The "Reading Guide" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Guide
This chapter uses the metaphor of drama to explain reincarnational lives: each person is simultaneously the playwright, the director, and the actor, creating the characters, the sets, and the themes, yet because of deep involvement forgets that this is their own creation. Multiple lives are basically staged simultaneously, and time, space, and progress are presupposed assumptions within the play. The multidimensional personality learns to create through the reincarnational drama, and consciousness is in a state of "becoming." The environment is formed by one's own thoughts and emotions; reincarnation is not predestined by past lives, and a broader reality can be perceived through the inner senses.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Life is like a play; each person is simultaneously the playwright, the director, and the actor, yet often forgets that this is their own creation.
- Reincarnational lives basically exist simultaneously; time is not a series of moments, and progress has to do with psychic or spiritual focus.
- The multidimensional personality learns through the reincarnational drama; consciousness is in a state of "becoming," not something already finished.
- Your environment is formed by your thoughts and emotions; your life and environment are your own responsibility.
- Reincarnation is not an unchangeable sentence; time is open, and changes in belief can affect the past as well as the present.
Main Text
Seth Speaks Chapter 4: The Reincarnational Drama (Part 1)
Today I will continue introducing Chapter 4, "The Reincarnational Drama," from the Seth book Seth Speaks. This chapter is a very entertaining one in Seth Speaks. It introduces each person's reincarnation, the things we experience as we go through death to birth, and birth to death.
Below let us return directly to the main text of the book. Today I am using a screen recording to give the explanation, so you can look at the text portion of the video. Because of that, I will read very quickly and will not spend too much time explaining word by word; you can feel it for yourself.
Session 521
He said:
Your own environment includes far more than you may suppose.
That is to say, there is much you do not yet know. The things you think you see are actually only a very small part, and there is a far vaster world you have not seen.
He said:
Earlier I spoke of your environment only in terms of your daily physical existence and the surroundings with which you are presently concerned.
The "your environment" he mentioned earlier refers to this physical world of ours, but actually it is far vaster than that. In fact, of your larger and broader environment, you know very little — that is for certain.
Think of yourself as an actor in a play — he says this is hardly a very new analogy, many people have used it before, but it is a fitting one, very apt. Later he will often use this example, so you must keep it firmly in mind. The setting is in the twentieth century — well, actually it is already the twenty-first century now, so we should say the setting is in the twentieth century — and you and every other participant created the props, the scenery, and the themes; in fact, all of you — including me — each person, yourself and others, wrote, produced, and acted out the entire play.
We are at once the playwright, the actor, and the director. Then he continues, and he puts it especially well:
But you are so focused in your roles, so intrigued by the reality you have created, so entranced by the problems, challenges, hopes, and sorrows of your particular roles, that you have forgotten they are of your own creation.
You have thrown yourself into the performance too completely, you are too focused on the role, and you have been stirred to interest by the surroundings of the role — these physical circumstances, including the people and events. You have been entranced by the problems, challenges, hopes, and sorrows that the role may face within the play, you have become obsessed with the role itself, and you have forgotten that you are the director of this play, and that you are also the playwright of this play.
This deeply moving play, with all its joys and tragedies, can be compared to your present life, your present environment — whether individually or collectively. The example of the play he gives is exactly the same as our actual lives. And whether from the individual or the collective perspective: in one play you may be the lead, but in someone else's play you are only a supporting character.
So what is the theme of this play, or if we were to give this play a name, what would it be called? It would be called your life. If it were me, it should be called My Life. The name of the play is this, and the theme is also this, and the play performs exactly this. Only you do not know that you yourself are the playwright and the director; you only know that you are one character in the play, and you perform it with great seriousness and devotion.
But at the same time, there are other plays being performed, in which you also have roles to play, and each of these plays has its own settings and props. That is to say, you do not have only one play; you are a very famous actor, and you must constantly move between different production crews. In your current crew you are performing a spy thriller; in another crew you might be performing a period costume drama; in yet another crew you might be performing a science fiction film — nothing is fixed. You are a very famous actor, and you move between them; in every crew you must perform.
He says these plays each have their own settings and props, and they take place in different periods: one might be called life in the twelfth century, one might be called life in the eighteenth century, or it might be in the fifth century BC, or in the year 3000 AD — a process of nearly a thousand years pushed forward from now. So a science fiction drama — you likewise created these plays as well, and in these plays you are also the playwright, also the director, and still the actor, and you also play a role within them. These settings also represent your environment, the environment surrounding your entire personality.
What he means is that the play you perform in the eighteenth century, the play you perform in the twentieth century, the play you perform in the thirtieth century — the play performed in the future — all of these are the environment of your whole personality, and together they constitute the environment of your whole personality. Do not think that only this present physical world constitutes the entirety of your personality's environment — it is not so; all of them do.
But the part of you that participates in the play of this era — that particular portion of your whole personality — is so immersed in this play that it does not even realize you are simultaneously performing in other plays. You do not understand yourselves, your own multidimensional reality. Therefore when I tell you that you are living many different lives at the same time, it may seem very strange or incredible. You find it hard to imagine being in two places at once, let alone being in two or more different eras or centuries at the same time. This is indeed very hard for us to imagine; we cannot comprehend it. We cannot accept the concept of time travel or parallel universes, but in fact this is what truly happens.
So how should we understand this? Actually it is quite easy. Let us take a simple example: every unit in our body — every cell, the molecules within the cells, the atoms within the molecules, the smallest quark within the atom, and the very smallest unit within the quark, the so-called string that humanity can currently discover, the composition of the string within superstring theory — it is a small segment of energy. And what is the speed of this string? It vibrates and changes constantly at a speed close to the speed of light, countless billions of times per second.
In other words, from another angle, the person you call yourself now, if viewed from a higher dimension, is actually a person who flickers constantly, flashing at a frequency of hundreds of millions of times per second. You are flashing across countless frequencies every second. You are like a personality that shimmers ceaselessly, now bright, now dim. So in this state, in any given second you may have countless分身 existing simultaneously in different parallel universes.
Because quantum mechanics tells us that the quantum state itself is eleven-dimensional1. Scientists and mathematicians have now deduced that the quantum state cannot be observed2; it can only be inferred through mathematical theory. If you do not believe it, you can search online for something called M-theory, look up what M-theory is, and you will understand that the latest developments in physics have reached this level. That is to say, every physical world we think of exists within an eleven-dimensional spacetime. Since it is eleven-dimensional, then you will understand that this particle you think of is actually a unit of energy, a segment of energy vibration. Since it can manifest in our three-dimensional world, it can also manifest in other realities or other spaces.
If we must understand this matter from the standpoint of physics, actually we should not understand it this way, because it has already transcended the things of the physical world. But if many people say, "What you are saying has no scientific basis at all, it is pure nonsense," then I will tell you now: if we insist on forcing science into it, from a scientific perspective, the so-called human body is countless quantum states flickering countless times every second. This quantum-state you can exist in your present spacetime, and it can also exist in any spacetime; it is not limited by time and space. Therefore it is possible for there to exist a you in the twentieth century, a you in the twelfth century, a you in the fourteenth century, a you in the Renaissance, a you in the Qing dynasty, a you in the Ming dynasty — a you in all sorts of periods may exist.
We are only giving everyone such an explanation from the standpoint of physics, so that we can understand it. But in essence it is not actually like this — the essence is that your essence is composed of consciousness. It is reversed: first there is consciousness, then there is your existence, not first your physical body, then your brain, and then consciousness within the brain. It is completely reversed.
He continues:
Now in simple terms, time is not a series of moments. The words you speak and the actions you perform seem to happen in time, just as a chair or a table seems to occupy space. But these appearances are part of the complicated props you have set up in advance, and within the play you must accept them as real.
This part he says is quite amusing. We think time is a series of indivisible moments, and all your actions, words, behaviors, and movements are completed within this series of moments; you think this truly exists and is certain. Just as your chair occupies a space, the words you speak also occupy a period of time, reading a book also takes a period of time, thinking about something also takes a period of time, going out to eat also takes a period of time. You think all of this is normal.
What he is actually telling you is that this is required by the plot. When you come into this three-dimensional world, you must perform this play, and within this play there are certain rules, one of which is time; you must abide by this rule, it is preset. So in a play within such a three-dimensional world, time and space must both be taken as real. You cannot say, "In this three-dimensional world I will not take it as real" — that will not do.
It is like in a play: an actor holds a gun, and we all know it is a prop gun; when he fires it, bang bang bang, it should not actually kill anyone. But in the play you must treat it as real; you cannot have someone shoot you and then you stand back up again — would that not ruin the play? When someone fires at you, you must fall down; only then is the play interesting, only then is it a real play.
He says, and he begins to give examples about time, telling you why time is a relative, uncertain factor. He says, take four o'clock in the afternoon as a closer example:
You can say to a friend, "Let us meet at the street corner at four in the afternoon," or meet at a restaurant, or meet at a coffee shop. Your friend will know very precisely when and where he can find you.
Of course. When we meet people now, we must confirm the time and place. He says this event happens, and although "four in the afternoon" itself has no actual meaning, it is very important to you and your friend. Because both parties must agree upon it; a rule must be set, otherwise the two of you will not be able to meet. If you do not agree on a place, the two of you also cannot meet. This is what is called a gentleman's agreement.
He gives another example: if you go to see a play at nine o'clock in the evening, say you go to the Beijing Exhibition Center to watch a stage drama, to watch their performance. Within the play, the scene may be set in the morning, and the actors are eating breakfast. Although you went to see this play at nine in the evening, the people you see within the play are living their morning lives. If you are very absorbed in the play, you accept that they are in the morning; you will pretend it is morning.
This may not be the most typical example. The most typical example is this: our technology is now very advanced, and we go to a 3D cinema to watch an IMAX 3D film, with surround sound, a giant screen, and stereoscopic glasses. Whether you watch the film in the morning, in the afternoon, or at a midnight showing, it does not matter, but the time within the film — for example, if it is now showing morning — you as a person will pretend or acknowledge that you are in that scene at that moment. You will follow the plot, follow the character; when he lives through morning, you live through morning; when he lives through evening, you can live through evening too. The point of this example is to tell us that for us, time is the same — it is all relative.
He says:
Each of you is involved in a much larger production.
We are in a very large production. If we speak of the actors in this production in terms of the Earth, there may be more than seven billion actors, more than seven billion actors performing at once. For example, when we shoot some large-scale scenes in films, there may be tens of thousands of actors at once; such large productions do exist. It is just that the scale of these actors is even larger — not tens of thousands, but hundreds of millions, billions performing at once.
In it, all of you agree upon certain basic assumptions. Since you are going to perform together in a play, there must be some basic rules, and they must be set. For example, if I put on certain costumes and take up certain props, then I am whoever. If I play a soldier, then when I put on the soldier's uniform and armor, I am a soldier, and within the play you must acknowledge that I am a soldier.
He says:
You accept as real the framework in which these plays can occur.
That is to say, you take the play as real — this framework, this framework of time. What he says is:
These frameworks are that time is a series of moments one after another, and that there is an objective world that exists.
That is, you believe time is objective, and space is also objective, unrelated to our subjective consciousness. No matter what we think, time still flows. We believe that outside our bodies there is an objective world that exists; we are we, the objective world is the objective world, the environment is the environment, and we are separate from the environment — this is the dualistic view. The world now regards these views as dualistic.
Not created by yourselves, and not affected by your perception. You are bound within the bag of skin you wear, and within the limitations of time and space to which you are subject.
This is very normal, as I just explained. You and the environment are dualistically opposed; you believe the environment exists objectively, and you exist subjectively, and the two of you are completely different in nature — they are lifeless, and you are alive. In fact, you do not know that the things around you are all created by yourself.
