The "Introduction" and "Chapter Highlights" in 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 parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter discusses the relationship among sleep, dreams, and consciousness, proposing that one long sleep be replaced by several shorter sleep periods, combined with eating smaller meals more often, in order to improve waking concentration, reduce the sense of division between waking and sleeping, and better the condition of body and mind. It then explains that consciousness itself has rhythms of rising and falling, and that a fixed pattern of long waking and long sleeping accumulates chemical elements and forms a vicious cycle. In the latter half, through a live demonstration with Rob, it shows that consciousness can partially withdraw from bodily expression without being extinguished, laying the groundwork for the later discussion of consciousness after death.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Sleep cannot be completely eliminated, but segmented short sleep is more effective than one long sleep; continuous sleep beyond six to eight hours is not beneficial.
- Segmented short sleep can heighten the focus of waking consciousness, reduce the sense of division between the waking self and the sleeping self, and improve the state of body and mind.
- If waking consciousness does not rest for long periods, chemical elements accumulate in the blood, causing dullness, which in turn makes long sleep necessary, forming a vicious cycle.
- Consciousness has rhythms of rise and fall; one should work at its peaks and rest at its troughs, rather than smoothing over the rhythm with a fixed long block of rest.
- During sleep, consciousness does not go out; it merely leaves the body or turns in other directions. At the time of death, consciousness may be unable to express itself through the body, but consciousness itself remains intact.
Main Text
Seth's Suggested Sleep Pattern
Seth says that the amount of sleep each person needs is different, and there will never be a drug that lets people stop sleeping entirely -- this has already been proven. I remember the last Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a scientist who, through experiments -- not through theory or some kind of consciousness-level or spiritual-level claim -- proved through scientific experiments a fact: if people do not sleep, they really will die.1 A person can go without food and without water, but as long as you guarantee basic energy supply, he can stay alive; but if he does not sleep, after several consecutive days without sleep, some people's bodies really do break down.
So Seth also emphasizes that no drug can let people do without sleep entirely. Remember this point: no matter what, you have to ensure you get your sleep. Skipping a few meals is no big deal, but not sleeping will not work. Why? Because there is too much work -- as the previous two chapters explained -- a great deal of work is done while you are sleeping. It has to be done in that state. In the deep levels of sleep you have a lot of work to do: you have to deal with your inner self, with many underlying things of your soul, communicate with your other personality fragments, draw nourishment from them, draw from their energy source. If you cut off this work, basically you as a person lose your source of momentum. So sleep is extremely important for you.
However, two shorter periods of sleep are more efficient than sleeping too much at one time. Later on he focuses on this issue, and he gives all of humanity his suggestions regarding sleep and eating.
He says, if before sleep you give yourself an appropriate suggestion -- suggest what? Namely:
I tell my body that my body can fully recover, and by the time I wake up, my body will already be fully recovered.
If you do this, he says, two three-hour periods of sleep are enough -- six hours in total. For most people, two three-hour periods should be sufficient. But in many cases -- setting aside some exceptions, such as small infants who may need more than fourteen hours of sleep per day -- for normal circumstances, ten hours of sleep is actually disadvantageous. You have to remember, sleeping too long is actually harmful; it causes dullness in both body and mind. In this situation, the soul leaves the body for too long, causing the muscles to lose elasticity and become stiff. People who are bedridden for long periods also have stiff muscles.
Just as eating smaller meals more often is much better than three big meals a day. Eating smaller meals more often is the same -- he gives you the same advice about eating. Therefore, conversely, sleeping several short periods is more effective than sleeping one long period, and there are other benefits as well.
Session 532
He said that the conscious self will naturally remember more of its dream adventures -- the self that wakes up, naturally, without doing special exercises, will remember more of its dream adventures:
And will gradually add these to what the ego considers its overall experience.
That is to say, it does not only add waking experience to its overall experience, but will also add some dream experience to it.
More numerous, shorter periods of sleep result in a higher peak of conscious focus -- if you sleep in several shorter segments, your waking conscious focus during the day will reach a higher peak. You will be more focused, sharper, and in a better mental state. And the activities of body and mind are both renewed, and the divisions between various areas and various levels are less definite. Here "self" refers to the complete self, not the waking self -- we usually think that only when we are awake are we ourselves, and that the sleeping one has nothing to do with us anymore.
For a complete you, you think that the waking state is one level and the sleeping state is another level, and the division between them is not so definite. The result is a more economical use of energy -- you will use your energy better -- and nutrients are also used more effectively, and absorption is better. The consciousness you know, which is what we consider the conscious mind, the waking consciousness, will also become more flexible and more vital.
It will not lead to a blurring of consciousness or focus. Sleeping in short periods not only does not lead to a blurring of conscious focus, but on the contrary makes you more clear-headed. Greater flexibility will make the area of conscious focus perfect. What is flexibility? It means keeping great flexibility in consciousness between waking and sleeping, so that you do not fall into a dead sleep, and then upon waking work continuously for a long time, exhausting the waking consciousness.
There also does not seem to be a great barrier between the waking self and the sleeping self. It is mainly the result of a division of labor -- when awake there is waking work, when asleep there is sleeping work. Our normal incorrect method is that when we sleep in one long stretch, we separate the two very much: we allot one long block of time to one, and another long block of time to the other. We often sleep eight hours and stay awake sixteen hours, and think this is a very good way of dividing. This is because our use of time has been separated -- divided into waking time and sleeping time.
He said that originally you rose with the sun and rested at sunset, but now with artificial light you no longer have to do this. Originally we had no choice -- at night there was no light, so we had to rest. But now that we have lamps, candles, and fire, we no longer have to do this. Therefore:
You can take advantage of opportunities from your technology that you are not presently using.
That is, use artificial light, use lamps, to do things that previously had to be done by rising with the sun and resting at sunset, breaking that pattern.
Sleeping all day and working all night is not the answer -- it is not telling you to reverse it and sleep during the day and work at night. Many people now are in a state where they do not get up during the day, sleep in very late, and then stay up late at night without sleeping. But reversing day and night is still the same; that is only reversing the habit, not the answer.
But dividing the twenty-four hours in a different way would be more effective. There are many different methods that are better than our current one. Theoretically, ideally:
Sleeping five hours at a time will give you the greatest benefit; more time than that is not as effective.
Then those who need more sleep can have a two-hour nap. It does not have to be during the day; you can add a two-hour nap after dinner. Some people sleep four hours a day and add two naps, and that works too. You need to give the body some hints and suggestions, telling it:
Sleeping four hours is enough, sleeping five hours is already sufficient, you do not need to sleep more time, your body has already fully recovered.
He said that in any case, being active for eight to ten hours is more the body's vibration, or far more efficient, than being inactive for eight to ten hours. Many times family members will say "sleeping too much makes you dull," saying this as a joke, and some people may not understand it.
Let me give a few examples. First, speaking of myself, my sleep time has been on the low side since childhood; at most I sleep about six or seven hours a day and then cannot sleep anymore. Especially in recent years, my daily sleep time is basically around four to five hours, sometimes six hours, but basically around five hours. In the afternoon when I get sleepy I will sleep a bit more; when sleepy I sleep, without a fixed time. Now with this pandemic situation, everyone is already staying at home, so it is easier for you to practice this sleep method Seth gives you and see whether it improves your life.
And for others, we know many athletes, basketball stars, professional managers, or CEOs of large corporations also sleep very little. Many people go to sleep around eleven at night and wake up a little after four in the morning, without fail. In America there is a group called the "4:30 group" -- they get up at 4:30 in the morning2, with their own schedule and work time.
He said that you have trained your consciousness to follow patterns that are not necessarily natural. What have we trained ourselves into now? Working during the day and sleeping enough at night -- scientists and nutritionists tell us we must guarantee more than eight hours of sleep, and for young people they require even longer, nine or ten hours. We think these are normal, but they are actually unnatural.
These patterns increase the sense of strangeness between the waking self and the sleeping self. Sleeping too long creates a sense of strangeness between the waking state and the sleeping state. To a certain degree you have drugged the body with suggestion -- what point do we often reach? We feel that we should sleep, that if we do not sleep the body will not hold up, the skin will not be good, the spirit will not be good; we give ourselves many suggestions, using suggestion to drug the body, making it believe that it must sleep a certain number of hours at a stretch to be healthy.
