DAY 6 · Part VI: Personal Biography
CHAPTER 26
Don Elkins
Gary We begin the final three sections of our interview of Jim McCarty and Carla Rueckert beginning with a biography of Don Elkins, the person whose desire for the truth and subsequent research efforts set the whole L/L Research project into motion, and set a trajectory that we still walk to this day.
Where and when was Don Elkins born?
Carla Don was born in Mayfield, Kentucky in . . . wait a minute, wait a minute . . . his mother came to Louisville to give birth. So he was born here in Louisville on the 27th of February, 1930.*
Gary He was born in a hospital in Louisville, but he was taken back to Mayfield, Kentucky to live.
Carla Well, his family had lived in Louisville and had some good money—good, comfortable . . . when people say of someone else “they’re comfortably fixed,” that was the way they were. There was a bunch of money in the family which was lost because of the Depression. And so
* Carla actually said that Elkins was born on February 28. Subsequent discovery of his birth certificate showed February 27. All instances of the wrong date have been corrected in the second edition of the book.
Sister—the nickname that Don’s mother had in the family—Sister moved with her husband, Tully, and with Don to the country.
Don basically grew up to the age of fifteen in the deep country of Mayfield. They made a big garden. They knew how to can and preserve and make the most out of their garden, and they survived the way country people always have. They made enough food to eat, and money was always tight. Tully was always on the road selling something and seldom home. He was a very nice guy and he became, at one point, I think the head of the—what do you call the central council of business people in a town?
Jim Better Business Bureau?
Carla He became head of whatever that is. Not the Better Business Bureau but...
Jim Like a Louisville marketing association or the . . .
Gary Commerce Guild or . . . [Probably the Chamber of Commerce.]
Carla You know you focus on welcoming and trying to get new companies to come to town and you try to support the companies that are in town. Anyway, he was well thought of, and he was a really nice guy. But it was very difficult to make money at that time. But they made the little they had go a long way.
Don lived in Mayfield until the age of 15. He became an incredibly good shot. He did a little time behind a mule, plowing, and was part of a farming family, which he did not like. He liked the town, he liked the forests, but he didn’t like working behind a mule. [laughs]
Gary He’s not one for physical labor?
Carla Well, he loved physical labor if he got to choose it. Every weekend that he was in Louisville he would take off, and he would be gone from Friday until Sunday night, and he and his best friends would be out hiking down around in the woods, acre after acre, hour after hour. They had a boat that they kept and would row across the river to the Indiana side where Don became an apprentice gunsmith and, by the age of fifteen, was an incredibly good shot. Those were his values at that time: to be a good shot, to be able to spend time with his buddies hiking the woods, and basically to be left alone other than that.
Gary So February 27th he was born, 1930.
Carla He was born right at midnight, in the first moments of February 27.
Gary This was just a few months into the Great Depression that began on December 29th?
Carla Well, people say it began then, but there was a deepening of the Depression in ’32. He was definitely a child of the Depression.
Gary You began to describe his parents. Did they have any religious or spiritual or philosophical belief system that they imparted to Don?
Carla They did. Sister was part of the Christian Science Church wherever she was. The latter part of her life she was in Louisville. So from the age of fifteen, they wanted Don to go to Male High School, which his dad had gone to, and so forth and so on—tradition in the family. So they moved up here and, I think, lived with her parents, and Don went to school at Male and graduated from Male. And his best friends did too. So he always had his buds. He was a faithful, loyal friend, too. There was a lot of very real love between those three guys.
Gary You said his mom was a Christian Scientist.
Carla Yes.
Gary Is that true of his father also?
Carla His father attended church, went along with things. I don’t think he had any really deep beliefs in anything. His father was kind of a [chuckles] glib, charming fellow that didn’t have a lot of bottom, not a lot of substance. He was a nice guy, but he went along with whatever was going on. He took care of his wife and son and was a good husband and father. And then after his wife died he didn’t take much care of anything. Didn’t have any money at all for the rest of his life. He dabbled at selling things and he made enough to get by.
Gary So it was his mom who had the higher convictions.
Carla That’s right, she did, and her family had, before that. She was a cradle member of the Church of Christ, Scientist and a reader in the church when she grew up as part of that. She was very highly thought of. And apparently she was an absolute gem, a beautiful woman inside and out. And Don adored her, and she adored him.
Gary You didn’t have the opportunity to meet her?
Carla No, I met Don in something like ’65; she died in ’63. No, I didn’t mean – I meant more like ’66.
Jim Didn’t you meet him in ’62?
Carla Oh, that’s right. I get my decades mixed up.
Jim After so many paths, you know, they just fall off the table. [laughter]
Carla I know [chuckles] I’m 70 and I’m just like, what? What is time?
Gary 71, actually.
Carla 71, that’s right. I just had a birthday.
Gary Case in point. [chuckles]
Carla There you go! [laughter] That’s how sharp I am. Anyway, I met his family after she died and became close to the family after she died.
Gary So in order to be a Christian Scientist in the social climate of the time in Kentucky, did one have to stand apart from the crowd? Was that an acceptable thing to be?
Carla Not at all. It was very acceptable. And they were very, very solid middle class. They had very solid, middle class standards. Sister had taught high school before she married and was a very sharp woman apparently, who was very capable of whatever she’d put her hand to.
Gary Did Don participate in her Christian Science devotion?
Carla Well, I think in his inner life he pondered the Christian Science dogma and decided that they were as close to right as anything he could come up with; being that everything was an illusion and that spirit was the reality. But he didn’t like anything that was formal. He didn’t like dressing up to do anything. And so at the age of nine, he bargained with his mom and dad that he would go with them on Sunday if he could stay in the car. Well, they went into service and it’s a measure of their relationship that he won his way.
Gary So he probably showed intelligence and responsibility and some self-awareness from an early age.
Carla Yes, he was precocious in that way. Not in the way of getting As or anything like that, he could care less.
Gary So he didn’t apply himself at school?
Carla Not at all. His mom asked him—she said, “Would you just do it for me one time? Would you just get one good report card?” And he said, “OK,” and he did. Once. [laughter] Then he went back to tramping the woods on the weekend and not worrying too much about school.
Gary Did he have the sort of personality profile of someone who is very intelligent but doesn’t feel quite challenged by school, so he doesn’t give it his or her all?
Carla Right. Nothing ever challenged Don. I remember when he was trying to join Eastern Air Lines, which he did in ’65. They had various tests, and one test that they had was supposed to measure how a pilot handled frustration. And so they gave him a little board that had different lights on it and different letters and if you saw this on the board, you hit “A” and “blue”; if you saw that on the board, your response was to hit “B” and “green”, and so forth on so on. There were rules, and it started out really slowly so you could check each time. Oh, that’s supposed to be “A”, “blue”; okay, that’s supposed to be “B”, “green”. And then it started getting a little faster, a little faster and a little faster. Well Don just did it, all the way through to the end. And after a while, it was over, and he had never made a mistake. So they were unable to grade him on that test because he never got frustrated. [laughter]
Jim You weren’t supposed to pass that test.
