“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Now I did mention to Jane perhaps the overriding question I have, and have often puzzled about: the intensity of her personality’s response to the idea of the Sinful Self. Though, as I said, I didn’t think of her Sinful Self as something entirely separate from other portions of her personality, but as a part of them. Why didn’t the “Sinful Self” get the message that it’s gone too far, and back off at least somewhat so that the whole personality had room to breathe—to begin physical recovery, in other words? Its actions, as they are, are clearly self-defeating. There are many fascinating but serious questions here. Jane agreed.

The child at such a time for one thing is not in the situation to do conflict with belief systems—it is too young and dependent. The belief systems can be like blocks, which are used and then later changed or replaced, but there is a kind of (underlined) bonding of the childhood self with those ideas it takes from its parents.

There is great leeway here. Some people, remember, are only peripherally involved with concepts or ideas. Ruburt has always been highly fascinated by both. Children want to “be good.” They look for approval. It is quite true that later they seek independence also. And shrug aside many early beliefs. The Sinful Self identification is a particularly unfortunate one, for to “be good” means that the child must consider itself bad or sinful.

(Long pause at 8:46.) Give us a moment.... Science provided no such releases, of course, for it looked upon all such values to begin with as meaningless, including the entire concept of the soul. For some time there was no direct challenge, however, made to the Sinful Self once Ruburt left the church. His creative abilities were growing and developing, his concepts enlarging, but he was for some time so convinced of science’s viewpoint that the ideas of the Sinful Self were looked upon as unworthy and superstitious. He was allied with rationalism instead. Many issues therefore remained unresolved, lying there unchallenged. When his creative abilities found contemporary scientific thought also too narrow, however, and his natural intuitions had led him toward a new framework—one that, again, introduced values having to do with the nature of consciousness, or soul—then the new ideas began to conflict directly with the old buried ones, particularly those that had to do with the conflicts between creative expression, the church, and “forbidden knowledge.” To go ahead creatively, forming new versions of a spiritual reality, to state that man and his impulses were good, brought him finally into direct conflict with the old beliefs of the Sinful Self, whose value system was based upon the idea that the self was indeed sinful, not to be trusted.