Mike's commentary · The Nature of the Psyche, Preface

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" in 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 block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Reading Guide

This chapter is the preface. It begins by explaining that the word "Psyche" in the English title should be translated as "spirit" or "soul" rather than "mind," and introduces Jane Roberts's bibliography, pointing out that this book is the only Seth book devoted specifically to sexuality and gender issues. It then includes Wang Jiqing's general preface and the translator's preface, introducing the core beliefs of the New Age movement, the themes of each chapter of this book, and Jane's own preface explaining the process of dictating the Seth material, the trance state, the bisexual nature, inner knowledge, and dreams and creativity.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The "Psyche" in the original title should be translated as "spirit" or "soul," not "mind."
• Jane Roberts published 25 books in total (counting separate volumes; 23 under the same title), of which eight were books published by Seth himself.
• This book is the only one in which Seth specifically and directly discusses sex, the two sexes, and homosexuality.
• The core beliefs of the New Age movement include: all people are part of God, you create your own reality, life has meaning, morality is internal, unconditional love, and so on.
• The Seth material was dictated by Jane in a trance state and recorded and organized by Rob; Seth holds that the psyche is neither male nor female, and that human beings have a bisexual nature.

Main Text

Hello everyone, I am Mike. Today I will continue introducing a new Seth book to everyone. The Taiwanese translation calls it The Nature of the Psyche. But I think this translated title is not very good -- it should more accurately be called The Nature of the Psyche. Let us look at its subtitle. It should be called The Nature of the Psyche, or The Nature of the Soul. Translating it that way would be better.

Why would it be translated that way? Let us look at what the original English title is. In this process, if we go through all the novels and all the books she wrote, we will roughly understand.

These are all the books Jane wrote. Her first book was Rebellar¹, written in 1963. I do not know what this word means; this is a book I have not read. But this book has nothing to do with Seth -- you can imagine that Seth only began contact with Jane at the end of 1963, in December Seth and Jane just began, so this book has little to do with Seth. But it can also reflect that before contacting Seth, Jane had only published one book. So when she called herself a writer at that time, she had actually only published one book. All her later books were more or less related to Seth, or one could also say that Seth inspired her creative inspiration.

The second book is Coming of Sights, which is about how to develop your ESP abilities after Seth came, published in early 1966. ESP means extrasensory perception, an abbreviation of three English words.

The next book is the famous The Seth Material, or Messages from the Spirit World. The original English version is called Seth Material. Why is it called Seth Material? This is a summary of Seth's first seven years -- from 1963 to 1970 -- the first 510 sessions. He made a compilation of these 510 sessions, summarizing seven years of content into one book called Seth Material. Why have I not covered this book? Because we plan to cover the early sessions later -- the early sessions essentially expand this book into nine books, introducing every session in detail, so there is no need to cover this condensed version here. It is a bit like that "five-minute movie review" kind of content.

Then the next book is the first official Seth book, called Seth Speaks, published in 1972. The next book was written by Jane herself, not a Seth book, about Oversoul Seven's Education, Education of Oversoul 7, written in 1973².

In 1974, she began writing The Nature of Personal Reality, which is also a Seth book. You see, whenever it is a Seth book, Jane would mark it as "A Seth Book" when publishing, or "Seth Speaks" -- "Seth Speaks" was requested by Seth himself, who said so, to distinguish them. The Nature of Personal Reality was from early 1974, and we have already covered this one.

Then in 1975, Jane published a book of her own called Adventures in Consciousness. Next Jane published another book called The Soul and the Mortal Self -- the self that must die, in dialogue through time and space; this is a poetry collection. Then she wrote another book called The Politics of the Psyche, or it could also be called The Politics of the Spirit. They all translate "Psychic" as psyche, but actually this word has little to do with psyche; it should refer more to spiritual, supernatural kinds of things.

Next, in 1977, she published The Worldview of the Power of Cézanne³, that is, this book about Cézanne. This was after she contacted the personality of the French painter Cézanne through channeling, and described how Cézanne, as a painter, viewed this world from an artistic perspective. Next she again used channeling to contact an early American psychologist and philosopher -- William James -- and viewed the world after death from his perspective. So she wrote two books: one viewing the world after death from a philosopher's perspective, and one written from Cézanne's perspective on his view of the world. These two books were published in 1977 and 1978 respectively.

In 1977, The "Unknown" Reality, Volume 1, was also published, and in 1979, two years later, Volume 2 came out. These two books took a lot of their time and energy because they wrote many annotations in them, and these two books are also very thick. The "Unknown" Reality is actually about exploring the unknown realms of our consciousness. If you call the world you live in now your hometown, then the unknown world is like leaving your hometown to explore another unknown world.

Then in 1979, Jane published another book, about the further education of Oversoul Seven. Next she wrote How to Correctly Use Magical Methods, about how to correctly use magical methods in education.

1979 is the book we are covering today: The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. What does this mean? How do you understand this "Psyche" here, and what should we translate it as -- he says our correct translation should be The Nature of the Psyche: Its Expression in Human Form, or its expression or manifestation in human beings, or The Nature of the Soul. But translating it as "psyche" here is not appropriate. Why? Because within the book it will be discussed; what it talks about is spiritual things. This word "psyche" carries many human characteristics -- when you say psyche, because this word is often related to people. Or in other words, it is related to human life. When a person is gone, when a person dies, our psychic activity also ceases; we would say how our psyche is, a beautiful psyche. So the word "psyche" is too much associated with people and life. But what it originally means is not this psyche; it means this spiritual thing, or this inner soul of ours.

The person who first proposed this view was a Teacher Wang named Wang Jiqing. He spent five or six years, more than six years, translating all nine books of Seth's early sessions into Chinese by himself. To this day, the officially published early sessions in Taiwan seem to have only published Volume 6, but Teacher Wang Jiqing has been personally translating all along, and he has already finished translating all nine volumes. In this process I had a lot of exchanges with him, and we had very in-depth exchanges early on. When I was teaching the public course on the early sessions, after finishing the first volume I wrote detailed reading notes and my own understanding in detail, and at the same time I was helping him proofread. Later I set this work aside for a while, because I felt that the difficulty of the early sessions is suitable for people who specialize in researching Seth and researching science, not suitable for general readers, so I first turned around and gave a comprehensive lecture on all of Seth's public books, and then later went back to work on the early sessions.

This view was first proposed by Teacher Wang Jiqing, who said that the translation The Nature of the Psyche is incorrect and unreasonable, and I also agree with his view. Why do I say this? Because Teacher Wang Jiqing translated it as "psyche," and I think the greater reason is -- when he was discussing the specific content of this book, because he was discussing a manifestation of spirituality in human beings, what it actually reflects more is the things of our psyche, psychic activity, or what we call psychological activity, so saying it that way is not unacceptable. But it limits the broad meaning of spirituality and soul, confining it only to such an expression in human beings.

This book is indeed Seth's only book that specifically discusses a lot of content related to the two sexes and related to sexuality; they also call it Seth's classic on sexuality. He directly and head-on discusses the issue of sex, which is rare among spiritual books, and it is also Seth's only book specifically devoted to this topic. Of course he also discusses many other issues; this is just one point.

Jane also published many other books: in 1981 she published The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which is also a Seth book; another translation is The Reality of Individual and Mass Events. No matter how it is translated, you should know what its original English meaning is -- its focus is on the relationship between the individual and social phenomena, mass phenomena. Then the next book is also Jane's book, called The God of Jan. The next one is also written by Jane herself, If We Live Again, or the open magic, the wondrous, and personal private love, a book published in 1982. In 1984 she published another Oversoul Seven book, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time.

