The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
This chapter discusses the question of the birth of Christianity. Seth states that Christ was not crucified on the cross, nor did he resurrect or ascend to heaven, and that no Christ matching the details of the Bible existed historically; the church organization is a historical fact, but its birth occurred later than the church claims. The masses' psyche's longing for a redeemer, their beliefs, and the psyche's dramatized creation caused events that never happened to be treated as history, forming a story more powerful than actual events. Mythic figures are also regarded as dramatized expressions of humanity's abundant psyche.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Christ was not crucified, nor did he resurrect or ascend to heaven; historically there was no Christ matching the details in the Bible.
- The church organization is a historical fact, but its birth occurred later than the era the church itself claims.
- The mass psyche's longing for and belief in a redeemer caused events that never happened to be treated as history, and formed a story more powerful than actual events.
- Before a physical event occurs there exists a long chain of psychological realities; people need to accomplish dramatization and psychic creation.
- Mythic figures are equally real; they are humanity's abundant psychic dramatized expressions. Fixing them into specific persons causes the loss of creative impetus.
Main Text
From Judaism to the Birth of Christianity
This session is the eleventh session of The Magical Approach, titled "The Multidimensional Psychodrama (Psychic Drama)," begun on Monday, September 15, 1980, at 8:52 p.m. Before the session began, Rob wrote the introduction.
Jane really could not muster any energy today. Along with her physical progress, she was feeling a lot of muscular discomfort, which made it very hard for her to concentrate. By 8:30, after she had finished washing the dishes—you see, Jane was already this uncomfortable, and still she had to do housework—the overall pain had subsided somewhat, but she had relaxed to the point of seeming utterly weary and limp. Rob could hardly expect her to hold a session. She kept yawning. At 8:40, to Rob's surprise, he heard her calling him from the living room, saying she would try to hold a short session. She said, "I'm sensing something about religion."
At that point Rob said, oh, God. He said it jokingly, because he had recently been troubled while trying to write a note for a passage in Seth's book The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events—about Christ's resurrection and ascension. He had not expected that Jane would just happen to tell him there was a short session, and that it was about religion, so he thought it was truly magical.
For several reasons, interference being one of them, he found it very hard to get started writing. He did not know how the note should be written, and he had to spend the weekend reading to remind himself of some background material. He hoped the note would be well organized and not too detailed. Jane also contributed a wonderful piece of material. As before, he found the whole subject of religion confusing and contradictory—there were many self-contradictory things in it. He had never expected Jane to receive any material about religion from Seth tonight, because this was about The Magical Approach, and this session's content had no direct connection to the content of The Magical Approach itself. But clearly, his own struggle with this subject had already prompted Jane to make this effort. You see how strong her telepathic ability is—Jane was able to pass this telepathic impression on to Seth, and Seth just happened to want to speak about it.
One of the distractions that had kept him from writing was the problem of a leaking basement bathroom. Because last night, he discovered that part of the basement floor—including the old bomb shelter used for storing readers' letters—was leaking and seeping water, flooded with a quarter inch of water, which had just seeped through to his cardboard boxes. He had specifically placed wooden strips under the cardboard boxes precisely to protect them from water. If the wooden strips absorbed enough water, it could seep into the cardboard boxes, which absorb water very easily, and then there would be some damp letters that would have to be brought back from the dead. Although this was not really too difficult a matter. This afternoon the plumber cleared the house's drainpipe, and he spent a lot of time using a mop to soak up six buckets of dirty water.
Jane's delivery for Seth seemed much as usual, except that she paused longer between sentences, as if at each pause she had to gather herself to deal with that very relaxed impetus—because she was about to fall asleep. But the material was still as brilliant as ever, and Rob would type it up while writing the note in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events.
Christ Was Not Crucified
Seth came through, and he got straight to the point. Because this session is all about Christianity -- if you are not interested in Christianity, you can skip this session.
He said:
Christ was not crucified. To bring up an old topic, if you have been reading the Seth books with me all the way from Seth Speaks, you will know that he has said this many times already. So he did not resurrect, nor did he walk out of the tomb, and afterwards, he did not ascend to heaven either.
The way he said this, Christians would all want to kill him. If Seth said this in a Christian society, you can imagine -- because as far as I know, in a country where Christianity makes up seventy or eighty percent1 of the population, if you talk about Christianity like this, you can imagine how much people would hate Seth.
But in the terms of the Biblical drama, Christ was crucified, he rose from the tomb, and he ascended into heaven. Yet the resurrection and the ascension were indeed two parts of one dramatic event.
