Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 913

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

Guide

This chapter begins with the subjective reality of cells: cells have an inner awareness of shape, identity, curiosity, and a sense of balance, and biological communication exists between cells. From this, Seth explains humanity's innate feeling for shape and form and the origin of painting; painting is a creative act in which inner images and the outer world are mutually transformed. The latter half of the chapter traces how art shifted from religious inner images toward realistic nature, perspective, and technology, discussing the loss of the heroic sense of self and its consequences. At the end of the chapter, Seth responds to doubts about the suicide of the previous homeowner, Mrs. Stevens, pointing out that the problem lay in her failure to reconcile inner and outer conflicts, not in any negative influence from the house; Rob also adds a note on the history of printing.

Chapter Highlights

• Cells have a subjective reality, with an inner knowledge of their own shape, identity, curiosity, sense of balance, and communication between cells.
• Humanity's innate feel for shape and form stems from the cell's recognition of shape; painting is a creative act that transforms inner images and the outer world back and forth.
• After art shifted from the inner images of religious myth toward realistic nature and technological perspective, the presentation of the imaginative and the inner world became restricted.
• People do best when they see themselves in heroic terms; the shift in perception from being "children of God" to being "sinners" moved people from the heroic role to the natural role.
• Rob and Jane were not negatively affected by the suicide of the previous homeowner; Mrs. Stevens' problem was her inability to reconcile her inner focus with her front-of-house life, rather than anything caused by the house itself.

Main Text

Seth's Insights on Cellular Consciousness

Today's session began on Monday, May 5, 1980, at 9:02 p.m. After lunch today, an old friend, David, came to visit them. This David had been recuperating in Florida after undergoing cardiovascular bypass surgery. David brought them surprising news, which stirred up some conflicting emotions. Because a few weeks earlier, he had heard from Mrs. Stephen's relatives that Mrs. Stephen had committed suicide.

Who was Mrs. Stephen? She was the original owner of the house on the hillside where they now lived. In 1975, they had bought this house. There were several connections here involving David, the Stephens, and their house. Actually, they had bought this hillside house through a middleman several months after Mrs. Stephen moved out of Elmira. Rob had never met the Stephens, and Jane had only encountered Mrs. Stephen once, back in 1973. At that time, David had hosted an informal gathering at his rented apartment, and Jane had casually done a reading for that woman.

You can see how coincidental the arrangement of their fates was -- two years before buying the house, Jane had met the owner of the house she would later buy, and had met her only that one time, and had even done a reading for her. What is even more interesting is that Mrs. Stephen was the last person Jane ever did a reading for in such a public setting.

David told us that Mrs. Stephen's relatives had told him that when Mrs. Stephen was living in the house they now occupied, she had suffered several episodes of severe depression, called "yuyu zheng" in Taiwan. After David left, Jane and I began to wonder whether they had been affected by this kind of psychological low before or after moving to this place. Depression is primarily a psychological low, a persistent unhappiness. One of its main symptoms is that nothing can make the person happy, and they lose interest in everything in the world. When Jane did the reading for Mrs. Stephen, she clearly did not receive this information, and did not detect that she had a problem with depression. So you can see that Jane's ability at doing readings at that time was still not sufficient.

They were speculating about when those depressive states had begun -- whether Mrs. Stephen did not yet have depression when Jane saw her, or whether she already had it but Jane's skill was not enough to detect it. And I (Rob) was curious about how long such negative psychological states could persist. When a person is drawn to a place where a very strong negative event occurred simply because of their own troubles, why would such severe depression occur in this house? Undoubtedly the same would be true of a place where positive events had occurred.

Actually, the two of them were somewhat uneasy. This is a strange belief that both Chinese and foreigners have -- first suspecting whether the house is bad, whether the feng shui is bad, why the previous owner who lived in it developed depression and committed suicide.

At dusk today, Jane said she did not think she had tuned in to the Stephens' depressive state. If I thought I had, then I would move out. Rob also said we would have to do that -- if they really felt depressed, then they would have to move out of this house. Rob said he himself had not felt any sense of having been affected.

Here you can see some strange phenomena. They had absolutely loved this house back then, having looked at twenty-seven or twenty-eight houses before finally choosing it. In such a small city. At the time, Seth had given a lot of advice, and actually at first he did not recommend choosing this house, but the two of them insisted that they really liked it.

The important thing is, why would they say at this time that if the previous owner had committed suicide because of depression, and we felt we were affected, we would move out? The first reason is that the two of them now had money. Previously, when they lived in an apartment, they rented for over a decade without moving, and never once said anything about the previous owner of the apartment they rented, because their financial situation did not allow it, and they did not care. But now that their financial situation allowed it, they had the confidence -- if it is not good, we will just move.

This phenomenon is very obvious. In real life, we also see that some people, once they have money, begin to become suspicious and paranoid. When they had no ability to choose, when they were in their early twenties buying a home or renting a place for the first time, they would not be particular or fussy about these things. But once they have the means, they start to be particular. So you can understand that many problems are self-inflicted, creating trouble for themselves. Even though Rob and Jane had been transmitting the Seth material for so many years by this point, the two of them could still be troubled and entangled by such everyday mundane matters. And Seth was actually not at all interested in this.

They still found it very strange, even unreal -- the impact of thinking that a person so closely connected to this place they loved had committed suicide was still great. Their recording of the small details of daily life actually makes the entire Seth material richer, and we can also see that Rob and Jane were two living, breathing people, just like us, living around us, with thoughts just like ours.

When Seth came through, he did not mention this matter at all. Did Seth know about it? Of course he did -- Seth knew their every move. But what Seth discussed were more macroscopic topics concerning the development of the entire human civilization. As specific individuals, Rob and Jane preferred to discuss topics closely related to themselves. This is also a very normal phenomenon. At the end of this session, Seth gave his own insight on this matter, and you can see the enormous difference between their cognition and Seth's cognition.

Below is the content Seth wanted to convey in this session, which is also very important and groundbreaking for many people's understanding.

The field of knowledge you have established does not allow cells to have any subjective reality.

Within your existing knowledge structure, there is no place for any subjective reality of cells. If you tell someone that cells have their own consciousness and their own thoughts, scientists will laugh at you. But:

Cells possess inner knowledge of their own shapes, as well as of any other shapes in their immediate environment. In addition, there are systems of biological communication between all cells.

