Mike's commentary · The Nature of Personal Reality, Chapter 5

The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter explains that the body is not a fixed finished product, but the result of continuous creation by the conscious mind and the inner self. The conscious mind focuses on the material world, while the inner self provides energy and information; the body is the blueprint and mirror of beliefs, and inner sound, light, and electromagnetic structures exist before the physical body and are translated into flesh and blood. Changing beliefs can change the condition of the body, illness and health both reflect beliefs, and mental images and emotions are important forces driving the creation of the body.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The conscious mind is the portion of the inner self that emerges into the physical world, responsible for focusing upon and evaluating physical reality, and for screening out nonphysical data in order to maintain survival.
• The body is the blueprint and mirror of beliefs; the inner self forms and maintains the physical image according to the beliefs of the conscious mind.
• Inner sounds, invisible light, and electromagnetic structures exist before the physical body, and are translated into flesh, blood, and bodily activity.
• To change the state of the body, one must change conscious beliefs; both illness and health reflect beliefs, and labeling illness is harmful.
• Emotions and imagination are the most concentrated energy; mental images and inner sounds are important mediums that drive the body's creation and change.

Main Text

The True Function of the Conscious Mind

At the beginning of Chapter Five, Seth's title is "The Body in Constant Creation." Starting from this chapter, he will systematically explain the relationship between our physical body and the inner systems.

In Chapter Four he said that the conscious mind is a part of the inner self; it rises from within to the surface, coming up from inside. And more or less, it is the part that directly contacts physical reality, but it does indeed emerge from within—this point must be understood.

We are now living in this world, and what concerns us is mainly materially oriented things, as well as the concrete physical manifestations of inner reality. Therefore, the conscious mind prepares the material you need to live an efficient daily life, keeping it ready for whenever you need it.

As I said, the conscious mind is a part of the inner self; it rises, so to speak, from within to the surface, and more or less, it is the thing that directly contacts physical reality.

The conscious mind is necessary for you to survive in this physical world. You need a lot of preparation in this physical world—certain essential conditions of the physical world, such as having food and drink, having a place to live, having basic survival conditions. All of these require the conscious mind to help you prepare. If the conscious mind did not prepare, you would not be able to survive in this physical world. It is efficiently preparing the materials you need for daily life, keeping them ready for whenever you need them; by the time you need them, they are already prepared.

And those materials that are not directly applicable to what you identify as physical reality at any particular "moment" need not be retained in your stable consciousness.

Those nonphysical materials—it need not retain them in your consciousness, in your stable consciousness. This consciousness must be clear about that. The conscious mind is designed this way for very precise reasons. In other books, Seth will introduce why the conscious mind is designed this way and why it works this way. Actually it is very simple—if those nonphysical things kept popping out and occupied a major position in your physical life, you would become confused, and you would not be able to distinguish what belongs to the physical world and what belongs to the nonphysical world.

For example: you see a tiger on the road, and you cannot tell whether it is a real tiger, or a tiger from one of your past reincarnations, or from some other past or future life. You cannot tell whether it is a tiger in a dream or a tiger in reality. If you had this kind of confusion, you would not be able to survive in real life. Perhaps right in front of you is a big pit, but what you see is a straight road, so you walk forward and fall in and die. So the reason the conscious mind is designed this way is that it only focuses on the physical world, and it stabilizes your focus in the physical world—this has a very important reason.

Those things from the nonphysical world, such as inspiration, the third eye, clairvoyance, clairaudience—these are all restricted within a certain range and will not constantly emerge to affect your daily life. This is normal; be sure to remember this.

Once your need for such material arises, it will come to you immediately.

That is, those inner materials—it screens the inner materials from you, not allowing them to appear steadily and at any time in your daily life and physical life. They may emerge in the form of inspiration, information, intuition, or a sixth sense, but they will not become your main conscious focus. But this material is always there; when your need arises, it will come immediately.

When will it not come immediately? When your conscious beliefs have created an obstacle. Your conscious beliefs are like a sieve; they filter the information they want to hear or want to receive, and anything that does not conform to that belief system and what the consciousness approves of will not appear within the scope of its aware consciousness. In that case, the information you want will not come. Actually, it is not that it does not come—it is that when it comes, you simply ignore it and cannot see it at all.

Your conscious mind has this fine, precise, and focused concentration, which is quite necessary in physical life.

Your conscious mind is very powerful; it has this fine, precise, and focused concentration, and it can focus on where you want to focus. The reason we can "zero in" on a particular range of physical activity is precisely because you have this high degree of selective ability. We can carry out physical activities in this three-dimensional world with great precision precisely because you have this ability—to choose your conscious focus and aim it at this physical reality, without crossing frequencies into other nonphysical things, such as your dreams, your past lives, or other probable selves. It will not happen; it is like other voices appearing on a radio station—it will not happen. It locks on very clearly and accurately to the frequency of the physical reality in which you currently exist. It is like a radio that has an automatic station-locking, automatic tuning function; it automatically focuses you on this physical world, and when you drift away it comes back, and when you drift away it comes back again. You have this ability.

Animals are the same way.

Animals also possess this selective consciousness in their own way. They focus their attention in very specific directions, selectively perceiving from a broad and general range of perception those organized stimuli that are "recognized" or "accepted."

This is very interesting. For example, we say a lot of things to animals; if you have a pet at home, you feel that it can understand your words, but it can only understand certain specific things—for example, when you tell it to eat, when you feed it, when you take it to do something, when you call it over, it can sense and receive all of that. But if you tell it something too complicated, it cannot receive it. Why? Because those things do not have much use for it. For example, eating, going out for a walk, walking the dog or the cat—these are things it needs; as for things it does not need, if you say too much to it, it cannot receive them. Although you give it a lot of information, it can only accept the part it wants to accept.

And in the case of animals, such necessary choices are made because their conscious minds are connected with their physical brains. If this were not so, they would be unable to survive in the physical world because of an effect of unclear "focus." Therefore some part of the inner self must come to the forefront of the entity.

The part that comes to the forefront is the conscious mind. The conscious mind must function here; for both humans and animals, it is the most basic thing that allows animals and humans to survive in the three-dimensional world. Animals also have some nonphysical information; they have deeper things, and they have their own souls. But when they are surviving in the physical world, they likewise do not mix that information into the information of the present three-dimensional world.

Because your mind in this life is connected with the brain and the physical organism, it automatically focuses on physical reality. Naturally, to some extent it ignores some "nonphysical" material hidden within any given range of perception. The reason is simple: it does not allow these invisible materials to enter its organized perception, so it blocks them out.

This passage emphasizes what I just said. Because in this life you are in this physical world, your mind is connected with your brain and your physical body. As long as you are alive in the three-dimensional world, this is the case. It is connected with the brain; the brain is physical, and the body is also physical, so it automatically focuses on physical reality—this is only natural. To some extent it ignores—note, not completely, not entirely, only to some extent—the nonphysical material hidden within any given range of perception.

Here "any" includes all nonphysical ranges of perception. Your reincarnational lives, your lives in previous and future lifetimes, your probable selves in parallel universes, including information transmitted to you by other people's inner selves, telepathic information, and so on—it covers many, many kinds that cannot be categorized, which is why it is listed as "any."

Nonphysical means nonmaterial. Why does it block these materials out? Because it does not allow these invisible materials to enter its organized perception. What does "organized" mean? Its cognition of this three-dimensional world is very systematic and very complete: a tree is a tree, a flower is a flower, water is water, the earth is the earth, the sky is the sky, a house is a house, a sofa is a sofa, a bed is a bed. These all form a complete cognitive system with a certain logic and interrelatedness; they are systematic from beginning to end, self-consistent, and self-approved. But the things that come from the nonphysical world are non-organized—they have no temporality and no spatiality; they transcend time and space. On the most basic level, they completely negate the two fundamental assumptions of this physical world: time and space. When they negate these two fundamental assumptions, it is a huge shock and disruption to our cognitive system; it would make you completely lose your bearings, and you would be dazed and confused.

This is the main point. Why does our conscious mind focus only on the physical level? It is automatically designed this way, and it is necessary—very necessary. It blocks out those nonphysical things; it deliberately blocks them out. So you say, why can I not sense those nonphysical things? It blocks them from you and does not let you know—this is also very necessary.

Some material is "not usable" for physical reality. Some of this material is perceived by "life in the invisible world" and incorporated into their reality systems, where it does have meaning, but here we need not concern ourselves with it.

These invisible materials are simply not usable in our physical world. Some are usable, and some are not. So earlier it said "to some extent"—it is not total ignoring; this matter is not absolute. It only screens out the things you cannot use. But some of this material is perceived by those worlds of time and space that have no physical or nonphysical existence, or by these nonphysical beings. There are many beings in the invisible world—Seth is a being of the invisible world; what we call ghosts and spirits are all beings of the invisible world. They can perceive this material and incorporate it into their reality systems, where this material has its meaning. But in our physical world, that material has no meaning.

Let me give a simple, imperfect example: we often talk about performing rituals, burning paper money, drawing talismans, and engaging in all sorts of supernatural and occult practices. It seems that in our three-dimensional world, these things really are unnecessary; a normal person seeing this would think you are just pretending to be mystical. But in that other world, these things do have meaning for them.

As long as you are a physical being, you will always focus on certain material and exclude other material.

You will always focus on physical material and exclude nonphysical material. However, if you find yourself in other kinds of reality—for example, after you die, you are no longer in the physical world; you have detached from the physical and entered other kinds of reality—you may likewise ignore the physical system. When that time comes, you will have to ignore the things of the physical world and instead focus on those systems of existence that you do not currently recognize. When you are no longer in the physical world, you will shift your focus to the reality of that nonphysical world. At that time, you cannot keep clinging to the things of the physical world.

Wherever you are, you deal with the matters of that place; whatever state your consciousness is in, you deal with the matters of that state. As a person in the three-dimensional world, you have a physical body, a material body, so you deal with the matters of the physical world; when one day you truly ascend and transcend into the nonphysical world, then you do the things of the nonphysical world. You cannot be in this physical world while constantly thinking about the matters of the nonphysical world, and then when you are in the nonphysical world, still cling to the matters of the physical world—that would not be good. Jokingly speaking, then you would not be living in the present, would you?

The Inner Self Is the Backing Behind the Conscious Mind

In your present life, the conscious mind is responsible for evaluating physical reality, while all the energy, power, and abilities of the inner self stand behind it.

Your conscious mind rises out of the inner self, specifically to handle this part of the physical world. It is only one part of the inner self, dedicated to dealing with the physical world. Behind it, the inner self, with all its abilities, power, and energy, is there for you to use, standing behind this conscious mind to back it up. Behind your conscious mind there is a powerful inner self supporting it, available for it to draw upon, available for it to command.

Any information it needs is available to it.

Whatever the conscious mind wants, it can obtain from the inner self; whatever information it wants, the inner self will give it. The job of the conscious mind is to use the fine focus mentioned earlier to evaluate physical reality, to carry out cognition, perception, and feeling with regard to physical reality.

The conscious mind, because of its nature, cannot take in too many details and too much information at once. The inner self sends it only that information which the conscious mind asks for or which it senses is needed.

You can imagine the information of your inner self as being holographic, that is, complete. It knows that the information it gives you is whole, including all the past, present, and future of any matter, and all its probabilities as well. It is exhaustive and complete. But your conscious mind, your consciousness, and your capacity for understanding are limited.

I often joke that your inner self is like a super quantum computer, while your consciousness or conscious mind is like a personal computer or a mobile phone terminal. Its computing power is limited; it can only receive and send simple instructions. You cannot dump the massive data inside the quantum computer into it, or it would instantly blow up, not knowing how to process it, unable to accept it. The information between the two is asymmetrical, completely asymmetrical.

Let me give a simple example: the human brain has roughly 100 billion brain cells¹. You can think of it as a computer chip, a CPU with 100 billion processing units -- treat each neuron as a processing unit. What does 100 billion even mean? If you have no sense of it, let me tell you. The most advanced computer chips we use today, like Apple's latest phone chip, on that tiny chip the size of a fingernail, already the most advanced there is, have transistor counts in the tens of billions². That is the most precise transistor we can make today, with feature sizes down to 7 nanometers³, now moving toward 5 nanometers and 3 nanometers⁴, and 3 nanometers is already approaching the physical limit of the material world⁵. Yet the human brain has around 100 billion neurons.

The speed at which we humans process information is only about 200 to 400 bytes per second⁶. I am not talking about image information -- the human eye processes a great deal of image information, of course -- I mean the information you consciously process, such as reading and writing, that kind of conscious information-processing ability, including the ability to judge instructions. Generally 200 is already the limit; very few people can reach 400, unless they have undergone specialized training and entered a flow state.

Just imagine: your ability to process 200 bytes per second, compared with the amount of information generated in one second by 100 billion brain cells -- what is the gap? Suppose one brain cell produces just one instruction per second, that is 100 billion instructions, and between 100 billion instructions and 200 instructions there is a difference of heaven and earth. And this is only the processing power of the physical brain in the material world, not even counting the processing power of the inner self, which is not in this three-dimensional world but in a higher dimension. Compared with the brain, its processing power is beyond any comparison; it processes on a quantum order of magnitude.

For example, Google announced that it has achieved the capability of a 57-qubit quantum computer⁷. It ran a test: a task that would take the world's fastest supercomputer many years to decode, the quantum computer could complete in about fifty-some seconds. Simply put, the computing power of one quantum computer is 700 billion times that of our ordinary non-quantum computers⁸. Remember, 700 billion times, not 7,000 times. So the processing power of a quantum computer and that of an ordinary computer are not even on the same order of magnitude; it is beyond discussion in words. This is also the root reason why countries around the world are desperately competing for quantum computing -- if any country masters quantum computing first, other countries in this information-based society would be almost completely crushed.

In such a state, your inner self is a quantum computer, processing massive amounts of data, holographic data, every day. It has to process every cell in your body -- you have 50 trillion cells⁹ -- and the interactions between tens of thousands, tens of trillions, hundreds of quadrillions of pieces of external information and these things. For example: every breath you take, how many oxygen molecules do you inhale? How much oxygen does your body need? When running, resting, sleeping, exercising -- in what state does it need how much oxygen, how much energy, what blood speed, what heart rate? All of these are precisely calculated, supplied to you neither too much nor too little. Calculations like these are entirely beyond the participation of your brain. Your brain would collapse trying to do this; it cannot handle it; its computing power is nowhere near sufficient. So your brain can only receive and transmit those simple instructions it is capable of understanding and accepting.

To a very large extent, then, conscious beliefs become the great "liberators" of this inner data.

At a certain point, which information your conscious mind takes from your inner self, which information it reads, which information it accepts, is entirely determined by your conscious belief system. The more open your beliefs, the more, broader, and wider the information you receive from your inner self; if your beliefs are narrower, more restrictive, like a frog at the bottom of a well, then the information you receive from your inner self is just that patch of sky the size of the well's opening. It is that simple.

Conversely, if your conscious beliefs are narrow, restrictive, and highly limiting, you become its "suppressor" -- making the information of your inner self completely invisible and unreadable.

This section, I think, is something everyone studying medicine or health should read carefully. Although similar theories have been expounded in our Chinese traditional culture, as well as in the ancient medicine of other countries -- whether the ancient medicine of India, or ancient Egypt, or China's ancient Huangdi Neijing¹⁰ and so on, all have their own complete expositions of the human body. In their expositions, they all hold that outside or inside our physical body there is another system operating that we cannot see, systems invisible and unknowable to the naked eye, but they all believed that this is the root and source of the outer physical body. If your outer body becomes ill, what you need to adjust is that inner system, because that is the root.

But the theories of these ancient civilizations around the world, because they are so old, or because of the characteristics of the cultural receptivity of their times, tend to be stated somewhat vaguely. Even if they were stated clearly today, under the theoretical framework of so-called modern medicine and modern science they would still be unacceptable, because they hold that anything invisible and intangible does not exist. On the other hand, modern medicine and modern science also represent a massive chain of interests and interest groups, and they will obstruct and deny anything that does not conform to their values and theoretical framework, because that would bring a new revolution and affect their interests.

The conscious mind is constantly developing and expanding

The conscious mind itself is also constantly developing and expanding. It is not a "thing." It learns through experience and through the effects of its actions, and no matter what results it wants, the inner self carries them out for it.

This sentence must be highlighted, it is very important. It refers to the conscious mind -- no matter what results the conscious mind wants, your inner self will fulfill them for it. You say, is my inner self really that powerful? Is my inner self really that amazing? According to what he says, my inner self is omnipotent. Yes, your inner self is that powerful, your inner self is indeed omnipotent, it is just that you have not recognized it and do not dare to believe it.

If you have been reading from Seth Speaks all the way through, you will know what your inner self is -- your inner self is connected with your entity, and your entity is a part of All That Is. Your entity, or whatever you call it, the soul, no matter what you call it, is itself a part of All That Is, of the Creator. This world is created by them, and since it can create this world, how could it not create anything else? It can create whatever it wants. So your inner self has this ability.

In Conversations with God¹¹ it also repeatedly emphasizes: whatever you want, I can accomplish for you, because as long as you connect with the inner self, connect with the universe, connect with the source of All That Is, everything can be manifested. Why can everything be manifested? Because the world around you right now, including this physical body of yours, the world around you, everything you see, is all manifested by it. Since it can manifest these things, it can also manifest anything you want. This is the simplest of principles. But ordinary people do not dare to believe it, they are half believing and half doubting, thinking this is complete nonsense. Since he does not dare to believe it, of course he cannot do it either.

The inner self does not ignore the conscious mind and leave it at a loss, nor does it cut the conscious mind off from the source of its own existence.

Your inner self will not ignore the calls of the conscious mind, leaving it at a loss in this physical world, not knowing what to do. Nor will it cut you off from the source. Since the conscious mind is a part of the inner self, it is obviously made of the same energy and filled with the same vitality.

The conscious mind itself is a part of the inner self that has emerged, specifically to deal with the physical world, evaluate the physical world, and perceive the physical world. The inner self is in turn a part of the entity, and the entity is a part of All That Is, so in the final analysis your conscious mind is also a part of All That Is. Therefore they have the same vitality, the same energy, and are brought about by the same energy.

