Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely
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While the foregoing is again a typical example of original concepts packed in his difficult-to-understand prose, his ideas on the brain have a poetic quality. Since the normal brain is to Keely "like a harp of many strings strung to perfect harmony," cure is a matter of adjustment: "If we live in a sympathetic field we become sympathetic, and a tendency from the abnormal to the normal presents itself by an evolution of a purely sympathetic flow towards its attractive centers."
And while Bloomfield-Moore readily admitted like so many Keely researchers after her that "there are few who will fathom the full meaning of these views," his discoveries according to her "embrace the manner or way of obtaining the keynote, or 'chord of mass,' of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances," and she envisioned a universal appliance of Keely's inventions: "the construction of instruments, or machines, by which this law can be utilized in mechanics, in arts, and in restoration of equilibrium in disease."123
We are also left with several statements that, in line with this holistic view, he involved himself in researches that tried to link his devices to the waves of human brain, or to other bodily processes. We have the slight reference that his Rotating Globe "worked through human magnetism," and it is asserted that around 1882 he discovered something that was termed "the source of life and the connecting link between intelligent will and matter."124
This he explained three years later, "My researches teach me that electricity is but a certain condensed form of atomic vibration, a form showing only the introductory features which precede the etheric vibratory condition. It is a modulated force so conditioned, in its more modest flows, as to be susceptible of benefit to all organisms. Though destructive to a great degree in its explosive positions, it is the medium by which the whole system of organic nature is permeated beneficially; transfusing certain forms of inert matter with life-giving principles. It is to a certain degree an effluence of divinity; but only as the branch is to the tree. We have to go far beyond this condition to reach the pure etheric one, or the body of the tree. The Vibratory Etheric tree has many branches, and electricity is but one of them. Though it is a medium by which the operations of vital forces are performed, it cannot in my opinion be considered the soul of matter."125
Interestingly, there are reasons to suspect that certain parts of the concepts that were developed by those early searchers of perpetual motion were incorporated in Keely's highly intriguing researches on this aspect of his discoveries.
Bloomfield-Moore for instance, while digressing on contemporary researches into the nature of magnetism and how it could possibly affect the human nervous system, writes how Keely's experiments "show that the two (magnetism and electricity) are, in part, antagonistic, and that both are but modifications of the one force in nature .. .Should it be that Mr. Keely's compound secret includes any explanation of this operation of will-force, showing that it may be cultivated, in common with the other powers which God has given us, we shall then recover some of the knowledge lost out of the world, or retained only in gypsy tribes and among Indian adepts."126
Elsewhere she assures her readers that while scientists "look upon the human organism as little more than a machine, taking small interest in researches which evince the dominion of mind over matter," it was Keely's research that had "shown him that it is neither the electric nor the magnetic flow, but the etheric, which sends its current along our nerves."127
According to her, the ultimate consequence of Keely's research results was that a "true coincidence" existed between "any mediums — cartilage to steel, steel to wood, wood to stone, and stone to cartilage — that the same influence (sympathetic association) which governs all the solids holds the same governing influence over all liquids; and again, from liquid to solid, embracing the three kingdoms — animal, vegetable and mineral — that the action of mind over matter thoroughly substantiates these incontrovertible laws of sympathetic etheric influence; and that the only true medium which exists in nature is the sympathetic flow emanating from the normal human brain, governing correctly the graduating and setting up of the true sympathetic vibratory positions in machinery necessary to success."128
Since we sadly lack coherent notes or any further documentation of any research results that Keely might have obtained, we now have only the assertions that along those lines he indeed constructed at least one of his devices according to that most innovating concept: "In the image of God made He man, and in the image of man Keely has constructed his Liberator. Not literally, but, as his vibraphone (for collecting the waves of sound and making each wave distinct from the other in tone when the wave-plate is struck after the sound has died away) is constructed after the human ear, so his Liberator corresponds in its parts to the human head," and in his Disintegrator, "the neutral center represents the human heart,"129 Bloomfield-Moore explains.
However, since no documentation other than her writing and Keely's statements have survived, we can only speculate whether this line of research went beyond its planning stages. Did Keely build other devices according to those principles? A machine that one could merely think or wish into action? A technology that would be so avant-garde in nature that, like some of the more radical ideas in the fields of modern cybernetics, the differences between man and machine would gradually melt away into an indistinguishable whole? It is doubtful that the tools existed during his time to accomplish such a feat, and we are left to speculate on this particular point by absence of any other materials or documentation.
