“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many writers of historical pieces, for example, are writing out of direct experience with those times. Such instances represent an excellent working rapport between the present self and the unconscious, which brings these memories to the surface in such a way that current life is enriched. More often than not, true awareness of the situation often becomes almost conscious, and just beneath awareness the individual knows the source of his authentic material.

The word “passive” is a poor one to describe the characteristics of the anima, in that it suggests a lack of motion, and this is hardly the case. It is true that the anima allows itself to be acted upon, but the motive behind this is the desire and the necessity to tune into other forces that are supremely powerful. The desire to be swept along, therefore, is as strong with the anima as the opposite desire for rest. The characteristics of the animus provide the aggressive thrust that returns the personality back outward into physical activities, triumphantly holding the products of creativity that the anima characteristics have secured.

The whole self is obviously the sum of these characteristics, and more. After the final incarnation, the physical, sexual type of creativity is simply no longer needed. You do not need to reproduce physically, in other words. In simple terms the whole self contains male and female characteristics, finely tuned together, blended so that true identity can then arise — for it cannot, when one group of characteristics must be emphasized over the other group, as it must be during your present physical existence.

The projection of the man’s anima, or hidden female self, upon [his] relations is quite natural, and allows him not only to understand them better but to relate with the other female existences of his own. The same is true of the woman’s projection of the animus upon male relatives and friends. The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper then than Jung supposed. Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics.

Personality as you know it, cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the anima and the animus is taken into consideration. The reincarnational pattern is generally speaking an open one, in that within it there is room for diversity. Each whole self has its own individual characteristics. It can live its lives as it sees fit within the guidelines. There may be a series of male or female existences, unbroken. Such a choice has some drawbacks.

Now there are deep correlations between these symbols and the struggle in which mankind is involved. Your consciousness as you know it, your particular present kind of consciousness, is a statement of awareness brought about by a particular kind of tension, a specific kind of focus arising from the true unconscious of the whole self.

The true unconscious is not unconscious. Instead, it is so profoundly and unutteringly conscious that it bubbles over. The life that you know is simply one of the many areas in which it is conscious. In each facet of its consciousness, literally tremendous power and balance must be maintained to hold aloft this particular consciousness-experience from all others.

There is also a natural tension, then, between sexes that is based on far deeper causes than physical ones. The tension results from the nature of your consciousness that arises from the anima, but depends for its continuation upon the “aggressiveness” of the animus. I have to some extent explained the fascination that one has for the other, as resulting from the inner knowledge of the whole self, that strives to attain true identity as it struggles to combine and fulfill the seemingly opposite tendencies that are a part of it.