“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(With broad humor, eyes wide and dark:) Your friendly cosmic author will now begin dictation.

Now throughout this book I have purposely stayed away from the word “love,” because of various interpretations often placed upon it, and because of the errors frequently committed in its name.

Now: Sometimes you may think that you hate mankind. You may consider people insane, the individual creatures with whom you share the planet. You may rail against what you think of as their stupid behavior, their bloodthirsty ways, and the inadequate and shortsighted methods that they use to solve their problems. All of this is based upon your idealized concept of what the race should be — your love for your fellow man, in other words. But your love can get lost if you concentrate upon those variations that are less than idyllic.

You are putting love on such a plane that you divorce yourself from your real feelings, and do not recognize the loving emotions that are the basis for your discontent. Your affection has fallen short of itself in your experience because you have denied the impact of this emotion, for fear that the beloved — in this case the race as a whole — will not measure up to it. Therefore you concentrate upon the digressions from the ideal. If, instead, you allowed yourself to free the feeling of love that is actually behind your dissatisfaction, then it alone would allow you to see the loving characteristics in the race that now escape your observation to a large degree.

Now: There is nothing more pompous than false humility.

(Intently:) Now: In those terms you are the power of God manifested. You are not powerless. To the contrary. Through your being the power of God is strengthened, for you are a portion of what He is. You are not simply an insignificant, innocuous clump of clay through which He decides to show Himself.

(In a private session on September 3, Seth discussed some of the reasons behind Jerusalem’s unceasing fascination for certain segments of mankind. These included probabilities, geography, and unusual interactions involving the past, present and future. Some aspects of the Christ phenomenon were also explained. Then in the next session — which concerned other subjects — Seth unexpectedly added this aside: “You can have more material on Jerusalem or Christ now, or when you want it. You can have the Christ Book when you want it….” But we weren’t ready to embark upon such an endeavor at this time.

He “consorted” with prostitutes (Luke 7:33–50) and the poor, and his disciples were hardly men that would be called the city fathers. Yet, many who consider themselves religious people hold on to respectability most of all. Christ used the vernacular of the times and in his own way spoke out against dogmatic ideas, as well as temples that pretended to be repositories of holy knowledge but were instead concerned with money and prestige. (Mark 11:15–18). Yet many who consider themselves followers of Christ now turn against the outcasts that he himself considered brothers and sisters.

It was not Mark’s or John’s. There are particular reasons why I do not want to specify now.

(Pause.) At the time, Christ united man’s consciousness in ways that reached out into history. The Christ consciousness was not isolated. I am speaking in your terms now. The same consciousness gave birth to all of your religions, therefore; the various frameworks through which the peoples of different times could express themselves and grow. In all cases the religions began with the beliefs prevailing, spoke through the dictums of the times, and then expanded. Now this represents the spiritual side of man’s evolution. The idea-frameworks of psychic and mental life were far more important than the physical aspects as the species grew and changed.