“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(10:22.) Give us a moment … The children that spring from your loins are real. [...] In your terms, you exist in physical life before your children do. [...] That greater personhood gives birth to many “psychic children,” who then become physical by being born into the races of men and women.

[...] Each “greater personage” takes several parts, or brings forth several psychic children, who spring to life as individual human beings. These psychic children have as much say in their birth as you have in yours, physically speaking, and that is considerable.

[...] Through you they become a part of the experience of the greater identity, but its reality also “originally” gave you your physical existence, as you gave your children physical life. Your children are not you, yet once they were contained within the mother’s womb. [...]

Each of those children wants to develop its abilities in a particular manner, translating them into earth experience in such a way that all other portions of the earth are also benefited.

[...] and they killed the children ...400 children one afternoon ...400 children in one day, and that baby was one of them. [...]

[...] It was a national holiday, sacrificial day ...something that we would translate into atonement but that wasn’t the word at all ...where children were sacrificed, so that the earth would grow ... [...]

[...] As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

[...] That is, they have the capacity to produce children who from a certain standpoint possess certain excellent characteristics. The children have brilliant minds, healthy bodies, and strong clear emotions.

[...] They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. [...]

These parents do not sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. [...] Instead, the parents retain their own clear sense of identity and their individual characteristics, serving as clear examples to the children of loving, independent adults.

[...] Through play children develop their muscles and overall body tone, and this is because children possess a keen expectancy and a desire to perform to the best of their abilities. [...]

These faculties can also be distorted, however, if children are taught to doubt their strength and agility, and instead to be overly cautious and fearful of overdoing. It is unfortunate that so many adults still behave as if they were children, to be scolded—

Children are extremely sensitive, of course, to their parents’ feelings and beliefs, particularly since they are dependent upon the parents to meet their needs. They can accept roles in somewhat the same way that children play at being sick, and in extreme cases some children find the game becomes only too real.

The child would not be run over by a car, for example, or pick up diseases from other children in school when he grew. [...]

[...] A father can feel very guilty about his love for his children, for he has been conditioned to believe that love is expressed only through sex, or else it is unmanly, while sex with one’s children is taboo.

Children would fare far better if the ancient parental qualities were not so forcibly focused upon the mother. [...]

[...] Tendencies toward lesbianism or homosexuality in children are quite natural. [...]

[...] Heterosexual love, as it is understood at least, gives you a family of parents and children — an important unit, about which other groups form. [...]

You did not want children, physically speaking. You wanted to reach out in the way that people do when they have children. [...]

[...] They will also have children.

[...] As a rule with other issues taken into consideration, they will not have children. [...]

[...] Others, children [or adults] who would be classified as mentally deficient, can tell, or have been able to tell, the day of the week that any given date, past or present, would fall upon. [...] There have been children, again, with highly accomplished musical abilities, and great facility with music’s technical aspects—all such accomplishments before the assistance of any kind of advanced education.

(9:10.) Children begin to count by counting on their fingers. [...]

Now, some of those children went on to become great musicians, while others lost their abilities along the way, so what are we dealing with in such cases? [...]

[...] In children under such conditions, the reasoning mind has not yet developed in all of its aspects sufficiently, so that in a certain area direct cognition shines through with its brilliant capacity.

[...] You do not concentrate upon the exceptions — the children who do not seem to fit the patterns of their families or environments, so of course no attempts are made to view those kinds of unofficial behavior.

[...] Children do already possess character at birth, and the entire probable intent of their lives exists then as surely as does the probable plan for the adult body they will later possess.

[...] There is great flexibility, however, and according to individual purposes many such children will also be acquainted with music of the past. [...]

[...] Others are only children. [...]

(9:12.) This does not mean that some children do not do very well under your system. (Pause.) I do not mean to imply, either, that children do not need an education, or that some discipline and direction are not beneficial. Children, however, will concentrate for hours at a time on subject matters and questions that interest them. [...]

Your educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up (pause) smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. [...]

As you know, again, it is far easier for you not to have children, regardless of all strains. [...] You have at different times adopted different methods and adjustments, but your physical relationship has been structured not around mutual pleasure but instead about the fear of having children.

