Mike's commentary · The Nature of the Psyche, Chapter 7

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 block quotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter revolves around the relationship between psyche, language, and the gods. Seth uses language as a metaphor to show that personal identity, the psyche, and the divine are mutually dependent: a person writes and reads themselves at the same time; the physical world and the divine, life and death, imply each other. Everyday language excels at making distinctions, but it struggles to describe the psyche; imagination, emotion, and dreams come closer to the language of the psyche. The psyche is constantly in a state of becoming, personal identity is indelible, and it merges with the consciousness of all things.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Spirit and gods are constantly in a state of becoming; questions about God can be turned back upon your own psyche.
• Who you are is defined by what you are not; personal identity depends upon other existences to be established, yet the sense of identity is inviolable.
• Everyday language speaks of separation and distinction; imagination, emotion, and dreams are closer to the language of the psyche.
• The physical world and God, life and death, imply each other; to deny personal validity is to deny God.
• Human consciousness intermingles with the consciousness of animals, plants, minerals, and others; the body constantly exchanges matter with the earth.

Main Text

Chapter 7: Psyche, Language, and Gods

The title of this chapter is "Psyche, Language, and Gods." He used the term "shen qi" here. "Qi" refers to earthly gods, while "shen" generally refers to heavenly gods, so "shen qi" means the union of heavenly and earthly gods, referring to gods in general. The original text uses a lowercase "g" for god. This is the title of Chapter 7.

This chapter corresponds to this part of the original book. The session began on Monday, June 14, 1976, at 9:17 p.m. Seth did not dictate the book in this session, but instead discussed the relationship between the use of X-rays and health, but we hope that one day this session can be published so that everyone can understand how Seth views X-rays and health.

Let us look at the content of this session. Jane was having trouble with her own body. You can see that by 1976, Jane's body was already quite uncomfortable. This spring, she began to enjoy long stretches of physical and mental relaxation. So you can see that starting from March, April, and May of this year, the sessions became very loose, often taking breaks of one or two weeks, and this was related to her body improving. So she did not have a session all of last week, and she was following another series of interesting events.

For example, last night, while she was lying in bed, there was a very deep healing session. She said she was absorbed for a full two hours in a state close to ecstasy, a wave of ecstasy along with the feeling of healing effects surging through her. I reminded her this morning to record this, and then add the new healing sensations afterward, so intense that she could not concentrate on doing it, and she only wrote one or two paragraphs. So Jane was absorbed in this ecstatic, post-healing joy, and she did not write much.

So tonight, before the session, Jane was quite detached. She did not care whether she wrote the book or gave the session or not; right now she was absorbed in this joy and the feeling after recovery. But she decided to give it a try. Tonight Seth still came as promised to hold the session.

Ruburt continues to recover, and we will begin the next chapter. The title of the next chapter is: Psyche, Language, and Gods. "Gods" should be lowercase.

He said that almost any question you have about the uppercase God can just as reasonably be asked of your psyche, of your inner self, or of your soul, and it would not matter. The uppercase "God" refers to All That Is, the universe, the heavens, the one who created this world.

At the beginning of this book, we also discussed the difference between psyche and soul: the manifestation of psyche in us as human beings can be replaced by the word "soul," but "soul" is not enough to cover all the extensions of the word "psyche," so I insist on using the word "psyche." The more accurate translation of the word Seth used should be "soul," but why did he not use "soul"? As I explained earlier, because the word "soul" carries too many human misinterpretations or connotations attached to it—the moment you say "soul," all sorts of ideas come into your mind—so he tried to avoid using the word "soul."

He said:

Any question you have about God, you can ask of your own psyche, or ask of your soul. You seem to feel that you know yourself, you feel that you understand yourself quite well, that you are not unfamiliar with yourself. But your knowledge of the existence of your psyche rests entirely on faith.

Here Seth is being very frank: your knowledge of the existence of your psyche, of the existence of your soul, rests entirely on faith, because you cannot see it or touch it at all; it all depends on your strong faith.

At most, you simply consider this psyche that you know to be yourself. And then you complain that you never really knew yourself, that you are not familiar with the part of yourself that is the psyche. When you say "I want to find myself," you usually think that there is a complete, finished version of you somewhere, and that you have placed it somewhere and have not found it. When you think about wanting to find God, you usually think in the same way.

He thinks that you also consider God to be a finished, perfect, flawless being, like a person or something that exists like God, and then you feel that you simply have not found him yet.

Session 779

You are always right beside yourself.

You actually have never left yourself; you have not gone anywhere. Do you really need to search everywhere to find yourself? We have a joke in China called "riding a donkey while looking for a horse" -- you are riding on yourself and still looking for yourself, saying, "Where am I? Where am I?"

You are always becoming yourself.

You are always becoming yourself. From another angle, your own patterns gather together from all directions and make up who you are.

You cannot be other than yourself. It is impossible for you to be other than yourself; you can only be yourself. Biologically, mentally, and spiritually, you are obviously different from all other people. In every aspect of body, mind, and spirit, you are independent and unique, different from everyone else. And no cloak of traditional custom can cover that indescribable uniqueness.

You cannot use the cloak of traditional worldly views, saying, "I am a teacher, I am a father" -- you cannot use these cloaks to cover up or conceal that indescribable, one-of-a-kind uniqueness of yours. That part you call yourself -- you cannot use these worldly titles to make your uniqueness less obvious. It cannot be done. You are a one-of-a-kind existence. Since you cannot hide your uniqueness and distinctiveness, you cannot become someone else; you can only be yourself. The point of this dialogue is: you do not need to go looking for who you are; you are yourself.

In certain respects, physically you are a molecular language that communicates with others.

In other words, your body, physically speaking, is made up of molecules. Let us not talk about the atomic level or lower levels for now; let us just talk about the level of human cognition: molecules form cells, small molecules form large molecules, large molecules form proteins, and there are all kinds of bodily structures -- cells form organs, and organs form your final body. It is as if you are speaking an accepted language -- these molecules compose your physical body in their own particular way. Just like a language, its basic elements are basic vocabulary and letters, and the combinations of letters become the endless variations of language. And although these molecules may be relatively few in kind -- earlier sessions talked about the relationship between molecules and language -- there may be only a few kinds of molecules: water molecules, the most basic amino acids in the body, and so on. The combinations of these basic molecules become the various tissues and organs of your body.

But the way they are organized is different, and that is why each person is essentially different physically and bodily. Just as 26 letters can form endlessly varied, infinite language, these fixed numbers of molecules compose a one-of-a-kind you.

It carries a biological accent.

This accent is like a regional accent. Because each body itself has its own flavor and meaning, each physical body has its own unique biological nature, so when molecules compose your physical body according to a specific biological nature, it carries the flavor of your body itself, its own characteristics. That is why it carries a regional accent, a kind of accent. If you compare your body to a molecular language, then the molecular language of your body carries a thick accent that belongs only to you.

When you ask what my psyche or my soul is, or who I am, you are searching for the meaning of yourself beyond the self you know.

When you ask "Who am I?" or "What is my psyche, what is my soul?" you are certainly looking for that you that lies beyond the range of what you already know.

You know and do not know God in the same way that you know and do not know yourself.

Your attitude toward God is the same as your attitude toward yourself: you seem to both know and not know.

Both God and the psyche are constantly expanding, indescribable, and always in a state of becoming.

This is the nature of God and the psyche -- always in a state of becoming, constantly expanding and developing. You might ask: then what are they becoming into? For example, what am I becoming into, and what is God becoming into? Because ordinarily, you always think that all motion seems to have a movement toward some state of completion. When you say "becoming," there must be something you are becoming, right? There must be some finished state. You think of perfection or becoming free, and you think in that way -- "I will not become more perfect, more excellent, better" -- you always think this way; this is how a normal person thinks. Therefore the word "becoming" itself seems to hang in midair; you do not know what you actually want to become.

If you are becoming what you already are, then my statement sounds meaningless.

What does "what you already are" mean? He is saying that you are always becoming the you that has already become yourself. This sentence sounds meaningless, a bit like playing word games. Because if I already am, then why would you still need to become something that is already complete? This is a seemingly contradictory statement.

In a broad sense, what you are is always greater than your knowledge of yourself.

That is certain. What you think you are -- there is always something beyond the range of your cognition that you have not recognized, so there is always a part of you that you cannot cognize.

For in your physical life, you cannot keep up with your own psychological and psychic activity.

On your physical level, you cannot perceive your psychic or psychological activity, because perceiving from the physical level cannot perceive it. That is why he says what you are is always greater than what you know.

In a certain fashion, your body speaks a biological language. At the very least, you are bilingual.

At the very least, you know one foreign language, and this foreign language is a biological language. "Bilingual" in English means you know two or more languages.

You deal with certain kinds of organization that can be regarded as biological verbs, adjectives, and nouns.

You deal with your bodily organizations -- your cells, immune system, respiratory system -- and these can be understood as the verbs, adjectives, and nouns within a biological language.

These create a time sequence that can be compared to sentences. You can think while you read and write.

You have this ability. When you take reading notes, this is exactly what happens: you read a book while writing notes and thinking at the same time, and your body can operate in perfect coordination. The brain has to think, the eyes have to look and read, and the hand has to write -- these three things can be done simultaneously. This means you are communicating with your body; you are speaking a biological language, a language your body can understand, and only then can it be deployed and directed by you, and only then can these three things coordinate extremely well without falling into chaos.

Pretend that the experience of your life is a page in a book, written and read by you. And from top to bottom, from left to right, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

According to a specific order, according to the order of human time, writing while reading. Remember: your life is something you yourself write while reading. Reading means looking at who I really am -- what have I done, how have I done, who am I. When you ask who I am, you are reading yourself; when you are doing things, you are writing yourself.

The you that you know, as you write while reading, with all the worldviews you understand -- that is the you that you know. This page of the book that you write and read yourself is yourself.

But there are also quite legitimate many other yous.

There are also probable yous -- you could write it in reverse, from bottom to top, read it in reverse, or experience this page in reverse; you could read every word and then read it back in reverse; you could also mix all these words together in a completely different way, confuse them and recombine them to form completely different sentences; you could scramble all the words or letters and recombine them. And there is something even greater -- you can perceive and experience all the various ways of reading and writing that particular page, and that page is the life you understand as yours.

Let me explain this passage in plain language. He is using a kind of poetic language, and I am not sure how much I understand. Suppose your life is one page in this book; this book is all your reincarnations, and one particular page is this one reincarnation of yours. The you that you think you are is written from top to bottom, from left to right, according to the order of time -- this is your own cognition. But there are also other probable yous, many yous -- they do not read it in this order. They have all kinds of ways of reading and writing: some may write in reverse, some may write vertically, some may write chaotically, some do not even write at all and just draw directly, and some scramble everything and arrange and combine it in their own way into all kinds of possible combinations. Does that not become infinite possibilities? Yes. This one page can evolve into countless possibilities, and all of these are probable yous.

And beyond all of this, there is still a you that knows all these possibilities -- reading forward, reading backward, reading in order, reading vertically, scrambling and re-reading -- there are N many versions, and he knows them all. Is this not amazing? The various ways of reading this one page, its various forms of expression, its various combinations -- all of this is your life. In other words, your life is not just one way of reading from top to bottom and left to right; only you think that your life has only this one way of being lived. In fact, your life has N many versions and N many ways of reading and writing, and all of these combined are your complete life.

Let us continue reading.

You think of your own consciousness as the only logical culmination of your physical reality.

You think that your present consciousness is the logical, ultimate version of the world and reality that fits your cognition -- the highest level, nothing else. You think your consciousness is the ultimate version for interpreting this world; this worldview is final.

You read yourself in a certain accepted manner.

You use the way you approve of and can accept, reading this page from left to right and top to bottom.

Purely physically speaking, within the whole of life, when your own biological consciousness and other portions of the biological language connect with the living texture of the entire world, on adjacent levels there exist interrelationships that you cannot perceive.

From a purely physical perspective, your own biological consciousness -- the consciousness with which you converse with the cells and tissues of your body -- is not conscious to you. You do not know how you control yourself to think, write, and read at the same time. This biological consciousness is constantly engaged in give-and-take, interactive, mutually metabolic relationships with all things in the world, and these relationships are things you cannot perceive.

For example, your relationship with the atmosphere, your relationship with magnetic fields, your relationship with sunlight and rays -- there are many, many of these things, and you cannot perceive them. Physically speaking, you are alive because of the reasons of your underlying structures. From a physical perspective, you are alive not because your consciousness decides you are alive, but because the bottom layers of your body below your understanding -- the cellular level, the molecular level -- are closely interacting with nature. It is because these underlying structures exist that you can be alive, that you have life. Without the support of these bottom layers, you would have died long ago.

Psychologically, psychically, and biologically, you have almost no understanding of these deep structures.

