The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This session first records the everyday episode of dealing with a raccoon that got into the chimney. Then Seth discusses the mixture of predictable and unpredictable activity, pointing out that events can be transformed on physical and psychic levels, such as a storm turning into an economic or emotional storm, or into a dream; experiences that science cannot explain are normal and good. He proposes that shifting focus allows one to sense a larger reality, that a subjectively conscious person cannot come from a meaningless universe, and that the point is not to pursue psychic abilities but to change the way of exploration and return to spontaneity. The session ends by noting that Jane's session times were becoming shorter and her energy was not what it used to be.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Events are a mixture of predictable and unpredictable activity, capable of shifting between the physical and psychic levels.
- A physical storm may show up as an economic storm, an emotional storm, or a long series of frightening dreams.
- Experiences that science cannot explain are normal and good; when science rejects their reality, it deserves to be knocked about.
- A subjectively conscious person cannot come from a universe without meaning and without intelligence.
- The point is not to train psychic abilities, dream recall, or out-of-body experiences, but to change the way of exploring, returning to natural, spontaneous activity.
Main Text
The Raccoon Interlude
This is the session for Thursday evening, November 19, 1981, at 8:30 p.m. Rob came upstairs and said that Jane had not been in a very good mood yesterday. Jane did tell him that she had realized with some surprise that Seth was perhaps more determined to finish this book than she wanted him to be -- Jane felt that Seth seemed close to finishing the book, and that was what she felt bad about. Whenever a book comes to an end, Jane feels that way.
Rob said that he had thought Seth was still far from finishing the book. In Session 900, in Chapter 5 of Volume 1 of this book, almost twenty months earlier, Jane had described a vivid dream in the notes for that session. Seth told her in that session that she had seen herself in the dream -- that is, the multifaceted light of Rob's own existence, and the multifaceted light of this universe.
The person involved in that affair was our friend Flor W. He is an extremely generous and warm-hearted man who has helped us many times over the years. He is the contractor, the builder, who converted half of our double garage into Jane's writing room. Jane and I have each shared several psychic experiences with him.
Then a comical serial drama involving him and W., along with one of his sons and another helper, began this afternoon. Rob was recalling a funny incident in their lives.
W. said, "Hey, Rob, that's a raccoon." The astonished Flor called down from the roof, his flashlight beam illuminating the black mask on the animal's face -- raccoons have dark circles around their eyes, much like pandas -- and making its eyes shine. The raccoon was crouched at the base of the fireplace chimney. Apparently it had chosen that spot as a safe, warm shelter for the coming winter. Most homes in America have fireplaces, but most of them are not used; very few people ever use them. The raccoon had come straight down the chimney, down to the bottom of the fireplace, but they had to get it out.
The three men tried several methods to persuade the half-wild, half-tame creature. Why call it half-wild and half-tame? A raccoon is a wild animal, but over a long period -- especially in North America -- it has lived very close to humans, and basically you can see raccoons in your own backyard, so that is why it is called half-wild and half-tame. But none of it worked. Finally Flor opened the stove damper just a little, then lit a newspaper in the fireplace, and the smoke immediately sent our very indignant raccoon scrambling up the chimney, then across the roof, and into the ironwood tree growing at one corner of the front porch.
Flor and the two helpers stood below keeping watch, so that the raccoon could only stay in the tree. Then Flor picked up a very heavy flat stone -- a very heavy, fairly flat stone -- carried it up the stairs, and pressed it down on top of the chimney. He fixed a piece of wire mesh over it, to prevent animals or birds from entering that vent. I wheeled Jane in her chair out to the front porch, behind the floor-to-ceiling plate glass -- the picture window -- as close to the ironwood tree as possible. From three feet away we looked up at the animal, which kept crying.
Raccoons are formidable. Once our cat even had a standoff and a fight with a raccoon. Actually, it is not certain the cat could beat a raccoon, but it still dared to show its ferocity at the raccoon. But if a raccoon really showed its ferocity, the cat would certainly be no match. So we had several times seen raccoons playing in trees, and Flor, who lives on a farm, often saw them too.
It was an adult raccoon, with a thick coat of mixed black-brown and gray fur, the color exactly matching the tree crown. On that overcast day, we could not see the eyes in that black face, nor could we tell whether it was male or female. Flor told us that raccoons cannot run fast, and if big dogs chase them in open ground during the day, they will attack them. But if that raccoon were cornered, it could even kill a big dog1. Raccoons are still quite fierce -- although they are rather timid, if you really push them into a corner, they are also very fierce. He added that if we heard a bang on the roof tonight, that would be the animal having found a way to move the stone covering the chimney.
