Mike's commentary · The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 4

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

Introduction

This chapter discusses the relationship between spirituality and gender and sexuality. Seth points out that the soul itself is neither male nor female, and that each person is essentially bisexual; gender distinctions come mainly from acquired cultural and social beliefs, the biological significance of sex is only a method of reproduction, and the capacities of the two sexes are interchangeable apart from procreation. He also explains that love and sex are not the same thing, and that both homosexuality and heterosexuality are natural expressions of the bisexual essence; cooperation based on love is the condition that allows human society to continue, and he touches on the second puberty of old age and its relationship to repression and illness.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The soul itself is neither male nor female; each person is essentially bisexual.
• Gender distinctions come mainly from acquired cultural and social beliefs; apart from reproduction, the capacities of the two sexes can be completely interchanged.
• Sex is not only for reproduction; sexual activity itself is also one expression of enjoyment and love; love and sex need not be the same thing.
• Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both natural expressions of the human bisexual nature.
• Cooperation is built upon love, and the human bisexual nature provides the basis for social cooperation beyond the family.

Main Text

The Myth of Gender — First There Was the Person, Then There Were Men and Women

The title of Chapter Four is "The Relationship of the Psyche to Sexual Elements, He and She — She and He" — here one "she" with the female radical, one "he" with the male radical. Actually, a better translation of this title would be: The Relationship of the Soul to Sexual Elements, Man and Woman, Woman and Man — that would be easier to understand.

Session 765

This session is Session 765 of the book, held on Monday, February 2, 1976, at 9:23 p.m.¹ At the very start of the session, Seth said that the title of Chapter Four is "The Relationship of the Psyche and the Sexual Elements." Then he said:

Distorted concepts about sexuality prevent many people from attaining close connection with inner experience.

This is what he discussed in the previous session: when people are exploring inner experience, distorted concepts about sexuality -- people feel that sex itself is evil, dirty -- will stop them from continuing to explore. Yet these inner experiences are constantly surging beneath ordinary consciousness. They are always there; if you do not observe them, do not explore them, they are still there.

So, looking at the relationship between the psyche (that is, spirituality) and gender is a good idea. Let us look at what this relationship actually is.

The Psyche Is Neither Male Nor Female, Yet Is Born Within Male and Female

Seth said that this psyche -- the soul -- is itself neither female nor male. Here he used the phrase "neither female nor male," which is very interesting. It reminds me of the distinction in Buddhism between "oneness" and "non-duality."² What he uses here is the "non-dual" formulation: non-dual means he is neither of the two sides -- neither this nor that. Whereas "one" means he is exactly this one thing. So Seth uses the "non-dual" formulation: neither male nor female.

Yet in our traditional belief systems, we usually think of the psyche as female. Why? Because, you see, in ancient times, all creation myths, the era of primitive early humans, were centered on goddesses. China was the same. I am talking about ancient times -- not after Christianity and other religions emerged; those had already changed into a male-dominated society, including God creating man and so on. At the very beginning, in the very ancient times, before there was writing or language, in all of humanity's myths and legends, goddesses were central, and the artworks they created were also centered on goddesses.

In that framework, daytime and waking consciousness were considered male characteristics, and the sun was also male; while night, the moon, and dreaming consciousness were considered female and passive. Ancient China was the same: this yin-yang division separated male and female, and so did qian and kun.³ In the same way, aggressiveness was usually considered a fiercely assertive self-affirming action, male-centered; while the female element was considered the nurturing principle -- the female was nourishing, cultivating, nurturing.

Seth said that in essence, truly speaking, you first have to be a person, and only then can there be male and female. If there is not even a person, how can the differentiation of male and female emerge? That is, from the yin-yang perspective, the Dao gives birth to the One; before the One has emerged, how can the Two Modes be born? Where would yin and yang come from? So fundamentally there must first be a person, and only then are there men and women. Each of you is first an independent individual, and only then, through biological characteristics, can you distinguish individuals with definite gender; only then can you say you are a man or a woman.

Because of the particular focus you have, you attach far too much significance to male and female, and you distinguish male and female especially sharply.

The Analogy of Hands and Feet

Then Seth gave an example, a counterexample. He said your hands and feet have different functions; what hands do and what feet do are completely different. If you wanted to focus attention on their different behaviors, you could also build an entire culture based on their different abilities, functions, or characteristics -- a culture of "hands versus feet." Yet hands and feet are obviously equipment possessed by both sexes. On another level, this analogy is still entirely apt.

What this example is meant to show is this: humanity currently distinguishes people by sexual characteristics -- male sexual organs and female sexual organs are different, and we use this to distinguish whether you are male or female. But the human hand and foot are also different organs; why not distinguish humans by the difference between hands and feet? The problem is that both men and women have hands and feet, so you cannot use that to distinguish them. He gives this example to show that male organs and female organs are only biological differences, just like the division of labor between hands and feet. Yet humans do not divide people by hands and feet; they only see the difference between male and female sexual organs, and then classify it as a difference in personhood or in kind.

Then he repeatedly emphasized that "the psyche is male and female, female and male" -- why he says it twice is meaningful: within the male there is a female element, and within the female there is also a male element. Any person, from the level of the soul, is androgynous, hermaphroditic. This is consistent with Jung's theory -- that every person has an inner male spirit and an inner female spirit.⁴ If you are familiar with the psychologist Jung's theory, you will know they are consistent.

Seth continued, I realize that from the very beginning you have imposed your own definitions on these terms. What terms? It means that as soon as I say "a person is male and female," your mind produces different definitions and understandings of these two words, and you impose humanity's definitions of male and female onto what I am talking about regarding the psyche.

What Seth wants to emphasize here is this: the psyche is neither male nor female, not male and not female -- it is not "both male and female"; these are two completely different concepts, and you must distinguish between them. The essence of the psyche is neither male nor female. But if I put it that way, you will not know what this soul actually is: if I say the soul is neither male nor female, then what is it? I cannot explain to you that there is a third state beyond gender. So I can only explain it to you this way: your psyche is both male and female, and in this way you can understand. Although you will add humanity's definitions of male and female, and this understanding is not entirely accurate, at least you have some understanding of it. So he said it twice: your psyche -- your soul -- is male and female, and then female and male.

The Biological Meaning of Sex: Merely a Method of Reproduction

Biologically speaking, sexual orientation is merely a method chosen for the propagation of the species. You must remember this: it is only a method. Beyond this, no particular psychological characteristics -- that is, inner psychic characteristics -- are attached to that biological function. That is, the sexual differentiation or sexual orientation of male and female exists for human reproduction; apart from reproduction, these two sexes do not carry any additional meaning or significance. Do not overthink it; do not expand male and female into something more. It is just a method, just a tool.

Seth also said, I fully understand that in your experience, the definite physical and psychological differences do indeed exist -- although I know that sexual differentiation is only for reproduction, I also understand that in your human society, regarding gender -- the male body and the female body -- there are indeed definite psychological differences; that is the current state of affairs. But the characteristics that exist in that way are the result of arrangement and programming. In other words, they are a result of human civilization, a product of culture, rather than something innate to human beings themselves. Humanity's perception of male and female is acquired, not something one is born with. The differentiation of gender is an attribute of later human culture, not something innate.

This is why homosexuality has gradually come to be accepted by society -- people have discovered that the so-called recognition of sexual orientation is not divided by biological male and female organs, but is primarily based on the person's psychological orientation. Since it is more of a social and cultural attribute, and since it is not a biological attribute, it is not innate. So there are many homosexuals -- many boys feel they are girls, many girls feel they are boys, even though biologically this is not the case.

Humanity Has Not Over-Specialized Sexually

So, biologically speaking, is there an essential difference between male and female? Seth said no, not really. He said:

In fact, the vitality of the species was assured precisely because it did not over-specialize sexually.

This statement carries great force. The reason we humans have been able to continue and reproduce up to now is precisely because we have not divided the sexes as specifically as other species -- this is the root of human vitality.

For example, humans have no fixed mating season, no estrus period; they can remain in estrus at all times and can mate at any time. Animals cannot do this. If you are not familiar with animal behavior, if you look into it carefully or watch some animal documentaries, you will know that animals have estrus periods; outside of estrus they will not mate and have no interest in any member of the opposite sex. If it is a beast of prey, if you approach it, it will directly bite you to death; other species also cannot mate -- they will not ovulate, and they will not engage in mating behavior.

Only humans have no estrus period and can reproduce freely. Therefore, when any kind of disaster occurs, this free reproduction is not bound to rigid patterns that might lead to possible extinction. Although human birth numbers are very small -- one or two at a time -- because there is no restriction of an estrus period, when any extreme situation or special environmental change occurs on Earth, humans can still reproduce.

Beyond Mating: Individual Characteristics and Flexibility

The challenges and problems humans face are different from those of other species, so further protective measures are needed; for example, a more flexible mating pattern is one such safeguard. In addition, there is also more variation in individual characteristics and behavior, so no one is trapped in a strict biological role.

Humans also have their own personalities, their individual characteristics. In the matter of mating, humans are more complex than all other species: they need to talk about feelings, about love, about mutual affection, shared aspirations, being able to get along -- everything is required. This is human individuality, human particularity. So humans are not limited merely to a biological role. Look at bulls and cows, rams and ewes -- in our eyes there is no essential difference, just the difference between this one and that one; but the differences between one human and another are enormous.

If that were true -- if humans only focused on their biological roles -- humanity would never concern itself with anything beyond the theme of physical survival. But this is not the case. We humans also care about philosophy, art, politics, religion, even linguistic matters. If we consider only the physical, only the biological, humans do not need these philosophical and artistic things. Without them, humans could still live perfectly well physically. But if humans could only develop along the pathways connected to biological orientation, they would not even have developed language, let alone religion, art, culture, or society.

In that case, there would also be no men doing so-called "women's work," or women doing "men's work" -- there would be no room for choice in individual behavior.

Misunderstandings About Ancient Times

Seth said that animals are not actually the way you imagine either. Animal behavior has far more latitude than you understand -- in some species the female is responsible for raising the offspring and the male does not; in some species the male is responsible, such as penguins.⁵ Their jobs cannot be swapped. But humans are not like that. Apart from the fact that only women can give birth, in the matter of raising children, a man can also raise a child perfectly well on his own. Although he has no milk, he can raise the child by other means.

Moreover, you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs, and you interpret humanity's past history with the same attitude. We also interpret the ancient periods we are unfamiliar with using humanity's present-day viewpoints.

For example, in your view, it seems that women always took care of the children, fed them, and were forced to stay near the home; meanwhile men were out fighting off enemies or hunting for prey, and the men wandering outside seemed far more curious and aggressive. This is our usual imagination of ancient tribal communities: men hunting and defending against enemies, women staying home with the children and picking fruit. But this is not how it was.

Seth made a humorous joke: "Children were not born in litters." Humans do not give birth to a dozen children at once, like piglets or puppies. So the families of communal humans were far more democratic groups than you assume; men and women worked side by side. In that ancient period, children learned to hunt from both parents -- from father and from mother, not only from the father. Women also went out hunting; they just stopped along the way to nurse.

The most essential difference between humans and domesticated animals is that humans have no ritualization in sexual behavior. If you do not know much about biology, you may not understand what he is saying. Animals have very strong ritual and ritualization in sexual behavior -- many people say humans should have a sense of ritual, like anniversaries, Valentine's Day, yearly commemorations; that is something humans made up themselves. In fact, the ritualization of human sexual behavior is far less than that of animals. I will not go into specific examples; you can look into the mating behavior of living creatures. Search for it and you will know: they are extremely ritualistic, with specific times and specific places. If you understand fish migration, many fish swim thousands of kilometers back to a specific place before they can mate and spawn,⁶ and they also need a specific environment, temperature, and time; at other times they will not spawn. Humans are the least ritualistic -- anytime, anywhere -- and this is an advantage of human evolution.

Apart from Childbearing, the Abilities of the Two Sexes Are Completely Interchangeable

So, apart from the fact that men cannot bear children, the abilities of the two sexes are completely interchangeable. Men are usually heavier, and in some respects physically stronger, with more of a sense of strength; while women are lighter and can run somewhat faster -- because they often have to run while carrying children, so they need to be lighter. Of course, even so there are still variations; it is not absolute. Some women are bigger and stronger than men. But women hunted just as well as men -- this overturns many people's misunderstandings; many people think that hunting is definitely something men do better.

He continued, if compassion, kindness, and gentleness were female characteristics, then no man could be kind or compassionate -- because such an emotion would be biologically impossible. If you classify gentleness, goodness, compassion, and sympathy all as female characteristics, that would mean men do not have these emotions. But this is not the case. So he uses this counterexample to prove that the two sexes, apart from giving birth, are completely interchangeable.

If your individuality were programmed by your biological sex, then you would be completely unable to do any behavior not programmed for that sex. A woman could not be a father, and a man could not nurture his own children. Since you are free to do any activity that you think of as divided by sexual orientation, those orientations are cultural, not biological.

This is what we often call "being both father and mother": a mother in a single-parent family both takes on the responsibility of being a mother and also has to teach the child courage, strength, and how to face life -- which is the father's responsibility; a single father raising a child can also raise the child just as well. Some even raise children who are not their own biological children, and they do the same. If you have seen the old Taiwanese film "Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale?"⁷ it is about an old scrap-collecting father who raises his adopted daughter, and in the end the adopted daughter grows up to become a singer. Such cases of a man acting as a mother and raising a child alone are everywhere.

The Dilemma of Creative Talent: Why Male Artists Like to Wear Long Hair

But you imagine men as aggressive, active, logical-minded, inventive, extroverted builders of civilization; you imagine women as passive, intuitive, emotional, nurturing, creative rather than inventive, concerned with maintaining the status quo and disliking change. These views are all incorrect; these are social and cultural labels imposed by humanity. At the same time, you consider the intuitive element to be rather frightening, feeling that intuition in some unknown way could directly blow up or disrupt the known, relatively stable patterns. So we often say "women are too emotional" or "women's intuition is not good" -- these are actually misunderstandings.

Men with creative talent find themselves in a kind of dilemma: their rich emotional creativity directly conflicts with their concept of masculinity. If he is an artist, a man with artistic temperament and creative talent, society will regard him as a woman with male biological characteristics. You say, "How could we think that?" Think carefully: do you not assume all male artists wear ponytails and long hair? When you see a painter, if he does not wear a ponytail, does not wear dreadlocks, does not have long hair, do you not feel he is not a real artist? It may have eased somewhat now, but it is still the case. Men engaged in artistic creation all over the world more or less retain some feminine characteristics on their bodies, such as long hair or a ponytail -- this is a typical feature.

Why does he do this? Now you know the root of it: because he is psychologically in a dilemma, feeling that he is a woman wearing a male outer garment. Why? Because his artistic sensitivity, his emotionality, his feelings are extremely rich -- otherwise he could not enter into artistic creation. Because his emotions are extremely rich and his intuition is sensitive, he feels that he is as emotional as a woman.

The reverse is also true. If you carefully observe female painters and female sculptors, you will find they lean masculine: they wear clothes with studs, wear gender-neutral clothing -- painters especially. They lean neutral, with some masculine features on their bodies. This is a completely similar reversed phenomenon, very interesting.

The Psyche: A Storehouse of Both Male and Female Elements

In your terms, the psyche is a storehouse of various cooperating characteristics, containing both female and male elements. The human psyche contains such a pattern that can be combined in many ways. You classify human abilities, so it seems that you are man or woman, primarily man or woman, and only secondarily human. However, your humanity exists first; your individuality, your personality, gives meaning to your gender, not the other way around.

To put this passage simply: we humans should first have individuality, first have the existence of your humanity, and only then can male and female exist; male and female then give meaning to your humanity. It is not that you are born a boy, so you are a boy, and within the category of humanity, under the role of male, you then have some classifications of your humanity. Seth says it should be reversed: first there is your humanity; do not first say whether you are a boy or a girl; first speak of the person itself -- your essential inner being is a soul, is a psyche.

This is a matter of two levels. From the level of the psyche, you are neither male nor female -- there is no distinction between male and female; neither concept exists; both are attributes of later human culture. From the level of the psyche, you are a psyche, you are a soul, you are a self-aware energy existence, without gender. But because of humanity's shared understanding developed over many years of social development, from the human perspective, the correct understanding should be: you are both male and female. Yet our actual society believes neither that we are neither male nor female, nor that we are both male and female; we believe we are simply male or simply female. These are three levels of understanding.

Gender Division of Labor in the Cave Era: Far Beyond Your Imagination

Seth said that, contrary to the prevailing theories about the past: compared to modern people, those who lived in caves -- similar to the era of Peking Man -- had far less division of labor by gender. This is exactly the opposite of our understanding.

