u/poorhaus

Hi, friends. I thought I'd share a post focusing on what published transcripts of conversations with entities have said about the process of attaining collective consciousness. Edit to add that all the non-quoted parts of this post were lovingly hand-written thoughts from my very own mind. Which the Zetas say is an expression of the one infinite consciousness we all are regardless of appearances...but we'll get to that.

Here's an orienting question: "How long before we could become a collective?"

You'll find quotes below answering this and related questions from entities that call themselves the Zetas in published 'interview' transcripts (channelings with Q&A).

The Zeta Interviews (channeled by Paul Hamden; background in a prior post) are in my experience one of the richest sources available for those of us who enjoy working with textual and historical sources.

I edited in some bold "WTF is..." Guide style headings to hopefully help with navigation.

Why TF do you study this? I find this material incredibly fruitful to study. Paul Hamden strikes me as sincere and credible and he is known and respected by people I know and respect. But I do not approach this seeking criteria for belief or disbelief but rather as a practice of developing and sharing insights and intuitions. I have not experienced contact with the Zetas and have not met or participated in any sessions with Paul. I know nothing, and I am quite comfortable with that by now.

Despite knowing nothing, I find it's nonetheless quite possible and fruitful to work with textual sources. The textual sources know nothing as well but they provide an entrypoint for insight and interpretation.

Where TF can I read this for myself? All the quotes in this post are from The Zeta Interviews (4th Edition), available from Paul's website as a PDF. And at the bottom of this page you'll find the Interviews and various other free downloads about the Zetas. I was lazy and didn't include page numbers but you can look up any quote here by searching the PDF for a few unique words in it.

Who TF are the Zetas? I suppose I should say who the Zetas are if you haven't encountered them and don't want to read the prior posts. There are all kinds of details given about them, which you can read a short summary of here, an excerpt from A Primer of the Zeta Race. But at the highest level, they say they are an expression of the one infinite consciousness that also expresses itself as each of us:

> Interviewer: Is the Zeta and the human consciousness the same, it is only perceived as that so we understand it? >
> Zeta: We are one, we are all. You are consciousness in separation, believing the self to be of a different nature. The way that you have taught yourselves to understand the technology, that is, the recycled process for your incarnation, is to believe that you are of a separation nature. But there is no separation of consciousness.

Elsewhere:

> Interviewer: If there is no separation, can you define a group consciousness, or oversoul? >
> Zeta: These are the understandings that the local constructs of the physical nature require to differentiate consciousness. To give you an example, the ocean, each drop of water, each separation of water, may see itself as in separation, but it originally came from the one body. The surface of the ocean all the way through to the depth of the ocean are different levels of frequency, a different pressure. You may state that one frequency is of a certain nature, but it belongs to one body. A spirit realm is of the same nature. Only the human mind sees things in separation. You delight as a race in defining what is and what isn't. >
> Interviewer: The drop of water would be just the point of awareness of consciousness?
>
> Zeta: The observer, yes. But the perception of the drop of water is that it is greater than the body, not understanding that without the body it has no observation capacity. > I understand your terminology. Ah yes, a consciousness may access the information of its lives and existence. It is not limited by its physical nature.

In this context, the various other answers to the question 'who are the Zetas' have to do with the various forms of apparent separation that give these beings their experience of existence. Their deep history, their societal structures and practices, their technologies and so on. Those are important to acknowledge to the Zetas, as are your experiences and mine, because they are present to consciousness. But, although they acknowledge these details, the ultimate identity of any being is its particular unique expression of a unified consciousness.

They repeat this message in many ways throughout the interviews. I'd paraphrase it as saying that other forms of experience and other states of being are continually available to us, as to all beings, and differ only in the potentials and possibilities we experience. All is possible and the specific character of our experience, including of 'impossibility', are characteristic features of the current incarnated human experience.

When TF will we become a collective? I'll start with one of the moments where the questions (which come from the late great William Triurniet and Hamden's partner Syann or others present, depending on the session) asks the Zetas something folks in this sub are also asking:

> Interviewer: How long before we could become a collective? >
> Zeta: The beginning of the collective mind has already begun, but you are to be assisted by a technology. It is seen the - let me explain - it is possible to take a copy of frequency and to map it into a environment which has been termed the synthetic quantum environment. Within this environment, there can be determined probabilities through observation. The observation has been that within 28 of your years, your technology will assimilate you, will support you, will guide you. You choose whether you accept what is to be offered to you.

