The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike 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 begins with Jane's perception of a nineteenth-century Jamaican Black woman and a long session, formally introducing the concept of "counterparts." Seth first discusses the personal nature of symbols in dreams, and space and time in dreams; then, using Rob's life versions such as Nebene, the Roman officer, and the Black woman as examples, he explains how multiple selves in the same era are counterparts to one another, facing common challenges from different angles. At the end, he mentions that Jane and Rob no longer have earthly reincarnations and have entered another system of reality, and explains why this concept is only being presented at this time.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Dreams are the mirror of the psyche; the symbols in dreams are given meaning by the individual, and fixed symbol interpretations will hinder understanding.
- In dream reality, locations and scenes form around you according to your intent; leaving an unpleasant experience is a matter of shifting your attention.
- Time extends from any point in all directions; both the past and the future are unfinished; a person lives more than one life in the same era.
- Each self is a counterpart; Rob had different versions in the same period, such as Nebene, a Roman officer, and a Black woman, jointly facing the themes of the era from different angles.
- Jane and Rob have finished their earthly reincarnations and entered another reality system; the concept of counterparts was introduced late to avoid confusion, because the soul is a focus of consciousness rather than a single entity.
Main Text
On November 16, Jane experienced another psychic event: a series of extremely vivid impressions in which she saw herself as a black woman in 19th-century Jamaica in the Caribbean. This happened on a Saturday. Seth spoke briefly about it on Monday evening, and that session later became a private session. Seth returned to Jamaica in the ESP class on November 19, and at the same time began discussing the concept of "counterparts," which he formally introduced for this book in tonight's session.
Last Wednesday evening's session was canceled to give Jane a rest. Yesterday, which was Sunday, she gave some very long sessions on her own to a visiting scientist. I say on her own because Seth did not come through, and Jane was not aware of Seth's presence either. Seth later mentioned that yesterday's session seemed to take place outside of what we think of as time -- it lasted from two in the afternoon until after midnight, nearly twelve hours, with only one interruption for a plate of scrambled eggs and occasional small breaks. We estimate that she was in a slightly altered state of consciousness.
Jane spoke with great pleasure. She talked about such topics as the many facets of the electron and its behavior, time and its variations, gravity and how it changes with motion, the attributes of past, present, and future, why the speed of light is what it is, mathematical equations, astronomy, the structure of the earth's core, earthquakes, black sound and light (sound and light we cannot hear or see), language, the gift of tongues, and Sumari -- she sang in the Sumari language -- as well as pyramid coordination points and so on. Our guest recorded everything and promised to send a transcript, which he did. But this content is not included in this book; Jane plans to excerpt part of it for the book The Politics of the Psyche.
The following point comes from her material on gravity and age:
The gravity surrounding older objects is different from the gravity surrounding younger objects; but this cannot be perceived at the level of our instruments. However, if we know where to look, we can discover it. Age affects gravity. Old things are heavier -- this refers to gravity in general, not some new kind.
This perception is very accurate -- gravity does change, and the older something is, the greater its gravity.
Why is this so? Because our physical forms are all energy moving faster than the speed of light; it is only after slowing down that it forms the matter we see. The longer it has existed, the longer it has been around, the more it proves that its speed is slower and its frequency lower, and thus the greater its alteration of the gravitational field, and the greater its gravity compared to others. But our instruments cannot measure these tiny changes -- though sometimes we can feel them.
Afterward, Seth said he would like Jane to write a passage about the primary mode of consciousness she experienced in that long session. The following text is what Jane herself wrote:
For me, it seemed like an easy and natural state. I suppose I entered it as naturally as a duck slides into water; but it is hard to explain. It was a state in which there was almost no resistance encountered. The answers were just there; the only problem was transmitting the material in the other person's vocabulary.
Jane said she did not really think it was different from her usual consciousness -- just different. It was an accelerated state mixed with passivity, and it was poised. However, if the scientist's attitude had been critical, she probably would not have done as well.
A few weeks ago, Jane joined a science club. Every month she receives a box of assembled parts used to do that month's science experiment. Seth said in the part I am not including in the book:
In your terms, Ruburt's scientific toy has another probability -- one in which he learned all the things that science as you know it should know. That is one reason why he can enter into the reality of the electron so easily.
In other words, Jane was just playing with a little scientific toy here. But in another probable reality, she was like a scientist who had acquired all the knowledge that the human scientific community should have. Seth used the phrase "picked up things" -- because this knowledge has actually always been there; when there is no limitation of time and space, your so-called scientists merely "pick up" that knowledge from that unknown reality by a certain method. That is why Jane could talk with that scientist for nine hours about topics that were actually relatively unfamiliar to her. This science club activity was helpful in expanding her probabilities -- she acquired that scientific knowledge in another probability, and then applied that knowledge in this reality, helping her communicate in a scientific context.
With the introduction finished, the session formally began. Seth said:
When you look into a mirror, you look into an impression of yourself -- but it does not answer you. In the dream state, you look into the mirror of the psyche, and see impressions of your own thoughts, fears, and desires. There, however, the impressions do speak, and have their own shapes. In a manner of speaking, they are unfettered.
In the dream state, your joys and fears speak to you, acting out the roles you have assigned them -- in the form of a performance, shown to you in ways you can feel and accept. Their identities, roles, and props are all assigned by you.
For example:
If you believe that you possess great inner wealth, then you might have a dream about a king in a beautiful palace. The king need not look like you at all; in the dream you need not identify with him either. Yet, symbolically speaking, this would represent one of the ways in which you express your feelings.
