Mike's commentary · The "Unknown" Reality, Session 741

The "Guide" and "Key Points" for this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not words spoken by Mike 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 the unknown reality and the workings of probabilities. People do not see the unknown reality because they do not acknowledge its existence. Just as a person walking through space does not need to understand the nature of space, so too does one move through probabilities, yet seldom notices it. Using the example of choosing a route at a street corner, the route not taken is experienced by the mental image, forming another probable self that is just as real. Technology and the flow of information make probabilities more practically influential. Both the past and the future are created from the present moment; history is constructed according to present beliefs and will exclude events that do not fit. All people are counterparts to one another.

Key Points of This Chapter

• The unknown reality is invisible because people do not accept that it exists.
• People move through probabilities the way they walk through space, usually without noticing the switch from one probability to another.
• When a decision is made, the unchosen route is experienced through mental images and forms another equally real probable self.
• Both the past and the future are open to change in the present; history is constructed by present beliefs and will exclude events that do not fit current beliefs.
• Each person possesses far more choices between birth and death than is ordinarily experienced, and all people are counterparts to one another.

Main Text

Let's look at Session 741, Part 1, titled "How You Move Through Probabilities, Precognition, and the Behavior of Probabilities." This session began on Monday, April 14, 1975, at 9:21 p.m.

That evening, around 8:50, Jane said she simply knew: "I want to get back to class. I don't care whether we get material from The "Unknown" Reality, or personal material, or whatever else, as long as we just start." After a break, she was always nervous about starting class again.

Earlier that evening, I read to her from my notes what Seth had said after the previous session (Session 740, February 26), which I had not yet typed up. It was unbelievable that that session was already six weeks ago. Since then, we had been caught up in so many activities that it was hard to decide which one to mention and to what extent.

Perhaps I only need to say that we have now been living in this new house for a month. From the time the house was decided upon in the last session, the deal was completed within two weeks, and then they moved in. This whole month has been spent getting the new house in order. After a great deal of heavy physical work, we have settled down enough to resume the natural rhythm of our painting, sessions, writing, and play. I have a room that is being converted into a studio, and I am also organizing these manuscripts in that room. And after twenty years of marriage, Jane has her own writing room for the first time—if she chooses to use it. But so far, she still prefers to work by the large picture window in the living room. Jane has not yet started her ESP class either, and we are not quite sure when we will be able to fit that in—perhaps not until Seth finishes The "Unknown" Reality.

I was thinking that during our first month in the new house, we had been busy forming a psychic atmosphere in which we could feel at ease. Anyone in the same situation would intuitively do the same thing; this is quite normal. When a person moves into a new house, there is a very busy period—preparing this, preparing that. After this busy period passes, it takes about a month or so to settle down and enjoy a time of ease before one can begin to continue the previous work. We were trying to combine the old environment with the new environment—the old environment being the habit of weekly Seth sessions, and the new environment being a new location.

Jane lit a cigarette, sipped a little beer, then took off her glasses and began the Seth transmission. Seth spoke very quietly and with humor:

The unknown reality appears invisible only because you are mainly within your main event series, and you do not accept it.

These so-called unknown realities—you cannot see them in your world because you do not accept them. This was his first sentence, and it is also a theme of this session. The so-called unknown realities are things that, because of our past fixed cognition, we believe do not exist, and therefore we cannot see them.

He gave an example:

It is as if you had trained yourselves to react to red lights and ignore green ones—as if you read only the first three or four lines on each page of a book.

We often only pay attention to red lights, and basically ignore green lights. You only notice those things that seem to have practical value; those things without practical value we hardly care about. But in fact, the most important parts of our lives are often those things that have no practical value.

Whether or not you understand what space is, you move through it easily. For example, you do not calculate how many steps it takes to walk across a room. You do not need to understand the nature of space in scientific terms in order to use it very well.

Regarding space, you do not need to understand much about it, yet you can use it very well. From childhood you know how to use it—you walk through space, you pass through space. However, you can see yourself operating in space, and to that extent, it is a known quality. Space is very obvious to the senses, completely known to you—but is it really known? Do you know how it operates? You do not understand the essence of space at all, but that does not affect your use of it. Your actual movement involves it, so you know it, but its mysteriousness or its lesser-known characteristics rarely concern you; you feel this is a matter of course.

You move through probabilities in much the same way that you move through space.

In the same way that you walk through space, that you pass through space, you also move through your probabilities. In other words, you do not know the essence of space, just as you do not know the essence of probabilities. You are not aware of the qualities of space, but that does not affect your passing through it. Probabilities are the same—you do not understand probabilities, or you do not even recognize probabilities, but that does not prevent you from walking through numerous probabilities just as you walk through a room.

What Seth means by this is: you experience probabilities, but you are not aware of it. You move from one probability into another, and then into another, and you are not aware of the switching between probabilities. To you, it is a seamless switch, as if you were never interrupted. You do not know that you are actually traveling through different times and spaces, traveling and leaping through different probable realities, but you do not feel it—you feel that everything is so natural and smooth, just like when you move through space.

In the process of walking down a street, for example, you do not consciously bother with the calculations that must be made. So you also ignore the mechanisms involved in moving through probable realities.

When you stroll down a street, you do not worry about how to walk down that street or how to calculate it; just as when you walk through probable realities, you do not concern yourself with what mechanisms are involved—why I am moving through these probable realities, you do not much care, and you do not even know that you are passing through these probable realities.

In fact, you flow so smoothly, and with such skill, through probabilities—you pass through these probabilities so smoothly, seamlessly—that you seldom catch yourself in the act of changing course from one probability to another.

