Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 885

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 parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This session records Jane resuming class after three weeks. Seth begins with her writing about cats and poetry, pointing out that creation should come from joy rather than duty; he then discusses the limitations of science: science accepts only clear answers, ignores evidence that does not fit, cannot prove the origin of the universe, and also rejects subjective evidence and the value of consciousness. He emphasizes that human beings have within them a complete subjective standard, and that creative play is the foundation of all creation. Seth also comments that psychologists' value tests cannot touch the subjective psyche, and suggests that Jane relax her creative work with a playful attitude. Rob's notes touch on topics such as consciousness and science, and the meaning of life.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Creation should arise from joy and play, not from duty or anxiety.
• Science accepts only answers that are clear and consistent with its assumptions, ignores evidence that does not fit, and therefore cannot prove the origin of the universe, and also rejects subjective evidence.
• Within human beings there is a complete subjective standard that cannot be entirely obscured by dogma or scientific assumptions.
• Creative play is the foundation of all creation, and is also the primary cause of the inner play between subjective and objective reality.
• A science that does not respect consciousness will deny the value of life; mechanical psychological methods such as value tests cannot touch the essence of the subjective psyche.

Main Text

Today is Saturday, October 20, 1979, and the session began at 9:20 in the evening. The previous session was on October 3, so there was a long gap in between. Since Session 884 three weeks ago, five regular class schedules have passed, and we missed four of them. But on October 10 there was indeed a private session, also called a deleted session.

We have been very busy. Jane worked hard on her poetry collection God, and also wrote some poems, some of which deal with reincarnation. I plan to present these poems when Seth's books touch on related topics.

On Sunday, October 7, Jane saw Sue Watkins's book Conversations with Seth¹ for the first time. Sue is the one who wrote the book about the ESP class Jane used to teach, a manuscript about what happened in the class. That work turned out to be much longer than Jane had expected, and Sue still had a few chapters to write, so it was not yet finished. The two ladies spent a day reading the manuscript, and I also had a chance to look at some of it. Sue later admitted with a laugh that she had been somewhat nervous at first, because in the book she wrote a great deal about Rob and Jane. Writing from the perspective of an ESP class member, as an observer and a student, Sue inevitably had to involve Rob and Jane, and she worried that Rob and Jane would be unhappy. But she did a fine job, and there was no such feeling. She had complete freedom to write Conversations with Seth in her own way. The next day Jane began writing the preface for the book, and was already working on a draft.

Last weekend, in the evening, they had a very interesting meeting with a psychologist visiting from New York. Our visitor recorded a richly worded Seth session and promised to send us a transcript.

Today Jane wrote three or four more wonderful short poems, and I hope one day these poems can be published. However, this evening Jane began writing about their cats, such as Billy and Mitzi. He said this was a very interesting piece. These two cats are a brother and sister pair, ten months old, born to a mother cat from the same litter. What Jane wrote goes like this:

In the very beginning, Billy and the kitty were not cats at all, just a little bit of cloud and sky that wanted to be kittens. And no one knew what a cat was, because God had not yet made any cats. If it were not for Billy and Mitzi, perhaps cats would never have existed at all.

This story was written in a very orderly way. Jane presented his own material in a highly humorous manner, reminiscent of his second book about Oversoul Seven, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, and also a book he wrote called Emir, yet different at the same time.

At the very last moment, Jane surprised me by asking whether I wanted to have a session tonight. I thought that because of his general dissatisfaction, he would not want to hold a session. Because Jane was dissatisfied with the current state of things, he had already skipped three weeks.

Seth did not call this session a book dictation, but it certainly applies to this book. And at the beginning, he talked about allowing himself the freedom of creativity today, even though that seemed to conflict with his conscious anxieties. What Seth meant was that Jane should more freely allow his own creative work, such as the little piece about the two kittens he had just written, and the short poems. But Jane himself was actually quite anxious about this, because he felt he was not doing serious work.

A Few Words Off Topic

Then, as he was talking, Seth came through and once again said a few words off topic. It seems as though this session has nothing to do with the book, but in fact it is precisely because of these few words off topic that this entire session is related to the book.

Ruburt forgot to worry. Because he is no longer working, his natural playful creativity bubbled up to the surface. Yet today he wrote poetry, but the poetry does not fit his current view of work, so that wonderful creativity hardly counts.

Simply put, Jane was playing. Jane was playing according to her own interests and hobbies, writing a little poem today, writing an article about cats tomorrow. But Jane was not interested in this sort of thing; she felt it did not count as real creativity.

