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).
Introduction
This chapter begins with units of consciousness: they form all systems simultaneously, and through their forward, backward, inward, and outward movement in time they maintain the boundaries of the universe and the exchange of energy. The text uses black holes, white holes, and moment points to illustrate the inward process of time, pointing out that cells are composed of units of consciousness, and that death is only a change of form. Life forms did not evolve in a straight line; there were once hybrids of animals and humans, and dolphins, mermaids, and the like belong to other lines of probability. At birth, infants can perceive both the inward and outward aspects of time simultaneously, but this is later covered over by physiological needs and conditioning.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Units of consciousness form all systems simultaneously, can adapt to any reality, and carry within each unit the support of entire groups of activities.
- Time moves not only forward and backward but also inward and outward, and this kind of thrust establishes the boundaries of each universal system and the exchange of energy between them.
- Cells are composed of invisible units of consciousness, know themselves to be indestructible, and death is only the ceasing to be material; the body relies on the death of cells to maintain its survival.
- Life forms did not develop in a straight line; there were once hybrids of animals and humans, and dolphins, mermaids, and others are species along other possible routes.
- At birth, infants can simultaneously perceive events inside and outside of temporal sequence, but physiological needs and adult conditioning gradually cause them to recognize only external sensory stimuli.
Main Text
Session 688: Early Development of Humanity, Mermen, Dolphins, Animal-Humans, Human-Animals, and Other Forms
Today we continue sharing from the first volume of the Seth book The "Unknown" Reality. The overall title of this part is: Parallel Humans, Alternate Humans, and Probable Humans -- These in the Present Private Psychic-Intellectual Response. That is its title. And the title is not finished yet; there is still the second half: In the Present of Your Existence, Your Multidimensional Reality. This actually connects to the closing part of the previous session, which ended in the last session.
After Seth finished saying these things, Jane came out of the trance state. He said, I have the most devoted greetings for you both, Ruburt is beginning to rev up again, and I will have more to say to him before long; I would like him to first get more of the good stuff of this book.
Jane came out of the trance state at 12:04. She sat in the rocking chair and began stamping her feet on the floor very quickly. Can you imagine it -- Jane stamping her feet on the floor without stopping, especially excited. I could feel the vibration, how strong it was. Jane said, these trance states are so deep that when I come out, I want to do something -- too deep, I want to do something. She continued stamping her feet, bang bang bang.
Exactly right, they are different. This trance state was so deep, different from her previous states, and obtaining this material was also different from before, with greater difficulty.
The title of this session is: Early Development of Humanity, Mermen, Dolphins, Animal-Humans, Human-Animals, and Other Forms. This session began on Wednesday, March 6, 1974, at 9:47 p.m.
Today I showed Jane the portrait I had drawn of her as a ghostly image of a man in another probability. I had begun trying to draw this portrait at the beginning of February. Then there was Jane's projection in Saratoga -- she went to see her infant self in another parallel world, or another world of probability, a probable experience. She had described it in Session 685. The ghostly quality of that event was exactly in keeping with what I was trying to achieve in this drawing. You could say the two of them were both spiritually strong -- Rob drew a painting in February, and in March, Jane's out-of-body experience feeling matched it.
Why did he find that by leaving thick gray and white underpainting in the actual portrait without adding any color, I could express not only one possible interpretation of him, but also the colorless quality of the Saratoga experience itself. Rob really did decide to give up the Wednesday night television program rather than move the session to Thursday.
Seth came through and said, units of consciousness are truly at every time and every place simultaneously. He emphasized again, truly -- not meaning symbolically true. Isn't it like what was said at the end of the movie Lucy1: when someone asks where you are, he says I am everywhere, I am at every time, I have become eternal. The same meaning. The most fundamental units that make up our physical world are of this nature.
They possess the greatest adaptability, able to adapt to any kind of environment and any kind of reality -- our physical environment, nonphysical environment, and other reality environments completely different from our reality; they can adapt to all of them.
They possess a profound innate propensity for the formation of all kinds of organizations. (Session 688)
This "profound" means this propensity is very hard to describe, but you just know it is there. What propensity and attribute is it? It is that units of consciousness automatically form organizations; they organize a bunch of instantaneous units into a new organization, and they want to try all kinds of organizations -- this is their nature.
Their actions are individual, yet each carries within it the support of all the other activities occurring in any other given unit or entire group of units. (Session 688)
It acts alone, but within each one there is knowledge of all the other activities occurring among those of the same kind, within the same group. This is somewhat like the connection between group consciousness and individual animal consciousness in animal groups mentioned earlier.
These units gather together and actually form the reality systems in which they have their experience. (Session 688)
This is very interesting. They gather together and form a new reality system, and then they themselves can gain experience within this reality system.
For example, in a physical system like yours, the most fundamental level of our physical reality is units of consciousness. They belong to the nonphysical realm, so in any reality space, they will always emerge in the specific reality pattern -- in our physical world they appear in the manner of physical reality. In different realities, they take on an appearance suited to that reality.
In your terms, they can move forward and backward in time, but they also possess another kind of inner mobility within the time you know. (Session 688)
This inner mobility is very hard to understand, and the following explains it in detail. For example, just as an apple has its interior -- we see an apple as an external apple, but there is something inside the apple. So then, think of an ordinary moment as an apple. In our ordinary experience, you can hold the apple in your hand or eat it -- that is all fine. How you use this moment point, how you play with it, is entirely up to you.
