The "Reading Guide" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter begins with Rob's unease over his experience of contacting his deceased father, who had "dispersed himself." Seth uses this to explain the nature of identity and consciousness: individuality is not limited to a single personality or soul; pure essence has no form and can exist simultaneously in multiple identities. Using metaphors such as a table, a mountain, a tree, cells, and atoms, he illustrates how identities at various levels are both independent and cooperative, with matter constantly being exchanged while identity remains continuous. Finally, he proposes that the "arithmetic of consciousness" is multiplication rather than division: the consciousness of all things is interconnected, with no hierarchy and no prejudice.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Individuality is not limited to one person or one soul; identity can be dispersed among many other personalities while still maintaining continuity.
- Pure essence has no form, occupies no time or space, and can exist simultaneously in many identities and realities without losing individuality.
- Cells, atoms, molecules, and other tiny units of consciousness each have their own independent identity; when they combine into larger gestalts they do not encroach upon one another, and they constantly exchange and change.
- On the physical level, everything is mutually exchanged: you eat animals and plants, and they also eat you; corpses and excrement return to the earth and then form other living beings.
- The arithmetic of consciousness is multiplication rather than division; when identity disperses into different forms, consciousness retains without prejudice the memory of all its alliances, and all things are related to one another.
Main Text
The Psyche's Blueprint and the Arithmetic of Consciousness, Eating Meat, and the Creativity of Animals (Session 725)
Wednesday, December 11, 1974, 9:17 p.m. Rob noted that their regular Monday night session had not been held -- they had sessions on Monday and Wednesday nights, so that night they got a rest. Tonight was so relaxed that he did not expect a session, but Jane wanted to try at 8:45. She said perhaps Seth would talk about their own material rather than dictate.
In the previous period, Rob and Jane had been doing the exercises Seth had given them, exploring the unknown reality. In the process, Rob had come into contact with some material from his deceased father. The message his father gave him was this: he was going to split his own personality into countless personalities from his previous reincarnations. This was very hard for Rob to understand -- at least after his father's death there was still a soul; if he split himself up entirely, even that spiritual body would no longer exist, and Rob could not accept that. His and Jane's psychic explorations were accelerating; in fact, it was not easy to keep up with their experiences -- the experiences came fast and in great number, and they had been practicing for too short a time to understand much of it, let alone study it. Experiences came and went, and Rob was certain of only one thing: he had contacted his deceased parents in a way they had never been able to while alive. They had never had that kind of open, frank communication while living; after death, they were in contact in this way instead. The application of this inner ability could clearly do much to promote communication among living family members.
Seth came through. He said this was a quiet dictation. This book is about the nature of unknown reality and the ways in which it can become known -- how to make the unknown reality known. In this part, he outlined for the reader various experiments and exercises.
This will obviously allow you to form the given exercises into your own version.
In your own way, you will spontaneously become aware of things that were previously invisible to you.
You may find that some of your truest ideas, in the light of your new experience, become false ideas.
You will most likely begin from your present framework of beliefs.
Symbols can be utilized, and as you continue onward, these symbols may change their meaning for you.
He used these exercises to help readers open their minds and see, each in their own way, things they had not seen before. Some core beliefs that had previously seemed very true would turn out to be wrong. Exploration is highly personal; everyone is different, and you certainly begin from your present framework of beliefs. Inner reality sometimes comes to you through symbols, and the same symbol's meaning may change as the exploration advances -- symbols may evolve, and that is normal.
At the beginning of this book, Seth warned readers that they would move beyond the concept of one god and one self -- you have to understand that you have many selves and many gods. He said that your concept of personhood would be expanded. Do not confine personhood to this one person or this one soul; personhood is far vaster than we think, and there is no concept of a larger one containing a smaller one -- each is independent, yet equally important.
Seth mentioned Rob's recent disturbing experience and Jane's material on the units of consciousness.
Joseph recently had an experience that disturbed him greatly, only because, given his understanding of his own nature, he found it difficult to explain that experience.
You cannot explore the nature of reality and hope to discover its unknown aspects if you insist that those aspects must correspond to the reality you know.
What he meant was, if you insist that those unknown realities must have a certain correspondence to known reality -- so that you can apply the logic, values, and worldview of known reality to them -- then you cannot explore the nature of unknown reality. Those unknown realities have no logical connection or comprehensible correspondence of the kind you imagine with your present known reality. Your original worldview is unusable in the exploration of unknown reality. So Joseph gave himself some freedom, and then was almost frightened by the result. He let himself go completely in the exploration, and after making contact with his deceased father, he found he still could not accept it -- what his father said terrified him.
His experience seemed to imply that his father's identity had so much mobility, and so many possibilities of development, that the concept itself seemed to lose its boundaries.
How could his father's identity have so much mobility -- able to go into so many fragments, so many reincarnated selves? This completely exceeded the boundaries of the concept of identity itself.
Rob's Note: His Father's Experience
Let's first look at Rob's note, otherwise you won't know what he's talking about. In Note 1, Rob says that in this session, Seth mentioned two recent inner experiences of his and one of Jane's, each related to consciousness. But he only wants to emphasize a very disturbing experience he had last Sunday night involving his deceased father. That event was very likely triggered by his inner perception from Session 719 a month earlier. In that session, Rob described how he saw himself as an old man of eighty or ninety, viewing his own aged skull from a position about five centimeters behind the young child, and made a quick sketch. Rob added that this in turn reminded him of his father's dying appearance.