And it is renewed again and again by the deep source of creation.

The deep source of creation is All That Is, and it continually gives the conscious mind new energy, and this energy is endless and inexhaustible. You must understand that the conscious mind has not been cut off from the inner self. Although your conscious mind only focuses on the physical world, making you feel as if it no longer has any connection with the inner self, because the inner self is completely nonphysical -- but you must understand that your conscious mind has not been cut off from the inner self in any way; they are closely connected.

At the same time, it is your inner self that maintains this physical body and keeps it alive. It formed your body, and it also maintains your body and keeps it alive. Without the support of the inner self, your body could not survive.

The spirit constantly translates itself into "flesh and blood."

We can imagine our inner self as, or call it, a kind of spirit, a kind of soul, no matter what it is called, the name is not important. Whether you study Seth or study spiritual materials, you must never get hung up on terminology. Getting hung up on terminology has only one purpose, which is to help you understand, and once you understand, you let it go. So whether the inner self is called the soul, or the spirit, or whatever -- whatever you call it, as long as you understand in your heart what it is, that is enough.

"The spirit constantly translates itself into flesh and blood" -- that is, those formless things of your inner self, under the support of energy, continually turn into material things, into your flesh and blood, and only then can you exist in this world.

These inner portions of your existence continue to create this miracle with infinite energy.

What miracle? It is this process of the spirit constantly turning into flesh and blood. The spirit is an existence that cannot be seen or touched, a nonphysical existence, and it ultimately becomes our flesh and blood, it becomes our flesh and blood. The inner portions of your existence are your inner self, and it continues to create this miracle with infinite energy.

The Body Is the Blueprint of Belief

But in any case, your inner self relies on the conscious mind's assessment of the body's condition and of external reality, and forms your image in accordance with the conscious mind's beliefs.

This sentence is also very important, be sure to remember it. Seth's words are often such that every word of every sentence is a gem. In any case, your inner self relies on the conscious mind. Relies on the conscious mind for what? For the assessment of your body's condition and of external reality -- the body's condition and the external world are both the material world, and this is the function of the conscious mind. Through this assessment, it forms your image in accordance with the conscious mind's beliefs.

The beliefs of the conscious mind are our conscious beliefs, the thoughts in your head right now, your values, your belief system. Do not underestimate these things. You may say my inner self is very powerful, but it says here: no matter how powerful your inner self is, it must rely on this conscious belief of the outer self. This is crucial.

Never think that there is a powerful inner self living in your body, that it is the same as the source of the universe, and that therefore you should fear nothing and the inner self can solve all problems. But no matter how capable your inner self is, it still needs the conscious belief system to stay consistent with it.

In other words, your conscious mind is like a sieve. It only filters out from all this information the things that are useful to itself, or that it thinks it can accept, or that match its own viewpoints. What it does not accept, it does not accept. So how does your image come about? It is formed after your conscious beliefs and your inner self reach agreement.

To put it more bluntly: your inner self has an image of you, and your conscious mind has an image of the self. The two must reach agreement before your true physical reality can be formed. That is to say, what you look like, how tall you are, whether you are tall or short, thin or fat, beautiful or ugly, handsome or sleazy -- all of this is determined by that. So in ancient times we said "the face is born from the mind." How is the "mind" in "born from the mind" born? This is how.

Therefore, I say again, you form reality through your beliefs, and the most intimate product is your physical body. When you say "I do not believe my beliefs form reality," then just look at your own body.

Look down and see: your body is formed by your beliefs. How is it formed? He tells you above.

Your beliefs about it are constantly fed into the inner data. On an unconscious level, you organize the atoms and molecules that form your cells, forming your body. And you build yourself according to the blueprint, and this blueprint is created by your conscious beliefs.

Before you build anything, you have a drawing, right? And according to this blueprint you build yourself, and this blueprint is created by your conscious beliefs. This is the blueprint of your body. In other words, what you look like and what your body is like are entirely created by your conscious belief system.

So I will say something half-jokingly: when you feel you are not beautiful enough, the first thing to do is not to go to a beauty hospital or plastic surgery hospital for cosmetic work. You should look at whether your inner belief system is not beautiful enough. If you adjust your belief system to be beautiful, the outside will naturally become beautiful. Did I accidentally reveal a secret for making all girls beautiful? It is very simple: go transform your belief system. It costs no money, not a single cent. If you go to a beauty hospital, you get cut and operated on, there is great risk, it costs money, and the result is not natural -- after plastic surgery, is it not an influencer face, recognizable at a glance? Operating on your own beliefs is always much easier than having a doctor operate on your face.

Even when faced with contradictory physical material and evidence, to change your body you must change your beliefs.

What is contradictory physical material and evidence? It is when someone says, I do not want to be sick, but why am I sick? No one wants to be sick. No one in this world wants to be sick, but why am I sick? You say my body is created by my inner beliefs, but I do not want to be sick, and in fact I am sick. So how can you say my body is created by the belief system? This clearly does not match.

No one hopes to be unhealthy, so why are there so many people in hospitals? What you are facing is this contradictory physical material -- the material and evidence of the material world. But he says, even when faced with such contradictory things, if you want to change your body, you must change your beliefs. You must firmly believe this.

You all have a body, and you all have a consciousness. You can use these ideas on the body and practice to see.

If you do not believe it, just try it. You want to become beautiful, you want to have health. Say you were originally sick, just try it and see whether changing your beliefs will make a difference. Trying costs nothing and has no risk. What risk could there be in changing your own belief system? Is it not zero risk compared to having surgery?

If a girl says, I want to become beautiful but there is no specific method -- there is. Go search online. There is a book called The 21-Day Self-Beauty Practice¹², something like that, just like The 21-Day Journey of Creating Abundance¹³. Follow the methods in that book to practice and meditate, and after 21 days you will become beautiful. If you do not believe it, just try it. What is the cost?

The Possibility of Bodily Change

For now, let us take the following fact into consideration.

What this sentence means is, given the current state of humanity's values, beliefs, and belief systems in general -- a few decades from now, people's belief systems may no longer be like this, and then there would be no need to say this. But at the time he wrote the book, it was 1971 or 1972¹⁴, I don't remember exactly, and at that time he said we should take the following fact into consideration.

Generally speaking, if you are already a grown adult, you cannot increase your height by another five inches.

How much is five inches? One inch is 25.4 millimeters, which is 2.5 centimeters, so five inches is 12.5 centimeters¹⁵. That is to say, once you have reached adulthood, you cannot make your height increase by another 12.5 centimeters -- let's just round it to 13 centimeters. Generally speaking, this is not possible. This is a fact.

Because when he said this, he could already imagine some contrarians jumping out and saying: You said I can change my height, so now I want to grow taller. I am a woman, only 158 centimeters tall, and I want to be 170 centimeters tall -- is that possible? Didn't you say my body is my own business, that my body is determined by my belief system? Well, I have changed my belief system now. I want to be 170 centimeters tall. Make it happen. So at this point he tells you the fact first, to shut you up -- at present, under current circumstances, generally speaking, once you are already an adult, there is no way to grow another five inches, because there are certain physical laws involved.

Because there are certain physical laws you must contend with, and we will discuss those physical laws in detail later.

So your physical body in the material world, besides being influenced by things like beliefs, is also subject to certain physical laws that work against it.

But even within that category, you can appear taller, and make others feel that way under present circumstances.

That is, without actually growing taller, you can make yourself look taller. If other people look at you and feel you are taller, isn't that enough? Is it more important that you are actually tall, or that you appear tall to others? You might actually be quite tall, but others still see you as short; yet even though you are not tall now, others see you as tall. For example, you are 172 centimeters now, but you appear to be 184 centimeters. Although you have not actually become 184 centimeters, other people see you as being over 180 centimeters tall. Hasn't your goal already been achieved?

But apart from certain cases that will be discussed later, generally speaking, through the use of your thoughts and beliefs, if you are ill, you can become healthy; if you are overweight, you can become slender; if you like, you can also gain weight, or greatly alter your physical image.

Growing taller seems to be somewhat difficult. Seth couldn't do anything about it either -- even if a deity came, there would be no way. You can't just break your legs and graft on another section, right? There are many objective limitations. But you can make others look at you and feel you are tall, and make yourself feel that you look beautiful and slender. Doesn't that achieve the goal?

Your thoughts and beliefs form the "blueprint," and you then build the body according to that blueprint. Whether you know it or not, your body is created in this way. Your body is an artistic creation, formed at the unconscious level and constantly maintained and recreated, yet quite consistent with your beliefs about what and who you are.

Your body is even more consistent than your beliefs about who you are and what you are -- at the unconscious level, it clearly knows who it is, more clearly than your own perception of yourself, with a more precise sense of positioning.

The Inner Voice

You constantly give yourself all kinds of suggestions about the health or unhealth of your body.

You are always thinking about your body, because you are in the physical world, and every day you are thinking about your body. You are sending a continuous stream of beliefs and instructions to the inner self, and these in turn affect the image of the physical body.

As I said earlier, your thoughts have a very definite and important reality. A belief is an idea about the nature of your reality, and this idea is reinforced by imagination and emotion.

What is a belief? A belief is a kind of cognition you hold about the nature of this world, and this idea is reinforced by imagination and emotion.

Speaking of this, I am reminded of a movie. I forget the title, but Huang Bo starred in it; you can search for it. It seems to be a rather obscure film. It is about a village where Huang Bo plays an outsider. His father had drifted into the area and later died, leaving him an orphan who grew up in the village. This man was extremely annoying, a real troublemaker, wild and unruly, and the villagers absolutely hated him. So the villagers came up with a plan to deal with him. He did something once that the whole village simply could not accept, and they all developed murderous intentions. But they did not actually want to kill him, so what did they do? They came up with an idea.

The next morning, when he got up, everyone who saw him looked at him with great concern and said: "Your complexion has not been good lately. You really do not look well. Your face does not look right. Is something going on? Is there something wrong with your body?" Every single person, the whole village had already held a meeting and reached a unanimous decision, every person who saw him expressed concern for him in their own way, concern for his physical health. Over time, they also secretly slipped him some drugs, using both external and internal means to constantly suggest things to this man's body. His body had originally been extremely strong, but after being subjected to these repeated suggestions, with the whole village saying he was sick, he gradually came to believe he really was sick, and in the end he became so ill that he was nearly dead.

This movie is very interesting; I will not tell you what happens after that. It tells you what good and evil are, how true good and evil are distinguished. I thought of this just now because, if everyone around you tells you that you look terrible and are deathly ill, if everyone tells you that, and you accept that belief, then you may very well fall ill very quickly. It is that simple.

Thoughts generally possess an electromagnetic reality. But whether or not you know it, they also have an inner sound value.

We know that thoughts possess an electromagnetic reality; our ideas, notions, and beliefs are all a kind of electromagnetic reality. But thoughts also have an inner sound value, the quality of sound. Outer sound is very important; as a method of communication, it is also a byproduct of many other things, and it affects the physical atmosphere.

Now the same is true of what I will call the "inner sound."

This inner sound is the sound of the thoughts in your head. Here he introduces a new term, one that did not exist before. This inner sound is far more important to you than outer sound, far more important.

I am not speaking here of the noises of your body, not the sound of your blood flowing, nor the sound of your heartbeat, although you are usually deaf to these sounds as well. I am speaking of the sound of your thoughts.

The effect of the inner sound on your body is even greater than that of outer sound. We know that outer sound does have an effect on people: during prenatal education, people play music for the baby in the womb; the finest Japanese wagyu cattle are raised listening to music. But the effect of the inner sound on the human body is far greater than that of outer sound.

They affect the atoms and molecules that make up the cells of your body. In many ways it can truly be said that "you speak your body." But this "speaking" occurs internally.

How does your body come into being? It is spoken by you, spoken by the inner sound. This physical body of yours is spoken into existence by your inner sound. The building of the pyramids also involved this kind of sound. In Seth Speaks, somewhere around Chapter 20-something, I cannot remember exactly, it was mentioned that in ancient times, when people built the pyramids, they also used sound to move heavy objects. Sound can move heavy objects, and it was not the kind of sound your ears can hear.

This inner sound forms your bones, your flesh, your blood. It is connected with, yet quite apart from, the abstract words you use in thinking.

In other words, this sound is not the kind of sound you silently recite in your head, nor is it the sound of you talking to yourself when you think, muttering away in your mind. It is not that sound. Although there is a certain connection between them, they are also quite separate.

For example, it does not matter what language you use to speak to yourself. The sound itself is formed by your intent, and the same intent will have the same sound effect upon the body regardless of what words or what language you use.

Because this involves sound, you might naturally wonder whether a particular language is required for it to work. He says no. The effect of this inner sound on you, we call it sound, as if it had to be spoken in some particular language, but he says language is not important. What matters is the intent behind the sound. In other words, it has to do with the thoughts and intentions that arise in your mind, not with the specific form of expression. It has to do with your intent, with what kind of intent you hold when you produce this sound, not with what language you use to produce it.

Usually, however, you think in your own language. Therefore the words you actually use become mixed with your intent.

Generally we think in our native language. The language you use becomes mixed together with your intent. Because language itself carries a strong intentional quality, especially Chinese, which is ideographic and semantic; each Chinese character has six dimensions of meaning, including pictographic and ideographic elements. Each written character carries its own specific inner intent. So in practice, language and intent merge together.

When you say, "I am tired," for example, mentally you send out not one but several silent messages.

He says several, not just one message. This very ordinary statement has been broken apart. Before you feel tired, many parts of your body must first be affected.

In addition, the inner sound quality of the message will automatically and clearly affect your body in that manner.

Sound quality does not refer to loudness; that value is not volume. By sound quality we can understand the specific character, the specific features of each sound, or what we call timbre. The quality of this inner sound will automatically and precisely affect your body.

So what should you do when you find yourself feeling very tired? This is something that happens often.

This is a conscious assessment of your body's actual condition at a particular moment. If you want to change it, do not reinforce it.

Your conscious mind is now assessing your body as tired. If you want to change it, do not reinforce the feeling of "I am tired." Instead, say to yourself inwardly:

The body can now begin to rest and renew itself.

You can take your initial judgment for granted, treat your judgment that you are tired as a correct judgment; of course you are tired, otherwise your conscious mind would not have given you such a signal. But do not keep emphasizing it. Do not keep reinforcing it by saying, "My back aches," "I am so irritable," "How much longer do I have?" Do not do these things that reinforce it. Instead, build some remedial measures. Do not tell yourself, "I am not tired, I am not tired, I will push on a little longer." That is not the way.

What should you do when you are tired? Acknowledge that you are tired, and begin to take remedial measures; rest for a while. If circumstances permit, you can lie down and rest, or make whatever adjustment seems appropriate, such as deep breathing or closing your eyes to rest. If none of these are possible, for example if you are driving and cannot lie down to sleep, or if you are in the middle of important work, and if it is a collaborative project with multiple people, you cannot just go off to sleep by yourself, then what?

Make several suggestions of this kind: the body can restore itself.

When you do not have the conditions to rest, in such extreme circumstances, give yourself several suggestions of this kind: my body is tired, I acknowledge that it is tired, but my body can recover. For example, I can appropriately slow down the intensity of the work at hand, take a few deep breaths, or while busy with the work at hand, make a few conscious relaxations, even if only for a moment. All of these tell yourself: my body is tired, but it can recover. The human body has this function of self-restoration; it has this ability. But by all means do not keep telling yourself how tired you are. If you keep telling yourself that, you will only become more tired. We have all experienced this in life.

The sound quality of this counter-suggestion, to begin renewal, will automatically begin to renew your body.

"Noise pollution" has now become a fashionable term, because everyone hates noise pollution these days. Little do people know that the same problem occurs with inner sound, especially when your inner thoughts are self-contradictory or confused and unclear. Your inner state becomes a kind of noise pollution, making your body very uncomfortable.

Contradictory Instructions

At this time, extremely contradictory instructions that pull in opposite directions are given to your body.

What does "pulling in opposite directions" mean? It means I feel very tired, but I still insist on working -- that is pulling in opposite directions. The body is already clearly very tired, yet you still tell it that it must work; even though it is tired, it still has to keep going. Then you also complain -- while working, resentment arises in you: I am already clearly very tired, yet I am still desperately working.

What is the best thing to do at this time? If you are tired, rest for a bit. I think in our current work environment, in our current state, it would not reach the point of not allowing you -- no matter what kind of company it is, none would say that you are not allowed even a five-minute nap or a period of closing your eyes to rest; no one would go to that extent to punish you severely. We often say that rest is for the sake of working better. If you are tired, admit that you are tired, and rest for a bit. If you truly, truly have no way to rest, then give your body the suggestion: my body can recover automatically, and it can recover well in such a state, under the condition of self-suggestion.

But ordinarily we often pull in opposite directions, contradictorily saying that even though we are tired, we still have to work.

So you should already know that the inner environment of your body is constantly changing, and it is precisely you who are changing it.

The inner environment of your body is constantly changing because you are changing it; you are constantly giving it instructions. Change is quite necessary, because the body needs to change.

And generally speaking, the overall balance of the body is still maintained.

The human body has the ability to maintain stability on its own.

But the instructions you give are often unclear and of no benefit. And your beliefs for the most part determine what kind of information you send to that environment.

Your beliefs also determine what kind of information you transmit to your inner environment -- meaning whether it is positive or negative, constructive or destructive.

The inner self is always trying to maintain the balance and health of the body.

But you yourself often pull its legs out from under it.

Yet your own beliefs often pull its legs out from under it, so that it cannot use even half of its strength to help you.

Your beliefs are pulling its legs out from under it, consuming half of your ability, half of your strength, and causing trouble for you.

Usually it is only when you are in a state of extreme difficulty, when you clearly see that your original beliefs and behaviors no longer work, that you will open the many layers of barriers to this great energy.

When you are truly gravely ill, when you are facing tremendous difficulty, you discover that all those previous things no longer work, and only then do you begin to say, "Let us treat the dead horse as if it were still alive" -- when medicine, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy are all useless, it is only at that point that many people remember these matters of belief.

