“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment… Before we discuss man’s and woman’s private roles in the nature of mass events — no matter what they are — we must first look into the medium in which events appear concrete and real. The great sweep of the events of nature can be understood only by looking into a portion of their reality that is not apparent to you. We want to examine, therefore, the inner power of natural occurrences.

A scientist examining nature studies its exterior, observing the outsideness of nature. Even investigative work involving atoms and molecules, or [theoretical²] faster-than-light particles, concerns the particle nature of reality. The scientist does not usually look for nature’s heart. He certainly does not pursue the study of its soul.

All being is manifestation of energy — an emotional manifestation of energy. Man can interpret the weather in terms of air pressure and wind currents. He can look to fault lines in an effort to understand earthquakes. All of this works at a certain level, to a certain degree. Man’s psyche, however, is emotionally not only a part of his physical environment, but intimately connected with all of nature’s manifestations. Using the terms begun in the last chapter, I will say then that man’s emotional identification with nature is a strongly-felt reality in Framework 2. And there we must look for the answers regarding man’s relationship with nature. There in Framework 2 the nature of the psyche appears quite clearly, so that its sweeps and rhythms can be understood. The manifestations of physical energy follow emotional rhythms that cannot be ascertained with gadgets or instruments, however fine.

Why is one man killed and not another? Why does an earthquake disrupt an entire area? What is the relationship between the individual and such mass events of nature?

Before we can begin to consider such questions, we must take another look at your own world, and ascertain its source, for surely its source and nature’s are the same. We will also along this line, and throughout this book, have to make some distinctions between events and your interpretations of them.

Myth is not a distortion of fact, but the womb through which fact must come. Myth involves an intrinsic understanding of the nature of reality, couched in imaginative terms, carrying a power as strong as nature itself. Myth-making is a natural psychic characteristic, a psychic element that combines with other such elements to form a mythical representation of inner reality. That representation is then used as a model upon which your civilizations are organized, and also as a perceptual tool through whose lens you interpret the private events of your life in their historical context.

(10:06.) When you accept myths you call them facts, of course, for they become so a part of your lives, of societies and your professions, that their basis seems self-apparent. Myths are vast psychic dramas, more truthful than facts. They provide an ever-enduring theater of reality. It must be clearly understood, then, that when I speak of myths I mean to imply the nature of psychic events whose enduring reality exists in Framework 2, and forms the patterns that are then interpreted in your world.

If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following questions might be asked: “Am I being punished by God, and for what reason? Is the disaster the result of God’s vengeance?” A scientist might ask instead: “With better technology and information, could we somehow have predicted the disaster, and saved many lives?” He might try to dissociate himself from emotion, and to see the disaster simply as the result of a nonpersonal nature that did not know or care what lay in its path.

Now: Myths are natural phenomena, rising from the psyche of man as surely as giant mountain ranges emerge from the physical planet. Their deeper reality exists, however, in Framework 2 as source material for the world that you know.

In those terms, then, Christianity and your other religions are myths, rising in response to an inner knowledge that is too vast to be clothed by facts alone. In those terms also, your science is also quite mythical in nature. This may be more difficult for some of you to perceive, since it appears to work so well. Others will be willing enough to see science in its mythical characteristics, but will be most reluctant to see religion as you know it in the same light. To some extent or another, however, all of these ideas program your interpretation of events.

In this part (2) of the book, we are more or less dealing with the events of nature as you understand it. It will seem obvious to some, again, that a natural disaster is caused by God’s vengeance, or is at least a divine reminder to repent, while others will take it for granted that such a catastrophe is completely neutral in character, impersonal and [quite] divorced from man’s own emotional reality. The Christian scientist is caught in between. Because you divorce yourselves from nature, you are not able to understand its manifestations. Often your myths get in the way. When myths become standardized, and too literal, when you begin to tie them too tightly to the world of facts, then you misread them entirely. When myths become most factual they are already becoming less real. Their power becomes constrained.

They cast their light over historical events because they are responsible for those events. They mix and merge the inner, unseen but felt, eternal psychic experience of man with the temporal events of his physical days, and form a combination that structures thoughts and beliefs from civilization to civilization. In Framework 2 the interior power of nature is ever-changing. The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of your world. That interaction includes not only man, of course, but the emotional reality of all earthly consciousnesses as well, from a microbe to a scholar, from a frog to a star. You interpret the phenomena of your world according to the mythic characteristics that you have accepted. You organize physical reality, then, through ideas. You use only those perceptions that serve to give those ideas validity. The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to you.

You divorce yourselves from nature and nature’s intents far more than the animals do. Nature in its stormy manifestations seems like an adversary. You must either look for reasons outside of yourselves to explain what seems to be nature’s ill intent at such times, or its utter lack of concern.

Science often says that nature cares little for the individual, only for the species, so then you must often see yourselves as victims in a larger struggle for survival, in which your own intents do not carry even the puniest sway.