close, that he was bringing it to its final stage. Even Jane's voice, as she spoke for him, had something of a summarizing quality to it.

Then Seth said, yes indeed, there will be a good book. Now he began to speak briefly, because this book was already finished, and what followed was just a little tail end, only a few sentences.

He said, the overall posture of humanity is maintained largely by the sleep-wake pattern you have recently mentioned. Each individual, at his or her own present point in time, has a certain posture; what kind of posture does humanity as a whole have right now? What determines it? He said this posture of humanity is maintained by your sleep-wake pattern -- that is, awake during the day, asleep at night, and it is by such a pattern of sleeping and waking that the posture of humanity as a whole is maintained.

Why does he say this? He will explain below. In this manner, one portion of humanity focuses upon your physical reality -- that is, when awake during the day; while at the same time another portion focuses upon inner reality -- and holds a safe foothold, which is during sleep. In the dream state, within the inner world, it holds a safe point. Why is it safe? Because when you are asleep, you no longer face the dangers of the three-dimensional world, so you hold a safe point within the inner world.

And from this foothold of sleep, efforts are made to form an inner pattern for the reality of the next day -- while you are sleeping and dreaming, it is forming an inner pattern for the reality of the next day. In other words, your life on the second day is formed by the preparation made in the dreams of the previous night, and it provides a probable rehearsal of future events -- it rehearses in advance the things that may happen the next day. He mentioned earlier that this rehearsal is extremely vast and complex, taking into account every person, every environment, and every event in the world, considered in the most specific and minute detail -- that computational capacity surpasses the range of human imagination, and it is constantly deducing and rehearsing, in the dream state.

Therefore, within the mind of the world -- if there is such a thing as a mind of the world -- here he used the word "mind," if the world has a consciousness. Translating it as "heart" here is actually not very good, because it easily leads to ambiguity. He said, if the world has a consciousness, rather than a brain of the world -- the difference between consciousness and brain he has already discussed many times -- if the world has a consciousness, then a balance is achieved between the reality of the waking state and the sleeping state.

Let us first look at the middle passage. He said their cat was named Willy Two, or Billy, sleeping beside him, but it woke up, stretched, jumped down, and then, while Jane was speaking for Seth, jumped into Jane's lap. Billy sat facing him, looking up at Jane. At this point Rob had to put down his notebook and pick up the cat. As Rob was carrying the cat to the cellar door, Seth said, it is a sweet thing. And what happened in between was inserted into the sentence I just mentioned.

So let us smooth out this sentence. He said, suppose humanity should have a human consciousness, then we could call it the posture that humanity should maintain. The state of maintenance of the posture of humanity as a whole is kept in balance by such a state of waking and sleeping. We humans have the daytime waking state to do things, and at night during sleep we rehearse in dreams what will happen the next day. The consciousness of humanity as a whole is maintained by such a pattern -- the pattern of waking and sleeping. Without the maintenance of such a pattern of waking and sleeping, the consciousness of humanity as a whole could not possibly be sustained.

Why is that? Because when you are sleeping, you need to rehearse the events of the next day. The entire dream is connected to the whole world -- just as when you are awake you live within this world, and all things in this world are connected to one another; but when you are dreaming, you are also connected to the dreams of the whole world, just like a dream world. Within this, you deduce your own part, each person deduces his or her own part, and then the whole world has an overall part. In this process, each person exchanges information and communicates with the people around them in the dream state, and only then is the whole world's next day rehearsed.

For you, it may simply be the things that happen to you. But are the things that happen to you not also a small part of what happens in the whole world? Is the world not determined by what happens every day to these seven billion-plus people? Does what these seven billion-plus people do the next day not determine what will happen in the world the next day? Yes. So what we need to do in our dreams is that the process of rehearsing these things in our dreams to prepare for the possibilities of the next day determines what will happen the next day. In the dream state, all the people of the world communicate in their dreams and carry out a rehearsal.

At this point, do not be overly literal. You might say, how can that be -- the Eastern and Western Hemispheres have time differences, and not everyone sleeps at the same time; when Chinese people are awake, Americans are asleep, so how do they communicate? Well, that is because they communicate less, so their views are often inconsistent, which is quite normal. I am joking, of course. What I mean is, do not be overly literal; what he is talking about is the overall pattern and the general framework.

