Mike's commentary · Seth Speaks, Chapter 22

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

Introduction

This chapter is the conclusion of the book. Seth uses his reincarnational experiences as a Roman merchant, a pope, a spice merchant, a mother of many children, and so on to illustrate the multidimensional personality, and introduces Seth Two, through whom he conveys messages such as the boundlessness of consciousness and spirit forming flesh. At the same time, he explains the openness of the soul, the simultaneity of reincarnation, and the preservation of personality, supplements the truth about the substitute in the crucifixion of Jesus, and finally guides readers to know themselves through an inner observation exercise.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Seth's reincarnational experiences include a Roman merchant, a third-century pope, a Danish spice merchant, a mother of twelve children, and others, used to illustrate the multidimensional personality.
• The relationship between Seth Two and Seth is similar to that between Seth and Jane; Seth Two has no physical life, and its messages must be translated through Seth.
• The soul is not a closed system; reincarnations occur simultaneously, and each personality retains and walks its own path.
• The one crucified was not the historical Christ, but a drugged substitute; Judas did this to save Christ.
• Knowing oneself depends on quiet inner contemplation, not on seeking out famous teachers or reading widely.

Main Text

Farewell and Introduction: Viewing Multidimensional Personality Through Seth's Reincarnational Experiences

This part of the content continues from the last section of Chapter 21, the latter half of Session 588. So this is not a new session; it is only in the latter half of the previous session that a new chapter began. At ten o'clock in the previous session -- the last part of the previous session was very short -- he continued: We will now begin the next chapter, titled "Farewell and Introduction: Viewing the Multidimensional Aspects from One's Own Experience." Rob asked, are these all titles? That long? Seth said yes, with a colon in the middle to separate them. The colon means he is talking about two things.

Farewell means this chapter is the last chapter of the book, and he wants to make a temporary goodbye to everyone. Introduction means he wants to introduce everyone to themselves -- to introduce each of you to your own self, so that you may come to know your true self. In the latter half, he actually uses his own multiple reincarnational lives to show you how to view the state of your own multidimensional personality. At the same time, in this introduction, besides introducing you to yourselves, he actually introduces a new figure within his own multidimensional aspects -- he brings in Seth Two. Seth Two is to Seth as Seth is to Jane. In this process, he is actually continually expanding our understanding of multidimensional personality: knowing its possibilities, knowing its vastness, its boundlessness.

The earlier part here is not difficult; it is just some narration of Seth's past lives. We will go through it quickly without too much further interpretation.

The Roman Merchant Milenius

In the historical time of Christ -- that is, around the turn of the era, more than two thousand years ago -- there was a man in Rome named Milenius. In that life my main occupation was as a merchant, but I was a very fine gentleman, a very curious gentleman, and my travels brought me into contact with many different social circles. Physically I was round and stout, with no aristocratic manner at all, and in dress I tended to be slovenly. There was a kind of snuff made from hay that I used often, and it often spilled onto my robe. My house was in the busiest part of the northwest part of the city, just past what you would call the city center.

Among the goods I sold were bells for donkeys -- this may not sound like a very great product, but the farmhouses outside Rome found them extremely useful. Each bell had a particular sound, each bell's sound was different, and a farmer could recognize his own donkey from countless similar donkeys by the sound of the bell.

Within the city of Rome, many trades also used donkeys to carry heavy loads, especially in the lower trades. The number of bells, their special pitches, and even their colors all had meaning. Therefore the poor and the slaves waiting to buy goods could, amid the noise of the city, recognize what was for sale by the specific ringing -- often stale food from heavily loaded donkey carts.

He mainly dealt in cloth and dyes; the bells were only a small part of his business, but they fascinated him. Because of his interest in them, he traveled in the countryside more than any prudent man should have. Bells became his hobby, and his curiosity drove him to travel in search of different kinds of bells, and led him into contact with many people he would not otherwise have met.

What does this passage mean? It means he sold bells, and the bells all had different sounds. In the noisy marketplaces of more than two thousand years ago, as donkeys pulled carts along, the different sounds of the bells told people what the donkey with those bells was selling. For example, one kind of donkey cart sold radishes, pulled a cart full of radishes; we know that if every time it sold radishes, you would know it by the sound. If it sold potatoes, we would know by the sound that this was the potato cart. The local people could find what they wanted to buy by the sound of the bells, and follow the sound to it.

He said that although I had no learning, I was shrewd and quick-witted. I discovered that the different Jewish sects within and outside Rome each used special bells; their bells were all different. Although I was a Roman and a citizen, my citizenship meant little to me, except that it gave me the minimum of security while I busied myself with daily life. Roman citizens at that time had very great rights, very great security. And in my business, I met Jews as often as Romans; I also did business with Jews, and my social standing was not much higher than theirs -- this is the first bit of humor. Actually, at that time Romans had higher status than Jews.

The Romans were not very clear about the number of Jews within the city of Rome at that time; they relied on guesswork. The bells hung on the donkeys belonging to the Zealots had the symbol of an eye on them -- he mentioned the Zealots in the previous session. The bells on the Zealots' donkeys were different from other donkey bells, with the symbol of an eye, and here Jane as Seth pointed to one of her eyes. They entered the city secretly, avoiding other Jews just as they avoided the Romans. They were very good at bargaining, and often made me lose more than I should have. He never made a profit doing business with Jews, but doing business with the Zealots he lost even more.

He said I learned about him -- that is, the Teacher of Righteousness he mentioned in the previous session -- from a cousin named Sheraba. In the previous session, when he was asked how the Teacher of Righteousness died and what happened, Seth answered readily; actually these were intersections of his past lives, and it happened that there was an intersection in this life.

He said:

From the above paragraphs it can be seen that Seth moved his physical location from Rome to Judea, but he did not say when he did so. I would like to know the method of his move, but decided not to interrupt further for now.

Because the place where the Zealots were was in Judea, he had already left Rome, and Seth said that in that life he did business in Rome, so he thought there was a major life change here. But he did not ask. As I guessed at the time, Sheraba was a so-called holy assassin. Sheraba said that on the night I spoke with him in a foul-smelling donkey stable outside Jerusalem, he was drunk -- that is, Sheraba was drunk. He told me about the symbol of the eye, and he also told me that the man -- Christ -- had been kidnapped by the Essenes. I did not believe him, but at the time he told me, I did not know who this Christ was either.

Comparatively speaking, during Christ's lifetime, only a very few people knew of his existence. Frankly speaking, and humorously speaking, I knew there was a man who was the main character, but I was not sure who it was -- he knew that in this era a main character was supposed to appear, but he did not know who it was. In dreams, this situation was finally known to me and to many people. So in that era, why did many people recognize Jesus when he appeared? There was a certain groundwork and preparation; at that time many people already knew in their dreams that a new savior was about to appear.

Generally speaking, Christians were not Roman converts; later I was one of them. Because of my nationality, I was never trusted. My role in that drama only served to acquaint me with the foundation of his existence in the world -- that is, the foundation of that role in the world. In that era I was a participant, no matter how insignificant a person -- a seller of bells.

He said that much later, I would become an unimportant pope in the third century -- the third century AD, that is, two to three hundred years after Christ. Some of my old lives met again, and by then three hundred years had passed. And if you will allow me a bit of humor, once again the familiar ringing of bells. Because bells are often used in Catholic rituals. If you are familiar with this church, you will see bells used in many Catholic rituals. In his previous life he sold bells, and in this life he became a very unimportant pope, and in the frequent rituals bells were often used -- he made another joke: after selling bells his whole life, the sound of bells could not be more familiar.

The Life as a Minor Pope

Seth first spoke of his reincarnation as a minor pope at Jane's ESP class on May 15, 1971. There were about eighteen people present that session, and it was recorded. Seth was in an excited but somewhat irreverent mood -- that is, while he was recounting that process. The following passage is an excerpt from that recording; the words in parentheses are all excerpts from the recording of that ESP class, which Rob excerpted here as a supplement.

In that class, in an excited and irreverent mood, how did he describe himself?

In the third century AD I was a pope, but I was not a very good pope. I had two illegitimate sons.

At this the students burst into laughter. He continued:

A mistress who sneaked into my private study. I kept a magician, in case I did not do so well on my own.

So you see, the popes of that time were quite interesting. When he wanted to display some divine functions, some miraculous skills, and did not do so well on his own, he would have the magician come out.

I had a housekeeper; the housekeeper I hired was certainly a woman. When I hired her, she was pregnant year after year. There were also three daughters, but I would not acknowledge them, and they entered a convent.

Why would he not acknowledge them? It was not that he could not afford to raise them; it was because he was the pope -- how could a pope have children with a mistress and a housekeeper? He did not acknowledge them, so he sent all the illegitimate children to convents. Three illegitimate daughters sent to a convent, and two illegitimate sons; in that life he may have had five illegitimate children.

Only three insignificant lines of text speak of me.

In history, only three insignificant lines of text ever spoke of him. Because his reign did not last long, a very short period in history, so the records about him were just those three sentences.

I had a large family, I mean I came from a large family, and I was ambitious. And like all young men of that time, I did not join the army, so there was nothing else to do but join the church. For a while I was not in Rome, but did religious work elsewhere. I wrote two canon laws. All of this shows you that everything will have some good results. Because I was such a glutton, I finally died of stomach trouble; I ate too much.

Someone in the class asked him, was your name Clement? He said it was not Clement, although Clement is a lovely name:

I was originally called Prothonius; now wait a moment, the surname is not very clear. This was not my religious name, but my -- please forgive my way of putting it -- my lowly name. I came from a small village. Unless I summon my self of that time, my memory of the details is not that clear. But as I recall it now, without checking with our pope friend -- you must understand, he has gone his own way -- I have come as close to the facts as possible.

What he means is that he could not remember the details clearly, but there was no major error in the main events.

We did not have so many guards in those days, but we had many priceless stolen paintings and jewels.

Notice the interesting wording here: stolen paintings and jewels. In that era this referred to the church, the papacy. Some of these jewels and money were used on expeditions you do not know about -- related to ships sent to Africa and trade.

And my interest in this life was connected to a later life involving a kind of mint spice.

He later became a spice merchant in Denmark in 1600, more than a thousand years later. He said his habit of liking to smell things could be traced back several centuries. In this life he was a glutton, very fond of eating, so he was also very sensitive to fragrant things. All of this is straightforward narration; it just gives you a rough idea of some of Seth's past lives.

At that time, two brothers stubbornly united to control Italy. Perhaps I should say two men, one of higher status, and the other his minister. I associated with them in my capacity as pope. I also sent armies to fight in the north. We had not yet begun to strongly support indulgences, so I did not have the extra income from indulgences. I both believed and did not believe, just as you -- he said to one person in the class -- previously both believed and did not believe. And I was very good at deceiving myself about what I believed and what I did not believe.

The higher a person's authority, the less easy it is to deceive oneself in such matters -- this is a very interesting statement. Indulgences were something the church sold at that time to broaden its sources of income. According to Catholicism and later Christianity, all people are born with original sin, and having done many bad things makes one sinful. So what to do about this sin? You could go to the church and buy an indulgence, which could reduce or wash away the sin. This was obviously a deception. It is somewhat like the various donations and rituals in Buddhism; the nature is the same -- making a deal with gods and Buddhas: I give you money, and you give me some benefit. This is pure self-deception, yet some people believed it, and the church conveniently went along with it and acquired a great deal of property. In the later period in Europe there was a time when indulgences were sold in large quantities; the rich could do evil -- after doing bad things, they would spend some money to buy an indulgence, to buy peace of mind.

But he said that as pope, he himself both believed and did not believe. He should have believed, because he was the supreme leader of that religion at the time. He said that for a person of my status, the higher the authority, the less easy it is to deceive oneself in such matters. So now you can understand that the present-day papacy, the pope, or other rulers past and present, all understand everything -- you must never think that he does not understand, is not clear, has not awakened, has not comprehended. They understand many things, because they have seen too much.

I was very fond of my first mistress; her name was Maria. There were no sound laws such as you have now, nor did we enjoy such a safe and reliable government as you now have. Secretly, I did believe in the religious faith and God that had been instilled in me since childhood.

It was only later that I began to wonder: how could such a God choose me to hold such a position? His doubt began precisely with doubt about himself. He knew what kind of person he was, what kind of role he played; he was very clear about it. He felt that if God truly existed, he would not let me do this.

