Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 719

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 portions Mike read aloud).

Introduction

This session discusses dream travel and concepts of good and evil. Seth emphasizes that The Nature of Personal Reality is a prerequisite course for exploring the unknown reality, reminding us that beliefs create private reality in the familiar world, but may fail once we leave this station. Rigid dualistic concepts of good and evil, along with repressed natural feelings, can be projected as enemies, demons, or evil spirits during alterations of consciousness. He stresses that inner exploration itself is not dangerous; the danger lies in long-term repression. Finally, he offers a photograph exercise and a dream-camera exercise, suggesting that we set aside our fixed worldview to record and examine inner experience.

Key Points of This Chapter

• Beliefs create private reality, but this only applies within the familiar physical world; when leaving this platform to explore unknown realities, old beliefs may become obstacles.
• Rigid concepts of good and evil will force physical existence to be seen as a battlefield between good and evil, and lead to the denial of bodily and natural feelings; this suppressed energy will be projected outward as enemies or evil spirits.
• Exploring inner reality is not dangerous in itself; the real danger comes from long-term suppression of feelings, and denied energy will erupt in relationships or illness.
• If you carry your inherent worldview with you when exploring unknown realities, you can only become a tourist and cannot go deep or gain real rewards.
• Exercise Thirteen (the photograph exercise) and Exercise Fourteen (the camera in dreams) help you set aside your old worldview and observe and record inner experience.

Main Text

Session 719: More on Good and Evil in Relation to Dream Travel

This session is very important. It began on Monday, November 11, 1974, at 9:36 p.m.

Seth came through and said that he considered the book he wrote, The Nature of Personal Reality, to be a prerequisite course for the exercises given here. We know that in universities there are prerequisite courses—before you take a certain class, they list which courses you must complete first, otherwise you cannot take that class. What he means is that The Nature of Personal Reality is the prerequisite for The "Unknown" Reality; you must finish reading The Nature of Personal Reality first.

He now explains why. In that book he discussed the way you form your private experience through your beliefs—how to use beliefs to create reality, to create your own reality. Remember, it is your private experience, not creating someone else's. You must remember this.

So you have certain pet ideas, and you are quite adept at this, using beliefs to create your reality, and you use them to construct your view of the reality you know, your own worldview.

If you are already very skilled at operating with personal reality, you will have a very strong sense of power, a very strong sense of control over your present life and the physical world, and you will no longer have that sense of powerlessness or worthlessness.

Then he says it is important to understand what your own beliefs are. Many of these beliefs are very useful in your home—this "home" means within your home station, within your physical world, within your old hometown. But when you begin to leave that home station and travel, you may find that those same ideas block your progress.

Very interesting. Let me give a typical example. Around 2016 or 2017, I can't remember exactly, in Arcadia, Los Angeles, a few high school girls committed school violence against another girl¹, forcing this girl to eat her own hair and performing humiliating acts. This kind of school violence may exist in many schools in China, but it doesn't seem like a big deal—usually at most there's some education, or at worst expulsion and a transfer to another school. But in America, many people say American schools are so dangerous. Actually, school violence does exist in America, but sometimes it is actually lighter than in China, because the punishments are extremely severe.

These few girls, all girls, no boys involved, ended up being arrested and prosecuted through the judicial process. If sentenced according to American law, these girls would face life imprisonment. Can you imagine that? This school violence could bring such severe punishment as life imprisonment, a life sentence. Because this involved abuse—in America, abuse is a very serious crime. No matter who you are, if you inflict torture or abuse, including restricting someone's personal freedom or kidnapping, these are all felonies. But these little girls simply didn't understand. They thought, "What's the big deal? I just don't like you, and my few girlfriends and I are a group," and then they did this thing.

After doing this, one of the girls' parents rushed to America to handle it². Some of the kids may have been in homestays, and some may have had one parent here and the other not here. One of the mothers flew directly from China to rescue her child. Guess what method she used? She used a method you would never imagine—she directly tried to bribe the judicial authorities with money³. She thought money could solve these problems. Do you know what the result of that is in America? The mother was also arrested, and mother and daughter were arrested together.

I use this example, although it is a very typical case you can all look up, to illustrate that when you go from your hometown to another country, your original beliefs and values no longer apply there, and they may cause you to commit crimes.

There are also many other examples, also of people traveling to America, a mother and daughter. The child was about ten years old⁴, and the mother perhaps felt the child was disobedient, so she loudly scolded and yelled at the child. As a result of this scolding and yelling, passersby nearby called the police, saying what was going on—they couldn't understand what was being said. After the police arrived, they brought charges against the mother. In the end, it was the daughter who pleaded on her behalf, and finally the mother was sentenced to two years' probation or one year's probation, I can't remember exactly, but it was probation, and then she was immediately deported, and they both left America.

Actually, these things that don't count as anything in China—hitting or scolding your child at home, or yelling a couple of times—these don't count as anything. But in a different country, what you think is nothing may already be a crime in another country. I use this example to help you understand: actually, your beliefs and your values are only effective within your own region; once you change places, once you leave your hometown, they no longer work. You must understand this. Beliefs are important, but they work in your home—remember, they are useful in your home—but once you go out, don't use them anymore.

Other ideas, even within your own physical reality, are basically really not feasible either.

Like the example I just gave—not feasible in your own home? No, not feasible even within this physical world of yours. As soon as you change countries or change places, some things you think are right may violate local laws in another place.

A rigid, dogmatic idea of good and evil will force you to view physical existence as a battleground of opposing forces, making that poor, undefended soul almost into a sandwich cookie.

He says when you go exploring the unknown reality, you easily fall into a denial of and resistance to physical reality. Because at this point you have already begun preparing to explore the unknown reality, but those unknown realities are all nonphysical, and you explore those unknown realities through consciousness. In those explorations, you will have an idea that says, "These nonphysical realities are the real ones, and these physical realities are all illusory bubbles in a dream, and should be firmly abandoned." So you develop a resistance to physical existence, treating it as something negative. And then your own soul becomes a sandwich cookie—it is in the middle. Physical reality is real to it, and nonphysical reality is also real to it; it does not feel that one is real and the other is not. But we insist on saying either this one is real or that one is not real; either you admit dreams are real, or you admit waking reality is real. When you tell him both are real, or both are unreal, he collapses. He can only think, "You have to tell me which one is real, and then I'll accept the other as unreal." So the soul stands in the middle and is baffled—what is going on? Why must one necessarily deny the other?

This is very typical in many religions. You can see many religions, and some people who have not properly understood Buddhism firmly deny the importance and the meaning of the existence of this physical world, and many other religions are like this too. It is very pitiful.

Or you may think of that poor soul as a blackboard eraser. You can imagine that your soul is a blackboard eraser, being tossed back and forth by two hands, shaken around. Which two hands? One hand is called good, and one hand is called evil. Your soul is tossed back and forth between these two hands. He says in this analogy, written on that blackboard eraser are the earthly experiences of your soul—suppose there is a blackboard, and the blackboard is covered with your experiences of this human world, this physical world. Then the evil hand will use the blackboard eraser to erase all the good things; and at the same time, the good hand will try to erase all the bad things. In such a scenario, all your experiences become suspect.

This is what we often call the two little people fighting—two little people in your head, one good and one evil, jump out and fight, and your soul is stuck in the middle, looking left and looking right, and you don't know what to do. What he means is that when you have this obsessive attachment to good and evil, in doing things in life you often don't know what to do, and you constantly doubt, "Is what I am doing good or bad, virtuous or evil?" If you do this, you will take every single thing and evaluate it.