You certainly do not know how your lungs breathe, and you cannot control them either.

Yet these are implied in the nature of your own consciousness.

Otherwise the consciousness you know could not exist. Not knowing does not mean these things do not exist; they are all contained within the essence of your consciousness.

Just as language gains its meaning not only from what it contains but also from what it excludes, so your consciousness also achieves its stability through exclusion.

Language gains its meaning not only from what it contains -- words, sounds, vowels, consonants, syllables, words, letters -- but also from what it excludes. What are the things it excludes? The pauses in language, the things that do not happen. Language is meant to be spoken, and the unspoken parts are what it excludes. But within your language there are small pauses, and there are also the meanings beneath the language -- these are things language does not contain. Yet the true meaning of language, apart from those syllables, also includes these pauses, which together form the meaning of language itself. Those parts that do not make sound, relative to the parts that do, are what language seems to exclude, but in fact they are things that cannot be left out.

By the same logic, our consciousness must necessarily contain some things that our consciousness excludes. If we did not include those things we cannot understand within it, we could not form the stability of our consciousness.

What you are is implied in what you are not, in essence.

When I say what you are, it not only contains what you are on the surface, but it also implies those things that you are not, in essence. In other words, what you are is also defined by what you are not. What you are not is just as important as what you are; otherwise you could not cognize what you are. If those things that you are not did not exist, you would not exist either. Is this not mind-bending?

His next sentence will make it clear:

You are not yourself because of the existence of what you are not.

All right, at this point some people may be able to follow, and some people are already confused -- "What is Seth talking about? Is this a tongue twister? Is he playing intellectual games or word games?" Let me give an example, and it will be simple to understand.

I say what are you, and you say, "I am a human" -- at the most basic level, I am a human. Does the fact that you are a human have meaning? Yes, it does. But does the fact that you are a human imply that you are not an animal, not a plant, not a mineral, not metal, not the sky, not the earth, not water, not fire, not wind? All right, now if I erase animals, if there had never been animals in this world, you could not say "I am not an animal," because animals no longer exist. I also erase plants, erase water, erase fire, erase all things in the world, erase all the things you are not -- then can you tell me what you are? You cannot. When all the things that are not you no longer exist, what you are no longer has meaning. This is what Seth means by this sentence. So do not reject those things that you are not, because without them there is no you either. This is a dialectical relationship.

You read yourself from the top to the bottom of the page, from what you think of as the beginning to the end. But your greater reality is read by its intensity.

You think you should read yourself from top to bottom, from beginning to end, but your greater reality is read according to intensity, not according to sequence.

The psyche, therefore, puts you together in a different way.

It does not read according to the time sequence you imagine; it reads according to the intensity of events. The psyche does not count time; on its level, time does not exist. To the psyche, the intense experiences of your life exist simultaneously -- there is no before or after. To you there is before and after: without your wedding night, there would not be the later birth of your child. But from the psyche's perspective, the joy of the wedding night and the joy of the birth of your child happen at the same time. These two events have no before or after, and no necessary causal connection. But from the human perspective, there is definitely a before and an after.

So from our human perspective, these intensely existing experiences are the present of the psyche -- passing the imperial examination, the wedding night, the birth of a son. Suppose to you they have a sequence, but to the psyche, they are simply the present; they happen simultaneously.

The psyche deals with probable events.

The psyche not only does not consider problems along the timeline, it does not even consider problems according to the real world as we humans understand it. It mixes reality and dreams together, scrambled, when considering problems.

For example, to your psyche they are far more real and far more effective than most of the flat but definite events of our three-dimensional world.

For example, the breakfast you ate yesterday morning -- to you there is no need to remember it, and it left no strong impression. Can you remember what you ate yesterday morning? He says that something that happens in a dream, something you may never have actually done in real life, can be more real than certain things you have actually done in real life. Although in the dream it is not real, it tells you this: when your psyche considers and handles problems, it does so in a way completely different from what you understand.

But this does not mean there is any difference -- you actually consider problems this way too. For example, suppose in a dream you and a girl you like the most finally end up together, you get married, and so on. If you have such a beautiful dream, then the meaning of this dream to you is far greater than the meaning of many things in your real life. You ordinarily handle things this way, and your psyche handles them this way too.

The inner world of the psyche forms a greater experience.

These inner worlds include those in dreams, include some that you can feel and remember, and some that you cannot remember at all, some that escape beyond the level of your consciousness and reside in your subconscious or deep consciousness -- all of these belong to inner experience. Remember, some of the inner world you know, and some you do not know.

The physical world is in some respects derived from it.

What happens in our three-dimensional world is only one version of the many possibilities of your psychological inner world, materialized into the physical world for you to experience it. But in other worlds, they are just as real as this world of yours. This was discussed in the material on probabilities -- in Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality, the probable you, parallel space-time, and all the probable yous were discussed.

These inner events form outer events, and they give off a kind of aura, almost magically turning your life into your own.

To put it more plainly: you have an inner greater reality, and within that inner greater reality, all possible things exist there. The things you have imagined, the thoughts in your mind, all the little ideas and small blessings in your heart are all here. Some are realized in reality, and some are not. The ones that are realized also come from here -- the things you realize in your real life also emerge or surface from this inner world in your heart, or you could say they are materialized from it. And there are many things that have not materialized or been realized in this real world of yours; they still exist too. But when they present themselves in real life, it is like a kind of magic or a miraculous way, and it makes you feel that this event is yours, is uniquely yours, is entirely yours.

Even if two people encounter exactly the same event in life at the same time, their experience of that reality can hardly be said to be nearly identical.

Not only is it different, sometimes it can be completely opposite. For example, a car accident -- the same car accident happens; do you think the two parties' perceptions of this car accident are the same? No. Take divorce -- the same divorce; do you think the two parties' perceptions are the same? All right, take falling in love -- two people fall in love at the same time. Even if both of them recall everything about the first day they met, do you think the two people's perceptions of that first day are the same? If you have them write it down themselves, you will find that they are actually different.

You read your identity in a particular, specialized manner.

You always use a way that only you would use, your own unique, specialized way, to read your life and read who you are. Your identity is who you are; you use this way to look at who you are.

Yet within your own biological experience, your plant, mineral, animal, and human consciousnesses intersect.

This was already discussed in the previous session: all the animals and plants you have eaten -- their consciousnesses are mixed together with your consciousness; they are mutually intermingled.

In the terms of the language you speak, these encounters are like the pauses implied in your speech.

Although these other consciousnesses intersect with your consciousness, you do not feel their existence, yet they are equally important. Just like the pauses in our spoken language -- although they seem to have no meaning and you cannot see anything in them, without these pauses your words would have no meaning. In other words, without those animal, plant, mineral, and other consciousnesses, your human consciousness would also have no meaning; they must be mixed together.

So here you understand the meaning of the earlier passage: is your consciousness what you think is your own? When you say "you," you always want to know this consciousness that belongs to yourself. But here he is telling you that fundamentally, biologically speaking, your consciousness is actually no longer your consciousness; it is already mixed together with nature and all things in the world. In other words, your consciousness already contains the consciousness of trees, the consciousness of grass, the consciousness of vegetables, the consciousness of fruits, the consciousness of animals, the consciousness of wind, the consciousness of water -- the water you drink also has consciousness. You cannot be separated from nature. Those things you think are not you, like the pauses in the words you speak, are just as important as you -- they are also important parts that compose you. It is through those things that are not you that you can experience what you are. You are not that plant, you are not that mineral, you are not that animal, but the wonderful thing is that their consciousnesses are actually mixed together with your consciousness, impossible to separate or untangle. Amazing, right? It is that amazing.

These other kinds of consciousness, then, form an inner rhythm.

Like the rhythm in your spoken language, it is a rhythm, and it is different for every person.

And you superimpose your own consciousness upon this.

They are like a kind of underlying foundation. To put it simply, it is like spoken words: what you say depends on the rhythm and pauses that are not spoken -- that rhythm and pause is an invisible cadence, and what you say rests on top of these pauses. Without these inner rhythms, without these pauses, what you say would have no meaning. If there were no pauses or intervals from beginning to end, no one would know what you were saying.

These encounters of consciousness take place constantly, and form their own kind of adjacent nature.

Once these consciousnesses meet and intersect, they form a nature adjacent to and similar to their own essence. You could call it a kind of quasi-consciousness, or a mixed consciousness. Remember, they are not the same as consciousness -- human consciousness mixed with tree consciousness is no longer a kind of consciousness; it is a mixture of consciousnesses, which can also be called quasi-consciousness, but you cannot call it consciousness anymore.

This is very hard to explain, and I hope you can understand. Because we have not yet discussed the nature of consciousness and units of consciousness; when we get to dreams and value fulfillment, we will talk about units of consciousness and the nature of consciousness, and at that time we will have a deeper understanding of consciousness. From the very beginning of studying Seth, our understanding of consciousness and these things has been deepening step by step. Do not be impatient; do not expect to understand everything at once. If we jumped straight to the most core things, it would really be very hard for anyone to understand all at once, because it is too far beyond human cognition. You see how Seth breaks things apart and explains them in great detail, and we still find it hard to understand; if he directly explained the nature of this world, you would have no idea what he was saying, and calling it a book from heaven would not be an exaggeration at all.

What are the characteristics of this thing? It has both the attributes of a tree and the attributes of a human -- it has both tree-nature and human-nature, such an attribute. So is it a new kind of consciousness? It is not a new consciousness; it is a mixture.

Perhaps you will regard them as a subspecies of consciousness.

You could call it a subspecies of consciousness -- a branch, a subcategory, a sub-consciousness, or a quasi-consciousness. He does not know how to explain it either.

But they are true entities, operating in a manner that cuts across species.

They transcend species, operating in a way that transcends species. So this already goes beyond many people's range of cognition. If you still have some understanding of consciousness and some understanding of the psyche, at this level you have taken another step further.

If you read yourself sideways in such a fashion, you will discover that certain portions of your consciousness extend outward.

If you can look at yourself from the perspective of a species-like, blended consciousness -- you are sitting at home, sitting in a chair or at a desk or on a bed, and you will find that certain parts of your consciousness have already extended outward. Why have they extended outward? Because you are blended with all things in the world. Within your consciousness there is animal consciousness, plant consciousness, and mineral consciousness as well. To put it more plainly, within your consciousness there is a great deal of the consciousness of all things in the natural world -- you have many, many kinds of consciousness blended together with your present consciousness. Every blending is a kind of intermingling, and each one allows you to have your perception and cognition of other species or objects.

So when you can look back at yourself from this angle, you will find that this you is connected with the wind around you, connected with the light around you, connected with the animals and plants around you, with the earth and the universe.

It crosses the entire structure of the earth as you know it.

Your consciousness has already crossed through the entire earth, and you have become a part of the material of the earth. Just as those earthly materials have also become a part of the self you recognize, it is the same principle. On the level of consciousness, you and this earth are one. Is that what this sentence is saying? That is exactly what it is saying.

And this level of consciousness comes from your underlying biological level -- it is not something abstract, not a philosophical slogan like "I and my earth are one." Speaking from your physical matter itself, from your biological level, from your physical body, you and the earth are one; you simply have not recognized it yet.

Your consciousness will not be lured by the line.

Your consciousness will no longer be confined to some very small area; you will no longer be the frog at the bottom of the well, no longer restricted by that fence.

Time will also be linked with this expansion.

Your time also expands along with the expansion of your consciousness. If you are one with the earth, then what meaning does this time still have for you? According to humanity's current detection, the earth has a history of 4.6 billion years¹, so do you also have 4.6 billion years? You say, I was only born a dozen or a few dozen years ago, how could that be? The atoms and molecules in your body, the matter that makes up your body -- how do you know it does not have 4.6 billion years? The molecules and atoms that make up your body may very well also have a lifespan of 4.6 billion years. What he means is: if you are one with the earth, then time also becomes expanded, and it is no longer the time you recognize.

You think of yourself as being practically the lord of all creation.

But you yourself generally think of yourself as the lord of all creation -- that you are separate from other species and from all things in the world. You even feel that I am the lord of all creation, that I am separate from everything else on earth. It is precisely because you always think about things this way that you limit your own spiritual experience. In fact, you and all things on earth are one, and have never been separate. You are not the lord of all creation; you are simply one among all things.

If you thought or felt in such a fashion, then you would appreciate the biological fact that your body is yours by virtue of the mineral, plant, and animal life from which it gains its sustenance.

If you consider the matter from this angle, then you will appreciate this biological fact: the reason you have life, the reason you have physical life, is because you have obtained other resources -- the life of minerals, plants, animals, and all things in the world -- and only then did your life come into existence.

You would not feel as you often do, imprisoned within one bodily form.

When you have this kind of recognition and feeling, you will find that you and all things are one -- the chickens you have eaten, the cows you have eaten, the pigs you have eaten, you and they are all one. You will no longer confine your own consciousness only within your present physical body, because this physical body is precisely composed of all these things together.