For the same reasons you accept other assumptions, including that all perception comes through the physical senses.
In other words, all information comes from outside, and no information comes from within — this is also one of our assumptions. Therefore you are forced to focus intensely upon the activities of the play.
Now these various plays, these creative period dramas, represent what you call your reincarnational lives. Only at this point does he get to the point — everything he said before is actually a reincarnational life. Basically, they all exist simultaneously.
What does "all exist simultaneously" mean? It means these reincarnational lives of yours exist at the same time. But remember, Seth's language is very precise; he adds the word "basically" in there — he does not speak in absolutes. There are special cases here, but let us not discuss the special cases for now; first get the basics clear, and later we will talk about those special cases. So basically speaking, each person's reincarnational lives all exist simultaneously; these several plays are being performed at the same time.
He says:
Those who are still involved in these highly complicated so-called reincarnational existences, these study groups, find it very difficult to see through them. Some can be compared to those who, during the intermission between two performances, try to communicate with those still performing, but they themselves are only in the so-called wings, and can only see so far.
What he means is that between two of our incarnations — here we see another contradiction: he just said they are performed simultaneously, so how can there be a "between two times"? Is this not contradictory?
What he is talking about here concerns two levels. From the three-dimensional level, we do have a temporal sequence of past life, future life, and present life; from a higher dimension, all of these happen simultaneously.
What he says here is this: suppose, from the standpoint of Earth time, we have a period between two lives, and we may communicate with the people in the play. When we communicate, we think we have already jumped out of the play, that we are no longer performing, that we are merely observing, and we even say to the people in the play: "You performed this section well, you performed this role well, the emotion was very full; but perhaps you did not perform that role well — for example, you performed the role of a leader very well, but you did not perform the role of a husband well; you should do such and such."
But during the communication, what he says is this: you think you are communicating between two performances, that you have already jumped out of the play, but actually you are like someone standing in the wings beside the stage. You have only temporarily left the stage; you have finished your performance, your role is finished, and you are communicating with the people on stage through some means — winking, gesturing, various ways. In fact, you are still on the stage; you are just no longer within the focus, and you cannot be seen from within the wings of the stage. He gives this example, and he says you can only see so far. That is to say, you are still within the play; it is only a matter of inside the play or outside the play — no matter how you move around, you are still within this theater, still within this production crew.
He says:
These plays seem to be performed one after another, and so these communications seem to reinforce the erroneous idea that time is a series of moments, moving along a single line, from some unimaginable beginning to some equally unimaginable end.
Because there is one play after another, you further reinforce the idea that time is certainly continuous, that one life follows another, past life follows present life — this must be a series. Therefore there must be a time that began from somewhere unknown and will end somewhere unknown. What we often tell ourselves is that time has no beginning and no end.
Of course, the physicists' Big Bang theory now says otherwise; they say time began at the instant of the Big Bang, and before that there was nothing, no time and no space. Well, I will not argue with what they say. He tells you that this is how we reinforce our view that time is continuous.
He says:
Not only individually, but for the entire species, this leads you to think of progress in very limited terms.
His perspective here is very elevated; he considers the matter from the standpoint of the human species. Even those among you who have thought about reincarnation — many people have thought about reincarnation — he says, you think, well, humanity has made progress since the Middle Ages. Although you greatly fear that it has not, or you turn to technological progress and say that at least in that direction we have made great strides.
What he means is that only because there is the development of time can there be such a thing as progress. Without time, how could one speak of progress? So all of these things reinforce your idea that time is a process of passing. Therefore you will say how advanced our technology has become since the Middle Ages; we now have computers, airplanes, artificial intelligence, and so on.
He says:
For example, you can smile and think to yourself: it is hard to imagine a Roman senator addressing the public with a loudspeaker, while his children watch him perform on television. But all such thoughts are highly misleading. Progress does not exist in the way you suppose, nor does time.
Here he directly points out that you should not be deceived by this illusion. When you think this way, you will certainly think: there must be time, time must truly exist, otherwise how could it be that in ancient Rome the senators could only shout at the top of their lungs, while now people can broadcast through television, and his children watch their father debate in the senate on TV. These things must be technological progress. He tells you that if you think about problems this way, you will easily be led astray, because progress does not exist in the way you imagine, and neither does time. We will not expand on this here; the question of time and progress has already been discussed earlier, and there has also been a special topic on the question of time.
He says:
In each play, different problems are set for the individual and for the whole. Progress can be measured by the way in which these problems were or were not solved. In certain periods there was great progress. For example, great offshoots appeared, which from your viewpoint might not be considered progress at all.
He does not give an example here, so we do not know what he means. In certain periods there may have been great progress, for example great offshoots appeared, but we did not notice it, did not feel it was progress. We can only feel the kind of progress that is visible to the naked eye, laid out before us, occurring in the three-dimensional world; we think only these count as progress, and nothing else does.
He continues — I will skip the dialogue in between, which is after Jane came out of the Seth state — let us look at what follows:
You need not record this "now." Because "now" is a signal; Seth said that when I say "now," it means I am about to begin dictating the content of the session, so do not write down the "now."
But Rob still insisted on recording these.
In some plays, generally speaking, each actor seems to be working on a small portion of a larger problem, while the entire play is meant to solve that larger problem.
He continues: in some plays you only solve a small problem, but within the whole play, within the whole great play, the aim is actually to solve the great problem.
Although I use the analogy of drama here, he says:
These plays are actually highly impromptu affairs. The actors have full freedom within the framework of the play.
If you use the example of a play, you will think there is a script, so there must be a plot, there must be something arranged by the playwright. He says that in fact these plays are all improvised performances, all open-ended; the plot is open, the performance is open, all of it is improvisation. Every day we improvise; we go on stage and speak, and with your counterpart — you do not know what your counterpart is going to say. In fact, you do not know what the people you talk to, the people you come into contact with, the people around you will decide to do or say; you can only react spontaneously.
He says:
And accepting the assumptions mentioned above, there is no rehearsal.
Of course this play has assumptions — time, space, these basic ones, and also that our three-dimensional world is obtained through our senses, that our information all comes from outside, and that no information comes from within — these are all our basic assumptions. After these basic assumptions are set, there is no rehearsal, no process of rehearsal; the curtain simply opens, and all the actors go on stage.
He says:
As you will see later in this book, there are observers.
There are actually observers; while you are performing, there are people observing from behind. Just as in a good theatrical production, there are certainly directors, playwrights, producers, stage managers, assistant directors, camera operators, lighting technicians — all of them are watching from the side.
He says in each play there is an overall theme. For example — this topic is a bit long — he says a great artist appears in a particular era, not only because they were born into it, or because conditions were excellent. What is the central idea of this play? It is that a great artist appears in a particular period — for example, the painter who painted the starry sky, not Nietzsche, I misspoke — that painter.
He says:
The play itself was about translating intuitive truth into what you call art forms.
Continuing from the previous sentence: if the theme of this play is that a great artist appears in a particular era, not because he lived in it or because conditions were excellent, then what is it? This artist was actually born at the wrong time, and what the play mainly wants to portray is how this artist translates intuitive truth into what you call art forms. This artist has great intuition — you can always see a bit of the mystical in artists — and he expresses this intuition through his own artistic forms. When he expresses it, it is an artistic reproduction of his intuition, displayed through painting, sculpture, calligraphy, music, and various other means.
He says:
The creativity had such sweeping and overall effects that the play itself would awaken the abilities latent within each actor, and serve as a model of behavior.
Here he says that when this person does this, his creativity is so vast and comprehensive, the artistic effect is so powerful, and its ability to inspire is especially strong. It will inspire the other actors in this play — who are the people watching this play? It is us. We are performing, and we are both performing in the play and watching the play. When we see a certain painter devote himself to art, we are deeply moved and deeply inspired, and many people also devote themselves to the profession of art, to the cause of art, one after another.
He says:
There were also periods of spiritual, artistic, or psychic renaissance, because the intense inner focus of those involved in the play was directed toward those purposes. The challenges of each play may differ, but the great themes are beacons to all consciousness. They serve as models.
What he means is that if the theme of our play is the struggling life of an artist, then this kind of struggling life will serve as a beacon and a model for the entire era, for the people of that period. And we who live within it — we actors — are actually influenced by these things. Although it is impossible for every one of us to play the piano and become Lang Lang, or for everyone to paint and become Monet, or that Dutch painter — the one who always painted that — they will still exert a psychic, artistic, and spiritual influence upon you.
He says something very interesting:
You must understand that progress has nothing to do with time, but with psychic or spiritual focus.
After all that long-winded talk, what is he actually trying to say? He is negating your earlier view — that progress is related to time, that look, our technology has advanced, we have cell phones and computers. What he wants to say is that progress has nothing to do with this; progress is related to the focus of your psyche and spirit.
He gave the example of the reincarnated artist's life as a drama in the middle of this. But the example he gave is not that persuasive. From his perspective, for those who firmly believe that matter determines everything, this example is very weak and cannot convince them. But for those who pursue spirituality, they can all understand what he means. What he is actually saying is this: human progress does not depend on how advanced science and technology have become, but on where the focus of your psyche and spirit is placed, on what level, at what height. It lies there, not in how advanced your technology is.
He said:
Each play is completely different from any other.
Of course. Your play is your play, and other people's plays are other people's plays.
It is therefore a fallacy to suppose that your actions in this life are caused by a previous existence, or that you are being punished in this life for crimes in a past one. All lives are simultaneous.
He is emphasizing this once again. I already explained this earlier regarding reincarnation and karma, and made two videos explaining it, so I will not go into too much detail here. Just do not think that the suffering you experience today is caused by the misdeeds of a past life, or that you created some kind of karma, or created more karma, or anything like that. When you understand this matter from a higher dimension, all of these things are happening simultaneously. Since they are simultaneous plays being performed at the same time, how can you say that one play is influencing this play of yours? That is his concept.
He said:
You, yourself, with your own multidimensional personality gifts, can have these experiences and still maintain your identity. Naturally, he will be affected by the various plays in which he takes part. If you prefer, there is an immediate communication and an immediate feedback system.
He is saying that although there is no temporal cause-and-effect relationship between you, there is other communication between you. It is like when you, as an actor, perform in several plays. Suppose you perform in a spy drama above, and then in a period costume drama below. These two plays may have nothing to do with each other. But perhaps the emotions you had in the previous play, or something like that, will affect how you feel in the next play. Although these two plays are very different and the influence is not that great, there may still be some effect on your emotions. That kind of influence does exist.
If you insist on talking about that influence, he says you can regard it as an immediate communication and an immediate feedback system. Remember that it must be simultaneous, immediate and simultaneous, not like actors in a theater who first perform one play and then perform another in a sequence. These plays of yours are being performed at the same time. The feelings of the actor in that play will have some feedback and immediate communication in this play. In other words, the inner selves do communicate with each other, but as your outer self, you cannot perceive this communication.
He said:
These plays are not without purpose. In these plays, the multidimensional personality learns through its own actions.
This is very important. You are learning. It has tried countless postures, behavior patterns, and attitudes, and the results have also changed others. There is no need to expand on this, but you have to try these things before you can learn from them.
Many people say, if I were president, I would not do things that way. I would do such and such. But the problem is that you are not president. You have not sat in that position. If you sat in that position, perhaps you would do exactly the same thing, or perhaps even worse. Many people say, look at those rich people who are wealthy but unkind. If I were rich, I might do such and such. Actually, you might not. Some people say, look at that person who is so famous, with such a great reputation and so many fans, yet look at how he behaves. But if you were him, you might not do any better. In other words, when you have not done it, you cannot understand how he feels. All of that talk is useless. Only when you personally become him for once, personally feel it for once, that is, perform as him for once, will you understand everything.