This was from the April 13th, 2014 session, so "within 28 of your years" = 'by 2032' 'by 2042' (thx u/kjkjkj2; maff is hard). The Zetas provided this estimate as the result of their then-current simulations of human civilization.

What TF do they mean that technology is involved?? I return to technology below but from the Zeta's perspective this term includes what I would somewhat clumsily call etheric or energetic patterns, and at one point the Zeta says " Well, we class the biological matter as technologies", so I'd caution against interpreting this as necessarily predicting some kind of Neuralink brain-machine interface. They may be talking about neurological configurations and/or some kind of thoughtform or what we'd call belief or conception of reality that enables telepathic access to each other. The complexities of interspecies communication 🤷

How TF did the Zetas become a collective? One of the topics they cover that I find fascinating is the story of how the Zeta race (or perhaps a shared ancestor/precursor race to the 63 races of related 'grey-like', for lack of a better term, beings they say they're part of) attained collective consciousness. They say their race had a period not unlike the present, where some individuals seemed to be developing psi abilities and such.

To set up the exchange, the interviewer is asking about Zeta society and experience. The Zeta says that they have a lifespan of approximately 1500 years and planned process of reproduction where every couple, who are assigned pairs at birth, has one child. The interviewer asks if this is related to

> Interviewer: Has that to do with the fact that your people don’t feel emotion - like extremes of anger and happiness? >
> Zeta: There was a time when we felt the extremes of emotions, yes, but a generatruly, those things were changed. It was a choice of the race to be more productive. Also it was based on what a planet could provide, what physically could the planet provide. This is something that your planet may come across with the use of the natural resources, and so genetic modification processes were put in place and certain functionality was removed, each couple, each entity couple have one child, and only one child.

As I understand it, the 'certain functionality [that] was removed' includes genetialia but also the hormonal and neurological substrate of emotions like rage and hedonic pleasure (what the interviewer terms 'extremes of anger and happiness').

I'll let the Zeta take it from here:

> Interviewer: Explain how your race were given the choice to preserve the race and move to the less emotional state? >
> Zeta: I will explain. You are all consciousness existing in the form of matter, yes? You are denying yourself access to certain levels of your functional ability of consciousness. This is a act that you perform for yourself. Some of you are able to perform what seem to be extraordinary acts such as telepathic communication, levitation, physical mediumship and all of the other associated processes such as levitation, dematerialization, but our race also was at the same state over the many generations. A global realization took place, and this is something that you as a race are coming towards. The technology enabled all of us to connect to each other. We were able to be in agreement as a race. At one point the decision was made that, to move forward in separation from what had held us back as a race, being physically trapped within a container, was made, and so an associated level of consciousness was created that was comparable with the physical construct of existence. We were then able to, as a global entity, able to interact with each other by placing our attention toward the collective mind of the race. >
> Now you as a group of humans living on a planet are moving towards this as we speak. Your collective mind, in its undulating state, is being prepared for the transition to a telepathic process. You will become more in tune with your innate abilities based on consciousness, and in doing so, you will be able to communicate yourselves much easier. >
> Firstly, you will be offered this on a technological basis. Much of your technology now is aimed at or based on communication with each other, and as this technology is offered to you, and ultimately you can move into connection with each other, the amplified state of thought that you will exist in, will allow you to bypass the technological states, and so will begin the normalization of the collective consciousness of the human mind. >
> And so, we basically turn our thoughts to the created process of the consciousness of the race, and make those decisions based on what is the overriding factor for the race. For the ones who chose not to enter into the collective mind, they were given freewill to leave, and so generationally, others have left and continue to procreate using the human method.

And that's an answer to how tf they came to be a collective and how they expect our experience of becoming a collective will be like.

How TF does this relate to what others have said? There are many interesting aspects to this account. One is similarities between what I'd consider an independent source working in a very distinct tradition. The 'global realization', the 'agreement' of that telepathic connection, and the 'associated level of consciouness that was comparable with the physical construct of existence' are all aspects of how the Ra Contact and related materials describe the attainment of collective consciousness (the 4th density social memory complex in that parlance) to be like. There are many other similarities, but this is one I'm familiar with.