Your inner abundance will display itself in dreams in the form of worldly glory and wealth. But once this dream is created, it is not dead -- the dream is alive, and it will go its own way.
If you have conflicts about the connected ideas of good and evil, poverty and wealth -- you have inner abundance, but at the same time you feel that good and evil are opposed, and poverty and wealth are opposed -- then the king may lose his land or wealth, and some disaster may befall him. If you inwardly doubt that wealth is in some way harmful to spirituality, the king in the dream may be captured and punished.
A group of people can represent a procession of unruly desires. The whole drama involves the evolution of an emotion or belief -- from inner abundance to your inner doubts; in the dream state you let this belief and emotion play out freely, to see what happens and where it goes.
Your thoughts and the reactions of your immediate emotions then project outward into a drama of abundance. You can observe that play, take a role in it, or move in and out of its plot as you please. You will use your own private symbols -- these represent a trace of your psyche, connected to your personal creativity.
So if some "dream guide" assigns a specific importance to a given symbol, it will actually prevent you from interpreting the meaning -- because this is your entirely personal creation, and the symbols themselves also change.
If you had before you the entire history of your dreams -- from birth onward, all the dream stories, readable like a book -- you would discover that along the way you change the meanings of your symbols according to your purposes. The same flower, the same king, at different ages and different stages of development, all portend different meanings. How the content of a dream is interpreted has a great deal to do with what kind of symbolic method you use.
At one time, the king might be a symbol of great inner wealth -- he might have a very kingly bearing, yet be poor, representing that wealth does not necessarily involve material possessions. At another time, he might appear as a dictator, cruel and arrogant, representing an entirely different framework of feelings and beliefs. He might appear as a young monarch -- the concept that youth is king.
In different periods of history, the same image has been used quite differently. When people opposed autocratic monarchs, the king in dreams was often a loathsome character, expelled or driven away. This is related to the historical and cultural background.
Whether or not you remember your dreams, when they happen, you are educating yourself.
You might suddenly wake up -- this waking up should be in quotation marks -- and you might still be in a dream; this is a dream within a dream. You recognize that the play is something you yourself created, and you will understand: this dream is merely a play I staged myself. Although it seems quite real, from a certain angle it is an illusion.
If you wish, you can say: I do not like this play, so I will not create it anymore. When you understand this principle, you can clear the stage immediately. But then, because of the sudden lack of activity, you may temporarily lose your sense of direction -- the play is gone, your role is gone, your sense of identity is lost, and you do not know who you are anymore. But very soon, another dream that you prefer begins to form.
If you pause and wait for a moment, not letting the new play begin, you can begin to catch a glimpse of the environment that serves as the stage -- what dream reality looks like before any play is performed.
In waking life, if you want to separate yourself from a thing or a place, you try to move away from it in space. But in dream reality, things happen in a different way:
Places spring up around you.
You do not need to go to the place. If you encounter people or things you do not like, you simply move your attention away from them, and as far as your experience is concerned, they disappear. Whether it is something you fear, dislike, loathe, find irritating, or do not like, you can use this method. What you cannot do is say "I am leaving you" -- the sense of space in dreams is not the same as in physical life; the only way to leave is to stop paying attention to it.
For example:
In physical reality, you can move through space quite freely. But unless you want to, you do not travel from one city to another. Intent is involved here -- but this is so obvious that its importance escapes you.
How do you get from Beijing to Shanghai? You can say by plane or by high-speed rail, but those are all tools. What really gets you there is your intent to go. Intent is the most important thing, but it is so obvious that you overlook it. Intent lies behind all your physical movement -- because you want to go to another place, you make use of ships, cars, airplanes, trains. Under certain circumstances, one of these tools is most convenient. But what really moves you through space is your intent.
In the waking state, you travel to places -- they do not come to you; you cannot move Shanghai to the doorstep of your home in Beijing. But in dream reality, it is exactly the opposite -- your intent causes places to spring up around you; it is the environments and locations that come to you, not the other way around. You form and attract that place -- or rather, you project an inner space in which you have certain experiences.
This inner space does not replace normal space, nor does it push it aside, nor does it interfere with the space of your three-dimensional world. It involves the process of creating inner environments and locations.
Seth gave an exercise: in dreams, try to expand whatever space you find yourself inhabiting. If you are in a room, then open the door and go out, go to another room, do this consciously; or go to the window and look out, see what scenery is outside, and then walk outside the house. If in the dream you are on a street, then walk along it, or turn a corner. Unless you are working on the idea of "limitation," you will find that you can indeed expand inner space -- the moment you turn, the space of that place unfolds before you. Space in dreams is endless, just as the space of the three-dimensional world is endless. The hinterlands of inner space are inexhaustible.
Most people are not yet that skilled at dream manipulation, but Seth said that some of his readers certainly can be. When you dream, remember what he said:
In the dream state, try to expand whatever location you find yourself in. If you are in a room, remember to look out the window -- and once you go to that window, a vista will appear. You can walk out of the house into another environment. And at least theoretically, you can explore that world, and the space within it will also expand. There will be no point at which the environment stops extending.
Moreover, the outer space you now think of is also expanding in exactly the same way. In this regard, dreams faithfully reflect the nature of what you call the outer world -- even in your terms, earth experience is far more varied than you have ever consciously imagined.
