Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 701

The "Reading 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 portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This chapter points out that the physical world is an outward projection of the inner world according to human desires, beliefs, and intentions, and that the conscious mind spans both inner and outer, determining how outer experience manifests. Externalization itself has unique significance, and worldly experience should not be denied. Using Einstein as an example, Seth explains that knowledge can be gained through alteration of consciousness and identification with the object of study, and offers an exercise for treating conscious awareness as a path and shifting the focus of consciousness; at the same time, he criticizes research methods that rely on instruments, charts, language, and the killing of living things.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The physical world is projected outward from the inner world according to human desires, beliefs, and intentions; the stance of the conscious mind determines the unfolding of outer experience.
• Every specific experience must be externalized in order to acquire its original, individual, and shared characteristics; the validity and purpose of worldly experience cannot be denied.
• Reality can be studied through alteration of consciousness and identification with the object of study; Einstein is one example of this approach.
• Treating conscious awareness as a path and shifting the focus of consciousness is changing the way consciousness is used, but consciousness itself has not changed.
• Relying on instruments, charts, language, and killing life to study reality will lead people away from true knowledge, and technology itself is not the answer.

Main Text

Opening and Theme of the Session

Before the session began, Seth made a little joke. He said we should speak softly, to keep Ruburt in a special state. Then he added humorously that we should not whisper either. After that, he began the formal content.

The Relationship Between the Physical World and the Inner World

The exterior nature of the physical world is connected with a multidimensional interior nature.

Here he is emphasizing again: our outer physical world is connected multidimensionally with the inner world. But that outer world rushes outward according to your conscious desires, beliefs, and intentions. The three words "rushes outward" are the key point. How is the outer world formed? It is formed by the inner world rushing outward according to our personal intentions, desires, and beliefs, projecting into our reality, that is, into our physical world.

Therefore, the standpoint of the conscious mind, as you understand it, is very important. Why? Because the conscious mind straddles both ends -- one end is in the inner world, and the other end observes the senses of the outer world. So when the inner world rushes outward according to your intentions and your beliefs, forming your outer world, the standpoint of this conscious mind becomes very important. What kind of intentions it adopts, what kind of desires it has, what kind of fervent needs it has -- these are what determine what your outer world manifests as. So we have always said, why are beliefs so important? Why are intentions so important? Why are desires so important? The conscious mind is very important in all of this.

The Meaning of Exteriorization

Each specific experience is unique.

Each specific life experience is unique. And although its creation and its energy both come from within, if it were not exteriorized in this way—

The original, individual, yet shared characteristics of that experience would not exist in the same way.

What he means is, although the outer world comes from within, you might ask: why do we still need to exteriorize it? Why project the physical world out there at all? Why not just experience it in the inner world? Seth is telling you here: no. Only when that thing is exteriorized do the original, individual, yet shared characteristics of that experience—he lists several qualities here—it is original, it is uniquely individual, and yet it also has shared characteristics. Why? Because every event experienced in physical life has its commonality. It would not exist in the same way.

What does "would not exist in the same way" mean? It would not exist in the form you materialize and project it into this time. That is to say, this process of materialization—after the inner world surges outward and materializes in the outer world—is the only way it can feel that inner uniqueness, that inner originality. These attributes require exteriorization in order to be felt.

I think this is exactly a doubt many people have, and here it is emphasized again: no matter how rich, how intense, how subtle your inner feelings are, they are not the same as outer feelings. Just like the example he gave earlier: in a dream you give birth to a child and raise him to adulthood, versus raising him to adulthood in real life—the feeling of holding that child in your arms is different.

So that exteriorization has a magnificent purpose and meaning. You say the inner is important, so does that mean the outer is not important? This is what many people worry about: since the outer world is just a projection or reflection of our inner world, then we can just live in the inner world, why should we still pay attention to the outer world? He says no—

That exteriorization has a magnificent purpose and meaning.

It brings a different mode of expression. The inner is one mode of expression; outer materialization is another mode of expression.

Therefore, although in this book we may emphasize the importance of inner reality, I have no intention whatsoever of denying the magnificent validity and purpose of worldly experience.

This is one of the biggest differences between Seth and other spiritual material. He says although we have been emphasizing the importance of the inner world, I have never said we should deny the magnificence, the validity, and the purpose of our ordinary worldly life experience. Without the projections, exteriorizations, and experiences of the physical world, if we lived only in the inner world, it would be incomplete—the range, the intensity, and the validity of that feeling would be insufficient.

In this book, any exercises should help you enrich your worldly experience and understand its framework and nature, and none of these exercises should be used by you to try to escape the content of your own worldly reality.

What he means is: I give you so many exercises in order to enhance your experience in physical reality, to enrich your experience, to let you see the framework and nature behind your physical world experience that you have not noticed. None of these exercises should be used by you to escape your real life, and even less to escape the content of that reality in your real life. So this is Seth emphasizing again here—he is afraid you will go off practicing inner reality alone and neglect the importance of outer reality.

