Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 12

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

Reading Guide

Grace is the cause of well-being and a sense of accomplishment, and the condition of existence; what is called conscience mostly comes from beliefs instilled by parents, teachers, and clergy, and distorts natural guilt. Through examples such as original sin, the Garden of Eden, health foods, and illness, this chapter explains how the birth of human consciousness, the choice between good and evil, and value judgments affect the body and everyday experience, and points out the need to trace back and examine personal beliefs.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Grace is the cause of well-being and fulfillment and the condition of existence; human beings have not truly lost grace.
• What is called conscience mostly comes from beliefs passed on by parents, teachers, and clergy; it is a distortion of natural guilt and cannot be trusted.
• Stories such as original sin, the Garden of Eden, and Satan symbolize the birth of human consciousness, the separation of the ego from nature, and the emergence of the choice between good and evil.
• Daily experiences such as health foods and illness are influenced by beliefs; the body has the ability to maintain balance and heal itself, and illness has a balancing and educational function at the animal level.
• Religions or philosophies that deny the flesh, deny the ego, and create artificial guilt cause people to distrust themselves and distort their daily experience.

Main Text

Grace and Conscience

Seth says, now, give us a moment to do the book dictation. We are going to begin the next chapter, titled "Grace, Conscience, and Your Daily Experience." This chapter deals with three themes.

Up to this point, I have mentioned the state of grace quite frequently. Although it has many facets, objectively speaking, it is the reason you feel happiness and a sense of fulfillment, and it is also a condition of your existence.

This is one of our most central points: grace is a primary reason we feel happiness and fulfillment, and it is also a necessary condition for us to exist in this world.

Each person can say this in his own words, but it often seems as though conscience tells you: I have lost grace. When you say this, you more often find that it seems to be conscience at work -- you did something against your conscience, or did many things without conscience, and only then do you feel that you have lost grace. You feel that some inner, mysterious, joyful sense of support no longer upholds you.

Unfortunately, however, the conscience as you think of it is an untrustworthy guide.

Words spoken to you through the mouths of parents, teachers, and clergy.

Where does our conscience come from? It is all given to us by parents, teachers, or clergy, perhaps all said long ago. And each person has his own beliefs about what is right and wrong for you or for all of humanity.

So Seth says, this feeling that you are no longer upheld by grace is mainly your conscience at work. And the most important point in all this is: do not trust your conscience, because it is unreliable, untrustworthy. What you call your conscience is actually a belief passed on to you by others, not a belief that is originally your own.

Those people were, of course, quite capable of error.

Your conscience is all beliefs and ideas passed on to you by your parents, teachers, or clergy -- these are their ideas. But these people are capable of error, quite capable of error. And when you were a small child, we had no way to resist. Adults were like gods; the things they said carried such weight. Because you needed their support so much -- we children need adults; without adults we could not survive. Our food, clothing, shelter, and the basic conditions of survival all require adult support, so adults were like godlike beings to a child.

As a child, before the conscious mind had formed its own beliefs, it was quite necessary for you to accept the beliefs of others; this is normal. Before a person has formed his own worldview, values, and outlook on life, he needs to accept the ideas of others; you accepted those ideas for your own reasons.

Those established beliefs represent the conscious mind -- consciousness represents the psychic and spiritual fabric of ideas.

Those so-called beliefs given to you by others are the material of your psyche and spirit; you need them to support your own psychic and spiritual world. Those established beliefs given to you by others are the most primitive psychic and spiritual raw material that you can put to use.

Belief Changes in Adolescence

During adolescence, some beliefs will be readily and immediately abandoned. Adolescence is a special period, and this topic has been studied in both ancient and modern times. Basically, after the age of twelve, a person begins to enter adolescence.¹ After this time, many beliefs begin to undergo thorough changes.

Before the age of twelve, a child basically has a child's mentality, and he basically takes the values of his parents or teachers as his orientation, as his guide. But after the age of twelve, he begins to have his own beliefs and values, and this is a very interesting point. At this time, many of your beliefs are readily abandoned or changed, and this suits an expanding model of experience—because at this time you begin to expand your model of experience. In adolescence, you are no longer a small child who is only cared for by his parents every day; you begin to have your own world, your own social circle. Because you need to expand your social circle and your range of experience, you need a new belief system to support it.

However, some other beliefs will still be maintained. Perhaps certain elements have changed.

You only replace a portion of your beliefs; some old beliefs are not completely replaced. For example, a certain belief may be revised to fit a new image of yourself—because after adolescence you have an image completely different from that of childhood. At the same time, the main pattern still remains unchanged. Although some things have been replaced and some elements have been changed, its main mode of thinking, its main belief pattern, has not changed very much.

The Concept of Original Sin

He gives an example, asking us to consider the concept of "original sin."

In the collective concepts of all of you, it takes on a colorful variety of forms, and it produces all sorts of influences on your behavior and experience.

Original sin in our lives — such a concept or such a belief — will appear in our lives in all kinds of ways. It does not appear as a single basic belief in original sin; it transforms into thousands of different forms, and it produces all sorts of influences in your behavior and experience.

The idea itself existed before Christianity began.

It was not Christianity's original creation; the concept of original sin existed before that. And in civilizations generation after generation, in very ancient civilizations, it was passed down in different ways.

From the standpoint of consciousness, it is a story.

Original sin symbolically represents the birth of the conscious mind of your entire race, and the emergence of "self-responsibility." Seth is analyzing the root of where original sin came from: why has the belief in original sin become a core belief for so many people? Because it is a process of the birth of the conscious mind of our entire human race. Original sin is a kind of symbol of the birth of a conscious mind in which humans are different from animals.

So it also represents your own separation from the object — the separation between the "criticizing and evaluating self" and the "criticized and evaluated object."

Because before you had this concept of original sin, you did not have a judgment about yourself. But after you had this concept of original sin, you would come to judge yourself: Do I have original sin? I was born with sin, born carrying original sin. At this point you necessarily have a process of criticizing yourself, because you have sin. And the one doing the criticizing and the one being criticized are actually one and the same — you are the person with original sin, but you also come to criticize yourself, that you have original sin. At this point you and yourself split into two parts: one part is the criticized, and one part is the criticizing.

It is a classic example representing the conscious mind and the firmly positioned individual emerging from the "ground of being" within all consciousness.

It represents your conscious mind and the so-called individual with a firm personal stance — the two of them emerging from all of your consciousness and splitting into two: you have your own conscious mind, and you also have a firm self. You use your conscious mind to judge this self as having original sin. He explains this very clearly.

Original Sin and the Birth of Human Consciousness

He has been dissecting this idea of original sin. Why dissect it? Because this idea of original sin involves the process of the birth of human consciousness, and original sin is one of the most primal core beliefs that many Westerners hold. What does he say the idea of original sin depicts?

The idea of original sin depicts the new consciousness as unique and distinct, evolved from the tree of life, and therefore able to examine the fruit of the tree of life, able for the first time to see itself as different from other creatures -- say, the snake crawling on the ground.

He uses such a long passage here, but actually he is telling you: what the concept of original sin depicts is a person's awakening to his own unique, distinct consciousness. He discovers that he evolved from the tree of life, and moreover that he can judge the fruit of the tree of life. Who is the fruit of the tree of life? It is himself. Man evolved from the tree of life, and the fruit is also himself. So he himself knows that he evolved from the tree of life, but he can also examine the result of his own evolution -- which is himself. So he feels he is different from others, he can judge himself, evaluate himself, he is different from other animals.

Man emerged as a creature of a different kind. Now, in our terms, when he did so, he quite deliberately separated himself from the body of the earth in a new way.

He felt he was different from animals, different from nature, he felt he could stand above nature, because he had consciousness.

Part of him very naturally yearned for that primeval "knowing unknowingness" that had to be abandoned.

What does "knowing unknowingness" mean? It means I know that I do not know. I know that within the bottom layer of my biological instincts, there is a part of the unknown that I do not know, and I know that part of things I do not know.

Part of him very naturally yearned for that primeval "knowing unknowingness" that had to be abandoned. He had to abandon it, because in evolving from animality to the human state, he wanted to turn everything into something conscious. But deep inside, a part of him still wanted to know these things -- that is, the part of our inner self. This is a very interesting process: because we want to be different from animals, we must abandon that part of the state that human consciousness cannot control and manipulate, and we would rather believe it does not exist.

In this knowing unknowingness, everything is given, and there is no need for judgment or distinction. In that animal instinct, or in the deepest unconscious level of us humans, we do not need to judge or distinguish, there is no good and bad, good and evil -- these things only exist after consciousness arises. All responsibility on the biological level is predetermined: how long you can live, when you are born, when you die, what animals you eat, what animals come to eat you -- all of these are already set from the animal level, from the biological level, and do not require your consciousness to make further judgments. Everything is natural and spontaneous.

But once man has consciousness, all of this changes. Once man has consciousness, he no longer thinks about things in this way.

He saw himself born above the snake, and the snake was a symbol of unconscious knowledge.

The snake is that kind of unconscious knowledge -- that part we know we do not know, that knowledge we cannot access. He rose above unconscious knowledge, and the snake is merely a representative symbol.

Yet the snake forever remained bewitching and attractive. Even symbolically speaking, man must stand upon the snake's head.

Even now we still feel bewitched by the snake, and we humans must stand upon its head. The snake represents that symbol of unconscious knowledge. In many ancient totemic visions, we actually see the snake used as a symbol of wisdom and power -- you see many ancient scepters, even ceremonial staffs, with a snake coiled around them, and at the top there is a pinecone. The pinecone actually represents the pineal gland, and the pineal gland represents wisdom. So ancient people knew that the snake represented that unconscious knowledge, represented a part of wisdom, that unconscious wisdom. And that part of wisdom, humans believed their own conscious aspect had transcended it, stood above it -- that is what humans believed.

With the birth of this consciousness, man also consciously took responsibility for the products of the earth. Man became a caretaker.

He no longer identified himself with all things in the world; he saw himself as the caretaker, the steward, the one responsible for all things in the world -- even the caretaker and maintainer of the earth and nature.

Beliefs and the Body: The Myth of Health Foods

He said, you can treat the following text as part of the book, as you like. What does this passage talk about? It is about something that happened two months ago, when a good friend of his had a toothache and a jaw problem, and because the pain was so severe he lost several pounds and could not eat anything.

Because when your friend began reading books about health foods, he gave himself an excellent example of how beliefs work.

On the subject of how beliefs function in our lives, he gave a very good example: this friend of his had a toothache and jaw pain, could not eat, and lost several pounds over two months. That is a very good example.

If he understands this now, then the experience is priceless.

Although he was in pain for two months, this experience is priceless for him.

If certain foods are good, then other foods must necessarily be bad.

If you have read these articles on health foods -- including all kinds of so-called popular science articles nowadays, where this expert says eating this is good for the body, and eating that is good for the body, and up to now, whether in the East or the West, society is filled with a great deal of such articles and content -- he was addressing these people. If you think certain foods are good, then other foods must necessarily be bad. You think eating sweet potatoes is good for the body, that sweet potatoes can prevent cancer, that aloe vera has such and such benefits -- does that not imply that certain other foods are bad?

