The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by the AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike 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
In ancient times, humans spent most of their time in a dreaming state, using imagination in dreams to create language, civilization, the environment, and the past and future. Early humans had slow bodily rhythms, communicating and cooperating with the environment and other species through inner consciousness, and physical laws were not yet fixed. Later, waking time increased, the outer senses developed, and language replaced inner communication. Dreams remained a pathway linking to the source and healing the body. The universe is based on loving cooperation, and being alive was originally easy and safe.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Ancient humans spent long periods in the dreaming state; waking was only for moving the body, replenishing physical energy, and reproducing.
- Early dreamers used imagination in dreams to create language, civilization, history, and the future, and dreamed forth all life forms.
- Early humans communicated and cooperated with the environment and other species through inner consciousness; bodily rhythms were slow, and physical laws had not yet become fixed.
- Language originated from practice in dreams; sleep and dreaming connected people to the source and healed the body in dreams.
- The universe is built upon the loving cooperation of all its parts; living was originally easy, safe, and reliable.
Main Text
Session 893: The Ancient Dreamers
This session is the first session of Chapter 4 of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, held on Monday, January 7, 1980, beginning at 8:43 p.m.
Jane began calling him to class early, to make sure they could hold the session before he became too relaxed. He planned to return to the approach of having a break in the middle -- resting for a while in the middle of the session, ten or twenty minutes, which would allow him to hold some longer sessions, since holding a session continuously would otherwise be very tiring.
By 8:40, Jane felt Seth was nearby. He said, "As I said, I will do my best." Then Seth came directly with astonishing exuberance and said good evening. They said good evening to Seth, and then Seth directly announced the title of the new chapter: Chapter 4, The Ancient Dreamers. This chapter follows the previous chapter's "sleepwalkers" -- the early sleepwalkers, the early differentiation of species, and the early trance-state consciousness. Trance-state consciousness refers to the idea that our environment is a state of consciousness of an entity in a trance state.
The Dream World of Ancient Times
Seth said that according to our human time scale, there was a period so long that it is hard to describe.
According to your time scale, for a period that to you would seem like an eternity, human beings dreamed far longer than they were awake.
Here he borrowed the Buddhist concept of a "kalpa." This kalpa is extremely long; you can look it up -- I cannot remember exactly how long it is. An eternal kalpa -- when we say "ten thousand kalpas without recovery," that length of time is beyond knowing. From our human perspective, this is an extremely, extremely long time, possibly billions or tens of billions of years, at least measured in units of hundreds of millions. In such a long river of time, human beings of that era spent most of their time dreaming; they slept for very long periods. Just as animals all do -- do not animals today also sleep for very long periods? If you carefully observe cats and other animals, you will know: apart from sleeping, they eat, and apart from that, they mate -- just these three things. Waking was only for moving the body around and replenishing physical strength, and later for reproduction. Early human beings were the same: waking was only for moving the body and replenishing strength, and in the later period for reproduction and mating. Otherwise, they spent most of their time sleeping.
That was indeed a dreamlike world, yet it was extremely fascinating and full of vitality. But you must remember, this dreamlike world was not the same as the dreamlike world we ordinarily understand -- it was more like the state of our inner world.
In this dream, his dreams were not the same as our ordinary dreams today. When we dream now, we are passive; whatever is arranged in the dream, we seem not to have much initiative -- that is to say, we are not doing any lucid dreaming, or dreaming with consciousness. But the dreams of the people of that time were carried out with consciousness. In the dream, he used his imagination, playing with all the possibilities brought by this new adventure. What is meant by a new adventure? Having this earthly environment, having a physical body in material existence, having so many new species -- against such a background and environment, the adventure unfolded through imagination.
Seth used the following passage to explain this imagination:
Imagining all possible languages and means of communication, weaving the stories of great future civilizations in dreams, filled with their own history, and building mental frameworks. And because they were now aligned with time... this framework automatically created the past, just as it created the future.
