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Law of One India
Companion

Library Practices

Sitting with others

a room — other people, one passage, a clock, and the practice of attending

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.

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

What a session is

One passage is read aloud. The room discusses what it means in an ordinary week. The hour ends at the time that was announced. Nothing is layered on top of that, and a format’s most important feature is often the thing it declines to do, which is why the essay in this library argues it by way of its refusals. This page is the other half of that essay. It tells you what you would be doing, in order, if you walked in on a Tuesday.

The first stretch is not an exercise. People arrive, the room settles, nobody is asked what they are working on. Then a short opening, held the same way each time, which marks the hour as set apart from ordinary traffic; nothing is required during it, including attention. Then the passage, usually read by the facilitator. Then the conversation, which is the event. Nobody is called on. Then the clock. No length in minutes is printed anywhere, because the honest number does not exist: sessions here have ranged from a weekly evening with a recording attached to two people talking because two people turned up.

The ask, stated as an instruction rather than an invitation, is the one that surprises people: come without having read the passage. Everyone else has a decade of reading behind them, and therefore a position to defend. You have a question nobody else was going to ask, because a question is not a position. Give an hour and no preparation and most people say some version of the question the others were about to talk past, and the evening is better for it.

02

Attending is a capacity, and it is not comfort

Attending is not warmth, not agreement, and not the feeling of being inside something. It is the capacity to keep your own judgement available while other people are talking, and to say what you think when what you think is unwelcome. The material says something about what makes that possible in a group. In session 100, closing a working, Ra thanks the group and states that the harmony of the group is what supports the contact. Harmony is named there as a distortion the group grows into, a direction rather than a state. Our reading, and it is ours: a room is not harmonious because people agree. It is harmonious when nobody has had to leave their judgement outside to be comfortable.

The silence is a working condition, not a gap and not a malfunction, and the material puts silence first in mental work rather than after it. You are not required to fill it or to look attentive, and a silence ended because it has become uncomfortable has cost the room a judgement it was about to make. The discipline is to let a silence run slightly past the point where you would have ended it yourself.

There is a measured reason for the part of the format that looks like a stylistic preference. Solomon Asch put one person in a room with a majority instructed to answer a simple perceptual question wrongly, to announce their judgments clearly and firmly, and to do so in a fixed public order. Judged alone, the group was wrong less than one per cent of the time. Judged against the majority, that figure became about a third, and only about a quarter of the subjects were never moved at all. Public announcement, firmness and unanimity together did the work. Asch concluded that the effect was considerable and by no means complete, and that individuals responded in fundamentally different ways. That last observation is the practical one. The disposition to hold a position when it costs something belongs to the person, not to the evening.

03

What a group is for, according to the material

The material’s argument for a group is in session 19, and it is one image rather than a syllogism. A third-density entity is self-sufficient only through difficulty and deprivation, and the reason given is the rational and intuitive mind, at once the great virtue and the great handicap of the density. Learning alone is difficult for that reason and no other. Then the sentence that carries the case: dealing with the self without other-selves is like living without mirrors, so the self cannot see the fruits of its beingness, and each may aid each by reflection. That is what the hour is for. Not inspiration. A mirror in which a reading can be checked by somebody who read the same passage differently.

Session 83 adds what the material thinks association actually does, and it names it carefully. Ra calls it the doubling effect: those of like mind who together seek will far more surely find. Three things in that sentence stand as written. The qualification is like mind, narrower than friendly and narrower still than compatible. The outcome named is finding, not understanding, and not truth. And it is an effect the Confederation has learned to call by that name, which is the language of something observed rather than something explained. Nothing there says a room makes anyone wiser. It says two people on the same passage have a better chance of arriving somewhere.

What service looks like in a room is narrower than the popular version. At 17.30 the best way of service to others is the constant attempt to seek to share the love of the Creator as it is known to the inner self, which requires self-knowledge and the ability to open the self to the other-self without hesitation. Both halves are limits. The thing shared is known to the inner self, so it cannot be handed over from a chair at the front of the room, and the capacity named is one nobody in a session has finished acquiring. The same answer’s other half is why no session is advertised as producing anything: there is no best, there is no generalization, nothing is known. And at 17.2 the ceiling is set explicitly. It is impossible to help another being directly; the most important catalyst available is the radiation of realization of oneness from the self, with information such as the sessions share placed second. A session is therefore not help.

04

Being right, alone, in a room

At 13.12 the material states the reason a group of free agents never resolves: freedom of will of awareness produced a concept, the concept was finity, and that was the first and primal paradox. The thing that makes such a room possible to sit in is the thing that prevents it from agreeing. A session is allowed to end unresolved. Most do.

One passage in the material runs against this community’s own interest, so it is worth stating at full strength. Asked at 43.23 whether gathering has a lesson to teach, Ra describes fifth density as the point where those of like mind gather, join hearts and hands, and become one in light and wisdom, and then says that there the gathering is a solace rather than a catalyst for learning. The company of the ones you have walked with is placed after the work, as comfort, and not in place of it. This is a third-density room, and the material locates the value of gathering at the end of the road rather than along it. A session is therefore not the solace. It is where the work gets done, it is allowed to be dry, and an hour in which nothing happened is an hour of the discipline in which nothing happened.

The cost of drifting is structural rather than a failure of character. 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 mechanism a group uses to exclude somebody is the mechanism a person uses to feel large in a room, which is why the drift is made of small conveniences rather than decisions. The material is describing a path here and not grading a room, and that limit should be kept. What a room can do about the drift is procedural: when somebody says the passage is wrong, restate what they said in your own words first, and then give your reason. That order keeps the disagreement about the passage instead of about the person.