A person from one country will be very different from a person from another culture -- one with its own concepts of art, history, politics, religion, and law. Because you must concentrate on similarities, the physical world possesses consistency. You see more of the sameness: living, pursuing happiness, doing business, all the same, with great commonality. And the differences, you sometimes choose to ignore -- you want more to find the similarities. "Seek common ground while reserving differences" -- this is the method we often use to judge and feel the world. We take out the similarities and reinforce them, and choose to ignore the differences; this is how people from different countries and different cultural backgrounds come to have a unified understanding of the same physical world. But if seen as it is, with each person's own social attributes and biases, the differences are enormous.
For example, between a poor Indian and a rich Indian -- India's gap between rich and poor is extreme -- a native of New Guinea, an American tailor, an African nationalist, a Chinese aristocrat, and an Irish housewife, there is an unknown chasm separating their private experiences. These differences cannot be objectively explained -- you cannot articulate them clearly -- but in the experience of time and space, they bring about qualitative differences that transcend language.
Some people are jet travelers, and there are also people who have never seen a train. Your reality system contains tremendous contrasts. Yet dreams involve you in a kind of communication that is physically impossible -- in dreams you can continually experience different lives.
In the physical world, each of us has an established role. Yet in the dream state, no one is limited by his own cultural background or actual experience: if you are poor, you can also experience the life of the rich; if you are an autocratic dictator, you can also feel what it is like to be an ordinary nobody under autocratic rule. Even those who have never seen an airplane can travel from one place to another in the blink of an eye; the poor are fed, the ignorant become wise, the sick become healthy, and creativity that is blocked in reality is also expressed.
Indeed, when the hungry person wakes up, he is still hungry; when the sick person wakes up, he is no healthier than before. But in a deeper sense, in the dream state everyone is solving his own problems or challenges -- the hungry person can discover a way to find food, or a way to obtain money to buy food. Dreaming is a practical activity; if this were understood, in your terms it would be even more practical.
The sick person may find a method of healing in dreams -- those methods are not necessarily the external physical methods you imagine; they may be methods that come from a shift of thought. When you know why you got this illness, your illness is already more than half healed.
Animals also dream. Those animals that are close to starving will be led by their dreams to find better pasture. In the same way, the dreams of hungry people will point toward solutions to their problems. But most of this material is ignored.
The magnificent natural cooperation that exists between the waking and dreaming selves is largely set aside. The conscious mind is quite capable of interpreting dream information, but you do not use it for this at all. You think dreams are insufficient and not worth mentioning, so they seem to have no practical effect.
But you live in a waking and dreaming psychic environment, and you are conscious in both environments -- so why do you acknowledge only one state of consciousness as meaningful, and the other as meaningless?
Your dream experience represents a pivotal reality. Like the center of a wheel, with spokes leading to the rim of the wheel, your physical world is one spoke. Through the nature of dreams, you are connected with all the other simultaneously existing spokes. There, the unknown reality is presented before you, and there is no reason in life, in the spirit, or in the psyche why you cannot make use of and understand your own dream reality.
Dreams are like a gathering place for all your realities; physical reality is one of the spokes, and all other probable realities are the other spokes, all connected and interacting with dreams at the center.
In your terms, in your dreams you find your personal past appearing in the present; for that matter, the past of your species also appears in the present. There, future probabilities are also activated -- the past exists in the present, and the future is also planned there. So the decisions of individuals and of the human race as a group about their probable futures all take place in dreams.
Many people have a concern that studying dream reality will distance you further from the world you know. Seth said it is exactly the opposite -- it will connect you with that world in the most practical way; you are precisely making contact with a truer aspect of that world.
Exercise sixteen: When you find yourself in a dream, tell yourself that you will know what will happen before you entered this dream. What this exercise trains is the ability to "know what the dream is before entering the dream."
And the past grows outward from that moment. Again, there is no place where time stops -- it is always in a state of development, always in a state of existence and experience; there is no state of total stillness.
Dream time does not replace physical time; on the contrary, it grows out of your physical time. You have a ten-minute dream at four in the morning, yet in the dream you experience several days of events -- dream time does not occupy the time of the three-dimensional world; it merely unfolds from that point in time. And outer time operates in the same way, although you do not realize this.
We ordinarily think of time as a timeline from left to right -- developing from age zero, age one, age two. You should imagine time as a process from bottom to top, like thinking of time as the Y-axis: zero is your age zero, and upward is age one, age two, age three. And at every moment-point, it unfolds outward.
For example, China has a tradition called "zhuazhou": on the day you turn one year old, the family places some objects in front of the child and sees which one he likes to grab, to predict the direction of his future development. That day is now past for you -- but for the one-year-old you living on that day of zhuazhou, that day never ends; every morning, that one-year-old you wakes up from that point in time.
You can imagine that at this point on the Y-axis, it expands outward into a disc, developing and expanding in all directions -- all kinds of possibilities unfold at this point. Every moment is something that "grows out" in this way. And we ordinarily think that a person can only climb like a monkey up a pole, from age zero to age one hundred. Actually, for your consciousness, this pole can be entered and exited at any time and any place -- you can not only move up and down, but can even enter any region of the disc at any moment-point. This is the most basic ability of consciousness. The present point is the connecting point between past and future -- from a certain angle, it can go to the past, and it can also go to the future.
Seth said that the following material could be used in our book, or in your own books (referring to Jane's books, such as The Politics of the Psyche). If you do not use it in this book, it will not leave a gap because of the absence of this material. In the end, Rob used the following material here.
Now begins another topic.
Time leaves any given point and extends in all directions. The past is never finished and done with, and the future is never solidly formed. You choose to experience certain versions of events, and then organize them, eating them in small bites -- so to speak, one small piece at a time.