Cells are particularly interested in shape -- interested in their own shape and in the shapes of other cells. At the same time, cells also have an internal communication system that we humans do not know about.

To an important degree, cells possess curiosity -- it is a driving force toward action, and then they have their own sense of balance, as well as a feeling of being both part of a tissue or organ and an independent entity at the same time.

Here he again discusses cellular consciousness and the subjective feelings of cells. Cells have the following subjective feelings: First, cells are curious. This curiosity drives their actions, just as curiosity drives many of our human actions. Why are you willing to travel to a place? Because you do not understand it, it is unfamiliar, and you are curious. Why do you marry another person? Besides love, do you not also want to explore the other side of your gender? Specifically for an individual, you want to explore this person, want to understand everything about them -- is all of this not curiosity? Of course, it is undeniable that there is love in it, but curiosity is also a primary driving force. If you have no curiosity about a person of the opposite sex, it is very difficult for you to develop an intimate relationship with them. Maintaining curiosity is a very good way to maintain an intimate relationship -- if you no longer have curiosity about the other person, then the relationship has basically reached its end.

Second, the cell's sense of balance. What is meant by its own sense of balance? It is the sense of being both part of a tissue, part of an organ, and at the same time being itself -- this sense of balance. It belongs to very large systems like the circulatory system or the respiratory system, and at the same time it is an independent cell. This sense of balance refers to the fact that the cell's identity is biologically closely connected to precise knowledge of its own shape -- the cell knows its own shape.

His preceding points are very logically rigorous and progressive. At first, when you read the beginning, you actually do not know what he wants to say, but when you read further, you understand. To summarize: cells have self-consciousness, curiosity, a sense of identity, and a clear and precise cognition of their own shape. And their cognition of shape is their cognition of their sense of self-identity.

In your kind of very complex cellular structure, you have unique mental attributes, and you have developed an innate feeling for the importance of shape and form.

You humans are composed of so many cells, and in addition you yourselves have mental attributes beyond the biological, and all of this has led to your innate feeling for the importance of shape and form. These words are very important. Why are they important? Because many of us are interested in things of inner shape. For example, men are especially interested in and fascinated by the curves of the female body -- what is so special about these curves? You can draw many, many S-shaped curves, but no, he is fascinated by this kind of shape, form, and contour, including posture and physique. Women are the same -- they have an incurable obsession with those "oppas," long legs, six-pack abs, and the physique and form of the male body. You cannot say why. Seth points out here that humans are born with an innate feeling for shape and form, revealing the secret in one sentence. So do not blame those people who judge by appearance -- it is innate to them; humans are born members of the appearance-judging club.

Then Seth immediately jumps to the ability to paint. Our earliest ancient humans began painting murals on cave walls -- why did they start painting so early? They could paint before they could write. This is humanity's instinctive feeling for shape, expressed through painting, a natural product of curiosity about shape.

On a rather different level, you possess a biological self-image that is quite different from the one you see in the mirror.

You paint the image of others, paint a tree, a cow, a sheep, and at the same time you also have a cognition of your self-image. This cognition of your self-image is not the same as the you in the mirror. How many people look at themselves in the mirror and feel strange? You feel, how did I end up looking like this, different from what I had in mind. Everyone has an inner self in their heart, and that self is better, younger, and in a better overall state. No matter what age and state you are currently in, you always have a better, younger image in your heart.

Where does this inner image come from? It is the accumulation of every cell's cognition of its own shape, or one could say the manifestation of the overall consciousness. It comes from within, obtained from the overall cognition of cells regarding their own shape and the shapes of other cells.

Formed by the shape of the cells and the composition of the tissues.

Your external appearance is certainly formed by cells and tissues. Skin cells, epidermal cells, muscles, collagen, fat -- the proportions of these ultimately make up your appearance, your facial features, and your body shape. You cannot see the shape of cells, but when they make up the shape of your body, you can see it.

And operating at its limits.

"Operating at its limits" means materializing it to the extreme. The inner image is invisible, but through the accumulation and superposition of cells' cognition of shape and self-consciousness from the inside out, it finally displays a process of concretization from inner image to outer image, reaching the limit of materialization. From inside to outside, until it is finally fixed, in the material world it appears as a fixed image.

Again, the simple cell has a curiosity about its environment.

So we also have curiosity about our surroundings, and this is all generated from the inside out.

And at your much more advanced cellular level, your own curiosity is endless.

Because cells have curiosity, and this entire human body composed of so many cells also has endless curiosity.

It is felt primarily as a curiosity about shape.

He says human curiosity has many kinds, but human curiosity about shape is especially important. The curiosity that humans are more willing to express is more about shape:

The desire to touch, to explore, to feel edges, that is, angular edges, and the smooth places without edges.

Why are we willing to handle an object? Whether it is handling the human body or handling utensils. Look at how many middle-aged greasy men often wear a bracelet of beads and take it out to fondle it whenever they have nothing to do, trying to bring out the patina and all that. Young people find it annoying and somewhat disgusting -- young people like clean, crisp, neat things. But the value orientation of middle-aged people is completely different from that of young people. Speaking of this, everyone can understand why this is so -- Seth has again explained the reason clearly: humans are innately interested in things of this kind of shape, wanting to hold them in their hands and fondle them, touch them. This also reflects women's innate obsession with jewelry and clothing. Any change in shape, color, clothing style, or jewelry design has a fatal allure for her. Men's obsession with the shapes of other things is the same, such as cars, phones, and computer equipment -- it is just that the objects of obsession are different, but the nature is the same.

There is a particular fascination with space itself.

Humans are not only fascinated by tangible things, but also by intangible space. There is nothing in space, nothing to touch, no shape to perceive. But you insist on exploring space, wanting to give this space a concrete shape -- space originally has no shape and no things, but you insist on concretizing it, constructing a spatial structure and dimensions for it, and then filling this concretized space with various objects. This is an instinct and nature of humanity. So in our human cognition, when we think of space, it is always that kind of three-dimensional feeling with perspective. For any space, you will immediately find the shape of the space formed in your mind.

Remember, cells are conscious. So when I say these tendencies intersect with biology, they are also mental attributes.