Jane was a little slow with Seth's delivery tonight -- not slow at all -- but still much faster than the pace of last Tuesday evening's session. And we heard no sound from the fireplace at the back of the house or from the roof.
Predictable and Unpredictable Activity
What follows is the content of this session that Seth came through with. Seth continued from the previous session, speaking again about the strange mixture of unpredictable and predictable activity. What is called unpredictable is that spontaneous, changing element; what is predictable is the preserving, protecting, conserving element he mentioned. In the events we experience, there is often a strange mixture of these two kinds of events. This also operates within the genetic patterns, in which the genetic system is largely built upon retaining specific characteristics -- genes are hereditary characteristics.
Yet it can also exhibit a kind of behavior that appears genetically unfaithful, distorted, or that introduces certain changes, and that may appear to be a dramatic distortion of genetic integrity.
This is simple, no explanation needed. Genes seem to preserve our hereditary characteristics, but genes can mutate, can vary, can change, or the combination of genes can produce new variations. This is why some children look very much like their parents, while some children do not resemble their parents or siblings at all. This is quite distinctive, yet it is also normal.
But as I have tried to explain, those strange genetic events -- that is, genetic mutations or genetic changes -- often provide the elasticity and expanded possibilities that are most necessary to the overall genetic balance.
Genes need this kind of mutation, this kind of change.
Dream behavior can indeed and often does influence genetic alterations.
In earlier sessions he talked about how people carry out modifications and changes to genes in dreams, which is also called genetic healing. Dreams have the role of a triggering mechanism that changes cellular behavior, because when genes change, cells change.
At every level of your reality, and at every level within the boundaries that nature seems to have, between the psychic and physical levels that seem separate in your life, there is mutual communication.
What does this mean? At any level of nature, at whatever you can think of or know, including even your psychic level and physical level, they all obtain information within these two possibilities of predictability and unpredictability. They are interconnected, and information is mutually exchanged. This is called mutual communication.
Some decisions in which each individual takes part are made within areas of activity whose existence you usually do not even know.
Did you hear that sentence clearly? His meaning is that every individual takes part in that portion. Why is it interactive? Because this world is connected as one whole, and the psychic world and the physical world are also interconnected. Therefore, the events you experience are actually participated in by everyone.
Rob said, and he told Seth: "Yes, I am getting the rather strange impression that to some extent tonight's material will come out of our experience with the raccoons, even though he has not mentioned that."
Below is what Seth said next:
The people of a nation at any given time can decide to activate or experience a particular event almost entirely in the physical realm, or to separate its components in such a way that half of it is physically experienced while the other half is experienced in dream fulfillment.
The topic shifted, and he said that the people of any nation, at any given time, can decide which particular events to experience. This is a very interesting thing. Then this event may very well be half an event in the physical world -- that is, an event in our three-dimensional world -- and the other half an event in the dream world, or an event in the psychic world.
Of course, transformations of energy are constantly occurring.
What does "constantly occurring" mean? It means that one part of this event will become part of the physical world, and another part will become part of the psychic world. Which part it is depends on the transformation of energy. Therefore, events themselves can transform on different physical levels, and on different energy levels.
So for example, he gave an example:
A possible physical storm might instead become an economic storm.
That is, when a storm occurs in the weather, for example a heavy rainstorm, thunder and lightning, or something like a tornado, a tropical storm, and so on, it might also become an economic storm. A country will experience an event, and it may appear in the form of a natural disaster, or it may appear in the form of an economic storm. Which one it will be is not certain.
Different Ways Events Manifest
He paused for quite a while again, and then he said this:
It can show itself as an emotional storm on the part of a large group of people.
That is, a certain group of people, or a certain type of people, whose emotions are very low. In contrast to that:
It can also show itself as a long series of frightening dreams, or perhaps as a long series of separate, individual dreams.
Not one big emotional shift, but one dream after another. Such an adverse physical condition -- for example, an illness -- at every point of its existence, might perhaps turn into a frightening dream. Yet in all of these instances, the necessary standards of the ego's soundness are maintained.
Sometimes you have a nightmare, and actually if he did not dream, if he did not have such a nightmare, an illness might show up in your body. Whether it shows up as an illness or as a nightmare, that is not certain. But no matter what, the necessity of your safety and soundness is maintained. It is not that if you are sick, you are not sound; nor is it that if you have a nightmare, your mind is not sound. None of that matters. Your soundness, your safety, is guaranteed. This is just a different experience of yours.
This is very interesting.
The same alterations, of course, also apply to fortunate events.
