Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 910

The "Introduction" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

Seth uses events such as a Dominican girl who changed from female to male at puberty and experiments with thymus-less mice as entry points to explain that the genetic system is not closed, mechanical, or deterministic, but a living system that interacts with the environment, cultural activities, thoughts, and emotions, and can prepare for the future. Human abilities depend on broad variation, and extremes such as idiots and geniuses together maintain genetic diversity. If the reasoning mind judges the value of life only by its own standards, it can lead to the distorted logic of animal experimentation and even genocide. Every life seeks value fulfillment, and no other life should be forced to go against its value fulfillment.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The genetic system is not closed, mechanical, or deterministic; it interacts with the environment, cultural activities, thoughts and emotions, and can prepare for the future.
• Human abilities depend on endless variation; extremes such as idiots and geniuses are a necessary part of maintaining normal standards and genetic diversity.
• The reasoning mind only recognizes the value of life that it itself understands, and devalues other life; this logic can lead to cruel acts carried out in the name of "optimization."
• Any life seeks value fulfillment; one cannot improve the quality of one's own life by destroying other life or forcing it to sacrifice its value fulfillment.
• There is no genetically superior race; differences among races or individuals are merely expressions of diversity.

Main Text

Today we continue sharing Session 910 of Volume 2 of the Seth book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. This session began on Wednesday, April 23, 1980, at 9:06 p.m.

At the start, Rob shared a piece of news, an old item they had filed away the previous year. The Dominican Republic is located in the West Indies, a very poor country in the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola¹. Yesterday Jane and Rob reread an article they had filed away last September and then forgotten. Both of them had the habit of reading newspapers, clipping articles, and making scrapbooks. In that era without the internet, these writers or artists often had to cut out news items or reports they liked and paste them into a notebook, making a scrapbook, so that later it would be convenient to look up related material. Now that we have the internet, we do not need this at all, but back then it was a very popular method.

The article they saw said that in the Dominican Republic, in the area around a certain village, outside the village there were 38 girls who turned into boys at the onset of puberty². Before puberty began, all 38 were girls, but once pubertal development started, they developed into boys. This remarkable bodily change derived from a genetic defect (with "defect" in quotation marks) carried by a common ancestor more than a hundred years ago. According to the modern point of view, this is a defect — these 38 girls had a common ancestor, and this ancestor had a defect in his genes, which caused these 38 girls to turn into boys at puberty. These men have a very low sperm count and may be unable to reproduce in the normal way. That is to say, this gene stops with their generation and will not be passed on.

Jane and Rob felt that this rare collective event was the only record they had seen that completely matched the statement in the Seth material that the vast human gene pool contains millions of variations. According to the understanding of the Seth material, even if these people did not pass the gene on biologically, the gene still exists within the vast human gene pool. This genetic mutation is only one of millions of possible genetic mutations, and it has always existed among us humans. For whatever mysterious reason, our overall consciousness wants and needs this particular genetic culture. Genes are influenced by the external environment, and this environment is not only the physical environment, such as temperature, climate, and humidity, but also includes the cultural environment and economic environment you find yourself in. Genes are intimately connected with our environment — not only the physical environment, but also the cultural environment.

Then that day they read another piece of news. At a company that sells animals to medical research — a company that specifically supplies animals to pharmaceutical companies, medical institutions, or animal research facilities — scientists had bred a kind of hairless laboratory mouse without a thymus gland³. The thymus is a very important primary defense system against viral invasion. During the last SARS outbreak, some people with resources, whether money or status, got hold of something called thymosin⁴, which they injected to stimulate the thymus in their own bodies. The secretions of the thymus help improve immunity and resistance, and help the body create immunity against external infections.

For example, scientists often use mice without thymus glands for cancer research, because those mice do not reject transplanted tumors. You transplant a tumor into a mouse and observe the mouse's reaction to the tumor. But a mouse with a thymus will kill the transplanted tumor, which does not fit the goal of the experiment — because they need to first give the mouse cancer, then feed the mouse the newly developed drug, and see whether the drug has a therapeutic effect on the cancer. But with mice that have a thymus, not every mouse will develop the disease from the transplanted cancer cells, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of the experiment. So they bred mice without thymus glands, so that every mouse with a transplant will be affected by cancer, and every one will get cancer. To be honest, these animals are so sensitive to any disease, because they have no thymus and cannot resist any external invading infection, so they must be kept in completely sterile conditions.

This article made Jane feel very uncomfortable, and she mentioned to Rob several times how uncomfortable she was — the whole matter of experimenting on animals. Then Seth came through. Seth said good evening, and then began the content of this session.

Seth said:

If there were no idiots among you, then you would very quickly discover that there would be no geniuses either.

What this means is, when there are no idiots among your population, then geniuses also disappear. How does this work? Seth explained:

Once again, those human abilities that you consider to be characteristics of your species are dependent upon the existence of endless variations, and those conditions that appear in the collective have often seemed to you to be opposites.

The special abilities that humans take such delight in and praise so highly exist within endless variations. The main point is that within these endless variations there must be included states that are completely opposite to the abilities of genius.

What you think of as average intelligence is a condition that exists because of the activity of constant variables, and the scale of those fine variations gives you idiots at one end and geniuses at the other.

Humans believe there is an average intelligence, assuming the average IQ is 100⁵, and that is the result of a very large statistical outcome. Since the average is 100, that means there must be idiots with very low IQs in the middle, and also geniuses with very high IQs, in order to finally arrive at this average figure. Between the most intelligent and the most idiotic, there are countless possibilities and subdivisions. Both of these are necessary for maintaining the larger standard of mental activity. These two extremes are very necessary for maintaining the level of an average IQ of 100.

I am using the word "standard" here for your convenience.

He put it in quotation marks. Although when it is used as a scale of measurement in psychology, he does not agree with the popular usage of that word. Why does he say this? Because in this world, there is no standard to speak of in psychological research. You cannot say what is standard; you can only say that every person is different. You cannot say that what the statistical majority shows is the standard and what the minority shows is not the standard — that is not right. On this question, in earlier material, in his criticism of the American Psychological Association's definitions of mental illness, he gave a detailed explanation. Seth strongly opposed using standards as a measure in psychological research; he believed that every individual is independent, different, and unique, and there is no such thing as standard or non-standard.

The genetic system, therefore, is not closed.

The genetic system is not closed or fixed. Genes do not merely hold information while having no relationship to the living system of the body. The information is not, as you think, like a segment of inherited code, dead and unaffected by your living body — no, it is changing at every moment.

The genetic structure does not exist like some already-set, highly complex mechanism.

It does not exist as rigidly as you think, blindly (he put it in quotation marks) beginning to operate, so that once it is set in motion there is no chance for correction. Genes are not, as you think, like a rigid machine that completely carries out the process of replicating its own genetic code, and once replication begins there is no way to correct the content of the code. No, it does not work that way.

