Mike's commentary · Seth Speaks, Chapter 10

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

Introduction

This chapter explains the relationship between sleep, dreams, and the reality after death: in dreams, people have already repeatedly experienced the nonphysical reality they will encounter after death, and the self in dreams possesses continuity and creativity; while awake, because one focuses only on physical reality, dreams are translated into scattered symbols. The environment after death is not unfamiliar; it coexists with everyday reality right now, time and events are not fixed, and ghosts are thought-form images projected by surviving personalities. Inner exploration requires satisfaction with physical life and psychological flexibility as its prerequisites.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The experiences in sleep and dreams belong to the same category of reality as the experiences after death, and the self in dreams possesses continuity and creativity.
• The after-death environment is not somewhere else; it coexists with physical reality right now. Being awake merely restricts the focus of consciousness to the physical projection.
• Time is not a series of moments, and events are not things that fixedly happen to a person. After death, one can re-experience and alter past events.
• Ghosts or apparitions are thought-form images projected by surviving personalities out of anxiety, usually harmless and without consciousness present.
• Only those who are fairly satisfied with physical life, psychologically flexible, and do not evade reality are suited to consciously explore the inner reality.

Main Text

Now We Begin

Let us now look at the content of this book. Seth talks about how, if you realize that in your present existence, encountering the experience of death is a normal part of it, then while you are alive, in your present existence, you have actually already gone through this. Since you have experienced it while alive, you no longer need to be afraid, and you do not need to treat the post-death experience as something unfamiliar and incomprehensible.

He emphasizes that in sleep and in dreams, the dimension of existence you are involved in is the same as the experience you will have after death. You do not remember this nightly adventure. You go on an adventure every night, but you do not remember this important part. Therefore, generally speaking, those parts you do remember seem strange and chaotic. Most of it you cannot remember, and what you do remember is all strange and chaotic, because he has already translated it for you. This is only because, at your present stage of development, you cannot consciously operate in more than two environments at once. With our current abilities, we still cannot operate in more than two realities simultaneously.

But while the physical body is asleep, you do consciously exist in a coherent, purposeful state of creation. While you are sleeping, you are indeed engaged in continuous, coherent, purposeful creative activity, and you take part in many of the activities I have told you you will encounter after death. The things you will encounter after death, you do these very things in your dreams, and you do them constantly. You have simply shifted the main focus of your attention to a different unit of activity. When you are asleep, you have already entered a different unit of activity, in which you are indeed continuously operating.

Just as you have memories of your waking life, you retain a large body of such memories as your daily physical contact. This large body of memories is what constitutes the sense of continuity you feel as you live day after day. You remember what you did yesterday, what you were doing a moment ago, what you did last week, and these memories make you believe that you exist day after day.

In the same way, the self that dreams is the same as the you of the daytime. The you in dreams has a very large collective, and just as your daytime life has continuity, your sleeping life also has continuity. Many people feel that the dreams they have are completely unrelated to one another, with no connection between them. This is your memory after waking up that finds them strange and bizarre. In fact, the work you do in dreams and your creativity are the same as in the daytime; they are continuous.

So, there is a part of you that is aware of everything experienced in every dream. This part is not your conscious part; it is another part that knows every dream and remembers the accomplishments and experiences of every dream. Dreams are no more illusory than your physical life; they are equally real.

As far as the you who is dreaming is concerned, the self you have when awake is the one who is dreaming. To the you in the dream, the you who is now awake in the daytime is, from his perspective, the dreamer. You are the dreamer sent out by him. Your daytime experiences are the dreams he has. Everything you do in the daytime is the dream of that you in the dream. Is it not reversed?

Therefore, you look at or think about the dreaming self with an extremely biased perspective. We often look at ourselves with great bias, because we think dreams are illusory and ordinary waking life is real. What he means is that if you stand from the perspective of the person in the dream, this daytime you is also the same as dreaming. You take reality for granted, take the things of the three-dimensional world for granted, and treat dreaming as fantasy. This is what all of us normal people do.

However, for your existence, dream reality is far more natural than physical reality. For your true soul, dream reality is far more natural than physical reality, because it is undisguised. Our three-dimensional world is all disguised.

The reason you cannot find coherence in the dream state is that you have hypnotized yourself into believing there is no continuous existence at all. We hypnotize ourselves into believing that dreams do not exist continuously, that dreams have no continuity, that dreams are completely unrelated and disconnected things — this is the hypnosis you have given yourself, making yourself believe this is the case.

Then when you wake up, you also translate this nighttime adventure back into the terms of the physical world. You say, I dreamed about something, and it was all a continuation of daytime events, or a different feeling of an experience. You use physical, material things to explain it, trying to fit it into your often limited, limitedly distorted nature of reality. You also fit the dream adventure experience into your daytime physical reality. To some extent, this is natural; it happens spontaneously, without your awareness.

Your focus on daytime life has its reasons. You treat it as a challenge, and you originally wanted to grow and develop within such a framework of daytime activity. Because this is what you planned to develop and grow within in this daytime physical reality. This is your challenge, one of the purposes for which you came into this life. This is very normal; it is to expand the limitations of your consciousness.

Session 538

It is very difficult to admit that in many ways you are more efficient and creative in the sleep state than in the waking state.

Right, admitting that your sleep state is in many ways more efficient and more creative than your waking state is very difficult. You probably find that hard to accept.

And it is somewhat shocking to admit that the body in dreams can indeed fly, unrestricted by time and space.

To be told that the body can fly, you would find that quite shocking.

So you pretend that none of this is true, but rather that it is symbolic.

For example, people develop complex psychological theories to explain dreams. We then get more people like Freud, the old Zhou Gong dream interpretations, all sorts of people explaining dreams, and now there are still many psychologists specializing in dream research. He is explaining the dream, and he feels that this is easier, much easier than believing that the dream is real.

What is the simple fact? When you dream that you are flying, you often really are flying. You really are flying. It is not a kind of symbolism; you really are flying.

In the dream state, you operate to some degree under the same conditions as consciousness that is not focused upon physical reality. In dreams, you are working under the same conditions as that consciousness which does not place importance on physical reality. And those conditions are the natural environment of such consciousnesses -- nonphysical conditions, the natural environment of those natural consciousnesses. That is where your consciousness is supposed to be.

So, many of your experiences are exactly the same as those you may encounter after death. When you are awake, if you shift the focus of your consciousness away from the material world, and no longer pay attention to the material world, then the experiences you gain while alive are the same as the experiences you gain when you die.

You may converse with friends and relatives who have died, revisit the past, greet old classmates, walk down streets that actually existed fifty years ago, travel through space without taking any time at all, and then guides come to meet you, you teach others, do meaningful work, solve problems, have hallucinations.

These are all things that happen after you die, but if during the day you shift your focus away from the material world, you can also do similar things.

In physical life, there is a period of time between the conception of an idea and its concrete construction. That is, between our thought and its concrete construction, before it actually manifests, there is a period of time. In dream reality this is not the case. Dream reality is realized immediately; no time is needed.

Therefore it can be said that the best way to become acquainted with the after-death reality beforehand is to explore and understand the nature of your dreaming self. But not many people want to spend this time and effort studying dreams, studying the nature of the dreaming self. No one wants to do this.

However, methods do exist. Those who really use such methods will not find it unfamiliar after death, when their attention is turned fully in this direction. Because they are already accustomed to not focusing on physical reality. While awake, they focus on things of nonphysical reality. They look inward, open their inner senses, and no longer use only their eyes, nose, and ears, but use many other senses to perceive this world. When they die, they will not find it unfamiliar at all.

Since your conscious memory is so strongly connected with perception within the body, although you leave your physical body during sleep, the waking consciousness usually still remembers that this happened.

Your conscious memory is very strongly connected with perception within the body, so the things the body senses while dreaming must also be captured by your conscious memory and incorporated into its own memory. So your waking memory still remembers this.

In the sleep state, you remember every person you meet in dreams. Yet in your daily life, you may never have seen these people. Many of the people in dreams you do not know at all; they are complete strangers. When you think about them during the day, you feel you do not know them. But the you in the dream will remember them.

In the sleep state, it is entirely possible for you to have years of intimate association with someone who lives in a completely different part of the world, while in the waking state they are strangers to you.

Just as your daytime efforts have meaning and purpose, so do the adventures in dreams, in which you also achieve your own various goals.

In the after-death experience you will continue such efforts, and you will still have many goals to achieve.

The vitality, power, life force, and creativity behind your physical existence are all initiated from this one dimension -- which dimension? The dimension you enter after death. In other words, in many ways, you are a flesh-and-blood projection of your dreaming self.