In a certain way, the universe began in the same way that Ruburt's story began tonight — with the desire to create, out of joyful creation, and not out of a sense of responsibility.

Seth cannot go three sentences without returning to his main subject, and once again pulled the topic back to the creation of the universe. At the very beginning of creation, the universe was just like each of us, filled with joy, possessing this desire to create, and not creating out of some sense of responsibility. This is the greatest difference — we do not need to have responsibility, we only need to have joy. Why is this so? Because the entire universe was born in exactly this way.

The Limits of Science

Many of the concepts we have been sorting through so far will make scientists regard them with a very skeptical attitude.

Of course, the concepts he mentioned earlier are all things scientists would doubt. Although of course some of them will understand what I am saying, there will be some who understand, and for you this is bound to be quite awkward, because the deepest truths cannot be physically proven. The deepest things cannot be proven. Although some scientists will understand, the majority of scientists are opposed.

Science is accustomed to asking very definite questions. And Ruburt recently wrote: science usually has definite answers, even if those answers are wrong.

This is something Ruburt wrote in his God, and he said it with humor. What is the characteristic of science? Science is accustomed to very definite questions, with very definite answers, and even if the answer is wrong, there still has to be an answer, and it has to be definite. Definite questions, definite answers, that is what scientists are solemnly busy doing. Whether the answer is right or not does not matter, but there has to be an answer. If someone asks a question, someone has to answer it. Scientists seem to have a kind of mission, to find answers for questions.

But then, wrong answers can fit together and show a perfect picture, which in itself is a wonderful construction. Why not?

Seth is joking about them, these wrong answers can still be self-consistent with one another, forming a theoretical system, and that in itself is a wonderful framework, a wonderful structure. Why not? It is all play. Using such a wrong viewpoint to explain this universe, and making it all sound perfectly reasonable, is quite interesting.

Because any answer that does not fit this construction is thrown away, never to appear.

Those answers that do not fit this question are all rejected, all filtered out, and they only accept the answers they want. So those answers that could truly reveal the truth are blocked out by them.

Therefore in a certain way, we are dealing with the things that science has thrown away.

What we are doing, the material we are discussing, is actually all the things that science cannot accept, cannot allow, has abandoned, or has blocked out. We take the things science does not want, the things science denies, and we bring them over to discuss and study, and the result is bound to be inconsistent with the views of so-called mainstream science.

But if objective evidence of that nature is considered the prerequisite for proving fact, then as you know, science likewise cannot prove its own view of the origin of the universe.

Even according to the scientists' viewpoint, where so-called objective evidence is the only prerequisite for certifying what is fact and what is not fact, even so, science likewise cannot prove its view of the origin of the universe. It can neither prove that it is right, nor can it prove that it is wrong. The current scientific theoretical system has only established a hypothesis, remember the Big Bang theory is a hypothesis, and to this day it is still a hypothesis. That hypothesis has gathered around itself all the data that fits it, while once again ignoring what does not fit. Scientists only collect what fits the Big Bang theory, and pretend not to see what does not fit.

Furthermore, the subject matter of science finds no answering affirmation in people's hearts.

What does this mean? The subject matter of science has only found affirmation in experiments and theory, but within a person's heart, it cannot evoke that person's inner true affirmation. In fact, science actually evokes the deepest resentment.

Why do people resent science? People know their own value very well, and can understand that their own consciousness is not an accident. Scientists believe that the emergence of the earth and the emergence of life are both accidents, but people are very clear that they themselves are not accidents. How could their own life and their own consciousness be an accident? How could it be a chance occurrence in the universe? So people's hearts actually feel great resentment.

The psyche, then, has within itself an inner affirmation that encourages the emergence of the flesh. This affirmation keeps people from being completely blinded by their psychological constructs.

Within ourselves, our knowledge of ourselves, of the universe, and of the truth has an inner affirmation, and it does not need these external experimental evidences to affirm it. This inner affirmation encourages the emergence of one's own flesh, your physical body also emerges from the affirmation of your inner psyche, it is the same kind of affirmation. And this affirmation keeps people from being completely blinded by their psychological constructs. The psychological construct is the body, our body is constructed by the psyche. Our affirmation of the psyche, our affirmation of the inner knowledge of the psyche, our affirmation of the truth, our beliefs create this body of ours, and everyone creates it this way.

