The "Reading Guide" 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 introduces the publication and translation history of The Nature of Personal Reality, various recommendations, and the book's table of contents, and includes Seth's own preface, "The Manufacture of Personal Reality." The preface explains that personal reality is formed by conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings, and that people are not at the mercy of external circumstances; negative thoughts form obstacles, and examining one's conscious thoughts can reveal inner attitudes; changing circumstances requires changing conscious thoughts and expectations. The book aims to teach people how to change situations they do not like.
Key Points of This Chapter
- This book was translated by Wang Yusheng and Wang Jiqing in relay, taking several years to complete; the English original is about 510 pages.
- Personal reality is formed by conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings; a person is not controlled by external circumstances.
- By examining your conscious thoughts, you can discover inner attitudes, intentions, and expectations, and directly face challenges and difficulties.
- To change circumstances you dislike, you need to change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations.
- Healing requires acceptance: matter is formed from inner qualities, material structures follow expectations, and matter can be changed at any time.
Main Text
The Publication and Translation of This Book
Today, let's continue introducing another of Seth's books, The Nature of Personal Reality. This book has been officially published in mainland China, with a fairly large print run. Before that, it had already been published in Taiwan.
The first five chapters of this book were translated by Teacher Wang Yusheng. After he translated them, he set the project aside for a while. Because before this, Teacher Wang Jiqing had already translated The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, and later also translated The Nature of the Psyche — all of these are Seth's books. At the time, when she heard that Teacher Wang Yusheng was translating The Nature of Personal Reality, she did not translate it herself. But after some time passed, she discovered that Teacher Wang Yusheng seemed to have put the matter on hold. Wang Yusheng and his wife were actually the first to translate The "Unknown" Reality; they were the translators of The "Unknown" Reality. Teacher Wang Jiqing asked him whether he was still translating it, and Teacher Wang said, "I don't have time to translate it now; I can't manage it anymore, and I'm getting old." Then Teacher Wang Jiqing took it back and continued translating, roughly from after Chapter 5 all the way to Chapter 10, and later she also set it aside. After she set it aside, Teacher Wang Yusheng took it back again, and after another period of time with no progress, Teacher Wang Jiqing took it back once more. It took them several years, going back and forth, before the book was finally translated.
This book is a very thick tome; the original English edition is 510 pages1, roughly the same thickness as Seth Speaks.
Recommendations From Various Sources
Let's go straight into the content of the book. First there is a featured recommendation, and it says:
Would you believe it? Everything external comes from within, and there has never been a single exception. The Seth books have been of tremendous benefit to my spiritual journey, helping me see another way of looking at this world. Quite simply, this is one of the best books I have ever read.
Who wrote this recommendation? It was Richard Bach. Richard Bach wrote a book in America called Jonathan Livingston Seagull2, whose sales ranking in America was second only to the Bible3. Think about how enormous Bible sales are, and yet this book's sales were second only to the Bible. Richard Bach himself once visited Jane while she was in the process of writing this book4; they met in person, so Seth and Richard Bach did have exchanges with each other.
There are also recommendations from other people. It says Jane Roberts's outstanding book The Nature of Personal Reality is a classic of spiritual literature and one of the good books that has influenced my entire life. The moment I closed the final page, I looked up and saw a new world that was endless and filled with every kind of possibility. This was written by Dan Millman, a top spiritual teacher in America and author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior5. We recommended this movie in our discussion of Seth Speaks; another translated title for the movie is Peaceful Warrior6. If you have not seen it, you can look for the movie online and watch it.
Then the next passage says that Seth was my first metaphysical teacher. Metaphysics is philosophy, the kind of purely rational, purely theoretical philosophical thinking about explaining the universe. It says:
Seth was my first metaphysical teacher, and throughout my life he has remained a constant source of knowledge and inspiration.
This is Marianne Williamson7, a New York Times8 bestselling author who once wrote the book A Return to Love.
Then there is another spiritual teacher:
The Nature of Personal Reality has had a tremendous impact on my life and work, and Seth's teachings were the original source of inspiration for my writing the book You Can Heal Your Life.
After that there is yet another spiritual teacher, also a writer, who wrote Love Is Letting Go of Fear9, and he says:
On my spiritual journey, the Seth books have benefited me the most and have helped me see the world from a different angle.