In such an analogy, however, the apple itself is the moment point, and would contain within itself its own infinite variations. (Session 688)
You can take the moment point and play with it, observe it, appreciate it, smell it, or eat it. But as for the apple itself, it has attributes of inner change; from the outside you may not feel it, but its inner variations are very evident. But even with such an example, you may still not quite understand what he means by this inner variation.
In a most difficult-to-explain manner, some can even operate within time as you understand it. (Session 688)
This is very interesting -- "operate within time" -- what does it mean to operate within time as we understand it?
Time not only moves forward or backward, but also moves inward as well as outward. (Session 688)
He gives two additional directions of time's movement, and this goes beyond human understanding. We humans can understand time moving forward -- movement in a single direction, we can understand that; movement in the reverse direction, although we cannot do it, we can imagine it and understand it. But this "inward" and "outward" movement of time, we humans cannot understand.
Seth refuses to accept this; he insists on explaining to you clearly what is meant by time moving inward and time moving outward.
Here I am still speaking somewhat in terms of your concepts of time. (Session 688)
Because if he did not speak this way, you would not understand it either. He can only use our concepts of time, but the moment he uses the concepts of time, distortion arises. Seth is trying to make this matter clear, and I am also trying to explain this matter clearly to you. In this book, I hope that later I can take you completely beyond him, to thoroughly transcend such a human understanding of the concept of time.
But in the terms of which I am speaking, it is precisely these inward and outward directions of time that give you a universe that appears fairly constant, yet is being created. (Session 688)
It is precisely because of the inward and outward movement of time that we are given a universe that appears constant, yet is being created at every moment. He presents us with a new concept: the inward and outward movement of time.
These inward and outward thrusts allow several important conditions necessary for the establishment of relatively separate, stable universal systems.
Note that this "relatively" is in quotation marks -- relatively separate, not absolutely separate. The inward and outward movement of time can make our universe appear relatively separate from other universes, but in essence it is not truly separate.
From any viewpoint within such a system, such a system may appear to be a closed system. (Session 688)
From its interior, it appears closed, so it seems to have boundaries with others -- as if this universe has a membrane that you cannot get out of. How is the boundary of this membrane formed? It is caused by the inward and outward movement of time.
These inward and outward thrusts, however, effectively establish the boundaries of each universal system and its uniqueness, while allowing a constant interchange of energy between them. (Session 688)
The inward and outward movement of time establishes the boundaries of universes, while also allowing a constant interchange of energy between universes. Energy can flow between different universes, yet this universe appears independent -- this is very subtle, and it overturns our basic human understanding of energy systems.
When we humans understand energy, we first assume that our universe is closed. In a closed universal system, energy is conserved. Here, right from the start, it overturns several of your concepts: first, this universe is not the only one; second, there are boundaries between this universe and other universes, and these boundaries are caused by the movement patterns of time; third, this inward and outward movement pattern both creates the boundaries and divisions between universes, and at the same time forms a flow of energy. And this flow of energy is something we humans still have difficulty understanding.
So how do we explain this matter? I can only try to explain it to you; this thing is indeed hard to explain. Let us approach it from several angles.
The first is from classical physics, that is, from general relativity, from Einstein. We know that there are black holes in our universe, and we have observed black holes. Last year we even took a photograph of a black hole2, a kind of composite photograph, allowing us humans for the first time to see the image of a black hole through radio telescopes. It was roughly what we imagined: there is a ring of bright stuff around it, the shadows and traces left behind by matter being sucked into the black hole.
What is a black hole? A black hole is a celestial body of infinite mass -- at least infinite from the perspective of human cognition. With infinite mass, gravity is infinite, and the result is that even light cannot escape its gravitational control. The mass of a photon is already extremely small, close to zero, but even so, photons still have mass, and anything with mass will be sucked in by it, so light will also be sucked in by it.
Second, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, the unified space-time theory, such a massive object in space-time will cause the distortion of space-time. It is like a funnel, like a vortex. Have you seen the shape of a vortex in water? When the sink is draining and the water is almost gone, or in a bathtub, the water forms a vortex, and the shape of that vortex is very much like the feeling a black hole gives. The image after space-time is distorted -- of course it is invisible to the naked eye, but suppose we could depict it using contour lines, it would look very much like the shape of that vortex -- a funnel, a vortex, and at the bottom all matter would leak in, fall in.
In Einstein's terms, it is not gravity that pulls it in -- it has nothing to do with gravity; it is its mass that causes the distortion of the unity of space-time. Of course neither of these is ultimate, so let us just use them for discussion.
All right, with this black hole, we can only use it as an analogy to help us understand what was just said about "time moving inward and outward." When an object approaches a black hole, for the person approaching the black hole, you would not feel any change in time; but an observer outside the black hole watching this person would see his time getting slower and slower -- the closer to the black hole, the slower. At the instant he is about to be sucked into the black hole, time gives you the feeling of having stopped; that person seems frozen outside the black hole. But in fact the person himself cannot feel it during this process; he feels no change in time.
Of course, when I give the example of a person in that state, it is impossible -- any matter would already have been pulverized, turned into the most primitive particles, even atomic nuclei torn apart. A person cannot maintain his own conscious existence after being sucked into a black hole. But we are only making a figurative analogy.
When this matter is sucked into the black hole, in our world we see it disappear -- even light disappears. For it, time no longer exists; time freezes, collapses, becomes meaningless. This process is the process of time entering the black hole; you can imagine it as a kind of inward movement of time.
