A reflection on the Ra contact of February 10, 1981
There comes a point on the spiritual path when understanding asks something of us. We may recognize that all life is connected. We may feel peace in meditation or be moved by teachings about love. Then an ordinary moment arrives: someone needs our patience, an opportunity to share appears, or a disagreement challenges our compassion.
What happens to our understanding then?
Session 22 of the Law of One brings this question into focus. Through accounts of Earth’s spiritual cycles, a small community that chose to remain in service, and the teachings offered to Atlantis, Ra explores the relationship between knowledge and responsibility. The invitation is simple: let what we understand become how we live.
The ancient civilizations, extraordinary lifespans, and spiritual visitations described here belong to Ra’s channeled account. They are presented as spiritual teachings rather than established history. Their practical meaning should be considered with an open mind and personal discernment.
The Quiet Work Beneath Awareness
The session begins with Carla Rueckert asking why she sometimes smells incense when none is physically present, and why she has been feeling healthier after the sessions.
Ra interprets the scent as a symbolic communication from her unconscious mind, connected to her longstanding dedication to service and the developing contact. Regarding her improved well-being, Ra speaks of prayer reaching deeper levels of consciousness and of Carla beginning to accept limitations she had previously struggled against. These explanations concern Carla’s particular experience; they are not a promise that spiritual practice will remove illness.
For the reader, this opening offers a gentle reflection: some inner changes become noticeable before we can fully explain them. Prayer, meditation, and sincere service may gradually change our relationship with ourselves. Acceptance, too, can bring relief—not because every difficulty disappears, but because we meet it with less inner conflict.
The Law of Responsibility: Living What We Have Learned
When the conversation turns to the end of Earth’s second major cycle, Ra describes a decline in lifespan alongside increasing conflict, possessiveness, and manipulation.
The central teaching is what Ra calls the Law of Responsibility. As people became better able to understand the lessons of love, they also became more responsible for expressing those lessons. Understanding sharing, giving, and grateful receiving created opportunities to practice them. Those opportunities could also be refused.
This goes beyond a contrast between peaceful tribes and warring nations. Ra places the lesson within personal relationships as well. Control can appear in a household, a business exchange, or a friendship. Generosity can appear in those same places.
Money and ownership enter the discussion as circumstances that offered more subtle choices between service and manipulation. A useful reading is to examine how we relate to what we possess: does it help us support life, or become a means of controlling others?
Spiritual responsibility need not become another reason for self-condemnation. We are learning. But learning becomes fruitful when it changes a choice. Understanding forgiveness matters most when we have someone to forgive. Understanding unity matters when another person’s needs interrupt our plans.
Reincarnation as an Opportunity for Healing and Review
Don asks whether shorter lives might help people by allowing more frequent reflection between incarnations.
Ra answers that both help and hindrance are possible. Within this teaching, an incarnation can become so intense that the entity needs withdrawal, healing, and evaluation. Yet a longer life, under suitable conditions, offers valuable time to work through experience and reach understanding.
Reincarnation is therefore presented as a continuing process of learning rather than a race through lifetimes. Experience provides the material; reflection helps reveal its meaning; another opportunity allows that understanding to be lived.
Ra describes many people near the end of the second cycle as living approximately 35 to 40 years, with some approaching 100. An isolated South American group is said to have approached 900 years. These extraordinary figures are part of the session’s metaphysical narrative. They should not be used to judge anyone’s spiritual development by their age, health, or length of life.
The reflection we can carry forward is more immediate: what are we doing with the opportunities available today?
The Souls Who Chose to Stay
One of the session’s most moving passages concerns approximately 150 people whom Ra describes as ready for harvest at the end of the second cycle, from a planetary population of about 345,000.
In the Law of One, harvest refers to readiness to move into another stage of spiritual experience. It is not a declaration that everyone else lacks worth. All remain expressions of the same Creator.
According to Ra, a luminous being visited this community, communicated the unity and infinity of creation, and showed interested members the condition of Earth’s people. Having learned of the loving existence available beyond their present experience, the group chose to remain and help the planetary consciousness.
