“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(It also arouses my sense of irony and dismay — for the nurses who told Jane such things are presumably in better health than she is. Their implications were that God loved Jane more than he loved them, and would reveal this in heaven. What kind of heaven does this leave those healthier individuals to look forward to, then? Surely a lesser one, in perhaps unknown ways? This ought to give such people pause …)

That remark, and similar ones, are often made to ill persons. The idea is supposed to be that suffering is good for the soul, is a way of atoning for one’s sins, and in some fashion the implication is made that such suffering in this life will be more than compensated for in heaven.

[...] The same unfortunately applies to the Eastern concept of nirvana, and to the Christian idea of heaven. [...]

There are many differences between the ideas of nirvana and heaven, but each has been used not only to justify suffering, but also to teach people to seek pain. [...]

A belief in heaven or hell, under certain conditions, can be equally disadvantageous. Some will refuse to accept the idea of further work, development, and challenge, believing instead that conventional heaven situations are the only possibility. For some time they may indeed inhabit such an environment, until they learn through their own experience that existence demands development, and that such a heaven would be sterile, boring, and indeed “deadly.”

[...] Their state does not usually last as long, therefore, as the heaven state.

[...] A belief in heaven that is not an obsessional belief can be used as a useful framework, as a basis of operation in which an individual will often accept easily then, the new explanations that will be offered.

[...] A belief in a stereotyped heaven can result in a hallucination of heavenly conditions. [...]

[...] Is there a heaven or a hell? [...]

[...] The boredom and stagnation of a stereotyped heaven will not for long content the striving consciousness. [...]

My life is its own definition.
So is yours.
Let us leave the priests
to their hells and heavens,
and confine
the scientists
to their dying universe,
with its
accidentally created stars.
Let us each dare
to open our dream’s door,
and explore
the unofficial thresholds,
where we begin.

[...] Is heaven on Mars or Venus? How many stars will man explore before this archaic heaven be found?

The mature adolescent, even, in his mental and emotional framework, knows that no one male deity, no one super individual, exists in some well-insulated heaven, where he yet is personally concerned with the most intimate affairs of man, mice, mosquito, and sparrow.

So the intelligent adult now knows, does he not, that no one individual but superior being exists as God in some heaven, threatening hell to the sinners and disbelievers? [...]

[...] You perceive but the lowest point of its reality, so I will tell you now that the various stars and planets and heavenly bodies that you observe in your universe do indeed exist as such, but only within your system.

[...] However, these heavenly bodies appear as something entirely different, you see, within other systems.

[...] These heavenly bodies represent moment points in other systems. [...]

[...] The heavenly bodies for example are moment points to other systems. [...]

[...] Men often took him literally, but his message was that the spirit of God was within each person—in terms of the symbolism, each person being a child of the father who dwelled in heaven. But heaven meant an inner reality for Christ, not an exterior one.

[...] Heaven and hell, indeed, are mere representations. [...] But no heaven or hell exist in those terms. [...]

[...] There is no heaven and hell in Christian terms. [...]

Now: Christ was not crucified — therefore he did not resurrect, coming out of the tomb, nor did he then ascend into heaven. [...]

He arose from the tomb and ascended into heaven. [...]

Now these descriptions of after-death events may sound very complicated, particularly if you have been used to a simple tale of heaven or eternal rest. [...]

[...] There is no such simple end to the life that you know, [such] as the story of heaven. [...]

[...] The heaven that had sustained me as a child seemed in my teens to be a shallow mockery of meaningful existence. [...]

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. [...]

[...] A man, literally of flesh and blood, must then prove beyond all doubt that each and every other [human being] survives death — by dying, of course, and then by rising, physically-perceived, into heaven. [...]

1. I added “[resurrection and]” to Seth’s passage because Jane told me that according to ordinary teaching Christ’s resurrection from the dead took place on Easter Sunday, the third day following his crucifixion (on Friday), while his ascension into heaven transpired at an indefinite later time — up to 40 days later, as stated in the writings of St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles (AA 1:10). [...]

I’d say that in this 829th session Seth spoke out of a knowledge of biblical tradition and history; that is, he wasn’t saying that Christ did rise from the dead or ascend into heaven, but referring to Christianity’s interpretation of its own creative Christ story. [...]

[...] This is not to be a pie-in-the sky sort of thing, or some “heaven” hanging suspended above, but a very valid meeting place between worlds. [...]

[...] I am telling you that your own dreams and thoughts and mental actions appear to the inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens.”

who study tissue heavens

heavens, do minute inhabitants

[...]  Discussion of the origins of Heaven and Hell followed.)

[...] And so you set up for yourselves the division of Heaven and Hell. [...]

[...] In the first place there is no such thing as a place—no heaven in terms of a location. [...]

[...] The heaven and hell that you think of, this is your own experience, the consequences of your actions. [...]

The Christian concept of heaven with its riches, God and his bounty, the source of nature itself—all of this in our terms was a symbolic structure describing in storybook terms the attributes and characteristics of Framework 2.

[...] Christ hoped to show that you survived death psychically and spiritually—that you “returned” to the father in heaven. [...]

[...] If you are to return to Australia it will be through your own individual efforts, and not through a windfall nor a gift from heaven.

Gifts from heaven are the results of individual spiritual developments, and if they are not then they only appear to be gifts. [...]

There are times when windows “appear in the heavens,” when it is easy for you to get, say, to the moon in a spaceship—and so, again from your viewpoint, there are better times for psychological windows to open, and psychic pathways. [...]

[...] I am telling you that your own thoughts and mental actions appear to the inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens. [...]