Because cells themselves are conscious, when I say humans have these inner attributes, they are both biological attributes and mental attributes. Biologically speaking, it is caused by the curiosity inherent in cells themselves, especially curiosity about shape; but because cells themselves are also conscious, you can also say this is both a biological attribute and a mental attribute.

Again, painting in its simplest form is an extension of that tendency.

From children's scribbles to the murals of ancient humans, to the most exquisite paintings of artists, all are extensions of the tendency to explore shape.

And in a way it serves two purposes.

Which two purposes? One mental purpose and one biological purpose. These two purposes are intertwined. Many people do not understand why people are obsessed with shape -- especially the obsession with the bodies of the opposite sex during youth -- it carries a strong biological attribute, a strong primal impulse, and at the same time a mental attribute. Painting can achieve both of these purposes, both the biological and the mental.

Particularly with children, this tendency allows them to express a form first seen in the mind.

For children, painting and scribbling is drawing out the forms and shapes in their minds. When they draw circles or squares, they are trying to replicate those inner shapes. Remember, the most primal motivation of painting is to draw out the pictures in our minds and hearts.

To transfer these images outward into the environment, onto paper, onto the ground, wherever -- an extremely important creative act.

Drawing is an extremely important creative act. This is why early development of painting ability in many children is helpful for their growth -- because they are creating, they are putting inner things into the outer world.

For it gives the child a way of taking an inner perception, giving it a shape in the personal world, and then transferring it into an experience of shared physical reality that is obvious to all.

He draws out the shape in his personal mind, turning it into a physical reality that others can see and that everyone can share. And this creative process is a need of human beings.

When children draw things, then, they are successfully turning the shapes of the outer world into their personal mental experience.

The preceding part was about drawing out inner things; now he says that when children copy external things -- for example, the teacher gives an apple and says, children, let us all draw the apple, or Da Vinci drawing eggs -- these are processes of turning the shapes of the outer world into the images in their personal minds. You see something, then imprint it in your mind, then draw it out, and this process of drawing itself is a matter of inner experience. Through the paintings and forms drawn in the material world, you possess them in your mind -- the process of drawing it out actually deeply engraves its image in your mind. Any painter has in their mind the images of the paintings they have drawn, because through such a creative process, they have already fixed that form in their mind.

The art of drawing and painting always involves both of those processes to some degree.

Which two processes? Drawing out inner things, and taking outer things into one's own heart. Remember, painting is always a mutual superposition and influence of these two processes.

A shrewd understanding of inner and outer energies is necessary.

A painter's understanding of their own inner image that they want to express, and of the shapes of outer things, is both very necessary. "Shrewd" refers to accurate expression -- your inner image must be accurately expressed with the brush, and the outer image must also be accurately expressed with the brush, and this all requires very exquisite skill.

The great artist, however, needs to enlarge and intensify those two elements.

The greatest artists enlarge and intensify these two elements of precise expression of the inner and the outer. Neither can be missing. You say, my inner is strong but my outer is not, and what I paint is nothing; if your outer is strong but your inner is empty, that also does not work.

Man considers all of his other needs, requirements, and purposes, and chooses the best conditions in which to display and develop the highest points of this ability.

When painting, it is not only about combining the inner and outer points, but also about the culture, era, and social background in which he lives -- these are also his needs and his purposes. After possessing both of these abilities, he must also follow his needs and purposes -- what he wants to paint and why he paints -- and then choose the best conditions in which to display and develop the highest points of this ability.

What this means is that you as a painter have this ability, and you express both the inner and outer very well, but what you paint must conform to the needs of your era. Ultimately you want to develop these two abilities to the extreme, but you need to find a way to express them.

For example, in the Renaissance era, you could only paint religious paintings. After the Renaissance, the things you could paint became much more numerous, and the restrictions disappeared. Actually, Western painting all began with religion, and so did Eastern painting -- look at the flying apsaras in the Dunhuang murals, breathtakingly beautiful. Why are painting and religion inseparable? Because they both come from the inside out; religion is all on the spiritual level, all concrete outward expressions of inner phenomena or the inner world. In the Buddhist period, the highest painting skills were all used to paint Buddhist paintings, and sculpture skills were all used to carve Buddha statues and bodhisattva statues; in the West it was the same, painting God, stories from the Bible, the Virgin and the Holy Spirit.

The important thing is that the artist displays the highest skill and demonstrates this ability. But it must conform to the era and environment in which he lives. For example, if you paint nude women in an Arab country to express the beauty of the human body, that is obviously not acceptable. You can only use other methods to display it, painting other stories of Islam. Because Allah has no image, it is impossible to paint an image of Allah.

Similarly, during the Cultural Revolution in China, you could not paint things contrary to the mainstream values of that era.

In Michelangelo's time, from 1475 to 1564, the particular, brilliant, and intensified flowering of painting and sculpture that occurred could not happen in your time after the birth of technology.

In such a world of probabilities, this could not happen after the birth of technology; it could only happen before the birth of technology. Why? Because after the birth of technology, these things no longer have meaning -- no matter how well you paint, it is not as good as what a camera can capture. Previously, being a photographer was a very professional occupation; now everyone is a photographer, taking out a phone and snapping a picture, and with powerful artificial intelligence algorithms, every shot is a masterpiece. Previously, correct exposure and color balance were very professional skills; now all of this no longer matters, as computers and artificial intelligence have solved all of it. Previously, professional drivers needed long-term practice; now artificial intelligence is already driving cars.

So in the 15th century Renaissance period, Western art reached its highest peak, whether painting or sculpture, and it has been difficult for anyone in later periods to surpass it. This is also the question Rob kept pursuing at the end of the previous session -- why is it that after the 15th century, there were no more of these great painters and artists? The reason is that they were no longer needed. It is not that humanity's level in art has regressed, nor that humanity's ability in this area is insufficient; it is that our focus is no longer on this.

It certainly could not happen in your own time.

In our era, no one says they want to become that kind of painter or artist.

When images flash before your eyes through television and film, when images display themselves freely in your magazines and advertisements, when you are surrounded at all times by all kinds of photographs.

So those painting masters will not be produced. But in those eras, the 1400s and such, there was no such thing as photography.

Aside from the images provided by natural objects, other images were very scarce.

