“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause at 10:10.) At the same time, there is much discussion about the good of mankind, ideal principles, goodness, charity and faith—but these are seen as possible only within the group, for the exterior world, you are told, is full of evil and corruption.

The group is always pitted against the world, which becomes its enemy. Paranoia reigns. Evidences of the world’s corruption are collected, and any proofs of man’s good intent begin to fade away. The end is seen as justifying the means. The hoped-for spiritual heaven on earth—in those terms (underlined) – is unattainable, of course.

The fundamentalist Christian groups, for all of their fanaticism, at least offer some kind of temporary relief for their believers; they are “saved” through prayer and good works. Many other sects, however, offer no such comfort, as for example the Guyana group. The concentration upon self-betrayal and worldly corruption offers no escape. Expression becomes meaningless under such conditions, not trusting the structure of the self, then the self’s expression is denied. It is feared. Yet the new self never comes—not the promised, overly idealized self that feels a godly love without distinctions. And all good works appear meaningless in the terribly exaggerated picture painted of social and world events.

(Pause.) The concentration upon self-righteousness and evidence of corruption leads to its own fulfillment, and in that dark light the expression of the good appears powerless.

(8:38.) He concentrated upon the vast gulf that seemed to separate the idealized good and the practical, ever-pervading corruption that in his eyes grew by leaps and bounds. [...] Eventually it seemed to him that he was surrounded by the corrupt, and that any means at his disposal was justified to bring down those who would threaten the presidency or the state.

[...] He believed in the absolute necessity of power, while convinced at the same time that he did not possess it; and further, he believed that in the most basic terms the individual was powerless to alter the devastating march of evil and corruption that he saw within the country, and in all the other countries of the world. [...]

[...] I thought the book’s editor had changed his slant in the new work, for now I came across many more pieces about foolish governmental spending, corruption, and so forth I read some of them aloud to Jane. [...]

(11:40.) To some people wars, poverty, murder, treachery, corruption, are primary experience, and must be dealt with — as requiring immediate action. [...]

[...] To attack medical corruption, or medical errors, or particular clinics, for example, is within bounds, but to attack the belief system of the entire structure is something else again.

(Pause in a forceful delivery.) You may begin to exaggerate the gulf between this generalized ideal and the specific evidences of man’s “greed and corruption” that you see so obviously about you. [...]

(Before the session this evening I spent some time blowing off steam about a variety of large issues that we see reflected in our daily news media—such things as corruption, pollution, inflation, the destiny of the race if it persists in its present ways, etc. [...]

[...] Often the word “power” has bad implications: power corrupts, for example. [...]

[...] They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. [...]

[...] You can hardly grow into your full potential if you think you are a physical creature bounded and limited by the physical limitations of time and space, soon to fall corrupted into an early and filthy grave. [...]

[...] Particularly when I consider the “news” on the typical front page of the typical daily newspaper: All too accurately the “stories” of war, pollution, corruption, and poverty and crime show just how little we human beings know or understand ourselves at this time—and how far we have to go, individually and en masse. As the years have passed, I’ve come to trust more and more my own insights into our behavior as a species within the framework of a nature that I believe our kind has co-created with every other species on the planet (to confine my theme to just our immediate environment for the moment). [...]

[...] Jane and I certainly aren’t turned on to realize that a major religion, for instance, teaches the “facts” of man’s basically corrupt and sinful nature; surely a religion in the best sense can offer beliefs superior to those! [...]