Our inner self creates this body of ours, our life, our inner life creates this physical body of ours, which is precisely what scientists cannot explain. Once scientists try to explain life, once they touch the human body, once they encounter human thought, consciousness, ideas, dreams, they cannot explain any of it.

Seth's meaning is to give you many clues, telling you that you cannot believe in this theory that the so-called objective world is the only truth. Why? Because this thing cannot even be explained in your own self, you yourself cannot get past this hurdle. You could only have been suppressed, from childhood when you did not understand things, by the entire society and the entire system, telling you that you can only believe this. From the time you were an ignorant child, the entire society and your parents forced you to believe that this world is objective, that it is materialistic, that your feelings are only feelings on top of a material foundation, and without this matter you are nothing.

What he does not know is that this matter, including your body, including the environment around you, is actually precisely created by your feelings, your emotions, your beliefs, your thoughts. He has it backwards. And when we were very, very young, when we had no ability to think or judge for ourselves at all, society imposed this whole theoretical system on us, and to this day we are still trying to unlock or dismantle this wrong system. The reason you now feel that all of this is perfectly natural, as if it were self-evident, is because you were too young at the time, and this belief was instilled in you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Inner Integrity

What is more, within human consciousness there is a deep, subjective, immaculately pure, conscious standard by which he ultimately judges all the doctrines and beliefs he has learned in his era. Even if his intellect is temporarily drowned by ignorant dogma, his inner integrity can never be fooled.

Within every person there is a complete consciousness, an immaculately pure consciousness. This consciousness will not be drowned out just because his outer intellect is overwhelmed by society or by traditional conceptual education. Even if his intellect can be suppressed and drowned by ignorance and rigid dogma, his inner integrity will never disappear, and it can never be fooled. This is very interesting: no matter what era or what age it appears in, from ancient times to the present it has always been this way. People thousands of years ago also knew that the Buddhist scriptures made sense. Why? Because they felt that it was something inside themselves. There is a part of a person that knows. There is simply a part of a person that knows, and he does not know why he knows.

Of course, even if the lungs or the digestive processes do not read learned treatises about the body's mechanisms, that part will still grow and mature.

Your lungs cannot read books, and your digestive system cannot recognize words. They have never studied specialized medical or biological knowledge, yet they still function perfectly well, taking good care of themselves, and even taking good care of the human body. Where does this ability come from? Does a person need knowledge in order to do these things? Of course we do not deny that knowledge is better, but these are things that even people with knowledge cannot produce. If you ask today's scientists to make a digestive system like the human one, can they do it? They cannot. Are you not clever? Do you not have wisdom? Have you not learned a great deal? Then why can you not make it? Tell me, is nature cleverer, or are you cleverer?

Evoking Subjective Evidence

So in our book, we hope to -- no matter what field the reader is in -- evoke within the reader a subjective evidence, a resonance between concept and existence.

What is subjective evidence? It is not objective evidence; it is your inner subjective feeling. We want to go through feeling -- of course scientists would rather prove things through objective facts, that this thing is here, this atom is here, this object is here -- but we human beings do not need scientific proof; we can feel whether something is present or not. This is very interesting.

What does resonance between concept and existence mean? Concept is our rational side, it is what we cognize; existence is a state of what is. This is what the very beginning of the Tao Te Ching talks about², the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. If you insist on giving it a name, if you insist on constructing a theoretical system for it, yet in the beginning the universe had no such name, nor did it have such a theoretical system, and it ran perfectly well. After you name it, you have to combine what you have named with its true inner experience or inner existence, and only then do you have a complete cognition. The concept is not important; this existence -- the experience and feeling of this existence, that subjective cognition -- you know it exists, you know this flow of energy, you know the changes within your body, you know what your inner senses can see, and you also know that you can open your inner senses and feel sensations different from the ordinary. All of these are your subjective evidence.

But ordinarily when we perceive, we doubt it. When sensations beyond the five senses appear in us, our first reaction is: oh, how strange, is this feeling right? I must ask someone right away. Why do you never ask whether the flower you see as red -- is the red flower I see correct? Because you feel that is simply natural, simply normal. But you will feel, why is my scalp tingling, why is there this electric sensation all over my body, why do I feel a stream of energy rising from the soles of my feet, this feeling is so strange, right? Why can I still see things with my eyes closed, is this feeling right? That is what this means.

You will evoke some subjective evidence, and then you will find that resonance between concept and existence. You will understand this concept through your feelings, rather than understanding this concept through words.