As was said earlier, the vitality, drive, power, and creativity of your physical body are all provided by that after-death dimension, or the dimension in dreams, that is, the higher-dimensional dimension. So if the abilities, energy, and drive of your physical body in this three-dimensional world all come from a higher dimension, then you can understand: this physical body is a projection of the you in your dreams. You are a projection of the you in your dreams.

But we do not think this way. We think about things backwards; we often put the cart before the horse.

The dreaming self as you understand it, however, is only a shadow of its own reality. The dreaming self is a psychological reference point, a psychological point of continuity in your terms, that brings all portions of its identity together, to consider them as a whole.

The dreaming self as we think of it, that is, the you in your dreams -- what does it do? It is a shadow of its own reality. The key is that it is an important psychological reference point. What is a reference point? It is there to ensure the continuity and consistency of your body. Otherwise you would not be able to understand that the you in your dreams went off and did something else, living in another world. Only in this way can you understand: so I have a dreaming self, and that dreaming self is doing all sorts of random things. But with the existence of this shadow of the dreaming self, your sense of psychological continuity, your sense of identity, can exist.

What is the sense of identity? There is the you when awake, and there is the dreaming you. The dreaming you has a bunch of random dreams, and when you wake up you go about your business as usual. That is the normal person's understanding. In this way you are a complete whole. Otherwise you would not be able to put the two parts together; you would collapse, your thinking would collapse. This part exists so that you can form a psychological point of continuity.

Only those who have developed to the highest level can perceive that the dreaming self has a deeper nature, and know that this dreaming self is not a shadow, but has a deeper nature. In other words, it represents a powerful integrative aspect of your overall identity. From another angle, the you in dreams is the integrative complex of the identity. It can project a you out into the three-dimensional world, and it also maintains its direct communication with the soul in dreams. It is an integrator.

In this respect, it is as vivid in experience and as rich in personality as the physical you that you know, and actually even richer. Because it does not have all the camouflage of the three-dimensional world; its expressions are all direct.

Here he is talking about when you are awake, because this whole chapter is about being awake, that is, being alive. The death experience in our lives refers to sleep -- one kind of death experience while you are alive.

He says, suppose for a moment that you are a child, and I am trying to do a particular job: explaining to you what you will be like as an adult developed to the highest peak. In my explanation, I would tell you that the adult you is already, to some degree, a part of you. I am explaining to a child what a remarkable person he will be as an adult, how high his level will be. But I tell him, the child you are now is already a part of that adult, a natural development and projection of who you are now. And the child would say, then what do I do? Do I have to die first before I can become that other me? I do not want to change; I am me. If the current me does not die, then how could I possibly become that adult me who is not the current me?

This is a bit like a tongue twister. For example, I tell a child, when you grow up you will be Jack Ma. Although you are in third grade now, when you grow up you will be Jack Ma. Jack Ma is so amazing, he changed consumption in China, fundamentally transforming it from physical stores to online consumption, and he also pioneered e-commerce and electronic currency, WeChat Pay, mobile QR code scanning, and all these things. Then you tell him, you are now a part of this Jack Ma. The child would say, impossible, I am me, what relationship do I have with that Jack Ma? That is something in the future. The child also says, do I have to die first before I can become Jack Ma? Because he and he, he is him, I am me, I cannot see any relationship between me and him. Actually, when this child grows up, he will naturally become Jack Ma.

When Seth tries to explain the nature of the inner self to you, he is in somewhat the same position -- like explaining to a child what he will be like when he grows up. Because although you can perceive the nature of the inner self in dreams, you cannot truly appreciate its maturity and ability. Just as little Jack Ma cannot appreciate the maturity and ability he will have as an adult; he is just an ordinary child, unable to imagine that his own maturity and ability will be like that when he grows up. So, for us in the waking state, when I tell you that your abilities are very strong, that you are inherently complete, that you already possess abilities like telepathy and clairvoyance, that you are originally a fragment or branch of a great soul, you actually do not take it seriously, because you cannot recognize it or appreciate it. The you in dreams, the inner self, is already very powerful and mature; it is even more the mature you, but the waking you cannot appreciate it.

But they are indeed yours -- "they" refers to those mature abilities. These abilities are originally yours, just as the adult's abilities belong to the child. Without the child, how could there be the adult? When the child grows up, he is the adult.

So in the dream state, in addition to learning other things, you are also learning how to construct your day-to-day reality. This is very crucial. Your physical reality is not only constructed by you during the day; at night you are not idle either. You are constructing the physical reality of each of your days. Just as after death, you learn to construct the next concrete life. As discussed in the previous chapter, after death there is a process: you review your past life, and then if you wish, you can begin the next life. Before the next life begins, you must construct the things of your next life -- choose the environment of your birth, your parents, your family, the events you will encounter, the people you will meet, including the environment in which you grow up, and so on. Actually, these things already began to be constructed during your previous life, just as in dreams you have already constructed the things of your tomorrow.

In dreams you solve problems. During the day, you only consciously become aware of the methods of problem-solving that you learned in sleep. The things you might encounter during the day -- you actually already know the answers. The inner self in dreams already knew the answers long ago. The daytime you only feels that you discovered the method, but actually you already learned that method in dreams long ago.

In dreams you set goals, just as after death you set the goals for your next life.

No psychological structure is easy to describe in words.

No psychological structure can be easily described in words. Just to explain general human nature, just to explain human nature as it is generally known, we have to use all sorts of terms -- for example, the primitive impulsive self, the subconscious, the ego, the inner self, the outer self, the superego. All these words are used to distinguish the interwoven activities that make up a specific personality. To explain any given personality, we need so many terms, but actually these terms are interwoven with one another. We separate them for the convenience of expression, but in a living person they are interwoven; you cannot distinguish which is the subconscious, which is the conscious, which is the unconscious, which is the ego, which is the inner self -- you cannot distinguish them; they are mixed together.

If even the personality of a living person is this difficult to describe and distinguish, then analyzing the dreaming you is equally complex, and even more so. Therefore you could say that one portion of it deals with physical reality -- the you in dreams also deals with physical reality, for example, constructing and concretely manipulating tomorrow's physical reality. It participates in the concrete operation and planning of your physical reality. That is one part of its function.

What does another part of its function do? It handles the deeper creativity and achievement that ensure the activity of the physical body. Your physical body must live; your fifty trillion cells¹ need someone to manage them and direct them, and it is the inner self that manages them. So it has deeper levels of creativity and achievement.

Another part handles communication -- communicating what? Dealing with the broader components of these personalities that you do not yet know. You have other reincarnational personalities, and it deals with those broader components.

In some portions, it also deals with what you might call the problems of the soul, or of the overall entity.

So this dreaming you has so many attributes, just as the living you has many -- inner self, outer self, entity, subconscious. The dreaming you can also be divided into many levels and many functions, and these parts are also interwoven.

That true multidimensional self continuously experiences and exists -- and there is also a part that deals with your soul and entity. What is that part of the soul and entity? It is the true multidimensional you. The soul is the real you, living in a higher-dimensional or multidimensional space-time. Its continuous experience and existence -- the you in your dreams also has to deal with it. So the dreaming you is also a very complex thing that cannot be simply described.

Many people ask me what dreams are really about, which dream is real, what each dream means. I tell them, the things in dreams are very complex; they cannot be explained in a single sentence. Is a dream just a continuation of the day? That is far too general and simplistic.

The soul creates the physical body, and the creator seldom despises his creation.

Our physical body is created by the soul, and the creator seldom despises his creation. The soul creates the physical body for a reason, and creates a concrete life for a reason.

Therefore none of this is meant to lead you to despise earthly life, nor to make you indifferent to the sensory pleasures that surround you.

What he means is, your physical body is created by the soul, and this life of yours is also created for you by the soul. The creator will not despise his creation. In other words, he will not create a life that you despise and make you live it, nor will he create things of sensory stimulation and yet tell you not to enjoy them. Then why would he create them? Would that not be meaningless? Then he should simply not create them. Since you have the ability to create your world, then do not create the things that are useless to you. He creates them precisely so that you can experience them, so that you can enjoy them. So this is the point he is emphasizing.

Any inner journey should lead you to discover greater importance, beauty, and meaning in the life you now know.

The inner journey, that is, looking inward, should lead you to discover greater importance and meaning in the life you now know. Whether it is the you in dreams, or the you in meditation, sitting practice, or spiritual cultivation, the inward you exists to help you discover the greater importance, beauty, and meaning of the you who is alive now. It is not meant to make you negate this life of yours. Having you look inward and discover the inner self is not meant to negate your outer self, nor to negate this lifetime of yours. Quite the opposite: it is meant to help you discover greater importance, beauty, and meaning. If you have not discovered it, it is because you have not yet found it, have not yet recognized it clearly. You can go seek it, but you must never turn it around.