You simply cannot be aware that this act of yours has already passed from one probability into another.

He used a very simple example—action—as an illustration. You stand at a street corner, thinking about which direction to go. This is something we encounter every day. Here we assume four streets are involved, an intersection. You briefly consider Street One and Street Two, but fairly quickly decide not to take them. You glance at Street One and Street Two, feel you do not want to go, and these two basically cease to be probabilities for you—eliminated. Then you stand a while longer, look at Street Three, see clearly the stretch before you, and you are somewhat attracted, imagining yourself taking that route. In your imagination, you briefly place yourself on the third street.

Inner data are immediately aroused through conscious and unconscious associations.

When you imagine yourself already walking onto the third street, the inner self links all this data together through the conscious and the unconscious. Perhaps you become aware of a few memories that come vaguely to mind—for instance, a house that may remind you of one a relative lived in years ago; a tree that may resemble the one growing beside your old home.

But in that instant, when you consider making a fairly simple decision, inner calculations take place, and the area in which you stand is checked against all portions of your knowledge as background.

Even in something as simple as choosing which street to take and which not to take, your inner self has gone through an enormously vast computation of probabilities, but you are not aware of it; this process happens without your knowing. Although the things he mentions—memories, the house in your hometown, and so on—you may be able to perceive, these things seem to flash by in an instant.

Then you see Street Four, and the same process happens again—you once more hypothesize what it would be like to walk onto Street Four, and this area also draws your attention.

At the same time, you hold the image of Street Three in your mind almost equally. Because at this corner, you can see both streets at once.

At this moment, when you imagine yourself already walking onto Street Four, because this corner allows you to see both Street Three and Street Four at the same time. Suppose you are standing at one corner of an intersection; One and Two are behind you to the left and right, Three and Four are in front of you to the left and right, so both Three and Four are within your visual range. At this time, you are simultaneously thinking about what it would be like to walk down the third street and what it would be like to walk down the fourth street.

Then, let us say that you are almost equally attracted to both routes.

Suppose you are attracted to both streets, and you waver back and forth between the two probabilities, with full authority to decide to choose one as concrete experience. Before you make your decision, if you had to stand at that present intersection and write down all the thoughts and associations connected with each course of action, you might never get across that intersection at all—then you just would not go anywhere, because there would be too many.

As you stand there, lost in your musings, you might be hit by a car.

When you stand in the middle of the road, dazed and foolishly thinking about whether to take Three or Four, you might already have been hit by a car.

In the same way, if you had to be consciously aware of all the nerves and muscles that must first be activated, then even walking from a table to a chair would take you considerable time.

Suppose you had to use all your awareness to think about which muscles you need to mobilize to walk from a table to a chair—that would also take quite a bit of time.

But when you stand there, almost equally attracted to the third and fourth streets:

Then you send out mental and psychic energy in those directions.

When you are choosing between Three and Four, you send out mental and psychic energy. Past associations and present reality mix to form a pattern—mentally, a part of you actually begins to walk down each street.

A projected mental image—your memories, your associations, and your present reality—they mix together to form what kind of pattern? It is that in this new pattern, there is a mixture of memory and reality.

For example, recalling the house in your hometown, the tree in your hometown, the place where a relative once lived, or some things you have seen. You stand on a street bustling with people—generally, this kind of situation is more common in a foreign land. In a familiar place, you rarely do such things. It usually happens in unfamiliar places—for instance, when you go to a tourist city, or arrive at a place you have never been before, you stand at the intersection, looking at the streets extending in all directions, not knowing which street to take. You look at each street, and the decision is entirely yours—you can go any way. But which one actually attracts you? The things that attract you most will each have a mental image projected out—like a mental double.

In this example, you stand there, and two projected images walk down Street Three and Street Four, because you are hesitating between these two, so two mental images go to Street Three and Street Four.

To some degree, these images experience what would happen if you yourself took one direction or the other.

To some extent, these two mental images are equivalent to you walking these two streets twice—what would happen, what would be experienced, they can experience it. That information immediately returns to you; your mental images will directly feed back the feeling of walking down those streets, and you make your decision based on them—it is as if you sent out two invisible mental images to walk the routes first, and through them you experience the feelings and experiences, and then you decide which way to go next.

For example, you choose Street Four. After comparison, you choose to walk down Street Four, and concretely you begin to move in that direction. You set off walking toward Street Four, and therefore Street Four becomes a physical image of yours—the experience you accept, in your main sequence of events, you accept that tonight you walked down this street, not that street.

However, you have already sent out an energized mental image of yourself walking down the third street. Although you walk down the fourth street, you cannot withdraw that energy.

You say, I have already chosen Street Four, so is the one on Street Three no longer needed? Can I withdraw it? It cannot be withdrawn—once this mental image is sent out, it will not come back. It has its own life, in a parallel world as real as your present world. There is another probable you who has already walked down Street Three.

The portion of you that was drawn to that route continues its journey. At the moment of decision, this alternate self made a different conclusion; it experiences Street Three as physical reality.

In that reality, that alternate self—the probable self walking down Street Three—has a different conclusion from yours. In its world, it chose Street Three.

The self that you think you are is truly reborn in every moment.

The self that you think you are is recreated anew, reborn, in every moment. That is, the you of the present is carried along by the focus of your consciousness—wherever the frequency of your conscious focus is in a given reality, your physical body follows into that reality. And the other you walking down Street Three, through that conscious frequency and conscious focus, manifests a body of yours walking on Street Three, along with a matching conscious focus. The two are a set—the conscious frequency of walking Street Three and the body frequency, the cellular frequency, of walking Street Three are on the same frequency; the one walking Street Four and the body frequency of walking Street Four are on the same frequency. So there appear two yous, walking on two streets, but in different realities—in your reality you walk Street Four, and in the probable reality, that you walks Street Three.

