Just a little process writing ... with a some tongue-in-cheekiness tossed in. I pulled out my copy of this book, which I still have with all the highlighted answers and scriptures written in the margins when I was a tween and teen studying to get baptized.
My whole existence was based on the ideas in this book being real and true and I lived my life accordingly, sacrificing myself to the Jehovah's Witnesses Organization, with nothing to show for it. I grieve for the countless others who are/were likewise deceived.
You Can't Live Forever in Paradise on Earth: Orgone Energy and Jehovah's Witnesses
by Phaedra
One hot, Sunday afternoon in July 1982, I sat in
an audience with over 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Hawthorne
Racetrack in Chicago, Illinois, listening to the day’s concluding talk
by a Governing Body member. Suddenly, he raised a large book with a
rich, red cover and gold embossed lettering. He read the title with a
booming declaration: You. Can. Live. Forever. In. Paradise. On. Earth!
The
full stadium erupted with joyful applause for the highly anticipated
book release after the long, 4-day convention. And the title affirmed
what adherents held so very near and near: that they, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, would live forever on a paradise earth as a reward for their
life of long-suffering, obedience, and visible works to Jehovah God in
this system of things.
At 10 years old, I was fully accepting of
this belief and all others taught by Jehovah's Witnesses. I trusted the
adults around me and followed their lead. Being among thousands of
believers in this setting was powerful, leaving no doubt in my
impressionable young mind. This new red book would go on to teach me the
foundations of life's "truth" and shape my worldview as it carried me
to the next level of my religious devotion through my teens and 20s.
Fifty years earlier, in the 1930s, Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich had a theory about life force energy that he called orgone energy (he closely associated it with sexuality). He believed that orgone energy
could be accumulated and stored, and despite being discredited and
dismissed by the scientific community early on, went on to design a
device called an orgone accumulator. His persistent belief in this
etheric force gained so much support from his believers that he
established the Orgone Institute in 1942.
You can read the fine details of Reich's story elsewhere, but both he and Jehovah’s Witnesses have this in common: the belief in an unverifiable, unseen "truth" so palpable that it takes on a life of its own, despite evidence to the contrary.
In 2014, peak membership of the Jehovah's Witness religion was 8.2 million. The vitality, or what I now call jworgone energy of
Jehovah's Witnesses, comes directly from its active members through
their attention, devotion, and resources in support of the movement,
voluntarily coerced by the words and actions of the governing body who
have positioned themselves as the mouthpiece of God. •
