Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 19

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

Introduction

This chapter explains that the concentration of energy follows belief, and that excessive focus on certain beliefs can bring negative results. Using life frameworks such as congenital disability, illness, and poverty as examples, it points out that these are chosen in advance in order to concentrate on developing other abilities. It emphasizes that the point of power is in the present, that all lives exist simultaneously, and that present beliefs can change past and reincarnational experience. Finally, it introduces an imagination exercise: imagining a desired situation with a playful attitude can change the body and reality, attracting experiences of a similar kind.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The concentration of energy follows belief. Over-focusing on certain beliefs brings negative results; attention should be placed on positive matters.
• Life frameworks such as congenital disability, illness, and poverty are chosen in advance, with the purpose of concentrating on developing other abilities; they are not necessary.
• The point of power is in the present. All lives exist simultaneously, and present beliefs can change past, present, and reincarnational experience.
• Every day is a window into a lifetime. Imagination is the clue for obtaining the experience of other selves and solving current problems.
• Doing imagination exercises with a playful attitude will change the body's chemistry and reality, attracting experiences of a similar kind.

Main Text

The title of this chapter is "The Concentration of Energy, Beliefs, and the Present Point of Power," and this chapter will address these aspects.

The Concentration of Energy Follows Your Beliefs

The concentration of energy follows your beliefs, meaning your beliefs guide this energy, so the concentration of energy follows where your beliefs lead. And many beliefs that are not in themselves negative, when overemphasized, will lead to results that do indeed appear negative. That is, you pay too much attention to beliefs that are not actually negative in themselves, but this causes you to feel as though the result is negative. What you need to do is stop focusing on these negative beliefs, or beliefs that appear negative, and pay more attention to the positive things, and that will resolve the problem.

For many people who find themselves in situations they do not like, this material is extremely important. Many people are in a situation they do not like. If you currently feel very happy and satisfied with your life, this chapter may not mean much to you. The focus of this chapter is on those who are living in situations they do not like; for them it is extremely important.

For several reasons, Seth uses Ruburt as an example, uses Jane as an example. Many of you have a tendency to believe that anyone with Ruburt's abilities — Ruburt has the ability to contact beings from higher-dimensional worlds, to communicate with Seth, to channel, or has already become enlightened — that someone like Ruburt should have no problems or challenges. You think Ruburt should be living very happily. Ruburt himself often says that some readers write to him expecting him to be completely healthy, wealthy, and wise, and truly no longer having any human emotions or difficulties. Many readers also think this way, believing that Ruburt should be someone who is wise, wealthy, and healthy. They think that having attained enlightenment or received this kind of spiritual illumination should result in that kind of life state. Actually, they do not understand this; they do not understand the nature of the psyche, they do not understand what the nature of this reality is.

Misunderstandings in Seeking the Pure Land

Some of you are searching for a state of peace. Many people have been thinking of a world of ultimate bliss, or a place of extreme peace and tranquility, where there is a stable supreme joy. All problems have already been answered. In that blissful world there are no worries, and all difficulties have already been resolved. Some of you think this will somehow be miraculously accomplished for you. You feel there will be such a place, that if I cultivate myself to a certain stage, I will be able to reach such a goal. This is what many people hope for.

If you acknowledge the power of your own existence, if you acknowledge your own power, then you will know what this power does. It is always seeking greater areas of creativity and experience, always seeking greater challenges for you. Within this, new challenges are inherently built in. All problems are challenges. When you feel that those so-called ordinary difficulties in your life have all been resolved by you, and you think you can then be safe and sound, that you can live out your remaining years in comfort, living like a happy person with no difficulties at all -- then you are mistaken. Your inner self will keep seeking greater challenges for you.

In Ruburt's case, he began with a set of concepts and beliefs. When they reached an extreme, those concepts and beliefs only became a limitation. You can look at Chapter Eleven, where it talks about Ruburt. What was Ruburt? He began with a set of concepts and beliefs -- he wanted to write, he wanted to be a writer, he wanted to express himself. When these concepts and beliefs became only a limitation, when they reached an extreme, they became limiting. He would feel that only being a writer counted as writing, and that the material obtained through channeling was not real writing.

In your own experience, many people also find themselves concentrating their energy so heavily within a certain range of activity, focusing their abilities, experience, and energy on certain areas, while being unable to see anything else, and treating those things as limitations. Those things you cannot see, you yourself regard as limitations -- I cannot sing, I cannot dance, I am not a person with artistic temperament, I cannot play an instrument, I cannot draw, and so on and so forth. He has limited himself.

Ruburt's situation involved the circumstances of this lifetime. Some of you may find yourselves concentrated on the physical aspect of existence, concentrated on the material world. This in itself is legitimate -- there is nothing wrong with concentrating on the material -- but you must not exclude other important things. You must not, because of this, exclude those non-physical existences.

In a broad sense, this kind of focus on a specific area can involve the entire situation of a lifetime. In terms of reincarnation, your choice beforehand is like concentrating your attention on a certain area (rather than another area). You have already chosen before coming here. You may have chosen for yourself a body that cannot move normally, or a mind that falls short of the general standard. All of this is possible.

Choosing Disability as a Life Framework

This section begins to discuss what he promised earlier he would talk about, namely, what causes the situation where some people are born disabled and some are born mentally challenged. So the situation at birth is that, no matter what kind of disability you chose, in that area you cannot manipulate things properly. For example, if you chose to be intellectually disabled, then you will not have much development intellectually; if you chose paralysis, then you can only sit in a wheelchair; if you chose congenital heart disease, then basically you have no room for development in athletics.

If you have decided on a situation that involves the defect or failure of an important organ, such as being born with a serious illness, then within that range you will experience a special focus within physical reality. If you made this choice before reincarnation, then in the world of physical reality you will definitely experience the special focus you chose, one different from others, such as being born intellectually disabled or with congenital heart disease.

However, there will be a reason for this. First of all, there is a reason, and where are these reasons hidden? These reasons are hidden in the abilities you leave yourself free and open to pursue. Simply put, the reason you made this choice is not without reason, and it is a very clear reason. And this reason is not hidden in the question of why you made yourself disabled or defective, but rather it rests in the other unaffected abilities that allow you to express yourself freely and develop freely. In other words, when you develop and create the potential of your other unaffected abilities as much as possible, then you will understand why you were given certain limitations or defects in certain areas. As we often say, when God closes a door for you, He opens a window for you, and this speaks of a similar principle.

All existence is simultaneous. Within biological attributes, within our physical, biological, animal nature, some things are possible, such as some illnesses can be cured, while others cannot. For example, if you are born missing an arm, then you cannot grow another arm after birth; you cannot grow a new hand or a new foot, nor can you grow entirely new limbs. If you suffered an accident and had a limb amputated, that is acquired; if you were born missing a hand or a foot, you cannot grow one either.

If you realize that the point of power is in the present, if you understand that your point of power is in the present, then you will be able to heal those so-called incurable illnesses in yourself. Others would think that telling you those incurable illnesses can actually be cured, but some congenital disabilities, things that go against physical objective reality, cannot be cured.

No matter what your situation is, you chose it for a reason. Because this situation involves a physical condition that cannot be changed, and since it cannot be changed physically, you chose it as a framework. You treat this defect as a framework in order to strengthen other abilities in a focused way. For example, if you are born blind, then your other abilities will be stronger than others; you will have to develop other abilities, such as your hearing, your sense of touch, your memory, and so on.

Your main point is not to focus on your shortcomings, on your defects, but on the abilities you already have. Some people are born disabled and they keep focusing on "why am I disabled," and they put too much attention on that, while they do not focus on the many other abilities they still have. Because the great energy of your personality will be channeled into those avenues, that is, those abilities that remain unaffected, and that is the direction your life energy should be channeled into, the direction you should pay attention to. This is also the direction you set for yourself before you came here.

Session 667

Jane's Alteration of Consciousness and the Racing Accident

This session is too short, so we will cover it together with the next one, Session 667, the class held on Wednesday evening, May 30, 1973.

Seth began by describing the process by which Jane was still giving Seth lessons while she was asleep, which is very interesting. This had happened before, but what was different now from before was that previously he had found himself teaching chapters that had not yet been covered, whereas now he found himself teaching some old chapters, teaching the previous chapter.

This afternoon Ruburt was practicing alteration of consciousness, and at the same time he had the radio playing softly. Then the rock program was interrupted by a special bulletin about the Indianapolis Speedway race, a car race in which a driver had been seriously injured. The race, which had been postponed on Tuesday because of that incident and the bad weather, finally began again today. While he was practicing, the station continued to interrupt with bulletins, and Ruburt heard about another very serious accident that had occurred. What accident? In addition, a man, not the race car driver but another man, was struck and killed by an ambulance rushing to the scene¹. Yet that victim was also connected with the race, because he was a member of a racing team's crew. Later Seth added a note, that the driver involved in the accident, who had been injured in a racing accident the previous day, Monday, died more than a month later as well. So the whole incident resulted in two deaths: one was the driver who was injured at the time, and then an ambulance rushing in to rescue him struck and killed a crew member outright.

When he returned to normal consciousness, Ruburt found himself astonished at the great violence involved, and at the whole situation in which such people place themselves. He did not understand why anyone would engage in this kind of life-risking racing sport. The risks of racing are extremely high, including, as we know, the former racing champion Schumacher, who also had an accident in racing and was in a coma for many years², and only recently recovered from the coma.

When Ruburt was practicing altered states of consciousness, he often left the radio on to serve as a reference point for him. Regarding this part, in The "Unknown" Reality, Seth actually gives an accurate and detailed introduction, saying that when you are exploring different levels and different areas of consciousness, you should set up a reference point. It is equivalent to saying that when you change television channels, you must always have a home channel, that is, your basic home channel, the place where your essential self resides, or the place where you are connected to the present reality. When you go too far, you can switch back at any time and return to the home channel. We will not go into that further here.

Some of the material in the previous chapter should help explain the reasons for such life frameworks, which could be said to have an innate tendency toward violence. Because these people, for the most part, may choose some very violent or very power-filled sports to prove their own strength, due to a sense of powerlessness, a sense of meaninglessness and worthlessness in their own existence, and a sense of helplessness. And violence indeed becomes a theme of challenge, including racing and many extreme sports, through which people perceive reality. This situation is very dangerous, because you do indeed place yourself in a very dangerous position, yet it is chosen by those involved; they choose it themselves, and it is not imposed upon them by anything. Many of us do not understand why someone would choose such dangerous sports, and the reasons have already been introduced in the previous chapter.

In much the same way, people choose the themes of an entire lifetime, which to an onlooker may appear incomprehensible, foolish, or even insane. When we look at people who engage in extreme sports, including triathlons, marathons, even half-marathons and so on, we think, is it not boring to run dozens of kilometers like that? Some people even think, with dangerous sports like mountain climbing or deep diving, do you not find them terrifying? So from the onlooker's perspective, it seems incomprehensible, foolish, or insane, but for the person involved, it is his own choice; he is willing to choose such a life experience.

These lifelong structures, where some people engage in, for example, racing as a professional sport, are lifelong choices, and may involve severe disabilities present from birth. From the outside, it seems unlikely that anyone would choose such a background as the opening of a life's backdrop, one so extremely limiting and even painful. If you chose such a situation, it would be very painful at the beginning, and also very painful later on, with many restrictions, difficulty moving about, inability to communicate normally with others, and so on. From that viewpoint, congenital disabilities, or any lifelong illness, make no sense.

However, this is not the case. Individuals often choose such circumstances; some people often choose such circumstances precisely in order to use them as a stimulus, to use such innate difficulties, such initial disabilities, as a stimulus in life. And many great people have done this as well; many great people had extremely harsh conditions in the early part of their lives.

But this does not mean that such defects are necessary. Be sure to remember, it is not to say that it is necessary, that if you want to become a great person, or accomplish something, you must first make yourself disabled, or that you can only grow up in a very miserable, harsh environment. No, it is not necessary. At any time, when a person realizes his present point of power—he has been discussing the present point of power in the previous several chapters—then you no longer need obstacles to test yourself, or to focus in the direction he considers correct. When you understand that you have this ability, this power, that the present is your point of power, then you do not need to make some aspect of yourself disabled in order to consciously develop other aspects. There is no need; you only need to make adjustments through the point of power.

Living Many Lives Simultaneously

You are living many lives at the same time. Be sure to remember: living many lives simultaneously means that in this present life, in this present moment, you are living in many lives. But you often think of it as reincarnational existence, thinking of it as one after another -- the past life ends, then the present life begins; the present life ends, then the next life comes. That is the understanding of ordinary people like us.

So if you are seriously ill, and you believe that the cause of your symptoms lies in a past life, and that you must endure it, then you do not understand that the point of power functions in the present, nor do you understand its power, nor will you believe that you have the possibility of recovery. Regarding this, much has already been said earlier.

Once again, even so-called incurable diseases can be cured -- as long as it does not involve the impossible regrowth within the animal realm, meaning do not say "I will regrow an arm or regrow a leg" -- that kind of cure aside, normal diseases can all be cured. There is no illness that cannot be cured. If you understand that the present is the point of power, you can take back this power.

In your terms, no matter what kind of congenital disability, it was chosen before this life began, and there are many different reasons for doing so; each person's reasons are different. Just as in this life some people choose illness, you do not know why a person would choose illness, just as you do not understand why a person would choose to begin a life with a disability. It is that a certain person's psychic framework was established, and through a pre-decided experience of the entire life situation -- that is how he set it up; this is his life framework setting.

I have also given some material in my other works: when you are limited in one aspect, other aspects will expand, and the expansion of other aspects, in certain circumstances, can only be noticed by you when one aspect is limited.

Seth gives a few examples below. A person who, over several lives, emphasized intellectual achievement -- that is, assuming according to our human time, over several lives of reincarnation he emphasized intellectual achievement, emphasized rational achievement, emphasized that knowledge changes destiny and knowledge determines everything. He might deliberately decide on a new life: in this life he loses all ability to think, becomes mentally disabled, or his academic performance is extremely poor, his thinking ability, rational ability, and reasoning ability are extremely poor. And the emotions he previously denied -- he previously focused on rationality, felt that knowledge was the core, and felt that emotions were unimportant -- so the emotions he had not focused on and had denied now have a complete expression. This person in this life may be a completely emotional person, because he has no rationality to apply.

Since all existence is simultaneous, all of your lives are happening at the same time, this only means that he emphasized a certain direction in this life. Are they all simultaneous? There are many lives happening at the same time, so one can only say that in this life he chose to let his emotions dominate and his intellect be weak, while in other lives, he let his intellect dominate and his emotions be weak. Only in this way can he develop more comprehensively and experience all things. You could also say he sacrificed other things -- for example, focusing on emotions, he sacrificed rationality; focusing on rationality, he sacrificed emotions. He set up what appears to be a restrictive reference framework, meaning that in terms of rationality he could not function, his IQ was below that of ordinary people, so he could only develop more in the emotional aspect.

On the other hand, the person involved might regard it as a most rewarding and expansive experience. He does not feel that this is a defect or a limitation; he feels that this can exactly provide a great expansion and reward for his emotions. In this, the emotions are allowed a freedom that is usually denied; the emotions gain the freedom that was denied in his other lives, and he acts entirely according to emotion in deciding his life.

According to each person's characteristics, some personalities prefer to follow a steady path of achievement. Some people like stable, balanced development and life experience; while others demand a great contrast -- they want bitterness first and sweetness later, or sweetness first and bitterness later, or to live in a very wealthy family, and then the family fortune suddenly collapses into poverty, experiencing the fickleness of the world, and then start over from scratch. Among the latter type who like contrast, there are also many people who in one life are so poor they have no place to stand, so poor they do not even have a place to shelter from wind and rain, while in another life they live in extreme luxury and extravagance; and in yet another life they are an intellectual giant, a very wise, extremely high-IQ technological giant, a scientist, or a great athlete; and in the following life they are completely disabled, paralyzed in bed. This is all the person's choice, and individual differences determine what kind of life circumstances he chooses. Each person is different; he can decide for himself what kind of life he wants.

Choosing the Role of Disability for the Family

In many cases, it is not the disabled person himself, but his family members who raise the question and cannot understand, for example in the case of a severely mentally handicapped child. It is not the mentally handicapped person himself or the disabled person himself, but the disabled person's family members who raise the question and cannot understand, because they are bystanders. As parents, they cannot understand why their own child is severely mentally handicapped.

But in all cases, the child of course chooses his parents in advance, rather than the parents choosing the child. When we reincarnate, we choose the environment into which we will be born; it is the child who chooses the parents. And the parents, when they reincarnate, also in a sense choose their children; they choose what kind of experience they want in this life, and they also have a setting for their children. So it is a two-way process of choice.

In such a situation, then, certain achievements can also be gained from the parents' standpoint. Why? Because in the process of raising such a disabled child, a mentally handicapped child, or a child born with a disability, the parents must put in more effort and more care than other parents, and they will also achieve things that ordinary parents cannot achieve. So in this situation, all those involved, including the disabled person himself, and the disabled person's parents and relatives, always have opportunities for growth. For both parents and child, it is an opportunity for growth, as well as an unusual creative possibility. Creativity that would not be possible under ordinary circumstances is stimulated under these extreme conditions. That is why they chose this framework; the reason they chose this framework is right here: to stimulate a creativity that would not exist under ordinary conditions.

The same applies to tragedies that seem to exist, such as accidents that happen at any time, or serious illnesses. This also applies to sudden tragedies, disabilities, car accidents, unexpected accidents, and so on. The principle is the same: to stimulate creativity that he would not ordinarily have the opportunity to stimulate.

For example, on an individual basis, a serious illness represents his adoption of a particularly heightened focus. If a person becomes seriously ill, he places his focus upon it, and in one aspect of it, certain ordinary experiences are deliberately cut off or negated. When a person becomes seriously ill, for example with loss of hearing, he becomes deaf, and at that point the most basic ability to hear others speak, which is so ordinary, is lost. So the content of his life itself must be amplified along other directions. Some people learn to understand what the other person is saying by watching the movement of their lips, that is, lip-reading. Once he has learned lip-reading, he can see the movement of another person's lips from far away and know what they are saying; a normal person's ears cannot hear the other person speaking, but he can know what the other person is saying by watching the movement of their lips. So it seems as though his hearing is impaired, but in fact he has gained more information than a person with normal hearing.

