“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The practical experience of reality is formed through the suggestive psychological idea-shapes that appear in the guise of theories, dogmas, and assumptions.

The theory of evolution represents a magnetic organizing suggestive hypothesis. It can, even in scientific terms, never be proven. Under its banner of suggestion, however, the great parade of men and other living creatures are observed so that the hypothesis brings about its own hypnotic focus—so that creatures, man, and indeed the universe itself, seem to behave in certain highly ritualized fashions.

In a manner of speaking, the motives familiar to men are applied to the smallest microbe. More than this, however, the theory’s vast suggestive nature forms a framework through which people then view the experiences of their lives, and through whose focus the behavior of their own species seems determined.

The theory, then, is a way of organizing experience, a suggestive hypothesis. It is indeed no more than a point of view. It has colored man’s societies and cultures since its inception. It has dominated economical systems. In that regard, for example, James was quite correct: certain religious societies interpreted the theme so that it read “evolution of the soul”; but there is no soul in Darwinian theory and hereditary, and certainly none in the environment.

Why then did such a theory originate? Darwin was initially a religious man. Like many others, his religious background held out nonsensical propositions. It saw a good God, a just savior, who nevertheless never thought twice about sending down death and destruction as punishment for sin.

Those theories of Darwin, however, formed part of the suggestive background in which you and Ruburt and millions of others matured. Each person interpreted those beliefs in an individual fashion. Sexual, economic, social and even religious behavior became tinged by these concepts.

The value of the artist was deprecated. Contemplation had little part to play. As per James, it was no coincidence that the beliefs of Freud and Darwin merged so well to form western society’s idea of the self, physically and psychologically. The ideas of financial competition, advocated, came into direct conflict, Joseph, with your own inclinations to be an artist. The ideas of manliness in your society, particularly in past years, were directly tied in with Darwinian concepts and Freudian theory. They operated as suggestion that directed the actions of millions of people, and provided a framework through which they experienced their reality.

Darwin’s theories, and Freud’s for that matter, will in the future be seen as any other antiquated, outmoded system—yet from their ashes will rise new ways of interpreting and experiencing reality.

As a woman Ruburt was in a worse position than you from both theories. He took greater precautions, therefore. Now that is the climate in which you began our work.