“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation. (Long pause.) At any given time there will be various climates of belief pervading the world. Some will be clustered in certain areas, for example, like low-pressure systems. Some will generally be local, and others will sweep across the continents like great periodic storms.

Remember that ideas are as natural as the weather. They follow patterns, then, and obey certain laws even as more strictly physical phenomena do. Unfortunately, no one examines the nature of mental reality from such a viewpoint. You will be born in the midst of certain mass beliefs, and these may vary according to the country of your nativity. As you come into your body with all of its physical surroundings, so at birth do you emerge into a rich natural psychological environment in which beliefs and ideas are every bit as real.

As you become more proficient at using your conscious mind, then of course you examine the beliefs that surround you, even as you question and often move out of your native environment. You may migrate to a climate in which the prevailing ideas suit you better, as well as the weather.

Regardless, there are certain tendencies, mental stances, that you will take about yourself, your body and your life to one degree or another. Many of these will be directly or indirectly connected with old myths and beliefs of your forefathers. Your ideas of good and evil as applied to health and illness are highly important, for instance. (Pause.) Few can escape putting value judgments in such areas. If you consider illness as a kind of moral stigma, then you will simply add an unneeded quality to any condition of ill health.

Such judgments are very simplistic, and ignore the great range of human motivation and experience. If you are bound and determined that “GOD” (in capitals and quotes) creates only “good,” then any physical deficiency, illness or deformity becomes an affront to your belief, threatens it, and makes you angry and resentful. If you become ill you can hate yourself for not being what you think you should be — a perfect physical image made in the likeness of a perfect God.

(9:55.) Following such a belief, you will confuse suffering with saintliness, desolation with purity, and the denial of the body as spirituality and a badge of holiness. Under such conditions you can even seek out illness to prove to yourself the strength of your own spirituality — and to impress it upon others. The same kind of moral value judgment can be placed in almost any area of human activity, and will of course have social repercussions. Those reactions will add to the prevailing beliefs and in turn affect the individual.

You may believe that wealth is a result of a moral virtue, and comes from “God’s” direct benevolence. As a result, poverty becomes evidence of a lack of morality. “God” made so many people poor that obviously no man should dare try to change the situation — that rationale is often used. The poor, then, following these beliefs, are looked down upon as are the diseased.

What sin did the poor person or the sick person commit? That question, often asked unconsciously — if not consciously — brings you back to beliefs in punishment that have nothing to do with the concept of natural guilt, but with those distortions placed upon it. There is also a connection with misinterpretation of the Bible. Christ as you think of him was simply saying that you form your own reality. He tried to rise above the idea-systems of those times, yet even he had to use them, and so the connotations of sin and punishment distorted the message given.

Some of you will have a contradictory belief that poverty is virtuous, and that wealth is a vice and represents evidence of a spiritual lack. (See the 614th session in Chapter Two.) This belief in your society also harks back to the Bible and Christ’s association with the poor rather than the rich.

Your daily experience will be affected by your race, your beliefs about it, your beliefs about other races, and the climate of opinion in general. On a quite simple basis, if you consider God in human terms you will project him as belonging to your own race. If you belong to a minority or if you are black, then you may be caught in a conflict of beliefs.

It is impossible to separate your daily experience in any of its aspects from your beliefs and those judgments that you place upon them. The beliefs boil down to your ideas of right and wrong, and they involve all of your attitudes concerning illness and health, wealth and poverty, the relationships of the races, religious conflicts, and more important, your intimate day-by-day psychological reality.

GOOD AND EVIL, PERSONAL AND MASS BELIEFS, AND THEIR EFFECT UPON YOUR PRIVATE AND SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

Heading for the chapter: “Good and Evil, Personal and Mass Beliefs, and Their Effect Upon Your Private and Social Experience.” Do you have that?

In this chapter we will deal with some current beliefs involving your most intimate behavior and social connotations.

The designations will make certain contrasts clear visually. I simply wanted to launch into the next chapter, and to make sure the visual aspects were clearly stated. (Pleased:) I will give you the rest of the evening off, therefore, as we are doing very well indeed, and will get to some beliefs not dealt with, of a social nature.