793 lines
43 KiB
Plaintext
793 lines
43 KiB
Plaintext
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
(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
|
||
|
||
RUSSELL1.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
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
THE MACROBIOTIC GENIUS OF WALTER RUSSELL
|
||
By John David Mann
|
||
|
||
Copyright 1989 John David Mann
|
||
Originally appearing in "Solstice" magazine, May 1989
|
||
201 E. Main St. Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901
|
||
(804) 979-4427
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
"The Times of July 21 [1930] contains an article stating that
|
||
Walter Russell challenges the Newtonian theory of gravitation. This
|
||
artist, who is admittedly not a scientist, goes on to say that the
|
||
fundamentals of science are so hopelessly wrong and so contrary to
|
||
nature, that nothing but a major surgical operation upon the present
|
||
primitive beliefs can ever put them in line for a workable
|
||
cosmogenetic synthesis'. . .
|
||
|
||
"It seems to me it would be more fitting for an artist of Mr.
|
||
Russell's acknowledged distinction in his own field, to remain in
|
||
it, and not go trespassing on 'ground which even angels fear to
|
||
tread'. "For nearly three hundred years no one, not even a
|
||
scientist, has had the temerity to question Newton's laws of
|
||
gravitation. Such an act on the part of a scientist would be akin
|
||
to blasphemy, and for an artist to commit such an absurdity is, to
|
||
treat it kindly, an evidence of either misguidance or crass
|
||
ignorance of the enormity of his act. . ."
|
||
|
||
-- Dr. John E. Jackson, The New York Times, August 3, 1930.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Page 1
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
"Dr. John E. Jackson's letter to you, a copy of which he
|
||
graciously sent to me, is a perfectly natural letter of resentment
|
||
for which I do not blame him in the least.
|
||
|
||
"It is true that I have challenged the accurateness or
|
||
completeness of the Newtonian laws of gravitation, and will just as
|
||
vigorously attack the other "sacred laws" of Kepler, and any others,
|
||
ancient or modern, that need rewriting. . .
|
||
|
||
"I am sorry an artist had to do it, but Sir Oliver Lodge said
|
||
that no scientist could make the supreme discovery of the one thing
|
||
for which science is looking and hoping. He said that such a
|
||
discovery would have to be the 'supreme inspiration of some poet,
|
||
painter, philosopher or saint'. . .
|
||
|
||
"Newton, for example, would have solved the other half of the
|
||
gravitation problem if he had found out how that apple and the tree
|
||
upon which it grew got up in the air before the apple fell. I
|
||
challenge the world of science to correctly and completely answer
|
||
that question. . ."
|
||
|
||
-- Dr. Walter Russell, The New York Times, August 17, 1930.
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
"I now wish to modify my statements and criticisms, for, since
|
||
writing that letter, my viewpoint has somewhat changed. . . What I
|
||
considered to be the overnight inspiration of a 'crank' might be,
|
||
instead, the result of an intelligent and prolonged study of
|
||
Nature.
|
||
|
||
"I am immensely intrigued by Russell's 'two-way' principle, for
|
||
it gives this universe of motion a meaning to me that it did not
|
||
have before. In fact, we know very little of the why of anything. .
|
||
|
||
"Why did not some scientist think of this instead of waiting
|
||
300 years for an artist to tell us about it? . . .I invite the
|
||
collaboration and criticism of my fellow scientists at large to join
|
||
me in this. . . If Russell is right, and he surely thinks he is, his
|
||
claim that science needs 'a major surgical operation' is
|
||
justifiable. . ."
|
||
|
||
-- Dr. John E. Jackson, The New York Times, November 9, 1930.
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Dr. John E. Jackson was furious. What educated person would
|
||
have the audacity to challenge Newton and Kepler? For months the
|
||
debate raged in the New York Times' "Letters" page. Prompted by the
|
||
release of an artist's heretical views on science, Nature and the
|
||
universe, the Times' 1930 filibuster culminated in Dr. Jackson's
|
||
dramatic reversal -- what began as a caustic attack was transformed
|
||
into a call for his colleagues' support that had the fervent ring of
|
||
religious conversion. Dr. Jackson, whoever he was, had caught a
|
||
glimmer of the genius of Walter Russell.
|
||
|
||
But in the end, Dr. Jackson notwithstanding, the world of
|
||
|
||
Page 2
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
science did not embrace Walter Russell, nor have sixty years of
|
||
progress changed that position. Today, despite the wide sphere of
|
||
contacts and influence generated by Russell and his wife and
|
||
colleague, Lao, their teachings largely await unearthing.
