Mike's commentary · The Magical Approach, Session 6

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

Introduction

This session begins with humanity defining itself through rationalism, pointing out that this identification leads to problems. Seth explains that animals also reason, and that the sense of identity need not depend on the intellect; children first come to know the world through feeling, yet adults are taught to cut off feeling and bury intuition. The function of the intellect is to choose among possibilities, while the body's operations belong to another level. One should expand one's sense of identity to include intuition, feeling, and dreams. Finally, regarding Jane's distress over readers' letters, Seth reminds her that she need not take responsibility for others' realities, but should provide an overall atmosphere of understanding.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Humanity's defining of itself mainly as a reasoning animal, identified with the intellect, is one cause of the current difficulties.
• Animals also reason, but they apply it in realms different from those of humans; a sense of identity does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with the intellect.
• Children first identify with inner feelings, and only later discover thought and the intellect; adults, however, are taught to cut off their identification with feelings, burying the intuitive portion of the intellect.
• The main purpose of the intellect is to make conscious choices within the world of probabilities, while the body's operations are carried out on levels that transcend the intellect.
• People should expand the scope of their identity, accepting intuition, feelings, dreams, and so forth; Ruburt does not need to take responsibility for other people's realities, but should provide an overall atmosphere of understanding rather than solving individual problems.

Main Text

Session 6: Animals and Reasoning: The Things Beyond Our Control

This session began on Monday, August 25, 1980, at 8:49 p.m. Before that, there was Rob's description of what happened before the session started. Rob said that Jane continued to show signs of progress, but lately she had been troubled more than once by the contents of some readers' letters, distressed by the grief in those letters, so much so that she sincerely asked Seth for various kinds of assistance. Today it was a letter from a lady living in Kentucky that caused Jane distress. This lady had both breasts removed because of cancer, and she also had a host of other physical and emotional problems. I suggested that Seth comment tonight on Jane's reaction -- that is, why Jane becomes so troubled when she reads these readers' letters.

Rob also said that since Seth began this series of personal sessions, Jane's walking had improved quite a bit overall. Especially in the past week, she had made even more progress. She could now walk ten steps at a time by leaning on her typing table, rather than the original one or two steps. You can see that Jane was actually already in a lot of pain. She walked twice a day, and each time she could only manage one or two steps. Now she could walk ten steps at a time. Ten steps may not seem like much of a change, but compared to her previous one or two steps, it was already a huge change. But Rob said we had become careless again: she only walked once a day. Seth had suggested she walk twice a day, and she had agreed. Seth also seconded the twice-a-day walking in a recent session. From this detail, you can also tell that Jane's body was basically either sitting or lying down sleeping. Her only activity each day was just this once or twice, and each time she could only walk a few steps. All her other activities were gone.

At 8:40 they sat waiting for the session to begin. Rob described that tonight would be another beautiful evening. The sky was darkening, and the cicadas and other insects were singing a rhythmic chorus, their music echoing in the nearby woods. Then Seth whispered to her, "Now," and then he said good evening, good evening -- this was their signal for each session to begin, and there was a long pause before it started.

Humanity's Definition of Itself: Rationalism and the Reasoning Animal

Then Seth began to speak:

Part of our present difficulty arises from the current blend of science-oriented rationalism, based upon the way in which the individual is defined.

He included himself among humanity here. This part of the difficulty we humans encounter comes from our blending of science-oriented rationalism, and then basing it on the way the individual is defined. What does it mean to base it on the way the individual is defined? It is our ego's cognition -- how we ourselves think of what kind of person we are. Each of us cognizes ourselves in this way. As humans, we think of ourselves as the apex of an evolutionary stage, having reached the highest point of evolution. Like all other beings, starting from the first cell, yet somehow existing on a steady line of progress, culminating in the animals, and finally in man as the reasoning animal.

We think animals have already reached the apex of this biological evolution, but humans have gone one step further -- humans have their own reasoning ability, and stand at the apex of all animals. So humans think of themselves as reasoning animals. Humans are first of all animals, that must be admitted, and then we are the most peculiar among animals -- we can reason. This is our human cognition of ourselves, and this is precisely one of the main causes leading to the current problems of humanity as a whole.

And the new statement -- at that time, in the 1980s, the prevailing view in our society was:

The particular kind of blended rational thought with which your society is familiar takes it for granted that man's identity as a human being, and the individual's identity, is first and foremost connected with the intellect.

Whether as humanity as a whole, or as an individual person, the first thing we must acknowledge or cognize is that we must be connected with our intelligence, that we must have our own reasoning ability. So you identify with your intellect -- that is, intelligence, logical thinking ability -- and try as much as possible to cast aside the equally important human components of yourselves. There is nothing wrong with identifying with the intellect, but we must not cast aside our humanity. This is the problem we face.

The Pendulum from the Soul View to the Scientific View

In your historical past, when people identified with the soul -- before science had developed, people identified more with the existence of the soul. With a worldview centered on the soul, in terms of psychological mobility, psychologically speaking, humanity gave itself greater leeway. But the soul view that was ultimately held, this value of the soul, came down to a distrust of the intellect. Because when we overemphasized the soul view, we developed a distrust of intelligence and thought, of human knowledge. That result was a dogmatic, inevitable result: if you strengthen the role of the soul, it necessarily leads to a denial of the intellect.

