Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 714

The "Reading Guide" and "Key Points" 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 unfolds around the ways of exploring unknown reality. Seth points out that consciousness can travel away from its focus in physical reality and bring back "snapshots," but these snapshots and travel brochures can become psychic conventions, causing explorers to give up personal interpretation and apply ready-made accounts instead. Then Jane, in an altered state of consciousness, experiences the "inner sounds" of electron spin, cells, and crystal-like structures, comparing the personality to seeds scattered across time and space, each striking its true tone while together forming a symphony, and touching on the relationship between feeling tones and the body's frequencies.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Consciousness can leave the material reality focus, travel to other realities, and bring back "snapshots," without having to disrupt daily responsibilities or the original channel.
• The psychic snapshots and travel guides of predecessors were at first personal interpretations, and later came to be treated as guidebooks, which easily turns exploration into sightseeing and causes people to lose their original perception.
• Inner customs and beliefs pre-package experience; in unknown realities, beliefs directly affect experience, and relying on ready-made accounts will make you see what you have presupposed.
• Personalities are like dandelion seeds scattered across different times and places, each seed carrying its own true tone, striking different chords in its own reality and yet combining into a symphony.
• Finding your own true tone means recognizing your unique existence; inner sound, light, and bodily frequency are related, and a muddied true tone is connected with physical problems.

Main Text

Session 714: Snapshots of Other Realities -- A Psyche-Guided Sightseeing Tour, the Inner Voice, and the True Tune

This session began on Wednesday, October 23, 1974, at 9:36 p.m.

In the afternoon, Jane called her publisher's editor, Mosman, and told him, "I've thought of my next book, called The Politics of the Psyche." She intended it as a book of psychology on another level, a sequel to The One-Time Adventure. Today, in a clearly altered state of consciousness, Jane not only wrote out the entire outline for The Politics of the Psyche, but also wrote four pages of manuscript that would serve as the preface, or the first chapter, of that book. There is a clear connection between her creative expression today and the outline she received for The Way Toward Health back in March.

Of course, Jane had even more creative expression tonight -- not only during the session, but also after it, as I tried to explain in the notes at the end. At 9:32 p.m., as we waited for the session to begin, Jane said she had a pyramid-and-cone effect. Generally when this effect occurs, many times it means Seth Two will come through. She also thought she might enter that enormous feeling at any moment, but she said, "I don't think this has anything to do with Seth Two." This time it probably had nothing to do with Seth Two.

Then Seth came through. Seth said that for Ruburt, this was in some ways an important evening, because his state of consciousness was changing.

As I speak, he is experiencing certain sensations in which his body feels dramatically elongated, his head stretched out beyond the stars, his entire body straddling realities.

Our physical bodies have always been half here and half over there, straddling different realities. The body itself contains time -- past, present, future -- and also contains other dimensions that already exist, which cannot even be described in words. The essence of the cell is eternal, although from the physical level it only lives for a period of time.

However, the unknown matters and the greater existence of the psyche cannot be separated from the intimate knowledge of the flesh itself.

That is, we have completely abandoned the body system, and so we have no way to explore those unknown realities and the greater existence of the psyche. The two must be closely bound together. Because the life of the flesh occurs within that framework, if you abandon the life of the flesh entirely, the matters within that framework lose a part of themselves, and it becomes incomplete.

As mentioned earlier, the conscious self usually focuses only upon one small dimension.

Our waking consciousness can generally focus only within a very small dimensional space. The dimension that consciousness focuses upon is experienced as fully as possible -- it is so clear, so brilliant, so finely focused, only because you have aimed at it, bringing that small dimension to the forefront of attention. In other words, if you bring other realities to the forefront of attention, they are just as real, just as brilliant, just as clear.

In your terms, when you learn how to do this, you begin to tune in to other stations.

When you learn how to control the focus of your consciousness, you also gain the ability to tune in to other stations -- that is, other unknown realities.

Suppose you have a channel selector -- an old-fashioned television set, without even a remote control, where you can only twist the dial -- among all those channels, you know which channel is the channel of physical reality.

When you concentrate your attention upon physical reality, upon that living scene, you can learn to travel through it while leaving the surface picture untouched and intact.

When you focus your consciousness upon the physical world, you should have an ability to pass through the surface layer of this physical world, to explore the unknown realities behind it, without shattering the surface picture to pieces. You do not destroy it first and then go look at another.

Put another way, you set your own program, carrying out your daily responsibilities as usual, responsibly and effectively, but at the same time you discover an added portion of your own reality. It is equivalent to having a few more channels to watch, rather than discarding the original channel. This does not diminish the physical you; in fact, it enriches it. When you fully enjoy physical life, you discover that you still have a surplus portion, a portion that can travel into other realities, and then return, bringing back to the physically oriented self snapshots of those journeys.

Just as when you have lived in one place for a long time and then go out traveling, it will do you no harm; it will only do you good.

These snapshots will usually be interpreted in the terms of your home station's programming.

You travel into other unknown realities, bring back some photographs, or have some special experiences, and these photographs and experiences can only be explained in the language of this physical world you inhabit; otherwise, they would be meaningless to the physical self.

Through the ages, from ancient times to the present, people have made such journeys. And those snapshots were developed in a darkroom that exists between your world and those visited worlds.

In ancient times, when we humans made such journeys across time and space, traveling to other worlds, we also took some snapshots. Those snapshots were developed in the intermediate zone, on the way back from that world to this world. They could not be developed over there, nor could they be developed over here -- if developed over there, we would not understand what they were; if developed after returning to this world, the information from that world might already be lost. So they had to be developed in that intermediate zone.

Those who travel into unknown realities have always been adventurous. Those who are methodical and steady, who play it safe, generally are not willing to do such things. But many people have seen the snapshots that others brought back to your world -- those who have had out-of-body experiences, entered samadhi, entered unknown realities, will bring back some of their snapshots to you -- and therefore, their views of the originality of the journey became clothed in the garments of those other snapshots, thus forming a set of convenient ideas, concepts, and images.