Then where does the matter that went in go? According to the law of conservation of matter3, it cannot disappear; it itself also possesses enormous energy. We can certainly imagine that in another universe there must be a white hole that constantly spews things out -- what is sucked in on this side is ejected out on that side. When this matter is thrown out from nothingness into existence in another universe, the moment it comes out, time exists, because the very act of "coming out" means time has already been born. This process of coming out can be understood as time moving outward -- time being born from nothingness into existence.
Time moving inward means time originally existed, and at the black hole time ceases to exist -- this is called inward movement. This is the only relatively close example I can think of to help you understand.
As for another example, I can only say it is approximate. Let us go back to the earlier question of the moment point. Why did he use an apple as an example? The moment point appears complete to you; we live on these moment points. What is a moment point? Suppose you divide a person's life into so many years, so many months, so many days, and each day into so many hours and seconds. Suppose we take one twenty-fourth of a second -- one frame of a camera -- and freeze it as a moment point, then we humans think that people live on these moment points, and linking these moment points together is living, is it not?
We humans think that a moment point is a flat point in time with no thickness, no content. But that is not so. That point has rich content and thickness. No matter how short it is, it is not a point; it is a period of time -- in English it is called duration; in Chinese it is more appropriate to call it a segment, or a process.
Within that process, the people and things inside are alive, not laid out like slices -- that would be dead -- the inside is alive. All the developments inside can be understood as time moving inward.
What is meant by time moving outward? Is there a connection between this moment point and other moment points? Of course there is; it cannot exist in isolation; it must be continuous with what comes before and after. When some content of this moment point communicates with content between moment points -- whether the flow of energy or the flow of consciousness -- from the perspective of the moment point, it is equivalent to time moving outward: it moves outside the moment point.
The examples I have given can only help you understand the distinction he makes between "time moving inward and time moving outward," but these two examples are not really what Seth means. Because this kind of movement has no matching vocabulary in human language and linguistic structures, and even less any matching examples, nor any phenomena we can observe -- it simply does not exist. How do you describe something that does not exist?
It is like how could I describe to you a color that does not exist in nature? We can say this is red, blue, green, or say it is a bit darker or lighter -- these can all be explained. But if there is a color that none of us has ever seen, that no one has ever seen, then how do I describe it to you? No one knows how to describe it. So when we describe something never seen before, we use a bunch of negative statements -- it is not this, not that, not red, not blue, not yellow. But even if you exhaust all colors, you still do not know what color it is; you can only know what it is not.
This is a very common way of description in Buddhism. When the Buddha could not describe something he could experience but humans could not, the words he used were all "not" -- neither increasing nor decreasing, neither defiled nor pure4 -- all "not." Because he could not say it, he could only approach it by saying "what it is not." So the principle here is the same.
I can only explain it to everyone to this extent; for the specifics, you can use your own imagination. On this moment point, use your imagination a bit more -- how time moves inward and outward. In other words, the inward and outward movement of time sustains the existence of this moment point. The content within this moment point is not a thin slice; it has thickness and a process. No matter how short this process is, there must be something inside that comes out from somewhere and leaves for somewhere. For this moment point, is it not equivalent to its own independent, small universe? When experiencing within this moment point, it is moving inward; when it produces effects outside the moment point, we can call it time moving outward. Let us first understand it roughly to this extent. Later Seth will also try to explain it, but if you can think of a better example, you can share it with me -- I also do not know how to describe it better.
Energy is never lost. It may seem to disappear from one system, but if so, it will emerge in another system. (Session 688)
This is very similar to the principle of black holes and white holes just mentioned. Just now I used the moment point to explain -- there are gaps between moment points, because they are moment points, not continuous. What is that blank space? That is something we humans do not yet know.
From the perspective of one moment point, no matter how short it is, it has a duration here, a process here. Then the things within that process will all emerge from within -- whether they come from the previous one or from somewhere else, from another system, we can call this an outward movement of time. After this moment point is over, for this moment point, that thing has already disappeared, and time seems to have moved inward. At the next moment point, this process repeats again -- there is again a process of outward movement and inward movement.
So Seth has been saying that the inward movement and outward movement of time sustain what appears to us as an isolated universe -- a universe that seems divided, yet has an inner flow of energy.
These inward and outward thrusts, unperceived, are largely responsible for what you think of as ordinary sequential time. (Session 688)
Why are we not aware of them? Because we think time is sequential, so we cannot understand this inward and outward movement, and cannot perceive its existence.
Most importantly of all, these units of consciousness are truly indestructible. They can take any form, organizing themselves in any kind of time behavior. (Session 688)
"Time behavior" -- this is another phrase -- organizing themselves in any kind of behavior based on time. Does this behavior itself require time? Actually it does not require time, but you think it requires time. When you find such phrases being used, generally the first part is the surface phenomenon, and the latter part is the essence.
Units of consciousness can organize themselves in any kind of action carried by time -- not only the time structure of the physical world of our three-dimensional world, but also other organizational modes of time behavior to organize themselves. Because behavior must occur within a period of time -- when we speak of a behavior, no matter what behavior it is, we always feel it occurs within a period of time. Yet this behavior itself is simultaneous, and in itself occupies no time at all.
Only then does it seem to form a reality completely dependent upon its apparent form and structure. (Session 688)
Remember this "seem" -- it seems to form a world that must depend on some kind of form and some kind of structure. But must this world depend on form and structure? No. Then what does this world depend on? On behavior.
You can regard anything as a kind of behavior. For example, a stone is a kind of behavior -- only its action is extremely slow, so slow that it moves only once in tens of thousands or millions of years, so you cannot feel its movement. From a more macroscopic perspective, stones, objects, and matter are all behavior.
