Not of the love or of the light

The usual explanation misses the point

Why does Ra say “We are not those of the Love or the Light”? 1.1 Ra is simply stating that he is not of the love density (fourth) or the light density (fifth), says nearly every Ra interpreter.

This explanation misses the point of Ra’s statement. That statement, along with the name “Ra,” was intended as a direct challenge to Carla’s preconceptions.

Ra’s intentional, direct provocation

Why would Ra, Ra who speaks with extraordinary precision, not simply say, ‘I am of the sixth density,’ if that were his point? Why would Ra, Ra who for years searched for a compatible channeling group, 1.0 6.20 71.21 Ra who can scan the human mind, 12.32 33.10 Ra who knew Carla, Don, and Jim more deeply than they knew themselves, 9.2 begin the long-awaited channeling with phrasing that was sure to offend?

The idea of being not “of the Love or of the Light” 1.1 was so problematic to Carla that she initially rejected Ra’s contact. P.75–6 The statement was so challenging to L/L Research that they omitted the sentence from the original and 2020 printings, not even including it with Book V’s restored fragments. In the two L/L Research sources in which the line does appear, it is presented as “We are not those of the Love [density] or of the Light [density]” and footnoted “to add clarity to what we believe to be Ra’s intended meaning.” P.25 But “density” is not the point of Ra’s statement.

We believe that “We are not those of the Love or the Light” 1.1 was the second of two intentional provocations to Carla.

Love and light were Carla’s most cherished concepts. She and Don had, 11 years earlier, named their partnership according to these words. P.49 She dedicated her channeling “to love and light.” 2.8.2008 When preparing to channel, Carla asked for “the highest and best contact which I can receive of Jesus the Christ’s vibration of unconditional love.” P.8

To Carla, love was the pinnacle. Up to this point, fourth appears to have been the highest density discussed in L/L Research channelings. Fifth density had never come up; sixth was mentioned only once, four months prior to Ra; 08.03.1980 and when Hatonn was asked in 1979, “How many densities are there beyond your density?” the answer was “We do not know.” 04.29.1979

Correspondingly, Carla asked for “Jesus the Christ’s vibration of unconditional love” as her highest example of that love. She was unaware that in asking for that vibration, she was asking for contact at the level of fourth density, the poles of which are love and light. 3.10 17.11-12

We believe that Carla did intend to contact the highest possible vibration — while at the same time holding onto distortions that limited that vibration to a fourth-density level. In his response, Ra was necesssarily clear that his vibration matched her intent but not her limitations, in order to allow Carla to make a fully informed choice to reject Ra or to explore further.

Carla’s initial rejection of Ra

“We are not those of the Love or the Light” 1.1 was actually the second point of conflict for Carla. Minutes before she spoke those words, Carla mentally tussled over whether the contact would proceed. When Ra first “knock-knock-knock[ed] on my inner door” on January 15, 1981, there was a mutual rejection of sorts, in Carla’s telling: Ra was “indignant” about Carla’s challenge and Carla interpreted the name Ra as “fairly negatively oriented,” according to Carla. Carla “opened up to them” only when she felt satisfied with Ra’s answer to three more challenges, she wrote. P.75–6

Neither was this Carla’s first encounter with the name Ra. “I kept getting, “I am Ra.” I’m thinking, “I don’t want to talk to a Ra,” she told Gary Bean in Tilting at Windmills, “…not something I wanted to encourage.” P.75

Carla’s interpretation of “Ra” as “fairly negatively oriented” most likely stemmed from Oahspe: A New Bible, the 1882 automatic writing of the “Words of Jehovih” by an American dentist. Carla quoted Oahspe extensively in Secrets of the UFO (1977) and Voices of the Confederation (drafted 1975; published 2016). Oahspe provided the name for Don and Carla’s early ’70s Louisville meditation circle P.63 and heavily iinfluenced Carla’s beliefs and channelings, including the Ra material. What does Oahspe say about Ra?

From that very same Oahspe “Book of Aph, Son of Jehovih,” Carla and Don lifted the Hidan of Maukbeiangjow 2:13 name for the “goofball ’70s sci-fi spoof” which they wrote and produced and in which Carla starred. (A trailer for the 1973 flick playfully addresses why it was retitled Invasion of the Girl Snatchers.) Aph the wizard can be seen in the trailer and two clips delivering the archaic and invented language from his namesake Oahspe chapter, “Book of Aph,” 15: 2:1 2:13 8:1 as well as from Oahspe’s “Book of Thor” 13:12 and “Book of Osiris.” 2:28 “I decided I’d take all of the language from Oahspe and make him [Aph] be very high-flown,” Carla said in an interview about the film. “So a lot of Aph’s language is right out of Oahspe.”

A choice to proceed

“Ra alone is sin”? “Delight in being bad”? And now, “We are not those of the Love or the Light”? These were quite intentional challenges to Carla’s beliefs. Carla could not simultaneously uphold Oahspe as authoritative and accept contact with a being it labeled as evil. She could not lock down on love as the highest vibration and simultaneously communicate with a source that so directly stated that he was not “of the Love.”

Fortunately for those who appreciate the Ra material, Carla chose to nonetheless allow the contact.

However, Carla certainly did not drop her attachment to Oahspe nor to love as the pinnacle. Neither Carla nor any other channel completely steps aside and transparently voices ideas from a higher vibration. This is the nature of the veil. Carla’s shaping of the material — while in and out of trance — is an extensive discussion outside of the scope of this piece, but as a single example, consider that Carla, through the end of her life, believed that Ra’s “basic message was love, love, love.” P.350 That was not an initial misunderstanding — it was a statement she made in 2014, after 30 years with the Ra material. Actually, “love, love, love” was Carla’s lifelong trademark, as is abundantly clear from her books, interviews, and conscious channelings, and Carla wanted that to be Ra’s also — even though it actually was not. Carla first fought with Ra over “We are not those of the Love or the Light,” and she continued that fight for the rest of her life.