The following passage was written by Hu Yinmeng, a well-known spiritual teacher and writer in Taiwan; her famous book is called The Unbelievable in Life10. She says:
When a person is swept into a crisis with which he is unfamiliar, he usually feels that life is not within his control, and then quite naturally he begins to blame heaven and other people. Seth's words caused my reaction of resentment and outward attack to suddenly turn into an action of inward self-reflection, and this turning made me feel an independence, autonomy, and sense of full responsibility that I had never felt before.
Then, speaking personally, The Nature of Personal Reality is one of the most solid books for spiritual practice. This is Xu Tiansheng, a well-known body-mind-spirit teacher in Taiwan. Then there is someone named Li Xinpin, a famous advertising professional, writer, and spiritual teacher:
From the perspective of Seth's concept of parallel worlds, all the various possibilities, whether chosen or unchosen, are actually happening. Seen from the whole, there are no wrong decisions; they are all ways of experiencing life, so there is no need to feel regret or remorse over a decision made in the past. One only needs to learn the lesson from it.
Table of Contents Overview
What exactly is The Nature of Personal Reality about? Let us take a rough look at its table of contents. It is divided into two parts, twenty-two chapters in total, just like Seth Speaks; Seth Speaks also has twenty-two chapters. It roughly starts from Session 610. The preface before that is Session 609, and we will get to that preface in a moment. Then from Session 610 all the way through Chapter 22, let us look at the general titles and run through them for everyone:
Chapter 1, The Living Picture of the World; Chapter 2, Reality and Personal Beliefs; Chapter 3, Telepathy and the Grouping of Beliefs; Chapter 4, Your Imagination and Your Beliefs; Chapter 5, The Constantly Creating Body; Chapter 6, The Whole of Your Beliefs, the Body of Your Beliefs and Their Structure of Power; Chapter 7, The Flesh and Blood Body; Chapter 8, Thought and the Birth of "Demons"; Chapter 9, The Birth of Consciousness. That is Part One. Part Two, Chapter 10, The Nature of Spontaneous Illumination and the Nature of Forced Illumination; Chapter 11, The Conscious Mind as the Carrier of Beliefs; Chapter 12, Grace, Conscience, and Your Daily Experience; Chapter 13, Good and Evil, Personal and Mass Beliefs, and the Influence of Beliefs; Chapter 14, Which You, Which World; Chapter 15, How to Free Yourself from Limitations; Chapter 16, Natural Hypnosis, the Trance State; Chapter 17, Natural Hypnosis and Healing; Chapter 18, Inner and Outer Storms, Creative Destruction; Chapter 19, The Concentration of Energy, Beliefs, and the Present Point of Power; Chapter 20, The Landscape of Dreams, the Physical World, Probabilities, and Your Daily Experience; Chapter 21, Affirmation, Love, Acceptance, and Denial; Chapter 22, The Practical Improvement of Your Life and New Beliefs.
He used twenty-two chapters to discuss The Nature of Personal Reality.
I will not go over the prefaces before today's material; there is no difficulty in them at all, including the preface Jane herself wrote, the preface Teacher Wang Jiqing wrote, the one Xu Tiansheng recommended, and prefaces written by all sorts of people. We will go directly to the preface Seth himself wrote, called "The Manufacture of Personal Reality." Seth wrote this preface for his own book.
Session 609
Seth's Preface: "The Making of Personal Reality"
This book is Session 509, Monday, April 10, 1972, at 9:20 in the evening. He said:
Two weeks ago, Jane mentioned that it seemed Seth was about to start writing another book. This idea of his just came out one day after dinner. At the time we did not take it seriously, because we had only just finished proofreading Seth's previous book, Seth Speaks, at the end of last month, and we never imagined he was really that capable, that he could immediately move on to another major project. Jane herself had never entertained any thought of such a project, nor had she thought of any subject or any title for a book Seth could write. Incidentally, the book will frequently cite Seth Speaks, as well as another book published in 1970, Jane's own The Seth Material.
The Seth Material is actually a summary of the content from the early sessions. Seth himself is the main figure who appears through Jane in a trance state.
It was not until last Wednesday, during our regular Seth session, that Seth confirmed what Jane had anticipated, but he did not mention exactly when the writing of the book would begin.
The following is what Seth said:
Now Ruburt...
Seth calls Jane Ruburt, and he feels it is quite correct.
