“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the same fashion, the person who hallucinates the voice of God or a demon actually does so to preserve the idea of sanity in his own mind. As long as he or she believes that a god or demon is involved, then the person can consider the entire affair most extraordinary, decidedly apart from usual experience, but valid.

[...] (Persantine.) The more dangerous ones, for God’s sake, turned down the body’s own defense mechanisms and immunity, an effect that really seemed absolutely senseless to me. [...]

[...] Actually, I’d explained them very well in God of Jane. [...]

Though I haven’t explored this idea yet at all in depth, I got a feeling that by the time I’d finished Mass Events and my God of Jane I’d come to a point of indecision and perhaps certainly some despondency because I had not resolved the issues. [...]

[...] And my God, talk about fatal flaws! [...]

The main issue, however, in that particular era, was a shared belief system, a system that consisted of, among other things, implied images that were neither here nor there—neither entirely earthly nor entirely divine—a mythology of God, angels, demons, an entire host of Biblical characters that were images in man’s imagination, images to be physically portrayed. [...] Using them, the artist automatically commented upon the world, the times, God, man, and officialdom.

In a fashion, those stylized figures that stood for the images of God, apostles, saints, and so forth, were like a kind of formalized abstract form, into which the artist painted all of his emotions and all of his beliefs, all of his hopes and dissatisfactions. Let no one make God the Father look like a mere human, for example! [...]

[...] While the Roman Catholic Church gave him a powerful, cohesive belief system (pause), for many reasons those beliefs shifted so that the division between man and God became too great. (Pause.) Man the sinner took over from man the child of God. [...]

For centuries it was taken for granted that God was on the side of the strongest, richest nation. Surely, it seemed, if a country was poor or downtrodden, it was because God had made it so.

(Timothy told Jane that his 16-year-old daughter voiced two questions for Seth: “Is there a God? [...]

In the same way: yes, there is a God. [...]

[...] So in many ways the stories of a God are myths, but you are still left with a bag of toys on one hand, and the luxurious earth on the other, so the question still remains.

(9:35.) Is there a God, or is there a being, or a source behind all reality? [...]

“MESSAGES” FROM GODS, DEMONS, HEROES,
AND OTHER PROMINENT PERSONS — OR,
MORE CONFLICTING BELIEFS

[...] This imaginary personage may say that it is God, or a famous hero from the present or the past, or Jesus Christ, or Mohammed, and the personality involved will be quite certain that such is the case.

Donald, for example, may hear the hallucinated voice of the god or hero. [...]

If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following questions might be asked: “Am I being punished by God, and for what reason? Is the disaster the result of God’s vengeance?” A scientist might ask instead: “With better technology and information, could we somehow have predicted the disaster, and saved many lives?” He might try to dissociate himself from emotion, and to see the disaster simply as the result of a nonpersonal nature that did not know or care what lay in its path.

In all cases, however, such situations instantly bring to mind questions of man’s own reality and source, his connections with God, his planet, and the universe. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

[...] In the terms in which you understand the word, there is a God. [...] For that matter, in the terms of your language, and intellectual concepts, you will probably have to take it for granted that you cannot understand the nature of such a God.

You will know God’s actions, however, through the manifestations of the universe. That God is not simply neutral energy, for example. [...]

There is no need to create a separate god who exists outside of your universe and separate from it, nor is there any need to think of a soul as some distant entity. God, or All That Is, is intimately a part of you. [...]

[...] It is no more divorced from you than — capital — God is.

[...] Only when you think of the soul as something different, separate, and therefore closed, are you led to consider a separate god — a personality that seems to be apart from creation.

[...] Having denied his impulses, believing them wrong, and having impeded his expression of his own power to affect others, he might, for example, “hear the voice of God.” That voice might tell him to commit any of a number of nefarious actions — to assassinate the enemies that stand in the way of his great ideal — and it might seem to him and to others that he has a natural impulse to kill, and indeed an inner decree from God to do so.

According to conditions, such a person could be a member of a small cult or the head of a nation, a criminal or a national hero, who claims to act with the authority of God. [...]

