Mike's commentary · Seth Speaks, Chapter 19

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

Guide

Chapter 19 starts from the different stages of consciousness, treating consciousness as an attribute or tool of the soul, and explains that by shifting focus one can enter different levels. Horizontally there are A1 and A1-A, A1-B, A1-C, which allow exploration of personal, group, and civilizational possibilities; vertically there are A2 through A6, involving past lives, planets, concepts, cross-time communication, and so on. The emphasis is on introducing the A1 level and A1-A for observing the body, thoughts and emotions, healing, and rehearsing future decisions, and on explaining fluctuations of consciousness, memory systems, and agent consciousness.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Consciousness is an attribute or tool of the soul, not the person himself; consciousness has different stages and focal points.
• The A1 level is one step beside normal consciousness, and can be used to observe oneself from a bystander's perspective, enter the body, adjust thoughts and emotions, and carry out healing.
• The A1-A level allows one to experience alternative presents brought about by different choices, and can be used to rehearse physical, mental, emotional, and environmental effects before major decisions.
• The horizontally adjacent levels A1-B and A1-C involve groups, civilizations, and broader possibilities; the depth levels A2 through A6 respectively involve past lives, the planet, concepts, communication across time and space, and so on.
• Consciousness is fluctuating, and waking consciousness is not continuous; memory systems are interconnected, and shifting to an alternative focus is simply turning consciousness in a non-habitual direction.

Main Text

Chapter 19: Alternative "Present" and Multiple Focus

Before introducing this chapter, let's briefly review Chapter 18, because these two chapters are closely connected. Chapter 18 talked a lot about the different stages of consciousness and their symbolic correspondences. Let's make a simple summary, so that we can conveniently use the relevant knowledge later in our study. I have made a diagram of the content of Chapter 18.

Consciousness itself is very difficult to describe. Let's simply give it a basic concept according to Seth's theory: consciousness has different stages. What we can normally feel is its conscious mind, that is, the topmost layer of consciousness -- the world we can perceive through our eyes, nose, ears, mouth, tongue, and also through the body and thinking. We call this the conscious mind, or surface consciousness. This is the first stage of consciousness. Going further down in consciousness, the symbol corresponding to it is the physical world and events. On the left are the different stages of consciousness, and on the right I have listed their symbols. The conscious mind corresponds to our physical world and the events that actually happen.

The second stage is psychological activity. For example, when you enter a psychological imagination, an imagined space, a kind of fantasy, or a prospect for the future, these are all psychological activities. In psychological activity you have some imagined pictures and events, but these pictures and events are all closely related to the real physical world or material world. It is just that they do not actually happen; they are only imagined in your mind. This is consciousness at this level serving as a symbol of your feelings and experience.

The third stage we call the trance stage, or daydreaming, or trance. At this time your spirit is in a dazed, half-awake and half-confused state, a state between half-dreaming and half-waking. In this state, the corresponding symbolic things are abstract images. These symbolic things are there to mark yourself, so that you can distinguish which stage your consciousness is in. As Seth said, they add some signposts, some markers to your consciousness. Otherwise consciousness itself will not tell you, "Ding, what stage is it now?" No one tells you, like riding an elevator, what floor you are on now. At this time you have to find a way yourself to distinguish which stage your consciousness is in. Therefore, when abstract images and abstract events appear -- for example, a flower, a very nice weather, and so on -- it represents that you have entered a trance state.

Going further down is the next stage of consciousness: ordinary dreaming, entering the normal dream stage. At this time the symbolic events are all the world in the dream. The houses, trees, environment, people, and events in the dream are all very consistent with real life and have corresponding relationships. Although there is no connection between each event in the dream, within a single event there is a certain logic, a certain cause and effect, just like a replica of real life. So at this level, you know you are having a normal, ordinary dream.

Going further down there is also a deep dream state. The symbolic things represented by this deep dream state are bizarre, irregular, illogical pictures, events, and symbolic things with no connection between them. When these rapidly changing strange scenes appear, you know you have entered a deep dream.

Going further down, you enter a layer that our current conscious stage or surface consciousness stage cannot understand or perceive. We call it the unconscious stage. The unconscious here does not mean there is no consciousness; it is just that this consciousness cannot be perceived by us. Actually it does have consciousness, but that consciousness is something we cannot perceive. At that stage, you do not need any symbols. It feels directly, without needing any symbolic things to feel it. It feels directly.

In this situation, consciousness can go further down and enter a stage equivalent to a gateway. After passing through the unconscious state, consciousness can go to other reality spaces, or go to other times, spaces, and dimensions. At this stage, what it feels is something our normal consciousness cannot understand, so it returns to the previous layer and weaves those experiences into deep dreams. Those bizarre, irregular, completely illogical events and images in deep dreams are all the parts that your consciousness, after exploring, feeling, and experiencing in other times and spaces at the bottom of the unconscious, translated into something you can understand.

Why did Seth spend such a long passage talking about the different stages of consciousness? Because our consciousness follows us all the way. We have consciousness when we are alive; do we still have consciousness when we are dead? Consciousness is an attribute of our soul. As long as the soul exists, consciousness exists; the soul exists forever, so our consciousness exists forever. Therefore, if you want to understand yourself clearly, you have to understand your consciousness. Consciousness is an attribute of the soul, or one of its tools.

We drew a waveform to represent the different stages of consciousness. It is like a wave. You may say that when I am normally awake, I cannot perceive that consciousness has so many bands, but indeed these stages also exist while you are awake, only sometimes you simply do not know it. Actually consciousness is wavelike. The peak part is the conscious mind, which your surface consciousness can feel. In our daily life we connect these surface consciousnesses one after another and think that this present "I" has always existed in the surface consciousness. Actually there are some gaps in between, and there are other stages we cannot perceive. We do not have the consciousness to observe them, do not have the awareness of them. So Seth often says that sometimes you pass through these stages without knowing it. Of course, when you are awake, you may not necessarily enter the deep dream stage, but it is possible that you enter the unconscious stage. This consciousness is not one peak after another; it is not necessarily a standard sine wave. It may be various wavelike forms, but it is always fluctuating, always changing back and forth among different stages.

All right, the content of the previous chapter has been summarized through this simple diagram. The content of this chapter is about "alternative present and multiple focus." Many people do not understand this title when they see it. We can simply understand it this way -- let's give this chapter a new title: how to use the characteristics of these different stages of consciousness. To simplify, it is about how to use our consciousness to explore those unknown worlds, or how to use consciousness to do things that are truly helpful to us.

Consciousness is a tool of yours; consciousness is not you yourself. This is something many people are easily confused about at the beginning: they think that this present consciousness, this consciousness I feel, is me. Now you must understand that this consciousness is only an attribute of your soul, or one of its tools. Starting from this chapter, we will carefully study and explore the depth and breadth that this tool of consciousness can reach -- how far it can explore, how deep it can explore.

Simply speaking, under normal circumstances, we think that consciousness and our own being, and the person we are now, are merged together and not separate. Consciousness seems to live inside our body. Therefore, ordinary people all look at things outward from themselves. They think this is the only angle and the only direction of exploration for consciousness: taking oneself as the center and exploring outward into this universe, into this physical world. All our modern mainstream science and mainstream values believe that this is the focus and range of our consciousness -- that is, the physical world seen by the eyes and heard by the ears. As for things beyond this physical world, mainstream society and mainstream science consider them all illusory, all reactions of the brain, some activities of the psyche, and none of them truly exist. They do not acknowledge your daily feelings, your psychological sense of happiness, that joy and feeling. They think only the physical world is important.

So today let's shift the focus of consciousness. This chapter talks about multiple focus. Earlier we said that consciousness is like a camera: the focus can be set on a wide-angle lens, or on a telephoto lens to see very far and very wide, or it can become like a microscope to see very finely, or like an astronomical telescope to look at the vast starry sky. Consciousness has many, many focuses. Just think of consciousness as different lenses, different tools for seeing. Today let's take a look at what we can see and what we can do when we shift the different focuses of consciousness.

The A1 Level

Let us begin with the normal waking consciousness as you know it. We call this waking consciousness A. This is our normal waking consciousness. Only one step away from here is another level of consciousness into which you have all slipped unknowingly. We call it A1.

The A1 level is adjacent to your normal consciousness, connected with your normal consciousness, but slightly separated from it. Yet very obvious effects can appear in it, which do not exist in your usual state.

Simply speaking, what does this mean? It means that one small step beside your normal consciousness, there is another level of consciousness. We call it the A1 level. Normally you cannot perceive its existence at all. You often enter it, but you do not know it exists, and you are not aware of its existence.

Take this present consciousness of yours. Suppose you are sitting here, standing here, sitting at a desk -- no matter what -- imagine that your present consciousness is no longer in your body. This consciousness moves out of your body and moves to your side -- let's say take a big step to the left -- and then use this consciousness to turn around and look at yourself again. That place where you took a big step, we call it A1, the A1 level of consciousness.

Using the physical data with which you are already familiar as a basis, many abilities can be utilized at this level. What level? The A1 level. So what changes and effects does it have on our physical world? The present moment can also be experienced in many different ways. In your normal state you see the physical body, while in the A1 state, your consciousness can enter another person's body and heal it. Normally when we look at others we can only see their bodies, but at this time your consciousness can deviate from your body and go to the side, and then it can heal other people's bodies, enter other people's bodies and heal them. You can also perceive the condition of your own physical form in the same way, and you can also look at your own internal organs. According to your ability -- depending on the level of your ability, and everyone is different -- you can clearly and alertly, consciously manipulate external matter from within. If your ability is strong enough, you can clearly and purposefully manipulate external matter from within.

What does "manipulate external matter from within" mean? This sentence is a summary of the function of the A1 level. We know that external matter is projected from within. If you can enter the inner side, then changing the inner things changes the outer things.

A1 can be used as a side platform. From there you can look at actual events from a clearer standpoint. We all have this experience -- we often say "step out and look at yourself." Many books on psychology and books on success will tell you: when you are dealing with something very difficult to handle, a good method is to step out and look at yourself. That stepping out to look at yourself, isn't that letting you look at yourself and the matter you are dealing with from outside? That is to say, letting you enter the A1 level of your consciousness.

When you are using it, you can temporarily be free from physical stress, and use that freedom to then reduce physical stress. What does this mean? It means that when you are in the middle of a very thorny and difficult matter, or when you are in the middle of physical illness and pain, your body is under enormous stress -- not only physiological, but also mental and psychological stress. But when you move your consciousness to this platform beside you and stand beside yourself looking at yourself, the stress on you disappears, or is reduced. Because you are watching something happen to someone else -- your name is Zhang San, so it is as if you are standing beside watching what happens to Zhang San. Watching something happen to someone else and having something happen to yourself feel different, and the stress is also different.

You cannot see the true face of Mount Lu because you are in the mountain yourself. We have an old Chinese saying: "The person involved is confused; the bystander is clear." The person involved is always dazed and cannot see the essence of the matter; only the bystander can see clearly. The A1 level lends you a bystander's perspective, giving you a possibility to look at yourself from the sidelines. Stress decreases. When you use this freedom of thought, freedom of consciousness, and freedom of feeling to deal with the problem again, it will bring more freedom to the present you. It is a positive cycle, a process of continuously reducing pressure. Seemingly unsolvable problems, many very thorny problems that are not easy to solve, can often be solved -- but not necessarily, not with one hundred percent certainty, but often they can be solved. When you handle your own affairs the way you handle other people's affairs, many things are often easier to solve.

Many people are very interesting. When advising their best friends or buddies about relationship problems, they speak with perfect clarity: you should do this, you should do that, what is there to be reluctant about with such a jerk, break up with him immediately. But when she herself encounters the same situation, she still cannot handle it. What should you do at this time? You still have to step out. At this time the advice you give yourself is much more effective, and you can more easily form images, and those images themselves also have stronger mobility. At this time the viewpoints and advice you give yourself are very effective, and it is easy to form some sense of imagery, or some analysis of future trends. The sense of imagery is also more flexible and has stronger mobility.

Although A1 is only one step away, it is an important step. You must remember this. This is the most important step, a very important step. When you are dealing with matters, when you are at the point where problems are hardest to solve, take one step to the side, turn around and look at this matter, look at your own position and role in it, and how the interests and relationships in the middle should be handled. Think from a bystander's angle: if your friend were giving you advice, what advice should he give you? Or when your friend is in the same situation and you are a bystander, what advice should you give him? Treat yourself as a friend, treat the you who is in the middle of the matter as a friend, and take yourself out of it as a bystander.

Rob and Jane's feeling about the A1 level was like this -- this passage was said by Rob. Jane found that she could very well use A1 as a side platform, and this was a very natural method for her. As Jane herself said: "There is a small figure on the right side of my cheek." She imagined her own consciousness as a very small self, a very small person, right beside her own cheek. That was the consciousness of the self that had stepped out one step. She said I can send this tiny me to various places, to various places in the physical world, and I can also ask it to do things. When some people asked her, she had used this tiny self to enter other people's bodies to examine various diseases, or the causes of diseases. Rob said he had also tried this technique. He had entered Jane's knee -- Jane's knee had problems, rheumatoid arthritis. After Seth gave him suggestions after Session 570, he began to do this. So Jane's interest in this possibility began to grow. A week later, that Patty -- the Patty we mentioned in the previous session -- brought information about the alpha state, and Rob's progress also accelerated, because he used these materials about the alpha state.

Seth said, you can use A1 as the first step in a series of steps leading to deeper states of consciousness, or you can use it as the first step in a series of adjacent steps. The difference between these two sentences is: using it as the first step toward deeper levels, or using it as the first step toward broader space. One is depth and one is breadth -- adjacent steps mean breadth. Each deeper level of consciousness can also be used as the first step leading to other adjacent areas of knowledge. From the A1 level, in terms of breadth you can enter A1-A, A1-B, A1-C; in terms of depth, you can enter from A1 into the deeper A2 level. From the A2 level you can again enter A2-A, A2-B, A2-C. And so on. Consciousness can expand in both depth and breadth.

A1 is very easy to enter. When? When we listen to very beautiful music, when we are absorbed in a pleasant and quiet pastime -- drinking tea, sitting quietly, playing chess, appreciating flowers, reading a book -- you can feel that different feeling. That is the feeling of having entered the A1 level, the feeling of being outside the matter. It may be accompanied by characteristic clues of your own: you may tap your fingers in a certain way, or have a specific gesture, or you may stare, or look to the left or right as if dreaming. Everyone's state is different, and everyone's characteristics are different. You have to observe yourself: when you enter such a state, there will be some characteristics in the body. Any one of these bodily clues, as long as there is one, can help you distinguish this state of consciousness from the usual dominant state of consciousness. You only need to recognize it, learn to master it, and then further experiment with using it.

Generally speaking, it is still physically oriented, because its abilities are usually directed toward inner perception and the manipulation of the material and physical environment. So the A1 level is oriented toward the physical body. Therefore you can perceive "the present moment" from various unique standpoints that you do not ordinarily have. Although you stand from a bystander's angle, many of the things you feel are still related to the physical world. Whether you enter another person's body to examine illness, or enter your own body to look, it is all related to the physical world. But you are perceiving through inner perception, not through the physical eyes -- the physical eyes cannot enter another person's knee to look at the joints. This is a function of inner perception.

You can perceive your intestines or your hand as existing in this present reality of the moment. With practice, you can also experience the inner stillness and restlessness that exist simultaneously within your physical body in the present moment. When your consciousness leaves the body and observes yourself from a position not far away, you can instead clearly feel this relationship of inner stillness and restlessness in the body. It can give rise to boundless appreciation and wonder at this structure of the body that is both restless and still, this living, perfect structure. And you have a feeling of unity and harmony with the living physical matter that composes your body.

We usually say, "We feel we are one whole," but you do not go and feel how your liver is doing, do not feel whether your lungs are all right, and do not feel how your stomach is. When you want to eat now, it is your own consciousness that is hungry and wants to eat. You have not asked your body what it wants to eat. You say you now want to eat rich food, want to buy a hamburger, want to eat pizza or hotpot -- that is what you think. You have not asked your body what it wants. This state is when you have a feeling of unity and harmony with any living matter, cells, organs, blood, and circulatory system in the body. With practice, you can become intuitively aware of your inner physical environment -- what does intuitive mean? It means you do not need to observe deliberately; you naturally feel it, just as you perceive the external environment.

This state, I think people who have experience with meditation, or who have practiced the chakras -- the process from the root chakra all the way to the crown chakra -- seem to be able to visualize changes inside the body and see some things emerge. The method is the same: separate your consciousness from yourself, and use a small person to enter your own body to observe yourself. Many practitioners, many people who cultivate themselves, have this ability. So some people say, why do some great masters know when they are about to pass away, about to enter nirvana? They say, I will leave on such and such a day, I will leave at such and such a time. Why do they know? They are too familiar with their own physical bodies. They are so familiar with their own bodies that they know when their lifespan is exhausted. Very simple. In earlier times, including various special abilities, qigong, and so on, we will not talk about those. As long as a person has a certain level of cultivation, they can do this. This is not difficult at all. It is not that you must cultivate for many years or anything like that. This is a very simple ability, requiring only a little practice.

