Mike's commentary · Seth Speaks, Chapter 12

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

Introduction

This chapter centers on interpersonal relationships across reincarnations. Seth explains that emotions and beliefs attract relationships and experiences of a similar kind; hatred can entangle a person with the object of their hatred for many lifetimes, and only genuine love and compassion can dissolve rigid ideas of good and evil. Families, villages, and other groups may reunite because of shared purposes or emotions, but relationships are not fixed repetitions. Reincarnation is a tool chosen by the individual according to need, with no predetermined rules; there is no need to trace past lives, because changing present thoughts and emotions can change the present and future lives.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Hatred attracts the experience that is hated, and may bind a person to the object of hatred for many lifetimes.
• Only genuine love and compassion can dissolve distorted concepts of good and evil, and love necessarily involves freedom.
• Groups such as families and villages may reunite across reincarnations because of shared purposes or emotions, but the relationships are not fixed repetitions.
• Reincarnation is a tool chosen by the individual according to need, with no predetermined rules.
• There is no need to trace past lives; changing present thoughts and emotions can change the present and future lives.

Main Text

Seth's Television Appearance

Seth used the content of two sessions to introduce this chapter. The first was Session 550, before which Seth mentioned that from September 7th to the 19th, Jane and Rob had done a radio and television promotional tour across seven cities to promote the book The Seth Material. The process itself was both stimulating and educational. The most interesting part was that Seth made an appearance on a Boston television station and was very well received -- while the host was interviewing Jane, Seth had already connected and communicated with Jane. Jane went on television in a trance state and gave a live demonstration to the audience on TV.

You can imagine, at that time, people were hearing for the first time that such a thing existed, that such material of spiritual information had come out, and the content and information were extremely rich. Many people who read the book were astonished, saying that for one person to understand the truth of the world to this degree, it absolutely could not have been written by an ordinary individual or human being. So they were very curious about her and also very approving. The promotional tour they did at that time was somewhat like the promotional tours after a movie release or book signing events for a new book today.

There was one episode I can't remember clearly, because I read about it many years ago. Once on television, Seth directly confronted the host. That host was very famous, and before the program began he said a few words to the audience, introducing himself and what the program was. The implication was: I am such a well-known host, and today they actually have me interviewing a channeling lady? He felt somewhat that he didn't know how the program director had arranged this, actually having him interview such a psychic. Because in most people's view, psychics were about the same as village shamans and people who performed all sorts of strange magic tricks -- somewhat disreputable, not a proper profession, and even less accepted by mainstream media. And he was a big name in mainstream media, so he felt this was beneath his status and he was quite aggrieved.

The interview with Jane had barely gone on for a few sentences when Seth took over Jane's body and began speaking through Jane's mouth, saying to the host: Your kind of perspective is extremely shallow. For things you don't understand and don't approve of, there is no need to denigrate them or slander them, because your not understanding them does not mean these things don't exist. That host still maintained the condescending attitude of a well-known host, thinking this was just a Gypsy trick, something from the rural countryside, something that simply couldn't be presented in polite society -- how could you appear on my program?

As a result, Seth was completely unsparing and directly gave that person a thorough dressing-down. He said: Your current problem, why do you see things this way? It's because there are problems in your family. Your current family situation is such and such, and your views are because of such and such problems. Like telepathy, he laid out the man's entire inner state with complete clarity. That person's face changed color on the spot -- when someone can speak aloud what you are thinking in your heart, that feeling is extremely shocking. He was immediately put in an awkward position, and basically completely changed his view, coming to believe that there really are many mysterious or unknown things that do indeed exist. Because he didn't know Jane at all, and he didn't know that Seth would use Jane's mouth to speak out his inner psychological activities, even some things he himself didn't know.

In the sixties and seventies, Jane and Rob were very popular in the media. Books were published one after another, and they frequently participated in such activities. There was very little video footage at the time; there are some on YouTube but not many, all black-and-white television recordings from the seventies. You can see Seth giving sessions, interviews with Jane and Rob, with the content of a session recorded and edited for broadcast as a special program on television. If you're interested, you can go search for these; they are all evidence that Seth truly existed. People who read the Seth books don't doubt this matter, but many people who challenge the Seth material will challenge it, and this provides some very interesting examples.

Breaking Free from Self-Imposed Limitations

Seth said that after returning home, two Seth sessions were held to answer questions and deal with other matters that had arisen from the trip. These sessions are not related to the content of this book, so they were not included in the book. This session jumps directly to Session 550. Sue brought a list of questions; they had a list of questions they wanted to ask Seth, because there is a chapter in this book specifically devoted to asking Seth questions, so they were collecting and organizing questions. Seth himself announced that the title of the next chapter would be Reincarnational Relationships -- in fact, the title of each chapter was determined by Seth himself, not summarized by Rob.

Now let's look at the main text.

Session 550

In all of your, remember, all of your reincarnational existences, you have been expanding your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions, your values. You have broken free of self-imposed limitations.

What does it mean to break free of self-imposed limitations? When we reincarnate, we roughly design a blueprint for our life, some limitations we set for ourselves. The general direction of development, the trajectory, the life goals and values to be achieved, all of these are roughly planned out. But he says you have broken free of them -- meaning we are an open script, an open performance. There is a general script, because without a script you could not just perform randomly; and without a script, those actors who play opposite you -- you cannot just grab a passerby on the street and make them an actor, you have to coordinate well with each other. But within this general script, you can completely break free of these self-imposed limitations. When you break free of these limitations, you are expanding your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions, and your values.

And as you learn to break free of narrow concepts and dogmas, your spirit grows.

This is crucial. Throughout your lifetimes, you are constantly casting off, breaking free of these narrow concepts and dogmatic ideas. Only by breaking free of these can you grow spiritually.

When Seth first began transmitting the material to Jane and Rob in the early sessions, he talked about this issue: the main shackle that hinders your progress and development is your dogmatic, unchanging way of thinking. This is what blocks your development. So in our spiritual learning and development, we must adopt an open and enlightened attitude. Let any thought, anything at all, come in, give it a chance to express itself and show what it can do. Do not say, "I am studying Seth today, so I reject all other spiritual practices, saying this one is no good and that one is no good, Seth's material is the best" -- it is not like that. Nor can you say, "I believe in Buddhism, so I will not look at any other religion." A good spiritual practice is to maintain complete openness of mind and spirit, maintain sufficient flexibility, and then apply your own analysis, study, and judgment. Do not reject things from the very start: "I will not listen, I will not look, those are all cults, heresies, things of demons and devils." All of these block your development. You can choose not to accept them, but then your reincarnations will take longer. One day you will have to accept these things, one day you will have to open up your spiritual world, it is just that the time will be longer.

Rigid Concepts Are Like a Leash

But the speed of your learning is entirely up to you. Why? Because this narrow, dogmatic, rigid view of good and evil will hinder you.

He points out: a rigid, dogmatic, rigid view of good and evil will hinder us, depending on the speed of our progress. The previous section of this chapter already discussed that good and evil will drag you down when it comes to the timing of your reincarnational choices. Later he will also say that it does not only drag you down at that time. If you have not changed this concept, if you do not have an open way of thinking, if you do not have a correct understanding of good and evil, then in all your future lives you will still revolve around this theme, and you will remain entangled in this matter.

If you do not choose spiritual and psychic flexibility.

What does flexibility mean? It does not mean blindly following, listening to everything and believing everything. That is not flexibility. Flexibility is being open. You can accept all kinds of knowledge, all kinds of viewpoints, all kinds of theories, all kinds of schools of thought coming in, and then you do your own analysis and judgment. That is called flexibility.

Overly narrow questions about the nature of existence may follow you for several lifetimes.

Regarding the nature of existence, that is, where exactly the meaning and essence of each reincarnational life lies. If you do not understand, if you do not know that your soul comes into this world precisely to create and to experience—not to focus on worldly fame, fortune, reputation, or status, but to truly experience and create, to paint the final glorious picture on the soul level, rather than lavishing heavy ink and rich color on some small puzzle piece in the human world—then this overly narrow concept may follow you for several lifetimes, and you will not be able to shake it off across several reincarnations.

These rigid concepts can indeed be like a leash on a dog, forcing you to go around in a very small circle like a bound puppy.

This is a very vivid image. Although you have reincarnated quite a few times, your thoughts and consciousness have never progressed. You are going around and around, circling back and forth. This narrow concept is like a leash on a dog, firmly tying you to going around in a very small circle.

In such a case, perhaps within one group of lives, you will find yourself constantly at war with the concepts of good and evil.

In every single life you are filled with righteous hatred of evil, forever fighting against the forces of evil, never stopping, regarding yourself as the very embodiment of justice. Within this group of lives, this series of lives, you are doing this very thing.

Going around in a circle of confusion, hesitation, and anxiety.

This chapter mainly discusses interpersonal relationships. Good and evil were already discussed in the previous chapter, and here he turns to interpersonal relationships.

Because like attracts like, you and your friends and acquaintances will all be concerned with the same issues.

Like attracts like—foreigners also have this saying. If you are a person filled with righteous hatred of evil, you will naturally attract people who are filled with righteous hatred of evil. Your friends and relatives will all gather around you, and you will all be concerned with the same issues.

Therefore I tell you once again: many of your concepts of good and evil are extremely distorted.

He uses very strong words: you have blocked off all your understanding of the nature of reality. That is why breaking through this barrier of good and evil is so important—if the barrier of good and evil is not removed, if the barrier of cause and effect is not removed, if the barrier of good and bad is not removed, if this discriminating mind, this dualism, is not removed, it is very hard for you to make progress. To put it more bluntly, you keep going around in the circle of ordinary mortals, because your discriminating mind is too strong. Every day you are filled with righteous hatred of evil, hating this society, hating this world, hating all kinds of unfair things. Your hatred is the core, and for one life or several lives you keep going around for this very reason. This is a hurdle that is very hard to cross.

Whether you are rich or poor, whatever your state, it is the same. When you have no money, you hate the rich. Once you have money, you will look down on the poor and dislike them, saying these people are idle, do not do honest work, and do not strive to improve themselves, which is why they ended up like this. Look at me, I work so hard and plan my life so clearly, so of course I have money. When you are poor, you will hate the rich, saying life is unfair, I did not have those conditions, and if you gave me the same conditions I would do better than him. You have a whole pile of reasons to hate. If you are in the middle class, you will still hate—you look down on those below you and hate those above you. There is a Chinese saying: "hate those who have, despise those who have not." All kinds of traditional concepts will come out.

If you form a sense of guilt in your mind, then it is a reality to you.

If you form a sense of guilt about something, or hate something, then that sense of guilt or that hatred is a reality, truly existing. You must resolve it. But many of you form a sense of guilt for insufficient reasons—whether from society, religion, family members, or people around you, they will all give you this sense of guilt: you are not qualified as a parent, you have not fulfilled filial piety as a child, you have not done your job well as an employee, you have not turned your employees into millionaires as a boss. It gives you a whole series of things to make you feel guilty, and basically none of this guilt is necessary. Ninety-nine point nine percent of guilt is self-imposed. Regarding what true guilt is, he will explain later.

You saddle yourselves with guilt without reason.

You put the saddle on yourself, and then put on the bit, tying yourself down completely. Within the dimension of your actions, there seem to be all kinds of absurd sins, endless and infinite. This is a sin, that is a sin, sins everywhere.

Let me tell you: those who hate one evil will only create another evil.

For example, you hate a certain type of person. Many people use their family of origin to excuse themselves, feeling that their childhood was very unhappy, that their parents were too strict or too neglectful, or overly indulgent. Some people hate their parents—do not assume that everyone loves their parents. For example, if the parents divorced when the child was very young, and the child grew up in a single-parent family, or the parents remarried, then the child may suddenly hate four people at once: he hates the parent who divorced, and he also hates the one who raised him (for example, a single mother will teach him that he should hate that man), and then the mother finds a stepfather, and he presupposes that the stepfather will definitely treat him badly, so he hates the stepfather, and then he starts hating the mother for not being good only to him. Suppose he stays in contact with his biological father, and the father has a new family. Whether or not the stepmother treats him well, he assumes she does not. So he hates all four people at once.

But the hatred will not stop there. He will hate other parents in the world—when he sees other parents doing similar things, or any parents who are divorced, that hatred in his heart that cannot be described in words comes out. He then starts hating all parents: you are not divorced now, but there is no guarantee you will not divorce in the future; you are loving now, but what if you divorce someday. This hatred becomes something that expands and magnifies infinitely.

So you understand: the cause does not lie in the event itself, but in the root within the heart.

From within your reference points, it is often very difficult for us to perceive that all events are creativity aimed at achievement.

It is very difficult for us to perceive: all events are meant to achieve creativity, or to stimulate your creativity, or to provide conditions for your creativity. If you think this way, you will not hate these events. Many children from single-parent families are also very outstanding. Confucius, Mencius, and many great figures came from single-parent families¹. Steve Jobs was not from a single-parent family; he was an abandoned infant², abandoned by his parents from birth and adopted. Many, many people had very unhappy childhoods. You cannot say that children from single-parent families will definitely be unhappy in the future. You need to experience the current events and the current state because you need to experience through them.

Do not think that these things happened to you and therefore resent them. Think from another angle: these things happened to me precisely because they were prepared for me. A great deal of effort was spent, many extras were arranged, the right time, place, and people were arranged, to put on such a play, precisely to make me accomplished, to elevate me, to help me, to break through the limitations of my thinking, to give me greater creativity. When you think that these things all happened for you and were prepared for you, what you hold is a heart of gratitude and appreciation, not "Damn, how did this happen to me, how did I get this illness, how was I born into such a family." If it is the latter mindset, you will feel that all bad things are crashing down on you. Think from another angle: how much effort went into arranging such a setup for you, to make you accomplished. Mencius says: when Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on a person, it will first frustrate their spirit and will, exhaust their muscles and bones, and starve their body³—are these things not all for the sake of making you accomplished? Otherwise how could you be worthy of such a great responsibility? If you think this way, that hatred is gone.

Or trust the spontaneous creativity within your own nature.

We inherently have spontaneous creativity in our nature. We often blurt out things, spontaneously create things, and sometimes when we look back we ourselves find it amazing. But it is very difficult for us to perceive it. We can neither perceive that these events happen for the purpose of achieving creativity, nor believe that our own nature contains spontaneous creative ability.