The word "alliance" used here is not quite right; the original word is "alignment." It is not an alliance, but rather that they were now in alignment with time, or synchronized with time, having entered the state influenced by the inner cohesion of the space-time web mentioned above. To put it simply, they identified with time and synchronized with time.
Let me go through this whole passage: the imagination of the people of that time was extremely rich, but it was mainly imagination in dreams. In that dream world, when they spent most of their time sleeping and dreaming, they were not idle in the dream; they constantly used their imagination -- imagining the birth of language, imagining communication with other species, imagining their own future, imagining the future of this civilization. Including our civilization today and today's development -- all of it was within their imagination.
Then he went on to say, how did they generate their own history? Because in the dream state there is no concept of time, so how could there be a future and a history? Because the people of that time already had such a positioning with space-time, such a consistency, such a cognition -- through the outer senses they had established a definite, unassailable unity with this integrated world of space-time. Within such a space-time unity, he used imagination -- remember, used imagination -- to create its future, and at the same time created its past.
Shared Dreams and Joint Creation
Then Seth said:
To some degree, these ancient dreams were shared by every consciousness engaged in the earthly adventure.
Just as he said in the previous session, these dreams were like a great reservoir, providing all the material for every consciousness. Every consciousness shared from it, so that living things and the environment together formed the great environmental reality. At this time, the animals, living things, and plants of the world, together with their environment -- the earth, air, water, mountains and rivers -- jointly formed a great overall environment with animals and environment together. The core point here is that they were generated together; this is the core.
The valleys and mountains, and the inhabitants dwelling within them, together dreamed themselves into a state of existence and a state of symbiosis.
That is, these environments and the living things within them dreamed themselves together into a state of existence and a state of symbiosis. This is quite crucial.
The Slow Rhythm and Relaxed Life
Seth said that in that respect, human beings, from your viewpoint, lived at a much slower pace. The human beings of that time, from the viewpoint of us modern people, lived a life much slower than ours.
For example, the blood did not need to circulate so quickly through the veins and arteries, and the heart did not need to beat so fast.
The heart did not need to beat so fast, the blood did not need to flow so fast, and the blood pressure did not need to be so high. Modern people have great pressure and fierce competition in life, so high blood pressure is a normal phenomenon. But in that ancient period, the pressure of life was not so great; life was very relaxed, and the whole person was relatively slow -- slow breathing, slow heartbeat, low blood pressure.
And in an important way, the cooperation between the living thing and the environment in which it lived did not need to be so precise.
That is to say, the cooperation between living things and the surrounding environment did not need to be as precise as it is for us now. Our cognition of the environment now has to be precise to a very exact degree -- growing grain, when to water it, when to fertilize it, when to harvest it, all follow strict seasonal markers, with precise amounts of water, precise amounts of fertilizer, and controlled seeds. Like China's 24 solar terms -- those are accurate to the minute and second; although we may not be able to do it, the timing is extremely accurate. In ancient times it was not like this; our cooperation with nature was very loose.
Why was it not so precise? Because between living things and nature, there was a flexible state of mutual give-and-take of consciousness. That is to say, between living things and the environment there was a process of conscious interaction, and this process could compensate for those precise confirmations. We modern people no longer have this ability; we cannot communicate with nature through the underlying inner consciousness -- it is not that nature does not communicate; it has always been communicating, but we human beings are not aware of this mutual give-and-take of consciousness. We can only understand the external environment through external, space-time-based, very precise cognition, so we have invented all kinds of instruments to measure and position things, to locate these things in space-time. All of this is because we have lost the inner perception, which was not needed in ancient times.
The Not-Yet-Fixed Laws of Matter
The basic laws were not yet firmly established, in ways almost impossible to describe.
At that time it is very hard for me to describe to you, because the laws of matter had not yet been established. For example, gravity was not yet stable; if gravity was not stable, the air was not stable either, the whole thing was not stable, and the magnetic field was not stable. This is very hard for modern people to understand; you think the earth should just be the way it is -- gravity itself had not yet exercised its all-pervasive dominance. We now know that gravity has a dominant force over all objects existing within its gravitational field, but in ancient times even this had not yet formed.
