“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane was quite upset before the session this evening, and I’m the one who was responsible for her state. Somehow, after supper, we got on the subject of Seth doing a “quick book” about Jonestown and Three Mile Island, something that could be offered to the public very soon, instead of material that would show up in a regular Seth book a couple of years from now. We already had the perfect title for the book, one we’d jokingly originated following last Monday night’s session: Seth on Jonestown and Three Mile Island: Religious and Scientific Cults.

In scientific terms there was no fallout involved in the disaster at Jonestown. Yet there was of course a psychological fallout, and effects that will be felt throughout the land by people in all walks of life. The Jonestown situation definitely involved all of the characteristics that I have ascribed as belonging to a cult. There was fanaticism, a closed mental environment, the rousing of hopes toward an ideal that seemed unachievable because of the concentration upon all of the barriers that seemed to stand in its way.

Most cults have their own specialized language of one kind of another — particular phrases used repetitiously — and this special language further serves to divorce the devotees from the rest of the world. This practice was also followed by those at Jonestown. Loyalty to friends and family was discouraged, and so those in Jonestown had left strong bonds of intimacy behind. They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. (Pause.) All of this should be fairly well recognized by now. The situation led to the deaths of hundreds.

(“Nothing,” I said. “It would just wait until the Jonestown–Three Mile Island thing was done. Maybe we’d have sessions almost every night for a few weeks, or whatever it took. Anyhow, we’d have to check to see whether our publisher is set up to market a book that quickly, or would even want to.”

[...]

[...] Jonestown, Harrisburg, and When Is an Idealist a Fanatic?”

[...] Jonestown was far away, remote in another land, I said to Jane, but the potential mass tragedy of Three Mile Island hovers at the edges of our personal worlds. [...] It would hardly be a coincidence, I added, that the mass events at Jonestown and Three Mile Island took place within less than six months of each other, and that they represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present main belief systems: religion and science.

[...] Seth will comment extensively on Three Mile Island, just as he’s in the process of doing about Jonestown. [...]

(We also speculated that Seth might refer to what may be called the “Jonestown Affair,” or something like it. This had erupted in a mass suicide, involving over 400 Americans, in the community of Jonestown in what was formerly British Guyana, in South America. [...]

(I might add here that the Jonestown affair reminded me at once of the mass suicide of the defenders of the Jewish stronghold of Masada, in the First Century AD, in Israel. [...] But wait—it gets tricky; The Jonestown people didn’t? [...]

[...] 2. We want to offer his comments on Jonestown and Three Mile Island in the order received, even if they don’t always come through within the context of “official” book sessions. [...]

(“I haven’t had too much time to think of questions, but today we were talking about the relationships between Jonestown and Three Mile Island — how those two events stand for the extremes of religion and science.” [...]

The Jonestown people thought that the world was against them, particularly the establishment, and the government of the country. [...]

To coin a phrase, then, we see “fantastically great” lessons in the examples given us by Jonestown and Three Mile Island. [...]

Jane laughed when I asked her why she hadn’t told me of her feelings about Jonestown before: “You never asked me.” [...] The mass deaths at Jonestown (in November 1978) took place during our long layoff from book dictation, but Seth began discussing the affair almost at once in our private material, as Jane described in her own portion of the opening notes for Session 831. [...]

Many people lost their lives recently in the tragedy of [Jonestown] Guyana. [...]

3. After this session, I was rather surprised when Jane told me that the Jonestown tragedy was an emotionally charged subject for her, and that Seth knew it. [...]

Now: I said, in book dictation, I believe (in the 835th session), that the people of Jonestown died of an epidemic of beliefs — or words to that effect. [...]

The people who died at Jonestown believed that they must die. [...]

[...] Anyhow, got the idea when I put the book away that Seth would speak about things like the Moonies without mentioning them, idea being that the self as it is isn’t trusted; as in the Jonestown thing. [...]

[...] Jonestown was far away, remote in another land, I said to Jane, but the potential mass tragedy at Three Mile Island hovers at the edges of our personal worlds. [...] It would be hardly a coincidence, I added, that the mass events at Jonestown and Three Mile Island took place within less than six months of each other, and that they represented the two poles, or extremes, of mankind’s present main belief systems: religion and science.

(Certainly we hope that as he continues with Mass Events Seth will comment extensively on Three Mile Island, just as he’s in the process of doing about Jonestown. [...]

In Mass Events, along with TMI Seth had discussed the tragedy of Jonestown—where in November 1978 over 900 Americans had died [by murder or suicide] for a religious cause in faraway Guyana, South America. Last night I realized that in these notes for Dreams I also wanted to refer to the religious revolution in Iran while reminding the reader of the events in Jonestown. For to me, and to Jane also, I’m sure, Three Mile Island and Jonestown-Iran represent powerful extremes or directions in large-scale human behavior: certain aspects of religion and science seemingly at opposite poles of the human psyche, as it were.

[...] 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. [...] 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. [...]

[...] In the same way, the Jonestown suicides lead the society to face its inner problems.

[...] We agreed — and hoped — that Seth did seem to be preparing to discuss the Jonestown tragedy for Mass Events.)

[...] Four days after they took place, he began discussing the disastrous events at Jonestown, Guyana, involving the murder or suicide of more than 900 Americans in that South American settlement last November 18, 1978. Since then, we’ve voiced our hopes often that Seth will go into the entire Jonestown affair in Mass Events; he can’t but help be aware of our wishes! [...]

[...] 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.” [...]

Those for example at Jonestown become symbols of social, religious, and political unrest. [...]

[...] In the case of the Jonestown tragedy, for example, all doors toward probable effective action seemed closed. [...]

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. [...]

The leader of Jonestown was at heart an idealist. [...]

Beneath all of the frustrations and upsets we may feel at their surface manifestations, Jane and I are caught up in the deeper meanings of events like those at Jonestown and TMI, for they represent great challenges that our species has set for itself, through this century and beyond. [...]

(I might as well use this opportunity to point up what I think is an obvious connection between the nuclear mishaps at Three Mile Island, and the mass suicide at Guyana [Jonestown] earlier this year. [...]