The "Guide" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the blockquotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter discusses the self. The concept of identity depends on focusing only on a small portion of reality at the physical level; the genetic information in chromosomes involves ancestors, reincarnation, and contemporary relationships, and is living and personal. The metaphor of plants and leaves illustrates that the individual is only a leaf on a larger self, connected to counterparts and reincarnational selves yet each independent. Finally, it discusses the law of cause and effect and the temporal limitations in language.
Key Points of This Chapter
- The concept of identity is maintained only because a small portion of reality on the physical plane is regarded as valid.
- Ancestors, reincarnational selves, and contemporary relationships together determine the genetic pattern, and their information is living, specific, non-neutral, and personalized.
- An individual is like a leaf on a plant, belonging with counterparts and reincarnational selves to a larger self, connected to one another yet each independent.
- Ancient cultures once accepted ancestral experience as part of the self, and therefore had more awareness of present reality.
- The law of cause and effect is only a natural law set by humans; language contains the implication of single-threaded time, which limits perception.
Main Text
At the beginning, Seth began to dictate slowly and quietly
This session began at 9:38 p.m. on Monday, January 20, 1975. At the beginning, Seth began to dictate slowly and quietly.
Because you consider only such a small facet of your own reality as valid, your present concept of identity can be maintained.
You take a multidimensional, multi-dimensional reality of your own self, and focus it only on such a small range as the physical level. Only by considering it valid on this level can you maintain your present concept of identity. If the entire multidimensional thing were given to you, you probably could not maintain it. So, the maintenance of your concept of identity depends on your conscious focus facing only a very small facet. In other words, as soon as you allow any significant subjective experience to intrude, the concept of self-nature that you have accepted will disappear. Self-nature is the concept of self-identity, that is, your idea of "who you are" will disappear, that old idea will disappear.
That absent self is the self you are not aware of. Although inwardly there is a longing for that greater portion of existence, you cannot perceive them, and even if you did perceive them, you would not accept that as being you. The unknown reality, for the most part, involves breaking down long-accepted theories, those entrenched theories that prevent you from perceiving the beneficial nature of the absent portions of yourself. Just as you focus on certain details within a larger range of reality, you also focus only on the small portion of yourself that you consider real—in a world of multidimensional reality, you focus only on a small portion of your existence that you consider real, and ignore all the rest.
However, within yourself, you carry deep knowledge of experience. Although the conscious part of you ignores it, your body carries these experiences that you are not aware of. In that regard, it should be prior—that knowledge is prepared in advance. Yet within your cells and within the deeper mind of yourself, that information is present. It has no concept of the past; to it, that knowledge is always living, fresh knowledge of the present. It is not the knowledge of your ancestors, not the knowledge of your ancient forebears; it is your present, brand-new knowledge. Although from the perspective of human time it is the knowledge of your ancestors, to your cells and to the deeper inner knowing, it is brand-new knowledge, present right now.
Your self-nature overflows with magnificent, luxurious heart-buds.
Because that knowledge is new to you, although it is old knowledge—this is another paradox. Although from the perspective of time it is old, you carry experience, and since experience is only called experience after it has been lived through, yet that knowledge is present and brand-new to you. So your self-nature overflows with magnificent, luxurious heart-buds. Why call it luxurious? Because being able to sprout new heart-buds on top of such ancient knowledge is itself a luxurious thing—that knowledge is ever-new, it is not ancient.
Yet you jealously prevent this creativity.
You yourself do not want this creativity. To some degree, within your chromosomes, you do indeed carry the knowledge of your ancestors, and those chromosomes present a pattern that is not fixed but elastic. In your terms, it is a kind of coded method that endows you with the subjective life experiences of those who have passed on. Simply put, within your genetic chromosomes there exists ancient wisdom. And that wisdom is not dead, it is not fixed—it is elastic. It is a pattern, that is, a kind of life wisdom and life experience, but not rigid; it conforms to your present environment and conditions, and can solve your present problems.
For example, what Ruburt has recently been suspecting—some very ancient cultures were aware of this. Ruburt has recently been suspecting that some ancient cultures and civilizations had already discovered this, namely that this ancient wisdom exists within the cells and chromosomes of our human bodies.
In these ancient cultures, although each person was an independent individual, their members nevertheless identified to some extent with their ancestors, and accepted them as part of their self-nature. This does not mean that the person had less awareness of his own reality, but rather more awareness. It is not that inheriting ancient knowledge makes you unaware of present reality; on the contrary, applying that ancient knowledge to present awareness will make you understand present reality more, not less.