Time extends from any point in all directions -- like a spherical radiation. Among countless probable variations, you follow whichever branch you go down according to what you want to experience. In all directions, you choose only one direction to taste -- as if tasting the feelings along this timeline in small bites.
The creativity of any given entity is inexhaustible, and all potentials for pursuing experience will be explored. The poor man may dream that he is a king; a queen tired of her role may dream that she becomes a farm girl. In the physical world as you perceive it, the poor man remains poor and the queen remains queen -- yet their dreams are not as out of keeping with their characteristics, or as separate from their experience, as they might seem.
From a broad perspective, that poor beggar was once a king, and the queen was once a farm girl. The creativity of this entity is infinite; at any point it develops, tries, and experiences in all directions -- among all those directions, is there not necessarily a probability for the beggar in which he becomes a king? From a higher perspective, it is entirely reasonable to say that this poor man was also once a king. And at any given time, you are merely following one of those versions.
Many people intuitively understand that they are multiple rather than single. Through intuition, that understanding is usually placed in terms of reincarnation -- the self is seen as having passed through centuries, walked through the doors of life and death, and entered other times and places. Yet in fact, the basic nature of reality is revealed very clearly in the nature of dreams: on any given night, you may find yourself taking on many roles simultaneously -- you may change your sex, social status, nationality, religious belief, or age -- yet you still know yourself as yourself. Dreams precisely reveal the nature of reality: in dreams you can be anyone, any role, yet you are still yourself. This is the magical part.
Recently, Rob found himself engaged in a series of episodes that seemed to involve reincarnational existences: a Roman soldier, a Roman officer, a black woman, and so on. Some of these were uncanny -- for instance, he saw himself as a dark-skinned woman. Last month, he saw himself as a Roman officer on a slave ship. He had an earlier experience that convinced him he had been a man named Nebene. All of these could very easily be accepted in terms of traditional reincarnation -- but what puzzled him was that Nebene and the Roman soldier had lived in roughly the same time period. How could there be two reincarnational selves in the same period? He also did not know in which time period to place the black woman from Jamaica.
In all of these episodes, definite emotional experience was involved -- this is the key point -- along with an indescribable but unmistakable sense of familiarity. Space and time continue to expand, and all probabilities of any action are actualized in one reality or another; all potentials of the entity are also actualized.
Seth continued:
You live more than one life at a time, indeed. You do not experience your time only from one separate viewpoint, and the individuals alive at any given time are far more closely connected than you understand.
Simply put: the reincarnation you understand is not just one body, going through life after life in sequence. In the same era, there are many of you simultaneously experiencing that era. Each you is a focus of consciousness, and this focus can have many points -- experiencing the same era simultaneously from different viewpoints and through different people's experiences. Only such a life is rich and complete: you cannot say that you have only experienced the feeling of eating a full steak dinner and never known what it is like to starve to death; that would be incomplete.
You speak of the human race, but you do not understand how consciousness is distributed in that regard. Nor do you know whether so many people each have one subject of consciousness, or whether consciousness is distributed in other ways.
Seth introduced one of his new terms:
You have your own counterparts.
The meaning of "counterparts" is, for example, the President of the United States and the President of France -- in terms of their positions, they are counterparts; diplomatic relations require this kind of equivalence. And what Seth is saying is that the people alive in any given century are connected in terms of consciousness and identity -- this is true both biologically and psychically. To put it bluntly, all the people alive in our era are one in terms of identity -- not only psychically, but biologically as well; their cells interchange, and their consciousnesses influence one another.
This is what Buddhism calls "all sentient beings are one body" — "If I do not enter hell, who will?" He would even go into hell to save those people, because he feels that he and everyone are one body. When it is very cold in winter, and you are living in a heated room, can you stick one hand out the window and let it freeze off? You would not. If you feel that you and another are one body, you will feel what he feels. And most of us cannot feel this oneness — that is where the problem lies.
The images Rob received — the black woman, Nebene, the Roman officer — were all lives he was living simultaneously within that time period of the first century A.D. In this way, he began to recognize the family relationships that exist among the various individuals sharing your earth at any given time: are black people and white people really so different? They fight back and forth with each other, yet in fact they are all one body.
Every entity has free will, and chooses its environment as a specific posture in space and time. One person has many kinds of postures — his existence in Africa is one posture, being a monk in Asia is another posture. Those involved in a given century are striving to solve particular problems and challenges. Why is this so? Because he wants to try out various possibilities, and so he participates, as different identities, in different challenges of the same shared problem. For example, during the Industrial Revolution, the challenge everyone faced was how to improve production efficiency, how to improve the efficiency of the steam engine; the challenge our era faces is how to deal with the threat of artificial intelligence to humanity, how to develop the abilities inherent in human nature, and avoid being pushed by technological development onto another non-spiritual path.
The various races did not just happen, and different cultures did not appear without cause. They were all different attempts made while jointly facing the challenge of a common problem — like different postures. That larger entity divides itself, materializing into several individuals, with completely different backgrounds in the flesh, yet each person engages in the same kind of creative challenge. In your era, that black man is somewhere a white man or woman; the oppressor is somewhere the oppressed, the conqueror is somewhere the conquered; the primitive man is somewhere the cultured one; the murderer is somewhere the victim, and vice versa. It lets you face the same challenge from different angles.
This statement also explains the idea of "karma" — we always feel that being killed is a very bad thing, and so the idea of karma came about. In fact, the killer and the killed, the ruler and the ruled, the conqueror and the conquered, are only facing, from their own different angles, the common challenge that this era must face, only experiencing it as different identities — this is one theme of this era.