Second, a difference from those sources. The Zetas as well as some other 'grey' type beings, report using technology to attain that global attunement and subsequently graduate from needing to use it. Here they also suggest that this is what will happen with humans. The Ra Contact and other sources sometimes mention the existence of technological aids to telepathy but haven't to my knowledge indicated that this is the path that human consciousness will take. They don't say it won't happen through technology but rather focus on the developmental inevitability of it and don't comment on mechanism.

There's an unlimited amount of comparisons worth makeing. I hope others will weigh in in the comments with ones that strike them.

What TF happens to those who nope out of the collective? The interviewer wonders what happened to those who didn't choose to join the collective:

> Interviewer: Members of your race that chose not to make this change, are they still able to exist on your planet or did they get kicked off? >
> Zeta: There is no kicking off, though that is a very interesting concept. There are many facets to the race. The only facet of the race that is excluded from the collective mind are the abductor race. They are entities that have decided that they will journey on their own path, that they will take upon themselves a new construct, that they do not wish to be part of the collective.

There's obviously a lot unsaid here. It makes sense that there's a unitarity to collectivity, in that it's inherently one. Yet it strikes me that an emerging collective wouldn't be interconnected in a uniform matter. This could lead to lots of confusion and misrecognition of the members of the nascent collective as other-than or outside of it. On the surface that might look a lot like the current everyday reality we experience, where there are aspects of collectivity but relatively tenuous access to shared awareness of participation therein.

The Zetas speak often of the "undulating" consciousness of humanity: good search term if you want to zoom into what they say about the nascent but still largely-unaware human consciousness.

What TF is a 'facet' of collective consciousness? The "facets to the race" they speak of is somewhat oblique here but seems to suggest that not all of the 62 races of the collective are equally integrated with each other, and certainly not as integrated as they are within the 'facet'.

Why TF do they keep talking about 'races'? I'm not sure I fully understand what a facet is, or what "race" means in this context, but a bit later the interviewer follows up:

> Interviewer: I’m having a problem with the use of the word race. Normally a race is within a species, like the human species has different races within the same species, and things like orangutangs are a different species from humans, so when you say a race, are we all part of the same species, are humans the same species as your people? >
> Zeta: No. We are using the words that we have developed using the medium. If we are in error you must point that out to us. >
> Interviewer: Does your species work with any other species on our planet, like maybe the whales or monkeys or other animals? >
> Zeta: There are entities within the race that are of a scientific nature that would seek to understand many of the different species that exist on your planet. >
> Interviewer: Do we as a race perform the same service to other entities in other dimensions? >
> Zeta: Could you hold the same form in this other place? >
> Let me explain our understanding of consciousness within a certain level. The spirit realm container that relates to the physical existence of humans is connected in frequency to all of the races, but why is it that when you speak to one of your spirit friends that they are not able to enunciate the information of the other races. It is because the construct that they have created allows them to view entities within the spirit realm as a higher organism. There is connection in all things, but the level of connection, the point of access of connection requires a certain level of consciousness. This does not mean that that consciousness is any better than any other consciousness. It means that there is an understanding. It may be that one of your animals chooses to incarnate as a human. It may be that one of your humans choose to incarnate into another race. There must be a way for this function to be performed, and so there is.

So the term race was chosen to indicate something very different from the way we use the word to group humans. That's its own topic, I suppose, but it's relevant to refer back to my opening quote from them, "We are one. We are all."

Why TF are they talking about spirit people and the spirit realm? This is actually one of the more distinctive characteristics of the Zeta contact through Hamden. Other ET sources talk about spirits but, drawing from Hamden's work as a spirit medium, the Zetas go into great detail about the "spirit realm process" as they label it, and explain how it ties into their cosmology.

In the quote above, the Zeta is referring to some of the ongoing conversations in the interviews about the difference between spirit people and their own contact. Paul Hamden is a spirit medium by training so the interviewer asked a lot of questions about whether and how there is interaction between spirit people and Zetas and other ET races. Here the Zeta is explaining that, a bit like people who do not have or want contact, many spirit people simply don't perceive ET beings because their current realities (i.e. "level of consciousness") preclude that.