Keely developed the intriguing notion that his devices could be linked to the human brain, or to human magnetism by envisioning one force that permeated all things. Coincidentally the same year, his discoveries were compared to Bulwer-Lytton's vril-force, so aptly described in The Coming Race. Around that time Keely stated that his force resembled the "will-force of nature" and "the waves of the brain."
Details of this notion would eventually be transformed by others to the theory that Keely himself operated his devices through peculiar paranormal powers. The roots of this paranormal power theory emerged from theosophical quarters; there the aspects that we are surrounded by one force or power tallied more with Keely's ideas. From its beginning, theosophy had been looking for a reconciliation of modem Western science and ancient Eastern philosophy. To do so, theosophy borrowed deeply from the vast storehouse of age old Indian doctrine; with amongst others the idea of a perpetuum mobile symbolizing the everlasting cycles of rebirth. Meanwhile in the West, there was the astrological concept of the body parts of man that tallied with certain zodiacal signs and the influences of the planets, ultimately meaning that the blueprint of the cosmos was to be found in man himself. There were the endless Akasha-chronicles, and the sea of ether. There were also other Western concepts that preceded theosophy, such as those of the Odylic force, of Mesmerism, of Bulwer-Lytton's vril and the ether and of the fluidum and ectoplasm of the spiritists.
All this more or less evolved into the notion that man was a brilliant interface or controlling mechanism between this material aspect of existence and the invisible cosmic life force, the sea of light and of willpower, and the emanations of the one supreme being. It was a small step for an esoterist or a theosophist at the dawn of the 19th century industrial age with its bristling steam mills and in which science made a new discovery each day, to envision the mind as the link between the cosmic sea of life force and avant-garde technology, for the modification of man's surroundings and in the end perhaps the whole universe. One was either born with this capacity, or else one needed the development of one's willpower through initiation. And technology was not merely something that one would develop along rationalist, empirical lines; it was an aspect of man's inner evolution.
With this in mind, we must treat the following statements from Blavatsky, who considered Keely as one who obtained his results form the fifth and sixth planes of the etheric or astral force, the fifth and sixth principles of Akasha, accordingly.
She considered Keely to be gifted from birth.
In her eyes, he was one of those mortals whose "inner selves are primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that group.. .who are called 'the first born of Ether. '"130 Thus she reasoned that "...whenever such individuals as the discoverer of Etheric Force — John Worrell Keely — men with peculiar psychic and mental capacities are born,"131 claiming that "It has been stated that the inventor of the 'Self-Motor' was what is called, in the jargon of the Kabbalists, a 'natural-born magician... "132 it would follow that Keely's constant struggle to develop his system for commercial use was "beyond his power," for he could not "pass to others that which was a capacity inherent in his special nature. "133
Blavatsky asserted that "the discoveries made by him will prove wonderful — yet only in his hands and through himself. ... The truth of this assertion has, perhaps, not quite dawned upon the discoverer himself.134 ... no one, who should have repeated the thing done by himself, could have produced the same results. ...For Keely's difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and regulate the 'force' without the intervention of 'willpower' or personal influence, whether conscious or unconscious to the operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no one but himself (her italics) could operate on his 'machines.'" That Keely's organism is directly connected with the production of the marvelous results is proven by the following statement emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately. At one time the shareholders of the Keely Motor Company put a man in his workshop for the express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close watching, he said to J.W. Keely one day: "I know how it is done now." They were setting up a machine together, and Keely was manipulating the stop-cock which turned the force on and off. "Try it, then," was the answer. The man turned the cock, and nothing came. "Let me see you do it again," the man said to Keely. Keely complied, and the machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but without success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to try once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous production of the current.135
The same year that Keely envisioned the holistic application of his discoveries, a woman told him that in her opinion he had "opened the door to the spirit-world," on which Keely politely answered: "Do you think so? I have sometimes thought I might be able to discover the origin of life."