There are many stories about this, like the story of The Millionaire, where a poor man and a millionaire exchange identities so that he can experience the life of a millionaire. There is also a television show where two people exchange identities, and so on. It is all the same idea. When you stand in another person's position and perform it once, then you can speak.
And your soul, your multidimensional personality, that is, the high-dimensional personality of multiple dimensions, must learn from this. Only then can you come to understand many things. When you have been both a king and a beggar, and when you have been a very good king, after you have experienced all the experiences of a king and also all the experiences of a beggar, I am just giving this example, and this example is not quite appropriate, after you have experienced both the poorest and the richest, then suppose you no longer need to come back to experience them. I am giving these two extreme examples, but in fact there are many other situations you need to experience. If you have experienced both the humblest and the noblest, then you no longer need to experience them. But before you have experienced them, if you say, "I can understand them, I can feel them, I can accept them from my heart," none of that is useful. You must become them once before you can know.
He said:
You must realize that the word "results" automatically implies cause and effect, the cause occurring before the result, and this is only a small example of the inherent difficulty of this kind of distortion and of verbal thought. Therefore, it always implies a single-line description.
Here he is emphasizing again that language is very difficult. He says, when I explain this to you, you see that I again use the word "results." Because your learning, your countless behavior patterns and attitudes, this result also includes the result of this matter changing others and having an influence on the other people in the play. But when I speak of "results" in this way, you will think: did you not just say there is no cause and effect? How can there be results here? If there are results, then there must be causes.
He says this does not mean I am contradicting myself. I am telling you that when I explain this matter to you, I can only use human language. But human language itself is linear. Our language has a temporal order, a sequence of before and after, the previous syllable and the next syllable, the previous word and the next word, the previous sentence and the next sentence. It is itself a language of causal sequence. In this linguistic environment, I can only explain it to you in this way, and it always implies a single-line description.
In other words, as long as we are using language to learn knowledge, as long as we are reading books, as long as we are learning in this traditional way, you will inevitably be subject to this kind of single-threaded, temporal suggestion. This is unavoidable. But as a learner, for example, if you want to study the Seth books or study spiritual knowledge, you must pull yourself out of it. When you read this kind of linear text or listen to my linear verbal introduction, you must understand that all of this is a suggestion, and this suggestion is an assumption, and it does not exist in itself. When you finish listening to this introduction or reading these books, what you should obtain is a holistic concept. You should focus on that concept, and not on what I said first and what I said later, or what Seth said first and what he said later. None of that is important. What is important is the concept being conveyed, the concept Seth wants to tell you. This concept itself is timeless.
He said:
You are this multidimensional self.
You are this multidimensional self. He just said that this multidimensional self of yours influences yourself and influences others, and you are here to learn. You possess these lives, and all these lives are possessed by you.
He said:
You create and act out these so-called cosmic passion plays.
This is on a larger scale, passion plays performed in the cosmos. Indeed, if you reach the stage of exploring Mars or exploring the solar system, have you not also begun to reach the cosmic level? Then these loves, hates, passions, and grudges will no longer develop only on the level of Earth, so they are called cosmic passion plays.
He said:
Only because you are now focused on this particular role do you suppose that your entire entity is it.
Because you are now performing this role, for example, you are now playing a secret agent, playing a bandit, playing a tycoon, playing an ordinary office worker, no matter what you are playing, you are too serious, too focused, and you think this role is all that you are.
He said:
You set these rules for yourself for a reason. Consciousness is in a state of becoming. Therefore, the multidimensional self I speak of is not a complete and already finished psychological structure. It is also in a state of becoming.
This point is very important. Everyone must not think that your soul is something already completed, already very mature, extremely advanced, and in a finished state. It is not. Your multidimensional personality, or this soul, is itself in a state of becoming. Through these many lives being performed simultaneously, it is not yet complete. It is still in the process of completing itself, in a present progressive state.
He said:
It is learning the art of actuality. It has within it an infinite source of creativity. It has unlimited potential for development, but it has not yet learned the means to actualize it. It must find within itself the methods to bring into existence the countless creations that are within it.
This passage can actually be summarized as follows: many people ask, why do we reincarnate? Would it not be fine to live just one life? Why do we keep coming back again and again? What is our purpose? Actually, there is no particular purpose. If you insist on finding a purpose, he tells you here where the purpose lies: this multidimensional personality has countless sources of creativity within it. It is like an artist whose thoughts flow like a spring, with all kinds of ideas pouring out endlessly. Today it wants to design this, tomorrow it wants to make that, the day after tomorrow it wants to do something else. Its ideas are inexhaustible, with infinite possibilities. But it has not figured out how to actualize these things.
Just like us humans, we have many ideas, but how do we actualize them if we have not done so? This soul is the same as you. It wants to find a way to actualize the ideas and creative desires in its heart, to turn thoughts into existence. This is what it needs to do in the three-dimensional world. So it comes back again and again. Therefore, it creates various situations and operates within them, setting challenges for itself.
He says it sets challenges for itself. Remember this too: it sets challenges for itself. Do you know what benefit this has? When you face any difficulty, do not be discouraged. Do not think, "Oh, why am I so unlucky? Why have I encountered this obstacle again?" You should think that these difficulties are set by yourself. You are that great, you are that powerful. You want to set challenges for yourself. You do not want to live a mediocre life. You want to live a challenging life.
So at this point, the most essential sentence is this: when anything happens around you, whether favorable or adverse, whether good or bad, you must remember that these things are not happening to you passively. They are designed by yourself and made to happen by yourself.
Speaking of this, I will mention one thing. When many people cannot figure this out, I still say the same thing: when you think, "Why did this happen to me?" you must change your way of thinking and say, "This happened for me." In other words, do not think "why something happened to me." You must think "something happened for me." Think about it this way: such a big setup, with so many actors, lights, stage, props, and extras cooperating to perform such a play for you. This play must have challenges and must have difficulty, and this difficulty and challenge must have been designed by yourself to challenge yourself. You are that excellent, you are that powerful. You want to challenge yourself. It is that simple.
And he tells you that some challenges are bound to end in failure for you, at least at the beginning. What he says is very interesting: these challenges are bound to end in failure at the beginning. The plot is designed that way. The difficulty is that high. When your ability is not yet sufficient, you will certainly encounter failure.
He said:
Therefore, it must first create the conditions that will bring about new creations. And all of this it does with great spontaneity and infinite joy.
This is very powerful: great spontaneity and infinite joy. You will encounter challenges, but you will create with the idea of being able to create new things. Only then can you change, and only then can you solve these problems. If this matter were easy and had no difficulty, in other words, if your soul already knew how to do it long ago, already understood how to walk out of this maze, and then placed you there, that would be meaningless.
It places you in a maze, and it does not know how to get out either. It wants to see whether you can walk out, wants to train and improve through this, and wants you to learn in this process. My example of the maze is not quite appropriate. It might be a goal, a task, for example, making you into a great artist, making you into a great pianist, a great painter, a great entrepreneur, a great politician, a great thinker. Any of these would work. In this process, you will certainly face many challenges, and many challenges are very difficult to complete at the beginning and are destined to fail. But he says this is only at the beginning. Do not be anxious. You will certainly succeed later.
Why will you certainly succeed? It is very simple, because you cannot die. You can reincarnate again and again, come back again and again to do this task, and achieve your goal again and again. And he tells you that this thing is not painful. It is spontaneous, not forced. Many people say, is my soul forcing me to come? Is soul reincarnation, or is Earth a prison, and I am forced to come? No, none of that is true. It is spontaneous. You must remember this sentence: it is done from your heart, with infinite joy. You do it with heartfelt joy. Otherwise, you could not do it, and you could not accomplish it.
Just as scientists recently studied and said that the Egyptian pyramids were built by slaves,3 many people raised objections and said that is impossible. If it were a group of slaves doing this work under oppression and force, they could not have completed such a crystallization of art, engineering, and technology in human history. So it must have been done with joy, completed with creative joy.
He said:
Therefore, you create far more environments than you realize. Each actor plays his role, focusing on the play, which is normal, and there is an inner guiding principle. Therefore, he is not abandoned in a play of his own creation that he has forgotten. Through what we call the inner senses, he can obtain information and knowledge.
Here you must remember that he is not abandoned in the play he created. This is something many people do not understand: after being reincarnated, am I just left alone and no one cares about me anymore? Then I am here performing a one-man show by myself, and I do not know what I am doing, and I do not know what my purpose is.
Actually, that is not the case. What he tells you is that your soul does not know how to do it either. It has many ideas, and it needs you to complete them. In other words, the environment you create is greater than its imagination, greater than its plan. It thought of the beginning but did not think of the ending. It thought of the plot and found the actors, but it did not think about how far the play would develop or to what extent it would be performed. It assembled the troupe, set up the cast, actors, screenwriter, director, lighting, stage crew, everything was prepared, but it does not know whether the play will be popular. Whether the play is popular or not is entirely determined by these actors and this troupe. That is to say, you play a major role in this: you can perform a terrible play that no one watches, or you can become the hottest hit of the moment that everyone follows. It depends entirely on you.
That is the first point. The second point is that the one who sent you here, let us put it this way for easier understanding, although actually that is not the case, it is all you, has actually built a great deal of information and knowledge into you. As he already said in the previous session, your body stores all knowledge like a computer. When it came, it equipped you with a fully functional version of yourself. You are an all-around player. You can do anything: be an artist, be a painter, be an entrepreneur, be an actor. You have all the abilities. It only depends on how you bring them into play and how you perform.
That is what he is saying: there is an inner guiding principle. Each of you has an inner guiding principle. Because your play only focuses on your current role, this role of yours has an inner guiding principle, but you just do not know it. You do not know what this inner guiding principle is. If you knew it, would that not be giving away the answer? Would that not be a spoiler? As an actor, because this is an open-ended improvisational performance, you cannot know what the other actors are going to say later. Would that not be performing according to a script? So you do not know this inner guiding principle.
He said:
Therefore, in addition to the information that is completely limited to the scope of this play, it has other sources of information. Each actor intuitively knows this. And within the play itself, certain segments have been set up, and room has been left, so that each actor can rest and recover from fatigue.
What he says is very interesting. In this play, you have been given information from other plays, but it will not tell you so obviously, and you do not want to know either, because you are performing this play, and knowing those things may be helpful or not helpful to you. And rest segments have also been set up for you within the play, leaving room for you to catch your breath, and also allowing you to communicate with the characters in other plays, that is, allowing you to communicate with those other selves.
He said:
At such times, his inner senses inform him of his other roles, and he realizes that he is far more than the self that appears in any one play.
At this time, his inner senses will tell him: you have other roles. You are not just this one. Right now you are playing a beggar, but in another play you might be playing a king. With a glare of your eyes, you are playing Emperor Kangxi or Emperor Qianlong. Your inner senses know these things. You are far more than your present self.
He said:
At these times, he realizes that he also has a hand in the writing of the play.
He discovers that he can also be a screenwriter. Since I have so many plays to perform and so many roles, I can also write scripts. I can perform whatever I want. And he is not subject to the limitations that apply when he is actively focused on the activities of the play. When he is concentrating on being an actor in the play, that is a limitation for him. He can only focus on the role in the play. But he says he discovers that he is actually not limited to that anymore. He can be a good screenwriter.
He said:
These periods, of course, coincide with your sleeping states and dreaming conditions. But there are also other times when each actor sees quite clearly that he is surrounded by props, when his insight suddenly pierces the surface of the play's apparent reality.
