Mike's commentary · Seth Speaks, Chapter 6

The "Introduction" and "Key Points" 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).

Guide

This chapter first clarifies that the soul is not a static, singular, or immortalized self that a person possesses, but a constantly changing, creative entity, an open energy field composed of multiple personalities and greater than their sum. It then explains that the soul's perception does not depend on the physical senses and can directly experience psychic activity; this perception can be touched in dreams and deep sleep. Finally, it points out that turning inward is not about searching for the soul, but about experiencing what you are, and that intent matters more than words.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The soul is not a static object that a person possesses, nor is it a single or immortalized ego, but rather a constantly changing, creative entity.
• The soul is an open energy field composed of multiple personalities, which exist independently and continue to develop; the soul is greater than the sum of its parts.
• The soul's perception does not depend on the physical senses; the physical senses merely translate inner events into material data.
• In dreams and deep sleep, the soul's perception is less obstructed, but deep-level experiences are usually not remembered, or are translated into dreams.
• Turning inward is not about searching for the soul, but about experiencing what you are; intention matters more than the words used.

Main Text

Session 526: What Is the Soul

The title of this chapter is "The Nature of the Soul and Its Perception," and it mainly covers two topics: one is "what is the soul," and the other is "how does the soul perceive," that is, what is the principle behind its perception. The word "perception" he uses here is not easy to understand—for example, we have vision, our eyes have sight, our ears have hearing; so what kind of perception does the soul have? What can it perceive? This part mainly addresses that.

With the little background given so far, we can at least begin to discuss the subject of this book: the eternal validity of the soul. Even though this is the title of the book, and even as we explore other subjects, we will still try to clarify the multidimensional aspects of this inner self. There are many erroneous concepts connected with it, and first of all we will try to clear these away.

(Session 526)

The first thing he wants to tell you is that the inner self is a multidimensional, multi-faceted thing, and there are many erroneous concepts attached to it. He is now going to clear away these erroneous concepts one by one.

The Soul Is Not Something You Have

First:

The soul is not something you have; it is what you are.

He says it very clearly. We usually like to use the term "entity"—they generally use "entity" rather than the word "soul," but they are actually referring to the same thing. It is just that the word "entity" is not connected with those particular erroneous concepts, and its meaning is less religious in an organizational sense, without so much religious flavor; whereas "soul" has been given many excessive meanings by humans in many cases.

The trouble is that you often think of the soul or entity as a finished, static thing.

We often think of the soul as something—something that belongs to you but is not you. We often have a feeling that the soul seems to be a part of us, yet somehow it is not us, does not belong to us. Soul or entity—the two mean the same thing.

In other words, your most intimate and powerful inner essence is, and must be, ever-changing.

This is what we need to understand: our inner essence, whether we call it the soul or the entity, is by nature ever-changing, constantly in flux.

Therefore, it is not like a cherished heirloom.

It is not like something placed in one spot, enduring, never moving. It is alive. Your soul is alive, responsive, curious—these are a few characteristics of the soul.

It forms the physical body and the world that you know, and it is a state of becoming.

It forms our physical body, forms our world, and it is also in a state of becoming—through physical perception we gain new experiences, and it is always a state of becoming.

Now, in the three-dimensional reality that your ego is concerned with, becoming presupposes some kind of arrival.

What this means is that in human thought, whenever we say something is going to "become" something, we have already presupposed some kind of goal, or something to be completed. What is that thing we are going to become?

It generally presupposes some kind of arrival, or a destination, giving an end to that which was in a state of becoming.

For example, becoming a Buddha, becoming God, becoming a deity—we give it an ending, reaching the ultimate goal. This is a psychological feeling we often have.

But the soul or entity basically exists in other dimensions, and in these dimensions "completion" does not depend upon arrival, in psychological or any other terms.

It tells you that the soul and entity basically exist in other dimensions, not within our three-dimensional world. In those dimensions, "completion"—also in quotation marks, of course—does not depend on some kind of arrival, whether psychological arrival, arrival in distance, arrival in level, arrival in energy, or arrival in some frequency—none of these. It is not an arrival in any aspect as you understand it, which is why he put it in quotation marks.

What does he mean by this? He is telling you that one of the primary attributes of your soul is this: it is always in a state of becoming, always a dynamic, active, living, constantly "becoming" state, not a fixed, unchanging thing. But our human linear thinking, the moment we hear "becoming," immediately forms a concept: it is becoming—becoming what? Is there some kind of purpose or result implied in it? He points out here: do not think that way. I am telling you it is in a state of becoming, but it does not want to become some particular thing, nor is it trying to accomplish some goal or reach some purpose as you imagine—none of these are the case.

Even when I say "state of becoming," actually "becoming" should be understood as becoming itself—becoming its own state, and it is also dynamic; it is constantly developing and perfecting itself as well.

I think many people have a lot of misunderstandings in this area. Things like opening up several chakras, entering some higher frequency—these are all very normal, but you need to understand that they are only a process. Always remember: it is not a purpose or a goal, where achieving it means something special. No. It is just a process of your experience.

The soul and entity are always in a state of flux or learning.

What does "state of flux" mean? It is like when people say our thoughts, our ideas, are like a river constantly flowing, rolling on without stopping, never fixed. Learning is also very normal—we are all learning. Listening to this lecture now, reading this book—is that not learning?

This state of flux and learning has nothing to do with time and space, but has to do with subjective feeling.

Remember this: it has nothing to do with time, but is related to your subjective feeling and the development of your subjective feeling.

The Ego Pretends Not to Know

This is not as mysterious as it sounds. Each of my readers is playing a game in which the conscious ego pretends not to know what the whole self certainly does know.

It is as if we have agreed to play a game, all saying we do not know who our whole self is, nor who our soul is.

Since the ego is certainly a part of the whole self, then it must know these things. But it is so intensely focused upon physical reality that it pretends not to know, until it feels capable of practically utilizing this material.

Since you acknowledge that your ego is a part of the whole self, then of course it knows what the whole self is about. But it is too absorbed in physical reality, so it pretends not to know. When does it stop pretending? When your ego feels it has the ability to practically—you see, "capable of practically," what does "practically" mean? It means materially—utilize this material. Humans are very pragmatic, and the ego is also very pragmatic: when it discovers that this thing cannot be utilized, developed, or made effective on the material level, it pretends it does not exist, pretends it does not know the existence of the soul.

Therefore, you can indeed communicate with the inner self, and you are not cut off from your soul or entity.

It is not that the two of you have severed relations; you have not severed relations.

The ego likes to think of itself as the captain at the helm.

This is very interesting. The ego very much likes to think of itself as the captain at the helm; it wants to be in control of everything.

Because the ego is in the vanguard of this turbulent physical reality, it is focused on this task and does not want to be distracted.

For example, in this physical reality we live in, you need to eat, to drink, to have a place to live, to have a sense of security, and so on. You need an ego out in front as your vanguard, first solving your basic needs, and only then can your higher pursuits and needs emerge. For instance, if you cannot even get enough to eat, if your life is under threat, you have no mind to study Seth, and you have no mood to study this material. So do not blame your ego for being so worldly, for only focusing on the material world—it is like a vanguard. If it does not solve your material environment for you, how can you peacefully study and learn the Seth material, or study knowledge about your soul? This is very normal.

You need to understand that it is simply too absorbed in this aspect, so it ignores the existence of the soul, or pretends it does not exist. That is its characteristic.

An Analogy: The House, the Owner, and the Butler

Let me give another simple example. Suppose you yourself as a person are a house—we know that in America and Canada, many houses have basements. Suppose your soul is the owner of this house, and your ego is the butler.

Now, this soul is not in the three-dimensional world; it is in a higher dimension, so it cannot handle many matters of the three-dimensional world. It needs the ego, the butler, to step forward and manage the affairs of the three-dimensional world on its behalf—it is like hiring a professional manager, a butler, to take care of all the affairs of the house.

But this butler is too strong-willed, its personality too forceful. After working for a long time, it begins to feel that the house belongs to it, that it is the owner of the house. Then it drives the soul into the basement and locks it up—anyway, the soul does not need to eat, it will not starve, so just lock it in the basement, out of sight, out of mind, and do not come out to bother me. It takes over the house. When someone knocks on the door and asks, "Is the owner of this house home?" it says, "I am the owner, what do you want with me?"—it is pretending to be the owner of the house.

So, your ego was originally a very capable assistant, because without it, you would have a hard time surviving in the three-dimensional world, and it would be hard to accomplish anything. But it has turned the tables, kicking the soul aside.

So what does this example mean? It means: when can you let the soul out? You have to first lock up the ego—lock the ego in a bathroom on the second floor, do not let it come out—and only then can you release the soul from the basement, release the true owner of the house. As long as the ego is present, it does not want to see the soul, and it will lock the soul back in the basement again. So, only by first locking up the ego properly can your soul slowly come out. That is roughly the idea.

I give this example in the hope that you can understand the relationship between your soul and your ego.

The Inner Channels

There are always psychological or psychic channels between the various levels of the ego.

In this section, we previously had a diagram introducing the relationships among the inner self, the outer self, the entity, the subconscious, the ego, and also the soul, the personality, and fragments. There is a very kind netizen here who, after watching our video, felt that the diagram I drew in Chapter 2 was not good enough, and redrew one on their own. Look at this diagram they helped me draw—it is much better than mine. They seem to be a painter or an artist themselves; I forget.

From this diagram you can understand: there is a certain connection between the inner self and the entity; then through the subconscious there is also communication with the outer self; the outer self handles affairs, mainly relying on the five sensory systems, plus a consciousness system and a thought system, which together become the ego. The ego is slightly larger than the outer self. Between them there is the subconscious for communication. Then all of them together form something called the "personality," or "personality fragment"—that is, this lifetime of your reincarnation. This lifetime is projected down by your entity, that is, projected down by your soul, and it carries all the attributes of your entity, inherently complete, omnipotent, coming into this world. That is roughly the structure. I will not repeat it here; it was covered in Chapter 2. I am just saying the diagram is very well drawn, and I am showing it to everyone.

The ego unconsciously accepts information from the inner portions of the personality.

Remember one condition here: unconsciously. Your ego must always remember its identity—it is a butler, and this attribute cannot be changed. So it must accept the information given to it by the inner self. Whether it listens or not, whether it is willing to listen or not, it must have the ability to accept the information given by the inner self. If it does not, as will be said later, then the inner self cannot exist, and this ego cannot exist; its existence would be meaningless.

In fact, the ego's position depends largely upon its unquestioning acceptance of inner data.

He does not say "absolutely" here; he says "largely"—the reason your ego can still exist and still function depends mostly on its unquestioning acceptance of inner data. In other words, the reason this butler can still be a butler is because it has always listened to the owner's instructions and directives. When executing them, it may cut corners, may not execute them well, may have its own selfish motives and ideas, but it must have one ability: it must be able to hear the owner's words and receive that information. "Unquestioning acceptance"—you cannot have any objections; you are a butler. A butler is a butler, never the owner. You must not mistake the ego for you, mistake it for the owner. Do not get confused; it is just a butler, a worker.

In other words, the ego is the outer self that you think of as yourself.

He emphasizes once more: the ego, this self, is the outer self that you consider to be yourself—the part you think is you.

It can maintain its security and its apparent supremacy only because the inner levels of your own personality constantly support it, maintain the physical body's functioning, and keep communication open between the multiple stimuli arising from both outer and inner conditions.

What does this passage mean? It means that your ego can maintain its current security and its apparent supremacy—a butler, after all, manages everything, holds all the keys, handles all the affairs of the house—and the reason it has this authority is because your inner self is supporting it; it needs the owner's support. Without the owner's support, this butler cannot keep working.

How does it support it? By maintaining the functioning of your physical body. Remember: maintaining the physical body is not your ego's job; it is your inner self that maintains it. At the same time, it keeps communication open between the multiple stimuli arising from outer and inner conditions—that is, the communication between the inner self and the outer self, between the inner self and the entity, between the personality and the outer self and the inner self. Through this support, your ego can exist securely and hold its supremacy. Without the support of the physical body, without these channels of communication for inner and outer information, your ego would not exist.

The Soul Is Not Singular

The soul or entity, through reincarnation, through existence and experience in probable realities, does not shrink, but expands.

Later I will explain "probable realities." What this means is that your soul, through many reincarnations, gaining experience in various realities of existence and in various probable realities, not only does not shrink, but expands—very normal, it has gained more experience.

It is only because you have such a narrow concept of your own entity that you insist upon its almost barren singularity.

Because you have a narrow concept of your own entity, of your own soul, you think this entity is singular—so-called "singular" meaning it exists only within your three-dimensional cognitive system.

There are billions of cells within your body, yet you call them one unit: the body.

