The "Guide" and "Key Points" of 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 parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter discusses worldviews, dreams, and their relationship to language. A worldview is an individual's interpretation of the physical universe; a person both observes and participates in creating their own experience. Dreams can break through the waking worldview, expand the range of experience, and mutually influence waking life. Language is constrained by culture and neural structure, defining cognition while also inhibiting direct experience; communication in dreams is more direct. Seth uses Sumari as an example to show that unpatterned sounds can break down linguistic structures and serve as a bridge between different states of consciousness, and he points out that physical life and dream life are closely interconnected.
Key Points of This Chapter
- A worldview is an individual's interpretation of the physical universe; a person does not passively receive the program but also participates in creating their own experience.
- Dreams allow a person to step beyond the waking worldview, and dream activity can be used to expand the worldview; dreams and waking actions influence each other, but the impact of dreams on the physical world takes time to manifest.
- Language is based on telepathy and is influenced by culture, country, and language; while language defines cognition, it also limits direct experience.
- Spontaneously creating new names for objects around you and uttering non-patterned sounds can break familiar verbal patterns, allowing emotions and perceptions to flow more directly.
- Physical life and dream life are closely connected, and the three-dimensional world also reflects dream images; non-verbal sounds such as Sumari can serve as a bridge between different states of consciousness.
Main Text
Let me talk about this session. Seth gets straight to the point as soon as he begins. He says:
Your worldview is your personal interpretation of the physical universe. It is entirely your own. Your world does not merely present a program for you to watch; on the contrary, you of course also help create that program, even though you are also a part of it.
His analogy is very easy to understand. Your reality is like your own channel. The world does not just play a program for you to watch; you yourself are also creating the program, and at the same time you are a character in it, an actor. That is how your reality is composed.
On any given afternoon, certain components of experience will be given -- roughly outlined, with certain clues to set the stage. For example, it might be a snowy, damp day, or a dry, sunny one; the location might be a city or the countryside. Yet within that loose framework, you create the day's program according to your own worldview.
He says the backdrop of the stage is prepared, but what specifically gets performed is up to you. If your worldview is expanded, you have far more room when creating experience -- in character portrayal, you can add far greater depth. In other words, do not limit this character of yourself to death, do not define it as simply "a middle-aged male." Let the unknown reality enrich your channel. What does "enrich" mean? It means you can take some plotlines from other channels to enrich the content of your own channel. Seth does not spell out this layer of meaning directly, but its essence is this: in real life, we should give the current character a broader opportunity for expression. You give him a bigger stage, a bigger space for development -- how does he develop? By exploring the unknown reality and obtaining some material, to enrich your experience in this world.
Then in dreams, you step beyond the waking worldview. When dreaming, your worldview is different from that of the daytime. You are able to bring into focus certain interests and activities that were left in the background while awake, that you did not notice. You can decide, by making use of dream activity, to expand your worldview. Many of the exercises in dreams are aimed in that direction. After all this, the core point is: the things you do in dreams are actually practice and rehearsal for the direction you want to develop in. When you are awake, you can follow that direction to develop your abilities, or you can ignore it -- it depends on whether you are willing to expand the scope of your worldview. You cannot just keep saying "I can't do this, and I can't do that either" -- dreams give you an opportunity and a possibility for breakthrough, letting you see that in fact you can do many things you previously thought you could not.
In physical reality, you are not alone; you have counterparts. So obviously, your picture of the world is also influenced by other people's worldviews.
You play a role in their experience, just as they play a role in your world. You have to coordinate with each other to form a shared world. Our physical world is a product created by the shared beliefs of the group, and you are also part of that group. It is not influenced by any single individual. Matters involving the group require coordination; one person does not have the final say. The same kind of coordination also happens in dreams.
You influence your world through your dreams, just as you influence it through your waking actions.
The two influence each other. Your dreams can affect your physical world, and your physical world affects your dreams. But in terms of time, there must be a passage -- when the various species physically mature and develop, this mutual influence may take time. The three-dimensional world's influence on dreams may be reflected in dreams immediately, but the dream's influence on the three-dimensional world takes time to manifest.
Why do you do this? Because there is an inner impetus. You may not find a reason, but many of the languages you now know were created in what you could call "realities that fly from your own viewpoint."
Many of our languages were created during sleep... Words are related to neural structure, and language follows that pattern.
The sounds and tones we normally make when speaking are related to the nervous system; language can only be built on this foundation. The coordination of your tongue, throat, vocal cords, and nervous system is indispensable. But in the dream state, much communication occurs, and there are inner transfers. It seems you are not speaking through your vocal cords; you communicate directly. In some dreams, two people who speak different languages can converse quite clearly and completely understand each other -- you dream that you are traveling abroad and find that communicating with the locals has no barriers; whatever you say they understand, and whatever they say you understand, as if communicating directly through telepathy. Each person translates the words into their own familiar language, but beneath this there is a basic inner sound upon which all languages are built.
