Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 730

The "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

The soul or consciousness is not a fixed unit that enters at birth and leaves at death, but a gradual focus of consciousness; a naturally aborted fetus is not without life, it experiences a stage similar to humanity's ancient aquatic phase. A birth astrological chart can only reflect extremely limited local conditions, and cannot pre-map the course of a life. Cells, animals, dolphins, and whales each have different ways of self-awareness, and the soul is not exclusive to humans. The soul cannot be defined, nor is there a hierarchical evolution from lower to higher.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The soul or consciousness does not suddenly enter at birth and suddenly leave at death, but is a gradual focus of consciousness.
• A naturally aborted fetus is not without life; it experiences stages similar to those of ancient humans in water, and certain consciousnesses therefore need not be born.
• A birth astrological chart can only represent extremely limited local conditions; one cannot use the positions of the stars to map out a person's route in advance.
• Consciousness and soul-nature are not limited to humans; cells, animals, dolphins, and whales each have different ways of self-aware identity.
• The soul cannot be defined, cannot be broken down, combined, destroyed, or expanded, but it can change its alliances and characteristics, and its progression cannot be diagrammed.

Main Text

Session 730: More on Astrology: Natural Abortion, the Consciousness of Dolphins and Other Creatures

This session began at 9:17 PM on Wednesday, January 15, 1975.

Seth came through and said right away: ordinarily, you think in terms of a hypothetical whole self, or consciousness, that emerges at birth and then disappears at death. That is how we usually understand it, including how we think of the soul — the whole self, the soul, consciousness, we think of them all this way.

But there have been learned professors debating this very question. For example, some astrologers use the time of conception as their calculation, as the starting point of a person's life; others prefer to use the day of birth. Various religions have decided that the soul enters the fetus at conception — many religions hold that the soul only enters at conception, and Buddhism also speaks about this in great detail¹, about how the embryo is formed. Still others argue that consciousness cannot be considered a human soul, because it can only be counted as such just before birth — that is, only at the moment of delivery can one say this person has consciousness; before that, it cannot be called having a soul.

Seth's point is that, regarding the question of when human life begins, human society has still not reached a consensus.

At the other end of the scale, the same problem arises — namely, when exactly death occurs. In most of these debates, this assumed self or consciousness is used as a basis for judgment. We often say that when consciousness departs, that is true death. In medicine, the stopping of the heartbeat is taken as death. But you know, when a person's heart stops beating, in modern resuscitation efforts it is common for the heart to stop for several minutes, over ten minutes — the longest I have seen is one hour, even two hours, with successful revival². So during that period, was the person dead or alive? Therefore, the timing of death is also uncertain.

First of all, in this kind of situation, the self or the soul is not something that can be evaluated. In the state of life and death, the soul, or your true self, is not a matter of evaluating when it comes and when it goes, nor is it necessarily something that suddenly arrives and then disappears. It is not some thing that comes at one time and leaves at another. This overturns many people's understanding — many people think of the soul as a thing that enters at birth to be reincarnated and leaves the body at death. When you first came into contact with spiritual knowledge, it was fine to think that way, but having studied up to today, thinking that way is too simplistic, too shallow.

The physical self, as you know it, is a focus of consciousness.

You must remember this — I have emphasized it repeatedly; this is the core. The physical body you have, your present physical body, is just your physical self, just a focus of your waking consciousness — that is, your sense of ego identity, the you that you think you are, this existence, including this body and your ego identity, is all a focus of consciousness.

It is a personality formed by consciousness corresponding to that focus, and you identify yourself as that personality.

Then you take yourself to be that — this is the core: it is a focus of consciousness. And this is very difficult to make an analogy for; it is hard for me to explain it to you in a way you can understand. But I still have the foolish courage to try — the courage of ignorance. Like the courage of the Foolish Old Man who moved mountains — called "foolish courage." Here I refuse to believe it cannot be done; I am going to try to explain to you how this focus of consciousness is the true manifestation of your life, or the manifestation of your personality.

What a Naturally Aborted Fetus Experienced

He said to you:

To you, it may seem that any naturally aborted fetus has no physical life at all, and that for some reason it was denied that life.

He said you think an aborted child has no life, that it died halfway. He said that is not the case. On the contrary, that fetus experienced another level of physical life, on a different scale. In your terms, that is the ancient past.

He said the fetus experienced something from an early stage of humanity. For example, in the placenta, in the womb, before the fetus is finally born, it is immersed in amniotic fluid inside the womb. He said this corresponds to the process of early humanity in the ocean — that is, an ancient past; it was experiencing this.

He has said before that in the traditional concept of evolution — which is wrong to begin with — but let us borrow it for now. In that concept, this would be a stage: during that period, this kind of consciousness of yours experimented with a water environment; it experimented with gills rather than lungs. It was experimenting with breathing through gills rather than lungs. He demonstrated that during that period, consciousness focused itself in the water, in the ocean, testing within the water environment.

In a manner of speaking, this gave consciousness an opportunity to see certain portions of the species' past, and it also provided that consciousness with direct, firsthand psychic data.

He said this fetus that was aborted halfway actually experienced, within the mother's placenta, within the mother's womb, that particular historical process from humanity's ancient past; it personally went through such a process.