Carla No, you were never supposed to pass it. The idea was to see what happened when you couldn’t keep up, how you handled it. And [chuckles] they had no idea, but he was remarkably skilled and accurate at anything he put his hand to.
He said of himself that he made a mistake once in 1947, but, he was mistaken. It actually wasn’t a mistake. [laughter] And that was pretty much true. He didn’t make mistakes. He thought quickly, and he thought accurately.
And in terms of knowing people, he could look right through you and see to your heart. It was lovely; I rested in that. A lot of people got spooked: “He can see right through me!” And I’m going, “Yeah, so? Isn’t that good? You know, don’t you enjoy that?” “No!” [laughter] I did.
Gary As it’s of a topical association—in terms of Don’s grasp of the material world around him and his competency or skill or talent in interacting with that—you also spoke about his sharpshooter skills.
Carla Yes, like I said, by the age of 15 he was a remarkable sharpshooter. He could throw a bottle cap up in the air, draw, aim, and fire one, two, three times, and make it move in the sky three times.
Gary You also related a story to me once of him at a practicing range?
Carla Oh, yes. Don was remarkably well-suited to being a non-commissioned officer in the Army. He didn’t want to be an officer, and he ended up being the youngest Master Sergeant ever in the history of the Army. He was made a Master Sergeant before the age of 21, which was actually illegal, but he was so good at handling men and making them understand what they needed to understand. And liked doing it. He would make up different ways that they could enjoy it, laugh at it, and still learn it.
This particular day, he was with another couple of his buddies from Male High School who had also joined the Army. This was during the Korean War and in Germany, which was a great place to stay alive. Don enjoyed shooting, so he went his buddies to the range. Well, he wasn’t an officer, he wasn’t actually allowed on the range, so he asked permission to shoot, to practice with them. And the guy that was running the range said, “Well, we’ll try.”
And so Don was given a card and was able to shoot one round. He drew, aimed, and emptied his gun very, very quickly and the guy says, “No, no, you shouldn’t be doing it that fast.” You know, started giving him a lecture. And his friend said, “Uh, pull the card, just pull the card.” So he pulled the card to him and you could see his lips moving, the friend reported. [Carla mimics this.] And he was counting the little divots; there was only one hole. And he was counting the number of shots that had gone through that hole—nicked a little bit of this or that part of the hole.
Jim It was a scalloped hole.
Carla Yeah. And all six shots had gone through. So the person in charge stopped the range and he said, “This gentleman is going to give everybody a lesson.” [laughter] And here he was giving all these officers a lesson. He wasn’t even an officer. But that’s how good he was. And he was just very, very good at that world of men that includes hunting and shooting and playing poker and laughing and being a pilot and buzzing water towers and having a good time. That was his world for a long time.
He grew out of it. He didn’t stay a boy forever. He grew up, but he always enjoyed the company of other men, rather than enjoying the company of women. He did not date; he did not go out with women. He did not take part at all in anything to do with the social rights of the time.
Gary From what do you think that stemmed? Was that a part of his cultural conditioning?
Carla Well no, I think it was his philosophy. As he grew up, he observed that his father worked very, very hard all the time so that he could put a roof over his mother’s and his head, and his father was basically a slave to that, was the way he looked at it.
Don looked around him and he saw all the other guys . . . you know, this was back before women’s lib when women stayed at home and the men took care of them and paid the bills and made it possible for them to have children. And the women ran the home and gave them a family, and it was considered a good deal by everybody. But it wasn’t considered a good deal by Don.† It was considered, by him, that a woman was nabbing the guy when he was in the midst of lust and nailing him down for life to a world of giving the woman a cave and a place where she could raise her cubs, and then becoming a slave to that. And he didn’t want to become a slave to that. He didn’t want to take care of some family, some bunch of kids. He didn’t like kids. [laughter] He said if they could be born 17, it would be okay, but younger than that, he wasn’t really interested in talking to them.
He was just very cold about it and very judgmental. And I know in his relationship with me, he always kind of wished that I wasn’t a woman, and was very grateful to me for not insisting that he step up to the plate and deliver his life to me, so that I could furnish my cave and have some cubs.
Gary So he felt confined and imprisoned by what women wanted.
Carla Imprisoned and for no good reason. He just didn’t see it at all. [chuckles] And I could sympathize with the point of view to a certain extent. I think that there was a lot of usage of men by women.
† It’s a safe bet to assume that Don wasn’t the only one who didn’t think that the traditional, patriarchal arrangement was a good deal.
Manipulation and so forth. Women setting their hats for men and doing it very deliberately, nailing them down. But there are always problems with any arrangement that you have. Now you’ve got more of an equal situation, but it’s still a man’s world. There’s still a glass ceiling women can’t bust through. And women still can’t pull down the salaries that men do. And the thinking really goes back to when men had to take care of the family by earning money and women did not.
Gary So, you described how Don joked that if he could have a child that was born 17 years old, that would be okay with him. Was he someone who, like you, was born somewhat of an adult, you might say, in a child’s body?
Carla I guess so, in a way. Although, I always wanted to please the people around me and he really didn’t care. [chuckles] He didn’t give a hoot. Just to give you an example of what I mean, when Don’s father died, I went through the whole apartment—bits and pieces of the life that Tully and Sister had lived were still around and had never been thrown out. One thing I found was a little packet of postcards that were stamped and addressed to Sister, and she must have given them to Don when he went to Germany. And he carried them with him, faithfully, the whole time and brought them home and left them in the apartment there. [laughter] And there they were when Don’s father, Tully, died. Don had never thrown them out. He valued his mother, but he didn’t use them.
Gary She had intended that he would use them to communicate with her from Germany.
Carla She wanted him to communicate. He wasn’t a communicator.
Gary He’s not the type that’s going to call his mom or write his mom.
Carla No, not at all.
Gary Because that’s an obligation, and he doesn’t need to fulfill that obligation.
Carla Yeah, what I faced when he first moved in with me, he said, “Well, I’m going to go.” And I said, “Oh, any idea when you’ll be back?” I’m planning my day, I need to know.
Well he said, “My mother asked me that once and I told her, ‘If you ask me that again I’m going to move out.’” Cold, very cold. Well, I took that in and devised a plan, a plan which ended up working very well. But I had to start where he was.
Gary So just a couple more questions about his boyhood. Did he get into trouble at all, or was he a well-behaved person?