What we just talked about was the bad side; good things are the same. Fortunate events:
They may be experienced through specific expression, or also through a series of specific manifestations that perhaps involve social or economic events.
They may also be experienced through a superb climate -- extremely fine weather, almost a perfect summer-like -- or whatever kind of day that suddenly arrives.
A very beautiful stretch of weather arrives. Actually, what does all this express? You have a fortunate event. At such times, we say that when a person meets with happy events, their spirits lift -- that is exactly what this means. You do not even know how it happens. Some people say that when they encounter good things, the weather also turns better, and many people do not know why. Now you know. Actually, Seth points out that the principle behind it is not necessarily that good mood makes the weather better; it could be that the weather really does get better -- because this whole series of fortunate things comes together.
The predictable and the unpredictable, then, are both used to form a kind of boundary for physical experience.
That is, within this there are things that can be predicted, and there are also things that cannot be predicted, and together they become a boundary of the physical world. What kind of boundary? Those things you can determine and predict -- those are all things of the physical world; those things you cannot predict, which may happen but whose occurrence is uncertain -- those are events that are uncertain to be events of the physical world.
The more open you are to such concepts, the greater your experiential latitude will be.
That is, the more open you are to such ideas -- that energies are mutually convertible, that a bad thing or a good thing expresses itself in different forms of energy, that it can manifest economically, socially, culturally, politically, and also climatically, physically, emotionally, that its forms of expression are different, that it is not a single expression -- the more open you are to this concept, the more you will be able to sense and experience the clues that the events happening around you in your life give you.
What Science Cannot Explain Is Normal and Good
He went on to say:
If, as Ruburt often mentions in his books, you should never accept as fact a theory that contradicts your own experience.
He said this point is very important. You can never accept as fact something that contradicts your actual experience. What does that mean? It means that when your direct experience clearly tells you something is not right, and then science tells you it is right, you should not accept those views.
Human experience includes all kinds of behavior that science cannot explain.
For example, dreams are very hard for science to explain; out-of-body experiences are also very hard to explain. These behaviors that science cannot explain are normal and good.
Normal science is not something that can explain everything. If science says its methods are not useful for studying this or that range of experience, we cannot blame it.
If science says this is not within my field of study, that is fine, and you cannot blame it. But:
Science should at least be sharply rapped on the knuckles if it automatically rejects such behavior as valid, reasonable, or real, or when it attempts to place such events outside the realm of certainty.
That is, when it excludes these things by saying: this is unscientific, pseudoscience, or simply not fact, not within the realm of certainty. When it places these outside the realm of certainty, you should give it a sharp rap. Because it does not match your actual experience. You clearly do dream, and that is a real event, but science says it is not within its field of study, or even refuses to acknowledge its reality. That is very dangerous.
When science tries to pretend that human experience is limited to those events that science can explain, we can very rightly condemn it.
When science tries to pretend to explain things it actually cannot explain at all, such as the origin of the universe or the origin of species, if it actually says "I cannot explain this, I do not understand, I do not know, my current data is not enough for me to give the correct answer," that is acceptable and very good. But if you insist on forcing an explanation, if you come up with the Big Bang theory in an attempt to explain the origin of the universe, and then come up with this theory and that theory to try to explain things you cannot explain at all, then you should condemn it. Pretending to understand what you do not understand deserves condemnation. Saying "I do not understand" is very good, and you should not condemn it. These are different levels.
It is quite possible, of course, that the predictable world you know does not fail to exist because of those astonishing, unpredictable, unofficial events.
The world you can predict does not become unstable or unable to exist because there are many unpredictable events. These unpredictable events, precisely because they exist, are what give your predictable world its stability. They do not undermine its stability; they provide it.
There is a greater spontaneous order, and the seemingly unpredictable part of your world provides its own clues to that order.
One of the fundamental laws of the universe is spontaneity. You think it is unpredictable, but in fact it provides clues within that spontaneity. Your spontaneity seems spontaneous, but behind it there are deep inner causes.
Changing Your Focus
By noticing events that seem unpredictable, by changing your focus, you do begin to sense an interwoven pattern of such a reality.
You did not notice these unpredictable events before. You may have noticed them before, but your viewpoint and perspective on them were not the same as your perspective now. When you have learned the above knowledge and begin to re-examine and re-evaluate these unpredictable events as they occur in your world, you can then sense and accept the pattern of a larger reality.
Previously, our understanding of reality was that reality is predictable, that the physical world conforms to laws, and that nothing exists that does not conform to physical laws. If a person floated above the ground, or could walk across the surface of water, we would think this is something that does not conform to laws, and find it miraculous. When you begin to accept these unpredictable events, you are in fact acknowledging that reality has aspects you do not understand, and that there is a reality that exists beyond physical laws.