In 1986 -- Jane had already passed away in 1984, so all the books after 1986 were published after Jane's death; Jane never actually saw them. Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment is the most difficult set of books among all of Seth's publicly published books, divided into two volumes, published in 1986; its depth and breadth are the most difficult among the publicly published books. In the same year, Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness was also published; this book was not spoken by Seth but written by Jane. Finally there is The Magical Approach -- a Seth book, only published in 1995. If you have read my afterword on the last session of The Magical Approach, you will know that when Rob wrote this afterword, it had already been a full ten years since Jane's death; this book was published only ten years after Jane's death.

The last book is The Way Toward Health from 1997, or The Road to Health. I do not plan to cover this book anymore, because it has no difficulty at all, and it is very long. If you are interested, you can find time to read it; it mainly talks about how Seth helped Jane after she became ill, and even after she was hospitalized, and how he gave them advice.

These are the books Jane wrote, 25 in total⁴ -- if both volumes are counted, because two books have two volumes; if the two volumes are not counted separately and only the same title is counted, then it is 23 books. Among them, Seth's own books account for about ten, including Messages from the Spirit World, the ESP class, and so on. The books actually published by Seth himself total eight: from The Nature of Personal Reality to Seth Speaks, to The Magical Approach, The Nature of the Psyche, and later The Way Toward Health, The "Unknown" Reality, Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, and The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Among these, I do not plan to cover The Way Toward Health; the remaining The "Unknown" Reality, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment I will gradually share with everyone later.

So let us return to the title of this book; it adds a colon after it: Its Human Expression -- an expression or manifestation in human beings. If the manifestation of the soul or spirituality in human beings is actually a kind of psychic activity, then Teacher Wang Jiqing's translation generally fits the overall meaning. But in terms of understanding, I am more inclined to translate it as The Nature of the Soul, or The Nature of the Psyche.

Today let us first introduce its preface. Below is the general preface of the New Age -- I have never introduced this general preface by Teacher Wang Jiqing before, because it is a preface that appears in every Seth book, or every New Age book. Today let us briefly go through it. Below is Teacher Wang Jiqing's preface:

At the age of nine, I seriously contemplated who I was. Where did I come from, where was I going; this aroused great doubt and great confusion in me. Afterward, these questions remained hidden somewhere in my consciousness.

You see, at a very early age, at nine, he would think about "who am I." Very interesting -- I considered this question when I was about 13, in the first year of junior high school, pondering this matter every day, very obsessed; I imagine he was the same. The question I was obsessed with at the time, besides this one, I was even more concerned about humanity as a whole -- humanity as a species or ethnic group, where is humanity's direction, what is humanity's goal. That is to say, apart from each of us living a better life, living in a bigger house, and so on, apart from these individual goals, what is the purpose and meaning of the existence of humanity as a whole? What I considered at the time was what exactly human beings, by living, by the survival of humanity, want to achieve.

In the landscape of this half of my life, I lived fervently, unwilling to let any scenery pass by. I crossed deserts, tasted wind and sand, trod through thorns, and also leisurely appreciated all kinds of beautiful scenery. The artistic, the scientific, the emotional, the intellectual -- the beautiful scenery touched by the psyche was naturally delightful and exhilarating, but it never resolved the ultimate concern. After all, where do we come from, where are we going, and who are we -- these questions always made me uneasy, fearful, and sorrowful.

This is something people sometimes consider at many stages of life. Today I saw a comment from a YouTube netizen; he said he always has a sense of desolation -- no matter what he looks at, there is a sense of desolation, even reading the diary he wrote as a child, reading it now still gives a sense of desolation. He did not know why. I did not reply to him at the time, because it cannot be explained clearly in one or two sentences. Why? Because if you have not resolved this fundamental question, everything you look at will have a sense of desolation.

The beauty of blooming flowers suddenly stirred the shock of flowers falling and people dying, both unknowing; truly, how can one bear such feelings.

That is, the more beautiful the scenery, the more sorrowful you feel, thinking that this beautiful scenery will eventually be lost -- flowers die, and people die too.

After explorations of psychology and philosophy...

All people who study spirituality basically go through these two paths, and they all go through certain explorations of psychology and philosophy, and then they also go through attachment to religion -- because religion and philosophy have a certain connection. In the heart there was a faint expectation, as if these things could solve his problems, but they still could not grasp what exactly I was longing for, and did not thoroughly solve his problems.

The Prophet, which I translated more than ten years ago, now seems to have already revealed hints. The Seth material I encountered in 1976...

He encountered the Seth material in 1976, the very year Jane published her first Seth book.

It broke many of my preconceptions and answered many of my questions. Although many of the theories in it cannot be verified, and are even beyond imagination, the intuition deep in my heart resonates with them.

Many people have that feeling -- many people say that when reading Seth books, they cannot seem to find evidence or arguments to support them, but in their hearts they faintly resonate with them, feeling that what he says makes sense.

After returning to my country, I made an effort to translate several Seth books, while at the same time continuing to study Chinese and Western philosophy and Buddhism.

You see, Teacher Wang Jiqing studied Chinese and Western philosophy and Buddhism.

At that time, I did not know there was a New Age movement. It was just that every time I went to America, I would inevitably linger in bookstores, looking for books on metaphysics or psychology and the like to bring back and read. Among them, in the rooster paperback series, there were some with a design on the back cover of a man and a woman holding hands, with the words "New Age Series" written below -- a series of books on the search for meaning, growth, and change. This logo stirred my heart, and I began to pay attention to the so-called New Age movement.

Looking at the man and woman holding hands, it was only after I had already read many books belonging to the New Age category that I truly understood the meaning of the New Age -- he first read many books and then discovered it, and he also knew that the Seth material had already become one of its exemplary books. The Seth material is a core book of the New Age movement.

The New Age refers to the Age of Aquarius. Western mysticism holds that the present is a transitional period, preparing to enter the Age of Aquarius. Aquarius symbolizes humanitarianism. Humanity has evolved from pursuing progress on the social, material, and technological levels to an exploration that touches the spiritual dimension of the psyche. It seeks to find the common ground of humanity that transcends race, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, and certain religious sects, to recognize the common origin and equality of humanity, and thereby achieve the vision of one world and peace.

This is also the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity that leaders have repeatedly mentioned.

At the end of this century, this end-times fear hung over many people's hearts like dark clouds.

That is, around 2012 there were claims that the world would be destroyed and so on, and there would be this kind of end-times fear; in 1999, when the year 2000 arrived, there were also such prophecies of destruction. Many voices warned us that humanity was about to become extinct.

Some also prophesied that the 21st century, after the turmoil, would be a century of the psyche. If one believes that "you create your own reality" -- this is Seth's phrase, and also the slogan of the New Age -- You create your own reality, this is an important marker. If this is the viewpoint, then the future of humanity depends on the reality manifested through the shared consensus of everyone's psyche.

He means that if the New Age movement's viewpoint that "you create your own reality" holds true, then whatever we think in our hearts, we will create -- then if we are like this, this is the kind of society, this is the kind of world.

Looking around the world, with totalitarian countries gradually opening up to democracy and human rights, and everyone's concern for concepts related to humanity's common destiny such as peace, disaster relief, nonviolence, and environmental protection, and putting them into action, it can be said that the influence of the New Age is gradually expanding and strengthening.

