“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE CATASTROPHIC. JONESTOWN, HARRISBURG, AND WHEN IS AN IDEALIST A FANATIC?

(10:20.) Chapter 7: “The Good, the Bad, and the Catastrophic. Jonestown, Harrisburg, and When Is an Idealist a Fanatic?”

[...] This applies to death through natural catastrophe as well as to any other situation.

[...] They know and yet pretend they do not know, but those who die in catastrophes choose the experience — the drama, even the terror when that occurs. [...]

[...] (Pause.) The more “civilized” man becomes, the more his social structures and practices separate him from intimate relationship with nature — and the more natural catastrophes there will be, because underneath he senses his great need for identification with nature; he will himself conjure it into earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods, so that he can once again feel not only their energy but his own.

Catastrophes, such as earthquakes or floods, are not perpetuated by certain elements of nature against other portions of itself. [...]

[...] A natural catastrophe represents the same kind of phenomenon at a different level. [...]

[...] There are many different attitudes and characteristics that apply, so that it is difficult to make generalizations, but there are always reasons why any individual is involved in a disastrous natural catastrophe.

[...] They will utilize the physical catastrophe as an individual might use a symptom for purposes of challenge, growth, or understanding — but they will choose their disaster just as they will choose their symptoms. [...]

So can a catastrophe be used consciously or unconsciously, according to the individual.

Constant fears about nuclear destruction, or other such catastrophes can also fall under this classification.

[...] The scientist will see the affair as relatively neutral —an event, however, in which man is certainly a pawn, caught by chance in a catastrophe that he would otherwise most certainly avoid. The earthquake is a mass natural catastrophe, seeming then to be perpetrated upon man and his cities by an earth that certainly does not take man or his civilization into consideration.

[...] And how can the desire to do good bring about catastrophic results?

[...] 2, one the two reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power generating plant, overheated and came close to a catastrophic meltdown of its uranium fuel. [...]

[...] [The entire plant is idle, since unit 1 had already been shut down for refueling.] By now the situation is much more serious, however: There’s a chance of a catastrophic “meltdown” of the uranium fuel rods in the damaged reactor’s core—the worst possible accident that can occur in such circumstances, short of an explosion, and a kind that proponents of nuclear power have long maintained “almost certainly cannot happen.” [...]

Often, however, in their private worlds people have their own versions of the feared probabilities, which they then run through the screens of their minds for good measure, so that they can take steps to avoid whatever catastrophe or near-catastrophe is involved.

[...] Any conceivable illness will worsen, and any possible catastrophe be encountered.

(And: “Faith and belief can move mountains, as they say — but it can also cause natural catastrophes.”

[...] The book follows the idea that an objectified God made the universe (and the earth) in a perfect condition, and that instead of evolving toward more complicated forms, it’s running down; that decay and catastrophe are break-downs of previous better conditions, but that even these will finally be removed by the Creator after they have served their own special purposes. [...]

[...] Why man’s sin, resulting in the catastrophic flood, to which all species fell victim? The regular theory of evolution doesn’t have to contend with such questions, of course, but in the book I just read no explanations for questions like that are given—I don’t even remember that they were raised.

[...] As of now, of course, you live in a survivor’s world, for all of the catastrophes of a worldwide nature that could have happened thus far, have not. [...]

[...] To be too womanly might bring about the catastrophe of childbirth, and in the terms in which you both operated once, destroy you as artists.

[...] It does mean that not all sexual activity is meant to end in childbirth — which is a biological impossibility, and would represent planetary catastrophe. [...]

[...] The cozy living room is quite safe from the imaginary catastrophes that are occurring just a few feet from the couch. [...]

[...] The question in such instances is the reason for such a person’s overconcern and alarm in the first place—why the intense interest in such possible catastrophes, or in crime or whatever?—and the answer lies in an examination of the person’s feelings and beliefs about the nature of existence itself.

How did Hitler’s initially wishy-washy undefined ideals of nationalistic goodness turn into such a world catastrophe? [...]

(Long pause at 9:45.) There are as many frontiers as there ever were, and there is no catastrophe that will annihilate consciousness, or put an end to earthly life. [...]

[...] It will seem obvious to some, again, that a natural disaster is caused by God’s vengeance, or is at least a divine reminder to repent, while others will take it for granted that such a catastrophe is completely neutral in character, impersonal and [quite] divorced from man’s own emotional reality. [...]