“If you will remember what I have said about the way in which the universe expands, that has nothing to do with space, then you may perhaps perceive, though dimly, the existence of a psychic pyramid of interrelated, everexpanding consciousness that creates simultaneously and instantaneously universes and individuals that are given, through the gifts of personal perspectives, duration, intelligence, psychic comprehension, and eternal validity.

It is this that your God concept hints at.

Now. This absolute, ever-expanding, instantaneous psychic gestalt, which you may call God, if you prefer, is so secure in its existence now that it can constantly break itself down and rebuild itself.

Its energy is so unbelievable that it does indeed form all universes; and because its energy is within and behind all universes and all planes and all fields, it is indeed aware of each sparrow that falls, for it is each sparrow that falls.”

Excerpt from Session 81, August 26, 1964
The Early Sessions: Book 2 of The Seth Material © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    “Prayer has been extremely successful in enabling individuals to manipulate matter through use of their psychic abilities.

The God concept, however, is true and not true. Myths and symbols are often closer to reality than what are called hard facts, since so-called hard facts are often distortions of the outer senses. These distortions however are necessary frameworks for existence of the inner self in the material universe.

Again, then, even the hard facts are true and not true. An open mind therefore, or an open spirit, must be large enough to contain within it room for what may seem to he utterly opposing data. Myths and symbols often are closer to reality, again, than so called hard-facts.

This is true. But so-called hard facts, that may seem opposed to symbols and myths, are not necessarily untrue, since they may be necessary distortions without which the inner self could not survive in the material universe.

I have decided to tackle this to some degree here and now.

The myth of God, as given in Christian theology, is too closely seen by the intelligent adolescent to have evolved and changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The mature adolescent, even, in his mental and emotional framework knows that no one male deity, no one super individual, exists in some well insulated heaven, where he yet is personally concerned with the intimate affairs of man, mice, mosquito, and sparrow. [...]

To the intelligent, even the symbolism of the Crucifixion is abhorrent. Does this mean, however, that such a crucifixion did not occur? It may not have occurred, in one place and in one time, and to one called Christ; but because man has created the myth, he created the Crucifixion out of his own need; and this Crucifixion, which historically did not occur, as the myth says it occurred, nevertheless has as much reality, and more, than it would have had, had it occurred in so-called hard fact.

So the intelligent adult now knows, does he not, that no one individual but superior being exists as God in some heaven, threatening hell to the sinners and disbelievers? For many reasons the idea does not make logical sense. [...]

So the hard fact would seem to be that there is no God. There would seem to be a point of departure. Either you believe in the myth or you believe what would seem to be hard fact.

The hard fact, to all intelligent minds, must be that there is no God. The myth insists that a God exists, and the intelligent man finds himself in a dilemma that does not exist for the unintelligent. This is merely coincidence. The fact is that the myth comes nearer to reality than the fact.

The myth represents man’s psychic attempt to understand facts that he must distort in his existence on the material plane.

He must distort them simply because existence on the material plane necessitates a way of focusing his abilities that will not allow the larger scope of focus to operate. This focus, which I have mentioned before, has been chosen by him to meet the circumstances of this existence.

Now. Prayer once enabled the intelligent man to focus his psychic abilities, because the hard fact, taken for granted by all Western civilization, was the belief in such a God. The so-called hard fact has changed.

The truth behind the myth still exists. Mankind has been engrossed in dreams of a god who is like himself: except that he was considered to be superior and possessed of the highest qualities that man admires in himself.

The God myth enabled him, man, to give his higher so-called instincts an objectivity, and the God concept represented and still represents a link with the inner self.

Now. As far as hard facts are concerned, there is no God as mankind has envisioned him, and yet God once existed as mankind now envisions him.

What he is now is not what the religious think he is. Yet once he was only what they think he is now. For in fact he did evolve, and was not complete, but represented a supreme will to be from tbe beginning.

He is not human in your terms, though he passed through human stages; and here the Buddhist’s myth comes closest to approximating reality. He is not one individual, in your terms, but is a psychic gestalt, an energy gestalt.

If you will remember what I have said about the way in which the universe expands, that has nothing to do with space, then you may perhaps perceive, though dimly, the existence of a psychic pyramid of interrelated, everexpanding consciousness that creates simultaneously and instantaneously universes and individuals that are given, through the gifts of personal perspectives, duration, intelligence, psychic comprehension, and eternal validity.

It is this that your God concept hints at.

Now. This absolute, ever-expanding, instantaneous psychic gestalt, which you may call God, if you prefer, is so secure in its existence now that it can constantly break itself down and rebuild itself.