|
||
|
||
However, the time for that rediscovery may be at hand; for the
|
||
Russells' vision suddenly has burning relevance to an acknowledged
|
||
urgent matter of global health. And the role of advocate for the
|
||
Russell perspective may best be fulfilled by those in the
|
||
macrobiotic movement -- for the macrobiotic world view and Russell's
|
||
practical cosmology have much in common.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Cloud Over the Ozone
|
||
|
||
Our story begins some ten miles above the Earth's surface in
|
||
the stratosphere, home of the planet's ailing ozone skin and
|
||
birthplace of the emerging global awareness of the limits of man's
|
||
technology. In 1974, two scientists at the University of California
|
||
made an announcement that shocked the world. When Drs. Sherwood
|
||
Rowland and Mario Molina warned of possible global ozone depletion,
|
||
they touched off a controversy that was to involve scientists,
|
||
industry, policy-makers, the press and the public. The "Ozone War,<2C>
|
||
as it came to be called, was principally responsible for ushering in
|
||
a new era of planetary policy. [See sidebar.]
|
||
|
||
Fifteen years later, the ponderous gears of human response are
|
||
finally grinding into action. Aimed at coping with the infamous
|
||
"ozone hole,<2C> a spate of local and global policy-making is pushing
|
||
its way forward in an unprecedented atmosphere of international
|
||
cooperation. Rep. Al Gore (D-TN), the seasoned environmental
|
||
advocate who helped uncover Love Canal and has stalked the
|
||
Greenhouse effect for years, recently introduced legislation to ban
|
||
production of CFCs (the chemical generally thought responsible for
|
||
the ozone crisis) within 5 years. As Gore observed this February:
|
||
|
||
"The political sentiment is changing very rapidly. . . I think
|
||
people are mad about this and ready for dramatic action.
|
||
|
||
But are they the right actions? Not according to Walter
|
||
Russell, who predicted the ozone dilemma 35 years ago -- a full 20
|
||
years before the Rowland/Molina research made headlines -- and
|
||
ascribed it to an entirely different cause.
|
||
|
||
If Russell's views were correct, then the chlorine chemistry of
|
||
CFCs is not the prime culprit [see sidebar], and no one is looking
|
||
in the one direction that matters most. In fact, according to
|
||
Russell, there is one overarching solution to the atmospheric
|
||
emergency: stop making nuclear stockpiles -- immediately.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
A Different Scenario
|
||
|
||
The year is 1954. Sherwood Rowland's ozone prognosis is two
|
||
decades in the future; Three Mile Island is a quarter century still
|
||
to come. To most of us, the "Greenhouse effect" connotes little
|
||
more than a better way to grow tomatoes. The word "ecology"
|
||
scarcely exists in the mainstream lexicon.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Page 3
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
This is the year atmospheric bomb testing has begun, both by
|
||
the Soviet Union in Siberia and by the United States on the Bikini
|
||
atoll. John Wayne and a company of actors and movie personnel are
|
||
filming a Western in Nevada, and emerge from long days' of shooting
|
||
covered with radioactive fallout. Years later, it will be
|
||
discovered that nearly all of them have just received a death
|
||
sentence. But all of that is many years away; for now, most of us
|
||
are caught up in the promise of Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace.
|
||
|
||
This year, Walter and Lao Russell write their warning in a
|
||
privately circulated newsletter to their students: Oxygen and
|
||
radioactive stockpiles cannot coexist. Digging up the Earth's
|
||
heavier elements, concentrating their reactions and releasing their
|
||
products into the atmosphere is a recipe for disaster.
|
||
|
||
Three years later the Russells publish a book, Atomic
|
||
Suicide?, whose principle message is that the development of the
|
||
nuclear weaponry and industry, if allowed to continue, will
|
||
eventually destroy the planet's oxygen.
|
||
|
||
"The element of surprise which could delay the discovery of the
|
||
great danger, and thus allow more plutonium piles to come into
|
||
existence, is the fact that scientists are looking near the ground
|
||
for fallout dangers and other radioactive menaces. The greatest
|
||
radioactive dangers are accumulating from eight to twelve miles up
|
||
[in the stratosphere]. The upper atmosphere is already charged with
|
||
death-dealing radioactivity, for which it not yet sent us its bill.
