Seth.  Quotes:

The Nature of the Psyche  -Seth's views on Sex

"Western society has attempted to force all expres­sion of love into sexual activity, or otherwise ban it entirely. Sexual performance is considered the one safe way of using the great potential of human emotions. When it seems to you that society is becoming licentious, in many ways it is most inhibited."

 In Psyche, Seth addresses himself to the matter of human sexuality for the first time in his published works, discussing it as it relates to the private and mass psyche, and connecting sexuality with its spiritual and biological sources.

Now we discover that such references were tailored to our own rather... limited ideas of the qualities assigned to the sexes, for in Psyche Seth makes it clear that the psyche  is not male or female, "but a bank from .which sexual affiliations are drawn.” He stresses the bisexual nature of humanity and the importance of bisexuality, both spiritually and biologically.

But Seth's bisexuality is a far vaster concept than the ones usually suggested by that term, and he sees it as a basic source from which our sexual definitions arise. What are those definitions? How many are basic, and how many learned? It is to such questions that Seth addresses himself. More: He ties in his discussion of sexuality with the birth of languages and the nature of "the hidden God".

The psyche is not only the repository for sexual affiliation, however, but contains hidden abilities and char­acteristics which are then triggered into activity by exteri­or stimuli.

Distorted beliefs about sexuality can hold back psy­chic or spiritual progress, for example, and Seth discusses such issues thoroughly. The questions of lesbianism and homosexuality are also considered, along with their private and social effects.

We were most eager to get this particular material to the public, since many correspondents write requesting Seth's views on sexuality.

Sexuality is the only strong area of energy with which some people are connected, so it becomes the focal point for all of their beliefs about the self in general.

In doing some of these exercises, you might come across images of masturbation, homosexual or lesbian encounters, or simply old sexual fantasies, and immediately backtrack because your beliefs may tell you that these are evil.

The Psyche in Relationship to Sexual Elements.

The He and She-the She and He

Distorted ideas about sexuality prevent many people from attaining any close connection with the inner experience that continually stirs beneath ordinary con­sciousness. It is a good idea, then, to look at the psyche and its relationship to sexual identity.

The psyche is not male or female. In your system of belief,  however, it is often identified as feminine, along with the artistic productions that emerge from its creativity. In that context, the day hours and waking consciousness are thought of as masculine, along with the sun-while the nighttime, the moon, and the dreaming consciousness are considered feminine or passive. In the same manner, aggression is usually understood to be violent assertive action, male-oriented, while female elements are identified in terms of the nurturing principle.

Physically speaking, you would have no males or females unless first you had individuals. You are each individuals first of all, then. After this, you are individuals of a specific sex, biologically speaking. The particular kind of focus that you have is responsible for the great signifi­cance you place upon male and female. Your hand and your foot have different functions. If you wanted to focus upon the differences in their behavior, you could build an entire culture based upon their diverse capabilities, func­tions and characteristics. Hands and feet are obviously equipment belonging to both sexes, however. Still, on another level the analogy is quite valid.

The psyche is male and female, female and male; but when I say this I realize that you put yourown definitions upon those terms to begin with.

Biologically, the sexual orientation is the method chosen for continuation of the species. Otherwise, however, no specific psychological characteristics of any kind are attached to that biological functioning. I am quite aware that in your experience definite physical and psychological differences do exist. Those that do are the result of programming, and are not inherent-even biologically-in the species itself.

The vitality of the species in fact was assured because it did not overspecialize in terms of sexuality. There was no fixed mating period, for example. Instead, the species could reproduce freely so that in the event of catastrophe of any kind, it would not be so tied into rigid patterns that it might result in extinction.

­

The challenges and prob­lems of the species were different from those of others. It needed additional safeguards. The more flexible mating pattern was one. With this came a greater diversity in individual characteristics and behavior, so that no individu­al was bound to a strictly biological role. If that were true, the species never would have been concerned beyond the issues of physical survival, and such is not the case. The species could have survived quite well physically without philosophy, the arts, politics, religion, or even structured language. It could have followed completely different paths, those tied strictly to biological orientation.

There would have been no question of men perform­ing so-called feminine tasks, or of women performing so-called masculine tasks, for there no leeway for that kind of individual action would have existed.

For that matter, there is far greater leeway in the behavior of animals than you understand, for you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs. You inter­pret the past history of your species in the same manner. It seems to you that the female always tended to the offspring, for example, nursing them, that she was forced to remain close to home while the male fought off enemies or hunted for food. The ranging male, therefore, appears to have been much more curious and aggressive. There was instead a different kind of situation. Children do not come in litters. The family of the caveman was a far more "democratic" group than you suppose-men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

Except for the fact that males could not bear children, the abilities of the sexes were interchangeable. The male was usually heavier, a handy physical advantage in some areas-but the woman was lighter and could run faster.

Women were also somewhat lighter because they would bear the additional weight of a child. Even then, of course, there were variances, for many women are larger than small men. But the women could hunt as well as the men. If compassion, kindness, and gentleness were femi­nine characteristics only, then no male could be kind or compassionate because such feelings would not be biologi­cally possible.

If your individuality was programmed by your biologi­cal sex, then it would be literally impossible for you to perform any action that was not sexually programmed. A woman cannot father a child, nor can a male bear one.

Since you are otherwise free to perform other kinds of activity that you think of as sexually oriented, in those areas the orientation is cultural.

You imagine, however, that the male is aggressive, active, logical-minded, inventive, outwardly oriented, a builder of civilizations. You identify the ego as male. The unconscious therefore seems to be female, and the femi­nine characteristics are usually given as passive, intuitive, nurturing, creative, uninventive, concerned with preserv­ing the status quo, disliking change. At the same time, you consider the intuitive elements rather frightening, as if they can explode to disrupt known patterns, dash-in unknown ways.

