Ever since CBs were made public by Don Croft, the question has come up whether the six crystals at the base of the pipes ever lose their power: whether they must be replaced or recharged.

I have been making and using CBs since 2003, and it was only this past year that I noticed that one of my CBs had stopped working. It is possible that the power of others has diminished over time, but this was the first time one had actually completely quit.

This particular CB has a base perhaps twice as big as a standard CB, with pipes somewhat larger than normal, but in other respects much like the Croft standard: no magnets, no center pipe, and no coils.

Yesterday evening I took it into my shop and pushed the crystals out of the pipes. All six of the crystals were dominated by negative qi, and contained other unwanted things as well.

I have tried clearing crystals before by putting them out in the sun, but when they had gotten into such a negative state, I found that sunshine was insufficient to clense them. This afternoon I found an alternate method which seems to do the job however.

A quartz crystal in a CB usually has two poles: a positive pole, which is typically the pointed end, and a negative pole, which is typically the broken or rough end. For a "double terminated crystal", which has two pointed ends, it may not be so easily determined which end is positive, but even a DT has two distinct polarities.

I took two of the crystals from the CB, and set them on a table in line, such that the positive tip of one was in contact with the center of the negative end of the other. In less than a minute both crystals had lost their negative qi, as well as the other unwanted things.

I then did this with a second pair of CB crystals, and they both cleared up, just as rapidly.

The third pair I cleansed by a different proven method, so as to have something to compare the other four to.

Tomorrow I shall inspect them all to see if they remain clean, and if so, shall put them back in the CB to see how well it operates.

Thanks for posting this, Kelly!

A few months ago, when ER was still down, I made a similar observation.
I have 3 larger crystals and was curious to see how they are interacting (remembering how you showed me the effects of putting crystals in various positions to each other)

When I lined up two quartz crystals, they both seemed to gain strength.
Interestingly, when I putting 3 crystals in a line, the one in the middle seemed to be weaker than the first one and the third one at the end.
Having a closer look at the arrangement I noticed that the one in the center was somehow pulsing, similar to a heartbeat. Stronger - weaker - stronger etc.
I had forgotten about that, but now there's the opportunity to post it.

Manfred

This morning I found that all six crystals were clean. I wrapped them in electrical tape so that they would fit snugly into the pipes, and set the CB up again. It seems to be operating well.

I just tried your experiment Manfred, and obtained the same results: there is a pulse in the middle crystal. I timed it at 72 beats per minute. Actually the qi runs through the inside of the crystal from broken end to pointed end and then moves back to the broken end outside the crystal. This is a continual movement along the described circuit. If you fix your mind at any point in the crystal, you feel the the qi as it passes as a beat. The qi movement in the circuit does not pass through the first and third crystals -- only the middle crystal.

With just two crystals, positive qi builds up around the crystals, but there is no movement. With three crystals there is no build-up of positive qi.

I tried lining up four crystals. In this case there is still a circuit of qi, but it passes through all four crystals, just as in the former case it passed through the middle crystal. I then tried with five, and then with six crystals. The movement here was as it was with the four crystals. In none of these cases was there formation of positive qi.

One might object to the above method of recharging crystals in that it may be inconvenient to remove crystals from a CB, especially if the crystals were included in the resin. I shall describe a method which does not require removal, but first some information concerning the interaction of two crystals:

Recall from the above that if the positive tip of one crystal touches the middle of the negative end of another, positive qi infuses both crystals. If the crystals are moved gradually apart, but both in line, the positivity diminishes until perhaps a half inch away (although the distance depends on the particular crystals involved) and the feeling becomes neutral. As the crystals are pulled further apart, the feeling of the qi becomes negative and the negativity becomes most pronounced when they are perhaps an inch away. As the crystals are pulled away further, the negativity diminishes until the feeling is neutral, after which the surrounding qi becomes positive again increasingly. The positivity becomes greatest again when the crystals are perhaps two inches away (though I wish to emphasize that this distance depends on the nature of the particular crystals being observed, and will vary). This cycle repeats itself as the crystals are moved further and further away along a straight line: less positive, neutral, more negative, extreme negative, less negative, neutral, more positive, extreme positive, etc. The strengths of the extremes gradually become less and less, until at some point one can no longer feel them. The graph of this phenomenon would be something like a damped sign wave:



where the horizontal axis expresses the distance from the positive point of the left-hand crystal to the negative end of the right-hand crystal. The distance from 0 on the horizontal axis to the next point on that axis under a positive extreme is called the "wave length".

Now if you take the two crystals directed in a line as in the first illustration on this page, and move them rapidly back and forth so that the distance travelled is at least one wave length, then an extreme of positive qi occurs at least once during the motion. This causes positive qi to build up in the two crystals, which however rapidly disappears after the movement is stopped. If the movement is continued for as long as a minute, and if one of the crystals is negative to begin with, by the end of the minute it will be cleansed.

So how does this apply to a CB which is no longer functioning, and the crystals are not well?

First turn the CB over on its side so you can access the base. Then find the six spots on the base closest to the negative ends of the crystals in the pipes.

Now pick one of these six spots and take a good crystal and place its postive end toward the spot (perpendicular to the plane of the bottom of the base).

Now move it back and forth (the line of the crystal continuing to be perpendicular to the bottom of the base, or parallel to the pipes, which is the same thing). In about a minute of so the crystal in the CB closest to the spot will be cleansed.

Then do the same for the other five spots on the base closest to the other five crystals inside.

I tried this today on a CB built in 2003 which was still working (slightly), but not nearly so strongly as before. After cleansing the crystals as just described, it began working much more powerfully again.