Turn the Other Cheek

In your system, killing is obviously a moral sin.

Not only a moral sin, but also a criminal offense punishable by law. But in order to punish the crime, a murderer pays with his life -- putting another person to death in order to punish the murderer only compounds the original error. To compound an error in order to correct an error, that is an ancient, deep-rooted idea: if you owe a debt, pay it back; if you take a life, pay with your life. That is why they do not understand the widespread abolition of the death penalty in Western societies. In fact, sentencing someone to death does not correct the error; it compounds the error.

There was a man who established a church, and if you want, you could say he put it in more civilized terms. There was a famous figure who once said...

This is something Jesus said, and he said it with irony. Jesus said in the Bible: if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also⁴. Here the left and right are reversed, but the meaning is the same; left or right does not matter.

But the original meaning of that statement should be understood.

You have to understand its original meaning; you cannot just understand the surface meaning. The reason you should offer him the other cheek is that you have realized this fact: the person who strikes you is only striking himself. If you firmly believe this in your heart, then go ahead and offer him your cheek -- on the surface he appears to be striking you, but in fact he is striking himself. When you have this realization, you are free, and that response is an appropriate, normal response.

But if you do not have this understanding, and you resentfully offer him the other cheek; or if you do it out of a kind of sanctimonious sense of superiority, saying, "I am more cultivated than you, of higher quality; I am a spiritual practitioner, my level is not on the same plane as yours, you have no idea what you are doing" -- in that state, offering him the other cheek is not appropriate. You have not realized the core of the issue; instead you are acting on moral coercion or resentment.

In other words, you have to let him strike you and feel nothing at all. You cannot have this feeling: "I let you strike me, look, you are striking yourself, go ahead, strike away, just let you strike." That kind of thinking is still not right; there is still dissatisfaction and resentment in your heart. What state do you have to reach? The state where being struck is the same as not being struck, as if it never happened. Most people cannot reach this state. If you cannot reach it, and you think, "You striking me is the same as striking yourself, so go ahead and strike," most people cannot do that either. And if you still cannot reach it? Then do not let him strike you -- strike back. That is a very normal, very instinctive response.

Never morally coerce yourself. Many people become foolish in their practice, become dull and wooden. They say the Bible says so, the Buddha said so: if you hit me, I will let you hit me; if you curse me, I will not answer back; if you strike me, I will not strike back. But their level has not been reached -- when your level has not been reached, you cannot adopt this approach; you cannot let him strike you; you have to fight back, resist. If your level has been reached, then of course that is the state, no problem. But when your level has not been reached, you cannot let him strike you while holding resentment; that is exactly counterproductive. Your behavior must be consistent with your level, your thinking, and your cognition.

I once told a parable from the Buddhist scriptures, though I cannot remember which one. Shakyamuni came to a village, and in the village there was a vicious python⁵ that preyed on people and did all kinds of evil, and the villagers were terrified of it. It happened that Shakyamuni was traveling through and arrived at this place, and the villagers begged him for help. Shakyamuni, following the principle of delivering all sentient beings -- a python is also a living being -- went to deliver this python, reasoning with it for a long time about being kind to others and compassionate, and also gave it some precepts for practice, such as no longer killing. The python took it to heart. After Shakyamuni left, this python became a good python, firmly believing in the teachings.

A few years later, Shakyamuni returned to this village, and before he even entered he saw a crowd of people gathered around something, making a commotion. He went over and saw the giant python lying in the middle, barely alive, while children and adults around it were hitting it with bricks and stones, beating it until it was covered in wounds. Shakyamuni pushed the villagers aside and asked the python, "How did your practice lead to this?" The python said, "Did you not teach me to be compassionate and not to kill? I stopped provoking the villagers and went up into the mountains to practice. But then the villagers discovered that I did not attack them, so they slowly came closer, and closer still, and when they found I still did not harm them, they started throwing pebbles, and when they found I did not get angry, they started throwing rocks... step by step, that is how I ended up where I am today. Following your teaching, my life is almost gone -- how am I supposed to practice?"

Shakyamuni heard this and burst out laughing, saying, "I told you to go practice, but I never said that a practitioner is born to be bullied by others. It is enough that you do not invade others or harm them, but you also cannot allow others to invade you or bully you." The python said, "Why did you not say so earlier? If you had, I would not have had to endure all these years of beatings; I was nearly beaten to death."

This story tells us: whether in spiritual practice or in learning anything, do not learn it rigidly, do not learn it merely in form. If your level has not been reached, do not do things that your level has not reached; only do things that correspond to your level. What you think, what you truly react with, is the outward response of your present spiritual state; just respond truthfully. You can improve step by step: the first time someone strikes your left cheek, you directly strike back at his right cheek -- that is your instinctive reaction, so just react. Later you look back and see that it was not right; you should have reasoned with him; if you can use words, do not use fists -- so next time try reasoning and see whether it works. Slowly explore and improve through practice; you cannot reach the master's level in one step.

Shakyamuni also once fed himself to a tiger⁶ -- in one of his other reincarnated lives, he saw a tiger in the snow with several cubs, having had nothing to eat for many days, about to starve to death. He said nothing, simply closed his eyes and jumped off a cliff, landing beside the tiger, and the tiger family ate him and was saved. Can you do such a thing? If you cannot, then do not do it. Can you go to the zoo and jump down from the lion and tiger mountain, saying, "Tigers, come and eat me"? Your level improves when you are alive, genuinely and truly improving, not through this kind of formal thing, not through the method of letting others strike your left cheek and offering them the right.

What is the root and what is the branch? The root is your state of mind; only when the beliefs in your heart change will there be corresponding action. Do not practice yourself into foolishness, like that giant python, and get beaten to death by others.

The Focusing Quality of Attention Will Attract Those Qualities to You

All of this applies to your reincarnational relationships, and of course it is also extremely relevant to your present daily experience.

The elevation of your state of mind, your state of consciousness, your attitude toward resentment, your standards of good and evil -- all of these will be carried into your reincarnational relationships.

If you hate another person, that hate can bind you to that person for as many lives as you allow the hate to burn within you.

If someone slaps your face and you do not hate them, the matter is over. But if someone slaps your face and you offer the other cheek, yet inside you are consumed with hatred and indignation, then you will remember the grudge of that slap for a very long time.

In this life and in all lives to come, your attention is focused on those qualities.

Whichever qualities your attention is focused on, you will attract those qualities to yourself. This is a very important sentence -- be sure to underline it. If your attention is focused on hate, what you attract will all be hate; if your attention is focused on love, what you attract will all be love. The sooner you recognize this, the sooner you will be liberated.

If you are extremely concerned with the injustices you feel others have inflicted upon you, then you will attract more experiences of such injustice.

If you look at the world and see injustice everywhere -- the system is unjust, the institutions are unjust, everything is unjust -- then everything you see will be matters of injustice, and everything in your experience will also be injustice, and these experiences will in turn reinforce your beliefs. If this continues, your fixation on and attention to injustice will be reflected in the next life.

He says, however, that between lives there is time (with "time" in quotation marks) for understanding and contemplation. As discussed in the previous two chapters, there is a period of choice, or an intermediate zone, a transition period, where you can think, reflect, and examine.

But here is the problem. Many people think: I do not understand many things right now, but will I not understand them after I die? During that transition period there will be teachers to explain things to me, so will I not understand then? In this life I have a physical body and vested interests, so I cannot learn; the conditions do not allow it.

If you firmly believe this, and in this life you do not change your beliefs, always hoping to change them after death during the transition stage, will you? No.

Those who do not take advantage of this opportunity in this life will generally not do so when this life is over.

Your consciousness after death continues from your consciousness while alive. What you do not change while alive, you will not change when dead. You will not suddenly become smarter or suddenly attain a higher state just because you died. If you did not change while alive and only count on changing in the intermediate zone, generally you will not change there either.

Seth said in the previous chapter that the intermediate zone between lives is extremely important and of vital consequence -- it is an excellent opportunity for reflection and introspection, and it can turn the direction of the next reincarnation. But if you did not seize it while alive, and you do not seize it after death either, then the next reincarnation will very likely repeat the points from the previous life that you were most entangled with and most focused on. To put it bluntly, the next reincarnation will show no real progress from the last one; all the problems will come around again, and you will handle them the same way again, find the result is the same, and then go through it all once more.

You may say: I will change, and next time I will not make this mistake again -- no, you will not. Because your memory of the next time will be erased. For the sake of fairness in the game, it is impossible for you to come over with the memory of your previous life; everyone is like this. In many rebirth movies, the protagonist dies and comes back to life, returning to a certain point in time, and because they have the memory of the previous round, they are able to improve. But you do not have that memory. If the flexibility of your inner consciousness has not opened up, if your cognition has not opened up, if there has been no progress on the fundamental underlying things, then next time you will handle matters according to a fixed pattern of thinking.

Consciousness will expand, consciousness will also create, and consciousness will do its utmost to do so. But there is no force outside of you that compels you to understand and face these issues.

Your own consciousness has the ability to expand, innovate, change, and create, but there is nothing external forcing you to change it. If you do not want to change inwardly, do not expect some external force after death to make you change, and do not expect a teacher to force you to change. A true teacher is someone you go to with questions, and they tell you how things are. It is not the cramming, indoctrinating kind of "you should be like this, you should fix your flaws." Others telling you to change is useless; real change is internal, and you yourself must want to change. So if you do not change yourself, it will still be the same after several more lives.

"When this life is over, I will review my experiences and correct my path" -- this is useless. It is like a young person saying: when I am old and retired, I will do the things that interest me and develop the talents I have not developed now. They will not even do what they can do now, insisting on waiting until they are old to do it -- that is just an excuse. If you do not immediately change the things you can change right now, and say you will change in the next life, or change when conditions are right later -- when will conditions ever be right? If you do not want to change anything, do not want to face anything, do not want to resolve anything, and do not change today, then you will not change later either.

You are now setting the stage for your next life.

What you think and dwell on today, no matter what it is, will become the material that creates your next life. What you think and dwell on today will directly become the material for creating your next life, the foundation of your next life. Past, present, and future exist as one -- the future has already happened, and the past has not ended.

There is no magical incantation that can make you wise, nor is there anything that can fill you with understanding and compassion.

Remember, there is no such thing. It is not that after death someone says "Om Mani Padme Hum" to you and your mind suddenly flashes with insight, like Ikkyu-san with a "ding" and you become incomparably wise. Never. Once we study the path of cultivation, we know that all change in the world must be internal. The external is a projection of our inner world; if the inner does not change, the external will never change. The saying that appearance arises from the mind and circumstances are created by the mind -- this is the principle.

Your thoughts and daily experiences include those answers.

Your daily experiences and daily thoughts all contain the answers -- what kind of life you will have in your next life, you have already planned it all.

Any success in this life, any ability, has been earned through past experiential effort.

Any success you have now, any ability, has been earned through the effort of past experience. Then will your future next life also be determined by what you think, dwell on, experience, and attain in this life? Yes. They rightly belong to you, because you worked hard to develop them.

Look at the People Around You

If you look at the relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates around you, you can also see what kind of person you are. Because like attracts like, you are drawn to one another, due to very basic inner similarities.

This sentence is crucial, and for many people it may be a blow to the head. When you are not clear about what state you are in—what state your spiritual practice has reached, what level your career has achieved, what state your life is in—then just look at what kind of people are around you. Your perception of the people around you, for example your perception of this friend Zhang San, your recognition and evaluation of him—whether he is a successful person or an unsuccessful person, whether he is morally noble or petty and whiny—your view of him is actually your view of yourself. What kind of person you are, look at what kind of people are around you and it is clear at a glance; if others do not know what kind of person you are, they will know by looking at the people around you.

Who your friends are, who your relatives are, who your wife or husband is, who your boyfriend or girlfriend is, who your business partners are, who your colleagues are, who the people you frequently exchange ideas with are, who the people you associate with are—this is the answer.

We are not telling you to cling to people of fame, great knowledge, great wisdom, or high status; we are telling you to truly and clearly recognize where you stand, and only then go about changing. If you want to become an outstanding person, then make friends with outstanding people; this is the simplest and most direct method. If you want to become someone like Jack Ma, then go make friends with Jack Ma; if you want to become a scientist, then make friends with scientists. Think about it yourself: what kind of person you are, just look at what kind of people are around you—it is very clear.

If during a lifetime, during a day, during different times of the day, you spend five minutes checking your own thoughts, and do this several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have so far arranged for yourself in the next life.

Spend five minutes every day, and do this several times a month, reflecting on your own thoughts, and you will receive a correct impression of what kind of life you have arranged for yourself up to now for your next life. You can already know in this life what your next life will be like: think about your thoughts every day, and you will know what the next life will be like. Because your environment will change, your background will change, the era will change, the scenes will change, but your thoughts will not change. If your thoughts do not improve, you will still live your future life according to today's thoughts, and you will still encounter the same problems.

If you do not like what you find, you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and emotions.

If, after reflection, you find that you do not like this kind of life, do not like still living this kind of life in the next life, then you had better immediately begin changing your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions. This is the point of origin of all things, the core of your arising thoughts and intentions. A little later in this book you will see: you can do it, you can change.

There is no rule saying that in each life you will meet again the people you have known before, but because of the natural tendency of like attracting like, in fact it often happens that way.

He is talking about interpersonal relationships in reincarnation: whom you will meet next time. Because of the natural tendency of like attracting like, in your next life you will often meet similar people, or the same people who have also reincarnated and come back. So you should be careful.

The Family as a Gestalt of Psychic Activity

You are born into your present family for many reasons, but after death you may find that you have a stronger emotional relationship with someone from a past life.

Take a common real-life situation: if you are married but not truly compatible with your spouse -- the two of you are together in appearance only, your hearts have already drifted apart, you have no common language -- then after death, you may find that a past wife or husband is waiting for you. You were born into your present family -- for example, your current spouse, your current parents -- for a reason; you chose all of them yourself. But after death you will find that you have a stronger emotional relationship with someone from a particular other life; it is not the case that the people from your most recent life are necessarily the ones you are closest to emotionally.

Often, various groups -- such as military groups, church groups, hunting groups -- will have members who form kinship relationships in another life.

