By James DeMeo
Over the years there has been a tendency for cloudbusting to be called "weather modification" or "orgonomic weather modification", or other terms which imply that the primary function of cloudbusting is to change the weather in a specified manner, to make the weather do this or that. Technically and philosophically, this is entirely incorrect, and I suggest this terminology be henceforth dropped completely from the lexicon of orgone research. Reich's impetus in the development of the cloudbuster was not to "modify" or "make" anything - rather, it was to restore the lost property of atmospheric pulsation. Cloudbusting was historically developed to address an atmospheric crisis situation, of a hazy contaminated atmosphere and drought which afflicted his region of rural Maine. Reich noted, atmospheric energetic pulsation and natural self-regulation in the atmosphere had stopped, and so he worked towards a solution, to return the atmosphere back towards a more natural condition.
Factually, cloudbusting is a technique to remove obstacles in the way of natural atmospheric functioning, to restore the lost principle of atmospheric energetic pulsation and self-regulation. The context is similar to the goal of Reich's emotion-release therapy, to help the individual feel more alive and to breathe deeper, to biologically pulsate more freely and function in a more alive and self-regulated manner. Emotional armoring could be relieved by the therapy he developed in his early clinical work, and this resulted in a more healthy functioning of the total organism. Likewise, his cloudbusting method can soften the atmospheric armor which appears as a dull, steel-grey haze and stagnation in the lower atmosphere and on the landscape. When armor or atmospheric stagnation sets in, one might attempt to assist or help nature to function as it would normally, had not the armor or atmospheric stagnation developed. Careful work with the cloudbuster could often accomplish this goal, though not uniformly or under all conditions. Cloudbusting is not a crutch, nor a "medicine" to be applied routinely, or without training or knowledge of atmospheric science. It is more like temporary atmospheric acupuncture which is used only briefly, to restore natural energetic streaming to the atmosphere, just as acupuncture needles are used on the living organism to stimulate a more normal and healthy bioenergetic functioning. After normal functioning is achieved, both acupuncture needles and the cloudbuster are put away, into storage, and are no longer needed.
Regarding atmospheric functioning, part of the difficulty is the term "cloudbusting" itself, which implies to many people the "busting up of clouds". Or it implies "cloudburst", a possible forcible triggering of rains from a given cloud, as if one pricked it with a pin and the water came pouring out. While the dissipation or eliciting of rains from individual clouds is sometimes possible, neither are primary goals of the cloudbusting technique. Reich preferred the term "Cosmic Orgone Engineering". If one merely removed the tendency towards atmospheric stagnation, the atmosphere would by itself pulsate and form discrete clouds which would spontaneously grow and shrink, developing into larger storm systems and then dissipating away for clear skies. Trying to "squeeze" moisture out of one or two individual clouds is what the cloudseeders do, with their chemicals, but this approach is entirely foreign to the field of Cosmic Orgone Engineering, which views the atmospheric pulsation much like the beating of the heart of a living creature. It does not require intervention unless something interferes with the natural pulsation, causing it to stop.
While grappling with these terms, I came to some interesting observations about words and language. It is far easier to come up with descriptive terms or synonyms for cloudbusting which imply "doing something" to the weather: modification, alteration, change, perturbation, and so forth. Related words which imply the outright stopping or interfering with natural processes are even more abundant: suppression, repression, containment, stop, halt, end, terminate, kill, discontinue, squash, quell, calm, quiet, silence, etc. But try to come up with single words which mean, clearly, assisting a natural function, or restoring a lost natural function, or setting free a natural impulse formerly bound up and repressed. Here, one finds the English language fails entirely, as do most other languages, and one must string together entire phrases to get the concepts across. Perhaps the freely-living Trobriand Islanders or Minoans had such single words, but we just don't know. And so, we continue to use the word cloudbusting, but also search for descriptive terms which avoid the implications of "controlling the weather" or "weather modification" and acknowledge that at basis, cloudbusting is a method for restoration of free movement of formerly blocked and stagnant atmospheric life energy.
Another reason to cease using the term "orgonomic weather modification" is the fact that the cloudseeders do use the "modification" terminology - they also start from the basic assumptions that space is empty, without any primary energy, and that both nature and the universe are dead. Meteorologists have no acceptance of any principle which comes close to atmospheric self-regulation, and indeed have been hot to criticize the use of concepts which come from the world of biology, such as homeostasis or the Gaia theory of Lovelock. By contrast, orgonomy came from the world of the biological sciences, with an emphasis upon self-regulatory processes. We therefore should strive to avoid the "control-make" terminology of physics and meteorology, which is founded upon empty space and a dead atmosphere and universe.
Other historical facts set Reich's orgonomy and cloudbusting fully apart from traditional cloudseeding and conventional physics and meteorology. As I have detailed in other essays and articles, Reich's work was opposed by the cloudseeders and atmospheric scientists embracing the empty-space theories. Reich viewed the aurora as an expression of living orgone energy streams high up in the atmosphere, and his overall discussion of the sensitive atmospheric life-energy were fundamental to his arguments that atomic-bomb testing and cloudseeding were life-negative influences upon the atmosphere, and possibly also causes of drought and severe storms. Strong irritants such as atomic materials could irritate the atmsophere, and drive it to extremes of behavior: furious storms, or stagnated immobility and drought. In the modern-day criticisms of atomic bombs, nuclear power plants, cloudseeding, conventional air pollution and the HAARP project, Reich's work is hardly mentioned. This is a large error, as his work is of central relevance to the modern-day scientific and environmental controversies.
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* Adapted from an earlier article of the same title in Pulse of the Planet 4:116, 1993.
For more reading on this subject, see the following essays:
1. Special Topic: ORANUR REPORT, Severe Drought Crisis in Rajasthan Province, And Failure of the Indian Monsoon Seasons,
Following Underground Nuclear Bomb Tests in India and Pakistan,
May 1998.
http://www.orgonelab.org/oranur.htm
2. Auroras at the Tree-Tops! Observations by Ordinary People, versus Scientific Theory
http://www.orgonelab.org/auroras.htm
3. Cloudbusting: Growing Evidence for a New Method of Ending Drought and Greening Deserts
http://www.orgonelab.org/AIBC.htm
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