“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We had a hard time believing him when Seth told us the very next evening, on April 23, that Jane’s sinful self thinks her physical symptoms are necessary “for the personality’s own good”; that that self has no conception that its policies have become self-defeating; that, following Catholic and non-Catholic Christianity, it believes that suffering is good for the soul; that the idea of the flesh itself being graced is, to it, blasphemous.

That June 15th session was Seth’s 20th on Jane’s sinful self, and the concept in general. Yet, as if they weren’t enough, on the 17th that trigger was released: Jane suddenly began writing down material directly from her own sinful self. It seemed that that self had been at last goaded into rising to its own defense; for five days she wrote in periods of excited strain as it gave forth its contentions and defenses through 36 handwritten pages. Jane also began work on several poems to accompany her prose, and had several relevant dreams.

Just before the session Jane reminded me that she was most interested in Seth commenting upon the reincarnation-type dream experience she’d had early this morning. This is the second time in four months that she’s had such an experience—most unusual for her—and this one even caused her to reflect upon her sinful self in a new way. After breakfast she wrote a very rough account of what she can remember.¹⁹ She thinks the experience was triggered by a television movie she watched last night. I saw only the end of the program, but it involved, Jane told me, a persons traveling from a present life into a past life. She finds some of the story’s concepts to be quite intriguing.

“I do not want to go into a history of culture here, but your organizations historically have largely been built upon your religious concepts, which have indeed been extremely rigid. The repressive nature of Christian thought in the Middle Ages, for example, is well known. Artistic expression itself was considered highly suspect if it traveled outside of the accepted precepts, and particularly of course if it led others to take action against those precepts. To some extent the same type of policy is still reflected in your current societies, though science or the state itself may serve instead of the church as the voice of authority.

“When Ruburt left the church, the concept of the sinful self was still there, but the methods that earlier served to relieve its pressures were no longer effectively present. The concept was shifted over to the flawed self of scientific vintage. Science has no sacraments. Its only methods of dealing with such guilt involve standard psychoanalytic counseling—which itself deepens the dilemma, for counseling itself is based upon the idea that the inner self is a reservoir of savage impulses. Period.

“In that regard, Ruburt’s creativity kept struggling for its own growth and value fulfillment. His psychic recognition or initiation represented a remarkable breakthrough, meant to give him that additional psychic room that would insure the continued expansion of the abilities of the natural self. The sinful-self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward into the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted.

“It is no coincidence that you have been relatively free of that concept in its traditional religious connotation—you worked that out in your Nebene existence to a large extent, and because of your own preparations for a life in which you are now involved.”

“The main issues with which the sinful self was concerned were focused most clearly in Mass Events and God of Jane,” Seth told us, “since more than the other books they represent a direct confrontation, ‘attacking’ the very legitimacy of the entire concept of sin and evil, insisting more dramatically on the good intent of man’s basic impulses…. [Ruburt’s] sinful-self explanation represents a fascinating psychological document in that regard, and also shows the self’s mobility and willingness to learn and change—once the intent is made to take a stand.

“It might be of value to have Ruburt mentally ask the sinful self for a few comments on how its beliefs about the female sex were connected with its concepts of sin, and if those attitudes are changing.”