“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The [retarded] son represented the result of two main conditions. The woman could simply not bring herself to form a complete construction. Her energies were not directed in a manner that would permit her to give birth to a normal child. She deeply reacted against violence, and was overly sensitive.

To some extent she resembled her mother. Her vanity, however, was not a characteristic woman’s vanity. Her vanity was perhaps the one characteristic that she shared with other members of the family. She felt she was set apart, but also that she was set apart because she could not tolerate violence. Violence frightened her deeply.

She would not admit the fear, but would change the fear to pride, saying to herself that the world was evil, and she would therefore have little to do with it. And so she did not. She was not a foolish woman. She loved her husband most deeply. She and he shared a quite mystical love of nature and of animals. They would harm no one.

Your father feels this way also. But he is bitter against it, and wants what it has to offer despite himself. She did not care. She was deeply attached to the other brother. She collected buttons and string and papers, even as she collected animals. To her the buttons almost seemed to have consciousness, and when she was alone she would take out her boxes of buttons and hold some in her hands, and remember the garments to which they belonged, and when she had worn them, and how the weather had been; and she lived in a present that was deeply colored by the past.

We will not go deeply into the sensations this evening, mainly because I am thinking of you, and do not wish to take up more than my share of your time.