Mike's commentary · The Way Toward Health, Preface

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" 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 is the preface to The Way Toward Health, giving an overview of the publication of the Seth material and the background of this book: Jane Roberts died on September 5, 1984, after 21 months in the hospital, during which time she still dictated The Way Toward Health. It includes prefaces by Xu Tiansheng and Wang Jiqing, as well as Rob's foreword, explaining that the Seth material holds that beliefs create reality, that health comes from psychological and psychic balance, and responding to the question of "why Seth could not save Jane," pointing out that the healing power lies within the individual.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Seth's publicly published books number nine in total, plus nine volumes of The Early Sessions, seven volumes of private sessions, and four volumes of ESP class sessions; the Chinese editions have not yet all been translated.
• Jane Roberts passed away on September 5, 1984, after 21 months in the hospital, during which time she continued to transmit the Seth material and dictated The Way Toward Health.
• The Seth material holds that beliefs create reality; physical illness is the effect, while distorted psychological and psychic energy is the cause.
• The main causes of Jane's illness were lack of self-acceptance, fear of her mother's curse, and inner conflict over her identity as a psychic.
• Seth and healers can only offer reminders, love, and support; the power to truly heal oneself lies within the individual, and as long as one still draws breath, it is never too late.

Main Text

We begin our reading of Seth's last publicly published book, The Way Toward Health, whose subtitle is "The Last Seth Session."

Seth has nine publicly published books in total. The first was The Coming of the Critical Information, which was a compilation of the early sessions. From 1963 to 1970, over these seven years, Seth delivered a total of 510 sessions. Once this book was published, it caused a sensation. Later, Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, The Magical Approach, The Nature of the Psyche, The "Unknown" Reality (in two volumes), Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment (in two volumes), and then this book, The Way Toward Health, were published one after another. But The Coming of the Critical Information, you see, is actually the content of the early sessions. Later, after twenty or thirty years had passed, by the nineties, around 1997, this portion of the material that Seth first transmitted, that is, the 510 sessions in total, was published separately, divided into nine books. So the early sessions took up another nine books.

In addition, there are another eleven books. Seven of them are the private sessions, also called the deleted sessions, which mainly involve private matters concerning Jane and Rob's family and personal lives, so at first they were not intended for publication. But later, after much deliberation, Rob decided to publish them in full. When he was organizing the Seth material in the later period, he found that every chapter, every session, every conversation was filled with wisdom, whether it dealt with the trivial matters between a husband and wife, personal privacy, or grand questions concerning human destiny, health, emotions, wisdom, and consciousness. He said he could not let such wisdom be buried simply because it involved personal privacy, so with the support of friends and family he made this decision and published seven volumes of the private sessions.

There are also four books containing the content of an ESP class that Jane ran in the early days. The ESP class was a practical class in extrasensory perception, organizing people who had opened their inner senses into a small training group. This began around the sixties and continued into the seventies. Later, Jane increasingly felt that extrasensory perception was not all that important. Things like psychic powers only give you some experience and expand your energy and cognition, but they have no absolutely essential role in truly elevating your understanding, so gradually she stopped running the class. But during those dozen or so years, Seth occasionally spoke through Jane to the students in the class, and Rob organized this content as well. So you can see that Rob and Jane's records are extremely detailed; over these twenty-one years, almost nothing was missed.

All of these have been published in English, but the Chinese translations are not yet complete. The nine publicly published books have been fully translated. Of the nine early session books, translation has currently reached the sixth or seventh volume. The private sessions and the practice class books have not yet been translated by anyone. The Chinese edition of The Way Toward Health that we are reading was also only published in the nineties. Jane passed away in 1984, and it was more than ten years later that Rob decided to publish this book. Originally, he did not want to publish it.

As for this book, I originally did not want to teach it either, because compared with Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, its difficulty drops sharply; it is simply not on the same level. But recently health issues have become a theme for all of humanity, and every sentence in the Seth material carries its own unique connotations and depth. This book involves a great deal of Rob and Jane's private lives, including diaries and records from every day of their hospital stay. No previously published Seth book has ever involved this much. I think this will be helpful both to those who are suffering from illness, those who are sick, and also to those who are currently healthy. So I still decided to finish reading and explaining this book, as the final conclusion to the entire set of publicly published books. After we finish this, we will begin reading Seth's early sessions. Those nine books may take several years to get through. Everyone, do not be impatient. The Seth material is material worth studying for your entire life, worth spending a lifetime researching.

Now let us quiet our minds and pull time and space back to January 1984, to see what Rob and Jane went through, and how, during their time of illness and hospitalization, Seth used his wisdom to give them support and help. Although this knowledge was directed at Jane and Rob, it is also universal wisdom for all of humanity.

Recommender Xu Tiansheng's Words

The recommender of this book is Xu Tiansheng. He says:

The Way Toward Health is the last Seth book dictated by Seth, running through Ruburt's progressively worsening illness, until it finally ended his last material reincarnation.

Many people ask: what does this "last incarnation" mean? Does it mean there will be no more after this? Actually, there is no such thing as a last incarnation or a previous incarnation. This is just Seth speaking from the perspective of human time -- after 1984, Jane and Rob would no longer appear in the material reality of our Earth. But from the perspective of the soul, there is no such thing as "last." Jane and Rob have already had many reincarnations, and Seth pointed them out one by one, guiding them through dreams, meditation, lucid dreams, or waking states to see the experiences of their past lives. Those past lives have a sequence according to Earth time, but from the perspective of personality transformation and reincarnation, there is no order of before and after, because they all happen simultaneously. Perhaps this life and his earlier life in Rome, and the life when he and Seth and the other two personalities were one entity, all happen simultaneously.

What many readers find puzzling is this: Seth has such high wisdom, compassion, and supernatural powers, and Ruburt, in Buddhist terms, is an enlightened person, one who has attained the Way.

Seth does indeed have sufficient wisdom and compassion, but as for supernatural powers, he does not. Seth never wanted to display supernatural powers, and he could not display them anyway. His so-called supernatural power is that he can communicate with Jane through consciousness. If you consider that a kind of supernatural power, then he has that power. He can also open the inner senses of Jane and Rob, or of us ordinary humans -- in the more than three years I have been sharing the Seth material, many friends who have studied with me have already opened their inner senses to a greater or lesser degree. If you think that is also a supernatural power, then one could say Seth has that power. But in the material world, things like moving objects through the air or teleporting from here to there -- Seth does not have that kind of supernatural power. Everyone must understand this topic of supernatural powers. Xu Tiansheng said this partly for publishing needs and partly from his own understanding at the time; do not take it too seriously. Wisdom and compassion, he has; if you think there are supernatural powers in the material world, I am telling you in advance that Seth does not have them. In the non-material world, in the energy realm, this supernatural power does exist -- but this supernatural power is something every one of us has.

As for Ruburt being enlightened in Buddhist terms, that is uncertain. He was not enlightened. You can tell from many of his cognitions that he was very conflicted, and his dualistic discrimination was very strong -- an enlightened person cannot still have dualistic discrimination and opposition. His viewpoints were still very attached and very stubborn. And Ruburt also became ill, and in the end died of illness.

Many people say: does that mean the Seth material is not worth studying? Is the Seth material all show and no substance? If it could not even save Jane, what is the use of studying it? If you hold the attitude of "what is the use of studying this" or "what practical help can it give me in the three-dimensional world," then you still have not understood the original intent of the Seth material. The Seth material is about handing power back into your own hands, letting you gain power yourself, letting you obtain this magical ability to heal yourself and change your own reality -- that is its core idea. And in this process, Jane had his own cognitions and beliefs, and he had a very firm, one could even say stubborn, belief system. Even with Seth, even with Rob, no matter what they said, he was sometimes better and sometimes worse, sometimes accepting and sometimes not accepting, sometimes approving and sometimes depressed. He was also a person who especially reported only the good news and not the bad, and was not very willing to speak his true thoughts, and was not even truly open with Rob. For example, he felt that his body was already failing, but he was unwilling to admit this whether in front of Seth or Rob; he would go along with them and say "I feel very good" and "my body is improving." But you could clearly feel that his words did not match his heart. When he opened his heart to Rob after being alone for a while, he would say: I am actually very afraid in my heart, I am terrified, I am worried to death, I am afraid of dying, I am worried that my body cannot recover, that I cannot go home. These underlying beliefs were the fundamental reason he could not truly recover in the end. He was not as truly optimistic as he appeared to be; deep down he truly believed that perhaps it really was hopeless.

Regarding the issue of Jane's illness, the entire book discusses the progression of his condition. To summarize briefly, the main cause was Jane's non-acceptance and non-approval of his own self. On the one hand, he felt that transmitting the Seth material was a very meaningful thing, crucial to the development of human civilization, and that he had made a very important contribution; on the other hand, he also received letters from some readers or evaluations from mainstream society saying that he was just a mystical medium -- a medium is a channel, a person who receives information from another world. And he could not accept this label and viewpoint. Mainstream society believed that this might be Jane's own self-talk, or another split-off personality called Seth. This thing could neither be verified nor confirmed. Although Rob tried every way to make the material very objective and detailed, recording the time and place, with many witnesses present, and even invited psychologists, physicists, professors, and doctors to verify it, it was still far from being accepted by mainstream society. So under such cognitions, Jane's inner state was very twisted: on the one hand, he had to affirm his work of transmitting the material; on the other hand, he did not want to be regarded as a medium. He wanted everyone to think of him as a famous writer and poet, but everyone still thought of him more as a medium. Given his background of being educated in Catholic schools from an early age, this made it impossible for his two inner identities to be reconciled. He also worried whether this material was too far ahead of its time, too distant from mainstream society, and whether it was really not suitable for present-day humans to understand and cognize -- somewhat like the feeling of accidentally transmitting a heavenly book to the human world, as if heavenly secrets must not be revealed and yet he had revealed them. These thoughts interwoven together were his underlying beliefs.

Another belief: his mother had placed many curses on him when he was very young, saying that in the future you will get the same disease as me. From the perspective of the three-dimensional world, it was indeed the same disease -- rheumatoid arthritis. The naming of this disease by modern medicine is not beneficial to human health; we will discuss this later, but for now let us temporarily use this term. Rheumatoid arthritis is not ordinary arthritis; it is essentially an immune system disease that manifests as arthritic symptoms -- swollen joints, inability to bend, inability to move, stiffness, and pain throughout the body. To this day there is still no better medical treatment; generally, partial relief is obtained through hormones. The patient suffers greatly.

Jane's mother had this disease at that time. Jane was still young then, and besides going to school, he had to take care of his sick mother. His mother disagreed with his viewpoints and could not stand him. Jane was very rebellious for a period when he was young -- you must never issue a "good person card" to others, assuming that Jane was such a person who was utterly faithful in love; do not use your imagination to box others in. Jane was not that kind of person. He almost always did exactly what his mother told him not to do; during adolescence he dated many boyfriends, and if he liked someone, he would take the initiative to date them. He also had some experiences in childhood that he could not clearly remember, such as what happened between him and the priest or teacher at the Catholic church, whether there was sexual assault, whether he seduced the teacher or the teacher assaulted him -- he could not sort it out either; the relationships were very chaotic. This was also influenced by his mother -- when his mother was young, she often spent the night with different men and brought men home, which had a great impact on Jane's beliefs and values in childhood. His mother also knew this was not right, but she could not win an argument with him, because Jane would say: you are the same way, are you not? What right do you have to criticize me? His mother would often scold him and curse him: when you are old, you will get the same disease as me.

A rebellious teenager of thirteen or fourteen would not want to take care of a mother who had been bedridden for a long time. You can imagine: if you were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, would you be willing to come home from school every day to take care of a long-term bedridden mother with a bad temper? Day after day, year after year, how long could you endure it? In the end, Jane still took care of his mother until she died. His mother died when he was in his twenties; she was probably in her forties or fifties. In this process, his mother's vicious curses were implanted into his underlying core beliefs. When he reached middle age and began to show symptoms, he was especially terrified -- although he did not believe in reincarnation, did not believe in karma, did not believe in curses, he was still afraid that his mother's curse would come true in his own body. It was precisely this fear and worry that made the curse actually come true; he got the same disease as his mother, the same suffering, the same bedridden state. So we often say: whatever you worry about and fear will come true.

There are many more details -- Jane's changes in thought, his beliefs, his mental activities, and so on -- that we will come to understand in detail in this book. I am just telling you in advance some of the material mentioned in the middle of it.

