Mike's commentary · Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Session 920

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

Introduction

This chapter records how Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment was interrupted from June to October: after Jane finished The God of Jane, her body deteriorated, yet she still refused rest and medical care, and finally began to accept Seth's help, with Seth shifting into the "Ten Magical Approaches" course. A schizophrenic visitor, Bill Baker, came to visit, and Seth used this occasion to discuss the label of schizophrenia, differentiation and conquest, the superior self and the inferior self, and other issues. Rob's notes supplement natural time and cultural time, creativity outside of time, the possibilities of the Seth material, and other content.

Chapter Highlights

• From June to July, Jane's physical condition deteriorated markedly, yet she still refused conventional medical treatment and rest. It was only after she began accepting Seth's help that Seth interrupted the dictation of the book and launched the "Ten Magical Approach" course.
• Seth pointed out that the label "schizophrenia" is misleading and carries negative connotations; many people who are labeled simply display patterns of behavior from multiple personalities that have not been assimilated by society.
• Schizophrenics use a "divide and conquer" approach to disperse the personality and refuse responsibility, with the personality split between a superior self and a debased self.
• Jane's physical state was related to whether she was engaged in creative work; it worsened when she lost a new direction, and began to improve slightly once she had a new writing topic.
• Rob's notes add: creativity operates outside of time, the magical approach is the natural way of facing life, and answers often emerge after one lets go of explicit questions.

Main Text

Jane's diary provides a real picture of their life and work. For five weeks, from June to July 20, Jane did not write anything in her journal. But during those two months they were very busy professionally: in June they began carrying out the project of "painting the images in my dreams," and on July 2 and 18 they sent the completed manuscripts of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events and Jane's God to the publisher. Yet during that period, I noticed with great sorrow that Jane's physical symptoms had become much more serious, along with her difficulty in walking and doing other daily tasks.

During that time, Jane was almost always somewhat uncomfortable, and sometimes she was simply in pain. "Aching" and "sharp pain" are two rather different sensations, which is quite interesting, and we will come back to that later. She had to sit on a high stool to wash dishes, and she still pushed herself forward step by step while leaning on the typing table to walk, but this kind of movement became less and less frequent, perhaps only once or twice a day. Instead, she grew accustomed to sitting in a wheeled office chair and using her feet to push herself around the house. She rarely left the house, found it very difficult to go down the two steps from the writing room to the garage to get into the car, no longer drove, and had great difficulty getting into the shower. When she typed, wrote, or held a pen, her fingers did not obey her well. You can see that she had entered an extremely difficult situation, where the joints and functions of various parts of her body were obstructing her work.

Even with her body in this condition, Jane was still unwilling to lie down once or twice a day for relief. Although Rob often persuaded her to do so, she refused, as usual, for many complex reasons, to follow the ordinary medical route, and was quite unwilling to rest, receive treatment, or undergo physical therapy according to the existing medical approaches. Rob said that my own prejudices about medicine also prevented me from helping her, from doing what another husband should have done and sending her to the hospital for forced treatment; I did not do those things either. Instead, Jane insisted on trying to use her own abilities to help herself.

Seeing my wife in such pain, I felt very sad. Anyone who saw this would feel sad. But apart from helping her be as comfortable as possible, I ultimately could not do much. Jane was a very stubborn person by nature and did not listen to Rob's suggestions. Among other things, Rob bought her a cushion with running water, which could spray warm or hot water, because she sat for long periods and it would be more comfortable for her to sit on it, but that was only a relief; she needed far more help than that.

So during June and July, Jane's condition grew worse and worse. In the midst of this worsening condition, Rob kept urging from the sidelines that she could turn to Seth for help, and only then did Jane begin to accept the suggestion and become ready to accept that Seth could help her. You see, before this, she would not even accept Seth's help, insisting only on using her own methods to help herself, not even using Seth. She set aside the first session of Chapter 9 of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment and began the sessions in which Seth discussed the "ten magical approaches."

The Origin of the Magical Approach

You know, when Seth was speaking about the magical approach, he actually interrupted the material of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. That was a total of thirteen sessions, and the material Seth delivered was mainly directed at Jane. Jane's body was already in such a state, and still she did not rest every day; she did not even lie down for a while to relieve it, but kept busy from morning until night. So although the magical approach is universal and applies to everyone, Seth's main idea was, during that process, to help Jane readjust her own beliefs and deal with the physical problems she had at that time.

As Seth said in the session on August 6 when he gave her the topic:

When Ruburt finished his book The God of Jane, he found himself with all that time on his hands that should have been used. Physically, he was also aware of his limitations, and it seemed that apart from working, there was nothing much he could do. So he took the reasonable approach, and that approach said that to solve a problem, you just worry about it.

At that time, it seemed that Jane had just finished The God of Jane and had a great deal of free time, but she did not know how to use it. She had great difficulty moving around and could only spend that time on work, so she worked even more. Actually, what Seth meant was that you should not put all your time into work; when you need to rest, you should rest, and when you need to move, you should move. In other words, Jane was not relaxed enough, and because she was not relaxed enough, the condition reflected by her body was one of not being relaxed. Most of the time, our human way of thinking is that the way to solve a problem is to worry about it, to take it seriously, and to think through all possible ways of handling it, feeling that this is the only way to solve a problem. Actually, this method is not right, and it is systematically explained in the magical approach. Here, Seth was speaking ironically.

The Body and Its Relationship to Creativity

In those early days of June, when Jane began to show those physical improvements, Rob was very pleased. In the preceding Sessions 917, 918, and 919, Rob's descriptions already said that Jane's body had begun to turn in a better direction, and she was increasingly relaxed and comfortable. But then you see her take another sharp turn for the worse. Can you think of Jane's psychology here? Jane's psychology was that when she had work to do, she was actually quite relaxed. Her ease lay in the fact that she felt her work kept her time from being wasted, that every minute and every second of life was meaningful. She did not want to live a meaningless life, did not want to let time be wasted. And by June and July, she had finished her personal book Jane's God, and the remaining work was all follow-up work with no creativity in it: typing, checking for typos, sending things off to the publisher. In that situation of having no creative work, her body began to reflect her inner restlessness and anxiety, causing the body that had already begun to improve to deteriorate once again.

In August and September, Seth followed a schedule of two sessions per week, and step by step gave some very exciting ideas, namely the content found in The Magical Approach. Those 13 sessions were so tightly interconnected that Rob said it was very hard to excerpt them — they were too complete, too logically coherent — so in the end they were published separately as a book. Seth's material on the magical approach represented one of his best efforts to help us, and to help others as well. The real difficulties clearly inspired that material, and its creativity also transcended their own needs, carrying greater universal value. And when Rob discovered that Seth would continue this series again, he immediately asked jokingly, "My dear, just what trick are you playing?" Because Jane had once again returned to writing Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Rob said, what are you playing at? You inserted another book in the middle of this one, stopped halfway to insert that one, and after finishing it came back to continue this one. But Rob could see that Jane was quite happy.

The name of that new book was naturally The Magical Approach to Reality, later shortened to The Magical Approach. At the same time, in early August, Jane returned again to the poetry collection she had been working on for a year. And on August 15, she happily announced that she had thought of the overall title she had been searching for, which was If We Live Again, or Public Magic and Private Love. Her editor Tam Mossman warmly agreed to her titles¹, both of them. Two days later, Jane began writing the first of the three essays she planned for that book, titled "Poetry and the Magical Approach to Life." Her choice of subject was entirely natural, because two days earlier she had already given the third session of that series, the third session for her new poetry collection.

Jane's Poem

Besides enabling Jane to help herself physically, Seth's magical approach had other benefits for her as well, some of which showed up in her poetry. For example, on August 25, the same day she delivered the sixth session on Seth's new theme, Jane wrote the following untitled poem. Rob urged her to give it a title and include it in the poetry collection If We Live Again. Beneath its deceptively simple surface, her poem carries profound meaning -- it looks so simple that you might mistake it for having no depth, but within it lies deep significance. Rob said he had never seen this meaning expressed better anywhere else, and that if she wanted to synthesize in a few lines the results of her life's work up to that point, this poem was indeed the best possible expression.

Not that my mind knows less than before, but that his reasoning has at last deduced the magic of its own source, and beneath his logic, feels that which propels his own thinking, the deeper spontaneous order of himself.

These two lines are indeed profoundly meaningful. What do they mean in simple terms? We know that cultivation, or learning, or self-improvement, is very often a process of subtraction. Not the subtraction of ignorance and recklessness, but the subtraction that comes after you have understood all the principles. This poem captures that state beautifully. It is not that my mind knows less than before -- on the contrary, it knows more, yet it gives the impression of knowing less. It is our mind, using its capacity for logical reasoning, that has deduced the magic of its own source. Where does our human capacity for reasoning, our conscious mind, come from? What is its source? The magical thing is that our mind uses its own logical reasoning ability to deduce its own source, and then beneath that source, it feels the propelling force that drives its own thinking -- a deeper, spontaneous order coming from the foundation of thought itself, pushing us humans to use our logical minds to deduce the source of the world and to seek the truth of reality.

This poem, in the simple language of a poet, vividly captures the inner state of an explorer, and in fact it also touches on one of the inner orders of the universe -- spontaneity, which is one of the laws of the cosmos.

The Necessity of the Afterword

Seth said, you can look at Note 2, in which Rob used Jane's poetry as a focal point to offer some perspective. Indeed, when Rob was annotating Chapter 9, he saw how necessary it was to write an afterword for this book -- to create a framework within which all the material could be presented from both private and professional life. There are ten afterwords at the back of this book, taking up roughly two-fifths, or at least one-third, of the entire second volume. These ten afterwords mainly record the circumstances of their lives and work, and within the framework of life and work, you can see the bit-by-bit application of the Seth material in daily life.

Rob said, I cannot yet know what such a plan should include, but I vaguely felt that this afterword was very necessary. Because combined with the content of Jane's and my life, it seems to be some life records, essay-like things, note-record-like things, yet it carries deep meaning within it. Jane said several times that she would help me, and she was conceiving a Seth book on the magical approach.

In early September, their editor Tam sent back the edited manuscript of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events for them to proofread. Jane and Rob spent a month on it, proofreading word by word, accepting some suggestions and rejecting others. On September 13, they received from Sue Watkins the first volume of her conversations with Seth², and Sue was now writing the last two chapters of the second volume. In early October, Rob mailed the revised manuscript of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events back to the publisher, and the book was ready to go to press. Jane was also busy with her poetry and essays during the first week of October, while her body continued to improve in a passable way, the progress being very, very small, especially with walking making some headway. And Rob could sometimes take her for drives through the beautiful countryside.

So at this point you can see that when Jane had a new writing direction and theme, and began working on new things, her body started to improve. Although the degree of improvement was small, it began to improve. And during the months of June, July, August, and September, especially August, her body was not doing well, because during those months she had nothing new to do.

An Unexpected Visitor

Rob said that this session was not dictated material for the book. As it turned out, of course, it was, because in it Seth once again illuminated the idea of value fulfillment from another angle -- this time from the angle of schizophrenia. The session was triggered by their contact yesterday afternoon with an unexpected visitor from out of state. Seth, however, barely mentioned that specific person, and instead discussed the subject of mental illness in more general terms. Seth had talked about this before in the case of Augustine.