Other animals -- animals not influenced by these experts -- what do they do? They sleep when tired. Look at your cat at home; it can sleep at any time, and falls asleep as soon as it lies down. Dogs too can sleep at any time and wake up immediately. When they sleep they are very alert; a dog's ears are always moving, and a cat's ears are also gently moving all the time. If there is any movement they wake up immediately. They wake up in a natural way, and they do not feel bad when they wake up. Many people have "waking-up anger" -- after getting up they feel miserable, uncomfortable, and irritable; they cannot get up, and even after getting up their mood is bad. Then what is the point of resting? Is not resting supposed to make you energetic when you get up? You should be full of vigor and vitality, starting a new day refreshed. But many times getting up actually feels awful. Why? Because you slept too much. It is very simple; sleeping too much will make you feel this way, while sleeping less will not.
If you change these sleep patterns, you will retain more memory of your subjective experience, and your body will be healthier. According to the nap pattern, sleeping six to eight hours a day is enough -- you sleep five hours in a short sleep, then take a nap; sleep four hours, and you can make up with two naps. Added together it may also be six to eight hours, but sleeping six to eight hours this way feels much better than sleeping six to eight hours in one stretch.
If you do not sleep too long at one time, even those who now think they need more sleep will find that they actually do not.
The entire system -- mental, physical, and psychic -- will benefit.
Whether from the physical system or from the mental and psychic, this is very beneficial to you. The boundaries between selves will not be so strict, and the work of body and mind will be easier. The body's own inherent time can obtain rest and renewal -- your body itself has a fixed time when it can sleep and renew. Unlike now, when no matter what condition your body is in, it must wait about sixteen hours before it can sleep. You sleep one long sleep of six to eight hours, but after waking you cannot sleep for sixteen hours. These sixteen hours are already very long for the body, and it is not as good as making up with a nap in between.
Because of other reasons related to chemical reactions in the dream state -- you do not know that when you dream you go to deep levels and communicate and exchange with the inner self. This communication and exchange is not only at the mental level or the conscious level; it itself also brings about certain chemical reactions, affecting the changes in your hormones. After changing the sleep pattern, the health of the body will also improve accordingly.
This particular schedule is also helpful for people suffering from schizophrenia, and helpful for people with depression or those who are mentally unstable. If you have such people around you, you can give them some suggestions.
He said that your sense of time will be less strong and rigid, and this is a most crucial point. Many of us have a very rigid sense of time: day is day, night is night; work is work, sleep is sleep, with clear boundaries. When you break this, your sense of time will not be so strong and rigid, and your creativity will accelerate.
Many people have insomnia problems. He said that most of it can be overcome -- not all, but the great majority can be overcome. Why do many people have insomnia? For some people, at the bottom layer of their consciousness, in a place they themselves are not aware of, there is a fear that during those longer periods of time consciousness seems about to be extinguished. At the bottom layer of their consciousness there is such a fear, so it causes them to be afraid to sleep, and they get insomnia. It is not that they consciously think this; they themselves do not know it.
After sleeping you should eat a small meal or a small snack. After a short sleep, you should eat a little something -- a bowl of porridge or a snack is fine. After waking up, eat something to replenish nutrition and energy. He said that this method of eating and sleeping will greatly improve various metabolic disorders. If you have metabolic problems, you can try it. It costs no money, requires no medicine, and no doctor's visit; it is just changing your sleep habits and eating habits. If it works you will know, and if it does not there is no loss. Relax, and just try it like a game. Try a different way of playing; for the past several decades you have let it play by one routine, so now switch to a different way and see what changes.
It also helps the development of psychic and spiritual abilities. Many of us here are engaged in spiritual practice, cultivation, or studying and expanding our psychic and spiritual abilities. He tells you that this kind of schedule will be of great help to you.
For many reasons, physical activity at night and physical activity during the day have different effects on the body. Theoretically both are needed, but most of our time we are physically active during the day and physically inactive at night. For example, at certain times during the night:
The negative ions in the air are much stronger than during the day.
Being active during that time, especially walking or outdoor activity, is extremely beneficial from a health standpoint. So sometimes walking at certain times at night will be more effective than during the day. Many Americans have the habit of running at night, and some people in China also run at night. Many people do not understand them and say it is unsafe at night; indeed sometimes there are unsafe factors. But for these people, the feeling of running at night is better than during the day, and quieter. Now you also know that when there are more negative ions, it is a great help to health.
He said that the moment before dawn often represents a period of danger for important patients -- for critically ill patients. Now scientists have also discovered that the probability of critically ill patients passing away in the early morning is very high.3 Why? He tells you the reason:
Because consciousness has been away from the body too long, and so a returning consciousness finds it more difficult to cope with the diseased body mechanism.
Let me give an example. Your body's organs are already not in good shape, and their functions are not good. At this time your consciousness leaves you during sleep at night and goes off to do its own things -- consciousness has its own other time and space, and is having a great time. When it finishes and comes back, returning to this body, the body's functions may have deteriorated a bit more compared to when it left. At this time it has to mobilize, to return to this body, to bring the organs and functions back into a waking state, and it requires greater effort, much more strenuous than when the body is healthy.
Another reason is that when you sleep normally you dream, and when dreaming you are repairing and recovering. Consciousness does many things in the deep levels of dreams. But we often give patients drugs in the hospital that make them sleep -- sedatives or sleep aids -- and then they sleep heavily all night, as if drugged. He tells you that this practice is harmful. Because these drugs make them sleep, deep sleep, and prevent certain necessary dream cycles that can restore the body. Your body's recovery requires certain necessary dream cycles, because in dreams you are often repairing yourself, returning to the inner self to draw nourishment and source, and this process is also a kind of recovery and restoration for the body. But the drugs prevent this dream cycle, and consciousness becomes very confused -- consciousness says, why can I not return to the bottom level? The consciousness has been drugged, and it cannot wake up either, and does not know what to do. So there is no cycle of physical restoration.
So some of the divisions between different parts of the self are basically unnecessary, but are required by our customs and convenience. Why? After human civilization developed, in order for everyone to work together during a common daytime working time, it was stipulated: everyone sleeps together at night and wakes up together during the day to work in coordination. It is because of this custom and convenience.
In earlier times, many people say, was it not rising with the sun and resting at sunset in ancient times? The sleep from sunset to sunrise was very long, more than ten hours. He said that in earlier times, although there was no electric light, nighttime sleep was also not long and continuous. Because the places where people slept were not as safe as now -- sometimes we slept in the wild or in caves, or in places with bandits, and had to remain alert. In ancient times, in caves, one had to remain alert to predators, just like animals.
I do not know whether you have experience camping in the wild. If you have slept in the wild, you will know that state: you do not sleep soundly, and you remain alert the whole time. You can try it -- even tonight move to your backyard to sleep, or go to a square or a park bench, wrap yourself in a sleeping bag and sleep one night, and you will know that feeling -- remaining alert the whole time, not sleeping straight through until broad daylight.
In the natural night of the external environment, its mysterious aspects also kept it in a state of partial alertness.
In the natural night outside, there are things that make you feel mysterious, frightening, and unknown that might appear, so you maintain a partially alert state. He often woke up to check the nearby area, to see whether the surroundings were safe, to check his shelter, cave, or tent. On the contrary, throughout the entire time from dusk to dawn, his sleep was divided into segments of two or three hours, interspersed with periods of extremely clear-headed and alert activity. And when he hoped that his predators were sleeping, he would also sneak out to find food -- when the animals that wanted to eat him were sleeping, he went to catch them. Many hunters go out at night; during the day the animals are also alert, and you cannot find them.
This state of remaining half-awake and alert all night led to the mobility of consciousness, and indeed ensured his physical survival -- not only spiritual, but also ensured his physical survival. If he slept like the dead, by morning he might have been eaten by other animals.
He might remember the intuitions that appeared in dreams.
This is interesting: because he slept very lightly and briefly, he sometimes remembered those dream intuitions, and used them while awake. In ancient times, many people were told in dreams where there was prey, where there was water, where there was food, where there were grasslands -- dream intuitions. Because he slept very lightly, upon waking he would immediately remember. I think each of you has also experienced this. Now during the pandemic quarantine at home, after waking in the morning you may go back to sleep for another round. The dreams in that second sleep you will remember very clearly -- that sleep is very light, not as deep as nighttime sleep, but after waking your whole body feels comfortable, the dream is very clear, and that intuition is also very clear and the feeling is very sharp. I give this example to remind you that you also encounter this situation in your daily life.
Many illnesses actually lie in our having this division -- sleeping one long sleep, then staying awake for a long time, the body inactive for long periods, attention focused on waking reality and dream reality for too long. You are awake for more than ten hours during the day and asleep for more than ten hours at night; whether awake or asleep it is too long, and your conscious focus will become fatigued.