The blueprint is implicit within.

That is certain. But you need to idealize it, and then exteriorize it in the outer world, realize it, go through it, feel it, experience it.

Other Methods of Studying Reality

He said that very soon, I would have more to say about our dream and art scientists — that was the content of the previous session. However, there are also other important methods that can be used to study the nature of reality. It is not only through studying dreams that this can be done.

One in particular does not involve the dream state.

There is a method of studying reality that does not require dreaming. However, it does involve a manipulation of consciousness, to a certain degree. It includes identification with the thing being studied, rather than separation. What is it that you are studying? It is the truth of this universe, the nature of this reality world. And do not forget, you are a part of this reality world; you have never been separated from it. When you feel separation, that is when problems begin to arise in your understanding.

Einstein's Approach

Einstein, though connected with your own civilization, came closest in this regard to what was said in the preceding paragraph.

He identified with what he studied. He did not dream, but he did indeed incorporate a manipulation of consciousness. This was the method Einstein used to obtain much of his knowledge.

For he could quite naturally identify with the various functions of the universe.

Einstein had this ability to identify with the functions of the universe, which is why he was able to publish the special theory of relativity in his twenties¹. He believed that space and time are one, that space-time can bend, and that time can also change. Traditionally we regard space and time as constants, unchangeable, and standing above all things. But Einstein told you: no. Space-time is like—how should I put it—like a jelly; it can be changed. It is a medium, or a kind of entity, and the two are one; space and time are interrelated.

He could listen to the inner voice of matter.

Einstein could also listen to the inner workings of matter—none of us knew that.

And he was led, emotionally, by directness to his discoveries.

He was led to his discoveries through intuition and emotion.

He leaned against time, and felt it give and sway.

He used poetic language to describe it. Einstein lived in the three-dimensional world, so of course he had to lean against time—could he escape time? He could not escape time. So he leaned against time, but he could feel what time was; he could feel that time could change, that time was alive. Time, like our tables, chairs, and stools, is also a substance in this universe, or a state, and it too can be changed. We came to know this later: because as the speed of motion changes, it causes your experience of time to change.

So he also said that Einstein made time sway and give way. He used such very aesthetic language. But Einstein was still one step short: if he could have seen this time, if he could have stepped beyond time, if he could have recognized that time actually does not exist, then he would have advanced further. But he did not. He always firmly believed that time exists, only that it can be changed. He could never accept the idea that time does not exist.

The True Physicist

The true psychic physicist will be a bold explorer, not one who pokes at the universe with small tools.

He is mocking those experimental physicists: using all kinds of small tools, today studying this, tomorrow studying that, poking at the universe with small tools.

But one who allows his consciousness to flow into the many open doors that cannot be found with tools, but only with the mind.

He once again unfolds his beautiful language.

Your own consciousness, as you think of it, when you become acquainted with it, if you allow it to, can indeed help lead you to a much greater understanding of the simultaneous nature of time.

What does this mean? It means the simultaneous nature of time, and a much greater understanding of it. You cannot say, "I understand that time is past, present, and future happening all at once" -- that is far from enough. That is only an initial, crude, primitive concept. Do not think that by grasping this point, you have grasped some great mystery of the universe, some core secret. This is merely an entry point, and not even much of an entry point at that.

Because the simultaneity of time, its durability, and the things you experience within time all have their own unique characteristics. Today we will not expand on this, because to talk about time would be another vast topic. I can only tell you this: your understanding of the simultaneity of time is only the very first step. When you can understand that there is no time, that is another state. When you can further understand that within the absence of time there still exists psychological time, and that time can also be changed like a tool -- how is it changed? Time can move forward, backward, and also inward and outward. When your understanding of time reaches a deeper cognition, then you can have a holistic understanding.

So here he says: when you follow your own consciousness, it will help bring you to a much greater understanding of the simultaneous nature of time, and not merely an understanding of the single issue of time's simultaneity.

If you do not do this, you often poke here and there with your small tools, with your instruments...

Can those instruments sense the existence of time? A microscope, an electron microscope, a particle collider -- can they sense time? They cannot. But you can. And yet you do not use this consciousness of yours, which can sense time, to study this world and this reality. Instead, you use a pile of instruments that cannot sense time, hoping they will reveal to you the truth of the universe -- do you not find this a rather laughable thing? You are using something that cannot perceive time, hoping it will figure out for you what time is.

Studying your own conscious experience with time will teach you far more.

Exactly so. Look at the earlier exercises he gave -- were they not all exercises involving time and space in various ways? Old photographs, earlier pictures, and so on. Through these exercises with time, he is helping you break down that rigid impression of time, allowing time to begin loosening within your consciousness.

