“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One side will be unable to see or understand the behavior of the other side. Each will seem foreign to the other. The American response—generally, now, speaking—to Iranian emotionalism is to become still more self-righteously reasonable, cooler, more superior. The Iranian’s response to the Americans’ reason involves new outbursts of emotionalism and behavior that appear utterly irrational to the American view. So we are often indeed faced with a lack of communication between various portions of the self, or between various portions of the world.

(At 8 PM tonight ABC TV News had begun a three-hour dissertation on the whole American-Iranian-hostage situation, narrated by Pierre Salinger. The program was fascinating, and was actually a sequel to a previous program of equal length that ABC had broadcast a few days ago; we’d seen much of that one, too. I heard Jane listening to this evening’s segment while I was working in the writing room. What a tale of intrigue, personalities, and beliefs it was. And as soon as Seth opened the session, I understood at once how he was going to link that tale with Jane’s own hassles.

(Pause at 9:20.) In either case, however, portions of the self are hampered, restrained, and their expression drastically reduced, and there are bound to be repercussions. Ruburt’s body suffered whether or not he intended it to, because value fulfillment was being further denied. In the case of hostages and those in protective custody, a certain kind of enforced isolation is also bound to happen —and to some degree or another, the individual involved will display in certain areas the same kind of exaggerated postures between various portions of the self, as the Americans and the Iranians display in their behavior together.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] We mourn the dead servicemen and wonder how many more Americans—military people and hostages—would have been killed had our commandos penetrated to the American Embassy compound, and the Iranian Foreign Ministry, in the heart of Tehran.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

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. [...] There’s plenty of oil available from around the world; were the West to stop buying Iranian oil, the regime would quickly collapse. [...] 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. The Iranian-Iraqi war promises to be the bloodiest one in centuries between the two countries; the West is working for a stalemate that over the years will degenerate into “harmless” border clashes. [...]

Just as the native mujahedin—resistance fighters—of Afghanistan consider it their religious duty to battle the Russian invaders (even while thousands of their countrymen take refuge in Pakistan to the east and in Iran to the west), so do the Iranian fundamentalists think it their religious duty to export their revolution until an Islamic empire extends from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

[...] I wrote in Note 3 for Session 936, in Chapter 11, that despite their egoistic orientations, ultimately Iranians bow to the ancient power of their religion, including the demands of martyrdom. [...]

[...] Why, I wondered as I began to read, are Iranians harassing a whole group of other Iranians in such unpleasant ways—really seeking to exterminate them? [...]

[...] 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. [...]

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. [...]

At least partially because of their brutal history, Iranians—Persians—are strongly self-centered; preservation of the self is given an overriding impetus. [...] Causality, the interrelation of cause and effect, is often ignored or misunderstood in the Iranian quest for immediate advantage. [...] Yet, such egocentric characteristics often are sublimated into the seemingly contradictory practice of martyrdom—the two are united within the Iranian interpretation of Moslem theology. [...]

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. [...]

[...] Iranian leaders emphasize the religious aspects of the war, Iraq the ethnic. [...]

[...] I told Jane I’d just written a note for Dreams last week, about the general Iranian situation. [...]

[...] 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. The captives were quickly freed by secular negotiators loyal to the Iranian clergy, but certainly that kind of virulent anti-Americanism can happen again. [...] The official and unofficial call has gone out from millions of Iranian throats to purge the country of all Western thought….

[...] [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.

[...] “The Iranians must be jumping for joy,” I said to Jane when I first saw the headlines in the newspaper. [...]

[...] Obviously, on an even larger scale of activity, the consciousnesses of all the nations of our world contribute to the challenges and dilemmas swirling around the Iranian situation.

[...] For a number of complicated reasons, our State Department refused to give the Iranians a speedy answer. [...]

[...] Quickly Iraq began to gobble up large portions of Iranian territory. [...]

[...] Perhaps the Iraqi-Iranian war will subside because of the exhaustion of those countries. [...]