The "Guide" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter begins with humanity's early consciousness, explaining that in order to maintain physical survival, the ego consciousness chose specialization, focusing only on the present stimuli of the outer senses while screening out the past, the future, and other inner data; the cells still process past and future information simultaneously in order to maintain the body's balance. By this means it explains the sources of memory, the sense of time, and the concept of God, and points out that after material survival has become stable, the focus of consciousness needs to expand once again. Finally, it uses one of Jane's waking out-of-body experiences as an example to show that the probable past and the present are equally real in their existence, and it appends two sets of exercises suggested by the editor.
Key Points of This Chapter
- In order to maintain physical survival, early human consciousness chose specialization, focusing only on the present stimuli of the outer senses and screening out the past, the future, and other inner data.
- Cells are not limited by this kind of time distinction; they continue to process past and future information in order to maintain the body's balance in the present.
- The ego consciousness first needed to gain a sense of security within small groups, and from this arose exclusivity, tribes, and nations.
- After the problems of physical survival are solved, the focus of human consciousness must expand again and accept data that was previously ignored.
- Jane's conscious out-of-body experience shows that probable pasts and presents are equally alive.
Main Text
Background Before the Session
The content of this session began with material Jane produced after the previous session (Session 685). That material was placed in Appendix 5, and I suggest that readers who have the book take a look at Appendix 5 before continuing with this session. Jane finished the dictation at 9:40, and she sat quietly for a while -- from 9:10 to 9:45, the middle portion was spent discussing Jane's subsequent feelings. Although Seth did not enter into the discussion, this material did come through in the form of dictation, and Seth placed Jane's assessment from that subsequent feeling at the end of this session as an exercise. I will bring up this exercise separately, because I also hope that after everyone studies The "Unknown" Reality, you will not merely have grasped the theoretical knowledge -- we should also practice it ourselves.
Early Choices: Biological and Psychic Discrimination
Basically speaking, cellular comprehension transcends the time you recognize.
Cells transcend time -- he has said this before. But human consciousness, however, must depend on time; there is no way around it. As it developed along those lines, it made use of various methods of biological and psychic choice and discrimination.
That is, when your human consciousness was choosing its own line of development, what did it use? It used various methods of biological and psychic choice and discrimination.
What are biological choice and discrimination? They are at the cellular level. Do you remember? In the previous session, he said that cells have their own precognitive ability, and cells give their own past certain information based on their precognitive ability, imprinting it into the information of the past. Then the cells will develop according to the patterns given to them by future cells. Although your present point is suspended among all the possibilities of past and future as a support, still -- to say it again -- rather than saying your present is determined by the possibilities of the past, it is more like it is determined by the possibilities of the future, though of course both have an influence on it. This is on the biological side.
What about the psychic choice? The psychic choice refers to the level of the units of consciousness at the very bottom layer of the cells -- at the level of the gestalt of consciousness formed by the units of consciousness. That is to say, at the level of that gestalt of consciousness, his inclinations, or what he considers meaningful and important, take precedence in his choices. So the development of our consciousness has these two tendencies, and he makes choices and discriminations along these two directions.
This is the line of development of consciousness, but what he is saying -- this is one layer of meaning, and his words always have several layers of meaning. The second layer of meaning is that he is talking about the development of human consciousness, meaning how we humans, from our birth -- from the earliest consciousness of humans in ancient times -- how that ego consciousness, human consciousness, came to be. Here it refers to the conscious mind that we can now perceive, that is, the ego consciousness, the consciousness we ordinarily talk about. How did this consciousness come about? It also developed along a clear timeline, meaning that from the perspective of human history, there was a process of ego consciousness developing from nothing to something, from small to large, from weak to strong, and it came about along a timeline.
So how did it develop? It likewise made use of biological and psychic choices. What does the biological choice look like? For example, right now, biologically speaking, a big tiger appears in front of you -- if you do not make a choice, if you do not take action, you will be eaten by the tiger. At this moment your consciousness must act: either turn and run, or fight it. If there is a group of people, then certainly the choice is to fight it; if you are alone, running is better. Of course, if you have the ability of Wu Song, then you could also fight it for a while, and perhaps you might even kill it. This is the biological influence on the development of consciousness.
What about the psychic influence? The psychic influence is that you yourself have an inner knowing of this past, present, and future -- your inner self knows. When you know at this inner psychic level, how do you choose the direction of your consciousness's development? Do you lean toward the psychic -- able to transcend time and space, able to disregard the tiger in front of you and develop on the psychic level? Or do you develop on the biological level? So he makes use of both, of both of them. As for which side is emphasized, sometimes this side, sometimes that side -- we will see this in the later content. So this one sentence of his has two different meanings and understandings.
The Birth of Memory and the Earliest Confusion
And when, in historical terms, man became aware of memory, and in your terms, when he looked back upon the past as a past, he might confuse that past with the present.
From a historical perspective, man began to become aware of memory. What does this mean? In the earliest period of humanity, man began to feel aware of his memory -- he could recall the things he had experienced yesterday or the day before. But in our terms, in early humanity, when he looked back upon the past as a past, he might confuse the past and the present; he could not tell them apart.
Why could he not tell them apart? You have to go back to the very beginning. From the cellular level, it transcends time and space. So in the earliest humans, when he had memory, and that memory vividly surfaced in his mind, he could not distinguish between the past and the present -- to him they were all vivid, living sensations. This is what makes him different from us modern people.
Beyond that range, however, vivid memories with intimate psychic validity might compete with the brilliant focus he must now have.
What does this sentence mean? It means that in the process of his remembering, those sensations were indeed vivid, living memories with psychic validity. Why are they valid on the psychic level? Again, go back to the beginning -- because cells have no concept of time. So at that time, when time had not yet been intensified to a certain degree, and the ego had not been intensified to a certain degree, his vivid experiences and memories of the past would compete with the focus of consciousness that he must have in the present moment before his eyes -- that is, the brilliant focus -- the two of them competed with each other. That is to say, he could not distinguish yesterday's events from today's events; he was somewhat in a daze.
This is talking about early humanity, when the ego consciousness had not yet been perfected. The title of this earlier section is the early consciousness of humanity, so you must understand this point.
Though the past was actually as immediate, as living and creative, as the present.
In terms of feeling, the past was as immediate, as living and creative as the present. This is very normal, because the past also exists within probabilities, and it is also real, living vividly in the present. Because from the present point, you can return to the past and enter into that point of the past; this is actual and real.
Man, however, made certain adjustments on several levels.
That is, in reality it is like this: from the present point, the past is also alive and also truly exists. But we humans made adjustments to it on several levels. Why make adjustments? How were the adjustments made? He focused on a clear distinction and separated the experiences of the past and the present.
In this process, when he repeatedly could not distinguish past from present, when he repeatedly suffered losses, repeatedly fell into traps, repeatedly faced danger, he discovered: I must separate past experiences from present experiences. Although both are living and real -- that "living" refers to the cellular level, and the realness of the sensations is equally real -- the wolf he encountered yesterday and the black bear he encounters today feel equally real to him. But the method of dealing with a wolf and the method of dealing with a black bear are certainly different. So sometimes he treated a grizzly bear as a wolf, and then he might have overestimated his own abilities. I use this example so that you can understand that in that ancient period, people discovered this would not work; he had to separate them, he had to separate the past from the thing before his eyes in the present.
The Necessary Choice of Specialized Consciousness
As your particular kind of consciousness developed, it began to intensify selectivity, to focus clearly upon a small range of activity while blocking out other data.
Which particular kind? It is our present ego consciousness. The ego consciousness that we humans have now developed is one of our choices. We chose to develop this consciousness, and we chose to ignore that state of consciousness that could simultaneously live in the past and the future. In other words, we chose one mode of consciousness to develop and gave up another mode of consciousness.
But the thing we gave up does not mean that we do not possess it in terms of hardware; we do have this ability. In terms of technology and hardware, we fully possess it; we simply have not chosen it. This is a choice in the development of humanity, or the development of human civilization. Just as your development has many possible versions, human development also has many versions. In the version of this world that we are currently living in -- this version of the Earth -- we did not choose that kind of historical development of consciousness; we chose to develop our ego consciousness.
This was necessary, since the manipulation of that particular kind of body, of physical existence, required immediate physical response to stimuli that were present at hand.
Because physical existence requires this. You cannot fail to distinguish the danger before your eyes; you must respond immediately to the situation in front of you; you cannot remain immersed in last night's moonlight or in that kind of feeling while ignoring the danger before you. No matter what kind of stimulus it is -- dangerous or happy or anything else -- you must respond immediately.
As consciousness made itself familiar with earth experience, this selectivity and specialization therefore represented a pertinent method.
