James DeMeo's OBRL-News Blog

This year 2007 marked a very busy time at the OBRL Greensprings Center, and for me personally.  In addition to on-going research, writing and publishing projects, I was invited to speak at several major Conferences devoted to remembering Wilhelm Reich on the 50th anniversary of his passing.  Below I will flesh out the details on these events and activities, and give some ideas of what's up for 2008.  For now, I wish to thank everyone who has supported my work and OBRL over the many years. I've been engaged in the study of Reich's work, experimental orgonomy, since around 1970, and OBRL marks its founding since 1978.  So that's 38 years of difficult but rewarding work, three decades alone through OBRL, now starting into the fourth decade.  My thanks and best wishes to all, and especially a big cosmic Thank You to the spirit of Wilhelm Reich, as humanity leaps and stumbles into the 21st Century.   James DeMeo

* The annual OBRL Summer Guided Independent Study Program on General Orgonomy was held at the Greensprings Center in early July.  Thanks to all who attended.  That event will be repeated in early August of Summer 2008.  Full details are now available on the OBRL website:

http://www.orgonelab.org/seminar7.htm

Dr. DeMeo was also an invited speaker at the following conferences in 2007, marking a remembrance of Wilhelm Reich on the 50th year after his passing:

* A major Conference was held in Rangeley Maine, hosted by the Wilhelm Reich Museum.  That event, which lasted 4 days over late July and early August, was entitled Wilhelm Reich in the 21st Century: 2007 International Conference on Orgonomy.  A list of the presenters and description of that event, which drew around 100 participants from all over the world, is given here: http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/07_08_update.html#success

A big thanks to Kevin Hinchey, Mary Higgins, and other WR Museum friends and volunteers, for their gracious hospitality and organizational efforts.

* Another major Conference,  entitled Orgonomy Today was held in Chipping Village, Lancashire, United Kingdom, as organized by Peter Jones and his CORE (Centre for Orgonomic Research & Education) organization.  This 7-day event allowed speaker's presentations mixed with demonstrations of apparatus and experimental orgonomic principles.  A full-sized orgone accumulator was available, along with magnificent optics for viewing orgone energy movement in the atmosphere, as well as a microscope for viewing of simple bion preparations, and living blood. Seed charging in the orgone accumulator was demonstrated (with about a 30% boost in the orgone-charged group as compared to the control), along with the Life-Energy Meter, a To-T apparatus, darkroom visualization of orgone energy lumination, and other essentials.  The last two days were devoted to a special session on New Research In Orgonomy, with a more compressed lineup of speakers,   A booklet of Abstracts of presented papers was made available, and also is now posted to internet as a PDF download:

http://www.orgonelab.org/Abstracts2007.pdf

A big thanks to Peter Jones for his warm hospitality, and nearly single-handed effort in organizing this Conference.

* Another major Conference was held in Valencia, Spain, entitled 50 Years After Reich: A Life Movement.  Held over 2-5 November, this event was primarily for the Spanish-speaking world with interests in Reich's work.  Nearly 200 persons were in attendance.  For more details, see here:

http://www.esternet.org/simposium_internacional_2007.htm

http://www.reichunmovimientovivo.com/es/index.html

*  Additionally, Dr. DeMeo gave lectures in Berlin, at the invitation of Prof. Bernd Senf, at his Lecture Series held at the Fachhochschule fur Wirtschaft, and in Paris at the invitation of Dr. Klaus Heiman.

The above events were only a part of the conference offerings of 2007 in Remembering Reich.  There were others in Europe and the USA not mentioned here.  Taken together, they are indicative of a sustained and growing interest in Wilhelm Reich's discoveries, around the world.  Once more, a big thanks to all who organized those events, and for their kind invitations.

While this e-Newsletter will always be in English, new subscribers are reminded there are translations of Dr. DeMeo's summary article on Saharasia into those languages, and others, as found on the Saharasia home page:  http://www.saharasia.org  The articles are specifically found here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_sp.htm

http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_de.htm

http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia_fr.htm

Please note the French-language translation is only a summary-abstract.  A French translator is sought for the entire article, however, as well as translators for this same article into other world languages.  Arabic and Farsi (Persian) would be most helpful.

