“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

On their return home the code of behavior changed back to one suited to civilian life, and they clamped down upon themselves again as hard as they could. Many would appear as superconventional. The “luxury” of expressing emotion even in exaggerated form was suddenly denied them, and the sense of powerlessness grew by contrast.

In a way I am sorry that this is not the place to discuss the Second World War (1939–45), for it was also the result of a sense of powerlessness which then erupted into a mass blood bath on a grand scale. The same course was followed privately in the cases of such individuals as just mentioned.

Give us a moment… Without going into any detail, I simply want to point out that in the United States strong national efforts were made after World War II to divert the servicemen’s energies into other areas on their return home. Many who entered that war feeling powerless were given advantages after it was over — incentives, education, benefits they did not have before it. They were given the means to power in their own eyes. They were also accepted home as heroes, and while many certainly were disillusioned, in the whole framework of the country’s mood the veterans were welcomed.

They were told by politicians that it was to be the last war, and the irony is that most of those in uniform believed it. (I, Robert Butts, was one of the believers.) The lie did not become truth but it became more nearly so, for despite their failures the ex-servicemen managed to bring up children who would not go to war willingly, who would question its premise.

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

Another small point here: Christ’s dictum to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39, for instance) was a psychologically crafty method of warding off violence — not of accepting it. Symbolically it represented an animal showing its belly to an adversary. (Jane, as Seth, patted her midriff.) The remark was meant symbolically. On certain levels, it was the gesture of defeat that brought triumph and survival. It was not meant to be the cringing act of a martyr who said, “Hit me again,” but represented a biologically pertinent statement, a communication of body language. Give us a moment… (Softly:) It would cleverly remind the attacker of the “old” communicative postures of the sane animals.

(That one had been concerned exclusively with the Second World War, Jane said with some surprise, and had contained amazingly complete information on the war’s origins and the individual, racial, and reincarnational aspects of it as experienced by the peoples of various nations, whether or not said nations had been directly involved in it. The information had even considered the consequences flowing from the intensified use of technology by the societies of the world after the war. “All of that was coming from that way,” Jane pointed to her lower left. She spent perhaps ten minutes describing some of the categories inherent in the material, and repeatedly said that she wished we had a record of it. At the same time, although the data was available, we didn’t want to lay this book aside to get it.

(Amused:) I thought it was more interesting than that.

A bond of hate will unite you, but the bond was originally based upon love. In this case however you aggravate and exaggerate all those differences from the ideal, and focus upon them predominantly. In any given case all of this is consciously available to you. It requires only an honest and determined attempt to become aware of your own feelings and beliefs. Even your hateful fantasies, left alone, will return you to a reconciliation and release 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.