Studies by various natural scientists have, over the years, demonstrated energetic principles at work in the natural world which are similar to the orgone energy. Early Chinese medicine acknowledged the existence of such a force, called Chi, and the traditional method of acupuncture is based upon the existence of such an energy principle within the human body. Acupuncture points do not correspond directly with nerve endings, and the most able acupuncturists do not rely upon the Western models of physiology to explain its effects. Given the absence of a vital energy principle, Western medicine cannot explain acupuncture, and has resisted its adoption in the United States. Acupuncture furthermore works on animals, invalidating invocation of the placebo effect; ancient texts from India have also referred to the life energy, called Prana,and provide maps of Nila points (similar to acupuncture points) on elephants. The texts from ancient China and India speak about an energy that is taken in through the breath, and flows through the body along the various meridians. Health is constituted by a free, unimpeded flow of this energy, while sickness occurs when the flow of vital energy is blocked. This is very similar to Reich's ideas on the orgone energy, though the Asian sources say little about the free expression of emotion; they also often advocated a conscious control of emotions and sexual feeling (orgasm avoidance). In contrast, Reich demonstrated that such chronic restraint or self-control was the reason why the life energy became blocked or dammed up in the first place.

In the Western tradition, the vitalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also discussed the existence of a biological energy or life force, which was called animal magnetism, the odic force, psychic force, e'lan vital, and so on.

Indeed, Mesmer spoke of animal magnetism as an atmospheric fluid which surrounded, charged, and animated living creatures, and could be projected across a distance by a therapist. Mesmer was a teacher of Charcot, who was, in turn, the teacher of Freud, who was one of Reich's early mentors. Reich also studied with other vitalists, such as Kammerer and Bergson, and the vitalist tradition has persisted as a quietly spoken minority viewpoint in biology. Besides Reich, the more recent advocates of a vital or dynamic energy principle in nature included the late Harold S. Burr of Yale University. Burr argued for the existence of a powerful electrodynamic field at work in nature, affecting both weather and living creatures. The biologist Rupert Sheldrake has similarly developed a theory on morphogenetic fields which also takes from this tradition. Like Burr's work, Sheldrake's theory provides a dynamic, energetic explanation for inheritance, making the biochemical DNA theory unnecessary. Most recently, editors for the academic publication New Scientist called Sheldrake's book the "best candidate for burning" they had seen in a while.

The surgeon Robert 0. Becker developed these prior principles to a most amazing state of advancement. His early research led to the development of a class of devices for the electrical stimulation of bone healing and pain relief. His later work took these principles, and developed them to the point that he could artificially stimulate the regenerative growth of amputated limbs of laboratory mice, in a manner similar to the way in which a salamander or spider will regrow a lost limb. This kind of regrowth is by nature limited only to less complex creatures, and does not generally exist among mammals, such as mice, rabbits, and humans. Regrowth of an amputated limb had never been previously demonstrated in a mouse, or any mammal for that matter. Becker's work was a severe blow for both the biochemical DNA theory of cellular regulation, and the theory that the bioelectrical field of a creature was just a meaningless "byproduct" of chemical metabolism, like the electric field surrounding a running automobile engine. His work proved that the energy field of the animal was a primary determinant of growth and repair, as was the case with Reich's work. Becker was preparing to replicate the limb regrowth experiments on humans, when the biomedical community reacted with severe outrage against him, pulling dirty tricks of all sorts to have his research funding cancelled, and his laboratory shut down.

Another vitalist of our era is Bjorn Nordenstrom, director of the Karolinska Radiological Institute in Sweden. Nordenstrom, like Reich, made a study of the x-ray "ghost" phenomena, which is an unusual spontaneous fogging of xray films. It appears as a wispy, smoke-like or blob-like form on the x- ray images of patients, and sometimes can be seen on the monitors of airport baggage x-ray equipment. It cannot be predicted, and most radiologists consider it to be a nuisance. However, Nordenstrom studied it, and observed distinct patterns correlated to his patient's bioelectrical fields. Like Reich, he also discovered and measured currents of bioelectricality in the body. His meticulous research was summarized in a book titled Biologically Closed Electric Circuits: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Evidence for an Additional Circulatory System. After being heavily advertised in medical journals in the USA, it sold less than 200 copies, evidencing a contempt among mainstream medical doctors for any new findings that would support the principle of a life energy, even one of a purely bioelectrical nature. Unable to find support for his work in the West, Nordenstrom recently went to China to pursue his clinical research.

