“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The scientific elite could of course present a probability in which a world was created [where] the common man could have little knowledge of its workings. You actually have an excellent set of guards and balances in your country. Now your TV dramas, again, systematically show your old Frankenstein movies just when your scientists are contemplating all kinds of experiments supposed to bring forth life. Hardly a coincidence, for the mass minds of the people are able to make certain joint statements, and those statements are heard.

1. “Now, for example,” Seth told us this evening, “man deals with a kind of dual selfhood, in that he presently thinks of himself as an uneasy blend of body and mind. He identifies primarily with what I call a limited portion of his consciousness. That portion he equates with mind or intelligence. He identifies with events over which he is aware (underlined) of having some control.

“Both religion and science are based upon such beliefs. Anything that happens spontaneously is looked upon with suspicion. The word seems to suggest elements out of control, or motion that goes from one extreme to another. Only the reasoning mind, it seems, has any idea of order, discipline, or control.

“Man is therefore set against his nature in his own mind, and he thinks he must control it. The fact is that man’s consciousness can indeed become aware of — aware of — those spontaneous processes. But he himself has largely closed the door of comprehension, so that he only identifies with what he thinks of as his rational mind, and tries to forget as best he can those spontaneous processes upon which the mind rides so triumphantly.

“In the same way the scientific community speaks of grandiose ideals, of man’s triumph over the planet and nature. At the same time these ideals further divorce the scientists from daily practical experience with their fellowman; and since they see animals as objects, they’re bound to see human life in somewhat the same fashion. The sacrifice of, say, thousands of lives in a nuclear accident almost becomes justified in their minds if it is a means toward the grandiose goal of learning how to ‘triumph over nature.’ Again, this intent automatically turns them into mechanics.