|
||
It is slowly coming, however, and we will have to pay for it for
|
||
another century, even if atomic energy plants ceased today.
|
||
(Atomic Suicide?, page 18.)
|
||
|
||
Later in the book, they predict that the oxygen-destroying
|
||
effects of radiation would not be noticed "until the late
|
||
seventies.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Atomic Prophesies
|
||
|
||
It was an uncannily accurate forecast: ozone depletion was
|
||
first noticed over the Antarctic in 1982 -- and scientists have
|
||
since concluded that it first appeared in 1979. But then, as now,
|
||
the Russells' voice received little notice.
|
||
|
||
The somber prediction of Atomic Suicide? was not the first time
|
||
Russell had gone out on a limb with scientific prophecy. His spiral
|
||
charts of the atomic table, copyrighted in 1926, predicted the
|
||
discovery of the transuranic elements Plutonium and Neptunium, as
|
||
well as the now-familiar elements of "heavy water, Deuterium and
|
||
Tritium -- years before they were isolated in research labs.
|
||
|
||
Some have claimed that the 1926 Russell charts (for which he
|
||
later received an honorary doctorate from the American Academy of
|
||
Sciences) and his years of New York City lectures on the subject led
|
||
directly to the laboratory research that resulted in these elements'
|
||
later discovery. It is difficult to document such a claim at a
|
||
half century's distance, but this sequence certainly is feasible.
|
||
Russell himself evidently exerted considerable energy for years
|
||
urging the research labs of Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General
|
||
Electric and others to verify his atomic findings.
|
||
|
||
Page 4
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
In any case, the exclusion from the mainstream of Russell's
|
||
charts is perhaps one of the most unfortunate snafus in the history
|
||
of science. For in neglecting to credit Russell with these pivotal
|
||
atomic discoveries, the world also lost track of the other side of
|
||
the Russell equation: the larger scientific understanding in the
|
||
spiral charts, the pragmatic warnings that accompanied them, and the
|
||
breathtaking scope of macrobiotic thought his life and work
|
||
revealed.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Who Was Walter Russell?
|
||
|
||
Russell's stunning achievements in science were but one facet
|
||
of a career that was unconventional, astonishingly successful,
|
||
dazzlingly versatile and unabashedly mystical. Often called "the
|
||
20th Century's Leonardo" and "the man who tapped the secrets of the
|
||
universe,<2C> Russell maintained that a firm grasp of nature's
|
||
universal principles would permit anyone to excel in any area of
|
||
endeavor; thus genius was all human beings' birthright.
|
||
|
||
His own accomplishments exemplify this belief. A largely self-
|
||
taught Renaissance man, Russell carved out his first successful
|
||
career as an artist, achieving international reputation in such
|
||
diverse fields as portraiture, poetry, sculpture and architecture.
|
||
His accomplishments as a portrait painter and sculptor, in
|
||
particular, won him commissions from dozens of era notables, such as
|
||
Mark Twain, Thomas Watson (the founder of IBM), both Roosevelts
|
||
(Teddy and FDR), and Thomas Edison. He also designed buildings and
|
||
urban layout -- New York City's famous Hotel Pierre, for example, is
|
||
a Russell creation. Forays into the world of athletics earned him
|
||
prestigious awards in figure-skating, horsemanship and race-horse
|
||
training.
|
||
|
||
To Russell, such bravura performance was significant mainly for
|
||
its value as a demonstration that Divine Law and Balance could be
|
||
tapped by human effort, and the world of art was only a starting
|
||
point. Russell's yearning to imbue the social fabric of his era with
|
||
principles of universal justice led to his long association with the
|
||
Twilight Club, a contemporary "think tank" of artists and social
|
||
philosophers.
|
||
|
||
Through the Twilight Club, whose direction he assumed in 1895,
|
||
Russell formed bonds that were to endure throughout his life; in the
|
||
early decades of the century the work of the Twilight Club members,
|
||
under the influence of Russell's teaching of Divine Law and
|
||
Universal Order, produced a virtually endless procession of social
|
||
innovations, such as the creation of child labor laws and child
|
||
welfare laws, Better Business Bureau and the elimination of
|
||
sweatshops.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
The Living Universe
|
||
|
||
It was in science, however, that Russell left his least known
|
||
and perhaps his greatest legacy. While steeped in the discoveries
|
||
and frontiers of his own time, Russell's science essentially is a
|
||
thorough reworking of a Taoist or pre-Socratic world conception in
|
||
modern terms. Freely blending mystic and religious imagery with
|
||
rigorous mechanical logic, Russell's scientific cosmology is rooted
|
||
|
||
Page 5
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
in the idea that all phenomena, from star systems to atomic systems,
|
||
arise from the same infinite source to live, grow and die by
|
||
precisely identical processes.