Now, last Sunday night, when Rob was studying that sketch of the old man, he again thought of his father's final moments, and then a whole mass of information surged toward him, carried by emotion, concerning his father's present nonphysical environment and plans. Rob wrote it down immediately, calling it "the Millian experience," and Jane placed it in Chapter 12 of The Politics of the Psyche, where the detailed description can be found. Rob said:
I received material about my father's psychic intentions, which at first was extremely confusing. The material suggested a kind of diffusion at one point so great that individuality seemed to have little meaning at that time.
When he glimpsed that his father had decided to disperse himself—"himself" in quotation marks—into a series of other personalities in the past and the near future, he wondered: with such a jumble of identities, how could his father possibly know himself? But Seth's explanations last night at ESP class and in tonight's session helped Rob sort out a great deal. Seth said that consciousness has no difficulty making such alliances while still maintaining the continuity of identity, although its vast capacities are obviously impossible for us to comprehend.
At last night's ESP class, Seth first came through with some very mundane material, which Rob placed in The Captive 24. Then Jane read her notes on consciousness units to the students. Seth returned and gave the following comments: he was mainly talking about Jane's concept of consciousness units, but as Rob listened he began to understand that it was actually also explaining what he had perceived about his father's post-death situation. Seth said at ESP class:
The self has no ceiling, and there are no set boundaries around you; there is no place where identity needs to stop.
Your development is limitless, and so is anyone else's. Your identity cannot stop at some place, and you will never find a static state that you call you—what you call you is always a process of continuous experiencing, experimenting, and creating within different identities. There is no place for your identity to stop, nor does any place exist where, once you stop, your identity remains unchanged.
Now, if you want to rest for a while in the privacy that the ego is familiar with, that is fine too. But if you find yourself entering pathways from yourself into other realities, or if you recognize consciousness units, then follow them.
It is fine if you want to rest temporarily in the privacy you are familiar with; but if you find yourself entering pathways into other realities, or if you sense a consciousness unit—a group of consciousnesses of which you are one—then follow those.
Who Meets the Self?
Then Seth answered a common question:
You meet those selves in time.
Rob and Jane would ask: I have split myself into so many parts, scattered across different reincarnations, so is it possible for me to meet myself in time? What if I meet another self in real life?
And what makes you think that those selves exist only in the time that you understand?
What he actually means is: how can you assume that the you in time is the self? Which one is actually you? You have countless selves, so why do you define only the one in time as the self? Then he asked:
Who meets the self? And who is the one who meets the self? Why does it seem impossible for other units of consciousness to constantly enter you and emerge from you?
What makes you think that this single you is your self? Why are you not composed of a group of units of consciousness? Why must it be a single focus of consciousness or a single soul? This is a misunderstanding of yours, and Seth emphasizes it again here: why don't you think of them as a group of consciousness, flowing in and out of you, entering through you and flowing out from you?
Let me give an analogy: suppose there are twelve units of consciousness, and each one entering a physical body is a you, and you take that physical you as yourself. Unit number six enters another body, and that one also thinks it is itself. So is it the twelve together that are you, or can any one of them represent you? That is what Seth is asking in return.
A student asked: what is the difference between a unit of consciousness and an identity? Am I one identity that includes a group of units of consciousness, or is this one unit of consciousness this one identity? Or is every stream of consciousness, every storyline, an identity? Seth's answer is very witty and also very profound.
That is for you to play with.
This idea, this question, is for you to play with. That is what makes the game interesting. Then he began to explain how to play with it:
Think of the tiny web-like distribution of neurons inside the skull. If these neurons wanted to find you, where would they look? Which one is you? Where would they go to find your identity separate from their own?
The neurons and you are certainly not the same thing — they are neurons, you are you. So where would they go to find you? At what point do the neurons know that beyond this point is you, and no longer them? Where is the boundary of identity? In which region of the brain can you say that beyond this point is the region of the self, and before that is still the region of the neurons? Can you find such a boundary?
Where does their thinking break off? At what position are they unable to follow, and yet they are followed?
Let me use units of consciousness and identity, and also individual consciousness, to explain. Suppose this one unit of consciousness is composed of twelve streams of consciousness, and this one unit of consciousness is one identity — this is the hint Seth gives us. The student's meaning is, is this unit of consciousness this identity? Or what is the relationship between the individual consciousness within the unit of consciousness and the identity? Seth's meaning is that these twelve streams of consciousness together form a shared identity, and asking how one of those streams of consciousness can find the existence of the larger entity formed by the twelve together is like asking how a neuron in your brain can find you.
In other words, although each stream of consciousness is a branch within a unit of consciousness, each stream of consciousness is also an independent self; and this self joins with other selves to form a larger self together. And that larger self is not separate from the self — it is also itself. On the surface it is one-twelfth of the self, but from another angle, it is also the whole self, because they are closely connected internally, they are one unit of consciousness, and the underlying layer is connected together.
So regarding the relationship between the identity of each stream of consciousness, the identity of the whole unit of consciousness, and the larger identity, Seth actually already explained it very clearly in the previous session, but here he explains it again from another angle. He goes over this question repeatedly because humans are especially prone to confusion — we have a particularly strong concept of a single self, a single soul, a single soul reincarnating, when in fact it does not operate that way.
Seth's use of the unit of consciousness is also just an illustrative metaphor and concept; the real situation is even more complex than this. He did not go further, because if he did, you would understand even less. This is only a metaphor; the real situation is more like a tangled ball of thread. But first understand this metaphor, and later I can give more complex examples.
This actually answers very well the question many people keep asking: what is the relationship between the small self and the entity? What is the relationship between me and my higher self, and my soul? It is layered, progressing step by step. From the very beginning of encountering Seth, he gave a basic concept, and then later it kept evolving and becoming more complex — first he made you feel you understood, then after a while he pushed the relationship one step further, making you feel it was more complex than before, and later even more complex, with so many possibilities. He did not present the most complex material at the very beginning, for fear that we could not accept it. If this content had been presented at the beginning of Seth Speaks, I imagine many people might have stopped listening after that one session.