Is the Seth Material Useful or Not?

Is the Seth material actually useful or not? Is it all show and no substance? People who have studied it know the answer in their hearts. It has already changed countless people around the world, with a reported global publication of over eight million copies¹. That number is actually not as large as we might imagine -- for material this difficult to understand, being translated into a dozen or twenty languages and spreading that far is already remarkable. But compared with other books, its publication volume is not that large. For example, the mind-beauty book we covered over 21 days in the Hainan in-person class -- the original title means "mind control technique" or "the art of mastery" -- later many mind-body-spirit schools adopted its core ideas, and that book has sold 35 million copies worldwide². Another example is Conversations with God³ and others like it, all with sales in the tens of millions. Among these mind-body-spirit courses, the Seth material's publication volume is not the largest, and the reason is simply that it is not that easy to understand.

This is a matter where opinions differ from person to person. If you are willing to engage with it and believe it is useful, then keep studying. If you get to this point and feel that Seth could not even help Jane, and perhaps this material will not help you much either, then you can also stop right here and not listen any further -- because your very disbelief will make this material of little use to you. Simply because you do not believe, because you approach it with a testing and judging mindset, it will have almost no effect on you. I have seen too many cases: over the past few years, some seriously ill people improved miraculously, recovering within a week or two. For specifics, you can look into Dr. Hsu -- Hsu Tien-sheng runs a cancer research institute in Taiwan that uses the Seth material to treat cancer, and he has published a great deal of material and case studies. He is himself a doctor with a medical license, but his Seth-based treatment has nothing to do with medicine. He has helped countless people. But I have also seen cases where it truly had no effect at all. Through various convergences of causes and conditions, some people may have only a few months or half a year of life left; they came to my classes and listened to my content. Some recovered miraculously, while others showed no change at all -- they would conclude that this material was of no help to them and preferred to accept conventional views. One can only say the causes and conditions did not come together, and there is nothing to be done. It is deeply regrettable.

If you do not believe the earlier content of Seth, then do not spend too much time on it. If this is your first encounter with this material, I suggest you start with Seth Speaks rather than beginning your study with this book. If you do not understand the full context of the Seth material and suddenly start with the last book, there are many viewpoints and points of knowledge that I cannot expand on one by one here, and you may miss a great deal. If you are a new reader and after reading part of it you feel you do not quite believe it or cannot fully accept it, then there is truly no need to spend time on this book -- your non-acceptance and lack of trust will make this book almost entirely useless to you.

The Doctor's Words

Teacher Xu continued:

The interesting thing is, I would never think of it that way. Quite the opposite: through his courage and fortitude, Ruburt demonstrated the breadth and depth of the Seth material, which neither panders to the crowd nor courts vulgarity.

People who have studied the Seth material would never find it impressive but useless, because they know what the Seth material is. It faithfully presents the real Jane's life, including her own illness, including the fact that the Seth material did not work on him and that in the end he still passed away.

As Ruburt's husband Joseph mentioned, very few people can truly understand the profound soul challenge that Ruburt took on.

Yes, I think I fully understand that statement. Teacher Xu himself is a specialist in both family medicine and psychiatry⁴, skilled at handling common health problems people face as well as all kinds of health checkups, so his understanding of health exceeds that of the average person. He said:

Modern medicine seems to have remained stuck at the level of physical health, believing that a body without illness, or a body whose illness has been cured, is what we call health. It even treats physical health as the foundation -- without physical health, how could there be psychological and spiritual health? But this concept fundamentally mistakes the effect for the cause. On the contrary, psychological and spiritual health should come first, and only then does physical health follow.

These are the words of a doctor himself, so they carry more weight -- if I said it, it might not carry as much weight as when he says it. Teacher Xu began spreading the Seth material in his twenties and has been doing so for over thirty years, gathering countless people and helping countless people.

Matter is not the foundation of the universe. On the contrary, the atoms and molecules of matter come from the concretization of inner psychic and spiritual energy.

This touches on many core ideas of the Seth material, which we will discuss in detail later. Simply put, your physical body, whether molecules or atoms, is manifested by your psychic energy. Therefore matter is the effect, and the psyche is the cause. The same applies to physical illness -- treating illness alone can never cure illness. If you try to treat the illness itself directly, you will never cure it, unless you change from within. You will only waste money, time, and energy, and can only control symptoms, or temporarily cure it, only for it to recur before long. Physical illness is the effect; the true cause is the painful, distorted psychology and psychic energy behind it. If people do not change their past patterns of thinking, if their belief systems do not change, then humanity's illnesses cannot truly be resolved. If beliefs do not change, illness will not go away; treating illness one-sidedly is useless, because matter is the effect, the body is the effect, and illness is also the effect.

A complete doctor must learn to heal the person and heal the heart, truly understand what is called psychosomatic dynamics, and realize what the distorted psychic energy behind all physical illness really is, restoring balance at the levels of thought, emotion, and life. At the level of effect, the body will naturally return to the way toward health.

This is the same in traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine does not deny illness, but it does not say this is called such-and-such a disease or that is called such-and-such a disease. Chinese medicine holds that all illness has one cause -- imbalance. When the inner five elements are out of balance, when the five zang organs, six fu organs, and meridian flow are out of balance, the body becomes ill. There is no need to define the specific symptoms that manifest; symptoms are only symptoms, and the cause is the underlying imbalance. The point of entry in Chinese medicine is to bring this imbalance back into balance, and then the body heals. Western medicine, on the other hand, treats wherever it hurts, treating the final symptoms and results without finding the cause of the illness -- it finds the result of the illness and works on the result. Is it effective? It is effective, because working on the result produces immediate results. But because the cause of the illness has not been removed, it will recur.

Let me give the most familiar example: the recurrence rate of cancer is very high. Modern Western medicine is already very effective at treating cancer, and in developed countries both cancer incidence and mortality rates are dropping sharply. I read a 2022 Western medical report⁵, using the United States as an example, which pointed out that in recent years cancer incidence and mortality rates have been falling sharply, entering a new inflection point, going downhill like a downward slope. The report's conclusion cited two main reasons: first, changes in human lifestyle habits, and second, early detection and screening. That report was done from a purely three-dimensional perspective, looking only at data-driven reasoning and analysis, and it has some reference value for people who think with a three-dimensional mind. The report gave an example: in the 1960s and 1970s, an average American smoked 4,500 cigarettes a year⁶ -- about 20 cartons, roughly a pack a day. Smoking was absolutely rampant back then; just look at the famous Marlboro tobacco advertisements of that era. Now the average has dropped to 800 or maybe 1,000-plus cigarettes⁷ -- I cannot remember the exact figure -- but cigarette consumption has dropped dramatically, including changes in dietary and drinking habits. The second reason is early detection and screening for cancer -- if you have health insurance in the United States, it normally includes one free comprehensive physical examination, and a major part of that is cancer screening. Medicine can determine whether there is early potential for cancer through changes in certain chemical elements or factor parameters in the blood, and there is also the latest genetic screening technology, which can achieve therapeutic effects before cancer has even begun to sprout.

But in terms of actual results, the recurrence rate of cancer is still quite high. A second recurrence is very difficult to cure. Take the famous Steve Jobs, for example: he had pancreatic cancer, was treated and cured, and then about ten years later it recurred⁸, and after the recurrence he passed away. The same is true for many women: after a mastectomy for breast cancer and chemotherapy, it is completely eradicated, but after a number of years it still recurs. The same applies to ovarian cancer and some other cancers, which are not fatal in themselves but do recur. Many people do not understand the principle of recurrence -- according to the tests at the time, there were no cancer cells left in the blood at all; they had all been cleaned out through radiation and chemotherapy drugs, so how could cancer cells grow back again? This is the viewpoint we moderns propose: if your heart disease is not removed, if the psychological and psychic distortions do not change, if the underlying energetic distortion is not untangled, it will ultimately lead to physical illness; if it is still not resolved, when it becomes severe it will lead to serious disease, and even the loss of health and life.

In the offline classes in Hainan, I taught everyone how to clear trapped emotions, using very effective and simple methods to relieve immediate physical pain on the spot, including some persistent physical symptoms. Offline they did a great deal of practice and exercises, and the effects were immediate on the spot -- not only for physical problems, but also for potential psychological and physiological problems.

Modern medicine today walks more along the way of illness, not the way toward health. Why do I say it is the way of illness? It stares at illness every day, dividing illness into categories and types, separating them into departments and treating them separately. It seems to work on the results and symptoms of illness, but this does not solve the problem; it only reinforces the illness -- it gives the public and the illness a name, first defining it as high blood pressure or diabetes, summarizing the symptoms, and teaching people how to self-examine and self-check. Its focus is on seeing only the illness and not the person. We often say the biggest difference between Western medicine and Chinese medicine is this: Western medicine sees only the illness and not the person, while Chinese medicine looks only at the person and not the illness -- Chinese medicine heals the person, not the illness; a truly good Chinese medicine doctor heals the person. Western medicine does not concern itself with the person; it looks at the illness first, and through the results obtained from anatomy, pathology, molecular chemistry, and biochemistry, it works directly on the illness.

Teacher Xu said he hopes everyone can stay away from the way of illness and truly return to the way toward health of inner balance, and this is also the significance of this book. But here we are not looking at this in an oppositional or exclusionary way -- working on the effect to solve the problem, the treatment of the effect is truly very effective and rapid, and we must acknowledge this. This is the accumulation of many years of science; whether modern medicine has reached molecular medicine or genetic engineering, it has achieved immediate results. But to truly attain health, one must return to the way toward health of body-mind balance.

The topic we are discussing today is actually very sensitive, because the policies and regulations of many countries do not permit open discussion of health-related topics, in order to prevent quacks from exploiting health issues to deceive and cheat the public. I very much understand and approve of the good intentions of various governments -- if there were no restrictions, many swindlers would exploit ordinary people's fear of physical illness to run rampant and swindle money everywhere. So in our discussion of health today, we try to avoid discussing it from the angle of modern medicine, because that might violate relevant regulations, and instead discuss it more from the angle of spiritual growth and physical-mental health. But inevitably some modern medicine will be involved -- Jane spent the entire book in the hospital, so it necessarily involves some treatment methods and plans. Everyone should choose according to their own understanding and preferences. If you strongly endorse modern medicine and feel that body-mind-spirit health is not that important, I hope you can maintain an open mind to learn and accept -- regarding things you do not understand or recognize, do not rush to judge or deny them.

Here I want to mention a viewpoint of Confucius, which is very balanced and objective. Someone asked Confucius: how should we regard those things involving spirits and ghosts, the spiritual, the energetic, the conscious -- things outside our material world? Confucius said a very classic line: beyond the six realms, acknowledge but do not discuss⁹. What does that mean? Within the six realms, that is, within our material world, within the world that humans can perceive, we can discuss and debate; but regarding things outside the material world, if you do not have the wisdom and cannot understand them, do not comment on them for now -- you can set them aside, acknowledge their existence, but because our cognition and wisdom are insufficient, we do not yet have the qualification to comment on or discuss them, so do not comment on them for now. By all means do not deny them; do not think they are wrong simply because they do not fit within the scope of our cognition. Because the so-called material world, the six realms, exist under the influence of that higher wisdom -- they are an effect, a form, a felt experience, the final manifestation. The fundamental cause lies behind, at the bottom layer, but because it is too profound and difficult to understand, ordinary people cannot understand it; from the perspective of the three-dimensional world it is very difficult to understand. Confucius, as a representative figure of the Confucian school, had his cognitive height right here -- he told his disciples of later generations: regarding things beyond the six realms, acknowledge but do not discuss; do not evaluate them, do not deny them; simply acknowledging their existence is enough.

Translator Teacher Wang Jingqing

The recommender, Xu Tiansheng, helped the translator Teacher Wang Jingqing with recording and translation. The earliest Chinese version of the Seth material was translated by a couple in San Francisco, who first produced a Chinese version called Beyond Time and Space. Later, Teacher Wang Jingqing went on to translate another version, called Seth Speaks, taking the original English meaning. After that, the two parties handed the work over to each other -- this couple had translated half of The Nature of Personal Reality when Wang Jingqing took over the latter half, finished the translation, and did a unified revision and adjustment. From then on, Wang Jingqing did all the translating, and during this time Xu Tiansheng provided a great deal of help and recording.