There was an entirely different kind of focus, in which ancestors were understood as contributing to new life experience. In which the physically focused consciousness clearly saw itself as perceiving the world for itself, but also for all those who had passed on. While understanding that in those terms, it contributed in the same way as past generations.
What this passage means is that in some ancient civilizations, they knew that the knowledge of ancestors would be passed down, and this transmission of culture and wisdom was not passed down through things written in books; it was passed down through chromosomes. And this transmission grows ever new with time—the more ancient it is, the more it brings new creation and new understanding. He would also, like those ancestors who once gave him ancient wisdom, contribute to the generations that follow through his own exploration and experience in new fields.
To put it plainly and concretely, for example, as descendants of the dragon, the Chinese people of the Chinese nation, no matter where in the world we are, whether we have taken local citizenship, our self-identity is still Chinese. Of course second-generation immigrants also have this sense of identity, but by the third or fourth generation, the sense of identity gradually becomes smaller and smaller. Among first- and second-generation immigrants, the country, region, and culture in which they live have all changed, but no matter how much the outside changes, it does not hinder them from identifying as Chinese. This identification, to a large extent, is a kind of inheritance in which culture is written into the genes.
Let me use another example to help you understand that this transmission of wisdom is sometimes written into the genes—for example, we all say that Chinese people are very intelligent, and Chinese people all over the world are very intelligent. Look at the people researching artificial intelligence in America now, 50% are Asian1, and Chinese people make up a large portion. Where does this wisdom come from? It is already hard to say. In different countries and different places, we can all see that the way Chinese people handle matters, and their wisdom in dealing with people and affairs, seem to have something innate. For example, the Jewish people's natural ability in business—we do not deny their contribution of loving learning and valuing education, but their own ethnic inheritance is very obvious.
When the individual clearly saw the living quality of consciousness, animals were also accepted within this natural philosophy of self-nature.
When people clearly see that consciousness does not distinguish between species, that it is all a living essence, then animals will also be accepted within this natural philosophy of self-nature. What is the natural philosophy of self-nature? It is that there is a vast unity—after animals are eaten by humans, the consciousness of animals also mixes with human consciousness and continues to be passed down, and the biological wisdom of animals can also be accepted by humans. The characteristics of animals will be understood as continuing life, and humans will add their characteristics to their own experience in a new way.
The human body would be used in the earth's magnificent agriculture.
After our bodies die and are buried in the earth, they decompose, and new forms arise from them—the body buried in the earth becomes fertilizer for the land.
For example, it was a mutual, regional process, in which a small area within a jungle was a true home.
Why? Because psychically, spiritually, and physically, everything is a part of the self. After you die and are buried in the earth and turn into fertilizer, plants grow out of it, and your descendants eat these plants and grow—your descendants are also a part of you, and the plants that you have become are eaten by them, and what they eat is also a part of themselves, and so it cycles continuously. Including the small animals in that jungle area that you eat, they also become a part of your consciousness. Between you and all things there is a mutual, regional process; the entire home—within this small range of home—is all a part of the self. You are everywhere, you incarnate in every place, just like at the end of the movie Lucy, you are everywhere.
Let those who wish to laugh, laugh at the stories of sprites becoming trees.
Some people say how could a sprite become a tree, or how could there be a sprite within a tree—he lets others laugh, like a fairy tale, thinking it is laughable. But this is clearly a simplified theory. Just as when we die and are buried underground, plants grow out of the nutrients from the decomposition of the human body—this is a mutual, regional process, and from a certain angle, the human soul has gone into the plant—you could understand it that way.
But in such societies, it was a symbolic statement.
After death, people were buried near their homes, on the same adjacent land, which later formed the soil composition out of which religion grew. Again, your narrow concept of self-nature makes what I am saying difficult for you to perceive. Because after you die, things grow out of the ground where you were buried, and then religion says these things have spirituality. This principle is true, but your human concepts prevent you from being aware of this part.
I am not saying, for example, that each individual's living consciousness literally returned to the earth.