Its energy is so unbelievable that it does indeed form all universes; and because its energy is within and behind all universes and all planes and all fields, it is indeed aware of each sparrow that falls, for it is each sparrow that falls.

This does not deny the free will of man, which is indeed misinterpreted. That supreme energy does indeed fight for existence in whatever form it shows itself; and justice, for your information, is only a human term, shortsighted at best. You would both do well to remember this.

I am not going to keep you much longer. Nor have I any intentions of starting a new religion. I am, however, trying to tell you the truth, and this material is perhaps the most important of any so far, in that comprehension of it will allow the intelligent man to avail himself of energies and abilities once utilized in prayer.

Prayer is now shunned. Why pray if there is no one to listen?

The prayer contains within it its own answer, and if there is no whitehaired, kind old Father God to hear, then there is instead the initial and ever-expanding energy that forms everything that is, and of which every human being is a part.

This psychic gestalt may sound to you impersonal, but since its energy forms your person, how can this be?

If you prefer to call this supreme and absolute psychic gestalt God, then you must not attempt to objectify him in terms of material, for he is the nuclei of your cells, and more intimate than your breath.

I know this much and no more. He is not human. He is not "he," if you are thinking in terms of sex. Nor is he "she." Such separations and designations are merely arbitrary in your field. He is individual in the term that many energies are focused into one; and indeed there is one infinite personality, but it is a gestalt.

There is, then, truly no beginning or end, because we are speaking in terms of an expansion that has nothing to do with space or time, an evolution in dimensions of which you and your kind have not yet even dreamed. As an idea expands, changing a world but taking up no space, and unperceived by your scientific instruments, so does the ultimate and instantaneous absolute gestalt, which you may if you prefer call God, exist and expand.

There are those who will say that such a concept represents an escape from reality. These men, however, follow their outer senses slavishly. They ignore and fear the inner reality, and the inner ideas and dreams which have actually formed the reality of which they are so proud.

It is true that undisciplined, hysteric flight into such realms can be dangerous, a least in the short run; but disciplined, balanced, curious and open minded pursuit will lead to self-fulfillment, betterment of the race in general, and will be the means for releasing innate, inhibited energy toward constructive ends.”