Extracted from Dr. DeMeo's on-line publication's list, here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/demeopubs.htm

INTERNET-POSTED ARTICLES & ESSAYS:

- "Update on Saharasia II: Reviewing Global Sex-Economic Conditions After c.1900", Abstracts of Papers booklet, New Research in Orgonomy Conference, Chipping Village Hall, Lancashire, UK, 18-19 August 2007. Internet Posted: http://www.orgonelab.org/Abstracts2007.pdf

- "New Experiments at OBRL: Reich's Geiger-Muller and To-T Effects Confirmed", Abstracts of Papers booklet, New Research in Orgonomy Conference, Chipping Village Hall, Lancashire, UK, 18-19 August 2007. Internet Posted: http://www.orgonelab.org/Abstracts2007.pdf

- "The Suppression of Dissent and Innovative Ideas In Science and Medicine: A Work In Progress", First presented to a Special Session at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco 1994; also presented to Special Sessions at the Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the 72nd Annual Meeting, 1996, Northern AZ Univ., Flagstaff, Arizona, and 74th Annual Meeting, Mesa State College, Grand Jct. Colorado. Internet Publication Only. http://www.orgonelab.org/suppression.htm

- "Critical Review: Dusan Makavejev's WR Mysteries of the Organism", Internet Publication only: http://www.orgonelab.org/makavejev.htm

- "Book Review: The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time (Nichols, Moon), reprinted from Pulse of the Planet #4, 1993, p.140. Internet Publication 2007: http://www.orgonelab.org/montauk.htm

- "Growing Nonsense About Wilhelm Reich and Orgone Energy on Global Internet", Internet Publication only: http://www.orgonelab.org/orgonenonsense.htm

- "Maps From the Ethnographic Atlas Data: A Defense of the Cross-Cultural Codes and Data Base of G. P. Murdock and the Quadruple-Blind Control Procedures Used in my Saharasia Research", Internet Publication only: http://www.orgonelab.org/murdockdata.htm

- "The First World Congress on Matriarchal Studies in Luxemburg, 2003: Personal Observations and Reflections, And a Response to Criticism", Internet Publication only: http://www.orgonelab.org/MatriarchyCongress2003.htm

PUBLISHED BUT NOT INTERNET-POSTED

- "Climate and Soils: Their Influence Upon Human Health and Society" (Abstract), Soils Science Society of America, Annual Convention,12-16 Nov.2006, Indianapolis, Indiana. Abstracts contained in HPSSS Newsletter, December 2007, p.16.

- "Foreword to the English Edition" in Wilhelm Reich and the Healing of Atmospheres: Modern Techniques for the Abatement of Desertification by Roberto Maglione, Natural Energy Works/Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, Ashland, Oregon, p.x-xii, 2007.

- "Intervista a James DeMeo sugli siviluppi della ricerca orgonica negli ultimi 50 anni, (Interview with James DeMeo)", Italian Translation by Roberto Maglione, Chapter 8 in Wilhelm Reich: Una Formidabile Awentura Scientifica E Humana, Luigi DeMarchi & Vincenzo Valenzi, Editors, Macro Edizioni, Italy, p.165-184, 2007.

- "Wilhelm Reich's Sexual Theories", Italian Translation by Roberto Maglione, in Scienza e Conoscenza, October 2007.

* WILHELM REICH AND THE HEALING OF ATMOSPHERES: Modern Techniques for the Abatement of Desertification, by Roberto Maglione.  It can be purchased from here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xorgone.htm

Some of this was noted in our last Newsletter, but additional details are now added.

