informis/textfiles
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity
textfiles/bbs/KEELYNET/ECOLOGY/russell2.asc

529 lines
27 KiB
Plaintext
Raw Normal View History

Initial commit
2021-04-15 13:31:59 -05:00
(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
PO BOX 1031
Mesquite, TX 75150
There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
files on KeelyNet except where noted!
January 8, 1992
RUSSELL2.ASC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of :
The TESLA BBS...300,1200,2400...(8,N,1)
(719) 486-2775 Data
(303) 824-6834 Voice
(303) 443-8478 Voice
TESLA, Inc.
820 Bridger Circle
Craig, CO 81625
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Article From Solstice Magazine, Issue #36 May/June 1989
201 E. Main St. Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901
(804) 979-4427
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WALTER RUSSEL ARTICLE: SIDEBARS
AN EARLY WARNING
August, 1954. "It will not take many years to utterly destroy
the . . . encircling protective walls which surround this planet and
protect the earth from burning up by the sun's hot rays."
Walter and Lao Russell,
Newsletter of the University of Science and Philosophy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
April 6, 1989. "Scientists reported yesterday that for the
first time they have detected an increase in "biologically relevant"
levels of ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground as a result of
the ozone hole over the Antarctica. This is the first indication
that the depletion of ozone. . . is beginning to cause the
potentially harmful effect that has long been predicted."
(Washington Post)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA
In a way, the abrupt emergence of Russell's astonishing
hypothesis is in keeping with the peculiar tradition of the ozone
Page 1
story, a tale rife with riddles and ironies. "One of the most
striking features of the ozone controversy [is] the extent to which
'outsiders' played a crucial role in identifying the threats to the
ozone layer." (The Ozone War, page 11.)
It was James Lovelock, now famous as the author of the
controversial Gaia Hypothesis, who first found CFCs persisting in
the stratosphere. Making the historic measurement required an
ultra-sensitive device. Unable to obtain any funding for the
research (he was dismissed as a "crank"), Lovelock built the
delicate tool himself, using his family's "grocery money."
Ironically, Lovelock thought the chemicals might serve as
useful "tracers" for atmospheric study, and said they posed "no
conceivable hazard." "I boobed," Lovelock frankly admits. "It
turned out I was sitting on a time bomb." (The Ozone War, page 9.)
Sherry Rowland, who while on a "fishing trip for new ideas"
happened to hear early rumor of Lovelock's measurements at a
conference coffee klatch, was no more a part of mainstream ozone
research than Lovelock. In fact, he was not an atmospheric
scientist at all, but a chemist specializing in, of all things,
the chemistry of radio-isotopes. He and Molina, a young research
assistant fresh from receiving his PhD, never imagined that their
study would plunge them into the eye of a national cyclone of
controversy.
If Russell is right, and manmade nuclear reactions prove to be
at the root of stratospheric ills, then Sherry Rowland's involvement
provides one further irony: prior to his becoming interested in the
fluorocarbon work that led to the ozone finding, he was funded by
the Atomic Energy Commission. His area of research? -- the
chemistry of atoms produced in nuclear reactions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSSELL THE ARTIST
The story of how Dr. Russell came to sculpt his famous bust of
Edison is an example of his legendary versatility. At the age of
fifty-six, Russell had been an accomplished painter, but had never
handled clay in his life. As President of the Society of Arts and
Sciences, he felt compelled to make good on a commission for the
bust, which a fellow artist had accepted but was unable to complete.
He promptly got some clay and wired Mrs. Edison that he would go and
do it himself -- akin to a great conductor suddenly picking up the
violin for an unrehearsed recital.
"It was a very unwise thing to do, perhaps, because with such a
great man as Edison as my subject, I might not have survived a
failure," he later remarked. "But I never let the thought of
failure enter my mind. . . .The inspired belief that I should do
this thing as a demonstration of my belief in man's unlimited power
made me ignore the difficulties that lay in the way. So I went to
Florida with a mass of clay, but on my way down, I spent the entire
time absorbed in inspirational meditation with the Universal Source
of all inspiration."
The resulting sculpture was to be one of the great mileposts in
his career; other commissions followed immediately, producing busts
Page 2
of Franklin Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Thomas Watson,
George Gershwin and Leopold Stokowski, and finally a twenty-eight
figure monument to Mark Twain and the famous "Four Freedoms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSSELL THE SOCIAL REFORMER
Founded 20 years earlier as an "ethical and moral movement to
bring culture, character and the Brotherhood of Man principle into
world human relations," the New York-based Twilight Club brought
together a network of such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark
Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, Edwin Markham and Alexis
Carrell. (Alexis Carrell wrote Man The Unknown -- a perennial
favorite in macrobiotic circles -- during his association with
Russell and the Twilight Club.)