Your classmates, friends, the people you work out with at the gym, people in all kinds of groups -- quite possibly in another life they will become your relatives. What is the purpose of their becoming relatives? To resolve their old problems in a new way -- there were some problems in your previous relationships, and you switch to a different pattern, a different way, to resolve them.

The family must be viewed as a gestalt of psychic activity.

Every family has its own particular attributes, its own subjectivity. Ancient great families had family traditions, family rules, a sense of family mission -- for example, the family of Yue Fei, the family of the Yang generals -- they had a sense of family mission and identity.

The family itself has a subjective component, though no single member of the group may be aware of this point.

Families all have subconscious purposes, although the individual members of the family may pursue these goals without being aware of them at all.

You people form a family, and in your subconscious there is a common purpose, but each family member does not know what this purpose is, yet he still strives and works toward it -- it is in the subconscious. This is the subjectivity of the whole family, or the gestalt of the psyche.

It can be said that such groups are set up beforehand, between two physical existences.

During the transitional period between reincarnations, it has already been set up, already discussed -- let us come back together, appearing in the form of a family.

Often four or five people set themselves a particular challenge, assign each member a different role to play, and then act out these roles in a specific existence.

This whole chapter is about interpersonal relationships in reincarnation. He tells you how the members of your present family came to be, and with what purpose they came -- who they were in past lives.

The inner self is always aware of the mechanism hidden behind the gestalt of these family members.

Your inner self knows what you have come to do, which dungeon you are going to run, which quest you are going to undertake; the inner self knows.

Those who have been tightly bound together by emotion often like to maintain a closer or looser physical relationship over many lives.

People who were once tightly bound together by emotion, people with very deep feelings, often like to maintain a closer or looser physical relationship in the material world over many subsequent lives. But new relationships are always encouraged; it does not mean that you are always these same old relationships, the same old married couple just changing roles, putting on new makeup, and going back on stage. He is simply stating the fact. Because your emotional bonds are too tight, you will carry these relationships with you for several more lives, but new relationships are always encouraged.

Because you can grow inward, you have a reincarnational family that you can grow into.

The "family" in quotation marks is not the family of your three-dimensional world. You can look inward; in your inner world, there are people who have an even closer relationship with you. Many of those families form actual organizations -- real families in the three-dimensional world. The physical family is actually the outer manifestation of an inner group. If you look inward, there are many members with whom you have a particularly good relationship, who may be very tightly bound to you emotionally, or who are your comrades-in-arms, who have been through life and death together, shared hardships and joys. This kind of relationship within your psyche will project outward into family relationships, and in your next life it will become a concrete material relationship.

If you pay more attention to your inner world, you have an inner family; whoever you feel is family to you will be projected out in the next life, or it can even be projected out in this life. For example -- I say this not to mislead you, just to tell you -- suppose in your heart you feel that so-and-so is more like your husband than the one currently sleeping beside you; you feel that so-and-so should really be your boss, or should really be your friend. Inside you there is a structure of who is closest to you, who is nearest to you, and this closeness is not based on the outside world but on the heart. This inner thing of yours will project outward, possibly in this life, possibly in the next, projecting a real family relationship.

If we speak in terms of human society, thinking this way may seem improper -- you are thinking about someone else's husband, someone else's wife, or a married person whose heart is never at rest. That is from the standpoint of social morality. But from the spiritual angle, from the deeper level of consciousness, none of this matters. On the spiritual level, morality does not apply. Perhaps in a previous life you were father and daughter, and in the next you become husband and wife. But what Seth means is this: if in your heart you like being with someone, if you consider someone family, then perhaps in the next life you will truly become family. What is in the heart is very important.

Only True Love and Compassion

The rigid concepts of right and wrong I held previously -- there is only one way to avoid this problem.

Rigid concepts of good and evil, of right and wrong -- there is only one way to avoid this problem.

Only true love and compassion can lead to an understanding of the nature of good.

And only love and compassion can be used to eliminate.

Love, Freedom, and the Tangle of Hate

Continuing from the question of good and evil discussed in the previous episode — there is only one way to avoid rigid concepts of good and evil, right and wrong: only true love and compassion can lead to an understanding of the nature of good, and only love and compassion can be used to eliminate the erroneous and distorted concepts of evil.

You must understand that the question of good and evil is a core issue that hinders you and blocks your development. So how do you resolve it? Through the understanding of love and compassion. I will not expand on this here, because once this topic is opened up it becomes another very large subject — what is true love, what is true compassion. Later Seth will have a special chapter on good and evil.

He says the simple fact is, as long as you believe in the concept of evil even for one day, it is a real existence within your system.

That is, if you believe for even one day that this evil still exists, then this evil truly exists, and you will always find it manifesting. Why do you find that your belief in it seems very reasonable? Because in reality you can indeed discover the existence of evil, and fact after fact proves it. If you carry this concept with you, through generation after generation, through reincarnation, you increase its reality — not only do you carry this concept in this lifetime, but you have carried it through generation after generation of reincarnation, so you further strengthen your acceptance of it. You believe it, you believe that good and evil exist, that evil definitely exists, that there are bad people and evil people in this world — it will strengthen your cognition of it, making you think it is real.

He said a long passage earlier, sometimes talking about good and evil, sometimes about family relationships, and many people did not know what he was really trying to say in this session. In the end he made a clarification — a clarification of what he was trying to tell you.

First, love always involves freedom. Everyone must remember this sentence, definitely remember it — this is one of the essences of love. Love has other essences as well, for example love is infinite, love is unconditional, love is free — these are the three basic conditions of love. If any of these three basic conditions is missing, it is not true love. So first he says love involves freedom.

If a person says he loves you, but does not give you freedom, then you will often hate him. But because he tells you he loves you very much, you do not think you have a reason to hate him, and you do not think you have a reason to hate him — this kind of emotional entanglement can itself lead to many sustained entanglements over many lifetimes. That is, he says he loves you, loves you to death, loves only you alone; but because of his own possessiveness, his desire to control love — many people will instill in you that love is exclusive, that loving you means loving only you alone, and you cannot love anyone else, and you cannot love anyone else either, because he loves you, and as a return you can only love him alone. If you love anyone else you are unfaithful, you are cheating, you are a scumbag man or woman — he will use this kind of viewpoint to reinforce you.

So what do you do in this situation? The deeper you love, the less freedom you have. At first, having no freedom makes you excited, because the two of you are stuck together, and every day you do not need freedom — being together is the happiest thing. But as the days pass, one year, two years, three years, five years, ten years pass, when you discover that you have no freedom, you will begin to feel resentment in your heart. At first you may not direct it at the other person, but at yourself: why do I have no freedom? Why is it that I clearly want to like someone else but cannot? Why must I be subject to this morality and law, to this social constraint? Why must I be subject to this kidnapping by love? You know clearly in your heart whether you still love him or not. You clearly no longer love him, yet you still deceive yourself, saying, well, we are husband and wife, I must love him — that kind of thing.

In this situation, you cannot hate him either. Why? Because he has been loving you all along. He has done nothing wrong. Is it wrong for him to love you? No. The demands he makes are all universally accepted by society, mainstream values. He is not asking for anything extra — it is all normal. Yet in this situation, you yourself feel uncomfortable, you yourself feel pain, and the essence of love is freedom. When you discover that you are slowly losing your freedom, you begin to want to hate him, but you cannot bring yourself to hate him. At this time, your entanglement, your fire with nowhere to vent, your resentment and the distress of losing freedom — you do not know whom to vent it on. You do not know whether to blame life, blame the marriage system, blame the social structure, or blame the other person, or blame yourself. So this kind of pain and this kind of tangled emotion will follow you for many lifetimes.

Hatred Is Like a Black Glass

He says if you hate evil, then you must be careful about your concept of the word "evil" -- evil will limit you and narrow your perception. Here you must remember: evil will narrow your perception and make your vision very shortsighted. It is indeed like a black glass, just as when you wear sunglasses, all things and all experiences you see are tinged with shadow, all a gray darkness. When you hate, it is as if you are wearing black sunglasses, seeing the whole world as gray and dark.

You will find that the things you hate become more and more -- this is a very interesting matter. You may hate only one thing, but as a result you hate more and more. Because you have brought the factor of hatred into your own experience, and this is the key to the problem -- not because you hate those things, but because you bring the factor of hatred, the emotion of hatred, the feeling of hatred, the belief of hatred into your experience. Because this factor of hatred is in there, you see all things as gray and dark, and the things you hate will become more and more.

For example, if you hate your parents, then it is very easy to turn into hating anyone's parents -- when you hate a certain kind of person, for example if you hate rich people, then you will hate all rich people, and then extend it further, hating more and more. Because on their faces, you see and project those who first offended you, your original parents -- when you were little, your parents may have disciplined you and lacked love for you, making you very miserable, and then you will hate all other parents. This thing truly exists.

Let me give an example. This material is a point emphasized in Conversations with God⁷ -- he says why do we not believe that there is true love in this world, that there is this unconditional love? It is because when you were born, the first people you came into contact with were your parents. During your infancy and early childhood, including your teenage years, your parents were your heaven and your earth. In this world they were the most authoritative people. Whatever they said went. If they wanted to give you candy, they gave you candy; if they wanted to keep you from eating, they kept you from eating; if they wanted to let you watch TV, they let you watch; if they wanted to keep you from watching TV, they kept you from watching. They were your heaven, your earth, an existence like your God.

But you will find that your parents' love for you was not unconditional -- the condition was that you had to be obedient, be well-behaved, do well in school, be a sensible child, and then they would love you. If you did not satisfy them, if you were not well-behaved, not obedient, did poorly in school, then they would punish you -- there was physical punishment, mental punishment, verbal punishment, abuse, cold violence, all kinds. You would find that this love your parents had for you was conditional. Then from them you learned love -- love, you first learned from your parents, but this kind of love was conditional, so you learned that love is conditional. When you love others, you also love others conditionally. This is a very bad way of learning.

You will define love according to the most common definition in this world: love is always conditional, love is a kind of exchange. What is love? It means I have something you need, you have something I need, let us talk it over and make an exchange, make an agreement, for example until death the two of us will not change -- because I have what you want, you have what I want. I have beauty, you have money; I have status, you have something or other. To put it bluntly, between two people it is a material exchange. And now it is even more direct. In China's big cities nowadays, when people get married they first ask whether you have a house or not, what kind of household registration you have, whether your family has money or not, whether your work unit is a state-owned enterprise or you are a civil servant -- you put all the conditions together, and then I want to ask you, where is there still room for love to exist? Where on your list have you placed love?

So under this mode of thinking, our entire human society believes that love must be conditional. When an unconditional love appears, you simply do not believe it is real, and you do not believe that anyone could actually carry out such unconditional love. This fixed pattern of thinking under this mode of thought is what we need to change. Seth repeatedly emphasizes that you should believe in the goodness of this world and believe in its compassion, but in actual life what we encounter is another kind of situation, so what should we do? At this time you must understand that this is not the fault of society, nor the fault of anyone. It is because from childhood, such a social pattern and social structure has led to such a social result. This is not your fault, nor anyone's fault. You should not hate your parents, nor should you hate this society. Acknowledge this fact. Now that you understand it today, just change it, that is all.

Once you know this, then go and change. Start from yourself and change it. You have unconditional love for everyone, is that not enough? For example, if you love your husband, then whatever he wants to do, let him do it. If you truly love him, let him do what he likes to do. If you like your girlfriend, then whatever she wants to do, let her do it. How many times have you seen this -- my girlfriend wants to study abroad, and I say I am not willing; she wants to go somewhere to develop her career, and I am not willing either. That love of yours has too many conditions and is too narrow. What you call love is nothing more than: only what is good for you counts as love, and if it is not good for you, then you do not love. This is a kind of narrowness of us human beings.

Hatred Attracts What You Hate

This narrowness can be felt in parents. We should not assume that we all love our parents. No, some people hate their own parents. He gives an example: this hatred will spread and expand.

He says that in the successive lives that follow, you will also be drawn to incarnate into a family that makes you feel the same emotions.

You hate your parents, you hate other people's parents, and fine, the next time you reincarnate, you will still live in a family like this one—your parents will still be in that demanding state toward you, or that state of not knowing how to love. Many parents do not not love you; it is that they do not know how to love, they have not learned to love. When they gave birth to you in their twenties, their own minds were still immature. They were still children themselves, and they had not yet learned the fundamental value of life or what the essence of life is. They did not know how to educate you.

So what do they do? They learn from their own parents. However their parents educated them, that is how they educate you. But their parents were also only in their twenties when they had them, and in ancient times even younger, so their parents did not know either. Then who did their parents' parents learn from? They learned from their parents' parents' parents. If you trace this chain all the way back, you will find that the development of human society has been in a very unreasonable state: letting people with no experience raising children raise children, letting people who are still children themselves raise children—assuming they have this ability, when in fact they do not understand it at all.

Do you think the post-90s generation who just got married and had children in their early twenties know how to educate a child? Last year they were still playing games, and they may still be playing games now. They grew up playing Dota, playing tower defense games. Girls grew up watching Douyin and eating snacks. She just got married today, had a child, and became a mother. Do you think she knows how to educate a child? Does she know what true love is? How to educate a child, what kind of moral character the child should develop? She does not know. She is still a child herself. You cannot blame her. She does not know yet, and you just plop her into the role of "you are the father, you are the mother." Is that not just like playing house?

So what is the correct approach? Conversations with God offers a very good suggestion. Its approach is that children should live together with their parents, and the children should be cared for by the grandparents⁸—by this time the grandparents have retired or are older, they have more experience in education, they are basically over fifty, their life experience is already rich, and they are much more mature. Only at this point do they understand what is truly important for a person, what important character traits matter, and what matters most in life. But for a person in their twenties, life has just begun and has not fully unfolded. The curtain has not even been half raised. They do not yet know what life means to them. What kind of life experience do they have to pass on to their own children? They have none.

So Conversations with God⁹ gives a very good suggestion: we should live together with our parents, just like in ancient times, as one large family with our parents. After young people have children, you should still take care of them as needed, but most of the educational work for the child—for example, their moral character and their everyday education—should be handled by the parents, who have the energy and experience. You just manage the child's basic needs, eating, drinking, and so on. This does not mean separating you from your child or taking the child away from you. That is not the point. The point is that you do what you need to do, and you go create your life. You are young, after all. Go pursue your own career, and leave the care of the child to the previous generation. They have more experience.

