Mike's commentary · The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, Chapter 9

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

Introduction

This chapter begins with the assumptions of law, religion, and science that human nature is guilty or meaningless, and points out that people are born with good intent, a rightful sense of existence, impulses, and creativity; when impulses are blocked, ideals turn into crime, paranoia, or illness. Using spiders and flies, and laboratory mice, Seth illustrates that cooperative adventure exists among species, and that value fulfillment, love, and cooperation are the basic needs of all reality. The end of the chapter discusses illness as a process that is invited rather than attacked, and dreams and language as creative sources.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Law and religion often start from the premise that human beings have original sin or a criminal nature, but people are innately endowed with good intent, a rightful sense of existence, impulses, and creativity.
• When impulses are blocked and ideals cannot be actualized in concrete life, they turn into distorted reactions such as frustration, anger, crime, paranoia, or schizophrenia.
• Value fulfillment, love, and cooperation are the basic natural laws of all realities; among species there are cooperative adventures, not merely competition for survival.
• Illness is not a one-sided attack from the outside, but rather the body's cells "invite" and reflect changes in psychological states and the sense of life's meaning.
• Human dreams and language originate from creativity; dreams allow human beings to draw creative components from the invisible reality, and set human beings apart from other species.

Main Text

What Is Law: A Series of Questions from Seth

The title of Chapter Nine is "Ideals, Individuals, Religion, Science, and the Law." You can see the scope Seth has designed here is very broad—ideals, individuals, religion, science, and the law.

Actually, this section is a second part, a second half, of the previous Session 860, but since he has already divided it into chapters, we can only follow the chapter divisions as they are. He says the title is ideals, individuals, religion, science, and the law, and he brings all of it with humor and emphasis. Seth is humorous.

In this section there are many thought-provoking questions that we need to think through carefully. Why do you have laws at all? Why does humanity need laws? Have you ever thought about this question? We know why laws are needed, but what exactly is law, and what is the essence of law? Of course, here this refers to looking at it from a spiritual perspective. Naturally, sociology, the legal field, the history of human civilization, modern history, ancient history—they will all give you their own complete definitions of law, as well as the historical background of its emergence and its important significance. Today let us look from a spiritual perspective at what law actually is.

Is law designed to protect our lives, protect our property, establish order, and punish those who commit offenses?

That is, people who commit crimes. Is law designed to protect people from their own treachery and cunning? In short, is law designed to protect people from their own basically criminal nature? The reason law came into being—is the purpose of our making laws simply to guard against the most basic criminal nature that each of us has? That is in quotation marks—actually there is no such thing, a basic criminal nature. The reason it is in quotation marks is that this is a basic understanding of human nature held by Freud and Darwin, and by traditional thinking, whether religious or modern scientific. Religion holds that people have original sin¹, and science holds that people have flaws: anything that has evolved has flaws, and since you came from animals, you have an animal nature.

Is law designed to protect people from the "harmfulness" of their own nature as roughly defined by Freud and Darwin?

Is it to guard against that kind of sinful nature that everyone has? Is that what law is for?

But people had laws a very long time ago, before Darwin and Freud—much, much earlier than that, there were already laws. China as well, Egypt as well, ancient Rome as well—all had legal codes. Were the laws of that time shaped by the religious belief that because people have original sin, laws must be made?

If you were all perfect creatures to begin with, would there be no need for laws at all?

Have you ever thought about this question? If every one of us were a perfect creature—according to our spiritual essence, we are all inherently spiritual beings, all divine beings—would we still need laws?

Does law define what is unacceptable? Or does it hint of some more positive issues that perhaps have not been clearly discerned, and that are barely perceived?

This question from Seth brings deep reflection. Does law define two things: on the one hand, it defines what is unacceptable—for example, murder is unacceptable; does it also hint at some positive meaning that perhaps we have not yet seen clearly, and that we have barely perceived? Apart from punishing crime, does it have any positive meaning?

Is law an attempt to limit impulse?

You see, these questions Seth asks are not so easy to answer. Do we make laws in order to limit our impulses? Are all our impulses bad?

Do they represent society's collective definition of what behavior is acceptable and what is not?

These are some reflections on law, and right at the start he throws out this whole pile of questions.

How Ideals Turn into Their Opposite

All right, from the viewpoint of most of you, what is the difference between a legal crime and a moral or religious sin? In English these are not the same thing -- one is a crime, the other is a sin. Is there a difference? Yes, there is. A moral sin does not land you in prison, whereas a legal crime gets you arrested, locked up, and may even cost you your head. So what exactly is the difference between the two? In what follows, in order to distinguish between a legal crime and a moral sin, he uses these two terms to make the distinction.

Can the state punish you for a sin? Obviously not. It can obviously punish you for a crime.

Whether by a fine, imprisonment, or in the end, execution.

Is law a reflection of something else?

Is the nature of law a response to something else? A response to what?

Is it a response to a person's innate pursuit of ideals on the one hand, and to reality on the other?

What he means is, is law a response to something -- is it that on the one hand a person is born with a nature that pursues ideals, but in real life is subject to all sorts of limitations, and the gap between ideal and reality is so great that law comes into being as a result? That is to say, people are born wanting to do good, but because in practice they do not do well, law is needed to restrain them.

When can law play the part of a practical idealist?

Law itself, according to what he just said, exists because this innate tendency of people to pursue idealism -- which in reality may inadvertently veer into fanaticism -- is where law steps in to play its role. So when can law stop being merely a tool for punishing those whose idealism has gone wrong and turned them into fanatics, and instead truly become an instrument that escorts and protects idealism? That is what he means.

When politicians reveal their shortcomings beneath a perfect image, why do you hold them in such contempt?

Those politicians all dress themselves up to look polished and radiant, with morals of the highest virtue and conduct beyond reproach. Yet why is it that when these politicians are exposed, when their corruption and debauched lives are brought to light, so many of us are instead gleeful, or adopt a highly contemptuous attitude toward them -- so you were actually such a sordid bunch all along? What does this have to do with you personally? We will begin with the individual. Again, there may be social dimensions -- because law itself is a social thing -- but let us start from the individual angle, and set the social questions aside for now.

Each person is innately driven by good intent.

This is one of Seth's basic beliefs and framework. No matter how distorted that intent may become, and no matter how distorted the means used to express it may be, the essence of every person is good intent. But in practice, it may be expressed through a distorted intent, or carried out by distorted means. Yet in terms of its essence, the intent is always good at its core. This is the most important point.

Just as the body wants to grow from childhood onward, all of the individual's abilities also want to grow and develop.

Every child has to grow up, and every person has to grow up as well; it is the same thing. A little baby has to grow into an adult, and every person's abilities also long to grow and develop.

Each person has an ideal of his or her own, and also has the guidance of some directors of ideals -- directors that can steer the person toward the realization of those ideals -- so that they naturally enter upon a clear path of development.

A person has ideals, and also has the guidance of directors that steer him toward the realization of his ideals, moving him forward toward those ideals in order to meet the needs of both the individual and society. When he realizes his personal ideals, he must at the same time take into account the needs of society.

Impulses provide the details, methods, meaning, and definition.

In this process, personal impulses provide very detailed things from behind. In every small matter -- the impulse to go eat something delicious, the impulse to dress up nicely -- these small impulses provide the concrete details, methods, meaning, and definition. The importance of impulses is crucial here -- they are the concrete details behind your movement toward the realization of your ideals.

A path pointing toward clear expression provides the individual with a sense of fulfillment and natural power.

Impulses are the concrete details, methods, meaning, and definition by which you realize your ideals. This path provides the individual with a sense of fulfillment and natural power, and it also automatically provides feedback. Therefore the person knows that he has had a good influence on the environment -- because the environment gives him feedback, and the people around him give him feedback. He knows that when he acts according to his impulses, in addition to realizing some of his personal values, his feeling for the whole of nature and natural power, that sense of oneness with all things, also gives him feedback.

Those natural impulses, if followed, would automatically lead to political and social organizations.

If you follow your natural impulses, they will automatically lead you toward political and social organizations, and those in turn become tools for individual development and the achievement of social value. What he is saying is that if you follow those natural impulses, they will automatically form political and social organizations. When each person follows his or her natural personal impulses, it will actually form a very interesting social phenomenon, giving rise to certain specific political and social organizations. And those in turn become tools for individual development and the achievement of social value -- because social value needs these.

From individual action to socially significant events, impulses follow along easily in one smooth motion.

What does he mean by this? It means that from a small individual action to a large action of society as a whole -- whether a political party, a social organization, a class, or a team or community -- the driving force behind the movement from small individual action to large social action is always this impulse. Yet the impulse is utterly inconspicuous; in between, it is too small, too little noticed. But it really is the common smooth driving force behind both small individual actions and large social movements, so that you cannot see the separation and distinction between individual action and social action, as if everything were perfectly natural and came about of its own accord. To put it simply, small individual actions bring about large social actions, but because impulse acts as a lubricant or catalyst in between, it makes you feel that all of it is so perfectly natural.

When Impulses Are Blocked

When you are taught to block your impulses, when others tell you that your impulses are not good, that you should not trust your impulses, that you should not trust them, then your organizations become blocked.

After each of our individual impulses has been blocked, the impulses of the whole organization are also blocked.

For example, you are left with only a vague, idealized feeling of wanting to improve the world.

We all want to change the world, to make the world better, but it becomes an idealized, very hazy thing, and in concrete terms you do not know how to do it, and in concrete life you do not know what kind of action to take. Because your impulses are not trusted, you cannot take action, and you doubt every action.

And you do not have access to the personal power of your own impulses.

That is, the ideal is very full, but reality is very stark. The ideal is too good, but in reality you find that you have no way to put that ideal into practice; the ideal is too grand.

Whereas it was meant to direct that idealism through the development of your personal abilities.

What did that idealism originally need? It needed you to develop your personal abilities, and then through your personal abilities it could direct that idealism. In other words, on the road to idealism, every person must bring out his or her own greatest ability. This does not mean that idealism can only be realized by erasing personal ability and emphasizing only collectivism -- that view is wrong. To realize idealism, remember, you must develop every person's individual ability; you must remember this. If you do not even dare to act on your personal impulses, how can you develop your personal abilities? If you cannot develop every person's individual abilities, then how can your idealism ever be realized? Do you understand the logical relationship here?

And then you are left with an undefined, lingering, even painful kind of desire.

World unity, a better humanity, and so on -- these become a general, lingering, painful desire. Although you want to do good, to change the world, you have no method at hand by which to do so. There is nowhere to start, no point of focus, no point of leverage; it is all empty.

This leads to a lingering sense of frustration.

What does "lingering" mean? It is that kind of frustration that echoes in your heart for a long time; whenever you think of it, there is a sigh, a lament. And if your ideal is very strong, the situation may make you feel quite desperate. If your ideal is not that strong, it is a little better; but if your ideal is very strong, and you especially want to do something for that ideal, then you are in trouble -- it will make you feel quite desperate.

You may begin to exaggerate the gulf between this generalized ideal and the clear evidence of greed and corruption that you see all around you.

Then you can see the enormous gap between the ideal and reality. The ideal sounds wonderful, but all you see around you is human greed and corruption, which seems very far away from the unified human society you want. People stop at nothing to gain wealth, which is completely opposite to the future society and ideal you want.

You may begin to focus on your own flaws.

You say, is there something wrong with me? Others all have these flaws; do I have flaws too? Look at these great, once-glorious politicians, celebrities, entrepreneurs -- it turns out that behind the scenes they are all so corrupt, greedy, and venal. Then if one day I sit in that position, will I be like that too? You begin to doubt yourself again.

And in your growing dissatisfaction, most of the people in your eyes are driven by an evil intent.

In your eyes, which are increasingly dissatisfied with reality, most of the people you see in society seem to be driven by an evil intent. You feel that everyone is struggling for self-interest. Just as the ancients in our country said, from ancient times to the present, all people coming and going are only after fame and profit. Many of us hold this view.

Then you may become angry, indignant. Why? Because it is too far from your ideal. And worse, you may be filled with self-righteousness, so much so that you begin to attack all those who disagree with you.

Because you do not know how else you can respond to your own ideal and good intent. This is very typical -- many people today are like this. One kind is indignation; indignation is still okay. Worse is beginning to attack others, being self-righteous. He feels that he stands on the moral high ground, because he has a beautiful ideal in his heart. Although he has not done anything, nor paid any practical action for his ideal, he always vaguely feels that he is standing on the high ground of that ideal, and then he fiercely attacks the people and things in real life that he cannot stand. Because he does not know how, apart from doing this kind of thing, he can reflect his good intent toward his ideal in practical terms. He does not know how to defend his ideal, does not know how to uphold that good, so he attacks those he considers evil.

The work of trying to make the world better seems impossible.

For these people, there is no work that can be done to make the world better, because it seems you have no power.

And any small good deed that an individual can do seems so insignificant compared with this generalized ideal that you dismiss it contemptuously, and therefore you do not try to use your power constructively.

Because your ideal is too grand, and the small acts of kindness in real life seem too far from that ideal. It is true that they are acts of kindness, and they can improve things, but they are too small, so small that you feel they are useless. What influence can an insignificant little person like me, doing such an insignificant little thing, have on the world unity I want to achieve? It is insignificant, so do not do it. Since doing something makes you feel it is insignificant or has no result, you certainly will not do it. This makes you dismiss it.

In ancient China, there was actually a saying about this problem long ago: "Do not fail to do a good deed because it is small; do not do an evil deed because it is small²," and so on. There are many similar sayings. We will not give more examples.

Start from Your Real Life

Do not start with your own life, your own work, or your colleagues.

What he is saying is that you should not use your own life, your own work, your own colleagues as the starting point for your pursuit of ideals. The correct way is that you should start with your life, the people around you, your work, your colleagues. Your ideals must begin from your real life, not from something vague and insubstantial.

If you are a fairly good salesperson, a plumber, an office worker, or a car dealer, what difference can you make to the world?

Then you will think: My goodness, what can one person like me do for society? On this point, we have an excellent saying from ancient China: "The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of every common person³." Remember, this "common person" does not refer to others, but to yourself. The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of every common person³ -- it means yourself. You are that common person. It does not mean pointing at others and saying, "The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of all of you." No, it means you yourself have the responsibility.

And that is precisely where you must first begin to make your effort.

You must start from your real life, from the most insignificant little things. There, in your work and in your interpersonal relationships, is where you intersect with this world. The place where you truly intersect with the world is your life, your work, the people and things around you.

In such interpersonal relationships, your impulses directly affect the world.

In the life around you, your impulses can truly affect the world. Because your intersection with the world exists only in the things around you.

Many of you are convinced that you are unimportant, and when each of you feels that way, when everyone feels that they themselves are unimportant, then your actions will seem as though they have no impact on the world.

The reason we are small figures, the reason we have no impact on the world, is because you believe it has no impact -- and when everyone believes that, then it truly has no impact.

You will deliberately keep your ideals generalized, thereby avoiding opening a path for yourself and taking action.

What does "generalized" mean? It means not specific, vague and broad. Because it is not specific, because it is vague and broad, you have no path leading into real life.

And by trusting yourself and your impulses, and with your own full legitimacy, influencing the people you encounter in daily life.

You do not trust your own impulses, and you will not influence the people you encounter in real life.

I remember Seth gave a similar example somewhere. He said you do not know it, but simply by being a joyful person, you are already helping others. I remember in the last class, Simon also shared this saying: simply by being a person who is peaceful and joyful yourself, by living always in the joy of your present moment, you can help many people -- you just do not realize it. He gave many examples. He said you do not know, when you walk down the street with joy, and you greet a stranger, you say hi, you say hello -- you do not know that this person might have been planning to commit suicide today, and just because of that one "hi" from you, just because of your radiant smile, he saw the beauty of life, and he might have changed his mind. Who can know these things?

The Inner Logic of Criminals

These criminals, for the most part, commit crimes out of a kind of despair. Many of them have very high ideals, but those ideals were never trusted or put into action.

Most of them commit crimes out of a sense of despair. They feel powerless, therefore:

Many people attack a world they see as cynical, greedy, and perverted with self-righteous anger or a desire for revenge.

They hate this world, and they attack this society with cynicism, with greed, with their desire for revenge, because they feel this society is cold and impersonal, indifferent, greedy, and perverted, so someone ought to take revenge on this world.

They focus their attention on the gulf that seems to exist between the ideal of what they think people should be, and the idea of what they think people currently are.

Their attention is focused on the huge gulf between the ideal life -- or their own personal ideal, or the collective ideal -- and reality. They put all their attention on this gap: the ideal is so good, but reality is so miserable, so this society, this world really deserves to be dealt with, really deserves to be cleaned up, and those bad people really deserve to be punished. In their minds, they are carrying out heaven's will.

On the other hand, they believe they are evil, and at the same time they are convinced they should not be so.

They do feel they are evil, but their essential nature is not bad either. Their reactions are excessive.

They often see society as the enemy of good.

They think this society is destroying good. You see, these criminals are interesting -- it is as if they are restoring justice.

Many, but not all, criminals possess the same characteristics you could attribute to heroes.

They all have a kind of heroic quality -- carrying out heaven's will, standing up for justice when they see injustice. They feel this society is the enemy of good, so we will take revenge on this society.

But the difference is, heroes have the means and clear channels of expression for their idealism, while many criminals find their own channels completely cut off.

Heroes have their own methods; no matter in what way, they can use means to demonstrate their actions. But many criminals find their own channels completely cut off. They originally wanted to do good, to contribute to society, to repay this society in a heroic way, but they found that in real life there was simply no possibility of this, and no opportunity either. All their channels were cut off, and at that point, they resort to a means of revenge.

Seth finally says that he does not intend to romanticize crime, nor does he want to excuse them, making these criminal acts sound so noble and lofty. That is not Seth's intent. What he really wants to point out is:

Very few crimes are committed because of evil, but most are a distorted reaction to the inability to realize a felt ideal.

There are very few real cases that are committed because of genuine evil reasons; most are because he has no way -- he feels that realizing his ideal is already hopeless, no matter in what way, he has lost hope for his ideal -- so he adopts a distorted reaction.

For example, we can think about it: if a person steals or robs, then in real life, he must have completely lost hope in the direction of being able to earn money and improve his life. Let us not first discuss whether his thinking is right or wrong, but that is how his thoughts came about. If he could have a high income in real life, would he commit crimes for money? No. The reason he commits crimes is because he wants to have money; that is his ideal life. But he also finds that in real life there is no path that can make him rich. Of course, his cognition is wrong, but under such wrong cognition, he feels his ideal cannot be realized, so he adopts another distorted way to realize his ideal -- stealing, robbing, cheating.

What Seth really wants to say is this: let us see clearly the true nature behind crime.

Who Defines Right and Wrong

So then, Seth said again, we have come back to another theme: What is the nature of ideals and goodness? Who defines what is right or wrong? What is legal, and what is illegal? Then he said, I leave this question for you to ponder, and the session ends here.

In these sessions Seth is especially fond of leaving questions behind, and we also hope everyone will take this question along and think it over: What exactly is the nature of ideals and goodness? Who defines right and wrong? Who defines legal and illegal? Think about how you would answer this question—who defines it?

Addendum: Jane's Early Morning Insight

I think we can just go through this tail section quickly. It is quite interesting, but there is nothing too important in it.

He says that one day early last week, Jane began thinking about the main part of the new book's title. He was up at four in the morning -- you see, this person gets up at four in the morning to eat breakfast, how driven is that -- and he made some notes for his book. So do not say this or that about Jane. Have you ever gotten up at four in the morning and worked that hard? This was not just one day; he would often get up very early in the morning.

Through the open balcony door, he listened to the first birdsong, and that birdcall summoned him outside to watch the misty dawn unfold. If you have ever seen the early morning dawn unfolding in the mist -- if the place has plenty of water -- that scenery completely enchanted him. Because the beauty of nature gradually, gradually unfolded as the heavy mist slowly dispersed, bit by bit it unfolded, slowly thinning and fading, and the trees, the flowers and grass, the sunlight also came through, the sunrise. That morning there was no other person, from my personal point of view, looking at what I was looking at. Well, of course, that was his own perspective.

An hour later he wrote:

I felt as though I had the privilege of seeing a world begin.

You see, Jane's words here are very poetic. He said:

Or, I suddenly thought, it was like seeing a new corner of my own inner psyche transformed into trees, grass, flowers, sky, and mist. It was as though I was looking at that part I had always been seeking, that part whose gaze is clear as a child's, and it slipped away and merged with its own knowing.

This feeling is very beautiful. Some of you can try to experience it -- when he saw this scenery unfolding, it was as if he saw the birth of a new world before his eyes. Most people have had this kind of feeling.

His other realization was deeper. What did he realize? He realized that the unfolding of the world he saw was like a corner of his own inner world that he had never discovered before, and then it unfolded before his eyes, just like that scenery. That was one of his insights. And the most essential part is this: this unfolding scenery, this scenery unfolding within his psyche, was the very part of himself that he had always been seeking. That is, everyone is always seeking -- who am I, really? Many people ask this question. Who am I? What exactly am I? That kind of self-knowledge, that sense of identity. But in that one instant, on that four o'clock morning, Jane suddenly knew, or suddenly realized: he was this world. Can you understand what he means by that? He was this world. This was the part of himself he had always been seeking. He had always been asking "who am I," and in that instant he understood: he and this world were one, he was this world.

