Mike's commentary · The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Chapter 1

The "Reading Guide" and "Key Points of This Chapter" below were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text that follows; they are not words spoken by Mike during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter starts from the relationship between personal experience, beliefs, and mass events, discussing issues such as epidemics, natural disasters, illness, and vaccination. Epidemics are not merely biological phenomena; they also involve psychological, social, and cultural frameworks. Viruses are originally a normal part of the body, and only become lethal after being activated by mental states such as despair and powerlessness. The body inherently possesses defensive capabilities; death is a necessity of the psyche, and the quality of life matters more than mere survival. Natural disasters are adjustments, and individuals still have choices within collective events.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Epidemics are not merely biological phenomena; they also involve psychological attitudes and social and cultural frameworks, and are collective statements made by those involved.
• Viruses are a normal part of the body; they become deadly only when mental states such as despair and powerlessness stimulate them into excessive proliferation.
• The body inherently possesses defense and self-regulating abilities; generalized fear and hypothetical dangers can throw the immune system into confusion.
• Death is a psychic and psychological necessity; the desire for death is not pathological; quality of life matters more than survival.
• Mass events are formed by the convergence of individual mental states; natural disasters are adjustments, and individuals still have choices within collective events.

Main Text

Session 801: The Natural Body and Its Defenses

Today we begin the first part of Seth's book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events -- "Natural" practice, epidemics, and natural disasters. Here "natural" is in quotation marks. This part focuses on epidemics and natural disasters, so it is also very closely related to the pandemic we are currently facing. Let us see how Seth looks at this issue from his perspective.

This part is divided into two chapters, and we are now covering the first section of Chapter One, which is Session 801. Chapter One is titled "The Natural Body and Its Defenses." Session 801 began on Monday, April 18, 1977, at 9:31 p.m.

Before beginning, Rob gave a brief introduction. He said that before starting the first session of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, he wanted to give a brief introduction to the roles he and his wife played in the Seth books. Seth describes himself as an energy essence personality who speaks through Jane while she is in a trance state. Jane and I hope that each book is complete in itself, so that new readers can understand from the very beginning what is happening.

Why did he give this introduction? Because this book was published independently -- it was not part of a series. Although we later study the Seth material as a set, at the time these were independently published books. For new readers who might not know who Seth is or why such material exists, it was necessary for him to begin with a brief introduction.

He said that by Seth's own definition, he no longer has a physical body. Although he has told us that he has lived many lives, the concept of reincarnation also appears in his material. This is his sixth Seth book, and the fifth one we are covering. We skipped The "Unknown" Reality. Why? Because The "Unknown" Reality is about the methods, steps, and precautions for exploring other reality spaces, as well as the process of how to return to your own reality -- and it contains a great many exercises and auxiliary exercises. We will cover that book later.

Seth calls Jane Ruburt and calls Rob Joseph. According to him, these entity names simply indicate that in this lifetime we tend toward, or lean toward, identifying with the male aspect of our entity or whole self, because both of these names are male names. The entity or whole self itself is neither male nor female, but within it are contained many of our other selves, of both genders. So he wanted to use a brief passage to lay a simple foundation for new readers regarding these concepts of the entity and reincarnational selves.

Note here that in The Nature of the Psyche he emphasized that every entity is neither male nor female. I covered this when discussing The Nature of the Psyche, and I will repeat it here: from the spiritual perspective, we are neither male nor female -- the two "neithers" mean non-duality. But in the process of human existence, while in the physical body, from our psychological structure and inner structure, in this lifetime we may be male or female; in the deeper levels of our subconscious, we are both male and female; and at the spiritual level, we are neither male nor female. You must understand these layered relationships.

In the physical body, we are male or female -- that is absolutely certain -- and the corresponding psychological state and consciousness also identify as male or female, and none of that is wrong. Deep beneath our subconscious, within our inner self, we are beings who are both male and female -- at the deep psychological structural level, that is what we are. But at the spiritual level, from the perspective of the entity or the soul, it is neither male nor female. However, it does have a tendency, a leaning toward manifesting a male or female state. So he took the symbol of this tendency -- the male symbol got a male name, the female symbol got a female name. Thus he called Jane, who is a woman in this lifetime, Ruburt, a male name; and he called Rob, who is male in this lifetime, Joseph.

He said, we believe that Seth could in fact speak continuously 24 hours a day and still never exhaust all the material -- he could keep talking and never finish. The only problem is that Jane and I simply cannot keep up; we cannot sustain it, being physical bodies after all. So this astonishing creativity and energy impelled us to continue, regardless of what we thought about Seth's reality or non-reality, or even regardless of what he told us he was. Rob's meaning is that they would keep writing without delving too deeply into what the reality world Seth inhabits actually is like.

But producing the Seth books, as well as a large body of unpublished Seth material, did not use up all of Jane's abilities. She herself also wrote ten books, including poetry collections, novels, and accounts of psychic events she experienced from her own conscious viewpoint. So by the time she was writing the Seth material, she had already written ten books. What can be confirmed, however, is that Seth's and Jane's unique and still-growing views of consciousness influenced all of her works at that time -- that is, both Seth and Jane believed that consciousness is unique and still growing, and this influenced all of her works.

For now, let us assume that Jane and I understand better than before that our consciousness has no limitations, except for those imposed upon it through individual perception and understanding -- except for the limitations we impose on ourselves through our own experiential perception, there are none. Consciousness creates everything, and everything we know reflects the individual creations of consciousness, and those remarkable spiritual and material achievements can be inexhaustible. Consciousness creating everything can itself be inexhaustible, and this implies the concept of infinity. The implications contained in this concept make us uneasy, because although the Seth material implies the infinite creativity of each one of us, we still understand that the conscious mind cannot truly comprehend all the meanings contained in such a concept.

His meaning is that our conscious mind can only understand finite things; it cannot truly understand infinite things -- it can understand the concept of infinity, but it cannot truly comprehend infinity itself.

Since August 1979, when Seth completed this book -- you see, the book was completed in August 1979, and all of this was written afterward -- when Jane began to worry again about her responsibility to the Seth material and her reaction to the books, he gave Jane the following two encouragements. That is, when Jane began to worry -- by this time Jane had already transmitted a great deal of material, but it had not yet been organized and published; it was all backlogged -- these feelings mostly arose from the increasing volume of reader mail generated by the Seth books. The following passage is excerpted from Seth, touching on certain things we often think about; this was from a private session on August 29, 1979.

Within each person there is a growth and value fulfillment. Everyone has this power, the very power that makes physical growth possible. And the power behind the fetus -- you knew in advance the nature of the era into which you would be born. That is, before you incarnated, you knew the nature of the environment and the era into which you would be born. You were both born with certain abilities, and you knew in advance that if you wanted these abilities to have the opportunity to be used, you would have to expand the framework of traditional concepts. In a certain sense, they gave you both a second life, because within the old framework there was no path that could satisfy you or be creative.

What is a private session? A private session means that when Seth was discussing this material, it touched on certain personal privacy issues, so he excerpted it. Especially in a country like the United States, matters involving personal privacy can sometimes lead to many legal disputes -- and this applies worldwide; psychological consultations of this kind are all confidential. So you can see that when Seth was discussing Rob and Jane, he spoke very directly.

What he said in this passage, in simple terms, means this: Rob and Jane, when you incarnated, you knew what the era you would live in today would be like; you also knew what the mission of this lifetime was; and you also understood that within traditional values and the traditional world, you had no way out, no creative path to follow -- within the old framework there was none. In other words, in a certain sense, only by expanding the old framework, or breaking the old framework, could you achieve the truly meaningful value fulfillment of this lifetime. So he said, for you two, this is like a second life -- before you transmitted the Seth material, you two actually had no path left. Not that you could not survive, but you could not survive in a satisfying, creative way; in those respects, the road was already blocked. So you two had to expand the framework of traditional concepts, and that is what made the transmission of the Seth material possible.

He continued:

You have both used the material I have given and your own understanding very well. Sometimes you use it so smoothly that you do not even notice your achievements. In some areas, you still cling to old beliefs, but as your understanding grows, what you can do is still limitless.

That is to say, you have already done well enough, and you can do even better. Seth said, you have used my material extremely well, so well that sometimes you yourselves have not noticed it. For example, you published the Seth books one after another, and you felt it was fairly simple and natural. But if you look back carefully at the process of trying to publish this material from the very beginning -- there is a very detailed account in The Early Sessions -- you will know that the difficulties in between were simply overwhelming. In that era, no publisher was willing to publish the things they were saying. And especially before Seth Speaks came out, the Seth material was very fragmented and unsystematic -- very, very difficult to understand using human logic. So finding a publisher willing to publish it was extremely difficult. But even under such difficult circumstances, they still managed to publish two Seth books: one called Seth Speaks, and one that was a condensed compilation of the early sessions, which at the time was also called The Seth Material. It was not until Seth Speaks that Seth, in creating that book, formed a self-contained system.

So Seth's meaning is that you have actually already handled this very smoothly -- transmitting information through genuine channeling, you have done it very smoothly, and very few people of any generation could reach Seth's level, sustaining such stable transmission continuously for over twenty years; this is not something ordinary people can do. You have both done very well, and you were able to publish the books as you wished, allowing all of humanity to see such material. But he said that in some areas they had not done well either; it was not that everything was good; in some areas it was not good.

In certain important ways, imagine yourselves as being in 1963, just as these sessions were beginning -- when Seth first began to speak through Jane, it was 1963 -- so imagine that you were just born in 1963.

That is to say, from the beginning of the transmission of the Seth material, for Rob and Jane, it was like a second life. You both became involved in not only initiating a brand-new framework -- in the course of human history, no one had ever expounded such material in this way. To expound systematically and completely the material transmitted by a personality from another reality space -- whether it was the Buddha or Jesus, they transmitted in other ways -- they transmitted after realizing something themselves, not through another personality. So you both designed a new framework through which you and others could see the nature of reality more clearly. Through the Seth material, we see clearly the nature of reality.

And you had to start from scratch, so to speak.

Because there was nothing. You two were not well-known scholars, scientists, or social activists; you were nobodies, no one knew you, and you had neither fame nor social standing. At the beginning it was bumpy, word by word, very difficult. You learned to trust it, and then you applied it to your own lives -- you practiced it in your daily lives.

Even though all the facts had not yet come in. Looking from 1963, there was very little information; unlike now, by 1979 it had been transmitted for sixteen years, and the material was already very rich. At the time the information was very fragmented, and you were still applying this knowledge in your lives.

At any given time, you never had all the material available to draw upon.

Because Seth transmitted it piece by piece, you did not have a complete body of material to draw upon the way readers do. Readers get one book or two books, all complete, and you can understand it from any point. But Rob and Jane, starting from 1963, only had the material transmitted in one evening, written down, accumulating day by day in such a fragmented way, without a complete book.

So tell Ruburt not to be too harshly critical of himself -- because Ruburt held himself to very high standards. He did not have a complete body of material to draw upon; he obtained the material day after day in this way. He was not like a reader who has a complete knowledge structure and knowledge system available.

And through all of this, ask him to try to remember his playful attitude.

That is, remember the playful attitude; do not be too demanding or too harsh on yourself. You have already done very well -- Seth was giving them encouragement.

The following passage is excerpted from the regular session of September 3, 1979, Session 877:

All creation is basically very joyful. It is the ultimate in play, forever vital, never still for a moment. These sessions and our work will help bring about a new species of human being, spiritually speaking.

Be sure to remember this -- Seth first proposed this viewpoint here. He said that our sessions and our work will bring about a new species of human being spiritually, not biologically, but a new kind of human being spiritually. Concepts can change chromosomes. But these sessions, Ruburt's writing, and so forth, first and foremost, must be a joyful expression of creativity. Although this material is very important, and these new concepts can even change human chromosomes and bring about a change in the human species, what should these sessions and these books first be? They should be a joyful expression of creativity -- Ruburt should create this Seth material with a joyful mood, a playful mood, a relaxed mood, expressing spontaneously and generating their own order.

He then turned to Rob and said:

You paint because you love to paint, and you forget what a painter should or should not be.

This is very well said. No one says what a painter should be like -- if you love to paint, it is simply because you enjoy painting. You should forget what a painter should or should not be. In real life, many people want others to treat them as artists, so they do things artists do, or dress the way artists are supposed to dress -- growing long hair, or growing a beard, or going up into the mountains to build a hut and live there, making themselves look ethereal and otherworldly. He said, tell Ruburt to forget what a painter or a channeler should or should not be; do not have that kind of constraint. Many of us impose such constraints on ourselves -- oh, I am an entrepreneur, so I should be such and such; I am a father, so I should be such and such.

Ruburt's spontaneity allows all of his creative abilities to emerge. Spontaneity is the key; spontaneity allows all of his creativity to emerge. Trying to impose discipline and regularity upon a spontaneous creation is futile. Spontaneous creation automatically gives you the best order that nature can provide.

As long as you create spontaneously, you will naturally align with the order of nature, and nature will provide you with the best order.

All right, this was Rob's preamble to the first section. Because he knew that many readers were encountering the Seth material for the first time, while for many of us who have been following along, these things are already very familiar.

Section One Main Text: The Spread of Experience and the Framework of Behavior

Let's look at the main text of this section. This section is truly brilliant. For the first time, he discusses illness, vaccines, epidemics, and all sorts of related factors, which is highly relevant to our current situation.

His first sentence says:

You cannot understand the nature of any mass event unless you consider the even larger framework in which it occurs.

Simply put, you cannot evaluate the nature of a mass event -- for example, an epidemic is a mass event, and the U.S. election right now is also a mass event. What is the essence of such a large event? Unless you consider its larger framework, unless you stand at a higher vantage point to look at it, there is no way for you to know its true meaning.

An individual's personal experience occurs within the scope of his physical and mental state, and basically cannot be separated from his religious and philosophical beliefs and sentiments, as well as his other cultural background and political ideas.

What does this mean? It means that each person's experience is influenced by the cultural background in which he lives. A person cannot be separated from his philosophical and religious beliefs, or his sentiments, his culture, the background of his era, or even his political ideas. Many people say, "I have no political ideas" -- having no political ideas is also a kind of political idea. So you need to understand that each of our experiences is influenced by these things.

Seth continues:

All of these ideas together form a framework for behavior, a trellis. And both thorns and roses can grow upon it.

All of these religious and philosophical beliefs and sentiments mentioned earlier, as well as your cultural background and political ideas -- all of these things, the entire humanistic environment, the background of the era -- will form a trellis for behavior. Be sure to remember, it is a trellis for your behavior -- a scaffold, a framework, a foundation. And both thorns and roses can grow upon it; thorny roses and weeds alike can grow on this trellis.

That is, the individual will grow outward into the world, encounter it, and form an actual experience.

Every person will grow outward into the external society, into your surroundings. When you grow outward, whether what you grow is thorns or roses, you will encounter the surrounding environment, and then form an actual experience.

And almost in the manner of a spreading form, spreading outward from its center. Using the materials of physical reality, it forms pleasant or aesthetically pleasing condensations, as well as unpleasant or stinging events.

His metaphor here is "the spread of experience." What is meant by the spread of experience? Your behavior will inevitably come into contact with the surrounding environment, and contact produces experience -- that is, your behavior interacts with the surrounding environment, and this interaction is experience. For you and for others alike, you can gain something from this event, and others can also gain something from it.

This "spread" is like ivy, continuously developing and spreading outward from its center. So Seth says, you must not let his logic carry you away -- his logic is very strong. He says, these cultural ideas, the background of the era, and so on, are a trellis for your behavior. If you have ever grown plants, you know that when growing beans or cucumbers, you need to build a frame for them; without a frame, they cannot climb upward. The things that climb are those plants, and those plants are behavior. What is the frame built for these vines? What is the frame for these vines? It is these ideas -- your political ideas, cultural background, religious beliefs, philosophical thoughts, worldview, values, outlook on life -- all of these are a support for your behavior, a skeleton, the thing behind your behavior. Whether you admit it or not, whether you are willing to accept it or not, that is how they are.

With the support of these ideas, behavior begins to spread outward. It may grow things of great aesthetic beauty, or it may produce unpleasant, stinging things. But all of them use the materials of physical reality -- that is, real events that occur in our actual lives, the objects and items produced -- these are all materials of physical reality. Using these materials, events are generated, and these events include both pleasant and unpleasant ones.

This spread of experience is formed in a quite natural manner from the elements of the psyche. And these elements are as necessary to your psychological experience as sunlight, air, and water are to plants.

The necessity of these elements to psychic experience is like the effect of sunlight, air, and water on plants. Simply put, the elements of the psyche are the indispensable elements that form your experience. What is your ordinary spread of experience -- the experience that continuously expands outward, layer upon layer -- composed of? It is composed of your psychic elements -- that is, composed of your cultural background, political ideas, philosophy, and religion.

However, because personal experience must be interpreted through the concepts of these ideas, mass events cannot be understood unless they are considered from a viewpoint much larger than your usual one.

What does this mean? For example, this pandemic is an experience for every person, affecting every aspect of your life. California is still enforcing very strict stay-at-home orders, the entire nation of Japan is locked down, and whether next year's Olympics can be held is still unknown -- it has already been postponed for a year, and if it still cannot be held, that would be a very great impact on all of Japan. The virus in Britain has undergone very serious mutation, and the same is true in Europe. These things affect every person, and this is the experience you gain within a mass event.

And what he means is this: when you judge this event -- the experience you gain in this world -- the understanding you hold is necessarily influenced by your personal viewpoint; and your personal viewpoint is in turn influenced by your own values, worldview, philosophical views, religious beliefs, and political ideas. Therefore it is not comprehensive, and it carries a very strong personal coloring. So when you consider the nature of reality from your personal perspective, you cannot understand this mass event. It is precisely because your field of vision is too narrow, and it contains your strong personal views. So you must look at it from a larger perspective; otherwise you cannot truly understand it.

Epidemics: Not Only a Biological Problem

He gives an example:

The problem of epidemics cannot be answered from a biological point of view alone. For it involves the extremely comprehensive psychological attitudes of many people, and it fits the needs and desires of those involved, and in your terms, these needs arise from religious, psychological, and cultural frameworks that cannot be separated from biological results.

When we talk about epidemics, viruses, and outbreaks now, we definitely discuss them from the perspective of scientists and biologists. If you are not a biologist, you are not qualified to speak, because when it comes to virology, epidemiology, and epidemic prevention and control, if you are not an expert in these fields, you had better keep your mouth shut. Humanity now believes that this problem is purely a biological problem. But from Seth's point of view, this is one-sided. A biologist necessarily has his limitations. From his scientific perspective, it seems very scientific, but he has his own outlook on life, his own values, and so on.

And he says, what does the problem of epidemics overlook? It overlooks the extremely comprehensive psychological attitudes of many people. It is a social problem, a spiritual problem, not merely a biological problem. We do not deny that it is a biological problem, but you cannot use biology alone to explain why an epidemic spreads.

It involves the extremely comprehensive psychological attitudes of many people, and it fits the needs and desires of those involved. To put it simply, the occurrence of an epidemic has a larger environment and background in which it occurs; and specifically for each individual, it is determined by the role that each person himself wants to play within this larger event. And these needs cannot be separated from biological results; they are also brought about by religious, psychological, and cultural background factors. It is not merely a biological result; it carries a strong social, religious, psychological, and cultural character.

From Personal Reality to Mass Events

Seth continued:

Up to now, I have avoided discussing many important and central themes involving mass reality, because the importance of the individual, and the individual's power to form personal events, had to be emphasized first.

This statement is very important. Why did Seth not mention mass events before this book? What he wanted to emphasize was your sense of power in forming personal events. If he had brought up mass events too early, many people would have felt a sense of powerlessness -- they would say, since mass events are decided by everyone together, then am I as an individual insignificant? What can I decide? Seth was afraid you would fall into that kind of misunderstanding, or that kind of bias, so he had to emphasize first the importance of you as an individual, the importance of your personal beliefs -- your beliefs create your own reality. He had to root this framework deep in your beliefs, let you accept this first, and only then could he discuss mass events afterward. Otherwise, the moment mass events were brought up, you would be swept into the torrent of collective history and would feel your own insignificance. So this had to be emphasized first.

Only when the personal nature of reality has been emphasized enough will we show you how the enlargement of personal reality combines, expands, and forms vast mass responses, such as the initiation of what appears to be a new historical and cultural period.

He is saying, only after individual ability and individual nature have been emphasized enough will I show you how personal reality -- each person's reality -- when enlarged, combined, and expanded, forms vast mass responses. Only after I help you understand the importance of personal reality can you understand what consequences arise when personal reality is enlarged and expanded into a collective reality. This is why he kept emphasizing the individual -- if you do not have a good understanding of personal reality, then the moment it is enlarged and expanded, you will be overwhelmed by it. So here he is telling you that mass reality is actually an extension, an enlargement, and a combination of your personal reality.

He then gives examples. From your personal perspective, you may feel that you merely encountered a historical event; but from a broader perspective, such a mass response is the mass response brought about by the enlargement and expansion of your personal reality or personal beliefs, and it may bring about the initiation of a brand-new historical and cultural period.

For example, this pandemic is the initiation of a new historical and cultural period. It is just that those of us currently in the midst of this historical torrent have not yet awakened to or recognized that this is the beginning of a brand-new historical and cultural period. If you could look at this issue from a higher level, you would see at a glance the meaning behind it. Why? Because the past behavior patterns and things that humanity relied on for survival were all suppressed under the impact of the pandemic -- economic development models, social development models, all suddenly paused as if a pause button had been pressed, making you start to think: Is our development model right? Is it good? Should we consider changing to a different way and model of development? That is what it means.

He is giving examples. Is it the establishment of a government or the overthrow of an old government? For example, in the late Qing dynasty, that chaotic situation, the displacement and suffering -- from one angle that was also a kind of disaster, but from another angle, did it not also mean the birth of a new government and the fall of an old one? Including the Sino-Japanese War, the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Boxer Protocol, that whole series of historical invasions and so on -- did the people living in that era not feel that this was a historical transformation?

He gives a third example. Is it possible that a new religion could sweep away all other old religions and give birth to a new religion? Does it also mean a change in collective belief? Is it a collective murder taking place in the form of war? Is it the sudden assault of a deadly epidemic -- which is what is happening to us right now? Is it earthquakes, floods, and other disasters? Or the inexplicable emergence of a great era of art, architecture, or technology?

Can we understand mass events from a higher perspective? Or in other words, because our personal reality expands, everyone combines and expands, forming a new mass event, and this event really can change history and change the course of human civilization. Do not think your personal reality is insignificant anymore -- when your personal reality is extended and expanded, it will produce this kind of real influence that changes history.

The examples he gives are only meant to tell you this: the birth of a new civilization, the arrival of a new cultural era, the birth of a new government, the birth of a new religion, a change in a new belief -- all of these may come from the enlargement of each individual's personal reality. So you can see the importance of personal reality. Why must we emphasize personal reality first before discussing what follows? If you cannot find your point of power in your personal reality, if you cannot find your sense of power, if you cannot take back your sense of power -- if you listen to external things, like aliens controlling the earth, and you completely give up your sense of power to others, then you can only be deceived by others and used by them to achieve what they want. But you have the ability to change an era or change human history -- it all depends on how you use your ability, how you use your personal reality.

The Individuality and Collectivity of Death

At the 9:57 pause -- there were many pauses tonight -- Seth then continued:

I have said there are no closed systems, and I have also indicated that, as far as the world is concerned, events spin like electrons, affecting all psychic and psychological and psychic systems, just as they affect biological systems.

We can say that each person dies individually, because no other person can die in the way this person dies. In the same way, we can also say that every part of the human race dies with the death of each person as they age, and is reborn with the birth of each person.

And the death of each individual occurs within the larger context of the existence of the entire human race. This death serves a certain purpose for the human race as a whole, while at the same time it also serves the purpose of the individual. For no death is uninvited.

Let us simply go over this passage once. What it means is that this system is not closed, and everything is interconnected. What "interconnected" means is that our psychic events also affect our physical events, and things in the physical world also affect things in our psyche. They are in fact mutually open, and at the same time mutually influential.

The death of an individual may be only a personal event for that individual, but this individual's death, in the history of the entire human race, is also a necessary event, an inevitable event, occurring within the process of the whole human race. This death serves a certain purpose of the human race -- as far as the entire human race is concerned, this death serves a certain purpose. In other words, every person dies a death that is fitting for them, every person's death has meaning. And at the same time it also serves the purpose of the individual -- this death simultaneously fulfills both your personal purpose and the purpose of the human race as a whole.

Birth is the same. Your birth is not only your personal matter; it is also a matter of the entire human race, and within the whole human race it also fulfills a purpose.

Hidden Variables in Epidemics and Vaccination

He then began giving examples:

For example, an epidemic reaches a personal purpose in which every individual is involved.

What does "involved in" mean? At the beginning of last year -- the beginning of 2020 -- I gave a talk on Seth's discussion of epidemics and viruses, made four episodes, and the first passage I quoted was this sentence. What purpose does an epidemic have? An epidemic is a mass event. What purpose does it achieve? It achieves the purpose of every individual involved in it, and at the same time it accomplishes its own function within the larger framework of humanity -- that is, this epidemic has its own important significance in the development of human civilization as a whole. And every person involved in it -- of course if you are not involved it does not count, but this current pandemic has involved almost everyone, so everyone is involved -- every person involved has their own purpose.

You say, how come I do not know? What purpose do I have? I never wanted an epidemic, and I never wanted this kind of thing to happen. He will explain below.

When you consider epidemics to be caused by filterable viruses, and when you emphasize their biological aspect, then the solution seems obvious.

Filterable viruses are one type of virus. This is indeed what we think now, right -- we think it is caused by this virus, the novel coronavirus. We emphasize its biological aspect and study the characteristics of this virus -- the characteristics of COVID-19 itself. We only study its biological nature, which means we only see the biological nature and the epidemic nature of the virus or the epidemic. Looking at the problem this way, there is only one solution: you invent a vaccine and produce a vaccine as soon as possible.

So you study the nature of each virus and develop a vaccination to inoculate against it. We discover this virus, then we go and produce a vaccine for inoculation, and then give each person in the general public a small dose, so that each person's body can fight against it and become immune.

This is exactly what we are doing right now.

Generally speaking, people inoculated with the polio vaccine do not contract polio. Using this method of inoculation, tuberculosis has been wiped out. Nevertheless, there are still great hidden variables operating within this, and these variables are caused precisely by considering such large-scale epidemics within such a small framework.

On the surface, these epidemics seem to have been suppressed, as if they no longer occur -- including the plague and tuberculosis that once spread in the past. Tuberculosis was once terrifying for a period of time, and now it is gone; polio is gone too; measles has also been eradicated. It seems that humanity has defeated them, and these epidemics have all been suppressed. But he says they have always been latent, always lying hidden -- he uses the phrase "hidden variables operating within this." Why do they remain latent? Because we have not discovered or found the inner core cause of these epidemics; we have only solved them biologically.

Such a large-scale epidemic is an extremely important event for humanity, but no matter what kind of epidemic it is, we always solve it from a biological angle. Considering and solving it within such a small framework will inevitably cause this inner latency.

Then he continues:

First, the cause of the illness is not biological. The illness brought by the virus...

This is very central.

Vaccines and the Nature of Viruses

It is not biological in nature, and the organism is merely a carrier of a lethal intent. This point is crucial: causing illness is not biological; it is not the organism that makes you sick, but rather the organism is merely the carrier of this lethal intent. What actually makes you sick? It is this lethal intent. The lethal intent is carried through this biological existence.

In other words, every virus -- we now know that a virus is composed of a segment of RNA or DNA -- it is a piece of information, a biological information body. The vaccines we now produce are called mRNA. The vaccines currently produced in the United States are third-generation vaccines, produced through genetic technology as an mRNA viral information fragment. In China, however, what is currently being produced is the first-generation vaccine, still the most primitive kind, which works by inactivating the virus -- the active mechanism inside the virus is killed off, leaving only the protein structure on the outside of the viral body, so that your body's immune system can recognize this external thing, but the virus itself no longer has the ability to reproduce. Through this small amount of viral body that lacks the ability to reproduce, your body is made to produce immunity; this is called an inactivated virus. But this virus itself carries a certain degree of danger; if the inactivation is not thorough enough, it is equivalent to injecting the virus directly into your body. The third-generation vaccine, on the other hand, uses RNA transfer technology -- mRNA, or messenger RNA technology -- to make the human body produce antibodies.

What is being emphasized here? That what actually makes you sick is not the organism, not this segment of RNA, not the virus itself, but the lethal intent carried by this RNA. It is the intent to make you die. This is recorded within the information, and it is this information that makes you die. The organism is merely the vehicle that carries this thing.

Viruses cultivated in the laboratory are different from viruses that live within the human body. The human body recognizes this difference, but the instruments in your laboratories do not.

This is a very crucial statement. Artificially synthesized viruses and naturally occurring viruses, or viruses produced within the human body itself -- our body's immune system can tell them apart, but our laboratory instruments cannot detect any difference. From a biological standpoint, we cannot see much distinction. This is why, even now, it cannot be determined where this novel coronavirus actually came from. Some say it came from nature, yet it cannot be found in nature; this virus does not exist in the natural world, no matter how hard you search. If you say it mutated from something, then what virus did it mutate from? The trajectory of its mutation cannot be found, nor can any evidence of its mutation. But if you say it was created in a laboratory, you also cannot find evidence; you can only find various clues, but no direct proof that this virus was manufactured in a lab. So what he says here is quite interesting: you humans cannot distinguish in the laboratory whether this virus is artificial or natural, but your body can tell the difference.

So what is our vaccine? Our vaccine is a virus created in the laboratory. It is just that this vaccine has no activity; it cannot reproduce. For example, if 5,000 are injected into you, there will be 5,000; once your immune system kills them, they are dead. It has no activity itself and cannot replicate. This is called a vaccine.

In a certain manner, as a result of the inoculation, the body produces antibodies and establishes a natural immunity, but the body's chemistry is also disturbed. For it knows that it is not reacting to a true disease, but to a biologically counterfeit invasion.

Human beings want to deceive the body's immune system. They want to create a vaccine that makes the immune system believe a virus has invaded, so that it produces antibodies, and when the real virus invades, these antibodies can be used to kill that virus. Humans think the body has been fooled, but Seth tells you that the human body has never been fooled. The body knows what a real virus is and what a disguised invasion is. So when you get vaccinated, this counterfeit invasion is recognized at a glance -- this is not a real virus, not a real invasion.

I do not want to overstate the case... but it does contaminate the biological integrity of the body.

What kind of contamination? He gives an example -- because when he says this, many people will attack him -- this counterfeit virus may at the same time produce antibodies against other similar diseases, and by overusing its resistance, the body may later contract another kind of disease. Many people find this hard to understand. It means that when you are injected with this vaccine, it not only induces the body to resist this virus, but also induces the body to produce antibodies that can defend against other viruses similar to the one injected. You might say, is that not a good thing? One vaccine can also treat other diseases -- would that not be even better?

Where does the problem lie? It lies in overusing its resistance, which exhausts your immune system. You should resist whatever virus enters, but now you have made it jittery and paranoid, treating everything as a threat. Originally, when one virus came, you would produce one antibody to fight it; now you have made it produce twenty similar antibodies, fighting twenty viruses at once, and all of them are fake. It is like enemies constantly harassing you -- one wave today, another tomorrow -- and the immune system never gets proper rest. You have overused your immunity, and when immunity is overused, it can develop another kind of illness -- immune deficiency, or lowered immunity, or even an overactive immune response, all are possible.

You know that when the novel coronavirus was at its most lethal, there was something called a cytokine storm. Your immune system began launching indiscriminate attacks on all the cells of the human body, and at that point it was often more harmful than the virus itself. Many people died suddenly or within a few hours precisely because of this. The immune system had lost the ability to distinguish or kill the virus, because its capacity is limited, so it resorted to this method -- attacking all cells. Because it could not tell which cells were infected by the virus and which were not. Those viruses are parasitic within your normal cells, using their nutrients to divide and produce offspring. When the immune system wants to attack these cells, it first has to distinguish which cells are infected; when too many cells are infected, it can no longer tell them apart, and it no longer has the capacity to do so. What does it do then? It delivers a fatal blow -- a cytokine storm attack -- launching an assault on all the cells of the body. Many people died from exactly this.

In other words, your immune system begins waging war on your own normal cells, and normal cells simply cannot withstand it. Your immune system is like an army with weapons, possessing powerful arms, but they are supposed to be directed against external invaders. However, when the invaders have changed into civilian clothes, and it can no longer tell who is the enemy and who is a law-abiding citizen, its only recourse is to attack everyone. Because the virus has put on ordinary people's clothing, and there are too many of them. This kind of attack is something your body cannot endure; it collapses all at once.

