“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

Women make a grave error when they try to prove their “equality” with men by showing that they can enter the armed forces, or go into combat as well as any man (with more amusement). War always makes you less as a species than you could be. Women have shown uncommon good sense in not going to war, and uncommon bad sense by sending their sons and lovers to war. Again: To kill for the sake of peace only makes you better killers, and nothing will change that. In any war, both sides are fanatical to the extent that they are involved. I am quite aware that often war seems to be your only practical course, because of the set of beliefs that are, relatively speaking, worldwide. Until you change those beliefs, war will seem to have some practical value — a value which is highly deceptive, and quite false.

Fanatics always use ringing rhetoric, and speak in the highest terms of truth, good and evil, and particularly of retribution. To some extent capital punishment is the act of a fanatical society: The taking of the murderer’s life does not bring back the victim’s, and it does not prevent other men from [committing] such crimes. I am aware that the death penalty often seems to be a practical solution — and indeed many murderers want to die, and are caught because of their need for punishment. Many, now — and I am speaking generally — are in the position they are because they so thoroughly believe what all of you believe to a large extent: that you are flawed creatures, spawned by a meaningless universe, or made by a vengeful God and damaged by original sin.

(Pause.) Fanatics exist because of the great gap between an idealized good and an exaggerated version of its opposite. The idealized good is projected into the future, while its exaggerated opposite is seen to pervade the present. The individual is seen as powerless to work alone toward that ideal with any sureness of success. Because of his belief in his powerlessness [the fanatic] feels that any means to an end is justified. Behind all this is the belief that spontaneously the ideal will never be achieved, and that, indeed, on his own man is getting worse and worse in every aspect: How can flawed selves ever hope to spontaneously achieve any good?

(Then louder:) Yes, Ruburt has started up again. He is on the right track. He has his [new book] project, and you are doing well, and I bid you both a fond good evening.

(“Good night, Seth.”

(10:20. “I feel real good, and Seth did well finishing that material,” Jane said. “I feel good about Heroics, too. Before the session I was worried about what good stuff we might get, and whether we could put it in this book or if it would just lay there for years. But something you said helped —”

(10:23 P.M. But, I told Jane with some humor of my own, I also knew that that knowledge wouldn’t stop me from occasionally inserting what I think is a particularly good and appropriate nonbook session into whatever project Seth may have going at the time. She laughed.)