Following an infinite number of events that are separate from the official series of events that you acknowledge at any given time.

The rebirth of this body of yours follows those infinite numbers of probable events that you did not take in this world you recognize, that are separate from it. In those probable realities, your body is reborn along with those consciousnesses, generating its own physical body.

This is a very important matter concerning your technological civilization.

What is it? In those terms, as your world becomes more complex, you increase the number of practical, feasible probabilities. The more complex our world becomes, the more numerous and richer these probabilities become. What he means is that as human technology—transportation, information—becomes so developed, our probabilities are far richer than those of our fathers and grandfathers. For them, probabilities were greatly limited by geography and communication. At that time, going from one country to another might take several years and require a very big decision. Now it is very easy—I can casually go to that country to take a look, and if it does not suit me, come back; no problem. So the number of decisions and the number of probabilities are multiplying.

When you can move fairly easily from one place on the earth to another—for example, by plane it takes about a dozen hours to fly from one end of the earth to the other, just one sleep. A few centuries ago, ordinary people did not have such opportunities to travel from one country to another at such speed. In the past, even by ship—which was then a faster way than overland—it took one or two months to go from the Americas to Europe.

As space becomes smaller... the complexity of your probabilities also increases.

Space becomes smaller—this should be put in quotation marks, because for you time is shortened, which is equivalent to space becoming smaller. Previously, moving across this space took two months; now it only takes twelve hours. Your consciousness now processes far more spatial information.

I am speaking in terms of your time.

Within your unit of time, you are able to experience more spatial information. For example, now you can travel around the world in one year; in the past, that was much more difficult.

When you watch television, you are aware of events happening on the other side of the earth.

The rapid transmission of media and information can also bring about the same effect, increasing our probabilities. So our consciousness necessarily becomes less parochial, more open than that of our ancestors—through the internet and television, we know what is happening elsewhere in the world, rather than only focusing on our own small village or town as before. Things from outside basically could not get through, and even if they did, their influence was extremely weak; you would think that is someone else's business, another country's business, having little to do with yourself. Now the entire earth is connected together, like a global village.

When this happens, the whole matter of probabilities begins to take on a more practical aspect.

Today, living in this society, the influence of probabilities on us is more practical. Why should we study the reality of probabilities, or the probabilities within the unknown reality? Precisely because today we are in an environment of information explosion, convenient transportation, and rapid media dissemination, the practical effects brought by probabilities are far more powerful than in the era of our ancestors.

Civilizations are linked one to another.

The civilizations on earth are all interconnected.

Politicians try to predict what other governments will do, and ordinary people try to predict what their own government might do.

We ordinary people are not particularly concerned about what other governments might do; we only look at the facts—news reports say that the United States has recently had some policy, and we only know after it has happened; but we rarely predict what other countries are going to do. But regarding our own country's politics, we generally predict what new political measures the next government will have, and who might become the next leader—we do make some predictions about these things. And politicians, political commentators, and current affairs commentators are keen on commenting on the probabilities of other countries—what Iran will do next, what the various EU countries will do—they predict the development of other countries' probabilities. This makes probabilities more practically meaningful in our real lives, mutually influencing one another.

According to what Seth said earlier, every time you make such a prediction of probabilities, and precognition of probabilities, does it not bring about a probable reality? Yes. So the number of these probabilities has multiplied many times over compared to before.

As you try to decide which of a probable event will physically occur, you begin to deal more and more with probabilities.

When you begin to predict, to decide, or when you want to determine which of a probable event will happen and which will not, you are operating with probabilities.

When probable questions are practical questions, then scientists will give them more consideration.

If the question of probabilities brings about a practical problem—such as climate warming, glacier melting, sea level rise, or recent climate drought and reduced grain production—when these bring real impacts, scientists will have to consider them. This is no longer as simple as what we think of as groundless worry, something we need not bother with at all.

When governments of various countries take action under the guidance of scientists, these probabilities are no longer just probabilities; they will truly affect our real lives. For example, in order to achieve zero emissions, many countries have introduced new policies. Canada, Toronto, has just announced a law¹ requiring zero emissions in new housing construction—if you cannot achieve zero emissions, the house cannot receive government approval. But achieving zero emissions in a building is extremely difficult; it inevitably needs air conditioning, heating, and warmth, and it will inevitably emit and use energy. It also requires that if you are an apartment building, the rooftop must be made into a garden, maintaining a great deal of greenery, and you must also keep enough bees—because bees are what allow plant pollination and the growth and development of green plants to be better. Many people will think that housing prices in Toronto will rise again, because this will inevitably increase the cost of building houses.

Just like when we visited Feni Technology in Guangzhou a while ago, they also proposed a concept of the future good house—wanting to reduce the energy consumption of the entire house to a certain percentage, for example, the first-phase goal is to reduce it by half, and ultimately to reduce it by 90%. This is very considerable; if the energy consumption of every house we humans live in could be reduced to a certain level, then the entire earth would undergo a change and impact.

What I mean by saying this is that if global warming is only a projection or prediction of us humans, then it is a prediction, but when this kind of prediction brings practical problems, governments of various countries will take action; and when governments of various countries take action, it will have a great impact on our real lives. I just mentioned the issue of housing energy efficiency and emissions, and also electric vehicles—Canada announced two days ago that after 2035, the sale of gasoline-powered cars will be prohibited nationwide²; the EU has also decided that after 2026, no more fuel-powered cars may be produced in all of Europe³—only five years from now. Is this not coming much faster than we thought? So I say to everyone here, if you still hold illusions about fuel-powered cars, thinking it is still a good point, and have not yet decided to buy an electric vehicle, then you should consider that by that time it will be gone. Whether you accept it or not, whether this news is true or false, no matter what, there is no way around it—this is a trend.

