“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Both religion and science see the self as primarily heir to flaws, decay. Only science’s Sinful Self operates in a framework in which there is no sacramental redemption. Science sees the world as rushing toward its own dissolution, and the self as the mechanistic system running down from the moment of its conception.

The world in those terms (pause) is as much the result of unpredictable behavior, unforeseen events, unexpected benefits, unforeseeable conditions, as it is the result of predictable actions, usual cause-and-effect phenomena (pause), and a close inspection of public and private life would show quite clearly that both are magnificently touched by significant coincidences. Unexpected events, unpredictable actions of the most auspicious nature.

(Long pause at 8:53.) When it seems that left alone Ruburt’s condition will only worsen, you are following those old patterns of conditioned thought, projecting negative situations into the future, imagining the unfortunate outcome or outcomes, and acting as if you operated within a closed system. You are concentrating upon the problem in order to solve it, often scaring yourselves into further depressions.

(Pause at 9:10.) Many of Ruburt’s beliefs have changed, but the core belief in the Sinful Self has been very stubborn. While you do not possess it in the same fashion, you are also tainted by it, picking up such beliefs from early background, and primarily from your father in that regard.

(Long pause.) I do not want to give you too much charged material in a concentrated period of time. Therefore, remember during the days for example to allow yourselves some enjoyments, and to consider any feelings, even unpleasant ones, as valuable expressions of sensation or emotion.

(Pause at 9:26.) This means that you deal, even consciously, with vast areas of probabilities, with various combinations, with ways in which identity itself will be defined and experienced. You will react to your definitions of yourselves. In that regard the Sinful-Self concept represents an exaggerated, distorted version of man’s recognition that in certain ways he seems (underlined) less sure of himself than the other species, less at ease, for he has taken upon himself the creative recognition of uncertainties (all intently.

(Long pause.) He is learning to create whole private and public worlds that directly correspond to his own states of mind. The possible diversity and the vast assortment of the creative ventures possible mean that he had accepted certain measures of uncertainty. He hits snags.

(Long pause at 9:37.) In Ruburt’s case the core belief, again, in the Sinful Self was hard to differentiate, because it could appear in many other guises. It dropped its most obvious religious coloration for some time, and could simply appear as an unusually strong dedication to work and discipline. The Sinful Self has no use for play, because it believes so fervently that left alone it will indeed be lazy or childish, or fritter itself away—or, looking at it the other way, it fears that left alone it will only play, or will be slothful. You see this most clearly in Protestant theology.