Of course, precisely because of this, recent humanity has over-identified with the intellect. We swept away all the past views about the soul, the subjective, the idealistic, in one go, considering them all wrong -- just as when we were centered on the soul, we considered all intellectual things to be wrong. This is a kind of reflection on past history, a kind of correction, a kind of overcorrection.

Neither religion nor science, however, has been able to give other creatures many subjective dimensions.

Whether it was the religion of the past centered on the soul, or the science of the present centered on the intellect, we have not given much acknowledgment to the subjective parts of other creatures -- including humanity itself. We even think animals have no subjective world, that animals operate on very primitive instincts, with no subjective world of their own, not even their own consciousness and judgment. He said:

Again, however, in your terms, you like to think of yourselves as reasoning animals.

Animals Really Do Reason

Then he continued:

Animals do reason, however.

It is not only humans who have this ability. They do not reason in the same areas that you do -- for example, in chasing prey, in seasonal changes, in the process of migration, in the process of reproduction, they use a great deal of reasoning on that level. It is different from the areas we operate in, but that does not mean they do not reason.

In those areas in which they do reason, they understand quite well the clues and the consequences.

Translating this as "cause and effect" is not quite right. The original says clues and consequences, and effects. Of course, you could also call it cause and effect, but cause and effect carries a lot of human subjective baggage. It is more about clues and effects, subsequent effects. In their chasing of prey, in their migrations across thousands of kilometers, even in their reproduction -- including some animals that must swim upstream, including the chum salmon, including the sockeye salmon. If you live in Canada, you know that every year there are salmon that migrate back upstream, swimming upstream for great distances in order to reproduce -- in all these processes, they are using their own reasoning.

Their reasoning, however, is applied at levels of activity to which your own reasoning does not apply.

For example, when birds migrate, they can use the positions of the stars in the sky, or geomagnetism -- the subtle changes in the earth's magnetic field -- to locate themselves with precision, following an extremely precise route, and they can remember it. If you have seen the movie Spread Your Wings¹, you know that if those wild geese are to migrate, as long as a person leads them flying once, they will remember that route the second time. Animal reasoning is often not obvious to you, because we cannot feel it -- because it does not reason in our domain. It reasons in its own domain, so we do not feel that it is reasoning.

Animals are curious. Their curiosity is applied in areas in which you seldom apply your own.

Animals are very curious. If you have observed small animals, including wild animals, they are very curious about new and unfamiliar things. Scientists have done experiments where they placed a fake penguin with a camera inside² and watched how other penguins reacted to it -- it was very interesting. They have also done experiments with other animals, placing a fake model sitting there. So animal curiosity is in a different domain from ours.

Animals possess a consciousness of themselves.

They possess a kind of consciousness of themselves, without having the human intellect. They do not possess the kind of intelligence we humans have, but they have a consciousness of their own being.

You do not need a human intellect to be aware of your own consciousness.

Our cognition of our own sense of being -- the cognition of self-consciousness -- does not require a logical reasoning ability, does not require intelligence. Even those children born with intellectual disabilities, with very low intelligence, are not affected in their cognition of their own consciousness. Animals have a cognition of their own consciousness, and humans have a cognition of their own consciousness. But we humans mistakenly believe that we must go through our rationality, our intellect, our intelligence, in order to cognize our own ontological existence, in order to find our sense of identity. Animals do not need this process -- they experience it directly. So:

It is true that animals do not contemplate the nature of their own identities, as man does.

In the future we will have some little chat animations, for example, contemplating cat life -- a little cat holding a fish and contemplating, very amusing. Actually cats and animals do not contemplate the meaning of their own lives the way humans do, or their own sense of identity: what am I doing in this world, what is my value, what is my meaning, what am I living for. They do not need to contemplate any of this. But does that mean they are stupid, that they lack this ability to think? No. They are different from humans. They understand directly. They have a direct understanding of the essence of life and the value of existence. They do not need to obtain it through an intellectual thing, or through IQ. It is an intuitive understanding, and it is self-evident. They do not need to prove this value and essence of existence. Only humans have such a process -- coming up with a bunch of reasons: I must be philanthropic, I must be compassionate, I must do this and that.

The Sense of Identity Need Not Be Accompanied by the Intellect

I simply want you to understand that the sense of identity need not be accompanied by the intellect alone.

Your sense of identity is that you exist. The sense of identity is the sense of existence. Why are you alive, why do you exist in this world. He thinks animals have that direct intuitive understanding, they feel it intuitively. We humans go through so-called learning, understanding, and then analyze it through our own brains, to find a goal, value, and meaning for our lives. He tells you that you do not need to -- you can also use this, but it is not the only thing that can give you this. He says "alone" -- it need not be connected with the intellect alone. You can understand it in a direct way.

Your intellect is a part of you. It is a vital, functioning part, but it does not contain your identity.

What this means is that IQ is a part of you, a tool of yours, or an important component. It is an important part of you that is functioning and cognizing this world -- that is, all these things in your so-called brain. But that does not contain you. You contain it. It is not a part of you -- you are not a part of it. You do not live by the IQ in your brain, by the thoughts in your brain. You can live without thought. You can also live through intuition, in a purer way. The whole point of all these animal examples is to tell you: actually humans and animals are the same on this issue. We humans have artificially added this extra thing -- there is nothing wrong with having it. You can think more thoroughly and with more depth, and facing a survival environment far more complex than that of animals, we do need this thing. But do not think that you only have this one way to cognize the essence of your existence. There are many ways to cognize the essence of your existence, and going through the intellect is only one of them.