The family of that time was a highly cooperative group. The foundation of early society was cooperation, not competition -- Seth has stated the core of human society: the reason we humans became a social, communal animal, with society, groups, nations, and ethnicities, the foundation of our living together in unity, is cooperation, not competition. Humans first gathered to live together for cooperation; this is the cornerstone of human society. If it were for competition rather than cooperation, human society would never have come into being.

He said that some families gathered together and formed a small social group. In such a group, there were always children of various ages. When a woman was about to give birth, she did the work that could be done in the cave dwelling or nearby, while also looking after other young children -- not only her own children; before giving birth she also looked after other people's children. Women who were not pregnant, including women who had already given birth, went out with the men to hunt or gather food; they fought and worked side by side.

If a mother died, the father took over the mother's responsibilities. The loving and kindly qualities within him were as alive as those within a woman. The father's love for the child was the same as the mother's, not diminished in the slightest. After giving birth, a woman had to nurse, so she took the child with her on the food-gathering journeys; or sometimes she let another nursing woman in the tribe nurse the child for her. Women often joined the hunting party immediately after giving birth -- not as we imagine, resting for a long confinement period; she might rest only briefly and then go. Meanwhile, the father stayed home making clothing from animal hides.

Why was it arranged this way? Because this allowed the men to rest after long periods of hunting. In the later stages of pregnancy, the woman was no longer able to go out hunting, so for those months it was basically the men who went out hunting every day. After the child was born, the mother rested briefly, then handed the child to the father to care for, or took the child with her, nursing along the way; at this time the father needed to rest at home for a while, because over the past months he had been out hunting every day without any rest. This arrangement meant that the adults in the household would not become overly exhausted -- the father would not be worked to death. Although from our present perspective this seems inhumane and cruel, do not forget: he is talking about the ancient era of the cave dwellers; this is how humanity survived and reproduced.

Once children were able to work, they immediately began gathering food or hunting, boys and girls alike. When they were a little older and could gather fruit or do basic work, older children led them, and as their strength increased they went farther and farther: at first picking fruit nearby, later able to catch small animals, little rabbits, and then going farther and farther. Their abilities were trained and improved in this process, and they also had more curiosity, intelligence, and skill -- such qualities cannot be assigned to only one sex.

Ancient Humans Were Not Ignorant of Reproduction

Seth said that if humans had been divided the way you imagine -- men hunting, women staying home caring for the household -- humanity would never have survived. He is introducing ancient history to us from a time-transcending perspective: early human civilization was not at all what we imagine.

He said that you are too accustomed to thinking in mechanical ways, very rigidly. In your view, it seems that ancient people did not understand the relationship between mating and reproduction -- you think that people in ancient times did not know that this kind of mating would lead to pregnancy and birth, and you think this requires learning before it can be known. Modern science discovered that sperm and egg combine to form a fertilized egg, which implants and leads to pregnancy, with birth after 39 weeks,⁸ so modern people feel: only we ourselves are smart enough; primitive tribal people who had not studied this knowledge did not understand that there is a necessary connection between mating and bearing children -- because pregnancy takes ten months, too long a time.

Seth said this is a viewpoint of modern people. Humanity has limited itself: humans think all this knowledge requires language to be transmitted. He said it does not. Even animals understand the importance of their sexual behavior. Animals know that this sexual behavior will continue their offspring; early humans could not possibly have been more ignorant than animals. Even if there was no textbook outlining the entire process from lovemaking to childbirth, the men of that time knew what they were doing, and women understood the relationship between bearing children and sexual behavior. If you think that because pregnancy lasts a long time, nearly a year, women could not understand that children come from sexual intercourse, that would be an extremely foolish thing.

Body knowledge does not require a complex language. In this regard, your verbal interpretation of giving birth is, by certain standards, very limited. In the terms we humans use today, our description of a woman giving birth is "technically correct," but when a child is born, it is born to a pair of parents and at the same time is a child of the earth -- its cells are indeed as much a part of the earth as any tree, any flower, any wave of the sea. This is a human child, yes, that is true; but it is also a descendant involving the entire history of the earth, a new creature. This new child comes not only from its parents, but from the whole gestalt of nature -- the parents themselves once came out of nature as well. This is an event that is both personal and public: in it, the physical elements of the earth are transformed into something personal, and the psyche and the earth cooperate to bring about a birth. This birth is human, but in another way, it is also divine.

Early humans understood those connections better

Historically speaking, early humans, in their own way, understood those connections far better than you do -- the connections between humans and nature, and between humans and the divine. And when they developed language, they first used this language to praise the miracle of life. Because he saw that he was constantly replenishing his own kind, and that all other species were being replenished in the same way, he was discovering the miracle of life in nature, and so he used language to praise it.

No matter how far early humans walked or how fast they ran, they could not exhaust the land. If he came to a desert, he still knew that somewhere there was fertile land, there were oases -- even if finding them was not easy, and he might never find them, he always firmly believed that beyond the desert there was fertile land. This belief was very important. The world itself seemed to have no end. In a way that is extremely difficult for you to understand, this world truly was a boundless world.

For you, the world has shrunk, so you cannot understand that this world is infinite -- that in many parallel space-times, countless earths exist. This is something mentioned in the system of probabilities.

Children come from the womb of a woman, and this is indeed a fact. Humanity recognized death, and many children were stillborn or naturally miscarried. But this was also part of the natural order of things, and in that era it was far easier to accept than it is now. Not all flower seeds that fall on fertile soil can bloom or bear fruit. Those seeds that do not grow return to the earth and form the basis for other life.

Why children come, and why they leave

Seth says that the growth and development of a fetus requires an appropriate form combined with an innate consciousness -- this consciousness of life is innate, and it is our soul. When this spirituality, this soul, combines with an appropriate form of our earth, the conditions for the birth of a healthy child are present. When the conditions are not right, the child will not develop properly, and nature causes it to miscarry. The physical elements then return to the earth and become the basis for other life, just as seeds return to the earth. Only those children who are perfect and in harmony with their time-space environment survive.

So it is not easy for a child to be born from nature. This is what we often call "a human birth is rare" -- for you to be alive in this world, who knows how many times all kinds of conditions had to come together perfectly for your birth to happen.

Here he is talking about miscarriage, natural miscarriage, and stillbirth. If a child is naturally miscarried, it does not mean the child's consciousness is destroyed; it simply did not continue developing in our three-dimensional world. Do not grieve excessively over this matter.

Someone in the YouTube comments asked about something similar, and this is the second time I am talking about it. Many Buddhists, as well as people from other religions and Christianity, frighten mothers who have had miscarriages or stillbirths, telling them they have killed their child's life, telling them the child's spirit will follow them and haunt them, making their whole life difficult. How malicious must the heart of someone who says this be? This girl's own child was miscarried, and the pain in her heart is already beyond words, and then you give her such a vicious curse, telling her she will never have peace for the rest of her life. How sinister and malicious such people are. I will not attack these people anymore; I only want to tell those women or girls who have had a miscarriage, a premature birth, or whose child died before being born: do not worry, there is no such thing, all of that is pure nonsense.

If a child wanted to be born through you, or ultimately died before being born, it has its own will in the matter. It may only have wanted to experience the earlier process of pregnancy; another possibility is that after birth the external environment was not suitable for its growth, and it was not the same as what it had originally envisioned -- perhaps the original plan was one thing, but later it found that conditions had changed, and if it were born at that point, the environment would no longer be the same as what it had originally expected, so it would terminate its own birth. This is all its natural choice. Just as seeds scattered by nature on fertile soil do not all have to sprout, bloom, and bear fruit, there are always some that do not sprout, and that is perfectly normal. It is a normal phenomenon of nature; do not overthink it and frighten yourself half to death.

The tacit understanding between humans and the earth: when the environment is poor, fewer births naturally occur

Seth then gives a further explanation: although humans do not have a mating organ, there is still a close biological relationship between humans and the earth. When climate conditions, food supply, and other factors are favorable, women will naturally become pregnant; when natural conditions are poor, it is very difficult for women to conceive.

If you carefully study the recorded relationship between human reproduction and the natural environment, you can discover a miraculous phenomenon: when the natural environment is poor, the natural human birth rate automatically declines -- without any external factor, it automatically drops. This is a coordinating relationship between humans and nature: when conditions are poor, the survival rate of children who are born will not be very high either, so she automatically miscarries before becoming pregnant or in early pregnancy. This is a natural cyclical coordination between humans and the earth.

Early humans knew in advance about dry seasons, barren seasons, times when food was scarce, or the coming of natural disasters -- this was not known only after the fact; humans knew long before. They had this precognitive ability, and at such times they would automatically change the conception rate as compensation: when the environment was poor, they would have fewer children or none at all. When there is no external interference, animals do the same thing.

Broadly speaking, early humans had a deep sense that everything seemed to reproduce itself -- humans reproduce, and all things in the world reproduce as well -- and this was the first thing that caught his attention. He used what you regard as myths to explain this abundance of nature, yet these myths contained a kind of knowledge that escaped your literal, specific interpretation of sexual matters. Early humans had their own explanations for biological reproduction, and we later people cannot understand what they were describing -- including some early sacrificial activities, primitive cave paintings, and early writing; we do not understand what they were doing. In fact, Seth says, it was more a recognition of nature's self-reproduction: they discovered this matter first, and they felt they had to describe and record it carefully. This went beyond sex itself; he was talking about the reproduction of the natural world, elevating sex to the level of a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. And we later humans cannot understand it, because we have made sex specific and specialized, adding many cultural and social attributes to it, and failing to see that it is one of the attributes of nature. So certain later records were passed down in this way. This knowledge escaped our literal interpretation of sexual matters; it dwells in your psyche, in your spirituality -- it has always been there in the depths of your spirituality, although modern people no longer understand it very well.

Exploring inward: you may discover unexpected things

Seth's final reminder is this: if you have any direct experiential contact with your own spirituality, you are very likely to find yourself encountering a certain kind of event -- when you explore inward into the psyche, you may discover some things that do not quite fit your concepts of your own sexual nature. He gives you an advance warning: when you explore into the depths of your spirituality, you may discover some foundational things that are subversive to you and do not fit your understanding of gender. They have always existed at the bottom layer of your spirituality.

When you discover this, do not be surprised, do not find it strange, and do not say, "So sex or the two genders are actually like this, completely different from my usual understanding of male and female" -- he tells you in advance that this is normal.

The work of writing the book ends here. Afterward he also gave some personal material, which is not part of the content of this session.

This concludes our interpretation of the first part of Chapter Four, where Seth discusses the two sexes, gender, and sexual orientation.

Session 768 The Relationship Between Sex and the Psyche

This session took place at 9:43 p.m. on Monday, March 22, 1976. At the beginning, Rob said that the previous two sessions—Sessions 767 and 766—were very interesting. Although they were not related to this book, both contained material about suicide, which Seth gave after a young friend brought about his own death by suicide. That material should be in the private sessions, which were eventually published too.

Seth began by saying:

Let us continue our fireside chats about sex.

"Fireside chats" were the talks President Roosevelt gave to all Americans over the radio every evening during World War II. As the American president, he used these talks to build people's confidence during the most difficult period. So Roosevelt's fireside chats left a deep impression on many Americans. Here Seth is saying humorously: Tonight, let us continue talking about sex by the fireside, discussing questions about sex. He adds that this is an aside, not part of the book, but if you like, you can put it in the book too.

Humanity's Limited View of Sex

He says that your human beliefs about sex, and the sexual experiences arising from them, cause you to view questions of sex from a very limited perspective, resulting in your limitations. Spirituality's own scope of knowledge is far broader than our human understanding. Changes in consciousness itself, or an individual's attempts to explore inwardly, can easily reveal glimpses of a certain sexual nature that may very well seem evil or unnatural. Seth uses the word "seem"—it actually is not; there is nothing evil about it, and it is not unnatural, but it looks evil and unnatural to you. This is because we humans view it from a very limited perspective.

Even when our social scientists or biologists explore the nature of human sexuality, they do so within the framework of sexual nature as it appears in our three-dimensional world—that is, they explore it within the framework of how the two sexes manifest in the three-dimensional world.

Some entirely natural variations in sexuality—by variations, we mean things outside our traditional understanding, even involving questions of reproduction and procreation—are not yet apparent in human behavior in any culture. Seth says that sexuality itself still contains things that have not manifested in human cultural behavior anywhere, things that are not yet apparent and that we humans have not noticed. These variations appear only on quite subtle levels of your world—in some very small, insignificant places in our world—or in the behavior of species other than your own, meaning certain kinds of behavior in animals. We humans do not yet have a clear understanding of these variations in sexuality.

The Capacity for Reproduction by a Single Individual

Then Seth begins to point out what these variations that humans have not discovered are. Look at what he says—it will make your eyes pop out:

When conditions within your human race require it, it is quite possible for one person to be both the father or mother of a child. In such a case, what you call a spontaneous reversal or transformation will occur.

To put it plainly: When external conditions require it—for example, various changes in the Earth's environment, or disasters affecting humanity, and so on—when such a need arises, humans can reproduce individually. That means one person, whether a man or a woman, can have a child all on their own. This idea goes completely beyond the understanding of all biologists.

But on the level of microorganisms, this process is entirely possible; it is quite normal. Many microorganisms reproduce through single-cell division, through single-cell reproduction, and some organisms beyond the microbial level also reproduce individually, such as earthworms. Moreover, this capacity is inherently endowed within cellular structures; they already have this capacity. Reproduction by a single individual is not an exceptional case in the biological world. Many organisms have this ability. There are many forms of reproduction by a single individual: Some automatically change sex during the reproductive period, while others simply reproduce on their own.

Even in our human world today, some people we consider women can themselves be the fathers of their own children. Throughout history and in contemporary society, reports of such cases have appeared frequently: A woman has male reproductive organs inside her body—we sometimes consider this a disorder or abnormality of sexual development—but her internal male reproductive organs, such as the parts that produce sperm, remain. So outwardly she looks female, but inside her abdominal cavity there are also things that produce sperm. If the conditions are right, she can have sperm and egg unite directly within her own abdominal cavity, without any intercourse or sexual activity as traditionally understood. There are even more examples in history, such as Mary in the Bible, who gave birth to a child all on her own⁹. Just a couple of days ago, I saw another case about a girl who became pregnant and gave birth on her own.

Let us set aside the exceptional and incidental nature of this for now. What Seth is pointing out is that every person actually has this capacity; it is just that in some people it manifests as an exceptional case. Everyone has this capacity.

Rob begins adding a note here. He says that Seth is talking about parthenogenesis—for example, in insects, algae, and so on. There is also artificially induced asexual reproduction, such as stimulating an egg's development through mechanical or chemical means. Then he says that, conversely, some people considered men can also bear children, with the same person serving as the father—this is quite possible; the capacity is right there.

Gender Is Not an Inborn, Clear-Cut Boundary

He says that these male and female, female and male orientations are not as separate as your present experience suggests. We humans make a very clear distinction, with sharply defined boundaries, but in fact they are not so distinctly separate. It is not connected with psychological characteristics in the way you assume—it is not connected with our inner world, meaning our spirituality, psychological activities, and psyche, in the way we think. It is merely something external.

It is not inherently concentrated at a certain age in the way it appears to be. Our gender is relatively apparent only during puberty or young adulthood, while at other times it is not so apparent. So it is not inborn. For example, before puberty arrives, a child does not actually have such a strong awareness of their own gender, and even in appearance you cannot see very obvious differences.

But puberty does arrive, and the time when it arrives varies according to the needs of each race, as well as its conditions and beliefs. The timing of puberty differs from region to region, or among different regions and races on Earth. For some it comes earlier, for others later.

He says:

Throughout your life, you are first a person. You are first an individual, and then only during the period from puberty into adulthood—for one part of your life—do you function as a person capable of reproduction.

The premise is that you are a person; only during one period of your life do you become a person capable of reproduction. During that period when you can reproduce, many factors begin to operate. The stimulation of female and male hormones is intended to make this process appealing to the individuals involved, their tribes, societies, or civilizations—because these changes draw everyone's attention, such as the pronounced changes in female and male sexual characteristics. So under these circumstances, a fairly strong gender identification is important: identifying yourself as a boy or a girl. But before or after this, excessive identification with gender may lead to stereotyped behavior in which the greater needs and abilities of the individuals involved are not allowed to be fulfilled.

What he means is this: During the reproductive period after puberty, when you are capable of having children, it is normal to display your masculinity and femininity. But if you overemphasize this gender differentiation—if you continue to overemphasize your gender after this reproductive period—then you will limit the greater mission and abilities you need to fulfill in this life as an individual who goes beyond being male or female. Why? Because you will keep wearing this hat of gender identification. Wearing it during puberty is perfectly normal; during puberty you need to reproduce, to bear children, to meet the need for human propagation. But if you identify with it excessively, and even in old age still insist, "I am a woman," "I am a man"—there is no point. To take an extreme example: Suppose you are already 90. At that point, does it still mean very much to say you are a man or a woman? The difference is no longer very great.