Full enjoyment and development simply means using all of your abilities, exploring the inner dimensions with as much wonder and enthusiasm.

Full enjoyment cannot be limited to external things. You can enjoy external things, but that is not full enjoyment. That is only a part. You can develop it, discover its beauty, discover its meaning. But what is full? Full enjoyment and development means using all of your abilities, exploring the inner dimensions with as much wonder and enthusiasm. External enjoyment is also enjoyment, but truly full enjoyment and development is looking inward, exploring your inner world. With what kind of wonder and enthusiasm? With the same wonder as when you explore the outer world, with the same enthusiasm as when you explore the outer world. With the same passion, interest, and wonder that you have when chasing fame and fortune, chasing money, chasing beautiful women, chasing a happy life -- go inward and explore with that. That is what he means; that is full enjoyment and development.

With correct understanding, you can now become quite familiar with the scenes, environments, and experiences after death. You will find them as vivid as any world you know. With all this preceding groundwork and understanding, you will find that the after-death experience is as vivid as the world you already know.

Such exploration will completely change your preconceived gloomy views of existence after death. It will completely change your view that after death is the underworld, with chilling winds and gloom. However, it is very important that you discard prejudices as much as possible, because they will hinder your progress. What prejudices? The prejudice that after death is gloomy, and other prejudices about present life, after-death life, and dream life.

Generally speaking, if you are fairly satisfied with physical reality -- what he says next is very important; the latter part of this session is very important. He tells you what kind of person is suited to explore inward, to explore the inner psyche, and what kind of person is not. When you read this part, you should consider for yourself whether you are suited to continue exploring further, whether you are suited to continue developing yourself on the spiritual path.

If you are fairly satisfied with physical reality, you are in a better position to study these inner environments.

First, you must be fairly satisfied with your present environment. This is a core point. Some people say, does "fairly satisfied" mean I have to achieve financial freedom, spiritual freedom, time freedom, and all these freedoms before it counts as fairly satisfied? No. Fairly satisfied is a state; it is an affirmation, acceptance, and recognition of the state of your own life. Whether your perception of your present self is one of satisfaction or dissatisfaction -- that is the core question.

If you see evil everywhere in life, and if this evil seems to outweigh the good, then you are not ready.

If you see evil everywhere in life, and evil seems to outweigh the good -- you see that the bad things in the world exceed the good things, and you believe there is a lot of bad in this world and very few good people -- then you are not ready. Whether in politics, society, economics, the environment, every aspect, including your personal life, the big environment and the small environment, if all you see is more bad than good, then you are not yet ready to explore inward.

If your mood is despondent, you should not begin these nighttime explorations.

If your mood is very low, very despondent, you should not begin. Because at such times, whether you are awake or asleep, whether day or night, your own psychological state is prone to experiencing unpleasant things. When your mood is despondent and very low, your state tends to feel unpleasant. I think some people have had this experience. At certain stages of life, when your emotions are very low or your mood is very despondent, not only is the daytime bleak, but even your dreams at night are bleak, full of nightmares.

If you wish to substitute inner experience for physical experience, you should not begin this study either.

This point is very important; mark it as a key point. If you want to live in an inner world, do not want to engage with the outside world, only want to feel inner peace, and pay no attention to the external world -- that is what we call the philosophy of renunciation, even wanting to go up the mountain to become a monk or a nun -- if you want to completely replace external experience with inner experience, if you no longer want to experience the external world, if you have seen through the vanity of the world and have no more interest in this world, then this kind of person is also not suited to begin this study.

Is this not stated very clearly, and very forcefully? Can it wake up many people who now want to go practice spiritual cultivation? It makes you think clearly about whether you really should be practicing. Many people cannot get by in the material world; their situation has reached an extreme low point. No matter what the state -- emotional problems, financial problems, problems of outlook on life, problems in their career -- when they hit a dead end, they want to renounce the world. They go to a temple and say they want to become a monk. Through what we are learning now, we know that their state is simply not suited to renouncing the world. Why? Because exploring inward is even more frightening for them. We all know that your inner thoughts, emotions, and feelings determine your external environment and world. If your emotions and thoughts at that time are in that state -- completely defeated, extremely despondent, unable to see a single ray of sunlight -- then the world created by your inner self will also look like that.

If your ideas of good and evil are intense, you are not yet able to be flexible.

People whose view of good and evil is extremely clear-cut, who cannot tolerate the slightest flaw -- good is good, bad is bad, right is right, wrong is wrong. They cannot see the bad within the good, or the good within the bad. They do not know that this world is unified, that there is no true good and no true bad. They believe good is good and bad is bad, clearly divided, absolutely never to be mixed together. This kind of person --

If your ideas of good and evil are intense, then you do not yet possess the necessary understanding for any conscious operation in these other dimensions.

Because your ideas of good and evil will directly guide your consciousness. If you very strongly believe that this is right and that is wrong, this intense consciousness will directly create that kind of reality, and in that state it is very unfavorable for you. In other words, many people debate good and evil -- how could Hitler go to heaven? Hitler killed so many people, was he not a demon? Someone did something utterly heinous, and people are filled with righteous indignation, and so on -- these people are not suited to learn about inward exploration.

In other words, psychologically and mentally, you should be as flexible as possible. Psychologically and mentally both refer to things on the spiritual level. You should be flexible, more open and more inclusive, with an open attitude toward everything, open to new concepts and creations without being overly dependent on organizations or dogma.

When you learn this, you will realize: were many religions wrong from the very beginning? They first teach you intense ideas of good and evil, and of right and wrong. Christianity's original sin -- people are born with original sin; Buddhism tells you there is cause and effect, to do good deeds and not bad deeds, how terrible it is to kill living beings. They instill ideas of good and evil in you from the very beginning, and make you hold fast to them, enforcing them as dogma, as precepts. Once you break a precept, you are finished; all your previous efforts are wasted, your practice is ruined. At this point you will understand: these people are not suited for spiritual practice. This is also why so many people chant sutras, practice in temples, and go into retreat, yet never get what they want -- they were wrong from the very beginning, fundamentally wrong. If you have this kind of problem, when you read this you should examine yourself or reflect on whether you are suited to enter higher-dimensional space. If you are not ready yet, then go prepare and come back. Do not force your way in. If your mind is full of those evil viewpoints, after you enter dimensions beyond the three-dimensional world, it will be extremely terrifying. In that world, whatever you think becomes reality. If you think of demons, demons appear; if you think of killing, murderous demons appear; if you think of all terrifying things, all terrifying things instantly become real and present themselves before you, just as real as your three-dimensional world.

You should be fairly capable and compassionate. He points out two basic conditions you should have in the three-dimensional world: in the three-dimensional world you should be fairly capable, and compassionate. Both are required. In Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path, it also says that if you want to practice Buddhism, you should have a proper job, a proper occupation², and support yourself; that is the most basic. Then you should also have a compassionate heart, be compassionate, have empathy -- it is the same principle.

And in your physical environment, you should be outgoing enough to handle your present life.

You should be outgoing enough to handle your present life. You need to have the ability to handle your present life well; this is the most basic ability. If you cannot even handle this, and your present life is a mess, then in that state you are not suited; you are not ready.

You need all of your resources, for this will be an active exploration and endeavor, not a passive withdrawal.

You need all of your resources -- all resources, including those of the three-dimensional world, are also needed, not only the inner ones. Whether you are doing good deeds or expanding inward, you need this foundation. This is an active exploration and effort, not a passive withdrawal. It is not passively escaping the world, saying that since the three-dimensional world is all illusion, since it is all created by my own consciousness and thoughts, then I will withdraw, stop paying attention to these illusions, just go inward, and no longer want the outer world -- this is extremely passive, not withdrawal.

If Seth's philosophy were divided into world-engaging and world-transcending, you should know that Seth is absolutely a world-engaging philosophy, not a world-transcending philosophy. There are many theories that are world-transcending, denying everything in real life and seeking only inner peace and inner progress.

Still less is it a cowardly retreat.

Whether you study Seth, or practice spirituality, or pursue inner progress, this is not a refuge you find after being completely defeated in real life. He is not telling you to retreat cowardly -- I cannot make it in real life, I cannot beat them, so I will defeat them psychologically, I have the spirit of Ah Q. No matter how rich you are, you are still empty-headed people; no matter how accomplished you are, you still do not know where the true meaning of life is; although I am poor and down and out, I understand everything -- it is not like that. He is not telling you to shrink back or retreat cowardly. You must actively and diligently develop and advance in real life.

Toward the end of this book, I will give some methods to those who are interested so that they can consciously explore these after-death situations, and at the same time maintain control over their experience and their progress.