Seth brought you here step by step. Regarding our identity, the individual consciousness, and the relationship with the unit of consciousness, he used a string of rhetorical questions without answering directly. But if you can answer no to each of those rhetorical questions, you will understand that the questions he asked have actually already been answered. Then Seth said something even more brilliant:
That is my answer to you. It is one of my non-answers. And far more advantageous than other possible answers.
You can understand this as an answer, or you can understand it as a non-answer — I did not answer you with a definite answer; I answered you with a pile of questions. But he said this non-answer is far more advantageous than giving you a clear answer explaining what the soul is, what life is, what consciousness is, what reincarnation is. Indeed it is. This exchange can be called a flash of Seth's brilliance, extremely incisive.
Teacher Xiyu also gave many examples. Among them, there is one example — if you look at it carefully, it can achieve the same wonderful effect. At the end he gave an example about YouTube. You are watching videos on YouTube; at the same time all the videos are there, you click on any of them, and then you are watching one video. When you watch a video, are you not observing the person in the video? For example, when you are listening to my video, are you not listening to me? But this video was not recorded at that moment; it may have been recorded a few days or a few weeks ago, but you saw it. Then you watch this video, and you are observing the me in the video. Suppose at this moment I also record the scene of you watching my video, and then I observe you watching my video. Then I put this video of you watching my video on my channel. At that point you are watching the video I just uploaded, the one I recorded of you watching my video. At that moment you wonder: who is watching? Who is the observer? Who is the observed? Using such a simple example, he lets you experience what Seth just said — which one is you.
I will not elaborate on this further, because later when Hailun reads Teacher Xiyu's interpretation aloud, there will be a detailed introduction. That part is like a tongue twister, especially mind-bending, just as mind-bending as this part. You can listen to these two parts repeatedly; it can really elevate your consciousness — as if your consciousness is working out its muscles, and through such practice it gains a very powerful expansion.
Pure Identity Has No Form
Now let us return to where we left off. Seth says:
Rob's experience hinted at so much mobility on the part of his father's identity, and so many possibilities of development, that the very idea itself seemed to lose its boundaries.
The boundaries of identity were already unclear. But were they actually lost? They were not lost. Seth goes on:
In your terms, pure identity has no form.
From your human viewpoint, a larger, pure identity has no form. You only know this part of yourself that is in a body, so you are overly familiar with it and think that this is yourself. But the true self has no form. You assume that all personality must somehow reside in a human body or something of the sort — when you speak of personality, it must involve a concrete human body. Whether or not that form has spirituality, it must have a form before you dare to discuss its personality; apart from a form, you do not dare, or cannot, imagine how personality could manifest.
Identity itself is composed of pure energy; it occupies neither space nor time.
Pure identity is your true self, occupying neither time nor space. I have said that some invisible particles can appear in more than one place at the same time, and identity is the same. Your identity, like those invisible particles, can appear everywhere simultaneously — that is possible. This is a true attribute of pure identity, and you must have this concept, otherwise you cannot understand what comes later. You always think that a soul can only be in one place at a time, combined with a body — that is your understanding. In fact, identity has countless fragments, existing simultaneously in these fragments; it is both the sum of these fragments and a single one of them. One can represent the whole, and the whole added together is also him, and a single one is also him. Each one is him, not a part of him — from one angle it is a part, but from another angle, each one is his identity.
Table and Identity
Seth talks about atoms and molecules:
In your terms, atoms and molecules build up blocks of matter, yet atoms and molecules still remain separate. Even the smallest atom, they are independent, and the distances between them are extremely far.
If we talk about the distance between the atomic nucleus and the atoms, that distance is extremely far. At this point Seth (Jane was in a trance state, resting her feet on their narrow coffee table) said:
This table between Joseph and me does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it.
The table is made up of atoms and molecules, yet this table does not feel that those atoms and molecules have violated its individuality. The nature of the table is not affected by the attributes of the atoms and molecules that compose it. When we see the table, we do not see the atoms and molecules, we only see the table. And as far as the essence of matter is concerned, the atoms and molecules that form this table today are already completely unrelated to the ones inside the table five years ago; they are all different now. Although the table looks exactly the same now as it did then, what is inside has long since changed.
So in the same way, quite separate identities can mix with other identities in a cooperative gestalt, and the overall intent within it is as clear as the shape of this table.
The table is composed of atoms and molecules, and they are all separate, and the molecules and atoms inside have also changed, but the shape of the table is just as clear. Why? Because these molecules and atoms come and go within the table, forming the gestalt of the table. Each identity joins with other identities to form a larger identity -- the table. The overall intent is to become a table, just as clear as the shape of the table. When a certain atom leaves, the newly arrived atom also accepts this gestalt and maintains the presentation of the table's larger intent. Even though the atoms and molecules inside are no longer the ones from back then, the ones that replace them still maintain the shape of the table.
To a certain degree, Joseph perceived that inner psychic organization.
He says, what you inadvertently came into contact with was your father's larger entity, the one like a table. What you contacted was not the father you think of as having just passed away, but your father's larger entity. That is why he would say that he incarnates himself into different fragments and goes into different reincarnational selves. This is what Seth was telling Rob.
The Consciousness of the Body and the Cells
Seth continues:
In your terms, at any given time the earth represents the most exquisite cooperation of a material, spiritual, and psychic nature.
The earth at any given time is a close and exquisite cooperation of body, mind, and spirit -- material, spiritual, and psychic. All consciousnesses are related to one another, and the consciousness of every species contributes to the overall reality. On the material level this is more or less understood by humanity. For example, on the psychic and spiritual levels, it is hard to explain without using the concept of hierarchies of identity.
