Is Orgone energy the modern rediscovery of the ancient yoga life force called “prana”?

It was almost a century ago that a pioneering scientist came across what could well be the very same substance that yogis have been describing for thousands of years. The ancient Sanskrit Vedas of India and the Taoist tantric practices of China both refer to a subtle energy or life force which they call “prana” or “chi”. So it was a meaningful moment when psychiatrist and scientist Wilhelm Reich discovered what he called “orgone energy” and designed a device to enhance it.

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Reich was perhaps one of his century’s great misunderstood men, much like Nikola Tesla. He was born in 1897 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary and trained as a Freudian, and a Marxist some say. He was actually a professor in Psychoanalysis, so it is not surprising that, like Freud, he incorporated a distinct sexual theme to his work and discovery. He propounded the Freudian idea that repressed sexuality was a source of illness. Blocked energy, presumably even on a subtle, or psychic or psychological level, turned positive orgone (POR) into deadly orgone (DOR). His sixth book of 14 was released in 1939 on his most revolutionary of discoveries, the “orgone accumulator” and its ability to help cure even Cancer.

By then Reich had already fled Europe to avoid the war, and was in America, land of the free. Despite already being a renowned professor and academic, it was on the eve of his launch that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) of America invaded his lab and arrested him, simultaneously confiscating all his research material. He ended up being imprisoned for most of his later life and ultimately died in prison. Ironically his death by heart failure was just days before his sentence came up for parole and some suggest that he was actually assassinated to keep him quiet.

His work on curing people of medical problems and helping to treat Cancer could have pushed against the mainstream medical and particularly pharmaceutical companies of the day who didn’t want a revolutionary cure to be given out – for free – while they intended to profit off the sale of their medicines.

The curious thing about Reich’s philosophy is that it encouraged more sexual intercourse in a, perhaps repressed time in history when the church still had a grip on people’s private lives and morals. It was the right time for a Freudian approach to society’s hang-ups. Ironically it is the very opposite which is recommended in the ancient Vedic Sanskrit texts on yoga as well as the Taoist texts on longevity. There celibacy and semen retention is highly recommended for anyone wanting to enhance their prana, chi or life force. This was one of the secrets of the yogis, but Reich had it backwards.

That being said, total celibacy is not necessary either. Mantak Chia is a prolific writer on Tao and the art of sexual energy, and he recommends an average of an orgasm a month for a middle aged man but less and less as we age. This is to preserve chi and facilitate good health and an advanced age. Female orgasms are more prolific, of course.

Reich found that orgone energy could cure people and could be collected and accumulated in a container that was lined with multiple recurring layers of organic material which holds orgone and inorganic that repels it. He built a small cupboard in which a person would sit for about 30 minutes and receive the extra orgone energy accumulated inside. His research seemed to be successful in not only improving the health of patients but also their libido and sexual inspiration. This is where the sexual theme arose probably. Presumably there were numerous sexually repressed patients in his era and he rose to the rescue with his timely techniques of therapy.

Among his other inventions are the cloudbuster, possibly the earliest attempts at weather manipulation, also harnessing orgone energy. The famous pop singer Kate Bush even wrote a song in the 1980s about Reich’s tragic arrest and abduction from his family calling it Cloudbusting. In recent years in our more liberal age, Reich’s work has been researched with much more openness, and even approval and substantiation, particularly regarding the orgone energy or “zero point energy” as we sometimes call it today. This “zero point energy” is also something that Tesla was alluding to in his revolutionary work on power and how to harness it.

These men both spoke of an unlimited source of this life force energy all around us. Tesla harnessed it for fuel, while Reich harnessed it for medicine. Apparently yogis, Tai Chi and kung fu masters also harnessed it via more ancient yet still scientific techniques to produce feats of wonder back then that we are only glimpsing in our experiments today.