What is being described here is a very typical phenomenon: some people, before exploring unknown realities, look up a great deal of related material, see what others encountered there, and those so-called snapshots then have a preconceived effect upon their exploration, influencing their original judgment.

Such explorers lose their clear vision. Those travelers, passing through unfamiliar environments and realities, no longer take their own original photographs; it is easier to interpret their experience through the cheap postcards of the psyche.

You arrive at that unknown reality, but because you have already seen so many related depictions, you feel that others took better pictures than you could, so you no longer want to take any. Everyone's out-of-body feelings, everyone's feelings upon entering unknown realities, are different, but to save yourself trouble, you say that those masters summarized it very well, and they even divided it into so many levels, so many states, so many steps, and you can just follow along and learn from them.

At one time, these postcards represented initial creations and personal interpretations. Later, however, they began to be used as guidebooks consulted in advance.

The people who first wrote the travel guides were original, but when later people used the previous travelers' guides for their own journeys, they treated them as sightseeing guidebooks.

For example, if in your own world you plan to travel to a distant country, you can find publications that tell you what to expect. When you travel into other realities, or when your consciousness leaves your own body, you can also rely upon such travel guides that pre-plan your activities.

He says that those guidebooks for inward exploration, for exploring the inner world, will not tell you that at a certain earthly destination, at a certain time, you must board a plane at a certain airport, leaving one set of longitude and latitude coordinates and arriving at another; on the contrary, they will tell you that you have left this astral plane and gone to any one of many other astral planes, where you may be ruled by lords, by spiritual masters, by male deities or female deities.

What they give you are different sects, different masters, different teachers -- just as different countries have different rulers. There are some countries where religion and state are unified, where the spiritual leader and the political leader are the same person; and then there are some primitive tribes, where there is nothing political, but they have their own tribal gods, their own ethnic deities.

They do not point out the locations of art galleries and museums for you, as in a secular travel guide. Instead, they will lead you to the Akashic.

The Akashic records, according to this notion, are all the records since the beginning of human civilization, and even all probabilities are recorded within them. So some people become obsessed with reading the Akashic records. What the Akashic tells you is very similar to other forms of fortune-telling: it is the greatest probability.

They do not take you to the archaeological sites of your world. Instead, they will take you to see Atlantis and Mu, and other eras of your past.

He does not take you to those physical ruins; he takes you to seek Atlantis, Mu, those places that have been widely transmitted but have already disappeared, places we do not know where to find.

Therefore, you have taken a psyche-guided sightseeing tour into other realities. You carry someone else's pre-written travel guide for exploring unknown realities, which is equivalent to joining a guided tour group and taking a trip. The unknown seems to become known -- he used the word "seems." During your travels you discover that it seems as though you have explored an unknown world, but actually you are not an explorer; you are merely a tourist.

Carrying with you the equipment of your own civilization, and very popular beliefs.

You arrive at the unknown reality, still carrying your most initial earthly concepts, beliefs, perspectives, including your feelings, to explore. You arrive at a multidimensional world, but you still view it from a three-dimensional world perspective, and so you never obtain the truth of that unknown reality.

There are outer customs, and there are inner customs as well; they are the same. When you go abroad to another place, you must observe the local customs, do as the locals do -- this is an old Chinese saying, and it is perfectly normal.

Just as outer customs try to force you to go along with generally accepted ideas.

For example, if you go to an Islamic country, women must cover their hair, and there are special dress requirements; you have to follow their customs, and you can only eat beef and mutton. But if you go to India, on the contrary, you cannot eat beef at all; it is absolutely forbidden. The customs of every country are different.

Therefore inner customs also try to force your inner experience to conform to prepackaged patterns.

Now he explains what inner customs are. For example, when you go to America, you are expected to tip for services received. Many Chinese people do not understand this at first -- why pay an extra tip? And then you also have to pay tax -- you buy something for a hundred dollars, and you still have to add a varying amount of tax, different from place to place, averaging about ten percent. Many people do not understand why they have to pay this tax; isn't the tax already included in the price of the product? Isn't the manufacturing company supposed to pay this tax? This is a difference in customs, or one could say a difference in systems and laws.

Customs exist for very good reasons. Generally speaking, they help organize experience. If they are accepted lightly, they can serve as guiding principles.

For example, everyone else gives tips, and you alone do not -- you say, what happens if I don't? Many people like to argue this way, which is quite interesting; you can try it and see what happens.

But when strictly enforced, they become unnecessary dogma.

When this custom becomes mandatory, when it must be carried out, it becomes very dogmatic behavior. In Western countries, tipping is a very normal custom; if you really do not tip, nothing much will happen to you. But it depends on the place -- if you eat at a Korean restaurant and do not tip, they really will chase you out the door to demand it; whereas in European and American restaurants, if you truly do not tip, they will only roll their eyes at you, and nothing will happen to you. Completely different habits. When we do not understand the origins and history of local customs, many times we still have to observe the local customs, because this allows us to integrate quickly into the local area and avoid a lot of trouble. But when this custom becomes too dogmatic, it becomes rigid and limits experience.

Customs are the result of stratified and rigidified spontaneity.

The earliest of these customs and habits were all spontaneous; people felt that this was good. For example, the tipping system: its earliest origin was in the European aristocratic system¹. When those who were not aristocrats provided services to aristocrats, the later development of civilization had already made people understand that all people are born equal, but the aristocratic system could not be abolished -- even today the aristocratic class in Europe still exists, although as a formal existence, it is still preserved. So what kind of habit did they develop? Since we advocate equality among all people, when you provide a service to me, I give you some reward or encouragement to level the relationship between us, rather than saying that your serving me is a matter of course. These are some extra benefits, expressing affirmation of your service, affirmation of you as a person, expressing that we are to a certain degree equal. This was a spontaneous behavior.