For you would understand that the body itself is able to maintain its relative stability because of its constant give-and-take with the materials of the earth.

Between you and all things of the earth there is an unceasing metabolism and mutual interaction -- your body gives things to your environment, and also takes things from them. The stability of your life is determined by this fundamental fact. And these materials themselves also possess consciousness. All these things with which you interact, whether you consider them living or non-living, all have consciousness, and their consciousness will enter into your consciousness.

To a certain degree, you will be able to feel that your body is constantly gathering together and dispersing.

When you have this recognition, to a certain degree you will often be able to feel that your body can disperse and then gather together again, then disperse and gather again. You can dissolve your own body into all things, into the world, between heaven and earth, and then you can also gather it together again.

You can fly within it, and you are not afraid that when it disintegrates you will be destroyed.

When your soul flies within this physical body, and this body is separating and reuniting, gathering and dispersing from time to time, you will not feel that you will be destroyed. Because this physical body is one with nature, you will actually never be destroyed. When it separates, it is not destroyed; it merely changes into another form and recombines. You say, every newborn fetus, is it not also composed of the things of this material world? And how do you know that this newborn fetus does not contain a molecule or an atom that was once in your body? How can you be certain that it definitely does not?

But when you ask who am I, you are trying to read yourself.

Like the example he gave earlier, you are trying to read this page. It is as if you have already written a sentence, a simple sentence that represents you, and then when you ask who you are, you have to read this sentence in order to prove who you are.

Instead, you write yourself as you go along.

There is no complete you already written and placed there for you to read. You are writing yourself as you go along; you have not finished writing yet, so how can you read it? Your history is written by your own hands. The ready-made sentence you think of is something you have written as you walked along. Your life is created by yourself, and when you ask who you are, you have not finished walking yet, so how would you know?

He is only one of many probable variations.

The sentence you are writing now is only one among all possible sentences.

In the first place, who you are, you, and no one else, choose the experiences you want to actualize.

You choose the unique life experiences you yourself want to undergo, not someone else choosing for you.

You do this spontaneously.

Just like when you speak, your speech is also automatic. When you speak, you never know what you are going to think of for the next sentence, nor do you write it out first and then speak -- except for leaders giving speeches or some famous speeches that require a written script, normal people cannot possibly write it out first and then speak. If you have not written it out, do you just not speak? Certainly not. So you do not know what the next sentence will be, but that does not prevent you from speaking. Your life is the same: you do not know what you are going to do next, and you do not know what you will do tomorrow, but that does not prevent you from living your life.

You take it for granted that a sentence begun will be finished, but you are reading yourself in the midst of it.

When you ask who you are, you are actually reading yourself. Your life is in the process of automatic writing -- you are writing yourself and reading yourself at the same time. You say, "I did such and such before, I did such and such things" -- these are all parts of what you call yourself. You say, "I am a teacher, I went to school; I am a soldier, I served in the army" -- these are all things you have written out before, and now you are reading them over. But are you still writing right now? And while you are writing, are you also still reading? What you write out or read out is your life; it is your very life.

Your life is in the language you speak, and it seems to happen by itself.

Because without realizing it, you maintain yourself alive -- you do not even know how you stay alive. Just as you do not understand anatomy, yet your heart keeps beating. Not everyone is a medical expert or a biology expert, but everyone's body is quite healthy, able to maintain itself well and operate normally on its own. How does that come about? It simply lives automatically.

Your life just walks onward by itself without your realizing it, just like when you speak: when you begin a sentence, you do not need to know how it will end or when it will end; you just speak, and it automatically continues. Your life is also like this.

You read yourself far too narrowly.

The way you read yourself is far too narrow; you read yourself in only one way. And the way you read yourself is mostly connected with serious illness and the pain associated with death -- as you read, you start thinking, "What will I do when I die, when will I die, what will I do if I get sick." Who reads like that? But you people are exactly like this; you people read yourselves so narrowly.

It comes from your lack of faith in your own particular continuing reality.

You have no faith in the continuity of your reality, of your world, that is, in the immortality of your soul, so you always focus on matters like death and serious illness.

You resist pain. Why do you resist pain? Because you have not learned to transcend pain, so you resist pain.

Serious illness is a kind of pain, and death you feel is even more painful. The reason you fear them is because you have not learned to transcend them.

Or rather, use these pains, and you transcend them.

When pain comes, normally you endure the pain. He says you should learn to use this pain, not endure this pain. When you are able to use this pain, then you have transcended it.

You do not trust the natural consciousness of the body, and so when its end is at hand -- and this end is inevitable -- you do not trust the signal the body gives you, which would mean setting you free again.

When your physical life ends, it means you have a new freedom -- allowing your soul to return to freedom once more, that is, setting you free again. But you do not believe it; you are afraid, you suffer.

Certain kinds of pain automatically throw the consciousness out of the body.

We often say, "That person was scared to death," or that a person died from pain, the pain was too great, and the soul was gone.

This pain is inexpressible, beyond the description of language, because it is a mixture of pain and pleasure.

Why is it indescribable? It is not the kind of pain we understand; it is a mixture between extreme pain and extreme bliss. Pain at its extreme is a kind of extreme bliss. It is a release of consciousness, almost exhilarating, that comes automatically from breaking free into freedom, gaining freedom, and being reborn. This pain is, to some degree, a freedom of breaking loose, an almost exhilarating release on the level of consciousness. This pain itself is also very brief.

So those near-death experiences, people who have been in car accidents, or those who died in relatively violent ways -- if they are rescued and revived, and you ask them whether it hurt during the time they were dead, they will tell you: it did not hurt, and there was no pain. That instantaneous feeling is very miraculous. Just like many people who froze to death -- if they are revived, they will tell you they did not suffer -- because that pain had already caused their soul to leave the body.

But under your present system, however, drugs are often used.

What he is referring to is that when people are about to die, many hospitals give patients drugs -- Demerol, morphine, these painkillers, to keep people from feeling pain. This is still the case even now; many people who are about to die are given large amounts of Demerol and morphine. What happens after you use drugs? The pain is reduced to a minimum, but it is prolonged. Originally it was a very brief pain -- at the extreme of pain, your soul leaves the body -- but you insist on not letting that happen; you give them these pain-relieving drugs, and the process of pain actually becomes very long. Their soul cannot leave the body for a long time, which is actually more painful. They also cannot activate the natural mechanism of release, nor can they activate the natural mechanism that ejects the soul out of the body.

Actually, that pain which causes your soul to leave the body is a natural release mechanism, like the ejection button in a fighter pilot's cockpit: when the plane is failing and about to crash, just as when your physical body is destroyed, you can press a button to eject yourself. This mechanism is natural, and pain is one of the key triggers. But you delay it through painkillers, so this trigger disappears, and the ejection cannot happen.

If you read yourself from the adjacent perspective, you will build up faith in those other cooperating consciousnesses of the body.

When you read yourself from the perspective of being adjacent to all things, from the perspective of blended consciousness, when you read yourself in this species-like way of consciousness, you must have faith in the cooperation among those other consciousnesses of your body -- besides your own consciousness, the consciousnesses of animals, plants, and all things in the world.

You will also have an intimate awareness of the body's healing processes.

Because your body is very sensitive, you are able to exist across physical matter. For example, when those drugs enter your body, the consciousness of those drugs is also blended with yours, so you have a very keen awareness of the entire healing process. Because you and anything within your body are a blending of different consciousnesses, if you step outside and look from this blended-consciousness perspective, you can feel the changes in your body.

You will no longer fear death as extinction, but feel your own consciousness gently disentangling itself from those other consciousnesses that have so graciously served it.

Death is not an extinction; it is only that you withdraw your own consciousness from those other consciousnesses blended with all things in the world -- those consciousnesses that still serve it and soothe it -- and you gently disentangle yourself from these blended consciousnesses. You leave your body, because your body is physical and biological; you have eaten the things of this world, the grains and animals and plants, so it naturally has other consciousnesses blended within it. When your consciousness leaves the physical body, it must separate from these blended consciousnesses. And this separation is a gentle separation. He is explaining it to you once more from this angle.

At this point, Seth called a halt -- because the telephone started ringing again, and he had forgotten to turn off the phone. When Jane and Rob came back at 11:12 after answering the call, they were given a page or two of personal information, and then this session came to an end.

This session is extremely important; he fundamentally addresses who you really are -- this is a question countless people have asked themselves. Who are you? This question has a positive answer, and a systematic explanation and interpretation that completely exceeds the understanding of ordinary people.

You Are a Part of the World, Yet You Are Also Yourself

This section is Session 780, a session that began on Tuesday, June 22, 1976, at 9:19 in the evening.

Rob said that while they were waiting for the session to begin, Jane reminded him that she had a feeling Seth should write a preface tonight for his own book on Paul Seth's worldview, and she had had this feeling earlier today. She said with a laugh, wouldn't that be interesting, because we had written prefaces for Seth's books, so it would only be proper for Seth to write a preface for me.

Earlier, Jane had mentioned the Seth material in the preface for this book, and in that preface she mentioned that the Seth material had developed on its own into a book rich in meaning.

Interestingly, today there was still considerable flooding in the area immediately surrounding Elmira, though it had not been greatly affected here, because they had already moved up into the hills. In any case, Jane and Rob were on their little hill this time, safe and dry. This was vastly different from the experience described in The Nature of Personal Reality of their being trapped on the third floor during the great flood of 1972². After that incident, the two of them decided: floods are a reality that is unnecessary for us. They exercised the point of power: since we do not like floods, why live in this place that floods so often? So they moved up into the hills. This was also a very effective application of the point of power.

Then Seth came through and began to introduce the content of this book.

You are a part of the world, that is certain, yet you are also yourself, and that is also certain.

He said this will not cause you confusion, and you certainly will not be puzzled by this matter. You have no difficulty in following your own sense of identity, and you have not the slightest difficulty about who you are, even when you are surrounded by other individuals.

He used the following as an analogy: the you of now is a part of your psyche or soul. Within it, you can easily follow your own sense of identity, and your sense of identity will not become lost. Even though that psyche also includes other parts besides yourself — for example, besides this one reincarnation, you have still more reincarnations, and those are all other parts besides yourself.

He said, you draw nourishment from the world, and through its medium you grow and develop; you contribute your abilities and experience, helping to form the civilization and culture of the world. He was constantly making comparisons and analogies between the physical world and our spiritual world, using this kind of analogy as a way to make it easier for us to understand what the spiritual world is actually like.

In the physical world, you certainly cannot separate yourself from the world; you can draw nourishment from the world, and then grow through the world; you also contribute your own abilities and experience, contributing your share to the development of the whole of human civilization or world civilization. To a considerable degree, you have the same kind of relationship with your own psyche. It is the same within the world of the psyche: within the psyche there are many other parts of you that you do not understand or do not perceive, and you can only sense the one identity you have in the present, but the relationship between you and those other identities is the same as the relationship between you and the world — you contribute to one another.

Through ordinary means of communication, you can know what is happening outside your own country, even if you have not traveled there. News and media transmission allow you to know the situation all over the world — and now it is even more convenient: turn on your phone, and the news of the whole world is in it. He said, within you, within your body, there is also this kind of media transmission, constantly taking place, except that you do not consciously tune your frequency to this information. These transmissions keep you in constant contact with the other parts of your own psyche, such as your identities in other reincarnations and other probable selves. They remain in constant contact inwardly, except that you do not tune your frequency, and so you do not see their contact.

Session 780

You are so much a part of the world, just as it is now, that your smallest action contributes to other realities.

In the physical world, you are a part of the world, one member of it. Although relative to the whole world, you are just one person among seven billion, seemingly insignificant, yet even if insignificant, your smallest action, your smallest contribution to the world, affects the entire world -- only the magnitude and depth of the influence differ. Your breathing changes the atmosphere, and when you meet other people, you change them, in many ways, as well as the quality of the lives of those they encounter. Some people become your friends, some become your lovers, some may become your enemies, but no matter what, they are all changed by their encounter with you.

You can easily see how cells form the body, because you understand the cooperative nature of cellular activity.

Cells must cooperate with one another to form your body. A change in one cell immediately causes changes in other cells, bringing about a different kind of bodily behavior. They are in a mutually influencing relationship, that is certain.

But it is not so easy for you to understand how your own actions and the actions of others together bring about world events. Yet just as the cells within the body form the body, the influence and changes among cells ultimately change the structure of the entire body, and this influence is the same.

On the one hand, each reader is only one person living on this planet at any given time, and this may seem to carry little power. One person seems to have little influence over the whole world and the earth. On the other hand, every active individual is necessary -- you say this person is unimportant, that person is unimportant, then all people, viewed individually, are unimportant. But if you removed every person, would not the earth be completely changed? So from another perspective, every person is important, necessary.