Certain images emit their own sounds, and two people together display clear and precise meaning.
When two people communicate, language takes on precise meaning. But when one person talks to himself and someone else listens from outside, sometimes ambiguity arises instead, because that is not communication.
Long ago I said that language would be impossible without a telepathic foundation.
Communication is not just language; there are also many expressions, micro-expressions, tone, intonation, and body movements. We often say "body language." This is easy to understand: some people are not good at English. If you ask them to make a phone call to explain something, they cannot make themselves understood at all. But if they meet in person, even if they cannot form complete sentences in English and only blurt out a few simple words, it does not stop them from getting things done. Because a phone call filters out facial expressions and body information, leaving only tone and language. If you then ask them to write an email, it becomes even harder to explain, because even the tone is gone.
Your worldview is influenced by the language of your culture and country.
Yes, that is exactly right. Some languages only reveal their meaning and charm within specific countries and cultural contexts. Look at the example Teacher Xiyu gave: he found a passage of classical Chinese, translated it once literally, then translated it once according to its original intent, and finally asked: try translating this into another language and see if you can do it. The point of this example is to show that your worldview is influenced by your culture and language. Why is the Eastern worldview different from the Western one? Because the cultures and languages are different, so the worldviews are necessarily different.
Certain sounds, tonal changes, and expressions put together take on a somewhat precise meaning, and that meaning is usually quite definite and referential.
This passage itself reveals the secret behind language. Language not only defines what it says, but also defines what it is not.
For example, the function of words in a language not only defines what a particular object is, but also defines what it is not.
But to a certain degree, in the dream state, you are not limited by this cultural orientation. The most effective dream experiences are actually the most direct, because you escape the influence of the cultural background of your external living environment. In dreams there is more telepathic communication than verbal communication. When you wake up, you usually automatically convert your thoughts into language through mental words -- and the thoughts then fall into a fixed pattern preset by culture, linguistic environment, and social environment. You enter a fixed mindset, but you do not realize it.
But dream thoughts are experienced directly, without that cultural background at work. You can live them out, unrestricted by language. They are projected immediately, escaping the limitations based on culture and language that you usually place upon them.
You can understand this point by putting it into daily life. For example, when rural women gather together and enjoy gossiping, when they talk about certain people, they do not need to use complete words or sentences. With just a few facial expressions and a few vocal sounds, they can express a state and an emotion. Different cultural backgrounds make communication very difficult in the later stages. Many cross-national marriages, after the honeymoon period passes, if either or both parties are unwilling to deeply learn the other's culture and language, the marriage often runs into problems. Because culture influences language, and even influences your worldview. If you cannot understand the other person's language and culture, you simply cannot consider things from their perspective, and you do not know why they think the way they do. Over time, it becomes a mismatch of values. During the honeymoon phase, people carry a sense of novelty and are still willing to learn the other's language; after marriage, they instead lose motivation, thinking "we're already married, what is there to be afraid of" -- the seeds of tragedy are often planted right here.
Why is it often so difficult for you to remember your dreams in verbal terms, or to put them into ordinary verbal expression?
Because dreams have already transcended language. In ordinary life, the moment we express something in language, it carries great limitations.
Your languages often deliberately inhibit meaning.
This sentence is very important. Our language is sometimes not meant to enrich something, but deliberately to inhibit it. To put it bluntly: when we say the word "flower," it is not trying to express the flower; it expresses that the flower is different from other things -- a flower is not grass, not a tree. That is the feeling it gives you.
But here I should interject: Chinese has its own unique advantage. People in European and American countries whose languages use the Latin alphabet cannot understand this. Because our characters, our words, inherently contain meaning. The character "flower" itself looks like a flower. Compare this with English, German, French, and other Latin-alphabet languages -- they do not have that pictographic significance. So much of the time they serve a "negating" function, telling you that this thing is not something else, rather than accurately depicting the thing itself.
To a certain degree, language does make the unknown known, and knowable. It establishes a symbol that everyone in a culture recognizes. But to do this, it selects certain significant meanings and ignores other portions.
For example, the word "rock." The moment you see it, no image appears in your mind, only a concept. You do not think of the difference between one particular rock and another; you do not see the play of sunlight and shadow upon that stone. Light and shadow -- that is the most core element in three-dimensional game design: when you place a three-dimensional object into a scene, the first step is to remove the original light and shadow, then re-light it, so that its meaning can be shown. The moment you say "rock," you classify the shadows on the rock, the play of sunlight and shadow, all under the category of "rock," and ignore them.
But in dreams, you may find yourself sleeping on a rock warmed by the sun, or lying on a cold rock; you may feel yourself enclosed within a rock, your consciousness dispersed -- you experience different facets of the rock. These experiences are all liberating; they liberate you from a certain conceptual cognition of the rock and turn it into a felt cognition. After such experiences, you may look at rocks in an entirely different way.