Excerpt from Session 81, August 26, 1964
The Early Sessions: Book 2 of The Seth Material © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    Let us consider the idea of original sin, all of the colorful forms it may take within your body of concepts, and the ways in which these will affect your behavior and experience.
    The concept itself existed long before Christianity’s initiation, and was told in various forms throughout the centuries and in all civilizations. On the side of consciousness, it is a tale symbolically representing the birth of the conscious mind in the species as a whole, and the emergence of self-responsibility. It also stands for the separation of the self who perceives — and therefore judges and values — from the object which is perceived and evaluated. It represents the emergence of the conscious mind and of the strongly oriented individual self from that ground of being from which all consciousness comes.
    It portrays the new consciousness seeing itself unique and separate, evolving from the tree of life and therefore able to examine its fruits, to see itself for the first time as different from others, like the serpent who crawled upon the surface of the earth. Man came forth as a creature of distinctions. In so doing he quite purposefully detached himself, in your terms now, from the body of his planet in a new way. A part of him very naturally yearned for that primeval knowing, unknowingness that had to be abandoned, in which all things were given — no judgments or distinctions were necessary, and all responsibilities were biologically foreordained.
    He saw himself as rising above the serpent, which was a symbol of unconscious knowledge. Yet the serpent would always mystify and attract man, even though he must stand upon its head, symbolically speaking, and rise from its knowledge.
    With the birth of this consciousness came conscious responsibility for the fruits of the planet. Man became the caretaker. Now that is the end of dictation. You may or may not, as you wish, include the following as a part of the book. [...]
    The serpent is the symbol of the deepest knowledge within creaturehood; it also contains the impetus to rise above or beyond itself in certain respects. Eve, rather than Adam, for example, eats of the apple first because it was the intuitive elements of the race, portrayed in the story as female, that would bring about this initiation; only afterward could the ego, symbolized by Adam, attain its new birth and its necessary alienation. The tree of knowledge, then, did indeed offer its fruits — and “good and bad” — because this was the first time there were any kinds of choices available, and free will.
    There were other tales, some that have not come down to you, in which Adam and Eve were created together, and in a dream fell apart into the separate male and female. In your particular legend Adam appears first. The woman being created from his rib symbolized the necessary emergence, even from the new creature, of the intuitive forces that will always come forth — for without that development the race would not have attained self-consciousness in your terms.
    Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed. In deeper terms, there is still another meaning that mirrors all of those apparent divisions that occur as All That Is seemingly separates portions of itself from itself, scattering its omnipotence into new patterns of being that, in your terms, remember their source and look back to it longingly, while still glorying in the unique individually that is their own.
    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. Satan represents — in the terms of the story — the part of All That Is, or God, who stepped outside of Himself, so to speak, and became earthbound with His creatures, offering them the free will and choice that “previously” had not been available.
    Hence you have the majestic elements given to Satan, and the power. The earthly characteristics often appear as he is depicted in animal form, for he was also of course connected with the intuitive terrestrial attributes from which the new human consciousness would spring.
    In terms of simple biological function, you now had a species no longer completely dependent upon instinct, yet still with all the natural built-in desires for survival, and the appearance within it of a mind able ID make decisions and distinctions.
    Now: This new kind of consciousness brought with it the open mirror of memory in which past joy and pain could be recalled, and so the realization of mortal death became more immediate than it was with the animals.
    An association could trigger the clear memory of a past agony in the bewildered new mind. At first, there was a difficulty in separating the remembered image from the moment in the present. Man’s mind then struggled to contain many images — past, present, and future imagined ones — and was forced to correlate these in any given moment of time. A vast acceleration took place.
    It was only natural that certain experiences would seem better than others, but the species’ new abilities made it necessary that sharp distinctions be made. Good and evil, the desirable and the less so, were invaluable aids then in helping form the basis for such separations.
    The birth of imagination initiated the largest possibilities, and at the same time put great strain upon the biological creature whose entire corporeal structure would now react not only to present objective situations, but imaginative ones. At the same time members of the species had to cope with the natural environment as did any other animal. Imagination helped because an individual could anticipate the behavior of other creatures.
    In another way, animals also possess an “unconscious” anticipation, but they do not have to come to terms with it on an aware basis as the new consciousness did. Again, good and evil and the freedom of choice came to the species’ aid. The evil animal was the natural predator, for example. It would help here if the reader remembers what has been said about natural guilt earlier in this book. It would aid in understanding the later myths and the variations that came from them. (See the 634th session in Chapter Eight, among others.)
    As the mind developed, the species could hand down to its offspring the wisdom and law of the elders. This is still being done in modern society, of course, when each child inherits the beliefs of its parents about the nature of reality. Apart from all other considerations, this is also a characteristic of creaturehood. Only the means are different with the animals.
    The acceleration continues, however. Ideas of right and wrong are always guidelines that are then individually interpreted. Because of the connection with survival mentioned earlier (in the last session), there is a great charge here. Initially the child had to be impressed with the fact, for example, that a predator animal was “bad” because it could kill. Today a mother might unwittingly say the same thing about a car.
    The early acquiescence to beliefs has a biological importance, therefore, but as the conscious mind attains its maturity it is also natural for it to question those beliefs, and to assess them in relation to its own environment. Many of my readers may have certain ideas about good and evil that are very hampering. These may be old beliefs in new clothing. You may think that you are quite free, only to discover that you hold old ideas but have simply put new terms to them, or concentrated upon other aspects.
    Your daily experience is intimately connected with your ideas of worth and personal value.
    Now: You may be quite able to see through the distortions of conventional Christianity. You may have changed your ideas to such an extent that you can see little similarity between your current ones and those of the past. Now you may believe in the theories of Buddhism, for example, or of another Eastern philosophy.
    The differences between any of those systems of thought and Christianity may be so apparent that the similarities escape you. You may follow one of the schools of Buddhism in which great stress is laid upon the denial of the body, discipline of the flesh, and the avoidance of desire. These elements are quite characteristic of Christianity also, of course, but they may appear more palatable, exotic, or reasonable coming from a source foreign to your childhood education. So you may leap from one to the other, shouting emancipation and feeling yourself quite free of old limiting ideas.
    Philosophies that teach denial of the flesh must ultimately end up preaching a denial of the self and building a contempt for it, because even though the soul is couched in muscle and bone it is meant to experience that reality, not to refute it.
    All such dogmas use artificial guilt, and natural guilt is distorted to serve those ends. In whatever terms, the devotee is told that there is something wrong with earthly experience. You are, therefore, considered evil as a self in flesh by virtue of your very existence.
    This alone will cause adverse experience, making you reject the very basis of your own framework of experience. You will consider the body as a thing, a fine vehicle but not in itself the natural living expression of your being in material form. Many such Eastern schools also stress — as do numerous spiritualistic schools — the importance of the “unconscious levels of the self,” and teach you to mistrust the conscious mind.
    The concept of nirvana (see the 637th session in Chapter Nine) and the idea of heaven are two versions of the same picture, the former being one in which individuality is lost in the bliss of undifferentiated consciousness, and the latter one in which still-conscious individuals perform mindless adoration. Neither theory contains an understanding of the functions of the conscious mind, or the evolution of consciousness — or, for that matter, certain aspects of greater physics. No energy is ever lost. The expanding universe theory* applies to the mind as well as to the universe.
    However, these philosophies can lead you to a deep mistrust of both your body and mind. You are told that the spirit is perfect, and so you can try to live up to standards of perfection quite impossible to achieve. The failure adds to the sense of guilt.
    You attempt then to further banish the characteristic enjoyment of your own creaturehood, denying the lusty spirituality of your flesh and the strong present corporeal leanings of your soul. You will try to rid yourself of very natural emotions, and so be cheated of their great spiritual and physical motion. 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.
    They may find it easy to cluck their tongues at obvious fanatics who cry out for God’s vengeance, and speak about the world’s end in brimstone and ashes. They may be as equally convinced, however, of man’s basic unworthiness, and so of course of their own. In daily life such people will concentrate upon negative events, store them up, and unfortunately cause personal experience that will seem to quite reinforce the basic ideas.
    Here in different context is the same denial of the worth and integrity of earth experience. In some such cases, all of the desirable human attributes are magnified and projected outward into a god or superconsciousness, while all the less admirable characteristics are left to the race and the individual.
    The individual therefore deprives himself of the use of much of his ability. He does not consider it his own, and is astounded when any others of his race display such superior qualities.
    To some extent, such beliefs follow certain rhythms in both civilizations and in time.
    The mind is a system of checks and balances even as the body, and so often a set of beliefs that can be seen as highly negative will often serve beneficial ends in countering other beliefs. For some time Western civilization stressed a distorted version of intellectual reasoning, for example, and so the current stress about other portions of the self serves a purpose.
    The people alive within the world come into it with their own problems and challenges, and this will have much to do with the kind of national and worldwide beliefs that are generated and that dominate. The beliefs, of course, are frameworks in which various kinds of experience are tested. This also applies to religions, and political and social situations as well. There is always a give and take between the individual and the mass system of beliefs in which he has chosen his environment.
    There is a belief in illness as being morally wrong, and a countering belief in it as being ennobling, uplifting and spiritually good. These value judgments are extremely important, for they will be reflected in your own experience with any illness or disease.

