Life Force... The Creative Process in Man and in Nature

About the Book

New discoveries about the nature and properties of the life force confirm what old civilizations like those of India and of China have taught for millennia. The life force can become the central concept in human knowledge, whether it be known as chi, spirit, soul, bioenergy, god, orgone, élan vital, or radix. It sits astride the great divisions in knowledge that split mind and body in the individual, self and other in relationships, religion and science in human society. Knowing the nature and properties of the life force makes it possible to reconcile these divisions. This book provides that knowledge -- what the life force is, how the process of creation through the life force actually works, and how this information can be used to change ourselves and the external world around us.

First, however, long-cherished illusions of both religion and science must be given up. The greatest of these illusions is the belief that religion in itself or science in itself, one or the other, can provide an adequate explanation of the deeper nature of things. The deeper nature of things cannot be explained by religious texts and dogmas. Nor can it be reduced to the laws of physical science. Something else is required.

We need to allow the possibility that consciousness and physical reality have come into and are still coming into existence together through the action of the pre-existing life force in the natural, understandable creative process.

Kelley's frame of reference is scientific, but he is also a psychologist. His discoveries about the life force come alive in these pages when he addresses the profound work of Wilhelm Reich, and demonstrates the relationship of the life force to muscular armor in human beings with examples from his own personal growth practice. Insights into muscular armor as a positive mechanism of the human will are described in chapters on emotions, purpose and, finally, autonomy.

The primary focus of this book is human consciousness and the life force. A life-time's interest in physical science and the life force - meteorology, cosmology, engineering, -- is concentrated into the last chapter, and prior writings on the subject comprise the Appendix.

About the Author

Charles R. (Chuck) Kelley, Ph.D. is a philosopher of science, an explorer and engineer of the life force, and an applied experimental psychologist. He was a student of Wilhelm Reich, and after Reich's death in 1957 he published The Creative Process, America's only scientific periodical devoted to furthering Reich's work at that time. By the late sixties he developed his own system of Radix® education in feeling and purpose, and he and his wife Erica ran a retreat center in California until 1987, offering residential programs and training professionals from around the world.

Apart from his reputation in the personal growth field, Kelley has served as a professor and scholar on the faculties of several universities, and was Chief Scientist with a firm of human factors engineers, at which time John Wiley & Sons published his MANUAL AND AUTOMATIC CONTROL. As a Visiting Scientist in Europe under sponsorship of the NATO Division of Scientific Affairs, he addressed topics such as "Man and Technology" and "Mechanism and Mysticism." He was made a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the Masters and Johnson Institute, and a Diplomate in sexual research by the American Board of Sexology.

A former weather forecaster, he published A NEW METHOD OF WEATHER CONTROL in 1961 describing his experiments with a device built by Reich to influence the weather. Other writings about Reich, Radix and the life force have appeared across the years in The Orgone Energy Bulletin, The Creative Process, The American Psychologist, Energy and Character, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Pilgrimage, and The Radix Journal, and in numerous books and monographs.