See, this is very interesting: consciousness had to make itself familiar with earth experience. What is earth experience? It is the experience of the three-dimensional world. Consciousness itself is not affected by time and space, but when it arrived on Earth, it had to be constrained by this time and space -- because it had a physical body, there was no way around it. The existence of this physical body made it inevitable that it had to become familiar with the Earth, had to take into account this physical body's inability to transcend time and space, and had to cooperate well with it.
This selectivity and specialization therefore represented a pertinent method -- that is, a very practical method. That is to say, in the process of consciousness adapting to the Earth, it gave up its ability of simultaneity -- that is, the ability to experience past, present, and future simultaneously, which is an ability consciousness originally had. But because of existence in the physical world, because of the need for the survival of its physical body, it had to adopt a pertinent, very practical approach. What approach? It blocked out the past and the future for the time being, looked only at the matter before its eyes, and placed its gaze only within such a short and narrow range -- we say "short-sighted," it could only be placed within the short-sighted present moment. There was no way around it; this could only be the most pertinent choice it could make. If it were not so, humanity would have died out long ago; humanity would not have continued to the present. So you cannot blame it.
The hunter must respond immediately to the situation at hand. In terms of time, the present animal must be killed for food, and not the past one.
He had to decide when and what kind of action to take to kill the animal and hunt it. In terms of time, the present animal must be killed for food, otherwise he would starve to death, and not the past animal. He had to distinguish which was the present animal and which was the animal in memory. That past animal and the one being seen now certainly both exist -- on the level of consciousness they are equally real. From the perspective of consciousness, there is no distinction between past, present, and future; they are all equally real. So the past animal exists just the same, but he cannot kill that past animal -- even if he killed it, he could not eat its meat. Because on the level of consciousness it is alive, but on the physical level it is no longer there.
So in order to satisfy the needs of life in the physical world, consciousness had to make such a compromise: to treat the past as memory and the future as a kind of imagination. There was no way around this.
Within man's range, physical action had to be directed to a highly specific area, for the body's survival depended upon such a specialization, such a specialized choice.
If our consciousness did not make such a specialized choice or such a specific choice, we humans would be unable to survive in the physical world.
This is very interesting. You see in Tibetan Buddhism, those two founders at the time -- when they were meditating in the state of dual practice, entering that very deep state, the bandits entered their home and they did not even know it; they were still in the meditative state, and as a result the bandits killed them. So the two skulls and the two bodies in the cross-legged meditative posture became a very classic totemic image in Tibetan Buddhism.
So you understand that when you truly live in that state and do not attend to the reality before your eyes, sometimes from the physical perspective you will face danger. Of course, from the perspective of pure consciousness, it does not matter whether you die or not, whether the physical body is present or not. But of course, from the perspective of the physical body, this certainly will not do. So you must understand that these are different perspectives.
Bypassing the Cells' Ignorance of Time
It had to bypass the cells' basic ignorance of temporal discrimination. At deeply unconscious levels, the neurological structure is far more capable of adjustment than it appears to be on the surface.
Cells have no concept of time. You have a concept; cells have no concept. Cells do not know what time it is now -- it is not that they do not know what time it is, but that they regard past, present, and future equally; they live in all of these places simultaneously. So if you want to focus only on the present and ignore the influence of the past and the future on you, you must bypass the cells' ignorance of time -- you must use your consciousness to bypass it, telling yourself that now is now, and the past is just a memory.
He says that at your deeply unconscious levels, the neurological structure is far more capable of adjustment than it appears to be on the surface. That is to say, in that underlying architecture -- already at the very deep unconscious levels -- it is not as you think, that you cannot control it or change it. What does your unconscious rely on to change? It relies on your conscious mind to change. If you have studied the 24-week Master Key system1, the training within it -- actually much of the training in the later stages works by using certain conscious beliefs to change certain unconscious thought patterns. This is very interesting; it is all this same method.
He says that at those levels you consider unconscious -- levels that you seem unable to control, unable to touch, even unable to change -- they can in fact be changed, and they can be changed considerably, far more than you imagine.
Certain adjustments were therefore made.
What adjustments? Originally, at the cellular level, the unconscious had no perception of time, but because your conscious level imposed this perception upon it, at the bottom of your unconscious -- your body, your cells are essentially indifferent to time -- but you changed it. Above this unconscious cellular level, within those deepest unconscious levels, it added a marker of time, so that from the deepest level you would know that time is meaningful to you, and that the present, the past, and the future are different. This is one of the most basic adjustments.
Basically, then, the neurological structure would respond to past and present data, so that physiologically speaking, this activity was inherently natural.
Our neurological structure responds to both the past and the present. What does simultaneous response mean? Let me give an example. When you recall a sad event from the past, the sensations in your body will still be felt as if you were there, as if you had returned to that historical scene. For example, when you think of breaking up with your boyfriend, or the day you were admitted to university, or the moment you earned your first pot of gold, the first time you had a figure like one million in your account -- that kind of experience feels different to you, but when you return to that past memory, you can still feel the feelings of that time. That is, your body still responds to that memory. What he means is that physiologically speaking, your nerves respond to the past, the present, and the future; this is inherent.
Within a body, that clarified new consciousness had to react quickly and accurately.
That clarified new consciousness refers to the consciousness that has blocked out the past -- that specialized consciousness, that is, the ego consciousness. It had to react quickly and accurately, so it focused only on one series of neurological systems -- what series? The series of neurological information of the present moment -- and blocked out all the neurological information of the past. This is how a change occurred in the early consciousness of humanity.
These neurological messages became more and more biologically prominent, so that man's consciousness rode upon them, or jumped upon them.
These neurological messages became more and more prominent biologically -- that is, on the physical level, on the cellular level -- and therefore man's consciousness rode upon them or jumped upon them. Here, neurological information is already physical information; do not be confused by the word "neurological": neurological information is already physical information. Although what it transmits within is some psychic information, its reactions on the physical level became more and more prominent. So our human consciousness rode upon this neurological information.
These particular pulsations, or messages, became the ones accepted biologically and psychically.
Neurological information is pulsating, like pulses. If you focus your consciousness only on it, then you have this sensation, you have this experience. When you have this experience, you focus only on this one particular kind of information.
Then they formed the lines of sense perception.
These pulsations or messages became the only recognized data.
That is, these neurological signals became the only data you acknowledge, the only officially recognized material, the only officially recognized information. And this neurological information is only a reaction of our physical body -- the body's reaction to the present moment -- while blocking out the body's other reactions to other information. What reactions? The body would also produce the same reactions to the past, but you have blocked them out.
You let your body produce only the most intense reactions, the clearest reactions, to the present moment. Toward memories of the past, there can be emotional reactions, but there should not be action reactions: when you recall a tiger from the past pouncing on you, you should not produce an action reaction; you can experience that feeling, and this is the function of memory for you. But in real life, when a tiger pounces on you, you must take action -- either climb a tree or fight it.
So you take the neurological information transmitted to you in real life -- that is, the sensations given to you by your five senses in the present moment, the present experience they bring -- and intensify it to a state where it is processed with the highest priority; its priority is the highest. Your body and your consciousness must respond with the highest priority to the signals your five senses give you in the present moment. The signals your five senses give you are neurological information -- your optic nerves, auditory nerves, olfactory nerves, tactile nerves; these neurological signals become the highest priority, and they become the only thing that is important, or the only thing you recognize as fact -- so they are the only recognized data. That is, what your five senses give you comes to you through neurological information.
Now you know how exhausting Seth is; he analyzes for you bit by bit how the human ego was formed, how this ego consciousness was formed, and how our current mode of consciousness came to be.
The Turn from Inner Existence to Outer Existence
And after being translated into sense perception, physical reality was formed.
After this information is given to you, it still has to be perceived by you; there is still a process of awareness, a process of perception. If you are not aware of it, it is useless. For example, a person in a vegetative state -- if a tiger pounces on him, he will not run. Why? Because he has no perception. Suppose it is a person with brain damage -- if a tiger pounces on him, he will not run either. Why? Because he cannot judge what this thing is; he cannot judge that this is danger, that his life is threatened.
So when the neurological signals are given to you, and then perceived by your brain, what you perceive is physical reality. The so-called real world we speak of came about in this way -- it is our consciousness doing a very narrowed, very specialized processing, also for the needs of human survival, the needs of real-life survival.
So our consciousness has become only the state it is now: it only acknowledges what the nervous system transmits to you, what is felt and sensed by your senses; we now only acknowledge this.
This choice gave an understandable reference line from inner existence to outer existence.
Seth's words here are so refined and academic. This choice -- what choice? The choice to experience only the sensations given to you by your five senses -- it is a reference line that can be understood as going from inner existence to outer existence. What does "understandable" mean? Because survival requires it, so the fact that you made such a choice is something we can understand. In other words, it is excusable; there was no way around it.