He will allow you, while you are alive, to consciously experience some of the conditions after your death, that is, things from another dimension. When you dream, you are unconscious, you cannot control it at all, and consciousness does not participate in it. He will tell you some methods for consciously experiencing the exploration of that world after death, and it can be controlled and has progress. If you do not control the progress, you will completely collapse inside it. I will not expand on this here -- regarding drug use, using pharmaceutical means to enter that kind of hallucinatory state, that is a completely wrong method, you are completely unable to control it, and you will collapse directly.

I would like to describe these conditions somewhat more thoroughly here.

In physical life, you actually see what you want to see. Within the range of available reality, the materials you perceive are carefully selected by you according to your concepts of what reality is. In the three-dimensional world, you only want to see what you want to see, and what you do not want to see, you cannot see. You can only see those things you want to perceive. Those materials were created by you in the first place -- you go and select the events that match your views on the nature of reality, and you see them and recognize them. In fact, these materials are all created by you. If you believe this world is evil, then what you see and feel is all evil, because those evil events and evil things are all created by you.

If you believe in the evil nature of man, you will not experience man's good nature.

If you believe people are all evil, how could you experience goodness? Your perceptual system for goodness is completely closed off, because you do not believe there is goodness, so you cannot see it and cannot perceive it.

They will then forever show you their worst face.

Because you do not believe he has a good side, you can never see it, so what you see is always the bad side of them. It is as if you are wearing a polarizing filter and only looking at the bad part of him.

When you believe that others dislike you, you telepathically bring about such events.

You will definitely encounter those events in reality where others dislike you, and then you will prove how correct your judgment is: others really do dislike me, see, this thing happened. And at the same time, you also project your dislike onto them. You dislike them, and do you think they do not know it? Because you believe others dislike you, you only see the facts of them disliking you; then because they dislike you, you resent them; then you project your feeling of disliking them back onto them, and then they dislike you even more. If you do not like them, how could they like you? So this matter further proves that your viewpoint is correct.

In other words, your experience follows your expectations. In after-death and dream experiences, and in any out-of-body encounters, this principle also applies. In dreams, in the dream state and in out-of-body states, it is all the same.

If you are obsessed with the concept of evil, then you will encounter those evil situations, and bad things will all happen to you. If you believe in the devil, then you will meet him.

When consciousness is not directed toward the physical body, it has greater freedom.

When your consciousness is not focused on your physical body, it has greater freedom. Let me say it again: thoughts and feelings construct reality without the passage of time. They do not need time to pass in order to construct reality, to create your reality. Therefore, if you believe you will meet a demon, then you will create such a thought-form image. You create an image of a demon, and yet you do not know it -- you do not know that it is your own creation.

Therefore, if you find yourself focusing in this way on the evils of physical life, then you are not ready to undertake this kind of exploration. If you see that life is full of bad things and terrible things, then you are not ready yet. Because when you explore inward, there will be many, many more terrible things appearing, because your inner heart believes in evil.

Of course, in such cases, it is possible to encounter a thought-form image belonging to another person -- many people ask, besides being able to see the inner demons of your own heart, can you also see the inner demons of others? What if my heart is good and has no demons, but others are evil, and there are demons in their hearts, and they project a demon that I encounter -- would I also see a demon?

If you did not believe in demons to begin with, you would always recognize the nature of this phenomenon and would not be harmed by it.

If you did not believe in the existence of demons to begin with, then your inner self would be able to see the essence of this demon -- it is not a demon, and you would see the essence of this phenomenon, and you would not be harmed by it, not be affected.

If it is your own thought-form image, then in fact, you should ask what it represents -- ask yourself: what does that image represent? Whatever you project, many people say that when reading spiritual materials or reading many books, ferocious demons or faces will appear in their minds. Those are all your thought-form images. You must ask what that image represents, what kind of problem have you concretized in this way? This image must be the concretization of some problem. After asking clearly, you can still learn something from it, and it will not have been wasted.

You may also hallucinate the same kind of thing after death, and then use it as a symbol, and experience some kind of battle between heaven and man.

Is it not the same after you die? You can also hallucinate the same kind of thing. You project this hallucination as a symbol and experience some kind of battle between heaven and man. This goes back to what he said at the end of the previous chapter -- if you imagine your subconscious as a certain animal, then at that time you have a relationship with this animal. Either the two of you get along very well, very gently, you raise it, you ride it, you tame it; or it kills you and eats you; or you kill it. These are all different states. The battle between heaven and man here means this kind of thing, and it also alludes to the great battle between Moses and Allah that he cited in the previous chapter³.

You must ask yourself what these symbolic things really are. Of course, if you have more understanding, then that is unnecessary. If you have more understanding of your own inner self, then you do not need these things.

You will solve your own concepts, problems, and dilemmas on the level of your own understanding. You solve this thing on the level of understanding the deeper self. Do not say this is just a devil, a ferocious face -- no, that is only a symbol. It must reflect certain problems in your heart, certain things in your thoughts. You must trace back to what those things in your thoughts are, and then through this method of analysis you will quickly be able to solve your own concepts, problems, and dilemmas. The dilemmas many people talk about -- unable to go up or down, unable to go left or right -- are very normal.

The After-Death Environment Exists Around You Right Now

He said the after-death environment exists right around you right now, whether in terms of space or in terms of experience.

Session 539

Your present situation, and all the various physical phenomena around you and related to you, all seem like a continuously running film projected outward from your own interior.

It is as if a continuously running film is projected outward from your own interior, and you are forced to see only those images that have shifted position and been pulled out. The content between the frames of the film, or the content outside the film, you cannot see. It is as if you are forced into a movie theater, and you can only watch the movie — actually, outside the movie theater there are many things, and the movie theater itself also has many things. If you walked out of the movie theater, there would be an even broader, vaster world, but you cannot see any of it. You can only see this movie.

They seem so real that you find yourself in a position of constantly reacting to them.

This is your actual life, just like this.

Yet these images are used to conceal other equally valid realities that exist simultaneously.

What are these images for? They can conceal and cover over other realities that exist at the same time and are equally valid, so that you see only these images and cannot see the other realities.

And you actually obtain the power and knowledge to operate this material projection from these other realities.

The energy, power, and knowledge of this three-dimensional world's projector, or film projector, are all obtained in other realities. You obtain energy and knowledge in other reality dimensions in order to project this material projection of what you think of as the physical world.

You can also let this life projector idle. Set the life projector to idle, and let it project nothing — because the image itself is a concealment, and projecting it is meaningless. Stop projecting these images, let it idle, do not project anymore. Turn your attention to other realities that exist simultaneously — there are many other realities. Shift your focus of consciousness, do not stare at this image, do not stare at the things of this three-dimensional world.

Because of Belief, One Sees

First, you must realize that they exist; this is what you need to be certain of. If you do not believe they exist, you will never experience their existence—many people never experience it in their entire lives, precisely because they do not believe it exists at all.

A couple of days ago I saw someone introduce a saying by Jack Ma, and I thought it was very philosophical. Some people believe only after they see—they believe something only after seeing it, and they do not believe anything they have not seen. Then Jack Ma said the second sentence: some people see because they believe⁴—some people see something only because they believed in it first. Believing in the future development, for example, Jack Ma believed that e-commerce in the future would one day completely surpass the current physical economy and offline trade, and so he saw that point, and therefore he went and realized it, and in the end it was presented in his own way. So Jack Ma's saying is this: some people believe because they see, and some people see because they believe. Think carefully about the meaning of this saying; it is very profound.

Therefore, you must realize that they exist; otherwise you cannot see them or perceive them.

As the initial stage of the methods I will give you later—he will give us some other methods later—as a beginner-level practice, he says you may as well ask yourself from time to time: at this moment, what am I actually aware of? That is, what am I aware of right now. Ask this question when your eyes are open, and you can also do it when your eyes are closed. Whether your eyes are open or closed, you should ask yourself: what exactly am I aware of at this very moment? Is it the scenery you see before your eyes? Besides the scenery, what else are you aware of? You need to think about this; everyone's feelings are different. You can do this practice often, jumping out from time to time to ask yourself: what am I aware of right now?

When you ask yourself with your eyes open, do not only see the objects that exist before you at this moment. Look at the empty places where there are no things; in places where there is no sound, go and listen; in space without matter, in empty space, every inch actually has molecular structure, but you make yourself unable to see them—you make yourself unable to see them. There are also other sounds, but you have already conditioned your ears, telling them they cannot hear, making them unable to hear those sounds.

In dreams, you use your inner senses; when awake, you ignore them. At this point he is telling you not to use the outer senses, but to use the inner senses to feel the world: what you truly are aware of, what you see, what you perceive.