He is explaining that this is one of the themes of this session, and later in the session he will break it down and discuss it separately.
In terms of dogma, the fact of rising from the dead alone, merely the fact of rising from the dead, clearly would not be enough to make people follow Christ. You cannot have a world in which the newly resurrected dead mingle with the living. You cannot have such a world. Therefore, after such a resurrection, what exists must be a spiritual realm.
What he means is that if Christ was crucified and then resurrected, then he certainly could not remain living in our world; he would have to ascend to heaven. Because people cannot accept the fact of a dead person coming back to life and then living among us.
Now, in historical fact there was no crucifixion, resurrection, or ascension. In historical terms, there was no Christ as spoken of in the Bible. There was no person whose life matched the details listed in the Bible. There was no such person.
But the organization of the church is a historical fact; the church does exist.
The power, devotion, and energy of Christianity, and its organizational expertise, are indisputable.
Under the leadership of the Christian church, its power, devotion, and energy, as well as its organizational expertise -- it is especially skilled at organizing the church at all levels of hierarchy -- this is indisputable.
Christianity was built upon great religious and psychic insights, and that is also indisputable. To some extent, it involved an intuitive reorganization of subjective reality, which could then be turned into objective reality.
That is to say, to some extent, Christianity is an intuitive reorganization of subjective reality. What is subjective reality? It is the subjective reality in our minds; the reality of our psyche is subjective reality. This subjective reality underwent an intuitive reorganization, and only after that reorganization could it become objective reality.
At the very beginning he is discussing: the person of Christ did not exist, but the church truly exists, and he also acknowledges the church's capabilities.
But I have told you that the world of events originates from the world of concepts.
He has told you before that the physical world around us originates from our inner world of beliefs and concepts.
The True Birth of the Church
Next he says, as he has often said, if you could go back into the past, back to the time when the event happened, and invisibly study that event — suppose you were an invisible person, back in the era when Christ lived, observing invisibly — you would find that the birth of Christianity was also as he had said. Rob put in parentheses here that he would rather say he would very much like to see what really happened. Suppose you went back invisibly, and you wanted to see what actually happened.
But Christianity was not born at that time, not at the time its church claims it was born. You could say the labor pains happened at that time. The labor pains — that is, the labor pains of the church's birth — were in that period, but the church itself came about only after waiting for a while beyond that period. So the church's emergence happened later than the era the church itself claims.
Then Seth used the process of a woman giving birth to a child to explain this matter of the church's birth: he said the Jewish shepherds represented the placenta that was meant to be discarded. Although the placenta nurtured the whole of Christianity, in the end Christianity was reborn and transformed, and it was a new religion. So the Jews at the very beginning were that placenta — it gave birth to the new religion, and then it was of no further use. Because in the early period before the new religion was born, the Jewish tradition nourished it.
He says:
As you know, Christ was a common name. In that era, Christ was a very ordinary name, like Jack or David today. Therefore, when I say that a man named Christ was involved in those events, I do not mean to say that he was the Christ of the Bible.
When I said in Seth Speaks, or in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, that Christ was involved in this matter — do not misunderstand, I was not saying that the Christ of the Bible was involved in this matter. Because at that time there were many people named Christ; it was an ordinary name. There was a man named Christ involved in this matter, but he was not the Christ described in the Bible.
That Christ, his life was ultimately one of the lives used to assemble the image of the Biblical Christ.
He says the Christ I said was involved in the Bible — he was only one of the lives ultimately used to assemble the image of the Christ in the Bible. He had other lives, and they pieced them together to form the Christ in the Bible. He was one of them.
The Mass Psyche's Longing
Then he said:
The mass psyche is seeking a change, an impetus, a flowering, a new organization. The idea of a savior is not new at all. It is an ancient concept found in many traditions. As I have said before, that part of the world was filled with would-be messiahs, self-proclaimed prophets, and so forth. And in those terms, the great psychic desire of humanity illuminated and filled that psychic landscape. It filled the ready psychic patterns with a new urgency and intent. It was only a matter of time.
What he means is that in that era, because of the needs of the people's psyche -- the need for change, the need for a new organization -- this very mood would itself give rise to many saviors. It was not only Christ as a single individual; in that era there were many who proclaimed themselves prophets, many who proclaimed themselves saviors. Because that age needed such a person. The desires of the people's psyche at that time needed these changes, and it illuminated that psychic landscape, and then a new urgency and intent filled the ready psychic patterns. Everyone was ready, just waiting to welcome this savior. Everything was prepared, and all that was lacking was the final push.