This part is actually very helpful for our physicists. Because I myself studied physics, I can also appreciate what he means. Unfortunately, many of our physicists do not feel this. But what is gratifying is that the top physicists -- I mean the top ones, including those top physicists alive in the world today -- they all know this inwardly. It is just that, first, they feel some things are hard to articulate clearly; and second, they do not want to lose the authoritative position they have worked so hard to attain. They hope to achieve accomplishments like Einstein's, to overturn human cognition through such achievements. They do not want, before having attained such high accomplishments, to be kicked out of the scientific community for saying some ambiguous things, or some things they themselves have speculated about -- after which it would be impossible for them to ever stand in such a position again. So I can understand them. It is not that they do not know; they know. The premise I am telling you is that this applies to those top scientists.

Exercise 8: Using Consciousness as a Threshold

Before I explain the exercise, let me first tell you about the exercise in this session. This session contains Exercise 8.

You can use your consciousness as a threshold.

You treat your consciousness as a threshold, as a door. Your consciousness — you can always think of it as a door. What is it when you walk out of a door? It is a road. When you go out of a door, there is a road, and it opens up a new world. Imagine the door of your consciousness as leading to a different, free, completely open state of various realities. You are within this door of consciousness; as long as you step onto consciousness, you are standing at the doorway to all realities. Where you want to go is up to you, but you are already standing at the doorway. In other words, as long as you follow your consciousness, it can take you along many roads you have never traveled before.

He puts it metaphorically —

Stand where you are.

Just stand here, stand right where you are now.

And think of that moment of conscious awareness as a road.

Take what you can be aware of in consciousness — whether a bodily sensation, a thought, an idea, an emotion, all of these are your conscious awareness — think of that moment of conscious awareness as a road.

Then imagine that many other such roads all interweave.

It is not just this one road. One conscious awareness is one road, so how many conscious awarenesses do you have every day? Even in this very moment, do you not have many conscious awarenesses? You can experience this with your eyes open. For example, with your eyes open, you can see many things. Within your normal visual focus — say you are staring at your phone, the phone is your focus, that is one awareness, that is one road. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see your cat walking by, wobbling along, maybe doing something, just waking up — you have another awareness of the cat. But your awareness of the cat is not as focused as when you are watching the short video on your phone. At that moment, your cat is another road. Then you hear, for example, your girlfriend, or your mother, or your child, calling you to eat, saying the food is ready, come and eat — that is another kind of awareness, that is another road. Think of all these awarenesses as roads, and all these awarenesses interweave together.

Again imaginatively, in your mind, take one of them.

You have so many conscious awarenesses, so which one do you follow now? Most people would probably follow the main object of their gaze. But some people would not — they would follow their thoughts, pulled along by their state and emotions at the time.

You take one line of consciousness, and you follow it, follow it, and accept whatever experience you have without judgment.

Just follow this consciousness in your thinking, experience it, feel it. Grab hold of this consciousness in your mind, grab one and do not let go, hold on to it tightly, keep following it. Then it will bring you many experiences — that consciousness will bring you completely different experiences. Follow this consciousness, and feel the experiences it brings you.

On a small scale —

You are altering your consciousness.

From a certain angle, you are altering your consciousness. But then he says, half humorously — of course, you have not altered it at all.

Why do we say you are altering your consciousness? Because this consciousness normally has a main focus, a main path. When you discover that this consciousness actually has many paths, and you jump out of the original path, turn away from it, and switch to another path, you are actually changing the focus of that consciousness. When you change the focus of consciousness, in a sense you have altered your consciousness — because compared to your usual consciousness, originally you were looking at your phone, and then you noticed the cat's movements, you went to look at the cat, you heard the cat meowing, you wondered what was wrong with the cat, whether it had no water or no food, and you were thinking about that — you followed that consciousness.

But then again, you have not altered it. Why have you not altered it? Because your consciousness has always had this ability; your consciousness has always had the capacity for multiple focuses and simultaneous perception. But you normally ignore these things. So now when you are asked to follow it, you feel as though you have jumped out of your original focus of consciousness, out of that original line of consciousness, and entered a new consciousness, or entered a new life experience. In fact, those experiences have always been there; you are just using them in a different way. This consciousness has not actually changed; you have simply changed the way you use your consciousness.

The Amplitude of Consciousness

Seth then used an example to illustrate this—

Suppose you stood in one spot all your life, then you would have to do this.

Because you were told you had to do it this way. In such a situation, you could only directly see the thing right in front of you. And your peripheral vision might give you hints of what was on either side, or you might hear sounds coming from behind you. For example, an object, say a bird flying in from behind, passing by your side, and you might predict their movements—what this bird was going to do, what important significance and origin it had, why they appeared, where they came from.

If you suddenly turned one inch to the right or left, you would not change your body, but only change its position.

You changed the position of your body, and increased your whole picture, and the sense of the picture would become vivid. You dodged a little, yielded a little, and very cautiously moved away from your original position—you shifted a bit to the left from that original position, letting the bird fly past from behind.