After that life I had four lives of very harsh circumstances, to make me understand the difference between luxury and poverty, pride and compassion.

Those four very bleak lives were to make him understand the difference between luxury and poverty, pride and compassion -- two pairs of completely opposite emotions. You can guess that among those four lives, there must have been one of extreme luxury, one of extreme poverty, one of extreme pride, and one of great compassion.

In other lives, I also had the chance to walk the same streets I had walked as pope. As pope I touched those streets very lightly, while as a farmer I walked them with heavy loads and heavy steps.

The same streets were different under different identities, until I learned the lesson I had to learn -- just as each of you must learn your own lessons. It is like those in high positions today, who go out with police cars clearing the way and smooth passage all along; they never know what a traffic jam feels like, never know what it feels like to be stuck on the road. This is an example we modern people can empathize with.

Rob's Research and Interjection

At this point Rob has a passage. He said that when writing this, they did not know which pope Seth was talking about:

As I was typing this, I wondered whether Seth had made a mistake in saying the third century. If so, I was not quick enough to catch the error; I could have asked him immediately. Since in last May's session Seth said the year 300 AD, I personally think it more likely that his reincarnation as pope occurred after this date -- in the fourth century. Since our modern calculation of time is based on the assumed date of Christ's birth, the fourth century includes the years 301 to 400 AD. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, between 296 and 401 AD, eleven popes and two antipopes are listed; some reigns were very short, and some dates of reign are uncertain or estimated.

Actually, Rob wanted to determine which pope in history Seth was talking about. Naturally, we wanted to know more about the reincarnation under discussion; as Seth had indicated, there was a wealth of information here waiting to be uncovered. This raised a dilemma Jane often faced: at any given time, among so many possibilities available, what should be investigated? And once the choice was made, how to find the time to do the research? Now we have the internet and Google search, but in the 1970s, all of this required going to libraries and checking original sources, which took a great deal of time and effort, and required going in person. Jane very much wanted to verify which pope Seth was talking about, but she also did not want to spend too much time on this matter, and she did not know where to begin looking.

Seth's Summary of Reincarnational Experience

At this point Seth continued the discussion. He said:

My purpose is not to discuss my past lives in great detail, but to use them to emphasize certain points. First, I have been a man or a woman many times, and I have immersed myself in all kinds of occupations, but always with the idea of learning, so that I could teach others. Therefore I have a solid background in earthly life, as a prerequisite for my present work.

He had done all kinds of occupations, always with the idea of learning. He had a very solid background in earthly life -- that is, very rich -- he had been to, stayed in, and worked in all walks of life. His present work is to transmit his knowledge, to exist as a speaker. He had to understand life in the human world, and have a very solid background. This is very simple; it is like when the United Nations recruits now, one of the requirements is that you must have done more than five different jobs. If you have only ever done one kind of work, then you are not suited to work at the United Nations. Why? Because it requires you to have a solid foundation -- you should have a broader vision and a more expansive mind, and understand the conditions of various industries; you cannot be one-dimensional, because one-dimensionality produces bias.

I did not play any lofty historical figure, yet I struggled with the homely, minute details of daily life, with normal success, and became experienced in the need for love. I knew the unutterable longings of father for son, son for father, husband for wife, wife for husband, and plunged headlong into the web of intimate human relationships.

Before what you call history, I was a Lumanian -- before this human civilization of ours, he was a person of another civilization. We have introduced the Lumanians; they were humanity's second civilization. And later he was born in Atlantis, so we know that Atlantis must have come after the Lumanian civilization. In terms of your history, he returned in the age of the cavemen to be a speaker -- at that time he began to be a speaker. Actually, he has always been a speaker, no matter what his actual occupation was. Whether he sold bells or sold spices, his essence was always that of a speaker.

He was once a spice merchant in Denmark, and there I met Ruburt and Joseph -- their connection began from that time, in the year 1600 AD. He said I had several lives as a black man, once in the place now called Ethiopia -- it should be Ethiopia, perhaps a difference in Taiwanese translation -- and once in Turkey. He said I had several lives as a monk -- he was a monk several times, the kind of monk in Western monasteries, not the Chinese kind. After my experience as pope, one of them was as a victim of the Spanish Inquisition.

My experiences as a woman were varied, from a plain Dutch old maid to a high-class prostitute in the time of David in the Bible, and several times as a humble mother with a brood of children.

And when I first began to contact Ruburt and Joseph, I concealed from them the fact that I had lived many lives. Ruburt especially did not accept the matter of reincarnation -- Ruburt, in that era, when he first met Seth in that life as a spice merchant in Denmark, was extremely resistant. And this experience of multiple lives was extremely repugnant to him, so at that time Seth did not mention the process of his many reincarnations.

Times, names, and dates are far less important than the experiences themselves. And my experiences are too many to list all here, though I will take care to give them all to you one day.

He was thinking that one day he would tell all the experiences of his past lives. Some I have given in Ruburt's class. Some, though not many, appeared in the book The Seth Material¹. But although he said this, he never truly described all of his reincarnations, only in fragments.

In a book devoted to reincarnation, I hope to let each of my previous personalities speak for themselves.

He hoped to let each of his previous personalities -- the personality of each lifetime -- be called back, and let that personality itself come out and speak, because their stories should be told by themselves. Therefore you should understand that those personalities still exist and are independent. At this point you must understand that it is not because of the existence of me, Seth, that the personality of the spice merchant, the personality of the bell seller, no longer exists, has become past tense, has become history, or has been submerged by a part of my larger soul. No. Here he is actually emphasizing what he said in the previous chapters: once the personality of this soul exists, it will never be erased; they are still independent, and can still be called back to tell their own stories.

Although I -- look here, what I am now, once seemed to be contained within those personalities -- I am only their seed.

This sentence is very interesting. He says "what I am now" refers to this present moment in which he is speaking -- the existence of this soul, this entity. As an entity, he incarnated into several lifetimes, and this soul should be contained within those personalities. But he says: I am only a seed-like existence. Those personalities will grow into their own personalities; they are not necessarily all cut from the same mold as me, nor do I represent or replace them. They are independent. He now exists as an energy form; in terms of the three-dimensional world, he does not exist at all. In human terms, I can remember who I was, but broadly speaking, those personalities should speak for themselves -- this is a very wondrous thing.

This point tells us: the person we are right now, every reader, every person listening to this interpretation, should understand that the present you has a uniqueness that is one of a kind, and no one can replace you. It is not that because there is a soul behind you, you do not exist. As the previous chapter said, behind every face there is a face, that is, All That Is, but this does not mean the other faces do not exist. Each reincarnation is like a face, and behind each reincarnation there is a common face -- our soul. But the existence of the face of the soul does not negate the existence of those earlier faces. Is there not also an All That Is behind the face of every soul? All That Is cannot deny the uniqueness of these souls, and these souls cannot deny the uniqueness of each personality fragment. So we know that the meaning of our existence in this world is unique and irreplaceable. There is something very subtle here: you are you, yet you are not you; you are not you, yet you are all of you. In between is a very subtle relationship. If you use the methods of the three-dimensional world, it is very difficult to understand this point -- if you cannot understand it, you can only intuit it; if you cannot intuit it, you can only use analogies. If you insist on finding a logic in the three-dimensional world to explain this matter, I can only say that in the three-dimensional world, no logic applies to the description of such multidimensional worlds; one can only speak provisionally, speak by analogy, and you cannot take it too literally.

Perhaps here you will see a similarity -- when you compare this situation with age regression under hypnosis.

This situation is somewhat similar to age regression under hypnosis, going back to past lives. But those personalities are not locked within what I am now -- as far as Seth is concerned, he is now already a soul, he has no physical body, and is a nonphysical existence of pure energy. Those personalities advance in their own way; they are not negated. To me, they are with me, but indeed on another level of reality -- remember this, it is in another space-time. He is with you, but not in this space-time.

This is what the title of this chapter means: Seth wants to use his own past-life experiences to let you see clearly what a multidimensional life and a multidimensional personality look like, so that we can more easily understand what "multidimensional" means.

Jane's Out-of-Body Experience

At this point, Jane said she had really gone out -- her consciousness had gone very far out. As sometimes happened, while we were chatting, the memories and intentions connected with the material began to return to her center. She experienced a sense of expansion and the impression of a large crowd of people. Then she remembered a stinking stable with dirty hay -- that is, as she had said, in a foul donkey stable, the righteous teacher's cousin Sheraba was there drunk, talking with the bell-seller from that lifetime about Jesus being kidnapped -- and three dirty brown robes made of very coarse cloth.

At this time, when Seth was transmitting the material to Jane, the images and even the sensations were transmitted along with it. Why did Jane find it foul-smelling? Did the smell come through as well? What Seth transmitted was a feeling, a sensation. Jane sat in this semi-trance state, and during the session she saw more than what was being transmitted. It was as though there was a point of light within her concentrated in a small area, and she saw grease or a bit of candle wax that had dropped onto one of the robes and soiled it.

In the stable, the long oval bundles of hay were stacked one on top of another to keep dry -- she could see that the shape of the hay was oval, stacked all the way up to the roof, each bundle tied but not covered. Now she smelled that very rank odor. She said in disbelief that among Seth's goods there was some kind of soap, some terrible mixture of lye water and rose water. Her nose wrinkled -- she smelled that odor. In some kind of woven bag, two connected pouches, the kind thrown over a horse's back -- in China we have this kind of pocket that hangs on both sides of a horse's back, one on each side. She could almost see it, it was right in front of her, and she could draw its shape. Although it was nothing major, it appeared vividly in her mind.

She said she finally said: after you began talking about it, all of this appeared. I did not have any larger hallucinations, and I did not know how far I should follow him. When I saw the double bag -- that is, the two pouches on the horse's back -- that was all I saw.

Now Jane was clearly much more relaxed than at the beginning of this chapter. She was yawning deeply, again and again, and tears were flowing too -- in this extremely sleepy state, she was so tired that tears came out. Rob suggested ending the session, but at 11:19, Jane continued again.

Further Explanation on Death and Reincarnation

At this point Seth continued, saying that in several lives he had consciously, with awareness, known his past lives. Once, when he was a monk, he found himself copying a manuscript that he himself had written in another life -- that is, he was copying a scripture, but he suddenly realized that this manuscript was something he himself had written in a previous life, that he was the author, and then in this life as a monk he was copying that thing. This kind of thing is not common for us, but sometimes we can sense it. Among the people I know, some can sense it: on certain special occasions -- not all the time -- they suddenly realize something that seems connected to a past life, or that they have been here before, or that they did something in a past life.

I have often indulged in this love of weight, and have indeed been quite fat.

Often, Seth was quite fat in many of his reincarnations. He explained why he was fat:

Twice I died of starvation.

He starved to death twice. The taste of starving to death is something few people today can experience -- except during famines or special periods, including what may still happen in Africa now. This year the World Food and Agriculture Organization also predicted that this year 265 million people may starve to death due to the food crisis². The taste of starving to death is extremely painful, and anyone who has experienced hunger can understand it. He said this experience of starving to death was educational for him:

Between lives, it is always a lesson to trace the thoughts and events that led to that death.

Between lives, between reincarnations, he traced the thoughts and events that led to a particular death, and it was always a lesson.

My deaths have never taken me by surprise. In the process I felt the inevitability, and that recognition was even a sense of familiarity. Of course, this particular way of dying was mine, and no other would do.

"No other would do" -- no other way of dying applied to him. In other words, he knew he was supposed to die this way, as if he had set it up beforehand. So even the strangest circumstances I could accept, almost feeling a sense of perfection. Without this death, this life could not be properly ended -- in several lives, while still alive, he had already realized this on one level: he had to die in such a bizarre way for it to be a perfection. Life was set up this way, and this set-up life had finally been completed in the way it was set up.

When death occurs, the inner self feels its freedom, and there is a great humility, yet a great exultation.

Very interesting. When facing death, the inner self feels its freedom, and there is a great humility -- that is, a kind of embarrassment, because it is finally free. The inner self had always been suppressed by your subconscious and conscious mind, suppressed by your ego, and now it finally gets out, it is finally free, so it feels a little embarrassed -- because its freedom comes at the cost of the body's disappearance. But there is a great exultation -- notice he uses the word "exultation," not ordinary joy. He is finally free.

