The "Introduction" and "Chapter Highlights" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike during his lectures. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the portions Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter describes that physical death is not a fixed point, but rather a longer interval within the pulsations of consciousness during which attention is not focused on physical reality. The experience after death varies from person to person, with each individual's reality formed by their personal beliefs, emotions, and thoughts; after death there is still a form, but usually one cannot manipulate matter. The text introduces transitional arrangements such as hallucinations after death, guides who come to receive the deceased, hospitals, rest homes, and training centers, as well as self-examination, the inability to disguise oneself in telepathy, and the similarity between sleep, out-of-body experiences, and death. The after-death environment coexists with the physical world but does not occupy space.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Death is not a fixed point, but a longer interval within the pulsations of consciousness during which attention is not focused on physical reality.
- There is no single standard answer for the after-death experience; personal beliefs, emotions, and thoughts each form their own after-death reality.
- After death, consciousness still has a form, but usually cannot manipulate matter; telepathy makes it impossible to disguise true relationships.
- After death, one passes through transitional stages such as hallucinations, guides coming to receive one, hospitals, convalescent homes, or training centers, and one must engage in self-examination.
- Sleep and out-of-body experiences are of the same kind as the after-death experience; the after-death environment coexists with the physical world but does not occupy space.
Main Text
We are starting Part Two of Seth Speaks. The first eight chapters make up Part One, and they all deal with your present life, or what you can perceive, with a focus on the here and now. Starting with Part Two, Seth introduces more about what happens after you die, or rather more about the outside world, other worlds, including things about religion, or other matters.
As for why Seth divided it this way, I do not quite understand either, because he did not offer much further explanation later on. Let us first look at the content of Chapter Nine in Part Two. This chapter is especially interesting. Starting with Chapter Nine, the next several chapters all describe the process after a person dies, and they describe in great detail what happens after death. This part is very important -- this way, after we die, we can more quickly enter the next stage of reincarnation, or better understand our condition after death, and then we can go to other realities, and we do not necessarily have to come back.
Let us look at the content.
Death Is Not a Specific Point
At the very moment of near-death, what actually happens? This question is much easier to ask than to answer. Many people ask: What will it be like after death? Of course, that is easy to ask. But basically speaking, "death" does not happen at a so-called specific point. Here "death" is in quotation marks -- actually there is no real death, only the death of the physical body, and it does not happen at a so-called specific point. Death is not a specific fixed point, not that at a certain hour, minute, and second you are dead. Even in a sudden accident, it is the same; it is not that at a certain point the person is dead.
However, regarding this question that you think is practical, I will also try to give you a practical answer, because what you are asking is a question from the three-dimensional world, and I want to give you an answer that is relatively satisfying to you. For most people, the real meaning of this question is: When my physical body is no longer alive, what will happen? How will I feel? Will I still be myself? Will the emotions that drove me while I was alive continue to drive me? Is there a heaven or a hell? Are there gods or demons? Are they enemies or my friends? Will the people I love come to greet me? The most important question is: When I am dead, will I still be the me I am now? Will I still remember the people I love now?
Many of the questions asked most frequently in the comments section below are also about this. Seth says that he also uses that kind of language to answer our questions -- you ask questions in this way, and he also answers in that kind of language. Starting from this chapter, in the following chapters he is explaining the process after death to us in a human way. Actually, once we truly arrive at the process after death, it is not understood according to our human way. We will talk about that later; for now, let us proceed step by step.
Before doing so, there are several questions concerning the nature of life and death that seem not very practical to consider, which we must deal with.
First, the first question: There is no separate, indivisible, specific point of death. Life is a process of becoming, and death is a part of this process of becoming. You are alive now; you are a consciousness that knows itself. You are alive, and at the same time the cells of the body and the molecules of atoms die and are reborn, and within the dying and already dead cells, cognition shines forth.
Session 535
Therefore you are living in the midst of many small deaths. Portions of your own image crumble away and are replaced moment by moment. (Session 535)
Your body is your image. Portions of your body crumble away moment by moment, and then are replaced. Cells die and are born, are born and die, yet you hardly ever think about these things, and certainly do not concern yourself with them. Therefore to some degree, you are now living within your own death -- because the cells of your body are continually being born and dying, and within your body numerous deaths and rebirths are taking place. Even so, it is precisely because of this that you remain alive. If cells did not die, if they kept living on and were never replenished, the physical image would not continue to exist, and that would be when you were truly dead.
Let us take cancer cells as an example. What is the problem with cancer cells? They grow extremely fast, and they die very, very slowly. Normal cells die after dividing for a period of time, whereas cancer cells basically go through many, many divisions before they die, so they just keep growing. Tumor cells themselves do not really have any other special characteristics; they simply keep growing without stopping, crowding out all the energy and nutrients that your normal cells need, so your normal cells cannot survive. So if cells do not die, that is not a good thing at all -- cells that do not die are cancer cells.
Consciousness Like a Firefly
So in the present, as you know it, your consciousness flickers around your ever-changing physical image. As I said earlier, your consciousness has pulsations, it has periodicity, it has peaks and troughs. Your physical body is always changing, cells are born and die, die and are born, and your physical body is not a fixed thing, not something that stays the same the way you think it does. Consciousness flickers around the ever-changing physical body.
In many ways -- remember, in many ways, not all ways -- you can compare the consciousness you now know to a firefly. Because from your point of view, your consciousness seems to be continuous, but actually it is not. It too flickers, now bright, now dim, and this is a characteristic of your consciousness. Although, as we said earlier, it never goes out completely.
Your consciousness can turn on and can turn off, but when it is off it is not completely extinguished; there is still a faint light. Your physical body is also flickering and unsteady, and your consciousness is also flickering -- completely different from what you think. Neither is a constant, unchanging state; rather, like a firefly, they are constantly flickering. Its frequency is much faster than a firefly's, but its focus is far less constant and unchanging than you assume. The focus changes back and forth constantly, and when its focus is not here, it is already not here.
Just as you live amid the deaths of your many small cells, although you do not realize it, although you do not feel it -- even in the flickering life of your own consciousness, you are actually often dead. In your ongoing life, it is a process of flashing on and off, and in the off process you are dead.
Remember, throughout this passage he is constantly using human terms to say this -- he says, "I am using your own terms." Do not ask again: you say this is the unified time of past, present, and future, so why do you bring up the process after death, and this whole series of processes? Does that not mean there is no simultaneity? You have to understand what level he is speaking from on this issue. In this chapter, Seth uses human terms, uses a way we humans can understand, to describe the process after death. Be sure to remember this, do not misunderstand him.
So when I speak of death, I am speaking of being completely unfocused in physical reality. (Session 535)
Right, he is not referring only to the death of the physical body. Now, very simply: when your consciousness is active in the physical body, it is actually not living in the body and located in the body all the time. Do you understand what he means by this? He means that when your consciousness is in your body, it is not in your body all the time the way you think; it goes in and out. The focus of consciousness changes back and forth: when it focuses on your physical body, you can perceive it; when it shifts away, you feel that consciousness is gone. When consciousness is not there, relatively speaking, in our human terms, this is what we call death.
Seth says that while he was typing this passage, he wondered whether what he was saying was correct, because it was different from what he thought, so he checked with Jane. He says this may sound very confusing -- it breaks our convention, because we feel that consciousness is always present, always in our body, so how could it go in and out, now bright, now dark? But he hopes to make it fairly clear.
Consciousness has pulsations, and you probably do not perceive their pulsations. He gives an analogy -- remember, he is using an analogy:
Your consciousness is alive in one moment, focused in physical reality. Now in the next moment, it is completely focused elsewhere, in a different reality system. To your way of thinking, it is not alive. Then in the next moment, it is alive again, focused in your reality. (Session 535)
What does "alive" mean? It means focused in physical reality. For us who live in physical reality, it is alive. In the next moment it is completely focused elsewhere -- note, its attention is not focused in a different reality system. What system? One that is not this three-dimensional world. According to our way of thinking, it is not alive, or we could say it is dead. Because its focus of attention is no longer in the three-dimensional world, so have you died? Then in the next moment, it is alive again, focused again in your reality, your three-dimensional world, but you do not perceive that intervening, nonliving moment.
Therefore your sense of continuity is entirely built upon an intermittent pulsation of consciousness. Our sense of continuity is our sense of existence; we think we exist continuously, that we have never left this world for a moment -- this sense of continuity is built upon an intermittent pulsation of consciousness.
Let us use the earlier strobe light as an example, or use a film reel as an example. Suppose your current life is filmed on a movie reel, at twenty-four frames per second, and only in that one twenty-fourth of a second do you exist. Suppose this time is one ten-thousandth of a second, then in that instant you can perceive it; the rest of the time it goes elsewhere. When the next one ten-thousandth of a second within the next one twenty-fourth of a second arrives, you come alive again; after that one ten-thousandth of a second passes, you go elsewhere again. Can you understand this? Your consciousness is pulsating like this all the time.
Always remember, this is an analogy, so this "one moment" should not be interpreted too literally.
The Flickering of Atoms and Molecules
Atoms and molecules today exist in the same way, also flickering. What he means by this "back side" is that consciousness is nonphysical, right? On the physical level, atoms and molecules exist in the same way too.
That is to say, their essence is a quantum state. You must remember: our essence is a quantum state, and the origin of the world we live in is a quantum state. It is like a mass of flickering, unstable energy.
Therefore within your system they are dead or inactive, and then alive again, and then active. (Session 535)
We think of molecules and atoms as dead and inactive, feeling that they have no life -- but actually they are flickering on and off. At one moment, at ten to the negative something seconds, it is here, and then it is gone; then after a while it is there again. Modern physics has repeatedly demonstrated this about the state of the electron: the electron has no trajectory1. You do not know where it is; it is only a probability function. You only know the probability of its appearing in a given energy orbit.
When we speak of quanta, quantum states, or quantum fields, it is a probability wave. This wave is not the energy wave we imagine -- not like the electromagnetic waves we picture, with peaks and troughs, with energy high and low, strong and weak -- it is not that kind of energy. The concept of a probability wave is this: its so-called peak is where the probability of appearing is high; its trough is where the probability of appearing is very low. That is what quantum mechanics calls a probability wave. So where exactly does it appear? You say the probability of its appearing here is high and there is low, but at a given specific time or a given specific place, what exactly is the probability of its appearing? That is uncertain. You can only describe it with a probability wave; you cannot give a definite description. You can only say that the probability of the electron appearing in one place is higher and in another place is lower -- that is definite, the function of the probability wave is definite.
If you want to understand quantum mechanics in detail, there is specialized research and material on this; for example, there are dedicated introductions to the wave function. When it comes time to manifest in the physical world, which state actually shows up is determined by the collapse of the wave function at that moment -- or call it reduction; such details do not matter. Once the wave function is determined, the moment you manifest it, once it enters the physical world it becomes definite, and it becomes a small particle, and this particle has its position, its kinetic energy, and its point in time.
Before it is manifested, it is an indeterminate thing. All of our world -- look around you, including your own physical body, the cells and atoms and molecules that make up your body -- all of it is in such a state, all of it is a quantum state. We use the quantum state to understand it. And the quantum state is not the final state of matter either.
Without your knowing it, in that instant when they do not exist, you are unaware. You can only perceive the instant when they do exist, so you think they exist continuously. Since your body and your entire physical universe are composed of atoms and molecules, then I want to tell you that the entire structure exists in the same way. In other words, it flickers into being and out of being, and it comes into being and passes away in a certain rhythm -- a rhythm like breathing. Our entire universe, our entire framework, the entire three-dimensional world we inhabit, all of it comes into being and passes away in this flickering, flashing manner, within a specific overall rhythm.
Within this overall rhythm, there are infinite individualized variations. Within this large rhythm there are many small rhythms, many highly individualized variations, almost like the metabolism of the universe. If we regard this whole itself as a body, then the individualized variations within us are like its metabolism.
In these terms, what you call death is simply the insertion of a longer duration of that pulsation of which you are not aware, of which you are not conscious. (Session 535)
Using this way of explaining it, death is when you enter into a pulsation within another, larger, overall rhythm -- one could say a longer stay in another reality.
Your normal consciousness itself is flickering, here one moment and gone the next; this is a pulsation, a rhythm. What he means is that there is an even larger rhythm: if you regard the entire cycle of a person's life as a single instant, then is it not also something that happens in a flash? Then is your death not also a part of this rhythm, a part of this pulsation? Birth is like a flash of light that you can see; death is like the place where the glow goes out. Think of your birth and death as a rhythm within a larger pulsation; and the flickering of your consciousness is a small pulsation, a very small rhythm, one that flickers relatively quickly -- if measured by Earth time, this one flashes faster, with a higher frequency, while that one has a slower frequency. This frequency is calculated in seconds or thousandths of a second; that rhythm may be measured in decades or centuries as its unit. Pulsations of different rhythms.
