In 1951, Ether, God and Devil, his first book on the method of orgonomic functionalism, Cosmic Superimposition, and a monograph on "The Orgone Energy Accumulator" were published. Cosmic Superimposition was based on the hypothesis that the cosmic superimposition of two energy systems is the basis of hurricanes, galaxy formations, the aurora borealis, and gravity. Reich was by this time thinking and writing in English. This year, he initiated the Oranur Experiment to ascertain whether orgone energy could successfully combat nuclear radiation.

On January 5, 1951, Reich put 1 mg. of radium, still in its lead container, into a 20-fold accumulator in a metal-lined room. He left it there for five hours. This was repeated daily for a week, and, on the last day, it was left in for only one half-hour. The results ware described in his The Oranur Experiment, First Report (1947-1951), (an account since burned by the Food and Drug Administration). I know what happened. I was there. The count on the Geiger counter went up alarmingly and finally jammed. The building and atmosphere around it glowed at night. One physician went into shock and nearly lost her life when she put her head in a metal cabinet in the laboratory. The mice died, and a peculiar, sickening, acrid odor pervaded the atmosphere while clouds hung over the area constantly. Reich fell ill and hovered between life and death for weeks. The whole area became uninhabitable. Although the radium was finally removed to a place eleven miles away, the process did not let up. I am confident that science will one day discover that this type of reaction accounts for the radioactive layer about our atmosphere (The Van Allen Belt) due to cosmic rays (perhaps X-rays from the sun) meeting the earth's energy envelope.

Besides near disaster and disease, this experiment brought about the discovery of a new type of energy (actually already matter since it was visible) which Reich called "deadly orgone" or "DOR." This resulted from the effect of nuclear radiation on orgone energy. DOR is black, lusterless, toxic, carries a high charge, and is oxygen and water-hungry. It appears as black specks in the atmosphere, as though someone had sprinkled the air with black pepper. One can clearly see the sun through it, but photographs appear as though they were taken in shadow. Leaves droop and lose their luster, birds and insects become quiet, and even the air is still. Humans become uncomfortable, the skin blue, mouth parched, and the scalp tight, causing headache and nausea. Reich called this "DOR sickness." The blackening effects of DOR on rocks led to considerable research into the chemistry of the process, designated preatomic chemistry by Reich, and the discovery of melanor, orite, brownite and orene, all of which are described in the later orgonomic journals.

Early in 1952, to combat DOR, Reich devised a cloudbuster consisting principally of hollow pipes grounded in water, which was able to draw this energy out of the atmosphere into water. This led to an interest in weather, and he experimented with both the production and prevention of rain. On two occasions, his weather work was televised, and once, in 1953, he produced rain for a group of Maine farmers whose crops were dying because of drought. They had agreed to pay him if he produced rain within a prescribed time, and did so when he achieved this. In the early days of cloudbusting, Reich used five pipes, two above the other three. On one occasion, I saw him point the cloudbuster at a heavy cloud, and in a few moments, five holes appeared in this cloud, two above, and three below. I was convinced. Thinking a bit further, Reich decided that this principle might be of value in treating neuroses, to make energy move. He modified the cloudbuster for use on humans and called it a "medical DOR-buster." Where energy is stuck in muscular contraction, it can be moved by use of the medical DOR-buster, and, as the holding gives, the emotion pours out. It can be a dangerous tool if used irresponsibly. Fantastic? Yes. Even when you see it work you scarcely believe it; it seems too simple, too simple for science to accept, but this was so of the orgone accumulator, as well. I have seen both work effectively on many occasions, but only time can bring acceptance; now they are under suspicion and looked upon as quackery.

Reich's discovery of armor and orgasm anxiety explained many enigmas of human functioning, such as mysticism and mechanistic thinking. One of the most important of these enigmas he termed "emotional plague." This is the character structure that consistently blocks all progress towards natural functioning. No one is completely free of this malady, but there are certain persons who function essentially as emotional pests. These individuals are generally capable, intelligent, and energetic, but they are anti-sexual and prone to attain positions of authority where they can dictate rules of living; they are the bulwarks of society. They cannot tolerate natural functioning because it creates an intolerable longing in them, so their prime purpose in life is to place restrictions on any natural living. At the same time, they rationalize their behavior so very well that it is accepted as being for the common good.

