Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 708

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

Introduction

This chapter explains that consciousness operates through code systems, by which it distinguishes and connects different focuses of consciousness, probable selves, and the body; it shows that humanity's current material orientation is only one of consciousness's possibilities, and that the body inherently possesses self-healing, longevity, and self-maintenance abilities, and that body consciousness can continue to operate when the primary consciousness departs. Seth also gives an exercise of recalling yesterday and imagining tomorrow, for touching past lives and future lives, and discusses the problem of the channel Ruburt constantly verifying the material because he does not trust himself.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Consciousness operates through a code system, allowing different focuses of consciousness, probable selves, and their bodies to be both distinct from one another and interconnected.
• The body possesses abilities of self-healing, longevity, and self-maintenance; body consciousness can continue to function when the primary consciousness departs.
• The current civilization, centered on physical and ego consciousness, is only one orientation of consciousness; other civilizations have centered primarily on spiritual or psychic directions.
• The exercise of recalling yesterday and imagining tomorrow can train consciousness to break through linear time and touch forgotten past lives and future lives.
• Ruburt's core obstacle is that he was taught not to trust himself, and therefore he continually verifies the material, finding it difficult to rely directly on himself.

Main Text

The Consciousness Code System

The title of this time's Session 708 in Volume 2 of The "Unknown" Reality is: The Consciousness Code System, the Cycles on Earth, and the Body's Healing Abilities. This session began on Monday, September 30, 1974¹.

At the very beginning, Rob said that neither he nor Jane had expected that after Session 707 on July 1, the work on this book would have paused for so long -- a full fourteen weeks². From July 1 all the way to September 30, that is to say, for the entire three months of July, August, and September, they did nothing on it.

The following is a simple record of some of their activities during this period, arranged by topic rather than in chronological order. During this time, they held several deleted sessions -- that is, private sessions, which were deleted from publication at the time but were later all published in full.

Jane continued with her ESP classes. In those spontaneous situations, she often spoke for Seth. In the ESP class, Seth also frequently came through to speak, or used Sumari to sing, singing Sumari songs. The interruption in the book's dictation gave Rob time, and he often attended the ESP class, planning to continue doing so. And when he began attending the classes, he rediscovered that the loose structure of the class had the effect of facilitating some small psychic practices, which he very much enjoyed. Classes were held on Tuesday evenings, and often when he took a half-hour rest that afternoon, one of these experiences would occur -- one of those small psychic events. He recorded each episode, sometimes drawing illustrations to supplement his description of the class practices.

Rob said that during this pause, he had time to attend Jane's ESP class. The class itself was loose, without any particular theme. Occasionally they would bring in fragments from the books that Rob and Jane were currently organizing for discussion, but overall there was not much of a theme -- it was just a group of people gathering together, sharing feelings based on extrasensory experiences, and then Seth would occasionally come through to chat with everyone and answer their questions. And this kind of loose discussion and such an ESP class actually gave Rob a different kind of small psychic event, because it was more relaxed.

Jane's Workload

At the same time, Jane truly devoted her full energy to completing her psychic exploration, this book. Meanwhile, Rob steadily drew charts for her, and also drew illustrations for Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time -- that was another book by Jane, which should be a poem, a poetry collection. Since Rob had typed up Session 707 more than three months earlier, he had not looked at The "Unknown" Reality again. Last week, Jane reread all the material for this Seth book from beginning to end, taking a week to do so. Yet today she still had to remind herself of the content of Session 707. Very interesting.

Because Seth's material is not something where you read it once, understand it, or grasp it at the time, and then it is over. Because the thickness of this material, the richness of this material is immense, and if you expect to understand it after one reading, that is not very realistic. So Jane, as the primary transmitter, read it once herself, and she had almost no impression of even this one book.

Everyone must pay attention to this -- do not be superstitious and think that because Jane studied Seth for so long, because she spoke for Seth for so long, she herself must be somehow extraordinary in this regard. I emphasize again: Jane's extrasensory abilities were extremely strong, but her own understanding and application of the Seth material was not strong. Everyone must have this concept. She fulfilled her life's mission, her value fulfillment -- she brought the Seth material into this world, and that was her greatest role, and it should be said she accomplished it beyond the plan, beyond the task. Because at the very beginning, Seth actually only intended to transmit two books, namely Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality. The later ones were not actually within his formal plan, but because of Jane's excellent performance and stable transmission, Seth simply could not stop, and began speaking one book after another.

But Jane, in the midst of this massive transmission and channeling process, also wrote a large number of her own books -- novels, poetry, and various other books, such as The World View of Paul Cezanne³ and others, and also letters from a dead philosopher -- she never stopped with these things. So she did not have much time to study, to understand, or to systematically master the Seth material. We can call it a regret, or we can call it an arrangement of her own life, a decision of her own -- whether she studied it or used it was not the most important thing. And in practice she did use it, just not as diligently in study or in application as some of us. Some good ideas, some good things she kept using all along, but in some areas she did not systematically study and apply them.

Everyone must not think that because she was the transmitter, she must necessarily be thus and so. Just look at her time and energy -- writing these books alone already exhausted her. Not just the Seth books, but her own novels number more than a dozen. You can imagine: from the time she began transmitting the Seth material, she lived only twenty-one years in total. We have been discussing the Seth material up to now for over a year and a half. In this year and a half, we have only been interpreting, only understanding, while Jane had to transmit it, then type it, proofread it, and publish it -- how much work was that? And we have only covered a few books, while she spoke seven, six or seven books. And the Seth material that came through totals thirty-one books, plus the dozen or so novels she wrote herself -- the books she produced in her lifetime amount to nearly fifty. For one person to intensively publish the text volume of a full fifty books within twenty-some years in a single lifetime -- most people cannot do that, and anyone who has written books knows it.

Consciousness Operates by Means of Code Systems

The session began at 8:50. Jane felt a little nervous, as she often did after a pause in the book's dictation. Seth came through and said:

Consciousness operates by means of what you may call code systems.

This must be remembered. These systems are numberless; these encryption systems are numberless. What does that mean? It means that every consciousness, and the consciousnesses of different frequencies corresponding to your consciousness, transmit between each other by means of encryption, by means of digital encryption.

This encryption method is actually more akin to quantum encryption, that is, a technique of quantum communication. First of all, it exists beyond the speed of light -- remember, the transmission of consciousness first of all exceeds the speed of light. Then the operation of consciousness is also transmitted in a manner similar to quantum communication; it is an encryption algorithm that we have not yet mastered. So why can this consciousness not be cracked? Because it is encrypted. Unless you have a similar, corresponding decryption system, you cannot crack it.

This also leads to the most core thing -- if it did not do this, it could not manage. Because consciousness is infinite and inexhaustible; if it could not be encrypted, then the probable consciousnesses in so many worlds of probability, if they were all strung together, it would be chaos. It can be strung together, and it can also be separated. In other words, at its backend, at the level of the entity, at the higher level of consciousness, it can be strung together, but clearly and distinctly, not mixed together. That highest consciousness clearly knows which encryption system every state of consciousness comes from, and which encryption algorithm is its own. Every encryption algorithm is different, but it clearly knows each one. And moreover, to that final higher consciousness, all of these are unencrypted, because it can decrypt all encryption systems in real time.

But then, it only works with its own set of systems -- for example, behind it there is an entity, and all the consciousnesses under that entity are ones it can process, ones it can encrypt. But outside of that entity, the others, it also cannot process. Between them, each has its own set of systems.

The Pairing of Body and Consciousness

In this way, it can maintain every reincarnation of yours, every probable self, every body -- we say the body exists in constant flickering, and it is simultaneously in any place. So how does this body exist? Which consciousness does it want to pair with? For example, the me who goes to drink water -- that is one probable self; the me who goes to drink coffee -- those are two selves. Then these two selves have two sets of physical systems, two sets of material systems, two sets of consciousness systems -- how do they correspond to each other? They use this encryption system.