I am not saying that your consciousness re-entered the earth and then burrowed into the plants. What I am saying is that the physical material that was permeated by your consciousness, and stamped with the imprint of your consciousness, went back. It returned in the form of physical nutrients and was absorbed by the plants again. But these nutrients absorbed by the plants carry the permeation of your consciousness—because they were originally the cells of your body, the components of your body, stamped with the seal of your consciousness; they were once in frequency resonance with your consciousness.
Even the cell retained the knowledge of all its alliances, and in physical terms, the consciousness as you understand it is built upon that.
Cells remember all the organizations and alliances they have ever formed. For example, a small group of cells formed a small tissue, a small muscle group, or a group of cells formed a special function—these cells will remember what organization they worked in. It is like a person who has been a soldier and also attended school; he will go to alumni reunions and also to comrades-in-arms reunions. He belongs to different organizations, and as long as he worked in that organization, he will remember the things of that organization, and those are all part of his wisdom. From the perspective of physical cells, the consciousness as you understand it is built upon this knowledge of the cells; if the cells did not have this knowledge, there would be no consciousness for you. The premise is from the physical level.
When the self-nature did not intuitively understand this heritage, it was impoverished.
When a self-nature does not understand such an ancient heritage—that you are inherited from your ancestors, and at the same time you are inherited from the environment in which you live, and you are also a heritage of your own, and also the heritage of your ancestors, and also the heritage of the surrounding environment, of those small animals and plants—when this understanding is lacking, you are impoverished. In the end, this heritage is the heritage of the unity of all things; all consciousness is the unity of all things.
Those intimate realizations had to be balanced against certain purposes set by your species, and even had to be temporarily set aside, so that other abilities and characteristics could be given expression.
This passage may be a bit hard to understand. The simple meaning is that when you want to achieve that intuitive, intimate realization of this heritage, it will be balanced against certain purposes set by the human species, and even temporarily set aside, so that other abilities and characteristics can be given expression.
For example, you have inherited such wisdom from your ancestors, but in the process of human development, you must forget this wisdom; it cannot be displayed in a very obvious way, and must be temporarily set aside. If you do not do this, you cannot bring out your other abilities. You would just be using the knowledge of your ancestors, with nothing new, and no new buds could grow. The purpose set by the human species is to increase new knowledge—you are given old knowledge, but you cannot be allowed to use it right away, because once you get used to using it, you will never expand into new things again. He first hides this knowledge, so that you do not know you have it. Then when you use the wisdom of a blank sheet of paper to expand anew, you are actually adding to that inherited knowledge.
Human curiosity would not allow it to remain for long in the realm in which it originally dwelt, so the intimate feelings were deliberately broken up.
So it is very normal that you do not understand these things. You may ask, why do I not understand this ancient wisdom? It is written in the chromosomes and DNA, why can I not perceive it? Why does the knowledge my father learned, the schooling he went through, have to be learned all over again by me? Why cannot it be passed directly to me through him? The reason is to expand your abilities. Because your curiosity will not let you stay forever in the ancient wisdom; it will definitely push you to open up new things. Although it is the same textbook, your father studied it and you studied it too, but what you learn is definitely different from what your father learned.
However, again, when the planetary population expanded to a certain degree (as it has now), that intimate feeling became very important again.
However, the original feeling of home must expand to a feeling that covers the entire surface of the earth. This feeling is that local feeling of the unity of all things in the jungle—everything is a part of the self. When the population increases to a certain degree, it will return again. When the population was sparse, this feeling had to be set aside, not allowed to be too strong; individuality had to be felt, to keep expanding, to have children, to open up new territories—this is the arrangement of nature, the setting of the human species. When the population density reaches a very high level, it must return again—this perception of spirituality, the perception of the whole world as one, must return. When he recognizes the unity with all things, he will not want to have as many children as before, because he feels that other people's children are also his own, so why must he have his own? This is a kind of natural regulation of population.
This feeling of home must expand—you cannot remain only within a certain small village, a certain ethnicity, or a certain family lineage as before; at this time you must expand to the concept of the entire earth. For example, as a Chinese person, wherever you go, you identify with the Chinese nation. If one day you explore and migrate to Mars, what you identify with at that time is no longer the Chinese nation; you will identify as an Earthling, from that blue planet. Just like when you come from a small city, as you keep growing, when people ask where you are from, you will say I am from Guangdong; when you leave China and go to Italy, you will say I am Chinese; if you colonize another planet, you will say I am from Earth. The sense of identity expands in this way.
