Ra Session 4 Study

What is healing?

In the physical world, the term healing has an almost exclusively physical meaning, referring to the cessation of symptoms such as pain or wounds. Even ‘mental health’ is defined in terms of physical manifestations.

When Ra speaks of healing, physicality is referred to only as one aspect of a larger context. The focus, instead, is on the mental realization of harmony and perfection:

One of the primal distortions of the Law of One is that of healing. Healing occurs when a mind/body/spirit complex realizes, deep within itself, the Law of One; that is, that there is no disharmony, no imperfection; that all is complete and whole and perfect. Thus, the intelligent infinity within this mind/body/spirit complex re-forms the illusion of body, mind, or spirit to a form congruent with the Law of One. The healer acts as energizer or catalyst for this completely individual process. 4.20

In Ra’s teaching, to heal is to free oneself of the mental distortions that stifle and block the flow of intelligent infinity. 5.2 12.31 By removing the cause we also remove (or stop manifesting) its effects, whether those affects are physical symptoms or emotional strife.

True healing is simply the radiance of the self causing an environment in which a catalyst may occur which initiates the recognition of self, by self, of the self-healing properties of the self. 17.18

The Seth books are a rich source of metaphysical information on health and the body, an in-depth elaboration on Ra’s comment that The body is a creature of the mind’s creation. 5.2 Seth speaks vibrantly and practically about the body’s continuous formation by the mind, such as in this quote from The Nature of Personal Reality:

The inner self keeps the physical body alive even as it formed it. The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body’s condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind’s beliefs. P.83

Why the term healing?

Healing is described in the Ra material in many ways: removing distortions, transforming catalyst, no longer believing the illusion, seeing through the veil, expressing the self. Healing as a separate term seems to be an unnecessary complexity, and healer seems to be meaningless or redundant: after all, The healer does not heal. 66.10

Yet healing is among Ra’s most frequently mentioned terms. Do the terms healing and healer enhance understanding, or is the name or concept of healing a complication of simpler ideas?

It seems to me that the focus on healing originates not from Ra but from Don’s interest in magic and Carla’s health issues. 18.4 In her introduction to The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater, Carla wrote that during the middle 70’s I became more and more disabled until I was unable to do my work any longer, and had to apply for Social Security Disability. Don became interested, due to my ill health, in investigating the field of alternative forms of healing. Carla mentions psychic surgery,… charismatic healing, the laying on of hands, polarity therapy, crystal healing, color healing, and healing by hypnosis. P.10 This bias had a significant influence in the Ra material.

So when Don asks about healing, Ra frames his answers in that context, even though Ra could otherwise (and perhaps more accurately) use any number of descriptive terms, including ‘undistorting’ or ‘making whole,’ in reference to the original meaning of health, and the literal meaning of heal.

A channel cannot help but shape that which flows through it — remember, the contact between Ra and the L/L Research trio offers merely the possibility of communication… through distortion acceptable for meaning. 2.1 Ra must work with the conditions of the channeling group. Primary among these conditions is the free will of Carla, Don, and Jim to continue believing as they wish, in this case about disease and healing.

Disease & reification

The word disease began as dis-ease, meaning lack, want; discomfort, distress. Consider the implications of doom or long-lasting illness that now accompany the word disease, compared to what began as meaning slightly less than ease (dis-ease). Without a concept of disease, there would be no concept of health.

I believe that health is a prominent idea in human life and in the Ra material as a reaction to disease becoming such a prominent and powerful concept — a ding an sich. 88.17

When we recognize the power of the mind, as is taught by Ra, Seth, A Course in Miracles, or even psychology, we can see that reification is a powerful fallacy. It is because of metaphysical teachings that I have retrained my mind to view a few days of fatigue, for example, as just part of the natural rhythm or the body, rather than as a symptom of underlying illness. It is because of these teachings that when visiting someone who is ill or injured or recovering from surgery, I choose not to focus on (and thus direct the person’s own focus to) his or her discomfort. I reject the etiquette of always asking how someone feels, because I don’t believe that treating illusion as reality can ever serve anyone. Healing means returning to wholeness, and it is that reality that I want to share with others.