He said, the sleeping portion of humanity represents the unconscious activity of the brain in the body. Sleep is not controlled by our brain; unless you can have conscious dreams -- through certain practices, you can enter the dream state with consciousness -- otherwise, your dreams are not controlled by your brain. Especially when you consider the overall activities of humanity on any given day, that activity of the brain is completely unconscious. You simply cannot imagine any connection between the unconscious activity of the brain during dreaming and the overall activities of humanity the next day. So that sleeping portion is, for you, unconscious, because you simply cannot perceive any relationship between it and the overall life and overall activities of humanity.

Those conscious activities, that is, the activities of the daytime, have an unconscious foundation -- the unconscious foundation of nighttime sleep determines what will be done during the daytime of the next day. If you think of a group world-brain, if you imagine there is a world brain, suppose there is such a virtual, simulated brain of the whole world, arranging the actions of every person in the world, what each person should do during the day -- suppose such a thing existed, then it would have to have a pattern of waking and sleeping. He said earlier that the individual level already has waking and sleeping, and here he has jumped to the level of the whole human world to discuss the issue, because the theme of this chapter is the universe and the psyche, and it inevitably touches upon the theme of the world.

He said, if you imagine the daily actions of the group as a giant -- if we imagine humanity as a whole as a giant, and the name of this giant is humanity -- then all the actions of all the people in this world every day can be seen as small branches of the actions of this giant. Then all those conscious actions, all those conscious actions of our waking state, have an unconscious version. Just as each of our daily actions is formed by the dreams of the previous night, by the deduction and rehearsal of probabilities in the dream state. If the whole world forms a brain, if the actions of humanity as a whole are regarded as the actions of a giant, then the conscious actions of this giant in its waking state -- the things done by the human world during the day, the real events that occur in the physical world -- must necessarily have an unconscious version, and a great communication within the inner nervous system must necessarily occur. Just like a human being, there must necessarily be an unconscious version like a dream. Extending from the individual to humanity as a whole, it is all this same process. Each of us humans, with every other person, in the inner spiritual world, has a vast communication that surpasses our imagination, and it necessarily occurs.

One portion of such a brain must always be awake. Not the whole thing, but one portion of the brain must always be awake; it must know what it is doing. And another portion must engage in unconscious activity, controlling the matters of the dream state.

This is how our world comes into being. If we consider it from the perspective of human behavior, what patterns can be found in human actions? He tells you: the daily daytime actions of human society all have an unconscious activity within them. All the daytime activities of human society are determined by the shared dream of humanity as a whole -- let us put it this way -- by a shared unconscious activity.

Because the cultural knowledge of the different parts of the world is given to the sleeping portion of the entire organism, different cultures are thus able to communicate. There are various cultures and knowledge in the world, and then during sleep, they are given to the sleeping world consciousness. Suppose the world is a giant, and the world has a brain; one portion of this brain processes the daytime behavior of humanity, and another portion processes all the dreams of humanity. And our cultures and knowledge all communicate within the dream state; different cultures communicate within the dream state.

So while they sleep, the waking portion adds the events of the day to the world's memory, and works out the probabilities of the future. Here he should be referring to the waking nations. The Earth has time differences; while one portion is sleeping, another portion is awake. The waking portion adds the things done during the day to the world's memory, becoming the world's history -- what happened where, where a war began, where a scientific achievement was made, and so on. These things are added to the world's memory and become the world's history. And the probabilities of the future are based on what has already happened -- the probabilities of the future are all rehearsed and practiced in part, just as it is for each of us as individuals. Each person also rehearses all the probabilities and chooses from among them the most advantageous way to develop. It is the same for humanity as a whole.

On this point, we will not expand here, because he has a dedicated book that will discuss this. He said, I will give you more, and when I ended the session too early, I forgot about this matter.

Tonight Ruburt's hesitation was a misplaced nostalgia for the ending of our book. At the beginning of this session they waited twenty minutes, and Seth was explaining why Ruburt was so slow to speak through him. Seth said, the reason Ruburt was so slow to come through, so slow to let Seth speak through him, and they waited twenty minutes, was that Ruburt realized that today this book would be ending, and Ruburt did not want to end this book, so he misplaced his attachment to this book -- you see, this "attachment" is quite interesting -- and wanted to delay it. If it does not begin, then perhaps it will not have to end? So at the beginning he kept delaying.

Seth said, you two are indeed beginning a newer, more productive, more surprising, and quite special period in your lives. And I bid you good evening. He said you are about to enter a highly productive period -- yes, after this book, Seth went on to write many more books, including The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events⁵⁵, and the most famous Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, and later The Magical Approach and The Way Toward Health, all of which came after this book. Seth thanks you very much, and wishes you good evening.

