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The Underlying Unity in Nature:
Cosmic Primordial Energy
By Michael Mannion
Inspiration for Cosmos and Consciousness V
As a young man, I studied the history of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the Existentialists; the advance of science from Francis Bacon to Albert Einstein; and the development of psychology from Sigmund Feud to Abraham Maslow. During the course of my searching, I was introduced to the work of Wilhelm Reich. After years of immersing myself in his writings, I came to see that his work was both a synthesis of Western thought and a breakthrough to crucial new knowledge.
In the summer of 1970, in the ground-breaking book, Cosmic Superimposition: Man’s Orgonotic Roots in Nature by Wilhelm Reich, I read the following passage for the first time: “Orgonomic research had broken down completely the boundaries between the bio-energetic and the astrophysical realm, heretofore kept strictly delineated by mechanistic natural science and transgressed only in mystical experiences of many religious kinds in a factually useless way.”
In the spring of 1999, in American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947 by Wilhelm Reich, I read another quote that helped inspire this year’s conference:
“…the enormous problem of consciousness has been haunting natural philosophers for thousands of years and natural scientists for hundreds of years without anybody so far finding a solution. I personally regard it as the most difficult and most decisive problem facing all of natural science…”
Reich’s science played a key role in opening me to a new worldview, one that was neither mechanistic nor mystical, but rather, functional, dynamic, and living. Today, researchers are crossing the artificial boundaries between the human and the cosmic and discovering connections that can greatly help us.
It is now becoming more widely understood that “consciousness,” “mind,” and “knowing” exist in some manner in all living things on Earth, the planet itself and in the cosmos from which all has emerged. However, at present, a mechanistic-mystical worldview prevails, as it has for millennia. It is evident in a split in our perception of reality, in a profound duality in our thinking and knowing, which prevents us from moving forward to a new understanding of reality founded on the underlying unity of nature.
To truly understand either cosmos or consciousness requires the experience of the universe as One. To experience the Oneness of creation, it is essential to be awake. As Heraclitus wrote, “To those who are awake, the Universe is One.” To awaken, and stay awake, is the struggle of a lifetime. However, our social order is organized to lull us all to sleep. And the sleep-inducing social machinery of what we call “The Trance” is powerful indeed. One of the central mechanisms that serves to limit a more comprehensive view of reality is what is called a “worldview.” Worldviews have a powerful, but little recognized, impact on us all.
The Impact of Worldviews
Worldviews shape and limit what we perceive and how we perceive, as well as what we think about and how we think about it. In September 2003, the late Dr. John E. Mack spoke on the critical influence of worldviews at Cosmos and Consciousness: The Transformative Impact of New Knowledge. In great part, the conflict and controversy that surrounded Dr. Mack because of his writings about human encounters with non-human intelligences was not really about the reality of so-called “aliens.” It was, in actuality, a manifestation of worldviews in collision.
Worldviews also affect the manner in which men and women explore the great unsolved enigma of consciousness. For scientists of any stripe, as much as for believers of any religion or persuasion, deep-seated assumptions shape and limit beliefs in what is possible and what is not. In some instances, there can be no discussion of certain phenomena because, according to the worldview of the individual and her or his society, the phenomena do not exist or are not “real,” reality being determined by the parameters of the worldview itself.
For example, in the worldview of mechanistic materialism, consciousness is an epiphenomenon—a by-product—of the accidental organization of matter. Consciousness somehow arises in living matter in ways not understood at all.
In the neurosciences, the brain and nervous system are considered essential to consciousness. There can be no consciousness without them. But the mechanisms for this are not yet comprehended. This leaves materialists asking themselves such intriguing questions as, “How can meat think?”
In this worldview, by definition, there can be no prenatal or perinatal consciousness since the brain and nervous system are not sufficiently developed. And there can be no survival of consciousness after the death of the body, since the brain and nervous system no longer function. There can also be, according to this worldview, no reality to the thousands of reports of near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and other anomalous phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and so forth.