Russell's long collaboration with Thomas Watson, another
Twilight Club member and the founder of IBM, led to the introduction
of moral standards and ethical principles in the world of business.
In his first of many meetings and lectures for IBM personnel,
Russell said he was "shocked" with the "jungle philosophy of every
man for himself" that then permeated the business world, and he
effectively replaced the philosophy of "business is business" with
the concept "that equal interchange of goods and services between
buyer and seller is the keynote of tomorrow's business world." (The
Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, p. 24-25.)
During the Depression years when so many businesses failed, IBM
continued to thrive. When asked the secret of their success, Watson
replied, "Go talk with Walter Russell."
Abandoned during the WWII years, the Twilight Club was later
revived as the University of Science and Philosophy at Swannanoa,
Virginia. After Russell's passing in 1963, his work was carried on
at Swannanoa by Lao Russell, his co-equal partner in work as in
marriage.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A LIVING AND DYING UNIVERSE
Walter Russell often asserted that God's universe "is a two-
way, not one-way universe." The death force or "winding down"
principle is familiar to us as the force of entropy, the famed
Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Law of Entropy states that all
systems gradually lose energy (that is, energy becomes less
organized and therefore unavailable to perform work) through
dispersal of heat; hence, the universe is destined to die a "heat
death."
Russell disagreed, and detailed the mechanics of an opposite,
balancing force -- the life-organizing force, which he also termed
"generoactive." This force is the answer to the riddle of Newton's
apple, to which Russell alludes in his 1930s Times letter. (Years
later, Buckminster Fuller coined the term "syntropy" to describe
entropy's complement.) Russell also likened these twin forces to
the charging and discharging of a battery, or the winding and
unwinding of a spring.
How rapidly or gradually a system unwinds after reaching
Page 3
maturity depends on a variety of factors, principally its degree of
balance within its local environment. Thus the relaxation and
dissolution of life may occur as slow fermentation, decay, a burst
of flame or an explosion.
"We do not say that a decaying tree, which takes fifty years to
go back into the ground, is exploding. If you burn it, however, the
flame is a series of quick explosions which will do in two hours
what Nature intended should take fifty years."
(Atomic Suicide?, page 23.)
Central to Russell's scientific conclusions is this
observation: the state of rest, the source from which all life
arises and to which it ultimately returns, is the "normal" state (to
which Russell often refers as God, Mind or Magnetic zero.) In other
words, it takes increasing effort to "wind up" into greater density
(to live), while it takes literally no effort at all, once a system
reaches maximum compression, to unwind again -- to die. Most
significantly, the force of the unwinding/death phase is
proportionate to the total effort expended in winding up to that
point.
For example, it may take many years of consuming steak and ice
cream, perhaps along with exposure to chemical contaminants, to
reach the condition disposing one to bowel cancer. The effort
expended by the individual, the food industry, the chemical
factories and even the cattle involved, are considerable; at the
point of maximum compression (when the body cannot hold itself
together any tighter) that mass of effort reverts into a forceful,
effortless unwinding. What goes in, must come back out.
To arrest the course of the disease at this point requires a
tremendous, renewed exertion of compression and life effort,
commonly observed as the "will to live" factor or, in macrobiotic
thought, as the capacity to self-reflect and change one's personal
habits.
In the case of human illness and dying, such a reversal through
renewed compression is often possible, just as it is possible to
arrest the burning of a tree with cold water, or to slow
fermentation with salt. It is not so easy to halt the unwinding
process of gunpowder, an electrical short-circuit -- or the decay of
radioactivity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPIRAL OF ELEMENTS
As in the life of his contemporary Georges Ohsawa, the modern
founder of the macrobiotic movement, Russell was absorbed in his
later years with both the cosmic meaning and the immediate dangers
of atomic science. Also like his Oriental counterpart, Russell
vividly and brilliantly expressed his grasp of universal dynamics in
a spiral chart of the elements.
Russell's atomic charts placed all the atoms as points along
a continuous spectrum of increasing compression, much like the notes
of an ascending musical scale. The musical simile is not casual:
Russell's atomic scale is harmonically organized in octaves, with
the inert gases (helium, neon, argon etc.) acting as the "keynote"
Page 4
of each octave. (Not surprisingly, Dr. Russell was also an
accomplished composer.)
