NINE YEARS OF ORGONE ENERGY MEASUREMENTS BY THE WILHELM REICH ORGONE INSTITUTE GERMANY

Lecture John Joachim Trettin

   
On the occasion of an interview with the university-radio of the FU-Berlin on Wilhelm Reich and Orgone energy in particular on May 25th 2004, we re-publish our results of 9 years of energy research, To-T and Eo-E.

Maybe, word from Berlin will be that Reich’s To-T measurements have been falsified, but 9 years of our measurements show that this is not the case. The adapted student may approach Reich’s work with a negative attitude and wish for them to be false, and consider the fact that universities don’t teach Orgonomy as proof. But we don’t care about this attitude – the correctness of Reich’s research has been proved by us and making Reich sympathetic to non-believers is of no importance.

Reichian research is fundamental and essential for the future, so essential that we give our best to show that Reich wasn’t wrong.  

This means that we are only interested in providing material for unbiased people to continue research in the future. Whoever wants to ignore this proof is of no relevance to us.

John Trettin

Orgone Institute Nümbrecht, 24.5.04

 

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Foreword for the first publication, April 4, 2004

On request of a reader of our sites, today we publish a first general report of our 10 years of Orgone research.
The result in advance:

Orgone energy can be measured. – It really exists. – And a lot of diverse Orgone data was acquired by us, the Wilhelm Reich OgoneInstitute Germany.

This report was written in several steps and now appears after the first correction in my absence.

However, it is important to me that the report comes out now, without being revised in small details. It gives an account of the data that can be collected when To-T and Eo-E are measured. A lot of work still remains, and I would never claim measurements were performed under optimal conditions.

Anyway, we were able to collect a lot of data, especially in the field of Eo-E that was never available before.
Real research naturally requires the right budget, in order to work with more sophisticated methods than those we applied.

Two days ago, the German federal government, represented by the minister of science, Bulmahn, decided to allocate money for renewable energy. Unfortunately, there is no one representing an orgonomic approach. Thus, we are excluded from the allocation of this money. That is the dilemma of politics: There is no Orgonomist who could represent Wilhelm Reich in the Green party or the Social Democrats.


On the other hand, we find it absurd to use Orgone totally detached as a general form of energy. Even worse are the circumstances among some representatives of Reich, where Orgone has also become an empty word. While others are shutting down their homepages on this field, we present a real project report.


A more intense research that went on for 2 years was finished at February 18th, 2004. The 16th and 18th of February are historical dates – at these days, Reich began measurement of his Oranur-experiment in the early 50s.



Today was the last day of a 2-year study on hourly measurements of Orgone-energy To-T and Eo-E, where the first year was dedicated to To-T and the last to Eo-E. The To-T-measurements were determined electronically then. This was made possible thanks to a member of the new Wilhelm Reich Society, Dipl. Ing. Hajo Scheibe-Kessler. The procedure was adopted by the OrgoneInstitute and remained standard for the hourly measurements. The quicksilver-measurements that were used from 1995-2001 were abandoned because it was difficult to read outdoors, especially in winter. The old procedure is still used in Berlin as well as Köln whenever we measure there.

The reading of Eo-E-data was only possible with an infrared-stopwatch-procedure. The idea goes back to Manfred Fuckert and was adopted by me back when I was still in the managing committee of the Centre for Orgonomy in Eberbach.
At that time there also was the idea of an hourly recording of Orgone data directly into the Computer, which couldn’t be realized at that time. In the end, the project was carried out by us, the OrgoneInstitute, the only remaining research institution in Germany.

In the time when I was permanently in Berlin, also in the 80s, B. Harrer began with electronic measurement-techniques. His results didn’t convince him, so he decided against a physical Orgone energy. He should have known better. Yet he postulated for example that warmth in the Orgone-accumulator was due to reflection of the metal in an enclosed cavity.