He said:
There were many saviors who were passed over, and many others who were passed over and did not ultimately become the savior. Their circumstances, characteristics, and abilities were almost exactly what was required. But they were unsuitable for a number of reasons: they were the wrong race, or their timing was not right, and their intersection with space and time did not meet the requirements.
With gentle humor, he said that this person's circumstances, characteristics, and abilities in that era were the same as those of the one who ultimately became Christ, almost completely matching the psychic conditions. But for a number of reasons they were unsuitable -- the race was wrong, the timing was wrong, the intersection with space and time did not meet the requirements -- so none of them were the one. In the end, the masses psychically created a Christ.
You must understand that before you have a physical event, there exists a long series of psychological realities.
This actually touches on a concept of groups and beliefs, the concept from The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events: when a physical event occurs in our society, before that event occurs, there must exist a long series of psychological realities. That is, people in their psyches have already imagined, fantasized, or envisioned countless times, and have already depicted such a picture, such a result, or such an outcome. The hearts of the people were set on it, and in their hearts they wanted it to be this way: if only a savior would come to rescue us; if only someone would come and lead us to such and such; or if only at this time there were a new organization that could lead us out of the old religion. At that time, such a current of thought already existed. So it was precisely this prevailing mood of the people that ultimately caused this Christ to appear out of nowhere.
The Dramatized Creation of the Human Psyche
He says:
You must understand the human need and capacity for dramatizing achievement and for psychic creation.
He says you need to understand that people have this need. What need? The need for achievement, the need to seek out those who have achieved great things. We often have this dramatizing tendency -- we love to tell stories. You know, up on that mountain there was some so-and-so who drank three bowls of wine and then beat a tiger to death. Have you heard that story? People are extremely interested in dramatized events, including coming back from the dead, ascending to heaven, one person attaining the Way and his chickens and dogs rising to heaven too, including all kinds of ancient myths and legends of ours, the stories of the Eight Immortals. So he says you need to understand that people have this need, this need and capacity for psychic creation.
What happened in that era is happening in your own era as well.
It is the same. What happened in that era happened that way, and even today it is still like this for us. Savor carefully what Seth is saying here. You now have countless gurus, everywhere. There are many people who seem to be performing miracles -- so-called miracle-working, meaning all kinds of supernatural powers. Some are frauds, but some are genuine; they really do have supernatural powers, they are not street-corner charlatans.
Therefore in those days, certain rather disconnected events were used as a focus for great psychic activity.
At that time, in the era of Christ, there were such people with supernatural powers. People would link these supernatural powers together and turn them into a focus.
People wanted to believe in something, and therefore their beliefs changed the direction of history.
People wanted to believe in these magical things, to believe in these miracles, these supernatural powers, to believe that people could come back from the dead, to believe that someone could ascend to heaven. Because they believed, their beliefs changed the direction of history, and they created a figure such as Christ.
The Event Itself Is Not Important
He said:
It does not matter at all that the event never happened. It does not matter that Christ was not crucified on that cross. Whether he was crucified or not is no longer important, because as long as the belief happened, as long as we believe it this way, we consider it to have happened.
And belief is:
People's response to intuitive knowledge and inner knowledge, inner knowing, and spiritual understanding.
Because everyone believes he was like that, everyone thinks it was like that, everyone needs such a person, needs such a storyline, needs such a scene, needs such an event to lead everyone. This is a need created by the human psyche, and it is also a capacity — we have such a capacity, we give it such space, we need such space.
All of this must flow into reality.
These responses to intuitive knowledge, inner knowing, and spiritual understanding all must enter into reality, into our physical world. Through people's own understanding, they are channeled into the physical world.
They flow into the patterns of the psyche, the psychological patterns. When it experiences history, they must flow into historical events, they must touch the ages, and they touch the ages by transforming those ages through later generations.
What he means is that when you want to experience this history, to go through this history, you must bring your beliefs into historical events, and your beliefs must touch that era, must come into contact with and interact with that era. And this belief must be carried on by later generations, transformed into later eras, and only then does it touch the era.
What does this mean? It means that when we look back at history, or when we go back to perceive and experience this history, what are you using to feel it? Your beliefs. You believe it was like this, so you feel that this is history, this is fact. If there is a person with a different belief, what he sees is completely different facts, and what he experiences is different history.