How Children Cognize the World

Perhaps we can understand more clearly what a natural person is by considering any person as a child.

He has always said that the natural person is the magical person, that each of us should return to being a natural person. Let us first look at every adult as a child -- because from the process of a person from birth through growth, by analyzing this process, we can figure out how an adult should return to the state of a natural person. It is already very difficult for us to return to being natural persons now, after all, having received decades of education and been steeped in society and human culture. He then begins to talk about children. Talking about children is actually an allusion: children are the most natural people. Before receiving education and all these human things, they are in a state of natural personhood. In Buddhism and in other religions, there has always been the hope that every person can achieve the heart of a newborn child -- just like a little child. It is the same principle.

In a way, the child discovers his or her own intellect in the same way that he or she discovers his or her own feelings.

In many places here he uses "feelings" and "sensations," which is also the most difficult part of the Seth books to understand. In English it is "feeling" -- that kind of inner feeling, the feeling of whether your mood is good or bad, the feeling of "how do you feel right now." Translating it as "feeling" would be better. He discovered his own intellect, the part of intelligence, and he also discovered the part of himself that has feelings. What must be emphasized here, first of all, remember this: you do not first have the intellect; you first have feelings. Feeling comes first.

Feelings give rise to curiosity, to thoughts, and to the operations of the intellect.

Because the feeling that comes before is the most important. Only feeling can lead to the curiosity, thoughts, and the operations of intelligence that follow. What is feeling? For example, a child will ask: why is grass soft, and stone hard? Why does a gentle touch comfort me and make me feel good? While a slap can hurt me? -- this translation is a bit overdone. The original does not have the meaning of "hurting my heart." It is just a hurt -- a slap feels painful. Why does a gentle hug make me feel very comfortable? What he wants to tell you here is: when we as a child, as a little baby, first begin to cognize this world, we start from feeling. He likes soft things, he does not like hard things, so children's clothes are all very soft. He also hopes others will soothe him, stroke him, hug him. This feeling is the very first thing he perceives.

Feelings Rising into the Intellect

The later part, "feelings and sensations... give rise to those questions of thought and intellect," is not translated very well. The translation of this whole book feels somewhat inferior to the previous few books, so when reading it, there will be passages that are very hard to understand. When you find it hard to understand, go and pull out the original text to study it. For example, in this session, starting from 9:01, where he says animals really do reason, go and look at what the original says -- he says "feelings and the sensations give rise to questions, to the thought, to the intellect." These three parallel phrases: our feelings and sensations bring about questions, bring about thought, bring about intelligence, the intellect. In this book, "intellect" is always translated as "wisdom," so the translation says "feelings and sensations give rise to the questions of thought and intellect," which is not the meaning of "give rise to these questions." So what exactly is the difference between feeling and sensation? One kind is that subjective sense of whether you feel comfortable or not, and the other kind is the sense of what is soft or hard. These two together. Today we will not expand on this issue, because regarding the distinctions and classifications of feeling, sensation, awareness, and perception, much of it can only be intuited and is very hard to put into words.

Now the key point is to go through this passage once, because if you try to understand this passage on your own, you really will not know what he is trying to say. Later he says:

In a fashion, the child's feelings, his or her own thoughts, rise from a relative psychological invisibility into vital, pertinent information.

Feelings were originally a kind of unspeakable, seemingly psychological sensation, but they rise into a kind of information -- that is, a kind of thought, or a kind of cognition, or a kind of concept. From a purely intuitive feeling, it becomes a rational, logical, conceptual, thought-based result.

There is a process there that you have forgotten. The child first identifies with the inner reality of the psyche, then discovers its feelings, then claims those feelings as its own, and then discovers thoughts and the intellect.

Can you sort out this concept? Any small child, from the moment of birth, first feels this inner cognition of the reality of the psyche. Through this cognition of his own inner reality, he then has feelings. From feelings, he then discovers: feelings can bring about thought, can bring about thinking, and can also bring about this knowledge-based reasoning. Then he further discovers that he will consider feelings as his own, and this thought and this rationality as his own as well -- he gradually identifies all of these as himself.

The child first explores the components of his or her psychological environment. He or she is most concerned with the subjective.

A small child is entirely a subjective kind of feeling, so he is very intuitive, with very strong intuition, very spiritual. We often say small children are very spiritual, and this is the reason -- they do not have too many rational things. They are all intuition and inner cognition. This small child then claims that inner territory as his own -- he claims his own inner feelings, his own inner world, as his own.

Why Young Children Can Die So Easily

The child, however, does not identify his or her basic existence with his or her feelings, nor with his or her thoughts. That is why young children can die so easily, for example... because they can let go of themselves.

Because he has not yet identified his own basic existence with his life experience. In earlier times, the infant and child mortality rate was very high -- in the era before medicine had developed, before vaccines, before modern medical disinfection and sterilization techniques had matured. Why did children die so easily? Because they had no sense of identification with their own identity. He feels inner feelings through intuition, and he has no identification with that cognition of identity, with life experience, with the sense of existence of the self in this world. He is like an animal. Just as when an animal dies, it is not as painful as you think, because its sense of identity is not that strong. This is what he wants to say -- he can let go of himself more easily.