Excerpt from Session 646, March 7, 1973 & Session 647, March 12, 1973

The Nature of Personal Reality © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts
– Part Two: Your Body as Your Own Unique Living Sculpture. Your Life as Your Most Intimate Work of Art, and the Nature of Creativity as It Applies to Your Personal Experience
– Chapter 12: Grace, Conscience, and Your Daily Experience

25th May 2025: Status Update

Due to the fact that I want to spend some time thinking about this serious subject matter, I have decided to provide a basic summary with some references, and then I may list much longer quotes and/or write an essay some time in the future.

13th May 2025: Status Update / Info Only

How many people are affected by lifetimes of being told that they are essentially evil, religious brainwashing and mind control that continues to this day? So, I want to finish reading all the personal/deleted session books first before I try to glean the most important information on the concept of The Sinful Self. These Seth insights were often directed at helping author Jane Roberts with her mobility issues, so it will require some effort to try to shape quotes for some useful and general comprehension.

If you want to find out more, you can find quotes online, but sometimes they are scrambled and certain controversial paragraphs missing. Whatever, you can use the following link:

I first started reading Seth books 24 years ago, and for a long time wondered why Jane Roberts died so young. Moreover, when the books mentioned the concept of the Sinful Self, I wanted to know more. So, when I decided to read The Personal Sessions book series, I was quite stunned. Basically, the teachings provided to the whole world through Jane Roberts and her husband Robert Butts, were often ignored when it came to Jane’s “symptoms.” For example, when Seth tried to offer practical advice like hot towels to help her knees, this advice was ignored. However, a friend’s advice on a cold therapy device was tried, but it did not provided any long term relief. So what exactly were this couple thinking? Well, when Jane did not get better, Seth tried many different ways to get through to them that Jane was creating this reality and the symptoms served as a convenient way of shutting out the world and allowing them to be creative people and produce huge volumes of work. Basically at some level, Jane’s “symptoms” worked for them both. Finally, Seth struck gold and got to the very deep issue of the Sinful Self, where it became truly apparent that Jane was deliberately sabotaging herself. Thus, as Jane became more and more successful, her mobility issues got worse. At the end of May and early June 1981, two books were released, Seth-Jane’s The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Jane’s The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. This precipitated Jane’s symptoms and especially her walking difficulties to become considerably worse. Secretly, Jane had become extremely worried about the impact of those books challenging existing beliefs and what, if any, subsequent consequences might bring.