How could that be possible, you say? Is not gravity a natural property? According to scientists, any object with mass has gravity, because the earth has mass, so the earth has gravity. This is how we consider it from a three-dimensional perspective, using basic physical concepts. But you have forgotten what this force itself is -- including the gravitational field itself, it is all a consciousness of the earth, created by our units of consciousness. Force is not an isolated thing existing as scientists tell you; it is itself the result of consciousness; it is consciousness that forms such a force. So in that period, the earth's gravity was not as stable as it is now, because that consciousness was also not as strong.
In this way you can understand why gravity in ancient times acted on some species and not on others. Modern scientists find this very hard to understand; you cannot describe it -- either everything has gravity or nothing does; how could some have it and some not? But now you know: this is consciousness at work.
So that the air was more buoyant. Human beings perceived the supportive force of the air in a luxurious, intimate way.
The buoyancy of the air at that time was greater than now, and people could feel its supportive force, whereas now you cannot feel it. Can you feel the buoyancy of the air? Not even a tiny bit. But in ancient times they could feel it.
The Self Not Limited to the Skin
Seth said:
He perceived himself in a different way... so that his identification with himself was not limited to the area within his skin.
The human beings of that time did not identify themselves the way we do now, believing that only what is within the skin is the self. His ego would go out with his consciousness, entering the space around his form; he was not limited by the skin, and did not have this sense of the skin as a boundary.
And a primitive sensory experience that you have long forgotten gave him the feeling of being one with the atmosphere.
He used a primitive sensory experience that we modern people no longer have, feeling himself one with the atmosphere. Because his perception of the atmosphere at that time was different from now -- the atmosphere had buoyancy, and he could feel the buoyancy of the atmosphere, just as we can feel the support of water when we are in water. We now cannot feel the atmosphere, but we can feel water. And because the people of ancient times could feel the support of the atmosphere and the presence of the atmosphere, they could release their consciousness from the body and blend it with the surrounding atmosphere. When he blended his consciousness into the atmosphere and went beyond the skin, he could perceive himself as one with the atmosphere, because he truly was together with it.
Higher Mental Activity and Bodily Adjustment
Seth continued:
Incidentally, during this period, the highest and most creative mental activity, including the functioning of the body, his relationship with the environment, his balance and temperature, and his frequent internal changes, all took place during this time.
This was a highest-level, most creative mental activity -- adjusting the functioning of the body, adjusting the relationship between the human body and the environment, adjusting the balance between them, the harmonious balance with nature, and the coordination with nature's temperature and seasonal changes, as well as some changes occurring within the body. Consciousness, in a state of unity, began to make adjustments to the relationship between the body and the environment; this was the premise.
So this is why human beings and nature could become integrated -- at this stage, human beings had physical bodies, but their inner unity let them know how to integrate the physical body very well with the environment and with nature. This is why the theory of traditional Chinese medicine has always regarded the human being as a part of nature; when regulating the human body, it has a very great relationship with seasonal changes, and if a person's state is adjusted to a very natural state, that person will not get sick and will not have any problems.
Learning and Training in Dreams
Seth explained it this way:
As units of consciousness transferred their inner knowledge into physical form through the dream state, all these extremely complex activities were learned and trained in dreams.
Units of consciousness have all knowledge, because they are connected with all other units of consciousness; they know the knowledge of each one, and they also know the knowledge of the whole of All That Is. But they had to concretize this person, and they knew how a person could be concretized -- all the plans, all the possibilities, all the template forms, the knowledge of growth and development, they had all of it, and then they had to make the attempt at concretization on the human body; this process was completed in dreams.
In our human terms, people began, together with other species, to transfer more completely into the physical world, developing the outer senses, and intersecting with time and space more precisely and more subtly.
According to our human viewpoint of time, people began to awaken together with other species. How did they awaken? Their sleeping time became shorter and shorter, and their waking time became more and more. When they were awake, what they could use were the outer senses. He already said in the previous session that the inner senses can only be used during sleep; otherwise, even if the inner senses sent all the information, he would not accept it. So the more time spent awake, the more he used the outer senses, and the more precise and more identified his connection with time and space became.