The self who goes to drink water and the consciousness of drinking water -- those two are a pair; the body that goes to drink coffee and the consciousness of drinking coffee -- those two are a pair. You can understand it as the kind of quantum encryption method in quantum communication; you could call it the entanglement of consciousness. Because the body can also be called a materialized manifestation of consciousness. So they can be completely separated, living in two completely different worlds, not interfering with each other. They have a certain connection; the connection is internal, at the bottom layer, but when no connection is needed, they do not mix.

It is like all the cell phones we talk about -- the transmission between each phone and another is encrypted. The transmission between your phone and the server, or between your phone and the base station, is encrypted. This encrypted thing can only be received by your phone as the relevant signal; otherwise would it not be chaos? If someone else's text message were delivered to your phone, if someone else's phone call came through on your phone, how would that be possible? The news you are reading, and someone else's phone also shows the same news -- that is also impossible.

Of course, current communication technology has developed very quickly. What we use most now is CDMA or TD-CDMA, or more advanced 5G technology. Through code-division multiple access, it can even carry different information within one frequency, one bandwidth, one code, making very efficient use of limited bandwidth and frequency to transmit more and more data volume. For example, with current 5G, the extreme download speed in the United States uses millimeter-wave technology, reaching speeds of three or four gigabits per second; while in most countries, 5G transmission speeds can only reach at most one gigabit per second. Fiber optics have also entered homes now; bandwidth is generally 300 megabits or 500 megabits, and domestically it basically starts at 200 megabits, with the fastest being 1000 megabits. No matter how developed our communication technology becomes, compared with the transmission between souls or consciousnesses, it is like a small witch meeting a great witch -- completely not on the same level.

So many people cannot understand: why is there so much content in consciousness? How can there be so many probable selves, parallel selves? How is this information transmitted? How is it achieved, this enormous data volume unimaginable to humans, that makes all of this happen simultaneously? All reincarnations, all selves, all events, everything happening at the same time -- how much bandwidth would be needed to achieve this?

This is -- I cannot say he actually said this -- he used technologies of quantum communication or even beyond quantum communication. Our human understanding of quantum communication is still not very high, so to put it simply, Seth was also speaking metaphorically. You can imagine it as a higher-dimensional encryption algorithm; do not imagine it as our ordinary passwords, passphrases, or anything like that.

In communications there is a frequency-hopping technology that can serve as an analogy. What frequency hopping means is that in military communications, to prevent the other side from intercepting information, it hops frequencies. For example, right now I am communicating on a certain frequency, and the next second I hop to another frequency to communicate; the receiver and the sender hop simultaneously, and the hopping algorithm is set in advance by both sides. Current frequency hopping is all random frequency hopping; there is no fixed frequency, and as for where it hops to, it tells the next one through encryption in the previous communication. You can crack it, but by the time you finish cracking it, it has long since hopped away, and you cannot catch up at all. Within one second it hops countless times, and this kind of frequency is almost impossible for you to crack. This frequency-hopping technology is a particularly vivid analogy for the different probabilities of consciousness. It says a sentence here, says a sentence there, and when you superimpose them together, that is the entire information stream.

You just need to understand that our consciousness works this way. Otherwise you will not understand; you will always think it operates in plain language, in a broadcast manner. It does not. It is a very, very advanced encryption system.

Consciousness, therefore, specializes itself through operation within certain code systems.

Every consciousness is unique; we know this too. But how can consciousness achieve its own uniqueness? It is achieved through this encryption system. Its content is roughly similar -- I want to go eat, I want to go drink water, to give the crudest example -- but through the encryption system, the subject corresponding to this consciousness of going to eat is different from others.

Those systems help direct certain kinds of focus.

Those frequencies can direct the focus of particular fields, bring in a certain kind of important meaning, while at the same time blocking out other data. That is, when I select a certain frequency, or a certain encryption algorithm, that means other content that is not of this frequency, or not within this encryption algorithm, cannot enter. You can connect with certain frequencies precisely because the two of you can match; if you cannot connect, that is also normal, because your encryption systems are different and your frequencies are different.

Here again the issue of focus is brought up. It is actually the focus of consciousness. This life of ours is a focus of consciousness; the things we pay attention to are also the focus of our consciousness. We have chosen our life trajectory within these parallel space-times, or within these matrices of probability -- it is our focus of consciousness that is choosing. Every probability is a different focus of consciousness, and each of these different focuses of consciousness is an independent encryption system, ensuring that it is different from others. Its own uniqueness is guaranteed by this encryption system. In this way, different focuses of consciousness will not be strung together, nor mixed together; signals will not be confused, nor will any disorder appear. For example, you cannot say that I went to drink milk and yet a coffee taste appeared in my mouth -- unless what you drank was coffee milk. Otherwise, coffee is coffee and milk is milk; two different focuses of consciousness cannot be mixed together.

Those other data may, of course, be quite important in different code systems.

What he means is that when you choose one probability, it is equivalent to placing your focus of consciousness there; you have made it the focus of your attention. And those other probabilities you did not choose may not be the same as your system. But then, in other systems, those become the focus; and what is the focus in your system may become a probability in other systems.

In their own way, however, these systems are connected with each other.

You see, they are encrypted, and their information is mutually isolated, yet they can also connect with each other -- this is their miraculous aspect. At the level of the focus of consciousness, they are independent; each one is unique, operating at its own frequency. But their backend, their bottom layer, has communication; at that layer the data is unencrypted, and one could also say it is decrypted at any time and encrypted at any time. The data of other probabilities is supplementary to you. You focus only on your own focus of consciousness, while other focuses of consciousness are merely a probability to you, but not primarily concentrated upon.

Light Values

These code systems involve molecular structure and light values.

If you want to ask specifically what the physical composition of these code systems is, or what their physical operating principle is, then many people would ask him: exactly how is this encryption done? Seth had to say a little about it; he said it is related to molecular structure and light values.

The term "light values" is actually a term he coined. In the field of photography or optics, it refers to a data level of the brightness of light, indicating what the absolute brightness of the light is. Nowadays it is generally expressed in nits; for example, Apple's latest phone has a peak brightness that can reach over 1000, 1500, 1600 nits; its newest iPad Pro 12.9-inch with mini-LED can reach a peak brightness of 1600 nits and a sustained brightness of 1000 nits. Our ordinary monitors are generally three or four hundred nits, which is already considered quite good. Some of Sony's newer mini-LED televisions and OLED televisions can also reach over 1000 nits -- a television with brightness reaching over 1000 nits is extremely bright; when playing HDR video with a sun or a light in it, it is basically almost the same as the brightness in real life.

But the light values Seth speaks of here are a completely different matter, because this was the 1970s; there were no LCD televisions yet, no such parameters. What do light values refer to here? They refer to the information contained within light after transmission through optical communication, the data within light.

If you have studied fiber-optic communication, you can roughly understand how light is used to transmit information. The invention of optical fiber was in 1966, jointly researched by Charles Kao of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a foreign scientist. Kao received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009⁴. Current optical fiber can basically achieve a theoretical transmission distance of 150,000 kilometers without any amplification or relay. The transmission bandwidth within a single optical fiber is now 2.5G, and 100 fibers would be 250G. Light has scattering and refraction, so optical fiber must transmit within an enclosed channel; it cannot transmit in open space, otherwise the signal becomes scattered. And can the light in nature, in our daily lives, transmit information? Of course it can; the principle is the same, except we humans have not yet mastered this technology. We can only transmit data within limited, enclosed optical fibers.

But our consciousness has long since mastered this ability. However, this light of its is not the same kind of light as in our three-dimensional world; it is in quotation marks. The light of our three-dimensional world is also a camouflage, also a kind of psychic enzyme, a camouflaged catalyst. Without this light, we could not see anything in the three-dimensional world. The most basic photosynthesis of plants, converting light energy into chemical energy, provides the fundamental core for all life on Earth. The energy on our Earth ultimately all comes from light. Petroleum and natural gas are also ancient plants and animals that underwent fission and decomposition, finally becoming the petrochemical energy we use today. All of this, all of it -- without light, there would be nothing. Chlorophyll, under the action of carbon dioxide and water, converts light energy into the energy within plants; in chemical terms, that is ATP, and ATP is then converted into starch. So without light, there is nothing.