And in the very beginning, people had this belief that they needed a savior, needed a redeemer, and so such an event was born — an event that did not happen in history, but had already happened in belief. Then they considered it to have already happened. Then through this belief, it was carried on in our later generations, carried on to today. People have changed, the times have changed, but this belief has never changed. This belief that has been carried on, from the most original belief that "people wanted such a savior," all the way to today, when we look back at this history again, we still use our beliefs of today to perceive it, to affirm that era, to experience that era. This is all the result of your beliefs.
The Meaning of Christ's Ascension
He said:
I want you to understand that that accomplishment -- the accomplishment of being able to die and come back to life, to ascend to heaven -- in its greatness, is tremendously exciting. Because man forms from his psyche such a multidimensional psychic drama that it strikes this or that person, this or that place, and forms a story more powerful and more exciting than any physical event could possibly be. That is why it has such great power.
He said that that accomplishment, the accomplishment of dying and coming back to life and ascending to heaven, in its greatness is tremendously exciting. After a person dies, they can go to heaven. Christ gave us a demonstration, a direct live demonstration. For example, suppose you meet someone who says to you, give me a stack of blank paper and I will turn it into money right before your eyes. You would not believe it. But if this person really did turn it into money in front of you, and then gave you the money to spend, and you went and bought what you wanted with it, then you would believe it. And when he tells you that you have this ability too, then you believe it even more, and you feel even more excited. Because the other person not only told you this belief, but also verified it for you right before your eyes. So the greatest thing about Christ's ascension is that he verified for people, right before their eyes, that after death a person can go to heaven. As for whether he actually went to heaven or not, that matter is no longer important, because people's beliefs hold that he already went to heaven, that he ascended. So such a story, such a plot, is far more effective than going to a certain person or a certain event, and it is more powerful than that. So the story itself is more powerful.
It reflected the needs of the beliefs of humanity as a whole at that time. Our beliefs in that era created such a virtual character and sketched out such a virtual story. But because we believed in him, he existed as if he were real. And then with the later workings of the church and all the rest. So Seth says in another book, what is reality? Reality is fiction that can be accepted. If everyone considers it to be real, then it is real. A fictional thing, if everyone accepts it, then it becomes fact.
Mythic Figures and Human Abundance
He said:
But then again, in that same way of speaking, those gods on Mount Olympus are just as real.
That is, those mythic figures of ancient Greece, those ones up on the mountain, Zeus, Venus, the god of war, all those gods in ancient Greek mythology — using the same way of putting it, they are all equally real, because:
All of humanity's abundance cannot be expressed or described in words, yet it is creatively expressed all the same, or represents a representation of an inner reality and a dramatization of the psyche.
To put his words simply, our human abundance cannot be described in words, but it can be shown through a story or something dramatized. In the unfolding of a story told bit by bit, it can describe human abundance, human greatness. So these mythic stories have their meaning, and their meaning is to portray human abundance — you think they are portraying gods, but they are actually portraying people. Including the matter of Christ ascending to heaven, isn't that just saying that after a person dies they return to the spiritual world? That there is reincarnation? It is simply showing this to you in such a way.
Those ancient Greek gods are describing human abundance: there is a god of war, a goddess of beauty, a goddess of love. If you like ancient Greek mythology, there are many more, including the god of the sea — I won't go into all of them. Ancient China also had many myths just the same, the Jade Emperor, the Old Man in the Sky, and so on — far too abundant.
He said:
This kind of information, translated one peg in one hole, often leads to sorrow, and the creative impetus becomes lost.
One peg in one hole — what does he mean by that? This matter of Jesus ascending to heaven, and these various gods in ancient Greek mythology, these stories all designate a particular person — only a particular person has such an ability. For example, only Christ has this ability, only Zeus, only Poseidon can be the god of the sea. These things are all translations of one peg in one hole.
What does "translation" mean here? What he actually wants to portray is the abundance of humanity as a whole, but you concretize it into each individual mythic figure. You translate each mythic figure and let people understand the things of these mythic figures. In fact, these mythic figures possess all the conditions of human abundance, and the sum of these mythic figures should be the complete set of human abundance. But we take it apart and turn it into individual mythic figures, and the wonders, the powers, the abilities these mythic figures display are all abilities that people themselves inherently possess.
So he says, when you use a one-peg-in-one-hole way to understand those mythic figures, including understanding Jesus Christ and these ancient Greek mythic figures, you are concretizing them into specific persons. But that is not what they are. If you do that, your creative impetus is lost, because you have fixed it onto those specific persons.
A New Religion Born from an Old One
He went on to say:
Of course the great mystery and the great question rely on the nature of the inner reality by which humanity rejected its religion, and also brought religion into the creative ability of birth itself.