If I wanted to, in your terms, I could relive any portion of those lives. But those personalities went their own ways.

Why did he not relive them? Because in those past lives he had no regrets. They walked the paths they were supposed to walk, did the things they were supposed to do, and even died the deaths they were supposed to die, so there was no need to live them over again.

On a subjective level, in each of my lives I acted as teacher and speaker.

Be sure to remember this: it was on a subjective level. In a few lives with very strong intuition, I was aware of this fact. And you do not yet understand the importance within consciousness -- most of us today still do not quite understand the importance within consciousness. Besides your objective role in each life, your reincarnational challenges also involve your dreams, the creative rhythms that rise and fall beneath the everyday world as you know it. Therefore, in several of my lives, in this way I became an extremely skilled speaker and teacher. By contrast, the surface lives of those several existences were quite dull.

In other words, when you become aware of the mission you came for this time, or when you become aware of some of your past-life memories, your surface life -- that is, the life of the three-dimensional world as we call it -- appears on the surface to be not interesting at all. What he means is that in each of his reincarnations, he was always acting as a teacher and speaker. Although he used different professions as cover, as disguise, his most fundamental purpose lay beneath this surface everyday world, and he had this kind of creative rhythm. This creativity could be strong or weak, but he was always trying to be a speaker, or always becoming a speaker in different ways. In this way he became an extremely skilled speaker and teacher -- that is, in those lives where he had awareness.

My influence, my work, and my concerns were far more extensive than my quiet objective pursuits.

Be sure to remember: far more extensive than his quiet objective pursuits -- that is, the material pursuits of the three-dimensional world. His pursuits in the three-dimensional world seemed like nothing much, but his influence, work, and concerns in other areas were far more extensive than his pursuits in this objective world.

I give you this information in the hope that it will help you understand the true nature of your own reality. Yet my reincarnational lives do not define what I am, and yours do not define you.

Although when Seth talks about his reincarnational lives, on the surface they seem incredibly rich and colorful, as if he had done everything. Although he carried a sense of mission in these reincarnational lives, they did not define what he is. And our reincarnational lives do not define you either. Your soul has not fixed you into a rigid definition of what you are. What you are is up to you, decided by yourself.

Introducing Seth Two

Seth said you could take a break or end the session. He said he wanted to rest for a bit, because it was already very late -- 11:35, almost midnight -- but he felt Jane wanted to continue. They talked briefly. Jane said: I, I don't know how to continue now. Jane said that at this stage, she no longer knew how to continue. This session had already gone on for a very long time; don't forget that it extended from the last part of Chapter 21 all the way through so much of the beginning of Chapter 22. She said she knew what Seth had planned, but she did not know how he intended to go about it. Rob said he did not understand what she meant -- what did she mean by not knowing how he intended to go about it? Then Jane said: Seth was going to let Seth Two come through, but Jane did not know how she could do it to let Seth Two come through.

In Jane's book The Seth Material¹, Chapter 17, Seth Two is discussed in great detail. If you are interested in Seth Two, you can look there. This figure Seth Two occasionally spoke in the ESP class, but quite rarely in our private sessions. Very rarely did he speak here in the sessions with Rob and Jane. In the outline Seth gave before the dictation of this book began -- if you still remember the earlier Seth material -- Seth had said: I will explain to you what Seth Two is. He said that some of the questions we listed in Chapter 20 were also related to Seth Two, but I had forgotten these two points for the moment -- she would be surprised, not expecting that at this time, so late, when the session was almost over, Seth would suddenly want to let Seth Two come through.

Now at 11:40, Jane did not know whether to end the session as previously suggested, or to continue. She finally decided to sit quietly for a minute, saying: then I don't know whether to shut it down -- shutting it down means closing the channel of communication with Seth -- I don't know whether to come back from this trance state. She said it might continue for another hour. Then she told him she was interested, and if he was also interested, then they would keep waiting. They waited another five minutes, and at 11:45 it continued.

Then he said:

The soul knows itself, and is not confused by terms or definitions.

Do not be confused by terms or definitions. This relates to the questions many people ask in the comments: what exactly do these definitions like soul, inner self, entity mean, and what are the differences between them. He emphasized again: the soul knows itself and recognizes itself; do not just ask about the literal meaning of words. If you let your inner self, your inner things come out, it will discover them on its own. Do not try to define it within the three-dimensional world.

I hope that by having you look at my reality, I can teach you the nature of your own reality. You are not limited to any one category or corner of existence. Your reality and my reality are equally boundless and immeasurable.

You are not limited -- be sure to remember this. His reality and the reality of each of us are the same, without any limits, boundless and immeasurable. You can become anything. Never think that there is a soul above you, that the soul has fixed something for you, and that you can only passively accept it -- no, it is definitely boundless.

I hope through this book to explain the functions of consciousness and personality, and to expand your ideas.

He came to expand our ideas, to let us view the whole self, the whole world, and the whole of life from a more macroscopic angle and a higher dimension.

I said at the beginning that I was transmitting this material through the mouth of a lady I like very much -- that is, Jane. Now let me tell you that there are other realities involved as well.

What reality? A reality other than Seth, called Seth Two. That reality is also involved. The next few paragraphs will be written by another figure -- Seth Two will write them. So the last small portion of the first section of the final chapter of this book was written by Seth Two.

He is to me, roughly, what I am to the lady through whom I speak.

Their relationship is just such a relationship.

At 11:51, Rob saw a transformation begin in Jane. As the familiar Seth withdrew and Seth Two began to become the central figure, some obvious physical changes occurred. At the same time, Rob knew that Jane was experiencing the sensation of a cone or pyramid descending onto the top of her head. Why would she have this feeling? Jane had often told Rob in the past that although she felt Seth arrived in a very warm, energetic, and friendly way, she felt her own consciousness go out of herself to meet Seth Two. When in contact with Seth, it was very warm, powerful, and friendly, but when she was about to meet Seth Two, the feeling was different. She felt like a gust of wind rising up a chimney, rising into a space within an invisible pyramid -- like an inverted funnel. She felt her consciousness being sucked upward like wind, rising all the way to the very top of the chimney, to the narrowest and thinnest point.

She said she did not know where she went, nor how she came back. Her body seemed to have been left behind, not taken along. Only her consciousness was taken to the top of a pyramid.

She sat in her rocking chair, her forearms resting on the chair, her feet on the carpet. On this sweltering evening, the living room windows were open. Rob began to notice the sounds of traffic on the road, cars coming and going, and also heard someone moving around in the apartment upstairs. Jane's eyes were closed, or occasionally partly open but mostly closed. As she spoke for Seth Two, there was a faint smile on her face.

At first she made a very high-pitched sound, very distant and formal, not loud, and without much modulation -- unlike when she spoke for Seth, which was full of modulation. If you have seen the videos of Jane, when she spoke for Seth it was almost like giving a speech. When Seth Two spoke it was different -- very flat, but very distant and formal, and the frequency was very high. Every word was spoken carefully and deliberately, almost elegantly, as though Seth Two was unfamiliar with the vocal cords or with language, and therefore was very carefully using these mechanisms -- the vocal cords, the language -- in the correct way. The contrast between the two Seths -- Seth and Seth Two -- could not have been more complete; it was very obvious.

The Words of Seth Two

The following paragraphs are all spoken by Seth Two. He spoke in a very high, very flat, unmodulated, very distant and formal voice -- listen carefully to what he says; it is very interesting and very important.

We are voices without tongues. We are sound. We are the source of all your energy, the source of energy from which you come. We are creators, yet we have also been created. We seeded your universe, as you seed other realities.

He begins with some declarations, very brief, very powerful, with nothing to explain. The meaning of the last sentence is: I seeded your universe, just as you seed other realities. What does it mean to seed other realities? Every space of possibility you create, every probable reality, is it not created by you? Every thought, every consciousness of yours is creating a reality, including this three-dimensional world, which is created by you. He said I created the universe, just as you created your realities.

We do not exist in your history. We have not known earthly life.

Be sure to remember this: he is not in our space-time, and he has never existed as a human being, never lived an earthly life.

Our joy created the exultation from which your world comes. The condition of our existence makes it necessary that communication between us be carried out through others.

His current state of existence is on a level even higher than Seth's. Later Seth will explain: when Jane communicated with Seth Two, Seth was actually playing the role of translator. Seth was like standing at the top of that pyramid, translating with someone on another level, and only then could Jane receive Seth Two's information. Without Seth in the middle doing the communication, Jane could not reach Seth Two; there was no way for the two of them to communicate directly. So the meaning of "through others" is that they must rely on Seth to transmit Seth Two's voice and information down.

The symbols of language mean nothing to us. Our experience cannot be translated. Although we hope that our intent can be.

His experience and his knowledge cannot be transmitted through language and words. Of course, if you enter a state beyond language and words, it can be transmitted, but as ordinary human beings now, we all communicate through words and language. If something cannot be transmitted through words and language, then that experience cannot be passed on or translated either. But he said: I hope our intent can be transmitted -- their thoughts, their purpose, their expectations for us, these can be transmitted.

Below he is transmitting his intent:

Within the vast limitless range of consciousness, all things are possible.

Remember this: he is talking about consciousness -- within the vast limitless range of consciousness, all things are possible. This sentence is already stated very clearly.

Every thought has meaning. Your thoughts, as we see them, are like light. They form patterns.

Our thoughts have form and can be seen. At this point Rob noted: every syllable was spoken so carefully and separately -- when he said this passage, every syllable was very distinct, not in the manner of connected or swallowed sounds.

Because of the difficulties of communication, it is almost impossible for us to explain our reality to you.

The world in which Seth Two exists cannot be explained to us. It is like someone asking you to describe what kind of existence Seth Two and the others have, how they exist -- you cannot say it. You only need to know that we exist. You do not need to know our world, you do not need to know our reality, you do not need to know our experience; you only need to know that we are here -- knowing that we exist is already enough.

We send you untold vitality, and support all those structures of consciousness with which you are familiar.

They send us inexhaustible vitality, and they also support all the structures of consciousness we are familiar with. In Chapters 18 and 19, were we not always discussing the structure of consciousness? How many levels consciousness is divided into, the attributes, characteristics, and grades of consciousness -- all those things of consciousness are supported by someone. Who supports them? He has already told you -- they support them.

You are never alone. We have always sent emissaries to you who understand your needs. Though you do not know us, we cherish you.

We have always sent emissaries to you, knowing what you want. The emissary who understands your needs knows what you need, so I sent it to you.

Seth is my reference framework, a point within our reference framework. He is an ancient part of us.

Seth is only Seth Two's reference framework, a point within the reference framework. Seth is an ancient part of them -- which is to say that Seth is an ancient state of theirs before their evolution. After many times of elevation, they may reach the state of Seth Two, but before the state of Seth Two, Seth is an ancient state of Seth Two. It is like when we joke that single-celled organisms are an ancient state of human beings -- just understand it that way; it is the same idea.

We are separate and yet united as one.

He and Seth are both separate and united. Separate, because they belong to different stages; united, meaning there is a sequential relationship between them. Of course, this is using our human terms, but actually it cannot be understood this way; internally they have communication and exchange.

He paused for a long time, and finally said one sentence:

Spirit always forms flesh.

This is the last sentence he emphasized.

All right, that is all Seth Two said in these few grand paragraphs. If you are interested, you can read these paragraphs over again two more times. You will then know what knowledge and intent a being on an even higher level than Seth wants to convey to humanity -- not knowledge, but the value of his existence and what his intent toward us really means. Here he only said: my experience cannot be transmitted to you, and my existence cannot be described to you. But know that we exist, and know that we love you, that we have always supported you, that your energy comes from me, and that your joy and your exultation come from my joy. It is enough for you to know that we exist.

In the end he emphasized once more: your spirit always forms your flesh -- spirit comes first, flesh comes after. That is, on this level, this is all he could say.

At 12:06 a.m. -- it was past midnight -- the session ended. As is usual when Seth Two speaks, he did not announce the end. He did not say, as Seth does, "Well, good night, this session is over." Seth Two never says when it is over, nor is there any of the warm emotional exchange that usually involves Seth, Jane, or me -- no "have a wonderful evening," no "sleep well and have good dreams," nothing like that, no good night, nothing; it just ended directly. So this is how a being who has never lived an earthly life communicates with us.