* Work continues on round-the-clock monitoring of the thermal anomaly in the orgone accumulator, or To-T.  Of special note is the observation of a definite increase in the To-T readings starting around mid-March, the time of the Spring Equinox, when the Earth moves into what appears to be a strong streaming or pulse of energy in space.  By December, in the throes of early Winter and typical blizzard conditions in the mountains, the readings have collapsed down to nearly a zero thermal anomaly.

* Also with continued monitoring, anomalous readings are developing from our orgone-charged GM/neutron counter, which soars episodically from nearly zero to several thousand CPM.  A control unit, of identical construction, but not orgone-charged, gives typical readings of 0-2 CPM.  After being rather "dead" for s period of many months, without significant readings, I considered the apparatus might have been damaged in some unknown manner.  Then suddenly, with the onset of the new solar sunspot cycle, the readings began to soar once again.  Reich also noted his orgone-charged GM readings were similarly related to sunspots.

* Our digital archive project continues, with transfers being made of OBRL's considerable archive of old VHS, U-Matic and Hi-8 videotapes onto digital DVDs, for long-term storage.  The VHS collection is nearly finished, but much remains to be done.  A section of the laboratory building, in the attic section under the observatory, has been set aside for this purpose.  This project has been greatly delayed in the wait for new high-definition digital recording equipment to become available in the USA.

* As noted in the last Quarterly Newsletter, I had organized but then cancelled a major CORE-cloudbusting operation in Australia when natural rains broke out by spontaneously.  That project was then cancelled.   I've also been asked to organize projects against the on-going drought conditions in both the SW and SE USA.  It appears, however, that much of those droughts may be ended spontaneously also, by nature, with this winter's rainy conditions.   Time will tell.  It always is best if nature relieves these situations spontaneously.  In the event the droughts persist into early 2008, operational draw-sites would be necessary in those regions, and I would be happy to communicate with persons living in the SW or SE who might have concrete suggestions.

* For 2008, I hope to cut into new territory, expanding upon the orgone-charged GM experiments, and also undertaking a few new experiments on the cosmic ether-drift question, exploring methods as pioneered by contemporary physicists working on these subjects.  A few added details may be found in our fundraising letter, reproduced below, and more will be said in later OBRL-Quarterly Newsletters once these ideas congeal into practical work.

* A 5-day Laboratory Seminar on General Orgonomy (Sex-Economy and Orgone Biophysics) led by James DeMeo will be held at the OBRL Greensprings Center in Summer 2008, from 2-6 August, Saturday through the following Wednesday.  An Open House Social will be held on Friday afternoon and evening, August 1st, just before the Seminar, with an optional field trip to Crater Lake on Thursday August 7th, after the Seminar.

The program will consist of a mix of lectures and open discussions, with demonstrations of apparatus and orgone energy phenomenon using the facilities of OBRL.

Topics to be covered will include (as humanly possible and as time allows):

* Reich's sex-economic findings and DeMeo's findings on Saharasia.
* Bioelectrical experiments and environmental bio-fields.
* Microscopical investigations of bions and bion preparations.
* Orgone accumulator construction principles.
* Orgone accumulator seed-sprouting experiments.
* Orgone accumulator physical measurements and demonstrations: To-T, Electroscopical phenomena, water evaporation and surface tension.
* Observations in the Orgone Energy Accumulator Darkroom (room-sized accumulator) and of atmospheric orgone energy phenomena.
* Oranur physics and chemistry: Direct work with a cloud-chamber, studying background and low-level radioactive minerals.
* Orgone-charged vacuum tubes (VACOR) and orgone energy lumination.
* The Orgone Energy Field Meter, and similar devices.
* The Orgone Energy Motor: What is known, and unknown.
* Astronomical and orgone-energy observations in the OBRL Greensprings Observatory, with 16" Meade Richey-Cretein telescope, 3" aperture "battleship binoculars", and H-alpha filter Solar telescope and Solarscope.
* Differentiation between Reich's authentic biography and orgone energy discovery, and the various "orgone gadgets" and falsifiers.

* Field Trip on August 7th to Crater Lake National Park (optional, and weather permitting).

