Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 1

The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

The outer world and personal experience are both projections of the inner psyche, and all living beings participate together in their creation. The feeling-tone is the individual's unique core of pure energy, coloring life experience and forming personal characteristics; the ego is only the focus through which the conscious mind perceives the physical world, and a rigid conscious mind or an overstepping ego creates difficulties. The text also uses examples such as floods to show that personal reality is closely related to one's own beliefs and feelings.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The outer world and personal experience are both projections from within; changing the state of the psyche changes the outer environment.
• The feeling-tone is the individual's unique core of pure energy, coloring life experience and forming personal characteristics.
• The ego is only the focus through which the conscious mind perceives the physical world; rigidity of the conscious mind or overstepping by the ego creates difficulties.
• Consciousness exists in all physical phenomena; human beings and all things in nature share a gestalt consciousness.
• Individual life experiences together form the living world of appearances; the world is created by one's own hand.

Main Text

From April 10, when Seth finished the preface to this book, up until today, a number of things happened in between. The most important of these was that Jane's mother, after many years of illness, unfortunately passed away. These events forced us to set Seth's sessions aside for the time being. Even so, Jane's own ESP class and writing class still continued in part, and she also kept working on the novel mentioned in the preface, The Oversoul Seven trilogy¹.

This book is also worth reading; it is very wonderful as well. In this book, Jane talks a great deal about reincarnation, about visiting many different other souls, reincarnated personalities. This is a novel written by Jane, and she presents it in the form of fiction. If you are very interested in reincarnation, you might want to take a look at this book.

However, throughout this entire period, we still looked forward to taking part in the writing of Seth's new book. During the time we were working on Seth's previous book, Seth Speaks, for a long stretch Jane had been avoiding reading its contents, the reason being that she wanted to avoid becoming consciously involved in it. But recently Jane told me with a laugh that this time she was going to read it after each session was finished, and also put it to immediate use. Her former uneasiness about producing Seth books has now dropped to a minimum, and I greatly encouraged her new openness.

Because there are no difficult points here, there is no need to explain further. I will also, as usual, note down Jane's various states of consciousness between sessions, but that is only the side notes of an interested observer. The true feeling and depth of the various realities and personalities she enters are entirely hers alone, and cannot be put into words. That is to say, Rob is only recording as a bystander, from the perspective of a bystander, while Jane is speaking for Seth and transmitting the Seth material. But which reality Jane herself enters, or Jane's own feelings themselves, these can only be possessed by Jane alone, and cannot be put into words.

Now Seth begins the lesson, and the title of Chapter One is "The Living World in All Its Forms."

Session 610

All the myriad phenomena of the world arise from the mind. The world you see before your eyes is like a three-dimensional painting.

He says the world you see before your eyes—here it should be "world," not "this world." Everyone has a hand in the process of painting; we all have a hand in it. Every color and every line in the painting is first drawn in the psyche before it appears outwardly.

However, in this analogy—and it is just an analogy—the painter himself is part of the painting. And appearing within the painting, there is not a single principle in the outer world that does not originate from within, not a single movement that does not first arise in the mind, and then it is painted out.

The most wondrous thing here is that this outer world of ours is first a manifestation within us, in the psyche, and only then can it be projected outside. And the most wondrous thing is that we ourselves, as people—we are both the one doing the painting and the figures in the painting. The magical thing about it is that it differs most from our previous logic, our previous values or theoretical systems in this way: we are both within it, and we are also creating this painting. That is the most magical part.

The great creativity of consciousness is your inherited asset.

The creativity of consciousness is the asset you are to inherit. But this asset is not unique to humanity alone; every living being possesses this ability. And between the highest and the most minute, between the supreme and the most humble, between atoms and molecules and the conscious, rational mind, there exists a spontaneous cooperation, and it is precisely because of this cooperation that this living world is constituted.

So the first five chapters here were translated by Teacher Wang Yusheng, and you can sense—as we will see later, including in Seth Speaks—that his word choices and many of his expressions are not entirely the same as Teacher Wang Jiqing's. The first five chapters we have read were basically all translated by Teacher Wang Yusheng, and Teacher Wang Jiqing only made some minor revisions and corrections, without making any major changes. So this passage is also very beautiful.

Because the difficulty of the first few chapters of this book is not great. When there is no difficulty, I will not explain; I will just read it through, and you should be able to feel it yourself by listening. Because if you have been following along since Seth Speaks, much of the content here you already understand. He is just using a different way of saying it, expounding it from another angle.

Insects, birds, and animals of every kind have all engaged in this cooperation, creating the environment of nature. This cooperation is as natural and inevitable as the fact that when you breathe on a mirror, a layer of mist will inevitably form on its surface.

It is not only you who participates in this cooperation; insects, birds, and animals—these living beings, all sentient beings—participate as well. This cooperation and its inevitable result are like when you breathe on a mirror; it is that simple. The moment you breathe, mist forms.

All living beings create this world within the feeling tone.

This is what he wants to emphasize, and it is a topic he will discuss for a while later on. This feeling tone. And the world is the natural product of your consciousness; the world is the natural product of our consciousness. Note here that "your" refers not only to human beings but also to other sentient beings participating together. He said it—all living beings.

Feelings and emotions therefore manifest in the world in certain specific ways.

Because our world is created in this way, our feelings and our emotions will manifest in the world in specific ways.

Thoughts appear, and then grow upon the ready-made warm bed.

Thoughts appear first, and then they grow upon this warm bed.

The seasons leap forth, formed from the ancient feeling tone, with its deep and unchanging rhythms.

The seasons have their deep and unchanging rhythms, and they are also the products of the creativity innate to all living beings. These seasons are also the products of the creative power innate to us living beings.

These ancient creative potentials are still deeply buried within the psyche of all living beings. Within them, individual patterns and new differentiated clear blueprints are realized.

This potential exists within every life, deep within the psyche of all living beings. Within this creative potential, there must be individual patterns and new differentiated things, things with innovation, and clear blueprints emerge. It is constantly evolving, constantly creating, constantly innovating.

In other words, this creation itself is not unfolding according to a fixed, predetermined blueprint. It is not that there is a sample designed in advance, and we create this world according to it. No. So here he emphasizes individual patterns and new differentiated clear blueprints—it is constantly changing. At the very instant we create, this blueprint is changing. The blueprint does exist, but it is a changing blueprint, not a dead blueprint, not a fixed blueprint. You need to understand this.

The body of the earth may be said to have its own mind or soul. Call it what you will.

You must remember this: the earth has its own mind or soul. This is an analogy.

Mountains, oceans, valleys, rivers, and all the scenes of nature—all of them well forth from the soul of the earth.

That is, the things of the natural world that we see are all welling forth from the soul of the earth. Just as all events and the things created by individuals—like our events and the things created by individuals—all appear from the mind or soul of humanity.

If we use this description, the earth has its own soul, its own mind. We say that mountains, valleys, these lakes and oceans can all be said to well forth from the soul of the earth. Just as the events that humans encounter, our events, and the environment around us humans are also manifested by us humans from the mind or soul. It is the same. Remember, he is using an analogy here.

Each person's inner world is connected with the inner world of the earth.

This is very crucial. Each person's inner world is connected with the inner world of the earth.

Spirit becomes flesh.

Thus, each person has a portion of the soul that is intimately connected with what we call the soul of this earth or the world. The most fundamental point of this passage is that we are intimately connected with all things in the world and with the world in which we live. A portion of our soul is intimately connected with all things, with this world, with this earth.

A blade of grass, a petal of a flower, no matter how tiny, is aware of this connection. It knows its position without having to reason it out.

What kind of connection? It is the connection between it and the natural world, between it and nature, between it and all things. It does not need to think to know its own position. This refers to the grass, to the petal—its uniqueness and the source of its vitality. Every blade of grass and every tree knows this.

The atoms and molecules that make up all things in the world, whether they compose a human body, a table, a stone, or a frog, also all know the creativity that lies deep beneath their own existence—its great silent impetus. And their individuality floats upon this, clear, definite, and not to be slighted.

Simply put, all things in the world, including a molecule, an atom, all know that they themselves have creativity, and that their creativity is one with the creativity of All That Is in all things. This great creativity—they are silent, it is an impetus, and deep within the psyche of every thing in the world, they all have it, and they all know it. And among all things in the world here, a flower is a flower, grass is grass, a stone is a stone, a frog is a frog, a human is a human—each thing in the world has its own personality and uniqueness, and it floats upon this, welling forth upon it, yet it is clear, definite, and not to be slighted.