Mobilize your focus of consciousness, and move the focus away from yourself. This requires a certain amount of practice. Today we will not expand on how to practice it. You should practice moving your focus of consciousness from yourself to the left, to the right, near and far, up and down. When you become very skilled, you can fix this focus of consciousness anywhere. Consciousness is like a searchlight: wherever you shine it, that place lights up, and only then can you see it; wherever you do not shine it, that place is dark. But one premise is that you have to know where you want to explore, otherwise the searchlight does not know where to shine. Give you a camera, and you also do not know where to aim it.

For a child, if you let him explore the unknown world, he may only explore the area of his room, or the part related to his toys. At most, when he is a little older, he explores the yard at home and the surrounding streets, and that is it. But as he grows older, the range of exploration becomes larger and larger -- this city, beyond this province or this state, going to other countries, exploring all kinds of places he has never been. But the premise is that you have to know these places exist before you can explore them. In other words, you have to know there is a country in the world called Mauritius before you can say, I want to go to Mauritius for vacation. Otherwise, if you do not know Mauritius, how would you buy a plane ticket to Mauritius?

So if you want to place your focus of consciousness somewhere, you have to know it. Today Seth tells us about these levels of consciousness, these breadths and depths, precisely to let us know how large the space is that we can explore within our psyche -- we can call it the structure of the psyche. We know the distances of the physical, three-dimensional world -- planets, the moon, Mars, the sun. Whether or not we think they are imagined by us or projected by beliefs, they exist in the three-dimensional world, so we speak according to the rules of the three-dimensional world. Then when we explore inward, how large is this space of inward exploration? Many of us have never been to that space. How broad and how deep that space is, we do not know. In this session, Seth is actually telling you about this space -- the space of your psyche, the structure of the psyche. Use your consciousness as a tool to explore this space of your psyche, that is, use your focus of consciousness to lead you to explore your inner world or internal world. Seth gives you a simple overview of this inner world -- what is in your inner world -- so that next time when you use the focus of consciousness to aim and focus on different places you are interested in, it will bring you to those places.

The Inner Landscape of Thoughts and Emotions

With more practice -- practice what? Practice the focus of consciousness, how to shift the focus of consciousness -- the contents of your own mind will become readily available. When you practice more and more, you will not only be able to heal illness and look at the body, and have perception of your own body, but the contents of your mind will also become readily available. You say you can see thoughts? Thoughts are fleeting and very hard to capture. After practicing even longer, when you can use the small person at the A1 level to observe your inner body, it can also see your thoughts clearly, just as clearly as seeing your internal organs. Your thoughts are placed there like an image.

In this situation, you can perceive your thoughts symbolically through symbols that you will recognize. How is this picture displayed? It is a symbolic display. For example: if you see chaotic thoughts as a pile of weeds, then you can discard this pile of weeds. What is this pile of weeds? It is a symbol, representing that your thoughts are messy and disorderly. At this time, how do you change your thoughts? You imagine throwing away this pile of weeds, discarding it, and then your thoughts become clean and clear.

You can request that the contents of your thoughts be translated into a strong image -- as just said, it can become a pile of rotten grass, dry grass, or it can become a strong image -- symbolically representing individual thinking and the entire mental landscape. Then take out what you do not like, and replace it with more positive images. For example, a thriving fruit tree, a red apple -- either is fine. This fruit tree is the visualization of your thoughts, a kind of mental landscape. If you find that inside it is like an attic that is dirty and messy, full of dust and piled with old furniture, then you can throw away this old furniture, replace it with new furniture, and repaint the attic. You can take any way you want to modify this picture. The process of modifying the image of this picture is equivalent to adjusting your thoughts, because this picture is a visual symbol of your thoughts. When the symbol is changed, the original thought it represents is also changed.

This does not mean that this inner landscape is always sunny, but it does mean that it should be very calm. A dark and alien inner landscape should alert you and make you set about changing it immediately. For any given reader, reaching one particular achievement may be harder than another, but none of these achievements are beyond what my readers can do. For example, becoming a small person, entering other places - these achievements you can fully accomplish.

You must understand that I am speaking in a practical way - that is, what I say has practical effect, and I will not give you a method that you fundamentally cannot do, one that your current abilities do not possess. For example, using the method just shown, you can correct a physical condition. But if things are as I say, then by examining the inner landscape of thought, you can discover right here the source that originally led to physical illness.

Emotions and feelings can also be examined in the same way. You can not only examine the body and the inner landscape of thought, but also examine your emotions and feelings, likewise using this small person standing on the A1 level to observe, standing from the perspective of a bystander to look at them. They look different from those things of your thoughts, much more fluid. Thoughts are relatively stable, and may appear as fixed, unmoving structures - like flowers, trees, houses, or a kind of scenery, a landscape. Feelings, on the other hand, will more often appear in the flowing changes of water, wind, climate, sky, and so on, and in changes of color. So when you want to see the state of thought, when you want to modify your own thoughts, go observe those relatively unmoving objects, material things; when you want to observe your present emotions, feelings, or sensations, then observe more those changing colors, the tone and keynote of the whole picture, the overall feeling, the wind, the sky. If it is an overcast day, you can change it to a sunny day, and your feelings will change, the whole thing will change.

Using A1 to Observe and Change the Body

By seeing the body inwardly, any physical illness - remember "any" here, be sure to remember it is any physical illness - in this A1 state will be perceived and discovered. Then by changing what you see - what you see of your inner landscape, or the image of your physical body, wherever there is a lesion, change it. You may find yourself entering your own body or someone else's body, like a tiny, glowing point of light, or with nothing at all, no entity whatsoever, like a current of air - like the invisible current of air that many qigong healers emit when treating illness - yet aware of the inner bodily environment. You may use the image of a small person to enter someone else's body, or you may be a moving, glowing point of light going in to observe - shining on the knee and illuminating the knee, shining into the brain where there may be a blocked blood vessel, going in to take a look. Then in whatever way you think of, change whatever needs to be changed, by directing the body's energy in that direction, by entering that physical body and putting in order the parts that need adjustment. Some people may have a herniated lumbar disc, some may have a problem with a certain joint of the spine - visualize the small person going in and pushing that joint, pushing it from the abnormal position to the normal position. Whether you push, pull, tug, squeeze, knead, or press, any way will do, as long as you correct the picture you see.

Thus from the adjacent platform of A1 consciousness, with the characteristics you consider to be yours, in whatever manner, you perceive the abstract patterns of thought of yourself or others. Abstract thoughts are like a theory, a belief, a value system - these are all abstract. When you use this small person to look at another person's abstract thoughts, what you may see are sentences or words flashing by quickly, just as when you have inspiration in your mind; or like black letters with printed words; or you hear those words or thoughts being expressed, being read aloud; or they are neither read nor spoken, but they are expressed anyway, and you just know - how you know does not matter, you just know. Or you see the kind of landscape mentioned earlier, a picture, an image, in which thought symbolically forms a picture. This will show you how thoughts cause physical illness, and which thoughts are involved. For example, if you have some stubborn ideas, these stubborn ideas will cause you to become ill.

Jane's Example

Many people ask: why did Jane transmit the Seth material for twenty years, and then pass away in her early fifties, from rheumatoid arthritis and other complications? Since beliefs create reality, why could she not be cured, why could she not be changed? This is a question many people have. There is a typical pattern here: Jane had many serious problems in her own thinking. Some of these Seth pointed out to her, and some Jane summarized herself.

For example, Jane believed that not a single minute should be wasted. In her thinking, every day had to be packed completely full. Seth many times suggested that the two of them should balance work with rest, often suggesting they travel, take vacations, rest, but they did not. Jane was a person of this kind of character. During the entire twenty-one years she transmitted the Seth material, the Seth material came through as thirty-one books - Seth Speaks being one of them - that is, one and a half books transmitted per year. At the same time she herself also wrote about ten or more books, published under her own name, such as The Oversoul Seven trilogy, various books on the soul, the politics of the psyche, various poetry collections, and so on. When you see how much she accomplished in just twenty short years, you know how great her workload was. And she herself was physically incapacitated; in the later period she basically sat in a wheelchair the whole time, unable to move. This was one problem in her thinking.

The second problem: in this reincarnation she wanted to be a woman. Between her and Rob, she wanted to be a "woman who is delicate and dependent," this was her lesson for this lifetime. But because of her psychic abilities, in transmitting the Seth material, the entire economic income of their household came from the books Jane wrote. Rob was the main recorder, but without Jane's transmission, what would Rob record? So Jane was still the main figure here. Every time she published a book, her income increased, her fame increased, her social status also increased. And Rob, as the recorder, his importance was not that great. This in itself was a blow to Jane - she wanted Rob to be the mainstay of the family, she wanted to play the role of the man working outside and the woman working inside, but in reality their family was not like that. So every time a book was published, Jane's illness grew one layer worse; every time a book was published, Jane's illness worsened once more, more severely each time.

Another reason: Jane believed that channeling was something that could not be brought into polite society. She considered herself a writer, and did not want to define herself as a channeler - like a witch of some kind, or something very disgraceful. Although she did not admit it on the surface, psychologically she always believed that among those who channeled, she was the most rational, the most reasonable, the most scientific and logical, different from other channelers. She was very conflicted between her rationality and her spirituality. Her channeling was entirely a matter of spirituality; she did not even know where the material came from - it was simply Seth speaking through her. When she introduced herself, she never said she was a channeler; she always said "I am a writer," "I am a poet." She did not dare admit this. Yet we all know that as historical time has passed, although her poetry carried great spirituality, her novels were also very well written.

Jane's Contradictions and Illness

Although her creative works all had their bright spots, compared with the Seth material, those creations were not worth mentioning in the light of the Seth material. Yet under this premise, she still insisted that channeling was not a legitimate thing, or not an open and aboveboard thing, or not something that could serve as her identity.

We know that in Conversations with God¹ it says that a person's most important task is to identify with one's own identity and one's ideal identity; you develop according to your ideal identity, and everything you do, think, and imagine is an expression of your ideal identity. But at this time Jane was conflicted in this regard. She felt that the Seth material was very good, that the Seth material truly was a treasure of human knowledge, but she did not dare to openly admit that she was a channeler, that the purpose of her life in this lifetime was simply to transmit the Seth material well, and that she would then have no regrets in this life. She was not like that. She was desperately publishing books. Basically, every time she published a Seth book, she would publish one of her own books. She wanted to use this balance to desperately prove that she was not a channeler, or not a full-time channeler, that she was also a writer and a poet.

Think about how deep her inner conflict was. Her own spirituality was so strong, and she could not deny what she was able to perceive -- you know from earlier that this person's spirituality was extremely strong -- a person with such strong spirituality was denying her own spirituality, so you can understand how deep her conflict within this conflict was, including her smoking problem and so on.

In the meantime, Seth also gave her a lot of advice, including the arrangement of her furniture, the layout of Jane's house, and so on. For example, Jane put her refrigerator in her bathroom. Seth had made countless suggestions about this matter, but Jane simply would not change it. Seth said, who puts a refrigerator in the bathroom? Whether from the perspective of hygiene, or its symbolic meaning, and what it implies behind it, this is all unfavorable to the layout of your entire home. Jane's family put the refrigerator in the bathroom. So she and Rob were two people without any taboos. Seth gave a lot of advice about their lives, and basically I cannot say all of it, but basically this couple did not listen to a single piece of it, including changing the position of their bed, including hanging a door curtain or making a screen. We can now say that perhaps Seth was giving them very good advice more from the perspective of feng shui, or from the intersection points of energy. She would not listen either. When she bought a house later, Seth also gave her a lot of advice. After they published books, they had money; previously they had rented a house, and later they began to buy a house -- in the process of buying a house, they did not ask Seth's opinion, and Seth also proactively offered some advice, but the two of them did not listen, and simply chose a house according to their own preferences.

I will not expand on this. The core point is that, from Seth's perspective, many of the ideological problems in Jane were the root cause of her illness. But these ideological problems -- neither Seth nor Rob could change Jane. Those were things in her own thinking, and there was no way to change her. So in the end, Jane passed away at around the age of 55, very young. So in this situation, sometimes it is not the case that just because you can see something or just because you can do something, you can change that person. When a person's beliefs are very strong, you cannot change them. So among folk practitioners there is also this situation: many people go to these folk practitioners to seek healing, and some say this illness can be treated, while others say this illness I cannot treat. These various situations are different, and one cannot generalize and say that I can see what ideological illness you have, and I can just change it for you and cure your illness. It is not like that.

A1 Level and Healing

You should do the same thing with situations and emotional patterns -- in addition to thoughts, you also need to make the same adjustments to emotional patterns. Emotions also change, and emotions also reflect a change in imagery or pictures, except that it may turn into changes in color, or into fluid changes like the sky or the wind.

He says that this emotional thing can be perceived as surging, sudden, within shifting warm and dark colors, or simply as the feeling of a particular intense emotion. One emotion can be felt in many such guises if the emotion is very strong.

What does "many guises" mean? For example, within a landscape, if this emotion is extremely strong, it will manifest as fierce wind, gusts of gloomy wind, plus overcast skies, rain, and other weather conditions. One emotion might be a sky full of glowing clouds, which is an expression of emotion; the rising sun at dawn is also an expression of emotion. The color of the sky, the color of the clouds -- these can all be expressions of emotion. At such times, multiple scenes and multiple images may appear simultaneously, but they represent only one intense emotion -- because the emotion is too strong, one way is not enough to express it, so it manifests as multiple images.

He says that in both of these examples, with thoughts and with emotions, you act with great confidence -- in both the emotional and the thought aspects, you act with great confidence to remove those parts connected with illness, those parts that cause physical sickness. In this way, you make adjustments on all three levels -- thought, emotion, and body. You remove it from the root on the thought level and the emotional level at the same time, and then on the physical level you also become a tiny person and go into its body, and you modify, correct, and change those abnormal parts or diseased areas of its body.

So you treat it on the physical level, you treat it on the thought level, and you treat it on the emotional level -- a three-pronged approach, and then it gets better, right? But our current medical treatment methods, traditional medicine and modern medicine, basically focus only on the single level of physical treatment. Of course, they now also pay attention to some other related factors, but none of them are treated as primary. But Seth says the opposite: you should change it from within, and then work on all three aspects simultaneously, and the illness will be cured.

He says that this A1 level, besides being usable for healing, can also be used for creation -- it is not only capable of doing healing. It can also be used for focus, study, recreation, and it can also be used for one's own amusement and entertainment, leisure, rest, and meditation as a great framework. The A1 level can be used for anything; as long as you use it well, you can apply it to all these various things.

This level is very simple and very practical, and everyone can strengthen their practice in this area on their own. The practice is very simple: just move your consciousness away from your body, take a step to the left or a step to the right, or you can take a step upward, it does not matter -- just move your consciousness away from your body, move it outside, do not look out from within your body, but look from outside, from the side, as an observer.

Let us not discuss the specifics for now; let us first talk about its framework. He says you can develop an image of yourself in this state to help you, and you can use a kind of visualized image to help you enter this state. How does it help you? He says you can imagine the A1 level as a room, or a pleasant landscape, or a platform. You can imagine the A1 level as a beautiful scenic view, a tourist destination, a very beautiful place -- any place you like best will do. You can imagine it as your favorite room, your ideal room, or any place at all. You give it a sense of imagery, and you bring that imagery to mind.

A sense of imagery -- if you now say, "I am entering the A1 level, I take a step to the left, where did I step? I still stepped into the place beside me," right? If you do it that way, is it not very difficult for you to enter this state? Because you are always connected to reality, and it is not easy for you to enter that state. At such a time, if you imagine: I take this step to the left, and in an instant I enter a room I love, with murmuring flowing water, floor-to-ceiling windows outside, and beyond that a bamboo grove, and a little farther away layered green mountains... You imagine a space. When you want to move from your current level of consciousness into the A1 level of consciousness, you bring this imagery to mind, and you enter it all at once.

He says that naturally, without any special emphasis, you will find your own symbol for this A1 state, and in this way it becomes easy for you to enter this state, convenient for you to enter.

A1-A and the Alternative Present

We'll skip this part and keep going. He says this state can also be used as a step toward the next state of consciousness -- besides all the things it can do on the A1 level, it is also a platform, a step, for entering another level of consciousness. It will lead to a deeper trance state. The A1 state is actually already a trance state, because you are no longer in your body; you have already come out. At this point you can use this state to enter a deeper state. He says in any case, however, it is still connected with the reality system you understand -- meaning after you enter the next state, it is still connected with the physical reality system you understand.