By the time you reach your forties or fifties, you will also have a lot of experience. Whether in terms of financial conditions or time, you will have plenty of free time, and you will not need to clock in at work every day the way you used to. When you are young, you are still striving, still starting businesses every day with no security, and you have no time to spend with your child at all. All of this leads to a series of mismatches. Young people today have an unhealthy tendency: I will not live with my parents. Whether it is the husband's parents or the wife's parents, we do not want either. We young people just want to live our own little life as a couple. I think that is fine. You can have your own special little world, your own little space. But after you have children, you need to reconsider what kind of educational model is most beneficial for your whole family. I will just expand on this briefly here.

So at this point you understand that many people hate their parents, but I tell you, do not blame your parents, and do not blame others either. This is caused by the development of human society as a whole.

He says that in this way you will again incarnate into that very situation you hate most, and those parents will appear again, because this emotion is where the problem lies.

That is, the emotion of hating your parents is where the problem lies, not the other factors that seem to provoke it. It is because you hate your parents that you will attract the parents you hate. I do not know if you can understand this—it is because there is hatred in your heart, and this hatred will bring things to you. What you hate is where your emotions are focused, and where your emotions are focused will manifest into a reality. Is it a fact that you hate your parents? Yes, it is a fact. Now we say that your beliefs create reality. Is that a fact? Yes, it is a fact. Then the fact that you hate your parents will create a reality in which you hate your parents. You hating your parents is a fact, so the universe satisfies your conditions and creates two parents for you to hate. Does that not satisfy you? Can you understand this now?

He says that if you hate illness, then it is very likely that your next life will be a sickly one. If you very much dislike disease and painful things, then because of your hatred, you will attract them to yourself.

He says that conversely, if you feel love, if you extend your love, if you expand your health and expand this feeling of your existence, then in this life and in future lives you will attract those qualities.

What qualities? The qualities of love and goodness. Because these qualities are what you focus on—when you only want to focus on the state of how to love a person, on the state of how to express your compassion, on how to display your goodness and discover good things, these are the things you focus on. Because you focus on these things, the universe responds to your call and gives you such a reality. You love your parents, so it gives you parents you can love. This is a very simple principle.

Because your emotions are focused there. You must remember: beliefs create reality is not just a slogan. Do not treat it as some kind of spiritual chicken soup—saying, "Beliefs create reality? Then why do you not create a millionaire for me? See, you cannot do it, so it is just a slogan, it is nonsense." If your awareness is that shallow, then I have nothing to say. But you must understand that this statement truly exists. It is one of the most fundamental truths in the universe—that your beliefs create reality. If you think this way, then the matter will definitely happen this way. We will not expand on this further here.

A Generation That Hates War Will Not Bring Peace

He said a generation that hates war will not bring peace.

There is a key statement in here, and you should remember it. This is something all people should remember. Many people hate war and detest fighting. The moment war is mentioned, their hatred of war pours out endlessly, and they could go on for days and nights about it. When they talk about World War II, about the Chinese nation being invaded and bullied, about all the wars in history, like the First Sino-Japanese War, they gnash their teeth with hatred. Because we suffered humiliation, we were bullied, and so many of our compatriots were brutalized, and then all our education revolves around this hatred: we should hate Japanese militarism, hate German Nazism, hate all these things, even hate Hitler, hate Tojo Hideki, hate the Japanese government of that time. All these things are a kind of hatred instilled in us.

When you study this material, do you not find it truly frightening? What will this hatred of yours bring about? You hate war, so a war has to happen, right upon you, so that you can hate it. The universe is like a photocopier: whatever order you send it, it accepts. You send a fax to the universe saying, "I hate war, this is the state I want, I just hate war," and the universe says, fine, then let a war happen so you can hate it. How obedient the universe is; whatever you tell it to do, it does.

Actually, you know there is no such thing as "the universe," right? Is not the universe simply created by your beliefs? Did he not explain this earlier? Everything is formed from your emotions, feelings, and thoughts, from the energy of these unit by unit, combined according to your beliefs. Based on the energy web spread throughout space and its intersection points, it automatically draws in energy and automatically turns your beliefs into tiny physical particles, and from physical particles into matter. It even includes events, which are likewise manifested by you. So when I just used the universe as an example, I was only giving you that example. In fact, you are placing an order with yourself. Whatever kind of reality you want, whatever kind of scenario you want, that scenario will appear.

So this statement is something all people, all of humanity, should understand: if we educate our children, if we educate our humanity, by means of hatred, then it will still bring war in the future. A generation that hates war will not bring peace; only a generation that loves peace will bring peace. This statement is extremely important, and you must remember it. If you can understand it, that is best. If you cannot understand it, then just remember it, remember it deeply. When others are saying they hate so-and-so, hate such-and-such, and expressing their loathing and hatred of war itself, you should tell them to stop, to quit going on about it. Do not act as if you are so righteous, so indignantly denouncing the war crimes of others, as if you were somehow just. Do not do that. If you always treat war with this kind of hatred, the result will be yet another war.

Do Not Die with Hatred

He said do not die with hatred for any ideology, any group of people, any organization, any group, or any reason; you will suffer a great loss.

This sentence should be highlighted. What he means is dying with hatred -- the key point is dying with hatred. If you die happily, it does not matter; if you die with hatred, this hatred, the premise being that this hatred is present, because the hatred with which you die is present, you will suffer a great loss, because this hatred will carry you through many, many lifetimes.

You need to understand, do not do it for any ideology, this ideology or that ideology, this party or that party, this nation or that nation, this country or that country -- remember, any, he said any ideology, any group, or any reason. For example, if you were killed by others while making a revolution, and you were unwilling and resentful, that is exactly this state. The premise is that you must harbor hatred; if you do not harbor hatred, then it does not matter.

This is the same meaning as turning the other cheek. If you do not take this death seriously, you laugh it off, like playing a game and losing, dead is dead, then if you have no hatred, the matter is over. If you are seething with resentment -- "Why am I like this, I fought for justice, for our nation, for our country, for so-and-so, I did a righteous thing, and yet I was cruelly harmed by others, captured by the enemy and then tortured to death, so I hate them, I wish I could drink your blood and eat your flesh, I will come back in a future life and tear you to pieces" -- all of this is hatred. He said do not do this kind of thing, you will suffer a great loss. This is Seth's advice to everyone.

He said you now have many and varied opportunities to recreate your personal experience in more powerful ways and to change your world.

It is stated very clearly: you have it right now -- do not wait for later, do not wait for reincarnation.

In the next life, you will act upon those attitudes that you now hold.

This is very important: in your next life you will still follow the same old patterns. If you now insist on harboring hatred, you are very likely to continue doing so; this hatred cannot be eliminated, and you will keep hating forever.

On the other hand, those bits and pieces now gained -- intuition, love, joy, creativity, and achievement -- will also help you at that time, just as they do now.

That is, these bits and pieces of truth you are now gaining, not comprehensive, just perhaps a little at a time, hearing a little today and a little tomorrow. What truth? For example, intuition, love, joy, creativity, and achievement -- your bit-by-bit recognition of truth will all help you in the future.

He said, do you understand? They are the only truths. They are the only true foundation stones of existence.

"They" still refers to intuition, love, joy, creativity, and achievement; these are the only true foundation stones of existence. What is existence? Existence is your sense of existence, or entity, or this present reality.

Personifying the Storm

At this point Ruburt said that hating a storm, or shaking your fist at it and cursing it, is foolish.

If you saw children or some indigenous people, some natives, doing this sort of thing, you would laugh. But if you compare the storm to some group, some society, or some government, or compare the storm to some event -- for example, compare the storm to the current pandemic -- are you not raging at the pandemic, hating it, feeling indignant? Is that not completely meaningless? Would others not find you ridiculous? And it also affects you yourself -- this emotion of hatred lingers and will not go away.

So we often personify the storm. If we personify it, it becomes a demon, and then we focus on its destructiveness -- we only see the storm's destructive factors, or those factors that appear destructive to you. You feel the current pandemic is destructive: billions of people around the world are stuck at home and cannot go out; over a million have been infected, now almost one million one hundred thousand¹⁰; the deaths are also -- I will not go on, those numbers change every day. We think about how bad this plague is, how terrible, a catastrophe for humanity, worse than the 2008 financial crisis, worse than the Great Depression -- and so we see the plague's destructive factors, and we amplify its destructiveness.

But from another angle, there have been a few news items: one is that the ozone layer over Antarctica is now gradually recovering¹¹, and this is something that had not recovered for many years. Some time ago the Arctic was melting, with temperatures already reaching over twenty degrees Celsius¹². The Antarctic was also losing huge chunks of glaciers, all because the ozone layer was gone -- the ozone layer was diminishing, and there was a particularly large ozone hole over Antarctica. That hole reduced the blockage of the sun's rays, and with the sun beating straight down, that temperature caused the glaciers to melt, caused changes in the Earth's climate, and even affected the entire atmospheric circulation. Through this pandemic, people reduced their activity; everyone stayed at home; billions of people did not go out, did not drive, did not work. Although there may be a great blow to the economy, there is also a positive side -- now the ozone layer has gradually recovered to a state close to what it was before. And following the recovery of the ozone layer, the atmospheric circulation has also changed. So you have to see the beneficial side of it, and not only see its destructive side. As for the pandemic's other effects on everyone, I will not explain that here; we have a special four-part video series on what the pandemic is actually trying to tell us, so I will not expand on it here.

He said that a change of situation is not destructive.

The explosive nature of this storm, the energy of thunder and lightning, is extremely creative. We have all learned in the history of human development or the history of the Earth that, according to the theory of natural evolution, the emergence of life was actually brought about by storms, by thunder and lightning -- without thunder and lightning, the most primitive chemical elements would never have combined into living matter. So explosive energy is creative.

Consciousness is not extinguished.

Remember this: consciousness is never extinguished. The storm is part of creativity, and each of you has your own angle from which to view it. Some people may feel that the storm's inner creativity is an endless cycle, that the thunder and lightning bring boundless, tremendous energy, shaking heaven and earth; some people may feel the storm is simply terrible; and yet another person may feel it is the symbol of the devil -- the devil's rhythm, the storm flashing and thundering, the devil in a rage. All these viewpoints differ.

Through all your lives, you will interpret the reality you see in your own way, and that way will affect you and, in turn, affect others as well.

What he means by this is: your own viewpoint, your own belief system, will affect how you see the essence of things. You will use your viewpoint to look at the events happening around you, the reality happening to you, to explain it and interpret it, and this way of interpreting will have an impact on you and on the people around you.

For example, how do you feel about a war -- if you look at this war with a compassionate heart, or if you take a clear-cut good-versus-evil stance, saying that one side is righteous and the other side is bad. Then the righteous side should do such-and-such, and the bad side should do such-and-such. Your viewpoint depends on which side you stand on. If during World War II you stood on the side of the Allies, then of course you would say that they were the bad ones; if during World War II you were a German, then you would feel the Allies were all bad. It depends on where you sit, where your position lies. So this is what he means: the way you look at things is determined by your own belief system or your own patterns of thought.

A truly hateful person will immediately turn himself into that very thing.

Turn into what? Into the very thing he hates. According to his own limited understanding, he has prejudged the nature of reality -- he believes the world is just like this: where there is good there is evil, where there is evil there is good; good and evil are clearly distinct, and evil should be punished. He uses this viewpoint to judge the world, and that produces exactly such results.

In this chapter on reincarnation, I particularly emphasize the issue of hatred -- because the results of hatred can be so tragic. A hateful person always believes he has good reason to be that way; this is the key point. He always believes he has reason; he feels he is righteous; he absolutely does not hate anything he considers good. So he believes his hatred is perfectly just; he feels he stands on the side of justice -- "Why don't I hate good people? Why must I hate this villain? Why don't I hate peace, why do I hate war? Because war is bad." So he feels he is just, and you cannot even persuade him; he has more reasons than you do. If you were to say, "Is war good?" -- well, of course not. What is wrong with hating war? It seems there is nothing wrong with it. So he gets stuck in this, and there is no way for you to save him. Then just give him a reality of hatred, let a war happen so he has something to hate.

But after this hatred, the text goes on to explain: he discovers that his hatred is perfectly just, perfectly reasonable, righteous beyond measure, but this hatred itself will take possession of him -- this hatred occupies all the beliefs of this person, and instead takes possession of the person, following him life after life. Until when? Until he learns that hatred itself is the only destroyer -- not that war is the destroyer, not that the thing he hates is the destroyer, but that hatred itself is the true destroyer. I do not know if you can understand this -- it is not war that is the destroyer; hatred is the root. This is also easy to understand: without hatred, how could there be war?

Believing the Essence of Life Is Good

He said, "Let's stop here for today. You two can chat for a bit; I'll listen." They didn't really come up with much to talk about. He said, "Do you understand what I've been saying?" He asked Rob. Rob said he could understand. Why did you ask that? He said, humorously, "Because you are my first readers, and I don't know whether readers can." If you, Rob, can understand it, then other readers can too. That's what he meant.

He said, I want to be clear. Let me say it again: hating the hate does no good either. You say, "I shouldn't hate war. How could I be so stupid? I hate myself for being so ignorant. I shouldn't hate these things." So hating the hate does no good either. You just trade one kind of hate for another. You fall into the same trap. Hating your own hate is also wrong.

He said, whether or not you can perceive it, evil is transformed into creative methods.

You may not be able to perceive it. You don't understand how to turn evil into a creative method.

He said, what is needed is a basic trust in the nature of the life force.

That is, you have to believe that the essence of the life force is good. You don't know how to turn evil into a creative method, but you have to believe in the essence of life, believe that it is good, and have confidence.

Believe that all parts of experience will be used toward a greater good.

Remember this sentence: have confidence, believe that all parts of your experience, including the good and the bad, including what you consider evil and bad, can all be used to achieve that greater good. You have to have this confidence before good thoughts can arise in you. You keep thinking that bad things will happen: "Do not do evil because it is small." A small bad thing becomes a big bad thing, a big bad thing becomes an even bigger bad thing, and in the end it becomes unmanageable. If you can believe that this small bad thing is meant to accomplish a greater good, then you don't need to condemn the evil.