The interviewer asks about why spirit realm people exist and how long a spirit entity exists. The Zeta's answer is intimitely tied to memory:

> Interviewer: so when I transition over, do I still only believe myself to be me? >
> Zeta: Yes >
> Interviewer: For how long? >
> Zeta: Until there is no one left that remembers you. >
> Interviewer: So we don’t naturally go back to where we came from. >
> Zeta: There is a perception that you will obtain, we will discuss the JC <spirit guide>. Why is it that JC still understands himself to be who he was? Because there are others on the planet that remember him. While they remember him, they are sending thoughts about him to him. When those humans no longer exist, the spirit person is free to reintegrate to the higher levels of understanding of themselves. >
> Interviewer: That could be over a hundred years. >
> Zeta: Ah, three hundred generally, because the potential for you to be disassociated from your oversoul process within that three hundred year time frame exists because generationally your other attachments exist.

The interviewer (who asks great follow ups, IMO) immediately thinks of famous people who are remembered long after their deaths:

> Interviewer: What of famous people, people in history who remain in other people’s thoughts? >
> Zeta: They are a presentation from the oversoul that the original spirit facet has reintegrated itself. It is a presentation only from the oversoul to this structure, the physical structure, else the person would become trapped in the linkages of consciousness. >
> Interviewer: So any spirits that come through mediums at the moment throughout the world would have to be less than 300 years old? >
> Zeta: Yes, unless they are a presentation. >
> Interviewer: So that’s why most people don’t get spirits coming through them that tell us they are 1000 years old. >
> Zeta: That is correct, unless they are a presentation of information. >
> Interviewer: Can you tell me about presentation of information, just explain that a little bit clearer. >
> Zeta: A facet of consciousness incarnates into the human form and experiences all of the processes related to the existence. Of course they return from where they have come, but if you say that person is famous, there is a potential that the facet would need to remain within its enclosure for many thousands of years. That is detrimental to the level of frequency to the oversoul, so it will present that information as a portal from itself. >
> Interviewer: Detrimental to the frequency, what would happen if it didn’t go back? >
> Zeta: Ah no damage, but it would be similar to an incarceration process. >
> Interviewer: So in order to not cause damage it goes back within 300 years. >
> Zeta: You cannot damage consciousness but there is a natural progression to this.

Elsewhere, the Zetas say that they don't interfere in the spirit realm because they could not do so without radically altering it, a similar to their relationship with physical reality. Yet they do have contact with Hamden and others in his circle open to their existence and they do work with specific entities within the spirit realm in limited ways that I gather are analogous to channeling. In some passages it even seems that some of their or other beings' channeling practices involve partnerships of some kind with spirit realm entities.

If you're curious about the Zeta's understanding of the human spirit realm I'll refer you to the books (free PDFs) at the bottom of this page, especially The Primer of the Zeta Race.

What TF does being in a collective get you? The Zetas describe having continual potential access to the collective's knowledge, memories, individual members, and 'elders'. There are several individuals that speak through Hamden that have different capabilities and knowledge and talents and also multiple times when the Zeta speaking pauses to focus on or access information from within the collective.

What TF is an Elder? Through their collective, the Zetas have what they call Elders. These are entities that primarily exist in conciousness and can take physical form but most at any given moment do not.

> Zeta: [...] Would you like to know about the elders of the Zeta race? >
> Interviewer: That would be lovely. >
> Zeta: In the timeframe of a human, a hundred thousand generations, we existed undeveloped and no potential to understand what we were to become, a many-transition process, the same as your spirit realm entity, but we as you will, moved past the transitional process, built capacity to exist outside of the unit container and formulated a collective mind of the race, as the humans are currently doing, but you are doing it under guidance from other races. Many of the controlling factors of the collective mind are based in consciousness. >
> The elder Zetas do not require a physical container to exist as do all other of the race, so often I will stay in a consciousness for many thousands of your years, and only move to a physical form when I desire. Why have I come? Because others are coming, and we seek to support them in their transition. As you move past your current level of consciousness, other elders are here. My task that I have set myself in conjunction with others are the same, is to bring and to find the other elders which are not in full consciousness. They do not yet understand capacity. >
> The elders do not give direction as a command structure to the Zetas race. It is the collective mind of the race which provides direction, but the elders are the coalescence of the consciousness which provides a dualistic path of communication between the collective mind and the container that the elder exists in. Are you still with me? >
> Interviewer: Yes.