Particularly in your own species, there is a remarkable interaction between the human genetic system, the environment, and cultural activity. And by cultural activity, I mean the events involved in those unique fields of activity that include your political and economic worlds.

Here he made a concluding summary: within our human genes, the genetic system is a living system. It interacts with the environment around us — the physical environment, the living environment — and also with our cultural activity. The three are mutually interactive. Remember it is mutual interaction; do not forget the word "mutual." It is not that the external environment acts on the genetic system while the genetic system does not act on the external environment.

For example, suppose in a certain region or country, the genes cause the average height of boys born there to be only 168 centimeters. Then the women of that country will not have very high expectations for male height, and this forms a unique cultural characteristic — they have their own particular judgment about height. If a man who is 180 centimeters tall is in that country, although everyone thinks he is very tall and good, most women will not choose him, because they think he is too tall. But when you go to the Nordic countries, where heights of 190 centimeters or more are common, a man of 180 centimeters is very short, and women are unwilling to choose a 180-centimeter man, because he is too short — many Nordic women themselves have a barefoot height of 175 or 178 centimeters. This is the influence of genes on culture and on the environment.

Conversely, culture also has an influence on genes. The most typical example is the height of Japanese people, which has been increasing continuously in recent years⁶; the average height has risen year by year, and they have completely shaken off our prejudice that Japanese people are relatively short in stature. Another example: Korean women all love plastic surgery. If you have been to Korea, you will find that in companies, universities, and among adult women, they all look quite good, very refined. But if you go to middle schools, junior high schools, or high schools, and you see them after school lets out, you will find that those girls are not very good-looking — later they all become good-looking through plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine. Whether through external means or through natural genetic inheritance becoming better-looking, overall the impression Korean society gives is that women are all very beautiful and very refined. Over time you forget the fact that Korean women are actually not good-looking without plastic surgery — what you see is already very refined, and with clothing, makeup, styling, and aesthetics all layered together, you form this kind of opinion. This influence will cause their expectations for the next generation of children to rise and improve, and gradually, over time, their descendants will also become better and better looking. This is a kind of counter-effect of culture on genes. Although they only became good-looking after plastic surgery, this culture of beauty in turn influences genetic changes. So the two interact with each other; there is no question of which one is decisive or which one influences the other.

Genetic events are not as irreversible as determinism would suggest.

Genes are not as we think — just a code that you keep replicating, with no variation, no place for adjustment or correction. "Irreversible" means it cannot be corrected.

Genetic events represent strong tendencies toward certain kinds of physical or mental activity.

Genetic events represent only a tendency, whether a physical or a psychological tendency. For example, some children are more extroverted — that is a psychological tendency; some lean introverted, some lean optimistic, some lean pessimistic. These all belong to psychological tendencies. There is no need to give examples of physiological tendencies; there are many, many of them. Genes are only a tendency, a preference, leaning toward the activation of certain events rather than others. That is to say, probability leans in a certain direction. Genes give a rough directional bias, not something specific and exact.

Genetic events are indeed events, although on a different level of activity than the one you are accustomed to recognizing.

Why is it said that genetic events are indeed events? The word "event" carries the implication of a certain degree of uncertainty. A genetic event is indeed an event; it represents only a certain tendency and preference, but it does not represent something that will definitely happen. For example, you may have a hereditary disease in your family, but this disease does not necessarily manifest in you. Although there is a high probability that it will occur, it is not certain that it will occur — this is what "event" means.

We are talking about chromosomal information... this information is not written inside the chromosomes.

Genetic information is not written inside the chromosomes like a code, the way words are written on paper. Although current science teaches us this — saying that the sequence of this editing and arrangement of the code determines all the information of the human body, and we call this determinism — believing that genes determine everything, and once you understand the genes, you understand the person. But Seth here painstakingly keeps telling you: genes are alive, the genetic system is alive, and it is constantly interacting with the environment around you, even the cultural environment. It is not dead. But determinism holds that genes are like a code written on paper, and once inherited from your parents they will not change.

But the information and the chromosome are a living unit.

Again he emphasizes that it is a living unit, and that the information is alive. He again says fervently that the information is not dead, not words written on paper, not like a segment of code in a computer.

We are speaking of a kind of biological cuneiform, in which the material structure of the cells themselves contains all the knowledge required for a physical body.

That is to say, this physical body forms itself, and the material structure of each cell itself contains all the knowledge required. Here he emphasizes several points: one is the material structure of the cells themselves — he is not talking about those invisible inner messages from the inner self, or messages from the network of consciousness — here he is talking about biological, material things, which already contain all the information the physical body needs. It is just that it is stored in a compressed and encoded way that we do not understand.

Scientists are now constantly trying to unravel this process, from the study of genes to the unfolding of proteins. Last week I shared some content about how, through quantum computing combined with artificial intelligence, gene expression can be accurately unfolded into three-dimensional proteins — given a segment of genetic code, how to convert it into the molecular structure of a protein. We humans did not know this before; we could only know after it unfolded and manifested. Now, through quantum computing and artificial intelligence, we can map this code to the molecular structure of the material world, and although the accuracy is not one hundred percent, only reaching ninety-five or ninety-six percent, it is already quite remarkable.

This is indeed biological knowledge, and it makes the clearest living statement biologically.

The package carrying these genes — the sex cells — such cells, like all cells, respond to stimuli. The information is wrapped inside the cell, but the cell will definitely respond to external stimuli; this is common knowledge. If the cell responds, will the genes inside the cell also respond to this external stimulus? Of course they will, because genes are also part of the cell. Cells are active; they are biologically aware of all the events of the body — remember, all of them; they know the activity of every cell — in ways that cannot be expressed. Cells are also aware of the body's external environment as perceived at the biological level. They know both the internal environment and the external environment.

We have said before that each living cell is connected to every other living cell, more or less, through an inner communication system. Therefore the so-called "programmed" genetic activity can be altered by conditions in the environment.

Since cells exchange information with other cells and know the changes in every other cell, they will definitely be influenced by the stimuli and responses of the body — that is, they will definitely be influenced by the changes in the body's internal environment caused by the external environment.

For example, I am not merely saying that genetic activity can be altered through events such as nuclear accidents, but that very meaningful changes can also occur in genetic behavior.

