I am using today’s Camelot Journal entry to speak about Don Elkins since this is the 40th anniversary of his passing into larger life, and I also want to share some information about Carla L. Rueckert who first began channeling 50 years ago this past February 23rd. I will start with Don Elkins by sharing an essay that I wrote six years ago about the nature of his passing.
Dear Friends,
Today is the 34th anniversary of the death of Don Elkins, and recently it has come to my attention that the nature of his death, by his own hand, is a topic that usually is not openly discussed by people who love the Law of One. The topic of suicide, in general, seems to be an uncomfortable and stigmatized one, as it is often viewed as a failure on the part of the deceased to meet life’s challenges. Many people have a friend or family member that has left this illusion by that means, and it is very painful for those left behind. I am sure that people’s reticence to talk about Don’s death is largely based on love for him, for the Law of One, and for L/L Research. There may be a desire to guard the reputation of the Ra contact by avoiding conversations about Don’s mental illness and suicide. I can feel your love and support in this regard, and I thank you for your heartfelt concerns.
I want you to know that, despite our great sadness in losing Don, Carla and I maintained faith in the possibility that Don’s decline was the result of his undying dedication to others–namely to Carla–and to his life’s work. He was truly a beloved companion for Carla, and was my best friend for the time that I knew him. Carla and I always wished to honor his memory by acknowledging all parts of his journey including the nature of his death. The factors that one must consider when talking of how Don’s life came to an end are almost beyond most people’s ability to comprehend because they are multiple in nature and have probably been reproduced only in a handful of instances in Earth’s entire history, if at all.
The primary factor was the “magical” nature of our spiritual work and, therefore, its susceptibility to negative interference. According to Ra there is a spiritual principle that when positive information, such as we were gaining from Ra, is consciously sought, this choice must be balanced by the availability of negative offerings from service-to-self entities. The “playing field” is automatically “leveled” by psychic greeting, so that the difficulty of our seeking is synonymous with the strength, or purity, of our free-will choice. In other words, spiritual work is never without sacrifice of one kind or another, as the power of a positive (or negative) choice equates to the difficulty of making it. The work of negative entities in this regard is usually called psychic attack, but Ra used the term “psychic greetings”. Ra mentioned this in 69.17:
“Secondly, that which we and you do in workings such as this carries a magical charge, if you would use this much misunderstood term. Perhaps we may say a metaphysical power. Those who do work of power are available for communication to and from entities of roughly similar power. It is fortunate that the Orion entity does not have the native power of this group. However, it is quite disciplined whereas this group lacks the finesse equivalent to its power. Each is working in consciousness, but the group has not begun a work as a group. The individual work is helpful, for the group is mutually an aid, one to another.”
So, we were in a unique situation in that our work with Ra had attracted the attention of a fifth-density negative entity who wished to stop the Ra contact and remove the light that it produced. And the way that it went about that work was described by Ra in 80.4:
Questioner: What is the reason for the fact that the entity is able to act through physical distortions that are already present [as] opposed to being unable to act on an entity who’s had no physical distortions at all?
Ra: I am Ra. The key to this query is the term, distortion. Any distortion, be it physical, mental, or spiritual in complex nature, may be accentuated by the suggestion of one able to work magically; that is, to cause changes in consciousness. This entity has many physical distortions. Each in the group has various mental distortions. Their nature varies. The less balanced the distortion by self-knowledge, the more adeptly the entity may accentuate such a distortion in order to mitigate against the smooth functioning and harmony of the group.”
Each of the three of us in the Ra contact had a variety of distortions that were used as targets of opportunity by our negative friend throughout the Ra contact. Just like any seekers, we still had much to learn. Carla pre-incarnatively chose arthritis as a means of focusing on her inner work—instead of on outer work in the world. This constantly was being intensified by our negative friend, sometimes in very mysterious ways but always according to the metaphysical laws, if you will, that provide for this balancing of difficulty in the face of choice. My tendency towards anger at myself in order to learn compassion for myself, for example, was intensified many times in my life as I made mistakes and responded by breaking a tool or an object.