Those you love in this life and in other lifetimes will also become part of your experience.

Love is eternal. Love is infinite.

The important concept to remember is: no one throws the experience of any given lifetime at you. It is faithfully formed according to your own emotions and beliefs.

You must remember this. Mark it as important. You must, must remember one thing: no one arranges the experience of your life for you. Never complain about this life of yours. You say, "Which god arranged such a miserable life for me?" You arranged it yourself. You say, "I arranged it myself? To hell with that. I would never arrange a life like this for myself." You don't even trust yourself. You deny yourself, you deny heaven, you rage against heaven, against earth, against the air, against everyone. Nothing looks right to you. That's the state many people are in.

In that state, you don't understand one thing. What is it? This sentence you must remember: no one throws the experience of this life at you. It is all formed according to your own emotions and beliefs. This life of yours, including your next life, is all formed according to your own true emotions and beliefs. If you believe this, you will have no hate and no complaints, because these experiences are all for experiencing that greater good.

The Simple Fact That You Are Alive Is Itself Proof of Love

So Seth is especially excited about this part too. He says, look at Jane powerfully being Seth -- at this point Jane is already channeling Seth, right -- as Seth, Jane is relaying this material with great force. Why does he think it is so important? Seth feels this is especially important, so he emphasizes it with particular strength.

He says in the simple fact of your existence, you can clearly see the great power and energy of love and creation. This is a truth that is often forgotten. The combination of consciousness and existence continues, and absorbs those elements that seem destructive to you.

He goes on to explain: because you exist, because you are alive, because you are living in this world, the very fact that you are still alive right now is already the simplest fact, and from it you can clearly see the great power and energy of love and creation -- without love and without creation, you simply would not exist in this world.

It is the same point as before: if the environment around you were entirely hostile to you, if you believed all bacteria are evil and all viruses are evil, let me tell you, the bacteria and viruses you are carrying on your body right now could kill you completely within one minute. If you think they are all evil, if you think this universe and this world are all evil, that is simply not the case -- if they were evil, how could you exist in such a harsh natural world?

So he tells you: your own existence -- when you wake up every morning and see that you are still alive, the first thing you should do is feel deep gratitude toward nature, toward the universe, toward All That Is -- because you were created by them, and of course you were also created by yourself. This creation and the essence of your life's existence represent tremendous energy and great power. What is there left for you to hate?

He says this is the truth that is often forgotten. What truth? The combination of consciousness and existence -- existence here means your soul, and here "existence" refers to entity. The word "entity" is sometimes translated as "existence" and sometimes as "entity," so it can easily confuse you. This consciousness is our human consciousness, conscious awareness, our thoughts and psyche; that is, our thoughts and psyche combine together, and continue on, and absorb those elements that seem so destructive in your eyes.

What does that mean? If your consciousness is evil, or believes in the existence of evil, or hates this evil, or is clearly and firmly opposed to this evil -- you are against war, you hate war, you hate certain bad people -- that is your consciousness. When this consciousness of yours combines with your great soul, the existence of this entity, what happens when the two combine? They absorb those things that seem so bad to you, those elements that seem so destructive. This is the fact, and this is the truth you often forget. What truth? Consciousness is your thoughts, and your entity -- existence means entity -- when the two of you combine and continue on, what happens? They will produce and absorb those elements that seem so destructive in your eyes. This is the fact he is stating.

He says if you believe in hate, hate is indeed very powerful. If you believe in meeting violence with violence, then violence has power. But even if you hate life, even if you hate life, you will still continue to exist.

He is being sarcastic with you, right? Some people rage against heaven and earth until in the end they even hate themselves, hate their own existence -- it is useless. No matter who you hate, your life will still exist, and you cannot die; you will reincarnate and still be alive. You will die and come back, die and come back. A couple of days ago I heard about reincarnation in India -- that is exactly this. You will die and come back, die and come back, and hating is useless; this is the reincarnation of your life.

He says each of you made an appointment, and then forgot it.

After you were born, after you came into this present existence, you had already signed your name -- that is, before you came, you had already arranged that you would come again in your next life, only you forgot. Therefore in this situation, the friends you make were already very close to you before you met them in this life. That is, when you come into life again, you have already set whom you will meet, whom you will intersect with, what interactions you will have -- all these things are already arranged. So you find them very close; you find your good friends, your best friends, your buddies, your relatives, your family all feel very dear, because you are not strangers to each other.

But this does not mean that every person you are currently involved with is someone you knew before, and of course it does not imply that an annoying record is being played over and over again.

It is not that everyone is someone you knew before; there are also new acquaintances. Did he not say earlier that he encourages this kind of new relationship? It is also not saying that your life is made up only of those familiar people, reincarnating over and over with only familiar faces -- that is not the meaning, not an annoying record endlessly repeating. Because every encounter, in its own way, is new; every reincarnation is brand new, not a repetition.

Family Reincarnation and Group Reincarnation

Please recall what I said about family reincarnation, and realize that a village or town may also be composed of past residents.

Every family has its own attributes, and every family is like a person. In ancient times we often said that when looking for a partner, one should seek a match of family status — "matching family status" means the two families should be comparable, not just in wealth and position, but the attributes of the families should basically match, and their values should be consistent. Otherwise, if two families have inconsistent values, even if the two individuals love each other deeply and come together, they will suffer immensely. Those who have experienced this will know it firsthand, so I won't elaborate.

Families can come together this way — family members will reincarnate together, or come together as a group. A village or town may very well be composed of its former residents who died and then reincarnated back, just as when a family member dies, they will reincarnate back into such a family. When such groups are trying different experiments, they may also do this — when they are conducting different experiments, they may come back together.

He is still discussing the theme of this chapter. He digressed a bit just now, but he is telling you not to harbor hatred. He digressed, but his core point is still: what are your reincarnational relationships, what are interpersonal relationships.

And there are times when it may happen, for example, that the residents of a certain town now may be reincarnated from the residents of a small Irish village in 1632, and they may reincarnate into a small town in Idaho.

This is quite possible. Some people who want to travel from the old world to the new world — that is, people who want to shift from an earlier time on Earth to a later time — may reincarnate in the new world.

And they must remember their previous abilities so that they can be put to use in this life.

Remembering the abilities from previous lives — what is being spoken of here is abilities. That is, they must remember those abilities so that they can be put to use in this life. If you want to be reborn from an old era into a new era — for example, you want to come from the sixteen hundreds to this era — then at this time you still have to remember the basic abilities and basic talents you relied on for your livelihood in that old era — for example, your artistic gifts, your ability to communicate with people, your sense of humor. You have to remember all these abilities so that you can use them in the new era, and then reap your own rewards. The rewards are the experience in the new era — all of it is your reward, and your abilities also receive their reward.

Information about these matters is often given to you during sleep.

There is a kind of gestalt dream, that is, a holistic dream; there is a kind of root dream, in which people who have known each other across past lives communicate through this dream.

Two kinds of dreams: one is called the gestalt dream, and one is called the root dream. What is meant by gestalt and root is that they tell you what the source of your successive lives is. Then the people you have known across your past lives, the different personalities of your successive lives, will communicate with you through these dreams, imparting to you certain abilities and knowledge so that you can survive in the new world.

He says that in such dreams, general information for the masses is given, some comprehensive information is given to you.

For example, how people of that era lived, how people of that era worked. He will not give you something specific like "you should handle this current situation in this way" — he will not give you that kind of information. He gives you comprehensive information, like knowledge, and then individuals apply it according to their own needs and wishes.

When the group members of a town decide the fate of their town, they release the overall plan for development.

When a town's group wants to decide whether the town should open a factory, whether it should cooperate with a large developer, or whether it should become a tourist attraction, and so on — when they want a major change, they will release this overall plan. What overall plan? Each person will return to the source through dreams, find the root dream or the gestalt dream, and then learn from it that these people have all reincarnated through many lifetimes and are all former residents of this town. They will give you an overall development plan, telling you whether such an overall development is appropriate or not.

He says that some people always choose to be born as part of a certain group, reincarnating together with people of the same past era.

He already discussed this in the previous chapter.

While others disdain this feeling, and return in a much more isolated posture; they come and go alone.

This is a psychological, feeling-level matter — whether a group of people returns or one person returns is all a matter of your psychological feeling. Some people are more relaxed in this kind of situation; when returning as a group, they are more at ease and more confident, better able to cooperate with others. They like to stick together and are unwilling to go it alone.

Let me use the following example as an analogy. What example? Group reincarnation versus reincarnating alone, like a lone ranger. Some people have the same group of people from kindergarten all the way through high school graduation — their high school classmates are their kindergarten classmates. Not all of them, but most of them they know. From kindergarten to elementary school to high school, they are all people they know. This is very much like a group of people reincarnating back together with them, and they continue within this group the whole time. Then there is another type of person who changes schools from elementary school and kindergarten to middle school and high school, and may even change high schools several times, transferring schools several times. Such people are lone rangers; they have greater freedom, they don't need to stick with the group, they face more challenges, but they don't have the comfortable feeling mentioned earlier — they don't have that comfortable feeling and secure framework, because they face all strangers, all new schools, new teachers, new classmates.

In each case, the individual is the judge.

Whether it is group reincarnation or individual reincarnation, whether it is good or bad is entirely up to oneself.

Constantly for each successive life, his time environment and date history, and also his entire characteristics and the method of accomplishing his goals.

It is entirely an individual, personal choice — whether it is his time, environment, historical period, that is, in what era, his overall characteristics and the goals to be accomplished.

Therefore, there are as many different ways of reincarnation as there are inner selves.

In other words, there are as many ways of reincarnation as there are fragment personalities, all different. Reincarnation is never the same.

And each inner self will choose its own individual method.

How they will reincarnate, what they will experience next time — all of it is completely independent, and every fragment personality is different.

He says that since this chapter has already begun, we will end this session here. He says that in any case we will have some extra sessions.

He is saying good night, and wishing them well on their next excursion — by "excursion" he means that Seth once helped Carl and Sue do spirit travel, that is, out-of-body experience; they have done this out-of-body spirit travel. So he is saying he wishes them a pleasant spirit journey, and hopes that next time when they go out of body, they will bring their memory with them. He says to Rob, the same to you — because many people, when they first go out of body, do not remember where they went or what they did.

The Problem of Overpopulation

At this point they were chatting, talking about their reincarnations, entities, and so on. Then Sue raised a question: the problem of overpopulation. This is a question many people have asked -- she said, if one soul corresponds to one entity incarnating, then the world's population keeps growing, so where do all these souls come from? Where do all those extra people come from?

Then Rob told her that, according to Seth, each personality that makes up an entity can choose how many times it returns in physical form -- his meaning was that, according to Seth, each soul can decide for itself how many times it reincarnates, so maybe it seems like a lot because the number of reincarnations is relatively high.

But this explanation is not correct; Rob's explanation is not correct. Because at any given time, an entity has only one reincarnated personality existing in the human world. So even if someone dies unexpectedly after living only a dozen or so years and then immediately reincarnates, when we talk about the population of the earth in the same era, we mean the living population, not those who have died or who once died. If we say there are currently 7.5 billion people¹³ alive on earth, then shouldn't that correspond to 7.5 billion souls up there? But going back a thousand years, maybe there were only 1 billion people¹⁴ in the world. Did that mean there were only 1 billion souls at that time? Then over the past thousand years, where did these 6.5 billion souls come from? That was what Sue wanted to ask, but he didn't answer the question well. He said, "Oh, well, you can reincarnate many times," and so on. That was how he explained it.

But at this point Seth couldn't stand listening anymore -- although Seth had temporarily stopped speaking through Jane, he had not left. Jane was still chatting with them at this time, but Seth was listening beside them and couldn't bear it any longer. Seth said, "Wait, hold on, let me speak in a moment."

He said, first of all, as a race, in general terms, you consider yourselves separate from the rest of nature and consciousness.

That is, you consider yourselves separate from the natural world -- we think we are us, nature is nature, the universe is the universe, the world is the world, I am I. This dualistic form of yours, this duality and opposition, is very obvious. That is the first thing.

What does he mean by this? Many people don't understand -- I'm not asking you where these 6.5 billion people came from; what are you telling me this for? What he wants to tell you is this: if you ask this question, then you are separating the soul from nature and from the universe. You think the universe is the universe, nature is nature, people are people, souls are souls, individuals are individuals, fragment personalities are fragment personalities, and that is why you have this kind of quantitative problem -- where did all these people come from?

So from the very beginning, Seth tells you: at the root, you have asked the wrong question. Humans and all things in the universe and all living beings are one. There is no such thing as however many souls there are, there are that many reincarnated people currently living. If you think that way, then you still think that people or souls are something that exists independently of the universe and the world. You have not truly recognized the relationship between All That Is and the soul. What is All That Is? All That Is is everything, all that exists in the world. Our souls are a part of All That Is. We are originally a part of this universe and this world. We are a part of the universe. So how can you talk about 7.5 billion or 6.5 billion in terms of quantity? What meaning is there in obsessing over this number? We are the universe, and the universe is us. Can you ask whether there is more of this part of the universe or less of that part, which part is more and which part is less? It is meaningless.

I don't know if you can understand what I mean. This is human thinking -- he treats each soul as an individual, and then one reincarnation after another, always using the dichotomy to view the world. This is one of humanity's greatest limitations: it is very difficult for him to view this universe, this world, and even himself with a holistic, integrated perspective -- he is all people, all people are him, he is the universe, the universe is him. He cannot accept this, because from childhood he was never given this kind of education. What you are saying now is subversive to him; for him it overturns his entire worldview. So he always thinks I am I, the soul is the soul, the universe is the universe, nature is nature, the world is the world, All That Is is All That Is, and therefore he keeps pursuing the question of the number of souls and the problem of population increase.

He said the survival of your own species is your primary concern.

Your own species means humanity -- whether we humans can survive, how long we can live, whether we can make it, is our primary concern. For other species, for trees, polar bears, mice, we simply don't care, let alone microorganisms. You only consider what use they are to you -- whether this thing can be eaten; if it can't be eaten it's useless, if it can be eaten it's useful.

You have no true conception of the great sacredness of all consciousness, and of your relationship within it.

You have not realized that the great sacredness of the consciousness of all things in this universe means they are one with you; you are all part of All That Is in this universe.