|
||
|
||
Hence, there is no fundamental difference between animate and
|
||
inanimate matter in Russell's universe -- all are living
|
||
manifestations of God's universe.
|
||
|
||
"All bodies in all the universe are the same in all respects,
|
||
whether they are electrons, cells, rocks, metals, trees, men,
|
||
planets or suns. All of them live and die in the same manner. All
|
||
breathe in the charging breath of life and breathe out the
|
||
discharging breath of death. All of them compress heat and polarize
|
||
when they breathe in, and expand, cool and depolarize when they
|
||
breathe out. (Atomic Suicide?, p. 9.)
|
||
|
||
Thus, Russell's universal mechanics hinges on a
|
||
reinterpretation of the ancient "unified field" theorem of yin and
|
||
yang. Life -- not only biological life, but the existence of
|
||
planets, gases and metals as well -- is caused by increasing
|
||
compression; and death, by expansion. These two processes, which he
|
||
also terms "charging" and "discharging,<2C> are not seen as separate
|
||
forces but as opposite stages and directions of one process, much
|
||
like the winding up and subsequent unwinding of a spring. Life
|
||
dominates every form from its inception to the point of maximum
|
||
compression, when the spring cannot be wound any tighter;
|
||
compression then begins to decrease, radiation assumes dominance,
|
||
and the process of releasing life's charge -- of dying -- unfolds.
|
||
|
||
To Russell, the elements of matter are also living entities in
|
||
various stages of birth, growth and decay. Carbon, the basis of
|
||
organic life, is the expression of matter at maturity; elements of
|
||
higher atomic weights are already dominated by the aging side of the
|
||
pendulum's swing. In the heaviest elements, the force of decay
|
||
reaches near-total dominance over the force of life -- thus
|
||
radioactivity is death incarnate. [See sidebar, "The Spiral of
|
||
Elements.]
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
The Secret Life of Plutonium
|
||
|
||
The key to grasping Russell's understanding of radioactivity
|
||
and ozone is the realization that all the elements, like all life
|
||
forms, are ideally suited to existence within their own natural,
|
||
local ecology. Thus, all the elements, when left in their natural
|
||
dimension, serve beneficial and life-giving purposes, including
|
||
Urium -- later dubbed "Plutonium.
|
||
|
||
Put another way, each octave or dimension of matter has its own
|
||
natural pressure zone. [For an explanation of the octave idea, see
|
||
the sidebar, "The Spiral of Elements.] The five elements of organic
|
||
life (C, H, N, O and Si) all need the normal pressures found at the
|
||
Earth's surface to exist normally. The natural dimension for the
|
||
supercompressed, naturally radioactive elements (radium, uranium,
|
||
plutonium, et al.) is deep underground, where they are widely
|
||
dispersed in solid rock. Here, far from being deadly or poisonous,
|
||
they actually have made possible organic life on Earth's surface:
|
||
through billions of microscopic explosions, they have gradually
|
||
caused the surrounding rocky crust to break down and release water
|
||
|
||
Page 6
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
and other lower-octave elements -- something like a geological
|
||
compost.
|
||
|
||
"Water and soil are decayed and dying rock. They are,
|
||
literally, dead rocks. Out of death in Nature life springs. . .
|
||
Think of the hundreds of millions of years Nature has to work to
|
||
decay solid rock and metal planets sufficiently to create enough
|
||
decayed surface, and an atmosphere, for organic life to become
|
||
possible. The radioactive metals made that possible. Radioactive
|
||
metals are dead and dying bodies. They belong underground just as
|
||
dead animal bodies belong underground. They are not poisons in
|
||
their own environment. . . Man makes them poisonous by removing
|
||
them from their purposeful environment.
|
||
|
||
"Just as the slight decay of an overripe peach will not hurt
|
||
you, while a fully decayed one might kill you, so, likewise, the
|
||
'overripe' chemical elements of the earth which are not too far from
|
||
carbon [potassium, selenium, iodine, etc.] will not hurt you, while
|
||
the further they are beyond carbon the more deadly they become, and
|
||
the more impossible it is to guard yourself from their quick death.<2E>
|
||
(Atomic Suicide?)