He says that your value judgments are often deficient; our judgments of value are not comprehensive. If you will not take offense, let me tell you that all natural common sense and all of this have become very complicated—you have made this matter complicated. You cannot separate biology from your own belief systems. You mix biology—here specifically referring to our outward distinction between male and female—with our belief systems, and that interaction is so important. We have attached a great many things related to religion and faith to gender.

The Main Purpose of Sexual Activity Is Enjoyment

He goes on to give an example: If every time we made love it were for the purpose of having children, then long before our present human civilization began, we would already have overrun everything, overflowed our planet, and been engulfed by our own excessive reproduction. So that is not the case; we humans do not make love necessarily to have children. Sexual activity itself is also intended for enjoyment, as an expression of sheer overflowing passion—this is one of the primary expressions of sexual activity.

He gives another example: A woman will often feel that right in the middle of her menstrual period—when she is menstruating—is when she is least likely to become pregnant. We all know that it is impossible to become pregnant during menstruation, yet she is at her most sexually active then. An honest woman, if she is not too constrained by culture and morality, if she is relatively open-minded, will tell you that during that time her sexual desire is actually strongest. During a time when she clearly cannot reproduce, she instead has very strong desires. This example proves once again that human sexual activity is not aimed at reproduction.

But here all the taboos against sexual relations come into play, particularly in so-called indigenous cultures—the more traditional the place, the stronger the taboo. What taboo? That you cannot make love while a woman is menstruating, during her period. There is a whole series of taboos to frighten both men and women. Men are frightened by being told: If you make love to this bleeding woman at this time, you will certainly bring bad luck upon yourself. You will have bad luck—for a while in milder cases, for the rest of your life in serious ones. Do you want bad luck? Do you dare try? These solemn threats tell men that at this time women are unclean, impure, and dirty. There are even more threats directed at women: You will get sick at this time; your body is at its weakest, your uterine lining is shedding, and you are most susceptible to infection by germs and viruses. One careless moment and you will get sick. Then they list a whole set of charges—the incidence of pelvic inflammatory disease, cervicitis, and uterine cancer will all increase. In other words, making love at this time is courting death. How promiscuous would you have to be to still be unable to restrain yourself from making love at this time? Both men and women are frightened.

Why do this? If you look at contemporary science, they discovered long ago that normal lovemaking during menstruation does not cause any problems. If you are still influenced by this traditional understanding, then all one can say is that you are under the influence of this traditional indigenous culture. This cultural influence is normal, and you do not need to feel guilty. It is normal to have been influenced by thousands of years of culture. After studying the Seth material, you will know that this is a restriction imposed by humans.

Why does such a thing exist? The reason Seth gives you is this: Within that indigenous culture, that traditional culture, this taboo made a great deal of sense. Because at that time, people wanted to produce more descendants. People in ancient times did not understand science, but they intuitively knew that if sexual relations were restricted to the time when conception was most likely, the population would increase. They knew that pregnancy was less likely during bleeding, and that if sexual relations occurred during bleeding, the population would not increase as much. So ancient humans frightened you: Do not do it during this time; save all your energy for when pregnancy is more likely. Blood was an obvious sign and marker telling you not to do it then. A menstruating woman was less likely to conceive, so her "richness" disappeared—here "richness" refers to a woman's enjoyment of sex. She originally enjoyed it very much, but at that time humans wanted to reproduce, so her enjoyment became less important. She was not allowed to enjoy it—you engage in sexual relations to reproduce, and if you cannot become pregnant or conceive now, then do not enjoy it. Save some of it; keep your sexual desire for when you can have children. Would that not make it easier for you to become pregnant? This was the thinking and psychology of humans in ancient times.

So people frightened women, telling them that during that time they were indeed cursed, and the women themselves felt cursed too. As a result, women came to feel that this thing was very dirty, disgusting, and unclean, and many women still hold this view today. Why? For hundreds and thousands of years, people have kept instilling in them the idea that this is something filthy. If she feels it is filthy, she does not want anyone else to touch her; she even feels disgusted with herself. How could she feel pleasure? She absolutely could not.

The Development of Ego Consciousness and Control of Nature

Seth says, I have spoken before about the development of what you call ego consciousness—that consciousness of the external little ego—and I will say again that it has its own unique rewards. What kinds of rewards? The psychological orientation involved in the development of ego consciousness will lead humanity toward another equally unique consciousness. The development of this ego consciousness, centered on the ego, believing itself different from nature and independently existing between heaven and earth, will bring a unique consciousness different from the ordinary. This self-centered consciousness does not arise naturally in humans; it is something people cultivate through acquired social culture and the development of human society. It is not human nature. The consciousness most people possess now is this ego consciousness, formed by the combined factors of social culture and human heredity; it is not innate. This ego consciousness, which is not innate, is itself also a reward, because it differs from our traditional, innate consciousness as natural human beings. It is unique.

What problems arise when this ego consciousness begins to grow? As ego consciousness develops, the deep inner power that comes from nature—this capacity of nature—must be controlled. Because it needs to demonstrate the little ego's sense of strength, its sense of power. If the little ego's sense of power is not demonstrated, then the ego has no awareness of itself. It needs to prove that it is stronger than everyone else, that it transcends nature. So at this point, all of nature's deep inner power must be controlled, made controllable, made into something its own consciousness can control. In this way, the growing ego consciousness can understand that it is separate from its roots in nature. The characteristic of ego consciousness is this: It does not arise from the natural world; it exists independently. This is what society and culture teach—so the ideas that humanity can conquer nature, that humans struggle against nature, and that the relationship between humans and nature is one of competition and plunder are all taught.

Yet children, who are so essential to humanity, are born one after another from women's wombs, and this is a natural thing. Humans have no choice about this; to reproduce, they must have children. But having children is so natural, and humans have no control over it at all. Only in recent decades has modern science developed many techniques and methods, but in ancient times—never mind ancient times, even just a few decades ago—humans still found having children miraculous. They knew the general outline, but had not studied it deeply enough. So in those ancient times, ego consciousness had developed, but something as natural as having children was like the most unmistakable statement, a piece of evidence, of humanity's roots in nature. Everyone could see that a child had been born. It was undeniable: Nature would bring forth children for people.

What could be done at this point? On the one hand, the growth of ego consciousness required people to keep control in their own hands, to make this force of nature controllable; but on the other hand, they could not control childbirth, so they tried to find ways to control it. For that reason—the need to control nature—humans, not only men but women as well, not just men, placed so many taboos on women's behavior and sexuality. Men wanted to make this matter controllable, and women did too. Both men and women were jointly restricting women's behavior here, because they discovered that as long as women's behavior was restricted, reproduction seemed to be under control.

So they could not let women go out freely and make love or have sexual relations with others; that would be completely beyond control or restriction. Over the long course of human civilization's development, they began to restrict women's behavior, while placing many taboos on sex—you cannot do this, you cannot do that—making sex mysterious, as though it were something shameful. In suppressing his own female elements, you must not forget that everyone has their own female elements within them; a man has his own female elements within him. While suppressing other women, this man is also suppressing the female elements within himself.

Humans tried to gain some psychological distance from the great source of nature. Humans wanted to maintain a certain distance from their roots in nature so that they could cultivate their own ego consciousness. The purpose of all this was to cultivate ego consciousness. Humans tried to lift their heads out of this source, to emerge from it—that is, they felt they could control some part of this too. Although they could not control the entire process of having children, they could control a certain limited part of it. For example, they restricted women's movements and bound their feet so they could not run around—where could you go with bound feet? You could only stay at home. Even if you wanted to go out and have an affair, you could not; you could not even run fast. They also stipulated that women must never go beyond the outer gate or step past the inner door, but could only stay at home, and imposed a whole series of other restrictions. What for? So that, in the matter of human reproduction, it seemed that by controlling women, they had controlled this force of nature, turning reproduction into a controllable form of carrying on the family line and continuing descendants through their own male line.

That is why the system of wives and concubines later developed, also for the purpose of carrying on the family line. No matter how many cultural and social attributes were later added to this purpose, its roots lay in the human need to reproduce in primitive society. It simply kept evolving afterward, with all kinds of cultural labels added, layer upon layer, until the most original thing was covered up. In fact, the fundamental reason was to produce descendants—so things such as the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, feudal codes of conduct, and rules for how women should behave were added. That is where the roots lie.

The Convergence of the Sexes and Excessive Gender Identification

He says that in the world of your present experience, when you reach old age, sexual differences become less apparent. Some women in old age display what you consider male characteristics—facial hair grows, their voices deepen, and their bodies become angular. Some men, after reaching old age, instead have softer voices than before, their faces become smoother, and the contours of their bodies soften. Many old men come to look more and more like old women, with soft, rounded bodies, nothing like young men with defined muscles, broad shoulders, and large frames. Women and men show greater convergence in gender at this time—women become more like men, and men more like women.

Before puberty, when you are a child, you likewise cannot tell them apart. When a little boy and a little girl are very young, if their parents do not dress or style them in distinctive ways, you cannot tell a boy from a girl at a few years old just by looking at their little faces.

You emphasize the importance of this gender identification because, in your view, it seems that a young child must know that they will grow into a man or a woman in the most precise manner. Why do humans emphasize this? Because you want a child to know from an early age: When you grow up, you must become a handsome, imposing, strongly built young man; as for a girl, you must grow up graceful and beautiful, with an S-shaped figure. From childhood, you are taught that you must grow up to look like that—if you do not, you are a failure, you are defective, you do not measure up. Even the smallest details must strictly follow the rules, as though humanity had a standard template for boys and girls, and as long as you do not conform to that standard, your parents are very dissatisfied.

There is so much of this conflict in families—so many parents say, "Look at yourself. Do you look like a girl? Sitting there with your legs spread, is that how a girl should behave?" They say the same kind of thing to boys: "Look at you, acting so girly all day, never going out, looking in the mirror and combing your hair. What kind of man are you?" There is a great deal of this kind of talk. Many parents feel real distress when they talk about this, and they cannot even tell others about that distress. They say, why does my boy look more and more like a girl as he grows up, and why does my girl look more and more like a boy—even the smallest details cannot be overlooked. If the child cannot grow up exactly according to the standard for boys and girls in your mind, you become dissatisfied. Even the slightest deviation is viewed with alarm.

Thus, personal identity and worth are completely subordinated to identification as female or male—who you are has become secondary, while your identification with your gender has become the more important issue. In other words, you must first identify yourself as a boy or a girl; this issue outweighs your understanding of yourself as an individual. If you cannot even clearly distinguish male from female, then do not even talk about being a person; you have already failed utterly as a person. This is how mainstream society thinks today—if you cannot even figure out your own gender and sexual orientation, then there is no point talking about anything else.

Look at how arbitrary this is: Making personal identity less important while placing male or female identification in a very important position. Most people are like this. The discrimination that immediately arises when someone sees a homosexual person is deeply rooted. Unless you have a very close homosexual friend, or someone in your family is homosexual, your understanding of homosexuality will always remain caught in misunderstanding and contempt. We Chinese are especially fond of this hierarchy of contempt—heterosexuals look down on homosexuals.

Everyone expects people of each sex to have completely different characteristics; the more different men and women are, the better. Boys cannot have long hair; long hair is for girls. Boys cannot wear skirts; girls can wear skirts, and of course girls can wear trousers too. The greater the differences in every respect, the better. But in Scotland, it is very common for boys to wear skirts—on formal occasions and even at weddings, boys wear tartan skirts. On many important occasions, even in restaurants, boys wear skirts. It is simply a piece of tartan cloth wrapped around them, in various colors. You are just making a fuss over something unfamiliar; you simply have not seen it. There are many other countries too, but I will not list them one by one.

Therefore, a man who does not feel fully masculine distrusts his own personal identity as a human being. If someone cannot recognize himself as a very manly man—if this man is, as we say, very "girly"—then we develop distrust toward him as a person, distrusting his existence as a human being. Look at how this society's recognition and understanding of gender outweigh its understanding of humanity. If you do not recognize yourself as a man, then you are not even qualified to be a person.

A girl who doubts that she is fully female, who feels she is not so feminine and graceful—for example, some girls naturally dislike wearing skirts and have worn trousers since childhood, like Li Yuchun—is likewise someone many people do not believe in or trust. They distrust the completeness of her humanity, always feeling that something is missing. Her parents look at her with such regret, and others see her with regret too: "Oh, look at this girl. What a pity." What does "what a pity" mean? That she is incomplete, that her humanity is incomplete. You should have been able to be a perfectly proper girl; how did you turn out like this? This is a characteristic of human society.

The Situation of Homosexual People

A lesbian or a gay man stands on very unstable psychological ground. Why is it unstable? Because they themselves feel that these interests and abilities that belong most personally to them—being attracted to the same sex, which they feel is an ability, an interest—have taken them beyond gender differences, into loving their own kind. They believe their love is purer and more untainted, that it has gone beyond the lower level of exploring the external body and entered a higher level of pure emotional communication. But society does not recognize this. Instead, because others regard them as different, they themselves come to feel that they are sexually abnormal, that they are not normal. The way the whole of society looks at them as different makes them feel abnormal too. This is what causes such problems to arise.

So many people do not understand why, in countries that are more developed, freer, and more democratic, tolerance for homosexuality is stronger. Now in the United States, in all 50 states, all homosexuality is legal¹⁰; you can marry any same-sex person, register the marriage, and enjoy all the normal rights and obligations of a married couple. In many Northern European countries, homosexuality was legalized long ago. But in China, and even in some Eastern countries, homosexuality is still not accepted and is not legal. If you are a boy in China and you find a boy to register with — no, the law does not recognize it. So you still have to hide and dodge, still have to enter a fake marriage, not daring to expose yourself, and still have to harm another person of the opposite sex. I know many people who are like this. To conceal their homosexual identity, afraid their family will find out — when they reach marriageable age and do not marry, they find someone for a fake marriage. That person does not know, and naively thinks she is just a girl and marries him, but actually this girl does not like men and does not allow men to touch her; she has her own private romantic partner, who is a girl. But that boy does not know, and is kept in the dark. This is very painful in the middle of it.

Some people think a homosexual is a victim or a sexually abnormal person, and want to change him. At first they still try to change him, and find it simply does not work, and in the end they have to divorce, and it becomes very unpleasant. This is unnecessary. But China's national conditions and society — many countries are like this — are already considered tolerant. In some countries, homosexuals are directly beaten to death; if you dare to expose your identity, you are directly executed, in some Islamic countries and some other countries.

It is the same in the United States. The most famous American film is called Philadelphia¹¹, a story named after that city, starring Tom Hanks¹², and it tells about homosexuality. He is a homosexual, the best lawyer in a law firm, already about to become a partner — being a partner in a law firm is the highest symbol of status. But everyone discovered he was a homosexual. That was probably in the sixties or seventies¹³; at that time people despised and discriminated against homosexuals, though it had not yet become illegal, but the whole society discriminated against them. Tom Hanks played the male homosexual vividly in that film. He was not only a homosexual, but also contracted AIDS. In the end he filed a lawsuit, and no one would take his case; he found a Black lawyer — that Black lawyer's skill was actually quite ordinary, but he had no choice; he had to find someone to take his case. He himself was a lawyer, suing his original law firm. In the end he won the lawsuit, but he had already died. At his funeral, he was told the lawsuit had been won, and he was awarded several million dollars. This is a true historical event, and in that period it became a very classic story.

It is the same now. There are many homosexual communities online, and many online films about homosexuality, but they are limited to the internet and cannot enter the mainstream, because society as a whole still has prejudice against homosexuality.

A man who possesses interests that your culture considers feminine naturally wants to enter the circle that is considered to belong to women. Among homosexuals, many such men with feminine tendencies hope that people will treat them as women. But people do not treat them as women, and still identify them as men through their external physical characteristics. He is very pained, and some people have no choice but to undergo sex reassignment surgery. For example, our famous host Jin Xing underwent sex reassignment surgery¹⁴; previously he was a famous male dancer, and later had surgery and became a woman. Our country's tolerance for homosexuality is still quite high, but the premise is that one must undergo sex reassignment surgery. This includes some famous entertainers, such as the "elder brother" in the Hong Kong entertainment circle, who also jumped from a building; he was also a homosexual¹⁵.

Between his feeling and identity as an individual, and the gender defined by his culture, he experiences intense conflict. His personal feeling and identity consider him a woman, but the society he lives in considers him a man — only considers him a somewhat feminized man, but definitely identifies him as a man. Between this gender that society identifies as male and his self-identification as female, there is a huge conflict. The same situation also applies to women; it is the same.

