What exactly happened to Don Elkins?

[Parsons]

I studied the material as the 'detached, objective scientist'. IMO, Don also approached the whole endeavor with the same attitude. If you are detached from the material, you certainly aren't integrating what is learned.

While Don was a scientist, and described his approach as scientific in the intro, I never experienced him as detached. Carla always said she never saw him as happy as after a session, and he physically jumped up and down with the first contact, someone who is usually very reserved.

For someone to say "I personally will not cease while still incarnate to disseminate this.", doesn't really appear to me as a detached, scientific attitude. I don't know I personally experienced him very passionate...   Best questioner we could have hoped for.

I did have the intro in mind: 

This book is an exact transcript from tape recordings of twentysix
sessions of an experiment designed to communicate with an extraterrestrial
being. We started the experiment in 1962 and refined the process for nineteen
years. In 1981 the experimental results of our efforts changed profoundly in
quality and precision. This book is simply a report of the beginning of this
latter phase of our work.

Since our experimental work began, and even before we officially formed a
research group, there was considerable confusion about the nature of our
research. I would like to state that I consider my point of view to be purely
scientific. Many readers of this material have used as a basis for its
evaluation a previously assumed philosophical bias which has ranged from
what I would call objectively scientific to subjectively theological. It is not
the purpose of our research group to attempt to do anything other than
make experimental data available. Each reader will undoubtedly reach his
own unique conclusion about the meaning of this body of data.

I should have been more specific. When I said detached, I was referring to a scientist following the scientific method in an unbiased manner in terms of not coming to a concrete conclusion before something is empirically proven. So the way I see it, Don was either being false in the above statement (because he really did have a philosophical bias towards believing the material), otherwise he would have to be detached from belief / *UNbiased towards the contents of the material (as is the theory from my previous post).

Furthermore, being excited doesn't necessarily denote understanding, belief, and integration of this philosophical material. In this case, I think it's possible Don was excited because he intuitively perceived a big jump in quality in the channeled message. In the same way, a scientific researcher would get excited if they changed their methods slightly and it yielded better results in an experiment. That doesn't necessarily mean the researcher fully understands the data, believes his theory is true, and has put the conclusions into practical application into his everyday life.

When I first read the Ra Material, I got to a point where I literally jumped up in the air and shouted 'eureka'. But at the time, I had only a moderate degree of understanding, a small degree of belief, and almost no integration of the concepts presented. A few years later, I had a lot more belief and understanding, but still a very small degree of integration. That was around the time when I started having unexplained anxiety / panic issues which I am theorizing Don may have been experiencing something similar.

I'm making the point that integration, belief, and understanding of concepts are not always at the same level. In fact, if how you feel about Don is true (that he very passionately devoted himself to the positive polarity), it would potentially be more evidence towards my theory that he attempted "to polarize more quickly than experience may be integrated."

Moreover, I really have a hard time blaming external 'negative entities' on a situation like this. I think it's possible, even likely, that they greatly exacerbated / exploited an existing weakness. But the weakness would have to already be present. And what I'm after is what Don did / thought that caused that particular weakness / distortion to open up in the first place. Hence my theory that Don may not have integrated (not to be confused with understood or believed) the concepts in the Law of One while attempting to earnestly positively porlarize.