“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment… In your terms, again, the psyche contains what you would consider male and female characteristics, while not being male or female itself.

Your psychological tests show you only the current picture of males and females, brought up from infancy with particular sexual beliefs. These beliefs program the child from infancy, of course, so that it behaves in certain fashions in adulthood. The male seems to perform better at mathematical tasks, and so-called logical mental activity, while the female performs better in a social context, in value development and personal relationships. The male shows up better in the sciences, while the female is considered intuitional.

(9:20.) It should be obvious to many of my readers that this is learned behavior. You cannot teach a boy to be “the strong silent male type,” and then expect him to excel either verbally or in social relationships. You cannot expect a girl to show “strong, logical thought development” when she is taught that a woman is intuitional — that the intuitions are opposed to logic, and that she must be feminine, or nonlogical, at all costs. This is fairly obvious.

The mother also provides the same kind of information to a male offspring. The father contributes his share in each case. Over the generations, then, certain characteristics appear to be quite naturally male or female, and these will vary to some extent according to the civilizations and world conditions. Each individual is highly unique, however, so these models for behavior will vary. They can indeed be changed in a generation, for the experience of each person alters the original information. This provides leeway that is important.

The psyche then contains, again in your terms, female and male characteristics. These are put together, so to speak, in the human personality with great leeway and in many proportions.

Many men, labeled homosexual by themselves and others, want to be fathers. Their beliefs and those of your society lead them to imagine that they must always be heterosexual or homosexual. Many feel a desire toward women that is also inhibited. Your male or female orientation limits you in ways that you do not understand. For example, in many cases the gentle “homosexual” father has a better innate idea of manliness than a heterosexual male who believes that men must be cruel, insensitive, and competitive. These are both stereotyped images, however.

A great artist in any field or in any time instinctively feels a private personhood that is greater than the particular sexual identity. As long as you equate identity with your sexuality, you will limit the potentials of the individual and of the species. Each person will generally find it easier to operate as male or female, lesbian or homosexual, but each person is primarily bisexual. Bisexuality implies parenthood as much as it implies lesbian or homosexual relationships. Again, here, sexual encounters are a natural part of love’s expression, but they are not the limit of love’s expression.

Many quite fine nonsexual relationships are denied, because of the connotations placed upon lesbianism or homosexuality. Many heterosexual relationships are also denied to persons labeled as not being heterosexual, by themselves or society. People so labeled often feel propelled out of sheer confusion to express their love only through sexual acts. They feel forced to imitate what they think the natural male or female is like, and on occasion end up with ludicrous caricatures. These caricatures infuriate those so imitated — because they carry such hints of truth, and point out so cleverly the exaggerations of maleness or femaleness that many heterosexuals have clamped upon in their own natures.

Now: In some historical periods it was desirable in practical terms that a man have many wives, so that if he died in battle his seed might be planted in many wombs — particularly in times when diseases struck men and women down often in young adulthood.

As a child he once thought that his father was immortal, in human terms — that he could do no wrong. The son tries to vindicate the father by doing no wrong himself, and perhaps by succeeding where it seems the father might have failed. It is much more natural for the male to try to vindicate the father than it is to destroy him, or envy him in negative terms.

(10:54.) The child is simply the male child. He is not jealous of the father with the mother, in the way that is often supposed. The male child does not possess an identity so focused upon its maleness. I am not saying that children do not have a sexual nature from birth. They simply do not focus upon their maleness or femaleness in the way that is supposed.

To the male child, the penis is something that belongs to him personally in the same way that an arm or leg does, or that his mouth or anus does. He does not consider it a weapon (humorously). He is not jealous of his father’s love for the mother, for he understands quite well that her love for him is just as strong. He does not wish to possess his mother sexually in the way that adults currently suppose. He does not understand those terms. He may at times be jealous of her attention, but this is not a sexual jealousy in conventionally understood terms. Your beliefs blind you to the sexual nature of children. They do enjoy their bodies. They are sexually aroused. The psychological connotations, however, are not those assigned to them by adults.