“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At the same time, the paranoid person can use his creative abilities in fantasies that seemingly boggle the minds of the sane — and those creative abilities have a meaning, for the fantasies, again, serve to reassure the paranoid of his worth. If in your terms he were sane, he could not use his creative abilities, for they are always connected with life’s meaning; and sane, the paranoid is convinced that life is meaningless. It did little good in the past for Freudian psychologists to listen to a person’s associations (pause) while maintaining an objective air, or pretending that values did not exist. Often the person labeled schizophrenic is so frightened of his or her own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are fragmented, objectified, and seen to come from outside rather than from within.

To some extent, this also applies to religion in the same time period. Churches wanted sinners galore, but shied away from saints, or any extravagant behavior that did not speak of man’s duplicity. Suddenly people with paranoidal characteristics, as well as schizophrenics,² emerged from the wallpaper of this slickly styled civilization. The characteristics of each were duly noted. A person who feels that life has no meaning, and that his or her life in particular has no meaning, would rather be pursued than ignored. Even the weight of guilt is better than no feeling at all. If the paranoid might feel that he [or she] is pursued, by the government or “ungodly powers,” then at least he feels that his life must be important: otherwise, why would others seek to destroy it? If voices tell him he is to be destroyed, then these at least are comforting voices, for they convince him that his life must have value.

(Pause at 10:07.) The term schizophrenia, with the authority of psychology, becomes a mass coverall in which the integrity of personal meaning is given a mass, generalized explanation. Those who are paranoid are, unfortunately, those who most firmly believe the worst idiocies of science and religion. The paranoid and the schizophrenic are trying to find meaning in a world they have been taught is meaningless, and their tendencies appear in lesser form throughout society.

These brief definitions are very general: A paranoid is afflicted with systematic, logically-reasoned delusions of grandeur or persecution; the personality can be relatively stable otherwise. A schizophrenic suffers from a division between thought processes and emotions. The cause of schizophrenia is unknown, and the victim usually ends up hospitalized because of the severity of symptoms, which can include motor malfunctions, perceptual distortions involving hallucinations and delusions, strange behavior, and a withdrawal from reality. Yet the schizophrenic can also keep the use of his or her primary intellectual capacities.

[...] The events are “distorted,” yet while the paranoid is convinced that those events are valid, this does not change other people’s perception of the same happenings….

What I want to emphasize here is the paranoid’s misinterpretation of innocuous personal or mass events, and to stress the ways in which physical events can be put together symbolically, so that from them a reality can be created that is almost part physical and part dream.

The paranoid has certain other beliefs. [...]

The paranoid organizes the psychological world about his obsession, for such it is, and he cuts everything out that does not apply, until all conforms to his beliefs. [...]

[...] If the people in power are paranoid, then they overestimate the dangers of any given world situation. [...] The reasoning mind acts in the same fashion when paranoid beliefs are in power. [...]

When a government is paranoid, it even begins to cut down on the freedom of its own peoples, or to frown upon behavior that in freer times would be quite acceptable. [...]

It is obvious to most others that such paranoid views are not based on mass fact. [...] He used those as in other circumstances a paranoid might use the sight of a police car to convince himself that he was being pursued by the police, or the FBI or whatever. [...]

He was as paranoid as any poor deluded man or woman is who feels, without evidence, that he or she is being pursued by creatures from space, earthly or terrestrial enemies, or evil psychic powers. [...]

[...] When it is overly stressed, with all of the usual frameworks or rationales that go along with it, it can indeed become frightened, paranoid, because it cannot really perceive events until they have already occurred. It does not know what will happen tomorrow, and since it is overly stressed, its paranoid tendencies can only fear the worst.

[...] The intellect, then, can and does form strong paranoid tendencies when it is put in the position of believing that it must solve all personal problems alone — or nearly — and certainly when it is presented with any picture of worldwide predicaments.

[...] Put another way, the intellect then must learn to cooperate in that trusting by relaxing its near-paranoid protective cover.

[...] The entire rationale as expressed in some of those sessions concerning the rather paranoid tendencies of the conscious mind, should also be remembered. [...]

[...] It is highly important, however, that he does not project negatively, as the paranoid does (as described in the regular 812th session). [...]

You were each surrounded by some highly unfortunate beliefs, that were at least partially paranoid, but in any case unfortunate. [...]

[...] Some of it drew a comparison between the paranoid individual, and an organization that contained the same ideas. [...]

[...] They also have their own paranoid tendencies, and overworked intellects to contend with. [...]

(10:02.) He expresses in exaggerated form many quite paranoid tendencies that are considered in a milder version as quite normal. [...]

[...] I don’t mean to be paranoid about this observation, merely that business is done that way and that the author, once he or she has produced the property to be played with, is relegated to a place much lower on the totem pole of importance.

First of all, if you realize that the intellect itself is a part of nature, a part of the natural person, a part of magical processes, then you need not overstrain it, force it to feel isolated, or put it in a position in which paranoid tendencies develop. [...]