Russell held that the hydrogen octave, far from being the
beginning of the atomic scale, was in fact preceded by three
"inaudible" atomic octaves, yielding a full spectrum of nine
octaves. These first three octaves, involving wavelengths too vast
to measure, would be beyond the threshold of physical sensing (that
is, beyond detection by normal instruments of science). It was the
lack of this knowledge, Russell contended, and the misconception of
hydrogen as the first element that forced scientists to view
deuterium and tritium (which he had originally called Ethlogen and
Bebegen -- now well-known as components of the "heavy water" used in
today's nuclear reactions) as isotopes of hydrogen instead of true
tonal elements in their own right. ("Isotopes" might be compared to
the "accidentals" -- sharps and flats -- of single musical notes.)
On the other hand, he asserted, that many of the higher octave
"elements" in fact are but isotopes of higher-octave versions of
carbon.
Carbon, lying in the center of the fourth octave, is held to be
the balance point of perfect stability and the mature expression of
the entire spectrum, and as such serves as the basis for organic
life. Russell pointed out that roughly 98 percent of organic life
forms are composed of carbon and four other elements (hydrogen,
nitrogen, oxygen and silicon) which all are grouped together with
carbon in the fourth octave (except silicon, a transmutation of
carbon in the next octave up, which forms the basis of the Earth's
crust and of soil). In a sense, the "purpose" of the entire atomic
spectrum is to create carbon life forms.
The further one compresses past carbon, the more readily will
the pressure and heat of compression explode into decay. The
supercompressed elements of the 7th, 8th and especially 9th octaves
(radium, plutonium, etc.) are simmering at the breaking point --
hence the tremendously explosive pressures of the radioactive
metals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ENCOUNTERING THE RUSSELLS
On a quiet afternoon in 1979, I sat in a coffee shop preparing
my Kushi Institute lecture for that evening. As I sipped my coffee
-- I was allowed to, after all, I was a teacher -- I was interrupted
by two friends, both "senior" teachers. (This particular coffee
shop served as a hangout and meeting place for macrobiotic
teachers.) They joined me and began discussing the usual topic of
the day: How to get everyone else to eat macrobiotically so as to
establish one peaceful world. One of the seniors noticed my
recently acquired book, Dr. Walter Russell's The Secret of Light,
lying on the table beside me; and they asked me who Dr. Russell was
and what the book was about. After the first few sentences of my
reply, they both proceeded to criticize both the book and its author
for a good half hour.
In the Boston macrobiotic community where I lived at that time,
I soon learned, to mention the Russells and their work was like
admitting that you did not understand the unique principle of
macrobiotics. The philosophical and scientific works of the
Page 5
Russells were (and perhaps still are) considered unclear, confusing
and impractical. I, like my fellow students and teachers, certainly
did not want confusing or "foreign" philosophical ideas to disrupt
our established belief system concerning the nature of macrobiotics.
As far as we were concerned, the macrobiotic truth existed here, and
only here, in our little community. The sun flag was raised high,
and I was dedicated, loyal, stubborn and very confused. So, I laid
the Russells' work aside, along with all else that did not fit into
my small world of dogma.
Several years later, being a little older, not necessarily a
little wiser, but a whole lot more curious and frustrated with
apparent inconsistencies and impracticalities in my own
understanding of macrobiotics, I secretly began to explore the works
of Dr. and Mrs. Russell. At first I became more confused and found
myself resisting, especially when I read such bold statements as,
"Opposites do not attract," or "Like attracts like." Wait a minute,
I thought. Maybe my macrobiotic friends were right about Russell --
there do seem to be inconsistencies here. I soon discovered that
the inconsistencies I was encountering were not in their works, but
in the limitations of my own prior understanding. Gradually a new
comprehension began to open up.
Their words penetrated deep into my soul. They were honest
words, words of wisdom, of love, and they were steeped in the
unifying principle of macrobiotics. Their expression was extremely
clear and to the point. The message was practical and not at all
confusing. There was nothing there to instill guilt or fear.
They spoke of the difference between knowing and thinking, and
how we all know all there is to know, yet do not always admit it to
ourselves. Dr. Russell was a perfect example of one who knew. He
had very little formal education, and used this to his advantage.
Through inspiration he became an accomplished scientist,
philosopher, artist, sculptor and musician.
They spoke of how we as human beings can reinspire others, yet
can only be inspired by the One. And most of all, for me, they
explained the mechanism and process of the logarithmic spiral -- the
foundation of macrobiotics. The more I absorbed their
understanding, the more it seemed to add to rather than detract from
or conflict with my prior macrobiotic learning.