Wang Jingqing's translation method was to read the original English book, read a passage repeatedly, and after reading it, form a Chinese way of expressing it in his mind, then dictate it aloud, while Xu Tiansheng recorded the Chinese beside him, and then they would go back and compare it with the English to see what had been missed or was insufficient. Basically, they used this method throughout, which is a free translation, not a word-for-word translation. But in the process, they still tried as much as possible to stay consistent with the original -- we have all carefully checked and verified this, and they truly respected the original text very much, even some ways of expression and punctuation. However, because of the differences between Chinese and English expression and language systems, there are still many places where it is impossible to fully express the true meaning exactly as the original author did, which is a great pity and something that cannot be helped. We also try our best to explain the true meaning to everyone. In this process, both Dr. Xu and Teacher Wang Jingqing put in very painstaking work, often working away in silence year after year.

The Contributions of Xu Tiansheng and Wang Jiqing

Xu Tiansheng once worked as a physician. He was a specialist in family medicine, and also a doctor at the Taipei City Psychiatric Center or in adult psychiatry, a doctor in psychosomatic medicine, and he also served as a psychological counselor for the Chinese New Age Society, among other roles. He published a number of books, such as Survival Against All Odds¹⁰, You Can Be Free of Illness, Dr. Xu's Prescriptions for Peace of Mind, Dr. Xu's Counseling Sessions, The Journey of Survival Against All Odds, Dr. Xu's Anti-Depression Prescriptions, Flying in a Child's Heart, I Am Not Only Me -- My Inner Pilgrimage, and Two Required Courses for Physical and Mental Health, among others, as well as audiobooks and CDs.

On average, it took him one to two years to translate a single book, working continuously, often from morning to night for an entire year, starting at nine in the morning and going until very late, more than ten hours a day, translating day and night. So when we look at the Seth material we have today, we must pay the highest respect to these former translators and editors, because it is through their dedication that we have the opportunity to learn this material today.

Wang Jiqing's Translator's Preface: Tender Compassion

Let's look at a preface written by the translator of this book, Teacher Wang Jiqing, called "Tender Compassion." He says:

Finally I have finished proofreading Seth and Jane's last book, and my heart is truly filled with mixed feelings that are hard to put into words. Perhaps unlike many readers, reading Seth has never been merely an intellectual or rational shock for me, but at the same time a deep emotional experience. And this book, which describes in detail how Seth tirelessly gave Jane teaching, encouragement, love, and support while she lay ill in bed until she was near death, revealing the wisdom and compassion of life itself, moves me so deeply that I cannot contain myself whenever I read it. Often I read with tears in my eyes, and later sometimes I would cover my face and weep.

He read it with tears in his eyes. But he cannot say he was purely mourning Jane; he felt heartache and reluctance for Jane, and he also grieved for the loss her early death brought to humanity. But in the depths of his heart, what he felt most deeply was the boundless care and supreme love that Seth revealed from All That Is, the god within us, our entity, toward his children living in this world. So on the one hand his heart ached, and on the other hand he felt tremendous joy and emotion at Seth's universal love and compassion for humanity.

He goes on to write:

Over the years, in heart-to-heart conversations with many friends whose bodies and minds have been wounded, I could not help but notice that most people have childhoods that are not entirely happy. It is not that their parents lacked good intentions, but often because they themselves did not receive enough love and affirmation, and were poisoned by all kinds of inherited negative beliefs, becoming accustomed to them without noticing.

What this sentence means is that in my life and in practice, my feelings are the same as his. We have encountered far too many people who, because their parents did not value them enough, did not affirm them enough, did not love them enough in childhood, have been suffering and tormented by this their whole lives up to now. Because many times, in order to protect themselves, they formed certain self-protective belief mechanisms in childhood. But that mechanism, by the time they reached adulthood and had already left behind the harm their parents caused them, still remained. And this outdated belief system, although it was a very good protection for them in childhood and early youth and was effective, became a harm to them in adulthood instead, causing their hearts to be wrapped in layers that cannot open, so that their emotions and love cannot flow well, and they cannot properly accept and approve of themselves. All of this leads to all kinds of problems in their adult lives, in their emotions, careers, and bodies, and the root lies in this underlying belief problem. And this kind of belief is often something you have become accustomed to and do not notice — "accustomed to it without noticing" means being used to it and not perceiving it.

He continues:

Whether as a result of teaching by words or teaching by example, their children also cannot receive the love and affirmation needed for a joyful life.

Parents are absolutely well-intentioned and kind-hearted toward their children, but because of their own limitations and various reasons, what they transmit to their children is fear, danger, that this society is a jungle where the strong prey on the weak, that it is competitive — if you do not struggle and fight, you are finished. They transmit their personal pressure about society to their children, transmitting this fear to children at a time when a small child cannot bear it.

For example, parents who have daughters, afraid that their girls will be bullied or influenced in the future, overprotect their girls from a very early age. And this overprotection transmits nothing but fear to the girls, because they do not yet understand what sex is, what relationships between the sexes are, what sexual assault is. But the parents worry excessively. It is a girl's nature to dress up a little prettier, but the parents fear that if a girl dresses prettily she will attract boys' attention, which will both affect her studies and possibly have a bad influence on her, so they desperately stop her and scold her. This causes tremendous damage and distortion to a small child's psyche.

There are many more examples. For instance, families that favor boys over girls excessively negate their daughters and only affirm their sons. There are many, many parents like this, which leads to children not receiving the love and affirmation needed for a joyful life, causing varying degrees of procrastination, or what is called obsessive thoughts and behaviors — these are all psychological illnesses.

He writes:

These cases are like mirrors, reflecting back the healer's own pain and inadequacy, creating a dilemma in body and mind.

Many healers themselves, many psychologists themselves have problems, and they have not resolved these problems well themselves, but because of the nature of their profession, they have no choice but to help others resolve these problems. And in the process of resolving them, they see their own problems reflected back, making both the healer and the healed suffer greatly, and it is quite difficult to cure. Because this is fundamentally a problem of distorted underlying beliefs, and the healer himself has symptoms of this kind of belief distortion. He wants to help the healed person come out of it; if he himself can come out of it, then there is no problem. But if he still has these symptoms and problems himself, and he is merely reciting words he does not even believe, because he himself has not come out of it, then when he tries to help the healed person, often the healed person's symptoms instead reflect back the healer's own problems. These are real points that exist.

We often joke that psychologists themselves need to see psychologists regularly. They all have a supervisor. A psychologist's supervisor is someone they can consult and discuss with when they encounter problems, and then they also have their own psychologists, and they see their psychologists far more frequently than you do. I remember once on an interview program, on "Qiang Qiang San Ren Xing," Dou Wentao raised a question — Dou Wentao is quite sharp-tongued — he asked Wu Zhihong, he said, I hear you psychologists all see psychologists yourselves, he said, do you have one too? Wu Zhihong said, yes, we have our own psychological supervisors, our own supervisors, and so on. Then Dou Wentao pressed on relentlessly, he asked, how often do you usually see a psychologist? Wu Zhihong actually did not really want to answer, but Wu Zhihong is an honest person, a straightforward person, and he still answered, he said, I see one about three times a week. Wu Zhihong went to England, he is from Peking University's psychology program¹¹, a very likable psychologist, and he wrote a book called Going to England.

What I want to tell everyone here is, first of all, we cannot say that just because a psychologist treats others while also needing to see a psychologist himself, he is not qualified to treat others. That is not what I mean. He can still treat others and heal others, and sometimes the effect is even better, no problem. But the point I want to emphasize here is that as a healer yourself, as a psychologist, if you have not yet resolved your own problems, then the more you heal others, the greater the harm to yourself actually is. The key point here is what I want to say — it will reflect back like a mirror and show you your own internal problems, and you will feel it deeply yourself. Although we have learned a lot of professional knowledge and try our best to avoid it, if the wound in your heart has not been resolved, then if you have worked through it and resolved it, there is no problem. But if you have not yet resolved it, the problems of the healed person will stimulate you and cause your own ailments to linger and not improve.

This is like a sick person treating many other sick people, like a contagious disease — he cures others, others infect him, then he goes to his own psychologist and gets cured, and then he goes back to continue healing others. It is also a very great act, but I hope these psychotherapists or psychological healers can truly resolve their own problems first, to avoid this kind of repeated secondary harm. I do not mean anything else; I truly cherish them. They are truly not easy, carrying their own wounds while still healing others, truly very great. Because they themselves know what pain in the body feels like, what suffering and sensation it is, and they also want to use their own modest strength to alleviate the physical and mental suffering of others, but this healing itself also causes them a certain amount of harm. I just hope they can truly resolve their own problems well and avoid being harmed in the process of healing.

Here, the author Teacher Wang Jiqing is saying the same thing. He writes:

In Chapters 2, 4, and 5 of this book, Seth particularly writes at length about children's innate spontaneity, love of play, trust, optimism, and exuberance, which made me realize that only when we adults truly accept the truths Seth has revealed to us and change our negative yet self-romanticizing outlook on life will life suddenly open up.

Yes, if we can truly resolve our own problems, and turn the truths Seth has revealed to us into something we can practice and apply in our lives, rather than merely treating them as a kind of knowledge, a kind of theoretical study, a slogan, or a viewpoint, but instead make the Seth material a true part of your life, make it your life, only then can it truly have a tremendous impact and change on you. If you want to change, if you want to truly live a happy and joyful life, then you really cannot just study; you must turn what you have learned into the bits and pieces of your life, internalize it into your life, rather than turning it into knowledge you have studied.

He writes:

Let us together use the new way Seth taught Jane on February 1 to live again.

On February 1, Seth taught Jane some new ways. Seth said that the way toward health is the natural way, the easiest way of doing things, the simplest.

All of nature cooperates under the premise that the future is guaranteed.

What is nature? Nature means that your future, your days ahead, are guaranteed. Guaranteed means it is absolutely assured that you will be fine. Under this premise, this is how it is for all people's futures.

Everywhere in nature is filled with promise.

Remember, this is Seth's original words — everywhere in nature is filled with promise, not only the promise of survival, not only the promise of keeping you alive, but the promise of beauty and achievement. It can let you live beautifully, and let you achieve something, fulfilling the promise of your value fulfillment. This is nature's promise. Remember, this is not a promise from God to you, nor a promise from certain people to you, nor a promise from Seth to you. This is the promise and commitment that our nature, our universe itself, inherently has for every existent being, for every life form, for every individual.

You must remember, it is not only the promise of keeping you alive, but the promise of beauty and achievement. That is to say, besides being able to survive safely, we should have more confidence, we can be free from fear, we can create joy, we can appreciate the beauty of nature, the beauty of human feeling, the beauty of art, the beauty of culture, the beauty of truth. See how beautifully Seth puts it. We can not only appreciate the beauty of nature, we can also create joy, we can appreciate human affairs and feelings, emotions, love, family affection, friendship, we can appreciate the beauty of art, the beauty of culture, the beauty of truth. This is what Seth said, very meaningful, and I hope everyone can truly grasp it.

The profundity, vastness, and difficulty of Seth's books are deeply known to his fans.

Yes, having studied all the way up to here, you can appreciate the profundity and the difficulty. But the truly difficult parts have not even begun yet. Although these are already very difficult to understand, later on, when you get to The Early Sessions, you will know what real difficulty means.

The final book, The Way Toward Health, however, is the most plainly accessible one.

Yes, it is the most plain, the most easy to understand. So this is also why I did not want to interpret it at first — it is too simple, the contrast in difficulty with the previous books is too great. Because he no longer talks much about the truths and realities of the universe, but focuses on the state of mind a person should maintain while living in this world.

The state of mind one should maintain: faith, hope, and love. Faith is confidence, hope is hope, and love. This is a Christian phrase — faith, hope, and love, that is, confidence, hope, and love. It somewhat echoes The Magical Approach. The Magical Approach and The Way Toward Health are two books that echo each other. The Magical Approach is about how a person who is not sick, who is healthy, should go about unfolding all of their potential. If you have not read The Magical Approach, I suggest you study the Seth material of The Magical Approach. And The Way Toward Health is about people who, because of distortions in their inner beliefs and psychic energy, have produced physical illness, and who are already sick — how they should go about restoring health. So these two books echo each other, but this one is more personal, more intimate, more filled with insight.

He plainly and clearly speaks out the erroneous negative beliefs that many people regard as truth, and those fallacious beliefs are precisely the beliefs that make this world a sea of suffering.

