(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2) Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS on duplicating, publishing or distributing the files on KeelyNet except where noted! January 8, 1992 RUSSELL2.ASC -------------------------------------------------------------------- This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of : The TESLA BBS...300,1200,2400...(8,N,1) (719) 486-2775 Data (303) 824-6834 Voice (303) 443-8478 Voice TESLA, Inc. 820 Bridger Circle Craig, CO 81625 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Article From Solstice Magazine, Issue #36 May/June 1989 201 E. Main St. Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901 (804) 979-4427 -------------------------------------------------------------------- WALTER RUSSEL ARTICLE: SIDEBARS AN EARLY WARNING August, 1954. "It will not take many years to utterly destroy the . . . encircling protective walls which surround this planet and protect the earth from burning up by the sun's hot rays." Walter and Lao Russell, Newsletter of the University of Science and Philosophy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- April 6, 1989. "Scientists reported yesterday that for the first time they have detected an increase in "biologically relevant" levels of ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground as a result of the ozone hole over the Antarctica. This is the first indication that the depletion of ozone. . . is beginning to cause the potentially harmful effect that has long been predicted." (Washington Post) -------------------------------------------------------------------- A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA In a way, the abrupt emergence of Russell's astonishing hypothesis is in keeping with the peculiar tradition of the ozone Page 1 story, a tale rife with riddles and ironies. "One of the most striking features of the ozone controversy [is] the extent to which 'outsiders' played a crucial role in identifying the threats to the ozone layer." (The Ozone War, page 11.) It was James Lovelock, now famous as the author of the controversial Gaia Hypothesis, who first found CFCs persisting in the stratosphere. Making the historic measurement required an ultra-sensitive device. Unable to obtain any funding for the research (he was dismissed as a "crank"), Lovelock built the delicate tool himself, using his family's "grocery money." Ironically, Lovelock thought the chemicals might serve as useful "tracers" for atmospheric study, and said they posed "no conceivable hazard." "I boobed," Lovelock frankly admits. "It turned out I was sitting on a time bomb." (The Ozone War, page 9.) Sherry Rowland, who while on a "fishing trip for new ideas" happened to hear early rumor of Lovelock's measurements at a conference coffee klatch, was no more a part of mainstream ozone research than Lovelock. In fact, he was not an atmospheric scientist at all, but a chemist specializing in, of all things, the chemistry of radio-isotopes. He and Molina, a young research assistant fresh from receiving his PhD, never imagined that their study would plunge them into the eye of a national cyclone of controversy. If Russell is right, and manmade nuclear reactions prove to be at the root of stratospheric ills, then Sherry Rowland's involvement provides one further irony: prior to his becoming interested in the fluorocarbon work that led to the ozone finding, he was funded by the Atomic Energy Commission. His area of research? -- the chemistry of atoms produced in nuclear reactions. -------------------------------------------------------------------- RUSSELL THE ARTIST The story of how Dr. Russell came to sculpt his famous bust of Edison is an example of his legendary versatility. At the age of fifty-six, Russell had been an accomplished painter, but had never handled clay in his life. As President of the Society of Arts and Sciences, he felt compelled to make good on a commission for the bust, which a fellow artist had accepted but was unable to complete. He promptly got some clay and wired Mrs. Edison that he would go and do it himself -- akin to a great conductor suddenly picking up the violin for an unrehearsed recital. "It was a very unwise thing to do, perhaps, because with such a great man as Edison as my subject, I might not have survived a failure," he later remarked. "But I never let the thought of failure enter my mind. . . .The inspired belief that I should do this thing as a demonstration of my belief in man's unlimited power made me ignore the difficulties that lay in the way. So I went to Florida with a mass of clay, but on my way down, I spent the entire time absorbed in inspirational meditation with the Universal Source of all inspiration." The resulting sculpture was to be one of the great mileposts in his career; other commissions followed immediately, producing busts Page 2 of Franklin Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Thomas Watson, George Gershwin and Leopold Stokowski, and finally a twenty-eight figure monument to Mark Twain and the famous "Four Freedoms. -------------------------------------------------------------------- RUSSELL THE SOCIAL REFORMER Founded 20 years earlier as an "ethical and moral movement to bring culture, character and the Brotherhood of Man principle into world human relations," the New York-based Twilight Club brought together a network of such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, Edwin Markham and Alexis Carrell. (Alexis