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

by Gary Zukav

From the perception of the five-sensory human, the physical world is an unaccountable given in which we unaccountably find ourselves, and we strive to dominate it so that we can survive. 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.

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 does not operate independently from the soul. To the extent that a person is in touch with spiritual depths, the personality is soothed because the energy of consciousness is focused on its energy core and not on its artificial facade, which is the personality.

child dies early in its life, we do not know what agreement was made between that child’s soul and the souls of its parents, or what healing was served by that experience. Although we are sympathetic to the anguish of the parents, we cannot judge this event. If we, or the parents of this child, do not understand the impersonal nature of the dynamic that is in motion, we may react with anger toward the Universe, or toward each other, or with guilt if we feel that our actions were inadequate. All of these reactions create karma, and more lessons for the soul to learn—more karmic debts for the soul to pay—appear.

Hate

For example, when we see a person sleeping in the gutter in the winter, we do not know what is being completed for that soul. We do not know whether that soul has engaged in cruelty in another lifetime, and now has chosen to experience the same dynamic from an entirely different point of view, as, for example, the recipient of charity. It is appropriate that we respond to his or her circumstance with compassion, but it is not appropriate that we perceive it as unfair, because it is not.

Reverence is engaging in a form and a depth of contact with Life that is well beyond the shell of form and into essence. Reverence is contact with the essence of each thing and person and plant and bird and animal. It is contact with the interior of its beingness. Even if you cannot sense the interior, it is enough to know that the form, the shell, is merely an outer layer, and that underneath it the true power and essence of who a person is, or what a thing is, is present. That is what is honored in reverence.

As we have come to seek and wield external power consciously, we have come to view feelings as unnecessary appendages, like tonsils—useless, but capable of creating pain and dysfunction.

The remedy for an absence is a presence. Evil is an absence and, therefore, it cannot be healed with an absence. By hating evil, or one who is engaged in evil, you contribute to the absence of Light and not to its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it. The absence of Light causes the personality to suffer. There is pain. When you hate, you bring that suffering upon yourself. Hatred of evil affects the one who hates. It makes him or her a hateful person, a person who also has absented himself or herself from Light.

The five-sensory human is not alone either, but the five-sensory human is not aware of the assistance that is continually being given to him or her, and, therefore, cannot draw upon that assistance consciously.

Just as we were taught to develop and employ cognition—to think things through—so, too, can we learn to develop and employ intuition—to ask for guidance and receive it. Just as there are technologies to discipline the mind, such as analytical thinking, studying, repetition, and respect for the mechanism, so, too, are there techniques to engage and discipline the intuition.

In the creation of a personality, the soul calibrates parts of itself, reduces parts of itself, to take on the human experience. Your higher self is that aspect of your soul that is in you, but it is not the fullness of your soul. It is a smaller soul self. Therefore, “higher self” is another term for “soul,” yet the soul is more than the higher self. Picture a cup, a gallon, and a water tank. The water tank is the soul. An aspect of the soul becomes a gallon. That gallon is still soul, but not the fullness of the soul. It is that part of the soul that is on mission, so to speak. The personality is the cup. The cup contacts the gallon, the higher self soul, but not the full-bodied water tank.

The experience of intuition cannot be explained in terms of the five senses, because it is the voice of the nonphysical world.

There is no time between a daughter’s loving intention toward her father and the soul of her father understanding that intention.

Other intelligences inhabit other ranges of frequency. These forms of Life do not exist elsewhere from us. Just as infrared light, ultraviolet light, microwave light, and many, many other frequencies and ranges of frequencies coexist with the visible light spectrum, but are invisible to us, the Life forms that are characterized by different frequency ranges of nonphysical Light coexist with us, but are invisible to us. In the place that you now sit exist many different beings, or groups of beings, each active and evolving in its own reality and in its own way. These realities commingle with yours in the same way that microwave radiation exists alongside of visible light, but is undetectable to the human eye.

Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you continue to be an angry person. If you do not reach this awareness by the time you return home, your soul will continue this lesson through the experiences of another lifetime. It will incarnate another personality with aspects that are similar to your own. What is not learned in each lifetime is carried over into other lifetimes, along with new lessons that arise for the soul to learn, new karmic obligations that result from the responses of its personality to the situations that it encounters. The lessons that the soul has learned also are brought forward into other lifetimes, and this is how the soul evolves. Personalities mature in time, and the soul evolves in eternity.

when in truth they are simply drinking from the finest nectar of their environment and are totally content to let the illusion play.

