“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last Monday evening Seth gave a very short private session for Jane; it turned out to consist of just one page of double-spaced typewritten information. During the session Seth said that he was “preparing some special material for Ruburt,” but except for the excellent relaxation effects Jane has experienced since then, we have yet to learn what else may be involved.

All of those religious and political structures that you certainly recognize as valid, arising from the “event” of Christ’s ascension, existed — and do exist — because of an idea. The idea was the result of a spectacular act of the imagination that then leapt upon the historical landscape, highlighting all of the events of the time, so that they became illuminated indeed with a blessed and unearthly light.

The idea of man’s survival of death was not new. The idea of a god’s “descent” to earth was ancient. The old religious myths fit a different kind of people, however, and lasted for as many centuries in the past as Christianity has reached into the future.² The miraculous merging of imagination with historical time, however, became less and less synchronized, so that only r-i-t-e-s (spelled) remained and the old gods seized the imagination no longer. The time was ripe for Christianity.

(Intently:) Again, Christ was not crucified. The historical Christ,³ as he is thought of, was a man illuminated by psychic realities, touched with the infinite realization that any one given individual was, by virtue of his or her existence, a contact between All That Is and mankind.

(10:10.) In all of the other imaginative constructs, for example, whatever their merits and disadvantages, man felt himself to be a part of a plan. The planner might be God, or nature itself, or man within nature or nature within man. There might be many gods or one, but there was a meaning in the universe. Even the idea of fate gave man something to act against, and roused him to action.

Now: The latest growth of fundamentalist religion has arisen as a countermeasure against the theories of evolution. You have, then, an overcompensation, for in the Darwinian⁵ world there was no meaning and no laws. There were no standards of right or wrong, so that large portions of the people felt rootless.

Unfortunately, the fundamentalists accept literal interpretations of intuitive realities in such a way that they further narrow the channels through which their psychic abilities can flow. The fundamental framework, in this period of time, for all of its fervor, is not rich — as for example Christianity was in the past, with its numerous saints. It is instead a fanatical Puritan vein, peculiarly American in character, and restrictive rather than expansive, for the bursts of emotion are highly structured — that is, the emotions are limited in most areas of life, permitted only an explosive religious expression under certain conditions, when they are not so much spontaneously expressed as suddenly released from the dam of usual repression.

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.

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

“Here Seth seemed to telescope the two events into one, “Jane wrote, “or refer to them together, as if the distinction didn’t exist for him…. Seth may be implying that the ascension was the main issue in the Christ story, rather than the resurrection, or telling us that the two events are so intertwined thematically as to be treated as one.” Since we do not arbitrarily change Seth’s copy, his reference here to the ascension rather than the resurrection, and a similar one that soon follows, stand as they were given. But, obviously, we did decide to add this note.

In the 591st session for Seth Speaks, I noted claims for an earlier date for the origin of the first Gospel, that according to Mark; nevertheless, most authorities still believe that the Gospels were written between A.D. 65 and 110. Since Christ was presumably crucified around A.D. 30, this means that some 35–40 years passed before the advent of Mark’s account. There are many consistencies in the Gospels, but also inconsistencies that cannot be resolved. Even the authorships of the Gospels according to Matthew and John are now being questioned. A study of the New Testament books alone can quickly lead one into a maze of questions: Why isn’t the resurrection itself described? Why are there so few references to the ascension? Matthew doesn’t mention it at all in his Gospel, for example; and Paul alludes to it only once (1 Timothy 3:16) in his writings. Is the Gospel according to Luke merely schematic, rather than chronological? If time (as much as 40 days) did elapse between Christ’s resurrection and ascension, where was he physically during all of that period, other than on the few occasions cited in the Gospels and in Acts, when on various occasions he revealed himself to the women who discovered his empty tomb, to the apostles, and to some others? Sometimes Christ appeared as an apparition — but as Seth commented in a private session: “You could not have a world in which the newly risen dead mixed with the living. An existence in a spiritual realm had to follow such a resurrection.”

I’d say that in this 829th session Seth spoke out of a knowledge of biblical tradition and history; that is, he wasn’t saying that Christ did rise from the dead or ascend into heaven, but referring to Christianity’s interpretation of its own creative Christ story. Seth has always maintained that Christ wasn’t crucified to begin with — indeed, he told us in the same private session that “…in the facts of history, there was no crucifixion, resurrection, or ascension. In the terms of history, there was no biblical Christ. In the terms of the biblical drama (underlined), however, Christ was crucified.

“It was the Jewish tradition that nourished the new religion in its early stages. Christ, as you know, was a common name, so when I say that there was a man named Christ involved in those events, I do not mean to say that he was the biblical Christ. His life was one of those that were finally used to compose the composite image of the biblical Christ.” (In Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks, see Session 586 for July 24, 1971.)

And finally, here’s an answer to a number of inquiries from readers. The 647th session for Chapter 21 of Personal Reality was held on July 2, 1973, and in it I quoted a remark Seth made to me the following September: “You can have more material on Jerusalem or Christ now, or when you want it. You can have The Christ Book when you want it….”

“When he said, ‘You can have The Christ Book when you want it,’ I think he was just stating his willingness to comply. Maybe he knows that really wanting it might take a while, at least on my part. But I do know my attitude about getting such a book has improved a lot in the last year or two.”