“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many people lost their lives recently in the tragedy of [Jonestown] Guyana. People willingly took poison at the command of their leader. No armies stood outside the grounds. No bombs fell. There was no physical virus that spread through the multitude. There was no clothing to decorate the mechanisms of events. Those people succumbed to an epidemic of beliefs, to an environment [that was] closed mentally and physically. 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.

(9:56.) To this extent experience becomes closed. Such people are frightened of themselves, and of the nature of their existence. They may be intelligent or stupid, gifted or mundane, but they are frightened of experiencing themselves as themselves, or of acting according to their own wishes. They help create the dogma or system or cult to which they “fall prey.” They expect their leader to act for them. To a certain extent he soaks up their paranoia, until it becomes an unquenchable force in him, and he is their “victim” as much as his followers are his “victims.”

They tried various religions, and in the light of their opinions of themselves their earlier advantages seemed only to damn them further. They tried social programs, and found a curious sense of belonging with the disadvantaged, for they were also rootless. The disadvantaged and the advantaged alike then joined in a bond of hopelessness, endowing a leader with a power they felt they did not possess.

He died, and came back as the next leader—this leader being the one that saw the final dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. [...]

[...] He was a great leader, driven by the desire for power, and by a sense of purpose, in the Ottoman Empire. [...]

Now the woman who was his mother this time had a connection with another leader—I am trying not to get distortions in here; you may have to check some of this later—I believe Charlemagne, and Ruburt slew him in battle, after he was first crippled. [...]

Social injustices can cause circumstances in which people will give up reason, logic, and personal responsibility to follow a leader who offers them protection from an unsafe universe. [...]

[...] It is there also for all political leaders.

Your religious leaders have freedom to say what they want to, and they have all of technology’s advances in communications at their service. [...]

[...] Ruburt was the leader of such a group, and you were what could be considered his lieutenant, or closest at hand. [...]

(10:16.) You had excelled, as he had, in all areas of that experience—as warriors, religious leaders, chieftains. [...]

[...] There is no need then to further show yourselves that you can indeed be understanding and compassionate leaders. [...]

(10:24.) You have abilities as a leader, as Ruburt has. [...] You can indeed now, to some extent, serve as a leader to Ruburt in certain areas, where before you feared that might inhibit his independence, and you felt he needed the freedom to grow.

[...] Tribal leaders were usually chosen only after long “dream investigations,” in which the new leader’s name cropped up, say, time and time again in the people’s dreams. [...]

They were of great aid, of course, in human politics, so that through dreams the intents of tribal leaders, say, were known to the others. [...]

[...] He behaved nationalistically, as any minor cult leader does in a smaller context. [...]

1. Hitler’s espousal of a German-Aryan superrace is an excellent example of how a leader can subvert history to his own ends. [...]

[...] Some wanted to know if one of the three Christs could have been the Teacher of Righteousness; this personage was the leader of the Zealot sect in Judaea early in the first century A.D. There were four known Jewish sects flourishing there at the birth of Christianity.

(In the literature I’ve been reading on the subject, the Zealot leader was always called the Teacher of Righteousness. [...]

[...] Jane was very intent in her delivery.) The story of the fall, the rebellious angels, and the leader Satan who becomes the devil — all of this refers to the same phenomena on a different level. [...]

[...] (Pause.) On the other hand, some leaders may give little consideration to such issues, but still be deeply convinced of the misery of the human condition, focusing upon all the “darker” elements, seeing the world’s destruction ever closer to hand without really examining the beliefs that arouse such constant feelings.

[...] At the same time, Iran’s mullahs want a continuing war with Iraq to help consolidate their total power; they do not want victorious, high-ranking military leaders back home from the front to challenge their undisputed power (as internal resistance groups like the Mujahedin-e Khalq are doing). [...] They continue their revolution even with their shortsighted military and economic policies, the war, the assassinations of scores of their leaders, and their country’s isolation by the free world. [...]

[...] Perception theory rests upon the assumptions of large groups of people in the two countries, including many of their leaders, and by the political rulers of many other nations, that it is vital for the United States and Russia to possess numerically balanced arsenals of nuclear weapons. [...] Indeed, military leaders in the United States, and evidently in Russia, concur in playing out the illusion of perception theory for their own psychological and political purposes.

[...] Iran’s economy is actually at a very low point because its leaders have squandered much of its already reduced oil income on the war with Iraq, and on revolutionary institutions and food imports, while devoting little to the nation’s long-term interests. [...]

[...] Who was leader of army? [...]

(“Can you give us the leader of the military force?”)

(To Sue.) Now your friend was a jealous leader. A very good leader, but a jealous one. [...]

[...] The individual has none, except that the power of the group is vested in its leader. [...]

The leader of Jonestown was at heart an idealist. [...]

[...] That is no way for a leader of sensitivity sessions to behave. [...]

Offhand, the work involved could take five years, for there were several versions, and a group of leaders, each going in different directions, who taught their people. [...]

[...] The Speakers, singly, existed in your Stone Age period, and were leaders. [...]

One woman, another follower, for Ruburt is the leader of this group, pushes a landscape of yours across the floor ahead of her—preserving, you see, your art as well as Ruburt’s. Finally one of the women objects strenuously and decides to stand up and show herself. [...]

[...] Iranian leaders emphasize the religious aspects of the war, Iraq the ethnic. The rulers of each country have urged the citizens of the other to revolt against their leaders. [...]

[...] This time a leader of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the largest of the resistance groups in the country, announced to some of our news media that the killings had been carried out by his organization.

[...] Nor, despite Western fears, does the Russian-oriented Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party, seem anxious to take over; instead, the leaders of the Tudeh are supporting [...]

You chose to be leaders rather than followers, and you would not have it otherwise.

By nature, leaders are not so much at odds with their world as they are ahead of it. [...]

[...] Such systems lead to the formation of cults, and the potential members seek out a leader who will serve their purposes as surely as they seem to serve his — through an inner mechanics of which each member is at least somewhat aware.

[...] Iran’s religious leaders actually run the country now, operating behind a weak secular and probably temporary government appointed by its Western-leaning and departed leader before he fled his country last January. [...]

[...] Those forces or consciousnesses must also constantly replenish themselves: Iran’s religious leaders devoutly nourish their country’s hatred for the United States, while here at home no less than six separate teams or commissions have begun investigations—on private, state, and federal levels—of what went wrong at Three Mile Island. [...]

[...] It seems to us that even if they privately agreed with us, our world leaders would have even more trouble implementing such thinking, for in their positions of “power” they’re quite locked into their national statuses by centuries of custom and history. [...]