Having constructed Orgone-devices for 30 years, we know that some Orgone-elements radiate warmth by themselves. Unfortunately, Harrer has been repeatedly consulted as an expert for measurement by people who are just as incompetent in judgement as Harrer himself is. I regret having to say this with such harshness. But this is much more important than politeness. Work in the field of Orgonomy doesn’t allow thinking of career, thinking of success and in no case lack of patience. Not everyone is predestined to become a scientist, and least of all in the field of Orgonomy. Whoever has passed through a scientific education is often hopelessly conventionally programmed and barely qualified for Orgonomy. This is the bitter truth. Uncritical mysticism is often the only loophole for such persons (Orgone – that is love) or some sort of mechanistic idiocy. Serious people often give up Orgonomy, because they realize, that one can’t make a living with it. Thus, our work has involuntarily achieved a central position, because others have abandoned it. However, this does not diminish our work.

Orgone data always served mainly to prove the existence of Orgone energy. At this time, there are little fields of application. We use them for weather-assessment before Cloudbusting and whenever an atomic-bomb-test is conducted, where the reaction spreads around the world, and hope for the future for a practical application of Orgone-energy in devices other than the Orgone-accumulator. But actually, they are object of research themselves, and thus of the conditions they represent, especially in meteorology.

Reich discovered Orgone-energy in 1940, at a time when no one was interested in an ether-theory anymore. Since the Michelson-Morley-experiment, the belief in physical ether was abandoned and since Albert Einstein there was no practical inducement to operate with such an item. Reich himself once said that when truths appear, they don’t ask if they are welcome or not.

The basis for the discovery of Orgone-energy was the sexual-economic emancipation, and thus the cultural emancipation par excellence. Here, patriarchic structures of thinking were overcome which wouldn’t have given room for Orgone-energy and the function of orgasm. The imagination alone that both physics and the pleasure-function were connected would have given rise to doubts. But according to Reich, rationality is associated with an unrestrained sexuality. Everything else he called characterological rigidification. Freud already showed that in the unconscious, real functions are associated, Reich found even in physicists he had in therapy, the fear of Orgone-energy which was at the core the fear of streaming pleasure. This statement is of course not accepted in contemporary science that isolates its disciplines. In conclusion I want to mention that Reich once said that it is no coincidence that not a physicist, but a psychiatrist discovered Orgone-energy.

The precursor of Orgone-energy was the ether-theory of the Greeks. According to imagination, everything would have to move in a medium, not in empty space. As mentioned above, Reich believed that genital frustration bared this access for the physicists. The Greeks had already postulated a primordial life-energy, manifesting in matter and life. They even believed that the universe originated from its basic principles, love and hate. An idea that may seem strange today, but it also means that matter is not made of dead substance. In the end, consciousness is just a sequence of electrical currents for the physicist and neurologist. According to this, the mind is just an illusion, just a misguided sensation of dead electricity.

The philosophy of life-energy takes other paths and doesn’t lead to exaltation over the mind, but is able to develop certain physical parameters. Orgone-research would do a lot better today if it had the budget of other research-institutions. Thus, it now lies in private hands in Germany, in this case in ours.

Reich had 3 standard methods to prove Orgone-energy. The first was the thermometer, the second the electroscope, the third the Geiger counter. I won’t get into the Geiger counter, because it is not object of our measurements.

The second main clause of thermodynamics (an awfully bureaucratically formulated theorem) states that under the same conditions, two physical measurements can’t be different in enclosed cavities. With Orgone-energy, this is not the case. Reich postulated on grounds of Orgone-energy a continuous rise of temperature in the Orgone-accumulator. Such measurements as he achieved in the clear air of Orgonon in the pre-atomic age don’t exist today. Another aspect is that a negative deviation, an Orgone-box that shows smaller temperatures. Such measures seem even more adventurous than positive values. They appear outdoors or in closed rooms, especially when they are heavily isolated and centrally heated, less pronounced in oven-heated rooms.

From the point of view of classical physics, one would attribute this to convection, a movement of warmth that leads to differing values. In classical physics this is willingly used as an argument, because there are no others.

Particularly the melting of ice (I) and Orgone-water-ice (OI) shows that normal ice melts a lot faster, while melting is slowed in Orgone-ice. This experiment was conducted by the OrgoneInstitute and also devised by us.