Then you will treat your body and its natural appetites—your body is your physical existence, and natural appetites such as food and sex—as wrong, and you will have a tendency to deny them. You feel these are all not good and should all be denied. And at the same time, that physical part of you—the primal desires of your body—will regard your good intentions as wrong. You say, "I'm hungry so I want to eat," and then you say, "I shouldn't eat right now"; you say, "I'm interested in the opposite sex right now, and I want to get close to them," and then you say, "This is wrong of me, I have these primal impulses." So that part of your body will regard those good thoughts of yours as wrong, believing they will infringe upon the legitimacy of its own existence. For example, clearly you are hungry but you won't let yourself eat, insisting on dieting, and so on.

If you do not understand the natural grace of your own existence—he talked about this in The Nature of Personal Reality, that you exist within the grace of nature—then when you try to do some of the exercises he gives you, you may automatically convert them into a very restrictive set of beliefs. Seth says that if your ideas of good and evil have not yet been removed, if you still have this very obsessive thinking about good and evil, then when you do these exercises, it is actually not beneficial for you. You will automatically turn them into a very restrictive set of beliefs. For example, during an out-of-body experience, or during meditation, you will think, "If I see an image of a bodhisattva, that is good; if I see a demon, that proves I am bad."

You are familiar with your own view of the world. But when you leave your ordinary orientation, when you alter the focus of your consciousness, you are quite likely to construct your new experience in the same way that you construct your physical experience.

He says you are very familiar with your view of the world, but this familiarity is built upon your view of the physical world. But when you do the exercises we give you, when you tune the focus of your consciousness to those unknown realities, in that world, all these physical-world experiences are useless. You have to construct a new set of experiences; don't keep forcing the old experiences into it—because those old experiences are only useful in this physical world, and once you leave, they are useless. At the same time, you are freer; you reconstruct a kind of experience, and of course it is very free, with no rules or restrictions limiting you, and you have more room, and you are completely free from the limitations of time and space in the physical world.

You are used to projecting your beliefs onto specific objects and events. When you leave your home station, however, those objects and events no longer present themselves in the same fashion.

He says in the physical world, you use your beliefs to create your own reality, and you have already practiced this very well; you are already very, very skilled at manipulating these abilities in your own world. Whether you know it or not, you use beliefs to create your own reality. But ordinarily in the physical world, you project your beliefs into familiar events, objects, or relationships, investing your beliefs into your surroundings, turning them into the familiar things of your physical world. None of this applies in the unknown reality—the act of projection is something you cannot change; wherever you go, you will project your inner contents outward. But when you project in the nonphysical world, what they show up as is not like what they show up as in the three-dimensional world.

For example, if you have a fear inside, in the three-dimensional world what you experience might be a fear of a certain relationship, or a fear of snakes, or a fear of having no money, or a fear of the future—these are all very normal events. But when you go to the unknown reality, what will this fear manifest as? It will be different. It is different for each person; it really will be different. And moreover, if your fear is very deep, what it manifests as can truly magnify and amplify your fear many times over. For example, your everyday fear of money, or that sense of worthlessness, will have an influence in real life, but not a very heavy influence—it won't threaten your life, won't threaten your normal living, just gives you a slightly uneasy feeling in your heart, or makes you worry unnecessarily, but it won't scare you to death. But when you explore the unknown reality, that fear, after being amplified countless times, will become something unknown that will scare you half to death, directly reflected in a racing heartbeat and rising blood pressure—because that feeling is real to you; it is just that the stimulus is much stronger.

Seth here reminds you: in case this happens to you, he is giving you a warning in advance. Some people may feel they have no fear inside, and only after going inside do they discover they actually do have fear. When you really discover this kind of thing, the best method is to take deep breaths. No matter which reality you are in, let yourself adjust through deep breathing—use your intention to take deep breaths. This is a very effective method that can bring you into a relatively calmer state. You absolutely must remember this.

You often find yourself coming up against your own constructions.

You will often find that the things you construct are the things you project. He says in this exploration of the unknown reality, they no longer hide within the kinds of experiences you are familiar with. Ordinarily they hide within your familiar life experiences, so you cannot see your own fears, cannot see those things of yours. But in the unknown reality it is different; these things are directly revealed without concealment, exposed all at once. These leftover matters may then appear in very different forms.

Very interesting. I once saw a science fiction film, I forget the name, in which in that world, all of a man's thoughts manifested around him in the form of colorful objects. No matter what thought that man had, the thoughts in his mind were immediately projected out in object-like forms, like images in a dream. That film was very funny; you can go watch it. In order to prevent others from knowing what he was thinking, he kept repeating his own name, over and over, without stopping for a moment, afraid that his thoughts would be exposed.

You may be convinced that you are evil.

Perhaps you yourself believe that your inner self is evil, precisely because you have a physical body, so you feel you are evil. You have your animal existence, and you feel that animal existence is evil, not advanced. You may believe that the soul descends into the body, feeling that the soul comes down from heaven, so the body is a lower, inferior, degraded version of your true face—the body is a low-level version, and the soul is the high-level one. This view is wrong, but many people hold this view: the physical body is lowly, and the soul is noble.

At the same time, however, your own physical existence is comparatively wiser. Your physical body understands far more than your little brain does, more than your ego does. Your physical body knows that it is not like this; your physical body itself exists across time and space, and basically cannot accept this idea. The body will not agree with the idea that "it is one level lower than the soul."

So in everyday life, you may project this idea of worthlessness outward onto another person or another nation, so that it appears to be your enemy. Generally speaking, you may choose animals, members of another religion, or another political party to play the role of the enemy.

He says because of this denial of yourself, this sense of worthlessness—"this body is useless, it is lowly, inferior, dirty, filthy." When you label the body like this, you will not attack yourself; people are very interesting this way. In their hearts they feel their body is lowly, but they will not attack themselves; this sense of worthlessness gets projected outward. They project it onto, for example, certain countries, certain people, certain political parties, members of certain religions—people who do not share your religious faith, or people who are not of your faction. You regard them as your enemies. What is it really? Actually, you are dealing with yourself—who is your enemy? It is your own body. You look down on your own body, and then you project this outward, turning it into looking down on people outside. Do you understand the difference and distinction here?

In any case, in your private life, you may almost never encounter your own beliefs of worthlessness or evil. In your life, you will not encounter the discovery that you yourself are worthless or that you yourself are evil. This is a foundational belief of yours, in your deepest, deepest place, but on the surface you have covered it all up. You will not think you are worthless or evil; you will not realize that in fact you treat yourself as the enemy; you will not have this realization. You feel the enemy is just the enemy—he did something to wrong you, did something you cannot stand, did something intolerable to heaven and reason, and therefore he is your enemy. You will be so certain that your projection onto others is the enemy itself. You so firmly believe: this enemy is clearly an outward projection of your own inner belief, but you firmly believe that the enemy is just the enemy, to the point that there is no attitude that can be corrected. You simply will not change, and you do not want to change your beliefs—the enemy is the enemy, there is nothing to discuss. When someone says, "This enemy is actually a projection of your own inner self," you will slap them aside and say, "Get lost! Your enemy is your projection! The enemy is the enemy—he killed my family, or he hurt someone I care about"—you will have a whole list of reasons to prove he is the enemy. So the ego is incapable of correcting itself; this is a very interesting thing.

Because all your feelings of hating yourself or fearing yourself will be directed outward.