Of course, this is not caused by the vaccine, but the mechanism by which it forms is very similar. It is the immune system becoming ill. Therefore, many drugs used to treat COVID-19 actually work by suppressing the immune system's overreaction. The damage the virus causes to the human body can be repaired to a certain extent, but when the immune system overreacts and wants to rise up in a desperate, all-or-nothing assault, humans truly have no way to deal with it. So humans have invented many drugs to suppress the immune system's overreaction.

The Real Problem with Vaccination

He is talking about the side effects of vaccines.

No one gets sick unless that illness satisfies a psychological or psychic reason.

People get sick because they want to get sick. That is why many people escape such illnesses, and during epidemics many people are fine. But at the same time, scientists and medical professionals have found more and more viruses that the public must be vaccinated against. Scientists and medical professionals have discovered many kinds of viruses, and then they develop a vaccine for each kind of virus, with each virus considered separately. Everyone is in a hurry to develop a new vaccine to fight the latest virus, and this is largely built on a predictive basis. For example, a virus attack that might cause a certain number of deaths, and then as a preventive measure, the public is invited to get the new vaccination.

For example, with the flu, out of fear of getting the flu, we predict how many people will get the flu after an outbreak and what the death rate will be, and then to avoid this from happening, everyone had better get the flu shot. And there are many kinds of flu. For example, the flu that spread in the United States in the winter of 2019 was divided into influenza A and influenza B¹, and that was for that year. The next year, that flu vaccine was ineffective again, because a new flu virus had emerged, so a new flu vaccine had to be injected.

What Seth is talking about is this situation: humanity keeps discovering new viruses, inventing new vaccines, and constantly injecting new vaccines. His point is, if you are a normal person and not sick, why would you go and get this vaccine injected? Why make your body produce this kind of immune system response? Knowing full well it is a fake invasion, why still make it react?

His logical relationship is different from our logical relationship. First, he thinks, isn't the reason you get vaccinated because you are afraid people will die? He thinks that when a person dies, it is because that person wants to die. When it is time for that person to die, that person will die, and you cannot stop it no matter what. Many people cannot accept or agree with this view. He will explain it later.

He says, isn't the reason you get vaccinated to prevent people from dying? But he cannot solve the problem of death, because death is something the person wants. And you, out of fear that these few people will die, make all the healthy people get these vaccines. For example, the death rate of the flu virus is only two per thousand or one per thousand of the total population², but you make 998 of those 1,000 people get vaccinated, just to prevent those two people from dying. And those two people are destined to die, so didn't your 998 people get vaccinated for nothing? And it also disrupts their body's immune system. When the real virus comes, they do not know what to do anymore. Or they do know what to do, but there was no need for you to mobilize their immune defense capabilities prematurely.

Many people who would never have gotten this disease in the first place then obediently go and get vaccinated. The body uses its immune system to the limit. We think the human immune system can be called upon indefinitely, but after all, it is a biological system, and a biological system still has its limits. If you use the immune system to the limit, then when the real virus comes, it has no way left to respond. And sometimes, depending on the type of vaccine they received, the body's resistance is overused in this situation. Those who have psychologically decided to die will die anyway, whether from that disease or some other disease, or from the side effects of the vaccination.

At this point Seth speaks a bit bluntly, and this is where many people cannot understand. He says these people will die sooner or later, because it is not a biological desire to die, but a psychological desire to die. Even if you vaccinate them, they might not die from this disease, but they will die from another disease, and they might even die directly from the vaccine injection itself. Originally they might have been fine, but the injection caused a reaction instead.

Is the vaccine death rate high? Yes, it is high. Why does a vaccine have to go through such a complicated testing process? The whole world discovered the virus at the beginning of the year, so why did it take until the end of the year to produce a vaccine? The reason is that a huge amount of time is spent on testing, clinical testing, and clinical observation. Because if it is not done well, the danger of large-scale deaths is too great. So the safety of vaccines is very important. There are many examples in history of side effects occurring from vaccinations.

The Background of Mass Events

Inner states and personal experiences give birth to many mass events.

Mass events are born out of them. A person cannot break free of the natural range of physical life -- a person is destined to die, and having a physical body, you cannot break free of the natural range of the physical body. His cultural, religious, psychological workings and psychological essence combine to form the background out of which personal and collective events arise. Each person's psychological, cultural, and social attributes combine together to form the background out of which his personal and collective events arise -- that is the framework, the background he mentioned earlier.

This book, then, is specifically about the nature of those great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events whose force seems to swallow a person, or to leave him overwhelmed with joy.

He is saying this book discusses these things: the underlying causes behind personal and mass events, namely those emotional, religious, and biological causes. Because our personal reality and mass reality are both generated from there. The results of this generation may indeed seem to swallow a person, or leave one at a loss, overwhelmed with joy.

What exactly is the relationship between the individual and the great mass movements of nature, of government, even of religion? What about changes in collective belief? And what do collective hysteria, collective healing, collective murder have to do with the individual?

Those are the questions we will specifically explore in this book. This book is called The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events.

After-Class Notes

After the break, Seth came back again.

You could say that the question you raised about epidemics became a fitting stimulus, because that question came from you, that is, from our readers.

The question he raised about epidemics led to the passage I just mentioned, and it was a fitting stimulus, a question raised by you, and also a question readers would raise. Jane really came out of trance in stunned silence, which showed that she had some inkling of what Seth had just been talking about, just as had sometimes happened in the past. Sometimes Jane did not know what she was saying, and sometimes she knew the general idea.

Then Rob asked Jane, hey, what on earth is going on here now? What he meant was that a new book had begun at this moment, and Rob was not prepared for it. Because in the past, before Seth began a new book, there would always be an announcement, saying that a new book was beginning, but this time there was no announcement, and he just started speaking directly. Rob and Jane both laughed.

Rob said, if this material belongs to a new book, how can I attach it to the appendix or postscript of The "Unknown" Reality? This is a new book, so how could it be placed in the appendix of The "Unknown" Reality? Not long after the session began, I felt that you and your Seth must be up to something, that you were starting a new book without telling me.

At this point Jane said, I really cannot believe it, this is completely inconsistent with my conscious speculation. You can write this sentence down, it was not my conscious, it did not match my conscious speculation. You can type it up two or three years from now.

Afterward there is a note: For two days Jane had already begun typing some of the finished manuscript of The Nature of the Psyche, and she was also writing her own journal about an American philosopher after his death, the worldview of William James³, and this book is also very good, I have recommended it to many readers several times, and I have an electronic version here. However, I think he needed the stimulation of what Seth was doing. The situation was also rather ironic, because as far back as June 1975, it was Rob who straightforwardly told Jane to begin The Nature of the Psyche, just so she could have a Seth book to play with. Rob also wanted to see what Seth could produce at his request. This time Seth fooled him, beginning this book only two weeks after finishing The Nature of the Psyche.

But Rob raised both hands in approval, and he enthusiastically told Jane that producing Seth books and exploring with Seth his unique view of reality, while trying to apply some of his concepts in our daily practical world, was always a pleasant thing. Rob made his position clear: although he had been deceived by Jane and this Seth, he was still very happy. He had previously encouraged Seth and Jane to write another new book, but he did not know what it would turn out to be. The Nature of the Psyche had been completed at his suggestion, whereas all the previous ones had been Seth taking the initiative to propose writing a book, while The Nature of the Psyche was proposed by Rob. And The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events began suddenly without Rob's knowledge at all.

Rob continued, I reiterate what I told Jane, that it did not matter how many uncontracted or unpublished Seth books he had accumulated. Because Jane was actually worried that the old books had not yet all been published, and now a new book was beginning, so when would it ever end? Rob said that compared with anything waiting to be done, what we were doing was absolutely a more creative and more interesting position. Compared with those books that had already been transmitted but not yet published, our beginning a new book now and doing the transmission of this new book was more creative and also more interesting.

Jane agreed with him, saying "yes," while still worrying about how to handle the material that had accumulated year after year. To this day we still cannot think of any way to publish all of it. Because that pile of material from The Early Sessions had not yet begun to be published, they had been busy publishing the five books Seth had mentioned earlier, and this was the sixth book, and there was still a large pile of material from The Early Sessions, and they did not know what to do about it.

Jane said, I was very sneaky, I did not tell you everything, and Jane sometimes played a little trick. I was thinking that if we really did a new book, there should be a question-and-answer format. She hoped it would be a way in which they asked questions and Seth answered. Even that idea was a revelation to Rob, because Seth had not mentioned beginning a new book.

While we were talking, Seth came back again for a moment, and Seth continued:

We have already begun the first step, and its title is "Natural Events, Epidemics, and Natural Disasters."

After a moment he said:

The title of Chapter One is The Natural Body and Its Defenses.

He was talking about the natural body and the body's defense system, that is, the immune system.

At this point, when Jane changed back into Jane, she said, and this was Jane herself speaking: Therefore it re-emphasized some of our endless questions about the Seth phenomenon, namely, which part of his personality or entity, no matter whether that part could be called Seth or something else, had been busy planning and organizing this new work? How could such a creative process happen without any awareness at all? What exactly is the limit of human achievement?

You see, even at this time, they were still not sure whether Seth was a part of his entity, or a part of the personality. So even though Seth repeatedly emphasized that he came from another time and space, Jane was still somewhat vague about it.

They talked about this new book, and then had something to eat. Rob read the title of the book to Jane several times, and she did not seem to like the title very much. Finally Jane said, I do not know whether I will continue the session, I am just waiting, and so far I have not received anything.

Death: A Necessity of the Psyche

By 11:25, nearly midnight, they continued. With many pauses, Seth began to speak again.

Death is biologically necessary, not only for the individual, but to ensure the continuing vitality of the human species. Death is a psychic and psychological necessity, because after a while the ever-renewing energy of the soul can no longer be transferred into the physical body.

Death is necessary, both for the individual and for the development of humanity as a whole. Why? Because the energy of the soul is always infinitely vital, but after a certain age, due to the limitations of our physical body itself, this overflowing energy of the soul can no longer be transferred into our body. The soul still has tremendous creativity and creative vitality, but our physical body cannot keep up. As it ages and deteriorates, the body cannot keep pace with the soul's capacity. So it must die, and a new body must be acquired to continue satisfying the soul's inexhaustible vitality and creativity.

Each person knows innately that in order to survive spiritually and psychically, their body must die.

Each person knows innately that the self -- in quotation marks -- will grow beyond the body. The self here refers to the soul; the soul will transcend the body, because the body cannot keep up with the soul, and the human body will age.

Especially since Darwin's theory of evolution⁴ came along, accepting the fact of death has come to imply a certain weakness. Isn't it said that the strong survive? Why do people reject death? Aside from the fact that people instinctively know they will die, why do they resist the occurrence of death? It is because Darwin's theory of evolution⁴ holds that the strong survive, so those who fall ill or die are seen as the weak. Therefore people are afraid of being the weak ones or the ones eliminated. But that is not the case. It is normal for everyone to die; there is no question of strong versus weak here.

To a certain degree, epidemics and recognized diseases serve a sociological purpose.

Epidemics, such as this pandemic, and various cancers and diseases, serve a sociological purpose. What sociological purpose?

They provide an acceptable cause of death, a face-saving device for those who have already decided to die.

Disease has a sociological purpose: it gives those who want to die an excuse, a face-saving explanation. They died of illness, right? It was not that I wanted to die; I did not want to die. I died of illness; I had no choice.

In our terms, this does not mean that such a person made a conscious decision to die. It is not that the person consciously wanted to die; no one consciously wants to die. But such a decision is often accompanied by consciousness. Their subconscious already knows -- perhaps those people feel they have fulfilled the purpose of this life and are ready to die.

But such decisions can also be based on a desire for survival that is different from what Darwinism understands.

Some people die because they have fulfilled their purpose, but others die out of a desire for survival. People die for an even stronger desire to survive, and this desire for survival is something that Darwinists and such people do not understand. They do not understand that death is a strong desire for survival. Why? Because only by dying can one be reborn.

Before birth, a person decides to live. A self is not merely an accidental materialization of biological mechanisms. Every person who is born desires to be born, and when that desire no longer operates, the person dies.

Before a person is born, before incarnation, they decide they want to live. A self -- the self here refers to the soul -- is not merely an accidental materialization of the body's biological mechanisms. No soul comes by accident; each comes with a purpose. Every person who is born desires to be born, wants to be born. When will they die? When the desire to live no longer operates, they will go to die.

No epidemic or disease or natural disaster, or bullet fired from a murderer's gun, will kill a person who does not want to die.

If a person does not want to die from within, no one can kill them, whether by disease, natural disaster, or bullet. This viewpoint differs from that of many people.

The desire for life has been much extolled, but human psychologists have seldom dealt with the quite active desire for death.

We humans praise the desire for life, yet few people study the fact that there is also a desire for death in this world, and it is active -- remember this: it is an active desire for death.

In its natural form, this is not a sickly, frightened, neurotic, or cowardly attempt to escape life, but a definite, positive, healthy acceleration of the desire for life, in which the individual strongly wishes to leave physical life, just as a child once wished to leave the parental home.

When a person wants to die, this desire for death is not the pathological kind we imagine, where one wants to commit suicide, finds life meaningless, is cowardly, or is utterly bored with life. It is not like that. This person wants to die with a positive, definite, accelerated desire for life. It is like a child who, upon growing up, very much wants to leave the family, wants to go to college far away, wants to get farther and farther from the parents. Why does the child do this? Does the child not know it is comfortable staying with the parents? Meals are prepared, everything is taken care of. No -- this desire is the same as a child leaving home to venture far away. When a person wants to die, the resoluteness of that desire for death is the same as the resoluteness of a child wanting to break free from the parents' embrace. No one studies this.

Here, I am not speaking of the desire for suicide.

Many people confuse this with suicide at this point, saying that if everyone wants to die themselves, is that not suicide? Seth says no. He then discusses suicide:

Suicide involves a deliberate method of the ego, a definite killing of the body.

Suicide is different from this. Suicide is conscious, a definite decision to kill the body. Moreover, suicide is often an extremely violent method -- whether jumping from a building, throwing oneself in front of a train, burning charcoal, taking sleeping pills, drowning, and so on. Suicide often has a purpose; it is deliberate on the part of the ego, and generally involves violent methods.

Ideally, however, the desire for death would simply involve a slowing of the body's physiological processes, a gradual disentanglement of the psyche from the flesh, or in other cases, according to the individual's uniqueness, a sudden and natural termination of the body's physiological processes.

This is not suicide. The normal human desire for death -- with the premise, of course, that it is not suicide -- when a person inwardly wants to die, this desire for death only involves slowing the body's physiological processes, that is, not wanting the body's physiology to continue developing, and gradually disentangling the psyche from its focus on the flesh. Or in other cases, such as sudden death in a car accident or other unexpected death, these are all arranged by the individual according to their own characteristics, with a sudden and natural termination of the body's physiological processes. "Sudden" means that to others it seems like an accidental event that happened abruptly, while "natural" means that from within, this person had long planned it. Not that they were conscious of it; on the unconscious level, it was all arranged.

Natural Death and the Body's Cooperation

If it is natural, the body will cooperate with the self so closely -- and here the self also refers to the soul -- that their separation is also very smooth. He can come in and he can also separate, and the body will automatically follow the wishes of the inner self.

For example, in the case of suicide, the self is to some degree acting on its own, while the body still has its own consciousness of wanting to live. In suicide, the soul wants to die, but the body does not want to die; the body still has its own will to live. He paused for a long while, then said:

I will have more comments on suicide, but here I do not mean to imply that a person who takes his own life is guilty.

The topic of suicide will be explored later, but for now he does not want to say too much. In saying this, he does not mean to imply that a person who takes his own life is guilty. This is something to remember; do not misunderstand it. Many religions and many traditional beliefs carry a certain prejudice against those who commit suicide, saying that people who commit suicide will not have a good end, will not have a good outcome, that after death they cannot be released, that they enter the City of Those Who Died by Violence or some intermediate bardo zone, and so on. Seth says, I did not imply that a person who takes his own life is guilty. There is no guilt.

In many such cases, however, death will come in the guise of an illness or a natural result.

Most of the time it does not happen so violently, so abruptly; it will come in the form of an illness or some other natural phenomenon. In fact, that is how it is, whether you understand it or not, whether you accept it or not. That is simply how it is.

He gives another example:

A person who wants to die may have intended to experience only a portion of life, childhood, for example, and this purpose will coincide with the intentions of the parents.

Some people want to experience childhood, but do not want to grow up, do not want to experience adult life. And when such a person incarnates, he is usually accompanied by a woman who only wants to experience giving birth to a child, or caring for a child until it is very young, and does not want to keep caring for it all the way into adulthood. The two of them form a combination, each satisfying their own desires.

Such a mother might attract a consciousness that wants to re-experience childhood but does not want to experience adult life, or, a consciousness that might teach the mother some greatly needed lessons.

Such a child might die naturally at the age of ten or twelve, or even earlier.

Scientific help, however, might enable the child to live much longer, until the person initially encounters an adult life that could be said to be forced upon him.

In modern society, because of scientific development -- for example, the child has a congenital heart defect and originally would not have lived very long, only a few years -- but now medical advances allow the child to live for a very long time. At this point, the child originally did not want to experience adult life, but you insist on making him live that long, and he has no choice but to experience adult life. What happens as a result? A car accident might happen, or suicide, or some other kind of accident. This person is very likely to become a victim of an epidemic.

But then the smoothness of psychological and physiological functioning is lost.

Originally he should have died in childhood, but because of the development of modern science and technology, he is forced to live for many more years. Yet at this point he still does not want to live, and so all kinds of accidents may happen -- a car accident, suicide, or an epidemic, and then he dies. But with this kind of death, he has actually already lost the smoothness of spiritual, physiological, and psychological functioning. None of what comes after is needed. According to natural development, he should have died early in childhood from illness or some other cause.

Here, I am not condoning suicide. For in your society, suicide is all too often the unfortunate result of conflicting beliefs.

He is not saying this to condone suicide, saying that suicide is all very good and encouraging everyone to go kill themselves. In your society, suicide is generally the unfortunate result of conflicting beliefs that a person cannot untangle.

Yet truly, all deaths are suicide.

If we speak truthfully, every person's death is suicide, except that we do it unconsciously. Those who actually commit suicide do it consciously. Although in real life they encounter many unfortunate results -- conflicting beliefs, emotions they cannot get out of, obsessing over a single point, all kinds of reasons -- yet every child that is born and both parents are all meaningful. Every child and his parents have agreed upon everything before birth.

In other words, many people ask, for example, whether abortion or miscarriage has a bad effect on oneself, whether the child will hate you. No. It was all agreed upon before he came. He only wanted to experience those few months in the mother's womb; he did not want to come into the human world. He just wanted to experience that segment. It has nothing to do with you; that is simply how he arranged it.

In the same way, you cannot separate the problem of world population explosion from epidemics, earthquakes, and other disasters.

You cannot completely separate the problem of world population explosion from epidemics, earthquakes, and the occurrence of disasters, saying that there is no relationship between them. There is a relationship between them, but what exactly that relationship is may no longer be something we can understand. If you do not understand it, you can look into what happened with Universe 25.

In war, people automatically reproduce to replenish those who have been killed. And when a race becomes overpopulated, automatic controls are imposed on the population.

What does automatic control mean? Naturally we will come to know it: there are natural disasters and man-made calamities, including the current unwillingness to bear children, late marriage and late childbirth, and even not having children at all.

Yet all of these will in every way suit the purposes and intentions of the individuals involved.

You might say, does my personal goal then go against this? It does not go against it. He will choose to experience this kind of event as the kind of person who wants to experience it. You need to understand this. Do not say that this natural disaster happened in order to reduce the overall population explosion or population density, while these people themselves did not want to die, and that this goes against their intentions. No. It fulfilled his personal intentions. He knew all of it before he came; it was all agreed upon. So do not think that this goes against individual will. It does not.

Seth said the dictation is over, the session is over, and he gives you his most heartfelt blessings. At 12:12, after Jane gave herself some material, without mentioning that Seth said goodbye, she suddenly came out of a very deep trance state. Usually she would say goodnight, goodnight from Seth, but this time she came out directly without saying it. Jane said that since that break, she remembered nothing at all. They were all tired.

Rob's Note on Vaccines

The following passage is Rob's own note. Rob's note on vaccines:

I was particularly interested in Seth's material on inoculation, because I have twice had severe physical reactions following vaccinations. Jane has also had some unpleasant experiences with inoculations. In my own case, both preventive inoculations were in 1963, before Jane began speaking for Seth. One of them resulted in a severe serum reaction that incapacitated me for two weeks, and the other caused partial paralysis lasting several days. I accepted those vaccines because of the pressure of traditional parents' aggressive medicine, those traditional pressures and a concession to my beliefs at the time, though not very willingly. They thought I should be vaccinated because it would be good for me. Even now, I still carry a warning card in my wallet stating my reactions to certain vaccines, along with a serious declaration: if for any reason, say after an accident, I were found unconscious, I must never be given any injection, because I might have a fatal reaction to it.

These are all the effects caused by vaccines. Since those very unpleasant experiences, Rob has never had another shot, and he has absolutely no desire to have one. He no longer believes he would die from any of the vaccines he is forbidden to take. At the same time, he does not want to find out what might happen if he did take one. Since those two incidents, he has not had a single vaccine.

However, in our society it is almost impossible to do away with preventive inoculation; they are such a strong part of our national and personal medical belief systems. I am certain that when Seth was working on The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, he would go into detailed explanation of this whole matter of mass inoculation.

Rob only offered his own personal point of view, but within his society, this kind of mass inoculation is still a group event. In America, you are not allowed to attend school without being vaccinated; one of the prerequisites for admission to any school is that you must be vaccinated. If you are not vaccinated, sorry, you cannot enroll. So it becomes mandatory, a collective inoculation that must be done.

All right, regarding the content of this session, about our illnesses, vaccines, the production of viruses, and so on, Seth has his own very unique perspective from a higher level.

Today I will continue introducing Seth's book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. What we are introducing today is the second session of Chapter One, which is Session 802 of the book.

This session began on Monday, April 25, 1977, at 9:47 p.m. At the beginning, Rob explained: last Wednesday evening's regularly scheduled session was not held, because by then they had bought a new house and were remodeling the front porch. Last Thursday the workers poured the cement for the new floor, and today they set up the forms for the new steps and poured more cement. The weather was wonderful; it was April, a very comfortable season in the eastern United States, with the feeling of warm spring and blooming flowers.

After Seth came through and said good evening, we will go straight into the formal content of this session.

Epidemics are the result of a collective suicide phenomenon

He said that, to a certain degree, epidemics are the result of a collective suicide phenomenon among those involved. From a certain angle, to a certain extent, the phenomenon of an epidemic is a result of the collective suicide phenomenon of those people who are caught up in that epidemic.

The factors involved here are very complex: they may involve biological, social, and even economic factors, and it is not a single or simple cause. Because for various different reasons, each person's reasons are different, the reasons for each epidemic are different, and the reasons for each kind of phenomenon are also different. And on different levels, whole groups of individuals want to die at a certain time, but they die in the manner of victims of an epidemic, so that their individual deaths amount to a collective statement.

For example, in this COVID-19 pandemic of ours, the whole world has now had roughly more than 1.8 million deaths⁵, and more than 80 million people have been infected. The deaths of these more than 1.8 million people amount to using a collective death to make a collective statement. On a certain level, these deaths are a protest against that particular era. This sentence is very important: this kind of collective death is a protest against the era.

However, those involved all have their personal reasons, but each person does not have such high awareness and cognition as to recognize that this is a collective protest and a collective statement. For example, because of some special circumstances they were infected, because of all sorts of various reasons, each with their own reasons. But these reasons all also involve a purpose that goes beyond personal reasons — a desire to achieve a purpose through death. Their respective reasons are all different, but they all transcend such a personal reason, and there is a common collective purpose.

Part of the reason for this kind of death is to make the survivors question the situation at the time. Because human beings unconsciously understand very well that the reasons for this kind of collective death must necessarily exceed the beliefs that are generally accepted. The dead used death to make a collective statement. Those who remain alive, those survivors, will question: What exactly is wrong with this society? What problems are there with our sanitary conditions, our epidemic prevention conditions, or with our beliefs, our social, economic, and political systems? Why is it that when humanity entered a period like 2020, it was helpless against an epidemic? Although we eventually invented vaccines, and now we have begun to vaccinate people, this epidemic has actually raged for a whole year, and it seems it has no intention of stopping. Not only has it not stopped, it even tends to be getting worse. What exactly is the reason for this?

This is what the survivors need to think about and question. In other words, the meaning of those who died also lies in this — the meaning of their deaths being worthwhile lies in making the living question: Why did these more than one million innocent lives have to die? Every person may be a family, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, each one a living, breathing person, not a cold, lifeless name. What exactly does their death mean? Who exactly should bear responsibility for this?

Historical Plagues and the Plight of Poverty

In certain periods of history, the plight of the poor was so terrible, so unbearable, that life was truly worse than death. Those who have not experienced it cannot understand the feeling of being slowly starved to death by hunger. To the point that great plagues broke out, truly causing entire regions with such social, political, and economic conditions to be completely destroyed. Indeed, if you look through human history, a couple of days ago someone recommended a book called The Great Plague, which recounts the occurrence of all the plagues in human history. Everyone thinks today's pandemic is already very serious, but compared with the plagues in history, it really is nothing. There was once a plague in a certain period that directly reduced the population of the Eurasian continent by three-quarters⁶, meaning 75% of the people died because of this plague. The Black Death in Europe⁷ was also extremely terrifying, including the Great Plague of London⁸, the Great Plague of England, all of these were even more frightening than the current pandemic.

Many people ask why the epidemics and plagues of ancient times were so severe, yet their range was not so wide, occurring only in certain regions? The reason is simple: because transportation was not developed at that time. To go from one continent to another, for example from Europe to the Americas, one had to take a ship, and in even earlier times there were no ships at all. Even if one took a ship, it would take a month, fifteen days, or twenty days; those who were sick would die on the way, and those who were not sick, those with immunity and antibodies, would already be fine. So the inconvenience of transportation caused plagues at that time to spread only within certain regions and ranges. But today it is different. Today the prevalence of airplane flights has connected the whole world into a single whole; once the pandemic in one place is not brought under control, it immediately becomes a global plague.

In certain historical periods, because the poor were especially miserable, life was especially hard, they could not eat their fill, and their living environment was extremely harsh, great plagues would spread among them, causing most of the people in the entire region to die. Because such a life was truly unbearably bitter, and life had no dignity whatsoever. Our souls incarnate and reincarnate not to suffer, nor to enjoy such a life, so they would rather leave this world in a way we do not understand.

Yet those plagues took the lives of rich and poor alike, without discrimination. When a plague came, it did not distinguish between rich and poor. No matter how well the rich protected themselves, if everyone around you was already sick, it was very hard for you to remain unaffected alone. Even today we see that those who contracted COVID-19 include not only ordinary people, but also the heads of state of various countries: the president of the United States, the president of France, the president of Argentina, all kinds of world leaders got it one after another, including the prime minister of the United Kingdom. There were also some celebrities: Hollywood stars, soccer stars, basketball stars, stars of the entertainment world, all kinds of celebrities also got it. So before a plague, everyone is treated equally.

Under this premise of equal treatment, of attacking everyone without distinction, those self-satisfied rich people could clearly see: if sanitary conditions, privacy, and peace of mind must to some extent also be given to the poor, if the poor must be given adequate sanitary conditions, must have their privacy, so-called privacy meaning not living in groups, not living mixed together like in refugee camps with hundreds or thousands of families crowded together, and peace of mind, meaning they can live and work in peace and contentment, for if they are all displaced, without enough food, living in constant fear of famine, then their minds have no peace, if the poor cannot obtain these things, then the poor's poor sanitary conditions, harsh living conditions, and minds long in a state of tension and fear, these are all the root causes that trigger plagues. This discontent of the poor would have very practical consequences, namely leading to the spread of plagues, which would also affect the rich.

Victims of Apathy, Despair, and Powerlessness

Those are protest deaths. For us today, there are not only protest deaths, but also a stagnation of the global economy. If you look carefully at the restaurant industry, the tourism industry, all kinds of brick-and-mortar businesses affected by the pandemic, every industry has been affected. For all of humanity, this is a very, very serious protest.

From this one angle alone, every victim—he puts "victim" in quotation marks—is actually not a true victim. Because each person chooses this for themselves, and to a greater or lesser degree is also a victim of apathy, despair, and powerlessness, and they automatically lower the body's resistance. These people who fell ill and died are victims, but they are not victims of the disease, not victims of the virus, not victims of some epidemic. What are they victims of? They are victims of apathy, despair, and powerlessness. This is the biggest problem. If our society still contains such apathy, despair, and powerlessness, if such a population still exists, then sooner or later they will become this kind of victim. Why? Because they automatically lower the body's resistance. They automatically lower their own body's resistance, so their immune system becomes weak. In some people these viruses do not flare up, but in them they do.

This state of mind not only truly lowers the body's resistance, it also activates and changes the body's chemical properties, affecting its balance. These things do not merely lower the immune system's ability to resist; they also activate it and change our body's chemical properties—that is, changes in our hormone levels and in the trace elements the body secretes are all chemical properties. These changes in chemical properties affect the overall balance of the body and begin to cause illness.

Viruses Are a Normal Part of the Body

Many viruses are naturally capable of causing death, but under normal circumstances they contribute to the overall health of the body, coexisting with other viruses, and each one contributes to a vitality that is necessary for maintaining the body's balance.

This passage is very important. These feelings of despair, pain, and powerlessness will ultimately cause these people to lower their own immunity, while also altering the body's chemical balance and chemical changes, and will cause these viruses that lie latent in the human body -- the ones that have never broken out -- to be reactivated under this great change in the body's internal environment. And these viruses themselves possess the ability to cause death. These viruses in the human body are part of our genetic fragments. Any virus is a fragment of DNA or RNA. Today's COVID is RNA, a single-stranded RNA fragment that replicates automatically; some are DNA, a double-helix DNA structure. In any case, there is a phenomenon, which is what Seth means: these viruses exist within the human body, latent in every person's own body. And under normal circumstances -- be sure to remember, normal circumstances without the influence of despair, powerlessness, and pain -- these viruses that have the ability to cause death contribute to the overall health of our body. Not only can they not harm our body, they are actually necessary for our physical health.

This is something scientists only studied later. Around February of this year, I posted a video about this virus, Seth on viruses. I quoted many passages from this book. At the time I made four episodes of the video, because the content was rather long, and I did not want to make one two- or three-hour video, so I split it into four episodes, each about half an hour or more, including some treatment suggestions regarding the virus and so on, all introduced in those videos.

At the time there was a comment below, and the person who left the comment said he was a professional in biological research, specifically studying viruses. He said that after watching your analysis and introduction of Seth's views on viruses, he was very surprised that his views were extremely correct. And the problem is, he said, many of the theories he mentioned were only discovered by scientists in recent years (that is, after 2010 or so), and I do not know how Seth could have had such understanding more than 40 years ago. He said, for example, scientists discovered that many viruses are fragments of DNA, all part of the human genetic fragments, part of our overall human genes; a fragment, when separated out, is a virus. Previous scientists believed that these were useless genetic fragments left over from humanity's long evolutionary process of struggling against viruses. For example, after we resisted certain viruses we produced certain antibodies, and then wrote their genetic fragments into our genome. That is what scientists used to think. But later they discovered that this is not the case; these genes are useful, not waste, not a historical residue, like a museum piece placed there for you to look at. They play a key role in certain special cytological or biological transformations and catalytic processes in humans. In other words, without the existence of such small virus-like fragments of DNA, some biological changes in the human body would not occur, and many of these changes are extremely critical. Simply put, without the participation of these viruses, human life would not develop normally.

So when can such a virus that is beneficial to humans be activated and become a virus that is harmful or even lethal to humans? He said this is something scientists have not yet figured out. Scientists do not understand when this virus gets activated, gets awakened. When does something clearly beneficial to the human body become lethal to the human body? This lethality does not mean it does not exist; it is simply latent within the human body.

So let us continue looking at what he says. Simply put, viruses are beneficial to our body, a vitality that is very necessary for maintaining the body's balance. But under special preconditions, under the influence of mental states of indifference, despair, and powerlessness, after humans lower the body's immunity, while simultaneously altering their own chemical structure and affecting their own balance, it will ultimately activate these viruses that are beneficial and indispensable to the human body, and stimulate that characteristic of death, that lethal ability.

But if a certain virus is stimulated by mental states into a more active state or over-proliferation, then they become lethal. These viruses that are normal in a normal body, once stimulated -- how are they stimulated? He says it is stimulation by mental states; be sure to remember that viruses are stimulated by mental states into a more active state, or stimulated into over-proliferation, meaning their reproductive power suddenly increases, exceeding a normal level, and then they become lethal. In fact, the way they spread depends on the type of virus.