Let me give a better example: is an atom a probability? Of course it is. If you think an atom is a probability, then it must be a kind of behavior. We speak of the existence of probabilities -- we go to drink water, to join the army, to do this or that -- all are probabilities. A probability is a kind of behavior, and the atom itself is a probability.
Regarding the nature of behavior, there is a profound introduction in The Early Sessions -- behavior is the essential thing of the entire world.
Units of consciousness can organize themselves in any form, in any mode of time behavior -- what does "organize themselves" mean? Units of consciousness, following such an organizational mode of time behavior, manifest in time, become a behavioral pattern, and then form a physical reality that we think has certain forms and certain structures. But what is the essence? The essence is a world formed by units of consciousness according to the organizational structure of time behavior. Its essence has no form and no structure; it is simply based on an organizational mode of time that we assume.
Our world, on the surface, appears to be composed of forms and structures; this is the surface phenomenon. Its essence is centered on behavior. And behavior seems to be based on time, but in essence it is not based on time, yet we humans think it is based on time.
Time here also has four directions of movement: forward, backward, inward, outward. These four directions of movement constitute our present physical world. Any behavior has four directions of movement -- forward and backward, so past and future exist simultaneously; inward and outward, so existence and nonexistence also occur simultaneously. This behavior both is and is not, both exists and does not exist.
Forward and backward means past and future exist simultaneously -- is that mind-bending? It is indeed mind-bending. If you want to explore the truth of this universe, it is this mind-bending -- it certainly cannot be explained clearly by a fairy tale or a children's book. Of course you can also say it is very simple; that is fine, depending on the angle from which you look at it.
When structures and forms disappear into the physicist's black hole, for example, though they would seem to be destroyed, time is drastically altered. (Session 688)
The forms and structures of our physical world are absorbed and disappear before the black hole, and time is also destroyed, drastically altered.
Yet at the other end, in another universe, there will be an emergence, and the entire universal package that had been enclosed in the black hole will be reopened.
At the other end, the end of the white hole, it is opened, unfolding a new universe once again. Can we imagine it as the point of the Big Bang as we humans understand it?
Through countless minute sources, there is a constant influx of new energy into your universe, and these sources are the units of consciousness themselves. (Session 688)
Right around us, in our physical world, there are infinitely many minute sources of energy constantly replenishing new energy, and this energy is the units of consciousness themselves -- because consciousness is energy.
In their own way, and using these units of consciousness, they operate, at least in certain respects, as minute but extremely powerful black holes and white holes, as they are presently understood by your scientists. (Session 688)
That is to say, all around us there are infinitely many minute black holes and white holes that our scientists cannot detect. Why call them black holes and white holes? Because energy emerges from there and also disappears there. Their effect on us is like the effect of macroscopic black holes and white holes on the universe -- except that the black holes and white holes he speaks of are microscopic, even smaller than atoms.
The units of consciousness act as source points, or holes, through which energy falls into your system. (Session 688)
Using the analogy of black holes and white holes, units of consciousness are the source points of our energy, or the origin of our universe -- energy falls out from here, through this hole, into your universe, into your system, or one could say it is attracted by your system.
And in so doing, they form your system, and hence produce the experience of forward-moving time. (Session 688)
When it enters our space-time, it forms an experience of time moving forward. So why can we only feel time as one-directional? Because the thing that comes out of a white hole and forms our system is itself time — it is equivalent to time moving outward, and in our three-dimensional sequential time it manifests as forward movement. The inward and outward movement of time does not depend on our sequential time system, but when it is placed in our three-dimensional world, after it drops one dimension, it becomes backward and forward.
And the specific emergence of matter in space-time, and the world of all phenomena also came into being. (Session 688)
When units of consciousness leave your system, time collapses. (Session 688)
When units of consciousness leave our system and go to other reality spaces, our system's time collapses, and its effects are no longer experienced as sequential. Matter becomes more and more plastic — more and more changing according to your thoughts — until its psychic components become apparent. The material components become less apparent, the psychic components become apparent, and you can see the psychic nature of matter. Matter returns to its original state — the state of units of consciousness.
Then new units of consciousness constantly enter and leave your system, and within the overall system, units of consciousness perceive everything that happens through their organizational structures large and small. (Session 688)
Units of consciousness form organizations large and small — as small as atoms and particles, as large as planets and the Earth, all are its organizational forms. They can perceive everything that happens. This is the special nature of units of consciousness: they can not only be aware of themselves, but also be aware of everything that forms organizational structures with them.
Let us return to the moment point to explain. The moment point as we think of it is like a video clip — do not think of it as a photograph, think of it as something moving. Although for you it is only a few hundredths of a second, within that few hundredths of a second, there is a whole world within. It may be an event, it may be a daydream, it may be a meditation. Within the world inside that moment point, are there not countless possibilities?
When you experience these moment points sequentially, you feel that you cannot change them. But when you realize that these moment points exist, you can assume that you can pause, that you can enter these moment points — and you will discover that within this moment point there are so many possibilities. That moment point is not dead, it is alive; the plot inside is not dead either, it can be changed at any time.
So we humans generally live on the surface of moment points, gliding over them, flowing past them. We think a moment point has only one result, just a picture, like a photograph. You cannot even feel that it is a video, a plot; what you feel is a dead photograph. You merely glide through these photographs, set the photographs in motion, and what you see is the very coarse side — a three-dimensional solid real world connected at 24 frames per second.