Many people write in, saying that somehow they feel as if they have always been very familiar with our material. Naturally they do, because this material represents knowledge that is inherent within each individual.

Many readers write letters to Seth, to Jane and Rob, saying that the Seth material gives them a very familiar feeling, as if they already knew all of this. Seth says, of course, because this is knowledge that everyone knows inwardly. I think many of the listeners and readers here have this feeling, right? When reading the Seth material, there is a sense of -- how can this be said so well, this is exactly what I have been thinking in my heart.

Creative Play

In a certain way, creative play is the human version of a far greater characteristic that forms your universe.

The creation of this universe has many, many versions, but for us humans, this version is more like a creative game. Remember, this is said with regard to humans, that it is more like a creative game; what it is for others is another matter.

There are all kinds of definite, even clear, subjective evidence as to the nature of your reality.

Regarding the truth and essence of our world, there are all kinds of clear subjective evidence, but it is very hard to find objective evidence; you can only find subjective evidence. This is something many scientists are unwilling to accept; they think subjective evidence does not count as evidence, and only objective evidence counts as evidence.

Once you truly begin to look for it, especially by comparing your daily life with the world of your dreams, you can discover this subjective evidence.

Why do you discover it by comparing dreams and your life? You will find that there are some connections between your dreams and your life, which is very interesting.

In other words, subjective play is of course the basis of all creation, but far more than that, it is also the main cause of the great inner game of subjective and objective reality.

Subjective play is the basis of all creation, and far beyond that, it is also the main cause, the main driving force, of the great inner game of your subjective and objective worlds.

That Psychologist

Your friend, the psychologist who came to visit over the weekend, with all due respect and the best of intentions, got the wrong target.

He was evaluating that psychologist. He was very enthusiastic about his value test, and he gave Jane and Rob a set of value test questions. And his enthusiasm was the most important thing—that passion of his to get others to take his test, that enthusiasm was what mattered, the test itself did not matter.

The nature of the subjective psyche will never be open to this kind of test.

This kind of test wants to test your mind, wants to test your psyche, wants to test your spirit, and this kind of testing is what psychologists most like to do. Your subjective psyche, the mind that you feel as yourself, its nature will never be open to this kind of test. At most he can take away some superficial things, but he cannot set foot into the place of the essence of your inner psyche.

That test represents a mechanical psychology more than anything else.

It is as if you could break down human values into a kind of logical alphabet made up of the atoms and molecules of the psyche. That idea is like wanting to divide the human psyche into the smallest atoms and molecules, and then telling you how they are combined, and then how they operate.

It was a good try, but it represents the best attempt of psychology to make a very poor hypothesis meaningful.

Seth can be quite sharp-tongued too—it is like the best attempt to make the worst hypothesis meaningful. Your hypothesis is simply wrong, and yet you still want to make it meaningful. Of course you can do that, whatever, but:

Our main purpose is to go beyond the boundaries of psychology.

The themes and topics we are discussing have already gone far beyond the scope of psychology, rather than walking carefully within the existing psychological garden. We are not carefully exploring within the existing body of psychological knowledge; we are far above it.

Creation Is Play

As for Ruburt, he became overly worried about work because of contracts and disputes abroad.

Because by this time the Seth material had begun to be published abroad, published in various languages, and at this point they were having some disputes, and also some translation problems.

If only you could take it for granted that all these problems will be creatively resolved in accordance with your interests.

If only you would stop worrying and trust that this will surely be resolved in a better way. He is still somewhat afraid of relaxing. Jane cannot relax; that makes him feel guilty. He feels that his material has not been translated or published well abroad, and he feels guilty about it, so he cannot relax. Yet his body is responding to this tension of his.

Therefore let him remember that creation is play. And when he allows his mind to let go of other worries, creativity presents itself continuously.

Rob, you must tell Jane that creation itself is a game. A game is not about being perfect, not about being what he thinks it should be, something that must be flawless or executed according to his plan. A game is a game. When he truly begins to create with the mindset of playing a game, his creativity will flow forth continuously, just like the article he wrote for the cat today, and those little poems as well.

He asked Rob if he had any questions. He said he had none. Seth said:

Then you have done well. And the book you are writing on the nature of personal and mass practice is organizing itself according to its own laws, so just let them be. I wish you both a good night.

Rob said good night to Seth. At 9:57, Jane said Seth was right there, and he said it felt very good. After three weeks without a session, Seth was still there.