I think many people here have seen a movie called The Truman Show.4 If you have not seen it, you can search for it. Truman is the English transliteration of "true man." The Truman Show4 is a very interesting and very profound movie.
It is about a person who, from the moment he was born, was raised by a television production crew. From his birth all the way through his growing up, the crew broadcast his life live every day. They named him Truman, and built a small town on an open piece of land in America, like the Hengdian film studio, with many streets and houses, exactly like the real thing. And everyone in it was an actor, except Truman himself did not know. He was the main character, and he did not know. Everyone else in the show was played by extras, NPCs performing for him, including his wife, his family, his boss at work, the mailman he met, the shop assistant in the store. They were all played by people.
This television program broadcast his life live every day, and large audiences watched this other person's life every day out of boredom. Truman could only live in this small town. He could not go anywhere. Many Americans live their whole lives in small towns like this, never leaving the city, never leaving the town, within a radius of maybe a few dozen kilometers. He enjoyed this state of life, just like many people in ancient times never left their village, always born in the village and growing up in the village. He thought it was normal, that this was his life.
Until one day, someone kept giving him hints, hinting that this was not real, that he was a character in a television program, in a TV drama. He wanted to escape from this town and see what was outside it. But he could not leave the town. He could not buy a plane ticket, and was told there were no flights. He could not drive out either. When he drove to a certain point, the road was blocked. He rowed a small boat to the end of the sea, which was actually the end of the set, and he suddenly poked through the backdrop. The backdrop was painted blue sky and white clouds. After his boat poked through the backdrop, he made contact with the crew and discovered that it was just a set as large as a town.
The example he gives is somewhat like the protagonist in The Truman Show.4 We just do not know it. If we were Truman, and we had been confined to one place since childhood, you would not know whether you were in a play or in real life. In the first half of his show, he believed that this was his real life. He did not know that he was just an actor in a reality show. When your insight suddenly pierces the surface of the play, when you suddenly discover that what you are living on is a stage, you suddenly realize it, and you understand.
He said:
This does not mean that the play is not real, or that it should not be taken seriously. But it does mean that you are playing a role, an important role. However, each actor must himself understand the nature of the play and his part in it. He must actualize himself within the limitations of the play's three-dimensional background.
What he says here is very crucial. Many people say, since I now know all this, should I not just stop performing this play? Since I know it is a play, why should I still perform it? I might as well meditate every day, practice every day, and stop paying attention to worldly affairs, stop caring about fame and fortune, stop caring about success or failure, and just live my spiritual life. Many people then set out on the path of spiritual practice and no longer pay attention to the world.
Then Seth says this is not right. Do not think that just because you know this is a play, you must poke through it and say the play is all fake, telling everyone you meet, "Do not be foolish. Stop performing. Do not take it seriously. This is just a play. You are all actors." He says no, that understanding is wrong. Do not stop treating it as real. You must still treat it as real. Why? Because you have an important role to play in it. You must understand this principle: you know that within this three-dimensional background, this is a limitation you set for yourself. Within this background, you have many things to learn. You must perform this play. You must be a good actor.
Speaking of an actor's professional integrity, is that not exactly it? Of course, "on the professional integrity of a person" is just a joke. But can it be applied here? Since you know you are an actor, should you not be a good actor? Should you not perform better, rather than going on strike and refusing to perform? No.
For example, do good actors not know that the play is fake when they are acting? They know. They certainly know. But do you know how many actors, in order to experience the role in a play, will live in a specific environment for a long time? For example, in The Story of Qiu Ju, Gong Li may have lived in a rural village for several months.5 Tom Hanks, when filming Saving Private Ryan, lived in a military unit for a long time,6 and in Cast Away, he lived on a deserted island for a period of time.7 Every good actor, when working on a role, will live in the environment of the role for a period of time and truly immerse themselves in it. During the time of filming, they completely merge themselves with the role. Only then can they bring out the inner world of the character and that genuine emotional expression. Such actors are the ones who can truly win Oscars and become best actors.
Are we not the same? Once we know we are actors, do we stop acting? Many people say that those who commit suicide will suffer terribly. That is exactly the point. What suicide means is that you know you are an actor, and you refuse to perform anymore. You abandon the performance and want to return to your original state. Or you think the script of this play is badly written, that it has written you a miserable life, and you refuse to perform because it is too painful. You want to go play an emperor or a rich second generation instead.
You can understand it by using the analogy of "an actor abandoning a role": in real life, if an actor keeps walking away from roles, which production team would dare hire him next time? Halfway through the performance he just quits -- would you still keep performing? My example isn't quite right, so don't take it literally; I'm just using it to help you understand. If you go and commit suicide halfway through, you don't want to live anymore, you don't want to perform this play anymore, so you withdraw. Fine, then next time don't perform. Since you don't even want to perform, then take a good long look at yourself, and study "The Self-Cultivation of an Actor" properly. Once you've improved, and you feel like performing again, then come back. You clearly need to learn, clearly need to improve, yet you don't want to learn and don't want to improve -- this is a typical current situation.
So here Seth is afraid you might have this kind of idea, and he directly points it out: no, that's not how it is. You are not indicating that this play isn't real, nor should you fail to treat it as real -- both of those are wrong. What does he indicate? He indicates that right now you should, within this three-dimensional world, within this kind of background scene, realize yourself, realize the value of your life, bring all your potentials into play, and do it to the utmost.
For example, your current identity -- whether you are someone's boyfriend, a company leader, someone's subordinate, a soldier, an actor, a painter -- no matter what role you are, shouldn't you bring out your greatest potential in that role? If you are playing a painter, shouldn't you play that painter into the greatest painter? If you are playing a soldier, shouldn't you keep playing until he can become a general? If you are playing a company leader, shouldn't you lead the company into the world's top 500? If you are playing a subordinate, shouldn't you become the most outstanding person in the department? This is your role-playing. You need to understand what your role is, and then play it well, so that you can learn something from it, and then next time you won't have to play this role again; you can switch to another role.
If you are careless, if you don't play this role well, and you don't even want to play it well, then next time you will have learned nothing. You didn't do well as an employee, and you don't know how to be a good employee; you didn't paint seriously as a painter, you were careless every day, your painting never amounted to anything, you never found inspiration, and your intuitive nature was not well expressed. Next time you haven't completed this course, so you come back to keep studying, to go through it all over again.
So many people ask, why do I have to reincarnate countless times? Because in every lifetime you have never been serious, in every lifetime you have never brought out your potential or exerted your greatest ability. You can only come back again, and we'll see when you can bring out all your potential -- then you'll be done. When you have performed every role to the utmost, then you no longer need to perform -- whether as a man, as a woman, as a husband, as a wife, as a son, as a child, as a superior, as a subordinate, as a leader, as an employee, as a king, as a subject, you have played them all. What else is there left for you to play? Then you graduate, and you go to another space and time, and you no longer need to experience things in this three-dimensional time.
This question is very crucial, so I want to say a bit more about it. You absolutely must not fall into dualistic opposition -- either this or that, either a very material life, or completely emptying everything, seeing through the world, living a "Buddha-like" life. This is a very foolish approach; don't say such childish things. First reach the utmost of life in the three-dimensional world, and then you can say you have seen through the world.
He says:
Behind so important a production there is great cooperation, and in playing his role, each actor first must actualize himself in three-dimensional reality. Unless the multidimensional self actualizes a portion of itself in three-dimensional reality, it cannot perform there.
He says you need to understand that coming into the three-dimensional world to perform this play is a very great cooperation. It is not just you; other people also have to put in great effort to cooperate with you in performing this play, and you yourself have also put in great effort. Before performing, you have to assemble the cast: you yourself need to understand that you are simultaneously the director, the screenwriter, the actor, and also the set, the props, the stage crew, the lighting, the camera; you also have to go find other actors to perform for you -- find this person to play your girlfriend, find that person to play your husband, find this person to play your child. You have to go find all these people and discuss it with them. What a huge project! After you have assembled this cast, if you come here and don't perform well, aren't you letting down both others and yourself?
You went to such great lengths to build such a big stage -- from a higher dimension, in the three-dimensional world it is a play, but in order to put on this play, wasn't a great deal of trouble taken? And this play is one you yourself wanted to perform, because you wanted to learn something from it. But once the stage is built and the actors are assembled, if after half a year you say you don't want to perform anymore, that is certainly your own problem.
Today Teacher Zha from the Rocky Seth Reading Group said something in the WeChat group that I found especially interesting. He said that when we were children playing house, playing house with the neighbor kids -- you play the mother, you play the father, he plays the child -- we knew we were playing house. Then he said, when we grow up we are still playing house -- you play the boyfriend, she plays the girlfriend, just playing house with the girl next door; he plays my wife, I play his husband. Of course you know this playing house is different from that playing house, but you also know the two have a similar subtle wonder.
Let me give another example. When you are old, in your seventies or eighties, you play house with your grandchildren. When he plays with you, can the playing house in his eyes be the same as the playing house in your eyes? But can you say that you won't seriously play with the child or perform this play well? Don't you still have to pretend very seriously to throw yourself into it, and play well with the child? If you play perfunctorily, without investing yourself, the child will immediately sense that you are fooling him. Only when you return to that state of true immersion from childhood, and play a real game of house with the child, will the child laugh heartily and truly feel drawn into playing it.
So in this state you need to understand: after you have seen the storms and changes of the world, after you have seen the vicissitudes of the world, you can still face this life and this world with your truest side, your most childlike side, your most sincere side -- this is the state you should have. After you have finished studying Seth and understood all these things, you can still face ordinary life with a very ordinary heart -- this is the realm and state you should attain. It is not going around every day with an arrogant attitude, telling everyone, "None of this is real, all of that is fake." That is not a normal state.
It is like when someone asked an enlightened master -- I forget which master they asked -- "What has changed in your life after enlightenment compared with before enlightenment?" The master said, before enlightenment I chopped wood, lit the fire, and boiled tea; after enlightenment I still chop wood, light the fire, and boil tea. He still means the same thing: life is still life. If you pursue spiritual realms, go ahead and pursue them; no one is stopping you. There is no need to make such a huge fuss in life, saying I am about to attain enlightenment, I am about to ascend as an immortal, I am going to do spiritual practice, I am different from all of you. Different from whom? These people are all extras you found to perform the play with you. You tell them, "This is a play, don't take it seriously, listen up, all of you are actors I recruited" -- aren't you wrecking your own show? What is the point?
If you understand that you are performing, then you should perform the play well. So I use this example to tell everyone that this is extremely important. If you cannot think this through, you will not know how to conduct yourself in life.
He says:
Then within this reality, he can bring about various creations and developments that could not occur under other circumstances. But then he must, through another performance, another actualization by his own three-dimensional part, push himself out of this system.
This sentence may leave you wondering what he means. He says that in this three-dimensional performance, you have incarnated from a nonphysical state into the three-dimensional world; this process of actualization -- the process by which the soul becomes flesh, within a human lifetime -- only in this process of actualization can it bring about various creations and developments that could not occur under other circumstances.
Many people ask me, what use is the three-dimensional world anyway? He tells you this is its use. In the soul state, in the nonphysical state, you cannot experience the creations and developments of the physical state. To give a simple example: in the nonphysical state you will never know what hunger feels like, and then after being hungry, the feeling of eating your fill, or tasting delicious food -- you cannot experience that, because you have no body and you do not get hungry. To put it even more directly, in the pure soul world, you cannot experience the feeling of being held in someone's arms or having your body caressed; you have no body. So do not ignore your present three-dimensional body, and do not ignore the development of this lifetime of your three-dimensional self.
He tells you that this process of the soul actualizing into the three-dimensional world -- only this actualization can bring about various creations and developments that could not occur under other circumstances, under nonphysical circumstances. These creations and developments can only be realized in the three-dimensional world.