The beliefs that plunge humanity into a sea of suffering are all pointed out for you here. In this way, he painstakingly assures Jane of the safety, spontaneity, and naturalness of life.

Many deep-rooted negative beliefs that we cling to desperately seem to have become our spiritual genes, implanted into the bodies of us humans, and the severity of their harm is outrageous.

The severity of the harm to people is outrageous. These negative beliefs, which we worldly people still think are the truths and realities of the human world, these so-called beliefs that truly harm us and are outrageous, are still treated by us humans as life's truths and realities, and are even taught to our children from a young age — not content with harming ourselves, we must also harm our children. Here you can see how angry the translator Wang Jiqing is; the words he uses have reached an extreme — the severity of their harm is outrageous.

So many harmful things, yet we humans hold them up as the standard, passing them down through generations and praising them everywhere, and they have even become the main theme of our society, even our mainstream ideology. Compassion for the world and for people is regarded as a virtue, but what should be mourned is not the heartlessness of heaven or nature, but rather a deep realization that we, individually and collectively, have created such a reality through our beliefs.

Compassion for the world and for people — what we should mourn is ourselves. Our beliefs have created such a world; we cannot blame others, cannot blame heaven and earth.

All That Is transforms itself into countless human spirits.

Remember, this is very interesting. All That Is transforms itself into countless human spirits — the souls of us humans, the existence of us humans. So where exactly did it go wrong, causing people to believe they live in a world of five impurities and cannot turn themselves around?

We are part of All That Is, we are All That Is, we are its incarnations, and we should not be subjected to such poisoning and harm. But why do we live in this world of five impurities, unable to free ourselves, unable to turn around, unable to escape? Where exactly did it go wrong? Mourning heaven is wrong; heaven does not need to mourn the lostness of its children. We do not need to mourn heaven; what we should mourn is ourselves, the lostness of heaven's children.

And through the mouths of Seth and Jane, we are made to realize that suffering is unnecessary.

We do not need to suffer. We are the children of life, and we should live in faith, hope, and love, playing joyfully — this is the natural state of our lives.

In the session of March 19, Seth said that each individual, merely by living, aligns with the universe and the purposes of the universe in a way that no one else can.

Just by being alive, you are aligned with the universe and the purposes of the universe.

In human terms, each person is a beloved individual, formed with infinite care and love.

Each of us is a beloved individual, and each of us is formed by infinite care and love. What constitutes us is this supreme love; we are made of love. Whether it is our body, our life, or our emotions, all are made of love.

Endowed with talents unlike those of anyone else. The inner self draws immediate and continuous support from the universal consciousness.

Remember, this consciousness is not our human consciousness; it is the universal consciousness. From it we can draw immediate and continuous support. Remember, immediate and continuous support at all times. This support comes from a universal consciousness. That is to say, once we connect to this network of universal consciousness, we can receive continuous and immediate support. What does immediate mean? It means it takes effect instantly; no matter what the result is, it takes effect instantly.

And the more the outer self keeps this fact in mind, the stronger its own sense of stability, security, and self-esteem.

An attitude that is detrimental to good health is self-condemnation or dislike of oneself. This point is crucial; we must remember it. What truly makes you unhealthy, what truly makes you sick, the primary attitude is self-condemnation or dislike of oneself. Self-condemnation and dislike of oneself are the main causes of physical health problems.

About Media and Focus

Unless we stop reading newspapers, stop watching TV, stop looking at our phones, stop looking at these media, we are made anxious every day by an endless stream of tragedies. The news reported around the world every day is all tragedy; the news rarely reports good things, very rarely. If you calculate according to the proportion they report, reporting on all kinds of disasters in the world accounts for 80% to 90%, while reporting on good people and good deeds, on joyful and happy things, accounts for less than 10% to 20%. Our media are actually selling anxiety, selling fear, selling pain, selling sorrow.

If the media are us -- the words we speak are a person's outward media and expression -- then the words we humans speak are what our televisions, radio stations, radios, and phones say every day. If you think of all of humanity as one person, our media are what our mouth says. We often have a saying: "You live in your own mouth," meaning what your mouth says is your life; however your mouth evaluates this world, that is the kind of world you live in. But what does our media's mouth say every day? Why our society today is the way it is is closely related to this; we live in the world our media depict.

The world is just like this; you can choose not to be influenced by it. Stop looking at it; instead, pick out from these media some positive, active, good media, give them sustained attention, give them encouragement and support, so that such media can truly develop and receive your attention. Because we cannot support them in any real, material way, but our attention, our focus, is our greatest support -- the attention economy. In this way, those media that report every day on where another shooting happened, where more people died, where there is war, where there was an earthquake, where a volcano erupted -- let the media that report such events gradually lose everyone's attention.

If the focus of all humanity were on faith, hope, and love -- that is, on confidence, hope, and love -- if 80% or 90% of media reported on these things, our world would be a very beautiful world. So we must never blame our heavens, blame the universe, blame the world, blame ourselves for living in a time filled with today's social and economic crises, the outbreak of conflicts, a world war on the verge of erupting, an economy on the verge of collapse, and so on and so forth, rampant pandemics, and so on, leaving humanity helpless. If we remain in such a state, we will always be like this.

I find it especially strange: why does the news media never report on those people who did not get infected with COVID? Why do they not report on those people who were completely unaffected during COVID? Why do they only report on those painful, tragic experiences? I think this is the biggest point. If you do not report on the positive ones, and all you report on are the negative ones, then the result presented will all be negative, right? There are many people who had no symptoms at all, many people who never got infected with COVID, many people who lived and worked and fought on the front lines, surrounded entirely by positive patients, yet nothing happened to them personally. And why do we not report more on such people, so that they can give us confidence, so that we ordinary citizens will also know that such people exist, and that we too can become such people, and that we need not worry or fear?

Yet today the entire country, the entire world, the entire environment is saturated with this fear. We worry about virus variants and the emergence of new viruses. In the face of this virus, we discovered a fact: we humans are almost powerless against viruses. Although we developed vaccines at the fastest speed and developed specific medicines at the fastest speed, we still could not stop the pandemic from spreading across the world, still could not stop hundreds of millions of people worldwide from being infected with COVID, and still could not stop some people from having to leave this world because of various physical illnesses. All because of this tiny virus.

Here I do not want to blame anyone, but I only want to say: each of us, regarding our own focus -- do not blame, do not dump this responsibility entirely onto the media again. Do not say it is all the media's fault, all the fault of the news, the newspapers, the websites, these media. Do not blame others -- if you do not pay attention to them, then for you they do not exist; if none of us pays attention to them, then this media outlet dies, it cannot survive. No one will place advertisements with them; if you do not pay attention to them, no one places ads; if no one places ads, they will die. Once they die, you will no longer see such media.

The media you do pay attention to, those that only spread faith, hope, and love -- because of your attention, these media will receive support from advertisers. With advertiser support, they will have money to make the media even better, and more people will invest themselves in such media of faith, hope, and love. This is the mainstream of social development; this is the hope of human development. So do not talk about others; we only look at ourselves. Can we stop paying attention to negative information, to those so-called explosive news stories, those so-called breaking news stories -- the kind of news that is sudden, urgent, immediate, instantly inserted as a live broadcast? Can we instead properly appreciate some of the beauty of this world?

We are still very grateful that there are many, many media workers who have created very, very many very good media for us, but we have not invested much attention in them. For example, during this Spring Festival period, the film we guided everyone to appreciate is called Welcome to Earth, that is, Welcome to Earth¹²; this is a very good classic documentary. It is the same as the one we shared with everyone last November, One Strange Rock, that is, One Strange Rock¹³, a kind of strange rock. These two documentaries can be seen as companion pieces.

There are very many of these beautiful things, including our Discovery Channel, and many of our documentary channels, our BBC as well, and now Netflix, and Apple TV, and Amazon, and many, many more; their documentary channels account for a very large proportion. But the time we spend watching documentaries is not much. There are many beautiful things in those documentaries. I remember that within the Discovery Channel, one of the channels later grew very large and became independent, called Travel and Food, that is, travel and food. I find the Travel and Food channel especially interesting and especially good to watch; it takes everyone traveling around the world, a beautiful sharing like that. There are also many stunningly beautiful scenes of this Earth and things of humanistic feeling, all on the Discovery Channel.

So it is not that these things do not exist; it is that you have not paid attention to them. Do not say that there are none of these good things in the world; there are. What are you focusing on? Are you scrolling every day through all these negative news stories, all this negative information? And today's algorithms are very powerful; whatever you scroll, they keep pushing more of the same to you. So everything you see is this kind of news -- you look at one piece of terrifying news, and they send you three pieces of terrifying news; if you also read all three, they send you ten pieces of similar terrifying news. From then on, your world is filled entirely with this kind of thing. And when it is discovered that people in society all love watching this, then such media will have advertisers come to support them, and they will become more and more numerous. So do not blame others; first change yourself.

No wonder anxiety and depression are so widespread in society.

But Seth said that all the world's problems also represent great challenges.

Problems are not to be feared; they are also a kind of challenge.

The world needs every hand and every eye, and cries out loudly for expressions of love and care.

Can our every hand refrain from clicking on those negative things? Can our every eye look only at those beautiful things? And cry out loudly for expressions of love and care. When you see good things, proactively share them, share them everywhere, spread them widely, let us cry out loudly, and contribute ourselves to such an ideal.

Far more praiseworthy than sorrowful eyes and mournful voices endlessly lamenting global problems.

Many of us think that expressing mourning for these victims is a kind of compassion, a way of showing that I have love. Save it, save your love, save these things of yours; do not use these things to -- you are reinforcing these things. Here Teacher Wang Jiqing said the same thing I wanted to say: share in such an ideal. What ideal? The ideal of crying out loudly for love and care. The world needs every hand and every eye. Far better than using sorrowful eyes, tear-filled eyes, to look at the pain and the things of war, to express your love, to express your compassion, to express that you are loving -- please, do not do this anymore, do not do such things anymore.

Can you move your eyes away from these problems? Can you look at the beauty of this world, look at the goodness of this world, look at the confidence of this world? Do not focus on war, disaster, and these pains anymore; do not use these so-called voices of mourning, these choked voices, to express your grief; do not act as if your attention to these global problems could solve them. What you can do is focus only on those beautiful things. Start with each one of us, starting from the moment you hear this passage I am speaking, starting from your contact with our information. From now on, can we focus only on those beautiful things? Delete all those public accounts on your phone that you subscribed to that push negative news; unsubscribe from all those negative, terrifying, anxiety-selling contents in your YouTube, in your YouTube, in your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram; stop subscribing to their content. Subscribe to a batch of beautiful lives, beautiful food, beautiful art, beautiful emotions, beautiful life; subscribe to the content of those bloggers, those uploaders, those media that spread these things. Let your life be surrounded by these positive contents, and your life, your existence, will become better and better. The opposite will only make it worse and worse. This is true for individuals, and the same is true for all of humanity.

In Chapter 21, Seth also very practically taught us several simple exercises to change all of this; he came with exercises.

Teacher Wang Jiqing said: When I read this book, I kept underlining and kept exclaiming in admiration, hoping to engrave these words of supreme wisdom into my heart, but I cannot excerpt any more, otherwise I would have to excerpt the entire book.

Here Seth quoted Seth; Wang Jiqing quoted several passages of Seth's words, and he said he did not want to excerpt any more, because if he excerpted any more, he would have excerpted the entire book.

He said: How fortunate we are that so much love and wisdom has been transmitted down through Seth and Jane, giving us the opportunity to possibly realize all of this within our lifetime.

What a fortunate generation we are. This is what the translator, Teacher Wang Jiqing, wrote.

He said: But even Jane died in pain. All that Seth could do, all that any healer can do, is only to give reminders, love, and support. How he is to create your life is still decided by your own free will.

Here everyone must have this understanding; do not have the misunderstanding of saying "Come heal me, come cure me, come treat me" -- no. Any healing, even from an energy body as wise and as powerful as Seth, can only give reminders, support, and love; the rest still depends on Jane herself changing her own beliefs. Not only is this true of Seth, it is the same for other healers.

If you hope that a healer can heal you completely, then you are essentially killing the power within yourself to heal yourself. The one who can truly heal you is yourself -- not Seth, not the Buddha, not the Bodhisattvas, not God, not anyone else, and even less so the so-called doctors, hospitals, and medicines. The only one who can truly heal you is yourself. If you do not believe this, then you cannot allow yourself to fully recover from illness to health.

