“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The political arena was the practical working realm in which those ideals were to find fruition. Hitler’s idea of good was hardly inclusive, therefore, and any actions, however atrocious, were justified.

Hitler preached on the great value of social action as opposed to individual action. He turned children into informers against their own parents. He behaved nationalistically, as any minor cult leader does in a smaller context. The Jews believed in martyrdom. (Pause.) Germany became the new Egypt, in which their people were set upon. I do not want to oversimplify here, and certainly I am nowhere justifying the cruelties the Jews encountered in Germany. You do each create your own reality, however (intently), and en masse you create the realities of your nationalities and your countries — so at that time the Germans saw themselves as victors, and the Jews saw themselves as victims.

The nation served as an example of what could happen in any country if the most fanatical nationalism was allowed to go unchecked, if the ideas of right were aligned with might, if any nation was justified in contemplating the destruction of others.

You must realize that Hitler believed that any atrocity was justified in the light of what he thought of as the greater good. To some extent or another, many of the ideals he held and advocated had long been accepted in world communities, though they had not been acted upon with such dispatch. The nations of the world saw their own worst tendencies personified in Hitler’s Germany, ready to attack them. The Jews, for various reasons — and again, this is not the full story — the Jews acted as all of the victims of the world, both the Germans and the Jews basically agreeing upon “man’s nefarious nature.” For the first time the modern world realized its vulnerability to political events, and technology and communication accelerated all of war’s dangers. Hitler brought many of man’s most infamous tendencies to the surface. For the first time, again, the species understood that might alone did not mean right, and that in larger terms a world war could have no real victors. Hitler might well have exploded the world’s first atomic bomb.

[...] There is no need to justify your existence. You do not need to write or preach to justify your existence. [...]

[...] If you write, therefore, to justify your existence then in time other aspects of reality will lose their meaning for you. You do not have to justify in any terms. [...]

[...] Why then do you worry about justifying your own existence in this hour? [...]

[...] If you become too determined to justify your existence then you will begin to close out areas of your life. [...]

[...] There is no need to justify your existence. You do not need to write or preach to justify yourselves, for instance. [...]

[...] If you become too determined to justify your existence then you will begin to close out areas of your life. [...] You do not have to justify in any terms.

[...] Both have been used by those in power to hold down the masses of people, to justify shoddy and inadequate living conditions by promising future bliss in the world after death.

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. [...]

[...] They justified any act. This applied not only privately, however, but to the mass-accepted revelations of all religions, that could justify righteous wars for God’s sake, or justify murder in the name of peace.

[...] Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the “idea,” but instead happen because men often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

[...] Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

(Long pause at 9:32.) That is why fanatics feel justified in their (underlined) actions. [...]

[...] If you want peace you must insert the belief in it and then your experience will justify it.

When you consistently concentrate upon negative aspects you seek them out from your experience and all the available stimuli, until reality certainly does seem to justify your attitudes. [...]

(10:53.) It means that you are not willing to take the actual steps in physical reality to achieve the ideal, but that you believe that the end justifies the means: “Certainly some lives may be lost along the way, but overall, mankind will benefit.” [...] The ends do not justify the means (all very emphatically).

[...] If you want to change the world for the better, and if you are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to yourself or others, no matter what the risk, and if you believe that those ends justify any means at your disposal, then you are a fanatic.

[...] They will justify almost any crime for the pursuit of those ends.

“I feel sometimes as if I am expected to justify life’s conditions, when of course they do not need any such justification.”

[...] Eventually it seemed to him that he was surrounded by the corrupt, and that any means at his disposal was justified to bring down those who would threaten the presidency or the state.

[...] And again, since the idealized good seemed too remote and difficult to achieve, any means was justified. [...]

[...] It’s just that the means they often choose aren’t justified by those ends….”)

[...] Even if it had, you would then be justified in taking more firm steps.

[...] By reacting normally you would indeed teach her respect for the regards of others, and she would have felt your reaction quite justified.

[...] As long as you hold them they will be most faithfully reproduced and objectively justified.

[...] All of this goes back to ideas that existence must be justified, and Ruburt’s early ideas that writing would justify his life—but writing should express life, and is an expression of being, an expression of spontaneity, an expression of emotion, of body as well as mind (all intently). [...]

[...] (Pause.) They believe that their search for answers, however, justifies almost any means, or sacrifices, not only on their parts but on the parts of others. [...]

[...] Because of his belief in his powerlessness [the fanatic] feels that any means to an end is justified. [...]

[...] and my news won’t be big enough to justify it? [...]

[...] Your belief in it will, therefore, seem highly justified. [...]

[...] Yet because of his words you do not feel justified in the emotion. [...]

[...] A man who hates always believes himself justified. [...]

([Ron L:] “Is it ever justified to do evil for the sake of good?”)

([Ron:] “I was just saying that no evil can be justified on the basis of the greater good.”

“The end justifies the means.” [...]

[...] The villains consisted of the following ideas: that the world is unsafe, and growing deadly; that the species itself is tainted by a deadly intent; that the individual has no power over his or her reality; that society or social conditions exist as things in themselves, and that their purposes run directly counter to the fulfillment of the individual; and lastly, that the end justifies the means, and that the action of any kind of god is powerless in the world.

This brings us to another most dangerous belief — that the end justifies the means.

(Pause.) You will not feel the need, say, to “justify your existence” by exaggerating a particular gift, setting up the performance of one particular feat or art as a rigid ideal, when in fact you may be pleasantly gifted but not greatly enough endowed with a certain ability to give you the outstanding praise you think you might deserve.

[...] The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however reprehensible, eventually can seem justified (see Session 850, for example). [...]