Ethical conduct
a standard — the prohibitions, and the personality they are actually for
A list of prohibitions is not a discipline. This is what the material says the discipline is for: the personality that has to hold the rules when holding them costs something, and the reason it refuses to grade you afterwards.
The practice, in this site's own words
Enough of it to begin, or to understand why this community will not teach it. The session references are named so a reader can check them.
01
A list of prohibitions, and what it is not
Do not kill, do not steal, do not lie, do not harm. Almost every tradition a reader arrives carrying has that core, and almost every one presents it as the whole of the ethical life. This page takes the opposite position and argues it from the material rather than from taste. A list of prohibitions is not a discipline. A discipline is what makes the list hold on the afternoon it costs you something, and the material is more specific about that than it is about the rules.
The rules themselves are worth saying something about, because they are not this material’s. We have searched the archive rather than trusting an impression: *kill*, *steal* and *lie* return no list of prohibitions anywhere in the sessions, and where the material discusses ethics it does so by describing polarities rather than by handing over commandments. The core is inherited. What the material contributes is an account of why a list cannot carry that weight, and it begins with an ordinary scene rather than a principle.
Asked at 33.8 to confirm that the orientation of a mind in the moment governs the catalyst it receives, Ra declines the abstract example and substitutes a queue at a shop. The entity ahead may be without sufficient funds. One entity then takes the opportunity to steal. Another takes the same opportunity to feel itself a failure. Another unconcernedly takes what it needs, pays for what it can, and goes about its business. And the one behind, watching, may feel compassion, may feel insulted at the sight of someone who is poor, may feel generous, may feel nothing at all. Same shop, same queue, four different acts. Nobody broke a rule. The rules were identical throughout, and the conduct was not.
02
Where the prohibitions came from, on the material’s own account
The material is willing to describe the origin of the tradition it stands inside, and the description is not flattering. Asked at 16.15 where the Ten Commandments came from, Ra answers that their origin follows the law of negative entities impressing information upon positively oriented complexes, the information attempting to copy or ape positivity while retaining negative characteristics. That is a claim about how a set of prohibitions entered the world: not as a disclosure from above, but as a copy of virtue made by those who did not have it, and made for those who did.
The answer does not stop at cynicism about the source. Asked at 16.18 whether the recipient was positive or negative, Ra says he was one of extreme positivity, which accounts for some of the pseudo-positive characteristics of the information received, and then makes a distinction the modern reader needs: as with contacts which are not successful, this entity did not remain a credible influence among those who first heard the philosophy of One. And at 60.17, describing the Ark, Ra says the arrangement was designed not by the entity called Yahweh but by those preferring that method for creating an elite. Two things are said at once. The content was not nothing, and the delivery is a documented failure.
The limit of the claim should be stated plainly, because this is the material talking about a historical question in its own register and not reporting a document. It is a theological account of an event, given by a source whose cosmological claims are equally unverified. What survives the caveat is the structural point, which does not need the history to be true. A rule enforced rather than internalised has to be enforced by somebody, and the material names the shape that enforcement takes. It is called an elite. This page returns to that at the end, because it is the reason a page about conduct has to be careful about what it is a standard for.
03
What the discipline is for
Ask the material what a discipline of the personality consists of and it answers in three words, and they are not prohibitions. Know yourself. Accept yourself. Become the Creator. The second step is the one nobody wants, and the whole argument of this page sits inside it. Acceptance is what makes the first possible: a person who has not accepted what they are has nothing stable to hold a rule with, and will drop it the first time keeping it means being who they are rather than who they would rather be.
The material says the third step renders one the most humble servant of all, transparent in personality and completely able to know and accept other-selves. Transparent is the operative word, and it is not a compliment in the usual sense. A personality that is transparent has nowhere left to keep the discrepancy between what it professes and what it does, and that is the mechanism by which a rule that would otherwise need willpower stops needing it. At 4.17 the material calls the mind’s knowledge of itself perhaps the most demanding part of the work, and at 15.14 it names the path to the heart of self as the understanding, experiencing, accepting and merging of self with self and with other-self, and finally with the Creator.
So the description of a discipline of conduct, on this account, is not a stricter rulebook. It is a person who has been examined enough that the rule and the self are no longer in tension, because there is no longer a private self for the rule to be violated by. The prohibitions are the surface of this, and the examination underneath is invisible from outside. Our own reading, and it is ours: the prohibitions are what most traditions use to point at this work, the pointing works, and a reader who takes the pointing for the work will be left holding a list and calling it a life.