But -- he adds a "but" -- your ultimate goal is not to keep reincarnating here over and over. He says, but then he must, through another performance, another actualization by his own three-dimensional part -- that is, another reincarnation, another experiment -- push himself out of this system.
This one three-dimensional experience gives you certain stimuli, certain creations, certain experiences in the three-dimensional world, and through these experiences it will influence your next -- again, when I say "next" that is a concept of time, but actually it is simultaneous. This is very easy to confuse; when reading the Seth books you must understand when he is speaking of simultaneity and when he is not. What he is saying is that the things of this lifetime will influence your reincarnation in the next lifetime or in other lifetimes, and what is the purpose here? Through such influence you will gradually push yourself out of this system. To put it simply: every time you study in the three-dimensional world, it is so that one day you will no longer need to study in the three-dimensional world -- you will have learned it.
He says:
In its three-dimensional existence, it helps others in a certain form. This can only be done under these circumstances. And it itself also receives benefit, and thereby obtains development that cannot be obtained under other circumstances.
Here he uses "it" to refer to the soul -- your entity. In the entity's three-dimensional existence, who is the three-dimensional existence? It is us. We are the three-dimensional existence. In its three-dimensional existence, it helps others in a certain form, which can only be done under these circumstances, and it itself also receives benefit, thereby obtaining development that cannot be obtained under other circumstances.
Can you understand this? Only under three-dimensional circumstances can you help others in a certain way. For example, the people you come into contact with in this reincarnation -- your relatives, your boyfriend, your husband -- these people actually all have a certain relationship with you. In this three-dimensional reincarnation you may also have helped many people, other people you do not even know. In the process of helping others, this can only be realized by returning to this physical world. On the soul level you cannot help them; you can only look down at them from above, and you have no influence on them at all.
In other words, if you want to help an ant, don't you often have to first become an ant before you can communicate with them? Shouting at the ants from above has no meaning at all. This is a typical example. And in this process you are not helping them for nothing; you yourself also benefit. Only under these circumstances can you obtain development, and under other circumstances you cannot.
He says:
Therefore, the meaning of the play is known to you inwardly.
The purpose of performing this play, of reincarnating in the three-dimensional world, is known to your inner self. It is just that the conscious part of you performs so well, and is so steadily focused within the background of the play. Your inner self knows, but your conscious self is only focused on performing; it cannot split its attention, and its main energy is all on performing. Moreover, the background of this play is so real, so grand, so dazzling and colorful, that your attention is all concentrated on the background of the play.
He says:
You can know the purpose of any given life.
You can know the purpose of any of your lives. That is to say, the information of every reincarnation is stored within you; it is just beneath the surface of the conscious self you know, deeper and deeper beneath your subconscious. Your inner self stores the memories of all your lives, and it knows what you came to do in each lifetime and what purpose and goal you were to realize. Your present conscious self still does not know this; after you open the inner senses, one day you will know.
He says:
There are also all kinds of hints and clues.
It will also give you hints. Many times I don't know what to do in this life; actually you don't need to think about it. You only need to learn to observe the impulses in your heart, the inner hints; it will tell you, it will tell you what to do.
A journalist once interviewed many famous people -- the most famous politicians, artists, entrepreneurs -- and asked them what they based their major life decisions on, what reasoning they used. Everyone told him: intuition. When they made such major life decisions, it was a kind of intuition, as if a voice in their heart was speaking to them. It will give you all kinds of hints and clues; you need to know this.
He says:
You have at your fingertips the knowledge of your entire multidimensional personality.
It is right there on your body. You have been an artist; you were once a painter, once a pianist; you have all this knowledge. When you realize this, this knowledge allows you to solve problems more quickly, or to accept the challenges you have set for yourself. Why are you given so many challenges? Because he has given you an all-capable you. For you, these challenges -- if you open the inner senses, if you connect with your own inner self -- are nothing; you can complete them, because you are an all-capable you.
He says:
At the same time, it opens up broader fields of creativity.
It is not just that you set a few challenges for yourself and then once you complete them, that's it. In the process of completing challenges, you will create and discover more new creative fields. For example, Jack Ma set himself the challenge of selling things online; he did not intend to create Alipay8, but he accidentally made Alipay very well; he did not intend to make it as convenient as today's WeChat Pay, but in the process of building Taobao he accidentally discovered an even broader field. I just use this example; it is not quite exact.
He says:
Therefore, to the extent that you allow the intuition and knowledge of the multidimensional self to flow through the conscious self, you not only play your role in the play more competently, but also add new experience, insight, and creativity to the whole dimension.
What is the use of studying Seth? Life is still life, right? What help is there? He is telling you where the use lies. First, you need to know that above there is a multidimensional you, and the multidimensional you is the real you. The intuition and knowledge of this multidimensional self -- you need to understand that this knowledge is not that of your present self; it is the intuition and knowledge of that multidimensional you, of the soul, of the personality.
It flows through the conscious self. What is the conscious self? It is the present you -- our ego self, this living person on earth right now. When you allow this multidimensional personality, which possesses the knowledge and intuition of all your reincarnations, to flow in through you as a person. Generally it flows in through the subconscious; if you can open the inner senses through training, that is even better, and you won't need to rely on the subconscious -- you can see directly into it.
Through the degree of this conscious self -- some people pay deep or shallow attention to their own inspiration and intuition. Some people do not acknowledge inspiration, do not acknowledge intuition, do not acknowledge that they have the ability of a sixth sense, so their degree is very low; some people are very sensitive and very spiritual, and they pay close attention to these things, so this degree is very high. Because you use this intuition and knowledge, you can play the role in the play more competently, perform the role better, and add new experience, insight, and creativity to the whole dimension -- that is, to your entire entity, your entire soul.
This is very crucial. Do not think of yourself as an insignificant little ant; do not think that you were sent down from above just to perform a play. You have seen Stephen Chow's King of Comedy9; don't think you are just an extra. Even an extra can put on a brilliant performance. Isn't that what King of Comedy9 says at the end? Even delivering a box lunch can be delivered as such a brilliant, peerless performance.
Of course:
From your point of view, it seems that the only conscious portion of yourself is the you in this particular performance.
We all think this way. Because you only identify with the you in this particular performance; you have become lost in the performance, too infatuated with it, and so you think the actor is yourself, you yourself are the actor, the role is yourself, and you cannot see the whole play.
He says:
But the other portions of your multidimensional personality are also conscious in these other reincarnational dramas.
That is to say, the you that simultaneously exists in your other reincarnations is also conscious. Because you are a multidimensional consciousness; your consciousness itself is multidimensional and multi-dimensional. You must remember that your consciousness is multidimensional; it does not exist only in that little bit inside your skull; it exists simultaneously in multiple dimensional spaces. You may call these parallel universes or times and spaces; your consciousness itself is multidimensional.
He says:
"You" are also conscious in other realities beside these.
Here he puts "you" in quotation marks; this "you" is actually no longer you, but another reincarnation of your soul, another actualized, materialized "you."
He says:
Your multidimensional personality, your true entity, the real you, is aware of its own original face in any of these roles.
What he means is that today's you -- the you of the twenty-first century sitting here listening to me read this book -- you understand your original face, you understand that you have only come here to be an actor. He says the you of the fourteenth century also knows this, and the you of the Tang dynasty also knows this; they all know their own original face, through the communication of the inner self.
All right, today's dictation is complete; this session is finished. This session is extremely, extremely important, so I will not repeat or emphasize it again; this has also been very long, and you should have very deep insights. This is the first session of Seth's discussion of the reincarnational drama, that is, the first part of Chapter 4 of Seth Speaks.
Session 522
This part covers Session 522 and Session 523 together, because Session 523 is relatively short.
The Purpose of the Age Dramas: The Creative Nature of Consciousness
First let us look at Session 522.
Taken as a whole, these age dramas have their specific purposes.
Here we need to pay attention to a few words: first, "taken as a whole." What "taken as a whole" means is, from the perspective of the entire entity's reincarnational cycle, from the whole, not just from this one life of yours or this one reincarnation, it has its specific purposes.
And they are brought about by the nature of consciousness itself.
Here it emphasizes "by its nature." Why emphasize this? Many people ask why consciousness is like this — because consciousness has its own nature. It always wants to materialize itself in this multidimensional reality as much as possible, to create new levels of perception out of its own existence. Here we need to pay attention to the words "new levels of perception": it wants to create new branches out of what it already has — new levels of perception, new branches. This is its nature. You must remember that this is the nature of consciousness.
In so doing, it creates all reality.
It is creating as many new branches and levels of itself as possible. In so doing, it also creates reality. Therefore reality is always a state of "becoming" — remember this, reality is a state of becoming.
In the roles that you play, the thoughts that you think are still completely unique.
In other words, your reality is not fixed. It is not that I set up this background, set up this scenery, and then it does not change, and then you just perform here — no, everything is changing, everything is completely unique. And this leads to new creativity. You see, it is not only the originally arranged plot — although the plot has been arranged, new content can be added within it, there are new creative factors in it.
Certain facets of your own consciousness cannot be fulfilled in any other way.
Here it emphasizes: many people ask why we must come into reincarnation, why we must come into this three-dimensional world. Because certain facets of your consciousness cannot be fulfilled in any other way; they can only be fulfilled in this three-dimensional world. So you want to understand why you come into the three-dimensional world.
When speaking of reincarnation, you assume there is a series of progressions, such as the next life being better than the previous one, or making some progress, and so on. But actually —
These various lives are brought forth by your inner self.
This is crucial: these reincarnations are all brought forth by your inner self, not imposed upon you by some external agency. Remember this. They are the actual and concrete developments that occur when your consciousness opens up and expresses itself in as many ways as possible.
You need to change your thinking. Do not feel that there is a higher soul outside of you imposing upon you such a life destiny, a fixed fate, that you must do this. You must understand that the so-called external arranger of your life is yourself. When you consider any question, never look at it with dualistic thinking — do not feel that there is a soul outside of you, that you are you and the soul is the soul, and the soul has arranged such work for you. No, you are that soul. As was said earlier, these are brought forth by your inner self; there is no external agency imposing upon you —
They are the actual and concrete developments that occur when your consciousness opens up and expresses itself in as many ways as possible.
You think that when your consciousness opens up and wants to express itself in more and more forms, rather than expressing itself in the original single form, then it has a concrete development. That is how it is.
The Multiple Forms of Consciousness and the Freedom of the Entity
Your consciousness is not limited to one three-dimensional life, and it is not even limited to three-dimensional existence alone.
Your consciousness is not inside your head, confined to this one lifetime of yours. It is not even limited to three-dimensional existence alone — meaning it also has multidimensional existence. Your consciousness does not only reincarnate on this earth; it has other existences, existences in higher dimensions, and it will go to other dimensions to reincarnate. You must remember this.
So your consciousness takes many forms.
These forms do not need to resemble one another. It does not mean they have to look like you. We often imagine whether aliens look like us — well, you are thinking too naively. How could aliens look just like you? Can they not have other forms?
Just as a caterpillar does not look like a butterfly.
You must remember this. Although the caterpillar eventually becomes a butterfly, and their essence is one, the difference in outer form is enormous. So the outer form is not important; it is not the same thing.
The soul and the entity have complete freedom of expression.