Physical Death Is Part of the Process of Becoming
As for the death of physical tissue, it is only part of the life process known in your system, part of the process of becoming. As you know, within those tissues there will be the sprouting of new life -- after we die, if the body is naturally buried in the ground, you think it is dead, but within it new life will be nurtured, new cells and new microorganisms will become active, and other lives will be born. Eventually the cells and molecules and atoms of these lives may return to our bodies again, and you will not know which ones were you, which molecule, which atom was once part of your own corpse.
Human consciousness -- Seth only emphasized human consciousness, not just other consciousnesses -- does not depend on physical tissue. Yet all matter is brought into existence by portions of consciousness. This goes back to the earlier part of Chapter Five: your physical matter is all brought in by certain portions of your consciousness, and your environment is created by you.
For example, when your individual consciousness leaves the body in a way I will shortly explain, the simple consciousness of the atoms and molecules is still maintained and is not destroyed. (Session 535)
When your individual consciousness leaves the body in a certain way, those atoms and molecules within your body, those simple consciousnesses, are still maintained and are not destroyed. Atoms and molecules have their own consciousness, and it still exists.
The Body You Had Ten Years Ago Is Already Dead
Rob asked Seth whether Part One of the book had a name or a title, because he had just finished the first part. Seth said no, Part One had no title, but each chapter would be given its own title -- and he gave Chapter Nine a title, which was about the experience of death, your experience of dying.
In your present situation, you arbitrarily consider yourself dependent upon one specified physical image. (Session 535)
You identify with your own physical body, and this is our normal state. As mentioned before, throughout your life parts of that body die, and your present body does not contain one particle of the matter it had ten years ago. In other words, your body now is completely different from your body ten years ago -- not one bit is the same. The body you had ten years ago is already dead, yet you obviously do not feel that it has died -- well, of course, we are still alive and well.
And you are quite able to read this book with eyes composed of entirely new matter. That colleague, which you feel is exactly the same as you are now -- did not exist ten years ago. Your eyesight does not seem to differ much either; it is still the same as before, with no change.
Do you understand how smoothly this process takes place? Your cells are born and die in this alternating fashion. Cells have a developmental process -- from tiny cells growing into adult cells, and finally aging; cells have their own life cycle -- so smooth that you simply do not notice it. The pulsations mentioned earlier are so brief in time that your consciousness is able to leap over them quickly. The cells of your body die and are born, are born and die; every cell in your body now is flickering, and your consciousness leaps over it, over that extinguished interval within the flickering, so you do not perceive it, and you feel that you are alive.
But when a longer pulsation rhythm occurs -- one not measured in milliseconds or microseconds -- your physical perception can no longer bridge the gap. When the gap remains at the millisecond or microsecond level, you can skip over it. When your physical perception cannot bridge such a gap, when the gap is too large, that is when you perceive death.
So what you want to know is this: when your consciousness is drawn away from physical reality, and consciousness seems to have no form to wear, what happens then? He will go on to talk about that next.
There Is No Single Standard Answer to the After-Death Experience
Quite practically speaking—and remember here, quite practically speaking is the key, but it cannot be one hundred percent either—there is no single standard answer. When you die, when your consciousness enters other realities, what happens does not have a standard answer, because each of you is an individual. Of course, generally speaking, there is an answer available for the main questions about death—how death happens, what one will experience, these can be answered—but each person's process of dying is individual and independent.
There are different categories of death, different ways of dying, and the experiences encountered are very much related to that, and also involve the degree of development of consciousness itself, as well as its entire unique method of handling experience. What concepts you hold about the nature of reality will strongly color your experience, because you will interpret these experiences according to your beliefs.
What is belief? Many people keep saying belief, belief, but very often belief is just a set of judgments about right and wrong, a set of values—what you think is right, what is possible, what will happen, what is normal, what is abnormal, what is reasonable, what is unreasonable, these are all your beliefs. Just as you now interpret your daily life according to your concepts of what you think is possible and what is impossible.
For example, right now you walk out of the room to pour a glass of water. You do not even have to think about how you move your legs, how you know you can walk to that place, you just know the water is there, and you know you can drink that water into your mouth—these are what is possible. And you also know that if you live upstairs and you open the window and jump down, you absolutely will not fly, you will definitely fall and die—this is absolutely possible. This is what you believe, and this is called your belief.
Many people say, belief creates reality, so why can I not get rich when I want to? Why can I not get what I want? That is not called belief, that is called your desire, your thought. Your thoughts and desires and your beliefs, these two are not equal. Belief is something you think absolutely will not fail, something you have not the slightest doubt about—only that is called belief. Just as you certainly believe that tomorrow morning the sun will definitely rise from the east, this is your belief—this is a firm belief given to you by many years, including many years of humanity. If you believed you were a millionaire as firmly as you believe the sun rises, then you would truly be a millionaire. But is your belief that strong and that firm? Just put your hand on your chest and think about it, and you will know. So do not say that belief creates reality is wrong; rather, you should understand what belief means.
Your experiences after death, you will still interpret them using the beliefs you had before death. What you think is possible and what is impossible—after death it is the same. For example, if you think heaven may exist, then you will have heaven; if you think hell truly exists, then there will be hell.
In Aging, Consciousness Has Already Begun to Leave
The speed at which your consciousness leaves the body depends on many variables; no two cases are the same, some are fast and some are slow. For example, in many cases of aging, as people slowly grow old, a part of their personality—that is, a part of the soul, a part of the personality you are right now—has already begun to slowly leave your body, while at the same time getting to know a new environment. It has already gone into another reality and is in the process of getting to know the new environment.
The fear of death itself can cause such great psychological panic that, for the sake of self-protection and self-defense, you lower your consciousness and thereby enter a state of coma, which may take time to recover from.
When you are old and aging, your consciousness can go over to another reality space and begin to familiarize itself with the new environment—it has not fully gone over, it is just beginning to familiarize itself with the environment. At this time, the fear of death itself still exists, you are still afraid, and so for the sake of self-protection you lower your consciousness on this side, and then enter a state of coma, remaining in a coma for a long time, and then slowly recovering back again.
If you have had an elderly person pass away in your family, you can understand this feeling: in the period before the elderly person passes away, they are basically in a state of drowsiness, with very little time awake. They may be awake for only a little while each day, then fall back into drowsiness, and only after a long, long time wake up again for a little while, then fall back into drowsiness again. What are they doing at this time? They have already gone to a new place, to adapt to a new life. This is very normal.
You Get the Afterlife Reality That Matches What You Believe
If you believe in hellfire, it will cause you to experience hallucinations of hellish conditions. If you believe there is a hell, an underworld with courts of judgment, then there will be hallucinations of hell. If you believe in heaven, then you get to go to heaven -- the concept of a model heaven will give rise to illusory scenes of heavenly landscapes.
You always form your own reality according to your concepts and expectations; this is the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is your thoughts and emotions, and it can use your thoughts and emotions to project the environment around it. As was said earlier in Chapter 6, consciousness creates its world as it goes along. After death, consciousness is the same: when it arrives in that after-death world, it also creates the after-death world as it goes along.
No matter what kind of reality consciousness finds itself in -- whether in physical reality or in nonphysical reality -- it will form the reality around it. But it assures you: these illusions are only temporary. Consciousness must use its abilities, and its abilities must be put to use -- developing them means it must create, it must create in order to experience.
The tedium of a model heaven will not long satisfy this striving, energetic consciousness. When you feel that you have reached heaven, that you truly have no worries about food and clothing, and you are living the kind of life you imagined while in the human world, then you will become very bored.
Heaven and hell are separated only by a wall. I think here I will tell a particularly classic example: I remember one of the richest men in America, one of the top tycoons, wrote a letter to his son. His son asked him: Why do we have to work? Our family is already this rich, this wealthy, so why should we still work? Let us just enjoy ourselves. His father wrote him a letter in reply -- this was quite a long time ago -- taking the opportunity to educate his son a little. In the letter he did not lecture his child; he told a story.
After Death, You Are Not Simply Done and Gone
A man died and entered heaven. The environment was especially wonderful -- fresh flowers, wild fruit, and everyone was extremely friendly. A messenger in white came over and said to him: You have arrived in heaven. Here, everything you could want is available. You do not need to do anything at all. Whatever you want, someone will bring it to you. There is only one condition -- you cannot work. You only need to speak, and the people around you will have everything prepared for you.
At first this man felt it was absolutely wonderful, especially happy. But after being happy for a while, he found it very boring. He wanted to get his hands busy tidying up the garden, wanted to arrange the furniture, wanted to open up some new things and make heaven even more beautiful. He had many ideas, but as soon as he was about to put them into action, someone nearby would stop him: You cannot move. You cannot work. Just enjoy yourself.
After many years of this, he was on the verge of collapse. He begged those people, saying: Please, I beg you, let me do something, anything at all. I do not want to live this kind of life anymore. How is this heaven? This is clearly hell. Then the person beside him chuckled and said: Where do you think you are? This is hell.
This is a fable. What it wants to tell people is this: if you think that endless pleasure is the ultimate pursuit of your life, then when that time comes you will understand -- that is not it at all.
The soul itself also has this characteristic. The soul cannot stand being idle. If you do not know what the essence of the soul is, then observe a very small child, before starting school, before being regulated by kindergarten, in that very natural state. Much of the time, that is a display of the soul's nature. What characteristic is that? He constantly tries new things, constantly explores new worlds, constantly discovers fun things, and in this process he learns and practices, improving his abilities. He tirelessly tries things out, not knowing danger and not knowing fear. A newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger -- the newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger because he has never even seen a tiger. The most primal essential characteristic of your soul is very much like a small child: full of vitality, boundless energy, constantly innovating, creating, opening up new ground, completely entering a state of self-forgetfulness, forgetting to eat and forgetting to drink, unless he is so hungry he cannot stand it and only then remembers to eat. Many children play until they wet their pants before going to the bathroom. Why? They are too absorbed. The body is completely ignored. The body's signals have reminded them many times but were suppressed -- wait a bit, wait a bit, play first, play first. So many parents hit their children and say, look, you are this old and still wetting your pants. This kind of thing happens all the time. That is one of the essence and characteristics of the soul.
If you lock a child up in one place and say, you do not need to do anything at all -- if you are thirsty, just say you are thirsty; if you are hungry, just say you are hungry; if you have no clothes, someone will dress you; if you want to play, someone will play with you; do not fuss over anything, and without doing anything you can obtain everything -- think again: are you not extinguishing the nature of his soul? The essence of the soul is to create, to experience, and it cannot stay idle for even a moment.
That kind of illusion of heaven, that illusory realm of heaven, cannot satisfy the creative ability of the soul's consciousness. And then a teacher will come, to explain the circumstances and environment after death. When you have grown tired of staying there, when you have had enough, the teacher will appear and tell you: this so-called heaven of yours right now, all of it is illusion, created by the beliefs you held during your lifetime. You have not been left alone in a labyrinth of hallucinations. Whether it is hell or heaven, someone will come to rescue you, to guide you, to tell you what it is really like after death. So who is it that helps you? Who is the teacher? He will talk about that later.
The Form After Death
After death, you may immediately understand that your physical body has died, or you may not understand it -- both possibilities exist. Many films and television works portray this process, for example Ghost2, for example Ghost2, many classic films depict people who have just died not knowing they are dead, unable to sense it.
When you die, you will find:
You are in another form, you will find yourself in another body. (Session 535)
This form appears to you to be roughly physical, not very different from your actual physical body. Note that he used the word "roughly" -- not one hundred percent. As long as you do not intend to operate it or manipulate it within this physical system, otherwise the differences between it and the physical body will become plainly evident.
You cannot actually operate it in practical terms -- for example, you cannot pick up a cup, cannot take your phone back and play with it again; you can no longer manipulate such three-dimensional world objects. But if you walk around the room, stroll about, listen to what others are saying, all of that is possible. After death you are roughly in such a state: you do have a form, you are not without a body or without shape, and you can feel the existence of a physical presence.
