ancients, he saw Nature as the mirror of the Divine. Following
Goethe's eighteenth century view, he conceived of God as a kind of
'Divine Weaver' of the unfolding tapestry of Evolution. It was
through this vision that Viktor found common ground also with the
Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner.
However, he saw the Earth and Nature also as part of a much
larger cosmos. The visible Sun is but the kernel, the only visible
part, of a much larger sun that, with its radiative body, stretches to
the very limits of the solar system. The Earth is within this sun,
bathed by the solar wind, spiraling with its sister planets like organs
within the same body. Our own bodies too are but kernels of a much
broader, invisible self that extends around us, and with which we
can feel another's energy.
He was influenced by Theosophical thinking that conceives
the Universe as a holistic system, and criticized contemporary
thinking that cannot accept our subservience to Nature; he said
that this limitation of awareness prevents us accepting our place
in the Universe, of which the consciousness we call Nature is a
part. This holistic view of all creation is aided by the idea of a
hierarchy of energies, from the very finest that are inconceivable
to humans, down to the coarse, material energies which dominate
contemporary society. Schauberger would refer to these different
levels as 'octaves,' but we shall describe them as 'dimensions' or
domains.
Why the mystery?
His scientific contemporaries misunderstood Viktor Schauberger
because his frame of reference was the subtle energies in Nature,
and they hadn't a clue what he was on about. His heightened sensi-
tivities enabled him to be aware of phenomena more subtle than
most of us are able to perceive. As this was his modus operandi, we
need to take a look at this whole question of energies.
Firstly, we need to accept that the worldview of our contempo-
rary culture is that of the material world; that is its reference
point. We don't learn about energies at school or at college, other
than the purely mechanical or electrical. Any phenomenon that is
nonmaterial poses a difficulty for conventional science, for it can-
not be described in a manner that is familiar to its discipline.
Thoughts and emotions are energies we all experience, but how
HIDDEN NATURE