|
||
|
||
In short, said the Russells, the only structures naturally
|
||
suited to exist together with the radioactive elements are rocks.
|
||
Even concrete, durable metals, "glassified" tombs or salt beds --
|
||
structures presently considered to contain high-level radioactive
|
||
wastes -- will eventually decay in proximity to the concentrated
|
||
pressures of such supercompost. The soft tissues of the fourth and
|
||
fifth octaves, including our bodies, vegetation and the atmosphere
|
||
itself, certainly cannot endure such a powerful unwinding.
|
||
|
||
So, then, what would happen? In Russell's estimation, the
|
||
lighter pressures of the stratosphere would retain the majority of
|
||
radioactive fallout, and would be the first region that would reveal
|
||
the wholesale destruction of oxygen. That's oxygen, not just ozone:
|
||
if played through to the end, the last act of the nuclear drama
|
||
would see the disappearance of all oxygen on the planet, whether as
|
||
ozone, water or the O2 we breathe. In this context, the ozone hole,
|
||
as serious as it is in its own right, emerges as an early warning
|
||
sign.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Our Depleted Personal Ozone
|
||
|
||
In addition to destroying ozone, Russell's logic would also
|
||
seem to predict other early effects, including the destruction of
|
||
oxygen mechanisms within our bodies; for the body concentrates far
|
||
more radiation within its tissues than exists freely in the
|
||
atmosphere. Dr. Tim Binder, a leading spokesman for the Russells'
|
||
work, has postulated that "radiation may affect the oxygen-ozone in
|
||
our white blood cells that is one of the principal [immune system]
|
||
mechanisms used to destroy pathogens.
|
||
|
||
This line of thinking may already have been confirmed. For
|
||
decades, a body of surprising data on health and radiation has been
|
||
observed by a number of researchers, notably Dr. Alice Stewart in
|
||
England and Dr. Ernest Sternglass in the US. Their figures show
|
||
that long-term, relatively low-level level radiation may wreak up to
|
||
1,000 times more biological havoc than currently accepted "risk
|
||
|
||
Page 7
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
levels" predict. The mechanism responsible for this dramatic trend
|
||
was first discovered in 1972 by a Canadian researcher named Abram
|
||
Petkau, and has since been confirmed by other researchers. [This
|
||
issue's article by Sara Shannon details the Petkau effect and its
|
||
dietary implications -- Ed.]
|
||
|
||
The little-publicized "Petkau effect" occurs through the
|
||
creation of highly reactive oxygen molecules with a "negative
|
||
charge" (the negative ion 02<30>). But according to Russell, Nature
|
||
produces no such thing as a "negative charge.<2E> All matter, he
|
||
maintained, exhibits both charging and discharging properties; and
|
||
all charges, whether of male or female polarity, are positive. In
|
||
Russell's terms, what Petkau observed is not a "highly reactive
|
||
negative ion" but a changed form of oxygen that is abnormally
|
||
balanced towards discharging its energy rather than charging --
|
||
unwinding rather than winding.
|
||
|
||
Thus, what Petkau first documented in 1972 and what Rowland and
|
||
Molina first suggested two years later may prove to be precisely the
|
||
same symptom, only on different scales. Perhaps we are already
|
||
suffering from internal "ozone depletion; or put another way,
|
||
perhaps the Earth's ozone crisis amounts to radiation burn -- Gaia
|
||
herself is already suffering from the Petkau effect.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Rx For Disaster
|
||
|
||
A problem without solutions is not worth unearthing, and
|
||
Russell's life was centered on practical solutions. As an immediate
|
||
measure, Russell recommended that all nuclear stockpiles be
|
||
dismantled and their materials dispersed in deep desert trenches.
|
||
His reasoning here is three-fold. First, the goal ought to be to
|
||
return these elements to their natural context -- that is,
|
||
underground -- where they originally were harmless. Secondly,
|
||
concentrating them in massed piles is a big mistake: they should be
|
||
widely dispersed, as they occur in nature. Thirdly, remote desert
|
||
regions should be selected as an added precaution, assuming that it
|
||
will take some time for us to master Russell's atomic mechanics
|
||
sufficiently to repatriate the volatile materials properly and, if
|
||
possible, correct the existing stratospheric damage.