The world begins and ends with each individual.

From this perspective, it is true, because every person is necessary. Your every action is so important, contributing to the experiences of people you do not know. Each person is like a center, and the world revolves around him. From the perspective of individual importance, from birth to death, the world exists because of his birth, and because he dies, the world no longer exists for him. This is correct from the perspective of individual importance.

Seth once said something before: you do not know that when you go out today and smile at everyone, it seems like an insignificant action. Perhaps someone who wanted to commit suicide, precisely because he saw you, a complete stranger, smile at him so sincerely and radiantly, may have rekindled hope for life. You will never know about such things.

If you had not done what you did today, for example, how much would the whole world be different?

The world would still turn, yes, but with you present versus absent, how much difference is there? In ways you do not understand, your actions radiate outward like microwaves and interact sympathetically with the experiences of others. Your actions spread outward like microwaves, like electromagnetic signals, engaging in mutual resonance with the experiences of others. Thus is formed the world of this world -- the world of the world is produced in this way. The most famous and the most obscure people are all interconnected through such a structure. A seemingly small, insignificant action may in the end change what you call history. So how can you be certain that your affairs, or the things you are going to do, could not change human history?

If we speak from sociology and real life here, you can study or learn about the butterfly effect: a butterfly in South America flapping its wings may cause a storm to form over the European continent.

Children feel that the world and time began with their birth, and they accept the world's past on faith. In a very important way, this is a quite legitimate feeling, for no one experiences the world, or affects it, from any viewpoint other than his own.

This is quite correct. Children see the world this way: they feel the world came into being because of their birth, and time also began because of their birth. In other words, each person can only experience the world through his own viewpoint, and the way he affects the world is through his natural, personal actions. Each person's seemingly very personal actions, insignificant personal actions, combined together, jointly affect the whole world. From the perspective of the human group as a whole, individual actions are indeed the most primal initial engine that sets the entire world of the world in motion.

From a metaphysical perspective, theoretically speaking, you exist in the same way within your psyche or soul. He just gave examples from real life, and he says it is similar in your spiritual world -- you exist in the same way within your spiritual world.

Your identity is obviously primarily spiritual, rather than physical.

Your cognition of your own identity is more a spiritual cognition than a physical one. Physical entities cannot interpenetrate one another, just as a table cannot pass through a chair, that is certain. But psychic realities are different; they can interpenetrate and permeate one another. They are mixed and blended together, penetrating one another, yet still able to maintain their own focus. They can interact sympathetically on the psychic level in the same way that events interact sympathetically on the physical level. We said earlier that the occurrence of world events in the physical world happens through ways we do not know -- human actions spread outward like microwaves, interacting sympathetically with others, and then form the world of the world. And the inner spiritual world is likewise a similar mode of operation: each of our identities, each of our experiences on the spiritual level, affects those other parts of the psyche, those parts you do not perceive, but without physical limitations, without any of our physical restrictions.

So then, although you are a part of the psyche, just as you are a part of the world, your sense of identity is still inviolable. It is not because you are a part of the world, or a part of the psyche, that your identity is insignificant. No matter how small a person you are, your sense of identity is sacred and inviolable, existing equally in personal reality and in the spiritual world.

It is not silenced or diminished within a larger self. It carries the stamp of its own integrity, it follows its own focus, and knows itself as itself, even while it exists as a possibility of its own being, only as a part of another larger identity.

That is, your present sense of identity carries its complete stamp, a sacred stamp. It follows the focus of the present sense of identity, and knows itself as itself, even if it is only a part of a larger identity. This sense of identity is not eliminated, not silenced, not dissolved, not diluted; it remains in a state that is ever fresh and renewed.

Therefore, further, nothing prevents him from exploring this larger identity.

So you need not worry that when you explore the larger identity, you might lose yourself. Because your sense of identity can never be lost, you can dare to explore the larger levels of yourself with confidence, to explore inward the larger part within yourself. When this happens, both identities are changed -- your present identity now, and that larger spiritual identity of yours. So in a broad sense, the psyche and the soul have never existed as a finished product or entity; they are always a state of becoming. And that becoming occurs in every part of itself -- you are in a state of becoming, because your becoming leads to the becoming of the whole.

Your physical posture and existence itself are dependent upon this psychic reality of which you are normally unaware.

Whether your physical body or your psyche, both depend upon that larger part you do not know, or the various parts of your soul's existence. But those parts also depend upon your existence -- your existence depends upon the other parts of your psyche, and the other parts of your psyche also depend upon your existence. You are in a mutually dependent relationship.

You take your breathing and your movements for granted, although they are produced without conscious awareness. Yet in a manner of speaking, at one time, from a certain perspective, you had to learn how to do these things that are not currently the objects of your conscious attention. That is to say, there was a time when you had to seriously learn how to breathe, how the heart beats, how to use the various organs and parts of your body and their coordinated organization. And these things, you no longer pay any attention to at all now.

And on other levels of reality, the activities that you now consciously claim as your own, in those same ways and from those other viewpoints, become unconscious, supplying a psychic history recognized by other identities. Just as your own identity emerges from an unconscious physical body, in the same way.

This passage is a bit convoluted. What does he mean? On other levels of reality -- levels you do not quite understand and cannot perceive -- the activities that you currently do consciously become a kind of unconscious activity on those levels, and that unconscious activity provides a support for another identity of yours in that reality space, in that time and space. Just as the you of now emerges from an unconscious body that you do not know, in the same way. To say it again, what he wants to clarify is this: in those parallel worlds you do not know, or on other levels of consciousness in other times and spaces, the things you are now doing clearly and consciously are, for that time and space, things being done unconsciously. And their conscious life or existence depends upon these things you are now doing that you consider conscious but that are unconscious to them; it is produced from this, and this is their support. Just as your life emerges from an unconscious physical body that you yourself do not know, it is the same principle. And what you now consider unconscious is, on those levels, conscious for them. So everything you do now is helpful to your entire larger soul or the whole of your psyche, and you are in a mutually supportive relationship with it.

While Jane was transmitting this, she said the material was very difficult to obtain. Although it came through very smoothly, it was the kind of thing that unravels as it goes along, very hard to express in words. It is indeed difficult.

In a very definite way, one person's existence implies activity on all other levels.

What does this mean? Those other levels, relative to your present conscious level, you are not aware of, and you feel they do not exist. But precisely because of your existence, it can in turn imply that the activities on those other levels do exist. Because the activities on those levels are unconscious to you, yet your existence depends upon such unconscious activities in order to come into being, just as their existence also depends upon your present conscious activities -- which are unconscious to them. Therefore, one person's existence implies the existence of all that has already occurred, and also implies the existence of those who have not yet lived -- the people of future events that have not yet happened. Your own existence is implied by the existence of every other person, and their existence is also implied within your existence. You exist, and this means that those things you do not know, those things you think do not exist -- your existence precisely implies their existence.

Then he goes on to use language as an example:

Language gains its meaning primarily through the pauses and hesitations between sounds, and it obviously also gains its meaning from those sounds that were not used.

Language is certainly limited, but it also gains meaning from all those sounds it did not use. Because you spoke this sound or said this word, it means you did not choose other words. Those other words seem meaningless to you, but in fact they have meaning -- because this word is not those other words precisely because the existence of those other words gives it meaning.

For any one language also implies the existence of other languages, to the extent that all other languages silently reside within any particular spoken language.

In other words, what you speak today is Chinese, but English, French, Italian are also implied within your present language.

The same applies to language written on paper. Written words become meaningful because of their arrangement -- the order in which the words are arranged is meaningful. If all the words on this page were scrambled, they would be meaningless. Precisely because they were selected from those words that never appeared -- you selected these from a large pool of words and arranged them on the page -- they become meaningful, and those words that were not selected, because you selected these, imply the existence of those unselected words.

In the same way, your focused existence is dependent upon all those other existences that are not you.

You judge your present existence from the focus of consciousness -- that state of "I think, therefore I am" -- and it is because of the existence of all other things that are not you that your existence can in turn be implied. Just as was discussed in the previous session: you are human, you are not something else, so there must be other things existing in order to prove your existence.

You are a part of them. You are a part of those that you think are not you.

This statement is very philosophical. You are a part of those other existences that are not you, and you depend upon them. Although you are primarily yourself, and you are not others, your existence depends upon the existence of those parts that are not you.

But this also applies to any one person. Each of them becomes a primary focus or molecule, each being its own focus, and within it implying all other people. This is a philosophical and dialectical relationship.

In ordinary terms, you did not create yourself.

You did not make yourself; you were made by those who are not you.

You are like a living language, spoken by someone who did not create the language.

The language is there for you to use. You, then, are like a language being spoken by someone, and this language was not created by you, but others can use it to speak. Suppose the things spoken are you. He is talking about the relationship between you and your psyche. This is a little complex, but once you understand it thoroughly, it is not difficult.

In this process, the language is in a molecular form.

Why is it in a molecular form? Because when you speak, language comes out of your mouth, and it must carry a certain molecular form. Seth said earlier: molecules form cells, cells form tissues, tissues form organs, and organs ultimately coordinate their operation, producing language through vocalization. So every spoken language carries a strong flavor of the human body. In the previous chapter, Seth used the term "earth accent" to describe it, or you can understand it through accent -- everyone has their own unique accent, unique tone, and if you trace this accent to its root, it is molecular in form, determined by the molecules of your body. Tracing this back theoretically, it is indeed so, beyond doubt.

The elements of this language form the earthly elements of the flesh, created at your birth. Just as the alphabet of your particular language was already there for you to use, it is the same.

The accent and sound of the language you speak were already created when your physical body was born, when it obtained its elements from nature. Just as when we speak, those 26 letters already existed long ago; otherwise you could not speak the words you speak today. For us Chinese, it is the same -- if these Chinese characters did not exist, how could you have language? These characters already existed before you were born.

He says all this to illustrate the relationship between you and your psyche. Because this relationship is very hard to describe, he goes back and forth, using different examples -- sometimes the body, sometimes molecules, sometimes letters, sometimes language, sometimes written words -- to tell you: the reason you are you is implied by the parts that are not you.

The life of your physical body itself implies a source, a source from which physical life emerges. The unspoken, un-materialized, un-born vitality provides the alphabetic components of the physical molecules of reality.

The life of your body implies a source, and this source is the source from which your physical body emerges. This source is implied, cannot be explained in words, is non-materialized and silent, but it provides the most primal material, the most primal elements. So the source of your life is like the letters in language, like the molecules in the physical body.

Therefore, your physical life implies the existence of a non-physical life.

You take your particular language so much for granted, and use it so effortlessly, that you never even think that it implies other languages, or that it gains its meaning because of inner assumptions never spoken, or because of the use of silent pauses between sounds. You live your life in the same way.

Here he once again uses language to imply those things that are not spoken. The pauses in language, the things not expressed in language, are the very foundation upon which the language exists. The life you are living now is the same: you feel that the things of this three-dimensional world are meaningful only because those unknown, unconscious events in the worlds you do not know provide support or implication in between. Without those, just as language without pauses, without those unspoken words, would be meaningless, so too, if you lost the support of the existence of those worlds you do not know, do not understand, or that are unconscious, your present world would also be meaningless.

Seth's meaning is to let you know what the existence of your present life depends upon, just as language depends upon something, by the same principle.

Seth was very pleased that he found such a good example as language to illustrate the relationship between a person and his own psyche, so he repeatedly used this example.

There are many languages, although most people speak one or two, or three or four such languages, and each is different, and each accent is different. While at the same time, you still maintain the integrity of any particular language.

That is to say, when you learn a language, that language is certainly complete; it will not be fragmentary or partial.

Therefore, to some extent, you can learn to speak yourself with a certain accent.

At this point he tells the reader that I laughed. He lets the reader know that Seth was smiling as he said these words. Why? Because Seth has a strong European accent, and he was using his own accent as an example, self-deprecatingly, while also illustrating a principle.

What principle is he illustrating? Each person speaks himself with a certain accent. This accent is like the most primal quality within his psyche, or like the molecules in language, the molecular structure -- every language is composed of molecules, and these biological molecules form your final spoken language, so these molecules themselves carry their own unique characteristics, their own accent.

Every language carries an accent, and you, if we use language as an analogy, also carry your own accent.

In other words, you are unique. Your personal characteristics depend upon the most primal fundamental attributes you obtained from the psyche, so you also carry within you the characteristics of your psyche. Like carrying an accent, in that situation you are still yourself.

And allowing yourself to take on the attributes of another language does not mean that when you speak another language, you are no longer yourself. Whatever language you speak, you are still you.

Of course, you can have a different reading of the world -- the interpretation of the world can be read in different ways, and you maintain your own identity; your identity will not change. You can read this world in English, in French, in Chinese; the language does not matter, you yourself are still yourself.

