“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Development is therefore considered in a one-line direction only, in Christian terms. Seldom, for example, is it thought of in horizontal terms. The idea of evolution in its popular meaning promulgated this theory, as through gradual progression in a one-line direction, man emerged from the ape. (Humorously): Christ could just as well have disappeared sideways.

Instead, the soul stands at the center of itself, exploring, extending its capacities in all directions at once, involved in issues of creativity, each one highly legitimate. The probable system of reality opens up the nature of the soul to you. It should change current religion’s ideas considerably. For this reason, the nature of good and evil is a highly important point.

(9:40.) The hallucination is created, therefore, out of fear and of restriction. The devil idea is merely the mass projection of certain fears — mass in that it is produced by many people, but also limited in that there have always been those who rejected this principle.

Some very old religions understood the hallucinatory nature of the devil concept, but even in Egyptian times, the simpler and more distorted ideas became prevalent, particularly with the masses of people. In some ways, men in those times could not understand the concept of a god without the concept of a devil.

In some systems the “individual” is quite aware of having more egos than one, in your terms. The entire psychological organization is in a way richer than your own. A Christ who was not aware of this would not appear in such a system, you see. There are kinds of perception with which you are not familiar, worlds in which your idea of light does not exist, where almost infinite gradations of thermal qualities are absorbed in terms of sensation, not of light.

Offhand, the work involved could take five years, for there were several versions, and a group of leaders, each going in different directions, who taught their people. The world was far more ripe for Christianity than people suppose, because of these groups. The ideas were “buried” already throughout Europe.

(A note: Seth has mentioned the Speakers just once before. This happened quite unexpectedly in the 558th Session for November 5, 1970. The apropos portion of that session, which was held for friends in an effort to resolve certain problems, is given in the Appendix, with notes. Jane and I find the idea of the Speakers most interesting. We’d like to learn more about this, and may make it a future project.)

They realized that from their own creativity they formed idea into matter, and that the stuff of matter was itself conscious and alive. They were intimately familiar with the natural rapport existing between themselves and their environment, therefore, and knew that they could alter their environment through their own acts.