And that reality leaves many traces within your own experience, and everywhere it gives hints and clues as to its own actuality, and as to your participation in various ranges of expression that have not been given official recognition.
He has left many clues in your world, and you can observe them as long as you pay attention. In expressions that have no official recognition -- meaning the kinds of expression that science or mainstream society does not acknowledge -- he has left many clues. In the clues that science acknowledges, you cannot see these clues, because by science's standards, if you follow its standards, you cannot find these clues. Only in the unofficial places, the places science does not acknowledge, can you find clues. For example, an intuition, an inspiration, a dream.
Within the patterns of human experience lie evidences of man's greater abilities.
Human beings have great abilities, not only the ones you know about.
When he remembers, for example, a precognitive dream, an out-of-body, when he perceives knowledge intruding into his mind, or blending with it, from sources not physically present, then he is dealing with his own greater understanding.
Human abilities are very strong. Human beings have greater abilities, but ordinarily you do not perceive them. For example, you can be precognitive -- is not the ability of precognition very powerful? Of course it is very powerful, but you think you do not have it. For example, the ability of out-of-body experience is also powerful, and you may think you do not have it either. Or you suddenly have a kind of knowledge, a kind of insight, and you do not know how it came, how it entered your mind. This kind of thing is also part of your potential.
Consciousness Cannot Arise by Chance from a Meaningless Universe
A creature like him, a human being of this kind, a human being with such great capabilities, could not possibly be a puppet of genetic engineering accidentally manufactured in a meaningless universe.
It could not be something nature produced automatically. There must be a higher, greater existence, or intelligence, in order for an intelligent human being to be born. That is, a universe without intelligence would not give birth to an intelligent human being. You can figure this out even with your toes.
Can we understand what this means? Let me give a simple example. Suppose that two thousand years from now, we are able to create lifelike AI humans, or bionic humans, just like real people. Suppose we can create them. Through creating such humans, you can figure out one thing: if we look at it from the perspective of this newly created bionic human -- although he is still a robot, still an artificial intelligence, but he also uses his own thinking, his own abilities, and by the time he has fully autonomous thinking ability -- he will ask himself a question: must the one who made me also be an intelligent being? Because this bionic human himself has artificial intelligence, he also has intelligence. When he has his own thinking, will he ask this question? He will think, "Am I something that nature somehow evolved without knowing how, without knowing how these silicon wafers, these transistors, these silicon elements combined, and in the end the combination became me, with no conscious participation in the process, no participation of intelligence, all of it the product of unconscious, objective, accidental, random combination?" Do you think that is possible? From his perspective, would he think about the problem that way?
If you can understand this reasoning, then you can figure out clearly that intelligent human beings could not possibly be born in a universe without intelligence.
If man paid more attention to his own subjective behavior, to those continuously arising feelings of identification with nature.
That is, if man identifies with his subjective behavior and begins to pay attention to the existence of these subjective things, then as long as you pay attention, you can discover your feeling of identification with nature -- this consciousness of the oneness of all things.
Subjective behavior and subjective feelings are truly existent for him; these are his real feelings. If you deny this subjectivity, then you should not continue studying any further. Yet science just refuses to acknowledge that this world is a subjective world -- it acknowledges that human thought is subjective, that human ideas are subjective, that human beings are subjective, but it just refuses to acknowledge that the world is subjective. Don't you find that funny? Is man not a part of this world? Is man really that special? Is man supposed to be excluded from this universe? Saying that man has subjectivity, that man has active thinking and ideas, but the world does not. Don't you think that is a very interesting thing?
But our current science thinks exactly that way. Don't think it is funny. If you poke through this simple reasoning, it seems very simple, yet scientists unanimously and firmly believe that the world is just like this: only human beings have intelligence, only human beings have subjective behavior and subjective thinking, but the world does not. Is man not a part of the world? Such a simple truth.
Then half of the authoritative dictates of both the theory of evolution and the theory of special creation would automatically lose their force.
When you have this kind of awareness -- the feeling of identification with nature, the acknowledgment of your own subjectivity -- then the so-called theory of evolution and theory of special creation no longer exist, because they will appear unreasonable.
The Process of Exploration Is What Matters
This is not to say that I am going to sketch out a whole new series of methods to increase your psychic abilities, or to remember your dreams, or to carry out your out-of-body actions.