What it means is that within your body there are billions of cells, each with independent consciousness, yet you think of your body as a single thing, a single unit. In other words, our cognition of our ego, or of our nature, of the nature of the soul, always tries to regard it as a single thing—for example, whether this soul is male or female, what it looks like, what character it has, what traits it has—all of our imaginings treat it as a single, singular attribute.

What it actually wants to tell you is that your soul is not singular; it is composed of several or countless of your reincarnations and personality fragments. Just as you are composed of countless cells, it is the same. These cells make up you, but these cells cannot represent you; you cannot use a single cell to represent you, right? Yet you are also greater than the sum of all your cells. You are not just the fifty trillion cells in your body added together; this "you" that you call yourself is far more than the sum of fifty trillion cells. You are composed of them—the relationship between your soul and you is exactly this: your soul is formed by countless personality fragments and reincarnations, yet it is far greater than the sum of these personality fragments. This makes it easier to understand.

You think of it as belonging to you, and you think of yourself as one unit belonging to yourself.

You do not think the body belongs to those cells; you think it belongs to you.

You do indeed create your body from the inside out, but it is formed by living stuff.

You do indeed create your body from the inside out, and it is formed by living stuff—what stuff? Your soul. It is not formed by those chemical cells, atoms, molecules—those things you consider lifeless.

And each most minute particle has its own living consciousness.

Every cell, every atom has its own consciousness.

Science Cannot Create a Single Cell

This is also the most difficult point for scientists in life science today. Our technology has developed to an extremely high level—we can explore Mars, land on the moon, see extremely tiny microscopic worlds, down to the atomic level. But everyone must understand that the greatest limit of science today, the chasm it cannot cross, and which we can foresee for a long time to come, is this: humans cannot generate a single cell. It can replicate cells, reproduce cells, clone cells—all of that can be done—but humans cannot create a cell in a laboratory from nothing. To this day, it cannot be done. Just one cell, such a tiny living substance—human science, as advanced as it is, cannot create a living cell.

Why? Very simple: it does not know what the essence of life is. It believes that life is composed of these lifeless atoms, molecules, and chemical elements, generated through chemical reactions. As long as it thinks this way, it will never be able to generate life, will never know how life came to be, and will never be able to create life.

Many people will come up to me and say: "You are just an idealist; we are materialists, and we do not even deign to discuss this with you. There is no need for you idealists to keep talking; if you keep talking, you are no different from charlatans, religions, and cults—you are just idealists." We just laugh it off.

Think about it: no matter how materialist you are, you say this world is composed of various atoms, and at the very beginning of the universe, under suitable conditions, billions of years ago, four billion years ago, "crack"—a bolt of lightning, and the nitrogen atoms and oxygen atoms of that time combined, along with hydrogen atoms and carbon atoms, generating the most primitive carbon-based life, the earliest single-celled life—though of course it may have started with proteins first. However you put it, this is how scientists explain the origin of life. To this day, scientists have simulated the environment of the ancient Earth countless times—temperature, climate, lightning, all can be produced—yet they can never generate the first primitive living cell¹, cannot turn some chemical elements into a living cell, and they do not know why.

So, you can see how extremely narrow humanity's understanding of life is. To think that human life—and not just human life, but all life—is generated from lifeless elements: think about it now, is this not a paradox? Using a pile of atoms and molecules without life or consciousness to create something alive, and you think it is perfectly reasonable, because that is what scientists have told you. But think carefully: is there not something off here? Using lifeless things to create a living thing—so why can you not create one now? Create one and show me. So many scientists, so much technology.

Of course, I am not saying we should completely reject science. Science is very useful in specific fields, specific environments, and under specific conditions, and our future development must still rely on the logic of science and its rational analysis; that is necessary. But we must recognize the limitations of science.

Let me first mention a few simple limitations. The first is that science is dualistic, the most oppositional viewpoint. What is dualism? Science believes that the environment is the environment, and people are people—scientists are scientists, experimenters are experimenters, experimental instruments are experimental instruments, and experimental subjects are experimental subjects. The experimental subject, the experimental instrument, and the observer belong to different roles; this is dualistic opposition. It does not know that they are essentially one: you, as the observer, also participate in the experiment; as soon as you enter the experiment as an observer, you are part of the experiment; and since you are part of the experiment, the experiment itself is no longer objective. Dualistic opposition divides all things into you, me, and them—living and nonliving, scientific, artificial, natural, innate—all dualistic opposites; it does not regard them as a whole.

The second weakness is that it always wants to repeat. Science believes that there must be regularity to be called science—this experiment can be repeated a hundred times, ten thousand times, with the same result every time, and only then is it science. If out of nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine times, one time the result is different, then it is not science, because that one time was not produced under the same conditions. Then you might ask: do those nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine experiments not count? Are those other experimental phenomena not valid results? Must there be complete consistency for a result to be correct?

Then let me ask you: why is every person different? Why is the reaction of every virus in every person also different? You say life is different; living beings have great individual variation, which is very normal. Then let me ask about water—water is lifeless, so it should always be the same, right? But look at the water crystal experiments done by Japanese scientists: if you have negative thoughts toward water or curse it, the water crystals are all very different²—water, which you consider lifeless, why does it also respond to human consciousness? Why do human thoughts and beliefs about it affect molecular crystallization?

Let me mention another one. You think all experimental results are the same, so let me ask you about the most important double-slit experiment in quantum mechanics, wave-particle duality, and the collapse of the wave function—the core of quantum mechanics is the uncertainty principle. What is the uncertainty principle? A simple explanation: in the quantum state, that is, at the smallest scale of the microscopic world, at the state of matter smaller than atoms, the smallest of the small, what state is this matter in? The uncertainty principle tells you: if you want to measure the position of the smallest object, you cannot measure its kinetic energy—suppose a small ball is bouncing around randomly in space; if you want to measure its position, you cannot accurately measure the kinetic energy it carries; if you want to measure its kinetic energy, you cannot accurately measure its position. You can only measure one of the two. In the macroscopic world, in the three-dimensional world, any object has both position and kinetic energy, and we know both simultaneously; but in the microscopic world, at the bottom layer of matter, this turns out to be impossible. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle—this is the earliest theoretical foundation of quantum mechanics, dating back to the 1920s³.

So, those who criticize idealism as unscientific need to think about what science is—first define science clearly, then discuss what truth is. You cannot use your own understanding to treat this superstitious science as science, or scientific superstition as science. I will say a bit more on this and expand on it.

The Creativity of the Soul

Back to the main text. What it means is that you should never think of a thing as singular. You are composed of fifty trillion cells⁴, every cell has independent consciousness, and every molecule and every atom within every cell has its own independent consciousness—how can you call it "you"? Which one is you? Your soul is the same; do not use a singular, barren idea to think about your soul.

He says there must be the substance of rebirth; you must have this concept of rebirth, that matter itself is many living beings coexisting, and it also has the consciousness of rebirth.

Ha, this part says: "The soul is often thought of as a jewel, to be finally presented as a gift to God." This is a human prejudice about the soul. It is often regarded as a jewel, and even presented to God—many people think this way: after death I will hand my soul over to God; I must return something to God.

Or like some women in the past, who regarded their chastity the same way -- something extremely treasured, and yet something that still had to be lost.

In many places this is still true even today: chastity is regarded as extremely treasured, yet it still must be lost, and losing it represents giving a wonderful gift to the recipient. Seth uses this as an analogy for your soul -- we often think of the soul this way: you treasure it extremely, but when you die you must return it to God, or you lose something, and treat this as a wonderful gift.

Seth tells you: no. The soul is not a gift, nor a jewel, nor something you must treasure and ultimately lose. Below he will give a definition.

Many philosophies still retain this concept, that the soul is returned to an original giver, or dissolves into some vague state between existence and nonexistence.

Many philosophies and many religions all hold this view: we are born, heaven endows us with life and endows us with a soul, and when we die we must return it. These views themselves are wrong, so why emphasize them? I am only telling you that many people will instill this view in you, telling you the soul is like this -- none of it is right.

So what exactly is the soul?

The most important thing about the soul is that it possesses creativity.

It is not a dead object; it is creativity itself.

It can be discussed from many viewpoints, and I can describe its characteristics to some degree. And indeed, most readers, if you have very strong motivation, if this is what concerns you most, can find these characteristics for yourselves.

Seth says, I can describe the characteristics of the soul to some degree -- what he means is, he still cannot give a comprehensive and complete description of it, and can only let us know it to some extent. There are two reasons here: one reason is that the soul itself is something not in dimensions, and describing the soul itself is an extremely difficult matter; the second is that Seth's understanding of the soul also has its limitations -- because later it will be discussed that entities and souls are not as simple as you think, and it is not simply a matter of you having one soul. We will not expand on this here. The soul itself, including your entity itself, can be said to be "so small that nothing is within it, so vast that nothing is outside it." Its relationship with All That Is is also extremely subtle: beneath All That Is there are many entities, beneath entities there are many fragment personalities, and we are one of the many fragment personalities -- we can simply understand it this way; but the relationship between entities and All That Is is again extremely subtle.

The soul or entity itself is the most highly motivated, most highly energized, and most potent consciousness-unit known in any universe.

Remember: in any universe -- not only in our three-dimensional universe, but in any space-time -- it is the most highly motivated, most highly energized, and most potent consciousness-unit. So you must never underestimate this soul. In any space-time, in any dimension, within the infinite universe of All That Is, it is the most highly motivated, most highly energized, and most potent consciousness-unit.

It is energy condensed to a degree you cannot imagine. Your soul is condensed energy, condensed to what degree? You simply cannot imagine how great its energy is.

It contains infinite potential.

Remember, in many of his discussions, Seth is not a literary writer, nor a poet. The descriptions here are not literary works -- Seth is here to transmit material and transmit information, and everything he says is very rigorous. When he uses literary language in describing something, he will tell you that this is a metaphor or a hint -- in your terms, he will tell you. When he expresses things normally, every sentence has been carefully considered and is rigorous. So do not treat him as engaging in literary description.

"Every soul has infinite potential" -- this sounds like the kind of motivational platitude we often hear. You must remember, no, what he is saying is fact.

But it must struggle to achieve its own identity, and to form its own world. It bears within it the burden of all living beings.

Do you see this? This is the nature of your soul. Although it has infinite ability and infinite potential, what is the characteristic of this soul? It must struggle -- not struggling is not an option -- struggle to achieve its own identity, and form its own world.

Many people say, can I not struggle? I will just be like this, not put so much pressure on my life, just take it easy. No -- even the soul, something with such infinite potential and infinite energy, must struggle to achieve its identity.

The soul is a kind of condensed energy, it contains infinite potential, but it must struggle to achieve its own identity, form its own world, and create its world. Do not think that "creating a world" only means this three-dimensional world -- no, the three-dimensional world is only one of them.

"It bears within it the burden of all living beings" -- you see here an anthropomorphic depiction is used. You must remember, do not think of the soul as a person. Many people, as soon as they think of the soul, immediately project human qualities onto it. There is nothing human in it. The human being is only one of the many manifestations of the soul -- the soul has countless ways of manifesting, and the human being is only one of its manifested, materialized, and revealed ways. You cannot reverse this and use human thought to speculate about the soul. So here it uses the anthropomorphic "within it," but it is indeed so.

Is this not a tremendous sense of responsibility? You are bearing the burden of all living beings under heaven, you are bearing all worlds and all creatures. Humanity is the most intelligent of all living things, and you are managing the entire earth on its behalf -- if the earth is a master, and the earth itself has its own soul, then we are the stewards of the earth. We manage this matter well on behalf of the earth. You bear the burden of all living beings under heaven, and this is true of every soul, not just that you have it and I do not.

This is why you will understand why the bodhisattva made this vow -- to deliver all sentient beings under heaven, and as long as there is one person who has not escaped the sea of suffering, I will remain here forever to ferry you across. Why did the bodhisattva make this vow? Because he saw this point, he recognized this fact: every soul bears the burden of all sentient beings under heaven. A bodhisattva is also a soul, and it is normal for him to have such a burden, because he has this ability. He has awakened, and you have not yet awakened, so he comes to wake you up. Once you awaken, you too are a bodhisattva. But if you have not awakened, you wait for others to come wake you -- actually you do not need to be called; you just turn over, get up with a grunt, and you are awake. But you pretend to sleep and do not want to wake up. Why? Because after waking up there are still many burdens, and after waking up the pressure is also quite great. Living in a muddled way is actually very easy; who is willing to bear the burden of all living beings under heaven? No one wants to. You say I do not have this ability; only if I were the president of the United States or the Secretary-General of the United Nations would I have this -- this view is wrong. You yourself are the very person bearing the burden of all living beings under heaven; everyone is. So everyone pretends to sleep and does not want to wake up -- you nudge her, and she says, I will sleep a little longer; you nudge her again, and she says, I have not slept enough yet.