Carla Never, no. He was not a trouble-maker in any way, shape or form. He was a very polite, courteous young man that knew all the rules and followed them, and knew where the wheels needed to be greased and slid around very skillfully. Everybody thought well of Don.
Gary Was he an avid reader growing up?
Carla Well, he didn’t really much like to read. He liked someone to read to him. His mother read him a lot of books. I read him a lot of books, after we had settled down. He liked knowing things, and the quickest way he could find to get to inform himself on a subject, he would do that. But he wouldn’t do more than was necessary.
Gary In the opening section of this interview, you described that he began to become aware that the scientific paradigms of the time, and even the sum of human knowledge, couldn’t explain a universe that he had sensed, and was mysterious. So it caused him to begin seeking beyond the boundaries.
Carla Right.
Gary How old was he at that time?
Carla 14, maybe 15. Very young.
Gary So he began to become awakened, you might say, around that time.
Carla Mm-hmm.
Gary Sounds like he was already fairly awakened from early on.
Carla Right. And he was a very deep thinker. You had only to know Don to realize the depth and the breadth of his intellect. He was a wonderful mind, an extremely capable thinker. Very accurate and very far reaching. I always totally enjoyed Don and respected him tremendously. He was really the only great man I ever knew.
Gary What do you mean by “great”?
Carla Well, he exceeded all the boundaries of normal human knowledge and he was totally upright, completely ethical, devoted to learning more about why, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Very, very steady. His thinking had a depth and breadth that always took your breath, to me. And I’m a smart cat. There aren’t many that are smarter than I am, but Don was maybe three times my intellect.
Gary Don was 18 years old was when the Thomas Mantell case transpired and first set Don on the trajectory of UFOs?
Carla Is that what you figured out?
Jim Actually it was 17.
Gary 17?
Jim Mantell was in January, Don’s birthday was in February; month difference.
Gary So, he joined the military at 18.
Carla I’m not sure precisely when he did that, but he was, like I said, he was a Master Sergeant before he was 21.1
Gary Do you know why he joined the military?
Carla Yeah, he joined the military so that he wouldn’t have to go to Korea. He joined the Reserves.
Gary Was there a draft for Korea?
Carla Yes, there was a draft, and he was up for it. He was prime. A-1. He wanted to fulfill his service. It wasn’t that he was trying to duck out of anything, but he would just as soon not get shot at, he would just as soon not shoot anybody.
Gary How long was his contract with the Army Reserves?
Carla Gosh, I think maybe 4 years.
Carla But after he got back from Germany, he became an officer and eventually a captain in the Reserves. He served the Reserves for, I think, 13 years after he came back.
Gary So maybe 17 years in total, ballpark.
Carla Something like that, yeah. I know he had to quit it when he became an Eastern Air Lines pilot, and that was in ’65.
Gary So he was actively engaged in his quest for the truth while in the military, and in the direction of UFOs.
Carla Yes.
Gary Do you know how he went about his research while in the military, or if those two fields overlapped whatsoever?
Carla I don’t think those two fields overlapped. I know he talked a lot about reading reports. That was his favorite thing to do: just to sit there, as a captain in the Reserves, and read reports of military men in the past, just to see how things transpired. He had wonderful stories to tell about reading those. I think he was just interested in a wide variety of things and just . . . wherever he was, he wanted to know more about it, I guess.
Gary So in trying to put together the social side of Don, I’ve heard it described that he didn’t enjoy humanity and also avoided people, but at the same time he seems kind of gregarious or very able to read and talk to people.
Carla Well, different people have different reactions to alcohol. Don was a gregarious drunk. [laughter] I never saw him drunk-drunk; I never saw the man the least bit out of control. The most I ever saw him out of control was one time I noticed he parked a little crooked. He was still between the lines, but the car was just a little bit crooked. [laughter] That’s the farthest he went out of control, but he would become increasingly charming the more beers he had or the more whiskey he drank. And did he drink because he liked alcohol? No, he drank because he was with his buddies, and they were drinking; he just went along.
Gary So he could be a very social creature.
Carla A very, very social, charming, wonderful creature that I dearly loved. I loved him to be drunk. [laughter] I had no complaints about that at all.
Gary But for all intents and purposes nobody could tell whether he had not had any drinks or whether—
Carla No, except that he would break out with more stories when he was a little bit soused. It’s a lifestyle thing. All his friends were pilots, guys in the army, and there’s a certain amount of drinking that goes on. There used to be more than I think there is now. Now there are more acceptable ways of getting high, but in those days it was all alcohol. And so guys met at the bar, and they hung out and they would have one beer and then another beer and then, you know, they would proceed. [laughter] And then depending on how long their evening was, they could drink a lot of beer. Or, if they were drinking whiskey, drink a lot of whiskey. But I never saw him have a hangover; never saw him drunk. Never saw it interrupt his lifestyle in any way. He didn’t have a problem. But he did drink a lot.
Gary Did he have any like minds in his social circle?
Carla No, not really. Not in terms of people that were interested in pursuing metaphysical interests. He had plenty of friends that tolerated him and thought he was interesting and got him to tell stories. There was a lot of acceptance there, and a lot of just plain old love—the kind of love men have for each other. Good, sturdy, shoot ’em up love. And it was good to be part of that. It was good to see Don with his buddies and feel the energy there of their mutual fondness and affection, respect for each other. They were all good men. They were all worthwhile, upright, trying-to-do-the-right-thing guys.
Gary Did he maintain those connections all way through the Ra contact?
Carla Mm-hmm. Well, everything went away during the Ra contact. Up until that point, yeah, he would spend time with his friends.
Gary So there were a few different vocations that Don took on beyond being an instrument and a questioner for channeling groups. Among his vocations, how and why did Don become a physics and engineering professor?
Carla He picked engineering because it seemed more what he might use and be interested in in the long run. He basically needed to go to college because if he didn’t do that he would have to work, and he didn’t want to work. He didn’t want to go get a job 9-to-5 and be in an office. He knew that he wouldn’t like that, and he never did it. He was a teacher, and he was a pilot. And neither of those vocations pinned you down from 9-to-5 with a cubicle and so forth.
And once he was in college, he discovered that he was very, very good at it without much effort, and sailed through. All of his professors thought a lot of him. He discovered that he was a natural teacher, and he discovered that it was something that he could do without moving a muscle, without knowing more. But he did constantly read a little of this, a little of that, and was constantly looking for paranormal instances of anything in the newspapers and magazines and so forth. And he shared those with his students.
Gary So he earned two separate degrees? One in physics, one in engineering? And then taught both?
Carla No, his degrees were in engineering. He earned up through the masters, and then he had a professional degree in addition to that.2
Gary But he taught both engineering and physics?