Here we need to understand what the relationship between the soul and the entity actually is. In fact, "entity" is a technical term Seth uses, and what he is really talking about is the soul. But why does he not use the word "soul"? Because the word "soul" carries too many ambiguities — when you think of a soul, you think of so-and-so's soul, whose soul belongs to whom, and it carries many human attributes. But the soul itself, the entity itself, has no human attributes in it. It has personalities that it projects, but it is not attached to those personalities; rather, it is the other way around — human beings are formed by it. It is not so-and-so's soul; you should say that the soul of such-and-such created you, and you cannot say it the other way around. Furthermore, the word "soul" has a lot of religious connotations, a lot of mystical and theological qualities. So to avoid the soul being influenced or suggested by too many human concepts, Seth does not use that word; he often uses "entity" — because it is neutral, without so many implications.
Whether you call it the soul or the entity, they are one and the same thing, and both have complete freedom of expression. It can express itself freely, taking on all kinds of forms —
It changes its form to suit its expression.
The difficulty of the Seth books lies right here: every sentence, every word, has deep inner meaning, with its own inner precision. If you skim through it too quickly, you will often miss the key points. It changes its form to suit its expression — for example, if your soul wants to make an expression like a tree, then it must take on the form of a tree. When you want to express different modes of expression, you need different forms to suit them.
And the environments it forms are like stage sets already arranged; it forms worlds to suit its purposes.
See, it forms worlds to suit its purposes. Every set brings new development — because when you interact with the background, when you interact with the set, a new kind of development arises.
The soul or entity is highly individualized spiritual energy.
Here you must remember "highly individualized." Many people ask whether souls are all the same, whether at higher levels all souls become the same. No. Every soul is completely individualized, with its own distinct personality, just as every person is different.
And then what is it? A kind of spiritual energy.
It forms any body that you wear, and is the prime impetus behind your physical survival.
The entity is the prime impetus behind your physical survival. You draw your impetus from it. Without the inner self, without the existence of the entity, you basically could not live.
The Two Great Natures of Consciousness: Creation and Experience
Consciousness can never be static, and seeks further creation.
This is the nature of consciousness. Consciousness has two great natures: creation and experience. Therefore—
The soul, or entity, gives its own qualities to the three-dimensional reality and to the three-dimensional self.
It gives its own qualities to the three-dimensional reality and to the three-dimensional self—what qualities? Creation, the fact that it can never be static, this is its quality. So the three-dimensional world also can never be static and is always creating; this is a result of its qualities.
In the three-dimensional existence, the abilities of the entity still lie latent.
That is to say, this three-dimensional self of yours—that actor, which is ourselves—can access this material and these potentials.
In learning to use these potentials, in learning to rediscover their relationship to the entity, the three-dimensional self further raises the level of achievement, understanding, and creation.
Why study Seth? It is also for this point: when you learn about the relationship between you and your entity, you raise your level of achievement, understanding, and creation.
The three-dimensional self becomes more than it knows itself to be.
It is a kind of transcendence. It is not only that the entity becomes stronger, but that the part of it that is realized in the three-dimensional world—that is, us, the us in the physical world—that part now also enriches the qualities and nature of that world itself.
For example, originally you were only planned to play a small role, a walk-on, but you performed so brilliantly that you won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, or even Best Extra, all of which is possible. You performed very well, and you can surpass yourself. After you surpass yourself, not only does the entity become stronger, but your three-dimensional self also gains enrichment.
Without this creativity, life on our planet would always be barren.
In fact, it would be barren. Remember this: without creativity, life on Earth would always be desolate.
So the soul, or entity, gives the breath of life to the body and to the three-dimensional self within it.
The phrase "the breath of life" is used very well. Many people do not know where life comes from, and now many scientists are also studying where human life comes from—this world of all things, what we call life, defining where this life comes from. He tells you: this life is something the entity and the soul inherently possess, and then they give this breath of life to your physical body.
And the three-dimensional self engages in the purpose of opening up new areas of creativity of its own.
It gives you the breath of life, and it also gives you its nature and its qualities—what does it give you? Creation. You must remember what was just said: this passage is about the creativity of the soul. It gives this to the three-dimensional you, and you yourself are inherently creative, so that you go and open up, pioneer new areas of creation, and expand them.
We can imagine yourself as a computer AI program. A program was written for you, and at first that program was blank, but because your program was written so well, it has the ability to self-learn, self-develop, self-improve, self-create, and self-program. You are a small program under a large AI, but because you are excellent enough, you can expand into innovations that the AI that originally created you could never have imagined. This is what the original great program that created the AI soul hoped for from the very beginning—it hoped that you could create things far beyond what it could imagine.
This is the root of your creativity. It tells you that it comes from above, because your soul itself inherently has creativity; it is built into its qualities.
The entity sends out portions of itself to open new pathways of reality
In other words, the entity or soul sends out portions of itself to open new pathways of reality that would not otherwise exist.
This sentence needs to be highlighted; it is not easy to understand. The entity sends out portions of itself -- why say "portions"? Because it comes down carrying all its attributes, all its information. If it did not come down, it would not open these pathways, there would be no this world, no reality corresponding to this portion of the entity, and it could not create new things, nor could it reach higher levels, higher achievements, higher understanding.
The three-dimensional selves existing within these realities must focus their attention completely within them.
As three-dimensional selves, of course they must focus their attention on the three-dimensional itself.
An inner perception gives them the source of their energy and strength.
The inner gives it the source of energy and strength. That is, our inner self, that portion of the soul within us, gives us the source of spirit and strength. That creativity, that natural disposition, that breath of life, flowing continuously. You need to understand where it comes from.
But they must ultimately understand that they are acting in a play.
You must know that you are definitely acting in a play.
And "finally" from their roles through a process of comprehension return to the entity.
Note that "finally" here is in quotation marks. The quotation marks mean: it is not truly final, because there is no concept of finality, because time is simultaneous. He adds "finally" here only for convenience of expression; actually there is no before and no after.
Then he says something especially interesting --
There are some who fully understand that this is a play.
These personalities know full well that they are only roles, and they voluntarily play those roles in order to guide others toward the necessary understanding and development. It is like a crowd of extras where a few must be planted to lead the applause and lead the actions. He knows he is acting in a play, and he leads the other actors, transcending what they need to understand, moving toward the necessary development; leading them to transcend the selves and backgrounds they have created -- not to be limited by the background, but to be able to see further.
These personalities from other levels of existence supervise this play, and appear among these actors.
These are like personalities from higher dimensions, supervising like producers in a play. Their purpose is --
To open the three-dimensional self's inner portals of the psyche to release the three-dimensional self into another reality system for further development.
Here it is stated very clearly: they come to supervise this play, and they also know they are acting in a play, and they know what their role is, but they still must perform it well, and still must help the other actors transcend themselves, help them understand themselves, lead them in development, let them see further, not be confused by the scenery before them, by these stage backdrops. Through this, they can open the portals of their own psyche, release the three-dimensional self, and reach another reality system for further development.
Here he does not elaborate, because he does not want to elaborate. This is like the final "once-returner" in Buddhism -- Buddhism actually divides this very finely, and one of the stages is called "once-returner" (I am not sure of the Sanskrit pronunciation), meaning that in the end you come for this one lifetime, and then you can depart from the cycle of reincarnation in the material world.
You are learning to be co-creators
You are learning to be co-creators.
See that? In terms of what people nowadays mean by God, in the narrow sense of God -- you are learning to be responsible. The phrase "learning to be responsible" is very interesting. Any individualized consciousness, every person, must take responsibility.
You are learning to manage this energy of yours for creative purposes.
For what purpose? Every word here is crucial -- for creative purposes, manage this energy of your own. This is what you are to learn.
You will be bound tightly to those you love and those you hate.
We get swept along by emotions -- loving something, disliking something, hating something. Although you will learn to relax, to let go of and dissolve that hatred, and you will even learn to use hatred creatively -- turning grief into strength, redirecting it toward a higher purpose, and finally transforming it into love. In later chapters I will explain this more fully.
The backdrop of your physical environment, those sometimes lovely props and devices, all the physical aspects of life as you know it are camouflage.
All of this is camouflage. Just as the Diamond Sutra says, "All phenomena are illusory" -- the same principle.
Therefore I call your physical world reality a camouflage.
Yet this camouflage is composed of the vitality of the universe.
Rocks, mountains, and the earth are living camouflage.
The things you think are lifeless are actually all alive.
Formed by the interlocking psychic webs of minute consciousnesses you cannot perceive, the atoms and molecules within them have their own consciousness.
Just as the atoms and molecules within your body are the same -- they all have consciousness.
Since you have had a hand in forming this physical backdrop, since you hide yourself within a physical form, then using the physical senses, you can only perceive this fascinating backdrop, while the reality within it or beyond it escapes your eyes.
Simple, right? Using your physical senses, you can only perceive this fascinating backdrop -- and this backdrop is actually something you yourself created. The things within the backdrop or beyond it escape your eyes; you cannot see them.
You Are a Part of a Multidimensional Self
Understand that the actor is us -- and not only three-dimensional. Remember the "not only" -- he does not deny that you are three-dimensional, but says you are not only three-dimensional.
You are a part of a multidimensional self.
Who is that multidimensional self? It is the entity.
Within it there are methods of perception that allow it to see through the camouflage background.
It has certain inner senses that can see through the stage. It constantly uses these inner senses. Remember "the inner senses" here -- each person has nine inner senses, and there will be a specific introduction later; today we will not go into them.
Although its own actor portion is so focused upon the play that it is unaware of this.
An actor certainly has to focus on acting. You cannot only pay attention to your own inner feelings; you also have to face the play that is being performed right in front of you, with all the other actors playing opposite you and exchanging lines with you.
In a broad manner of speaking, the physical senses actually form the physical reality that they seem to only perceive.
Note that Seth's wording is very precise -- in a broad manner of speaking. From a broad perspective, your physical senses form the physical reality that they seem to only perceive.
Here there is a key technical word: "form." Your physical senses do not perceive physical reality; rather, they form your physical reality. Do you see that? This is the key.
Let us remove all the adjectives in between -- when you cannot understand Seth's books, remember one method, which other teachers taught me and which I find very useful: grasp the key points. The key point of this sentence is "the physical senses form physical reality." That is the subject, verb, and object. But it has many modifying words, attributives, adverbials, and complements in it -- for example, first it adds a premise "in a broad manner of speaking"; then it says "that they seem to only perceive," which is also a modifier.
What does this mean? It is not the reverse -- it is not that first there is a physical world, an environment, and then you perceive it; rather, these worlds, these realities are formed by your senses.
You may not understand, so let me give you an example. The environment around us contains other physical realities, such as electromagnetic waves. You cannot see electromagnetic waves with your naked eyes, nor can you feel them with your body. The signal in your phone communicates with a base station at a certain frequency and transmits information over -- it transmits video down, for example, when you watch a video now, your phone is connected to the WiFi at home, and the WiFi is connected to the internet, and the information comes through. In between, you cannot see how it comes in, and you cannot perceive its existence. You have to rely on a tool -- the phone is a tool. With the phone, do electromagnetic waves become visible to you? But what you see is still not the electromagnetic waves themselves. What you see is what is carried on top of the electromagnetic waves: a message, a video, an article. You cannot see the electromagnetic waves themselves; you can see these things.
So is the phone not a kind of perceptual tool? It adds another sensory system, and then you can see these things.
Going back a few decades, say a hundred years ago, would people looking at us now not seem like immortals? We hold a phone and can have video calls, make phone calls, and watch videos with people thousands of miles away. They would not understand.
Then let us think one step further: are your eyes, nose, and ears not also a kind of tool? If you treat your eyes, nose, and ears as tools, like the phone, can you then understand: the realities they can see, which you think are the only ones, are so only because your eyes can only see these things. You cannot see infrared or ultraviolet -- do you then think they do not exist? You can only see a limited, very short range within the visible light spectrum. But they do exist. Some animals can see them. If you use certain tools, such as an infrared camera, you can also see infrared things.