For example, rocks emit sounds that you cannot hear. Yet your language automatically limits any perception you have of what a rock is. To a certain degree, words stand between you and your direct experience. On the contrary, they should and can express that experience.
Words were supposed to express the real experience of actual things, but now they have become an obstacle between you and that thing. When you say "sun," you do not feel warmth; but when you stand outside in the sun, the feeling of the sun shining directly on your body is completely different.
This problem was discovered long ago in ancient China. Buddhism calls it "name," and asks you to remove this "name." The very first chapter of Daoism talks about this: "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name" -- the Dao De Jing. Originally it was not "eternal name" but "constant name." Why was it changed? There was an emperor in the Han dynasty named Liu Heng, and to avoid using his personal name, "heng" was changed to "chang." So the Dao De Jing we see today reads "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name," but the earliest version should have been "The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao; the name that can be named is not the constant name." If you want to see the most original Dao De Jing, you should look at the one excavated from Mawangdui, written on silk, and the current order is reversed -- the De section comes first, and the Dao section comes after1. That is just an aside. Both Buddhism and Daoism ask you to first remove the "name," because knowing things through names is insufficient. You have not touched the thing itself; you are only touching it through the "name," through words, through concepts. You might say, "Then I won't rely on names; I'll just look at pictures, learn from images, or pick up an apple and smell it and taste it -- is that okay?" That is much better than going through the "name," but it is still an "image," still one layer removed.
Seth then gives an exercise.
Part of the unknown reality is hidden beneath the patterns imposed by language and familiar words.
So we need to do an exercise:
Look at your environment and make up new, different words for the objects around you; give them names. For example, pick up any object -- I am asking you to do this exercise again -- take anything from beside you, hold it in your hand and look at it for a while, feel its texture, look at its color, and then spontaneously, through the sound that comes into your mind, give it a new name.
For most of us, the thing at hand is a cell phone. You stare at it -- what is the first sound that appears in your mind? You cannot call everything "cell phone"; there would be no way to distinguish them, just as you cannot call every person "person." Give it a new name -- it does not have to be "Apple," "Huawei," "Xiaomi," or other brands. Feel its texture, its color, the weight in your hand, that heavy tactile sensation. Feel it directly, and then give it a name. This exercise is not meant to be done only once. Anything around you will do: things you eat, drink, use, play with -- pick them up and rename them. You can even say the name of anything backwards -- "apple" becomes "elppa," "banana" becomes "ananab." This kind of approach somewhat breaks the automatic patterning of familiar words. The purpose of this exercise is to let you step out of the fixed thinking patterns of language, break the mindset, and thereby break some of your entrenched worldviews.
You can perceive the individuality within each object.
In order to make direct contact with your own feelings, sometimes you need to create sounds of your own making -- not necessarily familiar words; you can make some strange sounds to give it a name of "form." Have you seen the animated movie Minions? The little minion who speaks "alien language" -- so much fun. Avatar also invented a language specifically. You can invent your own too.
Your emotions often cannot be expressed clearly in verbal terms, and this kind of non-patterned approach can allow them to flow naturally.
Your emotions often cannot be spoken in words. Breaking this fixed pattern can instead let emotions flow, expressing them more directly and more accurately.
The freshness of dream experience lies in its directness.
The biggest difference between dreams and life is their directness -- they skip over the intermediary barriers of language and words and directly feel the experience. Your cultural worldview has no clear understanding of the nature of dreams, so it no longer has any influence on them. At night, you simply tune in to the dream tendency by shutting out the so-called waking reality. The same kind of dream experience continues beneath the focus of your waking life -- dreams do not stop after you wake up; you just no longer pay attention to them, and feel that they are gone, that they are not real.
While dreaming, you are still aware of your daily experience, but it seems to be at the periphery.
When dreaming, you still carry your daytime experience with you. For example, if you dream of a house on fire, you will not rush in, because you know that would burn you to death -- you will not think "this is a dream, I won't die if I go in"; you will not go in. Daytime experience becomes peripheral in dreams. Conversely, when awake, dream experience is also at the periphery: if you dream of drowning, for a long time afterward you will stay far away from the water's edge. Dream experience affects your life, but you are not so clearly aware of this. These two -- daytime experience and sleeping experience -- exist simultaneously and influence each other; they represent a range of your consciousness.
You can and often do solve the challenges of daily life in dreams.
This shows that your consciousness is equipped to operate both in known reality and in unknown reality. The division you assume is quite arbitrary. Why? Because the difficulties you encounter in physical reality can be solved in nonphysical reality -- proving that the two are connected, and there is no such separation as you imagine.
You may understand that many of your dreams have a symbolic meaning.