In most cases, however, children do grow up. Though in the larger picture of nature, a goodly percentage of individuals do indeed take other courses, and participate in life through another set of actions.

Those who die young, who die in infancy, who are aborted in the womb -- in the whole picture of life, they are still an important element. Many people ask: then what did such a person come here for this time?

They forever affect part of the psychological background of later versions.

He is using earth time, using human language, to say that in the later life and in the later successive lives -- after this child has died young once, or been miscarried or aborted, the experience of that early death in the previous life leaves a background color on the psychology of his life version. That is, a background color of his psychology. These things are very interesting, and you will encounter them in your life later.

Let me give a typical example: Teacher Cha in our Seth class in Los Angeles -- he is still teaching The Nature of Personal Reality, and you can find his channel. Teacher Cha has two grandchildren, a grandson and a granddaughter, one from his son and one from his daughter. These two children have very different personalities. One of them is extremely insecure, while the other is naturally cheerful and optimistic. The extremely insecure child was conceived when his mother was pregnant with him, and his parents were not yet married. They kept discussing whether to keep the child -- whether it was a good time, and they kept hesitating about whether to abort the child. Of course, in the end they decided to keep him. But the phenomenon he observed was that after such a child was born, he was extremely insecure, from a very young age. It was not that anyone taught him from childhood to be insecure. The other one was happy and cheerful, born after the parents were married and ready, prepared to welcome a new baby. Born in such a state, he was very positive, optimistic, and cheerful. The point of this example is that every person actually has some background colors in their heart.

Growing Up, Taught to Cut Off Identification with Feelings

Ideally, however, children finally claim their feelings and thoughts as their own.

The good side is: through feelings, the child eventually acknowledges that his thoughts, including his intelligence, are all his own. It is not like when he was small, when he thought only feelings were his own and nothing else was. So why is it sometimes impossible to reason with small children? Because the intellect does not work in them. You say eating candy will rot your teeth, but that is useless to him. His feelings are more important. As we humans grow up, the intellect becomes more important -- we can avoid the desires of the palate for the sake of a slim figure. A child cannot. A child cannot resist. But as the child grows up, he finally acknowledges -- my feelings are also mine, my thoughts are also mine, my cognition is also mine. He naturally identifies with both, feeling that each is both valid and important -- both the emotional and the rational are important.

When you grow into adulthood, however, you are taught to cut off identification with your feelings as much as possible, and to think of your personhood in terms of your intellectual orientation.

When we grow up, we are gradually taught to think rationally, to think intellectually. That intuitive, primitive, emotional cognition is repeatedly, from childhood through adulthood, taught to be bad, to be unwanted, to be restrained -- to restrain those primitive impulses, primitive desires, and that direct feeling. You are an elementary school student now, you are a middle school student now, you are a high school student now. You should have reason and thought. You should be able to control and manage yourself. So you are taught to replace your personhood with the intellect. Your identity seems to be in your brain. What kind of person you think you are is all recognized through your rational analysis, rather than through an intuition of what kind of identity you actually are.

Your perceptions and your mental activities, therefore, often appear to be quite contradictory.

Your emotional and rational sides often contradict each other, just like the two little people fighting in your head that we often talk about. You try to use reasoning alone to solve all problems.

The Buried Intuition

You are taught to bury the intuitive portions of the intellect.

This part is poorly translated. He left something out -- this is a very key point. It is not that you are taught to bury the intellect. You are taught to bury a modifier that comes after the intellect: the intuitive portion within the intellect. The intellect itself is not wrong. The intellect can operate in both the physical world and the nonphysical world. But as we grow up, we are taught that the intellect should, or can only, operate on the rational level, and that the intuitive parts are best avoided -- because it will tell you that this thing is uncertain, that it is not good.

The very intuitive abilities that it needs to do its proper work.

Actually this sentence should be read together: you are taught to bury the intuitive abilities of the intellect itself. And these intuitive abilities are what the intellect needs when doing its own work. We have discussed before: when your intellect makes judgments and does reasoning, it not only needs rational, objective information from the physical world, it also needs that intuition and feeling itself. But we are taught that those are not important, that they are not needed -- that you only need objective factual things given to you. But your intellect, as we learned in the previous sessions, needs these things for its reasoning, in order to complete a full, normal reasoning process.

For the intellect must check with its own feeling portions to get feedback, support, and knowledge of biological conditions.

Its meaning is this: your intellect must receive feedback from feeling in order to tell itself whether what it has done is right or wrong. This feedback is very complex. It includes both the biological level and your feeling level, your perceptual level -- that is, your intuition. You use intuition to check whether the results your intellect has produced are right or not, whether its judgments are right or not. This is very much like the "five steps to open up your abundant life" in The Human Robot Instruction Manual³. Here he brings feeling into a very important position: feeling becomes a benchmark, an indicator light, a signal lamp for whether the decisions made by your reason are right or not. When you feel very happy, very joyful, very comfortable, that proves your intellect's judgment is right. If your feeling is very uncomfortable, awkward, and your heart is very depressed, that proves your intellect's judgment is not right.