What is very interesting is that the following sentence is extremely crucial -- those who have studied meditation, or who have reached a certain level, will understand the importance of this sentence.

That part whose gaze is clear as a child, it slipped away and merged with its own knowing.

This sentence is very profound. What does it mean? Let me try to explain it to you. Some people can enter this state, and some people cannot. That is, when he asked himself who he was, there was one moment, one instant, when he understood that he was this world. That kind of feeling is very beautiful, quiet and peaceful. And he had another kind of perception: the one who was asking who he was, that asker, was gone. The one who had always been asking "who am I, really," that asker, was like an observer. He suddenly discovered that this observer -- suppose it was a pair of eyes, looking at "who am I" -- when he saw a morning unfolding before his eyes, new life coming alive from this world, the clear cry of a small bird, he suddenly felt: I am this world. And then the next state: since I am this world, then who is there observing this feeling of "I am this world"? So this observer, this pair of eyes, or the one asking who he was, that consciousness, was also gone. It was not that it disappeared; it merged with this world, merged with their own knowing. That was Jane's state that morning, very beautiful.

He said:

That portion of our existence is, to us, separate from our concern with career, with business, with money, with livelihood, with the opinions of family members, with friends, and with the world. It is our direct connection with the universe. In each moment of life, we emerge from it.

This is Jane's insight. Let us look carefully. What was his insight? He said we have two portions of existence. One portion is living our everyday life -- with career, business, money, these are one existence. We also have another portion of existence, which is the part where the self and the world overlap, the part where the self is the world, the self is this source, the self is this fundamental reality. He found it. He said each of us has two states: one is the state where you have always existed together with the source of this world -- just like what Little Flying Insect said, "separation never occurred," it is the same principle -- that is, you and this source have never been separated, you have always been together. This is a part that everyone has. But he said, this part is separate from our concern with life, career, money, reputation, family, marriage, friends, and the world. That is, from the perspective of our cognition, the two do not seem to be the same thing. Can you understand what he means? Each of us has two states of existence, but these two states of existence are present at the same time, except that we rarely become aware of that state of existence where "the self simply is." We are more often in the latter state he mentioned -- career, business, money, family relationships, and so on. That other part, the part that is merged and one with the existence of the world, the part that is one with the knowing of the universe, that is what he is talking about. It is directly connected with our universe.

In each moment of life, we emerge from it. Our life, our living, our world, everything we have in this human world, all emerges from that part of you -- the part connected with the existence of the universe. Our entire life emerges from there. So you can see, Jane's comprehension and understanding were also very high. Once you reach this level, you will know.

Therefore, he said:

In that moment, I named that part of myself "the real God."

I named that part I perceived within my heart -- the part that has always existed with God -- I said let me give that part a name, and called it "the real God." That is, each of us has two states: one is the state of living in the material world, and one is that part at the level of the soul, or at the level of this higher-dimensional consciousness, or at the level of the subconscious or unconscious. That part is one with the entire universe. He said I gave that part a name, and called it "the real God."

And that naming, at least for me, was meaningful.

What was meaningful? It was not an empty term; it was the entire living world that unfolds vividly in our own backyard every morning before dawn, with the first birdsong. What he means is, it was not something empty; it was meaningful.

In that way of speaking, each of us has our own individual God.

Each of us has that existence which is always present together with the entire source.

And I am certain that no matter who we are, or what we are, or where we are, the universe knows us.

This insight is truly deep. He said, I think that for each of our cats, there is also a Mickey's God -- he had two cats, one named Mickey and one named Billy -- or a Billy's God. And every consciousness, no matter what its identity, whether great or small, possesses an intimate connection with the universe.

So you can see, Jane's insight was indeed very thorough. Take your time to savor this passage, everyone; I will not over-interpret it. What he said is already very beautiful and full of real meaning. If you savor it carefully, you will be able to feel the state within it. During meditation, you can try it -- see whether you can enter that state, whether you can stay for a while with that state of your own presence, search within your inner world for that place, look for the garden in your heart, and see whether it is there.

Session 862

Innocence in the Eyes of the Law

Session 862, Monday, June 25, 1979, 8:37 p.m. Rob began by saying that the regular session from last Wednesday evening had not been held, because after dinner unexpected guests had come to their house and left very late, so Jane decided to skip that session. This evening Jane repeated the thoughts she had talked about a week earlier during Session 861 -- that session was not related to writing the book. She thought Seth was close to finishing this book, but not within the next few sessions; still, he was moving in that direction. He had already given her all the material he could give, or wanted to give, about some of the negative beliefs we hold as individuals and as a society. He wanted to begin his next book, about how to positively solve our challenges and create a far better world -- you know, the book I told you about, in which Seth will discuss healing methods and value fulfillment. Today I was even randomly guessing at the book's title, although I knew I should not do that. Jane felt like starting the session earlier than usual, but a large portion of the beginning was cut out, because Seth was talking about other topics, and it was not until 9:09 that he began transmitting material for this book.

The following passage is what Seth said:

In your country's legal system, you are innocent until proven guilty.

He was referring to American law. American law works like this: every person is presumed innocent, and no one is guilty until convicted by a judge. But the judge's conviction is determined by a jury. If you are not familiar with American law, you can simply get acquainted with it: the American legal system has a jury system, and the judge only maintains courtroom order and determines sentencing after the jury has established guilt. For example, if a person is guilty, how many years they should be sentenced to is decided by the judge; but whether the person is guilty or not is not up to the judge -- it must be recommended by the jury. Jurors are randomly selected from among citizens, and every citizen has the obligation to serve as a juror. Once you are selected, you must serve as a juror, and your employer is required by law to continue paying your salary during that time. Depending on the complexity of the case, the jury process may be long or short, but throughout the entire process you cannot have any contact with other people. You will be housed separately, with no contact with the outside world, to prevent influence on the case, until the case finally concludes.

So the American court system is actually quite wasteful of money, and it drains both resources and people. Although the law does not need to pay these people wages -- their original employers pay them -- the process is still very lengthy. However, this system guarantees a basic principle of law: if the majority of people believe this person is guilty, then this person is guilty. This majority must be ordinary people selected from society -- that is a prerequisite. These ordinary people cannot be professionals -- when they are selected, you will be asked whether you are a legal worker, or in media related to law, or in any profession related to the field. You must be an ordinary citizen.

Then the lawyers on both sides have a right, which is to replace jurors. For example, if 21 jurors are selected, the lawyers on both sides have the right to replace a few of them, but not all of them -- you only have one chance. The reason for replacing someone might be, for example: suppose the suspect is a white male, and if 80 percent of the jury is white male, then the composition of this jury might be inclined to make a ruling favorable to the suspect. In that case the prosecution lawyer will request to replace some jurors with people of more diverse ethnic backgrounds. Similarly, if the suspect is a Black man, both the prosecution and the defense have certain choices regarding jurors. This is all part of the battle of wits between the lawyers on both sides; we will not go into these legal details.

We are only talking about its purpose -- after these jurors have heard the arguments of both the prosecution and defense lawyers, based on the evidence presented in court and the statements made by witnesses who appear, the jury finally makes a unanimous decision, and a representative of the jury hands the result to the judge, who announces in court whether it is guilty or not guilty -- guilty or not guilty. This is the most typical American legal system. If the jury finds the person not guilty, they are released in court; if guilty, the judge takes them directly into custody, and then the judge determines the sentence according to the relevant provisions of the legal code.

But the premise is that in this courtroom, before you are declared guilty, you are an innocent person with a clean record. You can receive visits from your lawyer, and you can even go home and live a normal life after paying a certain bail amount or with a guarantor. But for some suspects of serious crimes, such as murder suspects, releasing them might endanger public safety. In that case the prosecution lawyer will request that bail be denied and that the person be held in custody, and the judge will decide whether to grant release based on the potential danger of the crime the suspect is alleged to have committed.

There is another provision, which is that whoever makes the claim bears the burden of proof. If you say this person committed a crime -- that they stole something or killed someone -- then you have to provide the evidence. Generally it is the prosecution -- the prosecutor, representing the state and society, brings the charges -- so the prosecutor has to provide the evidence. The prosecutor cannot say "I think so," or ask the other side to provide an alibi. This is different from many laws in mainland China. Under mainland Chinese law, you have to prove your own innocence. If you say you did not kill anyone, then you have to say what you were doing that day, and you have to provide your alibi. American law is the opposite: if you say I killed someone, then you have to find the murder weapon I used, and the chain of evidence has to be complete. So convicting a person in America is much more difficult than in mainland China; you must have real evidence. Cases like the O. J. Simpson case and others are very typical examples -- we might feel that everyone thinks he did it, but there is simply no evidence. If at that point the other side can hire a very good lawyer who can drag the case out for a long time, and if the lawyer is highly capable, they can often sway the jury's opinion, and in the end the jury finds him not guilty, and no one can do anything about it. Of course, you can request an appeal to a higher court, but once it reaches the court of final appeal, there is nothing more to be done. There are roughly two appeals, to the district court, the superior court, and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court generally does not accept ordinary cases of this kind; it only accepts extremely rare cases that cross state lines or regions and have extremely significant impact. The Supreme Court has only nine justices⁴, and a while back the question of whether there was election fraud in the U.S. election between Trump and Biden was also appealed to the Supreme Court.

American law has its own characteristics. When you do not understand American law, do not make too many personal judgments, because its legal system and institutions are fundamentally different in many ways from the legal concepts and institutions familiar to listeners in mainland China. Although both are called law, although both are called courts, although both are called judicial systems.

Religion and Law Compared

Let's continue with Seth's words:

In the eyes of the law, then, it is important that each of you is innocent until proven guilty of a crime.

Then:

Usually there must be witnesses, and other considerations.

There have to be witnesses, and there also has to be other evidence — that is, the chain of evidence has to be complete. Normally a person cannot testify against their spouse; this is the same in America — interested parties cannot testify.

Opportunity and motive must also be established.

All the evidence matches up, but he really wasn't at that place at that time — maybe he was away on a business trip abroad, and there is clear evidence proving he wasn't there, so it couldn't have been him. That's the question of opportunity. Motive also has to be established — why would he want to kill him? Of course there are cases of manslaughter in the heat of passion or accidental killings, but if it's not that kind of case, then opportunity and motive also have to be established. This is a very interesting thing. I don't know much about American law, so I can only give you all an introduction based on my own understanding. If you want to look into this area, there are many related films and TV shows in America that are very well made — there are especially many TV dramas and movies about the law.

But in the world of religion, the situation is different:

In the world of religion, however, you are already tainted by original sin. The mark of Cain has been symbolically imprinted upon your forehead.

Cain was the child of Adam and Eve, and we are all descendants of this Cain. The meaning of the mark of Cain is this: you already have original sin. Ever since you ate that apple, this original sin has existed, because you offended God — your sin is that you offended God. You are automatically convicted; you are sinful from birth; as long as you are human, you are sinful. So you must do good deeds, be baptized, believe in Christ, and do other things in order to be redeemed, and only then might you go to heaven when you die.

Many people argue about this. In Conversations with God⁵, the author raised a contrarian-style question to challenge the existing church system. He said: suppose a little girl was just born, and her parents were taking her to be baptized because they were a Christian family, but on the way to the baptism there was a car accident, and the little girl died. Then he asked: Can this little girl go to heaven? This is a very challenging question. According to normal church rules, no — as long as you haven't been baptized, no matter the reason, you cannot be redeemed by God at that final moment; you cannot go to heaven. But clearly this is unreasonable.

Apart from Christianity, other religions — including Buddhism and Islam — all have similar views. He said you also have some base desires in your nature, and so you are detained in the human world, cycling through birth and death, condemned to pass through countless reincarnations until you are purified. You need to strip away all those basic attributes of being human, purify yourself, cultivate yourself, practice, raise your energy to some height or some degree of purity, and then you can reach some state of nirvana, and then you no longer have to reincarnate — you escape the cycle of birth and death. What does this actually imply? That human beings themselves are inherently problematic — not that you are sinful, but that you as a person are dirty, filthy, unclean, not pure enough. It's all this same viewpoint.

As I've said before, according to the language of psychology and science:

You are a living conglomeration of elements and chemicals, seeded without purpose by a universe that was formed without cause, and you have been given a life in which all the primitive, animalistic desires of your past evolution are constantly stirring, waiting to express themselves and to overthrow your control.

So you must control yourself, keep yourself in check, not act according to your own impulses — you must rely on your reason to keep yourself firmly managed.

So Seth says:

Therefore, dear reader, look with a kinder eye upon the laws of this country.

Look at American law with a kinder eye, because at least it establishes a confidence in your innocence under the law — until you are proven guilty, you are innocent. That's already pretty good. It's not like religion, where no matter what you do — even if you've done nothing at all — you are sinful from birth. And no matter how flawed the law may be — indeed American law has many shortcomings — it nevertheless protects you from the harmful effects of any religious precepts, any fanatical side of religion. You might say the law has flaws, but compared to religion it's much better. Religion says you are guilty from the start — even a newborn baby, if not baptized, is guilty. That's terrifying.

Religious precepts speak of sin. Whether or not a criminal has actually committed a crime, he is still guilty — because you are guilty, you must first receive the precepts. If you have no sin, why would you need to receive precepts? Why receive the Ten Commandments of Moses? In Buddhism, the precepts are even more fitting — if you want to escape reincarnation, then receive the precepts. Until proven innocent — you have to prove your own innocence. How do you prove it? Through all kinds of religious rituals, religious activities, doing all sorts of good deeds and kind acts — only then can you prove your innocence. If you haven't actually committed a crime, then at least you are still guilty in your heart, because you have original sin, and you must be punished for it.

In religion, sin can come from playing cards, or from any sexual fantasy — anything is sinful. In religion, even thinking is not allowed — thinking is sinful. You can't think about handsome men or beautiful women. Playing cards means playing poker or mahjong — that is, seeking pleasure, and seeking pleasure is also sinful. You must do sacred things, do good deeds for others, and so on and so forth — a whole pile of things.

You Are Born Knowing You Are Good

Here are Seth's original words. This passage is very important, so be sure to remember it. You can recite it to yourself when you have time. Seth stated this in very deliberate terms; he was not joking.

You are born with an inbred recognition of your own goodness.

You are born believing that you are good. Everyone knows that their own inner self is good.

You are born with an inner recognition of your rightness in the universe.

What does "rightness" mean? It means you are born knowing that your existence in the universe is reasonable and legitimate. You are not a criminal who ran into this universe from somewhere else, or who descended onto the earth. You were not demoted from some higher divine realm to the human world as punishment. None of that. Your existence in this universe is reasonable and legitimate, protected by the universe and graced by the universe. You do not need to do anything. You do not need to do anything at all. You simply have the right to exist legitimately, and there is a place for you in the universe.

You are born with the impetus to fulfill your abilities, and to act and to act in the world.

You are born with this desire.

And those assumptions are the basis of what I have called natural law.

He says "assumptions" — I say there is a natural law, but does it actually exist? Well, let us assume it does. You must remember that this is an assumption; do not take it as absolute truth. If we look from a higher level, even this natural law does not exist, but in the human world we do have certain regularities. The basis of natural law is what I mentioned earlier: first, people are born knowing that they themselves are good; second, people are born with the value of legitimate existence in the universe — their existence itself is their meaning; third, people are born with the impetus to fulfill their own abilities, and the desire to act and move in the world. If you insist on calling these the laws of nature, then they are natural laws. They are things people are born with, not things that need to be learned, or authorized or permitted by anyone.

You are born with love, you are born with compassion. These are innate. You are born with curiosity about yourself and about the world. This is normal. These attributes also belong to natural law. You are born knowing that you possess a unique and intimate sense of existence.

Each person knows that he or she seeks his or her own fulfillment, and the fulfillment of others.

Everyone knows their own unique existence, and they can perceive this sense of existence from birth. And they want to bring this sense of existence to fulfillment, and they also seek the fulfillment of others. Amazing, right? Everyone is born with altruism. This is something we are born with. Why do people help others? Why are they willing to help others? It is innate.

You are born seeking the actualization of an ideal.

Everyone seeks the actualization of their own ideals. The ideals differ, but the goal is always to seek actualization. That desire is the same.

You are born seeking to add value to the quality of life, to add characteristics, energies, and abilities to life that only you can individually contribute to the world.

This is something only you can contribute to the world. No one else can do it except you. Because you add your characteristics, your energy, and your abilities to your life, and also to the universe. This is the unique gift you contribute to the universe.

You are born seeking to attain a particular kind of existence of your own, that also enriches the value fulfillment of the world.

You are born doing this — actualizing the uniqueness of your own value, actualizing your own value fulfillment, and also enriching the value fulfillment of this universe.

All of these traits and attributes are given to you by natural law, all given to you by nature:

You are a cooperative species. You are also a loving species. Your misunderstandings, your crimes, and your cruelties, while very real, are seldom the result of any intent to do evil, but are the result of serious misinterpretations of the nature of goodness, and of the means that can be taken to achieve it.

Seth speaks with fairness and sincerity. He says that in your actual lives there are indeed very cruel facts, and he does not deny this. But very seldom — not absolutely never, just very, very seldom — are they truly born of evil intent. Most of them come from serious misinterpretations of the nature of goodness, and also misinterpretations of the means by which that goodness is to be achieved. Most people, and everyone in some part of their inner being, know this to be true. Deep down, everyone is actually well aware of it.

How Social Beliefs Are Changed

Seth says:

Your society, your government, and your educational systems are all built upon a firm belief in the unreliability of human nature.

Our society, our government, our educational systems are all built upon a firm, erroneous belief that human nature is unreliable. The very statement "you cannot change human nature" itself confirms that human nature is greedy. We often say, "It is easy to change rivers and mountains but hard to change a person's nature," right? When we say this, it is actually not a kind statement—why doesn't he say that this person's nature is hard to change because his nature is good? He thinks that everyone is a bad actor, that inwardly everyone is a murderer. This is what our society tells us: if not kept under control, without severe punishment by law, everyone could become a murderer.

You act according to one of your own beliefs, and you become the self that you think you are.

You feel that you should be this way, so you live yourself into that shape. You are living under other people's standards and other people's perceptions and other people's beliefs. Your individual beliefs change, and they become the beliefs of your society; the two are always mutually influencing. If your individual beliefs change, and you no longer believe that people are inherently bad or unreliable, then when each of our beliefs changes, it will lead to a change in the beliefs of the whole society. This book talks about the nature of the individual and mass events, meaning how to change our society and change our world—that is, each of us changes, each of us changes our own beliefs, and then the beliefs of society naturally change.

We will soon begin to discuss the formation of a better kind of mass reality.

How does a mass reality come to be formed? He says next:

That is something that will only happen when more and more people begin to get in touch with their own true nature, when more and more individuals begin to get in touch with their own true nature.

That is, do not be influenced by those negative beliefs and erroneous beliefs in society, and get in touch with your own true nature—his true nature is good. Only when more and more people begin to get in touch with their own nature will this happen. And at that time:

We will have fewer frightened people, and fewer fanatics, and more realistic idealists, and everyone involved will to some degree begin to see the realization of ideals becoming reality.

People who are afraid of themselves will become fewer and fewer, people who believe in themselves will become more and more, and fanatics in society will also become fewer and fewer. At that point, each person can see the method by which he is moving toward the realization of the ideal in his own heart. That is to say, each person's individual ideals can have a method of realization, rather than "ideals are full, reality is bony," and then the enormous gap leads to a sense of powerlessness. No. At that time, each person's ideals can be realized, and the method of realization can be found.

The means can never justify the end.

This is something you must remember. This is the most important sentence he emphasizes again—no matter how lofty your purpose is, the means cannot violate the most basic principles.

Seth's Hint About the Next Book

This session then ended: "I wish you a fond good evening, and I give my regards to Ruburt."

Below is Rob's note. At 9:40, Jane said that in tonight's dictation Seth had included some nonverbal material that she had received from Seth last Wednesday evening before class and then written down — the nonverbal thing was a kind of feeling, but there was more to it that he did not mention.

Note 1: Before Session 861, Jane received some very intriguing material from Seth about the following idea — that in psychotherapy, behind the patient's emotional and physical disturbances there are good intentions and impulses, and the impulses should be analyzed and should be brought out by the analyst. This is one of Seth's viewpoints: when we give psychotherapy to so-called mental patients, we should find the good impulses and intentions behind their emotions and impulses. Although what they manifest are emotional and physical disturbances, the psychotherapist must have a way to see through these emotional and physical problems and perceive the good motives and good intentions behind them. This is the correct approach to psychotherapy.

Jane made some notes on that material. She told Rob that it was very useful material that might change some ideas about traditional treatment methods, and that it might actually involve a book — Seth's next book — on the therapy of value fulfillment. She was very excited about the new ideas he had shown her. In Session 861, which was not a book session, Seth briefly mentioned the material on ideals and impulses that he had recently discussed in the book sessions, which in turn led him to comment on the notes Jane had just written. It sounded as though he had clearly already decided on his next book.

Below is what Seth said:

The therapy of value fulfillment will attempt to bring the individual in contact with his or her basic instincts, to allow them to feel the impulses that shape their lives, and to define their own version of ideals by recognizing the ideals within the impulses, feelings, and abilities of their own bodies.

