“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation: Chapter Four: “The Psyche in Relationship to Sexual Elements. The He and She” dash — “the She and He.” That was the heading.

The vitality of the species in fact was assured because it did not overspecialize in terms of sexuality. There was no fixed mating period, for example. Instead, the species could reproduce freely so that in the event of a catastrophe of any kind, it would not be so tied into rigid patterns that it might result in extinction.

(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.

For that matter, there is far greater leeway in the behavior of animals than you understand, for you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs. You interpret the past history of your species in the same manner. It seems to you that the female always tended to the offspring, for example, nursing them, that she was forced to remain close to home while the male fought off enemies or hunted for food. The ranging male, therefore, appears to have been much more curious and aggressive. There was instead a different kind of situation. Children do not come in litters. The family of the caveman was a far more “democratic” group than you suppose — men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

(10:00.) Except for the fact that males could not bear children, the abilities of the sexes were interchangeable. The male was usually heavier, a handy physical advantage in some areas — but the woman was lighter and could run faster.

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.

Now: In direct opposition to current theories about the past, there was far less sexual specialization, say, in the time of the caveman than now.

The family was a very cooperative unit. The basis of early society was cooperation, not competition. Families grouped together. There were children of various ages in such a band all the time. When women were near birth, they performed those chores that could be done in the cave dwellings, or nearby, and also watched other young children; while the women who were not pregnant were off with the males, hunting or gathering food.

If a mother died, the father took over her responsibilities, the qualities of love and affection being quite as alive in him as in the female. After a woman bore, she nursed the child, taking it with her on food-gathering excursions, or sometimes letting other women in the group nurse the child. Often after childbirth, women immediately joined the hunting expeditions, and the fathers made clothing from animals’ hides at home. This allowed the male to rest after prolonged hunting activity, and meant that no adult member of a family became over-exhausted. The work, then, was interchangeable.

Even the animals, however, understand without words or language the importance of their sexual behavior. Early man was hardly more ignorant. The male knew what he was doing even without textbooks that outlined the entire procedure. The female understood the connections between the child born and the sexual act.

There was always more land. No matter how fast he ran or how far he traveled, early man could not run out of land, or trees, or forests, or food supplies. If he came to a desert, he still knew that fertile lands were somewhere available, even if it was a matter of finding them. But the world itself seemed to have no end. It was literally a limitless world in a way most difficult for you to understand; for to you, the world has shrunk.

(11:16.) This unlimited world constantly replenished itself. Children came from women’s wombs. Man was acquainted with death, and many children were stillborn, or were naturally aborted. This also, however, was in the natural order of things, and was done far more easily then than now. All flower seeds do not fall on fertile ground and bring forth other flowers. The seeds that do not grow go [back] into the ground, forming the basis for other life. Biologically speaking, fetuses grow and develop — I am going slowly here because I am being tricky — and when innate consciousness merges with proper form, the conditions are right for the birth of a healthy child. When the conditions are not right, the child does not develop properly. Nature aborts it. The physical elements return to the earth to become the basis for other life.

Only those children perfectly attuned to their environment in time and space survived. This does not mean that the consciousness of a child was annihilated, for example, if it was naturally aborted. It did not develop.

While there was no mating period, still there was a close biological relationship between the species and the earth, so that women naturally conceived when situations of climate, food supplies, and other elements were beneficial.

Biologically, the species knew ahead of time when droughts would appear, for example, and it automatically altered its rate of conception to compensate. Left alone, animal species do the same thing. In broad terms, early man was struck by the fact that all things seemed to reproduce themselves, and it was this fact that first caught his attention. Later he used what you think of as myths to explain this abundance. Yet those myths contained a kind of knowledge that escapes your literal, specific interpretations of sexual events. Such knowledge resides in the psyche, however. If you have any direct experience with your own psyche, then you will most likely find yourself encountering some kinds of events that will not easily fit with your own ideas about your sexual nature.

(This was the end of book work. Seth came through with a few pages of material for me, and ended the session at 12:15 A.M.)