Or it can be used as a step leading to an adjacent level of consciousness. He just said it can be a step to the next state, meaning stepping into a deeper level; it can also be a step leading to an adjacent level, and "adjacent level" means broader, expanding toward a wider place. Therefore, that is to say, it is two steps away from normal reality on the same level. He just said it is one step away from your normal state of consciousness; now he says when you expand the breadth on the same level, then it is equivalent to, for example, two steps -- a bit farther, you have gone a bit farther -- not deeper, but farther.

In this kind of situation, it does not lead you to a deeper examination and perception of "this present moment" -- it does not make you reflect more deeply on and examine the feeling of this present moment, or intensify that feeling. Instead, it enters an awareness and cognition of what Seth calls "the alternative present moment."

What is the alternative present? We have to keep reading to understand. He says you will leave the present as you know it. You leave your body two steps away -- one of the main purposes of leaving two steps away is that you leave your present. Your present is still happening in your physical body; you leave it, you leave this present. This leads to the exploration mentioned earlier in this book -- what exploration? That is, entering into probabilities. At this point you have taken two steps, and it may not seem very far, but at this point you have already entered a system of probabilities.

Session 574

What does he mean? He goes on to say:

When you try to solve problems related to future arrangements, or decisions that will affect the future, and in fact any event in which important decisions about the future must be made, this state is extremely advantageous.

What he means is, when you want to deal with matters related to the future -- future events, future decisions, the impact of present decisions on the future, and so on -- when you want to make a major decision about the future, entering this state is extremely advantageous to you. Why is it extremely advantageous? Because you have entered a system of probabilities.

He says that in this state, you can try out different alternative decisions and some possible outcomes, not merely by imagining them, but in a fairly practical way. What does that mean? It does not mean you sit there thinking, it does not mean relying on imagination, saying, "If I had not broken up with my ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, what would my life be like now?" -- that is you thinking. He says it is not a way of thinking, but a fairly practical way, which is to let you truly experience all the future events that would unfold after you had made the decision not to break up.

Those probabilities are realities. This was already covered in Chapter 16: every probability is a reality, and no matter which decision you make, every decision is a reality.

He says, for example, you have three choices, and you must choose one. You make use of this state -- the state they call A1-A, the state one step further out from A1 -- and in this state you choose the first option. The moment you make that choice is the present you have chosen. In this present state you have three choices, and you choose option one. The time of that choice is the present, and after you make that choice, this present is changed -- by choosing one you have not chosen two and three, so the state of the present changes, becoming choice one. And you perceive very clearly the way it changes, that is, what will happen after the choice of option one, and which actions and events will flow into the future belonging to that particular "alternative present" as a result of this change.

This is related to the future, not to considering past matters, not to considering the past -- you must remember this. This is considering the future. For example, you now have to make a decision: whether to join the army or go to college -- I am giving an example, these are two decisions. When you do not know how to choose between these two decisions, you enter this state. After entering this state, you must remember, this requires your consciousness to enter this level, not like when you are awake and imagining. At this point you are no longer in a waking state, you are already in a deeper trance state -- you must remember, this is in a trance state, you have already entered a very deep trance state.

At this time, you have already taken another big step further out from that little person beside you, from the A1 level. That little person, in that present moment, in that space, on that level, first chooses "I will join the army." It is not imagining joining the army -- these are two different things. It says, I choose to join the army. All right, as we discussed earlier in Chapter 16, when you choose to join the army and make this decision, on the A1-A level, your consciousness chooses joining the army -- then does the corresponding probability system related to joining the army get activated? Does that world unfold?

Once that world unfolds, that little person can enter it and experience it. That little person enters that probability system, enters the state of joining the army. Remember, I emphasize again, this is not fantasy; this is making such a decision in another time and space. Therefore, what happens afterward -- what happens after this choice, the possible future results that could arise from this present in which you chose to join the army -- you can experience all of it.

After you finish experiencing that state, after you have experienced several years in that state -- those several years of time may only be a few minutes or a dozen or so minutes, not necessarily -- after you have experienced several years, you know the direction of its future development. All right, then you come back, walk back to the A1 level, and you take another step further out, but this time you do not step toward joining the army; you step toward going to college. In that decision to go to college, you experience the present of that decision and the development of future events associated with that present, and then you experience the results of going to college. In this way, after you have experienced both, you return to the A1 level, return to your own level of consciousness -- can you then understand which one you want to choose?

This is extremely beneficial for your future choices. When you cannot decide what you want to do, you do not need to choose this way for everything -- that would be very tiring, right? You do not need to choose for every small thing -- whether to eat braised beef noodles or pork rib noodles today, making a decision for that, is that not foolish? You would not do that. You only do this kind of thing for major life decisions.

For the other two choices besides this one, you can do the same thing, all from within the framework of that state of consciousness -- that is, the state of consciousness one step further than A1. In each case, in each choice, the method is the same. You first make a decision, make a choice, and then you become aware of the actual effects of whichever choice within your body -- the consciousness that chose to join the army can become aware of all the events happening in that world of time and space where you joined the army. Like the example I gave in Chapter 16: when you decide to go to your friend's appointment, the moment that decision is made, in another time and space, another you takes your body and goes to the appointment. So the consciousness of that you who decided to go to the appointment can perceive the entire process of going to the appointment, and it also carries the body of that consciousness that went to the appointment. This is the same.

When you decide to make any decision on this level, the you of that decision-making consciousness can feel all the future events brought about by this decision -- it is a real feeling, not imagination; this must be clearly distinguished. Even your body will undergo changes. This is a truly real feeling, that is, the life of another time and space lets you live through it virtually. So if you join the army, your body may become stronger; if you go to college, your eyes may become increasingly nearsighted. The entire body will undergo changes -- not only will events change, so it will have reactions.

Then at this point he says, you should use the method of self-healing I taught you earlier -- the method of the little person, the method of entering the A1 level -- enter into your own physical body, and in a very acute way, you can see what kind of physical effects this decision will bring. After you make a decision, you can also simultaneously use the A1 level to enter into the physical body that has made this decision and look at what changes will occur in your body after making this decision -- whether the body's condition remains the same, whether it will get better, or whether it will get worse? Is there a feeling of extreme health? Or are some major ailments already beginning to sprout? -- for example, fatigue, listlessness, and so on; these are all signs of an unhealthy body.

In a similar way, using the same method, you must explore not only the changes in the body, but also your mental and emotional aspects. Do you understand? You must not only look at the changes within the body, but also see what your mental outlook will be like after making such a decision to join the army, what your emotional state will be like -- whether you will be more joyful, more spirited, more sunny, more outgoing, and so on; you must observe this afterward. Therefore, you must observe yourself in three aspects: physical, mental, and emotional.

Then you turn your attention "outward" -- the meaning of this "outward" is that you no longer look inside the body, but look outward -- toward the environment brought about by this "alternative present." Do not only look inside your body, and do not only look at your own mental and emotional state; these are all inward. Now it tells you to look outward. Then events will appear in your mind -- when you look outward, at the external environment, those future events will appear in your mind.

You may experience these very intensely -- you must remember this statement -- you may experience these very intensely, or you may merely watch them, like watching a movie. You may feel very strong emotions and feelings, experiencing those events, those future events that are to occur, or you may merely watch them. These events may become so vivid, just like real, just like actually happening, and for a moment you forget yourself. It is as if you begin living your days in that time and space; you forget yourself, you have already thrown yourself into it.

And if you maintain contact with this level of consciousness, this rarely happens -- that is, when on that level of consciousness you still maintain a certain awareness, knowing that you are on the A1-A level and not on a real level, this kind of thing rarely happens, but it is possible. Generally speaking, you are very clear about what you are doing, like having a lucid dream. You know you are experiencing the process of joining the army; you know you are experiencing it because you want to experience it; you will not treat this matter of joining the army as a real experience of yours.

This process is very much like the story of the Yellow Millet Dream. That man going to take the imperial examination experienced similar events in his dream -- he went to the capital to take the exam, then placed first, then got married and had children, obtained a high official position, rode a fine horse, all the way to old age; the whole thing was a complete story. He lived several decades in that dream, and in the end, because he offended the emperor, he was to be beheaded, and at the instant of the beheading he was startled awake -- the blade came down, and after the cut he woke up. Only after waking up did he smell the fragrance of the yellow millet rice and realize that only the time it took to cook a meal had passed, yet he had already lived several decades. So in that state he had already become lost. He brings up this reminder today so that you keep this string in your mind: do not become lost in that state, in the future world of one of the decisions you have chosen.

According to the circumstances at the time -- that is, the events that occurred later as a result of making this decision -- you can likewise discover the individual effects of this decision on other people. When you choose to join the army, is it possible that you will affect other people? For example, your family, for example, your girlfriend -- she may break up with you, or she may not break up with you, and so on; all of these may change. So this decision will affect other people.

Then you return to normal consciousness, passing through the A1 state that you used as the starting point, rest for a while, and come back. Then come back and make the second decision, return to that level and make the second decision, then make the third decision, and so on. After you have experienced all three decisions, you then, in a normal state of consciousness, take the information and experience you have received and make your decision. Is this not quite powerful? It is like all three are truly felt by you once, and then you decide which one to choose; this seems a bit like cheating.

He says the name does not matter much; for the sake of simplicity, we call this level of consciousness A1-A. The name does not matter much; do not get hung up on the name; call it whatever you like.

A1-B and A1-C: The Levels of Groups and Civilizations

He said that related to this there is also one called A1-B, which likewise begins with an "alternative present" that can be used for many other purposes -- what is meant by an alternative present? It means that in your present moment you have only one choice; if you choose A you cannot choose B, if you choose to marry Zhang San you cannot choose to marry Li Si. But you do not know who will make you happier in the future, so you can go and experience it.

What does A1-B mean? He said that ordinary people cannot easily enter A1-B; it is not easy to get into. What does it deal with? What it deals with is the present of groups, collective possibilities, racial events -- you see, the events of a people, the movements of a culture, the direction of a culture. Entering into this would be most beneficial for politicians and statesmen; it is helpful for those in politics, for people engaged in politics, for social activists.

It can likewise be used to explore probable pasts. It can not only explore probable futures -- collective possibilities, racial issues, the movements of civilizations, future events -- it can also explore the past. In this case it is useful, for example, for learning about ancient ruins and vanished civilizations, such as the several possible outcomes of the civilization of the Lumanians, and so on. When exploring these things, you certainly have to set your state into one of the possible probabilities of the past. A certain probability is a collective choice, for example, the Lumanians decided to do such and such. But within this probability, you have to choose one of the possibilities that actually happened to them -- in other words, you have to truly enter into the space-time of that probability in order to feel it, to study the cultural ruins and historical civilization within it. If you choose wrong, and enter one that they never chose -- if you enter a choice they did not make, you will see nothing at all; it will be empty. That is what he means: do not enter the wrong one; you have to enter into the choices of their probabilities.

As for the future, it concerns this group -- for example, this political party, this electorate, or what future probabilities everyone has -- and you carry out projections. If one is a politician, a leader, he can use this method to project which approach is most advantageous to him. But he did not expand on this, why? Because very few people can enter it; ordinary people cannot get in. You can imagine that the scale involved, the capacity of consciousness involved, is enormous -- because you not only have to imagine your own affairs, not just the matter of one person making three decisions; you have to imagine the decisions of an entire group, of all humanity, or of an entire race, or of an entire civilization. To put it in computer terms, how powerful your brain's computing power would have to be.

It is like that show The Expanse -- the American series I recommended a few days ago -- in which you know that if you want to predict the future or project the future, it requires extremely powerful computational capacity. Even if you are given all the information, if your computational capacity is insufficient, you still cannot project it. So one of the main applications of the world's best computers, besides military use, is in weather forecasting -- weather forecasting uses large-scale supercomputers. So you know that for perception at this level, entering the A1-B level is not something easy to get into; it is not a matter of just stepping in to try it. You understand what I mean -- you do not quite understand, so we will discuss it later; we will not discuss it today, it is very complex. Think about it: you have to take into account every person's thoughts. With a single decision like this -- for example, if we start cutting taxes now, what effect will cutting taxes have on my votes -- then you have to see what will happen after the tax cut. This is a massive systemic matter, not a simple thing like choosing whether to join the military or go to college; it involves far too many changes. So we will not expand on this here, but he said you can explore it, if your ability is sufficient.

What is the next adjacent level? You can guess it, right? A1-C. He said this is the extension I just mentioned, in which there is greater freedom of action, mobility, and experience. At the A1-C level, there is greater freedom, greater freedom of action. At A1-B the freedom is already great enough; it has already reached the level of civilizations, the collective level of races -- you can simulate every individual within it, to speculate on each person's conscious decisions, the impact of each of your decisions on them, what corresponding decisions they will make, and then what corresponding decisions the collective will make, what corresponding results the collective consciousness will have, what corresponding changes will be produced, and in response to these changes, what new reactions they will have upon receiving them -- this is a whole chain of things.

He said that here you participate to some degree in the events you perceive. What does this mean? At the A1-C level, all things related to you -- all things that have even the slightest relation to you -- can be felt at this level. That is enormous. If we know about the butterfly effect, then you know that although you are just one small person, the people and things you influence are not just a tiny bit; they can be described as limitless. Although you are only a tiny, inconspicuous person, the entire surrounding environment you influence is extremely vast. What he means is that at this level you can perceive all the things you have participated in, all things related to you; anything that has even the slightest connection to you, you can enter into and participate in.

He said that beyond this point you need not discuss these states further, because generally speaking you will not be involved with them, and the realities they lead to have very little connection with yourself. Which point? It is the point where all things related to you have been taken into account, where every possibility of every single thing related to you has been taken into account. Beyond this, he believes your consciousness no longer needs to explore; there is no point -- because it no longer involves you; it has nothing to do with you anymore. The realities they lead to have very little connection with you -- he said it very politely, but in fact they have not even half a cent of connection with you anymore. Mathematically and theoretically speaking, there is still a certain, tiny, one-in-a-hundred-billion possibility that it might still affect you, but it can practically be disregarded.

And in the ordinary state, in the normal ordinary state, this is the farthest your present consciousness can go in that particular direction -- that is, in terms of breadth, in the direction of how far consciousness can travel. So at the point of A1-C, do not go on to A1-D; there is no D; C is where it ends. Is there a D? There is, but it has nothing to do with you anymore.

What he mentioned afterward was very brief; he introduced B and C in just a couple of sentences. Why? Because A1-A is the most practical and easiest for you; if you master it, it will be useful. Do not concern yourself with the great matters of the universe or the development of human civilization; taking care of your own affairs well is the easiest and most practical. Of course, if you have this capability, and one day you want to become a leader-type figure, he gives you this possibility. But if you do not have this ambition or this idea, then just master A1-A thoroughly, learn it completely, and when making any decision you will be able to choose the best outcome, and your life will be like having a cheat code.

He said that usually, before you are willing to take the next adjacent step, you must have a considerable understanding and feel for the A1 level. But within its limits, it allows for greater expansion -- that is, the A1 level can give you a very large range of expansion; you can do anything, and besides healing, you can also use it in meditation, creativity, leisure, and entertainment.

You may discover "if I do this or that," what will happen. By using the A1 level, and then entering A1-A, you can discover what will happen if you do this or that. So remember, these are all adjacent levels, that is, pushed outward horizontally -- like spreading a pancake, spreading outward, farther and farther, like exploring a vast plain; you go farther and farther. From this single point of you alone, it radiates infinite possibilities, and these infinite possibilities are like countless roads, each path having an indeterminate result, and you can go down each road and try it. Your physical body is still sitting in the middle unmoved, but that little person sent out, that分身 of consciousness, has already walked all these roads, and it comes back, and then decides which way the physical body should go.

A2: Exploring the Layers of Past Lives

All right, he has now talked about the breadth of consciousness, and now he begins to talk about the depth of consciousness. He says that directly beneath A1 you will have A2. Seth's naming is also very simple, direct, and blunt. A1 pushed horizontally gives you A1-A, A1-B, A1-C; pushed vertically, or in terms of depth, he simply calls it A2.

He uses the metaphor of up and down, but actually there is no up or down; he is just telling you that this is a slightly deeper layer. It is somewhat less physically oriented than A1, not physically oriented. He says you are still actively awake and aware -- at the level of A2 you are still awake and aware, but it is not so physically oriented, not so materially oriented.

In your terms, this state can be used to explore the past within the system of probabilities known to you. Be sure to remember what this state is for: exploring the past within the system of probabilities. Here you will know the reincarnational past -- at this level of A2 you will be able to know the reincarnational past, what your past lives were. If a certain person's illness cannot be resolved through A1, meaning you enter the A1 level and look around the body once and find that this illness was caused by his previous life or some other life, you may have to enter A2 to discover its source in a past life.

