“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In various ways your religions have always implied your relationship with nature’s source, even though they often divorced nature herself from any place of prime importance. For religions have often hinged themselves upon one or another quite valid perception, but then distorted it, excluding anything else that did not seem to fit. “You are children of the universe.” This is an often-heard sentence — and yet the main point of the Christ story² was not Christ’s death but his birth, and the often-stated proposition that each person was indeed “a child of the father.”

(Long pause.) Those who “lose” their lives in natural disasters become victims of nature. You see in such stories examples of meaningless deaths, and further proof of nature’s indifference to man. You may, on the other hand, see the vengeful hand of an angry God in such instances, where the deity once again uses nature to bring man to his knees. Man’s nature is to live and to die. Death is not an affront to life, but means its continuation — not only inside the framework of nature as you understand it, but in terms of nature’s source. It is, of course, natural then to die.

The natural contours of your psyche are quite aware of the inner sweep and flow of your life, and its relationship with every other creature alive. Intuitively, each person is born with the knowledge that he or she is not only worthwhile, but fits into the context of the universe in the most precise and beautiful of fashions. The most elegant timing is involved in each individual’s birth and death. The exquisite play of your own inner nature in general — and that identification leads you into the deeper knowledge of your own part in nature’s source.

Some people believe that they must be punished, and so they seek [out] unfortunate circumstances. They [go] to one event after another in which they meet retribution. They may seek out areas of the country in which natural disasters are frequent, or their behavior may be such that they attract from other people reactions of an explosive kind. Often, however, individuals use disasters quite for their own purposes, as an exteriorized force that brings their lives into clear focus. Some may be flirting with the idea of death, and choose a dramatic encounter with nature in the final act. Others change their minds at the last moment.