|
||
|
||
The key to such proper treatment may lie in the intriguing
|
||
science of atomic transmutation, which holds that elements can
|
||
change into one another freely within normal conditions (i.e., not
|
||
requiring the tremendous heat and pressures of a high-tech particle
|
||
accelerator.) Also like Georges Ohsawa, Russell asserted that low-
|
||
energy, "table-top" transmutation of elements was eminently
|
||
possible. Fueled by an early conviction that the civilization of
|
||
our present time would require new sources of energy, Russell
|
||
developed an approach to derive free hydrogen from the atmosphere
|
||
through atomic transmutation. [The recent claims of several teams
|
||
of scientists to have achieved "table-top" nuclear fusion may
|
||
finally have provided mainstream evidence of this claim; as of this
|
||
writing, not enough information has been released to evaluate the
|
||
nature of the news-making discoveries -- Ed.]
|
||
|
||
Other energy sources suggested by Russell's work include
|
||
devices using the winding-up "life principle" of nature, rather than
|
||
the winding-down "death principle" exemplified by explosive
|
||
|
||
Page 8
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
technologies of combustion and atomic fission. In other words,
|
||
Russell maintained that so far we have employed only half the
|
||
possibilities the two-way universe presents. Examples of such
|
||
technologies include an "implosion engine" and a logarithmic solar
|
||
amplifier. [Forthcoming issues of Solstice will report on the
|
||
present state of several of these technologies -- Ed.]
|
||
|
||
This is a radical concept; it is not hard to see why the great
|
||
electrical science pioneer Nikola Tesla once told Russell he should
|
||
"lock up his work in a vault in the Smithsonian for a thousand
|
||
years" to keep it for future generations who might be developed
|
||
sufficiently to understand it.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Challenge to Science
|
||
|
||
Meanwhile, back at the labs of established science and the
|
||
chambers of policy-making, it is highly unlikely that anyone is
|
||
talking about Russell's assessment of the problem -- let alone his
|
||
suggestions for solving it. Achieving such a discussion is an
|
||
undertaking even more ambitious than it would first appear. For
|
||
scientists to consider the hypothesis, they will have to face its
|
||
author. And taking a hard look at Dr. Walter Russell may not be a
|
||
pill much easier for science to swallow in the 1990s than it was in
|
||
the 1930s.
|
||
|
||
This is not hard to understand. For one thing, in the eyes of
|
||
most scientists Russell always remained an artist -- a non-
|
||
scientist. Moreover, his work is not merely unconventional: it
|
||
overturns many of the cherished tenets of science.
|
||
|
||
But what makes Russell's work so difficult for mainstream
|
||
acceptance is that it spurns all divisions between physics and
|
||
metaphysics, and proposes a comprehensive, logical explanation for
|
||
God and atomic physics in the same breath. What are scientists to
|
||
make of a man who writes:
|
||
|
||
"What is Atomic Energy? In answering this question let it be
|
||
remembered that God is love, and that this universe is founded upon
|
||
love. Every action and its reaction in Nature must be in balance
|
||
with each other in order to carry out to the purposeful intent of
|
||
the Creator.
|
||
|
||
As we suggested earlier, those involved in macrobiotics may be
|
||
best positioned to understand the scope and practicality of
|
||
Russell's views, and thus to help break ground where established
|
||
scientists hesitate to tread. A pivotal question, then: how has
|
||
Russell fared in the macrobiotic world?
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Walter Russell and The Macrobiotic Movement
|
||
|
||
Considering the sheer scope of his vision and his remarkably
|
||
practical understanding of the yin/yang principle, Russell would
|
||
seem to cry out for macrobiotic attention. In fact, many of his
|
||
most radical scientific positions have been echoed by the
|
||
macrobiotic science of Georges Ohsawa and Michio Kushi. For
|
||
example, Russell contended that matter is not held together by an
|
||
attracting force generated from the center of mass, but by
|
||
|
||
Page 9
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
compression generating from the outside toward the center. This
|
||
view, one of the Russell statements that flies most abruptly in the
|
||
face of accepted scientific tenets (and the one that got Dr.
|
||
Jackson's goat in 1930), is echoed precisely in Kushi's cosmology,
|
||
where conventional "gravity" is discarded in favor of centripetal
|
||
"Heaven's force.
|
||
|
||
Moreover, the Russells' application of the yin/yang principal
|
||
to physical entities, human relationships and the social order seems
|
||
extraordinarily direct and simple to grasp, and as such would seem a
|
||
valuable complement to the macrobiotic health/dietetic tradition.