If he developed a symptom after eating something, then he avoided eating those things.

When he ate something and felt some discomfort -- diarrhea, or pimples breaking out on his face -- he would avoid eating those things. But before reading that health book, he would not have had such thoughts; he would not have connected what he ate with bodily symptoms. But after he read those books or articles on health, wellness, and diet, he began to connect those symptoms with what he had eaten.

Therefore his refusal to eat certain foods became a way of avoiding certain beliefs.

This is very interesting. You do not eat certain things -- some people say they do not eat cilantro, do not eat scallions, do not eat onions, and many people do not eat all sorts of things, do not eat lamb; everyone has their own food preferences. When you refuse to eat certain things, you are actually avoiding a symbol of a certain belief -- that food is a symbol of a certain belief, and you are avoiding it.

For a while, when he did not eat this food, the belief was not faced.

When he did not eat this food, the belief did not change. He dodged it -- I will not look at it, I will not eat it, I will not deal with it.

People are constantly doing this in many such ways.

Here he only gave one example: I do not do this thing, I do not like doing this kind of exercise, I do not do certain things. Everyone has many, many restrictions -- I do not do this. Seth tells you, you are constantly doing this in such ways; you are avoiding some of your particular beliefs, you are running away from them.

In your friend's case, when he realizes that he can eat those foods, it means he understands that he can face those inner beliefs of his own.

As for that friend with the toothache and jaw pain, when he understands that he can eat those foods he considered bad, it means he is beginning to be able to face those inner beliefs of his directly. He now begins to eat those things he previously thought were bad, or unhealthy.

His refusal of those foods for so long was a symbol that he still had not faced his beliefs.

He kept refusing, and so he kept not facing them.

Now with each victory, several times with your help and Ruburt's, he allowed himself to see that beliefs, not food, are what matter, and this strengthened his independence and freedom.

He now begins to challenge these beliefs of his own: things he would not eat before, he now deliberately eats. Through such victories, one after another, each time overcoming his previous restrictive thinking, he will discover again that he is actually facing the beliefs he had been avoiding all along. With the help of Ruburt and Rob, he was able to see clearly: whether or not he eats this food is not important; what matters is his beliefs. When you think this food is bad, it will have that bad effect; when you do not have that belief, you will not be subject to that restriction.

Foot Reflex Zones and the Body's Wisdom

This person also read a book, discussing what? Discussing massage of the foot reflex zones. To us Chinese people this is all too familiar, this is foot therapy. The foot massage parlors that fill our streets and alleys all over the world, that is using foot reflex zones to influence the health of the body. He now no longer reads that book on food health, and starts reading about this foot therapy.

Now in this kind of therapy, giving the body natural consideration is very beneficial.

Seth says foot therapy is beneficial to the body, because the body's authority is taken into consideration. Why? Because you are considering the issue from the body's perspective, without the value judgments of right and wrong that health foods bring. You do not have this kind of value judgment of right and wrong about which food is good and which food is bad; you are responding to your body's needs. This knowledge you have about the reflexes of the massage zones on the soles of the feet actually originates from: a certain acupoint on the sole of my foot corresponds to a certain organ of the body, and pressing this area can stimulate it, strengthen the vitality of this organ, and so on. Seth says this thing is helpful to you, because it is actually responding to your body's needs, rather than some external belief or value system telling you that eating potatoes is good or eating something else is bad.

In this book, I will talk more about health foods. For example, the less contaminated your food is, the healthier you will be. But if you believe that the body's own wisdom cannot balance, cannot handle the food ordinarily eaten, then the situation is different.

What he means by this is: you think that if food is contaminated, then eating it will make you unhealthy, and you deny your own body's ability to process food. We humans have one of the silliest behaviors, which is thinking that whatever we eat, we will be influenced by whatever it is, completely ignoring the body's ability to process and handle food. We think we are like a robot, that whatever you feed it, it becomes that—for example, if you feed it contaminated food, then the source of contamination enters the human body. He completely ignores that humans themselves have a very powerful ability to process these things, that he can strip away these harmful substances and absorb the useful substances. Humans themselves have this ability, for example, the detoxification function. We know the liver's detoxification function and the kidneys' filtering ability, including the absorptive capacity of our small intestine itself, all of which are extremely exquisite, and their exquisiteness far exceeds the imagination of scientists. Yet we humans are like fools, thinking that whatever we eat is what we will become, imagining ourselves as the simplest possible robot. How would you know that the food you eat is all broken down in the body to the molecular level, that fine, before being digested, rather than being what you imagine, that what you eat is what it is—that is all your own imagination.

Massage, Relaxation, and Healing

Natural massage is very valuable, especially when performed by someone with healing intent.

When you believe that foot therapy helps you, when you believe that acupoint massage and the clearing of the body's meridians help your health, when you have such an intent, then this kind of treatment helps you even more.

It will not solve inner problems; it is not in itself the answer.

Massage itself cannot solve these problems of yours. But it can temporarily promote relaxation -- many people feel completely relaxed and at ease after a massage, whether it is Thai style, Korean style, or traditional Chinese medical acupoint massage. After you have these massages you will feel very relaxed. It can temporarily make you relaxed, but it cannot solve your belief problems, because many of your physical problems and balance problems are determined by beliefs.

The reflex points mentioned in that book do indeed exist.

Those acupoints and reflex zones on the soles of your feet, and their connection to the internal organs, do indeed exist.

If the proper inner attitude is maintained, such massage can be very effective. Then it is used simply to acquaint the body with those deep feelings of relaxation.

He says the main function of this massage is to let your body become familiar with that deep feeling of relaxation. Many people do not know what relaxation means. When you are having foot therapy you can actually feel that relaxation -- let your body become familiar with it, understand what state it is in when it is relaxed, that relaxation of body and mind, which your intellect does not allow your body to have. And it is a very good learning process. One of the main functions of foot therapy and massage is to let your body completely relax. Listening to soft music, with the help of aromatherapy, under the work of professional massage therapists and physical therapists, your whole body will become especially relaxed. And as your body becomes more and more familiar with this relaxed state, it will enter this relaxed state on its own. And this relaxed state is the part that, in your ordinary daily life, your intellect does not allow you to relax.

The Symbolism of the Snake, Eve, and Adam

This section is relatively short, so we will combine it with the next section.

Session 647

The snake is a symbol of the deepest knowledge contained within the biological attributes.

The snake is a symbol, of what? It is a symbol of the deepest knowledge within our biological attributes.

The snake also contains a driving force that in certain respects transcends itself.

The snake can transcend itself; this is a driving force.

For example, Eve, rather than Adam, ate the apple first. Because it is the "intuitive component" of the human being that is represented in that story by the female.

Eve represents intuition, and Adam represents the ego. The female represents the intuitive component, which in that story is represented by the female. Eve ate first, bringing forth an initialization of humanity.

Only afterward could the ego, which is represented and symbolized by Adam, gain its new birth.

Only after eating this apple, this fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, could the ego gain its new birth. Adam represents the ego, and this ego could then gain its new birth, along with the alienation it required. The ego must have a separation from nature; otherwise the ego could not be born from it. Without such a separation, we would still be the same as animals to this day; we would feel that we are part of nature, that we are one with it.

The tree of knowledge did indeed provide fruit.

What fruit did this tree of knowledge provide? Because this was the first time there was any choice that could be made, as well as free will. It provided a fruit for Eve to eat; the snake was tempting her. At this point Eve could choose to eat or not to eat, but she chose to eat. After eating it, she would know good and evil; that fruit was called the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. After she knew good and evil, this was the first time she made a choice: to eat or not to eat, and she chose to eat. Then Adam also went and ate it; both of them ate it. After eating it, the two of them knew good and evil, and also knew shame, and then they got some leaves and covered their lower bodies. The two of them had lived in the Garden of Eden for a very long time, living shamelessly for many years, but at this moment they suddenly felt embarrassed, because they now knew good and evil, beauty and ugliness. Why do animals not need this? Have you ever seen an animal make a grass skirt and wrap itself up? No, only humans do this.

So God later got angry, and when he called the two of them over and questioned Adam, Adam shifted the responsibility onto Eve. You could say Adam was really something, not a bit of accountability. This is also very much like the behavior of our ego: our ego is normally like this. It usually makes decisions everywhere on its own, but when you really interrogate it, it completely shifts the responsibility onto its intuition. It has no accountability; it does not say, "I did this consciously." It says Eve lured him into doing it—Eve told him to eat, and Eve ate first.

The whole story and the whole affair are all symbolic, symbolizing the birth of human consciousness. Seth here reconstructs this process for you, letting you know that this matter of eating the apple in Eden itself implies how human consciousness was born.

There are other stories besides this one, ones that were not passed down. In them, Adam and Eve were created together, and they were split into male and female within a dream.

In your human legends, Adam was created first. God created Adam in his own image, and then from Adam's rib he created Eve.

Symbolizing that even from within this new animal, the power of intuition must emerge.

Humanity is a newly created animal, and intuition must emerge.

The power of intuition will always, remember, have to come first.

This is a symbolic meaning: why did Eve have to eat the apple first? It tells you that for humanity, intuition always walks in front; it is always the one guiding you.

For without that development, in your terms, humanity would not have gained consciousness of the ego.

If intuition had not walked in front and eaten that fruit first, without that development, humanity would not have gained ego consciousness—Adam would not have eaten, and there would have been no birth of the ego. He has given this Bible story an interpretation.

Good and Evil: The Birth of Choice

Good and evil simply represent the birth of choice.

Once you know good and bad, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, you begin to have choice.

At first, choice was only for the sake of survival. So in earlier times, instinct alone supplied everything we needed for survival.

We chose at first just to stay alive. In early times, we did not need to choose in order to live well. When animals have no standard of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, they also live well. When we humans were at the very beginning, like in the Garden of Eden when we did not know good and evil, we also lived happily and blissfully. So when you do not know good and evil, or when you do not have this kind of self-consciousness, you can still live well; your instincts alone can sustain you.

But going further, there is another meaning, reflecting all those apparent distinctions. Those distinctions occurred when All That Is, as it were, drew out a portion of itself, and then dispersed its omnipotence into a new pattern of entities.

All That Is drew out a portion of itself, and dispersed its full ability, its omnipotence -- that is, its ability to create all things -- into a new pattern of entities. In other words, these countless entities are also constituent parts of All That Is, but once divided into such patterns, the entities and All That Is became two different things; they became distinguished.

In these new patterns, they remembered their source, and looked back upon it longingly.

These entities all came from All That Is, so they instinctively look back, because they came from All That Is. So at this point you will also recall the question discussed in the first chapter of Conversations with God²: Why do we humans need to know good and evil? Why does this world of duality need to exist? Why must we recognize the true self through the non-self? Why must we first forget that we are God, and only then can we realize that we are truly God? This is explained in a more accessible way in Conversations with God², but Seth and he are talking about the same thing.