In much the same way, this also applies to those born into conditions of extreme poverty, destitution, or what appear to be the most unfortunate families. The challenge of this life emerges from the innate problem itself, or from the challenge of facing this problem. Often, though not always, a singular personal achievement springs forth precisely because of such an inherent difficulty. A singular personal achievement; this achievement need not necessarily involve some great work of art, or an invention, or political leadership, and so on, although they may also lead to such results. Usually the activity that leads to success represents a challenge to the personality, something you should accomplish in this life. And he (Seth) establishes such a challenge in terms of psychological creativity and the wholeness of experience. He can experience things that he ordinarily could not experience, whether psychologically, physically, or in terms of personal experience; if he were a normal person, he might not be able to experience such things, but with a certain disability, he experiences them instead.

For those involved, such as his family members, there must be a kind of tacit consent to this situation beforehand. "Beforehand" means; Seth drew quotation marks; not that they consciously agreed beforehand, but that in their unconscious beforehand, there must have been a tacit consent, because they had all agreed before reincarnation; both sides had approved. Generally speaking, especially in cases of mental and physical congenital disability, the disabled person will accept that role. The limited person himself will accept that role, not only for personal reasons, but also for the sake of the entire family. The family needs such a disabled child, and he says, then I will come and play this disabled child. He does it not only for himself, but also for the family, so it is something both sides have discussed and agreed upon. For example, in this life, the parents want to experience the process of raising a disabled child, and another person happens to say, I happen to want to be a disabled person and see what such a life is like; the two sides discuss it, and both do it to fulfill their own respective life challenges.

Therefore, very intelligent parents may find that they have given birth to a mentally handicapped child; the parents themselves have normal intelligence, yet they have given birth to a mentally handicapped child, that is, a child whose intelligence is clearly below normal. If they place great value on intellect at the expense of emotion, then this child will make them act out the emotional spontaneity they fear most. This situation occasionally happens: some parents are highly educated or even high-IQ scientists, yet their child is mentally handicapped. Many people do not understand why, saying it is a case of things reversing at their extreme; because the parents are too intelligent, the child is mentally handicapped. The reason Seth points out to you is not this; it is because these naturally highly intelligent parents have extremely high IQs, perhaps 150, 160, 170, and the greatest deficiency of these parents is that, with high intelligence, their emotions are lacking. We often say that people with high IQ have low emotional intelligence; their emotional intelligence is very low, and their emotional aspect is also weak. At this point, there happens to be a mentally handicapped child; they cannot communicate with this child through intellectual means, cannot communicate through normal intelligence or upbringing; they can only communicate with this child through emotional means. The part of themselves that is usually weakest; the emotional part; has been strengthened.

During the break, Jane said something very interesting; in the middle of it she could not remember what they had said, and only remembered one sentence, which was Seth saying that she used the radio as a reference point. They had never thought of it before, but it was a very obvious thing. Jane said, I often use it; she kept the radio on as a lifeline between herself and reality. We will not discuss this issue here today; when you study the part in The "Unknown" Reality, we will come back and discuss how to set up a home station (that is, a local radio station or television station), and then how to allow yourself to quickly turn back when exploring other unknown realities.

A Congenital Disability Is Obviously Impossible to Ignore

A congenital disability is obvious; it establishes a certain situation that cannot be ignored. Born without legs or without arms, that is simply impossible to ignore. A couple of days ago I watched a video of a young girl, probably in her twenties -- 18, 19, 20 years old -- she was born without both arms, no arms at all, but she can do everything with her feet, everything a normal person can do she can do, including putting on her own makeup, cooking, stir-frying, eating -- everything you can do, she can do it all, and her feet are extraordinarily nimble.

Many ordinary illnesses also involve the family group to some degree; some illnesses are related to the whole family, involving issues that concern the entire family line. Thus the patient's dominant beliefs are always the most important; here the patient's own core beliefs are the most important. The group situation will include the tacit consent of the family and other members. This has already been stated once before: when a disabled person appears in a family, or when a handicap appears, the whole family has an overall belief, but the individual's own belief holds the dominant position.

Now you should understand that in these cases of unusual achievement -- in the cases of people who, though born disabled, have achieved results that ordinary people could not achieve -- the same thing applies. What thing? In those cases, the achiever's beliefs dominate everything. Remember, whether it is an ordinary disabled person or a disabled person who has made some achievements, the disabled person's own beliefs, his core beliefs, dominate everything. Beyond that, he may also be acting out some unfulfilled aspirations of his family, or of family members, or of the group closely related to him. In other words, in this process of achieving himself, he has actually also, along the way, fulfilled a life wish that this family, or this family group, had never realized. Such mutual relationships always have their reasons.

The Inner Meaning of Social Contrasts

Many great social contrasts carry the same kind of inner meaning. What is meant by social contrast? It is the gap between rich and poor. Social groups are the extremely wealthy and the extremely impoverished. Here an entire group of people chooses particular life circumstances, in which, for example, poverty and illness predominate — that is, there are some people who are both poor and sick, and these are people in great suffering. If you have seen the film Dying to Survive, you will have seen people with hemophilia, or people undergoing kidney dialysis, people with kidney disease who need long-term medication or long-term treatment, or a kind of leukemia. They are in great pain. And at the same time, other regions of the world — or one country, or any country — will be enjoying the latest, most advanced technological progress, wealth, and prosperity. Between some of the most backward African countries and the most developed United States, there is an enormous gap between them, and the size of this gap may exceed anyone's imagination.

Individually speaking, each person has private reasons for choosing such an alliance — that is, each person has his own personal reasons for choosing the environment he finds himself in, for choosing what kind of country, what kind of group, to be born into. On another level, through poverty and wealth, science and achievement serving as focal points of contrast, both opposite sides are made abundantly clear. Through such contrasts, the gap between rich and poor, social injustice, and the advancement and backwardness of technology are laid before the eyes of the world with such stark clarity. Technological progress is pursued as a primary focus, and automatically reveals its advantages and disadvantages — it has both good and bad. A country that pursues this path (taking technology as a primary focus of development) is, from a certain angle, like a person who mainly follows a strict, objective, masculine, externally oriented approach. In the case of your Western situation, in your country, certain values have been emphasized, especially recently; these attributes have been pursued for individual and collective reasons, but at the expense of others. What he means is that a country is like a person: when you pursue certain things such as intellect, rationality, technology, at the same time you neglect the emotional aspects on the other side.

Yet other parts of the world also agree to this behavior; those other impoverished places also agree — it is a tacit consent. Other parts of the world have chosen entirely different directions, just as among us some people choose wisdom as the framework and theme of a life, while another person chooses emotion — these are entirely different. Some people want to accomplish great things through wealth; others want to achieve a major sublimation of life through extreme poverty — both are possible. Therefore in your experience, the global society displays a myriad of different focal points and results, and this is also where the value of the diversity of our whole society lies. Every society, every country, every region has its own unique focus.

On a much smaller scale, and to varying degrees, any tribe, town, family, or group will display the same kind of tendency. Any group, large or small, has a similar tendency. What tendency? It is that while it develops one kind of ability, it suppresses another kind of ability. So within their shared experience — within the group experience of that group — each person can learn and grow, and this is a normal thing. Every group has its own belief system and a learning framework and experiential framework to share within it.

The Trade-off Between Talent and Intellect

Conversely, a person may choose one great talent, and through it perceive reality, and use it to focus all of his experience. Some people are born with a great talent, and some people's spiritual nature itself is very high, for instance, his celestial eye is open from birth; some people are born with telepathy, able to sense other people's minds; some people are born able to hear sounds from very far away with their ears, and this differs from person to person. And this great talent -- including certain kinds of wisdom, which may also differ -- is treated as a startling focus, but because of its nature, he often fears that it will exclude many other experiences that most people consider quite normal. When he is too strong in one aspect, he will exclude other experiences, and he will lack the experiences of normal people.

There are some extremely talented artists who also reject intellectual maturity. Many artists can be described as almost very low in rationality or IQ. When they take certain exams, whether the college entrance exam or other IQ-related tests, their scores are very low, but this does not prevent them from being extremely talented in art. They take their innate emotions -- we say that artists have relatively strong emotions, and their feelings come more intensely -- and when the emotional intensity reaches a certain degree, their reasoning ability is largely set aside. Without the illumination of reason, the emotional component may become so dense that it cannot be dissolved -- lacking the bright guidance of reason, emotion becomes so dense it cannot be dissolved. "Cannot be dissolved" means not knowing how to handle it, only knowing how to invest emotion deeply, and making a mess of one's own life. So much so that although this artist has completely spontaneous expression in artistic achievement, he cannot form any lasting intimate relationships with others. These people are very reclusive, too highbrow to be popular, and they find it hard to get along with normal people, yet their emotions are often so dense they cannot be dissolved, and they make these very normal emotions into a mess, taking them to extremes and excess. We see many artists, such as Van Gogh, who cut off his own ear and gave it to someone else³ and so on, and in the end even fought a duel with someone over a woman he liked. We can also see that many people who are very accomplished in art often have very chaotic emotional lives. From an outsider's perspective, he may seem like a scumbag, liking this person today and that person next year, loving everyone desperately. But from Seth's perspective, this phenomenon occurs because his reason is insufficient. Reason and emotion should naturally be a matched pair, and they should be balanced, but if a person's sensibility is too strong and his reason too weak, this situation will arise. It is not that a highly emotional person will necessarily have a good emotional life; often the opposite is true. When things reach an extreme, they reverse. An artist with overly rich emotions often lacks a sense of measure and control in his emotional life, which becomes chaotic and even extreme.

Another person may also choose to focus his attention on the intellect. For example, there are some scientists who focus on wisdom and knowledge to such a degree that they exclude truly intimate relationships with other people. He can accept a lasting relationship, but cannot experience the emotional richness that others might experience from a much shorter encounter. Here he points out that although some scientists have very strong reason, and they can also establish a so-called lasting romantic relationship with a person through reason, yet in this kind of long-term relationship that seems very faithful, devoted to one person, unchanged for decades, with the same wife from marriage until death, their emotional life is actually extremely bland. Because he can restrain himself or control the direction of his emotions through reason, but in fact his emotions themselves are very weak. It cannot be said that he is cold-hearted or ungrateful; it is that his reason itself is too strong and his IQ too high, so he does not have much room for emotional expression. This phenomenon is also very common, and many scientists are like this.

The most typical example is Newton. Needless to say, Newton's IQ was extraordinary. When he was young, he liked one of his cousins⁴. They liked each other very much; he loved his cousin deeply, and his cousin loved him deeply too. But in his twenties, he was obsessed with scientific research, and during those years he even forgot that he had a cousin. By the time he remembered to go propose marriage, his cousin had already married someone else. After she married someone else, Newton took a different path from then on. He felt that since he could not marry the cousin he loved, he would remain unmarried for the rest of his life, never marrying any woman, and continued to devote himself to scientific research. As a rather special example, other scientists are similar. For instance, if you look at Einstein, or other so-called scientists, strange things⁵ happen in their emotional lives. It does not mean that they cannot have a partner and live a stable life, but the emotion between them is certainly weaker than that of normal people. He simply cannot understand how two people could elope, or how two people who meet by chance, in a brief encounter, could strike such a spark of love. In fact, he wants to use reason to control emotion. He feels that a relationship between gentlemen should be as plain as water, that husband and wife should treat each other with mutual respect and live a plain, ordinary life, and that this is the most normal life for a couple. He overlooks the eruption of passion in emotion, and that kind of emotional need.

The Point of Power Is in the Present

Therefore, each of you chose -- in your terms, beforehand, before this incarnation -- the framework through which (that is, the original settings of this life) to grapple with the circumstances of this lifetime. This applies to individuals, and it also applies to groups. Be sure to remember: it applies not only to individuals, but also to groups. Regarding the question of groups, Seth discusses group reality in depth in another book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events; in this book he focuses mainly on the individual and rarely discusses groups. He also mentioned in passing, telling you: actually, for groups, for an organization, it is the same.

Those who believe in reincarnation may ask, what about the beliefs of past lives? Even if I have forgotten this idea of sin, do I still follow the law of cause and effect? This is a question many people ask, because they have always believed in reincarnation and karmic retribution. Seth says, since everything is simultaneous, then your present beliefs can of course also change past beliefs. Of course they can -- we can change the past right now. Whether they come from this life (some of your past experiences) or from a previous life (your past-life experiences), they can all be changed by you. As long as your present beliefs change, they will all change. Existence is open-ended. What you call existence is not a historical thing, something already finished, already completed; it is an open thing, still in progress.

Now, because of your progressive, time-based ideas, you have led to the belief in cause and effect. Because we have a sense of before and after in time, we are led to believe that cause and effect exist. I understand that this is very difficult for you to comprehend -- for those of us with a concept of time, it is very difficult to understand this kind of simultaneous occurrence, and that is perfectly normal. But for you -- within your animal abilities, your biological abilities -- present beliefs can alter experience. Your beliefs, your present beliefs, can alter experience. You can reorganize the reincarnational past in the same way. Your ability to alter experience through present beliefs can be used in just such a way to alter your past reincarnational experiences, just as you can reorganize the past that has happened in this life. This is emphasized in Chapter 15, Sessions 657 and 658, both of which focus on how you change the past.

In the middle of this page, Seth asks you to write down "The point of power is in the present." He emphasizes this statement once again. The present as you experience it also represents the psychological touchstone of your existence with all other existences. This present of yours is a point of intersection with other simultaneously occurring lives, a touchstone. You have conscious awareness of certain events, yet you are unconsciously aware of many more things, and you are more or less learning to bring them into conscious focus. We are learning to bring some unconscious things, things we previously did not notice, into the range of our conscious focus.

This also applies to all your other reincarnational selves. In this life, you are now learning spiritual knowledge, bringing those unconscious experiences you previously did not notice -- in other words, experiences from other lifetimes, or from the past that you already believe has happened -- into the perspective of conscious awareness, and then you can even change them. The reincarnational selves in your other lives (those lives that exist simultaneously with you, in parallel) are also unconsciously aware of your conscious experience. That is, the conscious experience of this life you are now living -- conscious for you -- is unconscious experience for other lives, for other people in other reincarnational cycles. Just as you are unconsciously aware of their experiences in those lives. What you consider consciously present is unconscious for others, and those others are the other reincarnational yous. What the other reincarnational yous understand through the unconscious is actually the conscious experience of this life of yours -- the experience of the life you are living right now.

The interaction is constantly taking place in the present of all your reincarnational selves. The present is this core point, this touchstone, and also this meeting point of power. At this point of the present, you can meet with all your past and future selves, and it is creative. What does creative mean? It means it can be expanded, it can become new, it can be changed -- it is not dead. You draw upon their knowledge, just as they draw upon your knowledge.

This of course also includes what you consider to be your future selves. You can also obtain knowledge from your future selves. You have an enormous pool of information and experience, in which all your lifetimes reside, available for you to draw upon. But it must be utilized according to your present conscious beliefs. After you draw from this pool of experience -- which contains the experiences and information of all your reincarnations, possibly unconsciously -- you must use your conscious beliefs of this life to utilize them. Therefore, your conscious beliefs in this present life are extremely important.

If you understand that the point of power is in the present, then you will have at your command an inexhaustible field of ability and energy. Do you see? How powerful this is. So I often say, once you have finished studying The Nature of Personal Reality and then go put it into practice in your life, you will have a life with the cheats enabled. A so-called life with cheats enabled, because you can command an inexhaustible field of ability and energy, all at your disposal. How could you possibly not have the cheats enabled? It is as if you had thousands of years of wisdom, and at the same time the experience of dozens of people all within you. How could you possibly fail to handle all the problems you encounter in this life with ease and competence? That would be impossible.

Energy, Intersection Points, and Simultaneous Selves

A reading of Chapter Nineteen of the Seth book The Nature of Personal Reality, that is, Session 668 of the book, held on Wednesday evening, June 6, 1973.

The session on Monday, June 4, did not cover the content of this book. That session was mainly held for a scientist visiting from the West Coast. His questions were about earthquake prediction, and he was conducting research on earthquake prediction with computer assistance. And it happened that just one week before our guest arrived, Seth had just finished Chapter Eighteen, about our psychic creation of the natural outer environment, which also included earthquakes, and Seth had also talked about the influence we humans have on earthquakes. Rob felt that there was certainly some kind of coincidental relationship involved here.

Beginnings and Endings Are Real Only in the Three-Dimensional World

Now let us look at the content of this session. He said, you must remember, this is a core point we need to remember:

Only in your own three-dimensional world are beginnings and endings real.

And if we are not in this three-dimensional world of ours, then there is no beginning and no ending. So we always ask where humans came from, how the universe began, and this kind of viewpoint of beginnings and endings only applies in our three-dimensional world. This we must remember. Once we leave this three-dimensional world, the question itself no longer has any meaning. So when we discuss a question, we must be sure to determine on what level we are discussing it.

Session 668

However, in your terms, that is, from our human perspective on time:

The energy of your existence exists outside of your system, and intrudes upon it, becoming physically alive at a certain point in space and time.

This must be remembered. The energy of our entire three-dimensional world's existence is not within this three-dimensional world. We humans seem to live in the world, eating and sleeping every day to obtain energy, recovering every day, but Seth tells you, your energy is not here. Why does he use our terms? Because only in our terms do we have inside and outside, and the concept of our system and outside our system. From Seth's terms, it is all one, there is no inside or outside. Only we make distinctions, only we have these concepts of the third dimension, the fourth dimension, the fifth dimension. From their perspective there are no concepts of dimensions; we are all one.