So from this time onward, human consciousness began to turn from inner existence toward outer existence. From the time when it could feel both inner sensations and outer sensations, it became one that only feels outer things. Because inner things could no longer be allowed to come out -- if they came out again, they would become mixed up with outer sensations, and they would compete for the focus of consciousness, and you would not be able to distinguish which was reality and which was a signal coming out from your inner self.
Although your outer sensations are also transmitted to the inner self through the nervous system and then expressed through the inner self, and on your nerves, on your body, on your cellular level there is no difference, still, because your consciousness at the unconscious level -- at the deepest level of the unconscious -- has already made a distinction: this is real, present, current; that is something in the memory of the past. Because at the very bottom of your consciousness, at the unconscious level, you have already made the distinction and the separation, later on you no longer feel that it was a distinction made after the fact. You think it is inherently this way; you think the world was always like this; you think this is reality, and anything that does not conform to this is unreal. And you have forgotten that this is a setting you made yourself -- that is, you adjusted the program to be this way yourself. The purpose of adjusting it this way is excusable; remember this firmly -- it is understandable.
So from this time onward, we moved from the inner world to an outer world.
It was cautious and exuberant, then.
Why cautious and exuberant? Because this matter is very delicate; once it is not said properly -- because what is it talking about? It is talking about the birth of human consciousness; the process it is describing is how human consciousness came to be. Here it is very cautious.
Other equally valid information was ignored.
That is, other information coming from the inner self was ignored. Is that stuff useful? Of course it is useful. Is it valid? Just as valid. It is just as valid as the information of your present moment. Although they are present -- that information is also there -- it was ignored by you.
Biologically, indeed, invisible.
Why? Because your nerves do not respond to it. What does it mean that the nerves do not respond? It means the information is there, right? It is there. The other equally valid information is there too, right? It is there. But if your nerves do not respond to it, it cannot produce images for you, cannot produce visual signals for you, nor produce any auditory signals, nor let your consciousness feel it or perceive its existence. Because your present consciousness has already specialized to the point that it only processes your sensory system—the sensory system of your five senses. Anything outside the five-sense sensory system, you have ignored and screened out. So even if those things exist, they will not trigger your response, and you cannot perceive their existence—because biologically you cannot see them, but on the spiritual level, on the psychic level, on the mental level, can you see them? Of course. But because your consciousness has already been modified, you cannot see them biologically.
Of course, you might say, can people who have undergone such study and training do it? Of course they can. Because your human body originally has this ability; this ability is innate—did he not say earlier that this is an ability you are born with, only you have narrowed it down, narrowed it to focus only on the frequency of the five senses?
The cells still respond to these otherwise ignored pulsations.
The cells still respond to it, but your consciousness does not respond to it. Because the cells are not controlled by time, since they need data from both the past and the future in order to maintain the body's balance in the present.
If, as mentioned earlier in Session 685, the body is an electromagnetic pattern, then the physical body is born out of this electromagnetic-pattern body. This electromagnetic pattern hangs within a web of probabilities, and at the point of intersection with time and space it is experienced as the physical body. It is connected with all the probabilities of the present, past, and future, and it can choose from the probabilities of the past and the future the parts it wants to actualize and experience in this timeline.
To make it easier to understand, it can be compared to a rapidly flickering light: each time the electromagnetic-pattern body flashes, it has chosen one probability; the probabilities not chosen by this reality are chosen in other probable realities. This analogy does not mean you exist on only one side; the actual situation is that all the probable versions of you exist simultaneously.
Because the flickering frequency is very high, you feel that your body exists continuously, just as the naked eye cannot see the flicker of a fluorescent lamp at fifty or sixty hertz per second2. Your choice "lights up" this electromagnetic pattern at a specific point of intersection in time and space, and you then experience it as a real physical body.
The Division of Labor Between Cells and Ego Consciousness
And at a definite point of intersection with the world, the necessity for conscious outward action was left to the emerging ego consciousness.
Your body's cells are responsible for processing information from the past and the future, drawing from that endless storehouse of past and future probabilities to maintain the balance of its own existence at this present point. Without the information from the past and the future, this present point cannot be maintained. Can you understand this? I hope you can. Because without the past and the future, the you of this present moment would be like a tree without roots, a source without origin; you would have no source, and you would be unable to maintain balance there.
But as for conscious outward action—that is, our outward feedback, our outward actions, our actions in response to external stimuli—to whom was this left? This was left to the ego consciousness. And responding to the information of the past and the future was left to the cells of the body, left to your bodily consciousness, which escapes the perception of the ego consciousness.
Although the cells need future and past data, and from that invisible tension form the body's present physical reality.
Although the cells need the data of the past and the future, and also must form the body's present physical reality out of that invisible tension. What does this mean?
This phrase "invisible tension"—I think it would be better to translate it as a kind of "tension" or "strain." If you translate it as "nervousness," I do not understand what the intention is there, but I understand that translating it as a kind of tension would be better. It means that in this present moment of yours, you simultaneously perceive the past and the future—the probabilities of the past and the probabilities of the future, all of them vividly existing. Remember, the past and the future are probabilities—they are probabilities, not a fixed past and a fixed future. If you were stuck in the middle, then there would be no point to it; then you would be like a puppet, like a marionette, existing within a certain destiny. That is not the case. The past can also be changed, and the future can also be changed; both are decided by you, chosen by the present you, picked and selected by you according to your present will, your present purpose, your present interest.
But what does this "invisible tension" refer to? It refers to the fact that when you are going to develop toward some future version of yourself, there is a certain tension within that process. That is, you must develop toward some future pattern—once you choose one of the future probabilities, you definitely have to make a choice. No matter which one you choose, you definitely have to choose a future pattern to develop toward. When you choose one of the future probabilities, does that future probability not form a kind of pulling force, or a developmental tendency, upon your present self? This is what we just said—it is better to understand it as a kind of tension.
At the same time, are you influenced by the past? Of course you are. But being influenced by the past does not mean what you understand in the three-dimensional world—that "your present is composed of the past." Those past events exist as probabilities, and you can also choose among them. Choosing a different past means your present feeling is also different—can you understand this? So whatever kind of present feeling you want, you can choose whatever kind of probable past. When you choose a probable past, you have in fact already chosen your present feeling.
So the feeling of this present point of yours, and the pattern toward which this present point is going to develop into the future—in the present state, you are simultaneously acted upon by the probabilities of the past and the probabilities of the future, both exerting force on this present point of yours. You are suspended there—Seth uses this word very well—you are pulled there by the tension from both sides, you are hung there. This is what it means here.
And the same kind of data may be a threat to the ego consciousness.
That is, that same kind of information, but coming from the past or the future—their information is just as important as the information of the present—but it will be a threat to your present information, to your ego consciousness. It will make you unable to distinguish reality, unable to distinguish the past, and unable to distinguish the future. Because if the information were equally important to you, you would treat some future events as the present, and you would also treat some past events as the present; you would become confused, unable to tell them apart. The ego may feel it cannot bear it; it really cannot bear it.
We say that some people in real life, in the three-dimensional world, if they have not undergone a certain amount of study or built up a certain reserve of knowledge, and they accidentally find themselves in such a state where they cannot distinguish past, present, and future, such a person will often go mad. If you meet such a person in reality—he really will go mad—why? Because his ego consciousness cannot process this thing; he has no way to handle it.
Of course, if you have a certain reserve of knowledge, a certain ability, and after studying you still want to pursue this ability, still want to experience this feeling of the past, present, and future existing simultaneously—the premise is that you know what they are; the premise is that even if you can simultaneously experience the present, the past, and the future, you can still clearly distinguish which is reality, which is the present, which is the past, and which is the future. In this process, you are in two states: on the one hand, you completely lack the concepts of time and space, you are completely immersed in that experience, you transcend time and space; on the other hand, in the process of transcending time and space, your sense of cognition of your own self, or your sense of self-identity, is not lost. Under these circumstances you are safe; otherwise you will become confused.
The Selection of Frequencies: The Body's Filtering
Within the physical structure, however, there is indeed information that seems to you to jump too fast or too slow, and no bodily response is allowed to it.
Within your physical structure, there is indeed some information that seems to you to jump too fast or too slow. It refers to the nerve impulses—those impulses may be very fast or very slow—whether fast or slow, he uses a vivid metaphor here: your body does not allow itself to respond to them.
Your body only allows itself to respond to nerve frequencies of specific impulses; anything beyond those nerve frequencies, you do not respond to. I use "frequency" here because jumping too fast and too slow can be understood as a kind of frequency—jumping fast means high frequency, jumping slow means low frequency. So you only respond to information of specific frequencies. Anything higher than this frequency, or lower than this frequency, your body does not respond to.