Later, it became a system. In American restaurants, tips are what pay the wages of the waitstaff and the kitchen workers. American waitstaff often only have a base wage, or even minimum wage; in some places there is no wage at all, and income comes mainly from tips. In many high-end restaurants, each server is responsible for a fixed set of tables, and the tips from those tables belong to that server. But in Chinese restaurants, this may change somewhat -- because this too easily leads to unfair service, where one server is run off their feet while other servers stand idle and will not help. So they changed it: all tips are pooled together, the servers take the larger share, the kitchen helpers in the back take the smaller share, distributed as a group, usually divided up that same day.

Later it evolved further into a system: many foreign tourists come to America to travel, and in their countries there is no custom of tipping. Restaurants, afraid that customers were not being deliberately stingy but had simply forgotten, began having some businesses add the tip directly into the total price. After being complained about and protested against, they quietly added it as a default option at the end, where you just check a box. Once it gradually became a system, it was no longer a spontaneous behavior, but became a judgment of behavior: if a person does not tip, it seems as though that person must not have received a good education, does not understand giving back to society, has no sense of community.

So it went from a spontaneous behavior to a judgment of behavior -- this is what a custom is. I have only used tipping as one example; in other aspects of life there are far too many, and every ethnic group has its own customs and habits.

There are psychic customs, just as there are physical customs.

In the psyche there are also customs. There are religious and psychic textbooks, guided tours of consciousness, all of these. In them you are told to follow a certain route, or a certain program.

You become afraid to privately interpret any reality that you find yourself experiencing.

This sightseeing manual tells you: when you arrive at the North Pole, you should see the aurora at this time. If you do not see the aurora, then something is wrong. If the aurora you see is silver, or gold, while what others see is green, pink, purple, blue, you will think -- how is that possible? Maybe I saw wrong. Do you understand what I mean? It confines your entire personal experience within a certain range. If you do not experience and feel things according to this method, you will feel as though you do not quite fit in with yourself, or with others. This is the harm of customs.

Ruburt still insists upon his private view of unknown reality and his unique expression.

Ruburt does not care about any of this; he does not read these things, and insists only upon the private matters he himself feels. Therefore he has brought back reports that differ from the popular psychic routes, unlike the feelings described by all those various so-called masters and schools; he has his own unique insights.

The psychic postcards and travel guides are convenient and colorful, but they are also highly misleading.

Now he begins to explain why they are misleading.

Individual travelers once took some snapshots, and they represented an original interpretation of other realities. They represented the personal views of certain travelers who caught a glimpse of strange worlds, and they interpreted their experiences as best they could. As such personal views, they are quite valid.

For him, this is entirely a personal experience, and absolutely fine, just as valid and just as real as any snapshot you might take of your backyard in the early morning.

However, that photograph of the backyard will be quite different from one taken by an inhabitant of your planet in a different location, in a different environment.

In the same world, if another person takes another photograph, their focus, their feelings, may be different. Maybe you photograph the fountain, and they photograph the entire swimming pool; maybe you photograph a rare variety of rose, and they photograph how abundant your fruit trees are -- each person's focus on the same backyard is different.

However, if there are any discrepancies in those psychic snapshots, people begin to worry. Although you expect your own reality and photographs to differ from one another, those who travel into unknown realities become concerned if their snapshots do not agree with one another. Therefore they try desperately to make all the photographs look similar -- in other words, they retouch them.

When you travel into unknown realities, it is very easy to be led astray by the experiences that previous people brought back. Those are their experiences, and have nothing to do with you. But you are afraid of being left out, afraid that you may have gone astray, and even more afraid that you may have gone off the deep end, so you always want to lean toward what others have said. Leaning toward what others have said is very dangerous. Because in the exploration of inner reality, what you think is what you get; whatever you think in your mind is what you will obtain, so you often can only observe the things they described.

Actually, outer travel is the same. Look at the things people photograph today; they are almost completely uniform -- the positions, the angles, the poses are all very similar. What meaning does that kind of thing have? At most, you have been there, and you put yourself in the picture. Now you do not even need to do that; at home you can use Photoshop 2021² to swap the background with one click, and it will completely insert you into the scene; there is no need to actually go there. Using Google Street View, you can splice yourself into any corner of the world.

So why do people have this kind of habit? Clearly everyone's feelings in the unknown reality are different, so why do they seek out that commonality?

First of all, in your own world, those travelers who enter unknown territory are often regarded as exiles. It is as though they received television programs that no one else could see.

In our present society, if you say you can channel, that you can go to those places, it is a bit better now, but if you go further back, to their 1970s, people would think you were talking nonsense, look at you with strange eyes, ask if you were sick, if you were all right, whether you needed to see a doctor, whether you had recently joined some organization -- with a face full of pity, saying, oh dear, so young and already like this, with a face full of regret. Including the people closest to you, your parents, your relatives, even your spouse, may not necessarily understand you. This exile does not mean being banished to some distant place; it means that in thought, in psychology, you have already been exiled by them from the mainstream world.

If the stories of their experiences did not agree, then who would believe them?

They were already a tiny minority, and a rejected one at that. If the people who came back each said different things -- I saw such and such, but what you saw is different from what I saw. One says, when I was near death I saw a white light; another says, no, that is wrong, it was not a white light, it was rainbow-colored; another says, no, that is wrong, it was not rainbow-colored, it was a staircase; another says, no, it was not a staircase, it was an elevator, with buttons even. Then everyone says, you people are just making this up. You were already a minority, and what you saw is not even the same, so you are even less credible. They felt threatened, and felt they had to tell the same story -- we say that after death one sees a white light; one person says they saw a white light, and then everyone says we all saw a white light, which proves that the world after death is consistent, objective, and truly exists, and you cannot question it. They have this kind of psychology, always wanting to tell the same story, otherwise they will be considered mentally deranged.

So they made an unspoken agreement to interpret their experiences in the terms used by those who had gone before.

Whichever account was told earliest, whichever was most widely circulated, was accepted as a universal reality of that world.

For example, the example Teacher Xiyu raised: people living in the West, in their after-death experiences, will absolutely never encounter the Jade Emperor, will never encounter the Bridge of Helplessness, will never encounter the life-taking little demons, the courts of the underworld, and even less will they encounter Sun Wukong, the Queen Mother of the West, and such things -- because these things do not exist in Western culture. If you said you saw these things, would that not be too strange?