Rob said that he saw many correlations between tonight's material and Session 917. In Session 917, Seth discussed the reasoning, imaginative mind and schizophrenia, and that session was at least partly triggered by an unsettling letter Jane had received. Jane had been quite upset at the time, because she had received a letter from a mentally ill person asking her to return everything he had previously sent her -- those things were writings, letters, little poems, little essays, sent to Jane bit by bit over all these years. Who would keep all that stuff?

Rob said, I admit that for some mysterious reasons of my own, I let myself become fascinated by the young man who will be called Bill Baker. Yesterday afternoon, this fellow named Bill knocked on their back porch door, dressed very well, speaking very properly, a complete gentleman, a young man. When he told Rob about the voices he heard in his head, and asked whether Jane had the same situation with Seth, Rob did not pay much attention, although he felt a bit of suspicion. After Rob introduced him to his wife Jane, he went back to his writing room and let Jane chat with the young man. If Rob had concentrated on the murmurs coming from the living room, he could have learned what they were talking about, but he rarely did that.

Jane said later that when she realized Bill was mentally disturbed, she almost called out for Rob, but she steadied herself and did not call him, and just kept talking with Bill. Bill told her that he had been hospitalized several times for mental problems -- not once, but several times -- and that he could fluently speak a kind of meaningless language that he himself could not decipher. He said, "I don't know what language this is, but I can speak it." Interesting, right? Like the language used by the people on the planet in Avatar, spoken very fluently, but we can't understand it. Our visitor had also received several pages of information from Christ -- the young man said Christ transmitted messages to him directly. He described how he had connected the Seth material with his youth and with his sexual fantasies about young girls -- impressive, right? He could read the Seth material and still connect it to sexual fantasies; I don't know whether any of you here could make that connection. And he elaborated on the intense rejection he encountered -- resistance from within -- when he tried to concretely actualize certain Seth concepts.

And there was more besides. Jane caught several contradictory statements from him, logical confusion, incoherence from one sentence to the next. Bill left not long after learning that Jane no longer taught the ESP class. This person had actually come wanting to take the ESP class, to expand this part of his abilities.

Reflections on the Seth Material

This episode reminded them once again that many visitors are seeking some kind of help. And when Jane began channeling at the end of 1963, they never imagined it would turn into this. Jane and Rob themselves were not very socially inclined, rarely interacted with people, and were not particularly interested in helping others—of course, when they encountered friends or letters from readers, they would try their best to help, but they did not have this strong desire to help others in and of themselves.

Rob said that sometimes they were not sure whether people were simply rebelling against the help offered by disciplines within the establishment—some people are opposed to the existing system, taking their material as ammunition against the establishment, finding theoretical grounds to criticize and attack the existing system—or whether they were more aware than most people, with some people, like the other psychic layers in Jane's personality, able to request information from them. Rob said he was not sure whether this young man, out of feeling out of place in society or out of rebellion, wanted to seek some help from the Seth material, or whether certain personality aspects underlying him—schizophrenia being a multiple-personality condition—those personality aspects wanted to obtain this information, wanted to get help from Jane. Or perhaps both.

However, Rob told Jane, "Just look at the wonderful letters we receive from psychiatrists, mathematicians, and ordinary people in all sorts of different professions." Those people all reflected one of the two situations described above. Rob said that since Bill understood that some of his concepts were core beliefs he had created, created by himself, and therefore could be changed, he had also benefited from reading the Seth material.

When Bill was talking with Jane, he brought up some of his core beliefs, and he also came to know that these things were created by himself and could be changed. This could be counted as a help the Seth material gave Bill. But Bill asked Jane, "If there were no Seth material, what would I have become?" This sentence is very interesting. He treated the Seth material as a theoretical foundation from which his different personality aspects could draw nourishment. At this time, some of his core beliefs were clearly skewed, overly extreme, and he also knew that these things could be changed, but he did not actually do these things. Yet he still believed that the Seth material was very important in his life, and without it he did not dare imagine what he would have become.

A schizophrenic patient strongly affirms the things in the Seth material, yet when it comes to putting many of Seth's concepts into practice, he has intense inner resistance. Don't you think he is a bit self-contradictory? This kind of conversation actually gave Jane and Rob some reflections and thoughts about what they were doing: they did not want this material to become a kind of theoretical support for mental patients or schizophrenics; they hoped the Seth material would gain recognition from mainstream society. But they found that it received strong recognition from schizophrenics like Bill Beck. Although he did not fully put the ideas into practice, he drew from some of the concepts what he needed. So now you can understand why Rob said that long passage earlier.

As they sat waiting for the session to begin, Jane said that Seth would discuss schizophrenia in general. So clearly the visitor's appearance led to a consultation on a question they otherwise would not have asked. Jane, as the channel for Seth, went from being very quick to having many pauses, varying and changeable. The appearance of this visitor sparked the birth of this session. Through Seth's general overview of this young man and of schizophrenia, we can see how to talk about its relationship to each person's value fulfillment and to the value fulfillment of our human race—because this book is precisely about value fulfillment. In the end, Rob put it into this book; originally he did not want to include it.

The Label of Schizophrenia

Then Seth came through. Seth said good evening, and he said:

I will use your visitor from yesterday to lead into a topic.

First, the term schizophrenia basically has very little value. He rejected the term right from the start. It is a label assigned by your psychiatrists, psychiatric doctors, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and other experts and academics, and the label itself has no real meaning. Why does it have no real meaning? Because many people who should not have been given that label have been given it. Once you have this term, you start labeling people.

It is like what many people have been saying in the past few days: nowadays young people seem to feel that if they do not say they have social anxiety, they cannot even interact with others properly. "Social anxiety" is social anxiety disorder. The stand-up comedian Li Xueqin has already sharply satirized these issues.³ People nowadays casually say they have social anxiety; everyone says they have social anxiety. He said his friend claimed to have social anxiety and asked Li Xueqin to help him. Li Xueqin said, fine, then hang out with me; I am thick-skinned, I do not have social anxiety. But that evening at a party, that person called Liangzi or whatever his name was, I forget, took off his jacket at the party, revealing a very short tube top underneath, and jumped straight onto the stage to dance wildly with Guo Qilin. Guo Qilin is Guo Degang's son⁴, and he also took part in these activities. Then Li Xueqin said, this person told me he had social anxiety, yet at the party he wore a little tube top and went up to dance passionately with handsome young men, while I sat below like an idiot quietly drinking. He says he has social anxiety, then what am I?

I use this example to say that once the label of social anxiety is created, many people stick it everywhere recklessly, thinking it is fashionable, all saying they have social anxiety, attaching a very trendy term to their unwillingness to deal with people and their avoidance of society. It is the same here: schizophrenia is also a term, and once it is created, many people do not understand it and are not clear about it, yet they go around labeling people who seem schizophrenic. And many people even label themselves, finding a set of psychological analysis test questions online, and after taking the test they say they have schizophrenia or depression, and they firmly believe it.

The Misleading Nature of Labels

There are so-called typical cases of schizophrenia. Scientists will tell you what schizophrenia is. There are typical cases, and there are also so-called borderline cases -- you could call them schizophrenia or not -- and there are also some less obvious cases. But in any case, that label is extremely misleading. Whether it is a typical case or a borderline case, this label carries strong misleading implications and has negative suggestions.

In many instances, you are dealing with the behavior patterns of personalities that are varied and sometimes quite diversified. Remember, you are not dealing with this personality directly. You are dealing with the behavior patterns of a personality that is even a diversified one. Can behavior patterns represent the person? No. Why is that? These can all change.

What does diversification of behavior patterns mean? It means that one personality can display multiple behavior patterns. Let me give a clearer example: some people present one way in front of public media, for instance some public figures -- absolutely that is the case. But in private, they are a completely different person. Would you say they are schizophrenic? You can only say that under different circumstances, their behavior patterns are entirely different. Normal people are like this. People constantly shift back and forth between diversified behavior patterns. You cannot call this schizophrenia. If you put it that way, then everyone would be schizophrenic. Every man and woman sitting in a meeting, when they get into private, intimate settings between husband and wife, do you think their behavior patterns could be brought into a public setting? Absolutely not. But would you say this person is split? Many people say so-and-so is "two-faced," appearing pure on the outside but actually something else on the inside -- this is very normal, so do not stick such labels on people. A person's multiple behavior patterns are a normal part of a diversified personality. Moreover, behavior patterns cannot represent the person.

The cases you speak of, where a person is said to have certain behavior patterns and you define that as schizophrenia, are defined through their behavior patterns. However, these are not the assimilated or smoothly functioning patterns of what you call normal people. The behavior patterns they display are often intense, undisguised, or make you feel very uncomfortable, not assimilated by society. And those patterns are viewed in an exaggerated way. Because they differ from the mainstream patterns of society, without disguise, without concealment, and unlike our usual expressions of behavior patterns, we exaggerate them into typical characteristics of mental illness or schizophrenia.

Therefore, in some cases, at least you can catch a glimpse of the psychologically almost invisible mental and emotional states and psychic processes beneath the more obvious and modified social personality. In such cases of schizophrenia, you can happen to see those relatively real mental and emotional states and psychic processes beneath the social personality that have not been whitewashed by society, laid bare for all to see, and you call that schizophrenia.

In other words, to put it more bluntly, what our society calls normal is all normalcy beneath hypocritical masks, all normalcy beneath the concealment of the social personality. We do not dare to face our own real consciousness, thoughts, beliefs, or ideas directly. We have to wear a mask and think that is normal. Then a few people show up who do not wear masks, who greatly dislike masks, who feel everyone else is fake and wearing masks, and everyone thinks they are crazy. Those who do not wear masks are all crazy, abnormal. We all wear masks, why don't you? You are abnormal. We all wear clothes, why don't you? You are abnormal. We are all polite to one another, mindful of social niceties, holding back a third of what we say -- why are you so direct? You are abnormal.

Seth is talking about the harmful effects of labeling people as schizophrenic, using this counterexample to illustrate why we should not label others.

Schizophrenia Is Another Kind of Disguise

Seth says:

People who are temporarily or chronically diagnosed as schizophrenic lack a certain kind of psychological veneer.

By "temporarily," he means those who, after a period of treatment, are declared by everyone to be cured; by "chronically," he means those who never get better and remain schizophrenic.

This lack is not so much a basic lack of psychological embellishment as it is the adoption of a certain kind of psychological disguise.

Seth always sees things with penetrating insight, and here he goes one layer deeper. The first layer is that we think social personalities all carry disguises and embellishments, and that schizophrenic people have no embellishment, no disguise. If you can see that layer, you have already made real progress. But Seth goes a step further and says: not so fast. What looks like an absence of disguise, an absence of veneer, what looks like the most direct psychological expression, is actually another kind of disguise — not a social disguise, but a disguise nonetheless.

And in a way, such a person is playing a rather serious game of hide-and-seek with himself and with the world.

Why are they disguising themselves? Why is it a kind of psychological disguise? It is playing dumb while knowing perfectly well what is going on. They are playing a game with themselves, thoroughly enjoying it, and playing a game with the world. Remember, they believe in this maxim:

Divide and conquer.