This sentence again refers to Christianity. Humanity gave birth to Christianity out of Judaism — you can all know this if you are slightly familiar with history. Judaism regarded Jesus as a heretic, which is why they burned him2. So this rejection of the nature of its reality, and also bringing religion into birth and the creative ability itself — that is, bringing religion into this creative power. What creative power? It created a new religion, a brand-new religion completely different from the old one. So at this time it also brought it into the creative ability itself.
This activity is for the most part the result of each natural person's individual relationship with nature and with the source of nature.
This activity — the great mystery and the creation of this great question, that is, relying on the nature of that reality which people rejected, the environment in which Christianity was born was one in which Judaism rejected it. And the reason it was rejected was that people at that time had an inner longing for a new savior, for a new kind of organization. So these two things complemented each other. Naturally, it would create a new religion — because there was such a need, such a thing, and so a new religion was born out of the old religion.
This process is somewhat like how the gods of ancient Greece were born from among human beings, just as the Christ who did not exist in history, who in fact did not exist, was created by taking the life of an ordinary person, piecing together other people's stories, deifying and beautifying him. It is the same thing. Human beings have this ability, this kind of god-making movement.
He said this activity is for the most part each natural person — for the most part, he did not say absolutely, he used the phrase "for the most part" — and the result of the individual relationship with nature and with the source of nature. Your relationship with nature, and with the source of nature, each person's relationship with nature is unique and one of a kind, because each person is also unique and one of a kind. So this unique individual relationship of yours will create each person's uniqueness, each person's magical quality. And at this time, it insists on replacing it with a unified god, a kind of divine symbol, and loses the specialness, the creativity of each person's magical quality as an individual, and makes it all one unified whole. It is equivalent to using Christ to represent the entire developmental direction of humanity — born with original sin, then beginning to atone, then after death waiting for the final judgment, seeing whether you did good or bad deeds, and then you go to heaven or to hell. Just like that, you cannot transcend it. So this, each person should be an individual result.
After Class
Seth said at the end that Ruburt is now progressing very well, and with Rob's help, you are both becoming more and more aware that your essential nature is that of natural persons. You have already begun to get better and better -- you are both becoming more and more aware that you are natural persons, and you can both feel it. Do you still have any questions now? Rob said, I think you have covered it very thoroughly. Seth said, good night to you.
As for the final tail end, Rob wrote: Jane was just as surprised as I was that she not only chose to hold the session, but also discussed this information about Christ. She said that although she was so relaxed, once she entered the trance state, Seth was right there. But now she was just as relaxed as before the session. She made many long pauses during the delivery, and Rob pointed out several of them. As we were talking, Jane laughed and said, you don't have to record all of this. But I have a feeling that if I had let him do so, Seth would have said all of it earlier -- he would have brought up these religious questions long before now. Because this matter had already been troubling Rob for quite a while, and Rob had been anxious for several days, not knowing how to write this note. Jane said, if you allow it, he could have brought this matter up earlier. Rob said, if I had also encouraged him to do so, perhaps he would have.
So as for the matter of religion, this session actually doesn't have much connection with the whole book; it seems to have been inserted sideways specifically to discuss this matter. This matter is actually a deeper supplement, or a more general supplement, to Chapter Twenty-One or Twenty-Two of Seth Speaks -- I can't remember which -- regarding that matter about Jesus in Christianity. Actually, he didn't go into much detail here, but in Seth Speaks he went into it in great detail -- he synthesized three personalities together.
As for this question of religion, we actually don't need to get too hung up on it, nor do we need to get hung up on which parts are fact and which are not. Seth's point is that which parts are fact and which are not no longer matters. You only need to understand this process: at the level of their own beliefs, people have their own needs, and people hope that these mythological stories and these supernatural achievements need to be given space. That is why, whether in China or in other countries or other civilizations, every one has its own mythological stories and its own mythological legends. You see, every people and every culture has its own mythological stories -- why? It is right here: people need this thing. Because they need to project the magical things within themselves onto concrete, embodied images, onto these specific individuals. This is a special need inherent in human beings, and this is the need of the human psyche. Through such a representative, in dealing with nature, it needs to display this special ability of its own.
注释与核实
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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According to Mike's original words, "Judaism regarded Jesus as a heretic, which is why he was burned to death"; upon verification, it should be "Jesus was not burned to death, but was executed by crucifixion, a Roman form of capital punishment, under the sentence of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate." (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Crucifixion," https://www.britannica.com/topic/crucifixion-capital-punishment) ↩