According to the intent of the consciousness of which you are all independent parts, each one will choose his own framework. After an entity divides itself off, it becomes a conscious subject, with its own separate intent: the poor have the intent of the poor, the king has the intent of the king, the ruler has the intent of the ruler.
Counterparts: You Are Your Own Counterparts
The governed have the intentions of the governed, murderers have the intentions of murderers, the murdered have the intentions of the murdered, and each person's intention is different. In this way, inherent challenges and opportunities are arranged within a given time. As long as we are born into such an era, we must face the theme of that era. Can you escape it or skip over it? Impossible. As long as you live in this society, in this era, you will definitely be born carrying the theme of this era, and you must face the challenges and difficulties that this era faces. You must resolve these challenges and difficulties, using your identity, using your angle and your position to do it. You don't need to worry about others; others will do it from their own angle and their own identity. You just do well what you yourself ought to do.
You are your own counterparts—you must remember this. What does "counterparts" mean? For example, in some places you are a rich person, and in some places you are a poor person; in some places you are a man, and in some places you are a woman; in some places you do all kinds of bad things, and in some places you do all kinds of good things. This is what "counterpart" means. In English, this "counterpart" refers to the same, the same kind, the identical, the same person. So this sentence is very important: you are your own counterparts, which means that everyone is each other's counterpart.
But as Ruburt would say—Ruburt often speaks of funny, living, peculiar counterparts—each one has your own abilities. Why peculiar? Because they are completely different from your present understanding, different from your present life experience, background, and role. Can you imagine yourself being a white person or a black person? Can you imagine yourself being another man or another woman? So this "peculiar" is reflected here. But although peculiar, is he still living? He is alive, each one has your own abilities, and each one is different.
Joseph's Four Versions of a Life
Take Rob as an example. Joseph was once Nebene — a scholar, not much of an adventurer, obsessed with copying ancient classics, yet afraid that creativity was wrong. He was authoritative and quite domineering, he feared sexual contact, and he taught the ancient classics to the children of wealthy Romans. And at the same time, in the same world, in the same century, Joseph also had a counterpart: an aggressive, adventurous, relatively insensitive Roman officer. He knew very little about manuscripts and records and had no interest in them, whereas Nebene was obsessed with copying ancient classics. Yet he too followed authority without question.
In your terms, the present Joseph — Rob — is a person who questions authority, tramples on authority, and casts authority aside. He tore apart this conceptual structure that he had once so believed in, and he tore apart all those things he had previously believed in so faithfully and so devoutly. Why? Because he had once worshiped authority, and he had also been willing to be an authority. You see, in these two counterparts of his, what does he have? He was authoritative, and he followed authority. Whether it was Nebene or the Roman officer, they both shared one common trait: the worship of authority. Nebene copying the classics was copying authority, and he was also quite domineering; this Roman officer submitted to no one — he did not submit to those above, he did not submit to those below — but he did submit to authority. Interesting. And when it came to Rob's present life, well, he does not even submit to authority; what he detests most is authority.
So the reason Seth uses Rob as an example is to tell you what counterparts are. Then you will be able to understand counterparts a bit better. Actually, it is just a balance — you can understand counterparts as a balance, like a seesaw: when this end goes up, that end must come down; when this end rises, that end must fall. If you are very wealthy on this side, then on the other side you have to experience a life without money, so that your life becomes rich and your energy becomes complete. If you have never experienced being poor, how can you understand what a rich person feels?
But sometimes you carry over the foundation from the other end. You will observe that some very wealthy people still live their daily lives like poor people; and there are also many poor people who really do not have much money, but when they are generous — our older generation called it "poor and generous" — when they are generous, even the rich are afraid. So what counts as rich and what counts as poor is a very interesting matter. If you measure purely by wealth, of course it is easy, but if you measure by a person's living habits, it is not so simple.
And that Black woman — apart from her own instincts, she followed nothing. Did this Black woman also not worship authority? She only trusted her own instincts. Was she also one of Rob's counterparts? Yes. So you see, among these four figures — Joseph, the Black woman, Nebene, the Roman officer — two worshiped authority, and two defied authority.
Seth says he does not want to give too much background here, thereby depriving Joseph of the discovery and exploration that he will necessarily make on his own. But he still says that the woman submitted only to the authority of her own emotions, and those emotions automatically brought her into conflict with the British colonial government of the time — in the eyes of the colonial government of that period, Britain had absolute authority, but the Black woman challenged that authority, while she obeyed the authority of her instincts over her emotions. So this is very interesting.
Joseph's present identity focus is his own, and he will follow it; he is not Nebene or the Roman officer or the woman. Yet they are versions of what he is. That is to say, the reason those three figures became Rob, and the reason Rob is Rob, is their achievement. In other words, they made Rob, or from a certain angle, they are Rob's counterparts, representing another version of Rob; and Rob is also another version of them. That is the relationship.
The Roman soldier once dreamed of the Black woman and of Joseph; there was a similar situation, and a certain correspondence even appeared in the cellular knowledge. In terms of cellular memory and dreams, there is a connection among them — even with the other two figures as well. If there were no connection, Rob would not feel that he was a Roman officer thrown into the sea, and so on.
Now the Roman soldier, Nebene, and the woman, after death, each went their separate ways, moving toward their own different paths, going off to do their own different things. In those terms, they made their contributions to the world they existed in at the time, fulfilled their historical missions, and then elsewhere, in other realities, followed their own lines of development.