This state is clearly indicated by a slower breathing pattern. You say, have I entered A2? Saying it is useless; you do not have this state. When entering the A2 state, basically the person's physical response is that the breathing is very slow, and there is also a slightly lower body temperature and longer alpha waves -- his brainwave wavelength is very long, and the longer the wavelength, the lower and slower the frequency.

What kind of people have experienced this state? I imagine some people have never experienced it. If some people have spent time in the countryside, or have relatives in the countryside, or have experience in this area, or have seen related materials and films, they will find that there are such people in every country in the world. In mainland China it is called "guo yin," and I do not know what it is called in Taiwan. That is, this person can go to the underworld. By performing certain rituals, or some people do not even need to perform rituals and have the ability themselves, as long as they are paid and entrusted to do this task, they are asked to go to the underworld to see how our ancestors are doing, whether there is anything to pass on, whether there is anything they need. Then this person can go over. The state of this person going over is basically the same: basically they lie there, lying there stiff and straight, breathing extremely slowly, body temperature dropping, as if entering a kind of hibernation state, very much like animal hibernation. In that extremely low physical energy state, entering a state of very long wavelength and very slow frequency, they use this state to see the past.

He says, however, at this time you are still connected with the environment, and you are aware of it; you can know it. For greater efficiency, this can be blocked out -- in order to work better in the A2 state, you can block out and shut off this awareness. So basically, these people in the countryside who go to the underworld, when they perform this ritual, they seem as if dead -- not that they have no breath; they do have breath and a heartbeat, but it is especially slow, and they just lie there stiff and straight as if about to die. But it is not necessary; you can block it out, or you can choose not to. For example, in many cases, your eyes can be open, although it is better if they are closed.

Here sensitivity is accelerated -- at this time the feelings will accelerate, very fast. You do not necessarily have to follow the method given by A1; it does not need to be that slow. It is not that I enter the body one by one and then slowly walk over to look at that thing; no, it is faster than that.

The past you -- that is, the you of past lives -- your mental aspect, physical aspect, and emotional aspect will all appear. Because A2 is for feeling your past, or other people's pasts. At such times, if some people have this ability, they can even take on the manner of a person who has already died -- the kind I just mentioned is the one who lies there stiff and straight with no response -- but there is another kind of person who remains conscious, and then they can speak to you in the voice of your deceased relative, as if that person has possessed them. In the process of speaking, the voice, appearance, and manner are such that the deceased person's own family members can recognize that it is the one who died -- the voice, the tone, the expression, including some of the things they say, are all matters of their own family, and also the state of that deceased person.

For you yourself, when you feel your own past, you not only feel the events of the past, you can also feel the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of the past -- that is, you can feel the experiences of your previous life. He says that according to the characteristics of the person in this condition -- depending on each person's different characteristics, and depending on the characteristics of the condition -- they can be perceived in different ways. This can be used to discover the past origin of an idea, or to find anything left behind there, as long as it is within your system of probabilities.

The feelings on the mental level, the physical level, and the emotional level will all appear, but the way they let you feel them is not fixed; they let you feel them in different ways. For example, you can discover some things left behind there, and how certain concepts came about. For instance, some person in this life is a celibate, someone who simply does not want to get married; how did this concept come about? You can discover that there are certain things in his subconscious, certain origins. The premise is that it must be within that probability, just as when you explored civilizations earlier, it also had to be within the probabilities of that civilization's choices. In other words, when you reach the level of A2, you are exploring all the possibilities of your past lives -- your past lives have many possibilities, but there are also some possibilities he did not choose, and those possibilities do not exist. If you go out there looking for them, you will find nothing at all. You have to go into the systems where those possibilities exist in order to discover the key things about your past emotions, body, and thoughts.

A3: The Planetary Level

He said that directly below A2 is A3. He mentioned A2 very briefly as well; he did not go into it in depth, just passed over it in a single stroke. Directly below it is A3. At A3 there is another extension, one related to group issues, concerning the movement of the earth's crust, the changes of the earth, the changes of the land across the entire surface of the earth. The history of your planet as you know it -- and remember, as you know it -- the knowledge of the races that have dwelt upon it, the knowledge of all the races that have lived on this planet, you know all of it; all the civilizations you know, how many times civilization has occurred on earth, the stories of these civilizations, you know all of them. The history of the animals, the natural gas and coal seams -- that is, the distribution and changes of the natural gas and coal seams underground, you know all of it. He gives an example, saying, and the ages that swept across this planet and changed it -- all the eras, all the ages this planet has passed through, you can feel them all.

Later, in the next session, there are still A4, A5, and so on, and many more levels below.

We need to understand that the A1 and A1-A he talks about here are the focus of this session; the rest you can just get a general sense of, because these two are the ones that genuinely have real help for our lives.

Although today's content is utterly incredible, I hope you will read it over and over, understand it, and then master the method within it -- how to move your consciousness away from the traditional, normal focus, and discover the many more focuses of consciousness. To put it simply, the so-called A1 level, A1-A level, A2 level -- these are all adjustments of the focus of your consciousness, letting your conscious focus attend to different levels. And then, through your adjustment of the conscious focus, attending to different levels, you are led into different realities -- wherever your conscious focus is, there you are, it is that simple, and that is what you can feel.

There are still three more sessions of content to come, elaborating on the different focuses of consciousness and how to use this consciousness to explore these unknown worlds; we will continue next time.

Today we continue with the second part of Chapter 19 of Seth Speaks, the content of Session 575.

The previous session divided the space that our consciousness can explore: on the horizontal direction, that is, on the plane, it is divided into the A1 level, and then there are the three large levels of A1-A, A1-B, and A1-C. You can imagine them as a very vast plain getting farther and farther away from you; this is the region your consciousness can explore. If you explore into the depths, there can be the A2 level -- exploring all possible pasts; then to the A3 level, one layer deeper, where you can see what is underground, see the changes of the earth, and perceive everything that happened in all the ages that swept across this planet. After finishing A3, he begins to talk about A4, so let us look at what the A4 level actually is.

A4: The Level Where Concepts and Ideas Can Be Perceived

A4, this level, takes you to a place beneath the formation of matter -- that is, a level below where matter is formed, where concepts and ideas can be perceived. On this level, your concepts and ideas can be perceived just like tangible physical matter. Although they will not appear within the physical reality of the present as you know it, consciousness on this level can directly perceive concepts and ideas.

Many of the deepest inspirations come from this level -- not simple inspirations, but the deepest inspirations. These concepts and ideas have their own electromagnetic identity, and this point is crucial. Concepts and ideas seem to be intangible, just things in your head, things deep within consciousness, but their identity itself carries an electromagnetic nature. Your thoughts, your ideas, a concept or a notion -- it itself carries an electromagnetic substance. It is intangible, but it has an identity that exists.

However, on this A4 level, the electromagnetic properties of those concepts and ideas will appear as a kind of "symbolic landscape" that you can perceive. This is very difficult to explain. For example, a certain thought does not appear as a pretense, nor does it usurp any false concretization. In other words, ordinarily when we receive concepts and ideas -- whether through mathematical formulas, physical phenomena, video images, photographs, words, language, or papers, by any means -- it must be transmitted to you through some form. But on this A4 level, there is no need for these intermediate states to exist; concepts, thoughts, and ideas are directly perceived.

Then the thought is felt and perceived vividly by a part of the brain -- those parts that seem to be unused and that science cannot explain. These things suddenly rush into your head, without the aid of any words, language, images, or any means you know. This is very difficult to explain, and humanity cannot understand it right now. We often say that human understanding of the brain may be only a few percent, and for much of the rest, people do not know what it is doing. He is telling you now: those places that seem unused to you, that you do not know what they are for, can actually directly perceive ideas and thoughts.

These concepts and ideas clearly come from consciousness, yet they represent some initial potential developments -- the most primal inspirations, the deepest inspirations, the source of the most original thoughts. They involve the interests and abilities unique to this person -- and this uniqueness does not mean unique to this one lifetime, but rather those abilities and interests unique across lifetime after lifetime are all here. So some people somehow suddenly learn certain things, or suddenly gain a certain ability, learning far faster than others -- with just a little guidance they make great progress in painting, or they have a gift for languages, and so on; there are many such people. They actually do not know where this ability came from; it just suddenly entered their heads. This has a great deal to do with the degree to which they can cognize the reality of this level of consciousness -- the stronger their cognitive ability regarding this A4 level, the stronger those unique interests and abilities they can obtain; if they do not have much understanding or cognition of this level, these abilities may remain hidden within their bodies all along.

However, the material available here represents the building blocks of many probable systems. The material of the A4 level is the raw material, the raw ingredients, of many systems of probabilities. How are the various probabilities chosen, and where do the most original materials come from? They come from here.

This is an open area, and many other dimensions can enter it. You can often obtain this material in the sleep state. Complete innovations, inventions that shake the world -- those of epoch-making significance, those that overturn an industry or a kind of technology -- are all stored in this vast treasury, waiting.

Moreover, intense changes in personal belief also often come from the influence of this level. Some people read the Seth material or other spiritual material, and their beliefs undergo a fundamental change -- previously they believed in Christianity, or in Buddhism, or were pure materialists, and their entire belief changed. He tells you where this change comes from: it comes from this A4 level.

Many people say they do not know where their spiritual joy comes from. Time and again they come into contact with spiritual material they like and are interested in, and that thing produces an impact on their consciousness and psyche. That impact comes from within. Anyone who has had this experience knows: the impact comes from what the eyes see and what the ears hear, and it is an external sensation, but the force that comes after that sensation is absolutely not external; it is internal, an impact from the inside out. So now you understand, where does this impact come from? It comes from this A4 level of consciousness.

Actually, any person, any person at all, can pass through these levels and remain quite unmoved and unaware, or can pass through here as if traveling, passing through as if having seen it. Each person's overall purpose and characteristics will determine the quality of his perception and understanding. The material mentioned exists in every one of these levels of consciousness, but it must be sought out through conscious desire or intense unconscious desire. If this is not the case, then the available gifts and potentials remain unused, unclaimed.

What is being said here is that we often pass through these levels of consciousness unconsciously, without awareness, and sometimes even the consciousness sees these things but does not know what they are. At this time, each person's overall purpose -- each person has something like a grand blueprint -- and characteristics, that is, the characteristics of the soul, determine the quality of his perception and understanding. There is an innate component to this: if a person's blueprint purpose does not temporarily require the use of certain abilities or experiences from past lives, then he does not need to perceive the things on these levels; if the mission or blueprint requires them, then he somehow can obtain the information on this level. Therefore, which level one reaches, what level one can reach, and what perception one has of which level -- there is a certain individuality to this. Although everyone can go, the quality of what is reached differs from person to person.

It is like how everyone can go traveling, everyone can join a tour group, but each person's experience of the travel itself -- the quality of the travel -- varies from person to person. The same itinerary, the same arrangements, the same sights touch and affect each person completely differently. Going to the different levels of consciousness is the same principle.

The needed material exists on every level, but you must consciously want it, and the key point here is that you must have an intense unconscious desire. Conscious desire we can understand, but what is meant by an intense unconscious desire? Since it is unconscious, how can it still be intense?

This kind of intense unconscious desire is an impulse, a most primal impulse that you cannot say why you have. For example, you are born with an irrepressible desire to explore things like "how did the universe come to be," "what am I doing in this world," "why do I exist," "who am I, where am I going." You cannot give a reason, you cannot say why, and in the eyes of others you seem almost like a madman. People will tell you to do something proper; these things neither feed you nor quench your thirst, you cannot make money from them, and they cannot solve problems. If you study them for a long time, others will think you are spooky, they will stop inviting you to gatherings, and they will not want to chat with you anymore -- everything you talk about is the universe, outer space, the shared future of humanity. Under these circumstances, if you still have this very primal impulse and desire, then you know: that is your intense unconscious desire.

Only through these two -- conscious and unconscious intense desire -- can you find the material and information on the various levels of consciousness. This is like a gift. Everyone has potential, but if you do not study, if you have no longing, if you do not discover, then it has not been claimed. This is also what Buddhism says: everyone has Buddha-nature, everyone has the root of wisdom, everyone is inherently complete and sufficient. But it is like a bank account: you have to go and withdraw; you have to have an action of withdrawing -- constantly questioning, seeking, asking yourself questions, asking others questions, constantly exploring. These gifts and potentials are all waiting to be discovered by you, to be used by you.

States of Consciousness Are Interconnected and Intermingled

The various states of consciousness are in fact also interconnected and intermingled. The levels I just mentioned—A1, A1-A, A1-B, A2, A3, A4—seem to have boundaries, but actually they are intermingled with one another. I used the term "depth" only for the sake of convenience in discussion. A2 is one level deeper than A1, A3 is one level deeper than A2—this is only for the sake of convenience in discussion. These concepts of higher and lower, above and below, originate from the ego and waking consciousness. It is only because we are the selves who constantly focus on external reality that we make such distinctions of high and low, deep and shallow. But these levels and states of consciousness themselves are, in themselves, vast—more like an infinitely broad plain offered for exploration.

Therefore each state of consciousness is also open to large adjacent regions, and according to your interests and inclinations you can take many different pathways. Let me give a simple example: it is like traveling. There are so many countries in the world, and they are connected to one another, yet they also seem separated—to enter a country you need a visa, you need a passport, and you need some means of transportation to get in. If you think of the different levels of consciousness as different countries, different regions—this level is Africa, that smaller level is Kenya—their interconnection lies in the fact that there are many paths you can take. Just as all roads lead to Rome, if you want to obtain certain information or enter a certain region of consciousness, you do not necessarily have to follow one fixed path; you can reach it through other paths. Consciousness is open; do not let yourself be restricted. As soon as someone mentions the A1 level, you start thinking every day about which level I am on now—this is useful in the early stage of your study, but once you have learned it, you can throw all of it away, because these things are themselves mixed together.

Just as your ordinary waking state perceives an entire universe made wholly of physical matter, so the reality perceived by every other state of consciousness is equally complex, ever-changing, and vivid. It is precisely because of this that it is so difficult to explain the possible experiences within any one level of consciousness.

Let me make an analogy. Our normal waking consciousness—suppose consciousness itself is A—what it perceives is our three-dimensional physical world, this universe—which is already boundless, unimaginably vast, with countless things happening within it. What he is telling you is this: every level of consciousness is a space even larger than this. So it is very difficult for me to describe the experiences within each level. It is like someone asking you, "What is it like to live in the human world?" You would not know where to begin, because this three-dimensional world is too large. A2, A3, A4, A1-A, A1-B, A1-C—the scope of every level is only larger than this three-dimensional world you perceive. So Seth says, I cannot describe for you the experiences or feelings within each level, because it cannot be said clearly—too large, too diverse, too changeable, too complex, too vivid.

A5: A Meeting Place Across Time and Space

After finishing A4, it is time to talk about A5. A5 opens up a dimension, a new dimension, in which at least in theory -- and this is remarkable -- you may contact the life consciousness of any personality whatsoever. At the level of A5, you enter a new time and space, and within this time and space you can contact any person: every personality in all possibilities within this universe, in all reincarnations, in all probabilities, every single one. In theory, you can communicate with whomever you wish. This involves not only communicating with "people" who, in your terms, have already passed -- to use our human language, not only communicating with those who died millions of years ago, but also communicating with "people" of the future -- you can also communicate with people of the 22nd century, the 23rd century, the 30th century, the 500th century and beyond.

This is a level of consciousness that is very rarely reached. For example, the majority of mediums -- a medium is a person who channels spirits -- cannot reach this level; almost no one can. He puts it very politely, not "the majority of mediums"; his original text says it very directly: almost no medium can reach it. A5 is a meeting place, where "people" coming from any time, space, or probable system -- he puts the word "people" in quotation marks, because they are not actually people, they are all kinds of souls -- can communicate with one another in ways that everyone clearly understands. People of different times and spaces, people of different dimensions, people within different probabilities, people of the present, the past, and the future, all communicate here, in their own very clear way. They do not rely on language; they communicate in an instant, in a flash of lightning. All the "people" of past, future, and present, spanning trillions of years above and below, communicate within this, and the efficiency of the communication is extremely high.

He says that since past, present, and future do not exist, they all exist simultaneously. This is a crystal-clear level of conscious communication, as transparent as crystal, utterly clear beyond compare, free from the limitations of time and space.