|
||
|
||
While he did not proselytize any specific dietary regimen, he
|
||
was meticulous in his own personal habits. (For example, while he
|
||
maintained a prodigious work schedule, he carefully rotated projects
|
||
so that his focus changed to a different problem or medium every two
|
||
hours -- a rhythm known in macrobiotic circles as corresponding to
|
||
the energy cycle of acupuncture meridians.) To his strict adherence
|
||
to natural law he credited his legendary ability to work long hours
|
||
with ceaseless good humor and without fatigue -- quintessentially
|
||
macrobiotic ideals, which he maintained until his peaceful passing,
|
||
on his birthday, at the age of 92.
|
||
|
||
The following passages from his 1957 Atomic Suicide? shed some
|
||
light on Russell's views on diet and health:
|
||
|
||
"The blood is of first importance of all the elements which
|
||
compose the body. The nervous system could be entirely paralyzed
|
||
and the body would still function, but the blood has deep
|
||
instinctive awareness of its existence, and the body which does not
|
||
have a happy, rhythmic blood condition cannot possibly retain its
|
||
normalcy.
|
||
|
||
Even the food one eats should be 'happy.' It should be cooked
|
||
with love and eaten joyfully, and there should be a joyful
|
||
realization of love in one's deep breathing and exaltation during
|
||
the process of taking food into one's body. The food you eat
|
||
becomes blood and flesh of your body, and the manner in which you
|
||
eat it, and your mental attitude while eating it, decides your blood
|
||
count, the balance between acidity and alkalinity of your digestive
|
||
machinery, and your entire metabolism. Your Mind is you and your
|
||
body is the record of your thoughts and actions. Your body is what
|
||
your Mind electrically extends to it for recording.
|
||
|
||
Curiously, though, his work has elicited little recognition
|
||
even from within the nominal macrobiotic movement. This is a
|
||
significant loss for a community purporting to be ever on the
|
||
lookout for Western cultural and philosophical roots: for Dr.
|
||
Walter Russell may well represent the apex of what the West has to
|
||
offer in original macrobiotic thought.
|
||
|
||
Two notable exceptions to this record of macrobiotic neglect
|
||
have been the writings of Jerry Canty and the educational efforts of
|
||
Dr. Tim Binder. Canty -- a long-time student of the Russells and
|
||
himself a bit of a maverick even within the world of macrobiotics --
|
||
has drawn heavily on the Russells' work in his own books, The
|
||
Eternal Massage, The Sounding of the Sacred Conch, and the privately
|
||
issued Spiral, Lord of Creation. None of them has really entered
|
||
the "macrobiotic mainstream" (though The Eternal Massage enjoyed a
|
||
|
||
Page 10
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
fairly wide readership in the 1970s); they stand today as several of
|
||
the lesser known but most challenging and adventurous books in the
|
||
macrobiotic literature.
|
||
|
||
Binder, a naturopathic doctor whose client list includes John
|
||
Denver and other well-connected environmental advocates, has studied
|
||
and championed the Russell teachings along with macrobiotics, the
|
||
climate crisis/soil mineralization thesis of John Hamaker, and other
|
||
vital fields of perspective. Where Canty introduced Russell's
|
||
thinking to a venturesome circle of macrobiotic students a
|
||
generation ago, Binder is now emerging as the Russells' leading
|
||
contemporary standard-bearer.
|
||
|
||
Recently appointed president of the Russells' University of
|
||
Science and Philosophy in Swannanoa, Virginia, Binder has undertaken
|
||
the massive project of reintroducing Russell's revision of science.
|
||
Next month (June 2-4), Binder and the University host an
|
||
international symposium at Aspen, Colorado, entitled World Balance,
|
||
aimed at exposing the core of Russell's teaching and related
|
||
perspectives both to the larger scientific community and to the
|
||
public at large.
|
||
|
||
While his own interests naturally lean towards matters of human
|
||
health and diet, Dr. Binder has thrown the University's focus and
|
||
resources full-force into documenting and publicizing the possible
|
||
ozone-radiation link. For Binder recognizes the irony of the
|
||
situation: the imperative of the ozone crisis may provide the
|
||
opportunity at last for the world to reconsider the thinking it
|
||
rejected 60 years ago.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
In Pursuit of Evidence
|
||
|
||
As the centerpiece of this effort, Dr. Binder is coordinating a
|
||
thorough scientific effort to test, verify and document
|
||
radioactivity's role in ozone depletion. Combining an exhaustive
|
||
review of existing literature with new laboratory experimentation,
|
||
the project owes its impetus in part to Binder's frustrated efforts
|
||
to obtain accurate data from past observations.