If an individual's mental problems are serious enough, they will really manifest as a social group disease. After this disease latent in every person's body is activated and becomes lethal, it then begins to spread, and the manner and route of its transmission differ according to the characteristics of each virus. For example, the transmission method of our current COVID virus is through air, droplets, and contact. But if everyone's mental problems are very serious, it will really manifest as a social group disease. Just as what we see today is exactly this -- a living, very typical classic case of Seth talking about epidemics and viruses. Although he said these words more than 40 years ago, when we read these words more than 40 years later, they still have a very important, enlightening effect, allowing us to re-examine what a virus really is.

A Russian Scientist's Discovery in 2003

In 2003, a Russian scientist⁹ published an article in a magazine in Russia called Life and Exploration¹⁰. The title was something like SARS—that was during the SARS epidemic. He said, we are SARS. What exactly is this virus? The author was a scientist who studied biological ecology and biology. Through repeated observation, research, and experimentation, he discovered that a virus has more than just a biological component; to a greater extent, it is a carrier of information, a carrier of spirit.

Humanity had never put forward this view before. This scientist dared to propose such a bold idea: the biological nature of a virus accounts for only a small part of it; most of a virus consists of its spiritual nature, or what we might call its information. It is a carrier of spiritual information. Its ability to cause disease, spread infection, and cause death is part of its biological nature. This happens to coincide with Seth's view. If you are interested, you can look for related articles, but because it was so long ago, I have not been able to find much more information either. After all, the material is in Russian.

So what lies at the core of this kind of epidemic? It comes from the influence of a state of mind, a certain mindset. What kind of mindset? What sort of condition does this represent in our society today? Why are we encountering a virus like this now? Each of us may have our own interpretation and understanding. We are not going to analyze the causes of this particular epidemic. Let us simply consider this, something we can readily imagine: when the material development of human society reaches an extreme, we discover a major problem, which is that our actual lives have not improved very much.

What kind of world do we live in? The economy is developing rapidly, and global GDP, global gross national product, has increased dozens or even a hundred times over what it was a few decades ago. Yet the quality and standard of our individual lives have not advanced along with the development of the world as a whole. The gap between rich and poor in human society is getting wider, not narrower. These wealthy financial oligarchs, multinational corporations, and global conglomerates are getting richer and richer. They use globalization to plunder the world's resources and wealth more easily. Meanwhile, ordinary people are still living as they did decades ago, and are even less happy than their parents or their grandparents were. Their sense of happiness has not risen with economic development; instead, it is declining.

And in many developed countries as well as emerging countries, there is a trend toward rigid class divisions: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. This makes the younger generation lose hope in life. There is a sense of despair and powerlessness.

The simplest example is the average wage per person in mainland China in 2020—we are talking about ordinary cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen may be a little higher, with average wages perhaps seven or eight thousand yuan; second- and third-tier cities may be four or five thousand; smaller cities, third- and fourth-tier cities, may still be around three thousand yuan. But how much have consumer prices risen, and how much have housing prices risen? With consumer prices and housing prices having multiplied countless times, look at people's average wages in 2010, ten years ago: they were almost the same as they are now. Go back further to 2000, twenty years ago, when prices were much lower than they are now. What were housing prices like, and what were consumer prices like? Yet wages back then were also about the same as they are today. As the economy develops, ordinary people discover a reality: the absolute amount of their income is slowly increasing, but their actual purchasing power is declining.

It is the same in other countries besides China. Look at Taiwan. People from Taiwan often joke with me, saying that twenty years ago, a university graduate's salary was twenty-something thousand Taiwan dollars, and ten years later, university graduates just starting work were still earning twenty-something thousand New Taiwan dollars. Twenty-something thousand New Taiwan dollars is roughly four or five thousand renminbi, and calculating the monthly salary at an exchange rate of 30, that is only seven hundred-something US dollars. But over those ten or more years, prices have also been rising. Subway fares and meals have gone up; even braised pork rice has gone up, but wages have not. Hong Kong has the same problem: young people cannot afford homes, and their incomes are not much different from what they were many years ago. I remember that sometime in the 1990s, the average wage in Hong Kong was around ten-something thousand Hong Kong dollars. Look at it now—is the difference very big? Nearly thirty years have passed. How many tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars do students in Hong Kong earn now when they leave school and enter the workforce? It is the same in the United States. In the past, one man could work and support an entire family, while his wife stayed home as a full-time homemaker. Now, among the younger generation of American families, how many people really dare to be full-time housewives? Both spouses have to work, pay the mortgage and car loan together, support the family, and raise the children. Americans today have a much lower sense of happiness than their parents, or even their grandparents.

These are common phenomena I am talking about. I am not exaggerating these things. Of course, society has aspects of development that are positive and constructive, but looking at society as a whole, the economy is developing, yet in terms of each person's own feelings, their sense of happiness has not increased.

And the biggest difference is that they cannot see any hope. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, the 1930s and 1940s, and the 1950s and 1960s, although people's incomes may not have been that good, they could see hope. They felt that through their own hard work and effort, life would get better day by day. But young people today do not think that way. Young people everywhere in the world feel they cannot afford a home. Across developed countries—the United States, Europe, Japan, and even China—the phenomenon of remaining single is very pronounced. A little while ago, there was a book specifically about a society of single people. People are unwilling to take on the pressures of marriage and having children, and human fertility rates have fallen to their lowest point in history. Whether in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, or the countries of Europe, fertility rates are even lower in those Nordic countries.

So the occurrence and outbreak of this epidemic is not without a cause, and it is not without deeper spiritual causes. And those deeper causes remain unresolved—these financial oligarchs around the world are endlessly greedy, without any restraint—which is what has led to the situation we have today.

The whole of society has come to a standstill, and globalization has been forced to stop. At this point, it is not Trump who is stopping globalization, nor is it certain countries that are stopping globalization. It is the epidemic that has brought globalization to a halt. Countries are closing their borders and canceling flights, including Japan, which closed its borders a couple of days ago. Every country is doing this now. Flights in Europe and the United States have been reduced to only one-tenth of their previous numbers, and some countries have even moved to suspend flights to countries where the epidemic is severe. We have passively, under compulsion, taken action against globalization. Of course, those who advocate globalization are certainly unwilling to accept this. They will tell ordinary people that every ordinary person benefits most from globalization. But if you really look at it the other way around, ordinary people are not the ones who benefit most from globalization—it is not that ordinary people have gained nothing from it, only that they have received a tiny share of the gains. The real beneficiaries are those financial giants, multinational conglomerates, and monopolistic corporate and financial groups. They are the ones who receive the greatest benefits. And we can only gain some small benefits along the way. Then they will say, look, you benefit too; globalization is the trend of future development.

What I want to tell you here is that the deeper background to this epidemic has its own underlying causes. It is not simply a matter of asking how this could suddenly have happened.

Disease Outbreaks Point to the State of Society

The circumstances surrounding the outbreak of a disease can point to the political, social, and economic conditions that gave rise to the disorder. Take the outbreak of the current pandemic, for example: it points to certain problems in our present political, social, and economic situation. We human beings must reexamine this. We are not saying globalization is wrong; we are asking what kind of globalization we want, what kind of relatively fair globalization we want. Should we be putting human well-being on our conscious agenda? Or have we all along been controlled by these deep states, these shadow governments, manipulated and influenced by them, working to generate profit for them? Has the goal of human social development up to now still been to address the happiness and well-being of every person, or have we already been deceived and brainwashed into becoming tools for creating their wealth and seeking their exorbitant profits?

When ordinary people lack the ability to stand against the whole system, they feel powerless, and they feel despair. When this powerlessness and despair accumulates to a certain degree, it exactly matches the conditions Seth described for the outbreak of a pandemic, a great plague. And so we had the most severe pandemic since human beings began keeping records of civilization and history. Its death toll may not have been the highest, and the number of people infected may not have been the highest, but its impact on human civilization and society has been the greatest. Since the beginning of recorded civilization, human beings have never experienced a global economic shutdown caused by a single disease, a single epidemic. Never before. This is the first time.

What far-reaching results will this bring? Those of us who have studied spiritual knowledge can see at a glance that it will inevitably bring about a tremendous transformation and change. It is not a localized matter, such as one particular country — the U.S. presidential election is a matter of Democrats versus Republicans, of Trump versus Biden; nor is it only the issue of Brexit in Europe; nor is it only the interruption of the European integration process and the internal divisions now appearing in the EU; nor is it only the challenge to the globalized economy. It is something far above all of these, with deeper and more far-reaching influence.

This kind of disease outbreak points to problems in the political, social, and economic conditions. Often such outbreaks occur in the wake of ineffective political or social behavior — what does that mean? It means politics has ceased to serve its purpose of securing well-being for human beings; politics has become ineffective, and society has become ineffective as well. The mechanisms and systems of society were supposed to promote the development of human civilization and society as a whole, but now we find that social organizations and social institutions are not playing that role.

So after certain concerted social, collective social protests fail or are deemed hopeless, they turn into a form of collective social protest. These outbreaks also often occur during times of war. In some periods of warfare, wars stopped because of plagues. In human history there have been many wars that ultimately subsided because of plagues — they simply could not go on fighting. Too many people died; plagues broke out on the battlefield, and neither side could continue, because the plague did not spread on only one side; it spread back and forth between them. If you look through history — I am not a student of history, so I cannot recall the specific details clearly, but I generally know that some famous historical battles came to an end because of plagues.

Once you have read these two passages, you will understand that Seth's understanding of viruses, epidemics, and plagues forty years ago far exceeded humanity's understanding of them. It was not on the same level of consideration. We human beings today still mostly think about this in biological terms: Has the virus mutated? Has the virus undergone another mutation? Then how do we control it? What means can we use to cut off its transmission routes? What better vaccines can we develop to fight it? Are we still not facing this problem squarely? Are we not truly addressing the conditions he mentioned earlier, the conditions that produce powerlessness and despair in ordinary people at the grassroots level? Are we not truly addressing that ineffective politics and ineffective social behavior?

Just look at America today. Many people do not understand why the United States, as the world's number one power, with the best economy, technology, and medical care in every respect, has had such a severe outbreak that it has become an object of ridicule and mockery for the whole world. At first I did not understand either. It was not until this election, until this event, that American politics showed the whole world a joke not only with the virus but also with the election. When you connect these two things, you will see how apt Seth's words are: ineffective political and social action will break out in those regions, and it will break out very severely. This is because after they failed or deemed it hopeless, this kind of collective social protest occurred.

So through this analysis, we gain a higher and deeper understanding of viruses and epidemics, rather than remaining at the superficial biological level of understanding.

Psychic Contagion

He said first of all there is psychic contagion: an epidemic is first of all psychic contagion. Despair moves faster than mosquitoes or any kind of external disease vector. Many epidemics and infectious diseases are transmitted through mosquitoes and fleas -- for example, plague was transmitted to humans because fleas on rats carried the plague bacteria; many other diseases are transmitted through mosquito bites. Our current disease is transmitted through droplets, air, and contact. Whether through mosquitoes, air, or contact, these are all called vectors, the vehicles of the virus. And this psychic contagion is much faster than that.

So very often when a virus breaks out, many people say, I did not go anywhere and did not come into contact with anyone; according to their understanding they had no contact with a source of infection, yet they were infected and do not even know why. There are many, many such cases, if you look carefully. People with no history of exposure suddenly become infected, and no one knows where it came from. The simplest example is Mainland China, in the earliest stage of the pandemic, through this kind of centralized management and control, used nearly several months -- from January all the way to May, five months -- of economic standstill to gain effective control of the epidemic within the country, becoming a model for the whole world; this must be acknowledged, it really was done very well. But this winter, they have already imposed the greatest restrictions on the number of people entering the country: if you want to return to Mainland China now, first of all foreigners cannot get in; all tourist visas for foreigners have already been cancelled, and those previously issued have been invalidated; one must reapply, and the chance of getting a visa on reapplication is almost nil. The only people who can return now are those holding Chinese passports, but because of reduced flights it is basically very difficult for them to return as well. On top of that, they have now implemented dual-negative testing, that is, nucleic acid testing and serum testing, and have put forward more complicated requirements: what standards the serum test must meet, what standards the nucleic acid test must meet, that one must go to designated institutions for testing, that only the most recent test results within two days are valid, and that transit is not allowed. With all of this under control, logically speaking, in a country where the virus has been at zero for several months, how could it break out again? And now the outbreak is again very serious; where does the cause actually lie? So at this point we begin to talk about how this kind of psychological contagion is very serious: the mental state activates what originally could be said to be an inactive virus. In other words, each of us may have this virus latent in our bodies; it is just that certain people's changes in mental state activate this virus.

After a pause at 10:16, he continued:

Despair may seem to be passive only because he feels that external action is hopeless. Despair is passive; looking at external action it sees no results, but inwardly his heart stirs up anger. That is a contagion, and that kind of contagion can jump from bed to bed, from heart to heart.

This psychic contagion, the contagion of hopelessness, is even more frightening. However, it only touches those in the same condition. But everyone need not worry; what does it only touch? This sentence is crucial -- it only touches people in the same condition, or people with the same mentality, the same state of mind. If you are not in such a state, not in such a frame of mind, it will not infect you.

It will bring about an acceleration in which group action indeed still has one thing it can do. What is that one thing? It is this: such a group of people, they are powerless and despairing in life, already without any action, but they have stirred up inner anger. Through this one thing -- the acceleration of contagion -- they do the only thing they can do: release their inner anger, release their despair, and outwardly this manifests as the rapid spread of disease, its very rapid spread.

Human Consciousness and the Complete Unconscious

Now if you believe you only live one lifetime, then this situation looks extremely tragic, and in your terms, it is clearly not very beautiful. If you could only live one lifetime, if your life came only once, such a situation would really be terrible for you -- your life comes only once, and then it ends because you die of an infectious disease. It really cannot be called beautiful. Indeed.

Yet although in an epidemic every victim dies his or her individual death -- his wording is very interesting, dies his or her individual death -- that death nevertheless becomes part of a collective protest. Those closest to the survivors, his relatives, his immediate family, his husband, wife, children, parents, their lives are shaken, truly shaken. According to the scope of the epidemic, social life itself at various levels is also disrupted, changed, and reorganized. Not only are the lives of his immediate family greatly shaken, but according to the scope affected by the epidemic -- now it has affected the whole globe -- social life itself at different levels, we now can only stay at home in our daily lives, confined, unable to casually participate in any social activities. The Olympics have also been forced to be postponed or possibly canceled; all sports competitions and sports activities have been suspended; concerts, music performances, all entertainment activities have been suspended, all canceled; even the most basic act of going out to a restaurant to have a meal has already become a luxury.

Sometimes this kind of epidemic ultimately leads to the overthrow of a government, or the defeat of a war. It has happened in history, and it will happen again. There are also deeper biological connections here related to nature itself.

He says you are biological creatures. We are biological animals, and our proud human consciousness is built upon the vast unconscious integrity of your physical existence. We humans have our own human cognition and human consciousness, but our human consciousness is built upon the integrity of our unconsciousness. In Jung's terms, there is a human collective unconscious; in Seth's terms, it is called a vast human collective unconscious. We are built upon this -- that is to say, the cognition of humanity as a whole exists built upon the unconsciousness of humanity as a whole. In that respect, your consciousness is as natural as your toes. Our consciousness is as natural as a part of the body.

Now the integrity of humanity -- as far as the integrity of humanity is concerned, your mental state is very important. If we acknowledge that the overall consciousness of humanity is built upon an overall unconsciousness, upon an overall integrity, then the mental outlook of humanity is very important. It depends on whether the overall psyche of humanity is whole.

He says apathy, despair, and indifference are biological enemies. Seth points this out with piercing accuracy: from the standpoint of the integrity or health of the overall human psyche, despair and indifference are biological enemies. The social conditions that promote this mental state -- the sociopolitical status quo or economic policies, or even religious or philosophical frameworks -- bring about a biological retaliation, like dry kindling meeting a fierce fire that directly ignites it. Despair and indifference are our biological enemies as human beings, and also our spiritual enemies. If the majority of humanity as a whole is affected by these emotions of despair and indifference, it will inevitably bring about a biological retaliation in all areas of our social conditions, political status quo, economic policies, and even religion and philosophy -- that is, epidemics and disease.

And this retaliation is as fierce as a raging fire upon dry kindling. Once ignited, at first there may only be a few isolated sudden cases, one, two, three, and in the end it can sweep across the globe and become a nightmare for the whole of human society. Is what we are facing today not exactly such a situation?

The reason is that we need to change. The reason is that these frameworks -- whether philosophical frameworks, religious frameworks, economic frameworks, social frameworks, or political frameworks -- all urgently need to change. If we do not change these frameworks, and we only want to eliminate these viruses biologically, do you think that can be done? It cannot be done. Only if we humans can rise above biology to understand the essence of this virus, and truly eliminate this despair and eliminate this indifference the way we would eliminate a virus, can we truly eliminate the virus. Because the virus is brought about by despair, indifference, and this sense of powerlessness. And if you want to eliminate despair and indifference, you must change the social structures, social systems, political systems, political structures, and even religious and philosophical beliefs and faiths within which we humans live.

Epidemics Achieve Several Purposes

So epidemics achieve several purposes. Such an epidemic, first of all, warns that a certain situation will no longer be permitted. This is very crucial — everyone, think carefully about this sentence. It tells us: our existing condition is no longer permitted. This pandemic and this virus are warning us that humanity's existing modes of survival — political structures, political systems, social structures, social systems, cultural attributes, beliefs and faith — all need to change; they are no longer permitted. It has reached the point where if you humans do not take action on your own initiative, it will be forced to use this kind of biological retaliation to wake you up. If you still do not wake up, then it will act directly, making it so you cannot do anything at all. You cannot go to religious sites, church services, religious gatherings, and even less can you have various forms of entertainment — young people's faith is entertainment, nightclubs and bars, and it has suspended all of that for you.

There is a kind of biological outrage, anger, and agitation. The biological outrage will continue to be expressed until the situation is changed. This has been stated very thoroughly — if the situation does not change, this state of affairs will not change. So we see that in the past year of 2020 — today is the first day of 2021 — human society has undergone tremendous change. Many countries, many societies, and many people are thinking about such questions, and we have also reached this consensus: we are at a critical turning point in human development. Where the future development of human civilization will go — these few years are extremely critical years.

Whether we are willing to accept it or not, our previous mode of development — the financial oligarchs, transnational corporations, and monopoly groups secretly manipulating the governments of various countries behind the scenes, exploiting the people, enslaving the people — that mode of life, that social model, that mode of human survival — is no longer permitted. Seth directly points out this problem: if it does not change, this biological retaliation will not improve.

Even during the time of the great plague in England, some people were attacked but did not die, and there were also people who spent time with the sick and the dying without being affected by that disease. In any epidemic, the disease is never one hundred percent — some people are simply fine, carefree and seemingly unaffected; some people are extremely careful and still get infected. For example, Mother Teresa — every time she went to visit those institutions for the sick in the slums, she wore no protective equipment at all and directly made contact with these people, even directly contacting lepers and AIDS patients, yet she herself was completely fine, truly completely fine. If you look carefully at Mother Teresa's whole life, you will find that she really had this radiance, truly immune to all poisons. This has also happened many times in history, and in Buddhism there are many classic stories told — someone was poisoned many times and in the end was never poisoned to death; the last time he said, then let it be as he wishes, let him be poisoned to death. If he said he would not be poisoned to death, then he would not be poisoned to death.

However, those actively involved survivors viewed themselves in a completely different way from those who died of the disease. The same society, the same group of people — some people saw despair, saw powerlessness, saw indifference; some people did not see that, and their hearts were still full of hope, they still believed that this society is full of goodness, they still believed that the essence of this society, this human world, this universe is goodness. So the way they viewed themselves was different — they did not see indifference, did not see hopelessness, did not see despair, did not see powerlessness. These survivors were those who had not been touched by despair — this is the core key. They saw themselves as people who had a way — no matter how difficult and hard society was, they had a way. It was not that they lived more comfortably than others, not that their material foundation was better, but their mindset and the way they viewed themselves — no matter how much hardship and suffering this society was filled with, their hearts were always like a flame, full of hope, always viewing this world from a positive and constructive angle.

So it is often the case that they awakened themselves from the previous non-heroic circumstances of life, they awakened themselves from the lives of ordinary people, and then behaved with great heroism. This can be seen all over the world: for China, at the beginning of last year, at the beginning of 2020, on the front lines of the fight against the epidemic in Wuhan, how many ordinary nurses and ordinary doctors displayed heroism and fearlessness that left us all in awe, calling them true heroes. But they said they were not heroes — before that they were just the most ordinary people like us. They awakened themselves from that non-heroic situation and took on the role of heroes of the era with the most heroic performance.

The horror of the current situation shocked them — it was something they had not been involved in before. The ferocity and terror of that disease truly shocked these people as well. They were not unafraid, not unworried — they were also ordinary people. But this shock, this terror of the virus — because they did not get sick — would stir up an even stronger power within them, would stir up that spirit of great fearlessness. In real life we also see that this is indeed the case. The sight of people on the verge of death, the sight of the dying, gave them some insight into the meaning of life, and stirred up their sense of social responsibility, their social nature, their political nature, and their spiritual ideals. Watching one patient after another die before their eyes, when they were powerless to do anything, it stirred up their sense of social responsibility, their political awareness, and their spiritual evolution and elevation. These were all entirely new ideals for them.

Therefore, in your terms, those who died did not die in vain — they provided these survivors with such a negative example, provided these people with material that stirred them up.

Epidemics, because of their public nature, speak of public problems. In sociological terms, some problems threaten to sweep the individual into psychic disaster — just as, in biological terms, they threaten to sweep the individual into bodily disease. These problems have become so severe that they threaten to sweep every person into psychic or spiritual disaster, just as disease threatens to sweep every person's body into illness, to be swallowed up by disease. That is to say, epidemics reveal the problems that we must face and change on a spiritual or psychic level. If we do not change these problems, the spiritual life of each of us will be swallowed up, swallowed into darkness, and the light of our humanity or spirituality will be extinguished. The problem has become this severe, so it declares, protests, and struggles in a public way, in the way of collective suicide, in the way of collective death. If none of this works, it makes your society shut down and your economy stop. If these still cannot awaken humanity, it will become even more severe.

You feel that such psychological problems are not as obvious as disease. What impact will social despair, the hopelessness and despair of the lower classes, and the solidification of class have on human society? While these psychologists and sociologists were still discussing it, our spirituality had already begun to take action to solve this problem. Since you sociologists, economists, psychologists, and politicians cannot solve this problem, or you did not even intend to solve this problem, then spirituality steps in to solve it. Its method of solving the problem is extremely simple and blunt.

Many people have this confusion, and they leave me messages in private: why is it that after I come into contact with spirituality, the miraculous things that manifest in my life — why are so many things so direct, so fast that it is beyond imagination, giving me no transition or breathing room at all, and it is done in one stroke. In solving social problems it is the same — when spirituality acts, it is just this direct; in the words of ordinary people, it is just this simple and just this blunt, and whether you listen or not, the result is the same.

We usually do not pay attention to such problems, but they are just as dangerous as diseases that can destroy our bodies, and we must face them squarely now.

Individual Choice Within the Collective Adventure

These are also the reasons for the scope and boundaries of various epidemics. Why do they sweep through one region but spare another? Why, within the same family, do some die while others survive? Because within this collective adventure, the individual still forms his or her own personal thoughts.

The scope of an epidemic and the impact it produces depend on the severity of the problem. Today we are facing such a global pandemic, which proves that this problem has already become a global problem—it is no longer a problem of a certain region, a certain country, or certain social strata, but a problem that all of humanity must face together.

Even if it is a problem for all of humanity, even if it is a global pandemic, each person within it still has to form his or her own reality. Here your subjective will and your free will are not violated. You can still choose not to be drawn into it; you can still choose to be a hero, to be a patient, or to be a person who dies, joining in that collective protest. What identity and role you want to participate in is entirely up to you.

Here you must remember, you must never have this kind of pessimistic thought, saying, oh, then in the face of such a major pandemic I am powerless anyway, life and death are up to fate, whether I get sick or not is up to heaven—no. Here I must tell you: in this collective adventure—first of all, this is a collective adventure, we must acknowledge that now all of humanity is collectively protesting against those rulers hiding behind the scenes, protesting against the so-called deep state, the shadow government—but within this collective protest, this collective adventure, you as an individual still have your own choice. You can completely choose not to participate; you can completely choose to be a bystander; you can also completely choose to be a radical participant, a leader, a promoter, or even a patient, or a doctor, a medical worker fighting on the front lines saving the dying and healing the wounded—any of these is fine. What kind of role—the event has happened, the stage has been set, and in this grand drama of the era, what role you want to play is entirely decided by you as an individual.

The Role of Belief and Modern Medicine

He paused for a while in the middle, then went on to say that in your society, the belief in scientific medicine is still in operation, and the preventive medicine mentioned earlier, which adopts a measure of inoculation, brings about a very mild condition of illness in a healthy individual, and then elicits an immunity to a larger, massive invasion.

He brought the topic back again to the issue of vaccination discussed in the previous session. In our current society, the belief in scientific medicine is still in operation. We still listen to medical experts, biologists, scientists, the WHO, and the research experience of teams in various fields. But you must never forget that they are just like scientists specialized in a certain field, like those who study computers or nuclear physics—only in their field, they happen to study biology, viruses, epidemiology, and medicine. They do not have a higher level of cognition that would allow them to view this issue from a higher perspective. The suggestions and opinions they offer are limited to the scope of their biological field.

But humanity as a whole is still in the belief of trusting modern medicine, so it remains effective.

For any kind of disease, such measures will be quite useful to those who believe in them. However, what is useful is the belief, not the measure.

For any kind of disease, this modern medical treatment is very useful to those who believe in modern medicine. Why is it useful? Because he believes in that belief, not in the treatment measures that medicine gives him. We mistakenly regard these drugs, medical treatments, and surgical measures as the primary means of curing him, but those are only auxiliary means. What truly cures the person is his own belief. What kind of belief? He believes that modern medicine can cure him. He believes that this expert, professor, doctor, or attending physician has miraculous abilities, that he has already cured millions of patients, and that curing me is only normal. As long as I find him, and he performs surgery on me or treats me, I will get better. What truly makes you better is this belief, not whatever treatment that person gives you.

I did not suggest that you abandon such measures. I did not ask you to give them up. Why? Because it is clearly useful to so many people—when vaccines are still useful to the vast majority of people—yet you should understand why it can bring about the results people want. I am not telling you not to get this vaccine. I am telling you to understand exactly why this vaccine works. Because you believe in modern medicine, believe in these sciences, believe in these authorities, believe in these scientists—they tell you over and over again in newspapers, media, and television propaganda that we humans are about to develop a vaccine, that once the vaccine is developed we will be effective against the novel coronavirus, that we will have a lethal weapon, and so on—these things will subtly make you believe that the vaccine is our antidote, the only effective weapon against the COVID-19 pandemic. You will not think deeply about this: what is truly effective about this vaccine is people's belief in it. It is that you believed in it, believed in the views of these media and scientists, believed that it is effective against the virus.

However, each of these medical technologies has its own targeted diseases, and each scientific technology targets certain specific, particular diseases. You cannot inoculate a person with the will to live, the eagerness, the joy, or the satisfaction of a healthy animal. You can vaccinate a person against a virus, but you cannot inject into them the will to live, the eagerness, the joy, or the satisfaction of a healthy person.

The Natural Body and Its Defenses (Continued)

If you decide to die, and in this way avoid that particular disease, then you will quickly develop another disease, or meet with an accident. If you originally intended to die by becoming infected during an epidemic, but because of a vaccination that outcome was changed, and you did not die in it, then you may very quickly develop another disease, or meet with another kind of accident, and still die. Because you originally planned to end your life in this epidemic, in a manner of collective death. But because this is something you have already decided inwardly, and you yourself do not know it. So you normally believe that this vaccine is effective for the human body, and it is indeed effective—because you believe it is effective, it really is effective, and you will not get the disease. But if inwardly you still want to die, then he will use other means to die again.

Although preventive inoculation is effective against a particular disease, it may only reinforce the earlier belief that "the body is incompetent." The vaccine may be effective against a certain virus or a certain disease, but it will reinforce your belief that "my body is incompetent"—which is why you need to rely on external forces, on vaccines, on the means of modern medicine, to maintain health and avoid infection. And this in itself reinforces the idea that the body is incompetent, that the body cannot cope with such situations on its own, and must rely on the external. It seems that if you ignore it, the body will certainly develop whatever disease is fashionable at the time—just as if you do not get vaccinated, this epidemic, now that the pandemic is severe, in ordinary years it was all prepared for influenza, polio, tuberculosis, DPT, these traditional epidemic infectious diseases. You believe that if you do not get vaccinated, the body will certainly contract this epidemic disease, which is called a "fashionable disease," that is, an epidemic. Therefore, in terms of your beliefs, that victory of preventive inoculation may lead to ultimate failure. From the perspective of your beliefs, although this injection was a victory in terms of preventing this disease, it deeply implanted in you a deep belief that "my body is incompetent," and it will lead to your ultimate failure, because you no longer trust the body.

However, you have your own medical system, and I am not trying to overturn them, because they are overturning themselves.

I am not trying to overturn their medical system, because these medical systems are overturning themselves.

In your terms, some of my statements obviously cannot be verified. From the human perspective, much of what I said earlier cannot be verified, or cannot be proven in the laboratory, and it appears almost like a kind of blasphemy—blasphemy against modern medicine and against science. It does seem that way. If you took this set of Seth's theories and moved it into any cult, it would still hold up: if you are sick, you do not need treatment; you can be healed by belief alone. This sounds very much like what many cults say. So he says here, because it cannot be verified, sometimes it seems like a kind of blasphemy.

However, throughout history, regardless of the current state of medical technology, no one who died did not want to die. A certain disease has a certain symbolic meaning that changes with time and space. He says, I am not going to discuss whether the development of medicine in each historical period met the needs of the historical conditions of that time; I only want to tell you: of every person who died, there is not one who did not want to die; each one wanted to die on his own.

Then what is disease all about? Since every person dies because he himself wants to die, wants to commit suicide, then why does disease still appear? How can there still be such a thing as disease? He says every kind of disease changes with time and space, and it carries symbolic meaning. Do you understand what he means? Disease is a symbol—symbolizing that problems have appeared at the spiritual level of humanity. Of course, each disease symbolizes something different, and that is why disease causes people to die. But this disease is not real; it is a symbolic meaning. It is because this person wants to die that he develops such a disease.

Seth paused here for a moment, and he asked Rob if his hand was tired. Rob said no.

He said, in past years there has been heated discussion of Darwin's survival of the fittest, but very little emphasis has been placed on the quality of life and on survival itself.

Having finished discussing vaccines, he now changed to an even more important topic—whether we human beings should have a certain quality of life in our survival, or whether it is enough just to cling to life. There is an old Chinese saying, "A wretched life is better than a good death"—this is a traditional Chinese belief: no matter how oppressed life is, being alive is better than being dead. Seth raises such a challenge. Your Darwinian view holds that the fittest survive, but you rarely discuss what kind of quality that survival has. The fittest have survived, but if the quality of survival is very poor, then is there still any necessity to survive? If we human beings all live like ants, day after day, living a nine-to-five, repetitive life with no creativity whatsoever, contributing wealth to others while not knowing why we ourselves are alive—with such a quality of life, is there still any meaning for us human beings to survive in such a state? He is asking such a serious question.

He goes on to say:

To put it another way, we can reconsider the question. Very few people explore what makes life worth living.

Very few people discuss this question: what makes life worth living? In other words, what is the meaning of staying alive? Is it just to avoid death? What is the purpose of not dying? To live a few more years—what is the meaning of living a few more years? Seth has begun to press the soul's questions, and this kind of soul-searching is very striking—to use a phrase we often say, it has the feeling of something that wakes one up with a thunderclap.

Very simply, if life were not worth living, no species would have any reason to continue existing. A species is a kind of living thing. In other words, if human life had no meaning in continuing, then there would not exist such a species as humanity. This sentence is stated in reverse—we human beings must have some far-reaching meaning in living; if there were no such meaning, there would be no such race, no such species as humanity appearing.

He continues:

Each civilization is in fact a species of society.

Every kind of civilization, whether the ancient Mayan civilization, Chinese civilization, ancient Egyptian civilization, and so on, is a species within society. When a certain civilization can no longer see a reason to go on living, then they die—but they sow the seeds of other civilizations.

This point must be understood. On our human earth, there have been many cases of civilizations suddenly disappearing, such as Atlantis, such as the Mayan civilization, and some that we still do not know about, such as the continent of Mu, and so on. These civilizations that suddenly disappeared—Seth tells you why? Because they could not see a reason to go on living, so they simply died. This civilization disappeared from human history, and the reason lies right here—just like the disappearance of a species is the same, because that species also could not see the meaning of its own continued existence, so that species also disappeared. But then, they died, yet they sowed the seeds of other civilizations—this civilization disappeared, but other civilizations were born.