More details and registration information is found on the Events page:

http://www.orgonelab.org/events.htm

Natural Energy Works, the mail-order and on-line bookstore for OBRL, has a selection of books on innovative scientific discoveries & heresies, avoiding the usual mystical mumbo-jumbo, all by solid research scientist, including works by Wilhelm Reich, James DeMeo, Harold Burr, Giorgio Piccardi... a "Who's Who" list of the "banished and nearly forgotten scientists" of the 20th Century, whose work will hopefully guide the 21st.  Also a great selection of electromagnetic field meters, the new Experimental Life Energy Meter, and much more.  Come browse at your leisure and get those items you always wanted, but nobody thought to give you for Christmas.

http://www.naturalenergyworks.net

You can also review the following letter at our website, which contains a lot of interesting photographs of the OBRL facilities and work, here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/funding.htm

OBRL Funding Request - December 2007

Orgone Biophysical Research Lab

VIEW THE OBRL WEBSITES AT:

http://www.orgonelab.org

http://www.saharasia.org

 

Special Announcement

Beginning OBRL's Fourth Decade of Work

 

Dear Friend of Orgonomy, and of OBRL,

Please Support our Research and Educational Efforts.

At this time of year, I wish to thank those of you who have already supported OBRL, and ask those of you who have not to please consider it now.  Please consider the scope of work-efforts which have been supported and organized through OBRL over the last 30 years, projects which have made a real difference.

 

I started OBRL in 1978, as an idea at the time when I was a university student and young professor, undertaking open investigations of Wilhelm Reich's pioneering work.  A few donors friendly to my work-efforts, plus my own out-of-pocket contributions helped with critical equipment purchases.  OBRL then existed only in a suitcase, as a dream, and it followed me, as I changed employment to other universities, where eventually small laboratory space was developed and supported through OBRL.  With help from interested donors, I undertook a number of important drought-abatement operations in the USA, using Reich's CORE methods, and my Saharasia research project developed, eventually into a major book which today is helping to bring Reich's sex-economic findings into open discussion within the academic world.  You can get a summary overview of my Saharasia findings and book by accessing these websites:

http://www.saharasia.org

http://www.orgonelab.org/ResearchSummary1.htm

In the 1980s, as many of my friends know, I was subject to a malicious smear campaign by Emotional Plague journalists, "skeptic club" members, and hostile academics.  These attacks lasted for more than 15 years, and were complete with malicious hate-mail to family, friends and professional associates, with terrible smear attacks against my name and work in magazines and newspapers, and even threats against my life and home.  It was nothing so severe as what Wilhelm Reich suffered, but the result was to tarnish my work as "too controversial" for the academic world, where my work had been otherwise exemplary. I was subsequently excommunicated from full-time academic teaching, and the subject of my research findings placed into the modern-day Index Expurgatorius.  In some ways, I should thank those hate-mongers, as this gave me the freedom and inspiration to work fully independent of the constraints of the universities.  That freedom was necessary to build up OBRL.

By 1988, moving to the West Coast USA, I began independently writing and teaching, and OBRL grew to become the vehicle for sustaining my work, and developing the Greensprings Center near Ashland, Oregon.  I was asked by persons in regions suffering from terrible droughts to come and help out, using Reich's CORE methods which I had been researching successfully at the universities, and OBRL became the vehicle for funding of those operations.  When my articles and books on orgonomic life-energy subjects elicited panic-reactions or scorn from academic reviewers, they were published through OBRL, and got an even larger circulation than in the academic journals. While the angry academics banished me from using their laboratories or getting research funding for experimental equipment, and blockaded my contact with "their" students, OBRL helped to construct an important new high-altitude laboratory and seminar building in the forest at over 4000 ft. elevation, with exceptionally clean air and excellent orgone-energetic conditions allowing study of basic life-energetic processes.  And "their" students, the brightest and the best, came to study at OBRL.  Strong orgone energy accumulators and a large Orgone Energy Darkroom were constructed at the Greensprings Center, something not possible to do in more contaminated environments given the hazards of toxic energetic reactions.  Many of Reich's most critical experiments have since been reproduced here, verified with excellent results, while others are in planning for the future.