So he uses our words, from our human perspective: the energy of our existence, that is, you and me, the life energy by which we exist and remain alive, where does it come from? It comes from outside, it is not within our three-dimensional world, and then it intrudes in from outside. The word he uses, "intrude," means entering the three-dimensional world from outside space and time. And at a certain point in space and time, you must remember, at a certain point in space and time it becomes physically alive. He uses quotation marks around "alive," as if it suddenly came alive. This energy itself is alive, but in our three-dimensional world, through a meeting point of space and time, it pours energy into the three-dimensional world. Once it enters, we have life. This physical means material; it physically comes alive within the three-dimensional world, and life truly and really exists in the three-dimensional world.

So at a certain point in space and time, which point? It is the point at which you incarnate. Starting from that point of incarnation, that is the point at which your life begins. But this point does not only represent the point of incarnation; it has many different meanings, discussed at different levels. Do not narrowly understand it as merely the starting point of your life, the point where soul and body combine. To think that way is still to understand it through the theories of the three-dimensional world. You should understand this point as necessarily your present point, that is, this instant of your present, this point of the present moment. At this point, your entity, that is, your soul, meets the material world. In this meeting process you become alive, and your energy all comes from here. Therefore you yourself are an energy existence outside, or beyond the three-dimensional world, a manifestation within the three-dimensional world.

The Leaping In and Out of Energy and the Trajectory of Life

Your own energy, that is, the energy of your entity, or the energy of your soul, leaps in and out of the space-time continuum as you understand it. We have discussed the space-time continuum many times before. In the three-dimensional world it is a space-time continuum in which space and time are one. In our three-dimensional world, this space-time continuum is indivisible; you cannot extract time from space, nor can you extract space from the existence of time. So when we describe this three-dimensional world, we must have these two reference points, time and space, in order to mark out a basic reference point for describing an event or experience that occurs in this three-dimensional world, like coordinate points. When we combine such reference frames together, we call it the space-time continuum. The space-time continuum is the world in which we live.

You leap in and out of this space-time continuum, jumping in for a while and jumping out for a while. From a distant perspective, this is reincarnation; from a near perspective, every time you sleep, your energy body has actually already left you. If you have studied the layering of consciousness in Seth Speaks, in the process of consciousness you will know that consciousness has peaks and troughs, and in the gaps of your consciousness, it is doing other things.

When you do this, your experience becomes physical, becomes real and material. Thus within this space-time continuum, it leaves behind a trace of life, a trajectory of life. It is you, your energy, your entity, your soul. Because it manifests within this, it flows out a trajectory of life. But this trajectory is not as you imagine, that once it enters it never leaves; it also jumps in and out. Let us just give an example: after you fall asleep, your soul has already left, gone to another of its original space-times, and in this three-dimensional world only a physical body remains here. Therefore, in the process of manifesting and experiencing within the three-dimensional world, it forms a trajectory of a life, called life tries.

When you think in terms of the concept of reincarnation, it seems as if one trace exists before another trace, as if there is a previous life and a present life, and each cycle of reincarnation is like a trajectory of a life, each trajectory having a before and after, as if there is such a process. But in fact, the entire chart, the whole chart, is composed of individual life traces, and they exist simultaneously. If you think of your life trajectory as a line, then your entire entity is a painting. When you exist within the process of one line, that is, when we are living a certain life, we do not know what the whole picture looks like. But this picture itself exists simultaneously; every line within it has already been completed, or is being completed, and you within it are only one of countless lines in this painting.

The Seven Meeting Points and the Simultaneous Self

Since these branches or life trajectories each come from your entity, all these reincarnations, life trajectories, and probable selves, every kind of branch, come from your self. Therefore they are connected in their psyches and electromagnetic energy patterns. So Seth often says that what is called reincarnation is more a psychic structure than a space-time structure. But from our human perspective, it looks like a space-time structure: in a certain era you were born, then you died, then you reincarnated and came back, and in another era you returned again. This is only for convenience of expression, so that you can understand it more easily from a human perspective. More often, these reincarnations are like a psychic structure that exists simultaneously.

He gives an analogy; you must remember this is an analogy. First, you must accept that you are indeed a multidimensional existence. In terms of physical animal characteristics, in terms of material animal nature, within one time you can only perceive this much of your own experience.

The three-dimensional system automatically specializes in the effects of before and after in time.

Our three-dimensional world is especially good at focusing on the length of time and the sequence of before and after.

It is as if you exist simultaneously in seven different worlds. However, the normal experiential mode of your physical existence prevents you from having any overall view of other lives in an animal way. You have seven reincarnations, but your physical body limits you, so that you do not have an overall view of other lives. You only have a relatively overall view of this one life; of your past lives you can only know a rough outline, not a whole.

Again, what actually happens? The energy of your existence, that is, the energy of your entity, exists at seven moment points. You intrude into the three-dimensional world through these seven space-time points, and within each point, you experience what appears to be an isolated life. At each meeting point of space and time, you can only see your own single life. But in fact you intrude into these seven space-time points simultaneously.

If you can imagine our human space-time as a great river, it is as if you enter the river from seven points at the same time. From upstream, midstream, downstream, or different points, seven of you enter the river to swim at the same time. But each swimmer at each point can only perceive his own segment of swimming experience; of the other six he has no awareness at all.

However, beyond these meeting points, beyond the seven meeting points, there is also an overall, more or less comprehensive and unified awareness that transcends them. What is it that divides into seven energy branches and simultaneously intrudes into our space-time continuum, entering this three-dimensional world? It is a unified awareness, and this whole represents that multidimensional existence. That which is above the meeting point that divides you into seven parts and simultaneously intrudes into the three-dimensional world is your entity. This entity is separate from each individual life trajectory; it is not within any one life trajectory, it is above them, or you could understand it as outside them. However you understand it, it is not within this one reincarnation of yours. But it is also a part of this one reincarnation of yours, and this reincarnation of yours is one of its seven reincarnations.

This kind of relationship is beyond the scope of normal human cognition and understanding. Our normal human scope of understanding is: either I contain you and I am bigger than you, or you contain me. We often say that to define a concept we must discuss intension and extension, and once the extension is defined it cannot change back and forth. If something is bigger than something else, then it must contain it. For example, the concept of humanity includes men and women. But does this man also contain the characteristics of humanity? You cannot say this man does not represent the attributes of humanity. He is only a small part of the larger definition of humanity, and the other part is women. I am only giving this example; you could divide by different races, skin colors, or regions, and it would mean the same thing.

What he is saying here is this principle: each of your reincarnations both contains the higher entity above it, and that entity is also a part of it. Interesting, is it not? So which part of it is it? Your entity in this one reincarnation of yours is a part of you. What part? It is your inner part, the part we often call the inner self, those things you normally cannot perceive, or you could call it the part of your soul. It does not represent the part of your physical body. When you die, your entity returns to its original multidimensional world, but this physical body cannot return with it; a bag of skin cannot follow it back. Therefore this physical body is not a part of that entity, yet this physical body is a manifestation of that entity in the three-dimensional world, a spokesperson, an expression, a materialized expression. So the concepts between them have already transcended much of human cognition. We think the entity should include each personality reincarnation, including these personality fragments; but the personality fragment also includes the entity. The entity is both above them and within them, both outside them and within them. So absolutely do not use the ordinary cognition of our three-dimensional world to understand it; understanding it that way makes it very difficult to grasp the true meaning.

The You in the Seventeenth Century Did Not Die

For example, you have an existence in the seventeenth century. To you, that is, you have one reincarnation in the seventeenth century, and to you it will seem that that life is already past and finished. You may believe that your present existence, with all its abilities and challenges, is a result of that past life, a continuation of that seventeenth-century life. If that life did many good deeds, perhaps this life I will enjoy blessings; if in the seventeenth century I did many bad deeds, perhaps this life I will suffer some punishment. This is what ordinary people believe. But in fact the two exist simultaneously; the one in the seventeenth century has not died. At that point in the space-time continuum, it is still happening.

You follow a single-line historical pattern.

The history we humans perceive is single-threaded, with a beginning and an end, moving in one direction. We also follow a certain kind of action as reality, treating a certain kind of thing as reality, and treating things that did not happen as not reality. We certainly identify with these, so much so that they become everything you perceive. Everything you perceive is this so-called single-threaded history. However, other probable actions are forever occurring within it, and they are just as valid as the one you happened to choose. All the probabilities in history also occur simultaneously.

He says your reincarnational selves are just as numerous as your probable selves. You have reincarnational selves, and you also have probable selves; they are equally numerous. Within every reincarnation there are countless probable selves, and in your present there are also many probable space-times existing, and you also have many probable reincarnations existing simultaneously. Your belief in the present, that is, your belief and action in this instant of the present, changes their experience. Who are they? They are the probable you and the reincarnational you. The experience of all probable yous and all reincarnational yous, these reincarnational yous and probable yous, will all change, precisely because of the change in your present belief. He emphasized this specifically in the previous chapters; chapters fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen probably all discuss this. Just as they also change your experience in each of their presents. You can change theirs, and they can change yours. Those probable yous and reincarnational yous, living in different centuries, different eras, different dynasties, are also changing you. How do they change you? Many of your inspirations, many intuitions, many inexplicable thoughts, may all be changes made to you by others.

If you regard these reincarnational selves as one existence, then the mutual influence becomes very natural. Because if you regard all reincarnational selves as one unified existence, all are changed by its own understanding.

The Dream Analogy: How the Entity and Reincarnational Personalities Influence Each Other

Many people find this hard to imagine. I will give an example; I can only give an example to help you imagine it. Remember this is an example. Suppose your entity is the you who is alive right now; you are this entity, and all reincarnations are within you. Then the dream you have, the dream you have every night, is like one of your reincarnations. You may have many dreams in one night; suppose you have seven dreams, then these seven dreams of the night live in seven different space-times.

Here is something especially interesting: you have seven dreams, living in different space-times, perhaps at different times and different places, in different periods, different dynasties, different eras; none of that matters. But is there a connection between the you who is dreaming and the you in these seven different dreams? Seemingly there is no connection, yet in fact there is. Because the seven yous in the dreams are all experiences of you, the subject, within the dreams. In other words, the seven yous in these dreams are all, in other space-times, acting out the experiences of the dreaming you in different space-times. And this dreaming you, the change in your present thoughts, the change in your conscious viewpoints, the change in your values, the change in your beliefs—for example, what you think is good and what you think is bad—your present change will affect the changes in the experience of those seven dream yous.

For example, when you are especially afraid of snakes, the yous in those seven dreams will all be afraid of snakes. If one day you come to feel that the snake is a spirit animal full of wisdom and great spirituality, then in the scenes of those seven dreams, you will not be afraid of snakes. The change in the present belief of the dreaming you will affect the scenes in the dreams. Conversely, someone may be afraid of snakes, but in one particular dream he finds he is not afraid of snakes. In that dream, the snake may ultimately save his life, help him accomplish something, become his wife, like Lady White Snake becoming Bai Suzhen, living a whole life with him. That is a story; we will not go into it. Suppose you go through a legendary dream like that of Bai Suzhen, and you are no longer afraid of snakes. In one of the seven dreams you experienced it this way, and after the experience, after returning from that dream experience, it changes your entire cognition of snakes. Perhaps when having other dreams, you will also no longer be afraid of snakes. The influence between them is mutual in the way illustrated by this example I have given. That is to say, the experiences of any one of these seven dreams, or changes in its beliefs, will, through the dreaming person—that is, through the entity—through its own cognition, change its cognition and views of things in the other dreams.

I hope this example helps you understand the mechanism of mutual influence between the entity and the reincarnational personalities.

Every Consciousness Is Itself and Not Another

Every part of the entity is unique and independent. We must unify this concept; we uniformly call it the entity. Every part of the entity, that is, this life of our reincarnation, is itself unique and independent, just like the seven dreams; each dream does not cross into another, each dream is independent.

Through each reincarnation's own decisions of belief and the circumstances of its actual life, it determines which influences it will accept. In each reincarnation, in that life, your beliefs determine, within the immediate circumstances of that life, which influences he will accept. How great is this influence on a specific person in a specific life? For example, in another reincarnation, a certain person was an artist, and in this life this person may be only an ordinary worker. How much of the artist's talent can be expressed in the worker, and how great an influence it can have on the display of the worker's artistic ability—who decides? Your beliefs decide. Your beliefs determine what influences you receive, and which influences from other reincarnations you receive.

In fact the great miracle is, remember, every consciousness, regardless of its level, you must remember, every consciousness, regardless of its high or low, noble or humble, its ability, its level, its standing—in terms of consciousness we do not concern ourselves with these:

Every consciousness is itself and not another.

Even when it is endlessly in relationships of interaction, even when it may be a part of another, it is still the same.

What does he mean? The life you are living now is certainly one of the many reincarnations belonging to a larger entity. But it seems as if your consciousness is one level lower than the entity's consciousness, because you are a part of it. It seems that its consciousness is more comprehensive, because it includes seven reincarnations within it, while the present consciousness only has the experience of this one life. But Seth tells you, regardless of the level, whether it is your consciousness as a human in this life, or the consciousness of the entity as a nonphysical existence, at the level of consciousness, consciousness is itself; consciousness is consciousness, it is not another. You must remember this. There is no relationship of subordination between them, no question of who is a part of whom; they are completely independent existences. Even if in this interactive process, he may be a part of the entity, may be a part of a larger self, a higher self, or the whole self, or the soul, none of this affects his own independence, completeness, and uniqueness. He is one of a kind; he is himself. No one can replace him, no one can represent him, no one can destroy him, no one can make him dissolve into other entities. It will not happen.

He gives an example: a city is a part of a state, or a part of a province, or a person is a part of a family. You cannot say you only see the family and not the person. Although he belongs to this family, his existence as his own independence cannot be erased. In the face of such a vast existence as the soul or the entity, you are not at all insignificant, you are not at all small; you are an existence exactly the same as them.

As far as the personality you understand is concerned, each reincarnational personality chooses its own abilities and the challenges of its life. Each personality fragment, in this reincarnated life, chooses what abilities it wants to use, because it is determined by its beliefs. Each person has unlimited ability to draw upon the power of the entity, that is, the power shared by all reincarnations, and the understanding and power of other parts of the entity. Needless to say, every person has the potential abilities of a great artist, athlete, politician, or philosopher. Everyone has this ability, because among your reincarnations there have certainly been these outstanding potential abilities.

In the animal kingdom, animals have a large range of abilities that may rarely be used, but they are there. At the animal level there is also a large range of abilities; our athletic talents also have many abilities at the animal level, but we basically do not use them; we have already departed from animal things. But that does not mean they are not there; they are simply set aside and not used. So in the same way, each person can also potentially possess the abilities of its existence, that is, the abilities of the other reincarnations of its entity. These are used as practical ideals, but in a different context from animals. Because you do not have only one life; you have other centuries and many existences to play with; you are different from animals.

You often perform excellently in some situations, but at the level of your physical body you are completely unaware of it. In the physical body you simply do not know that you are excellent in some areas; you feel you do not have this ability, because you are unaware of it. Nevertheless, these achievements still operate through your present focus. Since the physical you is only aware of one straight line of probable events, that is, one storyline, the significance of many dream events escapes your attention, because you only focus on the development of this single storyline, that is, the development of the storyline of the material world.

But what you do in dreams is often just as valid as what you do in the daytime. You only think it is a dream, but you do many things in dreams that are just as creative as the things you do in the daytime. And in the dream state, you can also meet your reincarnational selves and influence each other. In dreams you can also meet other yous, other reincarnational yous.

Actually I would prefer that you think of them as simultaneous selves—they refer to the reincarnational selves—rather than as having a timeline of one before another, but as occurring simultaneously. He says in dreams, you have a great exchange of information with other parts of yourself. The brain automatically converts this information into a form that you can accept in reality. The information you receive from other reincarnational personalities becomes a form that you can accept in this present life. Therefore, many of your important and remembered dream experiences, when you remember them, have already been translated; otherwise you would not understand them at all. Without translation, you cannot obtain this information.

In many instances, while dreaming you travel beyond three-dimensional space, that is, outside the three-dimensional world. But your experience must then be remembered in a physical way. What does physical way mean? It means it must enter the memory of your brain. Although you are outside the three-dimensional world, if this memory is to be remembered, it must enter the memory system of your brain; otherwise you will have no memory of it. So you must understand, even your dreams must pass through that present point. Although your dreams are outside the three-dimensional world, if you want to feel or remember this dream, it must pass through the memory system of your three-dimensional physical brain. That is to say, if you want to feel or remember this dream, it also requires that present point of yours. Which point? The point where space and time meet, the point where multidimensional space-time meets our three-dimensional space-time, that is, the point where psyche and body meet. Everything must pass through that point to come.

The Point of Unity and the Rhythm of Energy

Dreaming does indeed represent an open channel through which you can go to different spaces or levels of consciousness. Through this channel you transcend the physical environment; in dreams there are no physical limitations. In certain dreams, your brain undergoes some strange transformation that has not yet been discovered. In dreams your brain changes, but this change has not yet been discovered. It is a kind of acceleration; that is, your brain undergoes some substantial changes. It is not that your thinking changes, but that the structure of the brain itself changes. This acceleration very genuinely pushes consciousness out of the usual space-time continuum. Through this change in the brain, it can very quickly allow your consciousness to detach from this three-dimensional world and enter that other reality from which it came. Because consciousness itself comes from a multidimensional world; it is not from this three-dimensional world of ours. In order for it to return to that multidimensional world, it must be pushed out of our three-dimensional world. Otherwise, our consciousness ordinarily has great difficulty detaching from our three-dimensional world. But at this time, after the brain undergoes some acceleration and change, you have this ability to push your own consciousness out beyond the three-dimensional world; in other words, you enter a higher dimension.

He says these are called points of unity (point of unity). There, the various simultaneous selves meet. In this dream state, because your brain undergoes some strange changes, changes you are not aware of, you can then be pushed out of the three-dimensional world and return to the space from which your consciousness or soul came. In that space-time, you can meet with other different simultaneous selves, that is, your other reincarnations.

And in practical terms, this involves a kind of seasonal rhythm. What does "seasonal rhythm" mean? It means that when your consciousness and brain undergo this acceleration, when your brain changes and accelerates, your soul can more easily return to the place from which it came and meet with other reincarnational selves. This meeting, from the perspective of our physical world, has a certain rhythm, somewhat like our spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but it is not necessarily those seasons.