And you can move into another different country within yourself, where you speak your native language with a different accent.

You can enter another country within the inner world, enter another reality world, just like traveling to other places, and you speak your mother tongue with a different accent.

Whenever you tune in to a radio station you do not usually pay attention to, you are doing this to some extent. The news has a somewhat foreign flavor, and at the same time it is interpreted in the language you know, and you receive a translation of a reality.

It is like when you usually listen to your native-language station, and now you listen to a station in another language that you do not usually listen to. If you have learned that foreign language, you can understand it -- they are also interpreting what is happening in the world in a language you can understand, but what you receive is a translation of this world, because it does not come through your native language.

This is like saying that on the psychic level, you have gone to an unfamiliar place, explored some other spiritual worlds, and you need a mode of translation to understand what is happening there. But this translation and the description of that reality will not affect your cognition of your present identity -- it is not that when you go to another country, your identity changes and you no longer know who you are. The change of language and environment will not cause you to lose your identity. That is what he wants to say.

The psyche, forever in a state of becoming, obviously has no precise boundaries. In this context, the existence of one individual implies all existence. Therefore, any particular psyche is also made significant by the fact that other realities depend upon the existence of other psyches.

A psyche also becomes important because other psyches depend upon its existence. Because the psyche has no boundaries, when you come into contact with one psyche, you can come into contact with all psyches; they are interconnected. And the existence of your psyche depends upon the existence of those psyches that are not yours, and only then does it become meaningful. You are in a mutually dependent relationship.

Then he gives an example -- television stations.

A television station exists in the same way, because if you cannot receive any one station, theoretically, then no station can be received by you.

The example he gave was appropriate for that era. In 1976, you would put up a large outdoor antenna, buy a television set for the home, and if you could receive one station, you could receive all stations; if you could not receive even one station, then basically you could not receive any other station either -- either the television was broken, or the antenna was not working, or there was no signal around where you lived. Of course, this example is not practical now; television stations are all digital now, and how many stations you can watch depends on whether you pay or not.

Then, this inner information goes outward in every direction, through all psyches. Each identity, within the broader reality of the psyche, has its eternal validity.

This is somewhat like the title of Seth Speaks, saying the same thing: each identity, in the vast world of the psyche, in the different multiple worlds, has its eternal validity -- it will never disappear, it is always valid.

Thus on one level, any one person, when in contact with his own psyche, can theoretically contact any other psyche.

If a person can contact his psyche on a certain level, theoretically he can contact any other psyche, because they are all interconnected.

Life implies death, and death in fact also implies life.

In the terms of your world, from our human perspective, life is a spoken element -- like the spoken words, the spoken sounds in language, life is a manifest thing. At the same time, death is the element upon which life depends, the un-made, hidden element. If this hidden thing did not exist, if death did not exist, there would be no birth of new life -- because every death represents a new life for you. But we only look at life and not at death, feeling that death is disappearance. This is a hidden thing; from our physical world, when you die, you are equivalent to becoming invisible, becoming hidden, and we are concealed beneath it.

And what is not spoken is still present. Although we usually avoid talking about death, no one says every day, "What will happen when I die?" But your not talking about it does not mean it is not there. In other words, the reason you are alive, the reason your life exists, is precisely because death has always been here. Death is the unspoken, underlying necessary condition of your life.

Both are equally present.

Life and death exist simultaneously, equally present, equally important. This is a matter of one being implicit and the other explicit.

To consciously gain knowledge beyond what you ordinarily have available, you must pay attention to the pauses, to the components suggested in language, to what is not said, to any such unsupported quality upon which the recognizable, cognizable experiences of life depend.

In other words, you must pay attention to those things in life that lie beyond your cognitive experience, those things beyond what your cognitive experience depends upon. You must be sensitive to them, perceive them, be aware of them. Only then can you obtain all kinds of information.

But they must still be perceived through a focus or identity of your own.

No matter how this information is given to you, it must come through your own focus -- you perceive it through your own focus of consciousness, through your own viewpoint, through the identity you have right now. When inner information is given to you, how you view that information depends on your present identity and your present focus of consciousness.

Here this point is emphasized again. So your beliefs -- your beliefs are actually your focus of consciousness -- whether they are limited or open is very important; your perception of your identity is also very important, because these two are the core through which you interpret the inner material you receive.

So learning spiritual things does not mean "I can receive this material, I can channel so-and-so" -- that is not the most important thing, and it is meaningless. It is like having a television that can receive alien broadcasts or alien programs, but you understand nothing, and you cannot comprehend what you receive. In other words, if your cognition is limited and your identity is limited, what you perceive may turn out to be "aliens are coming to attack Earth, coming to fight Earth, coming to destroy Earth," and so on. What you perceive is just that -- that is the limitation of your cognition.

I have said that all events occur at once.

He said long ago that events are all simultaneous. This point is actually not easy for most people to understand.

All identities also occur at once, and each event changes every other event.

Things happening now can even change things in the past -- this was discussed at length in Chapter 14 of The Nature of Personal Reality, "Which World? Which You?"

Any one event implies the existence of that probable event which did not emerge, which was not spoken.

For example: right now you might go out on a date with someone, or you might stay home reading and studying. If you go on the date, that implies the existence of the possibility of staying home and studying. The things you do imply that the things you did not do also exist -- that is the relationship between them.

Physical events, therefore, imply the existence of probable events.

What happens in our physical world necessarily implies that worlds in the probable space-times of the nonphysical world exist. We chose this and did not choose the others, but those unchosen probabilities also exist -- because they exist, we have the things that happen now.

Different languages use sound in their own peculiar ways, and each emphasizes what another ignores. Other probabilities, therefore, emphasize events that are only implied in your reality.

Each language uses sound in its own way, has its own rhythm, emphasizes some things and ignores others. In our present reality, those things that did not happen, those probable things -- in other realities, they actually did happen. The events that happen in their event system imply the events that happen in your event system.

For example, in your world, you went on the date and did not stay home studying -- in this space-time, going on the date is something that really happened, and staying home reading is a probable existence. But for the you who "stayed home reading," staying home reading is what really happened, and going on the date is only a probability -- you originally wanted to go on the date, but in the end you did not. This is the relationship of mutual probable existence.

Your physical events, therefore, become the implied probable events.

The physical events that really happen in our three-dimensional world imply, in other worlds, those events that could happen. Every event that happens in your real life implies the existence of those events that did not happen. And other parallel worlds depend on these probable events -- for them, those probable events really happened. And the events happening now for you imply the existence of those probable events; those probable events are only probable to you, yet other worlds depend on the occurrence of those probable events for their existence. So the events happening now for you also have a major influence on other worlds -- you are in a relationship of mutual dependence and mutual influence.

Then, Seth began writing the preface for Ruburt's book about Seth. You see, at the start of this session, Jane had a premonition that he was going to write a preface, and sure enough, he began writing it. With obvious enthusiasm, Seth easily shifted from the present book to a new topic -- writing a preface for Paul's worldview of Seth. In our session, for the first time, he transmitted material concerning two books in one evening: one was the book about Seth, and the other was his present The Nature of the Psyche.

Session 781: The Language of the Universe and the Existence of God

This session was held on Monday evening, June 28, 1976. Seth used the first part of the session to continue dictating the prophecy for Jane's book Seth, which was not yet finished, and then at 11:11 began the dictation for this book.

Seth picked up very naturally. He said:

In a manner of speaking, you mark upon the universe in your own private way, using the language of atoms and molecules.

What does this mean? It means that we use physical means -- molecules and atoms are both physical -- to mark upon the universe in our own distinct, private ways. You impress the universe with your own identity, you stamp it, you mark it, you engrave upon it. Therefore, in a certain sense, the universe always knows you -- as you and not as someone else. Precisely because you use your own way, using this physical language of atoms and molecules, to engrave your mark upon the universe, to stamp it with your seal, the universe always knows you as you, and not as anyone else. You are recognized; you are known.

Broadly speaking, when you speak your own language, the universe is also speaking your language at the same time. Because the universe constantly transfers itself into your private perception -- it takes those parts of itself that are physical and nonphysical, and transfers them into things you can perceive, entering into your personal perception.

At the same time, he says that within your own psyche, you dwell somewhat as your body dwells within your own body. This enters into a kind of mutual nesting process: when you speak your own language, it is as if the universe is also speaking your language at the same time. Why? Because the universe perceives itself through you -- the universe you perceive is perceived through your own way, so the universe enters into the scope of your body through your perception. Through your cognition, you repack the universe into your heart.

He says this is just like your body dwelling within your body -- you dwell within the body of the universe, but the universe also dwells within your body. You are each other, mutually; you are within me, and I am within you. It is not as you think, that you are outside the universe and the universe is inside you -- no, the two of you do not distinguish between inside and outside.

That world of his -- the entire universe -- has many languages. Be very careful not to understand "language" here as the languages we actually speak; he says language is used as an analogy so that we can understand.

He says you are like one dwelling in your own spiritual kingdom. The psyche or soul is like a world, and you are like a country. The spiritual world has many, many countries, and each country assumes it speaks its own language. People are always seeking a primary language -- the original text says master language, your primary language or core language -- and each person is like an independent country within the spiritual world, seeking his own core language. And all other languages are revealed from it.

This viewpoint was mentioned in the previous session: every language, the languages it does not speak, are indeed implied by and contained within that language. In a certain way, for example, Latin is a kind of primary language.

In the same way, people need the magical, need to believe in gods, or need this kind of god, from which all spirituality is revealed. What you are seeking here is the implied source -- the spoken, the invisible pauses, the inner organization that gives the language, or gives oneself, a means of expression.

He says you have always been seeking God, you need God, just as if you were seeking the inner, unspoken, unuttered rhythms and cadences within language -- those pauses, hesitations, unspoken words, sounds not uttered. In other words, in your process of seeking God, it is like seeking those things in a language that are not spoken.

I do not know whether you can understand his meaning. Our world, as was said earlier, the scenes we see, these images, are all symbols, symbols of an inner organization. And when we seek God, it is like seeking the inner organization, the inner structure of this universe or this world, rather than the things that can be seen outwardly. It is like seeking the inner structure and framework of a language that is not spoken.

He says language finally becomes ancient. The languages we speak now are all very ancient, having been created and passed down to today, at least several thousand years old. Some words in some languages have been completely forgotten, but in another language they leap out in another form.

We can find an example for this. I cannot remember the specifics right now; it concerns a paper on ancient human languages and ancient languages from Peking University³. A professor specifically compared the differences between ancient Chinese and ancient English, and he discovered that many, many words were the same, with the same pronunciations. It is just that English later became a phonetic script, while Chinese characters still retain the basic characteristics of pictographs. But in ancient times, ancient China and ancient English -- perhaps originally descended from Latin -- were consistent in pronunciation across many word roots. If you are interested, you can look for related articles; he gave many, many examples. It is a very professional paper, not a joke; it was written by a professor at Peking University who specializes in ancient literature⁴.

I remember one relatively simple example from it: the pronunciation of ancient Chinese is different from today's; the pronunciation of characters changed in every dynasty. This professor examined some characters whose original pronunciations could still be found, or whose original pronunciations could be inferred. For example, the word "tong" -- in ancient times, the "tong" in "tianxia datong" (great unity under heaven) referred to a small city or small town called "tong," and in ancient times it was pronounced tong. And this sound is very close to the pronunciation of the word town in ancient English; the pronunciation of Old English and the pronunciation of ancient Chinese are very close to each other.

So Seth is saying here that some things have probably been lost by us humans today. A word that has been forgotten in one language will leap out in another language in another transformed form -- it is no longer in its original form, it has been transformed, so "tong" became town.

However:

All worldly languages are united by pauses and hesitations.

The various different sounds all depend upon these characteristic pauses and hesitations. Without these pauses and hesitations, all sounds become meaningless. Even the apparent changes of pauses between languages have meaning only because of an implied, unuttered inner rhythm.

One language and another language, such as English and Chinese, pause in different places, including the rhythm of the pauses and the rhythm of speech, which are all different. Let me give a simple example: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are all composed of the pronunciation of each individual character, unlike the Latin alphabet pronunciation of English. But if you let a Westerner listen to people from these three countries speaking, although he understands none of the three, he can still distinguish which ones are Japanese, which are Chinese, and which are Korean. I asked them how they could tell, and they said through the changes of rhythm in the language. They said that to Western ears, Chinese people speak with a relatively fast, relatively light and brisk process, while Japanese and Korean have a heavier sense of rhythm.

Seth is saying exactly this here: the changes in the rhythm of pauses between each language are all different. These differences are like certain hints, giving meaning to the unuttered inner rhythm of the language. In other words, the most core part of a language lies in its inner rhythm, in its rhythm and pauses, in those things that are not spoken. Just like our entire world -- compared with the things that are seen and the things that are not seen, although both are important, those unseen things are more important -- because they are the root, the core of the entire structure, while the things seen on the surface are what has already been manifested.

