“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Expression itself was considered highly suspect if it traveled outside of the accepted precepts, and particularly of course if it led others to take action against those precepts. To some extent the same type of policy is still reflected in your current societies, though science or the state itself may serve instead of the church as the voice of authority.

Many people’s economic well-being of course was dependent upon the church in one way or another, and in reincarnational terms many millions of people alive today were familiar then with such conditions. The nunneries and monasteries were long-time social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. But there is a long history of the conflicts between creative thought, heresy, excommunication, or worse, death. All of those factors were involved in one way or another in the fabric of Ruburt’s nightmare material.

There are, however, classic connections between creative thought and heresy, between established belief and the danger of revelatory material as being disruptive—first of church and then of state.

The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came [to the house] regularly, through direct contact with the religious [grade] school, and the support offered to the family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father Boyle, who objected to its themes, and who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of those fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all (equally important, of course). In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. It was precisely in the area of artistic expression, of course, that the inspirations might quickest leap through the applied dogmatic framework. The political nature of inspirational material of any kind was well understood by the church.

By such tactics the church managed to hold on to an entire civilization for centuries. (Long pause.) Ruburt well knew even as a child that such structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured. Later the old fears, if they surfaced, were not encountered. They seemed beneath him, unworthy or cowardly—but in any case their validity as feelings was not recognized or understood.

(Long pause at 9:37.) Ruburt had considerable difficulty with church doctrine even then, and the rules of the order as actually carried out through practice were later considered to hold their own seeds of heresy. Ruburt was forced to leave the order that he had initiated, as an old woman. He left with a few female companions who were also ostracized, and died finally of starvation. It was a time when unconventional patterns of thought, of unconventional expression, could have dire consequences.

The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.

(Half joking, I said to Jane, “What did you think of that? Are you trying to tell me religion has been in back of this all of the time? I thought you left the church. It appears you didn’t leave it at all.... I’ll have to arrange for an exorcism for you.”