Carrell wrote Man The Unknown -- a perennial favorite in macrobiotic circles -- during his association with Russell and the Twilight Club.) Russell's long collaboration with Thomas Watson, another Twilight Club member and the founder of IBM, led to the introduction of moral standards and ethical principles in the world of business. In his first of many meetings and lectures for IBM personnel, Russell said he was "shocked" with the "jungle philosophy of every man for himself" that then permeated the business world, and he effectively replaced the philosophy of "business is business" with the concept "that equal interchange of goods and services between buyer and seller is the keynote of tomorrow's business world." (The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, p. 24-25.) During the Depression years when so many businesses failed, IBM continued to thrive. When asked the secret of their success, Watson replied, "Go talk with Walter Russell." Abandoned during the WWII years, the Twilight Club was later revived as the University of Science and Philosophy at Swannanoa, Virginia. After Russell's passing in 1963, his work was carried on at Swannanoa by Lao Russell, his co-equal partner in work as in marriage. -------------------------------------------------------------------- A LIVING AND DYING UNIVERSE Walter Russell often asserted that God's universe "is a two- way, not one-way universe." The death force or "winding down" principle is familiar to us as the force of entropy, the famed Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Law of Entropy states that all systems gradually lose energy (that is, energy becomes less organized and therefore unavailable to perform work) through dispersal of heat; hence, the universe is destined to die a "heat death." Russell disagreed, and detailed the mechanics of an opposite, balancing force -- the life-organizing force, which he also termed "generoactive." This force is the answer to the riddle of Newton's apple, to which Russell alludes in his 1930s Times letter. (Years later, Buckminster Fuller coined the term "syntropy" to describe entropy's complement.) Russell also likened these twin forces to the charging and discharging of a battery, or the winding and unwinding of a spring. How rapidly or gradually a system unwinds after reaching Page 3 maturity depends on a variety of factors, principally its degree of balance within its local environment. Thus the relaxation and dissolution of life may occur as slow fermentation, decay, a burst of flame or an explosion. "We do not say that a decaying tree, which takes fifty years to go back into the ground, is exploding. If you burn it, however, the flame is a series of quick explosions which will do in two hours what Nature intended should take fifty years." (Atomic Suicide?, page 23.) Central to Russell's scientific conclusions is this observation: the state of rest, the source from which all life arises and to which it ultimately returns, is the "normal" state (to which Russell often refers as God, Mind or Magnetic zero.) In other words, it takes increasing effort to "wind up" into greater density (to live), while it takes literally no effort at all, once a system reaches maximum compression, to unwind again -- to die. Most significantly, the force of the unwinding/death phase is proportionate to the total effort expended in winding up to that point. For example, it may take many years of consuming steak and ice cream, perhaps along with exposure to chemical contaminants, to reach the condition disposing one to bowel cancer. The effort expended by the individual, the food industry, the chemical factories and even the cattle involved, are considerable; at the point of maximum compression (when the body cannot hold itself together any tighter) that mass of effort reverts into a forceful, effortless unwinding. What goes in, must come back out. To arrest the course of the disease at this point requires a tremendous, renewed exertion of compression and life effort, commonly observed as the "will to live" factor or, in macrobiotic thought, as the capacity to self-reflect and change one's personal habits. In the case of human illness and dying, such a reversal through renewed compression is often possible, just as it is possible to arrest the burning of a tree with cold water, or to slow fermentation with salt. It is not so easy to halt the unwinding process of gunpowder, an electrical short-circuit -- or the decay of radioactivity. -------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SPIRAL OF ELEMENTS As in the life of his contemporary Georges Ohsawa, the modern founder of the macrobiotic movement, Russell was absorbed in his later years with both the cosmic meaning and the immediate dangers of atomic science. Also like his Oriental counterpart, Russell vividly and brilliantly expressed his grasp of universal dynamics in a spiral chart of the elements. Russell's atomic charts placed all the atoms as points along a continuous spectrum of increasing compression, much like the notes of an ascending musical scale. The musical simile is not casual: Russell's atomic scale is harmonically organized in octaves, with the inert gases (helium, neon, argon etc.) acting as the "keynote" Page 4 of each octave. (Not surprisingly, Dr. Russell was also an accomplished composer.) Russell held that the hydrogen octave, far from being the beginning of the atomic scale, was in fact preceded by three "inaudible" atomic octaves, yielding