Open illusions

I admit that I only skimmed this book, "Hidden Nature" by Alick Bartholomew. The startling insights it contains comes from Viktor Schauberger, an alternative thinker in interwar Austria, who still has followers in some European countries. Unknown to me, a group of Schauberger fans exist right here, in Sweden. Although Schauberger wasn't an Anthroposophist, his ideas are easily combined with Steiner's basic worldview. "Hidden Nature" is published by Floris Books, an Anthroposophical press.

Some of Schauberger's notions are, although somewhat strange, at least plausible from a spiritual viewpoint. Thus, he talks about cosmic energies, life forces, sacred geometry, various astral and etheric realms, etc. He believes that the vortex or the spiral is the basic building block of the cosmos. Another key concept is "living water". As a firm believer in the possibility of cosmic-spiritual evolution, Schauberger denied entropy, claiming there are negentropic forces at work in nature. Usually, he sounds "Green". If we don't seek and achieve balance with Nature, society and our bodies will degenerate.

The above may or may not be true, useful or interesting. My problem is Schauberger's claims to have invented a perpetuum mobile and discovered the secrets of free energy. The Nazis supposedly forced him to work in their secret research laboratories, and some Nazi scientists stole his free energy devices to power UFO-shaped craft. Naturally, the SS shot everyone who knew the secrets, and all files were destroyed after the war... Well, not all. After being properly de-Nazified, Schauberger travelled to the United States, where he soon had a fall out with his new employers, refusing to reveal his secrets. Yet, the U.S. firm in question managed to force Schauberger to give up his remaining research material, and it has been inaccessible ever since. (Strange he didn't took private notes or had more than one copy!) Returning to Austria, he died a broken man.

I admit I'm somewhat incredulous to this story, retold in a very credulous manner by Bartholomew...

Here's an alternative scenario: since Schauberger didn't have any traditional technical or scientific education (something the author admits), he never worked for the Nazis at all, and if he did, he didn't invent anything. A bitter man, he made up all the stories about his great free energy discoveries after the war to boost his own credibility and ego. The American company called his bluff, at which point the old man promptly refused to communicate further and went home to Österreich. If the secret of free energy is known to The Powers That Be, why haven't the U.S. military used the invention to its own advantage? Why haven't the Russians been able to steal the secrets? They had no problems with the A-bomb...

I don't doubt that there is a hidden nature somewhere, but the idea that it contains the solutions to our peak oil predicament is simply another obvious illusion.