Seth: "Your civilization is in sad straits -- not because you have allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you have denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise.
"You think that, left alone, the natural inclinations of man would destroy civilization. Then what, indeed, started civilization, if not the natural inclinations of man? What began the cooperation that allows people to unite even in tribes, if not the natural inclinations of man?
"If you learn to trust your being, then you will be able to trust your institutions and your civilizations. You equate spontaneity with irresponsibility; abandon with evil. If you abandon yourselves to yourselves, then what good would seem to spring out of the heavens of your being?
"Your world is not in dire straits because you trust yourselves, but precisely because you do not. Your social institutions are set up to fence in the individual, rather than to allow the natural development of the individual!
"I come here because it is fun. I have fun when I come here. I do not come here because I feel that I have any great responsibility for your beings or welfare. Who am I to set myself against the innate wisdom of your own individual being, or to take upon my invisible shoulders the great privilege or joyful responsibility for your behavior and destiny?"
"There is nothing more stimulating, more worthy of actualization, than the desire to change the world for the better. That is indeed each person's mission...It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in your mind some desired goal being accomplished, if you are afraid to act upon the very impulses to which your meditations and imaginings give rise.
"Meditation must be followed by action--and true meditation is action....it takes aggressive energy to send forth thoughts and feelings of peace. So your idea of aggression is completely wrong. Aggression is action, and the thoughts of peace radiated outward take aggression and joy and vitality."
"If you do not like the state of your world, it is you yourselves that must change, individually and en masse. This is the only way that change will be effected."
"The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours....You form your own dreams and you form your own physical reality. The world is...the physical materialization of the inner selves which you have formed."
"Your must honor yourselves and see within yourselves the spirit of eternal validity. You must honor all other individuals, because within each is the spark of this validity."
"Do not fall into the old ways that will lead you precisely into the world that you fear. There is no man who hates but that hatred is reflected outward and made physical, and there is no man who loves but that love is reflected outward and made physical."
"The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel....Yours is a training system for emerging consciousness ... you must first learn to handle energy and see through physical materialization, the concrete result of thought and emotion."
"To pursue certain goals, you pretend that they did not exist. Now, however, your global situation as a race requires the new acquisition of some ancient arts. These can help you become aware again of those inner idealizations that form your private reality and your mass world. These arts are useless if they are not practiced, useless in that they lie ever latent, that they are not brought out into the exterior framework of your world. To use these arts requires first of all the knowledge that beneath the world you know is another; that alongside the focus of consciousness with which you are familiar there are other focuses quite as legitimate.