You do not see that this world is composed frame by frame, and you certainly do not know that every frame in between can be changed, that every frame contains infinite possibilities. This is the difference in the level and angle of your cognition, how much you can see, how much you can feel. Ordinary people cannot reach this level, but after a period of practice, you have the ability to enter into some moment points.
Now this refers to biological cells, which are aware of all their possible variations, while within your time and structure, they maintain their unique position as part of any organ in your body. (Session 688)
Biological cells can be aware of all their possible variations, but within your time, they maintain their unique position as part of a bodily organ.
Broadly speaking, the cell is a vast material universe surrounding an invisible unit of consciousness. (Session 688)
In your terms, units of consciousness are always invisible — of course they are invisible, right? If you try to find what is behind them through outer appearances, or through these camouflages, you cannot see it. Let me give an example: you freeze the picture on your television, and no matter how large a magnifying glass you use, you cannot observe the skin of the apple in that picture — because it is already very coarse pixels. Whether 4K TV or 8K TV, human television today still cannot reach the level where you can see the cells of an apple's skin on the screen. So you can never see the real apple; what you see is only an image.
Do you understand this example I am giving? We can never see units of consciousness, but we can always see the phenomena that units of consciousness create, form, and influence — we can truly feel them, but we cannot find their existence, because they are invisible.
Smaller than the smallest phenomenon you can see with any kind of instrument, it is not material, so how can you see it. Yet to some degree, its activity can be understood indirectly through its influence on the phenomena you can see. (Session 688)
Through phenomena it can let you feel it — when it reaches a certain degree, when it is strong enough, when it has manifested enough, it can let you feel its existence. But note, that is not it itself, that is phenomena. It is always understood indirectly, never directly.
In your terms, the stage at which the previously mentioned EE units emerge is actually the critical point that activates units of consciousness. (Session 688)
Units of consciousness can never be seen; only their phenomena can be seen. This process can be illustrated with EE units — EE units are this critical point, the critical point between the invisible units of consciousness and the phenomena you can observe. The state between the invisible and the visible is the EE unit.
However, it is very important that you understand the inward and outward thrusts of time, and understand the sequential appearance of the moments flowing out from this. (Session 688)
The direction of time's inward and outward thrusts largely determines the sequential appearance of moment points. The sequence of these moment points determines where energy goes from and to, which also determines from which angle time is inward or outward.
For example, in the previous frame there is no apple, and in the next frame there is an apple — so how did the apple appear in between? This process is a result of the inward and outward movement of time between moment points. Understand it this way.
This thrust gives time its amplitude, which you have not even begun to understand yet. (Session 688)
The force of this inward and outward thrust of time determines the amplitude of time. Time is not singular, not fixed — the intensity of moment points is not the same, some are strong, some are weak.
Using video editing as an analogy, if you have done video editing, you know there is something called "keyframes." Keyframes are very important; only after you determine the keyframes can you make many subsequent changes and adjustments. Between keyframes, the frames in between are all non-keyframes. Compared with keyframes, non-keyframes are less important — their time amplitude, their importance is not as great. I can only use this analogy to explain it to you.
We currently only see the surface of moment points, only see a surface that we perceive and recognize. What is beneath the moment point? It is various organizational forms composed of units of consciousness. We humans can only perceive the one possibility that it manifests, while it itself is a superposition state of countless possibilities — all of this we do not know. Moreover, the content within this moment point is not the same, and the meaning is also different. You cannot say every moment point is the same, but you also can only say every moment point is the same. This is very hard to explain; you do not need to worry about it.
Humanity's Blind Spot Regarding Time
Once again, you live on the surface of moments. We humans still do not understand time — what does amplitude mean? Amplitude means that time has intensity, time has intensity. He says humanity does not know this yet. He stops there and does not go deeper.
Once again, you live on the surface of moments, and are completely unaware of the unofficial realities that have not been questioned, have not been recognized beneath them.
Within moment points there are realities we do not understand; we only recognize the meaning manifested on the surface of moment points. And all of this is related to the following two points:
Once again, all of this is related to your neurological acceptance of certain information rather than other information, and to a psychological prejudice.
The reason you have not recognized the content beneath moment points is that you only respond to information from the outer senses; you do not acknowledge or accept the information your inner senses give you. And then there is your psychological prejudice — what you consider real and unreal, what you consider actual and unactual. These two: one is your blocking of the sensory system, the other is your cognitive prejudice, both of which cause you not to see clearly the content beneath moment points.
This prejudice effectively prevents you from seeing other very definite biological communication that exists in all time.
What is biological communication? Do not forget that your body is composed of units of consciousness. Your cells, your nerve cells, are all composed of units of consciousness. There is communication among these cells, but you cannot perceive it.
I am trying to tell you something about the larger reality of your species.
I am telling you some things that you humans do not know. However, to do this fully, I must first break down some of your concepts about the beginning of time and about the early history of humanity.
Why has he been talking about time and units of consciousness all along? It is to make you first clear away this attachment to time, and those fixed ideas about the history of human development. If you carry sequential time, and carry the objective cognition that "human history developed this way," you will not be able to understand what he says later.
Units of Consciousness and Simultaneously Formed Systems
However, at first we will use some old terms, while hoping to gradually leave these old terms behind.
Units of consciousness form all systems simultaneously.
This means that everything in the universe was formed simultaneously. When units of consciousness formed our universe, it was formed simultaneously; there is no such thing as gradually evolving from single-celled organisms into rich multi-celled organisms. Single-celled organisms were single-celled organisms from the beginning, and mammals were mammals from the beginning. There is no evolutionary process — this is a misconception of us humans. When you can understand some basic properties of units of consciousness, you can understand what "all systems can be produced simultaneously" means.
