“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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. At first revolutionary zealots blamed the “Great Satan”—America—for the crime. 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. Over 70 dissidents had already been executed by the time of the blasts; many others have been arrested since.

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. 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? The hatred the Shiites hold for the Bahais is based upon a century-old, primitive religious zealotry. Even though they too worship but a single God and the Koran, the Bahais are too liberal, too heretical in their peaceful and progressive ways; they are called unpatriotic and secular; some Bahais are attacked, dispossessed, lynched or executed, it seems, every day.

(Pause at 8:43.) Their dreams would then be shared by the tribe in the morning, or at special meetings, when each dreamer would give a rendition of the dream or dreams that seemed to be involved. In the same way, other dreamers would simply check with the dreamers of other villages or tribes—perhaps a hundred or even more miles distant. Some such dreams were extremely direct, others were clothed in symbolism according to the style of the dreamer, but in any case the dream was understood to have a public significance as well as a private one.

Psychologists often speak of the needs of man. Here I would like to speak instead of the pleasures of man, for one of the distinguishing characteristics of value fulfillment is its pleasurable effect. It is not so much that man or nature seeks to satisfy needs, but to exuberantly, rambunctiously seek pleasure—and through following its pleasure each organism finds and satisfies its needs as well. Far more is involved in the experience of life, however, than the satisfaction of bare needs, for life is everywhere possessed with a desire toward quality—a quality that acknowledges the affirming characteristics of pleasure itself.

“Violence will always be used creatively. You cannot be destructive even when you try. Beyond that, however, in the meantime the violence that you do, you do to yourself. You are a part of All That Is—of all the nature that you know and experience, of the world that you know, and even a part of the world that you know that you do not like. If you rip off the wing of a fly, you are yourself less. If you purposefully, now, or with malice, step upon an ant, then to the extent of your malice you step upon yourself all unknowing. Violence will always be used creatively, but if you do not understand this—and at your present rate of development you do not—then any violence is violence against yourself. This applies to each of you, for when you think in terms of violence you think in terms of malice or aggression. Despite all man does, he cannot really work any destruction—but while he believes in destruction, then to that extent he minimizes what he is, and must work harder to use creativity.”

Most of our tapes are dated—but not the one containing the session I’m quoting from below. I estimate that Seth gave this information to a group of visitors who attended a class some time in 1974 (or seven years ago):

End at 9:25 P.M. The “crisis point” Seth referred to revolved around the continuous efforts Jane and I had been making to help her; see the opening notes for the session. I hadn’t realized she was concerned that I thought she should let her work go on Dreams and concentrate instead upon our private material, but I was quickly able to convince her that I didn’t feel that way.)