Phillip Ngo
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Thinker

Ra Uru Hu

Canadian-born (Robert Allan Krakower, 1948–2011), former advertising executive, magazine publisher, and media producer who in January 1987 — while living on the island of Ibiza — encountered "the Voice" in an eight-day-and-night transmission that became the *Human Design System*, of which he was the founder, principal teacher, and reluctant messenger for the remaining twenty-four years of his life.

20th-century, 21st-century·5 min

Biographical Sketch

Born Robert Allan Krakower in Montreal in 1948, the fourth child of a "cultured, upper middle class family," Ra was raised among the arts (his lifelong avocation as a musician — composer, performer — began in childhood). He completed a BA at Sir George Williams University. His business career placed him in advertising, magazine publishing, and media production.

One morning in 1983, he "simply walked away from his family and fast-paced life as an entrepreneur" and disappeared. Several months later he found himself on Ibiza, the island off Spain's eastern coast, where his "real life as Ra Uru Hu had its beginnings."

On the evening of January 3, 1987, "he encountered the 'Voice.' It was a terrifying experience. The Voice said, 'Are you ready to work?' And for eight days and eight nights he worked, transcribing in detail what is now known as The Human Design System." Ra spent the rest of his life — until his death on March 12, 2011, less than a month from his 63rd birthday — disseminating and teaching the system.

He married, had three children and a grandson, continued playing music, and lived in Ibiza. He named the founding institution Jovian Archive Media Inc. (the international rights holder for Human Design) and the International Human Design School (IHDS), which he handed over to lynda-bunnell in June 2010, eight months before his death.

Intellectual Lineage

  • Influences: The four wisdoms Human Design synthesizes — astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the Hindu chakra system, the Judaic Kabbalah — all of which Ra had encountered before the 1987 transmission but none of which he had systematically studied. The transmission, in his account, integrated these into a new unified system not derivable from any of them individually.
  • Tradition: human-design — the system he founded; not a continuation of any prior tradition but a synthesis-via-revelation.
  • Contemporaries / interlocutors: lynda-bunnell (his closest student and successor); the early students of the system at Jovian Archive; the broader esoteric-knowledge community of Ibiza in the late twentieth century.

Core Ideas

  • Human Design as the "Science of Differentiation." A technical system disclosing each person's unique design from birth data.
  • Strategy and Authority as the catalyst of transformation. Five Types, each with a specific decision-making protocol.
  • The Not-Self and deconditioning. The conditioned mind is the "Not-Self"; living by Strategy and Authority for seven years de-conditions and reveals the authentic self.
  • The BodyGraph. Nine centers, thirty-six channels, sixty-four gates — the visual chart that displays the design.
  • The Voice as transmitter. Ra positioned himself not as inventor but as messenger; the system is revealed, not constructed.
  • Experimental epistemology. "Don't believe a thing I tell you, try it for yourself."

Books in This Wiki

Other Ra works (future ingest candidates): the Rave I Ching (his treatment of the sixty-four hexagrams); recorded lectures and courses preserved in the Jovian Archive (hundreds of hours of teaching material).

Author SWOT

  • Strengths. Founder authority. The system he transmitted has had measurable global reach — IHDS-trained practitioners in dozens of countries; hundreds of thousands of charts run; mass-market books in multiple languages. The "test it for yourself" methodology gave the system practical traction even where its founding claims were unverifiable.
  • Weaknesses. The "revealed" origin is a serious epistemic vulnerability — the system rests on a single transmission witnessed by no one else. The "neutrino imprint" mechanism is not supported by physics. The seven-year deconditioning claim is not supported by current understanding of neurobiology. Ra was a reluctant messenger and did not always engage critique constructively.
  • Opportunities. The system has continued growing post-Ra. The "deconditioned Rave I Ching" Ra intended to write but did not complete is an open project for successor teachers.
  • Threats. Founder's death leaves succession questions. Variant lineages and scientific scrutiny challenge the orthodox transmission. The popular culture's embrace of Human Design in the late 2010s and 2020s has sometimes simplified Ra's teaching beyond recognition.

"What Would Ra Say About...?"

  • Career repurposing: Find your Type. Live by your Strategy. Trust your Authority. The career that emerges from this practice — over years, sometimes over the seven-year deconditioning window — is the career your design called you to.
  • Suffering and meaning: The not-self emotions (frustration, bitterness, anger, disappointment) are the precise signals that you are not living your design. They are not failures but feedback. Return to Strategy and Authority dissolves the unnecessary suffering.
  • Identity transitions: The deconditioning process is the lifetime's identity work. The conditioned self that walks in is not who walks out.
  • Human–AI collaboration (extrapolated): Ra did not engage AI directly. The Type framework would predict differentiated responses; the deeper teaching would warn that the conditioned mind — including AI as a sophisticated conditioning device — must be distinguished from the body-and-Authority decision mechanism.

Signature Quotes

"Are you ready to work?" — the Voice, January 3, 1987 (Ra's account)

"Don't believe a thing I tell you, try it for yourself." — recurring throughout his teaching

"Human Design offers a mechanical understanding of the nature of being." — message to readers, March 1, 2011

"There is a 'way' but it can only be your way." — message to readers, March 1, 2011

Open Threads

  • The "deconditioned Rave I Ching" Ra intended to write but did not complete — an open project for successor teachers.
  • The epistemic status of the 1987 transmission — what is the right way to evaluate a revealed system?
  • The integration of Human Design with contemporary scientific frameworks (epigenetics, neuroplasticity) that have advanced substantially since Ra's death.
  • The long-term institutional trajectory of Human Design without its founder's continuing teaching.