“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Since ancient times religion has tried to help man understand the nature of his own subjective reality — but religion has its own dark side, and for this reason religion unfortunately has fostered fear of the spontaneous.

Instead of promoting the idea of man’s inner worth, it has taught people to distrust the inner self and its manifestations. Most churches preach a dogma that stresses concepts of the sinful self, and sees man as a creature contaminated by original sin even before birth.

This distorted picture depicts a species of sinners innately driven by evil, sometimes demonic, forces. In this dogma man needs to apologize for his birth, and the conditions of life are seen as a punishment set by God upon his erring creatures. Unfortunately such concepts are also reflected in fields of psychology, particularly in Freudianism — where, say, slips of the tongue may betray the self’s hidden, nefarious true desires.