|
||
|
||
Last year, to explore mainstream views on the possible
|
||
radiation-ozone connection, Binder visited the National Oceanic and
|
||
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, where he
|
||
spoke with NOAA researcher George Mount. He was told, "Oh, yes, we
|
||
know that radiation destroys ozone, but we don't consider it
|
||
significant. Pressing further, Binder learned of an earlier
|
||
"insignificant" government finding: "during the bomb tests in the
|
||
60s [before the ban on atmospheric testing drove the detonations
|
||
underground] they found a 2 percent reduction in ozone [emphasis
|
||
ours].<2E> Given the current alarm over a global reduction of 1.7 to 3
|
||
percent, 2 percent would certainly seem to us to be "significant.
|
||
|
||
Binder was told that a review of this data was in process; when
|
||
he later tried to obtain this information in print, he received
|
||
reports with figures that contradicted Mount's statements.
|
||
|
||
[Subsequently, we contacted Sherwood Rowland's office at the
|
||
University of California; Sherwood himself was out of the country,
|
||
but we spoke with one of his associates about the possible
|
||
|
||
Page 11
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
radiation-ozone connection. Offhand, he didn't see how radiation
|
||
would be likely to have this effect, though the hypothesis
|
||
apparently had never been suggested to him before.]
|
||
|
||
Commenting on his investigations, Binder offered this
|
||
conclusion: "As the government is now reviewing the old data on the
|
||
60s' testing, it sounds like they are reconsidering the nuclear
|
||
connection to ozone destruction, but don't want to tell [us] about
|
||
it yet.
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Beyond Ozone: The Human Factor
|
||
|
||
Shortly before her passing in May, 1988, we had the opportunity
|
||
to meet Mrs. Russell at her mountaintop home in Virginia. The
|
||
moment we met she looked directly at us and said, "I'm so glad
|
||
you've come. You know, we really must do something about this ozone
|
||
hole. The Doctor and I warned about this in 1954; nobody would
|
||
listen to us then. Now the situation is absolutely urgent.
|
||
|
||
Oddly, despite the dire nature of her subject, there was
|
||
nothing dark or gloomy in her words nor in her demeanor. Her
|
||
measured statements emerged in a melodious flow that was at once
|
||
precise and comfortable; they seemed uplifted by a quiet, unshakable
|
||
faith. We sensed a conviction that all events fall into their
|
||
natural time and place, with ultimate benefit for the whole.
|
||
|
||
Later that day, she addressed the assembled group: "There is
|
||
one central answer to all these terrible environmental problems, and
|
||
that is a change in the nature of human relationships. It was
|
||
impossible not to understand what she meant, and agree.
|
||
|
||
Thoroughly versed in her husband's cosmology and scientific
|
||
perspective, Lao Russell held that technical solutions alone, no
|
||
matter how cosmologically conceived, would not bring about the
|
||
changes so urgently needed. That change, she taught, would come
|
||
about only through the transformation of human beings, that we might
|
||
realize our awareness of the infinite Source, the Law of Balance,
|
||
and the Divine potential in ourselves and in each other. In a 1986
|
||
message to her students she wrote, "Only the power of Love put into
|
||
practice can put an end to all of the violence. Love will not come
|
||
into the world until mankind understands Who and What he is. When
|
||
he does understand, he will know that when he destroys another, he
|
||
is in truth destroying himself.
|
||
|
||
The modern bull in the stratospheric china shop, whatever its
|
||
identity may prove to be, is tearing holes in more than the ozone
|
||
and its underlying biological fabric. It has already begun to clear
|
||
away a stagnant web of parochial policies and human priorities.
|
||
Perhaps it will even have the force to open a gap in our staunchly
|
||
entrenched view of the world and our role within it.
|
||
|
||
The cloud over the ozone may yet reveal a silver lining. If it
|
||
succeeds in prompting a closer look at the heretical macrobiotic
|
||
science of Walter Russell, it may open a window to a two-way
|
||
universe -- a universe seen in an altogether different light.
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
|
||
Page 12
|
||
|
||
|