If you firmly believe that your consciousness is a product of the physical body, if you firmly hold that view, then you may try to cling tightly to the physical body -- without the body, wouldn't your consciousness be gone? So after death this consciousness tries to hold on to the body, not letting it go, not letting it be taken away for cremation, not letting it be buried. At this point a type of "personality" appears -- here "personality" is in quotation marks, for it is no longer a person as we understand the term -- one could call it an honorary guardian, always ready to offer you assistance and help.
Where do these honorary guardians, these honorary custodians come from? They may even be people who are still alive, or people who have already died. The dead ones are easy to understand, but what does it mean that living people are involved? People who live within your reality system, who live in our three-dimensional world, when their physical bodies are asleep, or in out-of-body experiences, will carry out these activities. Many people go to the spirit world during sleep to help those who have just died, serving as volunteers, helping others out of the difficulties of the post-death state.
They are familiar with the projection of consciousness, and with the sensations involved. (Session 535)
They are familiar with how consciousness projects the surrounding environment, and they help those who will not return to the body to become familiar with all of this. These people are very useful, because they still have connections with physical reality; some may have already died, but all have reincarnated in physical reality, and so they have a more firsthand understanding of the sensations and emotions involved for the deceased, which is why they can help. If you brought in a very high-level being, it actually could not help -- it would not understand the intense emotional fluctuations of someone who has just died.
These people live during the day and participate in such activities at night, sometimes with memory and sometimes without -- it is not certain, it depends on your level of attainment. You may go do this work at night without knowing it yourself.
Knowledge of the experience of projection of consciousness, and of the motility of consciousness, is most helpful in preparing for death. (Session 535)
That is to say, if you understand how consciousness projects, how it works, and what its essence is, then you can experience the post-death environment in advance and understand the situations you will encounter in the future.
This work of helping others has its benefits -- you can feel it in advance. It is not necessarily a gloomy kind of work -- it is not as you imagine, dark and terrifying; when many people think of going to the spirit world after death to receive those who have just died, they immediately picture the gates of the underworld, but he says it is not like that. Death does not necessarily bring sorrow:
The environment after death is not somber; on the contrary, it is often more intense and more joyful than the reality you now know. (Session 535)
You are simply learning to operate in a new environment, applying different laws. The world after death is different from life, and that world has its own rules. And these laws are often less restrictive and freer than the physical laws you now apply. In other words, you must learn to understand and apply new freedom -- freedom without the body's constraints, freedom without the limitations of time and space, able to go without eating, sleeping, or resting, able to pass through time and space, to roam freely through heaven and earth.
However, even these experiences will vary from person to person and are not entirely uniform. And even this state is still a state of "becoming" -- it is not the final destination; your consciousness is still experiencing, still undergoing, still continuing on another level. Many people will go on to enter other physical lives and begin reincarnation; some will exist and develop their abilities in entirely different systems, different from the three-dimensional world. For the time being they remain in this transitional state, not yet having gone to other dimensions, staying here for now as a transition.
Lazy People Do Not Get Eternal Rest
Seth is very humorous. He says to many people, with a touch of humor -- and there are plenty of such lazy people among us:
To those of you who are lazy, I can offer no hope. (Session 535)
What hope? Death will not bring you an eternal resting place. Many people think, "I am living in such pain and exhaustion; when I die, I will go to a place of eternal rest, and everything will be over and done with." No, that is not the case. If you wish, you can rest for a little while, but after resting you still have to go back -- if you should return to the physical world, you return to the physical world; if you should go to other realities, you go to other realities. You still have to go on developing your abilities.
After death, however, you must not only use your abilities, but you must face yourself courageously for those abilities that you did not use in your previous life. (Session 535)
What does this mean? In your previous life you were very lazy, many abilities were not brought into play, many potentials were not used, and you always thought of getting things done once and for all, thinking that after death there would be a more eternal place to rest. After death, not only can you not rest -- at most you can rest for a little while -- but then you must throw yourself into new challenges, perhaps in the physical world, perhaps in other worlds. Not only do you have to use the abilities you already had before, but you also have to use the abilities you did not use before, and this time the challenge is even greater. So you must face yourself courageously.
As for those who have faith in life after death:
Those who have faith in life after death will find it easier to adjust to the new conditions. (Session 535)
As for those who do not have this kind of belief, they can also obtain it in different ways -- by practicing according to the methods that will be discussed later in the book. If you are not slack, if you are expectant, if you are determined, these exercises will enable you to expand your perception to other levels of reality. Once you have this ability, you will adapt very quickly to the world after death, because that is simply a different reality.
Sleep and Out-of-Body Experience
Your consciousness is actually already accustomed to leaving the body for brief periods of space. Why? Because when you are sleeping, your consciousness often leaves the material system for quite a long time. But because you are in a sleeping state, you do not notice this gap, so you are not worried. If consciousness withdrew from the body for the same length of time during the normal waking state, you would feel you were dying -- you would lose the ability to control the body. If you sleep for over ten hours, and if during the waking state you left for over ten hours, you would feel you were dead.
Therefore, in the sleep state, each of you has to some degree already experienced the situation of consciousness leaving material reality, and that is the same kind of experience as at death. In the morning your consciousness returns to the body again, but you have already stepped across the threshold into other existences many, many times. You go out every night, you come back every night, you have stepped in and out across this threshold countless times, so this situation does not feel so unfamiliar to you.
He mentions a dream-recall experiment3, as well as other psychic training, which will make all those who do the exercises very clear about these points -- clear that your consciousness is moving in and out of your body.
After Death, Telepathy Cannot Be Distorted
As for whether your friends or relatives will come to welcome you immediately after death, maybe they will, maybe they won't -- it always varies from person to person. Looking at the whole picture, you may be far more interested in people you knew in past deaths than in those who were close to you in this life.
Why? Because many of the people you felt close to in this life were putting on a disguise. He felt he could love you and be loyal to you, but much of the time he was pretending. Once you reach the soul level, once you have died, these things can no longer be concealed. At that point there is no longer the outward disguise and lies of three-dimensional language and the physical body. Everyone communicates telepathically, so what he is thinking is clear at a glance. So only at this time can you truly see who is close to you and who is distant -- not the way it is in the three-dimensional world. There is too much disguise here, so do not get too hung up on the things of the three-dimensional world. Some people you encountered in previous lives may be closer to you, and they will come to greet you.
As for relatives who have already died, your true feelings cannot be hidden from them, and you cannot hide their feelings either. You will not pretend to love a father or mother who did nothing to earn your respect and love -- some parents did not fulfill the duties they should have, and your feelings for them are not especially deep. But for the sake of social convention and worldly morality, you still pretend to cry as if heartbroken, maintaining that feeling, telling him you cannot bear to let him go. In truth, there is no very deep feeling in your heart.
During the period after your death:
Telepathy operates without distortion. (Session 535)
Completely true. You must deal with the real relationships that exist between yourself and all the relatives and friends waiting for you. At this time everything is telepathic, each sees the other completely, nothing can be hidden or tucked away, heart meets heart directly. What you feel toward others and what others feel toward you are all perfectly clear.
For example:
You may find that someone you considered merely an enemy actually deserves your love and respect. (Session 535)
At the soul level, when telepathy is fully open and connected, you will discover that he may deserve your love and respect, and then you will treat him accordingly. Your own motives are also as clear as crystal -- every arising thought, every movement of the mind, is completely clear.
However, you will respond to this clarity in your own way. For example:
If you were not intelligent before, you will not automatically become intelligent. (Session 535)
Many people say, why should I study these things? After I die it will come naturally. Once I reach a higher-dimensional space I will suddenly be enlightened, suddenly understand everything. No. After you die, your consciousness is the same as it is now. Whatever level you are at is still whatever level you are at. You do not suddenly become intelligent just because you have died.
But you also cannot escape your own feelings, emotions, and motives. While alive you can find all kinds of excuses to escape -- conditions are not right, the environment is not right, the timing is wrong. After death there are no more excuses. Others can see it, and you can see it too, as clearly as things on a mirror. Whether you can correctly face your own baser motives, recognize and admit that these are your motives, and then learn from them -- that is a decision you make yourself.
Reviewing the Life You Have Left
But your opportunities for growth and development are very rich, and there are many ways to learn. Why? Because after death you are not limited by physical matter, so you can call up any past life, any scene, go deep into it and feel it again, think again about what your thoughts and intentions were at the time, and what the most original motives were doing. You can experience a past life all over again, not like watching a movie, but as a genuine, felt experience.
You review the "quality of the fabric" of the life you have left, and you learn to understand how your own thoughts and feelings formed your experience, and how these in turn affected others. (Session 535)
"The quality of the fabric" -- some people's is woolen, some is cashmere, some is polyester, all different. What kind of thoughts and feelings did you use to make this fabric? Why did you make this kind of fabric? You formed your environment and your experience with thoughts and feelings, and how did these in turn affect other people?
At this time you are still not aware of the larger part of your own identity -- your entity. You have not yet made contact with it, and you are still experiencing as a fragment personality. Only after this review is complete, when you have grasped the meaning and importance of the life you have just left, are you then ready to consciously perceive the other existences of your being.
At that point, what are you? You begin to include what you have been in other past lives. After you have reflected on and reviewed the previous life, you understand why you came in that last life and what you came to do, and then you begin to experience: so I am not only this one life, there are also other reincarnations, and all of these are me. In one life I was male, in another life I was female, in one life an old person, in another I died in my teens. Then who is the real me? What is that true personality? Where is that "you"? Are you that child, or that old person, or that alluring young woman, or that mother about to give birth? Which one is you?
Only at this point do you begin to consider the blueprint of your soul, what the purpose is as an entire entity, what is to be realized, and where the value and meaning lie. If you want to have another physical experience, you will make plans for the next time. If you do not want to return to this physical reality, you can also enter another level of reality. After returning from that reality, you can also come back to physical life, if you so choose. It is entirely up to you. Whether you are willing to come back and experience again, or whether you want to go experience in another reality for a while and then come back, it all depends on you. Each person is different, and it cannot be generalized, but the general process is like this.
Only at this time can you truly gain insight and understand what the purpose of your many lives is -- what those lives of yours came to experience, to learn, and to become. This is the question you only begin to ponder after death.
Consciousness Can Leave Before Physical Death
Seth tells us that what you call consciousness can of course leave your body completely before physical death. He says, as stated earlier, there is no precise point of death, but for your convenience, I will speak of one as if there were. You see, before physical death, since there is a "before," that implies a point—if you say "before," there must be a point, otherwise how can you speak of "before"? But in fact there is no precise point of death. However, for the convenience of describing it to us, he assumes there is such a point of death, and we will treat it as if it exists, otherwise there is no way to introduce the subject.
Here you need to understand that he is not saying consciousness necessarily leaves only after your physical death. Sometimes, before your body has completely died, your consciousness has already left. Those of you who have experienced being with a dying person know that in the final stretch, the last few hours, the breathing basically becomes that very monotonous kind—if you have experienced it, you know that kind of breathing is very, very slow and monotonous, until it gets slower and slower, and finally the last breath is gone. This is normal. At that stage, sometimes the soul has already left; it does not necessarily wait until the last breath is gone before leaving.
Your conscious self manages your household—the housekeeper, the example we gave in the previous session, this is your housekeeper, the conscious you is your housekeeper. According to the circumstances at the time, that is, the circumstances at death, your consciousness leaves the physical mechanism in different ways.
In some cases, although there is no previously existing leadership and organization, the organism itself can still function to some degree, still able to breathe and maintain a heartbeat on its own. After the primary consciousness has departed, the atoms, molecules, and simple organizational consciousness continue to exist for a while.
Depending on your beliefs and development, there may or may not be a sense of disorientation on your part, and this is crucial. This development does not necessarily refer to rational development. He says:
Your rationality should go hand in hand with feeling and intuition.
You must remember this: your rational thinking and logical reasoning ability must go hand in hand with your emotions, feelings, and intuition. But if rationality is too strong, so strong that it works against feeling and intuition—you set the two in opposition—then when the consciousness that has gained its freedom (that is, the consciousness that has just separated from the body and no longer depends on the body) seizes upon rationality's concepts of after-death reality, problems arise.
What does this mean? When your rationality is too strong, that already freed consciousness still seizes upon rationality's concepts of after-death reality. Rationality has a scientific deduction about its own afterlife, and its deduction is: after death, consciousness ceases to exist; when a person dies, it is like a lamp going out. Because this rational concept is too strong, your freed consciousness after death will still cling to it and refuse to face the particular reality it finds itself in—that is, the after-death reality, a reality different from the one you live in. It does not want to face it, and so difficulties may arise.