To those shaped by the mechanistic materialist worldview, none of the above topics can be investigated since they cannot possibly exist. But such anomalies are among the very subjects most in need of study. We are fortunate that high-caliber frontier scientists who come from very different worldviews are investigating anomalies and making progress in comprehending them. Although their pictures of reality differ sharply from the one that dominates the West today, and also differ in important ways from one another, dialogue is possible because, from these perspectives, all of the above anomalies are possible and, therefore, are possible to investigate.
Experiencing the Cosmic Energy
Since written records have been kept, human beings have communicated about an energy or force or source from which all originates and to which all returns. In physics, this phenomenon has been called prana, chi, pneuma and many, many other names over the centuries. In metaphysics, it has been called “god” or “spirit” or “soul.” But in both of these ancient ways of knowing, this central phenomenon has eluded our comprehension and direct experience.
Nearly 70 years ago, Wilhelm Reich began to elaborate a body of knowledge that brought this impasse to an end. Today, the cosmic primordial energy is no longer a metaphysical principle or unproven scientific hypothesis. It is a real energy that is demonstrable, measurable and usable. It can be directly experienced subjectively and measured objectively. This represents a major advance, even an evolutionary advance, for the human species—but only if it is further developed.
In 1971, I built a device called an orgone energy accumulator. Orgone was the name Reich gave to the primordial cosmic energy because it charged organic matter and was the energy of the orgastic function in man and animals. For the past 36 years, I have used this device and through it experienced direct contact with the life energy that has been postulated to exist in one form or another throughout human history.
The direct physical experience of the life energy has changed fundamentally my view of who we are, where we came from and where we are going. A major goal of my work has been to connect the body of knowledge that Reich left, the science of orgonomy, with the important discoveries being made by leading researchers today.
In 1949, based on experimental work with orgone energy, Reich came to understand that there is no such thing as “empty space” and “there exists no vacuum.” Rather, “it is a well-defined energy that is responsible for the physical qualities of space.” This physical energy could be observed, demonstrated, reproduced and controlled in scientific experiments. He understood the cosmos to be “full of cosmic primordial energy, a continuum that functions dynamically and obeys a generally valid law of nature.” Today, a great deal of related research is being done on zero-point energy, vacuum energy, the Akashic field, quintessence, dark energy, and scalar fields.
Reich’s views on consciousness also influenced me greatly. It was in his work that I first read about the “brain mythology” of mechanistic science that limited consciousness and perception to the existence of a brain. He noted that fully-functioning, perceiving multicellular animals existed for eons without brains. He also pointed out the similarity between the medical-scientific view of the brain as the “master” of the subordinate organs and the authoritarian, hierarchical structure of our society. Today, a great deal of exciting research is focusing on “mind without brain.”
For Reich, the greatest riddles of life are self-perception and self-awareness. Emotions and thinking and knowing are inextricably connected. They are energy phenomena at the root of being. He wrote “The quest for knowledge expresses desperate attempts, at times, on the part of the orgone energy within the living organism to comprehend itself, to become conscious of itself. And in understanding its own ways and means of being, it learns to understand the cosmic orgone energy ocean that surrounds the surging and searching emotions.” Reich further concluded that “…in self-awareness, the cosmic orgone energy becomes aware of itself.”
In his last book, Contact with Space, published posthumously in 1957, Reich wrote that Life has become aware of the precarious conditions under which it now exists in its present environment. He believed that Life was going to dramatically alter the conditions of its own existence. He wrote, “How this will be after Life has become aware of itself and its way, we cannot tell. It is within the realm of possibilities, even of probabilities, that Life will construct, create new, safer, broader ways of existence for itself with the knowledge of life that it is about to acquire.”
This small essay is not adequate for these profound thoughts. But it is worthwhile presenting them as an incentive for those who might wish to go further and read the primary material in the many books that Reich published during his lifetime and in the material that has found its way into print since his death.
The key to moving forward as a species is to fully feel and understand the role of the cosmic primordial energy in love, consciousness and emotions; in astrophysics and biophysics; in perception and self-perception. Our task is to comprehend the primordial energy field as the ground of being, the origin of matter and energy, of consciousness and information; of emotions, thought and knowing; the source of our existence; and the underlying unity of the cosmos that roots us in Nature.
Michael Mannion
September 2007
©2007 Journal of the Mindshift institute
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