“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now I want you all to know, and it will please you no end, that you have an authority present, for I was a pope in 300 AD. I was not a very good pope.

However, there is something that you should know. Because you are physically oriented, you early got it into your heads that goodness must have a place in the physical universe and evil must have a place within it. And so you set up for yourselves the division of Heaven and Hell. In one story or another, it has existed far back into the annals of your time. Now give us a moment.

As I have tried to explain to you, the rigorous concepts of good and evil are themselves highly distorted, and when you find such a dilemma where goodness is one thing and evil another, and both contrary and separate, then you automatically separate them in your minds and in your feelings and in your fantasies. You do not seem at this point able to realize that what you call evil works for what you call good, or that both are a part of energy, and that you are using energy to form your reality, both now and after this life. This is because you deal with effects physically, as you see them. And until you divest yourself of such psychological behavior, it will always seem to you that good and evil are opposites, and you will treat them as such in your feelings and in your concepts and in your myths.

Only in the terms in which you ask the question. In larger terms, there is no such thing as destruction; and your second question does not follow logically from the first one. Now if you will look at the script when you receive it, you will see what I mean. You ask questions without considering the answers that have been given. Think of the answers before you form your next question.

I do not need you to agree with my logic. I need you to understand the faulty quality in your own logic, and that must come from yourself and not from me. Now, wait. Part of this is due to the fact that you form questions before you comprehend the nature of the answers that you have received. Read the script. Find out the answers I have given you, and then form your questions.

([Ron:] “Well then I have to disagree with you. I think that even in the way we look at it now that there is destruction, which is evil...”)

(To Brady.) Now. Here we have creative love and intelligence operating this evening spontaneously and creatively in making contact with another. This is what you should learn to achieve.

([Ron:] “I don’t necessarily deal with physical entities the same way I’m dealing with you right now.”)

You should learn to. Now. We will take a break.

(To Ron) I egg—listen to me—I egg you on. It is good for you and good for the class and very good for this one over here (Florence), because you ask questions that she is already thinking of, and for some reason she has suddenly grown timid about her questions. Now, continue.

Not. (Pause) I do not like your term. Now. Any such intervention would only occur on the part of a personality who was, for the present time, physical. As indeed mentioned last week, the villain in a religious drama would be a creative figure. But he would exist historically in your time and not, for example, be a ghost whispering in the night. There are no creatures whispering evil in your ear.

I had two illegitimate children (laughter), a mistress that sneaked into my private studies, a magician that I kept in case I did not do too well on my own, a housekeeper who was pregnant every year that I had her, and three daughters who joined a nunnery because I would not have them, and I am referred to in barely three paltry lines, for my reign did not last very long. Now, I had a large family, that is, I came from a large family. And I was ambitious, as all intelligent young men of that time were. I did not go for the military, and so there was nothing to do but go to the Church.

Now. For a while I was not in Rome, but held my religious call elsewhere. I wrote two Church laws. It should all go to show you that some good ends up from everything. I died of trouble with my stomach because I was such a glutton. My name was not Clement (to Theodore), though Clement is a lovely name. I was originally called Protonius. Now give me a moment. The last name is not nearly so clear, and this is not my papal name, but my, if you will forgive the term, common name. Meglemanius. The third. From a small village. Unless I summon the self that I was at that time, the memories for details are not that clear. But as I now recall them, without directly checking on our friend the pope, who has, you must understand, gone his own way, I am coming as close as I can. We did not have as many guards at that time, but we had many stolen paintings and jewels of great merit. Now some of these jewels, as well as the money, went for expeditions that you do not realize were adopted at that time, having to do with commerce and ships sent through Africa, and this interest had to do with my later life when I was involved with the oregano. My sniffing goes back for centuries.

I was very fond of my first mistress, whose name was Maria. And there were no such sane rules as those in which you now sit. And there were no governments as secure in which you could reside as those you now enjoy. I did believe implicitly in the God in which I was brought up, and in that belief. It was only later that I wondered how such a God would choose me for such a position and then I began to wonder. I had four lives following that of the most adverse circumstances to make sure that I understood the difference between luxury and poverty, pride and compassion. And there were days that I walked in other centuries the same streets that I had walked as a pope, but then only put my fancy toes abruptly upon and lifted them up again. But as a peasant I walked with a heavy foot and great weight until I learned the lessons that I had to learn, as all of you will learn your own lessons.

(To Natalie.) Now, I will help you send energy to your tree. If we can fix one tree, surely we can do something with the universe.

(To Ron) Now, if you would pay attention, you could wake up in a dream and understand me more clearly.