Your intellect must check with its own feeling part, must double check, saying, "Is the result of my intellectual reasoning right or not?" Feeling then gives it feedback saying right or wrong, good or bad. It gives it some support -- for example, joyful emotions, a good state of mind, that kind of peaceful and serene state, a sense of happiness, all of these are a kind of support for your intellect. At the same time, concretely speaking, it still has a kind of knowledge of your biological condition, and it must feed back this concrete knowledge to it. If you do not give it feedback, the intellect may spin madly in place. You have seen race cars spinning in place, when the ground is full of smoke -- it does not move forward, it emits thick smoke. Why? Because no feedback was given to it, no one told it whether it was right or wrong, no one told it whether your feeling about such a result was good or bad. If you do not give it feedback, it spins in place.

Billions of pictures compose your present moment

At this point he begins to extend the topic further -- why feedback is needed.

At every moment, from any point in time, on the most minute level, the body has, more or less, a definite picture of its position within physical reality.

At any point in time, in every minute and every second of our lives, in every moment, our body has a definite picture of its position within this physical world. This "position" does not refer only to spatial position, but also to its position within interpersonal relationships, within events, within the whole situation and group -- it has multiple meanings.

This picture is composed of billions of ever-changing smaller snapshots... or rather, animations.

That is, one small moving picture after another composes a complete hologram of your present moment. A holographic picture is a relatively vivid manifestation of your existence in this world. If a person from a higher level were to look at you, what he would see is that hologram.

Determining so many such conditions, positions, and images that they can never be described.

There are too many of them -- billions of images, and your brain cannot process them all. It is like Tesla's upgraded 3.0 hardware, which has eight cameras⁴ processing in real time. Its computer is already very powerful, but it can still only process eight real-time video feeds. Tesla's autonomous driving capability up to now is still only average, and it has not reached the level 5 it claimed for itself⁵. At most it is now only at the level 2.5 to level 3 stage⁶. So you can understand: if billions of different pieces of information and pictures were transmitted at the same time, coming in every minute, every second, every moment, do you think your brain could handle it?

At any particular given moment, you end up with a dominant picture of reality, a result of psychological, physiological, and electromagnetic activity.

At any given point in time, there is a definite picture -- a main picture. Just like a painting, you do not see those billions of small pictures, you only see one main picture. It gives you an overall perception, a result of activity on the psychological, physiological, and electromagnetic levels. It gives you a general result, an overall feeling, and does not let you pick out the details within it, because human wisdom and computing power cannot reach that. But we can obtain this overall picture.

This one picture is then replaced by other pictures.

As time passes with each moment, new pictures are allowed to cover over the old pictures, and in this way we layer them one on top of another. If you possess a higher-dimensional perspective, you can see it as a holographic picture. If you are an ordinary person, you can only feel the picture of this present moment.

And calculations are constantly being made, so that all the combinations that compose physical existence meet and intersect, to give you life.

From the simplest level of life, the various substances that compose your life -- how the oxygen molecules in your breath and the carbon dioxide in your blood exchange at the most minute parts within your alveolar cells, and how much they exchange, the supply of nutrients within the cells of your body -- these countless incalculable meetings and intersections of substances are all controlled by them. Without this kind of ability, you would not have the existence of life. So you know the magic of life, which far surpasses scientific understanding.

The real work of the intellect

All of this is not something the intellect needs to concern itself with on an intellectual level. Of course, on the biological level and the electromagnetic level, the intellect performs wonders that it cannot consciously know through its reason.

It seems to be mobilizing billions of cells and all the systems to work in coordination, including your interaction with the external environment of nature. All of this is a miracle it creates unconsciously, because it itself cannot cognize these things.

In the process just mentioned, billions of pictures of probable actions -- that is, what you will do next -- are also spontaneously taken.

Your next step may be to stand up, may be to sit down, may be to walk around. In your terms, those probable actions will be, or perhaps may be, needed immediately afterward -- from the most minute action to the movement of a muscle, or driving a car, or reading a book. That is to say, behind any of these seemingly very ordinary actions of our body, there is hidden such a complex operation. All the actions you may possibly take next have already been prepared for you at a level your intellect does not know, with all those pictures of possibilities made ready. Whatever you use, it directly takes it out for you. That is why your body has all kinds of possibilities for movement -- it can stand, sit, or lie down; it can walk, eat, or play. All the possibilities of your actions have already been prepared for you inside your body, ready to be used as soon as you take them.

So what exactly can the intellect do?

The main purpose of the intellect is... to give you a conscious choice in a world of probabilities.

That is, whether you get up to drink water or get up to exercise, this is something your intellect can choose. As for how your cells cooperate with you after you exercise -- whether you run, swim, work out, play golf, or go hunting, that is your own business. You cannot decide how the body operates concretely -- how to allocate cells, blood oxygen concentration, blood pressure, heartbeat, none of these can you adjust. They are adjusted by something beyond the intellect. But your intellect can make decisions: what I want to do, that is what you can decide. Do you understand? The main function of your intellect is to make choices in this world of probabilities -- which one to do is your own decision, which is what we call free will.

To do this properly, the intellect must make clear and definite decisions about the matter it is concerned with, on its own level, and show forth the picture of its own reality, to enrich the entire construction.