Jane's eyelids were very heavy, and she was almost sleepy too -- in fact for several minutes she had difficulty keeping them from closing, and she basically kept her eyes closed. At this point she described her state while speaking for Seth Two, which you can use as a reference.

This session was extremely rich in content. From this session we learned about Seth's experiences across his many reincarnations -- his views on and experiences of reincarnation, which actually teach us how to view our own reincarnations. And then in the end he brought out Seth Two, and through Jane, Seth Two gave us those final very important paragraphs. I hope you will go back and ponder and understand them repeatedly, especially those final expressions from Seth Two.

Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks: Commentary (Part 2)

Let us look at the content of the book.

Earlier it was mentioned that Jane had a dream beforehand, and she wanted to ask Seth what this dream meant. Seth did indeed provide an introduction in this session, but because it involved some personal and private matters of hers, she deleted the part about the dream — there is a portion of the Seth material that was entirely removed. Later, in the 1990s, during the final stage of his life, Rob, for the sake of the completeness of the Seth material, also published the deleted material. I believe four books were released, called the "private sessions," also known as the "deleted material"³. That part had never been published before, and it involved some very private matters concerning them personally. If you are interested, you can find it elsewhere.

Session 589

Let us look at the content of his regular class. Seth continued:

We will continue. There are kinds of consciousness that cannot be explained in concrete terms.

That is, consciousness that cannot be described in words. He said, the one who created the figure you just saw -- he was referring to Seth Two from the previous session -- Seth Two is just such a kind of consciousness, one that cannot be described in words. He is exactly that kind of being.

As I mentioned, between that personality and myself there exists the same kind of relationship as between Ruburt and Seth.

That is, the relationship between Seth Two and Seth is like the relationship between Jane (Ruburt) and Seth. But in your terms, from our perspective:

Seth Two is far more distant from my reality than my reality is distant from Ruburt's.

He has made this analogy many times. The distance between Seth Two and Seth is not a physical distance, only a distance on the level of consciousness, and it is far greater than the distance between Seth and Ruburt.

If you prefer, you may think of Seth Two as a future portion of Seth, but far more is involved than that.

It is not simply a matter of "Seth will eventually develop into Seth Two." It is far more than that.

I am using simple terms here myself, trying to make these concepts clear.

He is explaining the relationship between Seth Two and himself, and between himself and Seth, using the relationship between Ruburt and Seth as an analogy.

In the trance state, Ruburt can contact me. In a state somewhat similar to the trance state, I can contact Seth Two.

Just as Ruburt can contact me in the trance state, I can also contact Seth Two in a state similar to trance. But remember, this is similar only in certain respects, not exactly the same as Jane contacting Seth in the Ruburt state.

Our relationship is difficult to explain.

Remember this -- Seth himself emphasizes that even he finds it difficult to explain. So many people keep pressing the question of what exactly the relationship between Seth Two and Seth is. We often offer some explanations and statements, but you cannot be overly insistent about it, cannot get stuck on the point, saying, "You must tell me clearly what the relationship between Seth Two and Seth is, and you must make it understandable to me." I can only say, I am sorry, neither I nor anyone else can make it understandable to you -- if the person involved cannot explain it clearly himself, can anyone else explain it clearly? Seth's level is already extremely high, and he is the one directly involved. He is in contact with Seth Two, and he is also in contact with Jane, yet even he cannot clearly explain his relationship with Seth Two through Jane's mouth. So how could we possibly explain it clearly? Because this is something beyond the scope of human imagination and understanding. Do not get stuck on it. Understand within the range of what you can perceive and comprehend, and let what you cannot understand simply be, let it be as it is.

Because there are far too many things in this world that you cannot understand or explain. Do not think that just because you have studied the Seth material or researched Seth's work, you can now explain everything in the world. That is not the case. We can only say that every soul is great, and every soul has infinite possibilities, infinite development, and boundless space. Within such infinite possibilities and boundless space, trying to explain every soul's actions and their causes and consequences is overreaching. Your soul is great and powerful, but other people's souls are also powerful, and other people's souls are also a kind of boundless development -- you cannot use one boundless developing thing to understand another boundless developing thing. You can only focus on the range of what you can explain or understand, and do not try to imaginatively explain things we fundamentally cannot understand.

Seth continued:

In the web of consciousness, we are united.

United with whom? United with Seth Two.

My reality, then, includes not only all reincarnational identities, but also other gestalts of existence that are not necessarily connected with any physical matter.

He is referring to gestalts like Seth Two -- Seth Two has not the slightest connection with the physical world, and has never existed in the physical world. Such a gestalt of the soul is also included within Seth's entire soul.

The same applies to every reader of this book.

The same in what way? Your soul does not only include a summary of all your reincarnational personalities; it also includes many other gestalts and other consciousnesses that we do not know about, and we do not know all of them.

The soul, therefore, is endless.

Remember this. The soul is endless, eternally endless. Do not try to exhaustively enumerate or investigate all the possibilities of the soul, or to give the soul some kind of definition -- it is endless. It is not a closed psychic or psychological system, not a dead thing that can be studied, not a quantum computer system or some kind of platform architecture that we can understand. It is developing endlessly.

I have been trying to make you understand that the soul is not a separate thing, apart from you.

The soul is with us every second, never separated from us -- just as God has never been separated from you. Does this not sound very similar to what is said in Conversations with God? What the two of them say is almost identical: God has never left you.⁴ Many religions also say this, the same principle.

There is no need to create a separate God, existing outside your universe. Nor is there any need to consider the soul as some remote entity.

Whenever we think of the soul, especially after studying the Seth material, we imagine the soul as something high above, somewhere beyond who knows how many layers of space and dimensions, sitting upright on a cloud. It silently watches us from above, watching us like little ants -- this is all wrong. Do not think this way.

God, or All That Is, is the most intimate part of you.

In our lives, in our present moment, in your body, in your thoughts, it is one with you, the most intimate part.

Its energy forms your identity.

The energy of All That Is, or the soul, or God -- whatever you call it -- is your identity.

And in the same way, your soul is a part of you.

You must understand this: your soul is a part of you.

Seth then introduced his own situation:

My own reincarnational personalities, probable selves, and even Seth Two, all exist now within me, and I exist within them.

The meaning of this sentence is what we have said many times: it must be that you are within me and I am within you. Your current reincarnation, this current life, is a part of your soul. All those past lives also exist within your body, within you. They are like those past happenings -- like the child you once were. The child you once were seems to have gone far away from you, but is it not still within your body? You grew into who you are now from the child you once were.

I use this example to help you understand: those past reincarnations are like the child you once were, like the first-grade you, the second-grade you, the third-grade you, the kindergarten you, the middle-school you, the high-school you, the college you, and so on -- just like your one reincarnation after another. Would you say they are you? And yet they are not you. Was that little girl or little boy in the first year of middle school you? If I ask you now, he or she is certainly not you; but would you say he or she is not you? He or she certainly is you -- if not you, then who? That is the kind of relationship.

"And I exist within them" -- right, the you who has now entered the workforce, are you not living inside that child's body? Are you not inside the child's body, and then after a number of years you became you? So this relationship must be thoroughly understood: within you are your past lives, and within your past lives there is also you.

Seth continued:

In your terms, Seth Two is more advanced.

Why do we need to understand it in our terms? Because on their level, the soul has no distinction of higher or lower -- such distinctions of high and low are all our understanding. Remember this. Many people ask this kind of question: Is the Buddha higher? Or is Christ higher? Or is Seth higher? Or are extraterrestrials higher? Or are the Lyran ones higher? The Sagittarian ones higher? Which constellation's people are higher? He keeps comparing. This is a human way of thinking, and it is quite normal -- people always want to find the biggest, the most powerful one, to attach themselves to it, to cling to it, feeling that they have found the true source. If you tell him that this one is not the most powerful, he will not study it anymore, will not look at it anymore: tell me which one is the most powerful? I will go and become his disciple. He keeps comparing which one is higher -- there is no higher. But from the human perspective, we will think that this one is higher and that one is lower.

Seth said:

In your terms, he is also alien. Seth Two is more alien.

Since he cannot relate to your human world the way I can -- because I have a deep background in the human world -- Seth Two has no physical body and has never existed in the physical world, so how could he understand our human life?

So many people say: since Seth Two is at a higher level, we should go and learn from Seth Two -- Seth is not yet ultimate, not yet complete, so we should not learn from him; we should go to the most complete, the most ultimate one. Then are there not also Seth Three, Seth Four, Seth Five, Seth Six -- would it not be even better to learn from them? This is a misunderstanding many people have. Do you need to understand that those exist? Yes. But what can you learn from him? It is impossible. Because he has absolutely no intersection with you, no channel, no frequency -- no matter what terminology you use, the two of you cannot possibly have any intersection. To put it more bluntly: you cannot understand anything he says, and even if he wanted to make things clear to you, even if he exhausted all his energy trying to make one thing clear to you, even if he existed like a god, he still could not make you understand. You say, if he is a god, why cannot he make me understand? I am sorry, even if he is a god, he cannot make you understand. It is that simple -- you can only understand it yourself.

So we will not discuss this further. He has absolutely no possibility of communicating with you, because he has no background of human life. He cannot understand what you say, and you cannot understand what he says.

But Seth said:

My experience still enriches Seth Two.

Remember this. Although Seth Two has already reached an immeasurable level, Seth says my experience still enriches Seth Two.

And his experience enriches me, to the extent that I can perceive and translate it for my own use.

That is, the enrichment Seth Two provides to Seth is meaningful to Seth only to the extent that Seth can perceive, understand, and comprehend it. If there are parts Seth cannot understand, then for Seth those cannot be called enrichment. And as for Seth Two in relation to us, we are even less able to perceive or translate him, so for us there is no enrichment either.

In the same way, Ruburt's personality is expanded by his relationship with me, and I also benefit from this experience.

Because even the best teacher learns from every level of activity. The best teacher also learns something new in every teaching process. So many people say: thank you for coming to share, thank you Mike for sharing. I am the one sharing, but what I want to tell you is that in the process of sharing I have also learned a great deal -- the one who benefits most from this is me. Of course you have also heard some things and gained some of your own insights and elevation, but remember, I have also learned a great deal in the middle of it.

When one day you pass this knowledge on to others, when you explain it to others, when you sow it like seeds among others, you will gain new elevation and new realizations in the process. At that time, when you explain the Seth material to others as I do now, you will find that you have learned even more. So here he emphasizes this point: in the process of Seth transmitting the material to Ruburt, Seth also enriched himself, and Ruburt also enriched himself through Seth. It is a mutual interaction. Do you remember a passage he spoke in the previous two sessions? He said: you must choose your gods carefully, because you and your gods fulfill each other, you and your gods accomplish each other -- that passage was saying something similar.

Seth said:

Broadly speaking, my soul includes my reincarnational personalities, Seth Two, and probable selves.

He must be speaking broadly: his soul includes these three major parts -- all reincarnational lives, Seth Two, and all his probable selves.

Incidentally, I am equally aware of my probable selves and my reincarnational lives.

That is, he knows all of his probable selves and all of his reincarnational lives. But he does not mention Seth Two here -- his awareness of Seth Two is limited.

Your ideas of the soul are far too narrow.

Remember this. Our ideas of the soul are far too narrow.

I am not really speaking of the idea of a group soul.

His meaning is: my soul includes all of these -- reincarnational lives, Seth Two, probable selves -- I am not talking about a group soul; I am talking about mine, and this is my soul. Of course he says:

Though it could be interpreted in that way.

If you treat each reincarnational personality as an individual soul, it could also be understood as a kind of group soul concept. It does not matter how you understand it, as long as you understand the meaning in between.

Each portion of the soul contains the whole.

This must be made clear: a small portion of the soul contains the whole. Just like a holographic image -- this small piece contains the entirety. Let us suppose we put a holographic image on a disc. The miraculous thing about this disc is: if you shatter it into countless tiny pieces, any tiny piece, under a specific instrument, can restore the information of the entire disc. That is the meaning. Every small portion of the soul -- each of our soul reincarnations, each incarnated life -- is equivalent to a portion of the soul, but this portion contains the whole. Your present existence contains the entirety of your soul. He is emphasizing this point to you again here.

A point that I am sure will surprise you.

