Here’s another session where I’m going to take a few bites, even in so far as we break up this monologue from those of Latuii. In this first part, they are following up on their opening in which they discuss Hatonn’s absence due to their geopolitical monitoring activities. Although they see more than we would, there was a lot going on in China specifically—Mao had only just died a few years ago, and China was embarking on normalization of relations with the U.S. and starting to stagnate in their invasion of Vietnam. So Latuii was filling in, and they did so with flying colors!

After a brief remark on the power of faith and love, they dive into this address to matters of ethics and law. They anticipate Ra’s view on the double-edged sword of legal codes:

It is a necessary balance to the intention of law, which is to protect, that the result would encompass an equal distortion towards imprisonment. Therefore, we may say that your supposition is correct. This is not to denigrate those who, in green- and blue-ray energies, sought to free a peaceable people from the bonds of chaos but only to point out the inevitable consequences of codification of response which does not recognize the uniqueness of each and every situation within your experience.

- Ra via Rueckert: April 5, 1982 (83.14)

Those of Latuii expand on this by invoking Jesus’s frequent and brazen abrogation of Jewish law so many times in the Gospels. Love overrides rigid legal codes, because love speaks to a deeper level of that person’s nature, and at that level only love and Creator-to-Creator contact can really deal with any situation.

We, as always, are amazed at the serious attempt of your peoples to live by the laws of ethical rightness as you know them. My friends, we would speak to you about these laws for they are sometimes harmful. It has been written in your holy works that when the teacher known as Jesus was asked why his disciples sat to eat without washing their hands, as was the custom among the people of that time, for religious purposes, the teacher answered, “It is not what goes into the mouth of any man that defiles him, but rather those things which come out of the mouth of men.” And we would reacquaint you, my friends, with this thought for it is very important in your understanding of the law of the Creator. Yes, my friends, there is a law and that law is love.

Mankind has created many systems of ethical considerations, so that man may live with man without warfare. And this is, of course, to the good of the people. For it is not comforting to know that you might at any time be killed for no reason at all, or dragged before a firing squad, or imprisoned, or the other difficulties facing one who lives in a society which has fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous government. Thus, to the extent that these laws of man, legal and ethical, preserve the common peace and aid the spiritual development of each human being, these laws are to the good. But when they are interpreted literally and rigidly and do not allow for compassion, understanding and the redemption of love then these laws are harmful to the spiritual development of the individual.

How many of your peoples, my friend, have been subjected in their childhood to a long list of things about which they must feel guilty if they not do? These laws cover everything from what one must put on one’s body to be well clothed to how one must keep one’s dwelling place, how one must speak, who one must speak to, and how one must judge others according to their appearance. All of these ideas of mankind are erroneous, in that the appearance of man, the habits of man, and all of those things which go with a cultural upbringing are merely window dressing for that which is deep within the heart of each man, and that is that spark of love which is the divine Thought which created him.

- Latuii via Rueckert: September 6, 1979

Latuii then takes this in a different direction—so different that I’ll save further comment to tomorrow’s post. But as somebody who looks askance at the value of law sometimes and the way it seems to entrench power and personality-shaping forces, both Ra and Latuii’s words give me food for thought. If I have love, I have no need for this puzzle, do I?