“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:19. Long pause.) Ruburt is trying to move outside of the picture entirely. Only by so doing, of course, can the larger avenues of knowledge be opened and made available to the society—or to the self. For many centuries creativity itself was firmly directed by Christianity, and to some extent (underlined) Christianity brings with it an air of uneasiness for society—to the extent that any original thought or insight must indeed imply an intrusive force to a world that must exist in a rare balance that is the result of preserving old values and obtaining new knowledge.

(Long pause.) All societies basically need the insertion of fresh challenge and knowledge, however, or they stagnate. At the same time, of course, the society wants to maintain its familiar stance. For centuries Christianity served to preserve old frameworks while still allowing for transforming elements and symbolic activities that allowed individuals to assert some independence and originality by moving from one religious symbol, say, to another—still, however, within that larger framework.

(8:44.) In terms of reincarnation, Christianity in numberless cases even served as a uniting framework connecting lives: you could for example theoretically move from one century to another, and while there were social and political changes, the overall cultural framework might well be the same.

[...] The power, devotion, and energy, the organizational expertise of Christianity, cannot be disputed. Nor can it be disputed that Christianity was based upon great religious and psychic vision. [...]

[...] It seems certain that “something” happened “back then” (as I often remark) — and that if you could go back there, invisibly studying the century, you would discover the birth of Christianity (also as I’ve remarked, although I prefer to say that “I’d like to see what did happen”). But Christianity was not born at that time. [...]

[...] (With much amusement:) In parentheses or brackets or whatever you use: (As indeed occurred in the case of Christianity, as I will explain later.) End of brackets or parentheses.

Certain bloodlines, in your terms, were extinguished because of your beliefs in Christianity, as people were killed in your holy wars. [...]

I am not here specifically blaming Christianity, for far before its emergence, your ideas (underlined) and beliefs about good and evil [were] far more important in all matters regarding the species than any simple questions of genetic variances, natural selection, or environmental influence. [...]

[...] The old religious myths fit a different kind of people, however, and lasted for as many centuries in the past as Christianity has reached into the future.² The miraculous merging of imagination with historical time, however, became less and less synchronized, so that only r-i-t-e-s (spelled) remained and the old gods seized the imagination no longer. The time was ripe for Christianity.

[...] Without exception, all of the horrors connected with Christianity’s name came from “following the letter rather than the spirit of the law,” or by insistence upon literal interpretations — while the spiritual, imaginative concepts beneath were ignored.

[...] You are having wars between the Jews and the Arabs and the Christians once again, because emphasis is put upon literal interpretations of spiritual truths.

NIRVANA, RIGHT IS MIGHT,
ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS, AND THE
HUMAN BODY AS A PLANET WORTH SAVING

We will continue dictation, starting a new chapter, to be called: “Nirvana, Right is Might, Onward Christian Soldiers, and the Human Body as a Planet Worth Saving.”

With some variations, the same kind of “sudden conversion” can occur when a person who has berated religious concepts and beliefs suddenly does a double-take of a different kind, ending up as a twice-born Christian.

[...] Paul was converted several years after Christ’s death; before that he had been a zealous persecutor of Christians. [...]

[...] Some wanted to know if one of the three Christs could have been the Teacher of Righteousness; this personage was the leader of the Zealot sect in Judaea early in the first century A.D. There were four known Jewish sects flourishing there at the birth of Christianity.

[...] It was because of a series of recurring dreams that Paul persecuted the Christians. [...]

[...] Largely speaking, yet in the terms of this discussion, Christianity and ancient Roman religions dealt mainly with the individual, and particularly Christianity overlooked the large unity of being. [...]

So some Americans have become tired of this badge of individuality, and they are ready to throw it over, either to fundamental Christianity, which is again rising, or to a number of various Eastern religions. [...]

[...] And for one-thousand, nine-hundred and seventy-eight years Christianity has flourished in one way or another. [...] It peopled the world of man with saints, sinners, priests, and it peopled space with a God, a legion of angels, and a devil and his cohorts—so surely Christianity must be based upon fact.

