“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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 when I talk to him I am always drawn back to the lilies of the field. Your poor little innocent flower, when it rains and thunders and storms come, does our little flower look up and say, “Here comes that evil lightening and thunder?” It does not think that the thunder and the lightening and the wind and the rain are out to get it. It realizes that the strength and vitality of life is as much in lightening and thunder and the storm as in the sunshine. And it has the sense to realize that it needs the rain, even though the rain that comes down may rip off a couple of its leaves. You have much more protection than you realize.

Now (to Ned) I will let you take your break and one word to our friend here. I am not frail. I may have to put up with Ruburt’s long hair nowadays, and flouncy skirts, but we all have our troubles.

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.

The cannibals, in one way, were far more discerning, far more religious, and far more sacred in their attitude than many of you here in this room. They ate, for example, both human beings and animals, but they did not eat indiscriminately, nor did they eat without a knowledge of what they did. They realized that their life was a portion of all this life. They were at one level, and you are at another level. But at their level, and in their level of experience, they partook of the sacrament of life as they ate those things that they slayed. They gave thanks to the body that they consumed. They hastened the spirit that had been in the body on its way with thanks. They prayed that their hearts would be as strong and brave as the hearts that they devoured. Many of them, in their own environment, knew that those who were not eaten by them, for example other warriors, would die of hunger in any case. They ate them, therefore, also with thanksgiving and joy.

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.

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.