He says it is the same as our spacecraft needing to wait for the most effective overall conditions before being launched to the moon. A space launch has a time window. It must be calculated; when the Earth's rotation reaches a certain point in time, after the angle with the intended orbit is worked out, launching within this specific time window makes it easier to enter the intended orbit. Of course you could launch at other points as well, but that would waste more unnecessary fuel. When a rocket launches, you want as little fuel as possible; if you carry a pile of extra fuel, you carry at least a ton less payload. So it is always launched within a very good time window. Therefore, in other words, there are rhythms related to energy; energy also has certain rhythms. In practical terms, this refers to communication in the dream state. Certain times are more effective than others, just as a rocket launch has a time window. In the dream state, this place where you meet with other reincarnational selves also has a time that is more effective than other times.

On a personal level, he says, for each person these often involve a clear awareness and a sudden, powerful decision. This kind of change is not easy for you to detect, or at what time it is easier to make that contact. But he tells you that for each person, the most typical thing is that you suddenly have a feeling of awakening. This clarity, I classify it as awakening, or as a sudden understanding of some spiritual material, or some understanding of multidimensional space-time; these are all moments of clear awareness. Or a sudden favorable decision, in which you suddenly make some unusual decision and a great change occurs in your life. On a collective level, for a group, they often imply great historical changes. They refer to certain times, times in which major historical changes are produced.

This exchange of information represents a period in which soul and body meet under the most favorable conditions within that time. Each person's changes are not entirely the same, yet there is an overall pattern; there is both individual particularity and collective unity. The individual's own energy often comes from the entity, so soul and body do not have only one meeting point, but at least a frequent series of meeting points. Your energy comes from the entity. The energy coming from the entity does not have only one meeting point; it has a series of meeting points. The fact that you have a series of meeting points means that you have a series of reincarnations, just as you yourselves think of them.

Energy Cycles: Two Thousand Years, Twenty-Five Years, Seven Years, and August

When energy intrudes into the three-dimensional system, because of its characteristics it has fluctuating waves. When this energy - your soul, your entity, and the entity is a kind of energy - manifests and enters the three-dimensional world in the form of energy, because of the characteristics of this energy it will have fluctuating waves. These fluctuations always involve your present. When this energy enters the three-dimensional world, it is not eternally constant; it is continuously fluctuating, because energy exists more in the form of waves, existing in terms of wave frequency and amplitude. These fluctuations involve the existence of each of us in the present.

These cycles meet at several points. These periodic energy fluctuations meet at several different points. Therefore, he says, within a period of two thousand years, in all regions, you do indeed have major changes. He does not say from when to begin calculating. If we consider changes for us human beings, we can understand it as calculated from the beginning of human history, but this point is actually uncertain. So roughly every two thousand years there is a major cyclical change, and this cyclical change affects every field, every place, and every region on Earth. We can feel this too; in the development of human history, every few thousand years there are major changes, earth-shaking changes. For example, from primitive society to feudal society, and from feudal society to industrial society; if you calculate the cycles in between, the approximate range may also be within about two thousand years.

For other reasons, and on a smaller scale, within a period of twenty-five years there will be some changes, and the month of August is also very important. We are about to enter August now, and once we enter August we will find that August is also a very important month. If we take two thousand years as a cycle, changes occur in every region and every field on Earth. If we take twenty-five years, on a smaller scale it is also a cycle, with some regional changes. And August, within the year, is also a very important time node.

Within this framework, for each person, a period of seven years is important; the seven-year cycle is more important. And this only describes the rhythm of the greatest impact of the meeting of soul, body, and time. When soul and body meet, there is a certain periodicity; the time points he points out are only the time nodes where the impact strength of this union of body and soul is greatest. It has a certain periodicity, like the strength of a wave.

In fact, ancient Chinese medicine also discovered this. For example, it set the time cycle for women as a seven-year cycle⁶: from birth to age seven is considered one stage; from seven to fourteen is another stage; after fourteen, Chinese medicine considers that the woman has already matured and begun to have the basic female characteristics. At twenty-one she reaches the peak period of female youth; at twenty-eight she becomes a more mature and stable stage; at thirty-five the best stage begins, and then from the peak it gradually declines; by forty-two, the woman can show a middle-aged appearance; from forty-nine onward, most women begin to enter menopause. For details you can look up relevant discussions in Chinese medicine. For men, it considers it an eight-year cycle⁷, using eight as the unit: eight, sixteen, twenty-four, thirty-two, forty, forty-eight, and so on. Therefore ancient people had a certain understanding of this human periodicity.

So in practical terms, this also involves tides and geography. It is related to tides; tides themselves are influenced by the planets. The nature of tides is determined by the positions of the moon and Earth within the entire solar orbit. These are effects related to the energy curves of which consciousness is composed; they are an effect made visible, and consciousness is composed of this very energy.

The Entity's Energy and Rhythms

In this session Seth begins to talk about energy rhythms. He says this energy itself has such curves, so in our nature there arise tides and natural seasonal changes. These rhythms are also perfectly and concretely reflected in other ways, and in different places they can display this rhythmic change.

The seventh dream of any given night is the most important.

Then he begins to laugh; he says he is smiling broadly. He says it is not that someone is counting; no one is counting which number dream they are having. He says he is saying this humorously - no one would count which number dream they are having.

However, because of some rhythm that is not yet understood, a person's greatest abilities may often be brought into physical expression.

We have some rhythms and regularities that are not yet understood. The things he says seem very simple. But for example, from which year do these 25 years begin to be counted, and from which year do these 2,000 years begin to be counted? So this rhythm, from his perspective, is something he can see. But from the perspective of our lives, this rhythm is not so obvious. Unless you have practiced to a certain stage, perhaps you can feel this change in energy and the change in the strength of your connection with your inner self; otherwise, for us it is clearly not so obvious. Therefore he says this is a rhythm that is not yet understood.

So this ability is often brought into physical expression - that is, when we do not know it, some potential within us manifests in our daily life. A person's greatest ability is some kind of potential.

How the Entity's Energy Strikes Space and Time

In a certain manner of speaking, you could say that the energy of an entity is dispersed, hits space and time in a series from a certain angle, and is always bouncing back. But this energy, even when it intrudes into physical existence, always keeps contact with itself.

What does this mean? It means that within certain rhythms you do not understand - where does this rhythm come from? It comes from the energy of your entity. The entity is your higher self, the complete you. You can imagine this entity's energy as divided into several portions, for example seven portions, striking this space-time simultaneously.

Here it says "in a series" using our human terms; it has an order. But from the entity's perspective, it strikes this space-time simultaneously. What does it want to display? It displays a certain potential ability. Therefore these several reincarnations - suppose I still use those seven times as an example - in these seven reincarnations, all of them show that you have a special ability, and this special ability has a certain commonality among these seven reincarnations. But this commonality is not something you perceive in any given lifetime. Maybe in a particular period of one of your lives, you suddenly discover that you have an ability in this area, or you discover that this is what you are supposed to do in this lifetime. But for the entity, the strengthening of this ability is not accidental - in the process of continually striking this space-time and continually reincarnating, it is strengthening this ability throughout.

What does the phrase "always bouncing back" mean? Imagine the entity as a being in a multidimensional world, and imagine our three-dimensional world as a bubble or a sphere. It strikes this three-dimensional world through a space-time point in our three-dimensional world; once it enters, it becomes our reincarnated lifetime.

In this lifetime, there are several times when it bounces back. One is when you sleep, your consciousness also goes back - when you enter deep sleep and enter the deepest level of your consciousness, entering this deep level means entering the multidimensional world; it is as if this consciousness returns to the multidimensional world again. The other kind of bouncing back is after you die, after this reincarnation is complete, your consciousness and your soul return to the level of the entity - for the entity, it has come back, it has bounced back.

Why does it use the word "bounce back"? Because for it, this happens simultaneously. For us, decades may have passed, but for the entity, it is simultaneous. So it is a bit like bouncing a ball - you bounce it, it comes back; you bounce it, it comes back; it keeps bouncing and returning. It uses this ball to strike this three-dimensional space-time, and each strike is one lifetime. And it uses the same type of energy to continually bombard this three-dimensional world through several consecutive reincarnations, and at this time it is expanding a certain ability.

The Bouncing Back of Energy in the Dream State

In your terms, energy bounces back in the dream state.

This energy is not the energy of our three-dimensional world; it refers to that higher-dimensional energy, the energy that composes our consciousness. In the dream state this energy goes back - back to the multidimensional world, back to the higher-dimensional world.

But it must always pass through this window of what you consider to be the present.

It must always pass through what you consider to be "the present," that is, the now. That is, no matter how this energy returns to the higher-dimensional world from which it came, or returns to your three-dimensional world after you wake up - no matter how it enters and exits, the window through which it enters and exits must be the present. When your consciousness enters and exits different dimensions and shuttles between different dimensions, it has only this one window, and this window is the present.

You must understand this. The meeting point where your consciousness enters and exits the higher-dimensional world and your present world can only pass through this point of the present. So now you can understand why he often says that "this present moment is eternity" - because at this point of the present you are connected with the higher-dimensional world, and in the higher-dimensional world there is no concept of time.

This energy jumps back into itself...

This energy refers to the energy of higher-dimensional consciousness, which is also the energy of your life, the energy with which you reincarnate and enter a lifetime. Wherever it came from, it jumps back - this is the meaning of dreaming. Why do we dream? The meaning of dreaming is to allow this energy to jump back to the place from which it originally came.

Then, in this process of jumping back, it engages in what are basically nonphysical experiences.

He uses the word "basically" here, and it is not absolute. Why "basically"? Because at this time, although you no longer have a physical body, you still have the experience of a spirit body. That is, while dreaming you have no physical body, but you still have a false physical body - we might call it a spirit body, or some kind of body, or a consciousness body - in the dream, you have perception of your body and you feel that it is a real body. Although we know that we do not have a body in there, you still have a body. So he is very precise; he says these are "basically" nonphysical experiences. It is not absolute; if it were absolute, consciousness would have no body at all, and that is not the same as this, it is completely different.

Let me give a crude example. For instance, some people, while dreaming, may be physically intimate with someone - that is a purely physical kind of perception - but in the dream state they did not bring their actual physical body along. So young women also have erotic dreams, and young men also have erotic dreams. In erotic dreams there is much that is physical, but that physical body is not the real physical body, yet in the dream it feels so real. So this shows Seth's precision and rigor in his use of words - ordinarily you do not notice it, but when you examine it closely you will know.

Yet through the brain it is interpreted as a dream.

You take this nonphysical experience, and your brain interprets it as a dream. What actually is it? It is your nonphysical experience.

However, your deepest dreams involve nonphysical understanding.

Because in your deepest dream - dreams also have many layers. If you do not understand this, you can reread Seth Speaks, roughly Chapter 19 and Chapter 20, where he talks about the stages of consciousness and the levels of consciousness. Dreams also have many levels; I remember there are about four layers, maybe four or five.

As for your dream, although it is remembered very clearly, it is already a translation by the brain.

Your clear dreams are all translations by the brain; they have already been translated by the brain.

That information then enters into your present.

Once it has been translated by you, that information comes in. In this way, that information enters this lifetime of yours and colors your life both mentally and physically. It is not only on the psychic or spiritual level; it also colors your life on the physical level. Remember, it is both mental and physical. Therefore, the healing of your body can also be completed here.

That information is also automatically altered according to your beliefs.

Although that information has arrived - the experience obtained in those deep-level dreams, those nonphysical experiences - it must still be altered according to your beliefs. That is, your conscious beliefs still do the filtering and choosing. All that information has arrived, but which parts you use in this lifetime's conscious life is determined by your beliefs.

So that you can at least understand it to some degree.

If it were not altered by your beliefs, you would not be able to understand it very well. So through the filtering and perception of your beliefs, you understand it to a certain degree. That information, the information of nonphysical experience, must pass through the filtering of your conscious belief system before you can cognize it.

The Particle and Wave Analogy

Now let us put it another way, speaking in terms of energy - you can think of yourself as a particle, like an atom or an electron; all these are called particles. Or you can imagine it as a small ball, even a little ping-pong ball. And think of your experience as what? As a wave. You can think of experience as a kind of energy wave. When this wave flows through particles, it brings sensation to each particle - it gives each particle feeling.

When this wave comes, the particles within this wave's energy field will change; they will jump, vibrate, dance, in various ways according to the frequency and amplitude of the wave.

We can use a simple particle - this particle may not be quite appropriate. If you take your physical body, the materialized body we now recognize, these cells, tissues, and the material structure that makes up our body, think of it as a particle. What does it mean to imagine it as a particle? We assume it is a dead, purely material thing - if we remove the soul and consciousness from our body, this body is just a pile of meat, just a physical body.

We can think of it as a purely material structure. Then when your higher-dimensional energy comes in, you can think of it as a wave, a special frequency and a special wave. This frequency and this energy will activate your physical body, make it come alive, and give it life. The reason your physical body has life is that this wave flows through your body.

In other words, suppose when you sleep at night you lie there asleep like a corpse, with no awareness. When your consciousness returns - that is, when your energy comes back from the higher-dimensional world after being recharged - your body, like a little robot with its batteries fully charged, immediately throws itself back into the day's activities. After some time, probably in less than ten-some hours, you become sleepy again, and you need to sleep again. So you can think of it this way: while you sleep, your soul goes to recharge - it can bring this energy back, make your body dance, and activate the movement of your body.

When you have a body, when we have a physical body, you are a particle. When this wave pervades the particle - when the particle is immersed in the wave, or when the wave's energy field envelops the particle and completely surrounds it - the form of this particle determines your experience. What does the form of the particle mean? It means how this particle moves - whether it jumps up and down or left and right, with what frequency, with what rhythm, and in what manner it moves. The result of this jumping is your experience.

To put it even more simply. Suppose your body is a particle. When this particle of our body is within the energy field of the soul's energy wave - and this energy comes from outside the three-dimensional world; it is a multidimensional, higher-dimensional energy existence - this energy will activate, drive, vibrate, or dance this particle. Carrying this particle, you can imagine it moving up and down, left and right, in all kinds of movement, just like your daily activities. You can regard the particle's movement as your daily work, your daily life, your daily activity. Although you may move between two points, work and home, or three points, in any case, if you look at the trajectory of your life and regard the physical body as a particle, it is like a molecular motion with a certain regularity.

All right, suppose we imagine this particle as dead and without vitality. Where does its vitality come from? It comes from the energy field in which it is located. This energy field gives it energy, vitality, and motive force. If you have seen some of the related videos I made before - about spirituality, like "Where do you come from" and so on - you may have seen that when there are sound waves and wave vibrations, particles within that kind of energy field arrange themselves into different shapes, which is very interesting. Suppose our physical body is dead and without life; who gave this body life? It is this energy field, this energy wave. When this energy field surrounds the particle and the particle dances with the vibration of the energy wave, the result of that dance is your experience. Your experience is simply how this particle moves, that simple.

Your Larger Reality

But you, the larger reality...

That is, you are not only this particle; you are, in fact, the entire moving energy field. Right now you only recognize yourself as a particle vibrating with the frequency of the energy field or with this wave - this is your present cognition. You and I are this particle, vibrating in this energy field, and you still do not know why you vibrate; you still do not know where the source of the vibration is, nor where the source of this power is. Like an insignificant tiny grain, you vibrate and dance amid the bustling world.

But actually, you have a larger reality. Because you are that energy field; you are not the particle. The particle is only a part of your perception, only a certain point on which your consciousness focuses.

Let me give an example. Suppose I am on a membrane - this membrane is the large membrane of a speaker, the membrane on a loudspeaker. Now the speaker is playing a very magnificent piece of music, whether a symphony or a beautiful melody. And this grain of sand, as the music plays, jumps on the speaker membrane. What we see is only the jumping of this sand - a speck of dust vibrating on the speaker membrane. Yet you think that the vibration of this grain of sand is your whole life, that this is you. But in fact, you are the whole movement - this music is you.

And on this speaker, there is not only this one grain of you; there are many other grains also dancing. In other words, you can imagine it this way: after this music enters our three-dimensional space-time continuum, the point where it intrudes forms a materialized particle. That one particle can be one of your lifetimes. Your entire life dances along with this music, but you do not know the whole and the full appearance of the music. As the particle, you cannot feel its totality. That is all.

But actually, this little grain of you is only a very simple form of expression as you dance along with this movement in the physical world. You have far grander forms of expression. Suppose there are thousands upon thousands of grains of sand on this speaker cone. Would they not, as the speaker vibrates, manifest the changes of the music in another form? Like a shape of dancing sand. The vibrational shape of these thousands upon thousands of sand grains can, from a certain angle, reflect the melody of the movement itself.

And right now you are only one of these many grains of sand. Those probable yous, those reincarnational yous, and the countless probable yous within each reincarnation -- you can imagine all of these as grains of sand. They are only a particle-level display, while behind them, driving them to dance, driving them to leap, is that magnificent movement, that energy field -- that is the real you. Be sure to remember, that is the real you. You must never mistake this little grain of sand for the only you.

To express it in such a limited way is far from enough.

What does "such a limited way" mean? To express it only in the manner of a single grain of sand -- that certainly cannot manifest the magnificence of the entire movement.

Break and Resumption

Rob recorded the process: at 10:55, there was another break. Jane's delivery for Seth was steady and powerful. She told Rob, "I really don't remember what I said, yet I do feel that in this material we have already surpassed the depth we reached before."

In this session, I don't know why Seth suddenly raised the difficulty so much. He raised the difficulty in this session, and spoke from a very high vantage point. He actually just wanted to talk about the fact that the process of our soul combining with our physical body has certain laws of time and periodicity -- that is what he wanted to say. He was saying there is a certain regularity, not that there is no pattern to follow. At certain specific points in time, the intensity may be stronger, and the combination may be better. But then, without meaning to, he started talking again about the relationship between the entire entity and each of us. But that is fine too; he can elaborate on this issue from different angles.

If physicists could understand it, it would cause a revolution in science. Even as limited as we humans are, I think we have already grasped some extremely important ideas through Seth.