And those involved in it have excellent knowledge of their own backgrounds and histories, but in this state they also possess a far broader perspective, in which private and historical backgrounds are seen as part of a larger knowable whole. What is being said here is this: within this eternal time and space that transcends time and space, where there is no past, no future, no present, everyone is communicating, and while communicating, each person understands the entirety of the other -- not only his personal life, but also the historical state he is in, and the historical background of every historical state he has ever been in. What kind of lives he has personally experienced, all these life experiences, and all the historical backgrounds he has been through -- between the two or more people communicating, the other party can see all of this clearly and distinctly.

This feeling is very subtle. For example: you enter this state and are communicating with a person through telepathy, discussing a certain concept. At this time, the person you see is a multi-dimensional personality -- he is composed of countless reincarnations over lifetime after lifetime, countless combinations of probabilities, and he has experienced hundreds of billions of lives. So what you see is a multi-dimensional person, not the way you and I ordinarily see people. The person of every historical period and every probability is him, and represents him. And when you communicate in the present moment, you must understand that the state of your communication carries all of his background with it; you must aim at which personality or which fragment is the one communicating with you in the present moment -- is he communicating with you from the perspective of Los Angeles in 2020, or from somewhere in Paris in 1768, or as a certain person in the Shang dynasty. You cannot speak with ten thousand people at the same time. Psychic communication also requires aiming: you know both the whole and the entirety, and you communicate in this way -- when he says something, you know where his words come from, and his historical background will have a profound influence on his thoughts and ideas.

At this level, messages truly flash across centuries. So fast that in a flash of lightning, in a single bolt, he has already communicated centuries of information -- in an instant, all the probable information of two personalities has already been communicated. One great person transmits to another great person, flashing across hundreds or thousands of years. So he says "the future" is speaking to "the past" -- people three thousand years from now are speaking to people from two thousand years ago, spanning five thousand years.

Great artists have always been able to communicate at this level. All great artists, like Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, and so on, can communicate at this level. Yet while they were still alive, living in the world, they truly operated at this level much of the time. Only the outermost physical part of their personality submitted to the dictates of the historical period of the time -- their outer physical body had no choice but to go with the flow, but their personality, their soul, was constantly operating at this level. That is why you understand why some great immortal artists have that feeling of being transcendent, not of this world. It has nothing to do with whether they deliberately put on an appearance -- some fake artists deliberately grow long hair and a big beard, pursuing outward things -- but true great artists are genuinely communicating and exchanging with people of the entire universe at this level, communicating and exchanging beyond time and space. Would he still care about his present life? Would he care about the era he lives in? But his physical body lives here, while his soul can live there.

For those who have reached this state and made good use of it, communication is clearest of all. You must understand that this communication is two-way -- it is not that you go there to seek teachings, to obtain things; it is not that it is a treasure trove, a library, with recordings placed there for you to listen to. No. It is two-way communication.

He gives an example: Leonardo da Vinci also knew Picasso. By ordinary logic, a person who died earlier would not know what happened after his death, but Leonardo da Vinci, while still alive, had already communicated with Picasso, when Picasso had not yet been born. In that space, this is something humans cannot imagine, but at Leonardo da Vinci's level, he knew that after many years, several hundred years later, there would be a person named Picasso. Picasso's personality and soul were already communicating with Leonardo da Vinci at this level, although at that time Picasso's parents might not even have been anywhere to be found, but that did not hinder it.

Some great men and women are unknown to the human world. They are hermits hidden within the human world, great recluses hiding in plain sight. Their contemporaries ignored them, and their achievements may have been misunderstood or essentially lost -- no one valued them, no one understood them. But at this level of consciousness, they share in these communications. They do not deign to communicate with the people of their own time, because the people of their time did not understand them at first, did not know them. So they go to the A5 level to communicate with other people, with people of the entire universe, where there are people who can understand and communicate. And at another level of existence, their achievements are acknowledged. He was not acknowledged in his own time, but he does not care; he knows that his work can exist across time and space. Many great artists, or artists who did not become famous during their lifetime, actually do not care about these things at all -- he knows that after the tempering of time and the changes of the ages, there will eventually come a day when his work is acknowledged, because at another level he already knows this, he has already witnessed it.

However, this is very important: I am not implying that only great people can share in this communication of consciousness. That is not so. Those who come into this realm must possess a very special kind of purity. To reach the A5 level, one does not necessarily have to be a great person or have achieved great things, but there is one most basic condition -- this person must be very pure, without any distracting thoughts, selfish motives, or desire for fame and gain. Because at this level, all your scheming can no longer escape anyone, so you must be essentially pure, naturally pure, like the heart of a newborn child -- a newborn is a naked baby wearing no clothes, the purity of a baby a few months old. We often say that those who cultivate themselves must cultivate the heart of a newborn child. If your state of mind can reach such a state of purity, you may possibly enter this level. You do not need to be a great person, you do not need Van Gogh's painting ability, you do not need the musical skill of Mozart or Bach, but you must be pure.

So you will see that many truly great artists have always been very pure. They seem not to understand worldly affairs, not to understand the ways of the world, with relatively low emotional intelligence, out of step with this world. In fact, they are preserving their purity.

Under this condition, many of the humblest people in the human world also share in these communications. Why? Because he already has nothing left; he has given up those things and no longer strives for them. And those who are not the humblest will certainly be trapped by fame and fortune, and cannot possibly reach that state of purity.

The dialogue at the A5 level is an endless and most meaningful dialogue, carried on throughout the entire universe. It exists across time and space, without beginning or end. The reason it is most meaningful is that it has already transcended all images -- when discussing A4, there were already no images of any kind; people communicate directly through concepts and thoughts, without needing any images, forms, words, or media. The entire communication is extremely meaningful. In other words, the wisdom of the entire human civilization, the wisdom of the entire universe, is all within this dialogue.

People of your past and future all participate in your present world. Do not think that the present world is merely the result developed by past ancestors generation after generation -- people of the past participate, people of the future also participate, and you in the present also participate. Problems encountered in the past and problems to be encountered in the future are discussed at this level. This is the heart of communication, spanning past, future, and present.

People mostly communicate at a protected deep level of sleep -- the deepest unconscious level discussed in the previous chapter, Chapter Eighteen -- or they contact this level in a sudden spontaneous, self-triggering state of trance that you do not even know how it arises. As long as you contact this level, it will generate enormous energy. Why? Very simply, the wisdom of the entire universe is here. If you go there to make contact, to communicate, all problems, all matters, all energy are resolved, and what you receive is a feeling of being recharged.

So why does your consciousness have to sleep every night? Why does it have to leave the body every night and enter such a deep level? To put it simply and figuratively -- I am only making an analogy -- your consciousness, your soul, needs to relax, needs to recharge. Why can people not go without sleep? I remember the research findings of the Nobel Prize in Medicine team from two rounds ago: not sleeping really does cause substantial harm to the human body². A person can go without food and only drink water for a long time, but a person cannot go without sleep. Why? Because your soul needs to go there to obtain energy, to recharge.

Remembering and Interpreting

If you want to keep the information obtained in any of these states of consciousness in your memory, you must first interpret it for normal waking consciousness. Just as if you wanted to store the information gathered from these levels of consciousness onto a hard drive or memory card, you must translate it into something normal consciousness can understand before it can remain in memory. Otherwise there is no impression at all, no memory at all.

In many actual cases, as far as the waking self is concerned, these memories remain unconscious—even if you remember them, remember them in your own way, you still feel as though you have no such memory. So these things seem to us like science fiction, like a story, as though they have nothing to do with any of us, because you have no awareness of them at all.

But the experience itself can completely change the structure of a person's life. Although in your memory you do not recall going to those levels of consciousness, A2, A3, A4, A5—every day you just eat when you should eat and drink when you should drink, with no impression whatsoever—what you do not know is this: after your consciousness has been to these levels, those experiences themselves, even though you have no awareness and no memory of them, will completely change the structure of a person's life. This is very subtle. It changes from the foundation upward—it changes your soul. Your soul knows; you do not know, but it knows.

Whether or not the outer ego is aware of them, through this kind of inner communication and enlightenment—that is, communication and enlightenment beyond consciousness, escaping the attention of your consciousness—courses that would have led to disaster can be avoided. It is like the Titanic about to hit an iceberg. Suppose in your life there is an iceberg right ahead of you; at that moment this kind of communication, this kind of intuition, this rich communication at the foundational level, will let you avoid such disasters. Your soul knows that it can exist beyond time and space, so many people discover some very miraculous things: they simply have an intuition that lets them avoid all sorts of strange events. The reason lies right here—you do not know, but it is working.

The experiences we gain at different levels of consciousness can be interpreted through symbols. In Chapter Eighteen we discussed how different stages of consciousness have different symbols: the symbol of waking consciousness is the three-dimensional world, fantasy is a picture, and so on. There are many ways to interpret them. They can appear through fantasy, through fiction, or through works of art. And at such times the conscious self does not realize the source—these symbolic things, fiction, fantasy, the impractical fantasies in your mind, you do not know where they come from, and you do not realize their source.

Now, at these different stages of consciousness, other phenomena can also be perceived. For example, "thought-forms," manifestations of energy, projected from that individual consciousness. Earlier chapters discussed thought-forms—you project out a thought-form, and at different levels of consciousness you can also perceive the existence of that thought-form, and you can also see the rising and falling of energy, the changes of energy, the flow of energy. There are also projections from the personal subconscious, as well as projections from the collective unconscious. We cannot perceive these in our normal state, but in that state they can be perceived.

Many of the things we project out, we ourselves do not know about. Just like the current pandemic—it is the result of a collective consciousness. Many people say that is impossible; none of us wanted this pandemic, no one likes such a result, we would not project such a thing. He tells you, this is collective unconsciousness, not something you consciously intended to project.

Any one of these, or all of them, may take symbolic form and appear in a beneficial or threatening guise according to the attitude of the person involved. You should regard them as entirely natural phenomena, whose intent is often neutral. Whether it is good or bad—the intent of the image itself or the symbol itself is neutral; it carries no malice, it is not an entity that wants to frighten you. It is simply such an existence. It may be a projection of someone else's consciousness, a projection of someone else's subconscious, or a projection of the collective unconscious, or it may be some other thought-form. When you encounter these symbolic things or forms at different levels of consciousness exploration, do not be afraid, do not worry; they bear no ill will, they are neutral.

Usually they are a kind of "prototype"—that is, something not yet formed. These forms have no mobility, but to activate them is something conferred by the person who comes into contact with them.

For example: in your exploration of consciousness you see a particularly terrifying, ferocious crocodile. In itself it is neutral, a prototype, without much capacity for activity, without much energy. At this point if you ignore it and step past it, nothing happens. But if you become fearful, if you stare at this crocodile and are especially afraid of it, then trouble begins—you trigger it, you activate it. It was originally a prototype, neutral, but because of your fear, you activate it, and at that level of consciousness it becomes harmful to you.

In other words, this crocodile was originally like a picture, perhaps projected by someone else, or something projected by the collective subconscious or unconscious of certain people. In itself it is a concrete image, without any particular meaning. But because of your fear, after you project your fear onto this rather passive concrete image, the crocodile truly becomes terrifying.

So when you encounter this kind of situation, you need only turn your attention away and you can "cancel" the phenomenon. This does not mean the phenomenon is unreal—the image of the crocodile is real—but its nature belongs to another category, another degree, not the meaning at your level, not the meaning of the crocodile as you understand it.

It also has some energy of its own, but it requires a perceiver to add energy before any interaction can occur. If such a materialization appears threatening, then wish it peace and withdraw your attention. It draws its primary motive power from your focus upon it, according to the intensity and nature of your focus. If you feed it fear, it becomes a thing of fear; the stronger the intensity of your fear, the more terrifying that crocodile becomes.

The Iron Law: Letting Go of Earth's Root Assumptions

As you travel through these levels of consciousness, there is one thing you must remember: you absolutely must not carry earth's root assumptions with you. This is an iron law. Because you have already left the three-dimensional world, left the earthly realm. If you keep bringing your three-dimensional things with you on the level of consciousness, you will completely misunderstand your experience. You must cast them off as much as possible -- discard all those root assumptions of the human world that would cause you to misinterpret your experience.

Below A5 there are still some other levels, such as the A6 level, which he does not go into detail about here. But the level below A5 merges into another, larger tendency -- perhaps A6 merges into A7, a tendency to merge into something larger. For example, on the next level, in your terms, you may communicate with various kinds of consciousness that have never manifested in physical form.

On the A6 level, the "people" or spirits you come into contact with have never existed in the material world, have never had the experience of living in this three-dimensional world, and have never reincarnated. You cannot even say they are human -- they are a synthesis of all other kinds of consciousness, not incarnated consciousness. On A5 we gather with all those who have ever had physical form -- communicating with people in the present, the past, the future, all probabilities, all times and spaces. A6 is where you communicate with all souls that have never had a physical body.

They are generally connected to your reality system in the identity of "guardians" or "custodians." It is precisely because of this connection that you are able to communicate with them.

Almost all experience coming from this level will be represented by "symbols." Because by the time you reach A6, there is no longer any physical image -- you cannot say what specific form it takes -- so it must necessarily be symbolic. These experiences all have to do, to some degree, with non-material life, non-physical consciousness and forms, and consciousness that exists independently of matter. These experiences are always supportive to you; do not think they are useless.

"Out-of-body" experiences are often involved here. The projector in such an experience finds himself in an environment that is different from the mundane world, or one that is extremely beautiful and magnificent. Many people who have out-of-body experiences find themselves as if on another planet, in another world, completely different from our mundane earthly world, extremely magnificent, extremely beautiful. There he deals with non-material consciousness and non-material life.

But everything in that environment originates from the projector's psyche -- everything in that magnificent environment is the inner projection of the person having the out-of-body experience. The extremely beautiful trees he sees there, the plants he has never seen before, the divine beasts -- all are projections of his concepts. For example, a symbol of his concept of life after death.

One or several "Speakers" will appear in whatever guise the projector can most readily accept -- whether in the guise of a deity, an angel, or an apostle. If the person having the out-of-body experience projects from within an image of a Buddha, an image of an angel, or the appearance of God, many of those are Speakers playing the role. But this is the greatest characteristic of experience coming from this level.

However, according to the projector's ability and understanding, more thorough information can be given to him -- depending on his level, different, deeper information can be given. Perhaps he can see quite clearly that the Speakers are indeed only symbols of those greater entities. Then the true nature of the non-physical Speakers can be made known to him -- that the things he projected outward are symbols, and the real thing is the Speaker itself, not those Buddhas, Gods, or angels.

Then he may project more deeply into that environment, and at the same time, in this state, he can see great vistas of the historical past and the future.

All these levels of consciousness -- from A1 to A6, from A1-A to A1-B, A1-C -- are filled with an interwoven web of all kinds of communication, and the person who steps into them can follow their threads according to his purpose.

Then the molecular structure, to go further down: molecular structures send out their own messages. A molecule has its own information. And unless you tune your frequency to perceive it, you will very likely interpret it as static noise or meaningless sound. Every molecule itself carries information and is constantly radiating it, but if you have not tuned to the frequency of that molecule to perceive it, then this information is just noise, just static.

Any one of the levels of consciousness described above can be passed through in an instant without your noticing it, or, at least in theory, you could spend a lifetime exploring any one of them. Your levels of consciousness are like the signals emitted by a molecule: if you do not pay attention to them, they are just noise -- you laugh it off or pass it by. If you pay attention to them, you can enter and discover them, clearly know the information they contain, and explore within them for as long as you wish, or pass them by just as easily.

For example, you might be completely unaware of the first three levels and go directly to the fourth -- that is possible. You can have several very definite experiences. For those who know what they are and how to use them, those levels are there -- they are not illusory and ethereal things like the dreams you imagine. They exist as truly as your physical world. Just as you now take a plane to Seoul, to Paris, or to Istanbul -- just as real. Once you arrive there, you have arrived at another level.

Many people find their own way quite spontaneously. They do not even know how they entered this level; it happens automatically.

As for the other adjacent planes in the horizontal direction, the adjacent planes from A1 to A1-A, A1-B, A1-C on the horizontal plane, they involve you in various kinds of "alternate presents" -- presents that can be substituted. This can affect other people, and can even affect the probabilities of other groups -- all explored within the world of probabilities. Each additional layer takes you further away: first starting from yourself, then from your own probabilities, then from the people around you whom your probabilities affect, and then from the entire group, society, or nation that your probabilities affect -- further and further away.

Many systems involved in these realities -- various systems of probabilities -- in many of these systems, the birth and death that you know simply never occur. The "time" you feel there is like a weight; there is no existence of birth and death, and time has a completely different meaning.

The root assumptions in these systems are so different from your own that you can only accept any experience as fantasy. For this reason, you are less inclined to travel in those directions -- you think it is fantasy, so you do not look that way very much.