You will certainly be surprised by this: how can a part contain the whole? Just as we cannot logically figure out -- how can a small thing contain a large thing? Surely the large contains the small; the small cannot contain the large. By human logic this is abnormal and contrary to logic. But he tells you it is indeed so: on the level of the soul, each portion contains the entirety of the soul.

As you become more aware of your own subjective reality, you will consequently become more familiar with more portions of your soul.

Subjective reality is not objective reality -- objective reality is your outer world; subjective reality is your inner reality, nonphysical reality. When you have more awareness of your own inner reality, you will have more understanding of more portions of your soul.

When you think of the soul as a closed system, you will perceive it in that way. In that case, you will never again recognize its greater creativity and characteristics.

Whatever you imagine it to be, that is how you will perceive it. The soul is infinitely possible, inexhaustible, boundless. If you insist on imagining it as a closed system, then when you perceive the soul you will feel that it is closed, that it is limited, and it will never again be able to produce greater creativity and new characteristics.

Seth said:

Seth Two, for you, does indeed to some extent represent what I will become.

Remember, for us, in our terms, Seth Two does indeed to some extent represent what I will become.

But when I become what Seth Two is now, this Seth Two will in turn have become something different.

Because only in our terms is there temporality, is there sequence. In human understanding, when Seth one day truly becomes Seth Two, that Seth Two will have long since become something else.

Now only under the same terms, Ruburt may become what I am now. But then I will be something quite different.

He is only giving an example, making such an analogy.

Whether or not you know it, each of us is also involved in this same kind of relationship.

Although for us humans, reincarnational lives seem to involve past and future events:

They are nevertheless parallel or adjacent to your own present life and consciousness.

He has discussed this many times in Chapter 16 and in the chapters on reincarnation. Reincarnational lives seem to have present, past, and future, a previous life, this life, and a next life, but they are actually parallel or adjacent to your present consciousness. They are right beside us, not existing in a distant past or distant future.

Relatively speaking, other aspects of your greater identity also exist in these vicinities and surroundings.

That is, where our present consciousness is parallel or adjacent, there are the experiences of our other reincarnational lives. And likewise, other aspects of each person's greater identity also exist in the vicinity and surroundings of our present consciousness.

Then:

The answers to the nature of reality, the intimate knowledge of All That Is that you seek, are within your present experience.

The intimate knowledge of All That Is, or of this intimate relationship with the soul, that you seek -- it is within your present experience, not to be sought outside. What was said earlier is also this passage: it is right where our consciousness is parallel, where it is adjacent to our consciousness. You only need to take one step to feel it, to learn it. It is not outside; it is within your heart.

To find the answers, you must undertake a journey into your own inner self, through yourself and through the world you know.

He states this very clearly: if you want to obtain the answers, it can only be through such a journey into each person's inner world, through ourselves and through the world we know. But the world we live in is meaningful and valuable -- we must go through them, through our understanding of this world, through our inner senses and inner psychic journey, to understand this outer world of ours.

He continued:

I was once a mother of twelve children.

Imagine having twelve children -- how terrifying! People today probably cannot even imagine it. In ancient times, mothers with a dozen or more children were common.

Educationally, she was ignorant. I was not beautiful, particularly in later years, with a fiery temper and a hoarse voice. This was in the vicinity of Jerusalem in the sixth century. The children had many fathers. I supported them as best I could.

You can tell what her life was like.

My name was Marshaba. I lived wherever I could, dependent on others, and finally had to rely entirely on begging for my food.

But in that existence, in that reincarnational life:

Physical life had a greater contrast, a greater sharpness, than I had known in all my previous existences.

In that reincarnational life, physical life had a greater contrast and sharpness than he had known in his previous lives.

Some crusts of bread were far more delicious to me than any cake I had tasted in any previous life.

Even though those cakes were covered with sugar and cream, in that life he felt those crusts of bread were far more delicious than those cakes.

When my children laughed, I was overjoyed. And no matter how poor we were, each morning was a triumphant surprise, because we had not slept forever, had not starved to death.

Every morning was for her a triumphant joy, a surprise. After waking from sleep, the twelve children and she herself had not starved to death, had come alive again, and a new day had begun. They were not complaining, not angry, not suffering -- they spent every day in joy and happiness. Their happiness was very simple: we are still alive today, and that is incomparable joy. Yet every one of us is alive right now, but cannot feel this joy.

Seth said:

I deliberately chose that kind of life, just as each of you has chosen your own lives. I did so because my previous lives had been too full of pleasure, and I had become too satiated. I had been too protected, and I could no longer focus clearly upon the truly splendid physical pleasures and experiences that earthly life could provide.

Mark this as a key point. Many people dislike our physical body, feeling that the body is a burden to their spiritual practice. There is also another problem: when life is too comfortable, people feel that everything is as it should be, and this kind of overly happy and comfortable life will cause your attention to no longer focus on the most essential joy and pleasure of life itself -- you cannot feel the most fundamental joy of life, cannot obtain those physical pleasures and experiences. He drew a "truly splendid" -- remember, the physical pleasures and experiences are truly splendid; do not think they are unimportant.

Although I yelled at my children and sometimes railed against the forces of nature, I was nevertheless thoroughly awed by the nobility and majesty of existence.

Existence means being alive. In that life, the nobility and dignity of being alive, of life itself, awed him.

And I learned more about true spirituality than I had learned as a monk.

He learned more about spirituality than when he was a monk -- a monastic life of single-minded focus with nothing else to do, no worries about food and drink, supported by others -- he learned far more than that.

But he continued:

This does not mean that poverty leads to truth, or that suffering is good for the soul.

You must understand: it is not that many people say, then I will also live a life of poverty, I will go beg on the streets, and then I will find truth -- no. He has already discussed earlier that suffering does not benefit the soul in any way, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering. If it is not for that purpose, mere suffering is meaningless. Many people who begged alongside him did not learn anything -- it is not that every person living in hardship, living at the bottom of society, can achieve great spiritual elevation. No. Seth is only saying that for him, this life was like that.

He does mean that you know beforehand where your weaknesses and strengths lie, and that each person, for your own purposes, chose the circumstances of that particular life.

The precondition for your spiritual elevation is that you know where your weaknesses are, so in the next life you choose an opportunity to remedy those weaknesses. Only when you are clear about this do those hardships and that suffering have any elevating effect on your spirituality. If you are not clearly aware of this, it is useless. He chose that life as the mother of twelve children because he had become too satiated with his previous lives, and could no longer focus his attention on the truly splendid physical pleasures and experiences that earthly life could provide -- so he had such a life, to give himself a profound experience of the simplest physical joys -- having enough to eat, not starving to death.

Seth said:

In your terms, I later lived wealthier lives.

According to our human reckoning of time, his later reincarnations were happier lives. But what he must emphasize is that these soul reincarnations actually occur simultaneously.

And in the gestalt of my personality, that woman still lives within me.

For example, just as the child lives within the adult -- each of us grew from a child, and does that child not live within us as adults?

Her later circumstances, compared with her earlier life, were filled with gratitude, and she prompted me to make better use of my advantages.

What advantages? Being alive means creating, being alive means striving, being alive means spreading, means doing things -- because being alive is already a tremendous thing. Be grateful that you are alive in this world, so at this point he must make good use of his advantages.

Therefore, within you, your various reincarnational lives, in a larger sense, occur simultaneously.

Remember this. To use another adult metaphor -- it must be a metaphor:

Just as the child within you is a part of your own memory and experience.

We think of our childhood, we often recall it, it is all in memory. But in another sense, he has already left you—you can only turn it into memory, you cannot call the childhood you back in front of you and chat with him again. That you who was in fifth grade, you can never find him again, you have walked away from there. You seem to have separated from that child—you are you, you are only the adult that child became.

Seth says:

Therefore I have been those people, and they have gone their own way.

You take your broad road, I will cross my single-log bridge. Those personalities who once reincarnated go their own way, and now I go my own way.

But those personalities, they are still a part of me, and I am a part of them.

He emphasizes this point again.

I still live in Seth Two's memory, just as a self from which he sprang.

For example, the you in the first year of junior high is like Seth; the you right now is Seth Two. The you in the first year of junior high thinks he no longer exists, that he has already passed, but that you in the first year of junior high—that Seth—is still living, and the present you sprang out from that you in the first year of junior high.

Yet the self that I am now is not the self from which he sprang.

What does this mean? The Seth that Seth is now is not the first-year-junior-high Seth in Seth Two's memory. In Seth Two's memory, that Seth is forever the Seth of that state, but the Seth of that time has already developed along his own path into a new form—he is no longer the self in Seth Two's memory. It is like you and the you of your childhood: the childhood you seems to live in your memory, he will not change, because he is a memory, but in fact that childhood you has been developing all along in his own direction, and he is no longer the him in your memory.

It is only because of your rigid concepts of time and consciousness that these statements seem strange to you.

Because it is very hard for us to understand. Seth says again:

In a larger framework, I can remember Seth Two.

Therefore all of these connections are open, and all psychological events also affect one another.

This has been said before—why the present can affect the past, and the present can affect the future, this has already been made very clear: all psychological events affect one another, all events are open, all connections are open. We have talked about this before, so I will not repeat it here.

Finally he says to Rob in a louder voice:

If there is anything you do not clearly understand, please bring it up.

Because if you do not understand, then the readers also will not understand—so you must ask.

The part after this is Jane's own words. In the early sessions, Seth talked about this: the majority of entities have at least three reincarnational lives—one as a man, one as a woman, or one as a father, one as a mother, one as a child. A person must have at least these three reincarnational lives. And how, later, when she began to realize that Seth had already lived many lives, she felt astonished—she thought it was strange: three times should be enough, why so many times?

Now she says that the concept of simultaneous reincarnational lives is quite acceptable. It suits her emotional and rational temperament. When the sessions first began, Jane actually especially disliked those cliched concepts of reincarnation—because those concepts were often mixed up with good and evil, sin and punishment. But when she understood that reincarnation is simultaneous, and that none of this cause and effect exists, she was very willing to accept this viewpoint.

Now she mentions something Seth once said in ESP class:

I wholeheartedly agree with Seth's statement that reincarnation is a myth, just as it is a fact.

You must remember this sentence.

The following content is what Seth said in the session of May 4, 1971, and he added the content of that session here. What Seth said was about reincarnation:

Therefore, your understanding of reincarnation and of the time involved is indeed a very simplified story.

The reincarnation we ordinarily understand—one life after another, the next life and the next—is a very simplified story, this must be understood.

Reincarnation, in itself, is also a parable.

You must understand this sentence. The reincarnation we now talk about, including Chapter 9, Chapter 10, and Chapter 11, which have been talking about how one reincarnates and chooses after death, and it all sounds so vivid—what he actually wants to tell you is that this is spoken from our human viewpoint. As far as the essence of reincarnation is concerned, the reincarnation we now understand is a parable, a simplified story, it is not like that. But let us just understand it this way for now. As we go further to higher levels, we will understand it layer by layer. We now know that it is simultaneous.

Seth continues:

Just as it is difficult for us to understand that we live in many realities and in many centuries at the same time.

Many people do not understand—the you right now actually lives in many worlds, lives in many centuries, and at the same time, right in the present moment.

All existence and consciousness are completely interwoven.

Only when you think of the soul as something different, separate, or closed do you think of a separate God—a personality that seems separate from creation. When you think of the soul as a separate, closed thing, you will naturally think that God should also be separate from us, a personality separate from creation.

All That Is is a part of creation, but is more than creation as creation.

This sentence is very profound—All That Is is a part of creation, but it is more than creation as creation. At this point he has already run out of words, and does not know how to explain it further.

There is an indescribable pyramidal gestalt of existence, whose perceptions include knowledge and experience that to you would seem like many other realities.

This passage is not easy to understand. There is an indescribable, pyramidal gestalt of existence—of course the word "pyramidal" is only a hypothetical description, it cannot truly describe it. Their perceptions, the knowledge and experience within their experience, seem to us like many other realities. In other words, within such a gestalt, every idea, every thought, every piece of knowledge, every experience of this gestalt is, to us, a world, a space-time, a dimension. The space-times, dimensions, and realities we understand are, to that gestalt, only its different feelings, only its different knowledge. We call them different worlds, different universes, different space-times, but to it, they are only one of its thoughts.