Your individual mental states, taken together, bring about the collective cultural stance of your civilization.

This passage is very important—the mental state of each one of us, taken together, will bring about the collective cultural stance of our entire human civilization. Are you positive and affirmative, or are you negative, despairing, and pessimistic? You are one very small person, but you are nevertheless a part, a member, of the collective civilization of all humanity.

Speaking of this, I am reminded of a mouse experiment. This experiment was exploring whether there is a collective subconscious, and it is very similar to the hundredth monkey experiment I talked about before. In Japan, they did the hundredth monkey experiment: they let some monkeys learn to wash sweet potatoes, and some monkeys did not know how to wash sweet potatoes, but when more than a hundred monkeys all knew how to wash sweet potatoes, then monkeys on other islands also automatically knew how to wash sweet potatoes. This experiment suddenly made human beings realize that in the world of monkeys, there seems to be a collective subconscious—when a certain number of individuals change, other individuals will suddenly acquire these skills.

Later, scientists did other experiments, one of which was this mouse maze experiment. Scientists took several dozen mice and had them pass through a maze, each mouse going through separately, and then timed them. After the first group of experiments was done, the average time was about two minutes and a few seconds. Then they did a second group of experiments, with a new batch of mice; the mice that had previously gone through the maze were no longer used. As a result, the collective average time of this batch of mice was cut in half, to only about one minute. Logically, the second batch of mice should be about the same as the first batch in intelligence, physical strength, and ability—they were all the same kind of laboratory mice—so they should have averaged about two minutes and eight seconds like the first batch, with some deviation, but not directly cut in half. The scientists did not understand, and wondered whether the first batch of mice had left behind some scent, or something undetectable to humans, when passing through the maze. They did a third experiment, and replaced the entire maze, but the layout was exactly the same—they replicated a new maze that no mouse had ever walked through. Then they used a third batch of mice for the experiment, and they were completely stunned: the third batch of mice averaged only 28 seconds to pass through the maze. 28 seconds was the shortest time among all the mice they tested for passing through the maze¹¹—one mouse passing smoothly through the maze without making any wrong turns, or even if it made a few individual wrong turns, the fastest it could pass through was still 28 seconds. But the average time of the third batch of mice was 28 seconds, which means every one of them passed through the maze in the shortest possible time. The scientists were completely baffled and did not know why. They could only hypothesize: there is a collective subconscious at the level of mice, and those mice that had passed through the maze would, through means unknown to themselves, upload their skills into this collective subconscious, and later mice would learn how to pass through the maze. Just like the hundredth monkey experiment mentioned earlier, the later monkeys had not learned it, and no one taught them; they were on another island, separated from the previous island by a vast ocean, yet somehow they knew that washed sweet potatoes tasted better.

These two experiments laid a very deep theoretical foundation and experimental evidence for Jung's theory of the collective subconscious of humanity, and made human beings begin to doubt and believe: does humanity also have a collective subconscious, unknown to us, in our dreams, at the bottom of our subconscious? Of course, those of us who have studied Seth and studied spiritual materials know that it certainly exists; Seth has emphasized countless times that it certainly exists, but scientists do not know, so they obtain this through experiments.

To put it simply, every success that each of us achieves, at the level of our individual selves, in our consciousness, in our spiritual pursuits, in the raising of our state of being—all of this plays a decisive role in raising the collective consciousness of all humanity. Your enlightenment, your understanding, the raising of your cognition, will drive the raising of the collective consciousness of all humanity. Therefore, in this era of the collective awakening of humanity, led by a certain base number of spiritually awakened people, at a certain period of time a collective awakening will begin. The work we are doing now, these tasks, are actually all part of the early groundwork, the process of sowing seeds. When the seeds blossom and bear fruit, it will be an explosion of the collective human consciousness, a collective awakening.

So Seth says, your individual mental states, taken together, bring about the collective cultural stance of your civilization. Then to a certain degree, the survival or non-survival of your civilization really does depend quite considerably on the condition of each individual. This statement is very weighty—whether our human civilization can continue to survive, really, he uses the word "really," he is not joking, nor is he serving up spiritual chicken soup; he tells you that in fact it really does depend quite considerably on the condition of each individual. To put it simply, if every one of us is despairing, full of powerlessness, in a state of having no hope for life, and then this state spreads to others—you tell others every day that life is hopeless, look at society, it is just like this, the big shots in society are just exploiting us and entertaining us, the classes have already solidified, you cannot afford a house, and even if you struggle you cannot afford a house, there is no meaning... This kind of despairing, pessimistic emotion is contagious. When it spreads to a certain degree, what does it produce? It produces epidemics, it produces plagues. Therefore, the mental state of every person determines the key to whether the entire human civilization survives; each of us is that person of decisive importance.

So China said long ago, "The rise and fall of the nation is the responsibility of every common person"—this is exactly the principle; everyone has responsibility.

And that condition is initially a mental or psychic state, which then produces the concrete organism, and that organism is intimately connected with the natural ecology of every other person, and of every other living creature or entity, no matter how small.

Let us explain this principle simply. What does he mean by "that condition"? It is the condition of each person—did he not say that the survival or non-survival of human civilization depends quite considerably on the condition of each individual? That condition is initially a mental or psychic state; at the most initial level, it is the psychic or mental state of each of us. Simply put, what kind of mindset you have, what kind of beliefs, what your mental state is like. And this initial mental, psychic state will then produce the concrete organism. In other words, if you have a positive mindset, you will produce a positive and optimistic body; you as a person will be positive and optimistic—this physical body is determined by your positive and optimistic mental state and psychological state. And that organism is intimately connected with the natural ecology of every other person—if you are a positive and optimistic person, will you not bring along a group of positive and optimistic people around you? You will influence the state of others. Other living creatures are the cats and dogs, the flowers and plants around us—if you are a positive, optimistic, and loving person, will you not treat the animals and plants around you well? Entities are souls, those formless spiritual bodies. Will you not respect those entities that are invisible and intangible, that exist in the spirit world, that exist in other dimensional spaces? No matter how small they are, you will influence them. Why? Because you are a carrier of spiritual energy, and the existence of this kind of spiritual energy will, like a kind of spiritual radiation, influence all people, things, and events around you.

So now you know how important your mindset as a person is.

Although in life there are all those vividly real stories of reality that serve as counter-evidence—what counter-evidence do they serve as? They tell you that "your positive mindset is useless; life is pessimistic, life is despairing." But:

The natural state of life itself is one of joy and self-approval, in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right.

Although in life you will see many vividly real realities—he puts "vividly real" in quotation marks—why? Because those are not real; they are used to frighten you, to test you, to confuse you. The despair and helplessness of life—if you can see through their essence, then you pass through them easily; if you take them as real, then you truly live in hardship and hopelessness. Life will give you these vividly real stories, so real it is almost unbelievable, real to the extreme. For example, the environment you live in undergoes drastic change; the person you love most dies of illness or meets with an accident, or he leaves you and falls in love with someone else—these are all extremely cruel things to you. Are they real? Very real. For many of us living in the three-dimensional world, that is real. But if you can see through this vividly real performance, you will not be so affected by it. Those things come to serve as counter-evidence against you—telling you that "your blind self-confidence and optimism, your belief that human nature is originally good, your belief that this world has love—all of that is too naive, and it is wrong." He uses such ideas to serve as counter-evidence against you. But no matter how he counters, no matter how real it is, Seth tells you that the natural state of life itself is joy.

It has no cause, no reason, no conditions—it does not require "I must have a big house, I must have a good job, I must have money before I can be joyful"; without these I am not joyful. These are conditions we human beings impose on ourselves. But true life, in its essence, is naturally joyful. Observe any kitten or puppy, observe a newborn baby—it is joyful, laughing from the heart, and you do not know what it is laughing about. Of course, when he is hungry he cries, and when he has wet himself he cries, but when he is not hungry and not wet, observe carefully—he is laughing, very happy. Where does the joy come from? Does he have a luxury car? Does he have fame and status? Is he a revered master? No. Then where does the joy come from? It comes from life itself. This is the natural state of life, that simple.

Then he says "self-approval"—this point is very crucial. Self-approval means acknowledging one's own state. What state? The state of joy. He also tacitly approves, tacitly accepts his own state, that is, he acknowledges that the present moment, accepting the present moment as the best arrangement, is the thing. In the state of self-approval of the present moment, action is effective—action is not powerless; action can change heaven and earth. By changing the people around you, by changing those creatures or entities around you that are no matter how small, no matter how insignificant, but intimately connected with you, the effectiveness of action is always there. It is just that sometimes you can see the effect, and sometimes you cannot. Just like the example Seth once gave: how do you know that when you walk down the street today, your bright smile and your kind gesture will not have a profound influence on a person who is about to commit suicide, changing his thoughts and ideas so that he does not kill himself? To that person, you may be his lifesaver, yet you only did what your own life should naturally have—joy from the heart—that simple.

And where does the sense of power to act come from? It is a natural right. To act is itself a natural right. Any idea you have must be put into practice; this is a natural and spontaneous behavior, just like a seed must sprout and a plant must blossom and bear fruit. This power of action is a natural right granted to us by the universe.

If you were not so blinded by opposing beliefs, you would see this quite clearly in plants and animals, and in all other life.

If you were not blinded by opposing beliefs, you would see all of this in nature. Many people are blinded, and they deny this. If you can see the beauty of a flower, the joy of living creatures in nature, the joy of cats and dogs living happily, then you can see it. You will feel it in the activity of your body—in the daily activities of your body's life, in the vitality of your body, you can feel its existence.

The vital individual affirmation of your cells brings about the massive and highly complex achievement of your physical body.

Each cell is extremely tiny, but the "individual affirmation" of each cell, which is extremely important, will bring about the highly complex achievement of the survival of your entire physical body. What achievement? It is that you are alive. Your being alive depends on the collective cooperation of the 50 trillion cells of your body, and every single cell is a tremendous affirmation of its own existence. At the level of the cell, it cannot perceive the existence and great significance of your entire massive physical body. He gives this example to say that the significance of each of us to the entire human civilization is the same as the significance of cells to our body. Each of us, through our own affirmation and positive living, will bring about one part of the glorious achievement of the entire human civilization.

I am not speaking of some romanticized, or passively indolent, spiritual world, but of an unobstructed, clear reality in which the emotions that hold sway are the opposite of despair and apathy.

I am not talking to you about a romanticized, passive, indolent spiritual world. I am describing for you an unobstructed, clear reality that is not veiled by other beliefs. In this clear reality, you should clearly see that what truly holds sway in the depths of your heart is the emotion completely opposite to apathy and despair—that is, being powerful, positive, confident, and proactive. Our inner life is like this, always positive, optimistic, and proactive, never despairing and apathetic.

This book is specifically about those states that promote spiritual, psychic, and physical desire—the biological and psychic factors that make a species want to continue:

Such factors promote the cooperation of all kinds of life on all levels. No one species is in competition with another, but instead they cooperate to form an environment in which all species can exist creatively.

This book is talking about this—how to achieve, in spirit, in psyche, in body, in all aspects of body, mind, and soul, that positive state we long for. And that state is the key factor that enables a species, a human civilization, to continue. These key factors promote—on all levels, remember, all levels, the tangible and the intangible, the conscious and the unconscious, the material and the non-material—the cooperation of all kinds of life on all levels. All kinds of life is equivalent to what Buddhism calls all sentient beings. They are in a cooperative relationship with one another. In Darwin's theory, living organisms are in competition with one another; the relationship between species and species is one of competition. Although he also mentioned symbiotic ecology, his main theme is a competitive relationship—survival of the fittest; whoever fits the environment of the time survives, and whoever does not fit is eliminated. But Seth says this is wrong: it is not a competitive relationship; all living things, all sentient beings, are in a cooperative relationship. We cooperate to form a common environment, and in this common environment, all species can exist creatively; there is no such thing as my existence depriving you of the opportunity or resources for your existence. Every race, every species, can exist very well.

Seth says:

End of dictation. We are going to have a thunderous book this time. You may end the session or take a break.

He said "thunderous"—I suspect this character was written incorrectly; it should be "thunderous." Seth already had a premonition that this book would indeed have very far-reaching influence and significance. He said you may end the session or take a break. By this time it was already 11:17, but Rob still hoped to bring in more material; their attitude was very positive. He said tonight's delivery had been very intense throughout, although there were many pauses, sometimes quite long ones. But before the session began, he was still doubting whether he really wanted to have a session, but as in other cases, once it began, he still delivered excellent material.

At 11:37, after a 20-minute break, they continued. By this time it was almost midnight. Since he wanted to continue, Seth went on:

You live in a physical community, but first of all you live in a community of thoughts and feelings, and these thoughts and feelings inspire your physical actions and directly affect the behavior of your bodies.

This viewpoint of his is very valuable in many places throughout Seth's books. You seem to live in a community—in America, the unit is a block or a certain community, just like the residential compounds in our country. American communities are ones in which neighbors watch out for one another, because when they immigrated from Europe to the American continent, it was open and empty there; every household kept dogs to guard against wild beasts attacking at night, and every household had guns—one reason was to guard against attacks by wild beasts, and also to guard against possible harm from other local people, and also to guard against the British invading them at that time. So their right to bear arms and their love of dogs have a long historical and cultural tradition. Community mutual watchfulness also exists because of their historical tradition; only in this way could they survive. When the colonies were first established, each colony had a self-governing body, and the militia organizations and national guard were all formed in this way. This is a product of a particular historical and cultural development. So for those who do not understand American history, do not use your own cognition to understand why America has the right to bear arms and so on; there is a historical development process and background to it.

Seth says, physically, on the material level, you live in a concrete community; but he says first of all you live in a community of thoughts and feelings. In other words, physically you live in a certain residential compound, but on the spiritual level you have a spiritual community. In this spiritual community, you have your own set of patterns of thought and thinking, and this pattern is like the community of your thoughts and feelings. You will divide it into many parts—there are close people, immediate family members, people you love and people you dislike, colleagues at work, friends, whether they are fair-weather friends or deep friends, and so on. In your daily life, your thoughts and feelings inspire your concrete actions, and these concrete actions directly affect the concrete behavior of your body.

His point is: your concrete actions are determined by the patterns of your thoughts, the categories of your thoughts. If your thoughts are in an upscale neighborhood—I think this vivid example works better—then the issues you consider are issues on a higher level; if your level of thinking is stuck in a neighborhood where people only struggle to put food on the table and fight to make a living, then it is equivalent to your living in a slum neighborhood, and the people around you and the things you encounter every day are all about scrambling to survive and scraping by. The neighborhood you live in may be hard for you to decide, because it is determined by housing prices and the surrounding environment. Basically, once you give your address, people know what kind of area you live in—this is very obvious in America, and it is the same in China. If you say you live in a certain part of Beijing or Shanghai, people can roughly tell your social status and class. But Seth tells you that this is not important; what matters is the neighborhood of your spirit. Only the neighborhood of your spirit can determine your behavior, and your behavior will bring about concrete actions, and these actions will directly affect the behavior of the body. You must constantly pay attention to what kind of neighborhood your thoughts are in—an upscale neighborhood or a low-end neighborhood. The metaphor he uses is excellent.

The experience of animals is different. In their own way, animals also have individual intents and purposes, and animals have both of these in their own way as well. Their feelings count every bit as much as yours do. They also dream, and they also reason in their own way.

Animals have their own intents and purposes—every animal has them, which is why there are stories like Hachiko the loyal dog and other deeply moving tales. They have their own feelings, and their feelings are just as real as ours, with no essential difference. They also dream, and they also reason in their own way. So this is why we understand why animals are sometimes so clever that they almost seem to have become spirits—because they also reason. Animals do indeed dream; you can observe this in small animals. They do not worry, which is different from us humans. When there are no obvious signs in their immediate environment, they do not anticipate disaster. Of course, if a natural enemy appears in their living environment as a threat, they will have a stress response, but when there are no such obvious signs, they do not anticipate that disaster will descend. Unlike humans, who anticipate what the future will be like, what will happen later—humans anticipate disaster.

When they live on their own, they do not need preventive medicine, yet pets are given preventive inoculations.

When animals live on their own, they do not need humans to vaccinate them. But modern pets, because they have lived with humans for too long, many pets also get vaccinated—cats and dogs all have four-in-one and three-in-one vaccines to prevent parvovirus and other viruses. Nowadays animals all have to be vaccinated, and it is also popular to sterilize animals, which has become a standard operating procedure. But in a purely natural environment, there would not be so many surviving kittens and puppies.

In a purely natural environment, you would not have so many surviving kittens and puppies.

He puts "purely natural" in quotation marks—because once humans are involved, you cannot define this purely natural. In an environment without human involvement, humans would not have so many kittens and puppies, because they have natural enemies and will die young. Mother cats and mother dogs give birth to several young at a time, and sometimes they cannot take care of them all, and there is not enough food to raise so many.

Physical existence has its stages, and in those terms, nature knows what it is doing.

The physical body, whether of every animal or every person, has a certain lifespan. For example, a cat lives for a few years and then dies, a dog lives for a few years and then dies. When a species, a kind of creature, overbreeds, instances of epidemics will increase. This applies equally to humans and animals. Why do animals need to be vaccinated now? Because the animal population is too large—human involvement has led to the raising and breeding of pets, and the number of kittens and puppies has increased dramatically. Once it exceeds the balance of nature, epidemics will break out, and that is why they have to be vaccinated. Humans are similar—if human medicine develops to a certain point, death is greatly delayed, human lifespan is extended, and so on, then humans will also encounter other disasters or natural calamities that will reduce the human lifespan by a certain amount.

The quality of life is more important than anything else.

This sentence is the key point. The quality of life is more important than anything else. We humans also have some awareness of this sentence, but generally in extreme situations we will give up the quality of life.

Animals that are born either die quickly, naturally, and painlessly before their consciousness is fully focused here, or they are killed by their mothers.

You will find that some animals eat their own young. Eating their own young is not because the young are physically ill or too weak to adapt to survival, but because the material environment cannot produce a quality of life that makes survival worthwhile. The conditions at birth are not enough to guarantee them a comfortable quality of life—if they cannot even eat their fill, then it is better to kill some of the young so that the remaining young can eat their fill. For example, if an eagle hatches four eaglets, and the food brought back in a day is only enough to feed two—if the environment is bad, and she divides the food among four, none of them will grow properly, none of them will get enough nutrition, and they may not even develop the ability to fly. In the end, all four may die, and even if they do not die, they may be killed by natural enemies. At that point, the mother eagle will kill two herself, leaving two that can survive with quality.

Humans also encounter this kind of situation. For example, in the 1920s and 1930s, there were neither contraceptive measures nor birth control measures, and farmers had nothing to do at night, so they had a great many children. It was common for a family to have eight, nine, or even more than ten children. But the material conditions and environment at that time could not support so many children, so many children died at birth. When a child died, the mothers of that era were not actually sad; they felt that if it died, it died—anyway, it would have been hard to raise it even if it had lived. If you can live, then live; if heaven lets you live, I will find a way to raise you. If you really cannot survive and die at birth, then die. That was how people of that era were, all of them.

However, such a consciousness that has so briefly taken physical form is not annihilated, but indeed, in your terms, waits for better conditions.

These consciousnesses that die young do not disappear; they do not vanish just because they died at birth. They are waiting for better conditions to come again.

In the human and animal species there are also similar kinds of trial runs, in which there is only a glimpse or a peek at physical life, and that is all.

Some creatures or humans only want to take a simple look at this material world, without really wanting to fully enter into it, and so this kind of early death or death in the womb occurs. This is all very normal.

Epidemics that sweep through animal populations are also a biological and psychic statement, for in them each individual knows that only its own greatest fulfillment can satisfy the quality of life on an individual basis, and thereby contribute to the collective survival of the species.

Some epidemics kill animals in vast numbers, one group after another. This is also a statement in biology and psychology—a statement that the current living conditions are not sufficient to satisfy the quality of life of each individual. Since the quality of life on an individual basis cannot be satisfied, they cannot contribute to the collective survival of their species. When each individual makes no contribution to the life of the whole, then this population has no reason to continue existing. To put it simply, when the natural environment and resources are insufficient to support them, epidemics will break out and cause certain species or populations in a certain area to disappear.

Suffering is not necessarily good for the soul.

You must remember this sentence. Suffering is not necessarily good for the soul. It is not absolute—on the whole, generally speaking, suffering is not good for the soul, but he does not say it is absolute. He uses "not necessarily," so his wording is very precise.

Left to themselves, wild animals do not seek it out.

Left to themselves, no animal will enjoy pain on its own, and no animal will practice asceticism, self-mortification, or torment itself the way humans do. Under natural conditions, animals will eat themselves sleek and glossy, as plump and beautiful as can be.

There is a natural compassion, a biological knowledge, so that an animal mother knows whether existing conditions can support her newborn offspring. Animals intuitively understand their relationship with the great force of life. Animals know that they would rather starve their young to death while the consciousness of the newborn is not yet focused, than let them fend for themselves under unfavorable conditions.

Among wild animals there is a natural compassion, and also a kind of biological knowledge. Animals intuitively know whether the current environment can support so many young. If it cannot, and these young cannot grow up healthily, then she would rather kill a few and keep only a few—otherwise, if all are kept, none can grow normally, none can escape the claws of natural enemies, and it would be better to let a few live very well. An animal will not give birth to ten young, let each one go hungry, and still keep them all alive. She will inevitably kill several of them so that the remaining ones can live well. You may say, how cruel is that to the small animals that are killed? But their consciousness has not yet focused, and they die before they have too deep a perception of the material world, so for them there is no great pain. This is far better than letting them fend for themselves under unfavorable conditions after they grow up. Nature understands this law.

In a natural state, for the same reason, many children are also stillborn.

In a natural state without human intervention, we humans are the same. Many children are stillborn. In ancient times, infant mortality was very high, and there were also many natural miscarriages.

Among all parts of nature, there is always a give and take.

Therefore, individuals often make such choices—for example, those mothers who may want to become pregnant but do not want the experience of giving birth. Souls with such ideas will choose to be born to a mother who only wants to become pregnant but does not want to give birth, experiencing those few months as a fetus, and then dying, miscarrying, or becoming stillborn. In this way, the wishes of two people are satisfied: one did not want to give birth in the first place, and the other did not want to be born but only wanted to be conceived. They choose the experience of being a fetus, but do not necessarily choose the experience of being a child.

Usually in such cases, these are fragment personalities—here he uses another term, not "personality fragment," but "fragment personality." They want to have a taste of physical reality, but are not yet ready to deal with it. However, every instance is individual—most have this possibility, but not every one is like this. You must not generalize and say that every fetus that dies early is like this. No, each one is unique, and this is only a general statement. You must remember this, and absolutely must not tell others that every fetus that dies early is like this.

Many children who would seem destined to die of disease or of infant epidemics nevertheless survive because of their differing opinions. The world of thought and feeling may be invisible, yet they set into motion all the physical systems with which you are familiar.

There are many children who should have died of disease or infant epidemics, but who survive because of their own differing opinions. By all reason they should have died young, but they have a strong desire to survive, a desire to continue living in the material world, and so they live. And this will to survive, just like the world of thought and feeling, is itself invisible, yet it sets the material world into motion—this thought and intention to survive will keep the physical body alive. This is the materialization of the material world.

Animals, like humans, can indeed make a social life that appears within a biological framework.

Animals, like humans, all have this possibility of being a social life within a biological framework. What does a social life within a biological framework mean? For example, getting sick is one kind, and dying is another—these all belong to the biological framework. But its deepest meaning is not biological—it does not want to display something biological; it wants to make a social statement. Many people get sick in this way, with a social dimension: wanting to attract others' attention, wanting more care, wanting love, or an inner sense of powerlessness, or emotions stuck somewhere.

For example, those sick kittens and puppies who choose to die—what fact do they point out?

That is, individually and as a group, the quality of their lives is extremely poor. Their relationship with their species is no longer balanced, and they cannot use their full abilities and powers, and many of them have not been given a beneficial psychic relationship with humans as compensation, but have instead been cast aside—discarded, abandoned.

Kittens and puppies are thrown away, unwanted and unloved. An animal that is not loved does not want to go on living. If you abandon a kitten or puppy, some of them will quickly contract a disease and die. The reason is that you no longer want it, no longer love it—small animals can feel this. When you do not love a small animal, it can feel it. An animal that no one wants and no one loves does not want to go on living either. So you should treat your pets well; they can feel what you are thinking.

Love involves self-respect, and trust in the individual biological enthusiasm and soundness.

Your love for a small animal involves self-respect—when you love it, it can feel your respect for it, and it can feel that it is respected, and this in turn brings about its own self-respect, as well as trust in its individual biological enthusiasm and soundness. It feels that it is lovable, worthy of trust, and should live with enthusiasm, because its owner likes it.

In this regard, animal epidemics, in their own way, have the same causes as human illnesses.

Seth not only discusses human epidemics, but also animal epidemics. Animals also suffer from various epidemic diseases—chicken plague, swine fever, and cats and dogs also contract many infectious diseases. Anyone who has raised a dog knows that once a dog contracts parvovirus, it will basically die very quickly. Animal epidemics, in their own way, have the same causes as our human epidemics—they are all a kind of spiritual, emotional, and social statement.

An animal can indeed commit suicide, and a human race or an animal species can do the same.

Have you ever seen an animal commit suicide? Far too many. Whales commit suicide; many whales beach themselves on the shore. There is also a kind of rodent that, at a certain time every year, runs in a group for hundreds of kilometers to a seaside and directly leaps off a sea cliff, forming a very mysterious biological phenomenon—humans still do not understand why they travel hundreds of kilometers over such a long distance just to seek death. Animals also commit suicide; you will find this if you observe carefully. A species can also commit suicide.

A lively self-respect, the self-respect of life, demands the maintenance of experience of a certain quality.

A lively life, a vital life—its self-respect, its demand upon life, the dignity of life—requires that a certain quality of life must be maintained, that one must have a quality experience of life, and not an experience of living that is worse than death. Rather than live a life worse than death, it would rather commit suicide. This helps us understand why some animals or some people would rather commit suicide—because for them, living is too painful.

Seth says:

Dictation ends, and the session ends. I heartily wish you well, and bless you.

He says, now trust that Ruburt's own condition has already begun to change—Ruburt is getting better and better now. Rob says thank you, Seth, and good night. It was 12:17 at that time.

Jane says in the preface to this book that recently the information about her own condition has already made considerable progress.

Afterward there is a note. According to the usual accounts, various plagues, including bubonic plague and the notorious Black Death, were transmitted to humans by fleas carrying bacteria from infected rats, and other forms of this disease were spread by other rodents. According to Seth, through the complex interactions and communications involving all forms of life, humanity's deep dissatisfaction periodically sets in motion the recurrence of disasters such as plagues. For example, in Rome in the third century, it is said that thousands of people died every day¹²; and it is estimated that within twenty years in the fourteenth century, three quarters of the total population of Europe and Asia died; and in the Great Plague of London in 1665, a great many people also died¹³.

The second note: the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), in his theory of organic evolution, maintained that all generations of animals and plants developed from their own earlier forms by inheriting slight variations, and only those best adapted to the environment were most likely to survive¹⁴. He made an elaboration: surprisingly, another English naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), independently developed a similar theory¹⁵, and the two met in 1858 and presented their work to the scientific community in the same paper. The following year, Darwin published the famous treatise On the Origin of Species¹⁶, which is Darwin's theory of evolution. I am certain Seth would say that this whole matter was by no means coincidence, because he said several times: in a certain historical period, new concepts often appear more than once, independently. This kind of idea should have appeared more than once at that time; a new concept appears more than once, and here he gives just one example.

Summary

This chapter is very rich and very long, and it can be divided into several parts to be listened to separately. Earlier it talked about the social, the societal causes of epidemics, and later it talked about how both human beings and animals should live with quality. The quality of life is more important to life itself—in other words, if there is no quality of life, then one would rather not live at all. This is something life itself knows; it is not a belief instilled in it by anyone, but the most important decision it naturally knows on its own. In a natural state, it will always make this choice, without needing a cultural, humanistic awareness that says, "If I cannot live with dignity, then I would rather die." He says there is no need for humanistic factors; nature itself is the same way—if one cannot live with dignity, then one dies. He uses the example of animals to reverse the earlier example and tell you why epidemics break out among human beings: too many people at the bottom live too stifled and too painfully, wanting to change but unable to change, wanting to push for reform but lacking the strength, and so this creates a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness, an extreme disappointment with life, which then leads to the outbreak of disease. Seth's way of looking at problems is indeed different from ours, and we can draw a great deal of reference and deep reflection from it.

Session 803

The Inner Environment and the Formation of Matter

At the very beginning of this Monday, May 2, 1977 session, Seth spoke about the wholeness of humanity and nature. He said:

Your sciences are learning the concrete relationship between man and nature. Man is obviously a part of nature, and is not separate from it.

This is a belief we should hold: there is no division between humanity and nature, or between humanity and the universe. Do not separate ourselves from them -- I am me, the universe is the universe, nature is nature. Because from the material level, our breathing, the exchange of our skin, the atoms and molecules of our bodies, are all composed of nature, and are constantly exchanging with nature. This whole series of facts proves that we are one with nature.

Human scientists are now also recognizing this, because people are raising many environmental issues, concerning the impact of humans on the world they inhabit.

Yet, there is an inner environment that connects all consciousnesses of whatever form belonging to your earth.

This spiritual, psychic, in any case formless environment, is always in a state of flux -- a state of flowing change. This activity provides all of your exterior phenomena.

What he means in this passage, simply put, is this: when we humans consider environmental issues from the material angle, that is our normal life -- driving, pollution emissions, air pollution, environmental pollution -- the impact on the earth or nature. That is the level humans consider.

But what is the level above this? It is what connects all living things on earth, all things -- including what you consider lifeless and living, animals, plants, microorganisms, and also minerals, the atmosphere, water, soil -- all of these have an inner realm of consciousness, a nonphysical, inner environment. Similar to our outer natural environment, such an inner environment exists.

Within the overall conscious environment of the entire earth, human consciousness or the collective subconscious of humanity is also a part of it. This level of the entire earth's consciousness is always in a state of flux, always flowing and changing. And our outer physical environment is manifested from this inner environment -- that inner environment is the more important one.

Although scientists pay attention to our impact on the natural environment, that is considered from the material level. What should really be considered is this: on the inner level, with the overall conscious environment of the whole, how do we affect the entire earth and the natural environment at that level. Only when changes are first caused at that level will changes then be caused on the outside.

Simply take the pandemic as an example: first, within the collective human consciousness as a whole, or within the consciousness of the entire earth, there came to be the possibility and preparation for this outbreak, and only then did it manifest in the physical world. Just as he said earlier, when despair and hopelessness accumulate to a certain degree, reaching a certain range and scale, they will erupt. This kind of changing, creative transformative force will erupt.

Regarding the body and perception, he said:

In terms of the body, your sense perceptions are the results of the actions of organs that seem to have no reality of their own except in their relationship to you.

How should we understand this sentence? As far as your physical body is concerned, what are your sense perceptions? They are the results of the actions of organs that seem to have no reality of their own except in their relationship to you. That is to say, your sensations and perceptions are all provided to you by your eyes, nose, ears, and other organs. For example, the nose can smell odors; it is the nose itself that smells them. The eyes, by moving and focusing, see things. We think these are all results brought about by the sense organs.

But have you ever considered: apart from their relationship to us, do these sense organs have their own reality? Do the eyes have their own world? Do the ears and nose have their own cognition? Does each visual cell, each olfactory cell, have its own world? From the perspective of the eye itself, does it have its own cognition?

In other words, is the world the eye sees the same as the world you feel in your brain, or the world you feel in your beliefs or consciousness? This is what he is talking about. These organs themselves are composed of atoms and molecules that have their own consciousness; they have their own states of sensation and cognition. They work for you, allowing you to perceive physical reality. They let you feel this world -- fragrant or foul, tasty or not, beautiful or not. As for what these sensory cells themselves feel, and whether it is the same as what you feel, that is something we ordinarily never consider. What you consider fragrant -- is it fragrant to the tongue? When your eyes see a beautiful woman, is she a beautiful woman to the eyes?

The eyes and ears seem always to be mere appendages of the body, but have you noticed -- the material components of these sense organs are constantly changing, and you have not become any smarter for it.

Your ears no doubt seem always to be an appendage, and so do your eyes. Yet the material components of these sense organs are constantly changing, and you have not become any smarter for it.

That is, whether your eyes are blue or dark, they change every day; the molecules and atoms within them change every day. Although the body appears quite reliable, firm, and stable, you are not aware of the constant interchange taking place between it and the material environment.

The characteristic components of your body are composed of entirely different atoms and molecules than those that composed it seven years ago. The hands you are familiar with actually have nothing to do with even the smallest material substance that composed them even recently. Yet none of this troubles you.