You think that everything in dreams has symbolic meaning, but you may not have considered: the things surrounding you in physical life also have symbolic meaning, except that they are three-dimensional. You think a piece of furniture is just a piece of furniture, but is it really just a piece of furniture? Just as things appearing in dreams represent certain symbols, do the clothes, furniture, cars, and houses in your three-dimensional world also have symbolic meaning for you? What do they symbolize?
You may spend time trying to understand the nature of dreams and their implications, but you never realize that your physical life is to some degree also a three-dimensional dream, which at any given time faithfully reflects the images of your dreams.
You always want to figure out "what does this dream of mine mean," but you have never thought: your three-dimensional world is also a dream. Do the things happening in your three-dimensional world also portend something, represent something? Have you ever thought that this three-dimensional dream is actually a projection of certain things from the dream world you usually dream in? You think dreams are a projection of your daytime experience, so why cannot your three-dimensional world be a projection of dream images? The two are the same. This brings to mind Zhuangzi's story of "Zhuang Zhou dreaming of the butterfly."
Your physical life and your dream life are so closely interconnected that what I am about to say may mislead you.
Your waking experience springs out of the unknown dream reality.
On the one hand, this statement is indeed true; on the other hand, the intricate inner workings make it impossible for you to separate one from the other. You cannot see clearly that your waking world emerges from the inner world, because the two are entangled together.
Basically, however, reality operates in such a way that it is perceived more clearly in the dream state.
Seth puts "reality" in quotation marks here. What does that mean? What is in the three-dimensional world is also reality, and what is in the dream state is also reality; they are equally real. In order to let you see more clearly -- because in the three-dimensional world you cannot see clearly -- he takes the same reality and replays it in the dream state. Dreams escape the linguistic environment and social-cultural attributes, communicating directly through telepathy, and he hopes that under these conditions you can see more clearly.
Free from the constraints of time and place, there is a broader kind of communication... the great fluidity of consciousness; all these experiences in the dream state are a characteristic of the basic nature of reality. Your waking experience, on the other hand, provides only limitations that indicate certain conditions.
In dreams, you transcend time and space, transcend the limitations of communication, and communicate directly through telepathy. What is displayed under such conditions is the basic nature of reality. So dream experience is actually more real. And our physical reality, its manifestation adds many limiting conditions: time, space, the body -- you cannot feel what it was like to be young when you want to; now that you are seventy or eighty, you cannot experience teenage love, but in dreams you can. Why are dreams more real? Because in dreams there are none of those limitations. When all these limitations are absent, it points directly to the essence of this reality -- what your inner self truly wants to experience and feel. This passage is subversive, so Seth himself is also very cautious, saying it may mislead you.
But then he continues:
To some degree, the greater expression of consciousness can be experienced in the ordinary waking state. But only when a personality is flexible enough, and secure enough, to alter the focus of consciousness, can this be accomplished.
Does this mean "then let us just not wake up, and just live in dreams"? No. He says you can obtain in the waking state an experience as real as that in dreams -- an experience not restricted or influenced by the external environment. But the prerequisites are: first, your personality must be flexible enough, not confined by those rigid beliefs; second, you must be able to shift your focus of consciousness. When you possess these two abilities, you can experience that greater expression of consciousness even while awake.
Then the other data that were not perceived become available.
If you possess such abilities, the things you normally cannot perceive can be perceived. So the so-called unknown reality is not outside your experience -- it is right there in your three-dimensional world, right around you, but your ordinary consciousness cannot perceive it. First, your personality is too rigid; you define yourself as a mother, and you can only see the world through a mother's worldview. Second, your focus of consciousness cannot shift; it is fixed only on the one point you are paying attention to, and you are unaware of everything else. It is not distant, nor mysterious; it is right at the edge of your ordinary experience, and you simply have not noticed it.
Any of your scientific or religious disciplines could benefit from a study of the dreaming consciousness, for there the basic nature of reality exists as clearly as you can perceive it.
If both scientists and religious practitioners want to improve, they should all study dreams. The reality in dreams is as clear as you can perceive it; it is just there.
The inner conditions of dreaming are valid... You find yourself in other times and places, because basically time and place do not exist in the way you assume they do.
Why do we say dreams are real? Because true reality has no limitations of time and space to begin with. The time and space you assume simply do not exist, which is why dreams do not have them. The fact that dreams are real can be proven precisely from this angle.
In alterations of consciousness without drugs... no basic danger is involved.
Changing the state of consciousness itself does not bring any danger. But because of your cultural beliefs, artificial dangers may occur. What is artificial? It is your personal emotions, your personal beliefs, your personal fears -- these may occur.
This is because such a person finds himself without an acceptable framework in which to validate or understand their experiences, and they try to turn to religious, scientific, or pseudo-scientific explanations.