This is probably a Western maxim. Seth will explain what this phrase means below.

For reasons I will discuss, it is as if they refuse to put themselves together properly, refuse to form a reasonably unified self.

The core belief behind this is:

If you cannot find me, then I do not have to be responsible for my actions. Those actions would necessarily betray me to some extent.

This statement is very profound. Why would a person not want to be responsible for their own actions? Like the Wang Leehom incident and the Li Yundi incident we looked at a while ago⁵, we would say they did not want to take responsibility for their actions. Why? Because they felt that these actions would necessarily betray them to some extent — these actions were not what they intended to do, not the real me, not what I truly wanted to do, and yet I really did do this thing. Seth analyzes this from a psychological angle with great clarity. This is a common trait shared by all people. But in essence, this common trait is actually correct: your behavioral patterns will lead to different behaviors in different environmental layers, and these behaviors are not sufficient to reflect the real you, so the things you do are not truly endorsed by the real you, which is why they are said to have "betrayed you." What does a person do then? They feel, "I do not accept that my behavior can represent me," so how do they shirk responsibility? They split into multiple personalities, so that you cannot find which one is me. There is no integrated, unified personality.

For most normal people in society, you can define them as having a unified personality, with everything presented according to a certain logic and set of personality traits. For example, a university professor should have a certain behavioral pattern, while a KTV service worker or a bar hostess has another pattern. If a female university professor behaved like a bar hostess, that would be inappropriate. Rationally, a university professor would never want to do such a thing, but from a deeper level of the soul, she might want to try it. People are split in exactly this way. This is not a split in the person, but is determined by the multifaceted nature of your deepest underlying personality. You are inherently multifaceted; in this life you may be a queen, and in the next life you may become a prostitute, because the soul simply wants to try different experiences.

Let me give an example. Many years ago at a university in Zhejiang, a number of university professors gathered together and formed a small internal club, a wife-swapping club, secretly exchanging each other's wives, and it was later exposed⁶. These people were all professors, and many people could not understand how professors had turned into such hypocrites. From this passage, you can understand a great deal of what was going on inside them.

People do not want to be responsible for their actions, but they dare not admit it openly, so they take an extreme approach — they scatter themselves into multiple personalities, so you cannot find me, and even I cannot find myself, so how can you hold me responsible? The law happens to stipulate that mentally ill people are not responsible for their own actions. So the soul essentially does not want to take responsibility: "As long as I become mentally ill, I do not have to take responsibility." But the person involved does not clearly recognize any of this; it is all subconscious activity that escapes conscious awareness. If you explain these principles to them, they will think you are talking nonsense, because there is no evidence to reveal it. But Seth points out the essence with one sharp remark. The meaning of "divide and conquer" is this: I divide myself into countless fragments, so you cannot conquer me, cannot pin me down, and I become an unconquerable existence.

The Two Levels Must Not Be Confused

Many people here cannot understand this: behavior cannot represent the person himself, which is exactly the opposite of our social concepts. Our society defines people by their behavior and results. If you tell someone they do not need to be responsible for their behavior, many people's first reaction is fear: wouldn't that lead to chaos? This is a matter of several levels. First, in real society you must be responsible for your behavior; this is a three-dimensional world, a society governed by law, and it is not up to you to decide. Second, on the subconscious, inner level, you do not want to be responsible for your behavior, and this is a normal need. But it does not mean that just because you have such a normal inner need, your actions can escape legal sanction. Do not try to preach this set of theories in this society; the vast majority of people will not accept it. This is a concept that transcends the material world. Suppose none of us had physical bodies; then much of logic, law, and morality would have to be torn down and rewritten. If we firmly believed that the soul is the subject and the body is merely clothing, a vehicle, a prop, then there would be another culture, another social system, another set of laws. But we do not have that now, and if you go out and preach it, you will become a heretic or someone against the social system.

Many people cannot accept "I have a soul, the soul truly exists," but conversely, if you say "you have no soul," they cannot accept that either. It is quite interesting. In other words, from the perspective of spiritual essence, from the psyche's angle, from the spiritual angle, these views are correct. But once you add the level of society, material events, and physical existence, you must be bound by reality. You cannot say that spiritual-level things are wrong just because they are constrained by social law; nor can you use lower-level rules to negate the higher-level spiritual rules. You simply follow different norms at different levels. You exist simultaneously on multiple levels, and each level has different behavior patterns, demands, and norms. They must not be confused. Although inwardly it is one whole, on whichever level you are, speak of the matters of that level. This is the most basic principle.

Dispersing One's Own Troops and Communication Systems

Let's continue.

The self -- the self in quotation marks -- becomes operationally dispersed and differentiated.

What is being described here is that in cases of schizophrenia, the person involved disperses and differentiates himself, turning himself into multiple personalities.

So that if one portion is attacked, the other portions can rise up in defense. Such a person uses the various differences of personality as spies or soldiers, dispersing his forces, and under those circumstances is forced to set up a complex communication system in order to maintain contact among those portions of the self.

This description is very interesting. He differentiates himself into multiple personalities, each personality like a scout or a soldier, and he himself is the commander. He sends different personalities out to see how others react. If the reaction is intense and the scout is eliminated, the other personalities become sensitive, knowing that this personality has been negated and attacked. How do they know? Through a complex communication system that maintains contact. In emergencies, greater isolation is established between the various parts, because if the scout maintains frequent contact with headquarters, he is easily discovered, so he becomes more isolated. The more isolated he becomes, the more he emphasizes encryption and secrecy, relying even more on encrypted communication systems.

The communication itself is often a kind of psychological or symbolic code.

It is like the codes used in military intelligence -- speaking some language that no one can understand, strange words, but internally they have their own meaning. If that information were clearly decoded, the game would be over. From beginning to end, he is playing a game: dispersing himself into different personalities so that others cannot find the real self. But the parts still need to maintain contact with each other in order to ensure that they remain a whole. Once the code is cracked, the subject is found, and the game is over. The one who understands all the information is the integrated self. What is needed is that disguised "army of selves" (Self Troops), which are those independent personalities. The code must never be cracked.

Such a person does indeed feel besieged.

He sends out multiple personalities in order to hide, and so he feels that others are all pursuing and intercepting him, trying to find the real him.

Such people are often very creative, and they have stored up an abundant supply of energy.

Look at people with schizophrenia -- they have boundless energy, sleep very little at night, and some do not even sleep at all. But he is trapped in extremely contradictory beliefs.

Whether the beliefs concern good and evil or strength and weakness, they are usually extreme idealists. For various reasons, they do not feel that their idealized abilities can be actualized.

They are always split between good and evil, strength and weakness. Among the different personalities, some are very strong, with great ability and abundant energy; some are very weak; some are supremely good; some are supremely evil. Shifting back and forth among these personalities, how could the self not split? Schizophrenia refers precisely to this kind of splitting, where the different personalities are incompatible with one another. Seth says here that he is speaking in general terms, and that each individual case should be examined in its own way. Each case has unique characteristics and must be looked at individually.

Such a person's exaggerated version of the self is so idealized that its very existence threatens practical action.

They have an exaggerated, idealized version of themselves. The existence of this idealized version threatens practical action, because practical action is necessarily imperfect and limited by the three-dimensional world. Yet he believes he is perfect and immensely capable -- this is an exaggerated perception of the self. This makes him unable to do anything in actuality, because the moment he acts, he sees his limitations and imperfections. He is afraid of making mistakes, afraid of betraying his inner psychological sense of superiority. He can live in a world of "I am God, I am Christ's spokesperson in the human world, God speaks to me," and maintain that sense of superiority. But in reality, the moment he acts, he is exposed and frustrated; he even needs help from others for basic living. This strikes at him, so he would rather not act.

The Superior Self and the Inferior Self

Usually this kind of idealized inner self comes from extremely distorted beliefs about the acceptance of good and evil. His overly extreme distinction between good and evil, either-or thinking, easily leads to this tendency.

If you have this thing that could be counted as two main inner enemies, the superior self and the inferior self.

Good and evil split into a superior self and an inferior self, and both are enemies. Because the discriminating mind of dualistic opposition is too strong, the inner self conjures up these two, making you constantly see dualistic opposition.

The traits considered good were drawn toward the superior self, as if it were a magnet, while the seemingly bad traits were drawn in the same way to the inferior self.

He made a split: he assigned all his good points to the superior self and pushed all his shortcomings onto the inferior self, dividing them into two opposing parts without unity. Two isolated psychological poles, with roughly equal strength. Good and evil are like "as the Way rises one foot, the demon rises ten"⁷, equal in power. All other ambiguous psychological evidence not clearly understood by either side gathers under the banner of the self.

Psychologically speaking, however, this is a circular rather than a linear arrangement.

They exist simultaneously, with one unified self sitting in the center and multiple personalities arranged in a ring around it. It is not a linear sequence of before and after, but rather all exist at the same time.

Fear of One's Own Exuberant Energy

Such a person is afraid of their own experience.

He has abundant energy, yet he is afraid of it. On the one hand, experience is assigned as the possession of a superior self.

In that situation, this is inexhaustible energy, and that energy must be used for magnificent adventures or heroic deeds.

On the other hand,

And on the other hand, the person feels unable to use that energy in a normal way.

In self-belittlement, the energy has no outlet. In the ordinary world, nothing matches the exaggerated ideals of the superior self. Real society has no need for such a superior person. You want to save the Earth, but no one lets you save it; you want to save the galaxy, but you do not know where to begin. The energy has nowhere to be used, so he is afraid of this experience. He originally wanted to save the galaxy, but in reality nothing connects to it, and the energy is limitless, so he does not know what to do.

The person becomes afraid, setting himself against the world, or concentrating intently on ordinary things.

He cannot do ordinary things, because he feels they have nothing to do with saving the galaxy, yet the energy is so great. Stuck here, he is in great pain. He does not want this energy, because in reality he cannot find a place to release it. Under this comparison, he can only belittle himself -- clearly capable of saving the galaxy, yet having to live a life of daily chores, which he feels is degrading. So these people often struggle between two extremes: a best self and a worst self, with different personalities frequently emerging.

He needs far more praise and attention from others than he deserves.

In his heart he thinks: I am the hero who saves the galaxy, so why do you not pay attention to me, not revolve around me, not praise me? But he is not that; he is just an ordinary person, yet he does not think so. Since he cannot get much,

He then, in another way, reaches a point where he will refuse to take responsibility for his own actions, and therefore he removes them from the framework of judgment within which others must operate.

Because what the ideal identity does cannot be done in reality, and everyday matters do not earn the imagined praise, he refuses to take responsibility, saying, "This is not what I should be doing; I should be saving the world." In this way he removes himself from the existing framework of social understanding, refusing to play along with you all, because you do not understand his lofty ambition to save the Earth.

Thus, he avoids having his talents and superior abilities tested.

He does not allow himself to be tested. Because he cannot demonstrate them; he has no superpowers. So he escapes, feeling that in another virtual world it is possible. In his heart he also knows this is a game, knows he does not have this ability, and is only pretending to play a role.

He somewhat understands that both the superior self and the inferior self are, in the psyche, psychological products.

He actually somewhat understands that whether the superior self or the inferior self, both are products of his own psyche. The ability is not really that great, and the failure is not really that catastrophic. He is neither that high nor that low.