The Necessity of Sleep and Dreams
Yet human beings still needed sleep and dreaming:
And that state remained firmly linked to his own source, and to the source of the universe as he knew it.
Why do human beings need to sleep and dream? Because that state is connected to his source, and he can only make that connection while sleeping. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded a couple of years ago; a scientist proved through experiments that the harm of not sleeping is enormous1 -- a person can live for a long time without eating or drinking, but a person cannot go without sleep. He proved this through experiments, but he did not know why, or at least did not find the fundamental reason. According to the scientists' view, a human being is a biological organism; as long as energy is continuously supplied, theoretically there is no need to sleep. If you regard a person as a biological robot, supplying energy to every cell, why must he sleep? Scientists have never figured this out; they cannot find the reason. They know it is a fact, and they have given some reasons -- people need rest, the brain needs rest, sleep allows the body to recover; they can observe through instruments that the body recovers tremendously during sleep, just like recharging, and if he is not allowed to sleep he cannot get recharged, and his bodily functions decline sharply. In fact, this is exactly the principle explained in this passage of Seth: because only during sleep and dreaming does a person connect with his own source and the source of the universe. If too long a time passes without making this connection, our life will wither -- because the source of life comes from the universe and from one's own higher dimension.
But it is also not the case that the more you sleep, the better. Seth said in Seth Speaks that there is no need to sleep so much; he hoped for frequent alternation between sleeping time and waking time -- sleeping too long takes you too far away from physical reality; going too long without sleep takes you too far away from the inner world. He suggested segmented sleep: sleep four or five hours at night, and when tired during the day, make up another hour or two.
The Origin of Language
Seth continued:
This came to a halt in a stable but quite deep rotation. Then human beings dreamed their language.
Human language came from dreams. In dreams, he dreamed of how to use his tongue to form words:
He dreamed of how to use his tongue to form words, and in dreams practiced stringing sounds together to produce meaning, until at last he could consciously begin a sentence without really knowing how he began it, yet with the confidence that he could and would complete it.
To put it simply, human beings practiced speaking constantly in dreams, practiced so many, many times over, that when he opened his mouth, the words came out. Although he did not know how the sentence was produced -- which muscles were called upon, which controls of breath in the lungs were used -- he did not know any of it, but he had confidence in the sentence, and spoke it with great confidence. What was the reason? He had already tried it hundreds and thousands of times in dreams.
All languages are based on the languages spoken in dreams.
However, when human beings became less dreamers and more immersed in specific moments, the need for language arose. Why did language arise? Because we are awake more and more of the time, and dreaming less and less of the time. In dreams we communicate through inner telepathy, but when awake this does not work; we must use language to achieve communication. The outer senses do not have the ability of telepathy; it only exists when the inner senses are activated. And the inner senses are screened off after we wake -- the information the inner senses give you is not accepted by you. The previous chapter explained why it is not accepted: because you must use the outer senses to live in this world, and at any one time you must focus on only this one sense. If you mixed the outer senses and the inner senses together while awake, it would be disadvantageous for your present life in the physical world.
So in the dream state, communication between human beings and those nearby, including communication with other species, was instantaneous and required no language. Now language arose to replace that inner communication -- we no longer have inner communication, so we can only achieve communication through language.
The Single Source Beneath Early Cultures
Seth said that in what people call early cultures, such as cave paintings and religions, there was a fundamental unity beneath everything. Because when human beings tried to translate inner knowledge into physical certainty, they were all fed by that common source.