Why do some people encounter danger when exploring the unknown reality? Because their existence must depend on something: a cultural background, a religious framework, some pseudo-scientific superstitious explanations. Without these, they do not know who they are, nor do they know the meaning of their existence or what this reality looks like. They must live within a framework of heaven and hell, of good and evil being rewarded, of karmic retribution; without such an environment, they do not know what to do. So these people may encounter danger when exploring the unknown reality, because they will turn to religion, science, or pseudo-science to explain their experiences.
Your worldview and the worldview of others: language, inner sound, and dreams
That leads to your cognition of this world being very biased or narrow. What it calls specialization is just another way of saying it is too narrow. This is caused by such a tightly knit organization, which limits so much reality -- so much reality, all of which it refuses to acknowledge, recognizing only one kind.
If you can speak two languages, that would be somewhat better. Why? Because your thoughts have two paths to choose from; you can choose to express yourself in this language or that language. Biologically speaking, you are physically capable of speaking any language currently on the face of the earth -- in terms of physiological structure, you can speak any language of any human being, and you can even learn the languages of cats and dogs. If you learned many languages, you would regard it as an achievement. If you could speak eight or ten languages, you would certainly be a remarkable person. Although this involves some training and takes time, you would take it for granted -- as long as I spend the time, I can master several languages, not just one. You would not think it is something frightening or unnatural. Is it not perfectly normal for a person to learn several languages?
Same here, your single-line consciousness is just one of many languages. Your single-threaded consciousness is only one kind among many kinds of consciousness. Other kinds of consciousness are just as innately present, just as natural as your single-threaded consciousness, just as biologically possible. This multiple consciousness, this higher-dimensional consciousness, rather than a single-dimensional consciousness, is just as natural, just as innate, just as normal, just as biologically possible as your single-dimensional consciousness -- just as you may be able to speak several languages.
Ruburt has been involved with what he calls the Sumari language. This is an expression of consciousness at another focus, an innate expression of experience that occurs outside the focus of your sensory single-line consciousness. Why? First of all, it breaks the pattern of language -- it does not use language. Sumari is not any language; it is a mixed language. But it is composed of sounds and syllables that Ruburt has heard before, and it was created by Ruburt himself. Sumari is not some special foreign language, nor some language of the soul. No, it is Ruburt's own original creation. It mixes Roman languages -- Roman letters, Roman languages -- and as far as he is concerned, these are all unfamiliar. At the same time, in your terms, those sounds are full of antiquity, full of an ancient flavor, like some ancient language of a bygone age, bringing hints of the past of this race and of the psyche, bringing hints of humanity's own past. They alter the usual bodily response to meaningful sound.
The Sumari language is not any language, so it alters our bodily response to meaningful sound. When you hear it, it has no meaning, but it does have a response in your body -- it does not go through your logical thinking, through linguistic analysis to understand what the sentence means, but rather through the direct feeling of the sound upon the body, letting the body feel it.
You may not have noticed, but your languages in fact structure your visual perception of objects. Human language itself always carries a visual component within it, so when you listen to someone describe something in language, there are always some images in your mind. This is normal.
There is actually a great deal that can be said about this part. For example, our sound healing, or the art healing center in Guangzhou mentioned earlier, where Professor Lu Xinhua treats others through sound healing2. Including Teacher Caochi, who heals others through painting -- through drawing, through a certain painting, or through some special way of painting to heal others. All of it is healing. Why can it heal? Because it penetrates language, transcends language, and above language, it directly makes contact with your body's perception, with your consciousness's perception.
Seth here emphasizes the principle of how it works, using Sumari as an example. Sumari breaks down the usual patterns of linguistic meaning, but the Sumari language also releases the nervous system from its structured responses to stimuli. It releases the nervous system from the fixed structures it has formed toward stimuli -- such as what language, what words represent what things -- it releases it from that, frees it from that limitation.
Let me give a simple example. On the first day of our 21-day meditation, during the exercise, I played a piece of music for everyone. It was a lama chanting the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit. Many people had no idea what it was, and I did not explain anything, did not say what it was or who it was, and he was singing a cappella, with no musical accompaniment at all -- just his one voice chanting. Yet many people, after hearing that chanting, were moved to tears without knowing why. They could not understand a single word of it. If I had not told them it was the Heart Sutra, they would not even have known it was the Heart Sutra. But that did not affect their bodily feeling at all. At that moment you understand where Seth's words come from -- because you transcended language, and directly through that sound, it broke down your cognition of linguistic structure, broke down your understanding of linguistic meaning itself. It entered the heart directly, entered your consciousness directly, entered your body directly. So many people had this kind of feeling in that session. Much of the music in there I had selected and screened, and it all directly affects your body, so many people have this feeling, and this is very normal. It lets you release completely, lets your nervous system and consciousness gain a complete liberation. After this complete deconstruction of your traditional consciousness and cognition, the natural flow of your emotions and feelings will emerge.