Sex does not necessarily have to lead to intercourse

Because of your over-exaggerated focus — this refers to our focus on reproduction and procreation, and on gender itself, the identity of male and female, which we over-exaggerate — you are made to believe that you have become relatively blind to other aspects of sex.

First of all, sex itself does not necessarily have to lead to intercourse. Sex does not necessarily have to lead to sexual life; it can also lead to behavior that does not produce children — behavior that is not intercourse.

The activities that you consider lesbian or gay are, biologically or psychologically speaking, very natural expressions of sexuality — whether biologically or psychologically, no matter from which aspect, they are very natural expressions of sexuality.

In a more ideal environment, such activities would prevail to some extent, especially before or after the primary childbearing age. If the environment and conditions were more ideal — suppose homosexuality were legalized worldwide and there were no more discrimination — this kind of thing would prevail. More often it would be before reproductive age, that is, in childhood and adolescence; or in the period after the reproductive phase has passed, after young adulthood, when there is no longer a need for reproduction.

For those readers who like to split hairs, he added: I do not mean that such activities will become mainstream in such periods. But he emphasized that indeed not all sexual activity has procreation as its ultimate goal — biologically that is impossible; how could the same sex reproduce? So homosexuality does not lead to reproductive behavior, and it is not aimed at procreation — homosexuality is a typical example. If all human beings became homosexual, then humanity could not reproduce — and that would also become a catastrophe for this planet.

Therefore, if you will allow the term, humanity is blessed by enjoying many different pathways of sexual expression — different expressions of sexuality are blessed.

The strong focus that now holds sway does indeed hinder the formation of certain kinds of friendship that would not necessarily lead to sexual activity at all. The current mainstream view of society hinders the formation of this kind of friendship between people of the same sex. When two boys or two girls get along very well, it is not necessarily homosexuality — it is just that the two are quite close; it is a certain kind of friendship. Of course it may also develop into homosexuality; we do not deny that, but it may also simply be a very good same-sex relationship.

For example, the best friends we had in childhood were all buddies; northerners call them buddies, Beijingers call them childhood friends, those who grew up together from childhood. This kind of childhood-friend relationship, in Beijing dialect, is "so close it could not be closer," both iron and porcelain. It is the same for girls. When girls are young, even during adolescence, they are often so close that they can hold hands and go to the bathroom together, inseparable every day, holding hands even when walking. Would you say these two girls are lesbians? No. But would you say there is any problem with their friendship? No problem; it is very normal. But because homosexuality is despised, or because of mainstream social values, such behavior is suppressed once it develops to a certain degree, blocked by gossip, and will not develop further. So it prevents the formation of what were originally certain kinds of friendship. Hugging and being affectionate between people of the same sex is a very normal thing; do not necessarily think that these two are going to be gay or lesbian — do not think in that direction. He will talk about this later: that is just another form of expression of love, and the expression of love does not necessarily lead to sexual behavior — this is our human prejudice.

Lesbianism and homosexuality, as they are currently experienced, also represent an exaggerated version of a natural inclination. Why is it said to be exaggerated? Because they are not accepted or recognized in this society, so they have exaggerated expressions. Have you seen gay pride parades? Starting from their popularity in Europe and America, they are extremely exaggerated — they insist on dressing more revealingly and more sexily; that is exaggerated. Seth says it is an exaggerated version. Actually it is not so; the two of them do have true feelings. If you have seen the film Brokeback Mountain, you will also know that between gay men, the feelings are very deep, not what you imagine, necessarily for seeking sexual excitement, shirtless and wearing tight pants. Why do they present themselves that way? Precisely to exaggerate — clearly it is a natural behavior, but in order to resist the prejudice of our mainstream worldview, they do exaggerated things.

He then says the reverse: even the experience of what you consider normal heterosexuality, the version we humans currently experience, is also exaggerated. We exaggerate heterosexuality far too much. Every day newspapers and media propaganda portray love as greater than mountains and greater than the sky; as soon as a spark flies between a man and a woman, it surpasses everything in the world, even transcending human nature itself. It completely ignores one issue: you first have human nature, and only then do you have male and female, and only then do you have love. People of the same sex have love between them, yet human society praises and glorifies love between the opposite sex beyond compare, making it one of the most beautiful things on this planet. What are we doing? We are exaggerating. Whether emotion, feeling, or love, it is natural; it is an attribute of biological instinct, and there is no need to elevate it to such an exaggerated degree.

Seth considers problems differently from us humans: first, he can see the essence; second, some things he says we do not like to hear — including his views on homosexuality and heterosexuality. But if we carefully savor them, we can understand that what he says is the truth. Yet several thousand years of human culture have come down to us in this way, and every one of us living within it is more or less influenced by this thing. But he tells you what the essence of this issue is: it is all exaggerated.

He says, you may end the session, and the session ends. Later he also spoke about some excellent material between him and Jane, including his relationship with us, and a discussion of the place of his books in our lives — those parts are already unrelated to this book.

All right, that is the end of the commentary on this section, the second part of Chapter Four.

This part corresponds to Session 769 of this book, held on March 29, 1976, at 9:20 p.m.

At the beginning of the session, Rob said Jane had finished typing the manuscript of Politics of the Psyche. Jane had received more material about the worldview she now held as Paul. She got up every day before dawn, all winter long, writing and enjoying the beginning of the day. Before tonight's session, Jane and I discussed the content in the Seth material about the nature of human sexuality, and hoped Seth would expand on it.

The War Between the Sexes Is Unnatural

Seth says that the so-called war between the sexes, including its offshoots related to war, is unnatural. "Natural" is in quotation marks. In that category, fighting between members of the same sex is also unnatural.

For example, even among animals, in their natural state, males do not fight to the death over females. In the animal kingdom, for instance, if two males fight over a mate, over mating rights, they generally do not kill each other. When one side feels it cannot defeat the other, it will flee in defeat, or lose its status as the alpha monkey or the lion king. Some may be driven out of the territory, while others may continue living within the group, but they lose the right to choose mating partners. It is very rare to see one male directly bite another to death or beat another to death over mating rights. That does not happen. So the struggle between the sexes is unnecessary and unnatural.

How could there be struggle between the sexes, you ask? For example, feminism is women asserting their own rights, while in patriarchal societies in many countries, including some underdeveloped regions today, and even in some religious countries, women's status can hardly be guaranteed. Men and women are actually quite opposed to each other.

Later I will explain what is meant by "natural," what natural really means.

For now he will not say. But for example:

When you observe the behavior of animals, even in what seems to be the most natural of environments, you are not observing the basic behavior patterns of such creatures. For those comparatively isolated areas exist in your world for a very simple reason. If you have one or two or twenty publicly set-aside natural preserves in which you observe animal activity, what you see are adjustments to the creatures' present condition — an adjustment superimposed upon their natural reactions. You cannot expect to see anything more than that.

What this passage means is that we think that when humans observe animals, we are observing the animals' most natural state of existence. He says no. That is not the animals' natural state of existence; that is a state you consider natural, in which the animals live within the natural reserves that you humans have designated. No matter which country, especially in Africa and South America, there are many natural reserves. The animals in natural reserves are protected. Even if you believe that the protected animals in natural reserves are living in a very natural state, that is simply not the case. That is only within an area designated by you humans, where you consider it natural for them to live — that is not the most natural state.

The balance of natural resources, the balance of nature's resources, the patterns of animal roaming, the migration of animals from place to place, the conditions of climate — all of these must be taken into consideration. That is what a natural state is. And this kind of isolated observation — placing them in a natural reserve to observe them — will only give you a distorted picture of natural behavior. It is a distorted picture of natural behavior, not a truly natural picture. Because the animals are also imprisoned within this reserve, with civilization surrounding them on all sides. Outside the reserve there is still human civilization, and other animals are not allowed to enter. Between two reserves there lies a vast area of human civilized life, and the normal migration and movement of nature cannot be realized within a natural reserve.

The hunted are regulated. Within natural reserves, hunting is allowed in certain specific places. The entire range of animal behavior has been altered, and the natural environment in which animals live has already been changed. Animals must learn to adapt to their current reserve environment, including their sexual activities, which must also adapt to the reserve.

To a certain extent, animals are also subject to the constraints of a changing world.

Man is obviously a part of nature.

We humans are also a part of nature. Therefore you could also say that the changes he often brings about are also natural. Then you would say, humans are also a part of the natural world, so our human civilization is also a product of the natural world, and our human civilization dividing the animals of nature into one reserve after another is also a natural behavior. Because if humans are a part of nature, then anything humans do should also be natural. If you look at it from this angle, what he says is not wrong.

He says, however, that when you study animal behavior, and sometimes use animal sexual patterns to illustrate certain points about human sexual patterns, people do not take this into consideration. What we ordinarily say is that the animal behavior we observe now indicates their primary or basic biological innate nature. We do not consider that animals are not living in a truly natural environment. We think they are living in a natural environment, and then we take the behavior animals display at this time — including their sexual behavior patterns and other patterns — to be the animals' inherent nature, their natural attributes, their innate essence. But it is not. No matter how you argue that humans are also a part of the animal world and a part of the natural world, that cannot affect such a change.

Men fighting over women is unnatural. Men fighting over women happens during adolescence, and in the adult world it happens in another way — no longer through fighting, but through wealth, social status, power, and so on, to win over women. So this fighting among men may have changed in form, but its nature has not changed; it is more of a competitive relationship. This is purely culturally learned behavior. We learned it. We learned it from society, from our parents, from society.

As far as the history we understand is concerned, humanity cannot bear this kind of pointless experience. Humanity cannot bear males fighting among themselves over females, killing each other. It is called "wasted energy" — that is, energy not used in the right place. Humanity cannot endure this kind of constant hostility. If humans put all their energy into this, then how could they survive in the natural environment? How could they compete with other species and with the harsh conditions of nature? So this is something that should not be, something unnatural. It is more of a cultural attribute and a social attribute, rather than something humans are born with.

Cooperation Is Built Upon Love

He says every race involves a cooperative adventure. Every species is actually a cooperative adventure. All existence on Earth is ultimately built upon this cooperation. All species on Earth, as long as they want to survive, must be built upon mutual cooperation with one another. This is the foundation for the survival of all species. Without this foundation, no one can survive.

You project your present beliefs backward into history.

We use our present beliefs to look at the history that once happened, that is, we use our viewpoints to interpret history, and thereby misunderstand many of the situations you observe in nature. We instead use our own viewpoints to distort the things we observe in the natural world.

He says I mentioned that cooperation is built upon love. The survival of all species on Earth throughout the world depends upon this kind of mutual cooperation, and this cooperation is built upon the foundation of love. Love has a biological basis, just as love has a spiritual basis. Love has both a biological foundation and a spiritual foundation.

Session 769

For example:

Your beliefs make you deny that feelings exist in animals, and any instances of love among them are interpreted as blind instinct.

We humans do not acknowledge feelings among animals, love among animals. The moment something like love happens among them, we turn it into blind instinct -- the animal does not know what is going on, it is just animal instinct. Actually, examples of this are everywhere. The simplest is the mandarin duck. If one of a pair of mandarin ducks dies, the other will not seek another mate; it will remain alone for the rest of its life. Its loyalty in love is far stronger than that of humans. There are other animals too, such as swans, that are the same. Their love even surpasses human love in certain respects. Yet we humans insist that animals have no love and no feelings. But then he cannot explain such things -- an animal's loyalty to its mate surpasses biological instinct, and these things he cannot understand or explain he simply labels as animal instinct, as a kind of instinct of lower animals, saying they do not understand love at all.

To a certain degree, society, the churches, and science all bear responsibility for this. For the distortion of love, for the distortion of this understanding of the whole world being built on cooperation, on cooperation based on love, religion and science are equally responsible. But he says, we also cannot shift the blame onto others, because priests and scientists are not people from outside, nor are they things imposed on us for no reason. They are the external reflections of the various different aspects of ourselves.

When humanity found that it had to isolate itself to some degree from the environment and from the other biological life within it, humanity developed its own consciousness. Humanity separated itself from the source of the natural world, from its own biological nature and the primal attributes of nature. When humanity developed its own ego consciousness, what was it doing? It was separating itself from its biological nature and from the natural world.

As a result, religion declared that only humans have a soul, and are noble because they possess emotions. Humans are different from animals; humans have feelings, animals have no feelings, animals live by instinct. Humans have lofty ideals and purposes, and live for lofty emotions. And the scientists, for their part, cooperated very well too, saying the opposite. Scientists maintain that humans live in a mechanical world, that every living creature is driven by a flawless instinctual machine, knowing nothing of pain or desire. Animals have no feelings; they are simply species driven by the machine of instinct.

So the religious priests and the scientists -- how well the two of them cooperated. Even today, whether you believe in religion or believe in science, you have gone in a wrong direction.

Yet the love and cooperation that form the basis of all life display themselves in many ways. What forms the basis of life? It is cooperation based on love. If any species on earth wishes to survive, it must be built upon cooperation based on love. This cooperation based on love has many forms of expression, and sex is one of them, and an important one at that. When you cannot, or do not know how to, embody this cooperation based on cooperation, this cooperation of love, then look at sex -- it is a very good expression of it.

The Bisexual Nature and the Expression of Love

In a broad sense:

It is just as natural for a man to love a man, and for a woman to love a woman, as it is to show love to the opposite sex.

For a man to love a man, and for a woman to love a woman, is just as natural a thing as for a man to love a woman and a woman to love a man. In that respect, bisexuality is more natural—a person has both male and female attributes at the same time, and this is called bisexuality. Every person is bisexual. In that case, there is nothing unacceptable about a man loving a man, or a woman loving a woman. Because each man is himself a combination of a man and a woman, and within every woman's body there is also another man. So two men loving each other, two women loving each other, a man and a woman loving each other—these are all normal, and they are equally natural things.

Conversely:

You have placed love in very definite categories.

We have made love too specific, too standardized, too narrow. Therefore only under the most restricted conditions is its existence considered right. We have placed many restrictive conditions on love. What are restrictive conditions? Let us look at what conditions humanity has imposed on it.

Under such restrictions, love goes underground, because it cannot come out into the open. Much love must meet certain conditions before it can be accepted and blessed by human society as a whole; if it does not meet these conditions, then this love is not blessed and not accepted. This includes love between men and love between women—none of it is accepted. So homosexuality goes underground, and then surges forth again in distorted forms and exaggerated tendencies. It is originally something natural; pressing it underground is useless. It is a natural response of human beings, a natural instinct, and it will inevitably burst forth again in distorted and exaggerated ways.

So you see that many homosexuals around the world display themselves in exaggerated ways, including the many places that have gay bars and rainbow flags. I remember there seems to be a street in Chicago that is a rainbow street; the bars on that street all fly rainbow flags, and they are all gay bars.¹⁶ In different eras, and for different reasons, it has rejected homosexuality.

Neither sex is to be blamed.

No sex among human beings should be blamed. Your sexual situation is only a reflection of the condition of your consciousness. Your present situation regarding sex is only an outward reflection of the condition of your consciousness.

As a species, at least in the Western world at present, you equate love and sex. You imagine that sex is the only natural expression of love. In other words, love seems to have to be expressed only through some kind of exploration of the beloved's sexual organs.

At this point Seth was humorous and his voice was deeper. He was joking about humanity. You have made the matter of love too limited; you think that love and sex are a pair, and that mentioning love necessarily implies sex. Sex is the primary, or even the only, way love is expressed. "You love me? Then let us have a relationship. If you are unwilling to have a relationship with me, that proves you do not love me." Seth used a humorous way of saying this. You will find that this old man Seth is also quite mischievous; he was mocking humanity.

However, he said, this is still not the only restriction on the expression of love. If you think that only heterosexual love is accepted by mainstream society, and that this is the only restriction, then you are wrong. Humanity not only accepts only heterosexuality, and not only treats sex as the only expression of love—there are many, many more restrictions.

There are countless books giving instructions, each one proclaiming that its method is the most correct. For example, a certain kind of orgasm is the best, and what is more, some allow the expression of love only between the opposite sexes.

Not only do we humans bind sex and love together, and believe that love can only be expressed through sex—this is a narrow restriction. At the same time there are many other restrictions. For example, regarding the matter of orgasm, you have all kinds of scientific research, all kinds of so-called sexologists, sex masters, and popular science, telling you how long is best, how many minutes is best, what kind of orgasm is normal, and what will happen if there is no orgasm. These are all extreme restrictions on love.

Generally speaking, these people must also more or less be of the same age. In addition there are other taboos, such as racial, religious, social, and economic ones. If these are not enough, then most people fundamentally believe that sex is wrong. If some of these conditions are not met, most of us fundamentally believe that sex itself is wrong, that it is a spiritual degradation.

Only the need for human reproduction is permitted by God. In other words, when we humans have sexual relations, it is only because we humans need to reproduce; only under this great premise is it permitted by God. Any sexual behavior or sexual activity beyond this is a degradation, a demotion, a spiritual demotion; it is filthy, dirty, or at least not noble and not lofty. This is what society has taught us for thousands of years.