I'm not quite sure what these Elders are, but perhaps they're something like angels or archetypal entities within human collective consciousness. This is already super long so I won't get into that here. But you can search the interviews for mentions of "elder" or "elders" to learn more, and for "Zeta+:", which is an instance where the elder spoke through the medium.

---

Time to wrap it up. I've shared a few thoughts along the way but there's not a 'point' to this post beyond introducing the thoughts of the beings as represented in these transcripts for your consideration. I noted some interesting similarities and a few (perhaps stylistic?) differences between these entities and other sources I'm familiar with.

I guess from here we can discuss anything that's interesting to you of the above, or perhaps share thoughts on the root question, "How long before we could become a collective?"

💜🙏, Poorhaus

I'm going to keep this short because I don't know how to say much about it. But I'd love to hear your thoughts if you care to share. [Narrator: He did not keep this short.]

Lately I've been thinking of the various experiences of self/other-self we each have as "paths" through infinity.

Take conventional memory. It's somewhat easy to think of the selves we remember being in a linear life as also-self. The person who took a shower ths morning, the person who married my partner, the person who was in front of the camera when my baby photos were taken: it's easy to think of these people as also-me. This is culturally and psychologically supported; it seems like there's nothing more natural.

Yet we overcome all sorts of barriers and lacunae of perception to do so. I'm subjectively very unlike the baby. If this person I am now were to be a baby, I suppose it'd be that one. But I have vanishingly little in common with that baby. The delight of recognizing the adult in the baby photo is in part because of how little there is in common between them combined with the specificity and recognizability of what is seen to be similar between them. The shape of the eyes or mouth, an expression, a smile. These specificities are the bridge that lets me and others who know me say "that's Poorhaus, just as a baby!" I have a lot more to go on when connecting this me to the person who took my shower or married my partner but the process is similar. We have things in common and that's enough for me to say "that's me, just when I was doing those things!"

Then there's unconventional memory. From memories of past incarnations on earth to memories of other forms of animal or even "alien" being-ness, these memories (which this me doesn't recall ever having, if that matters) offer states of experience where the rememberer can say "that's me, just as that being!"

Many meditators and experiencers have shared stories of extensive interactions with some entity that try subsequently come to recognize or understand as also-self. Regardless of where this perception or understanding comes from, they are then able to reckon with the sense that they are this other being or person and yet they may or may not ever become consciously/simultaneously aware of being themselves and that also-self being.

So the concept I've been working with to think thru this is that these senses of self, other-self, and also-self are specific paths (or clusters of paths?) through the infinite. From an incarnated beingness we experience the illusion of separation from all that is, even as each consciousness is also-infinite.

It is a wonderful thing to perceive the infinity waiting behind the illusion of one's own apparent finitude.

Yet moreso to perceive that infinity flowing beyond the apparent boundaries of apparent self.

The specific sequence in which this happens and whether and to what degree it is actual in any moment of experience is part of what makes the moments that make up these apparent selves unique.

The paths are infinite in their diversity and length. And yet all infinities are one infinity: it is all also right here.

It has given me some pleasing confusion and no small amount of ineffable and peaceful joy to see self, other-selves, and our various also-selves like this. I hope it might offer something similar to those who who are seeking that kind of thing.

There may not be much more to say but regardless I welcome any thoughts you care to share.

💜 Poorhaus

Heyo. Poorhaus here with another historical source I hope some of y'all might find interesting. Please enjoy my ragtag book report, lovingly hand-crafted with thoughts from my very own mind. Well actually maybe not 'my' mind since all consciousness is one, but we'll get to that.

Who TF is Don Elkins? Don Elkins, who would go on to participate in the Ra Contact with Carla Rueckert and Jim McCarty, published Secrets of the UFO in 1977, drawing from his 25 years of investigation into UFOs. The book included in-person case investigation with witnesses as well as insights from personal and guided telepathic contact with entities via channeling. Starting in the 1960s, Don had led meditation circles with college students that reliably produced channeled contacts and reported such contact himself. By the 1970s, this had evolved into regular recorded channeling circles with multiple channelers including himself and his by-then partner Carla Rueckert. (Edit: actually that's a pretty crappy bio blurb of Don. Sorry. Here's a better one if you want to read a few paragraphs about him)

A nice picture of Don. He just happens to be holding Secrets of the UFO in this one.