Speaking of Sun Wukong, I recall that in Hinduism, Sun Wukong has a real prototype; in their mythology he truly exists. In that tradition, Sun Wukong is called Hanuman, and he also holds a staff in his hand, also an iron staff, exactly the same³, and in that tradition he is also a guardian deity figure. Let me tell you, one time when we went to India, we happened to go together with Liu Xiao Ling Tong -- the actor who played Sun Wukong. At the time, Liu Xiao Ling Tong was truly astonished when he saw this image⁴, and many of us were also very astonished; we never expected that a mythological figure from Journey to the West would have an identical counterpart in Indian mythology -- a monkey figure, holding an iron staff, a guardian deity of the celestial realm. So I think Wu Cheng'en had some basis for writing Sun Wukong⁵; he was not just making things up.

You create your own reality. Therefore, following the pre-set programs, they will perceive this material according to the psychic customs that have already been established.

In the exploration of unknown realities, because it is the inner world, your beliefs create reality far too easily; what you think is what you get. Once you have this kind of psychological presupposition, once you have this kind of inner psychic custom, you will naturally see the things you want to see in that place. Then you come back and tell others, it really is like that, I am not lying to you, there really is a white light, there really is God coming to receive you, it really is such and such.

There are tigers in Asia, but you can travel through Asia and never see a tiger -- if you do not want to see one. We live in Asia every day, but apart from the zoo, have you ever seen a tiger in reality? It depends on where you go. In unknown realities, your thoughts immediately become obvious and real. If you believe in demons, you will see demons, and never realize that they are part of your psychic environment.

They are part of your inner psychic environment, not part of that unknown reality -- they are formed by your beliefs, and then projected onto an environment that you cannot sense, that is very real, like a mirage. You will believe the psychic sightseeing books, and you will go looking for demons, rather than tigers.

Individually and collectively, you form the world that you know. However, upon that overall individual and collective basis, certain things have been agreed upon, unanimously accepted, and you view those things from your own unique perspective. You have your share in that collective agreement, and it is valid, because you also participated in it. So it is not unreal.

What he is saying is not that it is unreal -- once it is created by your beliefs, it is real. But it is one of the appearances that your reality takes on, and inwardly it comes from something within your state of mind. It has a valid basis: the environment that you all accept, in which certain experiences are possible.

So in the exploration of inner reality it is the same; there is a basis that everyone acknowledges. Upon such a basis, certain experiences become possible. What Chinese people most commonly feel after death, or during out-of-body experiences -- the courts of the underworld, the Bridge of Helplessness, Granny Meng's soup -- are all vividly lifelike. If you do not even know what the Bridge of Helplessness is, and do not know what the flower of the other shore is, then how can you explore? Or you may see something and not know what it is.

This applies equally to other realities.

You know, for example, there is a difference between the picture in front of your eyes and an artificially rendered version of that picture. There is a difference between a landscape photo and an artificially rendered version of that landscape photo.

Looking at a landscape, and looking at a landscape photo that a photographer has post-processed, color-graded, and rendered, these two are completely different. Between the unknown reality itself, and the postcards that are depicted and shown to you, there is also a difference.

In your terms, Ruburt went out to find the real thing.

He did not look at postcards. He directly experienced that unknown reality through his own perception, and had nothing to do with the scenery the postcards gave him, nor was he interested in it.

This is a very important reminder and suggestion for everyone: when we explore, we should not be influenced by those postcards, and we should not let the things others give you preemptively limit you. If he wants to limit you, then you are actually traveling within the things projected from your own heart, traveling within your own illusion, and you have not entered the so-called unknown reality, or that inner world, at all.

Seth said, please wait for us a moment. Then at 10:47, Jane suddenly said "I'm out" while coughing, and suddenly coughed violently. She said I am working on some things, wait a moment, I do not know whether I can get him. She kept coughing, very severely. Since the break, her voice had become so hoarse that a few minutes earlier, I had almost wanted to ask her to end the session. After my protest was ineffective, she lit another pack of cigarettes. Jane smoked very heavily, pack after pack, and Rob was also very helpless, his protests ineffective.

The following are all Jane's words, and they are also very, very important:

If I can get him, that is, that material, it will be very good stuff, and I will tell you.

She lit a cigarette and took a small sip of beer. She really was both smoking and drinking.

Rob, what I am getting seems to be something I cannot reproduce. A truly fast, beautiful sound, very fast, very musical, connected with the spin of electrons and the composition of cells.

While she was exploring the inner reality, she described that the spin of electrons is faster than the composition of cells. This was her own feeling. In that state she received another content, but she could not reproduce the content. She could only feel that it was very fast, very musical, very beautiful, but too fast, and she could not transfer it over. She could only extract some key points.

It seemed to be about the spin of cells and the nature of cellular composition, and these two have a certain relationship. The spin of cells, the spin of electrons, is faster than the composition of cells. The faster speed of electrons somehow gave cells their boundaries.

Then she continued:

In those things, in a state of trance, as for example in a crystal, that is livingly present in the cells.

You can only guess at what she was saying. She said there is a state of electronic spin that exists in crystals, but it also livingly exists in cells. A crystal is a mineral crystalline body. Within that mineral crystalline body, the state of the atoms' electrons forms that feeling, livingly dwelling in the cells. It is like a state of trance. People have trance states, that is, meditation and trance. She said that the cell also has its trance state, and the cell's trance state is like a crystal, like that feeling within a crystal.

Then Jane cried out again:

I am getting it now. It is a beautiful sound imprisoned in a crystal. Wait a moment.

She cried out. She said: "What I am getting is a sound imprisoned in a crystal, and this sound speaks through light." Do you see? A crystal flashes all kinds of light, and she said this crystal speaks through light, flashing the light out, just like speaking.

That is the essence of personality.

Remember that everything she says later is very important. She was trying to use ordinary human language to tell us what the essence of a personality is. That part you call yourself, if one thing were used to represent you, that would be the essence of your personality.