You must remember this. All your feelings of hating yourself and fearing yourself will be directed outward. Why in The Nature of Personal Reality do we insist that everyone dig out the root of fear, expose it to the sun, let it rot, throw it out, strip it away? Seth says a lot here, and here he emphasizes again: if the root of your fear is not dug out, then all around you will be enemies, and you will live in a hostile society full of enemies—you yourself will feel it is this way.

When you begin to leave your home station and alter your focus, however, when you enter other unknown realities, you leave that particular object of your projection behind.

What he means is that when you go exploring other unknown realities, you leave those enemies you projected behind in physical reality. But have your beliefs changed? No. You have only left the objects of projection behind, left them in the physical world. You yourself seem to have gone to an unknown reality to explore, and those enemies of the physical world will no longer bother you or harass you, but your beliefs have not changed.

Because of the pendulum or automatic writing, you may find yourself coming face to face with material you have repressed in the past.

When you use the pendulum or automatic writing, you will suddenly discover that those things you had been repressing all along never left; they have always been in the depths of your heart, and at this moment you suddenly encounter them. You thought you did not have these things—they were repressed by you, and you could not see them, could not see your own evil, could not see your own perception of your own evil, could not see your perception of your own powerlessness and worthlessness; you thought you had none of these. They may appear at this time.

When this emerges, you may again project it outward, but in a different way.

He says at this time, you begin once again to project outward those fearful things, those terrifying things, those things of inner self-denial and self-loathing—all of them surface. How do you project them? You project them in a different way—you no longer use that kind of enemy, because you know you are exploring in the unknown reality, and there are no three-dimensional-world enemies there. So how do you project? You do not think you are in contact with a great philosopher or an old soul; instead, you may believe you have encountered a demon or an evil spirit, or that you have been possessed by an evil spirit. When you play with a Ouija board, asking those spirits of the unknown reality to help you, because of your inner fear, after you release all those repressed beliefs from your real life, you project outward a feeling that says, "What came is an evil ghost, what came is an evil spirit, and that is why I am afraid, that is why I am scared, and that is why there are such and such things."

Because you do not admit that what you produced through automatic writing, or what the Ouija board made you write and told you, is the projection of the darkest side of your own inner self. You dare not admit it is your own projection, so you say it is the projection of an evil spirit, that you are possessed by an evil spirit, that a demon has come again. You do not think it is the projection of the darkest thing in the deepest part of your own heart.

Why don't you think they are an old soul—very experienced, here to help you? Why don't you think they are a great philosopher? Why don't you think they are Seth, or other famous people? Or a bodhisattva? Why do you feel they are evil spirits? He uses this example—because your inner fear will bring about these things.

In such a scenario, when using the pendulum and automatic writing in this way, you must already be convinced of the power of evil.

Because you believe in the power of evil, that is why this kind of projection is brought out.

The natural feelings you deny also carry the great energy of repression.

You deny natural feelings, and they too have the great energy of repression; it is not all sunshine and brightness.

You may be filled with a feeling that you are caught up in a great cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil, and this often represents a fitting picture of your own way of viewing the world.

Because you yourself believe this world is caught in a struggle between good and evil. You believe this world always has an evil force on one side and a good force on the other, and you may choose the side of good, while the evil force will always want to fight against you, and you, representing the side of good, will fight against them. He says this is your way of viewing the world, and so you place yourself in such a situation.

What is the reason for this? He says you deny natural feelings, and they also have the possibility of repression; they have great energy. You must understand this, everyone must accept this. We say we study, we cultivate ourselves—for example, some people have a tendency toward depression, some toward mania—we must never feel this is bad or wrong. First, do you acknowledge whether it is a natural feeling? Just like when you have joy, is it also a natural feeling? Yes. Does that natural feeling also carry great energy? Yes. No one has promised you that after you study and cultivate, you will forever be sunny and bright, with spring flowers blooming and facing the sea. No one has promised you that.

You will still experience what you are meant to experience; you will still experience repression when you are meant to experience repression; you will still experience these sorrows when you are meant to experience them. But you must understand that they have no distinction of good and evil, right and wrong; they are just different expressions—like the weather, with violent storms and also skies full of rosy clouds. You cannot say this one is good and that one is bad; this is a very normal phenomenon. Yet in many cases you do not accept those depressive emotions, or those dark emotions; you feel these are all wrong, and it should always be sunny and bright. When you have reached that state and ability, it can be done; but when you have not yet reached it, you must acknowledge that it is also natural; you cannot deny it, and denying it easily leads to problems. When you go exploring the unknown reality, no matter what comes out, you do not need to judge it; do not judge good or bad, right or wrong.

For example, someone goes to a place—I'll give an example—he suddenly arrives in a desolate wilderness, with a gloomy wind and a bleak, killing atmosphere, as if he had arrived in the underworld, and he becomes very afraid, saying, "Have I arrived in hell?" and so on. No, this has nothing to do with that. This may simply represent your feeling about that world you explored, or a projection of your psychological state at that time. All of this is unnecessary; there is no need to think about things this way. Including views of good and evil in the world, including the denial of depressive or dark emotions, and even more so including the denial of your own physical body—all of these are unnecessary.

There is no danger in the exercises I have suggested.

Again, there is no danger in these exercises I am giving you, so you do not need to worry.

The longer you suppress your natural feelings, the more you place yourself in greater danger.

The real danger comes from the fact that you have suppressed yourself for too long in the physical world; the exercise itself is not dangerous. And an alteration of consciousness often brings you a framework, and within this new framework, these suppressed feelings will be exposed -- things you did not notice before will be exposed.

If they do not attract your attention in one way or another, then it is very likely that the energy behind them, which has been denied, will erupt in broken relationships, or in illness.

When you deny the existence of their energy, they may be enormous suppressed energy, or depression, or things in your heart that make you unhappy. In ordinary times you may not notice them, but when you go exploring the unknown reality, they are exposed. This is a good thing for you. You need to see it -- so that is how it is. When you see the energy behind this suppression, then when you return to everyday life, you need to find a way to resolve it -- either you change your beliefs, or you open a channel for this energy to flow through.

But if you choose not to look at it, to ignore it, and no matter how it tries to attract your attention you still do not notice it, and you do not think it is your own problem, and you think it is all evil ghosts and demons from the spirit world, then this energy that you have denied will erupt in your physical world, in the relationships of your life, or it will erupt in the illness of your body. To put it simply, it will make your days hard to live, make you sick, and make your relationships very discordant.

So when we go exploring the world of the psyche, when we go exploring the inner world, what are we exploring? It is through this method that one of the benefits is being able to see the suppressed part of yourself, the hidden part of your beliefs, being released in the unknown reality -- ordinarily it will not reveal itself.

The exploration of the psyche never causes such difficulties.

In the exploration of the psyche, it will not cause these problems of making your body sick or your relationships broken, nor will it aggravate the original problems. Going to explore the inner reality will not make your original problems worse. But your original problems cannot be said to be solved just because you went exploring the inner reality -- your problems must be solved through changing your own beliefs. Just going on a tour cannot truly relieve them. Do you understand what I mean?

It is like a married couple whose relationship is not good, whose relationship is already broken, and they have problems. They do not solve their problems, and they say, "Then let us go on a trip and see whether that can solve the problem." Do you think traveling can change the problem, or make it worse? You can try it; very often the original conflicts will become even more obvious and will be fully exposed. In ordinary life those conflicts may be limited to certain aspects, certain areas, but once you go traveling, the conflicts will erupt in every area, and you will find that the two people are so different in their beliefs and values. So people often joke that if you want to know whether two people can get married, first go on a trip together and then decide.