The kind of genetic change, genetic mutation, I am talking about is not the kind of genetic mutation or change that you humans speak of as occurring under nuclear radiation. We humans have now discovered that nuclear radiation can produce major changes in human genes — during the process of gene replication, the particle rays of nuclear radiation can cause severe destructive effects on gene replication, causing chaos in the process of replicating the genetic code, and producing bad, defective cells with incomplete genes. That is why humans are so sensitive to nuclear radiation, and why nuclear radiation is so lethal — because it directly destroys the integrity of the human body at the genetic level. The current method of scientific breeding also uses radiation to irradiate biological seeds to cause mutations, but these mutations are unpredictable, and scientists do not know what changes will occur. Then we collect the changes and preserve the ones beneficial to humans to cultivate as seeds. For example, some mutations cause plants to resist pests, and insects will not eat them, so these crops will not be affected by pests. But in this process, it is not that a specific genetic mutation trait is set up to be cultivated; rather, they randomly stimulate and then screen from among the results, and cannot decide which changes will occur.

What Seth wants to say is that the kind of genetic change he is talking about is not the change caused by nuclear radiation. He is talking about the kind of meaningful change that you consciously make — including the external environment and culture, and including your personal thoughts and beliefs, all of which can change genes.

For in your terms, the genetic structure not only prepares the human species for any contingency, but also prepares for future development by triggering those characteristics and abilities that the species needs at any given time, and by setting aside room for such future development.

This is a key point of this chapter. It points out something we humans have not seen: previous scientists believed that genes also change, but that it is passive — in order to adapt to the environment, they have no choice but to make adjustments. This is the scientists' view, the result of survival of the fittest and natural selection, causing genetic species that do not fit the environment to become extinct, while those that fit the environment survive, thereby achieving the evolutionary development of species. This is the traditional view of Darwinian evolution, but this view is clearly wrong — we have discussed this many times before, so I will not elaborate here.

But here he raises another viewpoint that we humans have not thought of: genes are not passive; genes prepare in advance for our future development. We humans may encounter all kinds of challenges in life, in the environment, and in culture in the future. You may ask, how could we encounter cultural challenges? Of course we can. For example, the marriage rate among young people today is very low, there are many single people, and neither women nor men want to get married, so the fertility rate is extremely low. I cannot remember whether it was last year or this year, I think it was 2020, China's birth rate was only eight per thousand⁷, not even one percent. Given China's population base, that might seem like a lot, but China's natural mortality rate is also eight per thousand⁸. Taken together, last year China's net population growth was almost zero, and it might even have been negative. If in the future, with even faster economic development, everyone's income is very high and life is very affluent, then whether women will be willing to marry and have children becomes a question mark. So what will humanity do in the future? Do not panic; your genes have long since made preparations in reserve for this kind of future development, and this ability is already prepared. You will find that if this kind of thing really happens in the future, human genes have already made preparations for it.

The biggest characteristic here is this: the genetic system actively makes preparations, reserving for future development. But how do genes know what future development will look like? There are two points here. One is that genes themselves, as an underlying architectural system, have placed all possibilities within them. They may not know what will happen to you in the future, but they have placed all the things you might encounter, millions of possible combinations, inside, and whatever you encounter now, you take it out and use it. The other is that genes, as an underlying system of humanity, have beneath them even deeper information systems at work — the genetic system you see is a biological, material system, and beneath it there are those nonphysical systems at work, and those themselves know, or rather are not limited by time and space, so they know what may be encountered in the future. Both of these aspects are at work.

Your genetic structure also responds to each thought you have, to your emotional states, and to your psychological climate.

It responds not only to the external environment, but also to your thoughts, to your emotions, and to your psychological states. That is why many illnesses and many bodily changes come about this way. So if you say, "Will I become younger and younger, better and better?" Yes, you will. When your thoughts change, your emotions change, and your psychological state changes, you really will become younger and younger and more and more beautiful. It is that simple.

In your terms, this involves the specific history of the human species as it is related to the abilities of the probable future of the species.

From the perspective of our human time, this contains the specific history of humanity as related to the abilities of our probable future. This sentence is grammatically a little awkward, but from the perspective of no-time it is normal; from the perspective of our time, it seems a bit strange to describe it this way. What he means is that all the things that may happen in the future of our humanity are recorded, and then written into the possible variations of our gene pool. If your future were all laid out and written into the gene pool, would it not be like a history? That is what this passage means.

You choose your genetic structure so that it fits the challenges and potentials that you have chosen.

You chose the genetic structure of your present body so that it suits the challenges and abilities of humanity. Here he again mentions — and these small words are all important: you have chosen. The genetic structure you chose is definitely closely related to what you are going to do in the future, or to the potentials you want to develop. Because you want to develop those potentials, and you chose that kind of future in which those things happen, you must have a matching genetic system — that is, your bodily structure must match it.

The genetic structure represents your physical reference point, your bodily framework.

These genes determine how you enter into the physical world, and how your consciousness and the physical world are joined together. Your consciousness, your soul, wants to do something, wants to realize its own value fulfillment, to realize its life blueprint — so how can it be realized in the physical world? You must have a body to realize it for you. And this body, as your expression or vehicle in the physical world, must conform to the basic functions of the task you want to accomplish or the blueprint you want to realize. For example, if you want to become an athlete, he will not give you a disabled body to do this — of course, if you want to participate in the Paralympics that is another matter; let us assume we are participating in regular competition. If you want to become a painter, he will not let you be born completely blind in both eyes. He will equip your life blueprint with a matching genetic structure, that is, a bodily structure.

The genetic structure is your personal physical attribute.

It is like when you play a game, you have to set the basic attributes of your game character — strength, power, energy, endurance, sensitivity, agility, and so on; these are all set in the genes.

It is the part of you with which you identify physically.

It is the part of you that identifies with your own body on the physical level, filled with your own identity. This body was chosen by you after thousands of selections, individually crafted, existing only for your life's purpose. The identity of this completely customized body, including appearance, height, the main functions of the body, and so on, is all like this.

Your body is like a finest ship, one that you personally chose in advance for a splendid challenging adventure, outfitted to make as much as possible of a personal physical manifestation.

Seth used a ship as a metaphor. A ship is a vehicle; we all know that in our understanding a ship is generally called a vehicle, so he is hinting that your body is in fact a vehicle.

Some people may ask: why is my body like this? Why can I not be a little more beautiful? Why can I not be a little taller? Why can I not be a little thinner? Or a little fuller? This is a doubt many people have — how could I have chosen such a body? Here Seth dispels all your doubts: this body of yours is the best ship for you, specially tailored for you. It is outfitted to make as much as possible of a personal physical manifestation, a ship that completely fits your personality, satisfying all your potentials in this life. The challenges you face and the things you want to do all require such a physical body. Seeing this, everyone, do not despise your body anymore. Many people despise their bodies, measuring themselves against advertisements, models, and pictures, feeling dissatisfied with this and dissatisfied with that; whether women or men, they are dissatisfied with their bodies. I hope that when you see this passage, you can truly feel heartfelt admiration and gratitude for your own body, because it is precisely this body that completely meets all the needs of your life, the best ship you personally tailored for yourself.