05

What this community will not do with a room

Four things, and the first is the one most often asked about. No guided practice at the opening. A guided opening turns a study session into a technique delivered by someone who knows it, and the material refuses that shape at 15.13 for a stated reason: it is important to allow each seeker to enlighten itself rather than for any messenger to attempt in language to teach or learn for the entity. The passage is read, the conversation follows, and nothing is performed on the group’s behalf to help them arrive.

No round-the-circle reports, and no progress instrument. A round turns a study session into a way of measuring people, and a group that measures progress can hold a person’s development over them, which is a thing a small community can do without ever deciding to. And nobody leaves standing as the one who knows. The facilitator’s work is procedural: the opening, the clock, the conventions, and making sure one voice does not become the room. Ra’s own reason for declining more is at 3.6, where the proper series of questions is refused because the questioner’s prerogative as a free agent outranks a social memory complex that cannot discern the distortions of the complex it would be sequencing.

The same reason stops this page from being an interpreter. At 12.10 discernment is to be used from within, by each being; at 66.21 Ra says it would rather listen to the observations the student makes than supply further concepts. So this community will not tell you what an evening did for you, what your silence meant, or whether the passage you defended was worth defending. One boundary, stated without taking the argument from the essays that own it: a session is not counselling, diagnosis, or crisis care, and the charter does not permit this community to hold that work. The essays on the boundary of this space and on what this community will not counsel you argue it at length, and a page about the format of a session has no standing to pre-empt them.

06

What your first evening is like

You will be welcomed and given nothing to do. You will hear the passage named, so that you can check it afterwards, in a room where nobody is called on and where a question you did not prepare is a contribution rather than an interruption. You will leave when you were told you would. That is the whole of what is promised.

What you will not get is a technique, a conclusion, an experience, or a reason to come back next week. If what you want is a practice you can do alone on a Tuesday morning, this is the wrong page, and the meditation practice is the one that begins there. The material’s own account of learning alone is not that it is unavailable but that it is difficult, and it names the difficulty precisely. What sitting with others adds is the mirror, and the mirror is worth one evening a week rather than every evening.

For a facilitator, the operational content of this page is short. The order of the hour. The convention that the other person is restated before they are answered. The four things a session does not do. The clock. And the recognition that the part of the job which is not procedural is the part this community declines to do, because the room is not a place where anyone is told what a passage means for their life. What is still missing from it is a cohort, and no format substitutes for that one.

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 best way of service to others is the constant attempt to seek to share the love of the Creator as it is known to the inner self. This involves self knowledge and the ability to open the self to the other-self without hesitation.

    Ra, session 17.30 · read it at the source

  • Speaking to the intention of your question, the best way for each seeker in third density to be of service to others is unique to that mind/body/spirit complex. This means that the mind/body/spirit complex must then seek within itself the intelligence of its own discernment as to the way it may best serve other-selves. This will be different for each. There is no best. There is no generalization. Nothing is known.

    Ra, session 17.30 · read it at the source

  • It is impossible to help another being directly. It is only possible to make catalyst available in whatever form, the most important being the radiation of realization of oneness with the Creator from the self, less important being information such as we share with you.

    Ra, session 17.2 · 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

  • The prerequisite of mental work is the ability to retain silence of self at a steady state when required by the self. The mind must be opened like a door. The key is silence.

    Ra, session 5.2 · read it at the source

  • It is appropriate to study one form of constructed and organized distortion of the archetypical mind in depth in order to arrive at the position of being able to become and to experience archetypes at will.

    Ra, session 76.9 · read it at the source

  • It is well to investigate each discipline, not as a dilettante, but as one who seeks the touchstone, one who wishes to feel the pull of the magnet.

    Ra, session 76.9 · read it at the source

  • I will not suggest the proper series of questions. This is your prerogative as free agent of the Law of One having learn/understood that our social memory complex cannot effectually discern the distortions of the societal mind/body/spirit complex of your peoples.

    Ra, session 3.6 · read it at the source

  • It is important to allow each seeker to enlighten itself rather than for any messenger to attempt in language to teach/learn for the entity, thus being teach/learner and learn/teacher.

    Ra, session 15.13 · read it at the source

  • You must realize that we offered these concepts to you so that you might grow in your own knowledge of the self through the consideration of them. We would prefer, especially for this latter query, to listen to the observations upon this subject which the student of these exercises may make and then suggest further avenues of the refinement of these inquiries. We feel we might be of more aid in this way.

    Ra, session 66.21 · read it at the source

  • It is necessary that each being use free and complete discernment from within the all-self which is at the heart of the mind/body/spirit complex.

    Ra, session 12.10 · read it at the source

  • The intelligent infinity discerned a concept. This concept was discerned due to freedom of will of awareness. This concept was finity. This was the first and primal paradox or distortion of the Law of One.

    Ra, session 13.12 · 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

Where it does work in this library

2 essays carry these teachings, in the order a reader should meet them. Search within them, or narrow by thread or framework.

2 essays in Sitting with others. Type to search within them.

Thread

Practice

Sitting with others — every essay here carries it

  1. 10 min read

    Nothing here will counsel you

    You have arrived with something specific, and this page is addressed to that rather than to a reader in general. It is a refusal, and a refusal owes you more than itself. What this community will not do, why the refusal is for you rather than for the library's comfort, what it costs and who pays it, and where the thing you brought actually goes.

  2. 7 min read

    The catalyst we share

    Some catalyst belongs to no one person, such as a failure a whole society lived through or a system that has gone wrong for decades. Individual light is not enough to digest it, and that is not a design flaw.

Check the source

The standing sessions, under the practice they govern. Nothing here is sponsored and no link is an affiliate link.

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.

  • Ethical conduct

    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.