Their choice gives service a deeply human meaning. They saw suffering and responded with companionship. Spiritual readiness became a willingness to continue loving where love was needed.
For us, this may take the form of caring for an aging parent, encouraging a struggling friend, or remaining patient with someone whose growth is slow. The scale differs, but the question is familiar: how can the love we have discovered become useful to another?
Loving People Are Not All Wanderers
Session 22 also adds nuance to the idea of Wanderers. Ra explains that many loving people have roots in Earth’s earlier cycle rather than originating as visitors from higher densities.
Ra names Saint Augustine, Saint Teresa, and Saint Francis of Assisi in this context, associating them with those repeating third-density experience and drawn to settings suited to further learning. The session does not specify which Saint Teresa is intended. These spiritual origins are claims within the Ra material, not independently established biographies.
The broader lesson is freeing: compassion does not require a special identity. Whether someone understands themselves as a Wanderer, an old soul, or simply a person trying to live kindly, their choices remain the place where love becomes visible.
Atlantis: When Knowledge Serves Healing—or Power
The discussion then turns to Atlantis. Ra says the initial call came from people seeking understanding with a desire to help others. The Confederation responded through channeling, followed by further teaching and occasional visits.
The early emphasis was unity. Later requests for healing led to information about crystals, pyramids, and places of training. Ra describes the Atlantean temples as centers of learning, with devoted students rather than a priesthood defined by celibacy, poverty, or obedience.
Problems emerged when some of those trained began using their knowledge for purposes beyond healing and became involved in governmental power. Ra also associates the civilization’s later decline in lifespan with an increasing desire for power, followed by requests for healing and rejuvenation.
The spiritual warning remains relevant without accepting the account as literal history: greater capability does not automatically produce greater compassion. Knowledge can help us heal, teach, and cooperate. It can also make manipulation more effective. Our purpose matters alongside our skill.
Even Helpers Must Learn
Ra acknowledges that members of the Confederation were naïve in assuming that direct assistance would benefit the Atlanteans as similar assistance had benefited them. Ra includes their own group among those who made such mistakes and expresses an ongoing responsibility to help restore balance.
This is a striking moment of humility. The teachers themselves describe learning from the consequences of their service.
Good intentions do not remove the need for listening. Something that helped us may not help another person in the same way. Loving assistance asks us to consider readiness, freedom, and the effects of what we offer.
The session also emphasizes that intervention followed a call. A practical expression of this respect for free will is to offer help without making acceptance a condition of our love.
One Law, Many Expressions
Near the end, Ra clarifies that there is only one fundamental law: the Law of One. The other principles discussed are expressions or ways of understanding that unity.
Responsibility, love, service, and respect for freedom belong within this larger vision. If another person is an expression of the same infinite life, their dignity concerns us. If we belong to that life as well, our own healing and honest limits deserve care.
The final exchange returns to the small group conducting the session. Ra emphasizes the value of their conscious attention and supporting energy. After a conversation spanning civilizations and spiritual cycles, the work returns to people being present for one another.
A Connection With Jesus’ Teachings
Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12:48 offers a close parallel to this session’s theme of responsibility: greater gifts and understanding carry greater accountability. In Matthew 7:24–27, he compares hearing and practicing his teachings to building a house on a firm foundation. In Gospel of Thomas Jesus said in saying 70 “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.”
These passages offer a shared ethical emphasis: spiritual understanding bears fruit through action.
We can study unity and still speak harshly. We can admire compassion and overlook someone nearby. Yet each moment also offers a fresh beginning. We can listen more carefully, share more freely, and allow another person the dignity of choosing their own path.
Session 22 leaves us with a hopeful invitation. Whatever we believe about our origins or the civilizations of the distant past, we can practice love here. The next step may be as simple as bringing what we already understand into the next encounter.
Source: The Law of One, Session 22, February 10, 1981. The Ra contact was conducted by L/L Research, home of the Law of One material. Biblical parallels: Luke 12:48 and Matthew 7:24–27 and In Gospel of Thomas Saying 70.
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