But light not only provides energy; light also carries information. Yet we humans still do not know how to use light to transmit information in an open environment, but our consciousness does. Our soul, the consciousness at a higher level, has long since been proficient in applying these things. Of course, you must understand that what it uses is not the light of this three-dimensional world we just spoke of; what it speaks of is that true light -- and the more this is discussed, the more complex it becomes. In the early sessions there is a special discussion of it, so let us set it aside for now.

And in a certain fashion, you use light values as precisely and effectively as you use the alphabet.

Of course, it is even more precise than the alphabet.

Certain kinds of life, for example, obviously react to spectrums of light with which you are not familiar. But beyond that, there are electromagnetic fields, or rather extensions of electromagnetic fields, completely unknown to you, to which other life forms react.

The spectrum of light known to humans is very narrow. We humans can only see the colors of light from red to violet; beyond this range, infrared and ultraviolet, we humans cannot see or sense them. But other animals or other life forms can sense them. Although we humans cannot sense them with our bodies, we can invent tools and instruments to detect them. The microwave ovens we use now employ another kind of electromagnetic wave -- 2.4GHz electromagnetic waves to heat food; mobile communications, network communications, satellite communications, microwave communications all use electromagnetic waves, all outside the visible light range.

Again, all of these code systems are interrelated, in the same way that their systems themselves are interrelated.

It is not isolated; at the bottom layer there is connection.

In the same way, the private psyche contains within it hints and clues as to other alternate realities.

Every person has a private psyche, and within it are included not only the clues of this life's experiences, but also the hints and clues of those alternate realities of probability that did not happen. They are connected.

These operate, so to speak, as secondary codes beneath your officially recognized existence.

Beyond the history acknowledged by our life experiences, it operates by means of secondary codes. Secondary codes are relative to our primary reality, but to other realities, they are also primary codes.

Such secondary systems can tell you much about the potentials of human reality.

That is, all the secondary codes -- in your subconscious there are many potentials of human reality that you do not know, or that you do not know within probable realities. Those that are latent may at any time be raised to primary importance. Those latent things are not useless; at the appropriate time, or at any time when needed, they will be raised to become primary code systems. In other words, they become your primary focus of consciousness, and become real events in your world. He again uses another angle to say that probable events can also become real events.

Such secondary systems also point out the possible directions of development, for the individual or the species, as far as humanity and the individual are concerned.

This probable reality points out the directions in which we may possibly develop.

All of the probable developments possible to humanity, therefore, exist to some degree within each person.

All the probabilities of human development actually exist within every person. The directions of every person added together are the direction of all humanity; the two are mutually complementary.

Any biological or spiritual progress of which you can conceive will certainly not come from an exterior agency.

The biological or spiritual progress you can imagine does not come from outside, but from within outward, from the heritage of consciousness made flesh. That is, our physical bodies all come from consciousness, and that consciousness not only becomes our present physical body, but also has its own blueprint for future biological or spiritual development -- this is the inner blueprint discussed earlier. So do not seek it from outside.

Humanity's Unique Direction

Generally speaking, those alive in this century have chosen a particular kind of orientation.

We who live in this era have chosen a particular orientation. Humanity has chosen, through certain manipulations of the body, to place its experience within certain aspects, and those aspects bring about a reality with its own uniqueness.

In other words, man has not driven himself into a dead end. He has been studying the nature of his consciousness, using his consciousness as if he were separate from nature, and therefore he views nature and the world with a particular kind of perspective. That perspective finally makes him feel isolated, lonely, and to a considerable degree, powerless.

Present-day humanity prefers to use technological means to view this world; we isolate ourselves from the natural world. But we have not walked into a dead end -- this is not a dead end either; this is just one of the ways consciousness is used. Consciousness has many ways of being used, and one of them is to completely separate oneself from the nature that one has produced, not acknowledging the existence of this oneness, nor acknowledging the importance of oneness. At this level, at this spiritual level, there is no good or bad, right or wrong -- do not say that this way is bad and that way is good; they are all among the various probabilities of consciousness.

We have developed a powerful ego consciousness and invented so much technology, so many techniques. Although it seems we are getting farther and farther from nature, and turning more and more away from the fundamentals of our reality, does it not also enrich another possibility within reality? That is, when our ego consciousness develops to its extreme, when our technology develops to its extreme, what kinds of things will we create -- and these are things that, when you do not use this ability, cannot be created. For example, if we had all learned to explore inwardly, and learned telepathy, we probably would never have invented something like the cell phone. But there is no good or bad here, because telepathic ability is just as powerful as a cell phone; it does not need a cell phone. But from the angle of this exploration of consciousness, is not the possibility of developing cell phone technology, in a certain sense, a blank? So he needs to explore this aspect.

Even so, our consciousness still feels very uncomfortable, because you are cut off from your own source -- how could you be comfortable? He is learning how to use the light of his own consciousness, and to discover a way of using his particular method.

The Direction and Possibilities of Consciousness

He says that humanity is learning, with that kind of special focus, to discover what it can do and what it cannot do. What humanity is now experimenting with is this: I will develop using this purely physical focus mode, and I will see what I can do and what I cannot do.

In other words, he is discovering -- he still needs other light. The light of ego consciousness alone is not enough. It has always relied on only a small part of the entire inner searchlight, and that searchlight can be used in many directions.

He says our ego consciousness is like a flashlight, or a searchlight; it is only a very small part of your entire light source. And your consciousness itself has many light sources, which can shine in all directions. But we humans only focus on the tiny space of ego consciousness, using only this one small searchlight to explore this vast universe. And the most frightening thing is that this searchlight only shines outward, and never looks inward.

Now, let us look at how other probable civilizations developed. They do not use this method; how do they develop? They also follow directions that are inherent in human consciousness, and that are still waiting to be effectively used. Let us look at how they use them.

He says, I am speaking in terms of your history, because before the historical system you know, human beings did indeed experiment with these other directions. Before our human civilization, there were other civilizations that also experimented with other directions, and achieved some degree of success. But this does not mean that present-day humans once fell from a higher spirituality to your present state. He says other human civilizations once reached higher levels, but that does not mean that your present humanity has fallen from a higher spirituality to a lower state. Because spiritual exploration does not distinguish high from low, noble from base; it is simply different levels, different angles, different directions of exploration. There is no higher or lower, only difference.

All right, first he gives humanity a reassurance, telling us not to belittle ourselves. Then he continues.

Historical Cycles and the Extremes of Ego Consciousness

He says that the formation of consciousness, secular experience, and the planning out of the sequence of history, have cycles. Your consciousness forms your secular experience, and human history has a time cycle. So besides your own species, there have been other kinds of humanity.

From a historical perspective, history always moves in cycles -- a civilization is born, and in the end that civilization disappears, and then a new civilization is born. Several human civilizations have already arisen on Earth. According to Seth, the one we are in now is already the fourth. Each civilization dealt with this physical world in its own way, and therefore some took other directions that you did not choose.

However, those paths are also secondary to, or latent beneath, your private and collective experience. Although our humanity did not take them this time, they still remain latent beneath each of us, or beneath the collective unconscious of all humanity. Do not think that we cannot obtain that consciousness, that experience. The fact that this humanity did not choose it does not mean we cannot attain it. These possible paths of development -- in other words, our humanity could also have chosen such a path of development, but we chose this one path: the path with matter as the main focus of attention. As for the other civilizations, they are within you, because their route is also within you; you could also develop into what they were. So they present alternatives that you, privately or collectively, may choose or not choose according to your own will.

That is to say, whether as an individual or as humanity, you can choose what you want. If you want to walk humanity's present path -- material development -- then walk it; and do those other realities, centered on non-material, spiritual development, exist? They exist just the same. Our humanity could also choose that path. For example, if we suddenly changed direction starting in 2035, then it is very possible we would turn toward that direction.

Of course, each system brings its own culture, art, science, and medicine. Each civilization is different, and they far exceed your present understanding. Whether in its "technology," art, science, or medicine, all surpass our present comprehension.