Your normal consciousness -- waking consciousness -- can benefit from your excursions and recreation in other real places while you are asleep. When you are asleep, your consciousness travels and tours in dreams to other real places, and thereby benefits. And that consciousness in your sleep also benefits from your daytime excursions -- you experience many things during the day. This example is very ordinary: if you experience many, many things during the day, if your day is very rich, your dreams at night will also be very rich, and that consciousness will also gain many benefits. If you are muddled all day, sleeping during the day and sleeping at night, there is nothing in the dreams to gain either. So your daytime consciousness needs the dreams at night to go to other environments for stimulation, and your nighttime consciousness also benefits from your daytime experiences and stimulation.
He said:
The things I am speaking of here, because of these habitual pattern changes, will certainly lead to a greater understanding of the nature of the self.
When you change your living habits, eating habits, and sleeping habits, you will have a deeper understanding of your nature.
The inner dreaming portion of the personality seems to you strange and unfamiliar, not only because of the difference in focus, but because you clearly divide the twenty-four-hour cycle of the day into opposite portions allotted to different areas of yourself.
You feel that the dreaming part of you seems very strange and unfamiliar, not only because of the difference in focus, but more importantly because you very clearly divide yourself -- into a dreaming, sleeping time and a waking time, using this twenty-four hours repeatedly: sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking. You think that the sleeping one is the sleeping one and the waking one is the waking one, that only the waking you is you, and the sleeping one is not you, so you feel very unfamiliar with what happens in dreams.
When you separate sleep and wakefulness, you very neatly separate the intuitive, creative, and psychic abilities from your physically manipulative objective abilities. These are two different abilities, but in fact they are one whole, a complete whole within you. Your intuition also depends on your physical body, and your manipulation and creation are not contradictory.
It does not matter how many hours of sleep you think you need; sleeping several shorter periods is better for you -- much better. After you practice this, you will find that you really do need less time.
The largest sleep unit should be at night; this will not change. It is not telling you to sleep four or five hours during the day; you should still sleep four or five hours at night. But remember, within this six-to-eight-hour period, after the body has been inactive, your sleep efficiency decreases, and the harm begins. Do not sleep more than six to eight hours; beyond this time there is no benefit.
With the alternating activity segments I have described -- sleeping when you want to sleep and waking when you want to wake -- your hormonal and chemical functions, especially the manufacture of adrenaline, will operate much more effectively. The wear and tear on your body will decrease, and at the same time all the regenerative forces -- your body's ability to recover and regenerate -- will reach a maximum. People with both fast and slow metabolisms will benefit; the psychic centers will be activated more often, and the entire entity of the personality will be stronger and better maintained -- you will know more clearly who you are.
As a result, the mobility and flexibility of consciousness will further aid the concentration of consciousness. It needs the alternating stimulation of waking and sleeping -- just like when exercising the body, alternating hot and cold showers, or taking a hot shower after winter swimming, all to stimulate the body. Your consciousness also needs this kind of alternating stimulation. The level of deficiency will always be maintained below the danger point, and body and mind will both be more balanced.
This schedule is easy to adopt. For example, people who work according to American working hours can sleep five to six hours at night. America generally works nine to five, and some people, because they have to pick up children -- American elementary and middle schools let out around 2:30 to 3:004 -- get off work very early; some people arrive at work at seven or eight in the morning and can leave at three in the afternoon. He said that whether you get off work at five or at some other time, there is still a period between getting off work and finishing dinner, and he suggests that after dinner you can take a nap. After dinner is finished around seven or eight, you can nap for one to two hours.
But at this time do not go to bed to sleep; you can lie on the sofa or in a rocking chair, in the living room or study. Just a nap, a doze. I think everyone has experienced this: many people are very sleepy after dinner -- after eating, blood goes to the stomach for digestion, and after working all day, fatigue comes over you. But normally you force yourself to think it is not yet time to sleep, and force yourself to stay awake by watching very stimulating TV dramas or variety shows, or go out to have fun, go to bars or nightclubs, or gather with friends, using strong stimulation to keep yourself from falling asleep, lasting until very late, around eleven or twelve. His meaning is that at this time you can take a nap.
He is only giving an example. You can adjust according to Chinese time, and see what time of day it is good for you to sleep. Chinese people like to take afternoon naps, and this habit is actually quite good. In the south, in places like Guangxi, there is a bed in the office, and they generally sleep at noon -- because their nightlife is very rich. In Nanning, Guangdong, Shenzhen, nightlife is very rich; every night they go out, and only go to sleep around one or two in the morning; nightlife has just begun, so they generally make up for it at noon. Each region and country can adjust according to its own habits.
According to American time, if he naps at seven in the evening, he may not get sleepy until after twelve or one, and that is fine. He at least has more than four hours from ten to two to do his own things, and then sleeps again until seven or eight in the morning, which is exactly four or five hours of sleep, enough for him.
He must emphasize once more -- this is very repetitive -- any continuous sleep of more than six to eight hours is disadvantageous to you. As for ten hours of sleep, that is quite harmful. So do not sleep more than eight hours. When you wake up, you do not feel rested, and you feel as if your energy has been drained, because you have not taken good care of your body. When you sleep for a very, very long time, after waking you do not feel relaxed all over; on the contrary you feel extremely tired, as if your energy has been drained, and that is because you slept too long.
He said:
If you do not understand that during sleep your consciousness does indeed actually leave your body, then what I am saying is meaningless.
You must understand that during sleep your consciousness really does actually leave your body -- do not think this is a metaphor, a joke, or a hint; no, it really does leave.
This was discovered long ago in ancient China. The ancients said that people have three hun and six po; during sleep one of the hun stays here, and the other two go elsewhere to do other things, leaving one hun to keep watch. And so on, all meaning this. The ancients spoke of this in very mystical terms, and many people did not believe it, but it is actually like this.
Some children at night especially cannot sleep and cry hard, or cry during the day too, crying day after day. In many places a superstitious method is still used, which is to "call back the soul" of the child -- saying that the child's soul was frightened away during sleep, or frightened away by seeing something scary during the day. They put some millet in a bowl, cover it with cloth, and circle it over the child's head. Most of the time it may actually be effective. The principle is actually very simple: because the child is too small, the consciousness is not yet very tightly combined with the body, and its manipulation of the body is not very complete. When encountering something especially terrifying and frightening, the soul and the body separate. It has not yet entered tightly, and the combination is not yet practiced, and for a time it cannot find the way back, because the body is still in fear. At this time, if the body is no longer afraid and returns to normal, the soul comes back by itself.
He said that your consciousness does indeed sometimes come back to check on your mechanism. Your consciousness has not left one hundred percent; it retains a part -- from time to time it comes back to see that your body has no problems, no issues, and has not slept itself to death. The Chinese often say "of the three hun, two have left and one remains," which is exactly this meaning.
The simple consciousness of your atoms and cells is always with the body.
The consciousness of your body's cells and atoms is always present, and the body's basic functions are always operating, so the body is not an empty shell — it is not that all the souls have left and all the consciousness has left. The basic consciousness is still there, always remaining alert, ready to call your consciousness back at any time.
When you are asleep, the main creative part of the self really does leave the body.
The main — not all, but the creative part — really does leave the body, and it leaves for a considerable stretch of time. You need to understand this in order to know why you should sleep in segments rather than one long stretch — that is, do not let the soul or consciousness leave the body for too long; let it come back from time to time.
Your current sleeping habits have led to some examples of intense psychic behavior, such as sleepwalking. He explains that sleepwalking is related to this to some degree — not absolutely, only on certain levels. What is the relationship? When you sleepwalk, you are in a very deep sleep, and the consciousness wants to return to the body and feels it should come back, but it is hypnotized. Hypnotized by what? Hypnotized by the belief that "I cannot wake the body yet; it is still sleeping, and in the middle of the night you cannot startle it awake." It believes it is not allowed to wake the body.
But the victorious psychic energy takes over — although the consciousness knows it cannot wake you, the psychic energy of its desire to return has already come back. And since the returning psychic energy cannot wake you, what does it do? It stirs up muscular activity. Because the body knows it has been motionless for too long, and if this continues it will lead to severe muscle cramps, so at this point it makes him get up. That is why people with sleepwalking get up in the middle of the night and do a bunch of things without knowing it, only discovering it after watching the surveillance footage.
The same example also applies to your eating habits. You just mentioned sleeping habits — you stuff the body's tissues full all at once and then starve them all at once. Look, we eat one meal at seven or eight in the morning, one at noon, and another at six in the evening. But after eating at six in the evening, until seven or eight the next morning, there are twelve to fourteen hours with nothing to eat. During this time the body is extremely hungry, and during the day you eat too much.
This has a definite effect on the nature of your consciousness, your creativity, and your degree of mental concentration. Following this direction, you really do starve your body at night. The body is uncomfortable under prolonged hunger — this is why many people find it very hard to succeed at losing weight, because they eat too little at night, the body is always in a state of hunger, so during the day when it is time for a proper meal they eat a bit more, afraid of being hungry.
