“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The upsurge of fundamental religion in the Arab world (meaning Iran) has a certain correlation with the upsurges of fundamental Christianity in your country, and will indeed serve as a needed reminder around the world of the exaggerated nature that religion can take when it is allied with government. [...]

[...] Taking probabilities into consideration, there are cultural movements involving the western world as it tried to form a new philosophical stance, and our books may well provide a highly valuable alternate position for people—again—between the passionate beliefs systems of religion in many countries, and the overly objective dictates of science. [...]

[...] This leads in some cases, then, to an exaggerated repudiation of objective reasoning, and to the alliance of a fundamental kind of religion with the intuitive portions of the self. [...]

In many situations, the main personifications are instead of a ritual nature, taking advantage of psychological patterns already present in the culture’s art or religion or science. [...]

[...] In many such instances there will also be at least a short spurt of intense but scrambled, perhaps garbled, creative activity, in which the individual tries to recognize these various elements, as mankind himself has attempted many times in the creative, sometimes garbled creation of his own religions (with soft irony).

[...] Even though they are so uncertain of themselves that their psychological patterns do follow those of culture, religion, science, or whatever, they try to use those patterns in their own individual ways. [...]

(Pause at 9:54.) These are often complicated, however, since the individuals’ belief patterns are of such an exaggerated blend to begin with, so that such episodes are usually accompanied by phantom figures from religion or mythology. [...]

All religions are distortive. [...] Religion has been the cause of much prejudice and cruelty, but the bomb over Hiroshima was not caused by the Catholic Saint Theresa showering down any roses. The distortions in science and religion have been truly disastrous. [...]

[...] But it has been taken into various doctrines and religions that have grown up about it until it is almost unrecognizable. [...]

[...] Someone who was not a believer in any particular religion was needed. [...]

(“Are all religions distortive?”)

[...] On Jane’s childhood, fear of aggression; religion; my role, etc. [...]

[...] These postcard messages usually bear the stylized (long pause) versions of reality that are sent out by various religions or organizations. Each person is born, however, with his or her—let me correct that—each person is born there with a private natural religion—one that rises from the springs of the individual psyche, and one that provides an easy, custom-made method of dealing with inner and outer reality. It is important, therefore, that such persons rediscover their natural heritage, and put themselves in touch once more with this inner, natural “religion.” [...]

(Long pause.) Both religion and science see the self as primarily heir to flaws, decay. [...]

[...] Science’s flawed self still carries the same import, however, the idea being that while science does not deal with values, so its says, it misleads itself considerably in making such statements, for it projects the worst kind of values both upon mankind and the rest of nature—so even if you are not tainted from religion’s old beliefs, it is difficult to escape such ideas. [...]

[...] Love is therefore surrounded very carefully by all kinds of barriers by both science and religion, and in your own lives you could now be much more demonstrative in those regards. [...]

The official mentioned, by the way, that there was indeed no direct evidence connecting past flu shots with the occurrence of a rather bizarre disease that some of those inoculated with the flu vaccine happened to come down with.⁴ All in all, it was quite an interesting announcement, with implications that straddle biology, religion, and economics. [...]

[...] Such a religion becomes isolated from daily life. [...]

[...] You cannot divorce your private value systems from your health, and the hospitals often profit from the guilt that religions have instilled in their people.

I am speaking now of religions so intertwined with social life and community ventures that all sense of basic religious integrity becomes lost. [...]

[...] The Egyptian religion was largely based upon the work of the Speakers, and great care was given to their training. The outward manifestations given to the masses of the people became so distorted, however, that the original unity of the religion finally decayed.

[...] The symbolisms and frameworks of religion, therefore, had to exist not only in the physical world but also in the unconscious one. [...]

There seems to be a division between science and religion, for even organized religion has an intuitive basis. [...]

[...] There may be minor interweaving ones, but the nature of personality, religion, politics, the family, and the arts — all of these are considered in the light of the predominating theme.