You see how fast her thoughts jump. Can you not keep up with her? Generally speaking, if while exploring the unknown reality a strong story-like element appears, that is definitely nonsense. If you watch your unknown reality like watching a TV drama, with plots, causes and effects, and narrative structure, that is basically a projection of your inner drama. But true exploration of the inner reality has none of this logic, and none of these things.

Let us briefly go through this passage. She said the spin of electrons gives cells their boundaries. This boundary is the boundary of cellular consciousness, and also the boundary of our human consciousness. The spin of electrons can be understood as a form of quantum communication, or a form of quantum entanglement. Your present self-consciousness couples with the consciousness within your cells. The thought of wanting to do this thing combines with this physical body; and the other possibility, the you who did not do it, combines with that other physical body that did that thing. The way consciousness and the physical body combine is through the spin of electrons.

Seth said earlier that the spin of electrons is like an encryption system, a basic attribute of consciousness. Consciousness has its own attributes, one of which is that it has an encryption system. You can also call it "frequency," and frequency also counts as one of the encryption systems.

Every consciousness has boundaries. How can consciousnesses be both clearly distinct from one another and yet overlap with one another? This state, in the seventh and eighth inner senses, the contraction and expansion of the tissue capsule, is the key point of this kind of perception: you can expand the boundary of your consciousness, and you can also shrink it. Expanding can reach the point where it is so large that nothing is outside it, and shrinking can reach the point where it is so small that nothing is inside it. This boundary is controlled by you. When it comes to the contraction and expansion of the tissue capsule of the eighth inner sense, as I recall, it is adjusting this very thing. From the physical level, it is adjusting the state of your electronic spin, that is, adjusting a quantum state of your body. In Seth's words, it is aligning you with a certain inner coordinate.

Returning to Jane's words: that state of electronic spin is somewhat like the trance state of the cell. If the cell in the physical world presents to us its biological state, the cell has its biochemical reactions and material reactions, just like each of us, we have our own biological nature. But when the cell meditates, supposing the cell enters its own multidimensional existence through meditation, what is it like? It is like that state of electronic spin. That is, the multidimensional conscious state of the cell is similar to the spin state of the electron. Then she used a vivid metaphor, like that feeling within a crystal.

Why use a crystal? Does a crystal have its own complete boundary? It is extremely hard, with its own boundary, yet light can shine out from within it. She used such a vivid metaphor so that we can understand from a certain angle what that higher-dimensional cellular consciousness is like.

What I am getting is a beautiful sound imprisoned in a crystal, speaking through light.

The crystal is an outer form, and within the crystal there is the consciousness of the crystal. The consciousness of the crystal is like a beautiful sound, but it speaks through light. And this consciousness of the crystal that speaks through light, this beautiful sound, is the essence of the crystal's personality, that is, the noumenon of its consciousness. Through this vivid metaphor, you can apply it to yourself.

I am getting almost jewel-like colored sounds.

She truly said she was getting sounds that were like jewels, brilliant, beautiful, exquisite, like colored sounds. That sound had color. In ancient China there was the phrase "big pearls and small pearls falling onto a jade plate⁶," which compares sound to pearls falling onto a jade plate with a tinkling sound.

Let me see what I can do with it. I want to turn it into words, but it comes so fast.

At this point it had already gone beyond the limits of language. Jane could deeply feel this feeling: this electronic spin, this boundary of cellular consciousness, the state of cellular meditation, the cell entering higher-dimensional space, and the connection with the crystal, and how the consciousness within the crystal speaks like sound through light, and transmits it through light, and that light is colored, and that sound is also colored. You can imagine it.

Then she said:

And we are now talking about personality.

This sentence is very important. She was afraid you would misunderstand, and be carried away by these crystals, cells, and electronic spins. We are not talking about crystals, nor about cells. We are talking about personality. What each of us has always wanted to ask: what exactly is our personality?

Just as seeds are scattered in all directions by the wind, so a seed of a personality rides on its own wings and is scattered into many worlds of different times and places. He carries his own true tone, that is, that seed, carries his own true voice, falls down, and strikes different chords.

What a beautiful picture this is, a feeling of sound and image combined. Every personality is like a dandelion. When the wind blows, the dandelion's seeds scatter to every corner of the world, or rather, to every corner of time and space, with different times and different places. When this seed of the personality falls into that time and space, when it falls down and makes contact with that time and space, striking against that time and space, it emits a beautiful sound. That tone is its own voice, its own true timbre. Every dandelion's timbre is different, and these seeds that fall into different times and spaces strike completely different chords.

Dandelion Seeds: How Personality Strikes Its Own Tone in Time and Space

Every personality is like a dandelion. When the wind blows, the seeds scatter to every corner of the world, to every time and space, taking root and sprouting. When this seed falls down, makes contact with that time and space, and strikes against that time and space, it emits a beautiful sound. That tone is its own true voice, its own true timbre. Every dandelion's timbre is different, but for these seeds that fall into different times and spaces, the fundamental tone of the sound they emit is the same, all being the sound of this dandelion.

But because they fall into different times and spaces, they strike different chords. If you have studied music, you know that the simplest triad is made of three notes. The sound of this seed is only one note within one chord among many times and spaces. This seed strikes different chords in different worlds, but its note is always the same note. For example, if it is mi, it is always mi; if it is so, it is always so. Do you understand what it means? That is what it means. Because this note must combine with other sounds to form a chord, and after forming a chord, you can no longer see its original appearance. But it comes from that most central keynote. Among so many different chords there is one common note, and that note is the note of this dandelion, its true tone. In English the word used is "tone."

Seth continued, saying that those sounds are aware of their own separateness. They are all in different times and spaces, and the sounds are distinct. Although the tone is consistent, the times and spaces are different, so the sounds are also different. It is like a song: sung by a male voice and sung by a female voice, they are two completely different versions; sung by different male voices, they are also different versions. Are they using the same score? Are they singing the same note? It is the same note. But the sound that is sung is not the same. Their tone is the same, but the sound that is sung is different. Each is brilliant and unique. Every one is a Voice of China, and here you can call it a Voice of the Universe. Yet each also gathers into a symphony. Each is brilliant and unique, each is different, but all these sounds combined together become a magnificent symphony.

