Wilhelm Reich says in his book, ‘Listen, Little Man’, that he found that man reaches out with his life energy when he feels well and loving; that he retracts that energy when he is afraid.
Reich says that he found that this life energy – which he termed “orgone” – is “found in the atmosphere,” outside the body. He says he succeeded in seeing it and devised apparatus which magnified it. Is what he observed so?
Maneesha, Wilhelm Reich was one of the unique intelligences born in this century. What he has found has been known to the East as aura.
You must have seen around the statues of Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna – a round aura around the head. That round aura is a reality. What Wilhelm Reich said was authentically true, but the people to whom he said it were not the right people to understand it. They thought he was mad because he described life as an energy surrounding the body. It is exactly true.
Life is an energy that surrounds your body. Not only your body, but flowers, trees… everything has its own aura. And that aura, that energy surrounding you shrinks and expands, in different situations.
Any situation where your energy shrinks, should be thought bad, sick. And every situation where your energy expands, should be respected and loved. In love your energy reaches out, you become more alive. And when you are in fear, your energy shrinks, you become less alive.
Now, poor Wilhelm Reich was thought by Americans to be mad, because he was not only magnifying that energy – he had found a few exercises in which that energy magnifies – he was even catching that energy in boxes, big boxes in which a man could enter. And if the man was sick he would come out whole and healthy. Naturally such a man should be thought mad. He was selling those boxes, empty boxes – but they were not empty. He had found ways to collect the energy which is available in the atmosphere. Around a tree you can find that energy showering, but with your bare eyes you cannot see it.
After he was declared mad and imprisoned, another man in the Soviet Union even managed to photograph it. And now it has become a recognized psychology in the Soviet Union, that life has an aura. And the man, Kirlian, has developed a certain sensitive plate to photograph it.
He would photograph the hand, and the hand would come with an aura around it. In a very strange way his photographs even showed if a man would be sick within six months: “Right now he does not show any pattern of sickness, but his aura is shrinking at a certain point…” And if at a certain point the aura is shrinking, maybe the person will become deaf, or blind if the aura around the eyes is shrinking. And all his photographs proved to be right. When he said, “This man is in danger of losing his eyesight,” there was no visible sign, there was no reason to believe it, but within six months that man became blind.
Now in Soviet psychology, Kirlian photography is recognized by the government. It is spreading into other countries also.
A man can be cured before he becomes sick. Kirlian photography is very predictive. It shows, at least six months ahead, what is going to happen.
In the East, it has been known for centuries that before your death – six months before – you stop being able to see the tip of your nose. Because your eyes start turning upwards, they cannot see the tip of your own nose. The moment you recognize you cannot see the tip of your nose means that within six months your energy will shrink, go back to its source. And the aura, without any photographic technology, has been recognized by yoga for five thousand years. But now, it can be accepted on scientific grounds.
Wilhelm Reich was a unique genius. He could manage to see and feel what is not ordinarily possible.
But if you are very meditative, you will start seeing the auras of people, even your own aura. You will see your own hand with the light rays around it, radiating. And when you are healthy you will feel your aura expanding. When you are sick you will feel your aura shrinking – something is shrinking within you.
When you are by the side of a sick person, you will have a strange feeling that he somehow makes you feel sick, because the sick person exploits the auras of the other without his knowing. He needs more life, so whoever has life and comes around him – he takes his life.
And you know by experience, without understanding, that there are people you want to avoid, because meeting them you feel sick, meeting them you feel that something has been taken away from you. And there are people you want to meet, because meeting them you feel an expanding, you feel more alive.
Wilhelm Reich was right, but unfortunately the masses never accept their own geniuses; on the contrary, they condemn them. Because if Wilhelm Reich is right, then everybody else is almost blind. And in anger he wrote the book, ‘Listen, Little Man’. But that book is beautiful, and his anger can be forgiven because he was mistreated by “the little man,” by the masses. He was first thought to be mad, then forced into a madhouse, and he died in a madhouse.
In the East, he would have become a Gautam Buddha. He had the quality, the insight. But a wrong society, a society of very little men, of very small people… small-minded, who cannot conceive the vast, who cannot conceive the mysterious.
The whole atmosphere is full of life. And if you understand your own sources of life, you will be suddenly aware that birds are alive, trees are alive, grasses are alive – everywhere there is life! And you can dance with this life, you can start having a dialogue with the atmosphere. Of course, people will think you are mad, because people are still the same. The same people crucified Jesus, the same people forced Wilhelm Reich into a madhouse, the same people poisoned Socrates… but those little people are in the majority.
Wilhelm Reich’s anger is right, but still I would say, rather than anger, the little man needs compassion. He was angry because they misbehaved with him, they destroyed his whole life. Rather than understanding him – he would have opened a new door to experiencing, to loving, to living – they destroyed the man completely. Obviously, he became angry.
In the East, the same little men are there, but the Eastern genius has never been angry with them. Rather than being angry, it has shown compassion, it has felt compassion for their blindness, and it has tried in every way to bring light to them, a little understanding to their hearts.
Osho, The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself, Ch 7, Q 4
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