“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You isolate the criminal element, therefore, in an environment in which any compensations are refused. The entire framework of a prison — with its bars — is a constant reminder to the convict of his situation, and reinforces his original difficulty.

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 guards are certain that the incarcerated are the dregs of the earth and must be held down at all costs. Both sides accept the concept of human aggression and violence as a method of survival. The prisoners’ energies are usually used in boring, innocuous tasks, even though some attempt is made to provide vocational training in many institutions.

Both prisoners and officials, however, take it for granted that most of those now behind bars will return time and time again. The confined project their personal problems out upon the society. Society returns the “favor.” In the same way individuals often think of certain characteristics as animal or evil, and attempt to isolate those portions from other areas of their own activity. Power or the lack of it, and the attitudes surrounding either mode, are often involved.

Unknowingly, the sick often give up their power to act in a healthy manner to the physicians. The doctors accept this mandate since they share the same framework of belief, so the medical profession obviously needs patients as badly as the ill need the hospitals. Society as you know it, not understanding the nature of normal aggression, considers it violent. The prisons and law enforcement agencies need criminals in the same way that criminals need them, for they operate within the same system of belief. Each accepts violence as a method of behavior and survival. (Pause.) If you do not understand that you create your own reality, then you may assign all good results to a personified god, and need the existence of a devil to explain the undesirable reality. So churches as they now exist in Western society need a devil as well as a god.

(11:35.) Your social structure, from the largest metropolis to the smallest farm, from the wealthiest areas to the poorest ghettos, from the monasteries to the prisons, reflects the inner situation of the individual self and the personal beliefs that each of you hold.