“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many people lost their lives recently in the tragedy of [Jonestown] Guyana. People willingly took poison at the command of their leader. No armies stood outside the grounds. No bombs fell. There was no physical virus that spread through the multitude. There was no clothing to decorate the mechanisms of events. Those people succumbed to an epidemic of beliefs, to an environment [that was] closed mentally and physically. The villains consisted of the following ideas: that the world is unsafe, and growing deadly; that the species itself is tainted by a deadly intent; that the individual has no power over his or her reality; that society or social conditions exist as things in themselves, and that their purposes run directly counter to the fulfillment of the individual; and lastly, that the end justifies the means, and that the action of any kind of god is powerless in the world.

They tried various religions, and in the light of their opinions of themselves their earlier advantages seemed only to damn them further. They tried social programs, and found a curious sense of belonging with the disadvantaged, for they were also rootless. The disadvantaged and the advantaged alike then joined in a bond of hopelessness, endowing a leader with a power they felt they did not possess.