Other than the natural images your eyes could see, you could not see anything else. Unlike now, with photos on your phone, photos on the internet, movies and television, all vivid and lifelike. In those times, there was none of this. If you lived in a desert, then all you saw was desert; if you lived on a farm, then what you saw forever was the scenery of the farm. In an era when you could not travel beyond the reach of your own two feet, your surrounding environment determined what you could see. Unlike now, if you live in a desert or on a farm, you can travel around the world through the internet, even take virtual tours.

Taiwan has a science fiction television series called 2049¹, which tells many stories about humanities and emotional intimacy issues -- a very good series. In it, virtual travel in the year 2049 has already become a very mainstream way of traveling -- solving the fatigue of long-distance travel and the troubles of jet lag. Wherever you want to go, you just put on virtual glasses and you are truly in that environment. But before the development of technology, let alone virtual travel, you did not even know what another place looked like. You could only listen to outsiders who came once every ten or twenty years describe the scenery beyond your village, what it looked like on the other side of the mountain.

So you can understand how important painting was in that era.

People's naked eyes could only see what was displayed before them. In that era, there were no postcards printed with pictures of the Alps or distant places -- no postcards, no photographs.

It is even more convenient now: open a virtual map on your phone, and you can directly walk around in a three-dimensional real scene.

Visual data contained only what the eye could see.

What your eyes saw was all your visual data, unlike now when the internet surrounds everything. That was indeed a different world. In that time, a painted object had considerable value. Imagine, without electronic devices and without the internet, if an extremely beautiful landscape painting or scenery painting hung in your living room or bedroom, and you could look at such beautiful scenery every day, how important that would be to you. Why did that era produce a large number of painters, including portrait painters and landscape painters? Because there was a great deal of demand. Although I live in this place, the painting hanging on my living room wall is of an extremely beautiful place, so that painting has value.

In those days, paintings were only for priests and nobles.

Ordinary people could not afford paintings; they were very expensive, and only clergy and nobles could possess them.

You must also remember that the art of the masters was largely unknown to the poor peasants of Europe.

Did the peasants know about Michelangelo and Da Vinci? No. Because to them it was not important; farming was more important. Let alone knowing about the whole world. Art was prepared for those who could enjoy it and afford it.

There were no widely circulated printed materials; there was no printing at that time.

Printing clearly appeared in the East much earlier than in the West, so we had printing very early on. But at that time the West had no printed matter, and you could not afford original works, so ordinary people had no opportunity to obtain paintings or images. So art, politics, and religion were all connected. What kind of person, what era, what period, and the environment he was in at the time determined that the feelings and experiences he could obtain were different. In that era, only that kind of experiential mode was possible. Now through the internet we can experience a world completely different from theirs. The world seems to still be that world, but you could say the world is no longer that world.

Poor people saw inferior religious paintings in their own simple churches, painted by local painters whose fame was far below that of the artists who painted for the pope.

The churches the peasants went to also had paintings, but they were painted terribly, all by the most ordinary local painters. So from the degree of refinement of the artwork, you could tell a person's political, economic, and social status.

So these refined oil paintings and artworks are called Fine Art in English.

Fine means exquisite, refined. You cannot simply use "artwork" to describe them, because a child's scribbles can also be called artwork, so "Fine" is added in front -- it has to be refined enough.

But in that particular era, the main issue was a shared belief system.

The main social theme of that era was a common faith; everyone believed in Catholicism or Christianity.

Within that belief system, among other things, there was contained an implied image that was neither here nor there, neither wholly secular nor wholly sacred.

Those mythological figures -- Jesus, the Heavenly Father, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Son, angels -- were none of them people we could see in real society. You could also say they were images within your inner self, or images within religion. He was not secular, nor was he completely sacred. Why not wholly sacred? Because he still had a human form in him; it was impossible to paint a completely sacred image.

A myth about God, angels, demons, and this whole cast of biblical characters, that was the subject of painting in that period.

That was the image in people's imagination being concretely painted out.

Those images were like an entirely artistic language.

Those images themselves were not important; they were only an artistic language, used merely to express these artists' exploration of the shapes of such images.

Artists automatically used them to comment on that world, that era, on God and man, and on the court and society of that time.

Artists used these images as material to express their creative passion and creative skill, using these concrete images to comment on that era.

Those mythological images and the belief system were, to a great extent, shared by everyone, peasants and the rich alike.

To a certain extent, churches everywhere had such images. Although the quality of the paintings was uneven, the images were basically similar -- what God looked like, what Jesus looked like, all had a fixed image.

They were all highly emotionally charged.

Here it refers to those images.

Whether a painter portrayed a saint or an apostle as a heroic figure, or as the concept of the Word made flesh, or as a natural man, he commented on a relationship between nature and the divine.

This passage is very important. Many people may think, I am not an artist or a painter, so can I skip this session? Do not. There is deep meaning in this. These figures, whether concrete people or concrete gods, all expressed the artist's understanding of the relationship between nature and the divine.

In a manner of speaking, those stylized figures representing God, the apostles, the saints, and so forth, were somewhat like formalized abstract images.

They were like a kind of formalized abstraction, without concrete...

The image a painter tried to paint was first of all a psychic and emotional image. Remember, when a painter wants to paint an image, he must first create that image in his psyche and emotions. Those paintings were not only meant to express the painter's own understanding of the psychic and emotional image of that figure; every figure in every painting he created carried a great deal of his personal emotional and psychic attributes. Beyond that, what he mainly wanted to express through his own understanding was how he viewed the tension between humanity and divinity. What is meant by tension? Man is not God, but man wants to become God; the process of man not being God yet wanting to become God -- that kind of difference is tension.

And those paintings themselves seemed to bring the heavenly host to life. Because these paintings existed, it seemed that heaven was not far from us, heaven was not ethereal and intangible, heaven became vivid and alive. When we look at these paintings today, it seems heaven was just like that, but do not forget, in that era -- more than a thousand years ago, several hundred years ago, even two thousand years ago -- the forms of heaven and the state of life expressed in the paintings held infinite attraction for everyone. Although our lives today may be more comfortable than the heaven of that time, for the people of that time, such depictions had already painted the holy scene of heaven vividly and lifelike, making it a place countless people longed for, and heaven was no longer abstract. If no one had ever seen Christ, at least they could still see his portrait. Those who had seen Christ were few, but that did not stop everyone from looking at his portrait.