What difficulties? The sense of disorientation. In other words, consciousness can deny feeling—at this point consciousness denies its own feelings, and even tries to argue forcefully, to deny its own current situation of being independent of the physical body. It does not admit, is unwilling to admit: my consciousness has completely separated from the body, this is a fact, but it does not admit this, so it becomes lost. This is one of the after-death states—some people become lost, some do not.
He has already said earlier: a person can be so convinced that death is the end of everything that it results in a blank of not remembering anything. Although that is only temporary. He firmly believes that after death is blankness, but note, he tells you that for this kind of person this blankness may be temporary. In many cases, when consciousness leaves the body, it will of course immediately have a sense of surprise and a recognition of the situation—it will of course discover that things are different, very strange: previously this consciousness had very good control over the body, and suddenly it discovers it has lost control of the body; consciousness is still there, but the body does not obey.
This is somewhat like the state of sleep paralysis. During sleep paralysis, your consciousness is very clear, but your body cannot move, cannot open your mouth, cannot speak; you want to open your mouth to speak, to call for someone, but no sound comes out. You will immediately discover this sense of surprise, and then immediately have a recognition of the situation. Actually at that time we think we are dreaming, but in fact we are not dreaming—at that time consciousness is awake, we know we are not dreaming, and we also know that sleep paralysis is happening, and we will try to find a way to wake ourselves up. After death there is also such a state, except that after death, no matter how hard you try, you cannot come back; you can never operate your physical body again. Whereas with sleep paralysis, after a period of effort and struggle, you finally return to the body and regain control over it. This is the difference.
Session 536
The Distinguished Guest at the Funeral
He said, for example, this sense of surprise and the recognition of the situation — that consciousness of yours after death, it may see the body itself, and can see itself lying there. What he says next is especially amusing:
At many funerals there is a distinguished guest among the crowd, and no one suspects that it gazes at the face of the corpse with just as much curiosity and astonishment.
It gazes at the face of the corpse with curiosity and astonishment. Why curiosity and astonishment? It will say, "How can that person be me? How can the one lying there be me?" Of course it is very astonished. No one else is like this — no one harbors as much curiosity and astonishment as it does; it alone is especially curious. At every funeral — you cannot say every one, but at most funerals — you can see there will be such a person: after the viewing of the remains is over, it does not leave, but stands there staring hard at the corpse, staring at the face, looking again and again. Normally we just know that this person has passed away, we view the remains, go through the form once; unless it is someone especially close, we may be reluctant to part, but even then you would not look at the face with such particular curiosity. So do you know who this distinguished guest is? The distinguished guest is that consciousness of yours — the post-death consciousness attached to it.
At this time many different behaviors appear, each one the result of personal background, knowledge, and habits. Everyone is different. The environment in which the deceased finds himself is often different from person to person. Vivid illusions can form experiences just as real as any experienced while alive — what you feel after death is just as real as the experience you felt while alive, not the least bit unreal, very real.
He said:
I have told you that thoughts and emotions form physical reality, and they also form the after-death experience.
This is what we covered in Chapter 5: not only do you form your physical reality while alive, but after death your emotions and thoughts still form the after-death experience. This does not mean that the experience is invalid — just as it does not mean that your physical life is invalid. Those illusions and that kind of experience after death are still valid for you, just as the environment and things around you while alive are equally valid for you. You cannot say those are invalid.
Symbols and Transition
Certain images have been used to symbolize this transition from one existence to another. Remember, you must use the word "symbol" -- it is symbolic. Symbolic of what? Symbolic of your changing from a physical existence (an existence in which body and soul are combined) into an existence without a body, with only the soul. Many of these symbols are extremely precious. Why? Because they enable you to move from one state of existence into another. The meaning of such symbols is very significant; otherwise you would become lost -- you would get stuck in the middle between this state and the next, moving very slowly, in great pain, and in great confusion.
The symbol is meant to help you pass through that period of being lost, to help you quickly change from a person with a body into a person without a body, and to accept this reality and enter into the next stage. They provide a framework in terms people can understand -- that is, your emotions and thoughts provide a framework in a way you can understand, in a way we humans can understand. Through this framework, we are able to quickly and smoothly change from a physical person into a nonphysical person. This kind of transition requires a symbolic approach.
For example, crossing the River Styx is one of these. This is a concept we often have -- after death you must cross the Bridge of Helplessness, cross the River Styx, with red spider lilies blooming on both banks, very red, as bright red as blood. Once you cross this river you arrive in the underworld; if you have not crossed it, you are still in the world of the living, not yet fully dead. So there needs to be a symbolic sense of ritual: I am going to cross this river, I am going to change from a physical person into a nonphysical person, from a living person into a dead person. You must understand that this river is only a symbol, only an illusion.
The dying person expects certain procedures to occur in a more or less regular fashion -- what you hope for will happen. This is a specific pattern, and it differs according to each person's experiences, beliefs, and life history before death. The person already knows the map beforehand -- what map? The map of the afterlife. Your consciousness actually knows it. At the moment of death, consciousness vividly imagines that river -- how could it imagine a river without a map? It must have a map, and on this map a river is drawn. So your consciousness knows the world after death; not only does it know it, it also helps create symbolic things for you, to help you pass through the transition from one existence to another.
Deceased relatives, loved ones, family members, and friends also enter into this ceremony. Many people's near-death experiences -- some who have been revived -- will describe to you this process of being greeted by relatives. For them, this is also a mysterious ceremony.
This river is as real as any river you know. It is real not only to you, but also to them -- those relatives and friends who have passed on. To a solitary traveler without correct knowledge, it is equally treacherous -- what does treacherous mean? Guides will always assist such travelers across at the riverbank. Why is it called treacherous? Because these guides will pretend, will disguise themselves as his relatives or friends, and greet him at the shore. So after you die, the relatives and friends you see by that river are not necessarily real; they may not be the souls of those relatives and friends coming to greet you. They may very well be guides in disguise. Later he will tell you why they disguise themselves: because some of your relatives and friends may have already reincarnated, already entered new lives, and are no longer on this level; some may have already gone to other realities to cycle through rebirth, and are no longer in this in-between zone. So at that time you may not be able to meet them, and they will not come back. And these guides, in order to help you cross over, will pretend to be your friends, your relatives.
It is meaningless to say that such a river is an illusion. Why is it meaningless? Because the river is real; he needs this river. You must understand: symbol is reality. We have already learned this before -- our physical world is actually a symbol that our emotions and thoughts need to express in a higher-dimensional space, just as our written words are a symbol, an expression of our emotions. Our physical world is also an expression of our emotions, feelings, and thoughts; we also use our reality to express them. So reality is a kind of symbol -- reality is the symbol of your emotions and thoughts, something manifested. So when you say this river is an illusion, the statement itself is meaningless, because it is inherently a symbolic thing.
The road is planned. Your road after death is planned -- how to walk, what river to cross, what bridge to cross; it is there to help you pass through. Now the specific maps generally no longer apply -- that is, the maps you are familiar with, the ones we think of as maps, no longer apply. At this time there is a new map, a map of another world. After death, your consciousness still walks within the space and time of your three-dimensional world, but the map here is no longer the same as the one you understood -- it is fused and mixed together with the map of a higher dimension. So as you walk along, you may push open a door and enter another place; you may cross a river and arrive in another world. But sometimes it is still the same -- sometimes you will still experience the streets, cities, and rooms from when you were alive, but not exactly the same. The living do not know how to interpret it -- how could we interpret that world after death? We do not know how to interpret it, but in fact it has already been arranged.
The Ceremony of Heaven and Hell
Christianity once believed in heaven and hell, purgatory and the Last Judgment4 -- and it still believes this even now: good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. Who decides good and bad? God. On the Last Judgment Day, if you are declared good, you go to heaven; if not, you go to hell or purgatory. Thus at death, for those who believe in these symbols, another ceremony is enacted -- not the ceremony of relatives and friends welcoming you by the river, but the Christian ceremony of heaven and hell. If you have strong religious beliefs, this ceremony is enacted. The Judgment Day will also really happen -- after death you will feel that there really is a Judgment Day, that there really is a God sitting there judging you, listing all your past evil deeds one by one, telling you to go to hell; then listing your good deeds one by one, saying you may go to heaven. All of that is real; it is not false. So many people will say that the God after death truly exists -- indeed, for that person, the period right after death is truly real.
And the guides? At this time they no longer play the role of your relatives and friends; they play the appearance of the Christian saints and heroes whom the deceased loved. You see, these guides have it rather troublesome -- playing your relatives and friends, and also having to act as those Christian saints, or the heroes that person worshipped. Why do they do this? They do all this to move you more quickly from a state of having a physical body to a state of having no physical body, so that you can pass through this stage more quickly and recognize this fact. Remember, this stage is very important; it is not something optional, it is extremely important.
Then, using this as the framework, in terms they can understand, the deceased is told the true situation -- the deceased is told that you have died. Mass religious movements have served this purpose for generations: giving people a plan to follow -- telling you what will happen after death, what happens to good people, what happens to bad people, what happens to those being judged -- telling you that all of this is true, that this is how it is after death. As a result, these mass religious movements achieved the fulfillment of this purpose. Later, the plan became more and more like a children's primer, like a textbook with wonderful stories. But that does not matter, because the main goal has already been achieved -- guiding you from one state to another; this purpose has been achieved, and in this process the deceased has no sense of confusion. They have a strong sense of belonging, recognition, and identity: "This is how I was when I was alive, and now I have died; once dead I must face judgment; if I am good I go to heaven, if I am bad I go to hell." Although this process is as laughable and childish as a children's picture book, it at least lets you believe, at least lets you identify with the fact that you have died, lets you acknowledge this fact.
In periods when people did not hold such mass concepts, there was more of a sense of being lost. And when life after death was completely denied, the problem was inevitably magnified. In this state, when your life after death is completely denied -- when you are told that once dead you are simply dead, the soul is gone, you are gone too, and as you die it is like a lamp going out, everything vanishes into nothing -- the problem is magnified, and you become more fearful. Just as he described earlier: your consciousness clearly can exist apart from the physical body, yet you were taught that your body and your consciousness are one, and that once the body is gone your consciousness is gone too. But your consciousness clearly knows that it still exists, yet the body is already gone, so it becomes confused, not knowing what is going on -- this is not the same as what I was taught before; is this not deceiving me? After death I am perfectly clear, everything is there, consciousness is there, but only this physical body is gone. I only identified my soul as being together with my body, but now the body is gone, so where do you expect this soul of mine to go? It becomes confused. It is like being dropped off at an airport or train station in a foreign country: you do not know where to go, you do not speak the language, you have no money in your pocket, you know no one and are unfamiliar with the place, and you are stunned -- this is what is called the sense of being lost.
Immediate Experiences After Death
Of course, many of the dead are overjoyed when they find they still have consciousness. Isn't that interesting? They're so happy -- oh my, I didn't die after all, so death really is what some people said it was. During his life he particularly mocked those superstitious notions, thinking they were ridiculous and childish: what do you mean there's an afterlife, a heaven and a hell -- I'm a materialist, how could there be life after death? But when he discovers that after death he still has consciousness, that feeling is one of ecstasy -- so it really is true, that old codger didn't lie to me, those monks and Taoist priests didn't lie to me, those fortune-tellers and diviners didn't lie to me, all that feudal superstition didn't lie to me, it really is real.
Others, however, must learn certain principles from the ground up. The others are those who are not ecstatic, who cannot accept this fact, cannot accept that their consciousness can exist independently of the physical body. So what do they do? They have to learn certain principles of behavior from scratch -- that is, they have to relearn how to survive after consciousness is separated from the body. Because they do not know the creative potential of their own thoughts and emotions -- they don't believe these things are something they can create, they don't know that the world after death is the same as when they were alive, that it is all created by their thoughts and emotions. They don't need a specific environment; the environment comes with them, formed by their mind, their emotions, and their thoughts. But they were educated to believe that the environment is an objective fact, and the physical body is also an objective fact. When they discover that these things no longer exist, and only their consciousness remains, they have no way to survive on their own, they don't know what to do. They are searching for that environment, looking left and right -- thinking, "What kind of state am I in after death?" They don't know that these things are something they can create themselves; they never thought they could create them, never wondered whether it would just be a blank. They don't know they have potential.
For example, this kind of person -- one who believes that the soul and the body must exist together, and who does not believe that thoughts and emotions can create reality -- what will he find? He may find himself in ten different environments in the blink of an eye, places he completely does not understand, and he completely fails to understand the reason behind it. Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh, he's gone to ten places, in an instant he's gone to ten places. He sees no continuity, no relationship or logic in between, doesn't know why he had to go to these ten places. He feels himself being tossed from one experience to another with no rhythm and no reason whatsoever -- completely passive, thrown around. And he never realizes what is really happening -- that it is really his own thoughts propelling him.