In the ruins of early human cultures, whether in religion or in painting, there is always a statement: our source is one. In Western religion there is the fall of the Tower of Babel2, the tower reaching to heaven, and so on -- saying that in ancient times human beings spoke one language, and people and all things, people and people, all used this one language. According to Western myth and legend, it was in order to make people fight each other that the gods shattered this unified language. In ancient Chinese mythology, there is Pangu separating heaven and earth, splitting heaven and earth apart with one great effort; in Western mythology, at that time there was a tower through which one could communicate with the gods in heaven, and later this tower was gone. So our language split into all kinds of different languages, and communication became problematic. Not only languages, but also dialects. Chinese has dozens or even hundreds of dialects; people in the same region, as long as they are separated by a few villages, sometimes cannot understand each other's speech. There is an old Chinese saying, "different sounds within ten li," which means exactly this.
Bodily Stability and Healing in Dreams
Seth continued:
The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, achieving a balanced state of force in its complementary responses to weather and the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind.
Early human beings had to learn to keep the body in a stable state, not subject to huge changes from the influence of the natural environment. No matter what the season, the human body should be stable, and strength and agility should be maintained. What is meant by complementary responses to weather and the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind? At that time, there was still a state of mutual connection between people and all things; when people and all things, including the weather and the four elements, could still communicate with each other, they negotiated a state of balance -- the influence of the environment and the four elements on the human body would not be enough to affect the stability of the body. This state was negotiated and communicated. So now you know why the environment makes us so comfortable, why we can live in such a comfortable environment -- that was the result of their negotiation, the result of a balance.
To dream the calculations that the conscious mind alone could not contain.
Your conscious mind cannot calculate how the environment achieves a state of balance and harmony with your body; the brain cannot figure it out, but in dreams it can be achieved. After our inner senses are opened, after mutual communication with the outside world and the environment, a state of harmony beyond human imagination can be achieved.
In sleep, the body learned to heal itself in its dreams. And in certain levels of that state, even now every portion of consciousness still contributes to the health and stability of all other portions.
The body heals itself in dreams. In those states, every part of your consciousness contributes to the health of your body.
The Universe Is Cooperation, Not Confrontation
Seth said:
Your universe is far from a universe at sword's point; it is built upon cooperation filled with love among all its parts.
The universe is not oppositional; the universe cooperates with each other in a spirit of love.
That was given. The gift of life itself brings about the realization of that cooperation.
By what was this cooperation given? By life. Because life itself bestows this cooperation based on love. All things have life, and all things are realized through this cooperation based on love.
Because of a cooperative inner relationship, the parts of the body exist as a unit. And those existed before your birth -- before you were steeped in any contrary cultural beliefs.
Because of the existence of such a mutually cooperative inner relationship, every part of the body -- including your organs and your cells -- exists as an independent unit. But the existence of such independent units ultimately forms a mutually cooperative, balanced, harmonious relationship that keeps your body stable. And this mutually cooperative existence was already there before you were born. In other words, when you did not yet exist, the substances that make up your body already existed; your atoms and molecules already existed, and the cooperative relationship among them had long existed as well. It is not as you think, that you were born and then cells divided and only then did they cooperate. What he wants to tell you is that this cooperation existed before you had life.
If it were not for that most basic, most primitive cooperation of love -- which is an innate characteristic of life itself -- life could not continue.
The cooperation based on love is an innate characteristic of life itself; it cannot be erased and cannot be changed. Without this, life could not continue.
Every individual of every material thing takes that initial eagerness and the joy of life as the foundation of its own principles.
Remember this sentence: the initial eagerness and the joy of life are the basic principles of every individual existence. So you see the natural world existing as it does -- vigorous, thriving, flourishing -- because their principles of living carry eagerness and carry joy.
Every molecule of every species, and every consciousness, regardless of its degree, regardless of its complexity, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself -- not only for itself, but for all of its reality.
Every individual is enhancing the quality of life itself. Here he translated it as "quality," but I think the word "quality" is better -- in English it is one word. This pursuit of enhancing the quality of life itself is what we call value fulfillment. And they do this not only for themselves, but also for everything in the reality in which they exist. This is the relationship between each of us as individuals and the whole; this is an inherent characteristic of life.
Do Not Misunderstand the Actions of Nature
Seth said:
No matter what beliefs might lead you to misunderstand the actions of nature, making some living things seem as if they deserved condemnation.