But Keely himself maintained a certain degree of ambiguity surrounding this aspect of his discoveries; for according to Bloomfield-Moore, he at first gave "no attention whatsoever to the occult bearing of his discovery. It was only after he had pursued his research, under the advantages which his small Liberator afforded him for such experiments, that he realized the truth of this woman's assertion. It was then, in 1887, that 'a bridge of mist' formed itself before him, connecting the laws which govern physical science with the laws which govern spiritual science..." and a year later Keely allegedly told that he had made "such startling progress that he now admits... that if not in actual experiment, at least in theory he has passed into the world of spirit."136
Bloomfield-Moore's endorsement of Keely's views were in accordance with theosophy: "Paracelsus taught that man is nourished and sustained by magnetic power, which he called the universal motor of nature," she writes, and referring to Keely's ideas on his discoveries for the appliance of the treatment of illness, she refers to light therapy by Seth Pancoast, one of the founding members of the Theosophical Society. We again may glimpse a possible influence on Keely's Christian symbology, for while describing his discoveries Bloomfield-Moore states in reference to Pancoast that she has learned that "students, versed in Biblical lore, declare that the esoteric teachings of the Book of Job enunciate a system of light-cure."137 But on the notion that Keely himself possessed paranormal capabilities, he thought quite otherwise. He once lamented, "I have been told that I am a powerful medium. But if there is in me any secret force such as resides in no other man... that force is in no way akin to spiritualism."138
Keely was never able to remove the suspicions of mediumship surrounding him and his inventions, nor was he able to refute the claims that he possessed a paranormally-gifted mind. Not only an unusual number of theosophists, mediums and those who were interested in spiritualism clustered around his person, in 1896 a reporter noted that Keely "made a very significant remark": "I am always a good deal disturbed when I begin one of these exhibitions," Keely allegedly said, "for sometimes, if an unsympathetic person is present, the machines will not work."
The reporter was quick to point out that "How many times have 'spiritualist' mediums said the same thing! How many times have they accounted for failure by explaining that the spirits were repelled by some unsympathetic person in the audience or 'circle'! ... It is reported, that the motive power he has discovered is 'the will of God,' and that the old man can move railroad trains and other things by word of mouth without the aid of any machinery whatsoever. ...Keely now admits that he is working on a new basis or hypothesis. Do not his latest allusions to the adverse influence of unsympathetic or unbelieving persons foreshadow a coming explanation that his occult force is really supplied from the spirit world?"139
And thus, in spite of Keely's denial, the press, but also Blavatsky, H.S. Olcott, her ally and co-founder of the Theosophical Society, anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, Fort and others developed the theory that Keely might indeed possess paranormal capabilities. Blavatsky and Olcott named this "psychical abilities."
No wonder then, that as late as 1913, Dutch astrologer and theosophist A.E. Thierens wrote of Keely that: "man may have, through one's willpower, at his disposal endless forces in this physical world, of this J.W. Keely with his motor has given an at this time still not totally controllable but nevertheless highly curious example... There is...reason to believe that Keely found the key to that cosmic life force."140
Not always would these theosophical views excerpt their evocative power; all of the above led a researcher to grudgingly remark that "The greatest tragedy of the time was that Keely's ideas occurred at the time when theosophy was being evolved, and the ideas of the Hindu sages upon such varies matters as physics and chemistry tended to become grafted on those of such workers as Keely. It would be more correct to say that it was not so much the ideas which were erroneous as the interpretations, most of which time has shown to have been wrong."141
Steiner referred to Keely's endeavors as the result of "the new mechanical faculty," although his concept deviated from the theory that Keely was somehow a paranormally-gifted person. His idea was more in line with Keely's original concept; he developed a notion of a technology in which future machines might be driven by waves of the brain.
Fort however, with his witty flair, called Keely's supposed paranormal abilities a "wild talent."142
Musical Globe with Spiro-Vibrophonic attachment
(lx-ti 10 Right) Compound Disintegrator. Vibratory Globe and Resonator combined. Medium lor testing vibration under different orders of evolution
Liberator
Globe Motor and Provisional Engine
Hydro-Pneumatic-Pulsating-Vacuo Engine
The Transmitter
Compound Disintegrator (front view)
Compound Disintegrator (rear view)
Pneumatic Gun
Test Medium" Used for testing the sympathetic force of vitalized disks.
Vibratory Planetary Globe with wave-plate, fork and spiroplione
Vibratory Globe and Accelerator
Revolving Ball
A rare cross-section cut of Keely's engines. It is not known if his devices were actually built this way since all of his drawings and blueprints mysteriously vanished.
Negative Attractor and Indicator
Glass containing weight which Keely claimed could be moved up or down by striking the zither strings.
Sympathetic Negative Attractor
Generator, built between 1881-1885
The mysterious sphere found under the floor of Keely's workshop. The object of much speculati
on, it's real purpose is not known.
One of the strange tubes (A) found in Keely's workshop. This and other unexplained findings prompted a search team to conclude that Keely was a fraud.
Piece of tubing with note by Carl Herring, one of the investigators of Keely's workshop after his death. Allegedly, this insignificant tube was able to direct compressed air under immense pressures.
8
Prisoners of the Neutral Point Keely's Antigravity Experiments
"For obvious reasons, those who possessed the secret of apergy had never dreamed of applying it in the manner I proposed."
Percy Greg, Across the Zodiac, 1880