IN MEMORIAM

This issue of LIGHT/LINES is dedicated to Don Elkins, our beloved friend and Questioner for the Ra contact. After nearly a year of declining health, Don died on November 7, 1984. Don’s light has lit, and will continue to illumine, many seekers’ paths, and our gratitude goes to him as we fold him in light and bid him farewell, and to each who may wish to join us in sending love and light to Don via prayer, visualization, or meditation.

Don’s death ends the Ra contact for the immediately foreseeable future as it was the harmonized blend of the three of us that allowed Ra to speak through our instrument. His illness prevented Book Five of THE LAW OF ONE from progressing beyond one session. At a future time we may collect and publish previously unpublished material that readers could use for personal growth, but we shall not accept donations for that final book of THE LAW OF ONE until it is available.

We have placed Don’s ashes beneath a yew tree in the back corner of our yard, next to the garden. We hope to make a simple meditation area there with a small fountain, benches, flowers, and shrubs. We would ask that no flowers be sent but that expressions of sympathy take the form of a donation or visualization to aid the construction of the meditation garden. All donations are tax-deductible.

The following message from Hatonn of the Confederation of Planets in Service to the One Infinite Creator was telepathically transmitted during our first regularly scheduled Sunday night meditation since Don’s death.

(Hatonn, November 11, 1984)

I am Hatonn. I greet you in the love and in the light of our Infinite Creator, whom we serve with all of our being. It is an immense privilege to be called to this group this evening. We, ourselves, have never had anything to tell you. For we in our turn are channels for that which is beyond our own frail understanding. That which we offer to you is offered through us and only then through this channel. We can speak from no certainty, nor do we wish you to bear our words as a weighty burden, listening to each word and pondering the meanings that may not seem accessible or acceptable to you at this time.

With our thanks and our disclaimer aside, we would speak to you about a fair, a grand and glorious carnival, a bazaar in which all of the merchants display their wares and thousands come to try their luck and to view the excellence that people have made with their hands and above all to rejoice in the feeling of being, part of a happy crowd. In a deep sense, this is part of the motivation for those who incarnate consciously and purposively upon the earth plane of your third density. You may have many lifetimes, but when you are not within a physical vehicle, it is impossible to remember that the carnival flags can flutter dismally, slowly and sadly, that pennants may be marred and broken and that the machinery that governs the merry-go-rounds, the ferris wheels and all the rides may not always work. As in many, many things it looks easier in the mind to live an incarnation and to learn the lessons you set for yourself than it is to accomplish the plan you have made. Many of you are ambitious, and your life’s plans have already caused you to experience a great deal of what you would call pain, anguish, suffering, disappointment, and confusion.

Let us stroll together out from the fair onto the street. It is a dark night. The fair is held in a poor section of the city. The chill in the air causes those who have no homes to bundle up against the cold in whatever they may have. You may find someone lying upon the sidewalk, lost in his drink or other intoxication. Shall you sit down and talk to the Creator now, or shall you pass him by? Shall you go back into the carnival and ride and wave your pennants and your flags and your prizes? It is a choice you make, my friends, each day in one way or another. For if you are open to hear the cries of those about you, you will rapidly become aware that there is no day in which the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the spiritually wasted are not crying out to you personally. And so you have a brightly lit carnival, and as you stroll through the gates you find a dark carnival. Instead of fine clothes, you have the hand-fashioned rags of the hobo. Instead of the many rides, you have that liquor which intoxicates, or that medicine which is used for oblivion rather than amusement. And what shall you do to be of service?

There was one among you whom you know as a teacher, Jesus, the Christ. This teacher chose the darker circus. Those to whom he reached for discipleship were poor folk indeed: a prostitute, a tax collector, a persecutor and reviler. And yet he walked into the circus with the bright and shining lights, the gaudy displays, the metaphysical rides. He got upon the merry-go-round and rode the ferris wheel with those whose lives were bound up in that experience. Nor did he condemn any who so chose to live a life of gratitude and experiential gladness. He spoke in temples. His instructions were based upon a hard rule called the law and all he did that was different from other teachers within this comfortable world in which the flags flew and waved so prettily was that he pointed out that the heart is more important than the law. Then he would walk forth into the streets and lift those from the gutter and pavement. Of the many, many stories that are narrated within your holy works, the one to which we would draw your attention is that one wherein the marriage couple awaits the guests for the great feast. When all do not show up, when seats remain empty, this teacher’s instructions are simple: Go out into the streets and gather all that you can find, and yet if they have not wedding garments, they may not come.

We are aware that you have been pulled from your carnival, your gaiety, and your joy to witness one who suffered and to wonder, “Why? What can I do?” We must leave that question with you. For this entity experienced both fairs, the light and the dark. Like most of you, he contributed all that he knew how to contribute. Like most of you, he became faced with a difficulty. Shall we then condemn those who lie in the gutter because we have not given them bread? Shall we remove courage and dignity from the infinite and eternal spirit of one who joined the darker carnival? It is your choice, my friends, and your polarity will surely be affected because of this choice. Far too much has been said about the virtue of caring for the underprivileged who find themselves in darkness. Far too little has been done. When is a spirit not worthy to be fed? When is nobility cut off from the loving kindness of the Creator?