The belief in these highly contradictory components of the personality keeps him in a constant state of turmoil, unable to act in any consistent manner.

One moment he is this way, the next moment that way; it would be strange if he did not split apart.

Yet the word schizophrenia covers a vast variety of experiences.

Under the label of schizophrenia there are all kinds of cases. Some people are quite content with their condition, having found their own niche, able to support themselves, or having found someone to support them, sometimes parents or a spouse. Others live in an atmosphere of constant fear about their condition. Still others have not found a foothold in society, afraid of their condition, yet at the same time feeling excited -- just like soldiers on a battlefield, who feel excitement in the face of danger and uncertainty. Some people function quite normally in society, and you cannot tell. These cases range from mild difficulty adapting to society to severe psychological difficulties, each one different.

Let the Impulse Fly for a While

For most people, before an impulse meets the conscious mind, there is a psychologically paved road along which the impulse can travel, and then the conscious mind decides whether to follow or carry out that impulse.

For most people, you have an impulse, you want to do something, but you need to give the impulse a buffer -- let the bullet fly for a while. Not every impulse needs to be acted on immediately. The process of letting the impulse fly is the process of letting the bullet fly for a while, with the conscious mind catching up, and in the collision finding a feasible action. This is the behavioral pattern of most people.

Let me give an extreme example: you enter school and see a girl, and you really like her. That is an impulse. You do not understand the other person at all; it is only the physical sexual characteristics that attract you. You need to give the impulse a buffer. You cannot harshly suppress yourself, and you cannot act immediately either. Let the impulse fly for a while -- normal people all do this. It is the same for girls toward boys: when they see a handsome guy their hearts flutter, and they even imagine the names of their future children. This process of the impulse traveling is necessary. The conscious mind slowly catches up, and it will consider whether it is suitable, how to get to know the person, how to make the other person like you. Then it takes action that conforms to the laws and morals of the three-dimensional world while also satisfying the impulse. This is the result of the collision between the two.

But in the kind of case we are discussing, there is no paved road.

Not only is there no buffer, but instead there is a wild field full of rocks, filled with landmines that could explode at any moment. When these people's impulses come, they cannot control them; they charge recklessly and must take action immediately. It is like charging recklessly through a wilderness with no roads, full of danger and landmines. What they lack is this process before the impulse and the conscious mind collide.

Remember, we are dealing with a scattered force.

In a schizophrenic person, the force is divided into many personalities.

The various components of the personality have been sent out to carry out different tasks, and in a way, they are trapped between the superior self and the inferior self.

They have been sent out to carry out different tasks. They can achieve neither the superior self nor the inferior self, and they are stuck in the middle.

Thus, there is no clear line of action that can be followed.

He can neither realize the grand ambition of saving the earth, nor can he completely act as the inferior self in reality, and if there is such a thing it must be disguised. He has no clear line of action; he is chaotic and does not know what to do. Because between the impulse and the conscious mind there is no process of letting the impulse fly and forming a feasible plan of action.

You do not have an impulse heading toward direct intersection with consciousness, but rather bursts of impulses coming from another source, or from some other sources, emerging as commands to act.

The impulse does not directly intersect with the conscious mind to form effective action, but instead is turned by other sources -- the extremely good self and the extremely bad self, these two completely opposing sources -- into action commands that conflict in all directions. For example, if he likes a girl, at one moment he feels that in the future he will become a great person, tall, rich, and handsome, and at another moment he feels he is lower than dust. He does not know whether to interact from a high posture or in the manner of a groveling sycophant. It is the same for girls: at one moment they feel they are as beautiful as a goddess, and at another moment they feel they are not worthy. When these two states are stuck at the extreme, all sorts of strange commands and voices will appear.

Distortions of Schizophrenia: The Mobility of Personality

This "command to act" will appear in many manifest forms. For example, that impulse may manifest as a voice telling a person to do this or do that. Many people at such times will hear auditory hallucinations in their minds -- he will hear, for instance, the voice of Christ, the voice of All That Is, the voice of the Buddha, the voice of Guanyin Bodhisattva, all kinds of voices will come out. Such voices will tell him: you must go do this, you must go do that, go act.

In reality we all encounter such people. Or through automatic writing commands -- some people will do automatic writing, and in a flash they write out a whole pile of grand and sweeping material, and then say this is instruction given to me by my higher self, instruction given to me by so-and-so, and I must act according to this and carry it out.

Or a kind of perception called hallucination -- some people will have hallucinations, seeing certain people, hearing certain people, or seeing someone give them these specific commands to act.

In such a way, that person does not need to take responsibility for the action. Acting according to this pattern, he does not need to take responsibility, because why? This is instruction given to me by God, this is instruction given to me by Jesus, this is instruction given to me by All That Is, and these all represent the highest realm of the universe. I do not need to take responsibility for this matter, I am only carrying out their commands. Just as a soldier does not need to take responsibility for his own killing, he feels what of it? I am only carrying out the orders of my superiors, and my superiors represent the will of the state, represent the intent of the state. So I am striving for the country, killing for the country, and there is nothing wrong with that.

This state is similar. In this, he feels he does not need to take responsibility for his actions, because that was not me, it was my superiors who told me to do it. That is the mentality.

What I am saying is, because they do not appear to come from themselves -- this information does not seem to come from himself, it seems like a voice in the head, the voice of the higher self, the voice of the inner self. So to that degree, the terrible possibility of failure is temporarily alleviated. This fear of failure, the terrible possibility of stepping on a landmine, of overturning in this rocky wilderness, is alleviated. He stops thinking about it, no longer feels it is terrible, because he does not have to bear the consequences, and he does not have to take responsibility. So if it overturns, it overturns; if it explodes, it explodes; that is not my affair, and I did not make it explode. He will have this kind of mentality, and so they will do some very extreme and very strange things.

This is also why many mental patients need to be restrained or controlled, precisely because they will do certain things in such a state -- just think how terrifying that is.

For the personality, there is always an overall order, even if it is in the background. As far as the present personality is concerned, he is one of many personalities, but among these many personalities there is certainly an overall one, although it may be in the background and not so clear.

So in any given case, all the different selves, or the other sources with which that person has contact, will together point to the overall entity or unity hidden beneath.

These different selves, different personalities, or those other sources with which that person has contact, will together point to an overall source or overall unity -- that is, a true self exists. No matter how he wants to hide, how he wants to deny, how he does not want to take responsibility for his actions, this cannot conceal the fact that he has an overall self, and he must take responsibility for these actions, but he does not want to.

Speaking of this, here is a very interesting matter: they do not want to take responsibility for their actions, and society has also accepted this view. The laws of various countries all have special provisions for mental illness, namely that they do not need to take responsibility -- as long as you are diagnosed as schizophrenic, and you truly have the symptoms of schizophrenia, you truly do not need to take responsibility for your own actions.

I personally suggest that this law could be changed and adjusted. That is, under this premise and scenario, they are actually playing games with themselves, playing games with society and with this world. If you play along with their game, then they will have a great time, and they will be even more willing to play this game. So, simply put, you must make him understand: since you want to play this game, besides your own game rules, there are also other people's game rules. Playing a game, you have your rules, I have my rules, you cannot go only by your rules.

So this is a typical example. The current approach, relatively speaking, is to place them in psychiatric hospitals for treatment -- although it is not called imprisonment, they are also not allowed to walk around freely in society. After a period of treatment, through the treatment evaluation of the psychiatric hospital, proving that he has recovered, then he is allowed to go back into society. This is one current approach. Although I think this matter can be thrown out for everyone to consider: should these people be made to take responsibility for their actions or not.

So the outward psychic phenomena show, in isolated fashion, those portions of the personality that have not been assimilated in the usual smooth manner.

That is, what they display are those isolated personalities that have not been assimilated, yet behind them there is a personality. In countless instances, such schizophrenic episodes occur within an otherwise normal personality, for learning purposes and during periods of growth, the personality sends out portions of itself and helps them expand their frameworks.

That is to say, in normal people, this kind of schizophrenic distortion exists. In the growth process of our so-called normal people's lives, there will always be such stages -- stages of schizophrenic distortion. And this stage can become an important process during its growth and learning period for recognizing or perceiving its larger portion of personality, and this is helpful. All people will have such a process.

The personality can indeed combine itself together in many different ways.

Each person's personality has different facets. Although none of us are schizophrenic patients, each of us has schizophrenic distortions within, all of these occurrences exist. And through our recognition and experience of this schizophrenic distortion, we can come to recognize those larger, unnoticed portions of our own personality. People do have the ability to combine these portions together.

In the utilization of inner and outer perception, and in the way they are mixed together to form an acceptable picture of reality at any given time, there is great leeway.

Simply put, this is the existence of a possibility of a larger framework of your personality. Your present personality, for example you are a good father, a good civil servant, a good employee, or a good boss, and so on -- this personality is a specialized portion of a larger personality. You must have a larger personality, and your present personality resides within it, and the existence of that larger personality guarantees the existence of this personality.

So your personality has a great deal of leeway. It is like the fuse in your home's electrical wiring -- it must be larger than the rated power of your normal electrical appliances, generally more than double, sometimes more than triple. It is impossible for it to be set so that the moment it reaches the rated power the fuse trips or burns out -- no, it has a certain surplus. Your personality is the same.

Even if you are a billionaire, and you have never imagined that you would live in prison, yet if you were really thrown into prison, that portion of your personality for prison life would automatically emerge, and that personality already exists. So whether you are a prisoner serving a sentence, or a famous entrepreneur, or a leading cadre, a political elite, these are all different facets of different personalities, and they can achieve a very good combination and normal integration within one person.

And at this point Seth points out that this schizophrenic distortion is normal, and it exists in normal people too, except that we can coordinate and organize it very well. In other words, in different scenarios, we use different personalities.

Then he pauses again for a long while -- he keeps pausing.

Physical perception gives you necessary feedback, but it is also built upon a learning process, so from a very young age you learned acceptable ways of putting the world together piece by piece, in a certain fashion.

In some cases, certain schizophrenic conditions can give you a correct EPA of the inner psychological mobility -- this mobility, that is, its flexibility. And when you go through childhood, this mobility will focus and be guided, and in that particular respect, schizophrenia represents a learning disability.

Schizophrenia is a learning disability. What kind of learning disability? That is, we all have this splitting and distortion of personality, everyone has it. But we, in the process of growing up from childhood, can gradually focus it in a particular direction -- that is, take so many different personality distortions and splits, and focus them onto a relatively stable or definite personality orientation. We have been doing this work since childhood.

For example, your parents, your mother and father, have always been helping you do this work. For instance, you are an obedient little boy, you are mommy's little princess -- these are all establishing a persona for you -- we all know the concept of persona. And a persona is a process of establishing a social personality. In this process, you gradually begin to focus on the persona role they have given you. Of course, after you grow up, you will have some of your own views, perceptions, and judgments, and then make adjustments, but overall it is such a process. This is already formed in childhood, and you will automatically learn an ability -- the ability to unify and integrate different distorted personalities into one whole.

And what is called schizophrenia, from a certain angle, is an impairment of this learning ability. His learning ability in this regard is not good, and so he becomes scattered and split.