So each of you exists in many times and places, and the various versions of yourselves exist in the world and time that you recognize. You are not merely a certain race that you know — such as Black or white, or that you are part of humanity — what matters is that you are also part of a species of consciousness. You belong to a certain species of consciousness, and your humanity is formed by these species of consciousness. Behind the human race, it is formed by many species of consciousness; you are part of one of the species of consciousness. Later it will be discussed that there are nine races of consciousness. You humans appear to have various skin colors and various different races — yellow skin, white skin, and so on — but actually these are not important; what truly determines your human race is that species of consciousness.
Jane and Rob's Reincarnational Endpoint
Seth continued giving Jane and me a pair of material, and by 12:16 he had already finished. Then Jane told me Seth could go on forever, but unexpectedly Seth came back again, supplementing Jane's and my reincarnational history from another angle.
Seth said, in your terms -- that is, from the perspective of our human history, or from the perspective of our human timeline, from the perspective of this cycle of reincarnation -- you two have no reincarnational future. From the standpoint of Earth time, you two will not reincarnate again. You have accepted this life as a break point for yourselves; this life begins the ending. In other terms, you still have three future lives -- that is from the standpoint of probabilities. But for now, you have a larger intent that causes you to break off from this system of reality. Theoretically you could still have three future lives, but your intent is not to continue.
And both of you have already fulfilled into another system of reality. Remember, already -- it is an "already." Although you two are still living here, your consciousness has already fulfilled into another reality. According to the simultaneous occurrence of past, present, and future, Seth said, I am in that system of reality you are going to, and I am speaking to you from there. Can you understand that? That is, Jane and Rob will no longer reincarnate, so they have gone to another system of reality -- not the system of reality of our Earth. In that system of reality, Seth is there, and Seth said I am part of that system of reality of yours.
If you think about this question using the material given to you tonight -- the idea of counterparts -- you may understand what I mean. What he means is that, from the standpoint of counterparts, in that other reality -- remember, not this Earth reality -- in that other reality, Seth, Ruburt, and Jane, the three of them are counterparts. So you see, the connection between them is not as simple as we think.
Then at 12:08 he ended the session. After Jane and I discussed the session, I said that as I understood it, my whole self or entity experiences a group of simultaneous physical lives in various historical periods, and in ordinary terms, I think of those lives as following one after another -- and that includes the so-called future lives as well. But each of those physical lives has its own cluster of counterparts. Each physical life has its own cluster of counterparts revolving around it, like planets revolving around the sun. Of course, within that framework, each counterpart thinks of itself as the sun, as the center of the matter. Jane agreed while yawning -- Jane was already tired -- saying yes, yes, that is how it is. That is, each counterpart, to others, is the center, yet the other counterparts, to this person, are also the center. They are centers to one another; it is a cluster, a group of characters.
Then Rob said, I went to bed and fell asleep immediately. But Jane told me the next morning that in fact, every time I woke up during the night, I was receiving material about the unknown reality -- the session material. In the dream state, I was also reading specific Seth manuscripts. In those situations, she herself received the material, although she knew it came from Seth. You see, this Jane, even in sleep she did not rest; she was still busy with the material of the unknown reality. For a person to reach this point is truly not easy; whether eating or sleeping, she was doing this work. Yes, that is how she was.
Jane's Own View of Counterparts
Jane's own material on counterparts includes a variation on Seth's basic ideas. Here she gave me an example of her own ego-driven expansion and interpretation of the Seth material regarding the understanding of counterparts. Jane put it this way:
If we wanted to, we could span a stretch of time, say a century. Within it, we could be a child at one end -- for example, be born as a child at the beginning of the century, and die as an old man at the end of the century. Take Michelangelo, for instance: he lived a full eighty-nine years, from 1475 to 1564, deciding for himself to span a single lifetime.
Jane was talking about her understanding of counterparts: suppose there is such a century, and you are born at the head of the century and die at its tail, you span an entire century, rather than, say, existing as three counterparts. In that case you would not need three counterparts; you yourself lived those hundred years. Since there are no laws about any of this -- Jane said, there is no law saying how many counterparts there must be, or even that everyone must have counterparts -- a great person could choose to do it that way, so that from his personal standpoint, with his gifts, he could influence our world or more, at least for those purposes. He might not necessarily want or need counterparts, because he had too much to contribute already.
But this is Jane's personal understanding, and this understanding is wrong. Let me first say that this understanding is her own, and it is wrong; it is not like that. Her own idea was that if a person is a great figure, that is enough; a great figure does not need counterparts, because his own contribution to the world is already great enough, and he does not need to incarnate as several people, to understand the world from different, humbler angles. So from this point, you can also see that Jane's understanding still had a certain degree of deviation. This is not how it is. This is not something she could decide; it is not a matter of whether she personally wanted counterparts or not -- it is not about whether Joseph wanted counterparts, or whether Jane herself wanted counterparts; that has nothing to do with you. This is decided by your entity, the level one step higher than you. Whether counterparts exist or not is not something you can decide whether you want.
Why Counterparts Are Only Introduced Now
This session on counterparts represents a key point in Seth's discussion of the unknown reality. Please take a look at Appendix 21 and read it yourself, because this material is quite long. The new ideas for tonight were already anticipated in the related material from not long ago, where the concept of counterparts and some early hints were also briefly discussed.
Counterparts are a concept that easily confuses people. Seth did not mention this in the very early days; he only brought it up at this point. Why didn't he bring it up too early? Because if he had brought it up too early, everyone would have been thrown into confusion. In Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, including those earlier books, he never once mentioned the concept of counterparts. He mentioned it in The Early Sessions, and he mentioned it in other terms as well, but in this book—this is long after The Early Sessions—he only brought it up now, precisely because he was afraid of causing you confusion.