04
What makes a list hold on the day it costs something
The first thing to say is that an intention is not yet a conduct. At 30.2 the material declines to deal with mind, body and spirit separately for exactly this reason, and states that the work a person does is done through the interaction of these three components and not through any one. That has a consequence: deciding not to take the money and taking the money are not one event separated by a small interval. The decision happens in one configuration and the act in another, and the act is the one your neighbours and your own body know about.
The second is that what dis-integrates a person, on this account, is power rather than appetite. At 7.15 those who seek through service to self, which the answer identifies as involving power over others, create the same power and then have constant difficulty, because separation is implicit in the manifestation, and this weakens and eventually disintegrates what is collected. Service to others is said to result in service to self, preserving and further harmonizing. The prohibitions against stealing, lying and harming, read this way, are three names for the same thing: the mechanisms by which separation becomes somebody else’s problem. What is prohibited is not wanting. What is prohibited is the arrangement.
The third is the test, and it comes from a different question. Asked at 47.7 what a fully crystallised structure is like, Ra describes one that will not splinter or break, is very strong without effort, and is radiant. Strong without effort is the whole criterion. A rule held by effort is not yet a held rule; it is a contest being won repeatedly. The same point has been measured. Forming a specific plan for when and where an intention will be acted on helps only where the underlying want is already strong and already active; where it is not, the plan does nothing. A meta-analysis across a hundred and forty-one studies found a small unique effect for goal setting, larger when the goal was difficult, stated in public, and shared with others. The technique is real, the effect is modest, and the precondition is a person who already wants the thing.
05
The limit, and why this page will not score you
The material does not hand out grades on conduct, and the reason is structural rather than diplomatic. At 93.3, asked whether the two poles of polarity can be described more precisely than service to others and service to self, Ra answers that it is quite impossible to judge the polarity of an act or an entity, just as it is impossible to judge the relative goodness of the negative and positive poles of a magnet. The negative pole is not a lesser magnet, and an act judged once, by a being with a stake in the outcome, will not come out the same way twice.
At 26.8 Ra declines a question about which texts were Orion-influenced, not because the answer is unknown but because Ra is not speaking in order to judge, and says such statements would be construed as judgmental, offering a careful reading and inward digestion instead. That is the material refusing the role this page must also refuse. What it offers instead is a magnitude rather than a verdict: at 17.33, attaining fifty-one per cent dedication to the welfare of other-selves is set as exactly as difficult as attaining five per cent, with what Ra calls the sinkhole of indifference between the two. Fifty-one per cent is not a pass mark. It is a description of where the difficulty is.
What is offered on the other side of the ledger is release. At 18.12 forgiveness of other-self is identified as forgiveness of self, on the ground that they are one. And at 34.5 Ra observes that one who has set an action in motion may forgive itself and never again make that error, and that this also brakes or stops what is called karma. The material’s economy does not run on accumulated penalty. It runs on a change in the one who acts, and a change is not graded. A reader who wants a number here is asking the one source that said it cannot be given.
06
What this page is not, and where it stops
First, conduct is not a treatment, and this page promises no outcome of any kind. To reach an undistorted understanding of the Law, the material says, it is not necessary to heal or indeed to show any manifestation, but only to exercise the disciplines of understanding. And it names healing as one of the primal distortions of the Law, on the grounds that it treats as a thing to be corrected something the Law describes as already whole. A library that answered a hard week with a standard of conduct would be doing the one thing its charter forbids, and would be making a metaphysical claim it has not earned.
Second, and this is the boundary that matters most: conduct is not the same question as scope. Conduct is what a person does. Scope is what this community will and will not be asked to do. They are different questions, and a page that blurs them undoes work that two essays in this library do at length. The essays on the boundary of this space and on what this community will not counsel you argue the charter’s limits as a matter of the community’s own integrity, and they do not need the prohibitions of this page to make the case.
And the material’s own account of the commandments shows why, which is why 60.17 is worth repeating: the arrangement was designed, the material says, by those who preferred that method for creating an elite. A community that began to enforce the core prohibitions as an admission requirement would be doing the thing the prohibitions were reported to have been used for, and in the name of the text it invoked. The material places the value of companionship among the ones you have walked with at the end of the work rather than along it, and a group formed to police its members is the other end of that. So the standard here is internal. What you do, you check against your own examination, because that is the only place the examination is.
The material, in its own words
From the verified record, so a reader can check the page's claims against the source instead of trusting the page.
The heart of the discipline of the personality is threefold. One, know yourself. Two, accept yourself. Three, become the Creator.
Ra, session 74.11 · read it at the source Firstly, the mind must be known to itself. This is perhaps the most demanding part of healing work. If the mind knows itself then the most important aspect of healing has occurred, for consciousness is the microcosm of the Law of One.