What he means is that even though we humans exist only as something as tiny as a grain of sand, unable to glimpse a grand picture or chapter, through Seth's descriptions we are able to catch a glimpse of this magnificent picture, to see or realize the existence of our life as a whole chapter -- and not to think of ourselves as merely that one tiny grain of sand.

Then in the middle, because it had rained and the rain had just stopped -- it was June, very hot, humid and muggy -- he left the house and went for a walk. He walked for a while and did not return until 11:24, so he walked for about half an hour. Then after Rob returned, Seth continued transmitting the material.

The Timing of Life's Peak

Just as within the range of your activities, there are times more favorable for sending a rocket or spaceship to the moon, so too there are peak periods, when your self and your soul coincide, when communication is at its optimal moment.

Just as there is a launch window for a rocket, there is a periodic regularity to it. So in this life of yours, when is your highlight period, when is your peak period?

He puts it very simply: it is when your self and your soul coincide. Or to put it more directly, when you remain in a state of consistency and alignment with your inner self -- when you are consistent with your inner self, that is, consistent with your soul, that is, when you coincide with the soul. In this state, you have entered a peak period of your life. In this state, you can create anything you want to accomplish in this three-dimensional world. Your great visions, your dreams can all be realized in this state.

These all occur through the window of your present time.

These also occur through this present window of the now. Be sure to remember, all your changes, all your transformations, have only this one window of the present. Everything happens here, everything happens within this window.

In terms of energy, the vitality of your entity intrudes into three-dimensional reality and forms a particle, which is the person you are now.

From the perspective of energy, the vitality, life force, or energy of your entity intrudes into this three-dimensional space-time continuum, and forms a particle within it. This particle is each one of us now.

But this particle also refracts away from the earth in rhythmic patterns.

What does "refracts away from the earth" mean? If the earth represents a three-dimensional world, then refracting away from the earth means leaving the three-dimensional world and returning to the higher dimensions. The process of returning to the higher dimensions has a certain rhythm. Suppose we say the simplest rhythm is sleeping every night -- roughly every dozen or so hours you sleep once, with 24 hours as a cycle. This part of your soul returns to the higher dimensions when you are asleep. He vividly describes this as refracting back from the earth, leaving the three-dimensional world.

This also happens to other portions of yourself at other points in the space-time continuum.

Other portions of yourself are your other reincarnations, your other reincarnational lives. They also refract back to that entity, back to the higher dimensions, according to certain cycles. So there you have it: you periodically refract back into the higher-dimensional world, and the person in your other reincarnational lives also returns to that higher-dimensional world according to certain cycles.

So if your time cycles happen to coincide -- whether we take a greatest common divisor or a greatest common multiple -- take a maximum value of your two cycles. For example, if you go back once every three years, and he goes back once every six years, then you can only meet on the six-year cycle. I use this example to help you understand, but it does not mean literally three years and six years.

So the other lives of you in that time, in his own present moment, and you in your own different present moments, your souls, your energies all return to the higher-dimensional world. On that level, you can meet. So every once in a while, you will meet -- who does this "you" refer to? It refers to those of you who refract out from the earthly world and rhythmically bounce back into the higher-dimensional world. There, you meet.

Each of your presents, when they meet, are recharged and filled with potential.

What does this sentence mean? It means that this point of our present -- no matter how you bounce around, no matter how you exchange information with other energies, or communicate with other personalities of the entity -- all of it needs to be accomplished through this present time window of yours. It is just that yours needs to go through your present, and other reincarnational lives need to go through their presents. Within these presents of yours, the soul stuff within you, the conscious energy portion, when they all return to this higher-dimensional world, they meet. They meet each other, and they also meet the entity -- the entity is right there. After they meet, what do they do? Like recharging, they are filled with potential.

What does "filled with potential" mean? It means when you encounter other reincarnations, they share their experiences with you, and you share your experiences with them. So you gain some things you did not know before -- this is called potential. This ability is not actually something you possess in this lifetime; it may be possessed by other reincarnational yous. For you it is potential; for him it is a manifested ability. For example, in that life he was a famous violinist, but in this life you may not know how to play the violin at all. But because you often meet them on the soul level, you actually also possess this violin-playing ability, only you do not know it, and you have not manifested it.

The Entity Is Enriched by Experience

Your existence, your entity, is also enriched by your various experiences and by the amplified power of his own past combinations.

Let us first smooth out this sentence. Your entity is also enriched by your various experiences -- remember, by your various experiences, every experience in every reincarnation -- and by the amplified power of his own past combinations. He put "past" in quotation marks, because actually there is no past. This entity gains amplified power from the experiences of this life of yours, combined with the incarnated selves of his past reincarnations, thus presenting this "amplified power." For you it is the past; for him it is not the past. So in this life of ours, our experiences are actually fused with the experiences of past lives, and after being amplified, we enrich your entity. That is how your entity is enriched.

So he himself is a conscious energy.

Your entity itself is an energy, an energy mass. Many people do not understand what this entity really is -- I want to find my entity, I want to talk to my higher self, and they imagine the higher self as some kind of sparkling, glowing, deity-like existence. Actually, he has told you many times already: your entity is an existence of energy. But what is the greatest characteristic of this energy? It has a very strong self-consciousness. It is a conscious energy. That is your entity. And it is constantly enriched by your various experiences -- this conscious energy body is constantly enriched by the experiences of this life and your past lives.

Therefore within each self, a high point is formed. And these high points, which serve as points of attraction, are now opened up, and through this existence of his, they are amplified.

In every reincarnation, he forms a high point, a peak of that life. That is to say, the part of your mission in this life, the part of your value fulfillment. In every life of yours there is a high point.

These high points serve as points of attraction, and are now opened up. Through the entity, they are amplified. Amplifying what? Potential can flow through. What does that mean? It means that at the high point, this potential can be realized, can be brought into play.

To put it plainly, in a certain life you achieved an extraordinary accomplishment -- for example, you were a painter, or an artist, or a writer, no matter what kind of achievement -- for that life of yours, that is the high point of that life. The ability you gained at the peak state of your life -- whether it is your interpersonal ability, artistic talent, ability to make money, ability to manage a company, all are abilities -- this ability at the high point is where the potential lies. Your potential passes through this high point, like an attraction, allowing your other reincarnational lives to learn from it, to use it, and to share it with others.

So on the level of the entity, the high point of each of your lives is his potential. If you can meet your other reincarnational selves, their high points are open to you -- their life peaks, the experiences and abilities they gained in their peak states, can all be used by you, are all open.

What does he want to tell you? He wants to tell you that these high-point experiences, these abilities, you do not need to learn again, and you do not need to start from scratch. They are right there. As long as you can perceive them, recognize them, you will understand. The word "through" is something he came up with; I cannot think of a better word either -- I can only grasp it intuitively. It is your understanding and realization of the high points of these different reincarnations, or a state of clear awareness. Your realization of the peak experiences of other reincarnational lives, on the higher-dimensional level, is instantaneous -- you understand in a second. You learn this ability all at once.

Why? Because you are one, are you not? In this life you are that grain of sand dancing on this movement. If this grain of sand dances out some different arcs or movements, enriching the movement, then the entire movement changes accordingly -- does that not mean every grain of sand changes accordingly?

So when every grain of sand is doing its utmost to develop its own potential, to maximize its own value, to realize its own high point -- that is, when you are combined with your soul, as he said earlier, when your soul and your self are better combined, when they coincide -- you realize the peak of your life. After realizing it, for example, if every reincarnation of yours completes an achievement, it is like earning a medal. Once this medal is earned, once this skill is gained, you elevate the capability of the entire movement -- the capability of your entire entity is elevated, and his experience is enriched and elevated. When the capability of the entire entity's experience is elevated, every one of you benefits from it.

So it becomes a high point of attraction. What is a high point of attraction? In your life, there is often a day, or a certain time, when you suddenly want to do something -- the things that attract you are generally these high points. They are achievements you once made, accomplishments you once reached, not in this life, but in other lives. They come to attract you.

This high point is gained in this life, and when you bring it back to the higher-dimensional world, through the entity, it is amplified. Potential can flow through -- at this high point, your ability is amplified, empowered, blessed -- however you want to understand it. Under the existence of this entity, every one of your highest abilities, your high points, is strengthened, and can flow through it.

Periodic Fermentation and Life's Turning Points

However, these energies may seem capricious...

This kind of energy seems invisible and intangible, and one does not know how to use it. It is as if some people, at a certain stage of life, suddenly seem divinely aided, while at other times they seem very low. He can use sunspots as an analogy -- it has a certain periodicity, roughly every 11 years, as a cycle for sunspots⁸.

Psychologically, a great fermentation takes place.

Psychologically, you need time -- you need your inner self to coincide with your psyche and your body. The coincidence of psyche and body requires a period of fermentation before it brings about this peak state of life. It needs time, it needs fermentation.

So the individual personalities involved often organize themselves along new directions.

After a certain fermentation is complete, you will suddenly discover some potential in yourself. Perhaps at the time you do not think of it as potential; you just suddenly have an impulse, you want to do something, or you want to change the direction of your life. Many people in this life, especially in the process of spiritual learning, as spiritual learning gradually deepens, at a certain stage, they suddenly want to do something, to make a major life decision. For example, someone was doing perfectly well at his original job, and then he makes a major life decision, and changes the trajectory of his life.

What does he mean at this point? At this point it often involves each individual personality -- everyone is different, because everyone's life is different -- and he will reorganize himself along a new direction. This new direction is that high point. It may not be the high point of this life, but the high point of another life, yet it has been strengthened.

Then you might ask, is it meaningful for me to achieve the same accomplishment in this life as in a previous life? It is meaningless. The accomplishment you achieve in this life must surpass that of the previous life -- did he not say it? It is strengthened, strengthened by the entity. You are constantly improving.

Individually, humans will find themselves aware of a greater illumination.

Greater illumination is greater realization, a greater state of awakening. At this time they will make sudden decisions and experience new power. This feeling is very wonderful; everyone can feel that inner fullness of impulse and power, that they must do something they have never done before.

Socially, such a time is not far off.

He said above that individually it is like this. Socially, such a time is not far off -- what kind of time? A time when society, like a person, will make sudden decisions. The development of the entire society will suddenly transform or change direction, or you could call it an elevation; sudden changes will occur.

However, this may be reflected in a period that seems uneasy.

For society, this may be a period of major transformation, and this period is not far off. But before this period of transformation arrives, it will be reflected in a period that seems very uneasy -- a period in which everyone feels as if things are chaotic, very uneasy, unable to see the future, unable to see what lies ahead. He says this is actually all very normal.

Within it, new creativity can be dimly perceived as gradually emerging.

Dimly perceived -- an unclear, vague feeling.

So in terms of your social organizations, there will be great global changes.

For our entire human society, there will be such great global changes. Is our current pandemic not a kind of great global change? What exactly is its impact and deeper meaning? Standing in the present today, we may not understand it. But when we look back at history, we will understand that this pandemic may be a very significant turning point for the development of human society.

But these will reflect the private inner illumination that materializes that reality.

What will this kind of great global social change do? It will reflect the awareness, the realization, the awakening state of each individual -- he calls it illumination, and illumination is the state of awakening. Through such a great global change, it is conducive to elevating and stimulating this awakening state in every person.

More favorably, you do not trust your inner self enough, nor do you realize the creative fermentation that is brewing.

You do not trust your inner self enough, and we also do not know that this inner self is brewing a fermentation. We cannot feel it, we cannot realize that the inner self is fermenting, creatively fermenting.

On the contrary, if you trusted yourself, and you realized...

Realized what? Realized that creativity is fermenting -- it is brewing a great transformation, bringing you into a greater awakening, which is greater illumination. You can save yourself a lot of trouble. When you clearly understand what this global social transformation means for you personally, you can save yourself a lot of trouble. You will not be directionless and aimless in this great global change; you will be clear about what you need to do and what it means for you.

You personally, and the readers of this book...

Here he is referring to Rob. This sentence is addressed to all of us:

Any point of your present is a point of potentially great creative change.

That is, any point of our present is a point of potentially great creative change.

But because of the rhythm I mentioned, it makes change easier to occur in certain cycles.

Because this rhythm has a certain periodicity, it makes change easier to occur in certain cycles. In other words, within a certain periodicity, certain periodic events will occur. For example, every 2,000 years there are great global changes, every 25 years there are certain changes, and for individuals there may be a change every 7 years -- this is the periodic change he has been talking about all along.

What he means in this final sentence is that any point of yours is a point where you can exert force, a point of power -- the previous two chapters have been talking about this point of power. But how does this point of power function? When it functions, there is a certain regularity. Some points are easier for it to function, and some points are not so easy. So here he tells you that there is a certain regularity in this, like the seasons, with a certain periodicity and cyclical nature.

What he actually wanted to emphasize in this session is this matter. He could incidentally go over the entire theory of the entity, the soul, reincarnational lives, probable selves, and reincarnational lives again, re-explaining it from another angle. I hope that through these different explanations, we can gradually gain a clearer understanding of the whole framework.

It is normal not to be clear at the beginning; if you were clear at the beginning, that would be wrong. If from the very start you were extremely clear and lucid about the whole framework, then I can only say that your framework is certainly not comprehensive and ultimate enough. In the process of learning, as you become increasingly clear about the whole framework system, that is normal. So Seth has to explain the whole grand framework from different angles.

This framework is a very typical framework within this knowable world of ours -- he calls it a framework of entity and personality. In Seth Speaks there is a special session on this issue. This framework exists only within the structure we know -- above there is an entity, and below it there can be many reincarnational selves at the same time; that is the framework of entity and reincarnational personalities. But this framework is not the only framework in this universe. This universe has many other frameworks; this is not the only one, it is just one framework.

He wants you to understand this framework, but it is indeed the foundational framework of the three-dimensional world and the multidimensional world we now live in. But it is not the only foundational framework. In other reality spaces, in other worlds, in other unknown realities, there are other framework systems, not just this one.

When we stretch out our own existence and look at it: every day is like a window

Session 669

Seth Book The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 19, Part 3, which is Session 669, Monday evening, June 11, 1973. Before this session began, Rob had a note: that evening was very hot and uncomfortably humid, but Jane did not want to miss the session, so they changed locations and held the session in Jane's study, opening all the doors and windows for ventilation. Before the session they hoped Seth would at least comment on Jane's recent dream work on the book—this had happened in the early morning of May 29, very vivid, see the note to Session 667. However, for some reason, Seth did not mention it, and I also forgot to remind Seth about it. In sessions it is easy to forget to ask specific questions, even when I have made a list beforehand I often forget. Yet, as if to deepen our confusion, Seth instead talked about dream material Jane had just received the night before, which turned out to be content related to Chapter 20.

The Point of Power Is in the Present

Jane's pace was fairly slow that evening, and her voice was very soft. She said:

For the point of power and action is in this present as you understand it.

That is to say, the point of power for force and action is right here in our present. He put "present" in quotation marks. So each day is like a window with different panes through it, and through the panes you can see many views. He used a very vivid metaphor: our present moment is like a window, and you sit before the window, and the scenery outside changes every day.

Each day is a different window, and what plays out beyond the window is somewhat different each time. Each window can be opened or closed, can be opened up or shut, but they are framed by your current psychological experience. Since it is a window, it certainly has a limited field of vision, and this field of vision is framed by your current psychological experience — actually, it is framed by your belief system.

Even when it is closed, light can still shine through it and illuminate your daily life.

What this means is that when you sense the present time through your consciousness and look at the outside world, it is like looking out through a window. This consciousness is your window, and your belief system limits the size of your field of vision, which is to say it limits the size of your window. And when I am not conscious, when I close my eyes, or when I am asleep, it is equivalent to this window being shut. But even when it is shut, you are still perceiving through this window of the present — just as sunlight can still come in through the curtains.

Each day, in its own specific and minute way, contains all the clues of your simultaneous existence.

Each day, in its most concrete way, contains not only the clues of this lifetime and of today, but also all the clues of your past, of your probabilities, and of your previous life or previous lives — all of them are in there. So your present self does not exist in isolation, with only you alone; there are many probable versions of you that exist as well.

Within any single twenty-four-hour period, all your other experiences, traces, and aspects will appear in their own way.

He assumes that within a twenty-four-hour day, other probable versions of you also exist, and the clues of their existence are in there too. But these clues appear in their own way, meaning each clue has its own unique way — not quite the same, each clue is different.

Each of you, within your present self, contains other identities.

Within our own body, within our own self, we contain the various facets of other identities. Although you live in the present, this person that you are already contains the different identities of other reincarnations. Some may be very obvious, while some can only be glimpsed a little. Because you cannot see that past lifetime of yours, you do not quite know whether your present character and personality bear a very obvious resemblance to the previous lifetime — whether the manifestation of other reincarnations in this life of yours is in an obvious way or in a subtle and obscure way, each is different.

For example, an ability to concentrate that you had in another life may be considered by you in this life as something you also possess now, and yet you have not made good use of it.

What he means is that in another reincarnation you may have had a very strong ability or professional skill, for example the ability to paint — and this ability you also possess in this lifetime, yet you have not made good use of it, whereas in that lifetime you did make good use of it.

A vague yearning for a certain achievement may be a kind of clue.

The clue from a previous lifetime may be a kind of vague yearning. For example, you want to become a designer, an architect, a scientist, a teacher... this kind of vague yearning may be a kind of clue, and the characteristics it requires — that is to say, those special talents — are already within the self that you know, you already have them inherently, and they do not need to be trained.

24 Hours Is a Condensed Symbol

In its own way, the twenty-four hour time period represents both: an entire lifetime and the coming together of many things.

He is giving an example: within these twenty-four hours, it represents an entire human life and the coming together of many things. This day of yours is itself your present moment, and he stretches the "now" into a day to make it easier for you to understand. This present moment contains two parts: one is your entire present life, and the other is the coming together of many things. If you remember, earlier we have been saying that the present is the point of power -- the present can change the past, and of course it can also change the future. So if this point of the present can change the past and future of a life, does it not include your past and your future? At the same time, it also includes the sum of your experiences across all your lifetimes.

