Witnesses · Devoted
Lynda Bunnell
Dean and later director of the IHDS; the founder’s co-author; the steward of the institution after his death.
Relationship to the founder
No one stood closer to Ra Uru Hu in his final years. Bunnell first saw him at a San Diego talk in 1999, trained through the school, was asked to be Dean of the Training Academy in 2006, and in 2010 received the school itself. She co-authored the system’s principal reference work, The Definitive Book of Human Design.
What they say
Her published testimony is the canonical loyal account. “For the 12 years that I worked closely with Ra,” she writes, “I had the profound good fortune to be in effect his private student as we corresponded almost daily about the details of The Human Design System knowledge, and his vision for it.” She continues: “He taught me how important it is to maintain the authenticity of the knowledge he was given, and he confided to me his dreams, wishes, and overall vision for The Human Design System. In the process, he transformed my life and the way I view the world around me.” (Profile statement, Human Design America.)
On tape she is a witness with scenes. Her first sight of him, in her recorded 2020 interview: “this funny little guy” walking out “with this funny little sort of magician’s hat on,” teaching from an overhead projector. Her reading with him “would just bring me to tears because it was the first time in my life that I had been truly recognized.” She narrates the succession in her own voice, with dates: the 2006 deanship (“the pay was horrible”), and in 2010 “he wanted me to take over the whole school, which I responded to.”
She preserves his instruction on the purity of the vocabulary, that a changed keynote dilutes the transmission because the original term “is going into their DNA,” and a smaller detail the institutional pages never mention: he signed his emails “love yourself, Ra.” (Human Design Collective Podcast, October 7, 2020.)
How the account is weighed
Interest: Devoted As the institution’s heir and the steward of its copyrights, Bunnell has the strongest possible interest in presenting Ra as an authentic transmitter whose teachings must be preserved intact. Her account is the inner circle’s canonization of the man and is read here as that. On the outline of his forcefulness, her testimony and the estranged accounts describe the same figure and divide only on its meaning.
Sources
- Profile statement, Human Design America (the page is now offline; captured April 17, 2026)
- Recorded interview, Human Design Collective Podcast, October 7, 2020 archived
- Ra Uru Hu and Lynda Bunnell, The Definitive Book of Human Design (HDC Publishing, 2011)
This dossier reports attributed testimony from named, publicly available sources; it adopts none of it as fact, and it characterizes living people only in their own recorded words. To correct or update it, use the corrections process.