“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In that case it would have, indeed. You must remember that in this case we were not thinking of a hypothetical question but of one individual and one individual incident, and there lies the difference for we cannot really generalize in that area. Do you follow me?

Now, the point that our friend over here (Sue) was trying to make earlier is related, to some extent, along these lines in that you can become so afraid of violence that you overemphasize its effect. And if you will excuse me, in so doing you are taking on the guise of the devil. It is the same thing you see, as projecting upon a hypothetical devil all kinds of powers of destruction. You can do the same thing without realizing it by projecting into the idea of violence, all powers, and then it seems to you that life itself has no ability to protect itself and that any stray thought of violence or disaster will immediately zoom home and that the recipient has no way to protect himself. If this were the case your race would not have lasted out one day.

Now, in the first place, there are several things you must understand. Some of these things you can misinterpret, and so I go lightly in class with them because some of you are not ready to understand them as yet. You hear the words and yet you do not understand what they really mean, but basically, you do violence to no one. Basically, you cannot hurt anything, but as long as you think that you can, then you must dwell within that reality. Now, in that reality, as you understand it now, there are reasons that you do not as yet perceive. I am not saying that you cannot perceive them, I am saying that you do not perceive them. No one, therefore, could hurt our friend’s fish, even if it were a live one, in your terms. And there are interconnections between you that you do not understand and that can be misinterpreted and these, also, I go lightly with in class and for the same reasons.

([Arnold:] “We don’t really do violence against an identity or whole self, but only against a self-created camouflage system.”)

Violence, in your level, is the other face of creativity, but you do not realize it and it is you who have set up the separation. All life, in certain respects, involves what you call violence. Breath is a violence, it is simply where you draw the line. All living is a thrusting out toward, and joyful thrusting out toward, the energy that you have not learned, as yet, to use creatively, you call violence. It has great potentials for creativity, and it is up to you now to learn how to use it creatively for it is another face of creativity.

They were so on the outlook for violence that their entire system of communication was built upon fear, for they could not protect themselves, they could only run. They did not face the issue of creative energy and how to use it. They blocked the energy off at the source. To put a hole into the earth is violent. To pluck up a flower from the earth is violent. To yell out into the air, as I am doing, does a violence to the atoms and molecules. Your blood rushing through your body does violence to it then. Learn what energy and life is, and then you will use it creatively and you will not fear it.

This does not mean I am saying kill, kill, kill. You do not understand the holy and sacred nature of life or energy and that you cannot misuse it. You may think you misuse it, but you are not allowed to misuse it. You are not allowed to destroy. While you live with these things you must deal with them and bear their consequences. If you kill, and believe that you kill, you will bear those consequences at this level of your development, but to think that you can destroy a consciousness would make the gods laugh. You cannot destroy one flower seed, much less a man.

([Arnold]“Do the animals that we know have a creativity in their actions as we do?”)

They do, indeed. All consciousness does or it would not be consciousness.

([Arnold:) “The thought of not being able to do anything violent, as these people were, lead me to think of the opossum, that play opossum when violence appears.” )

They do and they are different, for example, than they were here for they have continued their own line of development. Nothing is erased. In those terms, there is no nonexistence. That which is cannot not be.

There is a sacrament here that you do not understand, and when you gobble down food indiscriminately, and when you do not give silent recognition to the fact that what you eat once lived, then you lose contact with a certain sacred heritage and deny yourself a certain part of a cycle in which you rightly, as physical creatures and as spiritual creatures, have a part.

([Garrett:] “Should people get a pleasure out of killing, like people do for a sport, instead of killing for food?”)

([Garrett:] “In what way do they have to deal with it?”)

I told him to give up cigarettes a long time ago, but it is his mark of independence that he is not letting any spirit tell him what to do.

Now you are getting a lot of goodies out of me tonight. Now I am going to end our session and go home, you are all too spooky for me. I do not need any reason. I will have more to say on the nature of violence and the different civilizations and how they have handled it in later class sessions.

I also have some of your dreams which we will interpret, but beside this, you have class experiments that you should do here and at home. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of determination, and the desire to let go and let yourself have some fun, in order to find out who you are and why you are here, and I expect you to put forth the effort.