Why is this so? Because you have set it up this way. It was originally supposed to respond, but you have set it up so that it does not respond. Because if it responded, your body would fall into chaos, and your consciousness would also become confused.
In that way, the abilities of the cells are allowed their free flow.
What does "allowed their free flow" mean? It means this information—the information that is too fast or too slow, or of too high or too low a frequency—is simply allowed to flow away. The cells can perceive its existence, but the cells do not respond to it; the cells can know it.
As mentioned earlier, selectivity bypasses this kind of information.
What does selectivity mean? It means you choose what you want to experience, you choose what you are interested in, what you consider important. Because for the things you want to experience, you respond to them, and for those you have not chosen, you bypass them.
In the early stages of the development of human consciousness, humanity stood at a crossroads. At that time, we chose the mode of life and development centered on the physical world. We came to think that if physical life could not be secured, if humanity could not achieve a sense of safety and satisfaction in physical existence, then humanity's need for the inner world would be meaningless—because your physical body might no longer exist. Although we are in essence nonphysical beings, having come into this world we have a physical existence, and we still have to maintain it. So at that time, we chose the mode of thinking and development centered on solving immediate safety and survival problems; we did not choose the mode of development centered on the inner senses.
Your experience then began to be structured according to this physical orientation. However, the biological structure and the spiritual consciousness together chose the most comfortable sequence—the biological structure refers to the structure at the cellular level or the nervous system level, while the spiritual consciousness is on the nonphysical level; these two simultaneously chose a most comfortable sequence. In this sequence, the range of present activity brought about by spiritual cognition is supported by unconscious spiritual knowledge and other biologically invisible neural connections. That is to say, the perception given to you by the five senses, apart from the perception itself coming from the five senses, also has spiritual support at its foundation—there is support for your outer senses on the nonphysical level, and sometimes you do not even know this support exists. In this way, the unity of the biological and the spiritual is achieved.
The psyche knows itself, and is aware of its various parts. When the ego consciousness reaches a certain point of biological and spiritual ability, when present experience becomes broad enough, the ego consciousness will enter a stage where it can begin to accept more data. Previously you could not accept it, because you were not safe; you felt the information was insufficient, and the guarantee of survival was also insufficient, so you only focused on this physical world—because you had not yet solved the problem of food and clothing. But once these needs are satisfied, you have higher needs, and at that point you are already prepared to accept material like Seth's.
The psyche is now secure in its present focus. That is, humanity has already reached this stage—I mean the developed countries, or the countries that have already solved the problem of food and clothing. Then, in your terms, that focus has finally brought about an expansion of consciousness. Early humans did not need to expand their consciousness; early human consciousness was always expanding and had never been narrowed. It was we who narrowed it for the sake of survival, turning it into a focus only on the material level.
In your terms, time now includes a larger space. There is a good line in that song—in the past time moved slowly, carriages and horses were slow, and writing a letter was also slow; now that communication is developed and transportation is developed, the amount of information we can obtain and the range of space we can reach within the same amount of time have expanded enormously. In one day you can fly from China to the United States, and you can also live in different countries, different continents, different cultures, and different language environments—in the past this was unimaginable. Therefore it also includes more experience and stimulation.
From a historical perspective, in the past each individual could only perceive, at any given time, the events that occurred in their immediate environment, and therefore they could react immediately. Early humans only responded to the things around them—there were no newspapers, no media, no radio, no telegraph; they did not know about events in other countries or other places, and perhaps only learned of them after a very long time, and by the time they learned of them they had already become past events. So everything was within the range they could control; everything was within their grasp—because nothing went beyond their village. Ancient people lived with great confidence, great happiness, and great satisfaction.
The ego consciousness specializes in spatial expansion and physical manipulation in space; it specializes in objects. As a result, at any given time, a person is aware of events happening on the other side of the world—we can do this through our phones; in the past it was through newspapers and television, and now through phones it is even faster; events happening on the other side of the world are instantly placed before your eyes, and in the form of live broadcast. The immediate physical response he can make seems inappropriate on many occasions. For example, when you see a war scene happening in another country, your body will react, but that event is thousands of kilometers away, and at that moment your body's reaction is clearly inappropriate. The body's concrete action has lost its pure accuracy in time—it has its spatial accuracy; toward objects, toward those events, the body will react, and this is what the ego is best at. But what the ego is not good at is the control of time, because in essence our cells have no concept of time.
You cannot strike an enemy who does not live in your village—you see the enemy on television and become very angry, but he is not in your village, he is not even in your country; where should this anger of yours be vented? At that point, immediate bodily action in time no longer carries the same life-and-death factor as when a person is face to face with an enraged animal or an enemy.
In the same way, historically speaking, early humans lived in intimate contact with their families, kin, and tribes. In ancient times people lived in tribes or villages, and everyone in the village was related to everyone else through kinship—if not your cousin aunt, then your cousin uncle, cousin aunt, cousin younger brother, cousin older sister, cousin younger sister. In such a large clan family or tribe, there was intimate contact, and their love was easily expressed, because everyone was family. But now open your door and look—do you know your neighbor? Have you ever spoken to him? Do you know his name? The people you love—your parents may be thousands of kilometers away from you; you work away from home, and your parents are still in your hometown. As spatial expansion developed, loved ones often came to live far apart. Two people in love may also be far apart, perhaps only able to get together on weekends. In Beijing, because the city's traffic is so congested, some young people choose not to see each other from Monday to Friday, each living near their own workplace, and only get together on weekends. And sudden bodily responses—you suddenly want a hug, you want a caress—these receive no response, because the distance is too great.
These and other developments have already triggered changes in human behavior, and are urging it toward further changes in consciousness. We humans have once again arrived at a crossroads—just as back then we chose the change in consciousness centered on physical life and the outer senses, today we have again arrived at such a state of change. The ancient survival patterns and social patterns around us, which sought to produce immediate bodily responses directly through the outer senses, no longer exist; you must engage in deeper communication and conscious exchange with people who are out of step in this way—people who cannot be in the same time zone, cannot be in the same place—rather than achieving it through face-to-face immediate expression as in the past.
When material life is greatly abundant and satisfied, keeping your attention on material life has become superfluous. At this point human consciousness needs to make its next change, just like that change back then. We need to adjust our attention, our consciousness, from the mode that has focused on material life for thousands of years, once again toward paying attention to the spiritual and psychic needs and feelings on the nonphysical level. This is the turning point of our present era—humanity is beginning to gradually transition from material life to a mode of life centered on spiritual or psychic life, supplemented by material life. This is not merely a change in lifestyle or living habits; you also need to make adjustments in consciousness, otherwise you will not be able to perceive those things.
A New Version of the Present
Humanity now needs a broader, more expanded conception of past and future, not just staring at the present, in order to help him deal with a branch of the present that has already evolved through experience.
What does it need to help him deal with? A branch of the present that has already evolved through experience. In our current human life, this present has already evolved. Evolved through what? Evolved through human experience. How does experience come about? Experience comes from memory — that is, the previous alteration of consciousness, which gave humanity memory, and with memory our psyche could then project into the future. These earlier discussions of the development of consciousness won't be repeated here.
And the present that we have evolved through memory and through experience is our current version. At this point, we need to expand a branch of the current version — that is, another version. It is not this present that has matured through the evolution of experience; it is another kind of present, which means we are going to create a new version of the world.
The Ego's Interpretation of the Self
The accepted idea of oneself is an interpretation of the self by the ego.
Our accepted concept of ourselves is an interpretation of the self by the ego.
They are projected into concepts of gods and the universe.
Our interpretation of the self gets projected into concepts of the universe or gods.
They have a certain biological validity.
Can you understand this sentence? Why is it biologically valid? Because biologically, at the cellular level, you are not limited by time and space. Isn't the god we conceive of precisely something not limited by time and space? A god is something that can exist eternally and never die, and your cells are eternally existing and never dying — at least your cellular consciousness is like that too. So it is biologically valid — you project the ego into gods, into the universe, because your inner cells that make up your body, or these units of consciousness, are themselves cosmic existences of this kind. So it has biological validity; it is not arbitrary. When people say "I have divinity," they are not just making things up.
Because of the selectivity mentioned earlier — the selectivity that focuses only on the physical level — only one series of nerve impulses is accepted.
Only the nerve impulses associated with the outer senses are accepted.
And upon it, the ego-based self-knowledge rests.
What rests upon these nerve impulses? The ego-based self-knowledge — that is, our consciousness rests upon the nervous system transmitted by the outer senses. But this consciousness that rests upon the outer senses perceives only the ego, which is only a very small part of the self. Because the information obtained by the other senses, or the other nerve frequencies, is not perceived by it.
God Loves His People
There was a time when a god interpreted in this way was taken as a model of one self's selfish behavior toward another self.