Someone accustomed with Orgonomy knows that harmful substances and nuclear energy impair the vitality of Orgone-energy, just as radar and electrical devices in the high- and low-frequency range. In brief, all the devices that are in use today, and weren’t in Reich’s days. A drained Orgone-function is called deadly Orgone – DOR. Reich already observed how the DOR-hull accumulated and today we know that DOR travels around the globe like Orgone. For our measurements, To-T, this means that values are smaller today, not that Reich was wrong.
We, the OrgoneInstitute Germany, report here to verify Reich’s research, and - in contrast to the Neo-Reichians who would willingly eliminate Orgone-energy – have to produce real research in order to confront opinions that have nothing to do with research, because they have no basis.

This includes all forms of sexual-economic emancipation, which is often insufficient are totally absent. In the German Reich-scene, nobody except for us talks about sexual-economy, which was the actual cause of the discovery of Orgone-energy.

It is easy to call oneself Orgonomist in this or that discipline, although one actually doesn’t know, what Orgone-energy means. Just possessing an Orgone-accumulator hardly justifies this appellation.

We have now measured Orgone-energy for 9 years, from 1994 to 2004. Sporadically in the first 2 years, the rest daily and the last two years hourly. Several different boxes and measuring-procedures were applied over the years.

The first boxes were small Orgone-accumulators, i. e. six walls. Directly at the beginning, we added to the control-box, that is no Orgone-accumulator, 2 Orgone-boxes for measurement. One was a 1-layered Orgone-accumulator, the other a 5-layered one. Aside from the confirmation of positive temperature-differences To-T, we found that there was no strictly linear increase of Orgone-energy, so that either the 1-layer or the 5-layer box dominated. This seemed very strange to us back then, but has to do with the qualitative aspect of Orgone-energy. Sometimes, a negative charge can stubbornly remain while a weaker charge moves more freely. There are parallels in Orgone-therapy, which has hardly transcended the vegetative approach in Germany (except for us). In order to conceal the ignorance of the persons who wanted to represent Reich, the anti-Orgone-fraction in Berlin claimed that the vegetative approach was the representative of psychiatric Orgone-therapy. It is not, and I can only repeat this once more! Because of this permanent misinterpretation, we were forced to emphasize the contrast between us and these colleagues and in the end, we alone represented a practically oriented work.

Measurements depend on the content of Orgone-energy in their fluctuations. This statement is true, but we can say very little today about how this content comes about. It doesn’t work the same way as in classical physics and this always makes things complicated in Orgonomy. Only stereotypical persons are (widely) always the same. Spontaneous persons are often unpredictable. And thus it works in the physical world of Orgone. Extreme values may behave constant, not reacting to changes, while smaller values may do so.

I, as therapist, believe that this also applies to therapy and therefore, therapy is not only a matter of muscular armour. This aspect would have to be discussed again in the sphere of therapy. It modifies a lot of what is believed today about therapy.

The second step was to simplify the procedure with the boxes so that differences could be avoided. Now, there was just one ground-element with a thin Aluminium-foil. On top was a plastic-cup to contain the charge. For our third measurement, there was of course a 5-layer box that was constructed equally sparse.

Measurements were not influenced by these changes. Critics had always claimed that the increased values arose from the strong insulation that is a property of an ORAC. This setting shows that this was not the case.

Doug Marret, a Canadian researcher who heard of my project of daily To-T-measurement, started a similar project 2 weeks ahead of me that didn’t last long and sadly isn’t available on the internet anymore. He acted on wrong assumptions and measured in one Orgone-room T and To. Consideration alone should have told him that the experiment loses its sense, because we always want to compare with natural environment. The negative measurements were not very encouraging and in a discussion with me, he criticised the missing cube-design in our setting. Even Reich initially believed in the interaction of the six walls of an Orgone-accumulator for Orgone concentration. Today, we know this doesn’t apply.

Eva Reich also shares this point of view today. One Orgone-element is sufficient for raising Orgone-energy, at least for purposes of measurement. A human body of course has to be surrounded by elements for optimal charging. A general value that can be measured under favourable conditions is +0.1 to +0.2 degrees Celsius. Critics assess their tolerance limit for measuring errors right there, but this doesn’t impress us.

Berlin had a lot of negative values last year during the time of our measurements. This winter, values were good, sometimes rising to +0.4. In Berlin, measurement takes place in an old building. The house is not insulated, so values move with the weather, whether the room is heated or not.