It has already been said very clearly: your intellect only needs to make clear and definite decisions. As for how to realize and complete this decision after it is made, that is not a problem you need to consider -- you cannot do it either, you are not capable of it. You only need to make the decision well: what exactly do you want to do.

The intellect: both identified with and belittled

On the other hand, you have been taught to identify almost completely with your intellect... and you have been taught that this flower of consciousness, the intellect, is a fragile, easily injured appendage, again, an accidental creation, without meaning and without support... because beneath it lie primitive, animalistic, cruel instincts, against which reason must exert all its strength.

How contradictory we humans are. On the one hand, we highly identify with our intellect -- we think that logical thinking ability, reasoning ability, in other words the things that go on in our heads, are the part we call ourselves. On the other hand, we also recognize that this part is very fragile, easily injured, and is an appendage -- why is it an appendage? Because it has no support and no meaning. Humans think that what supports the intellect beneath it is intuition and feeling, yet from childhood we have been taught that intuition and feeling are not good -- they are primitive, impulsive, animalistic, and cruel. We have been told that your primitive impulses are not good, and must be restrained through reason, like putting a halter or bit on livestock. If this primitive impulsive nature is not controlled, humans will expose their cruel side. So our intellect becomes a rootless source without support, becoming so fragile, and yet we have no choice but to identify with it -- you have stripped away its source and support, and yet you still have to identify with it and think that you are it.

Finding the larger self again

Even so, the men and women of this world still find the answers to many of their problems by rediscovering an identity of larger meaning...

What is an "identity of larger meaning"? It is that kind of complete identity -- picking back up the things that were originally cast aside:

A sense of identity that accepts intuition and feeling, that accepts dreams and magical hopes as important characteristics of personhood, rather than as appendages.

Translated simply: even if we have been educated into such a state since childhood, we can still rediscover a larger self through ourselves -- that larger self, whether you call it the inner self, the higher self, or the whole self, no matter what name it goes by. Besides the intellect, you must also accept intuition, inspiration, feeling, dreams, magic, and these other things we previously ignored, and bring them all into your overall cognition of the self, rather than considering problems only through intelligence, logic, and reasoning. When you bring all this information into consideration, only then can you find that larger self, only then can you see that magical, hopeful personal characteristic, and find the kind of personhood you hope to become.

What is an appendage? Your intellect is an appendage of you as a person, and yet you take the cognition of your appendage as your sense of identity. If we had not studied these spiritual materials and knowledge before, we would think that the sense of self-identity produced by logical thinking and reasoning is just that ordinary self in everyday life, that ego, and we identify with it as ourselves. But Seth here tells you of a larger self -- this larger self must combine your intuition, feeling, inspiration, dreams, magic, and these things within it.

When I tell you to remember that you are a natural person, then I really do want to remind you not to identify only with your intellect, but to expand the scope of your identity.

Then naturally, those other characteristics that are often despised begin effortlessly to add their rich accomplishments and vitality to your life. As long as you accept it and acknowledge it, those abilities of intuition, magic, and dreams will all be brought into your life. If you do not accept it, if you do not acknowledge it, if you do not even acknowledge their existence, then it will not enrich your life either.

Returning to Jane's question: Willy and the reader's letter

As far as Ruburt is concerned, the new orientation is bringing results, and the results are really appearing effortlessly. As far as Willy is concerned, it indeed involves action on another level, a magical orientation. Ruburt is doing very well. On this matter of Willy, let him remember that creative activity is going on within him at all times, and that often he is most active when he is unaware of it. Only when creative activity floods into his conscious awareness does he perceive those moments, and by then the work has already been done.

That kind of inner operation, creative work, is not something that only exists when you think you are sitting there writing a novel with inspiration flowing like a spring -- at that time your creative work has actually already been completed, and what remains at the end is only the process of writing it down. What he tells you is that those creative things are very often going on all the time when you do not know it, and this process is easy and effortless. That is why many people say, "After I listened to the Seth material for two or three months or five months, wonderful changes happened in my life," including their own state of mind, their environment, and many strange things that happen in life -- some people with depression eventually recovered from their depression, and some difficult problems in life were magically resolved, and in this process they did not do very much at all. It seemed as if everything happened naturally on its own -- because your inner self changed.

Then Seth begins to talk about those people who wrote letters:

He does not need to be responsible for other people's realities. Ruburt, you do not need to be responsible for other people's realities. He must be responsible for his own reality.

You are already in this condition, only able to walk once or twice a day, only able to take a few steps at a time, and you are still thinking about others. The reality of that sick woman -- the Kentucky lady mentioned earlier who wrote in, who had breast cancer, had both breasts removed, and had a pile of physical and emotional problems -- does not in any way threaten Ruburt's own reality. When that woman wrote asking for help, it would not affect Ruburt's own reality.

That situation shows that he still sometimes thinks he should be able to solve all problems, and quite effective suggestions, clues, and explanations.

Jane often felt that she could solve all problems -- because she had connected with Seth, she thought she could solve all the problems in the human world, so she often asked Seth to help her solve these readers' problems.

Then Seth paused for a long time.

In fact, the kind of one-size-fits-all answer you may think you want would indeed lead you astray as far as the larger picture is concerned. Therefore Ruburt must say, that is not my field. You may send her energy, or occasionally write a short note, but that particular problem is that lady's own, not Ruburt's.