And not supplying the body with food for such a long time increases its aging. It is like ancient times when people did not have enough to eat; back then the human lifespan was only about thirty to forty years, because they were always in a state of hunger, and the whole body accelerated its aging. You now eat a lot during the day and do not eat enough at night, so the body is constantly in a state of hunger, which for you is a form of aging. All of this will be reflected in the power and nature of your consciousness — the ability of consciousness is insufficient, its intensity is insufficient, its flexibility is insufficient, its focusing ability is insufficient, so you will be more muddled and drowsy.
Your food distribution should be spread evenly across the twenty-four hours, not only during your waking time. If you eat four meals, then one every six hours; if you eat six meals, then one every four hours. If the sleep pattern is changed according to the suggestion, then you can also eat at certain times during the night. In this way, the amount at any single mealtime would be much smaller — eating less but more often is much better than your current practice, and far more beneficial for the body, the psyche, and the spirit.
Sometimes the living habits of many southerners are actually correct — they will eat a late-night snack, and after an evening gathering they will have a snack before going to sleep. So their energy is indeed more vigorous than that of many northerners, because they eat one extra meal, four times a day.
Changing the sleep pattern will automatically change the eating pattern — when you change your sleep, your eating will automatically change. This is normal; when you wake up, you will be hungry.
You will find that you are a more unified entity. For example, your degree of awareness of clairvoyance and telepathy will also be much greater — you will be more acute in your ability to use these inner senses. And you will not feel, as you do now, that there is a great gulf between the dreaming self and the waking self. Right now you feel that dreaming is dreaming and waking is waking, and there is a very great gulf between them. When you divide six to eight hours of sleep into two or three sessions, your spirit will be fuller, and this sense of estrangement will largely disappear — waking and dreaming, dreaming and waking will be more coordinated. There is a song called "Between Half Dreaming and Half Waking," and that is exactly what it means.
Your appreciation of nature will also increase. Why? Because generally speaking we are unfamiliar with the night — we do not go out at night, we do not engage in activities, and we only appreciate half of the day, the daytime. Actually, going out at night you can see a completely different landscape, and the healing effect of nature at night is very helpful. If you get used to it, you will like it very much.
Around the 1950s and 1960s, life was relatively stable and comfortable, and many people, after finishing dinner and tidying up, would go out for a stroll at eight or nine o'clock, walking around the neighborhood and the streets, going to the square for some activity. At night there were people playing basketball, playing chess, chatting, strolling — it was very lively, and everyone's mental state was excellent, sometimes even fuller than during the day. But nowadays people have less and less of this kind of night life; at night there is basically no activity. Abroad there are many activities at night; in China there may be fewer, with some people going to nightclubs or karaoke.
He says that you can make far greater use of the intuitive knowledge that occurs in dreams — the intuitive knowledge that happens in dreams will be used much better. And your emotional cycles will not swing as noticeably as they do now. We all have emotional cycles; sometimes our emotions are very low, sometimes very high. After changing to this sleep pattern and eating pattern, these emotional fluctuations will not be so obvious.
In all areas of existence you will feel much safer — not just in the physical sense; your mental state, your psychic state, and your emotional state will all feel much better. The problem of aging will also be reduced, and the speed of aging will slow down. One of the ways to reduce aging is to keep yourself vital and flexible — stimulate it. Whether physically or mentally and psychically, keep it vital.
You have also seen that in the last year and the year before, people kept talking about an eighty-three-year-old grandfather who still walks the runway and does posture performances, and a seventy-year-old grandmother who keeps working out — they are stimulating their bodies. In the same way, the stimulation of your psyche and soul is the same. Look at that eighty-year-old grandfather; when he walks, he moves with power and vigor, and his figure is better than many young men's.
In this way, you have a consciousness of greater flexibility — not only is the body better, but the consciousness is even better, and you taste more of your own joy. The consciousness itself will taste its own joy. When you do this, you can try it out.
At this point he says to the person taking the notes — Rob — you take a break, you can rest now. He says:
If you will not try it yourself, how can you expect anyone else to do it?
If you follow this advice I have given — these sleeping and eating habits — your own creative work will also be more effective and more efficient. He is telling Rob that it will also be better for his painting.
Then at this point, Rob adds a follow-up note. He says that after this session, before the next session, he typed the following passage — typed a few days after this session.
He says that Jane and I experimented to some extent — not completely; sometimes when we remembered, we experimented, and tried changing the sleep pattern a few times, but did not persist in the change. You will find it strange: Seth gave Rob and Jane a lot of advice, including earlier telling him to change the position of the bed, and this time telling them to change their sleeping and eating habits, and they did not fully follow any of it. The bed was never moved at all, and with sleep they only symbolically changed it a bit and tried it, without fully changing it either.
We can say that after they experimented, Seth's concepts seemed very promising.
Because he tried it relatively few times, he did not state it too definitively. He says that at night, after a shorter sleep, we woke up very easily, fully awake and ready to go — full of energy. This is their own record, their own practice. He supplemented it with one or two rest periods during the day, because he slept less at night, so he made up for it during the day.
He says what was the biggest change? This new system of changing the sleep pattern:
Added an extraordinary keenness to all our activities.
That is, your feeling and your senses become more sensitive and more acute. What is this sensory keenness like? It is like the feeling of being young. The feeling of youth at seventeen or eighteen, eighteen or nineteen — everything you look at seems to glow. The flowers, the grass, the world, the blue sky, the white clouds, the classmates around you — everything looks different in your eyes compared with after forty or fifty; everything sparkles and shines. Why is that? Because of your sensitivity — you are very sensitive, your senses are very acute. And when you change your sleep pattern and eating pattern in this way, you will rediscover that feeling of youth, that keenness of sensation.
That is, eat when you want to eat, sleep when you want to sleep. In this regard you can actually learn from your cat at home, and learn from your pet dog — they eat when they want to eat and sleep when they want to sleep, without too many restrictions, and instead they sleep very well and eat very well.
I hope that after everyone hears this, you will leave a comment below telling us the results of your own adjustments to sleep and what changes you experienced. Many people may have already been living this way all along, and many people may find their values touched and their living habits influenced. You can give it a try.
Consciousness Has Its Own Rhythms
As is well known, during sleep, both consciousness and alertness rise and fall. Certain dream activities actually do replace certain waking activities, which we ordinarily do not realize. But within normal waking consciousness there are also fluctuations -- rhythms of consciousness, intense activity followed by periods of much less activity. Consciousness is like this too: it has rhythms, it rises and falls.
Of course, some waking states are very close to sleep states. Sometimes our waking state is very close to the sleep state, in a half-dreaming, half-waking state, which is a state between the two. This intermediate state mixes the former and the latter together, so its rhythms often go unnoticed.
The body's states change along with these different levels of consciousness. Our body changes with the highs and lows of consciousness -- he just said that consciousness has a rhythm, with strong and weak phases, and our body's condition changes along with the rhythm of consciousness. During those periods when waking consciousness is more sluggish, the mind will not be focused; sometimes we are absent-minded and distracted; stimuli will be interrupted to varying degrees; accidents may happen and increase; and generally the body is also more sluggish. He is telling you that sometimes when your consciousness is unfocused, you are prone to this state. Everyone has probably experienced this, so we will not go into it further.
Because you are accustomed to sleeping for one long stretch, followed by being awake for one long stretch, you do not make use of these rhythms of consciousness. Because we often sleep too long and stay awake too long, we have not grasped the rhythms of consciousness well -- consciousness has fast and slow phases, high and low phases. Certain ranges at the peaks of consciousness are suppressed or ignored; when your consciousness is in a very high state, you ignore and suppress it. During waking hours, when the sharp contrast of consciousness is very strong, we make use of only a tiny fraction of that highly efficient part.
I am giving you all this material here because it can help you understand and make use of your own abilities. That is, what is the purpose of introducing this material -- it can help us understand and make use of our present abilities.
You demand too much of normal waking consciousness, and so you flatten out the peaks and valleys of its activity. That is, we stay awake too long; you demand that consciousness remain at a very high level for sixteen hours straight, and it cannot do that. So it has no sense of rhythm; when it is in good condition you do not make good use of it, and when it is in poor condition -- sometimes when it is at its worst -- you demand that it move forward at full speed. You give up the great mobility that consciousness could be used with -- when it is full of fighting spirit and wants to work, you make it rest; when it is in poor condition, you make it move at full speed, make it study, make it work. You have not made good use of it.