Therefore, you are increasingly ignorant of that great truth. In your present situation, you still continue that concept -- what concept? Of caring only for the survival of the species while ignoring the consequences.

Even today we still take human development as the top priority, and we consider this to be truth -- we believe "every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost"; we have held this idea since childhood. We humans should consider ourselves first; if we don't consider humanity, who should we consider -- ants? So this is our viewpoint, and then we ignore the consequences -- as long as it is done in the name of human development, anything can be forgiven.

And the concept of altering the environment to suit your own purposes.

We want to change the environment, change nature, and this leads you to disregard spiritual truths. Because we don't think all things in this world have spirituality; we think only humans have spirituality. Those other things are all dead things, all lower life forms -- cats, dogs, beasts, fish, microorganisms, these are all lower life forms, let alone trees, plants, and flowers, which are even lower life forms. And then there are inanimate objects -- bricks, cement, these are dead things; the earth, the land, these are all dead things. There is no need to communicate with them or hold them in awe. Humans are the highest form of existence. This is the concept we have been indoctrinated with, so you don't know how to cherish them or respect them.

Therefore, in physical reality, you are seeing the results of it.

Right? We are now seeing the results. This sentence is especially ironic today -- the result is that we humans have restricted all our actions. You don't revere nature, you don't respect the world, you don't respect the laws of nature, and so today you get today's result: billions of people around the world don't dare go outside, frightened by this invisible thing, as if the air itself were poisonous, not daring to go out and breathe.

Now, those who have returned to earthly life have done so for many different reasons, and some are attracted to earthly life precisely because of this attitude.

What are they attracted to? They are attracted back by this belief in earthly life that "the development of the human race is the top priority, and for the sake of human development we can disregard other species." They want to develop humanity into the greatest, most civilized, most advanced thing, so they come back -- to do what? To struggle and fight for this so-called physical existence, disregarding the rights of other species. They are driven back by their own desires, drawn back by this supposedly noble idea of "for the development of humanity." One lifetime isn't enough, so they come back again and again. They feel they are doing something righteous.

Humanity must learn to respect the value of the individual. Humanity is also learning its dependence upon other species, and humanity is beginning to understand its role within the entire framework of physical reality.

We should view the entire universe, the world, and the role humanity plays within it from a holistic perspective. This is the question we should be considering. We cut down trees every day -- today for printing newspapers, printing books, with all sorts of reasons for cutting down trees -- but don't forget, trees produce the oxygen we humans depend on for survival and absorb our carbon dioxide. They absorb the waste gas we exhale, carbon dioxide, as nourishment, and then produce new oxygen for us humans to use, and of course for other living beings as well. So there is this kind of interdependent relationship between us humans and trees. If you cut down all the trees, then the oxygen on earth will become less and less, and eventually the whole planet will become unsuitable for human life. But have we ever considered the feelings of the trees? No, we haven't.

Some people are born in this era only to understand and help you understand the truth.

Some people are born now precisely to help us understand the truth. They force you to face the problem -- many people raise the issues of environmental protection, global warming, and environmental conservation, and they do it with great intensity, forcing us in very intense ways to face this problem, to face the crisis.

Because you still have time. You still have time.

Before the earth is completely destroyed, we still have time to change our way of life and our beliefs.

You are trying to solve two main problems, but both involve the sacredness of the individual, and the individual's relationship with others and with the physically oriented consciousness they adopt.

What problems will he talk about next? The first is the problem of war -- in war there is always the sacredness of the individual, and the relationship between the individual and others, and all physically oriented consciousness.

The problem of war will sooner or later teach you that when you kill a man, basically you are killing yourself.

What is the problem of war? Sooner or later it will teach us that when you kill a person, basically the result is that you are killing yourself.

The problem of overpopulation will also teach you that if you do not have a loving regard for the environment in which you dwell, it will no longer sustain you.

Remember this? If you have no loving regard for your environment, the environment will no longer sustain you. Because you don't deserve it -- if you don't have love for your environment, you don't deserve to receive from it.

You will not destroy the planet. You will not destroy the flowers, the grains, the animals, or the natural environment. You are not worthy of them, and they will destroy you.

Humans always worry, oh, if we humans keep developing, will we destroy the earth, will we perish together with it? You're overthinking it. He tells you it won't come to that. When you develop to a certain point, it won't be you destroying the earth; it will be the earth destroying you. Do you understand?

Isn't this a preview for us right now? Isn't this pandemic a very vivid drill for us, a warning? It is telling you: if you still don't pay attention to these problems, destroying you humans is a matter of minutes -- it would only take a few months for all of humanity to be wiped out. You don't need the nuclear war, nuclear winter, mushroom clouds, hiding in underground bunkers that you imagine. None of that is needed. One tiny, insignificant virus that you can't even see with your eyes can wipe out your entire human race.

And we still don't reflect on this today? We still don't reconsider? It has been pointed out to us vividly. Seth said this in 1970¹⁵, and now it is already 2020, fifty years later -- reading this sentence and this matter today, doesn't it still carry great contemporary significance, great practical relevance? "You are not worthy of them, and they will destroy you." Isn't that stated clearly enough? Isn't this the fact? How much clearer does it need to be?

Don't think that we are going to destroy the world, that we will destroy the earth -- you're overthinking it. You cannot destroy this planet. He tells you that you cannot destroy this planet. You will not destroy these things either. They will destroy you.

He said that within this frame of reference, you have set up this problem for yourselves.

Within our world system, you have set up for yourselves the problem of survival -- whether you want development or shared development, or whether you only want humanity itself to develop. You have set up this problem.

Until you actually see the danger of tearing apart the natural framework, you will not understand your role within the natural framework.

When you discover that you really might tear apart, destroy, the framework of nature -- that is, the holistic, integrated structure of nature -- only then will you understand what role we humans play within the natural framework. Until you have this ability, or until one day you discover that you really might tear apart this natural framework, only then will you discover, only then will you understand.

He said you will not destroy consciousness. Once created, consciousness can never be destroyed.

You must remember this: consciousness can never be destroyed.

He said even the consciousness of a single leaf cannot be annihilated by you.

You cannot annihilate this consciousness.

But in your terms, if the problem is not solved, some consciousness will withdraw from your experience.

This is a very important sentence. For us humans, you cannot annihilate consciousness, but if the problem is not solved -- what problem? That is, this holistic unity between you and the natural framework; if you haven't resolved it well, if you don't know what humanity's position is, what its place is, within the natural world -- if you haven't solved this problem well, these consciousnesses will withdraw from our experience.

What consciousness? The consciousness of leaves or trees, those things. Although it cannot be annihilated, it will withdraw from our experience -- that is, you will no longer be able to perceive its existence. In other words, you think this species has gone extinct, that species has gone extinct, this thing has gone extinct. You think it has gone extinct, but in fact it hasn't. Its consciousness still exists, but its time has come -- in other words, it no longer serves you humans. It no longer wants to let you humans do whatever you want within this natural framework. Your feeling is that some species are leaving us. When the natural world that we humans depend on for survival gradually leaves us one by one, then how can we humans survive alone in this world? We humans will also perish.

However, this crisis is also a method of healing. It is a teaching method that you have set up out of your own need.

It is a teaching method set up because of your own need -- we are teaching ourselves, we are giving ourselves a lesson. We need this kind of crisis, and you need it right now. Aren't we in the middle of it right now? Isn't this pandemic giving us a lesson? The lesson is still ongoing; it hasn't finished yet.

And before your species can set out for other physical realities, you must learn this.

That is, we humans want to migrate to other planets, go to Mars, go to other planets -- aren't those other physical realities? When our species wants to go to other physical realities, before going, you must learn the relationship between you and the natural world, between you and your surrounding physical environment, between you and this planet.

Before you can travel to other worlds, you must learn your lessons in your own backyard.

Where is our backyard? It's the earth. We must learn these lessons on earth -- the lesson that we should live in harmony with nature.

Therefore, you have brought this problem upon yourselves for that purpose.

For the future, when we go to other physical realities, to other galaxies in the universe, to live on other planets, when we travel to other realities, we need to learn something. Therefore, in order to learn this, we have brought this problem upon ourselves.

You will learn.

So through this pandemic or other events, we will all learn. Why is it certain that we will learn? Because it involves your survival -- if you don't change your beliefs, even your survival becomes a problem, so naturally you will learn. If you don't learn this time, next time you'll be given something even more brutal so that you learn. Sooner or later you will learn. He says you will learn.

I only hope that in the process of learning, the price won't be too terrible. Wouldn't that be better? Since we will learn sooner or later anyway, why not obediently learn earlier? Why insist on being taught lesson after lesson before we learn -- wouldn't it be better to learn proactively?

In each life, you should examine the outer environment in order to learn about your inner environment and inner conditions.

The outer is a reflection of the inner. What he means is, we often say that you create the outer world from within, but many people cannot see what their inner world is like. Then look at your outer world, look at the environment around you, and you will know what your inner condition is like.

Session 551

The Nature and Abilities of the Inner Self

You should understand the nature of your inner self, and express it outwardly.

Your inner self is projected outward, expressed on the outside. When you achieve real-time examination of your external environment, then look at what your internal environment is like, and then you also understand the nature of your inner self—

When the inner self becomes more aware of its own nature and abilities, the outer environment should improve.

Why would this be said? Logically speaking, doesn't the inner self already understand its own abilities and nature? Why does it still need to become aware of itself? It is very simple: your inner self is unconscious. Relative to those of us who are conscious, this inner self is unconscious. This unconscious inner self, of course it understands itself very well, but when he says "let it understand," he actually means let you understand—let you understand your inner self. When you understand your inner self, it is equivalent to superimposing conscious awareness onto the unconscious inner self, using your consciousness to understand the unconscious inner self, its nature and abilities.

It is creation and experience—that is its nature and abilities. It can create, it can project everything of the inner self outward, turning it into the reality around you; then it goes and experiences, letting you experience your surrounding environment back again. It is a process of creating and experiencing at the same time. So when you understand its nature and abilities, your outer environment should improve. Of course—once you know that you yourself can create and change, then it will certainly improve.

Reincarnation Is an Opportunity and a Tool

So, theoretically speaking — he uses this phrase, "theoretically speaking." Why does he say "theoretically speaking"? Because in practice it is not necessarily so; theoretically it is like this —

Each of your lives would be stronger, healthier, wealthier, and wiser.

But for many reasons, in fact it is not so. Theoretically, going upward it would be like this, right, because in each life you learn more of the inner self's abilities, to bring out the inner self's nature. In practice it is not like this.

As I have said before, many personalities take on various different experiences, perhaps focusing on the development of one particular area in a series of reincarnations, while ignoring others.

Why does this happen? Because many personalities take on their own various different experiences, and then in a series of reincarnations, across many consecutive lifetimes, they all focus on the development of one particular area while ignoring others. Which areas? He said earlier, it is which areas you focus on. Many people get entangled in concepts of good and evil, and then they ignore the development of other areas, ignore their creative ability and creativity, and every day they get tangled up in this good and evil, good and bad.

No consciousness has the same experience, or interprets it in the same way.

No consciousness has the same experience, or gives it the same interpretation. Therefore, each person uses the opportunity of reincarnation in his own way. He treats reincarnation as an opportunity; you could even see it as a tool — he will say later that reincarnation is a tool. Do not treat reincarnation as an inevitable choice in life, a passive choice; just treat reincarnation as one experience in your life.

It is like this: right now you are an adult, and your reincarnation can be treated as a special experience, like an experience of studying abroad. If you treat one reincarnation as one life experience, then you are using each reincarnation in your own way, learning and improving yourself. So you should treat reincarnation as an opportunity; every reincarnation is an opportunity.

Changes of Sex and Experience

Changes of sex are necessary, and some people change sex in every life.

Some people change in every life: the previous life as a man, the next as a woman, the next again as a man, the next again as a woman, alternating back and forth like that. And some others have a series of female lives, they always like being female, a series of female lives, and then a series of male lives, or the reverse.

But within the whole framework of reincarnation, experience with both sexes is necessarily involved.

Both sexes will necessarily be involved. If you follow a single-sex line, your abilities cannot develop. You will not develop fully; you must have the experience of being a father and a mother, you must have the experience of being a father and a mother.

When you reach that point, that is, when you realize that you are forming your day-to-day existence, the life as you know it, then you can begin to change your own mental and spiritual and psychic patterns, and thereby change your daily environment.

When you realize that you are now forming your day-to-day existence, and the life as you know it, these are all being formed by you. When you understand that you have created your own world, when you believe this, then you can begin to change your own mental and spiritual things. Why did you not change before? Because you felt that even if you changed, you could not change the environment; you felt that raising your spiritual state had no effect on your outer environment, so raising it or not raising it made no difference. Now he tells you, when you understand that your outer life is created by your inner self, then you have the motivation to transform.

This realization should go hand in hand with an objective intuitive knowledge of the abilities of the inner self.

This realization of knowledge must go hand in hand with your deep intuitive knowledge of the abilities of the inner self. In other words, you must be able to truly perceive the inner self, perceive the abilities of the inner self, and do so in an intuitive way, intuitively feel it. In other words, you must also open up, connect with those inner senses, fully utilize these abilities of your inner self; these two abilities must go hand in hand. If you only say, "I have learned the previous passage, I know this knowledge," that is not enough; they must go hand in hand.

These two factors together can free you from any difficulties carried over from previous lives.

The whole structure of your life will begin to change with these realizations, developing accelerated spiritual and psychic growth. He says it very clearly: growth will accelerate.

The Inner Logic of Human Relationships

In terms of your present human relationships, mental attitudes, and experiences, there is an inner logic in all of them.

For example, if in a certain life you hated women very much, it is very likely that in the next life you will be a woman. Why? Because only in this way can you experience what it is like to be a woman, and as a woman, you have to face all those attitudes you once held against women, all that hatred of women. Weren't you the one who hated women? Weren't you the one who despised women? Then at this point, your attitude toward women must be experienced by you as a woman. For example, if you discriminated against women, showed disrespect toward women, and so on, all these prejudices against women must be experienced again by you as a woman before you can deeply understand them.

You cannot say, "I understand now, I get it, I have learned my lesson, I will not discriminate against women anymore." That is useless. These are just words in theory. Only when you truly become a woman and are discriminated against by others can you genuinely feel it. I have read related accounts, though I cannot recall the specifics, but only when you truly play a role as that identity can you understand.