Simply put, our bodies are changing at every moment. If you perceive it in terms of atoms and matter, it is no longer the same hand it was before. Scientists have now discovered that every seven years, all human cells are completely renewed¹⁷. Some cells have a lifespan of only a few dozen days, at most a few months before they are metabolized; seven years is the complete renewal cycle.

He said, you regard your body as solid, and once again you make the deduction -- that the senses themselves are the result of the behavior of atoms and molecules.

And those atoms and molecules really did come together to form organs, filling out a physical pattern. All other objects that you perceive are formed in the same manner, in their own way.

We think our bodies do not change, identifying with this body as constant over several decades. But this cognition of yours -- the cognition that you do not change, that the body is this way -- is itself formed by the physical brain. And the physical brain itself is also the result of the behavior of atoms and molecules. Even your thinking that the body is solid is the result of the combined movement of molecules and atoms.

Those atoms and molecules really did come together to form organs, and then filled out a physical pattern or mold. You can imagine: there is a formless mold, and then cells, atoms, and molecules fill it. Our bodies today, whether eyes, nose, or the whole body, are all first formed by an invisible mold, and only then do atoms, molecules, and cells go and fill it. Not only you -- all the matter around you is produced in this way.

Translating this as "pattern" is not quite right; it should be "mold" -- making mooncakes, making flower cakes, making industrial products all require molds. A mold is something fixed that gives shape, and you fill it with material. The material world we perceive is formed by countless invisible molds. These patterns are plastic, changeable, not dead.

The reason is this: although they exist, their final form is a possibility directed by consciousness.

Although the mold exists, what kind of finished product is ultimately made is decided by the consciousness that finally manifests it. For example: the human body, the human shape, is a mold -- two feet, two hands, eyes and nose, the general shape of the human form exists. But what it ultimately grows into is not fixed; it is plastic, decided by the consciousness that ultimately controls this physical body, the soul fragment, personality fragment, entity, the reincarnating consciousness of this lifetime that enters this body. Apples have the mold of apples, pears have the mold of pears, but no two apples are exactly alike, and the reason lies here.

The Forms of Thought and the Reality of Perception

He says these patterns themselves can be activated in countless ways. These molds exist in the universe, and when they are activated, when they are filled, when they manifest into matter—there are countless ways, countless possibilities.

Something out there is watching.

He is being humorous—as if there were a heaven, a creator watching. What he actually means is: at that level there are laws by which they operate, and the laws are as if watching over you. He is emphasizing this in a personified way.

But it is your sense organs that determine what form that something will take.

The material world we see—the reason it presents itself before us this way—is determined by our sense organs. The material world rises up before your eyes, but your eyes themselves are part of the material world, also composed of atoms, molecules, and cells.

You cannot see your thoughts.

Because you have not recognized that thoughts have form and appearance. Thought is an electromagnetic reality, like clouds, with currents of thought. Just as you cannot see the flow of air, but you can see the results of air flowing—leaves being stirred, flags being unfurled. Likewise, you cannot see the flow of thought, but you cannot deny that thought flows, because it brings results.

And the mental patterns of human emotion and thought are like flame arising from fire, or water vapor arising from hot water, and the ash or rain that falls down.

What is flame composed of? Fire is not a substance; it is a phenomenon of chemical reaction. Water vapor? When we go to the south we can feel the air is humid, yet we cannot see the humid air. When flame burns out it leaves ash; water vapor rises into the sky to form clouds, then condenses into rain and falls.

What he means is: although you cannot see thought, the patterns of human emotion and thought are the evidence that thought has existed. You cannot see the flow of thought, but you can see the results of the flow—your emotions, your patterns of thinking, are the results of your thoughts.

All the components of the inner invisible environment, acting together, form temporary weather patterns that are externalized mental conditions. Then, regionally and collectively, they show you a concrete version of humanity's emotional state.

The collective action of the inner invisible environment forms temporary weather patterns. Our collective beliefs influence the weather. This weather pattern is the externalized mental condition, allowing us to sense changes in collective beliefs or collective emotions through changes in the weather. It can be a local display, or it can be a collective one.

Regarding the "inner invisible environment," many people can understand it and yet cannot understand it, always feeling it is vague and intangible. Let me give a vivid example so you can understand. Earlier he gave this example: you humans all live in a residential community, and within this community you exist materially. You can imagine the existence of a "spiritual community"—every day you wake up, walk from your building into the community, and you have an overall feeling about the community: whether it feels safe, comfortable, warm, upscale, or run-down, poorly maintained, or full of birdsong and flowers. Your inner perception of the surrounding environment is your spiritual community.

We think the external material community determines the perception of the spiritual community, but what he wants to tell you is: it is exactly the reverse—the decisions of your spiritual community influence the material community. You say that is not right, I cannot change the material community, it is inherently dirty and chaotic. But if you have a strong belief, hoping that the community you live in is full of birdsong and flowers, while the community you actually live in has sewage everywhere and garbage all over—I tell you, before long you will move away from this community and go live in the beautiful community you imagined. At that point, has it not changed? Tell me, in the end does matter determine consciousness, or does consciousness determine matter? When you are living in a community full of birdsong and flowers, that old community is already completely different from you in terms of time, space, and reality.

This example is meant to give many people a concrete understanding of this inner invisible environment. Each person has their own spiritual community; on a larger scale there is the concept of a neighborhood; larger still there is a city, a province, the south or the north, a nation or ethnicity, and even the identification of the entire human species. The scope and levels differ, but in all cases there exists an invisible environment and an invisible world, and that invisible world is in turn the source that forms our actual material world. We often get it backwards—thinking the material world is what matters, and the inner spiritual world is unimportant.

Fluidity and Stability, Death and Rebirth

Seth went on to say:

Obviously this physical planet is also in a state of flux. At the same time, however, in operational terms, or in terms of reality, it is quite stable.

This is very subtle. Take the example of a person: every day cells are changing, but you feel that you have not changed, that you are the same as yesterday. The earth is the same way. It is changing every day, yet we feel that it is extraordinarily stable, and that it will continue to exist stably for billions of years.

The matter on this planet is also composed of truly infinite groups of consciousness. Each one experiences its own reality, while at the same time adding to the entire cooperative adventure.

Why use the phrase "cooperative adventure"? When each of us creates the world and creates personal reality, we are always in an environment full of challenges. Seth hopes that we will rise to challenges with vigor, and not be content with mediocrity—this is his basic requirement for us as people living in this physical world. Rising to a challenge means there is the possibility of success and the possibility of failure; refusing to be content with mediocrity means being a one-of-a-kind person. Everyone is challenging themselves, and our entire world is formed by the cooperation of these experiences of challenge and creation.

Each person, while creating their own reality, also adds to the whole. It is like how every cell has its own cellular consciousness, and a group of cells forms tissues and organs, which together form the human body. While each cell creates for itself, it also adds to the entire body.

Regarding natural disasters, he said:

Natural disasters are an understandable, prejudiced concept. In them we overlook the enormous creative or renewing factors that are very important to life on the planet, including human life.

Natural disasters are viewed with prejudice, as if natural disasters were bad. But natural disasters are not bad—volcanic eruptions formed the land, plate movements, earthquakes, and the flowing of the seas are all renewal and creation. The stability of this planet is built upon such changes. Forest fires, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are all indispensable to the stable functioning of the planet.

Just as the stability of the body is dependent upon the birth and death of cells.

The birth and death of cells maintains the fundamental stability of the body. If a cell did not die, but only gave birth without dying, that cell would be a cancer cell. A cancer cell is not poisonous or harmful; its only harm is that it keeps reproducing and absorbing nutrients. People must die, just as cells must die.

Not only because if this were not the case, it would cause the population to expand excessively and destroy the world.

If human beings did not die, the population would expand beyond imagination. But this is only one of the reasons.

But also because the nature of consciousness requires new experience, challenge, and achievement.

Why do people die? Besides the necessity of maintaining the functioning of the planet, there is another reason: the soul no longer has any further creativity within this physical body, and must begin a new life anew. The body has already limited it, and it wants to pursue new experience, new challenges, and new achievements.

For example: you play a game, and you have chosen your character's gender, appearance, and skin color, and then you are told that you cannot change any of it, that you must play only this one character, this one game, this one historical setting for your entire life, and the character does not even die. Would that game still be interesting? The same environment, the same teammates, the same storyline, no new challenges, and no possibility of achieving new accomplishments.

So Seth said something very important:

If there were no death, you human beings would have to invent death.

You can imagine it: suppose humanity solved the problem of death today, and from now on people lived forever without dying—this is an achievement that human beings have dreamed of for thousands of years. But what would actually happen when that time came? Before long, the most important thing human beings would have to invent would be death. When immortality became a form of suffering, human beings would instead go and invent death.

Because the scope of that self-nature would be so narrow, it would be like a great sculptor having only one piece of stone to carve.

How could a creative sculptor possibly spend an entire lifetime carving only one work? Giving him only one piece of stone would be a tremendous burying of his creativity, even an insult. If this life of yours is one work of the soul (the sculptor), today he carves a male figure, tomorrow a female figure, today a Venus, tomorrow a David—with this vivid metaphor, you can understand why human beings must die.

The sculptor's works are actually quite real. For they exist like objects, and can be perceived quite legitimately, just like your world. However, the sculptor's statues come from that inner environment, that pattern of possibilities.

Our physical world is the sculptor's work. The inner world, or the inner spiritual environment, is that sculptor.

The Game of Atoms and Molecules

He says:

From your perspective, a chair is just a chair. When Ruburt speaks for me, he sits in a chair. When you read this book, you are also most likely sitting in a solid and real chair or sofa, and the atoms and molecules within it are quite alert as well.

The atoms and molecules in a chair or sofa are alert and aware. Although we do not acknowledge them as living, they are still alive. Consciousness is an energy body that can be aware of its own existence; any energy that can be aware of its own existence is consciousness. Atoms and molecules have their own self-cognition; they know they are themselves, and they know what state they are in at the present moment.

When children play ring-around-the-rosy, they form their living circles in space. In that game they enjoy the movement of their bodies, yet they do not identify with those spinning circles.

When children play games, they often draw a circle and say, this is my house, this is my fortress, you cannot rush in. When playing, these imaginings that adults find laughable are utterly real to the children—they will truly cry over them, truly get angry, truly become happy.

In the same way, the atoms and molecules that compose a chair play a different kind of ring-around-the-rosy game, and are involved in different motions, forming a pattern that you perceive as a chair.

The reason we perceive a chair is that atoms and molecules are moving according to the perceptual pattern of a chair. Perception is a pattern; when atoms and molecules move according to this pattern, you feel that it is a chair; if they move like water, you feel that it is a puddle of water; like air, you feel that it is a patch of air. The core point is this: when molecules and atoms move according to your mode of perception, the physical world is formed.

These living circles are only an impression in a child's mind; this circle does not exist, just as the chair does not exist either. But within the game, these circles and chairs are real existences. The motion of atoms forms the chair, but does the chair exist? Of course the chair does not exist; it is composed of atoms and molecules. Anyone who has studied middle-school physics can understand that the essence of a chair is atoms and molecules. Why do you think it is a chair? Because of your sensory system, your perception.

If you look at it under an electron microscope, it is just atoms. He has been constantly dismantling our "image" of the physical world, telling us that the physical world is a perceptual result formed by the spiritual world. Just as the circle truly exists within the game—it exists for those who accept the rules of the game, and it does not exist for those who are not playing the game. Einstein said the most classic line: when you are not looking at the moon, is the moon there? When you are not perceiving the moon, does the moon really exist? All things in this world exist because of your perception; it exists only because you took that one look.

The difference in motion is so varied.

There are only a little over one hundred kinds of atoms that make up the universe. These hundred-plus kinds of atoms, through different combinations and different forms of motion, compose everything in the world that we can see with our naked eyes and perceive today.

So much so that to you, each chair appears to be as permanent as your own body.

The chair is changing, and the body is changing too, but your perception makes you think they are unchanging. The chair is of course not permanent; it appears to be—be sure to remember this, "appears." In reality it is not.

Atoms and molecules, like children, enjoy their motion. Yet from your perspective, they are solidified into form in space, and you are completely unaware of it.

This "unaware" is in quotation marks—actually your inner self knows, but the conscious level does not know. You regard that motion as a chair and use it as a chair. When you sit on a chair you do not fall through, even though the spaces between atoms are so vast, precisely because you perceive it according to your cognition, and it exists in the way you perceive it.

Yet that agreement takes place at the psychic level, and is never completely fixed.

You cognize those atomic motions as a chair in the way you perceive them. You know this at the psychic level and accept it: it is clearly a bunch of atomic motion, yet I treat it as a chair. But this "agreement" is not conscious on your part—you do not first analyze the atomic motion and then decide to treat it as a chair. "Agreement" is in quotation marks because it is a psychic-level acceptance that occurs unknowingly, in an unconscious state. And this perception, this atomic activity, has never been completely fixed. It is a probable existence, an existence that you perceive.

A person does not see the same chair at different moments. Although perhaps from different angles, this particular chair may appear to be the same chair.

Three people in a room looking at the same chair actually each see their own three chairs in their eyes. The same applies across time: you see this chair today, and when you see it again tomorrow, it is no longer that chair—the atoms and molecules, the vibrational frequencies, the modes of motion, have all changed. But why do you still think it is the same chair? Just as you have changed dramatically from infancy to today, yet you still identify the child you once were as you, and have never doubted it.

This motion of atoms and molecules is continuous in your locale. Broadly speaking, no chair ever remains as it was. When you discuss mass events, all of this must be taken into consideration.

This is why we must first discuss these matters—because these matters are the foundation, the essence. Without clear and accurate cognition, one cannot truly understand mass events. The same event is different in different people's eyes: for example, with this current pandemic, everyone sees it differently.

Scientists and the Concept of the Human Brain

During the break, he said his cat climbed into his lap, and his trance state had been very good throughout. Then he continued:

A scientist probes the brain of an idiot or a genius, and he will only find the physical substance of the brain itself.

If scientists wanted to study the differences between the brains of idiots and geniuses, they would find no difference. Scientists have always studied Einstein's brain. After his death, it was frozen, sliced, and preserved, in an attempt to find what was different about it in terms of human intelligence or brain development¹⁸, but they found nothing. The composition of the brain is the same.

He will not find a concept residing in a brain cell. You can try to convey a concept, and you can feel the effects produced by that concept, but you cannot see the concept the way you see this chair.

Concepts are invisible. The thoughts in the brain are invisible. But he said:

Only a fool would say that concepts do not exist.

Can you deny the importance of your thoughts? Up to this point in your life, isn't the most important thing your thoughts and feelings? This is very subtle -- we can study everything in the world the way we study a chair, conducting all kinds of scientific experiments and observations. Yet when it comes to the most central part -- human cognition, feelings, concepts, wisdom -- there is no way to study them the way we study a chair. But you cannot deny their existence either.

Nor can you find any dream's existence in the brain.

The solid matter of your world is the result of your senses acting upon an inner dimension of activity. And that inner dimension of activity exists in the same way that a concept or a dream does -- in that same river, yet just as frustratingly hidden.

Our physical world is the result of your senses -- it must be "your" senses, not someone else's -- acting upon an inner dimension of activity (a dimension, a reality). This inner dimension of activity exists like dreams, like concepts, like thoughts -- invisible and intangible, yet so truly present. You cannot find it, but you cannot deny its existence. It is simply not within our dimensional space, and you cannot find it by using the methods for locating three-dimensional matter, because the method is wrong.

Seeds and Harvest

He ended with a vivid metaphor of seeds:

You can easily see that seeds bring forth the fruits of the earth. Each is after its own kind, and every seed produces a different fruit. No one seed is exactly like another. Generally speaking, however, there are varieties that unite them.

Apple seeds produce apples, pear seeds produce pears, but the fruit each seed produces is different, and even the fruit on the same tree is different. You would not mistake an orange for a grape.

In the same way, concepts and thoughts form the outlines, the generalized patterns, that bring certain events into your world.

In that regard, your thoughts and emotions sow physical reality, and bring about all of its materializations.

Your concepts and thoughts form a kind of mold with outlines, bringing certain events into your world. Thoughts and emotions sow physical reality, bringing about all of its materializations.

Invisible Administrative Divisions

He then began to discuss the material world, and the relationship between our concepts of thought and the material world. He went on to discuss how, politically, things operate quite smoothly, with people living in villages, towns, states, and counties, each place having its own customs and local ordinances.

He was talking about the United States. In the United States, wherever you live, the laws in each place are completely different. It is not like the uniformity that those of us living in mainland China are accustomed to: all the laws are the same, all the systems are the same, and everyone follows a unified approach. The United States itself is a federal system, with 50 states¹⁹, and these 50 states voluntarily joined a federation. From the standpoint of the legal system, each state remains independent to this day, but they voluntarily joined a federation -- I am willing, in terms of foreign diplomacy and foreign military affairs, or in terms of an overall external identity, to acknowledge the existence of the United States of America, but in terms of independent governance and independent legal systems, each state is independent.

Then every county below that, every city, every region, has its own separate ordinances. For example, to take the simplest case, in a place like Los Angeles, in some cities when you park your car the front of the car must face inward -- this is required by law, and if you do not park that way you will be fined. In other places, if you drive out for five or ten minutes, the local area has no such regulation, and you can park in all sorts of ways, even backing in, but in some places that is not allowed, and if the police see it they will give you a ticket.

Likewise in Los Angeles, in some cities growing marijuana is legal, while in other areas growing marijuana is still illegal and not permitted. There are many, many subtle differences. Cities in the United States are very small, and counties are larger than cities. At the top is the federal government, below the federal government are the states, below the states are the counties, also called jun, which is "county"; below the counties are the cities. For example, Los Angeles County has 88 cities²⁰, and the Los Angeles City we often talk about is just one of those 88 cities. Each of these 88 cities is different: in some cities you can park overnight on the street with no problem, no one bothers you; in other cities street parking requires a permit from the city, and without a permit you will be fined. The regulations are endlessly varied.

What is he trying to illustrate with these examples? Every locality has laws, each has its own ordinances, but these do not affect the land itself in any way. Do the local laws have any effect on the piece of land where they apply? No effect. The land is still the same land; it is just that we have artificially drawn many virtual city boundaries, saying this place is this city and that place is that city. When you go to this city, such-and-such behavior is legal; when you go to that city, it is not. And between one city and another, there is no difference whatsoever in the land itself; there is only an invisible, human, administrative division. And this administrative division, as far as the land is concerned, is virtual, yet it is effective. You cannot deny its effectiveness -- if you deny it, then just go ahead and accept the ticket.

He uses this example to help you understand the relationship between reality and virtuality. It is called that for practical purposes. You would not divide cities according to the properties of the land -- saying this sandy land follows these laws, and that black soil follows those laws -- no. It is always divided according to an administrative, invisible, virtual division.

What he is actually trying to tell you with this approach is this: you call it a chair because you have named it; it is called a chair, but in itself it may simply be the land. In other words, you call this place Los Angeles City because you have drawn an administrative unit around it, and it is called Los Angeles City. If you changed the name, it would have no effect on the land; it would still be the same land. You probably understand what I mean.

And on one level, they imply an organization of intent or alliance. On a virtual level, on a level where everyone has reached a consensus, or on the level of law, of administrative units, of social governance or social systems, this kind of virtual division of cities represents an intent or an alliance, an organization. They are a kind of political pattern; you could call it a kind of mold -- draw a virtual line, this place is called this, that place is called that, this place has this system, that place has that system. Although this mold is invisible, it is extremely effective. For example, when you cross a border, even though it is the same land, simply because this virtual border line exists, you have to go through customs, through immigration, through the border.

The Inner Psychic Atmosphere

He said human thoughts and emotions are the same, organized, or one could say naturally organized, into vigorous, numerous, invisible psychic patterns. He said it is not as simple as the political patterns of your human societies, with their organizations, cities, and institutions. He said your inner world, that psychic pattern, is far richer and far more vigorous.

Take the simplest example from what I just mentioned: you know that in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a street in Shenzhen leading to Hong Kong called Chung Ying Street, in the Sha Tau Kok area. Half of this street belonged to Shenzhen, and half belonged to Hong Kong, divided down the center of the street. One side of the street was one way, and the other side was another way, so it was called Chung Ying Street, because at that time Hong Kong was still under British jurisdiction. That is a typical example: the same street, the same piece of land, becoming two different systems because of different administrative divisions.

The principle is the same. He uses this example to help us understand that this kind of virtual division is effective. In other words, we think in our minds that atomic motion is real, that this is the true nature, the truth of the matter; but our virtual belief that it is a chair is also effective. That is to say, the pattern of a chair in your psychic world, the mold of a chair, or the functions, uses, and appearance a chair should have, are all effective, and they are far richer by comparison.

Every person's thoughts flow into the construction of that psychic pattern, forming part of the earth's psychic atmosphere. We have formed an overall psychic atmosphere for the entire planet. And that kind of psychic atmosphere naturally materializes into the appearance of existence on our natural earth. The appearance of our earth is the materialization of this psychic atmosphere that we have jointly formed. Your seasons, with all their changes and effects, emerge from it.

Your seasons, with all their changes and effects, emerge from it.

Our changing four seasons, and all the changes and effects they produce, all emerge from this.

You are never the victims of natural disasters, though it may seem so, for you all have a hand in their formation.

So none of you are victims of natural disasters, because you all have a hand in their formation. What he means is, you are not victims of natural disasters; you all have a share in the formation of these disasters. Do not remove yourself from the picture and say it has nothing to do with you, that this earthquake, this tsunami, this volcanic eruption has nothing to do with you. He says it all has to do with you; you are all one molecule in its formation; you all have a hand in it.

The Uniqueness of Birth and Death

Your creativity is involved in the cycles of the earth.

Your creativity does not only form your own reality; you are also involved in the cycles of the earth, or in the workings of the earth.

No one can be born or die in your place.

Your own birth is your own affair, and your own death is also your own affair.

But no birth or death is truly an isolated event.

He is speaking from two angles: your birth and death are unique events for you, so no one can take your place; but your birth and death are absolutely not isolated events. They are a component part of the whole planet, of all humanity, of your entire family -- no matter from which level you look at it. They are not isolated; they influence and facilitate one another.

It is a world in which the whole earth takes part.

Your birth and death may seem very small, but they are events in which the whole earth takes part.

Again, in personal terms, the concern of each species is not only survival, but the quality of its life and experience.

He says each species, that is, every kind of living thing, such as human beings. The existence of a so-called species is not only about survival. What this species seeks is not merely staying alive, but a certain quality of life and experience.

How should we understand this sentence? It is very simple, because we have our mental activities, right? Our mental activities form our material world, so our material world is not just about eating our fill and then sleeping, sleeping our fill and then eating, living like pigs. It is because our material world is a manifestation of our spiritual world. Your spiritual world itself has its own quality, and this quality determines that our material life should also have quality. If such quality cannot be attained, one would rather die. This is what he covered in the previous session: if the dignity of your life cannot be basically satisfied, or if the quality of your life cannot be basically guaranteed, then the soul behind this life that supports it will choose to end this life and begin a new one.

Because for the soul, life is not limited to one time. Life is like a game you play, or like carving a piece of stone. If he feels the stone is too loose and cannot be carved -- it crumbles and breaks as soon as you carve it -- then he will switch to another stone and continue. That is the idea. It is like playing a game: if the environment the character is in is very poor and harsh, and basically you get killed after taking a step or two, and you keep searching for resources but cannot play on at all -- then the best approach at that point is to start a new game, to play a new round.

Natural Disasters as Adjustment

In that sense, what is the ultimate result of natural disasters? From his broader perspective, it is to correct the situation that previously undermined the desired quality of life, so it serves as an adjustment. From the standpoint of humanity pursuing the quality of its own life, natural disasters are an adjustment to situations where the quality of human life might be affected. Without these adjustments by natural disasters, the quality of human life would suffer, and so natural disasters appear.

Let me give a crude example: suppose the world is now overpopulated -- I am just giving an example, not saying it is true -- suppose the world population has reached 20 billion, the entire Earth is overwhelmed, all of humanity is living in extreme hardship, no one has enough to eat, and even with all our wisdom exhausted we still cannot feed everyone. At that point, as an important adjustment to maintain the quality of human life as a whole, natural disasters would step in -- through plagues, through massive earthquakes and tsunamis, reducing the human population by half, so that the remaining humans would have a certain quality of life. Otherwise, no one would have even the minimum guarantee of quality of life. From this angle, you can understand what natural disasters are for.

He says, am I speaking too fast? Seth says, indeed too fast. But he still talks back, saying no, not too fast. He goes on, getting more and more excited:

Those victims choose to participate in that kind of situation on a psychological or biological level.

Many people would say, well then, that is unfair to those victims -- who decides which people should die and which should not? He tells you, no one decides; they choose it themselves. Remember, they choose it themselves; they are not forced. Those victims you see, they participate in that situation on their own psychic level, psychological level, or biological level.

Some of those who died, for example, would have died of prolonged illness had it not been for such a circumstance.

Some people, if they had not died in this kind of natural disaster, would have died of a prolonged illness. At the cellular level, this knowledge is available -- the cells know. And in one way or another, usually in dreams, that information is conveyed to the person in the dream. Whether that person can understand it, whether they can get the point, that is not certain.

This does not need to be accompanied by conscious understanding.

Perhaps in a dream, you had a dream that told you, foreshadowed that you might be leaving, and in the dream you knew it clearly. But when you woke from the dream, you chose to forget it, or you completely ignored it. It happened, but to you it was as if it never happened, pretending you did not know.

Others, however, have completed their challenges, and they want to die, and are looking for an excuse.

Some people have completed the challenges of this lifetime -- all their potentials have been realized, all their abilities have been brought to their fullest, their life challenges are complete. At that point they want to die, and they are looking for a face-saving way. A natural disaster is a very face-saving way. They want to begin a new life.

And those people want to die in a dramatic way, dying in the midst of their activities. Natural disasters are certainly dramatic -- earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, even the current pandemic, these are all dramatic deaths, all very unusual ways to die.

And in a strange way, even at the point of death, they are filled with an inner knowledge of the exuberance of life's energy.

These people, when dying in a strange way, even at the point of death, are filled with an inner knowledge of the exuberance of life's energy. That is, at the moment of their passing, their inner knowledge of life's energy -- they know it. But this, for those who have not experienced it -- including myself -- having not experienced it, I do not know what he is referring to. This inner knowledge of the exuberance of life's energy at the point of death for the dying, I cannot understand what he is saying, because I have not experienced it.

In the end, they seem to destroy their natural force, identifying with...

They identify with this force of nature. This is a choice made by those who die in natural disasters, or a change in their state of mind. Seth points this out, and it is very hard to explain. But now many people who have died from this pandemic -- now over 1.8 million people, and it may soon exceed that number -- many spiritually aware people have received the information that these people who died chose to leave in this period because they want to exercise their creativity in the next great historical period, for example after 2050 or after 2035, in a larger, grander historical period. Many are young people, and many are elderly. They passed away in this period in order to be in the next period -- the period in which they want to exercise their creativity -- they like that kind of grand backdrop and grand era, and they are eager for that time, so they leave now. Remember here, each person always has their own entirely personal purpose; it is just that some are like this.

That identification often -- though not always -- brings about at death a greater acceleration of consciousness.

This identification with the inner knowledge of the exuberance of life's energy at the point of death is not something everyone has; it just often happens. For those who die in natural disasters, it often brings about a greater acceleration of consciousness, drawing the person into a group death experience.

Because people who die in natural disasters basically die in groups -- tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands may die at the same time. For example, the Tangshan earthquake, in which hundreds of thousands died at once²¹; for example, the Wenchuan earthquake; for example, the deaths caused by nuclear radiation from the Japanese tsunami²², and so on -- those are all group deaths. At that point, the individual's death is subsumed into an overall group death.

And at that point, all of the victims set out at more or less the same time into another level of reality.

The souls of these tens of thousands, these hundreds of thousands of people, all enter another level of reality at the same time, in the same period.

The Body's Precognition and Intuition

Before that disaster occurred, those people were aware, just below the level of consciousness, of the possibility of such an event. Before a great disaster happens, people do have this kind of precognitive ability; they will know that a major disaster may be about to occur. But until the very last moment, they still choose to go through it, to pass through that encounter. Some people do have this precognitive ability, and if they do not choose to experience that thing, they avoid it.

Just as in ancient legends, animals know the weather conditions in advance. When it is going to rain, ants will move their nests — we have known this since childhood; swallows will fly low, knowing before the storm arrives; even before an earthquake, many animals such as cats and dogs will exhibit abnormal behavior, running around frantically. And when a volcano is about to erupt, the small animals in the forest will all flee.

This kind of perception is also part of your heritage, belonging to the biological realm.

What he means is that this ability to perceive danger, to perceive natural disasters in advance, is an inherited, a genetic ability of your body. Your body's cells already know, and are already prepared to die, to go through this thing. But your cells know, while your consciousness does not — you do not know that an earthquake is going to happen, you do not know that a volcano is about to erupt, but your body does know. Isn't that amazing? This belongs to the biological realm that you have inherited.

Between the body's inner environment and weather patterns, there exist innumerable relationships.

Your inner spiritual environment and the weather are connected, and this connection cannot be clearly explained through language or mathematics. What kind of connection is it, what kind of function — no, this connection cannot be made clear through language or mathematics.

The ancient feeling of identification with the storm is entirely reasonable.

Since ancient times, human beings have had a sense of identification with storms, and this is entirely normal.

And in such a situation, the authenticity of feeling is far superior to the authenticity of logic.

When a storm comes, everyone has a perception of it. For example, people with stomach problems or joint problems, a day or two before it gets cloudy and rainy, can sense that their joints will be uncomfortable and their stomach will be uncomfortable; their body gives them this perception. The authenticity of this feeling is far superior to your logical reasoning.

When a person feels himself to be a part of the storm, that feeling speaks of something truly real.

Some people feel as though they are a part of the storm, able to sense when the storm is coming — some people especially love being outdoors and merging with the storm. I don't know if there are such people among you, but in reality there are indeed many: the more intense the storm, the more excited they become; they are willing to rush into the wind and rain, feeling at one with nature, feeling merged with the storm. He says this feeling is truly real; it is not that these people are literary romantics with their heads full of something, or that it is some kind of emotional buildup and outburst. No, this is real. Why is it real? Because there is a relationship between his inner spiritual world and the weather. We can roughly say that this storm is the result of a collective belief in which you yourself have participated, and since you yourself have participated in it, you naturally have a sense of identification with it, and naturally feel that this storm is a part of yourself, or that you are a part of the storm.

Logic deals with exterior conditions, while intuition deals with the most intimate personal experience.

Logic is our brain's thinking and reasoning, dealing with exterior conditions and cause-and-effect relationships; intuition deals with the most intimate personal experience, dealing with subjective movements and activities that, in your terms, move faster than the speed of light. Intuition deals with things of the inner environment or the inner spiritual world; it deals with things that move much faster than the physical world, such as the extrapolation of the inner world, the possibilities of future developments, and so on. It will directly bring you the result; the process of extrapolation is already extremely complex, and you can no longer reconstruct it, nor can you understand it — it simply brings you the result.

Let me give a very typical example, and this kind of thing is especially obvious in girls: whether a girl likes a boy or not, her body will have the most direct reaction. If a boy — one she does not like — touches her, not intimate contact, just a casual touch, a simple physical contact, she will instinctively feel aversion. She does not need her brain's logical thinking to judge why she feels aversion; there is no judgment, no logical analysis — her body instinctively feels aversion. If she likes this boy, she will very much enjoy this contact, enjoy this physical touch. This is a very typical example of how we apply intuition. As for what bodily computations or inner-world computations went on in between, we have no way of knowing, but it simply transmits the result to you through intuition, saying: you dislike this person, so your body dislikes him.

Your intuition deals with the simultaneous world that you cannot perceive on the causal level because it is too slow.

This sentence is very interesting. On our causal level — that is, in Framework 1, our physical world — cause and effect do indeed exist. But this physical world is a reflection of the inner world; on the inner world, or in Framework 2, or on higher dimensions, there is no cause and effect. On that level, all things happen simultaneously; these are called simultaneous events.

In my previous discussion of The Nature of the Psyche, in chapters eight and nine, the focus was really on this issue, especially in the first one or two sessions of chapter eight. I drew a wheel — do you still remember that wheel — or later I drew a ball, a sphere. Regardless of the form, the point was to tell you that real events happen simultaneously. But in our physical world, there is a sequence of before and after, as if there were cause-and-effect relationships.

What your intuition excels at dealing with is events that occur on that simultaneous level; and your logical reasoning ability has no capacity to reason about or deal with those things. If a hundred things happen at the same time, it is already fundamentally impossible for your logical reasoning ability to handle them — never mind a hundred things, if two or three things happen at the same time, your brain already cannot process them. But your intuitive computational ability, your inner computational ability, can very easily handle the situation of millions of things happening simultaneously. How does it do it? I cannot say clearly; I cannot explain it to you. But it has this ability.