Other biological scientists have inferred the existence of such a vital energy principle, on the basis of their experimental work. When they provide good confirming evidence, they are hotly attacked. The French scientist Louis Kervran, for example, spent years developing very elegant and simple experiments demonstrating that the basic elements of chemistry were being transmuted by living creatures. Chickens fed a diet free of calcium, for example, would not lay mushy or fragile eggs, unless dietary silica was restricted. With a restricted silica intake, however, they laid mushy and fragile eggs, and it did not matter how much calcium they ate. Likewise, laboratory mice would heal broken bones very quickly when fed a diet high in organic silica, but not so fast when silica was minimized and only calcium was provided. These experiments strongly suggested that dietary silica was being biologically transmuted into calcium in the bodies of animals. Kervran also experimentally demonstrated other likely transmutations, and other scientists in Europe and Japan confirmed his findings. He eventually came to the conclusion that there had to be some unknown form of powerful biological energy at work to drive the transmutations. But when he wrote to a prominent American scientist for assistance in obtaining equipment for an important experiment, he was impolitely told to go read an introductory textbook on biology". In the United States, Kervran is better known among homeopathic doctors and organic farmers than by university professors. However, if Kervran is right--and the experimental evidence suggests that he is then the textbooks of biochemistry will need to be rewritten. As Kervran pointed out, biology and biochemistry are two entirely different disciplines and should not be confused. Biology is concerned with observable fact, while biochemistry attempts to explain observed facts by a chemical theory which assumes elemental constancy. And it is with this basic assumption that part of the error lies.

Another French scientist, Jacques Benveniste, actually demonstrated such an energy principle at work in homeopathic dilutions. His experimental work was successfully replicated by independent laboratories in other countries, to satisfy his obstinate critics. But that was not good enough. For making this offending discovery, which lent some support to homeopathic physicians (who are often prosecuted and jailed in the United States), the science journal Nature dispatched a "hit squad" of fraud investigators, debunking magicians, and skeptical editors to his laboratory, under the guise of "evaluating" his laboratory procedures. The Nature science cops made a mess of Benveniste's lab, distracting laboratory workers, performing slight-of-hand tricks, and shouting, before finally being told to leave. Nature subsequently tried to smear Benveniste in their editorials, but did not factually refute his work through replication of experiments. Such is the warp and weave of traditional academic science in the 1980s.

In the atmospheric sciences, the tradition of dynamic energy forces which affect entire regions was preserved for a period by older weather forecasters, who used streamline, rather than frontal theory to predict weather. Streamline analysis more coherently focused upon streaming movements of air, or jet streams as they are called today. For example, when you look at the dynamic images of clouds, as seen from a satellite in space, you do not see "fronts". But you do see streaming movements of clouds. Reich independently discovered the basic configurations of these streams, years before the first weather satellites were launched. Likewise, the older atmospheric scientists often argued for a great interconnectivity in the atmosphere. Charles G. Abbot, head of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in the 1950s, used related energetic concepts to predict the weather months into the future. But he was ignored and ridiculed for his findings, in spite of their uncanny accuracy. Irving Langmuir, one of the originators of cloudseeding techniques, once objectively demonstrated that cloudseeding in New Mexico would trigger rain storms all the way into Ohio, and he warned his fellow workers about this danger. The cloudseeders of today, funded by millions in federal dollars, act as if Langmuir's work never took place, and refuse to replicated his simple experiment. They deny the existence of long distance effects from cloudseeding, knowing that if such effects became public knowledge, they would be forced to stop.

Among the physical scientists, the idea of an energy in space was embodied in the concept of an aether, which dates back hundreds of years. The theologian/physicist Isaac Newton forcefully argued that this aether had to be static (unmoving) in order to prevent it from directly participating in the movement and ordering of the heavens. That role, Newton argued, belonged only to the anthropomorphic God (who at that time was demanding that unbelievers be ruthlessly tortured and burned at the stake). And, over the years, a dead, unmoving aether has never been detected. However, a dynamic aether was objectively demonstrated by the physicist Dayton Miller. Miller also explained why prior attempts to measure the nether had failed. First, he observed that the aether is entrained at the Earth's surface, and moves faster at higher altitudes than lower altitudes. Prior attempts to measure its movement had taken place only at lower altitudes, or in heavy stone buildings or basement locations. Second, the dynamic aether is reflected by metals, and prior attempts to measure it used instruments with the critical parts housed inside metal enclosures. Miller found that by doing the crucial aether-drift experiments on a mountain top, inside a flimsy building without metals or dense window materials, that it was readily detectable and measurable. He made over 200,000 separate measurements, over the course of 30 years of investigation. Contrast this to the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, which involved a grand total of four hours of actual measurement time, made over two days in 1887. The Michelson-Morley experiment is widely misquoted as having completely failed in the detection of the aether. It was a hinge-point in the sciences, after which the idea of the aether was given up entirely for the "empty space" theories of relativity and quantum dynamics.