There are also many other taboos. They must be of the same age group, and even many countries require that the man be older than the woman, and that the age difference cannot be too great. They must be of the same religion; in many ethnic groups and many religions, different religions are not allowed to intermarry. Islam is like this—if you want to marry a Muslim girl, you must convert to their religion, you must convert, otherwise it is not allowed.¹⁷ There are also some ethnic groups where, apart from religion, not being of that race is also unacceptable. There are also economic restrictions—being mismatched in family status, as we often say. And there is power and influence, and all sorts of other things that need no mention. People have imposed countless social restrictions on sex and love—things that are originally the most natural.

The Trauma Brought by the Limitations on Love

Since you people regard sex and love as equivalent, an obvious conflict arises. You treat sex and love as equivalent, and it seems there is no harm in that, but in fact the harm is considerable.

For example:

Motherly love is the only kind considered sound.

When you think sex and love are the same, of the same kind, only motherly love can be accepted. In most cases, motherly love is nonsexual, because motherly love does not involve gender. Whether a mother loves her son or her daughter, it is perfectly normal. But a father cannot do the same. A father will feel tremendous guilt about his love for his children. That is why many fathers are unwilling to talk about love, and rarely say "I love you" to their children. Even when the children grow up and say "I love you" to their father, the child feels unnatural, and so does the father. This perfectly natural love between father and children has somehow been saddled with guilt.

Where does the guilt come from? It comes from our belief that love is connected with sex. A father loves his children, and love is expressed through sex, but a father cannot have sexual relations with his children, so he cannot show too much love toward them, otherwise he lacks manliness and is being fussy and effeminate.

This sort of thing happens a lot. Between fathers and children, whether boys or girls, the relationship is always awkward. Although girls are often very close to their fathers emotionally, on many issues it is awkward, and physical contact—hugging, kissing—makes both sides extremely embarrassed. When they are little it is fine, but once they understand a bit more, when a girl reaches puberty or approaches it, this kind of intimate behavior between father and daughter is completely forbidden. In fact, the whole matter has been made very complicated and twisted.

Creativity rides upon the wave of love.

In other words, without love there is no creativity. Creativity must be built upon the foundation of love. When love is denied its natural expression, creativity is wounded. When a person has no love, or cannot feel love and being loved, then he has little creativity.

Here you need to understand why creativity must be based upon love. This also helps explain why so many artists engaged in creative work have very rich emotional lives. Many of them marry several times, and you may think their circles are too messy, that they are so emotionally rich and so irresponsible, falling in love with one person after another. But once you have read the Seth material, you will understand: their creativity must be based upon love. If there is no love, then they have no creativity. Is it the same for each of us? Yes, it is. If you have no love, if you cannot feel love, then there is no creativity in your life either.

Your beliefs cause you to assume that a natural bisexuality would result in the death of the family, the decay of morals, the rampant spread of sexual crimes, and the loss of sexual identity.

Your traditional beliefs tell you that if human beings were such bisexual beings—each person simultaneously both male and female—then that would lead to the death of the family in all of human society. If people were bisexual, then there would be no family, and morals would decay even further—everyone being both male and female, there would be no binding force whatsoever in sexual relations. Sexual crimes would run rampant, and most frightening of all, people would lose their sense of sexual identity, not knowing what gender they themselves are.

At this point Seth said something ironic with a straight face:

The sentence just stated, however, aptly describes your present situation.

That is deadpan humor—the kind of humor like Ma Sanli telling crosstalk: he makes everyone else laugh while he himself does not. You think that only bisexuality would lead to the death of the family, the decay of morals, the rampant spread of sexual crimes, and the loss of sexual identity. But you humans have not adopted this idea; you separate the genders, male is male. Yet under your current conditions of understanding, is your human society not exactly like this right now? Are these phenomena not already appearing—the death of the family, the decay of morals, the rampant spread of sexual crimes, the loss of sexual identity?

If you humans were to accept the idea that bisexuality is natural, then that would ultimately help solve not only the problems mentioned above, but also large-scale violence and acts of murder. However, given your present situation, there is unlikely to be any easy transition.

But there is good news. In some places change is already happening. For example, in some developed countries in Europe and America, especially the United States and Canada, it is very obvious—there are third-gender restrooms, that is, gender-neutral restrooms. If you are unsure of your gender, you can use this restroom, and anyone can use it. The United States is now trying to pass legislation to build a third restroom in all schools—middle schools, elementary schools, universities¹⁸, but many traditionalists oppose it. In many places it is already happening spontaneously, but it has not yet become law. So change is happening, but the pace is very slow, and it is only a very small change.

What Seth wants to tell you is that one day you humans should stop being so tangled up over matters of gender. To put it more bluntly: you humans have spent far too much time and energy on the matter of gender, and it is all wasted effort. Men quarrel with men, women quarrel with women, men quarrel with women, and groups of men and women attack each other—"we men are like this, you women are like that." Women also fight among themselves: the good-looking ones against the not-so-good-looking ones, the slim ones against those with less ideal figures, attacking each other, and the younger ones calling the older ones "old women." All of this is a struggle for control over the opposite sex. To put it in zoological terms, to say it bluntly, it is all a struggle for mating rights.

During this long period of historical development, human beings could have devoted much of their fine energy to other areas. Do not overemphasize the matter of sex; it is simply a normal, natural behavior. Seth repeatedly emphasizes that it is simply a natural behavior, and it is one form of expression of love. Love has many forms of expression, and sex is only one of them.

If everyone recognized that they themselves are both male and female, then there would not be so much curiosity about the matter of sex, nor so much overemphasis on it. It is something everyone has; everyone is both male and female, so the degree of attention paid to gender would drop dramatically. Feminism would no longer exist, and neither would a patriarchal society. We would return to the essence of human nature, considering issues from the perspective of the person, from the perspective of humanity, rather than men and women quarreling for thousands of years over this matter of male and female, fighting over whether it should be a male society or a female society, a patriarchal society or a matriarchal one.

And on the question of love they have also quarreled for thousands of years—"ask the world what love is"—and wasted countless energy and time on love. Seth does not mean that love is bad, or that love is wrong; he means do not overemphasize it. As a person, you have your own mission in life; as humanity, humanity has its mission. And what has it become now? Love and family happiness have been made into the primary pursuit of all humanity, as if there were no other pursuits besides these two things. Seth's point remains the same—human beings have elevated these two things to too high a position, overemphasized them. Above and beyond these, humanity still has many, many abilities that need to be developed, explored, and demonstrated.

Parent-Child Relationships and the Distortion of Love

He goes on to say, and he puts it rather obliquely:

The parent-child relationship has its own unique emotional structure, and this parent-child relationship has survived despite the distortions you have placed upon it.

You have placed many distortions upon the parent-child relationship, but even so, the parent-child relationship has not been obliterated; it has still survived.

If greater emphasis were placed on your bisexual nature, its ancient integrity would not be weakened but would instead be strengthened.

If you acknowledged this ancient, primordial nature of every person being bisexual, then the parent-child affection would not only not be weakened, it would actually be strengthened.

If the ancient parental qualities were not so forcefully concentrated upon the mother, the child would fare much better.

It is precisely because of the reasons mentioned earlier that human beings have placed the burden of child-rearing more upon the mother. Because if the father shows too much love for the child, he himself feels awkward and embarrassed, and the child feels awkward and embarrassed too. Society, on this issue, places the responsibility of education upon the mother, because maternal love is acceptable. Look at the view all over the world -- "maternal love is great." What about paternal love? "A father's love is like a mountain."

What does "a father's love is like a mountain" mean? A mountain is a dead thing; it does not move, does not speak, has no expression whatsoever, and just stands there stiff and straight. We say "a father's love is like a mountain" as if it were a term of praise, but in fact it contains a great reproach of paternal love. A father's love does not speak. When the child is little, it still does; but as the child grows a bit older, when the child truly becomes aware of things and needs paternal love -- when the child is little, to be honest, the need for paternal love is not that strong; when little, the child needs the mother's milk more; it is when the child grows up that paternal love is needed -- yet after the child has grown up, paternal love instead disappears and becomes "great love is silent." For a child, how is he supposed to understand what "great love is silent" means? Many children do not understand until they themselves have children as adults, or even until they are in their thirties or forties, that a father's love is so deep. But what use is that? When he needed it, it was not there; it was missing.

To put it bluntly, the child in every family is like a child from a single-parent family. Although both parents are present, the child's growing environment is like that of a single-parent family, like that of a single mother. In Europe and America this may be slightly better, but it is still very obvious. Many women in Europe and America are housewives; if the family is well off and the husband alone earns the income, then the mother does not work and stays home to take care of the children. There is an economic factor involved -- if she has three children and sends them all to kindergarten or hires someone else to look after them, the money he earns would not be enough to cover those expenses. So the mother, as a sacrifice, stays home to take care of the children.

In China this is also very obvious now. In China both men and women work, so the mother's pressure is even greater -- she has to work during the day, and after work she still has to take care of the children, do housework, cook, and help the children with their homework. And the workload of helping children with their homework is probably greater than that of many household chores; it is not only a matter of physical exertion, but also a test of spirit and will. Nowadays in China, who is it that takes the children to all kinds of tutoring classes and takes care of the children's daily needs? It is all mothers, mostly mothers. Many fathers do not like hearing this; I can only say "mostly," I cannot say "all," but this is a phenomenon. Go look at the people picking up and dropping off children at tutoring classes: out of 100 parents, 90 are mothers¹⁹. This is the current reality; whether you admit it or not, this is how it is. And Seth said this in 1976; several decades have passed since then, and it is still like this. This is a common failing of human society, not something unique to China.

Is it good to forcefully concentrate the responsibility of caring for children upon the mother? No, it is not good. It is not good for the child either.

If it were not so forcefully done, the child would fare much better.

Why is that? You only need to have seen a father taking care of a child, and you will know that a father's way of caring for a child is completely different from a mother's. It is especially relaxed, especially casual. As long as you do not annoy him and do not interfere with what he is doing, basically he does not pay much attention to you either; it belongs to that kind of laissez-faire management style, encouraging the child to do things on his own. This kind of management style allows the child to gain tremendous freedom. So children are sometimes willing to be with their father -- basically he agrees to everything; as long as the child's requests are not too outrageous, they can basically all be satisfied. But the mother cannot do that. The mother's mouth just nags and nags and nags without stopping. I do not know why many girls who before marriage are as beautiful as little fairy maidens, after marriage their mouths become so fussy and nagging, down to every last detail, forever talking at the child, and the child is about to have a breakdown.

This in itself leads to an unhealthy over-dependence on the mother, and it also forms an unnatural alliance between mother and child against the father. In a normal family, whenever the husband and wife argue, most of the time the child will side with the mother -- regardless of whether the mother is right or wrong, he will always stand on the mother's side, without distinguishing right from wrong. After he grows up, perhaps he can distinguish right from wrong, but even if he can, he still leans more toward the mother. Unless the mother is truly outrageous, that is another matter. Under normal circumstances he leans toward the mother; this is a very normal thing -- but this very normality is precisely what is abnormal. The family then becomes a small faction. The child is generally of one mind with the mother, both of them against the father.

The Bisexual Nature and the Foundation of Cooperation

Heterosexuality is an important expression of bisexuality. The mainstream love between men and women in our current human society, this heterosexuality, is an important expression of bisexuality -- of humanity's natural bisexuality. And in terms of sex, heterosexuality represents the capacity for reproduction.

You say, no, that's not right, it's still for love, for building a family. Don't forget that your nature is bisexual. You can have love without heterosexuality. Who told you that love only exists between men and women? Is there no love between men and men? Is there no love between women and women? So this fixed mindset of humans is not going to change overnight.

Heterosexuality is bisexuality -- no, it is an important expression of the fact that humans themselves are bisexual. In terms of sex, it represents the capacity for reproduction. However, heterosexuality is built upon the foundation of bisexuality. If humans did not have this bisexual nature, then the larger structures of the family -- clans, tribes, governments, nations, civilizations -- would be impossible.

What does this mean? If humanity did not have a bisexual nature, if there were only two single sexes, male and female, and people only identified with these two sexes, then humanity would not be able to form any units other than the smallest social unit, the family. There would be no unions between families forming clans, no large tribes, and certainly no large social groups. Why? Because between families there would necessarily be no heterosexual relationships. Two people, a man and a woman, can unite to form a married couple and a family, but what would bind two families together, what bond would maintain their relationship? If people were only single-sexed, there would be no attraction.

So humanity's bisexual nature means that between families -- between two families, three families, a hundred families -- a cooperative relationship based on love can still form, one that transcends male-female heterosexuality. The essence of this relationship is based on the fact that every person is bisexual. To put it more bluntly, it is cross-gender, it transcends the division of the sexes.

Humanity's innate bisexuality provides the foundation for cooperation. It is because humans are bisexual in nature that the foundation for social cooperation between people is provided, making physical survival and any kind of cultural exchange possible. If humans did not live in groups, if they survived only in small families -- a father and a mother with a few children living on their own -- without a large tribe or social group, humanity could not have survived to the present day.

The war between the sexes, that is, men and women attacking each other over hundreds and thousands of years -- "we men are like this, you women are like that." If this war between the sexes were as pervasive as is assumed, if the aggression were that strong, then men and women truly could not cooperate for any purpose. If the differences between men and women were this great, if it were strictly either male or female, with men defending men's interests and women defending women's interests, then no cooperation would be possible. Men could not cooperate with each other, and women could not cooperate with each other, because everyone is either male or female, and they would be in a state of mutual warfare. Seth points out incisively: this bisexual nature of humanity is the most basic condition for the stability of human society.

In the natural biological flow of a person's life, there are periods of varying intensity, in which love and its expression fluctuate and change, and tend in different directions. Within this there are also important individual variations, that is, it differs from person to person. Overall, in a person's life, in different periods -- childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age -- the expression of love also fluctuates and changes, with a cyclical variation. Yet this natural consideration is rarely observed.

Among children, lesbian and homosexual tendencies are quite natural. Do you remember when you were in elementary school and middle school? Before the second year of middle school, or even in the first year, boys and girls did not play together. If you were a boy and went to play with the girls, first the girls would not accept you, and second the boys would not want you anymore either. At that time, boys played with boys and girls played with girls, and boys and girls did not play together. Boys played with boys, girls played with girls, and they got along wonderfully. Why?

But everyone is so afraid of homosexuality that the usual, equally natural heterosexual tendencies are also blocked. Homosexuality is natural, and heterosexuality is natural too, even for children. Many people say, what love can children have? Children cannot have love? If you still think that way, then you should stop studying spiritual material, because your understanding is far too narrow.

Young people are also forced into this mold. In the West it is a bit better, but try it in China -- parents repeatedly say "no dating": no dating in high school, no dating in college either, you must focus on your studies. Fine, no dating in college, but the moment you graduate, the family panics and urgently pushes you to date and marry -- "look, you're not young anymore." You don't let them date when they want to, and you expect it to appear immediately when you want it to? So for young people as well, our human society imposes especially many restrictions on them. Whether as parents or as society, we meddle too much and do not respect the most basic human nature.

A person's individual creative tendencies often reveal themselves in a powerful way during adolescence. When are people most creative? When they are young, during adolescence. I remember a famous scientist saying that a child is most creative before graduating from elementary school, and after graduating from elementary school there is not much creativity left.²⁰ If you had to choose people to do innovative work, you would choose elementary school students; even middle school students would not do. So the creativity of young people is the strongest.

If, in either sex, that impulse in its expression does not match the expected gender of a boy or a girl, then such a young person will become very confused. Because the creative expression seems to directly conflict with the expected sexual standard. What does this mean? As we said earlier, what kind of person has creativity? Only a person with love has creativity. Creativity is built upon the foundation of love. Why do adolescents have creativity? Their love is the strongest. Regardless of the various kinds of love, in elementary school or even middle school, although that love is very naive, is it not the purest and strongest?

Why is first love so unforgettable? Precisely because it is intense. That intense love and intense creativity are mutually reinforcing. But humanity tells you that in adolescence you cannot love, because your body is not yet mature, and love will lead to sex. For fear of two children having sexual relations, you had better not love. Because this idea that "where there is love, it will lead to sex" is a misunderstanding and limitation of humanity. This leads to the extreme suppression of their creativity. Now do you understand why many children have no creativity? If you do not let them love, where will their creativity come from?

He says again, do not misunderstand me. He says:

I am not saying that lesbianism or male homosexuality is a necessary stage leading to heterosexuality. I am saying that lesbianism, male homosexuality, and heterosexuality are all legitimate expressions of a person's bisexual nature.