The Discussion of Glasses

At this point, Rob raised a related point before the session. He speculated: if glasses were suddenly introduced to people who had never known them, would they develop a need for glasses? The answer is yes, because nearsightedness is a common phenomenon. He said that in America today it does not seem to be as serious anymore, because with the increase in physical education classes, the increase in extracurricular activities, the amount of exercise -- actually, far fewer children in America wear glasses than in China, because they get so much exercise and really have very little homework. School lets out at three in the afternoon, and basically by then their homework is already done, so from three o'clock until evening they are all doing hobbies and extracurricular activities.

By contrast, the rate of nearsightedness in mainland China right now is extremely high. If you go into a school, you will see elementary school students in class nearsighted in droves. But when we were in school decades ago, there were also nearsighted students in the class, yet the proportion was not high. Only a small portion were nearsighted and wore glasses; most had very good eyesight. With the current development, more and more people are wearing glasses.

This is indeed the case. People are dependent on glasses. Because many people have worn glasses since childhood to correct vision problems. In many cases, if you leave it alone, the eyes will correct themselves. Glasses may hinder any such self-correction, because they provide a crutch that makes the eyes dependent on them, further weakening the muscles of the eyeball.

We know that children who wear glasses generally have nearsightedness. Nearsightedness is generally a problem with the eye muscles in adjusting the lens; the curvature of adjustment is insufficient, and it cannot reach the needed curvature, so the image cannot form an accurate focus on the retina. Afterward, when we introduce a pair of glasses, we change the position of the focal point, and then it can focus precisely on the retina. But this kind of help will cause your eye muscles to accept this state -- they no longer need to make an effort, because the image is already in focus, and so the problem becomes fixed. We often say that children have pseudomyopia, and if you wear glasses for a long time it will turn into true myopia, and then you cannot take the glasses off.

Just as when you believe that only glasses can correct poor vision, then that is indeed the case.

On the contrary, you must discover the belief behind the bodily malfunction or functional disorder, and the reason for that belief. When you discover it, when you find your problem, the problem will automatically clear up. But for most people, wearing glasses is easier -- wearing glasses is much easier than searching for the deeper reason behind their nearsightedness.

Seth said that our dictation for today ends here. He said we will talk about the medical profession, but today it is already too late. And when Ruburt's state of continued relaxation appears, she should go along with it, and at ordinary times try to hold on to her mental state.

He said: You may use my energy at any time, and use it as freely and boldly as you like -- this does not negate or exclude my existence; this energy is available at any time. He originally had the right to use it and possess it, and all living beings also have the right to possess it. It simply appears at many different times in many different ways.

After the session ended, Rob introduced some of their feelings. I think I will not elaborate on this part; there is nothing too profound in it. If everyone wants to look at it, just briefly read through this last part.

The Nature of Illness and Belief

This section is Session 624 of the book, October 30, 1972. Let us look at the content of this session.

First, Seth says, if you want health, you must believe in health. A good doctor is actually a changer of beliefs—he replaces the idea "I am sick" with the idea "I am healthy." A so-called good doctor is one who gets the patient to go from "I am sick" to thinking "I am healthy." That is what makes a good doctor. Unless this change in belief occurs, no matter what therapies, injections, or medicines he uses, they will not be effective. Remember this firmly: if the belief does not change, his therapies are all ineffective.

Session 624

Unfortunately, when people began to like labeling anything and everything, and began to make extremely complex "maps," dividing illnesses into many kinds, they classified diseases far more effectively than ever before, so to speak. They devoted themselves to studying dead tissue in order to understand the nature of the disease that had killed it. Doctors began to regard people as carriers of germs and diseases, and in a certain sense, these diseases were actually created by these doctors themselves through certain new medical procedures.

Some diseases are created by doctors based on the processes of certain new drugs. Doctors in the past often dealt with patients far more directly than today's doctors do, and they understood the role of belief and the basic importance of suggestion.

In ancient times, doctors generally had masters guiding them. If you wanted to study medicine, you had to find a famous doctor and become his apprentice, starting as an apprentice and learning bit by bit from your master. From the perspective of Chinese medicine, you had to start with the most basic theory. You had to study theory, and in practice you had to start with basic things like medicinal herbs, meridians, and channels. Chinese medicine is very compatible with our present spiritual theories in many respects, while Western medicine contradicts this in many ways.

In ancient times, Chinese doctors often went to your home to treat you. Some also treated patients in clinics, but many went to the home. Why did they go to the home? They wanted to see the environment the patient lived in, the family environment, the influence of the people around him, and also his own living habits, diet, daily routine, and so on, including the place where he lived. In the process of going to the patient's home to treat him, the doctor was not only going to his home, but was actually also understanding the environment in which the patient lived, so his contact with and understanding of the patient was much greater. Moreover, as an apprentice, in the process of studying medicine while following his master through the streets and alleys and visiting various patients' homes, he also learned a great deal about how the master used suggestion and belief to treat illness. Here in ancient China there are many books and stories on this subject; you can go and look them up, and there should be many. For example, giving you a little water to drink and you were cured; it seemed as though there was hardly any treatment, and yet the person was miraculously cured, and so on.

Many of their healing techniques were adopted because of their "psychological shock value."

What is psychological shock value? It means adopting certain special rituals or methods. For example, bleeding you, and telling you that through the bleeding, once this black blood flows out, your illness will be cured, the toxic qi has already been expelled, or the cold qi has already left, and so on. Through this kind of psychological shock, he brainwashed the patient. How did he brainwash him? He told him that he did not have that illness, and that he should no longer believe he had that illness. Under this kind of psychological suggestion and psychological shock, the patient believed he was cured. Once he believed in his heart that he was cured, he really was cured. When we talk about this today, does it sound like a miracle doctor, like sorcery, like the words of a quack? It sounds very much like it, extremely like it.

The medical profession today, sadly, is hampered by its own beliefs.

The medical profession today is very sad, hampered by its own beliefs.

These beliefs operate as a framework in which unhealthy diseases are not only considered normal, but the ideas behind them are reinforced.

This is very interesting. We all knew before, for example, about the prostate issue; it seems that all men have worries about the prostate. Many people, after reaching a certain age, such as after entering their sixties, begin to worry about their prostate. At this point a very funny thing happens: before this, prostate problems were not a common illness, and not that many people got prostate disease. But ever since the medical profession told us that "prostate problems are a common illness in older men," everyone now feels instead that if they do not get prostate disease, such as stones or enlargement, that is actually rare, and that most people should get it. So many people begin to feel anxious before they even reach that age, wondering whether there is something wrong with their prostate.

Another example: we often say that women will have certain reactions during menopause, during the cessation of menstruation. But these reactions are actually not that intense or severe; as long as you maintain a normal, calm state of mind, you pass through it normally. Yet now it is repeatedly emphasized how severe menopause is, how women at this age will be so irritable, emotional, restless, breaking out in cold sweats, night sweats, and a whole series of things. Television and the media repeatedly publicize this, and as a result it seems that more and more people get "menopausal syndrome," and some even need to take medicine to treat and alleviate these symptoms. This includes many, many illnesses, such as fatty liver and so on and so forth; that is, they reinforce it, treating some illnesses as normal, saying that it is normal for everyone to get this illness, and that taking medicine is good.

Of course, we cannot use malicious intent to suspect that there is some shady business behind these medical systems and medical institutions, but we are simply telling everyone that this idea of treating illness as normal is absolutely wrong.

Here, as with psychoanalysis, they are again playing a cat-and-mouse game between doctor and patient.

What he is saying here is the same as what he said in Chapter Two about psychoanalysis and the relationship between psychiatrists and patients with so-called psychological illnesses. At that time he criticized psychoanalysis thoroughly, saying that these things were purely a cat-and-mouse game, a game of hide-and-seek. Here he says it is the same again: they are again playing a cat-and-mouse game between doctor and patient.

Both parties, of course, believe they need each other.

Behind this there is a psychic pattern of belief. Both parties believe they need each other.

The patient often assigns to the doctor the knowledge and wisdom that he believes he himself does not possess.

He feels that in terms of professional knowledge and medical common sense, he does not have this ability, so he hands it all over to the doctor. He believes the doctor. Even if the patient knows full well that this is not the case, in fact the patient also understands in his heart that the one who knows his body best is himself, but he feels that this will not do: I am not a doctor, I do not understand medicine, I must hand it over to the doctor. They still want to regard the doctor as omnipotent.

The doctors, for their part, often orchestrate or project onto the patient the sense of helplessness with which they struggle and contend.

On the doctors' side, they often project onto the patient the sense of helplessness with which they contend and struggle. Because their method of treating illness is itself wrong, in the process of fighting the illness they feel helpless. They often find that they cannot cure the illness. Many doctors, if they are conscientious doctors, will tell you that doctors cannot even cure a cold; a cold also depends on your own immunity to get better. During this COVID pandemic we also know that in the end it still depends on individual immunity, and medicine can do nothing about it. There are also many other illnesses. Here we are not belittling the role of medicine, nor denying the role of medicine; we are simply telling you that many doctors project onto the patient the sense of helplessness from their struggle and contention against illnesses over which they are completely powerless.

This interaction continues as the patient tries to please the doctor, and at best only shifts from one set of symptoms to another.

The patient believes the doctor is omnipotent, while the doctor actually knows in his heart that he is helpless. When contending with illness, many doctors become more and more helpless as time goes on, and find that they are truly powerless. The patient, in this state, feels that the illness is cured, but then he will develop similar or other illnesses.

In the vast majority of cases, the doctor "shares" the patient's unshakable belief that illness and the body are bad.

Doctors also believe that most people will get sick, and that many illnesses are very difficult to cure, because what they see is exactly that fact. So doctors are often even more pessimistic than you are. At this point you feel that the doctor has cured your illness, but he has not addressed the root, that is, he has not adjusted your inner belief system. So when this illness is cured, other symptoms will still arise, because he has not solved your root. Therefore we often say that Chinese medicine treats the root, while Western medicine treats the surface; this is exactly what he means.

What is more, the medical profession often provides "blueprints" for diseases, and patients often try them on for size.

That is, the medical profession often provides descriptions of certain illnesses, saying what symptoms this illness has, what the probability of getting it is, and what kind of people will have what kind of symptoms. Then many patients take these descriptions of illness and measure themselves against them: let me see if I seem to be this one, if I seem to have this illness, look, this symptom of mine matches this, doctor, do I have this illness? They repeatedly look to see which one "fits," which disease blueprint matches the symptoms on their own body.

This is not to say that the medical profession has not given people much help and benefit; it is not to say that it has not helped, but rather that within the value system in which it operates, most of its positive influence is canceled out. The fact that it describes these diseases is not in itself a bad thing, but its way of operating and its value system subtly lead many people to identify themselves with these descriptions, reinforcing and labeling physical discomfort caused by belief, when there was no illness to begin with, as a disease.

Because doctors are so highly respected, the advice or suggestions they give are particularly heeded. The patient's emotional state at this time makes it easy for him to accept what the doctor says under these circumstances with less critical judgment than usual.

Because doctors inherently carry authority, many people respect doctors very much. Many people who could not quit smoking or drinking went to the hospital after getting an illness, and after the doctor said a few words, they came back and quit both smoking and drinking completely. Because the patient is ill, in this emotional state, whereas normally he would have a certain critical attitude toward any viewpoint, at this time he finds that he accepts the doctor, and he accepts what the doctor says under these circumstances.

The naming and labeling of "disease" is a harmful practice that greatly denies the innate vitality and ever-changing nature of the psyche as expressed in the flesh.

You must remember this: the naming and labeling of disease is a harmful practice.

When a doctor tells you that you have "such and such a disease," "it" mysteriously attacks you, perhaps attacking your most vital organ. They often tell you that your emotions or beliefs or value system have nothing whatsoever to do with the unfortunate condition besieging you.

They tell you that being sick is just being sick, that illness is simply a fact, that if you are sick you should be treated, if you are sick you should take medicine, and if you need surgery you should have surgery; this has nothing much to do with your emotional belief system.

So labeling disease is harmful. But if you look again at Chinese medicine, when Chinese doctors treat illness, they do not call most illnesses "illness." You will find that when a Chinese doctor treats you, he will actually use words that are not illnesses at all. For example, he will say you have been affected by wind and cold, or your spleen and stomach are not in harmony, or your menstruation is irregular, or your mental state is poor, or your food is not being digested, or your digestion is poor, and so on. He believes that these are all cases where you have not properly adjusted yourself in relation to the external environment or to your inner condition; these are not illnesses in themselves, and once you adjust them properly, they will naturally be fine. So when a Chinese doctor treats you, he rarely says that you have some illness. After taking your pulse and examining you, the doctor will say, your constitution is weak, your qi and blood are insufficient, and he will prescribe some medicine for you, give you two doses to take home and try. He rarely defines you as having some illness, such as consumption or the like; he rarely makes such definitions. Although there are some who do make definitions, in most cases the Chinese doctors we encounter in daily life rarely pin the name of a disease on you. He will often attribute it to your disharmony, imbalance, or lack of balance with the surrounding natural world, or to places within your body that are not flowing or not properly ordered. He does not consider this an illness; it is only an obstruction or something functional, and you only need to regulate it and it will be fine. He often uses the word "regulate."

So you see, Chinese medicine is different from Western medicine in treating illness. When a Western doctor treats you, he prescribes medicine, and he must prescribe a certain medicine for a certain illness; he must place you into a certain category of illness. First you go to see a certain department, and he matches your symptoms to that illness: you have this illness, you have that illness. This is very interesting. All right, we will not go deeper into this subject; of course, it is enough that you understand it in your heart.

The patient therefore often feels quite powerless, at the mercy of any stray virus that may happen to pass by.

The patient does not know why he got sick, or how he was infected by a virus. Our current novel coronavirus is like a stray virus, infecting people as it wanders around unpredictably.

The fact is that you even choose the kind of illness you will have according to the nature of your beliefs.

He says the fact is that you choose what kind of illness you will have according to the nature of your beliefs.

As long as you believe that you are immune to disease, you are truly immune to all poisons.

Does this sound like the Boxers' sense of being invulnerable to swords and spears and immune to all poisons? It sounds too idealistic. But Seth tells you that as long as you believe you are immune to disease, you are truly immune to all poisons.

Regarding the virus of this COVID pandemic, I made four programs quite early on, gathering together and elaborating on all the viewpoints about viruses. In those, Seth said that much immunity is psychic immunity, immunity on the psychic or conscious level, not physical immunity. The best example is Mother Teresa. She was actually in the most dangerous places all over the world, in many epidemic outbreaks and many slum areas, and she took no protective measures at all. She even walked barefoot the whole time, never wearing shoes, and had no protection whatsoever. Yet for so many years, decades as one day, always in places densely populated by the poor, and even in many places where plagues broke out, she never contracted any illness.¹⁶

Of course, for this to work you must really believe it; you cannot be half-believing and half-doubting. You cannot say, I shout slogans that I will not get sick, that I am immune to all poisons, but in your heart you are actually terrified; that is useless, because in your heart you are still afraid.

These are all quite practical statements.

Here Seth is afraid you will not believe him, so he adds a sentence of emphasis. "Statement" is a very important word in English here; he uses "statement" only when he is proving that something is a fact. If you believe that you are immune to disease, you are truly immune to all poisons. This sentence, he says, is a quite practical statement.

Body Consciousness and Automatic Correction

Your body has an overall body consciousness filled with energy and vitality, and it automatically corrects any imbalance.

Your body has an overall body consciousness, and this body consciousness is filled with energy and vitality, and it automatically corrects any imbalance. But your conscious beliefs also influence the entire body consciousness. These two systems operate at the same time. That is to say, you have an overall body consciousness full of vitality and energy, and it automatically maintains balance; it corrects deviations. When some imbalance appears, it will first try to correct it, and when it truly cannot correct it, then some symptoms will appear. And at the same time, this conscious awareness of yours -- that is, your thoughts, your beliefs -- will also bring about change.

You tell your muscles how they are, and they believe that is how they are, and the same goes for every other part of your body.

You tell your muscles how they are, and the muscles believe that is how they themselves are. All the other parts of your body operate on the same principle. I will not expand on this here.

When you believe that only doctors can cure you, then you had better go to them, because within your belief framework, they are indeed the only ones who can help you.

Here he emphasizes again that he is not denying modern medicine. If you are the kind of person -- that is, you think that when I am not sick, I go to a Chinese medicine practitioner for regular conditioning, but when I am really sick, I still have to see a Western doctor -- if that is what you think in your heart, then I am sorry, when you are sick you really do have to go see a doctor. Because in your heart you believe that only he can truly cure you; this is your belief system, your belief framework, and you do not believe in anything else. Then you can only go to him, because you believe he can cure you, and it really may be that only he can cure you. Because anyone else recommended to you, you think is a quack, a charlatan, a second-rate practitioner, a fraud, or a shaman. So with that kind of belief system, there is no way around it: you really do have to see a doctor to be cured. But that framework itself limits you, because that is simply how you think.

At the same time, although some particular ailment of yours may be cured, you will still replace it with another, as long as your beliefs cause you to have physical problems.

If your belief system does not change, and a doctor cures this problem of yours, you will produce a new problem. Because your belief system caused the illness above; if you do not change the belief system and only cure the surface symptoms, your belief system will still cause you to produce a new illness.

This situation also applies to what is generally called "spiritual healing."

This situation is also like ordinary spiritual healing -- spiritual healing. Many of these so-called ritual practices, soul healing, folk remedies, including in rural China there are many shamanic healers who cure illness, especially in the Northeast region, where shamanic healing is a very common method of treatment.

If through the concentrated use of psychic energy your body is cured by such a "miracle healer," you will also very simply switch these symptoms to other symptoms, unless you change the original belief.

This kind of spiritual healing is the same. Suppose you are cured through this concentrated use of psychic energy -- so-called spiritual healing is the use of psychic energy, spiritual energy -- perhaps this person is very capable, and he can already mobilize these energies that we cannot see to help temporarily cure your illness. Although your body has been cured by the miracle healer, you will also very simply switch those symptoms to other symptoms; you will get other illnesses again, unless you truly change your original belief. If you do not change it, the illness will still come back.