There was a period when, in this way—that is, the way of projecting oneself as a god—because one's own biological nature inherently possesses the existence of divinity. He says, what is this process of interpreting oneself as a god? It is taking it as a model of one self's selfish behavior toward another self.
This sentence is very mind-bending, very convoluted, right? What he is talking about here is: one is the true self, and one is the ego—that is, the egoic self. A true self, and a model of the selfish behavior of the egoic self. Isn't the ego very selfish? It only considers the feelings of its physical body, without considering the needs of a larger self, a greater self. It blocks all of those out and only focuses on the needs of its physical body. Isn't that a kind of selfish behavior? Yes. And this selfish behavior, he says, is good, it is the most correct, and it was taken as a model.
Then he also projected it onto a god. What does "onto a god" mean? It means he projected that true self—the higher self, the whole self—into a god, and projected the small self into himself. Then what is the concept of god toward the small self? It is that god loves his own small self, god loves his people—why does god love only his own people? Isn't that very selfish? Of course he would also say that god loves all things, but he says he uniquely loves his own people. Open the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible3 and take a look: God uniquely loves his own people—he also loves all things, but he uniquely loves his own people. Why does he selfishly love only his own people, love his own people more? Here he gives you an interpretation.
In a world where the individual was confined within the space of a tribe or a clan, action was immediate and personal.
Actions were all reactions in the here and now. Because the environment was relatively small, the environment provided a framework—it was already determined within that environment, just within a village, or within a small tribe.
In it consciousness learned to deal with stimuli in a direct fashion, and it learned how to focus.
Consciousness dealt with stimuli directly, because everything was personal and immediate. In this environment it was easy to focus, because everything was right in front of you.
This necessary specialization meant that at any one time, emotionally or otherwise, he could only handle so much data.
This indicates that the ego consciousness, within a specific scope—for example, within a village—could only handle so much data. So at that time it was applicable.
But now, under the concept of a global village, the whole world is connected together. Through the internet, through cell phones, you are truly different from before. Before, you only needed to handle the relationships with the people in your village, but now what you are handling are relationships with people all over the world whom you do not even know. Sometimes when you post on various microblogs, when you look at the materials shared in various friend circles, when you chat with everyone in various group chats, some people you have never even met, and you do not even know their names—you are dealing with people from the entire world. This is completely different from dealing with a certain villager in a small village in the past. And the human processing capacity is limited; it cannot handle that much data. So in today's society, we have become very troubled.
Exclusiveness and Narrow-Mindedness
Different tribes were formed, small groups of people each doing things cooperatively on their own.
A small tribe is just a small group of people, and within that small group they do their own things.
And this meant that those on the outside were selectively ignored, considered to be strangers.
People in a tribe regarded all outsiders as strange and dangerous. You have seen many films like this — as long as someone is not from their tribe, as long as they are from another tribe, as long as they are an outsider, no matter where they come from, they are considered dangerous, considered enemies. This is quite normal. To put it more bluntly: the more someone comes from a small place, the more narrow-minded and exclusive they are, the less able they are to accept other outside things, outside ideas, and even outside people. Their sense of territoriality and exclusiveness, or their sense of discrimination, is very strong.
For example, people from Zhang Village will discriminate against people from Li Village, and people from Li Village and Zhang Village together will discriminate against people from another township, and these two townships together will discriminate against people from another county, and this county together with that county will discriminate against people from another city, and then they will discriminate against people from another province... and so on upward. The smaller the pattern of your life, the more exclusive you are, the stronger your regional identity — I am from such and such a place. As long as someone is not of his own kind, he instinctively rejects them. The reason for this is that he has seen too little, his horizons are too narrow. To put it harshly, he has not seen the world. People who are exclusive in this way are all people who have not seen the world, and the less they have seen of the world, the more exclusive they are. It ranges from one village going to war with another village, to one province discriminating against people from another province, to even larger conflicts between southerners and northerners, and upward it grows more and more — I will not go on, but you should understand in your own heart that when you have this exclusive mentality, you should remember what I said: although it sounds harsh, it is because you have seen too little that you have such exclusive thoughts.
At that point, consciousness could not handle focused attention while at the same time experiencing the powerful sense of unity with other large groups.
Because the amount of information is too great. When you cognize too much, you cannot focus your attention. You cannot maintain a concentrated sense of self-awareness while at the same time having a powerful feeling of connection with a very large group of people. In small tribes and small villages this is possible, but when you reach the larger modern scope, you can no longer do it.
The Significance of Grouping
He is struggling for this process of individualization—he is still in the process of forming the self. In the process of forming the self, he cannot be in too large a group, because the self would get lost. But in a small group, he can maintain the self. Only after he has maintained the self can he possibly enter a larger group.
So you see, no matter how large a group is, it requires you to divide into subgroups within it. For example, in an army, a corps is divided into several divisions, a division is divided into brigades, a brigade is divided into regiments, a regiment is divided into battalions, a battalion is divided into companies, a company is divided into platoons, and a platoon is divided into squads—a squad has only about ten people. These ten people are a small group, right. Of course you could say it is for the convenience of command, and that is true. But besides the convenience of command, there is a deeper meaning: it is also a process of forming self-identity and self-consciousness. If it were not like this, can you imagine what would happen? If you were thrown into an army of tens of thousands of people, without being divided into various detailed organizations, and you were just one member of this team of tens of thousands, you would get lost the moment you entered.
And this process of individualization is dependent upon the individual cooperation of each person.
That is, in the process of individualization, when you are forming an independent self and personality, you need to cooperate with each person in order to accomplish it together. You cannot do it alone, and you cannot do it with too many people at once.
As the self learns to feel more secure, its cooperative tendencies expand.
When the process of individualization has been completed, and he already feels secure in himself, only then can he expand into a larger group. If he has not yet matured in a small group, and the process of individualization has not yet been completed, he will not seek cooperation in a larger group, because he has no sense of security.
So much so that the formation of nations becomes possible.
So what he means is, from the perspective of human development, how nations came into being—it is because the self's sense of security was assured, and the self's sense of identity was maintained, that he then dared to form larger groups. And at present the largest is the nation.
Inevitably, however, that self-consciousness will produce a reality in which it will eventually need to accept other data and information that at first it had to ignore.
In this process, inevitably, he must begin to produce a reality—what kind of reality? It is the information he previously ignored, the information he did not accept, the information that did not come from the five outer senses—he must begin to accept it now. Why? Because at this point he has already lost the environment in which he could make immediate responses to information within a small group; he no longer has that environment as support. When he faces a larger group, he must have such a new reality to ensure that he can accomplish it; he must make a change—the feeling is no longer the same as when he was in a village.
Beyond Official History
Up to this point, I have been speaking in terms of the history as you understand it.
He says all of this has been spoken from the perspective of your human official history so far, that is, from the perspective of your human historical development so far.
But history is merely the official line of stimuli that you have accepted.
The history you currently understand is only one version among your many histories, but you consider this one to be the only real version. And the other possible versions of history, you do not recognize, you do not consider them official. "Official" means acknowledged, acknowledged by everyone, only then is it called official. Later on in this book he will give a clearer explanation, explaining those other versions.
When ego-based consciousness expands to include the greater portion of the data it has thus far largely ignored, then practically speaking, it will experience a new identity and recognize a different self.
When the ego consciousness begins to pay attention to the information it previously screened out or did not notice, this ego discovers that it has a new self. When it previously focused only on the physical level, the self it identified with depended only on physical sensations and physical senses. When it begins to pay attention to that nonphysical information -- that inner information, intuition, inspiration, or spiritual inner information -- its sense of identity will change, it will no longer identify with the original self, it will discover a larger self.
His concept of godhood will undergo major changes, and so will the amplitude of his emotions, and his concept of deity will also change. Your heritage includes far, far, far richer qualities of love, but your ideas of yourself and of godhood have severely limited these.
You have limited love.
For example, you often seem to hate those who hold different beliefs from yours, and you have also committed cruel acts against others in the name of religion and in the name of science.
I will not give examples of this.
That is because your concepts of the limitations of your own nature make you afraid of your emotions. For instance, you often fear that love will overwhelm you.
Here he is giving an example. When you begin to accept the identity of a larger self, your concept of deity will also change, the amplitude of your emotions will also change, the scope of your love and the richness of your love will also change, and your understanding of love will also change. Previously you only loved people of the same kind as you, people of the same belief as you. After you have a deeper realization, your love expands, and you will no longer be confined to those old rules and restrictions -- you will not say I only love a certain kind of people, a certain type of people, people from a certain region, people from a certain province, people from a certain area, people who speak only a certain language, people who believe only in a certain religion. All of this is the narrowness of love, the limitation of love.