On the Group World's Mind and Brain

Seth's comments on the "mind-brain" of the group world -- actually this part is not translated very well. You could also understand it as his comments on a world having a consciousness, a world having a brain, just as a person has their own consciousness and their own brain. If you translate it as "mind," it is very hard for people to understand what a world-mind means; you could translate it as the world's consciousness, which is easier to understand. Seth's comments on the consciousness and brain of the entire group world -- a certain society, a certain group, this is called a group, that is, the collective outside the individual, which could be the whole world's, or a certain country's, or a certain group's, a certain community's, a certain mass organization's -- his comments on the consciousness and brain of this kind of group world. He considers that the consciousness and brain are like a person's consciousness and a person's brain; it is an analogy.

As for this comment, it shows precisely that Seth was completely ready and eager to begin some new material. And although he mentioned a new book, Jane and I had no idea that he would begin this new book within a few weeks -- and that is exactly what happened.

After that there is a note. In the fall of 1977, the first volume of The "Unknown" Reality was published⁵⁶. And at the time of that publication, Seth had already been working on his most recent book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events⁵⁵, and had already begun dictating this book in the fall. This book is actually the one that was teased and foreshadowed at the very end of The Nature of the Psyche. Later on he would discuss, from the perspective of society and the whole world, what the essence of group events is; then what role the individual plays in these group events, and what the relationship is between the individual and group events. So this book deals more with social phenomena -- he had already extended from the individual to society.

Although The Nature of the Psyche had not yet been typed up, and he was still writing the notes for the second volume of The "Unknown" Reality⁵⁷, you can see that the notes for The "Unknown" Reality⁵⁷ consumed a considerable amount of Rob's energy. It is understandable, then, that his writing on William James also developed into a book called The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher⁵⁸. Therefore, while Seth was dictating The Nature of the Psyche, Jane, on her own -- without anyone's help -- produced Paul Cezanne's World View⁵⁹ and this book on James.

So then, all the creativity mentioned in this note truly proved its value. What value? Evidence of spiritual abundance and ability. So, Jane certainly demonstrated in her own way that attribute -- evidence of spiritual abundance and ability -- an attribute equal to it, yet one that is innate in every person. Everyone has this kind of spiritual abundance, spiritual creativity, and ability, all waiting to be utilized.

What Rob means in this passage is that while Jane was dictating The Nature of the Psyche, she wrote two books, and at the same time as she was transmitting and dictating The Nature of the Psyche, she was also writing these two books. Rob's point is that Jane used her own actual actions to prove how powerful our spiritual creativity is -- you see, while she was doing this, she could still write two books. This kind of spiritual creativity is very powerful, rich and abundant, inexhaustible. The abundance of this ability fully embodies its attribute -- spiritual ability is inexhaustible. And this ability, everyone has it, it is innate, but it is just waiting for us to utilize it, waiting for us to use our own spiritual power in our own lives, to open up a wonderful life of our own, to create, to experience.

As for this book The Nature of the Psyche, our reading has now come to a complete end. After this, we will continue with The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events⁵⁵. There may be a period of rest in between, to give everyone time to digest and to feel.

注释与核实

1. Source: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, "Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley" (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/208/) ↩

2. Source: Wikipedia, "Buddhas of Bamiyan" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan) ↩

3. Source: Guangming Daily, "The Origin, Connotation, and Evolution of 'Grasping with Both Hands'" (https://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2011-02/23/nw.D110000gmrb_20110223_5-11.htm) ↩

4. Source: Wikipedia, "Klein bottle" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. Source: The Bible, Genesis 1:3 (Chinese Union Version) (https://cnbible.com/genesis/1-3.htm) ↩

9. Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), "Meet the Constants" (https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/meet-constants) ↩

10. Source: American Physical Society, "September, 1905: Energy and Mass are Equivalent" (https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2005/04/september-1905-energy-mass-equivalent) ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. Source: International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), "Periodic Table of Elements" (https://iupac.org/what-we-do/periodic-table-of-elements/) ↩

13. According to Mike's original words, "survival of the fittest was proposed by Darwin's theory of evolution"; upon verification, it should be "the phrase 'survival of the fittest' was coined by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer in 1864 in Principles of Biology, and Darwin later borrowed the phrase in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Survival of the Fittest," https://www.britannica.com/science/survival-of-the-fittest) ↩

14. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Survival of the Fittest" (https://www.britannica.com/science/survival-of-the-fittest) ↩ ↩²

