“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

There were all kinds of aids available: indulgences, litanies, rosaries and so forth. When Ruburt left that system intellectually some of the old bonding power remained, the emotional glue, but he no longer believed in the indulgences, the sacraments and so forth, so the Sinful Self was left fairly isolated, still believing to some extent that to “be good” it must be bad, but without the releases of guilt once provided by churchly help and belief.

(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.

Beside this, people were reading our books, so to the Sinful Self Ruburt was leading those people astray (deliberately). Here you have a rather intense situation. (A one-minute pause.) Give us a moment.... The natural self operates within a state of grace, by whatever name, a state that allows for spontaneity, and implies self-trust. Most religious concepts, unfortunately, regardless of the original intentions behind them, end up by dividing man from his own sense of grace—his sense of rightness within the universe, and the individual will do almost anything to gain back that sense, for it is highly vital.

(Long pause.) That is at least a partial answer to your question. Ruburt began at once, you see, and has done well. Your help has also been of great value, for it showed of course that he was not being abandoned, for one thing. I am going to keep our session brief for this evening, however.

(“I do have another one, but you can discuss it later. It concerns Ruburt’s mother, and her own intensity of reaction.”)