But once again, this is extremely difficult to explain — especially without offending your concepts of yourselves, and especially without harming the strong defense you maintain of your concepts of yourselves, I still have to make it clear.

Each of you who are alive have died in just such a fashion.

What does "each of you who are alive have died in just such a fashion" mean? Are we who are alive now not a focus of consciousness? Yes. And this focus of consciousness, in that particular traditional evolutionary view, before the transition from marine life to land, these focuses of consciousness were all concentrated in the ocean environment, in the water environment. It placed its focus of consciousness on those creatures, just as today it places this focus of consciousness on our human physical bodies — it is the same; it was just placed on dolphins then, on whales, on other marine animals.

From this point of view, you humans who are alive now are also composed of focuses of consciousness. These focuses of consciousness are merely attached to humans now; when they were attached to marine animals, you also lived and died in that way, who knows how many times. That is to say, the reason you are alive is that this focus of consciousness exists behind you. And this focus of consciousness has lived and died countless times in the form of marine animals. This breaks the illusion of your identity, breaks your attachment to your identity.

Obviously, in traditional terms, this is thought of in terms of long centuries of time, during which some creatures came out of the sea, and some became reptiles, eventually developing into mammals, but some did not complete the full journey and fell by the wayside. According to evolutionary theory, they did not complete this evolution. Remember, this is in traditional terms — this theory itself is incorrect, but he is using it as an analogy.

In those terms, and according to that analogy, the psyche made the same adjustments and life transformations.

In other words, your spirituality initially placed its focus on marine creatures, then later projected onto reptilian creatures, and then later projected onto mammals. Your spirituality was also making the same adjustments, the same life transformations. Therefore, there are some highly intelligent reptilian beings — such as the lizard people — which we do not understand, but in fact they were also once an investment of consciousness, an infusion of a focus. And in the ocean there are also very intelligent, very wise beings — for example, dolphins have extremely high intelligence, and so on — these are all things we humans cannot understand.

He continued with the analogy:

Each of you, then, have existed many times as fetuses that did not succeed.

If we put it that way, the period of existence as marine creatures is equivalent to an early stage of your spiritual life exploration, equivalent to a fetal period. Let me put his words more simply and plainly so you can understand: suppose today's human form of existence, relative to the earlier focus of consciousness in the ocean — that is, relative to the form of existence of dolphins — then the dolphin form can be understood as an early fetal version of today's human species. From the perspective of the evolution of the spiritual focus of consciousness, from marine creatures to reptiles to mammals, the stage of marine creatures can be compared to a fetal version of today's human species.

It is not necessarily that you did not want to be born, but that such experience was itself valid.

It is not that the aborted fetus did not want to be born. In that period of marine animals, every life at that time was born in the sea and died in the sea — your life simply ended in the sea. Some beings, from the pseudo-scientific perspective of evolution, did not make it out of the ocean, and so they perished; others made it onto land and became reptiles, and later became mammals. Seth borrowed this view to give you an example: according to this process, when your spirituality was attempting the process of life development, it ultimately chose, for example, the human form, and the earlier attempts were equivalent to a fetal version of humanity's final outer form.

And in your present situation, it is written into the memory of your flesh.

These so-called early processes are not evolutionary processes; they are processes of the focus of consciousness trying out different species. I emphasize again: this is not an evolutionary process; this is a process of the focus of consciousness experimenting on different species — it tries this one for a while, tries that one for a while, and ultimately finds that the human form works best. Just treat them as the early stages of experimentation.

Now this does not mean that, as you know it, your personality is often trapped in a womb and doomed to die there, or that a hypothetical whole self would not be born — but that the archaeological history of your spirituality, focused only on the physical, carries those experiences.

Those aborted children — it is not that those children's personalities were confined to the womb, born in the womb and dying in the womb, and finally miscarried. This does not mean that the whole self was not born; rather, the archaeological history of the spirituality focused on the physical carries those experiences. And some focuses of consciousness want to experience this, want to revisit it.

He paused at this point, eyes closed.

Seth said, wait for us a moment, let me find a better analogy.

What analogy?

The self is not like a clay figure that comes out of a potter's kiln, so that you can say here is a self, and nothing more can be added to it. You have always existed as a probable self, even though you have not focused upon the knowledge of your own experience.

You are not a clay figure molded and fired — but in our myths and legends we often use this metaphor, that we are clay, molded and shaped, then fired in the kiln until hardened, and then we become human. It is not like that at all. Your humanity did not come about that way; it is not a fixed shape, nor a process of firing, nor a dead thing to which nothing more can be added. You have always been a probable existence of the focus of consciousness; this focus of consciousness is not settled — it tries here today, tries there tomorrow, and when it tries on this body of yours, it becomes your physical existence.

You obviously have not understood your own experience — where your own experience is, and what exactly you yourself are.

This is what he means — it is not a fixed form, a shape, into which the soul enters; no, it is not like that.

You may have been focusing well in other realities, but I am speaking of the earthly experience as you understand it; I mean that in your earthly experience, you have not fully focused upon your earthly knowledge and experience.

You have not yet fully focused on this physical experience.

He continued:

At any point, you can truly become more yourself, but in that regard, you are gradually being born, and in a manner of speaking, you have discarded portions of yourself, so you are also gradually dying, but both of these — birth and death — are happening simultaneously.