"Not to be slighted" means it cannot be denied, cannot be said to be unimportant, cannot be said to be worthless, and cannot be said to live and die on its own like worthless weeds. None of that. It is not to be slighted—he says it very clearly. What is not to be slighted? Individuality. Individuality is not to be slighted, and individuality is also clear and definite.

Likewise, each person among humanity rises from that most ancient yet ever-new wellspring of the soul, triumphantly presenting his or her uniqueness.

Each person rises from that ancient and ever-new wellspring of their own soul, triumphantly presenting their own uniqueness. Remember, it must be triumphantly. His word choice is very beautiful, very good.

The self rises from ignorance into knowledge, constantly bringing surprise to itself.

For example, as you read these words, part of the knowledge you gain is consciously known and immediately usable, while another part is unconscious. But even so, the unconscious knowledge, in its ignorance, is still knowing. You must remember this.

For example, when we read these words, our conscious knowledge is what our thoughts can understand, perceive, and know. We know the content of this passage, and we can immediately use it. But another part—when we read this passage, another part seems to be ignorant, perceived by that ignorant, unconscious part of you. Your unconscious part perceives it, and it is still knowing—it is knowing even though you cannot perceive it.

So many people say that when reading the Seth books, many changes happen without their realizing it. The reason is right here. The part you are not aware of is also reading, also listening, also learning from it and drawing energy from it. When this energy is drawn to a certain degree, it will bring about some changes.

Even when you yourself do not realize it, you have in fact always known very clearly what you are doing. Just as your eyes know they can see, even though they cannot see themselves unless they use reflection, by other means, by a mirror or by someone telling them.

Otherwise the eyes cannot see themselves, but even though they cannot see themselves, they still know they can see. Just as you are not aware that your consciousness can perceive, yet that consciousness is always perceiving. You cannot see your own consciousness, but consciousness still exists. It is just that the eyes can easily see themselves with a mirror—look into a mirror and you can see your own eyes. But on the level of consciousness, it needs other ways to reflect its existence.

Likewise, the world you see reflects what you are.

The world you see reflects what you are. The only difference is that this is not reflected in a mirror, but reflected in a three-dimensional world.

Our eyes can see themselves in a mirror, but where can our consciousness see itself? It can see itself in the world around us. The world around you is the reflection of your consciousness.

You project your thoughts, your feelings, your expectations, and then perceive them as the outer environment.

You take them—these thoughts, feelings, and expectations—and regard them as the external environment. Therefore, when you think that things in the outside world are observing you, it is actually you observing yourself from the angle you projected. This sentence is very important.

When you think that things in the outside world are observing you, it is actually just your projection. You are actually observing yourself from the angle you projected. You are observing yourself. You first project something outward as the external environment, and then you feel that the external environment is observing you. In fact, that external environment is just you looking back at yourself from another angle.

This chapter is actually talking about this living, vibrant material world in which we live—what exactly the relationship is, and the relationship between us and the material world. So here he touches on this point again.

You yourself are the living portrait.

You yourself are this portrait. Your physical existence, this body you call a person, is the self you imagine yourself to be, projected outward and turned into flesh and blood. You project the self you imagine yourself to be, project the image of your own beliefs outward, and it becomes a body of flesh and blood.

Your feelings, your thoughts, whether conscious or unconscious, have changed and formed the specific image you are today.

You need to understand this. He is actually repeating the passage above: your feelings, your thoughts, whether conscious or unconscious, have changed and formed the specific image you are today. The external physical image you have today is formed by your feelings and your thoughts, projected outward consciously and unconsciously into what you are now.

It is not too difficult for you to understand this. But it is not so easy to understand that the so-called outer circumstances are formed in the same way by your thoughts and feelings, or to understand that those external events that seem to happen to you are also originally set in motion by your inner psychic environment.

He says, when you want to understand that your outer image is projected outward from your inner feelings, he says this may not be too difficult, and it is somewhat easier to understand. We often say "the face is born of the mind," and that is what this means. Whether a person looks kind, whether a person looks fierce, and so on—these things are actually formed by your thoughts. Understanding this may not be too difficult, because after all, it is your own business; the body is your own, and the thoughts are your own. Your own thoughts forming your own outer image—people can still understand this.

What comes after is harder to understand. That is, when you think about those outer circumstances—circumstances means environment. Your surrounding environment, for example, you are still a low-level employee, your boss is still bullying and oppressing you, and so on—these all belong to circumstances. To understand that these circumstances are also formed in the same way, in the same way your outer image is produced, also formed by your thoughts and feelings.

Many people say, "That's not right. I don't want this kind of environment. I never thought of putting myself in such a disadvantageous situation. I don't want to work overtime every day. How could I create an environment where I work overtime every day for myself?" We will come back to this question later. At this point you don't understand, because you feel this is not yours, this is not what you want. So it is normal not to understand at this point. To understand that those external events that seem to happen to you were originally set in motion by your inner psyche is not so easy. We always feel that those things are external, imposed on us by others. We do not admit that they are set in motion by our inner psyche.

The fatness or thinness, tallness or shortness of your body, or whether it is healthy or not, are all not accidental. These physical characteristics are all presentations of the psyche, and all are the result of your throwing yourself outward onto this image of yourself.

He uses the word "throw"—it is the result of your own inner self throwing itself outward onto your own image.

I am not saying this to make fun of you.

He says I am not making fun of you, not teasing you, saying that you are ugly because of your own projection, and you are good-looking also because of your own projection. Many people say no one wants to be ugly; everyone wants to be beautiful. So people don't admit it. So Seth specifically emphasizes here: I am not making fun of you. That is just how it is.

You must know that you were not born yesterday.

Here he makes a joke, and it is also a meaningful statement. That is, you were not born yesterday; you are not so easily fooled. And this sentence itself is also a pun. What does "you were not born yesterday" mean? You did not become this way just today. You became this way step by step, little by little, since you were a child. The reason you became this way is the result of your daily, bit-by-bit inner projection outward.

In that way of speaking, your soul was even less born yesterday.

According to that way of speaking, your soul was not born yesterday either, right? It existed long before there were ages. The English below means exactly this—long before the concept of ages existed, your soul already existed.

What does he mean? He means that the reason you look the way you do now is the outward projection of your soul. So you say, why do I look like this? Then you can only ask the reason of your soul. You cannot say, I don't want to look like this now. But your present is too brief compared to your soul. The soul, or your inner self, determines what you look like—not the thoughts in your outer brain. It is something inner.

So here he uses a pun. First, you were not just born; you are something that has developed over time. In other words, you are the result of decades of inner projection outward. And this inner soul of yours has not existed for just these few decades either; it is far more ancient. So you do not know why you look the way you do, or what your outer image is. He says this is the reason. Do not deny it because of this.

You were born with those characteristics for a reason, because your inner self chose them.

Some people are born that way. Some children are born very good-looking, and some are born quite ugly. This is normal. Some are born very fair, and some are born very dark. I am not talking about the difference between black people and white people; even among Asians there are degrees of fairness and darkness, differing by many shades. For example, comparing Song Xiaobao's complexion with that of many very fair girls—I don't know how to describe the shades in between; you could say they differ by many shades. There is nothing you can do about it. Your inner self chose it; you chose it yourself.

Even today, your inner self can still change many of your own characteristics to a great extent.

That is, in the present moment, your inner self can still change many of your own characteristics to a great extent. It is not that it cannot anymore. It is not that because the soul caused it long ago, or because your beliefs of decades cannot be changed. As long as you change your inner beliefs, your inner world, you can change many of your own characteristics.

You were not a blank sheet of paper when you were born.

You must remember this. Many people say every child is like a blank sheet of paper. No, he is not a blank sheet; he brings many things with him.

Your individual characteristics have always been latent within your soul.

In the deepest place of your soul, in the depths of every cell of yours, at the deepest level of your unconscious, there are many attributes of you as a person, or of your personality, or of your soul.

A portion of your personal history, your past lives and previous existences, is also deeply engraved in your unconscious memory.

Your past lives are all recorded in your unconscious memory.

It not only dwells within your psyche, but also exists in a faithful decoded manner in the chromosomes of your genetic factors.

His words here are very subtle. And it flows through the blood in your veins. He says these things deeply hidden in your unconscious memory are not merely hidden within your psyche; they also exist in a faithful decoded manner—that is, the deepest things of the psyche are manifested in an encoded, decoded way, like DNA genetic material, in the chromosomes, that is, in your DNA, and they will be manifested.