According to Seth, the Sinful Self is not a natural psychological construct. In Jane Robert’s life, it was created in childhood as a consequence of Catholic upbringing. Her childhood was rough as her parents divorced when she was three years old and her mother became a bed-ridden arthritic who often raged and blamed Jane for her situation. Jane’s trauma was made worst by having to attend a strict Catholic orphanage for 18 months when her mother had been hospitalized in another city for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Priests were frequent visitors to the home, some were kind but one particular priest made advances to Jane in her teens. Seth first mentioned the Sinful Self in October 1967, here is a short quote:

    “There is one part of the self, confident, assured of its abilities, and somewhat demanding, rather powerful. It has to this point driven the personality onward despite all obstacles. It never admitted the possibility of failure, but only worked toward success.
    Now, to the other portion of the personality however, success was failure. This part of the personality remained relatively quiet until the other portion began to achieve its ends. This portion considered itself not only unworthy but evil. It (The “sinful self” May 10, 1982) is basically an overgrown and almost cancerous super-conscience that applied brakes in the past to some extent, and now has largely taken over.”

—The Personal Sessions: Book 1 of The Deleted Seth Material; Session 367 (Deleted) October 1, 1967 © 2016 Laurel Davies-Butts

Therefore, it is fair to state that 17 years after the Seth insight provided above, Jane died of what I consider to be spiritual cancer at age 55. I would like to add that it was not due to lack of support which is clearly laid out in The Personal Session books that span a period of over 18 years.

According to Seth, the church creates within it’s members the image of a Sinful Self, but it also provides a steady system of treatment — a series of rituals that gave the individual some sense of hope the Sinful Self could be redeemed, as in most of Christianity’s framework through adherence to certain segments of Christian dogma. Seth states:

    “The entire Catholic dogma is built about Christ’s agony and death.”
    “That system regards the body as highly distracting, disruptive, heir to the lusts of the flesh, and so forth. Its discipline through suffering is one of Christianity’s most appalling effects.”
    “When Ruburt left the Church, the concept of the Sinful Self was still there, but the methods that earlier served to relieve its pressures were no longer effectively present. The concept was shifted over to the flawed self of scientific vintage.
    Science has no sacraments. Its only methods of dealing with such guilt involve standard psychoanalytic counseling—which itself deepens the dilemma, for counseling itself is based upon the idea that the inner self is a reservoir of savage impulses. Period.”
    “The Sinful Self also shows itself in a period of transition from its religious to scientific format in science fiction or fantasy in particular, where you can almost trace the translation of religion’s self, tainted by original sin, to the Darwinian and Freudian concepts of the flawed self, bound to destruction one way or another, propelled by the unbridled unconscious or evolutionary defect.”
    “The Sinful Self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward onto the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted.”
    “In Ruburt’s case the core belief, again, in the Sinful Self was hard to differentiate, because it could appear in many other guises. It dropped its most obvious religious coloration for some time, and could simply appear as an unusually strong dedication to work and discipline. The Sinful Self has no use for play, because it believes so fervently that left alone it will indeed be lazy or childish, or fritter itself away—or, looking at it the other way, it fears that left alone it will only play, or will be slothful. You see this most clearly in Protestant theology.”
    “The Sinful-Self concept causes you to expect the worst in any given situation.”
    When Ruburt closes his mind to the feelings of the Sinful Self, he locks it up within a prison as if it could receive no new information, but must always operate with the distorted beliefs of its birth. It cannot get feedback.
    Its fears of such feelings, rather than the feelings themselves, cause difficulties, for the repression keeps the Sinful Self forever locked in the past, uneducated, panicky. The release of such feelings allows the Sinful Self some expression, and gives it a sense of communication so that it can indeed be reached by the understanding gained by other portions of the self—a highly important point.
    The feelings involve the fear of being abandoned and alone, outcast. The Sinful Self believes it is unloved and unlovable by nature. You talk to it as you would comfort a child. You tell it that it is loved, and will not be abandoned. That it is good and that those who told it anything else were in grave error . No portion of the self is beyond reach in that (underlined) regard, or unteachable. When Ruburt feels that kind of panic it is indeed the small child’s fear of abandonment for being bad, and feelings of powerlessness because of the child’s relative lack of power in reference to the adult world.
    Those feelings, again, can be accepted as belated expressions. In that way, Ruburt’s own current experience can reach back to comfort the child in the present. Such a process is relatively simple rather than complex, and can be most beneficial. The Sinful Self can be told it is a good self, it is loved, it is safe to express itself, it is free to follow its own motion and curiosity.”

