Ever since I started this blog I've occasionally referenced something called "the Law of One", and I have received questions on what that actually is from time to time. Several concepts from this blog, including "social memory complex" and "6th density", are from a body of work available from L/L Research known alternately as "The Ra Material" or "The Law of One". These are transcriptions of conversations between a member of L/L Research and a claimed disincarnate entity calling itself "Ra" that occurred by means of trance channeling. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of that initial contact, and I've written a congratulatory letter to Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty, the surviving members of L/L Research, which you can find here.
I have a history with channeled material. During my childhood my parents were very interested in so-called "new age" thought generally and the Edgar Cayce channellings from the early 20th century in particular, and when I was in middle school I began to develop an interest in reading them. I had had some personal experiences that inspired a curiosity in spirituality and had parents who encouraged it. Cayce gave tens of thousands of deep trance psychic readings that resulted in countless cures that cannot be explained by any modern science. However, interspersed throughout those healing readings were other pieces of information. There was all sorts of stuff about ancient civilizations and technologies, past lives and reincarnation, and attempts to explain the nature of the human condition beyond what we experience on a day to day basis. I became enthralled by this window into a larger reality, part science fiction, part metaphysics.
As fantastic as all that information was, its real utility as a platform for learning about deeper spiritual insights served me much better than believing in Atlantis ever did. Ultimately, the value of the work is determined by how much use you can make of it, and the introspective spiritual truths conveyed were more actionable in my daily life and adolescent struggles than stuff about crystals and sunken continents. This willingness to look beyond the transient surface of metaphysical information to the deeper significance would be a great tool in my future efforts.
Towards adulthood I started reading other metaphysical materials: various theosophical books, other channeled materials, and pop new age stuff like The Celestine Prophecy. I was never dogmatic about any of this information, and the more widely I cast my net, the more easily I could see the common threads in the varied approaches. That made it much easier to come to my own conclusions about these matters instead of blindly following one book or another, though it's probably fair to say that a certain amount of preoccupation with a given book is necessary to really absorb it.
A Course in Miracles was probably the work that made a deeper impression on me than any other I'd encountered up till then. It had been studied by my parents while I was growing up, but I didn't find it until I was 16. It approached spirituality from a comparatively intellectual point of view, challenging my thinking directly instead of through archetype and metaphor. Channelled by a thoroughgoing materialist psychology professor, its story is compelling all on its own. Suffice to say, while in the final equation spiritual exploration is not an intellectual exercise, there is much work to be done in examining one's thoughts.
I found the Law of One through David Wilcock, who did his own channeling and research. I moderated his Yahoo! group and became friends with him. He referenced the Ra material in his own work on alternative physics and spirituality, and most importantly he made available a study guide that broke down the Law of One material for better comprehension. Reading this first helped me tremendously, because the material is a transcription of conversations that build concepts gradually and it's easy to develop a disjointed and confused understanding on initial readings. Also corresponding on the Yahoo! group was a great help, and I owe David a substantial debt for all his guidance.
The core of the Law of One material is the spiritual principle that all that we experience as separate entities are in fact one infinite entity and identity: the Creator. In short, all is the Creator and all is the self, so a loving attitude towards others is an expression of the reality of unity, not some mere altruistic duty. The seeming separation we experience in our waking lives has utility because we can learn things about ourselves / the Creator that we cannot otherwise learn. We are here to develop the capacity for love in spite of all the suffering and confusion of this world, because only here can these capacities be "polarized" to sufficient intensity to allow us to progress to the next level. This polarization is governed by a choice of how to express our nature as the Creator, positively and loving or negatively and fearful, and the two poles are commonly referred to as "service to others" and "service to self". Both are valid paths back to unity, but they are different in quality, duration, and lessons.
The above is a tragically concise distillation of the Law of One material in its spiritual essence. I made sure I mentioned that first because the entity transmitting this information calls itself "Ra", claims to be a highly evolved extraterrestrial "social memory complex" or group mind, and claims to have visited Earth thousands of years ago to help us but in doing so unwittingly introduced distorted understandings of the Creator. This mistake in the past is responsible for much suffering and confusion today through various cultural, social, religious, and political constructs, and those of Ra feel a responsibility to correct these errors. There is more of this cosmic drama mentioned in the material, what I call "space opera" details, but to me they are not nearly as important as the spiritual heart of the message. In other words, even if all the space drama were completely false, the philosophical content could still be valid.
L/L Research, composed of Carla Rueckert, Jim McCarty, and Don Elkins, had been doing experiments in telepathically contacting extraterrestrials and channeling all throughout the 60s and 70s. Essentially, those of Ra say they chose to contact the group because they had honed the art of trance channeling through their previous work, and their attitude and orientation was congruent with the group's. One thing that sets the Law of One material apart from other channellings was that L/L Research attempted from the beginning to approach the contact as objectively and scientifically as possible, recording all contacts and making as much information and background available to others (with some exceptions for personal details) so they could reach their own conclusions. Because of this attitude of extreme transparency, the message could get through without the distortions that had been introduced in past contacts with humanity.
I don't expect people to take my word for any of this or that they should even care. I certainly don't consider this material the only source of truth, nor is any claim of exclusivity made on Ra's part. It's not important to me whether everything Ra says is 100% true; in fact, at one point those of Ra state that the more the conversation turns to so-called "transient" matters like UFO physics, paranormal phenomena, historical figures, and the like, the more likely the information is to be distorted. The more the requested information pertains to timeless, universal truths that transcend our culture and history and approach a more unified and infinite perspective, the more likely they are to be accurate. Indeed, Ra insisted as a condition of the communication that people judge the information for themselves and discard anything that did not resonate, lest they introduce distortion into our consciousness once more. Free will (what they call the "Law of Confusion") is a very important part of our journey. This makes sense to me because it describes exactly what I've done throughout my exploration of different metaphysical strains of thought.
All I'll say is that, as a friend once put it, discovering the Law of One material felt like slipping on an old pair of worn-in, comfortable shoes. It resonated with me at a very deep level. The backstory it gives for the spiritual utility of a seemingly mundane and definitely confusing life makes sense; that we're here not just to be happy (though that's part of it) but to be who we are, which is something more than we think we are. To me, the Ra material is a symbol of something more fundamental than a fantastic telepathic contact; it is a way of approaching spiritual evolution that can help one move towards a personal experience more authentic and instructive than any outwardly apprehended teaching.
It should be obvious that I've summarized quite a bit, even as this post has dragged on, but I want the reader to have some clue as to where I'm coming from. It's not easy to talk about because it flies in the face of our everyday experience, but it's part of who I am. Spirituality and seeking is at least as fundamental to me as the politics I write so much about, and indeed I see significant parallels between the two.
I also want to convey why these people to whom I wrote the letter are so dear to me; the quality of the information they've brought through is so high in my opinion that I'm very grateful for their sacrifices and celebrate this day. Finally, I want people to get a glimpse into a body of work that I've found helpful, because maybe they'd find it helpful. What's important is not channeling, or ETs, or particular models of a greater reality; rather, the most important thing is the desire to understand and develop the self. It is Ra's ability to inspire the latter that assures me of the usefulness of this material, though you have to make up your own mind about it.
