Ra Material

The Ra Material, a.k.a. The Law of One, is channeled communication with a '6th density social memory complex' calling itself Ra, who claims to earlier have been an ancient astronaut in the times of Ancient Egypt. Channeled through the medium Carla L. Rueckert in trance, the curious exchange was with UFOlogist, pilot, engineer, and physicist Don Elkins, together with Jim McCarthy   who transcribed the recorded discussions. Begun in 1981, the Ra channeling endeavor ended in 1984 with Don Elkin's suicide, though the remainder of the trio, with others over the years, have continued to channel their other invisible alien friends, those of 4th and 5th 'density'. Their organization is called L/L Research, 'love/light' in their channeled terms.

The later books of the Ra Material are called The Law of One. The whole material has the form of 106 transcribed sessions of questions and answers between 'Ra' speaking through Rueckert, and Elkins asking questions. The answers were delivered in a slow, even-paced monotone manner, with a very unusual, complex, and somewhat pedantic pattern of word usage.

To their credit, L/L Research – while not exactly champions of the scientific method – distance themselves from the conspiracism and rampant grifting in much of the modern New Age world, including on the part of those who draw upon their work such as David Wilcock. Their view is that conspiracism is, as it shatters common understanding and divides people.

Background and other works
Don Elkins took interest in channeling in 1961, after an acquaintance gave him a book with the channeled messages of a Detroit contactee group led by Walt Rogers. Experimenting together with some of his students, and others including Carla L. Rueckert whom he met that way, they eventually got similar 'love and light'-focused channeling going. In 1970, Elkins and Rueckert formed L/L Research – 'love/light', in their own channeled New Age terms – concerned with their overall project, publishing their books, and outliving both of them. Their 1980s Ra channeling was significantly more original than the rest of their channeled works before, during, and afterwards.

Indeed, the New Age world contains many basically similar works, which mainly focus on a few themes and repeat variations on cliché memes, and include instructions for focusing the mind to channel more of the same. In that sense, there's clearly a replicable phenomenon, though views on its basic nature differ a whole lot between skeptics and believers. Interestingly enough, Don Elkins took note of the repetitive qualities of a lot of the more conventional 'love and light' channeling and asked 'Ra' about it, receiving an answer including that many of those answers are computer-automated by the alien side, so as to reserve their time and attention for more worthwhile conversation.

During the 1970s, Elkins and Rueckert also each had a brief career making grade-Z movies, including The Hidan of Maukbeiangjow, a.k.a., Invasion of the Girl Snatchers (1973) and The Force Beyond (1977) about UFOs.

Pyramid-building and other Egyptian matters
Ra claims to be 'congruent' with the Ra of the Ancient Egyptians. Naively helping Egyptian civilization out by sharing crystal healing 'technology', and with the building of the Giza pyramids, they gave up on helping humans and left after seeing how those at the top of the human societal ladder hogged all the fruits of those efforts. But said disillusionment did not come so easily – only after the 1,500 years between the construction of the first and last of the pyramids had passed, or longer – beginning with Ra's initial forming by thought of the Great Pyramid around 4,000 BCE, the sudden appearance of which was a really big surprise to the Egyptians, according to Ra.

When first appearing to the Egyptians in the skies, the Egyptians were more in tune with their idea of Horus which Ra took as also representing them. Traveling by thought from Venus, Ra's bell-shaped craft suddenly came into the sky over Egypt once around 16,000 BCE, and again around 9,000 BCE. The second time, those of Ra went for a walk among the Egyptians, but it wasn't a success; they looked too different – tall, delicate, and golden – to be able to get across their brotherly "we are your other-selves" philosophy. Still, they stuck around long enough to get their pyramid-building done. Exactly how long is not really clear, though, because Ra has difficulty getting numbers through the medium, changing the time estimates thousands of years from time to time. Supposedly, Ra got to really thinking about how best to build pyramids around 6,500 BCE, then first got going with the Great Pyramid around 4,000 BCE.

Ra claims to have inspired the pharaoh Akhenaten, giving rise to his short-lived monotheistic teaching, which was supposedly based on an understanding of the 'Law of One' which Ra is trying to convey.

Lost civilizations
The Ra channeling includes ideas of several lost civilizations, including Atlantis, Lemuria, and also that of a people on a claimed lost planet between Mars and Jupiter. The latter is said to have had an advanced civilization before being blown up fairly recently, 705,000 years ago. The story of such a planet isn't reconcilable with scientific findings about the Solar System, but the underlying basic picture regarding planetary formation, life, etc. was less clear back in the 1980s.

Maldek
Maldek was supposedly a planet with not only a biosphere, but one in which life started more easily than on Earth. Maldek is said to have had a species forming a civilization somewhat like the mythical Atlantis on Earth – or versions of that story where the civilization recklessly and selfishly uses great technology and ends up destroying itself. Maldek is claimed to have been destroyed through nuclear war among its high-technological inhabitants, causing great spiritual trauma. Over 2 billion souls from Maldek have supposedly reincarnated on Earth.

Ideas about Maldek can also be found in theosophical writing and the work of Edgar Cayce, and is a moderately well-known theme in other channeled and New Age works. The Aetherius Society also came up with their version in 1960.