Do not think that because I said this, I am implying that homosexuality between men and women before heterosexuality is a necessary stage. I do not mean that. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both legitimate, normal, natural expressions of the bisexuality inherent in humans.

I am also stressing the fact that love and sex do not necessarily have to be the same thing.

This is one of Seth's viewpoints, that is, separating love and sex. Love is love, sex is sex. Sex is one expression of love, but it is only one of love's expressions, not the whole of it. Sometimes expressing love in other ways is quite natural.

However, because of the connotations of the word sex itself, human society has attached too many connotations to sex. For some of you, it seems as if I am advocating a promiscuous sexual culture. Seth says, I believe that sex and love should be separated, that sex is only one of the forms of love's expression, and that love has many, many other forms of expression. Because you humans have many connotations and extended understandings of the word sex itself, when I say that sex and love are not the same thing, it seems as if I am advocating chaotic relationships between men and women, promiscuity, sexual freedom, sexual liberation -- no, that is a misunderstanding on the part of you humans.

Instead, he says:

I am saying that biological and spiritual love should be more deeply united.

I am not telling you to be promiscuous. I am saying that these two -- spirit and flesh -- should be united. Under all personal and cultural relationships, this is a foundation. This love transcends your concepts of sex. He advocates that we should achieve oneness and unity on both the physical and spiritual levels, that is, in sex and love. This unity is the foundation for the development of relationships, whether personal or cultural, for you humans.

The Bisexual Nature and the Future of Humanity

Heterosexual love, that is, love between men and women, at least as you understand it, gives you a family with children. A man and a woman bring you children, an important family unit, which is the most basic unit of society. Around this family other groups form, along with kinship relations.

But if only stereotyped, rigid concepts of male and female were in operation, there would not be enough strength, binding force, and stimulation to join one family to another. Hostility between men would also be too intense, competition between women would be too severe, and before any tradition could form, war would already have wiped out the struggling tribes.

This bisexuality is the foundation upon which human society could develop. Otherwise, this heterosexual love based on male and female gender would bring us humans a family, but nothing more. Cooperation and collaborative relationships beyond the family could not be established. Humanity would be reduced to intense competition between men fighting over superior women, and women fighting over superior men. There would be hostility between men, and competition between women would be even more terrifying—she may not necessarily resort to force, but when necessary she would. Then everyone would just be fighting among themselves all day. In that case, before human civilization could even form, the tribes would have destroyed themselves.

Speaking of this, I am reminded of a science fiction novel called Ami's Stars²¹. It tells of a child who, while playing, encounters an alien child—who looks like a child but actually is not. This alien tells him about how the alien world views Earth from an extraterrestrial perspective. You can just read it as a science fiction story, but what it says inside is quite interesting. The child asks: Are you aliens coming to attack our Earth? In movies, whenever aliens arrive on Earth they attack, occupy, and enslave us. The alien child says: Think about it—is that even possible? If a civilization were as brutal as you imagine, plundering everywhere, with plunder as its primary survival goal and survival condition, then they could never have left their planet in the first place—their civilization could never have developed to the point of being able to leave their planet; they would have already destroyed themselves.

To put it more bluntly, apply this to humanity: If humanity still takes material pursuit as its core, no longer paying attention to—or not turning toward—spiritual, psychic, and mental progress and development, but still worships wealth, material things, and power struggles, including military hegemonism, then what is the final result? The final result is that humanity will have destroyed itself before it can even engage in outer space exploration. The development of such a civilization will inevitably lead to this result, because you are premised on competition, not on cooperation. When resources become increasingly scarce and depleted, war will inevitably occur. So humanity will destroy itself at that point—before you can develop that kind of high technology, before you can move into outer space, you will already have perished.

That alien said: You need not worry about aliens coming to destroy your Earth, because if they were that kind of alien, they could never have gotten out in the first place, and they could never have developed to that level of technology. Apply this in reverse to early humanity as well: If early humanity had not established cooperative relationships and social collaborative relationships based on love and cooperation, if the structure of human society were, as you imagine, built on competition, then human society would not have developed to this day—it would already have perished.

In the social world and the world under the microscope—in the macroscopic world and the microscopic world—cooperation is supreme. Whether in our microbial world, cellular world, bacterial world, viral world, or in our entire human society, between planets, between the universe and galaxies, what is it always? Cooperation is supreme. You walk out the door, shake hands with others, cooperate, smile—this is the highest principle, and apart from this you have no other way. So no matter what happens between the countries of the world today—America and China, Europe and whatever, China and Japan, including within the people, between political parties and the people, between political parties and political parties—anything that does not take cooperation as the highest code of conduct will not last. It is always like this; this is a rule of the entire universe.

It has only one basic bisexuality that can give humanity the room for cooperation it needs. If humanity were unisexual—born only as male or only as female—it would lack this room for cooperation, because between the two sexes their demands are different, and this difference in demands would inevitably lead to war between the two sexes, and that would be self-destruction. This human essence—the bisexual essence—is what gives humanity this room for cooperation, and prevents stereotyped behavior that hinders creativity and hinders social interaction.

The bisexual nature allows the fulfillment of each of your abilities, and therefore humanity does not fall into extinction. Because each of us is bisexual in essence, we focus our energy more on the fulfillment of individual abilities, rather than only on competing for sexual partners, competing for mating rights. Because you yourself are bisexual, you do not take this matter so seriously; you will place more importance on the formation of individual abilities.

Humanity's recognition of its bisexual nature is necessary in the future.

So in humanity's most basic education, from elementary school, from kindergarten, from the level of parents, children should be given correct guidance: He himself is bisexual, and it is okay for him to love whomever he loves—loving a boy is fine, loving a girl is fine. But this premise must be based on true love, not on considering the issue from gender itself; first consider the issue from the perspective of humanity. But such a viewpoint, as Seth says, is not so easy for humans to accept. So we can only start from those around us.

Once again, there are obviously differences between the two sexes, and those differences are unimportant. They appear so enormous and important only because you focus all your attention on them.

Humanity's great qualities—love, strength, compassion, intelligence, and imagination—do not belong to either sex.

Intelligence here means wisdom. None of humanity's greatest qualities has anything to do with gender. There is no quality that one sex has and the other does not; all sexes have them.

This is still Seth's polite and tactful way of saying it: We humans take sex, gender, and the matter of male and female far too seriously. Not just between individuals—society also takes it far too seriously.

Only with an understanding of the bisexual nature will those qualities in every man or woman be released.

Only when we humans understand the essence that people are born bisexual can we release those noble human qualities that transcend male and female, in both men and women. Those same abilities are the natural characteristics of every race of people—whether black-skinned, white-skinned, yellow-skinned, or brown-skinned—they are the most basic abilities of every race.

He next touches on the issue of racial discrimination, but only mentions it briefly. Just as we have such prejudices regarding gender—we set male and female in opposition, which is our human prejudice—we will likewise continue to make the same distinctions in terms of race. We will have all kinds of discrimination: what white people are like, what black people are like, what yellow-skinned people are like, what brown-skinned people are like. This kind of racial distinction and discrimination is just like our distinction and discrimination regarding gender.

So think about what humanity has been doing in this regard. To put it bluntly, it has not been doing anything worthwhile—it has been occupied with these trivial, superficial, visible-to-the-naked-eye things—male and female, skin color, these things that can be seen. While those greater, more glorious things of human nature—love, creativity, wisdom—are not seen, not valued so highly.

Therefore, a certain race appears to you to be feminine or masculine, and you have a gendered view of that race, projecting that gender onto it. You project your beliefs about sex onto nations. For example, when we think of France, we feel it is like a woman; when you think of Russia, you feel it is something very masculine. You project gendered things onto a country, onto a particular region.

In war, you also often use the same terminology as in sex. For example, when one country invades another, we often say violation, trampling, ravaging, humiliation. Are these not the same words used in sex? When a male violates a female, ravages a female, are these not the same words? The language of war and the language of sex are the same. Why? Because we have projected sex outward.

For example, you speak of domination and submission, master and slave. If you have played with SM, is there not master and slave in that? "Call me master," "obey," and there are special training practices—these all manifest in a particular kind of sexual behavior. Then why are these things also used between nations, between wars? A country has been raped, a country has been ravaged, has been violated. In war and in sex, we use the same words, the same characters—in China and abroad alike, not just in China; America, France, other countries are all the same.

Men and women are both races of humanity, or different races, different species—or both are members of the human race. These distinctions are things humanity has placed upon itself. The distinction between male and female is something humanity has imposed upon itself; it is not innate—it is a cultural, social, acquired limitation.

Once again, it is a distinction that occurred when humanity experimented with the routes of its consciousness. This gender distinction is also a distinction that occurred when a consciousness wanted to experience different routes. When a soul, a consciousness, wanted to experience the attributes primarily of male and female, it made a distinction. When incarnating, it would say "I am a male," but after finishing this life, in the next incarnation it might become a female. So male and female mean nothing to the soul. Why did it choose to be male in this life? Because it wanted to experience that.

So this is a distinction in the routes of consciousness, not a distinction in essence. It brought about an apparent separation between itself and the rest of nature. Nature does not distinguish male and female—can you say nature is male or female? Humanity was born from nature, and in essence also does not distinguish male and female. But in order to experience itself, to develop self-consciousness, to experience it in our three-dimensional world, we must make the distinction. Only through distinction can one recognize one's own male-female unity.

It is like what is said in Conversations with God: We first "make ourselves not God," and then from the state of not being God we experience that we are God, and in this process we come to recognize that we are God. It is the same with male and female. If you have not gone through the distinction between male and female, you cannot understand what is meant by the androgynous essence of human nature. Only when you have fully understood and thoroughly penetrated both male and female can you say "I am androgynous"—I know all the experiences of the male and all the experiences of the female. That is what he means.

After-Class Discussion

After giving Jane some material, the session ended. Jane and I were both very pleased that Seth had delivered material on sexuality, because we had received letters from many men and women who were confused about gender identity -- in the area of homosexuality -- and who were often overwhelmed by guilt because of their lesbian or homosexual tendencies. That was in 1976, when people could still be overwhelmed by it. Later, up to the present, in America homosexuality has become completely free of discrimination and is already a very natural phenomenon.

This is the essential viewpoint Seth expressed when he talked about male and female, when he talked about the issue of human sexuality. Seth's viewpoint is different from the viewpoints of all human sexologists, biologists, and sociologists, but you can clearly see from his viewpoint that the angle he stands at and the depth with which he sees the problem have already surpassed all human cognition and understanding on these gender issues.

Session 770: The Nature of Sexuality and the Transcendence of Love

Seth came up and humorously said, "Let us begin the discussion of sex." This is the only one of Seth's books that discusses issues of the sexes and sexual relationships.

Your identity, your true identity, does not depend on your psychological or physiological sex. Your sexual characteristics represent one part of human nature; they provide an important range of expression, as well as a focus for classifying and grouping experience. Your sexual nature is a part of your essence, but it cannot define your essence.

He began by giving a definition. This viewpoint he has expressed before; here he is merely repeating and reaffirming it: the expression of sexual gender can only be one part of our human nature. Although it is an important part of our human expression, it is not something that can define our human nature.

However, your beliefs so individually and collectively form your experience. Our beliefs determine our experience, and because our beliefs have problems, our experience therefore also has problems.

Therefore, contrary to the official data of those concepts, it either showed itself rarely, or in distorted, exaggerated form.

This sentence means: we experience our lives because of our own beliefs, individual or collective. Whatever beliefs we hold, that is the kind of life we live and the kind of experience we obtain. Those concepts that are contrary to your beliefs — those data that have already been verified — will display themselves in rare, distorted, or exaggerated ways, rather than in a normal way.

Our life experience is generally not very accurate, and that is precisely for this reason.

It is quite natural to operate in a biological and psychological manner that is not accepted by your society, and that seems to contradict your ideas about human history.

Physiologically and psychologically, there are some ways of being that are not accepted by the mainstream values of our society. He says those ways are also quite natural, even if our mainstream values do not accept them. And this seems to contradict our own understanding of human history, but it is also natural, even if you think it contradicts your human history.

In your terms, it is quite natural for some people to behave sexually as a man and psychologically as a woman. And it is quite natural for others to operate in the opposite manner.

Here he tells you to pay attention: they are all natural. Some people behave sexually like a man and psychologically like a woman; or the reverse, behave sexually like a woman and psychologically like a man. This is all normal, all natural.

Because you assign psychological characteristics to the male or female sex.

We humans have linked our own psychological characteristics to the male and female sexes. We say men should have certain psychological characteristics, and women should have certain psychological characteristics. So when a situation appears where someone behaves like a man but is psychologically like a woman, we find it very hard to understand; we do not know what is going on. Because we always have a gender cognition in front of us; we have linked our own psychology to the male and female sexes.

There are always people who naturally seek the experience of being parents, but it is not necessary for each person to be heterosexual at any given time.

Some people always want to be parents, but this matter of being a parent is not necessarily the case during all periods of their lives. During certain periods of life, they do not have this need, and what they express is not heterosexuality.

The larger pattern of human nature requires a bisexual connection, allowing leeway in this sexual healing. This leeway provides a framework in which individuals can express feelings and abilities that follow the natural inclinations of the psyche, rather than what you think of as sexual models, or models based on gender.

Because the vastness of human nature requires that humanity have a bisexual connection, and only under a bisexual connection can there be this kind of leeway. Under this leeway can we provide a framework, and within this framework people can freely express their feelings, abilities, and characteristics, rather than considering issues with gender as a model-like framework. He says it must first be based on human nature, and only secondarily based on gender.

I am not speaking of anything that simple here.

He says I am not just talking about giving women more freedom, or liberating men from the traditional role of breadwinner. He says what I am talking about is not that simple, and you should not misunderstand me.

I am certainly not discussing open marriage as it is presently understood.

He says this viewpoint of bisexuality that I am talking about is not advocating open marriage for people, but rather a far more significant issue. However, before we can consider these things, I have a few points I would like to make.

The Second Puberty

The first thing to state is an issue related to puberty.

Some biological possibilities are seldom activated and experienced in your present environment.

At the same time, this puberty — that is, the onset of sexual maturity, generally around age 14 for boys and around age 12 for girls²² (this is the translator's note) — generally speaking, is activated by deep mechanisms connected with nature. This mechanism is also related to the condition of humanity, and to those cultural beliefs that you have placed upon nature. So the timing of this puberty, or the understanding and cognition of puberty, also has a cultural background within it.

In other respects, your cultural environment is quite natural.

But when puberty arrives, it is different. Before or after puberty it is relatively natural; during puberty our culture is not so natural. After puberty arrives, one can bear children, which marks a sign of sexual maturity. Then this period will end, and the reproductive period will be over.

The larger dimensions of human nature become strictly narrowed into the roles of gender models.

The dimensions of human nature were originally very broad, but during this period of sexual activity in puberty, they are narrowed down and restricted into model roles. The so-called model roles are a relatively fixed, rigid view of gender.

And the various aspects of the entity itself, those that do not fit, are all ignored and denied.

Only those that conform to your current gender are recognized. A man must behave like a man, and a girl must behave like a girl. If a boy behaves like a girl, that certainly cannot be accepted; the same for a girl — if she looks like a tomboy, neither her personality nor her behavior is acceptable.

In fact, very few people can fit those roles. Because they are largely the result of an interpretation of religion as traditionally understood.

Humanity's rigid impression of gender mostly comes from religious interpretation. And scientists, who seem to be independent and discuss it from a scientific angle, are actually not.

Often scientists merely find new intellectually acceptable reasons for the emotional beliefs held unconsciously.

What he means is that scientists believe that things like human emotion all come from the deep unconscious level, and are uncontrollable or unreliable. They want to find certain reasons for them intellectually, from logic and wisdom. To take these unconscious feelings that arise from beyond human consciousness and interpret them in a conscious, logical, rational way is certainly distortion and twisting.

Physiologically, there is a period that is seldom experienced, like the hints in sick jokes about old age and a second childhood.

"Sick jokes" probably refers to a television program or some column in America at that time, where they often made jokes about the elderly, saying that old people have a "second childhood." We also say this in our country; we often say "old kids, old kids," which means the same thing — when people get old, they become like children.

This specific latent biological reproductive ability is only shown in rare cases.

For example, some old people's hair turns completely white and then gradually begins to turn black again; there are such things. Physiologically speaking, when the body approaches old age, it is entirely possible to fully regenerate. From a physiological angle, this is possible; this can happen. But because of the limitations of our human psychology, this either does not happen or happens extremely rarely. Even if physiologically there is this ability, the psychological limitation prevents it from manifesting.

It is indeed a quite legitimate second puberty, possible. In it, the man's sperm is youthful, vigorous, and full of vitality, and the woman's womb is supple and capable of bearing children.