This passage once again sums up our human definition in a very simple overview. Remember a few key points:

First, at any point you can become more yourself, whether before life or after death, or during your life — you can become more yourself. It is not that only during life can you develop yourself and become more yourself; both before life and after death are possible.

Second, you are gradually being born, and you are also gradually dying. Your life is a gradual process, and your departure in death is also a gradual process. If we must speak in terms of birth and death, then there is no single point at which you are born and no single point at which you die.

That is to say, the entry of this focus of consciousness into your body is a process of coming in and going out in the early stages, of constant experimentation — the coordination between the physical body and the focus of consciousness also requires a period of breaking in. And while you are alive, this focus of consciousness is not always on your body; it goes elsewhere. For example, when you sleep, your focus of consciousness has already left. So do not treat your life as something dead, something fixed, as we understand things in the three-dimensional world. It is not; it is a state of existence between you and your body.

The same is true when you pass away. It is not that you die and then this you is suddenly gone; it is a gradual death. Except for those who, from our perspective, suddenly meet with disaster, if a person dies naturally, you will find there is a gradual process: in the last roughly 48 to 72 hours before death, the person is basically comatose³; before the coma, they already spent a great deal of time in a comatose state, unconscious for long stretches each day, waking only briefly, then unconscious again. By the final 48 to 72 hours, they basically remain unconscious and do not wake again, until finally the organs fail one by one, and then the heart and lungs, these two organs, finally give up their work. That is, you stop breathing — at the very end, a person only exhales and does not inhale, which is quite interesting; there is basically very little inhalation, mostly exhalation, until the last breath is exhaled and breathing stops, and then the heartbeat also stops. The medical community generally records this moment as the time of death. But in fact, before this, the consciousness has already gradually left the body — it does not wait until that final moment when breathing stops to leave; no, before that it is a process of gradual departure. Therefore, death is also not a specific, fixed point in time.

The Process of Birth Began Before Your Parents Were Born

To some degree, the present you and I, in a certain sense, are latent within your placenta, but there is no point at which the full awareness of a soul enters the flesh.

There is no single point at which the full awareness of the soul enters your body; that process is gradual.

In physical terms, that process began before your own parents were born.

He said, in terms of your time, in terms of our physical world, in terms of the three-dimensional world, this process of your birth had already begun before your parents were even born. This is something you probably never imagined — that your life was already chosen, already beginning to gestate, before your parents were born.

How is this possible, you ask? In terms of time, it may be hard to understand, but do not forget: your focus of consciousness, or your soul, when it comes in, has no concept of time. If we must speak from a physical perspective, in terms of time, you can imagine your spiritual body in the heavens, always watching for when you will be reincarnated; it had long since thought it through, and then it waited for that point in time to arrive, and then chose what kind of parents to enter through.

Here, Teacher Xiyu gave an excellent example in his later interpretation, and I think this example is very simple and helps you understand. He said: suppose you are going to write a novel, and you want to create a protagonist, and this protagonist has a magnificent life story. At that point, do you first have the conception of the protagonist, or do you first have the conception of the protagonist's parents or grandparents? In other words, do you not first conceive the protagonist's main storyline, and then, in order to make that storyline more real and more believable, do you not have to create for him a family, his parents, his background? That makes it easier to understand, right?

According to this explanation, your spiritual body in the heavens, for the sake of your birth, had to arrange a background environment for you, including your parents, your family environment, your family background — all prepared for this great drama of yours; they were all brought in to support you. From your perspective, that is how it is.

The magical thing about this is what? It is that everyone is like this: from your parents' perspective, you are also one of their supporting actors, playing their child. The two of you are each other's supporting actors — in their drama, you are the supporting role of the child, and they are the protagonists; in your role, they are the supporting cast, they are the background of the story. So its complexity lies in this: they are each other's roles.

The Limitations of the Natal Chart

At the time of your birth, the astrological chart of events is like taking a photograph of a person's backyard in the afternoon. In this analogy, the entire personality of the earth can be compared to the world. As long as you base your inferences on that one picture, applicable relationships will exist, but they are valid only for that small, specific area.

The plain meaning of this passage is: suppose the entire earth is a personality, the greater self, the main personality of your life, and then, at the moment of your birth, the astrological chart in the sky is like taking a photograph of your backyard at the moment of your birth. Then you use this photograph to say: where am I on the earth, and what is my relationship to the entire universe and the earth?

If you simply look at this photograph, you can only obtain, within this small yard, within this very small space, your relationship to the surrounding physical environment and your relationship to the earth. But based on this small photograph alone, you cannot determine your relationship to the entire earth. On the scale of this small yard, it is valid; on a larger scale, it has no meaning at all.

You cannot say it is wrong, and you cannot say it is not — it is a photograph of the earth, just a very, very small corner of the earth. Can you say it is not part of the earth? It is part of the earth. Can it represent the earth? That is hard to say. If you say it does not represent it, it is indeed a small photograph of the earth; but if you say it does represent it, it cannot represent the earth. So what is he using this example to illustrate? That the astrological chart in the sky at your birth — can it represent your personality? It cannot represent much. Can you say it represents nothing at all? It is not that it represents nothing at all — after all, it is one of the attributes of your birth, just as this small photograph also represents the attributes of a certain corner of the earth.

In your terms, at birth a person is influenced by multidimensional conditions.