The True Potential of the Body and Its Self-Healing Ability

The physical body is basically equipped to maintain itself as a healthy and long-lived organism. Our body can actually be long-lived, living to over a hundred years old, and be very healthy and normal. The understanding of the cells provides very natural functioning and all kinds of inner healing methods. The cells are far wiser than we humans; they have automatic, spontaneous, natural functioning, and also various inner healing methods, all of which surpass our human wisdom.

Between the body and the environment, there is a physical area of interaction beyond your recognition. Between your body and the natural environment, there is a physical -- not only spiritual -- area of interaction beyond our understanding.

This can explain why many people, when they practice fasting for fourteen days or ten days, can still function normally; some people can even live for a very long time. In ancient India there was a method of spiritual practice that shut down the body's needs, reducing the body's needs to the minimum. The longest case -- I seem to recall someone once mentioned this history -- this person was shut down for forty years.

He was a person of very high attainment. He told others: bury me underground, bury me for forty years, and remember that after forty years you must dig me out. And so that person buried him. At the time it was quite a sensation, I think it was in the eighteen hundreds⁵, and they buried him. After he was buried, the agreement was forty years, but later people forgot about it. There was an expert who studied this field, and he saw the news reports from that time, and found that in the eighteen hundreds⁵, there had been a person who had done such and such, and at the time it had become sensational news. When he looked at the date, more than forty years had already passed, so he hurried to dig him out. Everyone else had long forgotten him, but this busybody dug him out. After being dug out, he came back to life; after recovering, he lived for another three years, and then passed away.

So many people say: then through this method I can prolong my life, I can enter fasting, let the body enter a state, and then I can achieve immortality, just like hibernation. Actually, from this example you can see that it does not work. You cannot say that in this state you can live forty years longer than others, and that when you come out you will be the same as everyone else. From this person's example -- because the specific information is too scarce -- we can only say that this person lived for another three years and then passed away. But the fact that this person could survive for forty years without eating or drinking, and even, one could say, in an environment without oxygen, is enough to verify what Seth says here: that between each person's body and the environment there is mutual communication and exchange of energy.

Here, there is a dynamic of which you are unaware, which unifies the health of animals, plants, and humans. This dynamic refers to the flow among animals, plants, the environment, and people -- the flow of matter within it, the mutual transmission and flow of material energy.

He gives the simplest and most mundane example: if you live in a fairly balanced, good, and healthy environment, the plants and domestic animals in your home will also be very healthy. You form your environment, and you also become a part of it, but you often forget that relationship, and react to it.

What he means is that you form your environment; you can make your environment very comfortable, and then the animals and plants in that environment will also grow very well. Everyone has felt this -- whether a field is good or not, you can sense it immediately. If the plants and flowers in it all grow very well, then the field is good; if you plant flowers there and they do not live, or you raise fish and the fish die, then your environment is actually not especially good. Here you must understand that the environment is created by you, but many times people forget this, forget that the environment is created by themselves, and then they react to that environment, saying, oh, this environment is bad and is affecting me. In fact, they created that environment.

This is the question of feng shui that ancient China often spoke of. Many people have always been talking about feng shui, and this is what it means. But in the final analysis, it is still what I said before: this is created by yourself. Some people can cultivate a feng shui and make it flourish. If a person's beliefs are not good, then even if others live well in a large house, as soon as he moves in it immediately goes bad. Because his beliefs are not good. It is not that the external feng shui is at work; it is your inner self that is at work. Here you must know which is primary: it is not because the feng shui of that place makes the plants grow well, and then you will also become better inside it; it is because your beliefs are relatively upright, and you are relatively good, that the field of that region, that location, becomes relatively good.

Ideally, the body has the ability to maintain itself in excellent health. And it can not only maintain itself well, but also maintain itself at the highest peak of its own physical achievement.

Then the achievements of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body's true abilities. This year's Olympics still do not know whether they can start on schedule; so far it seems they will start normally, except that it will be an Olympics without spectators.⁶ In human history, this is also the first sports event without an audience, which can be broadcast live on television, but with no spectators. I do not know what that kind of program will feel like.

However, within your belief systems, those athletes must train, and concentrate all their attention in that direction, and therefore often sacrifice other parts of their own experience. But their performance lets you see what the body can accomplish.

Actually, he wants to tell you: this ability exists in everyone. Since he can do it, you can do it too. Does it necessarily require long-term training to obtain? Some do, some do not. Of course, competitive sports today have reached a very professional level, and it is very difficult without professional training. But those who truly perform at the Olympics are often non-professional athletes. I have said before that they are usually doctors, lawyers, who simply love a certain sport. Only some special countries cultivate professional athletes in these sports.

Strictly speaking, professional athletes should not be allowed to participate in the Olympics. Professional athletes have their own professional competitions and professional leagues; for example, football has various championships and club competitions, basketball has the NBA, and ice hockey and baseball are the same. According to the rules, these professional athletes cannot participate in the Olympics. The Olympics are for amateur athletes whose focus is on participation. But now this rule exists in name only -- he says, I am a college student, I am from a sports university, so can you say whether that identity counts as amateur or professional? It is also very hard to define.

Again ideally speaking, the body is equipped to rid itself of any disease -- barring accidents -- and to maintain its stability until the age you call eighty or ninety.

Therefore, in the ancient Huangdi Neijing⁷, this was specifically discussed. The emperor asked Qi Bo why modern people were no longer capable⁸. The emperor's time was already very ancient from our perspective. He said, why did ancient people all live to over a hundred years old, and still be very normal and healthy? Why do modern people, at just over fifty, already begin to fail? Indeed, in rural China, people who do physical labor are already very old at fifty or sixty, and their bodies are already failing. Then Qi Bo said a lot of things, which I will not expand on here; in the final analysis, it comes down to your state of mind.

But we humans now cannot achieve that state of living to a hundred and still being healthy. We can now maintain an average life expectancy of about seventy-eight years, which is already not bad. Average life expectancy means that many people live to eighty or ninety, and many can only live to fifty or sixty; added together and averaged, is it not just over seventy? Average life expectancy is extending, but often at a very slow rate, extending by one or two years.

However, in the best of circumstances, that change will bring about spiritual change. For example, when you leave on vacation, you close up the house -- in these ideal terms, death would involve the closing of your own house, but it would not collapse around you.

Simply put, you must first understand that the physical body is like a house. When you go out to play, it is like your soul and consciousness going elsewhere, but this house remains here, like the physical body. You cannot say that the house has collapsed, and when your consciousness returns the house is gone. But it does not mean that if your house is gone, or your body is gone, your consciousness no longer exists. What it means is that the health of your body can give you a very stable physical existence while your consciousness goes out exploring. Otherwise, you would have to wait until the next reincarnation to have another stable physical existence, and then your journey in this world would lack such a vehicle of the flesh.

Now, certain individuals have seen this remarkable natural healing ability of the body. Doctors sometimes encounter this phenomenon of self-healing; for example, a patient with a so-called terminal illness suddenly recovers, and the patient does not know how he recovered, and the doctor does not know either. This kind of miraculous recovery is simply an example of nature unhindered. As long as humans do not interfere with it, humanity has this self-healing ability.

As I mentioned earlier, the complete physician would be a person who understands the true nature of the body and its potential. He would then transmit this concept to others, transmit the ability of self-healing to others, and encourage them to trust the reliability of the body. This is what a complete physician should do.

Certain abilities of the body seem unbelievable to you -- you feel the body is not that powerful, because you do not have evidence to support them. If you believe it is impossible, then it really becomes impossible; if you believe the body has the ability to heal, then it really does.

Many organs can completely replace themselves, and diseased parts can be replaced by new tissue. This is a very miraculous thing, and something humanity has never understood. Some people think that if a part of a person's organ is lost, then it is finished. You can look at an introduction Teacher Xiyu once gave, and you can also search online for people without brains -- people without brains are a very miraculous thing, and to this day scientists cannot explain it.

