A Teacher
Don Elkins
The questioner who structured the Ra contact as systematic inquiry
The transmission
Donald Tully Elkins was an American physicist, engineer, and paranormal researcher born on February 27, 1930, in Louisville, Kentucky. He held degrees in mechanical and general engineering, founded and headed the University of Alaska’s mechanical engineering department in 1960-61, and was a professor of physics and engineering at the University of Louisville for roughly twelve years.
He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and in 1965 left tenured academia to become a commercial airline pilot, eventually a Boeing 727 captain, in order to devote himself more fully to UFO and consciousness research.
Elkins began his investigative work in the 1950s and formally co-founded L/L Research with Carla Rueckert in 1970. He is best remembered as the questioner in the Ra contact (1981-1984): while Rueckert served as the trance instrument and Jim McCarty transcribed, Elkins posed the more than 2,300 carefully framed questions across 106 sessions that became the five-volume Law of One.
His scientific temperament shaped the contact’s methodical, interrogative character. Elkins died on November 7, 1984; his death is generally reported as suicide, attributed in part to personal strain near the end of his life.
As with all channeled material, the Ra sessions are presented here as a sincere documented experiment, not as verified fact.
What they gave
Architect of the Ra inquiry: Framed the Law of One as a disciplined question-and-answer investigation rather than free-form revelation, giving the material its systematic structure.
- Bridging science and the paranormal: Brought a physicist-engineer’s rigor and skepticism to channeling and UFO research.
- Co-founder of L/L Research: Built, with Rueckert, the organizational vehicle that produced and preserved the Ra Material.
- Decades of contactee research: Conducted years of comparative study into UFO contact and channeling that culminated in the Ra sessions.
In their words
Our research group uses what I prefer to call “tuned trance telepathy” to communicate with an extraterrestrial race called Ra.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: UFO and contactee research of the 1950s-60s; the spiritualist and channeling tradition; his training as a physicist and engineer.
- Influenced: Carla L. Rueckert; Jim McCarty; the Law of One / “Ra material” community.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- The Law of One (The Ra Material)1984-1998
- Secrets of the UFO1976