The suggestions about sleeping habits given earlier in this chapter will lead to the natural use of these rhythms. The first part of Chapter 8 earlier gave these suggestions about sleeping and eating habits. If you follow his suggestion of taking short sleeps, sleeping four to five hours each time, and then taking a supplementary nap during the day, you can make very good use of these rhythms of consciousness -- you will experience the peaks of consciousness more often, your attention will be more focused, problems can be seen more clearly, and your learning ability will also be better utilized. So you must grasp the state of your consciousness well. Seth himself also said: "I was about to say, it would be utilized far better." He emphasized this specifically.
This long stretch given to waking consciousness without rest periods causes the blood to accumulate many chemical elements -- remember this. That is, prolonged waking consciousness without rest causes chemical elements to accumulate in the blood, which can only be expelled during sleep. This makes it clear -- our traditional Chinese medicine also talks about this: what time you should sleep, what help sleep provides afterward, and so on; Chinese medicine says at certain hours you need to detoxify, and so on. All of this has a basis. He tells you here that it is for this reason. But at the same time, the body's sluggishness further hinders concentration of consciousness. Because of the accumulation of chemical elements, your body becomes sluggish, and then this sluggishness further hinders concentration of consciousness, so your state becomes even worse. Thus, the long sleep you are accustomed to really does become necessary. At this point he tells you that this long sleep is necessary -- a vicious cycle has thus formed.
During the day you do not make good use of the peaks and valleys of consciousness; when it is at a valley, that is, when the state of consciousness is very poor, you force it to work. Keeping consciousness awake for a long time causes the body to produce these toxins, and these toxins cause the body's condition to worsen and become sluggish, which then leads to an inability to concentrate consciousness. Then you will spend even longer working and staying awake even longer, because your state is poor; once it worsens, the accumulation of these toxins will make you need a long sleep -- because these chemical toxins in your body can only be expelled through sleep. At this point long sleep really does become necessary, because the toxins have already accumulated. This becomes a vicious cycle: you stay awake for a long time during the day, and you sleep for a long time at night.
This forces the body to receive more stimulation at night, because you go to sleep very late at night, keeping the night subjected to excessive stimulation, increasing the body's work -- you have accumulated many things during the day, and at night the body must detoxify, making it carry out the body's purification work continuously over a long period. Your body also works very hard. Ideally, several short rest periods would do the job -- like the short sleep he introduced in the previous session, this could solve the problem completely.
The ego feels threatened. When you sleep for a long time, your ego feels threatened -- because it must take a long vacation; when you fall asleep, the ego goes on vacation, and so it becomes afraid of sleep. It does not want to feel threatened, does not want to feel that the ego has no value, so it does not want to go to sleep right away -- because once it sleeps, it is another long sleep of ten hours or more, and the ego feels as if it has been put on leave, given a holiday. Then, it sets up barriers against dreams. These are all extremely unnatural, because your ego has become afraid.
As a result, an apparent duality is produced -- that is, a distrust between one part of the self and another part of the self. Your waking self does not trust your sleeping self; it feels that once asleep, the ego loses control. In this process, much practically valuable creative material is lost. During this mutual distrust, much is lost in the process.
The segmented sleep method mentioned earlier makes it easier to obtain this material -- when you take short sleeps, you will remember your dreams very clearly. And the waking self will feel more refreshed, the symbols in dreams will become clearer, the muscles will have more strength, and the purification of the blood will also be more effective than when the body lies prone for such a long time. Most importantly, there will be far better communication between the various subjective levels of the self -- that is, between your inner self and outer self, communication will be better through the subconscious. With better communication, the natural sense of security will also increase, and especially for children, creativity can be cultivated earlier.
This is a reminder for all parents: when raising your child, let him sleep when he wants to sleep, and not sleep when he does not want to. If you have time to play with him, play with him; if you do not have time to play with him, give him a creative environment and let him do some creative games he enjoys. You must never force a child to sleep, but you also cannot let him become overexcited and not sleep; that is also not normal. You must ensure that he sleeps when he wants to sleep, and gets up when he wants to get up. Never force him by saying he must sleep a certain number of hours every day. This will cause the child to lose excellent creativity.
Now, take a break or end the session -- of course he goes on to say: a clear, uncluttered, intelligent, and powerful consciousness requires frequent rest periods. Your consciousness needs rest if it is to maintain its efficiency, if it is to interpret reality correctly; otherwise it will distort what it perceives. When consciousness is very fatigued, it will act erratically, distort what it perceives, and lose its vitality.
Rest and sleep therapy -- long periods of sleep are helpful in certain cases -- not because long sleep itself is beneficial, but because so many toxins have already accumulated that such a long sleep is needed to cleanse and purify. Your present habits necessarily hinder the learning process. Because during certain periods consciousness is suited for learning, yet you try to force it to study during the worst periods, when it has no cognition, and the efficiency is very poor. Only because of this artificial division -- you feel that this time period is when you should study, but actually consciousness does not want to study at all; at that time its state is very poor. You artificially create a duality, and the abilities of the psyche are cast aside and forgotten; this duality (the opposition between sleep and waking) affects all of your activities.
This session is a further elaboration of the previous one: in some situations, when your consciousness may be at its highest point, you force it to sleep, which is very bad. Incidentally, when is that? It is the time just before dawn. Many times, just before dawn is the highest point of your consciousness, when you are most acute and most alert, but people generally sleep at this time -- during the darkest period before daybreak, most people are usually sleepy and prone to sleep. And during certain afternoon hours, consciousness sinks and needs recovery, yet you do not let it rest.
For example, if the various stages of waking consciousness were examined as the various stages of sleeping consciousness are at present, you would find a far greater range of activity than you suppose. We think waking consciousness is a straight line, always awake, but actually if you observe carefully, the fluctuations of waking consciousness are also very large. Certain transitional stages are completely ignored -- the middle ground between high and low is ignored. In many ways, it can be said that consciousness is indeed flickering and unsteady. From another angle, consciousness is indeed flickering and unsteady -- this is what you must understand. Its intensity changes back and forth; it is not like a steady beam of light, but like a beam of light that is ever-changing and of varying intensity.
A "Live Demonstration" Session
Let's continue with the last section of Chapter 8, which is Session 534. This session is particularly interesting because Seth is doing an experiment with Rob and Jane. Many people say that a lot of the Seth material is purely idealistic or purely theoretical, that they rarely see anything empirical in it, and some even harbor doubts about Seth himself. From this session you can see that he was actually using every means possible to give everyone some empirical evidence.
The previous session talked about how your consciousness has a fluctuating, rhythmic nature -- times when consciousness is strong, when the signal is strong, or times when consciousness is weak. He suggested using segmented sleep to make good use of your consciousness: when your state is good, study or work more; when your state is poor, let it rest. In this session, he directly provides an example.
Because this involves evidence from Rob and Jane themselves, there is a lot of description of the two of them here -- which we previously just skipped over. But this session is related to their states, so we cannot skip this passage.
Seth did not follow the outline of the dictation he had originally given. Jane felt that he did not seem to match what he had said at the beginning. He said it was fine, just let him speak it out this way.
Then Rob begins: I will now describe two effects, and these two states occurred almost simultaneously, just before the session began.
The first state was this: as he sat waiting for the session to begin, Jane told him -- they had painted an oil portrait of Ruburt and Joseph, which hung on the living room wall; Ruburt is the name of Jane's entity, and Joseph is the name of Rob's entity -- Jane told him that Joseph's face was smiling at her. When Jane perceived the smiling effect, she moved her eyes away from the painting -- she often had the feeling that it might be an illusion or a misperception. She looked away, then quickly looked back to check whether it was still there -- the effect remained, the painting still seemed to be smiling. She felt that the painting continued for two minutes, not disappearing until just before the session began at nine o'clock.
Sometimes when we look at certain paintings or works of art -- even in China, I remember there is a giant Buddha somewhere, and people often say they have seen this Buddha smiling, or shedding tears5. Others think this is nonsense, but the person experiencing it feels it is a very real sensation. Jane's feeling was very real; it smiled for about two minutes. Jane was sitting in her rocking chair directly facing the painting. Rob said: "I was sitting on the couch, with my back to it. But when I turned around several times to look, I did not see anything abnormal." Rob could not see anything abnormal.
Jane told Rob that Joseph, representing Rob's own entity, gave her a big smile that was not actually in the painting itself. Jane also knew it was not there, but she could feel the painting smiling at her. The smile began with a change in the expression of the eyes, and the smile spread downward from the eyes to the mouth; the forehead did not move -- as if the portrait had suddenly come alive. Although Ruburt's portrait did not change, Joseph's portrait did. Jane did not particularly like this painting, and she had never seen such changes in it before.