That is the principle. Your exploration of the inner reality is like going traveling to another world -- do you think the problems can be solved? They cannot. But can you say it makes the problems worse? It does not make your problems worse, it only lets you see them. Quite the opposite, they are often very healing -- not only does it not make your problems worse, sometimes it solves your problems.

So sometimes, if you can see your problems during the trip, and all these problem points erupt, and if both people have the ability for self-reflection and self-awareness, then through this one trip they can actually deepen their relationship and resolve their problems. Let me give a simple example: there was an old couple, about fifty or sixty years old, retired, and they quarreled all day long, like many elderly couples in China, constantly bickering, each looking down on the other. But it turned out they had one common hobby -- they both loved traveling. So the old man said, all right then, I will buy a car and learn to drive, and I will take you with me; we are retired now, and the children do not need our care, so let us go traveling. So the couple drove a small car through the great mountains and rivers of China. When I saw the report, the two had already been traveling for more than two years, driving themselves all over the country for more than two years. And in those two-plus years, the relationship between the two was exceptionally harmonious.

Why? Because the two of them would face some common challenges and problems -- where to go, where to stay, what to do, difficulties they faced, car problems, travel route problems, and so on. These practical problems made their goals align. To put it bluntly, they had no time to quarrel anymore, and they found they had many things in common. So whether this trip was good or bad for their relationship depends on how you approach it. Some people go on a trip and get divorced before the honeymoon is even over, while others quarrel their whole lives but after one trip their relationship becomes harmonious. The key point is how you look at it, whether you can see your own problems through the trip and solve them -- do not say all the problems are other people's problems.

And they give the person another choice, replacing the continuous suppression that would truly be unbearable.

What kind of choice? It is that in the exploration of the inner reality, in the exploration of the unknown reality, it gives the person another choice -- in that inner reality, he can choose other ways, other lifestyles, and can release what should be released and discover what should be discovered. So these explorations of the inner reality will not make your original problems heavier; they will only help and resolve them, and only let you see these problems. But the premise is that you must have the basic understanding that Seth mentioned earlier -- what he is saying here is all giving you a preventive shot, to prevent you from going astray in the exploration of the unknown reality.

If you can handle your physical reality ordinarily, then you will not run into difficulties in an alteration of consciousness, or in leaving your home station.

He says that if in the ordinary three-dimensional world, in your physical world, you live very clearly, very freely and at ease, then in the exploration of the unknown reality you likewise will not encounter difficulties. Conversely, if in your three-dimensional world you live very twisted, very stifled, very painfully, and you pin your hopes on not encountering these problems in the exploration of the unknown reality, that is unrealistic. At first it will only magnify your problems, so that your hidden problems have no cover and are all exposed. But if you are wise enough, and you see the problem and solve it, then later on you will walk more and more smoothly. This is also one of the main reasons we do the exploration of the unknown reality -- in the final analysis, after all is said and done, it ultimately still has to solve the problems in your reality; that is the root. It is not about letting you go live several lifetimes in the unknown reality and have a good time there -- having a good time there is another topic. The topic now is that it is of tremendous help to your life here, in the physical world. Otherwise, what are we exploring the unknown reality for? If we go traveling, and after coming back from a trip our life gets worse and worse, and not only does it fail to recharge or improve your real life, but every trip makes you suffer once more, would you still go traveling? The same principle applies.

When you can handle yourself well in everyday life, you can handle yourself well in the unknown reality.

However, by the same logic, if you have problems in New York City, no matter where you travel to, you will very likely encounter these problems in a different form. If you have problems in one city, will you have no problems if you change to another city? He says it is very likely you will still have problems -- because the problem is in yourself, not in the city. But by changing your usual orientation, by changing the environment, it may help clear your mind a bit. If you move from New York to Los Angeles, it may clear your mind a bit, and what will you discover? You will discover that it was not New York's problem, but your own problem. When you do not change cities, you always feel these problems are all caused by New York City; after you change, you understand. Therefore you can see yourself more clearly and benefit from it -- because you see yourself more clearly, you benefit from it.

The same applies when you leave your home station.

He says I gave the example of New York City; when you go exploring the unknown reality, the same theory applies, it is equally applicable. Here, the possible benefits are far greater than the travel in your ordinary life -- the benefits of exploring the unknown reality are far greater than the benefits of ordinary travel, because you see yourself more clearly, whereas in ordinary travel you may not see that clearly.

But you are still yourself; you will not cease to be yourself just because you have taken a trip to the unknown reality. It is impossible to construct reality in no way at all.

Remember, it is impossible. In other words, you always construct your reality in some way -- the matter that your beliefs create your reality holds true in any reality. You always construct it in different ways; it is just that in different realities, the results of that construction may be different. But you always have to construct it.

Reality implies a structure.

Reality is the world you create, the environment around you that you create. It implies a structure -- what kind of structure? It is the structure of your inner self. The inner, psychological structure of your heart will be projected outward.

Even in your own world, if you travel everywhere carrying your own worldview with you, then you will never see the naked culture; you will always be a tourist -- carrying your household equipment with you at all times, afraid to give it up.

This is a very typical example; the less people go out, the more they have these problems. Why do you often practice this unknown reality? When you go out more and become more experienced and knowledgeable, you will not have that very narrow native consciousness -- we call it provincial consciousness.

What is provincial consciousness? Seth explains it here. Let me put it bluntly: many people, when they travel, always stay in the places they like. For example, they say, "Wow, I only stay at InterContinental hotels; I am always an InterContinental member," so they always stay at InterContinental, or always stay at that Oriental Culture, or always at Four Seasons, always at Sheraton, always at Hilton. They stay in familiar hotels, and then when they travel anywhere, in any city around the world, they look for these chain hotels to stay in. Do you think you can understand the local culture that way? Once you have been to these hotels enough, you know they are all the same -- the breakfasts are almost the same, of course with some local characteristics, but seventy or eighty percent is the same; the hotel services and facilities are also about the same, maybe with a little ethnic flavor, but not much difference. So if you are traveling, should you not be understanding the local culture and becoming familiar with the local human characteristics? But if you stay in the hotels you are familiar with, can you experience these things? You cannot.

There are also many narrow viewpoints; for example, some people, wherever they go in the world, have to eat the food of their own hometown. This is maddening. Sometimes if you travel with this kind of person, you will go crazy -- wherever he goes he has to eat that one hometown flavor, no matter what his hometown food is, even if it is a bowl of noodles, a steamed bun, a flatbread, a stinky tofu, or whatever. There is nothing wrong with loving your hometown food, but when you go traveling somewhere else, should you not do as the locals do and experience their customs and culture? Otherwise why did you come traveling? Would it not be better to just sit at home? Would it not be more comfortable to turn on the TV and watch the travel channels? But no, they insist on eating their local food, and you find it maddening. It is like many people traveling to the south and searching all over the streets for northern noodles; and many southerners going to the north and searching everywhere for seafood -- those places do not have these things, but they still do it.

There are many, many more examples, but I will not list them all. So what is this problem? It is that you do not dare to give up your original values; you always feel that if you let go of those values, you will not know how to handle things. To put it simply, these people have traveled too little and have too little travel experience. Once you have traveled more and seen the customs and cultures of many places around the world, you will understand that your so-called hometown, your so-called worldview, your so-called cultural viewpoints, your so-called values, cannot withstand any scrutiny. As Seth says, they only work in your hometown; once you leave your hometown and go elsewhere, they are simply not other people's values. So you need to give them up.

For example, if you are an American or an Englishman or a European, then when you visit other regions of the world, you will stay in the metropolitan hotels -- all the same.