Males who are creatively gifted find themselves in some dilemma, for their rich, sensed creativity comes into direct conflict with their ideas of virility. Women who possess characteristics that are thought to be masculine have the same problem on the other side.

In your terms the psyche is a repository of characteris­tics that operate in union, composed of female and male elements. The human psyche contains such patterns that can be put together in multitudinous ways. You have categorized human abilities so that it seems that you are men or women, or women and men primarily, and persons secondarily. Your personhood exists first, however. Your individuality gives meanIng to your sex, and not the other way around.

Now: In direct opposition to current theories about the past, there was far less sexual specialization, say, in the time of the caveman than now.

The family was a very cooperative unit. The basis of early society was cooperation, not competition. Families grouped together. There were children of various ages in such a band all the time. When women were near birth, they performed those chores that could be done in the cave dwellings, or nearby, and also watched other young children; while the women who were not pregnant were off with the males, hunting or gathering food.

If a mother died, the father took over her responsibili­ties, the qualities of love and affection being quite as alive in him as in the female. After a woman bore, she nursed the child, taking it with her on food-gathering excursions, or sometimes letting other women in the group nurse the child. Often after childbirth, women immediately joined the hunting expeditions, and the fathers made clothing from animals' hides at home. This allowed the male to rest after prolonged hunting activity, and meant that no adult member of a family became overexhausted. The work, then, was interchangeable.

Children began food gathering and hunting as soon as they were able to-females as well as males-­led by the older children, going further away as they progressed in strength. Qualities of inventiveness, curiosity, and ingenuity could not be delegated to one sex alone. The species could not have survived such a division.

You are so used to thinking in terms of mechanics, that it seems to you that uneducated people did not understand the connection between the sexual act of intercourse and childbirth. You are so used to one kind of explanation for childbirth, so familiar with one speciflc framework, that alternate explanations appear to be the height of nonsense. So it is fashionable to believe that early man did not understand the connection between intercourse and birth.

Even the animals, however, understand without words or language the importance of their sexual behavior. Early man was hardly more ignorant. The male knew what he was doing even without textbooks that outlined the entire procedure. The female understood the connections be­tween the child born and the sexual act.

It is the height of idiocy to imagine that because of the time taken in pregnancy, the female could not understand the child's origin in intercourse. The body's knowledge did not need a complicated language. For that matter, your literal interpretation of childbirth is by some standards a highly limited one. In your terms, it is techni­cally correct.

But a child born to two parents is also an offspring of the earth, its tissues as surely a part of earth as any tree or flower, or burst of ocean spray. A human child, true; but an offspring in which the entire history of the earth is involved a new creation arising not just from two parents, but from the entire gestalt of nature, from which the parents themselves once emerged; a private yet public affair in which the physical elements of earth become individualized; in which psyche and earth cooperate in a birth that is human, and in other terms, divine.

Historically speaking, early mim in his way understood those connections far better than you do, and used language as he developed it to express first of all this miracle of birth. For he saw that he constantly replenished his kind, and that all other species were replenished in the same manner.

There was always more land. No matter how fast he ran or how far he traveled, early man could not run out of land, or trees, or forests, or food supplies. If he came to a desert, he still knew that fertile lands were somewhere available, even if it was a matter of finding them. But the world itself seemed to have no end. It was literally a limitless world in a way most difficult for you to understand; for to you, the world has shrunk.

This unlimited world constantly replenished itself. Children came from women's wombs. Man was acquainted with death, and many children were stillborn, or were naturally aborted. This also, however, was in the natural order of things, and was done far more easily then than now. All flower seeds do not fall on fertile ground and bring forth other flowers. The seeds that do not grow go [back] into the ground, forming the basis for other life. Biologically speaking, fetuses grow and develop---I am going slowly here because I am being tricky-and when innate consciousness emerges with proper form the conditions are right for the birth of a healthy child: When the conditions are not right, the child does not develop properly. Nature aborts it. The physical elements return to the earth to become the basis for other life.

Only those children perfectly attuned to their environ­ment in time and space survived. This does not mean that the consciousness of a child was annihilated, for example, if it was naturally aborted. It did not develop.­

While there was no mating period, still there was a close biological relationship between the species and the earth, so that women naturally conceived when situations of climate, food supplies, and other elements were beneficial.

Biologically, the species knew ahead of time when droughts would appear, for example, and it automatically altered its rate of conception to compensate; Left alone, animal species do the same thing. In broad terms, early man was struck by the fact that all things seemed to reproduce themselves, and it was this fact that first caught his attention. Later he used what you think of as myths to explain this abundance. Yet those myths contained a kind of knowledge that escapes your literal, specific interpreta­tions of sexual events. Such knowledge resides in the psyche, however. If you have any direct experience with your own psyche, then you will most likely find yourself encountering some kinds of events that will not easily fit with your own ideas about your sexual nature.

Your beliefs about sexuaity, and hence your experi­ence with it, makes you consider it in a very limiting light.

The psyche's own knowledge, of course, is far more expansive. Alterations of consciousness, or attempts on the part of the individual to explore the inner self, may then easily display glimpses of a kind of sexuality that can appear to be deviant or unnatural.

Even when social scientists or biologists explore human sexuality, they do so from the framework of sexuality as it appears in your world. There are quite natural sexual variations, even involving reproduction, that are not now apparent in human behavior in any culture. These varia­tions appear in your world on only fairly microscopic levels, or in the behavior of other species than your own.

New paragraph: When racial conditions require it, it is quite possible for an individual to both father and mother a child. In such cases, what vou would call complete spontaneous sexual reverses or transformations would occur. Such processes are quite possible at micro­scopic levels, and inherent in the cellular structure. Even in your world, currently speaking, some individuals known as women could father their own children.

Some individuals "known as-men could give birth to a child fathered by the same person could (underlined). The abilities are there.