That absent portion of the self—the probable selves, the unknown self—is about to emerge, ready to be given expression. In other words, at this time the spiritual awakening is basically about to begin.
Other lines of consciousness, possible to you, are now beginning to operate.
Previously they did not operate. Previously you only needed to expand your small territory into a larger territory; when humanity had not yet filled the earth, when large areas were still desolate land, this kind of cognition was not needed, and expansion on the physical level still needed to continue. When you have filled the entire earth, at that time the cognition of the unity of all things is needed, and a concept of the integration of the species as a whole is needed—this is the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind that our national leaders have been advocating.
These different directions of focus will each allow you to see other aspects of your reality as an individual, and as a species.
What does focus mean? It means no longer focusing only on yourself. Because if all things are one, this feeling of unity will make you focus on other species, other environments, and other humans; you will not focus only on the single self, or only on the single human species itself.
I have said once that no knowledge exists outside of consciousness.
In other words, there is no pure knowledge. Any knowledge, as long as it is transmitted, disseminated, or inherited, is definitely influenced and changed by the consciousness that inherits it. In those terms, this knowledge, this data transmitted through chromosomes, is not neutral.
Consciousness transmits information through living vehicles.
Consciousness transmits information through living vehicles such as chromosomes and cells. Whether or not it is materialized physically, knowledge is possessed by consciousness; it is always personalized.
That may not necessarily be in your terms.
Whether or not this knowledge has been materialized physically—whether this knowledge or concept has already manifested into a physical form—this is not important. What is important is that knowledge is occupied by consciousness, possessed by consciousness. It is always personalized, but here "personalized" is in quotation marks—it is not necessarily possessed in the way of human consciousness; consciousness is not only human consciousness. This knowledge is also influenced by other consciousnesses. You must step out of the limitations of being human.
An information carried by the chromosomes is not general, but highly specific.
The information carried by chromosomes is not universal, but completely specific. It is not a fixed program like a computer code; a code is dead, no. It can be understood as a kind of encoded data, but that itself is alive—the data carried by chromosomes is not dead; it is living data. When you have the concept of simultaneous time, you can understand it. So that data is both past, present, and future, which is why it is alive.
Within it is contained the essence of ancestral experience, the evolution of your turning around is all within it. Biologically, then, you do indeed carry within you the memories of your specific ancestors. This forms a part of the basis of your subjective and biological existence, and provides the support it needs.
The existence of this ancient wisdom in your chromosomes, in physical existence, is your appearance—Chinese people all have their own facial characteristics, black hair, black eyes, yellow skin; at a glance people know you are Chinese. In addition, there is the basis of your subjective existence—as a Chinese person, you differ from people of other ethnicities in many ways of looking at the world. For example, Chinese people all love to save money; it seems no one taught them, but that is what I have observed. Yet people in some South American countries have no concept of saving money; they earn money and spend it, happy after spending, and tomorrow they will deal with tomorrow. Of course this kind of concept also has cultural and educational background, but I will not go into detail here. But as the heritage of the Chinese nation, besides external things like skin color and facial features, you also have a very subjective basis, and this subjective basis comes from the information carried by the chromosomes. But each person is also independent—it has both a general commonality and is not uniform; individuality and particularity are also very strong.
Because part of your heritage is physical, those memories can be transferred back again, becoming emotional and psychic memories. Although they usually are not in your society.
This heritage is a physical, material inheritance through chromosomes, but in the course of life experience, you can transfer it back again. Your thoughts will change your chromosomes; you will re-encode, rewrite. Because those are all alive, according to your own life experience, you will write back into the chromosomes the essence of those experiences that you consider very good, and pass them on again. You can also form them into a kind of spiritual, emotional, and psychic memory. But in your society, you cannot see it yet; it is not in the manifest, it is inner, an inner thing.
This process of cultural transmission is very subtle and very complex, and very difficult to describe accurately in words.
Biologically speaking, to that degree, the past experience of your so-called ancestors and of your species occurs simultaneously with your own experience.
It is not that one suppresses the other; no.
But that is only one line carried by the chromosomes.
That is one line of development included in your chromosomes—the wisdom of your ancestors and the wisdom of your present actual life experience operate simultaneously. But this is only one line of your life's development; there is another line.
That is also used to support the line of existence you presently recognize, and it contains the interwoven, concrete relationships that connect you with all the people living on your planet at the same temporal level.