The New Age movement is blooming in all its variety in Europe and America; related books, broadcast programs, and workshops are dazzling in abundance, while various psychics, hypnotists, gurus, and various encouragements are each excelling in their own arenas -- each taking the stage, making their appearances, each with their own promotional channels. Among them, the levels are naturally mixed, some good and some bad; after discarding the dross and retaining the essence, he briefly introduced several of the most beneficial beliefs.

He summarized some of the core ideas within the New Age movement. The New Age movement is not just the Seth series; there are many other materials within this larger framework.

The first viewpoint is that we are all part of God. The traditional God is a transcendent external force, an authoritative judge; but now the New Age movement holds that we are part of God. The traditional view is of an external force, an authoritative judge, while the New Age advocates All That Is, cosmic consciousness, life force, energy -- different teachings use different terms -- as the source and essence of all things, originally existing, unborn and undying, not coming and not going, and we are all one part of it.

He points out that the Mahaparinirvana Sutra⁵ -- this is the Buddhist Mahaparinirvana Sutra⁵, which holds a very important position in Buddhism -- states, "All sentient beings possess Buddha-nature; all sentient beings can attain Buddhahood." We are essentially undying spiritual entities, formless and imageless; this is our essence. This All That Is, Seth calls it All That Is; other people may have different terms.

Just as Zhu Xi, in his commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean, when interpreting the book Doctrine of the Mean, said, what is this All That Is in Zhu Xi's words? "Spread it out and it fills the six directions; roll it up and it withdraws and hides in the secret⁶" -- this is Zhu Xi's original words. This All That Is, when you spread it out, it is so vast that it fills the entire world; when you gather it up, it hides in places you cannot see. Buddhism once said "so great that nothing is outside it, so small that nothing is inside it" -- that is the meaning. This is spirituality; this is the nature of the psyche.

Before the essence is manifested and unfolded into the phenomenal world, in this nature without time and space, it is silent and unmoving, an emptiness containing all things. Its creative power and dream transform into the phenomenal world -- how does it transform? Actually, in Seth's Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, there is a detailed introduction to how All That Is created this phenomenal world.

And that purely spiritual part of us entered our physical bodies to experience physical reality. This spirituality is the undying essence; spirituality itself is the undying essence. The universe is an illusory, dreamlike phenomenon; our soul, that spirituality of ours, is the undying essence, while this universe of ours is the illusory, dreamlike phenomenon. This is the first core theory of the New Age movement.

The second theory is "you create your own reality." Here you must remember, you create your own reality. Many people say, then can the spiritual knowledge I have learned help my family, help others? You can only create your own reality; you must remember this. That is to say, all phenomena are created by the mind. This "phenomena" is a Buddhist term; you must not think that this "phenomena" refers to Buddhist teachings; those who study Buddhism know that this "phenomena" refers to all external things -- everything you see is called phenomena, the visible and the invisible, everything that can be perceived is phenomena. External things are all created by the mind.

We are all masters of our own destiny; we need not be manipulated by any external authority -- you must remember this. We also cannot blame heaven or others anymore, because you are not manipulated by others, and you should not blame heaven or others -- it is all created by yourself; you must take responsibility for everything about yourself. Do not blame the heavens, blame God, blame your family of origin, blame your parents, including blaming past lives going back to past lives of past lives; none of it is meaningful. Everything in the external world is only a projection of our inner world; we are here writing, directing, and acting out one drama after another of joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, partings, and reunions. This is the second viewpoint.

The third viewpoint affirms the meaning of life. This is a key point of the New Age movement -- it does not engage in nihilism, and it is not pessimistic. It regards life as a process of learning, to face the reality we ourselves have created. Life provides an opportunity for our psyche to directly experience physical reality. Amid intricate interpersonal relationships and the dazzling phenomenal world, we exercise creativity and imagination; most importantly, living an engaged life gives rise to compassion within us. Purely intellectual thinking must be combined with life experience, contemplative reflection, and direct feeling before it can brew into wisdom. How does wisdom come about? He has already said it: purely intellectual thinking must be combined with life experience, life's experiences, then contemplative reflection, then direct feeling; through this series of brewing and the fermentation of time, it can brew what you call wisdom -- this wisdom is the ultimate wisdom.

In the drama of life, one must not plunge headlong into it and become overly absorbed in the play -- since it is said this way, you still cannot become too absorbed in the play, cannot plunge in; you must also be able to detach and stand apart as an observer, only then can you eliminate ego-attachment and have hope of realizing the infinite mind. The "dual operation of compassion and wisdom" advocated by Buddhism is universally applicable -- having both compassion and wisdom. Teacher Wang Jiqing himself studied Buddhism for a long time, so many of his views are combined with Buddhism.

The fourth characteristic is the inwardness of morality. There is no heaven and hell, unless your beliefs create one for yourself; there is no personified God to judge you. Morality should not be a morality of rules, or a morality of regulations and systems -- it is not a system of rules and regulations, not a law -- but a morality of virtue. This is internal; it is a morality of inner self-restraint, not one constrained by external social laws. What he is talking about is what Seth calls natural guilt, which is the only constraint.

Mencius said "benevolence and righteousness are internal" -- Mencius believed that human nature is originally good, so benevolence and righteousness are within the heart. He said that morality is unconditional, a supreme imperative, done for its own sake, a natural guilt, because it exists within every person's cells, not subject to religion, precepts, or the regulations of state and society. What is called conscience is this inner God of ours -- the conscience he refers to here is the conscience in Wang Yangming's "extension of innate knowledge"⁷. If you have studied Wang Yangming's Neo-Confucianism, you will know that in the extension of innate knowledge, this conscience is that inner God of ours. Each of us, as long as we reflect inwardly and examine ourselves, will understand how we should act. This is self-disciplined morality.

It affirms the original goodness of human nature, and there is no original sin -- it affirms that human nature is originally good. This question of whether human nature is good or evil produced fierce debates in the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought; I will not elaborate here. One school held that human nature is originally good, and another held that human nature is originally evil; these two schools struggled for many years. So remember this: the New Age movement affirms that human nature is originally good.

There is also no fear of eternal punishment. This was very shocking to the West, which grew up under traditional Christianity. Westerners believe in original sin. He discussed that there is no original sin -- guilt and fear are only means invented by humans to control people; these two are merely means of control invented by humans, and they do not exist. Without these, people can joyfully and openly be natural, at ease, and true to themselves.

The fifth characteristic is that physical and mental health is the natural state. That is, physical and mental health is the most normal; people should naturally be physically and mentally healthy; ill health is mostly due to psychological factors. Seth has also discussed this a lot already, so there is no need to elaborate.

The sixth point is that the New Age movement considers environmental protection very important. For the survival of humanity, to protect the environment and create a better home, including establishing various organizations and preventing climate warming and so on, there is no need to elaborate on this either.

The seventh is unconditional love. This is another characteristic of the New Age movement, called unconditional love. The essence of All That Is is unconditional love — be sure to remember this. It is a commonality underlying all the concepts mentioned above.

What the Chinese call "Heaven" is the masculine principle of creation; "Earth" is the feminine principle of nourishment. Heaven is the creative — Heaven moves with vigor, ceaselessly strengthening itself; Earth is Kun, the feminine nourishment, the earth that stores and receives all things. The God of Western religion represents the masculine will, that is, the principle of creation; the Holy Spirit represents the feminine love, the principle of nourishment. All things are born from the interplay of this yin and yang.