In Köln, the praxis is a ferroconcrete building. Values are normally +0.1 to +0.2 there, rarely higher. The OrgoneInstitute Nümbrecht is insulated all around. When central heating is turned on, values often drop below Zero.

From 1977 on there were continuous measurements. The US-Journal PORE (Public Orgonomic Research Exchange) connected the measurements of Marret with ours, so that they could be accessed weekly at PORE. Measurement took place once a day, between Noon and 4 PM, assuming that the data would be highest at that time. However, this only applied partially, as we found out later.

Outdoor measurements often resulted in negative values because of moisture when the boxes stood directly on the ground.

So we searched for a place where the boxes would not be directly exposed to light and that was the southwest side. Here, there was an afternoon-revolution. Remarkable was the fact that back then the To-T-boxes often had negative values before the sun-revolution began at the southwest side. The institute’s building faces the sun in direction southeast, so that the sun has to “get around the house” – so to speak – in order to reach the measuring-station. The measuring-station stood outside in the beginning and was then moved inside the house (we didn’t own a weather-hut back then) and placed so that the sun couldn’t hit it directly while the arrangement was still next to the veranda. A few meters from there, the electroscope data Eo-E was determined.

As I said, one of our first results was that Orgone-energy could not be measured linearly. The reaction of Orgone-energy to quantitative changes would be a project for the future. This point was made by us for the first time and has not been mentioned in conjunction with measuring-date elsewhere. Another point was that To-T and Eo-E data were not synchronous all the time. To and Eo often differ. In Orgonomy, a lot of nice graphics are shown where To and Eo move up and down in synchrony. This can happen, but often it doesn’t. The correlation is therefore no proof for Orgone-energy in my opinion. The To and Eo data however, are.

Two years ago we started measuring electronically. Here, the boxes were made of glass. The To-box additionally had a light steel wool net. Both parts were put into a container that replaced the weather-hut, and, sheltered from rain and sun, placed outside. The computer recorded the data hourly around the clock. From the data, it is clear that there are increases during the night and that the theory of a maximum increase between noon and 4 PM is wrong.

The data outside and in the dark is probably the best, although in the end, it doesn’t tell us what we wanted to know: When is there Orgone activity that expresses itself in data. Surely there is a connection between sun activity (Noon to 6 PM), but why are there such high values in the dark?

I think that we will have to part with a lot of assumptions that claim Orgone-energy is quantitative, so there must be this or that amount of Orgone-energy, just like classical physics deals with mass. In another way, several measuring instruments show several expressions of Orgone-energy. To what extent Orgone-energy reacts to quicksilver is also still unclear.

Research just requires money and since we have conducted research with minimal expenses we want to see it in this limitedness. The true age of Orgone research is yet to come.

In the field of electroscopes, our second measuring-method, things were completely different. Reich made a theoretical distinction between electricity from friction and galvanic electricity. He saw friction-electricity as the direct, natural expression of Orgone-energy and called this function Orgone-electricity (Eo). Determining Orgone-electricity is basically easy. All you need is two electroscopes, one placed in an Orgone-accumulator and one as control. We use a 5-layered Orgone-accumulator that is open at the front. It wouldn’t be difficult now to determine Orgone-energy, if only the discharge-times weren’t so long. Who has got the time to sit in front of an electroscope for 2 to 10 hours? We solved the problem with infrared-stopwatches. At first, the electroscopes stood in the lower part of the institute for years, later they were moved to the laboratory along with the thermometers. But there is another problem with measuring temperature: The positive difference is often falsely interpreted as “good”, in contrast to the negative difference that is considered “bad”. I believed that, too. But in fact, Orgone-energy moves between positive and negative, expressing different functions. This function is not present in electroscopes. There are a few exceptions in summer when Eo-E drops now and then.

But there are exceptions, too. For example, in June 2003, when the Eo showed totally different values than usual. The heat modified Orgone-voltage noticeably, so that it was negative for days. Something like that took place only once in 8 years of measurement and was surely documented by us alone. Back then, the Eo started to count before the E and finished before E as usual. A remarkable process that can’t be explained conventionally, just like a lot of other things in Orgonomy. The negative Eo-values require extended analysis, for which we have not found time yet due to our extensive work.

