“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you believe that hate is wrong and evil, and then find yourself hating someone, you may try to inhibit the emotion or turn it against yourself — raging against yourself rather than another. On the other hand you may try to pretend the feeling out of existence, in which case you dam up that massive energy and cannot use it for other purposes.

Many who unexpectedly commit great crimes, sudden murders, even bringing about mass death, have a history of docility and conventional attitudes, and were considered models, in fact, of deportment. All natural aggressive elements were denied in their natures, and any evidence of momentary hatred was considered evil and wrong. As a result such individuals find it difficult, finally, to express the most normal denial, or to go against their given code of conventionality and respect. They cannot communicate as, say, even animals can, with their fellow men as far as the expression of a disagreement is concerned.

(Pause at 10:11.) I am speaking generally now about the war under discussion, for there were certainly exceptions, yet most of the men involved in it learned something from their experiences. They turned against the idea of violence, and each in his own way recognized the personal psychological ambiguities of their feelings during combat.

In an odd way this made it even more difficult for those who did go into the next two, less extensive wars, for the country was not behind either one. Any sense of powerlessness on the part of individual fighting men was given expression as before, this time in a more local blood bath, but the code itself had become shaky. This release was not as accepted as it had been before, even within the ranks. By the last war (in Vietnam), the country was as much against it as for it, and the men’s feelings of powerlessness were reinforced after it was over. This is the reason for the incidents of violence on the part of returning servicemen.¹

Dogmas or systems of thought that tell you to rise above your emotions can be misleading — even, in your terms, somewhat dangerous. Such theories are based upon the concept that there is something innately disruptive, base, or wrong in man’s emotional nature, while the soul is always depicted as being calm, “perfect,” passive and unfeeling. Only the most lofty, blissful awareness is allowed. Yet the soul is above all a fountain of energy, creativity, and action that shows its characteristics in life precisely through the ever-changing emotions.

(Slowly:) In the same way, it is possible to love your fellow human beings on a grand scale, while at times hating them precisely because they so often seem to fall short of that love. When you rage against humanity it is because you love it. To deny the existence of hate then is to deny love. It is not that those emotions are opposites. It is that they are different aspects, and experienced differently. To some extent you want to identify with those you feel deeply about. You do not love someone simply because you associate portions of yourself with another. You often do love another individual because such a person evokes within you glimpses of your own “idealized” self.

Now: I will end our session. My fondest wishes to you both, and good evening.

(“Thank you, Seth. Good night.” 12:17 a.m.

(“In this book, Seth leads the reader beyond conventional ideas of good and evil to a new framework of understanding. But even at these deeper levels, hate is not justified, since an honest confrontation with it will lead the individual back to the love upon which it is really based.