The unconditional love advocated by the New Age is based on our divinity — because our divinity is exactly like this. We are all brothers and sisters of the same origin. Why unconditional? We ourselves are one, of the same origin. This is not clinging love, not carrying selfish desire, not carrying compulsion, not "imposing on others what you yourself desire," but rather gentle acceptance, warm care, and it begins with loving yourself. It is not something with moral compulsion, nor something with selfish desire, nor is it — we said before, "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you," and later people changed this slogan to "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you," meaning the things you yourself like, you also impose them on others — he says it is not this either. Rather, you must accept gently, very naturally, gently accept, warmly care, and begin by loving yourself.

Recognize the divinity within yourself — recognize that you originally have divinity, divinity is simply divinity, and therefore love yourself, respect yourself, and extend this love outward, like sunlight shining everywhere, unconditional, undemanding, uncritical. This love is not lacking, it flows endlessly, and giving is receiving. When you give it out, others can receive it, and you are endlessly flowing, and others can feel it immediately.

He says that within the Eastern traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, one can find expressions that secretly echo these ideas, whether Daoist or Confucian. Westerners influenced by orthodox Christianity have in recent years also been re-excavating spiritual nourishment from ancient Western mysticism and Eastern philosophy and religion, and have gained quite brilliant insights.

Sun Chunhua, Hu Yinmeng, and he — the three of them shared the same aspiration, hoping that by introducing New Age information, they could bring joy and love to friends willing to accept it. I do not know who Sun Chunhua is; Hu Yinmeng I think everyone knows — the former wife of Taiwan's Li Ao, and also a talented woman. She translated many books by Krishnamurti, and also translated many other books on spirituality, and her writing is very good. So the three of them had this common aspiration, to bring this New Age information to friends willing to accept it.

The New Age does not reject any religion, nor is it confined to any organization — it has no organizational nature at all. Up to now, the New Age movement has no formal organization anywhere in the world. If you want to find the organization of the New Age movement, who is it? Where is its headquarters? There is none. The New Age movement has no organization up to now. It does not engage in organization, nor does it engage in rituals, nor does it have any sects — which school or sect do you belong to? Are you of the Seth school, or the A Course in Miracles school? There are no sects. They are mutually compatible.

With the support and encouragement of Cao Youfang and Jian Zhizhong, he took on the task of chief editor — because this series of books, including the other books he published, was published in Taiwan by a New Age movement publishing house, which published many books in this area. Later, the reprint rights of some of these books went to Seth Culture. He selected some good foreign books to satisfy readers, and invited well-known domestic writers to share some insights on life with us.

May this series be like a living spring of love, relieving the dryness in your heart. I deeply feel that what I want to bring to everyone is the message of love, because I was once a frightened and uneasy child. When I realized that life is light and love — life equals light equals love — I longed to comfort every child swimming in fear.

This is his own statement.

Then he briefly introduces the table of contents of this book: Chapter One discusses the environment of the psyche, or the environment of the soul; Chapter Two, when you are dreaming, your soul or your psyche is awake; Chapter Three, association, emotion, and a different frame of reference; Chapter Four, the relationship between the psyche and the sexual components — it discusses psyche and sex, and also specifically addresses the issue of homosexuality; Chapter Five, the psyche is the spirit — the expression of spirit, love, and sex; Chapter Six, creativity, the language of love, images, and the birth of words — it also discusses how words came into being, how human language came about; Chapter Seven, psyche, language, and gods — he discusses how gods came about, how we created gods; Chapter Eight, dreams, creativity, language, and "Codella" — how language came about, what "Codella" is, we will discuss it when we reach that chapter; Chapter Nine, the characteristics of pure energy — the energetic psyche, the birth of events, how things happen; Chapter Ten, a game anyone can play — dreams and the formation of events, how events are formed, how to realize events in dreams; the final chapter, the universe and the psyche — the relationship between the universe and the psyche. This is the table of contents of the whole book.

Now let us look at the translator's preface written before the publication of this book, that is, the preface written by the translator herself, still written by Wang Jiqing. But this is not the general preface — the one just before was the general preface, and this one is a preface written specifically for this book.

The Nature of the Psyche, after revision, has finally been able to appear in a more refined form. During this period, it received many earnest inquiries from readers, and I believe this book will not disappoint everyone's expectations. In addition to delving deeply into the characteristics of the human psyche, and discussing in detail subjects such as consciousness, dreams, imagination, and creativity, this book also has unique insights on love and sex. It can be said to be the only treasure trove of sexual wisdom in the vast body of the Seth material. Its depth, fairness, tolerance, and compassion are rarely matched. Furthermore, this book uses an alien invasion as a metaphor, and then turns to discuss the greater inner reality of the psyche, and the psychological invasion that occurs in dreams. Seth says that unless we understand the connections among creativity, dreams, play, and the events that form our experience, we cannot understand how we form the physical events in our lives.

We will not expand on this today, because the book itself will introduce it in detail later.

Dreams are the free play of the mind. Yet this spontaneous activity is at the same time training in the art of forming actual events. Possibilities are tossed about, tried out, without physical results. Seth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of dreams, saying that the study of the dream state will give you important insights into the reality of the psyche.

From here on I will no longer correct it — the original text uses "psyche" throughout, but when you readers see the word "psyche," just think of it as referring to spirit, to the soul, and that is fine. The word "psyche" appears everywhere throughout the whole book; I will not correct it anymore, just adjust it in your own mind as you read.

In dreams, your psyche is drawn back into itself, into All That Is, and then again into your individualized identity. Seth has another brilliant description of the importance of each individual consciousness. He says, as you know, each person has certain abilities and characteristics, and you experience reality through the mold of those abilities, but you also stamp the universe with your own special uniqueness.

In Chapter Nine, Seth says that each chapter of this book is written in such a way that the concepts presented will activate your own intuition and open the pathways between your dreaming and waking states.

This is something he will discuss in Chapter Nine.

As always, as each book draws near its end, you can especially feel Seth's wisdom and love, accompanied by tremendous energy, flowing directly into your heart. The final chapter of this book, "The Universe and the Psyche," also moved me deeply.

Then he excerpts part of the content of the final chapter:

The greater truth and creativity must be such that consciousness itself cannot perceive all of its own purposes, yet it continually discovers its own nature through its own manifestations.

What does this mean? He is saying that consciousness itself cannot perceive all of its own purposes. If you ask consciousness what its purpose is, what the meaning of its existence is, if you ask consciousness itself, it cannot tell you. But it can only discover its own nature through continual manifestation. The nature of consciousness can only be discovered in the process of its creation and manifestation. Therefore, in your life, in your tasks, you must create and manifest — manifest your consciousness, manifest the things of your spirit. Only through this way can you know its nature; apart from this, there is no other way.

There is a design and a designer so combined — one within, one without — that it is impossible to separate them. You cannot separate the designer from their designs. And the creator is also within its creations, and the created things themselves are also endowed with the ability to create.

This is very magical, and by magical I mean this thing is truly hard to express in language: you are within this world you have created, you yourself have creativity, and you are constantly creating; you are the designer of this world, and you are also within this world, within the world you yourself designed; and at the same time you yourself still have creativity, you yourself are still constantly creating. This is a mutually nested relationship — you are both within yourself and outside yourself. What is within yourself? That is, you are both inside this painting, and you are also the person outside painting it. You can understand it figuratively this way, but the actual process is a state where inside and outside are not separated.