That is, these psychic things, in the process of material manifestation, will make use of heredity and genes. That is why you look the way you do. Your outer image today, your body, is all determined by these. In other words, your genetic factors and your chromosomes are the result of a decoding process of your psyche—a process of the psyche decoding itself on the material level. It is a faithful decoding, faithfully reflecting the changes of your psyche. It is faithful.

When your soul expresses itself through you, the realities you know, are aware of, and participate in are far more numerous than you yourself realize.

We have already discussed this in Seth Speaks. There are too many realities that your soul explores without your awareness. What you are aware of is only a very small part. That consciousness operating in the daytime—the so-called ego, the ego consciousness—grows like a flower from the unconscious warm bed of your own reality.

Where does your consciousness, your ordinary daytime clear self-consciousness with a sense of self, come from? Like a flower, it grows from the unconscious warm bed of your own self. Although you yourself are not aware of it, this ego manifests on its own. You feel it is innate; you do not know that it is born from this unconscious warm bed. And then it falls back into the unconscious, and we do not know where this ego goes afterward. Then another self is born anew from the unconscious, like a new flower blooming from the earth in spring.

He says your unconscious is like the earth in spring, and your conscious mind is like the flower blooming upon it. This year a flower blooms—it is like this lifetime of yours. This flower has its own features, its own characteristics, its own qualities. But when this flower withers, it is as if it has died, no longer existing in this material world. Yet in the spring of the next year, it grows again.

If you have been to the great grasslands, if you have been to the natural world, you know those wildflowers—when the wildflowers are in full bloom, with colors so brilliant and varied, especially beautiful—you will understand where these flowers come from. When you ask where these flowers come from, just ask yourself where your ego consciousness comes from, where your consciousness is born from. It is the same principle.

The self you have today and the self you had five years ago are not the same one.

Your ego is changing, but you yourself do not know this change. In other words, your ego of today is born from the you of today; it is a part of your existence and conscious activity. But just as the eyes cannot see their own constantly changing colors and expressions, you are not aware that it is constantly arising and perishing along with the changes in its own atomic structure. Your ego is constantly changing, and you do not feel it.

He gives an example: when your eyes are changing, the color of the eyes, the expression of the eyes. Eyes have expressions. We often say the eyes are the windows of the soul. Some people say some people's eyes seem to speak; two eyes flickering and sparkling. The eyes themselves have their own expressions, their own colors, their own emotions within them. If you observe carefully, you can see it. But these eyes themselves cannot see themselves.

What he means is this: the eyes are changing; the color of the eyes is changing, and the expression of the eyes is also changing, but you cannot see it. That is, your eyes cannot see it unless you are constantly looking in a mirror. You cannot normally hold a mirror in front of your eyes all day; in daily life you cannot see the changes in your own eyes. Just as you cannot see the changes in your own ego—your ego is changing minute by minute, but you cannot see it. Just as your eyes cannot see their own changes; it is the same principle.

Because you use this ego to feel the world, when it is changing you cannot perceive it. Just as the eyes are used to see things, when they themselves are changing they also cannot see it themselves. Why does he use the eyes as an example here? Because we need to observe the world through the eyes, and we humans feel the world through the feelings and perceptions of the ego. The two are consistent on this level—both are used to feel through this thing. Therefore, when this thing itself is changing, we cannot feel it.

In actual circumstances, although the material composing the cells is itself constantly changing, the cells maintain their own identity.

In actual circumstances, the material composing our cells, the things within the cells, are constantly being exchanged. If you have studied biology, you know that cells are constantly exchanging, and the material within them is also constantly changing. A cell also goes from being a small cell, from a weak cell, from the most primitive initial cell, all the way to maturity, and finally to the death of the cell. It has its own unique life cycle. And in the process of the cell growing from small to large, from its birth through division to its final death and dissolution, it is constantly changing. Yet this cell always retains its own identity.

The cell recreates itself according to its own innate pattern. Although it is always part of an ever-emerging action, even amid its own massive death, it is still alive and responsive.

Cells divide. If you have studied biology, you know about mitosis and such divisions. It is always part of an ever-emerging action, part of this action. It is still alive and responsive. This cell is constantly creating itself, constantly replicating itself.

It is all of our actions. Every action of each of us cannot be separated from cells. Can your present actions be separated from cells? Can your present living, your life, be separated from cells? It cannot. So every action we take each day has the participation of cells. But this does not mean that if certain cells die, you as a person cannot act; action still continues. So what is being said here is this: a group of cells forms your body, and then the actions of this body do not depend on the life and death of the cells themselves. Even if a cell dies, to some degree it is still alive.

The psychological structures that are given various names are the same. The names themselves are not important; what is important is the underlying structure hidden behind these names. This psychological structure likewise maintains its own character, its own distinctive pattern, amid changes of sudden arising and sudden passing.

What does this mean? He is saying that just as your cells have birth and death, your psychological structure also has birth and death, and the psychological structure is also constantly changing. He uses birth and death to describe it, but actually it is just constant change. Although the psychological structure is not fixed and unchanging, although it is always changing, amid this constant change it must maintain its own character, just as cells maintain their own character. That is, your muscle cells may have died, but the muscle formed by your muscle cells will not die; this muscle will still maintain its vitality. When some cells die, new cells will be generated.

He uses this as an example. He says the purpose of the preceding passage is not to make you understand cells; he wants you to understand your own self. Your self, your ego, is a psychological structure; your consciousness is a psychological structure; this self of yours is also changing.

The eye is born from the structure of the body; the self is born from the structure of the psyche. Neither can see itself, yet both look outward from within.

The eye is born from the structure of your body; the self is born from the structure of your psyche. Neither the eye nor the self can see itself, yet both look outward from within. One flees outward from the body; the other flees from the inner psyche and throws itself into the outer environment.

What does it mean that one flees outward from the body? It means that when your eyes look outward from within, wherever your gaze reaches, when you see distant scenery and distant things, it is as if you have walked up beside them. That is, he has already carried your consciousness to that thing, into the range your gaze reaches. Wherever you can see, your consciousness is carried there. That is what he means.

What about the self? The self itself is something born from your inner psyche, but after it projects itself outward, it forgets where it came from. It cannot see where it was born from, it does not even know where it was born from, and it cannot even see itself. What does he say it flees from? It flees from the fact that this self was born from the inner psyche projecting outward.

The creative body produced your eyes; the creative inner psyche produced your self.

Your body, according to its remarkable unconscious knowledge, miraculously and wisely created your two eyes. The human eye—I need not describe it further; the wonder and greatness of the human eye cannot be described. Even today, when technology has developed to the point that we believe we can land on Mars and explore space, our scientific instruments and cameras still cannot reach the level of our eyes. In some respects they have surpassed it, but in many respects they still fall far short of our eyes. Not to mention that our eyes can also outwardly reveal our emotions, reveal our feelings, and blink and speak like windows of the psyche, right? This is even more irreplaceable. Which camera lens have you seen that can speak?

Your body, according to its remarkable unconscious knowledge, created the two eyes, while your psyche brought you the self. Just as the eye has physical perception, the eye has its physical characteristics, its optical features, so some people have myopia and need glasses or correction, and so on; it has its physical characteristics. The self, on the other hand, has the perception of psychological structure. The eye can see things; the self also has its own psychological perception.

The eye and the self are both products designed for focused perception of external things.

You must understand that both the self and the eye are products for perceiving external things.

With this, the content of this session is basically finished. What he says afterward does not belong to the main text of this book. He says:

What Ruburt perceived during his break just now was quite correct. In this book, I will go more deeply into the nature of the unconscious and the psyche, and thereby bring forth a concept of supreme value.

Seth says that in this book, he will go more deeply into the unconscious and the nature of the psyche, unlike in our previous Seth Speaks, where he only touched on it briefly and did not fully delve into this subject, only letting you know that there is such an overall thing. But here he wants to deeply investigate the unconscious and the nature of the psyche, and then bring forth a concept of supreme value. So you have to read further to know what concepts he brings forth.

Since Ruburt began writing the novel The Oversoul Seven trilogy, around late March 1972, he has unconsciously, and partly consciously, aroused his curiosity about questions concerning consciousness and personality, such as the role played by ego consciousness.

What humanity knows so far is still extremely limited. Your psychologists are still unable to contemplate the matter of the soul, and your religious leaders, yes, are also neither able nor willing to understand the soul from a psychological perspective.