Carla Yeah. The reason that he taught physics was that nobody else could handle those guys. They were a rowdy bunch. 200 students is a big class. All of the entering freshmen had to take physics, and it had long been tossed from the newest guy, to the next newest guy, to the next newest guy. Nobody wanted the job.
Jim They were all male. There were no females in the Engineering Department at that time.
Carla Right. And these guys would do lots and lots of little pranks and make the guy look stupid. And most guys can’t handle stuff like that. Well, Don could handle that with one hand tied behind his back and his eyes closed. He would turn it right back on them and continue teaching. I’ve given examples like, one day, all of his 200 students said, “Okay, we’re going to throw pennies at him.” So they threw this massive bunch of pennies at him. So he spends time and he picks up every single penny, and he says, “Next time, bigger coins,” and turns around and starts teaching. So then they leave a dead cat in the lab sink, and he covers it up and continues teaching. They were just trying so hard to get him flustered.
And they arranged with one of the girlfriends of one of the students, who had a job as a bunny at a local bunny club, and she brought her costume from work and dressed up as a bunny and brought in a martini, covered with a napkin, at the beginning of class. So he watches her come in. And she doesn’t know what to do, so she finally just sets the thing down and disappears—you know, runs for her life. So he raises the napkin and looks at it and he says, “Too much vermouth.” So then [laughter] he goes back to working on the board, teaching. He couldn’t be flustered! He always had a comeback and his guys ended up absolutely adoring him and doing whatever he said. He was an excellent teacher.
He got all the points across, and he was very conscious of the pressures that men were under at that time. Some of them had to get a certain grade because they were in the Army; if they didn’t get that grade they didn’t get their scholarship. He would always give them an extra grade: if they were C students they got a B, and if they were B students they got an A. Why? Because they needed it. And that kind of understanding—of how he can best nurture young men . . . he would give them a quiz every Friday. And then he would add up the scores and drop the lowest one. Everybody has a bad day from time to time. And the balance of that would be their grade. And usually you can remember what you’ve been looking at that week, so it was the best possible chance that the young men had to make a good grade.
And just things like that—the excellent teaching skills, the love of springing one crazy fact on them at the end of every class, so that it wasn’t just physics, it was always physics plus an interesting factoid. [laughter] Like the inside of a Snapple cap at the end of every class. So his men got through; they knew physics. They passed and they were able to go on. So, he really was valued more for his ability to work with the freshmen than for the mechanical engineering courses that he taught, simply because he could do it so much better than anybody else.
Gary What years did he teach?
Carla Well, he started after he got back from the Korean War.
Jim ’55 to ’65?
Carla Something like that. He left in ’65 to go join Eastern Air Lines and be a pilot because they were making roughly three times the amount as a pilot than he did as a teacher, and he could use that money to pay for his research. So it just made sense to him to do that.
Gary Where did he teach?
Carla He taught at Speed Scientific School,3 which was the engineering school of the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.
Gary Both physics and engineering at that school.
Carla Mm-hmm.
Gary I was going to ask you about that. I recall you speaking previously in this interview of Don learning to fly, and it seemed connected to his research.
Carla It was.
Gary So all of the motivation for learning to fly and gaining a job as an airline pilot was as a means to an end?
Carla Yes, but he enjoyed flying too. He just enjoyed it in and of itself. And so he always maintained a healthy amount of flying people around—charter groups—for the various flying services in town. And he kept that up all the time that he was teaching. He was also building up his hours being a charter pilot.
Gary Once he stopped teaching for Speed Scientific School in ’65 or thereabouts, did he ever return to being a teacher?
Carla No. The only thing that he did that was unusual was, one year he went up to Alaska, the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He had been given the opportunity to be the head of the engineering school and to set their curriculum. And that was a big deal. And he took it. And he said if we had been together he would have stuck to it, but the winters were too long and lonely. He didn’t like them. He didn’t like the length of the winters and the darkness of it. So he came on back after one year.
Gary What year was he there?
Carla It has to have been before ’65, obviously.
Jim I think it was 1961.
Carla It was before I was in college. It would have to be before ’62.
Gary Okay. So you weren’t up there with him.
Carla No.
Gary It was him alone.
In the recording, “Spiritual Significance of the UFO,” Don is giving a talk in what I thought was a classroom auditorium at the University of Louisville, regarding his UFO research. What year was that?
Carla Oh, maybe something like ’77?
Jim No, it was ’82 or ’83 because we had the Ra contact then.
Carla Oh, ’82, okay.4
Jim It was Jefferson Community College. Downtown.
Carla He was offering it at a sister college that was actually part of the University of Kentucky system, not part of University of Louisville at all. And it was just a one-time thing. One of the students there had asked him if he would give a lecture, so he did.
Gary Oh, he was sort of a special guest.
Carla Yeah, he was a guest there. He wasn’t hired by the college or anything.
Gary Okay. How far did he go flying for Eastern Air Lines? I mean, to what destinations?
Carla Well, he was based in Atlanta mostly. He was based sometimes in Florida. He went all kinds of places within the United States and then down in the islands. He went wherever Eastern Air Lines had routes that they had paid for and they needed somebody to fill.
Gary He didn’t fly internationally then.
Carla He did not, no. He did not. He was not one of those who did.
Gary And you described that he would use the local airport in Louisville, named Bowman Field, to rent small charter planes and fly to destinations in order to conduct his personal research.
Carla Mm-hmm. That’s right.
Gary At some point Don made an important decision about how he would operate and relate to this world. Can you tell us when that decision happened, and then describe that decision and its implications?
Carla I’m sorry, what decision was that?
Jim Becoming indifferent to the world. That was twenty—
Carla Oh. Twenty-six. He was 26 years old.
Gary And what was that decision?
Carla Well, he decided that he was dead. He no longer was interested in anything the world had to offer, and nothing was ever going to move him again.
Gary So he consciously, basically, said to himself—
Carla Very consciously released the world and all its strictures.
Gary I am indifferent to . . .
Carla He didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. I’m not sure precisely what brought him to this, but he was a very sharp guy, and the world is as it is. His reaction to it is logical.
Gary So this is long before you met him.
Carla Yes.
Gary He must have told you about this incident.
Carla Right.
Gary How did he describe it to you?
Carla That way.
Gary He said, “I decided to . . . ”
Carla To die.
Gary Did he tell you why he made that decision?
Carla No. [laughter] Don never explained himself. I really don’t know what brought him to it, but I think it was simply a logical outcome of his observations up to that point. I think the world basically terrified him and disgusted him. It was rough, it was crude, it was tacky, and nobody kept promises—out there in the world of business and finance and so forth. The higher you went, the more you were going to be lying and cheating and stealing, all in the name of business. He wasn’t interested in taking part in any of it.5
Gary So he had a very pessimistic view of the world.