Every imaginable point within the universe is conscious. Any point in the universe has consciousness. Therefore there is an invisible universe, and the visible or objective universe springs forth from this invisible universe.

When the inner pulsations of the invisible universe reached a certain intensity and spontaneously gave birth to the entire physical system, your universe began to exist everywhere at once.

Be sure to remember, it is simultaneous — your universe began to exist everywhere at once. This is truly hard to explain clearly in a sentence or two; in Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment he introduces it in detail: what kind of pulsation, how it reaches such a frequency, how it can give birth to such a series of physical systems.

His answer to the origin of the universe and matter lies in a realm that you largely ignore.

That is, many people wonder how the universe and matter originated, and the answer lies in the realm you ignore — that is, in the very realm you consider the least scientific. Precisely in the places scientists consider unscientific, there lies hidden the answer to the origin of the universe and matter.

On the greater level of certainty, the universe has neither beginning nor end. On that level there are no contradictions.

The psyche — that is, the spirit — is also without beginning or end.

Seth finally discusses human nature, still insisting that no matter what outward evils a person may have, behind them there is a basic good intent.

Good Intent, the Hope of Humanity

This is one of Seth's most core viewpoints. That good intent may be confused, poorly executed, entangled in contradictory beliefs, strangled by the bloody hands of war and murderers.

That intent may be confused, poorly executed, entangled in contradictory beliefs, strangled by the bloody hands of war and murderers. That good intent, however, no one can lose. It represents the hope of humanity, and it has always been lit, like the brilliant inner light within each member of the human race. And that good intent is passed down from generation to generation, and its light is far stronger than any hatred that has been handed down.

He says this good essence is real. He says, if the psyche is to have any peace, you must necessarily believe that there is something of innate good intent within humanity. If you do not believe this, and you still want to attain this peace of the psyche, it will never be possible.

Seth says, we must not confuse the person with his actions.

We must not confuse the person with his actions.

To identify humanity with its worst creations is to deliberately nitpick an artist and then condemn him as beyond saving. To do so is also to condemn yourself as beyond saving.

What he means is, you should not merely look at a person's actions; you should observe the real person behind those actions — the one who has good intent. If you only see the evil deeds he has done, and then judge that this person is no good, and humanity is no good — many people extend this further, saying that human morality as a whole is deteriorating, our society is no good, humanity is no good, and it is bound to head toward destruction, and so on. If you think that way, then you consider it beyond saving; and if you consider yourself beyond saving, then you yourself are beyond saving as well. That is one viewpoint. So his point is, can you see the good behind these evil deeds? If you can see the good through the evil deeds, then you can truly understand why these people do these things.

Regarding the question of good and evil, he has had special sessions on it, and I have also talked about it many times.

Each Person's Unique Creative Posture

Seth says that each person possesses a unique creative posture in time and space.

Each person possesses a unique creative posture in time and space.

Why does he use the word "posture" to describe this? Because every person is different; it is a one-of-a-kind, unique posture. This is a vivid metaphor: because if time and space exist simultaneously, if they are frozen in place -- for example, if time and space were to stop right now, the posture in which each person comes to a halt is your creative posture.

Only when your own posture is put to use and set in motion can you help others to the best of your ability.

Only when you bring your own abilities into play, when you allow the energy of the universe to achieve creative manifestation through yourself, can you help others to the best of your ability.

To anticipate danger, or to imaginatively take on the troubles of others, robs you of the very energy you could use to help them. By dwelling negatively on what may happen in the future, you only reinforce their misfortune and destroy your own posture.

If you focus on the future, or if you become obsessed with things that might happen in the future -- things that could destroy humanity or destroy the world -- then you simply destroy your own posture. Your creativity cannot be brought into play at all; you negate yourself.

Since you are still alive, you are not being nourished. The vitality wasted in deeper bouts of depression is often greater than the energy used in creative pursuits.

What does he mean by this? In your deeper bouts of depression -- the kind of depression we experience in everyday life, feeling that there is no way out, feeling so powerless, feeling that fate cannot be resisted, that society is so unfair -- in this regard, the vitality you waste is often far greater than what you normally use in creative endeavors. Rather than worrying about things that may never happen, rather than wasting energy on depression and fear about the future, why not go create something?

He says, you are part of All That Is. The universe is inclined in your direction.

The universe is inclined in your direction. It gives; it rings with vitality.

You are a part of this All That Is. In other words, whatever you want to do, the universe will come to help you. But why don't you go? Why not create, why not do? It will give to you; All That Is will give to you; it will ring with its vitality.

Finally, Seth also assures us that the prophecies of destruction that humanity fears so desperately will not come true in our era. This is what humanity wants to hear.

A Real Preface

Then, he said, as always, I would finally like to thank Chen Jianzhi and Xu Tiansheng for their careful proofreading. These are two prefaces written by Wang Jiqing: one is a general preface, which appears in all the New Age books; the second is a separate preface specifically for this book, The Nature of the Psyche. Below is an author's preface, that is, a preface written by the author herself, written by Jane Roberts herself.

Let us see what Jane says. She says:

By the time I write this preface, I have already forgotten many nameless professions and countless nights. During that time, Seth -- that is, the personality I become in a trance state -- dictated this book. Only the notes my husband Robert Butts took during the sessions tell me what we did during the production of this book. One thing is certain: on the nights of the sessions, I entered a trance state, and as Seth -- that is, in his identity as Seth -- I dictated these chapters. The victories or defeats of any given day may vanish without a trace, but the starlight of those nights is contained within these pages, and thus endures.

You see, Jane's writing is really of a very high level. With just a few strokes, she sketches the experience of transmitting Seth's material through countless days and nights in such a poetic and picturesque way. The starlight of those nights is contained within these pages, and thus endures. A writer is a writer -- you have to give her credit.

How the Seth Material Came to Be

Then she asked herself:

Yet is Seth really a personality of my trance state? A resident of a timeless psychic realm who transmits his information into our time-stained world; or am I a trance personality of Seth's, living in space and time, almost forgetting my heritage. Perhaps I will never know, yet my continuing experience shows me that Seth's personality is stamped upon the sessions and upon his books, and perhaps in a unique way also upon his own consciousness. Unless I become Seth, completely and utterly become Seth, altering the very arrangement of my own psyche; unless Seth smiles and opens his mouth to speak, there is no Seth material. Therefore, although there were only two of us in the living room during the sessions, it could well be said that we were not alone.

She said she was well aware that some evenings were meant for holding our regular Seth sessions, and for certain reasons they did not take place.

Perhaps she felt low in energy, or was sitting at her desk writing her own work, or perhaps an unexpected guest arrived, or she ran into a lovely person and was interrupted.

In fact, she was quite concerned about the swift passage of time and the pressure of preparing Seth's books for publication. Because Jane was a person who used her time very efficiently.

While Seth was dictating this book, Rob was typing Seth's earlier work, The "Unknown" Reality, in two volumes, and adding countless notes in order to connect Seth's material with other earlier books.

When we get to The "Unknown" Reality, you will see that Rob did his utmost to add a great many notes in that book. Because Seth covered many concepts in it, and many of those concepts were not so easy to understand, Rob added notes everywhere to make it easier for everyone to understand, and those notes took him an especially long time and a great deal of energy.

I know that on some session evenings, Rob had no time to do that work, and the next day he still had to type up the most recent session. As for me, all I needed to do was become Seth.