Religious leaders can neither use nor are willing to use a psychological perspective to understand the soul, not even to the slightest degree. In other words, metaphysics and psychology have not yet met. Metaphysics refers to philosophy; philosophy and psychology have not yet met. They seem quite similar, as if they study similar questions, but actually they do not. Religious scholars and religious leaders basically belong to the category of philosophy, while psychologists belong to psychology. Philosophy and psychology have not yet met; each studies its own. In fact they are discussing the same question, but each insists on discussing it separately, and neither acknowledges the other.

Now as I have often told you, I am myself and not Ruburt. As you know, there is a considerable connection between Ruburt and me.

That goes without saying. If you have read Seth Speaks, you know that the relationship between them is very close.

Ruburt has not yet understood the true nature of his own creativity. Very few people can understand this. All such phenomena must have psychological reasons. In fact, any phenomenon is the same.

What phenomenon? Not understanding. Not understanding the nature of one's own creativity—these all have psychological reasons. Of course, from a certain angle, Ruburt's books are his children.

Ruburt has no children, but his books are like his children.

When I speak through him, the self I present is, in part, very much like the birth of a small child—a profound and unconscious phenomenon. In his mind, the situation of "Oversoul Seven" is also like this, only in a different way.

Seth says that when I speak through Jane, the Seth I present at that time is, in part, from a certain angle, very much like a small child just being born without consciousness—that kind of profound, unconscious phenomenon. So in his mind, the situation of "Oversoul Seven" is also like this.

When Seth says this passage, he is actually responding to what Jane said before this chapter began—that starting with this book, for every chapter she narrates, she will read it; for every session she transmits, she will make herself read that session. But during the previous book, Seth Speaks, this was not the case; she basically did not read it, and once she finished speaking, she let it go. Her reason was that she did not want to get herself involved in the process of reading, bringing in too many personal thoughts and personal consciousness, which would affect the accuracy of Seth's transmission of this book. That was her thinking at the time; she was a little nervous, she was afraid of herself, she did not trust her own creativity.

So what Seth says in this passage means this: Jane has her own creativity, her own ability, and she need not worry. He says I am myself, you need not worry, I will emerge from within. This is Jane's creativity; Jane's creativity is reflected in her ability to bring me out, just as she can write books. It is the same.

Jane felt that writing books was creative, but she felt that channeling Seth, speaking through Seth, was not creativity. In Jane's mind, she never considered this to be creativity. So why did she write so many books, The Oversoul Seven trilogy, The Politics of the Psyche², and so on? Why did she keep writing books? She was afraid she had no creativity. She was a writer and a poet, and she was afraid that if she only did this transmitting work, only did channeling, she would have no creativity. So Seth here is still emphasizing to her: your letting me speak through you is itself creativity, the same as the creativity of writing your books.

These children have no flesh and blood, and are not within the grasp of time and the forces of nature.

These children—that is, these books, including the books formed by Seth speaking through Jane, and the books Jane wrote herself—are all the same. They are not real children with flesh and blood, but they are eternal. A small child is not eternal; when born, he is a physical body, but these books are eternal. They are not under the control of time and nature; they transcend time and nature and are eternal.

They know more than their parents do.

Who are their parents? If we suppose Jane and Rob are their parents, then these books know more than their parents do. That is, the books themselves know far more than Jane and Rob do.

They are gods sprung from the human psyche, half human and half divine.

Who does "they" refer to? These books, those children without flesh and blood. He emphasizes this point again here.

At such times the parents are both amazed at their offspring surpassing them, and yet cannot help feeling a certain envy.

This is very interesting—both amazed and envious. Sometimes, when your offspring are especially outstanding, parents will have this state. This is also a very interesting phenomenon in psychology. Let me interject here; this is unrelated to Seth. There is a very peculiar phenomenon in psychology: everyone is in a state of not knowing, not being self-aware—that is, when your parents have achieved something, as their offspring, if the child's own inner psyche has not broken through or is not strong enough, the child will unconsciously be afraid of surpassing his parents. He himself does not know it; his own inner self does not know it; it is not within the scope of his inner awareness. On the surface, he wants to surpass his parents, to outdo them, but when he truly surpasses his parents, when he truly surpasses them in many respects, that part of his inner self that he does not know actually has a little resistance, and sometimes that resistance is quite large. He will actively, without your knowing it, refrain from doing that well. Until one day you recognize this yourself and break through it, only then can you achieve greater accomplishments. This is a very interesting subconscious behavior pattern in psychology; if you observe carefully, everyone will discover it.

If Ruburt's books are like his children to him, then his expression of my reality is even more vivid, more three-dimensional.

If the books Ruburt writes himself are like his children, then the books recorded through me speaking through Ruburt are even more vivid, more three-dimensional than those books. That is what he wants to say.

For example, Ruburt has several times suspected that he might be schizophrenic. Setting aside for the moment the fact that I am essentially a person independent of him, as well as some other questions, he does not understand that on that level, he created some people who exist outside of time, and under the leadership of his own conscious mind organized them, assigned them an extremely practical and extremely important task, and then carried it out one by one.

Ruburt has several times suspected that he might be schizophrenic, because he always felt that Seth's speech coming through him felt like another personality of his. Seth is a person outside of time. Ruburt's extremely unique creativity, if he wanted to use this unique creativity, would be enough to allow him to explore the nature of consciousness, the psyche, and the mysteries of creation in a way that very few people can manage. He is saying that Ruburt has such great creativity that if he wanted to, he could do it in a way that only very few people can manage—Ruburt has this ability—to explore the nature of consciousness, the psyche, and the mysteries of creation. But Ruburt did not use it; Ruburt did not develop in that direction.

He himself arranged the conditions that allowed this present situation to happen, and thereby made a portion of my reality become a portion of his own reality. And so, as it were, this thing called Seth was created.

What result? The result of Seth speaking through Ruburt—the conditions that allowed this to happen. Here he has actually been emphasizing how strong Jane's creativity is. What he means is that Seth seems to have been created by Jane. Because Jane merged a portion of Seth's reality with a portion of Jane's reality. In other words, she made a portion of Seth's reality become a portion of her own reality.

Beyond that level, I still have my own independent reality.

But within that level, Seth's reality and Ruburt's reality overlap. So, as it were, this thing called Seth was created. He uses this angle to talk about how strong Jane's creativity is.

I will explain these questions further later. I will add some supplements so that these viewpoints may have the opportunity to become self-complete.

What does he mean by this? Earlier we emphasized that everyone creates their own reality. Then is the matter of Seth channeling through Jane something created by Jane? Since we acknowledge that everyone's reality is created by oneself, was the appearance of this person Seth created by Jane? Seth answers this question here—yes, it was created by Jane. From a certain angle, he was created by Jane. He said earlier that Jane created some people who exist outside of time, then organized them under the leadership of her own conscious mind, then assigned them some extremely practical and extremely important work to transmit knowledge, and then carried it out one by one. From a certain angle, that is how it is.

Of course, Seth also participated in this. This reality was not only participated in by Jane; Seth also participated. Seth made a portion of his own reality, through Jane's ability, become a portion of Jane's reality, and only then could it be spoken through Jane's mouth. So here he is actually emphasizing Jane. He says Jane can write novels, and her letting me speak through her is the same as her writing novels; it is also a part of her creation, also her creating.

So the meaning of this sentence may not match many people's understanding. So you must understand that when Seth says many things, he is speaking from different angles and different levels. From another level, Seth transmitted through Jane's channeling, borrowing Jane's body to transmit the material. From another angle, it can also be said that this was created by Jane. But how you understand it—does it matter? This is a process of communication between Jane's essential inner world and Seth's world.

So it depends on which angle you look at this question from; do not insist on being pedantic. That is, when we study spiritual material, we must absolutely not get stuck in a dead end. We must not have this idea that "if this thing is this way, then it cannot be that way." If Seth channeled through Jane to transmit material, then it must not be that Jane created this character Seth; if Jane created the character Seth, then there is no such thing as Seth being a high spirit transmitting through Jane. These two are simultaneously both yes and no; they are actually both true at the same time.

So I emphasize once again here: after we study spiritual material, we must abandon this human mode of thinking. We cannot say that if it is this, then it is not that; if it is that, then it is not this. What if it is both? Is that possible? This goes beyond the space of human imagination. We think it is impossible; if it is this, it cannot be that; if it is that, it cannot be this; it can only be one. When you think that you yourself can appear in various probable space-times, existing as countless beings, will you still insist on your previous viewpoint?