What does "a one-size-fits-all answer" mean? It means having specific answers for certain readers, for example, in response to this Kentucky lady's letter asking for help, giving her a clear, concrete way that can solve her problem. But Seth says, from the larger picture, this way you will go astray -- do not get entangled in these individual personal problems. You must solve them from the whole. That is not my field. Ruburt, you must learn to tell her: that is your problem, that is your lesson, that is not my problem, and not my lesson either. I can send you energy, I can send you methods for solving problems, but your lesson you must solve yourself.

Spiritual students: do not fall into the whirlpool of solving personal problems

I think this point should touch everyone. In life, after we study spirituality, one of the biggest feelings many people have at first is wanting to help others -- helping the relatives, friends, and parents around them, doing these things with full enthusiasm and full love. This thing itself is good, and there is nothing to criticize, but you must remember to stop at the right point -- do what you yourself are capable of doing. I often joke with an example: a clay bodhisattva crossing the river -- if you can hardly save yourself, how can you solve other people's problems? Just like Jane, whose own body now has such problems, and she has not even solved her own problems well, so how can she help that woman who had breast cancer and both breasts removed? Seth's words here are not that harsh, but his meaning is this: focus on your own problems first. As for that kind of individualized problem, it is best not to go too deeply into it. You should give them energy, a comprehensive kind of solution. In other words, Jane sitting here now transmitting this Seth material is already helping all people. You do not need to get entangled with one specific person -- because this kind of thing would never end.

Let me give a simple example. On the spiritual level, or in the process of pursuing truth, someone suggested to me not to talk about spiritual matters, as if it were easy to fall into another mistaken zone -- what spirituality, what spiritual practice, you should say we are pursuing truth, pursuing reality. I think it does not matter, whatever you call it is fine, it is just a matter of terminology. But in this circle, there are many people who are very keen on solving each person's individual problems, and in the process of solving these problems, they are very popular, because they seem to be solving real problems in this reality -- this family's affairs and that family's affairs, mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, daughters-in-law, marital relationships, emotional problems, personal careers, all on these matters. So Seth here makes a hint: in the future, whether we are spiritual students or truth seekers, what are you pursuing? The truth of this world. Do not get entangled in these matters again. Because these matters, first, are that person's own lesson; second, they are a process that person must go through; third, if you think this world itself is created by his beliefs -- beliefs create reality -- then that is the result he himself created, and also the result you yourself created. Why would you create such a reality? Because Ruburt has a belief -- he feels he can solve all problems, so he attracts so many letters. This is also Ruburt hoping to demonstrate that he has this ability by helping this woman. Seth here wants Ruburt not to have this belief, but he says it very politely. Seth does not speak so directly to Ruburt and Rob, so I think these two did not understand -- perhaps they did not fully understand what he meant to say.

Seth continued:

The reason for this question is that Ruburt and you are philosophically concerned with it, but the answer to this question will gradually become clear. Again, I think all of this information is necessary in providing an overall atmosphere of understanding, an atmosphere that will allow you to release your own vitality and power in an effortless way, in such a way that your own problems begin to be solved.

Why are Jane and Rob interested in this matter of helping others? Because they want to solve it philosophically -- to see whether Seth's material can help them solve concrete problems in practical application. Seth says this question will eventually become clear. He says: for all these questions that come in, we must provide them with an overall atmosphere of understanding. This is necessary. What is an "overall atmosphere of understanding"? It means you must tell them an overall framework of knowledge, so that they have an overall framework-level understanding of the whole theory. If they do not understand an overall framework, and you simply tell them, "You must change your beliefs like this," "You must do the point of power exercise," "You must meditate for half an hour every day," they will not even know why they should meditate, nor why they should do such exercises. If you want that person to change, and he has no overall understanding, you cannot help him either. You are not a miracle doctor, saying that if you prescribe a few methods and a few steps for him, he can solve all problems by practicing them -- no such thing exists. Because if his overall atmosphere, his overall understanding, is absent, his beliefs will not change. If his beliefs do not change, and he only learns some methods, it is useless.

In that overall atmosphere of understanding, you will allow your own vitality and power to be released in an effortless way, rather than laboriously solving problems for every reader like this.

What you transmit to them is an overall framework, and within this atmosphere, your abilities and vitality are released in an effortless way. In such a way, your own problems and other people's problems begin to be solved. He is using these two people's matter, and the matter of that letter writer, to also talk about the two of them: if there is no overall change, no overall renewal of beliefs, no thoroughgoing overall transformation and cognition, and you only want to solve this problem through some concrete method, it is useless. Their problems -- mainly Jane's physical problems -- can also begin to be solved. Only under this overall concept, this overall atmosphere, can this problem be solved. Can the problem of that woman with breast cancer also be solved? The same applies.

Seth has given the manual of how the universe operates

The orientation I am speaking of here represents the truest picture I can give you of man's natural relationship with himself and his world. This is the way it works. This is practical.