But in your terms, even the smallest example of identity is inviolate. It may grow, develop, and expand, change its alliances or organization, and it does combine with other particles of identity, just as cells do.
Seth says he can only borrow this hierarchical concept from the human level, going level by level from small to large, from small organizations to large organizations. Although he should not use this concept, because it is not actually like this in itself, if he does not use this concept you will not understand. So this whole passage lays out the premise -- now that you understand it, you should set aside the hierarchical concept right away. It is only a linguistic descriptive method to aid understanding, not reality itself; once used, discard it. He gives a precautionary note first.
Now, your body does not feel that you have violated it. Your consciousness and the consciousness of the cells are mixed together.
Your body does not feel that you have violated the cells; your consciousness and the consciousness of the cells are mixed together. But the body is composed of the smallest material particles that form it -- all kinds of individual consciousnesses.
Those particles come and go, but your body maintains itself.
The atoms and molecules that make up a table all change, but the table does not change; the cells that make up your body die and are born, are born and die, coming and going -- there can even be cells from other animals and other plants -- and none of this prevents you from maintaining the consistency of your identity. Atoms and molecules come and go in the same way, cells come and go in the same way, but none of this can interfere with the consistency of this body.
What was part of your body last year is no longer so today. In bodily terms, you are already a different person.
In physical terms, in material terms, you are already different. Simply put, the material of the body continually returns to the earth and again forms material concretization, and it will always be different. The material of your body continually returns to the earth, is taken apart and scattered again, and then returns to your body -- just like this it continually reincarnates.
In much the same way, your identity constantly changes.
He talks about cells and cellular identity, and also the bodily identity of a person, to help you understand that your identity and the identity of that larger self are similar matters, but cellular identity and the identity of the entity are not the same -- this is only to help you understand.
Even though you maintain your sense of permanence, your sense of eternity, you will not lose it.
Although the cells constantly change, that sense of permanence is present above the endless changes. This sense of continuity of your identity arises amid constant changes on the material, spiritual, and psychic levels. Whether bodily cells or thoughts and ideas, every second is different from the previous second, and your psyche is also changing -- you are jumping back and forth within the world of probabilities. On every level you are constantly changing, but this does not interfere with the continuing validity of your self-identity recognition above it.
For example, if they did not constantly change, your body would die. The cells in my body cannot all be mine, cannot remain unchanged, otherwise they would die. It is not only the cells; the psychic and spiritual levels are the same -- if you do not change, you will also die.
Again, cells are not just tiny, invisible particles that happen to compose your organs.
Cells have consciousness, and that kind of consciousness unifies all concrete matter. There is indeed a kind of existence that unites all communication in nature, linking together all things in the natural world -- an inner network. So every part of the earth knows what every other part is doing. A cell is a kind of organization, constantly changing, forming and dissolving -- its proteins, the components that make up the cell, break down again and reassemble again, a continuous process. Inside your body it is like this, and outside the body it is also like this; cells compose very natural forms.
An identity is not something of a certain size or shape that must always appear in a fixed way. It is a unit of consciousness, always itself and inviolate, while still having the freedom to form other organizations, to join other combinations, in which all the other units also decide to play a role.
So just as material objects have different shapes, identity can also take different shapes. And basically those forms have far richer variation than the many kinds of concrete objects.
This is a summary of concepts Seth has spoken about before: every smallest unit has a consciousness, these consciousnesses form larger organizations, and the larger organizations have an even larger consciousness -- that is the gestalt. Cells compose organs, and organs have the consciousness of organs, which is greater than the consciousness of the cells, but this does not interfere with the existence of each cell's own independent consciousness, nor does it violate it; conversely, the existence of cellular consciousness also does not interfere with the existence of that larger consciousness of the organ. Small units compose larger units, and larger units combine together to compose even larger units, and this can continue indefinitely, and they do not interfere with one another. So these units of consciousness, or these units of consciousness according to the scale of different combinations, can combine into all kinds of different consciousnesses, just as numerous as the forms of objects in the three-dimensional world. The states of consciousness are even more numerous than the states of objects. Identity is the same as consciousness; identity also has different shapes, and there are even more shapes than those of objects, because some are non-materialized.
The Blueprint of the Psyche
Then Seth talks about chromosomes:
You have spoken of chromosomes. Your scientists write that the genetic factors hidden within the genes and existing in coded form are the blueprint for the body not yet formed.
The coding within DNA is what the body will look like after it unfolds; the body generates itself according to the DNA coding. But besides this physical blueprint -- the blueprint of DNA and chromosomes -- there is also a blueprint of the psyche.
There, each identity knows its own history, and takes the established line of development in order to project that history.
He uses the example of cells to illustrate: how tall a person grows, what color their eyes are, their hair and skin, are all determined by DNA. So within the cell, besides the physical blueprint of DNA, there is also a blueprint for spiritual development. In the spiritual blueprint, each identity knows what it should develop into, and projects according to the blueprint's line of development.
The potential of such an identity, however, is far greater than can be expressed by any physical single-line development.
The spiritual blueprint stored within each cell -- its possibilities, its potentials -- are far greater than what your physical body, limited by time and space, can attain. Your spiritual possibilities are far greater than what the physical body can do in ninety or a hundred years of time. So what then? One physical body is not enough.
The identity, then, does indeed send out units of consciousness into as many realities as possible.
So all versions of any given identity have the potential to develop in as many ways as possible. You have to send out units of consciousness -- units of consciousness are many streams of consciousness, many identities, in different bodies, going out to try all possible potentials. Because this potential is too rich; one body cannot satisfy it. He cannot be both a sports champion and an artist, so he has to expand himself and needs many identities. These identities all come from that one spiritual blueprint.