Do not be misled by what others tell you -- saying this animal is very bad, it specifically eats such and such; the little white rabbit is very cute, the big bad wolf is very bad, as if the big bad wolf deserved condemnation. Every living thing knows that they cooperate with each other, that their cooperation is based on love, including the big bad wolf eating the little white rabbit. Do not condemn them.
The Creativity of the Ancient Dreamers
Seth continued:
In a certain way, those ancient dreamers, through their boundless creativity, dreamed into being all the living things of life in their past, present, and future. That is to say, their dreams opened the doors of time and space for those existences that could not otherwise be released into actuality -- just as, for example, units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.
The ancient dreamers, through their boundless creative ability, dreamed into being all living creatures in their dreams -- past, present, and future. If it had not been for their ability to dream them into being, those creatures could never have entered our space-time. In other words, without these early dreamers exercising their powerful creativity in dreams, there would be no natural environment in which all things now flourish. By that time the dreamers already had a concept of time, already had the concepts of past, present, and future, but they were able to create and release all these living beings of past, present, and future through dreams -- releasing the dinosaurs at a particular time, releasing the mammoths at a particular time. If it had not been so, those creatures could never have entered our space-time.
If this state is hard for you to understand, you can imagine it this way: those units of consciousness are released from the mind of All That Is, and are its most basic fragments. And all the living creatures of this world were also created in dreams by these ancient dreamers, and placed upon the coordinate axis of time.
From ancient times to the present, all entities that could ever possibly be actualized have always existed.
As long as something has existed, it has always continued to exist -- it is not the case, as we think, that it has perished. For example, the dinosaurs: we think they have gone extinct, but they have not; they have always existed.
They have always existed before, and they will always exist.
You might say, how can dinosaurs exist? They went extinct millions of years ago. They exist in another way. Can they exist again in this reality? Yes -- when the conditions are present, they can exist. To put it in the simplest terms, with our current human genetic engineering, after extracting dinosaur DNA, it is possible to make them exist again on Earth.
Because of its nature, All That Is must exist in all its possible forms.
What is called All That Is includes all of past, present, and future. The forms it once was, all the forms it once was -- this is the fundamental attribute of All That Is.
Therefore existence cannot have an end.
Of course, the existence we humans understand does have an end, but what he is saying is that this existence has no end. Because when we speak of existence, we say when it existed, when it began, when it ended -- we only consider that to be existence. But he says this existence is permanent existence. In that sense there is also no beginning -- no end, and of course no beginning, so it has always existed.
But in the terms of your world, units of consciousness simultaneously act as forces, and also act as psychological entities of powerful vision, planting the seeds of your world in a dimension of imagination.
Units of consciousness simultaneously act as forces -- including gravity and all kinds of force fields, all of these are acted out by units of consciousness; at the same time they also act as psychological entities of powerful vision. They planted the seeds of our physical world in a dimension that is extraordinarily rich in imagination, and from this dimension the physical reality was born -- the dimension in which the seeds of our world's future form were planted gave birth to our physical world.
"In your terms" -- all of this is according to our human way of speaking -- planting seeds, growing reality, and so on. But the first half of what he said is that, not according to our human way of speaking, correctly speaking, it has simply always existed, always existed. There is no need for a seed to be planted and then blossom and bear fruit.
In your terms, those entities are your ancestors. But those ancient dreamers are not only yours -- they are the ancestors of all consciousness that forms your world.
Those ancient dreamers are not only the ancestors of humanity, but also the ancestors of all consciousness that forms your world. The ancestors of humanity created the entire world, including humanity.
Seth said, "Take a break."
Break
At 9:25, for the first time in a long while, Jane really did take a break in the middle of a session. Rob told her, "You did very well." Jane said, "Yeah, I was really successful." Even though his delivery was quieter, Seth still sometimes came through with considerable energy. Jane said that in winter, she liked having the session earlier so that she could finish earlier and then watch half an hour of television -- it was very relaxing and comfortable, especially when the two of them were alone.