After death, the environment created by his emotions and thoughts becomes real instantly -- unlike in our three-dimensional world, where it takes some effort and some belief to achieve. Because after death it is no longer a material world; it is a world of pure consciousness, and what you think immediately becomes real, just like in your dreams. When you dream, one moment you're here, one moment you're there, completely unrelated: one moment your dream is set in the May Fourth Movement period, one moment in the late Qing Dynasty, one moment in a future time, one moment on a cliff, or one moment in a palace. You yourself have no idea why; actually all of these are created by your thoughts and emotions. But he feels passive; he doesn't know these are created by emotions and thoughts. The thoughts in his mind are turning endlessly, and then he is carried along by these thoughts, by these experiences, by these environments. For example, an unfamiliar environment appears, and he thinks, "Why did this environment appear, why am I here?" -- and this thought brings new thoughts, new scenes, and new environments, and he understands even less what is going on. When a person is in this state, isn't he completely bewildered? You are completely bewildered, because you don't know what you're doing, your environment is changing whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh, one moment here, one moment here, one moment here, and you don't know why it's like this in between. You become more bewildered as it changes, and the more bewildered you become the more it changes, the more it changes the more bewildered you become, and finally you are completely stupefied on the spot, like an idiot. This is called the sense of being lost; that state is called the sense of being lost.
A Calm and Settled Mind
He says, what I am talking about right now is what happens immediately after death. So many religions, and many spiritual practices, all have you calm your mind and settle your heart, have you enter a state of meditative stillness. Why do they have you settle your mind? It is to tell you that when you truly enter a nonphysical world, enter a world of pure consciousness, or a higher dimension, form arises from mind, thoughts arise from mind, and circumstances shift with the mind -- if your mind is not settled, that kind of stimulation is literally like a kaleidoscope to you. It is like forcibly pressing your eyes into a kaleidoscope, where the kaleidoscope keeps changing without stop, and you simply have no idea what you are doing, cannot tell where you are, which one is you, what you came here to do -- you know nothing at all. You are like a tiny fragment thrown into a kaleidoscope, tumbling along with it. Therefore, you should ordinarily practice calming your mind and settling your heart, living in the present, and only feeling this present instant.
The guides, in order to help you leave the illusion, then transform -- they will become part of the illusion, so as to be of help to you. It is in order to help you leave the illusion that they have no choice but to become part of the illusion. These guides are quite remarkable -- and there is not just one guide -- but first of all they must gain your trust. That is perfectly normal: when you travel somewhere, do not know which way to go, feel lost, the surroundings are bizarre and bewildering, the environment is completely unfamiliar, and you do not speak the language, at that point you can only follow the guide. But the premise is that you must trust this guide -- if you do not trust him, you will not follow him either; you would rather stand in place. You think, what if he is a swindler? He might trick you into going somewhere else, take your money, or kill your body and sell your organs -- all of that is possible. You definitely will not go with him; you are scared to death, and would rather stay in place than go with him.
So after death, this guide who comes to help you also has to gain your trust. How does he get you to believe him? He has to become a part of those illusions that your own post-death emotions and thoughts have conjured up; only then can you believe him, and only then can you go with him. Then he will tell you: all of these are illusions, all things imagined by your own thoughts and emotions. But the premise is that you have to believe him; if you do not believe him, you will not follow him, and you will not be led out by him.
Seth as a Guide
Then he told a story, a really, really fun story, one I think you will definitely remember and never forget. Seth said:
I once — in your terms — played such a guide myself.
The way he worked as a guide was the same path Ruburt now follows in the sleep state — Ruburt, in the sleep state, also goes beyond the three-dimensional world to do certain things. Ruburt once built a library in dreams — not all at once, but bit by bit, and he built it together with many other people. It is very much like how all of us together could build a new city, a new world, in dreams.
From the guide's point of view, the situation was quite difficult to handle. It is hard to gain a person's trust, and this stranger would also constantly conjure up all sorts of strange things, endless things. Psychologically, one had to be extremely careful — this person had to understand something of psychology, otherwise you could not serve as such a guide. As Seth discovered, he once encountered — one person's Moses. If you have studied Christianity, you know that Moses is a saint in Christianity, but he was one person's Moses, and perhaps not another person's Moses. You cannot present yourself in one fixed form — "I will just look like Moses, Moses looks like this" — no, the Moses in each person's mind is different, just as the bodhisattva in each person's mind is different, the Buddha in each person's mind is different, and the God in each person's mind is different. You have to play the figure that each person imagines in their own mind.
A few times, he had played a rather convincing Moses — the Moses he played was quite believable, people felt he played it so realistically that they believed he really was Moses. And once, although it sounds almost unbelievable, he even played one for an Arab. Arabs do not believe in Moses — Arabs believe in Allah, and Moses is someone only Christians would believe in. But this Arab was strange; he believed in Moses, so the Moses in his mind was different from the Moses in the minds of ordinary Christians.
The Story of the Arab
Seth said this Arab was a very interesting character. This Arab hated the Jews -- this is the hatred between Islam and the Jews, a history of hundreds, even over a thousand years, with very deep historical roots. The Arabs of that time hated the Jews intensely. But somehow, he did not know why, he was especially obsessed with Moses -- he believed Moses was more powerful than Allah. It is like how we often ask: between the Jade Emperor and the Buddha, whose abilities are greater? If the two of them fought, who would win? Between Sun Wukong and Erlang Shen, who is stronger? That is what this is about. In this man's mind, he believed Moses was more powerful than Allah. And this man revered martial force, revered power; he believed in whoever he thought was stronger. He felt Moses was stronger than Allah, so in his heart he believed in Moses; but for religious reasons he also had to believe in Allah. For many years, this was a secret guilt on his conscience -- as a person who followed Islam, how could he believe in Moses, how could he believe Moses was more powerful? His conscience could not bear it; he felt guilty.
During the Crusades -- this is a historical event -- he stayed for a while in Constantinople. He was captured, because the Crusaders specifically arrested Arabs. The Crusades were the wars between Christianity and Islam at that time -- Christianity considered Islam a heretical religion and sent troops on expeditions several times, wars that may have lasted over ten years, several decades, or even a hundred years, to wipe out Islam. He and some Turks were together -- because Turkey also followed Islam, they stayed together as one religion -- and they were all executed by the Christians. And in this case it was a horrifying execution: at first they forced his mouth open, pried his mouth open, stuffed burning charcoal in, poured the red-hot charcoal down his mouth and throat. You can see how cruel this was; you can imagine how much pain he was in when he died.
Then he cried out to Allah -- that kind of pain was beyond description, utterly desperate. Then in even greater desperation, he cried out to Moses: "Moses, save me!" When people die, it is always like this -- they call out to God, to the Buddha, to whatever they believe in to save them. Then he was certainly tortured to death. When he died, when his consciousness left his body, Moses was right there -- why? Because at the last moment, in even greater desperation, he called out to Moses, and Moses appeared. Who played Moses? Moses was played by Seth.
He said:
He believed in Moses more than he believed in Allah, and I did not know until the last moment which image I should use.
That is to say, Seth was the guide, and had to play the figure in this man's fantasy. Only at the last moment did he know: should I play Allah to receive him, or should I play Moses? At the last moment, in this man's mind, in his beliefs, in his consciousness, he had been calling on Moses to save him -- first he cried out to Allah, then in even greater desperation he called out to Moses. At that point, in his heart, he actually hoped Moses would come and save him. So the moment he died, the moment his consciousness left his body, Moses appeared.
He said this Arab was a very likable fellow, a very amusing fellow, a very lovable fellow. He said:
I did not mind the seeming battle that would have to be fought for the benefit of his soul.
What does this mean? After the Arab died, he believed that Allah and Moses would both come to fight over his soul, to contend for the right to claim his soul. He believed Moses and Allah should fight a battle over him. You can see how amusing this man's beliefs were -- although he died by force, he still could not shake off his martial concepts; he still revered force, and he could not accept any kind of peaceful rest or satisfaction with any present state until that battle had been fought. He was dead, after all -- everything should have been peaceful, no more war, no more Crusades, everything peaceful, calm, and content -- but no, he still believed force was the way to solve problems; he still wanted a fight, until someone seized his soul. If there was no fight, the matter could not be settled.
Then Seth had to bring in a friend -- you still had to call in a friend -- and some other people, and there had to be a crowd, to put on this drama. You see how many people had to be involved, all so that he would not feel lost, so that he could get through this post-death predicament as quickly as possible.
How was this drama performed? Allah and I (that is, Seth playing Moses) were in the sky -- it had to be in the sky -- shouting at each other from opposite clouds, cursing each other, each claiming ownership of his soul: "He is mine! His soul is mine!" And that Arab, poor man, terrified, lay prostrate on the ground between the two clouds, scared to death -- the two gods he worshipped most were about to fight, fighting over his soul.
Seth said:
Now I am telling this story humorously.
Is it not hilarious? It is like if you believed in both God and the Buddha, and after death you hoped both the Buddha and God would come to fight over your soul, and then the Buddha and God started fighting in the sky. He said although he is telling this story humorously, you must understand: it was that man's beliefs that made it happen. It was not that Seth and the others wanted to put on this drama -- this drama was conjured by that man's beliefs. That was exactly what he thought; he believed Allah and Moses would fight over his soul. Therefore:
We slowly worked it out to set him free.
Worked what out? The drama of his beliefs. Then Moses and Allah began to fight. At this point Moses said: "I am Moses, I call upon Jehovah for help" -- behind Moses there was an even greater God; Moses was only a messenger. He said he would call upon God for help, call upon Jehovah. But it was no use! You see how funny this gets -- why? Because our Arab friend did not know who Jehovah was. He only knew Moses; he did not know of Jehovah's existence, so his faith rested on Moses alone. When putting on the drama, you still had to constantly watch the audience's reaction -- the audience saw that calling on Jehovah was useless, so the script had to be changed, had to be improvised on the spot.
At this point, the Allah across from him drew a cosmic sword. What does this cosmic sword mean? Islam reveres the sword, reveres force; in their faith this sword often appears. If you have been to Middle Eastern Islamic countries, there is one sect -- I forget whether it is Shia or Sunni -- they mount a sword on the hood of their cars. Where we often mount a Mercedes emblem or the Rolls-Royce flying lady, they remove it and mount a sword. Not just one person -- many, many people mount a sword there, sometimes painted black. They revere force intensely, so this cosmic sword is something from their faith.
At this point Allah drew a cosmic sword -- this was certainly conjured from that man's mind, conjured by his beliefs. Then Moses used his power to set that sword on fire, and Allah could not hold it anymore; he dropped the sword, and it fell to the ground, setting the earth on fire as well. Our Arab friend cried out again, terrified: "My God, what is this? The very earth is on fire!" Then he saw the allies behind Allah -- he realized that Allah's sword had fallen and caught fire, and without his sword, Allah could not defeat Moses. Because in his mind he believed Moses was more powerful -- Moses made a move and turned into a burst of fire; Allah could not hold on, dropped it, and the earth caught fire. At this point he realized: what to do? Allah could not win. But he also imagined that Allah still had friends, still had allies, right? Allies appeared behind Allah -- these allies were also played by Seth's friends. Then Moses also had to have allies behind him -- since Allah had brought helpers, Moses had to bring a group of followers too. Our friend -- that is, the Arab -- believed that among the three of them, one was certain to die; among the three, one was certain to be destroyed. Either Moses would kill Allah, or Allah would kill Moses, or he himself would be killed by one of the two. This man believed the outcome had to be this way -- both of them were fighting over his soul, after all. And what was he afraid of? He was afraid that he himself would be the victim: those two were gods, after all -- Moses and Allah -- they would not die; the one who would ultimately be destroyed was himself.
At this point he was truly afraid. Then the two clouds drew closer -- on one cloud stood Allah, on the other stood Moses. Moses held a stone tablet in his hand, and on the tablet was written "Thou shalt not kill" -- this too was conjured by that man, because he was afraid that Allah and Moses, in their divine battle, would get him killed, so he conjured this Moses to save him: Moses said "Thou shalt not kill," telling Allah that he could not kill the Arab down below; the two of them could fight, but leave him out of it. At this point Allah drew another sword -- had not Allah's sword fallen to the ground? He produced another sword. You see how interesting this is -- this man kept imagining that Allah must always be holding a sword. As we drew closer -- as the two clouds of Moses and Allah came closer and closer -- we exchanged these things: Allah gave him the stone tablet, and he gave the sword to Allah. Is that not amusing?