People from all over the world are the same; everywhere they go they start at five-star hotels, and they insist on finding at least a four-star; anything below that is unacceptable. You are always looking at other cultures through your own eyes -- you are like being shut in a cage at the zoo. You think you have gone traveling, but actually other people are looking at you, like looking at a foreigner.

What is real travel? Real travel is going to the places where the locals eat, the places where the locals live, the places where the locals shop, living together with the locals, and making friends with the locals. Forget who you are, forget where you came from. Being with the locals, you will feel incomparable happiness and joy, a kind of happiness you do not have in your ordinary feeling. Ordinarily you always hold yourself up, carrying that hometown attitude of yours, and wherever you go you put on the airs of your hometown; nobody cares about you.

I must remind everyone to pay attention to this point. After some of our countrymen become wealthy, wherever they go they are always afraid others will look down on them, as if doing as the locals do is a very low-class behavior, and they insist on going everywhere with the manner of the great Chinese civilization sweeping across the world. This really makes others dislike you. Your civilization is splendid, but other people's civilizations are not inferior either; why must your civilization be the main one? This is something many of us Chinese carry in our bones -- a sense of civilizational superiority. Some people think they are very high-class, very grand, very full of national spirit and national character this way, but in the eyes of others, you are just a country bumpkin who has never been out, a hillbilly, desperately clinging to your own set of things.

When you leave your home station and alter your consciousness, if you carry your own set of ideas with you and interpret your experience through your own personal cultural beliefs, then you will always be a tourist.

What he is describing is a typical example. When you travel to the unknown reality, it is the same: you arrive at a place that is completely different from our physical world, where everything is different -- the rules, the physical laws, even space and time are different, even the speed of time is different, even the direction of time may be different -- and you still keep measuring it with your viewpoints from this physical world, and you always interpret your experience through your own set of cultural beliefs, then you will always be a tourist. You have not gone deep into that unknown reality, and you will not gain anything. What you gain is essentially no different from what you get from watching television.

If that is the case, I suggest you do not travel; save your money for anything else. At home, turn on the travel channel, turn on the National Geographic channel -- there may be such a channel in China too; if not, find videos to watch -- and also Culture and Travel, which is a travel channel from abroad that specifically takes you traveling, and their travel is much deeper than yours; you can experience it. If you travel yourself, you absolutely must not do this, absolutely must not.

Travel has levels and realms. Let me briefly explain; travel has several levels. The first level is "I went, I arrived," take a photo as a memento of having been there, "I have been there, that is enough." Most of our countrymen remain at this level of travel -- I went, took a photo as a memento, wishing they could visit ten scenic spots in one day and take ten sets of photos, saying I have been to ten places. This is the first type.

The second type is the leisure type -- I go there to stay and relax; this already belongs to the vacation form. For example, I go to an island, the Maldives, the Caribbean, or somewhere, and I stay in a hotel for a week, doing nothing, just sunbathing every day, reading, listening to music, playing by the sea, and so on. Some people have already entered this stage -- the second level of travel, the vacation form.

The third level is the free independent backpacker. He is not on vacation either; he truly goes deep into the local area. When you are on vacation, you have not actually gone deep into the local area; you have just changed places to relax. The backpacker is another realm of travel -- I go to a place, go deep into the local customs, wander the streets and alleys, stay in local guesthouses, not in those star-rated hotels; eat local food, go to the local markets to buy things, go back to where I am staying and cook for myself, or taste some local specialty foods, cultural customs and habits, and so on. This is the third type.

The fourth type of travel is being able to work in a place for a period of time; I work there for half a year, I live there, and I work while traveling and travel while working, combining work and life together. This is the fourth state of travel -- the state of living to travel and traveling to live.

When you reach the fifth, it is the highest realm -- everywhere is travel. He just lives in his hometown, and when he walks to any place on the street, everything looks fresh, everything looks curious, and he looks at everything from a completely new angle. At that time, not a single day of his life is not travel; he is traveling every day. These are the five realms of travel. Most people are in the first and second realms; some are in the third; by the fifth realm you have reached a very high level. If you ask him what travel is, he does not know what travel is anymore -- the concept of travel no longer exists; life itself is travel.

Gods or demons, good or evil spirits, are not some kind of unconventional terminology.

These are very traditional interpretations of experience -- this is not something unconventional or unfamiliar to us, but rather another interpretation of familiar things. Precisely because you have good and evil, right and wrong, in the physical world it becomes good people and bad people, good events and bad events; when it reaches the nonphysical world, the unknown reality, it becomes good ghosts and bad ghosts, good spirits and evil spirits. These gods and ghosts and demons are actually the same thing, carrying religious connotations.

Fanatical sects merely represent the traditional side; in their own way, they are as dogmatic as the establishment they reject.

Just as when you explore the unknown reality, it is the same as when you look at those religions in reality. Those religions distinguish good and evil so clearly, and always proclaim themselves to be the good ones and others to be the evil ones -- they are the same as the things they oppose, and they are even more dogmatic than others.

So when we try some exercises, we really need to try to leave our traditional concepts behind. You must not only leave behind the things projected by those traditional concepts; the key is to leave your concepts behind. Merely leaving those things behind is useless; you must leave your beliefs and concepts behind, and step outside your own worldview. Do not carry your worldview, your beliefs, and your judgments with you when exploring those unknown realities; leave them all behind. The following exercise can help you -- Exercise 13, which helps you take off your traditional concepts.

Exercise 13. Close your eyes. Imagine a photograph of yourself; this photograph can be a real photograph or an imagined photograph; either is fine -- it can be a real photograph, one you remember from a certain year and month; or it can be a completely imagined photograph, one that was never taken, but you imagine that there is such a photograph. Remember, either is fine.

Then in your mind, see the photograph of yourself on a table. For example, a photo of you with some celebrity, or a photo of you from some trip somewhere; any is fine. Then imagine your photograph placed on a table. This is the first step; complete the imagining.

If what you have in your mind is a specific photograph, then pay attention to the other things in that image -- if it is a real photograph, for example one taken three years ago when you traveled somewhere, and you really have this photograph, then imagine the things in that photograph: the scenery, the objects, the people, the facilities, the furnishings, what is in it. If the photograph is completely imagined by you, then create such an environment beside your own image -- under what circumstances it was taken, what scenery is around, what season, what clothes you are wearing, what kind of people are around you, or whether there is only yourself around, what kind of city, what kind of landscape. You need to imagine all of this. Good, the second step is complete.

Third step, look at the image in your mind -- the you in the photograph. Can you do it? Try it. In your mind there is a table, on the table there is a photograph, and in the photograph there is a you. See the you in the photograph, the way you exist in the photograph, as a person who is only aware of the other objects surrounding him. Let the you in the photograph observe only the scenery in the photograph. For the person in the photograph, his world is framed and limited by the four edges of the photograph; he can only look within that photograph.

Then try to place your consciousness into that image of yourself -- the fourth step, project your consciousness into the person in the photograph. Use his eyes, use his feelings to feel the environment around him, immerse yourself in that photograph.

Actually, this exercise is the part that Jane said she did not receive in the previous session -- the exercise she missed. Seth said, "I want to give you some supplements and some new insights about those two exercises," and then Jane said she did not receive it; she only received a little, which was to take a photograph and then sink yourself into the photograph and look out through the eyes of the person in the photograph. She did not receive the whole thing, and she regretted it. Actually, Seth has supplemented this exercise again, and this exercise is the complete version of that one.

You look at the scenery in the photograph, at the world in the photograph, through the eyes of your image in the photograph. The worldview of this person in the photograph is limited to the photograph itself.