The you that you know may have difficulty following such an idea.
It is difficult for you to follow the future reality of your cells in this present moment; humanity is unknowable. So this reality of the spiritual blueprint is also something you cannot track down or understand.
You must understand that, broadly speaking, there is no large or small.
This is to break through fixed ideas: there is no large and small, no more and less, no inside and outside, no far and near. A universe may be contained within a cell -- this is something you would never believe even if it killed you; a universe may be contained within an atom, and you cannot understand that either. But the actual situation is exactly like this. The large and small that you understand in the three-dimensional world also do not apply to the concept of identity and levels. At this point you have to gradually dismantle the things just mentioned -- cells, organs, the human body, units of consciousness, single identity, reincarnation, each physical life -- these layered things. Because there is no such thing as large and small, no such thing as high and low, and no such thing as levels.
There is no giant identity and no dwarf identity.
There is no large identity and no small identity; every identity is inviolable. You cannot say that the larger identity of the entity is big and my small identity is small; there is no such statement. Each one maintains its own individuality on its own level -- the body maintains the body's individuality, the organ maintains the organ's individuality, the cell maintains the cell's individuality, each not infringing upon or conflicting with the others. On the premise that each is well maintained, they also combine with one another, and while developing their own potentials they also unite with others.
Mountains and Old Souls
Seth switched to another analogy:
A mountain exists. It is composed of rocks, trees, grass, and hills. And in terms of your time, you can look at it, see it as what it appears to be, give it a name, and ignore the equally independent components that make it up.
A mountain is composed of many things—rocks, vegetation, soil, streams, flowers and plants, trees. When you give a mountain a name, you ignore the components that make it up. Without rocks, vegetation, and soil, there would be no mountain. But it is not infringed upon by the trees and rocks that compose it, and the mountain's sense of identity is not lost. Although the trees grow and will die, the mountain itself exists, at least in terms of our time. The plants and trees of the mountain have died and been born, been born and died, through who knows how many cycles, but the mountain is still that same mountain. The mountain also undergoes some changes, and it depends upon those changes. Without the vegetation's cycle of spring and autumn, year after year of renewal, the mountain's soil and water conservation would not be very good; with too much soil erosion the mountain would collapse, and the mountain would no longer exist. The mountain and the vegetation are in a relationship of mutual dependence.
In such terms, your identity is dependent upon a similar organization of living consciousness.
The identity of the mountain is composed of vegetation, soil, rocks, and streams, and each of these has its own consciousness. A tree, a blade of grass, a flower—each is a very small consciousness of the mountain. Then is your identity also dependent upon a similar organization composed of different consciousnesses?
Those readers of so-called occult literature might consider me an old soul. Like a mountain, in a great and ancient way, situated above other more ordinary village-like souls.
From other people's perspective, from the perspective of mystics, I would seem like an old soul, and you would seem like young souls; I am above you, and you are like small villages, while I am on the mountain, and you are all lower than me. I have my own entity, my own identity.
But that identity is composed of other identities, each of which is independent. Just as that mountain is composed of its rocks, and could not exist without them. Even though it stands so majestically upon the plain, it is composed of those small rocks.
The Mountain Metaphor: Independence and Interdependence of Identities
I said, my understanding depends on my essence; just as the height of a mountain depends on its essence. What is the essence here? It is who I am. My understanding depends on what I am; the height of the mountain also depends on its understanding of its own essence.
I do not feel invaded by the selves and identities that compose me.
Those identities that compose me are the independent personalities of reincarnational lives. I do not feel that they compose me, that they invade me -- as if their existence would diminish the existence of my identity. I remain unaffected by them; no matter how their identities develop, I am still me.
Just as the cellular consciousness in your body, no matter to what degree it develops, will not interfere with your conscious level. They also do not feel invaded by me -- those identities, the person in each reincarnational life, will not feel invaded by the identity called Seth. Just as those trees, rocks, and grasses do not resent the mountain shape they grow into, as if the mountain shape invaded their individuality.
Seth once had a life as a prostitute with a dozen or so children. The prostitute is an identity, and in that era or now, it is a very humble identity, but that prostitute did not feel that she was invaded in her identity as a prostitute by this more exalted, more advanced old soul -- the old soul called Seth. She felt she was unique.
Seth says, from the mountaintop one can see farther. His "see farther" is in quotation marks -- the view from the mountaintop includes the whole countryside, so I can perceive your reality. But in using this metaphor, I am not saying that one is higher or lower than the other. The mountaintop can see the villages on the plain below, but the mountaintop and the villages are equally valid; there is no distinction of high and low, only difference.
A Different Perspective: The Thinking Mind and Cellular Consciousness
Seth shifts to another angle again. He has gone to great lengths to explain all this, but really he is just trying to break down your fixation on the size of identity: a bigger identity, a higher position, an authority; I am a little ant, they are all gods. And this fixation is not easy to break, so he keeps going over it again and again. Don't find him bothersome or long-winded.
As you think of it, your thinking mind is your mountaintop. In a manner of speaking, you can see more than your cells can, although they are also aware of their reality. Without their life, you would not be on the psychological mountaintop of your psyche.
If we put it this way, your perspective or your field of vision may see more than your cells can. Cells have their own world, and they are also aware of their own reality. But if the cells did not exist, you could not stand on the mountaintop of your psyche either.
Even the trees at the highest point of the slope send their sturdy roots deep into the earth.
No matter how tall a tree grows, it must sink its roots into the soil, joining with other realities and other consciousnesses. It depends on the existence of other things, receiving nourishment and life force from them -- a tree without roots cannot live.