Where TF can I get this book? The nonprofit the trio started (and Jim, the surviving member, still helps run) provides the book for free (or you can buy a printed copy, if you prefer):

https://www.llresearch.org/library/secrets-of-the-ufo

WTF does he say about contact? Elkins's point in the opening chapters is that he knows, through experience, that meditation is a reliable path to establishing contact. He reports having helped over 100 people receive such contact, many of whom subsequently reported seeing UFOs (or perhaps what we'd call UAPs/orbs today). He writes:

>The process of receiving contact is so simple that it is difficult to adequately describe it. Some people seem to have a terrific natural ability to receive this contact, and some almost none. To receive the contact it is only necessary that a person learn to clear his mind, by any process that seems to work, and then await the contact. I realize that this sounds much too simplistic to yield results. Yet this is the method, if you can call such a simple concept a method, which has produced in my own experimental work many contactees who have produced many thousands of words of standard contactee “doctrine.”

Unlike the channelings LL Research was producing at the time (and continues to produce today, forming over 50 years of practice), this book is not primarily spiritual in nature. But in the book Elkins lays out his reasons for moving gradually but inexorably from studying UFOs towards telepathy, the nature of human existence, and ultimately into metaphysical topics including the nature of consciousness. Which, <spoiler> the UFOs are telepathically telling us, is all one </spoiler>

[Edit:] What other cool stuff does he cover? Thought I'd give a little selection of interesting tidbits for those who want to page through the book:

• In Chapter Three, "Reality, Etc.", Elkins describes encounters with "ghosts" (most today would say 'spirits', I think?) that materialized and interacted with/passed through he and Carla when working with a medium. Elkins was familiar with psychical research and corresponded with parapsychologists. He then speculates that some of the mechanisms of UFO materialization and contact might be similar to or related to these phenomena.
• Later in the same chapter he writes about "real magic", or the ability to produce changes in consciousness at will. This includes his trips to observe and receive 'psychic surgery' in Mexico. Real magic is contrasted with 'prestidigitation' or illusion. See also his choice words for permaskeptic and prestidigitator James Randi in the Chapter Ten conclusion.
• In chapter Seven he writes about Uri Geller and Andrija Puharich. He tells how he and Carla Rueckert had written a screenplay together in 1968-69 at the behest and with the inspiration of telepathic contacts before they'd met Puharich. A character in the work, Dr. Padeyevsky, bore a striking resemblance to Puharich down to details of the estate he lived in. They became aware of Puharich in 1974 upon the publication of his book on Uri Geller.
• Humans with connections to ETs (what some call 'starseeds') are the topic of Chapter 8. He calls them "Wanderers" which I thought was a term that originated in his channeling with Carla and others but he attributes in the book to George Hunt Williamson. Williamson's source(s) use the metaphor of apples that have fallen from their trees that they're returning to contact and cultivate.

Plenty more but that hopefully gives you a sense of the scope and range of topics in the book. Many chapters are illustrated with quotes from contactees, either from other published sources or (then) unpublished transcripts from the channeling circles Don convened.

What TF does he base all this on? In this book, Elkins draws from a huge collection of case reports, extensive bibliography, and shows an almost encyclopedic grasp of then-available channeled materials. Elkins presents a thesis, that the majority of cases have broadly consistent messaging to communicate, but reviews communications and sources beyond just those that support the thesis. Sources and contactees covered in the book include OAHSPE, Uri Geller (channeling The Nine), UMMO, George Hunt Williamson (channeling 'Brother Philip'), Brad Steiger, George Van Tassel, George Adamski, Diana Adkins, and many others. The endnotes and bibliography are an excellent historical resource in themselves.

That said, the primary inspiration for the book are his experiences participating in weekly channelings since at least the 1960s. At the time this book was published, recordings and transcripts of those sessions were not available, but there are hundreds of sessions Don participated in and also channeled in starting in 1972 available here: https://www.llresearch.org/channeling/transcripts

It's a *much* bigger project to read through all of those to look for insights into the influences of Don's experiences as participant and channel in these sessions. (u/DJ_German_Farmer has an ongoing chronological study of these early sessions he's posting that you can find in his post history. I am totally daunted by that project but very much enjoy reading his thoughts.)