The male-female, female-male orientation is not near­Iy as separate as it appears to be in your present experience.

It is not nearly as tied to psychological characteristics as you suppose. Nor is it inherently focused in the particular age period in which it now shows itself. Puberty arrives, so to speak, but the time of its arrival varies according to the needs of the species, its conditions and beliefs. You are an individual for life. You operate as a reproducing individual, generally speaking, for only a portion of that time.

During that period, many elements come into play and are meant to make the process attrac­tive to the individuals involved, and to their tribes, societies, or civilizations. A relatively strong "sexual" identification is important under those circumstances-but an overidentification with them, before or afterward, can lead

to stereotyped behavior, in which the greater needs and abilities of the individual are not allowed fulfillment. ­

All of this becomes very complicated because of your value judgments, which oftentimes seem to lack-if you will forgive me--all natural common sense. You cannot separate biology from your own belief systems. The inter­play is too vital. If each act of intercourse were meant to produce a child, you would have overrun the planet before you began. Sexual activity is therefore also meant as enjoyment, as an expression of pure exuberance. A woman will often feel her most sexually active in the midst of the menstrual period, precisely when conception is least apt to occur. All kinds of taboos against sexual relations have been applied here, particularly in so-called native cultures. In those cultures, such taboos make good sense. Such peoples, building up the human stock, intuitively knew that the population would be increased if relations were restricted to periods when conception was most likely to occur. The blood was an obvious sign that the woman at her period was relatively "barren" Her abundance was gone. It seemed to their minds that she was indeed "cursed" during that time.

I have spoken before about the growth of what you call ego consciousness-which, let me reiterate, has its own unique rewards. That psychological orientation will lead the species to another, equally unique kind of consciousness.

When the process began, however, the deep power of .nature had to be "controlled" so that the growing con­sciousness could See itself as apart from this natural source. Yet children, so necessary to the species, continued to spring from women's wombs. Therefore the natural source was most flagrant, observable, and undeniable. For that reason the species-and not the male alone-placed so manv taboos about female behavior and sexualitv. In "subduing" its own female elements, the species tried to gain some psychological distance from the great natural source from which it was, for its own reasons, trying to emerge.

In the world of your present experience, sexual differences are less apparent as you reach old age. Some women display what you think of as masculine characteristics, growing hair about their faces, speaking with heavier voices, or becoming angular; while some men speak with lighter, gentler tones than ever before, and their faces grow smoother, and the contours of their bodies soften.

Before puberty there is the same kind of seeming ambiguity. You stress the importance of sexual identification, for it seems to you that a young child must know that it will grow up to be a man or woman, in the most precise of terrns -toeing the line in the least particular.

The slightest deviation is looked upon with dismay, so that personal identity and worth are completely tied into identification with femaleness or maleness. Completely different characteristics, abilities, and performances are expected from those in each category. A male who does not feel himself fully male, therefore, does not trust his identity as a person. A  woman doubtful of her complete feniininity in the same manner does not trust the integrity of her personhood.

A lesbian or homosexual is on very shifting psychologi­cal ground, because the same interests and abilities that they feel most personally theirs are precisely those that mark them as sexual eccentrics.

These are simple enough examples, but the man who possesses interests considered feminine by your culture, who naturally wants to enter fields of interest considered womanly, experiences drastic conflicts between his sense of personhood and identity-and his sexuality as it is culturally defined. The same, of course, applies to women.

Because of your exaggerated focus, you therefore become relatively blind to other aspects of "sexuality." First of all, sexuality per se does not necessarily lead to intercourse. It can lead to acts that do not produce children. What you think of as lesbian or homosexual activity is quite natural sexual expression, biologically and psycho­logically. In more "ideal" environments such activity would flourish to some extent, particularly before and after prime reproductive years.

For those literal-minded readers, this does not mean that such activity would predominate at such times. It does mean that not all sexual activity is meant to end in childbirth--which is a biological impossibility, and would represent planetary catastrophe. So the species is blessed, if you will, with many avenues for sexual expression.

The strong focus that now predominates does inhibit the formation of certain kinds of friendships that would not necessarily at all result in sexual activity.

Lesbianism and homosexuality, as they are currently experienced, also represent exaggerated versions of natu­ral inclinations, even as your experienced version of

            heterosexuality is exaggerated.

The so-called battle of the sexes, with its ramifications, is not "natural"-nor, in that context, is fighting between members of the same sex. Even in the animal kingdom, for example, males do not fight to the death over the females when they are in their natural state.

I will clear up my meaning of the word "natural" later. However, when you examine animal behavior even in its most natural-seeming environment, for instance, you are not observing the basic behavior. patterns of such creatures, because those relatively isolated areas exist in your world. Quite simply, you cannot have one or two or twenty officially-designated natural regions in which you observe animal activity, and expect to find anything more than the current adaptation of those creatures--an adapta­tion that is superimposed upon their "natural" reactions.

The balance of resources, animal travel patterns, migrations, weather conditions--all of these must be taken into consideration. Such isolated observation areas merely present you with a distorted picture of natural behavior, because the animals are also imprisoned within them. Civilization binds them round.

Other animals are kept out. The hunted and the prey are highly regulated. All areas of animal behavior alter to fit the circumstances as much as possible, and this in­cludes sexual activity. To some extent the animals have been conditioned to the changing world. Now man is obviously part of nature, so you may say: "But those changes wrought by him are natural." When he studies such animal behavior, however, and sometimes uses the sexual patterns of the animals to mak~ certain points about human sexuality, then man does not take this into consideration, but speaks as if the present observed animal behavior is the indication of a prime or basic nature inherent in their biology.

 It is not natural, then, for men to fight over women. This is a purely cultural, learned behavior. In terms of history as you understand it, the species could not withstand such misapplied energy, nor could it have withstood such constant antagonism.