[...] Because he is presently a woman he will react strongly and aggressively if he feels you are drawing too far apart, for this would threaten your life and goals as much as children would—children in your minds being coming too close together. [...]

[...] Both of you decided that you would have no children, not only because this fit in with the first goal, but because the energy connected with family life would go into your creative productions, would be saved and available when you began to embark upon the psychic work for which you had also planned.

The magnetism is both from past life experiences, and set up ahead of time in this life, so that the both of you would be drawn together and held together, despite the fact of no personal family, no children as a common interest.

[...] Children believe not only that there will be a tomorrow, and many tomorrows, but they also believe that each tomorrow will be rewarding and filled with discovery.

[...] Later, conflicting beliefs often smother such earlier attitudes, so that by the time children have grown into adults they actually hold almost an opposite set of hypotheses. [...]

[...] It is much better if you can imagine this endeavor more in the light of children’s play, in fact, rather than think of it as a deadly serious adult pursuit.

[...] Dramas and stories of all kinds have been written about the inner kind of communication that seems to take place between mother and children, sister and brother, or lover and beloved.

[...] In comparison with those times, however, children are now born ancient, for even biologically they carry within themselves the memories of their ancestors. [...]

[...] It is easy to say to you that such people could identify, say, with the trees, but an entirely different thing to try to explain what it would be like for a mother to become so a part of the tree underneath which her children played that she could keep track of them from the tree’s viewpoint, though she was herself far away.

[...] Jane and I talked about the feelings of guilt and blame that are fated to surround the survivors for the rest of their lives, particularly the teenage children and the drunk driver. [...]

The children were also obviously involved, and the accident would give them a new lease on life, for they had sensed an overall pervading sense of despair that lay at the family’s center stone, so to speak.

[...] The children were not to be killed, for example, and in some near encounters in the past, their deaths would have been involved.

[...] He had sired his children, loved as well as he could, done his job—but there was no contemplative life to look forward to, no greater love than the one with his wife—and that love while conventionally sound enough, did not content him.

[...] When I returned I saw that a family of five people — parents and three young children — were in the car, and ready to drive away. [...]

[...] I saw the family with children standing to one side, quietly waiting, wearing hats and topcoats, and so forth. [...]

[...] I said I’d forgotten to ask Seth to comment on my feelings about parenthood these days, especially as I’d felt them yesterday when looking at the photos of the aide Sue’s children. [...]

The thoughts of children give excellent clues as to mankind’s nature, but many adults do not remember any childhood thoughts except those that fit, or seem to fit, in with their beliefs about childhood.

Children play at getting killed. [...]

1. Seth’s idea that in their play children “try to imagine what death is like” certainly adds an intuitive dimension to my own activities as a child. [...]

I’ll also endorse Seth’s statement that children “are often quite aware of willing themselves sick to get out of difficult situations.” [...]

I was once a mother with twelve children. [...] The children had many fathers. [...]

When my children laughed I was overwhelmed with delight, and despite our privations, each morning was a triumphant surprise that we had not died in our sleep, that we had not succumbed to starvation. [...]

Though I yelled at my children and screamed sometimes in rage against the elements, I was struck through with the magnificence of existence, and learned more about true spirituality than I ever did as a monk. [...]

Children of either sex identify quite naturally with both parents, and any enforced method of exclusively directing the child to such a single identification is limiting. [...]

[...] The lack of a “suitable” father or mother image has “saved” more children than it has hurt. [...]

A high percentage of priests of the Middle Ages, for example, had illegitimate children. [...]

A good number of nuns were of course carrying the seed of those priests, and bearing children who acted as servants in monasteries, sometimes, as well as in convents. [...]

[...] Even in your world, currently speaking, some individuals known as women could father their own children.

[...] Yet children, so necessary to the species, continued to spring from women’s wombs. [...]

[...] It can lead to acts that do not produce children. [...]

When civilized children are medically inoculated against such diseases, however, they usually do not show the same symptoms, and to an important extent the natural protective processes are impeded. Such children may not come down with the disease against which they are medically protected, then — but they may indeed therefore become “prey” to other diseases later in life that would not otherwise have occurred.

(Jane has even thought of having Debbie Harris take dictation at night, for another children’s book. [...]