Therefore, these senses of yours are actually perceptual tools of your inner self, of your inner being. Add a phone, and you add an external sensory tool, and you can see more things. Why do you now think you only have these five tools? When each new tool is added, the world you see becomes different again, and the reality you perceive becomes different. But you say you do not have them -- could it be that you have them without knowing it?
Because your eyes, nose, and ears are themselves also part of this reality world, part of the physical world, part of the camouflage system. In a camouflaged world, using tools made from the camouflaged world to look at the camouflaged world, you are essentially looking into a distorting mirror -- what you see is not real.
This is why science must be combined with spirituality. Scientific instruments -- electron microscopes, particle colliders, all the equipment used, the tools of research, the facilities of observation -- are all physical. Using physical equipment to observe these physical things while also trying to explore the reality underlying matter itself -- you cannot see it. This is the crux of the problem.
You can regard them as a pair of glasses placed over your inner perception. Because they are physical, they force you to see a visible "field of activity" as a solid object.
What is a "field of activity"? It is that the smallest units of the physical world are all vibrating segments of energy. Assuming superstring theory is correct, we can treat it as a kind of energy segment vibrating -- then it is actually an energy field, an energy field that constantly flashes at superluminal frequencies. This energy field is real: a table is an energy field, and a stool is also an energy field. But you cannot see these energy fields; you can only "see" them as solid objects -- note the quotation marks here -- you can only see them as tables and stools, and you cannot see the energy field behind them. You can only see these camouflages, because you are looking with a camouflaged tool.
Therefore you can only rely on them to tell you what happens on the surface.
This is normal, because it is a camouflage and can only see what happens on the surface. For example, you can state the positions and times and places of the other actors -- where they are, what they are doing, and what they are doing at what time. But your physical senses will not tell you that time itself is an illusion. Of course they will not tell you, because time and space are a root assumption. As was said earlier, this root assumption -- if the root assumption of time and space did not exist, this world would not exist. As long as you want to exist in this world and interact with this world, you must pretend that it exists.
Or that consciousness forms the other actors.
The other actors, other people, are actually formed by consciousness. Your physical senses will not tell you these things.
Realities that you cannot see exist beyond such obvious realities.
Things invisible to your naked eyes exist beyond the tables, chairs, and stools that you can see. But you can use the inner senses to perceive them, to perceive the realities that exist beyond this play and beyond your role in it.
Now you have become an advanced actor. An advanced actor not only sees the surface lines but can also grasp the meaning beneath the lines, can read its psyche -- has mind reading, and also has the ability to travel through time and space, can see the past, present, and future lives of an actor, and can see all of its history. If you have these abilities, you are an advanced actor.
Inner Senses Practice
Of course, in order to do this—
At the very least, you must temporarily turn your attention away from the constant activity that is taking place.
That is to say, you first have to shut down your physical senses and shift your attention to those events that previously escaped your notice.
He is indeed speaking in an extremely simplified way— these effects are somewhat like putting on another pair of glasses.
Here you must remember that this is an extremely simplified way of putting it. What he means is that when you open the inner senses, it is somewhat like putting on another pair of glasses. Actually, it is not like that—
Because basically, to the inner self, the physical senses are artificial, just as to the physical body itself a pair of glasses or a hearing aid is artificial.
We think of glasses as correcting vision, and hearing aids as helping people with poor hearing—they are artificial. He is telling you: when you use the inner senses, you are simply not using these artificial things, but using what is originally yours. If you wear a pair of tinted glasses, everything you see has that color; if you wear refractive, funhouse-mirror-like glasses, everything you see is distorted.
Generally speaking, your inner senses are seldom fully and consciously used.
Remember the word "consciously" here. Most of the time you use the inner senses unconsciously. What we are learning here is to teach you to use them consciously, rather than unconsciously.
He gives an example:
Suppose that in an instant, if the familiar environment as you know it were all to disappear, and were replaced by another set of data that you were not at all prepared to understand, you would not only be surprised but bewildered and even quite frightened.
Your bed, table, sofa, television, house, universe, Earth, solar system—all of that data disappears entirely and is replaced. This is perfectly normal, because we are familiar with our surrounding environment, and if it suddenly changes to a different set, the first feeling is fear, terror. That is why many people do not dare to experience out-of-body sensations, and do not dare to experience the feeling of consciousness entering a higher level after sitting in meditation—because in that state, if your concentration is not strong enough, your first feeling is extreme fear, because everything has changed.
So much data coming from the inner senses must be translated into terms you can understand.
In other words, this data must somehow become something that the three-dimensional you can understand. That is why when many people dream, the things you remember in the dream, the things you can recall, have all already been translated. What the real dream actually was, you do not know—things from beyond the three-dimensional world cannot be understood by your three-dimensional brain, so it cannot translate them for you; or it translates them into an event that the three-dimensional world can understand.
Let me give a vivid example—though this example may not be entirely apt. Suppose in a dream you went to a higher level of consciousness, to an ancient civilization, a previous human civilization, and did something there. But that period and that thing are completely unfamiliar to you, because it is neither in this space-time nor in this dimension. After you finish and wake up, the dream you might remember becomes: you went exploring in a completely unfamiliar maze, spent the whole night searching for a way out, and were extremely tired. A dream like that, once it reaches the three-dimensional world, has been translated into a dream you can understand—not the most original thing anymore.
You must understand that your particular set of camouflages is not the only one.
The camouflage of the three-dimensional world is not the only one; there are many other reality worlds.
Other realities have entirely different systems.
You must understand this. You must never think that other universes, parallel universes, or other dimensions are built according to the model of our three-dimensional world, conforming to three-dimensional logic, also having space, also having time, also having people who look more or less like us. Completely different. When we go to another dimension, it has no relation whatsoever to our system. But—
All personalities have inner senses.
This was already emphasized once before, and here it is emphasized again. No matter which reality system you go to, you have this ability to see through camouflage. It is not only our world that has camouflage; other worlds also have camouflage. For example, you could go to a planet that is composed entirely of liquid from the inside out—just one giant ball of water; the life forms within it might exist in the form of bubbles, or in the form of liquids of different densities. That is one of their life forms, and they have their own consciousness, their own thoughts. Such life forms also have inner senses, and can also recognize what that camouflage is and what the reality behind it is. Because this world itself is composed of consciousness, and consciousness can of course see clearly the things composed by itself—that is its inherent attribute.
Through these inner senses communication is maintained, and the normal conscious self is seldom aware of these communications. Part of my purpose is to make you aware of some of these communications.
These inner personalities are constantly communicating with one another. But you do not know it. He says, part of the purpose of my coming—remember, part of the purpose—is to make you aware of some of these communications. Not all of them, because the entirety of it far exceeds your imagination.
Your True Environment Is Thought and Emotion
The soul or entity is not the you reading this book.
This is certain. The soul and entity are not the you reading the book; they are the you behind that you.
Your environment is not only the world around you that you know, but it also includes your previous-life environments that you are not now focusing upon.
Your environment is not only your present surrounding environment—the city, room, place where you are—but also includes your past-life environment, the environment of your previous life.
Your true environment is composed of your emotions and thoughts.
Your true environment is your thoughts and your emotions. Remember this well: your environment is not physical; that is all camouflage. The environment truly around you is your thoughts and emotions; they are your innermost core.
Because from these you form not only this reality but every reality in which you participate.
From these, you not only form this one physical world, but also other realities, other realities in which you participate.
Your true environment does not have the space and time you know, in your true environment, you do not need words either, for communication happens instantaneously.
In your true environment, you do not need words; it is all telepathic and happens instantaneously.
In your true environment, you form the physical reality you know.
In your true environment, the one composed of emotion and thought, you form physical reality.
The inner senses allow you to perceive reality independent of physical form.
Your inner self can let you sense reality beyond the physical.
Therefore I shall ask all of you to give up your roles, and try this simple exercise.
He is now beginning an exercise. He asks all of us reading the book or listening to this lecture to temporarily set aside the roles we play, and try this exercise.
Now pretend that you are on a lighted stage.
This exercise is very important. You can practice it for a while every day, over a period of time, and keep training it.
The stage is the room you are now in, close your eyes, pretend the light is gone, then the background disappears, the walls disappear, and you are alone, everything is dark. Be still, imagine the existence of the inner senses as vividly as possible, for the time being pretend that they correspond to your physical senses.
Think of your room as a large stage, with spotlights around it. Close your eyes and pretend that the lights have gone out, the background of the room has disappeared, and only you remain. At this point, become still and imagine as vividly as possible the existence of the inner senses—you must think that you have inner senses; if you do not think about them, you cannot feel them.
How should you imagine them? For example, your eyes are outer senses; think that within your mind there is a pair of eyes that can also see things. Your inner self can hear something—not by listening with your ears, but by inner listening, the kind of listening to your inner voice.
Remove all thoughts and worries from your mind.
This step is actually rather difficult. You need to relax, and let go of all your thoughts and worries. So find a way, in a calm state of mind, to temporarily set aside all your troubles and the difficulties of life. Imagine that you are in a peaceful environment, at the center of a quiet stage, and only you remain; this world is left with only you, nothing else. If there is no one else, how can you still have worries? You are the only person in the world. If you have watched the movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith, you will understand—only you are left in the world.
Keep a receptive attitude, and listen gently.
Keeping a receptive attitude is very important. Accept the you that is here now, accept this present state, the state of sitting alone in the middle of the universe, in the middle of the stage. You cannot say, "I am afraid"; that will not do. Listen gently—not to the sound of my voice, nor to the sound of cars passing outside, nor to the sound of neighbors arguing next door, nor to the sound of someone selling vegetables downstairs, but to the sound that comes through your inner senses.
Images may appear, do not force them.
They may appear, or they may not; it does not matter.
If images do appear, accept the image that appears to you as being just as real as the things you see with your physical eyes.
For example, when you see a table lamp on the table with your physical eyes, you think it is real. But at this time, if an image appears in your mind—you are standing in an open wilderness, and in front of you there is a large tree, rustling in the wind—you should imagine that tree is also real, just as real as what you see with your eyes.
Pretend that there is an inner world, use your imagination.
Imagine that there is an inner world within your mind, within your consciousness, another world. First assume that there is such an inner world, then bring your inner eyes, inner ears, and inner perceptual system to perceive it. When you truly become still, it will reveal itself to you.
Next pretend that toward this inner world you have been blind all your life, and only now are slowly beginning to see things in it.
This is perfectly normal. We are indeed blind; we do not need to pretend. We are only just beginning to see something, just beginning to enter.
Do not judge the entire inner world by the disconnected images you may first perceive or by the sounds you first hear, because you are still using your inner senses quite imperfectly.
When you first do this exercise, you may see some disconnected images and hear some sounds. You must understand: as far as your inner world is concerned, you are only just beginning to explore it. It is like how you began exploring the outer world from infancy, and only now, after exploring up to today, are you just able to move about in this world with ease. Now assume that you are like a little baby just entering the inner world. What you see and understand is not the entirety of the true inner world—only a very small part of it, and also incomplete, fragmentary, one-sided. At this time your inner senses are still not developed enough, not refined enough, so do not judge the whole by one part.
Many people, when they first acquire this ability, say things like "I saw something," "I heard some sound," "I heard God speaking to me," "there is a voice within me calling to me"; all sorts of auditory and visual hallucinations appear, and then they think this is a revelation from God. Or some people see the Buddha sitting upright on a lotus flower; all kinds of images appear. Remember: just observe; do not judge, and do not interpret. It is like a little baby exploring the world: at first do not judge, only observe. You are a beginner—is everyone who gives you candy good? Is everyone who buys you toys good? Observe first, and judge later.