We are indeed preparing to write another book, and this interval in between was deliberately left for you, to let you rest.
That is, to let Rob rest, because Rob had worked too hard before. He not only had to take notes, but also had to organize them; the organizing and proofreading were all done by Rob.
These books present my material in one continuous flow, and display it to readers within a certain disciplined framework. As you now know, you need quite a bit of time to organize your notes, so I waited for a while.
What Seth means is that he had wanted to write for a long time, but he waited.
Ruburt's feelings about this matter are quite clear, and there is bound to be a certain amount of labor pain involved. He has been wondering what I would write about this time, and what kind of book this one would be. A book like this can be written in an ordinary, understated manner during the times you usually meet with me, and it can not only increase your own understanding, but also help many other people in the future. I suggest we proceed with the writing of this book in as simple a way as possible. What I mean is, we adopt the most streamlined process in the "mechanics" of writing the book. Do you understand what I mean?
Rob said, I understand. However, the discussion that evening then turned to other topics.
Now back to this evening. As we sat here waiting for tonight's Seth session, Jane said, I feel Seth is completely ready. I can already sense that impulse of his about to begin; perhaps today is the day for the book. Before this, he had not particularly set his mind on this matter, or at least I do not remember him saying much about it.
The energy that manifests through Jane still amazes me even now, especially when I consider that this small woman weighs less than 90 pounds. One pound is nine liang; one pound is 454 grams, that is, 0.45 kilograms, so 90 pounds is roughly a little over 80 jin, less than 90 jin. With her consent, Seth can indeed manifest through her in a very powerful way. Although the way he speaks now is just an ordinary, normal state, what I want to explain is that when she speaks for Seth, her vocal range noticeably lowers, but the volume is somewhat stronger, and it carries Seth's deliberate, unhurried yet distinctive tone and rhythm. Jane took off her glasses and placed them on the coffee table between us; then her eyes became darker, and she had fully entered a trance state.
Now, good evening.
That was Seth speaking. Then Rob said, good evening, Seth.
Tonight's short piece can be titled "The Making of Personal Reality."
He had already chosen the title for this short piece. He said:
Experience is the product of the mind's conscious thoughts and feelings, as well as unconscious thoughts and feelings.
He began by saying that experience is the product of the mind's conscious thoughts and feelings, as well as unconscious thoughts and feelings; these things added together form the reality you personally know. He was explaining what personal reality is. Which things? The ones mentioned above.
Therefore you are not at the mercy of external, irresistible, or imposed circumstances from outside.
He is saying that you will not be controlled by external circumstances.
Because you identify yourself so closely with the concrete events that make up your life experience...
Because we identify our life experience so closely with those concrete events, it often becomes very difficult to distinguish between the events that seem to happen outside and the thoughts, expectations, and desires that cause them to happen. Because we tie these inner feelings and experiences so tightly to the events of our lives, we often find it hard to tell the difference between those events that seem to happen externally and the thoughts that cause them to happen -- thoughts, expectations, and desires. You cannot tell whether it is an external event, or whether it is formed by inner thoughts, expectations, and desires.
If there are very strong negative qualities in your most intimate thoughts...
If there are very strong negative qualities, then these negative factors really do form obstacles between you and a fuller life. What kind of obstacles? Obstacles between you and a fuller life.
You still often turn a blind eye to them, and once you do see them, you do not realize these obstacles exist, until one day you truly recognize that they are obstacles.
These obstacles themselves do exist, but we turn a blind eye to them; we simply do not see them. These negative emotions -- what he is talking about are all our negative emotions -- we cannot see the influence of these bad beliefs and negative emotions on us.
That said, even obstacles have their reasons for existing. If these obstacles are ones you yourself have created, then only you can decide whether to recognize them.
These obstacles are created by ourselves. Because you created them, only you can recognize them, pick out these obstacles, and find the reasons and circumstances behind their existence. This is very crucial.
Your own conscious thoughts are the best clues...
Clues to what? Clues to finding these obstacles.
Sufficient to lead you to discover where the various obstacles in your life come from.
The degree of familiarity you have with your own thoughts is actually far less than you imagine. We are actually not very familiar with our own thoughts. These thoughts often slip past your attention like water escaping through tightly closed fingers -- they carry within them nutrients sufficient to nourish your entire psyche, and at the same time they often carry mud and debris sufficient to clog the channels of experience and creativity. These thoughts that escape your attention carry nutrients that nourish your psyche, and they also carry mud and debris that clog the channels of experience and creativity.