Then our followers also mingled together -- "mingled together" here does not mean they fought together; it means they came together very amicably, like friends. Then we merged together; the two groups merged into one, ultimately forming the image of a sun. This image of the sun said:
We are one, you see.
Is that not hilarious? In the end, in this man's fantasy, Moses and Allah were both one unified god. He believed that whether it was Islam or Christianity, whether it was Allah or Moses, in the end they were all one unified, higher god above him -- they were one god. His final belief came to rest there. And the scene he conjured was this: Moses and Allah said "We are one" -- if they are one, then there is no need to fight over the soul; we are one family, so there is no need to fight.
These two completely opposite concepts had to be merged into one, otherwise that man's heart could never be at peace. Why could it not be at peace? He believed in both Allah and Moses -- two completely opposing religious systems. If he did not act out this drama, did not conjure such a scene, his heart would never be at ease -- because he had guilt in his heart. Remember what was said earlier? He had an intense inner guilt. This secret guilt on his conscience would not disappear just because he died -- after death, this guilt would only grow stronger. So he had to conjure all of this. You just act out the whole drama for him, let them merge, let Moses and Allah merge into one -- then would he not be free of guilt? He would no longer be torn, no longer pulled between "Do I believe in Moses or in Allah?" -- what I believe in is one thing; the two of them are one.
You see how meticulous this work is; this post-death hospice care is far more meticulous than our human hospice care -- it attends to every aspect of your emotions, your psyche, your religious faith. The purpose of everything they did was to keep you from that sense of unease, that sense of being lost. Only now can you understand what was said earlier: these illusions after death are meaningful, not meaningless, and they are extremely important -- they are a necessary process in your transition from one existence to another. Only when these two opposing sides were unified could they begin to explain to him his present situation -- only when his heart was free of unease, free of inner conflict, free of guilt, free of the guilt on his conscience, could he begin to accept their explanation: you are dead now, and all that just now was conjured by you. Only when his heart was at peace, when he trusted them, could he take in their explanation. This is the story. You can listen to it as a joke, but through this story you must understand: why do these things happen after death? Why do those who come to receive you appear? What are they trying to do?
The Training of a Guide
Seth went on to say that being such a guide requires tremendous training. It is not a matter of thinking, "I will just go and be this guide in my sleep, I will volunteer, I think it would be so much fun." No. For example, in the event I just described -- why does it require tremendous training? Just before this event I just described, he had already spent many lifetimes -- not a lot of time, but many lifetimes, that is, many reincarnations -- in his daily sleep, across so many human incarnations, he was learning how to be a guide under the teaching of another guide. He had to learn from an old guide, an experienced guide, and only after studying for many lifetimes could he go and be a guide for others.
Why does it take many lifetimes to learn? He gave an example: I might temporarily lose myself within the illusion in which I am acting -- and in such a situation, another teacher must come and rescue me. What does that mean? In the process of playing Moses, you must play the role very convincingly, because this is something projected from the other person's fantasy and emotion, and you must play it convincingly in order to match what the other person is thinking. But when you play Moses very convincingly, on the level of consciousness you merge with Moses -- you are Moses, and Moses is you. You have to put yourself into it, project yourself into it. And in this state, within this illusory time, you may temporarily become lost -- you become lost within the role. When you become lost, what do you do? You need another teacher to rescue you. This is what you must train for: you must not always let yourself get lost, and when you are lost you must know that you are in a lost state -- just as when you know you are experiencing sleep paralysis, you must be able to wake yourself up. He also has to know that he has become lost, and he must be able to call upon another teacher to come and rescue him quickly, otherwise you will remain lost in it.
Dexterity and careful exploration of psychological processes are essential. You just saw the story before, and you can see that this person's psychological changes, each person's changes, are different. Your understanding of the consciousness of this person who has just died, your understanding of his mind, your exploration, dexterity, and care -- all of these are essential. Otherwise you do not know what he is thinking in his mind, and you have no way of figuring it out, no way of cooperating with him in acting out this drama.
And as this guide, you may also become involved in all sorts of endless, infinite illusions. Because when it comes to people who have died, you do not know who this person you are going to receive is, and you do not know what fantasies and illusions he will produce -- these are endless and infinite. He gave an example: for instance, you might have to play the part of a dead pet that the deceased person loved very much -- you might have to play a cat, a dog, a parrot, a snake, a lizard, who knows. If it is an animal the deceased loved very much during life, you may have to play that animal, and you also have to figure out that animal's behavioral patterns and mannerisms, and play it so vividly that he absolutely cannot tell it is fake.
All these illusory activities usually take place in the time immediately following death -- within a very short period of time. You must remember that this time is actually very short. However, some people, because of their previous training and development, are already fully aware of their situation -- are we not among these "some people"? Because we have already studied, we have already trained ourselves in dreams: training ourselves for the scene after our consciousness leaves the body, becoming familiar with it, not feeling strange, not being afraid, not being confused, not losing ourselves. And they fully intuit their situation -- they know what the situation is right now, they know they have died, they know their consciousness has separated from the physical body, they know what the world after death is like. They do not need to be confused, nor do they need to suffer so much. After they rest for a while -- when we die, we can rest for a while, since this life has just ended -- if they want to, they are already ready to move on to other stages. They pass through this stage of illusion and enter another stage.
Post-Death Self-Examination
For example, they may become aware of those reincarnational selves -- they may be able to see those selves that have reincarnated before, and different personality fragments can all be seen. They can very easily recognize people they knew in other lives -- if those people have not yet been born. They can now deliberately create hallucinations -- remember the word "deliberately" here: the earlier ones were not deliberate. The earlier ones were the illusions formed in a state of disorientation when, after death, fear and panic arose and the consciousness was unfamiliar with a new reality. Now it is different -- now they consciously and deliberately create hallucinations. For what? For experience. They can re-experience certain portions of previous lives -- put "re-experience" in quotation marks.
For example, in a certain lifetime these two people may have been husband and wife, but perhaps in that lifetime the marriage was not handled well. Maybe they kept arguing, and in the end the two of them divorced and separated. In the course of that, the two of them said, "Hey, actually we shouldn't have been like that back then. We actually still had feelings for each other. Why did it get to that stage? Should we go back and relive it again?" They can re-experience, re-live certain portions of previous lives. This re-experiencing is not the same as what you understand by re-experiencing -- it does not mean he lives in the past and lives it all over again. He does not need to live it all over again in the past. He can directly, in the present state, conjure up some of the scenes and things of the previous life, and he can then live through that period of time within that space-time again.
Remember, what he says here is all spoken in terms of Earth time. At the beginning of Chapter Nine he said, "I am now speaking about your world after death using your terms," do you remember? So what he says here is all spoken from the perspective of our Earth time and our Earth viewpoint, unless he specifically emphasizes otherwise. So here he will have the concept of previous lives, and also the concept of re-experiencing and so on.
If they so choose, they will have a period of self-examination. They will examine that period of time: during that period, why did we not do well as husband and wife? During that period, why did we not handle the father-son relationship well? Why did the mother-daughter relationship become so melodramatic? -- Many people encounter this kind of problem, where their own biological mother always treats them as if they were not her own child. At this time they will examine that period. One could say they present a settling of accounts -- the word "settling accounts" translated over should be "summary report." At this time they need to summarize how the previous life went.
Therefore, they can look at their entire performance -- from the standpoint of a bystander, look again at how their performance was, look at their abilities and weaknesses in the performance, and how well they played the role in this process. And then decide: after watching it, they decide whether they want to return to reality again -- "Should we? There are some places where our acting skills could be improved. This time let's go back, change to a different scene, change to a different relationship, and the two of us can act it out again."
He says you must understand that any one person may experience any one of these stages -- that is, the stage of illusions, this stage of understanding what is going on with oneself and then consciously creating some fantasies, including these reviews of previous lives and self-examination. All kinds of stages are possible. It is not that every one of them must be experienced. But apart from this self-examination, which cannot be skipped -- many of the other stages can be bypassed, can be completely bypassed. Only self-examination is something you cannot bypass.
Friends and Guides as Escorts
He says that since emotions are so important, it is extremely advantageous if there are friends waiting for you -- since emotions are so important, having friends come to receive you when you die is extremely advantageous for you, because you trust them deeply. But in many cases, these friends have already moved on to other stages of activity -- they may no longer be on this plane, they may have gone on to be born again, or they may have gone to other realities. And often a guide will temporarily impersonate that friend, so that you feel more confident -- how considerate. Your friend is not there, but he knows you trust this friend the most, that you have the most faith in him, so this guide has no choice but to impersonate your friend, to give you more confidence, to make you feel you do not need to be afraid, do not need to worry. Because after death you arrive in an unfamiliar environment, and your first reaction is a bit of worry, a bit of confusion, a bit of fear.
It is only because most people believe you cannot leave your body that during this life of yours you do not often have conscious out-of-body experiences. We do not acknowledge this, we reject it, we do not believe it, so we do not have such experiences. And such experiences, far more than words, can give you an understanding of the situation you are about to encounter -- if you have out-of-body experiences, you can understand what state you will be in after death, what it feels like, and that actual experience is far better than written description.
He says you must remember:
In a certain respect, your physical life is the result of a mass hallucination.
This actual physical environment you live in is not the fantasy of one person alone; it is a group fantasy -- something everyone agrees upon. There is a vast gulf between one person's reality and another person's reality -- the world one person sees and the world another person sees, we think they are exactly the same, as if a camera recorded the world. In fact they are not -- each of us has our own feedback and our own perception of this environment, and you also create new environments and new realities, so what each person has is different, and this gulf is vast.
If it is like this while alive, what about the experience after death? After death there is just as much organization as in the life you know -- however elaborate, however complex, however diverse your life is while alive, after death it is the same; it is extremely elaborate.
Private Illusions and Animal Symbolism
He says that right now you have your private illusions -- earlier it was said that you have a group illusion, and then he tells you that there is also a private illusion, only you have not realized what they are. When the personality is undergoing transformation, or when opposing concepts must be integrated -- for example, as just mentioned, Allah and Moses must be integrated -- or when one concept must give way to another, then the kind of intense symbolic contact just described may also occur in your sleeping state.
These are very stimulating and important psychological and psychic activities, whether they occur before death or after death. You have some private illusions that generally do not come out; you cannot perceive them, and you do not know what these private illusions are -- they are hidden very deep. But when your personality undergoes a drastic change, or when opposing concepts must be integrated -- just as Allah and Moses must be integrated -- or when one concept must give way to another, only at such times will your private illusions manifest. Just like the symbolic contact described a moment ago -- Allah and Moses fighting -- or in the sleeping state, similar things can also happen. Just think how exciting it is -- the Jade Emperor and the Buddha fighting, how exciting! I am giving examples; not everyone is like this.
When these events occur in dreams, or before your birth, they can often change the direction of a civilization -- here "civilization" seems a bit too grand; what is actually meant is changing the direction of your personal beliefs. When they occur after death, a person may regard his previous physical life as an animal, and must keep reaching an agreement. What agreement? If this personal illusion did not occur before death, or if no integration was reached, then when two beliefs or two concepts come into contact and must yield to each other, or must be integrated together, this will occur after death: a person may regard his previous life as an animal, and he must reach an agreement with this animal.
He gives an example here: some people will regard their previous life as an animal, and then they reach an agreement with this animal. Such a battle -- the battle or contact between you and this animal -- has long-range consequences, because a person must reach an agreement with all parts of himself. This sentence is very important: whether it is his previous life, or his present feelings, or his present beliefs, he must reach an agreement. So in the end, Allah and Moses must be unified together, and that is reaching an agreement.
In such circumstances, no matter how this illusion ends -- in the case where he regards his previous life as an animal, no matter whether the illusion is him riding the animal, or becoming friends with the animal, these are all possible outcomes; or taming the animal, or killing the animal, or being killed by the animal -- it is not about which way it ends; there are many possible endings. Every feasible choice is carefully weighed, and the outcome will have a great deal to do with his future development. When you act as a guide, when one day you go to deal with this issue, you must understand: if this person regards his previous life -- for example -- as an animal, the animal is his illusion about his previous life. At this time he can conjure up some animals; he may ride the animal, kill the animal, be killed by the animal, get along very well with the animal, and so on -- all of these may appear. This outcome has a very significant bearing on his development. As for which outcome to choose, you must weigh it carefully.
