“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Over the centuries, in our terms, there have been numerous religious and secular (or worldly or nonreligious) consciousnesses at work and play in the Middle East. In Note 2 for Session 899, in Chapter 5 for Volume 1, I wrote that I could “only hint at the enormously complicated situation involving the whole Middle East these days.” I mentioned the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, on Iran’s eastern border, and how the coldly secular Russian philosophy clashed with the Iranians’ fanatical Moslemic orientation. I also referred to our own country’s entanglements in that section of the world. One of the complications I didn’t mention is Iran’s deepening confrontation with Iraq, another Moslem nation on Iran’s western border. Currently the two are arguing over territorial rights concerning a waterway between them that flows into the Persian Gulf; Iran and Iraq have exchanged border clashes for several months now, and each country has threatened heavier military action against the other.

Historically, the animosity between Iran (which until 1935 was called Persia) and Iraq goes back to at least the seventh century, when Arabic conquests brought Islam to the area. A major difference between the two countries is that Iran is Indo-European, and Iraq is Arab. Mohammed, the founder of the Moslem religion, died in 632; conflicts over his successor led to an overall division of the religion into the Shiite and Sunni branches (although this is a simplification). But this great split is also a factor in the current challenges being explored by the two nations: Iran is ruled by Shiite Moslems, Iraq by the Sunni.

(Last Friday, April 25, was day 174 of the taking of the American hostages in Iran. Until that day the 53 prisoners had been held at two locations in Tehran, the capital city of that very turbulent land. As we ate breakfast early Friday, Jane and I were astounded by television news reports that in the predawn hours of the 25th, Iranian time, American commandos had failed in a very complicated attempt to rescue the hostages. Actually, our forces hadn’t come close to reaching the prisoners: Responsible were mechanical failures and two dust storms that the American helicopters had to struggle through before joining a group of transport planes at a remote airfield, code-named Desert One, in central Iran. By then three of the eight “choppers” were out of action. Since six of them were considered vital for a successful rescue, the mission was canceled at that point—but eight crewmen were killed when one of the remaining helicopters collided with a transport plane during a refueling attempt. The resulting fires and explosions could be seen and heard for miles through the desert night.

As soon as they learned of the rescue attempt, the furious and contemptuous leaders of Iran announced that they were dispersing the hostages around their country in order to block another such endeavor. In spite of their previous threats, however, the Iranians have not harmed the hostages in reprisal for the operation, and our Administration has strongly warned them not to do so. And there for the moment events seem to swirl in place—storms of consciousness that, I think, are bound to combine in new patterns to further explore certain large challenges.¹

(She referred to Iran. [...] I explained the position that Iran is in geographically now, however, what with Russia occupying Afghanistan on Iran’s eastern border. Iran hates the Communists, but us also. [...]

[...] Then I changed my answer to Iran, which is the correct one. She said she felt that Seth may have alluded to our improving our relations as a nation with Iran, though this may be hard to believe at present. [...]

Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic orientation is directly opposed to the secular or worldly view of government espoused in Western lands. Horrendous as the situation at Jonestown turned out to be, with religious fanaticism furnishing a framework for all of those deaths, I think it obvious that developments in Iran are already far more serious. Iran is an entire country, whereas Jonestown was one fragile settlement confined within the jungles of an alien land. Iran can “infect” other nations or peoples with an ancient religious force, or consciousness, if allowed to do so. [...] And really, I thought, it could have hardly been an accident on consciousness’s part that as the events at tiny Jonestown receded from world attention, the revolution in Iran began to dramatically increase. [...]

Enjoying the sounds of life in the mysterious nighttime, I intuitively understood that not only did I want to mention in this Preface the feelings Jane and I have about Three Mile Island as a technological and scientific entity, embodying man’s attempts to extract new forms of energy [and yes, consciousness, in our joint opinion] from the far more basic and profound quality Seth calls All That Is; I also knew that I wanted to indicate how the very idea of nuclear energy, as an attribute of a national focus, compared with the situation in the Middle Eastern country of Iran. Iran is undergoing a revolution of a strongly religious, fundamentalist-Islamic character. [Islam means “peace,” by the way.] The force of Iran’s upheaval makes the growing Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States seem tame indeed by comparison; therefore I want to concentrate upon the Iranian dilemma rather than the religious conflicts in our own country.

