Book SummaryThe Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Seat of the Soul

The Seat of the Soul is Gary Zukav’s best-selling exploration of the soul’s evolutionary journey through the material realm. Published in 1989, following Zukav’s acclaimed The Dancing Wu Li Masters (which explored the connection between quantum physics and spirituality), this book earned a spot as an Oprah Winfrey favorite and gained a wide following throughout the 1990s. This guide is based on the 25th-anniversary edition of the book, published in 2014.

Origins of The Seat of the Soul

Zukav’s 1979 book The Dancing Wu Li Masters was born from Zukav’s friendship with physicist Jack Sarfatti, who introduced him to the concepts of quantum physics and purportedly ghost-wrote portions of the book. Zukav and Sarfatti were part of an Eastern mysticism-inspired spiritual movement in the 1970s, and they sought to combine ideas from the new physics and this new spiritual movement.

The Seat of the Soul veers away from a scientific perspective but extends some of the ideas from _The Dancing Wu Li Masters...

The Seat of the Soul Summary The Nature of the Universe

To understand the premise of The Seat of the Soul, we’ll begin by looking at how Zukav conceives of the universe. He says that the universe, in its essence, is composed entirely of a divine loving consciousness. Some may refer to this as “God,” while others may understand it as simply the living spirit of the universe itself.

That spiritual essence is then broken down into smaller components, Zukav explains, which consist of many different types of spirit beings, including angels, spirit guides and teachers, souls, and many other forms of spirit beings in other galaxies. All of these spirit beings are made of light energy, he says, and some of these light-energy spirit beings take the form of human souls that need to come to the physical plane to learn lessons, balance their karma, and evolve. These soul-beings are the only kind that need to incarnate this way, while the rest remain elsewhere in the spiritual realm of the universe.

Next, we’ll explain how Zukav understands the nature and purpose of our souls in coming to the material realm.

Pantheism and the Soul

Zukav’s conception of the universe being composed entirely of a divine loving consciousness is...

The Seat of the Soul Summary The Nature of the Material World

The biggest challenge our souls face in incarnating on Earth, according to Zukav, is that they are constrained by the choices we make with our rational minds, which think from a less enlightened perspective. If you are not consciously in touch with your soul and listening to its guidance, he says, you will make decisions based on the desires and fears of your lower self, your physical form. And yet those choices will affect your soul’s karma and therefore its chance for evolution. Next, we’ll discuss the mistakes humans make, according to Zukav, when we don’t live attuned to the guidance of our souls.

Mind Over Heart

Zukav explains that we humans dwell mostly within our lower, materialist selves, and have created a whole world based on this. We live a life of the mind instead of the heart, he says, so we don’t make proper choices about our behavior, we don’t hear our spirit guides, and we dismiss messages because we lack spirituality. Because of this, humans have created a world built on pursuit of external power instead of internal power, Zukav says.

The soul’s approach to the world is one of honoring all of life as sacred, and refraining from harming any other...

The Seat of the Soul Summary Evolution of the Soul

So, now that we understand how our lower selves may be preventing our souls from evolving, how do we correct this so we can find our soul’s purpose and follow it? Zukav explains that this involves developing our intuition, listening to our heart, and tuning in to our emotions, which will allow us to be guided by our soul. And, he says, we must learn to seek our internal power and let go of our pursuit of external power. We’ll take a look next at how he advises going about doing these things.

Develop Your Heart Knowledge

To understand what our soul needs in this lifetime, we need to learn to listen to our hearts, Zukav says, which begins by attuning to our feelings. When we’re in touch with our deeper emotions, we can understand them as messages from our soul and from other spirit guides out in the universe. This constitutes an intuitive way of knowing and understanding the world with the heart rather than the mind, which Zukav describes as a sixth sense. This means valuing emotions and being in touch with our feelings. This deeper awareness of our feelings, he says, will guide us in decision-making. **If you’re not sure whether to pursue a particular course of action,...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Your Karma

Zukav says the spiritually powerful person has the following qualities:

• Humble
• Harmless
• Non-competitive
• Non-materialistic
• Free to be themselves
• Forgiving
• Wise
• Loving

This means nurturing these qualities will spiritually empower you, and bring positive karma to your life.

Reflect on where you see these qualities, or the lack of them, in your life—in your actions, your choices, and your relationships. Where do you see the biggest lack, in yourself?