Each sound knows itself, for itself. This sound can recognize itself striking the medium of the time and space where it is, colliding with that time and space, producing sound. In it he finds his expression. Each sound, each seed, finds its way of self-expression in the time and space where it is. He can recognize that it is himself, and he also knows that he is within a vast symphony, and he also knows that he is within the chord of this time and space. Then he seeks his own expression. The note is the same, but what song is sung is different, and who sings it is also different. Yet he can perceive that he is within it, and he can also create infinite other sounds of every kind in other realities. He can also feel that in other times and spaces, his companions, his other seeds, have also created other infinite sounds of every kind.

And these realities are like the instruments upon which they solemnly perform. For example, falling into this time and space, this time and space is like a piano, and the sound this note produces on the piano is the piano's timbre; another reality, another universe, is like a violin, and the same note falling into that violin reality-universe produces the violin's timbre when played. You can imagine different universes or different realities as different instruments, and the same movement played on different instruments also sounds different.

Each cell strikes in the same way. He returns to the level of the cell again. Cells are the same: each one strikes out its own sound, but together they form an overall magnificent symphony. That magnificent symphony is your physical body. And each self is the same, each person is the same, each cell is the same. They know both that they are within the symphony of this universe, within the symphony of a multiverse, and they also know their own identity, know which note they are. Within the great All That Is of this multiverse, each universe is like each instrument in a symphony orchestra. Is this not a vivid metaphor?

And all of this is a true, real feeling. This was not something Seth told her; it was Jane's own feeling. Through this passage of experience you can know that when Jane explored the unknown reality, she did not follow anyone's so-called postcards, so-called snapshots, or those travel guides. She completely followed her own way of experiencing it. Each cell and each person is the same: in their own different realities they strike out their own note, and then form one great cosmic symphony of the whole.

In a kaleidoscope, every most minute change within it is meaningful. If you have played with a kaleidoscope, you know that those insignificant little fragments and little colored pieces within it, every one of them is meaningful, and they affect the individual notes produced by the whole, and every one of them plays a role. Each also combines to form a whole, but each is also an independent individual entity.

Jane said, we do not strike in only one reality, we do not strike in only one world. And I hear those notes together, and yet each separate. They strike in their respective realities, that is, they perform in their respective universes. Perhaps like raindrops, I try to put them together, yet I hear each separate note.

Just like the life of each of us, our personality has countless reincarnations, and also countless probable selves. These countless reincarnations are all in countless parallel worlds, each performing its own music, yet together they form a complete movement. And each note is also very unique, different from others, unique and brilliant, clearly distinct. It is not that because the whole movement is too grand, the note played by this single instrument is unimportant. In other words, the entire symphony is composed of the notes played one by one by these instruments. Without these instruments it would not work, without these universes it would not work, without these notes it would not work.

What are we? We are that note. What else are we? We are also that movement. We are both that note and that movement. This is the essence of personality. If you ask what personality really is, personality is like this. So is your movement different from other movements? Yes, it is different.

Finding Your Own True Tone

Seth or someone else is speaking, perhaps it is just me speaking. Jane said, maybe it is Seth speaking, maybe it is me speaking, speaking to the people of our era. I do not know who is speaking, it does not matter, it is speaking to all the people of our era. I have tried to do the same thing, but I suddenly heard my own true tone. Jane said I heard my own true tone, and that is what I must follow. That is me, that is my personality, that tone is what I must follow, that movement is me. As a molecule within that movement, as that one note, I must express myself, I must follow that note, to transcend those popularized postcards, I must speak about my understanding of the unknown reality in my own way, I must transcend those popularized postcards that others have already spoken about countless times.

Through this passage you can know that what Jane felt in this trance state was truly very difficult to describe in words, but she still tried to convey it to us in words. It was very magnificent, a very intuitive experience. Through her we can get a glimpse of what the reality of this world and the reality of personality really look like. This is what they look like.

Jane said, I tell you, I really went out. After a while Jane was rather weak and feeble. She was too tired. I do not know how you put this together with Seth's material. It is like a note that has found its own true tone. Jane said, this content that I have spoken, this content itself, is like a note that has found its own true tone, and it must come out. When a note truly finds the tone that belongs to it, other things no longer have meaning. For a note, once it finds its own tone, do other things still have meaning? No meaning. Then just play it well. Sing this tone out loud, sing this note that belongs to you so that it is resonant, brilliant, and radiant. This is this note's value fulfillment for itself, and beyond this it seeks nothing else. The premise is that it is a note. For a note, once it finds its own true tone, it seeks nothing else, and nothing else has any meaning.

Jane said, I can only say this much. I do not know how to describe it, but once you strike it, you know it is it. I can only say this much. But for every person, once you strike that note, when that note rings out, when that note resounds throughout your world, you immediately understand, and you know that it is it. What does this mean? It means you have found your own value, found your own mission, and you understand who you are. You will never again search in a flustered panic, and you will never again have that feeling of unease. Because you are that one unique note in the magnificent symphony of the entire universe, the note that cannot be missing. Although relative to the entire symphony you seem insignificant, without your existence, this symphony would be distorted. Can this symphony do without your note? No. When you understand that you are one note in this cosmic symphony, your heart is at peace, you are no longer flustered, and your heart is filled with joy and steadiness.

Jane said, I know that between my chair in the living room and the kitchen floor, there is a universe. She said she could feel that between her chair and the kitchen floor there is a universe. But no problem, no problem, I can walk directly through this universe. This was her feeling after her consciousness went out.

When you strike your own true tone, you recognize it, and you succeed. You know your own universe, and you know your own meaning within the universe, even if you cannot put it into words. When you understand all this, your inner feeling is like what many people say, it can be called a feeling of enlightenment, it can also be called a feeling of samadhi, and it can also be called the feeling of the eighth jhana among the four jhanas and eight samadhis⁷. You no longer seek or ask. In the eighth jhana there is no seeking and no asking. You no longer ask anything, and you have no questions. Because you know who you are, and you also know what the universe is. You truly feel that you are one molecule of the universe. It is not a theoretical feeling, but a real feeling, like the feeling of a note finding its own tone.