I am just concretizing it for you, so that you understand—today's information and media make these probabilities more practical; they are no longer just probabilities.

The whole subject, however, is very important. In terms of true psychology, when we let a person become aware of the existence of probabilities, he no longer feels trapped by events, trapped together with events. Your consciousness is beginning to understand the importance of predictive action, and predictive action always involves probabilities.

This statement by Seth is very prescient. I do not know how timely it was at the time, but today it is very much of our era. He said that you humans are now at this point—what point? You are beginning predictive action. We are at this point: we predict that the temperature will rise in the future. Over the past roughly two hundred years, the average temperature of the entire earth has risen by one degree⁴. The average temperature has only risen by one degree—what change is there? But do not forget, in the previous century, this one-degree rise in the earth's average temperature probably took about sixty thousand years⁵—I cannot remember exactly how many years—yet in just the last two hundred years, humans have caused the earth's average temperature to rise by one degree⁴. Scientists predict that if the world's temperature rises by another degree—two degrees above the previous average—it will bring disaster to human life. It will not just be a matter of heat, but of catastrophe.

So various countries have taken all kinds of actions, such as countries around the world uniting to sign climate agreements and reduce carbon emissions. Why does this happen? This is a prediction of probabilities—when the global temperature rises to two degrees, the Arctic and Siberia have large amounts of frozen methane—solid methane—that will melt and be released from the permafrost. Methane's greenhouse effect is 25 to 30 times that of carbon dioxide⁶; every ton of methane released is equivalent to releasing 30 tons of carbon dioxide. The global temperature is already rising, and when this methane is released into the air, it will create an even more severe greenhouse effect, and it will be irreversible—by that time, any action taken will seem utterly inadequate. Now countries around the world are taking active action under the predictions of scientists; this is a response to probabilities, a response to this kind of predictive action.

Is our human climate actually rising, actually increasing? This is very interesting, and opinions differ. But no matter what, is it not a prediction? It is a prediction. Will it happen? Are there not many probabilities involved here? It may happen, or it may not happen; the likelihood of it happening is some percentage—these things bring countless probabilities. But no matter what, we humans have already taken action on these predictions. This is the problem our society faces today.

We humans are now right at this point.

In a manner of speaking, you are the recognized result of all the decisions you have made up to this point in your life—that is the official one.

Let me emphasize this key point once more: How is this different from before? In the past, we would not take action. Why do we say that predictive action is what makes our present moment different from other points in the history of human civilization? In earlier human history, we could take political, economic, and social action, but we rarely acted together as all of humanity to solve a global problem. In the past, we basically let these problems take their course and rarely took global action to solve them. But our era and our society today are different. We will take action—that is the difference.

From a certain perspective, your life up to now, up to this present point, is the recognized result of all your past decisions. You have made many decisions—deciding to go this way, deciding to go that way, deciding what to do after graduation and what not to do—and the eventual results of those decisions have formed who you are now. This is called the official you: the you recognized by others, the formally recognized you.

But the equally official self is also a branch of your own experience.

There are other selves that are just as official as the official you now—they are equally real—and they are experiencing other branches. Those branches followed the choices you did not make and also chose an alternative version of reality. That self took a road you did not take.

But you are not diminished in any way because of this, nor are you affected or adversely affected. Your life is still your life, and you follow the main series of events that you recognize as your own. But all of you are connected.

You follow the course of your own life—this main series of events is the course of your life—but all those probable versions of you, all those probable life events, have also occurred. All these probable versions of you are connected within.

These are not merely esoteric statements.

This is not some secret thing, and I am not trying to talk about occultism today. Multiverse theory has long been an established specialized field in mathematics and physics, with dedicated scientists studying it, producing a series of papers and technologies. Scientists have also confirmed multiverse theory—it is just that we cannot understand it in our ordinary way.

Many things scientists have already confirmed, such as quantum mechanics and quantum theory a hundred years ago, still have not become guiding principles of mainstream science in how we educate humanity today, a hundred years later. What we teach today is actually all wrong from the perspective of quantum mechanics—not just ordinarily wrong, but wrong in a way that overturns everything—yet we will not change our textbooks. Why is that? Because ordinary people's understanding cannot get there. Ordinary people's understanding contradicts these theories: You say there are parallel worlds, but I cannot see them. You say there are probable selves, but I cannot feel them. Bring me a probable self and let me have a look, and I will believe you. Put a parallel world next to me and let me see it, and I will believe you. If you expect me to experience all of this without perceiving it, and you tell me I have already crossed from one parallel world into another, does saying I have crossed mean I have crossed? Is it so just because you say so? What evidence do you have? This is something many of us cannot get past—things that have been confirmed theoretically or scientifically still cannot be accepted by the public. This gap in understanding will grow wider and wider, but there is nothing we can do.

It is like Copernicus back then. From his perspective, Earth was central, and the stars, the moon, and the sun all revolved around Earth. When you said that this was not actually so, that we revolved around the sun, it contradicted everyone's understanding.