If you examine your conscious thoughts carefully, you will find that such examination can tell you a great deal about the attitudes, intentions, and expectations deep within yourself, and it often leads you to confront your own challenges and problems directly.
Examine your thoughts, and you will directly confront your own challenges and problems.
Your thoughts, after careful exploration, will let you understand where you are heading. They will clearly point out one truth: that everything that exists in the world originally exists first in thoughts and feelings, and apart from this there is no other law.
This sentence is extremely important. When you look carefully and clearly at your own inner self, at your thoughts, when you observe your thoughts, you will discover that all the so-called things of the external world first exist in our thoughts and feelings, and only then manifest outside. Apart from this law, there is no other law.
There is a great reason behind your use of a conscious mind.
He will specifically discuss this conscious mind later.
Know that you are not at the mercy of unconscious impulses...
You are not at the mercy of unconscious impulses. We will not expand on this here; it will all be covered later. What he means by putting it in quotation marks is that what you think is unconscious is actually not unconscious either. That is the first point. Second, this "unconscious" is only the unconscious as understood by human understanding, something without meaning; in fact, these impulses all have meaning.
Unless you consciously acquiesce to such a situation. Your current feelings and expectations can always be used as tools for examining your own circumstances.
How do you examine them? Your current feelings and expectations -- these can be used as tools for examining your own circumstances. That is, whether you are doing well or not depends on how you feel -- whether you feel comfortable or not, happy or not, in this present moment. Expectations can also be looked at: what are your current expectations, what are your current feelings; these are the tools for examining your own circumstances.
If you do not like your present circumstances, all you have to do is change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations.
If you want to change your circumstances, what you have to do is change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations.
You must change the various messages that you send through your own thoughts to your body, to friends, or to the people related to your life.
These messages are not only sent into your own body, but also to friends, and to the people related to your surrounding life.
In your terms, every thought will have a result.
This is said from our perspective. This involves the theory of cause and effect; every thought will have a result; this is a kind of causality.
If you repeat a thought habitually, over and over again, it seems to take on a somewhat permanent effect.
If you repeat a thought, that thought becomes a permanent effect. But if you have no particular dissatisfaction with this effect itself, then you will not want to examine that repeatedly held thought. Precisely because it leads to such a permanent effect, and you are not dissatisfied with the effect itself, you will not examine the thought itself.
But once you find yourself deeply tormented by various problems in life, you will begin to wonder what exactly is wrong.
When your life is not going smoothly, you begin to doubt what is wrong. When things are going smoothly, you will not doubt.
At such times, you may blame others or blame your own lot.
You will blame others. But if you believe in reincarnation, you will also blame yourself for not cultivating in past lives, blame yourself for not accumulating virtue and practicing well in past lives.
You may also think that if it is not God or the devil, then one of the two must be responsible for your circumstances.
We always feel that either God or the devil must be responsible for our bad results today.
You may even resign yourself, believing that all of this is fate, and thus accept adversity passively, treating all misfortunes as an inexplicable bond in your life.
Treating them as an inescapable karmic entanglement in your life.
Perhaps you have finally gained a partial understanding of the nature of reality, and you lament, saying, I believe I have caused these unfortunate results, but I find I cannot make them better.
When you have a partial understanding of the nature of reality, but not yet a full understanding, you will have this kind of recognition: I admit these were caused by me, I caused them, but I have no way; I do not know what method to use to make them better.
If this is really the case, then no matter what you have told yourself up to now, you still do not truly believe that you are the creator of your own circumstances.
You still do not believe it.
But once you truly understand this fact, you can immediately begin to change the circumstances that frighten you or dissatisfy you.
When you truly understand that you yourself are the creator of your own circumstances, you can begin to change them right away.
No one forces you to think in any particular way. In the past you may have learned to always think of things in the worst light; you may believe that pessimistic thoughts are more realistic than optimistic ones.
What does this mean? It means that your experience in society tells you -- what is it called? Preparing for a rainy day, thinking of the worst possible outcome first so there will not be too great a letdown, and so on; that is, always thinking of things in the worst light, and then feeling that this is your seasoned experience and worldly sophistication. If some young person thinks about something without considering these consequences, you will criticize them, saying, look at you, you have no experience at all, you did not think of these serious consequences that might occur. You feel this is your maturity, your depth, and your sophistication. But is it actually right? It is absolutely not right.