When you discover that you yourself are the creator, your burden is very great -- everything in this world of yours is created by you and formed by you; imagine how great this burden is.

Within it are personality potentials beyond your comprehension.

Within the soul there are personality potentials beyond your comprehension -- why does it use "personality potentials"? Because in our three-dimensional world we have come to the level of personality. What it means is that within the soul there are personality potentials beyond your comprehension, and the fragment personalities it projects all possess such potential, infinitely great, infinitely many possibilities. So do not think you lack ability. It has already been said earlier that you actually have an ability where what you think is what you get; you possess the greatest gift and the greatest ability bestowed on you by heaven. All other things lack this ability; only you have it.

I am saying that your soul or entity is also an ordinary soul and entity.

It emphasizes this: do not think that what he is saying now only applies to your human soul and entity -- other souls and entities are all the same; as long as it is a soul, it has this attribute. It is not only you who bears the burden of all living beings under heaven; others do too. You are only one manifestation of your own soul.

How many of you are willing to limit your reality to your present experience?

From your birth until now, this is all your experience. When you know all this, can you say that what you have experienced from birth until now is all of you? Can it represent you? Certainly not.

When you imagine your present self as your entire personality, or insist that your identity is maintained unchanged throughout infinite eternity, you are limiting yourself.

When you think this way, you are limiting yourself. Do not limit yourself -- you are infinite, you are infinitely possible.

Such an eternity would indeed be lifeless.

What is the "eternity" it refers to? It is the unchanging eternity you imagine. If you imagine that your present self is your entire personality, or you insist that your identity is part of the soul, and the soul is infinite eternity -- unmoving and unchanging, as the Buddha often said -- if you think this way, this kind of eternity is indeed lifeless. If it does not move at all, then it has no vitality whatsoever.

Here I will briefly explain the concept of "unmoving and unchanging." Many people say that the source of this world is unmoving and unchanging, and we all come from the unmoving and unchanging. This is actually wrong. "Unmoving and unchanging" refers to the state of mind of the Buddha after attaining supreme perfect enlightenment; do not misunderstand it as meaning that the source of this world is unmoving and unchanging. Second, why not just say "unmoving," and why add the two characters "ru ru"? "Ru ru," in one Buddhist interpretation, means perpetual, eternal unmoving. But from another angle, can you understand "ru ru" as "as if, seemingly" -- as if unmoving? It can be understood this way. At first glance it appears unmoving, like the vast ocean; when you look at it from space, it seems not to move. But when you look closely and quietly, inside it is constantly churning, constantly surging with waves. This is what "unmoving and unchanging" means. So you must understand that eternity is not the unchanging thing you imagine -- if it were, it would be lifeless.

In many ways, the soul is an incipient god.

Why does it use "god" here? Because Seth himself is an atheist; he does not speak of gods. But here he says "incipient god" because we often ask, how did the creator create this world? Where did the world come from? He tells you that in many ways, this entity is an incipient god. He does not expand on this here; this topic is too large, and I can only briefly explain:

This entity of yours, suppose it had a dream -- the soul had a dream. Within the dream there is a world, and this world is All That Is. That is to say, All That Is is actually a dream of the soul. Then the dream is too real, and at the level of the soul, at the level of the entity, it is materialized and manifested. This process is very complex, extremely complex, and I am only mentioning it in passing here. Why does the Buddha not address the first cause? Because this matter is indeed very difficult to explain. Everything I am saying now is a simplified version; you must not think that what I say is exactly how things are -- I am only saying it is a simplified version.

Then this manifested All That Is still contains entities within it. That is to say, your soul created the universe, created this world -- not only this three-dimensional world, but the entire universe, with all dimensions within it, which we call All That Is. The soul created it, but the soul is also within it. Language cannot explain this at this point -- you created something, and you are still within that thing.

Today we will not expand on this; this issue is too complex. He is only telling you that the soul is not simple; the soul is an incipient god, and not just any god, but the earliest god; All That Is was produced by it. So never underestimate your entity, never underestimate your soul; its origins are truly great.

But for now, we are only concerned with the entity and the soul, that larger I, which even now whispers to you from the hidden places of each reader's experience.

For now we will not discuss those more complex questions of how the universe came to be; that is another topic -- in Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment he specifically addresses it, two volumes, probably eight or nine hundred pages, all discussing this issue. He does not expand on it here. You only need to know now that you have a soul, and the soul is a larger you. And that larger you has always been hidden within your life, within every person reading the book and listening to the lecture, whispering to you quietly. Sometimes if you listen carefully, you can hear it chatting with you and speaking to you.

I hope in this book not only to assure you of the eternal validity of your soul or entity, but to help you sense its vital reality within your own inner senses, within your heart.

Here he returns to the main theme. He does not use the concept of "eternal life" -- "eternal life" is a literary usage in translation; what he says in the original is always "the eternal validity of the soul." His wording is very precise. Why not use "life"? Because where there is life there is death, and "eternal life" is not eternal life either -- since you speak of "eternal life," then where did it come from? Does this question not still remain? So you can see where Seth's brilliance lies: his wording is extremely precise; he uses "the eternal validity of the soul." "The Eternal Validity of the Soul" is the title of our book, a literary title chosen for the sake of understanding.

He not only wants to tell you that your soul and entity are eternal, but also wants to help you sense its vital reality within your own heart, within your heart, so that you can perceive your soul.

But first you must have some conception of your own psychological and psychic structure.

Before doing this, first you must -- remember the "first you must" here -- you must know how your psyche works and how your psychology works.

When you understand to some degree who and what you are, then I can explain more clearly who and what I am.

This needs no explanation; the text is already very clear.

I hope to make you aware of those deeply creative aspects of yourself, and not pretend to be asleep and deny them, so that you can use them to expand and extend your entire experience.

Use your creativity to expand your experience.

What follows is some unimportant content -- about Rob's feelings in a painting. A couple of days ago he painted a picture and encountered some problems while painting, and Seth gave him some guidance. If you are interested in painting, you can look at this part, where Seth gives Rob some experience and hints about painting; but it has nothing to do with the theme of this chapter, so I will not discuss it here.

The Soul Is Not the Immortalized Ego

This session continues to explain many people's mistaken views and mistaken understandings about the soul.

Session 527

Many people imagine the soul as an immortalized ego, forgetting that the self you know is only a small part of your own being.

Many people read this passage and do not understand what he is trying to say. What he means is that the concept of the soul is very difficult for us to grasp, so sometimes we keep substituting the ego for the soul, or we pile a lot of conditions onto the ego and turn it into the soul. One of those conditions is the idea that the so-called soul is an immortal ego. That is one version of the soul. He is telling you that this is imagination, and it is wrong.

When you think of the soul as an immortal ego, you will regard it as an endless projection -- this part of your personality keeps projecting onward forever, and so it becomes an immortal self. But this view is mistaken. The soul is not like that. The soul is composed of countless personalities existing simultaneously; it is a concept of rebirth.

Because you seldom understand the amplitude of your reality -- amplitude meaning its width, breadth, and depth -- we generally do not understand much of it, so our concepts are necessarily narrow. When thinking about the concept of "immortality," human beings seem to want to develop a more enduring ego -- they always want to turn the ego into something eternal, always want to work on the ego, always want to exert effort on the ego. Yet they also resist the idea of the changes such development might involve. Because if you want a more enduring self, you certainly have to make some changes, but you are unwilling to accept change, and you oppose that change.

Through this kind of religion, through their own religion, people often say that they do indeed have a soul, but they do not ask what the soul is. They often treat the soul as an object they possess.

Even the personality as you know it is constantly changing, and not always in the way you expect.

The personality as we know it, in this lifetime of experience in our three-dimensional world, is also constantly changing, and this change often does not develop in the direction you expect. In fact, it mostly happens in unpredictable ways -- nothing can be predicted with certainty. That is why Buddhism teaches that one must learn impermanence⁵, and only by treating impermanence as permanence can one understand it. Impermanence is this very unpredictability, this inability to foresee; you must accept that this impermanence is a normal state of affairs.

You insist upon focusing your attention upon the similarities in your own behavior, point by point.

This is a flaw we all share. We do not pay attention to the specialness or creativity in our behavior; we often focus on the similarities, the things that are the same. Then we think these identical things are the self, and we build a theory on top of them -- we set up a belief system for ourselves, a framework, and say, this is me.

What does this mean? We often say, when we encounter certain things we will handle them in a certain way, when we encounter certain situations we will react in a certain way. We are like an automatic mode: when others treat us badly we will do such and such, when others treat us well we will do such and such, when we are happy we do such and such, when we encounter this kind of thing we handle it this way, that kind of thing we handle that way. We often behave according to this kind of programmed, patterned, automatic reaction mechanism, just like robots. This behavior pattern is actually something you yourself built, yet you yourself obey it.

The true self is completely free and creative, unrestricted by anything, without any limitations, developing with complete freedom -- yet it lives according to the behavior patterns you have written for it. It has forgotten its free creativity. And this rewritten pattern, this fixed way of thinking or behaving that you have solidified, will prevent you from seeing the real self. Therefore you project these distorted views onto your ideas about the soul and reality -- you will also apply this same approach to your views about the soul.

Everything said before is actually about your resistance to the idea of possible development: when you think of the eternal, undying soul, you think of immortality; when you think immortality is the infinite projection of your present ego-personality, you also oppose making any changes to it -- because if you want immortality you must change, you must keep developing, and you oppose that development, you oppose that change.

Why oppose change? Think about it in reverse: in your present life experience, you are already following the rules and developing according to your existing behavior patterns. If you were immortal in the future, and if you thought your soul were an eternal continuation of your ego, would you still keep developing by following the rules? How dull and uninteresting life would be.

So you use mistaken ideas about the nature of your mortal self to think about your soul -- you use a mistaken concept to think about it. Everything said before is about your mistaken views; this passage is meant to help you clear away those mistaken views. If you already have no mistaken views about the soul, you can ignore this passage.

You must understand that even the mortal self is far more miraculous and wondrous than you know, and possesses far more abilities than you ascribe to it.

Your own life, your life in the three-dimensional world, is also more wondrous than you think. Even as a physical being, you do not yet understand the true nature of perception. Here he brings up perception again, because he wants to discuss the nature of the soul's perception. If the soul's perception is hard to understand, he starts with your physical perception and then extends outward to your real views about the soul's perception. If you cannot fully understand your own physical perception, how can you understand the soul's perception? If you cannot truly understand the essence of your visual, auditory, and olfactory perceptual systems, how can you understand the essence of the soul's perception?

Because the soul is first and foremost perception and creation. As was just said, the soul is mainly creation plus perception -- perceiving its own creation. Remember again, you are a soul right now. Based on the earlier explanation, you already know that you are a soul, and your present physical body is only a manifestation. Therefore, the soul within you is perceiving it right now. The soul is perceiving right now. Its present method of perception is the same as it was before your physical birth and the same as it will be after death.

The you who is listening to this lecture right now, the you who is reading this book, is your soul. Your soul is perceiving right now. Although it seems to be using the perceptual systems of our three-dimensional physical world -- ears, eyes, nose, tongue, body, and so on -- this perception is the same as it was before you were born and the same as it will be after you die. Because your essence is a soul, and your physical body is only a manifestation, your perception will not suddenly change just because you die. Your level of thought, your level of consciousness, will not suddenly be elevated by death either. Your inner part -- the soul -- will not suddenly change its methods or characteristics of perception after physical death. It will change gradually, but not suddenly.

So you can discover right now what the soul is. It is not something waiting for you at the moment of death, nor is it something you must save or redeem. It is something you cannot possibly lose -- as long as you can perceive your own existence, your soul is always with you.

The idea of losing or saving your soul has been greatly misunderstood and distorted.

You can neither lose your soul nor save your soul; the soul is right here. Because it is the part of you that is truly indestructible. In the section of this book dealing with the concepts of religion and God, we will discuss this in greater detail, so we will not go into it here.

The personality of yourself that you know, the part of you that you consider most precious and most unique, can also never be destroyed or lost.

Many people think that when this physical body dies, the most precious emotions of this lifetime, the experiences, the knowledge and experience gained, the elevation of my consciousness -- all of it will disappear or be destroyed along with my physical body. He says no, they will all still exist, because they are themselves part of the soul. Your personality fragment is a part of the soul, and the personality is eternal, so this part of you is also eternal.