In other words, an idea in your mind is only an idea to you—but that idea can project a possibility, and where that possibility exists, a material world exists. To the people in that material world, that is a world, they do not think it is only an idea in your mind; but to you as a whole, it is nothing more than an idea in your mind. I say it this way in the hope that you can understand—he is actually talking about All That Is: this so-called world and universe of ours, the various worlds, the various universes, the existence of all kinds of possibilities, are, to All That Is, just some of its experiences and knowledge. To put it in words we humans can understand:

Their present may include the birth and death of your planet within one instant of their time.

Can you understand this part? Look back at this sentence. "They" refers to that indescribable, pyramidal gestalt—you can understand it as a kind of cosmic consciousness, or All That Is. Their "present" may include the birth and death of the Earth—suppose it is ten billion years, calculated according to human time—all within their own time framework, just one instant. It is just one of its thoughts, one idea, one feeling.

Seth says:

The existence of Seth Two is on the edge of one such galaxy of consciousness.

Now you know how far away it is. In other words, within the worldview of All That Is—suppose our universe is the universe of All That Is, let us make this analogy, otherwise you cannot imagine it—suppose our universe is All That Is, but the only difference is that within the universe of All That Is, the existence of the Earth is only one instant. And within such a world of All That Is, Seth Two is like the edge of the galaxy beyond the Milky Way and the solar system where our Earth now is—so you know how far the distance is from us. It is not only a remoteness of levels, a remoteness of time, but a remoteness in space that cannot be described, that cannot be described in words.

Let me repeat it once more so you can understand: suppose we make the universe of All That Is the same as our universe. In this world of All That Is, suppose the Earth is now called the crystal ball. In this world of the crystal ball, there has already been 4.6 billion years of time. Within these 4.6 billion years, the world in which we humans now live is only equivalent to one instant of the crystal ball—one instant of the crystal ball, and the ten billion years of our Earth have already passed. And within such a crystal-ball universe, Seth Two is equivalent to a being in a place as far away as the edge of the galaxy. So you know how great the distance is between us and Seth Two. This is what he is saying: the world we think of, within the beings of a higher level—or within a soul, or within All That Is—is only some of their experiences and feelings, one instant. He is emphasizing the infinity of consciousness, the infinite possibilities of consciousness.

Seth then describes Jane's state when communicating with Seth Two:

When Seth Two speaks, Ruburt initially has the following perception. Ruburt's consciousness is drawn upward and tightened along an inner psychic passageway, a living funnel.

An inverted funnel—until he simply cannot advance any further. The front becomes narrower and narrower, and Ruburt's consciousness cannot go any further forward.

At that time, it seems as if his consciousness leaves his body through an invisible pyramid.

For Ruburt, his consciousness is like an invisible pyramid, leaving his body from above Ruburt. So Jane's own feeling in the previous session was: her physical body stayed here, her soul had already gone upward—she did not know how it left, nor how it came back.

From the apex of that pyramid it opens out, extending far into space.

That level of consciousness communicates with higher dimensions. But these are all adjectives. You must remember that the pyramid and space are all referring to the level of consciousness, not our actual space, nor an actual pyramid. It is a description on the level of consciousness.

There, he seems to come into contact with an impersonal symbol.

Impersonal means: he does not have the thing called "person." When we say "personality," at least one must have been a person to have a personality. If someone has never existed as a person, he has no personality, and cannot be called a personality. So when he goes to contact some impersonal symbols:

Their messages, so to speak, are automatically translated into words.

The point he reaches—the point where the apex of the pyramid contacts space—actually represents a plane of rotation within dimensions. He talked about this earlier, except that he reached a higher plane of rotation, not the plane of rotation for contacting Seth, but the plane of rotation for contacting Seth Two.

A place between systems.

This plane of rotation is a relationship of energy and psychological reality, far more than a relationship of space. Because space is meaningless—these metaphors of distance he uses all refer to the psychological.

Seth says:

At such times, I am almost always present as a translator. For this kind of communication, I must have knowledge and understanding of both of their realities.

He must understand both Seth Two and the world in which Jane lives, otherwise he cannot translate.

Seth Two is familiar with an entirely different set of symbols and meanings.

His symbols are completely different from ours, and the meanings represented by the meanings are also different.

In such circumstances, there must be two translations. One is Seth's translation, and one is Ruburt's translation.

Because at the level of Seth Two, he has no material life, no earthly life, and his symbols and meanings are incomprehensible to us, and we do not know what he wants to say. So Seth must translate Seth Two into something Seth can understand, and then Seth translates his understanding of Seth Two into something Ruburt can understand. In this communication, what actually takes place is two translations. Seth makes this clear here.

We hope that certain concepts that cannot be transmitted in other ways may be transmitted in this manner.

This kind of mixture of realities and experience, these messages transmitted from one system to another, are constantly produced in various different ways, and appear in your world in all kinds of different guises.

It has always been appearing, always appearing in different images and different ways—very often appearing in our world in the form of different inspirations. Many of our inspirations, we think are only an inspiration, but in fact many are a kind of information transmission from another system to our system, and because we cannot understand it, we treat it as inspiration.

In other words, someone is helping you from behind the scenes.

But we must also use our own strength and our own abilities—because our own individuality largely determines how much help we can receive. When our spirituality is insufficient, when we have no perception of these inspirations, we also cannot receive much help. Even if others want to help you, it depends on how much your ability can receive.

When Seth Two speaks, the symbols that Ruburt clearly perceives are very suitable.

Because Seth translated in between.

But outward is also inward, and therefore consciousness is also traveling inward, just as far as he thinks it is traveling outward.

It seems outward—Seth Two is something outside him, and communicating with a consciousness as far away as Seth Two is like traveling to a very distant place. But in fact this travel is inward, it only gives you the feeling of being outward.

This kind of contact and knowledge is available to everyone.

You must remember this. It is not that only Jane can do this, only Ruburt can do this, only with Seth's help can this be done—it is available to everyone.

All That Is does not transmit its information to all its parts from outside by voice, by trumpet, by horn, but through each consciousness, the living soul-stuff, by the essence of the soul.

All That Is transmits information to all its parts—that is, to all the parts of its soul—not by means of sound, not by means of trumpet, not by means of horn, but through the inner, through the soul. So what you feel is basically inspiration and that kind of information.

Next he is going to talk about Jane's dreams—that involves Jane's privacy, so I will not discuss it here today.

Farewell and Introduction: The Many Faces of Multidimensional Personality as Seen from My Own Experience (Part Three)

Seth's Supplementary Notes on Pope Number One

The beginning of this chapter says that they started rather late that evening, not beginning until five past ten — because they had attended a gathering with classmates, a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration. During this event, at the dinner table, Jane and Rob had been discussing the exact year in which Seth, in the previous session, had said he had once been a pope. In the course of the discussion, Jane said she received the information of the year 325 AD⁵, which surprised them even more. At five past ten, after returning from the banquet, they continued with the session, and Seth said it was in the three hundreds AD, that is, at the time when he was pope.

Session 590

For your own enlightenment, I will offer a few additional small notes. In the period after that time, records were often extremely unreliable.

In that period, records were often forged. Sometimes one person's name would be used to represent a dynasty that spanned quite a number of years. The person who originally held the position might have been assassinated, and another took his place and carried on, but as far as the common people were concerned, it seemed as though nothing had changed. Poisoning was a common method, and even those who had some slight awareness of the truth did not dare speak up -- they probably knew something was off, that this person seemed to have been poisoned and a substitute put in his place, but no one dared say it openly.

The records would show the reign of one pope, but one, two, three, or even different persons might have held the position. Shifts and vacillations in policy are one clue to this kind of situation.

He also mentioned some people called "minor popes," people who underwent a very ambitious kind of training. They were not real popes, but they had to be courted and flattered -- you understand, because if they seriously entered the contest, those who supported them would receive great rewards. Incidentally, the behavior of these people was not particularly worse than that of the rest of the common people; it was just that their position gave them greater room to maneuver. What he means is that these minor popes, when the opportunity arose in the future, would go on to replace those real old popes. They were trained from childhood to be extremely ambitious, but they were not actually especially bad; it was just that their position determined it.

When I recall that life of mine, I think of the years 325 and 375. Again, names and dates mean little to me now.

This must be remembered: for a person of a higher dimension, or for a soul, which specific year a specific event happened in may be a very important time marker for the human world, for us -- whether in history, archaeology, or fact, we all feel that this time is very important, that it cannot be wrong, cannot be confused. But for the soul, these times do not carry much meaning. What they remember are these events, those feelings, those things. So sometimes you feel that they speak in a muddled way, that the times do not match up, that the points do not line up -- you need to understand that it is not that they are speaking nonsense, but that they do not have much of a concept of these things, of these times. They have a rough concept, but not such a precise one.

In that lifetime I learned to understand the interaction between people and their ambitions, and the gulf that so often exists between ideals and actual actions.

A person has the ambition to become a great man, to become a famous figure, and so he must take action. That lifetime of his was actually just to experience what it is like to be an ordinary person -- when he has an ambition or aspiration, what kind of gulf exists between the things he must do, the actions he takes, and his ideals. He came to experience exactly this.

You must also understand that religion in those days was inseparable from politics.

In those days, religion and politics were unified and inseparable. Everyone expected that a person holding a religious office would be an excellent politician -- everyone hoped that the person holding a religious office would be a good politician, skilled in politics, understanding of politics, capable of leading everyone. This was the common understanding.

I seem to have spent a while in a place that sounded something like this. A brother or cousin was very important to me, and he ended up in serious trouble, caught in some smuggling business involving Spain. At that time there was a secret group called the believers of the Motherhood of God, who were considered heretics, and several times petitions were brought up against them.

Because at the time he was the pope, people came to him reporting that there were some heretics, some cult, and this had to do with the status of the true Holy Mother -- that is, Mary -- in church doctrine, because their teachings might affect the status of the true Holy Mother within church doctrine. Now Seth says, I have finished this note, and he begins to speak of other things.

The Retention of Personality and the Openness of the Soul

Let us continue with the following content. He continues to emphasize his earlier point:

You are not fated to dissolve into All That Is.

You do not have some fixed fate, destined to go somewhere and dissolve into All That Is, to melt away into it -- as if within this vast All That Is, each person's small lifetime, this personality, seemed to no longer exist. He says no, that is not the case. Be sure to remember, it is not so.

The aspects of your personality, as you presently understand it, will be retained. All That Is is the creator of individuality, not the means of its destruction.

This must be remembered, it is actually the opposite: All That Is creates individuality, creates personality; he is not here to destroy it.

My own previous personalities have not dissolved into me, just as your past personalities have not dissolved into you. They all live on, and are full of vitality, all going their own ways.

He said earlier that he has had many lifetimes of reincarnational experience, and those have not dissolved into him. Your past personalities have not dissolved into you either -- in a previous life you may have been a king, a prime minister, a beggar, or something else, and that person still lives, full of vitality, going his own way. To use Seth's words, you go your way, and they go their way.

Your future personalities are as real as your past ones. After a while, you will no longer worry about this matter.

Why after a while? Once you understand this -- he is referring to Seth and Rob and Jane -- once you have died, you will no longer need to worry about this matter. Because the two of them are already on their final incarnation. He has told Rob and Jane that neither of them will return to our physical reality to reincarnate again, so he says after a while you will no longer need to worry about this matter.

Within the framework of reincarnation, the death you imagine does not exist.

Within the framework of reincarnation there is no such thing as death; it is only a change of identity, and then starting over again.

However, my own framework of reference is no longer focused upon my reincarnational lives.

Seth is no longer interested in his reincarnational lives, because he no longer comes back. He says I have turned my attention to other directions, and no longer concern myself with the matters of physical events.

Since all the lives are simultaneous, any separation is psychological.

What he means is that all the lives happen at the same time, simultaneously. We imagine that between us and our past lives, between us and our future, there seems to be an unbridgeable gulf -- he says this kind of isolation, this gulf, this separation, is not a true separation in time, nor a separation in space. Because in time you are simultaneous, and in space you are in different dimensions, or perhaps it all happens right here in the present spatial dimension -- none of that matters. What matters is that this separation is not a separation in time and space, but a psychological separation. Between you and your future lives, between you and your past lives, it is all psychological separation.

I exist as I am now, and the reincarnational lives, in your terms, still exist as well.