In those terms, then, Christianity and your other religions are myths, rising in response to an inner knowledge that is too vast to be clothed by facts alone. [...] Others will be willing enough to see science in its mythical characteristics, but will be most reluctant to see religion as you know it in the same light. [...]

In those terms, the great religions of your civilizations rise from myths that change their character through the centuries, even as mountain ranges rise and fall. [...]

[...] Religion and government have had an uneasy alliance. [...] They constantly tried to manipulate religion’s substructure in the same acceptable male ways that government leaders always use to inhibit and use the emotions.

[...] Parallel developments in religion and government always echo the state of consciousness and its purposes. [...]

(9:20.) The flaws of religion in its organized form are often far more hidden than those of government. [...] Your sciences, religions, and your culture, has brought you into a peculiar position: “Forget your problems and they will go away.” [...]

[...] And many who do not believe in religion per se certainly believe in man’s sinful nature—though perhaps giving it a more scientific name. [...]

Man possesses an innate biological knowledge, however, of right and wrong, and to a large extent religions, as they are utilized, distort much of that information. [...] The old distortions involved with the various religions must and will come to light.

[...] Mohammed, the founder of the Moslem religion, died in 632; conflicts over his successor led to an overall division of the religion into the Shiite and Sunni branches (although this is a simplification). [...]

[...] For, again, I must stress the fact that in its way nature makes no such judgments, regardless of the beliefs of your science or religions.

[...] Surely one of the larger, long-term questions those consciousnesses must be exploring concerns the confining aspects that very restrictive fundamentalistic interpretations of a certain religion must impose upon large population groups (which accept such conditions for their own collective reasons, of course). [...]

[...] All the ideas of the fear of the inner self come from the basic division that has for so long existed in the minds of man since the birth of organized religion... Religion tried to make the devil into a black shadow of God, His counterpoint and yet opposite, but man forgot what counterpoint meant. [...]

(In the same average voice she began: “In the shadow of the image organized religion [at the same time my hands want to fly up], after it has been set up, has always been afraid of revelationary knowledge; to protect itself; and the Catholic Church in particular cast it in the form of a devil, which I was taught: the sin of pride, wanting to learn.”

Granting that, however, cults interact, and so there is quite a relationship between the state of religion, when it operates as a cult, and the state of science when it operates as a cult. Right now your cultish religions exist in response to the cultish behavior of science. [...]

Religion and science both loudly proclaim their search for truth, although they are seemingly involved in completely opposing systems. [...]

(“Despite the beliefs and teachings of religion and psychology, impulses are biological and psychic directional signals, meant to nudge the individual toward his/her greatest opportunities for expression and development privately—and also to insure the person’s contribution to mass social reality.”

(“The authority of the self has been eroded by religion, science, and psychology itself, so that impulses are equated with anti-social behavior, considered synonymous with it, or with individual expression at the expense of social order.”

[...] From many sources—literature, psychology, religion, biography, he felt that creative or artistic people, those highly gifted, were persecuted by others, hunted down, misunderstood, and poorly equipped to deal with the social world. [...]

Now: The latest growth of fundamentalist religion has arisen as a countermeasure against the theories of evolution. [...]

The [fundamentalists] returned to an authoritarian religion in which the slightest act must be regulated. [...]

“It was the Jewish tradition that nourished the new religion in its early stages. [...]

[...] “Well, it’s true that I have ambiguous feelings about doing a book on religion,” Jane said as we discussed this note. [...]

[...] There will be a chapter on the religions of the world, on the distortions and truths within them; the three Christs; and some data concerning a lost religion (pause; one of many), belonging to a people of which you have no information. [...] Their memories (long pause), became the basis for the birth of religion as you now think of it. [...]

It is fairly easy to recognize the ways in which organized religion discouraged vigorous intellectual speculation. [...]

[...] In a fashion, at least in your time, science has as much to fear from the free intellect as religion does, and (with irony) any strong combination of intellectual and intuitional abilities is not tailor-made to bring you great friends from either category.