He used this vivid example to tell you: what was that exercise above? It was just this kind of thing—you shift the focus of your consciousness, you switch the circuit of your consciousness, and the exercise is already done.

At present you have little awareness of the amplitude of consciousness, of yourselves or of those that seem to be beneath you.

That is, our awareness of the amplitude of our consciousness is insufficient—that is, the amplitude of the consciousness we currently have is not enough. What does that mean? It means we are too monotonous, our focus of consciousness is too shallow, too concentrated.

You know how to drive, right. What does a novice driver notice? He only stares at the car in front of him, or only stares at a very small area directly ahead on the road. But an experienced driver does not drive that way. An experienced driver's gaze is as if looking and not looking—he seems to be looking ahead, yet he is not looking ahead. His peripheral vision is constantly watching the cars on both sides, and he occasionally glances at the rearview mirror, the side mirrors on both sides, and the backup mirror, checking the cars behind him. In fact, his eyes are constantly scanning the cars around him. Experienced drivers often tell you: you can tell whether you are an experienced driver by whether you can drive five cars at the same time. What does five cars mean? You yourself are one car, there is another car in front of your car, there is one car on your left and one on your right, and there is another car behind your car—a truly experienced driver is actually driving five cars at the same time, observing all of them simultaneously, keeping his eyes on all directions and his ears open to all sounds. So when an accident happens—for example, the car in front suddenly has a crash, or the car in front suddenly rear-ends someone—those experienced drivers generally have enough time to brake in time. Whereas novice drivers, or absent-minded drivers, tend to get into trouble, because by the time they notice, it is already too late. Or many experienced drivers have a premonition, a foreknowledge, before the accident even happens. These are things that anyone who has driven can understand.

So our consciousness actually has this ability. But in daily life, when we drive, we use this method—this level-gaze scanning method. Yet when we do things, we rarely use this method. We tend to focus very intently on one thing, and our consciousness is too concentrated. When it is too concentrated, you are prone to problems.

For example, the most common example—when you are dealing with relationships with the people around you, when someone says something that offends you, or says something you do not like, or something that touches on your values, at that moment you immediately become sensitive, your nerves tense up, and then you begin to have this emotional interaction with them. The language may not have started yet, but the emotion already has. And at this moment, if you could shift your consciousness away a little, maybe this matter would just pass. But if you keep tracking this consciousness of yours—if you keep following this point that makes you uncomfortable and go further down with it—then you cannot shift away, and you will be pulled along by it all the way, until the two of you snap at each other, and both end up feeling gloomy and unhappy, and then you look back and think: was it worth it? Was it really necessary? But at the time, you could not do it.

So what he means is that you should use this method. Of course, if your level is high enough, you can also see the events behind this event, see those probable events, and the events beneath the events. And if you still have that kind of perceptiveness, then that is even more impressive. Although this kind of perceptiveness does require training.

Turning Around Within Consciousness

The true physicist is the one who dares to turn around within his own consciousness.

This sentence is very well said. What does "turning around within consciousness" mean? It means that first of all, he is not bound by his consciousness; he treats consciousness as a tool. And then, he can move around within this consciousness at any time, to the left or to the right, and his focus is very dispersed and very flexible.

What is consciousness? Consciousness is somewhat like a flashlight — he has used this example before. This world, this reality, has always been there. It is like when you go into an unfamiliar theater, with props and scenery, but the lights are not all turned on; they only give you one strong flashlight. Wherever you shine it, that place lights up. Consciousness is like this flashlight. But that world and that reality have always been there. Yet because your consciousness only shines on one spot, you can only see that spot, and you get drawn away by it. You say: oh, I see it, there is a person over there, I will follow him. Or you see something over there, and you get drawn away by it. You do not take the flashlight at that moment and shine it around more, look more, observe more — maybe what you see is only a prop, or a model. But at this time, people tend to be carried away by the focus of consciousness right in front of them. This exercise of Seth's is to teach you to shift your flashlight, move its position, and not stay fixed on one spot.

The Inner Structure of Matter and Consciousness

Within matter, there is this inner structure; they are vortices of energy.

Here Seth emphasizes again: the inner structure within matter is a vortex of energy -- this Vortex, a term that has always been emphasized in the psychological laws -- this kind of energy vortex.

And its purpose is not just one. All purposes are within it, and those structures are composed of units of consciousness.

For example, you have the most intimate knowledge of the nature of a cell or an atom, because they compose your flesh and blood.

You are not unfamiliar with cells and atoms, because they make up your very being.

In a manner of speaking, there is a continuous linkage of consciousness, and your present flesh-and-blood life is a part of it.

You have an exchange and a psychic communication with your own cells. At some deeper levels of consciousness, you are constantly communicating and exchanging with your cells, your tissues, and your body.

A true physicist would learn to reach that level of consciousness at will.

Just like a master who can control different levels of consciousness, this physicist could also communicate with all other things in the physical world.

