“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

It is now nearing Easter (on March 26), and the yearly commemoration of what is considered historic fact: the [resurrection and] ascension of Christ into heaven.¹ Untold millions have in one way or another commemorated that occasion through the centuries. Private lives have merged with public sentiment and religious fervor. There have been numberless village festivals, or intimate family gatherings, and church services performed on Easter Sundays now forgotten. There have been bloody wars fought on the same account, and private persecutions in which those who did not agree with one or another’s religious dogmas were quite simply killed “for the good of their souls.”

The [fundamentalists] returned to an authoritarian religion in which the slightest act must be regulated. They gave release, and they are giving release, to the emotions, and are thus rebelling against scientific intellectualism. They will see the world in black-and-white terms again, with good and evil clearly delineated in the most simplistic terms, and thus escape a slippery, thematic universe, in which man’s feelings seemed to give him no foothold at all.

In evolution man’s nature is amoral, and anything goes for survival’s sake. There is no possibility of any spiritual survival as far as most evolutionists are concerned. The fundamentalists would rather believe in man’s inherent sinful nature, for at least their belief system provides for a framework in which he can be saved. Christ’s message was that each man is good inherently, and is an individualized portion of the divine — and yet a civilization based upon that precept has never been attempted. The vast social structures of Christianity were instead based upon man’s “sinful” nature — not the organizations and structures that might allow him to become good, or to obtain the goodness that Christ quite clearly perceived man already possessed.

(11:01.) It seems almost a sacrilege to say that man is good, when everywhere you meet contradictions, for too often man certainly appears to act as if his motives were instead those of a born killer. You have been taught not to trust the very fabric of your being. You cannot expect yourselves to act rationally or altruistically in any consistent manner if you believe that you are automatically degraded, or that your nature is so flawed that such performance is uncharacteristic.

That was dictation. That was also the end of the chapter — and I bid you a fond good evening.

(“Thank you very much, Seth. Good night.”

(11:16 P.M. I’d say that much of Seth’s excellent delivery since break is related to some of his material in the 825th session, including this passage: “I put the word ‘good’ in quotes for now because of your misconceptions about the nature of good and evil, which we will discuss somewhat later.”)