All right, let us not expand on this further; I am just giving everyone a reminder here. Seth uses this passage actually to emphasize Jane's creativity—Ruburt's creativity, the creativity everyone has. He is not trying to deny that he speaks through Jane; he is only telling Jane that this matter itself, like her writing books, is something she created herself. I do not know whether you can understand my words. What he wants to tell Ruburt is this: you can write a book, and you can also let me speak through you to write these books; this is all the result of your creation, to some degree.

If Ruburt could treat the difficulties he encounters as a test, then the results he obtains would be better. That is all for today. Good night.

If Ruburt can treat difficulties as a test, he will do better, and the results will be better. This passage also applies to all of us—when we treat difficulties as tests, the results will be better.

He says come to class when you have time; he is speaking to Rob. Because their ESP class met every Tuesday, but every Tuesday Rob liked to go and organize the material from the previous class, and so on. Here he answers a question that has been asked many times: many readers ask him, why do you use pen to take notes instead of a tape recorder? Why, when Jane is speaking, do you not record it with a tape recorder? Why do you insist on working so hard to take shorthand notes on the spot?

He says that in the early days of 1963, when Jane first began to speak, they did try a tape recorder. At that time tape recorders were not cheap, but after they earned some money they went and bought a new tape recorder, a brand-new tape recorder. Seth even joked with them, saying, can you two figure out how to operate this thing? They also bought many tapes. But before long, he found that compared with his own notes, typing from notes was much faster than typing while listening to the recording.

He also found many problems while recording. For example, at that time tapes were very short, maybe only half an hour. That is, when recording he had to keep changing tapes, and while recording he might forget when it was time to change the tape. And when it was time to change the tape, he could only change it once every half hour, which would interrupt their speaking. It was not like now, when we can use a phone or a voice recorder to record for a very long time without stopping in the middle. But at that time, the method of recording with a tape recorder was not workable, so after trying several times they found this was the first troublesome point. Because they had to fiddle with it and prepare; at that time a tape recorder was still a relatively bulky thing, and the tapes were still that kind of tape, very troublesome.

The second point was that he found the tape still had to be listened to once after recording. For example, if class started at nine in the evening and went until eleven-thirty, lasting two or three hours, then he would have to listen to the tape for another two or three hours and then type it up, with pauses and stops in between, and so on. Rob found that it was faster to take shorthand notes on the spot and then retype them the next day according to his shorthand draft.

The saving of time was important, because my daytime work all had to be spent on writing, painting, or dealing with daily life, and in the evening there was all kinds of psychic work. Even so, we still had to revise our work schedule to free up extra time to handle these manuscripts.

Now in my daily plan, I paint in the morning and transcribe manuscripts in the afternoon. For example, the speed at which Seth speaks through Jane to me is slower than Jane's speed during class. In addition, Seth adds some punctuation marks as explanations to facilitate my recording. He tells him this is a period, this is a colon, add a dash here. These punctuation marks, which seem inconspicuous, were actually in many cases added by Seth asking Rob to add them. So Seth attaches great importance to punctuation.

The first draft recorded under such circumstances is already extremely precise; at most, occasional corrections are needed before it can be published. So the very fact that this high-quality product is obtained in this way already says something very important about the sessions themselves.

This ability of transmission itself—Seth sitting here, casually speaking, with his own logic, his grammatical and textual organization—already illustrates many things. If you do not believe it, you can try it yourself. You can pick an evening, or right now, sit down and talk about your feelings after reading Seth. Speak with your mouth, without drafting, just speak. You can record yourself and then listen to what you said, and see whether you can speak in paragraphs, systematically, and logically like Seth. Everyone can try it.

Our interpretation of the first part of Chapter One of The Nature of Personal Reality ends here.

Today we continue with the second part of the interpretation of Chapter One of the Seth book The Nature of Personal Reality, that is, Session 613, September 11, 1972³.

From the first session of this chapter on June 7 to now, September 11, more than three months have passed. Jane had been absorbed in the creation of her own novel in The Oversoul Seven trilogy series, The Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time. In addition, she had made a long-term plan to write a book tentatively aimed at psychology. Just when we were about to return to the writing of this book, suddenly on June 23⁴ a great flood occurred. The extent of this flood broke all records in this region—there had never been such heavy rain or such a great flood. This flood was caused by Tropical Storm Agnes⁵. It is quite ironic that this hurricane climbed along the East Coast from Florida, and by the time it reached New York its force had weakened and it was no longer called a hurricane, but its front was hundreds of miles wide and carried days of unceasing torrential rain. Near Cape Virginia, this storm suddenly gained a new supply of energy and struck inland in an unexpected way. When it lingered over New York and Pennsylvania, an unavoidable flood occurred.

Just before dawn, the government made a final appeal for the residents of this area to evacuate, but Jane and I decided to stay. This decision obviously had deep symbolic meaning; every decision contains a certain symbolic meaning, but to this day we still cannot fully understand this symbolic meaning—he will explain it in later books; he does not explain it now.

Only one street away from their residence was the Chemung River, which flowed through the center of the city. Their apartment was on the second floor, which was not very high, and the building was solidly built, so they felt there should not be any problem. All the neighbors evacuated, leaving only their household; the surroundings were extremely quiet. Sewage water carrying topsoil and emitting a nearly suffocating smell of gasoline began to rise in the yard, first one foot, then three feet, then five feet. Jane and I found ourselves experiencing a rapidly changing new world. Although Seth has not said so yet, I am certain that this experience was definitely one of the reasons we stayed—to let them experience this. They drank a little wine and did some light self-hypnosis to relieve tension. But when I watched the floodwater climb up the old red-brick house next door, the threat of this new world was about to turn into a truly terrifying experience; whether our decision was correct—he began to doubt it. The water had already reached the first floor of the neighboring building, and he began to be truly afraid. He says that by now, even if they wanted to flee, they could not; it was already too late; there was water all around.

I thought, I should really try to focus my mind and feel how things would actually develop—he wanted Jane to use her clairvoyant ability to sense what it would be like beneath the floodwaters. Jane said that when you are truly afraid, trying to calm down is really not an easy thing, and that was an honest statement. But she began to steady herself and slowly entered a fairly relaxed state. She told me that the water would keep rising until evening before it stopped, and that the water in the yard would reach ten feet deep, reaching halfway up the first-floor windows of the house next door—unbelievable, that height was simply unimaginable. She said that as long as we stayed inside the house, there would be no danger. When she mentioned that the Warner Street iron bridge over the Chemung River would also be washed away, she looked quite shocked—indeed, if even an iron bridge could be destroyed by the flood, that showed how powerful the flood was. He said, I was also stunned, because that iron bridge was less than half a block from where they lived—half a block, very close, and if you have lived in America you know that a block is not very big.

After Jane received this information, they felt a little more at ease: the water would not rise that high, and it would stop by evening. They ate something, played some games, played some poker, and at the same time checked the water level from time to time. Several hours passed, and the flood finally stopped rising, within fifteen minutes of the time Jane had predicted, and the height was off by less than three feet. By the time they went back to their room to sleep, the floodwaters had already begun to recede rapidly. The next morning when I walked over to the Warner Street bridge, the bridge had already been destroyed, and several sections of the bridge deck had been washed away.

Compared with most of the local people, they were fortunate. Although the car was ruined because it had been soaked, they still had a place to live. More importantly, all their paintings, manuscripts, and records, including the fifty-three volumes of the Seth material⁶, were all completely safe—this was what pleased him most. Because of the needs of their life and work, their residence occupied two apartments, so they had a lot of extra space and could take in a couple whose home had been damaged. The weather turned very cold, and the rain kept falling. For a long time, their daily work became serving the disaster victims. During this period, although Jane resumed her ESP class and also completed the book The Oversoul Seven trilogy in early July, this book—that is, The Nature of Personal Reality—was set aside the whole time, with a gap of three months in between.

In August, Jane held a Seth session about the flood, and Seth had the chance to touch briefly on the various reasons behind their personal involvement—that is, why they had become caught up in this flood, and what reasons each of them had. However, by late August and early September, several groups of guests connected with psychic work came to their home, one of whom was the famous Richard Bach, who was introduced at the very beginning, and whose best-selling book was Jonathan Livingston Seagull⁷. When Jane decided to return to this book, she was surprised to find that she was actually a little nervous about it. But once she began speaking for Seth, the whole thing went very smoothly, as if those three months in between had never existed at all. Seth said, good evening, now please wait for me a moment, we are about to begin the dictation.

Session 613

The experiences you gain in the physical world all flow outward from the core of your inner self.