This kind of life symbolization may be used by those who, while alive, seldom think of self-reflection -- while we are alive, some people seldom reflect: some people never reflect, and some people reflect often, examining themselves three times a day. But some people do not reflect, and seldom examine themselves. This kind of life symbolization is helpful to such people, helping them to reflect. Therefore it is part of the process of self-examination. In it, a person turns his life into an image -- he treats his subconscious life as an animal, an image, or possibly something else -- and then deals with this image. He is actually dealing with his subconscious life, but he cannot deal with it reflectively, so he can only imagine it as an image, and dealing with this image is dealing with his previous life. But not everyone uses this method; no, but sometimes this series of episodes is necessary.
This session is about what is experienced after death, including how to be a guide and the work a guide does -- he gave a very detailed, vivid description, like watching a wonderful story. I hope that through reading this story everyone can learn a great deal, and can be less afraid and less confused about the world after death.
Session 537
Witness John Barclay
Let's look at Session 537, which is the last session of Chapter Nine. Earlier in this session it was mentioned that a businessman from out of town -- a businessman who was not local, John Barclay, witnessed this session, meaning he came here as a witness.
There is an important point here: as promised, he brought a reel of tape, and on this tape he outlined the advice Seth had given over the years regarding his profession, and whether those suggestions had succeeded or not. From the early sessions in 1963 to the beginning of 1964, John had already been in contact with Jane and Rob. When they were in contact with Seth, John would often come by. John was, I believe, a pharmaceutical distributor -- if my impression is correct. He was friends with Jane and Rob, and during sessions he would often ask Seth about his own business affairs and his career plans and advice. Seth would give him suggestions. This reel of tape recorded a summary of the final results over all these years of whether following Seth's advice had been successful. His final conclusion was: the results were very good, the results were extremely good, he had followed Seth's advice.
Seth then continued, saying that we were about to begin the book -- an old friend was present, but he had no time to exchange pleasantries right now, he was going to begin his book. He said he had to catch hold of Rob, he absolutely had to catch hold of him, because if this book was to be finished he had to catch hold of him. (In excellent spirits) He was describing the state in which Seth was speaking through Jane; Seth's state was one of excellent spirits. He said we are writing an adventure story -- just like the matter mentioned in the previous session about Moses and Allah fighting5, that was an adventure story. He said he was in especially excellent spirits telling an adventure story, and he said let's continue, let us go on.
Is There "Organization" After Death
He said that one of Ruburt's students -- a student in the ESP class -- would strangely ask a question: in the experience right after death, is there any kind of organization? Are there any departments, any organizations? For example, like a group of little demons led by King Yama -- is there a hell, is there an organization like the courts of the underworld? Is there some kind of God, some kind of rescue, does any such related organization exist? Because everything you talk about is individuals -- there are relatives, friends, and so on -- but are there any other institutions, other units, departments, and so on -- like the organizations and institutions we have in the human world?
He said, since this is a question many people have in their minds, let us talk about it -- talk about what organizations and departments exist after death.
He said, first of all, from everything I have said so far, you should be able to see very clearly: there is no single, unified thing that happens after death. There is no fixed rule that after death things will definitely be a certain way -- for example, that after death there is definitely a court of the underworld, that there is definitely Meng Po soup to drink6, that when you die you must cross some River of the Dead, some red spider lily, walking along a path of red spider lilies, and so on and so forth -- none of it is fixed. Every experience is different -- remember, every experience is different.
However, generally speaking, these individual experiences will fall within certain ranges. Although they are all different, they will all fall within some commonly experienced ranges.
Hospitals and Rest Homes
For example, for those who are still strongly focused on physical reality, those who believe in physical reality, and those who already need a period of recovery and rest, there is an initial stage. What are they doing? On that level there are hospitals and rest homes -- isn't that interesting? He asks, are there organizations after death? He tells you, for certain people, for those who are focused on physical reality, after death there will be hospitals, and there will also be rest homes.
The patients in these hospitals do not realize that they have no illness at all. In some cases, the concept of illness is so strong that their years in the world were built around this psychological center. Some people were sick for a long time, perhaps for several years, some for several decades, all the while struggling against the illness. While struggling against the illness, all of their life's center, all of their years, were built around how to deal with the illness. So their concept of the illness is extremely strong; this was their belief and concept while alive, so at death they will certainly carry it with them.
Then after they die, they project that illness onto the new body. After death, we know we have a new body, and although that new body is different from our physical body, after death you will genuinely feel that it is a physical body. Although this post-death physical body cannot manipulate any material things in our three-dimensional world, in your post-death feeling, it is a real body. Then after death, they project their illness onto this new body -- just as they projected it onto the old body while alive.
We know that the illnesses of our body are all a projection of thought from your beliefs -- beliefs create reality, and our thoughts and emotions create our reality. Then isn't the illness in your body also created by your thoughts and emotions? So when this person dies, just as when he was alive, when alive he brought the illness to his living physical body, after death he still projects this illness onto his new body. He feels that he is still sick, still ill, still has heart discomfort, chest tightness -- he will have all those sensations. He feels I need to be hospitalized, I need a doctor -- how attached this person is to the material world. After death he thinks he still needs to be hospitalized, he still needs a doctor. At this point, what will appear after death? In his reality, a hospital will appear.
Some people feel that this life has been too tiring, and after death they need a good rest and a period of recuperation. At this point, after death they will enter a rest home, to rest and recuperate well. All of this is brought about by your beliefs and your mental and emotional states.
What are they doing in these hospitals? They are given various kinds of treatments of a psychic nature. Because they have already died, there is no longer a physical existence, so they cannot have IV drips, cannot have injections, cannot take medicine, so only treatments of a psychological nature can be done. And they are told: the illness in your body comes from the problem of your own beliefs. Isn't it the same for us who are alive? It is just that we can treat it through physical means. Actually the most important thing is your psychological treatment, but no one believes this; they still believe that taking medicine and getting injections are the most useful. So he says, after death some people will have hospitals appear.
Actually, many people do not need to go through this particular period. Needless to say, these hospitals and training centers, in your terms, are all nonphysical -- of course they are nonphysical; how could there be material things after death? He says in fact, they are often maintained by guides who carry out this necessary program. If you like, you could call it a mass hallucination -- that is, the guides and you together construct a hallucination of a hospital, a rest home, a training center. In fact, for those who come into contact with these realities, these events are quite real; they do not feel they are illusions.
There are also training centers. Here, according to a person's ability to understand and perceive, the nature of reality is explained to them. Each person's level is different, their degree is different, their state is different, so different people need different explanations. At first, for certain people, familiar metaphors are still used, the things they were familiar with before death -- otherwise they would not understand what the nature of reality is. Then gradually they are led to give these up.
These centers also have some courses. For those who choose to return to the human world, some guidance is given. In other words, what kind of guidance? They are taught the methods of translating emotions and thoughts into concrete reality. Aren't we learning these methods right now? You don't have to wait until after death to learn them; you can learn them now, before death. But some people did not learn them before death, so after death they still have to learn them, they still have to make up this course -- because after death everything is created by beliefs and thoughts, and returning to the three-dimensional world also requires this.
Here, unlike in the three-dimensional world system, there is no time gap between the beginning of such a thought and its materialization -- what you think is what you get, it appears instantly. This is different from our third dimension; in our third dimension it is not this fast. All of this happens more or less on the same level, within the same dimensional world. But you must understand that I am simplifying the matter here.
Some people do not go through any of this. Why? Because of their development and progress before death. Just as we are now learning these things, if your development before death is progressing, then after death you will not need these things -- because you have already learned them; teaching you again would be meaningless, you already know it all. So what you learn before death is not wasted; it is all useful, and you carry it with you after death. They are already prepared to begin more ambitious plans. Some people, while alive, are already thinking: if one day I no longer have a physical body, and exist as a pure soul or a pure consciousness, what would I want to do? There are so many things I want to do; I have many, many far-reaching plans and ideals. At this point, they can begin their more ambitious plans. They were already prepared long ago, already knew clearly what it would be like after death, so they do not need to learn any of these things at all.
No Need to Worry About Not Having "Psychic Powers"
We have already talked about this kind of development before. Some readers may not have noticed, and they say: I do not have any psychic abilities, I do not have clairvoyance, I do not have telepathy, I do not have the ability to read others' minds, I cannot read words through objects, I cannot walk through walls, I do not have any of these abilities. And so they worry: Then how have I developed? I have not developed. They may think they are destined for a very long after-death training, because they feel they did not learn these things while alive, they did not have these special powers, they did not have these psychic abilities, so they will still have to learn them after death.
Actually, I must tell you right now: all of these abilities are not necessarily conscious. That is, you have learned many abilities, but you do not necessarily realize it, and many of them happen without your knowing it during your sleep state. So do not think: I do not have psychic powers, I do not have any superpowers, can I leave my body, can I fly, can I control my dreams, can I have lucid dreams — as if those who can do these things are a level higher than those who cannot. It is just that those who can do them are aware of it, while those who cannot do them does not mean they do not know how or cannot do them, it is just that they do not realize they are doing them. Every night they are doing them, they go out, they leave their bodies just like you, it is just that they do not know they have left their bodies. And those who are aware of leaving their bodies are simply people who are aware that they are leaving their bodies. This is the difference, but it does not mean that if you do not leave your body you do not have the ability to leave your body — no, you have it, you just do not know it. So I want to tell you this quickly, for fear that you might have this misunderstanding. Do not worry, as long as you have thought the principles through and understood them clearly, you will naturally possess these abilities.
He says he will come back again. Seth is very humorous. He says I am like a bad coin, a broken coin, you cannot spend it, you cannot get rid of me, no matter who you try to exchange it with, no one wants your coin, so this coin of yours cannot be spent — he says I will always come back.
Refusing to Believe in Death
After death, you may utterly refuse to believe that you have really died. Sometimes you refuse to believe it, and you continue to focus your emotions and energy on the people or things you knew during your lifetime. This is why many of us, after death, remain attached to what we had in life -- for example, he was especially fond of a certain person, especially unable to let go of a certain person, things he kept thinking about with all his heart, including treasures he kept thinking about with all his heart, including his career, his family, his children, his beloved, and so on and so forth, including some parents who could not let go -- it is all like this.
What do you do at this point? After death you have already turned the page, right? Those are all things of the past, that was the previous life, yet you insist on focusing on that life, all your emotions are on it. For example, if you were once obsessed with a particular plan -- say you wanted your company to go public, and it still has not gone public, and you are still thinking about how to get the company listed -- you may try to complete it. For example, you wanted to marry a certain person, but before the marriage happened you had an accident and died, yet you are still thinking, I want to marry him.
There will always be guides to help you understand your situation -- to understand that you have died, that it is in the past. Although we say past, present, and future exist simultaneously, from the perspective of our earthly time, that is already something in the past, and it is time to turn the page. You have a new world, you have new things to create, there is no need for you to remain entangled in the past. The play is over, the curtain has come down, yet you keep wanting to go back on stage saying "I still want to perform" -- the director cannot hold you back no matter what, the lighting and scenery have all been taken down, there is nothing left, and you stand in the middle of the stage saying "I want to perform, where is the person acting with me? Come out quickly, let us continue the performance."
That is the state you are in. You may be wholly absorbed in those things, and completely fail to notice the guides coming to help you. You simply do not care about them -- guides or no guides, you do not want to begin a new journey at all, you only want to return to your previous state. That was your strongest belief at the time right after death.
He says we are not going to discuss the question of ghosts in this chapter. Why? Because you can imagine that if your emotions and feelings are absorbed in that state, is it not possible that, to the living, you might appear like a ghost here? Because your attention is still there -- emotions, beliefs, and your thoughts will form reality, and so you will form your reality in the three-dimensional world. So he says, in this chapter we will not talk about ghosts; later we will come back to how ghosts come about and what ghosts are all about. For now, I will only say that a great deal of emotional investment in physical reality may block your further development, and that is enough. It is enough for you to understand this point -- you do not need to know, if you do invest yourself there, what will happen to the ghost, what the ghost should do, how to pull the ghost back again; we will not discuss that question.
Those Who Try to Return to the Body
When consciousness leaves the body and has been away for quite a while, then the connection is severed. In the case of an out-of-body experience, the connection still exists. When you are out of body, you have to maintain a connection with your physical body, but after death that connection is broken. So a dead person may very well completely misunderstand the experience of death and try to enter the body again. This is different from an out-of-body experience. In an out-of-body experience you can come back, but when you are dead you cannot come back.
