Certainly by a complete reversal of the way we do things. This can
involve only a sea change in the way we regard our lives, and a per-
sonal commitment to help bring about a major shift in our society.
Only through sufficient numbers joining together in common cause
can these changes begin.
He criticized mainline science for its arrogance and herd
instincts. He also castigated scientists for their blinkeredness, their
inability to see the connections between things. Schauberger did
not blame the political hierarchy for the world's woes, as we often do
today. He believed that political leaders are basically opportunists
and pawns of the system. It was his own adversaries, the 'techno-
academic' scientists as he called them, whom he held to blame for
the dangerous state of the World.^4
Visionaries and pioneers are inevitably a challenge to the estab-
lishment in whatever field, for they pose an imagined threat to the
interests of those who benefit from the status quo. The degree of vil-
ification seems to depend on the level of rewards at stake. Thus sci-
ence, as perhaps the most exclusive and arrogant of disciplines, has
done so much throughout history to undermine great innovators
like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo to, in our times, the biological
pioneers James Lovelock, Rupert Sheldrake and Mae-Wan Ho.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his interrupted education, Viktor
retained a great thirst for knowledge. His wife found domestically
disruptive his tendency to stay up all night, pouring over books of
every kind, especially the more esoteric variety. There was no ques-
tion that Viktor felt he had a calling. This was evident from the fact
that often he seemed to write in a trance-like state, returning to nor-
mal consciousness quite surprised by what he had just written!
Schauberger was a man of unshakeable self-confidence and
inner conviction about the viability of his theories, and unsurpris-
ingly had a lifelong battle with orthodoxy. Callum Coats describes
how on one occasion during the Nazi era, good fortune saved his
life from being taken in a sinister way.^5 He did, however gain
important support. This was inevitably from the few scientists
who were not swayed by greed or jealousy and were of more inde-
pendent mind. One was the Swiss Professor Werner Zimmerman,
a well-known social reformer who published articles by Viktor in
his ecologically oriented magazine Tau. Another was Felix Ehren-
haft, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, who helped
with Viktor's calculations for his implosion machines. A third very
INTRODUCTION