Coded Messages: The Example of Bill Baker

At this point Rob interjected with a question. He said, "May I ask a question?" And then Seth said he could ask. Rob said:

"I heard Bill Baker -- that schizophrenic person who came to visit them yesterday -- speaking a very fluent foreign language, a language, you could say, one that he himself could not decipher."

Actually, he had not yet asked his question; he had just made this statement, and Seth knew what he wanted to ask. Seth answered him directly:

That language is an excellent example of the coded messages I mentioned earlier.

He said, as I told you before, the different portions of these personalities have their own communication systems, and they are coded communication systems. This person's case is an excellent example. He himself also said he did not know what this language was. Why? Because he himself was playing this game with various personalities and with the world, a game of scattering himself into different roles and being unable to find himself. And the communication between the various personalities and the various roles needed to be carried out through an encrypted communication mechanism. All of this is a game, and in order for the game to be convincing, he himself necessarily had to create a communication system.

He said this is the excellent example.

Do you understand? That language was supposed to maintain its secrecy, yet it became a symbol of the exaggerated superior self's extremely powerful knowledge, while at the same time he made that knowledge impossible to put into practice.

By rights, this kind of language and this kind of encrypted thing should not have been manifested, because it is a secret -- it is the secret language between the scout and the headquarters, so how could it be spoken aloud like a language? This was supposed to be secret, but it was brought out by the exaggerated self as a kind of knowledge and ability to show off. Because his excellent self, his superior self, always wanted to show off some ability that others did not have, and so he showed off this special language of his. This was already something that should not really have happened.

But because this knowledge itself had to conform to its encrypted, secrecy-preserving character, he told himself that this knowledge could not be put into practice.

To translate that information would imply a more serious commitment to specific communication, which the young man was not willing to make.

He could not translate it, and he did not want to translate it, because he wanted to keep it mysterious.

Such communication can point in several ways to the greater psychological mobility.

This "mobility" of his is psychological mobility, meaning that your psychological abilities have very strong possibilities. One way is to treat this secret communication as the existence of something forever invisible -- as in this case, where he turned it into a language, and he pointed out how strong this person's abilities were, that he could even create a language.

That is somewhat natural for children. I will still have more to say about such communication.

Early Causes of Schizophrenia: To Divide Is to Conquer

When you are a child, you are not responsible for your actions in the same way that adults are.

Children don't have to take responsibility, right? When many children do bad things, the parents or guardians are the ones held accountable. Current law works this way: before adulthood, if a child does something, the guardian bears the responsibility, not the child.

And the split often begins in adolescence or the teenage years. Schizophrenia begins at this time.

It begins when people feel that their youthful talents are expected to produce results.

So he has some talent, and he expects that in the future it will produce some results -- for example, becoming an outstanding scientist or an outstanding artist. At this point, the results haven't been produced yet, but when there is an expectation of such results, he begins to split. He splits into one part that is the accomplished self, the self that has already achieved that accomplishment; and another part that is still a teenager, who simply doesn't have that ability yet and hasn't yet become the person he expects to become in the future. At this point, as a teenager, he experiences his first split.

Seth points out an early cause of schizophrenia:

If, for example, they were considered gifted, then they should now display the results of that education through adult achievements. If, however, they have also come to believe that they are dangerous or evil, then they may become afraid of using their abilities, and indeed become more afraid of themselves. They then attempt to conquer themselves by dividing themselves.

To divide is to conquer. Here Seth points out the process of this psychological evolution.

He gives an example: if we say this person is very gifted, exceptionally talented, the adults say it and that's the end of it, but the child's mind produces a whole series of psychological reactions. He will think about this question: Am I really exceptionally gifted? If I am exceptionally gifted, then I should be smarter than ordinary children, and I should achieve the accomplishments and results that exceptionally gifted people should achieve. But in many cases he can't do it, and he can't demonstrate his results. He is only smarter than ordinary children; he only has this potential and this future expectation, but he hasn't realized or achieved it yet. And at this time, in order to demonstrate his exceptional talent, he imagines that he has that kind of ability, and at this point he begins to experience a certain split.

And from the opposite side, if a child's behavior shows a certain destructiveness, then the parents say this child will definitely grow up to be antisocial or have criminal potential, because he started doing bad things from a young age -- petty theft, fighting, and so on. At this point, he himself will come to believe that in the future he really will be a dangerous person, and he will become afraid of himself. Why? Because others have told him that in the future he will become exactly that kind of expectation.

So what does he do then? He begins to divide himself, splitting himself into different personalities to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions. Because he knows that in the future he will become a bad person, and a bad person must take responsibility for his actions. So what does he do then? He splits himself, and through dividing himself he attempts to conquer himself.

They become excluded from value fulfillment.

They feel excluded from value fulfillment, because they feel that the things they do are meaningless. Because they have been defined as dangerous people or bad people in the future, their lives have no meaning, so there is no value fulfillment -- that is what they believe.

In a manner of speaking, they begin to show an opaque face to the world, displaying a divided countenance.

Since everything I do is meaningless, at this point he begins to cause destruction and seek a sense of existence. Because he cannot achieve what he considers value fulfillment, he uses exaggerated and ostentatious methods to achieve that superficial attention and focus from others. He wants to realize his value.

Why don't we normal people need this? Because normal people know that what we do has its own value. Even living the most ordinary life is still achieving our value fulfillment. But he doesn't have this understanding, so he uses exaggeration and ostentation to express it.

Then Seth says this session is over.

I will continue this subject, and tie it in more closely with value fulfillment.

Actually, he didn't finish this sentence completely. Actually, this person is also doing his value fulfillment, he just doesn't realize it himself.

And stress the importance of positive action in the physical world, so that ideals can be expressed rather than feared.

The importance of action in the physical world lies in expressing your ideals. Your ideals should not be feared by yourself. Whether you want to save the planet or change the world and make it better, the ideal itself is not wrong. We also need to acknowledge that we ourselves have shortcomings. In this process, in this practice, don't treat yourself as -- just because you have this higher ideal, don't necessarily imagine yourself to be an ideal personality. We need to acknowledge our reality: we are a composite of multiple distorted and divided personalities. So under this premise, go and practice, and don't be afraid of doing things wrong, of not being perfect enough, of not being ideal enough.

If you behave this way, it is very easy to plant the seeds of this distortion. Because if you are afraid of doing things wrong or afraid of not doing them right, you don't act, and at this point you get further and further from your ideal. The ideal becomes something in your heart that can only remain within your own world, unable to act in practice. And at the same time you yearn for this ideal, yet in action you don't do it, because you feel that everything has nothing to do with the ideal, or you are afraid of making mistakes, and at this point you begin to split. You have a lofty ideal, but the things you do in practice feel completely unrelated to the ideal, all going in the opposite direction, heading south when you should be heading north. You cannot move toward your ideal. At this point you begin to split, and you even become afraid of your own ideal, afraid of having such a thought, such an ideal.

So that there can be some confidence, and the door between impulse and its activation is left open.

He says this should actually give you an opportunity, so that the door between impulse and actual action is always open -- impulse brings action, after all -- rather than the state of schizophrenic people: only having ideals and never acting. This is a very dangerous thing. Over time, you will lean toward the seeds of this split -- whether severe or not. This is what he wants to say: don't be like this.

Rob's Notes

The content of this session ends here, and what follows are some notes from Rob.

Rob says that in this session Seth did not praise them, but he did give them a clue as to how Jane transmitted certain sessions for him. But first, his material on the magical approach immediately reminded him that as early as May 12 of this year, Jane had received two such ideas from him -- on the day he held Session 915 for Chapter 8.

Then Rob emphasized this point, because he thought these ideas were important. Rob hurriedly stepped forward at this point to emphasize: I saw it long ago, in Session 915, on May 12 of this year, when Jane was transmitting Session 915 with Seth, she raised two very profound insights. What insights were they?

Reason alone will eventually become irrational; imagination alone will eventually become less imaginative.

These were points Jane specifically emphasized in the notes at the end of Session 915. Then Rob says, nine days after I made this point, Seth finally gave Jane some material related to this insight. You can look at the content after Sessions 917 and 923. Rob says that in Session 917, Seth echoed the insights he had seen in Session 915.

Then the following passage is excerpted from the private session on the evening of Wednesday, August 6, 1980. This is a sentence Seth said in the private session:

The natural person is indeed the magical person.

He also kept saying this in The Magical Approach.

And to a certain degree, you two have recently been in an example of activity telepathy. Framework 2 is a rather fascinating but mainly hypothetical framework, because neither of you can really use it in your own way for a perceivable usefulness. This does not mean that Framework 2 is not operating, but you do not have the kind of feedback you imagine.

What does this passage mean? It means that although you have grasped the magical approach, and although every person is naturally magical, not everyone can manifest the things in Framework 2 in the three-dimensional body right now. Why? Because Framework 2 is more of a fascinating, hypothetical framework; it is a framework of possibilities, and all possibilities are within it.

He says that you two cannot, in your own way, put these possibilities or hypothetical frameworks of Framework 2 to a perceivable usefulness -- that is, you do not really know how to use Framework 2, you do not know how to apply Framework 2. You have not effectively used Framework 2, but this does not mean that Framework 2 is not operating, nor that Framework 2 is ineffective or not working. It is just that you do not have the kind of feedback you wanted, meaning you did not get the results you expected. To put it plainly: you still do not really know how to use Framework 2, because you do not fully believe in Framework 2; you are still living in Framework 1 and using the methods of Framework 1. And this result -- the lack of feedback of the results you expected -- does not prove that Framework 2 is not working; it only shows that you do not know how to use it.

When you two were both focused on being involved in the projects you completed -- for example, these two books, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events and Jane's God -- these were concrete projects, and relatively speaking, you let a large part of your own inner experience slip away. But since then, you have both been astonished at how easy it seems when you perceive and carry out information you did not even realize you possessed.

You may not know what Seth is talking about in this passage. What he means is that in June and July, you two were focused on the concrete work of these two books, and you felt these two books were very important -- and indeed they were, in the three-dimensional world -- so you put all your energy into them. And then you did not pay attention to your inner experience.

Then, after those two books were sent to the printer and finalized, you began to be astonished: you perceived and carried out information you did not even realize you were using. You began to draw on your inner information, to use your inner perception, to use or become aware of things you had not discovered before. You think you do not have it, but actually you do, yet you do not feel you possess this information -- the reason being that you were too focused on concrete work and matters, and you did not use it in this regard. Then after you finished that concrete work, when you entered August and September, you discovered that in fact that information had always been there, that inner information had always been there.

And when you came back to your senses, you found that obtaining that information was so easy. That is, the things of Framework 2 had actually always been there; you just had not been paying attention to them.

Some of you have not read some of Ruburt's notes, which contain further important insights into this activity. The main point is the importance of accepting a different orientation of integrity, an orientation that is indeed a basic part of human nature, involving an incompletely different relationship between the self you know and time.

He says that because he is quoting what he said, many people find it baffling and do not know what it means. He says Ruburt made many notes, but you have not read these notes. In Ruburt's notes, there are further important insights into this activity. What activity? It is that through their recognition of that inner feeling, they obtained some knowledge.