But sometimes a "miracle healer" or a doctor, because of the effect shown by their curing of a condition, will lead you to infer that the healing energy has always existed within your own heart.

The two situations were discussed above. Sometimes a miracle healer or a doctor treats a condition -- for example, your body has certain symptoms, and he eliminates those symptoms for you -- and the effect shown will lead you to infer that the healing energy has always existed within your own heart. When the effect of the treatment begins to show, and you discover that the illness is gone, you will find that he did not really do anything; actually, the real healing depended on yourself. Then this realization itself may be enough to make you completely change your beliefs about health. In such a case, you will understand that your original illness was caused by belief.

The Part That Focuses on Health and the Inner Voice

If you have any physical problem, you should instead concentrate on the healthy part of your body, and on what you call the normal functions that are being blocked. In those healthy areas, your beliefs are working for you.

What he means is, when you discover that your illness is caused by beliefs, when you have a physical problem, at that time you should not keep focusing on your problem. You should think about the healthy functions and healthy body parts that are not sick, and think about why those things are healthy. Because at that time your correct beliefs have been working all along. You use such a correct belief to replace those incorrect beliefs. In other words, you use gratitude for the body's health, trust in the body, and the belief that your body can repair these things and recover. In this state, paying attention to your normal functions or the healthy body parts that are not affected can allow you to use this positive belief to cure the illness. Why? Because at this time your correct beliefs are working for you. If they were not working for you, then the healthy parts of your body would not exist either.

In the previous session he said that the inner voice is extremely important, and he brings up the inner voice again.

Every atom and molecule that makes up the body has its own reality in terms of "sound value."

That is, their own reality in terms of sound value. This is a reality you cannot hear.

So every organ of your body also has its own unique sound value.

Every organ also has its own sound value, and we can correspond to different sound values.

When something goes wrong somewhere, the inner sound becomes discordant.

If this inner reality is a very perfect symphony, then you will find that when something goes wrong somewhere, this inner symphony becomes discordant and starts to go out of tune.

As a result of the inner sound of your own "thoughts and beliefs," this discordant sound becomes part of that part of the body.

If the inner sound becomes discordant, this discordant sound will become that part of the body in that part of the body.

This is why he says it is extremely important not to repeat those same negative suggestions to yourself, thereby reinforcing those inner sounds. Do not keep looking at the place where you are sick, because you keep paying attention to it — I feel so awful right now, I hurt so much right now — if you keep focusing on this place of discomfort and pain, you are reinforcing this inner sound. Just as he said in the previous session, when I am very tired and exhausted, if at that time you keep emphasizing that I am very tired and exhausted, this tiredness and exhaustion will not be relieved in any way; it will only be reinforced, making you more tired and more exhausted. Illness is the same. If you keep focusing on the place where you are sick — this is a characteristic of many people: wherever they feel uncomfortable, they keep focusing on it — the more they focus on it, the more they are reinforcing that inner sound. So he says that when you are sick, focus on the good parts of your body and the good organs, and temporarily ignore the sick places. Naturally, those negative suggestions and that inner negative sound will become weaker and weaker, and only then can you slowly get better.

Verbal suggestions and hints are translated into the inner sound.

There are also hints and suggestions on the verbal level. You should speak them out, speak them out loud. Speak to your own body, to your own cells, to your own organs — talk to it, have a heart-to-heart with it, chat with it. This in itself is a kind of suggestion and hint. It will be translated into the inner sound. The inner sound cannot be seen or heard, but the outer sound is your language. So language can also carry very strong hints and suggestions, because it will be translated into the inner. What works is not the outer, but the inner — yet it needs to be translated.

And this inner sound will pass through your body, just as some kind of light passes through your body, and it heals you.

It is that simple. Verbal suggestions are translated into the inner sound, and this sound, like some kind of light, can penetrate your body and heal your body.

The Body's Multidimensional Structure and Mental Images

Now when you are a physical creature, your perceptual capacities must necessarily be largely physically oriented.

Largely, not entirely.

But even your body does not exist only within the range you usually imagine.

You think of your own body as a "thing" that has volume, made up of bones, flesh, blood, organs, and skin. What you do not realize is that--

They also have "various structures" of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you cannot see.

The body does not only have a physical structure; it also has a structure of sound, a structure of light, and an electromagnetic structure. All of these are connected to the body image you know. Any physical disability will first show up in these other "structures"--that is, in those nonphysical structures of sound, light, and electromagnetism.

This combination pattern of sound, light, and electromagnetism brings power and vitality to the physical image you recognize.

It is this pattern of sound, light, and electromagnetism that brings vitality to your physical body, to the actual physical image. It is they that bring you vitality. They are far more lively than the physical body. You have a body of light, you have a body of sound, and you also have an electromagnetic body--let us say there are these three--and all three of these bodies are far more active and lively than your physical body, and far more sensitive to, and more easily influenced by, the constantly changing patterns of your thoughts and emotions.

I have told you that thoughts are translated into inner sound, but thoughts also constantly attempt to concretely manifest themselves.

Besides being translated into inner sound, what else do thoughts want to do? They constantly attempt to manifest themselves.

According to this, thoughts are "incipient images," and they are also collectors of energy. They build up their own "embryonic" forms until they are finally concretely translated.

Here "they" refers to thoughts. How is your physical world formed? It is formed by thoughts. Thoughts are incipient images; all images are ultimately produced by thoughts. First a thought forms an incipient image, and then through the gathering and transformation of energy, among the atoms and molecules in the air that we cannot see, these then manifest and form a physical image. It forms an embryonic pattern, and then it is concretely translated.

"Mental images" are extremely powerful things; they combine inner sound and its effects together into one clear picture.

A mental image is the picture in your mind, and it is an extremely powerful thing. We must learn to use mental images. He emphasizes "extremely powerful" here--be sure to remember that. The power of this kind of mental image is very important; do not underestimate it. It has a clear picture, and then it combines inner sound and its effects together. When the image of a mental thought appears, it carries the energy of inner sound as well as the result after the effect has taken place; it combines the sound and the effect together at the same time and turns them into a picture.

And it will eventually seek concrete form.

In the end it will become the form that this mental image wants to take.

Your imagination adds the force of drive and impetus to this mental image.

This mental image still needs an impetus and a driving force, and your imagination can add this force to the mental image. So imagination is very important. First there is a picture, and then imagination is very important.

Therefore you will find that you often deliberate over many beliefs in an inner visual way, and all of these beliefs have psychic pictures connected with them.

You often use inner vision--like running a movie in your mind, or having things with a sense of imagery surface--to deliberate over many beliefs in this way. When you think of a loved one far away, or when you think of someone you like, many images arise in your mind. When you feel that your illness is about to get better, what appears in your mind is also a sense of imagery.

For example, many people who are ill have no appetite. When their illness is about to get better, they can feel it themselves--why? They find that they have an appetite. They may even begin to want to eat certain things before they have fully recovered, and images of eating have already appeared in their minds--the deliciousness and aroma of that food--and they feel especially hungry, craving it unbearably. Generally, when a patient shows this kind of state, it is a sign that their illness is about to improve.

Just a couple of days ago, during a meditation, someone in a group shared a case. There was a little kitten that had been sick for ten days and was almost dying. You know, when a cat is sick for ten days straight, it really is almost at the end. Anyone who has kept cats knows that cats generally do not get sick, but once a cat gets sick and does not recover, the probability of death is very high. This little kitten was almost gone. At that time, this person happened to be doing a 21-day abundance meditation, and during the meditation, he kept thinking about the kitten after it recovered--playing, eating the fish sticks, cat food, canned food, and so on that it liked. He imagined all kinds of scenes of the kitten playing with him after it got better, and during meditation he imagined the kitten's lively, healthy, and normal appearance after recovery. After he had imagined this for three consecutive days of meditation, the kitten began--it was not fully recovered yet--but it began to get up and eat. The kitten had not eaten for several days and was almost gone. After three days it began to get up and eat. Generally, when a kitten begins to eat, it basically means the illness is starting to improve.

So you will find that this kind of belief works not only on people; it works on all things, including many people's experiences with plants and with other things as well. You need to understand this. So when Seth emphasizes the extremely powerful effect of belief, you know how powerful its effect really is.

Such a picture also represents a particular belief, or represents several beliefs.

This sense of imagery represents several beliefs. When you are making a list of your beliefs--for example, when we want to sort out a list of our beliefs--you will find that this kind of picture surfaces in your mind. When we go to examine our inner beliefs and want to make a list of them, that kind of imagery will often appear. So this kind of mental thought, this kind of mental image, is itself associated with certain beliefs; it itself represents a particular belief or several beliefs. So you need to learn to use this tool of imagery. After Seth explains this theory, we need to learn to use it in real life.

You should look at it the way you would look at a painting you have created.

That is, this mental image, this mental picture in your mind, is like your painting. You can paint it. If you do not like what you see, then very consciously change the picture in your mind. In your mind, with this picture, you are the painter. You can consciously change it, and when you change this picture, the manifestation in the three-dimensional world, in the physical world, will change accordingly.

These pictures only show your inner state, but because they have already become part of your mental thoughts, you will also see them externalized in your experience.

These pictures already exist in your inner self. They did not come into being just today; they are themselves part of your mental thoughts and have existed for a long time. So you will also see that the pictures in your mind will surface in your outer experience. You will vaguely see the presentation of that kind of mental imagery in your outer experience.

For example, if you have a toe that hurts, from time to time you see it very clearly in your mind, and you may also find yourself picking out people in a crowd who are walking a little oddly. Normally you probably would not notice these people, but suddenly it seems as if the whole world is full of people with sore toes. What I want to talk about here is a situation where a belief has already become a fact--that is, a wrong, negative belief of yours has already become a fact, namely that your toe hurts. But if you continue to pay attention to that toe in this way, not only will it not get better, it will become even worse. His wording here is very convoluted--just understand that not only will it not get better, it will actually get worse.

Behind all such situations, the troublemaker is the belief that started the trouble.

You need to find that belief.

Once you have brought about a set of symptoms, you must be very careful to avoid looking at your situation from that standpoint again, otherwise when you do so, you add both the inner and outer images together and further reinforce that condition.

What does this mean? When you have a set of symptoms, if you go and pay attention to those symptoms again, then from the outer image--that is, the pain that has actually occurred--you further reinforce the inner belief that itself caused the symptoms in the first place. First of all, the symptoms you have occurred precisely because there was a problem with some belief system in your mind; it was because of the existence of this belief that these symptoms came about. But after these symptoms appear, if you then pay attention to them, you reinforce the idea that "these symptoms really do exist." This simultaneous reinforcement from both the outer and the inner will lead you to believe that this is the fact, and so your illness becomes very difficult to cure.

There is indeed light that your physical eyes cannot see, and there is indeed sound that your ears cannot hear; these combine together on the psychic level to form the physical image you know.

That is to say, the light you cannot see, the sound you cannot hear, including those electromagnetic realities you cannot feel--all of these combine together, on the psychic level, to form your physical image. Therefore you must work from the inside out.

Using Painting as an Analogy: Beliefs, Thoughts, Emotions, and Imagination

Let me use painting as another analogy—

Your beliefs are your palette.

What kind of picture you want to paint is entirely determined by your beliefs.

Your thoughts sketch the outline of the reality you specifically feel, your emotions and feelings give it light, and your imagination casts these into a unified whole.

What he says here is very poetic. You see, he uses painting as a description: your beliefs are the palette, your thoughts sketch the outline of reality, your emotions give it light—because a painting cannot do without light—and this light has distinctions of brightness and darkness, strength and weakness. Through your imagination, you blend these outlines, colors, and light into one, turning them into a complete picture.

The sound of your inner thoughts is the medium you actually use.

That is, the sound of your inner thoughts is a medium you actually use.

Yet this is not merely an analogy.

This is not an analogy. Because he uses very simple language to explain very clearly the method by which your beliefs form reality. He does not use complicated vocabulary; he uses very simple terms like "the inner sound" to explain very clearly the method by which your beliefs form reality.

When you are in a quiet state, he gives you a suggestion. Slowly recite in your mind, or aloud, "Om"—that is the "Om" from our six-syllable mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum."

This word is of great benefit in strengthening your general physical condition.

So this six-syllable mantra does have a certain validity. This sound itself has an inherent impetus toward "energy" and "well-being." I will explain shortly why this sound has such an inherent impetus toward energy and well-being.

All right, Seth says that is all for tonight, and we will continue in the next session. If there are questions, we can answer them. I wish you a pleasant evening—this session has now ended.

The Body's Creation: Sound and Light from Within

Today I will continue introducing the third part of the commentary on Chapter 5 of the Seth book The Nature of Personal Reality, that is, Session 625, November 1, 1972.

When the dictation began, Jane's delivery was leisurely and quiet, and then she said that Seth began to speak.

Session 625

The body responds to sound far less than it responds to the "inner sound" into which the former is translated.

The body is more sensitive to this inner sound, and our physical sound is actually less sensitive by comparison. But our physical sound can be translated into inner sound. So the things we silently recite in our minds, including the things we declare verbally, the things we declare in written language, are all very effective, because they are transformed into inner sound and take effect inside your body.

Furthermore, as I said in the previous two sessions, the body also responds to other "sounds" that have no physical counterpart, that are formless and have no material shape.

What Activates Recessive Genes in Chromosomes

He went on:

Within the structure of the chromosomes, certain characteristics must be activated by specific inner sound values.

If this activation does not occur, then the "attributes" latent in the chromosomes can only remain as they are; they cannot be stimulated into expression.

So I think everyone studying genetics and biology should look into this passage. Which things in our chromosomes are active and which are not. Many people talk about recessive genes, but some recessive genes become dominant in certain people, while in others the recessive gene stays recessive forever and never becomes dominant. But how exactly does it become dominant? Seth puts forward a very crucial point here: the reason these recessive portions of the chromosomes can become dominant is because of a specific sound value, a sound we cannot hear. A specific sound value, not something our ears can hear, activated through this formless, silent sound.

If our scientists were to research in this direction—if we used a spectrum analyzer to study all sound waves, not just the range our ears can hear between 20 hertz and 20,000 hertz¹⁷, but extending into frequencies below 20 hertz and above 20,000 hertz—and then observed how specific sounds at specific frequencies affect the activation of recessive genes in chromosomes, if research were pursued in this direction, we would make much greater progress.

The inner sound values weave together the intricate interweaving of "genes" and "chromosomes," and actually form a series of chain-like effects.

What is meant by chain-like effects? Because changes in the chromosomes directly alter certain characteristics of the genes, and certain characteristics of gene segments directly alter our outward appearance and actual physical changes in the body. For example, it can change whether you contract a certain disease or not, or whether certain of your hereditary traits are retained or not—all of this is determined by changes in the chromosomes. The arrangement of our chromosomes is, in many cases, accomplished under the control of sound.

The Prototype Woven from Sound, Light, and Electromagnetism

Seth knew that what he was going to explain next was very complex, so he explained it in the simplest way possible. These sound values—that is, the inner sounds—really do interweave with one another into an electromagnetic pattern. These sound values interweave with one another, like weaving cloth, forming an electromagnetic pattern. These sounds interweave back and forth, like threads crossing over and under one another in weaving, and cast this pattern into form. I think this "cast" should be the character for casting, as in casting metal.

The activity of the cells within the body also stirs up wave after wave of fine "inner sonic booms."

The activity of the cells within the body—there is activity between cells, and the cells themselves have activity. This activity also stirs up wave after wave of fine inner sonic booms—not sonic booms our ears can hear. What is a sonic boom? In the physical world, among the sounds we can hear, when an object's speed exceeds the speed of sound—the speed of sound is roughly over 300 meters per second¹⁸—when an object's speed exceeds this, for example many supersonic aircraft, at the moment they reach the supersonic threshold, they produce a sonic boom. What he is describing here is that the cells within the body produce inaudible, inner, formless sonic booms—it is just a figurative analogy.

Here he paused again for a long time, because Seth was thinking about what kind of analogy and what kind of form to use to explain this inner structure of the human body—not the physical structure. Then Seth was thinking:

Certain types of light also impinge upon this electromagnetic and inner sound pattern.

He thought for a long time and came up with this one sentence. He was pondering how to express it. So light also plays a very large role here, just as he said in the previous session, light acts like a kind of trigger, triggering it, impinging upon it.

All of these patterns together form a "prototype," and from this prototype the physical body is formed.

Now do you understand how this physical body comes into being? This is how the physical body comes into being. It is formed by invisible light and inaudible sound, which interweave with one another to form an electromagnetic pattern. This electromagnetic pattern carries its own characteristics and attributes—imagine it as a shadow we cannot see, or a translucent electromagnetic image. Imagine an invisible electromagnetic image; your physical body is generated within it. Under the pattern of this electromagnetic image, this prototype is produced, and this prototype then produces your physical body.

So there is mutual interaction here. First, the inner sound values interweave with one another to form a pattern; then certain types of light impinge upon this inner sound; these combine to become a prototype of this kind.

The Composition of a Mental Image

When you create a mental image in your mind, it is also composed of the same qualities just described.

When we imagine the image of a person in our minds, or when we create the image of a person, this mental image is composed of the same qualities as the method just described.

A mental image is also suffused with a certain type of "light value."

Just as he said above, when the silent sound values interweave with one another to form an electromagnetic pattern, it is only under the impingement of specific light values that this prototype can be formed, so nothing here can be missing. The inner sounds need to interweave in a very complex way, and after this interweaving of sounds forms an electromagnetic pattern, it must be impinged upon under the illumination of specific light values in order to form this prototype.

So here he uses a different word, "suffused"—suffused with light values. The value of light is the variable of light; it does not refer to the size or intensity of illumination, but to the specific different frequencies of light. If we must understand it from the perspective of the physical world, we can call it the difference in frequencies of light: different frequencies of light activate different effects, and different frequencies of light may represent different colors. Here Seth uses a very vivid word, "suffused"—as if a pale green light suffuses your entire body. Some people may be suffused with a pale blue light, or an extremely blue light, it is not fixed, so this light value is not constant.