Afraid of Being Overwhelmed by Love
What does "love overwhelming you" mean? Can you understand what he means by that? It means you want to have an identity of your own, and your own identity has definite boundaries—there is a sense of self, and then there is a circle of your own, a circle of life, with what is inside the circle and what is outside the circle. You are afraid that this kind of true love, unconditional love, this kind of great love, will make you lose your sense of identity. When you love all people, you will find that you no longer even know who you are.
You used to say, "I am a citizen of a certain country, I am a person of a certain nation, I love my country, I am a patriotic person"—that is an identity. Now if I ask you to love all the people of the world, even to love the people of hostile countries, would you worry that your own identity has been lost? You would think, "Who am I? What country do I belong to?" I give this example so you can understand what it means to be overwhelmed by love—that is exactly what it means. That is, in the presence of this kind of great love, if you do not possess a higher level of consciousness or a higher state of consciousness, you will worry about losing the self. That is what it means to be afraid of being overwhelmed. But will that happen? Certainly not. What gets overwhelmed is only the small self.
When you are still so concerned with protecting what you think of as the boundaries and integrity of a self, as a species you have actually reached the point where you begin to deny your own larger reality.
You always want to protect one self—but are you really one self? You are not. You are a group of selves; you are a being of multiple personalities. So why do you insist on protecting this present you? Because you only recognize this you, and you think the other yous are not you. So when you are still protecting the boundaries of this one you and maintaining its integrity, you begin to deny the other parts of your reality.
But all of this is within your probabilities.
This denial is also within your probabilities. This acknowledgment of only one self is also within your probabilities.
The Experiment We Conducted
Humanity is engaged in an experiment.
We humans are like conducting an experiment. We have simply tried this kind of thing -- saying I only acknowledge my physical body, and I do not recognize anything else. This is a kind of experiment. From Seth's perspective, this is us humans making an attempt, experimenting with how narrow our consciousness can become, how restricted it can get.
In those terms, when you learned physical manipulation, your physical survival was at one time dependent upon a narrow focus.
From the perspective of this experiment, when you were learning how to manipulate your own body, you placed the focus of your consciousness in a very narrow place.
Now the success of that manipulation makes an enlargement of that focus necessary.
But the manipulation is already complete -- our manipulation of the body has become more and more mature, more and more stable. We have created such an abundant material civilization and material society, such great material plenty, which proves that we have manipulated very successfully. Once the manipulation is done, you then begin to enter into the greater self, and this focus of yours must expand from only paying attention to the material world to beginning to pay attention to those nonphysical worlds.
You are to enter into a new awareness of your own greater existence.
Because there is no point in continuing to focus on material life -- everyone can be satisfied now, so why keep focusing on it.
And a corresponding recognition of neurological activity.
When you begin to awaken, you must have a new recognition of neurological activity -- that is, how the five senses perceive.
That is now only briefly sensed by certain individuals.
For example, like Jane. Jane belongs to those certain individuals, and she can only sense it briefly -- in a day she can only have, or in a week only about two times, the experience of communicating with Seth.
And that neurological activity is something we humans were not familiar with before, or have not tried before, but it exists within the heritage of your physical bodily structure.
Just like Jane, every one of you has this ability. This ability has been inherited in our bodies all along. Our bodies have this ability.
Take a Break
Now I do not think you can reasonably be expected to take more notes without a break, so I will let you take one.
He said too much, so he let Jane take a break.
Then at 11:26 -- again there was that feeling of "I could keep taking notes indefinitely," just able to keep writing. And the combined entity of Seth and Jane clearly seemed able to continue as well. Jane's trance state had already lasted one hour and forty-one minutes, but even so, she came out of it quickly.
As soon as Jane came out, she said that since Seth began this book, her trance state had changed. Once on track, Seth would just keep talking, and I did not want to change him or stop him. He talked for one hour and forty minutes at a stretch, and I think that is a remarkable development.
But you must understand that if you think you know something that no one else knows, you will be afraid of being called insane by the rest of the world.
You know some things that only you know, things others do not know, but when you still have to speak them out, you worry about whether people will treat you as a lunatic. However, Seth is a remarkable organizer. It is as if behind the sessions an enormous amount of work has already been done. Jane said the good thing is that Seth is a reliable person. Before transmitting this material, he organized all the content, and the material that came through was so orderly and so systematic that it would not make people think I am a lunatic.
Exercises in This Book
Now here, throughout the entire book, there will be passages dealing with exercise units.
In this book, Seth quite unusually lays out the exercises separately on their own; this book has many exercises in it.
There you can see to some extent how you can actually experience certain of these concepts, and at least receive a hint as to their application.
He says that in these exercises, you will be able to experience certain concepts -- the ones he mentioned earlier -- and then at least they can give you some hints. When these hints are given to you, although you may not necessarily get that experience right away, at least the hint plants a seed at the level of your consciousness. Without your noticing, at some point in time you may suddenly be able to feel this sensation, and at that moment you will be able to recognize it: "Oh, this is that thing, this is it." If he had never given you this hint, sometimes you would not know what it was.
One of Jane's Lucid Dreams
What is this exercise? Actually, it was a lucid dream that Jane herself had. At the beginning of this session, he had already given a brief introduction.
In a waking state -- remember this, waking -- Ruburt found himself in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he grew up, in what seemed to be a kind of psychic projection.
Everything was gray, and the most intense sensory data lacked the exact replication of immediacy.
That is, the replication of the most intense sensory data was lacking -- the intense sensory data was lacking, not so intense, gray and dim.
The vision was clear, but it was patchy, not continuous, very selective.
Selective, patchy.
However, the sense of motion was the strongest sensory part.
Although the vision was relatively unclear, the feeling of motion was very clear.
Ruburt was on the one hand bodiless, and on the other hand, he also perceived some experiences through the eyes of the baby in the baby carriage.
This feeling was very strange: Ruburt had no body, as if floating in the air, watching himself in the baby carriage, but he could also simultaneously feel the self in the baby carriage as an infant, the bumps and vibrations as the carriage was pushed over the ruts and ridges in the road -- he could feel all of it. He had two kinds of sensations at the same time -- remember this for now, it is a very magical thing.
He saw quite clearly a specific intersection, for example a certain stretch of sidewalk at York Street and Chinatown, and his attention was caught by a focal point, because there was a slope, a slanted dirt bank and then the sidewalk, and a sense of motion, a jolting sensation, as the baby was pushed up onto the sidewalk.
And at this time he was looking at this from the baby's perspective, and from the baby's viewpoint, the slope on the sidewalk was immensely huge.
Probable Selves
On the one hand, that child was himself in the past; on the other hand, that child was Ruburt in the past, while Ruburt, in turn, was a probable future self within that past.
Who is Ruburt? Ruburt is that little baby -- that past self -- a probable future self at that past time. That is to say, Jane at this moment and that little baby are not in the same probable time phase; they are in two time phases. The present Jane goes back to look at that little baby, and the two of them are in two different parallel worlds, in two different probable time phases. Because that little baby later -- you cannot put it this way -- the present Jane is one probable branch of that little baby, rather than that little baby later growing up and becoming Jane. Jane and that little baby are not in the same space-time; the two of them later separated, even though that little baby is Jane's childhood.
From the standpoint of Ruburt's official mental focus, and from the standpoint of that neurological, accepted present, that past environment must have been off-center or blurred.
What does this mean? From the two standpoints of Ruburt's mental focus and his biological focus -- whether speaking spiritually or physically -- that past environment should have been off-center and blurred. Why? Spiritually speaking, it is another probable space-time; physically speaking, from the neurological senses, it is also a sensation in another space-time. That is to say, when Jane went to feel the bodily sensations of her infant self in another parallel world, that sensation was bound not to be as clear and accurate as a sensation within the same space-time.
So what Jane saw was patch by patch, and gray -- this gray was not vivid and clear. She was looking at this world through the little infant's angle of view. Was what the little infant saw gray? Of course not. But because the connection was being made between two parallel space-times, that information was not in focus; it was necessarily out of focus. So the information lacked detail, and Jane could only feel that kind of vibration in the baby carriage, and could not feel much more than that.
Only by bypassing the official, accepted neurological activity could he experience such an environment.
He visited a shop that was not at that location, and here the sense data were slightly clearer. He had no conscious memory of the interior of the shop, yet in that instant it was vivid to him -- the black, oiled floor, covered with sawdust, and even the smell was still there.
He traveled to the public grade school where he had read in the third grade, where children came out to play at recess, and felt himself to be one of them, while throughout the whole experience he knew he was an adult, retracing that adventure.
What adventure? The out-of-body experience.