Long before there was any technology that could see beneath cellular structure, there were pictures of them.

From the human perspective, it was only later that humans invented the microscope and saw the structure of cells under it. But before that person saw the cellular structure through the microscope, scientists had already seen the structure of cells. How did they see it? Through their inner consciousness.

You say how is that possible? That is not scientific, right? You think this is completely unscientific. The microscope had not even been discovered, so how could they see cells? The human naked eye cannot see cells, right? How could they see them? You think this is unscientific and unrealistic, right? Then let me ask you: does a cell still have a material existence? Then what about the meridians and channels of the human body, which do not even have a material existence -- that is, according to traditional Chinese medicine, the circulation of qi within them. So how did ancient humans discover them? How did they depict them? How could they even point out the locations of the acupoints one by one? Do you think this means one can see without the aid of instruments? Yes. So it is not at all strange that before humans invented the microscope, humans could see the structure of cells.

When your eyes are closed, certain shape formations will appear.

Suppose you are meditating with your eyes closed; sometimes shapes and structures will appear in your mind.

Those are perfect replicas of atoms, molecules, and cells.

Sometimes you will see various structures and all sorts of strange things; those are all perfect replicas of atoms, molecules, and cells. But you do not recognize them as such -- you do not think they are that; you recognize them as "my higher self," "my energy."

There are also paintings, so-called abstract paintings, many of which are unconsciously painted by amateur painters.

Paintings may appear in your mind, like the abstract paintings done by amateur painters -- those are also excellent representations of this inner organization. What do those abstract paintings mean? They are also a manifestation of that inner organization.

Ruburt can sometimes project his consciousness into very small concrete instruments, such as computer parts -- as if at the electronic level, at the level of such tiny movements of electrons, he perceives the inner activity of those parts. He can project himself onto the consciousness of electrons and observe the inner activity of these components through the electrons. Impressive, right? So he can know the structure of cells without the aid of instruments -- he is already at the level of electrons, and electrons are who knows how many times smaller than cells, so if he went to look at a cellular structure, it would be far too easy.

In your terms, given time, using such techniques, there would be an equally clear understanding of the knowledge of so-called particle structure. But for now your technology and your terminology cannot describe these.

He says that actually, if you humans used the method I just described, you could in fact understand the basic structure of particles. But the basic structure of particles has already gone beyond the scope of what humans can comprehend, so language cannot describe it. And that is indeed the case -- if we look at it from the particle perspective, then the string within superstring theory is the smallest unit, because the vibration of the string determines the elementary particles. You could say the string is the smallest unit, but the string is very difficult to describe in language. It lives within six curled-up dimensional spaces and four extended dimensional spaces; it lives within a ten-dimensional or eleven-dimensional space. How do you understand that? How do you describe it? Nowadays scientists can only describe it mathematically, and ordinary people already cannot understand it at all -- what a ten-dimensional or eleven-dimensional entity would look like.

The Limitations of Language

You use your terms, and they are precisely what imprison you.

Your language imprisons you yourselves.

And they lead you to those wrong questions.

So if we want humanity to make greater progress, we absolutely cannot rely entirely on language; we must transcend language and operate above it — telepathy is a necessity. If we humans still cannot set aside language, if we are still doing deeper research and making progress on language itself, and still do not focus on studying how to expand humanity's telepathic abilities, then for the progress of human science, language will become the greatest obstacle. Language is the greatest obstacle to the progress of human science and technology and the development of civilization — although it was once the most important invention or discovery in human development, times have changed, and it has now become a stumbling block to the development of human civilization.

But within your civilization, and in terms of your beliefs, those wrong questions are precisely the right ones.

Language will lead you to wrong questions, yet within our human civilization, we think these wrong questions are the right ones. We are constantly playing these conceptual games, word games, logical games, theoretical games — writing piles and piles of papers, stacks and stacks of research materials, but all of it is studying concepts nested within concepts, theories nested within theories, never bringing up things like feelings and experience, just purely theoretical research.

You wanted to stay within that structure in the first place.

He puts it too incisively. Why can humanity never break through? Because you want to stay within that structure — stay within that language structure, stay within that thought structure, stay within that consciousness structure; you do not want to break through. Therefore, you are only now beginning to question your methods, and even your questions. You are only now beginning to ponder these issues — meaning humanity has only now begun to enter an era of comprehensive awakening.

How Real Physicists Gain Insight

A true physicist will ask his question from his usual state of consciousness, and then shift that consciousness in other directions, where he will be led into an exploration of reality in which the question itself will also be changed, and then the answer will be felt.

With this passage he once again reveals how people like Einstein and Tesla solved problems, or how they obtained discoveries and inventions that surpassed the normal level of humanity. They generally raised the question from the level of our normal, ordinary human consciousness -- and this question had to be one that solved a real-world problem. Whether it was Einstein, whether it was Tesla, whether it was the scientists in history, the inventors like Mendeleev, they all had to solve a problem, and this problem had to be raised from our present state of consciousness.