Between the smallest sapling at the foot of the mountain and the tallest ancient pine on the slope, there is a remarkable area of interrelationship. The old pine at the mountaintop and the little sapling at the foot of the mountain are also in communication with each other.
Not a blade of grass dies but that it affects the whole mountain.
A little blade of grass may seem utterly insignificant, but its death has an impact on the mountain as well. The energy within the grass sinks into the earth and, in your terms, is reborn once again. The grass rots into the soil and returns its energy to the earth. When energy changes form, trees, rocks, and grass often exchange positions -- the great pine sinks its roots deep into the land, and the nourishment it draws may well be a transformation of that little blade of grass's energy, transferred into the pine. Is there a relationship of mutual areas between the grass and the pine? Of course there is.
When Seth said this passage, he was very forceful, leaning forward, his eyes wide and deep -- look at his expression, he placed tremendous importance on this.
Water flows swiftly down the mountainside into the valley below, so between the village below, the grasslands, and the mountain, there is a constant interconnection.
Where there is a mountain, there is water. Water emerges from the cracks in the rocks on the mountain and flows to the village. Would you say there is a relationship of mutual areas between the mountain and the village? There is. So among all identities there is the same kind of transformation, this kind of mutual energy exchange or identity exchange. It is very hard for you to say clearly whose identity is whose -- they transform into one another, depend on one another, merge with one another, and yet each remains distinctly clear.
And this world that transcends our three-dimensional reality -- the way we are used to thinking of "one radish, one hole" -- it is not like that. It is all mixed together.
Change and cooperation involve the same kind of transformation. For convenience's sake, you can draw a line wherever you want, but each identity maintains its individuality and inviolate nature, even as it constantly changes.
If you want to, you can draw a line anywhere: say this is you, this is me; this is the great pine, this is the little sapling; this is the river, this is the mountain, this is the village, this is the field. Fine, no problem. But this line is just something you draw arbitrarily. In actuality, they constantly interact, constantly exchange energy, constantly exchange identity -- it is only you who, according to your own judgment, divide them into different identities. In their essential nature, they are connected and mutually transforming.
Jane's addition: All things are connected
At the time Jane was transmitting this material for Seth, she saw most of the images in her mind. She said this was a remarkable concept and analogy.
Now I think I am getting exactly that, everything on the surface of the earth is connected. Your consciousness is inside an ant, a rock, or a tree, but we are not used to thinking in that way. Not that one is higher than another, just that they are all connected, biologically and psychically, through a strange familiarity we have never been aware of. What I am getting is, your father...
This whole thing came from Rob's father's experience. Jane said, your father could do anything you wrote about without infringing on anything or anyone. It is only because of our concepts of individuality and the soul that it sounds so frightening -- until you get used to those concepts.
Actually what he meant was: because we humans have limitations in our concepts of individuality, sense of identity, and understanding of the soul, that is why it sounds so frightening to you. If you really got used to what Seth has been telling you about how true identity, true individuality, and true souls actually interact with one another, you would not have this fear or worry.
The Seed Analogy and the Expansion of Identity
Seth then continued:
A tree produces seeds, some of which fall near the tree, while others are carried some distance by the wind, taken to regions that the tree itself, tall as it may grow, cannot see.
A tree always has places it cannot see, but the seeds can go very far.
The tree does not feel diminished because it produces these seeds. So identity, in somewhat the same way, sends out its own seeds.
The tree does not feel its sense of identity lessened because it has scattered its seeds. It is still that tree, and it may even be richer for it—it has sown seeds, it has produced seeds. These seeds grow up in quite different environments, and their reality in no way threatens the identity of their parent.
Identity has a free choice, so they will select their own environments and places of birth. Because a tree is physical, physical properties are involved, and the seeds will follow those general principles and characteristics as they mature.
All of this must conform to physical laws and physical properties.
Atoms and molecules sometimes form a tree, and sometimes they become part of a sofa. They also maintain their own sense of identity as atoms and molecules, and together they form cells or organs, and through all these events they gain a variety of different experiences.
Atoms can become a tree at one moment, a sofa at another, then your cellphone, then your cells, your organs. In becoming these things they gain different experiences, but their own sense of identity is not lost. Although they make up other, larger identities, they still retain their own sense of identity as that molecule, that atom—this is what Seth wants to emphasize.
You Are What You Eat
Materially speaking, and generally speaking, your body is composed of grass, ants, rocks, beasts, birds, and so forth. Because all biological matter is more or less interrelated. In a manner of speaking, through your experience, birds and rocks speak out the letters, while you yourself exist in certain portions, flying as a bird or crawling as an insect, forming the great fulfillment of material experience.
Simply put, the plants, animals, chicken, duck, fish, meat, and grains you eat all become part of your body. They have their own consciousness, but after being eaten by you, they are elevated on the level of your consciousness—those cells, molecules, and atoms acquire your experience and your experiencing within your body. And the cells in your body also go into other animals, becoming cells in other birds or reptiles, so in a certain sense, you fly, crawl, and run within other animals. The consciousness among all things is interconnected, and this interconnection forms a great gestalt—there exists a common, great gestalt between the universe or within the natural world.
People popularly say, you are what you eat. For example, they say you must not eat meat, because you are slaughtering animals, and this is wrong—many people say you should be vegetarian, because killing living beings is wrong. But in a deeper sense:
Those animals are born from the body of the earth.
Whether animals or plants, it is all the same. Animals can only survive by eating the plants that grow from the earth, so animals are also born from the earth. And within the earth, besides other things, are buried the bodies of men and women. In America, most burials are still in the ground, and a portion are cremated1, so the land contains the buried bodies of men and women. Those animals grow out of the land and eat the plants that grow from the soil, so in a certain sense, they also eat you—just as you eat them.
