“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I will come through and say hello and to wish you a Merry Christmas. Now, I would play a Santa Claus for you when I am not playing a Scrooge because I want you to work harder.

Now, in your experiences this evening you have been dealing with symbols and you bring them to life. This is exactly what you are doing every day of your life in your normal hours of activity but you do not recognize the symbols. You simply perceive the objects that come from the symbols. When you are working with your consciousness, as you did this evening, you become aware of the inner symbols in your own mind. Now, there are symbols that are personal but there are also symbols that are, in your terms, universal and you build with these.

Now, (to Natalie) someone was trying to speak to you this evening and you have been doing very well.

It was not Cato but the information, portions of the information, were once given by Cato and the man is a follower of some, though not all, of Cato’s works. Now the works will make you think, so read them.

I want all of you to become aware of this inner mobility of consciousness. Use it. Now, none of you clearly left your bodies, with one exception; but mentally you detached yourselves to various degrees. You are taking first steps well, but the subjective knowledge must come from within each of you. I cannot give it to you.

Now, so-called occult knowledge dealt with secret knowledge, and it is secret to the extent that every man must discover it for himself and that is the end of the secrecy. But, in one manner of speaking, it cannot be told for you must have your own experience and recognize it. Very briefly this evening some of you dealt with the reality of symbols, and this is extremely important for the physical body that you know is a materialization of symbols that you have created. You do not know the symbols for yourselves but you can discover what they are, and I will expect you all to do so.

Now, what do you suppose Christmas means? The birth of the inner self. Each of you must be reborn, not once, but endless times even in this existence, in this existence as you know it. You break out of yourselves. When you are joyful you break out of yourselves.

Now, I suggest that you all take your break. I wanted you to know that I was here, but I also wanted you to know that I am keeping an eye out for your experiments in class and when you are not in class sometimes.

It is too late this evening to go into the allegory of the Bible. I have, to some extent, done some work on this in my own book, thus far. People in the Bible often were the personification of certain human characteristics. If, for example, a point were to be made along these lines, the following could happen— Say that you wanted to express the human characteristics that can lead to disaster, that can lead a man to betray another. Now, you are familiar with morality plays so in our story we take the term deceit and we give it a name and we make a person out of deceit and we call it, for example, Judas.

And so, if you are very innocent and a child, and you read our story, you have a pageant of characters. But if you look beneath you see that there is much more and that the story is merely the coating. It gives you suspense and Ruburt would say it gives you a great story line and while you are reading the story, however, you are automatically taking in the inner truths that are within it whether or not you are consciously aware of what you are doing. Now, this is only a partial, very partial, explanation for something that you are.

In certain portions of your world there were memories from other peoples and other layers of existence, and these memories for some time remained. They were part of your racial unconscious as it developed. You knew for example, some of you, that in other existences you had other abilities and used them well. Some of you, in previous existences, before this planet was as you know it, were a part of highly technical civilizations which you ruined out of avarice and greed and ignorance; spiritual ignorance. And so you began once again as savages. And yet no knowledge can be removed from you and no sense of your identity, past, present or future, can be divided from you and as you yourself do the dividing. And so in your dreams you remember the past in which you have been involved and so it seemed to you these had been forced out of a garden. Now this particular situation was reenacted many times and many places and not in one way only.

([Gert:] “Will you tell my why, when I look at you now, I see what I see?”)

You have bird eyes. I will tell you, however, but not now. When you are ready for me to really tell you, I will tell you. I am on to your other question, however, because it is more pertinent.

Now, you also have the memory of your future existences, for time does not exist as it seems to you now, and a portion of you is aware of your future as it is aware of your past. And so also, in your terms of time, as this sifts through to the physical being you had a great dream of grandeurs achieved, and yet you look around and see them unachieved in the morning. When your species squatted in the cliff caves and when they ran in terror across the face of the earth pursued by wolves and imagined that demons lurked in the shadows, when with ghost memories were great contrast to the world that they saw and know, and so they weaved a story from their memories. And so your legends are not only made of your past but they are also weaved from your future, in your terms, and all of these are interwoven even with your flesh. So that if all physical knowledge were taken from you, all the knowledge that you have learned since birth in this life, and that is impossible, but if it were possible still within you would always be the inner knowledge not only of your own private past and future, but of the private past and future of your kind and of your species.

Now (to Rachel) before I forget, Ruburt asked me and, of course, the answer is yes, whether or not you put up your Christmas tree.

([Joel:] “We are continuing to make them now and in the future as well?”)

Now, the church—shall I put it in quotes and capital letters for you?—“the Church” is composed of human beings who are fallible and you remember that. It is not an octopus out to get you. Now, wait, it does not have an evil intent toward you. It does not think, ah, there is a bad (word missing) in Elmira, New York and, by God and Jesus Christ, we are going to save her for her own sake.

([Gert:] “I sometimes feel like I may be out to get it now.”)

Oh, now we want a time element and some (words missing). It will, indeed, disintegrate in the manner in which it is now known by that time. It will be disbanded in large terms, but there will be vital groups throughout the world who will join with other groups.

Now listen. Imagine an onion, and if there is someone here who does not like onions, imagine anything you please. An onion comes up from the earth and the growth principle is within it; and imagine our poor onion in the earth. You see, I am not using a flower, and the onion comes up and it insists that it must know who God is and where He is that makes him grow. And so our onion, with the full vitality within it to grow from the inside out, as all things grow, instead looks at the fine carrot next to him, and such a lovely hue, and examines the carrot in his mind to see if this is God. And then he looks up to the asparagus and to the vines and to the tree. And the tree is much larger so surely, the tree must be God. Aha, but the tree does not look like an onion so, therefore, the tree could not be God. God instead must be a giant onion, a beautiful giant onion, and so our poor and stupid little onion spends all its life waiting for this giant perfection of an onion to come by and save it. He may even hallucinate such a giant onion but all the time the principle of vitality and power and growth is All That Is, and all of it that you can understand at this point, is within the onion. The principle within it that gives it its existence. Now, if ever I find a church of onions, I will let you know.

([Joel:] “As this evolution of the church continues and progresses before the timetable established at 2000 and disintegrates as we know it now, will this be a voluntary disintegration or will it be imposed politically?”)

Well, there is awhile between now and the year 2000.

You are, indeed. You will find your own way. You will know what it is, and you know what it is now. You do not need me to tell you.

When you know what it is, you will be on your own. You will be working with two segments of people though you only think you will be working with one segment. You see yourself with young people, but you will also be working with very old people. And that is all I will say to you about it right now. It will be your own and in your own way.

While you are taking your break there is one remark that I would like to make. Now, I have mentioned this before, but because our Lady of Florence has been so maligned, then I will make this point again. You have our Lady of Florence to thank that there are classes here, for Ruburt would not think of them in the beginning, and it was our friend, who you think is too intellectual and not intuitional, who suggested the classes in the first place to Ruburt and opened his mind so that he would follow my suggestions.

Now, I am going to say good evening because I know that it is close to the Christmas season, and you are all tired and how can you be born again unless you go and get some sleep. So I will give you a merry Ho, Ho, Ho.