Carla He was a melancholy man.
Jim His famous quote was, “This world is an insane asylum, and the best you could hope for is a private room.”
Gary That’s funny that he devoted so much—all of his life to this research when he perceived the world that way. He must have perceived that there is some redeeming value in the world nevertheless, or there’s some way to uplift the horrible situation that—
Jim This world isn’t all there is. There’s more, and he was interested in the more.
Gary But he didn’t just escape to that more.
Carla It wasn’t escape, it was getting below the surface of things, getting to the essence as he saw it, and trying to find out why things were as they were. Why are we here? What is the idea? What’s going on?
Gary But not just for his personal individual satisfaction, though that too, but in order to share it with others.
Carla Well, he was a scientist. If he found something, some result of his research that was worthwhile publishing, he published it. It was not, all these people have to know this. It was dispassionate. It was, time to publish what I’ve learned.
Gary So, this decision he made at 26 years old wasn’t just a philosophical response to the world, but it was a survival mechanism as well.
Carla I guess so, yeah. It was—he was, I don’t even want to say happy, but he coped better when he had made that decision.
Gary And he stuck by it.
Carla To give you an idea of how much he did not want to date: I met a woman once—she was close to 50 when I met her, she was his age—and she told me that their parents were friends and they had arranged for him to date her. Well, she was absolutely gorgeous. She was everything you could want: she was sharp, she was intelligent, she was funny, she was beautiful, she was—she was ready to like him, right?
So he’s roped in to it. And his mother asked, “Will you please do this?” And he says, “Alright, I’ll do it.” And he does. Never opens his mouth. Picks her up, takes her where his parents had planned for him to go, gave her a meal, brought her home, dropped her off. Never said a word. His parents did not try to get him to date anymore. [laughter] And you can imagine that I was somewhat flattered that he settled down with me. It was a great compliment that he managed to stay with me. Great devotion! He didn’t leave. [laughs]
Gary I have a vague memory of you describing how he somehow rated or evaluated you. Does that sound familiar?
Carla You mean my beauty?
Gary You in general.
Carla He told me one time that I was the best person he knew. That was the nicest thing he ever said about me.
Gary One of just a couple compliments that you ever received from him.
Carla He was very drunk. [laughter]
Gary So you’d see a little bit of the inside Don when he drank.
Carla Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. He let down a little bit. Not all of it. Concrete steel was still reinforced around his heart.
Gary So this decision he made when he was 26 years old carried forward all the way through to the Ra contact until the final couple years when that came undone too rapidly for him.
Carla Yes, indeed.
Gary So you’ve described Don as a melancholy man. Was he withdrawn and not engaged or did he laugh or smile?
Carla Oh, sure. But all the way into his eyes and into his heart? Not a lot. No.
Gary So there’s an underlying sadness . . .
Carla Yes, it was a sadness, a melancholia that was very deep and very, very real.
Gary So on the surface, he would enjoy himself or be sociable or gregarious and laugh and smile, but underneath there was always that melancholia that was always untouched.
Carla Always, yeah. It was a loneliness, I think, because once he discovered that he could hang out with me, that he didn’t have to be lonely, he would call me numerous times a day when he was off on trips. And at night he’d call me, and he wouldn’t even say anything. He’d just hang on the phone and listen to me breathe. And that made him happy. Made me happy too.
Gary So you didn’t need to talk, you just . . .
Carla I loved him. I loved him dearly. I just adored him.
Gary It’s always problematic to try to answer this type of question, but if there were an antidote to his melancholia, what do you think that would be?
Carla Conversations with Ra. [chuckles] That was the only thing that I ever saw bring him into happiness. He was joy-filled when he knew he was going to get to talk to Ra. It was like before a feast: he would [makes a sort of tisking sound from the mouth] do that with his mouth, which he always did before I cooked. He knew I could cook really well, and when it was time to eat one of my meals he’d [make same sound] love every bite. And that’s the way he was about those conversations.
Gary Speaking of the deliciousness of your cooking, he eventually asked you not to cook, right?
Carla That’s right. Well, he had gained 40 pounds. [laughter] He said, “You’re going to be the ruin of me if you keep doing this.” But it was hard to get me to stop. He eventually made me stop entirely. It was so sad for me because I’d gotten all his mother’s recipes and I knew how to make him happy. I knew how to make his tummy happy. [chuckles] And it was so much fun to see him enjoy food, and I enjoyed that service very, very much.
Gary I think this question is already answered, but just to be clear: Did Don have any intimate or committed relationships prior to meeting you, with a female?
Carla No. [chuckles] Anything but.
Gary Was Don involved in politics in any way?
Carla No.
Gary So the Civil Rights struggle and the struggle for social equality across the board was really taking shape and gaining momentum in the mid-fifties—Brown vs. Board of Education6 time. How did he relate to the social movements of the time? Or was he just as indifferent to that as he was to the rest of the happenings in the world?
Carla Yes. Yes, he was indifferent. He didn’t have anything against those who were fighting for the rights. He respected them, he didn’t talk against them; he just wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t one of the others, either. He just was not involved.
Gary Was this part of the world milieu that he turned an indifferent eye toward?
Carla Quite. Exactly.
Gary Would you say that Don was single-minded in his research and pursuit of truth, and if so, how did he balance that with the other necessities of living?
Carla Don paid the bills, and whatever time and money he had leftover was ready to be spent working in this research.
Gary So he wasn’t a Captain Ahab in pursuit of the truth, in kind of just becoming overwhelmed and crazy about it.
Carla [laughter] No, he wasn’t.
Gary He kept everything in perspective.
Carla He was very sane. And very effective.
Gary Though each of you three possess strengths not so pronounced in the other, Don Elkins was the leader of your small band. What made him the leader?
Jim Charisma and intelligence. And a great path to follow down the road to the paranormal.
Carla And neither of us was foolish enough to think that we were better at it than he was. We knew he was a leader among us and we were glad to have him.7
Gary This may be already covered, but in the event we can dig something new out of here: What characteristics about Don stand out to you?
Jim Intelligence. Character. Sensitivity. Compassion. Capability. Dedication. Perseverance. And he was tall!
Carla He was very, very tall. Six-six I think. He always said six-five, because that was the limit for Eastern Air Lines. If he was six-six he couldn’t be a pilot for Eastern. As a matter of fact, I think he always said six-four, but I think he was six-six. Anyway, six and a half feet, basically, tall.
Gary In pictures I’ve seen him in, he looks like he droops a little, leans forward.
Carla He always did. He was trying to relate to the world below him. What did you say? [laughing]
Jim When he was in school he was trying to hide behind the fat kid, so the teacher wouldn’t see him.