If in the past you had no sympathy for the sick, then it is very likely that you will be born with a serious illness.

Very likely, not certain, you may be born with a serious illness, but this is also your own choice, not something imposed on you. Thus you find yourself encountering those attitudes that were once your own. If you had no sympathy for the sick, then you will be made to be a sick person, to see how others regard you without sympathy. For example, if you are a disabled person, or if you are a severely ill patient, look at how others treat you -- this attitude you once held toward others, you are made to feel it anew.

Such a life, however, will usually include other lessons as well.

It is not only to make you experience what it is like when others hate women, or discriminate against women, or discriminate against the sick. It is not only for that; usually it will include other lessons as well. No life is chosen for only one reason. This is only one item among them; your life has other purposes too, and it will also provide many other psychological experiences.

A life of chronic illness, for example, may be a method of tempering.

There is a kind of long-term chronic illness, such as diabetes, hepatitis, high blood pressure, and various other chronic illnesses. This chronic illness will temper you, enabling you to use deeper abilities that you neglected in a life of good health. Some abilities you neglected when you were in good health, you will discover them when you are ill.

A life of perfect happiness may on the surface appear excellent, but it may basically be a shallow life, of little help in developing the personality.

You go through this life smoothly, everything goes smoothly to the end, you have not gone through any challenges, and you may not have developed much either. But a truly happy life is deeply satisfying, and should include spontaneous wisdom and spiritual joy. But he is not saying that none of us should live a happy life, or that we should all live lives of suffering. No, Seth never says that suffering can bring any benefit. He is only telling you that if you live a life that is happy and perfect on the surface, without improving yourself, without bringing out your spontaneous wisdom and spiritual joy, then you are shallow.

In other words, I am not saying that suffering necessarily leads to spiritual achievement.

Here you must understand that Seth is not saying that suffering is necessarily the teacher of life, that you must go through countless hardships and tribulations, through the eighty-one ordeals¹⁶, before you can attain enlightenment in thought and elevation of the soul. There is no need for that. If in a truly happy life you can spontaneously bring forth your own wisdom and spiritual joy, you are the same.

Nor are all illnesses chosen and accepted for one purpose only, for that is not the case.

Do not think, after learning the above, that we get sick because we hated and despised sick people, so in the next life we get sick. No, that is only one of the reasons. There are many, many other causes and other reasons for your illness. And it is not that you must go through illness in order to improve; there is no need for that either.

Illness is often the result of ignorant and lazy mental habits.

He gives a definition of illness here. This statement is a bit too direct, or perhaps too hard to accept. No one wants to be sick, but here he points out that illness is often the result of ignorant and lazy mental habits. That is to say, if you are a person who always has spiritual pursuits, or if you are a very active person in the spiritual world, or if your spirit is very rich and very full, if your pursuits, your creativity, and your sense of mission are all very strong, then you basically will not get sick.

When does illness occur? Basically when you have nothing to do, when your spirit does not strive for progress, when you have no creativity, when every day you only focus on the affairs of your physical body -- I cannot get sick, I pay attention to my body, I must take care of my health and preserve my vitality, early on I pick up my cup and soak goji berries in it, and then every day I take care of my body with great attention. Excessive care of the body indicates that you are spiritually empty and lazy. Here it must be said that it is the result of mental habits, not physical laziness. Some people are not physically lazy; they are very diligent, but they are mentally lazy, not striving for progress, not wanting to improve or elevate themselves. This mental laziness and ignorance will lead to illness. From this statement, you can probably understand one of the main sources of illness.

But certain individuals who, because of other characteristics, must be dealt with by strong measures, may adopt such training.

What kind of training? The training of making oneself ill, the training of getting sick. One kind of illness is the result of ignorant and lazy mental habits; there is another kind of person who, because they want to adopt a drastic measure, because of other characteristics, because of their own particularity, must adopt strong measures to carry out such training, and only then will they make themselves ill.

The Overall Pattern of Interpersonal Relationships

Across lifetimes, there is an overall pattern of interpersonal relationships.

For example, who you meet, who you get to know, and so on -- this overall pattern of relationships. Across all the reincarnations in your lifetimes, there is already a general overall pattern of who you need to meet. But he says the existence of this relationship pattern does not mean that you will go through different lives with just a very limited few familiar friends, like actors changing faces and costumes. It is not that the people around you are either your friends or your relatives -- it is not like that.

A group of people may come together in various lives for a certain purpose, then separate, and may or may not come together again in some different place.

He puts it rather vaguely -- maybe they will, maybe they won't, not necessarily. But there is no fixed rule for this.

Some families are indeed reincarnations of their own ancestors.

Many people ask about this: an elder in the family suddenly passes away on the child's birthday, and the two share the exact same zodiac sign -- is there some meaning in that? We will not discuss such specific special cases. But generally speaking, in some families the members are indeed the ancestors returning through reincarnation. Yet this is by no means the norm; it is not that it must be this way, only that some families are like this.

Deep relationships will continue to some extent, while others will fade away.

So deep relationships will continue to some degree, will continue this kind of familial bond; while other relationships that are not so deep will gradually fade away. And those deep ones -- after a few more lifetimes, will they no longer be so deep? Will they gradually fade away too? So that is what he means: it is not that this big family is always made up of the same familiar people reincarnating back and forth.

I want to make clear: the opportunity for development and the pursuit of knowledge exists in this life, at this moment, just as it will in the future.

This statement has a subtle meaning. He says what he wants to make clear is this -- your opportunity for development and the pursuit of knowledge is in this life, at this moment, in your present moment, in this very moment as you listen to my explanation, or as you read this book, just as it will be in the future. What does that mean? It means: learn now, change now, recognize now -- right now, in the present. If you say, "I will learn later," then why not learn now? Learning now is the same as learning later.

If you now ignore the day-to-day opportunities for development, no one can force you, after death or between lives, to accept and make use of greater abilities.

Your abilities -- if you do not use them now, no one will force you to use them after death, no one will force you to use them in your next life, and no one will force you to use them in the process between lives. If you do not use them, you do not use them; if you do not use them now, you will not use them later either. In other words, if you do not learn today, you will not learn later either. If you want to learn, you will learn. Do not make all kinds of excuses like "what about later, I will deal with it after death." He says it is not like that. In the after-death experience there are teachers. Some say there are teachers who guide you after death. You have teachers now too. Why would you say that you will learn after death because there are teachers there, as if there are no teachers now? There are teachers now, and you still do not learn.

Some families come together in a particular ritual, not because of great attraction or love in past existences, but for the opposite reason.

You must remember this. The opposite reason -- what is it? Bad relationships. Family members who do not get along, or who deeply resent each other, who dislike each other -- it is not because of love. So you must understand: when you reincarnate in your next life, it is not necessarily those family members who got along well with you who will be with you again. It is very likely that the one you did not like, the one you disliked the most, that family member of yours, will be with you, forming an even closer relationship.

So family relationships may be composed of individuals who did not like each other in the past. Is that not interesting? The people you do not like -- those people will form a new family, and they will come together again in an intimate relationship. So we often say, why is harming others the same as harming yourself? However you tormented others, how will others torment you? Now you will understand. If there is a family member you do not like, and you torment them every day, well then, in the next life they may be your closest loved one -- and would they not torment you in return? Think about it carefully.

And work together for a common purpose, learning to understand each other better, and resolve the problem under a different set of circumstances.

It is a different kind of relationship. If last time you were siblings and the relationship became extremely strained, then in the next life the two of you switch to a husband-and-wife relationship -- could you then make the relationship work? If you consider the problem from this angle, can you not quickly resolve the problems in your family relationships, without carrying that problem with you?

So what do you understand from seeing this? Why must you wait until the next life? Why can you not resolve it in this life? If you improve the relationship with them now, you will not need a next life for it -- why go through all that trouble? You understand it all now, but when you come back in the next life you may not necessarily understand it -- the memories are all wiped clean, and neither of you remembers the previous life. Fine, so you start all over again, torment each other all over again, hurting each other. After the hurting is done, you think: oh dear, we hurt each other again, so let us do it again next time -- and next time you come back with the memories wiped again, and the two of you start all over again.

You already understand this principle now; you already grasp it in this present moment. So what you need to do now is simply to improve the relationship with those family members you do not get along with -- is that not the solution? When you are fully clear and aware now, why not resolve it, instead of waiting until your next life when you understand nothing, and then trying to resolve it?

The Common Purpose of Each Generation

Each generation has its own common purpose, which is this: to perfect inner knowledge, and to externalize it into this world as faithfully as possible.

What purpose is that? To perfect inner knowledge, and to externalize it into this world as faithfully as possible. Which world? The inner world. First make the inner world perfect, then project it outward, project it outward as accurately and concretely as possible. This is a common purpose that a generation often has.

Through the ages, the changes in the concrete picture as you know it represent the inner images that have flashed through the minds of each person living on earth during various periods.

What he is saying here is something quite grand. Through the ages, the changes in this concrete picture as you know it, that is, our world is changing. The changes in this world are actually all inner images that have flashed through each person's mind.

You do not need to know your own past lives, although it may be beneficial if you understand the environment you chose to be born into.

You need to understand this: you do not need to know your own past lives. Although it may be beneficial if you understand the environment you chose to be born into this time, it is not of much use. If you examine your own life carefully, the challenges you set for yourself will become obvious. The challenges you set for yourself — if you observe your life carefully, you can see what kind of life you have set up for yourself. So you do not need to go back to a previous life, or go back earlier, to know why you set up this life plan for yourself in this lifetime. You can actually know it yourself. This is not easy to do, but it is something everyone can do.

If you release yourself from resentment, then you automatically release yourself from any future relationships of this kind, or from experiences rooted in resentment.

If you release yourself from resentment, then you release yourself from this kind of relationship, and you also release yourself from this kind of experience rooted in resentment.

No Need to Trace Past Lives; You Can Change in the Present

Knowing your reincarnational background, but not knowing the true nature of who you are now, is useless.

Some people will say, I will go find a psychic, find a skilled master, and have them look at my past lives. You know your past lives, but you do not know your true nature, so what use is it? What nature? It is that your inner self creates your outer reality; this is your nature. You only know your past lives, but if you do not know that this nature exists, it is useless. You cannot say, "This is caused by what I did in a past life."

Many people, once they know their past lives, what do they want to do? They want to shift the blame. One of the greatest traits of human beings is shifting blame. They shift the blame for things onto their parents, onto their family of origin, onto society, onto the environment, onto injustice, onto heaven, onto their closest loved ones, and so on. The biggest problem in a person's life is constantly shifting blame. When there is truly no one left to blame, they think -- well, let me see whether my past life is the cause of this, and then shift the blame further back.

They do not understand what their nature is; they do not understand that their present environment is something they themselves have created, something they themselves have brought about. They always look for external causes; they always shift the blame.

You cannot say that this is caused by what you did in a past life, and thereby justify your present circumstances or present difficulties.

You cannot do this; you cannot justify it. Because right now, within you, you have the ability to change negative influences; you can change this negative influence right now. In other words, if you want to know why your relationships with your family members are not good, and you want to trace back into your past-life existence to find the cause, then why not change it right now in the present? Is this not abandoning the root to chase the branches, climbing a tree to seek fish? It is something you can change right now, yet you insist on going around to past lives to resolve it. Even if you know your past life, so what? What you come to know, do you not still have to resolve it in this life?

You may for some reason bring negative influences into your life, but such reasons are always connected with understanding, and understanding will remove those negative influences.

That is, it is for some reason that you bring negative emotions into your life. You say, because of such and such, that is why I have these negative emotions -- because my childhood was unhappy, because I am a child from a single-parent family, that is why I lack a sense of security, that is why I do not trust others, and so on and so forth. This is the mantra of many people, is it not? These all become your grand and dignified excuses.

But when you understand these reasons -- you need to understand them, right, understand whether these reasons of yours truly exist, whether your real lack of security is because of that cause? You need to think it through carefully. Once you have thought it through clearly, you will change; you can change right now; you will adjust it right now. Your sense of insecurity -- one second ago you were in an insecure state of mind; the next second, can you not change it into a secure state of mind?

You say, "No, I cannot change it, because it was brought to me by my family of origin" -- then you cannot change it. You cannot change your family of origin, and you cannot change your childhood wounds; these are all things that have already happened. So you can only change your present state of mind. Clearly you can change it, yet you say you cannot change it; then no one can do anything about it, so just carry it with you then. But you can change it.

When you carry trust in life, trust in the entire universe, trust in All That Is, you are blessed; you are blessed by everyone, including yourself, including the entire soul, including all the people in the whole world -- toward you, all are gracious. In this world there is no evil; all is good; those evils are merely caused by their ignorance. So in such a world where all is good, where does your insecurity come from? Is it not just from yourself? I will not expand on this question further; go consider your own issues yourself. Everyone encounters these negative emotions; just remove them one by one.

Cultivation Cannot Be Cold: The Attitude Toward Helping the Poor and Suffering

You cannot say that the poor are poor because they chose poverty, and therefore I do not need to help them.

This is an attitude many people have. Many who have studied New Age ideas, or Seth, or the law of attraction will say: do not help the poor, because they chose this, they attracted these things to themselves; because they chose poverty, therefore they are poor, and I do not need to concern myself with them -- this is each person's life choice, so why interfere with their freedom?

Is this view correct? It is not. Why is it wrong? If you go back to Buddhism, Buddhism is divided into Hinayana Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and also a most original Human and Heavenly Vehicle¹⁷.

What is the Human and Heavenly Vehicle? This is for a person who has no aversion to reincarnation in the human world, who very much likes life in the human world, and does not want to escape it. At that point, Buddhism gives this person the theory of the Human and Heavenly Vehicle: through studying the Human and Heavenly Vehicle, at least in your next reincarnation you will not be too badly off, you will not fall into the animal realm; at the very least you will reincarnate among humans, asuras, or in the heavenly realm. You will not go downward; you can only go upward.

What is Hinayana Buddhism? Hinayana Buddhism is: I now understand the matter of reincarnation in the human world, I want to escape it, I want to achieve nirvana myself, so I will first take care of myself. I cannot manage others; I can only sever my own emotional roots, cultivate in purity, and go to nirvana by myself.