Each species is involved in a cooperative venture, upon which ultimately all earthly existence rests. You project your present beliefs backward into history, and you misinterpret many of the conditions that you observe in the natural world. This cooperation that I speak of is based on love, and that love has a biological as well as a spiritual basis. Your beliefs, for example, cause you to deny the existence of emotions in animals, and any instances of love among them are assigned to "blind" instinct.

To some extent the churches as well as the scientists are responsible, but priests and scientists are not some roreign people, thrust upon you. They represent various aspects of yourselves. The species developed its own kind of consciousness, as it round it necessary to isolate itself to some degree from its environment and the other creatures within it. As a result, the religions preached that only man had a soul and was dignified by emotional feelings. In its way science went along very nicely by postulating man in a mechanistic world, with each creature run by an impecca­ble machine of instinct, blind alike to pain or desire.

The love and cooperation that rorms the basis of all life, however, shows itself in many ways. Sexuality repre­sents one aspect, and an important one. In larger terms, it is as natural for a man to love a man, and for a woman to love awoman, as it is to show love for the opposite sex. For that matter, it is more natural to be bisexual. Such is the "natural" nature of the species.

Instead, you have put love into very definite categories, so that its existence is right only under the most limited conditions. Love goes underground, but springs up. in distorted rorms and exaggerated tendencies.. You have rollowed this course for different reasons at different times. Neither sex is to blame. Instead, your sexual situation is simply another reflection of the state of your consciousness. As a species, presently at least in the Western world, you equate sex and love. You imagine that sexual expression is .the only one natural to love. Love, in other words, must it seems express itself exclusively through the exploration , in one way or another, of the beloved's sexual portions.

This is hardly the only limitation placed upon love's expression, however. There are innumerable books written with instructions, each proclaiming the said methods to be the proper ones. Certain kinds of orgasm are "the best." Love's expression is furthermore permitted only between members of the opposite sex. Generally speaking, these individuals must be more or less of the same age. There are other taboos, involving racial restrictions, or cultural, social, and economic ones. If this were not enough, large segments of the population believe that sex is wrong to begin with-a spiritual debasement, allowed by God only so that the species can continue.

Since love and sex are equated, obvious conflicts arise. Mother love is the only category that is considered wholesome, and therefore nonsexual under most conditions. 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.

Creativity rides the tides of love. When love is denied its natural expression, creativity suffers. Your befiefs lead you to suppose that a natural bisexuality would result in the death of the family, the destruction of morals, rampant sexual crimes, and the loss of sexual identity. I would say, however, that my last sentence adequately describes your present situation. The acceptance of the species' natural bisexuality would ultimately help solve not only those problems but many others, including the large instances of violence, and acts of murder. In your terms, however, and in your circumstances, there is not apt to be any easy transition.

The parent-child relationship has its own unique emo­tional structure, which survives even those distortions you have placed upon it, and its ancient integrity would not be weakened, but strengthened, if greater stress were laid upon your bisexual nature.

Children would fare far better if the ancient parental qualities were not so forcibly focused upon the mother. This in itself leads to more dependence upon the mother than is healthy, and forms an artificial allegiance between mother and child against the father.

Heterosexual love is one important expression of bisexuality, and sexually represents the reproductive abilities. Heterosexuality, however, rests the bisexual basis, and (without man's bisexual nature, the larger frameworks of the family-the clan, tribe, government, civilization-would be impossible.

Basically, then, man's inherent bisexuality provides the basis for the cooperation that makes physical survival, and any kind of cultural interaction, possible. If the "battle of the sexes" were as prevalent as supposed, and as natural and ferocious, then there literally would be no cooperation between males and females for any purpose. There would be none between men or between women either, for they would be in a constant state of battle against each other.

In the natural biological flow of a persons life, there are periods of varying intensities, in which love and its expression fluctuates, and tends toward different courses. There are also individual variations that are of great importance. These natural rhythms are seldom observed, however. Tendencies toward lesbianism or homosexuality in children are quite natural. They are so feared, however, that often just-as-natural leanings toward heterosexuality are blocked. Instead, the young person is stereotyped.

Individual inclinations toward creativity often emerge in a strong fashion in adolescence. If those drives in either sex do not conform in expression to those expected of the male or female, then such young persons become confused. The creative expression seems to be in direct contradiction to the sexual standards expected.

I am not saying that lesbianism and homosexuality are merely stages leading to heterosexuality. I am saying that lesbianism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are valid expressions of man's bisexual nature.

I am also stressing the fact that love and sexuality are not necessarily the same thing. Sex is love's expression, but it is only one of love's expressions. Sometimes it is quite "natural" to express love in another way. Because of the connotations of the word "sex," however, it may seem to some of you that I am advocating a promiscuous sexual relationship with "no holes barred".

Instead, I am saying that deeper bonds of biological and spiritual love lie at the basis of all personal and cultural relationships, a love that transcends your ideas of sexuality. Heterosexual love, as it is understood at least, gives you a family of parents and children-an important unit, about which other groups form. If only stereotyped ideas of female-male relationships operated, however, there would be no bond or stimulus great enough to forge one family to another. The antagonism between males would be too great. Competition between females would be too severe. Wars would wipe out struggling tribes before any traditions were formed.

In the social world as in the microscopic one, cooperation again is paramount. Only a basic bisexuality could give the species the leeway necessary, and prevent stereo­typed behavior of a kind that would hamper creativity and social commerce. That basic sexual nature allows you the fulfillment of individual abilities, so that the species does not fall into extinction. Man's recognition of his bisexual nature is, therefore, a must in his future.

There are, again, obvious differences between the sexes. They are insignificant, and appear large only be­cause you concentrate so upon them. The great human qualities of love, strength, compassion, intellect and imagi­ nation do not belong to one sex or the other.