You may even, like many people, believe that sorrow ennobles a person, that it is a very spiritual sign, a mark of unworldliness, or an indispensable spiritual adornment for someone like a poet or a sage.
You think this kind of sorrow is a spiritual adornment, and you will often say, "When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on a person, it first must temper their mind and will," and so on, saying a whole lot, feeling that the current difficult and bitter circumstances are all for the sake of shouldering some great responsibility.
This viewpoint can be said to be the epitome of fallacy; it would be hard to find a thought further from the truth than this.
What he means is that always thinking of things in the worst light is absolutely wrong.
Deep within every living being there is an unceasing impulse to seek the fullest expression of abilities, the broadening of the mind, and the optimistic, enterprising breaking through of the various obstacles that seem to exist on the surface.
Deep within every soul is hidden this kind of impulse.
No consciousness would ever agree to any thought that would bind itself, not even the consciousness within the smallest molecule.
Even the consciousness within the smallest molecule is like this; they all long for new experiences and new forms of life.
So even atoms are constantly seeking to join new structures, or pursuing a new kind of meaning.
These actions and hopes of atoms and molecules are their instinct. Even atoms and molecules have this instinct, so what about us humans? Think carefully -- they all long for new experiences and new forms of life, so how much more do we humans? This is their instinct, and we humans also have this instinct.
Humans are born with a conscious mind, and humans have given this conscious mind to their own human selves, to direct the nature, shape, and form of what they themselves create.
Humans are born with a conscious mind, and they have given this conscious mind to their own human body, their physical body, to direct the nature of what they themselves create -- use this conscious mind to direct, remember, it is to direct -- the nature, shape, and form of what they themselves create.
Therefore, all the deep desires, the unconscious deep motivations, and the unspoken drives that exist in the depths of the human heart all rise to the surface, awaiting the conscious mind's approval or denial, and awaiting its command.
What he says here is very interesting. What he means is that the conscious mind can control the human body, and can also create the things around it, directing the nature, shape, and form of what it creates. And the deep motivations of the human being, as well as the drives that have not been spoken, all must rise to the surface, to let the conscious mind approve or deny them, and await its command.
The conscious mind has full authority to direct these things. Only when it abdicates this authority does it allow itself to be dominated by negative feelings; only when it refuses to take on its responsibility does it feel as though it is being led around by the nose by events.
That is, when the conscious mind abdicates, it allows itself to be dominated by negative feelings. When you give up your own responsibility, you will feel led around by the nose by events. And regarding the things happening around you, there is also a sense of powerlessness -- the reason for the sense of powerlessness is that it refuses to take on its responsibility.
On the Limitations of Positive Thinking
Then let's continue with what follows, which is Jane's own reflection. From this point on, he continues:
Those books that merely advocate positive thinking, while sometimes helpful...
We often call this kind of thing "chicken soup for the soul" articles.
...but they usually ignore the habitual nature of negative feelings, aggressiveness, and repressed sensations.
They ignore the fact that the habitual pull of these negative things is very strong -- negative feelings, aggressiveness, or repressed sensations, this kind of habituation is not so easy to shake off. If you tell someone to be positive and upbeat, the next thing they will say is, well, I just won't say anything then.
The authors of those inspirational books encourage you to think on the bright side, to be compassionate, to have a strong attitude, to be optimistic and enterprising, to remain cheerful and enthusiastic, but they do not teach you how to pull yourself out of difficulty, nor do they give you any way of knowing exactly which vicious cycle of mentality you are trapped in. Those books are sometimes quite effective, but they cannot explain how thoughts and emotional feelings actually form reality. Nor do those theories take into account the various multidimensional aspects of this thing called "I," and even less do they consider that although everyone follows definite general rules, each person ultimately has to find the way to make those rules apply to his or her individual circumstances.
He is saying why this kind of chicken soup for the soul is not good. Sometimes it works, but very often it does not, and the reason it does not work is what he says here:
If your health is poor, you can try to remedy it; if you are dissatisfied with your interpersonal relationships, you can improve them; if you are poor, you can also place yourself in circumstances of abundance. Whether you know it or not, you have all along embraced a determination to walk the road you are on today, and you have used all kinds of resources to pursue the purpose and reason that once seemed reasonable to you.
