“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These ideas become the driving themes of these religious dramas of which I have spoken. The actors may “return,” time and time again, in different roles. In any given historic religious drama, therefore, the actors may have already appeared on the historic scene in your past, the prophet of today being the traitor of the past drama.

The attributes of the gods are those inherent within man himself, magnified, brought into powerful activity. Men believe that the gods live forever. Men live forever, but having forgotten this, they remember only to endow their gods with this characteristic. Obviously, then, beyond these earthly historic religious dramas, the seemingly recurring tales of gods and men, there are spiritual realities.

For example, the main character in a religious historical drama may or may not consciously be aware of the ways in which such information is given to him. And yet it may seem to him that he does know, for the nature of a dogma’s origin will be explained in terms that this main character can understand. The historical Jesus knew who he was, but he also knew that he was one of three personalities composing one entity. To a large extent he shared in the memory of the other two.

(9:20.) He will not come to reward the righteous and send evildoers to eternal doom. He will, however, begin a new religious drama. A certain historical continuity will be maintained. As happened once before, however, he will not be generally known for who he is. There will be no glorious proclamation to which the whole world will bow. He will return to straighten out Christianity, which will be in a shambles at the time of his arrival, and to set up a new system of thought when the world is sorely in need of one.

The third historical personage, already born in your terms, and a portion of the entire Christ personality, took upon himself the role of a zealot.

This person had superior energy and power and great organizing abilities, but it was the errors that he made unwittingly that perpetuated some dangerous distortions. The records of that historical period are scattered and contradictory.

The man, historically now, was Paul or Saul. It was given to him to set up a framework. But it was to be a framework of ideas, not of regulations; of men, not of groups. Here he fell down, and he will return as the third personality, just mentioned, in your future.

Now Saul went to great lengths to set himself as a separate identity. His characteristics, for example, were seemingly quite different from those of the historical Christ. He was “converted” in an intense personal experience — a fact that was meant to impress upon him the personal and not organizational aspects. Yet some exploits of his in his earlier life have been attributed to Christ — not as a young man, but earlier.

Now he did not create them on his own, and thrust them upon historical reality. (Jane paused, a hand to her eyes.) He created them in so far as he found himself forced to admit certain facts: In that world at that time, earthly power was needed to hold Christian ideas apart from numberless other theories and religions, to maintain them in the middle of warring factions. It was his job to form a physical framework; and even then he was afraid that the framework would strangle the ideas, but he saw no other way.

He was called both. (Pause.) When the third personality reemerges historically, however, he will not be called the old Paul, but will carry within him the characteristics of all the three personalities.

His was the portion that was to deal with physical reality and manipulation, and so these qualities were strong in him. To some extent they overruled him. When the historical Christ “died,” Paul was to implement the spiritual ideas in physical terms, to carry on. In so doing, however, he grew the seeds of an organization that would smother the ideas. He lingered after Christ, [just] as John the Baptist came before. Together the three spanned some time period, you see.

John and the historical Christ each performed their roles and were satisfied that they had done so. Paul alone was left at the end unsatisfied, and so it is about his personality that the future Christ will form.

This personality will refer to the historical Christ, will recognize his relationship with that personality; but within him the three personality groupings will form a new psychic entity, a different psychological gestalt. As this metamorphosis takes place, it will initiate a metamorphosis on a human level also (emphatically), as man’s inner abilities are accepted and developed.

Events are not predestined. The framework for this emergence has already been set, however, within your system of probabilities. The emergence of this third personality will directly affect the original historical drama of Christ as it is now known. There is and must be interactions between them.