“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

They can often be recognized as attitudes, however, before they are seen objectively as beliefs. In an unsafe universe as given protection is necessary, and certain attitudes are accepted, coloring many areas of life, spreading out to assure that protection.

Until an individual gains enough confidence in the concept of a safe universe, he or she will hang on to many of those attitudes. They are disturbing because at one stage they are only felt but not understood for what they are. If you are convinced that your world is not safe then it seems sensible to protect yourself in questionable areas by expecting the worst so that you will be prepared. Unfortunately such expectations, of course, are disadvantageous. They have, however, a strong basis in your society from childhood up. “Wear a sweater or you will catch a cold.” A simple enough suggestion, it seems, a preventive measure. Yet in that innocent remark lies the assumption that the cold can be expected rather than, say, a normal state of health.

The more unsafe the world is felt to be, then the more important protection is, and the more threatening, expression. Repression becomes the order of the day. The species however will always react against repression, no matter what its source, and so will the individual. On the whole the species is beginning to change its psychological sense of selfhood. There are periods in history when this happened before, and a new kind of civilization resulted. The earliest Jewish traditions represent one such change. The beginning period of the Egyptian civilization another, the birth of Christ another, and the beginning of the scientific age.

The world, however, was seen as unsafe to one degree or another in each. Each era set up various methods meant to protect man against the environment itself, or against the gods. In terms of physical existence man’s consciousness has not progressed enough along the path it had chosen, so that it could afford to admit the oneness of inner and outer reality.