The next passage is very interesting. He said:

Some people, in beginning such an adventure, do insist upon a splendid ship, with the most top-notch equipment, the most gorgeous staterooms, and banquet halls.

Some people, when they come into this world, want the best, most top-tier ship. Is that allowed? Yes, it is allowed; they can make such a request, asking for the most luxurious setup, the most luxurious yacht.

But other people want far more excitement and far more passion, so they order a less gorgeous boat, but one that goes much faster.

But gorgeous boats all have one drawback -- they certainly cannot go fast. A gorgeous, fully equipped, beautiful boat can rarely go very fast, because when it goes fast it is not comfortable. If you have ever sailed on the sea, you know that your comfort is inversely proportional to your speed. Unless you spend money without limit, and within a certain range you can break through this limit -- a boat costing hundreds of millions or over a billion US dollars can also go very fast and still be comfortable, but most boats are not like that. And even this has its limits; beyond a certain speed it is no longer comfortable either.

The second kind of person is: I do not want comfort, I just want excitement, I want to drive a speedboat, I want to experience the sense of speed and thrill, I want to go to more places, I want to explore this world. With your slow, steady, stable boat, how long will it take to see this world? The world is so big, I want to see it, but with your slow pace, when will you ever finish seeing it? These are two kinds of people with different needs -- he is using the boat as an example and a metaphor, saying how each of us chooses our own body.

Some people will set a goal for themselves, testing their skill at the helm. Other people say, I just want to test how good my own helmsmanship is, so give me a boat with poor performance, and I can still steer it and make it run very well, in order to show how superb my helmsmanship is.

So these people's boats may not look good, but the results they achieve may be extraordinary. You cannot judge simply by whether the boat is good or bad; your helmsmanship, the ability of the person at the helm, is also crucial. If you are sailing a very good boat, do not be smug about it. If the helmsman is no good, then this gorgeous boat with only a fine appearance has no real meaning; it is only an empty shell of an exterior. If the helmsman is good, and can combine all of this to the utmost, then you can experience a completely different life.

He uses the body as a metaphor, to hint at something in our lives: some people have very good physical conditions, they are good-looking, their height and build and all aspects are excellent, but they seem to have no inner substance -- Seth does not say it outright, but he implies that such people do exist. If you have come into contact with such people, you will know. There are some people with extremely good appearances whose minds are basically empty, and there is nothing interesting about them. There are some plain-looking people who are nevertheless very interesting, an interesting soul, attracting everyone. Some people's physical conditions are not good, yet they can achieve extraordinary accomplishments; their physical conditions not only do not become a limitation, but instead become a driving force for moving forward.

Seth wants everyone to have a correct understanding of their own body: do not envy those with good appearances, and do not look down on those who are plain-looking. Everyone has their own unique characteristics and features, and they chose such a body to come into this time for an adventure, with their own decisions and considerations. As outsiders, do not casually pass judgment. Of course, this does not mean that good-looking people have no talent and no ability; there is nothing absolute here. A beautiful boat does not necessarily mean it cannot go fast; a boat costing hundreds of millions of US dollars can still go very fast and be very comfortable, but this is just the simplest metaphor. This metaphor is relatively simple, and not enough to reflect the true picture, but it is enough to make you understand this matter.

Each person carries their own intentions and purposes, and chose the living boat of the body. If you only want to live a leisurely life, then choose a comfortable boat; if you want to go exploring and adventuring, then you must choose a boat with relatively good performance; if your helmsmanship and personal ability are very strong, then the boat does not matter to you, and any kind of boat can let you thrive. Your ability to sail is so strong that the boat can no longer constitute any obstacle to you, so such people often do not care, and can sail any boat, and can master any kind of boat.

In physical reality, life is the key to the game.

In the physical world, life is the key to this game in physical reality. He points out again that everything in our physical reality is like a game, and the most crucial thing in the game is your life. In this game, if your life is gone, you cannot play anymore. Just like when we play an online game, when the main character's health drops to zero, he dies, and the game is over. The same with you: in the physical world, if you have no life, this game cannot be played.

In physical reality, life is the key to the game. But you must know that this game itself is built upon value fulfillment -- its essence is not the pursuit of the length of life. This is not to say that life is unimportant; without life, your value fulfillment has no way to manifest, at least not in this physical world. But the purpose of your living is not to prolong life, but to use your life to live out your value fulfillment. There is a dialectical relationship here: we do not live for how long we live, but for what kind of quality we live out.

Every Form of Life Seeks the Fulfillment and Flowering of Its Abilities

Every form of life seeks the fulfillment and flowering of all the abilities it senses within the framework of its own existence.

Every form of life, within this physical body it has chosen, within this physical world, within this framework of existence, must, as far as its abilities allow, create, challenge, experience, and flower. This is what every life should do. In other words, challenge is the nourishment of your life, and adventure is the wisest choice—if you do not take risks, your life is wasted.

This passage actually comes from one of our students, Liu Wannong, who studied very diligently, and who wrote these two sentences himself. He kept bringing up these two sentences: adventure is actually the greatest nourishment of your life; adventure is your wisest choice. He said that the highlight moments in your life are all things you can only experience when you are taking risks. When you talk with others with great relish about your life, what you talk about with great relish is surely what blossomed forth from you, what overflowed from you, the greatest brilliance and radiance of your humanity, at the times when you were taking risks, when you were facing challenges, when you were meeting challenges head-on. If you are like a small merchant, calculating every step, looking ahead and behind, fearing wolves in front and tigers behind, as if you were advancing steadily and surely, you are actually wasting your life—your life has not lived out the quality it should have.

Seth continues here, and he puts it rather gently and mildly:

And it knows that in that individual fulfillment—that is, in the fulfillment of you as an individual, within this one stage of your life, within the fulfillment of this life form of yours—every other species of life also benefits.

As an individual human being, when you completely release yourself, flower yourself, and live out all of your own possibilities, you not only enrich yourself, you also enrich all the other species in this world. The cats and dogs, the plants, animals, and environment around you will all benefit from this flowering of yours. He points out once again this essential nature of life.

The Contribution of the "Idiot": Freedom from the Domination of the Reasoning Mind

I by no means intend to belittle genius, whose value is beyond question.

He says I am not saying this passage so that you will think, genius is not important, is the same as an idiot -- that is not my intent. I have never questioned, nor have I belittled their great contribution to the quality of life. The great contribution of genius to the quality of life is ineffable. But once again, the quality of life also benefits from the existence of the idiot.

Here he uses the example of the idiot to say that the idiot lives out his own self, and he also has a contribution to the whole of humanity. Why is there a contribution? He will explain below. He says:

Not only because for genetic reasons the two ends of the scale must be.