What he means is this: he could feel that as a little infant he had turned the street corner and then had already returned home -- pushed home by his mother, as a little baby. But he also continued, as this Jane, during the out-of-body state, leaving the infant's line of sight, and began strolling alone on the street. While strolling, he turned into a shop, but that shop did not exist in that probable space-time. That sensation, too, was not the little baby's sensation, because in that probable time phase, in that version of Jane's process, the little baby had not grown up in that neighborhood; not long after, his mother took him and moved away. So that shop, for that little child, was nonexistent -- you cannot say nonexistent; rather, it was his future, something he had not experienced. But Jane could cross over it.
Splicing Two Worlds Together
Very interesting. Such a simple out-of-body experience contains a great deal of information. He could see the elementary school he attended, his third-grade self inside it, and then he could know that at this moment he was still an adult, looking at his third-grade self. And that third-grade self and that segment in the school were not in that probable reality either -- in that probable reality none of these things existed. So the remarkable thing here is this: Jane traveled from this probable parallel space-time into that parallel space-time, but she did not fully experience it within that parallel space-time; she also experienced something that should not have existed in that parallel space-time. In other words, Jane spliced two different parallel space-times together.
He had no physical support, moving from one place to another, wandering everywhere.
He was a consciousness traveling.
In the same environment now existing, alternating with Ruburt's present, and as vivid as his present.
In the place where he was out of body, the feeling of being out of body was just as vivid.
But from his viewpoint, it was a probable past.
From Ruburt's viewpoint, it was only a probable past.
Then he and the infant of his own with whom he temporarily identified were now merely in an opaque state, and not directly sharing common experience.
This passage is again very convoluted -- he listed the English original because it was too convoluted; actually this sentence is not complicated, and once translated it is not complicated. It is just that Ruburt and the infant of his own with whom he temporarily identified -- remember, temporarily identified -- that infant was actually not the him in this space-time, so he was temporarily identifying with it; they were merely in an opaque state, unable to directly share common experience.
Neural Sharing
Now this is not simple, this is not simply a kind of reverse narration.
What does this mean? This is not a recollection of memory — this Ruburt was not going back into memory to recall the process of his childhood. He was entering, from this present space-time, into one of his probable parallel worlds, a probable reality. In that probable reality, he saw another possible version of his childhood — that child grew up in that world, and did not grow up in this probable world of Ruburt's. Ruburt grew up in this probability, and the two of them grew up in different parallel space-times.
But Ruburt touched upon a certain point of intersection where the two shared a neural attunement.
Ruburt actually opened up a passage between these two parallel space-times.
He and that child were both familiar with the baby carriage, and the sidewalk, and the mother pushing it, and the feeling Ruburt sensed of himself as that child being carried into the room.
He made that feeling into a sharing — a neural sharing, that is, a sharing of the senses. He touched upon a sensory sharing between the two of them, meaning that what that child felt, he could also feel; what the child could see, he could also see; the bumping motion the child felt as the baby carriage was pushed along, he could also feel; the feeling of the child being carried into the room by his mother, the feeling of being held, he was also very familiar with. The two of them were sharing these outer sensory perceptions.
He vividly felt the interior of the house and the stairs.
These were all things he felt as an infant in a parallel space-time, or in a probable space-time, and he could share in them as well, because the two of them were sharing.
He knew that the mother then went down the stairs to bring the baby carriage in as well. But when he tried to perceive this, it moved, because the movement became too fast.
But he wanted to go and see his mother bring the baby carriage in. At this point he was obviously already in the room, and his mother had gone outside to get the baby carriage. When he wanted to look, when he wanted to perceive it, the movement was too fast — what does movement refer to here? It refers to the movement of consciousness, not physical movement — the infant could not move. He was referring to the movement of this infant's consciousness. This infant's consciousness moved too fast, and then the figure of his mother became so completely blurred that he could no longer follow him — he could no longer follow that infant's consciousness, nor could he follow that infant's perceptions. The blurring of vision means that the infant's neural sharing, that is, the sharing of the visual nerves, had already terminated on Ruburt's side of the picture. He did not keep up, because the consciousness moved too fast.
He then felt confused, and found himself walking into the store around the corner, and then consciously walking around the block and into the school.
He went to the school again.
The school and the store were not in the infant's experience.
Because in that infant's probability, the family later moved away.
The blurring of the earlier activity was the result of mental confusion.
The earlier blurring of vision was caused by confusion in the neural transmission. Why the confusion? Because he was switching between two space-times. That is to say, in the process where he wanted to see the infant, wanted to see his mother bring the baby carriage in from outside, his vision suddenly became blurred, and in that process he could no longer see clearly. Then he began to walk out of the house, onto the street, around a store, and so on — and at this point, he had actually already switched to another parallel space-time. Because in that infant's parallel space-time, this store was something he had never experienced at all. In other words, at this point he was no longer using that infant's experience, or that infant's neural senses, to experience — his nervous system had already become confused, and what he was using at this point was no longer that infant's sensory system to perceive. What he was using now was the out-of-body perceptual system of Jane in this present parallel world, who had crossed over into that parallel world. Can you understand? At this point Seth says his sensory nerves were confused.
And Ruburt unknowingly shifted into a material, contiguous environment that was still in the same one.
Ruburt himself did not feel anything unusual, but he had already shifted onto a material street. That street still existed materially, but that materially existing street, that store, that school — for that infant in the parallel world, these were all things he had never experienced. So how did Jane perceive them? Jane perceived them using his out-of-body senses. So there had already been a switch of the nervous system here — originally he was using that infant's sensory system to perceive, and now he was using his own out-of-body senses to perceive. These are two different systems, and he was switching between them.
That was meaningful to him, but it was not shared by the infant's future experience.
To that infant, all these things were unknown. It did not matter, the family had long since moved away.
The Past Is as Alive as the Future
You must understand that your own past is as alive as your future.
He emphasized this again.
Why does he say this? Because for that baby, these things are the future, and for this Jane, they are her past. He says whether it is a past like Jane's, or a future for that baby -- because that shop is Jane's past, while for that baby it is a future that never happened, a future that could not have happened -- what he means is that from the baby's perspective it is the future, and from Jane's perspective it is the past, but it exists vividly. No matter how you look at it.
But your probable pasts and presents exist in the same way.
He emphasized again that your probable pasts and presents exist in the same way, and you simply accept them as the experience you recognize.
This session is about Ruburt's (Jane's) own out-of-body experience. Seth says that as part of Ruburt's work on this book, he has only just begun to experiment with consciously recognizing probable material -- Ruburt is consciously beginning to experiment with contacting that probable material, and consciously accepting the kind of experience that, according to the choices already discussed, would normally be screened out. What kind of experience gets screened out? Probable selves, probable space-time, probable realities -- these are all things that our human consciousness normally forbids itself from contacting. Yet Jane is trying to experiment with contacting those things that are normally forbidden by our human consciousness.
After our last session, in the sleep state, she allowed her consciousness to expand enough so that she became aware of information and experience that are usually automatically censored through mental or neurological habits. After the previous session, Jane began consciously and actively to contact the information that her own mind and nerves normally filtered out automatically.
In this exploration of consciousness, Ruburt used the term "prejudiced perception," which is also an excellent term. Our current perception of the world is all this kind of prejudiced perception -- we only recognize one self, one past, one history, and this is all prejudice. Therefore, to put it that way, you prejudice yourself psychically, mentally, and physically. From a certain angle, you are prejudicing yourself in every aspect of body, mind, and spirit, and you have not reached a correct perception.
But in the sleep state, Ruburt instead became unprejudiced. Because after falling asleep, she actually became unprejudiced -- at least to a certain degree; you cannot say she was completely without prejudice, but she was without prejudice to a certain degree. So she contacted information that seemed unfamiliar, or outside the range of ordinary experience.
The Connection Between Time Theory and the Nervous System
Seth says that your theories of time are connected with your ordinary nerve impulses. Because our nerves need to transmit signals, time theory is closely related to the nervous system. To play with the idea of multidimensionality or probabilities is one thing, or even briefly to actually confront them face to face is another.
What does he mean? He means that although I have told you a great deal about multidimensional existence, probable selves, and probable realities, for you who use the nervous system as your primary means of perception, time and your nervous system are so tightly bound together. Under these circumstances, to play with and learn about multidimensional probabilities and multidimensional concepts is one thing; but to truly and actually face these probabilities is another thing entirely.
So knowing in theory and experiencing probable realities in practice are two completely different feelings. Therefore Ruburt felt frustrated, and she told Seth in very plain words that her consciousness could not contain the information she was receiving. Where did her frustration lie? She found that she could not fully accept that information, because that information came from multidimensional space-time.
Seth uses this example here to show that in theory you can easily understand probable selves and probable worlds, but when you truly face these probable parallel space-times, once you enter them you will have two kinds of perception, or you must maintain two states of consciousness simultaneously -- one is entering as an observer, but this observer is very strange, because at the same time you are also the future state of the one being observed. It is as if you enter as an observer, in an adult form, yet what you observe is yourself in childhood, and moreover a self in another parallel space-time. So Jane's original words were that her consciousness could not contain the information she was receiving.
