The Seat of the Soul: 25th Anniversary Edition with a Study Guide

by Gary Zukav

My producers were convinced in the beginning that television wasn’t ready for a conversation about the soul.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage one cannot practice any virtue consistently.

William James, Carl Jung, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein.

In this moment and in this hour of human evolution, this proper vocabulary and means of addressing that which longs to transcend religiosity and spirituality and assume the position of authentic power is longing to be born. We need to give that which we as a species are now touching consciously for the first time a vocabulary that is not clouded, so that it can be identified clearly in the acts and judgments of the human race, so that it can be seen clearly, and not through veils of mystery or mysticism, but simply as the authentic power that moves the force fields of this Earth of ours.

We will move through this change more easily if we are able to see the road upon which we are traveling, our destination, and what it is that is in motion.

Our deeper understanding tells us that a truly evolved being is one that values others more than it values itself, and that values love more than it values the physical world and what is in it.

We see the results of our intentions. We see that rage kills: It takes away breath—the Life force—and it spills blood—the carrier of vitality. We see that kindness nurtures. We see and feel the effects of a snarl and a smile.

The minds that coordinate the activities of violence can coordinate the activities of cooperation.

We see that when the activities of life are infused with reverence, they come alive with meaning and purpose. We see that when reverence is lacking from life’s activities, the result is cruelty, violence, and loneliness.

When perception of the physical world is limited to the five-sensory modality, the basis of life in the physical arena becomes fear. Power to control the environment, and those within the environment appears to be essential.

Brothers and sisters quarrel for the same reason that corporations quarrel—they seek power over one another.

The power to control the environment, and those within it, is power over what can be felt, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen. This type of power is external power.

Anything we fear to lose—a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief—is a symbol of external power.

What we fear is an increase in our vulnerability.

Our deeper understanding leads us to another kind of power, a power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power.

When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power.

Authentic power has its roots in the deepest source of our being. Authentic power cannot be bought, inherited, or hoarded. An authentically empowered person is incapable of making anyone or anything a victim. An authentically empowered person is one who is so strong, so empowered, that the i...

It is in this invisible realm that the origins of our deepest values are found. From the perspective of this invisible realm, the motivations of those who consciously sacrifice their lives for higher purposes make sense, the power of Gandhi is explicable, and the compassionate acts of the Christ are comprehensible in a fullness that is not accessible to the five-sensory human.

their words and actions awaken within us the recognition of truths.

we are never alone, and the Universe is alive, conscious, intelligent, and compassionate.

From the perception of the multisensory human, the physical world is a learning environment that is created jointly by the souls that share it, and everything that occurs within it serves their learning.

From the perception of the multisensory human, the intention behind an action determines its effects, every intention affects both us and others, and the effects of intentions extend far beyond the physical world.

Your personality is that part of you that was born into, lives within, and will die within time. To be a human and to have a personality are the same thing. Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution.

The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the Earth are the means by which you evolve. At each moment you choose the intentions that will shape your experiences and those things upon which you will focus your attention. These choices affect your evolutionary process. This is so for each person. If you choose unconsciously, you evolve unconsciously. If you choose consciously, you evolve consciously.

The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion, and wisdom do not come from the personality. They are experiences of the soul.

Your soul is that part of you that is immortal.

As a personality becomes multisensory, its intuitions—its hunches and subtle feelings—become important to it.

It senses things about itself, other people, and the situations in which it finds itself that it cannot justify on the basis of the information that its five senses can provide. It comes to recognize intentions, and to respond to them rather than to the actions and the words that it encounters. It can recognize, for example, a warm heart beneath a harsh and angry manner, and a cold heart beneath polished and pleasing words.

In time, it learns to value and to identify with those currents that generate creativity, healing, and love, and to challenge and release those currents that create negativity, disharmony, and violence. In this way, a personality comes to experience the energy of its soul.

It is a positive, purposeful force at the core of your being. It is that part of you that understands the impersonal nature of the energy dynamics in which you are involved, that loves without restriction and accepts without judgment.

When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.

Every experience that you have and will have upon the Earth encourages the alignment of your personality with your soul.

Every circumstance and situation gives you the opportunity to choose this path, to allow your soul to shine through you, to bring into the physical world through you its unending and unfathomable reverence for and love of Life.

This is a book about authentic empowerment—the alignment of the personality with the soul—what that involves, how it happens, and what it creates. To understand these things requires an understanding o...

The life of a mother, a warrior, a daughter, a priest; the experiences of love, vulnerability, fear, loss, and tenderness; the struggles with anger, defiance, emptiness, and jealousy—all serve the evolution of the soul.

A conscious lifetime, therefore, is a treasure beyond value.

The incarnation of a soul is a massive reduction of the power of the soul to a scale that is appropriate to a physical form. It is a reduction of an immortal Life system into the framework of time and the span of a few years.

The soul chooses, voluntarily, to undertake this experience in order to heal.

The personality is those parts of the soul that require healing, along with those parts of the soul, such as compassion and love, that the soul has lent to the process of healing in that lifetime.

The splintered aspects of the soul, the aspects that require healing, need to interact in physical matter so that each part of the splinteredness can become whole. The personality is like a complex mandala that is formed from these splintered parts in addition to the parts that are not splintered. It comes directly from the parts of the soul that the soul has chosen to work on in this lifetime to heal, that need to experienc...

Therefore, you can see within a person’s personality the splintered suffering of the soul from which it was formed, as well as the grace that the soul has earned,...

Consider how powerful the soul is if it can have a part of itself that experiences great love, a part of itself that experiences fears, a part that is perhaps neutral, a part that experiences schizop...

The harmonious personality is one in which the soul flows easily through the part of itself that is in touch with its physical incarnation.

The soul is. It has no beginning and no end but flows toward wholeness. The personality emerges as a natural force from the soul. It is an energy tool that the soul adapts to function within the physical world. Each personality is unique because the configuration of energy of the soul that formed it is unique.

The personality sometimes appears as a force running rampant in the world with no attachment to the energy of its soul. This situation can be the origin of what we call an evil human being, and it can be the origin of a schizophrenic human being. It is the result of the personality being unable to find its reference point, or connection, to its mothership, which is its soul.

When a personality is in full balance, you cannot see where it ends and the soul begins. That is a whole human being.

Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect.

It is, therefore, wise for us to become aware of the many intentions that inform our experience, to sort out which intentions produce which effects, and to choose our intentions according to the effects that we desire to produce.

The relationship of cause and effect within the domain of physical objects and phenomena reflects a dynamic that is not limited to physical reality. This is the dynamic of karma.

The Golden Rule is a behavioral guide that is based upon the dynamic of karma. A personalized statement of karma would be, “You receive from the world what you give to the world.”