Many people do not know what he is talking about. Let me go back to the beginning and you will understand what he is saying. He is talking about May 12, Session 915. Did Rob not say, "I knew long ago what Seth said in that passage" -- that when you use only reason, you will eventually become irrational; when you use only imagination, you will eventually become unimaginative. He said he knew that on May 12. But later, in Seth's sessions, it was expanded upon, and finally the course on the magical approach, over these four months, went on for another thirteen sessions and eventually became a book.

And what is the core idea of that book? It can be summarized in this one sentence: if you humans use only reason and inference, you will eventually become without reason, without intellect, without logic; when you say I will use only imagination, you will eventually find you have no imagination. Only when humans use imagination within reason, and use inference and logic within imagination, can they better develop all of their human wisdom. This central idea can serve as the central idea of the entire The Magical Approach.

And at this point Seth means to say: you had this insight back in May; you actually knew it long ago, you knew these concepts long ago. But you did not pay attention at the time; you were busy in June and July finishing those two books. Then when August and September came and I began to teach the magical approach, it seemed as if this thing suddenly emerged. Seth means to say: you knew it long ago; in May you actually already had such an insight in your heart.

The important misunderstandings involving time are largely responsible for many of Ruburt's difficulties, and for yours as well, though to a lesser degree.

He says this matter is mainly related to Ruburt; it is really a misunderstanding about time. Seth says: I had this insight long ago in May, but you did not begin transmitting through Jane an expanded book on this insight until August and September. This responsibility, this matter of time, lies mainly with Jane; he says you also bear responsibility, but your degree of responsibility in this matter is smaller.

All of this involves a more natural, and therefore magical, way of relating to reality.

In your experience, and in the experience of any creature, there is obviously a natural physical time, involving the rhythms of the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the ebb and flow of the tides, and so forth. In terms of that physical time, there is no basic cultural time; that is something you have transferred onto the natural rhythms.

That is to say, for all animals and for you, there is a natural time -- the changes of seasons, the changes of sun and moon, the tides, all of these. And for those cultures and civilizations concerned with local details, production lines, punctual contracts, and so on, this cultural time operates well on the whole. But besides that natural time, you humans also use this cultural time -- that is, what we call meeting someone at a certain hour and minute, finishing some work in a certain month, publishing a certain book, and so on. You also use your cultural time very well.

Culturally, Ruburt feels that every session must be devoted to work.

This is one of Ruburt's misconceptions. Ruburt feels that every session must be devoted to work.

And you somewhat have the same feeling.

You two are both workaholics, thinking that time not spent on work is wasted.

Natural time is vastly different from what you assume.

Natural time, that is, the time of sunrise and sunset, is vastly different from your cultural time and your assumptions about time. It is far richer, and it turns inward and outward -- by time turning inward, he means time turning backward as well as forward, and it turns back upon itself.

This part has actually been discussed by Seth in many chapters. The direction of time's movement in our three-dimensional world is perceived as singular -- always flowing toward a future direction, and this is what we consider the single direction of time, flowing from the past to the future. From Seth's perspective, time has at least four directions: inward and outward, backward and forward. Inward and outward refer to the involution and extension of time; we have discussed this part before, so I will not elaborate here. Backward and forward means time can move forward or in reverse. These are all places Seth has discussed before regarding time.

When you are dreaming, you are the natural and magical self.

You are natural and magical. Why? Because you make use of information outside the time categories experienced by the so-called rational mind -- it is outside your waking time. This dreaming time is definitely outside the time categories of your rational, waking mind, outside what we ordinarily consider time. Although it is within our natural time at night when you sleep, the events in the dream happen entirely outside your time system.

Creative ability operates in the same manner.

Your creativity is the same as dreaming; it is not completed within your time, it only appears within sequential time. It seems as if it is in our time -- for example, this morning I created a painting, as if this time is our conventional time, as if within this sequential time you created this thing. But the actual process of your creation is not within this morning; it may have been several years ago, or in your dreams, or in some place outside of time where your consciousness had a realization. Do you understand what he means by this sentence? Your creative ability seems to work within time, but it actually works outside of time; the main work of your creation is entirely completed outside of time.

When you were both working on your own projects -- that is, writing books, they were writing books, these were their own projects -- your cultural time was used up in a way you felt was acceptable.

Cultural time, that is, our clock time, our human perception of time, was used up in a way we considered acceptable. Because I have to publish a book, I have to proofread, I have to make corrections, I have to communicate with the publisher -- you feel all this time is legitimate and acceptable; you feel it has been used up, and all of this is you doing your normal project.

When that project was completed -- the project refers to the matter of publishing the book -- especially Ruburt, however, still held a cultural belief that time should be used in this way, and creatively directed, and trained to fall into the appropriate production-line time slots.

For these two people, once the proofreading was done and sent to the publisher, the matter was already complete; the subsequent publication and distribution had nothing to do with them. But after this matter was completed, Ruburt still held a cultural belief: that it was precisely because of his grasp of this cultural time, working diligently every moment without waste, that the book was produced -- for example, Jane's God, or If We Live Again, and other poetry collections and things she created herself. Let us set aside Seth's material for now; that is another matter. He believed that it was all because he managed his time slots very well, never wasting time every day, that he achieved such high productivity and such creative results.

But what Seth actually wanted to tell him is: it has nothing to do with your time management. Your poems, your novels, your creative works -- all of this creative work is completed outside of time, but it gives you the illusion that you completed it within time -- that you had to complete it within a time range of writing from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Seth wanted to wake the two of them up, so they would not have this mistaken perception that if you manage your time slots well, your creativity will be strong and your works will flow endlessly. He says you two have misunderstood; in fact, your creativity is outside of time, but you instead believe that it is indeed because you manage and control time very well that you have such high creativity.

I want to give you much material here, because it is important that you understand the different ways of relating to reality, and how those ways create the events that are experienced.

You must understand that there are many different ways of relating to reality; your current method based on time management is only one of them, and there are many other ways you do not understand. And those ways you do not understand are precisely what create the things you experience. In other words, to put it more bluntly: the ways you do not understand are what created those novels, those poems, those things.

Suddenly neither of you is really prepared to drastically change your orientation.

He says neither of you is prepared to truly change -- to shift from managing production-line time to grasping psychological time, or to a correct understanding of cultural time, and to begin entering into this true psychological creative time to do things. The matter of production-line time and psychological time is discussed in detail in The Magical Approach, and in this private session of August 6, he was only laying the groundwork for the subsequent magical approach. From August 6 until early October, Seth used a full thirteen sessions to expand on what he had said earlier and gave a complete discussion. Neither of you is prepared to begin shifting toward creating in psychological time; you are still managing time slots in this traditional cultural life, in this cultural time.

But you are approaching that threshold, as Ruburt's notes also mention. The magical approach means that you actually change your methods of handling problems, achieving goals, and satisfying wealth.

Ruburt had insight; Ruburt mentioned this sentence in his notes. He says Rob may not even know this, but Ruburt mentioned it in his own notes: the so-called magical approach means you must change your methods of handling problems, achieving goals, and satisfying wealth. All of these must undergo thorough change; if you do not change, your original methods cannot truly allow you to control the relationship between you and the reality you manifest.

You switch to the natural person's method, and then the magical approach is indeed part of your private experience.

He says the magical approach is indeed the personal experience of you two; it is not some mystical method, not some secret, esoteric method that cannot be passed on. But you must be convinced that these are natural methods that people should use to handle problems and face challenges. He says it is not a secret, but you must firmly believe this: the magical approach is the most natural and correct method we humans should use to handle our problems. And the methods we currently use are distorted, artificial, socialized, or methods burdened with many limiting beliefs, rather than the most natural methods that nature should have given us.

If we call the correct method that nature has given us for relating to this world the Way, then we are outside the Way. And at this moment Seth pulls you back once again to the source of this Way, letting you use a person's most natural method to handle things, and this most natural method is the most magical method.

Seth said, I use the word "method" because you understand it; you know that as soon as I say "method," you understand what I mean. But actually what we are talking about is a way of facing life.

Seth says it is actually not a method -- it is not a kind of method; it is a way of facing life. How you face life is how you use our life, and with what attitude you approach our life. Should you make a very rigorous plan -- from birth to understanding things to death, these several decades lived according to a strict rational plan -- or should you live completely freely and spontaneously?

The Natural Way and the Magical Approach

How exactly do you approach your life? Do you satisfy your inner impulses and follow your inner joy, or do you suppress them and operate according to rational methods?

This is your way of approaching life—a magical, or natural, path. It is the human version of the instinctive behavior that animals naturally exhibit in the universe. Animals do not have all these complicated things that humans have; they live very naturally, very authentically, simply living within nature. We all like that state of animals. The magical approach Seth speaks of is about returning to the state of a natural human being, returning to how you humans should be in nature, just as animals are in nature. So what should a human being in nature look like? It is exactly what the magical approach describes for you.

That approach is truly in direct conflict with the acquired methods you have been taught.

That true magical approach, which conforms to the natural way, is precisely incompatible with all those things you have learned after birth; it is in direct conflict with them, even completely opposite and reversed. Yet we humans treat what we have learned after birth as truth, and this most natural, most magical way of approaching life—the way of conducting oneself and handling affairs—we no longer know how to use, or even how to begin using it. And this book—this small, thin volume, The Magical Approach—once again points out to you what kind of approach we should use toward our lives, toward our living, how to handle problems, and how to solve the issue of wealth.

The Answer to a Problem Is Not in the Problem

It certainly seems that the best way to get a definite answer is to ask a definite question.

You humans feel that the best way to get an answer is to ask a definite question. As he said earlier, you humans think the best way to solve a problem is to worry about that problem, and the more you worry about it, the better it will get solved. And the rational mind first thinks of a questionnaire or a list of questions -- if you want to solve a problem, you first have to find the problem, you have to list the problems and solve them one by one.

For that matter, Ruburt's reactions before such a session are natural, and to a certain extent magical. For he knows that, regardless of what he has been taught, on one level of his consciousness he must to some extent forget those questions, and the moods that may accompany them, in order to create on another level of consciousness a proper atmosphere, one in which answers can easily come, even if they may appear in ways that differ from what the rational mind might expect.

You humans think the best way to solve a problem is to list all the problems, make them definite, ask the right questions, and then go solve them. Actually, that is not so. The more you obsess over the problem, the less solvable it becomes. What is the correct method here? Just do not think about those problems.

This refers to that poem. Do you remember the poem Jane wrote at the beginning of this session? -- It is not that I know less, but that I used my logical reasoning ability to deduce the source of that logical reasoning ability, and then beneath that source, I saw that most natural kind of inner order, that spontaneous order within it. Seth is actually echoing her poem here. Ruburt actually understood very well -- when you want to gain true cognition, true insight, you often have to ignore those questions, forget those questions, and only then will the real answer appear. If you insist on clinging to your questions, you confine the answer within that question -- if your question was wrong from the start, how can you expect a correct answer? How can someone who asked the wrong question ever get a correct answer?