But then, this problem could not be solved within this reality. He had to take this problem, through an alteration of consciousness, to other levels of consciousness. Once on those other levels of consciousness, the problem would change -- it would no longer be the same problem from our three-dimensional world. Because that dimension had already changed, the dimension of consciousness had also changed, the circuitry of consciousness had also changed, and the direction had also changed. When it changed at the level of consciousness, the problem itself also changed.

In other words, a problem in the three-dimensional world becomes a different kind of problem in the four-dimensional world, and it may not even be a problem at all. And a problem in the two-dimensional world is the same way in the three-dimensional world -- it may be a different kind of problem, or it may not be a problem. For example, for ants in the two-dimensional world, a flood might be a problem they cannot solve. But for you in the three-dimensional world, it might just be that the water pipe in your house was not turned off tightly, or that you put something on top of it -- you only need to gently shift the direction of the water pipe, and this flood, this natural disaster, no longer exists for the ants; it is solved. I give this crude example to tell you that what he says in this passage means exactly this. So problems are always solved from a higher dimension, and you should not try to solve them within the same dimension -- some problems cannot be solved within this dimension.

True scientists all know this method, some consciously, some unconsciously. So sometimes, when we look at those real scientists, we see that they all seem a bit eccentric -- real scientists of that kind and real mental patients are actually not very different in appearance and behavior, but that does not affect their cognition or their level. You saw the interview a couple of days ago with the youngest professor at Peking University -- I forget his name -- someone stopped him on the road and asked whether he was a student, and he said he was a teacher -- he is from the Peking University mathematics research institute. A very smart kid. But when you watch him speak, when the reporter asked him questions, he seemed to be in a state somewhat different from normal people. Yet in the field of mathematics, in his professional field, he is almost a prodigy, a genius. You can see many similar films that have been made, such as A Beautiful Mind² and so on, all of which are about these scientists.

Physicists Do Not Trust Feelings

This entire passage below is extremely powerful, which shows that Seth wants to emphasize this:

But most physicists do not trust the answers that are felt.

Many physicists also have this kind of insight, but they do not believe the answers that come from feeling.

Feelings are considered far less effective than a chart.

It seems as if they cannot operate your world by feeling, but you try to operate it by charts, and you have not done so well either.

Seth is once again satirizing humanity. Scientists sometimes obtain this kind of feeling, an intuition, an insight, but they do not believe it. They believe more in the results of scientific experiments -- "charts" refers to the results of scientific experiments -- they believe more in experimental data, and do not believe their feelings. He says this is actually very sad. You always want to manipulate this world through data, and do not want to manipulate this world through feeling, and then he goes on to satirize us humans: you have not done very well at manipulating humanity through data either.

In many instances, your scientists seem to have some strange ideas, such as that you can understand a reality by destroying it.

He says you scientists often have a strange idea: if you want to understand something, you have to destroy it first. How could you think that way?

For example, you can perceive the mechanisms of life by killing an animal.

He is referring to the fact that when we humans do dissections and animal experiments, we often kill an animal before studying how it works inside. Seth says you have already killed it, its life is already gone, and then you go study how life works -- is that not ridiculous? You first take away its life, and then you say let me see how your life works -- what you can see is only the structure of the body after it has died, and you cannot see how its life works.

For example, regarding the function of the bladder, current Western medicine still knows very little about it. They think the bladder is only a place for storing urine, but they actually do not know that the bladder has a very important function. Inside the human body, the urine in the bladder can return into the body again, and it can come back through evaporation, which is very interesting -- the mysteries of the human body. If you want to dissect it and study it after death, you will never understand it clearly.

But the ancient Chinese traditional medicine used methods similar to observing with consciousness, or opening the celestial eye, to observe the overall operation of the human body. Not only the various organs of the material body, but also the non-material ones -- such as the flow of qi channels, circulation, inner circulation, these transformations, the digestion of food, and so on -- they observed it as a whole. And the West has not done enough in this regard.

Or you can best examine a phenomenon by separating yourself from it.

You think that to observe a phenomenon, the best thing is to separate yourself from the phenomenon, so that the phenomenon becomes objective enough.

The Myth of Objective Research

Not influenced by anything subjective, and yet you live in a subjective world, and you are also a part of this world, and you yourself are also subjective. But you insist on objectively studying something, when even you are a part of the very thing being studied. You and the object of your study are one, and you will influence that object of study. It was not until the double-slit interference experiment in quantum mechanics³ ran into problems that people discovered that the observer, as the one conducting the experiment, also has an influence on the experimental results.

