“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] It was of a religious and warlike nature, in which the sword predominated. [...]

You were Ruburt’s younger brother at that time, and both of you engaged in many bloody religious battles. [...]

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

[...] His material was for Jane, and grew out of the paper she wrote this afternoon on Eastern religious thought [see Appendix 15]. [...]

[...] As given [at various times over the years, mostly in personal material], they involve cultural training and religious indoctrinations.⁴ He is challenging, finally, the old beliefs that say that the self’s spontaneity is not to be trusted. [...]

They were not only his private religious beliefs, but those of his contemporaries generally — and (loudly:) the foundations upon which your present civilization was made. [...]

[...] As I wrote near the beginning of this appendix, to go very far into religious history would lead away from the subject matter I planned to cover; but to us science is as far away from Seth’s philosophy in one direction as religion is in the opposite direction. The species’ religious drives have been around a lot longer than its scientific ones, however, so I found myself looking for broad correlations between the two, in that under each value system the individual carries a very conscious sense of personal vulnerability. Before Darwinism, to use that concept as an example, man at least felt that God had put him on earth for certain purposes, no matter how much man distorted those purposes through ignorance and war. [...] Either way, this very fallible creature found himself vulnerable to forces that consciously he couldn’t understand — even though, in Seth’s view, down through the millennia man had chosen all of his religious and antireligious experiences.

[...] Religious questions connected with evolution aren’t stressed as much as some might like, although they aren’t ignored either — but to go very far into religious history would lead away from the focus I’ve chosen.

(For some years now, organized religion as a whole has been suffering from a loss of faith and members, stripped of its mysteries by science, which, with the best of intentions, offers in religion’s place a secular humanism — the belief that one doesn’t need blind faith in a god in order to be morally concerned for the common welfare; paradoxically, however, this concern is most of the time expressed in religious terms, or with religious feeling. [...]

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one — which, with various modifications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. [...]

[...] The same applies to Ruburt’s feelings in the religious area. [...]

[...] If anything, these provide humanity with a great rich structure of psychological activity from which all of the later cultural, religious, or scientific elements emerge. [...]

[...] As indeed mentioned last week, the villain in a religious drama would be a creative figure. [...]

[...] For a while I was not in Rome, but held my religious call elsewhere. [...]

[...] Religious wars always have paranoiac tendencies, for the fanatic always fears conflicting beliefs, and systems that embrace them.

[...] Religious fanaticism frightens her because she regards it as being but a short step beyond fundamentalism, which is on the upsurge in this country. [...]

[...] The nunneries and monasteries were long-term social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. [...]

“The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came (to the house) regularly, and through direct contact with the religious (grade) school, and the support offered to the (fatherless) family. [...] Many of his fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

[...] Note how she expressed from another perspective the power of her early religious training, as well as religion’s fear of the power of the unknown—and how even now she still has to deal with those factors in her search for knowledge.

“I do not want to go into a history of culture here, but your organizations historically have largely been built upon your religious concepts, which have indeed been extremely rigid. [...]

Just as the native mujahedin—resistance fighters—of Afghanistan consider it their religious duty to battle the Russian invaders (even while thousands of their countrymen take refuge in Pakistan to the east and in Iran to the west), so do the Iranian fundamentalists think it their religious duty to export their revolution until an Islamic empire extends from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

It’s quite clear, of course, that the nations of the West, including that “Great Satan,” the United States, are, with Japan, keeping the fanatical Iranian mullahs (Moslem religious teachers) in power, so that their country will not be taken over by the Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party; that most unwelcome development could place Iran under Russian domination. [...]

[...] Iran has become a totalitarian religious theocracy. [...]

[...] Within our national orientations, within our religious and secular, scientific and artistic structures, we are choosing to go to the extremes of “good” and “bad,” and to deal with the consequences, all stewing together in what seems like an impossible mix of reason and emotion, learning and joy, pain and violence, and life and death. [...]

[...] People entertaining such beliefs are often very religious in conventional terms. [...]

[...] Both racial problems and religious dissension will be rationalized from the standpoint of these beliefs. [...]

[...] We already had the perfect title for the book, one we’d jokingly originated following last Monday night’s session: Seth on Jonestown and Three Mile Island: Religious and Scientific Cults.

[...] You have scientific cults as well as religious ones.

[...] It was a religious rather than a romantic pirate’s chest. [...]

This was however religious, and intimate to some extent. [...]

[...] Some ideas he has from William James (Varieties of Religious Experience), the seemingly disconnected realizations about his body, dreams and dialogues, will altogether help him.

[...] The idea of a knowledge of future lives becomes even more threatening from a cultural, religious, and scientific viewpoint.

[...] Seven was poking fun at religious conventions. [...]

[...] In reference, however, to one remark you made earlier, you have always been involved strongly in what you would call religious endeavors in almost all lives. Those lives that were not involved with religious endeavors were religiously involved in the opposite endeavors, in your terms, and we will go into that later. [...]

[...] Your abilities would meet some conflict in terms of religious, sexual, and social beliefs. [...]

[...] You were able to do something few people can: leap intuitively and mentally above your own period—to discard intellectually and mentally, and sometimes emotionally, the shortsighted, unfortunate religious, scientific and social beliefs of your fellows.

But your beliefs do not stop there; because of both scientific and religious ones you believe in western civilization that there are threats from within also. [...]

Science arose out of a religious world that was filled with “witchcraft.” [...]

[...] Like Ruburt, only more so, you have avoided religious symbolism, strictly avoided it, and for many years you did not see beneath the obvious hypocrisy and distortions inherent in religious organizations. [...]

[...] Now en masse there is an inner religious drama, if you will. [...]

(After break.) A villain or a victim can also be a part of a religious drama, but I enjoy your interpretations of what I have said, and so before I finish I would like to hear more of these. [...]

[...] A member of a brotherhood of St. John’s, which was largely a social organization with religious connections. [...]

(Pause.) The Roman Catholic Church seized upon art, inserted its own strong symbolism, provided art with a recognizable religious, social, and political value. [...]

[...] There were endlessly complicated, multitudinous religious and cultural justifications for such a situation, so that the entire affair seemed, often, even to the most intelligent of men, self-evident. [...]