A mental image is also suffused with a certain type of light value, an inner sound pattern with electromagnetic properties.

A mental image is an inner sound pattern—what kind of inner sound pattern? One suffused with light of a certain color, and one that also has certain electromagnetic properties. This is the composition of our mental images. We often talk about projecting mental images, the projection of thought, or a projected double, a thought-body, projecting a double—all of these things are composed of this kind of material.

So let me say something here: a characteristic of the Seth material is that it does not avoid any core issue. He will keep explaining an issue all the way to its root, until he can no longer explain it. Of course, at a certain limit—the limit of human cognition—he also will not be able to explain it, but before that point he will keep trying to explain. So we know that he is doing his utmost to explain it to us.

In a manner of speaking, and a very real manner of speaking—a mental image is incipient matter.

This is understandable: your mental image is incipient matter. Any structure of this kind of combination—a structure combining electromagnetic, sound, and light "values"—will automatically seek to give birth to itself into physical existence or concretization. Concretization is materialization; physical existence is also materialization, physicalization.

He paused again for a long time. When Seth was speaking this passage, you can see he kept pausing, pausing for a long time, because he was also thinking about what kind of language and words to use to describe it.

The Relationship Between the Body's Construction and the Inner Structure

There is a definite relationship between the nature of such mental images and the way in which your body is put together.

Here he begins to explain what the relationship is between your outer physical matter and your inner body—it is a definite relationship. What relationship? It is that you are born from this kind of mental image. Because there is such a specific mental image—a structure composed of three things: light, electromagnetism, and inner sound—once such a structure is formed, it will automatically seek every means to concretize itself. This structure itself is nonphysical; it is composed of invisible light, inaudible sound, and an electromagnetic pattern we cannot see. All three of these are invisible, nonphysical things. When these three things are combined according to a specific structure, this structure itself will materialize itself; it can by itself bring about its own concretization and materialization.

So when some practitioners project their thoughts outward, and to those who perceive them they are so real and lifelike, this is perfectly normal.

Electrons, atoms, and molecules all have their own separate inner sound values and light values.

So at this point, we know that we often apply a phrase: the inner image of a person, or the inner body of a person, is composed of sound, light, and electromagnetism. It is just that this sound is sound we cannot hear, this light is light we cannot see, and this electromagnetism is not the electromagnetism our instruments can detect. To put it in terms that are easier to understand in our three-dimensional world, this body composed of sound, light, and electromagnetism—or we may call it the spirit body, whatever name it goes by, this formless body—is composed of these things.

Our electrons, atoms, and molecules—the particles that make up our physical world, the particles that make up matter—are all composed of their own independent sound values and light values.

When messages jump across the nerve endings... there are also definite sounds.

This "sound, light, and electromagnetism" is just a simplified expression. You must not imagine it as various colors of light, various sounds, and various electromagnetic signals we can imagine surrounding the body. I am just simplifying it. But it is not light you can see, not sound you can hear, and not electromagnetic signals you can detect. These three things are all things that we humans currently cannot probe. But we use them as representatives—sound, light, and electromagnetism: inaudible sound, invisible light, and undetectable electromagnetic signals.

The Sound-Light-Electromagnetic Structure of the Nervous System

Seth paused again, and said:

The nerves within the body are also composed of the same "inner structure" mentioned earlier.

Our nervous system is also composed of the inner structure. What inner structure? Sound, light, and electromagnetism. Your nerves are also composed of the inner structure, generated by it.

The nerves are "around," or rather "from," these structures.

Within this structure, external data is translated and broken down into inner terms. What is external data? It is the external data seen by the eyes and heard by the ears—not data from within the body. It is translated and broken down into inner terms, meaning it is decoded in these three ways: as invisible light, inaudible sound, and undetectable electromagnetic patterns.

For example, a person nearly gets hit by a car. This event is just an external event; your eyes can see it, your ears can hear it, your body can perceive it. But when this thing operates inside your body, it must be broken down by your inner structure into three different sound values, light values, and electromagnetic signal values, decoded by it. Then it becomes usable data. Usable to what extent? It becomes data that even the atoms and molecules that make up your cells can use. How powerful is that! It decodes an external message of "a car is about to hit you" into information of three different values—an inaudible sound, an invisible light, and an undetectable electromagnetic signal—and this information can be directly used by the atoms and molecules that make up your cells. Even atoms and molecules can understand it and directly use this data. This decoding ability is no ordinary ability.

Why There Is a Time Delay

Before the incoming message is transmitted to its intended destination, there is an actual "lapse of time."

She paused and frowned—you see, you must pay attention to this detail—she paused and frowned, she was thinking about how to explain it. This thing is very difficult to explain, it really is very complex.

It does not exist in these other levels.

That is, the lapse of time does not exist in the other levels. The other levels are these three levels of sound, light, and electromagnetism. In these three levels, there is no such thing as the lapse of time. But within our bodies, within our physical bodies, this lapse of time definitely exists. Because when a message goes from one cell to a second cell, and from the second cell to a third cell, the time in between is very short, but even if it is very, very short, it still requires a certain amount of time, and in fact this time is not really that short.

Remember, I recall an example from before: if your toe is pricked by something, the time it takes for the pain sensation to reach your brain may be longer than you think. You feel it is instantaneous—why? Because there is an inner system. But in fact, according to calculations of nerve conduction, it may take several dozen milliseconds. Several dozen milliseconds is already very short to you, but for physics research, these several dozen milliseconds are already very, very long. We will not discuss these purely physical details; I am just telling you—you may have heard a story about a dinosaur whose tail, for example, was bitten by a small tiger. A dinosaur several dozen meters long, after its tail was bitten, might need about two seconds before it could realize it¹⁹. Because the dinosaur was too big, its body too long, and the dinosaur's nerve conduction speed was relatively slow; suppose it might take several seconds before it could react, and by the time it looked back at the bitten tail and who was biting it, the tiger might have already run away. This is a story we would tell as children.

So at this point you know that when external information is transmitted through these sound-light-electromagnetic levels, there is no lapse of time; the lapse of time does not exist in between.

This "inner message" reaches its destination before the physical message.

That is to say, before your nerve conduction has arrived, your inner information transmission has already arrived. Before the muscles of your body are about to react, before the nerve signal has been transmitted and before the reaction occurs, the molecules and atoms within your cells, including your cells, your tissues and organs, the whole body already knows this information. It is just that you do not know—actually, that is not quite right—the tissues and cells you think of as yourself have not yet received this information; the nerve conduction is still in the process of transmitting, but the other side has already received it.

By the time your physical body reacts, your "inner pattern" has already reacted.

Remember, it has already reacted. And this "inner pattern" must and always will react before the body reacts to itself. Remember this: the "formless body pattern" composed of inner light, sound, and electromagnetism reacts first, and in fact it is what triggers the subsequent bodily reaction. Do you understand now? Your actual bodily reaction is caused by the prior reaction of this formless pattern, which then leads to the subsequent reaction of your body. That is to say, it is not as our scientists believe—that nerve conduction reaches the cells and muscles, and only then do the muscles and cells react based on the information transmitted by the nerves. He tells you it is not like that. It is the inner, formless reaction that arrives first, and then it triggers the subsequent bodily reaction.

This translation of external stimuli is always present; it is not that a strong stimulus is needed to trigger this sudden translation. It is not needed.

The "lapse of time" observed by scientists is of course physical, caused by the "time" it takes for messages to cross the nerve endings. The inner translation is "simultaneous."

You must remember: the inner translation is simultaneous; it has no temporality, no lapse of time. You might say, does not the transmission of electromagnetic signals also take time? No. It definitely transcends the limitations of our physical world; it has no time. At this point you must not keep trying to explain it with physical theories and physical things.

Let me give a typical example: the reactions of twins. There are some identical twins where, when something happens to one twin, the other twin's body immediately reacts. And this reaction occurs no matter how far apart they are—they may be separated by dozens of kilometers, hundreds of kilometers, even thousands of kilometers, or even on opposite sides of the ocean—one in America and one in China—when something relatively important happens to one, the other's reaction is immediate, requiring no time. How is it transmitted? It just happens. It does not need nerve endings, nor any medium; it is transmitted in this manner of sound, light, and electromagnetism. Of course, the content may involve more things like telepathy and so on, but what I am actually talking about is that kind of bodily reaction—when one twin's body reacts, the other twin's body also reacts.

Returning to the Near-Accident Scene

Let us look back at that near-accident scene. That event—including the car, including its driver, and your own uncertain peril—all existed in another structure invisible to your eyes.

What our eyes can see is a physical material structure, but that event likewise existed in the manner of sound, light, and electromagnetism just described. That is to say, it existed in a reality composed of invisible light, inaudible sound, and electromagnetic patterns. You must remember: this sound is inaudible, this light is invisible, and this electromagnetism is undetectable.

On a conscious level, your response to physical data—such as the surrounding noise, perhaps the sharp screech of brakes, the visual shock of the car bearing down before your eyes—Seth will continue with this next.

Why Seth Chose Jane as the Channel

At this point, Seth said this session had covered enough and it was time to rest. He told Jane to take a break, only because he had more to say and wanted to say it all in one uninterrupted flow.

Let me interject something here. Many people ask: why did Seth choose Jane as the channel, and not some scientist or someone with a science background, which would have been more useful and more effective? Regarding this question, a friend of mine had an insight that I think is very meaningful. He has recently been comparing the original English books with some Chinese translations. He said, why choose Jane? Because Jane's vocabulary is too rich. Much of the vocabulary used throughout the Seth books is highly specialized; much of it consists of words he only encountered when he was preparing for the GRE. You know the GRE vocabulary is enormous. The average American's vocabulary is around 3,000 to 5,000 words, which is sufficient²⁰. Daily conversational communication requires about 2,000 words²¹, and with 5,000 words you can achieve normal, very accurate communication. But the GRE vocabulary is over 20,000 words²². If you want to become a professional writer, or if you want to write novels and publish books in Western society, you must have a very rich and nuanced vocabulary in order to accurately express the delicate parts of your feelings. And in this case, Jane's vast, specialized, and nuanced vocabulary played a very large role here.

After reading this material, my friend said that Seth's choice of Jane was the result of deep deliberation and careful consideration. He could have chosen a science person to explain this system very well, but that would have had two drawbacks. First, although what a science person writes is more organized and more logical, the vast majority of people do not like reading what science people write. Would you want to read an instruction manual? When you buy any appliance, including when you buy a car, there is a manual inside—I would like to ask everyone here, who has ever carefully read the owner's manual or instruction manual for their car? Even if you bought an advanced sound system or something advanced, it comes with a manual—who actually reads it carefully? Because you simply do not want to read it. That is what science people write. But what humanities people write, you are willing to read. You see many books have a quick-start guide at the front, with illustrations and two very simple lines of text telling you to connect this to that, set this up this way, and it will work—that is a very simple thing. But for something as nuanced as what Seth wanted to convey, although a science person would be very organized, that cold, detached feeling of a science person is something most people cannot accept.

And Jane herself was a novelist and a poet, so what she wrote could be accepted by the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people do not find her writing difficult to read. Although the GRE-level vocabulary is large, for Americans who have received a certain level of higher education, those words are not unfamiliar. Reading it in her native language, although it is not that easy to understand, it is already considered a relatively easy read. I cannot imagine if this material had been channeled by a physics PhD—how many people would be able to understand the Seth material, and how many would be willing to keep reading. That is the key point.

Second, a science person's vocabulary is insufficient. When a science person tries to describe these delicate, rich sensations, their verbal expression is strained; when they run out of words, they cannot continue, and can only keep saying "amazing, incredible, magical, exquisite—I truly feel it, I can understand it, but I cannot say it." It becomes like that.

So in this process of co-creation, Jane's rich vocabulary played a very good role. She later said, "I think Seth wanted me to have a better vocabulary regarding physical matters"—what does that mean? It means that what Seth transmitted to Jane was a thought, a concept, a piece of knowledge, or a picture, and he needed Jane to describe it in her own words. It is not as you might imagine, with Jane acting like a tape recorder or a repeater, Seth saying one sentence and Jane repeating one sentence—that is not how the transmission worked. Seth gave his thoughts directly into Jane's mind, and Jane had to use her own words to speak Seth's thoughts. It was a process of translation. In this process of translation, the size of Jane's vocabulary and the degree of detail in her expression determined the degree of distortion of the material itself.

You can imagine if it had been transmitted to a person with a very small vocabulary—an ordinary person who had only received a high school education—if you asked that person to transmit the Seth material, they would not be able to transmit it completely. So once you understand this, you can see why it was transmitted to Jane and not to someone else—there was a certain reasoning behind it.

The Body Is Constantly Being Created

Seth said:

In your terms, even in this present life of yours, your body is obviously being created constantly.

In our terms, from the perspective of three-dimensional time and space, according to the passage of time, you are constantly being created.

The body is not a "mechanism" that, once created, is left to fend for itself.

The body is not something that lives and dies on its own. Contrary to what many schools of thought believe, many of our schools of thought hold that—your body is not endowed at birth with a fixed amount of "life force," and then as you live, your life force is used up more and more, until it is finally exhausted.

This is the view of many of our more traditional perspectives. Every person is determined at birth: how long your lifespan is, how much energy you have. For example, every person is born like a fully charged battery; when we die, it is because we have used up the electricity, so we die; we have exhausted our energy, so we die. This is the view of many people. But Seth tells you it is not like that. Your life force is infinite; you can live forever young and forever vibrant. Your vitality is not determined by your age, nor by your youth; it is determined by your inner vitality.

So now you need to abandon one belief: that as I live longer and get older, I become less and less useful. That as my age increases, my abilities will weaken, my body's vitality will decrease, my physical strength will weaken, and all aspects of my emotions and feelings will weaken as well, including my eyesight getting blurry, my vision deteriorating, my hearing also weakening, every aspect weakening. And then you will have a pessimistic view of yourself, saying, "I'm old, I can't do it anymore." Seth tells you here that this view is wrong, that it is exactly the opposite, that it is not like this. Because what makes up the core of your body is a non-physical thing.

The atoms and molecules within your body really are completely replaced, right up until death.

The molecules of your body are always in a state of dying and then living, living and then dying, and then being completely replaced. In every instant you are physically created, in every moment, every second, you are being created. You are never a fixed, constantly depleting process; you are in a process of constant creation. Remember this: you are in a process of constant creation. This is the fact.

The Body's Rapid Response and Inner Decoding

The body responds to the sounds and stimuli from the outside world that the senses bring to it.

We do respond to external sounds; when we hear different sounds, we have different responses. Yet far greater interactions are also taking place at the same time, namely those inner sounds that cannot be heard. The response patterns we can currently observe are merely the part of all of this that can presently be observed. When we hear some external sounds and respond, this response is only the part that can currently be observed. There is still much we cannot observe -- the influence of inner sounds on the body is something we cannot observe.

The atoms and molecules that make up your cells and flesh do not respond to the sounds your ears hear or the light and shadow your physical eyes see.

But in times of crisis, your entire body must be able to move quickly, the endocrine system must react with extreme agility, sometimes completely altering the balance of the previous moment. Your muscles must immediately be on alert, and the whole body must have enough flexibility to respond comprehensively -- this includes every organ down to the smallest muscle or cellular component.

What he means is that your eyes can see things, but your cells cannot see. The molecules and atoms that make up your cells, including the chemical substances within them, also cannot see. But when some crisis situation arises, the entire body can suddenly shift from a very calm, balanced, peaceful state one second earlier into an emergency state. Anyone who has experienced an emergency will have a reaction, will have an impression of it. When a person is in a stress response, when an external event suddenly erupts, the speed of the person's reaction exceeds the speed that scientists understand. Because your entire human body is like a slingshot, like a spring, it suddenly reacts.

Let me give a simple example here. A couple of days ago, my family's cat often plays in the backyard. It generally does not go to the front yard to play, because the front yard is next to a main road, and sometimes it can be dangerous. But once it ran out by itself and was playing in the front yard. We wanted to call it back, so I went out the front door to look for it, and saw it coming back from outside. You know that when a cat is outside, it is very tense and alert, because that environment is not like being at home where it can very leisurely and comfortably sleep, stretch, and so on. When a cat goes into an unfamiliar environment, it is very tense and vigilant. As it walked toward the house, it kept looking back outside as it walked, checking whether anyone was chasing it from behind, maintaining a state of alertness. At that moment I saw it coming back, so I opened the door to let it in. The moment I opened the door, it had actually been looking outside the whole time and did not expect the door to suddenly open, which gave it a huge fright. Its instinctive reaction was to jump up on the spot with extraordinary speed. You know that the height of a cat's jump in place is very high. As it was walking back toward the house while looking back, the door suddenly opened, and the cat sprang up on the spot. That speed and reaction were simply unimaginable. A cat's instinct, when it encounters a stimulus it cannot react to in time, is to jump upward, to spring up in place. Many times this kind of jump in place can help it avoid some danger.

This is a very typical symptom -- its body can reach a state of activation in an instant, and every cell, every muscle, every part of its body very coordinately springs up in place.

Then Seth also gives a similar example, an example involving a person. In this example, let us look at how the inner body and the outer body, and the outer sense organs, interact with one another.

Suppose you are standing in the middle of the road, and suddenly a car, suddenly -- is about to hit you.

This kind of thing is rare, but sometimes we do encounter it. What we encounter may not necessarily be a car; it might be a person riding a bicycle, a person on a skateboard, an electric scooter. Whatever it is, it seems to appear out of nowhere, popping up from who knows where, suddenly appearing right in front of you.

"You" see the car.

He put "you" in quotation marks -- as if it were your physical body that saw the car, your eyes that saw the car. But the things that make up your intestines, your heart, your muscles, your cells, including the things that secrete hormones, clearly did not see it. The organs in your body and the cells of your body did not see it, yet your entire bodily system must instantly be activated. At this time we all have this feeling: when entering this state, the whole person's adrenaline surges, the whole person's muscle state and the whole person's state enter a state of combat readiness. At this time your reactions become even faster. There are also a few individuals who freeze at this moment, whose reactions become especially slow, who do not move at all and do not know what to do. Two kinds -- one kind reacts extremely fast, and out of instinct will jump away or dodge.