If you have seen the movie Lucy—you can see that when a person's brain is stimulated to a certain level of activity, for example stimulated to 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, he can see radio waves in the air that are normally invisible, and can hear sounds from very far away. That is all a cinematic expression of opening the inner senses. That movie is very good; it actually shows the state a person should have after fully activating all abilities. You can see that when the brain reaches 100%, this person becomes a Buddha, omnipresent.

The Inner Senses Are Always Operating

Here he begins to introduce the inner senses:

The inner senses are prepared for perceiving very substantial, non-material material.

The inner senses are not for seeing the material world, not for feeling this material world; they are for feeling the non-material world. They are not deceived by the images you project into this three-dimensional physical reality — that is, the images projected by that "life projector" mentioned earlier. They can see what lies beneath the images. Actually, they can also perceive physical objects; they can see the image too, they can see the material world too, but they can see the underlying level even more. It is not that they cannot see the material world; they can see all of it.

Your physical senses are extensions of the inner perceptions of these inner senses.

Your physical senses are extensions of the inner perceptual methods. When you die and no longer have physical senses, you will have to rely on them — rely on the inner senses. You have already used them in out-of-body experiences: when out of body, you no longer have the outer senses, and you rely entirely on the inner senses to perceive.

They continue to operate constantly beneath waking consciousness.

It is not that they operate only when you are asleep, dreaming, or out of body; they are always operating. Your outer senses are merely an extension of them.

Therefore you can even become familiar with the nature of perception after death.

Why familiar? Because in fact you use the inner senses quite often in ordinary life, only you are not aware of them when you are awake and conscious. But after death, when you use them, you will find they are not unfamiliar. Just as in dreams you can see things without eyes, hear things without ears, and perceive without a body — you do not bring your physical senses in with you, yet you can perceive, unaffected. So when you die, you are already familiar with all of this.

In other words, the environmental conditions and the methods of perception are not unfamiliar.

You will not find the environment, the conditions, or the methods of perception unfamiliar. You are not suddenly thrown into the unknown. That unknown reality is in a dimensional space you are not familiar with, but he says you are not suddenly tossed into it.

The unknown reality is now a part of you.

What you call the unknown is now a part of you; it is not at all unfamiliar, nor is it unknown. And before physical birth, it was already a part of you — it is that part of the soul, something from another dimension. After death it is the same: whether before birth, during life, or after death, that unknown — that is, the world after your death, that higher dimension, or a space of pure consciousness — is a part of you.

But generally speaking, these conditions have by and large been erased from your consciousness throughout history.

For the most part, humanity has had various different concepts and different ideas about its own reality — there have been different understandings throughout history. But starting from the last century — this book was written in the twentieth century, in the seventies, so the last century he refers to began in the eighteen hundreds — humanity seems to have deliberately turned its face away and refused to look, deliberately refusing to look at other realities, acknowledging only science as the one thing, acknowledging only what science sees, what the naked eye sees.

Before that, it was not like this. Before that, there were many religions, many beliefs, and many primitive traditional cultures that could acknowledge invisible things. For example, in ancient China, many legends, many myths, and many folk methods, rules, and regulations all carried this on. In the past, when a family member died, the body had to be kept for three days first⁵, and there were various post-death rituals — respect for life, respect for life after death. If people in that era had been purely materialist, like people today who think that once a person dies it is all over, then there would have been no need for such elaborate rituals. Look at the degree of importance attached to it — the attention given to after death was no less than that given to life. So you can tell that before what is now called modern civilization and modern scientific development, humanity had different views and different understandings of reality. It is just that now science dominates everything, and science tells everyone, "You are all wrong; do not look in those directions; those are all heretical paths, superstitions, and nonsense."

Because you can no longer see it. He says, so now let us try to talk about some of it.

You Are Dead Now

That whole section is about Jane's feelings -- it was raining that day, and Jane was not in a very good state.

In many ways, then, you are dead now.

Isn't that interesting? Earlier it said that the environment and conditions after death exist right now in this present moment, so from a certain angle, you are dead now. And it is exactly the same kind of death as the death you may have in the future. It is not that only now you are alive, and after death it is some other world; he is telling you right now that from a certain angle, you are dead at this very moment.

Then he explains why.

In the midst of your daily chores and drudgery, beneath your normal waking consciousness, you are also often focused upon other realities.

"Drudgery" means doing no creative work at all, working like a robot. Beneath your ordinary daytime work, beneath this conscious working and living awareness, in places you are not aware of, you are actually often focused upon other realities -- you just do not know it.

Your physical self is not aware of it.

The conscious self of your physical body is not aware of the responses to such stimuli; you do not know it. For example, when you focus on your inspiration, your inner system, or the inner self -- your perception of these things, you are actually not conscious of it.

Perceive situations with the inner senses.

We also use the inner senses to perceive situations in ordinary waking life, which is why people sometimes have inspiration, or flashes of insight. For example, before some major disaster strikes, many people have premonitions -- these things are all related to the inner senses.

And experience time that is not even recorded in the physical brain.

The brain cannot even remember these things; it simply believes they never happened. But your inner senses are constantly perceiving those things, and have already experienced them once through the inner senses, only you do not know it.

So why does it say "you are dead while alive"? While you are alive, the unconscious part of you has already experienced another reality -- a reality that is on the same level as the reality after your death. So being alive and being dead are actually the same; you just do not know it.

After death, you simply become aware of the dimensions of activity that you now ignore.

After death, your three-dimensional world is gone, your physical senses are gone, and you can no longer perceive the senses of this physical world. At that point, once your inner senses are activated, you discover: oh, so I should have been focusing on matters in another world. Only after death do you realize that you were actually doing the same thing while alive -- you just did not know it, because the stimulation of this three-dimensional world is too intense. This sensory stimulation is so strong that you ignore all the things perceived in the subconscious or the unconscious.

The present physical life has taken precedence.

While you are alive now, physical life takes precedence. When death comes, physical life will no longer take precedence, because the physical body is gone. But at the same time, you do not turn it off either -- he emphasizes this point: after death you do not turn it off; you retain your memories.

This is quite remarkable. Some people say memory is stored in the brain, and when a person dies the brain no longer exists; the brain cells die, the brain as physical matter no longer exists, and it may even be cremated. In that case, will your memories be preserved? They will be preserved, all of them will be preserved. So he tells you: you have died, but you have not turned it off. This is what you need to understand.

You have simply stepped out of a particular frame of reference.

"Frame of reference" is a physics term. When we study something, we have to set up a reference frame for it: a specific time, space, location, and environment. Only after establishing this reference frame can we discuss and conduct experiments within it, and only then can we reach certain conclusions. When the reference frame differs, the conclusions, results, and actual data of the experiment all differ. In physics there are all kinds of different reference frames. Once the reference frame changes, the entire content and results of the experiment change along with it. What he means is that after death, it is as if you have stepped out of an old reference frame and entered a new one -- all the assumptions of the external environment, the original foundational assumptions, have changed. For example, in the reference frame of being alive, time and space are the two most basic assumptions; but in the world after death, these two basic assumptions of space and time no longer exist. When these two basic assumptions differ, all the results within the entire reference frame will be completely different.

So in certain terms, you can even use the seemingly past years that were once given to you in different ways.

Use the seemingly past years that were once given to you in different ways. What does this mean? He gives examples below.

Time Is Not a Series of Moments

He said for the first time: the years you seem to have lived through in the past, the events that have already been completed -- this life you have already lived -- you can experience and go through it in different ways. In another kind of time framework, you are completely free from the limitations of time and space.

Time is not made up of a series of moments, one following another.

He tells you that time is not a series, not made up of the previous moment, the present moment, and the next moment linked one after another. He says that although you currently perceive it in this way -- and we certainly do perceive it this way right now.

Events are not things that happen to you. They are materialized experiences formed by you, according to your expectations and beliefs.

What does "events are not things that happen to you" mean? You might be very confused. How do events come about? What is an event in itself? An event is simply an experience -- formed into a materialized experience according to your expectations and beliefs. So now you understand what an event is: time and space do not exist, and events are not things that happen to you; they are just one kind of experience you have.

Now the inner portion of your personality knows this.

Now the inner portion of your personality knows this. After death, you are no longer focused upon the physical body that is subject to time and events -- as long as we are alive, time exists, and events keep happening.

You can use the same time and events as raw material.

Just as a painter uses dyes and pigments, you can use them however you like.

How does he give an example to explain "however you like"?

For example, perhaps your life is seventy years long. Under certain circumstances after death, if you choose to do so, you can freely experience the events of those seventy years, and they do not necessarily have to be in sequential order.

You can experience any event within those seventy years at any time, either in sequence or out of sequence -- events are not sequential.