I believe there are stories in the Bible similar to this kind of reproduction. In the Bible stories, people lived for several hundred years. Look at the children of Adam and Eve, Abraham or whoever — they often lived to nine hundred or eight hundred years old²³, and later five hundred or seven hundred years old, which was very normal; they all lived for several hundred years. So how did they reproduce at several hundred years old? They also reproduced. And in real life there are also many such examples, because the news is now quite developed; some women can still bear children in their fifties or sixties, and there are extremely rare cases of women bearing children at sixty, which has already exceeded people's understanding and cognition. Men need no mention; some men in their eighties or nineties are still having children.²⁴

In this age of overpopulation, this mechanism is probably not attracted.

We do not wish for this kind of thing to happen, because the population is excessive, and old people are still coming out to have children. But it is a part of humanity that is presently set aside, representing a natural ability — we humans naturally have this ability.

So now throughout the world, some developed countries, including China, which is a developing country, the population is also sharply decreasing, and the demographic dividend is very small. I saw some data a couple of days ago that was truly shocking: on January 1, 2020, the number of newborns born in the entire city of Shanghai was 156²⁵; while ten years earlier, in 2010, the number of births was around four or five hundred²⁶; by 1990, on the same day of January 1 of that year, the number of births in Shanghai was over 1,470²⁷. From 1990 to 2020, over thirty years, for the city of Shanghai, the absolute number of births decreased by 90%, to only one-tenth of what it was thirty years ago. So to solve this problem of China's sharply declining population and decreasing newborn population, one can refer to this — actually, some middle-aged people are capable of bearing children, which can solve the problem of young people today being unwilling to have children.

In certain areas of your world, isolated peoples have lived to be a hundred years old, strong and vigorous, because they have not been touched by your beliefs.

What are our beliefs? We believe that when people get old, they are no longer capable. They have not been touched by this belief, so in a place isolated from the world, they can live to over a hundred and still be healthy. I have mentioned this many times before; there is a Bama Village in Guangxi. Bama Village is a longevity village, where the average lifespan is around one hundred years, and living past one hundred is very common.²⁸

Because they exist in harmony with the world as they understand it.

They exist in harmony with the world as they know it, unlike us, who have separated ourselves from nature.

When a small group attempts to maintain its own ecological stance, this second puberty occasionally occurs, and children are consequently born.

In some areas isolated from the world and deviating from our civilized world, there is still this phenomenon; they will still give birth to children in their old age.

The usual second puberty, like the first, follows sexual orientation, but not always, because it is quite possible that the new sexual connection is exactly opposite to the first.

When the second puberty arrives, sometimes there is a sexual orientation opposite to one's actual physiological sex; this is very normal, but he says it is not common; it is rare.

Through medical technology, some of your elderly are able to live long enough so that this second puberty can begin. If the lifespan were not that long, it might not even have begun before it went undiscovered. But it appears in distorted form; the second puberty is often distorted, sometimes psychologically obvious, but physiologically frustrated.

What he means is that some people have the stirrings of this second puberty psychologically, but physiologically they are no longer capable; both men and women may no longer be capable, and there is no longer the possibility of engaging in normal sexual activity. So the second puberty becomes a "dead end" — he used quotation marks. "Dead end" means, for example, that the lubrication in women is gone, no longer allowing this normal sexual activity to proceed; it also refers to men who can no longer achieve erection. So he is using a pun. And it has nowhere to go; physiologically it cannot be resolved, psychologically there is still desire, and there is nowhere to release this thing.

At present, they are biologically both untimely and unneeded.

Very awkward. Untimely — old and still having such thoughts, and also despised by their children and society; unneeded — young people do it for the sake of continuing the line and raising children, but what are you old people doing having children? Your grandchildren are already grown, aren't they? This kind of social prejudice makes you yourself feel utterly ashamed.

Regarding the sexual needs of the elderly, our country has also published some articles and reports, and there are also foreign films describing this. I remember a long time ago there was a very niche European film called Cloud 9, which I think also addressed this issue of sexual needs in old age.²⁹

If this issue is not interfered with, some people may die with a sense of satisfaction.

If you do not interfere with them, some people will die with a sense of satisfaction. They will not restrict themselves; they will perform very well, and they will be very satisfied — although during this process of puberty the body has already aged, their mentality is that of puberty.

The Connection Between the Second Puberty and Cancer

When medical technology keeps them alive, the physical mechanism continues to struggle to regenerate the body, bringing about this second puberty. Under natural circumstances, it would only occur under different conditions. And mentally, it is far more alert.

Under natural circumstances, it requires some special conditions, such as living long enough, material life being sufficiently abundant, and willpower being undamaged, always full of fighting spirit, and not having suffered setbacks.

To some degree, there is a connection between these innate, seldom-perceived second puberties and the development of cancer.

Here he again brings out the relationship between our second puberty and cancer.

Cancer is a kind of exaggerated growth that becomes especially obvious. What we call cancer is when certain normal cells of the human body suddenly begin to grow crazily without restriction. Normal cells divide a certain number of times, for example, after fifty divisions they no longer divide³⁰, and the cell dies; but cancer cells are not subject to this restriction and can divide indefinitely and grow indefinitely. Cancer cells themselves are not toxic; it is only because of their unlimited growth that they occupy the nutrients needed by normal cells, causing your body to be unable to bear it, and finally you die.

Because your normal puberty did not allow it to develop, this growth of cancer cells manifests physically. In almost all cases involving cancer, the growth of the spirit and the psyche has been denied.

Generally, people who get cancer are middle-aged and elderly — although the proportion of young people getting it is now also relatively high, it is still mainly middle-aged and elderly people who get cancer. The main reason middle-aged and elderly people get cancer, Seth says, is that the growth of their spirit and psyche has been denied. Their psyche is no longer growing, their spirit is no longer growing, life is very unchanging and lifeless, with no hope of change in sight — life is the same day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Or the person feels that he can no longer grow appropriately personally or psychically. This attempt at growth then activates the body's mechanism: since growth cannot occur in the spirit and psyche, it activates in the body, and the result is the excessive growth of certain cells.

The person insists on the principle of "grow or die," and forces an artificial situation in which growth itself becomes a physical disaster.

So what is the simplest way to resolve cancer? Give him something to do, let his spirit and psyche keep growing, and do not let him stop. If you stop the pace of development — you originally had a second puberty, and you should develop and grow, but you do not let it develop, then it will make him grow in the body.

This happens because a blockage has occurred, a blockage of energy. The person wants to grow personally, but is afraid to do so, because he fears social opinion saying that an old person is still so improper for his age. He fears this kind of talk, so he does not dare to do it, and suppresses himself. Each person's situation is somewhat different and must be taken into consideration.

But usually such a person feels himself to be a martyr to his own sex, imprisoned and unable to escape.

What does he mean by this? It means that he will find that in his old age, at this age he should no longer be restricted by gender — because there should no longer be these sexual impulses, or the cognition of gender should already be very faint — but he finds that this is not the case; he still has sexual impulses and still has sexual needs. He finds that since he has already reached this age, he is still controlled by his own gender, and he is very pained and depressed. He feels, how can I still be a martyr to my gender? How can I still be imprisoned within such a limitation as gender?

He would say: why am I at this age, an old man of seventy or eighty, I should have very nice thoughts, right? My life, my moral standards, none of them allow me to keep staring at young girls. But I just cannot help it; when I see a pretty young girl, I just want to look. She is in great pain inside; she cannot control herself; this is very normal.

I remember a long time ago there was a film called 8mm³¹, about a person who shot that kind of 8mm film. There is a classic line in the film: some old men have a club, specifically liking that kind of young girl, and then the judge asks them, why, at your age, these little girls are younger than your granddaughters, how could you do this to them? These old men say: when I was 18, I liked teenage girls; at 20 I also liked them; at 30 I also liked them; and now I still like teenage girls. This is a normal psychological state of an old man.

So you must face it squarely; you cannot escape it.

This obviously can apply to cancers of the sexual organs.

For example, uterine cancer and cervical cancer in women are more common at this time, including uterine fibroids. Why? Women, especially after menopause, are more relaxed; they no longer have to worry about pregnancy. Because from girlhood to growing up and through the entire reproductive period, she always has a vague fear — what if I accidentally get pregnant? Although men have much less psychological pressure about this matter than women, women always have this pressure vaguely in their hearts, because in the end, whether it is abortion or anything else, the one who suffers is always the woman herself. But after menopause, she no longer has to worry about pregnancy, and she becomes more relaxed, never having to worry about this matter again.

So when women reach old age, they also have this kind of sexual need and sexual impulse, but they are likewise restricted. You see, young women are all restricted — if a woman dresses a little revealingly, when she is young she will be subjected to all kinds of social opinion saying how can this girl be so lacking in self-respect. Then needless to say in old age, elderly women even more cannot have such wild thoughts, and there is simply no opportunity at all. If an old man has sufficient wealth and relatively high social status and power, he still has the opportunity to obtain or capture those young girls; but an elderly woman simply has no such opportunity; it is very, very difficult. Unless she seeks out male sex workers to solve these problems. So this suppression of sexuality, after she enters the second puberty in old age, often may lead to the occurrence of cancer in her reproductive organs — uterine cancer, cervical cancer.

So this is a reminder to all women: after your menopause, you should pay attention to observing yourself, and do not overly suppress your sexuality; use various methods to release it.

Because the problems that began with puberty have caused energy to be blocked, and the energy is experienced as sexual energy.

Where do our problems come from? They have accumulated since our puberty. During puberty, that energy — that creative energy, the energy of love discussed in the previous session — was blocked, and then it will continue to affect you into middle and old age. The energy that was not released during puberty will be released in middle and old age. It is very interesting, just like the joke we often make: if a person played enough during adolescence, he will be relatively well-behaved and settled in old age; if a person was very proper and well-behaved during adolescence, following his parents' rules and requirements to go on blind dates, get married, fall in love, and have children, then in old age he will instead be very open, because he did not release much energy during puberty.

Elderly people who are considered aged or unable to care for themselves sometimes experience a new upsurge of sexual activity.

Some elderly people who cannot even take care of themselves will have this upsurge of sexual activity. And it is not given an outlet.

In addition, they have lost the traditional sexual roles through which they formerly expressed experience.

After reaching old age, they have already lost those things that attracted the opposite sex, whether as men or as women. Their appearance and figure are no longer sufficient to attract any member of the opposite sex to be interested in them. But they still have this new upsurge of sexual activity in their hearts, and it has no outlet.

You see, Seth discusses issues from his angle, and he speaks freely and at length. He does not only talk about the sexual issues of young people; he brings out the sexual issues of the elderly as well, without any avoidance. From his angle, this is very compassionate. If he did not talk about this issue, very few people would discuss it openly, but this is indeed a very obvious social problem and social phenomenon.

There are often unnoticed hormonal changes, and when many people are impulsive, some of the impulses are not only sexual but also intellectual, manifesting a kind of neurotic, strange behavior.

In the teenage years, the impulses are not only sexual but also include strange neurotic behavior on the mental level. Teenagers often do strange things that we cannot understand. The same is true in old age; this old-age puberty is not only sexual but also includes all sorts of strange psychic activities.

This new puberty never comes.

The "new puberty" he refers to here is the second puberty. He says this second puberty also dies very slowly, because your society does not provide a framework for understanding it. What does this mean? Some people express this impulse through neurotic, strange behavior rather than through sexuality. So you cannot tell that it is the second puberty, making you feel that it never comes. But the second puberty also leaves very slowly; unlike the first puberty, which passes quickly within a few years, this period may stretch on for a very long time. Why? Because our human society has very little cognition of this aspect, and there is no framework for understanding and cognizing it.

And indeed, it is something that may manifest in what seem to be the most grotesquely distorted ways.

We often see that the sexual needs of the elderly manifest in ways that are often distorted and very strange.

Love Is a Biological Necessity That Transcends Gender

Love is a biological necessity, a force operating to one degree or another in all biological life.

Remember: all life — not just human beings, but all biological life phenomena. So love does not exist only in humans; all living beings have it.

Without love, there is no substantive commitment to life, and your psyche has no peace.

He is talking about the importance of love to our lives.

Love exists whether or not it has sexual expression. Although quite naturally, love demands expression.

Love exists; whether or not there is sex, there is love. But quite naturally, love demands to be expressed. Love must be expressed; you cannot say, "I love you, but I keep it silently in my heart, I always keep it inside" — that will not do; love must be expressed.

Love implies fidelity, and it also implies commitment.

When we speak of the word love, it carries this meaning: faithfulness and commitment are inherent in it. This applies equally to lesbians, gay men, and heterosexuals. It has nothing to do with gender itself. Love itself crosses gender boundaries and always implies loyalty, honesty, and commitment. In fact, this commitment and faithfulness in love are also very strong among homosexuals. Look, just a couple of days ago, Armani and his boyfriend got married too. They had been in love for decades, thirty or forty years, without ever changing partners.³²

However, in your society, identity is so closely associated with sexual stereotypes that few people know themselves well enough to understand the nature of love and make any such commitment.

Because we humans have these rigid perceptions of gender, we are rarely able to recognize clearly that we ourselves are beings of both sexes, beings whose humanity transcends gender. When you always look at love from the perspective of a particular gender--for example, from a male perspective or from a female perspective--neither perspective allows you to understand the nature of love completely. That is because you always bring a certain gender bias into it. You are inevitably influenced by your gender, so your view of the nature of love is incomplete and one-sided. You should also make this kind of commitment in love, because when you look at it from a gender perspective, sometimes you do not dare to make such a commitment. You think--purely from a gender perspective, men are indeed attracted to women and women to men, and both have this tendency to prefer the new and tire of the old. Both men and women do. So when someone starts from a gender perspective, he does not dare to make such a commitment, because he is afraid he might meet someone of the opposite sex who is more beautiful and not know how to handle it. But what is the premise here? The premise is that his understanding of his own love is not comprehensive or thorough enough. He always gives priority to gender, so faced with sexual temptation, he does not dare to make too many commitments. What he actually fails to understand is that love has nothing to do with gender; it exists beyond gender.

At present, a transitional period is underway, during which women seem to be seeking the sexual freedom of promiscuity usually granted to men.

In this transitional period now, women generally grant men a certain sexual freedom to go out dating and hooking up indiscriminately. But there is a point here: this promiscuity cannot happen without women's participation. Where there are lousy men, there are lousy women, right? A man has to have a woman's cooperation. If women do not cooperate with him, how could he have this possibility?

Everyone believes that men are naturally adherents of the glass-of-water theory.

The glass-of-water theory was an expression used in the seventies and eighties--when he was writing this, it happened to be flourishing in the West. The main idea of this so-called glass-of-water theory is that sex is as natural as drinking a glass of water: when I am thirsty, I need to drink water; when I am hungry, I need to eat; and when I have a sexual need, I go and satisfy it. These are the most natural human needs. There was a period in the sixties and seventies in the West when sex was extremely widespread and extremely free. That was the era when the glass-of-water theory flourished.

Aroused by sexual stimulation, with almost no additional, deeper response.

Remaining only at the most superficial level of the sexual urge itself, without seeing the love beneath it, at the deepest level of sex.

Thus, a man is considered to want sex regardless of whether the woman involved has any loving response.

Men are thought to be this way--but this is not what men themselves think; it is what other people and society think of them--as though men do not need love, only sex. A man will also seek out prostitutes, sex workers, where there is no love at all, nothing whatsoever to do with love. So he needs it, and he goes looking for it. This is society's perception, the collective belief of the whole society, and this collective belief acts upon every man. Everyone will tell you--women say it, and men say it too--"That's just what men are like." When they keep saying it, everyone comes to accept it.

Or sometimes, he may encounter--that is, desire--want to have his body. Precisely because he does not love him, he sometimes wants to go to bed with a woman; it is because he does not love her that he goes to bed with her.

What does this mean? He wants purely to get sex, so he does not want love to become involved. If love becomes involved, he may actually refrain from going to bed with her, because he fears that once they have slept together, a relationship or marriage might become involved, and that would mean more trouble for him. Someone who emphasizes the glass-of-water theory does not want to get involved in these troublesome things. So they tell themselves, "I don't love her. I just want to go to bed with her. I just want sex."

That is why these hookup apps have become popular. All kinds of hookups, whether in America or China. The American one is that thing called Tinder³³. There used to be many in China too. Now most of them may have been banned, but that still cannot stop it. Seth is analyzing the underlying factors: at this stage of modern human history, why are hookups so widespread? It is because people do not want love; they only want sex. Men are like this, and women are like this too. If no women were willing to come out for hookups, who would the men hook up with?

In such cases, sex becomes an expression of mockery or contempt, rather than an expression of love.

In the course of these one-night stands or quick hookups, both men and women actually tend to treat sex with mockery and contempt. They say it does not matter, I do not care. Women are the same. A woman says, "I'm coming out to hook up with you. I'm not after money or anything else. I just want to enjoy myself." So in this, both men and women display an attitude, an expression, of contempt and mockery toward sex. You see, Seth's analysis really cuts to the heart of the matter.