If you admit that your illness was created by yourself, then you have the ability -- since I created this illness, then I have the ability to cure it, I have the ability to break free, I have the ability to recover. If you do not admit that the illness has anything to do with you, if you do not admit that the illness is caused by the distortion of your inner psychological or psychic energy, and you believe the illness is caused by external bacteria, viruses, genetics, environment, and so on, and those things you cannot change -- which of them can you change? Can you change the environment? Can you change your genes? Can you change bacteria and viruses? These are all things you cannot change, and you believe they caused your illness today -- sorry, this illness cannot be cured. Because you attribute the cause of the illness to the outside, to other people, and you cannot change other people, so this illness cannot be cured.

When you stop pushing this illness onto others and take it upon yourself, admitting: I alone created my current state of life and my illness with my own hands -- then if I want to change, it is only a matter of a single thought; I change my beliefs, and I change my life, and I change the state of my life. This is the belief a person should hold.

But do not forget, Seth said, as long as you still have a breath left, it is never too late. Remember this sentence: as long as you are still alive, as long as you still have a breath left, it is not too late for you. Many people say, "I am very seriously ill; is there still time for me? The doctor has already said I only have a few months to live; is there still time for me?" Remember, as long as there is still a breath left, it is not too late.

The most typical example here is the speech by the person who "understood only after dying once." An Indian girl living in Hong Kong, named Anita¹⁴. She gave a most famous speech called "Dying to Be Me"¹⁵, and she wrote a book. She had reached the final stage of cancer, and was already just a few hours away from death. All her organs had failed -- if you have a sick family member or have cared for a patient, you know that when all the organs fail, according to the viewpoint of modern medicine, this person's life is nearly over, with only a few hours left, and nothing can be done. Because if the heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver have all failed, failure means they are ruined, beginning to decay, and there is no longer any possibility of turning back. This person, who was only hours away from death, for whom the doctor had already issued a critical condition notice, whose husband was already waiting for her to pass and preparing for the funeral, making arrangements for the aftermath.

A person like this, because of a change in her own beliefs, because she began to learn to love herself -- before that she did not know what it meant to love herself -- in that state of near-death experience, suddenly realized, or had a sudden enlightenment, that loving oneself is the main theme of life, the core of life. Just such a near-death experience caused all the symptoms in her body to vanish in an instant. Her cancer cells had already metastasized throughout her body, but the cancer cells in her body were all eliminated by her in that instant; it was as if she had exchanged her body for a new one.

She insisted that the doctor re-examine her, saying, "I am already well; there are no more cancer cells." The doctor firmly refused to examine her, saying it was meaningless. Because of course the doctor knew that in a state like yours, the cancer cells could not possibly be gone, because I did not even treat you; we had already given up treatment, so how could you be well? Every day she asked the doctor to re-examine her, and the doctor would not do it; the doctor felt there was no practical meaning in it, and felt the patient was talking nonsense. But unable to withstand her persistence, after she persisted for a week, the doctor finally gave her a full-body examination and a blood screening for cancer cells, and the doctor's jaw nearly dropped -- because there was not a single cancer cell left in her blood. And during this time, the doctor had not performed any so-called cancer treatment at all; no radiation, no chemotherapy, nothing, because the doctor felt there was no need for you to do it. Doctors do not treat late-stage cancer; anyone who has been hospitalized knows this. Once it has spread throughout the body, there is no need to treat the cancer cells anymore; they will only give you some painkillers, starting with Demerol and then morphine, increasing the dosage to reduce the pain throughout your body.

And such a person, within just a few hours, that is, in the space of a single thought, had all the cancer cells in her body disappear. If you think this is unbelievable, you can find her speech; you can see this person's speech on YouTube, or on Bilibili, or on other video websites, or by following our public account -- an hour and a half, her own personal demonstration speech. She also published a book. And the most amazing thing is that she kept all the original records of her medical history. If you feel that what she says is not convincing enough, you can look up all her materials -- all her medical records from the hospitals in Hong Kong are completely preserved: how she got sick, how she got well, step by step, with all the medical records, examination result reports, various CT scan results, cancer cell symptoms, and so on. If a case like this still cannot convince you, I do not know what kind of case could convince you.

If such a person speaking from her own experience still cannot make you acknowledge it, cannot make you admit it, cannot make you accept it, I can only say that even the gods cannot save you, because if you do not believe, no one can do anything. If you believe what the doctor says, that in a few months you will die, that there is no more hope, then you really will create such a reality, and in a few months, as you wish, you will leave this world. If to this day, even if you are very seriously ill, no matter how much time the doctor announces you have left, if you dare to change your beliefs, change your current understanding, as long as you dare to change, as long as you are willing to change, your body will recover in an instant. This is its most miraculous aspect.

This is also the significance of this book. Although in terms of Seth's theory, Seth's knowledge system, and Seth's wisdom, this book does not contain wisdom as deep as that in his earlier books, its help to the world may be greater than that of his previous several books. This is also the fundamental reason I ultimately decided to interpret it. Wisdom may be the direction and goal many of us pursue, but health is a concern for all people, for all ordinary people. They may not need, nor want, to obtain so-called supreme wisdom, to attain samyaksambodhi, to obtain those true enlightenments and sudden awakenings of life; they do not need any of that; they only want to live a healthy and happy life. And such a simple wish is so real, and should be fulfilled.

Therefore, let us set aside for the moment the pursuit of wisdom itself, and return to the love and respect for every life. Even if only a few people, even if only a small number of people, accept this kind of understanding, accept this kind of viewpoint, change their own state of life, and recover their health, I think its significance is extraordinary. This is also what the translator of this book, Teacher Wang Jiqing, wanted to say.

He said:

The present is the point of power. As long as you can replace negative beliefs with positive beliefs, believe in life again, rekindle hope, believe in the exuberance you are born with and the endless energy that flows from you, then you can, according to what this book teaches you, begin again and awaken the joy of your life.

Jane's final book, a beautiful and deeply affectionate posthumous work. Jane was like the so-called thornbird; it is said that when the thornbird's heart is pierced through by the thorn, the song it sings at the moment of death is the most beautiful song.

This book is dedicated to the self I have tried to cherish tenderly, and to every one of you whom I cherish tenderly.

He said he does not expect that one day I can say "I do," rather than saying "I will try."

The difference here is that "I do" means: I believe, I am willing, I am willing to do it, I am willing to practice it. That is to say, I believe all these contents that Seth spoke of; I believe these things can allow me to live a happier and better life; I believe they can solve my health problems. The meaning of "I do" here is exactly this: I believe, I am willing, I will do it, I am certain beyond doubt.

And what does "I will try" mean? I am going to try it, I will give it a try. What does "I will try" mean? I half believe and half doubt; I cannot say I do not believe -- there is some truth in this, but I do not fully believe it either. I still believe in Western medicine, I still believe in the scientific viewpoint; I do not believe that merely changing a belief, merely changing my thoughts, will make my body better; I do not believe that the cancer cells in my body will disappear because I changed my beliefs.

If you half believe and half doubt, and go try it with doubt, then the effect will be of little use, and what manifests in you will be sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes better and sometimes worse. It is somewhat like Jane's performance in this book. Jane's state was "I will try"; it was sometimes good and sometimes bad, and her illness also fluctuated, sometimes better and sometimes worse.

You will see in the book that it was like this. Jane transmitted the Seth material until -- in my impression, until one week before her death, she was still transmitting the Seth material. This proves that her physical condition had not deteriorated to that extent. Even around ten days before her death, in my impression, her bodily functions had already begun to shift toward positive improvement, but she still did not believe it, and afterward it took a sharp turn for the worse. Think about it: a person who could still transmit the Seth material one week earlier could not have been in such poor physical condition; she should not have passed away just one week later. But she still could not completely change her beliefs.

So do not try; believe absolutely. And the biggest point about Jane here is that although she was a person who transmitted the Seth material, a channel, a conduit, an existence that was once part of a trinity with Seth, she herself, first of all, read very little and studied very little of the Seth material itself; her time was spent on dissemination, on transmission. Rob, on the other hand, used a great deal of the content in it, because Rob was simultaneously recording, typing, organizing, and publishing, so Rob's understanding of the Seth material was greater than Jane's.

After Jane finished transmitting, she did not know what she had said. For example, if she spoke for four hours in the evening, transmitting the entire Seth material, an entire session's content, if you asked Jane what Seth had said, she would not know. In that state of trance, she did not know what she had said. The next day, Rob would have to print it out, and Jane would read it over before she knew what she had said the day before. And sometimes, because she was busy with time, because she had many things to do, she still had to write her own novels, still had to transmit the Seth material, still had to organize the Seth material, she did not have that much time. There were many times when Jane truly had not read through the entire Seth material even once in full. You may not believe it; you may think, how is it possible that these were published and she read them all? Yes, she read every word, but she did not read with her heart; she did not read these books with her whole being. She may not even have studied as deeply as you have, may not even have studied as thoroughly as you have, because she did not have that much time.

How can you know this from this matter? For Jane, regarding the Seth material, she only treated it as a content she was disseminating; as a conduit, she transmitted it. As for the content within it, she felt it was very good, truly very good, very helpful to the development of human civilization and to the elevation of human consciousness; it is a treasure of human knowledge and a crystallization of wisdom. But she only thought so; she did not act accordingly. She did not say, "Come, from now on I will completely follow what Seth says" -- no, she did not say "I do"; she said "I will try." See whether it is useful or not; if it is useful, I will continue using it; if I believe it is not useful, then forget it.

This is her most essential difference. So I hope that when everyone learns this knowledge, you must turn it into life, rather than just trying it.

This is exactly the same as what Laozi said in the Tao Te Ching; I forget which chapter of the Tao Te Ching it was, somewhere around Chapter 40. In the received version, it says:

When the highest type of person hears the Tao, he diligently practices it¹⁶.

The highest type of person is the most wise person; hearing the Tao means this kind of true wisdom. When it comes to true wisdom, he immediately goes to practice it -- diligently practices it, rises up and practices it, immediately goes to practice it, no matter how difficult, no matter how incompatible it is with his views, he rises up and practices it, immediately goes to do it, immediately practices it, and turns it into his own life.

The middle type of person is the majority of people, the people in the middle, the mediocre people, the people who waver left and right. What do these people do? They half believe and half doubt:

When the middle type of person hears the Tao, he half believes and half doubts.

He does not fully believe, but he cannot say he does not believe; he half believes and half doubts. Most people are like this. So he is in the middle, and that is "I will try."

This is what "When the highest type of person hears the Tao" means: "I do," without any doubt; I accept, I receive, and I immediately go do it. The middle one is "I will try," "I will try."

What does it mean when the lowest kind of person hears the Way? They burst out laughing: what nonsense, what outrageous talk, what shocking words. They even classify it as fallacy, as a cult, as unorthodox. They dare not look at it, dare not listen to it, reject it, and even mock it. Laozi said:

If it were not laughed at, it would not be worthy of being the Way.

If the common people at the bottom do not mock this thing, then it is not the true Way. The true Way is always like this: it is something ridiculed by the masses, and only what the masses ridicule is the true Way. What the masses all accept is the opposite of the Way; that is not the Way.

Why is this so? Laozi made it very clear, because the Way and our cognition are completely opposite, right? "The movement of the Way is reversal" -- that is, when the Way is to move, to operate, to take effect and move, it is always reversed, always opposite to our cognition. "The function of the Way is weakness" -- when the Way truly takes effect, it is very soft, weak, and subtle. Do you think the Way should be very powerful, very forceful, that great force produces miracles? No, the function of the Way is always weak and subtle, the most insignificant, yet it changes everything.

This is the greatest core point: the viewpoint you hold and the true Way, the viewpoint of ordinary people and the Way, are all opposite. Because they are opposite, they cannot accept it; they mock it, they ridicule it, and this is normal.

All right, so today let us first finish discussing the prefaces of this recommender and this translator up to this point. Later we will continue to begin discussing the content of this book, and I also hope everyone will continue to follow our channel and follow our content. Let us continue to learn Seth's wisdom and gain insights for our lives from it. Finally, thank you all, and I wish everyone a magical and wonderful day.

Foreword: Setting Out on the Trajectory of a Life

Today let us continue sharing the foreword of The Way Toward Health. The foreword was written by Jane's husband, Rob. He wrote a foreword himself at the beginning of the book.