Don was always very cautious and wise in anything that he did. In the last two years of his life his wisdom became distorted towards worry and fear that his employer, Eastern Airlines, was going bankrupt and that Don would no longer be able to support our work or L/L Research. He also was worried about Carla’s deteriorating physical condition that was being intensified by our negative Orion friend of fifth density. But his greatest worry seemed to be that Carla’s spirit might be displaced into negative time/space by our negatively oriented friend. This had almost happened during a Sunday night public meditation on August 16, 1981. (68.5) This emphasis on the worry aspect of his wisdom constituted a free-will choice that could be, and was, intensified by psychic greetings. When Don asked Ra how our negative friend operated in regards to our group Ra said in 62.20:
Questioner: What is the objective; what does the, shall we say, the leader, the one at the very top of the pecking order in fifth-density Orion, have as an objective? I would like to understand his philosophy with respect to his objectives and plans for what we might call the future or his future?
Ra: I am Ra. This thinking will not be so strange to you. Therefore, we may speak through the densities as your planet has some negatively oriented action in sway at this space/time nexus.
The early fifth-density negative entity, if oriented towards maintaining cohesion as a social memory complex, may in its free will determine that the path to wisdom lies in the manipulation in exquisite propriety of all other-selves. It then, by virtue of its abilities in wisdom, is able to be the leader of fourth-density beings which are upon the road to wisdom by exploring the dimensions of love of self and understanding of self. These fifth-density entities see the creation as that which shall be put in order.
Dealing with a plane such as this third density at this harvesting, it will see the mechanism of the call more clearly and have much less distortion towards plunder or manipulation by thoughts which are given to negatively oriented entities although in allowing this to occur and sending less wise entities to do this work, any successes redound to the leaders.
The fifth density sees the difficulties posed by the light and in this way directs entities of this vibration to the seeking of targets of opportunity such as this one. If fourth-density temptations, shall we say, towards distortion of ego, etc., are not successful the fifth-density entity then thinks in terms of the removal of light.”
So, since we would not detune our desire to serve the One Infinite Creator, our negative friend wished to put out our light by whatever means possible. Each of us experienced numerous psychic greetings although Carla certainly bore the brunt of them.
As Don’s worries continued to grow Carla became concerned that her beloved companion, or B.C., as she called him, was suffering too much. So, she told him that she would like to take over his worries and be the strong one. He could be like her, “small and foolish”, instead of having to shoulder all these worries. Carla did not know that this offer had real and dangerous metaphysical implications. Don really didn’t imagine that anything would come of this offer when he off-handedly accepted. But Ra said that since Don and Carla “had been as one since before time” (75.23) that this agreement resulted in a “deleterious energy exchange” between them. Ra described this deleterious energy exchange in 106.13:
Questioner: Could Ra recommend what I should do to improve my state of health?
Ra: I am Ra. We tread most close to the Law of Confusion in this instance but feel the appropriateness of speaking due to potentially fatal results to the instrument. We pause to give the questioner and the scribe a few moments of space/time to aid us by stepping away from those distortions which cause us to invoke the Law of Confusion. This would be helpful.
[A few moments pause.]
I am Ra. We appreciate your attempts. Even confusion on your behalves is helpful. The questioner has, in the recent past, allowed a complete transfer of mental/emotional pain from the questioner to the instrument. The key to this deleterious working was when the instrument said words to the effect of the meaning that it would be the questioner and be the strong one. The questioner could be as the instrument, small and foolish. The questioner, in full ignorance of the firm intent of the instrument and not grasping the possibility of any such energy transfer, agreed.
These two entities have been as one for a timeless period and have manifested this in your space/time. Thusly, the deleterious working occurred. By agreement in care and caution it may be undone. We urge the attention to thanksgiving and harmony on the part of the questioner. We may affirm the previous recommendation in general of the skills and the purity of intention of the one known as Bob, and may note the sympathetic illness which has occurred due to the instrument’s sensitivities.
Lastly, we may note that to the one known as Peter several aspects of the distortions experienced by the questioner, the instrument, and the scribe may be quite apparent and rather simply traduced to lesser distortions.”
The deleterious energy exchange was never undone. What happened to Don, instead, was that his armor of light that allowed him to deal with any situation from a position of wisdom was removed and all outer stimuli came crashing in on him causing him great mental and spiritual pain. This continued to increase for the remaining eight months of his life. On top of that, both Don and Carla were in the midst of initiation at this time. (106.3 and 106.12) Initiation often is difficult all by itself to go through, but now it was added to the deleterious energy exchange and the attention of our negative fifth-density friend.
Don’s great worry about Carla’s spirit being displaced into negative time/space also led to a curious question that he asked me in the fall of 1983. He asked me if I thought it might be possible to make a deal with our negative friend to leave Carla alone. I told him that there would be no way to trust such an entity of negative polarity whose sole aim is to control you. So, I really don’t know how this question and Don’s consideration of it played into his death, but I would not be at all surprised to discover one day that our negative friend was able to use this thought in Don’s mind to help bring him to his end.