When it comes to understanding this concept of counterparts, people in general easily fall into a kind of confusion. Where does the confusion lie? It lies in the fact that we always think one soul corresponds to one personality, and this is a limited way of perceiving. We think one soul must correspond to one personality, or one personality corresponds to one soul. When it comes to reincarnation, you can understand it—in different times, you see, the soul is looking after different selves, different reincarnated selves, and that is understandable. But in the same era, in the same period, there are many selves reincarnating simultaneously—this he cannot understand. He says, how can one soul... which soul am I, exactly? He always feels that the soul is a real entity dwelling inside his body. Actually, it is not like that. I already explained this earlier in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events—it is not like that. What we call the soul is something we have given an image-based description to, or we have given consciousness an outline, a boundary, a defined limit. Actually, we are simply the focus of consciousness. If you can think this question through clearly—that you are the focus of consciousness, rather than some soul being inside your body—then you will be able to understand this matter.
Note 1: The Black Woman's Vivid Perception
Note 1. Rob said that the entire sequence of perceptions that made up my perception of the Jamaican black woman was the most vivid I have ever experienced. That feeling had a most unique, startling, and deeply personal quality, as well as an intense emotional involvement. As I sat at the typewriter, I was flooded by my perception of being her. Rob said this perception was different from the Roman officer ones -- those were just a glance, but suddenly the Jamaican black woman's feelings toward him, that intensity, completely overwhelmed his normal perception. The emotional intensity was so strong, so very obvious. Only someone who has experienced it would know.
For example, once during meditation, I perceived that I was a woman. When I perceived that state of being a woman, it was extremely intense -- it would overpower your current perception. Although you still have a real cognition of your present self, the feeling of perceiving as a woman would exceed your current perception. Although both perceptions are present, the perception of being a woman takes the upper hand. To put it crudely, it is as if you are 70% a woman and only 30% a man -- saying it that way is not quite reasonable, because actually both perception systems are present. So I can especially understand Rob's feeling when he said he was completely overwhelmed by that perception.
He was being chased by an armed British officer, and to save his life he ran toward a steep country road. He was not very young. Her name was Puss -- this Jamaican black woman's name was Puss -- an illiterate but fierce and very tough character. In the early 19th century she rebelled against the British colonial authorities. That time she escaped, and continued to fight against that power. But look at this timeline -- it is not in the same period as his time as a Roman officer and as Nebene. He was actually not in the same period as Rob either; he was a century earlier than Rob. The 19th century is the 1800s, and Rob was born in the 1920s, so the two of them were not from the same century. Even less so with the Roman officer and Nebene -- those two were from the first century AD. But Nebene and the Roman officer were from the same era.
Rob said that after this experience was over, after he experienced this black woman's intense emotions, he wrote a description of her and also drew two pen sketches of the black woman -- a face almost completely unlike his own. He said one of them was drawn very well, and he planned to turn it into an oil painting. What he found satisfying was that the vision of this Jamaican woman did not only stay in his mind, but also stayed in his line of sight -- externally drawn. How did he see it? Unlike in the Roman series, where I only saw them in my mind. Rob said, with my eyes open, I saw a fleeting, panicked image flash through the studio, and I felt the emotion. The whole thing made me feel extremely excited. He saw her in his studio -- with his own eyes he saw the fleeting figure of a black woman, her panicked expression, and the overwhelming rush of mood and emotion that came with it, along with an understanding of the whole event. This was something that shocked Rob greatly, which is why his feeling toward her was especially strong.
Note 2: Another Probable Ruburt
Note 2, Jane and Rob both felt that Seth's voice was talking about another issue — another probable Ruburt had learned the knowledge you know of, scientific knowledge. What he meant was that Ruburt, over in that probable reality, had become something like a physicist, knowing everything that scientists in our world should know, and then this knowledge could help Ruburt communicate with those scientists in this space, or transmit knowledge related to science. He was talking about the science group Jane had previously participated in. The science group would send a set of small scientific tools every month, and Jane used those scientific tools to do some scientific experiments.
Rob and Jane felt this was rather over the top, and the two of them were quite unhappy, but since he said it, we will record it faithfully. However, Jane later wrote about it in Chapter 11 of The Politics of the Psyche, saying, "Discovering what electrons actually do is something I find very enjoyable. I admit, it gives me far more freedom than dealing with human emotions. For example, on any given day, I would rather go looking for a missing electron than a missing person." That is to say, through Jane's own account in Chapter 11 of The Politics of the Psyche, Rob actually corroborated what Seth had said.
So why were Rob and Jane unhappy? They felt that this statement made it seem as though Seth somewhat looked down on Jane for not having a scientific background or scientific literacy, as though Seth was blaming her — because you don't have these scientific things, there are many things I can't explain clearly to you. Actually, Seth did not. Seth repeatedly emphasized every time that it was precisely because Jane did not have these scientific constraints, did not have these scientific limitations, and precisely because she was a poet and a writer, that she was actually unrestricted in transmitting this material. But speaking from both sides, Jane's lack of scientific literacy did indeed impose certain limitations in the process of transmitting some scientific and technological material, and that is the honest truth. But Seth, afraid of discouraging the two of them, kept reassuring them on many occasions, saying no, this is fine, this is good. Actually, the two of them could also tell it was reassurance, but they still were unwilling to admit it.