It will not be swallowed up by the soul. You must remember this. Many people say, is my soul going to take my experiences, and plunder everything that is mine? This includes the white light theory that was especially popular a while back: it said that when you die you must not go toward the white light, because a more advanced being will suck away all the experiences of this lifetime like some kind of energy-absorbing technique, and then throw you back to Earth to reincarnate, gain more experiences, and let it absorb them again. You are forever trapped in an endless cycle like a prisoner in a jail. This kind of view was all over the internet a while back, and it is all wrong.

Your soul will not swallow up anything of yours; everything of yours will exist eternally. The things you have experienced will not be erased, nor will they be obliterated, nor will they be conquered. It is not that there is a more powerful soul above you, and the things of this lifetime's small ego or personality get swallowed up by a larger soul, like a small wave drowning in the great ocean; nor is it like a small person submitting to the leadership of a greater person, where you are insignificant. No, you must remember this: your soul is not like that.

On the other hand, it cannot be separated from the soul. It is a part of the soul, but it is only one aspect of your soul. Your humanity, no matter what you think of it, will continue to exist; your individuality -- your personality -- will always exist, and it will continue to grow and develop. When you die, your personality still continues to grow and develop. This is quite miraculous.

But its growth and development depends greatly on whether it realizes that it is at all times clearly individual, yet it is also only a manifestation of the soul. This lifetime of reincarnation in the material world, we simply call it a personality fragment. This lifetime's personality fragment will continue to grow and develop after you die; it does not cease to exist when you die. It continues to grow and develop as a part of your soul, but for it to grow and develop, you must realize -- you must have a higher understanding of it. Realize what? Realize that this personality fragment does not depend on your physical body for its existence. Your physical existence is only a manifestation of your soul.

In other words, your physical body is a materialization of your personality fragment in the three-dimensional world, not the other way around -- it is not that your three-dimensional world formed such a personality in you. Let me repeat: this person in the material world is a part of your soul -- the soul has many personality fragments -- and it is a personality fragment of the soul, a manifestation, a showing forth, or a materialization in your material world, a process of becoming physical. Therefore, the fact that your materialized self has died and no longer exists does not affect the eternity, the persistence, the continuous growth and development of the personality fragment behind it. The physical body is only one of its manifestations.

Only when you understand this can you allow your personality to continue growing and developing. If you do not understand it, then with the death of your physical body -- it does not vanish, it cannot vanish -- but it will no longer develop, nor will it grow. According to the degree of its understanding of this -- who is it? It is you, the materialized you -- it then learns to unfold its creativity and to use those abilities with which it was born. The personality fragment's innate abilities do not exist because you have a physical body; the physical body is what it manifests. These abilities have always been there. So after your physical body dies, this personality fragment of yours will still continue to grow and develop. Is that not fascinating? It is different from what you thought.

So can you now understand why it is said that your reincarnations across lifetimes are simultaneous? The present, the past, and the future all exist at the same time. Do these things not fit together with complete logical consistency, all interconnected? When you think about this question from a higher dimension, you will understand.

The Danger Lies in Oversimplifying the Story

Now unfortunately, if I only told you that your individuality continues to exist, and stopped right there, that would be a very easy thing to do.

If I simply told you that your individuality will continue to exist, and stopped right there -- of course, I do not mean that the personality fragment stops; I mean that the words stop there -- that would be very easy. Although this statement can be regarded as a fairly reasonable prophecy, you could listen to it as a prophetic story, and it has been told to people in that particular way before, but the oversimplification of this story is precisely where its danger lies.

You must remember this sentence: oversimplification is precisely where the danger lies. If my words only went to that extent, it would be a very simple prophetic story, or a very simplified story. Just like the stories many of our religions have told us before -- reincarnation, hell and heaven, and so on -- all of these are simplified versions of the story. But if you simplify a story to a certain degree, to a certain extent of oversimplification, it inherently carries a certain danger, and this is also where the danger of many religions lies.

So then, what is the truth?

Your present personality, and your past and future personalities -- in terms of time as you understand it -- all of these personalities are the soul.

The truth is that these are all manifestations of your soul, manifestations of "your" soul, not that this one life of yours is eternal. Countless reincarnations happen simultaneously; what we think of as past, present, and future actually occur at the same time. Because personalities do not disappear; they are in a process of simultaneous development. I will not explain this part further; it has already been made quite clear.

Therefore your soul, the soul of which you are now a part, is a far more creative and more miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed.

Your soul is more creative and more miraculous than you imagined.

As mentioned earlier, when you dilute such concepts for the sake of simplification, then you can never understand the intense vitality of the soul.

What does simplification mean? It means that in order to simplify a concept, you can only dilute it -- do not make it so complicated; just say simply that when you die you go to heaven, and you have eternal life. That is a process of simplification. If you always understand this essence in such a simplified way, using a simplified comic-book story to reduce it, then you will never be able to understand the intense vitality of the soul.

Your soul possesses the wisdom, information, and knowledge distilled from the experiences of all these other personalities, and within you, you have access to this information.

Within your inner self, there are pathways to access this information. Sometimes you do certain things, and it is not complicated at all, and not strange at all. We often see stories about people who fall down and suddenly can speak a certain foreign language; or someone gets sick, and after waking up suddenly has many abilities -- like being able to play the piano or paint -- skills they never had at all. We find it very miraculous, but now you know that all these things are actually within you; you just temporarily do not know about them, or you cannot use them yet. You do have pathways to them.

And unless you realize the nature of your reality -- realize that you are a part of the soul, that all these lifetimes of reincarnation are within the soul, and all have their distilled experience --

Let me emphasize again that these personalities exist independently within the soul, and are only a part of it.

These personalities include the one in this life of yours; you are one of them. The one living in the nineteenth century is also one; the one living in the Qing dynasty is also one. These personalities all exist independently within the soul. You must remember: they do not mix together; each is distinct. Why? Because each is still developing on its own, growing on its own, creating on its own. Is that not exactly what the earlier passage was saying?

Each of them can freely create and develop. He is repeatedly, painstakingly, thoroughly explaining to you: what exactly is the soul. The soul is not something that can be explained clearly in one or two sentences. The core of the personality fragment behind your physical body is a part of the soul; it is unaffected by your birth and death; it has been growing and developing all along, creating and developing all along, and it is free. Whether or not you have this physical body does not matter.

However, there is a kind of inner communication. One person's knowledge can be made available to anyone -- not after physical death, but in this present moment. Your knowledge and experience do not mean that after you die, you pack them up, sort them into categories, and store them in various folders -- this is survival skills, this is interpersonal relations, this is emotional intelligence, this is IQ, this is driving ability, this is computer skills -- it is not like that. What you have learned, in this present moment, you can make available to anyone else.

Why does he insist on mentioning this present moment? Because the soul itself is not static; it is dynamic.

It even grows and develops through the experiences of the personalities that compose it.

To express it as simply as possible: it is greater than the sum of its parts. The soul is not just the sum of these personality fragments; it is far greater than that. Why? Because it is growing and developing through the experiences of your personalities. Each of your personalities is independently preserved within your soul; each is an independent fragment that will never disappear and never be lost; and the experiences and knowledge within them will not be lost or disappear either, and through inner channels and pathways, they can share with one another.

That is to say, the insights you gain in this life about life, about thought, about states of being, about knowledge, and the distillation of your experiences, can all be transmitted to your other lifetimes -- if they need them. There is inner communication among them. So this is why you often have a certain feeling: sometimes an inspiration comes to you, or something comes to you, and many times it teaches you to do something, or someone says they learned something in a dream -- that information transmitted to you inwardly may not be from this life of yours, nor necessarily from your soul; it may be from personalities of other lifetimes, from other personality fragments. Perhaps it is the future you giving something to the present you -- when I say future and present, I am speaking in terms of Earth time, the three-dimensional world; actually it is simultaneous. The future you, not the you of this life, but another personality, perhaps living in the year 3196 -- a personality fragment of that soul, of your own soul -- it lives in that time -- it will transmit some information back to you through inner channels. Of course, this information must be something that your present material environment in this life and this lifetime can understand, provided to you through psychological suggestion, flashes of inspiration, or dreams.

So this can explain a great deal. Take the famous physicist Tesla, including Einstein⁶, including some remarkable people -- at a very young age, around twenty or eighteen or nineteen -- they proposed theories that shocked the world, or theories that changed the course of human development. In many cases, these things were not the insights of this one lifetime of theirs. Where did that inspiration come from? Sometimes they themselves could not clearly say. But now we know that it was actually their different personalities sharing this knowledge with them, the distillation of this knowledge, which they were able to receive. You say they could receive it -- can you receive it? Of course you can. Once you know the reality, once you know the facts, you only need to open the channels with your inner self, open the connections, and go to your inner self to retrieve this information; it is all there. The key is whether you know how to use it, how to retrieve it, and how to unite with your inner self. This is not something sought outwardly; it must be sought inwardly. It is all there, just like computer storage -- your body already contains a backup of your entire soul, a compressed package of a condensed version; you just need to decompress and open it. The key is whether you know how to decompress, how to open it. If decompression requires a password, do you know where the password is? Do you know the tools and methods for decompression? If you do, you can unlock all the experience and wisdom of all your lifetimes.

And your soul is not the combination of your many personalities. For example, it is not that the sum of the experiences and knowledge of these one hundred personalities equals the sum of the soul's experiences and knowledge. No, your soul is far greater than that. Because it is using these, using the experiences of these souls in its own growth and development -- it is not dead; it is alive; it is developing every moment. So it is greater than the sum of its parts; you need to be able to understand this.

No Closed Systems

Now, in reality, there are no closed systems.

You must understand this concept. Your physical system, the nature of your perception, somewhat limits your concept of reality—the capacity of our perception limits our concept of reality. We think physical reality is closed because you consciously decide to focus your attention on one scene. But fundamentally, consciousness can never be a closed system, and your reality certainly is not closed either, because your reality is produced by consciousness.

All barriers of this nature, he tells you, are illusions. What kind of illusions? The feeling that makes you think your system—whether of consciousness, of reality, or of the physical—is a closed system; all such feelings of closedness are illusions. It is not closed at all.

Therefore, the soul itself is not a closed system. But when you think of the soul, you often think of it this way: it is an unchanging, a psychic or spiritual fortress—and this fortress not only keeps invaders out, it also prevents its own expansion and development. He tells you, the soul is not like that. The soul has no walls, no limitations, and no boundaries; it is a completely free and open, a completely open system. An open system means all kinds of possibilities will exist, infinitely many possibilities, infinite kinds of possibilities—only what you cannot imagine, nothing it cannot accomplish.

There are many things here that are very difficult to describe in words. Indeed, when you speak of the soul at this level, at this degree it becomes very hard to describe. Why is it hard to describe? Because we often use our sense of identity—we always worry that our sense of identity does not exist, we are always worrying: when the ego is gone, what will happen? We are especially afraid of losing the self, constantly reminding ourselves at every moment that I am the self, the self exists. You worry so much about your sense of identity, so you resist this concept—what concept? That "you are merely one of the soul's many projections, a fragment personality, and the soul is countless such"—you will resist this kind of thing, because you feel this will make you lose yourself, disappear, lose your sense of identity, lose your sense of existence.

The soul is an open spiritual system, a powerhouse of creativity, shooting out in all directions—and indeed this is truly the case. Remember this metaphor; in The Nature of Personal Reality and The "Unknown" Reality, he specifically depicted especially wonderful, beautiful scenes and images.

Simply put, you can imagine a picture like this: your soul is like an energy body, a very powerful energy body, with especially great creativity and vitality. It releases its energy in all directions—360 degrees, like a sphere. Its essence, we can use an analogy, is like the existence of an energy body as small as a pinpoint, itself within a sphere. Suppose we imagine a very large glass sphere, your soul in the center, releasing its energy outward toward all directions of the sphere, like electrical energy. Then on the surface of the sphere, it produces electric sparks, like lightning producing sparks within clouds, crackling and flashing all kinds of sparks on the surface of the sphere.

You can imagine such a scene. This sphere here, we can regard it as a manifestation of the three-dimensional world. Without this sphere, you cannot see its materialized manifestation—it is just an energy body radiating in all directions. But we use a sphere, letting the electric charge or energy form light spots like lightning on the surface of the sphere, and then you can see it. Our physical world comes about this way: it is a manifestation of the energy world in the physical world. Your soul radiates in all directions, and then on the surface of the sphere it flickers like starlight, constantly flickering, flickering with bits of light. Each flicker corresponds to one of your lives; when this one flicker ends, that life of yours ends. But after the flicker it is eternally unchanging; it is not like the physical world where after the flash it is gone—no, the flicker is eternal. This is very hard to explain in words.

The examples I just gave are all from the three-dimensional world, which you can understand relatively easily; later it becomes harder to understand. We imagine this process as eternal—time you can regard as a kind of stillness; now, past, and future all exist all along. This flashing, this process exists, but it exists within an eternal time.