Jane said she felt the next part of the session was going to be about her. She was quite prescient -- she sensed what was coming, and she was right.
Beginning at 9:34, Seth came back and gave a substantial amount of material. It is all in the notes. Rob said to look at how the material Seth gave Jane grew out of his work on the book tonight. That material seemed to be aimed only at Jane, but it was actually also connected to this book and to this session to a certain degree. Rob said it was very interesting, and here he excerpted only a few pages from the notes, just enough to show -- even within his more personal material -- how he was able to defy convention.
Living Is Easy
Seth continued:
Now living is easy. So easy that although you live, although you cultivate, although you create, although you react, although you feel, although you touch, although you watch, although you sleep, although you wake -- you do not have to strive to do any of the above things. You do all of them easily and naturally. From your standpoint, they have already been done for you.
Seth said that living is easy, so easy that everything grows smoothly and is accomplished naturally. All the things of living mentioned above have already been done for you in Framework 2 -- their Framework 2 has already prepared them. Since Framework 2 has been mentioned here, Seth said that further discussion of Framework 2 will be woven into the present book -- this book will mention Framework 2. But here he did not want to discuss that; what he wanted to talk about was why our lives are so easy -- because in Framework 2, everything has already been prepared for us.
But your beliefs often tell you that life is difficult, that once again the universe is unsafe, and that you must use all your resources -- certainly not in any attitude like joyful indulgence -- to protect yourself from the threats implicit in life. You are taught to anticipate those threats.
The life of every one of you humans has been arranged for you in Framework 2; every one of you can live peacefully and securely in this world. But you refuse to listen. Your intellect, your science, your education insist on telling you that life is so difficult -- that if you do not work hard, life cannot even be sustained, there will be nowhere to eat, and you will starve to death. From childhood we receive this education: life is difficult, you must struggle and strive, you cannot lose at the starting line. Certainly not in any attitude like joyful indulgence -- from childhood we are taught not to be indulgent, not to pass each day in a joyful way; we must plan strictly and arrange strictly, and every day must be lived meaningfully -- if not working, then studying; if not reproducing, then educating the next generation. Generation after generation, we have always lived in this kind of urgency.
This is you humans bringing trouble upon yourselves. You tell yourselves what threats the future may hold, and these threats are all imagined by you. Then you use the threats you have imagined to learn the abilities needed to face those threats, and you are very pleased with yourselves: "Look how smart I am -- I can foresee those threats, and then I prepare for them."
Inner and Outer Threats
Seth's criticism does not stop there. What was just discussed were outer threats and influences, but do each of you have inner threats? The same is true. Especially in the Western world, under the influence of both science and religion -- you also believe in threats that come from within.
According to Western religion, we are born with original sin. Is this original sin not an inner threat? Do we not also have to prepare to face judgment after death? We have to judge which of the things we do are right and which are wrong.
You have forgotten your natural selves -- forgotten the self that lives in nature, forgotten that we are in the natural world, in the cooperation of all things inwardly connected and loving one another. We could live very easily and freely, but we insist on not doing so.
And become involved in a secondhand, largely imagined culture.
"Secondhand" means not obtained through yourself, but told to you by others. These concepts, these cultural ideas, these imagined cultural ideas -- they are not innate to you, nor are they obtained through the natural world, nor are they guided by your own embodied understanding; they were handed to you by others. That is what is called secondhand.
What kind?
Beliefs individually and en masse projected negatively into the future.
Whether individually or collectively, we are swept up, frightened, and threatened by these secondhand beliefs -- projecting our negativity into the future. Then we begin to prepare, doing everything we can in life to face these dangers that may occur in the future.
People react to this with certain diseases or exaggerated behavior.
We cannot handle these things, so we can only react with illness or other exaggerated behavior. Because these negative beliefs threaten us, and we cannot handle them -- they do not exist in themselves; they are threats we have imagined, yet we insist on imagining that they exist. We cannot rest peacefully in the happy life of the present moment; we must think about what the future will be like: will energy run out, will the Earth warm, will sea levels rise, will cities be submerged, will the magnetic poles shift, will the Earth be destroyed, what about aliens... Which one of these is an immediate danger right here, right now?