This is an art entirely different from yours now. The art of that era was different from ours now. Different in what way? The paintings of that time were more the painter's inner psychic and emotional expression of that figure. In other words, what he painted was not a concrete person, but an image in his mind. That era was all like that -- images in the mind. Including ancient Chinese and ancient Indian sculptures, if you have been to the region of India, when you look at those ancient Buddhist statues, they are lifelike and bear the imprint of each era, but the skill of the sculpture can only be described as breathtaking. Even today you can still catch a glimpse of it. If you have been to the Dunhuang murals, or seen what the Dunhuang murals look like after restoration, you see the celestial maidens painted by people of that era, the images of celestial maidens flying in the sky and scattering flowers, that kind of grace, that kind of expression, that kind of realm, it makes one's heart yearn for it. So the art of that period was truly different from now.

They were an attempt to objectify inner reality as perceived through a certain belief system. Translated into plain language: making concrete the images people had in their faith. You think the Jade Emperor should look like this, so you paint him like this; you think King Yama looks like this, so you paint him like this. Objectively painting out the inner reality within the belief system.

Whether or not the painter agreed with a given issue, the belief system was there like an invisible framework. Whether or not this painter approved of this belief system, whether you approved or not did not matter. In that era, the belief system was there like an overall framework. In other words, as an artist, the paintings you created in that era were necessarily influenced by the religious framework of that period. So among the paintings of that period, the vast majority you see are related to religious figures and religious stories, whether in the East or the West.

The intense focus of that unifying belief system -- you might not believe in this religion, or believe only part of it, or not believe at all, it did not matter. But at that time, religion as a mainstream social viewpoint and social value, you would inevitably have some fusion, collision, and point of connection with it. Even if you did not believe in it, that was still not believing in it -- first it had to exist, right? You say I do not approve of its religious belief; when you say you do not approve, have you not already understood its religious system? Have you not already brought it into your reality? Although your attitude is one of disapproval. Here "unifying" refers to this: do not think that what you do not approve of has not been unified into your world of consciousness; what you do not approve of enters your consciousness just as much as what you do approve of. So this is a very subtle point.

The tension between the felt subjective world and the concrete world, that is, the difference between your subjective and inner world and the concrete world, that difference is tension. And the difficulty of finding images of other subjects -- you wanted to paint other subjects but could not; you wanted to paint alien creatures, wanted to paint DNA, wanted to paint a generator, but you could not paint them, because the subjects of that era were all this. And then bringing art into a great flowering, that is, none of these things mattered; these subjects and these images were only there to let artists display the greatness of their artistic achievement, except that in that era they all used religious figures as these roles.

The Turning Point of Art: From Inner to Natural

Later, when man insisted upon a certain greater objectivity, he decided that the image of man should look like man -- real man, with weaknesses and strengths. The heroic pattern began to fade, and artists decided to paint the natural world as they saw it with their natural eyes, casting aside the vast realm of inner imagery.

In the later period, as the ages developed and progressed, a most fundamental and subtle change occurred -- this passage is the key point of this chapter. Later people discovered that they should paint natural things, that they should paint what their eyes saw, and at this time perspective and the various sciences and techniques in modern painting emerged one after another. Especially as advocated by Leonardo da Vinci and other scientists (not just painters), he introduced mathematics, geometry, and perspective into painting. At this point, if you wanted to paint a picture, you had to follow these standards, otherwise what you painted would not look right. If you had no understanding of perspective, your painting would lack a sense of three-dimensionality. So at this time the greatest change occurred in man: man no longer painted what was inside his heart; man began to paint what his eyes could see; he began to paint nature. Remember this point, it is crucial: he cast aside these inner things.

Leonardo's sketches already showed that tendency. If you look at Leonardo's sketches, you will know that he incorporated a great deal of geometry and mathematics in them. The reason he is fascinating is because of his undeniable artistic inclination. What is fascinating about him is that although he used geometry and mathematics, it was still an artistic expression -- it is just that what he expressed was no longer that inner world of the heart, but rather an external objective world. But their methods, their craftsmanship, were still artistic expressions; it was only that the object of expression was different: from previously being primarily inner, it now became primarily outer. He also began to show those trends that led to the birth of modern science; modern science had its germination from that time.

Leonardo da Vinci was a remarkable person. He was not only a painter; his attainments in spirituality and theology also reached a very high level in that era, and many things may still not be fully understood by modern people. For example, Leonardo's notebooks dealt with detailed observations of all aspects of nature itself, and then combined very original, intense imagination with quite precise calculation. He combined inner original artistic expression and imagination with precise mathematical and geometrical concepts. That was a kind of precision that could lead to detailed depictions of flowers, trees, and the dynamic natural phenomena of water. Leonardo already had concrete methods for painting these things; he had already begun to form a science out of the technical and descriptive craft of painting.

Now painting of that nature prevails in your time in an entirely different way. A true description of reality, of the natural world -- we use different ways to make it prevail in our time. It is somewhat separated from its inception. What was the inception? The inception still had inner things in it, and then it was combined with some modern techniques -- mathematics and geometry -- and then expressed. But in modern times, this inner element is becoming less and less. For example, in very complex engineering drawings, such as those necessary in certain sciences, there is a unity of precise sketching and mathematics, and all the inventions that are now part of your world require sketches. Your modern science, whether building skyscrapers or designing cell phones, requires drawing; even chips are drawn out as pictures. These drawings no longer have any inner element at all; they are all descriptions of the objective world, all the concept of sketching plus mathematical rigor, which then became a kind of mechanical or computer drafting. This kind of drawing is also drawing; it is an extreme expression of the scientization of sketching. All the mechanical drawings and architectural drawings you see now, including everything in any science, must first be drawn. These drawings actually have their roots, their origins, in the era of Leonardo da Vinci -- they began only after painting was combined with mathematics. So this was also the enlightenment era of your science.

In your world, technology is your art. Now painting like that of the medieval period is no longer art; on the contrary, technology has become our art. Including the analysis of many chip patterns, it has been discovered that hundreds of billions of transistors are placed precisely and flawlessly on a very small chip, and this is like a work of art. Our cell phones, our technological products, are all like works of art.