From the perspective of our human space and time, at your birth you were influenced by multidimensional conditions of space and time. Remember, the reason we are born in this three-dimensional world, at this point in time, is premised on our human perspective of space and time — because in truth, birth does not happen this way at all; from a higher scale, this is not what it means. But let us return to the three-dimensional world. Whenever he says "in your terms," we speak in terms of the three-dimensional world. According to the three-dimensional world, the birth of a person in our three-dimensional world came about under the combined influence of many conditions from multidimensional worlds.

And the collective positions of the planets gave you a photograph, which merely involves one of the other realities — a very tiny indicator. The other planets as well; the positions of the other planets are also other realities, originally multidimensional, multi-reality. So the positions of our planets are merely a very tiny indicator of some other reality.

Can you say it is not? It is. Can you say it has much influence? It does not have much.

The Truth of Astrology and Numerology

Ruburt was right:

Even in traditional terms, a true horoscope should involve the time of death in your reality, just as importantly as it involves the time of birth.

Ruburt once said that if you truly want to cast a horoscope, you should include the time of death; you cannot calculate based only on the time of birth. But how could that be? If you include the time of death, the person is already dead — what is there left to calculate? Nothing left to calculate. But his statement is correct, at least from the perspective of numerology it has some validity.

Why does it have some validity? Do you know that those who truly practice fortune-telling, those who truly devote effort to study and learning, whether through the I Ching and the Eight Trigrams or through the Eight Characters, all have one most important exercise — what exercise? They practice using the Eight Characters of dead people. They take a person who has already died, whose life is settled, and record the year of birth and the year of death, record all the major events of the person's life, and then they make calculations and see how much their calculations differ from the person's actual life experience. They use a method similar to statistics, or what we often call big data learning — this is not artificial intelligence; it is human intelligence, skipping the "artificial" part entirely, what he called human intelligence learning — fed by this big data, it is the same principle as artificial intelligence. These dead people are all big data; fed by this big data, operated by the wisdom of the human brain, supported by certain specific tools, practiced and cultivated over a certain period of time, and combined with the person's own naturally strong spirituality, the person becomes capable of very strong calculation and prediction. That is why some masters are extremely accurate in fortune-telling — this is the reason.

Do not forget the premise: they have calculated countless dead people before arriving at their conclusions. So the statement "a true horoscope should include the time of death" may have been a joke, but it inadvertently hit upon a core aspect of the numerologist's training — any successful fortune-teller, or numerologist, or practitioner of I Ching prediction, must go through this stage; without this stage, they cannot achieve mastery.

The Boundaries Formed by the Focus of Attention

The focus of your attention forms your boundaries, which predetermine that you will believe there is a point, as you understand it, at which your consciousness emerges, and also a point at which it is no longer effective, or death.

Because the focus of your consciousness is only on our physical world, you will necessarily believe that your consciousness has a point at which it emerges from the physical world — that is, the point at which it emerges from the three-dimensional world — and also a point at which it leaves our three-dimensional world. Therefore, you will necessarily treat these two points as the point of your birth and the point of your death. The reason for this is that your attention forms your boundaries; you have boxed yourself into this physical world, and you only focus on the physical world; there is no way around it.

Your belief in such critical points limits your perception. For by changing the focus of your attention, you can perceive, any number of times, before and after the recognized points of birth and death.

That is, the perceptions before your birth and after your death. When you are able to perceive them, you will no longer be so fixated on these two points of birth and death. But precisely because we cannot perceive what exists before birth and after death, we cannot perceive their existence, so we can only perceive that in the three-dimensional world a life has been born, and in the three-dimensional world a life has departed. You do not know that it itself came in from another space-time, and then it went to another space-time.

To put it more simply, energy is constantly transforming: it converts from one kind of energy in the nonphysical world into energy we can perceive in our three-dimensional world, and life is born; when it dies, the process is exactly reversed, it converts the energy of the physical world back into nonphysical energy, and then we can no longer perceive its existence. It is still an entity, it has merely changed form. Whether it changes form or not, it is still itself, its essence has not changed. Just as water can become ice, and then we think of it as a solid and can see it; when it becomes water vapor we cannot see it; when it becomes water we feel it can be put into any container. But its essence is still water, even though sometimes we see it and sometimes we do not.

The Soul Does Not Belong Only to Humanity

At the same time, you humans have given the soul only to your own species:

You think only humans have souls, as if the soul had a size, and only fit within your own essence. You think of animals as inferior to you, and you use this method to defend your own concepts.

You think nothing else has a soul, only humans have souls. Beings lower than us have no souls, only higher beings like humans who have intelligence have souls -- you judge it this way, but in fact all of this is to defend your own concepts, and it is fundamentally wrong.

But then, inevitably, you must wonder, when did the soul enter the body? Or when did that unfamiliar fetus become one of you? And thus be protected by the divine, and be granted the right to life?

You would certainly wonder: if a soul really exists, when did the soul come in?

But all things are conscious, and in that way of speaking, everything possesses a soul-nature, every thing has its soul.

From this perspective, every thing has consciousness. The soul has no hierarchy, there is no distinction of high and low, noble and base, no such thing as a higher soul or a lower soul.

The soul is the life within every thing.