You are on a long voyage. The carnival shall end for you, as it has for others, in your physical death and yet you as spirit shall be free to move ahead to your next experience. One thing only shall be required of you and that is that you shall review this experience. We ask you both to be easy upon yourselves and to be honest with yourselves. What has lain before you this day which you have not done to help another? What discipline of learning have you not sought because of pressing considerations that shall not survive your death? How can you be of service? This instrument once composed a short article in which this instrument envisioned the teacher known as Jesus coming back into the inner cities. “He would sit down in the gutter,” wrote this instrument, “and take his peanut butter sandwich and break it and it would be food enough for all who came to touch his consciousness with their own.” Your daily bread is but a symbol, my friends, and we ask you to consider again and again the value of the allegorical and symbolical nature of what seems to be reality. Draw back and take the viewpoint of the eternal present. How can you love each other? How can you listen? How can you accept? How can you offer freedom to those who are wearing another piece of clothing, another physical vehicle?

We wish to encourage you to live in the realization that you shall leave this caravan of booths and prizes, rides and thrills, and you shall once again have a larger viewpoint. This is your chance. You have given it to yourself and you undoubtedly feel at this time that you have perhaps bitten off more than you can chew in terms of processing the catalyst of your life so that you may be a true channel of love and of light and of service. Of course you have, my friends. This is the essence of the learning of the lessons of love: to take more than you can chew, and then to pray your way, to meditate your way, to contemplate, analyze, and cling to your way until strength is given you-not from yourself, but through yourself.

There are many kinds of courage. May we say that you have witnessed one kind. In this instance which is extreme and extraordinary, the one known as Don exhibited a courage most difficult to express. This entity had a wish to protect those about him and so he did. Many things that you do will also be misunderstood, though less drastic. We urge you to do that which you feel to do, asking only that you center yourself daily in meditation and ground yourself in service to others. Let the flags fly; cheer the band on; ride your rides. Be exhilarated and share the joy of consciousness. And when you walk out into the darkness of a cold and rainy street know that this too is a carnival full of joy and mystery, and find yourself behind the carnival masks that you may see in the gutter just as you please yourself by seeing yourself as the graceful participants of a circus. If all things can become one to you, then you can become one with all things and you shall have learned the greatest lesson, and you may turn to all those whom you meet and say, “I shall meet you in paradise.” For the realization of that oneness is the most powerful realization in third density.

Rejoice, therefore, and love one another. Celebrate with one another. Share that which you have and that which you feel, and look when you walk out into the sleet, the cold, the frost, and the stench of a hobo’s fire on a bad weather night. Offer your jacket, your hat, your food, your substance insofar as you are able, with a gladness of heart and a singleness of mind. See the Creator and so shall the Creator see you.

We give thanksgiving and we praise each of you. May your hearts rejoice and be merry, for you are yet able to love and be loved, to care and to accept nurturing, to reach out and to enfold, to experience, in short, the carnival of third-density illusion-that grand illusion with many, many mirrors, all of which give you a distorted picture of the One Original Thought. Meditate, my friends, and allow the distortions to fall away.

I am known to you as Hatonn. I leave you in the love and the light of our Infinite Creator. Remember always that your peanut butter sandwiches, like fishes and loaves, are in infinite supply for those who wish never to hunger again. Break them and give them, for it is an infinite universe. Adonai, my friends. Adonai. Adonai. I am Hatonn.

The following paragraph is taken from Ra Session #104, July 27, 1983. It was read at Don’s memorial service as we felt it to be a fitting tribute to Don and his life’s work.

“I am Ra. We leave you in appreciation of the circumstances of the great illusion in which you now choose to play the pipe and timbrel and move in rhythm. We are also players upon a stage. The stage changes. The acts ring down. The lights come up once again. And throughout the grand illusion, and the following, and the following, there is the undergirding majesty of the One Infinite Creator. All is well. Nothing is lost. Go forth rejoicing in the love and the light, the peace and the power of the One Infinite Creator. I am Ra. Adonai.”

NOTES TO OUR READERS

THE JOURNEY, an album of music expressing the seeker’s quest from the Christian mystic’s point of view, is now available on cassette tape only. The words are by Carla Rueckert, and the music is by her brother, Tommy.

AIso from Carla and Tommy, just for Christmas, we have JENNY, a cassette of the musical story of a Christmas tree angel who came to life. As a live performance it lacks the polish of THE JOURNEY, but it is proof positive against Christmas melancholy.

We would like to invite anyone in the Louisville area interested in telepathic channeling meditations to attend our regular Sunday night meditations. Just write us at the address below, and we will send you directions and particulars. If you would like a tax receipt for your 1984 donations to L/L Research, just check that space on the order blank and we’ll send one right on to you.

Thank you all so much for your love and light this past year. It has truly lifted us up. May that blessing return to you a hundredfold in the new year.