“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When man identified with nature, as given in Psyche, he did not imagine that the gods disapproved of him when storms lashed across the landscape. He did not at that time, as is supposed, do sacrifice then to win the gods’ approval. Instead, identifying with nature, man identified also with all of its manifestations.

This of course gave you at that time a different orientation of consciousness. Man did not see himself pitted against the elements, but allied with them, whatever their mood or behavior. I have explained that kind of consciousness fairly well in portions of Psyche that Ruburt is reading. Man could exult in nature’s energy, power, and splendor, even in the midst of the most fierce storm —in which, indeed, his life might be in danger.

He felt himself to be a portion of the storm, however, and felt the storm as a vast magnification of his own emotional reality—even as he felt the body of the earth itself to be, beside itself, the magnification of his own emotional reality and that of others.

With that loss of identification storms for the first time became truly threatening, capricious, for man’s mind could not intellectually understand the intimate and yet vast connections that the intuitions and emotions had once comprehended. It was then, and in the terms of this discussion, that men felt a division between themselves and “the gods,” for it was then that man began to personify the elements of nature.

Once this was done, nature it seemed could be dealt with, could be cajoled, tricked, or reasoned with as circumstances warranted. If a large area was besieged by stormy weather of any kind, then obviously a god must have somehow disapproved of human action. It was vital that the person so disapproved of be cast out. If any doubt was present then another person would be cast out or sacrificed. Acts were scrutinized so that those offending to the gods could be clearly categorized so that men would not unknowingly offend. Tribal life became a series of ritualized activities. If certain patterns of behavior were followed and the weather was pleasant, then those patterns of behavior must be ones that were safe. If the weather turned disastrous, the people were in a quandary, reexamining the patterns of behavior, finding perhaps minute differences, suspicious variations, that seemed to occur just before the storm—so these became the new sins.

(Long pause at 9:41.) Your religions have been largely patterned from such self-disapproving bases. The thrust of your civilizations has been concerned with manipulating nature. Your latest snowstorm is an excellent example. Not only of nature’s power and its effects upon civilization, but it also provides you with a very small hint of the other side of the picture, for man despite himself has not lost entirely that identification with the elements. People still feel a part of nature’s power. Storms often, oddly enough it seems, bring out a feeling of adventuresomeness and neighborliness, because people are united—not against nature, as they may think, but by it. The good skier feels a part of the snowy hill, yet most skiers feel that the hill must be conquered. When you take a walk, you usually think of walking through nature, not realizing that you are a part of the scene through which you walk. The loss of a real, sensed, appreciated identification with nature has been largely responsible, however, for man’s attitude that self-disapproval is somehow a virtue.