Remember this sentence -- the soul is the life within every thing. Of course a fetus has a soul, but by the same reasoning, if you think in that way, then every cell of the fetus must also be given a soul. If you say a fetus has a soul, then every cell of the fetus must also have a soul.

The Choices and Changes of Cells

The path of a cell is not predetermined, and cells are usually very cooperative, especially when they form the structures of the body.

The path of a cell is not predetermined, so how could the developmental path of this fetus be determined? He is actually again attacking astrology -- that is, Western astrology. In fact East and West are the same, the same, only the methods and tools differ.

The body is a range that cells choose to experience.

Your body is a range that cells want to experience and choose. Just as you want to experience yourself in this universe, it needs a range, needs a space, needs a vehicle, needs a framework. Cells chose your body as the framework for their experience, and you chose Earth as the framework for your experience, that is all.

In experimenting, in actualizing themselves, when cells actualize themselves, each cell actualizing itself, cells also help your own existence, but within a framework they have chosen.

When cells actualize themselves, they also actualize the existence of your life, the existence of your body.

Yet they can reject certain elements within their own existence, and change their path, and even form new alliances.

Cells also exclude many possibilities within themselves, keeping only some. When they exclude other possibilities, they actually change the possible paths of their own development. Then they can combine with other cells to form new tissues, new organs.

Actually, we will not expand on this. In fact, from our stem cells -- when a child is born, stem cells are very important, because stem cells can form any cell⁴. For example, stem cells can form heart cells, bone marrow cells, cells in the eye, cells in the kidney, skin cells -- stem cells can form any cell⁴, this is one of their most core characteristics, they possess all possibilities. But once they have formed into specific cells, these cells grow and develop: for example, a hemoglobin cell, when it is first made it is a small hemoglobin cell, then it becomes a larger hemoglobin, then it becomes an adult hemoglobin cell, and after a life cycle it dies and is broken down. And this hemoglobin cell can no longer become any other cell -- it can only be a hemoglobin cell, it has given up other possible directions of development, it cannot become a fingernail cell in the blood, much less become a cell of your hair in the blood, none of that works, it can only become a hemoglobin cell, that is, a red blood cell. So this is a process of a cell.

In other words, every cell can theoretically become another cell, but it will choose to give up certain developmental paths and form a specific path. Then, they can also combine in special ways -- when it dies it is dismantled, and after being dismantled it forms new cells, and these new cells form new cells in any other part of the body according to the body's needs, so it can form new alliances.

He is actually using this process of human cells to tell you: the developmental path of cells is changeable, and it is the result of continuous choices among possibilities.

They have great freedom within the framework of what you think of as your reality.

Cells can become this, can become that.

If their path cannot be mapped out, if you truly cannot keep astonishing yourself, you cannot map out what a cell will become in the future -- your cells will always astonish you.

The development and changes of cells always exceed the understanding of human intelligence, exceed our human understanding, so that we humans can only always be amazed, feeling that life is truly wondrous, truly miraculous. But you really do not know why it is this way, why it maintains the whole body in such a vibrant, exuberant existence -- as if every cell has extremely high intelligence, and while actualizing themselves, they also actualize the whole, they cooperate with one another, cooperating with extreme subtlety and perfection, beyond reproach. This perfection is very hard to describe in words.

These 50 trillion cells⁵ operate like a single whole. Yet our entire human society is only 7 billion people, compared with 50 trillion cells⁵ -- what kind of concept is that? You may not quite understand, so let me remove the units: you have 70 dollars and you have 500,000 dollars, what kind of concept is that? Then you will know the gap. If 7 billion of us cannot work together in coordination, yet our cells can work together in coordination among 50 trillion cells⁵, and can even produce such high intelligence in you -- such high intelligence in every individual human body. Then imagine, if these 7 billion people formed a whole, and they could reach the level of cooperation that cells have, then how high would the collective gestalt intelligence of the whole human race reach? Can you imagine it?

That is, 50 trillion cells⁵ assemble into the human body, and the intelligence of cells of course has its own level, and then it assembles into the intelligence of a single human being like you, and you humans can go up into the sky and down into the earth, your abilities are who knows how many times greater than those of cells, right? This is very normal, right? But now let us think, if 7 billion people formed a single rope, supported by a large telepathic platform, and we formed a cooperative mechanism like that of cells, what kind of situation would that be? Have you thought about it? At that time, the collective intelligence of humanity would leap to what level, and it would no longer be the simple standard of today.

Back to the Topic: Why Do You Think the Stars Can Determine Your Path

He continues, saying that cells are in fact constantly astonishing you.

Then why do you think you can map out your path in advance through the positions of the stars at your birth?

You cannot even determine the developmental path of a cell, so how can you say that whatever the stars were like at your birth can determine the path of your entire life? He is again using this to ask you in return -- how could that be possible? That is what he means.

As far as you are concerned, cells are not lower than you, even though their forms make up part of your physical structure.

Although they are part of what composes you, that does not mean they are lower than you.

They are not even less conscious, they are not less conscious, they are conscious, they are simply conscious in a different way.

Their consciousness is not the same as our consciousness, it is consciousness in a different way.

There is no need to romanticize them.

There is no need to romanticize and humanize every one of these cells, or to imagine them all as little people. Japan once made an animated film called Cells at Work⁶, right? I recommended it to everyone once -- that animation personified every cell, turning it into a little person. He says you also do not need to over-romanticize them, nor over-personify them, saying that each one has intelligence like a person -- that is not so.