You can also alter those events.

Isn't that amazing? You can alter these events. But this "altering," as will be explained later, is not the kind of altering you might imagine, where you go back into the three-dimensional world and change things. It is not that kind of altering. What you alter are those experiences -- you have to understand that events are experiences.

You can represent yourself as operating within any particular activity dimension of those seventy years.

See, isn't this interesting? The first "you" is the you after death, who can represent "you" -- and this "you" refers to the you who was alive. These two yous are not the same. You can represent your seventy years of life, any designated activity dimension, and manipulate it.

For example, if you discover that you made a serious error in judgment -- in a certain event, you made a wrong judgment. For instance, you should have gone to college, but instead you started working and did not go to college -- if you discover those serious errors, you can correct them at that time. Do you see? Isn't that amazing? At that time you can correct it.

But you cannot reenter that reference framework as a fully participating consciousness.

This sentence is very important; you should underline it. You cannot go back into the original reference framework and participate in that life again -- as we just said, it is a different reference framework. You can only alter it within this reference system: within your post-death reference system, you can re-experience it once more according to your improved way of doing things.

In that kind of framework, it was the mass hallucination that came into being as a result of the application of consciousness by yourself and the people of your own time within the historical currents of that period.

We think this real world is a mass hallucination that we and the people of our own time created together by applying our own consciousness. In the world after death, you can, in your own way, go back and correct and adjust it, and experience it again. But you cannot go back into the state that the mass consciousness of those years once created; that is no longer possible. What you can change is the part you experience after death.

The Perfectionist's Approach

Some prefer this to reincarnation.

Some people prefer this -- that is, to keep experiencing and keep correcting mistakes. They are in no hurry to be born again, no hurry to reincarnate; they want to correct all the mistakes from their previous life first.

As a study before a new reincarnation.

This "it" refers to the events of his past seventy years of life experience. He treats the process of correcting mistakes as a kind of research and study before reincarnation -- like a student who did an assignment wrong, then redoes the assignment and corrects every mistake one by one.

They must go back and recreate.

These people are often perfectionists. We often say that if he does not correct his mistakes, he cannot get past this hurdle in his heart; he cannot begin the next life until he has corrected everything in the previous one. They must correct their errors. This is one type of person. People are different; there are also those who are easygoing and do not care -- "Wrong is wrong, whatever, that is just how it is" -- and they move on.

They use their latest previous life as a canvas, and they try to paint a better picture.

They treat their previous life as a "canvas," and on the same canvas they try to paint a better picture -- this "canvas" is only in quotation marks.

This is also a mental and psychological exercise that many people engage in.

While doing this, he is engaged in psychological and spiritual exercise: he brings back all the past events and reflects on them again, seeing where he did well and where he did poorly, and correcting what was poor.

It requires great concentration.

He has to devote a great deal of energy to this.

It is no more illusory than any other.

His experiences after death, when he goes to correct his mistakes, are not like what you might imagine -- like acting in a TV drama: "This plot is wrong, change it; the male lead and female lead should not have separated at this point." That is not the feeling. You cannot learn anything from that kind of feeling. The kind of change he means is to truly go back into the plot, as if you performed it again -- performed it once more, meaning you lived it again, experienced it all over again. Only the ending is different, or a decision is different: the decision you made at the time may have been wrong, and now you discover there was a better one; or you may try out several different possibilities and act them out.

This kind of experience and this kind of acting will not change what once happened within that reference framework; it only changes, acts out, and adjusts within your post-death state. And as your feelings change, and as your experience changes, what you learn will also be different.

For example, some people always had poor relationships with their family -- poor relationships with relatives, or with their partner, or with their children, or with colleagues. Later they realize that this way of behaving was not right, that it was wrong, and they go back and improve it. After improving it, all the experiences become positive, and they learn the positive experience. They are no longer caught in those negative emotions. So these things require a great deal of focused energy, and they are real -- not more illusory than you might think. They are not illusory; they are all real.

You may want to relive certain old dreams of your life in order to understand them better.

You may want to relive those sweet, happy old dreams of your life in order to understand them better; some want to experience the moments of conflict, the moments of major life decisions -- all in order to understand them better. Experience them a few more times, and understand that each time is different.

Your life experience is your own to have.

Your experience is only your own, not anyone else's; what you experience is always your own experience, which no one else can experience. So by experiencing it repeatedly, you can understand it better.

This reliving of old dreams is certainly not unfamiliar.

You are certainly not unfamiliar with it, because you have been through it all; it is very familiar.

In daily life, you also relive old dreams. You often imagine yourself having done certain things with a different attitude.

In our ordinary lives we also do this. Late at night, when everything is quiet and you settle your mind, you think: ah, if only I had not said that during the day; if I had taken a different attitude, maybe the outcome would have been different. Or you mentally replay certain things in your heart to gain more understanding: if I had made another decision back then, there might have been another result; if that had been the result, what follow-up reactions would there have been; and what final outcome would those follow-up reactions have led to -- you keep playing with how you handled things at the time.

Your life is your own experience, composed of your own personal experiences and views.

What you call your life is your experience -- a string of experiences from birth to death, plus your own views about those experiences. First comes experience, then comes the view.

At death, you take it out of the mass earthly time context.

Earthly time is not determined by you alone -- why does the earth keep turning after I die? Because it is not determined by you alone. Earthly time is determined by the group. After death, you take your experience out of this group-defined time framework, and then you can experience it and re-experience it in many ways.

Remember that events and objects are not absolute.

Events and objects -- that is, objects in the three-dimensional world -- are not absolute, not fixed. It is not the case that once an event has happened it has happened, or that a thing is what it is, black is black and white is white. No, it is plastic.

Before or after an event occurs, it can be changed.

Not only after something happens -- before it happens is also possible; both can be changed. They are never stable or permanent; they can always be changed at any time.

Even in the third dimension, in our physical reality, they may appear to be so.

In the third dimension we think they are permanent and stable: the event has already happened, and objects and things are fixed there, permanently unchanging. This appears to be what our three-dimensional world looks like, but in fact it is not so; they can all be changed.

Anything you perceive in three-dimensional existence is only a projection of a larger reality into that dimension.

The things we perceive in the three-dimensional world are all projections of a larger reality into our dimension. What dimension is that? It is the projection of our emotions, our consciousness, our thoughts, and our beliefs into the material world. Our thoughts, emotions, consciousness, and beliefs are not things of the three-dimensional world, are they? They cannot be located in the three-dimensional world: they occupy no space, take no time, and have no specific position. But when they are projected into the three-dimensional world, they become a material world.

The events you are aware of are only fragments of those activities, intruding or appearing in the consciousness you are normally operating in.

The events you are aware of are only the activities of your higher-dimensional self -- that is, your mental activities -- that happen to enter your waking consciousness and are captured by it, and you then treat them as events that have occurred. In fact they occur in a higher dimension; they are merely captured by you in the three-dimensional world.

In the dream state and at the bottom layers of waking consciousness, you are quite aware of the other portions of these events.

In dreams it is your inner self that operates, and when awake it is the bottom layer of consciousness -- at these two levels, you are quite aware of the other portions of these events. The event you are now aware of is only that small part of an activity occurring in the larger reality that you have intuited or perceived; in fact the whole activity is very large. But when you are asleep, when you are dreaming, or in the deepest unconscious part of your waking consciousness, it knows the whole event -- not just the little bit shown to you in the three-dimensional world.

That night, due to atmospheric influences, conditions were somewhat unstable, with thunder and lightning. Seth said the session was still held, but because such weather placed extra pressure on Ruburt -- Jane's condition fluctuated -- the session was relatively short.

Visits from Other Realities

He said that the other kinds of existence and reality just described, that is, those other existences and realities beyond our three-dimensional world, coexist with our present three-dimensional reality. And in the waking state, we are unaware of them. Actually, in dreams, we are often able to perceive these other conditions, but you often pull them into your own dream—this dream is a "dream" in quotation marks, not the real dream, but the dream you have interpreted, or the dream you have translated. In that kind of situation, when you wake up, you basically have very little clear memory of it.

He said, likewise, in life, you live together with so-called ghosts and apparitions; we often live together with them. Earlier, in Chapter 9, he said that at that point he would not discuss ghosts, but would bring them up later, so in this part he begins to specifically discuss ghosts.

What kind of thing is a ghost? He said, and on this point, the fact that we live together with ghosts means that to others, you yourself also look like an apparition. Especially when you are sleeping, when in the sleep state you send out your own intense thought-form images, or even when you unconsciously drift out of your body, at that time, to others, you are that ghost, you are that apparition. Remember, here one must add the word "unconscious"—unconsciously drifting out of the body, this is the key point. Conscious departure is called normal out-of-body experience; unconsciously drifting out of the body is different. As for the thought-form images mentioned earlier, he said in the previous session that your thoughts can form an image.