Some people are born without a brain; the cerebrum is empty. Some lose it later due to various accidents, or some people's brains dissolve because of illness. Most people, after losing brain matter, are finished -- either paralyzed, or dead, or some bodily functions stop working. But there are always some special people who are very miraculous: they are born without a brain, yet live a life just like ordinary people. When scientists see such cases, their mouths often hang open and they do not know how to close them; they truly cannot understand it, and it overturns all their understanding. You can search online and see.

Many people unknowingly develop cancer, and then get rid of it, healing themselves. An appendix removed by surgery sometimes grows back. Practically speaking, these powers of the body are also quite achievable biologically, but they can only be realized through a complete change of focus and belief.

This is very normal. For example, anyone who has had stomach surgery knows that even if five-fifths, or three-quarters, of your stomach is removed -- in the most extreme case, 75% is gone -- the stomach will still grow back on its own; it will slowly grow back over time. Although our arms cannot grow back after being severed, our stomach can. Some organs can; when some organs are damaged, other organs can take over and complete part of their functions. The brain I just mentioned is one example.

How can the brain be so miraculous? How can it still function without a brain? If you study it carefully, you will find that actually people have another brain in their intestines. Inside the human intestines -- especially in the large intestine -- there is another brain. Our ordinary brain has about one hundred billion nerve cells⁹. In terms of quantity, our large intestine has about one billion. It may not be as intelligent as the brain, but it is enough to handle ordinary matters. Because in our daily lives, we do not need the brain for anything too complex. If our brain's computing power is 100, ordinary people use less than 1% of the brain's capacity; those extreme scientists who can use 4% or 5% are already very impressive -- people like Einstein were already extraordinary. If you say you can develop 10% of the brain, then you would already exist like a god, which is very rare.

So what is the rest of the brain doing? In an earlier session, Seth specifically discussed that many areas of the brain are undeveloped and unused.

So how do you heal? You only need a change of belief and focus to change your body.

You insist on separating yourselves from nature, and within the automatic organization there is no trust in the biological aspect of your body. You separate yourself from nature, and then you do not believe in the abilities of the body on the biological level. You do not feel that it and nature can give and take from each other -- that nature will automatically give its help. Your body is also a part of nature, and nature itself has a very strong self-healing ability, right?

And your religious concepts have done even more to alienate your physical body from spirituality. Do not even mention religion; many religions are extremely opposed to the body, requiring you to eliminate the needs of the body, demeaning the desires of the body as utterly worthless, telling you not to trust it.

From another angle, in your reality, you often identify consciousness with the body. In religion, you are not allowed to believe in your body, and even less in the body's desires; while in our ordinary lives, you equate consciousness with the body, identifying with the body too much -- you think of your consciousness as something forever inside your physical body.

However, many individuals have discovered that they are fully conscious and aware outside the body -- including Jane and me. When many people have this kind of experience, they discover that consciousness is not inside the body; consciousness can be outside the body. Not to mention those who have out-of-body experiences; many who have not also have this experience. Those near-death experiences, or many other miraculous feelings -- anyone who has felt them can understand: consciousness is not inside the body; consciousness can be outside the body.

Body Consciousness

Then he says: therefore, under certain circumstances, when the primary consciousness leaves your body, the body can still maintain its own functioning. Then body consciousness -- he has a new term called body consciousness -- is quite capable of providing that overall balance. On certain levels of the sleep state, this fact does indeed occur.

When your consciousness is not participating, your body has a consciousness of its own, and this body consciousness can control the normal functioning of the body. For example, during sleepwalking, this often happens. The body is active, while the primary consciousness has not awakened; it is not operating your body, but is elsewhere. In such cases, the body can also carry out tasks, and often operates with an astonishing sense of balance; you usually cannot do it this well, but it can do it this well.

Joking aside, there was a person who came home drunk, parked the car in the underground garage, and in the morning did not know how he got home or how he drove back. Of course, this is very dangerous, so drunk driving is strictly prohibited worldwide and subject to criminal punishment. But I am just talking about this matter -- the next day when he got up and went downstairs, he saw that the car he had parked was better than when he normally parked it carefully; he had never parked it so well, so straight, so centered, and yet when drunk he parked it so well that he found it unbelievable. There are also many sleepwalkers who do strange and wondrous things; we will not go into that. Search for sleepwalking and you will find many cases to tell you.

Again, this kind of skill hints at bodily abilities that are usually not used: even when you are completely unconscious, your body can still function. That means that ordinarily you do not need to manage the body so much; it will take care of itself very well. Because its beliefs -- the primary consciousness in normal waking life -- often hinder this kind of operational ability. When you are normally awake, you hinder this ability, because you have all kinds of beliefs, fears, and worries; your distrust of the body will hinder the body's spontaneous ability to control itself through body consciousness.

Let us stand up and look at body consciousness -- this new term. What is body consciousness? It is like an animal, equipped to perform beautifully in the environment. You would call it mindless -- in English it is called mindless, casual doing, because it appears not to use reason. For the purpose of this discussion only, imagine that the body has a body consciousness that is perfect in movement.

He says let us do an imagination exercise; this is only a practice. Imagine that your body has another consciousness that operates perfectly, that can make your body operate perfectly, with no illness at all, and no defects at birth, but without all your overruling ego-dominant consciousness.

You can imagine: at birth you have a body consciousness, but no ego consciousness. What kind of state would such a life be? It would be a wholly animal-like life -- it has no existence of ego consciousness, and is entirely operated by body consciousness.

There have been human beings whose nature was of this kind. In your terms, they seemed like sleepwalkers; from our human perspective, they had no ego consciousness operating them, and their body consciousness controlled their bodies. We see them as if they were sleepwalking. But their bodily abilities exceeded yours -- they did not need the control of ego consciousness, and they were indeed as agile as animals. They were not unconscious either; they were simply dealing with a different kind of awareness. In your terms, they did not have an overall purpose; their purpose was simply to live -- living was their purpose. Just as we say animals seem to have no overall consciousness, and cannot cooperate, each being independent, only seeking to complete their own survival.

Their primary point of consciousness was elsewhere, not in this body. In that kind of reality, it was separate from their physical bodies. In another kind of reality, their consciousness was in another time and space, not in this time and space, not in this body; its focus of attention was not on this body. Their primary focus of consciousness was almost unaware of the bodies they had created -- it had no awareness of its own body.

However, even those bodies learned through experience, and began to wake up, becoming aware of themselves, beginning to discover time, and to create time. So these bodies, upon which the focus of consciousness was not placed, had their own body consciousness. This body consciousness would wake up on its own, learn through experience on its own, and then begin to discover time and create time on its own.

Very interesting. These people whom we call sleepwalkers existed in previous human civilizations. To themselves they were not asleep; it is only from your viewpoint that they seemed to be asleep.

There were once several human races like this. Their main experience as a whole took place outside the body, and physical existence was only a secondary effect. Did they still need physical existence? Yes, but it was only a secondary effect, not the main thing. For them, life in dreams was real. For these sleepwalkers, they wandered around like the walking dead during the day, and only when they slept was that world real--their focus of consciousness was there. Life in dreams contained the greatest stimulation, the most concentrated experience, the most firmly maintained purposes, the most meaningful activities, and the most organized social and cultural behavior. All of this was realized in dreams.

For us humans, the greatest stimulation comes when we are awake. We also have dreams when we sleep, and the stimulation can sometimes be very real and very intense, but compared with stimulation while awake, it may not be as intense--unless you occasionally have a nightmare or a dream that touches you very deeply. Ordinary dreams do not offer such intense stimulation.

But you could say that this is another side of your own experience. You can also regard these dreams as another aspect of your experience.

Races like this left the physical earth in its original state. They did not carry out extensive external, physical development and changes to the earth as humans do. Our earth today has been so thoroughly occupied by humans that it is almost impossible to find any features that humans have not altered--except in primeval forests. But those humans did not do this. They had no interest in external physical things, as long as their bodies could stay alive. They did not want to do too much, much like our animals--animals basically do not change the earth's environment very much either.

Their main activities, then, all involved a consciousness separate from the body. In your terms, their physical culture was rudimentary--from our human perspective, it was primitive, without much technological or material development. But they were highly developed on the mental level, on the level of consciousness.