Before sleep or while resting, or while doing some work that does not require your full attention, you may do this simple exercise.
For example, while doing repetitive work that does not require mental effort, or while planting flowers, arranging flowers, or passing time, you can do it at these times.
You will only be learning to focus your attention in a new dimension of perception.
Do not be afraid. You are only practicing, placing the focus of your consciousness onto a dimension you previously did not perceive.
It is like taking snapshots in an unfamiliar environment.
Remember that you will perceive only fragments, just accept them, at this stage do not try to make any overall judgment or interpretation.
At the beginning, ten minutes a day is quite enough.
At the time I am writing this book, the material in the book is, to some extent, coming through this woman in a trance state.
He is training you to use the inner senses. Jane actually obtains this material through the inner senses.
This work is the result of extreme organization, inner precision, and training.
Do not think this work is easy. You see Jane speaking with ease, and Seth speaking through her at length, passage by passage, with such precision—do not think this is casual. This is the result of long, precise training.
Many people ask: after Jane died, why did Seth no longer transmit information through anyone else? Why could he only transmit through Jane? There are of course many reasons, but one key reason is that it is not something just anyone can do. Jane's inner senses had to be sufficiently developed, very highly developed, and she had to go through a long period of mutual adjustment with Seth, reaching a very precise level, before she could transmit knowledge from outside this dimensional space into this reality. This requires a process of training.
When Ruburt is intensely focused on the physical world, she cannot receive material from me.
When Jane is eating, writing novels, or focused on the physical world, the material cannot be translated or interpreted; she cannot receive it, which is perfectly normal. That is why they do this only after 9:30 in the evening—Seth and Jane transmit material every Monday and Wednesday evening starting at 9:30. At that time it is quieter; the daytime affairs are done; there will be no unexpected guest, and no phone call will come in. In that era—the 1960s and 1970s—there were no cell phones, and information was not so developed. In America, after nine in the evening, if there was no emergency, no one would call you. So no one disturbed her at that time. In that state, Jane entered a trance state, separated from the physical world, and only then could receive Seth's material.
Therefore the inner senses are the channels that provide communication among various dimensions of existence.
Here the inner senses are defined: they are the channels that provide communication among different dimensions of existence. They can provide communication between different dimensional spaces—the third dimension, fourth dimension, fifth dimension, and higher dimensions.
Nevertheless, even so, when the material is translated into concrete form, there is inevitably some degree of distortion; otherwise it simply could not be perceived at all.
This is perfectly normal. When Seth speaks his ideas through Jane, there is certainly some degree of distortion in the middle. If it were not so, it could not be perceived at all. In other words, the Seth material we see today necessarily contains some coloring from the transmitter and the translator—their personal views and their thought-coloring. So distortion is natural. But do not say, "Since this has distortion, I will not study it." That is wrong. You must understand the deeper meaning behind the distortion. And this distortion is already very small—as said earlier, after their long mutual adjustment, this distortion has already become very, very small.
After making notes and records, they would often communicate with Seth to check and verify, and confirm any unclear places. After each session, the next day Rob would have Jane read through his notes again. Jane actually could not remember what she had said at the time, but because Seth's thoughts flowed through Jane's thoughts and were spoken through Jane's mouth, the things that flowed through her left a certain memory in her. So the next day Rob would check what he had written with Jane, to see whether what she said was what he had recorded.
Session 523
The next session is relatively short, so we will cover it together, that is, Session 523.
Your Environment Is Your Own Responsibility
I have spent some time now emphasizing the fact that each of us forms our own environment, because I want you to understand that your life and your environment are your own responsibility.
Earlier, at considerable length, he kept emphasizing: we form the environment around us, that is, the world around us, that is, our reality. This is something you need to understand: it is your own responsibility. Many people do not understand: how could my life be something I get to decide? He tells you: it depends entirely on you. Do not blame others. Just take up this responsibility yourself.
If you believe otherwise, then you are the one who is limited.
"Otherwise" means: if you do not believe that the environment around you is formed by you -- this is most people's view. We think the environment exists objectively, and we can only make some changes within it, like changing the color of the walls, switching to a different house, moving to another city, but the changes are limited, and you cannot change the big picture -- when you do not believe you can change your environment, then you are the one who is limited, because the environment limits you.
Your environment, then, represents the sum total of your knowledge and experience.
Many people ask: what level am I at right now? Is my level high or not? People often joke: the simplest way to see your own level is to look at the kind of people around you. The people around you are all projected by you. If the people around you are all of a high level, all of high quality, then your own quality is very high, because they are all projected by you; if the people around you are all unkind people, people who are harsh to you, fickle people, people who do not keep their word, people who care only about material things, and you think you are just unlucky to keep running into such people -- well, were they not all created by you? It is precisely because you are at that level that you created such people. All around you are people like that. Think about what the people and events around you are like -- that is your true reflection. Those are all created by you.
As long as you believe your environment exists objectively and independently of you, then to a large degree you will feel powerless to change it, or to transcend it, or to imagine other alternatives that may be less clear.
If you believe the environment is objective, independent of you, and has nothing to do with you -- the material world is the material world, you are you, and the two of you have no relationship -- then you will feel powerless to change it. It is there. How can you change it? You can only change it in a limited way, or transcend it; nor will you think that there are other ways to change it, or other choices.
At the end of this book, I will explain various methods that will allow you to change your environment completely.
He will have methods later.
Reincarnation Is Not an Unchangeable Verdict
I have also discussed reincarnation in terms of the environment, because many schools of thought overemphasize the influence of reincarnation, and so they often interpret the circumstances of reincarnation as the result of unchangeable, uncompromising patterns determined in previous lives.
Earlier we talked about the problem of cause and effect. Many people believe that the reason your present life has problems is because of causes planted in past lives, karma created, bad deeds done, and that these are unchangeable, unalterable, uncompromising. The theory of cause and effect strongly insists that this is an unshakable truth -- where there is a cause there must be an effect, whatever cause yields whatever effect, whatever karma you create brings whatever retribution. It becomes an unchangeable, uncompromising pattern. This is also a kind of environmental influence, and you also believe this thing cannot be changed.
At the same time, if you feel that you are at the mercy of your environment and cannot control it, you will feel rather powerless to deal with your present physical reality, to change your environment, to influence and change your world. Because if you think this way, you certainly have no power -- how can you change the events of a past life? There is no way to resolve it.
These reasons are ultimately irrelevant.
Actually they are fundamentally irrelevant, fundamentally unimportant.
Because the reasons will change with time and with your culture.
Today you have this reason, tomorrow you will find another one. Today it is cause and effect, tomorrow it is something else -- Christianity or whatever, all sorts of reasons. Every country, every race, every region is different; time is also different. A few hundred years ago there was one viewpoint, a few hundred years later there is another.
You are not condemned by original sin, or by any childhood event, or by past-life experience.
Christianity says every person is born with original sin; there is also the problem of the family of origin -- how your family of origin affected your childhood; and there is the past-life theory of cause and effect. He says you have not been sentenced by any of these.
Your life may, for example, be far less satisfying than you think it is, or than you wish it to be. When you wish you were greater, perhaps you are smaller.
Many people's actual lives are like this, far worse than they imagined. Many people leave comments saying: you say beliefs create reality, I want to become a millionaire, why can't I? When you want to become greater, richer, more famous, actually you are small. But your psyche is not overshadowed by original sin, or by Freudian infantile syndromes10, or by the influence of past lives.
Here I would like to try to explain the influence of past lives more clearly, because many people misunderstand it. They influence you just as any experience does.
Past lives are like things you have experienced before, like experiences, and they influence you. But the premise is --
Time is not closed, as I explained earlier.
This is the key point. Time is not closed; it is open. One life is not buried in the past, disconnected from the present self and the future self. This past life of yours has not ended; it is open, and it is happening simultaneously with your present. Changes in your present beliefs can change the circumstances of your previous life, and will also change the beliefs of that previous-life you, and then these in turn will affect you. They are connected, and they can be changed -- because time is open. If you recognize this, you will no longer think that their influence on you is unchangeable, nor will you think that past-life cause and effect exists like an ironclad law. You can travel through time and change it.
These lives are happening simultaneously. Creation and consciousness are never linear achievements.
Here you must remember: creation and consciousness are never linear developments as you imagine -- "I will accomplish this achievement and then that achievement, first do this and then do that" -- no, they are simultaneous.
In each life, you choose and create your own setting and environment.
In every reincarnation, you choose and create your own setting and environment. How can you blame anyone? You chose the past life too. The environment and setting of that past life were also chosen by you.
In this life, you choose your parents, and any childhood events within your experience.
You can neither blame your past lives, nor blame your parents for the influence on your childhood. You wrote this script. You wrote the script -- you must understand this clearly.
But like a truly absentminded professor, the conscious self forgets all of this.
So when tragedies, difficulties, or challenges appear in the script -- when things go smoothly it is fine, but when these appear, the conscious self blames heaven and other people. This is a common fault of ours. Remember here "the conscious self" -- it is not the true self, it is "the conscious self" -- why am I so unlucky? Why did I get sick? Why did he break up with me? Why haven't I made any money? Why did the stock market drop again?
Before this book is done, I hope to show you how precisely you create every minute of your experience. So that you can then begin to assume your true responsibility as a creator on a conscious level, or nearly so.
He uses a very precise phrasing -- "on a conscious level, or nearly so."
As you read this book, look now and then at the room you are sitting in, the table, the chairs, the ceiling and the floor. They may seem very real and solid, quite permanent, while in contrast you may feel yourself extremely fragile.
Perhaps after you die this house will still be here, the table will still be here. Compared with them, you find yourself seeming very fragile, trapped within a brief moment between birth and extinction -- your whole life is just these few decades, trapped inside it.
You may even feel jealous when you imagine the physical universe will endure long after you are gone.
We envy the green mountains, we envy the green waters, we envy the pines and cypresses that stay evergreen -- because they live longer than we do.
But by the end of this book, I hope you will realize the eternal validity of your own consciousness.
Here he begins to touch on the main theme. The title of this book is exactly this -- "the eternal validity of the soul." It has been translated as Seth Speaks, but the original meaning is the eternal validity of the soul.
And the non-permanence of those physical aspects of your environment that now seem so secure.
Those great mountains and rivers that now seem as stable as Mount Tai, including our houses -- these secure physical environments, they are not the eternal ones. They are all created by you. You are the eternal one, not them. You must not get this backwards -- if you treat them as eternal and treat yourself as a passing traveler, then you have lived your life completely in reverse.
All right then, that brings us to the end of Chapter Four. Starting from Chapter Five, he begins to talk about how thought forms matter -- we just looked at the problem of coordinate points.
注释与核实
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In string theory and M-theory, spacetime is proposed to have 11 dimensions. ↩
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Quantum states themselves cannot be directly observed; they are inferred through mathematical models and experimental results. ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Wikipedia "The Truman Show" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show) ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Source: Alex Colville / The China Project, "Gong Li, the empress of Chinese film" (https://thechinaproject.com/2020/05/25/gong-li-the-empress-of-chinese-film/) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, "Tom Hanks spent a lot of time living in the military while filming Saving Private Ryan"; upon verification, it should be "Tom Hanks did not live in the military for a long period, but instead attended a six-day military training camp run by retired Marine Corps officer Dale Dye together with the main cast (the training included staying in character, five-mile runs with full gear, weapons training, and only about three hours of sleep per night)." (Source: Wikipedia "Saving Private Ryan," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Private_Ryan) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Wikipedia "Alipay" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alipay) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia "King of Comedy (film)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Comedy_(film)) ↩ ↩2
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This claim could not be verified. ↩