Now, in your mind, you need to be able to see the you in the photograph step out of the photograph and walk onto the table. At this point, expand your imagination -- you have come alive from the photograph; you no longer only look at the surrounding landscape and scenery in the photograph; you stand up and walk directly out of the photograph, onto the table. Imagine this scene.

That specific room environment seems so enormous to the tiny self. For a person in a photograph, when he walks onto the table, like a little person from Lilliput standing on the table and looking around the room -- are not the things around him all incomparably huge to him? The scale and proportion themselves will be very different.

At this time you are still inside this little person; remember, at this moment your consciousness is still inside this little person, except that he has walked out of the frame of the photograph and onto the table in your reality. And you are still looking through his eyes, standing on the table, surveying the room. Look at the room anew; the proportions are so different from the proportions in his original environment.

Imagine that little person walking around in the specific room -- continue to place your consciousness in this little person, and let this little person explore the room. Walk around the room, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. You can imagine what kind of feeling it would be when you transform yourself into this little person, walking like this, looking at the room with your eyes. Imagine it; be sure to use your imagination and bring yourself into it; it is very, very interesting.

Then he says, after you have explored the room enough, walk outside -- open the door and walk out to the street to see what it is like. Then there will be a considerably expanded worldview. Your worldview will immediately become expanded, and you will never again think about the environment in the photograph -- that will be too small for you. Your world has become so enormous.

This exercise is done. It is very interesting; you can try it. This exercise is not difficult; it is very easy. It just helps you to replace your old worldview.

Many of you do not really want to step out of that photograph.

He is making an analogy. In reality, many of you do not really want to step out of that photograph. Yet in the dream state, you are much freer -- in reality you would not be willing to step out of the photograph.

What is this photograph? The photograph is our present home base. He uses this vivid analogy to tell us that this so-called photograph and the us in the photograph -- is that not our home base, our physical world, our old home? Yes, it is. Many people are not willing to step out of this physical world, not willing to leave this familiar safe zone. But in dreams, you often step out; in dreams you are free. However, you can pretend that dreams are not real -- "Dreams are not real, I do not care, it does not matter if I wander around in dreams." So you can have it both ways: you do not lose your sense of security, and in dreams you can still go strolling through other realities.

Dreams of various kinds often provide frameworks that allow you to leave your own worldview under buffered conditions. You set up the normal picture you have manufactured from reality.

He says that in dreams, the picture you have is also fairly normal, similar to your everyday life. It is just that, with your safety guaranteed and under buffered conditions, you leave your traditional worldview, as if you have gone to explore some other environments. It may be a place you do not even know. Sometimes you know it is in a certain city, or you have returned to the old home of your childhood, or returned to a place where you once worked. Sometimes you know where it is, sometimes you do not know where it is -- it does not matter where it is. But you have left your original worldview, left the place where you originally were. This is the most important practice -- you have left your home base.

Then below, he says that as Seth, he really took a sip of milk, and then he immediately made a very disapproving expression, his features all wrinkled up, his lips pulling back in strong dislike. He raised the half-empty glass of milk toward me, and his Seth voice boomed out:

This is far too different from any milk I have ever drunk. It is like lime with chemicals added, completely unrelated to the cow.

This little interlude is very interesting. At this time Seth and Jane were in a merged state. Jane picked up the glass and took a big sip of milk, and Seth, still in the merged state, looked utterly disgusted. You can imagine that expression -- disapproving, mouth pulling back, then holding up the milk and saying, "This is milk? Is this not all a mixture of chemicals and lime? What does this have to do with a cow? Can this even be called milk?" That is what he meant.

What is the fact? The fact is real -- most of the milk we drink is not milk. I may again be bringing up many inappropriate examples -- a lot of our milk simply has no milk in it at all. It is just a mixture, all kinds of milk flavoring, all kinds of water, plus various thickening agents and who knows what else. This is absolutely real, absolutely something I have seen with my own eyes -- if you have this experience, you know.

What I am describing is still the best-case scenario. On the Hulunbuir grasslands, the herders who collect the milk all add things to it themselves⁵. If they do not add anything, they cannot meet the dairy factory's purchasing standards. They first add water -- large amounts of water. After adding water, they add those things. Let me describe what those things look like -- white bags, thick transparent plastic bags, about the size of the flour sacks you eat from, bag after bag, each around twenty or thirty jin, and inside is a viscous substance, some kind of thickener or whatever. Then they dump bag after bag of this stuff into the mixture of water and milk, stir it in, and add some special milk flavoring or the like. Then the dairy factory buys it up. I have seen all of this with my own eyes. And they say this is already the best milk in the whole country.

If the milk collected on the Hulunbuir grasslands is already the best, then you can imagine what the milk in other places is like. Is it only China that is like this? Other countries have similar situations, just not as severe, because their standards are stricter and there are some things they dare not add. So you should know -- this was American milk in 1970, and just imagine what it is like now. This was America in 1974, so everyone should just be aware in their hearts. If a mother has given birth, if she can breastfeed, she should definitely breastfeed; only if that really is not possible should she use formula, and try not to drink these things.

Teacher Xiyu also added a supplement, and his supplement was even harsher than mine. He said that in Europe he participated in a project where a European milk brand was going to be exported to China. When testing was done, what was shocking was that in the entire milk -- in Teacher Xiyu's words -- there was not a single drop of milk; it was entirely blended from chemical products. Everyone should just know about this kind of thing and not publicize it too much, because these are secrets within the industry, open secrets. Anyone who has worked in the milk field, if you ask them, they all know; it is only a question of whether they are willing to say it or not.

Alteration of Consciousness in Dreams

Jane was still in trance. She set the milk aside and did not drink any more of it, but for the rest of the time she kept drinking wine. However, when Jane was resting, that is, when Seth was not merged with her, she drank milk with no reaction. That is to say, we humans have already become accustomed to this kind of milk and do not feel much of anything. But when Seth was merged with Jane, he could taste the flavor of the milk. This is a little interlude, unrelated to the content, just amusing.

He says that alterations of your consciousness often occur in dreams:

Alterations of your consciousness are very many in dreams, but in real life you cannot do them. There, for you at least, your experience has no practical use.

In dreams you feel that experience has no practical use for you, so you dare to change, dare to make alterations of consciousness. You imagine that dreams involve only illusions, that dreams are just illusions. But many of your best photographs of other realities are taken by you in dreams -- your best snapshots of other realities, some memories, are all scenes from dreams. They may be overexposed or underexposed, the focus may be somewhat blurry, but your dreams present you with far more information about unknown reality than is assumed.

However, during your sleep, your consciousness often slips out of your body and back again. When you are outside the body, you dream -- this "you" refers to your consciousness. When consciousness leaves the body, you are dreaming; consciousness goes to unknown reality. It is just like dreaming inside the body -- actually you do not dream inside your body, you dream inside your consciousness. You feel as though you are dreaming inside the body, but actually consciousness has already left the body.

Thus you can form a dream story about an out-of-body journey of your own. Actually every one of your dreams is similar to an out-of-body experience, except that it is an out-of-body experience within the dream. Your physical form lies asleep on the bed.

He says that unknown reality is not really so mysterious to you. You always feel it is very mysterious, but actually every day when you dream you are exploring unknown reality; it is not mysterious at all. You feel it is mysterious, but you are only pretending it is mysterious.

