“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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. He believed in the superiority and moral rectitude of the Aryan race. In his grandiose, idealized version of reality, he saw that race “set in its proper place,” as natural master of mankind.¹

How did Hitler’s initially wishy-washy undefined ideals of nationalistic goodness turn into such a world catastrophe? The steps were the ones mentioned earlier (in a number of sessions in Part 3), as those involved with any cult. Hitler’s daydreams became more and more grandiose, and in their light, the plight of his country seemed worsened with each day’s events. He counted its humiliations over and over in his mind, until his mind became an almost completely closed environment, in which only certain ideas were allowed entry.

(Long pause.) Despite himself, and despite his followers, Hitler brought to flower (long pause) a very important idea, and one that changed your history. (Pause.) All of the most morbid of nationalistic fantasies that had been growing for centuries, all of the most grandiose celebrations of war as a nation’s inalienable right to seek domination, focused finally in Hitler’s Germany.

You must realize that fanatics always deal with grandiose ideals, while at the same time they believe in man’s sinful nature, and the individual’s lack of power. They cannot trust the expression of the self, for they are convinced of its duplicity. Their ideals then seem even more remote. Fanatics call others to social action. Since they do not believe that the individual is ever effective, their groups are not assemblies of private individuals come reasonably together, pooling individual resources. They are instead congregations of people who are afraid to assert their individuality, who hope to find it in the group, or hope to establish a joint individuality — and that is an impossibility (emphatically).

“In the same way the scientific community speaks of grandiose ideals, of man’s triumph over the planet and nature. [...] The sacrifice of, say, thousands of lives in a nuclear accident almost becomes justified in their minds if it is a means toward the grandiose goal of learning how to ‘triumph over nature.’ Again, this intent automatically turns them into mechanics.

[...] The leaders of religious cults, like that of Jonestown, overexaggerate grandiose ideals of brotherhood and love, for example (as Seth has mentioned), while often forbidding the natural expression of love on the part of one individual for another — assaulting family affiliations and so forth. [...]

[...] If you are idealists, and if you feel relatively powerless in the world at the same time, and if your idealism is general and grandiose, unrelated to any practical plans for its expression, then you can find yourself in difficulties indeed. [...]

[...] Usually they are vague grandiose dreamers, whose plans almost completely ignore the full dimensions of normal living. [...]

The Christ image is often used because it so perfectly represents the combination of the grandiose self, as per the all-knowing son of God, and the martyred victim who is crucified precisely because of his lofty position.

The second island-spirit says, also to the third: “You are myself, only my excitement, my joy and beauty, are concentrated in the magic of my volcano, and you instead stand for the twittering excitement of diverse species — birds and animals and insects — that flow in far less grandiose fashion across the slopes of your uneasy land.”

What grandiose claims these are, however — at least at this time — for Jane and I also read that in the last three-quarters of a century science has managed to bring about an increase of only four years in the life expectancy of the adult white male: from 69 to 73 years. [...]

[...] Strange, I thought, if it turned out that personal work would be one of the most creative of all the uses to which the Seth material could be put, rather than grandiose pronouncements coming down from on high, dispensed by one who was in a position of superiority.

A chest of drawers (pause), it seems of grandiose design, and of dark wood. [...]