If the hassles surrounding TMI have engendered forces of a scientifically oriented consciousness, then, certainly those in Iran have released a very strong religiously oriented consciousness. [...] This year [1979], Iran has turned into a land in which all Western nations—but particularly the United States—have become anathema. Iran’s religious leaders actually run the country now, operating behind a weak secular and probably temporary government appointed by its Western-leaning and departed leader before he fled his country last January. [...]

[...] Iran seethes. [...] Last February some 70 Americans were taken hostage when a mob of Marxist-led Iranian fedayeen [or sacrificers] overran the United States embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran. [...] Our citizens began a large-scale evacuation of Iran by air, as did those of several other Western countries. [...]

It’s quite clear, of course, that the nations of the West, including that “Great Satan,” the United States, are, with Japan, keeping the fanatical Iranian mullahs (Moslem religious teachers) in power, so that their country will not be taken over by the Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party; that most unwelcome development could place Iran under Russian domination. Iran’s economy is actually at a very low point because its leaders have squandered much of its already reduced oil income on the war with Iraq, and on revolutionary institutions and food imports, while devoting little to the nation’s long-term interests. [...] The United States doesn’t want either Iran or Iraq to win their war. In the grimmest of political realities, our side is using Iran to block Russian expansion into the Middle East, and is using Iraq to block Iranian domination of its other, weaker oil-producing neighbors. [...]

[...] These events must interact with each other on many levels: The revolution in Iran came to a head with a change of leadership in February 1979, after a ruler long favorable to the United States had been deposed; the accident at TMI took place in March 1979; the American hostages were taken in Iran in November 1979; Russia invaded Afghanistan at Christmastime 1979; and less than 10 months later Iraq invaded Iran. [...]

2. “The killing in Iran continues—and hardly just because of that country’s war with Iraq,” I wrote in the opening notes for Session 936, in Chapter 11 of Dreams. Some three months later the killing goes on, and with even more ramifications of violence, intrigue, and power politics—involving not only Iran but that unhappy country’s neighbors in the Middle East.

[...] At the same time, Iran’s mullahs want a continuing war with Iraq to help consolidate their total power; they do not want victorious, high-ranking military leaders back home from the front to challenge their undisputed power (as internal resistance groups like the Mujahedin-e Khalq are doing). Iran has become a totalitarian religious theocracy. [...]

[...] Now Iran is ruled by the Shiites, and is religiously oriented; Iraq is ruled by the Sunnis, and is more secular and socialistic. [...] There is much disillusionment in Iran over the excesses of the Shiite clergy. In Iran martyrdom is encouraged—at home, in the war, and in terroristic activity abroad. [...] The Moslem world, then, is hardly a monolithic entity; as within Iran itself, the myriad consciousnesses making up that whole framework are much too varied for that to be true.

Yet American specialists on Iran do not believe that even those two severe decimations of its leadership will result in the collapse of the Iranian government. [...] Nor, despite Western fears, does the Russian-oriented Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party, seem anxious to take over; instead, the leaders of the Tudeh are supporting [...] Despite the appearance that the revolution in Iran—made up as it is of all of those diverse consciousnesses—is feeding upon itself in very destructive ways, in ordinary terms, civil war does not appear to be likely. [...]

[...] Before going into our chronology of personal events for those three months, however, I want to continue my brief study of the affairs—really the consciousnesses—involving Three Mile Island, Iran, and the war between Iran and Iraq. [...]

The killing in Iran continues—and hardly just because of that country’s war with Iraq. At the end of August, only two months after the group assassination by bomb explosions of more than 150 leading officials of the Islamic Republican Party, both the president and the prime minister of Iran were killed by another bomb; so were six other men. [...]

2. Today is day 95 of the taking of the American hostages in Iran (on November 4, 1979). [...] The generally explosive predicament in Iran, for example, has been considerably aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan over the recent Christmas season: Now the unbending revolutionary government of Iran, following its own fanatical interpretation of the Moslem religion, must contend with at least an implied threat on its eastern border as the godless Russians occupy Afghanistan. Jane and I find it fascinating to think about—to attempt to trace—some of the ways by which the overall consciousness of the United States continually becomes involved with—entwined with—the consciousnesses of adversaries like Russia and Iran: Such consciousnesses, once created, continue to grow and to complicate themselves in new ways within our concept of “time.” [...]

As for Iran, I described how last February [1979] a mob of Marxist-led Iranian guerrillas overran the United States Embassy in that country’s capital, Tehran, and temporarily held prisoner some 70 Americans. I noted that such a situation could happen again—and it did: On November 4, Iranian students assaulted our embassy compound and took 63 Americans hostage; 3 others were imprisoned at Iran’s Foreign Ministry. [...] Iran holds our entire country in contempt.