It is not that to balance out the existence of genius, there must be the existence of the idiot -- if you want to think that way, then you have not recognized the role and value of the idiot at all. The main reason is that the idiot himself is not regarded by nature as a failure or a defect. That is only your human idea, your human judgment. You humans consider the idiot a defect, a congenital disability. He says:

By modulating the sometimes intense dominance of the reasoning mind over human activity, idiots also play their role.

What does that mean? The human reasoning mind, which is what we call wisdom, IQ, has an especially strong dominance over our lives and human activity. The strength of this desire to dominate is almost unimaginable. People always consider themselves clever, wanting to control everything. This desire to dominate is also often reflected in parents' desire to control their children. He cannot control others, others will not let him control them, but the child has no way out -- he cannot control others, the child has no way to avoid being controlled by him, and at this point this human desire to control is exerted to the extreme, wanting to control every detail of the child's life. From eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, and sleeping, to what clothes to wear, what food to eat, to what school to attend, what major to choose, and even after graduation what job to take, what kind of partner to find -- he wants to control all of it.

This is an inevitable negative effect once humans have intelligence. With the reasoning mind, he can reason, and he says look at you -- if you do not study when you are young, you will not find a good job when you grow up, and without a good job you will not have a good income, so he uses his reasoning mind to control, saying you must study hard right now. But the idiot does not use the reasoning mind, does not use intelligence, does not think about these things. He only lives in the present, never considering later matters, what the future will be like. He gives a completely opposite example to this strong desire to control and dominate brought about by our human reasoning mind: I never control, never dominate, never scheme for the future -- because he also does not have this ability. What we call an idiot is someone without the ability to reason, without intelligence, without what we humans call this logical reasoning ability. And their existence just shows us a state of living without intelligence -- a freer state.

Idiots also often allow themselves to experience within their own reality a freer, more generous, and more faithful tributary of emotional states, unhindered by the sometimes harsh dominance of the intellect, and this modulating tendency is important in the workings of the genes.

This passage is undoubtedly the greatest comfort and consolation for those parents whose relatives, friends, or even their own children have tendencies toward mental retardation, delayed intellectual development, or congenital intellectual development problems. Seth points out in one sentence: these people whom we ordinary people call idiots live more freely, more generously, and more faithfully to their emotional states than we do. If he likes something, he likes it; if he does not like it, he does not like it. He is not influenced by any of these worldly things. He lives completely in his own state.

His degree of freedom, his generosity -- why generous? Because he never worries that if he gives this thing to someone else, it will be gone. In his concepts there is no such thing, so good things he shares with others, and this flows out naturally. These are all natural. Human nature is freedom, and human nature is generosity -- human nature is not selfishness. What makes us not generous? It is our intellect. The intellect tells us: no, if you give it away, you will not have it anymore, you only have this much. Your intellect makes you not generous, but in your essence, in your nature, you are generous. And you are faithful to your emotional states -- these are all innate.

He uses the word "tributary," indicating that it flows out naturally. This outflow of a natural state is not hindered by the harsh dominance and obstruction of his intellect -- because he does not have this intellect, does not have this logical ability, so he does not have this limitation. And this natural outpouring of each person's inner true freedom, generosity, and faithfulness to emotion, unhindered by the intellect, has a very important role in the healthy development of the genes of our entire human race.

Here you must not forget the influence of culture on genes, and the influence of genes on culture -- they influence each other. If there were not such a group of people, if our genes were all developed under the control of the so-called elite, the so-called rationality, the so-called intellect and intelligence, then over time, human genes would lose this natural flowing -- these things of our nature would disappear, because everything would be accomplished under the control of the intellect. In the possibilities of this vast gene pool, the most important link would be missing.

We are not here to judge who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is superior. If you are still thinking this way -- "Is it good or not that he is like this" -- then your spiritual learning has not yet truly penetrated into your heart. When you no longer think about the question of good or bad, but only think: this preserves the diversity of the human gene pool, and this is a very important point; only then have you basically understood what Seth wants to say.

In other words, Seth is not saying that living by the intellect is bad. He is only saying that it is one of your choices; some people choose not to live by the intellect, and that is not bad either -- that is the choice of those people. He is only telling you that these different choices are all important parts of the healthy maintenance and development of our gene pool. That is to say, we should be grateful for the choices of these people, and we should feel gratitude in our hearts. When you see those people with delayed intellectual development on the street, what should arise in your heart is a feeling of gratitude: because of their existence, the integrity and health of the human gene pool is maintained. This is the attitude you should have.

The Limits of the Reasoning Mind: It Only Recognizes the Value of Life It Can Understand

I will discuss this topic again later in this book.

Seth says that, roughly speaking, ever since the birth of Christianity, the reasoning mind you have been using has restricted its reasoning ability to a very narrow range. He says that since the birth of Christianity, over these last two thousand-plus years, your reasoning mind has been restricted far too narrowly. This reasoning mind, for the most part, only looks at the value of life according to standards that conform to its own criteria -- this sentence is very important; see how much of it you can understand.

The reasoning mind only uses the life it can understand, and according to its own logic, analyzes and judges: what the value and meaning of life should be. Its premise is derived by the reasoning mind itself: through the intelligent brain, it reasons out what the value and meaning of human life should be, in this way or that way. Then, under such a premise, it establishes its outlook on life and values, and then uses its reasoning mind to operate within that range. But this is incomplete from the very start -- the value and meaning of human life is not something we can reason out with the reasoning mind. What we reason out is only a part of it; there is another part we cannot understand, the part concerning value fulfillment, which lies outside the operating range of the reasoning mind. But we do not realize this; we only acknowledge the meaning and value of life that the reasoning mind recognizes.

As long as something falls within this range, we consider it valuable; outside this range, what other people do has no meaning and no value. Do you understand what he is trying to say? We often say: the thing you are doing is meaningless, the thing you are doing is worthless. What is your judgment based on? It is based on the judgment of your reasoning mind. You have no idea how meaningful those things other people are doing are for their own lives, for their own value fulfillment. But according to the logical relations of your reasoning mind, you cannot see the meaning and value in them, and so you deny them.

This is a kind of arrogance of us humans, the place where humans most need to reflect. So we think that other living beings have no meaning in being alive: plants exist only to provide food for humans, animals live only for human development -- their own lives in themselves have no meaning. Why? Because you think that only a life that understands the meaning of life truly has meaning. In other words, only the meaning of life that the human reasoning mind can understand is considered meaningful; the meaning of life that the human reasoning mind cannot understand is considered meaningless. If you carefully sort through this sentence, you will understand it. This is the current state of us humans.

The reasoning mind you use considers that only animals capable of reasoning can possess the ability to understand the value of life, while other biological forms, other life forms, are almost not worth considering; their value is considered only in terms of their usefulness to you humans.