Physical organisms like these were capable of functioning in that system of reality. This kind of human civilization, without ego consciousness and controlled only by body consciousness, could function in its reality--it could ensure basic bodily survival. That system was neither better nor worse than your own. You cannot say that the ecosystem they lived in was better or worse than ours. It was simply an alternative mode of behavior that was biologically and spiritually possible.

No complex physical transportation systems were established. In the physical state, in what you would call the waking state, these people were asleep--during the day, or when awake, they were all asleep. Their dreams were their real world. By comparison, to you, their waking activities would seem like dreaming. Their waking sleepwalker state, without conscious participation, looks to us as though they were dreaming; only when they slept did their consciousness enter, and only when they dreamed did their consciousness participate. So when they were awake, they looked like sleepwalkers to us; when they slept, on the other hand, things were very stimulating for them.

Yet their movements had an extraordinary natural physical grace. Although they had no ego consciousness, their body consciousness was very strong, and their natural grace is something we humans still do not have. Carefully observe a kitten or a puppy. The agility, precision, and strength of their movements all far exceed ours. This is physical grace.

Now, bodies like these would not age to the extent that yours do--they would also age, but not to the extent that we do--and could enjoy the greatest ease and sense of belonging within their environment.

Consciousness connected with the physical body, then, has tremendous latitude, spiritually and biologically. What does this mean? It means that our consciousness has a great deal of room for development, both spiritually and biologically, with great possibilities for development. Apart from your own particular orientation, it can invest itself in many areas with and through this physical body--investing itself in other areas through this body is also a possibility.

There have been highly mature, developed, and advanced civilizations that would not be very apparent to you, because their main orientation was mental or toward the psyche, while the physical species itself would appear very undeveloped. So some civilizations look like primitive humans to you because they have made no material progress, but mentally and spiritually they have already achieved extraordinary things.

This possibility actually amounts to your consciousness offering you a great many possible choices, beyond just the one we humans have now.

He says that some of my many readers will find, in their own personal dreams, a reality just as vivid as normal reality, sometimes even more vivid. These experiences can give you some vague hints of the kind of existence I am talking about. This sense of the existence of such dreams and such a reality will give you a vague feeling for the things he describes--things that once existed in the history of human civilization on earth.

There are also bodily organs connected with the hibernation abilities of certain animals that can offer further clues to the possible relationships between consciousness and the body. Hibernation is a very good clue, allowing us to discover that our consciousness can leave the body and the body can take very good care of itself. For example, many bears hibernate. They eat their fill in autumn, and when winter comes, they shut themselves inside a cave. They neither come out nor move all winter, as though asleep, sleeping for several months without eating or drinking. They come out again when it gets warm in spring, and by then their body fat has been almost used up. At this point, you need to understand that their whole consciousness has not been participating inside their bodies. Hibernation can also offer you this clue: your body can be separate from consciousness.

For example, under certain circumstances, consciousness can leave the physical body, while the body remains intact and continues to function, but at a maintenance level--a very low maintenance level. This is why many people sit in meditation, and some can have an out-of-body experience for a long time: their bodies can still maintain themselves. When the best conditions return, when the consciousness of these hibernating people reactivates their bodies, this behavior is not possible only for animals. In systems different from yours, there are realities in which physical organisms are reactivated after what would seem to you to be several centuries of inactivity. When conditions are right, they activate again. This is quite normal.

Hibernation and Reactivation

Consciousness can leave the physical body, while the body continues to function intact, only at a very low maintenance level. This is why many people can sit in meditation and have an out-of-body experience for a long time while their bodies still maintain themselves. When conditions return, consciousness will reactivate the body accordingly.

In many systems different from yours, physical organisms in certain realities are reactivated after what would seem to you to be several centuries of inactivity. We humans may find this unrealistic, but it is quite normal. A couple of days ago, I saw a news report that human scientists had suddenly reactivated a little worm from 24,000 years ago¹⁰. How many centuries is 24,000 years? One hundred years is a century, so 24,000 years is already 240 centuries. So in many other realities, this phenomenon is very common: consciousness can leave the body, the body lies dormant on its own for a certain period, and when conditions are good, consciousness returns to reactivate it.

In the cases of those hibernating animals, the body is in the same state. It is the same with those hibernating animals: consciousness is absent, and the body is there.

From a certain perspective, your own existence, your own cycle of life and death, is simply another aspect of the principle of hibernation as you understand it. From a certain perspective, the death of your body is like hibernation, except that when you die, your consciousness leaves your body. Your consciousness leaves the body in almost the same way that information jumps across nerve endings, while consciousness itself is not destroyed. Just as information jumps from one neuron to another, during that gap, would you say that consciousness no longer exists? Consciousness has not ceased to exist, because it is being transmitted; it simply has not arrived yet.

Cellular Renewal and Reincarnated Selves

Now, in the cases of those hibernating animals, the body is in the same state. But in your own experience, it is a greater hibernation. That is, at death, the body as a whole becomes unable to function. You can regard death as a greater hibernation.

The cells within your body are clearly dying all the time. Your present body is not the body you had ten years ago. Its physical constituents have already died completely many times since your birth. And those gaps connected by consciousness--the gaps across which it jumps between neurons--that is, the process between your life and death, are still connected by consciousness. The process in which the soul leaves one body and jumps to the next is simply that gap.

In that case, it would seem to you as though, for example, at seven, fourteen, and twenty-one, you were each time a reincarnated self--a self born into another incarnation. If you look at it this way, the particular sequence of your own awareness has nevertheless remained continuous. The you at seven, the you at fourteen, the you at twenty--you think you are still the same you. But your body has long since become completely different from the one before. Not a single cell is the same. Your physical body has already died several times, yet you still identify it as you.

He uses this example to help you understand that your death is like this too: doesn't your death simply mean changing to another collection of cells, a body made up of another collection of cells? Isn't it the same principle? In the body you are living in now, the cells have already been replaced several times during your life, yet you still maintain the understanding that "this is the same body, the same self." Then, when you die, why do you think that changing to another collection of cells means you have died? It is still the same. You still have not died. Your awareness will always exist.

In basic terms, the body dies often, and with the same certainty as that one death you recognize and believe in.

You feel that death seems not quite so certain, that this is merely a theoretical statement. Seth says it is not a theoretical statement. In fact, it is the same: all your body's cells have been replaced, and you have actually died once--isn't this the same principle? What is the difference? On many occasions, your body has disintegrated, physically disintegrated. But you will say that this is a future body of ours, a new life, a new cycle of reincarnation. What is it really? It is actually that you have changed physical bodies, while your consciousness has continued to exist.

The Inner Treasury of Knowledge

In your reality, knowledge is usually passed down through books and historical writings.

All our knowledge is passed on through these, including Seth's material, which is also transmitted through books. Yet within every individual is a vast treasury of direct knowledge of the past, accessible, in your terms, through unconscious understanding. That is to say, we always obtain knowledge by searching historical documents and through archaeology, but within you there is actually an inexhaustible treasure that records all history--including your personal history and the history of all humanity--and it is direct knowledge of the past.

Speaking again of the unknown reality, most of that reality is unknown because your beliefs shut you off from your own knowledge. You have all that knowledge; you have simply locked it away. Your own consciousness is inherently unlimited, but because you have accepted a concept of time moving in a straight line, you cannot see before or after what you regard as your birth or death. From a linear view of time, you cannot see it, but your consciousness can leap through and across time and space. Your greater consciousness, however, is quite aware of such experiences--the greater consciousness beyond your ego consciousness can perceive those things before and after your birth.

Ideally speaking, you can not only remember past events, but also plan future events now.

You can not only know the past, your previous lives, but also plan your future lives, and you can plan them now. This is something many people have not thought of. Broadly speaking, all these things exist simultaneously. Your present neurological structure makes this seem impossible, yet your inner consciousness is not so hindered.

Exercise Ten: Remembering Yesterday

Now he is going to give an exercise. This exercise is to help you break through this limitation, so you can see your own past, your previous lives, and your future lives as well. This exercise is very simple, not as complicated as you imagine. Any exercise requires sustained practice over time to be effective, but it is not difficult.

