“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

People’s beliefs do form the cultural system, which then exerts its influence upon the individual. The cultural system is not imposed however from some outside source, and it is not biologically predetermined. It has its biological aspects, of course; but war, for example, is not a biological culmination of an aggressive instinct (period).

Since it is formed by beliefs held by natural creatures, culture is, as Ruburt states, as natural as your physical environment. Once you are born into a particular time and country, you do grow up in an almost invisible but definite environment of concepts, assumptions, and predetermined ideas that serve as a basis from which your own individual beliefs spring. There is a constant give-and-take between any individual and his cultural system.

Now: in The Nature of Personal Reality we discussed the nature of private beliefs. Some day there can be a book called The Nature of Cultural Reality.

[...] The bonding is not meant to be permanent, however, and after a while the child begins to question its affiliations, the ways and means vary according to cultures. Some cultures provide symbols, or symbolic steps within the system itself, that allow for a steady “progression,” in which a young person’s curiosity and accelerated adolescent rebellion is subtly directed from within the society itself. [...]

The errors and discrepancies of the culture are apparent, and that information can then be used in highly creative ways. Solutions can then be sought for the problems of the culture as well. [...]

(8:44.) In terms of reincarnation, Christianity in numberless cases even served as a uniting framework connecting lives: you could for example theoretically move from one century to another, and while there were social and political changes, the overall cultural framework might well be the same. [...]

Education in your culture is a mixed bag (with ironic and humorous emphasis) — and education comes not from schools alone, but from newspapers and television, magazines and books, from art and from culture’s own feedback. Generally speaking, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two kinds of education — one focused toward teaching the child to deal with the natural world, and one focused toward teaching the child how to deal with the cultural world. [...]

Your educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up (pause) smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. It became more important, then, for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. [...]

EDUCATION AND CULTURE.

[...]

(Long pause at 10:18.) In a fashion—and forgive me for using one of my favorite qualifications again—but in a fashion, cultures do not evolve in the kind of straightforward manner that is usually supposed. Of course, cultures change, but man instantly began to fashion culture, as for example beavers instantly began to form dams. [...]

Man automatically began to form culture. He did not start with the rudiments of culture, as is thought. [...] The first cultures were as rich as your own. [...]

Various tribes in different parts of the earth would suddenly begin using new tools, say, not because there might be any physical communication among them, or cultural exchanges, but because separate conditions in their own environments triggered mental processes that activated the particular images of the tools required for a given job at hand. [...]

[...] All kinds of taboos against sexual relations have been applied here, particularly in so-called native cultures. In those cultures, such taboos make good sense. [...]

These are simple enough examples, but the man who possesses interests considered feminine by your culture, who naturally wants to enter fields of interest considered womanly, experiences drastic conflicts between his sense of personhood and identity — and his sexuality as it is culturally defined. [...]

[...] There are quite natural sexual variations, even involving reproduction, that are not now apparent in human behavior in any culture. [...]

[...] It is peculiarly suited, of course, to react to cultural information. [...] Through that kind of action it helps form your cultural environment, the civilization of which you are justly proud.

THE INTELLECT AS A CULTURAL ARTIFACT.

[...]

Some of this, again, is difficult to explain (pause), but in a fashion the intellect is a cultural (underlined) phenomenon. [...]

[...] When you were both working on those projects your cultural time was taken up in a way you found acceptable. Creative time and cultural time to some extent merged, in that you could see daily immediate evidence of creativity’s product, coming out of the typewriters, say, like any product off an assembly line. You were “using” time as your cultural training told you to do.

[...] In the light of that kind of physical time, which is involved within earthly biology, there is no (pause) basic cultural time. That is, to this natural rhythm you have culturally added the idea of clocks, moments and hours and so forth, which you have transposed over nature’s rhythms.

(9:05.) Such a cultural time works well overall for the civilization that concentrates upon partialities, bits and pieces, assembly lines, promptness of appointments, and so forth. [...]

[...] Their products are the seas upon which you sail your ships, the skies through which your airplanes fly, the land upon which your cities sprawl, and the very reality that makes your culture, or any culture, possible.

You have a mass psychological environment that forms your worldly culture, and corresponds to a worldly stage set in which experience then occurs. [...]

[...] You look upon your cultural world with its art and manufacture, its cities, technology, and the cultivated use of the intellectual mind. [...]

[...] Part of this is personal, but part is also cultural, and shows the one area of cultural beliefs from which Ruburt has not freed himself. [...]

[...] This is a part of your culture. [...]

Again, since you are culturally taught, to accept physical data as your criteria for physical reality, this is to some extent quite understandable. [...]

The gentleman who wrote you from Canada (Vincent Vycinas)—the writer—is living out his cultural agony. (The name of VV’s book is Our Cultural Agony.) In his case the drugs are being used so that they can be blamed for a malaise that is spiritual. [...] He feels that he has lost his power, because he does not believe that the individual, with all his capacities, really has any effective power in the cultural world. [...]

(9:37.) Such momentary lapses follow personal and cultural patterns. [...]

