An appreciation of 'Outlier' Don Elkins

[Questioner]

In Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers,' he explores some people whose experiences are very different from what most people experience. In Gladwell's opinion, the average person can learn a lot by studying outliers.

Don Elkins's studies certainly revolved around 'outlying' experiences, at or beyond the fringes of most people's experiences and understandings of the universe they lived in.

Gladwell concludes that to be one of the most extraordinary experts in a field usually requires ten thousand hours or more of study. He gives a few examples.

Mozart began music studies very young, but did not create what is considered his first masterpiece until he'd probably had about ten thousand hours of study.

The Beatles had to play a relentless quantity of material at daily shows during their time in Hamburg. When they got their record deal, they had likely been on stage together more than ten thousand hours, and may well have had more work experience than any of their competitors at the time.

Bill Gates got to learn computer programming in high school, long before most kids got access to computers. By the time he dropped out of college to form Microsoft, he likely had ten thousand hours of programming experience, and far more than anyone else in his generation looking to start a company.

I haven't read the whole book yet, so I might miss something, but I think Gladwell doesn't discuss Steve Wozniak. But Woz probably also meets the criteria of ten thousand hours of electronic design experience before designing the Apple computer.

From reading Henry Ford's autobiography, I think that Ford also meets the ten thousand hour criterion with his own engine studies and management experience before his great success.

Now I turn to Secrets of the UFO by Don Elkins and Carla Reuckert. I had not read it until just recently, when I finally gave up my stubborn refusal to pay attention to Carla's suggestion that the Ra books will make more sense if one reads Secrets first. She's right and I wish I had taken them in that order, rather than the reverse.

Think a bit about would best qualify a person to research UFO's. Here is a reported phenomenon that involves aerial craft, esoteric thought, hypnosis, evidence that flees from skeptical debunkers, and discussion of advanced physics concepts.

Now comes the researcher, a pilot, engineering teacher, open-minded philosophical explorer, experienced hypnotist, utterly impartial collector of evidence steadfastly not evaluated yet, familiar with the relevant developments in theoretical physics, equipped to envision multi-dimension concepts and turn them over in his mind. No casting agent in Hollywood or Broadway could have created a more perfect match of player to role.

Think about a man with the self-discipline to collect almost thirty years worth of evidence BEFORE writing a book to explain what it all means. If I had been witness or student of these types of cases, starting at the age Elkins was when he started, I'd probably have tried to get on the Tonight Show with case # 1 and the front page of the New York Times with case # 2, writing my book about what it all meant after case # 3! What astounding long-term open-minded dedication to the collection of data before reaching any conclusions.

Yet Elkins's explanation of what this all means to him comes 15 years after dealing with his first of over 100 hypnotic regression experiments.

Only then, "Since I have observed over 100 people go through this process and have read millions of words of contactee literature, both published and unpublished, I believe that I am now in a position to select the highly correlative material from the masses of communications." And even then, the humility of "I believe that I am now in a position," rather than "pay attention, listen up, I'm the expert around here!"

At the start of the Ra contact, therefore, there may have been no other human being alive who was better equipped to represent humanity in the conversation. And he did so, not as Proclaimer or even Investigator, but merely as a humble Questioner: one who aspires to learn enough in order to be able to learn more, through asking a question that opens the door to a helpful answer.

My user name here is to honor and respect that attitude, and to aspire that some part of the graciousness of learning Don Elkins embodied will be present in my life as well. The user name is to remind me of those positive qualities and to inspire me to live up to that example as much as my life provides opportunities to do so.