She said many people wrote in to criticize the dramatic nature of our sessions. Many people said, you must be putting on a performance, and what is this Seth business anyway, isn't it just your own split personality? She said:

Indeed, the whole affair is an extremely thought-provoking psychological drama. But most people do not consider how much time and energy it takes to keep up with Seth's seemingly inexhaustible creativity. The notes have to be typed, and there are all the various steps of preparing the manuscript. Nor do they consider that, leaving aside the many distractions that life itself presents, simply keeping the Seth sessions going requires a certain kind of persistence.

It truly was not easy. Keeping this up for twenty years, as you can imagine, was not a matter of a day or two.

Rob was typing Seth's other books—such as Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, and The "Unknown" Reality—along with his own writings, and he did almost all of the preparation work for publication. When Seth finished this book, Rob was still working on The "Unknown" Reality, and then Seth almost immediately began another book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. During this time, I was also writing my own books and preparing those works for publication. So Seth certainly did not slow down my own creativity.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this session, there were twenty-five books written in all, and the Seth books accounted for eleven or twelve of them, with more than half being Jane's own books. But she said:

As I stare at the notes for this book, I still wish Seth could type too.

She added an exclamation mark. What she meant was that she really felt sorry for her husband Rob, who typed for this work day after day, typing endlessly, typing without stop. So she said to Seth, since you can transmit, why not just type it all out directly, and spare my husband from typing any more.

So I think back to those unremembered trance moments, viewing them from a different vantage point, and I am almost startled by a simple thought that had not occurred to me before: those trance sessions, it turns out, had productive value.

She suddenly realized that those evenings when she spoke for Seth, those trance times, actually had productive value. And at this point, she had not yet written The Magical Approach, so you can see that Seth later wrote The Magical Approach specifically in response to these thoughts of Jane's.

We produce results here in the three-dimensional world of time. That possessing consciousness—that is, Seth—no matter what he knows, no matter what you call him, knows what he is doing.

Whether you call him Seth or whether you think he is just Jane's second personality, that possessing consciousness, whatever you call him, knows what he is doing—he keeps writing books.

I cannot help but wonder, as I smile as Seth and hand myself—that is, hand him—a can of beer, what sort of sight I must be in Rob's eyes.

Jane was a heavy smoker and also a heavy drinker, so at this time she had a cigarette in one hand and a can of beer in the other, leaning back in her recliner, her rocking chair, speaking for Seth. And Rob, beside her, was taking shorthand in a notebook the whole time—normal recording could not keep up with Seth's dictation speed. Jane said, I really don't know what kind of sight I must be in my husband's eyes.

I am certain there is a memory of the trance state, but my ordinary memory cannot recall those trance sessions. As for what happened in my normal daily life on those days, I cannot easily bring it to mind either.

She was already in a kind of dazed state at this point, because she was often out of body, often in trance, so she could not remember ordinary daily life very clearly either. She was in a state of total creative flow. You can imagine that from 1963, when she began publishing books, plus the nine volumes of The Early Sessions that Seth later produced, the four volumes of ESP class sessions, and the seven volumes of private sessions, that makes twenty books, and adding the twenty-five books mentioned earlier, that means from 1963 to her death in 1984, in roughly twenty-one years, through Seth and through Jane, they produced forty-five books altogether⁸. Stack forty-five books together, and they would almost reach Jane's height⁹. The average woman is only about five feet tall, and Jane was not tall. So you can see that Jane could also be said to have books equal to her own height—we often say of someone with great scholarly achievement that their books equal their own height, meaning their books are as tall as they are.

The Mystery of the Trance State

She said:

In our terms, because regardless of everything I have just said, these sessions themselves still seem to keep on existing. They seem to contain an energy that comes alive within Seth's words. Therefore they belong to the future just as much as they belong to the past.

Seth said that this material is as if alive, as if it possesses energy, belonging to the future just as it belongs to the past. Here he touched upon the simultaneity of past and future. And in fact this is truly the case -- the Seth material continues to help countless people even today.

Although the words were slow enough for Rob to take notes, so that he could write them down, they were all spoken with originality, spontaneous and resonant. They were part of a living performance.

I hope readers will not forget this point -- what are these words you are seeing, these cold, lifeless words? They are what Seth transmitted through Jane every single night. Jane was like a dramatic performer, speaking with passion and force, while Rob sat beside her, frantically writing it all down.

They were pronounced in Seth's peculiar accent, accompanied by gestures.

You must never forget, when you see these words, how they were recorded and transmitted.

Stack after stack of trance endpoints, these trance times, here they are, this material, these books, here they are. But if I was in a trance state, was Seth also in a trance state?

I was indeed alert, active, and responsive, deeply concerned with individual people and with the world at large. Yet I still felt that during the sessions only a portion of his consciousness was here, the portion that expressed itself through me. Therefore, whatever the nature of Seth's own present experience may be, his performance in our world only hints at a psychological complexity far beyond what we can currently understand.

Let us set aside for now the question of what space, what dimension, what world Seth lives in. The mere fact that he projected a portion of his own consciousness into Jane's mind to transmit these books through her -- this alone reveals that the complexity of our psyche exceeds our imagination. One personality can pass through another personality, two personalities united within one body, and then speak of yet another matter -- this very fact foreshadows the complexity of the psyche.

The Bisexual Nature

In The Nature of the Psyche, Seth first discusses human sexuality in his published books.

In The Nature of the Psyche, Seth first discusses human sexuality in his published books, exploring the relationship between sex and the individual and collective psyche, and connecting sex with its spiritual and biological sources.

When it comes to sex, there is certainly a biological factor involved -- without biology there would be no sex to speak of. But sex itself is also related to spirituality, so in this book Seth specifically explores the sources of sex in both the spiritual and psychological aspects, connecting the two together.

As most of our readers know, Seth called me Ruburt and my husband Joseph early on in the sessions. He then explained that these were the names of our entities. I was somewhat amused that Seth gave me a male name and referred to me as "he." When I taught classes, Seth also gave many other students the names of their entities. There were many lively discussions about names and gender.

He gives a female a male name, or gives a male a female name, so we find that this approach is meant to accommodate our rather narrow concept of gender.

In this book, Seth makes it very clear: the psyche is neither male nor female. The psyche itself has no gender; it is merely a repository, a treasure house from which we can draw out the attributes of gender. You can draw out male or female attributes from it, but it itself is neither male nor female, without male and female, and one could also say it is both male and female, both female and male.

Seth's concept of bisexuality is far broader than what the usual term suggests.

He emphasizes the bisexual nature of humanity. Seth emphasizes that every person is bisexual, because your psychic essence is bisexual. Although you manifest your female or male side biologically or psychologically, he says that in your essence you are bisexual, and he stresses the importance of bisexuality in both the spiritual and biological aspects.

Why bisexual? This is consistent with Jung's psychological view -- Jung believed that every person has both a male spirit and a female spirit dwelling within. But Seth's concept of bisexuality is far broader than what the usual term suggests. It is not the combination of male and female as we ordinarily understand it; it is much broader than that. In his view, the concept of bisexuality is the basic source of our definitions of gender. What is the definition itself? And how much of it is learned after birth? At the moment you are born, your surrounding environment, your parents tell you you are a girl, you are a boy -- how much of this is told to you after birth? Or is it your innate self's own cognition of gender? Is it a natural cognition, or a cultural cognition acquired after birth? Seth explores these questions. Furthermore, he connects the discussion of sex with the birth of language and the hidden nature of the divine -- he extends it into such a broad domain.

