Seth from ESP Class December 19th, 1972.
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Some text I found:
Do not think that Christmas is too camp. In your civilization, when you allow it to, it speaks to the child in you. Accept the child and enjoy the myth, for behind the myth there is truth, and the truth is that you are reborn. And the truth is that the inner self does have the wonder of a child. Other stories have been wound about those truths, but the truths remain. The god Pan has as great a validity as Christ has. The names change; the stories change to fit your ideas and your civilization. Now, I prefer Pan piping his magic flutes over the countryside and drinking wine, to a Christ born to be crucified. But that is my idea; you pick your own. Behind all the myths is the reality. You are born with the wonder of a child again to remake the world in a new image. Christmas should represent the rebirth of the self. Seth Speaks should be called You Speak. So listen to yourselves. It is fashionable to think in terms of Buddha and Eastern religions. And it is not fashionable to think of the infant Christ, for example. So you are “in” if you think of Buddha, and “out” if you dare to let a tear show when they play a Christmas carol. The same thing is involved. You are still dealing with systems of beliefs and myths that have grown through the ages. And each of them has their degree of validity and their degree of distortion. Santa Claus—Ho Ho—is relatively harmless considering what your religions have done. If you are bad you get a hunk of coal, and if you are good you get a goody. But what about a god who says if you are good you will go to heaven and if you are bad you burn through all eternity? Place your indignation where it belongs! All of the gods in your myths die and are rewarded—from the time of your ancient memory, and through the ages of the memory of your race. So it is simply said again and again, in terms that you understand, according to the time in which you think you live: That you are born again and again, and the trials of the gods are your own, and so are their triumphs and their joys. The symbols used are also colored by the times, and they are personified, so winter and the cold that sweeps across the earth are used to symbolize the death of the soul. Not a death, however, but transformation. If you understood your myths, you could use them effectively. When you think that they are reality, however, they can entrap you." "You are the stories that the Soul tells. You are your own stories, and you create your ideas of God according to your interpretation of greater realities that you understand and do not understand. You are catching up with your own understanding, but as soon as you understand, there is more to learn because creativity is never still and never done and never finished. In other worlds there are other Christmas tales, each with their own story and rhyme. But none of them denies the intense and eternal NOW which is being forever created and in which you have your quite natural existence. And none of it denies the joyful vitality that is your own, neither the bewilderment in your eye, nor the pleasure in yours. All of this is meant to illuminate the joy and ease of your own being, and meant to generate within you, if you will forgive me, that old Ho—Ho—Ho—the vitality and the laughter and the joy that is your being. If you understood thoroughly what I am trying to say to you, you would be laughing with me and enjoying your own grizzly beard and hair, and, as you looked around at each other, you would see yourselves as all ages, reborn time and time again and with your identity alive within you now. The truth is not something apart from you. You each are truth, speaking and living in physical form. Seth Speaks is within you and not in a book. You are the book. Then joyfully listen to what your feelings tell you. Your thoughts and your feelings are both natural and both yours. And your joy is within you, Christmas or non-Christmas, Santa Claus or no Santa Claus, December 25 or the 4th of July. Your atoms and molecules shout with the joy of their own being; listen to them. Feel within their fleshy substance your own spirituality. Look at the Christmas tree; your cells and molecules shine a million times more brightly. Your eyes glitter with far greater light. You are love in corporeal form. You do not have to look for it or wonder where to find it or give it in packages with bright ribbon. You are packages with bright ribbon. Christmas is now and was yesterday and will be tomorrow. It is in you, in Buddha, in Pan, in Christ, in Mohammed, in an ant and in a frog, and in your eyes and with you, each of you. You are each, then, Christmas. You shine and glitter whether or not you know it. You shout “Merry Christmas” even when you cry. You cannot deny your own vitality or being. Let the vitality and energy, therefore, ring out through your own knowledge. Let it awaken within you the knowledge of your being. Dance through your own molecules and scatter your own petals! And I bid you all a merry Christmas!
Seth’s ESP class session, December 19, 1972.