As a specific example of the aforementioned, all of Reich's books were banned by the injunction brought against him, and all the orgonomic periodicals were burned, with the given reason that they represented labeling for the orgone energy accumulator; to mention orgone energy was forbidden because it was supposed not to exist. Assuming for a moment that orgone energy does not exist, one would have to ask why the ban included such volumes as Character Analysis, The Sexual Revolution, and The Mass Psychology of Fascism, all of which were written before the discovery of orgone energy. We begin to understand that there must be some other reason than the given motive for the book-banning, a hidden purpose which must never be exposed. The same hidden purpose was responsible for the persecution of people to maintain the beliefs that the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, that evolution was against the ideas of God, and that children were asexual. Any finding that genuinely increases the knowledge of natural functioning and man's relationship to the cosmos is anathema and comes to acceptance only after very many bitter years of struggle and persecution.

In 1953, The Emotional Plague of Mankind, consisting of two volumes, The Murder of Christ and People in Trouble, was published. The years between 1945 and 1953 had been filled with new findings, much work, and concern with many problems: new concepts of medicine, physics, and mathematics, and a growing understanding of cosmic functions and gravity, along with the almost catastrophic events precipitated by the oranur reaction. In spite of all this, Reich found time to produce many beautiful paintings and some sculpture, and to compose music.

More ominous to Reich than any of the dangers of natural research as the constantly threatening black cloud the emotional plague of mankind. It was, therefore, no coincidence that he published the two aforementioned volumes in 1953. There were persistent rumors of a "busy, pudgy little man," who had twice failed his psychiatric boards, constantly demanding that the APA "do something" about Reich and "all that orgone stuff", and this is at a time when that august body was begging for "new ideas in psychiatry however fantastic they might be . . . " Since 1946, this little man had been frightened of Reich's work and he eventually persuaded the APA to act, which it did by instigating a reactivation of the Food and Drug Administration's investigation with its support.

The culmination of this plague activity occurred on February 20, 1954, in the form of a complaint issued through the United States District Court at Portland, Maine, charging that the orgone energy accumulator was a fraud, that orgone energy did not exist, and that all the literature on the orgonomy was merely labeling for the sale of the accumulator. Reich was stunned and for three days could not act. Eventually, he sent his Response to Judge Clifford, contending that the law could not decide scientific matters and affirming his right through common law to continue his basic research. When he asked my opinion, I told him that I had little faith that an American judge would either understand or accept his response, since the court was concerned only with the technical question of his right to distribute the orgone energy accumulator (2) and this would have to be defended in court. Reich argued correctly that the court should protect sincere scientists from being attacked; he could not grasp that the court, within our present legal structure, had no way of knowing who was sincere except by testimony in court. He, therefore, refused to allow a court of law to judge his scientific work, a shocking, all-inclusive, uncontested injunction was issued against him on March 19. Without the necessity of proof, the Food and Drug Administration succeeded in having a federal court brand the accumulator a fraud, with the added contention that orgone energy does not exist, and the proscription that all literature that even mentioned orgone energy should be burned. It became illegal to dispense any information about the orgone energy accumulator. This injunction altered no scientific facts, but did cast an official stigma on the entire field of orgonomy. The emotional plague nature of the proceedings is evident in the fact that neither the court nor the Food and Drug Administration were really interested in learning about anything in favor of Reich's work, since no attempt was made to obtain facts from Reich or his co-workers, and petition by fourteen physicians to present the case for orgonomy was refused by the court. Reich's bitterness over these events was expressed in an article he wrote, The Modju Injuncta, laden with his feelings of abandonment and bitterness.

However, Reich had little time to think about himself, and he notified the court that he would resume his activities. He had become concerned about the rapid increase in development of desert conditions in the United States and other parts of the world, which he believed was due to an increase of DOR in the atmosphere, partly precipitated by the nuclear testing, but mainly coming in from outer space. Reports of space ships interested him; he had observed several sightings at Orgonon. DOR conditions increased following each sighting, and he concluded that the space ships were responsible. In October, 1954, he went to Tucson, Arizona, with two cloudbusters to ascertain what he could do to reverse the desert process, remaining there until April, 1955. His account is recorded in his Second Oranur Report entitled Contact with Space, published in 1957. This volume must be read for a fuller understanding of the project, but I shall present three observations which I made personally.