This sentence is very similar to the very first sentence of Chapter One—basically the same meaning: first it flows outward from the core of your psyche, and then you turn back to perceive these experiences.

The various events, situations, and conditions that happen in your outer world are actually meant to serve as a kind of living feedback.

That is, what happens externally is there for you to feel it, to provide you with a kind of feedback—in English it is called feedback. Therefore, by changing your own state of mind, you automatically change the external concrete environment. Apart from this, there is no other viable method sufficient to change concrete events.

The following method may be of help. He says, when you want to change the outer world, there is a method he can tell you:

If you imagine that within yourself there is a small world, in this small world you create, in miniature and detailed psychic form, all the external environments you know.

Mark this passage—it is important. "In miniature and detailed" means in extremely fine, detailed-to-the-extreme psychic form, forming all the external environments you know. In short, you have simply always been doing this—we have in fact always been doing this.

Your thoughts, feelings, and mental images can be seen as a prototype of the outer world, because in any case they will one by one materialize and enter physical reality.

Within this small world inside you, your thoughts, feelings, and mental images are all a kind of prototype of the outer world. Because no matter what, they—your thoughts and feelings—will one by one materialize and enter physical reality.

Even those situations in your life that seem to be permanent and unchanging are in fact always changing along with your attitude toward them.

Of all the external things you perceive, not one is not initiated by your own inner self. Of course, the interactions between you and other people do exist, but still there is nothing among them that you have not been willing to accept, and nothing that has not been attracted by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions. In other words, these things are all things you have acknowledged, you have approved, you have agreed to let happen to you. This law applies to every area of your life, and in your terms, this law also applies before birth and after death.

This ability you possess to create your own experience is a most miraculous endowment.

In this life, you are learning how to master the inexhaustible energy available to you. In this process, we should have come to realize something—we have all already experimented with it.

The entire situation of today's world, and the position and current circumstances of every person in this world, are the concrete display of your own progress as humanity in forming this world.

The present world is the concrete display of humanity's own progress. This is all very simple, all plain language, no need to elaborate.

The joy of creation flows out from your heart, as natural and effortless as breathing.

The most minute parts of your outer experience all come from this joy of creation. All your feelings have an electromagnetic reality that flows outward and affects the atmosphere itself. They gather together through the force of attraction—your emotions and your thoughts are all an electromagnetic reality—building up momentum for certain events and situations, and finally, so to speak, condensing into physical objects, or into events in time.

Some feelings and thoughts are transformed into structures that you call objects, which for you exist in a medium you call space, while others are transformed into psychological structures called events.

We place objects in space, and events in time—events are things that happen. Space and time are both root assumptions. Why call them root assumptions? Because humanity accepts both of them, and at the same time assumes that their reality is rooted in this series of time and a space with depth. Because our inner feelings are translated into a real existence of time and space.

Even how long a thing or an event exists in time and space is entirely determined by the intensity of the thoughts and emotions from which it was born.

How long a thing or an event exists in time and space is entirely determined by this emotion, by the intensity of the thoughts and emotions from which it was born. Although duration in space and duration in time are not the same thing—some things can be stored in space for a very long time, but some things can exist in time for a very long time, and these two are not the same thing. He goes on below to explain this meaning.

For example, something or some event that is as fleeting as a flower that blooms only briefly may linger in time for a very long while.

After some very meaningful event or special circumstance has happened, even though the event has passed, or the thing no longer exists, it lingers in your memory and does not fade. Things that have long since disappeared from space can often remain imprinted in your memory, retaining their intensity and importance. Such an event or object does not merely exist symbolically in your memory—they do indeed continue to exist, becoming, in your terms, a time event. As long as these events continue to remain in your mind, their reality will not be annihilated.

Let me give a simple example. If we tell a child not to play with a doll anymore, but the child refuses to listen, and then the child, intentionally or unintentionally, breaks the doll, and finally has to throw it away—in this case, as long as this child—or the adult this child later grows into—has not forgotten this doll for even one day, this doll still lives vividly in time, and it becomes a time event. If this doll was originally placed on a cabinet, and this impression still remains vividly in the child's mind, then even if the space where the doll originally sat is now occupied by other things, this space still retains the impression of the original doll—the space has been changed to something else, the doll has been replaced by a lamp or something else, but this space still remembers the impression of the doll's existence. Therefore, what can provoke a response in you is not only what is directly visible before your eyes, but also includes those things and events that seem on the surface to have disappeared from time and space, but which still affect you. You are still affected by them, so they still exist.

Basically, your experience and understanding are created by yourself through your beliefs about yourself and about the nature of reality.

Your experience and understanding are all created by yourself through your own beliefs, or through your beliefs about the nature of reality. To understand this, you can approach it from another angle—start from the fact that your experience is created according to your own expectations. The things you experience are actually the things you want to experience; you have expected them. Many people will say, I do not want to expect illness, I do not want to expect unemployment, I do not want my life to be like this—he will come back to this later.

When you understand this, you will know that what is called the feeling-tone refers to the emotional attitude you generally hold toward yourself and toward life.

What kind of attitude do you have toward yourself and toward life—are you positive, optimistic, joyful, abundant, or are you pessimistic, gloomy, decadent, powerless? This is your feeling-tone, your overall tone. If your overall feeling-tone is positive, active, full of happiness and joy, then no matter what you do in your whole life, you will carry this tone with you; if you carry a negative emotional tone, then no matter what you do, you will carry this negative tone with you, and everything will be affected.

Under ordinary circumstances, these attitudes govern a very large range of experience and feeling.

The reason the things that happen to you have their particular character is because your feeling-tone gives them their overall emotional coloring. Why do the things that happen to you carry your deep personal character and imprint? In other words, why can you tell at a glance who did this thing? Many people say, you can tell at a glance who did this—why would you do such a thing? It is because the feeling-tone gives it an overall emotional coloring. A person like you will do such things; a person like you will make such decisions.

He says it very clearly:

You are what happens to you.

The things that happen to you come from you; you are those things. When you look at the things around you, you understand that they are you. So remember the title of this book—at the very beginning of this book, above the English title "Nature of the Personal Reality," it says "All of this is me." Why does he say this? This sentence echoes this relationship—all of this is you, and you are what happens to you.

Of course, your emotional states are often transient, but beneath these emotions there exists the quality of feeling that is uniquely yours, like deep chord music. Your day-to-day feelings may rise and fall, but these characteristic feeling-tones still lie hidden beneath them.

These feeling-tones carrying your deep imprint lie hidden beneath, sometimes rising to the surface, but this surfacing happens at an extremely slow rhythm.

You cannot call these feeling-tones positive or negative, because they are fundamentally the tone of your existence. They represent the innermost part of your experience.

We should not define them as positive or negative, because they are you; they themselves are you. They represent the most core, deepest part of your experience. This does not mean they are deliberately hiding from you or deliberately preventing you from discovering them—it means that this feeling-tone lies deep beneath, and you generally cannot perceive it. Although it sometimes rises to the surface, this process is extremely slow. Within this core, you form your experience. If your feeling-tone is joyful, then all your experience is joyful; if your feeling-tone is sorrowful, very dejected, then your entire experience is also very dejected.

If you have become afraid to face your own emotions, or afraid to express your feelings, or if you have accepted what others have taught you—that the inner self is a repository of improper impulses—then you may have developed the habit of denying this deep rhythm of your own.

If worldly education tells you that your inner self, those intuitive impulses, are all bad, improper, and should be locked away—if you accept this viewpoint, you will deny your own feeling-tone, and even deny your own deep rhythm. You are unwilling to face your true emotions and true feelings; you hide them all away. You may pretend that this thing does not exist at all, and even try to refute its existence.

But what it represents is your deepest, most creative impulse.

The thing you deny, the thing you refuse to acknowledge, is your deepest, most creative impulse. To resist it is like swimming upstream against a powerful current—swimming upstream against the current in a rushing river; you can imagine what that feels like.

These feeling-tones pervade your existence. They are the form your spirit and flesh take when they merge into one.

From the core of these feeling-tones, your physical body emerges. You must understand that this feeling-tone comes first, and your physical body unfolds from within it.

Everything you experience has consciousness, and every consciousness is endowed with its own feeling-tone.

Everything you experience has consciousness. The reason the earth as you conceive of it has its present appearance is because there exists a very remarkable great cooperation. All the individual living structures that exist on earth—all sentient beings—are born from the feeling-tones that exist within every atom and molecule. The world we see today being the way it is comes from the basic feeling-tones of the molecules and atoms that make up all things in this world.

