These companion volumes, long out of print, are presented together for the first time so that the reader may better grasp their essential unity. In Ether, God and Devil, Wilhelm Reich describes the process of functional thinking and reveals how the inner logic of this objective thought technique led him to the discovery of cosmic orgone energy.
In Cosmic Superimposition, Reich steps beyond the character structure of man to an understanding of how man is rooted in nature. The superimposition of two orgone-energy systems which is demonstrable in the genital embrace is revealed as a common functioning principle that exists in all of nature. Concluding this work, Reich returns to the human sphere "to ponder about the greatest riddle of all: the ability of man to think, and by mere thinking to know what nature is and how it works."
Chapters 1-4 in Ether, God and Devil and Chapter 4 of Cosmic Superimposition have been newly translated by Therese Pol from the original German manuscripts of Orgonomischer Funktionalismus, Teil I. All other parts of these works were written in English by Reich. In this edition, minor editorial revisions have been made.