—The Personal Sessions: Book 6 of The Deleted Seth Material; Deleted Session April 16, 1981 © 2017 Laurel Davies-Butts

In June 1981, Jane channelled her ‘Sinful Self’ and wrote 36 pages of information. Only a few pages have been provided for public scrutiny in Seth books (actually, the raw manuscripts could have been archived with all their other material at Yale University.) Whatever, here is a shortened quote that can be found in Essay 3, that serves as part of the introduction to the book Dreams, Evolution And Value Fulfillment, Vol. I

Statement of the Sinful Self

    “I believed in the soul’s survival first of all, and inspired the “creative self” to step out as freely as possible even while in my heart I [also] believed in the existence of sin and devil. I felt upon my heart the heavy unkind mark of Cain, sensing that humanity carries (unfairly) the almost indelible strain— the tragic flaw—[of] being tinged by sin and ancient iniquities. Thusly I reasoned: If I am flawed I must automatically distort even those experiences of the soul that seem clearest. I must unwittingly fall into error when I trust myself the most, since I share that sinful propensity. Yet despite these feelings did I (did we) unswervingly set forward.
    The belief in sin and in the sinful self has been for uncounted centuries embedded in man’s concepts about himself and God. Around those beliefs civilizations evolved and religions orbited. So I maintain that I am being unfairly attacked (perhaps that is too strong a word) for personally accepting in my own understanding a philosophy to which ten millions and more have also succumbed, and to which the “wisest” of the species have given their loyalty and trust.”

The following longer Seth quotes were arbitrarily chosen, because over the years, the subject was never really dropped from The Personal Sessions material.

    “The Sinful Self obviously is not a burden that Ruburt carries alone, but one inherent in your civilization. Unfortunately its values have in their way appeared throughout your culture. In terms of goodness, you can certainly tell the Sinful Self that health and vitality are indeed not only good, but in their way they represent the spiritual attributes. No self really needs a baptism. It is already blessed by All That Is before its birth, and its desires, impulses, and characteristics are also inherently good, meant to insure its own fulfillment, to bring out its best characteristics, and to help the rest of the world as well—all very important issues.
    One small note: again, the Sinful Self should be assured it is good, it is not sinful. It is safe to express itself, it is safe to move, and it was produced by All That Is out of the great energy of universal love.
    The Sinful Self was taught to distrust its own nature and expression, believing that that nature, by virtue of original sin, was flawed—but in a tragic fashion—literally damned by God, of course, because of the sins of the forefathers.”

    “She learned of the concept of sin through her intense early involvement with the Roman Catholic church. It’s easy to see how, in Jane’s case at least, the church’s teachings about sin began to grow as the innocent child started protecting her spontaneous natural mysticism—that prime attribute she’d chosen for exploration in this life. I don’t think her “sinful self” could have risen to such prominence without feeding upon those repressions, clamping down more and more within the psyche as the years passed, continuing its misguided but “well-meaning attempt to protect the creative self … to keep a hand of caution on its course lest the centuries of men’s belief in sin carried a true weight that I shared but could not comprehend.” And so, of couse, the sinful self’s own overreactions, although carried out without “malice,” became themselves a portion of Jane’s long-range learning challenges this time.
    Any decision Jane makes about altering the deeply set beliefs involved in her condition will require the cooperation of a number of portions of her psyche, including her sinful self, and it appears that at this time neither of us is ready to try achieving that kind of overall effect. [...] Ironically, Jane’s sinful self is one of the main creators of and participants in her illness syndrome, so any beneficial changes she can bring about will first call for a major shift in the attitude of that very stubborn portion of her psyche.”