Vibratory sound complex

Sometimes Ra + Carla choose basic language, and other times vibratory sound complex 4.4 4.12 is channeled where it seems ‘word’ or ‘name’ would have fit the bill. Why might unusual language such as vibratory sound complex be chosen?

When we discussed this question, J pointed out that vibratory sound complex describes rather than names. By using a description instead of a name, Ra is avoiding reification, since naming is a key aspect of thing-making.

When we view an idea as a thing, we are treating an abstract concept as having rockbed reality. As Ra observes, Your people have a fondness for the naming. 60.30 A description, even a description of merely physical characteristics, encourages us to see something for closer to what it is, with fewer preconceptions.

Consider the American bias of identifying a person by his profession. Are you a lawyer, or are you a human being who, among many other characteristics and activities, practices law? Is being someone’s child or parent your definition (a word which, remember, means limit) or is it simply one of your many facets? Are you not all things? 44.6

Only the ego can identify with these labels and use them to judge, manipulate, or otherwise imbalance:

If one wishes to have power over an entity it is an aid to know that entity’s name. If one wishes no power over an entity but wishes to collect that entity into the very heart of one’s own being it is well to forget the naming. Both processes are magically viable. Each is polarized in a specific way. It is your choice. 85.7

Naming is a convenience for communication and an ingrained aspect of society — and a limitation. 4.20

Consciousness is the microcosm

Ra’s healing curriculum begins with the mind, because If the mind knows itself then the most important aspect of healing has occurred, for consciousness is the microcosm of the Law of One. 4.17 I find this statement easy to accept at a surface level — it sounds right! — but what does it mean?

The mental learn/teachings 5.2 through which the mind knows itself 4.17 include a prerequisite of silence and the disciplines of self-examination, recognition of balance and wholeness (rather than polarity), and total acceptance. These exercises are applied first to the self and then to fellow entities. The last step of the mental disciplines, Ra says, involves observing the geographical and geometrical relationships and ratios of the mind, the other mind, the mass mind, and the infinite mind. 5.2

Upon the realization of the mental disciplines, the most important aspect of healing has occurred. 4.17 What other aspects of healing are there? All that I can imagine is the physical manifestation of healing, which in our illusion tends to lag behind the mental.

The second part of Ra’s statement is more challenging to me: for consciousness is the microcosm of the Law of One. 4.17 How does this phrase relate to the first part of the sentence? Is Ra equating the mind and consciousness, suggesting that they are the same thing? I think of the All-mind as synonymous with consciousness, and I think the All-mind or consciousness is the true mind of each of us — except that the version we experience is veiled by our mental distortions, such as our external focus and personal and societal biases. I can see that the mind that knows itself 4.17 is much closer to or is the All-mind or consciousness. This is consistent, also, with Ra’s assertion that these mental learn/teachings [are] necessary for contact with intelligent infinity. 5.2

The question that remains, for me, is why or how consciousness is the microcosm of the Law of One. 4.17 How is consciousness a miniature version of unity? Or to look at this from another angle, how is consciousness a small-scale parallel of the sixth-density level of understanding? Or to flip the direction, how is the Infinite Creator 4.20 the macrocosm of consciousness? Perhaps this relates to the idea expressed in Genesis 1:26, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Perhaps the microcosm and macrocosm are akin to the geographical and geometrical relationships and ratios of the mind, the other mind, the mass mind, and the infinite mind. 5.2

My best guess is that Ra is saying that individualized consciousness is the microcosm of the All-mind, or that the desire of each God-spark to know Self is the microcosm of God’s desire to know Self. The cosmic paradox is that these apparently two consciousnesses or two desires are truly One.