Then what is Mahayana Buddhism? Mahayana Buddhism is: I want to help all people in the world attain liberation. If one person is not liberated, then I myself cannot be liberated either. I want to help all people -- this is the state of a bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas practice Mahayana Buddhism.

This is the same principle here. If there is still one poor person in this world, if there is still one person in this world who is in pain, still one person who suffers, then all of humanity suffers along with them. Their suffering is your suffering; their sin is your sin. You cannot say that they chose this thing, and so you just sit there on the sidelines watching -- "That is what you chose, you deal with it, what does it have to do with me anyway" -- this view is incorrect.

If this view were correct, then I ask you, where would your compassion come from? Where would your love come from? When you see others suffering and in distress, and you do not even extend a helping hand, then what use is your cultivation? What are you even cultivating? I do not understand what you are cultivating.

So you must not go astray. Oh, Seth already said this, others already said this: you create your reality through your inner mind, you are poor because your inner mind created it, right? What does that have to do with me? I am doing so well now because my inner mind created it -- this is still the mark of a person, the mark of a self, the mark of sentient beings; it is still this discriminating mind at work here. So this view is wrong, definitely wrong.

You cannot see poor people, see suffering people, and not help them. You absolutely cannot be like that. If you are like that, you will be unable to cultivate; you will not be able to accomplish anything. This is a key point; this is a fundamental attitude.

If you have this kind of attitude, you may very easily attract poverty to yourself in your next life experience.

Why? Because you are disgusted by poverty, you hate poverty, you resent this poverty. You have not seen the shining points within this poverty; you have not seen that these people chose such a life in order to experience poverty, in order to gain experience. You have not respected this poverty, and you have not extended a helping hand to poverty. You are avoiding it; you are afraid of it. You are afraid that this poverty will attach itself to you; you are afraid that if you give your wealth to these poor people, you will become poor yourself; you are afraid that your wealth is not enough to share among them. You fear poverty, you fear being poor -- fine, sorry, in your next life you will still be poor. It is that simple. Because whatever you fear, you attract. That is the belief behind your inner belief; that is your hidden logic. Once you understand this, you understand it all. So do not do this kind of thing anymore; when you see someone who needs help, extend a helping hand.

Each Achievement Is Different

Even when reincarnation ends, each person's achievements are different.

Many people ask, is it true that all those who finish reincarnation, all those who reach complete spiritual attainment, have the same state? No, each person's achievements are different.

Some people possess certain qualities for which no equivalent can be found in human experience.

What does this mean? They are unique. Among the billions upon billions of beings who have come and gone over these hundreds of billions of years, you cannot find anyone the same as them. This kind of quality is something every person can develop; you are a unique existence. So do not think that we all go through reincarnation, and in the end we all reach complete spiritual attainment, and in the end we all attain Buddhahood, and we all go together as a group to the Western Pure Land -- it is not like that. Every person is different. Even if you no longer reincarnate, each person's achievements are still different.

For different kinds of people, earthly life itself also has different effects.

Some people find that human life is an excellent medium for expression and development. They find that this human life is itself a process of the best expression, from nothing to something, where they can fully display all their abilities and talents. On such a stage, they find this is the best opportunity for expression, an excellent one. It suits them very well; they have the skill to express themselves in concrete ways, and they have the means to faithfully objectify inner feelings.

Others find it difficult, but these people may do much better in other levels of reality.

In other words, you cannot simply evaluate a person based on their achievements in human society and the human world. They may not be particularly outstanding in some respects in the human world, but that does not mean they cannot do well on other levels of reality; they may perform even better there. And some people may be especially suited to this earthly level, to fully and freely express themselves through reincarnation after reincarnation across the long river of human history. Then just go and develop that; every person is different.

Some hardy souls thrive in physical reality, yet they may have difficulty adapting to other nonphysical areas of activity.

They are very capable in the physical world, very skilled within that environment, but in the environment of the nonphysical world, they may not be as skilled.

Yet in all of these areas, profound psychic or emotional situations are never negated.

Whether physical or nonphysical, in these areas, profound psychic and emotional situations are never negated. Whether in the physical world or the nonphysical world, you must experience the development of your most profound psychic and emotional aspects. Do not place too much emphasis on material achievements -- not that material life is unimportant, nor that material achievements are unimportant, but you must understand what is most important: the psychic and emotional. In both of these realms, they will never be erased, never be negated.

Acquaintances from Past Lives: Reunions in the Dream State

Friends who were very close in past lives will often communicate with you in the dream state, if they are in a position to do so.

Some old friends, close friends from past lives, may contact you after you die or even during your life. If they are alive, they contact you in the dream state; after you die, they contact you in that intermediate zone. But while you are alive you are unaware of it. You connect with them in your sleep, the two of you are chatting and communicating, but the conscious you does not realize it.

Why does he say this? He is saying what was said earlier: these deep psychic and emotional connections, if you have established deep connections with certain people in a given life, this thing can never be erased, never be denied. No matter what level you go to in the future, this emotional connection and bond will always remain. If those good friends or dear relatives want to contact you, they will contact you. But the premise is that they are able to reach you; that is the prerequisite. Sometimes it is not possible; sometimes communication between levels is not permitted.

On an unconscious basis, you will be aware of the reincarnation of a person you knew in the past.

On an unconscious basis, you will be aware of a person you knew in the past, an old friend from before, someone from a past life, who has incarnated as a human, who has been reborn into human form. You will be aware of it; you will sense it. But remember the premise: it is on an unconscious basis. Your inner self will know, but the conscious you does not know.

Strangers met in dreams are often people who are alive now, or contemporaries, or people you have known in past lives.

The people you dream of are all living people, and occasionally you also encounter those who have died. Or you meet some strangers whom you think you do not know in this life, and you do not recognize them in the dream either, but in fact you already knew them in past lives. So on an unconscious basis, you will meet these people, because they are your old friends.

Marriage Relationships and Ambiguity

There are also brief relationships, where contact is made and then it is over.

For example, a spouse in any given lifetime may or may not represent someone with whom you have had a deep, enduring relationship. We often say the old saying: "Ten years of cultivation brings a shared boat crossing; a hundred years of cultivation brings a shared pillow¹⁸." That is, you and the person beside you must certainly have a close karmic connection. But he says it is not necessarily so; it may or may not represent that. You must not become rigid about it -- "Then surely the two of us being husband and wife this time means we must have a deep connection" -- not necessarily; it is also possible that it is not.

You may likewise marry someone because of an extremely ambiguous relationship in a past life, choosing a marriage relationship not founded on love, although love may appear.

That is to say, you may have married someone because this person had an ambiguous relationship with you in your subconscious, with all sorts of emotional entanglements. In this life you met, and then you got married. Perhaps in this life the two of you did not have anything of mutual love, but because of certain causes from a previous life, you got married. At this time, love may possibly appear. Because in the previous life there was this kind of ambiguous relationship, although when you met in this life you did not know why you got married, perhaps in the course of getting along later on, you will slowly, gradually find that familiar feeling.

Then many people will say: Hey, didn't you say that cause and effect does not exist? Why are you now saying it does exist? You must remember, when I say cause and effect does not exist, I am speaking from a higher dimension, from the level of four-dimensional space, from the level of the higher soul; if you are speaking from within three-dimensional space, these causes and effects do exist. If you insist on straightening out the line of this earth, then there is a before and an after -- wherever time exists, cause and effect will exist. You must not misunderstand this.

But you must understand that in essence, cause and effect does not exist. Why? Because it is possible that you may reincarnate across eras; you may reincarnate forward, then further forward, then backward. How can you say it is because of a previous life? For example, the ambiguous relationship between you and this person happened in the 21st century, but when you reincarnated, the two of you returned to a process in the 18th century, and at that time perhaps the two of you became husband and wife again. So how can you consider this cause and effect on a timeline? There is no way to consider it, right? But would you say there is a connection in the middle? There is a connection. It is that kind of relationship.

Incidentally, twins almost always involve an extremely strong, sometimes obsessive in nature, enduring psychic relationship.

He is talking about identical twins, not fraternal twins. I will not elaborate on this; you can understand it at a glance. The relationship between twins is no ordinary thing; that kind of psychic bond between them is extremely strong.

Reincarnation Is a Tool Used by People

The purposes of reincarnation also vary greatly. I want to emphasize: reincarnation is a tool used by people.

This is a very crucial sentence. Each of them uses it in their own way. Reincarnation is one of your tools, a tool that everyone uses, and through reincarnation you aim to achieve certain purposes. Tools are for achieving purposes -- so regard it as a tool.

Some people enjoy being women, or prefer the life of men more, or must experience both, but there is still a great range of choice and activity.

Some people have difficulties in certain areas, while developing quite easily in others. This is also very normal. Certain people are extremely skilled in some fields, completely in their element, while in other areas they struggle and can barely move forward. So in such cases, this is all a choice each person makes for themselves through the method chosen by this tool used in reincarnation.

Because challenges and environments are determined by the person, there is absolutely no predestination involved.

We choose them ourselves. For example --

Some problems may be postponed for several lives, perhaps resolved within a series of rather tormenting lives and exaggerated environments.

Some people want to resolve the most serious problems first, and put the less serious ones off, push them back. Here you need to understand that challenges and environments are all chosen by the person themselves. If you regard reincarnation as a tool, then you will make good use of this tool: set up the environment and challenges for the next incarnation, set them all up, use it as a tool, and then throw yourself into it again to train yourself. So this does not involve predestination -- it is your own choice, not something predetermined for you by others. Can someone else's choice be called predestination? If you had to count it as imposition, it could only be counted as imposition you placed on yourself. And since you imposed it on yourself, can you not change it at any time?

Some problems, in your reincarnations, you consider unimportant and can resolve them slowly; but some problems you discover are very serious, and you want to resolve the most serious ones. Moreover, these most serious problems may need to be placed in a rather tormenting, exaggerated scenario -- or a situation, or a plot -- in order to be resolved. Without this intense emotional conflict or intense drama, the problem cannot be resolved. This is very interesting.

Other individuals of calmer temperament solve one problem at a time.

In this lifetime he resolves just one problem, and perhaps he needs a period of rest in between. Why rest? It has a very good healing effect. After resolving a major problem, he needs to rest for a while. What does rest look like?

For example, a person may choose a life that is relatively problem-free, extremely pleasant, and satisfying, as a prelude to the next life full of all challenges, or as a reward for those difficult previous existences.

When you are about to begin a life full of all challenges, a very difficult life, your previous life can be one you choose for yourself that is more relaxed, more enjoyable, more satisfying, with fewer problems. Because you know the next life is about to begin a very challenging one. Or if you have lived through several very challenging lives in a row and are especially exhausted in body and mind -- I mean spiritual exhaustion, psychic exhaustion -- then at this time you may choose a relaxed life, which is also a reward to yourself.

Enjoying Without Being Bewitched

Those who thoroughly enjoy the physical medium without being bewitched by it are indeed doing very well.

There are some people who completely enjoy the physical world, but they do not become obsessed with it. What we often say, "passing through a field of myriad flowers without a single leaf clinging to you," is exactly this state. He fully enjoys the medium of the physical world, but he is not obsessed with it, not bewitched by it; such a person is doing very well. In other words, when he comes to the physical world, he enjoys this physical world, but he does not become obsessed with this thing, is not bewitched by this three-dimensional world, yet he still fully enjoys it.

The Laws of Reincarnation Are Personally Adapted

The laws of reincarnation are adapted by the individual according to his needs.

This is very important. Are there any rules or regulations for your reincarnation? For example, must my next life be—whatever the previous life was like, the next life must be the same; or you cannot set yourself up with a rich-second-generation starting point, cannot set the difficulty too high—are there any such restrictions? He tells you there are none. These laws of reincarnation are changed by each person according to his own needs—what kind of afterlife, what kind of life he wants—he changes them himself; there is no fixed rule.

Chapter Twelve has only two parts, mainly discussing interpersonal relationships in the process of reincarnation. Later we will begin Chapter Thirteen—the topic of reincarnational dreams and the male and female hidden within oneself.

注释与核实

1. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Mencius" (Mencius | Chinese Confucianism & Moral Philosophy) (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mencius-Chinese-philosopher) ↩

2. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Steve Jobs" (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Steve-Jobs) ↩

3. Source: Mencius, "Mencius: Gaozi II" (https://m.gushiwen.cn/shiwenv_ff66d475ee44.aspx) ↩

4. Source: The Bible, New Testament, Matthew 5:39 (Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation) (https://wd.bible/en/verse/mat.5.39.cunps) ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: Wikipedia, "Prince Sattva" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Sattva) ↩

7. Source: Neale Donald Walsch, "Conversations with God: Book 1" (https://gadyasoor.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cwg-1.pdf) ↩

8. Source: Neale Donald Walsch, "Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 3" (https://library.melbac.org/books/dvdBooks/DIGGING%20DEEP%202/Conversations-With-God-Volume-3.pdf) ↩

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

10. This claim could not be verified. ↩

11. Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "Small and short-lived 2025 ozone hole confirms long-term recovery trend" (2025) (https://wmo.int/media/news/small-and-short-lived-2025-ozone-hole-confirms-long-term-recovery-trend) ↩

12. Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "WMO recognizes new Arctic temperature record of 38⁰C" (https://wmo.int/media/news/wmo-recognizes-new-arctic-temperature-record-of-380c) ↩

13. According to Mike's original words, "there are 7.5 billion people alive on Earth"; upon verification, it should be "the global population had reached about 8.2 billion by 2024, not 7.5 billion (7.5 billion was approximately the level in 2017)." (Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, "World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results" (2024), https://population.un.org/wpp/assets/Files/WPP2024_Summary-of-Results.pdf) ↩

14. This claim could not be verified. ↩

15. Source: Wikipedia, "Bibliography of Jane Roberts" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Jane_Roberts) ↩

16. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Journey to the West" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Journey-to-the-West) ↩

17. Source: Ding Fubao, "Dictionary of Buddhist Studies: Five Vehicles" (https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%BD%9B%E5%AD%B8%E5%A4%A7%E8%BE%AD%E5%85%B8/%E4%BA%94%E4%B9%98) ↩

18. Source: Anonymous, "Expanded Writings of Worthies" (https://m.gushiwen.cn/guwen/bookv_5f1f444ff8c6.aspx) ↩