Such a cosmic, magnificent and brilliant picture: you as the essence of the soul, radiating your energy in all directions, manifesting in different realities, showing forth its different forms. Different manifestations are different in each reality. For example, in our three-dimensional world on Earth, it manifests as us humans; perhaps in other higher dimensions, it manifests as another kind of non-human environment—for example, Seth as this kind of non-physical energy body is a kind of flash or manifestation in another reality. It is not only the three-dimensional world; the three-dimensional example I just gave is only one of them.

If you think of your soul this way, you can imagine what a grand, what a magnificent thing it is. If you have this kind of picture in your mind, you will know what your soul really is. In a later book, there is a chapter specifically devoted to depicting such a scene for this kind of reality—very spectacular, very beautiful, very enchanting, that relationship between the cosmos and the essence of the soul. We will not discuss it now.

I tell you this also to remind you: your present personality will never be lost. He tells you, your life has meaning. Many people say, since I am going to reincarnate, and there are so many reincarnations, this life of mine can be casual, it is not important anyway, my soul does not take me seriously, this little small self—no. Your personality will never be lost.

Another Word for the Soul Is Entity

Another word for the soul is entity. To give you a definition of the soul or entity is not a simple matter -- that is for certain, it is very difficult to define. Because even if you want to discuss it slightly in a logical way --

Look, he has a premise here: even if you only want to discuss the soul slightly in a logical way, you must understand it on the mental level, the psychic level, or in electromagnetic terms. Is not logic material, is it not rational? You still have to have an understanding of it on the mental, psychic, spiritual, or electromagnetic -- this scientific -- level, otherwise you have no way to define the soul. And you also understand the basic nature of consciousness and action -- when you discuss the soul slightly, you simultaneously understand the basic nature of consciousness and action.

But you can intuitively discover the nature of the soul and the entity. You do not need to use the logical approach, you do not need to reason it out like a scientist from the psychic, mental, or electromagnetic logic. You do not need to. Your intuition can directly discover the nature of the soul.

In many respects, intuitive knowledge is superior to any other kind.

But to achieve this intuitive understanding of the soul, there is one prerequisite. What is it? It is the desire to attain it. If the desire is strong enough, then it will automatically attract you, and you will be drawn, passively or actively, to those experiences that will bring you active and definite subjective knowledge -- those experiences, those methods that can enable you to do this.

What does this mean? If you want to understand your soul through intuition, you need one prerequisite -- you need to have enough belief, enough desire, and the desire must be strong enough, meaning you really want to understand it. Then when you have such a strong desire, you will automatically be drawn to those experiences that will bring you active and definite subjective knowledge.

For example, those of us who read the Seth material, or those watching this video, all have a very strong inner desire to do what? They want to understand: What exactly is the soul? Who exactly am I? Why did I come into this world? What am I here to do? What is our mission? What is the meaning of human life? There is such a strong desire pushing from behind. When you have this kind of strong desire, it will naturally draw you to some subjectively visible experiences. In other words, you will be able to discover the Seth books, you will be able to find the Seth material, and you will also be able to see a video or commentary like this one. Otherwise you would not see it. The fact that you can see this thing is precisely because you have such a desire within you. So through my commentary, or through introductions to the Seth books, or through other people's material, you will gain a relatively comprehensive and profound understanding of the soul.

When you have a complete understanding of the soul, your life will fundamentally change, completely change. You will never go back to those childish, oversimplified, simplified versions of fable-like stories again. You will develop a greater curiosity to explore the truth of this world.

He says this session is about to end, and he will give you some methods, but we will not talk about them for now. For now, there is a simple but very effective exercise. How do you do this exercise? It is to use your intuition to realize and feel the nature of your soul.

An Exercise to Intuitively Grasp the Nature of the Soul

Okay, let's all do this exercise together. He says, when you read this, close your eyes and just listen to me.

Try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breath and vitality spring.

So right now, close your eyes and think: with each breath in and out, where does its original source of power come from? Where is the power behind this breath? Just think about it that way. If you can connect the power of your breath with the power of the universe — you know, a person living in this world, the source of the power of breathing comes from a larger reality behind it — then just think about that power, feel it, feel where this power comes from between each inhale and exhale. This power, where does the power come from? The source.

Some of you will succeed on the first try, while others may need a little more time.

When you sense your inner source — the source of power, the source of breath, and the source of vitality, these two are the same thing, because if you stop breathing, you die — when you experience the breath, when you experience vitality, then try to feel this power:

From your entire physical body, through your fingertips or toes, through the pores of your body, with yourself as the center, flowing outward in all directions.

That is, this power, the power in your heart, the original power of life within your body, radiating outward through your hands, feet, toes, fingertips, your skin, your hair, every pore of your body.

Imagine that its radiance does not diminish.

Imagine that this radiating brilliance is boundless and does not diminish, unlike the light of the physical world, which weakens. No matter how far it travels, across thousands upon thousands of miles, it never weakens. This life power keeps radiating outward, radiating through your roof, through the trees around you, through the building you live in, through the leaves, through the clouds in the sky, through the atmosphere, radiating all the way into the universe. Through the stool or chair you sit on, the bed you sit on, through the floor, through the stories of the building, through the foundation, through the earth, through the crust, all the way to the center of the earth, all the way to the other side of the earth, even spreading to the ultimate place at the farthest edge of the universe.

Imagine your original life power filling the entire universe, with you as the center, filling the universe, all the way to the farthest, most extreme end of the universe. When you do this exercise, you can feel the nature of your soul — that is, the original power of your life, which is the very essence of your soul.

I do not mean this to be a symbolic exercise.

I'm telling you, this is not symbolic. It's not giving you some feel-good platitude, or telling you a story to make you imagine boundless radiance. No. Although it begins with imagination — we do begin with imagination — it is nevertheless built on a foundation of fact. It may seem like an imagination, like a piece of literature, like the guided imagery at the start of a meditation or spiritual practice, but its essence is grounded in fact.

That which is sent out from your consciousness and the creativity of your soul does indeed extend outward in that manner.

The creativity of your soul, the creative nature it sends forth, does extend outward in exactly the way you just imagined. That is the nature of your soul and the creativity of your soul. This exercise will give you some concept of the true nature of the soul, and of creativity, vitality, and life force.

So, what is the true nature of the soul? Creativity and vitality. From your soul, you can draw your energy — this is the key point here. You can draw your energy from the soul, and you are an individual and unique part of it. After you learn these things, you need to connect them with our inner self, with our entity, and also with our soul. The energy behind it, the creativity and vitality behind it, is inexhaustible — you can imagine it pervading the entire universe, how powerful its energy is. So you can draw vitality from it, draw creativity from it, draw ability from it. This is the fundamental thing you need to learn.

Beware of Narrow Concepts Cutting Off Your Source

This discussion is not meant to be some kind of occult performance—he does not want to turn it into a metaphysical or mystical performance, a display of psychic powers with no practical significance for daily life. It is not a performance. The fact is, when you hold narrow views of your own reality, you are unable to make practical use of many of your own abilities. So your concepts must be open, not narrow. You cannot say you only accept materialism and set many limits for yourself, refusing to look at, listen to, or touch anything beyond that circle—you have confined yourself within that circle, and you cannot expand more of your actual abilities.

And when you have a narrow concept of the soul, then to some extent you cut yourself off from the source of your own existence and creativity.

When you hold a prejudiced, narrow concept of the soul, if that concept is strong enough, you cut yourself off from the source of your own existence and creativity—you cut yourself off from your own entity, and your entity is the soul. When you hold prejudice and narrow understanding of the soul, you cut yourself off from the creative source attached to your own entity. So much of the time you live lifelessly, living without motivation, without any joy. Why? Because you have cut yourself off from your entity; the source is gone, so what is there to nourish you, what is there to give you motivation?

Now, whether or not you know it, these abilities are operating.

It is not that they stop operating just because you do not know about them. They usually do not operate with your conscious cooperation—most of the time, they operate without your knowledge or awareness. Although you do not know it, they are still operating. When you actually discover yourself using them—when you consciously discover yourself employing these abilities—not only will you not be happy, you will be greatly frightened, at a loss, or confused.

This is very normal. Many people do not want to experience that kind of supernatural feeling—for example, out-of-body experiences, opening the third eye, telepathy—they do not even dare to try. Many people do not even dare to try hypnosis; they feel these things are terrifying because they lose their sense of identity.

Regardless of what you have been taught, you must understand that, for example, perception is basically not physical.

That is to say, you think your perception is felt through the physical senses, but actually it is not. No matter what others have taught you, do not believe it. You think you see things with your eyes and hear with your ears, but actually these are all external. What you truly perceive is perceived by your inner soul, by the inner self.

If you find yourself perceiving data through something other than the physical senses, then you must accept that this is the way perception operates.

When you discover that you are not using the five physical senses but something else to perceive, you must accept it: you must understand that this is the way perception operates—perceiving without your physical senses is the true way of perception. He said earlier, perception is not physical.

What usually happens is that your concepts of reality are so narrow that whenever you perceive any experience that does not fit your concepts, you are frightened.

This is often how it is with us: our concepts of reality are narrow; we only accept it as the material world, and anything non-material we do not recognize. Whenever anything does not fit your concepts, when you perceive something beyond your experience and concepts, you become frightened—this is very normal. Some people say they saw a ghost, and they are scared to death—that is because it goes beyond their traditional concepts.

I am not speaking only of those abilities loosely called extrasensory perception.

These experiences that do not fit your senses do not refer only to extrasensory abilities; they also include other abilities. These experiences seem extraordinary to you—we call them special powers or psychic abilities, because they are extraordinary to you. Only because you have for so long denied the existence of any perception that does not come through the physical senses. You have denied it for too long—as long as something is not obtained through the physical senses, you deny it—so when you are suddenly given something not felt through the physical senses, your first reaction is fear, sheer terror.

So-called extrasensory perception gives you only a crude and distorted idea of the basic methods of inner reception of information. But the concepts built up around extrasensory perception are at least closer to the facts, and represent an improvement over the concept that perception is basically physical.

What this sentence means is: although extrasensory perception is only a crude and distorted concept—a concept of what? A crude concept of how you receive information from the inner self. You think it is extrasensory, but actually this is you communicating with the inner self, not something extrasensory. However, the concept built up around extrasensory perception can at least come closer to the facts, and it is also an improvement over your concept that "all sensory perception is physical."

What he wants to say is that the concept of extrasensory perception itself is a false proposition—there is no such thing as extrasensory perception, because perception does not come through the senses in the first place. But since such a term exists, it is much better than believing all perception comes through the physical senses—at least it is an overturning, an improvement, a step forward; at least you acknowledge the existence of something beyond the senses.

But he speaks more rigorously, and he goes on to tell you: actually there is no such thing as extrasensory existence. There is no so-called magic, and no so-called psychic powers; none of these exist. It is simply that when you communicate with your inner self, others think you have psychic powers—for example, if you have telepathic ability, others think you have psychic powers. Actually that is not the case; this is an ability everyone has, you just do not know how to use it. As long as your inner communication, your information exchange, is smooth enough, you will have telepathic ability. Extrasensory perception is just a way of speaking, an improved way of speaking that corrects the idea that "the physical senses are the only source of information."

The Soul and Perception Are Inseparable

Now, it is almost impossible to separate a discussion of the soul's nature from a discussion of the nature of perception.

So the title of this chapter is "The Soul and the Nature of Its Perception" -- he has to discuss these two together, because they cannot be separated. Let us briefly review a few points again; he is summarizing.

You form the physical matter and the physical world that you know.

This is all a repetition of what was said before -- your physical world is created by your physical senses. The point is that your physical senses force you to perceive an available energy field in a physical way, and they impose an extremely specialized pattern upon the field of this reality.

What pattern? It is your thought patterns, your rigid thought patterns, your behavioral patterns, and those limited, narrow, prejudiced ideas -- those are the specialized patterns. You not only see with your physical eyes, but after seeing, you also place many restrictions on your own thoughts, consciousness, and ideas, and you impose many rigid patterns on your behavioral patterns and thought patterns. This is what "extremely specialized" means.

Therefore, using the physical senses, you cannot perceive the world in any other way.

When you use the physical senses, you can only use the physical senses -- once the physical senses are turned on, the other senses will shut down.

Physical perception in no way alters the basic, unconstrained perception that is inherent to the inner self.

Although your senses are temporarily not being used by you, they are absolutely not altered. The basic, unconstrained perception inherent to the inner self -- that is a characteristic of the inner self, and you cannot change it or constrain it. And the inner self is a part of your soul.

The inner self knows its relationship to the soul. You could say that the inner self is a part of me -- as a messenger between the soul and the present personality.