Views like this have actually always existed in our everyday lives. For example, Teacher Xiyu gave a particularly clever but extreme example: Those of us who have studied physics know that the colors we see are all reflections of sunlight. Sunlight is a full spectrum of seven colors, containing every color. We see a red flower because that red flower reflects red light and absorbs all the other colors. Why does it absorb the other colors? Because it is made up of those other colors—it absorbs all the colors that do not match its own color and reflects only red, the color it does not absorb. And this red flower you see is precisely not red itself—only then can what you see be red. If it were red itself, supposing it were itself a red flower, it would absorb the red color, and you would not see a red flower.

In fact, the colors we see in everything in the world are all reversed. It is just like the colors in the negatives from old cameras—the colors on the film are all reversed. It is actually the same principle. So is this flower a red flower or not? We say it is a red flower, but what we should correctly say is that it reflects red light—it is precisely not red. It can be any other color, but it cannot be red. If it were red, you would not see it as a red flower. But that is not how we understand things. Our understanding often contradicts our theories and our science. From childhood, we are taught that it is a red flower.

So human beings are very interesting: Whatever science says, we always take our own perceptions and understanding as our main starting point. Even if science tells us we are wrong, we still give priority to our understanding and perceptions. We consider things right even when they are clearly wrong, and we refuse to acknowledge things that can be proven. So there is even less chance of acknowledging things that cannot be proven—parallel time and space, multiple universes, things that can only be confirmed in theory and cannot be verified in practice.

It is like a film I recommended before, called Developers⁷ or perhaps Pioneers, with the English name DV. It is about a future day when quantum computing reaches a certain level of capability. If you give it all the parameters, it can foresee the next action of the entire universe. Give this quantum computer all the information and all the variables, and it can predict the universe's next action—this is a concept from quantum mechanics. But there is a problem with the algorithm: It can never get the calculations right. Finally, a very young scientist applies the theoretical framework of multiple universes to it, and suddenly it is accurate. But the project's developer and director is extremely opposed to multiverse theory, because he has a personal motive for developing the project. When that brilliant young man substitutes the formulas of multiverse theory, the entire prediction becomes astonishingly accurate.

I am not saying here that the television series has any scientific significance. I just want to tell you this: Multiverse theory is only one of our current theories about the world, and we cannot say it is the only correct one. Like the theory of a single universe, it is only a conjecture about the universe, one of the possibilities. Of course, people who study spirituality all acknowledge the existence of multiple universes, but many people cannot accept it. We need to understand everyone; this is normal.

He says this is not an esoteric statement, but a valid clue to the nature of your own behavior.

This is not a matter of mysterious theology. It is a fundamental clue to the nature of your behavior. It is meant to let you feel your own freedom and emphasize the importance of your choices. It lets you sense where your actual behavior comes from—which factors interact to produce behavior in the reality of your present world. It lets you feel your own freedom: You have complete autonomy, and you can try out and explore all your possibilities. It emphasizes the importance of your choices: All the choices are yours to make.

We used to be told that we could only choose one road, and the other roads were impossible for us. Now we are told that every possibility can be chosen—no matter how bizarre, how ridiculous, or how implausible you think it is, every possibility can be chosen. At this point, you have a breakthrough in understanding: Oh, so I have this much freedom to choose. Should I reconsider what kind of life I should choose to live and what pattern of action I should choose?

Whenever you try to predict behavior or events, you are dealing with probabilities.

As soon as you predict any behavior or events, you are dealing with probabilities.

To you, however, it seems that all past actions are fixed and completed, while only future actions are open to change. So the word prediction presupposes future action.

When I mention the word prediction, what you inevitably think of is the future. Why? Because you human beings believe that past events are already over, settled once and for all, turned into history, and fixed, with nothing that can be changed. In fact, this is fundamentally wrong. Both the past and the future can be changed from where you stand in the present. This present point is your point of action, the point from which you exert your power—acting from this point, you can change both the past and the future. This was discussed in The Nature of Personal Reality—basically, the past is just as open to change as the future.

When you deal with historical events, you believe that prediction is not involved. You feel there is no prediction in them; you feel they are all facts. Individually, and as a species, you are certain that behind you lies a single, completed series of events.

You think the history of human development is a record of past events and that it is all true. But is it true? Be sure to remember this: History is certainly not true.

Where does history come from? The first source is your memory. The things you yourself have experienced in these few short decades, your memories—doesn't your memory see only one side of an event? It does not see the whole picture. So your memory is neither complete nor true. If you do not understand this, you can watch a television series whose name I have forgotten—the point of the show is that everyone sees something different. What you see is what you see, and what someone else sees is what they see, while the truth of the matter is neither what you saw nor what that person saw. There is a third or fourth possibility. So the facts you see are not necessarily facts, and what you see and take to be the truth is not necessarily the truth. There is no need to give examples; there are too many—Teacher Xiyu gave a very good example, the one about the wallet on the bus.

The second source is the history you learn in history textbooks, and that is even less true. We know who writes history, don't we? The victors write it. One dynasty overthrows another, and the new dynasty writes the history of the old one—it can write it however it wants, and that introduces a great deal of distortion.

Of course, to avoid this kind of thing, ancient China also established many systems to reconstruct history as closely as possible. For example, in many imperial courts, historians would record every word and action of the emperor—whether good or bad, whether you were cursing someone, flying into a rage, or acting as a foolish ruler and indiscriminately killing loyal ministers, I would record every action, word, and deed without passing judgment. But a dynasty did not compile its own history—for example, the Tang dynasty could not compile the history of the Tang. Your history could only be compiled by the next dynasty. One task of the next dynasty was to compile an account of the preceding dynasty. Those court records served as historical references, along with all the documents, memorials, and imperial edicts.

So we are not historical nihilists. We are only saying that there is a certain degree of distortion—because when someone compiles the history of the preceding dynasty, they inevitably bring the distinctive views and values of the new dynasty to it. So what is in history books is not true either. Do not assume it is all true; even the exact dates are uncertain.