—Dreams, “Evolution”, and Value Fulfillment: Volume One; Essay 9 Monday, May 31, 1982 © 2012 Laurel Davies-Butts

    “Instead of promoting the idea of man’s inner worth, it has taught people to distrust the inner self and its manifestations. Most churches preach a dogma that stresses concepts of the sinful self, and sees man as a creature contaminated by original sin even before birth.
    This distorted picture depicts a species of sinners innately driven by evil, sometimes demonic, forces. In this dogma man needs to apologize for his birth, and the conditions of life are seen as a punishment set by God upon his erring creatures. Unfortunately such concepts are also reflected in fields of psychology, particularly in Freudianism — where, say, slips of the tongue may betray the self’s hidden, nefarious true desires.
    The unconscious is understood to be a garbage heap of undesirable impulses, long ago discarded by civilization, while again much religious theory projects the image of the hidden self that must be kept in bounds by good work, prayer, and penance.
    Amid such a conglomeration of negative suppositions, the idea of a good and innocent inner self seems almost scandalous. To encourage expression of that self appears foolhardy, for it seems only too clear that if the lid of consciousness were opened, so to speak, all kinds of inner demons and enraged impulses would rush forth.
    Again, people who have such views of the inner self usually project the same ideas upon nature at large, so that the natural world appears equally mysterious, dangerous, and threatening.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
    Secondary personalities and schizophrenic episodes are also somewhat characteristic — again appearing as sudden explosive behavior when conflicting beliefs are damned up and held back. And when it is believed that the inner self is indeed a bed of chaotic impulses, then it becomes less and less possible for an individual to express normal ranges of activity. The person then feels lethargic and out of touch with work or family.
    Expression is a necessity of life, however. Each person feels that drive. When one set of rigid beliefs threatens to make action appear meaningless, then another set of buried, repressed beliefs may surface, providing new impetus precisely when it is needed — but also forming a secondary personality with characteristics almost opposite to those of the primary self.”
    —The Way Toward Health; Part Two: Chapter 10: June 5, 1984 © 2011 Laurel Davies-Butts

Since I am interested in spiritual evolution, I have taken this psychological condition seriously, especially when Seth says that it is one that effects millions of people. Maybe there are others out there that think this issue is worthy of some consideration.

    Part of me doesn’t want to contend with this material at all but last night I had one of the strangest, quite frightening experiences—all the odder because there are so few real events to hang on to. Anyway early after we went to bed I realized I was in the middle of an odd nightmarish experience, one terribly vivid emotionally, yet with no real story line. I only know that the following were involved: a childhood nursery tale or/and a childhood toy like the cuddly cat doll I had as a child named Suzie that I thought the world of. Anyway, the point was that the story.... and there I lose it; I don’t get the connections. All I know is that I awakened myself crying, my body very sore, sat on the side of the bed and made the following connections from my feelings at the time:
    They were these; that the entire world and its organization was kept together by certain stories or one in particular—like the Catholic Church’s; that it was dangerous beyond all knowing to look through the stories or examine them or to look for the truth and that all kinds of taboos existed to keep us from doing this, since.... since on the other side so to speak there was an incomprehensible frightening chaotic dimension, malevolent, powers beyond our imagining; and that to question the stories was to threaten survival not just personally but to threaten the fabric and organization of reality as we knew it. So excommunication was the punishment or damnation.... which meant more than mere ostracism but the complete isolation of a person from those belief systems, with nothing between him or her and those frightening realities.... without a framework in which to even organize meaning. This was what damnation really meant. To seek truth was the most dangerous of well intentioned behavior then.... and retribution had to be swift and sure.
    At the same time I can’t remember the events connected with the nightmare that gave rise to the feelings.... but I was being assaulted or attacked by.... A psychological force who wanted me to understand the danger of such a course, and when I went back to sleep somehow the entire thing would happen again.... once I think the title of the—(Jane left this blank)—or the children’s tale appeared in the air in large block letters. The idea also being that outside of the known order provided by these stories, there were raging forces working against man’s existence. (The old Pandora’s Box idea comes to mind.)
    I equate this with three events: a movie I saw on TV the night before last where Sean Connery sees through the god of his people after reading The Wizard of Oz; a Raggedy Ann doll Rob found in the yard and brought in that reminded me of my old Suzie; and a part of a review I read yesterday on a book about death. The book was based on the idea that nature was against man; and that religion was man’s attempt to operate within that unsafe context. The feelings I was getting went even further, that religion or science or whatever weren’t attempts to discover truth—but to escape from doing so, to substitute some satisfying tale or story instead. And I suppose that if someone persisted long enough, he or she would find the holes in the stories.... and undo the whole works. The idea of the stories was to save each man from having to encounter reality in such a frightening fashion.... the characters in the stories did this for him in their own fashion.... and if you kept it up.... you threatened the fine framework of organization that alone made life possible....

—The Personal Sessions: Book 6 of The Deleted Seth Material; Jane’s Notes March 8, 1981 © 2017 Laurel Davies-Butts

Comment: In the original, these notes were all in italics to distinguish from Seth material, but here there are no italics (blue font colour), to make this section easier to read. As a reminder concerning the following deleted session, Seth always calls Jane Roberts ‘Rubert’, which is her entity name.