Symbolically speaking, within these twenty-four hours, when your consciousness attuned to the physical body reaches the limit at which it can comfortably handle stimulation without rest, you are dead.

Many people find this sentence hard to understand. In this present instant, after your soul and body are aligned, it reaches the limit at which this physical body no longer needs rest and can still comfortably handle all kinds of stimulation. When this body and consciousness are aligned, and it can no longer experience more stimulation, when it has reached the limit of stimulation, you die, and you need rest.

In terms of time, when you reach that point -- that is, when your earth-attuned consciousness can no longer process more data without a longer rest, and can no longer organize them into a creative, meaningful whole -- your normal physical body dies.

He is considering this question from two angles. From the perspective of higher dimensions, there is only the present; but he is afraid you will not understand it easily, so he unfolds this present into twenty-four hours to make it easier for you to understand. Later he wants to use sleep as an analogy -- when you are awake during the day and asleep at night, that is what he means.

When you are attuned to the time of this physical world, if you cannot process more data without a longer rest, and you reach that state, and you also cannot organize these data into a creative whole, then your physical body will die. So many people do not know when I will die, or why I die when I do -- he has already made the premise of your death very clear here: when you have no creativity, and you cannot create anything, or your body can no longer accept creative stimulation, when it has reached the limit, you will die. He uses this to tell you the standard and definition of death.

Therefore it can be said that every day is a reincarnation. This is not symbolic... but actual. Because through the meeting of soul and body, each self every day reflects its reincarnational or simultaneous selves.

He says this is not a literary description, not symbolic, but actual. Every day after you come back anew, your soul returns from its multidimensional existence (the entity) to your physical body, and it brings back all the data of all your reincarnations. For you, it is equivalent to reincarnating every day -- reincarnation is reflected and mirrored in every day of yours.

Every Day Holds the Answer to the Present Problem

On a level that you may think of as more practical, this also applies: each day holds within itself the answers to present problems.

You may think, what does what was said above have to do with me? Below he tells you it has practical use for you: every day of yours contains within it the answers to the problems you currently want to solve. The problems you face today -- in career, in study, in spiritual development, in emotions, in all kinds of family issues -- the answers to these problems are all within this very day.

If you are aware of a particular problem, therefore, you can be assured that its solution is as much there as is the problem. It is there, and can be yours.

This problem or challenge itself contains the answer. The answer is like the back of the problem -- the front is the problem, the back is the answer. No matter what kind of difficulty you encounter, what kind of challenge, remember this sentence: the answer is right on the problem itself. The solution is just the other side of the problem.

There will even be clear clues there as to the proper direction you should take.

Just telling you the answer is sometimes not enough to solve it; you also need to be told how to realize it, how to complete it. It even tells you the clues to the steps.

These are already within your experience, but you have not recognized them because you are so focused on the problem.

Those clues for solving the problem are already within your experience, but because you are overly focused on the problem itself, you have not seen them.

This applies to any kind of dilemma.

Be sure to highlight this sentence. He tells you that this method of solving problems applies to any kind of dilemma. This is an extremely precious treasure in your life.

Your Soul Has Its Own Uniqueness

Although you are an individual with free will, you are also, in another sense, a part of you.

You are indeed a part of a larger you, that is certain. You are an independent individual with completely free will, but you cannot deny that you are a part of a larger you. You simply do not identify with that larger self at this present moment.

Your larger existence also possesses its own originality.

That entity of yours, your soul, has its own unique characteristics, a one-of-a-kind originality.

However, there will be something in you that can be thought of as akin to the similarities among family members.

Your entity itself has its uniqueness, but this uniqueness can be thought of as the similarities among family members. To put this passage in plain words: your soul is one of a kind, and it has its own traits -- just like you as a person. The soul's unique characteristics will lead it, each time it reincarnates, to choose similar or the same kind of challenges. This is like a family having a family tradition; there is a commonality in the style among family members, and within that family style there are implied common problems they will face together.

Although your soul is one of a kind, the self it becomes in each reincarnation will very often -- he uses "often" here, not "absolutely" -- choose the same kind of challenges. Because this soul has a taste for exactly this; it just likes this kind of challenge. This is the same principle as you always doing very similar things. Say you do similar things in this country, and after immigrating to another country, what you do differs somewhat from what you did in the original country, but the nature of many things does not change. You move to different groups, different organizations, different countries, different ethnicities, different regions, but your uniqueness always comes along with you.

In the early Seth sessions many cases were discussed, and Seth Speaks also mentions this: there was a person who in a previous life sold medicine -- aphrodisiacs, strength pills, that sort of thing -- in the Middle Ages or the seventeenth century; by the twentieth century, he was still selling medicine, only now in a pharmaceutical company. It is quite interesting; some things do have commonality.

Other portions of your multidimensional existence are also involved in experiences more or less similar to your own.

You do not need to be so curious about your other reincarnational personalities, nor so enamored of them. They are undergoing experiences similar to yours -- the scenes, backgrounds, environments, characters, and plots may be completely different, but once you strip away these surface phenomena layer by layer, you will find that the things they are challenging, the things they are conquering or creating and completing within themselves, are in essence and at the core very similar to what you are meant to do in this life.

Although outwardly the circumstances may appear completely different, their experiences are hidden within the windows of the moment point.

The moment point is this present instant, the current point of intersection between you and the reality you know. Your present point of power is this present moment of yours; everything you can perceive is within this moment point -- the experiences of this life, the experiences of your probable selves, the experiences of all your past and future lives, all are within this present moment point. Since you can go back to the past and change the past through this present point of power, then are the things they experience, from many deeper angles, similar? Because they are all being experienced by this same soul of yours, just at different moment points. In other words, that you in another reincarnational life can also perceive, in his present moment point, what is happening on your side; and you can also perceive, right now, what is happening on his side. You share one underlying thing, and that is the soul essence itself.

Seth once gave a rather vivid example: it is like an onion. Your successive lives are like one layer after another of the onion, and the whole onion is your entire essence. They share a common root, and you can imagine that root as the connecting part of the entity, linking all these lives of yours together. These layers of onion of yours are tightly wrapped together, as if one life follows another, with a process from inside to outside, as if some are newer and some older. But if you cut across horizontally and slice the onion open, then all your successive lives, including your probable selves, are all attached to this one root -- and that root is this present point of yours. You can treat it as a window, as each day, as this present instant -- any of these works; you can also call it the moment point.

There are many kinds of onions. Domestic onions are rather uniform; when you go to a supermarket abroad, you will find that onions come in many, many varieties -- white, red, yellow, large, small, probably seven or eight kinds. Even within the same type of onion, some are spicy and some are not -- if this onion is spicy, then every layer of it is spicy; if it is sweet, then every layer is sweet. I use this vivid example to tell you: your entity has its own unique characteristics, and these characteristics will influence every layer of the onion.

Again, the adventures of your simultaneous selves will also leave traces in your consciousness.

The simultaneous selves are all your probable selves, all probable times and spaces. Their adventures in different times and spaces will leave traces on the present you -- as thoughts, daydreams, or disconnected images, or even as a sudden intuition.

They can be drawn upon to help you understand present problems.

If a probable you encountered a problem in that time and space, or solved a problem, its experience can be pulled out by you and drawn upon to solve your current problems. You need to become good at using them.

The Vast Possibilities That the Physical Body Cannot Handle

There was a break in the middle of the session, at 10:10. Jane said this was one of the few times in all the sessions when she felt hot even in trance — she is generally not that sensitive to physical sensations when in trance, but this time she kept shifting around in her chair. However, her delivery had already sped up to her usual steady pace. If you want to know more about the material on the moment point, you can see what she said about the moment point at 9:26 in the previous session.

Then at 10:28 she continued:

This does not mean that you will necessarily have a great mass of reincarnational data, immediate recognition of past lives, or experience any such intrusive information.

You ask whether you will get a great mass of reincarnational data? No, you will not. You will not have immediate recognition of past lives, nor will you experience a pile of intrusive information — so-called intrusive information is data coming over from other probable versions of you.

But it is true that in your life such information will automatically appear in intimate ways, hidden within your own framework of understanding.

It is hidden within your framework of understanding — that is to say, hidden within the trivial details of your daily life, and also hidden within your thoughts, within your level of consciousness. If this thing is something you cannot understand right now, then it is of no use to you; no matter how good a solution is, if you cannot understand it, it has no meaning. So that kind of solution, that kind of information, that kind of data — it does not come to you as information from another life or from a probable you, but as things you encounter in your life: information you see in the newspaper, a passage you overhear by chance, suddenly opening a variety show, clicking on a YouTube video, a message someone sends you, suddenly seeing a post on your social feed — all of these could be information given to you by someone else, and that "someone else" is the probable you and the reincarnational you.

"Intimate ways" means ways that are very familiar to you, ways you use every single day. It will not appear in some abrupt manner. For example, suddenly a person walks up to you and hands you a letter, and you open it and find it is a secret plan written to yourself by your past-life self — nothing like that will happen, absolutely not. Or you suddenly open a forum and discover that a version of yourself from decades in the future has written you a letter — no such thing. And you should not go looking for that kind of thing either. It all appears within your daily life, in ways you can understand, just like the trivial things you experience in your everyday life.

It may even pass through your conscious thoughts without hindrance, and you do not notice it.

This is very normal, and you must understand it. When you want to obtain this kind of information, it does not come in the way you imagine — which is why so many people fail to recognize it.

Many painters unknowingly paint portraits of their simultaneous selves.

Many painters paint portraits without knowing who the person is. An image appears in their mind, or a portrait keeps surfacing, and they paint it — and that person is actually a probable self. Rob added a note here, saying that he himself is such a person. Rob said that in the past he would often paint portraits without knowing who they were; later, after he came to know Seth, Seth pointed out to him many times that these were all versions of himself in probable worlds, or versions of himself in other reincarnational lives.

Many mothers will sometimes feel younger than their children, and almost call their children by different names.

Some mothers feel very small, feel that they are little children, and often blend right in with their children and play together with them. Some mothers get along with their daughters just like best friends, laughing and playing together — she is not deliberately pretending; she genuinely feels that she and her daughter get along like sisters. The way they address each other is also not the typical mother-daughter form of address, but rather a unique, affectionate nickname shared just between the two of them.

The impulse to try activities you have not tried before may indeed come from other portions of your existence.

Sometimes you will want to do something you have never tried before, something very strange — this "may indeed" come as information from other reincarnational versions of you, from probable versions of you in parallel worlds.

There is no time as you think of it at all... there is only a present in which all things occur.

There is no such thing as time in the way you think of it. There is only a present, and all things occur within this present. People say that from the birth of the universe to now is 14.6 billion years⁹, and there is also a calculated figure for how many years lie ahead, though I have not looked at it carefully. But whether it is what has already happened or what has not yet happened later, it is all in your present moment, all completed within this "now" — remember, all things.

Within the cells themselves, there is miraculous condensed information that scientists cannot perceive.

Every cell contains this kind of compressed, condensed data. Where is this data stored? Is it in the DNA? If it were in the DNA, scientists would have discovered it long ago. It exists as condensed information that scientists cannot perceive.

For they exist outside of the range of physical instruments.

As long as you see the word "physical," just understand it as material, as pertaining to matter. This condensed information exists outside the range of physical instruments; it is not something of our three-dimensional space-time, so you simply cannot detect its existence.

In their own way, the cells' comprehension includes a vast recognition of what you call probabilities, and operates with lightning manipulation in which these probabilities are weighed and responded to, and therefore altered.

"They" refers to the cells. At the level of the cell, it contains all the information of all your reincarnations, and it is compressed and condensed. So it has a vast recognition of what we call "probabilities" — why do we say "what we call probabilities"? Because to us they are probabilities, but to the cell, which has all these memories, every one of them is actually real. It operates at lightning speed; these probabilities are weighed and responded to, and therefore they are altered.

To put it in more straightforward terms, it may be easier for you to understand. Let me give an analogy: your cells flash in and out of existence at a rate of ten thousand times per second. In one ten-thousandth of a second, it exists in this present world; in the next ten-thousandth of a second, it appears in the Tang Dynasty; in the next ten-thousandth of a second, it appears in some period in France. You can probably grasp the general idea. But note that when I say "appears" here, I do not mean the kind of material appearance you understand. This physical cell will live and die, constantly changing; the cell has its own lifespan, but the core condensed information within it is always preserved.

So when your cells flash continuously among all the probable versions of you — many parallel worlds, many probable versions of you existing simultaneously, your cells flashing continuously among different parallel worlds — to you, among those probable versions you can only perceive the one you are in right now, and you consider it real; the others you have not experienced are only probable existences. But to the cell, those are not "probabilities"; it truly goes and experiences them, and the cell retains all of its memories. Then in what manner does it present them? It presents them in the specific frequency patterns that your present beliefs can recognize and perceive; it weighs and responds from the cell's memory bank, and finally decides which contents to bring out, turning them into the materialized manifestation of this life of yours, or of your present cellular level.

To put it simply, your cells have countless states. From the perspective of human time, every cell lives and dies; but if you look at it from the simultaneity of time, your present cell contains the existence information of all probable versions of you. It is as if your body is flashing back and forth — let us simplify and say there are three versions: the you who goes to eat, the you who goes to the supermarket, the you who goes to study. Your cells flash among all three versions, simultaneously eating, shopping, and studying. To you that is impossible, but to the cells that is exactly how it is. So what is probability to you is all memory to the cells.

Then how does it actually choose? Does this cell display a state of eating, a state of responding to food, or does it display a state of focused study, consuming large amounts of energy? How exactly does it choose? It says these are all weighed, responded to, and consciously or unconsciously decided and altered by you. Now you understand — the reason you can live the life you want to live is that it already exists within the probabilities; you are simply allowing your cells to manifest into that state.

In your present, the conscious mind tuned in to physical reality cannot yet handle those vast probabilities.

When we aim the conscious mind at the physical world, it cannot process those parallel-developing probabilities. We can only handle one thing at a time; we cannot simultaneously eat, do this, and do that, while also maintaining a sense of identity — if you cannot maintain it, everything falls apart. Let me give an objective example: a probable you may have already been married four times, living with four people at the same time. If your conscious mind could process these four probabilities simultaneously — that is, if all four realities were truly real to you — then you would break down. You would not know whose husband or whose wife you are; your sense of identity could not be maintained, and your sense of selfhood would be gone.

Yet there are conscious traces within your daily thoughts.

Although you cannot process these things simultaneously, the things themselves are happening, and traces still remain. These traces are a kind of psychological representation of knowledge — you can feel a strange sensation, or a psychological reaction that goes beyond the normal. But usually you do not recognize it as such.

Imagination Is a Great Clue

You often do not trust your own imagination, and think that it deals with a phenomenon that cannot be called fact.

We often do not trust our imagination, thinking it is useless, just fanciful thinking or daydreaming, only able to deal with imagined things that cannot be called fact.

Therefore you artificially form a situation in which you must draw the entire picture. For example, if you are too imaginative, perhaps you cannot properly handle physical life.

For many people, imagination is supposed to be a very powerful tool that we should use, but we just think it can only deal with things that are not fact. Yet if a person is overly imaginative, or overly reliant on imagination, problems can also arise -- they cannot distinguish reality from imagination, and cannot properly handle physical life. There are such people, the ones we often jokingly call "too much drama" or "drama queens." They live inside their own imagined space; they imagine what their boyfriend is up to, imagine what their mother is up to, imagine what their coworkers are up to, imagining it all so vividly, and then treat what they imagined as fact. For example, they imagine that a certain coworker is treating them badly, and the next day at the office they act coldly toward that person -- because they took their imagination as real. If this degree is not handled well, it becomes very difficult to manage in real life.

Yet this is only within the cultural medium in which you currently operate. In your terms of time, it was precisely that imagination, in its own way, that separated you from the other animals, and enabled you to form within your own minds realities that could later be externalized.

He says this only applies within our current three-dimensional world. In the very beginning, it was because humans had imagination and animals did not, so humans separated themselves from animals. We can foresee what will happen later; we have this capacity for imagination. From the human perspective, imagination seems unreal, something unrelated to fact, but you need to understand: what is the final consequence of these imaginings? They are the prototype of all later events, the prototype of the things that truly happen in your physical life.

Precisely because you now distrust your own imagination so much, you do not understand that it gives you great clues in both problem-solving and creative expression.

Imagination has two major functions, giving you very great clues: first, it gives you clues in solving problems, and second, it gives you clues in creative expression.

Many quite valid reincarnational memories will come to you in the form of imagination, but you do not trust them.

Those very effective, real reincarnational memories often come into your life in the form of imagination in your daily reality, but because you do not believe in imagined things, you do not receive this information either.

What does "imagination solving problems" mean? If you observe carefully, those people who are good at solving problems in everyday life -- we often say they have strong communication skills -- can put themselves in others' shoes, can predict the future direction of events, and therefore can offer constructive suggestions. When solving problems, imagination is extremely useful. Why is it useful? You think it is something you imagined, but you do not realize that these things may happen to be information given to you by your reincarnational self or probable self, expressed through the channel of imagination.

So in real life, when you encounter a difficult or thorny problem and do not know how to handle it, one very good approach is to unfold your imagination: think of several possible solutions to this problem -- one, two, three, four, five. The biggest point here is that you often exclude from your imagination the things you consider unlikely -- at this time you need to pull them back in, re-invite them onto your list of possibilities. When you are imagining, do not set any limits on yourself; only then can it help you solve the problem. If you first say this thing is impossible, impossible, impossible, and do not even grant it the possibility of happening, then your problem will never be solved.

On the Power of Imagination

It is that simple. If you want to solve a problem, then you imagine all the possible situations, even if the probability of their occurring is minuscule, it is still a possibility. You imagine it, and when you imagine it in this way, it gives you the line of thinking for solving your problem.

Creative expression goes without saying; there are many kinds of creative expression. For example, building a house, designing a building, designing software, writing a program, or writing an article, and so on. All work related to creativity requires you to first imagine, to first operate. And this operation of the imagination, he also tells you, is not only your own ideas; it may also be help given to you by other probable versions of you. So you must very, very much believe in your own imagination, and be very, very skilled at using your own imagination. You must remember, absolutely remember, that imagination is one of your most precious assets.