Such a person identifies almost exclusively with his physical image—he believes that only this physical body is himself. At such times, this kind of thing can happen: he still wants to return to his body. This is not common; generally he will understand. But in any case, under various circumstances, such a person tries to reactivate his physical mechanism. When he discovers the condition of the physical body—he cannot get it going, he cannot command it, none of the mechanisms are working anymore, breathing has stopped, the heartbeat has stopped. When none of the mechanisms are working, he becomes even more terrified, because he had identified too strongly with the physical body before.
For example, the consciousness of some dead people, after the mourners have left, is still weeping beside the corpse. He cannot bear to part with this body. He feels that without the body he himself is gone; his sense of identity and identification rests on this body. He cannot get into the body, he cannot move the body, he cannot put the body back on, so he is very frightened, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go. He is especially sorrowful, staying beside the body in grief. Some people say that when someone has died, they hear someone crying—actually it is he himself who is crying.
We need to realize this: except for those places where the physical body is diseased or where the internal organs can no longer be repaired, he himself is healthy and whole. His soul, his consciousness is healthy and whole, right? But his physical body is diseased—kidney failure, lung failure, liver failure. When all the organs fail, he will die; it can no longer be repaired, it is thoroughly broken. At this time he does not know that he is actually healthy and whole, and that only the physical body is broken. He does not believe that.
For example, they are like a dog worrying about a bone it has buried. A dog buries a bone it cannot finish eating, and it keeps going back to look at that bone, always thinking that someone might take it away or steal it. This person is the same way. He has already left the physical body, yet his consciousness keeps going back to the body to look at it, always unable to part with this body, just like a dog unable to part with the bone it has buried. This example Seth gives is rather harsh, very satirical.
The New Body: The Spirit Body
Those who have not completely identified their consciousness with the physical body -- those who consider the physical body to be the physical body, and consciousness to be able to exist independently of the physical body -- these people find it very easy to leave the physical body. What is very strange and ironic? Those who hated the physical body while alive find, on the contrary, that right after death they are very attracted to the physical body. He says the physical body is this bad and that bad, that he is dragging around a sickly diseased body, oh I don't want this body anymore -- the more he says this, the more dependent on this body he becomes after death. On the contrary, those who are very healthy, who clearly know that consciousness and the physical body can exist separately, have much less dependence on and identification with the body after death.
Now all of these situations, depending on the person involved, may or may not happen; not everyone experiences it this way, so every situation is different.
Yet after leaving the physical body, you will immediately find yourself in another body. This is the same form you use for traveling during out-of-body experiences -- if you have had out-of-body experiences, you also have a form when out of body, otherwise how could you fly? Many times in dreams you can fly, and what flies is that form. The body you have after death is the same form as your out-of-body form.
I remind my readers once again: every person, during sleep each night, leaves their own body for a while; everyone leaves the body. This form is only something you know or do not know -- most people do not know it. This form will appear to be concrete -- remember, the word used here is "appear" -- but generally speaking, people still in the physical body cannot see it. Here you must remember: generally speaking, people who are still alive, people living in the human world, cannot see this spirit body of yours. But are there unusual cases? Yes, some people can see it, and some who have practiced spiritual cultivation can see it even more. So when he says "generally speaking," he is being very precise; he does not say ambiguous things, he is always very precise.
It can do anything you can do in your present dreams. So you can fly; it can pass through walls, pass through solid matter. It is directly propelled by your consciousness; wherever you think of, you arrive there. For example, if you think about what your Aunt Sally in New York is doing, you immediately find yourself there.
But usually -- he explains "usually" again -- usually you cannot manipulate material things, but under special circumstances you can also manipulate material things. You cannot pick up a lamp, nor can you throw a plate.
The moment you die, this spirit body immediately manifests. However, this spirit body is not your only image. For that matter, this is not a new image -- it is intertwined with your physical body right now. Your spirit body is intertwined with your physical body right now, intertwined while you are alive, but you are not aware of it. For a period of time after your death, it will be the only body you are aware of -- not for all time.
After a long time, across many different dimensions and different levels, you will eventually learn to adopt many images according to the choices of your own consciousness. Do you understand that, in a certain way, you are doing this right now -- right now as a living person, you are right now using your consciousness to create your present image, only you do not know it. What are you doing with what you are right now? You are translating your psychological experiments, psychological experiences, psychological realizations -- that is, your thoughts and emotions -- quite certainly yet unknowingly into material things, including your image, which is also a material thing.
So after your death, when you imagine yourself as a child, you may suddenly find that you have the image of that child. For a period of time -- remember, for a period of time, not always like this -- you can manipulate this post-death image, and can make this image appear as you were at any period of your previous life. Perhaps you died at eighty, but after death when you think of the youth and vitality you had around age twenty, you will find that your image is the image of age twenty.
Most people choose a more mature image after death, which is very interesting. Usually it is the image from the peak period of your physical abilities, regardless of when this physical peak was reached, some earlier or later. There are also the opposite cases: other people choose the image from when they reached the greatest peak of spirit and emotion, regardless of beauty and age. People after death pursue different things, so sometimes some people's image is an old grandfather, some are old immortals of longevity, some are wise old men, some are very young, some are very mature and composed. But most people will adopt an image from a relatively mature period of themselves, generally around the image of their thirties or forties -- not necessarily, everyone is different, roughly, I am just saying.
Therefore, you will feel satisfied with the image you choose, because you chose it yourself. When you want to communicate with other people you already knew, you usually use this image. You certainly would not choose the sickly image of yourself about to die to communicate with others; you would certainly choose an image from when your mental state and physical state were both at their fullest, so that others can recognize you. Otherwise, with that gaunt image of you lying on the sickbed, many people would not even recognize who you are.
Although when engaging in such communication with the living -- does communicating with the living mean you have become a ghost -- you will appear using the image that the person you want to contact knew you by. If you knew him when you were young, then when you appear before him you will appear as you were when young; if you knew him after you were old, then you will appear in an old form. That is, you appear using the image from the period when he knew you, and you will not appear using an image from a period when he did not know you.
Where the After-Death Environments Are
Seth says this John is about to fall asleep, so we will stop here. He is joking with John; John has been sleeping the whole time.
Now let us look at the content: those after-death environments do not necessarily exist on other planets; this you must remember. They may or may not; it is not certain. Later he explains it to you: they do not occupy space, not the space as we think of it. You ask, "Where exactly do these after-death things happen?" This question is basically meaningless, because how can I explain to you something that does not happen in three-dimensional space at all? But Seth still wants to try to explain it.
He says this kind of doubt is the result of your own misunderstanding of the nature of reality. Therefore there is no one place, no specific location. These environments exist within the physical world as you know it, but they are not perceived by you. Actually, it is just that your perceptual system does not allow you to tune your frequency to their range, right? They exist right beside us, right within this present world of ours, and yet you cannot perceive their existence. Because your frequency is not right; your perceptual system does not allow you to tune your frequency to their frequency.
If you tune to that frequency, is there not a movie called something like I Have a Pair of Yin-Yang Eyes7? Many people with yin-yang eyes can see that thing: they can see the frequency of this world and also tune to the frequency of that world, both frequencies tuned together. Such a person is not a single frequency but dual-band, so they can see that thing. Normal people are not allowed to see it; you cannot reach that frequency.
We respond only to an extremely specific and limited range, only to specific frequencies, specific ranges. As I have said before, other realities, other worlds, other universes, other dimensions coexist with your own; they are both within you and outside you, both within this three-dimensional space, and yet you could also say they are not within this three-dimensional space; they coexist. At death, you merely cast off your physical costume and then align yourself to a different range of frequencies. After death you switch to another frequency and respond to the frequency of that after-death world, to another set of settings. While you are alive, that frequency is closed to you and cannot be perceived; after death, that perceptual system is opened, and the range is adjusted to that frequency.
With this viewpoint, you can perceive physical reality within a certain range; that is to say, after death you can still perceive some things of physical reality, within certain ranges.
However, there are indeed energy fields that separate them. But because our overall concept of space is so distorted, any true explanation becomes extremely difficult; because of our attachment to and distortion of the three-dimensional world, of this physical space, there is no way to explain to us why that after-death world both coexists with our present world and yet is separated from it in this way. But he tells you: there are separating energy fields between them, but that does not mean you cannot perceive things of the three-dimensional world; you can perceive a certain range.
For example, since your perceptual mechanisms firmly believe that objects are solid, that tables and stools are all solid, you therefore insist that something like space exists. But actually what your senses tell you about the nature of matter is completely wrong; here you must understand, it is completely wrong. Your senses tell you that this thing occupies space; a table occupies space, a box occupies space, you yourself also occupy space. This is what we see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands, and we think it is real. He tells you this is all wrong, completely wrong. What they tell you about the concept of space is likewise wrong. This wrongness is relative to the basic reality, to fundamental reality; for the three-dimensional world it is consistent and correct, but relative to basic reality it is wrong.
After Death and Space-Time
He said humorously: in out-of-body experiences while alive, you encounter many problems related to space. You fly, you pass through walls — these are all problems related to space. After death you will encounter the same. What does that mean? Your limited cognition of the three-dimensional world and your cognition of the space after death — you can experience this during out-of-body experiences, and what you experience at death is the same. So in these episodes — that is, in these episodes after death — the true nature of space and time becomes evident.
For example, after death, passing through space requires no time. In our present reality, walking from one end of a room to the other, from New York to Beijing, from Shanghai to Tokyo — all of this requires time; you cannot teleport there. After death, however, no time is needed; it is instantaneous movement — from one point to another, wherever you think of, you arrive, with no time required at all. At the same time, space does not exist in terms of distance either. When we speak of space now, it is always a concept of distance — a few meters, a few kilometers, several thousand kilometers, how many light-years. After death there is no such concept of distance; space and time are both illusions.
There are indeed obstructions, but they are all mental and psychic obstructions, not physical, temporal, or geographical obstructions. For example, the intensity of certain experiences is interpreted in your reality in terms of miles of distance. This example is not so easy to understand. From one state to another, the obstruction in between depends on your psychic and emotional intensity, and this intensity, when translated into our three-dimensional world, can be converted into a distance, so that you can understand it more easily.
After death, you may find yourself in a training center. In theory — not in your actual feeling, but in theory — this training center may be right in the middle of your family's living room. But the distance between you and your still-living family members — those sitting there thinking of you or reading the newspaper — has nothing whatsoever to do with space. They sit in the living room reading the newspaper, or sit there thinking of you, missing you, while you are in a training center within some energy field in the middle of that living room. The separation between you and them, if described by comparison, would be as if you were farther away than the moon; yet in practical terms, you may be right there in the middle of that living room.
Usually in theory, you can change the focus of your own attention — change the focus of consciousness, and by shifting your focus back from the training center, you leave that training center and can see your family members in the living room. But it is not something within your reach, because the distance between you is still unrelated to mileage. Although you can notice them and see them, between you there is an energy field — an energy field you cannot see, cannot perceive. Unrelated to mileage, the intensity of this energy field is something you cannot cross over; you cannot get past it. So since ancient times it has been said that yin and yang are separated by a boundary — this "boundary" — there are many ancient descriptions of this thing. Once you cross over, you cannot come back; of course some people can shuttle back and forth, but for ordinary people this energy field is something you cannot pass through.
His oral account here is finished. He said your friend has already fallen asleep — John has fallen asleep; do not continue, or if you continue he will fall asleep.
This is the last section of Chapter Nine, that is, the interpretation of the final part of Chapter Nine. We will have an introduction to Chapter Ten later.
注释与核实
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Source: Landau and Lifshitz, Quantum Mechanics (Non-Relativistic Theory), 3rd ed. (https://archive.org/download/landau-and-lifshitz-physics-textbooks-series/Vol%203%20-%20Landau,%20Lifshitz%20-%20Quantum%20mechanics%20-%20non-relativistic%20theory%20(3ed.,%201991).pdf) ↩
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Source: Wikipedia, "Ghost" (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-my/%E4%BA%BA%E9%AC%BC%E6%83%85%E6%9C%AA%E4%BA%86) ↩ ↩2
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Purgatory | Definition & History" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/purgatory-Roman-Catholicism) ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "that thing where Moses fought Allah"; upon verification, it should be "the one who wrestled with God was not Moses, but Jacob: Genesis 32:22–32 records that Jacob wrestled all night with a 'man' (the text calls him God) at the ford of Jabbok, was renamed Israel, and named the place Peniel; the episode of Moses contending with God does not exist in either the Bible or the Quran." (Source: Genesis 32:22–32; see also Wikipedia, "Jacob wrestling with the angel," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_wrestling_with_the_angel) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