Carla Yeah, he had no desire to attract attention. He had the gift of being invisible. He could sit there and waitresses wouldn’t see him, people would come and go—they didn’t see him. I don’t know how he did that. But he could choose to become invisible. It was an odd ability.
Gary It sounds like, unless he took a liking to you, he didn’t want to be approached or didn’t want to be talked to.
Carla Right. He was a loner through and through.
Gary Is there anything about Don that might surprise people?
Carla That he was so good with kids, probably.
Gary That would surprise me, too.
Carla He was wonderful with kids, yeah.
Jim He never talked down to them. He always talked just like he talks to you and me.
Carla They always adored him, just like everybody else. I think that was the biggest surprise I ever had, was realizing that he had no problem relating to kids. He liked kids just fine. As long as they weren’t his.‡ [laughs]
Gary Jim, what kind of relationship did you form with Don after meeting him and Carla, and then living together in community?
Jim Hmm. That was probably one of the most important relationships of my life, but one of the most difficult to describe. It felt like we were brothers, and we had the same basic goals, and we were both dedicated to getting there doing whatever is necessary. So we had a shared vision and we both very much wanted to take care of Carla.
And I never felt that I really got to know him the way I wanted to. We were only together for four years, the four years of the Ra contact. So it was a beginning relationship, but it was one that already had taken place elsewhere. It was like renewing a friendship. But in our current personae, [chuckles] we had to work our way through what we’d constructed here in
‡ Maybe Don’s relationship to the concept or the reality of kids was complex, or ambiguous, or not properly communicated, as this statement from Carla seems slightly at odds with her previous statement in this chapter, though not irreconcilable.
this illusion. And we hadn’t gotten there yet. I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to being on, like, some farm someplace and splitting firewood with him. But that didn’t happen.
Gary Don felt that he was a wanderer in the sense that his soul incarnated here on Earth from another density in order to be of service. When and how did he become aware of this, and how did he relate to this understanding or belief?
Carla I think it happened during the Ra contact. When the Ra group introduced the idea of wanderers, he just really related to that, really identified with that. I don’t think he specifically thought he was from another planet or anything beforehand. He certainly didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere. He was a wanderer in that general sense, but not in the specific sense of feeling he came from elsewhere.8
Gary Some wanderers—and I’ve always found this particularly remarkable—are born knowing that their soul is not of this planet, even prior to encountering any information that might suggest that idea to them. They just know.
So to the best of your awareness, Don didn’t have that.
Carla He wasn’t one of them. Hmm. Nor was I, for that matter. That had to be kind of sprung on me in the process of our research.
Gary I was actually going to ask you guys this in your personal bio sections, but, while I’m here: you discovered that through your past-life regression hypnosis—
Carla Right, which was part of our research together.
Gary So do you know what kind of impact that had on Don, discovering that he was a wanderer?
Carla I think he was really glad to have found such a good source that was evidential to him about this information being true. He trusted me and he knew that I had had this experience during the session of hypnotism, and I think he was glad that it happened. Glad that I was a wanderer.
Gary When people write to L/L Research on the topic of “Am I a wanderer?” “Is there any value in knowing that I am a wanderer?”, etc., I highlight two reasons why I think it is of value to know you are a wanderer, one being that it helps to bring the life into a perspective that might have been unavailable beforehand.9
Carla Mm-hmm. That’s true, it does.
Gary All the things you couldn’t explain about yourself, especially the sense of alienation, suddenly come into view. So it gives an ordering to the life.
Carla Right. Plus, for so many people, they have a feeling of having a mission, but that’s not a respected idea in our culture. That’s considered maybe you need to have some psychiatry done, a little analysis there to find out where you got this distortion. But, the Wanderer Syndrome includes that feeling of having a mission, and the thing is, it’s very comforting to know that you’re not the only one that has this feeling of being under the gun.
Gary Yeah, and that ties into the second thing I highlight, and that’s that knowing you’re a wanderer helps to underscore the fact that you are here to offer service. The whole reason for your existence on this planet is to help other people.
Carla Right.
Gary Though if that sense of mission turns into a messiah complex, then maybe there’s some ego in there.
Carla Yeah, you need to stay humble with it. But yes, exactly. You need to keep your proportion—your sense of proportion is very important. Otherwise, you get all emotional and feeling that this is so important, and you burn yourself out, to where you can’t really proceed for a while. You have to heal up, sit by the side of the spiritual road and just breathe. And it’s better for the long run to always keep the light touch. Always have a sense of proportion.
Gary Yeah, you’re still human. You still have human challenges and human lessons to learn. And a sense of wandererhood needn’t feed some special sense of identity, like I am better than others.
Carla Mm-hmm. There’s that very ticklish characteristic of feeling like the elite, and that’s always wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Gary Returning back to Don. Per the descriptions you’ve shared with me of Don, he seemed set in some rather peculiar ways. Can you describe any of those?
Carla Well, he was always heavily armed. I always thought that was a little peculiar. My father wouldn’t allow a gun in the house. With Don, we had a gun in every room, tucked in the radiator housing.
You know, he was a loner. He wanted to be celibate. Is that what you’re going for? He was peculiar in every single way you want to look at, so it’s difficult for me to know where you’re going.
Gary Eccentricities and behaviors that one would describe as odd.
Jim When we went out to eat, we usually went out in the middle of the afternoon so the restaurant would be empty. And when we went to a movie, we always sat in the back row.
Gary In order to reduce all social contact?
Jim Pretty much, yeah.
Carla The most defensible position is in the back row or in the corner, so that nobody could get behind you.
Gary So was he one of those types that kind of had the room mapped out? Mentally he knew where the exit was, he knew how to defend himself should something go south.
Carla Oh yeah. Definitely. And he wanted to take care of me. It wasn’t just to take care of himself, but needed to know how to get me out of there. [laughter] But he was quite careful to do that everywhere he went, and map the place out, to sit in the most defensible position where nobody could get behind him. And he liked as few people in the restaurant when he ate as possible.
[laughs in reflection of what she’s about to say] And he would reconnoiter—this used to drive me crazy. He would go into the parking lot, and he would do a reconnoitering walk around the restaurant to see what it was like and if it was acceptable. If there was a place where he could sit that he was comfortable with and so forth, we’d go in. If there was a problem, if there was somebody in there he didn’t want to eat with, if there was any kind of a problem, we couldn’t go there. We’d move on. So then we’d go to another restaurant—fortunately there were quite a few restaurants in Louisville—and he would repeat the procedure. Sometimes we didn’t eat till 10:30 at night. [laughter] It was so hard to find a restaurant that he found okay.