a full spectrum of nine octaves. These first three octaves, involving wavelengths too vast to measure, would be beyond the threshold of physical sensing (that is, beyond detection by normal instruments of science). It was the lack of this knowledge, Russell contended, and the misconception of hydrogen as the first element that forced scientists to view deuterium and tritium (which he had originally called Ethlogen and Bebegen -- now well-known as components of the "heavy water" used in today's nuclear reactions) as isotopes of hydrogen instead of true tonal elements in their own right. ("Isotopes" might be compared to the "accidentals" -- sharps and flats -- of single musical notes.) On the other hand, he asserted, that many of the higher octave "elements" in fact are but isotopes of higher-octave versions of carbon. Carbon, lying in the center of the fourth octave, is held to be the balance point of perfect stability and the mature expression of the entire spectrum, and as such serves as the basis for organic life. Russell pointed out that roughly 98 percent of organic life forms are composed of carbon and four other elements (hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and silicon) which all are grouped together with carbon in the fourth octave (except silicon, a transmutation of carbon in the next octave up, which forms the basis of the Earth's crust and of soil). In a sense, the "purpose" of the entire atomic spectrum is to create carbon life forms. The further one compresses past carbon, the more readily will the pressure and heat of compression explode into decay. The supercompressed elements of the 7th, 8th and especially 9th octaves (radium, plutonium, etc.) are simmering at the breaking point -- hence the tremendously explosive pressures of the radioactive metals. -------------------------------------------------------------------- ENCOUNTERING THE RUSSELLS On a quiet afternoon in 1979, I sat in a coffee shop preparing my Kushi Institute lecture for that evening. As I sipped my coffee -- I was allowed to, after all, I was a teacher -- I was interrupted by two friends, both "senior" teachers. (This particular coffee shop served as a hangout and meeting place for macrobiotic teachers.) They joined me and began discussing the usual topic of the day: How to get everyone else to eat macrobiotically so as to establish one peaceful world. One of the seniors noticed my recently acquired book, Dr. Walter Russell's The Secret of Light, lying on the table beside me; and they asked me who Dr. Russell was and what the book was about. After the first few sentences of my reply, they both proceeded to criticize both the book and its author for a good half hour. In the Boston macrobiotic community where I lived at that time, I soon learned, to mention the Russells and their work was like admitting that you did not understand the unique principle of macrobiotics. The philosophical and scientific works of the Page 5 Russells were (and perhaps still are) considered unclear, confusing and impractical. I, like my fellow students and teachers, certainly did not want confusing or "foreign" philosophical ideas to disrupt our established belief system concerning the nature of macrobiotics. As far as we were concerned, the macrobiotic truth existed here, and only here, in our little community. The sun flag was raised high, and I was dedicated, loyal, stubborn and very confused. So, I laid the Russells' work aside, along with all else that did not fit into my small world of dogma. Several years later, being a little older, not necessarily a little wiser, but a whole lot more curious and frustrated with apparent inconsistencies and impracticalities in my own understanding of macrobiotics, I secretly began to explore the works of Dr. and Mrs. Russell. At first I became more confused and found myself resisting, especially when I read such bold statements as, "Opposites do not attract," or "Like attracts like." Wait a minute, I thought. Maybe my macrobiotic friends were right about Russell -- there do seem to be inconsistencies here. I soon discovered that the inconsistencies I was encountering were not in their works, but in the limitations of my own prior understanding. Gradually a new comprehension began to open up. Their words penetrated deep into my soul. They were honest words, words of wisdom, of love, and they were steeped in the unifying principle of macrobiotics. Their expression was extremely clear and to the point. The message was practical and not at all confusing. There was nothing there to instill guilt or fear. They spoke of the difference between knowing and thinking, and how we all know all there is to know, yet do not always admit it to ourselves. Dr. Russell was a perfect example of one who knew. He had very little formal education, and used this to his advantage. Through inspiration he became an accomplished scientist, philosopher, artist, sculptor and musician. They spoke of how we as human beings can reinspire others, yet can only be inspired by the One. And most of all, for me, they explained the mechanism and process of the logarithmic spiral -- the foundation of macrobiotics. The more I absorbed their understanding, the more it seemed to add to rather than detract from or conflict with my prior macrobiotic learning. Through the years that followed I began to incorporate their understanding of macrobiotics into my own teaching and counselling, always with the thought that I would meet