The second state was Rob's own, concerning a visual disturbance. This disturbance had been with him since childhood; it was not something new. He had no actual blindness and no aftereffects, apart from a very mild headache -- but tonight he had no headache. He had never felt nervous about this phenomenon. Because he was reserved and liked to keep secrets -- Rob was a very tight-lipped person -- even as a child he never told his parents about these things, nor did he think of seeing a doctor -- because there were no aftereffects, and his mind remained clear, which put him at ease.
This effect always reminded him of a mirage: to the right of his line of vision, there was a small, bright, jagged light. He knew that the shape of this brilliant flash would expand; this small jagged light would grow larger and larger, and would obscure what he was looking at. Although he still retained peripheral sensation, the center would become a very bright light -- meaning he could still see things in the outer ring of his field of vision. Sometimes this disturbance would spread over a fairly large area, and he basically could not see anything; for example, he could not make out the drawing paper in front of him or the pen in his hand. The intensity of the flash varied. Once he lay down and closed his eyes, because there was nothing else he could do anyway; the effect lasted about half an hour, though usually it was shorter, and he was not entirely sure of the time.
He said that once again, the origin of this matter was entirely beyond the knowledge he possessed -- and he found his consistently calm reaction to it very strange. Because normally, with this kind of vision problem, when a patch of light appears to the right of the center of one's vision and one cannot see, a person would panic and become tense. But he himself found it especially strange that he was not tense at all.
In the past, when the disturbance intensified and covered most of his field of vision, he had experienced a peculiar sensation that was both dark and bright -- the surrounding field of vision darkened, but the center was very bright, flashing. The objective world he saw had a velvety depth; light and dark alternated, an alternating confusion, a large mass of patterns mixed together and indistinguishable. Tonight's experience was not that intense. He first noticed it beginning at about 8:50, and he immediately gave himself a suggestion to reduce it as much as possible -- because he did not want to delay the session and make Jane anxious. While he was having this sensation, Jane began describing the smile she saw on the painting, almost at the same time. When Jane asked him to check, he could see the painting clearly, so at that point the effect was not yet strong, although his visual effect was still intensifying. His suggestion worked well; by 9:05 the effect had passed. He realized that not only had his experience reached the furthest point it was going to reach, but it was also retreating. By 9:15, after about twenty-five minutes, even the last traces were gone, and his vision had become clear.
At the same time, the real show was still to come -- this was only the beginning. Because as these experiences weakened, he was replaced by something else, or led into another event. This event was new to him and most interesting: he gradually lost the ability to spell -- he could no longer spell. English words are made up of letters; when he said a word, he had to spell it out -- and finally he also lost the ability to write.
At this point, Jane began speaking for Seth at a slow pace, noticeably slower compared to the pace at which he usually came through. Rob found that he had to exert a little effort to see clearly and write on the paper. Because at the very beginning of the session, Rob had said that tonight was very calm and the weather was warm, and then Seth said: "I hope I have not broken your calm."
Session 534
Then he said, let us continue with the dictation. Seth said:
Consciousness has many characteristics, and of course you are already aware of some of them. However, there are many that are not so obvious, because you presently use your consciousness in such a way that your perception of it seems quite unnatural.
In other words, in what way? It is the way we use our consciousness in our current state of frequently sleeping and frequently waking. So your perception of it seems quite unnatural, because it is not in the most natural state of consciousness. In other words, you perceive your consciousness through your own physical mechanism. We use our physical bodies to perceive it. When your consciousness operates without the medium of the body -- for example, when it is out of body, it does not need your physical body as a medium -- then you do not perceive it very well. That is, when you do not have to use the physical mechanism to perceive it, you no longer have that feeling.
He still did not feel troubled as he wrote the last sentence. He had to take a little longer than usual to recall ordinary words. Because Rob was taking notes in shorthand, using a kind of shorthand and speed-writing he had invented himself -- simple characters plus some special symbols, because otherwise he could not keep up with Jane's speaking speed. This action itself should have been automatic, but although the visual disturbance had now mostly dissipated, he had great difficulty with these automatic characters. At 9:12, he began occasionally misspelling a word. In order to let you understand what was happening at the time, he placed the corrected versions of some of the errors contained in the notes in parentheses, that is, the originally misspelled words. Because English is spelled out and Chinese is not, the spelling errors in the original text cannot be expressed in the translated Chinese, so he could only use some homophonic characters to indicate that he had misspelled or written incorrectly at the time.
At this point Seth continued speaking, and Rob recorded:
The characteristics of consciousness are the same whether you are within the body or outside it.
Remember this: the characteristics of consciousness are the same, whether you are alive or dead, or whether you are awake or asleep, the characteristics of your consciousness are the same. At this point he had already begun to make spelling errors --
Whatever form consciousness takes after death, the peaks and valleys of consciousness that I have mentioned exist to some degree in all consciousness.
As I said earlier, consciousness has peaks and valleys. All consciousness has peaks and valleys, not just human consciousness. The essence of consciousness is basically no different from what you have now, even though you may not perceive many of its characteristics -- whether you perceive them or not, it is the same. These peaks and valleys, whether you know them or not, are still like this.
In the last sentence he omitted the word "not" -- he not only misspelled words, he even dropped the word "not." This would change the meaning, and at this point he realized there was a problem: it was not just a matter of wrong characters, he could not even understand the words. Rob already understood very clearly that something was wrong.
He said: I made an increasingly conscious effort to write the notes correctly. In the following material, I could not recall some of the symbols I habitually used, and had to write out the full words -- he could no longer recall the shorthand symbols he often used, and had no choice but to write down the words in their original form.
At this point Seth continued:
For example, your consciousness has telepathy and clairvoyance, even though you may not know it.
Your consciousness inherently has these abilities, whether you know it or not. During your sleep -- you often assume you are unconscious, but you may be far more conscious than you are now. See, is this not the key point? You think that when you are asleep you have no consciousness, but actually when you are asleep you know a great deal. You are merely using abilities of consciousness that you do not accept as real or valid in your waking life -- when you are awake you do not accept this, you think that when you are asleep you have no conscious abilities, so you shut them out of your conscious experience.
Both your consciousness and mine are quite independent of time and space.
You must understand this: consciousness is independent of time and space, not limited by time and space.
After your death, you simply become aware of the consciousness that has always been within you, and it has even greater power.
What is it like after you die? You will simply discover that this consciousness that has always existed within you has even greater power after death -- without the constraints of the physical body.
At this point Rob went on to say that he already felt extreme difficulty in writing sentences -- many words were misspelled, and he had to cross them out, crossing out entire sentences and rewriting them. But his vision was no longer a problem; by 9:21 his vision had completely recovered -- which means the spelling errors were not caused by his vision, not caused by a problem with his eyes.
For the first time he admitted defeat to himself, saying he should ask Seth to speak more slowly -- but at the same time he realized that the pace was already very slow; Seth had been speaking very slowly tonight. He did not ask Seth what was going on. That great personage (referring to Seth) looked at him through Jane's eyes, showing no sign that anything unusual was happening during the session -- Seth was still pretending that nothing was wrong, with an innocent face. You will learn later that all of this was actually directed by Seth, but at this moment he was still pretending that nothing was happening.
Of course, since consciousness has those abilities -- clairvoyance, telepathy, and so on -- Seth continued lecturing, completely ignoring the fact that Rob could barely keep up with the notes:
Since consciousness has those abilities, you can discover them now and learn to use them. This will be of direct help in your experience after death.
If you understand before the fact (before death), for example, that your consciousness is not only not imprisoned by your physical body, but can freely create other portions of itself, then you will not be so startled by the nature of your own reactions. That is, after you die, you will not be startled by the state in which your consciousness can freely create things -- when you are alive it is not this fast; when you are alive, what we call thought-creation actually requires a process, but when you are dead it is basically whatever you think is immediately obtained, and this thing is instantaneous.
Those who identify their consciousness too thoroughly with their bodies will suffer torments created by themselves without cause.
What does this mean? It means you identify completely with your bodily consciousness. When you die, the physical body is gone, but your consciousness is still alive -- not only alive, but able to create many, many things, and this frightens you greatly; you are terrified by yourself.
They will also linger beside the corpse, and indeed they are quite despairing souls.
Why despairing? Because they over-identify with their own bodies. After they die, they linger beside the body, and they discover that the body no longer obeys their commands, that it has nothing to do with them anymore, that it is completely separated from them -- and they cannot get back into the body either, so they are especially despairing. Because they believe their body and soul are one, they do not know where to go, and they think they have nowhere else to go. They believe the body is the dwelling place of the soul, and since the body has died, where does the soul go? They feel like a lonely ghost. So these souls are despairing. But if you understand this before death, then when you die you will not have these pains, nor will these terrifying things happen; you will accept it very calmly -- death is death, and the soul will go do whatever it needs to do.