One point about electroscope-measurements that wasn’t mentioned by others, not even by Reich, is that in winter, values are very different to those of summer-measurements. Orgone-rates in summer are a few seconds to minutes, in winter up to 2 hours. These are huge differences. So measurements extend in summer. The Orgone-electroscope requires 10 hours from a right angle (90 degrees) to the middle (45 degrees) where measurement takes place.

In 2002 we started the project of hourly measurements. This first applied to the thermometer, 1 year later to the electroscope, too. The data was published via Yahoo-groups. We overlooked the fact that Yahoo-groups had reduced storage space so heavily that all data was lost. We have already begun with the reconstruction so that all data will be fully available again soon. All other data, 1995-2002, is available via Geocities as a monthly list. Electroscope data of the last years is only present at the daily site of the OrgoneInsitute. As mentioned above, in the course of our measurements a difference between winter and summer showed. One would think that in summer, Orgone-rates are high and low in winter. But the opposite is true.

We, the OrgoneInstitute Germany were the first to have discovered this. It was not mentioned in orgonomic literature before. Calculating the ratio that indicates, how many E-charges are contained in an Eo-charge was given up after a few months since there was little interest in Orgone-data. But it can be calculated belatedly and a first view showed that it was a lot higher at the beginning of our measurements than now. The mean ratio was 3, high values were around 7. However, our lists show that in the first months, the ratio was around 10. Electroscope data seldom brings us negative values, maybe once or twice a year, in summer and under high pressure.

June 2003 shows us a different picture. Under the continuous heat there were a lot of negative values. Orgone-voltage normally expresses in a severely delayed discharge of the electroscope. But in this case, Eo discharged a lot faster. Radiant sunlight doesn’t charge Orgone-energy indefinitely but leads to discharge. These facts were also unknown before in Orgonomy. Orgone-voltage can be measured only once or twice a day in winter due to slow discharge-rates, more often in the summer. Whoever has worked with an electroscope knows that ratios increase with repeated measurement. For this reason, one needs two separate electroscopes for measurement.

The reason for this is that Orgone-concentration sticks to the electroscope (Eo), even when it discharges completely. Therefore a once arranged Orgone-electroscope has got to remain an Orgone-electroscope. One should not exchange these devices. The same applies to the thermometers.

Through the Wilhelm Reich OrgoneInstitute a lot of new facts were secured, but their interpretation is more difficult than their determination. Field studies at our Cloudbusting operations were not conducted. 

Summary:

Since 1995 there is a service in Germany that measures Orgone-data To-T and Eo-E daily. For To-T there is an hourly chart now, for Eo-E a daily one. The following ostensible conclusions can be drawn.

1. Orgone-energy doesn’t grow linearly. It enhances or holds charges. This expresses in the discontinuous values of several charge-measurements.

2. Orgone-electroscope values are very high in winter and very low in summer. This means that Orgone-voltage is high in winter and low in summer, ultimately that free atmospheric Orgone-energy is stronger in summer than in winter.
Electroscope-measurements are more stable than thermometer-measurements. Thermometer-measurements tend to cross the zero more often than electroscope-measurements. The continuous temperature difference of at least +0.2 degrees as postulated by Reich doesn’t exist nowadays.

A continuous correlation between Eo and To doesn’t exist, as our measurements have clearly shown.

Academic science couldn’t include Orgonomy yet and will probably not do so in our time. Private institutions don’t get the necessary support to continue their work reasonably. This probably led to the standing upon trifles that has made Orgonomy such a conservative institution, comparable only to the Catholic Church. Orgone data could be a new start, but I doubt it. The white-bread camp has recaptured everything that once emerged from it in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Orgonomy has developed into a practically impotent form. What remains are Reich’s writings as a legacy for the future. We hope to have opened the door to this legacy a little with our work. But the real scientific work is yet to come.

Whoever wants to see the data in detail should visit these sites:

http://www.orgone.de/daten.htm

http://www.trettin-tv.de/orgondaten.html

A lot of lists of the Yahoo-groups that were deleted are being reconstructed and will soon be available.

Meanwhile Eo-E data can only be found at the daily page of the OrgoneInstitute.

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.Wilhelm Reich Akademie