They eat you, and you eat them. And they are part of your humanity, something you cannot cast off even if you try. You say, I do not eat meat, I only eat vegetables—well, do vegetables not grow out of the ground? Does the ground not contain the corpses of animals and humans? Then from a certain angle, do plants not also contain the genes of humans or animals? Are you not, in a disguised way, still eating animals?
Just as you are as much of what they call this animal nature.
You have animal nature within you; you are part of that animal nature.
The Arithmetic of Consciousness
Jane delivered the following material with the most intense manner. She paused for a long time, clearly in a very deep state. In the passage below, Seth delivered it in a very important, very emphatic tone:
Biologically there is interchange, meaning that the same material that makes up a man or a woman can be dispersed and broken down, and later form a bat, a starfish, a dog, or a flower. It can be dispersed into countless different forms. That arithmetic of consciousness is not annihilated; it is multiplication rather than division. And as identity continues to form new creative endeavors and related gestalts, the memory within each form is the consciousness of all other combinations, all other alliances, without discrimination, without prejudice.
This passage is very important, because it touches on a concept: what is meant by the arithmetic of consciousness. Let me explain it to you briefly in my own words.
From the standpoint of consciousness, it is not doing division or subtraction; it can be said to be always doing addition or multiplication. After a person dies, the material that made up that person's body breaks down into various forms, becoming frogs, starfish, puppies, flowers, plants, and so on. That person's consciousness is then dispersed into these various other species, and these species each have their own consciousness, and then they die in turn and are dispersed into other things, and so on in an endless cycle. That is to say, this person's consciousness can be dispersed into countless myriad things.
And this consciousness is not, as you might imagine, decreasing; on the contrary, it is multiplying exponentially — the experience it gains through different identities increases dozens of times over. So they combine with one another, form alliances with one another, forming an allied consciousness, and within this allied consciousness there is no discrimination, no prejudice. You cannot say that human consciousness is a level higher than starfish consciousness; you cannot say that dog consciousness is stronger than cat consciousness, or higher than ant consciousness — no such thing exists. That is our human understanding. In fact, all these consciousnesses are connected together; they are one integral consciousness. Within one integral consciousness, how can you say who is higher than whom?
So this oneness of all things is not a slogan; it is a real, actual existence. When you genuinely maintain this concept of the oneness of all things, you can maintain a good state.
The Reincarnation of Excrement
Seth went on, and it got a bit gross:
When you eat food, you must excrete it through your intestines. That stuff that is produced there eventually returns to the earth, and there it helps form all other living creatures.
This is perfectly normal. If you have ever lived in northern China, the pigsties and the toilets were connected -- the pigs would eat the poop that people dropped, fresh, you would go on one end and they would eat on the other. And yet people still ate the pork. Tell me that is not disgusting? Nowadays this sort of thing is rare; it is all factory pig farms now. But a few decades ago, this was real, living rural life, and every household that raised pigs did it this way. Human feces was one of the main food sources for pigs.
You may not want to eat pork ever again after hearing this, right? But that is how pigs were raised back then. Seth probably never lived in northern China, so he did not use this even more disgusting example. His point is the same: your excrement goes into the soil, and does the soil not then nourish other animals and plants? Do plants not grow stronger because of human fertilizer? Are those plants not then eaten by other animals? Do people not then eat those animals? Are people not, in a roundabout way, eating their own poop?
He uses this disgusting method to break your illusions, to stop you from thinking of yourself as so noble. When Seth shatters illusions, he uses every means available.
That dead thing -- your shit, let us say -- or the remains of a bird, or shed cells, or your feces, you consider all of it dead. These things are subsequently used not by other birds, but by men and women.
Everything he says is gross. He is not saying it is occasionally used directly by birds, but that most of it is used by human beings.
There is no rule saying that your discarded cellular material can only be used by yourself.
Your human cells can only be used by human cells? No. Everyone uses each other, because it is all protein and amino acids, and when broken down to the end, it is all the basic units that make up the human body.
Yet in your terms, any identity, no matter how small and tiny, maintains itself and its identity through many alliances of forms and organizations.
No matter how tiny an identity is -- the identity of an atom, the identity of a cell, the identity of a molecule -- it maintains its own identity. How does it maintain it? Through these alliances of organization. Through these units of consciousness -- you could call them consciousness webs, consciousness threads, and they are entangled with one another.
All of your worlds are related to one another through such units of consciousness. Your own identity constantly sends out its own units, and these mix psychically with other units.
Your identity constantly sends out itself as a kind of unit of consciousness, mixing with the units of consciousness of other animals and plants. When the atoms and molecules of matter are exchanged with one another, they mix together. So there are organizations of different identities in which you play a role -- you play different roles, not just as one person, but you also play a bird, a reptile, a flower, a tree, and these are all your identities. In these identities, atoms and molecules all play a role within the organization, but their individual identities are not lost.
Ruburt is connected to me in that way. He is also connected in the same way to any ant in the backyard, but he retains my identity, and I retain my identity.
Ruburt is connected to me through this inner link, and he is also connected to the ants in the backyard. But I do not lose my identity, and the ant also retains the ant's identity -- the ant does not stop knowing who it is just because Ruburt's consciousness is connected to it and his identity is connected to it. It still feels it is an ant, not Ruburt. And Ruburt also retains his own identity; he has not become an ant.
But without the other two, the other one could not exist.
Without the ant's identity and without Ruburt's identity, there is no Seth's identity. In other words, without Seth's identity and without the ant's identity, there is no Ruburt's identity. In a broad sense, the reality of any one of these three presupposes the existence of the realities of the others.
These two examples are a bit extreme, but in essence this is how it is: without the existence of all other things, human beings alone could not exist.