Science has not played a very good role in this either. Science uses what it observes to tell you that the Earth is warming in the future, that humanity will be destroyed in the future, that energy will be exhausted, that our damage to the environment has reached a point of no return.
Let us think about it: our lives today are far happier than any period in history. Think carefully -- is your current state of life not happy? Whatever you want to eat, just tap a couple of times on your phone, and in ten, twenty, thirty minutes, whatever you want to eat is delivered to your door. This treatment is even better than that of ancient emperors. Whatever you want to eat from anywhere in the world, just move your phone a little, tap a little, and it is done. Whoever you want to chat with, whoever you want to communicate with, you can chat one-on-one, or in a group, or even have a video conference -- dozens of people, a hundred people, talking face to face together. Our material abundance is tremendous, not scarce. Do not talk about Africa or whatever -- does Africa have anything to do with your life? If you keep caring like this, is there any end to it? Just talk about your life right now, your current state -- why are you not satisfied? You insist on carrying the hunger of Africa, the disasters and suffering of the whole world on your own shoulders, making yourself seem like a very accomplished, very mature person, bearing the burden of the universe and the responsibility for all life on Earth, living in such fear -- is there any meaning in that?
So it was very important for Rob to include this short passage -- it is important for everyone. Do not scare yourself. In Chinese it is called "the man of Qi who worried about the sky" -- think about whether you are that man of Qi.
Life is easy, and because it is easy, it is safe and reliable.
This sentence was said for Ruburt's benefit, but it is actually said for every one of us as well. Life is easy, and because it is easy, it is safe and reliable. It is that simple. The moment you truly believe this is the moment you can truly relax.
Seth's Proposal and Rob's Work
After a while, Seth said again with humor:
As long as you can stand me, I am willing to give longer sessions. If you like, I am willing to spend one whole evening doing the dictation for this book, and the next evening doing another book, or discussing personal material, or other general questions, or doing our present material twice a week. Whatever ingenious arrangement you can think of is fine.
Seth said he did not mind -- if you can stand it, I can talk all evening. The material of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, about the origin of your universe -- I could also do one book a day: today this book, tomorrow start a new one, or talk about things you are interested in, or we could have an exchange. I am fine, but you humans cannot handle it.
After the session, Jane said that for someone who was absent-minded -- he said of himself -- he was absent-minded but often very relaxed, and he had not done badly. He gave himself a fairly good evaluation and felt somewhat more spirited. He was again awed by Seth's present and potential creativity. He said that if it were not for all the letters they received -- now he was doing two sessions a week because he had to answer so many letters from readers -- he would try to do at least three sessions a week. Jane said that actually three sessions a week would be no problem for her either. He said, but with all the work currently being done, Rob, you would no longer have time for typing. Rob said he would also make time -- it is worth it. Do not worry about me; I can make the time. Rob reminded Jane that back when she held the ESP class, she often did three sessions a week. When they were preparing to move from the apartment in town to the hill house in 1975, they held the last ESP class, and never held one again after that. From 1963 all the way to 1972, and then to 1975, they had always done three sessions a week.
Of course, talk is talk, but none of us can compare with Seth, because in his dimension he does not have the time limitations we have. By this time Jane was already quite ill, and Rob's workload was also enormous. You can imagine that in that era there were no computers -- everything depended on the typewriter: shorthand plus typewriter, and then organizing it into a book to submit to the publisher, and then the publisher would have him proofread it. Besides that, they also had their own things to do -- Rob still had to paint, Jane still had to write her own novels, and Rob had to help her proofread and organize. You can imagine their workload. It was already mentioned in the previous session that he got up at six in the morning to work on this material. The two of them were like diligent little bees, doing this labor of love -- as they themselves often said, we are this labor of love.
注释与核实
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Source: Hans P. A. Van Dongen et al., "The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology from Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12683469/) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