1 result for (book:ur1 AND heading:"introductori note by robert f butt" AND stemmed:vital)
[... 35 paragraphs ...]
Although there are similarities, then, in our view there are vital differences, too, between Seth’s philosophy and that of many other organized systems. Jane and I prefer to think about the unities we find in our world as including religions, not being defined by them, and we think Seth stresses this. We go along in our own stubborn ways, knowing that our outlooks are rooted in the Western traditions of the world, but also knowing that there exist all about us these numerous other philosophies or systems, some of them many centuries old, that the human race has created to help it explain reality. Yet we feel no compulsion to intimately know the details of, say, Sufism or Brahmanism. (A simile I often think of here compares Eastern and Western life and thought with the right and left hemispheres of the brain; they’re separate, yet united; each half performs functions that complement and to some extent overlap those of the other, and together they operate as a whole.) But we dislike the idea of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism, which calls for the extinction or blowing out of individual consciousness, and its absorption into a supreme spirit, usually after a series of lives. And we object to the notion that “nature,” in those terms of linear time, has so arranged things that the individual has to pay a karmic debt in one life as the result of actions in a previous one. Why should nature punish anyone if it doesn’t punish anything? The realities of nirvana and karma are not ones that Jane and I want to create.
[... 25 paragraphs ...]
Your problems are caused by your own doubts. These doubts arise because you have been out of touch with the validity of your own existence. Let me here reinforce that validity. Let me reinforce my faith in your innate ability to find joyful acquiescence, and to rise above any problems that you have. If I presume to solve problems for you, then I deny you your own power, and further reinforce any feelings of powerlessness that you have. I know that you can grow tired, however, and that sometimes a gift of energy can be quite a boost; so, again, with this letter I send my joyful recognition of your existence — and energy that you can use to reinforce your own vitality and strength.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]