“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, one of many, at 9:51.) Give us a moment… To some extent your society’s beliefs allow you enough freedom so that most of you trust your bodies while they are growing toward adulthood. Then, however, many of you no longer rely upon the processes of life within you. Certain scientific treatises often make you believe that the attainment of your adulthood has little purpose, except to insure the further existence of the species through parenthood — when nature is then quite willing to dispense with your services. You are quite simply told that you have no other purpose.³ The species itself must then appear to have no reason except a mindless determination to exist. The religions do insist that man has a purpose, yet in their own confusion they often speak as if that purpose must be achieved by denying the physical body in which man has his life’s existence, or by “rising above” “gross, blunted,” earthly characteristics. Period. In both cases man’s nature, and nature in general, take short shrift.

(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.

This myth finds great value in the larger processes of nature in general, and yet sees man alone as the villain of an otherwise edifying tale. A true identification with nature, however, would show glimpses of man’s place in the context of his physical planet, and would bring to the forefront accomplishments that he has achieved almost without his knowing.

2. I underlined the word story (like this) in Seth’s material just to remind the reader that the Christ figure symbolizes our idea of God and his relationships. According to Seth, the man we call Jesus Christ was actually composed of three individuals who were the physical manifestations of the same nonphysical entity: John the Baptist, St. Paul, and a man historically known as Christ. None of these were crucified. Their roles became blended and distorted in history. Seth discussed the Christ story in various passages in The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, and has at least touched upon it in all of his succeeding books.