“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

3. Jane’s mention of possession came about because today I’d read her an article in a scholarly journal we subscribe to. The piece contained public information with which we were already familiar. Briefly, most authorities in the Roman Catholic Church realize that almost all of those who are supposed to be “possessed” by malevolent forces are in actuality mentally ill people who need treatment. Yet the church must admit the separate reality of the devil and numerous demons, because their existences are given in the Gospels. This contradiction was reinforced in 1972, when Pope Paul VI declared before several thousand people that the devil is a distinct, actual being.)

The Christ image is often used because it so perfectly represents the combination of the grandiose self, as per the all-knowing son of God, and the martyred victim who is crucified precisely because of his lofty position.

In your terms of time, man has always projected unassimilated psychological elements of his own personality outward, but in much earlier times he did this using a multitudinous variety of images, personifications, gods, goddesses, demons and devils, good spirits and bad. Before the Roman gods were fully formalized, there was a spectacular range of good and bad deities, with all gradations [among them], that more or less “democratically” represented the unknown but sensed, splendid and tumultuous characteristics of the human soul, and have stood for those sensed but unknown glimpses of his own reality that man was in one way or another determined to explore.

It was understood that all of these “forces” had their parts to play in human events. Some stood for forces of nature that could very well be at times advantageous, and at times disadvantageous—as, for example, the god of storms might be very welcome at one time, in periods of drought, while his powers might be quite dreaded if he overly satisfied his people. There was no chasm of polarity between the “good gods and the bad ones.”

Jehovah and the Christian version of God brought about a direct conflict between the so-called forces of good and the so-called forces of evil by largely cutting out all of the intermediary gods, and therefore destroying the subtle psychological give-and-take that occurred between them—among them—and polarizing man’s own view of his inner psychological reality.

The next natural step would be to reassimilate those portions of the self, to acknowledge their ancient origins and abilities, to return them so that they form a new coating, as it were, or a new version of selfhood. It is as if (pause) man could not understand his own potentials unless he projected them outward into a godhead, where he could see them in a kind of isolated pure form, recognize them for what they are, and then accept them—the potentials—as a part of his own psychological reality (all very intently). As a species, however, you have not taken the last step. Your idea of the devil represents the same kind of process, except that it stands for your idea of evil or darkness, or abilities that you are afraid of. They also stand for elements of your own potential. I am not speaking of evil possibilities, but that man must realize that he is responsible for his acts, whether they are called good or evil.

Tell Ruburt to relax, and to encourage and trust his body when it is undergoing so many changes, for the changes are all for the better. (Pause, as Seth stared at me with some amusement.) A fond good evening.