“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yet I think more is involved than choosing among the belief systems offered by Eastern or Western cultures, for instance — that is, in more basic terms each personality would make that kind of choice before physical birth, with the full understanding of the vast influence such a decision would have upon a life’s work. Obviously, in those terms of linear time, Jane and I each feel that we chose our present environments.

Yet Buddhist belief, for instance, maintains that our perception of the world is not fundamental, but an illusion; our “ignorance” of this basic undifferentiated “suchness” then results in the division of reality into objects and ideas. But why call our generalized awareness an illusion, instead of regarding it as one of the innumerable manifestations that reality takes? No one is free of certain minimum physical needs or of self-oriented thought, I remarked to Jane recently, and each nation strives to expand its technological base no matter what its philosophy may be. Would a widespread use of Eastern religious doctrines be more practical on our earth today, or the kind of self-knowledge Seth advocates? Even given their undeniable accomplishments, why didn’t the Eastern countries create ages ago the immortal societies that could have served as models for those of the West to emulate — cultures and/or nations in which all the mundane human vicissitudes (in those terms) had been long understood and abolished: war, crime, poverty, ignorance, and disease?

[...] It has a good overall climate, a great mixture of cultures. [...]

[...] As given [at various times over the years, mostly in personal material], they involve cultural training and religious indoctrinations.⁴ He is challenging, finally, the old beliefs that say that the self’s spontaneity is not to be trusted. [...]