The more realistic explanations for the destruction of such a planet involve collisions or interactions with other large objects in space – even though this is not the current accepted explanation for the formation of the asteroid belt. By contrast, the most popular versions of the Maldek story attribute the destruction to nuclear war in one way or another – which is wildly implausible, because nuclear weapons are far too weak. Though very well-capable of harming the biosphere of Earth and causing a mass-extinction event, even if all the uranium on Earth were to be gathered and used to produce nuclear arms, and they were all used at once, they wouldn't be able to rip the Earth to shreds, or even do that to the Moon. Stories in which planets explode and turn into asteroid belts through the use of nuclear weapons live on in fiction despite not agreeing with physics, perhaps because people just assume that nukes are all-powerful.

The Cassiopaean channeling borrows the theme from the Ra channeling, but renames the planet to Kantek and gives a different time-frame and explanation for its destruction.

Spiritual evolution
A large part of the Ra channeling concerns spiritual evolution, with a panpsychic framework and grading of life on a scale of density – the density of something, the One thing, supposedly. Basically, life begins at a 1D elemental level, then develops into 2D plants and animals, then 3D humans and similar, then 4D hyper-dimensional beings with more holistic understanding, then 5D magical mental angels of light or darkness with a different relationship to space and time, then 6D social memory complexes like that of Ra characterized by a greater cosmic unity, and finally a more ultimate 7D gateway to a unity which cannot be described so much more in detail. Supposedly it all then begins again above 7D, with an endless series of octaves, the details beyond even Ra's knowledge.

Supposedly, densities 4 through 6 are there, but choose to be invisible to lower-density beings almost all of the time, leaving human observers examining the Universe to only see densities 1 through 3; densities 4 through 6 are basically the source of paranormal and other extraordinary influence, for good and ill.

A millennialism of sorts also enters, with the idea that Earth goes through cycles, at the end of which those who are ready and have spiritually grown up are 'harvested' from one density to the next – the minority of spiritually prepared Earthlings going on to live in a 4D world, while others need to repeat their learning process. Early Ra channeling placed this 'harvest' somewhere around 2011, 30 years after the Ra channeling began.

Polarity
The New Age ideas of service to others (STO, positive or 'good' polarity) vs. service to self (STS, negative or 'evil' polarity) have spread to various other works after first appearing in the Ra Material. (The framework of densities is less popular; New Age teachings usually use other ideas of spiritual 'dimensions' and levels.) These are Ra's version of a metaphysical polarity, and a vaguely sciencey-sounding description of how good and evil works, at the core of Ra's teaching – though Ra avoids conventional moralizing in this area. Explaining in broad terms and through some claimed historical examples how it all supposedly works, Ra also uses the framework of chakras to elaborate on the various 'rays' which positive and negative subtle energy dynamics can be divided into.

Don Elkins had read the 1882 book Oahspe, and the Ra questions and answers show that the STO vs. STS concept builds on ideas from that earlier work. A central claim is that people in this world are mainly 'for self' (self-serving) and that it is an achievement to be more than 50% 'for others', a change in one's being that supposedly allows moving to the next density (see ). That is, for those who strive to become nicer. Those who instead work to 'move up a level' to gain power at the cost of others as negative beings, will instead need to become more than 95% purely self-serving, which is said to be an equally difficult achievement.

Fairly straightforwardly, the light side is one of acceptance, unity with all, openheartedness, and boundless love, while the dark side is one of judgment, separation from all else, purely one-sided self-love, and control above all. The development of such tendencies are said to take off in 3D, reaching superhuman purity at higher density levels, and development beyond 3D being a matter of growing further through choosing and following one or the other path. Ultimately, the 'all is one' part of the cosmology implies that the path which strives toward unity, the positive, is only one that remains viable to the end, those on the negative path eventually needing to jump between the paths when their pursuit of separation is no longer possible.

Ethically, Ra's formulation makes goodness almost entirely about intent rather than about consequences, the idea being that love truly is the answer. This is fairly common among the more hippie-flavored New Age philosophies; the Ra channeling however lightly explores the possibly self-destructive consequences of absurd extremes of this philosophy, like meeting brutal imperialist 'negativity' (violence and slavery) with passive acceptance – suggesting that sometimes, defense rather than acceptance may be for the better in looking at the bigger picture, even though in the short term it is not as 'purely positive'. Supposedly, beings in density 5 also have a more cool-headed and calculating approach to goodness, born of wizening up through very long experience.

This philosophy differs from that in the Cassiopaea channeling which borrows the STO vs. STS terminology, but redefines the terms, according to an idea that knowledge and honoring of reality, instead of preferring and choosing a falsification of reality (which it describes as inherently self-absorbed), is what's positive in both spirit and results. That seems like a fair point – and after all, separating in mind from what reality beyond the self is really like doesn't seem to go along with seeking unity with all. However, said 'Cassiopaean' teaching in turn redefines reality in problematic ways; like other conspirituality teachings, it contains things that make it very difficult to actually honor reality, like imaginary omnipresent alien conspiracies and impending doomsdays. Caveat emptor.