So this is a process of remembering -- "yi" means to recall, the process of recalling.

And yet at the same time felt glory in their own unique individuality.

On the one hand, he can look back, trace back to his origin, which is All That Is; at the same time, within his own unique individuality, within his own one-of-a-kind personhood, we are unique existences. At the same time, we come from a unified All That Is, and within this structure of unity and individualization, we feel supreme glory. His glory comes from two sides: it is not only because he comes from God, from All That Is, that he feels glory -- that is only one side; his other glory is because he has his own uniqueness, his own independence, his own complete autonomy.

Satan and the Fallen Angels

The so-called fallen, rebellious angels, and the leader who became the devil, all these stories speak of the same phenomenon on a different level.

What phenomenon? Satan represents a part of All That Is, or God, stepping outside of himself, descending to the human world, and being together with God's creation—human beings. Satan is with humanity, offering people free will and choice, which had not existed before. Satan gave humanity choice. It is often said that Satan tempts you to do this or that, but Satan is actually a part of God. Humanity gained free will and choice, so God became angry and drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden—because you had begun to know choice, you had free will and free choice, and you were no longer fit to remain on God's level.

Therefore you gave Satan the element of majesty and power, and earthly qualities often appear.

We define Satan as very fearsome, majestic, and stern, and these worldly characteristics often appear in Satan. For example, he is depicted in animal form—we often portray Satan as having legs, as an image of an animal transformed into something magical.

Because it is of course also connected with the intuitive earthly attributes.

Because it is connected with the intuitive worldly attributes, since it descended to the human world. The new human consciousness emerged from those attributes.

In simple biological terms, you are now a species no longer completely dependent upon instinct, but still carrying all of nature's desire for survival.

We no longer need instinct; we have consciousness, and with consciousness we no longer need instinct. But we still have this desire for survival. Just go to a hospital and you will see—some people are clearly aware that there is no hope for their illness, yet their will to survive remains very strong. They undergo all kinds of surgeries that leave them unrecognizable, but they still want to live. That will to survive is natural and very strong.

And within the human race there emerged a mind that could make decisions and distinguish differences.

We also gained wisdom, rationality, and the ability to reason. This is what makes us human beings different from other living creatures, and it began right here.

This new consciousness carried with it an uncovered mirror of memory, in which the joys and sorrows of the past could be recalled.

"New" means something other living creatures do not have. It carried an uncovered mirror of memory, in which the joys and sorrows of the past could be recalled.

Therefore the knowledge of death became more immediate than that felt by animals.

We feel death more immediately than animals do. Animals do not experience so much suffering in death. Whether it is a pet in your home or a creature in nature, its death is simply a natural death; it does not suffer as much as you might imagine. Human beings are different—before death, people suffer terribly.

In this bewildered new mind, there was an association that could trigger the conscious memory of a great past pain.

This is a characteristic of the human mind.

The Mirror of Human Memory and the Power of Association

He gained recollection, the mirror of memory, an ability other animals do not have. So when he saw death occur, he would make associations, and then he would bring back all those painful memories from before—the death processes of relatives, friends, and other members of the tribe he had known, the suffering before death—he would remember all of it.

In the very beginning, the human mind was not yet mature, and it could not distinguish between the feelings brought by memory and the feelings of the present moment. So separating his memory from the present moment was difficult for him.

The human mind therefore struggled to contain many images—including those of the past, the present, and the imagined future—and was forced at any given moment to string these together.

A great acceleration took place.

The human mind has had this characteristic from its very birth: when he saw a person die, that painful memory would be preserved; so when he thought of his own future death, he would bring all these things to mind. Although he lived in the present, he could recall the past experiences of others' deaths, and then he would associate that with the painful experience of his own future death.

The Distinction Between Good and Evil

When these became linked together, when humans gained this capacity for association and linking, a tremendous inner acceleration occurred. Quite naturally, certain experiences seemed better than others -- some were pleasant experiences, better than the experience of death or injury. But humanity's new ability made it necessary to make sharp distinctions, to tell him which experiences were good and which were bad, and they had to be clearly labeled.

On the basis of helping to form such distinctions, good and evil, the more desirable and the less desirable, served as an invisible aid.

When we make judgments and distinctions about our own experiences, good and evil become helpful. Because it is impossible to recall every single memory and relive that feeling each time, we attach labels to them, saying that such behavior or such a thing is good, and that kind of thing is bad; such an experience is what I want, and that kind of experience is what I do not want. He says this is an invaluable aid, which is to say it helps you make distinctions, and you make use of these labels -- good and evil, good and bad -- to make distinctions.

The Birth of Imagination and Pressure

The birth of imagination initiated the greatest possibilities.

At the same time, tremendous pressure was placed upon this biological species—what kind of pressure? Imagination is a tremendous pressure.

Its entire physical structure now not only responds to present objective circumstances, but also must think about imagined circumstances.

So the entire physical body does not just see what is in front of it and react; it can associate, it can imagine future events. This is what we refer to in the story of the man of Qi who worried that the sky might fall—that is just an overly exaggerated story, but actually each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, has this kind of feeling. So this is a tremendous pressure for human beings—things that have not yet happened in the future, and you already carry that pressure on your own back. You imagine what kind of unfavorable situation might appear in the future, and then you think about how you should face it now, but it has not happened yet, and you do not need to react to those virtual things.

Yet human beings insist on reacting to those virtual things that have not yet happened. In real life, this is happening at every moment: what if he stops loving me, what if he leaves me in the future, what if he divorces me, what if the child does not listen, what if I cannot find a good job—all kinds of things. None of these are present problems; they are all later, future things that may or may not happen, yet you carry the pressure of them on your back at every moment without exception.

Think carefully about whether this is the case. This is a typical example—it is precisely because of having imagination that you carry this pressure on your back.

How Imagination Aids Survival

At the same time, this human member, like other animals, still had to cope with the natural environment; we still had to survive. But imagination helped humans. Why? Because we could anticipate the behavior of other animals -- when we were hunting in reality, we could use imagination to predict how the animal intended to run and where it would run, allowing us to set ambushes and dig traps in advance. So when humans first used imagination, it was of tremendous help in survival.

In another way, animals also possess an unconscious anticipation, but they do not have to be aware of this anticipation.

Animals do not have imagination, but animals do possess this unconscious anticipation; they do not need to be aware of it -- they know it instinctively.

Natural Guilt and the Inheritance of Good and Evil

Once again, good and evil, along with freedom of choice, have given humanity help.

For example, why evil animals are natural predators -- tigers, wolves, these fierce animals, they are themselves natural predators, and if you get close, you will be eaten.

It will help if the reader remembers what was said earlier in this book about natural guilt. It helps to understand the subsequent myths and variations that developed out of this natural guilt.

When you know good and evil, you save yourself a lot of trouble. You can teach children from a young age that the big bad wolf is bad -- even to this day we still tell children the big bad wolf is bad, because wolves eat people. Then you do not need to experience the process of how the wolf is bad; you only need to know that the wolf is bad, and then keep your distance. That is the simplest thing, and it is helpful for people.

The Passing Down of Knowledge from Generation to Generation

As the mind develops, the human race is able to pass on the wisdom and laws of previous generations to its descendants. As our wisdom develops, we can build on the foundation laid by those who came before us; there is no need to personally experience everything before we can know it. Those who came before wrote down the things they experienced as laws or lessons and passed them on to us, and we only need to learn from them. We do not need to see a person eaten by wolves or eaten by a tiger before we know not to go near them; those who came before already told us this. That is their experience and wisdom.

Of course, this still goes on in modern society. Why is that? Every child inherits his parents' beliefs about the nature of reality: do not touch boiling water, do not touch electricity, do not go into dangerous places, and so on. Apart from all other considerations, this is also a characteristic of animals; animals are the same way. Animal parents also teach their children how to survive in this harsh natural world, only the methods they use are different from ours. We can pass knowledge on to our descendants through wisdom, experience, laws, and written rules; animals do not have these means, but they have other means.

The Accelerating Development of Moral Concepts

However, this acceleration is still going on -- by acceleration I mean the accelerating process of the development of human consciousness, that is, the acceleration of human intelligence. This acceleration is still continuing, and what is it becoming? From the very beginning there was choice, the knowledge of good and evil, then later there was imagination, and now it has developed to the point where knowledge can be transmitted, and finally there is also the concept of right and wrong.

It is always a guiding principle, and then it is personally interpreted.

Our sense of right and wrong is always a guideline that directs our behavior, but each person's viewpoint is different.

Because of its association with survival, as mentioned earlier, there is a great emotional charge behind it.

Behind our sense of right and wrong there is certainly a great deal of emotion involved. When we dislike something very much or like something very much, there is a certain amount of feeling and emotion involved in this, because beliefs attract emotions.

He says, for example, that in the beginning children had to be told that predatory animals were the impression of evil, because this evil animal might kill people. Today a mother might casually say to a child that cars are also evil, cars are very dangerous -- sometimes we actually educate children to stay away from cars.

Therefore the early grudging acquiescence to beliefs was important at the biological level.

In early childhood, before we reach adulthood, before puberty, our grudging acquiescence to beliefs means that they are not your own, they are given to you by others -- you are forced to accept certain beliefs from your parents, from your family, from school, or from other parts of society. They are imposed upon you, so it is a grudging acquiescence. This acquiescence is important at the biological level; it allows you to survive. Your forced acceptance of these beliefs is useful, because without these beliefs it would be very difficult for you to survive in this society.

But when the conscious mind reaches maturity, the consciousness quite naturally questions those beliefs and reassesses them in relation to its own environment.

When our conscious mind has matured and entered the adult state, we naturally question those beliefs that others instilled in us when we were children, and we reassess and reevaluate those beliefs in relation to the environment we find ourselves in.

Old Concepts in New Clothes

Many of my readers may have certain concepts of good and evil, and that view of good and evil is very obstructive.

Because they can be old concepts wearing new clothes.

You will find that those good and evil things may actually all be those old beliefs that have put on new clothes, and you just have not noticed.

You may think you are quite free, but then discover that you are actually still holding on to those old concepts, only giving them new phrasing, or concentrating your energy on other areas without realizing it.

Those old concepts you accepted when you were little — when you grow up you feel you are very free and can live entirely according to your own free will, but in fact you are still influenced by those old beliefs and concepts — only they have put on new outer garments and new phrasing. When you trace them to the root, you find they have merely changed their appearance, and are actually still an extension of some old beliefs and concepts you accepted as a child. So this is also the reason why many people attribute their problems to their family of origin and their childhood state. Actually the root is here. You can change, and you must remember this.

The Distortion of Religion and Views of Good and Evil

Your daily experience is closely tied to your personal concepts of value—your values. Your personal value concepts directly influence your everyday experience.