Yet the psyche is not merely a container for gender attributes.

The psyche is not merely a container for gender attributes; it also contains hidden abilities and characteristics, which are then triggered by external stimulation.

In addition to containing both sexes, the psyche also contains your hidden abilities and characteristics, but these hidden characteristics must be triggered by external stimulation, brought forth by the external environment.

So in Chapter 3 of this book, Seth says:

Mathematical formulas are certainly not printed on your brain, but they are inherent in the structure of the brain, and are implied within its existence.

Interesting, isn't it -- mathematical formulas are not printed on your brain, but the structure of your brain implies the existence of these mathematical formulas within it.

According to Seth, our own desires, focus, and purposes determine what kind of inner data we draw from the endless field of available knowledge. We have an inexhaustible treasure house of knowledge, so what is the principle by which we draw data from it? It is based on your desires, focus, and purposes. Because all knowledge exists simultaneously; the knowledge is all there. But it is not like dry data or records, not like the data and information in a computer; rather, it is brought alive by the consciousness that perceives it. This data is not dead -- when you use your desires, focus, and purposes to draw out the knowledge you need from your inner treasure house, this knowledge itself is activated.

The Treasure House of Inner Knowledge

The minds of the past and the future are open to us. We cannot obtain the future, we cannot obtain the past, but Seth tells you that the minds of the past and the future — the thoughts of those times — you can all obtain them; they are all open to you. At least their contents are open, their records are open. So you can go back to the past, and you can also go to the future, to communicate with the mind you had at that time. That is not a parasitic relationship, but a lively relationship of mutual give-and-take. It is not the kind of relationship where the past is, the present is parasitic within the past, the future is parasitic within the present — rather, the present, the past, and the future are all vividly communicating with one another, mutually giving and taking — you help me, I help you, you give to me, you influence me, I influence you. This completely breaks our human understanding and cognition: the present can change the past, the past changes the future, the future changes the present. It is entirely interconnected, not dead — you must remember, it is alive.

For example, if in a past life you were a painter, you can draw out your painting ability from the hidden skills of that painter in the previous life. Yet in this life you have new breakthroughs and new expansions, and the breakthroughs and expansions of this life are not unobtainable to the previous life — not because it has not happened yet, because it is a matter of the future, but it can directly influence the you of the past. Very interesting, right? That is how it is. So you see, sometimes this painter, in different periods, his painting style will suddenly change — at a certain period his painting style suddenly changes, and he himself does not even know why. Sometimes that is how it happens. I am just giving this simple example to tell you that all of these are alive, in this relationship of mutual give-and-take.

Within this, the knowledge of each period enriches the other eras of history.

Seth has made this matter clear to you, broken it apart and kneaded it fine to tell you that this truly exists. This is Seth's greatest importance and contribution — it breaks the limitations of time and space.

Such a statement has astonishing implications for education. Schools, besides teaching mechanical material, should also make us as acquainted as possible with all kinds of disciplines, because these act like external triggering mechanisms that will bring out natural inner knowledge and develop skills that are waiting to be activated by appropriate stimulation from the outer world.

From the perspective of education, you should let children become acquainted with all kinds of knowledge as much as possible, because this external knowledge is like a trigger — it will trigger the hidden potential within each person's inner heart that they themselves do not even know about, and stimulate it into expression. Now, Western education has made use of part of this, but has not fully unfolded it. Our domestic education is even more rigid, not wishing children to have too many opportunities to read books outside the curriculum, all of it confined to school or the gaokao, the joint examination, the general examination, and so on — the examination subjects that must be studied in order to enter university. But Seth says this is wrong; you should fully expand it.

Paul Cezanne and William James's¹⁰ Worldviews

Suddenly, while Seth was dictating this book, focusing intently on the potentials of the psyche and his reception of the material, Jane's own experiences seemed, as usual, to be used to corroborate his theories. For example, just as Seth had begun to discuss the nature of the psyche, Jane suddenly introduced, through channeling, a book on the philosophy, philosophy of art, and techniques of art, which he claimed came from Paul Cezanne. Cezanne was a well-known French painter, born in the 1830s and died in 1906¹¹, at the beginning of this century. And as for this book, Yuting in our group -- the one who handles the transcripts -- has herself been transmitting Seth material for many years now, and she has already translated this book in its entirety.

Seth began discussing the question of worldviews in The "Unknown" Reality. In short, a so-called worldview is a living psychological picture of an individual's life, together with its knowledge and experience, which remains alive and responsive long after the individual's physical life itself has passed. That is to say, the material Jane received did not come from Cezanne himself, but from Cezanne's worldview. On this question, Seth has a dedicated discussion in The "Unknown" Reality: after each person dies, their own worldview continues to exist in a living way, and if a person has psychic ability, they can perceive it and even communicate with it. But what is communicated with is not the psyche itself, not Cezanne himself, but his worldview.

Jane said:

Actually, while writing that Cezanne book, I felt like a secretary, just taking down psychic dictation. But what wondrous dictation it was. For the manuscript not only displayed the fascinating appearance of a genius at work, but also provided specialized knowledge about the profession of art. Because Cezanne was a famous painter, while I, at best, am a dilettante when it comes to painting -- that is, just an amateur enthusiast of painting. Seth himself wrote the preface, the preface for this book.

In that same session, Seth first began dictating the material for The Nature of the Psyche, and then immediately shifted to the preface for Cezanne. For example, the book The Worldview of Paul Cezanne was published by this publisher in 1977¹².

Just as Jane had completed it, another similar experience occurred. Just as Seth was about to finish The Nature of the Psyche, the posthumous journal of an American philosopher -- The Worldview of William James¹⁰ -- arrived in the same manner, like psychic dictation. Only, Cezanne's world specialized in art, whereas James's worldview was broader, and he had profound commentary on our world since James's death. He also discussed American history, and questions concerning soul studies, psychology, and democracy.

According to Seth, any of us can tune in to this kind of additional material. Seth said this is not an ability unique to Jane; everyone has this ability. In The "Unknown" Reality, he continually teaches you how to adjust your frequency, to adjust your frequency across different worlds, different fields of consciousness, and different levels of consciousness. If you adjust it, you can receive it. But we will receive according to our own desires and intentions; desires and intentions are what determine it. For example, Jane's interest in art, and Rob's own appreciation of Cezanne's paintings, opened up the Cezanne book; while Jane's own curiosity about William James¹⁰, and Rob's appreciation of his work, brought about the James manuscript.

Inner data often resides within our minds, but it passes through the filtering of our individual psyche and is colored by our lives, so that we often do not recognize its source at all.

It is too close to our own lives, often it is exactly what we are thinking about, so you do not recognize where it came from, and it feels like the feeling of "what you think about by day, you dream about by night." You do not feel that it comes from a wondrous place; you feel as though it is the result of your daytime thinking.

Sometimes this happens in dreams or in inspiration. For example, an inventor may receive a concept from the future, and an archaeologist may make a discovery because of receiving data from the past.

As we have said, when scientists invent things, sometimes it is your future self or some future information that gives you the inspiration, but at the time you simply feel that it is because you have thought about this matter so deeply that the inspiration burst forth. For example, Tesla -- many of the things he invented still seem utterly wondrous even today; for example, da Vinci -- the things he invented in his own era are also wondrous things when viewed today. Da Vinci and Tesla are both widely acknowledged as two people with notable psychic ability; if you are not familiar with them, you can look into the lives of these two people.