A large portion of your problems can be solved quite easily with the help of your imagination.

You must remember that when you encounter many, many problems, in fact they can all be solved through imagination.

Often, when you think of all the things you might do wrong, you unintentionally use it to prolong negative situations—that is, when you think about the things you might do wrong, you are prolonging this negative thing. However, you can use it very constructively to change the past. You can use this negative thing, the things done wrong, to constructively change the past. What do you use to change the past? Imagination. What it means is, do not focus all your energy only on the things you did wrong; you can change your past, present, and future. With your imagination, you can do this right now. You can do it immediately, freely imagining a situation in which you feel happy. Right now you can imagine what a situation in which you feel very happy would be like—whatever things in your ordinary life make you feel very happy, imagine that situation.

He says that at first, your imagination may seem very foolish. For example, if you are old, poor, and lonely, yet you imagine yourself as only twenty years old, wealthy, and surrounded by friends and admirers, this may seem utterly ridiculous. When you first begin to imagine, this kind of thing may make you feel especially ridiculous, because the gap between reality and imagination is so great.

Indeed, if after such a pleasant exercise you look around—when you have finished an exercise, imagining yourself in a very happy situation, but after the exercise ends, you open your eyes and look around, comparing what you have imagined with the reality you now have—then you may feel worse than before. Compared with before, of course; you might as well not have imagined at all. If you never thought about it, you might not feel so much pain in your heart; after imagining it, you feel even more pain. He tells you this is normal, all of it is normal, that you feel worse than before. But what must you understand? You must understand that this imagined world truly exists. You think this imagined world is only an imagination, but you must understand that although this imagined world of yours is only your imagination, it truly exists. But it does not exist in this actual world that you know; it exists in a world of probabilities, and it truly exists. You must understand this, and you must firmly believe this. It is not in your world; it is in a parallel world, and it definitely exists, because it is a possibility. The thing you imagine is a possibility.

And yet to some degree, according to your freedom within it, such an exercise will automatically renew your body, spirit, and psyche, and begin to draw to you any possible equivalent things in the actual world that you know.

Is this not a sentence that would be mentioned in the law of attraction, or a viewpoint they would introduce? This is exactly what it means. Their core principle—Seth has already explained it clearly to you.

If you believe in the entire theoretical framework of Seth, you will know that around you there are many parallel space-times and multidimensional worlds. In those parallel worlds, probable versions of you are living there. And those things you imagine, the so-called possibilities, are just this: the moment your mind moves, a thought is a possibility. And this thing you imagine is itself a possibility. So if you believe in the existence of those parallel worlds, then the you that you imagine exists in a parallel world.

When one day your imaginative ability becomes extremely strong, when you imagine vividly, when you can freely enter into the world you imagine, when you can merge into oneness with that imagined world, what change will occur? It will bring about a fundamental change in your present life. What kind of change? It will automatically attract into this world of yours the same kind of things as those you possess in the imagined world. It will not necessarily be exactly the same, nor will it be exactly identical without the slightest difference; no. What it attracts is things of the same nature, the same type, the same category.

Why is this so? Seth told you long ago that the core things that make up this world are the electromagnetic energy units, or emotional energy units—the EE units. He tells you that the greatest attribute of these EE units themselves is that like attracts like. They are things of a kind gathering together, people divided by groups; they attract their own kind, and whatever kind of thing attracts whatever kind of thing. In other words, to put it bluntly: happy emotions will attract happy things to your side. The happier you are, the more happy things there are, and the more they happen around you. The more you frown and worry, "How do I solve this problem? It is so difficult," in real life, under your condition of overwhelming pressure, that pain of yours will attract things that make you suffer to your side. The entire world, the operation of the entire world, is just this principle, just this rule, and it is very simple.

So he asks you to go into that imagined world, to enter that imagined world, and when you merge into oneness with the self in that imagined world, your beliefs, your feelings, your frequency state change accordingly. When you bring that change back, what is changing? Your beliefs are changing. When you identify with that imagined world, when you believe that you are living in such a world—did he not say earlier, asking you to believe in and trust your imagination—then at this time your beliefs change, your frequency changes, and you will attract into your present world things of the same kind, things similar to those in your imagined world, things of the same category. It is that simple. Seth has already explained this issue very clearly here.

The Example of Age

Now I will use age as an example, as an analogy. To you it may seem as though you are at a certain stage of age -- right now, for instance, in the present, each person has their own current stage of age. In your subjective experience it is necessarily supreme. In your present world, your current age is undeniably existent; it cannot be changed; it truly exists, so it is supreme.

And regardless of what your age is, to some extent you cannot experience the experience of any other age.

You cannot experience the things of other age stages, which is normal. In other words, if you are old, you cannot experience the things of youth; when you are young, you also cannot experience the things of old age, which is normal. However, in certain simultaneous existences you are very young, and in certain other possibilities you are very young, in certain parallel worlds of this sort.

You must remember this concept of parallel worlds: it is not what you imagine, where the timeline of the parallel world is equivalent to the timeline of your present real life. Among those parallel worlds, there is no concept of time between them, and no concept of space either. Be sure to remember this. In other words, the fifth-grade you is still living, the eighteen-year-old you is still living, living in some day of being eighteen. There, it is like being in a movie scene: every morning when he gets up, he is eighteen. It is that simple, just as in the year you were eighteen, every morning when you got up you were eighteen. Very simple, not complicated, and not magical.

So it is not like what you think, that the you in that parallel universe is also around the same age as you are now. No, there are all age stages. Of course there is the aged you, and you are there too. So in other ones you may be very young, and you may also be very old.

It can be said that some of the cells of your body are brand new -- if it is an existence in a young parallel time-space, then that young you is brand-new cells, fresh life regenerated within you. The you in that parallel time-space is a body being reborn, being regenerated, and in your terms, this is real.

He says not only until you die, but even after your death your hair and nails will still grow.

He gives an example, that your life, the life of your cells, the life of your body, is more complex than you imagine, more alive, more capable of regeneration. Very interesting. If you have read many ancient novels before, we all know that actually after a person dies, the hair and nails will continue to grow.

Then identify with the constantly renewing energy that lives within this present of your existence, and realize that on all levels you are connected psychologically and psychically with your greater identity.

This sentence should be highlighted. What he means is that you must remember, in your parallel worlds there are still many young yous, and they are experiencing brand-new life and that new cellular vitality. If you can spread the wings of your imagination and often merge with those yous in the parallel worlds, you yourself will bring about a rebirth or a renewal of your body, your spirit, and your psyche. Using his earlier words, renewal: you will often keep yourself in such a youthful state, and it is that simple.

He says you and your greater identity are connected both psychically and physically. Be sure to remember, you are not only connected to your entity psychologically; you are also connected physically. How are you connected? He explained earlier: every cell of yours has the memory of all your reincarnations, and also the memory of all your past history, and then it will decide, according to your deliberation and your choice, what kind of response to use. If you decide that you want to be young, then the cells will show their youthful side; if you feel that you are already very old and decrepit, then your cells will show their aged side. But saying this does not mean that your physical body can be immortal and never die. That is not the meaning; it is only about maintaining such a state within a very large but limited range.

So seeing this, you know that for all people, whether male or female, especially for women who want to stay beautiful and maintain a youthful state, there is a very simple method: spread your imagination, go back to the time when you were youngest and most beautiful, and spend more time with that self of that time, spend more time, and that is all. Then bring that feeling back. Be sure to remember to bring that feeling back, and then that change that makes you young, that physiological change in your body, will happen.

The Answer Lies Within Desire and Ability

Now, no matter what your current situation is, no matter what kind of state you are in right now, no matter what challenges you face, the answer lies within your own desire and ability.

That is, no matter how great a challenge you face, this challenge is one you can solve; you will not be given a problem you cannot solve. And the answer to this problem lies within the very challenge you face, within yourself, within your desire and ability -- depending on how much you desire to solve it.

Often you will suppress or repress certain aspects of experience in order to make use of other aspects, and by utilizing those available levels of experience you can relieve pressure in other areas.

What this passage means, to put it simply, is that you certainly have your strengths and your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are those experiences you repress and suppress -- those are your weaknesses; and your strengths are those levels you often utilize, and utilize very well -- those levels of experience that can be used are your strengths. Then you often make use of those other levels -- the other levels being those that have not been suppressed, not been repressed -- the more you use the advantages of those levels, the more you can relieve the repression in other areas. In other words, develop more in your areas of strength, and those shortcomings, those weak points, will automatically be resolved; they will no longer be weak points. It is that simple: make more use of your strengths, and do not focus on your shortcomings. What about your shortcomings? Focus more on your strengths, develop them to the utmost, and those shortcomings will naturally disappear. You cannot really call them shortcomings; you should call them weaknesses, or weak points.

Perhaps there are actual circumstances involving unchangeable congenital disabilities, so there experience must be concentrated along unusual pathways.

What kind of state is that disability? There was a session earlier that specifically discussed this issue. The reason is that he wishes this experience to be concentrated through this particular method. For example, if you have been paralyzed in bed since childhood, it is so that you will concentrate on certain areas; the loss of motor ability will open up your other abilities.

Even so, the available talents and characteristics will open up vistas of experience and achievement.

This is quite normal. We often see many disabled people achieve successes and accomplishments that ordinary people cannot reach. That is how it is: they do not feel that their disability limits them; they use the functions of the parts of themselves that are not disabled to the utmost, and then they develop very, very well. So for them, disability is not an issue.

Use a Playful Attitude to Imagine

When you use your imagination in the way I have suggested, you should deliberately do so with a playful attitude, just like playing house.

Do it with a playful attitude.

And understand that only in the so-called practical terms is there a great discrepancy between imagination and fact.

Only in what we call the practical sense is there a great discrepancy between imagination and fact. That is, imagination and fact are completely different. In your thinking, you take that discrepancy for granted; you consider it certain. Imagination is imagination, and fact is fact.

Yet often your seemingly wild and silly imagination will bring quite practical answers to your problems.

He used the phrase "silly imagination." We often say that silly people have silly luck. Here you need to understand that this kind of silly imagination will bring quite practical answers to your problems -- seemingly offbeat imaginative things can bring actual, real solutions.

If you do this exercise well, you will automatically release yourself from the limitations you once took for granted.

What does "took for granted" mean? You once took it for granted; you once thought, "This is just a fact, and I cannot change it." You thought the current situation could not be resolved. I am facing such a difficulty -- for example, the client is about to cancel the contract, and there is nothing I can do about it. I do not know what to do, so you take it for granted. But at this point, if you can use your imagination, you imagine how to solve this problem, how many possible ways there are to keep him from canceling the contract. You may feel there is no way; maybe they will cancel it next week, and right now they are preparing a whole series of steps to cancel it. When you think that way, you are trapped there. At this point, if you are very good at using your imagination, you need to find this kind of problem-solving method through imagination. It can free you from the state where you seem stuck, trapped in a certain condition, a certain situation, a certain circumstance. Once you are freed from that situation, you will find that you have many possibilities available to you.

But even if no direct answer appears, the renewal itself will still begin to guide you in the right direction.

He says you used your imagination, you did everything according to his method, and you also imagined possible solutions, but you found that no good clues came to you, and you still have not found a way to solve it. Here he says that in this situation, when no direct answer is given to you, he says at this point you must believe that although you have not found the answer, this act of imagining, this act of using your imagination, this act of trusting your imagination -- the imagining itself -- will bring renewal. Did he not say earlier that this kind of imagining itself will bring renewal to your body, your psyche, and your spirit? This renewal -- what is meant by renewal is that you can now consider the problem from a different angle. You are no longer trapped as before in that passive situation where the contract is about to be canceled. You have activated yourself. In this state of renewal, although you have not yet been given a real way to solve the problem, you will receive guidance and see a faint direction. Just walk toward that correct direction.

The Woman in an Unhappy Marriage

He says, for example -- now he begins giving an example.

If you are a woman in an unhappy marriage, you begin to imagine that you have a wonderful suitor, excellent in every way -- tall, rich, and handsome -- coming to pursue you.

Now, perhaps a man of impressive bearing will not actually appear. Right now you imagine that you have a tall, rich, and handsome man pursuing you, asking you out to dinner every day, courting you every day, going on dates with you every day -- you imagine this tall, rich, and handsome man appearing. But in real life no tall, rich, and handsome man shows up. This is just imagination, so what do you do? There is no tall, rich, and handsome man.

If you are doing this exercise correctly, that means firmly believing in your own imagination -- you must believe in this imagination, believe in this you in another time and space. You must believe that there is definitely a tall, rich, and handsome man courting you, dating you every day. You have to believe this point. Then you spend more time being together with the two of you in that imagined world -- what he calls "correct," this is what correct means.

Then you will automatically begin to feel loved.

Because in that imagined world, if you feel that he is not imaginary, that he is real, just happening in another time and space, different from your present time and space -- if you really feel this way, if you really perceive it this way, then in that imagined state, don't you feel loved? Don't you feel that you are being dated every day by a tall, rich, and handsome man?

And therefore you feel worthy of being loved.

You feel that you are worthy of being loved, and very lovable -- you feel that you are very lovable. Whereas before, you felt rejected, worthless, and inferior. Before, you did not think this way. Now you feel that you are very lovable, because you are in that imagined world. And before, what did you feel? You often felt rejected, felt that you had no worth, and felt very inferior.

He says this feeling of being loved will change your reality.

This feeling of being loved will change your reality. When you feel that you are being pursued and loved, a woman who is being pursued and loved shows a different state -- she will be radiant.

And draw love to you.

That state of yours will draw love to your side. You will show the appearance of being loved. The way a woman looks when she is loved is actually the most attractive thing to others, so a woman in love is very happy -- that is normal.

And then your spouse may appear, and your spouse may find that you are displaying those most delightful qualities, and he himself may also change accordingly.

She will also change along with it. So he is saying that you are in an unhappy marriage -- at this time your marriage is unhappy, so your husband is certainly not good. But at this point you will find that after you change, your husband will also change along with you. He will find you more and more charming, more and more attractive, as if many people are asking you out every day. He will look at you anew, see you differently, and he will value you. He will feel that he sees you in a completely new light. This is very interesting, because he finds that if he does not start valuing you, you will run off with someone else.

He says, on the other hand, you may draw another man to you, and thus find the motivation and reason for change.

You may also attract another man, outside your marriage. You will find that although I am already married, although my husband treats me so badly now, and I have no charm anymore -- what charm does a married woman still have -- but you find that there is still a man you like who keeps pursuing you, and you like him too. At this time you will find the motivation and reason for change. As the saying goes, a woman dresses up for the one who delights in her. You will find that, ah, I want to be youthful again, no longer like a housewife at home, no longer like a mother, but once again radiating the state of a young girl.

You may end a marriage that exists in name only.

You will find true love. You will find that your husband does not like you, your marriage is unhappy, so just start a new marriage.

Because your imagination is beyond time, it is one of the greatest touchstones for reaching your own entity.

Your imagination is beyond time -- remember this firmly: it is not limited by time. What does this mean? The meaning of this sentence is that your imagination can exist across time. That is to say, you may now be thirty-eight, but you can still imagine yourself as eighteen. Imagination itself can cross time. When you imagine yourself as eighteen, your attractiveness is different from your attractiveness at thirty-eight. In other words, your imagination can bring you to the best state of your entity, so it is called the greatest touchstone. What does "the greatest touchstone" mean? It means this: it adjusts your body, your spirit, and your psyche to your optimal state. And this optimal state is not just the best of this lifetime -- it may be the best state across all your lifetimes. How powerful is that.

Of course, you must be able to distinguish between reality and the actual society.

Of course, you must still be able to distinguish. You cannot treat the imagined world as the actual world. You must understand that it is an imagined world, that it can influence the present world, but you must never confuse the two. You must never become confused and turn into a lunatic -- that would be living every day in a fantasy world, and then you would really be mentally ill. You must be able to distinguish that these are different, so that you can effectively manipulate, effectively operate this mechanism. You must know that you are jumping back and forth between the imagined world and the real world.

But physical reality leaps out of imagination, and imagination follows the path of your beliefs.

But although you must be able to distinguish what is the imagined world and what is the real world, you must understand that what you call the physical real world leaps out of your imagination. You imagine that a handsome man is pursuing you. Although you are in an unhappy marriage, perhaps a year later you really will have a happy life.

The Example Given by Dr. Ma Guanzhong, Practitioner of Chinese Medicine

There are many examples that could be cited here. I remember when I was listening to that Taiwanese Dr. Ma Guanzhong¹⁰ lecturing on Seth, he gave several examples that were extremely interesting.

For instance, there was a person at a company who wanted to resign — no, he didn't want to resign, he wanted his income to double, he wanted his salary to double. At the time his income was 50,000 Taiwan dollars, and he wanted it to become 100,000 Taiwan dollars, he wanted it to double. So he used this method Seth had given him, he practiced, and he imagined his salary doubling. I'll just give a simplified example. After practicing for a period of time, he discovered that things did not develop the way he had imagined. Not only did his salary not double, he was also fired by the company. You can imagine, this person was imagining every day, and the company felt this person was starting to become unreliable, so they fired him — not only did they not give him a raise, they fired him. After being fired he had no job, and with no job what could he do, he had to look for work. He discovered that at this point his original knowledge reserves — the knowledge he had learned back in school — were no longer sufficient when looking for a new job, so he signed up for a training course. Not only did he not earn money, he had to spend money; he signed up for a training course and studied some of the latest technologies related to computers and the internet. It didn't take him very long, just a short-term training course, and he learned some practical operational skills. Then after graduating from the training course he began looking for work, and at this point he found a job, and the monthly salary of this new job was 100,000 Taiwan dollars. Because it was that kind of high-tech company, that kind of internet company or IT company, the starting salary was 100,000. Only then did he realize, oh, so this is how it was realized for me. This is a typical example — you absolutely must have confidence, because the things he attracted may not come in the way you think, in the way you imagine; it doesn't necessarily come in any particular way.