I do not mean to offend anyone here, but think carefully: Why are we not even certain which day our Party's birthday falls on⁸? We have set it as July 1, but which day in July it actually was still cannot be established—the day of the meeting on South Lake, exactly which day was it? It is uncertain. So can we not even establish something that happened only a few decades ago? This is very interesting. Look, a dozen or twenty people attended the meeting, and none of them remembered which day it was? I find this a little—if one person could not remember, or two, or three, or four, fine. But no one knew which day it was? Don't you find that a little interesting? And this was not so long ago. We were already around when the First National Congress was held, and by the Second and Third Congresses, we were recording this history—how the First Congress was held and who attended—but the date alone remains something of a mystery.

Seth says that in The Nature of Personal Reality, my statement was: The point of action occurs in the present. The present is your point of power.

In Adventures in Consciousness, Ruburt says very aptly: The experience of time really splashes outward from the present. Your experience within time—the past and the future—must splash outward from your present, forming an apparent past and future. Seth's quotation of this statement demonstrates that it makes sense. Why does it make sense? Let us look:

You may not understand that when you seem to look back through time...

Let us think carefully about this passage:

When you construct a history, when you build your history, you do so by projecting your own main series of events into the past as you understand it. Obviously, you understand the past from the present, but you also create it from the present.

You accept certain information, a currently accepted series of events, and then use that system as a measuring rod. It automatically excludes history that does not fit. On certain levels of experience, this makes little difference, because all the information agrees and nothing gives it away.

Let me put this passage in plain language: When you look back at history, you inevitably look at it through your present worldview, values, and outlook on life. In other words, your present understanding determines how you see past history.

For example, how you view the building of the Great Wall, how you view Qin Shi Huang's burning of books and burying of Confucian scholars⁹, and how you view the dismissal of the Hundred Schools and the exclusive elevation of Confucianism¹⁰—with different understandings and at different levels of awareness, the conclusions are completely different.

In other words, you establish a benchmark using your present understanding, judge by your values, look back at history, and interpret it according to your standards. You think you are explaining and interpreting history, but you are actually creating it. When you accept a particular understanding of this history, that history takes shape in your memory in that way. For you, it becomes a fact, something that exists like an established historical fact. But remember, it is necessarily created from your present. This is something we must understand.

So people who study history all take historical realism into consideration; this applies to any point. For example, when we discuss the history of Western philosophy, many people interpret it differently—there are traditional interpretations, orthodox interpretations, and Mr. Wang Dongyue's own interpretation. You can listen to Li Yuanxiang's account of the history of Western philosophy, or Wang Dongyue's account, and then compare them with the history of Western philosophy you learned growing up. You will find that in each person's writing, the development of Western civilization presents a completely different picture. They are worlds apart, different beyond measure.

The reason we think history is consistent and free from discrepancies today is that everyone around you living in the same era has studied the same history textbooks. What do history textbooks do? They standardize the account of history, and then that standardized account is uniformly passed on to you. You acquire these memories from childhood. You are repeatedly tested on it and have to memorize it, and that forms your memory. This seems to be how history comes about.

But if you look at it from another angle, doesn't it become completely different? For example, we called the Korean War the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. For the Korean people, whether in South Korea or North Korea, is their understanding of that war the same as ours? No. Did the United Nations forces at the time, led by the U.S. military, have the same understanding? No. Likewise, in World War II, did the Germans and the Allies have the same understanding? No. In the Soviet Union at the time, did everyone have the same view of Stalin? No. So what exactly was this history like?

What Seth wants to tell you here is that you build a flat structure of beliefs, and then use those beliefs like glasses—but they are tinted, colored glasses—to look at reality in that way. Information contrary to the color of those glasses really becomes invisible to you. It is ignored or cast aside, filtered out by you.

When you look at reality, whether past or future, you are always wearing tinted glasses. What are these glasses? They are your beliefs. Beliefs are your tinted glasses, so your view of any issue will always be biased.

The Nature of Personal Reality did not pursue that topic further, but this is not something suitable to bring up with ordinary students. What is the ultimate aim? The ultimate aim is to dismantle all beliefs. In the early stages, we need to establish correct beliefs and good beliefs and use them to replace bad beliefs—beliefs that limit you, negative beliefs, beliefs that make you afraid, and so on. That is the first step. At the second step, the good beliefs must also be dismantled, leaving no beliefs in your mind. That is the ultimate aim. Any belief you have is a kind of bias, a pair of tinted glasses. As for what happens once you have no beliefs, that is a topic on another level, and we will not discuss it on this level.

You can only discuss certain topics at the corresponding stage and level of awareness. For ordinary people, of course there must be distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong, and good and bad beliefs. If you start by telling someone that no beliefs are needed at all, that is the end of it. They will fall apart, not know where to turn, and be unable to cope.

This is like why many people say that others cannot accept multiverse theories and parallel time and space, and why scientists in many countries know about them but are still unwilling to popularize them: They feel that the public's capacity to accept and understand them is not sufficient. If people are rashly told about them, their first response will be a kind of collapse—historical nihilism, every possibility exists, anything can happen, they can go through reincarnation countless times, life does not matter, nothing matters. They will be in that frenzied state, not knowing what to do.

But in fact, this is a delusion, a confused impression on the part of these sociologists or humanities scholars. They suppose this will happen, but would it really? No. They overlook something—the people who think this way have not fully understood what human beings actually are, what the nature of human life is, or what the nature of spirituality is. They think that removing these things will drive people mad, making them either utterly passive or utterly frenzied, going to one of two extremes. In fact, that would not happen at all. The earlier people know this truth, the earlier in childhood they accept this truth about the real world, the more it can only contribute positively and constructively to the development of all human civilization. It certainly will not make people either burn, kill, and loot or give up completely, as imagined.

