“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In deepest terms the world had an outside only. It was empty inside. The soul or any remnant of it vanished, so that all of the action had to occur in an arena where competition ruled. Life was not trusted. You could be betrayed by your genes. There was no purpose in nature except its own mechanical reproduction. The individual had no importance, once it served its part in reproduction.

(10:05.) These ideas went a long way to justify later scientific experiments that involved giving pain to animals, for example: nature itself had no feeling. It was seen in human terms as inhumane: life without reason, life with no purpose except its own repetition, life in which the individual was dispensable. Many people cannot operate under that kind of system. The individual shouts that his life does indeed have meaning, while the scientists until now have vehemently stated otherwise.

To some extent the Freudian self, as per James, more or less followed the same pattern. A man could scarcely trust his neighbor if he agreed with Darwin or Freudian concepts. Behind any altruistic impulse there had to be a selfish gain. Before all of this, however, nature was seen as primarily passive—put here by God for man’s purpose, but without possessing the uniqueness or even approaching the status of man.