“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rising ego consciousness then would have its religious reasons for domination and control. The pope became God the Father personified, but that god had indeed changed from the old Jewish Jehovah. Christ, historically speaking, had altered that concept enough so that at least God the Father was not quite as capricious as Jehovah. (Pause.) Some mercy came to the forefront. Growing ego consciousness could not run rampant over nature. On the other hand, holy wars and ignorance would keep the population down. The church, however — the Roman Catholic Church — still held a repository of religious ideas and concepts that served as a bank of probabilities from which the race could draw. The religious ideas served as social organization, much needed, and many of the monks managed to preserve old manuscripts and knowledge underground. Those who were allied with religious principles, now, mainly survived, and brought forth communities and descendants who were protected. Psychic and religious ideas, then, despite many drawbacks, served as a method of species organization. They are far more important in terms of “evolution” than is recognized. Religious concepts from the beginning kept tribes together, provided social structures, and insured physical survival and the protection that made descendants most probable.

(Long pause.) Other democratic societies had existed in the past, but in them democracy was still based on one religious precept, though it might be expressed in different ways — as, for example, in the Greek city-states (in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.). The Holy Roman Empire united a civilization under one religious idea, but the true brotherhood of man can be expressed only by allowing the freedom of man’s thought under the banner of cooperation; and only this will result in the fulfillment of the species, with developments of consciousness that in your terms were latent from the beginning.

(Then we wondered whether Seth had referred to aspects of Christ’s philosophy that were truly buried — quite unknown today. Almost always I refrain from interrupting the flow of session material with questions, but now I wished I’d asked Seth about that. Jane and I also liked the idea that from their earliest times, religious forces had been operating in the development of the species; this seemed to be a very sensible concept — and quite obvious once it was mentioned.

The growth of ideas space-wise was a prerequisite. Men on one side of the planet had to know what men were thinking on the other side. All of this presupposed spatial manipulation. Religious incentives always served to stimulate man’s spatial curiosity (intently).⁶

[...] You cannot, each of you, consider the real meaning of your own sexuality unless you understand your own religious history. [...]