But each of them possesses highly focused consciousness, and also, a consciousness of itself.

Each one uses highly focused consciousness, and it knows who it is.

Do Only Humans Know Themselves

You like to think that only your own species possesses an awareness of its own self-nature. But there are different kinds of self-nature, and there are infinite, myriad ways of experiencing self-awareness.

This sentence is very interesting. You humans have a misconception: you always think that only you humans know who you are, only you humans know that you live in this universe, on this Earth. It seems that human cognition of themselves is comprehensive and complete, including how we humans are composed, how the universe is composed, and so on, all of which you think you know. But you think other beings have no cognition of themselves, that they do not know who they are, do not know what their position is in this physical world, do not know what their role is, that is, they do not have a complete cognition of their self-nature. It seems as if we have a complete cognition of our self-nature. This is an illusion of you humans.

In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Human cognition of their own self-nature is a misunderstanding. Humans do have cognition of their self-nature, but human cognition is wrong. This is very laughable. Humans think they have cognition of themselves, but this cognition is laughable, it is cognition of that ego, the small self. Humans need to learn and continuously practice in order to truly obtain cognition of their self-nature. Obtaining cognition of the self-nature is very difficult. That is why Buddhism has always emphasized discovering your self-nature, finding what your self-nature is, finding your true self-nature. In the end, after studying for a long time, they discover it is actually suchness. What is suchness? It cannot be described, it is a Buddhist term, we will not expand on it. Human understanding of their own self-nature is actually a misunderstanding, but we think we have awareness, while other beings and animals have no awareness of their self-nature. In fact, it is exactly the opposite, their understanding of their self-nature is more genuine and more accurate than yours.

There are many different kinds of self-nature in this world, not just one kind of human self-nature. For example, a nail has the self-nature of a nail, a chair has the self-nature of a chair, a stone has its own self-nature. But this self-nature is of their own kind, different from the self-nature we humans imagine when we understand human nature. You cannot use the human perspective to speculate about their self-nature. There are also infinite, myriad ways in this world to experience their respective different self-natures. Humans use their own thinking, thought, consciousness, awareness, and perception to observe their own self-nature. Others, not only living beings, but all objects, all things in the world, use their own ways to observe their own self-nature, and those ways are not understood by us humans. And then we think they do not have it.

He gives an example:

From your perspective, animals seem not to reflect upon their own reality. Obviously it appears as if a cell has no objective knowledge of its own existence. As if it does not know what it is, or is not truly its own existence. In this kind of reasoning, you are indeed mistaken. This is certainly wrong. Nor is there necessarily a hierarchy, there is no need for a hierarchy, there is no hierarchy. In which one kind of consciousness, in a rigid manner, progresses from a lower state to a higher state.

So there is no hierarchy of consciousness, no process of evolution, or process of progress, from lower consciousness to higher consciousness. There is no distinction of high and low, no hierarchy of consciousness. For example, any cell can actually make use of precognitive abilities that you have not discovered.

For example, any cell can actually make use of precognitive abilities that you have not discovered.

From the cellular level, cells all have precognitive ability, yet humans do not. We humans have not even mastered precognitive ability, yet cells have mastered it. Where do you still think you are superior to cells? But many of you assign this ability to higher souls, thinking that only people with high spiritual attainment can have the ability to foresee the future. You keep searching and exploring, yet even the cells in your own body have it. Is that not very interesting, very face-slapping, very funny?

Every kind of living being has its own qualities that cannot be compared with those of other living beings.

Every kind of life has qualities that cannot be compared with those of other lives, and those often cannot be explained. You cannot compare a flower with a goldfish, nor can you compare a cat with a mite. They are completely different life qualities, completely different life forms. There is no question of which is higher than which, which is more refined than which, which is more perfect than which, there is no such thing. They are merely different forms, each with its own unique qualities, which are incomparable.

You say some single-celled organisms or very lowly organisms are, from a certain perspective, very lowly, but do you know, they can live for tens of thousands or even millions of years⁷, remaining dormant the whole time. When conditions are good, they will revive again. And this is an ability that all the higher life forms we consider do not possess. Can you hibernate for tens of thousands of years and then come back to life? It can. Do you think you are more advanced, or is it?

Let us say one more thing that may not be quite appropriate. You think this novel coronavirus is very stupid, just a simple RNA fragment, not even DNA, just a fragment of RNA. It seems like a dead thing, and you seem to think it has no life, no intelligence. Yet now all scientists, when evaluating this novel coronavirus, say it is extremely cunning. Why do they use the word "cunning"? That proves it seems to have life, only then can you call it cunning, as if it has consciousness. Otherwise you could not use the word "cunning," you could only say it is hard to overcome, or its structure is very complex, or its virulence is very strong. But when you say it is cunning, what does that mean? It means they have discovered that this novel coronavirus is not quite the same as what they had accepted before. We will not expand on it.

Dolphins and Whales

All of this may seem to have nothing to do with what you think of as the nature of reincarnation, or with the counterparts I have explained. Yet it is very important: before you can begin to understand the freedom of your own self-nature, you must discard old ideas about the self and the soul. These seem to have nothing to do with counterparts or reincarnation, but they are very important. If you cannot have a correct understanding of yourself, or even a correct understanding of the soul, and still hold on to the idea of one self, one soul, you cannot truly understand what the freedom of your own self-nature really is.