The inner self serves as a messenger between the soul and the present personality -- that is, your reincarnational self -- a role of communicating information and delivering messages. You can use that as an analogy.

You must also realize that as I use terms like soul, or entity, or inner self, or present personality -- I do so only for the sake of convenience.

You must understand that I use these terms -- soul, entity, inner self, present personality -- only for the sake of convenience. Because in fact one is a part of another, and one part is also a part of yet another. There is no specific point among them where one begins and another ends. There are no boundaries between them -- there is no point where the inner self becomes the outer self, or where the outer self becomes a fragment personality, or where a fragment personality becomes an entity. There is none.

But for the convenience of understanding and discussing this matter, we define various terms, and these terms are all meaningless. When you perceive your own existence, you do not need any terms.

If you think of the terms psychologists use -- ego, subconscious, even unconscious -- you will easily understand this yourself.

When you know that psychologists also use many terms to describe your psychological activities, you will understand that these terms are actually all rather meaningless, and there are no strictly divided boundaries between them. Those things that seem to be subconscious in one instant may become conscious in the very next moment; an unconscious motive may also become conscious at some point. The conscious and the unconscious, the subconscious and the conscious -- they all intermix with one another, and they are not so clearly distinguished or strictly bounded.

Even within these terms, your experience should tell you that the words themselves create divisions that do not exist in your own experience. These divisions do not exist; they are caused by language.

It seems that you perceive only through your physical senses, but you only have to expand your ego-bound concept of reality, and you will discover that even the ego-bound self is quite capable of accepting the existence of nonphysical information.

Here he emphasizes: even if you perceive only through your physical senses, you only have to expand your ego-bound concept of reality -- that is, the concept that "you yourself are only a part of the soul" -- you only have to expand the ego-bound concept, and not regard your own ego as the complete self. You are only a very small fragment, and there is a greater self. You only have to expand this concept, and you will discover that even if you have not activated the inner senses and have not learned to use more perceptual systems, even using only the physical perceptual system, you can quite easily receive the existence of nonphysical information. This is certain -- every day we come into contact with a great deal of nonphysical information, and you do not even know where it comes from.

When the ego does this, its concept of its own nature automatically changes and expands.

When it does this, its concept of its own nature automatically expands -- changes and expands. Because you have removed the restrictions on its growth.

Now, any act of perception changes the perceiver. Therefore the soul, being considered as a perceiver, must also change.

Any act of perception changes the perceiver. When we perceive something, the reason we call it perception is that we have sensed a change or a stimulus. When we perceive something, this process of perception will have an impact on and change the perceiver -- otherwise it would not be called perception. When a video camera records, your camera has no perception; whatever you perform, it records. The camera itself does not have a perceptual system; it merely records faithfully. But when the human eye sees, it is different -- what the human eye sees, it perceives, and what is perceived will definitely have an impact on the perceiver.

There is no real division between the perceiver and the thing seemingly perceived.

You may not understand what he means. We know that the things we perceive -- are they not created by ourselves? Your inner self, your inner personality fragment, your soul portion, uses its thoughts, feelings, and emotions to create the environment around you and the physical world around you. You created it yourself, but then you go and perceive what you created, so there is no real division between the two.

The thing perceived is often an extension of the perceiver.

The things you perceive -- that is, the environment around you, the tables, chairs, and the people and things around you -- are all things perceived by you, and these things perceived by you are actually you, an extension of the perceiver. This may seem very strange, but all activity is mental -- or you could call it psychic activity. Because thought creates reality, and then the creator of the thought goes to perceive the object -- it does not understand that there is a connection between it and this seemingly separate thing. It creates the physical matter, and it thinks there is no connection between the two, but in fact they are not separate at all; they follow along with your sensory system, and wherever you go, it creates accordingly.

This characteristic of transforming thoughts and emotions into physical reality is an attribute of the soul.

This was already discussed in the previous chapter -- the chapter on thoughts and emotions forming physical matter. This is an attribute of the soul; the soul itself has this ability.

Now in your reality, these thoughts are constructed into physical matter. In other realities, they may be constructed in entirely different ways.

In our three-dimensional world, they are made into physical matter. In other non-three-dimensional worlds, they may be constructed in different ways. We will not expand on this, because it already goes beyond your capacity to imagine.

Therefore your soul, which is you, constructs your physical daily reality from the nature of your thoughts and expectations.

The things and events you actually face every day are all constructed by yourself, and then you go and perceive them. As the perceiver and the perceived object, there is no real difference between the two of you -- both are created by you. So you can easily see how truly important your subjective feelings are -- this knowledge, that is, the knowledge that "your universe is constructed by ideas," can immediately give you clues, many clues, enabling you to improve your environment and circumstances.

When you do not understand the nature of the soul and have not realized that your thoughts and feelings form physical reality, you will feel that you have no power to change it. When you do not feel that you create these realities -- that reality is physical, that it is external -- then of course you have no power to change it. You can change it to a limited extent, but when it grows large enough, you can no longer change it.

In the later chapters of this book, I want to give you some practical material so that you can actually change the true nature and structure of your life. For example, in the last few chapters of this book, he will tell you how to go about changing your daily life, rather than just finishing a theory and serving you a bowl of chicken soup and being done with it.

This concludes the commentary on the second part of Chapter 6 of Seth Speaks.

He says Rob is already very tired from writing -- though of course Seth says, I am not tired; if I wanted to speak, I could speak all night, but you cannot do it; your physical bodies cannot manage it, and your hands would break.

The Soul's Perception: Direct Experience and the Inner Senses

This part mainly discusses the perceptual system of consciousness, that is, the awareness of consciousness and the awareness of the soul. Let us first look at its specific content.

He says that the soul directly perceives all experience -- this is the sentence that sets the theme for this section, and the main point of this section is to explain this.

Session 528

Most of the experience you perceive is wrapped up in physical packaging, yet you mistake the packaging for the experience itself.

Most of the experience that your senses, your perception come into contact with is actually packaging, actually camouflage, and you do not look inside it — yet what is inside the packaging is what really matters.

The world you know is one of the infinite concretizations made by consciousness.

That is to say, this world we know is one of the infinite concretizations made by consciousness — the materialized one. Seen this way, it is meaningful. Why is it meaningful? Because the world is created by consciousness, and you are also a part of this consciousness; you are also a part of this soul, of this consciousness itself. So the world it creates in this way is the creative expression of this consciousness.

But the soul does not need to obey the laws of physical reality.

That is, the soul does not need to follow all these rules of the three-dimensional world, including the rules of the material world. It also does not depend on physical perception; it does not depend on it.

What the soul perceives is the spiritual activity and practice beneath the physical events you know.

What the soul perceives is spiritual activity and practice, which lies beneath our physical reality. The soul's perception does not rely on time, because time is a camouflage of the physical world — this has been emphasized several times before — and it does not apply to nonphysical reality. In nonphysical reality, in higher dimensions, time is of no use.

It is difficult to explain to you how direct experience actually works, because it exists in the form of a complete field of perception.

What kind of experience is this direct experience? It is bypassing the packaging, directly looking at the spiritual activity and events inside, directly experiencing these things. So what kind of experience is it really? This is very hard to describe in words, because it exists in the form of a complete field of perception — it is simply a field of perception that can be felt directly. And this intuitive experience of directly feeling the field of perception cannot be described in words.

And it has nothing to do with physical cues such as color, size, weight, or the senses, which are precisely what your physical senses are clothed in.

It has nothing to do with color, size, dimensions, weight, or the senses, and it has nothing to do with what you see or hear. It lies beneath this surface appearance, and your soul perceives it directly.

Words Are Not Experience

We use words to describe an experience, but clearly the words themselves are not the experience they attempt to describe.

That is certainly true—you use words to describe an experience, but words are not the experience. Words are words, and experience is experience.

Yet your physical subjective feelings are deeply involved with word-based thought patterns. So it is almost impossible for you to imagine an experience that does not belong to thought or words.

Here he is emphasizing a fact. In this Seth material, every passage and every sentence carries profound meaning, and you must not skip over it. If you read this passage casually, there may not seem to be much to it, but he is actually stating a very important fact. What fact is that? It is that we often use words or language to describe an experience—for example, something I did or something I experienced—these are some of our life experiences. We often use words and language to describe them, but the description itself is not the experience.

But because our subjectivity is indeed deeply entangled with word-based thought patterns, it is very difficult for us to imagine an experience that does not belong to thought or words. In your life, it is hard to say there is an experience that cannot be described by language, words, or thought. All of your experiences can be described by thought or by words.

He says "almost," not absolutely. But there are very rare cases—for example, someone who has gone through an extremely strange phenomenon that cannot be described by language or thought will be shocked and speechless. Such rare cases do exist.

Every event you perceive is already an inner event.

That is, the event you perceive is already an inner event—a translation of a psychic or spiritual event directly perceived by the soul. What does that mean? It means that when you sense something or experience something, the moment it is sensed and perceived by you, it is actually an inner event, and this inner event is directly perceived by the soul. After that perception, this spiritual and psychic event is then translated, and only then can you perceive it.

Translated by the physically oriented portion of the self into the terms of the physical senses.

To put it simply, what does this mean? When we become aware of an event, the inner event has actually already happened and has been directly perceived by your soul. After perceiving this soul event, it is translated at the psychological level, the psychic level, or the spiritual level into an event you can understand—your awareness or your perception.

But this translated content is rendered into physical sense terms by the physically oriented portion of the self. For example, when we perceive a flower as beautiful, we say, "Oh, this flower is so lovely," and we use physical sense terms to describe its color. We are accustomed to using the physical senses to describe our perceptions, but you must understand: first, it is a translation of your psychic and spiritual events, and second, it is translated from an inner event.

Then it may be said that the soul does not need a physical body for the purposes of perception.

So it can be said that the soul does not need a physical body for the purposes of perception. Perception does not require a body; it does not depend on the physical senses, does not depend on your eyes, ears, and so on.

Whether in this life or another, feeling continues.

Here there are semicolons throughout, one after another.

And even as you read this book, the soul's basic methods of perception are still operating within you.

Even as you read this book, you think you are reading with your eyes, but he says that in fact your soul's basic methods of perception are still operating within your body right now.

Your experience within the physical system is dependent upon a physical body and physical senses.

Your experience in the physical world is necessarily dependent upon a physical body and physical senses.

For they interpret reality and translate it into physical data.

Why is that? Because these are physical senses—no matter what is sensed, no matter what is sensed inwardly, they will translate it by means of the physical senses into a physical sense experience, into physical data. That is why you have these different sensations of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.

It may be said, then, that some hints of the soul's direct experience can be gained by momentarily turning off the physical senses, by refusing to use them as perceivers and resorting to other methods.

You might say, I cannot sense this direct experience of the soul; we all perceive through the five senses—eyes, nose, ears, and so on. He says, how can you sense it then? You can gain it by momentarily turning off the physical senses. When you refuse to use the physical senses as the perceiver—we are all accustomed to using the physical senses as the perceiver—when you do not use the physical senses as the perceiver, but instead use the soul as the perceiver and resort to other methods, then your inner senses come into play.

When we get to the inner senses, I will explain further how you can directly sense them. Let me first give an example, because without an example it may be hard for you to imagine. For instance, right now you see a tree in front of you. Your physical senses see it—you see the shape of the tree, hear the sound of the wind passing through it, smell the fragrance it gives off. If you open your inner senses—the first inner sense is called inner vibrational touch—if you have this ability, what does sensing this tree feel like? You can directly and comprehensively have a holistic understanding of the tree. What you sense is not its outer appearance or form; you can even sense the experience of being a tree itself, and you can know the tree's present feeling as well. You can sense it from the outside, and you can sense it from the inside. What you sense is a holistic, present-moment feeling, including every little blade of grass and every flower around the tree—you can sense all of them simultaneously. What you sense is the vivid, intuitive feeling of the entire surrounding environment—you are not looking at the tree with your eyes, but touching it and embracing it with consciousness. That is the kind of feeling.

Dreams and Deep Experience

Your state while dreaming is how this is accomplished.

When you dream, you do not use your eyes, yet you can see things; you also have no legs, yet you can walk. And those sensations are all very real. The dream state, to a certain degree, accomplishes these things.

But even in many dreams, you still tend to translate experience into seemingly hallucinatory physical images.

Even while you are dreaming, you still translate the experiences in the dream into physical images that resemble hallucinations -- in dreams we still see things that look the same as what we see during the day: there are trees, houses, people, and all kinds of scenes are the same. That is because you carry out a translation in the dream. Most of the dreams you recall are of this kind; he did not say absolutely all of them.

Yet at certain depths of sleep, the soul's perceptive faculties operate with less hindrance.