So at this point, since you cannot even ask the question correctly, you might as well not ask questions at all. When you do not ask questions, the answer will actually emerge. Why? Because when you ask a question, that question is like a sieve, like a frame, and it locks the answer in place. But the answer is not in there -- because your question is limiting, it is framed, it carries the framework and structure of logical thinking, of your rational mind. And the answer is not like that; the answer has no such rational thinking framework. It is a multidimensional, intuitive kind of answer. Yet you ask what the answer to this question is, but the question itself is already wrong, so even if the answer comes out, you will not know it, because you will not think it is the answer. At this time, the best approach is to throw away all your questions, forget all your questions, and only then will the real answer surface. And this answer is often different from the rational, expected way you are used to.

The Atmosphere of the Magical Approach

With the joint permission of you two, and I hope with your joint enthusiasm, we will have several sessions discussing the ten items and especially the magical approach in your private lives, in order to create that kind of atmosphere in which the answers can be experienced.

This is August 6th. Seth says he hopes that next we can together — with the joint permission of you two, how polite, and then with your joint enthusiasm — permission alone is not enough, you also need the enthusiasm of you two — and then we will have several sessions discussing the magical approach of this reality, the content related to your private lives. But in fact, it is not only helpful to their private lives; it has played a crucial role in the development of the whole of humanity. So we should thank the two of them, especially Jane — who encountered problems physically, and also encountered some problems in her career, and for four whole months had not been speaking about the content of this book — and so on, and in the end what was given to us as a perfect presentation was the sudden emergence of The Magical Approach.

Again, the key point of The Magical Approach is to let you have this kind of atmosphere, within this kind of atmosphere that is created — what kind of atmosphere? It is to put your logical reasoning and your intuitive sensibility together, and after letting these two combine, to form this kind of relaxed atmosphere. This atmosphere will let the answers emerge automatically, or let you experience them — it does not appear in the form of a thesis as you imagine. This answer will never appear in the form of a thesis as you imagine. This kind of answer can only let you experience it, can only let you realize it, but it cannot be accurately described in words.

This is also what many prophets, eminent monks and great virtuous ones, and enlightened people have repeatedly told you: you can only experience it personally, I cannot tell you. But you say, does that which I cannot tell you not exist? No. You can realize it, but I cannot tell you.

Note 1: The Essence of Life Is Excitement

Then we look at Note 2. Rob said, at first, some of these excerpts might seem quite different from one another in content, but he said that in his heart he intuitively chose every excerpt included here. He had wanted to show the first two items for several years now -- that is, the first two excerpts below -- and the reader would necessarily guess how they relate to that poem and to the ten magical approaches Seth spoke of. The next three items are excerpted from later sessions in the magical series, or content directly related to them.

The first excerpt is from Jane's diary in 1975. She did not remember the specific month, only that she wrote it down at high speed. The following is what Jane herself wrote:

Life as we know it is excitement, highly organized excitement, excitement on all levels -- whether on the microscopic, the macroscopic, and within the psyche. Life is the result of the relationship between balance and imbalance, between organization and chaos. Life is excitement in an ever-fluid state, forming a knot of the psychic and the material.

There is nothing to explain here; it is all plain language, but written very beautifully. He is talking about what the essence of life is -- the essence of life is excitement, it is this impulse, it is this joy. You can break excitement down into impulse plus joy.

Life is explosive, yet full of order. It becomes so full of itself, because it is explosive, that it blooms -- it explodes in the same way that a flower blooms.

Life is a kind of explosion; life is like a flower blooming -- from a bud waiting to open, it keeps blooming. In this process of blooming, it fills itself up. Blooming is the essence of life; explosion is the essence of life.

And this same principle also appears in a storm, a flood, a murder, the creation of a poem, or the formation of a dream, and it also appears in the birth and death of individuals and nations.

It is all a kind of excitement, a kind of creation. This explosiveness of life, like a flood or a storm, a murder case, a poem, the formation of a dream -- all are formed in this excitement. It even includes the birth and death of a person or a nation.

We instinctively know that disasters imitate the birth and death of the cells within our bodies. Natural disasters are simulations of the birth and death of the cells within our bodies. We instinctively know that all life continues to exist after death, and know that death is life revealing a new form, and that is why we are fascinated by accidents and fire.

So we are fascinated by accidents and fire. What are we looking at when we watch the news every day? What is in the news? Accidents -- what we love to watch most in the news is accidents; we do not like to watch the routine things. We like fire, we like the way fire looks. What is fire? Fire is burning, it is erupting -- you can understand it as a kind of slow explosion, an explosion of countless tiny particles forming fire.

To describe it simply: suppose life is this fire, but life is not any specific fire, any specific flame, any specific blaze -- life is the nature of fire. The nature of fire is the nature of life. So we humans like fire, like sitting by a fire, like watching fire, like appreciating fire, experiencing fire, feeling fire -- we like this burning, this uncertainty. One characteristic of fire is uncertainty. If you study fire carefully, you will find that you cannot predict the next movement of a flame, the next shape of a flame; no one can predict it. A great wildfire in nature is also unpredictable in which direction it will burn. This uncertainty, this accident -- but what is its essence? Its essence is this eruption, this excitement, this burning.

People are naturally interested in this kind of thing. Why? Because this is the essence of our life. If we were to use one thing to metaphorically represent our life, fire is one of them. Fire is a very representative characteristic of the image of life. If you think about it carefully, in our five elements -- metal, wood, water, fire, earth -- each one is a manifestation of a basic characteristic of life. Our life is a synthesis possessing these five characteristics. What Jane wrote here only emphasizes its fire attribute. Does our life have this attribute? Yes, it does. But remember, this is not the only attribute; the true attribute of our life is the common attribute of these five elements.

The psyche itself, at the ordinary level of consciousness, goes beyond our beliefs and sees us as part of all life.

The essence of the psyche transcends conscious existence, and regards our physical existence as only a part of life.

Excitement forms all kinds of complexity, and then this complexity fills itself to the point of overflowing, exploding out of that structure, only to form another new one.

The essence of your psyche is like fire: wherever fire catches, fire fills that place; fire fills the space where fire is, and it fills itself up. But when the fire goes out -- you put it out, or it burns itself out -- it does not matter; in another place it can catch fire again. Once it catches fire, this fire erupts again, and it possesses the same attributes again, and it fills the space where it is again.

Emotion itself, when we allow it, can feel this. In grasping that sense of excitement, we can catch a glimpse of a greater freedom of our own psychic existence, and this psychic existence flows into each of us, and then escapes that brief life form and enters another life form.

Just like fire jumping from one place to another, but the nature of fire has not changed. The nature of life has not changed either -- whether it is this reincarnation, or future reincarnations, or past reincarnations, or life in other parallel worlds, the essence of existence is always like fire carrying such great excitement, blooming like a flower. He is using poetic language to describe what the essence of life is.

Note 1: Middle Age and Time

The second excerpt is from the 1976 journal, a note Jane wrote down on March 6, when she was 47:

My own concepts must necessarily be colored to some degree by my own position in time. Middle age seems to be the best time for me to do this kind of study, because theoretically speaking, time extends forward and backward equally.

In middle age, the time one has lived and the time one has not yet lived are almost equal in length. In childhood, we do not have much past time to recall—we seem to come out of darkness, and we rely on faith in our parents' memories as proof that time existed before our own birth. Parents will tell you, this is how I met your mother, this is the year we got married, and later this is the year we had you—and in this way they prove that the world existed before you were born, and that time existed too. You are merely a new life that has been born into this world.

As we gradually grow older, we have past time to play with. Generally speaking, we know where we came from—because once you are old, you know that you came step by step from youth. And the future stretches out as a darkness behind our origin, seeming to be our destination. We know where we came from, but we do not know where we are going in the future. That future is also unknowable. And that future seems to be the place we came from—that darkness seems to be where we came from, and where we will return to. Our life comes from an unknown world, and after death we will also go there.

So why is middle age a time when one is willing to study this spiritual knowledge? Because it happens to fall right on this point in time—it can see the past, and it can also have a comparison and a perception of the still-uncertain half that is the future.

Obviously it would be invaluable to examine the mind and reality from the viewpoint of old age.

Once you have lived to the end of life, you review it all over again from the beginning, replaying your life once more in your mind—this in itself is invaluable.

And the acceleration I felt today, that acceleration tells me that my intents are going out to be fulfilled in the unknown or in the universe, bringing answers to my questions—even questions of which I am not consciously aware.

Jane said she suddenly had a feeling that she was accelerating toward an unknown world, and then also into some larger unknown universe, to bring back answers to those questions—even questions she did not know about, questions she was not aware of. This echoes the passage quoted earlier: when you want to probe the answer behind a question, it is best not to cling tightly to that question. The tighter you cling, the harder it is for the answer to come out.

From my experience I know that enough energy can be set into motion to do this. While the results will be known to me in time, I know that in some unknown fashion I get them from outside of time.

It seems as though I spent several years, from 1976 to some later year, acquiring this knowledge. But I also know that this knowledge is not within this framework of time—it comes from outside this framework of time. For example, the process of Seth coming through to transmit this material seems to be completed within human time, but in fact Seth does not live within our human category of time at all, and this material is not content from within our time and space.

Commentary 2: Excerpts from The Magical Approach

The third excerpt comes from Session 2 of The Magical Approach, the class held on August 1, 1980. Since we have already covered The Magical Approach, let us go through this quickly here.

Ruburt's mood and your own mood are telepathically connected. Just as you have a certain connection with your teachers, with your old or childhood environment. So in these examples, on other levels as well, you also have a free flow of information.

What he is talking about here is that when Rob brought a camera to take a picture of Jane, Jane had an intuition at that moment that she wanted to take a picture, and right then Rob came in and happened to take a picture. He says this is just like the way you have a certain connection with your childhood environment. From these examples you can see that you have information flowing freely across different times and spaces.

Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted. That is, his own information is not all the information you possess. The intellect can realize that his own knowledge represents only the tip of the iceberg. When you apply that realization to your life, you will begin to understand further that, in practical terms, you are indeed supported by a larger body of knowledge than you are aware of, and also supported by the magical and spontaneous wellspring of action that forms your existence.

You are supported by those things you do not know, supported by those unknown things. What you now consider reasonable and logical is all supported by those things that are not reasonable and not logical.

The intellect can realize that it does not need to do everything single-handedly, and that not everything must be explained by theory or be understood.

Since all the things I cognize are only a part, only the tip of the iceberg, and there is a much larger part that I do not know, and the reality in which I exist also emerges from a larger reality, then there is no need for me to necessarily explain all these things with theory. Those things that cannot be explained must have other ways of being experienced and felt; they do not necessarily have to be expressed by me through reason or in the form of a paper. It is not that if they are not expressed they do not exist; they still exist. At this point the intellect is no longer anxious, no longer insists on using the rational approach to explain this world.

The fourth excerpt comes from Session 3 of The Magical Approach:

Of course Seth not only dictated his material, but must have kept the entire session in mind while doing so, so that every sentence he spoke was quite reasonable in comparison with what came before and after.

Think about it carefully: Seth spoke this material for twenty years, twenty-one years, and if you take out any single sentence from it, it is self-consistent with everything else said elsewhere in the material. It all conforms to his overall framework of knowledge and logic; there is no contradiction, no self-conflict, no inconsistency between the front and the back. How is that accomplished? That is to say, when Seth was speaking this material, there must have been a complete theoretical system or knowledge system behind him. Seth was only expressing it from within that system using different methods and different language, but that thing was always there, and that is why what he said remained consistent from front to back without contradiction. There is an implicit, hidden reality that we humans do not know, which has always been there; Seth simply stood upon that reality and described the reality of this world for us. Because that reality is an implicit reality that has always existed but that humans have not perceived—or an implicit universe—that is why there is no contradiction when he describes it.