When truly facing probable realities and multidimensional worlds, our consciousness still needs a certain amount of tempering and training; otherwise it is very difficult to process them.
The Relationship Between Seth's and Ruburt's Realities
Seth, like a good teacher, said humorously: "I take Ruburt's protest into consideration." Because Ruburt said she could not contact that multidimensional information. Later Ruburt wrote something, which was her conscious interpretation of the information she had received the previous night. If you have time, you can look at that manuscript -- she translated it as best she could in a linear way, translating the out-of-body experience into linear space-time terms.
Seth says:
I have my own existence, which is quite different from Ruburt's, yet I also have a reality connected with his psyche. Each of you has the same kind of connection with other more knowledgeable portions of yourself, or with your greater identity. (Session 686)
He says there is a connection between Ruburt and me, and in the process of this connection a shared reality world is formed between the two of us. But as Seth, I have my own reality world, and that reality world is different from Ruburt's world, and also different from the reality world formed when Ruburt and I are connected. It is like you and your higher self -- your higher self has its own reality world of existence, you have your own reality world of existence, and when your higher self connects with you there is a world of existence of that connection. These three reality worlds are independent of one another; although from a certain angle they interpenetrate, from another angle they are independent of one another.
These are three different realities, and they are independent in themselves. But he emphasizes that these realities nevertheless live within your psyche, and they are part of that unknown reality.
Seth continues:
I can obtain information that Ruburt, in his terms, cannot obtain.
Didn't Ruburt say earlier that she could not obtain that information? Because that multidimensional information was truly too difficult for Ruburt, beyond the capacity of her consciousness. Seth says: "I can obtain that information, and in other terms, he indeed -- from a certain angle Ruburt also received some information, only her conscious level did not receive it." And the same is true for you:
But you have been mentally, psychically, and biologically prejudiced against him, and so do not accept him. (Session 686)
That is to say, regarding the information Ruburt said she could not receive, Seth says he can receive it; and from a certain angle Ruburt did indeed receive it, but because there is prejudice on the three levels of body, mind, and spirit, she turned a blind eye to that information -- you cannot see it.
The Purpose of This Book and Its Invitation
But as a race, as humanity, you are ready to become more aware of your greater reality. You are ready to begin exploring the unknown reality, and to seek out its unknown features, and that is why Seth wrote this book to help you explore these unknown realities.
Some ideas in this book may disturb you, only because you have been trained to ignore them. (Session 686)
Some ideas in this book may make you feel very uncomfortable, very uneasy, and may even overturn your beliefs -- many times it is an overturning of our perception. The reason is actually that in the early days of humanity, when your consciousness was being formed, you deliberately ignored them, and they were always there.
However, you should also experience an acceleration of consciousness. You may feel that recently your consciousness is accelerating, and as you read it you will feel an increasing sense of familiarity -- at first you will feel it is very strange, very unfamiliar, very hard to accept, and then it will become more and more familiar. If you allow him, if you permit him:
The structure of the book itself will lead you into other levels of your own greater knowledge. (Session 686)
If you allow the concepts of this book to influence you, or if you can accept these concepts of this book, then the structure of the book itself will lead you into other levels that you did not know before, but where that knowledge actually already exists within you.
Post-Session Interlude: Jane's Fatigue and Adjustments
This session ends here, and it was a very long session. Next time, I will have some personal suggestions. Seth mentioned that Ruburt likes watching television programs, which is good for her, allowing her mind to rest. These dramas are her mental play, and for that reason they are very important.
This session went until 12:37 a.m. -- you see how late it went, from 9:10 p.m. all the way to 12:37 a.m. Then Seth said good night. Jane's trance state had been very deep throughout, and now she was so tired that her eyes were a little red. Jane was exhausted to this degree, and I feel as if I would not want to use my brain for two weeks -- she really was worn out. I imagine that if you, dear readers and listeners, have listened all the way through in one sitting, you are probably quite exhausted as well.
Seth did not say this in the session itself, but Jane told me that Seth said this: because of what she had received, for a while she should eat one extra meal each day, as a late-night snack, for example after the session. Also, she should do some exercise every day. Seth went on to say that in producing The "Unknown" Reality, she was not under any extra pressure, because this was what she wanted to do, but those simple physical activities would help her recover her energy.
After finishing The Nature of Personal Reality4 in July 1973, while preparing that book for publication, Jane and I often suspended our Monday and Wednesday Seth sessions, and so we developed the habit of watching certain television dramas on Wednesday nights. Since returning to the regular scheduled sessions for this book, we have been unable to watch them -- because the sessions are Monday through Thursday, with sessions on Monday and Wednesday, and on Wednesday nights the dramas could not be watched. Therefore Rob suggested moving Jane's Wednesday session to Thursday.
Many times after this session, Jane found herself dictating for The "Unknown" Reality in the middle of the night, simultaneously in a sleeping state and a non-sleeping state. So the fact that we can read the Seth material today -- it truly was not easy. You need to understand that Jane put enormous effort into this -- you see that even while sleeping she was still speaking the Seth material, in the middle of the night, sometimes asleep, sometimes awake. Whether asleep or awake, whether day or night, her mind never stopped, constantly transmitting the Seth material. So you can see that Jane truly gave everything she had to this matter, pouring all her energy into it.
Practice Suggestions
All right, this session ends here. This is also the first practice unit. In this practice unit, Seth did not point out what we should practice; what he described was Jane's own out-of-body experience -- what was described earlier was Jane's experience while awake. So what kind of practice should we do? Seth did not point it out. The following is only my personal suggestion; I think you can try it.
First practice: Take out a photo from one year ago, place it in front of your eyes, and then return to the scene when that photo was taken. Feel the feelings of that time -- see whether you can feel the emotions and the state you were in then, and even whether you can smell the scent of that time, or hear the sounds of the surrounding environment. This is a very simple practice, to see whether you can feel the you of that moment.
Advanced practice: Once you have become proficient in the first practice, I suggest you do the second practice -- take out a photo from ten years ago. Find it; seven or eight years is also fine, it does not have to be exactly ten years, just a photo from a longer time ago. Then repeat the previous practice. Once you are very proficient, take out photos from an even longer time ago, such as fifteen or twenty years ago, and do the same practice again.
This is the first set of practices, to bring you back to the state of that time. But this is a progressive practice -- you start with recent times, beginning with one year, then three years, five years, ten years, twenty years, gradually increasing, building your mastery of feeling and experiencing the more distant past.
Second small practice: Also start practicing from a short time ago, beginning with a photo from one year ago. What you are practicing is to assume that starting from that point in time, what changes did you make in your subsequent life? What probable parallel space-times, what probable realities occurred after this photo? Then follow that probable space-time and imagine -- if you lived in that probability you did not choose at the time, what would it be like?
What you chose at the time was certainly this present space-time, but there was a probable time track that you certainly did not choose; you only thought about it. Now think about what you would be doing in that space-time, what kind of you would exist in that probability. Start from the time of the photo, and from that time onward it branches -- one is the present life you chose, and one is the probable life you did not choose. Imagine how that one develops.
Then push the time further back, take out a photo from ten years ago and imagine a probable space-time, then take out an even earlier photo and experience it again. In this process, just as in the first set of experiments, in addition to imagining what happens in the probable space-time, try as much as possible to feel that probable you -- when you observe, what are the physical sensations, the auditory, visual, and olfactory information? See whether you can obtain some information. If you cannot, that is also perfectly normal; if you can, or even if it is just a very small fragment, a visual image, or something, you can try to strengthen the practice in that area.
These two sets of practices -- actually the first practice is to help the second practice, and ultimately it achieves the same effect as Jane's purpose. You can do them during meditation, or while awake; either is fine. You can also do them right after waking in the morning, or when you suddenly wake at four or five in the morning, or during a lucid dream -- at those times the effect may be better. It depends on your own situation.
The above practices are my suggestions for you, two sets of practices. If, after reading about Jane's process and then doing the practices I just described, you have any insights, you can share them directly in the comments below, or in the group, and we can discuss further.
Closing and Teacher Xiyu's Sharing
注释与核实
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The Master Key System, by Charles F. Haanel. ↩
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According to Mike's original words, it was "fluorescent lamps flicker at fifty or sixty hertz per second"; upon verification, it should be "traditional magnetic-ballast fluorescent lamps under 50 or 60 Hz alternating current typically flicker at 100 or 120 Hz, that is, twice the power frequency." (Source: Naomi J. Miller et al., Flicker: A Review of Temporal Light Modulation Stimulus, Responses, and Measures, 2023, https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/ssl-miller-etal-2022-LRT-flicker-review-tlm-stimulus-response.pdf) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