So, your attempts to examine the nature of the human brain are often carried out by damaging the brains of animals, separating one part of an animal's brain from the other parts. You study how the brain operates, what each part controls, where the motor nerves are managed, where the optic nerves are managed. By now, humanity has studied the various functional areas of the brain fairly thoroughly -- which area is responsible for language, which for memory, which for imagination, all of it has been more or less figured out. But to this day, they still have not found one thing -- where human self-consciousness comes from, where the human entity, where self-cognition comes from, that thing that you recognize as you.

How does consciousness actually come about? Scientists still have no answer to this day. Go ask the latest brain scientists, and they will give you an answer that sounds like they do not even know how to explain it: human consciousness arises when the brain processes information after all the sensory systems have gathered that information together. Is there any essential difference between that answer and saying nothing at all? I do not think it means much. They believe that consciousness automatically arises when the brain processes information, but as for how exactly it arises, they cannot say clearly either. And they cannot locate where consciousness is produced. They know which part of the brain is responsible for language, hearing, vision, taste, smell, movement, but they simply cannot find which part is responsible for consciousness, for thinking.

Destroying Life Cannot Buy True Knowledge

Our scientists generally cut animal brains into pieces, draw circles on them, and then study them. They often do experiments on monkeys, and it is very cruel: they cut open the monkey's skull and expose the brain. When you do this, you violate the entire integrity of that animal, and at the same time you also violate your own psyche. Why is your own psyche affected as well? When you kill so many animals, your own inner psyche is also affected.

Seth says that every such attempt separates you further from yourself, from your environment, and from other species. Every time you carry out research with such an intent, for example studying how the brain works or how life is born, you actually separate yourself further from your surroundings, from the environment, and from other species. Although you may learn certain so-called facts -- volume after volume of anatomical data, what we call facts -- you are nevertheless driven further and further away from any great knowledge. You have acquired some so-called facts of your own, so-called knowledge, but in fact you are getting further and further away from true knowledge and from true truth, because those so-called facts stand right in your way.

You have not yet understood the uniqueness of consciousness. You do not acknowledge that all things have consciousness, you do not acknowledge that the object you are studying also has consciousness, and you do not acknowledge that your research instruments also have consciousness. Including the interaction between the research instruments and the object being studied -- they all interact with one another, and you cannot see any of it.

Seth says that trying to learn about consciousness by destroying consciousness is utterly absurd. When your pursuit causes you to destroy life, yet you believe you can learn even a little about the inner reality of life, that is also absurd. When you destroy life and still want to gain knowledge of life, that is hardly possible. In your terms, destruction itself presupposes a misunderstanding of life. If you want to study a life, you can only study life through life. If you first kill that life and then study it, this in itself carries a destructive quality, and is in itself a distortion of life. You think that only dead things can be studied, but how can a dead thing have life?

Methods of Identifying with Animals

Seth said that there are methods of identifying with animals, atoms, and molecules. Your consciousness can identify with them, and can learn their knowledge. For example, there are methods you can use to discover how different species migrate. If you want to do this kind of thing through technology, you can also study animal migration using your current technological methods, but these methods do not include dissection, because what you learn in that way, you will not be able to use.

Seth has always opposed the cruel behavior of understanding life by dissecting it, yet we humans have always used this method. When people study migration, they often capture migrating animals, then look at what they ate, what food they obtained along the way, and why they migrate. Seth said, you have many methods available to you, so why do you insist on taking the stupidest, cruelest, and least effective method? What you obtain through this method, you cannot use anyway, because it is dead. To put it another way, to say it more gently, you are simply too full of exuberance, like children playing a new game. Right now you are all excited, dissecting frogs, scorching ants, wanting to study this external world. You are like a bunch of children playing with building blocks, far too low-level.

Some of you have already reached that conclusion, understanding that nothing can be obtained this way. As this book continues, Seth said he would indeed give a starting suggestion, about some methods you can use with your consciousness to understand the nature of reality, rather than continuing to use the stupidest method—using the physical world to kill a living being in order to understand it.

Technology Is Not the Answer

Even in terms of your history and sequential time, as a species you have already tried all sorts of ways of dealing with the animal world. In your most recent adventures, you are discovering that external manipulation is not enough, and that technology alone is not the answer. Space exploration, for instance, cannot do it. Humans now want to invent spacecraft close to the speed of light, and no one knows how long that will take. At the speed of your current spacecraft, let alone other galaxies, you cannot even fly out of the solar system. So technological development is not the answer you want.

A loving technology is not wrong. What Seth wants to ask is that technology should be done with the heart. Is a loving technology wrong? Why do you not do it with love? Why do you kill these animals, destroy one thing in order to study another? That is the question Seth raises. You clearly have other ways, yet you do not use them. He says, if you do not know, I will tell you some methods in this book.

Einstein Was Bad at Math⁴, and That Actually Helped Him

He went on to say that if Einstein had been a better mathematician, he would not have achieved the breakthrough that he did. The Einstein we know was bad at math⁴; some even say his first wife was far better at math than he was, and that she helped him with many of the physics calculations. He came up with the concepts, but his math was lacking. Seth said that fortunately, Einstein was bad at math⁴. If his math had been good, he would not have been able to accomplish what he did. Precisely because his math was poor, he was not constrained. If his math had been good, he would have been too timid, thinking that mathematically this was impossible — how could time and space be one and the same?