Mrs. Russell some day. For the past eight years I traveled throughout the United States, teaching and encouraging people to study the Russells' works, and giving out the address of the University of Science and Philosophy. During this period I had not once contacted the University to introduce myself. Why? I have no idea. In 1987 I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia from New York. Why? I have no idea, other than it seemed to be the proper move for me. I soon learned that the University of Science and Philosophy was only a twenty minute drive away. I called the University and introduced myself, and said I would like to meet Mrs. Russell; I was given an appointment. Days later, I drove out to Swannanoa with John Mann, who had recently relocated Page 6 Solstice from upstate New York to Charlottesville. [Editor's Note: Why had we abruptly relocated? We had no idea.] Arriving at the requested time, I introduced myself to the staff and they said they would inform Mrs. Russell that I was there. I stood among a group of approximately twenty other visitors and watched as the most elegant lady I have ever met began to descend the carpeted stairs. We had never met, yet she recognized me in the crowd immediately, and invited me upstairs. As we sat, she proceeded to tell me my life story in detail, from the beginning to the present. She spoke as if she knew me when I was a child. She did! And that wasn't all she knew -- for she, too, was a living example of her and her late husband's philosophy. We spoke for a few hours on many subjects. She told humorous stories about Dr. Russell and herself as if he were still alive. "He is!" she said, "You can never die!" She spoke with a simple, quiet conviction that was utterly disarming, and I felt as if I were in the presence of honesty incarnate. Meeting Mrs. Russell was an experience I will cherish forever. -- Steve GagnŽ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Mrs. Russell was a perceptive person. Early in our conversation, she looked straight at us again and said, "This started in 1954." She was referring to the '54 University Newsletter, no doubt; but she spoke so emphatically, Steve and I could not help glancing at each other -- could she have known that we were both born in 1954? She smiled. Later, she abruptly turned to us and nonchalantly commented, "You know, Dr. Russell never smoked cigarettes or drank coffee." Bingo, I thought. -- Ed. -------------------------------------------------------------------- RESOURCES "Atomic Suicide?" (1957, 304 pp.), discusses the nature of matter and its relation to the world of spirit. It also provides a broad introduction to Russell's general cosmology. One fascinating section is devoted to excerpts from the contemporary popular media about the dangers of nuclear power. A lengthy introduction by Lao Russell includes a biographical essay on Russell's life. (Solstice Library) -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Secret of Light" (1947, 288 pp.) is a thorough exposition of Russell's cosmology, more completely and systematically presented than in Atomic Suicide? (Solstice Library) -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe," by Glenn Clark (1953 edition, 57 pp.), is a short, highly accessible biography. (Solstice Library) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 7 "Home Study Course." Available from the University, this is a thorough, comprehensive course of study of the Russells' work in all its dimensions. (See ad this page for the Home Study Course and other Russell books.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- RELATED BOOKS AND LITERATURE "Holoscene" (formerly "Spiral, Lord of Creation"), by Jerry Canty; 144 pp. Canty's most thorough explanation of Russell's work to date. Available directly from Canty in photocopy for $25 ppd. Jerome Canty, Box 5256, Chico CA 95927. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Atomic Age and The Unique Principle," Georges Ohsawa. Written towards the end of his life, The Atomic Age presents Ohsawa's most incisive perspective on the atomic frontier and the 20th century challenge. (Solstice Library) -------------------------------------------------------------------- "World Crisis Solutions Foundation Newsletter," issues 1-4. Written by Dr. Tim Binder, these four newsletters contain brief overviews of some of Dr. Russell's insights and Dr. Binder's efforts to pursue the radiation/ozone-depletion connection. The Newsletters also contain condensed articles on a variety of other vital health and environmental issues. $20 for set of four. NW 169 Blodgett Camp Road, Hamilton MT 59840 (406) 363-4041. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Ozone War," Lydia Dotto and Harold Schiff, Doubleday & Co., 1978. A fascinating account of the discoveries and controversies surrounding Sherwood Rowland's work with the Ozone Hole. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Protecting the Ozone Layer," Chapter 5 of The State of the World 1989, Worldwatch Institute, NY -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have comments or other information relating to such topics as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page. Thank you for your consideration, interest and support. Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet -------------------------------------------------------------------- If we can be of service, you may contact Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 8