Ve Marco, on FaceBook brought my attention to
Walter Bowman Russell.
Walter Bowman Russell (May 19, 1871 – May 19, 1963) was an American painter of the Boston School and a sculptor, an illuminate, a natural philosopher, a musician, an author and a builder. His lectures and writing place him firmly in the New Thought Movement.[1]
To the New York Herald Tribune, Russell was "the modern Leonardo," a Renaissance man for the twentieth century.[2]
There are two biographies of Walter Russell. The first is by non-sectarian religious writer Glenn Clark, who published The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe in 1946. Because Clark collaborated with Russell, the small book may be considered an authorized biography. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.[3] Another biography was published in 2011 (Second Edition in 2013) by Charles W. Hardy: A Worthy Messenger: the Life's Work of Walter Russell.[4] In addition, J.B. Yount III of Waynesboro, Virginia has written a biography of Lao Russell, whom he knew well.[5]
Thomas J. Watson of IBM was Russell's patron, and Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, his advocate in the media. The New York Times covered Russell's every public move and so provides an extensive paper trail.
The Russell Cosmogony
In May 1921 Russell experienced a transformational revelatory event that he later described in a chapter called "The Story of My Illumining" in the 1950 edition of his Home Study Course. "During that period...I could perceive all motion," and was newly "aware of all things."[21] Russell used the terminology of Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke in his book Cosmic Consciousness [22] to explain the phenomenon of "cosmic illumination." Later he wrote, "It will be remembered that no one who has ever had [the experience of illumination] has been able to explain it. I deem it my duty to the world to tell of it."[23] What was revealed to Russell "in the Light" is the subject matter of The Divine Iliad'', published in two volumes in 1949.[24]
After five years of preparation, Russell was ready to challenge the field of theoretical physics with his new knowledge. He published The Universal One (1926) and The Russell Genero-Radiative Concept (1930) and defended his ideas in the pages of the New York Times in 1930-1931.[25]
From the debate with scientists came a tag-line for the Russell Cosmogony, the "Two-Way Universe" of gravitation and radiation. "Gravity and radiativity are opposite pressure conditions. They perpetually void themselves by giving to the other."[26] The ideas are further developed in The Secret of Light (1947) and A New Concept of the Universe (1953). Russell's Periodic Chart of the Elements (copyrighted in 1926) revealed the existence of new isotopes and elements (later known as Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium, and Plutonium) and won him recognition for his contributions to science. The degree of Doctor of Science - not an honorary degree - from the American Academy of Sciences was conferred in 1941.[27] Russell's work was never rejected by bona fide scientists, but essentially was ignored by the scientific community.[28] "This lack of engagement by scientists is the reason for the barely concealed bitterness one can read as a subtext in Walter Russell's later letters."[29] However, Russell was close to Nikola Tesla in the 1930s and apparently influenced Tesla's views on the periodic table and radioactivity.[30] Russell wrote in 1954, "Tesla and I exchanged inspirations for many years."[31]
The Russell Cosmogony is a new concept of the universe, explaining the relationships among matter and energy, electricity and magnetism.[32] It describes the process of Creation, the nature of atomic and stellar systems, the Natural Laws that govern the universe (The Voidance Principle, the Law of Balance, etc.), and man's relation to God and the universe. An engineer who learned of the Russell Cosmogony in 1930 commented, "If Russell's theories are sound, they will be of utmost value, as he shows that there can be but one substance, and that the difference [among the elements] is a dimensional difference and not a difference of substance. In other words, if Russell's theories are right, transmutation can be reduced to a practical reality."[33]
Russell wrote that "the cardinal error of science" is "shutting the Creator out of his Creation."[34] Russell never referred to an anthropomorphic god, but rather wrote that "God is the invisible, motionless, sexless, undivided, and unconditioned white Magnetic Light of Mind"[35] which centers all things. "God is provable by laboratory methods," Russell wrote, "The locatable motionless Light which man calls magnetism is the Light which God IS."[36] He wrote that Religion and Science must come together in a New Age.[37]
The Secret of Light
Russell wrote in 1947: "For within the secret of Light is vast knowledge not yet revealed to man. Light is all there is.[40] "If science knew what LIGHT actually IS, instead of the waves and corpuscles of incandescent suns which science now thinks it is, a new civilization would arise from that fact alone."[41]> "Revelation of the nature of Light will be the inheritance of man in the coming New Age of greater comprehension."[42] When The Secret of Light was published, popular historian Dr. Francis Trevelyan (1877-1959 )sent an unsolicited letter of praise. He wrote of the "tremendous magnitude of thought expressed in this little volume," and Walter Russell's "courage and vision" to explore the natural laws which science, hitherto, "has not attempted to define."[43]
Russell and the New Age
Main article: New Age
The New Age Movement which emerged in the 1970s seems to be unrelated to Walter Russell's use of the term New Age. Walter Russell referred to a New Age in June 1932 when he answered questions for John Dittemore in a pamphlet about the Universal One (published in 1926), in 1943 in the draft to The Cosmic Plan (never published), in the Divine Iliad II in 1949 (p. 257), and in the New Concept of the Universe in February 1953. Russell saw a New Age coming in human relations,"as transmutation slowly unfolds its new world for man"[44] and as a result of the marriage of Religion and Science.
Russell accepted Richard Maurice Bucke's premise that not only the human body, but also human consciousness, had evolved in stages, that human consciousness periodically made iterative leaps, such as that from animal awareness to rational self-awareness, many millennia ago.[45] Russell believed that humankind was on the brink of making another key, evolutionary leap in consciousness. The next cycle of human evolution, said Bucke, would be from rational self-consciousness to spiritual super-consciousness on the order of that experienced by sages,artists and illuminates of the past 2,500 years,[46]' such as The Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Mohammed, the unknown author of the Bhagavad-Gita, Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Emerson, Eddy, Whitman etc. "Without these few illuminati, the world of man would still be primate."[47]
In 1947–48, Russell wrote: "This New Age is marking the dawn of a new world-thought. That new thought is a new cosmic concept of the value of man to man. The whole world is discovering that all mankind is one and that the unity of man is real – not just an abstract idea. Mankind is beginning to discover that the hurt of any man hurts every man, and, conversely, the uplift of any man uplifts every man."[48] Russell's students would be the "seeds" of the New Age.
Legacy of Walter Russell
Russell's Cosmogony is a work of natural philosophy, not science, but it has the ideas to transform Science; neither is Russell a theologian, but his cosmogony has the potential to transform Religion. British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge wrote (1929) that future investigations will result in "no merely material prospect that will be opening on our view, but some glimpse into a region of the universe which Science has never entered yet, but which has been sought from afar, and perhaps blindly apprehended, by painter and poet, by philosopher and saint."[49] Similarly, Friedrich Gottlieb Brieger (1872-1948), an associate of Russell in the 1930s, wrote, "Call [Walter Russell] a fantastic dreamer, if you will, But after all, we must believe in dreamers. Without them the realist would make scant progress and man would still be primitive.[50]