The goal of the value fulfillment therapy is to enable each person to come into contact with his basic instincts and with the things of his essence. The instinctual things include his impulses, feelings, and abilities. He will feel those impulses in his life, and then, by clearly recognizing the ideals within his impulses, within his feelings, and within his abilities — remember, it is the ideals within the impulses, the ideals within the feelings, the ideals within the abilities — he will go on to define his own version of ideals. Note that here he did not mention the mind, nor did he mention thinking; what he mentioned were impulses, feelings, and abilities. Through the direct feeling of these three aspects, one finds a clear version of his own ideals, and then helps them, in the realization of those ideals, to find acceptable and practical methods for implementing their natural powers — that is, methods of using natural power to realize their ideals. First determine what one's ideals are, but he emphasized that ideals are not something recommended by the intellect; rather, they are the ideals felt from within the impulses, and then there is also a method by which one can use natural energy and natural power to realize those ideals. Does this not accomplish his value fulfillment? This is what Seth said he would introduce to everyone later on.

Session 863

Today's session is the third part of Chapter 9 of Seth's The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, that is, Session 863. This session began on Wednesday evening, June 27, 1979, at 9:10 p.m.

The Natural Laws Seth Speaks Of

Right at the start, Seth says that because in the previous session he brought up the question of natural laws—he was saying that we have some of the most natural, fundamental laws. Seth goes on to say:

When I speak of natural laws, I do not mean the kind of natural laws scientists talk about, such as universal gravitation. The law of gravity is not a law at all; it is a result of the perceptual apparatus, manifested from the viewpoint of a certain level of consciousness.

This is something you must remember. This is one of the greatest misconceptions in human cognition: we use the outer senses—eyes, nose, ears, body, tongue—that is, what Buddhism calls the six consciousnesses, to gain cognition of the world, and then we go study that cognition. But we do not know that this cognition of ours is itself already skewed. Our perception itself is also part of what we are studying; it is of the same nature as the object of study. In other words, when you use one camouflaged thing to study another camouflaged thing, it cannot arrive at the truth; with a tool that is uncalibrated and itself situated within the very environment being observed, there is no way to achieve cognition.

To put it even more bluntly: if our consciousness cannot rise to a higher level, we are incapable of understanding this existing physical world. Because our consciousness is now based on the physical world—whether you admit it or not, from childhood you have been influenced by the outer senses. The information-processing system, the brain's response system, the perceptual judgment system, the formation of self-consciousness—this whole system has been influencing us from as far back as we can remember. Our consciousness is necessarily based on the three-dimensional, and that is the starting point for how we consider problems. What does three-dimensional consciousness mean? It means that when you consider a problem, you have to consider time and space; the space-time view has already taken shape in your mind, and it is very hard to remove it from your brain. When I say this world has no time and no space, you cannot accept it, because if your brain lacked these two things, time and space, you would hardly be able to think about problems at all.

Our consciousness itself is broad-spectrum, with multi-dimensional capabilities. We assume such dimensions exist—though in fact dimensions do not exist either; dimensions are all dimensions of consciousness—even if there were four-dimensional space, five-dimensional space, our consciousness is firmly locked into the three-dimensional world, and at that point it is very hard to break free. We use the outer physical senses to perceive things, and then we want to obtain a result. That result will come out, but it will necessarily conform to the properties of our outer senses. When you use a tool and want to obtain some valid cognition, the result will necessarily match the properties of the tool itself. So Seth is saying here that this gravity you see, this law of gravity you perceive, is also obtained through this cognitive system; this cognitive system will inevitably produce results that match itself, but that result is not the truth of this world—it is merely a result that conforms to your cognitive tool.

Seth goes on to say:

There is a certain level of consciousness...

Remember, "a certain level of consciousness" means that your consciousness has many levels, and you have used only the viewpoint of one single level, and then displayed the so-called result. These laws that the scientists of what we call nature tell you—including Einstein, general relativity, Newton's classical physics, modern physics, and the quantum mechanics now under discussion—they are all results observed through this tool of our outer senses, not the true laws of this universe.

According to that view, your perception is prejudiced, not objective; and it is inherently present in your scientific instruments. Are scientific instruments objective? No. Because your scientific instruments already carry prejudice—what do you use to judge the results your scientific instruments give you? Still your perception. So in the double-slit experiment of quantum mechanics, in the wave-particle duality experiments, this shows up most clearly: when you look at it, it is in the particle state; when you do not look at it, it is in the wave form. Scientists were baffled, and from that unfolded the whole subsequent series of developments in quantum mechanics. It seemed to touch on something like the truth—it is both wave and particle. When human perception is added, it is in the particle state, the material state; when human perception is not added, it displays the wave state, the energy state. Interesting, isn't it?

Regarding quantum mechanics, a couple of days ago I recommended a book called The Quantum Heart⁶; people in the group should have already seen me share it.

Seth emphasizes:

What I am speaking of is not the kind of natural laws you humans have... the inner natural laws that pervade and permeate existence.

This sentence is very important. What he is talking about concerns "existence"—the inner natural laws of existence, not the natural laws of this camouflaged physical world of yours.

Of course, what you call nature refers to a particular experience you have of reality, and outside that scope, very different manifestations are also natural.

Seth is saying that what you consider natural is a kind of experience and cognition of this world, of this reality, obtained through the sensory system. But outside that cognition, there are many things you cannot cognize or feel, and their manifestations are equally natural. You find them unnatural because they exceed your sensory system, but they still exist naturally. Those energy bodies, consciousness bodies, people like Seth himself—to us they seem unnatural, but to the entire universe, they are utterly natural things.

This natural law that I am explaining underlies all realities.

The natural law Seth is talking about transcends all realities; it is a law that all realities must follow underneath. This is huge—Seth blows the lid off right from the start. He is talking about the inner natural laws of existence, not the natural laws of any particular reality. He says:

It forms a stable foundation beneath all the various natures.

It provides a stable foundation for all kinds of natures, all kinds of realities. But Seth says, I will speak in terms of your reference framework—he still has to use a way you can understand, a way based on time and space, based on the three-dimensional state of consciousness. Because it itself transcends your time and space, I will do my best to say things you can understand.

Consciousness and Life

So this session is very, very important. Once you understand this session, you will understand all things, all the inner workings of the three thousand great thousand worlds.

Each living being experiences life as if it were at the center of life.

This is crucial. Each of us experiences our own life, feeling as though we stand at the very center of that life. In fact, you have countless分身 and countless selves, but you cannot feel them. This principle applies to a spider in the kitchen — he is starting to use the spider as an example — and it applies equally to any man and woman. Remember, the spider is just an example; it can be applied to people, and it can also be applied to atoms.

Each manifestation of consciousness enters into existence.

This sentence is very interesting. It means that consciousness, only when it becomes aware of its own existence, can it manifest. What is consciousness? It is an energy that can know who it is and can perceive its own existence — this energy is called consciousness. He says each manifestation of consciousness enters into existence — this "existence," he does not say it is a single kind of existence. Consciousness can enter into many existences; you need to understand this. When consciousness enters into its present existence, it feels that it is safely situated at the center of life.

Where does our life come from? It comes from that consciousness. The reason we have life is precisely because we have consciousness. And each manifestation of consciousness can enter into existence. The existence of a flower, the existence of an atom, the existence of a person, the existence of an animal — within every existence there is a consciousness. The reason you see it as existing is precisely because there is a consciousness behind it.

The issue is that this existence, in the present moment, considers itself to be the center of that life, and then it wants to experience this life through itself, to perceive life through its own essence. These few sentences are all very important; you cannot just let them slip by. He is talking about something fundamental to all reality — just one thing — and he is only using our physical world as an example.

What does this mean? This consciousness exists everywhere, but at every point of existence, that existence considers itself to be the very body of that consciousness, the core. But is it that core? No, it only feels that it is that core. It can only be considered a point of focus of consciousness, a perception of consciousness, or one could say a focal point of consciousness. In this moment, consciousness focuses on this place, and the point that consciousness focuses on will itself feel that it is the center of life. What it does not know is that it is actually a point of focus of some consciousness. The moment this consciousness focuses, it comes alive. But the interesting thing is, once it comes alive, it can only perceive its own existence as this center of life; it has no way of feeling that it is actually a point of focus of some consciousness.

Each of us perceives life through our own awareness, feeling that we are the center of this world, that the world exists for me, that the earth revolves for me. This is that point of "I think, therefore I am" — I think, therefore I am; that is only true from his own perspective.

Value Fulfillment and the Quality of Life

He then began to say:

He enters existence with an inner impetus toward value fulfillment.

He is referring to consciousness. Here we get a little closer to the truth of this world. That focus of consciousness has life, regards itself as the substance of life, the essence of life, and through its own awareness feels this life. But it inherently carries an inner impetus toward value fulfillment, born with it. Why? Because this existence is brought in by that focus of consciousness, the focus of that consciousness is here. Does consciousness itself have a certain intent? It is not dead, it is alive, with its own intent, its own thoughts. Of course, these thoughts are not human thoughts—at this level we have already transcended the human, so do not keep thinking in terms of human problems, though of course this includes humans, includes every person just the same. If you think in human terms, you can understand it; if you think in animal terms, it may be harder to grasp; if you think in atomic terms, you have even less idea how it thinks. But Seth tells you that no matter what kind of thing it is, within it there is an inner impetus toward value fulfillment.

Toward value fulfillment—the last book we will cover, which is Seth's last publicly published book, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment⁷, in that book he will again emphasize the core meaning of value fulfillment. But here, because we have not gotten there yet—this is only 1979, and he still has The "Unknown" Reality after this—I cannot quite remember whether he had already covered The "Unknown" Reality by then. Anyway, later there is a whole book devoted to this, but here he cannot help himself and brings it up again.

He is innately secure within his environment.

This "he" is that focus of consciousness. At this point it is very hard to define him—is he the substance of consciousness, or the focus of consciousness? The focus of consciousness is also that consciousness. Consciousness is ultimately formed by the convergence of countless focuses.

Every existence of consciousness is itself secure. This state of being at ease is something you are born with. You feel uneasy because the thoughts of your little ego are stirring up trouble. It itself is at ease, in an environment suited for it to handle—it will not give you an environment you cannot handle. If you exist in this state, you are certainly suited to this state.

You can make a certain correlation between consciousness and energy: consciousness needs energy to be carried, energy is the vehicle of consciousness, or you could call them two sides of one coin. Energy with awareness is called consciousness. Then the environment in which this conscious energy finds itself is certainly one that this conscious energy can handle. The energy field of the environment it is in matches the energy field of this consciousness itself; it will not place a conscious energy into a place with a vastly different energy level. Because if the energy difference is too great, it will immediately make you uneasy, and the two energies will undergo violent change. Energy always tends toward equilibrium—like something exploding: at the moment of explosion the energy is very high, but after it bursts it returns to nature, returns to the air, and once again reaches accord with the most stable energy of nature, returning to calm. So this consciousness itself is an energy, and the background it projects into is certainly matched to its own energy level.

He is given the impetus toward growth and action... and is filled with the desire to influence his world.

You are given a suitable environment, and then you are given an innate impetus to grow, an innate impetus to act, and you are also filled with the desire to influence the world. Where does your desire come from? It was already there in that focus of consciousness; it was already there the moment this life was born. This is the essence of your life—to influence the world, to explore the world, to create, to experience, to realize your value fulfillment. These things are inherently yours, things that cannot be removed no matter what; if you were to remove them all, then you would no longer be life.

Why do you grow up? Why do you keep growing, keep doing things, keep acting? Try lying down for a day, for two days—you cannot stay lying down. If lying down were the most comfortable state, then prison would be the most comfortable thing in the world: you would not have to do anything, just lie on that little bed every day. Why not? Because you need to act, to grow. Why is prison a punishment? Because it restricts your growth, restricts your freedom of action. This is something your life itself inherently possesses, something given to you; if someone restricts this thing, the quality of your life is greatly diminished. And then you want to influence the world, but they lock you in prison and do not let you out; no matter how great your desire, they will not let you act on it—that is a punishment. So people have known since ancient times why prison is a punishment for human beings.

The True Meaning of Value Fulfillment

The following passage is very important. The reason I am speaking slowly is that it really is important—because what he is talking about is not the affairs of our world, but the set of principles behind all realities. Once you understand this principle, it will be easier to understand when it corresponds to the three-dimensional world.

The term value fulfillment is extremely difficult to understand. It is not the kind of value fulfillment in our ordinary language. Because this "value" is very hard to define—it transcends humanity, transcends society, transcends the three-dimensional world, transcends time and space. Can you imagine what that value behind all of this actually is? All the values you currently hold are meaningful only within the scope of time and space; beyond time and space, these things all become meaningless. So what could still be of value up there? This is why this term is so hard to understand, and yet it is extremely important.

Obviously he is talking about the development of value... But he goes on to say, and it must be emphasized, that it is not moral value.

The value fulfillment he speaks of must be a development, an evolution of value. In a later book he specifically talks about "evolution," and he does not use the word "progress." In English it is the same word, but when Teacher Wang Jiqing translated it, he always emphasized "evolution" and avoided "progress"—because as soon as you say "progress," it easily drags you into Darwin's theory of evolution, so he avoided that word. Here he uses "development," which is actually the same idea.

And it must be emphasized that it is not moral value. Do not think that as soon as value fulfillment is mentioned, it means the elevation of one's personal state, the raising of one's level of consciousness, the raising of one's energy frequency—that feeling of leveling up and fighting monsters, where I go from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and finally reach some level. If you understand it that way, then you are truly and completely mistaken. The ultimate law of this universe has no concept of hierarchy: not in time, not in space, not in energy, not in levels, and not in morality. Nowhere at all.

It is not moral value, but it is a value for which you truly have no adequate words to describe.

Human language has no way to describe this value. Should the discussion end here? No, he still has to go on. This is Seth's characteristic—clearly at a loss for words, clearly human language cannot express it, yet he still keeps talking. The following passage can only be grasped intuitively, because no matter how he says it, it is not exactly what he truly means. You can only try to sense it, and each person's sense of it will be different.

So Seth says, although language can no longer express it, and words cannot say it, let me still give you a simple explanation:

These values are those that add to the quality of life of whatever being is conscious of being at its center.

Remember a few key words here: "being"—the English word is "being," which can be translated as "living being" or as "existence." This is a very large word, and its meaning is extremely vast, somewhat like the meaning of "Dao" in the Tao Te Ching, but not quite the same. Here it does not refer only to animals and plants; atoms and molecules are all included, and even those things you consider inorganic and lifeless are included. So translating it as "living being" gives you a certain feeling, but actually a better translation would be "existence."

"Whatever" is a very key word. What this sentence means is that the value in value fulfillment refers to—that being, that existence which feels itself to be the center of this life, the experiences it adds that are related to whatever quality of life. To put it more bluntly: every being may have good experiences, bad experiences, all kinds of experiences—the experience of being a millionaire, the experience of being a street beggar; the experience of being a queen, the experience of being a princess, and also the experience of being a prostitute. Whatever the experience, it is all adding to the quality of his life.

Be sure to remember that "whatever" is the key word. Do not think that as soon as life quality is mentioned, you should think of good things—fine wine, beautiful scenery. In his eyes there is no good or bad; good and bad are your standards. At the level of consciousness, all of these are good experiences, all things not yet experienced, not yet gone through. So these few words are very important.

Then he says:

That quality of life is not only passed down or experienced, but is indeed creatively enhanced and increased in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.

This sentence is very important, extremely important. This is a point many people do not understand. Let us analyze the meaning of this sentence.

He says it is related to the quality of life of this existence—the so-called value is to increase the quality of life of this existence. So what exactly is this quality of life? He says "not only"—note, do not exclude anything here; "not only" means do not let it be only. Only what? "Passed down" or experienced.

What does "passed down" mean? Have you forgotten where your life comes from? Your life is a focus point of a larger consciousness's attention. When this focus is placed here, it carries a certain intention, a certain purpose—what does it want to do? This thing is what has been passed down to you. He uses the phrase "passed down"—you are passive. Why? Because even this life of yours is someone else's focus point, so you inevitably carry a passive quality.

Then "experienced"—what does it mean to be experienced? It means you are the focus point of someone else's attention; you are the thing that is "being" something. This is what many people cannot understand: I have lived as myself, I have my own free will, so how have I become a passive, being-experienced process? I often say that in this world you are in a world of "effects"; your actions have long been constructed in Framework 2—you may now be slowly getting a sense of this.

Is there anything in your life that has been passed down? Of course there is. Is there anything to be experienced? Of course there is. This is what we usually call the life blueprint, or what we call the key time points within that fixed destiny—those things all need to be experienced. Whom you meet in your life, whom you marry, whom you run into—these probable things all need to be experienced by you. These are the things that the consciousness behind that attention is interested in; its focus is right here—it wants to see what it feels like for you to marry this person, wants to see what it is like for you to be the chairman of a company. This is the focus of that consciousness's attention.

But there is a premise before this—"not only." If you think your life is only this, then is it not finished? At the very beginning of Liao Fan's Four Lessons⁸, Liao Fan was completely calculated to death by that master of the art of divination, his entire life from birth to death fully predicted⁹. But Seth says there is more to it than this—not only passed down or experienced, it must:

Be creatively enhanced and increased in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.

Only this is called value; only this is called your quality of life. With these few sentences, Seth gives you a simple description of the value within the indescribable value fulfillment. Remember, this is a simple sketch under a very simplified premise. This is what many people have been asking all along: where is the meaning of this universe? Where is the purpose of this universe? What is the purpose of that god behind the whole system, that All That Is? He has now said it.

Having nothing to do with quantity—this is a very important premise. By accumulating wealth, are you not accumulating quantity? Can it increase your creativity? Can it enhance your quality of life? No. Be sure to remember this sentence of Seth's; he emphasized it specifically because he was afraid you would misunderstand. Every word in this passage has been carefully considered, because he is explaining the greatest principle behind all of reality. The law of gravity determines the trajectory of our macroscopic world—it cannot solve the microscopic, which requires quantum physics—and what Seth is now explaining is the greatest principle behind the whole of reality.

In the same way, earning ten million this year, another ten million next year, another ten million the year after, and after thirty years you have made several hundred million—it is meaningless. The increase of wealth and the increase of quantity are in themselves meaningless. What he wants is a way that has nothing to do with quantity, creatively enhanced and increased. You have to vary the patterns, vary the experiences—only then is it meaningful. It is not that I know how to make money, I know how to grow a business, I know how to get along well with the opposite sex, I have many friends of the opposite sex—these quantitative things in themselves do not have much meaning. Since life quality is called quality, it must have nothing to do with quantity, and instead be related to creativity.

Spiders and Flies: A Metaphor

He went on to say that animals also have a sense of value. The living beings referred to here are not limited to humans.

If the quality of their life deteriorates beyond a certain point, the numbers of that species will gradually diminish.

Seth is telling us, what is the reason many species decline? It is because the quality of their life has deteriorated to a certain degree.

We are not speaking of survival of the fittest in environmental terms, but of the survival of meaningful life.

He said this with great enthusiasm. I am not saying that the environment has worsened and animals cannot adapt, not the Darwinian survival of the fittest, but rather that the meaning of its life is gone. For that animal, the meaning of its life is gone, so the species is heading toward extinction. To put it simply in reverse: only meaningful life can survive.

Then he went on to say:

To animals, life is its own meaning, and the two are indistinguishable.

You see, this becomes a paradox: only meaningful life can survive, and what cannot survive is because it can no longer find meaning; yet he also says that to animals, life itself is meaning, and the two are indistinguishable. Where does the paradox lie? For animals, this "life" refers to the animal's own natural state of life in nature, unaffected by outside interference—that life has meaning. It does not refer to being kept in captivity, or being raised like mechanized production. In that case, for the animal, its life is also meaningless. Then why has it not gone extinct, you ask? It has already become a product of industrial production, so even if it wanted to go extinct, it could not. Its entire life process—from sperm collection, to conception, to reproduction—is entirely controlled by humans. Its life no longer has any autonomy.

If in the natural world a species' quality of life is affected, it would rather not live. This is very interesting. You may not have experienced it, but many animals are like this. For example, a little sparrow—sparrows are small enough, right? If you have ever caught a sparrow, you know that sparrows cannot be kept alive. If you do not give it freedom, it will not eat or drink, and would rather starve to death. Even such a small sparrow has the dignity of life, because it feels that such a life has no meaning.

If you have kept some snakes, some snakes placed in a glass container with a small opening will bite themselves to death, biting themselves into two pieces. I do not know if you have ever seen this, but many animals are like this—when they no longer have quality of life, they do not live. So this is what Seth means: only meaningful life can survive. And these things apply to all worlds of reality, not just our Earth, not just our humans, not just our physical world; the nonphysical world is the same.

He still gave examples:

The spider, for example, instinctively spins its web. If you say the spider instinctively spins its web because the spider must eat insects, that is our human assumption. The best web-spinner will be the spider most fit to survive, that is our human viewpoint. This is not anything original, not anything new, not a fresh viewpoint.

Then he paused for a long time, and said with humor:

But it is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of your beliefs.