When your sleep is very deep -- you could also call it deep sleep, or approaching the stage of hibernation -- the soul's perceptive faculties operate with less hindrance.

Quoted from the realm of pure perception.

At that level, you perceive directly from the realm of perception itself, without needing the external physical senses, and without needing the external camouflage reality in order to perceive. Perception is purely the activity of the psyche or spirit itself.

You communicate at the deepest level of your own existence, and with the source of your creativity.

You communicate with the deepest level of your existence and with the source of your creativity.

These experiences that have not been physically translated will not be retained in the morning.

Remember, you cannot retain these things; in the morning there is no impression of them at all. But at night you are by no means idle -- you are communicating with the source of your creativity.

You will not remember them in the form of dreams, but later that same night, during other stages that occur in the sleep state, you may form some dreams out of the material obtained in what I call the deep experience.

After entering deep sleep, when that same night you enter light sleep or other sleep stages, you may have material obtained from the deep experience, and then use that material to form some dreams.

These dreams will not be precise or even close translations of that experience, but rather will have the nature of dream prophecy.

You know that is a completely different matter. Very often the dream you recall actually has no direct connection with what you truly experienced in the dream. In the Duke of Zhou dream interpretation, it is also said that what you dream about and the meaning it foretells have little connection; sometimes they are completely unrelated.⁷

For example, someone dreams of sleeping in a graveyard, feeling very afraid, or sees and hears someone digging a grave nearby -- not for themselves, but for a relative who has just passed away -- and it feels terrifying. But the Duke of Zhou dream interpretation tells you that this actually foretells that your fortune has been good recently, and good luck is coming. The two seem to be things with no connection whatsoever. Here he is actually telling you that such a translation has already been translated, and after the translation it no longer has any connection with the original dream itself.

Now this particular level of consciousness that occurs in the sleep state has not yet been precisely identified by your scientists.

Scientists have still not entered this level. They roughly know that during deep sleep one enters this kind of deep-level conscious activity, but they have not yet studied why it happens.

During it, energy is activated to make the sleep state possible.

During deep sleep, what energy do you activate to make the sleep state possible? The deep sleep state requires energy. Obviously, at that time your eyes are moving rapidly -- you yourself do not know it, but if a monitor is watching you, your eyes are moving very fast, much faster than they move during the day. This is also a hint of a fluctuation in your energy.

It is true indeed that dreams allow the physically oriented self to digest current experience.

Dreams do in certain respects allow the physically oriented self to digest current experience. Many of us say that dreams are the experiences or reactions of the daytime, and he does not deny this. What are dreams doing? They are digesting your current experience -- the things you went through during the day, considered from another angle, felt in another scene, considered from another person's point of view. This is also a digestion of your current experience, understanding it in a different way.

But equally, this experience is indeed reduced again to its original components.

What are the original components of this experience? They are the essence of physical reality. The experience we see is based on matter, and when we digest our current material experience, its original components are the activity of the underlying psyche or spirit -- that is the most original truth of matter. When this experience is reduced to its original components, it becomes an intuition of spiritual activity and psychological activity.

It disintegrates, and a portion of it is retained as past physical sense data.

The experience of the true reality within material experience has been disintegrated by you -- you only remember it as a kind of past physical sense data. You will remember a dream from long ago: "I dreamed about such and such a thing," but you have already forgotten the most original material of reality contained within that event. The original thing you perceived cannot be remembered; it has become a kind of physical sense.

But the entire experience returns to its original direct state.

You cannot remember it; the body cannot remember it; the conscious you cannot remember it. But your inner self knows all of it, and not a bit is wasted. Although when you wake up you treat it as a strange dream, your inner self returns the entire experience to its original direct state, directly reading the original experience.

The Relationship Between the Soul and the Physical Body

The soul exists eternally, separate from the physical attachment you need in order to understand it.

You want to understand the soul, right? You are using your physical body to understand the soul. So he says, the soul is separate from this physical body of yours. It is like an "eternal" existence—he put it in quotation marks. Why quotation marks? Because it is not eternal in that sense, since the soul is with you. It is not that the physical body is not eternal and only the soul is eternal. What he means is that the soul is with you.

Physical existence is one of the methods by which the soul manifests its own reality.

You understand this now, right? Your physical body is one of the methods by which the soul experiences its own reality.

In other words, the soul creates a world for you to inhabit and to change, a complete field of activity.

An open space, where you can go anywhere.

Within it, new developments and new forms of consciousness can indeed emerge.

In the process of its creating a world for you to inhabit and to change, giving you an open environment for you to create and to experience, new developments and new forms of consciousness will emerge. This is the purpose of consciousness—it goes to experience new things, giving you an environment in which to exercise yourself.

You may say that you continue to create your soul, and it continues to create you.

This sentence is key. Because the emergence of your new forms of consciousness and the new developments of consciousness are all creating your soul, enriching your soul. And the soul, in turn, continues to create you. The two of you have this kind of relationship—mutually creating, mutually fulfilling.

The soul is never diminished.

This was already mentioned in the previous session. This layer of your personality, including your experiences, emotions, knowledge, will not be diminished.

The soul can be considered as an electromagnetic energy field.

We can regard the soul as an electromagnetic energy field, and you are a part of it.

It is a field of concentrated action.

If you consider it this way, it is a field of concentrated action. What is a field of concentrated action? It is a power plant of possibilities and possible actions, and these possibilities and possible actions are seeking ways of expression. All possible actions and all possible forms of expression are within the soul, and it seeks to express them.

It is a collection of nonphysical consciousness, yet it knows itself as an entity.

The soul, as itself, knows itself as an entity. The soul has self-perception.

Later he uses a poem Jane once wrote to illustrate this. Jane once wrote a poem saying:

These atoms speak, calling themselves by my name.

He will explain this later. He says:

Now your physical body is an energy field with a certain shape.

He uses this as an analogy—you must remember, he is giving an example. The soul is originally an energy field, and your physical body is also an energy field, just one with a certain shape. The soul is an energy field without shape.

When someone asks your name, you certainly open your mouth and say it right away.

What speaks your name is your lips, and your lips are made of cells composed of molecules and atoms, but that name does not belong to the atoms and molecules of the lips that speak those letters. This responds to the meaning of Jane's poem above: those atoms are speaking, calling themselves by my name. Your mouth is made of atoms, and your mouth is speaking, saying my name is so-and-so—do the atoms have this name? The atoms do not. Atoms have their own consciousness. Atoms are just atoms, how could they be you?

What is this example saying? Your consciousness is an energy field, and you are just one individual within it. But at this time you often take this one small individual as being the entity of the soul itself. He tells you, actually you are not; you are just one very small part of it. That name only has meaning for you, and has no meaning for those atoms and molecules.

The Entity That Cannot Be Found

Within your body, you cannot point to any specific location where your own entity resides.

This is quite correct. Right inside your body, whether in the brain or in any part of the body, you cannot point to any specific location where your entity is. Can you say my entity is in my head? No. Scientists have long since proven this; brain science, human brain science, is now very advanced. Scientists can tell that certain parts of your brain are responsible for various functions, responsible for movement, for basic emotions, for joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, for language, for imagination, for drawing, for image processing, for hearing. The brain has been analyzed very thoroughly.⁸

But scientists have exhausted tremendous effort searching everywhere in the brain for which part can represent you, and they cannot find it.⁹ Brain scientists to this day have not found a single region in your brain that can represent you. They can find all the different functional areas: the motor area, the sensory area, the emotional area, the language area, the imagination area, the visual processing area, the auditory processing area, but they cannot find which area is connected to your sense of entity. Scientific experiments have proven that this is indeed the case.

If you could travel within your body, you still could not find where your entity lives.

If you had this ability, if you became as small as a cell and went into your body to look for where your entity actually is, you would not find it. There is no entity of yours. And yet you say: this is my body, this is my name, this is me. At this point, you know the core of what he wants to say.

Actually, this is what Buddhism often speaks of: the need to let go of "attachment to self," to let go and enter the state of no-self. It is not that there clearly is a you and you are being forced to let go of that you; it is because there is no such thing at all. You insist on taking much of your own experience, accumulation, beliefs, ideas, including your ego's behavioral patterns and standardized thought patterns, and regarding all of these as you. You think they are you, but in fact none of those are you, and you cannot find where you are either. That is why Buddhism says you must let go of attachment to self in order to enter a higher state. Here he is telling you the reason: there simply is no such thing.

If even you cannot find yourself within your own body, then where is the entity of you that claims to possess cells and internal organs?

You cannot find yourself, so where exactly are you?

Your entity is obviously connected with your body in some way.

It seems that our entity is connected with the body, because our bodies are different. Why does no one else say "he is mine"? You are you, and he is him; you can feel the difference. You have no difficulty distinguishing your body from someone else's body, nor any difficulty distinguishing your body from the chair you are sitting on.

But in a broader manner, the soul and identity can be viewed from the same perspective.

All of that just now was an analogy, a figure of speech. He says you can use the same perspective to look at the identity of the soul: it knows who it is. The soul also knows who it is; indeed, it is far more certain of its identity than the physical self is. You are a physical being, and you are not even very certain of your identity, but the soul knows who it is even better than you do. But if you say "show me where you are," just as you cannot find where you are, the soul also cannot find where it is.

Within that electromagnetic energy field, where can the entity of the soul be found?

If you cannot find the entity in the body, then how can you find the entity of the soul in the energy field? He is using analogy, using examples, to make this point.

It regenerates all other parts of itself, and gives you your own entity.

The soul regenerates all other parts of itself. All of its personality fragments can be reborn, can be regenerated, and it also gives you your own entity.

When someone asks who you are, you can only answer simply: I am me.

At the same time, it also answers for you. This passage is a very philosophical one; you often see similar words in philosophical works or in the sharp exchanges of Zen dialogues. Many people say they half understand, half do not; actually, what those people say is spoken on this level. When someone asks who you are, and you say "I am me," this "I am me" is not your physical body answering; it is the soul answering. Because even your physical body is a manifestation of the soul, so you are not qualified to say it. It is the soul saying "I am me" on your behalf, and at the same time it also answers for you.

The Soul's Multiple Perspectives

In terms of the psychology you understand, the soul can be considered a primary entity that in itself possesses many other gestalts of individual consciousness, an infinite self, and one that can express itself in many ways.

He is speaking here from a psychological angle. The soul can be regarded as a primary entity, and beneath it there are many gestalts of individual consciousness -- each personality fragment is one such gestalt of individual consciousness. It has an infinite number of them, each consciousness is a self, and each self can use many methods and forms to express itself, not only through physical means, but through other means as well.

And still maintain its own identity.

No matter what it becomes -- whether it becomes a tree, a small river, a flower, or something without form -- however it changes, it can still maintain its own identity, unaffected by the changes of the countless分身 beneath it. Its own sense of selfhood is continuously maintained and never changes.

Even while it knows that its selfhood may be part of another selfhood.

This is very subtle. This soul has countless fragments, and each fragment can freely transform itself into any form to display itself. No matter how it changes, the soul knows that its nature, its sense of identity, will not disappear. Even if it knows that this sense of identity of its own is also composed as part of a larger sense of identity -- above the soul there may be an even greater soul, and this entity is only a part of that super-entity -- it will not become lost. Just as you know you are a part of the soul and you will not become lost, it is the same principle.

I know that this may seem incomprehensible to you.

Incomprehensible or not, the fact is:

Figuratively speaking, even though it may now merge with or travel through other such energy fields, this selfhood is still maintained.

Note that he says "figuratively speaking" here -- the moment he says figuratively speaking, it is not literal; he is making an analogy. Between soul and soul there is a capacity for mutual giving and receiving, and the possibilities for development and expansion are endless.

Let me say it again: the soul is not a closed system. Why does he use figurative language? Because he cannot express it in words. The merging of souls, the traveling of souls, the mutual fusion and giving-and-receiving between souls -- these are very difficult to describe using the language of the three-dimensional world, so he makes an analogy. You must remember that this is not literally how it is; it is only an analogy.

What is the analogy? Souls can also exchange with one another, able to take and to give, mutually giving, receiving, and communicating. It is not communication through language, but an exchange between one part of a soul and one part of another soul. He uses the word "merging" -- a soul is an energy field, and another soul is also an energy field; when two energy fields partially overlap and superimpose, some phenomenon of merging occurs. Or "traveling through such energy fields" -- when one soul travels through another soul, it is equivalent to two energy fields having an intersection. None of this affects its sense of identity; it still knows that it is itself and others are others. But this does not mean that its sense of identity prevents it from exchanging, communicating, or merging with other souls.

The soul is not a closed system.

He wants to tell you that the soul is not closed. It is not that the soul is a fixed circle, composed only of your countless personality fragments, with all the experiences of your personality fragments transmitted up to it -- that is not how it is. The soul has its own set of behavioral rules and principles at the soul level.

