“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:27.) At what expense is “the good” to be achieved — and whose idea of the good is to be the criterion? Man’s pursuit of the good, to some extent now, fathered the Inquisition and the Salem witch hunts. [...] Some people believe that homosexuals and lesbians are “evil,” that somehow they lack the true qualities of humanness [and therefore need not be treated with normal respect]. These are all value judgments involving your ideas of the good.

Whose good (question mark)? Is “good” an absolute (question mark)? In your arena of events, obviously, one man’s good can be another’s disaster. [Adolf] Hitler pursued his version of “the good” with undeviating fanatical intent. [...]

When you are discussing the nature of good and bad, you are on tricky ground indeed, for many — or most — of man’s atrocities to man have been committed in misguided pursuit of “the good.”

[...] He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed (loudly), filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent. 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. No matter how much power he achieved, it seemed to him that others had more — other people, other groups, other countries — but their power he saw as evil. For while he believed in the existence of an idealized good, he felt that the wicked were powerful and the good were weak and without vigor.

Before we end this particular section of the book, dealing with frightened people, idealism, and interpretations of good and evil, there is another instance that I would like to mention. [...]

[...] The President felt threatened — and not only personally threatened, for he felt that the good for which he stood in his own mind was in peril (intently). And again, since the idealized good seemed too remote and difficult to achieve, any means was justified. [...]

[...] Acts which fit in with the good-intended universe, in which basically each life and detail, seeking its good, also works for the good of all others, bring forth what you call good acts—simple enough acts which are not well-intentioned in that light, toward the self or others “do not work right.” [...] They bring pain, sorrow, or illness to the self or to others, and they are often called evil acts. [...]

(As we were eating lunch today Jane said she thought Seth would discuss the question of good and evil, re our conversation on those subjects the other day. [...] Once I’d written it down, I saw that its subject matter fit in very well with the idea of good and evil, and told Jane I hoped Seth would use it in any discussion of his own.

You have been considering the nature of good and evil, and in your dream you presented yourself with a capsule demonstration. It is good to eat, and each creature seeks food. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Dineen heartily believes in good and evil; so, being convinced that she was at the mercy of demoniacal forces, she began to pray. As Ruburt pointed out, however, the prayers themselves were merely a weak surrender to the idea that evil is so powerful. They were not based on any real belief in the power of good, but only upon a superstitious hope that if bad forces exist, good ones must also.

[...] She is a heroine, battling cosmic forces of good and evil, important enough so that another person even wants to control her. [...]

[...] The man who has believed that he was evil may now see the world, or persons of another faith or political affiliation, as evil instead. [...]

[...] You are terrified of the idea that evil is more powerful than good, that one stray violent thought of yours was more important and powerful than the vitality of good. [...]

[...] You have an idea that good is gentle and bad is violent. [...] By this analogy, you see, the soft voice is the holy voice and the loud voice is the wicked one, and a strong desire is the bad desire and a weak desire the good one. You become afraid of projecting ideas or desires outward, for in the back of your mind you think that what is powerful is evil.

You have always been involved with questions concerning good and evil, and you had two existences in two civilizations in Egypt. [...]

[...] As mentioned earlier, good and evil effects are basically illusions. In your terms all acts, regardless of their seeming nature, are a part of a greater good. I am not saying that a good end justifies what you would consider an evil action. While you still accept the effects of good and evil, then you had better choose the good.

[...] Your conception of good and evil results in large part from the kind of consciousness you have presently adopted. [...]

In your terms, the ideas of good and evil help you recognize the sacredness of existence, the responsibility of consciousness. [...]

[...] Are you actually saying that he feels that his mother and father both thought of him as evil—that now he thinks he’s that evil?”)

A good question and a good evening.

[...] I was glad I’d asked the second question in particular—at first I’d found it hard to believe that Jane thought of herself as evil for any reason, parents or whatever. Not that we hadn’t known from earlier material and our own conscious experiences that her mother especially had often exerted an unhealthy pressure upon the daughter—but I’d been taken back to realize that Seth was actually saying that Jane had considered herself evil.

[...] Convincing Augustus that he was under the domination of an evil entity would be step one. [...] Augustus must then always be “good,” and yet he would always feel vulnerable to another such invasion of evil. [...]

[...] Unfortunately in his present state, powerless as it were without Augustus Two, he might also simply call on his “alter ego” to show the good doctor that he was no one to trifle with.

Sometimes such cases are handled within another framework, in which Augustus would be considered possessed by an independent “evil” entity whenever Augustus Two took over. [...]