This is very interesting. You say the spider spins its web by instinct, that it is in order to eat insects; you say the spider that spins the best web will survive, and the one that spins poorly may die—this is a process of survival of the fittest, this is what your Darwin told you. He followed immediately with: it is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of your beliefs, like a spider's web, it sticks to me wherever I go. What does this mean? These are all erroneous beliefs, but these erroneous beliefs are everywhere, and they have already formed a major pattern of thinking in the human brain, like a spider's web—you cannot escape it, and when you run into it, it is sticky.

But that spider's web, in its own way, represents an ideal realized by the spider, an achievement of the spider. If you have watched a documentary about spiders spinning webs, you will be utterly amazed: how does it judge distance? How does it spin such a web in three-dimensional space, a web that is truly not simple for it? If you do not mind my saying so, it is also an artistic web. Is it a creation for the spider? Of course it is a creation. Is art also a creation? It is also a creation. Seth uses these two as an analogy here.

He went on, very amusingly:

Then the fly so kindly fell into that web... much to the spider's surprise.

He used the word "kindly." The spider had originally made a work of art—the spider simply wanted to spin a web, that was its ideal. It originally wanted to make a work of art, and unexpectedly a fly fell in, and the spider was startled: what is this? Who has destroyed my work of art? Then you could say, the spider found it very strange that art could be so practical, that it could even catch food. If you think about it carefully, Seth's words carry a strong sense of humor. Those paintings by painters, worth tens of millions or hundreds of millions, are they not more than practical? It is not just a matter of practicality anymore. He is joking, very humorous.

The spider spinning its web is its instinctive artistic creation. This web of instinctive artistic creation can solve its survival problem. These two qualities are reversed: what you see is that it spins the web in order to eat insects, but in essence the spider does not spin the web in order to eat insects—this spider is born to spin webs. Spinning the web is the spider's ideal, the value fulfillment it wants to realize. Once this value is realized, it not only solves its own survival problem, but most centrally: this is what its value wants to fulfill. Can you understand what Seth means to express? It is not what we humans think, that it spins the web in order to eat insects; it is that the spider simply wants to spin the web, and this is its value fulfillment as a spider, its ideal as a spider.

And what about that poor, unsuspecting fly? For the spider, it caught a fly—while creating a work of art, it accidentally got a bit of meat to eat. But what did the fly ever do to anyone? The fly did not create a work of art either. So what is going on with the fly?

He was so entranced by the spider's web.

The reason it fell into that spider's web is that it was entranced by the web, and lost all its vigilance. Look at the tone Seth uses here, very interesting. The fly did not see the web—it should have seen it, but it did not. But it was entranced by the shape of the web. You say it could not see the spider's web? That is unlikely, it should have been able to see it. But why did it still fall in? Why did some flies not fall in, but this one did? This is very interesting. Because it was entranced by the spider's web.

He said in a whisper, with feigned indifference: because the fly is indeed a victim of that wicked, web-like beauty.

That web has its own geometric shape, very beautiful. The fly, simply because it was entranced by the shape of the web, plunged right into it. Why does this happen? I do not know either. But if I were to guess, from the fly's perspective, it does not see it as a flat web—if one looked at a spider's web through a fly's eyes, I would guess it might see a conical passage that it could fly through from the middle. Because when that central point of the spider's web is pulled, it looks like a cone. Perhaps that is what it sees in its eyes. If it could see that it was a web, it would not crash into it; it thought it could fly through.

We have both indeed entered something sticky.

Seth is very humorous. Who does "we" refer to? Seth is saying, the fly and I have both indeed entered into this sticky thing. The fly entered the spider's web, very sticky, basically cannot get out; and I have entered into the sticky web of your traditional beliefs, and cannot get out either. Because whenever I explain something, I easily fall into your traditional beliefs. So the fly and I have both entered this sticky thing. The fly fell into the spider's web of wicked beauty, and I fell into the sticky web of your traditional beliefs, unable to shake it off no matter what. Why? Because you have always had a three-dimensional view of consciousness, and your consciousness always remains in this three-dimensional state.

The Multiple Levels of Consciousness

He says:

You are dealing with different kinds of your own consciousness.

This is the first point, and it is crucial. How many kinds of consciousness are there? As many as all the species and objects in our world, and far more than that. Do not think there is only one kind of consciousness. Consciousness comes in thousands upon thousands of kinds, too many to count. Humanity must not think that only human consciousness deserves to be called consciousness -- everything in the world has consciousness, and you must deal with these different kinds of consciousness.

Indeed, they are consciousnesses that focus.

These different consciousnesses are all focused consciousnesses. The moment consciousness focuses, it manifests into a form of existence. This existence may be physical, or it may be nonphysical -- do not assume that existence must be material. It may be nonphysical, including your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams, and many more things in the nonphysical world, all of which are the focusing of your consciousness. The moment consciousness focuses, it forms a manifested existence; our physical bodies in the three-dimensional world are also a focusing of consciousness.

A focused consciousness is an existence. Every existence feels that it is at the center of life.

Nevertheless, these other forms of consciousness also identify with the source of nature from which they emerge.

Although they consider themselves the center of life, they also identify with the fact that they and nature both emerge from that larger body of consciousness. Nature comes from there, the universe comes from there, and our own lives come from there as well. What is that? It is simply a vast body of consciousness. You may call it All That Is, or an energy mass, or the Source, or chaos, or whatever you like. It is that vast body of consciousness, omnipresent. So although life considers itself the center of life, it also acknowledges that it has a source, and that its source is the same source as nature and the universe.

In a way impossible to explain... the fly and the spider are connected.

What does "a way impossible to explain" mean? Let me try to explain it to you, though my explanation is also a forced one. The fly is a focus of consciousness, and the spider is also a focus of consciousness. In fact, they are both focuses of a larger consciousness -- behind them both is a larger body of consciousness. This body of consciousness suddenly wanted to experience what it feels like to be a fly, and also wanted to experience what it feels like to be a spider. It has far too many focuses; let us just talk about these two. Both focuses come from the same body of consciousness. What is manifested is the life and existence of a fly, and the life and existence of a spider. The so-called life of the spider and the life of the fly are both formed by the focuses of that body of consciousness.

If you look back at the earlier sentence, you will understand it now: "Each manifestation of consciousness enters into existence" -- the moment consciousness focuses, it enters into existence. When consciousness does not focus, it remains in a state of chaos. The moment consciousness focuses -- ah, I want to be a fly, I want to feel what a fly feels -- it enters into that existence.

So the spider and the fly, which you think of as two different living beings, are actually different focus points of one shared consciousness. They are connected, right here. And they can sense that connection, which is remarkable. As a focus point, it can trace its way back and look back at the consciousness that focused it -- just as the you in a dream looks back at the dreamer. You feel vaguely that you come from someone's mind, or from someone's dream, unclear and somewhat hazy. If one day the you in the dream awakens, you will discover: oh, I was originally inside someone's dream.

This awareness, on a deeper level, is a recognition of the original body. But their connection does not appear as that of prey and hunter:

But as individual participants in a deeper process.

I am not talking about the relationships in nature's food chain, not saying that one is at the top of the chain and the other at the bottom, nor about a coexisting environment within an ecosystem. What I am saying is that at the source of the two of them, there is a deeper process.

What process? It is that the consciousness wanted to feel "what it is like when a fly crashes into a spider web." It wanted to experience this process. So it had to first create a spider, and then create a fly. It can feel both of their feelings at the same time, and by feeling both, it understands the process of a fly crashing into a spider web.

Do you think this consciousness is so bored that it has nothing better to do? Does it really need to experience a fly crashing into a spider web? Do not forget what was said earlier: what is the quality of life that every living being pursues? To create as much as possible, to experience as much as possible. It is not about scale -- it is not like what you imagine, only caring about world peace and human development. It attends to everything, great and small; it cares about everything and wants to try everything. So its caring about this is already a big matter, a very big matter -- not to mention what goes on inside atoms and molecules.

That larger consciousness wanted to participate in and understand this process. These two are separate participants, two roles, two actors -- one plays the spider, one plays the fly. Together they strive toward a common value fulfillment. What value fulfillment? The experience of a fly crashing into a spider web. For both of them, this matter is accomplished, a common goal, and both of them have fulfilled it.

With one spider and one fly, Seth explains the affairs of our universe clearly and plainly. You cannot say this example is the best example; you could come up with a better one. But this is an example everyone can understand. You could also use other, more advanced approaches -- quantum mechanics, molecular biology, and so on. But what could be more universally understandable than using a fly and a spider web as an example?

Do you understand now? Do you have a rough sense of what value fulfillment feels like? You can never truly understand it completely, but you can find that feeling. For the two of them, there is only one value fulfillment: experiencing a fly crashing into a spider web. This feeling, this process, is what they both want to experience together. Once this matter is accomplished, both of their tasks are complete, and both value fulfillments are realized. Is the principle simple enough? He was afraid you would not understand what value fulfillment means, so he gave you this example.

Communications of consciousness of which you are unaware.

You do not know how the spider and the fly communicate. Do they have signals, telepathy? None of those -- not the kind of communication you can understand. They communicate on another level, and that communication cannot be described in words; it is unknown to you. But when you believe in theories such as survival of the fittest, and in the grand dream of evolution, then you organize your perception of the world in such a way that they seem to confirm those theories. For example, in the life of a mouse sacrificed for an experiment...

The White Mouse Analogy: A Plain-Spoken Explanation of Value Fulfillment

He was afraid you would not understand what value fulfillment means, so he gave you this example. A fly and a spider, for the two of them, their value fulfillment is just one thing: to experience the fly flying into the spider web. This feeling, this process, is what the two of them want to experience together. Once this event is accomplished, both of their tasks are done, and both value fulfillments are realized. This principle is quite plain, isn't it?

Those communications of consciousness that are unknown to you, you do not know about them. You do not know that the two of them are a fly and a spider, so how do the two of them communicate? They have signals, telepathy, none of that. It is not the kind of communication you can understand. They communicate on another level, and that communication cannot be explained in words either. Unknown to you, you simply do not know they are communicating. But when you believe in theories like survival of the fittest, and the great dream of evolutionary theory, then you organize your perception of the world in such a way that they seem to confirm those theories.

Seth just will not let go of Darwin. For example:

You will see no value in the life of a mouse sacrificed for an experiment. And you will project this claw-to-claw struggle onto nature, completely missing the great cooperative adventure involved.

What does this mean? You humans cannot understand the communication on this underlying level of consciousness. You can only look at it from the level of phenomena. So what you see is always this kind of natural-world phenomenon of survival of the fittest. You see a phenomenon, and you interpret this phenomenon as the law of the world. You simply have not seen what the inner communication among these species is actually like.

So through your outer senses, this view of the world organizes your perception. You organize the phenomena you observe, and you form a theory like Darwin's, the so-called theory of evolution. And then, because you summarize it through your perception, through phenomena, the law you summarize is bound to fit your cognition. You observe phenomena through your perception, you study these phenomena and summarize a law from them, and then you use this law to fit the phenomena you observe, so of course it will match. Humans have trapped themselves in this. Humans are playing games with themselves. Because you do not understand why this phenomenon appears, it is because you do not understand the communication of consciousness behind it. That is the real thing.

You treat the fly being eaten by the spider as a process of biological evolution, or as something in the ecosystem. You have no idea that they are actually doing it to realize a value fulfillment. But this process, you humans cannot know it, and you cannot capture this communication of consciousness.

The Laboratory Mouse: A Great Cooperative Adventure Between Species

A little mouse in a laboratory, for the sake of medical experiments, drug experiments, or whatever experiments humans want to do, gets killed -- dies of disease, dies from dissection, dies from poisoning, no matter how it dies. After this mouse dies, you cannot see the value of this little mouse's death.

But in nature, on the other hand, you would say what kind of state this mouse occupies in the ecological chain. Scientists study their group life and say that their struggle with cats proves that cats are a higher level in the biological chain, while mice are a lower level. This process of mice and cats fighting, of mice being hunted and killed by cats, completely validates the natural laws of the biological world -- whether evolution or whatever. This is the result your scientists observe, and you accept it. But what have you missed? You have missed the great cooperative adventure they designed.

He often uses this phrase; remember it: between species and species, it is always a great cooperative adventure. This great cooperative adventure, at the human level, at the material level, you cannot see it. What you see is survival of the fittest, natural selection, the whole set of evolutionary theory, because you cannot see the underlying communication and connection at the level of consciousness.

The mouse sacrificed in the laboratory, at a deeper level, has a deeper communication within the consciousness of the human scientists. This mouse voluntarily came to participate in such a scientific experiment, and sacrificed its own life precisely for this scientific experiment. The value of this mouse is very great, but you cannot see it. You think these are all little white mice raised in laboratories, and humans can breed thousands upon thousands, endless little mice, for various pharmaceutical companies, laboratories, and medical corporations to experiment on. You say you do not see that between this little mouse and humans, it is also a great cooperative adventure.

Separated from nature, if you placed it in nature, you could understand this as natural selection, as the biological chain, as the ecological environment. Once it is in the laboratory, you are removed from this set of natural theories, and you do not know how to explain it, so you think the mouse is merely an experimental tool. In fact, whether in the laboratory or in nature, they are all a cooperative adventure between species and species. The mouse, for the sake of human medical research, no matter for what, knows it; it knows its death serves a purpose. Saying this sounds rather grand, but that is simply how it is -- we just do not feel it.

Religion and Science: Two Extremes on the Meaning of Life

After he finished talking about the little white mouse, he started shifting topics. He had already covered part of value fulfillment, and now he goes on to say: why must people pursue value fulfillment? Because if a person believes that life has no meaning, he will become mentally deranged.

Religion, it is true, once made a very big mistake, but at least it offered the hope of an afterlife, of redemption, and it maintained the possibility that sometimes a bad bamboo can still produce good shoots — that is, a heroic system of the soul. Although religion has done many bad things, it has also done a great deal of good. One of those good things was giving you hope — so that when you felt life had no meaning, it still gave you an afterlife as a hope.

Science, including psychology, through what they say and through what they ignore and leave unsaid, has come close to declaring that life itself is meaningless. If you let scientists have their say, then you might as well let religion have its say. Religion at least gave people a meaning — even if abstract, distorted, or false, it at least gave you a meaning. But when scientists speak, they say that when a person dies, it is like a lamp going out, and then there is no meaning at all. A person lives only a short few decades, and once you die, the meaning is gone.

Scientists believe that the meaning of human life is the same as the meaning of animal life — it is simply to allow the species to reproduce. Apart from allowing the species to continue reproducing, there is no other meaning. Do you think you would be willing to equate yourself with animals? Of course you would not be willing, and you also know that this cannot be right, yet you cannot say exactly where they are wrong. Scientists tell you with absolute conviction that this is just how it is — that we are simply one of the many living beings on this planet, and as a species, the most basic thing we share is that we must stop at nothing to continue our own race, because they believe other animals also stop at nothing.

A Contradiction in Deep Biology

He says this is a direct contradiction of deep biological knowledge, not to mention spiritual truth. Setting aside the spiritual meaning of life, I will just say that from the standpoint of deep biology, this in itself is contradictory. Why is it contradictory?

The scientist's view denies the meaning of biological integrity, denies the fundamental factors that a person actually needs in order to use it as a biological being: the feeling of being at the center of life, of being able to move safely within its environment, of being able to trust itself, and of trusting that its existence and actions have meaning.

What is biological integrity? Biological integrity means that existence itself is justified, that existence in itself has meaning. It denies that a person should actually make use of it -- the fundamental factors that a living being, not just a person but all living beings, need. What factors? It is that they feel they are at the center of life, that they can move safely within their environment. Kittens and puppies know this, spiders and flies know it too. It can trust itself, and it can trust that its existence and actions have meaning. This is an ability that every living being has.

You say that humans are one kind of living being, and yet you deny the meaning of human existence in the natural world. Then what are you doing? Are you not contradicting yourself? If scientists say that humans are biological beings, then you have to acknowledge a fundamental factor that all living beings possess. If you say that humans are not equivalent to animals, then do humans have something spiritual? But then you also say that humans are biological beings, and that humans have no spirituality. Fine, Seth says, then let us not talk about spirituality, let us talk about biology. From the standpoint of biology, you say that humans are one kind of living being, so do other living beings not all have this basic attribute? Survival, a sense of safety, moving within their environment, all of it has meaning. You say that the existence of those animals has meaning, so why would human existence have no meaning?

Impulses and Life's Guidance

Then Seth said:

Impulses provide a guide for action in life. The main function of impulses is to guide life. If you are taught that you cannot trust your impulses, then you set yourself against the overall integrity of your physical body.

Impulses are the guide for your actions. But from childhood you are taught not to trust your impulses, so you lose your integrity as a biological being, as a physical whole. What then guides your actions? The intellect guides them.

If you believe your life is meaningless, then you will do anything to provide meaning, while all the while behaving like a rat in a scientific maze. Because your primary directives, so to speak, have already been scrambled.

You believe life is meaningless, but in order to find some meaning for yourself, you grab at random things and treat them as the meaning of your life. It is like in many biological experiments, where they make a white mouse run through a maze to measure time — this is the scientists' favorite experiment. Do you think running through a maze is the meaning of life for that white mouse? Obviously not. That is something the scientists found for it to do. But you humans are so pitiful that you build a maze for yourselves, and then try to find your way through it. And neither that maze nor the act of running through it is the meaning of your life. It is a meaning you have imposed upon yourselves.

Running through a maze is not your impulse; it is something passive imposed on you. He paused, then said forcefully:

Here, I try to soften my statement.

He is saying, let me not put it so harshly, make it sound a bit nicer. The previous words really did describe humanity in quite a way, so he softens it, afraid you cannot take it.

In your past fifty years, psychology has created insanity, and by attempting to reduce the great personal life force, the impetus hidden within each individual, to a mass of generalized chaotic impulses and chemicals — once again, this is a mixture of misapplied Freudian and Darwinian thought.

He says, what I said earlier may have been a bit too harsh, and many people cannot accept it. To put it more gently — well, I think it would have been better not to soften it, because the softened version sounds even harsher. Your psychological research of the past fifty years — he mainly means Freud — has simply gone in the wrong direction, creating insanity. You have taken the great personal impulse within each individual, that impetus, and portrayed it as an untrustworthy, terrifying, chaotic, hysterical, evil, dreadful force. That is the great personal life impetus within every person's heart — that is your impulse — but what have your psychologists reduced it to? Seth is so angry here that he does not even know how to describe it, so he says he will put it in a softened way. If he did not soften it, he would probably start cursing.

Psychology's Erasure of Individual Uniqueness

The soul's most private anguish is thought to be caused, more or less, by humanity's primitive unconscious desires.

This is currently the mainstream view of all psychologists. You suffer because in your unconscious there are some underlying desires that you yourself do not know about, desires down in the subconscious, and those desires are not a good thing; they are the root cause of all your suffering. They make you dig for that root cause—was it trauma from your family of origin when you were little? Was it something or other from early on?

Then the individual's unrepressed impulse toward creativity is seen as an imbalance of some deep chemical compound. That is, each person's impulsiveness, that unrepressed impulse toward creativity—your scientists believe it is because the chemical compounds in your body are out of balance. Your hormones are disordered, some index is too high, and that is why you are impulsive. But what is that impulse itself? It is the very thing that brings you your great creativity. Look at what they have explained it as.

Genius is seen as a chromosomal error, or as the fortunate result of an individual's hatred of his father.

You regard genius and madness as only one step apart, believing that genius only appears when there is a chromosomal error, and that normal people have no genius. A genius is bound to have other problems, such as poor life skills, low emotional intelligence, and difficulties in dealing with people. The second view holds that maybe this person wanted to become a genius precisely because he hated his father. He wanted to replace his father's position in his mother's heart, so he did it by achieving more than his father, and as a result he applied it to science or some field and became a genius. They say this is a fortunate result of hating his father.

The meaning of life is debased, or seen as a genetic accident. You have debased the meaning of life into a genetic accident. Scientists think in terms of averages and statistics, and then every individual is assumed to conform to these fields. Scientists sample some basic data from the whole of humanity, and then they take the results of that survey and apply them back onto every individual; as long as you do not conform, they consider you abnormal.

They do not acknowledge individual specificity. They clearly know that people are one of a kind, yet they insist on going among these one-of-a-kind people to find average data, to find statistical probabilities. After finding them, they apply them back and say, look, 80 percent of people are normal, only these 20 percent are abnormal. You survey 100 people, and instead of observing why these 100 people each have their own uniqueness, you find an average and a statistical probability from among them, and then you say 80 percent conform to this. Because that is how you took your sample; the result you get is bound to be a statistical and mathematical result, and there are bound to be people who are abnormal. Because that is how your algorithm works; there are bound to be a majority and a minority, and then you say the minority is abnormal and only the majority is normal. Are you joking? Are your scientists joking?

When you run statistics on 100 people of all different kinds, the premise is that you first acknowledge these 100 people are not the same. If these 100 people were the same, you would not need statistics. All right, you survey these 100 people and get a result, and you want to look at this result statistically. No matter which statistical formula or algorithm you use, it is just an algorithm, just a statistical method. Whether you use the median or the average, is it not true that there will always be a majority and a minority? And then you say that those who conform to this statistical result are normal, and those who do not are all abnormal. What about your premise? You insist on artificially dividing these differences into which are the majority and which are the minority, and then you go on to assert that the minority is all abnormal. These scientists seem clever, but are they not being foolish? They really are being foolish.

The Self-Contradictions of Religion

To a certain degree, this also applies to the religion of the same era.