It is only because you are presently so intensely focused within a narrow range that you have defined such strict limitations for yourselves, and then projected those limitations onto your concepts of the soul.

We are too absorbed in the three-dimensional world, and so we set many strict limitations on our own thinking, finding it very hard to transcend the circle of our own thoughts. And these limitations we then project onto the concept of the soul, using three-dimensional ideas to think about the soul's affairs.

I often joke with people that many of the questions left in the comments are all of one type: they are using human thinking to ponder the affairs of the soul, or even the affairs of All That Is or of entities, always asking the question from a human angle. If you leap beyond the human level, you would not ask this kind of question; the question simply could not be formulated. But if you insist on asking from a human angle, I can only say: the soul, this world, and this universe do not operate according to human thought. This world, this universe, this reality -- it does not operate in ways that humans can understand. How much you can understand is a matter of your own ability, but just because you cannot understand it does not mean that it is not operating in this way; it will not accommodate you. Within the whole of All That Is, you are not the master of everything, and All That Is does not run according to your rules. It does not run according to human rules. So he tells you that you must have open-minded thinking; do not use that narrow kind of thinking to ponder these things.

The Body's Worries and the Nature of Identity

You worry about your physical identity.

We often worry: what if my physical identity is lost? What if I die? If I give up my faith, give up my beliefs, give up my experiences, can I still be called me? Where did I go? Your physical identity is not just that material identity; it includes your thoughts and your beliefs, all of which are part of your physical identity.

Because you worry about this, you limit the range of your perception.

You worry about this, so you only use the perceptions you are familiar with to perceive.

You are afraid you cannot cope with more perceptions and still maintain your sense of I-ness.

You are afraid you cannot handle more perceptions and still maintain your sense of I-ness. He tells you there is no need to be afraid; it will not happen. Why? Because the I-ness of the soul never changes, and you are a part of the soul, so your I-ness will not be lost or changed either. Even if some merging or separation occurs between two souls, their I-ness does not change, let alone at the level of the physical body, where you need not worry at all about losing your I-ness. What you are worried about is your ego, and that ego is a false illusion to begin with, so whether it is lost or not does not matter.

The soul does not fear for its identity.

The soul does not worry about losing itself or forgetting who it is. It has confidence in itself. It is always exploring, and it is not afraid of being overwhelmed by experience or perception. It is not afraid that experiencing too much will make it lose itself. We often say that when a person enters society and goes through too many things, they end up losing themselves and extinguishing their conscience. This is a worry many people have, and it is also a fact: environment and experience do change a person. But he tells you, the soul is not afraid.

If you had a more thorough understanding of the nature of identity, you would not be either.

You would not need to worry either.

You would not, for example, fear telepathy.

What you fear is that your identity will be swept away by other people's suggestions and thoughts. You are afraid that once the function of telepathy is turned on, other people's thoughts will come into your mind, and you are afraid of being suggested to by others, of having your thoughts possessed by others, and then you will not be able to find yourself. Actually, you do not need to be afraid at all. If you have a more thorough understanding of the nature of identity, you will not be afraid. Why not? As was said earlier, the soul does not lose its I-ness, and you are a part of the soul, so of course you will not lose it either.

No psychological system is closed.

You always want to close it off in order to maintain your I-ness, but thinking that way is incorrect. No consciousness is closed; all are open.

Regardless of any contrary appearances within your own system, the soul is, as people say, a traveler, but it is also the creator of all experience and all purpose. It can be said that as it walks, it creates the world.

This sentence is very poetic. The soul is a traveler, but it is the creator of all its experience and all its purpose. Wherever it wants to go, even the destination it wants to go to is something it created itself. For example, if it wants to travel to Italy, although the pandemic in Italy is currently quite serious, it wants to see the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Florence. No matter where it wants to go, that destination is something it designed itself, including the experiences and feelings along the way to the destination, all of which it also created itself. So "as it walks, it creates the world." How did the world come about? That is how it came about.

This is the true nature of psychological existence.

The true nature of that psychological existence you feel and call yourself is exactly this: as you walk, you create the world. And you are a part of it.

Good and Evil and Inner Exploration

As I said earlier, later in this book I will give you some practical suggestions that will enable you to recognize some of your own deeper abilities and use them for your own development, enjoyment, and education.

How kind Seth is! He says here that later he will tell you some methods for discovering your deeper abilities and using them for your own development, enjoyment, and education.

Consciousness is, basically, not built upon those preconceptions of good and evil that you are so concerned with right now.

He always leaves room in what he says -- he does not speak in absolutes -- "basically." So do not nitpick. Many people leave comments nitpicking, saying so-and-so is such-and-such. If you bring up some extreme or very isolated case, then you are just nitpicking. Seth is afraid you will nitpick, so he has already covered all the bases in what he says, and you cannot nitpick with him.

Consciousness is, basically, not built upon those preconceptions of good and evil that you are so concerned with right now. By implication, neither is the soul.

The soul is not built upon preconceptions of good and evil. I made a video earlier about what true good and evil are, and whether there is any true good and evil. He tells you here: there is not. The soul and the essence of consciousness are not founded upon this basis of good and evil.

This does not mean that in your system, or in some others, these problems do not exist.

The soul and the essence of consciousness do not need standards of good and evil as a premise, but that does not mean that in our physical world, in our society, in our psychic and spiritual levels, the concepts of good and evil do not exist. We still have these concepts.

We are not saying we should not pursue good and avoid evil.

What he means is not that you should not do good deeds or avoid doing bad deeds. He is simply saying: the soul knows that good and evil are merely different manifestations of a much larger reality.

I do not know whether everyone can understand this. Let me give an example. Suppose a larger reality is a transparent coin, with one side being good and the other side being evil. When you seek the larger reality, good and evil will both be present to you at the same time. From the side of good, through the transparent coin, you can see the side of evil; from the side of evil, through the transparent coin, you can also see the side of good. On a higher level, good and evil are just two sides of the same reality. What is most essential is that reality, not good and evil. Good and evil are just the names you have assigned to it; the reality is what matters.

I want to emphasize again, although this may sound difficult to understand.

It really is difficult to understand. I do not know whether you can understand it.

When you learn to experience what you are, this becomes intuitively clearer.

When you go and experience "who am I" and "what am I here for," these things become much clearer.

If you cannot travel within your physical body to find your identity, you can travel through the self of your psyche to find it.

You cannot find your identity within the physical body -- you cannot find it in the brain, in the brain cells, or in the cells of your body -- but within your inner psyche, your identity is there.

Unless you begin such a journey yourself, you cannot believe that through this kind of inward exploration you can perceive so many wondrous things.

Unless you personally begin a journey -- an inward journey, an inward exploration. If you do not begin it yourself, you cannot believe that you can perceive so many wondrous things. Your inner world is far richer and more colorful; you just do not know it. You are always looking outward, thinking that only the outside is real and that the inner world is vague and illusory.

You are a soul; you are a particular manifestation of a soul.

Here he emphasizes again: you are a soul; you are a particular manifestation of a soul.

To think that you must remain ignorant of the nature of your own existence is utterly absurd.

You yourself are a particular manifestation of a soul, yet you think you must remain ignorant of the nature of your own existence -- you do not want to know. Many people say: "I do not want to hear this, do not tell me any of this, I do not need it. I just think I am me, I am just this hundred-plus pounds of flesh." Well then, there is nothing you can do -- it is simply absurd. You yourself do not even want to know what you are.

Perhaps you cannot clearly express what you know in words.

It is perfectly normal that you cannot express what you know in words.

But this does not mean that your inability to express it in words absolutely negates the value and validity of the experience you gained when you first began to look inward.

Not everything needs to be expressed in words. What language cannot express is sometimes the more genuine thing. The opening of the Tao Te Ching says: "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name."¹⁰ What language cannot describe may well be the very value and validity of the experience you should truly gain. You cannot say that because something cannot be expressed in words, it does not exist.

Yet today's scientists not only refuse to acknowledge what cannot be expressed in words, they do not even consider what they cannot see to exist -- even if you can express it and have experienced it, they still think it does not exist. Let alone those experiences you cannot even describe in words. And we know that those are often the truly valuable parts of you. So he tells you to look inward.

You know, many enlightened monks, and many practitioners who have reached a certain level, become unwilling to speak and do not want to communicate with you. It is not that they look down on you, despise you, or disdain speaking with you -- it is that they truly do not know what to say to you. This thing cannot be expressed in words, and even if they said it, you would not believe it. You keep asking endless questions about your own physical body: How can I be happy? How can I make more money? Over and over again. How can they communicate with you? To put it in more worldly terms, you are not on the same level, and they have no desire to communicate with you.

You may call this a spiritual or psychological or psychic exploration.

You may call this inward exploration spiritual, psychological, or psychic -- whatever you call it is fine, as you please. In any case, it is an inward exploration.

You are not trying to find your soul.

This passage is crucial: when you explore inward, you are not going to find your soul. If you put it that way, there is nothing to find -- you cannot find it. Just as you cannot find your identity within your physical body, you also cannot find the essence of the soul within the energy field. It is not lost; it has not gone missing, and neither have you. You are still you; your sense of identity never disappears.

The words you use do not matter; your intent does matter very much.

Whether you call it spiritual, psychic, or psychological, the words do not matter, but your intent truly does. To put this in Buddhist terms, your arising thoughts and intentions are extremely important. What is your intention, what is your purpose -- this is very important.

Why are you exploring inward? Is it for yourself or for others? Do you want to explore the mysteries of the universe, or do you want to attain a higher spiritual state for yourself? You cannot say, "I am just going to take a look, I am going on a little tour." You need to have a sense of purpose. Why are arising thoughts and intentions so important? Because when you enter the level of pure soul, the level of pure consciousness, in that world, whatever you think is what you get, and it manifests instantly. If at that time your mind is still full of chaotic thoughts, still thinking about the things of your physical body -- for example, if you imagine that once you reach the soul level you will discover a few beautiful women to practice with you, or find a few wealthy patrons to sponsor you and set up a foundation to help you realize your grand ambitions -- if you have thoughts like that, you simply will not be able to get in at all. And if you do get in, you will fall into demonic delusion and trap yourself.

Every sentence Seth says hits the mark directly. Remember, why does Buddhism insist on the importance of arising thoughts and intentions? It is explained clearly right here. Think about it yourself: what do you want to accomplish by exploring inward? That matters more than anything else.

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注释与核实

1. Source: Wikipedia, "Miller–Urey experiment" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment) ↩

2. According to Mike's original words: "The water crystal experiment done by Japanese scientists: if you have bad thoughts toward water or curse at water, the water crystals are all very different"; upon verification, it should be: "Masaru Emoto was not a scientist but a businessman and author. His 'water crystal' experiments were never published in peer-reviewed journals, did not use double-blind methods, and relied on manually selected photographs. Mainstream science regards them as pseudoscience—ice crystal morphology is determined by physical conditions such as temperature, freezing rate, impurities in the water, and the container, and has nothing to do with thoughts or words." (Source: Wikipedia, "Masaru Emoto," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto) ↩

3. According to Mike's original words: "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this is the earliest theoretical foundation of quantum mechanics, it existed in the 1920s"; upon verification, it should be: "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was proposed in 1927, which is indeed in the 1920s, but it is not the earliest theoretical foundation of quantum mechanics—quantum theory began with Planck's quantum hypothesis in 1900, quantum mechanics itself began with matrix mechanics in 1925, and the uncertainty principle is a later result rather than the starting point." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Uncertainty principle," https://www.britannica.com/science/uncertainty-principle) ↩

4. According to Mike's original words: "You are composed of fifty trillion cells"; upon verification, it should be: "The human body is composed of approximately 30–40 trillion cells, not fifty trillion: the estimate by Hatton et al. published in PNAS in 2023 is about 36 trillion cells for an adult male (about 28 trillion for an adult female, about 17 trillion for a 10-year-old child), consistent with the approximately 37.2 trillion given by Bianconi et al. in 2013." (Source: Hatton et al., "The human cell count and size distribution" (PNAS, 2023), https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2303077120) ↩

5. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "anicca" (https://britannica.com/topic/anicca) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. Source: Nancy Kanwisher, "Functional specificity in the human brain: A window into the functional architecture of the mind" (PNAS (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1005062107) ↩

9. Source: Philippi, Feinstein, Khalsa, Damasio, et al., "Preserved Self-Awareness following Extensive Bilateral Brain Damage to the Insula, Anterior Cingulate, and Medial Prefrontal Cortices" (PLOS ONE, 2012) (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038413) ↩

10. Source: Laozi, "Dao De Jing, Chapter 1" (Chinese Text Project full text) (https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing) ↩