Only an understanding of this inherent bisexu­al nature will release those qualities in each individual, regardless of sex. Those same abilities are natural charac­teristics of people in each race, of course, yet you have consistently made the same kind of distinctions in racial terms as you have in sexual ones, so that certain races appear as feminine or masculine to you. You project your sexual beliefs outward upon the nations, then, and often the terminology of the nations and of wars is the same as that used to describe sex.

You speak, for example, of domination and submission, of the master and the slave, of the rape of a nation---terms used in war and sex alike.

Male and female are each members of the human race--or species if you prefer--so these divisions were made in the species itself, by itself. They are the result of distinctions arising, again, as the species experimented with its line of consciousness, and brought into being the appearance of separation between itself and the rest of the natural world.

Your identity is simply not dependent upon your psychological or biological sexuality.

Your sexual characteristics represent a portion of your personhood. They provide vital areas of expression, and focal points about which to group experience. Your sexual qualities are a part of your nature, but they do not define it.

Your beliefs so structure your experience individually and en masse, however, that evidential material contrary to those ideas shows itself but seldom, or in distorted or exaggerated form. It is quite natural, biologically and psychologically, to operate in certain fashions that are not acceptable in your society, and that 'seem to run counter to your picture of mankind's history. In terms of your definitions, then, it is quite natural for some people to behave as males sexually and as females psychologically. It is quite "natural" for others to operate in a reverse fashion.

Again, this may seem difficult to understand, because you assign psychological characteristics to sexual affiliation, whichever it is. There will always be people who naturally seek the experience of parenthood. All of them will not necessarily be heterosexual at any given time.

The larger pattern of human personhood demands a bisexual affiliation that allows leeway in sexual encounters, a leeway that provides a framework in which individuals can express feelings, abilities, and characteristics that fol­low the natural inclines of the personal psyche rather than sexual stereotypes. I am not speaking here of anything so simple as merely allowing women more freedom, or reliev­ing men from the conventional breadwinner's role. I am certainly not talking about" open marriage" as it is currently understood, but of far greater issues. Before we can consider these, however, there are several points I would like to make.

There are biological possibilities, seldom acti­vated in your present circumstances, that have some bear­ing upon the subject at hand.

Puberty comes at a certain time, triggered by deep mechanisms that are related to the state of the natural world, the condition of the species, and those cultural beliefs that in a certain sense you transpose upon the natural world. In other respects, your cultural environ­ment is of course natural. The time that puberty comes varies, then, and afterwards it is possible to parent a child. A time then comes when the period is over. During what

is called the sexually active time, the larger dimensions of personhood become strictly narrowed into sexually stereo­typed roles-and all aspects of identity that do not fit are ignored or denied. The fact is that few people fit those roles. They are largely the result of the interpretations of religion as conventionally understood. And the scientists, for all their seeming independence, often simply found new intellectually acceptable reasons for unconsciously held emotional beliefs.

Biologically there is a period very rarely experienced, as jokingly suggested in the "sick jokes" about senility and second childhood. This particular latent biological ability shows itself only upon the rarest instances-because, for one thing, it represents a feat now scarcely desirable. Physically, however, the body is quite able to completely regenerate itself as it approaches old age. Indeed, a quite legitimate second puberty is possible, in which the male's seed is youthfully strong and vital, and the woman's womb is pliable and able to bear. There are, I believe, Biblical tales of such births resulting.

In times of overpopulation, this mechanism is hardly desirable, but it is a part of the species held in abeyance now, representing nature's capabilities. In some areas of your world, isolated peoples live on past a hundred years, vital and strong, because they are untouched by your beliefs, and because they live in sympathy and accord with the world as they know and understand it. Occasionally such second puberties happen then, with resulting cbildbirth, as a small group attempts to maintain its own biological stance.

Usually the second puberty follows the same sexual orientation as the first, but not always-for it is quite possible for the new affiliation to be the opposite of the first. This is even rarer-but so does the species protect itself.

Through medical techniques some of your old people are kept alive long enough so that this process begins, appearing in distorted form, sometimes psychologically apparent but biologically frustrated. The second puberty is dead-ended, then. It has nowhere to go. It is not now biologically pertinent or needed.

Left alone, some of these people would die with a feeling of satisfaction. Kept alive through medical techniques, the physical mechanism continues its struggles to revital­ize the body and bring about this second puberty-that naturally would only come about under different conditions, with the mind far more alert and the will unimpaired.

Now, to some extent (underlined) there is a connection between this innate, rarely observed second puberty and the development of cancer, in which growth is specifically apparent in an exaggerated manner:

Give us a moment. . . In almost all such cases involving cancer, spiritual and psychic growth is being denied, or the individual feels that he or she can no longer grow properly in personal, psychic terms. This attempt to grow then activates body mechanisms that result in the overgrowth of certain cells. The individual insists upon growing or upon death, and rorces an artificial situation in which growth itself becomes physically disastrous.

This is because a blockage occurs. The individual wants to grow in terms of personhood, but is afraid of doing so. There are always individual variations that must be taken into consideration, but often such a person feels a martyr to his or her sex, imprisoned by it and unable to escape. This can obviously apply to cancers affecting sexual areas, but is often in the background of any such condition. Energy is being blocked because of problems that began­in your terms-with sexual questions in puberty. Energy is experienced as sexual.

Now, old people who are considered senile or unman­ageable are sometimes experiencing new bursts of sexual activity for which no outlet is given. Beside this, they have lost their conventional sexual roles, in which they earlier expressed their energy.

There are often hormonal changes occurring that go unnoticed. Many express a nervous, erratic type of behav­ior as they are aroused-some not only sexually but intellectually. The new adolescence never comes. The new puberty dies a slow death, for your society has no frame­ work in which to understand it. And indeed it shows itself in a distorted fashion that can appear most grotesque.

       Love is a biological necessity, a rorce operating to one degree or another in all biological life. Without love there is no physical commitment to life-no psychic hold.