    Ruburt’s nightmare experience (of March 8) is a beautiful example of the kind of explosive emotional content that many people carry, fairly hidden, representing certain taboos, translated of course in individualistic manners.
    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. In the light of those concepts, artistic expression has been channeled, focused, directed along certain lines. It has been discouraged along other lines. The repressive nature of Christian thought in the Middle Ages, for example, is well known.
    Expression itself was considered highly suspect if it traveled outside of the accepted precepts, and particularly of course if it led others to take action against those precepts. To some extent the same type of policy is still reflected in your current societies, though science or the state itself may serve instead of the church as the voice of authority.
    Behind such ideas is of course the central point of Christianity, or one of the central points at least, that earthly man is a sinful creature. He is given to sin. In that regard his natural expression must be closely guarded. It must be directed toward officialdom, and outside of that boundary lay, particularly in the past, the very uncomfortable realm of the heretic.
    In medieval times to be excommunicated was no trivial incident, but an event harkening severance that touched the soul, the body, and all political, religious and economic conditions by which the two were tied together.
    Many people’s economic well-being of course was dependent upon the church in one way or another, and in reincarnational terms many millions of people alive today were familiar then with such conditions. The nunneries and monasteries were long-time social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. But there is a long history of the conflicts between creative thought, heresy, excommunication, or worse, death. All of those factors were involved in one way or another in the fabric of Ruburt’s nightmare material.
    Again, many people carry the same kind of emotional charge. Ruburt’s fears, as expressed in that material, can be encountered, of course. It is when they are hidden that difficulties arise, because their charge is then added to other issues.
    There are, however, classic connections between creative thought and heresy, between established belief and the danger of revelatory material as being disruptive—first of church and then of state.
    The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came [to the house] regularly, through direct contact with the religious [grade] school, and the support offered to the family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father Boyle, who objected to its themes, and who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of those 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.
    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.
    He [Ruburt] was afraid that if he went too far he would discover that he had catapulted himself into a realm where both answers and questions were meaningless, and in which no sense was to be found. To do that is one thing, but to take others with you would be, he felt, unforgivable—and in the framework of those fears, as his work became better known he became even more cautious.
    (9:28. A very significant sentence:) The entire structure of fears, of course, is based upon a belief in the sinful self and the sinful nature of the self’s expression.
    Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all (equally important, of course). In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. It was precisely in the area of artistic expression, of course, that the inspirations might quickest leap through the applied dogmatic framework. The political nature of inspirational material of any kind was well understood by the church.
    By such tactics the church managed to hold on to an entire civilization for centuries. Ruburt well knew even as a child that such structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured. Later the old fears, if they surfaced, were not encountered. They seemed beneath him, unworthy or cowardly—but in any case their validity as feelings was not recognized or understood.
    Ruburt did initiate a small religious order in the 16th Century, in France, and he was in love for many years with the man he met in his dream —a cleric. The love was not consummated, but it was passionate and enduring nonetheless on both of their parts.
    Ruburt had considerable difficulty with church doctrine even then, and the rules of the order as actually carried out through practice were later considered to hold their own seeds of heresy. Ruburt was forced to leave the order that he had initiated, as an old woman. He left with a few female companions who were also ostracized, and died finally of starvation. It was a time when unconventional patterns of thought, of unconventional expression, could have dire consequences.
    The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.
    Some of Ruburt’s short notes, written after the nightmare experience, show that he is beginning to put that material into its proper reference. Those fears, however, have been pertinent, since they stood between old beliefs and new ones—that is, they prevented him from taking full advantage of his newer knowledge, and of the abilities and good intent of the spontaneous self.
    Both the nightmare experience and the dream were partially triggered by our last session (on March 4), of course, and served to show Ruburt why he had begun to cut down on some of his own psychic experience, inspiration, and expression—a policy reflected in the repressed nature of bodily expression.

—The Personal Sessions: Book 6 of The Deleted Seth Material; Deleted Session March 11, 1981 © 2017 Laurel Davies-Butts

Comment: It suddenly struck me after re-reading this deleted session a few times, that the modern social credit score and the consequences of failing to keep it up and therefore being excluded from society, is just a modern version of excommunication by the medieval Church. (Emphasis on the evil.) So, how many people are there today, who are desperate to keep up with the Joneses because they have unconscious fear of being sought out and cast out as a heretic, due to a past life experience?