Through the years that followed I began to incorporate their
understanding of macrobiotics into my own teaching and counselling,
always with the thought that I would meet Mrs. Russell some day.
For the past eight years I traveled throughout the United States,
teaching and encouraging people to study the Russells' works, and
giving out the address of the University of Science and Philosophy.
During this period I had not once contacted the University to
introduce myself. Why? I have no idea. In 1987 I moved to
Charlottesville, Virginia from New York. Why? I have no idea,
other than it seemed to be the proper move for me. I soon learned
that the University of Science and Philosophy was only a twenty
minute drive away.
I called the University and introduced myself, and said I would
like to meet Mrs. Russell; I was given an appointment. Days later,
I drove out to Swannanoa with John Mann, who had recently relocated
Page 6
Solstice from upstate New York to Charlottesville. [Editor's Note:
Why had we abruptly relocated? We had no idea.] Arriving at the
requested time, I introduced myself to the staff and they said they
would inform Mrs. Russell that I was there. I stood among a group
of approximately twenty other visitors and watched as the most
elegant lady I have ever met began to descend the carpeted stairs.
We had never met, yet she recognized me in the crowd
immediately, and invited me upstairs. As we sat, she proceeded to
tell me my life story in detail, from the beginning to the present.
She spoke as if she knew me when I was a child. She did! And that
wasn't all she knew -- for she, too, was a living example of her and
her late husband's philosophy.
We spoke for a few hours on many subjects. She told humorous
stories about Dr. Russell and herself as if he were still alive.
"He is!" she said, "You can never die!" She spoke with a simple,
quiet conviction that was utterly disarming, and I felt as if I were
in the presence of honesty incarnate. Meeting Mrs. Russell was an
experience I will cherish forever.
-- Steve Gagn<67>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor's Note: Mrs. Russell was a perceptive person. Early in
our conversation, she looked straight at us again and said, "This
started in 1954." She was referring to the '54 University
Newsletter, no doubt; but she spoke so emphatically, Steve and I
could not help glancing at each other -- could she have known that
we were both born in 1954? She smiled. Later, she abruptly turned
to us and nonchalantly commented, "You know, Dr. Russell never
smoked cigarettes or drank coffee." Bingo, I thought. -- Ed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
RESOURCES
"Atomic Suicide?" (1957, 304 pp.), discusses the nature of matter
and its relation to the world of spirit. It also provides a broad
introduction to Russell's general cosmology. One fascinating
section is devoted to excerpts from the contemporary popular media
about the dangers of nuclear power. A lengthy introduction by Lao
Russell includes a biographical essay on Russell's life.
(Solstice Library)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Secret of Light" (1947, 288 pp.) is a thorough exposition of
Russell's cosmology, more completely and systematically presented
than in Atomic Suicide?
(Solstice Library)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe," by Glenn Clark
(1953 edition, 57 pp.), is a short, highly accessible biography.
(Solstice Library)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 7
"Home Study Course." Available from the University, this is a
thorough, comprehensive course of study of the Russells' work in all
its dimensions.
(See ad this page for the Home Study Course
and other Russell books.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
RELATED BOOKS AND LITERATURE
"Holoscene" (formerly "Spiral, Lord of Creation"), by Jerry Canty;
144 pp. Canty's most thorough explanation of Russell's work to
date. Available directly from Canty in photocopy for $25 ppd.
Jerome Canty, Box 5256, Chico CA 95927.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Atomic Age and The Unique Principle," Georges Ohsawa. Written
towards the end of his life, The Atomic Age presents Ohsawa's most
incisive perspective on the atomic frontier and the 20th century
challenge. (Solstice Library)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"World Crisis Solutions Foundation Newsletter," issues 1-4. Written
by Dr. Tim Binder, these four newsletters contain brief overviews of
some of Dr. Russell's insights and Dr. Binder's efforts to pursue
the radiation/ozone-depletion connection. The Newsletters also
contain condensed articles on a variety of other vital health and
environmental issues. $20 for set of four. NW 169 Blodgett Camp
Road, Hamilton MT 59840 (406) 363-4041.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Ozone War," Lydia Dotto and Harold Schiff, Doubleday & Co.,
1978. A fascinating account of the discoveries and controversies
surrounding Sherwood Rowland's work with the Ozone Hole.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Protecting the Ozone Layer," Chapter 5 of The State of the World
1989, Worldwatch Institute, NY
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If we can be of service, you may contact
Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 8
Reference in New Issue Copy Permalink