Then he asked me if I was tired, and Rob said he was not, but in fact I was. Because the material was coming through so well, he did not want to interrupt it. But Seth had already seen that he was tired, and Seth said: "Tell me whenever you want to stop."

Seth said that tonight Ruburt had read some material about dolphins and whales, and that material contained strong implications that those creatures are geniuses, possessing a high capacity for abstract thought. And this is indeed the case. Research on dolphins and their psyche has found that their intelligence is extremely high, and they can engage in abstract thinking. We humans used to think that animals do not possess abstract thinking, that only humans have the capacity for abstract thought. He said dolphins are a completely different kind, dealing with the tenth dimension. To put it bluntly, it seems to live in the same space-time as us, but it is not in the same dimension at all, not in the same dimensional plane. It is dealing with a completely different world from ours. There is as yet no method of communication that would allow you to perceive their ideas about self-nature, and their collective view of existence. There is no method that would allow you to communicate with dolphins and then understand how dolphins understand their own self-nature, and their cognition of the collective existence of the entire dolphin species, just as you humans have a collective cognition of humanity. This is not yet possible, because you have no way to communicate with dolphins.

Dolphins are sensitive, self-aware individuals. They are altruistic. They also understand the essence of relativity. I would like to ask how many of you here understand relativity? You can silently feel ashamed. You do not even understand relativity, yet dolphins understand its essence, can you imagine that? Will you still be smug about how clever and intelligent humans are?

They have different methods of passing information to the next generation. We pass knowledge to the next generation through books, writing, paper, computers, and networks, but dolphins do not use this method, they have other ways of passing knowledge to the next generation. They are not higher or lower than your own species. Nor is it to say that they are higher than you humans, nor that they are lower than you. They merely represent a different kind of self-nature. The self-nature of dolphins and the self-nature of humans are different, that is all, there is no question of high or low.

At least as far as our discussion is concerned, there is some relationship between the reality of dolphins and the reality of the fetus. He is saying, in connection with our earlier discussion, that there is some relationship between the reality of dolphins and the reality of the fetus. He did not say they are the same, only that there is some relationship. In your terms, the fetus lives in an ancient condition, in a condition of the distant past, similar to a past period of humanity. In its own way, it relates to its environment. And for certain consciousnesses, that is enough. The fetus lives in amniotic fluid, and it exists in the manner of the most ancient forms of human life, equivalent to an early era of humanity's past. Then it relates to its environment, the surrounding amniotic fluid, in its own fetal way. And for certain consciousnesses that only want to experience the early living environment of humanity, this is already enough. Therefore it does not need to be born. Again in your terms, for each of you individually, at that time it was enough. In the early period of humanity in the ocean, that is, when the focus of consciousness was concentrated on marine animals, as marine intelligent beings, it was already enough. Do you understand what he means? It did not need to live on land, that is, it did not need to be incarnated onto our land. So for those consciousnesses, it would miscarry, it could not be born, because it did not need to, because it had already had enough.

He asked us to let his fingers rest, and there was a two-minute break in the middle.

The Soul Cannot Be Defined

The soul, then, is not a person, a definable unit.

He emphasizes again that the soul cannot be defined. It does not have boundaries, a beginning, or a life cycle the way you imagine, like a thing. On the contrary, it is an indefinable quality. The soul cannot be defined, and it cannot be broken down and recombined, cannot be broken down, cannot be recombined, cannot be destroyed, cannot be expanded, but it can change alliances, organization and characteristics. It cannot be destroyed, expanded, broken down, or recombined. What does that mean? It means you cannot take the soul apart into however many pieces and then scatter them and recombine them, that will not work. Nor can you say you will destroy this soul, eliminate it, it cannot be eliminated. You say let the soul expand itself, for example how to expand, that also will not work, it is simply itself. But it can change its own characteristics, can change its own alliances, that is, it can combine with other souls. But you say, is not combining the same as recombining? The nature is different. The breaking down he refers to means taking it apart first and then recombining, whereas this is combining without taking it apart, so he uses the word "alliance," not combination. It forms alliances with other souls, but does not lose its own independence, and can reorganize some things. This is a basic characteristic of the soul. At the same time, it always maintains itself. In this process it can still maintain itself. This is a relatively objective understanding of our soul. First of all, it is indefinable, you must be clear about this, you cannot define a soul.

For example, the soul within a fetus cannot be destroyed by any kind of miscarriage. It is not that if the fetus miscarries the soul is destroyed, no. The progress of the soul cannot be diagrammed, that is, the process of the soul's development and progress cannot be drawn as a chart. There is no way, as we humans would, to draw a chart of the soul's progress, from the first generation of souls, then the second and third generations continuously developing and progressing, with the soul continuously leveling up, fighting monsters and improving. It cannot be diagrammed, because it will always escape such calculation. Why? Because its history is in the future, and its future is always creating the past. Do you understand what he means? Its history is in the future, how can you draw it? And its future is still creating its past, how can you depict it with a chart? When we speak of development and progress, it is all under the premise of time, but it is not. It is a multi-dimensional entity that transcends time and space and is simultaneous. How can you draw it from a human perspective? How can you use human diagrams or human ways of understanding to understand it or define it? This is all wishful thinking.