You are pursuing an understanding of your relationship with the universe through the use of technology. Medieval people understood their relationship with themselves and the universe, understood their relationship with God, through painting; you modern people explore your relationship with the universe through technology -- you are walking a different path.

Until recently, science was providing you with a unified belief system, and that is only now beginning to break down. Seth is smiling. Science has always provided a complete, consistent, unified belief system, although recently it has begun to break down. Why is it breaking down? With the development of technology, you will find that the so-called unified belief system of science simply cannot hold up -- whether it is quantum mechanics or the problems encountered in space exploration, they will all make you understand that so-called scientific theories cannot hold up.

And your space travel is merely a concrete attempt -- a concrete act of exploring the unknown. Ancient people did not have the ability for this kind of concrete act; their exploration of the unknown world was more through artistic creation, through the expression of the inner world of art, by presenting the pictures of the inner world as a way to explore their unknown. Seth is a bit gleeful here; he says that the unknown world your science explores is actually the same as the unknown world explored in those religious eras -- in other words, it is all our inner world, all an existence of a spiritual world or a psychic world. But religion explored it through their methods, through various scriptures, paintings, religious rituals, and so on; while our scientists explore it through scientific methods, by launching different rockets to various places in the universe. We are all exploring an unknown world. In different historical eras, other people used other methods and did similar things -- exploring the unknown; it is just that science used its scientific method, and this does not deny that others did similar things before.

Science was once a great painting that could see the world directly or through reproductions, and now far more people are familiar with the works of the masters than in the eras in which they lived. Science has also made progress, because the development of science can make those masterpieces more easily accessible to the whole world. Today, far more people have seen Van Gogh's paintings than when he was alive; today, far more people have seen the Mona Lisa than in the era when Leonardo da Vinci lived -- these are all effects brought about by technological progress. So Seth makes a bit of a compensation here -- from this angle, technology has made the works of the masters widely accessible, and this is also one of its meaningful uses; you cannot only say that technology has bad aspects, you must also objectively acknowledge the good aspects. Mankind took advantage of that situation, so the paintings of the masters could become models and driving forces. We push the world's highest standards before the whole world, making them models for all humanity. In the past, without technology, this was impossible -- the painter you knew might have been the best painter in your village; the artist you knew was just the makeshift troupe that often came to perform at the village entrance, because you had no other means to know more people who could sing, dance, or paint. But today's technology displays the world's most top-tier works of art before you, and this undoubtedly raises the standard of role models and exemplars for each of us -- all world-class masters. So in this respect, technology has an immeasurable role.

It not only concerns the extraordinary artworks involved, but it can also rekindle and reawaken in people those emotions that brought painting into existence. It is not merely about pushing out those extraordinary artworks; more importantly, it allows you to think, or through these artworks to feel that the artists of that era depicted the world in their hearts. This is their most important function -- allowing today's humanity to return to several hundred years ago, to rethink the expression of the inner world that those artists painted. The touch upon our psyche far surpasses those sketches, those photographic-like things of the real world. Why can artworks still remain artworks after so much time? It is because they do not paint things of the real world; they paint what is inside the painter's heart -- this is their most valuable aspect. If it were a description of the existing world, that would be meaningless; today's photographic technology is far stronger in ways beyond measure. But no matter how strong today's photographic technology is, it cannot capture the inner world of people. This is also why artists are important and different from others -- they can paint the inner world. If you aspire to become an artist, you should know where your direction of effort should be. You must not say that you will plunge headlong into the inner world; you must combine these two together; you cannot go astray. As was said earlier in this session, you must have both skills -- a precise grasp and expressive power of both inner energy and outer energy, both of which you must develop. You cannot say that I will only develop the inner and ignore the outer; that will not work, because then you will not be able to express it.

The Heroic Perspective

When a person views himself in a heroic way, he is always doing his best. Underline this sentence -- it is very important. Do you want to do better? Look at yourself in a heroic way. This is why biographies of famous people are so popular.

Although the Roman Catholic Church once gave him a favorable, consistent belief system, for many reasons those beliefs shifted, so that the distinction between man and God grew larger. In that ancient period, the Catholic religious system regarded man as a child of God, and this view is consistent with our spiritual learning -- we are a part of All That Is, just as saying that man is God's people is the same thing; there is no essential difference, it is the same principle. Man is a child of God -- is man not a heroic existence? You are a child of God -- are you not a heroic existence? So that person could develop very well. But later it was no longer like this; later it became that man was a sinner, man was born a sinner, and now this became the mainstream of society, the mainstream of this religion. Man is born sinful -- this replaced the concept that man is a child of God. These are two completely different concepts. Man as a child of God is a heroic way of viewing oneself; man as a sinner is viewing oneself from a posture even lower than ordinary. What was the result? As you may have seen especially in art galleries, man shifted from the heroic role to the natural role. In the paintings of that period, every person was a heroic figure, every person existed like a god; but in the later period, people gradually became realistic versions of human beings.

The curiosity that had once been directed toward divinity became directed toward nature. People in the past felt they were children of God and would ultimately return to God's embrace; we were developing in divinity, and we had curiosity about divinity. But later, with the intervention of science and the entry of mathematics, we directed this curiosity toward the exploration of nature, and the exploration of divinity was gone -- at least it no longer became the mainstream -- and we turned instead to exploring the existence of the natural, material world. So man's questioning led him to paint more natural portraits and images; people began to paint natural things, and then also began to paint landscapes.

This was an inevitable process -- a pity, but there was no way around it. Yet when this process occurred, man made a great division between the world of imagination and the world of nature, until finally he became convinced that the material world was real, while the world of imagination was not real -- this was the greatest consequence. So painting became more and more realistic. This was the greatest watershed. From then on, people began to acknowledge only the real material world, and lost interest in the images and development of the divine inner world. Why did they lose interest? Because they felt those were not real.

Here you see, Seth goes from the cell's innate recognition of images and sense of identity, all the way to the point that human painting is caused and brought forth by this innate attribute of the cell toward images, and all the way through the entire process of the evolution of human civilization. So you can see that the angle, breadth, and height from which Seth views problems is not something ordinary people can comprehend.

