“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

3. Jane’s mention of possession came about because today I’d read her an article in a scholarly journal we subscribe to. The piece contained public information with which we were already familiar. Briefly, most authorities in the Roman Catholic Church realize that almost all of those who are supposed to be “possessed” by malevolent forces are in actuality mentally ill people who need treatment. Yet the church must admit the separate reality of the devil and numerous demons, because their existences are given in the Gospels. This contradiction was reinforced in 1972, when Pope Paul VI declared before several thousand people that the devil is a distinct, actual being.)

(A one-minute pause at 9:29.) Devils and demons have no objective existence. They have always represented, again, portions of mankind’s own psychological reality that to some extent he had not assimilated—but in a schizophrenic kind of expression, projected instead outward from himself. Therefore, it does not seem he must be held accountable for acts that he considers debasing, or cruel. He isolates himself from that responsibility by imagining the existence of other forces—the devils or demons of the nether world.

The supposedly telepathic messages can be attributed to contemporaries—enemies, gods, devils, or what have you. Spacemen are a recent addition. In most cases, what you have here are expressions of strong portions of the self that are more or less purposefully kept in isolation. They may appear or disappear, psychologically speaking. They present a kind of chain of command—one that is not usually permanent for any long period, however.

The Christ figure represents the exaggerated, idealized version of the inner self that the individual feels incapable of living up to. He feels he is being crucified by his own abilities. He may—or of course she may—on other occasions receive messages from the devil, or demons, which on their part represent the person’s feelings about the physical self that seems to be so evil and contradictory in contrast to the idealistic image. Again, there is great variety of behavior here.

Some very old religions understood the hallucinatory nature of the devil concept, but even in Egyptian times, the simpler and more distorted ideas became prevalent, particularly with the masses of people. In some ways, men in those times could not understand the concept of a god without the concept of a devil.

There are, then, no devils waiting to carry anyone off, unless you create them yourself, in which case the power resides in you and not in the mock devils. [...]

[...] Now it has been said often that there is a god, so there must be a devil — or if there is good, there must be evil. [...]

[...] As long as you believe in a devil, for example, you will create one that is real enough for you, and for the others who continue to create him.

(Jane continued: “But that devil image comes from a long pagan line of earth gods, and always represented the innate knowledge inherent even in the earth itself. [...] Religion tried to make the devil into a black shadow of God, His counterpoint and yet opposite, but man forgot what counterpoint meant. Personified, for example, the devil is the fury of a storm, but disconnected from a storm’s great creativity.”

[...] I saw a devil image walking away from me in one direction, and on the other side of me an angel image, walking away; and I knew I had both these images of myself. [...]

(In the same average voice she began: “In the shadow of the image organized religion [at the same time my hands want to fly up], after it has been set up, has always been afraid of revelationary knowledge; to protect itself; and the Catholic Church in particular cast it in the form of a devil, which I was taught: the sin of pride, wanting to learn.”

[...] She talked him out of his nuclear-arms policies, and out of the devil — and evil — idea. [...]

[...] He convinced that portion that the old beliefs about good and evil, self-destruction, and the existence of the Catholic devil, were not valid. [...]

[...] A preacher may stand golden-faced, earnest-eyed, extolling the merits of goodness and damning the legions of the devil — and to some of my readers that devil, unseen, never appearing, may nevertheless seem quite real.

There is a compassion, a jovial yet understanding one, that I can feel for such activities that is more difficult for you to experience, but in many cases the drama—the gods or devils who seem (underlined) to speak through the board, the sense of importance felt by the participators, the heightened emotional activity—all of these provide often, rich elements of experience otherwise lacking from a mundane daily existence.

[...] If you are not careful, you see, you end up with whole leagues of in quotes “devils and angels,” only completely disconnected from human personality. [...]

You end up with the casting-out of devils, which can be of great benefit, incidentally, if (underlined) the sufferer happens to believe (underlined) he is possessed by one.

[...] (Pause.) If you do not understand that you create your own reality, then you may assign all good results to a personified god, and need the existence of a devil to explain the undesirable reality. So churches as they now exist in Western society need a devil as well as a god.

[...] The “devil” becomes a powerful evil figure, for example. [...]

Some individuals can with ease and exuberance imagine themselves in a fistfight, a brawl, unmercifully beating “the devil” out of an adversary. [...]

Now: It is often said that man believes in devils because he believes in gods. [...]

If you are religious-minded and fundamental in your beliefs, you may blame a devil who causes you to behave in such and such a manner. [...]

[...] The therapist should make it clear that he understands that the client is not lying, in ordinary terms, when he reports hearing voices from the devil.

[...] Nor can you blame a devil for the world’s misfortunes. You have grown sophisticated enough to realize that the Devil is a projection of your own psyche, but you have not grown wise enough to learn how to use your creativity constructively.

[...] When you fear that man will most certainly destroy himself through his misuse of technologies, then you are expressing the same feeling in different form expressed by the religious attitude—only religion’s devils are turned into technological devices. [...]

[...] Science, if it bothered, might label him a fool, but fundamental religion could label him as evil, or claim his work was inspired by the devil in Christian terms, and so the old beliefs in the Sinful Self or evil self were activated. [...]

[...] And if you will excuse me, in so doing you are taking on the guise of the devil. It is the same thing you see, as projecting upon a hypothetical devil all kinds of powers of destruction. [...]

The alternative, that of hellfire, was equally unbelievable. Yet the conventional God of our fathers apparently sat without a qualm with the blessed in heaven, while the devil tortured the rest of the unlucky dead. [...]

[...] Heaven and hell, angels and devils, were dismissed. [...]

In a way, that concept puts a psychological devil in place of the metaphysical one. [...]

Now, it is also true that in some of its aspects religion has glorified suffering, elevated it to [be] one of the prime virtues—and it has degraded it at other times, seeing the ill as possessed by devils, or seeing the insane as less than human. [...]

[...] In such circumstances an individual might then construct an artificial devil or demon who annoys him constantly, and even orders acts of a highly destructive nature.

[...] The authors, however, suppose that the devils have a reality outside of your belief in them, and such is not the case. [...]

[...] There is no reason, for example, to encounter any demons or devils in any trance or out-of-body condition.³ (Pause.) In such cases your own hallucinations blind you to the environment within which they are projected. [...]

When people using such methods are told that their writing comes through from a demon or the devil, or an evil spirit, then those invisible beliefs are shoved farther away. [...]

[...] Western religion and science promote the ideas of competition, effort, the emphasis upon the will, divorced from the imagination, so that to “give up all effort” can be read as an abdication of responsibility, an indication of laziness and sloth; or in fundamental Christian terms, the devil finds work for idle hands.

[...] Joe B may hold the opposite viewpoint most intently — that sex is at least evil, perhaps sent by the devil, and below or beneath the dignity of a good man.