“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The performance of a great athlete gives evidence of abilities inherent in the human form that are little used. Great artists by their very works demonstrate other attributes latent in the race as a whole. They still represent one-line delineations, however. Within the experience of your race as you know it lie all the patterns that would point to some fully developed human being, in which all inherent tendencies were given full play and came to fruition.

You would have an individual who displayed within himself [or herself] all of those great abilities known to the race, fulfilled according to his own unique temper — the artist, mathematician, athlete, the inventor — all the extraordinary qualities of creaturedom; the emotional realities would be used to their capacity, and any of the racial qualities or characteristics of the species would be given their complete freedom.

[...] The contrast between the activity of those athletes, however, and the activity of the normal young person is drastic. [...] In those cases, the athletes through training are finally able to give a glimpse of the body’s spontaneous abilities. [...]

(Long pause.) Your species as a species includes the idiot and the genius, the stupid and the wise, the athletic, the deformed, the beautiful and the ugly, and all variations in between. [...]

[...] To develop as an athlete, for example, great training is required that automatically focuses energy and activity, and hence usually precludes deep concentration to the same degree in a different area. [...]

[...] Seth commented: “You rarely find a person who is a great intellect, a great athlete, and also a person of deep emotional and spiritual understanding — an ideal prototype of what it seems mankind could produce.

For that matter, an athlete may have a great zest for motion and an impatience with reading, caring not what within the body makes it move as long as its performance is superb — while an invalid with great book knowledge about all of the body’s parts is quite unable to physically perform in a normal manner.

[...] You rarely find a person who is a great intellect, a great athlete, and also a person of deep emotional and spiritual understanding — an ideal prototype of what it seems mankind could produce.

It may interest you to know that your athletic tendencies are somewhat involved in your out-of-body travel, in that it seems to you that the body must be poised and balanced, and have support — hence the hallucinations you use. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) It goes without saying that any human being possesses the latent ability shown by a great artist or athlete, or statesman or philosopher. [...]

Now, your friend had been to the Olympics (last month, at Lake Placid, New York), and he was charged by the great physical vitality that he felt watching that athletic panorama. [...]

[...] Perhaps you compensated — became athletic later, or used the impetus to go ahead in your own way. [...]

Sportsmen and athletes are admired and well-rewarded. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) They still enjoy—relatively—a good deal of freedom, however, of a sideways extension, so to speak, or in a horizontal manner, as excellent athletes, perhaps. [...]

[...] You may personally have the ability to be a fine athlete, for example. [...]

Your natural athletes, for example, show through their physical expertise certain ideal body conditions. [...]

[...] One of the latter may be miserably poor in one life, luxuriously rich in another, an intellectual giant in still another, a great athlete, and then a complete invalid. [...]

(4:35.) Truly great artistic, creative, athletic and social abilities are inherent within each human individual. [...]

[...] Ruburt was never athletically inclined, but always loved nature. [...]

[...] I have extra athletic ability, I know, but I used to think that such self-preserving knowledge was inherent in everyone. [...]

[...] The exploits of your greatest athletes give you a hint of the body’s true capacity. In your system of beliefs, however, those athletes must train and focus all of their attention in that direction, often at the expense of other portions of their own experience. [...]

[...] And the most expert athlete can die in his tracks. [...]

(To Rob:) Remember the private session I gave you the night before last, in which I told you that you could have developed very well as a sportsman⁷ — considering the athletic qualities involved — instead of as an artist or writer. [...]