Rob begins by saying that The Way Toward Health is not merely an account of his wife Jane Roberts's hospitalization at St. Joseph's Hospital in Elmira, New York, thirteen years ago, and of her death. When he wrote this foreword it was 1997 — because Jane was hospitalized in 1984, and the book was only published in 1997, thirteen years after Jane's death. Rob begins by saying that this book is not merely about his wife's hospitalization and death.

He says:

I had long thought of its publication, feeling, and knowing that it had much, much, much more to offer.

He knew it was not only about Jane's remarkable ability, in trance or out-of-body states, to speak for Seth — an energy personality essence, as he called himself. Seth is an energy personality; he is not our physical personality. We, in our ordinary, natural, three-dimensional world, are all physical, whereas he is energy. And it is also about all the vast and complex challenges that can, and do, arise in the course of a human life. In the book he also introduces and shows how many possibilities a person's life holds.

Rob says I learned — this is what Rob learned — that our lives do not proceed simply in a direct sequence from birth to death. According to the viewpoint of our three-dimensional world, birth is a starting point, death is an endpoint, and in between we pass through many life experiences. This is a line, and we think this is our life's trajectory. Everyone thinks this way; we are on this line. But in fact, it is not like that.

Life as Rob Sees It: Branching Out and Winding Back

This is Rob's realization after many years of studying Seth, and also the realization he arrived at through continuously organizing, studying, and researching the Seth material in the thirteen years after Jane's death. He says it is exactly the opposite. He says:

I see each person as traveling a most curious path of detours and returns, creatively, in ways we know — that is, with our present consciousness — and in ways I am now quite sure we do not know.

Let me briefly explain this. For us in the three-dimensional world, we feel that life is a road from birth to death. But this road, according to Rob, constantly branches out and winds back again, branching in and out among all possibilities, with such branches.

Let us draw a simple diagram to share how life's trajectory and the role of possibilities work within it. For example, the first level of understanding: the average person thinks that life begins, develops continuously, rises and falls, and finally reaches the endpoint at death. This is a single-line trajectory with an arrow indicating direction.

Now Rob, through his own realization and study, has come to understand that life is far more complex than this. In his view, we begin at birth, then pass through many choices — choice one, choice two, then more choices, and new choices again; every road has choices, and each one can branch out into new ones, until finally there is a death. He believes our lives are more like this: from a certain point you insert yourself here, and after branching out, how do you return to this node again? This process is called branching out — your life branches out, and then from this node it develops again, and it winds back here.

What does winding back mean? Let me give a simple example to help everyone understand. Say in the evening, a friend calls you to go out to dinner, and your girlfriend also calls you to go shopping — these are two possible choices. If you choose to have dinner with your friend, you do not go shopping with your girlfriend; that is a branching apart. But no matter which one you choose, by ten o'clock at night, you still have to come back to sleep — assuming you are still in a university dormitory and must be back by ten to sleep. In this way, no matter which possibility you chose, you return to the point of sleeping at ten. The next morning there are again two possibilities, such as going with your girlfriend to buy a computer, or playing a murder mystery game with your friend. By the second night, you may converge again — the branches come back together in sleep.

With this simple example, you can understand what branching out and winding back mean. Rob is telling us that the possibilities in life have this kind of structure, rather than being the single thing we imagine. It is a process of branching out and coming back, circling back again.

From Quantum Leaps to the Field of Consciousness

What about a further level of understanding? Our life goes from birth to death, and then there is another possibility of going from birth to death — these are different trajectories. And in the third level of cognition, our life is constantly leaping — we can pass from this point to that one, or switch to this one, any point at all. You can switch to any point, so your life is basically constantly switching among these parallel possibilities. But you do not know you are switching; you cannot feel yourself switching. So for you, your life is also a single trajectory. But in fact you are switching back and forth among several lives, and you do not notice. The yellow line of this single life is also his whole life, and he does not feel the switching; the red one does not feel the switching either. But whether red, blue, green, or yellow, their lives are also formed through switching. Their feeling does not change; it is also formed by shuttling among different possibilities.

After the third level of understanding, there is a fourth. Real life is far more complex than our human minds can conceive. The fourth is similar to something called a Faraday globe — a Faraday sphere. It is a sphere, and in the middle there is something discharging electricity. What is it? It is your consciousness. Your consciousness continuously discharges outward.

In the middle of a Faraday sphere there is a charged object, and outside there is a glass surface. The lightning in the middle crackles outward, and when it reaches the surface of the sphere it produces a bright point, with a trail in between. You can understand this whole process as the process from consciousness to reality. We strike the glass sphere and form this point, and a trail forms in between. We call this process the process from belief to reality, or from consciousness to reality, from thought to the material image. This bolt of lightning is the process of one thought becoming one reality.

Finally a point forms on the surface of the sphere. If we imagine it as a three-dimensional sphere, then there are many points on the surface — every thought of yours produces a point. Seen from the surface of the sphere, there are many, many points on it, and you can connect them. The points of reality on the surface of the sphere, connected together, form one of your lives. Your life is like this: from the different points on this sphere, you choose how to connect them, and that forms a trajectory. This is what we call a life in our three-dimensional world.

This spherical shell can be imagined as a kind of limitation of time and space. The image your consciousness projects within time and space is just such a point, and then you connect these points — for example, what you did today, what you will do tomorrow — and these realities connected together are what you call a life.

Most people remain at the first level, and very few can understand the second level. The second level is basically the state of quantum mechanics, where left and right possibilities both exist, and you can enter and exit back and forth. At the third level, you are constantly leaping and shuttling among multiple parallel possible versions of yourself; this is called a quantum leap, also called a jump. In this jumping process, unlike ordinary jumping, quantum leaps require no time and can switch instantaneously.

At the fourth level, it becomes more three-dimensional and more concrete, closer to reality but still not reality itself. Imagine your head is a sphere, and the head is the core at the center of the sphere, containing thoughts and ideas. The thoughts and ideas in your head radiate outward and strike the structure composed of time and space — using this sphere as an analogy, time and space compose the sphere itself; this shell is called the space-time structure, or it can also be called the boundary of consciousness or the space of consciousness. On this boundary of time and space, your consciousness forms an image. This image may be a concrete three-dimensional image, or it may be an image in the mind; either is fine. It does not necessarily have to be a three-dimensionally manifested image.

If there is a fifth level, our life is more like a field — a field of consciousness, or a field of conscious energy. In this field of consciousness, all things exist simultaneously. We just said there is a focal point of consciousness, formed by countless thoughts and ideas connected into a life trajectory. But in the true field, every point in the field of consciousness is equivalent to one of the spheres in the fourth state. The entire field of consciousness is composed of infinitely many such small points, and they are also connected to one another. Each point, when magnified, is such a sphere, with countless possible versions of you forming such a field within it.

And what we call life in the three-dimensional world — you can only understand three dimensions, so we use three dimensions as an example. All the points and all the states in this three-dimensional world exist simultaneously — you are at this point, and at this point, and at this point, all at the same time. Because three dimensions can only use the word "simultaneous" to understand this.

Their more real state is actually in a kind of quantum state, and also in an entangled state. The quantum state has two main characteristics: all possibilities exist simultaneously, and at the same time they are entangled with one another; there is quantum entanglement and quantum superposition. This comes closer to our understanding of the truth of the world.

Is there anything beyond this level of cognition? Yes, there is. At a still higher level, even the field is gone, even the field of consciousness is gone, even these points are gone; they are simply in a state of oneness. This cannot be drawn anymore; it has already gone beyond our range of understanding. All these points, although each one represents a sphere of consciousness or a space of consciousness, all merge into a single wholeness. Once true oneness is reached, the field is gone, the points are gone, the spaces of consciousness and all such things are gone; everything is together.

For example, a point in the middle can be magnified into an infinitely vast universe; a grain of sand in the universe can also become a small point. They are both continuous with one another, and one, and separate. It is somewhat like the golden ratio spiral we speak of: it can be infinitely small and infinitely large; the infinitely small is contained within the infinitely large, and the infinitely large contains the infinitely small. This is the state Buddhism describes as "so great it has no outside, so small it has no inside¹⁷." It is one, yet in this state there is no sense of separation — no separate points, no space of consciousness, no sense of separation, only a sense of oneness. This oneness, you can understand it as the state of All That Is.

For most of us, being able to understand the second or third level is already quite good. But no matter how you understand it, the final state of your consciousness will enter into this oneness. We will not go too deeply into this topic; it is enough to have a general idea.

Challenges, Choices, and Respect

Rob gives an example here to help you understand what our lives are like. Then Rob says:

The challenge, then, is to understand the creativity with which we are born.

We have all kinds of possibilities. We can try to train life, to make it conventional, or obedient. We can let it follow the mainstream, live the way the world lives — that is fine, no problem. We can also try to train life a little, do some challenging things, and let it unfold according to your subjective will. "Obedient" means letting your life obey your command; you are fully capable of controlling your life. You cannot say that these impermanent, unknown, uncertain things have blocked my life — no, they have not.

You can also let go and allow fate to control you. In that case, those fortune-tellers, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, can all accurately predict you. When you want to take back your power — I do not want this anymore, I do not want to go along with it, I want fate to obey me, I am the master of my own fate — at that point, all those fortune-tellers become useless; they can no longer calculate you, because you have already taken control of your own fate, which is to say you have gripped the steering wheel in your own hands.

Every life has its own life; every person has the independent possibility of taking back the steering wheel. But there are also people who live plain, unremarkable lives following the mainstream. What he wants to tell you is that in the choices at life's crossroads, every possible life exists, and we must respect their existence. Even if someone chooses a plain, unremarkable, conventional life, we must respect them; we cannot say that is bad or wrong. You cannot say you must awaken, must become enlightened, must understand the truth of life — no, that is not necessary.

Every person's life is unique, and we must respect their choices in life. Whether they choose to walk a path of seeking truth, or choose a life of simple happiness, we should respect them. Each of us has our own life, and every life is unique, worthy of admiration and respect. We cannot say we only respect and admire those lives that have become enlightened, while toward those who live simple lives we develop an attitude of looking down on them, belittling them, or disdaining them.

If you still have this kind of discriminating mind, then you are drifting further and further from enlightenment. If you can look at ordinary people's lives — those little lives of eating, drinking, defecating, sleeping, living peacefully and working happily — and see them with respect, and recognize that their lives are equal to those of the so-called eminent monks and great masters, only then can you truly remove your discriminating mind; only then can you stop judging; only then are you even remotely connected to enlightenment. Otherwise, if you are on one hand disdaining others for not being enlightened while on the other hand smugly congratulating yourself on being enlightened — then I am sorry, at that point you are still very, very far from enlightenment; you have not become enlightened at all.

This is the meaning he wants to convey in this passage. You should marvel that you have so many lives, each one rich and colorful, each one adding to yourself, so do not disdain this one or that one.

He says:

My wife's life and work show that we can create challenges and goals even before birth.

This is their feeling; they both chose a very difficult starting point. They chose it before birth — truly born into such a family, with a mother like that, and living conditions like that. Rob may have been somewhat better off compared to Jane, but the two of them were about the same, both belonging to the type who had to struggle on their own, with a sense of being all alone.

Putting On the Overcoat of the Flesh: Practice and Completion

In physical life, when we put on our flesh, put on our clothing, put on our beliefs, we plunge right in and practice and complete those qualities. Which qualities? Our potentials. Our lives have many potentials. In the three-dimensional world, we treat the physical body as our outer garment, our clothing — that is the outermost garment. Our beliefs, attitudes, and emotions are also a kind of garment, an invisible garment. When we put on these things, in the three-dimensional world we go about practicing and completing those qualities. These garments are also one of the outward expressions of those qualities, and they are also part of practicing and completing them. It is not that the body, the garments, and the clothing are unimportant — they are important. In the process of achieving value fulfillment, it is not merely at the spiritual level; it is at the spiritual and material levels simultaneously. The two complement each other and are the inner and outer aspects of one another. Your outer image, clothing, body, thoughts, emotional states, and so on are all outward expressions of your inner beliefs, and they are also part of your value fulfillment; do not neglect them.

However:

What remarkable, unexpected convolutions can we encounter within those challenges that we ourselves have created?

