“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, mankind builds civilizations. He has gone beyond the child’s game. The toys are real, and yet basically the analogy holds. I am not condoning those violences that occur. The fact is that they can never be condoned, and yet they must be understood for what they are: man, learning through his own errors. He also learns by his successes, and there are times when he holds his hand, moments of deliberation, periods of creativity. (Pause.) Identities take many roles in many lives.

The race of man is far more than the physical race, however. You see him in but one stage of development. When an individual leaves your system, it is for other systems. He has learned his ABC’s, but that is all. There are exceptions—identities who choose to return and teach. They are not in the same league, so to speak, as those whose reincarnational cycles are not complete. They may return, even enduring violence, as a man might set up a school amid a jungle of savages.

In those days neither did a sane, reasonable man give thought to sharing his wealth, or even consider the plight of the poorer classes. Not only was charity not given, its practical nature was not even considered. The archaic concept of God (at that time) nicely covered such matters. The poor were obviously sinful. Poverty was their penance, and it was considered a sacrilege to try to help those whom God had cursed. Animals were tortured in sport. Compassion for living things in males was regarded as a weakness to be plucked out. Women were scarcely thought of as human, except in very select circles.

The progression through the centuries would be far more noticeable if you knew all the facts. There is one aspect here that I have not previously mentioned: Man was not allowed to play with the more dangerous toys until certain evidence was given that he had gained some control. This does not mean that he could not have destroyed the world he knew. It simply meant that such destruction was not inevitable. You do not give a child a loaded gun if you are certain he is going to shoot himself or his neighbor.

There were nine planets once, grouped like jewels around the sun. They were evenly spaced, one from the other, and they were evenly distributed outward from the sun. And this was the first system that knew the race of man. These were in your corner of the universe, but in your terms they would have seemed to have drifted off so far that none of your instruments could ever find them.