The church needed many sinners, but it shunned the saints and any behavior that did not conform to the ordinary, because that did not suit human cunning.

Religion says that people are all bad, that people are all sinful. But then why are there so many saints in your religions? If, as your religion says, people are all born with original sin, then where did these saints come from? You are slapping your own face. People are all born with original sin, so where did those archbishops come from? Where did those cardinals come from? Mother Teresa, those great figures you hold up from history and from the present, where did these saints come from? What about their original sin? What about the evil in them? And there are many, many people who do things of the utmost goodness, and you say that they were all moved by God. Did you not say that people are all sinful? Then where do these saints come from? Are you not contradicting yourself?

Is this not the same clever trick as the scientists above, who pick out from the statistics those few people who are different from everyone else and label the minority as abnormal? Why do you not say at that point that these saints are abnormal? No matter what you say, you are always speaking according to your own values.

Paranoia and Schizophrenia: Finding Meaning in Meaninglessness

But people with paranoid tendencies, and also schizophrenics, have this ornately decorated wallpaper of civilization emerging.

The ornately decorated wallpaper of civilization includes both the scientific and the religious—all seemingly gorgeous, magnificent, rigorous and scientific, and religion even more magnificent and noble beyond compare. How did they come about? Each one's characteristics have been properly brought out, yet suddenly paranoia appears, and schizophrenia appears too. These are the people who have escaped the persecution of your traditional, socially recognized norms. But you label them as paranoid, as schizophrenic. Because when their own impulses could not be satisfied, or were not released, they became what we call paranoid and schizophrenic. He is being sarcastic about us.

A person feels that life has no meaning, and that his life in particular has no meaning, and he would rather be arrested than ignored. He is referring to those paranoid, schizophrenic people, including those criminals—they are all like this. A person feels his life has no meaning—is that something our scientists taught us? And he feels his own life is even more meaningless than that of ordinary people. So what does such a person do? He would rather be caught than ignored. Because being caught still has some meaning, doesn't it? At least a whole group of police are after him; at least the event of being caught still carries some meaning—though not a particularly good meaning, but at least someone takes him seriously, and they have to hold a court hearing for him, and a whole group of people have to busy themselves with him, conduct a trial, and lock him up in prison for a few years. Isn't all of that taking him seriously? At least society has not forgotten him.

Even the weight of sin is better than having no feeling at all. He would rather be punished, rather receive a criminal conviction, than be mediocre and buried at the bottom of society. Sometimes you see many very unremarkable people suddenly commit very serious crimes, and everyone thinks it is impossible—how could such a well-behaved boy or girl commit such a serious crime? His life truly had no feeling; he could not find the meaning of being alive, and felt he was even more meaningless than others.

If the paranoid person feels he is being pursued by the government or by evil forces, then at least he feels his life must be important. Otherwise, why would others want to eliminate him? He would rather be pursued by the government, rather be hunted by those evil organizations he imagines, than be mediocre. If voices tell him he is about to be eliminated, then at least those are comforting voices. When someone is hunting him, he actually feels a kind of comfort. Why? Because he is important. So you can understand why those wanted fugitives, those who commit serious crimes, actually feel a little meaning in life in that state. At least whether as a bad person, or as someone others fear, or as a topic of gossip in the streets, he feels his life finally has a bit of meaning. Though it is not a good meaning, it is still better than being completely unknown and having no meaning at all.

They believe life must have value. If they had no value, why would anyone arrest them? If they had no value, why would anyone convict them? Why would anyone go to such lengths to capture them? And at the same time, the paranoid person can use his creative ability in fantasy—that creative ability which would seem unimaginable to the mentally sound. This paranoid person can fantasize, and his fantasies are very vivid. For example, he fantasizes that the police are after him, because his life has no meaning—only when the police are after him does he feel important. So he conjures up scenes of the police chasing him. He is using fantasy to create, and the mentally sound cannot understand—how could anyone think of such things?

And those creative abilities are meaningful, because those fantasies once again assure the paranoid person of his value. In his fantasies, he feels he is being hunted by the FBI, by aliens, by certain mysterious organizations. These big players are all hunting such a small person as him, which proves this small person is very valuable—otherwise why would these large institutions and secret organizations all be hunting him? So these paranoid people construct many, many such stories. Not stories, really—imagination. He lives within such a fantasy.

If you have a paranoid person around you and you talk with him, he will tell you: in your terms, according to your terms, if he were normal, he would not be able to use his creativity. Because he is always connected to the meaning of life. If he did not use this kind of fantasy, fantasizing that certain mysterious organizations and the police are after him, where would his imagination be used? How would his creativity be expressed? He is ordinarily just a mediocre little person, with no value or meaning at all. Look—once he fabricates such a paranoid storyline, his life suddenly becomes different from others, as if he has found meaning.

The quality of life requires creativity, not quantity. What is the value of value fulfillment? It is to increase the quality of life. Increasing the quality of life does not come from increasing quantity; it is a creative gain and enhancement. So this creativity is the quality of our life's essence, which is our meaning itself. If his creativity cannot be expressed elsewhere, then it must be expressed here.

The Limitations of Freudian Psychology

In the past, Freudian psychologists listened to a person's associations while at the same time maintaining an objective attitude, or pretending that values did not exist—this was of little use. The psychologist listened to this paranoid person's fantasies, while striving to maintain his own objective attitude as a normal person, and then pretended that values did not exist. Values undeniably exist, but this psychologist believed that values really did not exist, because he viewed them with an objective attitude, and so the values already did not exist. He failed to recognize that this paranoid person, in the very process of fantasizing those scenarios, was actually using his creativity to fulfill the meaning of his life. Then do you think that by going to treat this person, he could cure him? He could not cure him either; it was of little use.

People often labeled as schizophrenic are so afraid of their own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are all split apart, objectified, and regarded as coming from outside rather than from within. He is afraid of his own energy, impulses, and feelings, because from childhood he was taught that he could not trust these—could not trust his own inner impulses, inner energy, inner feelings; these were all wrong. But this person still has these inner impulses, energy, and feelings, and he cannot suppress them. So what does he do? He then thinks: since these inner things cannot be trusted, and yet they do exist, then they must all come from outside, not from within.

The concepts of good and evil are exaggerated, or separated from each other. Good and evil are set in complete opposition, and the concepts are exaggerated. He will then feel that he represents the side of good, or the side of the persecuted, or he will believe that there is some very evil organization in this world. But this creativity cannot normally be expressed; when he projects it from the inner to the outer, then he can express it. The inner is unreliable and cannot be trusted, but the outer is acceptable. If there is a threat from outside—a mysterious organization, aliens, lizard people controlling the earth, controlling humanity, a very complete story—then within the background of this story, he can unfold it in an extremely exaggerated manner of good and evil.

In other words, if he had always followed his inner impulses, and had been able to deal with these impulses correctly, to give them expression, he would not have ended up this way. Such a person is afraid of the main driving force of his own personality—what is the main driving force of the personality? Impulses. They had been taught that energy is wrong, that power brings disaster, and that their own impulses should be feared. Therefore, when effectively projected outward, the good impulses and the bad impulses are together; he projects them outward. He can only place them outside; he cannot even accept them inside.

He must join some kind of organization; only this organization can allow him to uphold justice, to express good and evil to the utmost. If he has not assigned himself to some organization, if there is no such opposition between organizations—evil and light, darkness—then he has no way. He must have this kind of protective mechanism to protect himself within this organization.

What psychological authorities call schizophrenia has become a catch-all label, in which the integrity of the individual's meaning is given a collective, general explanation. Each person's value fulfillment and the methods for improving the quality of his life are all different, yet psychologists take a general, standardized, statistical norm and apply it to every person. If you do not conform to this norm, then you are mentally ill. They completely refuse to acknowledge that this person has his own special value fulfillment, his own special meaning in life. How can you say that just because he is different from everyone else, he is mentally ill?

That Famous Experiment

Have I mentioned this example before? There is a famous experiment¹⁰. There was a famous psychiatrist who kept challenging the diagnostic standards for mental illness set by the American Psychiatric Association -- saying they were simply wrong, that by their definitions, ordinary people would all count as mentally ill. So to carry out this experiment, he got a group of his good friends to pretend to be mentally ill and sneak into a psychiatric hospital, to see whether they could get in. As it turned out, they all succeeded in being classified as mentally ill and locked up in the psychiatric hospital.

The key problem was they could not get out. You want to prove you are not mentally ill, but you cannot prove it -- the more you insist you are normal, the more they think you are mentally ill. Later they got out through some other means; I cannot recall the specific details. After he got out, he wrote a detailed report saying these so-called psychoanalytic definitions of mental illness are all nonsense, that they had locked up us so-called experts as mental patients. How many misdiagnoses happened in between, nobody knows.

After that experiment, the American Psychiatric Association issued a statement saying this is not scientific, this is an isolated case, this does not represent the whole, our analysis is still very accurate. It seems he did it again, to prove that if he could get in again, that would show there really was something to it. In any case, his conclusion was to prove that the views of these so-called psychological authorities are pure nonsense. The idea that anyone who does not conform to the majority is mentally ill itself denies people's most basic rights. Every person is born different. Being born equal does not mean being born the same. Does being born equal not mean respecting each person's individuality? Being born equal certainly does not mean being born all the same. If you define those who are different as mentally ill and lock them all up, then what are you doing?

The Staunchest Believers

Seth is also a person of strong feelings, and he cannot help speaking up for these people. What he is talking about now is value fulfillment, and everyone is different. Why would you impose a single value fulfillment that appears statistically uniform on every individual? That is simply wrong.

Unfortunately, those paranoid individuals are precisely the people who most firmly believe in the most foolish pronouncements of science and religion.

What an irony. Those whom science or religion define as paranoid are actually the ones who believe most in science and believe most in religion. They are tormented into this state by the very science and religion they believe in most, yet they remain staunch supporters.

Paranoids and schizophrenics are trying to find meaning in a world they have been taught is meaningless. From childhood they are taught that the world is meaningless, and then trying to find meaning in such a meaningless world drives them mad. They tend to appear in a mild form throughout the whole of society -- and what is the non-mild form? It is the criminals. Criminals are the non-mild form. In fact, they are trying to find meaning, trying to find their value fulfillment.

Creativity: The Innate Driving Force of Human Beings

Creativity is an innate driving force of human beings, far more important than what science calls the satisfaction of basic needs.

This sentence is crucial. What science calls basic needs refers to Abraham Maslow¹¹ in the 1940s¹², whom we call Maslow for short. Maslow divided human basic needs into several levels, five levels I think. The first is the basic need for survival, which means you have to eat and drink and cannot die. The second is the need for safety; you at least have to live in a safe social environment, where your life is protected and respected. Above the need for safety, he has a social need, the need for love, the need to be needed, the need to be needed by society. To have your own company, position, role, father and mother, son and daughter, he needs to be needed by society. This is the third level of needs.

What is the fourth level of needs? To be respected. Having social relationships, having love, having the need to be needed is not enough. If all these are satisfied, he has a higher level of need, the need to be respected. He wants to make a name for himself, to become an outstanding person among people, to become a dragon or a phoenix, to become an object of admiration for others. This is the fourth level of needs.

Then what is the fifth level? After the need for respect is satisfied, after others all respect him, at this time he needs to fulfill the need for self-actualization. In your situation, there is nothing left you want to obtain; you can only compete with yourself. Compete with yourself in what? That is self-actualization, transcending yourself, realizing the meaning and ideals of your life. Later on, someone developed a sixth level of needs for him, which is the need to transcend oneself, what is called the need for flow. All that later stuff is nonsense, it does not matter.

Maslow's ideas seem reasonable. Our science and psychology always give people that seemingly reasonable feeling. As soon as you hear it, does it not sound so very reasonable? Maslow's view is that people can only satisfy these needs from the bottom up, only starting from the lower levels. When you have not satisfied the most basic needs, you do not have higher-level needs. Only when the lower-level needs are satisfied will you rise to a higher level.

But Seth here raises the most fundamental challenge: all of that is nonsense. The most basic driving force of human beings is creativity. If creativity cannot be satisfied, even if all those needs are satisfied, life still has no meaning, and people will not want to live either.

The Absurdity of Maslow's Theory

And what is most frightening is that many scientists and psychologists have done experiments and found that Maslow's hierarchy of needs simply cannot be verified. Some people live at the very bottom, where even basic food and clothing cannot be guaranteed, yet they still have higher pursuits. If you believe in it, you might feel it makes sense; but if there are those argumentative, nitpicking types who need to run experiments, the results of those experiments, I tell you, are this -- no experimental results whatsoever can confirm that Maslow's hierarchy of needs holds true. Remember what I said: no experimental results can prove that it exists. It merely proposed a theory, a hypothesis.

Second, how did Maslow come up with this thing? He selected the top 1%¹³ of American college students -- the top one percent among college students -- and used them as his survey sample, conducting interviews and questionnaires, and arrived at such a conclusion. Doesn't that sound ridiculous to you? And such a person still dares to write books, and has become the basic theory that people nowadays bring up whenever these topics are discussed, casually citing Maslow's five levels of needs. Pure nonsense. You take the top 1% of American college students in 1940, do a survey analysis, come up with something utterly unscientific, and then promote it everywhere, and society actually accepts him.

Do you know what is most frightening? At the end of his book's conclusion, he said that those who are born disabled, those who are mentally ill, those who are intellectually disabled -- he would not investigate them; they were outside the scope of his research. They only regard humanity in this general sense, meaning these people are the waste products of humanity. Don't study them; studying them will not yield any meaningful results. We only need to study the outstanding ones among humanity, the most excellent ones, and only that is meaningful. That is roughly what he said in his own words. Now you understand what kind of person Maslow was. And such a standard has still become what is now called science.

You don't have to believe me -- go online and search for Maslow. Don't just look at the positive views; see whether there are any opposing opinions, and you will know. Starting today, we are going to overturn his argument. Like science, he only stood from the position of an observer, observed the phenomena, but did not understand what lay behind them.

Remember: creativity is the innate driving force of human beings. It is creativity, not the survival instinct. The innate driving force of human beings is creativity, not the survival instinct. This is something no scientist has ever thought of. They think that the first thing a living person must satisfy is the survival instinct, and only then come the later satisfactions -- security, social belonging, being respected, self-actualization.

Creation: The Most Basic of All Needs

Creativity is the most basic of all needs.

It comes before the need for survival; it is the most fundamental need. Be sure to remember this—it is a viewpoint that overturns your understanding.

Here I am not speaking of any overly insistent need to find order, in which case a person can narrow his physical and mental environment.

The creativity I am speaking of is not about seeking the laws of the world or the principles of social order—none of those are this need. It is that innate creativity. Innate creativity has no order; do not even think about order—when it comes to so-called creativity, do not bring up order, for to bring up order is to have no creativity.

It is, rather, a powerful driving force within the human heart to create, to achieve emotional and spiritual value.

Mark this as a key point. The so-called need for creativity, I emphasize once again, is a powerful driving force within the human heart to create, to achieve emotional and spiritual value.

And if a person cannot find these, then the so-called basic drives to seek food and shelter cannot sustain that person's life.

Be sure to remember this: having enough to eat and warm clothing cannot sustain a person's basic life. A person must create, and this creation cannot be confined to any form or order; it must be unfettered creation. This is the greatest value of a person's being alive, and it is also his most basic need.

Here lies the essential difference between humans and animals. For animals, life itself is their primary meaning. But for humans, merely being alive is not the meaning; creativity is the meaning—to create is the meaning of being alive.

Now you understand why people locked up in prison, with food and drink provided, feel that living is worse than death. Their lives are guaranteed, they are safe—what is there to be unsafe about in prison? Every day someone brings you food. But now you understand what the most basic need of a living person is. Man does not live by bread alone. If a person cannot find meaning in life, he does not want to live; he simply will not want to live. Whether or not there is bread, he will not have the experience of going to look for bread, and he will not believe in the impulse that drives him to do so.

Those who truly commit suicide do so because they cannot find meaning in living—not because they have no food. According to Maslow's view, those people have everything, so why do they still commit suicide? Was Leslie Cheung not respected? Did Leslie Cheung not realize his life's value and self-actualization? Such suicides among celebrities are everywhere. He had already fulfilled the five highest human needs Maslow described, so how could he still die? Because he could not find meaning in his life, he no longer wanted to live.

Love and Cooperation: The Basic Law of All Realities

Is there, then, a natural law that guides all kinds of life, and all of reality?

Is there a natural law that guides all life, all sentient beings, that is valid in all realities? Yes, there is.

It is the law of love and cooperation.

Go ahead and underline that, the law of love and cooperation. The basic need I am talking about is not just for humans, it is for all living beings, all kinds of worlds, all kinds of universes, visible and invisible, in all realities, there is such a basic need. What need? Love and cooperation.

Love and cooperation are the basic needs of all realities. As for this question, we will stop here for now and not expand on it, because he will introduce it at other times later. Regarding value fulfillment, he did not finish talking about it, he only made a beginning. But this session is very important, and many, many very good concepts were discussed earlier. At the end he made a very important finishing touch, and the final summary is just this one sentence: love and cooperation are a basic need of all realities and all life. If this cannot be satisfied, life will not exist, or life will not find the meaning of its existence.

Footnote on the Two Diagnoses

At the end he has a simple note. Seth discussed paranoia in Session 812, and at the beginning of Chapter Six there was already a discussion of what paranoia is. The following brief definition comes from a very general source -- actually, this definition is just the one given by traditional psychological authorities, the so-called psychologists. Just get a rough idea of it; it does not mean much. Their definitions are all given from their own point of view.

A paranoiac is a person who suffers from a delusion of systematic, logically reasoned self-grandeur or of persecution. A paranoiac either feels that he is great, or feels that he is being persecuted; he is simply living inside his own fantasy. And apart from that, the person can be quite stable. Aside from the fact that he believes he is a great person, a superman, or that he is a person being persecuted, apart from that, this person is ordinarily quite stable.

A schizophrenic patient, on the other hand, has a disorder in which the thinking process is separated and split off from emotion. Our thinking should be joined together with emotion; his is not -- his thinking and his emotion are separated. The cause of schizophrenia is unknown; scientists do not understand what leads to schizophrenia. And the victims are usually sent to the hospital in the end because of the severity of the symptoms. Those symptoms can include: motor disturbances -- being unable to walk; perceptual disturbances involving hallucinations and delusions -- that is, already being unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy; strange behavior; and withdrawal from the real world -- no longer wanting to stay in the real world, already living in a world of hallucination. But a schizophrenic patient may also retain the use of his primary perceptual abilities; some still have this capacity for logical thinking, but as for his cognition of the real world, he has already withdrawn from it, and he lives inside his own hallucinations and delusions.

This is the judgment of traditional psychology and psychiatry regarding schizophrenia. Since we are not experts in this area, we will not offer too much interpretation. If there are professionals in this field, I hope you can take Seth's viewpoint as an opening, and see whether it can open up some new lines of thought.

Session 9, Episode 4

This session began on Wednesday, July 18, 1979, at 9:40 p.m. Before it started, Rob made some notes: according to Seth, after 9:52 tonight's session would no longer be material related to this book, but Jane and I still put it here because in it Seth returned to the question I had asked earlier in this book. For example, in human events, what role does a virus like smallpox actually play? Then I remembered my question again, because a few days earlier I had been reading an article in a scientific magazine, and the author of that article explained that a considerable number of women contract cervical cancer through contact with a virus carried in the sperm of men who have not had vasectomies¹⁴.

Actually, what he was talking about here, I'm guessing what he read was an introduction to the HPV virus. In China these past few years, HPV vaccination has started to become popular. I don't know the specifics of HPV very well either, but because in the United States this is a very widespread vaccine, it can be given to little girls starting around age ten¹⁵, and the hope is that the earlier it is given, the better, and the more effective it is. Getting this vaccine can greatly reduce the likelihood that the girl will later develop cervical cancer. The HPV virus is divided into many types, numbered like 17, 18, 19, or 33, 34, 38¹⁶. In men, the HPV virus produces no reactions or symptoms at all, and you can't even detect it. In women, it can be detected through a vaginal smear, or a hysteroscope, or other scrapings used for viral culture and testing. Once a woman is infected with the HPV virus, her probability of developing cervical cancer is much higher than that of a normal woman. Exactly how many people are infected with the HPV virus, there is still no precise figure, but according to scientists the rate seems to be very high. There is no specific medicine that can treat it, and in women there are no particular symptoms either; you can't feel it yourself. Its only possibility is that it greatly raises the incidence of inducing cervical cancer. The best approach is to improve your own immunity and exercise; some people recover on their own, and they don't even know how they got better.

Rob said to Jane, I think this whole premise or situation is a bit strange. That we human males could actually have the potential to transmit cancer to women, that we could actually have this kind of ability. Incidentally, I had heard of this theory before, but transmitting cancer in such a way seems like one of the most lethal results to come from the union of male and female. It feels a bit like AIDS, though of course AIDS is not cancer; AIDS is another kind of acquired immune deficiency disease, whereas this is something that causes cancer. Rob and Jane both became very curious, wondering how Seth would explain this phenomenon.