About That Test

The visiting psychologist left us two sets of the test Seth mentioned. During the time we met with him, Jane refused to fill out those tests, and she has no intention of doing them now either. Even our guest said the test was highly experimental. I believe one of his colleagues actually proved that most of the test was invalid.

I think they may have unintentionally adopted a negative orientation, meaning that the person being tested must choose from a series of more or less negative possibilities, arranging the choices in a definite order of exclusion according to his personal belief system.

This test is essentially asking you to pick, from a pile of negative reactions, one negative reaction that is relatively stronger or relatively weaker for you -- it is still negative at its core.

Clearly Seth fulfilled the statement he made at the end of the previous session. He had reminded me that in the next session he would discuss how subjective entities learn to transfer themselves into physical human beings. But tonight I did not ask him about it, and Jane did not bring it up either. When the routine of a session gets interrupted, such oversights happen easily; when we become concerned with other matters during a break, he may not pay as much attention to a particular session.

Consciousness and Science

Looking back so far, several of the world's top scientists in the field of physics have publicly stated that they believe consciousness fundamentally plays a major role in our world or universe. Even some mathematicians agree with this view and attempt to penetrate this core of our reality.

But for every scientist bold enough to think this way, there are twenty scientists firmly opposed to him. As far as the materialists among most scientists are concerned, only material things are real. To them, consciousness is merely a surface phenomenon, a passive by-product of the brain's physiological and chemical events.

Whenever some scientists step forward to support the idea that consciousness is an important component of our lives and the universe, even more scientists step forward to oppose them, saying that you have already betrayed science by doing this.

They believe that the death of the body is the end of everything, and that everything is ultimately futile.

This is the understanding of traditional science. They contemptuously call their rebellious colleagues animists, those who believe that all life forms and the natural world have a spiritual origin unrelated to physical objects. Such heretics are also called vitalists, a term related to animists, which has long been ridiculed by scientists. As long as you say that all things have spirit, they use this word to label you as a heretic, a heathen.

Jane and I have often been curious about this apparent contradiction. Why curious? Because what else can materialist scientists use to study and break down the material world except the mind or consciousness—that poor surface phenomenon?

These scientists keep saying that consciousness is not important, that thought is merely a by-product of material existence, that these things only exist because there is a brain and brain activity. These are not important; what is important is the brain. Rob would say, you materialist scientists who speak this way—what are you using? What are you thinking with? Aren't you scientists using your consciousness, your mind, your thoughts? You use your thoughts and your consciousness to criticize, saying that consciousness and thought are not important, that only matter in this world is important—isn't that laughable?

This does not hold up under scrutiny. A scientist who denies the importance of consciousness is using consciousness to argue with you—isn't that a tremendous joke?

Not to mention the countless experiments proving that material things are not solid or objective at all, but are merely energy.

He is saying, even if we concede for the sake of argument, modern scientific experiments have long since proven that there is no true matter, only energy. Since only energy exists, then matter is energy, and consciousness is also energy. So we have developed a mind, yet we deny its own reality.

Human beings developed intelligence, developed the mind, developed consciousness, and then used their own mind and intelligence to logically deduce that mind and intelligence are not real, that only material things are real. Can you hear the absurdity in that logic? Consciousness denies itself, the mind denies itself, it denies its own existence. Then what is this thought that denies your own existence? That is not important either.

As far as we know, human beings are the only creatures on Earth seriously engaged in such a futile endeavor.

On Earth, only humans—this one creature—use their own mind to deny the fact that the mind exists.

We find it ironic that materialists spend many years acquiring their specialized education and reputation, and then use both to tell us that all effort—including, of course, their own—is ultimately meaningless.

These scientists spend their entire lives studying and researching, and then finally tell you that all this study and research becomes meaningless with the death of the brain. Then what are they doing? If our lives have no meaning, if our living has no meaning, then why are you still researching these things? Just eat, drink, and have fun—be a happy little pig, eat your fill and sleep, sleep your fill and eat. Wouldn't that be fine? Since life has no meaning to begin with, why are you still studying these things? It defies common sense.

But for materialism, the mind-brain duality is not scientific in orthodox doctrine, yet it is not falsifiable either.

Traditional science does not acknowledge the duality of mind and brain; it only acknowledges the existence of the brain. The mind is merely a blood-pumping organ; as an organ of thought or an organ of human consciousness, it does not believe it exists, and it cannot prove that this view is wrong either.

We can equally understand that scientists who accept the truth of the mind would answer the above by saying: the notion that only material things are real also cannot be proven false.