Overly complex

I am intrigued by Ra’s comparison of the less- and more-experienced mind: We ask your imagination to consider the relative simplicity of the mind in the earlier cycle and the less distorted, but often overly complex, views and thought/spirit processes of the same mind/body/spirit complexes after many incarnations. 4.9

So, incarnational experience yields a reduction in distortion and an increase in complexity, to the point of being often overly complex! The overly seems like a judgment, but since Ra tends not to judge, perhaps he means something like unnecessarily. This concept reminds me of Seth’s comment:

You have allowed the ego to become overly developed and specialized. You were here to work out problems and challenges, but you were always to be aware of your own inner reality, and of your nonphysical existence. To a large extent you have lost contact with this. You have focused so strongly upon physical reality that it become the only reality that you know. P.272

Complexity is of the separate mind, and it is the separate mind that focuses on the illusory external rather than the unseen reality.

One health

There is one health… Ra says, but there are several significantly various distortions. 4.10 There is one reality, but there is infinite complexity. There is one truth, but there are numerous illusions.

Even health, though, is a step away from truth, reality, unity. This is because just as there is no peace without war, there is no health without illness. Something apart from the natural state is what is first noticed. Only amid a lack of health do we conceive of a concept of health. And only in physicality — in the presence of physical bodies — can we have a concept of either.

Inner disciplines

Don’s mission in Session 4 is determining the ideal conditions and the ideal individual for what he calls initiation and healing. Don asks about the shape and size of Ra’s pyramid, the focusing of energy, the location of the chamber, whether he could build an effective pyramid, and then, the requirements for the person selected to do the healing.

Don continues to imagine himself as a ‘white magician,’ stationed within a magical contraption, practicing Ra’s healing arts to miraculously cure Carla.

That is not at all what Ra is speaking of.

Ra is not referring to healing others. There is no such thing, despite Don’s fantasies of gaining such a power. The structure is not important, 4.7 and the healer does not heal. 66.10

Ra is referring to correcting the mental distortions or mistaken beliefs that block the flow of intelligent infinity. Thus, the intelligent infinity within this mind/body/spirit complex re-forms the illusion of body, mind, or spirit to a form congruent with the Law of One. 4.20 The result is the cessation of physical symptoms, or what we call healing. Healing depends completely upon the inner disciplines of the channels attempting such work. 4.7

The person to be trained should be living the Law of One, Don assumes. Is this correct?  Yes and no, Ra says, and the latter part surprises me: The incorrectness which shall be observed is the healing of those whose activities in your space/time illusion do not reflect the Law of One, but whose ability has found its pathway to intelligent infinity regardless of the plane of existence from which this distortion is found. 4.13

How is it, I wonder, that these people are effectively healing, yet they are not living the Law of One? Isn’t healing itself a reflection or demonstration of the Law of One?

Living what we know

Ra’s answer doesn’t make sense to Don, either, so Don requests clarification. Two kinds there are who can heal, 4.14 Ra answers. Both have the information necessary for healing: they know that there is no disharmony, no imperfection; that all is complete and whole and perfect. 4.20 One of these two kinds applies his knowledge (and thus facilitates his own healing); the other does not. 4.14

This is one of the many instances where Ra is speaking directly to the channelers: that first kind describes Don and Carla, who were eager for Ra’s information but resisted applying it to their own lives.

It is a further item of interest, Ra continues, still specifically addressing Don and Carla, that those whose life does not equal their work may find some difficulty. 4.14

This returns to an idea that Ra emphasized in the first session:

to learn is the same as to teach unless you are not teaching what you are learning, in which case you have done you/they little or no good. This understanding should be pondered by your mind/body/spirit complex, as it is a distortion which plays a part in your experiences at this nexus. 1.10

There is a responsibility, an honor/duty, a karmic effect that accompanies learning. The honor of receiving information is accompanied by the duty of teaching what has been learned. This is not a responsibility to publish books, hold classes, or deliver lectures: to teach is to apply what is being learned to one’s own life. To live what you know. To demonstrate, which originally meant to show the divine.

Here in Session 4, Ra again stresses this responsibility:

One item which may be of interest is that a healer asking to learn must take the distortion understood as responsibility for that ask/receiving. This is an honor/duty which must be carefully considered in free will before the asking. 4.20

We must live what we know, teach what we learn. We are honored to receive this information; it is our duty to also demonstrate what we are learning.