However, although that sound is spontaneous, it is not unstructured -- it is not random, not without structure. Just like the lama chanting the Heart Sutra I mentioned: although you cannot understand it, it is spontaneous, yet it is not without structure. It has its own inner structure.
They will present emotions, or a sound equivalent of the perceived object -- that is, a sound equivalent of the object they perceive. For example, when this lama chants the Heart Sutra, he has an emotion within him, and at the same time he has his own perception of the Heart Sutra, and then he sings it out through sound. It is a sound equivalent -- he is a sound equivalent of that Heart Sutra. So what you hear is the direct equivalent of the Heart Sutra, entering your heart. It is not conveyed through words, but through such a sound, a very direct, intimate equivalent. And carrying the effective response of that object or emotion brings about the effective response of the object or emotion it intends to express. So many people have these different emotional feelings and reactions.
This fresh expression establishes a new relationship between the so-called perceiver and the perceived. The perceiver is, for example, this chanting lama, and the perceived is the Heart Sutra he chants. The same is true for Sumari: if Jane sees a sunset and wants to express it, and expresses it through Sumari, Jane is the perceiver, and the sunset is the perceived object. Jane establishes a new relationship with the sunset -- she expresses the relationship between herself and the sunset through the method of sound equivalents, and what you hear is that.
Thus Sumari becomes a bridge between two different kinds of consciousness. Jane is one consciousness, the sunset is another consciousness, and Sumari is the bridge. And when Ruburt returns to his usual state, he can translate that Sumari into English -- just as the Sanskrit Heart Sutra can be translated into Chinese, can be translated into English. However, the English itself becomes charged as a result, freshened by new ideas, and carries within it a strangeness, such that it alters the relationships of words and sentences.
Even when Sumari is translated into English, it is different from using English in the ordinary way to express something, because it is charged. Why is it charged? Because Sumari itself is this link between Jane's consciousness and the sunset's consciousness; it is the bridge of communication between two kinds of consciousness. When you translate this bridge into English, it is still a bridge -- it is just that originally it was a Sumari bridge, and now it is an English bridge, but it is still a bridge, a bridge where two kinds of consciousness meet and communicate, so it still works. But if you use English to communicate directly, because of the limitations of English language and culture, the limitations of social background, the limited one-way thinking of human language, or because language itself is a one-dimensional mode of expression, it is insufficient to establish a connection between Jane's consciousness and the sunset's consciousness. Because Jane's consciousness is multi-faceted or multi-dimensional, and the sunset's consciousness is also multi-dimensional. When establishing a connection between multi-dimensional and multi-dimensional consciousness, it must transcend language, and at that point English cannot function in between.
So using Sumari to express it, it can play that role. After expressing it, it is recorded on a tape recorder, and then Jane translates it into English. Although at this point Sumari seems to have become a translation into English, it still carries that function of serving as a bridge linking two different consciousnesses, and it still carries its charged effect, carries its strangeness.
I have just explained this strangeness clearly, why it has strangeness. So do not just look at whether it is English or Chinese -- that is not the point. According to Seth's meaning, it is not that all words are bad, or that all words are no longer needed. Then why does Seth himself still use words to write? Why not draw a few paintings, or turn it into a few songs, so that you could sing them and learn all of Seth's material? Because although the words are written in English, they are a bridge formed by the combination of Jane's consciousness and Seth's consciousness, and they carry within them their own inner strangeness. So we should not say that all words are one-dimensional. Can you perceive the multi-dimensional attributes from within this one-dimensional text? Can you see through this one-dimensional text to the existence of the multi-dimensional perceived object behind it? The thing this one-dimensional text wants to express is certainly multi-dimensional. If you can see through the text to the multi-dimensional thing behind it, then the text is not an obstacle; if you do not have this ability, then the text is an obstacle for you.
Sumari is like a dream language, or a language of the trance state. To her level of consciousness, it is as natural as English, Hindi, Chinese, or whatever language is to your own level of consciousness. Our current level of consciousness is a single-threaded consciousness, so we produce a single-line language. And other states of consciousness -- the trance state, the dream state -- the language produced by that consciousness is a language like Sumari. The Sumari language is not any specific language; it is a language Jane created herself. You must remember this. You can also create your own language.
The various focuses of consciousness will have their own languages. Each focus of consciousness will have its own language, and they may all be different. Ruburt discovered that Sumari has even deeper meaning -- not just this kind of singing. He became aware of what are called long sounds and short sounds. You remember earlier it was mentioned that there are long sounds and short sounds: some come so quickly that he cannot keep up, cannot sing them out fast enough. For example, the one he sensed inside the crystal -- that was a short sound, so fast that he truly could not keep up. Others are so slow -- you remember in one session he was using long sounds at a very slow speed, so slow that he felt a single sentence would take one or two weeks to finish. Another kind of language, one he could not even keep up with at all.