Within your conscious attention, you can hold far more information than you know.

In fact, you know more than you can remember. You have hypnotized yourself into believing that your awareness is very limited. For example, you cannot remember your previous lives, just as you cannot remember your yesterday. Yesterday is something you experienced--that is a fact, right? Aren't your previous lives also something you experienced? But haven't you forgotten them?

Exercise Ten has two parts. First, recall yesterday: try to remember what you did when you got up and what you wore, then try to follow and recall the entire sequence of your activities throughout the day, from waking up to going to sleep. Then fill in the details--what you ate for breakfast, how you felt, whether it tasted good. Try to recall all those feelings: how you felt going to work in the morning, whether on the subway or driving; how you felt about that day's weather and temperature; did the clothes you wore look good? Did you wear perfume? Can you still smell it? Whom did you meet, and so on.

Most of you will already be quite lucky if you can remember this much. Then those who remember should go a step further and try to recall any daydreams you may have had, and try to remember the stray thoughts that came into your mind. Do you still remember the thoughts that went through your mind that day? What were you thinking about while eating breakfast? As you ate breakfast, what was on your mind? Before going to sleep that night, what were you thinking about? This kind of exercise is not complicated, is it? Give it a try.

At first, this will occupy all your attention. You can sit quietly, or do this while riding a bus or subway, or waiting for someone at the office--do the exercise during quiet moments, without taking up your other time. Some of you may be able to do this exercise while engaged in a series of more or less automatic activities, such as exercising, working out, or riding a bicycle. But do not try to do it while driving. Driving is dangerous, and your attention needs to stay focused.

As you become more skilled at the exercise, you can deliberately do it while carrying out other activities at the same time. When most of you begin this exercise, it will seem as though you have completely lost the precise, fine coordination between your senses and bodily activities--when you move your body while recalling yesterday's details, your movements lose their accuracy. But this is exactly what the exercise trains.

As you continue, practicing for a few more days, the details will become very clear. And you will be able to hold at least some aspects of yesterday's reality in your mind.

Continue this exercise; do not do it just once. Then yesterday's surroundings will become vivid, and yesterday's experiences will emerge, while you can still maintain your position in today. Today's scene will not become disordered or confused.

Previous Lives and Future Lives

Broadly speaking, there are other entire lifetimes that, for you, are basically as forgotten as yesterday.

From a certain perspective, you have a previous lifetime that you experienced, just like the events of the day you experienced yesterday, except that you have forgotten it. Exercises like this help train your ability to recall that past lifetime. The things you did yesterday seem like your primary activities in the history of your life, while the activities of your previous life are also a series of activities, but that series is secondary, not primary. So you try to remember these secondary activities too.

Why should you do this exercise regularly? Having you do today's things while thinking about yesterday's things is meant to allow what belongs to a secondary focus of consciousness to emerge very clearly. When you have this ability, you can recall the experiences of your previous lives while living your present life. Those are like a secondary focus of consciousness for you, just like yesterday.> What is unconscious is part of you now, and is also connected with them. Your previous lives are also connected with your today; you have simply forgotten.

If you want to explore your own previous lives, you can try this method. Then look at the second part of the exercise--see what your future life is like.

Vividly imagine what you will do tomorrow, and plan a possible day in detail.

Imagine what you will do tomorrow: what you plan to do when you get up in the morning, what clothes you will wear, what business you will attend to, whom you will meet, what you will talk about, and so on. It naturally begins to arise from your present experience, behavior, and purposes. Keep going, making tomorrow vivid.> The reality of that day is already anticipated by your cells. When you envision tomorrow this way, your cells have already begun preparing for it. Your body has already prepared for the coming tomorrow, and all its functions anticipatorily refract their own existence into their own existence.

When you are deeply immersed in this state, your body's cells have already gone through it with you once, and they will store that feeling in their memory. Your future lifetime exists in the same way. How does your future life exist? The principle is the same as your imagining tomorrow. In your next life, that cellular memory already contains the goals, behaviors, and purposes of this life--you have already left your imprint on it.

In your terms, just as your tomorrow grows out of today, out of your present, your next life grows out of this one.

How it grows depends on how you want it to grow in this life. Doing this exercise will allow your normal consciousness to recognize its own sense of flexibility. You will exercise the invisible muscles of your consciousness--imagine that your consciousness also needs to work out and train its muscles. Exercise your consciousness just as you can exercise your body through sports.

To other parts of yourself, you seem like a sleepwalker.

When you do this exercise, the other parts of your body will feel that you are dreaming, that you are sleepwalking, because you are thinking about a future world. Yet at any moment, full creative participation will awaken you to your own potential. When you envision a future day, you will discover how great your potential is, that you can design the future with such richness and creativity.

It thus allows you to experience a unity between your own consciousness and the understanding of your body's cells.

There is a certain discrepancy between your consciousness and your cells' understanding: you want to do something, and then the cells experience it, and there is a discrepancy between the two. How do you bring them into unity? What you imagine and what you can ultimately experience must finally come together. As you train this ability and it grows stronger, when what you imagine finally matches what you experience, won't you be able to make your wishes come true? At first, you let the cells feel it, let them feel it in their memory. Then, as this ability grows stronger, whatever you imagine, the cells can experience, with increasing vividness and reality. When they become unified, what will the result be? Tomorrow happens according to what you imagined. It is that simple. If you want to create the future, it is that simple. Seth has actually already told us this method.

Those cells are just as spiritual as your soul.

About Ruburt: Trusting Yourself

Now give us a moment, a somewhat longer moment. This is no longer dictation. What follows has nothing to do with the preceding content. Seth gave Jane and me three and a half pages of material in all. Here are some condensed excerpts of a more general nature.

In your society, you have more or less been taught not to trust yourselves. Various schools of thought and religions try to express their own validity, but their distortions bury the basic reliability of their churches.

In this society, what you are most often taught is not to trust yourself--including not trusting your physical body, not trusting your body. Many people will ask, "Is this thought coming from my physical body, or from my soul, my higher self?" Doesn't this way of putting it still mean that you do not trust yourself? You would rather distrust yourself and trust your higher self. Isn't that a typical example? Many spiritual practitioners are like this: they trust others, their guru, the people around them, those Buddhist scriptures and other classics, but they do not trust themselves. This is the greatest obstacle on your path of spiritual practice. Everyone must remember this. If you cannot break through it, you basically will not get very far.

Many religions and schools of thought have this problem. They say they are very effective and very powerful, but they tell you, "You have to follow me. You have to trust me. You cannot trust yourself." Their distortions bury the truly valuable parts of what they offer. This does not mean there is nothing valuable in them. There are many, many valuable things, but their distortions are so great that all the valuable things are buried. It is such a pity.

In that manner of speaking, as one of you, Ruburt started from scratch. He had no religious background or background in any school of thought, and finally set aside the currently popular information and belief systems.

Seth said long ago, I chose Ruburt and you precisely because neither of you had any religious background or faith, which would make it easy for you to avoid their influence.> For a time, he was simply between belief systems, completely abandoning some while accepting parts of others. Here he means Ruburt--Jane. He was between several systems, first abandoning some belief systems and then accepting others. But he was primarily a pioneer, while still carrying a basic belief that went unrecognized by most people in society--what belief? That you cannot trust yourself.

After studying Seth's material, Ruburt had abandoned some old beliefs, but before new beliefs were established, the old beliefs were still operating. What was that belief? You cannot trust yourself. So look at what Jane was doing when she did many things. She was verifying them.> When you carry those emotionally invisible beliefs, everything you do must be examined and put to the test. When you have a belief like this, that I cannot trust myself, you have to examine and test everything you do: Am I doing this right? Is this appropriate for me? I always think about things this way.> Meanwhile, the beliefs that had supported others were temporarily set aside.