Whether you know it or not, you are doing this all the time, pursuing that purpose and reason that once seemed reasonable to you. The words he uses are always so interesting.
You might say, I cannot see what meaning being sick could possibly have for me...
You cannot see what benefit being sick could have for you.
...or, a broken marriage could never have been something I deliberately sought out.
No one would want to seek that out. No one gets married without wanting it to last forever.
You might also say, who would go looking for trouble, and after such hard work end up pursuing poverty instead?
What he is saying here are all the questions that ordinary, worldly people often ask when they deny the idea that "your world is formed by you." You say my reality is created by me, so how could I create a sick self? How could I create a self with such an unhappy marriage? How could I create such a poor self? That is what he means.
If you were born into poverty, or born with illness, then on the surface these circumstances may appear to be misfortunes coming from outside...
On the surface it seems as if it was not decided by you -- the family conditions were bad from birth, or there was a congenital illness from birth.
...but in fact that is not so, and these conditions still have more or less the opportunity to be improved.
They all have the opportunity to be improved.
But this does not mean that effort and determination are no longer needed. The point of this statement is to make clear that you are not powerless to change things, and that every person, regardless of his or her status, circumstances, or physical condition, has his or her own personal experience and understanding entirely within his or her own grasp.
It has nothing to do with their identity, status, or wealth.
What you see with your eyes and feel in your heart is entirely what you yourself expected to see and expected to feel. The world you know is a painting displayed by your own expectations.
These are all things you yourself wanted to see or wanted to feel.
And the whole human world is the concretization of each of your individual expectations combined together.
Our present three-dimensional world, this human world, is the concretization formed by combining together everyone's expectations.
Just as a child comes from your own body and tissues, this world is created by all of you together.
He gives an example: how a child is born, it comes from our bodily tissues, but it is a new life.
My purpose in writing this book is to help each of you solve the personal difficulties you face. I hope by doing so to show you that your personal reality is formed by your own hands, and to explain to you how you can turn adversity into advantage and accomplish what I wish to do.
What is his purpose in writing this book? It is how to enable you to turn adversity into advantage. He places the original English text here: "I hope to do this by showing you exactly the way in which you form your own reality, by explaining the ways in which you can alter it to your advantage." That is the original text of the passage after the colon.
To put it simply, I will not cover up the existence of so-called negative thoughts and feelings, but neither will I ignore your ability to deal with these things. Because negative thoughts and feelings are entirely within your own grasp, and we have ways to use them as springboards for further creation. I will never tell you that you should suppress or ignore those thoughts and feelings. I will teach you how to recognize the negative thoughts and feelings in your experience, to find out which of them has gotten out of control, and how to handle those thoughts and feelings that seem to be beyond control.
These are all things this book is going to teach us.
The methods I am going to describe all require effort and focused concentration on your part. They will also challenge you, and bring into your life the most meaningful kind of expansion and alteration of consciousness.
They will also challenge you.
I am not a physical being, but basically neither are you.
We already talked about this in Seth Speaks. It is just that your present feelings and experiences are very concrete.
You are a creator who brings your own expectations into concrete form. The meaning of this world lies in your own reference points, and all outer manifestations are in fact reproductions of your own inner desires.
The manifestation of the outer world is a reproduction of your inner desires.
You can change your personal world, and in fact you have always been doing so.
You have actually been doing this unconsciously all along, always changing your own world, only you do it without realizing it -- you do it yourself and do not know it.
What you really need to do is simply to consciously use the abilities you already possess, to examine carefully the nature of your own thoughts and feelings, and then project out those thoughts and feelings that you basically agree with.
What he means is that you are doing this every moment, only you do it without realizing it, so now let yourself do it consciously, and that is all there is to it. You have this ability, because when you are unconscious you are doing this all the time anyway, so now it is just a matter of letting yourself do it consciously.
After these thoughts and feelings of yours enter the world, they will combine into the various events that are intimately related to you and very familiar to you.
These thoughts and feelings will combine into familiar events of all kinds.
I will teach you some methods for recognizing the nature of your own reality, and how to change that reality according to your own consciousness.
At this point Rob said, good heavens, starting a new book in this way is really quite cunning. Then Seth joked:
This is my own special trick. Later I will tell you the chapters of this book and other related material, and if you want to know, I will also tell you the general idea of the book.