The later Chapter 9, Chapter 10, and Chapter 11 -- these following chapters all discuss the world after death. What your soul will be doing after you die, we will also cover. That is the second part of this book -- a large portion earlier is about what happens after you die.
He continued making writing errors, as if he had just woken from a deep sleep and was immediately struggling to focus on physical reality -- like suddenly waking up in the morning and doing things before understanding anything.
Seth ignored him and continued:
As I have said before, you are now a spirit.
You are now a soul. This spirit possesses a consciousness, and the consciousness belongs to this spirit. But the two are not the same -- spirit is spirit, consciousness is consciousness; you must remember this.
The spirit can turn its consciousness on or off. The nature of consciousness may flicker and fluctuate, but the spirit does not.
The inherent nature of consciousness may flicker and fluctuate -- as I said earlier, consciousness itself has times when it is strong and times when it is weak; it is like a rhythm, sometimes bright and sometimes extinguished, it can flicker and fluctuate, and this is the nature of the soul; but the spirit does not, the spirit has no concept of this rhythmic fluctuation.
I do not particularly like using the word "spirit," because it carries several connotations. But it suits our purposes well, because the word does imply something unrelated to physical form.
Using "spirit" can indeed emphasize the matter of being unrelated to the physical body. So here he deliberately wanted to use the word "spirit," even though he did not want to use it, he still used it.
Consciousness does not refresh itself in sleep.
You must remember this: consciousness does not refresh itself in sleep. What is it doing when you sleep? It turns in other directions. So consciousness is sleepless -- consciousness does not need to sleep. Although it can be turned off, it is not like a lamp that goes completely dark when switched off; it is not like that.
Rob went on to say that he continued with the spelling errors and found it even harder to write, but he did not panic. Seth said:
Just as when a light disappears when a switch is turned off, when your consciousness is like a light belonging to you, then when you turn it off, there will still be a faint glow, not total darkness.
That is, you can turn it off, but when you turn off this consciousness, it is not completely black; there is a very faint light. You may not know why he is saying this, but you will know in a moment.
Rob said that by this time he was so tense that he was sitting on the edge of the sofa, bending over the coffee table to write the notes -- normally he sat comfortably while writing, never like this. At this point he asked Seth to wait a minute; he could not take it anymore, he needed to catch up on his writing.
Seth continued:
The spirit is never in a state of nothingness in which its consciousness is annihilated. Therefore it is very important to understand this.
As I just said, you are a spirit; each of us is a soul, and this soul has a consciousness, and the consciousness can be turned on or off. But what he is telling you is that when you turn off your consciousness, it does not mean that this soul is empty, a void -- there is still a faint consciousness there, just weakened, very weak, equivalent to being turned off.
At this point Rob could no longer see clearly, and could not write complete characters; everything became crab-like scrawls. Then he asked Seth to wait a little longer. At this time Jane, still as Seth, sat waiting without indicating yes or no, her eyes open.
It is very important to understand this.
Understanding that consciousness is never extinguished is very important. When you are asleep, your consciousness does not rest either; it goes in another direction -- to another reality, another level, communicating and interacting with other aspects of your inner self; it is not resting. After you die, your consciousness does not rest either; it will continue to develop and continue its conscious functions. As for what your consciousness does after death, we will only discuss that in Chapter 9; this chapter will not go into it yet.
He continued making writing errors, and he truly could no longer continue taking notes. But he still did not feel alarmed -- see the last sentence, he still did not find it strange. At this point he began to explain to Jane why he had to stop. He discovered that besides being unable to write, unable to spell, and unable to take notes, he was also unable to speak coherently from beginning to end; he had even lost the logic of his speech.
Finally Seth briefly returned -- because he had stopped, and when Seth came back he wore a big smile and said to Rob through Jane:
"Joseph, you are acting out this material tonight."
What you are performing right now is precisely the matter I am about to discuss. What did he say earlier? Your consciousness is never extinguished, but it can be turned off, and after it is turned off it becomes faint like a small flame. But after consciousness is turned off, many of your functions and abilities are lost. What Rob was performing at this moment was a state in which consciousness was gradually moving away, or consciousness was gradually being turned off. Through Rob, Seth was letting Rob genuinely experience: when consciousness is gradually turning off or gradually leaving, what kind of state are you in -- all your physical expressions will stop, you cannot write, you cannot organize language, you cannot speak, and even communication becomes a problem.
Rob understood immediately upon hearing this: it was all Seth making trouble, using him to act out the material of this session -- he not only wanted him to write it out, but also wanted him to perform it.
Although that effect (the inability to write) did not dissipate so easily, and he made many grammatical errors when speaking with Jane -- just like when we foreigners speak English and often make grammatical errors -- the difficulty in speaking could never compare to the difficulty in spelling and writing.
At first Jane was very worried about Rob's experiences before and after the session; later she told Rob that at that moment she had almost decided not to continue the session and wanted to stop immediately. But she finally believed Rob's repeated assurances -- Rob told her it was no problem, that his body was fine -- and then she continued. Seth temporarily stopped the dictation at his request.
During a short break, Seth suggested to Rob: after Jane came out of the trance state, have her turn on all the lights in the room, and then have Rob imagine his own consciousness growing brighter and brighter, like light, filling the room. Then he would find that all his abilities would quickly return. Rob could not remember some of the material that followed; he only remembered this: imagine your consciousness growing brighter and brighter like lamplight, filling the room.
In real life, we also encounter similar methods. When a person's consciousness suddenly scatters, or when a consciousness is gradually leaving a person, we often say you must keep calling his name -- have him call his own name, or you call his name, or have him keep talking with you, to keep his consciousness awake. You will use various methods, external stimuli, and so on, to keep his consciousness awake and prevent it from leaving. Because Rob's consciousness was growing weaker and weaker, Seth told him: just imagine your consciousness filling the room like light. To help him imagine it, he had Jane turn on all the lights, giving him a reinforced concept. Then Rob slowly got better.
Rob himself said: What did I experience tonight? Problems with my eyes, problems with writing, problems with spelling, problems with speaking -- he discovered that all of these were specifically related to his methods of communication. Then as he sat in the brightly lit room, he hurriedly described everything to Jane in detail, telling her the sensations he had experienced -- including this matter from his early years, which he had never told Jane about before. Think about this man, how unwilling he was to communicate; he had never told Jane about this visual problem, and only now did he mention his early visual problem.
Jane speculated whether Rob's loss of communication ability was related to his father's aging and physical deterioration. Rob's father was already in a state of senile dementia and partial paralysis. Rob said: "I don't know; nothing unusual has happened between us in recent years." Jane meant: are you getting old too, are you also about to get senile dementia? Rob said that actually nothing unusual had happened between them.
Slowly, he began to organize the notes, revising and reorganizing what had been missed or written incorrectly earlier. He very much hoped that Seth would explain all of this -- why this had happened. He said Seth was right: turn on the lights, imagine your consciousness growing brighter and brighter like a lamp. By 10:30, Rob was much better, and finally he finished correcting the notes and told Jane he was ready to continue the session. At this point he received interesting material -- about why he had felt so strange and not at all panicked about tonight's events. He would tell her later.
At 10:47, the session resumed at a faster pace. Seth returned again.
A Demonstration of Consciousness
Seth said:
In the demonstration that Joseph so kindly helped with, several points from the material just given were put into practice.
That is, through a live demonstration, several points from what was just discussed earlier were realized again.
Earlier I said that you are familiar only with those characteristics of your own consciousness that operate through the medium of the body.
That is, you only use your consciousness through bodily means -- for example, speaking with your mouth, writing with your hand, spelling, the abilities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, all of these are done through physical means. You are accustomed to expressing yourself through words and language, and you depend on the body to express the perceptions of your consciousness. You use language, the mouth, and written words to express the perceptions of your consciousness -- whatever your consciousness feels, you have to describe it through language. Furthermore, you tend to identify the expression of your consciousness with the body -- the body feels the same things, and then you express them through language and words, and you want the two to be in agreement.
In our demonstration, of course, I am referring to those states that Joseph just mentioned, which Joseph agreed to do.
He first emphasized that this was something Joseph agreed to. Joseph allowed his consciousness to withdraw -- he used "Joseph," he did not call him Rob. Why use Joseph? Because Joseph is the name of Rob's entity, that is, his higher-dimensional self.
And to some extent began to cut off his expression through the body.
The expression of this consciousness through the body was cut off -- he no longer expressed through the body, no longer spoke with his mouth or wrote with a pen. But that does not mean he had no consciousness. His consciousness was very clear, but his ability to express was gone, his physical ability to express was gone. Do you understand this? His consciousness was very clear.
He was not consciously aware of his agreement.