You have relationships with all the people living on earth; you are contemporaries in time. You will be more intimate with some people than with others, and some of them will be your counterparts. Besides the relationship with the wisdom of your ancestors supporting you, you also have another layer of relationship, namely that you have an inner connection with all living people on earth, and their wisdom also helps and supports you. Not to mention those who are your counterparts; your connection with them will be even closer. These counterparts may not be closer to you than your family relationships, or they may be closer than family relationships, but psychically they will share certain histories with you, connected through the vast, mutual, regional framework of the earth's space-time structure.
Let me give you an example to make it easier to understand. Suppose you are a senior executive of a multinational corporation with branches in more than 50 countries around the world. You often travel to these countries on business, meeting and exchanging ideas with colleagues from other countries. In this process, are you not influenced by these other people, and do you not also influence them? It is even possible that you develop intimate relationships with some of them, fall in love, and then marry and have children. A person on the other side of the earth has developed such an intimate connection with you; this is a manifest relationship that we can see. Does the existence of a manifest relationship not imply that there must be an inner, hidden, probable—what we call Framework 2—possibility of this kind? Otherwise this manifest relationship would not have emerged.
So when we say that we are connected with anyone in the world, it is not an empty phrase; it is just that sometimes you cannot perceive it. Like a video I watched a couple of days ago, a young Chinese man, a travel blogger, who travels around the world filming things. He went to Ukraine and filmed a Ukrainian female student, a bit overweight, whose family was especially poor, and whose parents did not take care of her. She was one of five siblings, the fourth child, and her family not only gave her no monthly living allowance, but also asked her for money. She applied for a school scholarship of 1,000 local currency, roughly equivalent to about 250 RMB, and this was all the money she had, to cover her living expenses for a month. She said she basically could only eat bread, and during summer vacation she had to work, doing very basic manual labor, picking corn in the fields, earning only 20 RMB a day.
This blogger originally went to Ukraine to look for beautiful women, and by chance he ran into this female student named Victoria. After he posted the video, people from all over the world who watched it contacted the blogger and gave him money to pass on to this female student. Over several installments, a total of more than one thousand US dollars was donated. More than one thousand US dollars solved a big problem locally—compared to her monthly living expenses of only 250 RMB, more than one thousand US dollars is about six thousand RMB, many times her usual income. One person directly gave her 500 US dollars, sent through Western Union. The blogger took the girl to withdraw the money, and she was extremely emotional; she did not understand why these people from all over the world, whom she did not know at all, would help her.
I use this example to tell you that in this world there are many magical connections you cannot even imagine, constantly happening. This kind of connection between people in the world, that inner connection, is something we do not know about.
These are the first two lines—the first is the ancestral line, and the second is the contemporary line, including counterparts and non-counterparts.
The third line, also not yet detected by your scientists, is the genetic and chromosomal response.
The third line is the reincarnational line. The reincarnational you is also written into your genes and chromosomes, and your scientists have not discovered it.
The ancestral and reincarnational lines are mixed to some degree, so as to form in advance what you think of as the genetic pattern.
Ancestral genes' changes to you, and the reincarnational self's changes to your own genes, mix together to some degree and influence each other. These three lines together determine your genetic pattern. The first line -- the ancestral one -- and the third line -- the reincarnational one -- are already determined before you come into physical birth. The second line -- the influence and changes on your genes from people contemporary with you while you are alive -- only happens after you are born.
Before this life, you chose from those two main areas the genetic pattern you wanted.
Before you were born, you chose from those two main areas -- ancestral wisdom and reincarnational experience -- the genetic pattern you wanted, selecting from the experience within them the data that makes up your genes and chromosomes.
Reincarnational experience is also transmitted, reincarnational experience is also transmitted by your genes, and can be retransferred from a biological coded imprint into emotional awareness.
It is not only biological; from a biological imprint it becomes a kind of emotional awareness. For example, say in a previous life you drowned, then in this life you have an innate aversion to water, you are especially afraid of water, you do not want to go near water.
But then again, just as you are not your father or your ancestors, you are not your reincarnational self either.
Seth has repeated this many times here: although you are the descendant of your ancestors, you are not your ancestors. Ancestors are ancestors, you are you. You are influenced by your reincarnational self, but you are not your reincarnational self either. The reincarnational selves are themselves, and you are you.