Historical magic -- those gods throughout history -- become equally ancient. The differences between gods are just as obvious as the differences between languages. When you are learning a language, it seems to involve a great mystery -- when you do not understand a language, and you watch people speaking another language in a television interview, your first feeling is that it is very mysterious; you do not know what he is saying.

But when you are studying the nature of the psyche, an even greater atmosphere of the unknown exists. What is the psyche? As was said earlier -- the psyche is that unknown part of yourself, the part you have not discovered, the part you yourself do not know, and it is still yourself. Because you do not know it, when you explore the nature of the psyche, there is certainly an even greater atmosphere of the unknown present.

Therefore, the unknown parts of the psyche and its greater horizons are often perceived as God, or as a greater psyche, a greater soul. Those unknown parts of your psyche are like exploring an unfamiliar world, those distant horizons -- you can never see their end. The horizon is right before your eyes; you can see it, but it seems you can never reach it, because as you walk forward, the horizon is always before your eyes. There seems to be a novel or an article called "The Horizon You Can Never Reach," or something like "The Vanishing Horizon"⁵ -- you can see it, but you can never reach it.

The unknown parts of your psyche are like the existence of God: you can feel its existence, but you can never touch it, never reach it. Yet you also feel that it seems to be a part of your world. Is the horizon a part of your world? Of course it is. But can you reach the horizon? You can never reach it. Why? The earth is round; even if you circle the earth several times, you will not find where the horizon is, because it never has an end.

Seth has been using this example all along to tell you what God is: he is not mysterious; he is just like the horizon of your world -- he is in your world, yet you cannot see him or touch him; you seem to be able to perceive him but cannot actually grasp him.

And this part of the self that is revealed from the psyche -- for example, your own physical body, which is the perceived part of the psyche, and the material world around us, which is also the revealed part of the psyche -- is just like a specific language leaping out from a certain language family, just as Latin leaps out from the Latin language family. He has been using these two analogies all along, to give us a genuine understanding of God and of the nature of the psyche. Because the psyche itself cannot be described; it can only use this kind of analogical method to give you a vague, half-understood concept. It can only go this far.

He says you use ordinary language to speak with your companions and with humanity; you are writing history, and you are also using language to communicate with others. Many books are written to be read, not to be read aloud -- speeches are certainly meant to be read aloud, but books that write history and records are purely for recording.

Through written language, communication is greatly expanded. If communication between people only occurred through spoken language, it would certainly be limited: the words you have spoken, when you are not present, do those words not simply vanish? But when they are recorded and written into books, they can be passed down even after you die. Just like the Seth material we see today, it was certainly received through writing -- that was for people of that era. Now it is no longer like that; now there are tape recorders, video, and all kinds of advanced technology, and in the future there will be quantum communication and holographic imaging. These methods can all break through limitations and can allow a person to stand vividly before you for one-on-one communication.

But in direct communication, you do not only encounter the language the other person speaks; the speaker himself is also present. His spoken language is embellished by smiles, frowns, expressions, and gestures, and these add to the meaning of the speech. Face-to-face speech always transcends the mere transmission of text, because it adds expressions, tone of voice, volume, and manner, and these embellish the entire language. When you read a book, you often have to silently recite the words -- some words you do not understand after reading them twice, so you have to read them aloud -- as if using a more emotionally direct immediacy to strengthen their symbolic content. These words themselves are all symbolic, but when you silently read them in your heart, the words take on emotion. Emotion is direct; words are indirect. In the transmission of symbols, much information is lost, but when you silently recite them with an emotional voice, this directness of emotion strengthens their symbolic nature.

But the language of the psyche -- the language of the spirit -- is far richer and more colorful. The language of the psyche is not as thin as written language; in the language of the psyche, words come alive. What is the language of the psyche? You have never understood what the psyche is; the language of the psyche is your world -- the world around you is the language of the psyche, including you yourself, all of it is the language of the psyche. All objects are symbolic, so he says that in the language of the psyche, the words of the psyche all come alive. Its verbs are in motion, and do not merely represent or stand for that motion -- not like when we read a verb, which has past tense, present tense, future tense, and so on; in the language of the psyche, a verb is an action itself. Its nouns become the very things they represent. Its inflections are multidimensional.

He says that when comparing the language of the psyche with our current language, its verbs and nouns can be interchanged -- while in ordinary understanding, nouns and verbs cannot be interchanged; for example, "table" and "run," one is a noun and one is a verb, and they cannot be interchanged. But in the spiritual world they can be completely interchanged, because it is multidimensional.

In another way, the psyche is its own language -- from a certain angle, the psyche is itself the very language of itself. At any particular point in time, all of its tenses are present tense. In the spiritual world, no matter from which point you cut in, all the things it manifests -- assuming they are all language -- their tense is always present tense. Because time is simultaneous; it has no past tense and no future tense. In other words, it has many tenses, but they are all present tense. This sentence is interesting: theoretically it has many tenses, past, present, and future, but seen from the spiritual world, they are all present. The past is also present, the future is also present, and the present is even more present. Something that happened five years ago is also a present event from its perspective; something that will happen three years from now, which has not happened for you and which you certainly consider future tense, is also present tense in the spiritual world. Are these two present tenses the same? No, they are not. So Seth uses a convenient way of saying it: you can understand it as many different kinds of present tense.

In it, no words die -- some words do not disappear, unlike in current human civilization where many ancient scripts have already disappeared and are no longer used, becoming antique-like things, studied only in ancient language research at certain universities. But in the spiritual world, there is no such thing as ancient script and ancient language. He says this language is experience -- language itself is experience, so there is no such thing as past and ancient; all of it is happening now.

So in spiritual terms, you cannot say that there is a source, and you also cannot say that there is no source. So when you ask whether there is a God -- the God he refers to here is that thing which created the psyche, or a source -- the very nature of this question itself indicates that you have misunderstood the subject itself. From another angle, your study of the psyche has not yet entered the door.

He says in the same way, when you ask whether there is a primary language, a core language, it is obvious that you do not understand what language itself is. If you understood what language itself is, you would know: language exists by depending on its implied language. When we say English is a primary language, English itself actually implies the existence of Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian -- all of these languages. When you speak English, it implies the existence of other languages. Between one language and all other languages, they are themselves yet inseparable. Although your attention may be focused only on one particular language, if you can understand the essence of language from the perspective of language, then you can understand the essence of the spiritual world from the perspective of the spiritual world.

Just like you yourself -- there was a passage earlier: you have eaten the plants and animals of the world, and their consciousness merges with your consciousness; you are defined and determined by the non-you. If there were no those non-you things, you would not be called you. English exists because of the existence of Chinese, Japanese, and other languages; if all these languages were gone, there would be no existence of English. They are mutually dependent, inseparable from one another, a single whole.

So extending outward from this point, what Seth wants to tell you is this: you and your psyche, you and your soul, you and that unknown part of yourself -- you are a single whole, and cannot be separated.

Therefore, the psyche and its source -- many people will ask, since you speak of the psyche and the soul, where is its source? You ask where an individual's source is, where humanity's source is, and what is the source of God? Who created God? You say God created everything, so who created God? If you want to ask such questions -- they are so inseparably interconnected with one another that if you attempt to find the separation of one from the other, to find who is whose source, who is whose origin, then you will automatically confuse the subject; you will not even know what you are asking, and the question will have no value or meaning in existing.

At 11:01 Jane was transmitting with considerable focus. During the break she received an inspiration: the material Seth gave for the book Seth would be divided into two parts, one about the worldview, and the other about Seth and his worldview -- these two are different. At 11:25 they continued, and Seth did not pick up on this thread, but continued with this session.

He says the physical world implies a world of gods. The physical world we are now in, this three-dimensional world, implies a world of gods, just as the language we speak aloud implies those unspoken inner rhythms and structures. The existence of God also implies the existence of a physical world -- the existence of the spiritual world, the existence of the soul, the existence of God, likewise implies the existence of a physical world. This statement implies that which is unuttered, and the reverse is equally true.

For this reason, to deny the validity and importance of the individual is to deny the importance and validity of God. When you deny your individual validity, your individual importance -- when you say, each of us is insignificant, I am as tiny as an ant, there are seven billion people in the world and I am only one of them -- then you are denying God. These two exist within one existence: human and God, the physical world and the nonphysical world, the body and the soul; they are within one existence, and you cannot separate them; never separate them.

He then gives a vivid example: suppose from one end of reality -- one end of the universe -- you shout out, you proclaim: Where is God? Tell me where God is! Suppose your voice travels far enough and is loud enough, reaching the other end, and then the other end sends back an answer. He says:

I am me.

The original text is I am me, and the m in me is capitalized; Seth specifically instructed this. Why capitalize it? Can you understand? Who is he asking? He is asking where God is. The other end of the universe answers back from afar, saying: I am me. Besides answering with an "I am me" -- this phrase is very interesting -- God then shouts back: "Then who am I?" And then God finds himself within you. God, from the other end of the universe, finds himself within you.

Is that interesting? He is giving a vivid example. You have to listen to the story of this example: because you are a part of the source, and likewise everything that is manifested is also -- you are a part of the source, and all things in this world are also parts of the source. Because God exists, you exist; and because you exist, God exists.

There is a strong philosophical dialectical thought here: you and God are one. It is like the principle of seeking the horizon -- you can never find the horizon, but does the horizon not exist? How could it not exist? The moment you open your eyes you see the horizon; the horizon is in everyone's eyes, but is your horizon the same as someone else's horizon? No, it is not. Everyone knows in their heart that the horizon exists, but go and find it -- you cannot find it.

This passage is very interesting; savor it carefully: you ask at this end of the universe where God is, and God at the other end of the universe tells you "I am me" -- he does not say I am God, he says I am me. All right, let us use logical reasoning: then God asks, "Then who am I?" God, at the other end of the universe, discovers himself within your physical body. So what does "I am me" mean? Does it not mean "You are you"? Are you not that God?

So why must this me be capitalized? Because it carries divinity; it is not the me you think it is -- not the small self you think of, but that greater self. Although it is still you, at this moment, after God has answered back through the other end of the universe, this you is no longer the original you; it is already a greater you, so he capitalizes it.

Just remember his conclusion: because God exists, you exist; and because you exist, God exists; you and God are one. When you deny your existence, God also ceases to exist; when you deny the reality of God's existence, you also cease to exist. These two are mutually dependent.

So considering it from this angle, when we now speak of materialism or idealism, are these two viewpoints both incorrect? Many people say that those of you who study spirituality are all idealists -- wrong; those who study spirituality are never idealists. Are they materialists? They are not materialists either. They are both materialist and idealist. For example, you are a physical existence; that is materialist, right? And what is God? God is an idealist thing; it is not a material existence at all. But these two are not separate from each other, so are those who study spirituality materialists or idealists? They are both materialist and idealist, and you could also say they are neither materialist nor idealist -- these two statements are different. We are not here today to debate this; when you reach that state, you will understand the difference between these two statements.

At the level where you have awareness, where you have consciousness, when you can feel, of course, you are not the whole of God -- you know this very clearly. Because you know that God is the part of you that is unuttered -- the part not spoken, not manifested. The so-called God, the so-called psyche, is that part of yourself that you have not spoken, that you have not manifested. It is also a part of you; it is just that you have not seen it, have not felt it; it is a part of yourself. When you seek the psyche or seek God, it is within your body -- using "body" is not quite appropriate -- it is a part of you. Your physical existence depends upon those unuttered realities. Just as a letter depends upon the inner organization it implies, just like the letters ABCD, they certainly depend upon an implied, unspoken inner organization. This inner organization cannot be uttered -- why must English be composed of 26 letters? Who can tell me why? You cannot say; there is no theoretical basis. But indeed there is an implied, unutterable inner organizational structure. Every language is like this; Japanese has its 50-sound chart, and the number of letters in each language is different -- why? No reason; it is the invisible inner rhythm of the language.

He says, speaking in those terms, from the perspective of language, the part of you that is unuttered traces back to a source that becomes God -- the part of you that is not spoken is the part beyond what you yourself know, the part you do not know. If you trace it backward, it is the source that becomes God. God is produced from that part of yourself that you do not know. You ask where God comes from? God comes from you. Just as various different languages can be traced back to their sources. The source of God is within you.

The primary language -- still master language -- can be compared to historical deities. Have the primary languages all been manifested? Yes, they have all been passed down. Look, we compare them to some deities in history: the Jade Emperor, God, the earth god, all kinds. Once each language takes shape, is it not fixed and determined? Just like every named god -- the "deities" used here refers to those gods with names; if we simply say God, capitalized God, it refers to a general term for God; there is a subtle difference between the two. Any named god, heavenly gods, earthly gods, earth gods, are like the languages of history -- all named, passed down, and fixed.