After it formed these diverse material forms, it still retained the ability to perceive all possible variations of any biological species. It is not just one kind; it has other possible species.
There was never any straight-line development.
There was never the kind of sequential development Darwin described. From single-celled to multi-celled, from plants to animals, from reptiles to mammals, then to primates and to humans — there is no such linear relationship.
Instead, there were magnificent, still-continuing, infinitely rich parallel explosions of life forms and patterns in as many directions as possible.
There is no single thread; it is still parallel explosions, possibilities in as many directions as possible. Our universe is still in this creative process.
In your terms, there were animal-human hybrids that shared time and space, both of which lasted for centuries.
Human-animal hybrids, for several hundred years both existed. Animal-humans and human-animals are of course different — it is a question of which is primary. Animal-human hybrids are based primarily on animal genes, with some human gene segments added; human-animals are based primarily on human genes, with some animal gene segments added. If you have studied grafting in biology, you will understand what scion and rootstock are, and the different genetic relationships between them.
If you all fully understood, this is a material system in time, therefore cells die and are replaced. The units of consciousness within the cells know their own indestructibility, only changing form, yet maintaining the identity of all the cells they have ever tried.
Cells live and die, and they accept it calmly, because the units of consciousness that compose the cells know that the cell is only one of its organizational forms. This unit of consciousness can never be destroyed. The form of the cell is destroyed, but the pattern remains — the organizational structure composed of units of consciousness remains, because it is not material, and its organizational form does not disappear because the cell disappears. So it does not worry. According to this organizational pattern, the units of consciousness will form a new cell.
Although the cell physically dies, its inviolate essence is not betrayed; it simply is no longer material.
It returns to the mode of units of consciousness, returns to its original existence. That kind of death is more or less natural in your system. I will discuss this from many viewpoints here, and later I will thoroughly discuss your concept of death.
However, let me state here that all life is cooperative, and all life knows that its existence transcends its physical form.
The Wisdom of Cells and Human Identification
Your species' experience involved a certain extremely important development of consciousness, which made a certain specialization and a certain long-term identification with the body necessary.
Because of our identification with the physical body and with the outer senses, we develop a long-term identification with the body. If we did not identify with the body, we could not operate in this material world.
In the body's present reality, the cellular structure maintains magnificent effectiveness, yet knows that it is not bound by it.
Very effective, but it knows it is not bound by this body. This specific intense identification of human consciousness with identity is necessary in order to focus on concrete operations. The cell's identification with its own identity — it knows it is within a vast structure, but it is not bound by this structure. To some important degree, this also applies to animals.
Cells may gladly die, but human consciousness, and animal consciousness to some degree, with their definite loyalties, will not let go so willingly.
Cells can willingly die, because cells know they cannot die; what dies is only the form, and their cellular consciousness is eternal. But humans and animals cannot do this; we cling desperately and will not let go. The reason is that cells do not have the kind of long-term dependence on their form that humans have, while the long-term dependence of humans and animals on the body leads to unwillingness, to reluctance to let go. He says again that this is very normal, because humans have a very strong, definite center — that center is its ego consciousness.
Cells are individual, unique, and struggle for deserved survival.
Every cell has its right to survive. However, its time is limited; the lifespan of cells is limited. And the survival of the body depends on the innate wisdom of cells — what wisdom?
Cells must finally die so that the body can survive, and only through death can cells promote their own development, and thereby ensure their own greater survival.
So cells know that to die is to live. If every cell did not die, cells would become cancer cells — cancer cells are cells that do not die, and then the person dies. So cells know that to die is to live. But we humans do not think this way; we are especially afraid of this self doing away with itself.
However, human consciousness, and to some degree animal consciousness, is more definitely identified with the body.
Cells identify with the organizational structure of their units of consciousness. But if humans want to develop their own awareness, they must consciously ignore their own position within the Earth's structure, ignore their physical identity, and do so deliberately. Their experience of time seems to be an experience of their identity — because all our memories, all our life experiences and experiences, are based on time, are placed on a timeline. So if we want to truly attain awareness, we should first see time clearly, or remove it from our personal experience. If you still always use this timeline to consider problems, you are still far from attaining awareness, from attaining enlightenment.
His consciousness does not seem to flow into his body before birth, or flow out of it after death... He will forget that death has a proper time.
He will deliberately forget that death has a proper time. That is to say, when he should die, death is a kind of rebirth. He will deliberately forget that "death means rebirth" in order to maintain his state in this earthly identity. But if he wants to attain awareness, he must conversely understand: death means rebirth.
Service Among Cells and the Sacredness of Hunting
A natural message must replace the old knowledge.
Within the body, certain cells kill other cells — this is very normal. And in doing so, the living soundness of the body is maintained. What does this mean? We humans need to consume about 200 grams of protein per day5, but the average protein intake of humans per day is only about 70 grams6, so where does the remaining hundred-plus grams of protein come from? We find that it is actually these cells engulfing the aging cells in the body. Our cells will kill other cells — later scientists also proved this: the ready-made proteins in the body will not be wasted; cells will eat them7. Cells serve each other, and for each other's survival, they let themselves be eaten.
In the outer world, certain animals kill other animals. In your limited terms, for generations, you have had a situation in which humans and animals were both hunters and hunted.
In ancient times there was a period when humans hunted animals and were also hunted by animals. In those dim ages, from the standpoint of us humans, these activities were carried out with the deepest, most sacred understanding — we knew that hunting other animals, and also being hunted by other animals, were all sacred.