Miller's extensive work on the aether question was never rebutted when he was alive, but his research was contemptuously compared with "searching for perpetual motion". After his death, the adherents of the empty space theory breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Today, every physics textbook starts out with the lie that "the aether was never measured or demonstrated". It should be pointed out that the theories of relativity and quantum dynamics, plus the expanding universe and "big bang" theories, are utterly shattered by the discovery of an energy in space, and many physicists, who cling to their theories religiously, simply refuse to look at this kind of evidence. Worse, the discipline of physics has become a military-oriented growth industry, with multi-billion dollar funding for the sustenance of nuclear power and bomb making technology, for fusion plants particle accelerators, and "star wars" experiments. This kind of research has not brought forth any real benefits or fruits for humankind, but has become a self-perpetuating "research industry", a multibillion dollar edifice which, like the medicopharmaceutical industry, is threatened to the core by these discoveries of a primary, cosmic life energy. The physics community has unfortunately reacted to these new findings with the same arrogance and viciousness that characterizes the medical communities' reaction to the life energy. Einstein's followers, for example, have recently been accused, in print, of very nasty stab-in-the-back tactics of censorship and suppression. An entire new journal, Scientific Ethics, for a short period at least began to expose the whole stinking mess.

Of great interest for Reich's work is that Miller's dynamic aether was more active at higher altitudes, and reflected by metals. The capacity to be reflected by metals, with a more active state at higher altitudes, are basic properties of the orgone energy, as independently discovered by Reich. The orgone also satisfies many other of the basic properties and functions of an aether, being ubiquitous and mass-free, and by providing a medium for the transmission of electromagnetic excitation. However, the orgone also spontaneously pulses, superimposes, and directly participates in the creation of both matter and life. But even without using the taboo word "aether", or the more offending word "orgone", another group of physicists have detected or inferred the existence of dynamic energy currents at work in deep space. For example, the American astrophysicist Halton Arp made so many photographs of energy/matter bridges between deepspace objects, where those energy/matter bridges should not have been there, that he was actually banned from using the big American telescopes. His simple photos demolished the theories of empty space, the expanding universe, and the "big bang" with a single shutter click. So great was the hatred against his work that he ultimately had to go to Germany to continue with his research. Hannes Alfven, another famous physicist, also deeply offended his contemporaries by suggesting, like Reich, that space was filled with streaming currents of plasmatic energy. The space scientists to this day refuse to send satellite probes where he says they should, as to do so might confirm that space is energetically rich. In fact, physics of today is in a state of turmoil, and is desperately trying to explain away the newer evidence for an energy in space, to preserve the big bang theory, relativity, quantum dynamics, and the billions of dollars of research money that supports the "empty space" religion, and its institutional priesthood.

Few of the above ideas, or the findings on sunspot-weather correlations, are given much funding or investigation today. Science journals still routinely carry the false statement that "no mechanism" has been found for solar terrestrial correlations, just as physics textbooks carry the falsehood that "the aether had never been detected". And it is true that these relationships cannot be true, nor do they make any sense, from the standpoint of the "empty space" theories of physics. They require a medium in the atmosphere and in space, through which excitations and influences can pass, independent from thermal or pressure phenomena, a force which propagates in the atmosphere faster than air currents, and which can likewise quickly propagate influences across the depths of space. Again, Reich's orgone energy fits such a description.