Gary You said he wouldn’t tell you his reasons for . . .
Carla [to Jim] Do you remember him telling us reasons?
Jim Just wanted to see what the situation was. He had the same behavior as a captain for Eastern Air Lines. He’d walk around his plane and look at everything very carefully. He wanted to be sure that it was, you know, flight-worthy. And that’s a really good quality for an airline pilot. But he used that same quality with whatever he did. He was aware of things around him. Potential problems that other people wouldn’t think of.
Carla Yep, that was Don.
Gary Would you say this was a strength or a paranoia?
Carla Both.
Jim Well, strengths and weaknesses are two ends of the same quality. Just depends on how far you’re going and what happens.
Carla If you were really hungry it was paranoia, and if you were looking at it generally philosophically, it was a great strength.
Gary Carla, you understood Don on a fundamental level, and realized that in order to work with him, you had to release expectations and meet him where he was, not vice versa. You had to make sacrifices and concessions and operate within his parameters. Can you describe that dynamic and why you put his needs before your own?
Carla I think love has a sacrificial quality to it, or it can have if it’s needed. Don was the loneliest man I ever knew. My heart went out to him on so many levels. My poor guy! Everybody else would see this huge, tall, imposing, scary guy, and I would see this little lost boy that was so lonely. And I just wanted to take him, and take care of him, and make it okay. I loved him so much.
And so, whatever it was that he needed I was wanting to do. I wasn’t proud. I knew that he couldn’t fulfill all my needs. So I figured out what I did need, what I really did need, and then I made sure that I got it. For instance, when he first knew me he asked me to marry him.§ That was the first night that he moved in, and when he came back after that
§ Carla offers a fuller telling of this story in the chapter of this book where Don meets Carla.
three-day trip, he reneged and said he really didn’t want to marry, and so we wouldn’t marry. And I was desperately unhappy with that and I cried. Well, he didn’t like tears, so he went into his room and closed the door. [laughter] And that was going to be the end of it; that was going to be goodnight.
But that was unacceptable to me; that did not meet my needs. So I thought it through (didn’t take long), and I went into the kitchen and I got a little juice-glass of water, made sure it was tepid, not too hot, not too cold, and I opened the door to his room and I went in and he was in his bed pretending to be asleep. And I poured it on him.
And he sputtered and sat up and said, “You poured water on me!” I said, “Yes I did. And I will continue to do so until you ask me what it is I need.” And he said, “Okay, what do you need?” I said, “I need you—when I cry, I need you to realize that I never use it; it’s not a manipulative thing. I’m just desperately unhappy. I need you to pat me on the back, and I need you to tell me that everything is okay, and reassure me until I am over crying, and we’re okay again.”
And he took it in, and he said, [Carla gestures a steady patting motion] “You are on a planet at the very ends of space.” (pat, pat, pat, pat) “You’re sticking up out of this planet along with everyone else.” (pat, pat, pat, pat) And he would continue to tell me what a tiny piece of the Creator I was, and how—[laughter] it sounds crazy, but how insignificant we all were, and how tiny our planet was, and how huge the universe was. And he would just continue doing that. And, whenever I cried from then on through the years, then he would very seriously, very conscientiously start doing that. And that was his way of comforting me. And it really, oddly enough, was very comforting, simply because he wanted it to be comforting.
Gary He was trying.
Carla And it was an effort that he was making. So it worked. It satisfied my need not to be closed off simply because I was crying. He never could understand why I was unhappy. I had told him, “If you don’t want to be married, say so, because I don’t want another bad marriage.”
He took me at my word—why should that make me unhappy? Oh, I don’t know! [laughter] It did! What can I say? So, it was a matter of: Do I want to take care of this man? Do I want to be with this man? Or, do I want to go back into the world and find someone who will fulfill more of my so-called needs? And he always came out on top. I can’t say any more than that. My depth of love for him was enormous.
And so I would figure out—well for instance, here’s the way I figured out the problem with his going out of the house and not telling me where he was going or when he’d be back. The next time he went out of the house, I said, “Can I go with you?” He said, “What? You’re just going to have to wait in the car. You don’t want to go into the flying service with me.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll wait in the car.” So for quite some months, actually, I would take a book with me and I would sit in the car and I would wait for him; it was a big car, very comfortable. And I would read, and if I got sleepy I would sleep. And I would wait for him and eventually he’d come out and we’d have lunch and then he’d go do something else and I would wait and then we’d go to. It was a way of being with him, the only way I had of being with him, and I accepted that.
So, he got used to having me with him, and eventually one of his pilot friends saw me in the car and said, “Well, come on in. What are you doing in the car?” And I said, “Well, Don doesn’t think I would be really welcome there; and you know, I’m not a pilot”—blah, blah, blah. So he said, “That’s not true! Come on in! You’ll see.” So I, in fear and trepidation, went with him. And sure enough, everybody was glad to see me. I was well-accepted and one of the gang. Just a little guy with long hair. So it worked out fine. And so Don was able to take me in with him after that, which meant I didn’t get as much reading done, but that was okay too.
And once he got used to me being with him, he got used to that feeling of not being alone. Because far below the level of physical nearness or anything like that—you know, like conversation—I was home to him, and he was home to me on a very, very deep level. It was comforting for him to be with me. He was comforted by my presence. And I was very glad that I could do that for him. And of course, he was my beloved, a comfort—it was very comfortable for me to be with him. So, it worked out great and I never challenged him. I just worked around his needs and so that I could fulfill mine without bothering him.
Gary When he was patting you, per your request, and telling you that we live on such and such a planet, we’re pretty insignificant compared to the whole . . . it sounds like you were hearing some of his own inner dialogue.
What he must tell himself.
Carla Mm-hmm. I expect so.
Gary How would Don introduce you to others when you would meet new people?
Carla My name.
Gary Would he say, “This is my friend Carla. My research associate”—?
Carla He didn’t go into that.
Gary Oh. He just said, “This is Carla”?
Carla Yeah.
Gary I was wondering if that might give some insight into—
Carla Oh, no, it was not a matter of avoidance; it was just not part of his dialogue, for people to explain somebody. He was very proud of me, and used to brag on how smart I was, with all the skills that I had, and the things that I could do—that I could sing and so forth. He thought I was a great gal and had wonderful skills and he was pleased with my research for him, and he would talk to people about that. So I guess we related as research partners.
Gary So he, despite his profound loneliness, and the sadness and melancholy that stemmed from the loneliness, and despite his great need for you, he didn’t quite know how to let you in. So it was only through you being patient with his own road blocks and working with his blockages that you slowly . . . that he found ways to let you in and bring you closer.
Carla Yes. Yes.
Gary Was Don someone that allowed or enjoyed physical touch?