These are the imprints of consciousness when it is transferred at different focuses into your space-time system -- what consciousness feels at different focuses is different, and it has its own different languages, and when you transfer them all into our three-dimensional space-time, in that space-time the speed of its consciousness, its flow rate, and the flow rate of time are all different from ours, so you feel it now suddenly fast, now suddenly slow.
Language is usually a certain psyche expressed through the organization of experience in sentences and in the mind. Language is always like this. Again, in your case a certain neurological bias occurs. For example, if your experience -- if you experienced more examples of out-of-body consciousness, then your linguistic expression of space and time would automatically change. Your expression has a neurological bias, because you cannot leave your body, you must be subject to the limitations of space and time, so your language necessarily has limitations of space and time.
So you see, the most famous thing in English is the most central part of grammar: voice and tense. Those tenses are divided into past, present, and future, and each past, present, and future is further divided into progressive, perfect, and simple forms, and again divided into three tenses, and there is also the past perfect, and so on, divided into many more -- evolving from these three tenses into what seems like seven or eight tenses. No matter how many tenses there are, they are all working on time. This is the limitation of human language.
If we humans could leave our bodies, if everyone could leave their bodies at will, then you would not be subject to the limitations of space and time. You could instantly move here, move there, and you could experience that kind of simultaneity. Even the future determines the present, and the present determines the past -- when you can leap beyond this limitation of space and time, your language would undergo tremendous change. Would not all those tenses change? Chinese also has tenses, the same. Do you not feel that these tenses in human language actually limit our thinking? They tell you "yesterday I finished something," "I did something," "I am doing something," "I have already accomplished something," and so on -- all of these imply that time flows in a single direction. So language is actually a limitation on us, a limitation on our thinking. Over these decades since childhood, this limitation is not easy to change.
If you become aware that you have more dream experience, your language will also automatically expand. If you can leave your body, your language will also expand. If your dream experiences are more vivid and more real, and you can record them, your language will also expand. Again, you will automatically become aware of other neural patterns that you are not using, so you will sense those neural patterns you have not ordinarily used.
And our current neural pattern is single-line. Why? Because your nerves, from one neuron to another, require a passage of time -- because there is transmission over distance, and because this time exists, it leads to the fact that because our nervous system transmits in this way, our perception of time is a biological perception. Although in consciousness it does not require time, in the nerves, in the physical, you have a perception of time.
When those neural patterns you ordinarily do not use begin to activate -- as you continually explore the dream state, your other neural patterns are all functioning. What neural patterns? The neural patterns that transcend the limitations of space and time. When you have this ability, your scientific instruments can also receive it, can also monitor it, and therefore in this regard your concepts will change -- your concepts will change, and your language will also change.
When people are alone, many find that they hum unknown songs to themselves, mumbling and singing. Many people do this. When they are alone, especially when taking a shower, they are not singing popular songs; they mumble and sing songs they made up themselves, trying to release themselves from the structure of language. When they are extremely relaxed, they sing nonsense. Have you had this experience? Look at the Tibetan areas on the grasslands, or those very open places, or some places of ethnic minorities -- their mountain songs sometimes have no lyrics at all; they just keep producing syllables, with no specific meaning.
Children often play games by constructing their own languages. Observe children carefully, and they often say strange and peculiar things. For example, look at the Minions -- one of the Minions invented a strange language, and then one of the Minions, after being stimulated by some injection, mutated and became especially powerful, able to speak what was, to the Minions, an alien language -- very interesting. Why do children like watching that animated film? Actually, it is full of things children are interested in -- reconstructing a new language as a game.
And speaking in tongues is a beautiful example of attempting to express a reality. I do not know what speaking in tongues is; I did not look it up, but you can look it up. There are also other languages, something called floating language; Chinese people speak of floating language. And reality, through the tyranny of overly structured language -- reality can transcend linguistic structure. Language has structure; reality has no structure, and the structure of language is a limitation. So what can be done? You must use this kind of sound without language to represent this reality, or to express an equivalent of reality.
Music is a language, and painting is also a language -- he emphasizes again that music and painting are both languages. The senses have their own language, and the senses also seep into your language, into the structure of words and sentences, which is also a kind of language.
Apart from your own, consciousness at other focuses has a different view of time, and in fact one that is biologically more correct. From a biological perspective, this view is actually more correct, because the focuses of consciousness have greater knowledge of both realities -- the cellular and the spiritual. The cell is a physical reality, the spiritual is a nonphysical reality, but the focuses of consciousness have knowledge of both realities that surpasses your current understanding.
