“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Your species as a species includes the idiot and the genius, the stupid and the wise, the athletic, the deformed, the beautiful and the ugly, and all variations in between. There are genetic cultures operating, then, of literally infinite variety (intently), and they each have their place and their reason, and they each fit into the overall picture—not only of man’s reality but of the planet’s reality, including all of nature.

Your religious ideas have often told you that deformities at birth were the result of the parents’ sins cast upon the children, or that another kind of punishment was involved in terms of “karma.” In terms of biology, people talk about coming from good stock or bad stock, and even those designations imply moral judgments.

The possibility of creative change must always be present to insure the species’ resiliency, and that resiliency can show in many ways—in conditions that you consider deformities, disabilities from birth, or in any physical variation from a hypothetical physical norm. You all look quite alike, with one head (amused), two arms and legs, and so forth, as a rule. Such differences or variations are very noticeable at a certain level, if you have more fingers than you are supposed to, or less, or two thumbs to a hand, or any other condition that is considered an abnormality.

(Just before she took a nap this noon, Jane received a letter from a man who explained that he’d married a woman with genetic deformities of her hands. [...] Yet he still expressed sorrow, and asked: “Why?” He’s troubled by the challenges of one who has to live with a so-called deformed wife—and now a child—each day. [...]

[...] Then this afternoon she picked up from Seth that in a new chapter he’d explain how physical deformities are, among other things, manifestations of the great range of abilities encompassed within our species’ genetic pool, and that we retain such flexibility in case wide changes are ever needed. [...]

[...] Because the reasons for any such conditions can be so diverse, then life should be encouraged even in the face of deformities. [...]

[...] If you are bound and determined that “GOD” (in capitals and quotes) creates only “good,” then any physical deficiency, illness or deformity becomes an affront to your belief, threatens it, and makes you angry and resentful. [...]

[...] Your body is not beautiful or ugly, healthy or deformed, swift or slow simply because this is the kind of body that was thrust upon you indiscriminately at birth. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) She was a rather handsome-looking young woman, though not of stable temperament, crippled but not deformed.

The withered foot (of my father) represented any and all deformities, and the great gap you felt existed between man’s ideal, and his actualization of it.

[...] Some are born as dwarfs, or hairless, or with deformed or missing limbs. [...]

[...] A man might be born deformed or sickly because of the sins of his father.

[...] She was a handsome-looking young woman, crippled but not deformed. [...]