Alternate Perceptions Magazine, August 2015
Wilhelm Reich=Orgone Energy, the Space Gun, and UFO Invasion of Earth
by: By Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger
For refusing to obey a U.S. Pure Food and Drug Administration injunction to cease experimentation with cosmic "orgone" energy and UFOs, Wilhelm Reich was sentenced to prison on May 7, 1956, where, eight months later, he died, leaving humankind with his legacy of controversial discoveries and with his grim warning regarding the advent of invading interplanetary spaceships in our atmosphere.
The discoveries, harassment, trial, and final silencing of Wilhelm Reich stretched back over some three decades. Many of Reich's scientific writings, including books which are consid¬ered classics in medicine, psychoanalysis, sociology, and nat¬ural science, were condemned by the Pure Food and Drug Administration. Wilhelm Reich was born March 24, 1897, in Imperial Austria, and he was an Austrian citizen until 1938. In 1918 he entered the University of Vienna, and he was able to complete the six-year course for his medical degree in four years, graduating in July, 1922. While still in medical school, he attained mem¬bership in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society under Professor Sigmund Freud.
Reich was early acknowledged as a brilliant new light on the psychoanalytic horizon. From 1924-1930 he was the Director of the Seminar for Psychoana¬lytic Therapy and first clinical assistant at Freud's Psychoanalytic Polyclinic in Vienna.
In addition to doing research into the social causation of neu¬roses, Reich founded and directed mental hy¬giene consultation centers in various districts in Vienna (1928-1930) and Berlin (1930-1933). In 1934-1939 he lec¬tured on biophysics at the Psycho-logical Institute of the University of Oslo, Norway, and did research on his discovery of the biologi¬cal and cosmic energy which he named "orgone energy."
In August, 1939, Reich transferred his scientific laboratory to Forest Hills, New York and moved to the United States. From 1939-1941, he was Associate Professor of Medical Psychology at the New School for Social Research, New York City. The Orgone Institute was founded in 1942 by Reich, and was set¬tled on a 280-acre estate in Rangeley, Maine. The home for the new science of Orgonomy was appropriately named "Or¬gonon." The Wilhelm Reich Foundation was established in Maine in 1949 by Reich's students and friends to preserve Reich's work and safeguard his discovery of the primordial, mass-free cosmic orgone energy--the same energy Reich later claimed propels the UFOs, or outer-space craft, which are vis¬iting our planet.
As a young psychoanalyst, Reich searched for the energy (Freud called it "libido") behind the neurotic behavior of his patients. What is it, he asked, that moved a patient to feel and to express emotion? Through experimental verification, Reich discovered a bioelectrical charge at the skin surface of the human being during periods of pleasure; and he noted a diminution or absence of this charge during anxiety. Later experimentation convinced Reich that this physiologi¬cal energy was not electrical energy but rather a specific bio¬logical, organismic energy (hence the name "orgone") which is the life energy per se.
Through years of careful investigation, Reich was able to demonstrate the existence of orgone energy in many ways and to concentrate the energy in his invention, the orgone-energy accumulator (1940). Reich demonstrated the existence of the cosmic orgone energy visually, thermically, electroscopically, by way of his "field meter," and with a geiger counter. During the period of Reich's greatest productivity, more than a score of top-ranking medical doctors and scientists in the United States and abroad published verification of Reich's discoveries in scientific bulletins and journals. Even the great physicist Albert Einstein confirmed Reich's basic temperature experiment, objectifying the existence of the orgone energy in a letter to Reich, Feb. 7, 1941.
In 1950, with the advent of the Korean War, Reich pre¬pared his laboratory to help in the war effort. At that time, he worked out his famous Oranur Experiment in which he inves¬tigated the possible antinuclear effects orgone energy might have on nuclear energy. The Oranur Experiment led Reich to the discovery of cer¬tain noxious "DOR" clouds (clouds containing Deadly OR¬gone energy) which he believed to be responsible for wide-spread planetary drought and desert development. Reich also concluded that UFOs were responsible for the “cosmic offal" contained in the typically black and nauseating DOR clouds, and that, in addition to planetary drought, DOR was causing worldwide disease epidemics.
Reich's search for a means to rid the skies over Orgonon of DOR clouds led to the invention of his "cloud buster," with which he succeeded in producing and stopping rain. Subse¬quently, Reich’s cloud buster became the "space gun" used on the fateful night when contact was made with the space ma¬chines hovering over his laboratory.