Love exists whether or not it is sexually expressed, though it is natural for love to seek expression. Love implies loyalty. It implies commitment. This applies to lesbian and homosexual relationships as well as to hetero­sexual ones. In your society, however, identity is so related to sexual stereotypes that few people know themselves well enough to understand the nature of love, and to make any such commitments.

A transitory period is currently taking place, in which women seem to seek the promiscuous sexual freedom more generally granted to men. It is believed that males are naturally promiscuous, aroused by sexual stimuli al­most completely divorced from any complementary "deeper" response. The male, then, is thought to want sex whether or not he has any love response to the woman in question­or sometimes to desire her precisely because he does not love her. In such cases, sex becomes not an expression of love, but an expression of derision or scorn.

So women, accepting these ideas often, seek for a situation in which they too can feel free to express their sexual desires openly, whether or not any love is involved.

Yet loyalty is love's partner, and the primates display such evidence in varying degrees. The male in particular has been taught to separate love and sex, so that a schizophrenic condition results that tears apart his psyche-in operation­al terms-as he lives his life.

The expression of sexuality is considered male, while the expression of love is not considered manly. To some extent or another, then, the male feels forced to divide the expression of his love from the expression of his sexuality. It would be disastrous for women to rollow the same course.

This great division has led to your major wars. This does not mean that men were alone responsible for wars. It does mean that the male so divorced himself from the common rountain of love and sex that the repressed energy came rorth in those aggressive acts of cultural rape and death, instead of birth.

When you look at the animal kingdom, you suppose that the male chooses blindly, led by "dumb" instinct, so that in overall terms one female will do as well as any other. When you discover that a certain chemical or scent will attract a certain male insect, for example, you take it for granted that. that element is alone responsible for drawing the male to the female. You take it for granted, in other words, that individual differences do not apply in such cases so remote from your own reality.

You simply are not able to understand the nature of such consciousnesses, and so you interpret their behavior according to your beliefs. This would be sad enough if you did not often use such distorted data to further define the nature of male and female behavior.

In so distorting your ideas of sex, you further limit the great capacities of human loyalty, which is always connect­ed with love and love's expression. Lesbian and homosexu­al relationships then are at best tenuous, overwrought with confused emotions, very seldom able to maintain a stabili­ty that allows for individual growth. Heterosexual relation­ships also break down, for the identity of each partner becomes based upon sexual roles that mayor may not apply to the individuals involved.

Since you feel that sex is the only proper method of love's expression, and yet also believe that sex and love are divided, you are in a quandary. These sexual beliefs are also far more important in national relationships than you realize, for you attempt to take what you think of as a masculine stance as a nation. So, for example, does Russia. India takes a feminine stance-in terms of your beliefs, now.

One small note: A male with growths of any kind, ­kidney stones or ulcers, for example-has tendencies he considers feminine, and therefore "dependent," of which he is ashamed. In a mock biological ceremony, he gives birth to the extent that he produces within his body material that was not there before. In ulcers the stomach becomes the womb-bloodied, giving birth to sores-his interpretation of a male's "grotesque" attempt to express feminine characteristics.

Chapter 5

The Psyche, Love, Sexual Expression, and Creativity

Your ideas about sexuality and your beliefs about the nature of the psyche often paint a picture of very contradicto­ry elements. The psyche and its relationship to sexuality affects your ideas of health and illness, creativity, and all of the ordinary areas of individual life. In this chapter, therefore, we will consider some of the implications that result.

      In your terms, again, the psyche contains what you would consider male and female characteristics, while not being male or female itself.

In those terms and in that regard, the psyche is a bank from which sexual affiliations are drawn. Basically, however, there are no clear, set, human, psychological characteristics that belong to one sex or the other. Again, this would lead to a pattern too rigid for the development of the species, and give you, too-specialized behavior patterns that would not allow you to cope as a species­particularly with the many varieties of social groupings possible.

Your psychological tests show you only the current picture of males and females, brought up from infancy with particular sexual beliefs. These beliefs program the child from infancy, of course, so that it behaves in certain fashions in adulthood. The male seems to perform better

at mathematical tasks, and so-called logical mental activity, while the female performs better in a social context, in value development and personal relationships. The male shows up better in the sciences, while the female is considered intuitional.

It should be obvious to many of my readers that this is learned behavior. You cannot teach a boy to be "the strong silent male type," and then expect him to excel either verbally or in social relationships. You cannot expect a girl to show" strong, logical thought development" when she is taught that a woman is intuitional-that the intuitions are opposed to logic, and that she must be . feminine, or nonlogical, at all costs. This is fairly obvious.

The child is not born a sponge, however, empty but ready to soak up knowledge. It is already soaked in knowledge. Some will come to the surface, so to speak, and be used consciously. Some will not. I am saying here that to some extent the child in the womb is aware of the mother's beliefs and information, and that to some extent (underlined) it is "programmed" to behave in a certain fashion, or to grow in a certain fashion as a result.

Basically the species is relatively so freewheeling, with so many potentials, that it is necessary that the mother's beliefs provide a kind of framework in the beginning, allowing the child to focus its abilities in de­sired directions. It knows ahead of time then the biological, spiritual, and social environment into which it is born. It is somewhat prepared to grow in a certain direction-a direction that is applicable and suited to its conditions. Beliefs about the infant's sexual nature are of course a part of its advance programming. We are not speaking here of forced growth patterns, or of psychic or biological directions, impressed upon it so that any later divergence from them causes inevitable stress or pain. The fact re­mains that the child receives patterns of behavior, gently nudging it to grow in certain directions. In normal leaming, of course, both parents urge the child to behave in certain fashions. Beside this, however, certain general, learned patterns are biologically transmitted to the child through the genes. Certain kinds of knowledge are transmitted through the genes besides that generally known, having to do with cellular formations and so forth.