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"[… 7 paragraphs …]
The legend of Christ is of great psychic import however, and is intrinsically true. This does not mean it is based in historical fact. In many ways it is more true than historic fact, for man himself created that which had not been provided. The creation nevertheless happened in quite real terms, and is part of mankind’s inner recognition of the pyramid gestalts of which I have spoken.
This was as close as man could come in his imagination to that which is, and this is all right. The basic idea behind Christmas is definitely important, whether or not the intellect is able to see its significance.
Now. Psychologically alone this is beneficial, for it acts against those feelings of despair that can creep up during the winter season. And by reminding men of a birth and a resurrection it hints at the innate abilities of the race to transcend physical time and space.
The getting out of oneself that is involved is excellent therapy, and therapy that does others good, as well as the self involved. There is much more here, however. Culturally speaking, there is a strong connection with pagan intuitions, deep and meaningful, that found newer and broader expressions.
The character of Christ as it is portrayed is an excellent one, since it stressed human rather than specifically male qualities. Or should I say it stressed human qualities rather than those unfortunately considered male qualities. It stressed the best qualities of the race as a whole.
The personality of Christ is an idealization, and a clue to the entity of which each individual personality is composed. And as far as prayer is concerned, though I realize that neither of you pray in those terms, someone does indeed listen. The self who prays listens, and makes necessary adjustments and improvements. For the individual is part of All That Is, and therefore partakes of the abilities of the psychic gestalts of which we have so sketchily spoken.
[… 7 paragraphs …]"
—TES5 Session 213 December 1, 1965
"([Gert:] “How then, does the Catholic church come to say that the Pope is the Church instituted by Jesus Christ and it is, therefore, it?”)
Because there are millions of people upon the earth who would rather have someone speak and tell them what to do, rather than do it for themselves, that is why.
([Gert:] “Has the church, either through the interpretation of the Bible or the text, refused to let this be known to its members?”)
Now, the church—shall I put it in quotes and capital letters for you?—“the Church” is composed of human beings who are fallible and you remember that. It is not an octopus out to get you. Now, wait, it does not have an evil intent toward you. It does not think, ah, there is a bad *(word missing) *in Elmira, New York and, by God and Jesus Christ, we are going to save her for her own sake.
([Gert:] “I sometimes feel like I may be out to get it now.”)
It is not worried about that either. It is falling apart at the seams and it is human. It served many purposes and it formed itself into a psychic entity, sustained by the belief of millions.
([Gert:] “And therefore, in a sense, it is powerful?”)
It is as powerful as the people believe that it is.
([Natalie:]“Then if it is falling apart at the seams, will it fall apart by 2000?”)
Oh, now we want a time element and some (words missing). It will, indeed, disintegrate in the manner in which it is now known by that time. It will be disbanded in large terms, but there will be vital groups throughout the world who will join with other groups.
[… 1 paragraph …]
There will be an evolution of it, and an evolution of all religion as the people realize that the God is within them.
Now listen. Imagine an onion, and if there is someone here who does not like onions, imagine anything you please. An onion comes up from the earth and the growth principle is within it; and imagine our poor onion in the earth. You see, I am not using a flower, and the onion comes up and it insists that it must know who God is and where He is that makes him grow. And so our onion, with the full vitality within it to grow from the inside out, as all things grow, instead looks at the fine carrot next to him, and such a lovely hue, and examines the carrot in his mind to see if this is God. And then he looks up to the asparagus and to the vines and to the tree. And the tree is much larger so surely, the tree must be God. Aha, but the tree does not look like an onion so, therefore, the tree could not be God. God instead must be a giant onion, a beautiful giant onion, and so our poor and stupid little onion spends all its life waiting for this giant perfection of an onion to come by and save it. He may even hallucinate such a giant onion but all the time the principle of vitality and power and growth is All That Is, and all of it that you can understand at this point, is within the onion. The principle within it that gives it its existence. Now, if ever I find a church of onions, I will let you know."
([Joel:] “As this evolution of the church continues and progresses before the timetable established at 2000 and disintegrates as we know it now, will this be a voluntary disintegration or will it be imposed politically?”)
It will be imposed but from within."
—TECS2 ESP Class Session, December 22, 1970