Your new beliefs have not yet developed, and your old beliefs have been cast aside, so the development of Ruburt's abilities would take her away from this reassuring structure. When she found other structures to support her--she had cast aside the old beliefs, the beliefs that reassured her, while the new beliefs had not yet been established--when the beliefs of completely trusting and loving herself had not yet been established, and she had also abandoned the old belief that she could not trust herself, she left her state of reassurance.

Ruburt put most of what he had learned to the test. Her own personality blossomed on all levels, especially in terms of relationships with others and personal creativity.

She put everything she learned to the test, experimenting with it in every direction. She experimented with our material in the world she knew--she was also someone who put things into practice. She wrote novels and published them, putting what she learned from Seth into practice in her dream work.

So, having been taught that he was bad, that he was a bad self, how could he bring forth good things?

This sentence is another tongue twister. What he means is that Ruburt does not really believe in herself. After studying the Seth material, she wanted to test it. Through all sorts of methods, including writing novels and these other works, she was trying to see whether this material actually worked. Deep down, she had this thought: How can a bad self produce something good? How can she write good novels, good works? She kept testing and examining herself; she did not quite believe in herself. Even after bringing through the Seth material, she was not quite convinced that it was really good, really useful, or really correct. She kept struggling between these two states: when she understood, she felt that the Seth material was wonderful, a treasure for humanity; but when the social pressure grew intense, she would ask, "Is this something I imagined myself?" In the early days, there was a period when she was constantly doubtful.

There were some structures that could have provided support, helping Ruburt overcome this problem and quickly establish her new belief system, but she saw that they were fundamentally unreliable and therefore did not rely on them.

Jane questioned everything; she had to put it to the test. What was at the root of her questioning everything? It was that she did not believe in herself. That was the core of it. Seth pointed it out directly: she did not even feel confident in herself. She wondered how she could possibly bring through anything good. It had to be tested, confirmed, and examined.

When you read The Early Sessions, you will see that they spent roughly an entire year or more doing over a hundred exercises, testing whether Seth's telepathic ability was accurate. He kept practicing with a psychology professor. Then he also did many experiments, such as putting things in envelopes and sealing them. Without telling Jane what was inside, Rob would ask Seth during a session to guess what was in them. Those were the kinds of games and exercises they did. This sort of testing continued for about two or three years in The Early Sessions, at least two years, I would say. They were doing this all along. Of course, they also discussed other things. During the sessions, they set aside a separate block of time to do the testing first, then analyzed on the spot what had been said correctly and what had been said incorrectly, why the correct parts were correct, and why the incorrect parts were incorrect.

Rob's Notes and the Conclusion

By 12:18, Seth had spoken for an entire evening, and the delivery throughout this session was very energetic.> In the Seth material above, concerning Jane as she began to engage with her old, reassuring concepts in pursuit of a newer and larger framework of concepts and beliefs, Seth dealt very clearly with certain aspects of the role he had chosen for this lifetime.

But what I want to emphasize here is the emotional side of Jane's pursuit, and the circumstances those qualities brought about that she sometimes found very difficult to handle. Jane had her own unique qualities, which sometimes made that state very difficult for her to cope with.> To some extent, I too became involved in many changes of belief. But I was a participant in the development of the Seth material, rather than its originator. My pressures and challenges were less severe. Yet with humor born of many struggles, I noticed that giving up certain cherished old beliefs was not so easy, even when they were blatantly wrong. They might suit one's personality too well.

What Rob means in this passage is that, during this process of transmission, Jane also had her own emotional side, her side that reacted emotionally. In receiving the Seth material, she had to recognize many of her own mistaken beliefs and limiting beliefs, and when she went about revising and correcting them, she would have some emotional reactions. That is perfectly normal. During this process, the pressures and challenges Jane faced were enormous. Rob said, "I also changed many of my beliefs, but I was a participant, rather than the person transmitting the material." And during this process, the sheer extent of the adjustments and changes Jane made to her beliefs often left even her feeling very uncomfortable and unable to cope.

We know perfectly well that some beliefs are wrong, but changing them is very difficult, because those mistaken beliefs suit each of our individual personalities so well. Those beliefs have grown together with our personal character and our experiences since childhood. When you want to separate them, to remove them as if by surgery, it is not an easy thing to do. But you still have to do it, because if you do not, they will pull you back into your old patterns, and it will be very hard to struggle free of them.

Seth knew this too, and every so often he would give Jane a lesson, build up her confidence, and also point out some of her problems to keep her from going astray.

There are some notes afterward that are not particularly important, including some about Atlantis. Since Atlantis will be discussed again later, we will not go into it here. If you are interested, you can read the first appendix in Volume 2. It is very long¹¹. Here, I will not interpret these appendices unless it is necessary. That is because those appendices contain a great deal of material from The Early Sessions. When this book was being written, Rob actually had no intention of publishing The Early Sessions separately. They had already published a book drawn from the early sessions called Messages from the Spirit World, which was a summary and compilation of the early sessions, rather than the complete material¹². Rob also felt that a great deal of the content in the early sessions was excellent. Having decided at the time not to publish them separately, he felt that this material had to be included in the other published books of Seth material, so he made every effort to add a lot of content from the early sessions here. We will not discuss that content separately here, because we will discuss The Early Sessions on their own later, and covering it this way would be repetitive. Also, with a passage taken from here and another from there, the intention was actually to enrich the Seth material in The "Unknown" Reality. But because this was also content from other early sessions, some parts fit together, while others were not very systematic, so we will discuss them separately when we cover The Early Sessions.

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注释与核实

1. Source: Mary Dillman, "List of Seth Sessions - Revised December" (https://sethresearchproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SessionListforInternet4.pdf) ↩

2. Source: Jane Roberts, Robert Butts, "The Unknown Reality, Volume Two: A Seth Book" (https://www.everand.com/book/806223325/The-Unknown-Reality-Volume-Two-A-Seth-Book) ↩

3. Source: Jane Roberts, "The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation" (1977) (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4541307M/The_world_view_of_Paul_Cezanne) ↩

4. According to Mike's original words: "The invention of optical fiber was jointly researched in 1966 by Charles K. Kao of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a foreign scientist. Kao won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009." After verification, it should be: "In 1966, Charles K. Kao and George A. Hockham, a colleague at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the United Kingdom, jointly published research on optical fiber communication; at that time Kao had not yet joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2009, Kao received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for breakthrough achievements in the field of optical fiber communication." (Source: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 - Illustrated information," 2009, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2009/illustrated-information/?print=1) ↩

5. Source: Ayusman Chakraborty, "Hatha Yoga, Live Burial, and Human Hibernation: How the West (Mis)Conceptualized the Samadhis of Yogi Haridas in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries," 2024 (https://cdr.creighton.edu/items/40909f20-9f9d-4002-a938-558cdb488c5e) ↩ ↩²

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. Source: UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, "Huang Di Nei Jing (Huangdi Neijing, Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon)" (https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/huang-di-nei-jing-huangdineijing-yellow-emperors-inner-canon) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. According to Mike's original words: "100 billion nerve cells." After verification, it should be: "The average adult male human brain has about 86.1 billion neurons (with a margin of error of +/- 8.1 billion), not exactly 100 billion." (Source: Azevedo et al., "Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain," 2009, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19226510/) ↩

10. Source: Lyubov Shmakova et al., "A living bdelloid rotifer from 24,000-year-old Arctic permafrost" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34102116/) ↩

11. Source: Jane Roberts, "The Unknown Reality (Volume Two)" (https://www.scribd.com/document/893633750/3-2%E8%B5%9B%E6%96%AF%E4%B9%A6-%E6%9C%AA%E7%9F%A5%E7%9A%84%E5%AE%9E%E7%9B%B8%E5%8D%B7%E4%BA%8C-1974-1975) ↩

12. According to Mike's original words: "Because for the early sessions they have already published a book called 'Messages from the Spirit World'; that book is a summary and compilation of the early sessions, not the entirety." After verification, it should be: "The book Jane Roberts published in 1970 was titled 'The Seth Material' (Chinese translation: 'Messages from the Spirit World'). It presents the early Seth material up to 1969 in summarized form, not the complete records." (Source: Wikipedia, "Jane Roberts," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Roberts) ↩