Wanderers
A big theme is that of wanderers, reincarnated beings whose souls have grown beyond 3D but who incarnate in 3D on Earth in order to 'lighten up the planetary vibration' or otherwise influence life on Earth. This is the Ra version of starseed, and a very prominent part of the community around the Ra or Law of One teaching. The original L/L Research trio who produced it believed that they were 'wanderers' – and so do most people in the associated online community, apparently; at any rate, the official L/L Research discussion forums basically style themselves as places by and for wanderers, where those who join can post their "wanderer's story".

Most wanderers are supposed to be super-positive beings deep down, though not necessarily all. However, they may react against the 'vibrations' of Earth by developing personality disorders, along with physical ailments. The majority of wanderers are said to be 6th density wanderers, approaching 65 million in the early 1980s and maybe increasing thereafter, most of which play a passive role in the world, simply brightening its 'vibration' by being there, though some 'remember' or become conscious of their nature.

Wanderers are prime targets for the Orion higher-density adversarial forces, crusaders working for a brutal 4th density empire, and who are always bent on trying to make spiritual inroads by fostering elitism and ultimately imperialism among the people on Earth. Of course, there's also positive invisible friends who may help out spiritually, or at least aid those who stay 'in tune'. At best, when those Orion crusaders succeed in 'de-tuning' some psychic or prophet, they merely make that person go nuts with visions of impending doom.

Harvest
The 'harvest' is a time when beings are said to graduate from one density to the next, having spiritually grown so as to be ready to move on to a new phase of existence. This idea is basically millennialist, the early Ra channeling placing a new age for the spiritually evolved somewhere around 2011, which just so happens to be 30 years after the first Ra channeling session. Such Earthlings go on to a life in a 4D world while others need to repeat their 3D learning process, the growth and 'harvest' of the ready being a cyclical process taking place on large time scales. Only a minority is said to be thus prepared, and most of them will become 4D STO while some become 4D STS. Some Earth changes are expected during a time of transition, attributed to the disharmony, friction, and entropy that comes with a mixed-up environment with both positively and negatively polarized beings.

"Questioner: Am I to understand that the harvest will occur in the year 2011, or will it be spread?

Ra: I am Ra. This is an approximation. We have stated we have difficulty with your time/space. This is an appropriate probable/possible time/space nexus for harvest. Those who are not in incarnation at this time will be included in the harvest."

Naturally, when the 2012 ascension or apocalypse ideas spread throughout the New Age world, the community around the Law of One teaching latched on to that, and believed everything would change then. (It didn't.) While that crowd had a more optimistic view of what was to come than the gloomy conspiracists in other parts of the New Age world, the latter sometimes took issue with Ra and the 'harvest', finding both to be a little too spooky for their Illuminati-scrutinizing tastes. Opposing New Age ideas included the idea that the 'harvest' is an alien mass-killing of Earthlings somewhat like in the 2015 movie  by the Wachowskis, or at least a trap by malevolent spiritual forces.

Like the New Age world in general, the people interested in the Ra teaching kept going as usual after 2012 came and went, some of them opting to believe in newer predictions making the rounds in the New Age world, while others let go of that and just focused on the other parts of the teaching.

Esotericism and occult practices
The trio behind the Ra Material had broader interests in Western esotericism and the occult, and parts of the material deal with such topics. They also surrounded the channeling sessions with magic ritual, eventually combining the use of their own original procedure and an arrangement of symbolic items with the additional use of the from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, when they saw the need for further spiritual protection.

In the material, much of life, the universe, and everything is viewed as related to "archetypical mind", where each part of the universe has its local sub-logos and variation on archetypical dynamics. Study of structured esoteric teachings dealing with archetypes is recommended by Ra, specifically astrology, Kabbalah, and/or Tarot. Tarot seems to have been more of a focus – maybe unsurprising given the long pseudohistorical tradition of linking it to Ancient Egypt – and Ra even claims that the "Ancient Egypt" Tarot of C.C. Zain which the group had acquired is truly an above-95% accurate representation of what can be found on the walls of the Great Pyramid. For copyright reasons, a different but pretty similar Egyptian Tarot was included in Law of One volume IV instead. Don Elkins also discussed making his own Egyptian Tarot variation in a Ra channeling session.

Alternative physics
Don Elkins was interested in the physics of Dewey Larson, believing it may be a viable approach to a Unified Field Theory. As a UFOlogist, he was looking to explain how alien UFOs may be capable of the extraordinary maneuvering and other abilities that were claimed – and Larson's physics made it easy to arrive at such sci-fi capabilities. However, it has turned out to not quite allow for the more mundane capabilities of matter, energy, and the things built using it which are used in more 'boring' and down-to-Earth experiments.

Some of the Ra channeling involves questions and answers about Larson's concepts, which are also metaphorically connected to the 'all is energy' New Age metaphysics.

Larson's physics also appear to have inspired the 'space/time' and 'time/space' duality part of the cosmology, where the former of those things is basically spacetime as we experience it and the latter is a metaphysical flip-side to that existence in which souls review and plan their business during incarnations.