I said before that no man acts out of the desire to be evil, but has always justified to himself his actions precisely by his own “good” intent. [...] The religious area in general, from time immemorial, has dealt intensely and sometimes one-mindedly with “the good ideal.” That ideal, however, different in one area than in another, was usually self-righteously applied with a vengeance and fanatical zest, so that all things outside it were seen as evil.

The more narrow and strict your conceptions of the good become, the larger and more threatening the “powers of evil” seem to grow.

Good evening.

Consciousness is not basically built upon those precepts of good and evil that so presently concern you. [...] This does not mean that in your system, and in some others, these problems do not exist and that good is not preferable to the evil. It simply means that the soul knows that good and evil are but different manifestations of a far greater reality.

Now: Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

[...] (Quietly:) Your attitudes toward sleep, dreams, or any alterations of consciousness are all colored to some extent then by beliefs concerning good and evil in your Western society. These emerge from the old Puritan work ethic: “The devil finds evil work for idle hands.”

[...] Such ideas are mirrored in your society in innumerable fashions, and in areas in which values of good and evil are not apparent. Active sports are considered good, however, but often contrasted to passive intuitive activities which are then seen as bad.

[...] Yet beneath, the inner self is quite aware of the great thrusting creativity that occurs in dreams, and realizes that the source of individual energy has nothing to do with such superficial concepts as the nature of good and evil.

[...] Your ideas of good and evil as applied to health and illness are highly important, for instance. [...]

[...] Often white is considered pure, and black impure, white good and black evil.

Good evening.

Now I bid you another most fond good afternoon.

(“Good afternoon, Seth.”)

This distorted picture depicts a species of sinners innately driven by evil, sometimes demonic, forces. [...]

[...] In basic terms they are no more good or evil than the wind is. I say this because you usually imagine that if something is good, there must be a countering force that is evil. [...] In greater terms these forces are good. [...]

[...] There are, then, “spirits” of all natural things — but unfortunately, even when you consider such possibilities you project your own religious ideas of good and evil upon them. [...]

Good evening.

Many quite limiting ideas will pass without scrutiny under the guise of goodness. You may feel quite virtuous, for example, in hating evil, or what seems to you to be evil; but if you find yourself concentrating upon either hatred or evil you are creating it. [...]

[...] If you think the world is evil, you will meet with events that seem evil. [...]

[...] The mail had brought us good news early this afternoon; we’d celebrated with a drink, then Seth had come through.

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

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

[...] I rubbed Jane’s right temple at her request, and got a good reaction when I pulled my finger away finally: “I feel so light — it’s great. [...]

[...] I am aware of that — and yet the destructive storms worked by mankind ultimately cannot be said to be any more evil than the earthquake. [...] For many well-intentioned artists, with the best of intentions, produce at times shoddy works of art, all the more disappointing and deplorable to them because of the initial goodness of their intent.

(10:01.) When he is destructive, man does not seek to be destructive per se; but in a desire to achieve that which he thinks of as a particular goal that to him is good, he forgets to examine the goodness of his methods.

One animal chasing and killing its prey serves the greater purpose of preserving the balance of nature, whether or not the animal is aware of this — and again, the animal’s intent is not evil. [...] You may deeply regret the havoc worked, knowing that neither the storm nor the earthquake is evil. [...]

[...] If you would have good health, if you would have good health for the child, then you must imagine this as vividly as, in fear, you imagine the opposite.

[...] If an individual sees only evil and desolation in the physical world, it is because he is obsessed with evil and desolation and projects them outward and closes his eyes to all else. [...]

[...] Another example only: a very industrious individual thinks the majority of mankind are lazy and good for nothing. No one would ever think of calling him lazy or good for nothing, yet this may be precisely his own subconscious picture of himself, against which he drives himself incessantly, all in an effort to prove that his erroneous self-image is, indeed, wrong. [...]

You think of viruses as evil, spreading perhaps from country to country, to “invade” scores of physical mechanisms. [...] The old ideas of voodooism recognized some of these concepts, but complicated and distorted them with fears of evil, psychic invasion, psychic killing, and so forth. [...]

(Whispering:) Good evening.

(Good evening, Seth.”)

On the one hand, they believe that the self is evil, and on the other they are convinced that the self should not be so. [...] They often see society as the “enemy” of good. [...]

[...] Then whispering:) Each individual is innately driven by a good intent, however distorted that intent may become, or however twisted the means that may be taken to achieve it.

[...] You are left with an undefined, persisting, even tormenting desire to do good, to change events, but without having any means at your disposal to do so. [...]