Jane said, because he discussed those virus issues, all those issues including the virus issue and so on, and all those people, those things people assume we are supposed to answer, I guess I had been brooding, because I fell into the trap Seth talked about: thinking that I had to save the world. Before the session began, Jane sat quietly without saying a word, and Rob asked her why she had gone quiet. Then they both laughed, and the two of them agreed that there was no need to save the world at all.

This is a very crucial point, everyone should take note: there is no world waiting for you to save, and there is no mass of humanity waiting for you to save. You just live out your best state, and if everyone lives out their own best state, that is enough. Don't go around thinking about saving people or helping others. The moment you think that way, first, your pressure becomes enormous; second, you create a dualistic world, as if you are a person standing high above, needing to rescue those who have not yet awakened, those who have not yet been roused; as if you are in a relatively powerful position, while others are in a state of ignorance. That kind of mindset and state is itself problematic. The Buddha also often said this at the end: in these forty-five years of teaching, I have never saved a single person¹⁷, and there has never been any such thing as saving people.

This world does not need to be saved. Although it is the home of a messy species like humanity, it is still fully capable of surviving. The world will heal itself. If you believe you are good, then you believe the world is good; only a good world will heal itself, just as you can heal yourself.

Rob and Jane seemed to feel that in any case, humanity merely co-creates this living earth as he sees it together with countless other species, and every other species, every other kind of life, does the same thing from their own viewpoint. Even in his seemingly destructive ways, some ways may seem destructive from their viewpoint, for example we think human economic activity has already destroyed nature and polluted the environment, humans can only very slightly harm that shared reality, and it is not nearly as serious as everyone has exaggerated it to be, as if our environment is already beyond saving, humanity is on the verge of collapse, and nature can no longer bear it. Even if there are possible dangers like Three Mile Island or nuclear war, are there? Yes, there are.

Session 866

But I especially reminded Jane of something Seth said in the non-book Session 865 -- that session is not in this book, but he said the following:

Fortunately, the power of constructive action and thought is indeed very strong in nature and in your world, otherwise you would not exist at all. Interweaving back and forth, this cooperative venture in the Elmira area -- whether in biological, social, psychic, economic, political, or artistic terms -- is astonishingly vast. Most of that cooperation goes unnoticed. But it rests steadily upon a stability that is inherent in all life.

Now let us look at the formal content of this session. Seth began by saying:

Every species is endowed with emotional feelings, and is immersed in an inner system of value fulfillment. So once again, each species is concerned not only with its physical survival and the multiplication of its members, but also with the strengthening and realization of those particular qualities that are unique to it.

Every species has this trait: it can not only take care of its own physical body, but also take care of its own kind, and even take care of other species in the environment where it lives. But beyond that, what it is even more concerned with is the strengthening and realization of those qualities that are uniquely its own -- qualities that no one else has, qualities unique to this species itself. This is a characteristic every species has.

For the purposes of this discussion, there is a biological ideal imprinted in the chromosomes. But there are also inherent ideals that are difficult to define, which exist as psychic blueprints.

Imprinted in the chromosomes means passed down through heredity, and that is easy to understand. But there are also some inherent ideals that are difficult to define, and they are a kind of psychic blueprint. Here lies the biggest distinction: in DNA it is biological, and our scientists can now detect some of that; but beyond this biological blueprint, human beings also have a psychic blueprint, in order to develop other kinds of abilities. By using the word "psychic," I mean that all species, all living things, possess their own kind of inner psychic life. Animals have their own psychic life, plants have their own psychic life, and human beings have their own psychic life.

For example, your accepted views are effective in making you blind to the real evidence of cooperation that exists among all species, which you could otherwise see.

He says, for example, among animals, plants, and humans, these three great categories have evidence of close mutual cooperation, evidence that you humans should be able to see, but you tell yourselves you cannot see it, so you cannot see it. The psychic cooperation among all species -- what Seth often calls the "cooperative venture" -- is plainly evident, yet we humans turn a blind eye to it.

I am not speaking of a forced cooperation either.

What is forced cooperation? It is the result of instincts that somehow arrange the mating and social habits of animals -- animals must live in groups in order to survive, and for reproduction, during the annual mating season there are certain social activities, social interactions to compete for mates, including raising the young. Seth is not talking about this kind of animalistic, instinctive social behavior. He is talking about a higher level.

Recently, when Ruburt read that orthodox science still refuses to admit that human beings have free will, he was quite moved. According to the dogmatic teachings of scientific materialism, any such sense of meaningful choice is instead merely the response of the brain's attitude at any given time.

Scientists believe that what people call free will, what they call willpower, is nothing more than a choice or judgment made by the brain. But Seth says:

Human beings do have free will within the framework of their existence, and all other species likewise have it within the framework of their existence.

Human beings themselves do have free will, just as animals and plants have their own free will. He is not saying that only humans have it, nor is he saying that free will does not exist and is merely some kind of brain response -- he says no, human beings do have the will to choose freely, and it has nothing to do with the brain.

A chicken cannot read, and it cannot choose to read. A chicken cannot read, and a plant cannot choose to go shopping. But a chicken and a plant can choose to live or to die. In terms of the existence of any being, this is a rather important issue. It can choose to like or dislike its environment, and change that environment according to its own circumstances.

A very popular claim nowadays is that certain scientific laws can be verified at the microscopic level. For example, those tiny particles can be accelerated to speeds far beyond their usual state. He is referring to the fact that in the late 1970s, Europe had already begun planning to build this kind of particle collider¹⁸, and such experiments had already begun in scientific laboratories: accelerating particles to extremely high speeds, close to the speed of light, and then using technical means to make two particles invisible to the naked eye collide, to see what new things the collision would produce. In microphysics we are indeed conducting such experiments.

But you quite deliberately ignore that feelings also exist at the microscopic level.

What he means is this: you acknowledge that the material world has its microscopic nature -- tables, chairs, and benches contain atoms, and atoms contain nuclei, protons, neutrons, and electrons -- so why do you not consider whether your feelings and your thoughts also have a microscopic nature? This is a very good question from Seth. Have you ever thought about it? What kind of tiny particles make up a certain feeling of joy, or a certain thought? Matter can be subdivided down to the microscopic world, so can our thoughts be microscopic? This question is worth your consideration.

He also ignored possible psychological particles. Scientists ignore this, and therefore assume they do not exist. A thought is just one whole block of thought; they are not even willing to admit the objectivity of thought, let alone admit that thoughts have psychological particles. Seth's meaning is that thoughts also have shape, thoughts are also material, thoughts also have concrete reality. But scientists do not admit the microscopic nature of feelings or the microscopic nature of thoughts, and therefore do not admit the material properties of thought. All particles are psychological particles.

Scientists deliberately ignore this kind of question, let alone reach such a conclusion: all particles are psychological particles. This sentence is extremely interesting -- the particles you observe in the material world and consider to be material are essentially all psychological, meaning that psychologically you feel they are particles. Whether something is a particle depends on how you psychologically regard it.

They have their own impetus to develop, or to achieve value fulfillment.

Every particle is a psychological particle; besides having the state of a material particle, behind it there is also a psychological state. This psychological state will want to develop, or has the impetus to achieve value fulfillment. It wants to accomplish its own value fulfillment as a psychological particle.

That is the reason why those atoms combine to form matter. Through form they seek their own realization, and they cooperatively choose the manner in which they take it.

For example, two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom are needed to form a water molecule. These three atoms combining together is the need of their own value fulfillment. Their value fulfillment is different from that of us humans or other living beings -- theirs is the most basic, the most fundamental, but they still have their own value fulfillment. Oxygen can also combine with other things to form carbon dioxide and so on. Chemistry can explain why they combine -- because there are chemical bonds, there is chemical energy -- but scientists have always been unwilling to admit that these particles themselves have their psychological nature, and that they themselves have the desire to express their realization through form. What form? Is a water molecule not a form? Are the atomic compositions within all molecular structures not forms? Through form they achieve their value fulfillment.

If the simplest particle is thus endowed with impetus, and endowed with hidden ideals that seek fulfillment, then what of human beings?

Every particle has such hidden ideals, and has the tendency to pursue value fulfillment. Then what about human beings -- do they not have it too? You have the tendency to search for your meaning, to search for love, to search for cooperative ventures; human beings are born with this. So when we often look up at the starry sky and ask ourselves what the meaning of my existence is, what the value of life is, this is your instinct; when you search and seek for love in society and in the world, this is your instinct; when you cooperate with others to do something, this is a cooperative venture. These are all instinctive tendencies of human beings.

You have the tendency to form psychic or psychological creations that dazzle you.

Besides the material, there is also the psychic, like your art, science, religion, and civilization -- these are all things we have created.

Whatever errors you may make, whatever major distortions, even those exist because of the need to seek meaning within your individual existence and within life itself.

No matter what achievements your art, science, religion, and civilization have made, you have also done some bad things, including some errors and major distortions. But those were also done out of each person's need to seek meaning within your individual existence, or within life itself. In essence, it is also for seeking the meaning of life. Perhaps the method was wrong, or the means were wrong, or some distortions were produced, but in its nature it is all for seeking meaning, seeking love, seeking cooperative ventures.

Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning is merely providing himself with a support he can accept, against the vicissitudes and impermanence of life.

The reason scientists believe life has no meaning is that, faced with the vicissitudes and impermanence of life, they have no way to contend with it, so they find themselves a very reliable theory as support, otherwise they would collapse. They tell themselves: life has no meaning to begin with, so the fact that life has no meaning cannot possibly make me collapse. It is not that I searched for a long time and could not find meaning and then collapsed; it is that I know life has no meaning to begin with, so I do not need to collapse. Then I just live for a few decades and die normally. They use this as their final support. If they say life has no meaning, and that is indeed the case, then they will not be disappointed. Because they have trapped themselves in a cocoon -- when they feel life has no meaning, this cocoon wraps them up inside, and they cannot find meaning.

But this cocoon itself has meaning -- because the belief that "life has no meaning" can protect them from their deepest fear. They have fear inside, fear of the impermanence of life, fear of the fact that life has no meaning, so they instead use the opposite approach: I might as well decide that life has no meaning, then I will not be afraid. So this sentence becomes a cocoon for them in exploring the meaning of life -- it is impossible for them to find the meaning of life under this belief, because they themselves believe there is none. And this cocoon provides an umbrella of protection for their fear.

When a civilization does not support its creativity, it begins to decline.

When a civilization has no creativity, it begins to decline, so you see many civilizations eventually heading toward decline, and they all have this characteristic. When a country does not rely on its gifted citizens, and does not encourage them, problems begin to appear. This is true of any country: when it does not trust its own people, does not rely on the abilities of its own populace, when it is superstitious about the operation of its own power and obsessed with state authority, then this country will not last long. A true country is one that brings out the strength of its people; only then can the country enjoy long-term peace and stability. This is a warning Seth gives us.

Your psychology emphasizes norms, thus making people afraid of their own characteristics and abilities. Because psychological norms cannot fit the psychological contours of any individual.

Since we are talking about norms, characteristics and abilities all have individualized elements within them. Ask a psychologist to take out his so-called standard of mental health and test himself with it -- does he pass? Many psychologists themselves still need to see therapists, and many psychologists themselves are quite twisted -- I said some, everyone, do not overgeneralize.

It does not touch the heights and depths of human experience, and so people become afraid of their own individuality.

Psychologists have not touched the heights and depths of possible human experience. They regard everything very high or very deep as abnormal, leaving only the most mediocre middle section, which they consider normal. This is the tragedy of psychologists. When I said psychologists are twisted, I was not making it up out of thin air; just look carefully at the dark histories of various psychiatric experts and mental research experts. Including the practice of using an awl to hammer through the nostril, through the nasal cavity, directly into a person's forehead, and then stirring up the inside¹⁹; afterward the person became docile, and all psychiatric symptoms disappeared -- no more mania, no more depression. This was later stopped, but before it was stopped, countless people fell victim to it, and for a long time it was used to treat so-called mental illness. And this person later won a Nobel Prize, which I truly do not understand. If you are interested, you can go search for it. Using an awl to hammer through the nasal cavity into the forehead and stir up the brain to treat mental illness, and reportedly winning a Nobel Prize²⁰.

Ruburt read an article today about gifted children -- that is, children with exceptional aptitude -- concerning their backgrounds and discovery. Gifted children are of course not ordinary people; according to psychologists' standards, they all fail. But Seth says:

Gifted children do not fit the image of children that is generally instilled in their parents. In fact, for many reasons, gifted children merely show the innate potential of human beings for alertness, mental agility, curiosity, and the ability to learn. They are not at all freakish versions of humanity; rather, they provide a hint of humanity's true abilities.

These children who are naturally special are not freaks; they are a hint of humanity's true abilities. If everyone possessed such abilities, that would be the direction of our human future -- it is just that many potentials have not been opened. These children may have been born with them already opened, yet we treat them as freaks.

Your brain is not empty; it is a well-maintained machine, ready to begin operating when you are born. They provide a tendency to learn. And the foundation of knowledge as you understand it exists within the brain.

The brain is born knowing how to learn; the foundation of knowledge inherently exists within the brain. If it did not exist within the brain, if the structure of the brain did not possess the ability to learn, then knowledge would not exist either. In that sense, the brain thinks before birth, and does not merely react. According to traditional psychiatry or psychology, infancy is a period without thought, only basic biological instinctive reactions; thought comes later. But Seth says: children have thoughts from the moment they are born, and even before birth they have thoughts.

Each individual has his or her own unique abilities, some of which involve abilities related to relationships with other people, for which you do not even have language to describe.

Some people's special abilities involve relationships with others -- in interpersonal relations, their ability is not expressed in arithmetic, art, or literature; it is expressed in interpersonal relations. And this kind of special ability is something we humans do not yet know what language to use to describe.

However, parents are often not very able to accept the unusual talents displayed by their young children.

Parents cannot accept those "abnormal" children. These talents are actually very good, but because they are abnormal, parents instead become very anxious. They fear the child cannot get along with other children, because the child is different, does not fit in. But no child has ever conformed to that standard -- the standard set by psychologists, or the standard given by society at large. Every child is unique, so why should they conform to a standard? Who gave them the right, who gave them the authority, who gave them the qualification to judge who conforms to what standard? No one has the right to say such things, no matter what expert they are, no matter what Nobel Prize they have. No one has the right to judge whether a child or an adult conforms to some standard.

Many adults are aware of an ability in one area of their lives, and deliberately ignore that ability.

After growing up, adults have some special abilities, but they deliberately ignore them, because they are afraid of standing out from the crowd, or afraid of being attacked by their peers, so they hide their abilities and do not use them.

Both religion and science have taught them to be suspicious of any kind of greatness.

Religion tells you: you cannot be great. Why? Because only God is great. You tiny humans are born with original sin and flaws; what do you have to do with greatness? If anyone claims to be great, you must attack them -- because only the one true God is great, and apart from Him no one is great. This is what Christianity or other religions teach you.

Science is the same. According to the scientific view, human beings are all products of evolution, all accidental -- accidentally creating such a world, accidentally forming an Earth, accidentally forming single-celled life, accidentally forming human beings as a species that evolved. How could all these accidents contain greatness? Can a bunch of things thrown together by chance be called great? That can only be called good luck. So scientists do not admit greatness, and religion does not admit greatness either.

But every living person contains an element of greatness, and furthermore has a desire to realize their own inner abilities.

Every person has within them an element of wanting to be great, and furthermore has a desire to realize their inner abilities, to achieve that greatness within their hearts.

The greatness I speak of is not fame, nor ordinary artistic or intellectual ability. The greatness I speak of also includes those whose lives have the capacity to contain the content of great emotions.

The greatness Seth speaks of is not wealth, fame, artistic talent, or any achievements you have attained. True greatness is when a person's heart can contain great emotions -- those who have the capacity to contain great emotions are the truly great. Those who can be called great from a worldly perspective, such as artists or people of achievement, Seth does not deny them, but he says true greatness must also include those whose lives have the capacity to contain the content of great emotions -- in simple terms, people of great character.

I also refer to other natural abilities. For example, communication in dreams, and the meaningful use of dreams and creativity in daily life -- these are all natural abilities. There are ranges of human character and psychological experience that have been latent.

Some people have noble character, but it has been latent; the same is true of psychological experience -- because they have focused all their attention within the concept of the norm, they feel those things do not conform to what is normal and traditional, so they have been suppressed. Any experience that is not publicly accepted must still be strange and abnormal. Beyond your main concerns, the truly valuable parts that your science has ignored -- some of humanity's noble character, and the range and experience of his emotions -- have all been ignored by you. You understand that the greatness Seth speaks of includes character, includes emotions, includes these great emotions.

In that sense, many children who are regarded by their teachers as mentally deficient are actually very gifted.

By this standard, those you consider mentally deficient are actually gifted themselves. If you have seen the movie Rain Man²¹, you will know. The movie Rain Man²¹.

The same applies to those troublesome children who are given medication for hyperactivity.

There is a diagnosis called childhood hyperactivity disorder, saying a child is hyperactive, and these children are even made to take medication. After taking the medication, the child is no longer hyperactive, but becomes dull and dazed. But their rebellion is entirely natural -- their hyperactivity is natural in the process of child development. It may not conform to the appearance of the majority, but you must allow these special children to exist.

Then Seth talked about autistic children. He said:

Many cases of autistic children are those who have received the following idea: the world is so unsafe that it is best not to interact with it at all. As long as one's own demands or needs are satisfied, that is enough.

Since the world is unsafe, why interact with it? As long as one's own demands or needs are satisfied, that is enough. When a child is fed, clothed, and well educated, he will continue his autistic behavior and not interact with society, because he feels society is dangerous. An unsafe society -- why should I interact with it?

That behavior itself does achieve his purpose.

What purpose? Parents feel their child is very special and must be taken care of even more -- some parents quit their jobs, lose their work, and stay home full-time to care for the child. The child is delighted; he gets exactly what he wants.

No one wants to deprive a child of food, but if the child must ask for it, or make a choice in some form, then in such cases food may perhaps be used as a treat.

Seth is quite mischievous here. The method he suggests is this: when this child is well fed, well clothed, and well cared for, he will not interact with others, because he feels the world is unsafe. Many parents use all kinds of methods to coax and guide, but nothing works. Seth says: I will tell you a good method -- just do not give him food, starve him for a few days. For the sake of food, he will naturally interact with people. In order to survive, in order to eat, he is forced to deal with this world, because without dealing with it, with no food or drink, he will starve to death. So he must make a choice in some form -- you can choose not to, but with no food or drink you will starve to death. Do you choose not to speak to anyone, or do you choose to say "Mom, I am hungry"? Severely autistic children do not speak to anyone, do not communicate with anyone; they are closed off from the entire world. The method Seth gives is this: starve him a few times, and he will naturally come to communicate with you.

Autistic children are afraid of making choices, and some of this is received from their parents.

Because the parents are afraid of making choices, because the parents have fear. Continuing:

Therefore, this child expresses his parents' own unacknowledged fears.

The parents have fear inside but have not acknowledged it, and inadvertently pass this fear on to the child. The parents believe the world is terrifying and dangerous, so the child does not interact with society. But autistic children can be very intelligent; although they are autistic, it does not mean they are not intelligent.

Here I should mention that in our group there is someone called Curator Lu -- Curator Lu of the Guangzhou Art Therapy Center. Curator Lu of the Guangzhou Art Therapy Center has the concept of "treating mother and child together"²². One of his viewpoints I think is extremely good: he believes that many children's illnesses are caused by the parents. He advocates "treating mother and child together" -- when treating a child's illness, the parents must accompany them, and both parents must go. Not just the mother, although the mother takes care of the child more, but both parents must go. And to treat the child, the parents must also make changes; the parents must also be treated. Many problems in children are caused by the parents. Curator Lu's approach of "treating mother and child together" has very good results; many symptoms are easily resolved, because he finds the key to the problem. Just like these autistic children, the parents of autistic children must also have a deep fear of the world -- though of course they do not admit it, it is unacknowledged.

To a certain degree, such an autistic child symbolizes what happens when a person believes he has no worth, cannot trust his impulses, and that the disadvantages of making choices outweigh the advantages.

This autistic child can serve as a symbol: a symbol of the extreme state an adult reaches when he does not trust his impulses -- becoming like the behavioral patterns of an autistic child, but not so extreme or so severe. Why? Because he does not trust his impulses, and he feels the disadvantages of making choices outweigh the advantages. Then why choose at all? Simply do not choose, do nothing, remain passive.

He believes it is safer to hide behind his abilities than to use them.

He does not make choices; hiding behind his abilities is safer than using them, because using them means choosing.

Then Seth said at the end:

Life is expression. They have all lived wrongly. Life must express itself.

If you do not express yourself, if you hide behind, then what kind of life is that? Life has no meaning for you. Life is about expression; no matter what kind of expression, you must express it. Remember this sentence. This portion of the dictation ends here.

Then below Seth starts to talk about the HPV virus issue—the issue Rob initially raised, that some men's sperm may cause cervical cancer in certain women. Seth says:

I will give the opening part of an answer.

Rob said this was the thing I mentioned earlier, about this question of the relationship between remembering and illness. Seth says:

You create your own reality, and that should be your complete answer.

Then Seth says with humor:

But clearly that is not the answer you wanted.

I told you long ago, the answer is very simple: you create your own reality. But this answer seems very feeble to you here. Actually, Seth has said these things tirelessly, over and over again—he had already explained it very clearly earlier in Session 840, when he talked about viruses.