Sometimes you have quite clear perception of your journeys, but the actual local areas you visit are so different from your own world that you try, as best you can, to interpret them from the viewpoint of ordinary circumstances. Because it is too different from your world, you still use your habitual three-dimensional thought patterns to interpret your dreams. If by chance you remember an episode, it will also seem chaotic -- if you do not interpret it with the three-dimensional world but truly remember the original appearance of the dream, it will seem very chaotic. Because you will place your own worldview where it does not belong, you cannot understand it, and you feel it is chaotic. Only by reorganizing it and reinterpreting it with your own viewpoint do you feel the dream is very logical.

In dream travel, you are quite likely to journey to other civilizations:

Those civilizations in your past or future, or even other realities, or even to other realities, to worlds that exist in other systems of probability.

In dreams you often go to other civilized worlds, perhaps civilizations of the past, perhaps civilizations of the future. Perhaps in your dreams you visit Atlantis of the past, or Atlantis of the future. Atlantis is a common name that exists in three civilizations; do not think it is only a past human civilization. It is actually a combination of several civilizations, existing both in the past and in the future. Bashar specifically talked about this⁶. Once I went to a Bashar lecture, and the theme of that session was specifically about Atlantis.

There is even a kind of mutual influence -- those worlds in different realities, worlds that exist in other probabilities, and our world influence each other. Here "mutual influence" is in quotation marks, because it is not the kind of influence we imagine. Because you influence any reality system with which you have experience -- he has talked about this before. When your consciousness focuses on any reality, that reality itself is also composed of consciousness, and there is bound to be interaction between you and it. Once interaction occurs, there is bound to be influence, whether the influence you understand is great or small. In other words, your journey to unknown reality, even though you did not touch anything and did not participate in anything, still has an influence on them; and after you return, it also has an influence on your present physical-world reality.

Why is there influence? Of course there is influence. When you experience a reality, is that reality not different from what it was before? Because there is one more you present, and that is the biggest difference, not to mention other potential influences. He says there is no closed reality; there are only surface boundaries that seem to separate them. Realities are not closed off from one another; they are completely connected, internally linked, but on the surface there are boundaries that seem to separate them, making you think this is the underworld and this is the world of the living. When you learn to travel in unknown reality, you will have a different feeling: so I can move through different worlds; so there really are no boundaries between them. If there were boundaries, how could you cross over?

But the narrower your own worldview, the less you will recall dreams or activities concerning them, and the more distorted your dream photographs will be. Because your worldview is too localized, anything that does not conform is filtered out, so the dreams you remember are few, and the photographs are more distorted.

Exercise Thirteen: Letting Go of Fixed Worldviews

The core idea of this thirteenth exercise is not to bring your fixed worldview with you into unknown reality; before you go, you must put everything down.

Exercise Fourteen: The Camera in Dreams

Below is a very useful, short and effective exercise -- Exercise Fourteen.

Before you go to sleep, tell yourself that you will take a dream photograph in your mind of the most important dream of that night.

Be sure to tell yourself clearly before sleep, when you are lying in bed preparing to sleep: tonight I am going to take a photograph of the dream in my mind. Then tell yourself that you will even be aware, while sleeping, that you are doing this -- I am going to take a photograph in the dream.

Imagine that you bring a camera with you. Any camera will do -- a cell phone, a DSLR, a point-and-shoot, or an instant Polaroid. Use the camera you are most familiar with, and at your clearest point of perception, take a photograph with this camera, then bring it back in your mind. When you wake up, it will be the first picture you see in your mind. Of course you will try to take the best photograph possible.

You can expect various results. Some people see the dream photograph as soon as they wake up; others find that such a photograph suddenly appears later in the day, during everyday activities -- after working for a while during the day, or in an unguarded moment of daily life, a photograph suddenly flashes in the mind. All of this is possible.

But if you do this exercise often, many of you will find that you can even consciously use that camera while sleeping, to the point that it becomes an element of your dream travel. You will be able to bring back more and more photographs. As you practice and become more skilled, you will not only be able to take one photograph, but many, and bring them back, making it a basic part of dreaming. Just as when you travel you must bring a camera, when you travel in unknown worlds, when you travel in the dream world, you will also carry a camera with you, forming a habit, forming a standard accessory -- just like modern people take out their phones to photograph everything, photographing food, drinks, travel, scenic spots, little flowers, pets, and of course many selfies.

However, he reminds you that if you do not learn how to examine them, these photographs will not have much meaning. They are not just to be stored and forgotten, not like travel photos that you take and store and forget after a while. They have other uses.

You should describe each scene, and write down what you remember about it.

After you bring the photograph back in your mind, you should record it -- this is the process of recording dreams. The photograph only strengthens that feeling of clarity in the dream, but you cannot say that once the photograph is recorded you can toss it aside and forget it after a while, as if it were useless. You should describe the scene and write down everything you remember about it: in which dream, in which plot, was this photograph taken; what people, things, and events are in the photograph; whatever you can remember, write it all down. Include your feelings while dreaming and later while recording it -- how you felt while dreaming, the feeling at the moment the photograph was taken, and the feeling while recording it; both feelings should be written down.

The very effort of taking the camera with you makes you a more meaningful explorer, and automatically helps you expand your own awareness.

When you consciously bring the camera with you, it will automatically expand your own awareness, and you become a true explorer, not merely a sightseer.

When you are in the dream state, each photograph will only be used as a fleeting glimpse of a different reality.

Do not get overly excited after obtaining one or two photographs and rush to interpret them or ask around everywhere. He has laid the groundwork for you in advance here: do not do this. Why? Because you have only had one or two fleeting glimpses of that unknown reality. It is like taking one or two photographs of New York City and asking someone else to explain what the photographs mean -- how can he explain? You cannot explain it yourself either. Because there is too little information; you have only seen one or two snapshots of another world, and there is not enough information.

What you should do is keep recording your dreams, persist in recording dreams, and continuously record the things in your dreams. Over time, these photographs -- for example, if you live in New York City for a long time and take two photographs every day, in different scenes and different places, when there are enough photographs, your understanding of the city will be far greater than from looking at just one photograph.

Now, we use a mental camera. There is a knack to being a good dream photographer, and you must learn how to operate that camera.

Just like ordinary photography, there is a knack; not everyone can take good-looking photographs. Why are some people photographers, while others take ugly pictures that even their own girlfriends dislike?

For example, in the physical world, a photographer knows that many conditions affect the photographs he takes.

In our physical world, a photographer knows that many conditions affect a photograph: light, exposure, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and so on, so external conditions are important. In the three-dimensional world, external conditions are very important to a photographer. For example, on a gloomy day you may take a very poor photograph, with bad light and underexposure.

But for your dream camera:

Those conditions themselves are mental.

In the dream world, the dream camera is a mental camera, not a physical camera. A physical camera records things as they are; a mental camera carries your strong subjectivity. You must understand this: what you are using is not a physical camera but a mental camera, and the mental camera itself has mentality within it, has subjectivity within it.

For example, if you are in a gloomy mood, then your photograph of inner reality may be dark, unclear in outline, or faintly ominous.

This does not necessarily mean that the dream itself has a tragic meaning. You cannot look at a dark photograph and say whether this dream portends a bad future -- there is no relation at all. It is simply that the emotions of your psyche were photographed in dim light; it can only show that your psyche's emotions at the time of photographing were dim and lightless, and cannot indicate what the future will be like.

He tells you a very important knack when using the dream camera, and you must remember it:

Inner weather changes often, just like outer weather.

Weather is not unchanging. A dream photograph carrying a gloomy atmosphere is different from a photograph of the physical world taken in the afternoon: photography in the three-dimensional world is objective recording, unaffected by the photographer's emotions, while the mental camera is affected by the emotional state of the psyche at the time.