He said, although there are as many kinds of ghosts and apparitions as there are kinds of people, they are like us in that some are very alert to their surroundings, circumstances, and the state around them, while some are not alert. Ghosts also come in many kinds; some do not know what their present state is doing, while some do know what their present state is about. But whether in terms of personality or form, they are not completely focused on physical reality—whether in their personality or in their form, they do not place their focus entirely on this three-dimensional world; they focus only partially. This is their greatest difference, meaning the greatest difference between ghosts and people. People place all their focus and attention on physical reality; whether in our personality or in our form, we are all focused on physical reality, so the greatest difference between us and ghosts lies here.

The Definition of Ghosts: Surviving Personalities

He says that some ghosts are surviving people. Note something here: there is a flaw in the translation. This "person" should actually be "personality." I checked the original text, and it should be "personality," not "person." The translation of "surviving" is also not very good. It should be translated as "residual" or "lingering," not "surviving," because "surviving" gives the impression of something alive. The original word is "survival," and translating it as "still living" is not ideal. It should be understood as a residual or lingering personality.

So ghosts are some lingering or residual personalities — his lingering, deeply anxious, projected thought-form images. This is his preliminary definition of ghosts: ghosts are certain personalities. This residual personality might be an unconscious part of your personality during sleep, or it might be a personality after death, with a part of it still remaining in the state of the human world — that is, the anxiety lingering on certain specific matters in the human world. So this kind of personality is called a residual personality. It is not a complete personality; it is a certain state of a personality.

Below, he gives an example, saying that the behavior ghosts exhibit is very similar to the compulsive behavior you often see in daily experience. It is like a distraught woman — we often see some people repeating a certain behavior, such as constantly washing their hands, or constantly checking whether they have their keys, or constantly opening their phones to look, or never feeling at ease about whether the door is locked and needing to go back to check. Some people with this kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder even go back during work to check whether the door is actually locked.

He says this is very similar, and the mechanism is the same. Remember, he is not saying that this hand-washing woman will form a thought-form and become a ghost. No. He is using this woman as an analogy for that residual personality. That personality is also in a state of deep anxiety, and it does not know it itself — just as the hand-washing person does not feel that there is anything wrong with herself, that mentally anxious personality also cannot control itself. This deep anxiety, just like your constant hand-washing, through the same mechanism, will cause the ghost to return again and again to the same location. In such cases, that kind of behavior is usually formed by repetitive actions.

So sometimes some of us have the ability to see ghosts, and some people have the ability of yin-yang eyes and can see ghosts. When they see ghosts, they find that ghosts often perform repetitive actions. We often say that a house is haunted, and that ghost always does the same thing. What he means is that these ghosts, because they are caused by deep anxiety, can also always return to the same location. Because their core is a thought-form image, projected by deep anxiety, and because this residual personality lingers and does not leave — remember this, lingering and not leaving is the key point — they will often appear repeatedly at the same location, performing a repetitive action, just like what he described with people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

He says that for various reasons — the reasons are different for each person; it should be various reasons. He often translates "reasons" as "excuses," which is not good. Such a personality, that residual personality, that personality trapped in deep anxiety, has not yet learned to digest and absorb its own experience, so it becomes anxious.

Characteristics of Ghosts: Consciousness Not Present

The characteristics of this kind of ghost are the same as those of the person who is troubled. This troubled person, the obsessive-compulsive person, is himself troubled by himself, and he also troubles others. He said it is basically the same, although there are some exceptions. Where are they the same? The characteristics of ghosts and the characteristics of obsessive-compulsive people are that their entire consciousness is not present; this is their characteristic. They are often absent-minded—if his mind were present, he would know he had already washed his hands and he would not need to wash them again; yet after washing his hands he thinks he did not wash them. He clearly locked the door with his key, but he thinks he did not lock it, he forgot, so he comes back to look again and lock it once more. The characteristic of this kind of obsessive-compulsive person is that their entire consciousness is not present; only one part of their consciousness is here, and one part is not here.

It is said that this personality itself seems to be having a nightmare, like a series of dreams repeated over and over again. And then in the dream, he returns to the physical environment. This personality itself is sound, safe, and complete; it is only that a certain part of it has been projected into the three-dimensional world, or has been released into the three-dimensional world, that thought-form image going to solve unresolved problems, and in this way releasing energy. The purpose of his going back is that there are some problems not yet solved; some anxieties in his heart, some things, some problems not yet solved, so he will go back. If you simply solve the problems for him, he will not come back again. It is that simple.

They themselves are quite harmless; you must remember this. Ghosts are nothing to be afraid of; they have no thought of harming you at all. Just regard them as images projected by an anxious person. It is only that we humans have given some interpretations to their behavior; we have given some interpretations to their behavior, saying that ghosts will do such and such, and so we are afraid of them.

You Are Also a Ghost in Other Realities

He said that in living situations, you may also occasionally appear as a ghost in other levels of reality. Remember, this must be occasional, not frequent. Not on the physical level—on the physical level we always appear in human form, never in ghost form. But on other levels of reality, in dimensions other than our own, we will appear as ghosts, and we will become ghosts again.

There, in that dimension, your false image—that is, the image you project outward, which is the image of your mind's thoughts, and it is called a false image—also draws some commentary. People make remarks about you, and it becomes the basis for many myths, while you remain completely unaware. Sometimes in myths, many people say they saw so-and-so, saw a bodhisattva manifest, or saw so-and-so do such-and-such. Actually, sometimes what they saw might be a ghost of yours, but this is not in our three-dimensional world; it is in other dimensional spaces. You just remain unaware of it, and you become the myth in other people's mouths. What he said is quite funny. This happens occasionally, because you have crossed over into that dimension.

He said he is speaking generally now, not digging into specifics. Once again, in these exceptions, memory still remains. So generally speaking, ghosts and apparitions are no more aware of the impression they make on others than you are when you are a ghost. What does that mean? It means that those ghosts and apparitions—when someone says they saw a ghost and felt terrified—the ghost or apparition itself is not aware of it. That is, when you are a ghost, when you go to another reality and act as a ghost, you do not know that you went to be a ghost, and you do not know that you exist as an apparition. Just as when a ghost comes to our reality, it does not know how others perceive it. And when you appear as a ghost, you appear quite unconsciously in a very unfamiliar world. You appear in that completely unfamiliar world, just as a ghost coming into this three-dimensional world is also unfamiliar with it.

He said that your thoughts, emotions, and desires unite to create images that possess energy and are composed of energy, and it will display itself in as many ways as possible—this "it" refers to that image. You only recognize the concrete physical body, and as this book mentioned earlier, you unknowingly send out your own false images. We often unknowingly send out the images of our mind's thoughts. This is still a different matter from spirit travel. Soul out-of-body and projection are far more complex, whereas you unknowingly send out your false images, send out the images of your mind's thoughts—this happens constantly, anytime and anywhere, and is completely different from out-of-body experience.

The World That Appears in Spirit Form

He said, when you appear in spirit form, that is, in the way your soul leaves the body, the realities you enter are far more advanced than the human world. Here he states a fact: when we arrive in a higher dimensional space, that level is higher and far more advanced than our present three-dimensional world. He said you are often recognized because you have lost your way -- when you arrive in that place, in an unfamiliar world, you often lose your bearings, just like a person who arrives in a big city and often cannot find his way. When you cannot find your way, you are recognized; others discover that you have come out of the body as a soul, that you do not live in their world, that you have merely come out of the three-dimensional world and entered into their world. But after entering that reality, you often cannot find your bearings either; you do not know what you are supposed to do; your face is full of confusion; you do not know how to manipulate your own body, nor do you know the local customs and ways.

But whether or not you have a physical body, if you have feelings and emotions, then there will be a form. When you have a physical body, you will have emotions, desires, and thoughts, and from these a form is projected. This physical form itself will also project other false images of its own, its own thought-forms. These are not cases of the soul leaving the body; these have nothing to do with the soul leaving the body. But when you truly possess the ability to leave the body as a soul, and after your spirit body leaves the body and departs from three-dimensional reality and enters a higher dimension, then you have entered another, higher level, one that is indeed more advanced than the earth, more advanced than the world you live in, but when you enter it you often cannot find your bearings and are discovered, because you do not know the local customs and habits. With this phenomenon he is still explaining the meaning of ghosts -- when the soul leaves the body, in that place you are regarded by others as a ghost.