The three of us lived in the house in Anchorage, Kentucky for seven months before Don died. During all that time he was in mental, physical, and emotional decline. He lost 70 lbs. and went from 220 down to 150 lbs. He put himself into the psychiatric ward of a local hospital, but his psychiatrist went on vacation for the first three weeks of Don’s stay there. And when he returned from his vacation, he had very little to do with Don since Don didn’t want to talk to him. Eventually Don was able to feign improvement enough to be released. He told us as we were driving home that he was no better, and each day seemed worse than the one before it. Carla feared that his body may eventually fail due to not eating.
One day Don mentioned to me that he felt that his death was immanent, by one means or another. Reflecting on this today, it’s still impossible to know whether Don’s feeling came from his intuition or from his confusion. That day Don told me he was thinking of killing himself because, if he was going to die anyway, he did not want to die in the hospital. Carla and I faced a very difficult choice. Neither of us wished to violate Don’s free will if he was making conscious decisions. However, we were not convinced of Don’s presence of mind. We certainly feared losing him to an unconscious act. We believed in the greater possibility that Don’s mental illness, which was enhanced—or even brought about—by psychic greeting, was taking center stage. We felt it was causing him to believe in the imminence of his death, and in the doctors’ inability to help him, and was leading him to contemplate suicide. We did not think that Don wanted to die; but only that he could not see a way to survive. To us, for better or for worse, Don’s confusion constituted a call to service. Carla and I did our best to apply a love/wisdom balance to Don’s predicament. I signed a mental inquest warrant to have Don taken to the hospital for a seventy-two hour stay to evaluate his situation.
When the police came to serve the warrant, Don put a .38 revolver to his head and told the police to leave. It was then that Carla ran up the stairs to be with him but was pulled back by police officers. At one point during the ensuing standoff Don gathered all the coats in the house and put them on the porch so that the police could keep warm on a cold November night. Even through the agony of his current state of mind he could still feel compassion for the police in the cold night air. After a six hour standoff the police decided the situation needed to end and shot tear gas into the house. This drove Don out into the back yard where he shot himself and died instantly. Carla and I always believed that Don went outside to shoot himself so that Carla could continue to live in the house.
Three days later Carla saw Don in a waking vision, and he told her that everything that had happened had occurred as planned and that all was well. He said that we would not be able to understand how this could be true until we, too, went through death’s door. Within another two days Carla saw Don once again in a waking vision and was given the same information. So now Carla has passed through death’s door and knows the good reasons for which everything happened, and the rest of us are left to ponder yet another mystery on the journey of seeking the truth of the Law of One.
We cannot know whether Don might have survived, had things gone differently. Ra said many times that “There are no mistakes.” That is easier to say than to comprehend, but I believe that is where our faith plays the crucial role in our spiritual development. Each of us in our spiritual journeys will find many times when we cannot fathom how what is happening to us can be without mistake. And yet when we look back upon how our spiritual journey has unfolded, we all can see many places where things did not look well at all but turned out well as we moved further along our paths. In this case, Carla’s life may well have been saved by Don’s sacrifice. Don was an incredibly conscientious, ethical man. He was also quiet and mysterious. I believe that there is much he sensed, knew, or experienced but did not discuss. I believe in his utter positivity and in the fact that all his conscious choices were designed to bring about a positive outcome for others, even at his own expense. Whether or not Don ended his life with presence of mind, his actions may have preserved Carla’s life—whether by ending the Ra contact, or by some other means that allowed Don to accept the interference of our negative friend so that Carla could go on sharing her love and light. After all, they had changed places, and this precipitated Don’s decline.
After Don’s passing, Carla and I felt almost as though we had entered a new incarnation together. Carla’s tireless work in service to the One Infinite Creator would continue for thirty-one more magical years. During that time, Carla and I were able to serve one another in ways that we feel were in fulfilment of our pre-incarnational plans. Carla was finally able to balance her tendency, since childhood, to give of herself without expectation of return, with the ability to accept the love offerings of others, represented by her accepting my care while she was confined to her hospital bed. In this way, she balanced her sense of unworthiness. For my part, I was able to open my heart in unconditional love, thanks to the opportunity to meet Carla’s daily needs. After her passing, and as a result of my experiences with Carla, I felt finally able to love myself. I was later inspired to ask Jesus to come into my heart and have since felt an ability to more fully open my heart to anyone around me. Every day I thank the One Infinite Creator for everything in my life. I do believe that all is well with Don, with the world in which we find ourselves, and with the world within us. All is truly well.