Seth's sentence here points out exactly the point I was just trying to make: we humans think that only living beings and animals with a reasoning mind can understand the meaning of life; if you do not even have a reasoning mind, how can you speak of where meaning lies? So humans judge on this basis: only human life has meaning -- because only humans have a reasoning mind, only humans can use the reasoning mind to think. And those other lives without a reasoning mind, their lives have no meaning; their meaning lies only in what use they have for humans. For example, they provide humans with eggs, milk, meat, and grain, or they keep us company and serve as little pets. Now you understand the meaning of this passage -- because they themselves have no meaning; their meaning lies only in what benefits we humans can get from them, and only then do they have meaning. What an arrogant judgment this is on the part of humans.

But human life clearly depends on the existence of other living species; this is a fact. If all other species on this planet went extinct -- animals and plants all extinct, including microorganisms and bacteria all wiped out -- leaving only humans, could humans survive? Humans could not survive even one day. So on the one hand we trample on the meaning of other lives, yet in our own lives we cannot go a single day without them. You cannot live without them, yet you say their lives have no meaning; if their lives have no meaning, then does your life have meaning? Your life could not even exist.

And those species share certain values with him.

Those beings do not just supply you with energy, give you food, and keep you company -- they also give you certain values, share with you the value of their existence, and only then does your life have value.

Life is sacred.

He emphasizes again: life is sacred -- all life, and he does not mean only human life.

And once again, all life seeks value fulfillment, and not merely physical survival.

All life is pursuing its value fulfillment, not the length of its life. This point here is complementary to the view mentioned earlier: although life is important, it does not mean that the longer you live the better; rather, you should live out your own value fulfillment.

From Animal Experiments to the Holocaust: The Slippery Slope of the Reasoning Mind

Ruburt read an article about developing a strain of mice that had no thymus gland. The thymus is a very important part of the necessary process by which the body maintains its resistance to disease, so these particular mice had little resistance. They were bred and sold for experimental purposes. The intention behind this practice was to promote the quality of human life, to study the nature of disease, and hopefully to apply what was learned to certain people.

Mice are not considered to be human beings. They are not human, so like any other animal, they are considered to be disposable, to be thrown away after use, and to be sacrificed for a good humanitarian purpose. In The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Seth addressed this issue separately -- the matter of us humans using animals for experiments. He was, of course, opposed to it, and there is no doubt about that.

Perhaps at first the biases of the reasoning mind may have escaped your notice, and in any case, mice are relatively far removed from your own species. Not too long ago, Jews were also sacrificed for the same purpose, and the reasoning mind was largely the same, although in that case you were dealing with your own species.

Some of you may feel unsettled after hearing this passage. He is saying that the reason you experiment on mice and on other living beings is that you are operating with the reasoning mind. What is this reasoning mind? It means: we experiment on mice for the betterment of humanity -- as long as something is good for humans, then it ought to be done. If human life can be extended and its quality improved, then there is nothing wrong with what we are doing. As long as human quality is elevated, whatever we do is acceptable and forgivable, because our purpose is lofty and great: for the development of the entire human gene pool, for the elevation of its quality, to make our human species purer, more refined, better, more superior -- what could possibly be wrong with that? We use thousands upon thousands of mice to develop new drugs, and the new drugs improve the quality of human life. This is everyone's view.

What is this view built upon? It is built upon the reasoning mind. As long as you use the reasoning mind, you will arrive at such a result. But you may say, what is wrong with that? It is perfectly normal.

Then Seth shifts direction and points directly at the Jews. At that time it was 1980, only thirty-five years after the end of World War II. The war ended in 1945, so thirty-five years earlier in Europe, Nazi Germany had put Jews into concentration camps and killed millions of them in gas chambers -- they intended to exterminate this race, to wipe out the Jewish people. Why? Because according to their reasoning mind, the Jews were bad, flawed, an inferior people. If their existence were to mix with superior human breeding -- they called it breeding or hybridization -- it would drag down the genetic quality of all humanity. Therefore, in order to optimize humanity, we must eliminate those inferior peoples. This was one of Hitler's main theories at the time.

Why does Seth bring this up again at this point? He wants to tell you: if you continue to develop according to your human reasoning mind, what terrifying things will happen -- you will turn on your own species, and it will no longer be just a matter of experimenting on white mice. When it comes to white mice, you can turn a blind eye, because they are too far removed from you. But if you indulge this reasoning mind and let it keep reasoning onward, what will happen? Events like the massacre of the Jews will be staged in human society. You can see that Seth's perspective and his grasp of the essence of things are different -- his ability to see the essence of a problem is not the same.

But the Jews were considered to be hardly human.

From the perspective of Nazi Germany at the time, this was indeed the case. They did not treat the Jews as human beings.

And whenever it comes to such atrocities against your own species, you indulge in the same kind of distorted reasoning.

When you commit acts as brutal against your fellow humans as those you commit against animals, you indulge in this same kind of distorted reasoning, just as with the white mice: it is for the good of humanity -- killing the Jews was also for the good of humanity. That is what they believed at the time.

Or at most they were considered a defective product of humanity, a flawed item, regarded as a sacrifice that could be rationalized upon the altar of improving the human gene pool.

At the time, the Nazis proposed to transform the human gene pool, to make it purer and more superior. In such a sacrificial rite, who was the offering? The Jews -- if you kill off all the Jews, then the purity of humanity is guaranteed, is it not?

You cannot change the quality of your own life by destroying the quality of any other kind of life.

He emphasizes again: you cannot say that by wiping out other species, by destroying their quality, my own quality will then be elevated -- that is nonsense. The elevation of your own life quality depends on yourself. How could destroying others elevate you? There is no logical relationship between the two.

There is no genetically superior race.

He emphasizes again: genetically, there is no race or ethnic group that is more superior. None at all. They are merely different. If you understand Seth's entire theoretical framework regarding genes, you will understand: we have so many human races, with all kinds of differences and distinctions -- tall, short, fat, thin, facial features, body types, including whether the body is deformed or not, high or low IQ, varying levels of all kinds of abilities, and so on -- all of these are the beneficial existence of the diversity within this vast gene pool. Without these beneficial existences, the vast human gene pool could not maintain its healthy development and continuation. There is no question of who is superior and who is inferior. It is simply a reasonable existence, simply what a vast gene pool should look like. It is the same principle as the earlier analysis of the mentally retarded and the idiot: you see only their shortcomings, but you do not see their strengths, their freedom, their generosity, and their loyalty in affection.

To begin with, the very act of dividing humanity into races is itself based upon laughably minute distinctions within a picture of overall similarity.

You humans still insist on ranking people into hierarchies, dividing them by skin color, by all kinds of facial features and bone structures -- it is all quite ridiculous. You are all one species, and yet you insist on subdividing it so finely. That is merely a manifestation of the diversity of your species.