Therefore, women often accept these ideas and seek a situation in which they too can freely and openly express their sexual desires.

As I just said, women are the same. Without women's active participation, one-night stands and hookups could not become widespread or popular.

Yet loyalty is the companion of love.

Everything discussed earlier was about sex and had nothing to do with love.

And primates show evidence of this to varying degrees.

Not just human beings, but primates--monkeys and apes--have similar things, similar loyalty.

Men in particular are taught to separate love from sex, so as a man lives his life, he develops a schizophrenic condition that tears his psyche apart.

How does this split happen? Let us see how it happens.

Sexual expression is considered male, while the expression of love is not considered masculine.

People think sex leans toward the male--actively seeking sex is a male behavior--while love leans toward the feminine, not the masculine. Women are the ones who ask more for love. This is a perception in our society: women go to bed with someone only for love, while men can go to bed with someone for sex.

Thus, to some extent, a man feels compelled to separate his expressions of love from his sexual expressions.

The man becomes divided. He feels: when I love, I seem fussy and sentimental, like a woman; but sex--I only talk about sex, not love. Damn it, I do not talk about love, only sex. I sleep with this one today and that one tomorrow. I pass through a field of flowers without a single leaf clinging to me. That is my manly heroism. If a hero cannot get past a beautiful woman, then he is no hero, right? A hero has to be able to get past a beautiful woman. He regards women as clothing. Which outfit should he wear? Any one will do. He expresses his masculinity through this pursuit of sex and does not want to show his loving side, because he thinks that is too feminine.

If women follow the same path, they too will fare very badly.

Men separate sex and love, and women will do the same. Women see that men have separated them: you can be indifferent, and so can I; you can disregard the family and loyalty, going out every day to fool around to display your masculinity, so I, as a woman, also want to go out and fool around. It is the same thing. So if women follow along, the results will be very bad for everyone.

This great separation has led to your major wars. This does not mean that men alone are responsible for war, but it does mean that men have kept separating themselves so far from the common basis of love and sex that the repressed energy has expressed itself through aggressive behavior, cultural rape, and death, rather than through procreation.

Seth goes on to analyze this, saying that one of the roots of the outbreak of human warfare is often this very thing--we humans, especially men, separate sex from love, and this mental split leads, at an underlying level, to acts of war. Because he is repressed, his energy has been repressed all along. No matter how many times he has sex or how many sexual partners he arranges to meet, he cannot experience love, because love is not what he is seeking. He is trying to place himself above sex through mockery and contempt. So this energy of love in him has never been given expression or release. He thinks he can express his energy of love through sex, but he has never been able to do so, because it is not love at all. Instead, his energy remains repressed. This repression of energy leads to aggressive and violent behavior, including a kind of cultural rape and even death, even the outbreak of war. Look at how, if this issue of sex is not properly resolved, it can cause many social problems and human disasters.

Human Misunderstandings of Animal Sexuality

When you observe the animal kingdom, you assume that males choose blindly, guided by mindless instinct.

When humans look at animals, they always feel that animals select females completely indiscriminately, that any female will do. So, generally speaking, one female is just as acceptable as another--this female monkey and that female monkey, this lioness and that lioness, with no essential difference.

For example, when you discover that a certain chemical substance or scent can attract a particular kind of male insect, you take it for granted that the only factor attracting those male insects to female insects is that chemical element.

There are now many such attractants that lure a certain kind of insect. It takes the scent to be that of the opposite sex and flies over, and this can be used as a way to trap and kill it. When humans discover this, they think: since you are attracted by this chemical scent, any identical chemical scent can also attract you.

In other words, you take it for granted that individual differences do not apply in such cases, so far removed from your own reality.

You take it for granted that individual differences do not exist in the animal world, which is so far removed from the human world. So in their view, males and females mate without any selection. They do not choose, either; it makes no difference.

You do not understand the nature of this consciousness at all, because you interpret their behavior according to your beliefs.

He says this is already very sad: you are judging animals from a human perspective.

And you even use this distorted information to further define the nature of male and female behavior.

It is already very sad that you look at animals this way. You are completely misinterpreting them. And not only do you misinterpret them, you also apply what you have misinterpreted about them to human beings--assuming that humans too can be indiscriminate in sexual relationships, that they can have sex with anyone of the opposite sex. That is why hookups exist, why these hookup relationships exist--the two people have no further communication or conversation. As long as both agree, they are simply satisfying a purely physiological need.

Actually, when it comes to animals, those of us who have kept pets at home know, or anyone who has had contact with animals knows, that many people have this mistaken perception because they have had no real contact with animals. Once you do, you know that whether it is a cat or a dog, it has to take a liking to the other one first. If it does not like this little male dog or female dog, the other one cannot even get near it. Other animals show very similar behavior. It is not as you imagine, that you can give it just any female cat and it can produce kittens. No. If the female cat does not like the male cat, or the male cat does not like the female cat, the two of them will not produce anything.

By distorting your ideas of sex in this way, you further limit the great human capacity for loyalty.

Once you extend to human society this view of animal sexuality that disregards individual personalities and distinguishes only between male and female, what meaning does human loyalty have for you? So you do not dare to express your loyalty. Why? Because you feel that society's perception tells you: you are an animal being, and you will inevitably be attracted to the opposite sex. If you have not been attracted, that only proves that the attraction is not strong enough yet; when it is strong enough, you will certainly be attracted. This is the value system, the belief system, that the whole of human society is now presenting to you.

But that is not actually how it is. Because everyone says this, you become uncertain--look at so-and-so, what happened with them, and what happened with someone else. It is all this sort of thing. Because you hold such a belief, you can only see those kinds of things. There is so much unwavering love and good fortune that you neither see nor report. The news media are also unwilling to report such things. They only want to report eye-catching gossip.

Loyalty is always connected with love and the expression of love.

Without loyalty, there is no way to speak of love.

Gay and lesbian relationships, then, can at best be ambiguous, strained excessively by confused emotions.

It is all the same. Whether male, female, or homosexual, everyone has this problem. These emotions are muddled together--we humans still do not have a correct understanding of love and sex, so we are very conflicted. The relationship problems and social problems people have been having lately keep getting tangled up, with no way to sort them out.

Rarely can they maintain a stability that allows for personal growth.

We put a great deal of energy into issues between the sexes. In the process, we become excessively entangled in this issue of sex, spending so much of the prime of our lives struggling with it--is it love or sex for me? Are my sexual urges normal or abnormal? How do I handle them? And so on and so on. In such relationships, people put more energy there, leaving no time or possibility to provide room for personal growth. If even your relationship with the opposite sex is unstable, how can your other relationships develop stability? Every day, you change boyfriends today and girlfriends tomorrow, marry this person today and divorce that person tomorrow. How are you going to solve this problem?

But here you must understand: Seth is not saying that you must not divorce, or that you must stay with one boyfriend to the end and never find another. He does not mean this kind of feudal moral code. If you understand it that way, then you have completely misunderstood and taken it to another level. What Seth means here is this: sex is an expression of love, while love itself transcends gender and is not limited by it. Love is a radiance of humanity, existing above gender. He is discussing the issue from this perspective, and he believes that this love that transcends gender also requires loyalty. Love can exist on the basis of loyalty. And loyalty means that when you love someone, you must be faithful. Of course, if you no longer love them, there is no need to remain simply to comply with social and moral constraints--there is no need for that. This is a natural behavior. A natural behavior, not an attempt to drag you back into a feudal moral code. Do not misunderstand.

Heterosexual relationships also break down.

If the problems of homosexuality are not properly resolved, those of heterosexuality will not be properly resolved either.

Because each partner's identity becomes grounded in a sexual perspective.

Whether heterosexual or homosexual, identity is grounded in a sexual perspective as the basis and angle for considering issues, so many problems arise.

And that role does not necessarily suit the person concerned.

For the person concerned, everyone is a being of both sexes. If you insist on imposing a single gender on someone, it may not fit. At most, it fits in part.

Since you feel that sex is the only appropriate expression of love, yet also believe that love and sex are separate, you find yourselves in a dilemma.

This is a perception in our human society today--we both consider sex the only appropriate expression of love and believe that sex and love can be separated. So we find ourselves in a dilemma.

Sexual Beliefs and International Relations

These sexual beliefs are far more--far more important in international relations than you think.

He says these beliefs about sex and gender are even more important in international relations than you imagine.

Because, as a nation, we humans attempt to adopt what you consider a masculine stance.

Some countries lean toward the masculine. For example, we consider the Soviet Union masculine. It has now become Russia, and this masculine quality has weakened a little, but it is still there--we often call Russians a warrior people, and calling them a warrior people necessarily refers to their being masculine. We often see India as having a feminine stance, more gentle and graceful. In terms of our beliefs, if you have been to India and had contact with Indians, you will know that Indian men do indeed have some feminine qualities--watch them speak. As they talk, they tilt their heads, first to the left and then to the right. There is a feminine tendency in their mannerisms, and their voices also lean toward the feminine, rather than being very deep.

Seth's Addition: Ulcers and Kidney Stones

This session is almost over here. Jane says that she was still in a half-trance when the book dictation ended. Rob gave her a can of beer. Then, two minutes later, Seth came back and said, "I'll add a brief comment." This comment is very interesting.

A man with any kind of growth problem, such as kidney stones or ulcers, has a tendency he considers feminine and therefore dependent, while at the same time feeling ashamed of it.

If a man develops a growth-related illness such as kidney stones or ulcers, it is generally because he has a feminine tendency within him. This is quite normal. Every man has a female spirit within his mind. But usually a man does not recognize or sense the presence of this female spirit, and it does not matter to him. Some men, however, can sense this feminine element within their bodies, and they are quite dependent on the female spirit itself--quite dependent on this feminine character--yet they also feel that this is shameful. Because their ideas about gender have given them a rigid stereotype, telling them: you are a man, so how can you have a feminine character within you?

Then he engages in a counterfeit biological production, producing something that was not originally present in him. To that extent, it can be called procreation.

It is as though he were imitating a woman giving birth. He cannot give birth to a child, so what does he produce? He produces stones. These stones were not originally part of the body, just as a child was not originally something in a woman's belly, but the two are very similar. So these men have a strong likelihood of developing stones.

Would you say this kind of man looks like a woman on the outside? No. He goes to great lengths to avoid looking like a woman, so you cannot see anything womanlike about him at all. Only by entering his inner world can you really know that he is actually very dependent on this feminine character. But because he loathes and dislikes this so much, outwardly such a man often appears very masculine, rough and casual, excessively so, and sometimes even more manly than an ordinary man. Because he thinks, he fears, that others might discover this feminine tendency within him, he deliberately acts more manly. But this is actually a disguise, a disguise for what is inside him. People like this are prone to kidney stones or ulcers.

Ulcers are the same sort of situation. What situation?

Your stomach becomes a womb and then bleeds. Ulcers mean bleeding, and then sores develop.

It is like the shedding of the uterine lining every month. He uses this to explain a grotesque attempt by a man to express feminine characteristics. The core inner reason is that this man wants to express feminine characteristics. Women can have children, women can menstruate, and the inner lining of the uterus sheds once a month. He has no uterus, so he uses his stomach. The stomach bleeds, develops ulcers, deteriorates, and so on. So this is an interesting thing.

After-Class Remarks

His dictation ends here. Then Jane says that five minutes of material were delivered, followed by another five minutes of material concerning Jane, and then Jane says, "I don't have enough energy tonight. But now, on this subject of ulcers, he has a great deal of material waiting to give me. It's all right there. Instead of ending this session, perhaps I should rest a little and see whether this material of theirs about ulcers can come back."

You see, Jane is still very ambitious. She still wants to bring through Seth's material discussing ulcers. But by this point it is almost midnight--11:46 p.m. She wants to rest a while and then continue transmitting it, but can she? She cannot. She is tired. She really has no energy left. It is midnight, but she is also very excited, and Rob can see that. Still, they decide to end the session without exploring the further material about ulcers.

This brings us to the end of the final part--that is, Part 4--of our commentary on Chapter 4 of Seth's book The Nature of the Psyche. This part is also very important. From his perspective, Seth explored the role of this second adolescence as we enter old age. Many people may feel that this has little to do with them, but do not forget that one day you too will grow old. Gaining this knowledge before you grow old will be very important for your life in old age. If you have elderly people in your family, you can also pay attention to these issues in their lives.

---

注释与核实

1. Source: Jane Roberts, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Jane%20Roberts%20-%20Seth%20-%20Nature%20of%20Psyche%20-%20It%27s%20Human%20Expression%20%5BOCR%5D.pdf) ↩

2. Source: Jodo Shu, Newly Compiled Jodo Shu Dictionary: Non-duality (https://jodoshuzensho.jp/daijiten/index.php/%E4%B8%8D%E4%BA%8C) ↩

3. Source: Wang Mingxu, Zhang Wen, Wang Xueliang, "The Family Consent Principle in Organ Donation: A Modern Application of Confucian Ethics," 2008 (https://ejournals.lib.hkbu.edu.hk/index.php/ijccpm/article/download/1454/1418/1385) ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Australian Antarctic Program, "Emperor penguin" (https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/animals/penguins/emperor-penguin/) ↩

6. Source: NOAA Fisheries, "Ocean Ecology and Atlantic Salmon" (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-mid-atlantic/endangered-species-conservation/atlantic-salmon-and-ocean-ecology) ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. Source: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), "Definition of Term Pregnancy, Committee Opinion No. 579" (https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2013/11/definition-of-term-pregnancy) ↩

9. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Virgin Birth" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Virgin-Birth) ↩

10. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Lawrence v. Texas" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lawrence-v-Texas) ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. Source: Wikipedia, "Philadelphia (film)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_(film)) ↩

13. According to Mike's original words, "That was probably the sixties or seventies"; upon verification, it should be "Philadelphia is a 1993 American film set in early 1990s Philadelphia, not the sixties or seventies." (Source: Wikipedia, "Philadelphia (film)," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_(film)) ↩

14. Source: South China Morning Post, "How transgender dancer Jin Xing conquered Chinese TV" (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2087720/how-transgender-dancer-jin-xing-conquered-chinese-tv) ↩

15. Source: South China Morning Post, "Hong Kong icon Leslie Cheung and Daffy Tong's epic love story" (https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3172416/leslie-cheung-and-daffy-tongs-epic-love-story-hong-kong) ↩

16. Source: Wikipedia, "Lake View, Chicago" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Halsted,_Chicago) ↩

17. Source: Alex B. Leeman, "Interfaith Marriage in Islam: An Examination of the Legal Theory Behind the Traditional and Reformist Positions," Indiana Law Journal, Vol. 84, Iss. 2 (https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol84/iss2/9/) ↩

18. This claim could not be verified. ↩

19. This claim could not be verified. ↩

20. This claim could not be verified. ↩

21. This claim could not be verified. ↩

22. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Puberty | Physiology, Hormones & Development" (https://www.britannica.com/science/puberty) ↩

23. This claim could not be verified. ↩

24. Source: Guinness World Records, "Oldest mother to conceive naturally" (https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-mother-to-conceive-naturally-) ↩

25. This claim could not be verified. ↩

26. This claim could not be verified. ↩

27. This claim could not be verified. ↩

28. According to Mike's original words, "I have mentioned many times before that there is a Bama Village in Guangxi. Bama Village is a longevity village, where the average lifespan is around one hundred years, and living past one hundred is very common."; upon verification, it should be "Bama is the Bama Yao Autonomous County in Hechi City, Guangxi (not a village), with a permanent population of about 236,000. At the end of 2015, there were only about 100 centenarians (about 34.5 per 100,000 people), and the average life expectancy was about 76 years, not an average lifespan of one hundred years with centenarians being common." (Source: Wikipedia, "Bama Yao Autonomous County," https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%B7%B4%E9%A9%AC%E7%91%B6%E6%97%8F%E8%87%AA%E6%B2%BB%E5%8E%BF) ↩

29. Source: Wikipedia, "Cloud 9 (2008 film)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_9_(2008_film)) ↩

30. Source: Wikipedia, "Hayflick limit" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit) ↩

31. Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment, "EIGHT MILLIMETER," 1999 (https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/eightmillimeter) ↩

32. According to Mike's original words, "You saw the other day Armani and his boyfriend also got married, after loving each other for decades, thirty or forty years without ever changing."; upon verification, it should be "Giorgio Armani and his longtime partner Leo Dell'Orco never married. Armani died in Milan on September 4, 2025, at the age of 91, so there was no recent marriage." (Source: Wikipedia, "Giorgio Armani," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Armani) ↩

33. Source: Time magazine, "The New Dating Game" (https://time.com/4799/the-new-dating-game/) ↩