In Praise and Thanksgiving,
Jim McCarty
As I reflect on the outcome of Don’s taking his own life and later appearing to Carla in her two visions to tell her that all had occurred as it was meant to, I remember when Carla was talking to me about how the book The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater that she and Don wrote in 1968, as their first work together, that they knew one of the major characters would have to die at the end of the book. (Don was the character Joshua Starr; Carla was Esmerelda Sweetwater; and I was Theodore Behr, but it would be ten years before I met them.) But they couldn’t see which one it would be, so they just assumed that since Carla was the one with the weaker physical body, and that Don had never been sick a day in his life, that Carla’s character of Esmerelda Sweetwater would be the one that would die at the end of the book. This is what Ra had to say about this situation in 68.14:
When the commitment was made between two of this group to work for the betterment of the planetary sphere, this commitment activated a possibility/probability vortex of some strength. The experience of generating this volume was unusual in that it was visualized as if watching the moving picture.
Time had become available in its present-moment form. The scenario of the volume went smoothly until the ending of the volume. You could not end the volume, and the ending was not visualized as the entire body of the material but was written or authored.
This is due to the action of free will in all of the creation. However, the volume contains a view of significant events, both symbolically and specifically, which you saw under the influence of the magnetic attraction which was released when the commitment was made and full memory of the dedication of this, what you may call, mission restored.
I could be wrong, but maybe this is what Don was telling Carla that all turned out as it was meant to be.
Now I would also like to share Carla’s experiences with channeling that began 50 years ago when Don Elkins was a professor of physics at the University of Louisville, but he had larger questions about life and the universe that led him to study questions unanswered or just unaddressed by science, particularly regarding paranormal activities and UFOs. In 1961, this research led him to meet a fellow named Hal Price who gave Don what later came to be known as The Brown Notebook—a collection of channeled transcripts from a group in Detroit led by Walt Rogers who claimed to be in “telepathic” contact with the beings in the UFOs. After visiting this group in Detroit, Don decided to begin an experiment to reproduce this contact at home.
Toward that end, Don gathered twelve of his physics students from the Speed Scientific School and formed a meditation group to conduct an experiment. He wanted to see if he could transplant the protocols he had picked up from the Detroit Group in order to form a channeling group to receive Confederation contact. One of the students asked if his girlfriend could come along. She turned out to be Carla L. Rueckert.
After some false starts and challenges, along with an in-person visit from Walt Rogers to help the group, the twelve students began to develop as channels, receiving information and inspiration from entities calling themselves members of the Confederation of Planets in Service to the One Creator.
Carla enjoyed these channeled messages which were done in the state of meditation, but she didn’t have any desire at that time to learn how to channel. However, after about twelve years all of the physics students had graduated college and moved out of town, so Don asked Carla if she would be willing to help keep his experiment going by learning how to channel. Carla agreed, and on February 23, 1974, her first channeling was a brief message from those of Hatonn:
Hatonn: I am going to try to use an instrument that is new to channeling. If you will avail yourself.
(Carla channeling)
I am Hatonn. I am with this instrument. I am having much difficulty with this instrument.
Then, on March 5, 1974, Carla wrote a short report of how her second experience channeling Hatonn went because there were no microphones on the day before when the actual channeling session was held.
I am recording this in the form of a report because I did not have the microphone on and so cannot furnish a transcription. I am writing down as much of the message I received as I can remember and noting the experience as a whole for the record. In retrospect, I feel it helped me learn about doing a better job of channeling.
Yesterday, the fourth, we had a very large group for meditation and Don was not here. Nor was R, nor was M. R and M are the now more accomplished of the new channels and Don is the oldest channel in the group and very reliable. There are many people in this group who have been getting conditioning. Eight people were here who have been getting conditioning that I am sure of. They have not yet really developed as channels. They have channeled one message each. And these were very short.
We simply did not have any microphones on. I felt that I was ready to channel, I heard or was aware of certain thoughts that came into my mind and I spoke them. There was, of course, a good deal of doubt in my mind later as to whether the thoughts were mine or whether they were actually channeled; especially, since there was not a more dependable channel there to correct me if I made an error.
