Two questions from Seth

Here’s the next Seth class extract in which Seth poses two simple, but profound questions for the students to experience … not intellectually … but by feeling (like the Alpha meditations from the previous sessions).  It’s surprising what comes up when one turns off the brain!  

SESSION, MARCH 30, 1971

… Now, you have been running away from emotional realities this evening.  I have a slight suggestion, this means that I have a question for you.  Now, I do not expect the question to be answered in a general manner, that is far too safe, and we are not dealing with philosophies.  We are dealing with realities from which you may weave whatever philosophies suit your fancy.  And the question you can thank a member of this group for.  The question comes in two parts and so I shall expect it to be answered in two parts.  The first may seem general, but it will be highly personal, and I do not ask you to dispense with any great personal secret this evening.  No sacrifices need be offered as a proof of (words lost).  You can save them for later.

The first question is, “How relevant is life?”  And the second question is, “How relevant do you think you are?”  And I do not expect beautiful sounding generalizations.  Not only do I not expect them, but I will not stand for them.  The nature of reality is now.  It is within the reality that you know, and the reality that you know is a part of these other realities.  Illusion is also a part of reality.

([Mark Disbrow:] “That first question, ‘How relevant is life?’ You mean physical life?”)

You answer the question as you understand it, and that is part of the game and also a part of the illumination that I hope you discover as you find yourself facing both parts of that question.

… I expect feeling to predominate.  I will give you a hint to show you the extent of my great goodwill.  Every breath that you take is relevant, and every thought is relevant, and what seems to you to be waste is not waste.

… I expect you to encounter the question in both of its parts quite honestly.  “How relevant is life?  How relevant is your life?” and I will add a third portion: “Are you more relevant than an ant?”  Than an ant.

… (During the break everyone answered the questions.)

Now I will tell you that many of you (the class), in Ruburt’s terms, and quite unwittingly, copped out.  You were giving intellectual answers.  You were thinking in terms of themes and compositions and all of your answers did, indeed, sound fine, spiritual, highly edifying, but very few of you felt.

Now during the week here is a little assignment for you.  I want you to consider the same questions, but from a feeling level.  What does life mean to you?  Then listen and feel the life within you.  Sit quietly and listen to the tumult within you.  To the vitality within your atoms and molecules.  To the alternate periods of peace and tumult that flash through your being.  To the activity that courses through your body.

Imagine if you can, the reality that exists within and beneath and supporting your most single thought.  What is that thought that flashed so momentarily and clearly and then to drop away, upon what is it dependent.  Come into contact with the life that is within you now, not with words.  I am not asking you to relate to the word life, but to life itself and to do this you must experience the life within yourself and feel it.

Do not simply say that the ant has a right to existence as you do.  Either feel it and understand the reality of the ant or understand that you do not understand the reality of the ant.  Do not play around with the concepts.  Experience as directly as you can within yourselves your own living reality, then go from that, if you can, to other realities.  To life as it shows itself in many forms, not to the word life.

…

To answer the questions you need to feel your reality at any given moment, to follow your own thoughts, but not only your thoughts, but your physical sensations, the sensations of physical life.  And when you cut off as many of these physical sensations as you can then what remains?  What physical sensations do you think that you feel that an ant does not?  What can he feel that you cannot?  You evaded the questions.  Now I knew you would evade the questions, so that is all right and it was part of the lesson but you must encounter your own vitality.

(To Ned) And you must encounter your own vitality and honour it.

The physical sound that I make, the energy that you sense now is, indeed, a part of the energy that sings within the vitality of any atom and molecule.  Within you is so much unrealized and unrecognized and unreleased energy.  Now, trying to answer the questions such as those I gave this evening on a surface will not help you.  You are afraid of the energy that resides within you and you often avoid the encounters with yourselves.

Now, I would like you, in the following week, to think of these questions again but answer them from a feeling level, from an experience level and then answer them as simply as you can verbally.  But in finding the answers for yourselves you should have experiences that you may not be able to verbalize.  And you should sense within yourselves the energy that resides within your own identity and sense to some extent the unique vitality of every living organism.

If the ant spoke, what would he say?  Would he step on you if he were as large as you are?  Let yourselves go in feeling with these questions.  You sit here feeling isolated within your skins and for no reason for you, yourselves, enclose yourselves.

This sort of question, if you work at it, will give you great freedom.  And so, in Ruburt’s terms, do not cop out and I will be interested to see what you come up with.

([Janice:] “Was I feeling vitality when I tried to express it in relaxation?”)

You were simply learning to let your ego relax.  Now the ego itself is a poor term, for individually each individual uses his ego differently.  You use yours very restrictively, often, and you are learning to relax it.  You experienced a point of consciousness where, momentarily, that barrier was released.  Feelings of energy from the inner self were then allowed to bubble up and give you a sense of energy and a release from normal pressures.

([Ron Labadee:] “Is there relevance to Oriental forms of meditation?”)

There are to all forms of meditation as there are to all forms of activity.

([Ron:] “Is there any hierarchy in terms of the way you look at it the most important?”)

The most important is that which is before you most intimately and it is the nature of spontaneity.  It is this force within you that gives you your life and vitality that keeps you alive and that allows you all to think these fine and weighty thoughts.  The spontaneous self, left to itself, ideally is the answer.

([Ron:] “So you are saying that this type of involvement, because it is the most spontaneously structured, is the most valuable?”)

Ideally, it is indeed.  Unfortunately, when you bottle up repressions and feelings then often a structured procedure is necessary to help you release them.  But all of you sit here very nicely, very spontaneously, very alive, very conscious and none of you know, egotistically, how you do so or what makes your thoughts work.  When you begin to question how your heart beats or why, then you can encounter difficulties if you lose the faith that they work spontaneously and that your conscious knowledge is not necessary for the fine mechanisms that keep you alive.  The ego is a great king.  It sits in splendour upon a great throne and it usually does not want to know that power resides beneath.

([Ron:] “All forms of activity or all forms of meditation?”)

Your spontaneous selves is the answer.  Not control, but spontaneity.  Now, I did not say this, but spontaneity knows its own control, that is an entirely different sort.  December does not bring flowers and yet December does not know your means of control.  I just wanted to be sure that you understood.