Seth says: I am telling you the truest picture of the natural relationship between man and himself and his world, and I am also telling you how they operate and how they function. To apply the theme of this book, what I am telling you is the magical approach by which nature operates, in which you can easily and effortlessly realize your goals and ideals. And to achieve this, you must have an overall conceptual cognition -- it basically overturns all your current cognition. If you do not have this thing, it will not work. He says what I am telling you is practical, the truest picture -- this universe operates exactly this way. It is as if you have now obtained a manual of how the universe operates. This universe operates exactly this way. You have obtained this manual, so what more could you be dissatisfied with? But this manual may be completely subversive in cognition compared with what you were taught from childhood, so you need to switch over, to convert to the overall picture and framework this manual depicts for you, and you can no longer hold on to your old beliefs and patch them up here and there, applying bits and pieces from here and there without accepting it as a whole. In these last two paragraphs I have expanded on it, that is, I have spoken out what Seth did not say afterward -- in fact this is exactly what he meant. See how implicit he is. An ordinary person really would not know that he was trying to tell Rob and Jane this meaning.

Seth said this session ends here, and again wished them a magical evening.

After class: they seized on the cat matter

At 10:07, Rob told Jane: if Seth had not mentioned it himself, I would also have asked Seth to comment on her reaction after reading the letter. Jane said she also wanted to hear information about the letter. Before class, Jane rarely asked Seth about any specific matter. Rob told her she had done very well. They actually wanted to ask how Jane should handle this matter after reading the letter. In fact Seth had already given her a very clear answer, but I do not know whether these two could grasp it or understand it.

As for what Seth said about Willy: last month their two cats, Willy and Billy, both got covered in fleas. Although they often stayed outside, it was still quite unusual for them. Rob bought flea collars and effortlessly put one on Billy, but when he tried to put the other one on Willy's head, Willy resisted and fought with him endlessly. And because Jane's body was inconvenient, she could not help. Before Rob could restore friendship with Willy, it actively avoided him for many days. Our little cat at home used to run around outside often too, because running outside is very happy, but it would also get fleas -- suddenly it would get them, I do not know why. Same as their family. But now there is medicine for fleas, applied to the back of the cat's neck, and after applying it continuously for a few months it is cured. Now it is completely cured, there are none left, but now we do not dare let it go out to play either. So sometimes you will hear it meowing while I am interpreting the session, because it wants to go out and play.

Rob said that last Saturday, the twenty-third, he bought a flea collar, and by that time Willy's condition had already become terrible—if a cat gets fleas, it is very painful; they bite it, it is very uncomfortable, and it can hardly sleep. So Rob made up his mind that he had to find a way to put the flea collar on it. A friend had once suggested using a towel to keep it from scratching him. That afternoon, when Rob was getting ready to start this task, Jane suggested that he sprinkle some catnip on the towel. Anyone who has kept cats knows that catnip is something like opium for cats; it makes them intoxicated, deeply absorbed, and delighted. It is a kind of crushed plant, and after cats smell it they get a feeling of intoxication similar to alcohol. After coaxing Willy for a while on the back porch, Rob managed to get it to roll around in the catnip on the towel, but he did not succeed in wrapping it completely in the towel. He could only manage to get the squirming Willy into the kitchen—Jane was washing dishes, and Rob knelt on the floor and held onto Willy. At that moment, Jane was also inwardly trying to comfort it and soothe it. Then Rob succeeded in putting the flea collar on Willy. In fact, Willy's resistance was not even half as strong as Rob had expected.

Jane said that while Rob was coaxing Willy to let him put the collar on, she sent Willy a whole series of suggestions—this is what Seth meant earlier when he said "Ruburt did very well": while she was putting the collar on the cat, Ruburt gave the cat many suggestions, so this time the resistance was not so intense. As a result, everything went smoothly. That afternoon Rob fed Willy several times, and that same day Willy resumed diplomatic relations with him—because when you put a collar on it, it really dislikes you. Willy did not try to get the collar off—sometimes cats will try to scratch it off, and in fact it has a very strong medicinal smell. Now, a few days later, when they were typing up this session on Wednesday night, Willy was already feeling much better.

Rob's final summary of this passage was really just meant to say that Ruburt has this kind of telepathic connection with the cat, or uses suggestion to make the cat respond. But that is not the point. You can see that Seth actually said a great deal to him in the last paragraph, but these two did not grasp the point—they only seized on this matter of Willy and made a big deal of it, and did not fully understand the true meaning of what Seth was saying to them. Well, if he had understood it, perhaps their lives would have changed, and Jane would not have become so seriously ill in the end. But there is no way around it; this is how the history went, and that is simply the fact. This was their own lesson, Jane's lesson, and Rob's lesson—but it is not your lesson.

I hope this touches everyone deeply. Do not fall into the whirlpool of trying to solve the problems of the people around you or of others, and do not be like certain so-called spiritual masters or such experts, who hold lectures and solve each person's problems one by one, speaking with great eloquence, as if they were very popular.

I wish everyone a magical day.

注释与核实

1. Source: Wikipedia "Donne-moi des ailes" (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donne-moi_des_ailes) ↩

2. Source: John Downer Productions "Penguins – Spy in the Huddle" (https://jdp.co.uk/programmes/penguins-spy-in-the-huddle) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. Source: Wikipedia "Tesla Autopilot hardware" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot_hardware) ↩

5. Source: SAE International "J3016_202104: Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles" (https://saemobilus.sae.org/standards/j3016_202104-taxonomy-definitions-terms-related-driving-automation-systems-road-motor-vehicles) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