The OBRL Greensprings Center also hosted many weekend seminars and conferences, wherein students and professionals come for education and direct study of orgone energy phenomenon, for education on the basics of orgonomy, to see the bions and experience the orgone accumulator, to get the facts on my Saharasia findings as regarding the Origins of Armoring or Origins of Violence question (which matches Reich's findings exactly, but with new aspects), and so forth.  In short, all the functions of some future  "University Department of Orgonomic Research" which was never allowed so far, is today being carried forward at the OBRL Greensprings Center in a direct and uncompromised manner -- education, research, and social applications.

OBRL has published five issues of our small but respected journal "Pulse of the Planet", as well as my "Saharasia" and several other books, plus maintaining informative internet sites and an E-Newsletter, with many materials available in multiple world languages.  OBRL maintains a truly international correspondence, with the growing number of people interested in this new knowledge.  The OBRL website provides a listing of my own publications, which also demonstrate an excellent record of accomplishment, especially in moving Reich's name and orgonomic science out of the shadows and into more mainstream scientific venues. See here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/demeopubs.htm

OBRL also hosts an on-line Bibliography on Orgonomy which I developed starting back in 1985, which allows anyone, world-wide, to search out Wilhelm Reich's publications, as well as the bulk of authentic materials devoted to Reich by other scientists and clinicians.

http://www.orgonelab.org/bibliog.htm

You can review these and other accomplishments supported through OBRL, or events in which OBRL helped support, at these weblinks:

- "Report on OBRL Summer 2003 Educational Events"

http://www.orgonelab.org/Report2003.htm

- New Research in Orgonomy Conferences, Paper Abstract Booklets

http://www.orgonelab.org/Abstracts2005.pdf

http://www.orgonelab.org/Abstracts2007.pdf

- "OBRL Progress Report, Summer 2006"

http://www.orgonelab.org/Report2006.htm

On the eve of OBRL's fourth decade of existence, I have compiled a summary-list of old and new projects in the works, our plans for continued expansion of research activity, educational outreach, and facilities.  For example:

* Building Projects at the Greensprings Center:  Since 1995, and almost every year since, the OBRL Greensprings Center has hosted lively seminars and educational events, including the 2005 New Research in Orgonomy Conference, held outdoors under the trees on a specially-constructed stage.  However, there is a need to expand our laboratory-seminar building by extending the first-floor to accommodate a larger group of people, and to thereby make the Laboratory usable for seminars during the rainy and snowy winter months.  This will also provide more laboratory space.  Already this summer 2007, a small storage-building which doubles as a student cabin, with a generous sleeping loft, was constructed.  An older storage out-building on the property will also be converted into a livable workspace.

* Experimental Projects on around-the-clock automated To-T and Geiger-Muller counter reactions continue, but the equipment is constantly overtaxed, and in need of periodic maintenance and replacement.  I hope to expand these important experiments to include automated systems for measuring electroscopical discharge rates, and other novel experiments pioneered by Reich.  Some preliminary experimental work on the 19th Century "cosmic ether-drift" question is also under discussion, using modern equipment and new approaches already published in recent years.  See my article on the Miller ether-drift experiments for mention of some of these:

http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm

http://www.orgonelab.org/DynamicEther.pdf

An older experiment on Living Water, or water-structuring inside the orgone accumulator, using surface tension and spectroscopical parameters, was pushed into the background over the last several years, without progress.  Those experiments will also be revived and approached with new energy in 2008.

* CORE Research and Applications: With the growth of political instability in the world's great desert regions, I've retreated from efforts aimed at desert-greening, being quite content with the marvelous results from the 1990s work undertaken in Israel, Namibia and Eritrea.  Those experiments generously confirmed Reich's ideas on the desert-greening abilities of the CORE methods.  You can review a summary of those results here:

http://www.orgonelab.org/ResearchSummary2.htm

Consequently, OBRL is today focusing attention with CORE-cloudbusting efforts only in the stable democratic nations. All such efforts continue to be developed in cooperation with the CORE Network, which today has an international outreach.