This must rely upon translating the external stimulus into an internal stimulus.

The reason you can have a rapid reaction is that you must rely on being able to transform the external stimulus -- the stimulus of your eyes seeing the car approaching you -- into an internal stimulus.

But so far, what your scientists and doctors have been able to investigate is only the physical carriers of this information. What modern medicine tells us is this: the eyes see it and transmit it to the brain; after the brain knows about it, it makes a judgment and discovers this is a danger; the brain issues a command to the central nervous system; the central nervous system transmits it through various neural network systems to all the muscle parts of the body; after each muscle part receives this signal, they begin to act and respond simultaneously. This is what doctors and medicine tell us now. He tells you that it is actually not like this. There are two systems transmitting at the same time. The system that scientists now talk about is also functioning, but at the same time it is functioning, there is another system that can operate without any time delay, with zero delay, transmitting this information into every cell, every atom, every molecule of the body.

He is telling you how this is transmitted. He says they have not seen that more remarkable function -- that is, the invisible, unseen, non-neural information transmission process. That is to say, the true story of how this information is "decoded" is still not understood by them. We have only seen the simplest, most materialized, most physical part -- the story of how it is transmitted within the nervous system.

Regarding Jane's Vocabulary (Continuing from Earlier)

Let us return to that earlier topic. Jane said, "I think Seth wants me to have a better vocabulary regarding bodily matters" -- that word is used very well. What Seth transmits is a picture, a concept, and Jane is responsible for translating it into human language. In this translation process, Jane's own literary cultivation and the richness of her vocabulary directly determine the degree of fidelity with which this material can reach us. This is an extremely critical link in the entire process of the formation of the Seth material.

The Spectrum of Perception

On the level of consciousness, you respond to physical data -- the sound of brakes, the sound of emergency braking, the frightened cries of people around you, the visual shock of the car rushing toward you. These are all physical responses. But the entire inner reality of that scene or event is instantly recognized by your so-called "inner senses."

Your inner senses respond to those "inner patterns" mentioned earlier, that is, the patterns of sound, light, and electricity.

When physical material is transmitted through nerve endings, there must necessarily occur a "lapse of time," and this also represents the time-bound end of the "spectrum of perception."

What does he mean? He is saying, suppose we regard the information that can be perceived as a complete spectrum. One end of it is perception with the passage of time, and the other end is perception without the passage of time when inner data is transmitted. Our spectrum of perception can be divided into two ends: one end necessarily has the passage of time, and the other end has no passage of time.

Because we are flesh-and-blood creatures, the inner levels of perception must have their physical counterparts.

Were it not for these inner networks, you simply could not have physical awareness or bodily response at all.

You must understand the essence of this matter: there is an inner network that truly exists, and these outer perceptions are its counterparts. Things on the non-physical level, because we are beings of the physical world and have the perceptual systems of the physical world, therefore within the perceptions of the physical world there exist counterparts to these non-physical perceptions and existences.

For example, we have a set of inner senses, and there is a corresponding set of outer senses corresponding to them; we have sounds that cannot be heard and light that cannot be seen, and there are sounds that can be heard and light that can be seen as counterpart existences; we have electromagnetic responses and the functioning of electromagnetic patterns, and there are also responses of the nervous system and patterns of the nervous system -- the nervous system itself is also electromagnetic, and nerves transmit information by means of electrical signals.

All non-physical things will have a set of physical counterparts corresponding to them, because we are physical creatures. But do not mistake the counterpart for the real thing. You must absolutely not get this reversed -- the counterparts are formed by the inner networks. Without these real inner worlds, the counterparts would be meaningless.

Columbus's Fleet

Before you see anything with your physical eyes, you first "see" it through these inner channels.

You think you see things with your physical eyes, but how would you know that your inner senses have already seen them long before? Your inner perception initiates your outer perception -- underline this sentence. Without these inner perceptions, outer perception cannot perceive anything.

Let me give a typical example so you can understand why I say this. This is a true historical record. When Columbus discovered the New World, he did not first land on the American continent; he first reached some islands in the Caribbean. Because he came from the direction of the Atlantic, he would pass through these Caribbean islands before reaching America.

The historical records of that time recorded an interesting event. Columbus was leading a fleet. When the fleet approached an island in the Caribbean, the indigenous people on the island noticed that there was something abnormal on the surface of the sea²³, and some strange and peculiar sensations appeared. But they could not see anything, and did not know why these changes were occurring on the sea. They could not see the fleet; all they saw was an expanse of sea.

Why could they not see it? Because their inner perception told them: there is no such thing. In their belief system, nothing would ever come from the sea. The sea is just the sea. In their cognition, how could such an enormous fleet suddenly appear on the surface of the sea? So they called over the most powerful shaman of the tribe and said, take a look at what exactly is happening here.

The shaman stood by the shore and carefully observed the changes in the waves, the changes in the swells, and then used his own abilities to judge. After meditating for a period of time, he suddenly saw an enormous fleet appear on the surface of the sea -- ships that were completely incomparable to the small dugout canoes they themselves paddled, far exceeding them in size and scale. He told the people of the tribe, look, there is a large fleet over there. After he said this, those indigenous people all saw the fleet. And this fleet was actually already very close to the island.

In other words, when you do not believe that certain things exist in this world, you cannot see them. Even if they are right in front of your eyes, right under your nose, you still cannot see them.

You say, that is not right. My inner perception perceived it, so why can my physical eyes also not see it? Remember what Seth has been saying in the previous chapters: your conscious belief system is like a sieve, filtering the information sent up by your inner system, only passing up the information that matches the belief system, and turning a blind eye to what does not match. Your inner senses saw these ships, and your outer senses, your physical eyes, also saw these ships, but your belief system does not acknowledge, does not believe that there could be ships on the sea. So the belief system blocks out the ships seen by the inner senses, and makes your outer senses also unable to see them.

This completely transcends the human cognitive system. We have always believed that seeing is believing, that the eyes see first and then there is a reaction. Only now do you know that it is your psyche that sees first, and your belief system first approves of it, and only then does it allow your eyes to see it. This is a problem of putting the cart before the horse -- we humans have always lived in this inversion.

In other words, when others have good intentions toward you, because your belief system believes that this world is full of evil, you cannot see the goodness in others. For the same behavior, when your belief shifts, you will suddenly discover that, oh, they were actually so good to me, that they simply loved me in a different way, simply cared for and looked after me in a different way. It was only my belief reaction at the time that prevented me from seeing its goodwill and benefits, and I only saw all the negative things.

The World of Counterparts

When you experience bodily movement or activity, and have perception of actual events or phenomena, in fact you are only becoming aware of the tail end of a long "series" of "inner understandings."

When your body reacts to external events, in fact you are only becoming aware of the tail end of a long series of inner understandings that have already occurred. Your inner self has already reacted long before; it is only that you are not aware of what the inner self has reacted to, and you can only become aware of what the outer self reacts to. We always understand this world after the fact.

All outer events, including your own body, from inside to outside, all objects, all concrete manifestations, are all "outer structures" that are counterparts to "inner structures."

And the inner structures are entirely electromagnetic patterns woven from inner sounds and invisible light.

All the outer events you come into contact with in your present life, including your own body from inside to outside, all objects, all concrete manifestations, are all outer structures that are counterparts to inner structures. Everything you see in the physical world, whether things or events, are all outer structures that are counterparts to inner structures.

And your inner structure, to put it plainly, is an electromagnetic structure, an electromagnetic pattern woven from invisible light and inaudible sounds. If you then ask him how this light and this sound are interwoven, do you think humans can understand it? On this level you cannot even see it or perceive it, and it tells you how they interweave and how they are woven -- can you understand it? At least in the current state, you still cannot understand it. Perhaps when you reach a certain realm, you can understand it.

Beneath your time-bound level of perception, every object and event exists in this way, existing within patterns of mutual interaction.

Beneath our conscious perception, every object and every event exists in this way, and also exists within patterns of mutual interaction.

On a physical level, you seem to be separate from everything that is "not you."

But in fact this is not so. Yet in practical life it seems to be so, and this is only an assumption you take for granted.

Seth is using various ways to explain your inner body. From the perspective of Buddhist thought, he is breaking down your attachment to self -- whether it is attachment to the self of persons or attachment to the self of phenomena. Whether it is "you" or the world around you, all are inner structures composed of inner systems. And these inner structures are interconnected with one another; they are one. When you perceive on the physical level, you think objects are objects, events are events, and you are you.

All Things Are Connected

He says:

On what I call the "inner level," all events and objects that occur are connected with one another.

We are intimately connected with all things. Why? Because the outer things we see are counterparts generated by inner structures, and these inner things and inner events are intimately connected on their own level. They are not like what we think in the three-dimensional world -- "you are you, I am me, the cup is the cup, the television is the television" -- no, they are intimately connected. The oneness of all things and the interconnectedness of all things: Seth here provides the theoretical reason and foundation.

Many people say that all things are one, but they cannot explain it clearly. Seth can explain this matter so clearly.

One action or change affects another, and you recognize certain changes and respond to them.

In the inner world, one action or change affects another. For example, in the example of the near car accident, you will respond to this event; you will jump away, you will dodge it.

Whether or not you are consciously aware of this activity, it will alter the inner environment of your body through these inner channels.

From the cellular level, and even from the molecular and atomic levels, your environment has already been changed.

Your thoughts and beliefs have the same kind of inner reality.

Our thoughts, beliefs, and consciousness -- these things that appear to be external -- have an inner reality that corresponds to them. We can write a thought down, sing it out, draw it out; we can articulate a belief as a theory, write it into a paper and publish it -- this is visible and tangible. But within it there is also an inner reality.

The inner reality of this thought and belief can also change the inner environment of other people. Why? Because all things are connected -- one action of yours affects another, and your change affects another. The crisis state mentioned earlier is an actual event, a physical event, but it was originally a psychological event.

A car accident appears to be an accident, like an external event unrelated to you, but it was originally a psychic event. In your terms, before it had actually materialized, been seen by people, and responded to, it already existed in a reality without time. From our human perspective: before this car accident had become an event, it already existed in that reality. Because that reality has no time, the event of the car accident already existed there.

If we consider it from the perspective of time, the time has not yet arrived, this event has not yet happened, so how could it exist? That is not so. The essence of this matter is: the car accident that is going to happen is a psychic event that has already been set. It is only that in the space-time of our three-dimensional world, at a certain point in time on a certain day, it became concretized, and then was seen by us humans, and we responded to it.

When you understand this point, you will unlock a great many mysteries of the human world, of this world, and of the universe. You will discover that all things in this world have actually already happened before they happen, or are happening, or already exist.

Emotion and Imagination

It is pushed from inner reality into outer reality through beliefs, emotions, and imagination.

What does "it" refer to? It refers to the psychic event, that is, the car accident. The car accident itself is a psychic event, and it is pushed from inner reality into outer reality through your beliefs, emotions, and imagination.

Because you cannot see beliefs, emotions, and imagination, these structures do not seem as real to you as a physical object. You feel as though this external event suddenly appeared out of nowhere, born out of thin air, and you have no idea where it came from. So you feel that this world is impermanent, unpredictable, and that nothing can be controlled.

On the physical level, you can only see the consequence of an emotion, but you cannot hold it the way you can hold a stone.

What you see is only the result, and you do not know how it happened. Just as when you see a car accident happen, and this event suddenly appears, it seems like an accident; a brick falls from the sky, a flowerpot falls from upstairs and kills a passerby, and you think this is purely an accident. You do not know how it happened.

Just like our emotions -- right now we are very sad, very angry, very happy. We vaguely know where they come from, but we seem unable to grasp them in themselves. You cannot hold your joyful emotion the way you hold a stone. It is like a loach, extremely slippery in your hand; the more you try to grasp it, the faster it slips away. It is the same as when many people ask the Buddha, "How can my mind be settled?"

Your "ideas" represent the intentions of the psyche. They give rise to emotions, feelings, and imagination, which then trigger inner patterns. They are the impetus for action.

What does "they" refer to? Your ideas represent the intentions of the psyche, and your ideas give rise to emotions, feelings, and imagination. Because there are emotions and imagination, inner patterns are triggered -- the inner patterns are that system of sound, light, and electricity, and within that system of sound, light, and electricity there is no time. The second "they" refers to the impetus for action, and here it refers to emotions, feelings, and imagination.

They are also the means by which all inner things are externalized.

For inner things to be externalized, there must be emotions, feelings, and imagination to drive them. Whether you love something or hate something, these things will give rise to manifestation.

They are formed, directed energy.

Your emotions, feelings, and imagination are energy that has already taken form. That formless energy has now become concrete love, hate, passion, and sorrow.

They are the systematic expression of inner and outer patterns of reality, and they are part of the great creativity from which all realities arise.

Emotions, feelings, and imagination are part of the great creativity from which all realities arise. They cannot be said to be the whole of it, but they are a part of it.

Inverted Dreams

Seth then says:

Here again I am at a loss for words, because what I am trying to explain is truly beyond what pen and ink can describe.

Simply put, all things in the world are created from inner reality, and our emotions, feelings, and imagination are part of the creativity through which all things in the world leap from inner reality into physical reality. What constructs our surrounding environment can be called the small creativity; what constructs the universe, the earth, the planets, the mountains, rivers, valleys, and oceans is a great creativity. We cannot create the Himalayas, but we can create the small environment around us. The small environment we create is actually part of this great creativity.

We often put the cart before the horse. The Buddha said that you are all living in inverted dreams²⁴ -- what you think is real is all false, and what you think is false is all real; what you think is right is all wrong, and what you think is wrong is actually all right. Why is the world you live in called an inverted world? Through Seth's explanation, you can understand why this is said.

The Most Concentrated Energy

At this point Seth's tone is very solemn, because he has reached the core and the key of the matter.

As a physical creature, imagination and emotion are the most concentrated energy you possess.

This sentence must be underlined. As you walk through the human world, you may have no money, no status, no material things at all -- none of that matters. But you absolutely must not be without imagination, and must not be without emotion.

In the Buddha's classification, he speaks of sentient beings and insentient beings²⁵, and we humans are one kind of sentient being. Why did the Buddha consider emotion to be so important? We humans think that emotion is just my normal feeling -- when I am happy I laugh out loud, when I am sad I cry out loud. What is so remarkable about that? You do not understand the Buddha's deeper meaning. Only now that Seth has said it do you understand why emotion is so important -- because emotion is your most concentrated energy, and imagination is also your most concentrated energy.

When you have nothing at all in this world, when you start from nothing, utterly destitute, even begging for food every day -- none of that matters. As long as you have imagination and emotion, you can possess everything. If you still have imagination and still have emotion, are you not the richest, most abundant person in this world? The Buddha repeatedly emphasized that "you are originally complete in yourselves," but you just do not understand where this completeness lies. Has not Seth now told you concretely -- when you have imagination and emotion, you are originally complete in yourselves.

Any single strong emotion carries within it more energy than is needed to send a rocket to the moon.

He was afraid you wouldn't easily grasp how great this energy is, so he gave you an example. How much energy do you think emotion has? Its energy is this great—far more than what the most powerful launch vehicle in the world today needs to send a manned lunar landing module to the surface of the moon, and not just by a little.

So you must make good use of your emotions, whether the emotion of love or the emotion of hate. The power of this emotional energy exceeds your imagination. Don't take energy as great as a rocket engine and go spraying it everywhere—if it's the energy of love, that's fine, it can help; but if it's the energy of hate or negative energy, and you take that energy and open fire on everyone, that would be truly terrifying. Conversely, the harm it does to yourself is also enormous, and it can even make a healthy person fall ill in an instant.

As a higher-dimensional being, to us people in this three-dimensional world, this is a word of advice: imagination and emotion are the most concentrated energy you possess.

The ability to create something out of nothing

What "emotion" does is not push a physical rocket outward, but push "thought" outward from this inner reality, penetrating the barrier between the invisible world and the visible world, and entering the objective world.

This is no small matter, but the most remarkable thing you do over and over again—you are creating something out of nothing, you are making things happen through thought. You push thought outward from inner reality and turn it into an external physical reality, and in between you must penetrate the barrier from the invisible world to the visible world. This barrier—scientists today still don't know how to penetrate it. Scientists cannot turn a thought into an object; according to scientists' theories, this energy would be unimaginably vast.

Let me give a counterexample. Physics today has been researching thermonuclear fusion. The atomic bomb is fission, where one large atomic nucleus splits into two smaller ones, and fission produces enormous energy. In the process of fission, the mass of the atom decreases, and according to Einstein's mass-energy equation²⁶, when mass decreases, energy is bound to burst forth—energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. Thermonuclear fusion is the same: two very small atoms fuse into one larger atom, and in the process of fusion, mass also decreases, releasing enormous energy. Our hydrogen bomb is a thermonuclear fusion weapon, and the power of a hydrogen bomb is many times greater than that of an atomic bomb.

Suppose a piece of matter the size of a match head, such as the metal palladium, under thermonuclear fusion conditions, were turned into a controllable nuclear reactor and allowed to react completely—how much energy would it release? It could supply the entire human race with energy for one year²⁷. A piece of matter only the size of a match head would be enough.

So you see, this barrier between the visible world and the invisible world is not something that can be broken through simply; the energy involved is unimaginably vast, and these are entirely two different worlds. So when we say "you are God, you are the creator," don't be modest anymore and say, "I'm not, I can't bear that." If you dared to tell others, "I am the creator of the world, I am the maker," the ambulance from the psychiatric hospital would arrive immediately. I'm not joking—there really are parents who send their children to psychiatric hospitals simply because the children keep saying strange things every day, and the parents truly believe the child has gone mad.

When you push your thought from the invisible world into the visible world, when you turn it from a thought into a material existence, do you realize what a remarkable thing you are doing? Look again at the world around you—where did this world you live in come from? How did it appear before you? When you think about it carefully, you will understand.

How the book was written

At this point Jane said:

I can tell you, I really did go out just now. If the house had collapsed, I wouldn't have known. I think I had that feeling, as if I went in so deep that you became part of that thing.