Other research has been done to show that living creatures, and the physical chemistry of water, are sensitive to weather or cosmic factors in a manner than cannot be explained according to simple mechanical phenomena, such as light, temperature, humidity, or pressure. Frank Brown, of Northwestern University, spent decades demonstrating that the biological clocks of various living creatures were sensitive to lunar cycles and other cosmic forces. Nobody could refute him when he was alive, but today, after his death, his findings are widely ignored. Likewise the works of the Italian chemist, Giorgio Piccardi, who demonstrated that the physical chemistry of water was changed by magnetism, sunspots, and other cosmic phenomena. His work helped to fuel an interest in the magnetic treatment of water in Europe, leading to new methods for reducing scale deposits in household plumbing, and in industrial boilers. Magnetism, correctly applied, can alter the solubility characteristics of water, allowing dissolved substances to remain in solution at concentrations higher than normal for a given temperature. In the USA, these findings have been greeted with derision, as every physics textbook says magnetism has no effect upon water. Also, almost every chemical laboratory uses magnetic stirring devices to mix their chemical solutions, instead of the "old-fashioned" hand-operated glass stirring rods; these magnetic stirring devices would, if Piccardi is correct (and he is) alter the chemistry, precipitate quantity, and titration curves for every chemical reaction exposed to them. And so, the new findings are ignored in the USA, while abroad, new products based upon the discovery are entering the marketplace. Simple magnetic water treatment systems for the home are now common in Europe, replacing in many cases the ion-exchange water softeners, with their bags and bags of salt. In the USA, meanwhile, the water softener industry, in collusion with dogmatic academics and politicians, has managed to have laws passed in a few states to forbid the sale of magnetic water treatment devices.

Piccardi's work extends beyond the issue of simple magnetic treatment of water, however. At one point he attempted to isolate an unknown cosmic energy which was affecting his chemical experiments, in a manner similar to strong magnetism. In order to block out the unknown radiation, which was correlated to sunspots, he constructed an electromagnetic shield around his experiments, in the form of an Earth-grounded metal box enclosure. Then, in order to stabilize the temperature inside the metal box, he placed a layer of wool around the outside. To his amazement, the metal box did not extinguish the cosmic phenomena, but amplified it. He and his co-workers spent decades performing chemical experiments inside similar enclosures, which mirror the construction of Reich's orgone energy accumulator. This independent corroboration of the orgone accumulator principle by Piccardi was also confirmed, though in a less direct manner, by the biologist Brown. Brown observed that hermetically sealed metal enclosures, with a constant pressure, temperature, light and humidity inside, would not extinguish cosmic influences upon biological clocks, but would instead allow them to be more clearly observed, or even add an unusual dimension to their behavior. For example, inside the metal box, the metabolism of potatoes followed a cycle that correlated with lunar, solar, and galactic parameters. Potato metabolism additionally demonstrated a correlation to local weather; not the weather today, but the weather two days into the future! In the enclosure, the energized potato would respond to external energetic factors in the environment which were also determinants of future weather events.

The above are just a few of the kinds of evidence that exist for an energetic principle similar, or identical to the orgone energy. In many cases, these researchers had not known of Reich's work. In a few, they hated Reich's guts, and would hardly tolerate mention of his name by their students! And yet, the facts speak powerfully for a corroboration of Reich's orgone energy. It must be stated, however, that Reich's discovery on the orgone energy is far more inclusive, comprehensive, and tangible than any of the above concepts. In addition to having been quantified, photographed, and measured, the orgone can be seen, felt, and, as noted in this book, accumulated within special experimental enclosures.

An additional word must also be given regarding the response of the scientific and academic communities to these new discoveries. The reader will note that most, if not all, of the above researchers were hotly attacked, or isolated and ignored for their findings, irrespective of their credentials, reputations, or the amount of evidence they provided. This emotional reaction, of running away from or attacking disturbing new ideas, was explained by Reich as being the results of a specific emotional disorder, which he called the emotional plague. Virtually all scientists who have verified portions of this common natural energy principle have been assaulted by special emotional plague characters, who build their reputations not upon work or research, but upon political power, and the number of scalps they have taken. Gossip, slander, political tactics, the sneak attack, and even manipulation of the Courts and police are standard tactics of the plague. Their secret goal, like the Grand Inquisitors of the Church, is to kill disturbing new findings, and the men and women who make them. The history of science is filled with evidence for this kind of behavior. The reader is encouraged to read Reich's discussion on the emotional plague, in Character Analysis (3rd Ed.), People in Trouble, and The Murder of Christ, as it still constitutes the major obstacle in the way of human social progress, and scientific research.

NOTE: Full citations are found in the published book.

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