The World in Slow Motion

Our physical world, you can imagine it as a slowed-down version, or a slow-motion version, of those higher-dimensional simultaneous events. Let me give you a vivid example: the thoughts in your mind are one world -- your mental space, your ideas, your concepts, your thinking, that is one level. In that space-time, everything happens simultaneously, at extremely high speed. But when it is manifested into our three-dimensional world, it becomes a slow-motion process. Imagine it being slowed down ten thousand times or a hundred million times before you can see it, and that is why you can see the appearance and form of our physical world.

If it were like the lightning-fast events that happen in the mind -- for example, a dream lasts five minutes, yet within the dream you experience a process of five years -- your physical thinking, or logic, or senses cannot keep up; they cannot immediately follow it. So in order to let you keep up, to let this physical existence of yours -- now that you have incarnated into this physical world, you have become a physical existence -- although your soul possesses this ability, your physical body does not.

When you incarnate onto this planet, you have to abide by the laws of that planet. Just like in Avatar, when we incarnate on this Earth, in this physical world, we have to follow the natural laws of this physical world. Under these natural laws, you can only experience events one after another in slow motion. Even though they are happening simultaneously, even though they are the same event.

What does it mean that they are happening simultaneously? Imagine fast motion: if your entire life were played as a fast-motion film, compressed into one minute, then wouldn't everything be completed in an instant? This is a concept of time, a concept of practice for you. Why do you need to experience this one minute of events over a hundred years? It is equivalent to watching it in slow motion.

But your inner perceptual system can handle that level of ability -- the ability to process fast, simultaneous events. Your physical senses -- eyes, nose, ears, thinking, consciousness, logical analysis -- can only process slow-motion events. Remember, I am saying that your physical senses cannot process it, but your inner senses can. On your higher levels, outside your consciousness, on the subconscious level, there is the ability to process it; your inner self has the ability to process it, but it must be outside your consciousness.

You ask, why can't I consciously perceive it? Because your consciousness cannot keep up with it. The processing speed of your consciousness is like you using an abacus, while over there it is computing at the speed of a quantum computer. How can a person using an abacus understand the entire computational process and the overall computational logic of quantum computing? You are too slow, and it is too fast. It can only give you results that you can understand -- that is, it gives you results through intuition, letting you know.

In that respect, the activities of the inner environment are too fast for you, and you cannot rationally keep up with them. Your intuitions can, however, give you some clues as to such behavior.

The activities of the inner environment, of your mental world, are too fast; you cannot keep up with them logically or rationally. But intuition can give you many clues. For example, as I just mentioned: a girl does not like a boy. If you were to reason it out or analyze it logically, there might be hundreds or thousands of reasons and causes -- why you do not like him, and you may even have already projected all kinds of future disharmony, dissatisfaction, or ultimately bad outcomes if you were to live together. But you are not aware of this process of projection. At that point, your inner self can only give you an intuition saying: do not pay attention to him, stay away from him. Because if it told you too much, you could not accept it. It cannot present to you the fact that "the millions of possibilities of me being with this boy will all ultimately lead to a bad outcome," because your information capacity is not enough, your storage capacity and your processing speed are not enough; it cannot give that to you. It can only give you a final result: do not pay attention to this boy, stay away from him, which becomes a physical intuitive reaction. It is that simple; it can only give you some clues. You cannot keep up with it, but you have clues.

The Responsibility of Nations

A nation is responsible for its own droughts, earthquakes, floods, and storms, as well as for its own harvests and the abundant products of its various distinctive features, and for its industrial and cultural achievements, and all of these are interrelated.

A nation is responsible for its own natural and man-made disasters, and also for its achievements and the fruits of its harvests. That is to say, these things belong to that nation, and they are all interconnected, not isolated events.

If the quality of life deemed necessary on psychic and biological levels is not achieved, then adjustments will occur.

Why does this kind of adjustment occur, that is, why do natural disasters happen? It is because either of these two possibilities, psychic or biological, is involved. The quality of life they deem necessary has not been satisfied -- whether it is the psychic quality of life or the physiological, biological quality of life. For example, what does the psychic refer to? Despair, hopelessness, a sense of powerlessness -- these are psychic. What is biological? Not having enough to eat, extremely harsh living conditions, terribly poor sanitation -- these are all biological conditions. Either of these two may trigger the emergence of such natural disasters. It is actually coming to make adjustments, to make adjustments so that we humans can subsequently attain the basic necessary quality of life.

If political methods fail, then a political problem may be altered by a natural disaster.

Human beings originally possess the capacity for self-adjustment. But if this kind of political adjustment fails -- when adjustments should have been made but were not made, for example, a nation's social climate has already become corrupt, and it should have corrected and adjusted it through politics, law, and morality, yet it did not correct it, did not adjust it, and politics has failed, politics no longer functions -- at this time a natural disaster emerges, and the natural disaster comes to bring about change.

You can carefully look at history and you will find such things happening. I cannot remember the specifics clearly, because I am not a student of history, but I remember that the fall of the Roman Empire²³ had many causes of this kind: in its later period, the Roman Empire had declined morally to a degree that was almost beyond description.

The Emergence of Creative Energy

On the other hand, people's uplifting creative energy will emerge.

In the face of such great disasters, people will rise up, form new cohesion, new goals, new ideas, and people will reflect -- he said in the previous session under what circumstances reflection occurs. So the creative energy that makes people rise up will be stimulated and will emerge, driving the transformation of human society or human civilization.

Excellence will be expressed through artistic and cultural creativity, technological or social achievements.

Humanity attempts to achieve its great abilities, and each specific physical body, in its own way, is very much like this world. It has its own resistance and talents, and every part of it is pursuing a quality of existence that will bring its smallest part its own psychic and biological fulfillment.

This last passage sounds very simple, yet also very convoluted, and it is hard to tell what he is trying to say. What he wants to say is this: each person, by realizing their own excellence, can express creative excellence in all walks of life in society -- art, culture, business, technology, the military, and all kinds of fields. This is their creative energy, the creative energy of each person. In the face of natural disasters, this will all be expressed through this, and humanity as a whole attempts to achieve its great abilities through the excellence contributed by each individual.

Each specific physical body -- that is, each one of us, each flesh-and-blood person -- in their own way, is very much like this world. That is to say, each person has their own resistance, their own ability to withstand pressure, their own ability to adjust, just as this world has its own resistance and its own ability to adjust.

And every part of it -- here referring to every part of the world -- is pursuing a quality of existence. The flowers and grasses of this world, all things in the world, the small animals and small plants, including human beings -- are they not all pursuing a quality of existence? That flower blooms so vividly, that forest is so lush and verdant -- they are all pursuing their own quality of existence. You would never see a scene of a dilapidated world; they are so full of life, so thriving and flourishing, and the whole of nature is so beautiful. Why? Because they are pursuing a quality of existence.

In the process of each part pursuing a quality of life, a quality of existence, it will bring the smallest part of this world -- that is, each person's physical body -- its own psychic and biological fulfillment. To put it simply, you and the world are one. Every achievement of yours fulfills the achievement of the whole world or the whole of humanity, and the achievement of humanity as a whole in turn fulfills the achievement of each individual. Without such a beautiful natural world, there would not be a world in which we live so comfortably. Yet this natural world is also composed of each one of us, and even more so, it is composed of the inner spiritual world of each one of us.

If our inner spiritual world is not good enough, then the outer natural world will not be good enough either. When it is not good enough, when the quality of its inner existence, whether physical or psychic, is affected, adjustment will occur. You might ask, who brings about this adjustment? Is it brought about by God, or by nature? Do you now know who brings it about? This adjustment is something we ourselves bring about. Do not push this responsibility onto heaven, and do not push it onto nature. These natural disasters are something we ourselves bring about.

Just as he said in the earlier passage: a country must take responsibility for its abundance and richness, and it must also take responsibility for the natural disasters within it -- they are interrelated. You cannot only acknowledge its abundance and richness while denying its natural disasters -- the abundance and richness are created by it, and the natural disasters are also created by it. Only when you hold such a belief will you not shirk the responsibility you ought to bear, and only then will you change it. If you do not want natural disasters, then bring abundance and richness, the quality of existence, to its utmost, and it will no longer need adjustment.

So what this last passage wants to tell you is that none of us should shirk responsibility in the face of natural disasters, and none of us should say that a natural disaster has nothing to do with ourselves. It has to do with every one of us -- we brought it about. Seth has merely explained very thoroughly the inner principle, the reason why this natural disaster was brought about. But he also tells us, do not shirk responsibility -- as the saying goes, in the face of an avalanche, no snowflake is innocent²⁴.

Then you might ask, are we humans then trapped in a very pessimistic situation? It seems as though we brought about natural disasters. But Seth also said that those human achievements were also brought about by you, and was that kind of brilliant human excellence also brought about by you? If you want to maintain human excellence, natural disasters are sometimes necessary. This is the point he wants to make: they are one, and they are interrelated. As he said earlier, they are mutually related. In this way you can understand the central idea Seth wanted to express in this session.

Then he said the dictation is over, the session is over, unless you have questions. He said I have no questions, and he said then I give you my heartfelt blessings. By this time it was already 12:08, and this was another session of Seth's that was not short. Then Jane came out of the trance state.

Rob's Note: On Immortality

Finally he made two annotations. He said Seth's point about the real nature of death is its necessity—death must be necessary, one must die. He said these concepts are increasingly in conflict with what we read these days, because some scientists say that before the end of this century—that is, by the year 2000, and this is 1977—we will have the ability to extend physical life. They tell us again and again that technology is nearly able to manufacture many parts of the body, that is, to do organ transplants, to use cloning technology to produce artificial lungs, artificial livers—whichever organ fails, you just replace it, and so a person can become immortal. He is applying the idea of fixing a car to the human body, thinking that as long as you replace an organ, a person can just keep replacing them forever.

And then there could be microcomputers implanted inside the body. You see, people of that era were already imagining the future like this, so Elon Musk²⁵ making the brain-computer interface is not a sudden whim; this kind of technological fantasy has existed for a long time. These advances, combined with our overcoming of illness, suffering, and pain, plus genetic engineering, will soon enable human beings to live indefinitely.

Those experts claim that if you are fortunate enough to be relatively young, you will be able to catch up with this era. For example, if you were only 20 years old in 1977, then by the year 2000 you would only be in your thirties or forties, and you could catch up with technological progress and become immortal, perhaps never having to die. But this is human fantasy, and of course that era did not realize it. Twenty years passed, and humanity still has not achieved it.

But modern scientists have discovered all sorts of things—for example, Israeli scientists discovered that people can breathe pure oxygen and extend lifespan by at least one third²⁶; a couple of days ago another scientific team discovered that humans can alter the length of cell telomeres²⁷. Human DNA telomeres have a certain length, and when this length decreases or wears down, or is completely worn out, the human cell dies, and when metabolism reaches a certain point, the human being dies. When DNA replicates, the telomeres are copied along with it. Scientists discovered that human lifespan is related to the length of DNA telomeres²⁸, and now they have found a technique that allows telomere length to grow, to reverse-grow—normally it decreases with age, but this technique can make it grow. So scientists would think that once telomeres can grow, human beings can become immortal.

But how exaggerated this claim is, at least for now. He had read that over the past three quarters of a century—that is, the past 75 years, from 1900 to 1977—human medical knowledge had increased enormously, yet the average lifespan of adult white males in America had only risen from 69 to 73 years²⁹. In 1900 it was 69, and by 1975 it had only increased by 4 years to 73³⁰. And by this time 75 years had already passed, and science and technology had already developed at a rapid pace—you can imagine what the technology was like in 1900. He said that if one wanted to achieve immortality, then science would have to develop at breakneck speed to achieve it before the year 2000. Of course it did not happen; looking back at this book, it was impossible.

We have not seen people discuss this question: if some people could live forever, all the problems might involve some psychological difficulties, or the enormous social problems that would immediately begin to emerge. Just thinking about the legal issues involved is enough to make your head spin. For example, people might even have to revise their marriage vows—if people could be immortal, would you still dare to say, when you get married now, "I will love you forever until death do us part"? Would you still dare to say that? Would you live with one person for 100 years, 200 years, 300 years, 400 years? Would you stay with just this one person?

Science-fiction-style ideas abound: what should be done about population control? What about those who want to keep living but cannot afford it? Who decides who can receive this better treatment that makes you immortal? Should it be based on the family unit, or on the individual? Does the whole family become immortal, or just one person in the family? For example, does the father become immortal, or do all the direct relatives in the family become immortal? And what about the indirect relatives who are not in the direct line? Is it the geniuses who get to be immortal, or the fools who get to be immortal?

If the services necessary for extending life were free—suppose the government paid for it so that all of humanity could have it for free—then could the government decide which families should not have children? Because once you give birth to a child, that child becomes immortal, and he will never die. So who has the right to have children, and who does not have the right to have children? Or would they decide that no one should have children? Given the current challenges of our world, one could even say there are already too many people in the world. And what about animals and other forms of life? If we humans can become immortal, what then? Does your pet need to be immortal? If humans can make their own lives immortal, can they make animals immortal? If animals can be made immortal, then should your favorite pet become immortal along with you?

He said perhaps animals, along with their own collective wisdom, would think that we have completely abandoned the ability of intuitive understanding. These are all Rob's musings on the question of immortality. I would bet that humanity will definitely try as hard as it can to extend physical life through science, by any means necessary, wanting to extend physical life. Indeed, this is still the case now. Because they are so afraid of death, believing that death means there is nothing left. The greatest obsession of humanity throughout history has created that fear, that belief. This is humanity's greatest fear.

He said the whole idea of living indefinitely contains many ironies—originally, staying alive is a very good thing, but it carries many ironies in itself. If this day really comes, I think on a conscious level, human beings would be extremely afraid of accidental death. Why? Because this powerful concern might severely restrict human behavior. If you could live forever, you would not do anything that might bring about an accident: you might not even drive a car, because what if you got into a car accident and died—you could have lived forever, and then suddenly you die, wouldn't you feel cheated? So even sports involving impact, like any contact sports, you would not participate in, because what if you got knocked dead—that would be such a pity. Let alone exploratory activities like the ocean, the sky, including space travel, or any dangerous profession—you would not participate. Why? He feels there is no need; since I can be immortal, I should just be immortal properly, why take such risks? Any kind of illness and bodily aging would have to be absolutely controlled.

And as for Jane and me, we do not think the physical body must survive forever; even living to 200 years old he felt was not quite reasonable. This attitude may simply indicate that we have been conditioned—we may feel a kind of sadness and jealousy because we chose to be born a few decades too early: we were born too early and cannot catch up with the dividends of technological development; perhaps in 50 years scientists will invent the technology of immortality, but people of our time can no longer catch up, so there would be a kind of sadness and jealousy. When we were discussing this note, Jane said, if my physical health were good, living to 100 would also be quite nice.

He said we thought those future generations might unhesitatingly choose to live as long as possible, and at least for a period of time consciousness would cooperate very well with them, that is, they would also want to live very long. But the ultimate irony might develop—Jane had given many related hints—once it began to seep into human consciousness, the suicide rate would rise considerably. He said when people finally openly recognize the extreme necessity and desirability of physical death, at many times, they would simply end their own lives.

That is to say, if we reached that stage of immortality, although some people at the beginning would be very excited about immortality, and consciousness would also be very happy, consciousness and the body would cooperate very well, and under the great premise of immortality they would rejoice and open up their infinitely wonderful lives. But after a certain period of time, people would eventually understand one truth: this kind of immortality is not a happiness, but an extreme cruelty, and many people would choose suicide. What would actually happen, you can imagine: if you were made immortal, imagine living for a thousand years, ten thousand years—what would you do? Would you choose suicide? As Seth said, would people by then invent a kind of death?

Faster Than Light and Units of Consciousness

Seth and Jane talked about this in earlier books, and Seth Two discussed the issue of faster-than-light travel. For example, when Seth talked about units of consciousness, he said that Einstein's theory of relativity proved that nothing in the universe can approach, let alone exceed, the speed of light³¹, and that human beings cannot approach or exceed the speed of light. However, some physicists had once constructed theories about particles faster than light³², particles created by some unknown process. He said that at the time, for example, he was talking about quantum mechanics—quantum mechanics had been proposed back in 1920³³, and by 1970 it had already developed considerably, but string theory had not yet emerged at that time. In any case, theoretical scientists of that era had already been able to deduce from physical theory that particles traveling faster than light must exist in the world, and that they were moving at such extraordinary speeds. Therefore they tried to get around the limitation Einstein had set—and by now they have indeed gotten around it.

Recently, there have also been many astronomical observations of distant objects showing that those objects appear to be superluminal, or moving at speeds exceeding the speed of light, and these effects have not yet been satisfactorily explained. He was talking about why we human beings cannot exceed the speed of light in the physical world.

I think we should not discuss this matter, because Jane and Rob's level of physics knowledge was not sufficient, and they could not offer very insightful knowledge either. But they did represent the understanding and cognition of the world held by most ordinary people, and from that angle it is sufficient. Because for a poet and a painter to understand physics to this level is already quite impressive. Let us not explore this question. As for the issue of the speed of light, discussing it in this physical world, at this level, within a camouflage reality, has no real practical significance. Regarding the question of the speed of light, if there are later Early Sessions or deeper explorations of the Seth material, we will discuss it then. That is not something ordinary people want to know or want to understand, because it no longer has any real practical significance or impact on our lives. If you want to make breakthroughs in science, or if you want to gain some inspiration in science, we can explore this question in that field, in future research on the deeper theories of Seth. But today we do not need to talk about it.

So when objects leave the realm of particles, leave our physical world, no matter how tiny they are or how they act, or how tenuous their material structure is, at that point all the limitations may already be gone. When certain objects leave physical reality, they are no longer objects. At certain nonphysical levels, there are indeed movements that exceed the speed of light, and the limitation of the speed of light no longer exists there. Just as Seth said about units of consciousness, their subjective motion and activity, their simultaneous events, and so on—these can easily become some of the basic laws of the formless universe. Events that are impossible in our universe are the basic laws in that universe. That is one angle. The point he was making was about this question of slowing down and speeding up.

All right, our reading of this session ends here for now.

Interpreting the Seth Material: The Unity of Body and Inner Environment

An interpretation of Chapter 1, Part 1 of The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, moving into Session 804. This session began on Monday, May 9, 1977, at 9:44 p.m.

First, let us look at Rob's notes. May 8 was his birthday, and around that time one or two things turned out to be quite good gifts. Two days earlier, he had worked for the first time on their new front porch — they had planned to remodel the front porch, and now it could become a place for work. He sat in the slanting sunlight and wrote down the material he had received through psychic means from the worldview of William James³⁴. This event itself was like a gift. Then, on May 9, his publisher sent him the publishing contract for The Nature of the Psyche³⁵. As long as he signed the contract, following the normal publishing process, he would receive a check for the publishing advance. By this time, their financial situation had already improved enormously.

Seth suddenly came through — without a greeting, without the usual salutation, he said directly:

Dictation.

Then came the core content of this session.

Session 804

The body is a spiritual, psychic, and social statement expressed in biological terms.

This statement, although expressed through the body, has an inner essence that is spiritual, psychic, and social. For example, whether the body gets sick or not, whether it contracts diseases or gets infected by epidemics -- on the surface this is biological, including emotional states and so on; but in itself it is a manifestation, or rather a statement, of what lies behind it: the spiritual, the psychic, and the social.

This statement is obviously private -- everyone is different, each person has individual differences. But it cannot be hidden. Why? Because it is a life; how could it hide? Whether your body is healthy or not -- although each person's reasons for illness are different, each with their own hidden circumstances -- the fact of being ill is plain for all to see, the whole society will know. Because, generally speaking, it is right where you are -- this statement is right where you are. The state of your body, the biological state of your flesh, is this statement itself.

Whether your body is healthy also means whether this statement of yours in the spiritual, psychic, and social realms is healthy. If you believe that your existence in the spiritual, psychic, and social realms is healthy, then your body will also be healthy; conversely, if your body is unhealthy, then you must have certain problems in the spiritual, psychic, and social realms. Think about it carefully -- the spiritual goes without saying, the psychic needs no elaboration, but what is the social? It includes social interpersonal relationships, your position in society -- all of these affect your health. So what truly affects our health are these three causes: the spiritual, the psychic, and the social. The biological is only the final expression, merely the manifestation.

The individual body exists as it does because it exists within the range of other similar bodies.

Here Seth unfolds a higher perspective and framework for us -- he can always look at problems from a higher level. Each of our individual bodies appears to be different, but the reason this individual body exists in its present human form, in the form of present-day humanity, is because similar bodies have existed before, and that is why we have the body we have today. In other words, the body we have today did not come from monkeys, from gorillas, or step by step from marine organisms, as Darwin or other evolutionary theorists claim. No. It is because we already had a similar body -- in previous human civilizations, in other human civilizations that have already disappeared from the human timeline, we already had such a body. That is why we have this body today, and why we are the way we are today.

This is the same as what the Bible³⁶ says: "God created man in His own image." He is talking about the same thing.

A particular present body presupposes that it came from similar past organisms, and it also presupposes the similarity of bodies in the same era.

A particular present body -- that is, our present human form, the human appearance -- presupposes that it came from similar past organisms, and it also presupposes the similarity of bodies in the same era. That is to say, our generation, or the humans of this civilization, are all like this.

For example, if an adult human were seen by an alien from another world, certain facts would be very obvious. What facts? Even if such an alien encountered only a single member of the human species in a deserted place -- not the whole of humanity, just one person -- this alien could make certain assumptions from this individual's appearance and behavior.

He begins to explain why we have this appearance, why we are shaped the way we are now. Suppose an alien, in the Gobi Desert, in a desert, or on the ocean, discovered just one single human being -- he could still infer many assumptions from the present appearance and body structure of our human form.

First, if this Earth person began to speak, the alien would immediately know that this is an animal capable of communication. And within the sounds produced, he would recognize patterns containing purpose and intent. Perhaps at first the alien would not know what meaning our sounds represent, just as we do not know what meaning the sounds of cats and dogs carry -- but can we not hear the purpose and intent contained in the sounds of cats and dogs? Whether a kitten is hungry or wants to go out to play; whether a puppy wants to go for a walk or wants food -- we can tell. So for a life form as expressive as humans, the language and sounds we produce, even if you cannot understand them, can you not also tell what the other person wants to do? Not that you know exactly what they want to do, but you know that the sounds contain purpose and intent.

All animals are capable of using language. This implies a much broader sociobiological relationship than humans usually assume.

Animals also use language, and they use it far more than we humans understand. We humans think animals can only communicate simply, but that is not so -- animals have very complex communication, we humans just do not know how they are communicating. But we can also understand something through the sounds animals make and the communication between them.

From that Earth person's appearance, the alien should be able to infer the proportions of various elements on your planet.

If this alien were intelligent enough, he could immediately infer the proportions of carbon, iron, oxygen, and hydrogen on Earth. It is that simple -- through one human body, he could calculate it.

This is predicted by your method of locomotion, and limbs, and the nature of your physical vision.

Through our human body, the alien could infer this much information.

Then although each individual at birth, individuality leaps into the world. In terms of each member of each species, each birth also truly represents an effort, a triumphant effort, because the delicate balance of life requires conditions of great precision for each birth. No one species can guarantee this alone, not even for its own kind.

The birth of every life is a triumphant effort. This includes not only the triumph of your species -- your birth within this species signifies a kind of victory -- it also represents a subtle coordination, a delicate balance between your species and the other biological species related to it. Without this delicate balance, you would not have your birth.

Let me give a simple example. In a certain region, suppose wolves run rampant; the number of baby rabbits born in that place will be very small -- because they are eaten as soon as they are born. Moreover, under such circumstances, the rabbits' willingness and ability to reproduce will also decrease. They must wait until the wolf population, due to the decrease in rabbits and the lack of sufficient food, starves off a portion of its own numbers, and only then will the rabbit population rise again. This is a mutually supporting relationship.

The same applies to humans. If our surrounding environment is not suitable for our survival, this infant will not be born. Why is this a triumph? Because it is not only a matter of the species, but also a matter of the delicate balance of the entire ecological environment.

When he says "no one species can guarantee this alone," he means: it is not that we humans can give birth just because we want to. If the surrounding environment does not provide for it, if the natural environment does not provide for it, then humans are helpless. It necessarily requires the consent of other species -- not consent in the way we humanize it, but a deeper sociobiological subtle communication and balance. Without such permission, we humans would have no way to be born.

Not to mention that the birth of every life is the outstanding one among hundreds of millions of sperm, the final lucky one, combining with the egg and so on -- he is not even talking about these. He is talking about a higher level, not the level of this one union.

Grain must grow, animals must reproduce, plants must do their part. In that sense, photosynthesis governs everything.

For a person to be born, first of all, must there not be the growth of grain? Without food, it is impossible. Must animals not reproduce, to supply the food we humans need? Plants must do their part -- if plants were not flourishing, the oxygen content in our air would be insufficient. Our oxygen is provided by plants; plants release oxygen through photosynthesis. Here Seth only mentions these three conditions, but there are many other conditions as well -- grain, plants providing oxygen, animals providing meat. If these three conditions were not met, could humans survive? Could there be newborn babies? No.

So does not the birth of us humans depend on these things?

Then he says: if we put it this way, within the human state of existence, does photosynthesis not govern everything? Is everything the result of photosynthesis?

So in Seth's early sessions, he specifically brought up chlorophyll, saying that chlorophyll is a spiritual enzyme -- or spiritual ferment -- of your camouflage world. In those sessions he explains in detail: within our camouflage reality, this seemingly insignificant chlorophyll is actually the most core, most critical thing in our world. Its function is catalytic. What is catalysis? Without it, things develop very slowly -- not that they will not develop, but they develop extremely slowly; with it, the speed of development increases tens of thousands of times, even hundreds of millions of times.

In other words, the manifestation of our three-dimensional world, the existence of our three-dimensional world -- one of its conditions, or one of its catalysts, is chlorophyll.

Chlorophyll is the most core element of photosynthesis; it converts the light energy of the sun's rays into sugar and stores it -- the conversion of light energy, turning light energy into our biological energy. Sugar is our human biological energy. Humans need sugar; without sugar humans cannot survive. The starch we eat is mainly sugar, carbohydrates. Where does this sugar come from? It is produced by photosynthesis.

Amazing, is it not? Think about it carefully: sunlight shining on the leaves of plants causes the plants to produce starch for human consumption, and humans need this starch to survive. What if there is no starch? Humans can eat meat; meat breaks down fat, which can also serve a function similar to sugar, used by the body as energy. But all animals must eat plants -- the herbivore that the carnivore eats, must the herbivore not eat grass? Must it not eat plants? So ultimately it is plants that sustain all life.

This is the most interesting point. So Seth says, from this angle, does photosynthesis not govern everything? Without photosynthesis, would there be no three-dimensional world as we know it? Perhaps rocks and land would still exist, but there would be no life.

So this entire passage emphasizes the cooperation among various species. The emergence of life is a triumphant effort, the result of the cooperation of all species.

All seasons must maintain some stability. Rain must fall appropriately, storms must also rage...

Now he begins to talk about nature. Without a comfortable temperature, there would be no possibility of human survival. And this comfortable temperature must also be stable -- you cannot have one day of winter, one day of summer, then another day of summer, then another day of winter. You can have the alternation of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but you cannot alternate day by day; humans could not endure that. The human body cannot live in 35 degrees Celsius or 40 degrees Celsius one day, and then the next day live in minus 30 degrees. Nature could not adapt either.

The growth of plants also depends on the stability of the seasons. And there must also be rain -- sunlight alone is not enough; plants also need water. But water cannot be too much; too much becomes a flood, and the land becomes waterlogged.

Storms must also rage. Can we do without wind? No, we cannot do without wind. We would prefer gentle breezes and sunny days, but without wind it is impossible -- without wind, plant pollen would not be dispersed, and pollination would not occur. Of course there are bees and other methods of pollination, but a great deal of pollination and seed dispersal still requires the wind to carry them. The dandelion is the most vivid example, and other plants need it too.

Why are storms necessary? Because storms and rain are mutually dependent -- rain is produced by the meeting of high and low pressure systems, cold air and warm air; where such meetings occur, wind is inevitably produced. Wind always blows from high pressure to low pressure, so wind is necessary. But it cannot be too destructive -- wind is needed, but it cannot be too fierce; too fierce, like hurricanes or typhoons, destroys everything.

And behind all of this there is a biological and psychic cooperative venture.

This appears to be a coincidence of nature, but in fact there is a close biological and psychic cooperation that we cannot yet fully understand, and it is this that has led to the birth of life today.

All of this could be seen by our hypothetical alien from a single human being.

Everything we have said above -- the stability of the seasons, the appropriate amount of rain, the raging of storms that must not be too destructive -- once an alien sees a single person, he sees all of it. Without all of this, no such human-shaped life form could survive on Earth. So the moment the alien sees this human-shaped life form, he can immediately infer everything described above.

We will come back to this alien later.

Cells possess a quality of sociality. They have a tendency to unite with other cells, they communicate naturally, they naturally want to move. In making such a statement, I am not anthropomorphizing cells, but wanting to communicate, because wanting to communicate, and also having the desire to move, is not exclusive to humans and animals.

Let us set the alien aside for now; he goes on to talk about the cellular level. Cells have a social quality, so cells often cluster together, group after group. Identical or similar cells have this tendency to unite with one another; they communicate naturally, and they naturally want to move. But Seth says, I am not anthropomorphizing cells; rather, I am telling you: just as humans and animals want to communicate and want to move, cells also want to move and want to communicate. That is to say, wanting to move and wanting to communicate are not the privilege of humans and animals; all living things have this characteristic.

The human desire to travel to other worlds is as natural as the plant's desire to turn its leaves toward the sun.

Humans want to travel, want to explore other worlds -- "the world is so big, I want to see it" -- this is the most straightforward expression of humanity. But in this process, what do we discover? We discover that it is not only humans who have this desire. If an animal cannot move, what does it do? It can turn its leaves -- a sunflower can turn its flower head, facing it toward the sun. Why do leaves turn toward the sun? For photosynthesis. This is just like humans wanting to travel; it is also a desire to move.

Man's physical world with all of its civilizations and cultural aspects, even with its science and technology, basically represents man's innate drive to communicate, to move outward, to create, and to objectify felt inner states.

The world we live in, including the civilizations and cultures connected with it, and even including its science and technology -- all of these things point to one thing: humans want to communicate, want to move, want to move outward, want to explore external things, want to create, want to objectify felt inner states.

What does it mean to objectify inner states? It means to manifest them, to realize your inner thoughts. This is innate -- remember, it is an innate drive. This is not something that requires us to set aspirations, to establish ideals, or anything like that; this is an instinctive inner driving force: wanting to communicate, wanting to gather together, wanting to form groups, wanting to manifest what is within, wanting to realize the ideals in one's heart. This is the instinctive driving force of every one of us.

The most private life you can imagine is also a very social affair.

What is the most private matter? It is the most private matter between a man and a woman; he uses this as an example. But is it not also a very social affair? Of course it is. For example, the current issue of low birth rates -- is this matter not brought out for discussion? And has the matter between men and women not already become a specialized field of science, psychology, and gender studies for exploration? The things you consider private, intimate matters, are in fact open, public matters on the sociological level.

The hermit who lives in seclusion relies not only upon the biological cooperation of his body's cells, but also upon nature with all of its organisms.

Just like the famous Zhongnan Mountains in China, which have now become a gathering place for hermits; practitioners of all kinds take setting up a thatched hut in the Zhongnan Mountains as a point of their practice. These hermits who live in seclusion rely not only upon the biological cooperation of their body's cells; they must also cooperate with the other organisms of nature.

What does he mean? Your seclusion is meaningless. You want to leave human society, but you cannot -- your person must be intimately connected with nature.

The body, then, however private, is still a public, social, biological life.

He once again emphasizes the very first sentence of this session: your body is a public, social, biological life.

A sentence spoken in any language has a certain structure. It presupposes a mouth and a tongue, that necessary bodily organization.

No matter what language it is spoken in, it necessarily implies the existence of a mouth and a tongue. Without a mouth and a tongue, how could there be language? It is the same for any language.

It implies also a mind... a certain kind of world in which sound has meaning.

You not only have a mouth and a tongue, but also your brain, your mind. And it also implies: you as a person are intimately connected with nature -- your atoms, your molecules, the parts that make up your tongue, your vocal cords, and the rest of your sound-producing system, because your body has always had a biological connection with nature. So any sentence you speak is not merely a human language; it also represents a kind of voice of nature.

We think nature has the sound of wind, the sound of rain, the sound of thunder -- these are the sounds of nature; then is the human voice not also a sound of nature? Of course it is. We often say "heavenly music" sounds like the sounds of nature, but in fact the human voice is the true heavenly music. Why would the human voice not be a sound of nature? Of course it is.

And an understanding of the nature of sound, its patterns of combination, and repetitive use... a very precise and practical knowledge of the nervous system.