In this area, the concept of time again obstructs you. Because Seth must explain all of this in terms of time, but since time is simultaneous, then although your ancestors died before the recognized era of continuity, on other levels your ancestors know of your birth. The same also applies to the reincarnational existences you think happened in the past.
This part is not easy to explain, because to human understanding, time is one life after another: ancestors were born before you, and they died long before you were born, which is why they are called ancestors. But from the simultaneity of time, they also exist at the same time. In other words, your ancestors know of your birth, and your reincarnational self also knows of your birth. That is the meaning, and it is not quite what you imagine.
You cannot say your ancestors are like some strange plant growing toward the shape of your present self; nor can you say you are a sum of their experience. Ancestors are ancestors, they have their own lives, they have personalities, they have their own self-nature, and you also have your own self-nature. You are not the sum of all your ancestors' experience either. They were not only in the past, they have always been themselves.
For the same reason, you cannot say you are the sum of past reincarnational lives. Those lives upon lives of you are lives upon lives of you, they are independent selves, you are you, you are not their sum.
Because you have cut off your knowledge of yourself, it seems as if separation occurs. Your knowledge of yourself should have been a comprehensive knowledge, but you do not have such knowledge, so you can only know yourself in this separated way, piece by piece.
Seth gives a vivid analogy: it is as if you are a plant, a plant that can only know one of its leaves at a time. The complete you is a plant, but in this life you can only experience this one leaf -- when the leaf is born you are born, when the leaf dies this life ends. In fact you are a plant, you are not this one leaf, but you perceive yourself as only this one leaf.
A leaf can feel itself as part of the plant, which is a deeper reality: it knows it belongs to this plant, and this recognition enhances its own sense of continuity, and even enhances its own feeling of individuality -- every leaf's feeling is different, and the feeling of individuality is also different.
But what about you? You often pretend you are some kind of rootless, strange, suspended, lonely leaf, with no plant to support your growth. You think your self-nature is like a lonely leaf hanging in the middle of the universe, with no roots and no origin, growing in the air. Because you see, before birth you did not exist, after death you do not exist, you are only alive during this period of time, so you think you only have the life of a leaf. In fact your self-nature is not like that -- your self-nature is the whole plant, it has roots, a stem, branches and leaves. You only experience yourself as one leaf in this life, but your true reality is the whole plant.
The Plant and Leaf Analogy
Seth pointed at a begonia sitting on the narrow coffee table between us and said that all the leaves on this one plant could be thought of as counterparts of one another. Each leaf lives within a period of time, lives within its own space and time, is individualized and independent, each one makes its contribution, yet each faces in a different direction.
When one leaf falls, another takes its place. Until the next year, the whole plant, though still alive, has completely different leaves -- there is an entirely new batch of leaves, the old leaves having all fallen away. He said that this new batch of leaves, from a certain angle, is the future reincarnational self.
He used leaves as an example. This example is quite simple; once you hear it, you can understand what your true self-nature is, and you should not think of yourself only as a single leaf. Through this example, you can also understand the two examples discussed earlier: suppose you think your self-nature is a leaf, then this leaf's existence depends on its root -- for this leaf, the root is its ancestor. Without the root there would be no leaf, but the root is the root and the leaf is the leaf; they are two different things.
You can also understand the relationship between the counterparts of other leaves and this leaf: on the same plant, the influence and energy produced by the photosynthesis of other leaves also has an effect on this leaf itself; this leaf also carries out photosynthesis and produces energy, contributing to the whole plant. Between them there is a process of mutual inner connection; they belong to the same plant, to the same root, and they are one whole plant. This is the complete self-nature, the complete self-nature of the self, the complete self-nature of one's own self.
Seth said, after all, you are not plants, but this is a simple analogy, and on the whole the analogy holds up and is quite apt. Within the plant, among its various parts, there is a constant interaction that you do not perceive -- we humans cannot clearly perceive their interaction.
In your terms, the present batch of leaves is biologically normal and interrelated. You think the leaf now living is normal, but in terms of time, each leaf is also aware of the plant's past history, and biologically they spring out of that past. From the standpoint of time, each leaf can perceive the past history of this plant -- how the plant grew, what its previous leaves were like, it knows all of this. And its present leaf also springs out of the plant's past; without that plant's past, there would be no present. If there had been no leaves last year, the plant would have died last year; precisely because new leaves can grow this year, credit must go to the growth of last year's leaves and their contribution, not to mention the role of the root system.