Direct Experience Surpasses Theory: Feeling Tones

Jane spent most of today in a series of alterations of consciousness, even approaching a state of ecstasy. In the alteration of consciousness she accidentally touched her own note, and she knew what the meaning of this life is. Through this matter, she could also realize that it is the same for personality, and the same for cells. And each expresses his fundamental mysterious nature, and each state expresses his mysterious nature, which is a unique and creative aspect.

You see how many times her state of consciousness changed today: transmitting Seth material for Seth was one alteration of consciousness, her normal life was another alteration, and the state she was in just now was yet another alteration. Although she had a bit of a cold today, she could still draw upon a very large amount of energy. Rob believed that Jane's experience of the inner voice after the session represented her interpretation of the material on feeling tones that Seth spoke about in the early days. See Chapter 1 of The Nature of Personal Reality, Session 613. There is clearly a deep connection between her understanding of her own true tone and what Seth said in that session.

Let us review that passage. What did Seth say? Seth said that each of us possesses certain feeling qualities that are unique to us. Many people may not have fully understood what feeling tones are in that session. In this session let us review it again, and combined with the above description, you can probably understand what that feeling tone that cannot be described in words really is.

It is like a deep musical chord.

Then Seth said, these feeling tones pervade your existence. This feeling tone is the form your soul and body take when they combine. That is, this soul of yours, this consciousness of ours, when it combines with this physical body, the form it takes. Just as Jane said just now, that dandelion seed falls into a specific time and space. When it falls into that specific time and space, that is the moment when the soul combines with your physical body, and the form it takes is the timbre it strikes out.

This feeling tone is your posture and temperament, the timbre that is your substance, that portion of your energy that is effective in material experience.

That is, the timbre, temperament, and posture of that portion of energy that contributes for us in the material world. That is your feeling tone.

In other words, what Seth said in that session was something Jane only truly understood through bodily feeling in this session. And at the time that session was delivered, Jane actually had no feeling about it. This example tells us that there is actually a huge gap between theory and practice. We need to combine theory with practice; otherwise, theory remains just theory. If Jane had not had this personal experience, she could not have truly understood what feeling tones are, and she could not have understood what her own feeling tone is. Fortunately, through Jane's description, we can also get a glimpse of it, and know what the feeling tone of a personality is, and what an individual's feeling tone is.

Jane was also quite aware of the fact of her tremendous feeling, as she wrote down, just as she tried to look at our three-dimensional world's existence and this universe from outside this framework, or as a method of traveling beyond the popularized psychic postcards. What Jane meant was that she abandoned our traditional psychic postcards, traveled beyond them, and at the same time stood outside the framework of our three-dimensional world to look at the combination of our soul and body, the combination of consciousness and body, to look at what that part we call the individuality of personality really is. Why is every person so different? Each person's temperament, tone of voice, posture, and the feeling they give off to others are so different. How did this come about? Jane basically explained it clearly here.

Annotation One: The Akashic Records

The following are Rob's annotations. In Jane's writing of Psychic Politics today, she had already begun writing about the Akashic records:

In occult terms, the Akashic records are the complete cosmic record of every action, every thought, and every feeling that has occurred since the beginning of creation.

It is like supposing there is a monitoring device that records everything in the universe. This is one way of describing the Akashic records. Jane said in answer to my question:

I don't believe in them, at least not in that way.

But that -- Jane said -- then why would I build a psychic library? And then he laughed. It's still not easy to explain my own thoughts, and I must get to the bottom of it. Jane said I don't believe in the Akashic records in that way -- for example, that there is something like a file, and we can directly go into the Akashic records, look it up, and retrieve it, and then know everything about this person's past lives, present life, and future -- Jane said I don't believe in it in that way. He said if I don't believe in it, then why would I still build a psychic library together with everyone in our own space of consciousness? What's the point of building a psychic library, if he doesn't believe in the Akashic records, why build something similar to that?

Note 2

Just as the legendary Atlantis was located in the Atlantic Ocean between Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the great mother continent was believed to exist in the Pacific Ocean between the Americas and Asia. These two mysterious lands finally sank to the bottom of the sea in a tremendous crustal upheaval, and each mysteriously disappeared more than ten thousand years ago. In the twenty-fourth appendix of Volume 2, there will be some reference material on Atlantis; if you're interested, you can go take a look.

Note 3: Those who explore unknown realities are still called oddballs

Those people who travel into unknown realities are still labeled as exiles, oddballs, or worse. He said those who go to explore unknown realities are still called exiles, oddballs, or worse by people in ordinary society. Jane had experienced this kind of reaction from others toward him. Rob said I'm the same, I've felt it too. When this kind of reaction combined with his own very natural doubts about his psychic abilities -- that is, when this happened, he also began to doubt his own inner things, not only did others doubt him, he doubted himself -- when these two things came together, such episodes were not fun at all; they were very painful.

Unintentionally, it might be rather humorous, if those criticisms were not so personally directed. If the criticism were not a personal attack on the individual, this kind of thing might sound quite amusing; but if it is a personal attack, only the one who feels it knows; it's not that easy to take.

We also knew what negative thoughts other people held about us. For example, in a conversation, in a letter, or on the phone, a person would unintentionally reveal to us that their spouse or parents did not much appreciate Jane and me and the work we were doing with the Seth material. That is, the parents of those followers' families were not very interested in what the two of them were doing. Occasionally I would run into one or two indirect slanderers -- by indirect I mean they did not insult or mock the two of them to their faces, but only told them through other people what they thought of them.