I think Jane would certainly want to know, and Rob himself also wanted to know.
Let me just say it briefly first, please wait a moment.
Then here he is going to talk about what the content of this book actually wants to say.
The Core of This Book
This book mainly explains how personal reality is formed, with the emphasis on the various methods for transforming circumstances you do not like. So The Nature of Personal Reality is a book about everyone's life, about your actual, practical life. He has already stated the core of this book: the emphasis is on the various methods for transforming circumstances you do not like.
I hope this book avoids the fault of excessive optimism found in many inspirational books, and instead arouses in the reader a fervent desire to explore the nature of reality, even if only to solve his own problems.
He says this is the goal he wants to achieve: to give the reader a fervent inner desire to explore the nature of reality, even if only to solve his own problems. What he says here is quite interesting -- when you are not solving your own problems, you rarely have this kind of motivation. Some people are interested in the truth of the world, in the origin of all things, but others have no interest in these things. He says, I hope you have this desire, this fervent desire, even if only to solve your own problems. You can try this method, and then you will discover that this is how the world actually is.
The methods I will tell you about are absolutely workable, absolutely practical, and all within the reach of every person's abilities.
Everyone can do it.
As long as you truly care about the difficulties that inevitably come with being human, you can solve them.
I will repeatedly clarify one fact throughout the book, and that is that all healing occurs because the person involved has accepted a basic fact.
If a person wants healing to occur smoothly, he must accept a basic fact.
First, matter is formed by those inner qualities that give it vitality and life.
What gives it vitality and life, the inner what? It is its consciousness.
Second, the structure of matter follows expectation. Third, matter can be changed at any time, and the way to change it is to awaken the creative ability inherent in all consciousness.
The way to change it is to awaken the creative ability inherent in all consciousness, which is already there.
Please take what I have said tonight as my preface, and good night to you.
Afterword
Afterword: We did not know the second half of this book's title until six months later. The content of the second half was that Jane said she felt the book's title was only "The Nature of Personal Reality," and that after this title there was a dash or a colon, but she did not know what it was. It was not until a few months later, six months later, that she knew -- at the time of Chapters 4 and 5 of this book, on the day of Session 623, Jane said during her rest before dinner that evening that the complete title of the book had finally come through:
The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book -- this is the full English title of the book.
In fact, Rob never asked for an outline of this book afterward, because once the book began they discovered that this decision gave Jane the greatest possible freedom. He found that not having an outline was actually better -- unlike Seth Speaks, which began with an outline right at the start.
What follows is Rob's summary of the topics Seth discusses in this book: how beliefs come into being, how beliefs influence our daily lives, how to practice self-hypnosis and healing, what dreams represent, how to activate inner energy, how to improve intimate relationships, how to learn to accept the present moment, and how to love better.
Thank you for opening this book; you will discover a new world. As for this part of the preface to The Nature of Personal Reality -- that is, the preface Seth wrote for his own book -- we have now finished introducing it.
注释与核实
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Source: Open Library, The Nature of Personal Reality (1974, Prentice Hall) (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL9297619M/The_Nature_of_Personal_Reality) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "second only to the Bible in U.S. sales"; upon verification, it should be "Jonathan Livingston Seagull sold over 1 million hardcover copies in 1972 alone, setting a U.S. hardcover sales record since Gone with the Wind and becoming the best-selling book in the United States for 1972–1973, but there is no record of it being 'second only to the Bible in U.S. sales.'" (Source: University of Virginia Library Bestsellers project, Bach, Richard: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, https://bestsellers.lib.virginia.edu/submissions/91.html) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, Way of the Peaceful Warrior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Peaceful_Warrior) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, Peaceful Warrior (film) (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%B7%B1%E5%A4%9C%E5%8A%A0%E6%B2%B9%E7%AB%99%E9%81%87%E8%A6%8B%E8%98%87%E6%A0%BC%E6%8B%89%E5%BA%95_(%E9%9B%BB%E5%BD%B1)) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, Love Is Letting Go of Fear, Third Edition (Penguin Random House book page) (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/203065/love-is-letting-go-of-fear-third-edition-by-gerald-g-jampolsky-md/) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, Terry Hu (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%83%A1%E8%8C%B5%E6%A2%A6) ↩