“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The psyche is not male or female. In your system of beliefs, however, it is often identified as feminine, along with the artistic productions that emerge from its creativity. In that context, the day hours and waking consciousness are thought of as masculine, along with the sun — while the nighttime, the moon, and the dreaming consciousness are considered feminine or passive. In the same manner, aggression is usually understood to be violent assertive action, male-oriented, while female elements are identified in terms of the nurturing principle.

(Pause at 9:38.) Biologically, the sexual orientation is the method chosen for continuation of the species. Otherwise, however, no specific psychological characteristics of any kind are attached to that biological functioning. I am quite aware that in your experience definite physical and psychological differences do exist. Those that do are the result of programming, and are not inherent — even biologically — in the species itself.

(Long pause, one of many.) The challenges and problems of the species were different from those of others. It needed additional safeguards. The more flexible mating pattern was one. With this came a greater diversity in individual characteristics and behavior, so that no individual was bound to a strictly biological role. If that were true, the species never would have been concerned beyond the issues of physical survival, and such is not the case. The species could have survived quite well physically without philosophy, the arts, politics, religion, or even structured language. It could have followed completely different paths, those tied strictly to biological orientation.

If your individuality was programmed by your biological sex, then it would be literally impossible for you to perform any action that was not sexually programmed. A woman cannot father a child, nor can a male bear one. Since you are otherwise free to perform other kinds of activity that you think of as sexually oriented, in those areas the orientation is cultural.

You imagine, however, that the male is aggressive, active, logical-minded, inventive, outwardly oriented, a builder of civilizations. You identify the ego as male. The unconscious therefore seems to be female, and the feminine characteristics are usually given as passive, intuitive, nurturing, creative, uninventive, concerned with preserving the status quo, disliking change. At the same time, you consider the intuitive elements rather frightening, as if they can explode to disrupt known patterns, dash — in unknown ways.