Why Seth Was So Patient
After giving this material, Seth said that all of this should help you understand your own experiences involving your father, and later those with your mother, as well as Rob's with your mother. Everything he said was meant to help you understand your father and so on. He gave this instruction: all of this was said to help him understand, or to ease his fear of losing his sense of identity after death.
Why would he fear this? Have you forgotten what the two of them said earlier? Rob and Jane were extreme individualists — that is the premise. Why don't ordinary people suffer this much? Because ordinary people are not extreme individualists. Easterners especially, we have had this concept since childhood: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, from where you came, there you return, where you came from, there you go. We were instilled with this view from a young age, so we live relatively more free and easy than they do.
But the two of them represented most Westerners, and they were very pure individualists. They believed that the individual stands between heaven and earth, unique, sacred and inviolable — the one and only sense of identity. From a certain angle, this identity was greater than everything, something he strove to maintain, strove to protect, sacred and inviolable. When you say that your sense of identity is the same as pigs and dogs and such, he collapses; he cannot accept it.
So Seth used a great deal of space here, precisely because Rob and Jane's individualism was so strong. When they heard that after their father died he would be dispersed into various different identities, they collapsed: then who exactly is my father? He has been divided up into all these different personalities. And then he would think of himself: then after I die, who am I? What kind of existence is this "Rob" of mine? Who am I, really? And who is me? He started asking this philosophical question again.
So you can see that Seth here was very patient, very loving, very kind. Just because of Rob's worry, his psychological shift, Seth gave him this whole long passage alone, breaking it apart and kneading it into fine detail, even bringing in human fertilization — using such a disgusting method, also in order to get Rob to come out of it quickly. So Seth said, this material was actually aimed at Rob's question.
Notes on the Seth Session: Student Replies and Jane's Poem
After giving Jane half a page of material, Rob ended the session with this sentence. What that final sentence says is this: Seth mentioned the role that the ESP class students were beginning to play in helping Jane and Rob answer letters.
By now three Seth books were on the market: The Seth Material, Seth Speaks, and The Nature of Personal Reality. Once the three books were out, a flood of mail arrived, many letters every week, and it was clearly going to keep growing. Two months earlier, Jane had thought of asking interested students to answer some of the letters, because the two of them simply could not keep up. The result was an unexpected bonus: not only were the letters answered much faster, but the students involved also gained considerable experience in dealing with the wide variety of intellectual and emotional questions raised by strangers. In helping Jane answer these reader letters, they also gained growth on both the emotional and rational levels themselves.
When you answer other people's questions, it really is an excellent way to broaden your own understanding. That is why I have always encouraged the students in the group to ask each other questions, and not to feel that every question has to be asked of me, or of some other so-called teacher. You are all students; there is no teacher; we are all learning together. The group members can also answer each other's questions directly; there is no need to wait for some authority to answer. In the process of answering each other, your personal growth is extremely rapid. This has been proven.
But later on, problems arose. After a few weeks, the idea had been taken up so enthusiastically by so many students that everyone was willing to help Jane answer letters, but in the end they could not keep it up. Jane and I finally discovered that the students had also grown tired of the endless, week-after-week process of answering letters. More than one student said with a wry smile that it had become too burdensome, the letters just kept coming. We also learned that some people who wrote to Jane did not like receiving a reply written by someone else; they only wanted a reply from Jane herself.
They felt that each person had asked their own question, but when all these questions came together, by the time they reached Jane they had become dozens or even hundreds of letters, and Jane simply had no way to answer them one by one. Later Seth stepped in specifically over this matter and wrote two letters, asking Jane to have them photocopied or printed out, and to include the same reply in every letter, with Jane adding a signature on top, or simply writing two lines, as a unified reply to readers.
The notes also discuss this "blueprint of ten items," which he had devoted two earlier sessions to.
Then note three: in 1959, four and a half years before Jane began the sessions, when she was thirty, she wrote a short poem about the arithmetic of her own existence. This poem resonates so strongly with the title of this session, "The Arithmetic of Consciousness." Actually, the word "arithmetic" is not translated very well here; a more accurate translation should be "the four operations of consciousness," which is more fitting. Since it was translated as arithmetic, we will use arithmetic.
Why say "the four operations of consciousness"? It is trying to tell you this: in the process of consciousness being broken down and recombined, broken down and recombined again, the sense of identity of consciousness suffers no loss or diminishment whatsoever; on the contrary, it multiplies. In the operations of consciousness, it is always only multiplication; there is no subtraction or division. It is either addition or multiplication. Multiplication is more vivid, because it is a many-to-many process, constantly expanding downward through levels, like a process of radial diffusion, or, to use Teacher Xiyu's phrase, like an umbrella spreading outward. It is multiplication.
Four and a half years earlier, Jane wrote this poem, titled "My Heart Does Not Understand Arithmetic":
My heart does not understand arithmetic, But one plus one is two, And the heart sums up the parts, And its whisper is added through the fibers. My brain is not good at calculus, But its rules apply. My thoughts skip over every cell, And everything I want to do. But I do not understand equations, Yet the chemicals of my atoms, And the precise calculations, Add up to me.
What Jane means is: I do not understand arithmetic, nor calculus, nor anything at all, but my cells understand, my body understands; they make precise calculations, and then they bless me with the final result, and generate me.
So the question of "the heart not understanding arithmetic" actually fits with the title of this session, "The Arithmetic of Consciousness." Rob placed it here to show that Jane had this latent ability, that her transmission of the Seth material was not accidental.
注释与核实
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Source: Cremation Association of North America, "History of Cremation" (updated) (https://www.cremationassociation.org/historyofcremation.html) ↩