Ra, session 4.17 · read it at the source Thus we refer to the mind/body/spirit complex rather than attempting to deal with them separately, for the work, shall we say, that you do during your experiences is done through the interaction of these three components, not through any one.
Ra, session 30.2 · read it at the source The understanding, experiencing, accepting, and merging of self with self and with other-self, and finally with the Creator, is the path to the heart of self.
Ra, session 15.14 · read it at the source Those seeking intelligent infinity through the use of service to self create the same amount of power but, as we said, have constant difficulty because of the concept of separation which is implicit in the manifestations of the service to self which involve power over others. This weakens and eventually disintegrates the energy collected by such mind/body/spirit complexes who call the Orion group and the social memory complexes which comprise the Orion group.
Ra, session 7.15 · read it at the source However, service to others results in service to self, thus preserving and further harmonizing the distortions of those entities seeking intelligent infinity through these disciplines.
Ra, session 7.15 · read it at the source Forgiveness of other-self is forgiveness of self. An understanding of this insists upon full forgiveness upon the conscious level of self and other-self, for they are one.
Ra, session 18.12 · read it at the source Thus one who has set in motion an action may forgive itself and never again make that error. This also brakes or stops what you call karma.
Ra, session 34.5 · read it at the source It is to be once again iterated that healing is but one distortion of the Law of One. To reach an undistorted understanding of that law, it is not necessary to heal or, indeed, to show any manifestation but only to exercise the disciplines of understanding.
Ra, session 4.19 · read it at the source 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.
Ra, session 4.20 · read it at the source Thus the structure is regular and, when fully and perfectly crystallized, has certain properties. It will not splinter or break; it is very strong without effort; and it is radiant, traducing light into a beautiful refraction giving pleasure of the eye to many.
Ra, session 47.7 · read it at the source To attain fifty-one percent dedication to the welfare of other-selves is as difficult as attaining a grade of five percent dedication to other-selves. The, shall we say, sinkhole of indifference is between those two.
Ra, session 17.33 · read it at the source
Where it does work in this library
0 essays carry these teachings, in the order a reader should meet them. Search within them, or narrow by thread or framework.
No essay here carries this practice yet. The page exists so that the first one has somewhere to land, and so that the register on it is settled before the writing starts.
Check the source
The standing sessions, under the practice they govern. Nothing here is sponsored and no link is an affiliate link.
Session 33, answer 8 — the queue at the shop
free; one situation, three different acts taken from it, and a fourth person whose only decision is how to respond
Session 16, answer 15 — the origin of the commandments
free; the material’s own account of the prohibitions as an impressing of information by negative entities, with 16.18 and 60.17 carrying the qualification and the Ark
Session 74, answer 11 — the threefold work
free; know yourself, accept yourself, become the Creator, and the transparency the third is said to render
Session 93, answer 3 — the refusal to judge an act
free; the polarity of an act or an entity held to be as unjudgeable as the relative goodness of the poles of a magnet
Sheeran, Webb & Gollwitzer, “The Interplay Between Goal Intentions and Implementation Intentions” (2004)
paid; a specific plan for when and where to act helps only where the underlying goal is already strong and already active
Epton, Currie & Armitage, “Unique effects of setting goals on behavior change: Systematic review and meta-analysis” (2017)
paid; 141 papers and a small unique effect for goal setting, larger when the goal is difficult, set publicly, and a group goal
The other practices
Meditation
The one practice the material returns to across every density and every question: silence that can be kept at will, and the self examination that makes the silence worth keeping.
Lucid dreaming
The dream is where the mind works without the day’s supervision. What the material offers for meeting it is not a dictionary of symbols but a single discipline of recall, kept immediately on waking.
Astral projection
The astral is the inner planes between sleeping and the gateway of death: real in the material’s account, graded by vibration rather than by species, and approached here with the one protection the material describes — which is not a technique.
Magical workings
Deliberate work on the subtle body with intent and will: the material names it, gates it more tightly than anything else it offers, and hands over no procedure — the work is the personality, not the technique.
The written record
Writing a thing down is the practice every other practice in this library leans on, and the one with the lowest rate of return. The material names it once; what it does not name is the half most people drop.
Study
Reading the material properly is a method with steps, and this is where the method lives: how to read an answer with its question, keep the hedges the text keeps, and know when your own understanding has outrun itself.
Breath
The material names the breath as the body's first ingress and as the act that cleared a room. It gives the anatomy and no technique. The method is the tradition's, and it is taught here in its register.
Sitting with others
A session is a passage read aloud, a room that talks about what it means, and a clock that says when it will stop. What attending is, what a group is for, and what it will not do for you.