“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When a civilization does not support creativity it begins to falter. When it distrusts its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble. Your psychologies, stressing “the norm,” made people frightened of their individual characteristics and abilities, because psychology’s norm did not fit the contours of any one human being. It did not touch the heights or the depths of human experience. People became afraid of their own individuality.

(Pause.) Your brains are not empty, but well-oiled machines ready to whirl into activity at your births. They are provided with a propensity to learn — and the rudiments of knowledge as you understand it exits within the brain (intently). In those terms, now, the brain thinks before birth. It does not simply react. Each individual has its own unique abilities. Some that involve relationships with others, you do not even have words for. Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. They are afraid their children will not get along with others. They are upset because the children do not fit the norm — but no child ever fits “the norm.”

I am not speaking of greatness in terms of fame, or in terms of usually understood artistic or intellectual abilities alone, but also of people whose lives have the capacity for great emotional content. I am speaking also of other natural abilities — that of dream communication, the conscious utilization of dreams and creativity in daily life. There are dimensions of human sentiment and psychological experience, that remain latent simply because you focus your attention so closely within the idea of “the norm.” Any unofficial experience must then remain bizarre, eccentric, outside of your main concerns, and ignored by your sciences (quietly).

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. [...]

[...] At microscopic levels, in fact, no one fits any norm, and there is no way to predict with complete certainty the development of any genetic element. [...]

[...] The norm has become nonachievement, physically speaking. [...]

[...] You have not gone so far from the norm after all (amused)—you are as human as anyone else. [...]

[...] Psychology’s emphasis upon the average norm, as mentioned previously, made people think that one individual should almost be a carbon of any other individual. [...]

[...] Granted there are other reasons for it, nevertheless you choose to begin with a situation in which dancing is not the norm, where it requires on anyone’s part particular effort, and a spotlighted situation.

Both are necessary to maintain that larger “norm” of mental activity. I am using the word “norm” here for your convenience, though I disagree with the ways in which the term has been used, when it has been set up as a rule (underlined) of measurement, psychologically speaking. [...]

[...] They may appear as superior characteristics of one kind or another, but they must be biologically stated as the variations from the genetic norm.

Your overreliance upon physical norms, and your distorted concepts concerning survival of the fittest, help exaggerate the existence of any genetic defects, of course. [...]

Science has promoted the idea that hostility is a constant attribute of nature and all of its parts, while it sees the cooperating characteristics of nature as rather infrequent or extraordinary — but certainly outside of the norm (wryly amused).

[...] I do, however, want to make the point that your prized psychological norm as a species means that you must also be allowed a great leeway in the use of the imagination and the intellect. [...]

[...] It might help if now and then he imagines his walking taking place as easily and naturally as his thoughts come and go, and in ways as mysterious as the way his vision operates, when it is suddenly clearer, and he reads so much more quickly — for the quick reading will soon be the norm.

[...] These same ideas also had involvements with psychology, dealing with “the norm,” the average man, and so forth. [...]

With some, the lapses are more noticeable, outside of the norm. [...]

[...] There was in such a system no room, literally, for individual differences, but a norm set so that you must behave thus and so.

[...] Since Ruburt’s nature was rather—rather—extravagantly different from what he considered the norm to be, and since he possessed abilities that were not common generally and specifically to his sex, he became even more unduly suspicious of his own nature. [...]

[...] Such ideas have much to do with the way you think of yourselves, and what you consider human characteristics, and the light in which you view those who vary in one way or another from those norms.

[...] Ruburt’s psychic climate has indeed changed for the better, but in periods of physical symptoms beyond his present norm, you can greatly assist in such a manner, for these are simply—or not so simply—miniature pitfalls. [...]

[...] During sessions, however, all the characteristics of the inner being are accelerated; the knowing, intuitional, creative abilities, working at a rate far beyond what you would call the norm.

[...] The person might say “New York City is a frightful place in which crime is rampant, gangs roam the streets, murders and rapes are the norm, and people are not only impolite but ready to attack you at a moment’s notice. [...]

[...] Physical endurance of the kind now considered extraordinary would be the norm. [...]