Survival of the human species, as it has developed, is a matter of belief far more than is understood-for certain beliefs are now built in. They become biologically pertinent and transmitted. I mean something else here besides, for example, a telepathic transmission: the translation of beliefs into physical codes that then become biological cues. [As a result], it then becomes easier for a boy to act in a given manner

biologi­cally than in another.

If women have felt that their biological survival depended upon the cultivation of certain attributes over others, for instance, then this information becomes chro­mosome data, as vital to the development of the new organism as any other physical data involving cellular structure.

The mother also provides the same kind of informa­tion to a male offspring. The father contributes his share in each case. Over the generations, then, certain characteris­tics appear to be quite naturally male or female, and these will vary to some extent according to the civilizations and world conditions. Each individual is bighly unique, however, so these models for behavior will vary. They can indeed be changed in a generation, for the experience of each person alters the original information. This provides leeway that is important.

The child, also, uses such information as a guide only; as a premise upon which it bases early behavior. As the mind develops, the child immediately begins to question the early assumptions. This questioning of basic premises is one of the greatest divisions between you and the animal world.

The psyche then. contains, again in your terms, female and male chracteristics. These are put together, so to speak, in the human personality with great leeway and in many proportions.

 As simply put as possible, love is the force out of which being comes, and we will consider this statement much more thoroughly later in this book. Love seeks expression and creativity. Sexual expression is one way that love seeks creativity. It is hardly the only way, however. Love finds expression through the arts, religion, play, and helpful actions toward others. Period. It cannot be confined to sexual expression only, nor can rules be given as to how often normal adults should sexually ex­press themselves.

Many men, labeled homosexual by themselves and others, want to be fathers. Their beliefs and those of your society lead them to imagine that they must always be heterosexual or homosexual. Many feel a desire toward women that is also inhibited. Your male or female orienta­tion limits you in ways that you do not understand. For example, in many cases the gentle "homosexual" father has a better innate idea of manliness than a heterosexual male who believes that men must be cruel, insensitive, and competitive. These are both stereotyped images, however.

Love can be expressed quite legitimately through the arts. This does not mean that such a person is repressing sexuality in any given case, and stealing its energy for creative production-though, of course, this may be the case. Many natural artists in any field normaly express love through such creative endeavors, rather than through sexual actions.

This does not mean that such persons never have sexual encounters that are enjoyable, and even of an enduring nature. It means that the thrust of their love is, overall, expressed through the production of art, through which it seeks a statement that speaks in other than corporal terms.

A great artist in any field or in any time instinctively feels a private personhood that is greater than the particu­lar sexual identity. As long as you equate identity with your sexuality, you will limit the potentials of the individual and of the species. Each person will generally find it easier to operate as male or female, lesbian or homosexual, but each person is primarily bisexual. Bisexuality implies parenthood as much as it implies lesbian or homosexual relationships. Again, here, sexual encounters are a natural part of love's expression, but they are not the limit of love's expression.

Many quite fine nonsexual relationships are denied, because of the connotations placed upon lesbianism or homosexuality. Many heterosexual relationships are also

denied to persons labeled as not being heterosexual, by themselves or society. People so labeled often feel pro­pelled out of sheer confusion to express their love only through sexual acts. They feel forced to imitate what they think the natural male or female is like, and on occasion end up with ludicrous caricatures. These caricatures infuri­ate those so imitated-because they carry such hints of truth, and point out so cleverly the exaggerations of male­

ness or femaleness that many heterosexuals have clamped upon in their own natures.

Now: In some historical periods it was desirable in practical terms that a man have many wives, so that if he died in battle his seed might be planted in many wombs­ particularly in times when diseases struck men and women down often in young adulthood.

When physical conditions are adverse, such social traditions have often emerged. In times of overpopulation, so-called homosexual and lesbian tendencies come to the surface--but also there is the tendency to express love in other than physical ways, and the emergence of large

social issues and challenges into which men and women can throw their energies. There are "lost" portions Bible having to do with sexuality, and with Christ' beliefs concerning it, that were considered blasphemous and did not come down to you through history.            

Again, it is natural to express love through sexual acts-natural and good. It is not natural to express love only through sexual acts, however. Many of Freud's sexual ideas did not reflect mans natural condition. The complexes and neuroses outlined and defined are products of your traditions and beliefs. You will naturally find some evi­dence for them in observed behavior. Many of the tradi­tions do come from the Greeks, from the great Greek play-writers, who quite beautifully and tragically presented the quality of the psyche as it showed itself in the light of Grecian traditions.

The boy does not seek, naturally, to "dethrone" the father. He seeks to emulate him; he seeks to be himself as fully as it seems to him that his father was himself. He hopes to go beyond himself and his own capabilities for himself and for his father.

As a child he once thought that his father was immortal, in human terms-that he could do no wrong. The son tries to vindicate the father by doing no wrong himself, and perhaps by succeeding where it seems the father might have failed. It is much more natural for the male to try to vindicate the father than it is to destroy him, or envy him in negative terms.

The child is simply the male child. He is not jealous of the father with the mother, in tIie way that is often supposed. The male child does not possess an identi­ty so Weused upon its maleness. I am not saying that children do not have a sexual nature from birth. They simply do not Weus upon their maleness or femaleness in the way that is supposed.

To the male child, the penis is something that belongs to him personally in the same way that an arm or leg does, or that his mouth or anus does. He does not consider it a weapon . He is not jealous of his father's love for the mother, for he understands quite well that her love for him is just as strong. He does not wish to possess his mother sexually in the way that adults currently suppose. He does not understand those terms. He may at times be jealous of her attention, but this is not a sexual jealousy in conventionally understood terms. Your beliefs blind you to the sexual nature of children. They do enjoy their bodies.

They are sexually aroused. The psychological connotations, however, are not those assigned to them by adults.