Another example is very typical, very similar to the examples Seth gives. There was also a woman who got married, and then she felt her husband treated her badly, she couldn't feel the presence of love at home, she felt that as an old married couple there was no love, no communication, no emotion, and it was different from the married life she had imagined. You know, no matter how old a woman is, she needs emotional communication, she needs love, and she felt there was no love, the family had no warmth, so she went to complain. She found this Dr. Ma — Teacher Ma Guanzhong — and said, hey, I... she had taken Seth classes and learned these methods. So she experimented in her life, she went and imagined. After imagining, she wanted her husband to treat her a little better, she imagined that feeling of being loved, that feeling of family happiness and family harmony. As a result, not only did her husband not become better the way she had imagined, nor did he change the way she had imagined, becoming more and more affectionate toward her, rekindling the flame of love for her, or anything like that — no, instead he became colder and colder toward her. After she studied spirituality, the two of them drifted further and further apart, walked further and further away, and they simply had no common language anymore. Before long, not only did things not improve, he directly divorced her, feeling they could no longer live together, so they divorced. After the divorce there was nothing she could do, but then not long after the divorce, hey, she met another man, and this man was in every respect what she had imagined — that is, the state she had wanted, all the virtues she had imagined and fantasized about in a man were present in this man. Then the two of them quickly got married and formed a new family. Only then did she understand that this was how the process actually worked.

Here I've cited two other people's examples to give everyone an introduction, so that you understand that imagination and the world are not the same, but your actual world develops according to the prototype of imagination. Moreover, imagination follows the path of your beliefs — be sure to remember, imagination follows the path of your beliefs. Therefore you must adjust your own beliefs at any time.

The Exercise Opens the Windows of Perception

He said that in the exercise he just gave you—what exercise? The imagination exercise—you are using beliefs to bring about change in any area, and you can use beliefs to bring about change in any area, so you can give it a try.

You can give it a try and see whether this exercise actually works.

Then let the imagination play freely along those established lines. Such an exercise will automatically achieve further effects, opening the windows of perception and allowing the knowledge and experience of other portions of yourself to come in.

He said that doing this kind of exercise, doing this kind of imaginative exercise, not only enables you to achieve the change you want to achieve in this area. The exercise itself—this method of using the imagination—once you have mastered it, once you know how to use it, it will automatically play out along your established lines. What lines? He just said it, didn't he: the imagination follows the pathways of your beliefs. So this imagination will definitely follow the pathways of your beliefs and play out on its own; it will play out by itself. When you let it play freely along the pathways of your beliefs, it will produce further effects, and not merely achieve your ideal life in the practical task. It will open the windows of your perception, and your perceptual ability will also be enhanced, allowing the knowledge of other portions—the knowledge of other portions, which knowledge? That is, the knowledge and experience of probable selves and reincarnational selves. Once you open up this perception, you open up your perception of them. Why? Because he just said, didn't he, that these things in your imagination are all sources given to you by the experience of probable you and reincarnational you. So you have opened it up; you have opened up this window through which you draw experience and strength from them. Therefore you will also bring in other knowledge and experience.

As this light and energy flows through, it will be colored by the reality of your own psyche.

What is meant by light and energy? It means that when the light and energy of other probable selves and reincarnational possible you flow in, they will be colored by the reality of your own psyche, colored by your feeling-tone. That is, when the material transmitted to you by other lifetimes and other probable you—if we figuratively compare it to a kind of light or energy—when this light and energy enters your psyche, when it enters your current time and space, that is, during the process of your imagining, it is still influenced by your current beliefs or your current psychological state. Therefore it will be colored by the reality of your current psyche, colored by the world within your psyche.

In other words, if your psyche is joyful, it will be joyful; when your psyche is pessimistic, it will be pessimistic; when you are happy, it will also be happy. So when this material from probable realities comes in, it will all be given your own coloring by your own psyche.

Just as sunlight passing through colored glass is.

This means that material from other dimensions often appears in ordinary guise. Why? Because it has been colored by your psyche, and once it is colored, you think it is your own. If it were not colored, you would be able to recognize it—hey, this isn't right, this is a different color; my psyche is all bright, how could a patch of melancholy color suddenly come in? It wouldn't. Because if the color of your psyche is bright, then when it comes in it is also dyed bright, and then you will think that it is your own current material, not material from another time and space. He is telling you this meaning: you won't be able to see it for what it is.

Through an intuitive inspiration—if you have a premonition, an intuitive premonition, or a sudden thought, or some solution you have already thought of but have not yet put into actual action—through these, you feel that this is a thought of your own in the present, an intuition of your own, an inspiration of your own, a method you thought of yourself. He said that in fact all of these may be material given to you by probable you and reincarnational you, except that after being colored by your psychological reality, you recognize it as your own.

The Multidimensional Knowledge of Cells

He said the multidimensional knowledge of your cells is not normally available to your conscious mind, nor can they translate that knowledge into psychological terms that you could understand.

Your cells themselves have a multidimensional consciousness; they are multidimensional, and normally this is not available to your conscious awareness — you cannot sense their existence. Nor can they translate that knowledge into psychological terms that you could understand — it cannot be made known to you; they cannot turn it into something your ordinary psychology could comprehend. They cannot, because it is all multidimensional material.

However, through this kind of imaginative exercise, you can trigger them, you can draw to yourself information from other levels of your greater reality, and focus that information upon the specific problem at hand, and then that information will appear in a way that your own experience can understand.

It is like a trigger, just like a trigger — a triggering point. What does he mean by this? He is saying that although your cells are a multidimensional existence, containing a condensed memory of lifetime after lifetime, those experiences and memories are not something you can perceive on a conscious level — you cannot sense them. Because in themselves they are — you can imagine them as compressed and encrypted data; you cannot extract them; with your conscious mind you cannot unlock that information. So what do you do about that? If you cannot unlock it, what help is it to you, what use is it? But he says that as long as you learn to imagine, when you practice in this way of frequently using your imagination, then they will be put to use by you. They will begin to appear as if at hand when you encounter some difficulty or problem that needs solving; they will appear and give you the method of resolution, appearing in a way that your own experience and understanding can grasp. That is, in a way you understand — you do not feel that this is knowledge and experience coming from a multidimensional source; you feel that this is just a brilliant idea you came up with yourself, that you are so clever, so amazing, coming up with such a good idea right now — and none of that matters.

What he means is that using the imagination can activate that information which your conscious awareness cannot obtain. But through the imagination — although imagination is also a conscious method — through the imagination you can activate that unconscious material for your use, or that inner material for your use.

He said such an exercise in itself will creatively alter possibilities.

Why is it called creatively altering possibilities? Because you no longer treat this problem as an unchanging, concrete fact, but rather as a psychological and psychic dynamic.

It can change the habitual messages you send to the body and to the cellular structure, and then you can creatively manipulate on several levels of experience.

What does this passage mean? What "this exercise in itself can creatively alter possibilities" means is this: originally there was no such thing, no such imagining; now you go and imagine it, you imagine it vividly, and then — does this imagined thing not become an existence in a parallel world, a probable you existing in a parallel space-time? It truly exists. Precisely because of your imagination — and this creative imagining of yours is itself creatively altering possibilities. Originally this possibility did not exist; because of your imagination, it now does. You can imagine one possibility, you can imagine a second possibility, and you can imagine a third possibility; each possibility is created under the conception of your imagination.

Among these created probable imaginings, these imagined worlds, is it not the case that in some of these worlds this problem has already been solved? It has been solved by your imagining. When it is solved by your imagining, you will discover that the problem you are now facing is not a dead problem — in other words, it is not a problem with only one way of being solved. It has possibilities; it has many possible ways of being solved. That is, this one problem no longer has only one possibility, only one solution; it has many possible solutions. So in this situation, you have opened up new ways of thinking about and solving the problem.

Therefore you no longer treat this problem as an unchanging, concrete fact; you no longer treat this problem as a fact. You treat this problem as an existence of possibility, and the solving of this problem also has multiple possibilities. This is how you come to consider the problem.

When you consider the problem in this way, you will change — you will create a dynamic in the psyche and the mind. What dynamic? That all things can be solved; there is nothing that cannot be solved. When you have this kind of thinking habit, what kind of message will you send to your body and your cellular structure? That the problem — the problem is no big deal; the problem can be solved. If it cannot be solved here by me, perhaps in one of the probable worlds, in one of the probabilities, it has already been solved. It is that simple. So when you think about the problem in this way, you will send to your body and your cells the message that "this problem is not a problem; it has already been solved."

Then you creatively manipulate back and forth on several levels of experience. What does "several levels of experience" mean? Every time you imagine a possibility, is that not an experience? You think of another possibility, and that is another experience. Then you can manipulate back and forth among these different experiences. You try manipulating this possibility, then try manipulating that possibility, then try manipulating yet another possibility, and see which one works. This is what he is telling you in this passage.

Practical Effects

Take the two examples we just discussed -- the two examples we just talked about: one about an elderly person, and one about a woman unhappy in her marriage.

The elderly person who imagines youth will, in this kind of practice, set in motion again certain hormonal and chemical changes, and will actually become younger.

But can you say he can go all the way back to being eighteen in one go? That is also impossible, but he will definitely be much younger than his actual current age, that is for sure. Why? Because certain hormones and chemicals in his body have changed. It is not simply a psychological change, not that kind of Ah Q spirit -- it is not Ah Q spirit. He has genuinely changed certain hormones and chemicals in his body, it is just that simple. It changed just like that. So when you leap back and forth among these multidimensional possibilities, when you manipulate them back and forth, you will bring about this kind of substantive change.

The woman who felt rejected, when she imagines herself being loved, she does the same thing.

What thing? Certain hormones and chemicals in her body undergo change. A woman who feels that no one loves her, and a woman who feels that she is loved -- under these two different psychological states, the secretion of hormones and the secretion of chemical substances in this woman's body are completely different -- well, you cannot say completely different, but they are very different. If you know about this, everyone can understand it, everyone can grasp it. So you will notice that those women who are loved, their faces all radiate a glow. Many people say, oh, you can tell at a glance whether a girl is in love, her face radiates a glow every day. Those women who feel that no one loves them, their state is different from those women who feel they are loved. So if you want to seek love, then you can imagine, and through the method of imagination you can attract the person you like.

He says such practice will also set in motion within yourself all those unconscious but quite legitimate experiences of his.

He says this kind of imagination can also set in motion within you those unconscious things -- that is, the consciousness at your bottom layer, the consciousness you cannot detect -- those experiences, that is, the experiences of your lifetimes upon lifetimes and the experiences of probabilities.

And draw out similar episodes from those same lives.

In other lives as well, it draws out similar episodes, similar events -- that is, it draws energy and draws experience from your past lives and past existences.

In another existence, this elderly person was very young, and the woman who was not loved was indeed loved.

That is perfectly normal. In another existence it is perfectly normal. These possibilities all exist.

He says through the use of imagination, these unconscious realities become capable of being opened.

Those things that you cannot be aware of, that is, those worlds of probability that you normally cannot be aware of, they become capable of being opened by you, and you can go inside them and experience them for a while.

He says each day is a window into a life.

Mark this sentence as a key point. What does it mean? He says each day is a window through which you enter each life. In other words, each day -- and here he returns to the beginning of this session -- that is, each present moment is a window through which you enter this life. In other words, your each and every day, if you regard each day as a window, then this window not only allows you to perceive the present world, it also allows you to sense different lives, the existence of different probable selves. So this each and every day, it can enter into each life, not just this life -- remember that. So you must learn to use this ability of your own present moment. And how can you go from this window into other lives? You must use your imagination. It is very simple: use your imagination. So this knowledge -- here he has explained to everyone the principles behind it and how it works.

Break and Jane's Dream

He said you could end the session or take a break, whichever you prefer.

So let's take a break for a while. By 11:59 p.m.¹¹, it was already midnight, and it had cooled down a little in the evening, and Jane felt better because she didn't feel so hot anymore. Although while she was in trance, the noise in the house had disturbed her, which was something that rarely happened.

During the break I reminded Jane that we were going to discuss again her dream experience from May 29th related to the book work. But as soon as I said this, she began to describe her dream from last night, and I had just forgotten about that, forgotten that she had mentioned her dream from last night. So below is her introduction to last night's dream.

She was also very hot last night, and Jane slept very poorly, waking up constantly. She felt that the material about the dream landscape -- Dream Landscape is "Dream Landscape" -- the material about the dream landscape was right in front of her eyes, and she wondered whether she could travel within it. This material was right in front of her, and she just didn't know whether she could travel within it. She said it felt like climbing over a fence, going from one backyard to another, and at the same time she knew that all these locations were part of one vast dream landscape. She knew that these locations, one dream landscape, were only part of a larger dream landscape.

Jane said that as far as she knew, this material did not come from Seth, and in retrospect it seemed quite obvious that it was preparation for Chapter Twenty. Right now it's Chapter Nineteen, so it was preparation for Chapter Twenty. Because as soon as Chapter Twenty began, she started talking about that content.

Then Seth was already poised and ready. While we were discussing Jane's dream, Jane said this sentence again, that she felt Seth was poised and ready. So at 12:03 a.m.¹² she resumed the session.

Let's look at her note here. In The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, we have accumulated considerable material on this subject. Seth first discussed the theory of moment points in a group of four sessions between April and May of 1965¹³, which was part of the early sessions, and he connected it with reincarnation and the dream universe.

For example, in Session 152, he said that the whole self of which Ruburt is a part is extremely flexible -- that is, Ruburt's entity, that whole self is the entity, extremely flexible, and the various parts of this whole self are more flexible than most people's, extending inward and outward. He said that Ruburt's entity is very flexible, so Ruburt is also very flexible, more flexible than most people. What he meant by this was, referring to the earlier part of this session, that every soul has its own characteristics, so in each of its reincarnations, the challenges it faces are similar.

He said that at the same time he also encompassed more moment points. In a very simplified explanation, Seth said that he could enter the range of Jane's psychological understanding through one of these moment points. That is, how he communicated with Jane -- he explained it many times, using things like psychological spiral planes and various different points.

He said at that time, and this is what he said:

I feel that I am like a painter who often paints reincarnational selves.

He said the detailed material on this is in Chapter Twenty, Session 582 of Seth Speaks, where he said:

It was not until these sessions began in 1963 that I realized that the model within me was as real as the model sitting before me.

It was only then that he knew, indeed, that he often saw the former with clearer vision -- that is, he could see the model in his mind with clearer vision, even more clearly than the model in front of him.

But my early training and work as a commercial artist made me believe that painters should only deal with what they saw objectively.

He had started in New York in 1939, and the education he received made him believe that painters should only deal with what they saw objectively, that is, what they truly saw -- the model in front of them, the scenery -- you couldn't paint something imagined in your mind. It was only then that he said that actually this wasn't the case, that things imagined in the mind are sometimes clearer.

For many years I ignored the fact that in elementary school I would very happily and freely fill my yellow practice books with drawings of imaginary people and places.

So when Rob was very young, he often used imaginary people and imaginary places to draw in his practice books.

Chapter 20 Begins

So this is the end of Chapter 19. Seth ended Chapter 19 without any warning, and then he began Chapter 20. So the title of Chapter 20 is:

The Landscape of Dreams: The Physical World, Probabilities, and Daily Experience

It does have a certain connection to Jane's dream from earlier -- he mentioned earlier something about the dream landscape within dreams.

All right, with this third part of our commentary on Chapter 19, we have finished. I hope that in your practical lives you can make good use of your imagination, do more of the exercises Seth suggests, and see what changes occur in your life. We study the Seth material not merely for theoretical understanding and learning; we are meant to put it into practice, to genuinely improve our lives and solve some of the problems we encounter in life. I wish you all a wonderful day.

---

注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, it was "a man, not that race car driver, but another man, who was struck and killed by an ambulance that quickly arrived at the scene"; upon verification, it should be "in the 1973 Indianapolis 500, the person struck and killed was not the race car driver Swede Savage himself, but the 22-year-old mechanic Armando Teran—he was struck and killed by a fire/safety truck (not an ambulance) traveling in the wrong direction to reach the scene while he ran toward the accident site." (Source: Wikipedia, "1973 Indianapolis 500," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Indianapolis_500) ↩

2. According to Mike's original words, it was "the racing king Schumacher also had an accident in a race and was in a coma for many years"; upon verification, it should be "Schumacher's severe injury did not occur during a car race, but on December 29, 2013, when he hit his head on a rock while skiing in Méribel, France, after which he was placed in a medically induced coma until June of the following year." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Michael Schumacher," https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Schumacher) ↩

3. Source: Van Gogh Museum, "Why Did Vincent van Gogh Cut off His Ear?" (https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/vincent-van-gogh-faq/why-did-vincent-van-gogh-cut-off-his-ear) ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, it was "Newton's IQ goes without saying; when he was young he liked one of his female cousins"; upon verification, it should be "the object of Newton's youthful affection was not a cousin, but Miss Storer, the stepdaughter of the apothecary William Clark, with whom Newton lodged while studying in Grantham; the two later separated when Newton went to Cambridge to focus on his studies." (Source: Wikipedia, "Early life of Isaac Newton," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Isaac_Newton) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: Huangdi Neijing: Suwen, "Shanggu Tianzhen Lun" (https://ctext.org/huangdi-neijing/shang-gu-tian-zhen-lun/zhs) ↩

7. Source: Huangdi Neijing: Suwen, "Shanggu Tianzhen Lun" (https://ctext.org/huangdi-neijing/shang-gu-tian-zhen-lun/zhs) ↩

8. Source: NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, "Sunspots and the Solar Cycle" (https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/our-environment/space-weather/sunspots-and-the-solar-cycle) ↩

9. According to Mike's original words, it was "people say the universe from birth to now is 14.6 billion years"; upon verification, it should be "the age of the universe from the Big Bang to the present is about 13.8 billion years (about 13.8×10⁹ years as measured by the Planck satellite), not 14.6 billion years." (Source: European Space Agency (ESA), "Planck science highlights," https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_science_highlights) ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. This claim could not be verified. ↩

13. Source: Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions: Book 4 of the Seth Material (Sessions 149–198, 4/26/65–10/13/65) (https://sethcenter.com/products/the-early-sessions-book-4-of-the-seth-material/) ↩