“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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. There are genetic cultures operating, then, of literally infinite variety (intently), and they each have their place and their reason, and they each fit into the overall picture—not only of man’s reality but of the planet’s reality, including all of nature.

The entire idea of reincarnation has been highly distorted by other religious concepts. It is not a psychological arena composed of crime and punishment. Again, you have free will in the conditions of your life, given the characteristics that are your own. The great facility and adaptability of the human species are dependent upon an amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom. The very characteristic attributes of the species, its dependability and integrity, are dependent upon constant checks and balances, the existence of divergent characteristics against which the species can measure itself.

The species is also always in the process of keeping within its genetic bank millions of characteristics that might be needed in various contingencies, and in that regard there is a connection, of course, between, say, viruses of many strains and the health not only of man but of other species.

The possibility of creative change must always be present to insure the species’ resiliency, and that resiliency can show in many ways—in conditions that you consider deformities, disabilities from birth, or in any physical variation from a hypothetical physical norm. You all look quite alike, with one head (amused), two arms and legs, and so forth, as a rule. Such differences or variations are very noticeable at a certain level, if you have more fingers than you are supposed to, or less, or two thumbs to a hand, or any other condition that is considered an abnormality.

(9:52.) There are mental conditions also: the so-called retarded people who do not use their reasoning minds as others do. There are also, again, highly gifted people, physically or mentally, people who seem to be at times as far from the ordinary person on the gifted scale as an idiot might be [on] the other. So as we progress, I hope to show where all of these situations fit in with the development of the individual and the species.