But to me the point is that Don started from his own experiences, explored the phenomenon on his own and with many others over decades, and read widely across many, many, sources in forming his conclusions. That's an excellent process I aspire to and have come to admire in and expect from others like Jacques Vallee, Jeff Kripal, Brenda Densler, or Diana Pasulka.

Where TF is a tl;dr? The outlines of what would later become known as the Law of One are visible in the book: Chapter Ten gives a compact summary of the understanding he had developed at that point in his journey:

>To conclude this exploration, I will make a statement of the total UFO story as I have come to understand it, on the basic philosophical level. The UFO sources have a view of the universe and man within it upon which they build all their actions toward us. This is what we are getting from the bulk of these UFO contacts:

>The stuff of which the universe is made is consciousness, a single, infinite consciousness. This by definition is the Creator. This consciousness created vibrations through infinite space. This basic vibration is identified in our physical science as the photon, the basic particle-wave called light. This light vibration is the raw material used to make everything that there is within the creation.

>The vibrations which were fashioned from light exist over a large range of frequencies, only a small portion of which is apparent within our present physical reality. All atoms, whether within or outside of our physical reality are simply more complex rotations and vibrations of the basic photon. We are then, a highly complex, vibrational, single, infinite, entity. Presently we are experiencing the illusion of individualization as separate entities, but still we have been created by the one consciousness, and our basic essence resides within the Creator’s one consciousness. This original state has been allegorized by the Holy Bible’s story of Adam and Eve. In that tale, the serpent coaxes the couple into eating the fruit of knowledge of duality (good and evil), and so they get ousted from the Garden. The UFOnauts say that the Creator created us with knowledge of our unity with all things, but also with free will and the ability to create as His sons and daughters. Through our free will, they say, man long ago decided to become individualized to the extent that we could no longer find our unity with one another. We were no longer one, we had entered into a man-made universe of duality, of separation from the original thought, which then resulted in the polarization of consciousness (good and evil). From this duality all of our present problems have been generated.

>The original creative thought was a thought of the creation in which each part would act in service to the other parts, just as the parts of the body act as a unit, in mutual service to itself as a whole. However, in the man-created world the various parts have ceased being totally and mutually supported, and a far more complex world-reality has emerged. The question of why the world doesn’t seem to work very well can be put in focus by imagining what would happen to the natural creation if trees got tired of turning C02 into oxygen and clouds decided not to rain any more. In some cases we humans are still capable of being biased towards service: we are shocked if a mother refuses to feed her new-born child. But we have strayed far enough into isolation to be unable to perceive the unity between us all, so that we tend to believe that there are some whom we should not serve, but oppose.

>This Adam and Eve adventure of ours away from the original thought resulted in succeeding changes of vibration, as the structure of the individualizing consciousness proceeded to take form. Back when the individualized man was young he had the full Creator’s ability to instantly create that which was imagined. Thus the Creation grew and grew. But as the consciousness of unity was lost, the Creation became progressively stratified so that it came to exist not as one vibration of love but as many vibrations, each a little less rapid than its predecessor. And so evolved the numerous densities of experience, all condensed from the same original vibration, each spanning part of the range from total unity to total separation. This makes for a vast creation of experience, considering that the original consciousness was infinite to begin with.

>We are, today, encased in a consciousness many eons away from the condition of total unity. Most of us don’t totally like where we’ve landed in the continuum of experience: worse, most of us don’t even remember the journey we took to get here. According to the UFO contacts, we are at a point in the journey back toward the original thought where it is possible for at least some of us to realize our position and make a conscious choice about our own progress. We have been preparing to make this choice for almost a full cycle of experience at this level or density. The time to make the choice is now, for the cycle is ending.

I'll largely let Don speak for himself here. But note the urgency of "The time to make the choice is now". As I wrote in a prior post on false prophecies of doom in the 1970s, in that case from explorers working with Robert Monroe, there is often a sense of impending world-changes that participants in channeling sessions get, or perhaps project.

Don Elkins wasn't immune to this tendency. This book's Chapter 9 reviews the various sources, including Hatonn, one of the entities Don and Carla channeled, predicting "physical changes" to the earth without specific dates but the implication that they were soon to occur. It was almost self-evident to many during the Cold War era, and particularly the geopolitically tense 1970s, that global changes were on the horizon. I can see why so many adopted this tone and why it was such a focus for those participating in channelings: the participants, after all, get to shape the communication by the kinds of questions they ask.