Natural Guilt and Biological Violation

Ruburt felt indignant about the article he had read, and he said with righteous anger: this kind of practice is biologically immoral. And Seth said:

I usually avoid words like moral or immoral.

At Seth's level, in his world there is no concept of moral or immoral. This is what the Tao Te Ching means when it says "the highest virtue is not virtuous." For those of us who have studied Seth for a long time, we no longer have this concept of moral and immoral -- if you still have such concepts, that only shows you have not fully understood. Because the definition of morality varies from person to person; for certain groups and certain periods, certain so-called immoral things are, in other places, completely moral and legal.

But that practice did indeed involve a biological violation.

Seth mentioned a natural guilt -- he had mentioned it back in The Nature of Personal Reality. This involved a biological violation: a violation by us humans against the entire biological world, a practice that goes against the flow and intent of nature. In it, one form of life is forced to go against its own value fulfillment -- this little mouse was forced to alter its own value fulfillment. What is the little mouse's value fulfillment? According to us humans, its value fulfillment is to contribute to human drug research -- but that is your human value fulfillment, not the little mouse's value fulfillment. The little mouse has its own meaning in life, its own value in life, but you changed it, forcibly made it change, and that is the greatest, most harmful thing you have done.

That is because it involves an attitude toward other life.

We do not respect the value fulfillment of other beings. We use our human reasoning mind -- and a narrow reasoning mind at that -- to examine the value of others, to judge whether another's life has value or not: whatever benefits humans has value, whatever does not benefit humans has no value. Do we not often judge this way? For example, the old campaigns to eliminate the four pests, to wipe out this or that -- we always judge from the angle of whether it benefits humans or not.

That is what made the horrors of the concentration camps in World War II possible for the Jews.

You did not respect the value fulfillment of other life, did not respect other forms of life, did not have this recognition that all things are one, and so the horrors of the concentration camps in World War II became possible in your society.

Then Seth asked: do you have any questions? Rob said no questions. Seth said then good night to you both. Rob said this material was very good, and Seth said with humor: naturally. Then the content of this session was over, and below are some notes Rob wrote.

Rob's Note: Our Ambivalence Toward Animal Experimentation

This is a note written by Rob. He says he has clearly ambivalent feelings about animal experimentation in medical research -- ambivalent meaning not firmly opposed, yet also worried about it. He believes most other people, whether they know it or not, also have this complex feeling.

On the one hand, we are full of compassion for the pharmaceutical companies harming small animals; on the other hand, we are somewhat detached -- after all, it is not happening in front of me. And the results of pharmaceutical research may also be beneficial to me: if I ever get a certain disease and need a certain medicine, it may be the medicine developed by these pharmaceutical companies that saves my life. If I were to stop this practice of using animals for experiments, human medical research would greatly regress or be restricted, and in the future when I get sick there would be no effective medicine to treat me. So this ambivalence comes from people's judgment of their own interests -- on the one hand there is instinctive compassion and mercy, on the other hand, driven by self-interest, one places oneself in this very subtle state of ambivalence.

Rob goes on to say: has our physical life ever been saved by the knowledge obtained from animal experimentation? Perhaps even before our birth, when we had no choice, we were given certain vaccines, and at birth we were vaccinated -- was this not because of the results of animal experimentation? We do not know. What we truly know is that if a person is isolated from a philosophy that supports harm and repetitive animal research, it is easier to accept him. Simply put, if you can keep it out of sight and out of mind, or if this matter does not appear before you, you can choose to ignore it.

However, if given the choice, Rob says he would now choose to give up the benefits from animal experimentation, even if the lack of the knowledge that comes with it might impair our future welfare. And he assumes that in times of crisis, our different resolve would not weaken either. To follow such a path would actually be very difficult, because in our society, the results from animal research are so pervasive -- he even thinks that to separate oneself from them, one would have to become an invisible hermit in the wilderness, a recluse.

Using animals in the laboratory is imposing human goals and value fulfillment upon other life forms. Even if the current scientific method can be assumed to be value-free -- of course, because such research is carried out in the name of progress and practical common good -- let us remember that such progress should also be applied to the treatment of other animals.

Rob says he believes every reader of this book has benefited from animal experimentation, and still does, some of which experiments were the most cruel. Everyone benefits from the medical, chemical, cosmetic, and entertainment products found in every household in the country, in whose research animals were used.

Simply put, if we humans want to separate ourselves from animal experimentation, we will face a very awkward situation -- every aspect of our lives will be affected. Under this premise, humans do not dare to hold firmly to their own views, and they think: well, all right then, because it is not only medicine; our chemicals, cosmetics, entertainment, many things depend on animal experimentation. Including our vaccine research this time, there is also a lot of animal experimentation involved -- of course there are human trials at the end, but those are only phase three; during phases one and two at the animal experimentation stage, how they experimented on animals, who would tell you? Would they tell you the details of the animal experiments? How they infected the animals with the virus, then gave them certain drugs, or first injected them with the vaccine, then exposed them to the virus, and observed their state of illness and so on? Do you think that among people today, how many dare to truly stand up and say, "I firmly oppose animal experimentation"? Because you are also a beneficiary -- when you are a beneficiary, you begin to hesitate. This is the problem Rob wants to point out: every one of us, on this matter, on the issue of animal experimentation, every person in modern society today is ambivalent; on this issue we are not clearly and firmly opposed.

Rob says, although if I were to choose now, Rob himself says I would choose the latter: no experimentation, no animal experimentation. I would rather endure the development of new technologies without these drugs; I would rather endure the possibility that my body might die in the future from some disease, but I would still make this choice. Because in this way, the practice of us humans depriving other animals or other species of their value fulfillment, imposing human value fulfillment upon other species, is wrong. As for what problems humanity will face, that is humanity's own affair -- you cannot say that because of this, I can do things that violate the value of other lives. You cannot, because of the fulfillment of your own life's value, harm the value fulfillment of other lives; that is wrong.

On this issue, everyone's current understanding is different -- some people can accept it, some cannot, and that is all right. If you cannot accept it, then frankly admit it: I still cannot accept it; I am still a person willing to benefit from animal experimentation. But those who have already reached the point of placing life and death aside, those who have already jumped beyond the scope of life and death, who value the importance of life's value more than the length of life itself, can accept this viewpoint. It depends on what you said earlier: do you care about the length of life, or the fulfillment of life's value? If you pursue the former, taking the length of life as your goal, then you will certainly support using animals for experimentation; if you pursue value fulfillment -- which is the most fundamental law of the universe -- then you will certainly support the latter, and cannot deprive other living species of their value fulfillment. This depends on which stage your current understanding is at right now.