He says you may be able to see through the distortions of traditional Christian doctrine, and you may have changed your concepts to the point where you find many Christian ideas too inappropriate, too simplistic, or too naive, and feel that your current ideas bear little resemblance to your former ones. For example, now you may have begun to believe in Buddhism or other Eastern philosophies—many people feel that Christianity cannot resolve many of their worldview problems because it is too shallow, so they turn instead to Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. There are many typical examples of this; Steve Jobs is one example—when he was in college, he went to India to study some basic knowledge of meditation in Buddhism and Zen³.

The differences between those systems of thought and Christianity are so obvious that the similarities are largely ignored by you.

What is meant by those systems of thought is the thought systems of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. Their differences from Christianity are particularly obvious, but in fact they are largely the same, yet you cannot see it.

You may follow a particular school of Buddhism. In certain schools of Buddhism, or in most schools, there is an emphasis on negating the body—Buddhism actually regards the body as merely a shell, and its highest goal is to be rid of this body and to no longer reincarnate, to restrain the flesh and practice asceticism. Buddhism is ascetic; it does not only prohibit your sexual desire, it also prohibits all kinds of desires, including appetite—all desires must be restrained, and you should not pursue these external temptations.

Of course, these elements are also thoroughly characteristic of the Christian form.

You yourself understand that Christianity is also like this, but they may seem easier to accept, and they have an exotic flavor, or seem more reasonable.

This is what we often mean by "a foreign monk chants better." So whether it is Buddhism, Zen meditation, Zen Buddhism, or Eastern philosophy, they are actually very popular in Western society, because they carry a sense of mystery and an exotic atmosphere, because they come from a place different from your childhood upbringing.

Therefore you may jump from one to the other, and then you cry out in liberation, feeling that to some extent you have escaped from the old restrictive ideas.

You feel that by jumping from Christianity to Buddhism, you have escaped from those restrictive ideas of Christianity such as original sin, Satan, the devil, and the Last Judgment. But in fact you have not seen at all that there are more parts that are the same between them; you only see those parts that are different.

Denying the Body and Denying the Self

Philosophies that teach people to deny the body ultimately must end in preaching denial of the self.

This one sentence negates the very roots of both Buddhism and Christianity. If you go on preaching this way, denying the body's feelings and perceptions and experiences, you are in itself denying yourself, and in the end you will certainly lead to denying yourself. Buddhism does not deny this point; it wants to deny the self, to bring you into a state of no-self, into nirvana.

And in building up a contempt for the self.

Contempt arises for one's own body, for one's own family, for one's social relationships, and even for this world one lives in, feeling that all of it is filthy.

For though the soul is hidden within muscle and bone, the soul's purpose is to experience this world, not to deny it.

If you deny the experience of your body, that is tantamount to denying the purpose and meaning of the soul's existence. If you deny the meaning of the soul's existence, you also deny the meaning of the body's existence, and then you as a person are entirely negated.

The Distortion of Artificial Guilt

All these dogmas make use of artificial guilt. In our earlier chapters we talked about artificial guilt -- artificial guilt is something you make up yourself. A person only needs to follow natural guilt, and the expression of natural guilt in human society is simply this: do not infringe upon others. That is the one rule, very simple and very easy to remember. If you do not act against this natural guilt, then you do not need to pile artificial guilt onto your own back.

But various religions push artificial guilt to the extreme, and then they distort natural guilt to achieve this purpose -- they wrap natural guilt around a kind of artificial guilt. For example, not killing living beings is originally a natural guilt, but the premise of not killing is not to kill more creatures than you need; it does not say you cannot kill a single one. But they disguise this natural guilt of not killing and package it into an artificial guilt, turning it into: no living being of any kind may be killed, and you must even deliberately set them free.

In any case, those devout believers are told that earthly experience is deviant, and therefore, as a self in the flesh, your very existence is considered evil.

Because your experience is all wrong, your experience is all deviant, then as a self existing in the flesh, if your flesh can only experience wrong experience, then you might as well not experience at all. So your existence itself has no meaning, and your existence itself is evil.

He says this point alone, just this one point, is enough to cause poor experience, making you reject the very basis of the framework of your own experience.

What is meant by the very basis of the framework of experience? The very basis of the framework is this: you are an entity who has incarnated into this world to experience; you have projected out from the soul precisely in order to experience. That is the basic framework. You have even begun to doubt this itself; you have forgotten what you came here to do. You even doubt whether this framework itself is wrong -- I should not have come; I should have stayed there all along. I came because I did something wrong, because I created some karma, and I came to dissolve that karma, to clear away my sins, and once I have cleared them away I will not need to come again.

You came of your own will to experience, yet you turn the very fact that you wanted to come and experience into something sinful, saying you should not have come.

Then you will treat the body as a kind of object, rather than as a natural, living expression of your being through material form.

You have not regarded the flesh as a natural, living expression, manifestation, or embodiment of your entity, of your soul, through material form. You treat it as a tool, a vehicle, a skin-bag for reincarnation.

Schools That Deny the Conscious Mind

Many of these Eastern schools, many psychic schools, emphasize the importance of "the unconscious level of the self," and teach you not to trust the conscious mind, not to trust the conscious part of yourself. Including India, Buddhism, they will all tell you: these conscious things are not important, you should cut off these thoughts, remove all these thoughts, they have no meaning at all, you should seek the state of emptiness within yourself, the state of spiritual emptiness, that is your foundation. Seth points out here: what they teach you is not to believe, not to believe your own judgment, that your consciousness is all wrong, should not exist, is not needed.

He says the idea of nirvana, and the concept of heaven, are two versions of the same picture.

The highest state in Christianity is going to heaven; the highest state in Theravada Buddhism is nirvana. In these two states, you think they are different, but Seth says they are just two different versions of the same picture.

He says in the former, in nirvana, individuality is lost in the bliss of undifferentiated consciousness.

After entering the land of ultimate bliss, all consciousness becomes the same, you return to the source, without distinction, without individuality in it, your personhood is completely submerged, lost.

And in the latter, in heaven, the conscious individual still exists, engaged in constant, blind worship.

You still have a conscious individual, still doing blind worship, worshiping God.

He says neither understands the function of the conscious mind.

Neither of these understands the function of the conscious mind. What is the function of the conscious mind? Or the evolution of consciousness, or certain levels in the larger physics, they do not acknowledge any of these. Why do we have consciousness? Why do we consciously experience things in the human world? We experience the things of our material world, and our consciousness itself evolves, it can evolve, consciousness can be continually elevated.

He says your energy will not, can never be diminished, just like the theory of the expanding universe. The same applies to the mind and the universe.

Scientists now believe that the universe is continually expanding outward, expanding at a constant speed since the Big Bang, and even expanding at an accelerating rate. He says the same applies to the mind and the universe — the world of your mind is like the universe, expanding endlessly. Your wisdom, your consciousness, the things within you are expanding endlessly; it is not a dead, static state.

The Consequences of Distrusting Yourself

Yet these philosophies can lead you to harbor a deep distrust of your own body and mind. Others tell you that the psyche is perfect, so you try to reach that rather unattainable standard of perfection, and you fail -- you cannot reach it. If we take the psyche of the Buddha as the standard, we cannot reach it. Then at that point you fail, and that only adds to your sense of guilt, giving you even more guilt.

Then you try to further banish all the unique enjoyments you have as an animal.

You reject all the unique enjoyments of being an animal, denying them completely.

You deny the desirous spirituality of the flesh, and the soul's strong earthly inclinations.

Our physical body itself has many desires, and this is natural; this in itself is a spiritual thing. It is because we are drawn by desire that we create all things in the world. If this desire were gone, then all things in the world could not be created either. Our soul itself has strong earthly inclinations; it wants to live this kind of life full of worldly warmth, this life of human bustle and vitality, which is why it came to the human world. If it did not want to come, it would be very easy -- it would simply not incarnate. It came precisely because it wants to experience this thing; it wants to experience this worldly warmth of human life. This is its strong earthly inclination, and it is perfectly normal. Yet you deny all of it.

Then you try to rid yourself of those unnatural emotions, and therefore fail to see their great spiritual and substantive activity.

We want to throw away all those emotions, failing to see the great spirituality and substantive flow within them. This kind of very natural emotion -- when you see a girl, or see a handsome man, and feelings of admiration and affection arise in your heart, this is completely natural. Whether it is caused by biological factors, hormones, or chemistry, from the perspective of nature, this is simply something that happens naturally. Yet you insist, "No, I do not want it, I do not want to like him, I want to be free of desires and passions, I want to read scriptures" -- that is unnatural.

The Spread of the Sense of Human Worthlessness

In one respect, some readers may not care much about these questions, yet still be very convinced of the wretchedness of the human condition. This kind of person is not interested in religious matters -- what do these religious matters have to do with me, how human consciousness came about, that is also of no concern to me, I don't care about it, anyway I have consciousness right now and that is enough. And he begins to focus on what "darker" elements.

He then begins to believe that the future is all terrible, that the ending will ultimately be bad, that humanity will eventually perish. Or the most popular thing now is that there are many -- we are controlled by aliens, the earth is a prison, and then the aliens take away our experiences to nourish themselves -- and all sorts of legends like that.

Seeing the destruction of this world becoming more and more imminent, he will feel that this world is about to be destroyed any moment now, whether it is a world war breaking out, or energy being exhausted, or aliens attacking the earth. And he has not really examined, what kind of belief has aroused this feeling that the world is going to be destroyed? Which of your deep-seated beliefs has given you a feeling that the world is about to be destroyed? So you remember in 2012, the Mayan culture said the end of the world was coming⁴, and so on -- why could such ideas be accepted by so many people? What belief is at work in the middle of it? Have you examined it? You have not examined it, you just accepted it directly.

They may find it easy to condemn the obvious fanatics.

Those fanatics loudly call upon God's punishment, asking God to punish the people of the earth, to punish this world, and they hope the world will be destroyed in sulfur and ashes.

Yet they themselves may be equally convinced of humanity's basic worthlessness.

On the one hand he condemns those fanatics who call upon God to punish humanity, saying these people are wrong, you should not call upon God to punish humanity in this way. But he himself also believes that humanity is of little value -- although humanity should not be destroyed by God, he also thinks that humanity actually has no value either. This is very interesting.

Including now as well, many people are saying that the earth is about to enter a new era, that some people will transcend the past and enter the new era, and those who cannot make it through will be destroyed. You will find that this kind of idea has always appeared in this world in different historical periods all over the world, always changing into various different outer garments, but its essence is always the same -- believing that humanity is worthless, and therefore of course also being convinced of one's own worthlessness.

Negative Beliefs and Personal Experience

In everyday life, this kind of person—someone who believes humanity is doomed, who only sees the dark side of human society or the world—will focus their attention on negative things. Unfortunately, what creates personal experience is indeed exactly this—he thinks about these unfortunate things every day, accumulates them day by day, all kinds of calamities and disasters and so on, and then in his personal experience, in his life, he really does encounter these things. And the occurrence of these things further reinforces his original ideas quite a bit—he feels he was right, what I thought was correct, you see, I encountered these things. Food crises, nuclear war breaking out, pollution, natural disasters, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—all he sees are these things, and he will also experience these things, becoming more convinced as he experiences them.