An archaeologist discovers an ancient tomb or some ancient objects, and Seth says, perhaps he obtained data from the past, but he himself does not know it. This so-called going back to the past is not his physical body going back to the past, but rather his obtaining, through various means, some knowledge or data from the past, but he does not feel it.

Our inner knowledge usually corresponds so closely with the matters that currently concern us that we seldom recognize its source.

It comes from within, from other times and spaces, and yet through the psychological lifeline of the psyche to which each of us is connected, it provides a reliable, constant stream of data for the individual and for humanity. It is as if your inner self is connected to a network; as long as you connect to it, you can obtain all kinds of information from the past and the future.

Seth discussed in depth the experiences of early humans, and the different organizations of perception that were prevalent at that time, and emphasized that humanity has always been able to access inner data. Therefore, the sources of human knowledge have never depended solely on the external environment.

According to Seth, it is from this body of inner knowledge that our systematized, objective, data-storing social processes emerged.

Our human society emerged from the knowledge of this inner data. He also discussed this same question later in The Magical Approach: each of us has inherently complete knowledge, and each person can individually develop a human civilization. For example, even if you were the only person, you would still have the ability to develop the entirety of human civilization, because the knowledge you possess is all within you; when you need it, it will emerge.

Possibility and Free Will

So what follows from this?

In evolutionary change, the ability to foresee is necessarily involved, so that the various species can prepare in the present for the changes that must be made now and in the future.

That is to say, all species will prepare for present or future changes, because there is a certain ability to foresee within this process.

In all these discussions, Seth emphasizes possibility as always, saying that it plays an important role in individual and human development. Possibility represents the foundation of free will -- this is the foundation of free will. He understands the possible actions of the psyche's private dream experiments, while the imagination of humanity's collective dreams provides an inner tool by which humanity chooses global events. You as an individual practice in dreams the things you may want to manifest in actuality in the future; and the same is true on the collective level -- the human collective has a shared dream, and within that shared dream it experiments with what to manifest and observes what consequences follow. All of this is accomplished by humanity within the collective dream.

The psyche, the spirit, is private, and the soul is also private. But generally speaking, every soul contains a pathway to the public soul. Every soul is independent, private, and protected, yet at the same time every soul has a passage leading to the common soul. The psyche itself is both shared and independent. This thing seems to be a paradox in itself, but that is how it is.

So in spiritual matters it is often said -- and Seth has also said -- that truth is hidden within paradox and contradiction. If you cannot accept paradox and contradiction, then you are not suited to study spiritual things. If you believe that a single logic can explain all problems and cannot accept any contradiction or paradox existing within them, then you are only suited to study science, not suited to study spirituality. The most typical paradox is in the Buddhist Heart Sutra, which says form is emptiness and emptiness is form -- this is a paradox; form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form. Many, many things in Buddhism are paradoxes, yet the truth lies within this paradox.

As Seth makes very clear, this book is not a dry treatise or dissertation on the psyche. He is not discussing what the soul is or what the psyche is, but rather the book is constructed in such a way that it enables every reader to make more direct contact with his or her own personal psyche. It is not a dissertation, not a lengthy discourse telling you what the psyche actually is, but rather it lets each person, while reading this book, touch and make contact with his or her own psyche, his or her own inner psyche. The book also contains many exercises that enable each person to recognize that deeper part of himself or herself, that is, the inner self, and invites readers to explore their own concepts and experiences.

For example, beliefs that distort gender can inhibit the progress of the psyche or spirit. Seth thoroughly discusses this kind of issue, and also talks about the question of male and female homosexuality, touching on its private and social implications. How broadly Seth discusses this. He was extremely eager to provide this particular material to readers, because many people wrote in asking Seth's views on sex. This wish, combined with Seth's seemingly inexhaustible creativity, led them to make a decision: from now on, the notes accompanying Seth's books will be far fewer.

Starting with this book, the notes become fewer and fewer. Because in the previous book, The "Unknown" Reality, there were far too many notes, sprawling into two volumes, and one can see that the notes occupied a large portion. In the two volumes of The "Unknown" Reality, Rob attempted to connect Seth's views on various subjects and trace them back to his earlier books, including the unpublished The Early Sessions material, showing the background of how those books were written -- why a certain viewpoint or concept appeared in The "Unknown" Reality, where it came from, and what Seth had previously said about such questions. He made many such notes. Now, they said, we will write down general notes on the sessions, but will no longer make annotations. Readers must search on their own, in their leisure time, and connect them with the earlier Seth books -- as long as you are willing to search, you can find the thread of the theory's development yourself, why Seth proposed this viewpoint and where it originated. He said if you are willing to search, go search on your own; Rob and I will no longer write these notes for you.

Proof of Creativity

As I write this preface, Seth has already almost halfway completed the book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. That book will show how individual beliefs become a public practice. Jane has already prepared the publication of Yima's education, that is, The Magical Approach, as well as the further education of The Oversoul Seven trilogy. The publication of both books has already been arranged, so both of these books were also published in 1979.

All these books by Seth and by Jane herself truly prove the vast creativity of the psyche. The spiritual creativity of each of you is immense, so none of us should be limited by ourselves. Many people ask me why I encourage everyone to share their own experiences and to write all kinds of things. Many people have also started their own channels, abroad on YouTube, or domestically on Bilibili, on Bilibili, and many others on other channels, all transmitting and creating. This is an ability that everyone is born with; it is not that only certain people can do it and others cannot. Just look at Jane as a typical example: before she came into contact with Seth, she had only published one novel, but after she came into contact with Seth, her creative power became extremely strong. For one person to publish a full forty-five books is not something an ordinary person can do, and in just a short period of twenty years, averaging two books a year.

To perceive and utilize inner data and abilities with it, just as one utilizes the data of the outer environment.

Jane herself said, you must understand that your inner creativity is very strong, and you must learn to use it to utilize your inner data, just as you use your outer data, and then you can continuously obtain your creativity.

She said, writing books is my specialty. Just as for other people, this creativity may be shown in family relationships, or in emotional understanding, or in other arts, sciences, sports, or simply in raising the quality of life to a newer, richer level. These are all forms of creative expression. What Jane ultimately meant was, what I am good at is writing books, but you should develop your own creativity in every aspect of life, not that each of you should go write books or each of you should go study Seth, no -- these are all creative expressions.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Wikipedia, "The Oversoul Seven Trilogy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oversoul_Seven_Trilogy) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Wikipedia, "Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E5%A4%A7%E8%88%AC%E6%B6%85%E6%A7%83%E7%BB%8F_(%E5%A4%A7%E4%B9%98)) ↩ ↩²

6. Source: Zhu Xi, "Collected Commentaries on the Four Books: Commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean" (https://ctext.org/si-shu-zhang-ju-ji-zhu/zhong-yong-zhang-ju1) ↩

7. Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Wang Yangming (Wang Shou-Jen)" (https://iep.utm.edu/wangyang/) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. This claim could not be verified. ↩

10. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "William James | Life, Books, Psychology, Contribution, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-James) ↩ ↩² ↩³

11. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Paul Cézanne | Biography, Post-Impressionist Painter, Still Life Artist, Paintings, Mont Sainte-Victoire, Bathers, & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Cezanne) ↩

12. Source: Jane Roberts, "The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation" (1977, Prentice-Hall) (https://archive.org/details/worldviewofpaulc00robe) ↩