Like that feeling of being at the core of something, a strange inward-focused feeling, a satisfying sense of triumph, as if you were drawing something out from within something mysterious.

I can't say where I went or what I did. After all this time I still feel oppressed that this book, once it came out, was already completely finished.

She said she usually doesn't like having other people around when she speaks for the book, and at that time she cut off all external connections. Other people would make her sense that person or become distracted because of them. Regarding this idea, Seth later expressed some opinions—

Generally speaking, the transmission of the book is best done by the two of you alone, or only with friends present whom you know very well and who make you feel relaxed and at ease. Don't have outsiders or strangers present, simply because they will cause less psychic interference, and Ruburt will also find it easier to focus on a clear channel.

Other people's needs and wishes will naturally become mixed in, and you must expend some energy to screen them out. Of course, the more interested and excited the witnesses are, the more their own concerns stand out, and it is very difficult for Ruburt to block out these extra psychic disturbances.

Yet with strangers present, the session often becomes personal in nature.

When Jane was communicating with Seth, her telepathic system, her channel, was open. She could receive Seth's messages, and she could also receive the strong messages from other people present who wanted to ask Seth questions, so the signals would cross. And while Jane was listening to Seth, she had no way to divert her attention to block out other people's signal interference, and this would affect the transmission of the entire book.

Actually, Jane and Rob both had some private concerns—they always feared that if no one witnessed this, others would doubt its authenticity, so they always hoped more people would participate, especially strangers, to confirm its authenticity. In fact, the two of them were overthinking it. That's just how things are in this world: those who believe it will naturally believe; those who don't believe it—even if you summoned Seth right in front of them and had him say a few words, they still wouldn't think it was real; they would think Jane had schizophrenia.

Recently there's an American film called Close Encounters²⁸; you can watch it. It's about a young researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)²⁹ who is very interested in UFOs. One time he encountered aliens and was abducted by them. He wanted to announce this event, but at the national level the existence of aliens was constantly denied. Even though he was a scientist, everyone still heaped slander on him, saying his video was fabricated and everything was fake. No matter how much evidence he produced, no one accepted it.

Actually, what Seth means is this: let's just finish transmitting the book well, and that's enough. Those who should believe will naturally believe, and for those who don't believe, it's useless to find witnesses for them.

The Conscious Mind and Its Connection to the Body

Let us begin with the title of this session. This chapter is about "The Body in Continuous Creation," and in today's session, Seth explains the relationship among the conscious mind, the body, and the inner self very thoroughly. He starts with a digression, using a pun.

Seth says, I can make a digression outside of time on the subject of "Time magazine." The English word "time" itself also means "time." He uses this pun to say that he can speak both within "Time" and outside of time. What he really wants to tell you is that he can speak without being limited by time and space.

Then he moves into the theme of this chapter: the physically alive body. This "physically alive" refers to the body that is alive physically, in the material world. Its activities and conditions are directed through the beliefs of the conscious mind. For example, where we want to go, when we travel, when we go to work, when we rest, what we eat -- all of these are decided by the conscious mind.

The body also has an "invisible" counterpart, composed of electromagnetic information, electromagnetic properties, and these characteristics of sound and light.

This invisible inner structure exists before the physical body appears, and it does not perish after the physical body dies. Although the condition of your body is directed by the conscious mind of this lifetime -- in our material world this is indeed the case -- the body's pattern in terms of idea and psyche existed long before the conscious mind was connected with the brain.

That is to say, although our physical body is under the direction of the conscious mind, because there is an inner structure and an inner body, the pattern of your body in terms of idea and psyche already existed before your conscious mind and brain were connected.

Session 626

"Genes" and "chromosomes" do not just happen to contain the precise coded data you need.

This data is inscribed upon them from the inside out. The identity of the self inscribed upon these chromosomes and genes is your "identity of the self," which existed before the "image." Before there was your physical body, your identity of the self already existed.

You could say there is also a self that exists entirely in another dimension, seeded into the medium of the material world, and then its own material existence leaps forth from within it. To put it another way, you have a self in another dimension, an identity in another space and time, which is seeded into the medium of physical reality, and then its own material existence grows and leaps forth from this seed.

Therefore, the inner self first forms the "invisible" body structure, and only then does it appear as flesh and blood. First there is the invisible body structure, and only then is there the visible body of flesh and blood. In your terms, at the time this psychic seeding took place, the conscious mind was clearly not yet connected to the brain; your brain had not yet taken shape at that time.

It is the conscious mind, holding the "idea" of the body, that makes it physically concrete.

Before your brain had even formed, your conscious mind already held the idea of the body, and thereby made the body physically concrete.

Conscious Awareness Does Not Depend on the Physical Body

So the perception of consciousness does not depend on physical perception. Since before your physical body had even come into being, you already had another inner body structure appearing, and at that time your conscious mind was not yet connected to the brain, so when you had no brain, your consciousness could already perceive without needing the brain.

You must understand this clearly. So before the brain and consciousness were connected, your consciousness already had its own perception, and moreover had its own imagination, and it was by relying on its own imagination and its idea of the body that your body was formed.

To say that this attribute does indeed require an awareness immersed in physical form.

This attribute, that is, the attribute that conscious awareness does not depend on physical perception, is an attribute of consciousness itself. But this attribute itself requires an awareness immersed in physical form. What does "in physical form" mean? It means an awareness within your physical body, like the awareness we have in this physical life.

Is this not convoluted? It is convoluted. Although we are physical beings, this physical existence of ours can indeed become aware that the awareness of consciousness does not depend on physical perception, but this very thing still depends on an awareness in our physical form. Is this not a paradox? It is one in itself.

But when specific perception is filtered through the body's apparatus, you usually, because of that process, are not aware of nonphysical perception.

Because you need to filter through the body's apparatus, you are not aware of that nonphysical kind of perception.

Therefore, the general structural nature and characteristics of the body already existed before it took form. Simply put, you chose in advance which kind of physical body you would inhabit and influence.

But you may feel that you have no conscious control over the condition of the body you know in this life. It is as if you just let it be; if it gets sick, it gets sick; if it is healthy, it is healthy. It seems you have no conscious control over it. For example, if I now make my blood pressure rise, does it rise? If I tell my heart rate to slow down, does it slow down? It does not slow down, and it does not rise either; it does not listen to you. All the more so regarding the condition before your birth; you cannot even control it now, so what could you control before you were born?

What it means is that your body is not controlled by your conscious mind, much of the time. You cannot control it even now, so before birth, when your consciousness was not yet strong, you were even less able to control it.

They have long told you that there is little connection between your thoughts and your bodily activities.

It goes on to say, is there actually a connection? There is a connection, of course there is a connection. But you feel as if there is no connection; you feel the body is the body, and your thoughts are your thoughts.

Beliefs and the "Involuntary" System

A person who believes they have a heart condition, if this belief is not examined, will eventually, through their anxiety, affect their own "involuntary" system.

The "involuntary" system is the system that does not change according to one's own will, which is what we often call the "parasympathetic nervous system" in medicine. We have two sets of nervous systems. One set can change with our consciousness. For example, if I want to lift my leg, it lifts; if I want to sit down, it sits down; if I want to eat, it opens my mouth. This is called the "voluntary system," controlled by the sympathetic nerves, changing as your will directs the brain's commands.

There is another system called the "parasympathetic nervous system," also known as the "involuntary system." This system is completely beyond your brain's control; you cannot command it. Can you control your heart rate? Can you control the amount of air you inhale and the oxygen intake with each breath? You can change the size of your breaths, but you cannot control your blood pressure, your hormone secretion, or the secretion of your body's glands. None of these can be controlled.

If you believe you have a heart condition, you will, through anxiety, affect your own "involuntary system" and cause definite damage to the heart. Be sure to remember: the ultimate damage is real, it is genuine damage.

It is the conscious mind that directs the body's so-called involuntary system, not the other way around. No thought can slip past your awareness unnoticed and affect your involuntary system.

In other words, what affects the part of your physical health that you cannot control is always your conscious beliefs, always your conscious thoughts. There is no thought unknown to you that is quietly, secretly affecting you. It always affects you consciously.

Unless it happens to coincide with your own conscious beliefs.

When a thought coincides with your conscious beliefs, it automatically slips past your perception or awareness. You then think, "This is not my idea; this is simply fact. The fact is just so. How could this be my idea?" So at that point it escapes your notice.

Let me say it again.

If you believe you are healthy, you will not get sick.

But perhaps you have other thoughts that make you believe there is a need for you to be ill.

Many people ask me why they get sick at all. What is illness really about? He says:

You do not know how the body carries out its involuntary functions. The conscious mind cannot process all that data. Those functions now act like a mirror, faithfully reflecting the thoughts and beliefs you hold on a conscious level.

Your conscious mind cannot process that much information. The amount of information the involuntary system has to process is enormous; the entire body is under its control, and this volume of information is beyond what your conscious mind can handle. It does not have that much computational or processing capacity. But it acts like a mirror, faithfully reflecting the thoughts and beliefs of your conscious mind.

As I have also mentioned, the conscious mind is basically not disconnected from the inner self, nor is it cut off from the sources of deep inner knowledge available to it. In that regard, your aware mind is not a one-sided thing.

Your conscious mind and your inner self remain in a state of constant connection, and it is not cut off from your sources of inner knowledge. From this perspective, your aware mind is not a one-sided thing.

It represents the various portions of the inner self that "surface" at any given moment.

What has not surfaced, you cannot perceive; only what has surfaced can you perceive. So whatever form surfaces, that is what your conscious mind can perceive.

The Body as a Mirror of Beliefs

You chose this body before you were born. How you chose it, we have talked about before, in Seth Speaks, from Chapter 9 onward, when discussing the world after death and the time before reincarnation, it was explained that you had already made the choice before you came.

Within the basic framework, you personally have complete freedom to create a fully healthy and functionally unimpaired form.

You are entirely capable of this.

However, this form is indeed a mirror of beliefs. It will actually exist in flesh and blood, concretely manifesting the ideas held by the conscious mind.

Your physical body is the concrete manifestation, the materialized expression, of your conscious mind.

That is one of the body's primary functions. In its own way, the body of a patient performs that function just the same as the body of a healthy person does.

In what way? It is that your body is a material reflection of your conscious mind. The body of a patient is also a reflection of his conscious mind, and the body of a healthy person is also a reflection of his conscious mind; these are all the same. They are all performing the same function, which is to transform your conscious mind into the expression of your body.

The body is your most intimate "feedback system," giving you the physical counterpart of your thoughts as your thoughts and experiences change.

Getting angry because of a symptom is useless. Why is it useless? Because it is the counterpart of your inner thoughts. Nor is there any need to ridicule the body for its condition; it is only doing its duty. What duty? Simply showing you the physical replica of your own thoughts.

So when you discover that you have some symptom or ailment, do not get angry, and do not ridicule it, because it is all a physical replica of your own thoughts. Would you ridicule your own thoughts? You would not. And since your physical body is the product of those thoughts, why ridicule it?

Your environment and your experiences in physical reality also provide the same kind of feedback to you.

Besides the body, which is the most intimate feedback system, your environment and your experiences in the physical world are all the same; they also provide the same feedback. It is just that in those, what you perceive is not the body's symptoms and the body's sensations, but other things.

For the same reason, railing against your environment and your experiences within it is just as useless as ridiculing your body.

Here Seth is pointing out a certain type of person, the kind who blames heaven and earth, who rails against everything. The sort who gets in a car and curses the whole way, from the road traffic, from the other drivers, from female drivers to male drivers, from the system, from the traffic police, from all kinds of fines; anyway, whatever he can think of, he curses it all. They are often like this, bitterly cursing and ridiculing all kinds of people.

Why the World Is Not Perfect

When I tell you this kind of idea, in your terms, it often seems as though the result of thought should be perfect. When I tell you that the environment around you is produced by your own thoughts, you often feel that the ideal result should be a perfect paradise on earth. Everyone healthy, because no one wants to be sick; everyone wanting to be rich, wealthy, and intelligent.

You will immediately say, no, that is not right. If our world is created by our thoughts, then our thoughts should create a perfect world, a paradise on earth. Because everyone wants to be healthy, wealthy, intelligent, and beautiful, so why is the world not like that now? Then you are just talking nonsense, you are deceiving people, you old scoundrel must be up to no good.

This is the reaction most people would have.

At this point Seth had Rob open a bottle of beer for Jane. Then Seth continued:

However, in physical existence you are using your body as a medium for learning and expression. Each of you is unique. For example, many of you, for personal reasons, pursue certain things that do not give your abilities a balanced development. They choose certain qualities to express and experience, and exclude others. In the physical world, such a path will not bring you anything like a "balanced picture of perfection."

What is this passage trying to say? He is saying, when I say that your outer world is created by your inner thoughts, you will refute me by saying, then why is our world not perfect enough, not a paradise on earth? According to what you say, each of us wants to be physically healthy, wealthy, beautiful, and intelligent, but why is our world not like that?

Then Seth begins to explain why. He says that in this existence of yours, you are using your body as a medium for learning and expression, and each of you is unique. Why unique? Because you each have different ideals and goals, and following these ideals, you pursue the development of different abilities of your own. For example, in this lifetime you may want to pursue a certain ability in mathematics, in the next lifetime you may pursue an ability in artistic creation, and in yet another lifetime you may experience your genius in business. Each time the point of development you choose may be different.

So in any one of your reincarnations, you cannot have a balanced and even development. You will only want to experience and go through certain specific qualities within this one limited period of time, while excluding others. So in this physical world, because it chooses differently, choosing only one particular quality to develop, it necessarily is not balanced or perfect.

Because you chose some, you gave up some, you excluded some.

In this session, later we will discuss other kinds of "existence" in which you are also involved, those nonphysical existences. These existences to some degree color the intent and purpose of this life of yours as you now understand it.

Many people ask, what is the purpose and intent of my coming into this life? What exactly is the meaning of my life? What does my soul really want me to do? Here he tells you that what you want to do in this life is not determined within this world of yours; it is determined in another time and space. In that time and space, it colors the intent and purpose of your present life.

If it were not that all of your beliefs, not only the "fortunate" ones, will materialize, then on the physical level you would never thoroughly understand that it is your ideas that create reality.

If it were not that both your good beliefs and your bad beliefs are realized, how could you understand the concept that "your ideas create reality"? Ideas create reality, but this idea does not mean that only my good ideas create reality and my bad ideas do not. Right? So he tells you that the world around you is not perfect because your whole state of mind is not elevated enough, your ideas are not perfect, or the purpose for which you came this time is different.

In other words, some people may come in this lifetime wanting to experience being a bad person, and then all of their expressions, judged by our standards of good and evil, would be not good, not perfect, or even bad. So at this point Seth emphasizes that it is precisely because all of your beliefs are manifested, and not only the fortunate ones, that you could not understand what the statement "ideas create reality" really means. It means that not only good beliefs, but bad beliefs can also create bad realities.

If only your "positive" beliefs materialized, then you would never clearly understand the power of thought, because you would not completely experience its actual consequences.

Only when your negative beliefs also materialize can you understand the power of thought. The power of thought — the negative side of it also materializes.

The Existence of the Conscious Mind and the Growth of the Brain

The conscious mind existed before this life of yours, and it will still exist after this life.

It existed before you came, before your physical world existed; and it will still exist after your physical world comes to an end.

In physical existence, it is entwined with the brain. In physical life, your worldly perception, your precise and stable focus within this particular space-time system, depends upon that subtle and magnificent alliance.

This alliance is the alliance in which the conscious mind is entwined with your brain. When the conscious mind is entwined with the brain of the physical, material world, it is able to focus very stably and precisely upon the material world, which is truly wondrous.

Then before your birth, you formed a mental idea of the body you would have. This image was "stamped" into matter in the following way.

Before you were born, you already had a mental concept of your body. The image of your physical body had already emerged; it was a spiritual, nonphysical image. It stamped this image into the material world in the following way, just like a photocopier. Then the you that was born, after growing up, became this image.

How did it stamp this into the material world?

You tuned yourself to a very specific level of reality, creating a physical structure capable of existing in that dense region, a physical structure with "validity" and "effectiveness," a structure able to come alive within those "frequencies."

You can ponder the meaning of this passage over and over. To put it simply, how does this image of yours -- whether your physical image is good-looking or not -- actually manifest in the material world? How does it go from being a spiritual image to becoming the way you look after being born into a reincarnation?

It tells you how this is accomplished. First, you must tune yourself to a very specific level of reality. What does a very specific level of reality mean? It means you must focus in alignment with your material world. Not only with the surroundings of your material world, but more importantly, with your physical body itself. The material reality frequency of the physical body must be aligned with the frequency of your inner structure, keeping the two in a relatively consistent state.

Once aligned, you can create a physical structure of a dense region on this material level. What is meant by a dense region is that you take your spiritual substance and manifest it, materialize it, on a material level of such a specific frequency. For this process of manifestation, you can refer to the coordinate points discussed in Chapter 5 of Seth Speaks -- the part about how thought becomes matter. The process is the same: through energy, through the energy that exists in space that we cannot see, through our emotions, thoughts, and intentions, we are able to create matter. Your body is created in exactly this way.

It creates a physical structure that has validity and effectiveness. Validity means it exists as three-dimensional matter, composed of molecules, atoms, cells, and organs. Effectiveness means the conscious mind can communicate with it and direct it within this specific frequency range.

At the same time, a structure able to come alive within those frequencies. That is, a structure able to come alive within the specific frequency of material reality. In other words, it can also be understood as within that specific frequency of your psychic image. Do you not have a psychological image of what your next reincarnation will look like? That psychological image may be composed of an inner frequency. It focuses this inner frequency into the three-dimensional material world, and then, using the energy principle of coordinate points, organizes the atoms and molecules in our space into cells, and then organizes the cells into life. It then creates a physical embryo.

After this physical embryo is created, this embryo can come alive within the specific frequency of your inner conscious image. In other words, the frequency of that physical embryo and that of your inner image can be coordinated and consistent; they are on the same frequency. Once they are on the same frequency, your physical body has a soul; it comes alive, it has life.

I am not sure whether I have made this clear. I can only explain it to this extent; my own ability is also limited.