Although he uses a different method, he still denies the value and integrity of earth experience.

What is earth experience? It is the experience of coming to earth to be born, of living as a human being. He is denying it; he feels it has no value, no meaning. He uses another way to deny it—earlier he used a religious way to deny it, and what Seth says here is telling you that some people do not believe in religion, but they also use this way to deny their own value, feeling that they are worthless. Whether religious or non-religious, these two types of people are the same—he is denying the value and integrity of existing on earth as a human being.

The integrity of the human soul, the integrity of the soul's experience—physical experience is part of your entire experience; you have non-physical experience, and that is also part of you at that time. This physical experience and non-physical experience are both part of your experience, so if you deny one part, you deny the integrity.

He says that in some of these cases, the person magnifies all the beauty in human nature, then projects it outward into a god or "superconsciousness," and then keeps the less lovable characteristics for himself.

He tells himself that those good qualities and radiant things in human nature belong only to a god; while his own shortcomings, those desires, that inability to suppress sexual desire, and all such things—he keeps those for himself. Everything good belongs to the god; the god does not have these things. In fact, you have them too—you have your good side, and you also have your bad side. This is reality.

Therefore the individual deprives himself of many abilities.

Because he feels he does not have them; he does not believe those abilities are his own. And when other people display those higher abilities, he is greatly astonished—how can you have that? That should be an ability only a god has. In fact, he has those abilities too.

The Mind's System of Checks and Balances

He said that to a certain degree, these beliefs rise and fall in turn along a rhythm within civilizations and across time.

When such beliefs reach that degree, within the framework of a given civilization and time, within a given era, they rise and fall in turn.

He said the mind is a system of checks and balances, just like the body, so that even those sets of beliefs that appear extremely negative have their benefits and can be used to counter other beliefs.

Our human wisdom and intellect are a system of checks and balances, used to counter other beliefs, and the body is also a system of checks and balances, in the same way. Those sets of beliefs that appear relatively negative also have their benefits; with the help of the intellect they have certain benefits, and they can deal with other beliefs, counter other beliefs.

For example, there was a period when Western civilization emphasized a distorted aspect of rational thinking, that is, an overemphasis on rational thought. Things like "I think, therefore I am" are also one expression of this kind of concept. Therefore, during a certain period in the Western world, there was particular emphasis on the application of intellect, logic, reason, inference, and the scientific approach. Although this scientific application had its own distorted and restrictive side, it also had its good side.

It served as a check and balance against other beliefs -- what beliefs? That human beings are meaningless, that human beings are worthless, that the sense of human value does not exist, that our experiences in this society are unnecessary, and so on. And those who emphasized intellect, innovation, development, and science and technology, although they did not return to the correct and proper rational thinking of human beings, to that level of spiritual thinking, still, on the rational level they powerfully blocked and struck against that belief which held that human existence has no particular meaning. They were checking and balancing that belief.

So this excessive emphasis on intellect, rationality, and science in Western society, although it had already deviated from the normal path of human spiritual development, was nevertheless a strong impact and blow against those beliefs that considered human experience meaningless and valueless, so that such beliefs could not become mainstream. Although many people have this sense of worthlessness in their subconscious, it was scattered and shattered by this concept of scientific development.

The Interaction Between Personal Beliefs and Collective Beliefs

Human beings living in this world come with their own problems and challenges, and this is very much related to the beliefs of nations and the beliefs of the world that have been set in motion by everyone and have become mainstream. We come into this world with our own challenges and personal problems, but these challenges and problems must be resolved within the larger context of the collective beliefs of the nation or the world. You cannot separate yourself from this larger context.

Those beliefs -- the beliefs of nations and the beliefs of the world -- are a backdrop against which various kinds of experience are tested. We come into this world with problems and challenges, and we must, within a specific historical period, a specific cultural context, or the great historical canvas of the world context, realize our own challenges and value fulfillment.

This also applies equally to religious, political, and social situations -- some people live within a religious society, a religious nation, or a religious group or community; others are under a particular political environment. For example, some people are born in North Korea, so they are in that particular environment. Everyone is different.

He says that between the individual and the overall belief system he has chosen as his environment, there is always an interaction.

You choose to incarnate into this environment, which means you choose to interact with this environment, and within the context of the beliefs of this larger environment, you accomplish your own challenges and value.

Views of Illness and Value Judgments

There is a belief that illness is a punishment inflicted on oneself for a moral wrong, while another opposite belief holds that illness can ennoble and elevate a person.

In different places, he would consider that illness can ennoble and elevate a person, and can benefit the spirit.

This kind of thing is very subtle. For example, I remember when I was very young, if you have lived in mainland China you would all know, there was a famous person called Zhang Haidi⁵ -- she was a disabled person, and at that time she was constantly touring the country giving speeches, and she was held up as an ideal model. So we would feel that if a disabled person herself keeps striving without giving up, then her soul must be noble, and her spirituality must be of a higher level.

Including Hawking in Western society, sitting in a wheelchair yet still studying the universe, studying time, writing A Brief History of Time⁶, researching cosmic science. Before he passed away, he also made some predictions about the future of humanity and left behind some words. If he were an ordinary scientist, if he had not been paralyzed in a wheelchair, if he did not have that kind of motor neuron disease or the condition of being unable to move his body, then perhaps our perception of him would be a different one. If an ordinary scientist had put forward such views, they might not have attracted anyone's attention. So this point is very typical.

He said these value judgments are extremely important, because they will be reflected in your experience with any illness.

Under these two different value systems or value backgrounds, one holds that illness is a moral issue, that you did something wrong and therefore you are punished with illness; the other holds that illness can actually elevate your spirituality and be more helpful to your spiritual growth, that illness is a good thing. So within social environments constructed by these two different belief systems and value contexts, your view and experience of the matter of being ill are completely different.

In the first one, you would feel that illness is bad, and you could not even hold your head up; but in the second state, you would feel that illness is something to be proud of, something you could proclaim to the whole world. So he tells you: the overall beliefs of the country you choose, the society you are born into, or the environment you live in, have an influence on your personal beliefs, and the two of you interact with each other. You cannot separate yourself from this larger background, and you must also realize your own life value and self-challenge within this larger background.

Session 648

In the Wednesday evening session of March 14, 1973, Seth began by mentioning that on September 25, 1972, Rob had seen a flock of wild geese flying south. But six months later, on this very day, he saw these wild geese flying north again, completing a cycle of migration.

Then Seth said:

As far as what you think of as health and disease are concerned, there are far too many aspects to be discussed even in a book devoted to the nature of personal reality.

Even in a book devoted to this very subject, it cannot be fully discussed, because the body plays such an important role in personal reality. Especially important. For us, the body is concerned, both health and disease are evidence of the body attempting to maintain stability. Remember these two points: whether in a state of health or in a state of disease, this is evidence of the body trying to maintain stability. Disease is also evidence of maintaining stability. He said:

The overall patterns of health in animals and human beings are different, because the physical experience of animals and human beings differs greatly.

The physical experience of animals and human beings, that is, material experience, the material experience of the three-dimensional world, differs greatly. More will be said on this subject later, but on the whole, among animals, disease plays a "life-giving" role. Being sick is actually giving life -- not giving life to that individual animal, but giving life to the whole of nature, to the whole species. Disease is such a role, and it maintains balance among species, thereby ensuring the future survival of all related living things. That is, it keeps the numbers among species in balance. So disease may be bad for the individual, but for the whole of life, for the whole population, for the relationships among species, it is very meaningful.

Animals in their own way are quite aware of this fact. Some of them even bring about their own destruction through what you would call mass suicide. I talked about this in earlier chapters, that many animals have forms of mass suicide⁷, including a kind of mouse I will mention below, and also the whales we often see committing mass suicide, and some dolphins as well. At that level, the animal understands -- it always knows that its deep biological connection is never severed. It is not that when it commits suicide, its connection with nature is cut off. They know their continuity within the chain of nature.

Man has given himself a rich psychological activity as a species, yet denies that other animals have it too.

That is, he does not admit that other animals also have this kind of psychological activity.

Yet there are as many splendid and unique kinds of psychological activity as there are species.

That is, every species may be different. Not only does man have his own, other species have theirs too.

The cycles of health and disease are felt by various kinds of animals as bodily rhythms.

That is, from health to disease, and from disease to health, this is for them a kind of bodily rhythm.

Even for them, disease has life-saving qualities on another level.

On certain levels it also has life-saving qualities.

Instinct is quite precise, and can, for example, lead beasts to lands where suitable conditions for survival can be found.

He mentioned the wild geese earlier, remember, so the content at the beginning of each session has a certain thread of connection. These instincts lead animals to migrate, or to find new lands.

Even physical health represents physical evidence of being in the right place at the right time.

As long as the body is healthy, it proves that the present environment is suitable for their survival.

And it reinforces the animal's sense of being blessed.

This is the way mentioned earlier.

The animal then understands the beneficial educational nature of disease, and handles it in its own instinctive manner. In a natural situation, this handling may involve large-scale migrations from one territory to another. In such cases, the illness of a few companions can move the entire animal group to safe dwellings and new food supplies.

What does this mean? For animals, when they are healthy, it proves that the environment suits them; when a few animals become sick, it has already sent them information and a warning, proving that the present environment is no longer suitable for their survival. So they will go looking for new territory or new lands. In this process, although a few members of the group die because of illness, the larger population, precisely because of the illness, migrates to a new place and obtains new food supplies. So disease has a certain educational nature for animals -- it tells them that the present environment is no longer suitable for survival.

He said:

Man is so dependent upon language that he finds it very difficult to understand other species. For other species use a different kind of idea complex, in which what you think of as thought, of course, does not exist, but there is an equivalent.

Let me make an analogy -- be sure to remember this is an analogy -- it is as if ideas are not composed of sentence structures reinforced by inner visual imagery. Our ideas, within our visual imagery, are basically composed of certain reinforced sentences. But for animals this is not the case. At the animal level, their "ideas" -- he puts "ideas" in quotation marks -- are composed of similar mental patterns formed through touch and smell. In other words, it is a kind of thought, but within a completely different and unfamiliar framework from yours.

Animals do not have thoughts like we humans do, but they have something similar, something equivalent, called an "idea complex." We humans communicate through language -- when I describe a red apple to you, a red apple will appear in your mind. Animals do not have this, but they have something similar and roughly equivalent. It is like this: we communicate through language, and when a word is spoken, an image arises in the mind; animals transmit information through touch or smell -- the type or concentration of scents in the air. So animals that live together in groups, such as a flock of sheep, a herd of deer, or a herd of horses, form the structure of their own thought through these smells, through mutual touch, and also through some sounds. This is called the structure of ideas. It is completely different from ours as humans.

He makes an analogy here:

This kind of thinking exists within the framework of instinct.