The beliefs involving the son's inherent rivalry with the father, and his need to overthrow him, follow instead patterns of culture and tradition, economic and social, rather than biological or psychological. Those ideas serve as handy explanations for behavior that is not inherent or

biologically pertinent.       ­

In a manner of speaking, humanity deals with differ­ent predominant themes at different times. There may be 'minor interweaving ones, but the nature of personality, religion, politics, the family, and the arts-all of these are considered in the light of the predominating theme.

In usual historic terms, humanity has been experi­menting with its own unique kind of consciousness, and as I have mentioned many times, this necessitated an arbi­trary division between the subject and the perceiver­nature and man-and brought about a situation in which

the species came to consider itself apart from the rest of existence.

What you think..of as (underlined) male ego-oriented characteristics are simply those human attributes that the species encouraged, brought into the foreground, and stressed. Using those actually as guidelines, you have so far viewed your world and formed your cultures. There are some exceptions of note, but here I am speaking historical­ly of the Western world with its Roman and Greek heritage. Your gods became masculine then; competitive. You saw the species pitted against nature; and man pitted against man. You consider the Greek tragedies great because they echo so firmly your own beliefs. Man is seen in opposition in the most immediate fashion with his own father. Family relationships become a mirror of those beliefs, which are then of course taken as statements of fact concerning the human condition. You thus have a very polarized male­ female concept.

Those characteristics that you consider female are, then, those that did not predominate because they repre­sented the source of nature from which the species sought release. To some extent this was a true, creative, sexual drama-again, of high pretense, for in its own way the consciousness of the species was playing for high stakes, and the drama had to be believable.

It was seeking for a multiplication of consciousness, forming new offshoots from its own source. It had to pretend to dislike and disown that source in the same way that an adolescent may momentarily turn aside from its parents in order to encourage independence. Before the so-called flowering of Greek and Roman cultures, consciousness had not as yet made that specialization. There were gods and goddesses galore, and deities in whose natures the feminine and masculine characteristics merged. There were deities part human and part animal. The species, then, had not yet taken up the theme that has been predominant in Western culture.

These changes first occurred in man's stories of the deities. As the species divorced itself from nature, so the animal gods began to vanish. Man first changed his myths, and then altered the reality that reflected them.

Before then there were various kinds of divisions of labor, but great leeway in sexual expression. Children were a necessary part of the family, for a family was a band of people who belonged together, cooperating in the search for food and shelter.

Homosexual or lesbian relationships, as you term them, existed quite freely, and simultaneously. These were considered pertinent with or without sexual expression, and served as strong bonds of sisterhood and brotherhood.

When you view the animal kingdom, you also do so through your specialized sexual beliefs, studying the behav­ior of the male and female, looking for patterns of aggressiveness, territorial jealousy, passivity, mothering instincts, or whatever. These specialities of interest make you blind to many larger dimensions of animal behavior.

To some degree, the so-called mothering instinct belongs to male and female alike in any species that can be so designated. Animals have close friendships, with or with­ out sexual expression, with members of the same sex. ­Love and devotion are not the prerogatives of one sex or one species.

       As a result, you see in nature only what you want to see, and you provide yourselves with a pattern or model of nature that conforms with your beliefs.

Love and devotion are largely seen as female charac­teristics. Societies and organizations of church and state are seen as male. It is not so much that the male and the female be considered equal as it is that the male and female elements in each person should be released and expressed. Immediately, many of you may be annoyed or alarmed, thinking that of course I mean sexual expression. That is a portion of such expression. But I am speaking of releasing within each individual the great human characteris­tics and abilities that are often denied expression because they are assigned to the opposite sex.

In your present framework, because of the male­female specialization-the male orientation, the implica­tion that the ego is male while the psyche is female-you force upon yourselves great divisions in which operational­ly the intellect seems separate from the intuitions, and you set up a situation in which opposites seem to apply where there are none. When you think of a scientist, the majority of you will think of a male, an intellectual, an "objective" thinker who takes great pains not to be emotional, or to identify with the subject being examined or studied.

There seems to be a division between science and religion, for even organized religion has an intuitive basis. The male scientist is often ashamed of using his intuitions, for not only do they appear to be unscientific, but female as well. It is what others will think about his masculinity that such a man is concerned with. To be "illogical" is a scientific. "crime"-not so much because it is an unscientific­  attribute, but because it is considered a feminine one. Science has followed the male orientation and become its epitome. Up until the present, science has consistently tried to do without the so-called feminine qualities. It has divorced knowledge from emotion, understandin~ from identification, and stressed sexuality over personhood.

To an extent, some people in the sciences manage to blend the so-called female and male characteristics. When they do so, seeming oppositions and contradictions disappear.

To whatever degree, more than their contemporaries, they do not allow sexual roles to blind them psychologically. Therefore they are more apt to combine reason and emotion, intuitions and intellect, and in so doing invent theories that reconcile previous contradictions. They unify, expand, and create, rather than diversify.

Einstein was such a person in the sciences. While he was tainted to some extent by conventional sexual beliefs, he still felt his own personhood in such a way that he gladly took advantage of characteristics considered feminine. As a youngster, particularly, he rebelled against male­oriented learning and orientation. This rebellion was psychological-that is, he maintained an acceptable male orientation in terms of sexual activity, but he would not restrain his mind and soul with such nonsense. The world felt the result of his great intuitive abilities, and of his devotion.

Because of the world situation, and the over­all male orientation of science, the results of his work were largely put to the uses of manipulation and control.

Generally, reason and intellect are then considered male qualities, and the frameworks for civilization, science, and an organized world. The intuitions and the impulses are considered erratic, untrustworthy, feminine, and to be controlled. The world exists because of spontaneous order. Civilization began because of the impulse of people to be

together. It grew spontaneously and came into order. You only see the outside of many processes because your objectified viewpoint does not allow you the identification that would show you more. It seems to you then that