You cannot prove whether the existence of the psyche is real or false, and likewise you cannot prove that only material things are real.

Regardless of what Seth may have said or might say about other probable realities or humanity's origins on Earth, I think that at this stage of history, in America in 1979, it is extremely dangerous for anyone, scientist or not, to dogmatically declare that life is meaningless or a farce, or that our spiritual understanding at this time—an attribute of our reality—does not really exist.

In our current era, to deny the meaning of life, to say that life is a farce, and then to deny that our spiritual understanding of the attributes of our reality does not exist—he says that is all very dangerous.

Future developments will very likely prove such a limited viewpoint to be wrong.

The history of science itself contains many examples of doctrines that have been proven to be in error.

Open the history of scientific development, and you will find that later generations are always negating earlier ones, and the earlier ones were almost always wrong. Every understanding we have had of the world has been wrong, until later it was proven wrong, and when a new theory emerged, the old one was proven wrong. According to this pattern of scientific exploration that we humans have followed so far, we have always been in this mode—discover a theory and prove it correct, then a couple of years later prove it wrong, then a new theory emerges, and a few years later it is also proven wrong. Look carefully through the history books; this is not just a few isolated cases. So our current science will inevitably be proven wrong in the future as well.

Furthermore, why would we humans want to rely on such a fragile notion as surface appearances to understand our reality?

Why do we humans rely on these surface appearances—the things visible to our naked eyes, the things perceived by our outer senses? Why can't we believe in these inner feelings and experiences of ours? Why can only what is received through the outer senses be considered real?

Indeed, our personal and collective ignorance of our own probable realities is of the utmost importance at this point in our current history.

We humans are currently ignorant of unknown realities, including these probable, parallel-space-time realities, and this is of the utmost importance at this time.

If, ultimately, because of humanity's endless search for meaning, we do not end up with some official way of returning to the ancient idea that there is spirit within everything—living or inanimate—Jane and I would not be surprised.

If there is no official response regarding whether the existence of spirituality is real, or whether every thing has an inner spirituality, he says that having no official response is perfectly normal, not surprising at all. The official response to this matter is simply not to respond. They cannot prove it right, nor can they prove it wrong, but they tell you as a matter of fact that we now only adopt the scientific approach. Beyond that, you are either anti-intellectual, or ignorant, or you have ulterior motives.

Such a new version of animism and vitalism would encompass everything from nuclear practice to the observable universe, to the discovery of the largest astronomical phenomena imaginable. Humanity does indeed know its own value.

Seth's material says that consciousness is the most core existence of this world, and this statement is essentially equivalent to animism. All things have consciousness, and all things are created by consciousness. This is a new kind of animism, not the traditional kind. If you go to India, you will see that India is a pantheistic country—believing that every tree is a god, every plant has a god, flowers have flower gods, trees have tree gods, birds have bird gods, everything is a god. That is the older pantheism. The theory Seth mentions, that this world is composed of consciousness, is also a kind of pantheism, but it is a new kind of pantheism. This new animism can answer questions from the most microscopic nuclear physics and atomic physics within the atomic nucleus, all the way to the galaxies and starry seas of the universe, using one single theory. The most important thing is that human beings know they themselves have value, whereas traditional materialists believe that humans have no value, that living has no meaning, and that after death everything vanishes into nothing.

The Meaning of Life

Recently Jane has been commenting on these questions in her own way, and what she has said will appear in a later chapter of The "Unknown" Reality.

It is certainly necessary that we believe life has meaning, and that belief is very likely a biological necessity. If we are, as science maintains, merely creatures formed by mindless elements in a universe that was itself created by chance, surrounded everywhere by chaos, then how could we even produce the concepts of meaning and order?

Jane says it is certainly necessary that we believe life has meaning. Why? Because this belief that life has meaning is very likely a biological necessity -- not just an intellectual necessity, but a biological necessity. If that were not the case, then according to what scientists say, we are the product of an extremely small probability in the universe, we were just formed that way, and all around us there exists all kinds of cosmic chaos. If scientists were to calculate the odds of human beings appearing, it would be some unimaginably tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent. If the appearance of human beings came about on the basis of such a low probability, and apart from this human probability everything else is chaos, and only humans are special, only Earth is special, then everything around us should be chaos. If this whole world were generated by probability, then wouldn't it become a subjective world? Then it would not be an objective world.