Yet even so, the mathematical knowledge he did have still limited him; mathematically it did at times hold him back. If his math had been even worse, it would have been better. You often take it for granted that intuitive knowledge is impractical, that it cannot get you anywhere, that it will not give you any data or charts. But those same data and charts of which science is so proud can also be a hindrance, giving you a dead rather than a living knowledge. Therefore these data and charts are quite impractical, because they are not alive.

Not Killing Animals Means War Would Not Happen

Seth said, if you did not feel it necessary to kill animals in order to gain knowledge, then you would not have wars either, and you would also understand the balance of nature far better. He said he has always advised you not to study science by killing animals. This is only one point, but the most important thing is that when you learn to gain knowledge without killing animals, you will no longer solve problems through war. War is about destroying the enemy; you want to solve problems by destroying the enemy. Do you think eliminating your opponent is a way to solve problems? You solved the last problem, but using the method of destroying life fundamentally solves nothing. When human beings no longer do animal experiments and respect all life, they will also respect the lives of their own species, no matter what country, what ethnicity, or what faith the other person belongs to.

If you did not feel it necessary to destroy reality in order to understand it, you would not dissect animals in the hope of discovering the reasons for human disease. You would have long ago gained a living knowledge, and disease itself would simply not occur. Human beings now study animals and kill so many of them, trying to study how disease works. They even inject viruses into these animals, then feed them all kinds of drugs developed by humans, and see how the animals react to which drugs. He said you seem very clever, but actually you are busy for nothing. To use a Chinese saying, taking off your pants to fart, a complete waste of effort. Because in the end you will discover that human beings simply do not have disease; it is all something people have stirred up themselves. You would have long ago understood the connection between body-mind feeling, health, and disease. Illness is simply your sickness of heart.

I am not saying that if you learn this way of respecting life, you will necessarily have a perfect world, like a prince and princess living happily ever after. You will still have to go through the challenges you are meant to go through, and there are still many challenges in the development of human civilization waiting for us to overcome. But you will deal more directly with the blueprint of reality, instead of going the wrong way or in reverse.

Einstein and Session 45 of the Early Sessions

The dictation for this session ends here, and afterward he transmitted some material. Clearly Einstein was not a great mathematician; he often spoke of his poor memory and did most of his work through intuition and imagery. Shortly after he published the special theory of relativity in 1905⁵, Einstein was said to have attributed the completion of his achievement at least in part to the fact that he knew very little about the mathematics of time and space. If he had known more about the mathematics of time and space, he would not have been able to do it. He was also young then, and a newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger.

In Session 45 of the early sessions on April 20, 1964⁶, I found that Seth had said that Ansah was a person who voyaged inward, trusted his own intuition, and used his own inner senses. If he had been able to trust his intuition even more, and had left the so-called scientific proof of his theories to lesser men, giving himself more inner freedom, he could have made even more discoveries. Seth said that Alice should follow inner intuition and freedom, and write out all his ideas, rather than rushing to prove them, leaving the proof to others, to those who were better at mathematics. But in his later years Einstein kept getting entangled in mathematics and physics, and began wanting to prove his things, which hindered his development.

Totally Accepting Yourself

Einstein's life mission attribute or gift was not to prove this thing. If he had been meant to do that, his mathematics would have been very good. It was precisely because his mathematics was not good that his gifted mission led him to do what he did. So he had not yet realized this, and instead went to make up for his math. You will find that when certain things happen on each person's life path, you must never complain, because you do not know what greater arrangement lies behind it. You cannot figure it out with your little head. You want peace of mind, thinking if your math were better, would you not achieve greater things? Quite the opposite. So when you encounter many areas you are not good at or places where you fall short in life, never blame or reproach yourself. Those are precisely where your gifts lie. It is just that from your standpoint, you cannot see it. Then what do you do? You can only totally accept yourself, totally love yourself, and trust that everything is the best arrangement. This seemingly foolish AQ spirit is in fact often the most effective and direct method that can bring you into a higher level.

注释与核实

1. Source: American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics, "Einstein Chronology for 1905," 1996 (https://history.aip.org/exhibits/einstein/chron-1905.htm) ↩

2. Source: CCTV.com, "A Beautiful Mind (film)" (https://tv.cctv.com/2013/08/21/VIDA1377077043422344.shtml) ↩

3. Source: Richard Feynman et al., "The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Quantum Behavior" (https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_37.html) ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Source: American Physical Society, "The Back Page," 2004 (https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2004/01/the-back-page) ↩

6. Source: Mary Dillman, "List of Seth Sessions," 2016 (https://sethresearchproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SessionListforInternet4.pdf) ↩