Seth says the way I am now -- he does not even have a physical body now, he exists as a kind of energy body, or what we would call a soul -- he exists in this way, and at the same time his reincarnational lives still exist as well. That is, all those mentioned above, from all the eras, all the centuries he lived through, he even once lived as a Lumanian, back in the years before Christ, who knows how many years ago -- he existed in all those times.

I am not concerned with them now, but I have turned my attention to other fields of activity.

From Seth's perspective, he no longer concerns himself with his former -- or perhaps one cannot call them former -- the personalities of his past lives, and he has turned his attention to other nonphysical levels.

Whether a personality is within a body or outside of it, it will change. Because you will change after death, just as you change before death.

This must be remembered: personality will definitely change. After you die, your personality will also change -- according to this logic, if after death you still insist on maintaining the way you are now, would that not be rather ridiculous? Because we are always changing, so why maintain this fixed personality unchanged?

It is like a child saying, I will grow up, but I will never change my present concepts.

You will change accordingly, and this includes changing after death as well; it is the same principle. It is like a child saying, I will grow up, but I will never change my concepts -- impossible.

The multidimensional nature of the psyche allows it to experience endless dimensions. Experience in one dimension does not negate life in another dimension.

The psyche itself is a multidimensional existence, and its nature is to experience endless dimensions. Existence in the three-dimensional world does not negate my existence in other probable realities; there is no conflict.

You have been trying to squeeze the soul into concepts too narrow for the nature of existence, making it conform to your narrow beliefs. Yet the door to the soul is open, and it leads to all dimensions of experience.

What he means is that we humans often use human ways of thinking to think about the soul. When we use human thought patterns to think about the soul, we impose extremely narrow concepts that limit all the possibilities and the greater space for development of the soul. He says no, the door to the soul is open, completely open, with nothing closed off, and it can go to all spaces of reality.

Yet if you think of the soul you know as your own end or conclusion, then you also imagine your soul as a finite being, limited to the adventure of this one present life, and judged after death according to its performance in a few insignificant years.

If you think your soul is your final endpoint, the goal you must achieve, or some result you must complete -- like the analogy I made before, as if a soul puzzle is finally completed, and then the matter is finished. That was only an analogy and an image; actually it is not a completion, not an endpoint, it is always changing. You can think of that painting as a magnificent, ever-changing scroll of the soul that is simultaneously being completed, simultaneously being created, simultaneously being manifested -- not a dead, fixed thing waiting for us to paste it together piece by piece, and once the scroll of the soul is finally completed, our task is done, and we are game over, done once and for all. That was only an analogy made in that scene and that context, for the convenience of your understanding. In essence, that painting -- if we compare it to a painting -- is constantly changing, always in progress, with no state of completion, no final result.

If you think the soul is a conclusion, then you will judge it and pass a final verdict based on its performance during these few decades in the world, saying that this soul's actions are just this, that this is the person's whole life -- and you will use such a life, a three-dimensional worldly life, to judge it and pass a final verdict. That is wrong, it is not like that. It is always changing, always completing itself.

In many ways this is a comfortable and easy concept, though for some people the implication of eternal damnation it contains may be quite frightening.

This comfort and ease, for some people, is even more frightening than being made to create endlessly; it is like a permanent punishment, quite terrifying. Comfort and ease are not a good thing -- although while we are alive we often pursue comfort and ease, he says that for some people this comfort and ease is as terrifying as eternal punishment.

Yet it is too clean a concept to suggest the rich splendor at the heart of divine creativity.

Too clean, too simple -- that is, wanting to pursue this kind of comfort and ease. In fact, the divine creativity within us is far richer than this.

The soul stands both within and without the structure of physical life as you know it. You do not separate yourself from the animals and other life by possessing an eternal inner consciousness. Such a consciousness is within all living things, and within all different forms.

Do not think that because this consciousness has an eternal inner existence, it is therefore separated from your outer life form, from our physical life, from our bodily life -- as if an eternally existing inner thing had no connection with this mortal body, as if our body were merely a piece of clothing it passes through, of no value at all. It is not like that. This consciousness is within all living things -- all creatures have it, all sentient beings have it -- and it is within all different forms as well. This consciousness is not only within our life; it is also within objects we consider inanimate. Consciousness is the most fundamental thing in this universe and this world. Everything in this world is created and produced by consciousness; it constitutes the essence of this world. So when you separate your own consciousness from your own body, that is quite ridiculous; they are one.

This session is relatively short, so we will stop here.

Session 591: Farewell and Introduction

Let us continue with Session 591.

This is a short session, which has become a habit. In the process of making this book with Seth, I have come to look forward to every development.

Jane says she was somewhat reluctant to hold this session. She felt strange, almost attached -- she could sense that Seth was now going to finish his book very soon, so Jane did not want to hold the session, wanting to stretch the time out a little longer. She says perhaps it will be tonight, I suppose, and I do not want to let it happen -- she did not want the ending of this book to happen.

I call the title of this chapter farewell and introduction. The farewell refers to myself, from your perspective, because I am now about to finish this book; the introduction is for every reader, as I hope that you can now face yourself with a greater understanding of who you are and what you are.

Seth says he must say a temporary goodbye to everyone, because I am now about to finish this book; and the introduction applies to every reader -- "I hope that you can now face yourself with a greater understanding of who you are and what you are." Therefore I want to introduce you to yourselves. This is a key central idea of this book: Seth's Seth Speaks of course contains a great deal of other knowledge and theory, but his ultimate purpose is to introduce everyone to themselves, to introduce you to yourself, to let you know who you are.

Session 591

You cannot find yourself by visiting many teachers or reading many books. Nor will you see yourself by following any particular specialized method of meditation.

This has already been stated very clearly here.

Only through quiet inner observation, the self that you know, can you experience yourself, and the connection that exists between this immediate personal self in the present and that multidimensional inner identity.

The "inner observation" mentioned here is not a special quality, not a method, not some kind of inner-observation technique. He means observing yourself inwardly. Quietly observe yourself inwardly, and only then can you experience your own reality. Be sure to remember: it is the immediate personal self existing in the present, and its connection with that multidimensional inner identity. It is not through visiting many teachers, reading many books, or joining certain organizations, or entering certain specialized methods -- someone tells you that through this method you can do it, but none of these are it. The only way is to observe yourself inwardly and quietly.

There must be a willingness, an acquiescence, a desire.

What kind of willingness, what kind of acquiescence, what kind of desire? It is the willingness to observe yourself and understand yourself -- you must have this willingness, this acquiescence, this desire. If you do not take the time to examine your own subjective states -- he says, then if so many answers seem to elude you, you cannot complain. If you do not go and observe your own subjective states yourself, those answers seem to elude you, and you cannot find where the answers are at all. You keep asking me every day why you cannot find the answers, I do not know what the answer is, after all, can you just tell me what is going on -- he says, actually it is you yourself who are avoiding these things. You cannot shift the burden of proof onto others.

This is a very crucial statement. Many people ask: prove it to me. Many people go around asking, have you ever had an out-of-body experience, have you had other special experiences, has your celestial eye opened, how are you doing -- they are asking others, asking everywhere, grabbing whoever they can and asking them. What is the purpose of asking this? They want proof, they want to prove everywhere whether what Seth says is right, whether what so-and-so says is right, whether it makes sense. Seth says very clearly here: the burden of proof must be your own; no one else can provide proof for you. This process of discovering yourself -- how can you ask someone else to provide proof for you? This is your own affair.

Or expect a person or a teacher to prove to you the validity of your own existence.

Here it is actually still a matter of "validity" -- it is not legality; it is proving the validity of the existence of your own soul. The "yourself" he speaks of refers to the true self, which is your soul. Of course your physical existence is certainly valid; that needs no proof -- you are sitting here, standing here, so it is certainly valid. What he is talking about is the validity of that true self -- do not expect others to prove to you the true, real existence of your soul; you can only rely on yourself.

Such a process would necessarily lead you into one subjective trap after another.

When you want to seek proof from others or from outside, it will lead you into one subjective trap after another. You keep refusing to seek inwardly, always wanting to grab something from outside.

As you sit reading this book, the doorways within you are open.

Basically, for people reading the Seth books, everyone's inner self is open -- if it were not open, they would not have read this far, nor would they have reached this chapter. Generally they stop reading by the first three chapters; they flip through it and do not continue, because they do not know what this book is talking about. Many people's first impression when reading Seth is: I do not know what he is talking about, and it has nothing to do with me. So when you have read this far, your inner doorway is definitely open.

Simply experience as fully as possible the moment that you know.

That is, experience your present. When he specifically exists in the form of this room, or in the form of the city street outside where you live -- when you go to observe yourself in this moment, this time, it is like observing the streets around you, the city, or observing the room you are in now. Just treat the room you are in now as the appearance of your inner present moment.

You can see the appearance of the room, and when you close your eyes you can also see the appearance within your mind. There is still a world inside your mind; as long as you observe it with your heart, you can walk into it, you can see it, it is right there. Your inner world is not unfamiliar, nor is it as mysterious as you think. Just like your room, just like the streets, just like the city you are familiar with -- as long as you look inward, it is right there.

Imagine the experience of being present in the whole earth at this moment. Try to appreciate the subjective experience of yourself that exists in this moment yet escapes this moment, and multiply this by every living person.

What does it mean? When you go to pay attention to the present, start from your own small room, and begin to pay attention to the city you are in -- but this time do not look with your eyes; perceive it with your heart, perceive the city you are in with your inner senses. Then you must also be able to imagine that in this same instant, you are present in the experience of the whole earth. That is, you have a cosmic perspective; you are gradually raising yourself upward, rising to a certain height, together with the cosmic perspective -- we would call it the God's-eye view; whatever you call it, it is the same. From that perspective, you are paying attention to what is happening on the earth at this moment.

Try to appreciate this moment. Whether it is a volcanic eruption, a forest fire, a raging plague, or familial affection, love, or all the beautiful things you notice -- a flower blooming, a bird flying -- whatever it is, it is all like this.

And there are also those things that exist in this moment yet escape this moment, things we have not been aware of for the time being. Just like in the movie Peaceful Warrior, where Socrates takes him to the park and says, look at these people in the park right now -- he says, there is nothing here, what is there in an ordinary park on an ordinary day? Socrates then has him suddenly enter a state similar to Zen meditation. Only then does he truly experience the meaning of the present moment; he sees so many, many things. At that moment, if you go back to the movie, you can feel what it means to appreciate the present and feel the present moment. This is what you perceive. There are also some things in the present that you have not yet perceived, things that have escaped your subjective experience, things you yourself are unaware of. He says then multiply this experience by every person -- that is the experience of the God's-eye view, the experience of all humanity, the experience of this planet.

When he reached the final chapter, in making his final summary, everything he said was on a very grand scale.

This exercise alone will open your perceptions, increase your awareness, and automatically expand your appreciation of your own nature.

With just this one thing, you can expand your perception. This very simple exercise, you can try it: observe inwardly, just like observing the room around you, and expand outward little by little. It does not have to succeed in one try; if it does not succeed the first time, that is fine. Go as far as you can, do as much as you can, and continue next time. Just as exploring a city cannot be finished in one day, let alone exploring the whole world -- go little by little, expand a bit each time, and explore this world within your heart.

The you who is capable of such expansion must necessarily be a far more creative and more multidimensional personality than you previously imagined yourself to be.

The many small exercises I suggested earlier in this book will also help you recognize your own reality, and bring you into contact with that portion of your own existence from which your vitality springs.

He suggested many small exercises -- actually not many, just three or four -- that will let you directly experience the essence of your own soul or entity. You can experience it directly, rather than learning it from books or from theory. Simply put, it is contact with your inner self, contact with your entity, contact with your soul.

You may or may not meet your own reincarnational selves, or probable selves. You may or may not catch yourself in the act of altering your own levels of consciousness.

He emphasized: you may or may not meet your past reincarnational selves or probable selves. You may also catch that consciousness of yours that is exploring on different levels of consciousness. But he said "may or may not" twice -- his meaning is that you should not force these things. Do not say "I want to know what my past lives were like," "I must perceive every one of my consciousnesses," "I want to try to contact all my probable selves" -- do not make such purposeful attempts; do not carry this kind of purpose. Be sure to remember: explore without any purpose whatsoever.