What the message was about mainly was simply a greeting to everybody and a statement of how pleased Hatonn and Laitos were to be here. And that they would condition all those in the room who wished it and attempt to use each new instrument that they could use, very briefly. They didn’t use anybody else but me. Although afterwards two other instruments stated that they could’ve spoken, but they were “chicken.” It is very easy to be “chicken” because when you begin to get a thought all you get is the first, which is usually, “I am Hatonn.” And unless you say that aloud, they won’t go on to the next bit, unless you say it to yourself. Which is how I got up the courage in the first place, because I said it to myself and got about the first paragraph and I realized that I was going to get a message.
So, today, there was no one here for the first time in a long time and my meditation was by myself and I had been thinking to myself all day and as many times, as I believed in other people’s channeling, I did have the predictable problem very much of self-doubt and so when I sat down and meditated and I was meditating I thought to myself, “Hatonn, if it really is an occurrence, I want conditioning now,” and I began getting conditioning and when my jaw finally opened and that unmistakable “I,” I said it. And sure enough, I got a thought and it led to another one and it led to another one, so I went on and channeled Hatonn to myself. And it was short. It said, “I am Hatonn. I am very privileged to be with you. I am pleased to see that you are meditating. I will recommend to you that you relax more because if you wish to become a channel and if you wish us to direct you there is no way for us to do that if you are misdirecting yourself.”
There was a pause after for the thought to sink in and then he just said, “I leave you in the love and the light of the infinite Creator. I am Hatonn.” So, I am now able to do it, and I had a sense of it actually being over. I could feel that the contact had lifted, and I wanted to ask a question so I said, “Hatonn, can I ask a question?” and immediately I could feel that there was presence as though a computer had come on and was kicking over or something and I said, “How can I meditate better?” And I got the thought, “Think of nothing. You are thinking of something.”
End of report.
After developing a close relationship, Don moved in with Carla in 1968 to consciously dedicate their lives to their mission as companions and research associates. In 1970 they formed L/L Research. (Named “the L/L Company” for its first several years.)
Their research continued alongside the ongoing channeling experiment until 1974 when all of the former students who had participated in the experiment had gone their separate ways. Though Carla had not channeled up to that point, Don requested that she take up the art so that the experiment could continue. Carla took to channeling naturally. Carla loved and lived to be of service-to-others as an instrument for the Confederation’s words. She continued in this service without interruption up until 2011 when a major spinal fusion surgery brought it to a halt. Her last channeling was on April 2, 2011, when she channeled the answer to the question: “Q’uo, please tell us something about the seeking and the enlightenment of Gautama Siddhartha. Aka, the Buddha. What does this story tell us about spiritual enlightenment?” You can read the response from Q’uo that Carla channeled by using the search function on our website and using the first sentence of the question.
Of course, you all are well aware that Carla was the instrument for those of Ra for 106 sessions which focused on the Law of One and produced the two volumes of The Ra Contact: Teaching the Law of One. This channeling was done in trance where Carla would leave her body and be with those of Ra in the inner planes of Earth so that they could use her body from a distance to respond to Don’s questions. All of the rest of the channeling that she did was conscious channeling.
Carla also channeled her guidance system which she called the Holy Spirit 470 times, from 1987 through 1989, as a way of perfecting the channeling process for herself. Her first thoughts for channeling any spiritual source of information was to ask anyone attending a channeling session to ask only spiritually oriented questions and to avoid any fear-based questions and any questions focused on worldly advice. She created a process of preparing herself to channel by tuning her consciousness by singing sacred music, praying and meditating in silence. She also used protective techniques such as calling on the archangels, visualizing protection for her energy body and counting down from her age to zero to focus her attention. Then she would ask for the highest and best contact of the Christ consciousness, or the Holy Spirit, that she could channel in a stable manner. When she was ready to begin the channeling process, she would challenge any source that wished to channel through her asking them if they could say that Jesus is Lord since she was a mystical Christian, and she would offer this challenge three times. She and I chose 366 of these channelings to eventually become the book, A Book of Days: Channelings from the Holy Spirit. I have always felt that these channelings from the Holy Spirit are the most inspiring channelings I have ever read as they have the concepts of Love and Light in almost every sentence.
When you look at all of these channeling experiences that she had, along with over 1600 sessions with those of Q’uo, and the 106 Sessions with those of Ra, I cannot imagine a more gifted channel that wanted to be of service to the one infinite Creator and to every person who might be interested in traveling their spiritual journey. It was my great honor to be a part of her channeling gift to the world; to have known her for 35 years; and to have been married to her for 28 years. Thank you, Carla, for a beautiful and inspiring life given in service to others, to Jesus, and to the one infinite Creator.
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