“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Such religious dramas focus, direct, and, hopefully, clarify aspects of inner reality that need to be physically represented. (Long pause, eyes closed.) These do not only appear within your own system. Many are also projected into other systems of reality. Religion per se, however, is always the external facade of inner reality. The primary spiritual existence alone gives meaning to the physical one. In the most real terms, religion should include all of the pursuits of man in his search for the nature of meaning and truth. Spirituality cannot be some isolated, specialized activity or characteristic.

(Pause at 9:30.) At no time will any given church be able to express the inner experience of all individuals. At no time will any church find itself in a position in which it can effectively curtail the inner experience of its members — it will only seem to do so. The forbidden experiences will simply be unconsciously expressed, gather strength and vitality, and rise up to form a counter projection which will then form another, newer exterior religious drama.

The dramas themselves do express certain inner realities, and they serve as surface reminders to those who do not trust direct experience with the inner self. They will take the symbols as reality. When they discover that this is not so, they feel betrayed. Christ spoke in terms of the father and son because in your terms, at that time, this was the method used — the story he told to explain the relationship between the inner self and the physically-alive individual. No new religion really startles anyone, for the drama has already been played subjectively.

Man tried to form a new realm, attain a different kind of focus and awareness. His consciousness turned a corner outside of itself. To do this he concentrated less and less upon inner reality, and therefore began the process of inner reality only as it was projected outward into the physical world.

I am speaking here in more or less historic terms for you. You must realize that the process has nothing to do with time as you know it, however. This particular kind of adventure in consciousness (smile) has occurred before, and in your terms will again.

(Here Seth was making a little joke, for Jane has been doing some writing lately which she has tentatively entitled “Adventures in Consciousness.”)

There are tests to pass before entry. There are rituals to be acted out. Now, all of this is highly distorted. Any attempt to so rigorously and precisely express inner reality is bound to be abortive, highly misleading, and in your terms sometimes dangerous; for you do create your own reality and live it according to your inner beliefs. Therefore, be careful also of those beliefs that you accept.

They represent, however, deep unities that you do not understand. Your conception of good and evil results in large part from the kind of consciousness you have presently adopted. You do not perceive wholes, but portions. The conscious mind focuses with a quick, limited, but intense light, perceiving from a given field of reality only certain “stimuli.” It then puts these stimuli together, forming the liaison of similarity. Anything that it does not accept as a portion of reality, it does not perceive.