15. This claim could not be verified. ↩

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

17. This claim could not be verified. ↩

18. Source: Wikipedia, "Diamond Sutra" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E9%87%91%E5%89%9B%E7%B6%93) ↩

19. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Big-bang model" (https://www.britannica.com/science/big-bang-model) ↩

20. Source: NASA, "Hubble Cosmological Redshift" (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behind-the-discoveries/hubble-cosmological-redshift/) ↩

21. Source: Wikipedia, "Shanghan Lun" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghan_Lun) ↩

22. According to Mike's original words, "because Western medicine's anatomical studies are all on corpses, all after death or even long after death, soaked in formalin for a long time"; upon verification, it should be "Western medical anatomy does not study only formalin-preserved corpses—fixed-cadaver dissection remains the foundation of basic teaching, but 'living anatomy' (anatomia in vivo), represented by ultrasound and imaging, has entered medical school curricula, complementing rather than replacing cadaveric dissection (anatomia in mortuis)." (Source: Kefala-Karli et al., "Introduction of ultrasound-based living anatomy into the medical curriculum: a survey on medical students' perceptions," The Ultrasound Journal, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13089-021-00247-1) ↩

23. Source: Wikipedia, "Flower Sermon" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Sermon) ↩

24. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Platform Sutra" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Platform-Sutra) ↩

25. According to Mike's original words, "not long after a beaver is born, once it grows up, it will build a dam in the river to catch fish"; upon verification, it should be "beavers are herbivores and do not eat fish; they build dams to create deep, still ponds for protection from predators, to build lodges with underwater entrances, and to store winter food underwater, not to catch fish." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Why Do Beavers Build Dams?", https://www.britannica.com/science/Why-Do-Beavers-Build-Dams) ↩

26. This claim could not be verified. ↩

27. This claim could not be verified. ↩

28. According to Mike's original words, "in the 1960s, a student at Princeton University got an opportunity to interview Einstein"; upon verification, it should be "Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, so it would have been impossible for a Princeton University student to interview him in the 1960s." (Source: Wikipedia, "Albert Einstein," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) ↩

29. This claim could not be verified. ↩

30. Source: National Park Service (NPS), "The Plight of Aspen: Emerging as a Beneficiary of Wolf Restoration on Yellowstone's Northern Range" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-plight-of-aspen.htm) ↩

31. This claim could not be verified. ↩

32. According to Mike's original words, "in ancient times this kind of thing was called 'qi ren you tian'"; upon verification, it should be "the idiom is 'qi ren you tian' (not 'qi ren you tian'), from Liezi, 'Tian Rui': 'There was a man in the state of Qi who worried that the sky would collapse and the earth would sink, leaving his body with no place to rest, and he could neither eat nor sleep.' It is a metaphor for groundless, unnecessary worry." (Source: Lie Yukou, Liezi, "Tian Rui," https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%9D%9E%E4%BA%BA%E5%BF%A7%E5%A4%A9) ↩

33. Source: Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962" (https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis) ↩

34. This claim could not be verified. ↩

35. This claim could not be verified. ↩

36. Source: Congressional Research Service, "An Overview of the Corporate Income Tax System" (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47519) ↩

37. According to Mike's original words, "in 1970, by today's standards, every person at that time was poor, all below the poverty line."; upon verification, it should be "measured by China's current rural poverty standard (2010 prices), at the end of 1978 the rural poor population was 770 million and the rural poverty incidence was 97.5%, meaning that on the eve of reform and opening up the vast majority (but not all) of the population was below the poverty line by today's standard, and there was no corresponding official poverty statistic for 1970." (Source: National Bureau of Statistics, "Poverty Alleviation and Development Forge Ahead with Strong Force, Historic Major Achievements in Poverty Reduction—Report Series on the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China, No. 15," https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202302/t20230203_1900412.html) ↩

38. Source: China Daily, "China's per capita GDP exceeds $10,000; overseas netizens: extraordinary achievement, amazing" (https://china.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202001/17/WS5e2156c1a3107bb6b579a862.html) ↩

39. Source: Wikipedia, "Tian Dao (Mainland Chinese TV series)" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%A4%A9%E9%81%93_(%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8%E9%9B%BB%E8%A6%96%E5%8A%87)) ↩