According to Reich and his associates, actual contact was made by way of the cloud-buster with luminous objects in the sky on May 12, 1954, between 9:40 and 10:45 P.M.. During this period of time, Reich contended that men on earth saw for the first time in the history of man and his science, two “Stars,” to the west fade out several times when cosmic energy was drawn from them. The shock of this experience on Reich and his staff was so great that they did not attempt to repeat such action until October 10, 1954. The reason for their hesitation was what they believed would be the risk of precipitating an inter¬planetary war by such experimentation. Reich and his staff were certain that their space gun had destroyed a number of interplanetary space ships, and they were greatly concerned about extraterrestrial retaliation.
In an injunction dated March 19, 1954, and signed by John D. Clifford, Jr., United States District judge for the District of Maine, the Pure Food and Drug Administration claimed that orgone energy did not exist. In brief, the FDA Injunction implied that Reich was little more than a quack, that he claimed he could cure all kinds of diseases from cancer to the common cold, and that the public should be protected from Reich's nefarious schemes. Among the many publications listed on the FDA Injunc¬tion as dealing with the "care, mitigation, prevention or treat¬ment of disease conditions" were the following: The Mass Psychology of Fascism; The Sexual Revolution, Character Analysis, and The Murder of Christ. None of these books claims to cure anything.
From the first, Reich's position was that of an eminent and responsible scientific researcher, who believed that matters of science belong in a laboratory, not a courtroom. At no time, either before, during, or after the trial did the Food and Drug Administration provide any scientific evidence to contra¬dict the findings of either Reich or his associates.
The FDA, however, persisted, and finally won the case by default when Reich refused to appear in court as a "defendant" in matters about which, he claimed, the FDA knew nothing. Reich refused to obey the FDA injunction which he termed unlawful and which he considered to have been obtained by fraud and deceit. He asserted that his research was too important to be stopped by procedures that had no basis in truth and fact. In his response to the injunction, dated February 22, 1954, he wrote: ". . . Scientific matters cannot possibly ever be decided upon in court. They can only be clarified by prolonged, faithful, bona-fide observations in friendly exchange of opinion, never by litigation. The sole purpose of the complainant is to entangle ergonomic basic research in endless costly legal procedures.”
Despite the injunction which ordered him to do so, Reich refused FDA agents access to his research files and notes, nor would he reveal his antigravity equations. Brought into court in chains Reich then determined "to get the total infamy on the Court Records." A very unusual aspect of the case against Reich was the fact that Peter Mills, who was the prosecuting attorney for the FDA, was originally the attorney for the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, for the Orgone Institute, and for Reich personally from 1949 to 1952. Mills was Reich’s attorney at the time the Wilhelm Reich Foundation was incorporated, and it was Mills who drew up the incorporation papers. Mills had also notarized the papers attesting to the motive force of orgone energy, which Reich had hooked up to run a motor. As the incorporating counsel for the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, Mills had direct knowledge of and access to many of the Foundation's confidential documents. In 1952, Mills severed his affiliation with the Reich Foundation and accepted employment as an attorney for the Pure Food and Drug Administration.
Reich fought the charges as far as the law would permit. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, refused to review the case.
Reich believed that our planet is in deep trouble. It was this belief that drove him to fight to protect his life-positive discoveries and to get his ideas into the trial record.
He told the court that humankind was facing an emergency in which the human species and the very principle of life itself on Earth was being challenged. He warned that the planet was undergoing a process of deep and crucial change of its total existence on biological, physical, emotional and cosmic levels, and he urged a stop to the petty quibbling that separated scientists from fully examining the on-coming crisis. So serious was he about extraterrestrial invasion and other planets’ proprietary interest in Earth that in his Contact with Space (1956), Reich implied that his own father had come from outer space.
The courts refused to take Reich's warnings seriously. Despite the fact that Reich informed the court that he had a severe heart condition and would surely die if imprisoned, he was found guilty and sent to jail, where he died of heart failure eight months later. The 50th anniversary of Reich’s death was celebrated on November 15, 2007 with a major exhibit of the controversial scientist’s work at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, the city where he began his work and studied under Sigmund Freud. In New Jersey, the American College of Orgonomy, which provides training for those physicians interested in Reich’s legacy, scheduled a conference and a banquet. Later that month, nearly 300 boxes of Reich’s unpublished manuscripts and papers were made available for the first time for examination at the Countway Library at Harvard Medical School. The release of these documents honored Reich’s request that his scientific papers be opened 50 years after his death. The once discredited scientist was now described by the American Psychoanalytic Association as the first therapist to emphasize character analysis rather than neurotic symptoms. Reich was also a pioneer in linking a healthy sex life, which he defined as “orgiastic potency,” to emotional well-being. The scientist who died in prison, damned as a fraud, was now hailed as “one of the most brilliant, creative, and controversial of the pioneering analysts.”