In other words, if you go by thermodynamics, by the Big Bang theory of the universe, the entropy of our entire universe should ultimately tend toward zero. Entropy is decreasing; the universe can only become simpler and simpler. What does "simpler and simpler" mean? For example, if you detonate a bomb, the instant the bomb explodes is the most complex moment -- a violent reaction occurs, energy bursts out in an instant, then everything flies apart, heaven and earth are torn asunder, thick smoke rises to the sky, a crater is blasted into the ground, rocks and debris fly everywhere. At the instant of explosion, entropy is at its maximum. A few minutes later, a few seconds later, the dust settles and the world returns to calm. No matter how great the explosion, there will come a day when it returns to calm. If the universe is such a great explosion, will it not also have its day of returning to calm? Going from the most complex state to the simplest, as if the explosion had never happened -- this state is called entropy decreasing.

But the appearance of human beings has brought about a fundamental reversal in the entire universe. Humans are making this entropy increase. Humans are making this universe more and more complex, so complex that it is almost beyond description. Just look at how complex our phones are and you will understand. Apple's newest Mac Pro chips, the M1 Pro and M1 Max -- those are just chips in a small laptop. Do you know how many transistors are on such a small chip? 59 billion. 59 billion. The population of our Earth is only 7 billion³, and on one tiny chip there are 59 billion transistors. Is that complex? Of course it is complex -- so complex that only a few companies in the world can manufacture it. Right now only TSMC can make it; no other company can.

Do you think the universe is becoming simpler or more complex? According to those Big Bang theorists, this universe should gradually, from the beginning of the Big Bang, tend more and more toward calm, toward a state where the dust has settled, right? But why did something like human beings suddenly appear, causing a fundamental reversal in the universe? Then one can only say that the law you originally proposed simply does not exist. This whole business of entropy decreasing is fundamentally wrong. Otherwise you cannot explain human beings -- why are humans so special? Humans can build skyscrapers, such precise instruments and meters, phones, computers, spaceships. None of this is simplification; all of it is making the universe more and more complex. We humans are moving against this action of entropy decrease; we are increasing entropy. You cannot explain this logically.

Jane does not approach it from the angle of entropy. She simply says:

If we are the product of a chance occurrence in nature, then why can we produce anything meaningful at all?

We are all a species produced by a chance occurrence in nature, a probability of one in trillions upon trillions upon trillions. What meaning are you even talking about? It is accidental; it has no meaning. Only things with regularity have meaning; only things with order have meaning. Something that occurs accidentally within disorder has no meaning. If the birth of humanity itself was born in meaninglessness, then why does your humanity go seeking meaning? Isn't that absurd?

Science would say that the concept of meaning itself is merely a reflection of brain states, just as the illusion of our consciousness is as well.

Scientists will jump out and say: don't discuss these things. Meaning is just an illusion of the brain; there is no such thing as meaning. Even your human consciousness is an illusion. Then if you ask him what is real, he will say only the material world is real. Then what do you use to sense that it is real? Don't you use your senses? He says no, I don't use my senses to know things; I use instruments to know things.

Do you understand what I mean? It is like a mother who gives birth to a child. She knows this is her child, but she insists on doing a DNA test -- not to test who the father is, but to test whether she herself is the mother. Isn't that taking off your pants to fart? The child came out of your own womb, and you still need to test whether it is your child. Of course, surrogacy and artificial insemination are a different matter; we are not discussing those. We are talking about natural conception and birth.

What am I trying to tell you with this example? Things you already know, things you already know through your sensory experience and feelings -- you do not trust your feelings, your experience, your senses. You say all of these are unreliable; I only trust my instruments, I only trust what scientists say, I only trust these scientific theories. I do not trust my feelings, I do not trust my experience, because they are unreliable. Why are they unreliable? Because scientists told me they are unreliable. Is that funny?

You say scientists tell you -- then ask the scientists, what is reliable? Scientists say instruments are reliable. Then ask the scientists, how do you know instruments are reliable? He says I prove it through theory. How do you know your theory is reliable? Because I proved it is reliable. How do you prove it? Because I use reasoning and logic. When you circle all the way around, isn't it still that scientists think it is reliable? Isn't it still that scientists think the theory is reliable, think the instruments are reliable, think the experimental equipment is reliable, think the experimental process is reliable, and then tell you this thing is reliable? Then isn't all of this just what scientists think?