[...] If I say there was very little factual basis for Christianity’s beginning, then people will interpret this to mean that Christ’s reality had no basis in truth. [...] Those religions had as great an effect upon their cultures as Christianity has had upon your own.

Now Ruburt’s paper was largely correct, in that Christianity in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, has not only frowned on revelation, but in the past tried with the utmost effort to strike it down. [...]

That freedom, however, of course has been highly limited in nature, for the dogma of Christianity still largely held. [...]

The church could not trust revelations, lest new orders might come to contradict the old ones, to upset the spiritual status quo, and hence the social organization that developed about it; or that might revive old tenets once a part of Christianity but later dropped—such as a belief in reincarnation.

[...] Ruburt became aware of non-Catholic Christianity to any degree only after our sessions began. [...] 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. [...]

All in all, those results are considered by the Sinful Self, now, as regrettable but necessary, as perhaps the use of overly severe discipline, or the use of punishment “for the personality’s own good”—all of which makes perfect sense within the belief structure of the Sinful Self and the larger philosophical structure of Christianity itself. [...]

[...] Its discipline through suffering is one of Christianity’s most appalling effects. [...]

Many believe — using the first diagram — that it is “good” and morally superior to be Christian, white, wealthy and in excellent health. [...]

In that chart of belief, disease, poverty, femininity to some extent, non-Christian concepts, and a non-Caucasian racial heritage, are all considered wrong to one degree or another.

[...] All of the distortions in Christianity are apparent, where the first group is blind to them, of course. [...]

[...] Christianity has believed in a heaven and a hell, a purgatory, and reckoning; and so, at death, to those who so believe in these symbols, another ceremony is enacted, and the guides take on the guises of those beloved figures of Christian saints and heroes.

[...] He was captured, and ended up with a group of Turks, all to be executed by the Christians, in this case very horribly so. [...]

(The Crusades consisted of a series of military expeditions sent out by the Christian powers in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems. [...]

[...] The repressive nature of Christian thought in the Middle Ages, for example, is well known. [...]

Behind such ideas is of course the central point of Christianity, or one of the central points at least, that earthly man is a sinful creature. [...]

In the time those fears originated, he shared the belief framework of Christianity, so that he believed that outside of that framework there could indeed be nothing but chaos, or the conventional atheism of science, in which the universe was at the mercy of meaningless mechanistic laws—laws, however, that operated without logic, but more importantly laws that operated without feeling. [...]

The differences between any of those systems of thought and Christianity may be so apparent that the similarities escape you. [...] These elements are quite characteristic of Christianity also, of course, but they may appear more palatable, exotic, or reasonable coming from a source foreign to your childhood education. [...]

Dictation: Now: You may be quite able to see through the distortions of conventional Christianity. [...]

[...] The conventional Christian concept of God has been in many ways a convenient one, and it carries with it many truths. [...]

[...] There is no personal god-individual in Christian terms and yet you do have access to a portion of All That Is, that is highly attuned to you only above all others.

[...] The sect was a strange mixture of Mohammedanism, Christianity and Judaism, but it went under the banner of Mohammedanism, and considered Christians in conventional terms as enemies. [...] It was a rich pageantry of beliefs—almost an Oriental Christianity despite the fact that the Christians were considered the true infidels.

Christian dogma speaks of the ascension of Christ, implying of course a vertical ascent into the heavens, and the development of the soul is often discussed in terms of direction. [...]

Development is therefore considered in a one-line direction only, in Christian terms. [...]

[...] The world was far more ripe for Christianity than people suppose, because of these groups. [...]

[...] It is there as an early Christmas present for those who use Christianity in fanatical ways. [...]

The message blazes across your television screens at a time when fundamental religion has begun to sprout again, both eastern and Christian. [...]

I give you both my blessings for the meaning of this season, as it was established long before the time of Christianity. [...]

(I’m intrigued by Seth’s rather mysterious closing phrase, above, about this season as it was established long before the time of Christianity. [...]