He said, whether or not you have a physical body, it has nothing to do with whether a person has a physical body; as long as you have emotions, feelings, and thoughts, you will have a form, and they will produce a reality. If you think very intensely about a certain thing, then it will appear somewhere. So how does a ghost come about? A ghost is, at certain times, some remnant personality, a fragment of that personality; that kind of intensely anxious mentality, that obsessive-compulsive mentality, will cause him to fixate on a particular point in time, on a particular matter, and he will return to it again and again.

Secondary Constructions and Primary Constructions

He said that if you strongly desire to be in another location, then an apparition of you will be projected to that place -- he already discussed this issue in earlier chapters. Whether or not it is perceived by anyone, whether or not you are aware of it, or whether your consciousness is within it or has followed along, the same applies. Just as we can project an image of ourselves outward, the same applies to personalities who have left our physical system, that is, those who have already left this world, or those still living within it. We who are alive can project an image outward, and those personalities who have died will also project an image outward; the image he projects is, to you, a ghost -- if you can perceive his existence.

All such images are called secondary constructions, and he gave them another term. Why are they called secondary constructions? Because generally speaking, the full consciousness of the personality is not within them; only a portion of the personality's consciousness is in there, or a very small fragment of consciousness is in there, but the entire consciousness is not in there. They are automatic projections -- he is not trying to do anything, no, he just automatically goes there. The moment that personality thinks of the matter, the matter that has been on his mind and never resolved -- for example, he is especially worried about his loved ones, or worried about some unresolved matter -- that intense anxiety carries his beliefs and projects, producing a ghostly image in that place.

Relative to this secondary construction, in a primary construction, a consciousness usually takes on an image while fully aware and awake, and it is not his innate one. What is his innate image? His innate image is the image of that consciousness itself, but that consciousness itself has no image; he has to choose one for himself. According to different realities and different positions, for example, in physical reality he must choose a physical body image, and in nonphysical reality he must choose another kind of image. If he wants to meet old colleagues, he must choose an image familiar to those old colleagues to appear; if he wants to meet elementary school classmates, he must choose his elementary school image to meet them. He consciously projects himself outward, often into another level of reality. Even this work is quite complex.

Projecting a primary construction is far more complex than projecting a secondary construction; he must consciously choose an image and carry consciousness along with it, so this is considerably more complex than the other. Therefore it is rarely done for the purpose of communication -- there are other far easier methods, so there is no need to go to such great lengths. He said I have to some extent explained the method of constructing an image from an available energy field, which is the method he mentioned earlier regarding the points of intersection, the way of constructing a reality from thoughts, beliefs, and your desires; he discussed this in Chapter 5, but he did not elaborate on it.

How Ghosts Communicate with Us

He said, you only perceive your own constructions. Therefore, if a ghost wants to contact you, he can do so through telepathy. If you want to communicate, you yourself can also construct a corresponding image, something ghost-like. Or, at the same time as his telepathic communication with you, he can also send you a thought-image -- and this thought-image appears to you as a ghost.

The thought-image he sends you, he can also choose not to send. Some ghosts do not give you a thought-image; without an image, they just give you some suggestions, as if there is a person in your mind speaking to you, or as if you can hear certain sounds -- that is also another ghost communicating with you. But sometimes he will also send you a thought-image, and if you are also on that level, you can see it.

He said, the room you are in now is full of thought-images that you do not perceive. Let me say it again: right now you are just as much a ghost-like phenomenon as you will be after death; you are simply unaware of this fact. This statement of his is very interesting: we who are alive now are the same as we will be after death -- we all exist like ghosts. Why does he say this? Because we are all formed by our thoughts, consciousness, and beliefs; it is just that in the three-dimensional world we form a physical image, and in other dimensional worlds we form other images. Just as when a ghost returns to our physical world, he also forms a ghostly image. The point of this example is that, from this angle, we are all the same -- we are simply unaware of it.

Clues Around You

He says, you ignore certain changes in temperature and disturbances in the air, thinking they are your imagination. Actually, he says, this is an indication of thought-form images. We often say, novels often write, movies often portray, that when a ghost appears, you feel a chilling wind, a gloomy, eerie feeling, and the temperature feels very cold. Actually, the temperature does have subtle changes, and the air also changes. He says you often cast aside the telepathic communication that accompanies such images. When someone comes to deliver a message to you, the air around you will undergo some changes, and the temperature will also change, subtle changes, but you actually do not pay attention to them, do not feel them, and you disregard all the inner clues.

These clues point out that other realities are also a very effective existence, coexisting with your own reality. The two of you are together, existing in the same place, just in different realities, so you say the air and temperature around you will change. When you are in one existence, you are surrounded by invisible yet effective evidence, namely those disturbances in the surrounding air and changes in temperature.

The words life and death themselves limit your understanding, because having life and having death limits your understanding, erecting barriers where originally there were none.

Visits from Deceased Friends and Relatives

He said that some friends and relatives who have already passed away will really come to visit you. You must remember this: they really do come to visit you. From the level of reality where they are — the reality beyond the three-dimensional world they were in — they project into our three-dimensional world. But generally speaking, you cannot perceive their forms. So many people say they can feel a recently deceased relative or friend appear vividly in the room, while others say they cannot see anything at all.

But they are no more ghostlike or more dead than you are when you project into their reality — for example, when you are asleep, you also go to visit them in dreams. In other words, they are just as real, just as alive. When you are dreaming, when you go into your dreams to see those deceased relatives and friends, is the you in the dream not very real and alive? Yet at that time you have already entered their reality. That dream is no longer your three-dimensional reality; it is their reality. When you go into their reality, are you not also alive? You have not died. You are not like a ghost, like a zombie in a movie hopping around. You are alive, talking and laughing. So you are just as alive in that reality, and when those friends and relatives come back to see you, they are just as alive when they come into your reality, just as alive as you are when you go into that reality in your dreams.

But generally speaking, on those occasions, they can perceive you, while you in the three-dimensional world cannot perceive them. Is that not interesting? He said you often forget that these people are at various stages of development. Some of them have a deeper connection with the physical system than others — by "these people" he means the complete personality or soul that has already died. This personality has different stages, with varying levels of development. Some people have a very strong connection with the physical world, while others do not have such a strong connection.

In our terms, whether they will come to visit you has little to do with how long they have been dead, but rather with the intensity of the relationship between you. So you must understand: if you dream of or encounter some of these people, it is not that they have a stronger ability to return right after death, or that you can see them more clearly then. It has nothing to do with the time since death; it has to do with the intensity of the emotion and the relationship between you and that person.

He said, however, as mentioned earlier, in the sleep state you can help the newly dead. You can serve as a guide. In the sleeping state you can help those who have just died, complete strangers, to adapt to the after-death situation. Although when you wake up in the morning you will not know about these things. Therefore other people, strangers, may communicate with you while you are asleep, and may even guide you during various periods of your life. You can go in your sleep to help those who have just died, serving as a guide, receiving them. They do not know you, and you do not know them either. Likewise, while you are asleep there are also some people you do not know, who will guide you and help you during various periods of your life. Many people call these what — spirit guides. That is what this means.

When I explain your life to you — the life of this three-dimensional world you are familiar with — it is already no simple matter. But discussing with you these complex events that you are unaware of — things like ghosts, things you cannot see or touch — is even more extremely difficult. That is certain. We still cannot fully understand or clearly explain the matters of the living, and now he is trying to explain the matters of ghosts to you, which is even harder to explain clearly.

Key Points of This Chapter

The key point he wants to make in this chapter is this: you are already quite familiar with all the situations you will encounter after death, so you need not be afraid. Moreover, within certain ranges of your being, you have already become consciously aware of this knowledge — for example, when you have an out-of-body experience, you know it; for example, in certain states of sleep, you know it.

So the whole of Chapter Ten is saying: do not be afraid of death, because the situations you will encounter after death are also encountered while you are alive. He gives many examples, including ghosts, including dreaming, and so on.

注释与核实

1. This claim could not be verified. ↩

2. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Eightfold Path" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eightfold-Path) ↩

3. According to Mike's original words, it was "the great battle between Moses and Allah"; upon verification, it should be "There is no 'great battle between Moses and Allah' in the Quran—Moses (Musa) is precisely the prophet and messenger sent by Allah, and the one he opposed was the Pharaoh of Egypt." (Source: Wikipedia, "Moses in Islam," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_in_Islam) ↩

4. Source: Electronic Information Industry Network, "Jack Ma: Because You Believe, You See—Only Thinking Without Boundaries Has a Future" (2017) (http://m.cena.com.cn/ai/20170910/89126.html) ↩

5. Source: Wikisource, "Book of Rites: Questions about Mourning" (https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/%E7%A6%AE%E8%A8%98/%E5%95%8F%E5%96%AA) ↩