explanation was simple: the energy in the box, in the absence of cultures, came from the
atmosphere. Hence the atmosphere contained an unknown energy.
Reich went on to make a series of visual observations of this energy, including
magnifying the phenomena in order to rule out the possibility of their being only subjective
sensations. However, these efforts were never decisive in the sense of permitting a critical
test. David Boadella has summed up this controversial subject succinctly:
If such phenomena as Reich described in the sky in fact exist, why is it,
one may reasonably ask, that other people have not commented on them? Let us
consider a related phenomenon that can be observed in the daytime, which Reich
also described. If one looks into the daytime sky on a clear day, relaxes the eyes, and
looks into empty space, a number of brilliant points of light become visible. They
appear to dance about in whirling motions.
Anyone who looks at the sky in this way can observe these points of light,
yet few people are in fact aware of them until their attention is specifically direct-
ed. One does not find in the annals of science a description of these points of light
Whether they are phenomena associated with the human eye (endoptic) or phe-
nomena that are properties ofthe atmosphere (exoptic) as Reich believed, one will
find an account of them neither in textbooks of vision, nor in textbooks of mete-
orology or atmospherics. The phenomenon is one that was never studied because
scientists did not give up valuable time to looking at darkness, or into empty boxes,
or at a blue sky^5.It is characteristic of Reich’s method that in reporting his path to orgone energy, he
interrupted the account of various experiments to deal more broadly with “subjective
impressions of light.” He recalled children’s fascination in closing their eyes and playing
games with afterimages. Reich was doing something interesting in this little exegesis. The
very process ofturning away from inner childhood sensations, including the delight in “see-
ing things with our eyes closed,” contributed to the adult fear of direct observation. Reich
always kept central his awareness of how much our attitudes toward our own sensations
could affect reactions to his “orgonomic”* findings—from orgastic potency to the bions to
orgone energy in the atmosphere. Afraid of the energy within us, we cannot see the same
energy outside ourselves. As Goethe put it in a favorite quote of Reich’s: “Is it then so great
a secret, what God and mankind and the world are? No! But none like to hear it, so it rests
concealed.”
Initially,Reich was puzzled by the nature of the bion radiation, then further per-
plexed by his inability to isolate the radiation. We leave him in the summer of 1940 finding
victory in his failure: he could not isolate the radiation because it was “everywhere.”
262 Myron SharafFury On Earth
*All phenomena pertaining to the spontaneous movement of orgone energy Reich came to subsume under the
name he gave his science, orgonomy.