It is instinctive. For example, when animals are in heat, they emit special scents, and the opposite sex is attracted, without needing language to achieve the purpose of courtship. Regarding territory, felines leave their unique scent in their territory to declare their status, and puppies do this too.

Whereas your own verbally expressed thoughts can break out of that framework.

We humans use language to express thought, and are not constrained by the framework of instinct.

Here is one of the main differences between you and the animals. In terms of free will, this has important significance.

Our human communication can break free from the most primitive and basic form of communication through smell that animals use.

The animal, then, understands the "beneficial" instructive elements of disease, and it also understands the nature of stress, which is a necessary stimulus for bodily activity.

Animals know that disease has good aspects, beneficial parts, and they also understand stress. Disease also brings stress, which is a necessary stimulus for physical activity. So disease has a certain positive and constructive effect for them. Even when observing a cat, you will notice its wonderful complete relaxation. A cat is very relaxed when sleeping, but it also responds instantly and totally to stimuli -- the moment there is an external stimulus, it jumps up immediately.

Therefore animals kept in captivity by man will fight, to provide themselves with the necessary health-promoting factors of stress.

Animals fight among themselves to provide this stress factor, because they need to maintain this alertness, to maintain nature's test of their survival. Without nature's harsh test of survival, without this stress, their health would also suffer. That is why wild animals, after being kept in captivity for a long time, have increasingly worse living conditions, because they lack the presence of this stress. People who have raised such animals will probably have some sense of this -- you need to preserve a certain wildness in them, maintain a certain stress.

As he was speaking, he heard the sound of the wild geese again. Seth joked with him and teased him: Would you like to take a break and go listen to your wild geese? He said no. Seth said their voices are much more pleasant than mine. Seth was teasing him, because he kept wanting to go listen to the wild geese. Then Seth said: Thank you for the compliment. And he said it seriously, but actually he was joking.

He continued:

These are all beside the point. Now, the animal does not think of disease in terms of good and evil. Disease itself is, at that level, a part of the process of the survival of life, and also a system of checks and balances.

Disease is a part of your existence in life, just as health is also a part of your existence in life.

When this particular consciousness of man emerged, other questions became involved.

Man is different from animals, and feels that being sick is bad. Human beings feel their own limited life more deeply than animals do -- man cherishes life more, cares more about his own life, unlike animals, which are not so concerned about their own lives. This is relative to man.

With the growth of this kind of self-consciousness came the exteriorization, amplification, and intensification of certain definite components latent in other animals.

This refers to the growth of man's self-consciousness, which caused certain definite components latent in other animals to be exteriorized, amplified, and intensified. For example, the "individualization" of intense emotional activity reached a new degree. Each person's emotions have individualized, personalized parts. Animal emotions may be simply divided into a few kinds, but human emotions are very much personalized -- even anger is expressed in different ways from person to person. Of course there are also commonalities.

Earlier he mentioned the emergence of this "moment of reflection," and with the intensification of emotions came the blossoming of memory. This led to a situation: the members of this new species, now remembering the dead and the diseases that killed them, became afraid of disease, especially plagues. We are afraid right now. We are afraid of disease and plague, because we remember those companions who once died from them.

He said:

Man forgot the teaching and healing elements of that disease or plague, and focused instead upon the repugnant experience itself.

He forgot that the disease itself has certain teaching and healing elements, including our present plague, which also has teaching and healing elements. Man only sees the bad side of disease, and focuses on the repugnant experience of the illness itself. To a certain degree, this became quite natural.

Because this new species developed to alter the nature of consciousness and to follow a reality in which instinct is no longer "blindly" followed.

The biggest difference between us and animals is that our pursuit of instinct is not so blind. Animals follow instinct completely, while we completely personalize physical experience with an intense individual focus. Each person's point of focus is different. Unlike animals, which use collective experience -- we see that different mice, rabbits, and ants all seem to have no individualization, they are all the same; whereas human beings have rich individualization, everyone is different, and their experiences and focuses are all different.

Those experiences previously took the instinctive form of animals, and are different from our human individualized experience.

Next, while Jane was taking a break, she had several kinds of material available to her. The first material was about how the idea structure of animals works compared to that of humans; the second was about the essential difference involved in using animals in experiments designed before applying medicines to humans, such as when using mice -- because human psychological reality is so different from that of animals, inevitably various different reactions occur; the third material was Jane's own material about herself. She asked which one we should choose, and in the end the two of them discussed it and chose the first one, because the first one was related to the content of the book.

Then she began to ask Seth for the first part of the material:

Man has far more room to form his own reality according to conscious beliefs.

The space at the level of human consciousness is much larger than that of animals.

Even when the basis of these beliefs is deeply hidden in the "unconscious nature" of the biological world.

The roots of our core beliefs are partly hidden deep within that unconscious nature of the animalistic.

Man's "I am" seems to be separate from nature, and this is in order to develop the characteristics necessary for this kind of consciousness, and to bring it into value judgments.

When you say "I am so-and-so," you seem to be separating yourself from nature. You must have this characteristic of separation, because if you want to experience and develop and create in this world, you must have this separation. Bring it into value judgments -- bring the concept of "I am," which is what we often call "ego attachment," into value judgments. Because without the self there is no such thing as value judgment -- if there is no self at all, then by whose standard is your value measured? So as soon as you think "what am I," it automatically brings you into a kind of value judgment, a value judgment oriented toward you or your small group's values.

And therefore it is somewhat separated from the "deep inner certainty" of other species.

We human beings are separated from the inner certainty of other species, and this separation is necessary. What is inner certainty? It is that the animal itself inwardly knows who it is, clearly knows its own position and its position in nature, knows it very certainly and deeply. The animal may also be unconscious, but it does not need to think the way humans do to know its position in nature. That is why some animals will commit mass suicide and such things happen. But man is different from them. At this level, man is separated from that deep inner certainty of positioning that animals themselves possess. He becomes uncertain, and begins to search, to think.

So therefore disease is experienced as "evil."

We feel that being sick is bad, is not good.

One sick person could place the entire tribe in danger.

If one person becomes sick, it could infect the entire tribe, infect the entire race.

At the same time, in terms of the development of the human mind, man's cunning and memory became very useful survival tools.

Seth does not mince words at all. In the long course of human historical development, cunning and memory were the main tools of survival. Cunning is reflected in every aspect -- for example, when hunting, people would dig traps, set up arrangements, pretend, arrange for some people to go elsewhere to frighten the animals, and then drive them to a special place. In the process of survival, human beings developed this cunning, and also made use of memory -- they would remember both successful and failed experiences, to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

And this cunning, in certain societies or tribes, meant that the old and weak would be killed. Later, in feudal society, some dynasties still had similar regulations -- people over a certain age, say seventy, would be put to death. In many places there were similar customs. I remember it seems that in some place, after a person reached seventy, the old person would be walled up inside a wall⁸, that is, a very small space, with walls built up around it, leaving an opening about the size of a hundred bricks, and every day the children would bring food to the old person. Each time food was delivered, one brick was added, and on the last day of delivering food, the opening was sealed up, which was equivalent to burying the old person alive. It took a hundred days of delivering food, and if the seventy-year-old had not yet died, they would be killed in this way. I forget which place still had this custom.

In ancient times there were also legends and stories like this. It seems that in the story of "The Five Rats Riot in the Eastern Capital"⁹ or "The Civet Cat for the Crown Prince"¹⁰ -- old people all had to be killed, and one person could not bear to part with his father, so he hid him in a crack in the wall, made a false wall and hid him inside, and regularly brought him food. When a monster appeared and caused chaos in the capital, he provided the solution, because the old man was experienced and knowledgeable. But many ancient backward regions, even up to the present, still have similar practices -- they feel that old people are useless and kill them. Why? Because these people in poor health required too much time to care for during long hunting expeditions, and there were also wild beasts attacking, and they had to be protected, which put the whole group in danger. So this kind of human cunning has existed since ancient times.

However, in other societies or tribes, in some tribes, the elderly were respected for the wisdom accumulated with age. This became very practical in tribes with high mortality rates -- the experience of the elderly could help them survive. History relied on these old people's memory of past events, and the sense of continuity of the group was also in the hands of its oldest members. The oldest person was the elder of the whole tribe or group, and the elder had the greatest power, relying on passing memory on to others.

A man with many diseases who did not die was considered a philosopher.

A person who had been sick many times and had not died was an old person, and was considered a philosopher, very wise. Because he often observed animals and observed nature's own methods of healing -- he had been sick many times and had not died, because he had been observing how animals treated themselves and how nature healed itself.

In certain eras, the boundaries between species were not yet completely drawn, and they learned from each other.

For a very long time, humans and animals were mixed together, learning from each other.

Man's imagination made him a great creator of myths.

Because animals do not have the capacity for imagination, man's imagination made him a creator of myths. The myths we know symbolize bridges of psychological activity, and point out quite clearly the patterns of perception and behavior. Through these myths, humanity traveled to its present state.

Myths connected the gap between "instinctive knowledge" and the "individualization of ideas."

Myths served to connect the instinctive cognition of animals with the completely personalized ideas of each individual in human consciousness, and to fill the gap between them.

When an animal is sick, it immediately begins to remedy the situation.

When an animal is sick, it will immediately treat itself. If you have observed this, you will find that they will look for certain grasses around them, or use their own methods to treat themselves, and they unconsciously know what to do. It is strange, you do not know how it knows -- it will eat some strange grasses, or some will eat some sand, or something like that, and it will get better. It does not need to spend brainpower thinking about so-called good and evil, saying why did I get sick, nor does it need to doubt why it has fallen into this situation, nor does it think that it is inferior to others and that is why it got sick. It will automatically begin to treat itself. It treats first, and does not think about these questions.

But man cannot do this:

A man, however, has to deal with another level, a creative new field, and various combinations of beliefs.

Once a person becomes sick, the problems he has to deal with are far more numerous. So the relationship between a person's health problems and his beliefs cannot be explained clearly in just a few words.

He must examine his ideas about himself, for those ideas are precisely what are materialized in the body.

If you have physical problems, if you are sick, generally it is your ideas that caused it.

Again, the situation is extremely complex. Still the body wants to maintain balance and work toward health, and overall, the conditions of the world must also be taken into consideration.

The body instinctively wants to maintain balance and restore health, but it must also take into account the conditions of human society and the whole earth.

For example, the problem of overpopulation brings about death, to ensure new growth.

The problem of overpopulation brings about death, including war or plague.

However, at such times, the living also have a hand in such decisions.

It is not only the dying who participate in this matter; the living also participate, and also have a hand in the decision.

Again, because you are a self-conscious creature, your beliefs govern your reality, whereas an animal unconsciously knows it is unique, and has its place in the blueprint of existence. Their sense of grace is innate.

Your free will, however, allows you the freedom to have any beliefs, including the belief that you are "worthless" and have no "right to exist."