You say that is science, it has theory -- but doesn't every scientific theory have a premise, have an assumption? If you have studied mathematics, you know that before mathematics there are axioms, and all axioms are assumptions. Do you remember the first class when you studied mathematics? The teacher would re-teach you mathematics, and he would tell you these axioms: mathematics must first have axioms, then theorems, then formulas, built up through generations of reasoning. He would tell you these axioms are all assumptions; we first assume these axioms exist, otherwise there is no way to proceed.

Science has already made it very clear: all scientific theories are established on the basis of an assumption, and only then do they hold. But after we have done this for so long, we forget that the assumed premise is an assumption, and then without further thought, without thinking anymore, we accept the whole thing wholesale. This is our current state. And this assumption of science has also been overturned again and again. Look at the history of human understanding of science -- overturned again and again. From the earliest belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun and so on -- I won't even bother with those examples; they are everywhere. In every theory, in every discipline, you will find it being overturned again and again.

A scientist who does not respect consciousness is bound to create his own illusions. He ignores the reality of experience and the evidence of existence, and in so doing he denies rather than enhances the value of life.

A scientist who does not respect consciousness -- that is, he does not acknowledge the importance of consciousness. Although he is using consciousness to do his work, he says this consciousness is not important; matter is what matters. What is the result for such a scientist? He is bound to create his own illusions -- because if consciousness is not important, then what the scientist says, isn't it just nonsense? Only if you acknowledge the importance of consciousness can you prove that what you are saying is not nonsense. But your conclusion is that the scientist solemnly tells you consciousness is not important. Then what are you using when you say these things, when you reason through these things? Aren't you using your consciousness? So in the end you are bound to create an illusion.

This kind of scientist simply does not look at our real human experience and feelings. He does not look at the obvious evidence that exists everywhere in this world; he only believes in the things filtered through his own set of theories. Those subjective evidences are everywhere -- the changes in every person's thoughts, including his own, which he experiences every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Why doesn't he study where human thoughts come from? Why doesn't he study whether human thought possesses a material reality? Does he dare to set it up as a research topic? He doesn't even study it, because he thinks it is wrong.

But without thought, what do we have left? We don't study our own thoughts, we say they are not important, they have no meaning, and then we turn a blind eye, we don't study them, and instead we go study material things. But aren't all those material things just things your thoughts perceive? Then you say perception is not important either, thought is not important, sensing is not important, experiments are not important -- only those material existences matter. Then how do you perceive that material existence? I perceive it through instruments, I perceive it through theory. You just looped through the logic again -- then where did your instruments come from? How did you come to trust those instruments? Doesn't this just go around in circles and come back again? You go around and around, and isn't the conclusion still the same? Do you acknowledge the importance of consciousness or not? You do. Then why not study it? Why always bypass it? You can't study it, you can't study it thoroughly -- you say we scientists need to intensify our efforts to study it. And yet you deny the reality of its existence, deny that consciousness is an objective existence, and then you use your consciousness to prove that this objective existence does not exist. But the very method by which you prove it does not exist is your consciousness. Is that funny? This science is just that funny.

Scientists right now are like this: if you say this to them, they will say you are crazy, you are an idiot, you are anti-intellectual, you are a sophist, I won't talk to you. Why won't they talk to you? Because they can't talk to you, because you have directly stepped outside their own frame. They can only talk to you within their frame; once you step outside their frame, they won't talk to you, because they don't know how to talk. They think they are above talking to you, because you lack scientific literacy, scientific knowledge. When you bring up people who have won the Nobel Prize and talk to them about it, they have nothing to say, and then they will find some other people who oppose it and say, look, there are still people who oppose him.

We don't need to argue with them, we don't need to discuss with them. We just know this thing, and we just pass this knowledge on to more and more people. As Seth says, this is something everyone knows in their heart, something that was suppressed by our traditional education and science, and no one ever told him this knowledge. As long as he knows it, as long as he has heard it, he will understand in his heart whether this is something familiar to him inwardly -- something that his inner pure, flawless, complete consciousness can recognize, and science cannot.

These scientists are not enhancing the value of life; they are denying the value of life. They have denied the existence of consciousness itself -- what is left after that? This is what Jane means.

I wish everyone a magical and beautiful day.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Laozi, Tao Te Ching (https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing/zhs) ↩

3. According to Mike's original words, "our Earth's population is only 7 billion"; upon verification, it should be "the world population reached 8 billion on November 15, 2022, and it took about 12 years for the global population to grow from 7 billion to 8 billion." (Source: United Nations, "Day of Eight Billion," https://www.un.org/zh/dayof8billion) ↩