So art became bound to the images before one's eyes -- art became bound to the things you see before you, only the form of expression differed. You could have a certain degree of creative freedom, but the premise of that freedom had to be an expression based on reality. Therefore, in a certain way, art could no longer present to man the greater information he once had; it lost the nourishment of the inner world and became merely an artistic expression of the outer world. It could still do exaggeration, abstraction, and various other forms of expression, but its essence was artistic creation centered on the outer world. Whereas earlier artists were centered on the inner world, on imagined images.

This imaginative interpretation was like a classroom, and so art largely became the handmaiden of technology. For example, we draw engineering diagrams, mathematical charts, and so on. What you call abstract art attempted to reverse that process, but even abstract painters did not believe there was any world of heroic dimension within it, and that style of painting was also largely short-lived. Many artists, in order to say no to this phenomenon, began doing abstract paintings, but the core of abstract painting is that they no longer believed there was a more powerful inner world, no longer believed those heroic figures existed, no longer believed they themselves were heroic existences; they merely used an abstract way to express it. This abstract style of painting would not last long either; it was bound to be short-lived. Abstract painting or Impressionism is no longer so popular now; it was popular for a period. Why was it popular for that period? As Seth said, it was actually a rebellion against reality -- what meaning is there in all of you painting realistic things? That is not what an artist should do, so I must paint abstract things. But its essence did not change; it did not have a powerful inner world as its support; it merely took the outer world and processed it in an abstract way.

I do want to mention man's application of perspective in painting -- perspective is the most important turning point in modern painting. In the early fifteenth century, because Rob has a professional background in painting, in the early fifteenth century people began to put perspective into painting². It signaled that art began to turn away from the colors of imagination and toward a more explicitly realistic method of painting. Because perspective is the core of three-dimensional painting. After that, to a very large degree, the role of imagination was not allowed to distort the reference framework of fact. The application of perspective gave painters a framework -- you could no longer paint arbitrarily; what you painted had to conform to this method of perspective. If your painting did not even conform to the method of perspective, you had not even reached the passing mark of a painter. Using this sense of space and perspective of the three-dimensional world to frame an artist's creation of the inner world -- that is truly lamentable. In the end, artists could no longer create works that transcended this time and space. Yet artistic creation itself transcends time and space; but time and space were nonetheless imposed as a frame upon art -- art was originally the least affected by it, yet in the end it too was affected by it.

All of this involved humanity as a whole as well as certain individuals within it. When their purposes met with the purposes of the species, at certain points in time innate abilities were touched upon. When the abilities of certain individuals fit together with the needs of the development of humanity as a whole, then those individuals would play a very great role in the historical process of human development. They merged the goals and purposes of their personal development with the role that humanity needed them to play at that time -- while completing their personal value fulfillment, they also brought about a transformation of humanity in that historical period.

Seth's Perspective on Things

In today's session, what Seth has been trying to discuss is this inner connection between human civilization and human cells and cellular consciousness. He started from a single cell, infinitesimally small within, and went all the way to the development of human civilization, vast beyond measure without. This kind of cross-disciplinary, cross-domain, cross-scale insight -- from the microscopic scale of the cell all the way to the vast dimensions of human civilization -- on all these levels, Seth unified them. This kind of ability is not something a person in a higher dimension could fail to do. Only when you have penetrated all of this can you see the inner essence of these things. And this ability is not something that just anyone can fake, not something that just anyone can spout a few lines about "the New Year creates reality" and so on, saying that kind of chicken-soup-for-the-soul, superficial stuff and expect to have insight.

As I've said before, many people say, "I've channeled, I've connected with a higher spirit, I've connected with Guanyin Bodhisattva, I've connected with the Buddha, I've connected with Seth," and some even say -- but when you read everything they say from beginning to end, there's not a shred of originality. It's just those chicken-soup-for-the-soul phrases repeated over and over. Their level forever stays at the surface expression of Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality. They've merely changed the wording, but it's still the same viewpoints turned this way and that. Then you know they haven't actually connected at all. Only after you've truly connected can you know that the insight it brings, the cognition it brings, is not on that level -- not about solving a few of your personal problems, solving a few of your family and emotional problems, giving you some unique perspectives and insights. It's not something that can be covered by simply saying a few words like "love yourself" or "unconditional love." There is a very, very deep difference in cognition and in state of being here, even though sometimes the outward forms of expression are quite similar.

The Answer to the Matter of Mrs. Stevens

Then the dictation for this session came to an end, and Seth asked: Do you have any questions? Rob very persistently said -- earlier here we talked about this matter of Mrs. Stevens' suicide. She used to live in this house, and Rob still remembered the matter. At that point Seth directly interrupted and said, I know your discussion, you don't need to say it, I know everything you said. Seth's meaning was, look, everything I've been telling you is about such grand, macro-level matters, why do you always ask me these micro-level questions. But Seth was Seth after all, he had no emotion or impatience; since you want to ask, I'll tell you.

Seth said, you were attracted to this house because of its contemporaneity and because of the neighborhood -- your neighbors -- but also because of them, because it placed you in a different position, a different social category. When you liked this house back then, what you liked was its contemporaneity -- building a house on a hillside is certainly different from building one on flat ground, it carries a bit of a modern feel, with floor-to-ceiling windows, with that layered design sense going from top to bottom or bottom to top, different from a house on flat ground. Most importantly, it was the neighbors; it placed you in a social category completely different from the apartment you had lived in before. Seth looked at the problem from this angle. He said that category was the same category in which Mrs. Stevens also operated -- that social category, that community, was very comfortable and felt very good. As you can recall, that house was very formal, impeccably clean. Why did Seth mention this point? Seth was giving the two of them reassurance -- when you chose this house back then, there was nothing wrong with the house at all; none of that talk about unclean things, bad feng shui, or the house causing its owner to fall into depression and commit suicide -- none of that.

