“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., my students in class were quite upset, and like many people throughout the country and probably the world, we began to discuss the meaning of violence. In the middle of our conversation, Seth came through:

My class is small but students range in age from sixteen to sixty. One evening we were discussing student riots. Carl and Sue are both in their early twenties. They had been upholding ideas of nonviolence and peace. The older adults began complaining about the rioters with some bitterness, however, until Sue said with some heat: “Well, I’m against violence, too. But sometimes it’s justified—”

She hardly got the words out of her mouth before Seth interrupted her. Everyone jumped. In the heat of the discussion, Seth and ESP in general had been forgotten. Now Seth’s voice really boomed out. “There is never any justification for violence. There is no justification for hatred. There is no justification for murder. Those who indulge in violence for whatever reason are themselves changed, and the purity of their purpose adulterated.

“When you curse another, you curse yourselves, and the curse returns to you. When you are violent, the violence returns. … I speak to you because yours is the opportunity [to better world conditions] and yours is the time. Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear.

“When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed, there will be no peace. As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war. Unfortunately it is difficult to imagine that all the young men in all of the countries will refuse to go to war at the same time. And so you must work out the violence that violence has wrought. Within the next hundred years that time may come. Remember, you do not defend any idea with violence.