“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The information came in a natural manner—which is, again, excellent. I do not want to rehash his entire early background, but it is important that he become aware of its emotional content. I wanted to make a few additional points. Ruburt became aware of non-Catholic Christianity to any degree only after our sessions began. The Sinful Self is quite as evident there as it is in the Catholic Church. The Protestant version is often intermixed, however, with psychic organizations. In that light, as in the Catholic one, the female’s guilt is seen as even larger than the male’s. So that additional pressure is cast upon the women, who are indeed seen as spiritually inferior—or (underlined) on the other hand painted as pure, pedestal-like individuals in the manner of the Blessed Virgin. That particular subject matter can be discussed at another time. Ruburt has often wondered at the poor quality of most intuitional material, particularly since it is supposed to be so important. The truth of course is not intrinsically in the nature of the material itself, but in the very fact that it is almost exclusively translated in terms of Christian thought, however bizarre that interpretation might be. For that matter, such material often simply restates the entire concept of the Sinful Self in different form. Often that form is highly inflammatory. The main point is a good one to remember, however.

In the framework of the Sinful Self’s points of reference and in the Catholic philosophy in which it is based, suffering for a good purpose, toward a good end, toward a good goal for the sake of the soul, is a virtue. (Pause.) The entire Catholic dogma is built about Christ’s agony and death. Now to a portion of the personality believing in that system, Ruburt’s position makes hardly a ripple. That system regards the body as highly distracting, disruptive, heir to the lusts of the flesh, and so forth. Its discipline through suffering is one of Christianity’s most appalling effects.

His mother’s pathological lying meant that Ruburt had to assess and reassess any given situation as a child. He determined not to be malicious as his mother was. His anxiousness led to the most severe examinations of conscience, such examinations being a recommended Catholic practice.

What Ruburt believes to be his intellectual skepticism is the voice of the overly conscientious self in quite limited Catholic terms.

[...] It was not the Catholic God. [...]

[...] To the overly conscientious self however this is not Catholic nor legitimate. [...]

([Gert:] “Is the Catholic church part of this symbolism?”)

Does the Catholic church know symbolism? [...]

([Gert:] “How then, does the Catholic church come to say that the Pope is the Church instituted by Jesus Christ and it is, therefore, it?”)

([Natalie:] “To take the place of the Catholic church?”)

Jane had been a devoted Catholic in her youth. Since she had died in a Catholic hospital, I called for a priest to speak at her bedside. [...]

[...] So, instead, we will form a free city to which those travelers can come, and where those who enter can read books about Buddhism if they prefer, or play at being Catholic. [...]

[...] When you are tired of playing a Catholic priest, for example, you will fall into your own trap — in which your beliefs [as such a one] are suddenly worked out to their logical perfection, and you see what they mean.

The Catholic church, incidentally, as he knew it, while admitting the mystic experience, was highly suspicious of him in that regard. [...]

He also knows that such channels lead other people away from, specifically, the Catholic church. [...]

[...] Part of this has to do also with the fact that his complete support in St. Vincent’s Catholic orphanage was carried on by a religious order. [...]

[...] Ruburt had been put in the Protestant day camp for an unfortunate short summer following the grandmother’s death, and later into the Catholic home for a more protracted period of time. To some extent he thought of that as punishment, of course, of being abandoned, forced to take charity as well, and the home reinforced all of the Catholic beliefs, particularly stressing the sinfulness of the body. [...]

[...] Father Traynor provided some kindliness, compassion and good will as he tried to translate Catholic dogma to Ruburt’s rebellious mind. [...]

[...] As a child, couched in the Catholic Church, his poetry was a method of natural expression, a creative art, and also the vehicle through which he examined himself, the world as he knew it, and the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.

[...] No matter what he was taught in Catholic school or later in the public one, his intuitions, wedded to his creative capacities, led him to question established views. [...]

(I reminded Jane that since she belonged to no religion now [having left the Roman Catholic Church when she was 19 years old], her mystical nature would choose other avenues of expression than religious ones; as in these sessions, for instance. [...]

[...] And she had reinforced that framework by demanding her transfer from a public to a Catholic grade school.

[...] Through her involvement with the Catholic church, she became aware of the quality called “mysticism” in connection with the saints of that church — but still she had no idea of attributing such a quality to herself. [...]

They were these; that the entire world and its organization was kept together by certain stories or one in particular—like the Catholic Church’s; that it was dangerous beyond all knowing to look through the stories or examine them or to look for the truth and that all kinds of taboos existed to keep us from doing this, since.... [...]

[...] Some of last night’s dream material dealt with the ideas, again, of creativity—sometimes seen as harmless enough for children, as in the play Ruburt remembered taking part in his Catholic public school. [...]

(Now the noise in the fireplace was fluctuating.) There you run into problems involved with Catholic or Christian devotion, the natural feedback needed in the development of creative work, and the striking originality of creative ventures that strike out on their own, forming their own paths. [...]

([Gert:] “Do we all have someone such as you assigned to us—like the Catholic Church says each person has a guardian angel—watching over us so to speak?”)

It is the idea behind the Catholic conception of guardian angels. [...]

([Gert:] “And I think my question is now, if l go back to teach little children the Catholic concepts of mortal sin, hell, etc.”)

[...] Now this self-denial began in the Catholic home, and he was peculiarly prone to accept it. It was part of the old Catholic training, and he fell for it under a new guise. [...]

[...] The church, however — the Roman Catholic Church — still held a repository of religious ideas and concepts that served as a bank of probabilities from which the race could draw. [...]

[...] He was a monk as a young man but, eventually rebelling against the Catholic Church, became the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

[...] The connection is far-out: My brother, father of the Protestant bride who married a Catholic, was at my parents’ home Sunday; the people who live next door are Catholic.

(“An entrance,” Linda, a Protestant, married a Catholic in a Brooklyn church. [...]

[...] She wears a print dress that had been given to her in the Roman Catholic orphanage in Troy, some 35 miles from Saratoga Springs; she’d spent the previous 18 months there in the institution while her mother had been hospitalized in another city for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. [...]

[...] At his preference and demand, he changed from a public to a Catholic school after the third grade.⁴ This was against his mother’s judgment. [...]

[...] Well over a year before this picture was taken, in fact, Ruburt was sent to a Catholic home.⁵ There, unconventional thought was not tolerated. [...]

[...] He threw himself headlong into the Catholic reality, pursued it with great stubborn diligence, used it as a framework of conventionality in which he could allow his mystic nature to grow.

[...] (Pause.) It is not his early complete acceptance of the Catholic Church that is a block here. [...]

[...] I began questioning Jane about her religious training in Catholic grade school. [...]

[...] He convinced that portion that the old beliefs about good and evil, self-destruction, and the existence of the Catholic devil, were not valid. [...]

(Booklets titled “The Catholic Burial Rite” were handed out as we entered the church, and I kept my copy. [...]