On some levels there are inherent barriers. For example, projecting from your universe -- the three-dimensional world universe we are in now -- to an antimatter universe is extremely difficult³. If you understand physics, you know that where there is matter there is antimatter, and when the two touch, both vanish -- this is a viewpoint of modern physical science. He says that projecting from this present physical universe to an antimatter universe is very difficult, because the two are completely opposite, and you simply cannot understand what antimatter is. Even the electromagnetic structure of your thoughts -- as mentioned earlier, every thought and every idea has an electromagnetic body -- in that antimatter universe would also be affected in the opposite way, would be affected by the assumptions of that antimatter universe. But in theory, from one of these adjacent levels of consciousness, you can project over there. It is very hard to go directly from the physical world, but you can project over through a level of consciousness adjacent to the antimatter universe.

Usually in dreams you automatically and spontaneously fall into and travel through such regions of consciousness. In dreams you enter these without realizing it, and in the morning you only remember a strange dream, a wondrous dream.

Just like the body, consciousness must use all its parts and activities. When you sleep, your consciousness turns itself toward many of these directions, whether it wants to or not. The physical body cannot be mobilized, but this consciousness is never idle -- it shifts to other directions, shifts to non-physical levels, perceiving bits and pieces of the realities it can reach at various stages. It goes exploring in various reality spaces -- this also happens to some extent beneath your normal physical focus, even when you are engaged in waking activities, working during the day, doing your job -- it is the same.

The alternate presents I speak of are not merely alternative ways of perceiving one objective present. There are many alternate presents, and your attention is focused on only one of them. You are reading a book right now; that A1-A might be out running. That is an alternate present. You yourself are unaware of it, but in your present moment there are actually many alternate presents, and we can only focus on one of the many alternate presents. This actually reinforces what we discussed in Chapter 16 about the system of probabilities: in your present moment, many of you actually exist simultaneously.

However, when your attention wavers, you may often fall into a state in which you temporarily catch a few glimpses of another alternate present. Sometimes when your attention is scattered, when you are spacing out -- for example, you are doing repetitive work on an assembly line, and as you work you drift off -- you seem suddenly to enter another alternate present. For a few seconds you enter into that present.

Your whole self -- that is, your soul -- knows the reality of all these systems. The reality of all these levels of consciousness, from A1 to A6, from A1-A to A1-C, in all these systems -- your soul knows all of it. And this physical self of yours, this present personality fragment, as a part of it, as a part of the soul, is striving toward the same state of self-awareness and development. We ultimately must also become this soul, so we must strive toward the same goal as the soul, and we must also explore all the systems of reality.

Consciousness Is an Attribute of the Soul

Once you become proficient, when you sleep you will not be involuntarily swept into other states of consciousness, but will be able to understand and direct these actions. Not passively — saying, "Tonight when I dream I don't know what I'll dream about, I don't know where consciousness will take me" — once you become proficient, in dreams you can direct these actions. Wherever you want to go, you can direct it, consciously direct it.

Consciousness is an attribute of the soul. Consciousness is not you; consciousness is an attribute of you, a tool of yours, a tool and attribute of your perception and experience. It is a tool that can be turned in many directions, like a searchlight that you can turn wherever you want to shine it, like a zoom camera that you can turn wherever you want to look, that can zoom in and zoom out.

It is not your consciousness — it belongs to you and your soul. You are learning to use it, constantly exercising and adjusting the focus of this consciousness. It is like a child who has just gotten a camera and doesn't yet know how to take pictures; everything that comes out is a jumbled, blurry mess. Once he uses it more and more skillfully and becomes a master photographer, he will take very beautiful pictures. You are like this right now, learning how to adjust the focus of consciousness so that you can see more clearly and obtain more information.

According to the degree of your understanding and use of the various levels of consciousness, you will also learn to understand your own reality, and the "conscious you" will then become truly conscious. The you that you consider conscious is actually only a very superficial level of consciousness. To be truly conscious means that you can recognize that consciousness has so many levels, and go to whichever level you want to go to — rather than, as now, only being able to see one level, which is our physical world.

At that time you will be able to perceive physical reality — this three-dimensional world, tables and chairs, this universe — because you want to perceive it. Inwardly you know that it is one of many realities; if you want to perceive it, you perceive it, rather than being forced by ignorance to perceive only it alone. These are two completely different concepts. Right now we cannot perceive anything else; we can only perceive this three-dimensional physical reality and treat it as the only one.

He has said so much in this chapter, from Chapter 18 all the way to Chapter 19, wanting to tell you this: beyond the physical reality that we see, this world has so many possibilities, so many spaces, so many worlds waiting for us to explore.

Then you will understand why so many people who practice spiritual cultivation keep practicing. Many people don't understand: once you reach a certain state through practice, that should be enough; you've already become enlightened, you already know that this physical world is like a dream, like an illusion, like a bubble, like a flash of lightning, so what is there left to cultivate? Now you know: the realm of spiritual practice is boundless and inexhaustible. If you want to explore the various levels of consciousness, even the time of several lifetimes or several incarnations may not be enough. How many lifetimes, how many incarnations, would it take to exhaust these places? He has, in effect, opened up for you an infinitely vast space for exploration.

How Seth Sees Us

That wraps up the content of this section, but I think the passage that follows is quite useful. Someone asked Seth: when you speak to a group of people — when you focus on each of us as individuals in this time and space — what do you actually see? That is to say, Seth, as a soul without a physical existence, as a nonphysical energy being, when he looks at us people in the physical world — when he is talking to Rob, when he is talking to the other people in the ESP class — what do we look like in your eyes?

This passage comes from a question they discussed in the Seth session of the ESP class on February 9, 1971, and he later included the excerpt here.

No one asks me what I look like when I enter a trance state. Entering a trance state is simply focusing intensely on a very specific area of reality. A trance state is just super-concentrated attention, focused only on one particular point — that is what is called a trance. Therefore, I throw or project a portion of what I am into this place. Seth is a soul, and he focuses a portion of himself onto a certain focal point in three-dimensional reality.

Because I can utilize the scope of "my personality" far more extensively than you can utilize yours. I can do this consciously — we often do this consciously, for example, when we think of someone, we project ourselves out — and I can do this consciously.

But as I have already mentioned, when I am here — when he is teaching the ESP class — I still find it difficult to look at you and relate to the "yourself" that you think you are in this moment. Although I can be here teaching you, it is hard for me to zero in on the you that you currently think you are and establish a relationship with you.

Because what I see is a "composite" of you. What I see is a composite of you, and I need a certain kind of training to aim at the you in the time and space you are familiar with. I need a certain kind of training to pick out, from such a composite — for example, from your 260 reincarnations — the you of the present moment. Seen from that higher dimension, the you of these 260 lifetimes are all overlapping together. I just pick you out.

What you perceive is the self sitting in this room on a certain snowy evening — that is the you that you yourselves perceive. And some people in the class are present, some are absent, some are not here, and there are also some newcomers. Yet I am familiar with those inner portions of your selves — you know them too, but the egoic self keeps them hidden. You yourselves hide those inner portions, but he can see them.

I must constantly remind myself, Seth says: oh, right, our Ms. Venice Darlin — this is a nickname for one of the students — thinks she is sitting in this particular room at this particular hour, wearing a blue dress. When he wants to communicate and focus with this lady, he has to remind himself: this lady in the blue dress, at this particular moment in the present, sitting in this particular room — this particular fragment is this lady's current perception of herself.

But you should know, I perceive several different existences, several different versions of Ms. Venice. What I see is several of this Ms. Venice, all happening simultaneously. I must remember that she is not aware of these — the Ms. Venice in the blue dress is not aware of them at the present moment. But Seth can see them, so he reminds himself: she does not know these, but I do.

And when I speak to her, I must use a form of address that makes sense to her at this particular moment, and communicate with her according to the form of address that makes sense in the present, her mood at that time, and her way of thinking.

To some degree, I am like a communicator from one level of your own self to another level of your own self. Because you cannot see the other levels, but Seth can, so he is like a communicator who can communicate between the two yous on two different levels. Because I remind you of what you are.

Tonight we have spent a great deal of time indulging in thoughts about "death." As it happens, I have on many occasions been a very lively corpse. This is a pun — "very lively" means a corpse that is still alive. Yet you are all the same; you are all like corpses that have not quite died. Your own inner portions know this very well. The number of times you have walked away from the graveyard is more than you can count — you have gone through countless reincarnations, and your soul has left the graveyard again and again. Many of you will indeed walk away from more graveyards — many people will still have to reincarnate again, and will still have to die many more times.

But since this is the case, why do you still worry at this moment about justifying your own existence? You are going to die many times anyway, and all of those are you, so why must you now insist that your present existence is the justified one, and that none of the others are? What he means is, you are too attached to the physical body.

This passage is an excerpt from Seth's talk in the ESP class, and the emphasis is on: from the perspective of a soul, what do we in the three-dimensional world look like? That is also equivalent to what it will be like when we one day enter such a soul state and look at other people. He gives us a vivid description.

A Digression from the Previous Session

Session 576 continues from the previous session's content -- the various levels of consciousness, and their characteristics.

At the start of this session, Seth made some digressive remarks, unrelated to the content of our book. Jane had again placed a notice in her local newspaper, saying she was recruiting for some creative writing classes, to teach people literary creation -- how to write novels, how to compose poetry, things along those lines. But after she placed the notice in the newspaper, many people came to ask her about the ESP class, that is, the extrasensory perception class, rather than asking about her writing class. As soon as Seth came through, he gave her a suggestion: the suggestion was a good one, but it would be best not to open too many classes. Ruburt's regular class could not be expanded any further. Why could it not be expanded any further? One reason was a practical limitation -- his apartment was already too crowded, as mentioned earlier. Seth said it was not only the practical limitation of the crowded apartment; there were also other, less concrete limitations. Once the number of people became too large, the ESP class would not be as effective, and this had to do with the interactions among the people involved; if there were too many classes, the effectiveness would be affected. He said there were also other possibilities you had not thought of, but Seth did not elaborate, only saying that the class should not have too many people.

The Alternative Focus Is Only a State

Now we begin the formal content of the book.

Session 576

Discussing the various levels of consciousness here may seem very far removed from everyday waking consciousness. The content we have just discussed in this chapter, these topics, seem very far from the consciousness of our daily lives, as if they did not exist at all. He says the separation between these periods is quite arbitrary -- arbitrary meaning, as if there were no connection whatsoever. He says:

These various stages all represent different attributes and directions inherent within your own soul.

That is, these different stages of consciousness all represent different attributes and directions inherent within your own soul. Every person's soul is different, and the levels and layers of each person's soul consciousness, or the structure of the psyche, are also different -- not entirely the same. He is talking about different attributes and directions. He says:

Their clues and hints appear even in this consciousness that you know, as shadows and reactions.

Although they are at the bottom layer, beneath the range of your conscious awareness, their clues and hints still appear as shadows and reactions even when you are awake, within the consciousness you know -- that is, when you are awake. In other words, normal waking consciousness is not entirely ignorant of the traces of all other existences, nor is it completely lacking in other kinds of perception. Regarding other existences -- that is, your waking consciousness, toward the activities of those other stages or levels of consciousness that you have not noticed -- it is not that it knows nothing at all, nor that it has no other perceptions. It is only because you ordinarily use your waking consciousness in a limited way -- we use our waking consciousness very limitedly as well -- that we do not often come into contact with these clues, let alone those unknown consciousnesses. He says they are always present -- who are they? They are the other stages or levels of consciousness; they are always there. He says:

If you follow them, they can give you some idea of those other directions, and those other levels we have spoken of.

If you follow them, become aware of them, and feel the different levels of consciousness, you can gain a basic concept of those other directions and other levels.

For example, symbols or images that often seem unrelated will appear in your mind -- ordinarily you often have strange images, or certain special symbols appearing in your mind, and usually you ignore them. If instead you accept them, do not ignore them, face these clues squarely, face these hints, face these symbols and images, turn your attention toward them, and pay attention to them, you can follow them to several other levels. For example, at the very least you can easily reach the A-1 level and the A-2 level -- at least you can reach these two. The method of getting there is very simple: you just follow that symbol or follow that image and go. When you do this, that symbol and image may change -- the moment you pay attention to it, it disappears. Therefore you cannot see -- how much similarity there is between the initial impression and the next impression is hard to say; there is a certain degree of connection, and also a certain degree of disconnection. Yet between them -- between these symbols and images, or between the previous image and the next image -- there may be very important intuitive, associative, and creative connections. Usually, when you reflect on it afterward, you can see why one image dissolved into another.

A single image may suddenly open into an entirely abstract landscape, but if you do not acknowledge those initial clues that lie just beneath present perception, you will know nothing of any of this.

If you do not pay attention to it, do not perceive it, and do not acknowledge it, thinking it is some strange feeling from who knows where, some strange fantasy, some strange picture appearing in your mind, you let it pass, and you will not obtain any further clues. If you are willing to look -- if you are willing to look, you may see that those initial clues are almost transparent.

What does this passage mean? It means that within your mind, the feelings of your consciousness going to other levels will bring about certain images, pictures, and symbolic things, and these symbolic things themselves have a certain internal connectedness. If you observe them carefully, they will represent intuitive, associative, and creative inner clues. These clues are actually very hidden, or as he says, like transparent things -- you cannot see them unless you observe carefully. If you let them pass, they pass; if you observe carefully, you can find the clues they bring you -- the so-called clues are the meaning behind the symbols, the meaning behind the images. Why this image appears, what kind of meaning it represents -- this is called a clue.

He says:

An alternate focus is simply a state in which you turn your consciousness in other, non-habitual directions.

That is, you shift the focus of your consciousness from the places you ordinarily pay attention to, to some non-habitual directions you ordinarily do not pay attention to. It is equivalent to changing the direction of consciousness; this is called an alternate focus. The original focus was on the places of daily attention; now you shift the focus elsewhere, in order to perceive realities that exist simultaneously with your own reality system -- other realities exist simultaneously with the physical world reality, and you can discover them and pay attention to them. He says:

You must alter your perception to perceive any reality that is not actually designed for physical form.

Because our perceptual systems are all designed for perceiving physical reality. Simultaneously coexisting with this physical reality are other realities and other space-times, and those space-times are not set up for our physical world -- nor are they set up for your physical sensory system, so you must adjust your perceptual system; otherwise you cannot see them or perceive them. He says this is somewhat like what?

It is like looking out of the corner of your eye, or the corner of your mind, rather than looking straight ahead.

We often see strange things, things of an inspirational nature, or things of a sensitive nature, or feelings in a trance state or a dazed state. What is seen in that way is not directly in front of your eyes; it is like seeing with the peripheral vision of your consciousness. You cannot use your present waking consciousness to look straight at it -- then you will see nothing, just the things you ordinarily see. Look with the peripheral vision of consciousness; that peripheral vision of consciousness is equivalent to an alternate focus. Because the normal focus is in the very center, at the center of consciousness; in that peripheral place, if you now shift your focus to the edge of your field of vision, you will discover things you previously did not notice. This is called an alternate focus -- shifting the focus of consciousness.

Space Is Overlapping

He says, after practice:

You may perceive the different material components that have filled any given space, or, in your terms, filled it using our three-dimensional world's terms.

Let's finish reading this section together, and then I'll explain what it means.

In certain dream states, you may visit a specific location, and then perceive this location as it was, say, three centuries ago and as it will be five years from now.

But you never understood the meaning of that dream.

To you, it seems that space can only be filled by one particular item at any given moment, and that one must move aside to make room for another.

What this passage means is, the earlier part says you must use other perceptual systems to perceive, and then it gives an example -- what is meant by an alternate focus, what is meant by shifting focus. He says it requires practice; only after practice can you perceive it. For example, when we humans perceive things, we perceive that there is something in this space: there is a house on this piece of land. Say there is a house here right now, then we really cannot perceive that fifty years ago this land had a different house on it. We cannot perceive that; we can only see the house in front of us -- at this present moment, this space is filled by this house. What we do not understand is that in the same time-space, in the same space, at a different time, this space also has another house. To put it simply, space is overlapping.

To understand the concept that space is overlapping, you need to have this kind of perceptual ability. Normally you do not have this ability, but when you dream, you go and look at a place: in the dream state you visit a fixed location, and what you perceive there is how that location looked three hundred years ago, and you can also perceive how it will look five years from now. That is, in your dream, this space is overlapping, and you can perceive everything happening in this space. In our ordinary perception of space, at this present moment, in a particular historical period, or at a particular point in time, it can only be filled by one thing; but he tells you that actually this is not the case -- actually this space is filled by many things simultaneously. He says:

It is only that you perceive it in this way.

You perceive in this way, meaning that at the same time this space can only be filled by one thing, and cannot be filled by a second thing at the same time -- that is just your way of perceiving, and you can change it. He says:

When you use an alternate focus, you do not have to maintain the usual basic assumptions that guard, direct, and limit your perception.

You can walk away from this point and this moment as you know it, and return to it and find it still there.