I am not saying that I am going to give you a new theoretical system, or help you improve your spiritual abilities so that everyone can be psychic like Jane; nor am I saying that you should remember your dreams, so that you can remember every dream, no matter what level it is on; nor that everyone should gain the ability to have out-of-body experiences. When I said those earlier things, I was not saying that you should go and acquire abilities in these areas.
What I would much rather do is completely change the way you explore life.
What does he want to do instead? He wants to completely change the way you explore life. This process of exploration is what matters. I am not giving you something -- I am not giving you a theory, not giving you a method, not giving you a thing -- I am asking you to explore, to let each person explore their own inner self. This exploration is what matters most. This exploration is what you should go through and experience, rather than someone giving you some theory and you accepting it as truth and following it. That is not it.
Why does he say this? You have to connect it with what was said before, because our cognition of this objective world is too fixed, too persistent, too stubborn -- it is very hard for you to change. You always think there is some truth that exists, always think there is some objective law that exists. If you accept that this world is a subjective world, if you firmly believe that this subjectivity definitely exists, then how could there be these truths, these theories, these systems? It would be a thousand people with a thousand faces, varying from person to person, everyone different. Because it is your subjective world, created by your subjectivity. Of course, there is predictability within it, but there is also a great deal of unpredictability, a great deal of spontaneity.
To put it bluntly, it is the combination of your subjectivity and the objective world -- this interaction and mutual influence between the subjective and the objective -- that forms your cognition and your feeling of this world. So if the subjective and the objective are both at work at the same time, then if you want to go looking for an objective law or a truth, you are looking in the wrong place.
So that you no longer block that natural, spontaneous activity.
Let you go with the flow, return to your inner spontaneity. Within this world of ours, among the basic principles of this universe, one of them is spontaneity, and that spontaneity is the greatest. The events you see all emerge from that spontaneity.
I have told you all of this so that you can have a new way of exploring life, so that you can return to your natural spontaneity. As long as you do not block it, as long as you do not add artificial interference, your automatic spontaneity -- that part that comes from the deep layers of the universe, from your inner potential -- that spontaneous activity will emerge. You just need to not interfere with it. You do not need to do anything extra, you do not need to learn anything, you do not need to master anything, you do not need to practice anything -- you just need to not stand in its way.
All the exercises we do, all the work we do, all these fussy little things we do -- they are really for one thing only: to bring you back to your most natural state. Beyond that, you do not actually need to learn anything. In other words, the ultimate purpose of learning is to bring you back to simplicity, back to the state of a little baby, the state of the innocent heart.
You might say, how do I return to the state I was in at birth? Does that mean all these years of my life have been wasted? Not wasted -- these are two different concepts. You start from a certain cognition, from your cognition of the material world when you arrived in this world, all the way until you have mastered all this knowledge, and then you set that knowledge aside and enter into a spontaneous, natural, magical state -- it is not that the knowledge is useless; the knowledge is only useful when driven by your spontaneity. If you use that knowledge to limit yourself, then you have reversed things, turned them upside down. It is not that knowledge is useless; knowledge can only bring out its full effectiveness when driven by this spontaneity. If you use this knowledge to confine yourself, then it is exactly counterproductive, putting the cart before the horse.
Jane's Condition
This block of dictation ended here. After giving Jane a few paragraphs of personal material, Seth ended the session at 9:40.
This session was relatively short. Looking at the recent Seth material, you get one session that is especially long, and then one that is especially short. From this you can sense that, aside from Rob adding a lot of notes, you can also tell that Jane's state during the book dictation sessions was starting to become unstable. Basically, one book dictation session was only about an hour or a little over an hour, which was completely different from when she was in excellent condition. In the past, when her condition was good, during the earlier books -- The "Unknown" Reality, and in other sessions -- she could basically transmit from 9 o'clock until around 11:30, sometimes even until past 12, which was quite normal, but at the very least she would go until after 11. But look at her now: she basically started at 8:30 or 9 o'clock, and by 9:40, 9:30, or just before 10, the session was over. So her transmissions were also starting to get shorter.
Tonight Jane's body and energy were not what they used to be in every respect. Jane had said before that she never expected a psychic activity would require so much physical vitality as support, and her physical vitality was no longer what it used to be, so her sessions could no longer go on as long. Even when merely serving as a channel to transmit the Seth material, it was like this.
So in our real lives, keeping our bodies in very good condition is also extremely important. Otherwise, later on, even doing the simplest, most basic psychic activities will require enormous, powerful vitality and physical stamina as support. It is not just that you are not an athlete, and that is not the point either. Your body's vitality and physical stamina are absolutely crucial.
注释与核实
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This claim could not be verified. ↩