40. This claim could not be verified. ↩

41. According to Mike's original words, "the Soviet Union in 1989, because of this massive, prolonged arms race, decades of arms race, was directly dragged down and collapsed, ultimately leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union"; upon verification, it should be "the dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred in December 1991 (Belovezh Accords on December 8, Gorbachev's resignation on December 25, and the formal cessation of the Soviet Union's existence on December 26), not 1989; the economic burden of the long-term arms race is only one of the causes cited by historians, not the universally accepted sole direct cause." (Source: Wikipedia, "Dissolution of the Soviet Union," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union) ↩

42. This claim could not be verified. ↩

43. Source: Wikipedia, "Ming Dynasty Stories" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%98%8E%E6%9C%9D%E9%82%A3%E4%BA%9B%E4%BA%8B%E5%85%92) ↩

44. According to Mike's original words, "he didn't even have a proper name, Zhu Chongba, ranked eighth—his father and mother starved to death"; upon verification, it should be "Zhu Yuanzhang's childhood name was 'Zhu Chongba' (not 'Zhu Chongba'), so named because he was the eighth among his generation in the family; in the fourth year of Zhizheng (1344), a severe drought struck northern Huai, and his father Zhu Shizhen, mother Chen, and eldest brother died successively from famine and plague." (Source: Wikipedia, "Zhu Yuanzhang," https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%B1%E5%85%83%E7%92%8B) ↩

45. According to Mike's original words, "the Yuan dynasty was the descendants of Kublai Khan and Genghis Khan, who at the time occupied not only all of China's territory but also directly fought their way across most of Europe"; upon verification, it should be "the Yuan dynasty established by Kublai Khan was only one of the four major divisions of the Mongol Empire after its split (the others being the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate, and the Ilkhanate), and it did not itself reach Europe; the Mongol western campaigns advanced only as far as Poland and Hungary, then withdrew eastward in 1242, and Western Europe was never invaded or occupied." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Mongolian invasion–1242," https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mongolian-invasion) ↩

46. Source: Wikipedia, "Haijin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin) ↩

47. According to Mike's original words, "after Zheng He's six voyages to the Western Ocean, the late Ming dynasty prohibited anyone from going to sea for trade"; upon verification, it should be "Zheng He made seven voyages to the Western Ocean (1405–1433), and the late Ming dynasty did not prohibit all private maritime trade—in the first year of Longqing (1567), Emperor Muzong accepted the petition of Fujian governor Tu Zemin to lift the maritime ban, opening Zhangzhou's Yuegang to allow private merchants to trade in the Eastern and Western Oceans, known as the 'Longqing Opening.'" (Source: Wikipedia, "Longqing Opening," https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9A%86%E5%BA%86%E5%BC%80%E5%85%B3) ↩

48. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "European exploration" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-exploration) ↩

49. According to Mike's original words, "the Eastern Depot, Western Depot, and Embroidered Uniform Guard—many of them were for catching corrupt officials"; upon verification, it should be "the factory guards (Embroidered Uniform Guard, Eastern Depot, Western Depot) were secret police agencies directly under the emperor, established to serve as the emperor's personal troops and to spy on the words and deeds of subjects, monitor the loyalty of officials and signs of rebellion in order to strengthen imperial power, rather than primarily to investigate corruption; anti-corruption was at most a byproduct of their surveillance activities." (Source: Wikipedia, "Embroidered Uniform Guard," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidered_Uniform_Guard) ↩

50. Source: LAist, "LA Councilman Jose Huizar Arrested By FBI, Accused Of Leading 'Criminal Enterprise' From City Hall" (https://laist.com/news/la-councilman-jose-huizar-arrested-by-fbi-amid-city-hall-corruption-probe) ↩

51. This claim could not be verified. ↩

52. This claim could not be verified. ↩

53. This claim could not be verified. ↩

54. Source: The Bible, Genesis 1:27 (Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation) (https://www.biblestudytools.com/cuvs/chuangshiji/1-27.html) ↩

55. Source: Jane Roberts, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events: A Seth Book (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601893/the-individual-and-the-nature-of-mass-events-by-jane-roberts-notes-and-cover-art-by-robert-f-butts/) ↩ ↩² ↩³

56. Source: Wikipedia, "Bibliography of Jane Roberts" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Jane_Roberts) ↩

57. Source: Jane Roberts, The Unknown Reality, Volume One (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601894/the-unknown-reality-volume-one-by-jane-roberts-notes-and-cover-art-by-robert-f-butts/) ↩ ↩²

58. Source: Jane Roberts, The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James (1978, Prentice-Hall) (https://archive.org/details/afterdeathjourna0000robe) ↩

59. This claim could not be verified. ↩