But many people remember a gloomy dream and become afraid, thinking it portends something bad. Here he tells you: no, it is not so. Of course you construct your dream; your dream is certainly constructed by you. From that angle, your dream world is as changeable as the physical world. The weather of the physical world is changeable, and the dream world is the same.

Every actual photographer has a concept of what he wants to capture in the photograph, and to that extent, the photograph he constructs and his viewpoint are ordinary.

Photographers in our physical reality all have an idea: what the photograph should capture, how to choose the foreground and background, how to compose, where to place the subject. He has ideas and choices, and this composition, the photograph, and his viewpoint are formed. The scene is the same, but how he chooses the composition is his choice, so what a photographer produces is different from what you produce -- the composition is different, the focus is different, the angle of seeing things is different, and that is why he is a photographer and you are not.

This is the same in the dream state. You have all kinds of dreams:

You can take what you want from dream reality, so to speak, just as basically you take what you need from waking life. For that reason, your dream photographs will show you the kind of experience you choose from the reality of the inner world.

Let me explain this part together: when photographing in the three-dimensional world, the photographer has a concept that leads him to choose the composition. The world is the same world for the photographer and for you; the scenery is the same, but why do his photographs look good and yours do not? It is because his framing angle and compositional ability are different from yours. Taking photographs in the dream state is similar: what photographs you bring back depends on which images your psyche chooses to capture in inner reality. The three-dimensional world is colorful and varied, and photographers choose different things to shoot -- some specialize in humanistic subjects, some in people, some in street scenes, some in still life, some in landscapes, some in stars; there are all kinds of photographers. He is very clear about what he wants to shoot, and because the world is colorful and varied, what to shoot is decided by himself.

The same applies in the dream world. The dream world is also rich and colorful, and what exactly you want to shoot, what you bring back -- the function of the photograph is shown here: by analyzing the photographs, you know how your inner soul, the nature of your psyche, chooses in the unknown world. When you take photographs with the mental camera, what you bring back is certainly the focus of your attention and choice at that time. Through the photographs, through your description and recording of them, over time you will know what preferences and tendencies of choice you have in the inner world, and how you choose. In other words, you can gradually explore the real you in the inner world -- what its values are, what its worldview is.

From a certain angle, do a photographer's photographs or works represent his worldview? We can say so. Some people always shoot dark subjects; that is one kind of worldview. Others always shoot bright and happy subjects. They are different. Your soul or psyche takes photographs in the inner world, in the dream world; if you organize these photographs, put them together, and record them, you can see what the worldview of your inner psyche is.

We have said not to bring your three-dimensional worldview with you, so what is your own worldview in the inner world? You do not know. Just as when we ask you to examine your belief system, you cannot see it either. But we have many methods to obtain it. In the inner world, this method is very effective. The theme of this session is what to look for when we travel in the inner psyche -- to find what your own worldview is in the inner world, how you choose and discard, what your belief system is, not your present one, but the one in the inner world. When you discover it, it has a very great significance and influence on your present life. Why? Because that is your deepest underlying belief, and the things you normally do not notice are displayed there without concealment. It will have an influence on present social values and worldviews, and that influence may be obvious or not obvious, depending on whether you can analyze it out.

Rob's Experience: Another Probable Self

The dictation of this session ends here. Seth spent another six minutes giving Jane some personal material, and then was about to end the session. Rob suddenly asked whether he could ask a question. He said that this afternoon he felt he was a very old man; what did that mean? This is Note One.

Note Two, Rob said:

When I lay down to take a nap this afternoon, and as I began to drift toward sleep, I became aware that I was looking at my own head from an angle I do not ordinarily see.

What angle? About two inches behind and above my right ear -- that is, about five centimeters -- looking at my own head from that position, five centimeters behind and above the right ear.

I saw the head of a very old man, about eighty or ninety years old. I was certain that he was a probable version of myself in this reality.

This was when he was half asleep, beginning to drift toward sleep, not yet asleep, a kind of lucid dream or waking dream. He clearly knew this was another probable version of himself in this physical reality.

I saw short, sparse white hair, but not complete baldness. Through the hair I could see blue veins pulsing in the skin covering the skull.

Because there was almost no hair, the scalp was clearly visible, and the blue veins could be seen very clearly. In some way, this sight alone was reminiscent of both the very young and the very old -- in a child's skin the veins are also blue, and in the skin of the very old the veins are also blue.

I knew I was resting, and that I was not aged.

At this time he knew he was resting, not yet asleep.

I do not believe I was bedridden, but I was being cared for.

Rob asked Seth what this meant. Seth said:

What you saw represented two things. The first was an association with a definite past sensation of old age, and a precognition of that moment in this life that you have not yet encountered.

The first indicates your association with the sensation of old age in a certain past life, and a precognition of the future moment in this life when you will be old, which has not yet arrived. Therefore:

You are psychically open. Because you are open, your body and the position of your head are used as a bridge of relationship between the two worlds.

Because you do not have restrictive thinking, the body and the position of the head are used as a bridge between the two worlds. Your mind knows it is young, but the head looks old, and this old head is both a memory of a past life and a precognition of old age in the future of this life.

In both you are not aged.

Not the feeling of being too old to move; the age is advanced but not aged. Because your psyche is open, the mind is not old. To put it simply, that eighty- or ninety-year-old Rob still had a mindset that could connect with the mindset of his youth; they had an inner connection, so mentally he was not old. The same was true of the previous life; mentally he was not old either, because the psyche was open. Therefore the body can draw energy from the psyche -- many people are advanced in age, but their mindset is not old at all. We have said before: the Chinese male model in his eighties walks with a swagger; and just two days ago I saw a news report that many young people born in the 1990s in China are already showing symptoms of geriatric diseases⁷. How terrifying. So mindset is very important.

He said it was because his mindset was open, and in the two elderly scenes he saw, the mindset was not old in either one. Why was the mindset not old? Rob himself said, "I know I am resting, and I am not aged." That was Rob's genuine feeling. Seth then explained to him why he was not aged.

Seth then ended the session, gave his heartfelt blessings and wished him good night, Rob said good night to Seth, and it was over.

Seth's commentary on this experience reflects the idea of simultaneous time—past, present, and future exist at once. From my "now," I saw the reincarnational past as well as the appearance of my own future self in this life. This point once again confirms what Seth has always emphasized: past, present, and future exist simultaneously.

Afterword

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注释与核实

1. According to Mike's original words, "In Arcadia, Los Angeles, USA, several high school girls committed school violence against another girl"; upon verification, it should be "In March 2015, several Chinese international students kidnapped and assaulted a female classmate at an ice cream shop and a nearby park in Rowland Heights, Los Angeles County, and also forced her to eat her cut hair; the incident did not occur in Arcadia or on a high school campus." (Source: Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, "Three Chinese Nationals Sentenced to Prison for Kidnapping, Assaults in Rowland Heights," https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/press/021716_Three_Chinese_Nationals_Sentenced_to_Prison_for_Kidnapping_Assaults_in_Rowland_Heights.pdf) ↩

2. Source: Cheng Manqi, "Dianping" 2015 (https://zqb.cyol.com/html/2015-06/17/nw.D110000zgqnb_20150617_2-10.htm) ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. This claim could not be verified. ↩

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: Bashar official website, "The Last Days of Atlantis" (https://tv.bashar.org/checkout/new?o=p3073580) ↩

7. Source: Xinhua News Agency, "Beware of the Trend of Some 'Diseases of the Elderly' Affecting Younger People" 2022 (https://www.news.cn/2022-07/25/c_1128861469.htm) ↩