* OBRL Publishing Projects in the coming years:  In the planning stages are the following new books:

- New Research in Orgonomy, Proceedings from two conferences held in 2005 and 2007, respectively as sponsored by OBRL at the Greensprings Center, and by CORE in Chipping, Lancashire, UK. (Pulse of the Planet #6)

- Greening Deserts: my long-delayed book on CORE-Cloudbusting work, with an overview of modern problems in climatology.

- Saharasia Since 1900: A survey of sex-economic conditions in the modern world, using nation-state data as gathered by international agencies like the UN or WHO, to address the relative levels of human armoring and violence-potential around the world, with new maps, taking up from the anthropological time-line where the original Saharasia book left off.

- New Experiments on the Cosmic Ether-Drift: A review of the work of Miller, Michelson-Pease-Pearson, Galaev, Cahill, and others indicating this is a real and demonstrated ether, similar to Reich's orgone energy, which has been suppressed by the politics of science.

- Suppressed and (Nearly) Forgotten Scientific Innovators of the 20th Century: A chapter-by-chapter review and theoretical integration of the works of scientists such as Wilhelm Reich, Frank Brown, Giorgio Piccardi, Dayton Miller, Halton Arp, Harold Hillman, Royal Rife, Jacques Benveniste, Peter Duesberg, Robert O. Becker, Immanuel Velikovsky, Hannes Alfven, Louis Kervran, Bjorn Nordenstrom, Michel Gauquelin, Harold Burr, and others.

* Continuing the Digital Archive Project:  Our collection of old U-matic, VHS and Hi-8 tapes continue to be transferred into digital format for long-term storage, but this process was temporarily halted in anticipation of new "Blu-Ray" high density DVD recording equipment.  The research materials I've gathered over these many years, which also include archival information from others, are of great importance to history, and they must be preserved optimally.

These and other experimental efforts will continue at OBRL, and they all require a constant infusion of funds for equipment and supplies, as well as for considerable out-of-pocket expenses.  For this, our network of donors is called upon to help out as they can, as the barriers to full participation of orgonomic research in the mainstream scientific institutions are still ever-present, with many prejudices remaining in the "old guard".  Thankfully, however, a younger generation of scientists and professionals is moving into the scientific and medical institutions, armed with the facts about Reich's work, educated in part by such institutions as OBRL.

Your Support is Needed Now

 

In order for OBRL to remain a thriving enterprise, we depend on friends and contacts such as you, and this is where you can make a difference.  Please consider helping to fund these ongoing research and educational projects.  Such a donation would make a meaningful holiday gift.  And if you cannot make a donation, then consider to purchase OBRL's publications, which also provides overall support to the work-efforts.

 

DONATE ONLINE

 

Donating online is easy and secure and also keeps our administrative costs down.  To contribute right now, visit http://www.orgonelab.org/donation

You can indicate the amount you wish to contribute.

 

OBRL is a 501(c)(3) status organization, and your donation to OBRL is tax-deductible.  Please also consider to remember OBRL in your bequests.

 

You can also send a check to OBRL:

OBRL

PO Box 1148

Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA

 

Thanks once again, and have a wonderful Christmas, Hannuka, New Year, and holiday,

 

James DeMeo, PhD

Director and Founder of OBRL

Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory

Since 1978

Ashland, Oregon, USA

http://www.orgonelab.org

http://www.saharasia.org

email is today our primary notification method. 

If you appreciate getting these materials and have not done so already, and to get "plugged in" to our announcements, please subscribe to OBRL-News or the less-frequent OBRL-Quarterly using the links near the bottom of the OBRL homepage.

http://www.orgonelab.org

The same information presented on the more-frequent OBRL-News is also posted to the OBRL-News Blog, which you can visit at your leisure, here:

http://obrl.blogspot.com/