Rob did not consciously know. His agreement means that Rob did not know his entity had already agreed to do this experiment. Simply because if his normal waking consciousness had known, he would certainly have been afraid -- once he felt fear, once he was afraid, the whole thing could not have been performed. So Rob said in the previous passage: "Only now do I understand why I was not afraid at the time." Why? Because his soul entity already knew, he had accepted, he had approved doing this experiment together with Seth, this performance, his entity had already agreed, so he was not afraid at all. Rob also did not feel very afraid -- he was also surprised, at a time when he should have been afraid, why was he not afraid? Not panicked at all. I am telling you it was because he agreed, so you were not afraid.
When I said that consciousness became blurred, Joseph experienced it.
Here Rob emphasized again -- he was not sure, this was something Rob added later in his notes: Seth used the word "blurred." Rob said that although his ability to express through the body had declined considerably -- communication through words and language had all deteriorated -- he still remained clear-headed and alert, and out of habit, his mind was full of thoughts about them, and he was also aware of this change in himself. "I did not detect any kind of elevation of consciousness, or any sudden ability of telepathy or clairvoyance." He did not go up to the sky, nor was there any elevation of consciousness.
Actually what Seth wanted to tell him was this: consciousness ordinarily depends very heavily on expression through the physical body -- expression through the mouth, the hands, words, language. Your consciousness is used to this, and apart from this you do not really know how to express yourself, but in fact your consciousness has other ways of expression, and can make use of other means of expression. But you can only accept expression through the body. In other words, you can only confirm your consciousness after you have spoken it aloud. You rarely can sit quietly and carefully observe your own consciousness. You would rather write it out, speak it out, communicate it to others -- this process itself is a process of identification with the body. Without this process, you always feel that those thoughts cannot be grasped. So you depend on this kind of physical expression. And Seth said: the fact that your ability to express is now gone does not mean that your consciousness has weakened. Consciousness is gradually withdrawing, it is only your ability to express through the body that is weakening, but consciousness itself is still there, so your mind is still clear and still alert. But it does not mean that at this time you suddenly have the abilities of clairvoyance or telepathy.
Seth continued:
Taking notes is no longer difficult now. Give us a moment. Actually this is an exercise in the manipulation of consciousness.
At the time of dying, when we are about to die, this kind of thing happens to varying degrees. If you practice it ordinarily, then when you die you will not need to be afraid. I think everyone has had this feeling: if a family member has passed away, and you were at their side, you could sense it -- assuming they were conscious, at the time of their passing they actually wanted to express themselves, but they could no longer do so. They could only look at you with their eyes, or sometimes their eyes could no longer even open, but that state was still there; sometimes at the moment of leaving they would shed tears. You could feel their emotions, but they could no longer express them. So this means that at the time of dying, your consciousness is in this state -- gradually losing control over bodily expression, no longer able to organize language, and even less able to read and write.
When consciousness realizes that it can no longer express itself through the medium of the body, if the dying person has identified too thoroughly with the physical body -- if he does not believe in the soul at all, if he is only a material person, identifying especially with the body -- then he is very likely to panic.
His consciousness is very clear, very awake, but the body cannot express, and at this time he becomes very panicked. So all expression is cut off from then on -- he thinks all expression is cut off from then on, because he has no way to express through the body anymore, he cannot open his mouth to speak, and even less can he read and write. And because of this his consciousness is about to be extinguished -- this is all what he thinks. Because he cannot express, expression is all cut off, so consciousness will be annihilated, extinguished? This is all because of his excessive identification with the body.
This belief in extinction, this certainty that identity is about to be annihilated in the next moment, is a severe psychological experience.
He believes that his consciousness is about to be annihilated in the next moment along with the death of the body -- he truly believes he is a purely material person. Much of the suffering at the time of death comes from this: when he discovers that he, as an entity, as a self-existing person, is about to disappear from this world, that experience is a very severe psychological experience. This severe psychological experience itself may bring about unfortunate reactions.
As a result, on the contrary, when he actually dies, he finds that his consciousness is entirely intact.
He finds that after the body has really died, his consciousness is intact, without any loss, and his expression is far less restricted than before. Strange, is it not?
Joseph subconsciously chose to interfere with those modes of expression he was using at the time, and only because their interference would attract corresponding attention.
Why did he do this? Because interference would attract the attention it deserved. Only interference could interrupt this state and bring him back to normal consciousness. When his vision had problems, Joseph had to forcibly interfere to restore it; when he could not read, write, spell, take notes, and kept misspelling, he stopped several times to restore it. Because only interference could attract his attention, so it was to attract his attention.
After I have given this background material, which I hope is unified, what we will now do is spend several chapters discussing the nature of existence after death and at the moment of death, and the final death of the body after reincarnation is complete.
With this background material in place, what they will now do is -- he will spend several chapters later -- discuss what the nature of existence is after physical death and at the moment of death. That is, the nature of your consciousness, the nature of the entity. And it will also involve what happens after reincarnation is complete -- many people ask, what will happen in my final lifetime of reincarnation? I am no longer reincarnating, so where does my soul go after my physical death? At this point he will discuss the final death of the body after reincarnation is complete.
Before we can begin, it is important that you have some understanding of the nature and behavior of your own consciousness.
For the things he is going to discuss later, you should have some understanding of the nature and behavior of your own consciousness -- this is the groundwork he wants to lay.
He continued:
Joseph, in our demonstration, you also used some knowledge drawn from past experience. That was when in a previous life in Denmark, in your final illness, your motor functions were impaired.
This is a digression. In the process of the demonstration, Joseph used some knowledge from the past -- in his previous life in Denmark, in his final illness before death, his motor functions were impaired. In the process of dying from that illness he learned a great deal -- what state consciousness is in when it leaves the body, what it is like when motor functions no longer work. When Rob was just now trying to restore his consciousness, he unconsciously used the knowledge he had learned during that near-death experience in his previous life in Denmark. Of course Rob himself did not know this; it was Seth who pointed it out to him. He said this was a digression, and it should not be included in the book.
According to Seth, the three of them -- Jane, Rob, and Seth -- had a relationship in seventeenth-century Denmark. At that time Rob was a landowner, Jane was Rob's son, and Seth was a spice merchant. There will be a general introduction to this in Chapter 22. They had a relationship in the seventeenth century, they all knew each other, and Rob and Jane were even father and son.
Now I will end this session, and with it end the first part of this book.
At this point the first part of this book has ended. What follows is some introduction by Rob, about some things related to his painting, which we will not expand on here.
Finally Seth said:
Earlier this evening, when Ruburt and you were talking at the dinner table, you silently acquiesced to my experiment.
Rob acquiesced. He told you when the acquiescence happened: this agreement was made without Rob's knowledge, it was the entity Joseph behind him who agreed. While he was eating dinner, Rob's entity -- his soul -- had already accepted this experiment, accepted that Seth wanted to do an experiment during the session later that evening. At the same time as this acceptance, Ruburt (Jane's entity), through telepathy, knew about this arrangement -- Seth said to Joseph's soul, let us do an experiment tonight, to demonstrate what state consciousness is in after it withdraws. Rob did not know, but Rob's entity Joseph knew, and Ruburt also knew. Ruburt has telepathic ability, although not on a conscious level -- be sure to remember, it was not known on a conscious level.
In a way, the smiling picture that Jane saw was produced by you.
The name of that painting was Ruburt and Joseph -- it was a portrait of the two entities. Joseph made his own portrait on the wall show a big smile to Jane, rather than looking at Ruburt. It was like telling Jane: do not worry, everything is guaranteed to be fine. Ruburt actually knew that Joseph could handle this matter well, so Jane saw Joseph smiling at her from the very beginning, giving that assurance.
He finally asked her: "Do you understand?" And she said she understood, and her spiritual level was also very high, and she said: "I think it was a very effective method."
Chapter 8 ends here, and the first part of this book is also finished. The second part begins with the next dozen or so chapters, and we will give a more detailed introduction to the content later.
注释与核实
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According to Mike's original words: "I remember the last Nobel Prize in Medicine was given to a scientist who, through experiments—not through theory or any consciousness-level or spiritual-level claims—proved a fact through scientific experiments: people really do die if they don't sleep."; upon verification, it should be "The most recent (2025) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance, not for experimentally proving that 'people die if they don't sleep'; nor has any Nobel Prize in Medicine ever been awarded for experiments on death by sleep deprivation." (Source: Nobel Prize official website, "Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025," https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2025/press-release/) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Catherine Brown, Ulrich Boser, Perpetual Baffour / Center for American Progress, "Workin' 9 to 5: How School Schedules Make Life Harder for Working Parents" (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workin-9-to-5-2/) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