The "As-If" Distinction Between the Inner Self and the Outer Self

It is here that those seemingly existing distinctions within the "self" occur.

Those seemingly existing distinctions actually do not exist. This distinction does not really exist, but the seemingly existing distinctions -- including your inner self, outer self, inner systems, outer systems, inner senses, outer senses -- these appear to be distinct, but in fact they are not distinct at all.

Because in physical life, the conscious mind must be connected with the brain. What this passage is saying is, why does the separation occur? Do you have the conscious mind first, or the brain first? Do you know the answer now? Of course the conscious mind comes first. Before you had a physical body, you already had the conscious mind. Your physical body was created through the intentions of the conscious mind, so of course the conscious mind comes first.

But your conscious mind has to wait for the brain to mature before it can connect with the brain. And the brain itself develops as it grows over time. We humans have now discovered that the human brain develops little by little from infancy onward. It has a developmental process; it is not mature from the very beginning.

Therefore you cannot perceive the entirety of your consciousness on the physical level.

Why? Because your brain, being connected with the conscious mind, can only understand a portion of the conscious mind, because your brain is still developing. For example, when you were one year old, you also had a conscious mind, but at one year old, you could only think about nursing and sleeping. When you were hungry you cried, when you were wet you also cried, and if you were neither hungry nor wet you smiled. Could your conscious mind consider very complex questions at that time? No. Because at that time your brain did not yet have the capacity to consider such things.

Your conscious mind must wait for the brain to mature. To whatever degree your brain matures, that is the degree to which you can understand the contents of the conscious mind. The more open, the more mature, the more intelligent the brain is, the more of the range and content of the conscious mind it can understand.

It is that part of you which, during your life, you call the "conscious mind" -- the part that "must" wait for the brain to develop.

It puts the conscious mind in quotation marks here. It is not the complete conscious mind. Your complete conscious mind can only be unlocked step by step according to the maturity of the brain. At one year old you unlock the one-year-old conscious mind; at two years old you unlock the two-year-old conscious mind. To whatever degree the brain matures, that is the degree of conscious mind you unlock.

But this does not mean that the conscious mind was only this small at the beginning, nor does it mean that the conscious mind develops along with the brain. The conscious mind has always been there; it is simply waiting for your brain to discover it, to understand it, to perceive it.

So when you study the Seth material, or study other spiritual materials, and you suddenly have a feeling of sudden realization, and suddenly there is a kind of ecstasy of enlightenment or spiritual joy, it is not actually that you suddenly learned something new. It is that your conscious mind already knew these things all along; you simply saw it, you perceived it. It was always there.

The other portions are then called the "inner self."

The part that the brain can understand as it develops -- that is what we call the conscious mind in our three-dimensional world. The things the brain cannot understand are all called the inner self.

Even when this inner self is connected with the brain, its entirety still cannot be expressed. Because the brain must filter perception through the body's organs.

The brain must come to know the world through the body's organs -- through your eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hands, and the body's sense of touch. Your perception is actually all-encompassing, but those perceptions obtained from all directions are not recognized by your brain. Your brain only recognizes the perceptions given to it by your physical senses; it does not acknowledge other perceptions, it filters them out. So it cannot fully express what the inner self knows.

So this separation is all produced at this time. It said earlier that those seemingly existing distinctions within the "self" occur here. Where do they occur? They occur at this stage.

The Brain and the Processing of Time

Because of its connection with the body, the brain must deal with the "passage of time" suggested by the senses and perception.

Because the brain itself has to connect with your body, directing the body and receiving sensory stimulation from it. Our senses are all related to neural transmission, and neural transmission itself has the effect of "the passage of time," so it produces the feeling of "the passage of time."

If the body's internal workings were to become "conscious," they would have to deal with temporal sequence.

If the body's internal operations were to become conscious, if you wanted to use the brain to consciously control the body's internal operations, it would have to deal with the problem of temporal sequence. It is like a computer's CPU: it is an instruction set, processing this first and then that. Although computers now have parallel processing and multi-core processors, in a single-core process, it operates according to temporal sequence, with a clock frequency. At any given moment it can only process one thing. The bus structure also operates according to temporal sequence: whoever comes first, whoever comes later, whoever gets processed first, whoever gets processed later, though of course they have their own priority assignments.

If the human body were to consciously process its internal systems, it would also have to process these things according to temporal sequence, like a computer; it could not process all these things in parallel simultaneously.

But your inner self does not need to do that; your inner self processes everything simultaneously. Remember this: the parts of your inner self have no temporality. Your perception of time is mainly because, in the process of neural transmission, there is the phenomenon of time passing. But in the architecture of your inner senses and your inner self, because there is no process of neural transmission, it is instantaneous transmission, with no passage of time occurring, so everything happens simultaneously.

This is one reason why, when we often discuss the problems of the three-dimensional world and higher-dimensional worlds, ambiguities or self-paradoxes arise.

If you wanted to consciously handle the internal workings, you would have to have temporal sequence. This would cause the consciousness aligned with the physical body to face an enormous quantity of "mathematical" deductions and calculations, far beyond what it could manage.

Your brain, although very powerful, with one hundred billion neurons³⁰, when faced with the things the inner self has to process, and when it has to process this first and then that according to temporal sequence, would collapse. Your brain simply could not handle it.

Let me give an example. Suppose I ask you to simultaneously feed fifty trillion babies, and you have to take care of them, just keeping them alive is enough: feed them when hungry, give them water when thirsty, put them to sleep when sleepy, bathe the ones who need bathing, take the sick ones to the doctor. Do you think your brain, with its one hundred billion neurons, how many orders of magnitude apart is that from fifty trillion? You simply could not manage it.

The amount of information in your inner self is extremely vast; your brain cannot deduce and calculate it, and simply cannot cope with it.

For example, when it manipulates the body in space and time, it must also consciously maintain alertness to all the activities of the muscles, nerves, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, and so on.

Do you think you could do that? Suppose every movement of every muscle in your body had to be controlled by your brain's consciousness? Can you control the relaxation of your vocal cord muscles? Can you control your vocal cords when speaking every sentence and every word? You would also have to control the coordination of your tongue and vocal cords, and the airflow from your lungs. If all these things were controlled by your brain's consciousness, show me how you would control even one of them?

Not to mention anything more complex. Even taking a step back, suppose through hard training you could control your vocal cords, but going one step deeper, what regulates the muscles of the vocal cords? What about the cells within the muscles? The molecules within the cells? The atoms within the molecules? Can you control all of them? If you do not control them, how do they operate?

So now you understand: you simply cannot control it.

The Circulation Between the Conscious Mind and the Inner Self

Therefore, a seeming distinction occurs.

Not a real one -- actually there is no distinction, but there seems to be one.

A portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected to the physical brain, and a portion is not connected to it. And "the latter" -- the part not connected to the brain -- forms what you think of as the body's involuntary system.

One part of the conscious mind is connected to the brain, and one part is not connected to the brain. The part that is not connected, we call the involuntary system -- that is, the part of the body we cannot control. The management of muscles, organs, the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the blood system, the endocrine system, the secretion of trace elements, the secretion of hormones, the secretion of the pituitary gland... who controls all of these things? It is not you who controls them at all.

We feel that they are separate. In fact, they are all controlled by the same conscious mind. It is just that one part of this conscious mind faces inward, and one part faces the brain. The part that faces the brain, we call the outward-facing part, the part you can be aware of. So it seems to be divided into two parts.

Again, it is important that you understand that the initial nonphysical reaction occurs in response to the stimulus that triggers all physical reactions.

What is this sentence trying to tell you? That what you call the reactions of the body's organs, the reactions of the body, and so on -- their very first, most fundamental nature is always a nonphysical reaction. What you see as muscular reactions, emotional reactions, brain reactions, thought reactions, feeling reactions, including reactions to the world, physical reactions, reactions of bodily movement -- the very first, most primal origin of all of these is always a nonphysical reaction.

There is constant communication and interaction between the area of consciousness connected to the brain and the area of consciousness not connected to the brain.

Between the part of your conscious mind that faces the physical world and the part that faces your inner world, your inner structure -- they communicate with each other; they are not cut off from each other. If they were cut off from each other, you could not stay alive. They must communicate with each other.

The purposes of the "deeper" levels of consciousness involve "circulation," which at times rises to the level of "awareness" connected to the brain.

What kind of circulation? He explains it below. Information coming from the deeper source of the "self" reaches the area connected to the brain, and is then interpreted according to the beliefs of that part of the self most focused toward matter.

This passage is a bit abstract. The purposes of the deeper levels of consciousness involve circulation -- what kind of circulation? For example, your inner intuition, your inspiration, sometimes rises to the level of awareness connected to the brain, and is captured by your conscious awareness. This part originally should not be capturable, but because the purposes of the deeper levels of consciousness involve circulation, it surfaces into your conscious awareness and is captured by it. It is as if you can perceive an inspiration, or an instinctive awareness, a kind of intuition. You do not know where it comes from, but it just emerges.

After it reaches the area connected to the brain, it is interpreted according to the beliefs of that part of yourself most focused toward matter. When this thing comes up from the bottom layer, it is a nonphysical existence, something belonging to the inner structure. When it is reflected onto the level of your brain consciousness, you will inevitably interpret it according to a belief system of the materialized world.

When your inner intuition and inspiration come up, what initiates them is not a materialized thing, and they do not necessarily have to seek a materialized expression or explanation. But because of the materializing tendency and orientation of your brain, you will inevitably interpret them -- interpret them according to your own belief system.

If your belief system is incompatible with the thing that surfaces, your brain, your conscious part, will turn a blind eye to it -- it will not accept it at all, will not receive it, will not even see it. It is like a child in class raising his hand, and some teachers simply cannot see certain children -- they can always see the children they like raising their hands, but when the children they do not like raise their hands, they cannot see them either.

So when viewpoints incompatible with your belief system emerge, they will not be seen either. The reason you are able to see the things that surface from the bottom layer is, first, because they are compatible with your belief system, and second, because you give them a materialized explanation.

To some extent, these inner data are then influenced by the beliefs of that part of the self that most directly confronts the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly under the scrutiny of the inner self.

This whole mechanism, Seth calls it circulation. This is a mechanism by which the entire inner and outer self operates: what comes out of your inner self must be accepted and recognized by the belief system of your outer self, and then interpreted by it. But where do the beliefs of your outer self come from? They come from your life experiences and feelings. Yet the beliefs of your outer self are also examined by your inner self.

When we say we examine our belief system, we adjust our belief system, when we say that the purpose of studying The Nature of Personal Reality is to change our belief system -- I ask you, who is changing it? Is it your conscious beliefs that are changing it, or is it your inner self that is changing it? This process is what he calls circulation here. It is a kind of circular operation, a kind of feedback and re-feedback, deep re-feedback -- between them there is a mechanism of mutual interaction.

This part can actually be described in a simplified way, but its inner mechanism is actually quite complex. Seth stops here and does not go on, because he wants to use more space to elaborate on this later, or perhaps he feels this part is not easy to explain.

The Mystery of Physical Birth

He continued:

I have given you quite a lot of material, so you should be satisfied.

The content of this session may not seem like much, but its depth is arguably greater than the previous three sessions combined. It summarizes the core content of the preceding three sessions and carefully explains how your inner system and outer system interact and operate with each other. The last three paragraphs in particular are extremely crucial -- how we human beings come into existence, how our life comes about, how we go from a nonphysical state to a physical state, how we operate from before incarnation all the way through incarnation, how our body comes into being and how it stays integrated and functioning, and where our consciousness comes from.

What scientists currently regard as consciousness -- I am not talking about the overall consciousness, but the consciousness that we humans think of as ours, where it comes from -- he has already explained it very clearly.

So Seth's final remark was directed at Rob. Rob had said that ending so early took him somewhat by surprise, but Seth said:

I have given you quite a lot of material, so you should be satisfied.

If you carefully understand and digest the content of this session, it is extraordinarily rich. It resolves many, many questions that humanity has always wanted to answer, and all of them are thoroughly explained in this session.

If you are still unclear about the questions concerning life and the human body in this session or this chapter, I suggest you listen to it repeatedly. Because the Seth material itself carries an enormous amount of information, it often takes several listenings before you can understand the deeper meaning within. Perhaps at a certain moment, you will suddenly realize what he was trying to say. If you do not understand it the first time, that is perfectly fine and completely normal. Listen to it a few more times or read it a few more times.

If you truly want to study it, I suggest you take out the original English edition of the book and carefully study it again alongside the original text, and you will come to understand a great deal more.

注释与核实

1. According to Mike, "the human brain has roughly 100 billion brain cells"; verification shows it should be "the number of neurons in the human brain is about 86 billion (with another about 85 billion non-neuronal cells, for a total of about 171 billion brain cells); '100 billion' was a rough estimate circulating before 2009 and has been corrected by measured data." (Source: Azevedo et al., "Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain" (2009), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. Source: Wikipedia "7 nm process" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process) ↩

4. Source: TSMC "3nm Technology" (https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/logic/l_3nm) ↩

5. According to Mike, "3 nanometers is already close to the limit of the physical world"; verification shows it should be "'3 nanometer' is only a commercial name for a process generation, unrelated to the actual physical dimensions of transistors - the IRDS projects the '3nm' node's contacted gate pitch at about 48 nm and minimum metal pitch at about 24 nm, much larger than 3 nm, so the name does not indicate that physical limits are nearly reached." (Source: Wikipedia "3 nm process", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process) ↩

6. According to Mike, "our speed of processing information is roughly only 200 to 400 bytes per second"; verification shows it should be "human conscious information-processing throughput is about 10 bits per second (about 1.25 bytes per second), while the sensory system's raw data acquisition rate is about 10^9 bits per second; neither is 200 to 400 bytes per second." (Source: Jieyu Zheng, Markus Meister, "The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?" (Neuron, https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(24)00808-0)) ↩

7. This claim could not be verified. ↩

8. This claim could not be verified. ↩

9. According to Mike, "you have 50 trillion cells in your body"; verification shows it should be "the scientific estimate of the number of human cells is about 37 trillion (3.72 x 10^13), not 50 trillion." (Source: Bianconi et al., "An estimation of the number of cells in the human body" (Annals of Human Biology, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23829164/)) ↩

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. According to Mike, the title was "Dialogues with God"; verification shows it should be "the book's Chinese translated title is 'Conversations with God' (English: Conversations with God), by the American author Neale Donald Walsch; the first volume was published in 1995." (Source: Wikipedia "Conversations with God", https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%88%87%E7%A5%9E%E5%B0%8D%E8%A9%B1) ↩

12. This claim could not be verified. ↩

13. Source: Deepak Chopra official website "21-Day Meditations" (https://www.deepakchopra.com/21-day-meditations) ↩

14. Source: Open Library "Seth speaks by Jane Roberts" (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4739168M/Seth_speaks) ↩

15. According to Mike, "5 inches is 12.5 centimeters"; verification shows it should be "1 inch exactly equals 2.54 centimeters, so 5 inches is 12.7 centimeters, not 12.5 centimeters." (Source: Wikipedia "Inch", https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E8%8B%B1%E5%AF%B8) ↩

16. According to Mike, "she never had any illness."; verification shows it should be "Mother Teresa was ill many times in her life: she had a heart attack in Rome in 1983, another heart attack in 1989 after which a pacemaker was implanted, pneumonia in Mexico in 1991, and in 1996 malaria with heart failure, and she underwent heart surgery." (Source: Wikipedia "Mother Teresa", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa) ↩

17. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Sound (physics)" (https://www.britannica.com/science/sound-physics) ↩

18. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "Speed of sound" (https://www.britannica.com/science/speed-of-sound-physics) ↩

19. This claim could not be verified. ↩

20. This claim could not be verified. ↩

21. According to Mike, "a vocabulary of about 2000 is enough for everyday spoken communication"; verification shows it should be "the vocabulary needed for everyday English spoken communication is higher than 2000: Adolphs and Schmitt's analysis of the CANCODE spoken corpus shows that 2000 word families cover less than 95% of spoken discourse, and about 3000 word families (about 5000 words) are needed to reach about 96% coverage - the old 2000-word claim comes from Schonell et al.'s 1956 Australian spoken-language study and has been overturned by modern corpus data." (Source: Adolphs & Schmitt, "Lexical Coverage of Spoken Discourse", Applied Linguistics Vol. 24, No. 4, https://academic.oup.com/applij/article-abstract/24/4/425/213596) ↩

22. This claim could not be verified. ↩

23. According to Mike, "the indigenous people noticed abnormal phenomena on the sea"; verification shows it should be "this is an urban legend known as 'invisible ships' and is fictitious: there is no historical record that Caribbean indigenous people could only see unusual conditions on the sea and that a shaman perceived the waves before the fleet 'materialized' - the Taino clearly saw Columbus's ships and paddled canoes/swam out to meet them; the legend most likely originated from Joseph Banks's 1770 diary entry recording indigenous people's indifferent reaction to the Endeavour, and was later embellished by New Age works such as 'What the Bleep Do We Know!?'." (Source: Wikipedia "Invisible ships", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_ships) ↩

24. Source: Xuanzang's translation of the "Heart Sutra" (https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E8%88%AC%E8%8B%A5%E6%B3%A2%E7%BE%85%E8%9C%9C%E5%A4%9A%E5%BF%83%E7%B6%93_(%E7%8E%84%E5%A5%98)) ↩

25. Source: Wikipedia "Sentient beings (Buddhism)" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%9C%89%E6%83%85) ↩

26. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica "E = mc2" (https://www.britannica.com/science/E-mc2-equation) ↩

27. This claim could not be verified. ↩

28. Source: Wikipedia "Proximity (2020 film)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_(2020_film)) ↩

29. Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory "Who We Are" (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/who-we-are/) ↩

30. According to Mike, "there are one hundred billion brain nerve cells"; verification shows it should be "the number of neurons in the human brain is not one hundred billion; measured results are about 86 billion (86.1 +/- 8.1 billion), with a comparable number (about 85 billion) of non-neuronal cells." (Source: Azevedo et al., "Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain" (Journal of Comparative Neurology, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.21974)) ↩