REICH’S CONTACT WITH SPACE
by Alison Davidson
“There is no proof. There are no authorities whatever. No president, Academy, Court of Law, Congress or Senate on this earth has the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow. There is no use in trying to prove something that is unknown to somebody who is ignorant of the unknown, or fearful of its threatening power. Only the good old rules of learning will eventually bring about understanding of what has invaded our earthly existence.”
The invasion that Reich refers to in his introduction to CONTACT WITH SPACE is the invasion of earth by intelligences from outer space. Very few copies of this remarkable book were made available, and Reich’s extraordinary experiences during this turbulent period have been swept under the carpet by ‘orthodox’ orgonomy.
To speak openly of UFO experiences still invites ridicule or polite smiles of disbelief. Consider then the atmosphere of the mid 1950’s when Reich was not only claiming the existence of space visitors, but carefully documenting his battle with these ‘invaders’, while developing his now well-known cloudbusting techniques.
Reich termed the space craft Ea – ‘E’ standing for ‘Energy’, ‘a’ for alpha or primordial. Ea also represented ‘Enigma’…
“Ea is a new event without precedent in our lives,” he writes. “Humanity, with the exception of a few philosophers, had no idea of the possibility of visitors from outer space. Earthman had not developed any view, method or scientific tool to cope with the problem. In addition he has developed in his offspring a character structure and a kind of thinking which obstructs the approach to the new fact by way of ridicule, slander and outright threat to the existence of the pioneer of space engineering. Therefore our new approach must start from scratch, as if no science existed at all.”
Reich’s ability to ‘start from scratch’ had characterized his revolutionary approach to psychoanalysis early in his career, long before he left the restrictive climate of Europe to pursue his ideas in ‘free’ America. He is best known for his research into the fundamental life-energy and for his controversial methods of sex therapy. His greatest contribution to real science was his discovery (or re-discovery) of what he called ‘orgone’, the life energy at the very roots of existence. Blockages in the free flow of this energy in the individual caused ‘character armoring’ which inhibited the spontaneous expression of joy and pleasure in life. The nature of this cosmic energy, depending on circumstances, functioned either as a ‘life giving, life furthering, and reproductive force (OR), or in the absence of such conditions, turns into a killer of Life (DOR).”
During his orgonomic research Reich was able to measure this orgone energy and he successfully treated many patients in the orgone accumulator, a specially layered box wherein the life-energy was concentrated. It was this unorthodox method of treatment which brought down the wrath of the Food and Drug Administration upon Reich, an attack which finally secured his imprisonment, and death, in a federal penitentiary.
“Orgone energy does not exist,” the FDA officials said to the Judge. Having declared that Cosmic Energy did not exist, it was obvious that its discoverer must either be a “quack” or a “lunatic”. That, after all, is the rationale of orthodox, mechanistic science chained to its conceptions of a dead universe.
For Reich, the Universe was very much alive and his approach to scientific research was functional, taking into account the subjective perceptions and emotions of the researcher. After all, he writes, “Classical knowledge may all be wrong, such with the perfect Copernican circles, the ellipses of Kepler, the empty space of Einstein, the airgerms of Pasteurian bacteriologists, the atomic nature of the Universe, etc. To see new things from scratch, to expect the impossible to be true, belongs to the emotional equipment of the true pioneering scientist.”
“We shall no longer hang on to the tails of public opinion or to a non-existent authority on matters utterly unknown and strange. We shall gradually become experts ourselves in the mastery of the knowledge of the Future.”
THE FIRST CONTACT
“From the historic Oranur Experiment of 1951, Reich knew that nuclear radioactivity had a deleterious effect upon the living sea of energy in which we all live. From the observations made of the reaction of a milligram of radium put inside an Orgone Energy Accumulator, Reich knew that there was an antagonistic relationship between the energy of life (Ether, Prana, etc…) and the manmade nuclear energy so recently unleashed upon the planet. The effect of the nuclear ‘irritant’ seemed all out of proportion to the physical amount of radioactive material. The distance of this irritating and wildly exciting Orgone anti-Nuclear effect seemed to reach much farther than the actual radioactivity of the nuclear material would indicate. Perhaps, Reich reasoned, the Orgone Energy was a continuum; and this anti-nuclear reaction of the life energy (Oranur) extended and perpetuated itself in a chain reaction fashion far beyond the original limits of the nuclear radiation.” (1)
The development of the Cloudbuster was a response to the aftermath of the Oranur Experiment. Around Reich’s Oranur laboratory near Rangeley, Maine, the atmosphere became polluted with DOR (Deadly Orgone Radiation). The black and bleak DOR clouds were remarkably similar to what would later be called air pollution or smog. These clouds were present even in the midst of sunshine, and where they gathered the atmosphere felt ‘suffocating’, the sky seemed to lose its sparkle and animals and humans felt lethargy and other symptoms of malaise.
Not only were the DOR clouds a noxious presence, but a black powdery substance poured down onto the area, a substance that Reich came to directly associate with the presence of Ea in the skies above Rangeley. It was here that UFOs began to appear, big yellow and reddish pulsating ‘stars’ which were easily discernible from the planets and bluish colored fixed stars.
Previous to this Reich had no experience with UFOs and had never studied the subject. Now he was faced with a direct confrontation. Some nights there would be 3 or 4 Ea hanging in the sky above Orgonon. They would make the atmosphere black, but by mobilizing the cloudbuster Reich was able to clear the air and make the sky blue again. It was under these peculiar conditions that the ‘Spacegun’ came into existence, and the war with Ea began.