There is nothing wrong with the kind of consciousness you are accustomed to now. This single-threaded consciousness, this single-thinking consciousness, this single-dimensional consciousness that you are now familiar with -- there is nothing wrong with it -- just as there is nothing wrong with speaking only one language. You say, I can only speak one language; is that wrong? It is not wrong; there is nothing wrong with it. But within you there is the impetus to explore, to expand, to create, and that will automatically lead you to explore the inner continents of consciousness, because in your terms, it once led you to explore other countries of the physical world.
You explore inward, you expand, you create; you have an inner impetus. You can have only a single form, and there is nothing wrong with that, but you have an inner impetus that constantly drives you to explore inward, to explore more realities. This inner impetus is innate in every person; it is impossible for you not to have it. And this impetus for inward exploration will automatically lead you to explore your inner reality -- the inner continents of consciousness. Because it also once led you to explore physical reality, the physical world -- the same principle. The drive that leads you to explore the outer world, that primal drive, and the primal drive that leads you to explore the inner world, are one and the same drive. You cannot stop it. Why do you continually explore the outer world? Why do you want to go everywhere to look, to travel, to visit various countries? Why do you want to explore different places? Because you have this inner impetus.
And this inner impetus not only drives you to explore the outer world, it also drives you to explore the inner world. When you explore the inner world, those single states of consciousness you use in the outer world no longer work -- when exploring the outer world, this thing works fine, no problem, but when you explore the inner world, this single, single-threaded consciousness, this one-dimensional consciousness, cannot be used. So you must learn a foreign language -- this is what is being said now. Let me give a vivid example: if you want to go abroad, you must learn a foreign language. You say, I do not know a foreign language, I can bring a translation device -- but do you not need to bring a translation device? Yet bringing a translation device and being able to communicate directly with people are still two different feelings, two different levels.
Unless you say, I will not go abroad, then that is fine; unless you say, I will not explore the inner world, that is also fine -- you can keep using your current state of consciousness. But Seth says you cannot do that. "Your humble servant cannot do it!" You do not want to explore the inner world, but your inner primal impetus is urging you to explore the inner world. Can you stop dreaming? Is not dreaming the inner world? Is not dreaming the reality of that location? Can you say, I will not dream, I am no longer interested in this from now on? Impossible, because your physical world emerges from the dream state.
So he used this analogy: just as when you go to various countries in real life to play and explore, you are using that inner impetus; when you explore the inner world of the psyche, it is the same impetus. And at this time you have no choice but to learn a new language, just as you have no choice but to learn a new operating mechanism of consciousness. So you must adjust your consciousness, change your consciousness, and learn how to operate it in more states of consciousness.
Seth said, "A very excellent session ends here," and he even cheered himself on. Rob said, all right, the content of this session ends here. Below are all notes. I will not go over these notes; they are still about language, about the past history of these things, how the Sumari poems came about. Let me say a few words briefly, otherwise you will not understand what Sumari is.
In Chapter 8 of Adventures in Consciousness, Jane used her Sumari poem "Song of the Peach Tree" to present this multi-layered, deeper meaning. For example, in one instance, she first translated a line of Sumari poetry as "the peach tree stands." Later she learned a truer and more thought-provoking meaning: it was "the earth itself grows into a tree, and becomes the earth standing with a peach face." Originally Sumari was just this one syllable -- in terms of pronunciation, in terms of sound, just this one segment of words, and I do not even know how to pronounce it. If spoken in Sumari, it is just this one syllable, but Jane translated it into English as "the peach tree stands." But after translating it, she discovered it did not mean only this -- the meaning of this word is: the earth itself grows into a tree, a tree like a peach tree, and the earth becomes a peach tree.
Through a brief example, it lets us understand what Sumari really means. The Sumari language contains many elements of Italian, Spanish, French, and other Latin languages; it is a mixture of various syllables and tones, and it is Jane's original creation. If you have seen children playing games, children often create this kind of language: several children playing together often chatter away in something they created themselves -- "Let us invent an alien language, and from now on we will all speak in the alien language." The children say, yes, yes, yes, and then they all say a bunch of things, and actually no one knows what any of it means. Jane's is a bit more advanced than that, but the meaning is similar -- in the dream state, the trance state, the meditative state, when it is impossible to express things in language, Jane used a Sumari method to express those feelings and experiences. It breaks down the structure of language, and beneath the structure of language, it is something between telepathy and language.
All right, as for the interpretation of this part, that is all for today. Next, let us listen to Hallon read aloud Teacher Qiyun's interpretation of this session for everyone.
注释与核实
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Source: Li Cheng, "A Study of the Problem of the Order of the Chapters in the Laozi" (https://newetds.lib.tsinghua.edu.cn/qh/paper/summary?dbCode=ETDQH&sysId=221824) ↩
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Source: The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, "When 'Allergy' Meets 'Chinese Medicine' and 'Art' — The Department of Allergology Holds an Academic Exchange on Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine," 2020 (https://zssy.com.cn/article/16811) ↩