Again, the killed animals knew that they would later look out through the eyes of their killers, and gain a renewed, different kind of consciousness.
It merged with the consciousness of the one who ate it. The killer also understood that even in the process of killing there existed a remarkable sense of harmony, and knew that the material of his body would in turn be used by the Earth, to replenish the kingdoms of animals and other plants. The body would decompose, be buried in the ground, and become raw material for other animals and microorganisms.
Even when you cannot see those deep connections, such connections are sometimes invisible, as you know, they will continue to function.
Whether you see them or not, those inner connections are still functioning. Until human consciousness can in its own way rediscover this knowledge, consciously and voluntarily make use of it, and thereby allow consciousness to blossom.
In your terms, this will represent a great leap forward, because the self-centered aware individual will fully understand unconscious knowledge.
We begin to understand that unconscious knowledge, and choose our actions from within it. He will become a "conscious co-creator" — co-creator, co-creating this world with all things. Clearly this has not happened yet; humanity has not realized this. Because you only see the surface of moment points, and only see one line of human development. But beneath the surface of moment points, there are still many possibilities, and those many possibilities can also be understood as a process of time's inward movement.
Inward Movement and the Superposition of Possibilities
Let me give an example to explain what inward movement means. You can understand possibilities this way: if a moment point, besides the one possibility we see on the surface, also has many possibilities within it that have been superimposed all along, and each possibility brings new possibilities, and new possibilities bring even newer possibilities. After such a superposition of possibilities passes, from the perspective of time, it means that within this one moment point there is still time, and that time moves inward, endlessly. Because each possibility consumes a time, and each possibility brings new possibilities, all of which bring time. So from the perspective of time's inward movement — and also from the perspective of the inner, unmanifested time content contained in these possibilities — it can be understood as time's inward movement. As for time's outward movement, I have not yet thought of a better example to correspond to it.
However, even within your system, there are hints of other coexisting probable realities.
For example, multiple personality is a rare, occasional event in our world, but it hints at a possible version of human development. In that reality, in that parallel world, every human is a multiple-personality being, each person living three or four human lives simultaneously in one lifetime, living them simultaneously.
The dolphin is a case in point. In your line of probabilities, they are exotic creatures.
In another probable world, the dolphin is an exotic creature. Yet even now, you recognize the dolphin's great brain capacity. We know dolphins are very intelligent. To some small degree, we can see the range of their communication — dolphins can communicate with companions very far away through sonar systems8. And Seth says, you have only seen a very small range of dolphin communication; dolphins can communicate over a much larger range, which you do not yet know.
From your time perspective, there was a time on your Earth when there were many such species... water dwellers with brain capacities as good as your own, or even better.
From the way you humans view time, in another version of the probable Earth, there was a period when there was a group of marine creatures whose brain capacity was as large as humans', or even larger.
For example, your legends of mermaids, although highly romanticized, hint at another such development of species.
This legend cannot be without a source. Since so many people firmly believe they have seen mermaids, it means that such a probable species existed.
There were several species smaller than dolphins, but generally of the same body structure... and the ancient myths about the sea god arose from such species.
All were mammals, and their intelligence was beyond doubt. Our legends about the sea god — in English the sea god is called Poseidon9 — the ancient legends all came from this species. So these ancient myths all have origins.
Even now, dolphins have an extremely rich emotional life, and you are quite blind to that.
In this present age, dolphins still have an extremely rich emotional life, which we humans are still not very clear about. And it does not stop there — they have a much greater recognition of other species than you have of your own. Dolphins have a higher degree of recognition of other species than you do.
Dolphins possess a strong sense of personal loyalty, with an intimate family pattern, and highly developed individual and group recognition and interactive behavior.
They also have their own social structures. In other words, they are cooperative; they will especially try to help other species. You have seen many cases of dolphins saving people; if you search, you can find many. However, they do not keep pets — he glared at me gently, actually mocking Rob, because they kept several cats.
But there were also many, many different kinds of water-dwelling mammals at that time... some combining human and fish, though roughly along the lines of a chimpanzee-fish combination.
Those small creatures, small mixed creatures of chimpanzee and fish, swam at astonishing speeds, and could come ashore for days at a time.
In other probabilities, water-dwelling mammals were dominant.
In our probability world, land mammals are dominant; in another kind of probability world, aquatic mammals are dominant. They farm—just as you cultivate things in seawater, they cultivate things on the ocean. And only now are they learning how to operate on land for a period of time, just as you are only now beginning to learn how to maneuver underwater.
The physical universe, then, became a threshold of probabilities, and all possible species found their greatest fulfillment within that system, and each of them was neurologically tuned to their own time phase and their own time.
Every species is neurologically tuned to its own time phase, with its own perception and its own time, which is different from our time.
So the body itself, as it presently exists, is innately equipped with neurological responses that, to you, would seem biologically invisible.
You cannot sense these biological existences. Yet your consciousness and your beliefs are what direct these neurological perceptions. That is to say, when neurological signals such as vision and hearing are transmitted to the brain, how we interpret them is through our consciousness and beliefs.
At birth, and before structural learning has begun, you are far freer in that regard.
When you are just born, before you have begun learning what humans call modern structured knowledge, your consciousness's ability to direct neurological perception is stronger and less constrained. Once you have learned structured knowledge, that is when it goes wrong—you then use structured knowledge to perceive this world, and it places shackles on you.