To put it more directly, I think this is all about the ruling class, the people at the pinnacle of power, not wanting everyone to acquire this knowledge. They use theories like this to frighten people: If you tell others about this, ordinary people will go mad. To frighten you and make everyone accept this view, they exaggerate these terrible consequences as much as possible. Aren't they actually predicting a probable outcome too? Yes. Then, to avoid such a thing, we take action concerning it—namely, we prevent our children from accepting from an early age the idea of multiple universes, the idea that these probable realities exist simultaneously, and the fact that we can stand at this present point and change both the past and the future. Then you understand their purpose in doing this. So I hope everyone can understand, and not assume that if history can change, everything becomes historical nihilism.

For example, the idea of linear evolution was once all the rage—that is, Darwin's theory of evolution¹¹. It was mentioned earlier in this book, and here he brings Darwin up again. He dislikes Darwin's theory of evolution most of all. The theory of evolution generally accepted by people is extremely simplified:

But in fact, your species did not come from one particular source.

You did not go through an evolutionary process from marine organisms to reptiles to mammals to human beings. Humanity does not have such an origin; that is simply not how you evolved. Humans are humans, and monkeys are monkeys.

You could say you have many expressions. He has discussed this before, so I will not repeat it. In Volume 1, he said that early humanity had many forms. We should not assume that humanity must have a human shape. Why could dolphins not be human? If we placed human consciousness in a dolphin, wouldn't it also be a kind of human? So do not narrow down this idea of "humanity" and say that only something with this four-limbed shape can be called human.

You have many expressions, and traces of some lineages remain in your time. Dolphins, for example, are one.

But when you look back at Earth, you are actually trying to predict past behavior from a present perspective. Standing at this present point and looking back at the history of Earth's development, you use present scientific methods and present scientific theories to guess what happened on Earth in the past. You use the scientific technologies and theories humanity currently possesses as a yardstick, and use that yardstick to measure what the past history of Earth's development was like.

So you are always using present views to predict past behavior. The word "predict" is used here. We have not seen what actually happened in the past, nor do we know, so we can only guess. This guessing is prediction. Things concerning the birth of the universe are all a kind of prediction, and the history of Earth's development is also a kind of prediction. None of it is the actual process of Earth's development—remember, none of it is actual. It is all the result of today's human knowledge speculating and guessing from this perspective.

To a certain degree, the same is true of individuals in their immediate personal lives. He says that I have used a fairly distant historical example, and you can begin to understand and accept my point. When you look back at your earlier life, your understanding of the past is the same as when you look at Earth's past history: It is all speculation, all guessing, all prediction.

You paint over those events that do not fit your present idea of yourself. Whatever does not fit your current ideas and current belief system is painted over, deleted, blocked, erased, and denied by you. As far as you are concerned, those things really cease to exist. For you, that history truly no longer exists. It really does not exist.

I have previously told the story of a child who gave his pencil case to his best friend, but was afraid his mother would hit him when he got home, so he said he had lost it. If it was lost, there was no need to look for it, because his family was well-off and losing a pencil case did not matter. But after losing one, he lost a second, and when he lost the second one, his family came to the school. Why did his pencil cases keep disappearing? The teacher investigated, and the investigation found that they were with his best friend. But he had actually given them to his friend. He did not dare admit it, because he had told everyone that the pencil cases were lost. In the end, that other student was severely criticized, but he was completely innocent. His family was not well-off to begin with, so of course he was very happy when his best friend gave him a pencil case. But he did not expect that later his friend would turn around and say the pencil case had been lost, as though this child had stolen it.

But the child who lost the pencil cases had absolutely no recollection of this episode. In his memory, the pencil cases had simply been lost, taken by that other child. This was his formal, official memory, and he had always believed it. Only once, under deep hypnosis, did he truly return to what had happened at the time and see that he had personally given the pencil case to his friend. His friend had not wanted it, but he insisted that the friend accept it—and he not only gave him one but later gave him a second, because he felt that the other child was so unfortunate.

So which is the fact, and which is the history? Could things like this happen in our own lives too? Yes, they could; you simply do not know about them. Because for you, they have already been erased and painted over, you certainly do not remember them. They no longer exist; you have already changed them. But what is the real history? You have an official version of your own, and you take that to be true. So you must remain alert on this issue when it comes to things in the past—they may not be as you really believe them to be.

In this way, you block off certain aspects of your own reality, and at least consciously reduce your choices. Originally you had many possibilities, but you chose only one, thinking those others could never happen and did not fit your beliefs and viewpoints. So the series of historical events you believe happened to you has actually been altered according to your own belief system, and the real possibilities that might have been in it were also erased by you, turning into a historical trajectory that, from your present perspective, looks very self-consistent and in line with your current values.

Here, look at what he said earlier -- he did not give away any clues. He will never give away any clues, because this information all agrees with itself. It is very interesting: when you use your values to tamper with past history, what is truly amazing is that the tampered history does not resist; it simply agrees with itself: fine, let us all change together.

You might say this is a bad thing, but is it not also a good thing? From the negative angle, it is not good; but from the positive angle, when you understand this principle, when you can understand that through your beliefs, through the point of power in the present, you can change history, can you not change it into the outcome you now hope will happen? Why does it work? Because the information all agrees with itself. He will not give away any clues, so as long as you know how to use this method, you will get it after using it a few times. Do not look at it pessimistically; you should look at it actively and optimistically.