He says that to speak a sentence, one must have a very precise understanding of the nervous system -- these are all very practical pieces of knowledge. Our speech contains so much information: sound, the patterns of sound combination, repetitive use. Our speech uses many repeated syllables; our vowels and consonants are only so many -- in English there are only five vowels, you see: A, O, U, I, E; in Chinese the vowels are also only a few, and the consonants are about the same.

So through a single sentence you speak, an alien could understand a great deal of information about humans and even about the Earth.

Few of my readers possess this kind of conscious knowledge.

He says that among his readers, no one has this ability -- the ability to infer, like the alien, from a single sentence spoken by another person, the relationship between the human living environment and nature. But --

Most of them, however, speak very well.

We do not need this ability, nor do we need any alien ability; we can naturally speak every sentence very well. Including the understanding of the nervous system -- when you speak, you do not need to understand your nervous system, how your tongue operates, how your vocal cords operate; none of this is needed.

Your body, therefore, seems to possess a very practical kind of information... you can express almost any thought you want to express in sound.

Your body seems to innately possess this information; it knows how to do it. Anything we want to say, anything we think in our minds, can almost always be expressed in language. Of course, in rare moments there are times when words fail us, when we do not know how to express something, but most of the time our thoughts can be expressed.

Even though you have almost no concept of how your words are spoken.

We do not know how we speak our words, but that does not affect expression. So --

The body is suited for action.

Seth's opinion is: do not think about how you speak this sentence; just speak, just express. He is very practical; this is a very core point.

Its primary task is to explore and to communicate.

The primary task of our body is to explore and to communicate; this is an innate, fundamental inner drive that no one can change.

Communication implies a kind of social interaction. The body already has within it everything needed for self-defense.

The body itself has the capacity for self-defense.

The body itself guides the child to speak, to crawl and walk, to seek out his playmates.

Why does a child speak? It is the body that makes him speak. Why does he want to communicate, to express, to explore? Communication, expression, and exploration all require speech; what if he cannot speak? They all require crawling and walking, because he needs them. His body itself needs them.

Children do not need adults to introduce them to find playmates. Observe children carefully; they are especially willing to play with other children, without any introduction from adults. "Hello, what is your name" -- that is something that comes later in life. Very young children, a few months old or even one year old, who cannot yet sit up and can only crawl, already know how to play together. They do not need social constructs; this is their instinct.

Through biological communication the child's cells become aware of his physical environment, temperature, air pressure, weather conditions, food supply, and the body makes adjustments to these conditions with very great speed.

After a child, driven by this primal impulse, makes contact with other child playmates, walks, and communicates, he will naturally discover and explore new things, gaining a new awareness of the physical environment. Changes in temperature, changes in air pressure, weather conditions, food supply -- when there is milk to drink, when there is not, under what circumstances there is milk -- he develops an awareness of all these, and this awareness causes him to make certain adjustments. He also knows hot and cold, knows comfort and discomfort, whether the air is too humid or too dry; he knows all of this at the cellular level.

The world, then, exists as a means of social communication.

From the perspective of entering into the very small scale of the cell, within the world of the cell, the entire world is also a means of social communication.

During this time, the birth and death of cells is known to all other cells.

Within a cellular, social, large community of cells, the life and death of every cell is known to the other cells. Which cell is born, which cell dies -- they all know.

And the death of a frog and the death of a star are of equal importance.

From the perspective of the entire world, the death of a frog and the death of a star are equally important. A star is a sun -- for example, the Sun is a star. The death of the Sun means the death of the entire solar system; on our Earth there are billions of people, and perhaps several planets would disappear. And a frog, relative to this solar system, is simply too insignificant. But he says, in a certain sense, they are equally important.

On your level of activity, your thoughts, emotions, and meanings, however private, form part of the environment of inner communication.

Your thoughts, ideas, intentions, and emotions, however private they may be, are all a part of this inner communication environment. In that inner world we do not know -- for example, in the world of telepathy -- they are always communicating, always exchanging, only we do not know it.

Just as in the entire Milky Way galaxy, when a star dies or is born, the other stars know it; just as when a cell dies, the other cells know it. It is the same principle. So you humans think your thoughts and emotions are private, unknown to others, but in fact they are all part of the inner communication environment through inner communication methods you do not know; they are a part of this inner, larger universe.

This inner environment is as vital and important to the welfare of the species as the physical environment.

Our inner environment is just as important to the well-being of humanity as a whole as our outer world is. To use Jung's terms, this is the collective unconscious of humanity -- an inner environment. The collective unconscious of humanity is just as important to human well-being as nature is to human development, not one bit less.

It represents a collective psychic repository of potential.

It represents a collective psychic repository of the inner potentials and latent capacities that all of us possess. All of the potentials, all of the abilities and latent capacities that we humans share are there, and you can draw upon them at any time.

Just as the earth provides a physical repository of potential.

Doesn't our earth provide a physical repository of potential? Whatever you want, it will give you, but you have to dig for it -- it will not jump out on its own. For example, if you need energy, then you go dig for coal; if you need oil, you go extract it; if you need natural gas, you bring it out; if you need iron ore, you go mine for iron. The repository is all sitting there, but it requires you humans to dig it out. Hasn't everything humanity has developed up to today been provided by this physical repository that the earth gives us?

Besides this physical repository, you humans also have a collective psychic repository of humanity, and it is just as important as the physical repository.

When there is an earthquake in another part of the world, your own native land is affected to some extent. When there are psychic earthquakes in other parts of the world, then you are also affected, and often to the same degree.

When there are psychic earthquakes in other parts of the world, you are also affected, and often to the same degree. The impact that this kind of psychic earthquake causes in this region is far greater than the impact of the earthquake itself. For example, if an earthquake happens in South America, many places actually do not feel it at all; but if an epidemic or an outbreak erupts in South America, the whole world will feel it -- isn't today's example very typical?

In the same way, if one portion of your own body is injured, then the other portions feel the effects of that injury.

When your body is injured in some place, the other parts also know about it.

An earthquake may be a disaster in the area in which it occurs, even while its existence corrects imbalances, and therefore promotes the life of the planet.

An earthquake is a disaster in the place where it occurs, but the earthquake itself is making an adjustment. As was said earlier: these natural disasters are all adjustments. Why is the meaning of this kind of adjustment not so easy to understand on the very small scale of us humans? Because an earthquake means a release of energy. If there is no earthquake for a long time, that energy accumulates to a certain point and will produce even greater harm. So the adjustment of one small earthquake can cause the lifespan of the entire planet to be extended. If there were no earthquakes, the energy in the earth's crust could not be released and would keep accumulating, and then there could be a massive movement of tectonic plates or a world-shattering catastrophe.

In the area immediately adjacent to an earthquake, there is considerable emergency activity, and aid is also sent in from other countries.

Once an earthquake happens, all kinds of social rescue organizations and agencies come in.

When one area of the body erupts, there are also local emergency measures, and other portions of the body send aid to the stricken part.

Like when we get sick, white blood cells, T cells, or other immune cells are immediately sent to the injured or stricken place to do rescue work.

A bodily eruption, while it may appear to be a disaster at the site of the illness, is nevertheless also part of the body's defense system, intended to ensure the overall balance of the body. Thus biologically speaking, disease represents the body's overall defense system in operation.

When you get sick, it is indeed a disaster in the region where the illness breaks out, but in terms of the body as a whole, it means that your body's overall immune system is functioning effectively. If the body's immune system were not effective, that area would not even get sick at all -- it would simply be completely overrun. It is precisely because your immune system is effective, and because the entire operating mechanism of your body is effective, that the illness makes itself felt to you -- it is a process by which your body is healing itself.

He says I am trying to say this simply... but without some diseases, the body could not endure.

Remember this sentence: without some diseases, the body could not endure as it does now. In other words, some of the diseases we humans have are necessary -- these diseases actually promote the extension of human life.

We all had this feeling when we were children, especially when little kids sometimes run a fever. Adults often notice: every time a little child runs a fever, the child becomes smarter. I am referring to very young children; after they get older it is not so obvious. So some illnesses, which seem like a disaster to the person who is sick, may actually be a good thing over the course of that person's whole life.

The body must be in a constant state of change, making quick decisions that you cannot follow.

The body must adapt to all kinds of environments -- the inner environment, the outer environment, and even changes in the environment of the whole world and changes in the potential environment. It must make preparations and adjustments in advance. And this rapid change has already become so fast that we cannot follow it -- that is what is meant by "cannot follow": our consciousness can no longer keep up with this rapid change of the body's adjustments; our brain cannot keep up.

Regulating the concentration of hormones, maintaining the balance among all of its systems, not only in its relationship with its own body, but also in relationship to a constantly changing environment.

It must not only find balance in its relationship with its own body, but also find balance in relationship to the constantly changing outer environment. So this kind of change in the body itself is something our human brain cannot keep up with. If you rely on the brain to calculate it, you simply cannot keep up.

To give a simple example: do you know how much sweat your body has to produce when the temperature of your surrounding environment rises by two degrees? How would you calculate that? Which systems are involved in sweating? How much sweat should be produced? If you sweat too much, the body loses too much water, and you will die of dehydration; if you sweat too little, it will not be enough to lower the temperature. So how much is the right amount to sweat? How is it done? These things seem simple, but they are actually very subtle.

To give another simple example: why can your body temperature be constantly maintained at 36.5 degrees, within a range that does not vary by more than a few tenths of a degree? You say that is not so hard? Try it yourself -- go build something that maintains the entire temperature of a body weighing over a hundred pounds at 36.5 degrees, never changing no matter how the external environment changes. Then you will know how much complex capability is involved in this, and how many systems must cooperate. It is a precise, rapid adjustment that the human body cannot keep up with.

On a biological level, the body often produces its own preventive medicine and inoculations.

Remember, biologically speaking, our body often produces its own preventive medicine and inoculations -- not the artificial vaccines we have now, but the body has its own preventive medicine, which is quite miraculous.

For example, by seeking out new or unfamiliar substances in its environment that have come into being because of natural science and technology... it absorbs a small dose of these things and comes down with an illness. If that illness is left alone, it will quickly disappear. After the body has made use of whatever it can make use of, or after the body can coexist peacefully with this seeming invader, the illness disappears, but the person has acquired that immunity.

This kind of self-inoculation and self-prevention of the human body is extremely miraculous. Why do some people never get sick? They have already carried out their own inoculation and their own prevention. How do they do it? Humanity still does not know.

To give the simplest example: some animals, after being injured, will find herbs that can heal them. For example, cats lick their fur every day, and many hairballs accumulate in their stomachs. Once they build up to a certain point, they affect digestion and physical health. But cats in their natural state will find certain grasses to eat, and when these grasses reach the stomach they cause vomiting, and the cat vomits out the entire hairball. Another example: after some animals eat something poisonous, they can distinguish which things are poisonous and which are not -- and it is often said that next to a poisonous plant there will be an antidote herb.

He is only giving an example; do not go too deeply into it. His meaning is: people will automatically take in certain things from the natural world, or from the scientific world, or from the medical world. He is not saying that he rejects things from science and technology -- of course natural things are also included. The traditional Chinese medicine we had in China in the past used entirely natural herbs, but among those herbs there were also some mineral and metallic substances, some minerals, and also some things that had been processed and prepared.

For example, taking some medicine. Why does taking medicine make you better? It is because the body, through these medicines -- these substances that may be new or unfamiliar to the human body -- takes them in, and then comes down with an illness, and through this illness it acquires an immune capability. It is that simple, and the principle is similar to how we get vaccinated.

Another example from Chinese medicine in treating cold damage or the invasion of cold qi: when Chinese medicine treats illness, it has you take some sweat-inducing medicine, such as cinnamon bark, and cinnamon bark itself has a very strong dispersing effect. After taking it to treat a cold or cold damage, you will sweat profusely, and they have you cover yourself with a blanket to induce sweating -- drenched in sweat, the entire blanket and your clothes soaked through. That process of sweating itself is like being sick. In a certain sense it is like an illness, but through this he heals himself.

The body uses this kind of method to immunize itself -- the body has this kind of method for immunizing itself.

The body's existence, however, must contend with the mind, and the mind produces an inner environment of concepts.

If it were in a natural state, the body might heal itself. But the reason the body sometimes cannot heal itself is because your mind is interfering. He says "contend with the mind," meaning it has to struggle against your mind.

The cells that compose the body do not try to understand the cultural world... therefore the body relies upon your assessment.

Why? Because your cells will not understand your cultural background, cultural attributes, humanistic things, including value judgments and so on. But your mind has these things. Once the mind has them, it will influence the body -- the body needs to rely on your consciousness to interpret the existence of those non-biological threats.

As far as these threats themselves are concerned, biologically speaking they do not exist, but you believe they exist, and your mind believes they exist, so they exist. Because you believe they exist, under the action of your consciousness, it is as if they are the same as existing -- your body also has to respond to them and make assessments.

Just like when you worry that you might get some disease, that is a judgment of your mind. For example, you think: "My parents or my family has a genetic history of some disease, could I get it too?" That is a judgment of the mind, not a biological judgment. Another example: everyone is worried right now: "This epidemic is so contagious, the British virus has mutated again, and its transmissibility has increased by 70 percent" -- these are all things that cells cannot understand, but your brain can understand. Then what your brain understands in turn transforms this threat, which is not biological in nature, into a threat that your body can feel.

If that assessment coincides with the biological assessment, then your body will have a very good working relationship.

For example, suppose you are in a dangerous environment, and your consciousness tells you that in this environment you might get sick -- such an assessment coincides with your biological assessment. After assessing, your body discovers that you really might get sick, because the water you drink is indeed unclean, or many things in your environment are polluted. Then this will form a very good cooperative relationship, and the body can respond quickly and clearly, making the correct adjustments.

When the body, even through cellular communication, has concretely scanned the environment and still cannot find any biological connection between that threat or danger, then the body must trust your assessment and respond to the dangerous situation.

What does this mean? It means that when you feel there is danger, your body sends out many detection signals to look at the surrounding environment: is the temperature rising? Is the air pressure changing? Is the surrounding environment dangerous? It can detect this biologically. As a result, after scanning biologically, it finds no danger, everything is safe, everything is peaceful, and at this time you have no danger to your life.

But at this moment you tell it: "No, there is danger! Because I am in a hospital, and right now the hospital is full of COVID-infected people everywhere. I am in an extremely dangerous environment."

At this time, whom should your body listen to? It should listen to you. Because your decision is above it. It has already scanned biologically and found nothing wrong, but you tell it there is danger, so the body must follow your arrangement and enter a state of emergency defense, just as if it had biologically detected danger.

The body, therefore, to some extent will react to imagined dangers in the same way that it reacts to dangers that are biologically real. As a result, the body's defense system often becomes overused.

Some people worry every day about getting this illness or that illness, and they are sickly every day -- that is the reason. They overuse their own defense system, and over time the defense system becomes excessively fatigued.

The body is therefore quite well equipped to handle its stance within the physical world.

It brought you into this world, into this physical world, and prepared for you such a human-shaped vehicle, such a human-shaped physical body, and this physical body can deal with everything it faces in this physical world. It was designed long ago. If you could not face this physical world, you would not survive. If you could not adapt to this earthly social environment full of bacteria, microorganisms, and viruses, humanity could not survive. The fact that you can be born here means that this body is sufficient to deal with these things.

And in that respect, its defense system cannot go wrong.

The body's defense system will not make mistakes; it has an extremely exquisite design.

Your conscious mind, however, directs your perception of reality, and interprets that perception, organizing it into mental patterns. Again, the body must rely upon those interpretations.

So in the end, the body must rely on your interpretations in order to function.

The biological basis of all life is a loving, sacred, and cooperative one, and it presupposes a safe bodily stance. From there, any member of any species feels that it has the freedom of initiative to seek out its own needs, and to communicate with others of its kind.

The body's defense system is itself complete, but the conscious mind often directs your perception of reality. When there is clearly no danger right now, you tell it there is danger. For example, the epidemic originally has no effect on you at all, and there is no possibility of infection around you, but you frighten yourself by saying it is very dangerous -- everywhere around you there are sick people, my friends and my environment are all very dangerous. This kind of frightening will put the body into an extreme defensive state. If you were in real danger, defending like this would not be wrong; but you are in safety, yet you keep the body in a defensive state all the time, and over time this defensive state will become fatigued. Being in a state of tension every day, when the virus really comes to infect you, the defensive state will no longer have any strength -- it is like making it work 24 hours a day without letting it rest, and after working continuously for a period of time, when the real virus invades, it no longer has vigorous energy and power.

This kind of consciousness of yours will turn into a mental pattern, and the body must rely on the interpretations of this conscious mind. Therefore, a tense state of mind does no good at all to the condition of the body. You think you are being clever, but actually you are worrying about problems that do not exist.

The Foundation of All Life Is Cooperation

The biological foundation of all life is a loving, sacred, and mutually cooperative foundation. This point is important, mark it well, and be sure to remember: all life -- he is saying all life here -- has this kind of biological foundation. On this foundation, a very safe bodily posture -- a bodily state -- is already presupposed. Because the body knows that it cooperates with all things around it, that this is sacred and loving, and that others will not come to harm it or encroach upon it. On this broad foundation, any member of any species can bring forth the freedom of its own initiative to seek out what it needs and to communicate with others of its kind. It communicates with its own kind out of active need, not out of a desire to harm its own kind or other species. All living beings are in a mutually cooperative relationship with one another, whereas we humans portray these external bacteria and viruses as things that want to compete with humans for living space and that harbor ill will toward humans. It is not like that.

Animal Imagination and Human Possibilities

The popular belief nowadays is that animals do not possess imagination. But this is quite a mistaken belief. For example, animals anticipate the arrival of mating time before it comes—they know when to mate. Animals all learn through experience, and regardless of your ideas, at any level, learning would be impossible without imagination. Animals also learn, also have the capacity for reasoning, and also have their own imagination. In your terms, animal imagination is limited, but their imagination is not confined to the portion of prior experience; they can imagine events that have never happened to them.

Human ability in this regard is far more complex than that of animals. For instance, if you have hit your dog or cat at home, when you raise your hand it may run away—you hit it with something else, and the moment you move that thing it will run. Humans can anticipate many things because they deal with probabilities, while animals only deal with what is right in front of them. Although animals have imagination, they do not use it as broadly as humans do, thinking everything far ahead and factoring in all kinds of probabilities. Animals only face the real dangers and difficulties right before them; they do not go imagining those things. Of course it is not that they lack this ability—animals are very cautious and very imaginative when protecting their young, and they know how to avoid being affected by natural enemies. Humans, however, deal with probabilities. What we call imagination is being entangled day after day with "this might happen, that might happen."

In any given period of time, a person who possesses only one body can anticipate or do far more things than an animal can—countless more. Each thing is still only a probability until it is activated. Humans can anticipate far more things than animals can; humans can think in very complex ways. But no matter how many of these probabilities there are, each is only a probability. What does "probability" mean? It means you know that once you activate it, it will become an event or a threat in actual life; if you do not activate it, it is not.

We often have a catchphrase: "just in case." "One in ten thousand" means something that will happen only once in ten thousand times, and yet we want to be fully prepared for it. We consider this human shrewdness and cleverness, but is it really? No. This is humans overusing their imagination. If something has only a 0.01% probability of happening, would we spend enormous financial resources, material resources, and energy on it, or even feel anxious over it? Any rational person would not prepare for such a small probability. But we humans do—we prepare for things with even lower probabilities than that, and then feel pleased with ourselves, thinking we are very clever: "Look, I have even thought of a way to deal with such a tiny probability." Is that not a waste? If the probability of something happening really is one in ten thousand, then just let it happen.

Therefore, the body, which responds to human thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, has far, far more material to process, and it must also have a clear range within which simple action can take place. The body has to respond to human thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, so this body gets very tired. No matter how complex your emotions, no matter how complex your thoughts, no matter how complex your beliefs, no matter how thorough and meticulous your deductions about the future, you must give your body a clear instruction; you cannot make it guess. But we often do not give the body anything clear; we give it something very vague, or even contradictory, and the body truly does not know what to do. On the one hand you hope you are healthy, and on the other hand you worry that this virus may infect you at any moment. In such a tangle, your body does not know whether it should raise its defense system or lower its defense system.

The Body's Defense System Is a Second Line of Defense

The body's defense system is automatic — you know it is automatic, and you do not need to raise it prematurely or proactively. To a certain extent, however, it is a second-line system rather than a first-line one. Only when the body is threatened does it enter a state of mobilization. It should not be activated by your assumptions; it should truly activate only when a virus invades, when danger approaches. It is a second line, not something at the forefront of consciousness, where the moment you become aware of danger it kicks in.

The body's primary purpose is not merely to survive, but to maintain the quality of existence at a certain level, and that quality itself promotes health and achievement. Mark this as a key point: the body's primary purpose is not just survival; it also requires a basic quality. If survival alone comes at the cost of that quality, it would rather not live. If living is painful, aggrieved, suffocating, unbearable — when life is worse than death — the body would rather not live. Because it needs to maintain a basic quality of life, and that quality itself implies health and achievement — if there is no health and no achievement, how can you say your life has quality?

To translate what Seth means here into plain language: if your body's immune system has been activated but still fails to hold the line, and the person actually dies, then it was time to die — so die, it is all right. Because if you survived at that point, you would still be left with many aftereffects, or with subsequent experiences of suffering worse than death, so it would be better to die. Seth says it very tactfully and beautifully, not as crude and shallow as my version, but his meaning is exactly this: without quality of life, there is no necessity to keep living; if there is quality of life, then it necessarily means health and achievement. So when the body recognizes that there is no health and no achievement — that is, no quality — then let death come; if it cannot hold out, then it cannot hold out. If it can hold out, and you have that quality of existence, then the body will certainly be healthy, and those viruses will be unable to harm you.

Physiologically Immediate Fear and Generalized Fear

A clear, physiologically immediate fear is what alerts the body and allows the body to have a complete and natural response. This is correct, because if we human beings want to keep surviving in the physical world, we must have this kind of alertness; we cannot face danger and ignore it. For example, when you are crossing a busy street, you might be reading a newspaper headline, and long before you have any conscious awareness of the environment, your body may already have jumped away from a car coming toward you. The body is simply doing what it is supposed to do. Although consciously you are not afraid, there is nevertheless a physiologically immediate fear that you act upon.

What does this mean? When you cross a street full of traffic but do not watch the road, and instead read a newspaper or look at your phone, long before you are conscious of the environment, your body may already have dodged a car coming toward you, and you are not aware of this process. We often see many people reading books or looking at their phones while walking, but apart from a very few individuals, you rarely see the vast majority of people bump into something because they are looking at their phones or reading while walking. Amazing, right? It is that amazing. Because your body's perceptual ability and its awareness of the surrounding environment are far more precise and complex than you imagine. Sometimes when you are walking on the road and a car suddenly rushes toward you, your body instinctively jumps away, and you may not even realize why you jumped; only after you jump away do you realize that you avoided an accident. The body simply does what it is supposed to do. Although consciously you are not afraid, the body nevertheless tells you to pay attention to this danger, and it will take action against the danger. Your body knows that crossing the street this way is dangerous. While you are still reading the newspaper, it has already turned on the alarm system and the perceptual system completely, closely watching everything around it—keeping its eyes on all directions and its ears open to all sides. Although your eyes are still looking at the newspaper, through other perceptual systems it still senses the surrounding environment, giving you a kind of physiologically immediate fear, and that is why you can cross the street safely.

However, if you mentally live in an environment of generalized fear, your body has no clear line of action, and no appropriate response is allowed. If you are in danger every single day, will the body still respond? No, it will not. For example, you cross a crosswalk while looking at your phone, and it is fine. But if such a crosswalk were three kilometers long, and you were constantly in the state of crossing the street, do you think your body could still dodge these dangers? It could not. Because it cannot remain in this tense, sensitive, extremely fearful state all the time—and the fear I am referring to is not psychological fear, but physical fear. If it is constantly in a state of fear, your immune system, your body's resistance, or your defense system will not be as effective. Only when you let it rest most of the time can it function when real danger arrives.

The Vicious Dog Four Blocks Away

Let us look at it this way. An animal -- not necessarily a wild animal in the forest, but an ordinary cat or dog -- reacts in a certain way, alert to everything in its environment. Yet a cat will not anticipate any danger from a dog locked up four blocks away, nor will it speculate about what might happen if that dog escaped and found the cat's comfortable yard. But people -- many people do not pay attention to everything in their environment, yet through their beliefs they focus only on the vicious dog four blocks away.

The example he gives is very vivid. Cats are afraid of dogs. They are not afraid of ordinary small dogs, but they are extremely afraid of big dogs. Suppose a cat and a dog live four blocks apart. This cat will absolutely never worry about that dog, worry that one day the dog will break its chain, rush over, find its cat bed, and catch it and bite it. A cat will never think about such a thing, because it does not anticipate that kind of danger.

But people are exactly the opposite. People do not pay much attention to the tangible, visible dangers in their environment, because our bodies themselves have a certain capacity for self-defense and will automatically avoid these dangers. For example, a toddler learning to walk is unsteady on his feet, but you rarely see him suffer serious injuries -- he protects himself. Yet people pay far too much attention to dangers outside the body, outside their immediate environment. We even see a news report saying that the Siberian permafrost is melting and some ancient viruses have been discovered; or that beneath the Antarctic permafrost some ancient virus from ages past has been found. This kind of news frightens many people. Or, on the last day of December, an unknown virus was discovered in Africa, a combination of the Ebola virus and the coronavirus, with a fatality rate reaching 90%³⁷ and so on -- many people break out in a cold sweat the moment they see this news. They start thinking, if COVID had Ebola's lethality combined with COVID's transmissibility, wouldn't humanity be finished? What are they doing? They are focusing on the vicious dog four blocks away. This danger does not exist in front of them at all right now, yet they are already getting nervous.

That is to say, they do not react to specific, visible things that exist in time and space, but instead let their thoughts dwell on dangers that might exist, while at the same time ignoring other concrete data right beside them. This is a mistake we humans often make, and everyone has some degree of it. They focus on things outside their own time and space, and instead imagine them as things that could happen right beside them. Is this possible? Yes. What is the probability? One in ten million, or one in ten thousand, or one in a million. For example, suppose the very place in Africa where the virus was discovered happens to be visited by a tourist who travels around and gets infected; this tourist happens to return to your city; the two of you happen to meet in the same mall or supermarket; you happen to bump into each other accidentally, and then he transmits the virus to you. Is this probability possible? Yes. Do you need to worry about it? Do you need to be on guard against a danger with a probability of one in ten thousand or one in a million?

The mind sends out a signal that "there is danger," but it is a danger with no specific existence. The body therefore cannot react clearly; the body does not know what you are doing. Clearly nothing is wrong around you, yet you frighten the body by telling it something is wrong, that it is very dangerous. Because you frighten it, the body has to listen to you. It does not know the specific situation either. Perhaps you really are in a high-risk area for the virus, and perhaps the body really should raise its immune system. But at this moment it listens to you, because the body cannot judge these things. Although biologically the body judges that there is no danger, when you tell it there is danger, it listens to you. And at this point, the body begins to react to this false threat, and it can be said to be stuck between two gears -- between threat and no threat, stuck in an intermediate state where there seems to be a threat but there actually is none. This creates physiological confusion. The body's response must be clear: danger is danger, no danger is no danger. There is no state of "there might be danger." Yet we humans are constantly in a state of "there might be danger," and this "there might be danger" is extremely harmful -- more harmful than the danger itself. If there is danger, face the danger; if there is no danger, be at ease and content. It is that simple. Do not keep placing yourself in a state of "there might be danger." If you think about problems this way, then at every moment of your life there might be danger -- the kind of possibility you speak of can happen to you every day, every hour, every moment.

Beliefs and Illness

The whole feeling of being healthy, vigorous, and resilient is a generalized state of satisfaction. Such an overall feeling is a state of satisfaction, and it is brought about by many specific responses. What responses? That is to say, if the body is left to its own devices, it can protect itself against any disease. This sentence is very important: you only have to let the body have its way, and it can protect itself against any disease. But the body cannot properly defend against an exaggerated, generalized fear of disease. The body can defend against actual diseases, but it cannot defend against hypothetical, possible diseases—you have given it an imaginary enemy, and it does not know how to defend against that. The body must reflect your own feelings and assessments, and your own feelings and assessments are very important. Feeling that you are healthy is very important. And such feelings and assessments must be practical and realistic; you cannot pull all those possibilities into reality.

Now generally speaking, your entire medical system really does create as many diseases as it cures. Your medical system also cures many illnesses, and it also creates many illnesses. What are these illnesses? These illnesses are all possibilities. A certain symptom, under certain circumstances and in certain people, has a certain probability of leading to certain diseases, but that probability is very low. Yet scientists act as if they have discovered a new continent, saying that it has such-and-such a percentage probability of leading to such-and-such a disease, so in order to prevent this thing, we must do such-and-such. But this disease itself does not actually exist; it is artificially created, given a name, entered into a database, given corresponding treatment methods, and given a corresponding plan of drug therapy—and this disease has then legitimately become a disease within the medical system. Then when someone has similar symptoms, they are classified under it: you have this disease, take this medicine. Perhaps this person's symptom, in their own case, is not at all sufficient to lead to that final possibility, but there is no way around it—if they have such a possibility, they must be treated for it.

Because you are constantly being hunted by all kinds of diseases and symptoms, filled with fear of disease, struck down by what seems to be the body's tendency toward illness. There are some symptoms—for example, if your chest feels a little tight, could it be insufficient blood supply to the heart? He immediately associates it with the symptoms of some disease and begins to match himself to it, and then you seem to have this tendency toward illness. Someone says they often feel dizzy—do I have high blood pressure? Are my blood lipids also bad? High blood lipids, high blood pressure—could that lead to heart disease, myocardial infarction, insufficient blood supply to the heart, or blockage of cerebral blood vessels, stroke, and so on—and it begins.

Now private illness also occurs within a social framework. Each person's illness also occurs within a social framework, and this framework is the result of personal and group beliefs that are entangled with one another at all cultural levels. Therefore, in that regard, it also serves personal and public purposes.

What is meant by personal and public purposes? That is to say, a person, because of their own worry, thinks: could I have some kind of disease? And this disease is one that public medical experts or medical institutions have announced, saying that a certain disease has certain characteristics and certain symptoms. So it is the combination of these two: there is a personal purpose, and there is also a public purpose. The public creates this disease, and it hopes that someone will fill this vacancy—if there is such a disease, then naturally there will be such patients; according to the estimates and projections of medical scientists, a certain percentage of the population will suffer from such a disease, and then someone will come forward and say, I have this disease, I have these symptoms. This is a mutual influence, the result of personal and group beliefs at all cultural levels. When medical scientists create a disease, someone claims to have this disease; then the pharmaceutical company says I have this medicine—this whole set cooperates very well with one another, seamlessly. Scientists say there is this disease, patients say I have these symptoms; medical scientists say he has this disease, the pharmaceutical company says I have this medicine; the patient takes it and perhaps it is effective. That is the process.

This also involves the diseases generally attributed to all different ages, and it also involves the fact that different ages have different diseases. The diseases of the elderly are consistent with the beliefs of the social culture and with the structure of family life. Because these are all influenced by group beliefs. For example, we believe that when people get old they become useless, that when people get old they lose their strength, their eyesight blurs, their hearing fails, their reactions slow down, their memory deteriorates—these beliefs are consistent with the diseases of old age. What is the structure of family life like? Elderly people live by themselves; in many places elderly people live by themselves, without children to care for them, and their lives are very lonely, so it is also related to the structure of their lives that so many symptoms of old age appear.

Aging animals should have their own dignity; even animals in their old age should have their own dignity, and aging men and women should as well. Aging is an epidemic of body and mind, an unnecessary disease. You contract it because when you were young, you believed that old people were useless. There is no vaccine against beliefs, so when young people with such beliefs themselves grow old, they become the victims.

Let me give an example. A young man will mock those old men, feeling that old men are no good—their physical strength is no good, their physique is no good, they are extremely ugly, their sexual ability is even worse, and their ability to win the favor of the opposite sex is even worse. Here, as a young male, he carries a certain selfishness or jealousy—he hopes that young girls will all like young people like himself. But such a belief was originally for his own personal, selfish purpose; yet after implanting this belief, he firmly believes it. When he reaches old age, he is harmed by this belief, because he firmly believes that people become useless when they get old—when he himself grows old, he will also believe this, because it is his belief. The same is true for women, and vice versa. When a girl is young, she will mock those old women. Nowadays people often joke online, saying, you old women born in 1999 or 1998 should stop showing off—the post-2000 generation mocks the post-1990 generation. Why? Because they think you are old; you are already in your twenties, while we are only in our teens, and we are in the prime of youth. This also carries a strong sense of purpose: in the process of competing for the opposite sex, these old women should not come out and compete with them, because they no longer have the strength to compete. But this mentality will also harm them when they grow old. You should not have this kind of misconception or misunderstanding about age, and bring it into your own beliefs, because in old age it will be a harm to you.