I was making a motion picture film of Reich's work in Arizona and soon learned the necessity of using a light meter. Although the sun appeared very bright and hot, the light meter indicated a much wider shutter opening than one would judge necessary. One morning, the light meter indicated a shutter setting of 8. At this point, Reich began to draw with the cloudbuster. With no other change in weather conditions, I checked the light meter after ten minutes and I found a shutter opening indication of only 11. One other change was noticed. After the drawing, although there was actually more light, the sun did not seem so glareful or hot; DOR had absorbed the light and produced both the glare and heat.

On another occasion, we were watching the maneuvers of a military jet place which left a long, unbroken vapor trail. Ahead of it, we observed an area of DOR. At the moment that the jet entered the DOR, the vapor trail disappeared abruptly; DOR had absorbed the moisture, so no trail appeared.

My final observation had to do with space ships. None has been captured as yet, and many people still believe that they do not exist. I shall merely record here what seven of us, besides Reich, saw. At about 9:00 P.M. one evening, Reich pointed to a very bright star (3) in the southwest, about 40 degrees above the horizon. It was unusual in that it was brighter than I had ever seen Venus to be. Also, it alternated in color regularly in a sequence of red, blue, green, orange, yellow and white, then back to red. We watched it for several minutes and then observed it through a 3-inch refracting telescope where it appeared larger but still merely as a body of light. Lining up with stationary objects, we found that it was moving slowly in a northeasterly direction and changing its position gradually with relation to other stars. Reich then trained the cloudbuster on it and after three or four minutes, the red color no longer appeared. This was followed by the successive non-appearance of the blue, green, orange, and yellow colors. Now all that remained was the white, which grew dimmer and dimmer until we could no longer see it. These were my observations; interpret them as you will.

By 1954, Reich had solved many problems of cosmic functioning and was nearing the solution of negative gravity. Gravity, he found, was due to the reaction of two energy streams; actually, a manifestation of superimposition.

In the meantime, after being assured by the federal court that the injunctions applied only to Reich, Dr. Michael Silvert assumed charge of the Orgone Institute Press and distribution of accumulators. CORE (Cosmic Orgone Engineering) replaced the Orgone Energy Bulletin as the official periodical and was published in 1954 and 1955.

Reich returned to Orgonon in May, 1955, and that summer held his last conference, which was based on the medical use of the DOR-buster, a modification of the cloudbuster. At this seminar, he met Aurora Karrer, a medical technician from Washington, D.C., who became his third wife and gave him comfort and loyal support in his last years. In the fall, he moved to Washington where he spent the next two winters. He had but little peace and quiet left in which to enjoy life. The Food and Drug Administration was busy charging him and Silvert with contempt of the injunction; he was being followed everywhere; his telephone was tapped and he received numerous crank calls. He was unable to interest scientists in his weather and desert control methods since they contented themselves with old concepts of cloud-seeding and irrigation. Everywhere he was frustrated, needled, and accused. It amazed me constantly that he could still show serious concern for the welfare of his remaining co-workers and their families.

On July 26, 1955, official contempt charges were placed against Reich and Silvert, followed by criminal court proceedings. Both, although they consulted attorneys, decided to act as their own counselors. In court, Reich acted as defendant, defense counselor, accuser and teacher. Actually, Reich had not violated the injunction but believed that his trip to Arizona was a violation; his feeling of responsibility towards Silvert, whom he knew was really responsible for the contempt charges, caused him to share equal responsibility and, finally, to state in court that he was in violation of the injunction. Both were found guilty, with Reich receiving a two-year sentence, Silbert a year and a day. A $10,000 fine was imposed on the Wilhelm Reich Foundation. Reich stated openly that he would not survive his sentence. He knew that he suffered from a serious heart condition but had not told anyone; his structure could not survive imprisonment in Connecticut and was later transferred to the penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He died on November 3, 1957, one week before the date of his recommended release. While in prison, he had solved the final formula for negative gravity and had written his last book, which he called Creation. The manuscript mysteriously disappeared at the prison, and the formula died with Reich. He had planned to give the formula to his son the following week.

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