That is, when we face a challenge and accept it, after accepting it, you do not know what you will experience afterward. The joy of life also lies in this. Can those enlightened people also not foresee how these future possibilities will develop? They cannot. Their challenges, and their joy, also lie in this. For an ordinary person, he can know — when judging other people's lives, in a life that follows the crowd without taking the initiative into his own hands, he can know what challenges others will face. But regarding his own subjective self, after accepting this challenge, what his life will face, he also does not know. This is where his joy lies. If everything were known, then there would be no joy at all.

But where does his difference from ordinary people lie? It lies in the fact that he knows all these possibilities exist. All the challenges, spirals, and convolutions he will encounter are arrangements within his life, with their own deep meaning and purpose. It is just that at that particular point in time, we may not be able to understand, and sometimes we may not even be able to accept it — this is all very normal. Whether or not you can accept and understand it, it will still happen. And such happenings make up our challenges to life, which are very interesting.

So never assume that these so-called enlightened people have foreknowledge of themselves. You might say that is wrong — why is it that some people, some eminent monks and great masters, know when they are about to pass away? This they can know; they can know it. That is, it is one possibility they want to know, or they can choose one possibility to live by. But when they face a challenge, because they continuously raise the difficulty of the challenge, in the process of continuous challenge and continuous elevation, their lives are also full of all these unknown joys for them. This is very interesting.

Even so, Rob says:

I think that in the end, whether on a conscious or unconscious level, wherever we are, knowing or not knowing, or in a state where both exist simultaneously, we will realize that while learning along the way, we are still ourselves.

That is, we must understand that while we are learning — learning as we go — we are still ourselves; this sense of self-nature will not be lost.

The particularly interesting point here is that in the several models of life we just discussed — no matter which model you are in, no matter which model your cognition remains at, no matter how you jump around — this "I" of yours, this self-nature, will not be lost before you truly reach that state of oneness. The joy also lies in this. It is not that when I switch, I feel as though I have changed from this person into that person. No. No matter how you change, you can perceive the changes and transformations, but you still know this is still you, only that you have become this or changed into that. This "you" has not changed; this sense of continuity, oneness, and self-nature exists.

Of course, in the end, after reaching the state of oneness, when your consciousness rises to the next dimension, it is no longer so distinct. Because at that point you can be anything — you can be trees, flowers, and grass; you can be stones; you can also be wind, rain, or sunlight. But no matter what you are, you still know who you are. This is very interesting.

Jane's Hospitalization, Passing, and Our Questions

In the hospital, Jane was in certain respects quite helpless. After staying in the hospital for one year and nine months, she passed away at 2:08 a.m. on Wednesday, September 5, 1984. Since February 1982, she had already been hospitalized three times. Since Jane's death, many people have written letters expressing their condolences, and also asking why — why did Jane die? She had Seth, did she not? Everyone asks this kind of question: how could she die when she had Seth? She had spoken for Seth for twenty-one years, and she had also written six books together with him — and that is not all, plus eight books of her own. So did Seth not have the key to open the proper door of magical abilities, to help Jane escape this predicament, this difficult situation? This is what many readers want to ask, and it is also what many of our listeners want to ask, right?

She was only fifty-five when she died; she could very likely have lived another twenty years, which would have been quite normal. She could even have contributed more of our knowledge of Seth and of herself. If she had transmitted knowledge for another twenty years, another set of Seth material would have emerged — a full thirty-some books; you can imagine it. But no.

If she had wanted fame, she could very likely have become world-renowned. If Jane had wanted fame, it would have been too easy — think about it: a person like this, with such an ability, capable of writing such wise content, could easily have become famous. But after accepting perhaps one or two radio and television interviews — my impression is it may have been only one or two — Jane later declined all media interviews. All media, including newspaper interviews and television. By then it was already the 1980s, and television was at its hottest; it would have been very easy to become a household name through television. But she did not; she declined these media interviews.

He says:

Jane, Seth, and I have the answers to such questions in this book.

This book answers many readers' questions.

Jane Was First and Foremost a Human Being

First, we must acknowledge that Jane was a human being. We must not mythologize her; we must not create a god. We ourselves are human, and we are also divine; we do not need to create an additional god. Just like Shakyamuni Buddha, he himself was also a human being; do not mythologize him. You might say, how could the Buddha, at such a high level, also die? Why could he not live forever? If it is truly as the Buddha said, that he could already transcend the six realms of reincarnation, why did his physical body still die? Why could he not do what the Tibetan Buddhist tradition calls rainbow body — turning into a beam of light, a rainbow, a red light, and disappearing? But why could he still die like an ordinary person? The Buddha passed away at the age of eighty¹⁸. I think this is the real side of the Buddha; he showed his human side. Toward his human side, he neither rejected it, nor worried about it, nor lamented, saying why am I still a human, why do I still have a lifespan and a physical body, why can I not live forever — he had long since passed beyond this kind of discriminating mind, long since passed beyond this kind of expectation. He happily lived as a human being, happily lived as himself, happily enjoyed his decades of life.

This is what ordinary people cannot understand. You think that once a person has supernatural powers, the first thing they should do is achieve immortality. Wrong. If a person has supernatural powers, first of all they possess that kind of cognition and understanding, and this cognition includes non-attachment and non-discrimination toward life and death. If a person has already awakened and realized, yet still has such a strong discriminating mind and such strong attachment toward life and death — saying I must live forever, I must never age, I must make my physical body endure forever — then with such discrimination, that simply cannot be called enlightenment. If the discriminating mind has not been removed, you have not even entered the gate of spiritual practice; go enter the gate first, and do not talk about the things that come after.

So here Rob also emphasizes: whether or not Jane was enlightened, let us set that aside for now; first of all, she was a human being. And was the Buddha enlightened? Who among us dares say the Buddha was not enlightened? And was the Buddha a human being? He was a human being. Being a human being means following the laws and forms of our physical world. But if you cling to this form, saying the Buddha still died, and what is this form of the Buddha's death — if you want to cling to this form, that is fine, but then you are no different from the ordinary beings of the three-dimensional world. You may continue to doubt, and use this opportunity to attack and to worry. Then was what the Buddha said correct or not? He himself died, so is there a problem here? Whether he was reborn in the Pure Land, we do not know either, right? It would be best if he could be like Jesus, dying and then resurrecting, letting us see such great supernatural power, so that we would believe in and accept him even more. But look at these people: they died and could not be reborn — and the key point is that after death their bodies were cremated, and many relics emerged from the cremation, many of these glass-like objects, and even the flesh was entirely burned away.

So the core point we must understand is that Jane was first and foremost a human being, and each of us is also a human being. Although we are here discussing The Way Toward Health, and we hope that every day of our lives is very healthy, happy, peaceful, and joyful, we still must not be attached to our bodies or to the things of our material world. Do not think you can transcend above them. If you still have this idea of transcending, the same problem applies. You always want to transcend the state of an ordinary person; you are always unwilling to be content as an ordinary person; this is still your discriminating mind at work. You feel that after studying for so long, after so many years, you should show some difference from ordinary people; you feel that something miraculous should happen to you; you feel that you should be different from ordinary people in order to be normal — but thinking this way is what is truly abnormal. You should be just like an ordinary person; that is what is truly normal.

Many people who have truly attained the Way understand this principle. It is like what the Zen people say: before enlightenment, one carries firewood, draws water, and boils tea; after enlightenment, one still lives the same life¹⁹. This is the state of a person who is truly awakened.

Seth's Help and the Larger Realm

Over the years, Seth did indeed help him many times. Beyond that:

Jane and I also learned that there exist vast realms of knowledge and feeling in the universe that remain largely undisclosed.

Seth did help him many times, but the initiative lay with Jane. And in this process, in the process of Seth transmitting the material, both Jane and Rob could feel the infinite vastness of the knowledge of the universe. Although Seth had already spoken a great deal, compared with the overall knowledge of the universe as a whole, what we know is still very limited. If one could connect more deeply with or draw from that magical labyrinth -- that is, the knowledge of the universe -- it would be even better, but we have done all we could. This is Rob saying that we have done our best.

This continued until Jane passed away. This one person used her whole life, or rather the latter half of it -- from her early thirties, from age thirty-four, all the way to age fifty-five. The two of them worked almost day and night recording, organizing, and publishing. The entire body of work was led and completed by the two of them. From transmitting and writing, to organizing, proofreading, typing, and publishing, the two of them did it all. If you do not know how great this workload is, you can try writing a book yourself, and then you will know how great the workload is. They published thirty-one books of the Seth material alone, not counting the roughly ten novels Jane herself wrote.

Rob said:

I am quite sure Seth is still helping my wife... They have now become one.

That is, after Jane passed away, Seth was still helping Jane in another space-time. They are already together; in terms of energy and consciousness, they have already merged into one. And in a broad sense, they have also met many people they knew in the past, present, and future -- they can now travel through time and space.

Rob said that because of certain dreams -- he had many dreams -- he believed that he himself, even his own entity -- the part of Seth that became Joseph -- also participated in this. In his dreams, the entity, which is the larger part of the soul, the part of Seth that became Joseph, together with Ruburt -- that is, Jane, the part Seth called Ruburt -- and Seth, the three of them were in fact already together, already merged into one, and were already experiencing their shared past, present, and future.

He said, why not? Since Seth describes reality as saying that everything exists simultaneously. Rob said:

I know that is a concept and a problem that is very difficult to grasp... sometimes even self-contradictory and complex.

Even within this worldly reality, there is enough to keep us busy for a lifetime. Many of Seth's theories and many things, when understood from a three-dimensional perspective, are indeed self-contradictory. If you rise one dimension higher, then they may no longer be contradictory. But within your present cognition, if you think that much of the Seth material is contradictory from beginning to end, or even paradoxical, that is normal -- congratulations on seeing that. If you cannot see the contradictions among them, that is also normal, because in essence they are not contradictory.

Rob said:

This book shows that the way toward health can and does have great variables... Perhaps in some stubborn yet psyche-knowing way, each of us must make our own choices.

Each person has their own choices, just as humanity has always done. We make our own choices, and Jane had Jane's choices. Jane's life clearly demonstrated this, and it was demonstrated in a way that, when we married forty-two years ago, neither of us was consciously aware of.

He said that when they married forty-two years ago, at that time they had not yet realized that each of them had their own conscious decisions. Although Jane and Rob had a marriage of forty-two years -- this time seems a bit off; I think the author may have written this wrong. It cannot be forty-two years, because at this time Jane was only fifty-five, and forty-two years earlier Jane would have been only twelve. I think this time was written incorrectly. Probably they married when Jane was around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, not yet thirty. So at that time, they had already shown differences in consciousness.

Recording and Work During the Hospital Stay

When Jane was hospitalized for twenty-one months -- one year and nine months, that is twenty-one months --

Jane, Seth, and I all said many things about his physical and mental state, and I often recorded them under very great pressure, using a shorthand method I created myself as best I could.

Because at this time he had to care for a sick person -- his wife was in the hospital, and it was a life-threatening illness -- so you can imagine that Rob was under enormous pressure. During that period, there was only one time, because of a severe blizzard, that he did not, as he did every day, spend six to eight hours with his wife. You can imagine that at that time Rob drove to the hospital every day to stay with his wife for six to eight hours, rain or shine, for a full twenty-one months. Only one day, because the snow was too heavy and the roads were closed, he could not go.

So you can see the depth of feeling between Rob and Jane. Why did he not stay overnight at the hospital? In America there is no concept of staying overnight with a patient. Even his coming every day like this may already have violated the hospital's relevant regulations; for him it was a special exception. In America, hospitalization does not require family members to stay overnight; that is a Chinese characteristic. I do not know why this is so, why there is such an arrangement. But for the patient's family, it is truly very painful and tormenting. But there is no way around it. In China, when one is hospitalized, generally speaking, except for especially serious emergency cases, ordinary hospitalization requires family members to stay by the bedside. In this way, the hospital doctors can reduce a great deal of workload, and the daily work can be reduced -- for example, serving tea and water and other arrangements and services for the patient can be reduced. But abroad it is not like this; abroad there is no need for family members to stay overnight. From admission to discharge, a patient can manage without any family member staying by their side, and there is no problem at all.

After Jane was hospitalized in April, for several weeks Rob did not know whether Jane would do any more channeling work. Why? Because of the noisy hospital environment -- think about it, it is all wards, with patients, doctors, and nurses coming and going, one moment checking this, the next moment checking that. There was no quiet environment, and they were often interrupted. Moreover, Jane's condition at that time was not good; she was ill, her whole body ached, and she could not even lie down comfortably. And Rob? Every day he went back and forth, exhausted, and every day he had to stay with her, handle the household matters, and also continue all their normal work of typing, publishing, and proofreading -- none of it could be reduced. He also had to take care of his own daily needs, cook for himself, take care of the housework, and so on.

