OBRL Funding Request - December 2007

December 14, 2007
 

At this time of year, we wish to thank those of you who have already supported OBRL, and ask those of you who have not to please consider it now. We ask you to 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:

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:

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.

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

On the eve of OBRL's fourth decade of existence, we have a list of new projects and ideas 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, we wish 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.  We hope to also convert an older storage out-building on the property 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.  We hope to expand these important experiments to include automated systems for measuring electroscopical discharge rates, and other novel experiments pioneered by Reich.

* 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.

* Continuing the Digital Archive Project:  Our collection of old U-matic, VHS and Hi-8 tapes continue to be transferred, but we temporarily halted this process in anticipation of new "Blu-Ray" high density DVD recording equipment.  We feel our research materials are of great importance to history, and they should 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, we must rely upon our network of donors, as the barriers to full participation of orgonomic research in the mainstream 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.

 

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 our ongoing research and educational projects.  Such a donation would make a meaningful holiday gift:

 

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