I believe there must be involved here a remarkable memory, a memory that exists on a deeper level in connection with what we think of as the shortening of time. The ability of this Seth-Jane combination reminds me of the things I have recently written—talking about how certain portions of the psyche must very cunningly and carefully structure dreams in advance, construct dreams, so that when the dreams are replayed, they give exactly the right information to the portion of the psyche that needs them. When I wrote that dreams are also products of memory, I was not contradicting myself here.

What he means is that our dreams, in the process of continually rebuilding and reconstructing, form this world of ours. And when things happen in our world, this continual replaying and reconstructing in dreams will give you sufficiently correct information for what we call real events that occur in social reality. The possibilities regarding this matter in your dreams may have been rehearsed in many versions, but when it actually happens, it will give you the correct version; it will not get things mixed up. Then from this angle, is it the case that our real life has already been rehearsed and fixed in the dream state? Or is it that our life has already been decided in dreams?

Then he goes on to say, if I say that dreams are also a performance of memory, he says here too he is not contradictory; he is also being reasonable. The scenes in dreams are also improvised, improvised performances—there is no script or stage directions in there saying that this matter is definitely predestined. So there are two levels here: on the level of dreams it is improvised, and then on the level of our reality, from among those improvised versions, we select one version that matches our present state of mind, wishes, goals, and desires, pick it out from Framework 2, and actualize it in Framework 1.

Note 2: Filler-Control Sessions

The fifth part is excerpted from the opening of the thirteenth session -- the final session -- of the private series of The Magical Approach, the session held on the evening of Wednesday, October 1, 1980. This Session 920 was on October 6, just five days earlier, and Rob excerpted this content and placed it here.

Why is this session so long, with so much content added at the beginning and so much added at the end? Actually, we can guess -- Rob still fell into the very thing Seth least wanted him to fall into. He felt that four months had passed without a session on this book, and he felt somewhat guilty about it. He felt we should be working on this book, but then The Magical Approach got inserted in the middle, and The Magical Approach turned out to be especially good. He kept wanting to take the essential parts of The Magical Approach and present them through the beginning and end of this Session 920. But he also knew he could not really do it, yet he was not willing to give up, and he still wanted to blend it in. Because that happened to be what occurred during those four months from June to October, he felt it was something that happened in the course of completing this book, so he wanted to add it in. But there was actually no necessity for that. Still, he hoped to do it that way, because he had not yet fully switched over to living in Framework 2 the way Seth described -- he was still living in Framework 1, and so was Jane. So in that state, he definitely wanted to make a compensation for it: those four months of blank space, he wanted to take what had been done during those four months and present it in condensed form, to fill in that blank. That was the result of his thinking within the framework of time.

Then he said:

He said he was curious why Seth used two other private sessions at the end of September to discuss different topics.

Originally we were discussing The Magical Approach very well, and then suddenly The Magical Approach was inserted, and even if inserting The Magical Approach did not matter, suddenly two other private sessions were inserted, discussing different topics, having nothing to do with The Magical Approach either. Why could you not, Seth, finish one topic at a time, and then we start a new topic? Why do you strike here with a hammer and there with a stick?

Tonight when I asked Jane about this, at first he said, quite matter-of-factly, that he did not know. Then he went on to say, I do not tell you everything.

What Jane meant was, I actually do know why Seth sometimes talks about this and sometimes about that, but I have known for a while now.

Seth gives what I call filler-control sessions, named that way in my mind. They include some floating material that he can give at any time. They are not sessions about the book, and they are not really private sessions either. They keep the sessions going over a period of time. Because usually by discussing past material, connecting it with the present, it is not necessarily adding new things, nor is it specifically about one topic. I think the original sessions about Christ all began in that way.

Jane said these sessions that seem to be on different topics, these things that seem to ramble here and there, are done by discussing past content or topics that have already been talked about, and then re-presenting them from another angle. They are not new concepts, but they are a different angle, going deeper from a different angle.

This is like when we often chat, we frequently connect with certain things from the past, saying how things were in the past. Is this content new? No. Have these past things never been discussed? They have been discussed. Is it necessary to discuss them again? It is necessary -- because if we did not talk this way, the conversation could not even begin. You can imagine, if every conversation only dealt with new content, without a single word of small talk, every sentence being brilliant new knowledge and new insight, then first, the conversation would be very dull, second, very tiring, and third, after a while it would lose all interest. So Jane said, when we were doing Seth Speaks, when we talked about Christ, or later talked about a lot of Christ-related content, all of that began in this way.

So? After all these years, I only now find out -- I said, what else have you not told me? Why is it such a big secret?

At this point Rob was clearly very unhappy -- so you knew all along, so you and Seth both understood everything, and I was the only one who did not know. Why did you not tell me? These contents that seem unrelated to the sessions and are not private sessions either, yet they are a seemingly unimportant but actually very important connective tissue holding the whole course together -- why did you not tell me? All these years, nearly twenty years, from 1963 to 1980, seventeen years, and you never said a word. A rift appeared between husband and wife -- why did you not tell me something you knew? And it was not a small matter, it was a very big matter, because it involved the system and structure of the sessions, and the issue of transmission.

Then Jane said, you never asked me either. Jane often says this. Rob was thinking: if you do not tell me, how would I know to ask? How would I know what goes on in between?

The reply really sounded familiar. Later I found out that about the material Seth gave on Jonestown, he also gave me the same reply -- you never asked me either.

I think filler-control sessions occur between the sessions of a book, in order to change the pace, when the material does not necessarily have to fit the more concentrated, unified focus of a book.

This is changing the pace, making an adjustment -- not saying that one must adhere to the central idea of the book without the slightest deviation.

The Infinite Possibilities of the Seth Material

Jane added that, for the record, she had deliberately given him another short report she had just told him -- our conversation quickly reminded Rob of some small notes he had written two weeks earlier but had not yet put into the book. Rob said:

I think, of course, in ordinary terms, the vast potential of the Seth material is destined never to be fully realized, no matter what Jane and I do in our joint reality. That is simply the way it is.

No matter what the two of them did, it would be impossible to bring out all of the Seth material. Jane could spend the rest of her life giving sessions twenty-four hours a day, and still she could not exhaust the reservoir of Seth's potential information.

There are many things that indicate his material is multi-channeled. It is as if Jane feels he is ready, on any occasion, to discuss any one of a number of subjects. I call that feeling, that awareness, an unobtrusive hint of the meaning of Seth's theory of actualization.

Seth has a theory called probable realities -- you cannot exhaust all the knowledge of another reality, especially a reality higher than yours or a reality of a higher dimension. You cannot exhaust it.

Like probable personalities, he can access unspoken channels, whether or not they are actualized in our physical reality. That is obviously true. Just like those schizophrenic multiple personalities, in their different personalities they will say things that cannot be actualized at all in our world, yet they believe them to be true.

Rob said that these things are indeed true within the channel in which those personalities exist.

I can see that, on a day-to-day basis alone, when Seth deals with events in Jane's and my life, his material expands almost endlessly. And this does not even include his reactions to his own reality and to other matters he can reach, events on various different levels, and their interactions with one another.

Rob said that regarding the things that happen in his and Jane's daily life, Seth could unfold a topic and discuss it around any of these events, and such discussions could go on endlessly. Their lives represent the lives of Earth people, represent the reality of Earth people, and around this alone it could be endless. Not to mention that the matters within Seth's own reality have not even begun to be unfolded, not to mention his experiences and explorations in other probable realities, and not to mention the interactions and possible collisions between events across these different realities and the results they might produce -- you can imagine how endlessly vast this material is.

In Chapter Eight of this book, when I asked Seth what he would do with the rest of the evening -- in our terms -- he answered: I will refresh myself by diving into some new ideas. For of course there are new ideas for me also, and I have been diving into them from many different positions.

This is what we discussed earlier -- what does Seth do in his leisure time? He is also studying new ideas, diving into new ideas from different angles. Seth treats this as a kind of spiritual refreshment. Interesting, isn't it? Many of us also have this feeling: when you are reading a good book, when you are understanding a new concept, when you understand different concepts from different angles, when you get that feeling of sudden realization, that sudden clarity, the spiritual joy is beyond words. So Seth says that when he does spiritual relaxation, he is doing something similar.

Think of it -- that is just one statement. How many questions could one ask him?

For Seth, those are all new ideas and new things, but for us, you cannot even ask the questions, because you do not even know where to begin asking.

His provocative statement left a great hole of unsatisfied curiosity.

Seth's highly provocative words made you enormously curious about his reality -- what exactly are the new ideas that are new to Seth? From which positions did he dive into them? Would that open up even greater curiosity? Yet Seth did not go on to discuss these questions.

Actually, no matter what the subject, most of Seth's information is like this -- giving us a new idea, new to us humans, but Seth displays it or introduces it from different angles. But obviously, if Seth really spent every moment of our worldly lives on personal material, then everything else would have become a possibility and would not have actually appeared.

If Seth had really spent all his time and energy on resolving the personal events that Jane and I encountered, then we would not have the Seth material we see today, which is far more helpful to the elevation of human wisdom and consciousness. Seth did do that too -- he said a great deal about the two of them, seven whole books related to the specifics of their lives. He said fortunately, he also talked a great deal about knowledge universal to humanity.

Alright, the content of this part has now been fully introduced, because this session is indeed very long. I wish everyone a magical and beautiful day.

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注释与核实

1. Source: Jane Roberts, Robert F. Butts, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, Volume Two (https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Jane%20Roberts%20-%20Seth%20-%20Dreams%2C%20evolution%2C%20and%20value%20fulfillment.Vol2%20%5BOCR%5D.pdf) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, "Guo Qilin is Guo Degang's son"; upon verification, it should be "Guo Qilin is Guo Degang's son." (Source: People's Daily Online, "Guo Degang: It Doesn't Matter Whether I Appear on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala; I Am Nurturing Crosstalk Talent," 2015, https://media.people.com.cn/n/2015/1123/c40606-27842698.html) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. According to Mike's original words, "Many years ago at a university in Zhejiang, many university professors gathered together and formed a small internal club, a wife-swapping club, secretly exchanging each other's wives, which was later exposed"; upon verification, it should be "This case occurred in Nanjing; among the 22 defendants, only one was a university associate professor, and the majority of the rest were ordinary migrant workers; apart from three couples, all others were single, and it was not a 'wife-swapping club' composed of multiple professors from a university in Zhejiang." (Source: Yangcheng Evening News, "Associate Professor on Trial for Organizing 'Wife-Swapping': Female White-Collar Worker Once 'Flew In' to Participate," https://www.chinanews.com.cn/sh/news/2010/04-07/2212151.shtml) ↩

7. Source: Ministry of Education, Dictionary of Chinese Idioms, 2020 (https://dict.idioms.moe.edu.tw/idiomView.jsp?ID=8541&la=0&webMd=1) ↩