“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Organized religion has committed many important blunders, yet for centuries Christianity provided a context accepted by large portions of the known world, in which experience could be judged against very definite “rules” — experience once focused, chiselled, and yet allowed some rich expression as long as it stayed within the boundaries set by religious dogma.

(Pause.) You can think in terms of experiments. You may try this or that. You may run from one religion to another, or from religion to science, or vice versa. This is true in a way that was impossible for the masses of the people in medieval times. The improved methods of communication alone mean that you are everywhere surrounded by varying theories, cultures, cults, and schools. In some important areas this means that the mechanics of experience are actually becoming more apparent, for they are no longer hidden beneath one belief system.

(Pause.) Now in medieval times organized religion, or organized Christianity, presented each individual with a screen of beliefs through which the personal self was perceived. Portions of the self that were not perceivable through that screen were almost invisible to the private person. Problems were sent by God as punishment or warning. The mechanics of experience were hidden behind that screen.

The psyche expresses itself through action, of course, but it carries behind it the thrust from which life springs, and it seeks the fulfillment of the individual — and it automatically attempts to produce a social climate or civilization that is productive and creative. It projects its desires outward onto the physical world, seeking through private experience and social contact to actualize its potentials, and in such a way that the potentials of others are also encouraged. It seeks to flesh out its dreams, and when these find no response in social life, it will nevertheless take personal expression in a kind of private religion of its own.

Give us a moment… Basically, religion is an activity through which man attempts to see the meaning of his life. It is a construction based on deep psychic knowledge. No matter what the name it might go by, it represents man’s connection with the universe.