Because your free will allows you to have any thoughts, including thinking that you are worthless and meaningless -- these are all rights you should have. Because you have complete free will, it cannot restrict you in this. But an animal's instinct would not think this way.

If you misinterpret the myths, then you may believe that man has lost grace, and that his very existence is cursed. In such a case, you will not trust your body, or allow the body's "natural" self-healing patterns.

If you do not understand what the myths are trying to convey -- that within your animal nature there is the animal's instinct, and also your own individuality -- if you can realize from the myths your oneness with nature, you will automatically have your own healing effect. But if you misinterpret the meaning of the myths themselves, and see all the demons and monsters in them as punishment against you, you will believe that man can lose grace, and that bad things will happen if you do wrong. Thinking this way is equivalent to giving up your own methods of self-healing.

In your terms, in order for consciousness to develop, there must be freedom for man to explore all ideas individually or en masse, each one a living existence, toward your own development and growth. Therefore each of your beliefs has its own unique origin and emotional pattern, and for your own sake, you must travel back through your beliefs and your own emotions.

He has returned to the theme from earlier in this chapter. In order to live better and healthier, you must go back through your beliefs, go back through your feelings, and find your core beliefs.

Until you realize, rationally and emotionally, your own integrity and your completely original existence in time and space.

You must realize this in both rationality and emotion, not just know it theoretically, but also know it in your emotional feeling. You yourself are complete -- your body, psyche, and mind are all complete, and it is not right to be biased toward any one aspect. Only when body, psyche, and mind develop simultaneously and in balance is it most important. And you also know that you are a completely original, unique existence in the world.

This realization brings you conscious knowledge that is the equivalent of the animal's unconscious understanding. Simply put, this realization brings you a conscious sense of grace or of being blessed, and this is the equivalent of the animal's own unconscious understanding, its instinctive feeling that it is blessed.

Animals do not need to be this complicated, but humans do.

At this point Jane began to talk about some of her intermediate processes, and there is a rather important passage later on. Jane said a lot, and talked about the ideas of natural healing in the animal kingdom. She began to actively tune in to the frequency of this material herself, rather than receiving it through Seth's channel. She said:

Long ago human beings did not merely observe animals, human beings also went to them for help. This is related to shock treatment.

She said with great surprise:

After a battle, if someone was in a stunned state, the animal shaman would deliberately frighten that person.

An animal shaman is a kind of animal. For example, a tiger -- suppose a person was frightened into a stupor in battle, scared silly by the cruelty of war. At this time, the method of treating him was actually to find an even more terrifying tiger to frighten him, to produce an emotional reaction in him, to bring him out of that stunned state.

Then Jane said:

I think these animal shamans were a branch of the ape ancestors, not the kind of ape we imagine, but a bridge between animal and man. I see an upright-walking animal, a hairy ape with bright, compassionate eyes.

She said this ape was about the same height as a human being, not four feet tall. These anthropoid apes themselves served as animal witch doctors, animal doctors, in the course of human development, to help treat human beings.

Jane told me she could go deeper into the details of that material, but because it completely deviated from this chapter, we decided not to pursue that material further. She said it reminded her of our racial memory, and of our ancient heritage of gods who were half-human and half-beast, bird, or reptile. We humans have many such half-human, half-beast things in the Classic of Mountains and Seas¹¹.

Seth continued:

In any case, you must remember that an animal does not need a conscience.

Animals do not need a conscience.

Because of the great flexibility of your nature, however, man needs a framework in which the offshoots of what we have previously called "normal, healthy guilt" can be considered.

Man needs a special framework, and within this framework we can discuss what is healthy, what is normal, and what is guilt. Animals do not need such a complex framework.

What you think of as conscience is often a sense of right and wrong that comes from outside, instilled in us when we were young. Generally speaking, these ideas represent concepts that our parents arrived at after distorting natural guilt with their own beliefs.

Where does our ordinary conscience come from? It comes from our parents, including society, teachers, and some religious groups, who distort natural guilt, and after distorting it, wrap it in an outer garment, and that outer garment is called conscience.

Whether individually or collectively, you accept these ideas for your own reasons, because in any given era, humanity has very strong concepts about the particular kind of world experience it has created.

Different eras, and different regions within each era, have completely different concepts of conscience.

Because you have free will, you therefore have the responsibility and obligation, the joy and the necessity, of dealing with beliefs and choosing your personal reality according to your desires.

We have free will, and we can choose freely. We can choose how to handle our beliefs and how to choose our desires within reality. This is what makes us different from animals. We can choose our own personal reality, and we have the responsibility of such choosing, the obligation of such choosing, and also the joy of such choosing, and also the necessity of such choosing.

He says:

I have told you before that you cannot lose the state of grace.

Impossible. We cannot be without grace in nature; grace is always there.

Nevertheless, each person must accept this fact both rationally and emotionally. Although this may seem like an extremely optimistic statement, nevertheless, in truth there is no such thing as evil.

Evil does not exist, but that does not mean you will not encounter phenomena that appear to be evil.

But as each of you travels alone through the various levels of your own consciousness, you will understand that all things that seem opposite are actually different faces of one tremendous driving force toward creativity.

When you explore on the levels of consciousness, you will discover that many things that appear opposite often lead you toward the opposite. What you see as evil will actually lead you toward good—without evil you could not recognize the true face of good; and when you discover evil and avoid it, only then do you move toward good. So opposite things themselves are a driving force.

At this point he finished. Before the end of class there was a small note:

Because their instinctive knowledge attracts you, and at the same time they represent inner freedom, humanity is in the process of consciously objectifying inner freedom.

Here "they" refers to animals. It is precisely because the instinctive knowledge of animals attracts you, and at the same time animals represent inner freedom—they are not bound by anything, and have no conscience condemnation or artificial guilt. Human beings need to consciously objectify and re-choose the inner freedom that they should have had all along. Animals have it through instinct, while human beings must display it through a conscious approach.

The wild geese themselves also remind you of your own deep and definite biological nature, and through their flight they awaken within you the knowledge that you are leaping from biological nature into a slightly perceived level of reality.

The matter of the wild geese reminds you that everyone has this biological nature. It awakens that primitive biological part within your body, allowing you to see those things—those that are slightly perceived.

Their migration, at once simple and complex, is perfect, yet as one of the animals, your journey is far more unpredictable.

The journey of migratory birds is relatively fixed, the same every year; but for us humans, there is far more to it.

Speaking of this, let me recommend a film to everyone. It is especially good and healing, called Spread Your Wings¹². It is a European film, I think a French one. It is about a biologist who discovers an endangered species of wild duck, and he wants to lead it along a new migration route—he feels that the route the wild ducks have followed for thousands of years is too long, too risky, and has a very high mortality rate, so he designs a new path himself. He buys some wild duck eggs, and starting from incubation, he flies a small plane leading these wild ducks along a brand-new migration route that has never been traveled before. In the process, his teenage son also gets involved. The scenery in this film is beautiful and it is wonderful to watch. If you have time, you can find this film and watch it. I think it is called Spread Your Wings¹².

So he says:

Opening the great avenue of possibilities, in which your consciousness and free will allow you to become a conscious creator in the world you yourself originated and then inhabit.

In the survival of human beings within this natural world, there is a completely different distinction from animals—we have fully autonomous innovation and creative ability. We live in the world we ourselves created, and become conscious creators; we create consciously.

He says, is this all right? He says it is quite good.

Session 649

At this time Jane was excited and also tired, because she was writing the sequel to her novel The Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time¹³, The Oversoul Seven and the Reality of Illusions¹⁴. This was the second novel related to The Oversoul Seven trilogy.

The next session is very short, Session 649 of the book, the class held on Monday evening, March 19, 1973. He said now is writer time, meaning writing time.

In any given era, there are different climates of belief that pervade the entire world.

Every era has its own characteristics, and we become the colors of that era's canvas.

Some, for example, gather in certain regions like low-pressure systems, while others are usually local, and still others sweep across continents like great seasonal storms.

Some beliefs are like local climates, existing only in certain regions; others are like seasonal storms that sweep across the continents in fixed seasons.

Remember that concepts are as natural as the weather, and they also follow certain patterns and obey certain laws, just as physical climates do.

Our thoughts and concepts are as natural as the weather, and they also follow certain patterns and obey certain laws.

Unfortunately, no one examines the nature of psychic reality from such an angle.

Unfortunately, no one examines the nature of our psychic reality from this angle -- that it has its own laws, just like the weather.

You are born into certain group beliefs, and those group beliefs differ according to the country of your birth, and just as when you entered the body you entered the physical environment in which that body was located, so at birth you also entered a rich psychological environment, in which beliefs and concepts were equally real.

When you are born, you not only enter a physical world -- what we call the three-dimensional world, with time and space -- you also enter a world of spirit and belief. This world is influenced by the country, the region, or the local religious culture in which your physical body was born. So you enter two worlds at the same time.

As you become more familiar with the use of the conscious mind, you will naturally examine the beliefs that surround you.

When you grow up and begin to use your conscious mind more familiarly, you will naturally examine the background of beliefs surrounding you. Of course you are influenced by them; they were instilled in you when you were young.

Even when you question them and often move beyond your local environment, you may relocate to another place, where the prevailing concepts and the local weather are both more suited to you.

Sometimes when we doubt a belief and feel out of place with the surrounding social environment, we may leave that place and move somewhere else -- you will certainly choose a place that suits you. This is what he is talking about: the beliefs of your country, the beliefs of the world, and this background of belief.

In any case, regarding your own physical health and life, you always have certain inclinations and views, many of which will be directly or indirectly connected with ancient myths and the beliefs of your ancestors.

For example, your view of life -- do you believe that when people die they will meet God, or go to the Pure Land, or meet their ancestors, or come back again and reincarnate? These ancient beliefs will all influence you.

For example, your concepts of good and evil as applied to health and illness are very important, and few people can avoid making value judgments in this area.

You have very deep concepts of good and evil regarding health and illness, and you apply them to health and illness. In this area you basically cannot avoid it, because you have been indoctrinated.

If you regard illness as a moral disgrace, then you are simply adding an unnecessary characteristic to any undesirable condition.

If you feel that being sick is a moral disgrace, this is actually completely unnecessary. You are sick, so just begin treating it; there is no need to add moral condemnation and self-criticism on top of it.

Such judgments are highly simplistic and ignore the great range of human motives and experience.

This kind of good-and-evil judgment is far too simplistic; it ignores each person's uniqueness, the complexity of human motives, and the range of experience he wants to have -- which may include illness itself, and there is no need for you to label it as good or bad, or morally condemn it, saying that he did something bad and is receiving retribution. All of that is wrong.

If you stubbornly insist that God created only good, then any physical defect, illness, or impairment becomes an insult or a threat to that belief, and makes you angry and resentful.

If you believe that God created only good and did not create so-called impairment or disability, then when you yourself become ill or disabled, you will feel that you have been cursed by God, or that you did something wrong to others, or that you did something bad in a past life. You yourself become an insult or a threat to the belief that "God is perfect and will create a perfect world," and this will make you very angry and resentful -- because why have you become like this? Because your very existence seems to threaten the belief that God would create a perfect world.