The Infant's Simultaneous Perception
At the moment of birth, you could walk into yesterday just as easily as into tomorrow, if you could walk. And indeed, your perception simultaneously brings you time within and outside of temporal sequence.
At birth, you could walk in the reverse direction of time, and you could also walk in the forward direction of time—you could move toward the future, and you could also move toward the past. Your consciousness has this ability, only you do not feel that you have this ability. Your perception simultaneously brings you time within temporal sequence, as well as time outside of temporal sequence. The world within temporal sequence is this world of our space-time, and the world outside of temporal sequence is that inner world unconstrained by space-time. The moment you are born, you can operate in both worlds. In the physical world you can only move forward, you can only move toward tomorrow, you cannot move toward yesterday; but in the inner world, you can move in both directions.
But reactions to events outside of time will not bring the infant recognition.
The infant will not recognize these reactions outside the physical world. Because those things coming from the inner world cannot bring the infant physical satisfaction and resolution. For example, if he wants to be held, he has no way to do it except by crying to make adults notice him, and only then might they hold him; if he is hungry and wants to eat, he can only cry to make adults feed him. In this process he gradually discovers: only responding to immediate, direct sensory stimuli is the most effective. Those things coming from the inner world cannot resolve his physiological needs. Slowly he comes to recognize only external sensory stimuli, and gradually shuts out the things of the inner world—for an infant, those things are useless, after all.
This can be a frightening process, although it is accompanied by the assurances of adults.
For the infant, in terms of consciousness, he has come into this physical world from a pure conscious energy body. When he begins gradually learning to respond only to the physical world, this can be a very frightening process, because he is not familiar with that domain.
Outside of that domain, the infant sees both present and future without distinction, and I am speaking of images seen with the physical eyes.
The infant can see the future and see the past with his physical eyes. Although he cannot say so. So you will understand why many infants wail with great force, seeing things that you seem unable to see. For the infant, the past of the physical world is basically blank, so he simultaneously sees the present and the future. And he sees them with his physical eyes, without needing to meditate or open the third eye or use that kind of psychic vision as we do.
So the child's nightmares often serve as a biological and psychic release.
Children often have nightmares, and the reason they have nightmares is because they need to release those things they have seen and cannot understand.
During this period, the buried awareness beyond time explosively discharges.
It is in the process of his dreaming, within the dream state, that this knowledge beyond time, this awareness, can explosively discharge.
Because of facing parental conditioning, he is unable to respond effectively to the events he perceives.
The things he can perceive, his parents cannot see, so his parents condition him. He cannot respond effectively to those events he cannot perceive, so he can only release the energy coming from beyond time in his dreams.
The body, then, does have living mechanisms far more miraculous than you understand.
The body's abilities are extremely miraculous, greater than we understand.
It is the body's own precognition that allows the child to develop speech, to walk, and to grow.
Because the child can see the future, the body's precognition leads him to develop, to walk, to speak.
In the same way, humanity as you think of it is, on one level, aware of its own probabilities and future lines of development.
Humanity can also know roughly what its future development will look like. A child learning to walk may fall and get hurt, and yet he does learn—learning to walk requires paying a price. Humanity is the same: although humanity can see its future, on the road ahead there may be some setbacks, some mistakes, and it may fall. In the same way, humanity will do wrong things, and this is very normal.
Yet in responding to his own greater knowledge, he continues to seek out those areas of his own probable achievements.
When he responds to his own inner, previously unconscious knowledge, he continues to seek out his own probable achievements—those potentials, or the achievements of his probable selves that he can foresee in the future. In our human terms, this is bringing into play all his possible potentials.
Teacher Xiyu
注释与核实
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Source: Netflix, Watch "Lucy" (2014) (https://www.netflix.com/sg-zh/title/70307658) ↩
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Source: U.S. National Science Foundation, "Astronomers capture first image of a black hole," 2019 (https://www.nsf.gov/news/astronomers-capture-first-image-black-hole) ↩
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Source: National Geographic Society, "The Conservation of Matter During Physical and Chemical Changes" (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/conservation-matter-during-physical-and-chemical-changes/) ↩
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Source: National Taiwan University Digital Library of Buddhist Studies, The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra (https://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/sutra/chi_pdf/sutra3/T08n0253.pdf) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "about 200 grams"; upon verification, it should be "the safe intake of protein for a healthy adult is about 0.83 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, and a universal need for about 200 grams is not generally required." (Source: World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, United Nations University, "Protein and amino acid requirements in human nutrition," https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/43411/WHO_TRS_935_eng?sequence=1) ↩
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Source: Julia Reedy et al., "Global Intakes of Total Protein and Sub-types; Findings from the 2015 Global Dietary Database," 2019 (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6576294/) ↩
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Source: Geoffrey M. Cooper, The Cell: A Molecular Approach, 2000 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9957/) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "dolphins can communicate with very distant companions through their sonar system"; upon verification, it should be "bottlenose dolphins mainly communicate with companions through frequency-modulated whistles, with an estimated maximum communication range of up to 5,740 meters; echolocation sonar is mainly used for detecting objects." (Source: Frants H. Jensen et al., "Estimated communication range and energetic cost of bottlenose dolphin whistles in a tropical habitat," https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22280620/) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "the English sea god is called Saidongna (Poseidon)"; upon verification, it should be "the sea god in Greek mythology is named Poseidon, not 'Saidongna.'" (Source: Getty Research Institute, "Poseidon (Greek deity)," https://www.getty.edu/cona/CONAIconographyRecord.aspx?iconid=901000198) ↩