“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] If as a species you really found yourselves communicating with the animals, you would have an entirely different culture, a culture that would indeed bring about an alteration of consciousness of the most profound nature.

Within the context of Islamic culture, law is intrinsically religious law; there is no real separation of state and church unless by force. [...]

[...] In Chapter 5, see the 832nd session for January 29, 1979: “Nature in all of its varieties is so richly encountered by the animals that it becomes their equivalent of your structures of culture and civilization. [...]

[...] Man cannot afford to become aware of such communication at this point, simply because your entire culture is based upon the idea of the animals’ “natural” subordinate position. [...]

Because of his cultural beliefs, he was also determined that his “womanly nature” would not impede his progress as a writer, or yours as an artist. [...]

[...] Taking probabilities into consideration, there are cultural movements involving the western world as it tried to form a new philosophical stance, and our books may well provide a highly valuable alternate position for people—again—between the passionate beliefs systems of religion in many countries, and the overly objective dictates of science. [...]

Ruburt has some inclinations in that direction, as do many creative people, but these rhythms are often nearly completely overlaid by culturally-learned ones. Cultures that were night-oriented (pause) appreciated the night in a different fashion, of course, and actually utilized their consciousnesses (pause) in ways that are almost nearly forgotten. [...]

[...] Your cultures—your civilizations—obviously affect the well-being of your species, and those cultures are formed by your ideas, and forged through the use of your imaginations and your intellects.

[...] The story of the Creation, as Biblically stated, is the symbolic representation of a master event—a legend that became its own event, of course, forming about it whole arts and cultures, religions and disciplines. [...]

[...] You are used to thinking of any bodily commotion as disruptive, and put it in the worst possible light because your backgrounds have given you little experience in such situations—you, Ruburt, or anyone else—largely in your culture.

This feeling that Christmas represented hypocrisy has been one of the main reasons for your own low spirits during the season, for it represented a rather deep disillusionment with the culture in which you were nurtured.

[...] Culturally speaking, there is a strong connection with pagan intuitions, deep and meaningful, that found newer and broader expressions.

[...] The magical orientation might be in direct conflict with our training in this and most present cultures. [...]

[...] Instead it’s as if I’m practicing some precise psychological art, one that is ancient and poorly understood in our culture; or as if I’m learning a psychological science that helps me map the contours of consciousness itself … after all this time, I’m finally examining the trance view of reality and comparing it to the official views of science and religion. [...]

[...] I also wanted to make certain points, stressing the importance of dreams as they impinge upon and help form cultural environments. [...]

[...] But culture throughout the ages was spread by more than physical means. [...]

[...] If you wanted to focus upon the differences in their behavior, you could build an entire culture based upon their diverse capabilities, functions and characteristics. [...]

[...] Since you are otherwise free to perform other kinds of activity that you think of as sexually oriented, in those areas the orientation is cultural.

[...] This meant that a certain conformity to official culture was maintained.

[...] At the same time you are everywhere surrounded by the suggestions of your culture.

Because you were born in this culture, it is not surprising that you still fall prey to lack of trust in yourselves, or in the body’s abilities to cure itself. [...]

When you feel the sessions do not help, it is of course because you doubt yourselves, and you doubt yourselves because of the very cultural reality you are in the process of changing for yourselves and others. [...]

To some extent, particularly at certain levels, that participation brings about a far greater sense of sympathy and power than adults ever realize, particularly in your cultural times. [...]

If you take your own world view with you all of the time, however, as you travel, even in your own world, then you never see the “naked culture.” [...] You always see other cultures through your own eyes.

Now when you leave your home station and alter your consciousness, you are always a tourist if you take your own baggage of ideas along with you, and interpret your experiences through your own personal, cultural beliefs. [...]

(Pause at 11:15.) In many “native” cultures an individual is not considered in terms of his age at all, and the numbering of years is regarded as insignificant. [...] It would do you all good — young, middle-aged and old alike — to forget the number of your years, because in your culture so many beliefs are limiting in those ways. [...]

[...] In this century several issues came to the forefront of American culture: the exteriorization of organized religion, which became more of a social rather than a spiritual entity, and the joining of science with technology and moneyed interests. [...] Young adults found themselves faced with a multitudinous number of personal decisions that in other cultures were made more or less automatically. [...]

In your culture there are several built-in unfortunate circumstances in particular. [...]

[...] And when you compare your technologies, learning, logical thought, cultures and arts with what you understand of animal experience, there seems no doubt that you are superior and “the Flower of Evolution” — that all other kinds of life are topped by your existence.

You are closed to the intricate, voluptuous, sensuous, social experience of the animals, or even of the plants — not being able to perceive that different kind of biological emotion and belonging, that rich, sensual identification with earth, and cut off from a biologically oriented culture that is everywhere part and parcel of both plant and animal life.

[...] There were highly developed human beings with elaborate civilizations, existing simultaneously with what you might call animal kingdoms — that is, more or less organized primeval animal tribes, possessing their own kinds of ‘primitive’ cultures.

[...] Their senses were extremely acute, and their ‘cultures’ dealt with a kind of transmission of knowledge that made a highly complicated vocabulary unnecessary.

[...] There were many highly technical human cultures, but in your terms not on a global scale. [...]

Organized religions are always attempts to redefine that kind of feeling in cultural terms. They seldom succeed because they become too narrow in their concepts, too dogmatic, and the cultural structures finally overweigh the finer substance within them.

Your private beliefs merge with those of others, and form your cultural reality. [...]

[...] As a result you forget your natural selves, and become involved in a secondary, largely imaginary culture: battles that are projected negatively into the future, individually and en masse. [...]