But this is something I think readers of historical materials and practitioners of contact (including but going beyond channeling) should take care to avoid.

I, for one, take the entities at their word when they say "take what resonates and leave whatever might be a stumbling block". The Ra Contact includes advice to avoid or at least scrutinize sources that proclaim 'doom and gloom', which is a warning that certainly resonates with me. I have and will continue to read samples of doomy/gloomy messages. I try to walk the line between acknowledging and understanding such sources even as I curate and focus on others that resonate more strongly with my understanding of the purpose and potentials of contact like this.

I'll quit rambling but maybe we can discuss in the comments.

How TF does this relate to the later Ra Contact? By the time of the Ra contact in 1981, Elkins was openly thinking of UFO-related content as "advertising": the sort of topic that could attract the attention necessary to understand that the messages contactees were receiving were highly metaphysical and even spiritual in nature. (cf. Why it doesn't work to advertise the Law of One; I think Don came to de-emphasize what Ra called 'transient' material in the published works. See also my post about Ra's Disclosure Day: January 26th, 1981 which details Don's decision to exclude Ra's answers to questions about human-operated UFOs. Don was incredulous at Ra's claims that there were secret sites and programs that used recovered technologies for national security operations. I hold no position on the veracity of those claims but they're certainly less unbelievable today given the increasing admissions of similar programs that have happened over the past decade. But I digress.)

Ra refused to weigh in on whether and how Don and crew would make the material from those sessions available, saying that it was entirely their decision. Initially, they thought they might edit together a book presenting Ra's teaching of the Law of One. Ultimately, however, they decided to release the material as transcripts, with some introductory material. This has made them somewhat challenging for many readers (but don't let that deter you: the transcripts have been an absolute joy for me once I got a working vocabulary. The transcripts are raw and sometimes frustrating but it feels like we're thinking through all this together, in the moment.)

Regardless of how you feel about them, the transcripts will have to cut it. Don tragically took his life in 1984 during a poorly handled mental health crisis (which you can read Jim write about in 2018 and this excellent post by a Redditor a few years ago), so this book is one of the few complete statements of how he, the person, understood the messages he was receiving from his contacts.

As I've read through the Ra Contact, I've seen many places where Don's line of questioning expresses an understanding that Ra substantially revises. Like I said at the outset, this is a snapshot of Don's thinking and best understanding at the time. That was to undergo a rapid evolution in the balance of the 1970s. The broad outlines are already here but the Ra Contact systematically laid out a cosmology and metaphysics that's certainly much more developed than Don presents here.

How TF is this related to Experiencers? Don's journey from UFOs to psi abilities to studies of consciousness and metaphysics remains a familiar pattern for many experiencers today. UFOs, UAP, NHI, and so on lead towards the development and use of telepathic communication and other psi abilities.

This is no hagiography of Don: as remarkable and intelligent and sincere as I believe him to have been, he was by his own admission just a person like any other.

But history helps us find context and community across the boundaries of the present moment, which we all too often let hem us in. The world seems intractably large and out of control, even if there are many bright spots when we look closely. Institutions and popular culture seems oblivious and often hostile to experiencers, even as we gather together in community to bemoan this and support each other. The 1970s were a time of huge upheaval geopolitically, culturally, and technologically. The 1980s perhaps even moreso.

Like so many sincere seekers who've left their mark, this man's work and journey offer new perspective on where we've been, where we are, and where we might go. To me, a work like this is inspiring: so much work has already been done. So many insights have already been had.

And ultimately, as the first quote I used from this book stated, contact is straightforward. The journey inwards leads us anywhere we might want to go.

I hope you've enjoyed my book report. It's the best I could do on short notice. But if you've read the book or look it over I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and discuss them with you.

Be well.

💜,

Poorhaus

I love this sub AND sometimes it feels hard to just have conversations. About anything and nothing in particular.

So...how's it going?

I've felt at peace lately. Even in the everyday frustrations. But I'm interested in whatever your answer is to that question too.

What's on your mind?

I've been thinking about minds and Mind and social memory and identity and such.

Hope you're well.

💜,

Poorhaus