And every living person is a living part of the divine. That makes sense, right? He says that throughout this life a person is supported by nature's excellent, magnificent power — that even the divine has transferred itself into a quality of the earth and the universe — the original text says "element," meaning an element, a core component. He says every living person is part of the divine, and throughout life is supported and upheld by this excellent, magnificent power of nature. The divine, from its multidimensional reality, has transferred itself into the core elements of the earth and the universe, the core elements that make up our world and the universe, and human beings are among them. So every person is a living part of the divine.

Session 782: The Language of the Psyche and Imagination

This session is relatively short, so we will cover it together with the next one. Session 782 was held on Monday, July 5, 1976, at 9:56 p.m.

He began by saying: The everyday language you use speaks of separation, distinction, and discrimination. In our ordinary language there are many nouns and many definitions: what this is, what an apple is, what a pear is, what the difference between an apple and a pear is. To a certain degree, language organizes your feelings and emotions—language symbolizes a thing, but it also goes beyond the symbol itself and begins to directly organize your feelings and emotions.

But the language of the psyche can be applied to far more symbols, and it can be combined in many more ways than the alphabet can. Language is the production of symbols, symbols that represent your feelings, emotions, desires, and thoughts. In your three-dimensional world it constantly needs to distinguish and discriminate the differences between various things, and then it can organize and reorganize, and to a certain degree it can even organize your emotions and feelings—when you read a novel, and you weep profusely for Lin Daiyu and Jia Baoyu, have you not entered into it with emotion? When you watch a speech delivered with great feeling, you also shed tears. This is all language organizing your emotions.

But the language of the psyche—our entire world is the language of the psyche—compared to the alphabet, it can be combined in far more ways; its modes of combination and expression are vastly greater.

In everyday language, objects have specific names. Names are not objects, but symbols. When I say "a cup," you can only have a general image of a cup, and the image of the cup in each person's mind is different; when I say "a tree," it does not refer to any particular tree—not an apple tree, not a pine tree, not a redwood. So a name is just a name, not the object, but a symbol.

In Buddhism this kind of wording is often used—"such-and-such a thing is called such-and-such, but is not such-and-such." You see this in the Diamond Sutra⁶ and other sutras as well. What he is saying here is exactly this meaning: a name is a symbol, not the thing itself.

Yet even these symbols separate you from your world. Why? Because, as was said earlier, language is about separation—nouns are about separation; this noun and that noun are different. So even these symbols can separate you from your world. Then you are the perceiver, and the world is objectified by you, becoming an objective world—you are a subjective perceiver, and the world is an objective existence, unmoving.

He said that in fact you can understand the nature of your psyche far more than you think you can. But to do this—to understand the greater scope of your psychic nature—you must leave your everyday language behind, at least temporarily; you must forget it. When you try to use language to understand the psyche, it is very difficult. To do this, you must temporarily set aside the language you ordinarily use; do not try to use language to explain or describe everything, but pay attention to your own feelings and imagination.

Your language tells you that certain things are true, are facts, and that certain others are not. Yet many of your most vivid or deeply moving feelings do not conform to the facts of your language, and so you cast them aside and leave them unexpressed. What does this mean? In your real life, those vivid, deeply stirring feelings—you cannot describe them in words. Try it: how would you describe them? I ask you to describe the feeling of love, to describe the feeling of embracing the person you love—you cannot describe it. Let alone those even more subtle feelings. So these things that transcend language, because they are hard to describe, sometimes you simply do not describe them. Yet these emotions and experiences often express the language of the psyche.

It is not impossible for you to understand your psyche; you are not unable to understand the things of your psyche. But you often try to understand it in the most difficult way—what way is that? You always want to understand and experience it through your everyday language; that is where the difficulty lies. If you do not use your everyday language, there will not be so many difficulties.

He said that imagination belongs to the language of the psyche. Your imagination is the language of your psyche. So you see, in the 24-week Master Key System, it constantly trains your imagination: from the very beginning, imagining a person, looking at a photograph, and by the end, imagining having a conversation with that person, and finally being able to imagine a warship... it constantly trains your imagination. Why? Because imagination is the language of the psyche. If words and the things you speak are the language of your physical world, the language of your body, then what is the language of your psyche? The language of your psyche is your imagination. Only by using it more and learning it more can your linguistic ability become rich—so now you know why it uses a great deal of imaginative work and exercises.

It often gives experiences that conflict with the root assumptions upon which everyday language is based. Because this kind of imagination is based on the language of the psyche, it conflicts with your ordinary everyday language, and therefore imagination is often regarded as a suspect—that is, as highly dubious. Because the things of imagination conflict with the logic of everyday language, with the root assumptions of everyday language, you end up feeling suspicious of it. What does conflict at the level of root assumptions mean? For example, from the perspective of the psyche, you can merge with a tree—and in the logic of everyday language, that is a conflict.

Spiritual Experience That Language Cannot Describe

Why is imagination the language of the psyche? Because imagination is based on the language of the psyche, and it conflicts with everyday language at the level of basic assumptions. For example, from the perspective of the psyche, you can merge into oneness with a tree, yet in real life, in the logic of language, this conflicts with all your assumptions, including the simultaneity of time. Our language has tenses, with distinctions between past, present, and future, so when you use language to describe that "the you as a child, the you in the future, and the you now are a trinity existing simultaneously," you will find that language simply cannot describe it.

Why can it not be described? Because the core purpose for which human beings developed language was precisely to distinguish one thing, to separate it, to state something clearly. But the things of the psyche are all mixed together. Past, present, and future happen simultaneously and exist simultaneously. Your consciousness and the consciousness of a tree are also mixed together. It is in itself something that cannot be stated clearly, cannot be separated, cannot be explained. No matter how you try, you cannot depict it with human language, because language was not invented for that purpose. Language was invented to make things clear. To make something that clearly cannot be made clear speak, no matter how you speak it, it cannot be made clear. That is not within its scope of work, nor is it within the reach of its ability.

A Moment of Oneness with the Sky

Seth gives an example. You might be standing alone in a doorway, on a stretch of grass, or on a street, lying on the grass looking up at the sky, or walking along a crowded street, surrounded perhaps by many people in a big city. Then suddenly you look up, moved by a large cloud sweeping overhead, and feel that you are part of that cloud. You might momentarily experience a deep longing, feel your emotions suddenly filled with that moving solemnity, and in that instant, you and the sky seem to become one.

The feeling he describes is one many of us have had. It does not happen often in cities, but the most common scene is this: when you were little, or during a relaxed time in your school years, you went on vacation to some tourist spot or a place with no one around, lay quietly on the grass, watched the blue sky and white clouds, felt the breeze on your face, listened to the small insects and birds around you, and suddenly had the feeling that in some instant you and that cloud could become one, as if your heart drifted away with the cloud, moving along with it.

But when you think according to the language patterns of the mundane world, that language will tell you your imagination is unrealistic. Obviously you are one thing, and the cloud and the sky are another; you and the sky are not at all equal, completely unrelated. Seth jokes that if your friend were Spock—a major character in the old Star Trek series—he might say, "That is illogical." Spock is a major character in the old Star Trek series.⁷

After that brief moment that leaves you dazed, the feeling quickly fades. That instant made you feel at one with the cloud in the sky, but it was very brief. You might feel refreshed and uplifted, but usually you would not take that feeling as a statement of any legitimate reality, would not regard it as a real event, or as a representative, a proof, of your spiritual existence. You think this is just that artistic feeling coming over you again, and you feel like an artsy young woman or an artsy young man, suddenly young again.

Yet emotion and imagination bring you into the closest contact with other portions of your own reality. If you want to understand the spiritual part of yourself, it is only through emotion and imagination—those two are the closest. Words and language are much farther away. Emotion and imagination also release your intellect; when you have emotion and imagination, you are no longer bound by the intellect, so their power is not confined to those ideas you have been told are facts. Conversely, from a certain angle, the feeling you imagine is the more real one, more real in practical terms—what you imagine is more real, not that the factual content you consider real is more real.

For example, the physical laws you are familiar with operate where you are; relatively speaking, they are true. On Earth the basic physical laws all hold, whether Newton's first law, second law, or third law,⁸ but that does not mean they hold in other realities. In those terms, your physically materialized person is a bodily, materialized person; you are a physical person. In the scene just described, you gaze up at the starry sky, your body has a certain weight, you look up at the sky at such and such an angle—in physical terms, you can be classified: you are not the sky, you are a body. Likewise, the cloud can be physically measured, shown to be so many feet above you, driven in its course by a particular speed and wind, and about to pour down a precisely measured amount of rain. Physically speaking, you are obviously separate from the cloud, so in those terms, your brief experience of oneness with them is like a rumor, a piece of nonsense, rather than a fact, or merely a product of your imagination.

The Direct Expression of Psychic Knowledge

Yet this very thing is a direct expression of psychic knowledge. That moment when you felt yourself merging with the clouds in a daze is precisely a direct manifestation and proof of your psychic knowledge. The psyche can feel its identification with nature as entirely legitimate; it exercised its own possibilities and felt its emotional power leap up -- leap up from within your body, fly straight into the sky, and be together with the clouds. In such a circumstance, your emotions were magnified, far larger than your body, rising to a higher power, and became one with the clouds.

Seth says he could give many such examples, and every one of us has experienced them in our daily lives. Every day, your psyche is showing evidence of its own larger existence -- not limited to your physical existence alone; the psyche also has a psychic existence. And those evidences, you have been taught to ignore, told that none of these need be considered, that they are imagination, that they are wild fancies; because they do not conform to the facts, you need not consider them at all. Every day the psyche is showing its own larger side, yet you never see it, because you simply do not value it.

From childhood you have been taught that imagined things are not real. Yet imagination connects you with a different kind of reality, or a different framework, in which experience is legitimately perceived. Imagination can connect you with the future, the unknown, the larger, the more real world. Although you cannot see its material manifestation in the three-dimensional world, the experience you gain from it can be legitimately perceived by your consciousness -- when you merged with the clouds, that feeling of being utterly relaxed and joyful, that feeling of solemnity, that momentary feeling of being one with all things in the universe, can be experienced by you, and so it is called legitimate perception.

The Reality of Thoughts

The greater truths of the psyche exist in that dimension. Apart from the physical laws and truths that our material world recognizes, the greater truths of the psyche exist in just such a dimension. From that dimension, you select physical, material facts, but thoughts are also real -- only you do not consider them real; you acknowledge only physical facts. Of course, only some thoughts are transformed into physical actions, while some are not acted upon.

Seth gives an example. For instance, "adultery" -- he is talking about the thought of wanting to have sexual relations with someone other than your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend. There is clearly an essential difference between this thought and actually carrying out the action. Many men and women have thought in their minds about doing such things with other people of the opposite sex, fantasized about it, imagined it -- but does everyone actually carry it out? No, some just let the thought pass.

In that reality space, in that dimension, these things are all real. Your thoughts and the things you actualize in the three-dimensional world are equally real. It is not that something is unreal just because it was not actualized in the three-dimensional world. We only acknowledge as real the things that are actualized in the three-dimensional world, but Seth tells you that in that dimension, all of it is real. If explained in a way you can understand: if you have the thought of being unfaithful, then in a parallel world, you have already been unfaithful; this event has already happened in that parallel world. Therefore, on the level of the psyche, your thoughts and your actions are equally real.

But you cannot deal with your thoughts and reality in a rigid, literal-minded way. You might think: then I must watch over my thoughts and ideas at every moment, because as soon as these thoughts arise, they become real on the level of the psyche. And among my thoughts there are so many shameful, filthy, sordid ideas -- what will happen if all of these become actualized?

This reminds me of what Shenxiu did when the Fifth Patriarch was transmitting the Dharma: "Constantly wipe it diligently, let no dust alight"⁹. Shenxiu's "constantly wipe it diligently, let no dust alight"¹⁰ -- he was cleaning up his thoughts, because he knew that thoughts and ideas should not be allowed to run wild, that they would become actualized on the level of the psyche. Seth tells you here that most of the time, you should not try to watch over your thoughts. Do not try to manage them, saying this thought is wrong, impure, not noble, too selfish. Do not imagine your thoughts as some kind of purebred animal -- as if you had to put a halter on your thoughts, like a herd of horses whose bloodline you want to keep pure, always afraid they will go out and mate with other animals and the bloodline will no longer be pure.

Your thoughts do indeed form your reality -- this is certain. But you do not need to fear them; they will create their own balance by themselves. Why is there no need to manage them? Because the psyche dwells in a reality so different from the world you ordinarily perceive -- they are two completely different worlds. Your three-dimensional world's concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, the rules and norms you want to use to control your thoughts -- morality, ethics, secular laws -- none of these exist on the level of the psyche. What you consider good may be bad on that level, and what you consider bad may be good on that level. You simply do not understand the norms of that world, so do not try to manage it.