Carla No.
Gary So there was no hugging Don.
Carla No.
Gary How about shaking hands? He didn’t shake hands?
Carla If he had to.
Gary [chuckles] So otherwise he was very cut off from other people in that sense.
Carla Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. I am an island. Not in a rude way. Some people just don’t enjoy touch.
Gary Is there anything else that you could think that you might want to share about Don before—
Carla Uh, no. Certainly if you look at the way he treated Jim and me, he was always very responsible, and even though he didn’t want responsibility, when he felt that he was responsible for our group, for making the money for it, he wrote it—he had a will written out, so that we’d be taken care of if he died. That kind of probity, that kind of care, speaks of very, very deep uprightness and affection and character, that you might not guess looking at the lonely guy, the melancholy man.
Gary Beyond probing the archetypal mind through the tarot, do you know if Don had hopes of exploring other avenues of inquiry with Ra?
Jim I’m sure he did. [laughter] We didn’t talk a lot about what we were going to do in the distant future, we were focused on the next session.
Carla Yeah.
Gary You said of Don that he hoped to communicate this information to a large number of people and felt real urgency in getting the word out. Don said to Ra:
QUESTIONER I personally will not cease while still incarnate to attempt to disseminate this. 37.5
Was it difficult for Don to accept that this information likely wouldn’t make a big splash in the Earthly world?
Jim I don’t know if it’s difficult or not. I know that he was hoping to get it out to as many people as possible, make it generally available. At that time we really didn’t know how we were going to do that.
Carla It surprised him that more people weren’t interested. The depth of people’s desire to remain ignorant surprised him. It was a very innocent, honest reaction that he had. He was so interested himself that he really didn’t see why people were almost allergic to learning the truth about UFOs. Are they here or not? He was glad to tell them anything that he knew! But most people just would say, “I don’t believe in UFOs.” Well, he never took that as a challenge, he just said “okay” and went on. But it surprised him that people—he could almost bet they would not be interested.
Gary I think people experience echoes of the same feeling when their own world is lit up by this information—they feel it’s one of the best things since sliced bread, and they can’t understand why others don’t feel likewise.
Carla [laughter] Yeah. Yeah, I have to encourage some people that are so excited like that just to lay off, let people indicate their interest. Don’t try to influence them.
Notes
[1] Elkins joined the JROTC at 14 or 15 years old in high school. Upon graduating at 18 years old he immediately moved forward in the National Guard or Army Reserves. Remaining documents issued by the armed services specify that Elkins had achieved the rank of Master Sergeant at the young age of 20 years. Whether or not he was the youngest in Army or National Guard in its history at that point is unknown to us and rests on Carla’s remembrance. ↩
[2] Don earned his Masters of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed Scientific School in 1961 and earned a second Masters of Engineering from the same school in 1972. ↩
[3] The name of this University of Louisville school has since been changed to J.B. Speed School of Engineering. ↩
[4] The date was April 21, 1981, to be exact. ↩
[5] In a transcript of a talk Carla gave at the opening of a Channeling Intensive, she said: ↩
By the time he was 26 years old he had gotten all the way through his education and was a professor. It came to him that he wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to seeking the truth. He’d already started just desultorily, here and there, investigating this and that. But from that point on it was his life’s goal to seek the truth. He said to me several times, “At that time I died to myself. I have no more attachments to any outcome. I just want to seek the truth.”
And he never seemed to have highs or lows like most people. Of course he did inside. But he was all about the work, the seeking, the putting the puzzle pieces together, he always said.
Channeling Intensive 1 – Session 1 – Introductory Talk, Carla L. Rueckert, L/L Research, 2008, llresearch.org/homecomings/channeling_circles/cycle_1_channeling_intensive_1/2008_0208_01.aspx
[6] “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9– 0) decision stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement.” ↩
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Brown v. Board of Education,” accessed February 17, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education.
[7] In Chapter 24, page 328, Carla and Jim said: ↩
CARLA He was a wonderful leader. Jim and I are both leaders in terms of our genes, we have no problem leading a group so it’s not that we were leaning on him. We were two people who were delighted to give over our will—you know, “What do we do next, George?” and questions of that sort to a boss that was going to tell us a really good thing to do next. We trusted his capacity to lead.
JIM He was definitely the leader but we never felt, I never felt that he was the boss—he didn’t give orders. You just wanted to be around Don. You wanted to do what he wanted to do 'cause he was fun.
From Book V of The Law of One:
CARLA However, what had always before gone hand in hand with my dependency was his willingness to steer our course, indeed, his insistence upon that. I was glad to give this leadership over to him, and to do what he said. He was far wiser than I was or ever could be.
[8] Ra was not the first source through which Don was introduced to the notion of wanderers. Don likely learned about them from George Hunt Williamson who used the terms “wanderers” and “apples” synonymously. Wanderers are also described rather accurately in Don and Carla’s pre-Ra contact book Secrets of the UFO, which included citations of several channeled sources outside of L/L work. ↩
About the wanderers in the group:
QUESTIONER Can you say if any of the three of us are of Ra or one of the other [Confederation] groups?
RA I am Ra. Yes.
QUESTIONER Can you say which of us are of which group?
RA I am Ra. No.
QUESTIONER Are all of us of one of the groups that you mentioned?
RA I am Ra. We shall go to the limits of our attempts to refrain from infringement. Two are a sixth-density origin, one a fifth-density harvestable to sixth but choosing to return as a wanderer due to a loving association between teacher and student. Thus you three form a greatly cohesive group. 45.5-7
[9] In my thinking, knowing that you are a wanderer does not change too much, actually—you are still in a human body living a human life on a human world with human lessons and a human personality—but it is helpful in these two basic regards: ↩
1. It underscores the reason for your incarnation here on planet Earth. The wanderer is literally defined by his or her desire to be of service. In feeling the suffering and the sorrow upon this planet and in hearing the cries for help sounding from every corner of Earth, the wanderer decided to make the sacrifice and take on a body in this illusion, forgetting who they are and risking becoming karmically involved.
2. Knowing that you are a wanderer simply connects you with the principal desire at the center of your heart. It is a reminder that the purpose of your incarnation—the very reason of your being—is to be a lighthouse in the darkness. That of course does not necessarily translate into the soup kitchen, social work, or performing some great world service on an outer level. Rather it is a service of being, a service of simply being who you are, radiating who you are, and shining the love and the light of the one Creator through your essential vibration. This is perceived by and is helpful to others.
It helps one to bring a certain order and perspective to the life that may have been previously unavailable. Many are able to finally make sense of themselves and the patterns of their life when they come to the understanding that they are a wanderer. This can be of tremendous aid in reducing or even eliminating doubt, fear, worry, and stress.