In the Preface I also wrote about how I thought the great blossomings of religious consciousness and scientific consciousness engendered by the events at Three Mile Island and Jonestown/Iran would continue to grow, once born, seemingly with lives of their own. [...]

[...] On that same day—day 367 of the hostage crisis—Iran demanded a quick reply from the United States to its latest set of conditions for the release of the 52 American hostages. [...] Evidently Iran wants to bring the hostage crisis to an end because of the economic boycott the Western world has imposed upon it, because in January it will have to deal with a new United States president, and because of the military pressure being exerted against it by Iraq. Iraq invaded Iran on September 23; on November 4 also, the president of Iraq proclaimed that his country is prepared to fight a long war for the recognition of its “rights” by Iran.

One of the tactics leaders in the West are still pursuing is to organize world opinion against the Soviet stay in Afghanistan and the war between Iraq and Iran. [...] I speculated that the overall revolutionary and fundamentalistic consciousness of Iran is like a creative vortex, surrounded by other great national consciousnesses that are strongly resisting its policies for their own creative religious and political reasons. A look at a map will show what I mean: Iran has Iraq and Turkey on its western border, with Russia to its north and Afghanistan on its east; Pakistan lies on Iran’s eastern border also; south of Iran, across the narrow Persian Gulf, cluster the mix of large and small wealthy states on the Arabian peninsula. The Moslem Kurds of Iran and Iraq, minority peoples with strong roots in eastern Turkey, are rebelling against the military forces of their respective countries; and Pakistan has become a place of shelter for refugees from Afghanistan. [...]

That first, July 23rd entry at Three Mile Island took place on day 263 of the seizing of the American hostages in Iran. See Note 1 for Session 919, in Chapter 7 of Dreams, wherein I reviewed not only Iran’s concern over the Russian invasion of its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, in late December 1979, but also Iran’s border clashes with its western neighbor, Iraq, during the past year. Finally, on September 23 [day 325 of the hostage situation], the inevitable happened in the very unstable Middle East: Amid that explosive mixture of secular and religious national consciousnesses “at work” there, Iraq launched an outright invasion of Iran. [...]

And yet the embattled consciousness of Iran persists, and will, I think, survive for a long while. [...]

Six weeks ago in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, over 150 officials of the ruling Islamic Republican Party were killed by bomb explosions which destroyed their headquarters building. [...] They also accused Iraq, with whom Iran is at war, but it’s almost certain that one of the dozen or more Iranian underground revolutionary groups is responsible. [The most powerful one, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, for example, is a Marxist-based guerrilla organization of “People’s Crusaders” that espouses its own brand of radical Islamic republicanism.] The mass killing resulted in an immediate increase in the government’s campaign to eliminate opponents of clerical [Shiite] rule in Iran. [...]

Then yesterday I read a long newspaper account of how the members of the Bahai faith in Iran are being severely persecuted by the government and the Shiite clergy. [...]

[...] She’s on a “creative high” with the latter.¹ The complicated events surrounding Iran and Three Mile Island continue to develop, as consciousness explores itself in those areas.²

[...] Iran is an example for the world, in explosive capsule form, complete with historical background and a modern political one. [...]

[...] Iran is at war with Iraq. [...]

(Actually, I took a moment or two to toy with the idea of asking Seth to comment upon the affair in Iran with the 49 American hostages being held at the American embassy. [...]

Like the entire American hostage affair (in Iran), any physical event serves as a focus that attracts all of its probable versions and outcomes. [...]

[...] For the purposes of this discussion, we must simplify, so we will say that generally speaking your own country aligns itself with the world of reason, while in the same fashion Iran allies itself with the world of emotion. [...]

[...] Currently these include topics like Jonestown, Iran, Frameworks 1 and 2—and one I initiated earlier this year about human reproduction, called “the community of sperm.” [...]

The upsurge of fundamental religion in the Arab world (meaning Iran) has a certain correlation with the upsurges of fundamental Christianity in your country, and will indeed serve as a needed reminder around the world of the exaggerated nature that religion can take when it is allied with government. [...]

[...] When you look at world events, however, the present world situation for example (the war between Iraq and Iran, which began a few days ago), try to enlarge the scope of your intellectual reach, so that you consider world events as living multidimensional “novels” being formed in the present in response to both future and past triggers. [...]

[...] The hostage crisis in Iran is a case in point. [...]