Then Seth returned at 10:54, gave Jane and me some personal material, and ended the session at 11:45.

Miscarriage and Personal Material

The second note, especially on a more private level, says that Jane herself and we, less than a year after we were married, naturally miscarried a three-month-old fetus. Seth did not say much about this matter, and we never asked him about it. He did mention in a private session not long ago that because the personality inhabiting the fetus changed its mind, it changed its intention and withdrew from the physical world, so the miscarriage occurred spontaneously.

Teacher Xiyu said quite a lot about this part. Because miscarriage has always been a very important topic that has harmed women, whether in spiritual circles or in religious circles. Many people have used miscarriage to carry out very serious persecution of women, and I can only use the word persecution. Many women come to us asking about this issue, and everyone who has experienced miscarriage carries some degree of psychological pressure and psychological burden. Then they all ask this kind of question: will we be affected? Will this fetus come looking for us? Is there some kind of infant spirit, evil spirit, and so on? Will our whole lives be unlucky? There are countless questions like this, and each one is quite miserable.

All right, for the interpretation of this part, you can listen to Teacher Xiyu's post-class interpretation. He spoke quite thoroughly, and mentioned several things we would never normally have thought of. You would never have thought of how the word "baba" came about, you would never have thought of how the word "daddy" came about, that is, "diedie," how the word "die" came about. When you truly finish listening to the interpretation, it will overturn your cognition.

Note on Relativity

The third note, in an example like this, Seth spontaneously mentioned Einstein's special and general theories of relativity⁸. Under the overriding invariance of the speed of light, all phenomena in our camouflage reality, whether motion, velocity, mass, matter, time, space, gravity, and so on, are all relative to one another, and none of them exists absolutely. What is relative, what is absolute? Absolute means not dependent on any external conditions, it is simply the way it is, that is called absolute. Relative means its existence, the nature of its existence, is determined by other external environments or other matter relative to it, that is called relative. So the theory of relativity, whether special or general, mainly wants to address this issue. Einstein discovered that even time, space, and gravity are all in relative relationships, and he gave the corresponding formulas, and that is what is miraculous about him.

Space and time are not unified things, respectively, but are closely related intuitive constructions of consciousness.

They are constructed by our human consciousness. Space and time are both constructed by our human consciousness. To put it simply, even this world of yours is constructed by you. And then you use the star chart in this world you constructed to talk about how your own life will develop in the future — isn't that ridiculous?

Mass is a form of energy, the law of intelligent conservation, movement is not absolute.

It is only relative motion, but it is spoken of in correspondence with the movement of other things. Two observers moving at different speeds relative to a common sequence of time will perceive this time through different temporal processes. These are some of the most basic theories and concepts in relativity, so we won't expand on them. What he means is that even dolphins know the essence of these principles of relativity, and not just the surface, but the essence. Even dolphins know it, so how much do we humans actually know?

According to Einstein, dolphins, and of course whales, understood this phenomenon in their own way, and did not write it down in a very sophisticated manner — how they calculated it, or how they reasoned it out, like a paper, or use the specific instruments we humans use to observe and assist experiments. Because after relativity came out, scientists have been verifying it through experiments. And Einstein's relativity is not a purely theoretical thing; it is a theory that has already been verified extensively through experiments. Although at the extremely microscopic level it also breaks down, and is only effective at the macroscopic level. It is an upgraded version of Newton's law of universal gravitation⁹, and can replace it. But it is not the latest theory. In the latest theories there is quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics in turn overturns relativity. But at the macroscopic physical scale relativity is effective, while under specific conditions, in the microscopic world, or when approaching the speed of light or exceeding it, relativity becomes invalid.

What he means is that dolphins and whales do not have human laboratories or scientific experiments, nor have they learned your mathematical reasoning or formulas, but they still know the essence of relativity. Are you convinced or not? It doesn't matter if you're not convinced, they just know it. You humans have to know it through these methods, and your way of perceiving the world is also different.

注释与核实

1. Source: SuttaCentral "MN 38: The Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving" (https://suttacentral.net/mn38/zh/zhuang) ↩

2. Source: Fei He et al. "Complete Recovery With the Chain of Survival After a Prolonged (120 Minutes) Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Due to Brugada Syndrome: A Case Report" 2015 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26166103/) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, "stem cells can form any cell"; upon verification, it should be "not all stem cells can form any cell; pluripotent stem cells can differentiate into all cells of the adult body, while adult stem cells typically can only form specific cell types of the tissue or organ in which they reside." (Source: National Institutes of Health "Stem Cell Basics", https://stemcells.nih.gov/node/16) ↩ ↩²

5. According to Mike's original words, "50 trillion cells"; upon verification, it should be "the total number of human cells is approximately 37 trillion (3.72×10^13), not 50 trillion; another revised estimate gives about 30 trillion human cells." (Source: Bianconi et al. "An estimation of the number of cells in the human body" (Annals of Human Biology, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23829164/) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. Source: Yuki Morono et al. "Aerobic microbial life persists in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17330-1) ↩

8. Source: Nobel Prize official website "Albert Einstein – Questions and answers" (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/questions-and-answers/?print=1&vm=r) ↩

9. Source: NASA "Universe glossary" (https://science.nasa.gov/universe/glossary/) ↩