Often your medical beliefs as a culture stabilize conditions that, left alone, would right themselves. [...]

Ever since she began studying Jane’s work fourteen years ago, my companion, Laurel Lee Davies, has been very conscious of the conflict between the rationalistic dominance so common in our culture, and the potential for greater development that she sensed within herself. [...] Laurel pointed out a number of forceful passages Jane wrote on cultural acceptance in The God of Jane in 1980 — the same year in which she dictated The Magical Approach for Seth. [...]

So far, metaphysics has only been entertainment, a step-science of our culture; part of the extended family of science for the purposes of inspiration and ideas, but not given credit as scientific truth. [...]

The world-view consists of those cultural and private beliefs concerning cultural, economic and social environments. [...]

The body is amazingly quick to act upon environmental cues of a physical nature, but your world also involves cultural activity and “dangers” that are not immediately biologically perceivable. [...]

[...] When the world-view enlarges to include more sophisticated cultural environments then, however, the body must rely upon the conscious mind’s interpretation of events. [...]

[...] Try to realize that even in your terms there have been multitudinous cultures upon the face of the earth, each one defining for all time, with great moral rectitude, the roles of men and women. There have been freer, more exuberant beliefs systems, and there have been more limiting ones, so look at those of your culture as they influence you as simply one of the ever-varying social fabrications by which a man colors his days. [...]

[...] There were endlessly complicated, multitudinous religious and cultural justifications for such a situation, so that the entire affair seemed, often, even to the most intelligent of men, self-evident. [...]

[...] Because there were few ground rules, and because it takes time to develop a culture, this rambunctious group set out to tame the continent, to show Europe that Americans could do Europe one better, without a king and without pomp. [...]

He has used the materials of your culture—the television programs and so forth—to excellent advantage in the dream state and otherwise, so that messages of his own psyche come through. [...]

The Mafia dream (of March 16) based on the gangsters’ series, for example, served to bring into conscious awareness not just the information, but Ruburt’s feelings about the dominant male role in your present culture. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, it is amazingly difficult to verbally describe the connections between the dream state, health, cultural stimuli, and the way all of these are put together in the interrelationship of body and mind —but Ruburt’s notes on his dreams and other experiences, being specific, can offer some excellent clues. [...]

[...] Castaneda speaks of what is really exotic behavior from your cultural viewpoint. We are saying that changes can be made from within the culture. [...]

[...] It can be counted upon, may grow slightly, but will not affect the overall culture to any considerable degree.

[...] You are competing now, as you were not before, however, in that general market with all of the conventional cultural goodies. [...]

Castaneda’s books, for all their seeming unconventionality, had a niche to fall into, for here was the quite conventional scholar exploring a culture, even of the mind; not his own—but safely, within an academic framework to which he then returned, and to which academic readers could identify. [...] That society could then accept his journeys, and the individuals could allow themselves to follow his adventures, and forgive him for his cultural transgression because he brought home goodies.

[...] The point, however, was always made that Don Juan’s inner culture was alien—natural perhaps to Don Juan, but not to Castaneda or to the reader.

Both varieties of books allow the reader a built-in distance that provides a cushion against cultural shock: the story is, after all, secondhand. [...]

In your mind you creatively envision the ideal—the sanity of some future culture that, hopefully, our work and others will bring about: if not tomorrow, some “time.” [...]

More than this, again, any money thus acquired in the future, as in the past, would go to promote the continuance of the very system that, left alone, would mutilate our book, and continue idiotic cultural and political policies that are opposed to what you stand for.

[...] When you thoroughly understand what is meant by the entire safe universe concept, then the physical, cultural climate is understood as a medium through which the ideal can be expressed—can be expressed. [...]

[...] The first man is my primary self, who discovers that he must bear the burdens of the second man imposed upon him through cultural beliefs involving taxes, success, the male breadwinner role, and so forth. [...]

[...] This means that I sidetrack —but not try to repress—those cultural and learned beliefs I’ve let rule my life in large measure, instead of following the natural, creative dictates of my first, or primary man. [...]

(My own activities, then, have aroused in Jane the urge to try the same approach, and I’ve suggested she think of her own women numbers 1 and 2. It seems that she confronts the same basic challenges I do, I told her, so she could delineate the two opposing portions of her personality well enough to understand that many of her cultural beliefs have been imposed upon her natural, spontaneous, free, creative self, and to such an extent that the acquired beliefs have turned into detriments rather than aids, that she envisioned as helping her obtain what she wants in life. [...]

[...] Then thought, nearly crying: I cut down desire—like loving to shop, and am afraid now to mix with people—then said Rob would help me there—in decent walking shape surely my attitude would be entirely different—so different it’s hard for me to imagine then to the importance that I make distinctions between the natural world; and the social or cultural one. [...]

[...] overreacted to my version of the social or cultural world as opposed to the natural one—where of course I fit in beautifully. [...]

[...] It would be cultured — for what, we don’t know.

(Then, while she was still eating, two lab technicians came in to take more blood from Jane — this was for a culture that would be grown for a week, they said. [...]

[...] It’s to be cultured like the last blood sample. [...]