A sperm carrying cancer enters a woman's uterus, and if this woman does not have the intention of wanting the disease, then the body's own system will render that cancer symptom completely ineffective. You must believe that your own ability is very strong. But in the case of that article in the science magazine, that is not what happened—scientists do not think so. Seth says:

I am somewhat at a loss as to how to explain it, only because there are certain invisible assumptions that, as I see it, you are bound to make.

Scientists believe it is not that this woman gets cancer because she wants cancer; there is a certain probability that people will get cancer, unrelated to their intention. Seth says he does not quite know what to say, because your traditional mindset is too strong. He says he will still do his best to explain. As for Rob, on the question of illness, on the question of belief creating reality, how many years has he been telling you? This is 1979; he has been telling you about these questions since 1963, for sixteen years already, and today you are still asking why people get cancer. Seth is a bit speechless, but he is still very patient; since you ask, he does not mind the trouble of explaining it again.

Although some of the things I say will no doubt contradict your scientific knowledge.

He first makes this point clear, and then continues. Next he begins to talk about the nature of disease:

Although it may seem that cancer is caused by a virus, ... cancer involves a relationship, and in your terms, you can think of it as the relationship between host and parasite. And to some degree, this applies to any disease. Although the diseases themselves may seem to be caused by completely different causes. A host cell is not simply attacked in that way; it invites the attack. Although I do not at all like the implied meaning of the word "attack," my intention is only to try to discuss this in terms familiar to you.

Generally, cancer is not caused by a virus, but scientists have concluded that cervical cancer in women is correlated with the HPV virus—this is what scientists have proved with a great deal of experimental evidence. The key point of this sentence is: "it invites the attack." That is, when a parasite or parasitic virus is in the host, it is not that the parasite or virus actively attacks the healthy cells inside the host; rather, the healthy cells of the host invite it, actively and voluntarily, to attack themselves. This is something many scientists completely cannot understand or accept.

It is not just as if some cells suddenly relaxed their defense against a disease.

This is one possibility. Then he says:

I will try to explain as simply as possible. A cell reflects a psychological state, and a cell exists as its own individual existence, and it also exists in relationship with all the other cells of the body. There is truly a constant mixing and communication of numberless psychological states.

A cell exists both independently and within the overall relatedness of all the cells in the body. Countless psychological states constantly mix and communicate—from tiny cells, cell groups, small tissues, small organs, to the whole system of the body; each has its own different psychological state, and from small to large they continually mix, communicate, and collide.

Let me give an example so you can understand: for instance, the spiritual university of our current Teal organization, in the process of being prepared, has divided into dozens of small groups. These twenty-some groups collide, mix, and communicate with each other; each group has its own unique psychological state and atmosphere, and each person may be in different groups. Because people and groups mix and communicate with one another, these groups produce a very subtle overall state. And each individual is influenced by the particular group he is in, influenced by the whole atmosphere, and influenced by his own psychological state; these are all mixed together.

And it manifests an overall state with biological integrity.

If the whole organization being built as this spiritual university is in an integral state, then it will present an overall state: everyone can feel this flourishing, this vitality, and feel that this organism maintains a whole, maintains its functions, like a body composed of vibrant living organisms. So your body is a concrete mirror of your psychological state—whatever your psychological state is, your body is.

Then Seth says quietly and earnestly:

It is powered by the energy of the universe. The body literally leaps into existence in every instant.

Your body is powered by the energy of the universe. Seth has talked about this issue before: your body exists like something flickering; it leaps into and out of existence countless times per second, in dimensions you cannot understand, and each moment is brand new. I cannot even say you are brand new every second; I can only say every moment—because within a time shorter than a second, your body is constantly entering into physical reality from a cosmic energy.

Your body and mind both come from the same source, from the energy of the universe. This source is in motion, and you are filled with the vitality of life. You must seek meaning in your life.

Didn't he already say earlier that seeking meaning is one of your basic instincts? In the previous session he talked about what the most basic principle or most basic need of all reality is. Love and cooperation. After cooperation, what is it for? Creation. So love and cooperation are the most basic principle and the most basic need of all reality. Seeking the meaning of life, seeking love, seeking cooperative adventure—this itself is a basic need and basic attribute of being human, so you are born to seek the meaning of life.

When, for whatever reason, you lose the meaning of your life, this will be reflected in your body.

When you lose the meaning of your life, your body is the first to reflect it.

It is difficult for me to separate all of this from the many suggestions that are placed on disease.

When you lose the sense of meaning in life, your first feeling is not necessarily a clear intuition or feeling; instead, you take it as the suggestion of some disease. Through the pain and symptoms brought by this disease, plus your knowledge of the disease—the possibility that it may take your life—your own analysis and judgment, all of these are added together; in fact, the core behind it is that life has lost its sense of meaning. But it is mixed together with each person's suggestions about disease, and cannot be separated.

For example, in recent years cancer has become a symbol of the vulnerability of the body.

When we talk about the high cancer rate, how high the incidence of cancer is, what are we actually trying to imply? We are implying an evidence that human beings are limited by the body, implying that human beings themselves are vulnerable—look at such a high cancer rate; human beings are subject to the body.

It is a disease that arises when people want to die. When they are ashamed to admit they want to die ... because death seems contrary to normal behavior.

Cancer is a disease that people themselves find when they want to die. They are embarrassed to admit they want to die. Why? If everyone, the whole human race, is struggling to survive, how can you as a person want to die? For others, staying alive is not easy; just go to a hospital and see how many people are trying with all their strength to live, and there are also those living at the bottom struggling for survival—how can you, with all that, properly want to die? You yourself cannot accept even this. So you find yourself a cancer—both satisfying your wish to die and saving face for yourself: it is not that I want to die; it is that I got sick, I cannot help it, and I do not want to die.

I have mentioned before that many people have had cancer and recovered, without ever knowing it themselves.

Many people have serious illnesses and you do not even know it, because you never had a checkup. But in your belief system, when you suspect you have cancer, you definitely go to see a doctor, get tests, even a biopsy to prove whether you have cancer. Because many fears are unverified and cannot be confirmed; but cancer tests can be confirmed. And the mere act of discovering that those fears are groundless already gives the person new life, symbolically and literally.

If you can truly understand that these fears are entirely groundless—that is, do not worry that this disease will kill you, it is you who want to die, the disease itself will not kill you if you do not want to die—but you do not believe it; you believe that this disease will kill you, and then you look at the mortality rates, the death counts, and so on. In other words, you are often scared to death by this kind of fear. When you truly understand that these fears themselves are groundless, or if these fears can all be dug out and cleared away, then your illness is already healed; you have already symbolically gained new life—because your beliefs have changed, and you no longer fear.

But in the example in the article you were reading, a woman's cells should already have been ready to receive the guest. ... There is no such thing as an attack at all; there is only an acceptance. And a readiness for some kind of change. ... A crisis of life is then formed. The parasite or the virus is the same; built upon such a psychologically desired situation, it just plays their role.

No sperm is trying to attack any woman's normal cells; it is the cell that is receiving a guest—welcoming you in—and is ready to begin some kind of change. Of course, what is meant here is a change toward cancer; a life crisis is formed, because getting cancer may lead to death. The parasite or virus then plays the role of the "villain."

It is a condition filled with emotion, an urgent crisis.

That is heavily emotional; if you have seen the expression on a cancer patient after diagnosis, you know it.

I know the painful issues involved in this subject.

Seth says, I may seem to discuss this lightly, but I know this issue is not actually that easy. It is only because it has not happened to you that we can discuss it with laughter and complaint; if you yourself had cancer, when reading this passage you would definitely not be in a relaxed state of mind. Seth says he understands, and he knows there is a gap between his explanations and many everyday experiences—between them and the knowledge given to you in your real world by scientists, medical experts, or so-called popular science materials; there is a huge contrast here.

The fact is, when you want it, death comes. Death is chosen. ... The fact is that death is an end point of a life, leading to a new birth and new experience.

Whether or not you are willing to admit it, this is the fact. Death is not the end of everything; it is only the beginning of a new birth, the beginning of a new experience. Cells know this, and the heart knows it too.

People cannot admit that they want to die at some point, but if they can accept that this is their own intention, some people can even change their minds.

Many people do not believe that they themselves want to die at some point. If they admit, "I myself want to die, I have this wish," simply understanding this one point may make them change their minds: saying I still have things unfinished, I do not want to die. And death is one's own choice—when he understands that death is caused by his own choice, he will immediately change his mind.

Many people have done just that.

After the psychological state improves, the cells of his body no longer welcome the cancer situation with open arms, and his body recovers. Many people use this kind of spiritual approach to heal illness and produce very remarkable results; there are many such examples. I often share with others the example of how a terminal cancer patient cured himself; it sounds truly contrary to common sense, contrary to medicine, contrary to science—in modern terms, anti-intellectual. But there is no way around it; if you are a person who believes in conventional medicine, everything these people do appears anti-intellectual to you. But the reason many terminal cancer patients recover through spiritual healing, through psychological counseling, is that they changed their minds; they no longer want to die. But there are still some people who firmly want to die, and then no one can cure them.

Those women—women whose husbands have had vasectomies—have often already resolved the sexual problems that troubled them.

When the husband has had a vasectomy, there will be no sperm ejaculated, so there is no possibility of cervical cancer, and the woman's mind relaxes: this is safe, that possibility will not happen anymore. The fear in that regard decreases. Think about it: if women all had this kind of fear—every time they are in the midst of lovemaking with a man they worry whether they will get cancer, whether they are one of that small fraction—do you think she can enjoy those beautiful moments? How powerful the fear in her heart is. And it is truly that fear that led to the series of physical changes afterward.

Seth pauses for a long while, then he says:

Cervical cancer can involve a distortion of the growth process itself. It is caused by the woman's beliefs, by complex distortions.

The reason a woman gets cervical cancer is precisely this complex distortion of the woman's beliefs.

In a certain respect, the intensity of pain in cancer—especially in certain cancers, not all—often reflects the person's belief that life is painful and tormenting.

Some people believe that life is suffering, that illness is also tormenting, and that getting cancer is unbearably painful. Because they believe this, the cancer they get turns out to be extremely painful. The pain of some cancers is simply indescribable and has to be suppressed by injections of Dolantin or morphine, in large doses. What is the reason? These people believe that life is painful and tormenting. But many people with cancer have a very gentle course; they have no great pain until death, the body becomes extremely weak, and then they die quickly, without very uncomfortable feelings.

For those who feel pain, that pain also reminds that person—the one who believes that life is painful, that life is suffering—of his feelings and awareness.

He means: that person brought it on himself; he wanted to feel pain, wanted to experience this thing. Of course he himself would not admit it, and he himself was not aware of it, but the result is that because he himself wanted to experience it, he attracted this kind of pain. This is Seth's brief analysis of the pain of late-stage cancer and the HPV virus.

In this final part Seth says: Let us stop here for tonight, good night to you both. Thank you

Illness and Creativity

This session began at 9:28 p.m. on Monday, July 23, 1979. Rob noted before the session that they had begun preparing at 9:14, and Jane had no questions for Seth, expecting him to continue the material from the previous Wednesday. But a neighbor dropped by at 8:45, and Jane explained that although he stayed only a short while, the material had already withdrawn from her inner perception. So she could only wait for Seth to come through again. That visit actually did have an effect on her -- the material had clearly arrived, and then with the visit it went back again.

Session 867

Seth began by saying that he too could feel confusion, and after saying this he gave a wry smile. What was the wry smile about? It was that the material had clearly come through again, but because someone had dropped by for a visit it had gone back, and by the time he came through again, nearly fifty minutes had passed in between. What Ruburt had just felt was precisely Seth's confusion:

Because in certain ways, indeed, I still want to give you a great deal of material, but I must contend with the thinking patterns that you are accustomed to.

Seth wants to give us a great deal of material, but our thinking patterns are so stubborn that they often obstruct the transmission of the material. Those fixed thinking patterns make it very difficult for you to combine and ponder the various different components within it, to combine them in a very effective way. You are only good at one kind of single-threaded, logical, single-path thinking pattern. Although you do sometimes use associative, leaping, divergent thinking, for the most part it is still that ingrained, single-threaded thinking pattern.

Seth said:

As usual, I will do my best to begin the explanation using concepts familiar to you.

At least at the beginning, that is how it will be. He understands that currently popular experience may seem to contradict some of these concepts he is presenting, so he asks for your patience. Why has Seth become so polite all of a sudden?

Then he said that he would bring together the concept of illness and the concept of creativity, because the two are closely connected. Very interesting: in the previous session he had just talked about illness, and in this session he puts illness and creativity together.

The Painter and the Self-Portrait

He brought up a metaphor he had used in the past, comparing the scene of physical world experience to a scene painted by a painter, which he had discussed in The Nature of the Psyche. He said that painting might be dark, gloomy, full of omens of disaster. Some painted scenes are not necessarily bright and vivid; they may be dark and gloomy, and may even be full of omens of disaster, but it is still a work of art. Many works of art are like this; they are not all pleasant to look at, as you might imagine.

Each person paints a self-portrait in living colors, and what is painted is not just a person sitting quietly at a table, but one full of the potential for action.

What he said earlier was that whether the painting is dark or bright, it is still a work of art. What he means is that whether human beings are in a state of illness or a state of health, both are forms of creative expression. What he paints is not a static person sitting at a table, but the potential for action of that person, something alive.

All of you now living in the world are in this same class. You can look around at the people of your own time, look at the people around you, and see how their portraits are coming along. While you paint your own portrait, you also keep looking at how others are painting theirs, this one is painted well, that one is not. Each person paints something different: some paint a tragic self-portrait, some paint a heroic self-portrait, some paint a comic one, some paint all kinds of romantic, loving, warm ones. All of these portraits are living portraits.

It is these living portraits, when they interact, that form your global, social, collective, political world. When each of you is like a living portrait, and within these there are all kinds of dark, bright, happy, joyful, sorrowful portraits, when they communicate and interact with one another, they form the collective events of your entire society.

These portraits clearly have a kind of biological reality. You feel they are real, even though Seth is using the portrait as a metaphor. Why does he use the portrait metaphor? We will come back to this question later.

Now, to put it one way, each person seems to have stepped into the same dye. We all agree, we have all been dipped in the same dye, and that is where your similarities come from. Although each person seems to paint a different portrait, there is a great similarity among them, just look at the people around you, is there not a great deal of similarity? Where does your similarity come from? It may be that you all seem to have used the same kind of dye.

For such portraits, a great creative license must necessarily be allowed.

This is a great margin, a great space. You have a great deal of creative room, and you have complete autonomous decision-making power over what you paint yourself as. Each person's interaction with every other person jointly forms a reality of human psychology and matter. When you interact with others, you form the shared psychological and social reality of humanity. You jointly form this reality, and therefore you participate to some degree in the formation of many portraits. That is to say, in the process of interacting with others, you form other people's portraits. When others paint their own self-portraits, you also have a hand in it. And others may also have a hand in your portrait.

He said that as long as you keep this metaphor in mind, you should be able to imagine such a scene.

Let me briefly summarize this section. You need to imagine such a scene: in your human society, you are a painter, and you have painted a portrait, and that portrait is the you in this society. The real you is the painter, you are not the person in the painting. Follow my line of thought here, because there is deep meaning in this painting.

Each of you is a painter. Remember, you are not the portrait; do not get this backwards. You are the painter. But your innate creativity determines that once you come here, you must paint. Who do you paint? You paint a self-portrait. You are a painter, but what you love to paint most is self-portraits; you do not love painting others, you only love painting yourself.

Each person paints a different picture: some paint themselves very melancholy, some very bright, some paint a comedy, some paint a tragedy, some paint themselves laughing, some paint themselves angry, it does not matter. But what is important is that the portrait you paint is not static, not dead; it is alive. In other words, each person is like Ma Liang with the magic brush, and whatever is painted comes out alive.

Then, while you paint, you also keep looking at how the other painters are doing. Now here is where it gets interesting: these living portraits all need to interact. Let us set aside for now whether the painters interact with one another; first consider that these painted pictures are alive, and they step out of the portraits and communicate and interact with the living people in other portraits. When they communicate and interact, they form the global events of our entire world and society: social events, political events, collective events, all of these are formed.

You have the picture now, right? Remember your identity: you are the painter, not the portrait. The painting is painted in your own likeness, but it is still a painting, and you are the one doing the painting. You must be clear about your role; do not mistake yourself for the person in the painting. You paint a self-portrait, and that person looks just like you.

The Creativity of the Portrait

Let us continue. This painted portrait, although it is a portrait, has a kind of biological reality. Each one feels that it is a living, real existence; it does not feel that it is a painting, it feels that it is a living person. Yet it seems that although the painters are different, you all use the same kind of dye, processed by the same factory, or all made of the same material. Therefore the portraits you paint all share certain common similarities, and these similarities come from the dye.

For such portraits, there is a great deal of creative room. Each person interacts with others, and this forms the psychological and material reality of humanity. In this process, you also participate in the formation of some other portraits. As painters, you do interact with one another, and this causes each person, when painting their own self-portrait, to be influenced by others. This painter is influenced by that painter, and that painter is influenced by this painter, so every portrait has, to some degree, been participated in by others.

I will leave this picture in your mind: a group of painters painting there, using the same kind of dye, so the things they paint have many similarities, yet each has its own uniqueness. Each portrait has its own space for free development, and the portrait itself is alive; they communicate and interact with one another, forming the collective reality of human society. The painters also communicate and interact with one another, and after this communication and interaction, the portraits are influenced by other painters.

However, these portraits are miraculously creative by nature. It is clearly painted in the likeness of the painter, yet it has its own creativity by nature. This is remarkable, because it means it can also paint.

Let us not talk about that level for now. Let us say that they are created so automatically. These portraits are all painted automatically; painters all have this innate ability, everyone can paint, and they paint automatically.

On certain levels, humanity is forever creatively beginning another version of itself.

This sentence is very philosophical. These portraits themselves are created by the painters, and the painters are not human; remember, the portraits are the humans. But once this portrait is painted, it is inherently creative, which means it can also paint portraits, which means it can create a new human being. This human being is painted by a group of painters, and then these other painted portraits, having creativity, means they can also become painters; they can continue painting, and thus create a new version of humanity. What I am saying here is all examples and metaphors; this is what Seth wants to tell you. Humanity is forever creating another version of itself. We all paint new human beings in our own likeness.

But a general pattern is always maintained, because it will not differ too much, and you are also using the same kind of dye.

Biological integrity is also maintained at all times and in all places.

But what you consider illness is a quite creative component of talent, operating on different levels, and on many levels at the same time.

Why is it said that illness itself has a creative component within it? Because you are inherently creative. When this portrait was painted, it had no illness; you inherently have a biological integrity. But because you yourself have creativity, and creativity has no limits whatsoever, setting aside for now the creation of new little people, which is another way of putting it, let me just ask: does this creativity include creating illness? Creativity has no limits whatsoever. Therefore illness is also a kind of creativity.

What does it mean that it operates on different levels, and on many levels at the same time? It means that this illness is not only on the physical level that we can perceive; it is also on the mental level. To put it even more mysteriously, sometimes it is on the level of the painter, sometimes on the level of the portrait, sometimes it is caused on the psychological level of the portrait, and sometimes it is indeed formed on a biological level. And such an illness has all kinds of different functions. Illness does not have only one function, to make you die or make you suffer; no. Illness has all kinds of functions, and it has good functions.

The Functions of Illness

He said that many viruses are essential to physical survival. Around Session 840, near the beginning of this book, he also talked about something similar.

And in your terms, viruses have different stages of activity.

We humans think this way, so only under certain conditions do viruses become the kind you consider deadly. The healthiest body also contains many so-called deadly viruses; that is how we humans think of it, but they exist in what you would call an inactive state. From your viewpoint they are inactive, but in fact they are active all along. Because they do not cause illness, you think they are inactive, yet they help maintain the overall balance of the body.

In a manner of speaking, in each body, humanity settles into a known identity, but on many levels it creatively carries out experiments in cellular change and chromosomal variation, so each body is unique.

What he wants to tell you is that each body is also conducting its own experiments, on the cellular level, on the chromosomal level, on its own creative level. Its creativity is not just simple creativity; it includes all aspects, so it also wants to create on the level of body cells, chromosomes, and DNA, and this is what makes every body unique.

Now with different illnesses, there are various stages.

Illnesses have different stages, and some illnesses arouse the body's overall defenses, and can really make the body go from weak to strong. Under certain circumstances, some so-called states of illness can ensure the survival of humanity. At times, humanity needs such states of illness in order to survive. Here he paused again. This session had especially long pauses, many pauses, and he said it was very difficult for him to explain that illness also has a good side.

So in a manner of speaking, certain states of illness help protect the survival of humanity.

This passage is actually repeating the sentence above, but it is not what you think, not removing the unhealthy people and leaving behind those with superior genes; that is not what it means.

But rather introduces a condition to a considerable number of people, a condition that stabilizes other viruses within the human body that must be suppressed, and naturally inoculates humanity against a possible greater danger.

Illness has so many uses and benefits. He is not saying that illness eliminates the unfit among humanity, but rather that it can inoculate all of humanity, naturally inoculating humanity.

