“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Because of the beliefs of religion, the child expected God to show his power through some disastrous act by which sinners would be punished. That child’s life already carries the marks of her beliefs about religion, God, power, and mainly in the belief that nature is a tool in the God’s hands—to be used against man at any time.

The conventionally religious will be certain that the earthquake is a punishment for sin. The scientist will see the affair as relatively neutral —an event, however, in which man is certainly a pawn, caught by chance in a catastrophe that he would otherwise most certainly avoid. The earthquake is a mass natural catastrophe, seeming then to be perpetrated upon man and his cities by an earth that certainly does not take man or his civilization into consideration.

The emotional identification with nature meant that man had a far greater and richer personal emotional reality. That love of nature, and appreciation, quickened and utilized inner biological capacities, also possessed by plants and animals, so that man was more consciously aware of his part in nature. He identified with natural events. It is almost impossible in your time to describe man’s reality when he was consciously aware that he would die and yet not die, and when he was everywhere surrounded by those inner data of his psyche.

Both before and after “the time of Christ,” as historically given, there were men who claimed to be the messiah. The messiah was a myth waiting for factual clothes. Many men tried on the fit. In a manner of speaking, now, it would make little difference which man was finally given the kingly robes—for the greater reality of the dream was so encompassing that it would come to be, whether one or 10 or 20 men’s lives were historically joined together to form the Christ.

Christ of course was a common name. Crucifixions were normal punishments. Conflicts between the priests and righteous members of the congregation were frequent. Many men dreamed of being the messiah, yet the dream went even beyond the confines of Jewish identity, and was far more international than any would-be messiah realized. Some of the stories have absolutely no basis in fact, as you think of fact. Others are distorted versions of factual events.