“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: for all of its seeming sophistication, the self as generally seen by science is only science’s interpretation of the Sinful Self in mechanistic terms.

(Long pause.) Both religion and science see the self as primarily heir to flaws, decay. Only science’s Sinful Self operates in a framework in which there is no sacramental redemption. Science sees the world as rushing toward its own dissolution, and the self as the mechanistic system running down from the moment of its conception.

The whole idea was developed in the most mechanistic of terms, stressing competition among all aspects of life, pitting one life form against another, and using physical strength and dexterity, swiftness and efficiency, as the prime conditions for the survival of any individual or species.

[...] But now it seems that when science claims to understand the workings of a molecule of DNA, for example — the “master molecule” of life, as it’s often called — science then states that it’s stripped away the mystery of DNA and reduced our functions to easily understood mechanistic ones. [...] Even the biologists (and other scientists) who insist upon our mechanistic bases do so with feeling!

[...] Jane and I think the idea of such self-centered genetic behavior is much too limited, simple, and “mechanistic,” to use another term that’s currently in scientific vogue. [...]

[...] On some occasions specific knowledge of the various parts leads him to forget other issues, and leads to a mechanistic approach.

The body is given mechanistic qualities. [...]

Seth’s material largely opposes science’s mechanistic model of the body wearing down within certain age limits, abetted as that model is by the power of the beliefs that say it will. [...]

Dictation (with elaborate humor). Now: Remember that these units of consciousness of which I have been speaking are not neutral, mathematical, or mechanistic.

[...] This is almost a mechanistic response that is confining, and indeed detrimental to expansion.

[...] The whole idea of the body’s wearing down, as that is understood in your society, is based upon the idea of the body’s mechanistic model: energy is given at birth, and gradually wears down. [...]

In the time those fears originated, he shared the belief framework of Christianity, so that he believed that outside of that framework there could indeed be nothing but chaos, or the conventional atheism of science, in which the universe was at the mercy of meaningless mechanistic laws—laws, however, that operated without logic, but more importantly laws that operated without feeling. [...]

[...] Did those who could have made a dent in such mechanistic thinking simply drop out of such fields when they realized what the score was? [...]

That kind of an event simply cannot fit into your concepts of “the beginning of the world,” with consciousness arising out of matter almost as a second thought, or with an exteriorized God initiating a divine but mechanistic natural world.

[...] In its way science went along very nicely by postulating man in a mechanistic world, with each creature run by an impeccable machine of instinct, blind alike to pain or desire.

If you have thought that the universe followed a mechanistic model, then you would have to say that each portion of this “cosmic machine” created itself, knowing its position in the entire “future construction.” [...]

(I think it more than a coincidence that in these excerpts from Seth Speaks, Seth mentions Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Biblical story of creation in the same sentence, for those systems of belief represent the two poles of the controversy over origins in our modern Western societies: the strictly Darwinistic, mechanistic view of evolution, in which the weakest of any species are ruthlessly eliminated through natural, predatory selection, and the views of the creationists, who hold that God made the earth and all of its creatures just as described in the Bible.

[...] The biological sciences can cling to mechanistic theories of evolution by employing the conservative physics of cause and effect to support their conclusions while being aware, perhaps, of the tenets of particle physics. [...]

[...] The mind can ask too many questions to be satisfied with mechanistic explanations, and nurturing that characteristic of dissatisfaction alone may be one of the most valuable contributions the Seth material can make.

[...] (Only one part of that session is quoted, but eventually it will be published in its entirety as part of a Seth book.) Very evocative, to consider how consciousness chooses to manifest itself physically, in direct contradiction to the mechanistic beliefs held so tightly — and with so little humor — by those adhering to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. [...]

[...] Its view of nature is therefore mechanistic. [...]

Not only was he set against himself, but he saw himself as a part of an uncaring mechanistic universe, devoid of purpose, intent, and certainly a universe that cared not a whit for the individual, but only for the species. [...]

[...] It’s just as foolish for those who are religious, even though they outnumber the scientists by far, to expect most scientists to embrace religion, to surrender their agnosticism or atheism, to give up their mechanistic, reductionist views of life—their attempts to use a series of “logical” steps to reduce the human being, say, to his or her ever-lower components, right down to the atomic level. [...]