The types of diseases change with history and with the times; some become fashionable, while others fall out of favor. Every period has its own special fashionable diseases.

He says that biologically and psychologically speaking, all epidemics are a collective statement. When a certain disease becomes especially prevalent—for example, when diabetes becomes especially prevalent—it is actually making a statement. What does it declare? For example, it may declare that our human nutrition is excessive, that sugar metabolism is disordered, that we have long consumed too much sugar. But what I am saying is not scientific—what diabetes actually declares may be interpreted differently by everyone; I am just giving a random example.

Epidemics point out the group beliefs about specific situations that are detested on all levels. That is, everyone detests this image, everyone detests such a social phenomenon, but it is a state that cannot be changed, and such a state will manifest and become diabetes or obesity—obesity was originally not a disease, but it became a disease called obesity. It is like people asking, is being ugly a disease? Being ugly is not a disease. Then why are they called plastic surgery hospitals and cosmetic hospitals? Why are they called hospitals? This is just a joke.

We humans will create some epidemics, but the reason these epidemics become prevalent is not that more people have contracted these diseases, but rather that we humans have a situation in which we collectively detest a certain phenomenon to an extreme degree.

They often accompany wars, and they represent a kind of protest on the biological level. There are some things you can no longer endure, and they can only protest on the physical level—protest on the biological level, protest on the physical level. It may be a kind of social mentality, a statement.

Whenever living conditions reach a point where their quality is threatened, there will be such a collective statement. The quality of life must be maintained at a certain level so that the individual members of a species can develop. Human beings must also maintain a quality of life; if it cannot be maintained, whether collectively or individually, it will express itself through the means of life, through protest on the biological level—and protest on the biological level is an epidemic, a plague. Then is the pandemic we face today also some kind of social statement or protest? Whether spiritual, psychic, or social.

A Dimension Added by Humanity

Your species, as far as we humans are concerned, has added a dimension to its psychic and spiritual capacities, and this is biologically pertinent. That is to say, the quality of our life is not merely material life; we have also added spiritual and psychic aspects. So sometimes many people live very comfortably, with fine material conditions, yet they still want to commit suicide; they still do not want to live, finding life meaningless and pointless. Why? Because humans have added a dimension -- beyond material life, they begin to pursue the spiritual or the psychic. If they still cannot attain a certain quality of life in these two respects, they do not want to live either. So you see, some suicides do not occur among people living in poverty; sometimes they also occur in lives that are comfortable and easy, but very dull.

For example, a freedom to express concepts, a personal inclination, and a worldwide social and political background must exist, in which each individual can develop his abilities and make a contribution to humanity as a whole. The freedom to express concepts spoken of here is freedom of speech; a personal inclination means that personal will and free will cannot be influenced, and his full freedom must be guaranteed; and a social or worldwide political background must also be satisfied. If a basic political and social background cannot be satisfied, then the quality of his life will also be affected.

So you will find that humans are actually quite fussy, very fussy -- being fed and clothed and warm is still not enough; they also need political and social demands, they also need their own freedom of speech, they also need the manifestation of personal free will, and moreover each person must be able to develop his own abilities, and also make a contribution to the whole of humanity. These are the contents of that added dimension he speaks of -- he is giving examples, because without examples it would not be easy for you to understand.

But the establishment of such an atmosphere must depend on many concepts that have not yet been universally accepted throughout the world. Yet humanity is formed in just this way, so concepts are extremely important biologically. These conditions for a spiritual or psychological quality of life require a large environment, not just a small group or a small circle -- they require a large social, worldwide background and atmosphere, and require universal concepts accepted throughout the world. If these universal concepts cannot be accepted, then this cannot be realized. For humans, concepts are also extremely important biologically, so humanity is formed in just this way: we need concepts that can be universally accepted. Although concepts are not biological things -- biology has no cognition of concepts; biology only studies cells, environment, nutrition, and such things -- yet for humans, these universal values accepted throughout the world are also extremely important biologically.

So now you all understand: why some people shed their blood and sacrifice their lives for politics, why some people struggle over party conflicts, over elections, over these matters -- it is all for this reason. They know this thing is important; it is not that they do not care. Those of us who study spirituality have already transcended above them, already do not ask about politics, do not ask about current events, already have transcended them -- as long as you are still human, you cannot transcend it. Remember what I say: as long as you are human, you cannot transcend it. Why? Because the whole of humanity is affected by this. What we need to do is to continually improve and continually perfect these concepts that can be universally accepted throughout the world, rather than to transcend this world. You cannot transcend it; you will be affected by it.

The quality of your life is formed through your feelings -- your feelings of this subjective reality -- and through your concepts. With what kind of concepts you view the world, you can form what kind of feelings, and form your basic view of subjective reality. So these universal concepts and universal values are very important.

Once again, beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive. Many people say the world is already like this, what can I do, what power does a little nobody like me have -- this is fostering despair. Beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive; they cause the body's systems to shut down. If collective action against those terrible social or political conditions is ineffective, then other methods will be adopted, and they often appear as epidemics or natural disasters. Many societies make the masses feel hopeless about life, and this fostering of despair -- all kinds of social phenomena and news media reports are fostering this despair -- will later lead to a terrible collective action against social conditions. And this collective action is actually ineffective; everyone has protested, resisted, and struggled, and in the end it was ineffective. After it proves ineffective, what happens? Other methods will appear. What methods? Basically epidemics or natural disasters.

If you look carefully at the history of human development, you will find that before this pandemic occurred, was there not such an atmosphere of despair in various places around the world? For example, in France, before the pandemic developed, was the Yellow Vests movement not continuously ongoing? If not for this pandemic, it might not have stopped; later, because of the pandemic, the Yellow Vests no longer took to the streets, though it still continued for a while, disregarding the pandemic. In the United States, was there not the Black Lives Matter movement, and also other movements, movements of the lower classes. In Hong Kong, before this pandemic broke out, from June all the way to the end of the year, there had already been about half a year of sustained protest. But when all of these proved ineffective, there would be other ways of expression. Of course, I am not saying there is any causal relationship or causal connection between them; I am only saying that this is the meaning Seth explains in this passage, and I am giving a few examples so that everyone can understand.

In whatever manner, the cause that invites the problem will be eliminated. Whether the government resolves it itself, or through a political reform or change, a policy change, or mass protest and mass movements, or natural disasters, disease, plagues, and epidemics -- in whatever manner, that cause must be resolved and eliminated. What cause? The cause that leads the whole society into despair and hopelessness. If it is not eliminated, then this thing will continue to ferment.

Look at how ancient emperors dealt with natural disasters. What did they do? They opened the granaries and distributed grain. No matter how much rent and grain and wealth they had collected before, at such a time they had no choice -- on the one hand they ensured the people's survival, and on the other hand, from a certain angle, did they not eliminate the problem and resolve the cause? If you have no grain, I will give it to you; the state will give it to you; in ancient times, the emperor gave it to you. These methods are all effective and useful; they can greatly alleviate this problem.

But such images, such situations, are the result of beliefs. And beliefs are spiritual, so the most important work must always be done in that realm. Which realm? In the inner environment of humanity as a whole. Humans have two environments: one is the world in which we live externally -- the material world, including the earth, social organizations, nations, governments, political systems; this is the outer environment. We also have an inner environment, which is the spiritual, psychic, and psychological environment of humanity; we have a shared environment. Only in that environment can problems truly be solved. Such situations are the result of beliefs, and beliefs are products of the spirit, so the work must be done in that realm and at that level in order to solve the problem. If this problem is not solved at this level, and is only solved from the outside, then it is not fundamental; it treats the symptoms but not the root cause.

All right, the content of this session has now been fully covered. Seth said, my heartiest regards and good evening. Then at 12:15, Seth ended the session, as abruptly as he had begun it. Jane delivered this material for Seth at a steady, focused pace, so smoothly that I expected him to continue for a while longer. He said the session stopped because I had asked Seth to repeat an important word, because I had not understood it the first time. Jane explained that when I did this, he had already moved three or four sentences ahead -- he had already spoken three or four sentences -- and this question forced him to turn back and look at what he had just said. Then, although he was still in trance, he knew that it was already late, and suddenly decided to end the class. At the same time, he had originally felt that he could well have continued for another hour.

Rob's Note 1: Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is a process that is not fully understood. In this process, the chlorophyll of plants is used to make use of solar energy, and sugars are manufactured from water and carbon dioxide. This stored sunlight -- sugar is stored sunlight -- is then used as food, as food for other herbivorous animals, and also as food for human beings.

Rob's Note 2: On Aging

When Seth says that aging is an epidemic of body and mind, just look at the thousands upon thousands of people in the past who all died of this disease, and you will know that this statement is true. I watched my own father suffer the ravages of aging; he passed away in November 1971 at the age of 81, and it has been seven years since his death -- so Rob has the right to speak on this, he has felt it firsthand. Of course, the beliefs people acquire when they are young can be changed -- that is, when we are young we should not mock the elderly, and then when we are old we will not be ravaged by such beliefs. And according to the concepts of Seth, Jane, and myself, this process of change is the best inoculation against aging. What kind of change? It is to change this belief while you are still young -- to change the belief that old age is bad. There is nothing bad about old age at all; old age is just as full of vitality, just as full of spirit. When you believe that elderly people are charming, vital, and creative, and you hold such a belief, then when you yourself grow old you will be the same; conversely, when you believe that old age means nothing works anymore, the body is old, the spirit is failing, creativity is gone, and one can only lie in a hospital being cared for, unable to manage one's own life -- if you hold such a belief, then when you grow old you will be like that too. Why? Because you create your reality according to that belief.

Rob says, as I observed my father growing old, with his bodily functions gradually failing, I often wondered why he never consciously changed his reactions to life, and why I never saw any sign that he wanted to do so. Why was it that his father, clearly aging day by day, did not change his reactions to life? He did not even see any sign that his father wanted to change. He says I clearly felt that it was possible for him to change and improve his beliefs about life, and that such action would have been very beneficial. Yet he simply would not change. I wanted him to change, not only so that I could avoid the pain of watching him deteriorate, but even more because I wanted him to change for the sake of his own life. But my father did not change. My father's choice to withdraw from this world was evident to everyone. Jane and I, along with the rest of his family, watched this process without fully understanding it -- they did not understand the process, but they could feel that his father was leaving. Everyone felt powerless to do anything about it.

Actually, Seth spoke about Rob's father: in his final period, Rob's father was basically in a state of stroke, paralyzed on one side, unaware of anything. Seth said your father is already in another time scheme, already beginning to prepare for his new life; his consciousness is paying very little attention to this side now, and he is ready to leave at any moment. Rob and the others did not know this process -- that his father was withdrawing from this time scheme and beginning to prepare for the next one. Seth said your father is subconsciously an engineer, and he has already made thorough preparations for this, and has prepared extremely well.

Now in medical circles, there has recently been much discussion that many diseases of aging are caused by a slow virus -- this is nonsense -- rather than being solely genetic, or caused by traditional old age and lack of oxygen to the brain. This slow virus hypothesis asks: could there be some slow virus in aging that we humans do not know about? Right now in Israel they are using pure oxygen inhalation as a way to improve lifespan to some degree. The general hope, and the unproven speculation, is this: that an infection can eventually be treated scientifically. Scientists believe that humans have a kind of slow aging virus, and that this virus causes problems such as lack of oxygen to the human brain. But no matter which angle one takes, whether aging is caused by old age or by infection, belief is still the most important factor -- it can both help the entire body maintain healthy functioning into very old age, and it can also prompt the body to produce unnecessary decline.

As I was writing this note, Jane pointed out that some of the material in my Note 1 from the previous session also applies here, because obviously, aging must be overcome through a combination of physical and mental techniques -- if one wishes to live longer, let alone live forever.

Session 805

Hello everyone, I am Mike. Today we continue sharing the fifth section of Part One of the Seth book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which is Session 805 of the book. This was a session held on Monday, May 16, 1977, at 9:28 p.m.

Rob briefly introduced the background:

Jane and I had thought a month ago about turning half of the garage into a writing room, with her own back porch attached. Now the idea has matured considerably, and in fact we have already agreed to begin the work this summer. It will undoubtedly be a long and noisy project. Now that our contractor has finished the front porch, he can begin the work at the back of the house as soon as possible.

Then Seth came through and began to speak:

An animal is aware of its own biological soundness, and so is a child.

In all forms of life, each individual is born into a world already prepared for him, with an environment favorable to his growth and development.

Not only human beings, but all forms of life, each individual is born into a world prepared for him.

He is born into a world in which his own survival depends upon the equally effective survival of all other individuals and species, so that each contributes to the whole of nature.

So in the process of human birth, he is not only beneficial to himself, but also contributes to the entire natural environment, to the whole of nature.

In that environment there is a biological, mutually cooperative social relationship. Animals know this in their own way, and the children of your species also take it for granted.

Our little babies also know this when they are born.

There are therefore many ways in which the needs of the individual can be met.

Survival Is Not the Primary Purpose of a Species

The needs of every individual can be met, but there are many ways to do so. Of course survival is of the utmost importance, but it is not the primary purpose of a species. Many people say that the primary purpose of a species is to survive and reproduce. Seth tells you: no. Survival is of the utmost importance, but it is not the primary purpose. Why?

Because survival is only a necessary means by which a species achieves its primary purpose.

A species must stay alive in order to do this; it must live in order to achieve its primary purpose. But in any case:

If conditions are not truly favorable to the maintenance of basic life or the quality of existence, however, it will deliberately avoid living.

If conditions are unfavorable, this individual will deliberately avoid living; it will no longer want to live. So it has a primary purpose, and that primary purpose is to pursue the quality of its life — and this quality means creativity, a sense of accomplishment, health. If a species feels that this quality is lacking, it will eliminate its offspring no matter what, not because those offspring were originally unable to survive, but because the quality of that survival would bring tremendous suffering — a life worse than death — so the parents might as well kill them.

For example:

He has distorted the nature of life to such a point that it becomes almost a mockery of life.

When conditions have become so difficult that the nature of life has been distorted into such a state, that is a mockery of life. It would rather not live.

So it is quite interesting:

Each species develops its abilities and talents within a framework. Each species needs a framework, and the safety of that framework is the medium for action.

In other words, whether we are talking about humans or other species, we all need a safe framework. Without this safe framework, there is no way to act normally.

Within that context, danger exists under certain clearly defined conditions known to the animals.

Within this safe framework, does danger exist? It does. But that danger is clearly defined, not present at every moment and in every place. If a child is born and lives its entire life in a state of danger, then it would rather not live. It must survive within a basic framework that has a safe framework. And within this safe framework, it does not mean there is no risk or danger; rather, the danger is clearly defined and perceivable by the animals. For example, prey know their natural predators, and hunters also know their prey; this is known to both sides. A prey animal being caught by a predator is a danger to the prey itself. But when the hunter is full, its natural prey will not fear it. For instance, when a lion is full, the antelopes and wildebeests will not fear it; they drink water and graze beside it, knowing it is full. At that time the hunter will not attack either. You might say, would it not catch more and store it for later? No, it also knows it cannot store it — it has no refrigerator, and the food will quickly spoil and rot. Animals only hunt what they need to survive, never more.

There are also emotional interactions between animals unknown to you, as well as biological laws.

Between animals there are emotional interactions unknown to us humans, and there are also laws of survival, biological laws.

So when an animal is killed by another animal as natural prey, he understands his role in nature.

The animal understands that it is prey and will be hunted by its natural predators. However, it does not anticipate this before death occurs — it does not have precognitive ability the way you might imagine, calculating that it will be eaten by a lion this afternoon; it does not know.

That fatal blow, the fatal blow of being pounced on by a lion and having its throat bitten through, pushes the consciousness out of the body.

The consciousness of the hunted animal is pushed out of its physical body. So in that sense, that fatal blow is merciful, because it pushes the animal's consciousness out of the body. When an animal is killed by a predator in nature, it is not the kind of suffering you imagine — you might think, what kind of pain is it to be bitten to death alive? There is no such pain. When it is pounced on and its throat is seized, its soul or consciousness has already left the physical body.

In their lives, animals in their natural state enjoy their vitality and accept their worth.

They regulate their own births and their own deaths, regulate the quality of their lives, so that their abilities are challenged. They enjoy contrasts, those between rest and motion, heat and cold. This direct contact with natural phenomena accelerates their experience everywhere.

These contrasts of rest and motion, cold and heat, are the stimulation nature gives to animals. They need such contrasts to accelerate their experience. When necessary, they will migrate to seek a more suitable environment. So do not say, oh, why does this polar bear live in such a cold place and not go somewhere warm? No, it needs such stimulation, such experience.

They are aware of approaching natural disasters, and when possible they will leave such areas.

Animals all have an intuitive sensitivity to natural disasters.

They will protect their own species, and according to the environment and circumstances they will care for their wounded, and even compete among young and old males for leadership of a group.

Among many animals, males will compete for leadership of the group. Under natural conditions, the loser — the one who failed to challenge the leader — is rarely killed; he simply did not succeed in the challenge.

Danger is clearly pointed out, so the body's responses can be simple.

What does "danger is clearly pointed out" mean? It means that within this framework of safety, biological danger — such as natural enemies, predators — is something it can clearly feel, and the body's response is very simple, unlike humans who carry possible dangers in their hearts every day.

The animal knows it has the right to exist, and to enjoy such a place within the structure of nature. This sense of biological integrity supports it.

What Humans Must Contend With

On the other hand:

Man, however, has more that he must contend with.

What is it? It is the fear of danger brought about by his own mind. This is what man must contend with.

He must deal with beliefs and feelings that are often so ambiguous

What does "mixed-up and unclear" mean? He will give examples:

that it seems impossible to take any clear course of action.

People often do not know what they should do; nothing they do seems right, left is not right and right is not right either. Pursuing his own primitive impulses is not right, and having higher ideas also feels not right; he pursues the material and feels it is not right, he pursues the spiritual and feels materially lacking; he feels he is in no danger, but is still influenced by other people's beliefs -- still danger.

The body often does not know how to react.

For example:

If you believe that the body is sinful, then you cannot expect yourself to be happy, and health will very likely desert you, because your dark beliefs will taint your innate psychological and biological soundness.

Your psychological and biological soundness is innate, but your dark beliefs taint it. You inherently possess a healthy psychological and physiological state, just like a child, yet your dark beliefs taint them. For example, in Western society, Christianity holds that a person is born with original sin³⁸. If you regard yourself as full of sin, how can you possibly be happy? Impossible.

Humanity Is in a State of Transformation

Humanity is in a state of transformation.

This is a very key sentence, be sure to remember it. We humans right now are in a state of transformation. Why do we say this is a state of transformation? This is one of many transformations of humanity -- in the history of human civilization, humanity has already undergone many transformations, and now it is in a new state of transformation.

Why do we say it is a transformation?

This transformation began when humanity tried to leave nature, when it wanted to develop the unique consciousness you now have.

The unique consciousness we humans now have only came about after we humans separated ourselves from nature. We think of ourselves as separate from nature, independent, able to challenge nature and make use of natural things, viewing ourselves and nature as two different things.

But this consciousness is not a finished product.

This is a very key point. The unique consciousness we think humans now have is a half-finished product, not a completed product. Why do we say it is a transformation? Because it has not been completed. And other animals are not like this -- the consciousness of other animals is itself natural; their psychological and biological health and soundness have not been defiled, so they do not need to transform. But we humans need to transform, because we made a mistake -- we separated ourselves from nature.

From the time we separated from nature, that was a transformation, and that transformation was a mistaken transformation. But it was also a necessary process in human development. Without that transformation, humanity probably would not have developed so quickly -- in science and technology. But this transformation itself also brought its own problems, namely cutting ourselves off from nature, and even cutting ourselves off from ourselves.

Human consciousness, however, is something that was meant to change, to evolve, and to develop.

Human consciousness, no matter what, is meant to change, to evolve, and to develop; this is normal. Human consciousness will not stop at some stage and cease developing. As for how far it will develop in the future, we do not need to worry about that for now. But remember, human consciousness is right now in a state of transition, a state of transformation.

The Role of Humanity as Caretakers

You, the more intelligent animals, must return to that nature which gave you birth, not only as loving caretakers of the other species on Earth.

We humans are the caretakers of the other species on Earth, and one could even say we are the caretakers of the entire Earth. Seth once gave an example, saying that you humans, relative to the Earth, are like the brain relative to your body. Remember, he was giving an example. Humans should look after all other things, acting as loving caretakers of the other species. That is why the Buddha said, "I will deliver all sentient beings" -- this is precisely about the question of other species. The Buddha did not only resolve the suffering of humans; the Buddha delivered the suffering of all sentient beings.

And also their companions.

Not only caretakers, but also their companions.

You must rediscover the spirituality of your biological heritage.

We must once again discover the existence of the inner spirituality. We are not a human existence; we are a spiritual existence that is merely having a human experience. In other words, we ourselves are the very being of spirituality, except that we have had the materialized, physicalized experience of being human.

A Critique of End-Times Thinking

This belief accepted by most of humanity — religious, scientific, and cultural — has always tended to emphasize a feeling of powerlessness, incompetence, and impending destruction, painting picture after picture in which neither man nor his world has much meaning.

An accidental product, isolated, yet seemingly ruled by a capricious God.

What he says here is very apt. He says that you humans, whether from a religious standpoint, from a civilizational or cultural standpoint, or from a scientific standpoint, are all promoting an end-times viewpoint. End-times thinking is something you humans have wanted to promote ever since you had civilization. Religion says that in the end everyone will face the great judgment and the world will perish — which is why there was the Mayan prophecy of humanity's destruction in 2012³⁹, and every few years another one pops up. Why do people always believe in this kind of end-times thinking? It is because they have this tendency — to portray themselves as a concept of powerlessness, incompetence, and impending destruction. So this includes many of Bashar's current theories saying that humanity has begun to divide, with one part ascending and another part dying off; and also the idea that we humans are controlled by extraterrestrials from outside the Earth — reptilians, little grays — and above the little grays there is yet another kind of extraterrestrial controlling the little grays. There are especially many theories of this kind; it is a widespread phenomenon in human society.

Then humans say that we as a species came into being somehow without knowing how. When they cannot explain it, they say it was an accident — including the emergence of life as an accident, that amid lightning and thunder in the early Earth, life came into being. Then he says that the Earth and even this universe are both products of accident. Scientists, through repeated comparison and observation — of the other planets they are able to observe — have found that an Earth like this one, where humans can survive, is a miracle among miracles, a wonder among wonders. Such an environment can only be explained as an accident.

So according to this kind of theory — this overall human cognition that is not scientific, religious, or cultural — we humans ourselves are a meaningless accident, and this world is also a meaningless accident. So we are isolated orphans of the universe and orphans of the world. We cannot find our own kind, nor can we find our companions; humanity seems to exist all alone in this universe. And then it seems that although we cannot find companions or other civilizations, we are still ruled by a moody and capricious God — one moment natural disaster, the next man-made calamity. So life is regarded as a "vale of tears" — this is an expression, and Buddhism also says this, that life is suffering, with the four sufferings and the eight sufferings⁴⁰, birth, aging, sickness, and death, plus not getting what one seeks, and so on.

Man is almost like a kind of lowly infection — infected by the soul, and only curable by death.

He says that man seems to be a kind of infection, and only through death can he heal himself. To give a vivid example, it is like a lowly infection — human life is a kind of lowliness. The soul is noble, and the soul infects man; in other words, when man incarnates into the human world from the soul, from God, that is a kind of lowliness. And this lowliness is infected by the flesh — the desires of the body, these filthy things. So how can this polluted human being be purified? Only by dying. So this is a viewpoint held by many religions, many societies, and many cultures: after you die, your soul becomes clean, and the soul is purified.

The Tendency to Devalue Individual Purpose

So:

All religious, scientific, medical, and cultural beliefs emphasize the existence of danger, devaluing the purpose of humanity and of any individual member.

We have been constantly emphasizing danger, devaluing each individual's purpose to an extreme degree -- you feel your own is unimportant, everyone's desires, your things are all too lowly, too "low." You people just pursue those lowly pleasures, too "low." You are no different from ants, no different from pigs and dogs -- isn't it just eating well and drinking well, then reproducing yourselves and mating endlessly, isn't that all you humans desire? He just devalues, devalues relentlessly, from every angle, with no blind spots whatsoever. Devaluing the purpose of individual members of humanity, feeling as though each individual member's purpose is somehow unimportant.

Or it regards humanity as a perverse, half-insane member of an otherwise orderly world.

Either it attacks the individual, devaluing the primal impulses and purposes of the human individual, reducing them to worthlessness; or it says that humanity is a freak in nature's order, a perverse, half-insane member. Nature is very orderly, and within this very orderly nature, humanity has appeared as a freak. This is what our religion, science, medicine, culture -- what our current human civilization has always been telling us. As if nature is beautiful and humanity is not; humanity is a malignant tumor on this world, a cancer on the earth, reproducing without limit, constantly encroaching on resources, destroying the earth. As if we humans are half-mad, mad enough to destroy the very earth we live on.

Any or all of the above beliefs are held by various different systems of thought.

He says what I have said are all core things, but they have already been disguised, transformed into various different beliefs and cultures. They may not be as obvious as what Seth says, but the core intent is the same.

All of these, however, put pressure on the individual's biological integrity, reinforcing concepts of danger while shrinking the area of psychological safety.

All of these arguments put pressure on each person's biological integrity. They constantly emphasize danger, while shrinking the area of psychological safety. Every person has a psychological safety zone, but when this safety zone keeps shrinking and shrinking -- you feel nowhere is safe. In the past, people felt safe in the tribe; later they found they only felt safe within the family; later they found the family was not safe either, and only by returning to their own little room could they feel safe; later even the little room was not safe, as if only by returning to a meditative world, entering another time and space, could they be safe; in the end they found that only in death is there safety. So humanity's safety zone keeps being shrunk.

That is necessary to maintain the possible quality of life.

The human psychological safety zone is necessary for maintaining the quality of life required for survival. We humans need to live in a safe environment -- this is the first of Maslow's basic human needs -- the first is survival needs, the second is safety needs⁴¹. Once a person has solved the problem of survival, the next step is solving the problem of safety. Only in a state of safety will a person develop other needs; if one does not feel safe, there are no other needs. This is a very interesting thing.

The body's defense systems and its various different procedures have all been thrown into confusion.

The body itself has defense systems and various different procedures -- besides the defense systems there are also self-healing systems and so on -- these systems have all been confused and thrown into disorder by people themselves. Why? Precisely because of the reinforcement of the concept of danger, we emphasize danger too much.

What Seth Wants to Emphasize

I have no intention of giving a dissertation on the body and the biological structures and their interactions with one another.

He says he does not want to discuss the perfection of the human biological structures and the things that interact among them. So what does he want to discuss?

I only want to add material on those aspects that are not known today, and that is also, in my mind, the material of the greatest importance.

Seth generally talks about these more macroscopic, larger matters. He does sometimes discuss specific issues, but he says, compared with the topic of discussing the interactions between the human biological structure and the human being itself, I would rather discuss the issue I was just discussing.

I am far more concerned with the more basic issues.

He is very concerned with these core issues.

The body's defenses will take care of themselves, if we allow them to. And if the air of the psyche has been cleared of the true agents of disease.

He puts this very well, especially in light of our current pandemic situation. If the air of your psyche -- that is, the air of your inner mind -- is already very clean and fresh, or to put it simply, if the air of your psyche has already been disinfected, then it will eliminate those true sources of illness. Where does the true source of illness lie? It lies in your psyche. Once you have disinfected it and cleared it away psychologically, only then will it not give rise to real illness in you. Therefore, the true agent of disease lies in your psyche.

Section Summary

All right, this Session 5 is in two parts. The first half is the end of this chapter, because since we are going by chapters, we can only stop here. This session is very short, and when the next session begins, it is actually still Session 805, but it has already started the next chapter. So we will leave that for the next part, when I introduce the content of Chapter 2 to everyone.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. Source: Jane Roberts, "The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James" (https://archive.org/details/afterdeathjourna0000robe) ↩

4. Source: Wikipedia, "On the Origin of Species" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) ↩ ↩²

5. Source: World Health Organization, "The true death toll of COVID-19: estimating global excess mortality" (https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covid-19-estimating-global-excess-mortality) ↩

6. According to Mike's original words, "the population of Eurasia was directly reduced by three-quarters"; upon verification, it should be "the Black Death in the 14th century took about one-third of Europe's population (regional estimates range from one-eighth to two-thirds), and the global population fell from about 475 million to 350–375 million, rather than a three-quarters reduction in Eurasia's population." (Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Black Death," https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Death) ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Great Plague of London" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Plague-of-London) ↩

9. This claim could not be verified. ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. This claim could not be verified. ↩

12. Source: Wikipedia, "Plague of Cyprian" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Cyprian) ↩

13. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Great Plague of London" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Plague-of-London) ↩

14. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Charles Darwin" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin) ↩

15. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Alfred Russel Wallace" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Russel-Wallace) ↩

16. Source: Wikipedia, "On the Origin of Species" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) ↩

17. According to Mike's original words, "every seven years all the cells in the human body are completely renewed"; upon verification, it should be "not all cells in the human body are renewed every seven years—different tissues have vastly different renewal rates, and neurons in the cerebral cortex (occipital lobe) and other cells are as old as the individual and are never replaced during life." (Source: Spalding et al., "Retrospective Birth Dating of Cells in Humans," Cell, https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(05)00408-3) ↩

18. According to Mike's original words, "scientists have been studying Einstein's brain; after his death it was frozen and sectioned for preservation, to find differences related to human intelligence or brain development"; upon verification, it should be "after Einstein's death in 1955, his brain was removed, fixed in formalin, embedded in celloidin, cut into 240 blocks, and made into histological microscope slides for research, not frozen-section preservation." (Source: Falk, Lepore, Noe, "The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs," Brain, https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/4/1304/356614) ↩

19. Source: Library of Congress, "Overview of Basic Principles Underlying the Constitution" (https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/intro-7-1/ALDE_00000028/%5B%27article%27%2C%20%271%27%2C%20%27section%27%2C%20%278%27%5D) ↩

20. Source: County of Los Angeles, "Maps and Geography" (https://lacounty.gov/government/about-la-county/maps-and-geography/) ↩

21. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Tangshan earthquake of 1976" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Tangshan-earthquake-of-1976) ↩

22. Source: United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), "A decade after the Fukushima accident: Radiation-linked increases in cancer rates not expected to be seen" (https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/news/content/a-decade-after-the-fukushima-accident_-radiation-linked-increases-in-cancer-rates-not-expected-to-be-seen.html) ↩

23. This claim could not be verified. ↩

24. This claim could not be verified. ↩

25. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Elon Musk | SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, X, & PayPal" (https://www.britannica.com/money/Elon-Musk) ↩

26. This claim could not be verified. ↩

27. This claim could not be verified. ↩

28. Source: Qi Wang et al., "Telomere Length and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-analysis," 2018 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30254001/) ↩

29. This claim could not be verified. ↩

30. Source: National Center for Health Statistics, "Vital Statistics of the United States, 1975; Vol. 2, No. 5," 1977 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/lifetables/life75.pdf) ↩

31. According to Mike's original words, "Einstein's theory of relativity proved that nothing in the universe can approach, let alone exceed, the speed of light"; upon verification, it should be "relativity allows particles with mass to approach the speed of light arbitrarily closely, but they cannot reach or exceed the speed of light in a vacuum; particles in the universe can actually reach 99.9% of the speed of light." (Source: NASA, "How to Travel at (Nearly) the Speed of Light," 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/how-travel-nearly-speed-of-light/) ↩

32. Source: M. E. Arons, E. C. G. Sudarshan, "Lorentz Invariance, Local Field Theory, and Faster-than-Light Particles" (1968) (https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.173.1622) ↩

33. This claim could not be verified. ↩

34. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "William James | Life, Books, Psychology, Contribution, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-James) ↩

35. This claim could not be verified. ↩

36. This claim could not be verified. ↩

37. Source: World Health Organization, "Ebola virus disease fact sheet" (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-disease) ↩

38. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Original sin" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/original-sin) ↩

39. According to Mike's original words, "the Mayan prophecy of humanity's destruction in 2012"; upon verification, it should be "the Maya never prophesied humanity's destruction in 2012; December 21, 2012, was simply the end of a b'ak'tun cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar and the beginning of a new cycle, symbolizing renewal rather than doomsday." (Source: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, "Living Maya Time: The Meaning of 2012," https://maya.nmai.si.edu/2012-resetting-count/meaning-of-2012) ↩

40. Source: Otani University, "The Four Sufferings and the Eight Sufferings (Buddhist Terms in Daily Life)" (https://www.otani.ac.jp/yomu_page/b_yougo/nab3mq0000020kcv.html) ↩

41. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, "Abraham Maslow" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-H-Maslow) ↩