Each leaf seeks to express its leafness as fully as possible -- leafness means the same thing as a person's self-nature. Each leaf expresses its own particular attributes as fully as possible. The leaf receives sunlight, and sunlight, through photosynthesis, helps the plant itself grow, so the development of the leaf is very important to the existence of the plant itself. The plant's cells maintain contact with the environment through the leaf's experience -- absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Future probabilities are always taken into consideration, and the smallest calculations involving light and shadow are known to the plant, just as in the example he gave earlier: the plant already knows from which direction the light comes in and how to make use of that light.
The life of the plant and the leaves cannot be separated. Although one cannot say that this leaf is the life of the whole plant, the life of the plant nevertheless depends on the existence of these leaves. The plant has its own concept of itself -- just as the leaf has its leafness and we have our self-nature, the plant also has its own attributes; for example, a tree has treeness and a flower has flowerness, each has its own concept. Within that, each leaf has its own role; from the standpoint of the whole plant, each leaf also possesses the potential ability of the entire plant.
For example, if you use a leaf to put down roots, a new plant will grow. There are many such cases -- for instance, dragon fruit. The dragon fruit plant itself looks like a cactus, a green thing about as thick as an arm, and you could regard it as branches and leaves. But take any branch of a dragon fruit, break it off and stick it in the ground, and as long as it is handled properly, it can grow into a new dragon fruit plant. So he said, if a leaf can develop well, it too can grow into a new plant.
The leaf itself has less freedom than you do -- he said you have far more freedom than leaves. A leaf cannot go off and put down roots on its own, but you can root yourself wherever you please, and indeed you have done so.
The Reincarnational Self: A Leaf Rooted in Time
The reincarnational self is like a leaf that has left the plant, choosing a new medium, choosing a new medium of existence. In this analogy, the fallen leaf of that particular plant has already fulfilled its own purpose as a leaf, and its purpose to that plant, completing its value. Yet these selves fall from one branch of time, from one bough of time, and take root in another time, becoming new plants. Other selves also sprout from the branches.
He says these reincarnational selves, in a certain sense, are like a leaf that falls from a plant and takes root and sprouts in the soil. But the reincarnational self does not take root and sprout in soil; it takes root and sprouts in time. For example, a reincarnational self is like a leaf that has fallen from you—as far as your whole overall existence is concerned, one of your branches goes into a certain time, takes root and sprouts in that time, and becomes a new reincarnation.
Because he often mixes people and plants together in his discussion here, it gets a little confusing. At this point Seth is asked: "Do you mean a new self? Rather than a new plant? You are talking about people, not plants, right?" Seth says yes, what I am talking about is people, that is, the self that reincarnates.
The larger self sows itself in time, just as our reincarnation describes. In such a process, no identity is lost, no identity is misplaced, and no two identities are the same—they cannot be completely identical identities; each is utterly unique, yet all are connected to one another, just as different leaves of one plant are connected to one another.
So theoretically, you can expand your consciousness to include knowledge of your past lives. Although those lives are both yours and not yours. They are yours because they are part of the larger you; they are not yours because they also exist independently. They share a common root, which is this larger self. Just as next year's leaves and the present plant share a common root—this year's leaves and next year's leaves are certainly not the same leaf, but they grow from the same root system.
And this knowledge automatically affects that previous life, affects those lives that came before you. Here, the concepts of cause and effect will confine you within limits you draw yourself; through the notion of cause and effect we cannot understand—why can this year's leaves still affect last year's leaves? From our human perspective, from the perspective of time and space, this cannot be understood; this is the limitation of causality.
Because in your view, it seems as though next year's leaves are the effect produced by this year's leaves as the cause—you always feel that next year's leaves are a result produced by this year's leaves. But for the plant and its innate creative pattern, all of its manifestations are united as one, becoming an expression of itself, and each part is different.
The innate creative pattern of that plant is one. That a plant grows leaves is itself its natural expression, just as you have reincarnations; these are a natural development, a natural unfolding of the larger you. Although each leaf is different, they all belong to one plant; every reincarnational life is a different life, yet all belong to the same larger self. They are part of a larger pattern, just as these leaves belong to one plant.
Their knowledge of their own future leaves exists now as a latent pattern—this is certain. The knowledge of what future leaves will look like exists within the plant right now; what your future reincarnations will look like exists within you right now.