Rob's Note 2: The Perspective Set by Genetic Science

Generally speaking, science still views our genetic system in mechanical, deterministic, or reductionist terms -- I won't explain these here, what mechanism, determinism, reductionism, these are all their terms. To put it simply, according to the current mechanical perspective of science, genes are not considered to be alive. All these theories he is talking about mean that modern scientists do not consider the genetic system to be a living system.

Therefore, evidence is being accumulated to support that overall viewpoint. Because human beings hold such a viewpoint, human beings look for such evidence, proving that genes are a mechanical hereditary system that is not influenced by the outside world, nor shifted by human will. We organize our evidence according to our own beliefs.

That is to say, at this time, science does not need to seek out a larger, or more disturbing, frame of reference that encompasses consciousness, intent, and genetics. Because of the reasons mentioned earlier: when human beings look at it through this mechanical viewpoint, this deterministic viewpoint, this reductionist viewpoint, we do not want to look for evidence that genes change or interact under the influence of consciousness and intent. We do not want to look for such evidence at all. We only want to look for conclusions and evidence about how genes determine our bodies in this mechanized, deterministic way. All our experiments, all our funding, all our researchers are devoted to studying this aspect: how to confirm that changes in genes do indeed influence changes in our bodies. No one, and no funding, goes to study what influences and changes our intentions, thoughts, ideas, and belief systems have on our consciousness, or even what changes our culture and our society have on our genes.

Like the example I gave before: the new generation of children nowadays has absolutely no negative reaction to junk food. We of the older generation feel that these things are junk food, not as beneficial to the body as organic food. But you forget that our new generation, these several generations, they live in a world filled with junk food, and the genes in their bodies have already changed -- they can extract nutrients beneficial to the body from this junk food, and this junk food is no longer junk food to them. This kind of change is a change brought about by culture, and it can also be called a change brought about by the environment. So when he does not consider it junk food, when every bite of hamburger he eats is fragrant, sweet, and utterly delicious, this hamburger is truly very beneficial to him. And why is it junk food to you? Because in your heart you have determined it is junk food, and when you eat it you are very reluctant, feeling that it is junk food, so when you eat it, its effect on you is just like the effect of junk food. Of course there is also the genetic issue here -- because when you were little these things did not exist, and they were not as tasty as mother's cooking, which is normal.

Genes and Consciousness in Interaction, and the Return of Lamarck

Rob said:

Really, I have rarely seen consciousness mentioned together with genetics, except, for example, when the quality of consciousness might be linked to genetic defects such as intellectual disability.

Rob said, I rarely see anyone in this field of genetics discussing the issue of consciousness. Humans do occasionally discuss consciousness, but only to discuss, for example, how the incomplete consciousness of certain intellectually disabled individuals is caused by genetic defects -- they only study that, and do not study the interrelationship between genes and consciousness.

Nor do I think that established science will soon become interested in Seth's theory. Within our genetic system there is interaction between the environment and cultural activities such as politics and economics, or our genetic system responds to our thoughts and emotions, let alone any genetic advance planning for future possibilities.

Rob said, I do not think our scientists will be interested in these theories, nor do I think our scientists will go and study this area. I do not know how those factors -- culture, politics, economics, including the influence of consciousness on genes -- could be measured and manipulated in the laboratory.

Science can allow Seth's concepts to have their own reality outside the framework of science, and thereby dismiss them. Science says: these are not within the scope of our scientific research. Even if what you say is correct, it is not within our scope of research, and we will not consider it -- because I cannot measure it, I cannot measure how your intentions and thoughts influence your genes.

Whether or not science admits it, the concept that genes can prepare for future contingencies very favorably conflicts with the theory of evolution.

Those theories say that evolutionary, genetic changes can only occur through natural selection or mutation. Although arbitrary or random mutations are generally considered to be nature's mistakes -- the theory of evolution considers such mutations and natural selection to be nature's mistakes -- these mutations are retained because they adapt to the environment. So here, there are many unresolved challenges. Rob could even foresee that Seth's material in this session would be dismissed by science as another version of the old, discredited Lamarckian theory.

Lamarck, 1744 to 1829, was a French naturalist⁹. At that time, there was not yet any scientific evidence. He declared:

Certain modifications in the structure and function of an organism can develop as a result of environmental factors.

The biggest difference between this and the theory of evolution is: it develops on its own -- whereas the theory of evolution says it is due to certain unpredictable mutations, and ultimately selected by the environment. Lamarck believed that was not the case, that it actively made its own choices and developed on its own. And such acquired characteristics can be inherited -- the abilities it developed can also be passed down.

Lamarck's research was widely misunderstood, but it still has its own value, and has recently been used in some remarkable scientific research reports. Recent research reports actually cite this material from two or three hundred years ago, in order to show, in scientific terms, how evolution can occur through means other than natural selection and mutation -- that is, scientists have discovered that evolution has ways other than natural selection and genetic mutation, such as our actively producing changes in response to the environment, and so on.

These are all pieces of evidence and supplementary material that Rob collected. From this perspective, Rob was indeed very diligent. Regarding the relationship between the Seth material and the contemporary science of their era, as well as the latest scientific ideas, he never relaxed his research. At this point, do not forget that he was just a painter -- for a painter to combine Seth's theories with science and research them to this degree is already something truly, truly remarkable.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. According to Mike's original words, "38 girls outside the village turned into boys at the onset of puberty"; upon verification, it should be "38 affected 46,XY males from 23 families of a large kindred in the Dominican Republic; due to 5α-reductase deficiency, they were born with feminized or atypical external genitalia and underwent virilization at puberty, rather than girls turning into boys." (Source: L. Q. Cai et al., "5 alpha-reductase-2 gene mutations in the Dominican Republic," 1996, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8626825/) ↩

3. Source: National Cancer Institute, "Definition of athymic nude mouse" (https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/athymic-nude-mouse) ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Russell T. Warne, "In the Know" (https://assets.cambridge.org/97811084/93345/excerpt/9781108493345_excerpt.pdf) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. According to Mike's original words, "In 2020, China's birth rate was only 8 per thousand"; upon verification, it should be "China's birth rate in 2020 was 8.52‰." (Source: Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, "Birth rate continues to decline, will negative population growth arrive ahead of schedule?", https://www.cppcc.gov.cn/zxww/2021/12/02/ARTI1638411002446226.shtml) ↩

8. According to Mike's original words, "China's natural mortality rate was also 8 per thousand"; upon verification, it should be "China's mortality rate in 2020 was 7.07‰, not 8‰." (Source: National Health Commission, "China Health Statistical Yearbook 2021," https://www.nhc.gov.cn/mohwsbwstjxxzx/tjtjnj/202305/03b91f308f7843e681e70c63e86781ff/files/1740022548902_91015.pdf) ↩

9. Source: Larousse, "Lamarck (Jean-Baptiste de Monet, chevalier de)" (https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/college/chevalier_de_Lamarck/23123) ↩