How can you trust your impulses when you read, for example, that a man commits a murder because he has a strong impulse to do so, or because the voice of God commanded it? [...]

(Seth-Jane spelled the god’s name Bael. [...] Baal was most often a god of fertility, its image of stone probably a phallic one. [...]

[...] A group gathered together with Bael as their idea of God. [...]

There is one God, but within that God are many. [...]

[...] Now he knows differently, but he still clings to the idea of one god, one self, and one body through which to express it.

I was between projects after The God of Jane. [...] I took that to mean that I would shortly be on the move again creatively, and to be prepared, so I had Rob help me move all my writing materials from the small breezeway where I’d finished The God of Jane, into the new patio back room, as a gesture of being ready to start over.

[...] I was finishing work on one of my own books, The God of Jane. [...]

1. Jane Roberts writes in The God of Jane: “Since late 1963, I’ve clocked approximately 4,000 hours of trancetime, during which the Seth sessions have been held twice weekly. [...]

[...] Her own work has been going well for the most part, however—she expects to finish Chapter 12 of God of Jane tomorrow. Because of her concentration on that hook she hasn’t done much on her book of poetry, If We Live Again, since late February; and as I mentioned in the Preface for Dreams, she laid aside her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, in May 1979 when she began God of Jane. [...]

I want to add that even with ideas of religious determinism—that man cannot know God’s will, for instance, or is quite dependent upon that divine grace—we’re still creating our conscious ideas of what God is, in those terms. [...]

[...] And he still struggles with questions about his freedom before God’s omnipotence and foreknowledge, and whether those qualities cause events, or can cause them, and whether they involve predestination. [...]

[...] In many ways the soul is an incipient god, and later in this book we will discuss the “god concept.” [...]

Now: Often it seems that the soul is thought of as a precious stone, to be finally presented as a gift to God, or considered as some women used to consider their virginity — something highly prized that must be lost; the losing of it being signified as a fine gift to the receiver.

[...] Obviously, then, the affected individual was thought to be speaking for God when he gave orders or directives. [...]

[...] Put very loosely, the dogma says that you must love God or he will destroy you. [...]

Illness was suffered, was sent by God to purge the soul, to cleanse the body, to punish the sinner, or simply to teach man his place by keeping him from the sins of pride. Suffering sent by God was considered a fact of life, then, and a religious truth as well.

[...] It is about as factual as the “fact” that God sends illness as punishment, or that illness is the unwanted gift of mischievous demons.

[...] The church’s concepts at least gave suffering a kind of dignity: It did (underlined) come from God—an unwelcome gift, perhaps—but after all it was punishment handed out from a firm father for a child’s own good.

(10:45 P.M. “My God, your fingers must be ready to fall off!” Jane exclaimed as she quickly came out of her excellent trance state. [...]

[...] The child does not have to cry out or address or search for a particular kind of God, because it understands through such subjective behavior that its own precious singularity is also a part of the greater us-ness of all other creatures, and that its singularity is automatically assured, as is its own us-ness within that larger context. [...]

[...] The dimensions of the self begin to shrink enough, and it is at that point, in your terms, that the search for a private God or religion begins to emerge. [...]

Now our friend, poetic Ruburt, wrote a poem about the Gods in the Rafters that I enjoyed, although poetry has never been one of my particular joys. [...]

Indeed, so that your muscles tensed, your adrenaline production increased, you wanted to wring his neck and you stood there and said, God bless you my fine young fellow. [...]

[...] Instead, he bends down and says, my good man, et cetera, may you live long and hearty and God bless your life and then he pats himself on the back and thinks, I am growing more spiritual day by day. [...]

[...] But again, it behooves you to deny your true feelings in order to be spiritual, which is not true spirituality and you say again, God bless you, may you go in peace, and this time the psychic safety valve has had too much. [...]

(To Arnold.) The African God. [...] The African God episode. [...]

[...] Do not take everything you get as the holy word of God. [...]

[...] You laugh spontaneously, the Gods laugh spontaneously. [...]

[...] Do not say, “God bless his soul,” when you hate his guts. [...]