This also applies to the psyche. In the larger realm of that reality, there is a creative interplay, and an interrelationship that exists among all levels of the self—including the reincarnational you, ancestors, living people of the same era in this world, including your counterparts. The interrelationships among you are forever interacting, forever influencing one another.
The dictation ends here, and the session ends here as well.
Two Notes from the Early Sessions
What follows are some notes. We will skip the first few and look at the later ones.
The third note, regarding the excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Nature of Personal Reality, see also... Below is an explanatory passage following the note. In fact, ever since Jane began the Seth sessions more than ten years ago, Seth has been describing, in all sorts of different ways, this ever-present relationship between consciousness and information, or between consciousness and anything else. Rob did a little experiment: he randomly pulled out the second volume from the sixty-four printed transcripts, and among the eight sessions from Session 16 to Session 23, five of them contained material applicable to this topic.
For example, in Session 18, Seth said:
As you may by now have assumed, everything is conscious. To you, every fragment of the visible and invisible universe has its own consciousness. Pain and pleasure, the most intense feelings of all consciousness, are experienced by every fragment according to its own degree. There are, of course, all kinds of differentiation, and it is precisely in the degree of differentiation that consciousness differs.
This is not complicated: all things have consciousness, and every consciousness can feel its own pain and pleasure, only it is not the pain and pleasure as humans understand them. They feel them to different degrees, and that is why there are distinctions, but they all can feel. What he means is that all things have consciousness. This is from Session 18 of the early sessions.
The fourth note: he says that in Session 727, note 3, the same session touched on the question of the consciousness of numbers, and here he continues some of the content from the early sessions.
He says that in Session 16 I said — what follows is still from Session 18:
In drafting his list of so-called natural laws, man takes what appears to him as cause and effect and declares it to be a natural law of the universe.
When humans draft the laws of the universe, they regard the law of cause and effect as a fundamental law of the universe. This is a fact. If you look at materialist scientific theory now, the law of cause and effect is an ironclad law. It is just that Buddhism and other religions have expanded this law of cause and effect, extending it to the world after death, to before birth and after death. But this idea is not advanced, and the idea itself contains great errors and limitations. Yet because we humans generally accept the theory of cause and effect, Buddhism skillfully made use of such a theory of cause and effect — because everyone accepts its existence, and it is verifiable by direct observation: whatever you do, there is a corresponding result, and it is visible. So they extended it to the world after death, to reincarnation, and people could accept it too, and believed it deeply.
You list the law of cause and effect as a natural law of the universe. Not only are these so-called natural laws not actually laws, they change according to where you are in the universe, and also according to what you are in the universe.
This law of cause and effect is not in itself a law of the universe; it is just that you humans feel it is a law of the universe. It depends on where you are in the universe, your position, and it also depends on what your identity is in the universe.
So your tree knows a human being, and it does not see the human being in your terms. To a tree, those laws are simply different.
If a tree were to write its own laws of the universe, then you would know how different those laws would be. For humans and trees, the laws of the universe are not the same; different consciousnesses have different understandings of the universe.
From Session 521 in Chapter 4 of Seth Speaks, he wrote: You must realize that the word "result" automatically implies cause and effect, that the cause occurs before the effect, and the word itself presupposes such a thing. And this is only a small example of this distorting force and the inherent difficulty of verbal thought, because it always implies a single-line technique, a technique of single-threaded development in time.
How great the limitations of the law of cause and effect are, because our language itself is a product of the law of cause and effect, and our language itself is single-threaded. For example, the word "result," or many, many words in our daily life, such as tenses and voices — the language we use every day constantly hints to you, at all times and in all places, that time is a single-threaded, irreversible flow. Under such constant reinforcement from childhood to adulthood, your consciousness is tightly imprisoned within this framework of single-threaded flowing time. He gives you a simple example to show how we are trapped in the limitations of language.
A couple of days ago I read an article, something about what actually limits the development of human science and technology. I did not read the content carefully, only the title, but I thought the title was very insightful — what truly limits the development of human science and technology is actually language, because language itself limits science and binds it. But there is no way around it: our scientists still say that if you want to be a scientist, you must write papers, you must write articles. If you do not write articles, how can you prove you are a scientist? You see, he once again uses language to lock science in place.
注释与核实
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Source: Pew Research Center, "Appendix A: Demographic makeup of AI experts surveyed," 2025 (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/03/appendix-a-demographic-makeup-of-ai-experts-surveyed/) ↩