This is the realm of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch. Looking at our three-dimensional world from that level, the mirror, the tree, the stand, the dust you speak of -- none of them exist at all, so what is there to sweep? The original meaning says it all -- it never existed in the first place. It is not that it existed before and then disappeared through cultivation; it never existed from the very beginning. Huineng truly reached that realm; he was not just playing with words. Seth here says the same thing from another angle.

In that world, the observer and the observed, which you think are separate -- it is because you think they are separate that there is right and wrong, good and bad, because there is the notion of a self, the notion of a person, the notion of sentient beings, the notion of a lifespan. If the killer and the killed are the same person, tell me who is the good person and who is the bad person? He is both the murderer and the victim. The reason you have standards of good and evil is that you have separated the two. Without these notions, without time, without cause and effect, is there still good and bad? The early Buddhist teachings spoke of cause and effect for the sake of beginners; at the next level, they tell you there is no cause and effect. If you do not even have good and evil, how can there be cause and effect? How can there be karma? Those are all for beginning Buddhists to understand; you must move beyond them, not remain stuck in good and evil, cause and effect, karma and reincarnation.

The Reality of Dreams

At this point Jane said she felt she was not very focused tonight. Although the material was coming through smoothly and the information was good, Seth went on to say, you have been taught that dreams are imaginary things. Broadly speaking, it is useless for you to question whether dreams are real, because they are real in themselves. If a dream event later becomes a fact and happens in the three-dimensional world, then you confirm that the dream was real -- for example, you dream that you will fail tomorrow's exam, and then tomorrow you really do fail. But in the life of the psyche, whether or not a dream can be reproduced in waking life does not make it any more real or any less real. Dream events occur in an entirely different range of reality, in things that exist in another space and time. You could call it an imaginary range or an imaginary world -- what you call it does not matter.

In dreams, you experience another reality that exists independently and is highly effective. Within it, the psyche's own language is given greater freedom. The flowers, grass, and trees of the three-dimensional world are also symbols of the psyche, they are symbols -- a tree is a symbol, a flower is also a symbol -- and in dreams, this language of the psyche has greater freedom and can express itself freely.

Some of you may try to remember your dreams, but no one is required to connect with the reality of dreams -- no one asks you to live in the world of dreams and never want to wake up. Except for the one in Dream of the Red Chamber¹¹ -- someone gave him a mirror, and every day he looked at Wang Xifeng in it, until in the end he could not pull himself out and could not get out. I cannot remember his name.

In most of your dreams, you do not merely think about a situation; rather, your imagination becomes a part of it, and in the imagination you also become a part of it. In dreams there is always your participation -- you appear as a character, you do this and that. You do not remove yourself as a bystander the way you do when you ordinarily imagine something; instead, you put yourself into it as well. You are both the builder of the imagination and a part of the imagination -- you become the person in the imagination, the protagonist. Apart from physical, material facts, in every other way dreams are real. You dream that someone gave you a gold ingot, and when you wake up there is nothing in your hand -- apart from that not being real, your overall feeling is real.

Creativity and Dreams

Every time you encounter any fact, you have bumped into the tail end of some kind of creativity. Those facts you perceive in the three-dimensional world, whether they are facts about objects or the occurrence of an event, are all the tail end of some kind of imaginative creativity—that is something you created, and you only see its result. The psyche brings facts into existence.

The dreams you remember are already a translation of a deeper experience. In this process of translation, a so-called fact is equally true and equally false. To say it is true: at the level of the dream, it is true. To say it is false: it has been transferred from a deeper experience. How do your dreams come about? As discussed in Chapter 19 of Seth Speaks, your dream is only one level among them; it emerges from a deeper level of consciousness. That deeper level of consciousness, because you cannot understand it, translates itself into things your three-dimensional senses can comprehend—into images, perceptions, sounds, emotions, language. The level where it actually happens in essence is one that all your human perceptual systems cannot perceive; that is where it truly happens. It is translated over only so that you can understand it.

We can borrow the perspective of projection that Teacher Liu Feng often uses to understand this: the projection theory Teacher Liu Feng often uses—if you regard the deeper layer of consciousness as a higher-dimensional projection source, then the layer of your dream is only a projection of that deeper consciousness onto the level of the dream, like a shadow play. From this angle, it is false; yet at the level of this shadow play, it truly happens and truly exists. In dreams you have all kinds of real feelings—you experience joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness; some people wake up laughing, wake up frightened, break out in a cold sweat, and the body reacts along with it. If we push it down one more layer—if our three-dimensional world is a lower dimension, and the dream level is a higher dimension—then our three-dimensional world is also a projection of that higher dimension onto our level. Many things are first rehearsed and practiced in dreams, and only afterward manifested in the three-dimensional world. Regarding this question, a later chapter of The Nature of Personal Reality also discusses it: many things in your three-dimensional world must first be rehearsed and practiced by yourself in dreams.

Seth says that dreams are used as dramas, performed for you. They connect the perception of your psyche with the perception of the dreaming self—the dreaming self is the you inside the dream. Dreams transfer experience from one level of the psyche to another, transferring something from a deeper level to a somewhat intermediate level, so that you can have some perception of it in the dream; otherwise you would not be able to perceive it. During certain portions of your sleep, your experience enters regions of existence so vast that dreams are used to transfer these experiences to you.

This ability of yours to dream comes from that source—the source of the psyche, the source of the universe. Dreaming is not a passive activity—it is not fragments of your past memories somehow combined in the brain, which is the nonsense that current human science spouts. Many people who dream will tell you that they saw a person in a dream whom they had never met in reality, yet days or even months later, they suddenly met this person, and this person had appeared in their dreams countless times. If we follow the scientists' explanation that dreams are random combinations of human memory fragments, then how could he have memories of a person he has never met? How could that face appear in his dream? This simply cannot be explained. If you cannot explain something yourself, it would be more reasonable for you to tell me, "I know nothing about the matter of human dreaming." But explaining it recklessly like that is not appropriate.

The Ability to Dream

Dreams require a peculiar and definite mixture of various kinds of consciousness. By various kinds of consciousness, I mean consciousness on various levels. Consciousness has many levels; Seth Speaks, Chapters 18 and 19, are both about the different stages and different levels of consciousness, and those two chapters are best read together. Dreams mix consciousness from different levels of consciousness, and they transform nonphysical perception -- not the physical perception of eyes, nose, and ears -- into symbolic signs and codes so that our senses can understand them. The scenes, images, landscapes, and events that appear in your dreams bypass your outer physical senses and directly cause images to appear vividly in your mind; you are not walking with real legs, yet you can feel that you are walking. It transforms the perception of the nonphysical senses into symbols and codes that your physical senses can understand, as a way of making it comprehensible to you.

You take dreaming for granted, but dreaming is actually the result of a special ability, an activity of higher consciousness -- one could even say super-higher -- that humanity to this day cannot fully master. Although there is Inception¹² and all kinds of science fiction films imagining how to enter dreams, those all remain within human imagination and science fiction; in the real world, people have absolutely no way to manufacture a dream.

That ability brings about the very subjective feeling of your conscious life. Your everyday recognition of yourself, your grasp of the self, that subjective feeling of "I am I" -- it is the same ability as the ability to dream. Without this ability, your normal consciousness could not be what it is.

The Preconditions of Dreaming

Seth returns to language again. A spoken language depends on all the other languages it could have spoken, and also on the silences and pauses that make no sound. Without green leaves, how could red flowers stand out? Without those pauses in language, how could the importance of language be shown? A language remains alert precisely because it hides these pauses within its alertness. This is the inner structure of language, its inner rhythm.

The existence of experience that is not defined as physical fact is a precondition for the ability to dream. It also presupposes a greater freedom, in which perception does not depend on time and space. It is a world in which objects can appear or disappear with equal ease, instantly appearing and instantly vanishing in dreams. A person can freely change his subjective framework: if he wants to go to the seaside, he goes to the seaside; if he wants to go to another country, he goes directly, without the bodily contact usually spoken of—without taking a plane, without taking any means of transportation.

That reality represents your origin; it is the natural environment in which your psyche dwells. Your psyche dwells in a reality space similar to the dream state. Once you enter that psychic world, your beliefs, your cultural background, even your language, including the buildings around you, all seem unreal to you in the dream dimension. Even if you catch yourself in the midst of the most vivid dream adventure, or you find yourself traveling beyond the body in a dream, out of body, you still do not grant such experience the same validity as your waking experience. You think it is only a dream, or just a peculiar sensation; you do not consider it as real as the three-dimensional world you live in.

Subjectively speaking, you are surrounded everywhere by your own greater reality, but you do not look in the right place. You have been taught not to trust your feelings, your dreams, your imagination, because those are precisely the right directions—precisely because they do not fit the facts of your narrow three-dimensional perspective, you do not trust them. Yet they are that greater reality; our world is surrounded by that greater reality, but you do not look in the right place. Dreams, imagination, and feelings are the creators of facts; they are the creators of the three-dimensional world, the physical world.

The Role of the Intellect

Seth says that he has no intention of belittling your intellect in any way. Yet it is precisely on the intellectual level that the tyranny of the factual world holds the greatest sway. Because you have an intellect, the tyranny of the physical world has even greater sway -- you rely too much on the intellect, and so you identify with the idea that the physical world has absolute dominance, while all other nonphysical worlds you consider not to be facts. The intellect is not wrong; it is just that the intellect has had its wings clipped. The intellect was originally capable of knowing both the physical world and the nonphysical world, but you have clipped it, allowing it to see only the physical world, and forbidding it to look at any nonphysical world. You have restricted the range of the intellect's activity, giving it only the facts of the three-dimensional world to work with.

Biologically speaking, you are quite capable of handling both the dreaming and waking states, and of forming a far more effective synthesis of the two. You can let the dream and waking states work together -- doing dream things in dreams, doing waking things in the waking state, opening up the barrier between the two, and not using the reality of waking life to deny the realities of dreaming. The later chapters of The Magical Approach also mention this point: you need to find a way to break down this obvious boundary between dream and waking, a boundary that was never necessary in the first place, but was imposed by humans. If you can move very smoothly between the dream state and waking reality, only then can you truly bring into play all your magical powers.

All creative impulses arise from that hidden dimension, from the dimension you cannot see. It is these creative impulses that have formed your great cities, your technology, the steel and concrete that hold your cultural organizations together. Where does that creative impulse come from? It comes out of that reality space you cannot see. And that creative impulse lies behind your language, yet you often use language to silence inner communication -- you use language far too much, so that inner communication stops, falls silent, rather than being liberated.

The Alternation of Dreaming and Waking

There have always been many rhythms of consciousness that have not been prominent historically. In certain eras, human behavior was primarily an expression of the waking state, just as our lives are now; while in other eras, what was called normal human behavior, from a certain perspective, was more like dreamlike scenes in a dream, and the state in which people lived was like that of a person in a dream. You can sense that in certain periods of history, in certain places, people's state was like this. This emphasis was never fixed; it has always been changing.

In certain eras, those particular developments, the extraordinary developments, the developments of human progress, all took place in dreams. Thus dream behavior became the more lucid and clear-cut of the two -- in those eras, people were exceptionally lucid in their dreams, doing their work in an orderly manner, while the things they did upon waking in the daytime were muddled and confused. People entered into sleep to do their work.

Many people, after studying spirituality, find that their greatest realization is that they begin to have lucid dreams, dreams whose clarity is exactly the same as when you are awake. Anyone who has had such dreams can attest to this. In certain eras, human beings lived in just that way -- the dream world was recognized as more real than waking reality, because upon waking they were muddled, while in dreams they were exceptionally lucid. We human beings of the present are exactly the reverse. If you do not understand, you can look at science fiction films, in which the dream world is even more real than the waking state.

Seth said that the dictation for this session was complete, and he gave his most heartfelt blessings and greetings. He said, since I have told you all the ways of how to put this into practice, then I wish you the most exciting experiences in tonight's dreams.

注释与核实

1. Source: United States Geological Survey (USGS) "Geologic Time" (https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/geotime.html) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Lost Horizon" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Horizon-novel-by-Hilton) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia "Diamond Sutra" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E9%87%91%E5%89%9B%E7%B6%93) ↩

7. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Leonard Nimoy | Biography & Facts" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonard-Nimoy) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. Source: Zongbao (ed.) "The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" (CBETA Chinese Buddhist Canon T48n2008) (https://tripitaka.cbeta.org/T48n2008_001) ↩

10. Source: Zongbao "The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" (Taisho Canon T48n2008, Chapter 1: Account of Origins) (https://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/sutra/chi_pdf/sutra19/T48n2008.pdf) ↩

11. Source: Wikipedia "Dream of the Red Chamber" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber) ↩

12. This claim could not be verified. ↩