“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 3:50 PM Jane told me that she’d just received from Seth a definition of cults. She repeated it as best she could: “....a closed, emotionally charged mental environment, in which the characteristics of individuality were purposefully undermined.” Then a little later she picked up some more material while doing her exercises. Some of it drew a comparison between the paranoid individual, and an organization that contained the same ideas. The individual would be called ill for thinking the world was against him, but the organization’s similar beliefs would be more unthinkingly accepted because of its sheer size and power in the society.

Those characteristics are set in the form of an elderly woman whose pace bespeaks wisdom. She has no arms. However, her concern, her love and understanding, are seen only in the expression of her eyes and face. She cannot embrace the world, and so she is armless. Her concern and understanding also have a mental quality, as your own deepest feelings in those regards are expressed through art or writing indirectly, rather than through direct contact with others.

There are indications of arms beneath the clothing—indications only. For you embrace the world through, say, inner devotions rather than exterior acts. The woman is alone, with many empty rooms behind her, signifying that you set yourself apart from the many worlds of commerce in your day—meaning social commerce—and that such an understanding can also bring loneliness.

A certain amount of comparative isolation from the world is necessary if you are to understand man’s condition. Yet the woman is not weak, but strong: nor is she unaware of some irony in the situation.

(Pause.) Give us a moment.... When the dream gives you such an image, and the image becomes objectified, then you are of course showing a new part of yourself in the physical world, and bringing into expression through your physical hands the emotions that otherwise could not be expressed.

Your mental world is full of ideas and feelings that surge toward actualization. You have a need to express your self—and I am repeating the word “express” quite purposefully (with a smile). You must feel that you are a self, and that you can express that self in the world that you know.

(A note: I must write that not only was I surprised that Seth opened the session with an analysis of the dream, but that I was even more surprised with the generous connotations he ascribed to it: I may love my fellow man, but often times feel that that feeling is compromised by events in our world, even though I fully acknowledge my own part in helping create that world in the most intimate detail. Seth’s interpretation of my feelings may be too generous. He may also be taking the larger view, as Jane often says he does. On that basis his material may very well express the content of that dream; from that wider viewpoint, I would feel the compassion he describes more openly. Perhaps it’s all another reflection of that curious dichotomy I’ve often felt: One may rail against the world in general, and the behavior of its individuals in particular. Yet as one gets to know each of the individuals in his or her world in particular, it becomes more and more difficult to blame them for the state of the world, or much else for that matter: One becomes too enmeshed with their individuality and humanness. An understanding on a more personal level of the forces in their lives that push and pull them in often conflicting directions makes it very difficult to actively blame people for very much on an individual basis....)

(Pause at 10:10.) At the same time, there is much discussion about the good of mankind, ideal principles, goodness, charity and faith—but these are seen as possible only within the group, for the exterior world, you are told, is full of evil and corruption.

The group is always pitted against the world, which becomes its enemy. Paranoia reigns. Evidences of the world’s corruption are collected, and any proofs of man’s good intent begin to fade away. The end is seen as justifying the means. The hoped-for spiritual heaven on earth—in those terms (underlined) – is unattainable, of course.

The fundamentalist Christian groups, for all of their fanaticism, at least offer some kind of temporary relief for their believers; they are “saved” through prayer and good works. Many other sects, however, offer no such comfort, as for example the Guyana group. The concentration upon self-betrayal and worldly corruption offers no escape. Expression becomes meaningless under such conditions, not trusting the structure of the self, then the self’s expression is denied. It is feared. Yet the new self never comes—not the promised, overly idealized self that feels a godly love without distinctions. And all good works appear meaningless in the terribly exaggerated picture painted of social and world events.