“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Often it is akin to love, for the hater is attracted to the object of his hatred by deep bonds. It can also be a method of communication, but it is never a steady constant state, and will automatically change if not tampered with.

In its natural state, hatred has a powerful rousing characteristic that initiates change and action. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence. As covered earlier in this book, the outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. Period. (See sessions 662–63 in Chapter Seventeen.)

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.

In these wars aggressions could be released and codes still followed. The individuals were faced, however, with the horror of their violently released, pent-up hatreds and aggressions. Seeing these bloody results, they became even more frightened, more awed by what they thought of as this terrible energy that sometimes seemed to drive them to kill.

Hate, left alone then, does not erupt into violence. Hatred brings a sense of power and initiates communication and action. In your terms it is the build up of natural anger; in animals, say, it would lead to a face-to-face encounter, of battle stances in which each creature’s body language, motion, and ritual would serve to communicate a dangerous position. One animal or the other would simply back down. Growling or roaring might be involved.

Hatred always involves a painful sense of separation from love, which may be idealized. A person you feel strongly against at any given time upsets you because he or she does not live up to your expectations. The higher your expectations the greater any divergence from them seems. If you hate a parent it is precisely because you expect such love. A person from whom you expect nothing will never earn your bitterness.

In a strange manner, then, hatred is a means of returning to love; and left alone and expressed it is meant to communicate a separation that exists in relation to what is expected.

Love, therefore, can contain hate very nicely. Hatred can contain love and be driven by it, particularly by an idealized love. (Pause.) You “hate” something that separates you from a loved object. It is precisely because the object is loved that it is so disliked if expectations are not met. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love and denies your expectations, then you may “hate” the same parent because of the love that leads you to expect more. The hatred is meant to get you your love back. It is supposed to lead to a communication from you, stating your feelings — clearing the air, so to speak, and bringing you closer to the love object. Hatred is not the denial of love, then, but an attempt to regain it, and a painful recognition of circumstances that separate you from it.

If you understood the nature of love you would be able to accept feelings of hatred. Affirmation can include the expression of such strong emotions. Give us a moment…

In personal contact, you can be quite aware of an enduring love for another person, and still recognize moments of hatred when separations of a kind exist that you resent because of the love you know involved.

Love is of course always changing. There is no one [permanent] state of deep mutual attraction in which two people are forever involved. As an emotion love is mobile, and can change quite easily to anger or hatred, and back again.

The child’s antagonism is based upon a firm understanding of its love. Parents, taught to believe that hatred is wrong, do not know how to handle such a situation. Punishment simply adds to the child’s problem. If a parent shows fear, then the child is effectively taught to be afraid of this anger and hatred before which the powerful parent shrinks. The young one is conditioned then to forget such instinctive understanding, and to ignore the connections between hatred and love.

(“In these passages on hate, and elsewhere in this book, Seth goes more deeply into the nature of our emotional life than he has before. His earlier comments on hate, for example, were made when he had to consider the level of understanding of those who were witnessing the session. One such instance is mentioned on page 248 of The Seth Material, when, in response to a declaration by a student in my ESP class, Seth took the conventional idea of hate for granted on the part of the student. Then he answered accordingly: ‘There is no justification for hatred…. When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you.’” The answer must be considered in the light of the previous conversation, in which the student was trying to justify violence as a means of attaining peace. Seth’s main concern was to refute that concept.

(“In using the word ‘curse,’ Seth is not referring to swearing, but to directing hatred against another. Until the individual comes to terms with himself and his emotions, the hatred will return, because it belongs to the one who hates and not to anyone else. The earlier instructions on handling emotions, in Chapter Eleven, provide a framework in which hate can be faced and understood. Also important in this context is Seth’s frequent reminder that the expression of normal aggression prevents the buildup of anger into hatred.”)