So of course we would be met with polite smiles, but their opinions, their criticism of people, would still be there. The conversation might touch on the weather, but almost never on psychic matters -- we usually chatted with others very politely, but never touched on this kind of content; talking about the weather was fine. Sometimes we would find that those skeptics' understanding of us was so far removed from our true beliefs and activities -- they simply did not understand what we were doing; it was a misunderstanding, and there was nothing to be done -- that it would take us a very long time to establish any real understanding among all the people involved. Even if it were possible, we always chose to give up such opportunities. Those who doubted us had no idea what we were doing, but if I wanted to explain it clearly to them, it would take a great deal of time to explain to each person, and the moment we thought of that, we just didn't explain; we couldn't be bothered to do it.

Even while Rob was writing this note, Jane received a letter that said: If you are not a fraud, then do this thing for me. Jane said this kind of letter was probably not the first he had received, and he simply threw the letter away. Rob also had a temper; he was very polite and very conscientious with readers' letters, and replied to almost every one, but this letter he threw away directly.

At the same time, Rob remembered the prophetic humor Seth had delivered in the twentieth session on January 20, 1964:

As far as publishing this material is concerned, I have no objection. I am giving it to you not only for your own enlightenment, but also as a contribution to the whole of humanity. Because of its source, once this material is obtained through Jane through channeling, you may be called frauds. But I imagine by now you have understood this.

Seth had foreseen it long ago -- as soon as you publish it, you will certainly be called frauds by others, and then Rob said: Yes.

And faced with such doubt and misunderstanding, Jane and Rob sometimes found themselves wondering: Why should the attributes of the psyche exist in nature, if they are not allowed to be applied within that framework? What does that mean? Jane said if inner reality, the nature of the psyche, the nature of spirituality, is a basic natural attribute that everyone has, then why in our natural framework can we not apply it naturally, like our other abilities? Why must it necessarily be through this kind of inward exploration, rather than in the ordinary way, that this spiritual attribute can be directly displayed? And then -- each of you must have a basic affirmation of yourself -- so that you know that you are born with a spiritual essence, that you are fundamentally a spiritual being.

Then Seth told us in a recent private session -- Seth said, of course this information is not only for the two of you, but also for others, but you must trust your basic existence. The following passage is information for everyone:

Each of you must trust your basic existence, along with its characteristics and abilities. You have them, and there is a reason for their unique combination.

There is a reason you have this ability, including this spiritual ability, this ability to explore inward, this psychic ability. Each person's combination is also somewhat different, and each person's abilities are different, and there is a reason for all of it. You should also avoid labeling, because these can freeze your perception of yourself -- once you label, you freeze your judgment and perception of yourself, so you should not label yourself. He is emphasizing this again.

Note 4

As shown in Appendix 19, the portion of Session 621 and the notes contain the fast and slow sounds that Jane has been able to perceive so far. He again mentioned the effect of that long sound, that is, the sound from the crystal he just mentioned was too fast. He mentioned it in Session 621; see especially Notes 7 and 10 there. The word that follows is an English word for colored hearing, and it is defined in Note 10. Many people have this ability. I've talked about this before: a little American girl could directly listen to every piece of music and draw a picture from it. She said every piece of music is colorful, and different colors and images are different. Information about electrons and spin is also discussed in Notes 8 and 9 of that session.

Note 5: Inner sound and the true tone

In a private session on October 1, 1975, Seth discussed the symptoms of Jane's own body, and also talked about inner sound. Seth said:

Regarding the sounds produced by joint movement, that is, Jane's joint movement, because she has rheumatoid arthritis, joint movement produces that kind of sound, and that sound is information. When hormones are released, they produce sounds, and those sounds are also information.

All the sounds in your body are information, inner sound.

Yet these inner bodily (sounds) can only be compared to an internal bodily condition, in which sound operates like light.

In the inner bodily condition, sound operates like light. Seth had said before that human beings are composed of sound, light, and electricity -- but this sound is not ordinary sound, this light is not ordinary light, and this electricity is not ordinary electricity; human beings are composed of a triple sound-light-electricity.

You are accustomed to thinking in terms of transparent or opaque colors; in such terms, there is opaque light and transparent light. In human terms, sound has light values, and light has sound qualities, and these operate within the body.

Why can some people see images from sound? Jane finally saw that colorful, jewel-like sound flowing out of the crystal -- she saw that sound was colorful and as beautiful as jewels. Why can sound become light and become color? Why can crystal transmit its own sound through changes of light? Seth says here:

Each frequency, so to speak, acts as a messenger (carrier of information), triggering the body's response before an actual reaction becomes apparent.

When that sound-light-electricity has not yet produced a reaction in a person's outer senses, your body has already responded to it.

At any time, in any bodily problem, you can say that the frequencies of light and sound have become out of tune.

When your body has a problem, from a certain perspective, the frequencies of light and sound in your body have become out of tune, and once they are out of tune, your body has a problem. Actually, there are even more complex things, including taste -- why does Chinese medicine say "grabbing medicine" when treating illness? Each medicine is one flavor after another, and the medicine treats illness mainly by its flavor.

The true whole true tone becomes turbid.

That is, your true tone, your feeling-tone, the basic sound tone that every person should maintain in this three-dimensional world, has become turbid and unclear. And when Ruburt began writing The Politics of the Psyche, he experienced his true tone spiritually and psychically -- he found himself. Although he himself did not yet understand what was going on, this gave him something he could rely on. He is still unconsciously bringing about the physical counterpart of the true tone -- the body will also change along with these tones.

All right, this session is also very rich in content; it discussed several themes. Everyone can savor it carefully; each one can have a very great influence and effect on us.

注释与核实

1. Source: Tim Sablik, "Tipping: From Scourge of Democracy to American Ritual" (https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2024/q1_q2_economic_history) ↩

2. Source: Adobe, "Update information for older versions of Adobe Photoshop" (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/legacy-version-updates.html) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: National Museum of China, "Chen Yixi's Inscriptions on the 'Album of Journey to the West'" (https://www.chnmuseum.cn/zp/zpml/ysp/202012/t20201217_248562_wap.shtml) ↩

6. Source: Nanjing Institute of Mechatronic Technology, "Song of the Pipa: The Large Strings Murmur Like Rapid Rain, the Small Strings Whisper Like Intimate Words" (https://www.nimt.edu.cn/renwen/2019/1202/c83a3394/page.htm) ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