If we cant perceive or see but make a choice that serves tbe soul and not the personality we feel the suffering of the personAlity then why is this A good choice?

Remind yourself that you both have chosen to interact sexually in ways that do not ignite your feelings because, if your feelings were awakened, they would only let you know that the person you are drawn to is no more emotionally involved with you than you are with him or her. It is one thing to think that you are sexually involved with someone and not feeling anything. It is another to face that neither is your partner feeling anything for you.

Gandhi,

Contains good and bad who decides overall karmic output? This feels moralistic

The dolphin soul is leaving the Earth, that is, the dolphin species is becoming extinct. The dolphins are beaching themselves. They are creating diseases within themselves. This is their way of refusing to continue to live upon the Earth. They feel that they cannot fulfill the purpose for which they are born. Therefore, they are leaving. Their deaths are not suicides because they are not frightened. They are exhausted. The dolphin soul manifests itself—dolphins are born—to bring love and life and creativity to the oceans. They manifest to form a bridge of joy and love and intelligence between the aquatic kingdom and the human kingdom. This they cannot do. Our species reaches toward the dolphin soul only with brutality. The dolphin spirit—how it suffers! This is a time of great sorrow. It is a time to look soberly and deeply upon the values and behaviors that result from the perception of power as external. It is a time to grieve with the dolphin soul, to offer comfort to it.

Lost me

Other levels also exist, such as the level in which disincarnate spirits are bound close to their physicalness in the immediate environment of the Earth arena. These spirits do not pursue the journey back to their higher selves, but remain bound with their nonphysical individual states close to the Earth. Imagine that your personality, your characteristics, and part of your nonphysical self wish to remain intact and not proceed on their evolution. The process of the soul discharging the aspects of personality does not happen. A combustion and congestion occurs within the energy system. Usually this happens when a soul cannot accept that it must move on and release a particular incarnation. In some instances, a soul holds on to a personality because that personality was particularly successful or powerful in its lifetime. The congestion in the process of evolution that occurs produces the phenomena that we refer to as evil spirits, ghosts, or possessions.

Pain by itself is merely pain, but the experience of pain coupled with an understanding that the pain serves a worthy purpose is suffering. Suffering is meaningful. Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort. What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul? This does not mean that you become a martyr. When you understand that by consciously serving the evolution of your soul you contribute the most that you can to your world, you become one who contributes consciously to the well-being and spiritual development of those who share the human learning experience with you.

holism

When we experience fear or anger or jealousy, we are in an illusion that is designed to bring to awareness those parts of the soul that require healing. These things do not actually exist. That is why pursuing them does not bring power. What exists between souls is love, and that is all that exists. By understanding this, the personality is able to remain aware within the illusion, to accept consciously the healing that it offers, and to help others heal as well. The power of awareness and knowledge is identical in both situations.

The illusion is governed by impersonal energy dynamics. It is shaped initially by the law of karma. The configuration of each personality, the unconscious intentions with which it is born, is determined by the karma of its soul. These intentions shape that personality’s illusion, its reality within the Earth school, until they are replaced by other intentions, unconscious or conscious. If the reactions of the personality create additional karma for the soul, and if that karma cannot be balanced within the lifetime of the personality, that karma contributes to the shaping of another personality, and the intentions of that personality create its illusion, its reality within the Earth school, and so on.

Nonauthentic needs belong to the personality. They are what you adopt in your physical life in order to maneuver the space you claim and walk in upon the Earth. Artificial needs are the needs from which negative karma is incurred. As you reach to fulfill these needs without letting them go and bending and flowing, as you determine to have them satisfied or to use them, you can gain great negative karma.

How doez anybody avoid this

Without genuine humility, you cannot have this kind of power because power leaves you when you feel that the situation that you are in, or the people that you are with, do not command your respect.

An authentically empowered person is one who forgives. Forgiveness is not a moral issue. It is an energy dynamic.

When you hold someone responsible for what you experience, you lose power. You cannot know what another person will do. Therefore, when you depend upon another person for the experiences that you think are necessary to your well-being, you live continually in the fear that they will not deliver.

Within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, the fear that lies behind it, and to choose to learn with wisdom.