This is where the Seth books get very interesting -- it seems like you can understand every sentence, but you do not know what he is trying to say. What does he mean? He means that your way of perceiving is different. When you use an alternate focus, that is, when you perceive in a way where the focus of consciousness can shift, you have no need to defend the basic assumptions of the three-dimensional world. Our basic assumptions in the three-dimensional world are: time flows, it does not stand still; space cannot be occupied repeatedly -- if this space has this thing, it cannot have that thing. If you put a box here, you cannot put another thing here as well. These are the assumptions of our three-dimensional world. And he says you do not need to have these assumptions at all. When you learn to adjust the focus of consciousness, you will not be limited by these assumptions. You can walk away from this moment as you know it, go do something else, and then come back and find that this moment is still here, time has not changed. It is as if time has stopped here, and wherever you left off, you pick up right there.

This connects to the previous point -- above he said space can overlap, and here he says time can be manipulated. You walk away halfway through something -- what is that like? Every one of us has experienced continuous dreams, right? You have a dream one night, and the next night you have another dream that connects to the first night's dream -- these two dreams are a continuous dream, continuing the events of the first night. Logically it should have developed long past that point, but in the dream it is not like that; it continues from the first night's events, so it is as if that first night's matter stopped there, waiting for you to come back and continue it. I give this example so you can understand: on different levels of consciousness, or in different time-spaces, all the assumptions of our three-dimensional world no longer exist -- these basic concepts of time and space no longer exist. What he means is that you must use other methods of perception to perceive, and not cling to the things of the three-dimensional world; otherwise, when you arrive at places that do not have three-dimensional world conditions, you will not know what they are trying to tell you, because everything you understand will be wrong.

He says:

Your consciousness only pretends to submit to the concept of time.

Your consciousness seems to obey the concept of time, but that is pretense -- he tells you it is pretense. On other levels, it enjoys playing games with this idea -- what game? The idea of time. That is, in a place without time limits, your consciousness still likes to play games with time. And the great unity perceived from events that occur outside the framework of time. Playing games with time -- what kind of games? It is you running back and forth in time, picking out things that are not from the same time, categorizing and summarizing them, breaking time apart, and discovering the internal patterns among them. For example, he gives an example -- without an example you would not know what he is trying to say:

Consciousness can mix events from different centuries, taking historical and private environments out of the framework of time, examining them to find harmonies and points of contact.

What does this mean? It means that when your consciousness reaches other levels, where there are no time-space limitations, it then plays games with time. What kind of games with time? It picks out people and events from different centuries, takes the historical background and the private, personal environment out of the framework of time, and does not arrange them in order -- not in the order of Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, but rather, say, takes one from the Tang dynasty, one from the Song dynasty, one from the Yuan dynasty, one from the Ming dynasty, one from the Qing dynasty, takes events from six dynasties, and then scrambles all these events, not arranging them in chronological order, and looks for the internal connections among them. So it seeks out harmonies and points of contact -- these two terms mean their internal connections, their internal consistency, and their differences and correlations.

We look at things as happening in chronological order, and so we have this kind of cause-and-effect relationship -- because something happened earlier, therefore something happened later; that is our mode of thinking. He tells you that when you reach those levels of consciousness, you cannot think about problems this way. You should set aside the framework of time and look only at an event that happened in the Tang dynasty and an event that happened in the Qing dynasty, and see what internal connection exists between these two events. Look only at the events themselves -- their events, feelings, emotions, and so on -- and see their internal connections, connections outside of time. What Seth is saying here is: break the limitations of time and space, think openly, use an open perceptual system to perceive things on the levels of consciousness beyond the three-dimensional world.

He says that actually you often do this even in sleep. Why? Because when you sleep, the plot in your dreams has no chronological order at all; it is often chaotic, jumping around, and the story is not even in any kind of sequence. You cannot find any patterns in the middle of it, yet the things in the middle seem to have some connection. It seems baffling, yet there seem to be some internal connections, and the scenes keep changing. He says if you do not do this while awake -- earlier he said you do this while conscious -- it is because you are controlling your consciousness too tightly. Loosen up a bit, give your consciousness the courage to think about problems by leaping beyond time and space, and do not let yourself be limited by this time and space. You should find the internal connections between things, the internal connections between events, rather than necessarily following the order of time and space.

The Fluctuation of Consciousness

He goes on to say:

As I mentioned earlier in this book, although your "normal waking consciousness" seems continuous to you, you are usually unaware of the blank spots.

We think our consciousness is always here, continuous and unbroken, but actually your consciousness flickers on and off—now bright, now dim, now dim, now bright, flickering unsteadily. In any case, it has many fluctuations. As I explained at the very beginning of this chapter, we can use a waveform to represent your consciousness—your consciousness has peaks and troughs, it fluctuates. And you can only feel the peak parts; the trough parts you cannot feel at all. He says:

To a large degree, it is your waking consciousness that remembers only itself, only this waking conscious self and its own perceptions.

So within normal consciousness, there seems to be no real other kind of self. You tell me consciousness has so many levels, so many stages—sorry, I have never felt them, I do not know, there is nothing there. I have only this one consciousness, only in the physical world, nothing else.

When it hits a "blank spot" and "comes back," it perceives it as a time when it was "not functioning."

The blank spots refer to the flickering of consciousness. Between one flicker and the next—between the flickers of consciousness, those blank places—it perceives them as times when it was "not functioning," thinking nothing happened there at all, that consciousness was not doing anything in those places. It does not know what happened there either; it cannot perceive it, it blocks those things from its awareness. It forgets that "stumbling"—what does that mean? It means your consciousness is not smooth; it has troughs and peaks, like walking with one foot high and one foot low, one foot high and one foot low—that is called stumbling. But when you walk into the low place of consciousness, when one foot steps down into emptiness, your waking consciousness forgets—forgets that there was such a ditch, such a blank place, and treats it—that blank spot, or the position of the trough, the place beyond the peak, the blank space between one consciousness and the next—as a substitute consciousness that it itself cannot perceive. It thinks there is nothing there, it cannot perceive it. Unless some method is used to recover it from this amnesia—in these blank places of consciousness it is constantly stumbling, one stumble after another, but it cannot perceive it, it just feels there is nothing there. So it has amnesia. If you had a way to recover it from the amnesia, it would understand: so this waking consciousness is not continuous, it is a wave. What happened in the trough places, the places you did not perceive, you have forgotten all of it; you only remember what happened at the peaks.

He says it jumps in and out of reality—who is "it"? It is your waking consciousness. Sometimes it leaves, and you do not notice; on such occasions, your attention is focused elsewhere. In what you might call micro-dreams—a micro-dream is dozing off, when you are extremely sleepy, or in class, or doing something, and you are so sleepy you doze off; or sometimes, this phenomenon is not common, but sometimes while driving, when you are so tired that your eyes are almost closing, almost falling asleep, for just an instant it seems you have already fallen asleep, and then with a start you wake up. In that kind of state, or in the realm of hallucinations, or in the associative and perceptual processes of thought that go considerably beyond the normal focus—that is, the associative or perceptual nature of thought that escapes beyond your normal conscious focus—during this process, your waking consciousness is absent; it has left.

The point of saying this is to tell you: do not assume your consciousness is always present. The waking consciousness is not always present; it jumps in and out, sometimes here, sometimes gone. When you are in a trance—we often have these trance states—it is not there, the waking consciousness is not here. In this gap, in this state where your waking consciousness is absent, you do indeed perceive other kinds of reality with a non-normal waking consciousness. In this state, in this gap, you are not without perception; you have perception, but that perception is different from your ordinary waking perception. We have all had this experience. When you come back, when your waking consciousness returns, you feel that you have come back, that you have regained your senses, but at that moment you cut that thread—cut which thread? The thread of perception of the reality you perceived during the non-normal waking consciousness. That is, the moment you come back to your senses, the things perceived by that non-waking consciousness while you were absent-minded are cut off; the information is cut off. Then the normal waking consciousness pretends there was never any interruption—there clearly was an interruption, we have all had this experience, but it insists there was none, no interruption, I have been continuous all along.

He says this happens quite regularly, only the degree varies; each person's degree is different. Depending on your activities—different from what we do each day—he says:

Generally it ranges from fifteen to fifty times per hour.

That is, this trance state, this absent-minded state, happens roughly fifteen to fifty times per hour—such a high frequency, dozens of times every hour. Yet you insist there is none—my consciousness has always been very clear, I have never had a moment when consciousness was absent. Actually we all know that consciousness is often absent—when someone talks to you and you have no idea what they said.

At various times, many people do catch themselves—what does "catch themselves" mean? It means catching themselves in that stage they thought never existed. When consciousness is absent, there is actually a non-waking mode of consciousness perceiving this world, but you think that stage does not exist, and that perceived reality does not exist either. Your consciousness denies the existence of this gap, denies the existence of this blank, so that part gets erased. He says sometimes your consciousness can catch what happened in that gap. Why can it catch it? Because the experience is so vivid that it crosses over the interval—that is, in that gap, the things your non-waking consciousness experienced, the things it experienced in another reality, that experience is so vivid that it is vivid enough to leap out of the gap, to jump over the interval, to reach the point where your waking consciousness can perceive it, and so it is captured by your waking consciousness. He says, one could say the feeling at that time was so intense—"that time" refers to the gap, when you are in a trance or absent-minded, when consciousness is absent, the experience felt by that non-waking consciousness in other times, spaces, and realities is so intense that even the normal waking consciousness notices it—normally it would not notice it.

These occasional experiences are quite necessary for the physical consciousness—that is, our ordinary waking consciousness. Remember this firmly: they are quite necessary. He says they are so skillfully and so finely woven into the web of your awareness—it is very dense, happening dozens of times every hour, meaning once every minute or two, once every minute or two. Those intense feelings in space will make you notice them. These experiences are very necessary for your normal consciousness. And then they are so skillfully and so finely woven into the web of your awareness; once woven in, they color the atmosphere of your psyche and feelings—the things it feels from other reality spaces, when brought back to your conscious level, color the atmosphere of your entire psyche and feelings. You need to understand this: it colors your psyche and feelings, it tints them.

He says:

The normal waking consciousness weaves in and out of this vast supporting web.

Your waking consciousness is within this vast supporting web—what is the supporting web? It is what was just mentioned: the other levels of your consciousness are all your supporting web. Your normal consciousness comes in and goes out, comes in and goes out. Your inner experience is so complex—as the previous two sessions said, your consciousness has so many levels, such a complex and vast space, so when you go in to experience, although your consciousness does not know it, the experiences of the other stages of your consciousness are extremely complex. He says:

Your inner experience is so complex that it is almost impossible to describe in words.

Memory Systems and the Potentials of Consciousness

Normal waking consciousness, although it has its own memory, clearly does not retain all memories at all times. We have memory, but we do not remember everything—for example, you do not remember what you ate the day before yesterday; many small things you do not remember. Some people say that the memory of past events has fallen back into the subconscious:

It has not passed, but is very much alive.

That is, the memory of things that happened in your past has fallen back into the subconscious, because you no longer remember them. You do not remember that those things happened, so where did they go? You would say they fell back into the subconscious, but they have not passed; it is not that they disappeared just because you do not remember them. It refers to these things you did not remember. When it says "alive," it means living, and also active—those things you did not remember have not only not passed, they are still living and active. Although you no longer focus on them, because they are already past and you do not place your focus on them, they are still alive. He says:

The inner portions of your personality have memory of all your dreams as well.

Waking memory is like this, right? When you are awake, your memory has some things remembered and some things not remembered. He tells you that the things not remembered are also alive, and they all exist within the great storage space of your subconscious. The memories of your dreams, the inner memory of your dreams, and those things you have already forgotten from your waking state—he says all these things exist simultaneously, so to speak, hanging there, like lamps suspended high above a dark city, like one lamp after another. All past events and all dreams are there, still lit, illuminating the various parts of the psyche—that is, on every level and in every corner of the structure of your psyche, they exist in every place, not necessarily in any one place. So when you explore the various levels of consciousness, you will encounter some things that happened before, and they are still happening vividly in that place. He says:

These memory systems are all interconnected and reflect one another.

These memory systems are all interconnected, just like the network of lights in a city—the lights shine upon one another, you shine on me and I shine on you. There are connections between them. In the same way, in fact, your memory of the events of your past life is also quite complete, and it is also functioning within the entire memory system.

Is this not vast? This memory system is vast, far larger than the capacity of your phone, whether 64G, 128G, 256G, or 512G—far larger than that capacity. Everything is in there, including the things you experienced in your past lives, across lifetime after lifetime, and they are inwardly connected and reflecting one another—like a dense network of city lights illuminating the whole city. This city is the structure of your psyche, illuminating every street and every place in the city.

He says that in the blank points of consciousness—that is, the places you do not know, the unconscious states, or during certain periods of fluctuation, just as mentioned earlier, consciousness is a wave, and during a certain period of that wave, these memory systems can often be perceived. Which memory systems? The ones mentioned earlier—the things you have forgotten, the things in dreams that you have also forgotten, for you forget many dreams after waking, those things in dreams, and all the memories of your past lives, all of them are here. Where? In the blank points of your consciousness, at a certain stage of the fluctuation of your consciousness, these memory systems can often be perceived, whereas your ordinary waking consciousness cannot perceive them. He says generally speaking:

The conscious mind with its own consciousness and its own memory system will not accept them.

Generally speaking, the normal conscious mind does not accept them, does not acknowledge them—forgotten is forgotten, and once forgotten it is as if it never happened. He says:

When a personality realizes the existence of such other realities, and that other experiences of consciousness are also possible, then it activates certain potentials within itself.

This is all plain language, very easy to understand. When it knows that other realities exist, and that other experiences of consciousness are possible, it will bring into play certain inner potentials of its own. What changes occur when these potentials are brought into play? He says:

These changes, such changes involve electromagnetic connections both within the mind and within the brain.

Within the mind and within the brain—he separates them. People say, is not the mind just the brain? The mind is not the brain; the mind is the mind, and the brain is the brain. They are two kinds of electromagnetic connections: the mind can reach some deeper levels of consciousness, and it brings out those potential things—abilities and skills from past lives, all kinds of abilities that are inherently there—and brings them out. To whom does it bring them? To your brain. Then the brain is one electromagnetic mode, and those underlying potentials of yours are also an electromagnetic mode, and then through the connection between the mind and the brain, those potentials are brought out for you, brought out in a direction your brain can understand. He says:

It even alters the perceptual system, the perceptual apparatus.

What is the perceptual system? It is our physical eyes and ears; this is our perceptual system. It alters the perceptual system, meaning it develops your inner perceptual senses. He says they bring together the storehouses of energy—that is, they bring together this energy, the things from the subconscious of previous lives, and the things you have forgotten, and the things you learned in dreams, the things you gained in dreams—they bring the storehouses of energy together, and establish pathways of activity, so that the conscious mind increases its sensitivity to this kind of material—that is, they bring all this energy together, and then they also establish pathways of activity for it. What is the purpose of the pathways of activity? To allow it to penetrate into your conscious mind, so that the sensitivity of your conscious mind increases, and then it can perceive these combined storehouses of energy. He says:

The conscious mind is no longer limited by itself.

It is no longer limited by itself. The conscious mind will restrict itself—our waking consciousness sets many, many conditions for itself, including how we perceive, and these most basic root assumptions—that time and space exist, that time and space are a continuum, and so on; this is a restriction upon itself. He says at this time the conscious mind is no longer limited by itself; this conscious mind has undergone a considerable transformation, taking on greater responsibility and greater functions—greater functions means greater abilities. It has taken upon itself its greater abilities. This is the waking mind, the conscious mind. He says:

It will gradually perceive some contents that were previously closed to it.

Things it previously could not perceive and considered nonexistent—when it changes, when it is no longer limited by itself, when it undergoes a great transformation, it discovers that this waking consciousness, this mind, actually has great abilities that have not been used. When it discovers that it can use these abilities, it will gradually perceive those contents that were previously closed to it, those contents it could not perceive, and now it perceives them all. Therefore, after each person studies spiritual material, after reading these books and hearing these explanations, they will change, consciously or unconsciously—their mind is undergoing transformation, their entire personality and entire psychological structure are undergoing dramatic change, and this change is very great. They will be able to perceive some things they could not perceive before; it is as if something has been opened.