If you are ill, you will hate yourself for not being what you should be, rather than a perfect bodily image created in the likeness of a perfect God.

You feel that you should not be sick, so you hate yourself -- why are you not a perfect body, why do you have to be sick?

On the other hand:

If you believe that illness is also a learning process, then you will fall into the other extreme, and will exalt illness as a necessary and ennobling experience.

Since illness is a learning process, then I can get sick often and learn often.

Because you believe that only after the body is disciplined can the soul be saved, with such a belief you will confuse suffering with saintliness, and solitude with purity.

You feel that suffering is saintliness, and you feel that solitude is purity; you completely confuse the two.

You regard denial of the body as spiritualization.

Many people do this -- the more the body is sick and incapable, the more they feel it is a symbol of their spiritual advancement, and a sacred sign -- "I see I can become a god now; many of my bodily functions are already degenerating."

In such cases, you may even deliberately become ill to prove your spiritual power, and to make others think so as well.

You may deliberately become ill to prove your spiritual power.

The same kind of value judgments can be applied to any area of human activity, and will of course elicit social responses, which will further strengthen the prevailing beliefs, and in turn affect the individual.

This kind of value judgment is not only applied to illness; it can be applied to any area. You will inevitably receive attention and responses from others -- saying, look, this person is sick; has he achieved spiritual advancement, which is why he is deaf, mute, and blind? He must have something spiritual about him, otherwise how could he have such a body. The premise is that he is in that kind of social environment -- these are two different social environments, and they must be distinguished.

You may believe that wealth is the result of virtue, or a direct blessing from God.

You may believe that wealth is the good result of your accumulated virtue, that you accumulated virtue in a past life and therefore have wealth, or that God blessed you and therefore you have money.

Poverty then becomes a sign of lack of virtue, a sign of moral deficiency. Because if you are poor, you must have done something bad, which is why you are so poor. God has made so many people poor, and apparently no one has the courage to change this situation.

No one dares to change it, because this theory is often used -- people feel that they are poor because they are being punished by God, and they dare not change it, because they should be punished.

And according to this belief, the poor are despised in the same way as the sick.

The poor and the sick are both despised.

What crime have the poor and the sick actually committed? People often ask, consciously or unconsciously, and this brings you back to the belief in punishment, which has nothing to do with the idea of natural guilt, but is related to the distortion of natural guilt.

They have not bullied anyone; they are simply poor and sick, and this has nothing to do with the idea of natural guilt.

This is also related to a misunderstanding of the Bible. Christ, as you think of him, tried to rise above the conceptual system of his era. Yet even he had to use those conceptual systems, and therefore he had to imply sin and punishment, which distorted the message he gave.

At that time, Christ wanted to rise above the belief system of the era he was in, but even a figure as great as Christ had to make use of that belief system while operating within it. So sin and punishment were not actually Jesus's original intent, but within the belief framework of that time, this distorted his message and formed the doctrine of sin and punishment, original sin and retribution, that exists in Christianity today.

Some people hold the opposite belief, that poverty is a virtue and wealth is a sin, and regard wealth as evidence of spiritual deficiency.

We think that many rich people are rich precisely because they are spiritually lacking. We often use phrases like "so poor that all they have is money" to describe them -- the implied meaning is actually: they are spiritually deficient, with nothing else left, only money.

This belief can be traced all the way back to the Bible, because Christ often associated with the poor rather than the rich.

Christ was surrounded by the poor; he was helping the poor. So some people feel that spiritual things should be associated with the poor and with poverty, and that rich people will not pursue spiritual things.

However, these are all sweeping moral judgments, and they involve guilt -- artificial guilt, or the distortion of natural guilt.

Individual experience is instead forgotten. What are each person's feelings? Among the poor there are those with high spiritual attainment and those with low; among the rich there are also those with high spiritual attainment and those with low. This has nothing to do with wealth or poverty; you cannot make sweeping generalizations. Yet we ignore this kind of individual experience and uniformly label them -- saying that the rich are all so poor that all they have is money, and only the poor have spiritual potential. In another society, it is reversed -- people think the poor are affected by the bad deeds of their past lives, punished by God, and therefore deserve to be poor. Either kind of judgment is wrong.

Such judgments, such critical evaluations, are also applied to colors.

For example, white is considered pure, black is considered impure, white is good and black is bad. The Tao Te Ching¹⁵ has already explained this matter very clearly.

This of course also involves considerations of race. And you must understand that your present race is the one you chose to be born into in this time and space.

You treat skin color and race the same way. You often look down on this race or that race, but actually you have simply chosen to be born into this race at this time. You may have been in another race in a previous life or will be in a future life -- what reason do you have to look down on people of other races?

Everyone has been a member of different races, so from a historical perspective, you have all shared in the advantages and disadvantages of belonging to different races.

We have been black and we have been white, and we have been other races as well, experiencing the advantages and disadvantages of different races at different times.

This is not the time for a lengthy discussion of the importance of race, yet each race has its significance and represents a different facet of the whole of humanity.

Each race has its important significance and represents a different facet of the whole of humanity.

Therefore each race has its symbolic significance for the human psyche, and the external experiences and structures of any race may change, but the inner symbols will still be maintained, and people will deal with these symbols in creative ways.

The external environment and experiences may change, but as a race, the distinctiveness that sets it apart from other races will be maintained, and it will express this uniqueness through other creative and symbolic means. The uniqueness between black people and white people, although their external environments and experiences differ, internally each maintains its own independence.

Your race, your beliefs about yourself and other races, and the general view of race, will all affect your daily experience.

In our daily lives we may not encounter this much, but if you live in a multiracial and multicultural society like the United States or Europe, you will often encounter this kind of thing, with people of various skin colors and ethnicities all around you. But we who live on the mainland mostly live in a single-race environment, so we rarely encounter this kind of problem.

Simply put, if you view God in human terms, you will project him as belonging to your own race.

For example, after Guanyin Bodhisattva came to China, she took on the appearance of a Chinese person; in India, Guanyin looks like a local. Everyone projects their own god with the characteristics of their own race. Actually Guanyin Bodhisattva is a figure that is neither male nor female, but when she came to us, she was turned into a very gentle and beautiful female image.

If you belong to a minority race, then we are likely to be caught in contradictory beliefs.

If you belong to a minority race, or if we are black, you will discover that God is not black -- Jesus is white, he is the Son of God, and he is neither Asian nor black. At this point you will fall into a contradiction.

You cannot separate any aspect of your daily experience from your beliefs and the judgments based upon them.

Your daily feelings in everyday life are certainly closely related to your beliefs and the judgments based on those beliefs; they directly affect your daily life.

Beliefs ultimately are your ideas of right and wrong, and they involve all of your attitudes.

What are beliefs? Beliefs are a combination of a set of ideas about right and wrong. What is good, what is wrong, what is right, what is not right -- good and bad, good and evil, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness; these standards together form your beliefs. They involve all of your attitudes, about illness and health, poverty and wealth, race relations, religious conflict. And more importantly, the everyday psychological reality that directly concerns you is determined by your beliefs. Your beliefs have that much power.

He said that later we will discuss further the relationship between these themes and you personally, when you are alone or with others; this is the content of the next chapter.

What he mainly introduced is your conscience -- the distinctiveness between human conscience and animal instinct itself, and the process of the difference between humans and animals; the difference between how we humans view illness and how animals view illness -- we humans use our own standards of good and evil to view illness, while animals deal with it through instinct, seeing illness as a kind of education for themselves, and as helpful to the development of their species. But we humans cannot see this; we only see the bad side of illness and vigorously reject and despise it, just as we do not want to eat certain things. But we do not know that this is due to certain beliefs of ours -- we dare not face them, and we are avoiding them.

All right, that is all for this session, and Chapter 12 ends here.

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注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Wikipedia "Conversations with God" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%88%87%E7%A5%9E%E5%B0%8D%E8%A9%B1) ↩ ↩²

3. According to Mike's original words, "Jobs is an example; when he was in college, he went to India to study some basic knowledge of meditation such as Buddhism and Zen"; upon verification, it should be "Jobs enrolled at Reed College in 1972 and dropped out after one semester; by 1974 he was already working at Atari, and only afterward did he travel to India to encounter Buddhism, not during his college years." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Steve Jobs | Biography, Education, Apple, & Facts," https://www.britannica.com/money/Steve-Jobs) ↩

4. According to Mike's original words, "You remember in 2012, the Mayan culture said the end of the world was coming"; upon verification, it should be "Mayan culture did not predict the end of the world in 2012—December 21, 2012, was simply the end of the 13th bak'tun cycle and the beginning of a new cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar. Ancient Maya inscriptions contain no record of a catastrophic ending; the doomsday claim is a modern non-Maya embellishment." (Source: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian "Living Maya Time: The Meaning of 2012," https://maya.nmai.si.edu/2012-resetting-count/meaning-of-2012) ↩

5. Source: Wikipedia "Zhang Haidi" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%BC%A0%E6%B5%B7%E8%BF%AA) ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia "A Brief History of Time" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%97%B6%E9%97%B4%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2) ↩

7. According to Mike's original words, "Many animals have forms of collective suicide"; upon verification, it should be "There is no scientific evidence that animals engage in collective suicide—the famous 'lemming mass cliff jump' was a staged illusion in Disney's 1958 documentary White Wilderness, and whale and dolphin strandings are mostly due to disease, navigational failure, sonar interference, or group behavior following a leader, not suicide." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Do Lemmings Really Commit Mass Suicide?" https://www.britannica.com/story/do-lemmings-really-commit-mass-suicide) ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. Source: Wikipedia "Five Rats of the Hollow Island" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E9%99%B7%E7%A9%BA%E5%B3%B6%E4%BA%94%E9%BC%A0) ↩

10. According to Mike's original words, "The Civet Cat for the Crown Prince"; upon verification, it should be "'The Civet Cat for the Crown Prince' is not an independent ancient novel, but a folk legend in which Consort Liu of Emperor Zhenzong of Song and Guo Huai swapped the prince with a skinned civet cat; it was written as the opening chapter of the Qing dynasty chivalric court-case novel The Three Heroes and Five Gallants (compiled from Shi Yukun's storytelling text)." (Source: Wikipedia "The Civet Cat for the Crown Prince," https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E7%8B%B8%E7%8C%AB%E6%8D%A2%E5%A4%AA%E5%AD%90) ↩

11. Source: Wikipedia "Classic of Mountains and Seas" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Mountains_and_Seas) ↩

12. Source: Wikipedia "Donne-moi des ailes" (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donne-moi_des_ailes) ↩ ↩²

13. This claim could not be verified. ↩

14. Source: Seth Culture "Shuttling Through Illusion and Reality: The Oversoul Seven Series II" (https://www.sethtaiwan.com/goods.php?id=325) ↩

15. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Tao-te Ching" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tao-te-Ching) ↩