Let me give an example. This example is not a perfect fit; I am just making it up casually, so do not take it seriously. For instance, the current global pandemic of the novel coronavirus, such a large-scale spread, is it not equivalent to naturally inoculating all of humanity with a certain ability to resist the coronavirus? Right now people all over the world are being injected with vaccines against this coronavirus, and those who have recovered, or who got better on their own, have already formed a global immunity to the coronavirus. Is this not similar to a kind of natural inoculation? If several years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, there is another, even larger outbreak of the coronavirus, humanity will already have immunity to that virus by then. Without this outbreak, perhaps that future one could have been a catastrophe for all of humanity, or even annihilation. I give this example because I do not have any precognitive or predictive ability; I am just saying this in passing based on what Seth said, so just listen and do not take it seriously. You can treat it as something to help you understand this passage.

On many subtle levels, on the microscopic level, there are always biological experiments being carried out.

Right inside your body, your body has never been idle.

That is a creative endeavor.

Your body is always creating, conducting biological experiments, constantly trying things out, and then giving humanity as much room for activity as possible, so that humanity can move about in as wide a range as possible without being affected.

Your thoughts change your body on the biological level.

Because creativity itself is an activity of thought. Then he paused again. You see, there are especially many pauses in this session.

Your culture is also a biological influence upon humanity.

Not the kind of cultural influence we understand. Be sure to remember: it is a biological influence. Very interesting.

I am not speaking of an obviously derogatory connection, such as pollution or anything like that.

That is not what he is talking about.

If you are thinking in terms of the old idea of evolution, then I would say that your culture and civilization actually alter chromosomal information.

If you can only understand what I am saying from the perspective of evolution, then I will speak to you from the perspective of evolution. Remember, the premise is that I am using the perspective of evolution, speaking to those who can only accept the viewpoint of evolution. He said that your culture and your civilization have actually indeed altered your chromosomal information, meaning your DNA has been changed.

You do not believe it? I once read an article, I forget which book it was in, I cannot remember now, about an experiment done abroad that found that poverty can be inherited²³. Poverty is actually a state of life, or an external environment, but they found that poverty really can be inherited. If a family is very poor, their children will later inherit this poverty gene. This poverty is not the material scarcity you think of; that is only one aspect. Poverty refers to a state of life. For example, you can look at some people's state of life: they may already be very wealthy, but their state of life is still that poor person's way of thinking. We will not expand on this here; I am only giving the example Seth mentions here: culture and civilization can sometimes be inherited, and can form an influence on the chromosomes.

Once again, your thoughts influence your cells, because culture and civilization are all things of your thoughts. Thoughts can change what you consider genetic factors. Think about how astonishing that is. As we study spiritual material today, study these things of Seth, the insights and new understandings that traditional teaching or traditional knowledge may not give you, they are actually subtly influencing your genetic factors. This is not simply a matter of this one lifetime; do you understand?

Imagination and Illness

He asked us to wait a moment, and paused again. There are especially many pauses in this session.

Just as your imagination is so important in every area of life.

Imagination and illness are also closely connected; on the question of getting sick, imagination is also needed.

You form your existence through imaginative consideration of one possibility or another.

Your present existence is formed when you consider whether this is okay or that is okay, when you imagine various possibilities. And your thoughts influence your body in that way. How is your body influenced? It is influenced in just this way: you think this way, you think my body will be like this, my body will be like that.

In a manner of speaking, illness represents a tool of life.

Because people have already given illness social, economic, psychological, and religious meanings, it has therefore become another field of activity and expression. What he means is that illness itself has social attributes, economic attributes, psychological attributes, religious attributes, and so on. The moment the word "illness" is spoken, it is no longer a purely objective, scientific concept; it itself carries all kinds of social, cultural, religious, psychological, and humanistic meanings. Therefore illness has also become a tool in your life, used to express what you want to express.

Illness has become another field of activity and expression. Many people express themselves through illness. Think carefully: in your life, whether you yourself have had some illness, or someone in your family, or people around you, you will find that many people's lives are often changed by a single illness. So is illness not a form of expression? Is it not a form of activity? And a very important activity and expression at that.

What is a tool? It is something through which you want to achieve some purpose. To put it more bluntly, you want, through being sick, or others want, through being sick, to obtain something that cannot be obtained without being sick, so being sick becomes a tool for them. For example, some people get sick because they want to receive care from others, some people get sick because they want to receive attention from others, some people even get sick just because they want to avoid taking an exam, and some people get sick perhaps because they want to save a relationship or a marriage. Of course, the ways of expression are all kinds of different; I am only casually listing a few.

The Nature of Cells and Dreams

He said something very crucial:

I have told you that on the microscopic level, there is no fixed ego structure like your own.

How should this be understood? It means that on your microscopic level, there is no fixed ego structure of the kind you imagine. It is not fixed. There is an identity, a sense of identity does exist, it really does.

But a cell does not fear its own death. Its identity has, as a matter of course, traveled back and forth between physical reality and the invisible reality, and nonphysical reality, too many times.

Let me explain it this way, and it may be easier for you to understand. For example, a metal cup is made of metal atoms or alloys, and it has a microstructure. You can see its microstructure under a microscope, and it is fixed and stable. Although the surface may have some slight loss and change, overall it has its own fixed, stable microstructure.

But as for human beings, humans do not have this. This is something many people cannot understand. How can humans not have it? Do humans not have tissues, organs, and cells, and are they not ultimately made of cells? And within cells there are molecules and so on; is that not also a microstructure? You can imagine that humans seem to be like this, but in fact they are not. Humans do contain these things, but it is not a fixed microstructure. Humans are made of cells, and these cells are constantly living and dying, arising and ceasing, but despite this living and dying, arising and ceasing, they still maintain the existence of your unique identity, the existence of your life.

It is not like a cup. If a few of the atoms and molecules inside a cup die today and a few die tomorrow, the cup will gradually break down. Just as iron rusts, iron oxidizes in the natural environment, constantly changing, forming new oxides, and it slowly corrodes, finally turning into a pile of rusty fragments. That is a solid object. But for humans this does not happen. Cells die and regenerate, regenerate and die, die and regenerate; they do not cling to the integrity of any particular cell's microstructure. They rely on the integrity of the entire identity and the integrity of the entire life. They have come and gone between the invisible and the visible worlds countless times, yet they can still maintain the stability and integrity of this body's structure, and the maintenance of this stability and integrity does not depend on the fixed existence of the microstructure.

Cells sing according to their own life characteristics. In its view, perhaps it only has this one life, but it cooperates with other cells. You remember in the earlier chapters I talked about how love and cooperation are a basic principle of all reality, right? So cells must cooperate with cells; they must ally themselves with the body they belong to, forming a great alliance with this body, yet in some way they also fit into that structure. They are part of the alliance, and they also must fit the structure of this body.

Then he paused again. This is indeed very difficult to explain.

Humanity's dreams are very important to its survival.

You probably did not expect this; Seth suddenly turns to dreams. But this turn goes beyond the cognitive level of ordinary people. The reason Seth is Seth is that his unique insights completely transcend our cognition. Could you have imagined that cells and dreams are related? The relationship is huge; just keep listening and you will understand.

Humanity's dreams are very important to the survival of the cells.

It is not just because dreaming is a kind of biological comparison, not because people need rest and therefore dream, or cells need rest; it is not entirely that. Rather:

In dreams, humanity is immersed in several deeper levels of creation, and therefore the actions, inventions, and ideas that will be needed in the future will appear at the appropriate time and place.

It is this deep-level creation in our dreams that allows the actions, inventions, and ideas we need in real society to manifest in the three-dimensional world. Because the appropriate time and place, that is the three-dimensional world. But the premise is that a deep-level creation must first take place in the dream state before it can manifest in the physical world.

In the old terms of evolution, I am saying that humanity's evolutionary process also depends upon its dreams.

He says that if you still prefer to understand Darwin's theory of evolution, then I can compare human dreams to an indispensable and necessary part of human evolution. In other words, human evolution comes entirely from dreams. Amazing, right? Of course, as I said before, the word "evolution" and the word "development" mean the same thing; the English is the same, only the wording differs. So now you know why Seth's very important book is called Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, right? We will not expand on this today.

Most of the characteristics that you consider to belong only to humanity appear to some degree in all other species.

You think these things are unique to humanity, but in fact, to some degree, other species also have them.

But the fact is that the nature of human dreams is largely responsible for what you consider human evolution.

You think some of humanity's unique traits -- for example, walking upright, having no fur, and so on -- actually other animals and other species also have them to some degree. There are plenty of creatures that walk on two legs, far too many to count. What truly sets you humans apart from other species is the nature of your dreams. Human dreams are not the same as the dreams of other species, and that is the biggest difference. When you ask what essential difference there is between humans and other species, Seth says, actually this is your most essential difference, and you yourselves do not know it. The reason humanity has been able to develop to where it is today is that dreaming is the most important thing; dreaming is what can be held responsible for this.

Dreams and the Origin of Language

He then says eagerly:

You learned to dream in a way different from other creatures.

Then Rob says, that is really well said. Is this passage important? You must remember it, you must mark it as key. When someone later asks you what the difference is between humans and other animals, remember, it is not in those external things; it is because human dreams are not the same as the dreams of other animals.

Before your languages were specifically invented, you dreamed of yourself speaking.

Before you invented language, you could already speak in dreams first. Because the nature of your dreams, and the activity of your dreams, created what you are now. What is the nature of dreams? Creation. What is the activity of dreams? Also creation. It created what we are now. If you do not understand this, you can look at the part about dreams near the end of The Nature of the Psyche. Otherwise, you would have developed a mechanical language -- if it were not for the existence of the dream state.

We learned from childhood, how did human language come about? Labor created it. Because labor requires cooperation, cooperation requires coordination, and coordination requires the invention of language. Seth says that is completely not the case; human language did not come about that way. Human language was completed in dreams. It is very interesting; later when you see what follows, you will understand exactly how language came into being.

Suppose you could develop a language other than the one you have now, then you might develop a very mechanical language.

What kind of mechanical language? One that only names locations and the simplest, most objective matters that need to be dealt with. For example, "I go this way, you go that way," "the sun is very hot," and that is all. If dreams had not been involved, you could only have invented this kind of language -- very practical, machine language, simple and direct, with no description or embellishment, and no emotion or feeling in it at all.

You would have that kind of bare description of concrete facts.

You would be unable to imagine objects that do not yet exist, because you would have only bare plain description -- we call this writing technique plain description. You would be unable to develop your imagination, and you would also be unable to describe things that do not exist. You would have no poetry, no artistic conception, none of these things would appear, and you would also be unable to imagine yourself in novel situations. Because everything would be an insipid sketch, a mechanical description.

You would have no overall picture of the seasons; you would have no concept of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. You would only see what is before you: if it is spring, then it is spring; if it is summer, then it is summer. But you would not think from spring to autumn -- you would not have that thought, because you cannot see it, you have no way to imagine it.

Because dreaming educated memory.

In dreams, although you are in spring, you can have a dream of autumn. In the dream the leaves have all fallen, and when you wake and see the newly grown tender buds, you have a feeling of mourning spring and grieving over autumn. This is unique to humans. Dreams lengthened the span of human attention, and they also strengthened the learning of daily life, because in the dream state we can extend our learning time, since it can lengthen memory. This was very important to human progress.

Using the intellect alone, man could never, through the ages, have learned from daily experience that, for example, one season follows another.

Because he would have lived too much in the present to accomplish that. But within one season, he dreamed of the other seasons, and in his dreams he saw the seeds of the fruit he had scattered, just as in daily life he saw the wind sowing seeds.

What does he mean by this? If in dreams he did not have the complete concept of "one season following another," of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, then he would not know that he must sow seeds in spring in order to harvest in autumn. If he simply lived day by day, he would never know this. So why do animals not sow seeds? Because animals do not have dreams like humans; they cannot see that the things growing in autumn come from your sowing in spring. They do not know there is any connection between the two. They know that in autumn there is fruit to eat, all kinds of fruit, but they do not think it has anything to do with sowing in spring. But humans in dreams saw the wind blow seeds to the ground, and then saw the whole process of those seeds sprouting, flowering, and bearing fruit, and so they understood that seeds could be sown. All of this they learned in dreams. Without dreams, if they only lived in the real world and only saw the present state before their eyes, they would have none of this. You must understand the importance of dreams to humanity.

His dreams reminded him that a cold winter was coming, and would come again.

Therefore we must prepare for winter, we must store food. Most of your inventions arrived in dreams.

And again, it is the nature of your dreams that makes you so different from the other families, that is, the other species.

The fundamental reason humans differ from other species is that the nature of our dreams is different. You absolutely must remember this. Now you understand why, in the previous passage, Seth suddenly shifted from cells to the level of dreams.

Human creativity is also the result of that particular specialization of your kind of dreaming.

Dreams are equal to a particular state of existence. What state?

Dreams are a special state in which you combine a component of concrete reality and a component of intangible reality.

In dreams, you take the concrete physical reality you saw or felt during the day, and the intangible reality you imagined, and you combine them together. This is the greatest significance of our dreams.

It is almost like a threshold between two realities.

On one side is the material world you perceive during the day; on the other side is the result of the probabilities you create and imagine in dreams at night. Dreams are like a threshold connecting these two.

You learned to hold your specific intent at that threshold long enough.

In dreams, if you hold the state you want, that specific intent, long enough:

You could then, with a brief attention, draw from intangible reality the creative ingredients you needed.

When you have a specific image, and when in the dream state you hold enough focused attention on it, to a certain degree, you can draw from this intangible reality the ingredients you need for creating in real life. It is like what Tesla said: when I invented the alternating current motor, I first constructed its existence in my mind²⁴, constructed it in dreams or in my mind, and then after constructing it again and again, I made it in reality. That is what this means. Remember this -- when you have a specific intent, and when you hold it long enough, you can use your brief attention to draw from intangible reality the ingredients you need for creating in the physical world.

Animal Dreams and Human Dreams

Generally speaking, animals are less materially oriented in their dreams.

Animals are not like this. Generally speaking, animals do not bring things from physical reality into their dreams. They do indeed dream of physical reality, but in time it is much shorter than yours. They immerse themselves in dreams. You see, when little cats and dogs dream it is also very interesting, their paws twitch and their bodies jerk.

In a different kind of dreaming consciousness that I hope to explain later.

He says I will not discuss this question now; this question will be explained to you later. The consciousness with which animals dream is fundamentally different in kind; we will not talk about it today.

Seth Ends the Session and the Follow-up Conversation Between Rob and Jane

He says the session is over, but he will continue this material, and wishes you good night. Then Seth said one thing, he said:

I have opened a very good can of metaphysical worms.

Seth is very pleased with himself, very pleased, because this kind of insight and understanding really did open up an angle of thinking that humans had never considered before. Then Rob said thank you, Seth, good night.

At 10:42, while Jane was speaking for Seth, she had many long pauses. In fact, for many months this was her best session. She said now she knew why she had felt so confused before the session began -- she had to sit there and wait for Seth to put things together in a new way, and that was a strange feeling, meaning that this time the way Seth delivered the material was somewhat different from before. She said that near the end of the book, she seemed to have received something different, as if there was a book there, and that book in that place would lead to the next book. For example, Seth talked about the book on healing methods and value fulfillment, and so on, and what you talked about today concerning body consciousness, everything is related.

Rob said he liked Seth's material tonight about dreaming and language. Jane replied, I wish you had not said that -- because as soon as you said it, I immediately felt a body of material open up. This body of material was about a series of collective dreams of ancient people. These dreams were like speaking in an incomprehensible language; it really was language, speaking with the sounds of our speech, but they were meaningful. And so people began to speak; that is how people learned to speak.

Then a minute later, Jane immediately mentioned another thing she had just received, and this supplement is very important, you must remember it:

When a person is with others in the physical world, he can point to the thing he wants to describe and show it to others, but when he wants to describe a dream, that is when he learned truly to speak.

In real life, ancient people did not necessarily need to speak. He could use "ah ah," point, gesture, because what he needed to express was very simple. This is actually true -- when you travel to a country where you do not speak the language, when you really do not understand the language at all, you actually do not need to worry. You cannot solve many complicated matters, but some simple basic things of daily life you can all solve, because humans have this ability. In the physical world, he can gesture, he can point, he can use all kinds of body language and forms; when pointing at certain things he can solve the problems he wants to solve, and language is not necessary here.

But here is the problem: when you explain your dream to someone, or tell him what you just dreamed, at that moment you have nothing but language. There is no other way; you can only use language.

So what she means is that it was by sharing that invisible information that people learned truly to speak. During the day, in the physical world, he could point at a tree and make grunting sounds to get others to look, but he could not point to anything in a dream. Things in dreams cannot be seen by others, and he cannot point them out to others; he can only speak. He must have a method of expression to describe those unseen dreamscapes. And when he tried to tell others what he had seen in dreams, he might also invent some things.

So how did language come into being? Language came into being because people wanted to describe their dreams; it was this most urgent need that led them to invent it. And they also learned in dreams how to speak. This is the true origin of human language.

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注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, "religion holds that people have original sin"; upon verification, it should be "original sin is a doctrine specific to Christianity (the view that people are born in a state of sin resulting from Adam's fall, with the main scriptural basis being Paul's Romans 5:12–19), and not all religions assert it—both Judaism and Islam deny original sin." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Original sin," https://www.britannica.com/topic/original-sin) ↩

2. Source: Chen Shou, Records of the Three Kingdoms, Book of Shu, Biography of the Former Lord (https://ctext.org/text.pl?if=gb&node=603400&remap=gb) ↩

3. Source: China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Magazine, "Gu Yanwu: The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of every common person" (https://zgjjjc.ccdi.gov.cn/bqml/bqxx/201607/t20160726_84179.html) ↩ ↩²

4. Source: Supreme Court of the United States, "The Court as an Institution" (https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/institution.aspx) ↩

5. Source: Wikipedia, Conversations with God (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%88%87%E7%A5%9E%E5%B0%8D%E8%A9%B1) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. Source: Jane Roberts, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601895/dreams-evolution-and-value-fulfillment-volume-one-by-jane-roberts-notes-and-cover-art-by-robert-f-butts/) ↩

8. Source: Wikipedia, Liao-Fan's Four Lessons (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E4%BA%86%E5%87%A1%E5%9B%9B%E8%A8%93) ↩

9. Source: Yuan Liaofan, Liao-Fan's Four Lessons, Chapter on Establishing One's Destiny (https://www.moj.gov.tw/2204/2498/2520/2524/12128/) ↩

10. Source: Nathaniel Morris, "This secret experiment tricked psychiatrists into diagnosing sane people as having schizophrenia" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/an-experiment-fooled-psychiatrists-into-treating-sane-people-as-if-they-were-insane/2017/12/29/c6c9c3ea-d5f7-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html) ↩

11. Source: Wiley, "Abraham H. Maslow" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119547143.ch14) ↩

12. Source: A. H. Maslow, "A Theory of Human Motivation," 1943 (https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation) ↩

13. This claim could not be verified. ↩

14. According to Mike's original words, "a considerable number of women get cervical cancer from contact with a virus carried in the sperm of men who have not had vasectomies"; upon verification, it should be "cervical cancer is mainly caused by persistent high-risk HPV infection; HPV can be transmitted through sexual contact and non-penetrative genital skin contact, and is not necessarily transmitted by the sperm of men who have not had vasectomies." (Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection - STI Treatment Guidelines," 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/hpv.htm) ↩

15. Source: World Health Organization, "WHO updates recommendations on HPV vaccination schedule," 2022 (https://www.who.int/news/item/20-12-2022-WHO-updates-recommendations-on-HPV-vaccination-schedule?source=email) ↩

16. Source: International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, "Papillomaviridae" (https://ictv.global/report_9th/dsDNA/Papillomaviridae) ↩

17. Source: Kumarajiva, trans., Diamond Prajnaparamita Sutra (CBETA Chinese Buddhist Canon T08n0235) (https://tripitaka.cbeta.org/T08n0235_001?format=line&linehead=yes) ↩

18. Source: CERN, "The LEP story," 2000 (https://home.cern/the-lep-story/) ↩

19. According to Mike's original words, "an awl was knocked in through the nostril, from inside the nasal cavity, directly into the person's forehead, and then the inside was stirred into mush"; upon verification, it should be "transorbital prefrontal lobotomy involves piercing an ice-pick-like instrument through the top of the eye socket into the frontal lobe, then swinging the instrument to sever or destroy white matter fibers; it does not enter through the nostril or nasal cavity." (Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health, "Appendix: Psychosurgery," https://videocast.nih.gov/pdf/ohrp_appendix_psychosurgery.pdf) ↩

20. According to Mike's original words, "an awl was knocked from the nasal cavity into the forehead to stir the brain into mush to treat mental illness, and it is said that this won a Nobel Prize"; upon verification, it should be "in 1949, Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for discovering the therapeutic value of prefrontal leucotomy in certain psychoses; Walter Freeman's 'ice-pick' transorbital procedure entered through the top of the eye socket, not through the nasal cavity." (Source: Elliot S. Valenstein, "The Practice of Psychosurgery: A Survey of the Literature –1976," https://videocast.nih.gov/pdf/ohrp_appendix_psychosurgery.pdf) ↩

21. Source: Wikipedia, "Rain Man" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_Man) ↩ ↩²

22. This claim could not be verified. ↩

23. This claim could not be verified. ↩

24. Source: Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, 1919 (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Inventions) ↩