He says it also no longer needs to fear perceiving those temporary "blank points"—previously consciousness did not want to perceive the blank points, because when it perceived the blank points, it felt that those blank points were evidence of its own "nonexistence." The conscious self perceiving those blank places, that is, the blank unconscious state between two periods of consciousness, felt that this was evidence of its nonexistence, evidence proving that consciousness does not exist, so the conscious self never wanted to perceive that thing—because perceiving that thing would mean that it itself does not exist, that at certain times it itself does not exist. But now it is no longer afraid; it knows that within that there is a great deal of very complex complexity that is difficult to describe in words. He says the fluctuations of consciousness mentioned earlier are often very slight but very important—these fluctuations are very slight. It is not that at one moment you are awake and the next moment you enter deep sleep—there are such people, but they are rare; they can fall asleep in an instant, awake one second and asleep the next, such people are rare. Most of these fluctuations are very slight; they do not jump "whoosh" from one level of consciousness to another; the fluctuations are not that large; they are gradual. He says:

The conscious mind is quite aware of its own fluctuating state.

That is, the conscious mind is quite aware that it itself is a wave-like fluctuation, with peaks and troughs. But once it is guided to face this state, it does not find "chaos"—it is very clear about this state—or worse, "nonexistence," but instead finds the source of its own abilities and power. Then the personality begins to use its own potentials, begins to bring its own potentials into play.

Moments of Fantasy and Entrances to Creation

All right, let us continue with what he says next. He says:

Moments of fantasy and moments of conscious creation both represent excellent pathways into these other regions.

In the ordinarily creative state of consciousness, everyday waking consciousness is suddenly supported by energy from these regions. Let us finish reading this passage. His material is not especially easy to understand, but it will be easier once we have read it through. He says:

Waking consciousness alone cannot give you the creative state.

Indeed, normal waking consciousness can be as fearful of the creative state as it is of the blank state.

Because it can sense that the "I" — that is, the conscious waking I — has been pushed aside.

It can sense the upsurge of energy, which it cannot understand.

What does this passage mean? It means that in moments of fantasy and in moments of using consciousness to create, both of these states represent your entering into an ordinarily very creative state of consciousness. In both this highly creative state and the blank state, your ordinary waking consciousness is not particularly adept: in the blank state it feels that this is proof of its own nonexistence; and in that highly creative state — when you are awake, especially in that radical, impassioned state, full of vitality, full of drive — in that state it is also not at ease, because it does not know where the underlying energy behind that drive comes from. It does not know why this consciousness has such great creativity, such great energy, such great creative power. It senses this great creative power, and it feels as though its usual step-by-step self has been pushed aside, and it cannot find its own sense of itself — it does not know that this powerful creative force comes from creation in other reality spaces. He says the low points of the fluctuations — here he is continuing from the earlier discussion of consciousness, that consciousness has high points and low points. At the high points of consciousness, when it is very excited and extremely creative, that is also not good; the energy coming from within, from the inner side, makes the conscious mind feel threatened, as though some force coming from who knows where is threatening it, so it does not like that either. So at the low points of these fluctuations, there can also be a place where this kind of experience arises — what kind of experience? The state he described above, of feeling the self being thrown aside. His meaning is that whether at the high points or the low points of consciousness, there is this possibility of arising, this feeling of waking consciousness sensing itself being pushed aside. This state is the same whether consciousness is in an extremely creative state or in a relatively low state. What he is talking about now is when consciousness is in a trough, because the normal temporary weakening of consciousness places it in a period of rest — consciousness has fluctuations, with those excited creative states, and also those blank points of unconsciousness that it itself does not know, and also these trough periods. He says in fact the entire physical organism goes through these normal, usually quite neglected fluctuations; our physical bodies frequently pass through these fluctuations. These periods also fluctuate according to rhythms connected with the particular personality — that is, the length of each person's fluctuation periods, the speed of the waves, and the shape of the waveforms all differ, fluctuating according to the rhythms of each person's particular personality. He says for some people, this fluctuation is relatively long and slow, and the valleys within it slope gradually — that is, the slope of the wave is very gentle. For other people it is the opposite: very fluctuating, very intense, very steep. For some people, these valley-bottom conditions are more pronounced — that is, when they go beyond the standard range, when they are more pronounced than the normal fluctuation, this state of being at the bottom of the valley, this period when consciousness is relatively weak and consciousness is resting, is often described as the person being unable to summon energy, having no state, consciousness not being online, that kind of feeling. If that condition is not understood — that is, if this fluctuating condition is not understood — then these people may also find it difficult to relate to things in the outside world. The characteristic of someone who has been in the valley-bottom state is that he relates very little to things in the outside world, has not much interest in what is happening around him, and does not pay much attention. If in that state, in the emotional trough state, he is able to perceive other levels of consciousness, other spaces, he may find himself in an even greater predicament. What kind of predicament? It is that he has not understood that both reality systems are valid. His greatest predicament is this: in the three-dimensional world he relates relatively little to things in the outside world, and his sense of alienation from this world is very obvious — yet he also does not think he belongs to other realities. That is, when his consciousness goes into other levels of consciousness, he does not think he belongs to those levels either. In other words, he thinks this three-dimensional world has nothing much to do with him, and he also does not think the other reality levels explored by consciousness have anything to do with him — he is not even interested in the three-dimensional world, so if you tell him to explore a nonphysical reality space, he is not interested either. So his conclusion is that he has not understood that both systems are valid — he should be playing a role in both systems, but he considers both invalid, and thinks neither has any necessity for existing. This is his greatest predicament. This kind of person's emotions remain in a valley-bottom state all the time, because his consciousness has been in this valley-bottom state all the time, and that is what causes it.

He says these fluctuations are changes like the changing of the seasons — like spring, summer, autumn, and winter, they change continuously and cyclically. He says:

Events from any one level of consciousness are all reflected in all the other regions, each actualized according to the particular characteristics of that level.

Just now we said consciousness has many levels, from A-1 all the way to A-6, from A1-A, -B, -C. Events on these different levels of consciousness are all reflected in all the other regions — remember this, remember, all of them. What happens on one level affects all the other regions, and then it is actualized and expressed according to the characteristics of the region it affects. He says it is like:

A dream image thrown like a pebble into the pool of dream consciousness.

It is as if you have a pool of dream consciousness, and within the pool there are many levels of consciousness, with depth and also surface. You throw a dream into it — a dream is like an event occurring on the dream level — and when you throw this dream into the pool of consciousness, it is like throwing a pebble into water: on the surface it produces layer upon layer of ripples, and under the water there are also many changes. So it is as though you have thrown in a dream, but this dream produces changes and influences on every level of this pool of consciousness, and its ripples spread through every level. Thus any action appearing in this pool also has its own appearance on each level — throwing a pebble is one action, throwing a large rock in is another action, placing a small lotus lantern is another action, and on its different levels it has its own appearance. And alternate focuses allow you to perceive the many manifestations of any one action — an action has one manifestation on one level of consciousness, other manifestations on other levels of consciousness, and different manifestations on different levels of consciousness. When your conscious focus rests on one level, you can only perceive one manifestation, one form, of this action. At this time, if you switch your conscious focus to another level, you will see another form of manifestation of this action on that other level. So when you continually switch your conscious focus to explore the various levels of consciousness, you will discover the diversity of responses to such an action on one level, across all the levels. He says:

Being able to perceive the true multidimensional reality of a single thought enriches normal consciousness.

Why perceive the true multidimensionality of a thought? Because a thought is not only influenced by its own level; it is also influenced by other levels of consciousness. Therefore this thought itself comes from multidimensionality. In other words, where does your present thought come from? It does not all come from your own level — does it not also include inspirations and perceptions from other levels of consciousness, past-life experiences, and so on? So how your thought today came about is not entirely something that happened within this familiar world of yours. Only then can you truly understand the multidimensional reality of thought. He says:

Whether or not you are aware of it, you are very active on these other levels.

You do not only learn in practical life and in dreams — we know we can learn in life and in dreams — you also learn in this "inner existence" of which you have no memory. You also learn in these unconscious inner existences — that is, on the other levels of consciousness. He says:

Creative abilities and healing abilities of a special nature are often trained in this way.

That is, your creative abilities and healing abilities of a special nature are often trained in this way on your inner unconscious levels — that is, they are trained on the other levels of consciousness. Only after this, after the training is complete, do they emerge as certainties in the conscious physical world — only after the training is complete can they surface to your physical level. That is to say, only then can this matter happen on your surface consciousness. Healing has healing effects, creation has creative results. Previously it was only exercising itself on the deeper levels of consciousness, but it must eventually manifest in the physical world. He says:

In these dimensions, your future thoughts and actions are as real as if they had already occurred.

Your future thoughts and actions are as real as if they had already happened, because in this time dimension, in these dimensions, there is no limitation of time. They are also part of your development — that is, your future events, things that have not happened for you, have in fact already happened on that level, as real as if they had occurred. He says:

In this way, you are formed not only by your past, but also by your future and by alternative existences.

You are not only composed of your past; past events form you as you are now. You are also formed by your future, and by those probable, alternative existences — those probable yous — all of these form you. He says:

These great interactions are part of the structure of your soul.

This is what the structure of your soul is like. You are composed of this multidimensional you — present, past, future, all kinds of probable yous. All of these are you, and all of these people constitute you. This is part of the structure of the soul, and this is how the great interactions come about. He says:

Therefore you can change the "present" as you understand it from any of these other levels of consciousness.

Because they interact internally, past and future both influence the present you. Since that is the case, you can change the "present" at any point on this level of consciousness. He puts quotation marks around it here. Why? Because on those other levels of consciousness there is no limitation of time, and there is no such thing as present or past; it is only for us as humans that this is the present. That is to say, you can have that kind of alternate present — that is what this means. And that is why the title of this chapter is "Alternate Presents and Multiple Focuses" — it refers to exactly this meaning. This present moment of yours can be changed at any time, and there are many possibilities.

Session 577: The Proxy Consciousness

He says this chapter is about to come to an end, so the next session is very short, so let us finish the next session together, and then this chapter will be over. Continuing with Session 577. He says:

Any of these various levels of consciousness can serve as the normal proxy consciousness, and reality is viewed from that particular standpoint.

What does this sentence mean? It means that our consciousness has many levels. Normally, we take our surface consciousness, our conscious mind, or our physical body consciousness, or our three-dimensional world consciousness, and we call this consciousness our proxy consciousness -- or call it the main consciousness, the home-base consciousness. We set out from this place to look, and from its perspective, there is a level below, the A1 level, the A2 level, the A3 level, right. But if we take the A1 level as the main consciousness, as the proxy consciousness, as the starting point for considering things, then do these hierarchical structures change? In other words, suppose you take A2 as your normal consciousness, your proxy consciousness, then A1 is above it, and A is even further above it. What he means is that when the focus of your consciousness does not take our present level of consciousness as the starting point, you can take any level as your primary consciousness, your proxy consciousness, your reference point of consciousness -- this proxy consciousness is like the meaning of a reference point of consciousness, or a standpoint -- and when we view reality from there, certain changes will occur. Therefore:

Other kinds of "personalities" in other systems can also glimpse our physical reality.

Within the other levels of consciousness, as we just said, in different spaces you can meet different people. For example, in A2 you see the reality of all past probabilities, A3 can see certain things, A5 can see certain things -- these are all different personalities. He says that those people in those different levels, from their own unique viewpoints, can also glimpse our physical reality -- which is to say that a person in A4 can also see our A level, they can also see a little of it, just as you can also see A4. Suppose there is a person living in A4, they can also see A, this is understandable. So one could say, from that angle they peer at it -- peer at what? At our physical reality -- they peer at it from another angle. And at this time, suppose that person looks at A from A4, they will discover a strange phenomenon: suppose you are that person, you stand in A4, and you look back at A, he says:

You would not recognize it as your own home-base system.

The home-base system is where you came from, and you cannot recognize it anymore -- from a different angle you cannot recognize it. He says:

From certain of these viewpoints, your matter has little or no permanence.

Our matter has no permanence, or very little permanence. And at the same time, in the eyes of other observers who are not yourselves -- if we are not standing in A2 looking back at A, but are people living within A2 -- he says that to those people on these other levels, your own thoughts appear to have form and substance. He has said this many times already -- to people on other levels, our thoughts have form and substance, like a painting, or like a flowing video, a moving video, or like seeing a specific image. He says:

In traveling through their own various states, these other personalities will attempt to gain some focus and perceive your environment.

That is, other personalities -- those other personalities living on other levels of your consciousness -- when they also travel through the various levels of consciousness, they can also sense your environment, that is, our physical world. When a person on the A2 level moves their focus away from the A2 level and places it on the A level -- our ordinary physical world level of consciousness -- they can also sense our physical environment. Then they try to make sense of material that is largely unfamiliar to them -- when they come to perceive our physical world, they are also unfamiliar with it, they are completely unfamiliar with our physical world, but they use what they can understand of these matters of reality space that they do not understand, and make it seem as though it has some logic, some reason to it. He says:

Many of them have no knowledge of your concept of time.

They do not understand our time, they do not know that we have a concept of time. They will find it difficult to understand that when you look at things, you see time intervals between events -- they do not understand why there must be intervals between one event and another. Nor will they perceive the "inner organization" you impose upon your normal environment -- what is inner organization? It is those things you assign to it. You assign meaning to the three-dimensional world, the three-dimensional world is a symbol to you, and those things on top of the symbol, they will not perceive; they can only see the concrete physical things. He says:

To others who also touch upon areas of probability, your system is obviously also a system of probability.

That is, relative to other probability systems, our physical world system is also a probability system. And because these systems are adjacent to yours, because these systems are connected with you, yours and theirs are also adjacent -- because these systems are adjacent to you, and you are also connected with them. So the alternate focus allows you -- since your levels are connected and adjacent -- it allows personalities from other realities to perceive your own reality, at least in theory this is what is said. The alternate focus means shifting the focus of your consciousness, allowing you to glimpse into their existence -- that is, people on different levels can sense your existence in your physical world, just as you can enter other levels of consciousness and meet the existence of other personalities on those levels. You can perceive their existence, and they can perceive your existence. When you travel to different levels of consciousness, and you contact those people, meet those people, they can also perceive your existence -- you are not just passing by like a ghostly shadow, and you can also perceive their existence, it is the same principle.

Chapter Summary

At this point, Chapter 19 has come to a complete close. He has already laid out for you all the spaces and structures that consciousness can explore, and he has also made clear the characteristics of consciousness, its wave-like nature, and its various attributes. The purpose of everything he has said is just one thing: to teach you to use consciousness as a tool, to explore a larger world and a larger space, and to understand yourself -- because all of those are you, and the things happening on those levels are also all part of you. You simply had not seen it before; now he has let you see it, given you a tool, and taught you how to use this tool, so that you can explore the larger space of your own reality. This is the final question that Chapters 18 and 19, taken together, set out to resolve.

At the end of this chapter, he left an assignment -- he will cover questions and answers in the next chapter, which is Chapter 20. He had said before that Seth asked Rob and Jane to organize questions, and that they were going to answer questions. He said you can ask some questions that other people might want to ask, and you can also ask some questions that you yourselves want to ask. Then he said these questions must be ones that you want to ask, not questions that I have raised -- Seth said they are not questions raised by me; they must be questions raised by you, so that readers will feel they are more relevant. Because they represent the readers, after all; they live in the three-dimensional world, and the questions that interest them are also the questions that interest readers. He said, next session you give me the questions, and I will begin answering them one by one.

This session is the shortest one, and it ends here. As early as when Seth was discussing the table of contents, in January 1970, in Seth Session 510 -- our entire Seth Speaks begins with Session 511, but in Session 510, the session before this book, Seth had already given them the outline⁴ -- that is, he gave them the outline of the book. In that outline he had listed a chapter on questions and answers, but he said I had already forgotten about this matter at the time, but Seth remembered, so he said the next chapter will cover questions and answers.

Starting from the next chapter, we will begin answering questions. They listed a total of 15 questions. So speaking of this, I would also like to invite all readers, listeners, or those who see this video -- you can also list your questions. Chapter 19 of Seth Speaks has now been covered, and there are still two chapters remaining -- Chapter 20 is questions, and Chapters 21 and 22 bring it to a close. At this juncture, you can all list your questions, because there is still some time ahead. After these questions are organized, I can, based on the questions that are relatively concentrated among everyone, provide you with my own understanding and answers. If you are interested, you can leave your questions in the comment section below, or in the group, or let me know your questions through various means. I cannot say that I will answer every question; I will try as much as possible to pick out the questions that have common representative value, and provide a unified answer for everyone.

Starting from Chapter 20, let us take a look at what questions Rob and Jane asked, and how Seth answered them.

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注释与核实

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

2. According to Mike's original words, "The research result of the Nobel Prize in Medicine winning team from the session before last is: not sleeping really does cause substantial harm to the human body"; upon verification, it should be "The session before last (2024) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation, unrelated to sleep research (the previous session, 2025, was awarded for peripheral immune tolerance research)." (Source: Nobel Prize official "2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine press release," https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2024/press-release/) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. Source: Jane Roberts, "Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul" (https://nowdictation.com/q/book:ss+session:577+Chapter/) ↩