Humanity as you know it has many abilities and characteristics inherently built into it, and they have not been recognized because you do not accept them as part of your biological or spiritual heritage.

We human beings have many latent potentials, abilities that are inherently built in -- the ability of the third eye, the ability of telepathy, those nine abilities of the inner senses. Take out any one of them and you would be like Sun Wukong with cheats enabled. Yet we have not brought them into play, precisely because we do not accept them as part of our biological or spiritual heritage. From childhood we are taught that all those things are nonsense, that only what your eyes see, your hands touch, your nose smells, your mouth tastes, and your body contacts are real, and that anything beyond that is illusion, hallucination, or imagined sound. When those things emerge, time and again you block them out, and later they stop emerging. There is no point in emerging anyway, because you do not acknowledge them. Moreover, this information has a tacit understanding among itself; if you always block it out and always deny it, then it stops emerging. So the reason you can no longer see it is that you yourself blocked it out, because you do not accept it. This "not accepting" is the key.

In practical terms, they become latent and invisible. They have not disappeared; the ability is still there, only it has become invisible -- just like those facts in history that you cannot see, because you do not accept them, so you cannot see them.

The same applies to the individual, when you give up the rich mixture of consciousness and experience that is gained through the recognition of manipulable probable realities...

What he says here is very official, very scientific, with nothing to pick at. To put it simply: you do not know that your present known reality is the result of those probable realities mixing together -- mixing together within your consciousness and experience. To put it bluntly, your known reality, these facts in your life, are all formed by those unknown, unrecognized probable realities, ultimately shaped into this result through the mixing of your consciousness, intent, beliefs, and emotions. But you cannot see them, precisely because you do not acknowledge their existence.

This is exactly the sentence at the very beginning of this session: all unknown matters are unknown because you do not acknowledge them, and therefore you cannot see them.

You change your experience quite drastically at every moment.

You are changing your experience at every single moment, and this is quite drastic. Remember this sentence too -- quite drastic.

Each individual has far more opportunities for choice than he understands.

Your opportunities for choice are far more numerous than you think. Yet you often feel you have no choice, only because you believe time is a closed system, and that is why you cannot obtain tomorrow's wisdom. Because you believe time is closed, flowing in a single line, today can only obtain today's information, so how could you obtain tomorrow's wisdom? Because you believe time moves in that direction.

Indeed, you will certainly be born and die; that is certain. In this physical world, you certainly have birth and death.

And between birth and death, far greater dimensions of experience than are usually experienced are possible.

All of this lies between your birth and death. Far greater dimensions of experience than what you can usually experience and undergo are possible, and they exist. It is only a matter of whether you choose to experience them or not, whether you want to bring these possibilities into your reality.

Remember, learning these possibilities, learning these unknown realities, is telling you that you have more possibilities to choose from. Those will happen just as truly, and whether or not you experience them, they have happened. What this actually tells you is that if you want to experience them, you can choose that possibility. Those things you previously did not dare to choose, those you thought impossible, unattainable, or likely to produce bad results -- at this point you can have the right to choose them.

Each person's experience could actually be much richer. It is only because we are limited by our own beliefs that our life experience appears so monotonous and unremarkable. If you can unlock this limitation, then your life experience will become rich and colorful -- far richer, far more meaningful, and its depth and texture will be immeasurably greater than that of people who have not unlocked this ability.

You are all counterparts living at any given earth time. By truly understanding this, you can accept the concept of the brotherhood of all humanity that religion has been teaching for so long.

This final passage is very meaningful. Earlier we kept discussing counterparts, saying each person has roughly three or four, or four or five, counterparts. Here he moves from that discussion and, in this final passage, upgrades it: in essence, every one of you is the counterpart of every other.

In other words, this is what Buddhism calls the equality of all beings and the oneness of all things, and other religions say similar things: you are all brothers and sisters, all family. Many people feel this is very hollow, very fake, very contrived. But when you can understand that every person now living on earth is your counterpart, when you can truly recognize this, only then can you understand why so many religions tell you that all humanity is one family, and what that sentence means. So here he makes an elevation and upgrade of this viewpoint.

Do you think this viewpoint conflicts with the earlier viewpoint? If you are still wondering whether it conflicts or not, then your study of spirituality has not yet truly opened up. I do not know whether you can understand what I mean.

注释与核实

1. Source: City of Toronto "By-law 600-2023" (2023) (https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/bylaws/2023/law0600.pdf) ↩

2. This claim could not be verified. ↩

3. This claim could not be verified. ↩

4. Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "Summary for Policymakers" (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/summary-for-policymakers/?trk=public_post_comment-text) ↩ ↩²

5. This claim could not be verified. ↩

6. Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency "Understanding Global Warming Potentials" (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials) ↩

7. Source: Disney+ "Devs" (2020) (https://www.disneyplus.com/zh-sg/browse/entity-fd2f6cc3-dafc-4741-ae2e-d86494f3ca51?msockid=15ea374e9d856c5005c521959cae6def) ↩

8. According to Mike's original words, "Our party's birthday is not even certain which day it is"; upon verification, it should be "The anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China is clearly designated as July 1; after research by party historians, the First National Congress of the CPC opened on July 23, 1921." (Source: Communist Party of China News Network "The Founding of the Communist Party of China", https://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/33837/3503018.html) ↩

9. This claim could not be verified. ↩

10. Source: Zhang Qizhi "The Unique Path of Self-Innovation in Traditional Culture" (https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/info/1182/40162.htm) ↩

11. Source: Wikipedia "On the Origin of Species" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) ↩