Your flesh and blood are born in response to these inner chords of yours. Mountains, rivers, the great earth, rocks, and trees are born and become the flesh and blood of the earth.

These things, like the flesh and blood of the earth, are also born in response to the chords hidden deep within living atoms and molecules. What is said here carries a very deep meaning. We now know that the most core particles inside atoms are themselves composed of strings—string theory—and here he is again deliberately hinting that your inner being is born from chords. This is a pun: atoms and molecules have a feeling-tone within them, and this feeling-tone is like a chord in music. If you have played guitar or some other instrument, you know that a chord itself is a repeating, constantly repeating rhythm, and it carries within it a certain feeling-tone, a certain musical mood, and your melody is produced on top of this chord. What he means is that the inner feeling-tone of molecules is equivalent to an inner chord, and the myriad things of the world we see today—sentient beings, things, the world, the earth, nature—all emerge from within this most basic feeling-tone of molecules and atoms.

Because of the existence of this creative cooperation—what is creative cooperation? It is the cooperation in which all things in the world jointly create; our world is created by everyone together—this is what allows the great miracle of the materialization of all matter to take shape so smoothly and so naturally. This great miracle of materialization—the miracle of our inner world projecting outward and becoming materialized—seems inconceivable, yet it takes shape so smoothly and so naturally, and its naturalness is such that on a conscious level you simply cannot perceive what role you yourself are playing in it. It is too natural—so natural that you do not even realize what you are participating in; you feel as though this world just came into being naturally on its own.

Therefore, this feeling-tone is your posture and temperament, your timbre, the energy that serves your physical experience specifically. It flows into you as a being of material existence, and materializes you in this world of changing seasons, of space, of flesh and blood, of time.

The feeling-tone is your posture, your temperament, your timbre, the energy that serves your physical experience specifically—it is that energy. Every energy has its own different attributes; every energy has its own feeling-tone. The energy of your particular feeling-tone gives birth to you as this unique, one-of-a-kind you; another person is generated by the energy of his own particular feeling-tone. Understanding it this way makes it easier to grasp.

Yet its source is quite independent of the world you know. Once you can feel your own inner tone, you will be able to perceive its concrete power, intensity, and resilience, and at the same time, to some degree, you can follow it into deeper levels of reality.

Once you feel this feeling-tone within yourself, you will be able to feel its power, intensity, energy, and resilience, and at the same time follow it into deeper realms. In other words, why are you who you are? Why do you have a unique temperament, attributes that are completely different from everyone else, one of a kind? Your feeling-tone forms you and distinguishes you from others—it is this feeling-tone that sets you apart.

The incredible richness of emotion and the colorful variety of life experience are the concrete reflection of this inner feeling-tone.

It pervades every single thing in your life. In the entire inner direction, in the quality of your perception, it fills and illuminates every individual aspect of your life, and at the same time greatly influences the subjective atmosphere and environment in which you find yourself and in which you believe.

It is your individuality as a person—the "individual" of the body—that is, the essence of you as a person.

This feeling-tone is the essence of you as a person. Although the scope it covers is extremely vast, in terms of details it is not decisive—you must remember this: it is not decisive in details. What specific things you do is still up to you, but it colors the great landscape of this experience.

It is that feeling you have about yourself, that feeling, inexhaustible.

It colors all the experiences of your life. It is your personality, the attribute of the energy of the inner soul, which you call the feeling-tone.

It represents yourself expressed in the form of pure energy.

The feeling-tone is your form of pure energy. If you find the feeling-tone hard to understand, it is this: remove all the flesh, remove all external things, and that you expressed as pure energy—that is called the feeling-tone. And your personality is born from that pure energy—your individuality, your uniqueness, your one-of-a-kindness, your irreplaceability is born from this pure energy. One of a kind, no duplicate, absolutely no copy, the only one there is.

This energy comes from the core of existence, from All That Is, and represents the source of inexhaustible vitality and vigor. It is existence.

Because it comes from the core of existence, it is itself existence. The existence within you, not this external existence.

Therefore, all the energy and power of existence is reflected through you in the direction of your life.

The energy and power of existence itself is reflected through you in the direction of your life. The driving force of your life, the trajectory of your life, the original impetus behind why your life moves in the direction it does—all of this lies in this existence, and also lies in your feeling-tone.

Although your feeling-tone is uniquely yours, it is nevertheless expressed in a certain way that is shared by all those who focus their attention on the physical world. In that sense, then, you are, like all other living beings and the living structures of nature, a product of the earth.

When you have a physical body, you are not outside nature, but a part of nature. This sentence is very core, very important. You are the same as the other natural structures of nature. When you have a physical body, you are one with this physical world; you are not outside it—you are a part of it.

Trees and rocks all have their own consciousness, and they share a gestalt consciousness. The same is true of the living tissues within your own body.

What is gestalt consciousness? Let me introduce this to everyone. Gestalt consciousness means that its feeling exceeds the sum of its parts. Every rock and every tree shares a gestalt consciousness of nature—the whole world has an overall consciousness. Although they together form this world, each small part together forming this world, the consciousness of this whole world is greater than the sum of all these consciousnesses. It is not that these consciousnesses added together equal that consciousness—it is greater than that. This great consciousness of the entire universe, the entire consciousness of nature, is greater than the sum of its parts—this is called gestalt—that is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our living bodies are the same way; every cell in our body has its own consciousness. Seth adds a note here, saying that gestalt is a psychological term referring to an integrated, indivisible structure and pattern with definite characteristics, carrying with it an overall experience. This consciousness of nature, the consciousness of the great earth, is an overall experience that can neither be divided according to the parts within the whole, nor reduced to a sum of small individual units gathered together. In simple terms, it is a kind of morphic field—he coined a new term, and it gets more and more complicated; let us not get too caught up in all these terms. The more terms there are, the more confused you become. You only need to understand that there is a gestalt consciousness of nature, and all things in the universe share in this consciousness together.

Cells and organs also all have their own consciousness, as well as a kind of gestalt consciousness.

Each cell has both its own small consciousness and an overall consciousness, and these two consciousnesses exist simultaneously. It knows both what it should do as a cell, and also its position and place within this human body.

Therefore, humanity, in addition to having individual consciousness, also has a complete or collective consciousness.

This is the same as what Jung called the collective unconscious or collective subconscious—humanity has a common thing, like the seabed, which is the collective consciousness of humanity. It is just that for the individual, this consciousness is almost entirely imperceptible.

This collective consciousness has its own identity.

Although you are a unique, individual, independent person, you are still a part of this identity. This overall human consciousness of humanity has a sense of self as a human being, its own sense of identity. Just as you yourself have an identity.

The only limitation you are subject to is that you chose physical reality, and therefore placed yourself within the scope of its experience.

You are not subject to any limitation; the only limitation is because you chose physical reality. When you have a physical body, you place yourself within the scope of physical reality, and you must abide by physical laws or assumptions—as long as you have a physical body for one day, you must abide by these laws for one day. All of this—you have both a common gestalt consciousness of humanity and an individual personal consciousness, and you must also follow the assumptions and laws of the physical world—put together, this creates the expression structure of your physical body as you now know it. This is the structure of your body, or the structure of being a human being.

Within this structure, you have complete freedom to create your own experience. You create every environment in your own personal life, as well as the living world in all its myriad forms.

Your personal life and the experiences in your personal life have, to some degree, shaped this world as it is known to the world today. How did our present world come to be? The title of this chapter is "The Living World in All Its Myriad Forms"—how did this living world in all its myriad forms come to be? It is the sum of each of our lives and the experiences in our lives—and more than that—together constituting this living world in all its myriad forms that we know in this human world.

We will talk about your own subjective world, and the parts you create and participate in within various events, including personal and shared events.

Before we continue, there is one very important thing you must first understand:

That is the fact that consciousness exists in all physical phenomena.

Mark this down—the existence of consciousness is a basic fact in all physical phenomena. But this point, our current science and scientific system absolutely do not acknowledge; they do not acknowledge this basic fact that our material world has consciousness.

Furthermore, it is extremely important that you know your place in nature.

Nature is something created from the inside out, and the life you know as your own is also something produced from the inside out, and at the same time it is given.

Nature and life are both created from the inside out. Given by whom? The truth of the matter is just this. Because you yourself are a part of existence, in a certain way, the life that lives through you is what you have given to yourself. What is the life that lives through you? It is that pure-energy you within you; the pure-energy you needs to live through this physical body of yours. So this life, this pure energy, is what you give to yourself.