So you see how interesting this person is. They clearly knew they had no background or knowledge in physics, which is perfectly normal, and Seth was not blaming them either, but the two of them were still extremely sensitive, feeling that what Seth said in this passage was secretly blaming the two of them, and they were quite upset — Rob especially was quite upset. But actually, you see, Jane herself also emphasized in her own book that she had undergone a huge change — she became especially interested in things like electrons. She was not like this before; she had no interest at all in these scientific things before. If you have read her earlier material, you would know that she was not interested in these things. But she underwent a change. She said, "I would rather discuss the problem of electrons than discuss the problem of a person, and even less would I discuss problems of emotions — family relationships, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships, intimate relationships, all these trivial matters — honestly, I have no interest in any of these at all. I would rather discuss the behavior of an electron, the state of an electron." That is to say, she was more willing to discuss the question of the truth of this world than to discuss emotional matters between people. This had already undergone a great change. You see, in the early sessions, she was extremely interested in these things — personal emotions, family emotions, her own emotions, and so on.
Note 3: Why Humans See the Same World
Note 3, see Appendix 12, where I excerpted the ESP class of June 23, 1970, as stated in the appendix of Seth Speaks. Let me put it simply: you happen to emphasize all those similarities that you connect together, and you make them into a pattern. This is why our physical world as humans is so stable, and why everyone sees the same thing. The reason is that you emphasize all the similar places and connect them together, forming a fixed pattern. And this is the public, common aspect of your physical world's existence. You see a bus, and it is also a bus; you see a subway, and it is also a subway, with no deviation in between. It is precisely because there is such a thing.
And you do not happen to ignore all the differences -- not by chance, but deliberately. If you could focus your attention on those places that are different, just pay attention to those differences that your perception could perceive but has not perceived, then you would be amazed that humans could form any concept of an organized reality at all. If you could observe these different places, you would not have such a notion -- what notion? The notion that human society is organized, structured, lawful, and orderly. He says that in fact your human society is unorganized, unlawful, and disorderly; it is just that you think it is an orderly, lawful, organized reality. If you dared to look at those different places, you would find there is not much organization. You think there is organization, but you always go looking for the commonality. Here he emphasizes that our human species' recognition of commonality is far greater than our recognition of differences -- we seek common ground while reserving differences.
Note 4: The Book Rob Did Not Write
Note 4, what this refers to is Seth suggesting that Rob write a book — Through My Eyes. In 1972 he suggested that I write about the Seth phenomenon and other books, and so far, apart from short pieces on art, Seth, the recent passing of my parents, and a few other topics, I have not yet had time to write more for that book. Rob indeed did not write much; Rob was always organizing the Seth material and organizing what Jane wrote, but Rob himself did not write. Seth kept suggesting that he write a book, and in fact Rob never did it, which is also a pity.
Rob actually did not understand the purpose and significance of the book Seth was asking him to write. He only felt that Seth was saying, you can also talk about your understanding of Seth from your perspective as an artist, because you have personally experienced Seth. He did not quite understand; he always felt, what is there to say about this? What needed to be said has already been said in the other materials; Jane said so much, Seth said so much, and he said, I just need to organize their stuff well. What he did not understand was that if he had started writing, he would have connected with other materials, and it would have been a very different book, because it would look at this question anew from an artist's perspective. In my impression, after the eighties and nineties, he was always organizing the Seth material. Actually, he should have done this; doing so would have been a kind of creativity. Look at how many notes and how many appendices he wrote in this book — what was that for? He was also creating; he was also enriching the Seth material, but he should have done his own creative work, which would have raised his artistic ability to a higher level.
Notes 5 and 6: On Nebene and the Roman Officer
Note 5, in that regard, the Nebene I hypothesized lived in Greece, Palestine, or Romania, Rome, or some other location in the Middle East, and the time was the early first century AD. He said he was not certain exactly where this figure Nebene lived.
Note 6, in a private session not long after Seth finished this book, Seth again mentioned that Roman, that is, his counterpart. As a Roman, in that era he was an aristocrat, and also a military officer, and his rank in the army was not low -- he was not a minor officer. But you pretended to be a follower, when in fact you were an officer of quite high rank. You did not believe in the traditional gods, nor did you believe in those Roman gods, yet you had to conquer other people's lands in their name. When you went to war, you had to go to war in the name of the gods; in that period it was always like that. You even carried out a campaign to Africa. You looked down on the leaders as frauds -- you felt the leaders were using the gods as a cover, because you did not believe in the gods at all, so you felt that the leaders using the gods as a cover to conquer others made them frauds. You also looked down on the masses who acted as followers, those blindly obedient masses -- if you could not even respect the leaders, could you respect the masses? Even less so. So you were always getting into arguments with your compatriots -- also officers, also people in the army -- and even with the authorities, that is, your superiors, your commanding units. You were naturally argumentative, and very curious, and once again a practical person. So what did he do? He followed along -- although he argued with them, he did not truly challenge them. In his heart he did not believe in them, but he believed in authority, which is very interesting.
Your curiosity, however, did not involve philosophy, but was concerned with the physical world, for example with aqueducts -- the building of aqueducts attracted a great deal of your attention.
In Appendix 18, Rob discussed the relationship among Jane, Seth, and me, and he has discussed it many times. Rob said he chose not to examine this passage in Appendix 18, because in it Seth mentioned what he said about our future lives, and Rob believed this involved probable lives of Jane and me, rather than lives that actually occurred in our reincarnational line with Seth. However, Seth mentioned here a generative situation, one line of which was that the three of us in another reality are in a counterpart relationship -- not in this reality; in another reality, the three of them are counterparts.