Mrs. Stevens tried to live an outer life that emphasized appearances, even though she was always concerned with inner issues, and on your side, that is what brought out a creative tension between the two. You were clearly able to make use of that atmosphere, which she could not do. Mrs. Stevens placed importance on the outer image, on appearances -- there is an English word, "facade" (it may actually be a French word), meaning the front or face of something, what we often call in Chinese the "frontage," or the scene, the show. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens did not handle the relationship between this outer facade and the inner world well, but the two of you can handle it well. On the one hand you are dealing with inner things, including the channeling with Seth, and even your artistic painting and literary creation -- these are all inner things; but you express them outwardly -- through painting, writing books, or other means, you express them outwardly. There is a tension between this inner driving force and the outer power of expression -- you always want to express the inner things outwardly, and you did express them, you released that tension. This tension is something that contains a certain strain within it. But if Mrs. Stevens could not do this, if she did not have this ability, the conflict between her inner world and outer world, this discrepancy, the way the inner world could not be expressed in the outer world -- that led to her eventual depression and suicidal tendencies.

Seth put it another way: the house itself longed for a kind of elasticity, longed to be more open to the forces of nature, and the woman was attracted to it for that very reason. Here Seth shifted his angle and spoke of the consciousness of the house itself. The natural environment where the house was located was very good, on a hillside, overlooking the entire city of Elmira, able to see many natural scenes, stretches of forest and green land. The house itself wanted to open itself to the forces of nature. When Mrs. Stevens bought the house, she was also attracted for this reason. From that aspect, you did not react to any negative influence, but in a certain way, through your creativity, you reconciled the conflicting factors. The house itself wanted the forces of nature to develop; the forces of nature are inner, but Mrs. Stevens was a person who cared about outer appearances, about the outer facade, and she could not fully open herself in the direction of nature and let it unfold, so this was the reason she ultimately fell into depression and committed suicide. But the two of you, because you coordinated well this creative process of expressing the inner world outwardly, you do not have this problem.

As for last night's dream, Ruburt was right; if you remember, I have always encouraged the two of you to do more of this kind of dream-recall activity. The matters the two of them were so anxious about were not problems at all to Seth. But Seth had not wanted to talk about this matter in the first place -- these two had studied Seth for so long, and here they were going back to spirits and ghosts, feng shui and evil entities, the house having something unclean in it, going around and around. In his heart Seth was quite disappointed in the two of them -- how did you circle back to this again. But Seth still very patiently explained where their problem lay.

A Historical Exploration of Printing

Seth said that printing was not widely circulated. Rob immediately found this strange—what Seth was talking about should have been the era of Michelangelo, yet Rob's reading indicated that Seth might be right in saying that printed materials could not have been obtained by the poor peasants of that time. There is no need for "might"—it is simply right. Westerners have later reached a certain degree of scientific arrogance or superstition about themselves, believing that the West should always have been a very civilized leader and advocate. They have actually forgotten that for a very long period of time, their civilization was backward. So this kind of Western arrogance leads them to make erroneous judgments about history.

Through woodblocks and woodblock prints, because only woodblock prints could be printed repeatedly. This method of printing by carving onto wooden blocks had long been used by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. If you look at how Buddhism promoted images of the Buddha back then, when they painted Buddha images, they would carve them onto wooden blocks, and then use a printing method similar to today's—brush on some ink, and a picture would come out. So this thing existed in ancient China long ago: woodblock printing. Later they even invented movable type printing. After Bi Sheng invented it, it became even more advanced—characters could be combined, one small block after another, and the printing capacity became extraordinary. This played an extremely pivotal role in the advancement of Buddhism, Chinese society, and civilization, including the printing of Buddhist scriptures and the mass printing of Buddha images, all related to this.

What we do not even realize is that the Mandarin Chinese we Chinese speak was brought by Buddhism. Before Buddhism, Chinese people did not speak this colloquial Mandarin; what we spoke was a kind of language similar to the official language, something close to classical Chinese—at that time, language and writing were unified. Don't you find it strange? Look at how our ancient writing was, yet what we speak is like this. Today our writing and language are unified—the books we see and the things we read are basically consistent with what we say with our mouths. Books may be more official and more literary, but in essence they are consistent. But in ancient times, you would find that something was off—ancient writing was like that, full of "zhi hu zhe ye," so why didn't ordinary common people in ancient times speak with "zhi hu zhe ye"? But in the earliest times, they did speak with "zhi hu zhe ye" as well. The main reason for the change was that in order to promote and popularize Buddhism—just like Westerners spreading Christianity now, carrying the Bible around and preaching to people. Christianity also played an important role in advancing Western civilization; the earliest church schools greatly helped raise the literacy rate of reading and writing. And in China at that time, in order to promote Buddhism, because common people could not understand all that "zhi hu zhe ye," and even less could they read those Buddhist scriptures, so if you wanted to popularize Buddhism, you could not use that kind of language—it could not reach the level of being passed on by word of mouth. So they used an extremely colloquial approach, combining the everyday spoken language of common people, sorting it out and smoothing it over, and then telling the stories in Buddhism and the principles in the Buddhist scriptures. In this way, our colloquial, vernacular language was able to be passed down. So in ancient China there were two systems: writing was one system, and language was another system. You now find this inconceivable, but at the time it was very normal—speaking was one way, writing was another way, and the two were not consistent. Many of the nouns in your colloquial speech today are Buddhist terms—things like "xu yu" (a moment), "cha na" (an instant), and so on. If you look carefully, you will find that many of the nouns in our spoken language are Buddhist terms.

Seth's point is that the ancient Egyptians and Chinese were already using woodblock printing, yet Europe did not have it at all at that time. The earliest woodblock print in Europe appeared in 1423³, which was already the 15th century; the first religious figure print with woodcut illustrations was in 1460⁴. Simply put, it was only around the 15th century that the West had woodblock prints. As for true printing technology later on—printing that could arrange and combine letters and reuse them through movable type, as in ancient China—that came even later. So in that era, printing had indeed not been invented or could not be popularized, which led to Western painting having its particular characteristics at that time. This was Rob's own exploration of this question.

注释与核实

1. Source: Taiwan Creative Content Agency, 2049 (https://ip.taicca.tw/ipMeetUp/ip/show.do?ip_id=423) ↩

2. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florence and Central Italy–1600 A.D., 2002 (https://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/08/eustc.html) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, "the first religious figure print with woodcut illustrations was in 1460"; upon verification, it should be "existing European religious woodcuts predate 1460; for example, Saint Christopher has been dated by watermark analysis to 1435–1450." (Source: University of Manchester Library, Early European Print: Saint Christopher, https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/PR-XYLO-17249-00002) ↩