Your world is created by your own hand. This is the only truth. He emphasizes again: understand this, and you understand the mystery of creation.

Please do not confuse this "you" with the "you" you usually think of.

The "you" I am talking about here is not the you that you ordinarily think of as yourself. The you that you usually think of is only the ego, and the ego is only a part of you; the ego cannot represent you. So when he says "your world is created by your own hand," this "you" does not refer to that small part of you that is the ego, but to a complete you, the whole you, the entire you.

The ego may be said to be that part of you that has a certain specialty, dealing directly with the contents of your conscious mind.

Your ego deals with your conscious mind. But the conscious mind spans both the material and the nonmaterial, while your ego only deals with the material part within the conscious mind, and that is called your ego. The ego is a specialized part of your larger being, something specifically designed to deal with the physical world. Because your physical body lives in this three-dimensional world, you have to deal with this three-dimensional material world, and to deal with this three-dimensional world you need something, and that something is called the ego. Without this ego, you would have no way of dealing with the three-dimensional world.

If the conscious mind allows the ego to run away with it, the ego may become cut off, lonely, frightened, and so forth.

If the conscious mind agrees to let the ego not keep its focus on the material world, and allows it to run along with the conscious mind—wherever the conscious mind wants to go, the ego follows it—then the ego will have all sorts of feelings of being cut off, lonely, and frightened. Why? Because the places the conscious mind goes are nonmaterial worlds; it goes everywhere, it is a multidimensional existence. But your ego can only focus on the material world, so when it follows the conscious mind around, things go wrong. Therefore the conscious mind leaves the ego only at this one focal point on the material level, letting the ego focus only on the material level, so that it will not have feelings of loneliness, being cut off, or fear.

The conscious mind and the ego are not the same thing. The ego is composed of various different parts of a person's personality.

The ego is a synthesis of various characteristics, constantly changing yet acting in a single pattern—what pattern? The material pattern. It is the part that deals most directly with the material world.

The conscious mind is an excellent perceiving instrument, a function of your inner perceptual state, but under present circumstances it turns outward toward the colorful world, enabling the soul to look outward through it.

Remember, it enables the soul to look outward through the conscious mind. If the conscious mind is left to function on its own—without the ego restricting it—it perceives perfectly clearly.

In a manner of speaking, the ego may be said to be the eye through which the conscious mind perceives, or the focus through which it observes things.

You can think of the ego—your ego—as the eye your conscious mind uses to perceive the material world. Just as you use your physical eyes to look at your material world, your conscious mind uses the ego as its own eyes to perceive the material world. Or you could say, the focus through which the material world is observed is your ego. Wherever your ego is, that represents where the focus of your conscious mind's observation of the material world is.

Even so, throughout a lifetime the conscious mind automatically changes its focus.

The focus of the conscious mind changes automatically. The ego is equivalent to the focus through which the conscious mind perceives the material world, and when the conscious mind changes its focus, the ego changes. Although your ego may not seem to itself to change, it is in fact changing all the time—because the conscious mind automatically changes its focus, so the ego keeps changing.

Only when your conscious mind becomes rigid in its direction, or when in certain respects it lets the ego overstep its bounds, do you find suffering and difficulty arising.

There are two situations: one is when your conscious mind keeps focusing on a certain point, on a certain direction, without moving—that is, your ego becomes rigid; the other is when the ego is not rigid, but the ego replaces the conscious mind—it was originally a tool, but now it has become the master. Both of these possibilities will produce suffering and difficulty.

Then the ego allows the conscious mind to function in certain respects, while in other respects it blocks its perceptual abilities.

This kind of thing happens because the ego allows the conscious mind to function only in certain respects, while in other respects it does not let it function, does not let it have its own perceptual abilities. When this happens, difficulty, suffering, and trouble arise.

Therefore, the reality you perceive is created from a larger reality, from a larger you.

This material world and three-dimensional world that you know are created from a larger self that is greater than you.

Whether or not you are willing to carry out this creation with a joyful and exuberant attitude is entirely up to you.

Are you willing to carry out this creation with a joyful, exuberant attitude, or are you going to create lifelessly, passively, complaining and blaming others?

Whether you are willing to clear your conscious mind so that the greater you, with its deeper knowledge, can be joyfully expressed in the world of flesh and blood, is also entirely up to you.

Are you willing to clear your conscious mind, so that the greater you, the you with deeper knowledge, can be joyfully expressed in our material world, the world of flesh and blood—projected into the three-dimensional world, materialized into manifestation. Whether you are willing to do this depends entirely on yourself.

The dictation ends here. Seth then said:

This book can help many people find methods of self-help, far more than Ruburt could personally handle or than I could deal with individually.

This book can help many, many people, far more than Ruburt solving problems one by one, or Seth dealing with them one by one. He said, you should organize the list of people who come seeking help, and tell them that this book will be coming out—there were many people constantly coming to see Jane and Rob, with all sorts of problems in their lives. Seth said, do not let them come to you anymore; write down their names, write them a letter, tell them this book is about to come out, let them buy this book, and this book will tell them how to solve the problems in their lives. This is a method of self-help for them.

At this point Rob said, that is a good idea, because the number of people calling and writing for help was so large that Jane simply could not handle it. In the past, when many people came seeking help, Jane would ask Seth to speak through her to help that person solve his own real-life problems. But as more and more books were published, more and more people came seeking help, and Jane basically could not keep up. Seth said, you do not need to deal with each of them individually; you should give them this book and let them solve things on their own, using the methods I teach in the book to solve the difficulties they face.

Then Seth said, if you have any questions, you can ask me. By this time it was already very late, so Rob only asked one question—about another matter that had happened recently. A young scientist from the West Coast—probably from San Francisco or Los Angeles—had come to see them. They lived on the East Coast, in a small place near New York. At that time Jane, in her dual identity as Seth and as herself, had successfully tuned in to certain technical material, and had made a very good start. This scientist came to discuss scientific questions with Jane or Seth—scientists are the most interested in the Seth material; what they most want to know is how EE units become materialized, how the energy at coordinate points is realized, how it is amplified, what laws and principles are involved in between, and so on. Jane tuned herself to certain technical levels and gave him some technical material.

Rob said, in my opinion, if Jane wants to give full play to such specialized work, it would necessarily require tremendous effort and several years of continuous work. Because Jane lacks a scientific background; she has no background in science and engineering, and this actually limits her ability to elaborate on science and engineering in this material. The rational and theoretical content in the entire Seth material is relatively sparse, because Jane's own capacity for understanding has its limitations.

Seth said, that visit had excellent results, especially for Ruburt, because Ruburt finally got involved with some scientific matters. As for scientific questions, we will discuss them later. In order to keep Ruburt's confidence, I will let the dictation of this book begin in a proper and orderly way—that is, not let the book begin too difficult or too complex, too theoretically intense, otherwise it would cause Jane to lose confidence. Because if Seth transmitted only things Jane could not understand, it would be a great blow to her. So in order to maintain Ruburt's confidence, he began with a very plain, not very difficult opening to let Jane unfold this book. If necessary, I will also digress from the dictation of the book to discuss other issues. Even if she is lacking in science, it does not affect the transmission of this book.

He said, in any case, our work right now is still on this book, not on exploring some kind of scientific knowledge. That flood you encountered—the flood at the very beginning of this session—we will bring it up as an example when we discuss natural disasters, so that others can understand it more easily. He said, I really must say good night to you now.

The content of this session ends here, and the content of Chapter One is also completely finished. Later we will introduce Chapter Two: Reality and Personal Beliefs.

注释与核实

1. Source: Jane Roberts, Wandering Through Past and Present Lives: The Oversoul Seven Series, Book One (Seth Culture, 2012) (https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010557550) ↩

2. Source: Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976) (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4890737M/Psychic_politics) ↩

3. Source: Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality (https://archive.org/stream/PdfsSethMaterial/JaneRobertsTheNatureOfPersonalReality_djvu.txt) ↩

4. Source: Wilkes University, "Susquehanna River | Agnes Flood Walking Tour" (https://www.wilkes.edu/academics/library/agnes-flood-walking-tour/susquehanna-river.aspx) ↩

5. Source: Susquehanna River Basin Commission, "Tropical Storm Agnes in the Susquehanna River Basin" (https://www.srbc.gov/our-work/fact-sheets/docs/tropical-storm-agnes-june-1972.pdf) ↩

6. This claim could not be verified. ↩

7. Source: Wikipedia, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull) ↩