But three months later, to Rob's surprise, she began a series of dialogues. During the first three months of hospitalization, Jane did nothing, nothing related to the Seth material. Three months later, she began producing content similar to the worldview material she had once produced for the psychologist and philosopher William James²⁰ and the painter Paul Cezanne²¹ -- she began to speak the content. Jane was once again inspired by Rob's questions about art and related knowledge. When she began the new project, she said:

At least I feel I am doing something I was born to do.

This sentence is very important: something one was born to do -- this is a kind of gift.

She finished this part of the content, the part about art, in September 1983. Then in the following four months, she dictated another series of mostly short, personal Seth sessions, seventy-one sessions in all. She ended that series on January 2, 1984. These sessions would all be placed in the private sessions. The next day -- January 3 -- she began The Way Toward Health.

You see, Jane was never idle during her hospitalization. She transmitted three major categories of material: one discussing art, which took several months; then four months of seventy-one personal sessions; and then she began The Way Toward Health.

Throughout this period, Rob said:

We did not explicitly tell anyone in the hospital what we were doing.

He did not formally tell the hospital that they were channeling. The hospital accepted their general explanation, believing that they were simply writing. The hospital staff all thought they were writing, just writing in this way. They did not say anything about channeling, and everything went smoothly; no one disturbed them.

Even though the records show that we were often interrupted. Inevitably, however, there are many abridgments in The Way Toward Health -- omissions, not of the Seth material, but abridgments of what Jane and Rob wrote, omitting their personal material. Rob owed Jane Mill, the owner of Amber-Allen Publishing, many things; he had promised to write a great deal for them. If all the surrounding material from every session were included, the book would be extremely long, so he did not include it; he wrote only the themes related to Seth, to Jane, and to health.

For example, Rob had many personal experiences and insights that he believed would enhance the Seth material. He had his own feelings -- as the husband of the patient, as a family member -- his own experiences and insights. But how should he omit? Which ones should be included? When should he stop? This created a dilemma for him. He did not know how much of his own insights he should write in. If he wrote too much, it would become a personal book of his own; if he wrote too little, then Rob felt that these views of his were actually helpful and enhanced Seth.

The Value of Trivial Life

When Jane began dictating the Seth material in 1963, Rob said:

I was very self-conscious about the record we would leave behind -- not the part related to Seth, but indeed the part related to our lives.

He said that besides the Seth material, he also very self-consciously recorded the details of their lives; one inevitably enhanced the other.

Many people read the Seth material with a very strong utilitarian attitude. I have seen many, many people read the Seth material, and they say: I do not want to hear the trivial family matters of Rob and Jane, all this fussing over little things; I only want to hear Seth's very lofty wisdom. I feel that only then will I not be wasting my life and wasting my time; these fussy little matters have no real meaning. Including when they attend classes, those who want to hear me share and teach say: we only want to hear Mike speak; we do not want to hear other people share their so-called... especially those who speak at length and are long-winded. They say: I feel I do not want to hear them; I do not have the patience to listen; I only want to hear the content that is very wise.

I would like to say that Rob answered you with this sentence -- that is, these seemingly unimportant things actually enhance the Seth material itself. Because if Seth simply spoke his content without any connection to their lives, and if it could not be reflected in the changes in the lives of the two of them, then the Seth material would belong to a kind of metaphysical state floating in the air. A corresponding comparison is the Datre material. If you look at the Datre material, there is no record of life at all; it is all Datre saying this and that, and them asking Datre this and that. Everyone feels this is very much pure substance, all full of pure substance, and this suits the interests of certain people. But this also reflects that the entire Datre material lacks humanistic care and emotional connection -- that is, it has no warmth. Although they often say "I love you humans," "I care about you," "I bless you," and so on, when you read those words, you cannot feel that warmth from them; you cannot feel the presence of that temperature. It is not like the Seth material, which when read feels like an old friend chatting with you, with that warmth that flows gently, that inner peace and steadiness, that very comfortable feeling when listening.

So everyone must remember: the two enhance each other. Exactly how they enhance each other is very difficult to describe in words; you can only feel and sense it. It increases the wondrous complexity of both.

Rob said:

Long ago I began to believe that nothing exists in isolation.

This view is correct. The whole world is a whole; there is no isolated existence. Therefore, the trivial matters of life do not conflict with or contradict what Seth wanted to say. If you can, from these small trivial details of life, from one small matter, extend to many other matters, then you have this ability. If you cannot, from these trivial matters of life, perceive the wholeness and oneness hidden behind them, then you still need to study well.

The whole world is connected. Any single point can allow us to perceive the truth of the world, even the trivial bits and pieces of everyday life, including the so-called quarrels, arguments, and vexations you speak of -- they also contain much truth. Truth is never what you imagine, glittering with golden light and enshrined on a high shelf, where we must kneel below, bathe, purify ourselves, and change clothes before we can study it. No. Every moment of your life is the manifestation and display of truth.

He said:

Abridging certain records will obviously leave some gaps. It is hardly an original concept, but we see that it is a concept often overlooked in the surface activities of our daily lives.

We will omit some things; that is normal. But if we gave more attention to our material and non-material lives and other levels, no matter when they occurred, it might greatly benefit us. If we pay attention to the other levels of life, it will enhance our understanding. Using the time of the human world to say when something happened is of great benefit to our understanding of this material and of material and non-material life.

Therefore, regarding life, we should have more awareness and more perception. It is not that we only focus on the Seth material itself, or only on these so-called spiritual lectures and courses themselves. If you put a great deal of energy into observing your own life, you can likewise gain very deep insight and understanding. As long as you observe the inner connections between these events, the subtle changes among them, and the invisible web and field behind them, you will gradually gain very deep insight. And this insight comes from yourself, not from what others tell you.

So Rob wanted to tell us that life contains much truth and reality. We should actually spend more time observing our own lives. Of course, sometimes studying knowledge is also necessary, but it is not mandatory. It is not that one must study the knowledge of life, and that without studying it one cannot do; it is not that one must study the Seth material, or must study the wisdom texts such as the Buddhist scriptures. No. Even if you study nothing at all, as long as you observe life carefully enough, with enough sensitivity and enough insight, you can still gain very deep understanding -- not necessarily less than what you would gain from studying the Seth material.

Dreams, Potential, and Going Deeper into the Psyche

But he asked:

How can we -- how can anyone -- bring more of the innate knowledge to consciousness and then make use of it?

Simply put, how can we bring out all the potential of our lives? How can we bring out, in this one lifetime, all the potential of all the probable selves, all the selves in parallel space-time, all the reincarnational selves, and all the potential possessed by our selves across lifetime after lifetime?

For example:

How can we become more deeply aware of the facts and meanings of our dreams?

How can we gain these deeper insights? How can we obtain some knowledge and draw some nourishment from our dreams? And their tremendous influence on our lives? What influence do these dreams have on us? Although we know this influence is great, how exactly does it affect us? How can we apply it in our lives? Our dreams are often doorways into other realities -- at the very deep levels of dreams, after the fourth level of dreams, after the fourth or fifth level of dreams, there is an entrance to other realities.

Rob said:

Yet I know we are going ever deeper into the psyche.

The joint works of Jane and Seth -- this book, including the previous books, as well as her poetry and other works -- all point to this. The depth and breadth of our consciousness are constantly being expanded as we study the Seth material. The great endowments of our psyche are all there waiting -- ellipsis -- do not worry, all our potential and all our endowments are there waiting for us. We only need to go deeper slowly; do not rush, do not be anxious. We have infinite and boundless time to let us master them.

Those who are anxious still understand time based on the three-dimensional world. They say: if I do not seize the time, if I do not use the time effectively, my time will be wasted like this, meaningless. Do not panic. You have plenty of time; you have infinite and endless time. You only need to slowly savor and experience the potential abilities in your life, and let them manifest in their most beautiful way, embodied and blossoming in your life.

Conclusion

This is Rob's final signature: Robert Butts, Elmira, New York, September 1997. He was still living in that old house in Elmira, already thirteen years after Jane's passing. This is the preface of this book.

After this is the main text, divided into several parts, each part with several chapters, and each chapter containing many sessions. This is the content and structure of this book.

---

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Profile Books, Psycho-Cybernetics (Updated and Expanded) (https://profilebooks.com/work/psycho-cybernetics-updated-and-expanded/) ↩

3. Source: Wikipedia, Conversations with God (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%88%87%E7%A5%9E%E5%B0%8D%E8%A9%B1) ↩

4. Source: Seth Education Foundation, Dr. Hsu Tien-Sheng (https://www.seth.org.tw/article/5/) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. According to Mike's original words, "an average American smokes 4,500 cigarettes a year"; upon verification, it should be "the historical peak of annual per capita cigarette consumption among American adults occurred in 1963, at approximately 4,345 cigarettes, and has declined continuously since then (about 1,236 cigarettes in 2011), never reaching 4,500 cigarettes per person per year." (Source: Holford et al., Impact of Tobacco Control on Adult per Capita Cigarette Consumption in the United States, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 104 Issue 1, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3910051/) ↩

7. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 20-Year Trends in Tobacco Sales and Self-Reported Tobacco Use in the United States, 2000–2020 (https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2022/21_0435.htm) ↩

8. According to Mike's original words, "the famous Steve Jobs previously had pancreatic cancer, was cured, and about ten years later it recurred"; upon verification, it should be "Jobs was diagnosed with a rare pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003, had it surgically removed in 2004, and about five years later the cancer recurred and metastasized to the liver; he received a liver transplant in 2009 and died in October 2011—the recurrence interval was about five years rather than ten, and he was never truly cured." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Steve Jobs, https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs) ↩

9. This claim could not be verified. ↩

10. According to Mike's original words, "Survival Against All Odds"; upon verification, it should be "the author of Survival Against All Odds is Taiwanese mind-body physician Hsu Tien-Sheng (not 'Hsu Tian-Sheng'), and the book received the 2004 Health Good Book (Cancer Prevention category) recommendation award from the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health, Executive Yuan." (Source: Wikipedia, Hsu Tien-Sheng, https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%A8%B1%E6%B7%BB%E7%9B%9B) ↩

11. According to Mike's original words, "Wu Zhihong went to the UK, from Peking University's psychology program"; upon verification, it should be "Wu Zhihong entered the Department of Psychology at Peking University in 1992, studied under Qian Mingyi, and received a master's degree in clinical psychology from Peking University in 2001; his formal education was completed entirely at Peking University, with no experience of studying in the UK." (Source: Wikipedia, Wu Zhihong, https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A6%E5%BF%97%E7%BA%A2) ↩

12. Source: Wikipedia, Welcome to Earth (TV program) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Earth_(TV_program)) ↩

13. According to Mike's original words, "Earth: The Magical Stone"; upon verification, it should be "what the author refers to is likely the 10-episode documentary One Strange Rock (Chinese title Mysterious Planet), hosted by Will Smith and produced by Darren Aronofsky, which premiered on National Geographic Channel on March 26, 2018; there is no documentary titled Earth: The Magical Stone." (Source: Wikipedia, One Strange Rock, https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E7%A5%9E%E7%A7%98%E6%98%9F%E7%90%83) ↩

14. Source: Wikipedia, Anita Moorjani (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Moorjani) ↩

15. Source: Anita Moorjani, Dying to Be Me (https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010898501) ↩

16. Source: Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 41 (Chinese Text Project) (https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing/zh) ↩

17. Source: Lü Buwei, Lüshi Chunqiu, Shen Da Lan, Xia Xian (https://ctext.org/lv-shi-chun-qiu/xia-xian) ↩

18. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Buddha | Biography, Teachings, Influence, & Facts (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Buddha-founder-of-Buddhism) ↩

19. Source: Pang Yun, The Recorded Sayings of Layman Pang (Supplement to the Canon X69n1336) (https://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/sutra/10thousand/X69n1336.pdf) ↩

20. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, William James | Life, Books, Psychology, Contribution, & Facts (https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-James) ↩

21. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Paul Cézanne | Biography, Post-Impressionist Painter, Still Life Artist, Paintings, Mont Sainte-Victoire, Bathers, & Facts (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Cezanne) ↩