“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Any normal home life is denied him; and along with the overall concentration upon the problem at hand, all other stimuli is purposely held to a minimum. In their ways, the warden and guards subscribe to the same set of beliefs as that held by their prisoners — the idea of force and power is accentuated on both sides, and each believes the other its enemy.

The detective and his criminal wear versions of the same mask. Following such ideas, you end up with segregations in which the ill, being powerless, are isolated; the criminals are kept together; and the old are held in institutions or in cultural ghettos with their own kind. Transferences of personal problems are all involved here, and clusters of beliefs.

If you equate power with youth then you will isolate the elderly, transferring upon them your own rejected powerlessness, and they will seem to be a threat to your well-being. If you agree that violence is power then you will punish the criminal with great vindictiveness, for you will see life as a power struggle, and will concentrate upon the acts of violence about which you read. This may bring such aspects into your personal life, so that you yourself meet with violence — hence deepening your conviction. (Pause.) If you accept the basic idea that evil is more powerful than good, then your beneficial acts will bear little fruit because of your own framework; you assign such small power of action to them.

If you accept the idea that knowledge is “bad,” for instance, then in line with that belief all of your efforts to learn will be futile, or bring you great discomfort. You will not trust any knowledge that comes easily for you will feel that you have to pay, do penance for the attainment of any wisdom. Fundamental interpretations of the Bible often lead to such conclusions, so that the pursuit of knowledge itself, which has a built-in biological impetus, becomes a taboo activity.

The voodoo and the healer, the witch doctor and the priest, are all held in honor, yet are also looked upon with a certain terror because of the power and knowledge involved. The man who heals or the man who curses both imply a power of knowledge to many individuals. To those who are caught up with fundamental ideas in pious terms, religious power is a frightening thing. Normal aggression, seen as evil, is therefore segregated within the self — and also seen everywhere outside. Period.