Most of my readers, however, will certainly succeed with some of the exercises I have suggested. They are not difficult, and they are within the abilities of all people. Each reader, however, should feel his or her own vitality in a way that is to some extent new to him or her, and discover expanded paths opening inwardly, paths that he or she had not previously noticed.

There are many comments below our videos, and we have several groups where people are also leaving comments -- anyone who has read the comments will know that what he says here is indeed the truth. Every person, after reading this book or after studying this material, will have a completely new understanding of themselves and of this world.

The very nature of this book, the method of its creation and transmission, should clearly point out the fact that the human personality has far more abilities than are generally attributed to it.

Seth, through Jane -- a person without a physical body -- wrote such a book, and this book itself is a proof. When you think back to the very beginning of the first chapter of this book, when he said, "I do not have a physical body, yet I am writing a book," that was actually a declaration. A declaration of what? A declaration that each of us has a personality with abilities far greater than we know, abilities beyond this three-dimensional world. The existence of this book is itself proof. Many people are asking for evidence, evidence -- give me evidence, give me proof of the existence of the soul, can you produce some evidence for me to see -- this book itself is the proof, it is the evidence. But if you do not accept it, there is nothing to be done.

By now you should understand that not all personalities are physicalized. As this book was conceived and written by a personality without a physical body, then made concrete, then materialized. Therefore each of you can express, can access far greater abilities and methods of communication than those that are usually accepted.

Each of us should also have such abilities, beyond the abilities and methods of communication that we can understand, access, and recognize.

I hope this book has, to some extent, introduced each of you to the multidimensional inner identity that is your own.

He says, speaking more loudly:

My dear friends, this is the end of this dictation, and the book is finished.

The book is finished at this point. Rob finally says, "Very good, Seth." Seth says:

Now you may rest, a well-deserved rest.

Your hand has been writing for such a long time, always recording and taking notes, so he says you may rest.

On the Historical Truth of Christ's Crucifixion

After this part of the book is the conversation between Rob and Jane. They did not expect the book to end like this, to end so quickly. In the following section he continues to talk about Jesus Christ and the question of Christ's crucifixion, and we will now go through it quickly.

He says for your edification -- because many people, since Christianity is so widespread in the Western world, have been pressing this question -- the historical Christ was not crucified. He had only mentioned this briefly before, and now he gives everyone some details.

Christ had no intention of dying in that manner, but others felt that in order to fulfill the prophecies in every way, crucifixion was necessary.

Other people all felt that his martyrdom, his dying as a martyr, was a very necessary thing, because before this event happened, they had prophesied many things, and those prophecies had to be fulfilled.

So there was a conspiracy in which Judas played a role, an attempt to make Christ into a martyr. The man chosen was drugged, hence the necessity of helping him carry the cross.

In the Bible, if you are familiar with it, there are differing accounts as to whether Christ carried the cross himself or someone else helped him carry it; both versions exist. He says you can see this in the twenty-third chapter of the Gospel of Luke⁶.

This drugged person was told that he was the Christ. He was one of those who were mentally confused, but he also believed that he was himself, and not the historical Christ, who was to fulfill the prophecies.

He believed that he himself was the Christ; he had been drugged, and others told him, you are the Christ. He was one of those who were mentally confused. He believed he was himself, and not the historical Christ, and that it was he who was to fulfill the prophecies -- he was absolutely certain he was the one.

Mary came, because she was filled with sorrow for this person who believed himself to be her son.

Jesus' mother came, because she was filled with sorrow for this person who believed himself to be her son -- she was very sad, because she knew this person was dying in place of her son, and she was present out of sympathy.

The group responsible wanted it to appear that a certain particular segment of the Jews had crucified Christ, but never dreamed that the entire Jewish people would be blamed.

They never imagined that because of this event, the entire Jewish people would be blamed.

It is difficult to understand this matter, and even I find it hard to unravel this mystery.

That is to say, Seth knows that the person who was crucified and burned was not Jesus; he knows this, but he does not know exactly how this happened, what the specifics were. He knows the general outline, but not the very specific details.

Including the fact that the tomb was empty. So this is why in the earlier sessions I recommended The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ⁷ to everyone -- if you have read The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ⁷, you will know where the person who was burned came from, what the whole story was, and so on; you will know all these things, and you will also know Jesus' final whereabouts.

This same group carried the body away.

So the tomb was empty -- after that person was burned, he was buried in the tomb, but later when it was opened, it was empty.

However, Mary Magdalene did see Christ immediately afterward; see the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.

What does "immediately afterward" mean? It was not three days later that she saw him; it was immediately after this event, right after he was nailed and burned on the cross, that Mary saw him at once.

Christ was a great psychic, and he then caused the wounds to appear on his own body. And he appeared to them in both physical and out-of-body states at the same time.

Although he had not been nailed to death on it, he used a kind of illusion to make everyone see what appeared to be wounds on his body -- he caused these wounds to appear on his own body. Remember, here he appeared before his disciples in both physical and out-of-body states at the same time -- he appeared before them both in the flesh and in the form of the soul, in the form of the spirit body, out of the body.

He tried, however, to explain what had happened and the position he was in, but those who had not participated in the conspiracy could not understand, and misinterpreted his statements.

So this is when Peter denied the Lord three times⁸ -- it is in the Gospel of Matthew -- he said he did not know Jesus. Because he recognized that that person was not the Christ.

Everything he says is about matters in the Bible, still dwelling on whether Jesus was crucified. Because for Westerners this is an enormous matter; for us it does not seem so important -- we think, so what if he was burned or not burned? But for Westerners, this is the most central thing that would change their value system and destroy their faith, so he must pay special attention to this question; his focus is different from ours.

Jesus of course said, "Peter, why have you forsaken me?"

These words were spoken by the one who believed himself to be Jesus, that is, the person who had been drugged. Judas pointed out that person -- Judas was the informer, after all; he said that person was Jesus. Because at that time, as a heretic, one would be burned, and Judas was the informer. Because he knew about this conspiracy, he knew this person was a fake, and he was afraid the real Christ would be captured; afraid that the real one would be caught, he gave up a fake one.

Judas handed over to the authorities the one who claimed to be the Messiah, and thereby saved, rather than destroyed, the life of the historical Christ.

This Judas was actually the one who truly saved Christ's life. He did not want to harm him; he wanted to truly preserve his life, so he gave up a fake one. This person had actually often gone around babbling that he himself was Jesus; he was quite an interesting person. This person who was drugged -- you see how interesting this history is; Judas has borne the infamy for thousands of years, always existing as the betrayer. The Western world to this day dislikes the number thirteen⁹, because Jesus plus the twelve disciples makes exactly thirteen people, and Judas was that thirteenth person, so the number thirteen⁹ has always been considered unlucky. But if you think about it, Judas was actually a very good person; he truly saved the life of the historical Jesus.

Yet the symbolic crucifixion itself gave birth to meaning and deep dilemmas within the human psyche. Therefore the crucifixion itself became a far greater reality than the actual event that occurred at the time.

In that era, under those circumstances, this was a dilemma. What is a dilemma? People neither wanted Jesus to die, nor wanted him not to die -- because only by dying could this matter be accomplished, could the prophecy be fulfilled: God sent his son to wash away humanity's original sin, to wash away humanity's sins with his blood. This event needed to happen in order to verify that what God said was true. But people also did not want him to die, so this was a dilemma. In the end, this dilemma was resolved in a satisfactory way through such a method -- it achieved such a purpose, yet did not let Jesus truly die.

Only the mentally confused were in danger or capable of making such a self-sacrifice and considering it necessary. Only those still bound by concepts of sin and punishment would be attracted to such a religious drama.

You have to say it in reverse: only the clear-minded would not consider this matter of nailing oneself to the cross as necessary. According to Jesus' level of attainment and perception, he had long since transcended this level; he would not say that he must burn himself on it in order to achieve such a purpose. But people thought this way, and that is why such a drama occurred.

And find within it a deep resonance with their own subjective feelings.

That is, these spectators, these crowds, the people bound by such concepts, would, because of the crucifixion, find within it a deep resonance with their own subjective feelings -- they needed such an event to happen.

In any case, Christ, by virtue of his clairvoyant abilities, knew that this event would happen to some extent.

Christ at that time already had the ability of clairvoyance; he was originally a psychic with very strong abilities, so he knew that this matter would happen to some extent -- that is, being crucified, and how things would develop afterward.

The subjective decision of the person involved could not be swayed. He would be sacrificed so that the ancient Jewish prophecies could be fulfilled, and no one could dissuade him.

That is, the person who had been drugged had to be burned; this event had to happen in order for the ancient Jewish prophecies to be fulfilled.

So at the Last Supper -- this goes back to the Last Supper, there was once a very famous painting of it -- when Christ said, "This is my body, this is my blood," when he invited everyone to eat, he said this:

He meant to show that spirit is within all matter, that spirit and matter are connected to each other yet separate, and that his own spirit was separate from his own body. And he was also, in his own way, hinting that he should not be identified with his body.

Because he knew that the dead body would not be his own -- he knew all of it, he understood everything. So he said such a sentence, a sentence with very profound meaning. Seth uses his own understanding to interpret this sentence -- it has all been misunderstood; people have misunderstood all these words.

Christ then changed his mode of behavior, often appearing to his disciples in an out-of-body state. Here you can see the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of the Gospel of John, the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

He had seldom done this before -- previously Jesus rarely appeared to his disciples in an out-of-body state. He had a physical body before, so there was no need to use out-of-body means. But now everyone believed he had been burned to death, so he could no longer appear in the flesh, and therefore he could only meet with everyone through the form of the spirit body, through out-of-body means. So at this time many people said, oh, I have seen the Lord again -- there are many accounts, and he points out these chapters of the Bible here.

In any case, he was trying to tell them that he had not died, and they chose to take him as speaking symbolically.

He tried to tell his disciples that he had not died, but his disciples took it as a symbolic statement -- just like saying "Premier Zhou will live forever in our hearts," or "so-and-so is immortal"; that kind of meaning. What he was actually saying was a fact.

It was no longer necessary for him to appear in physical form, and it would even have been embarrassing under those circumstances.

If he were to appear in physical form, it would be embarrassing, because everyone knew he had been burned to death; how could you appear in the flesh again? So he used his mental power to separate himself from his own body, and met with his disciples through out-of-body means.

He says this is so interesting. In between there is actually some more conversation between Jane and Rob.

He knew that without those wounds, they would not believe he was himself, because they were so certain that he had died with those wounds. Those wounds were originally used as a method of identification. When he explained the true situation, they were no longer needed.

Being crucified, after all -- only those nail wounds could prove he was Jesus. If he had explained the true situation, they would not have been needed. But he had no way to do so.

For example, he ate food to prove that he was still alive.

You can see in the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John and the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, it says that after Jesus' resurrection he still ate food. Eating food is not something a soul would do -- a soul does not eat food. So he was telling them that his physical body had not died at all. But they thought this meant that the soul could also enjoy food. His disciples believed that the soul could also enjoy food; they did not think much about it, because they were too deeply convinced of the fact that he had been crucified.

They wanted to believe.

They wanted to believe that he had been crucified and then resurrected -- they wanted to believe this.

That is all for the matter of Jesus being crucified. He ends tonight's session, wishing you all a good evening. Finally he tells Ruburt:

There will be other books.

At the very end he tells Ruburt that besides this book, Seth Speaks, there will be other books.

I thank you for your help, cooperation, and patience.

He has been thanking Rob all along for his constant transcription.

With the end of this session, the content of the entire book has been fully covered. That is, the main text of Seth Speaks, all twenty-two chapters, has now been completely introduced. There is still some appendix content after it, which is also very wonderful. We will select portions of the appendix content and present them to everyone in several installments -- there is very excellent, very good content in there, and we will continue to introduce it to everyone later.

注释与核实

1. Source: Jane Roberts, The Seth Material (https://www.sethpublishing.com/booksContent.aspx?id=eFBJK72iMvW1hessxTxxqQ%3D%3D) ↩ ↩²

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. Source: Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 3 (https://library.melbac.org/books/dvdBooks/DIGGING%20DEEP%202/Conversations-With-God-Volume-3.pdf) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia, "Luke 23" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_23) ↩

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

8. Source: The Bible, Matthew 26:69-75 (Chinese Union Version, WeRead Bible) (https://wd.bible/bible/mat.26.cunps) ↩

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