Energy (esotericism)

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"Subtle energy" redirects here. For the mystical concept of psychospiritual bodies overlaying the physical body, see Subtle body.
Electro-metabograph machine
For criticism see Criticism of Energy_(esotericism)

Energy, in an esoteric sense, refers to a variety of ideas, often (though not always) conceived as "fields" surrounding the earth or any living thing, supposed to be directly perceptible and accessible to the human mind as "auras", "rays", "fields" or "vibrations".[1]

In many cases "energy" is conceived of as a universal life force: to this extent "spiritual energy" theories resemble vitalism[2] and may even invoke the Luminiferous Ether of Victorian physics.[3] Additionally, or alternatively, such notions are often aligned with or derived from conceptions found in other cultures, such as the Chinese idea of Qi and the Prana of the Upanishads.[2] Many such ideas arise from the primitive idea of life as breath - a relationship implicit also in the word "spirit".

Such a usage is already evident in William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793);

"Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight." [4]

Blake's alignment of energy with affective emotion is noteworthy, for it depicts energy as the psychic continuum that unites body and mind, thus reflecting Plato's celebrated tripartite division of the human psyche into the appetitive, the spirited and the rational.[5] Such an integration of "energy" into systematic esoteric expositions of the universe and/or the human psyche is frequently found combined, as in Kundalini and Theosophy, into an account of a hierarchy of "inner planes" or "subtle bodies".[6]

Contents

Bio-energy and the appeal of fields

The success of the scientific Enlightenment's treatment of energy in natural science quickly led to attempts to study the energies of life, a process which at first derived much strength from Luigi Galvani's neurological discoveries. Some, like Mesmer, identified these energies with magnetism, others continued to assume that living organisms were constituted of special materials subject to special forces - a view which became known as vitalism.

As microbiologists studied embryology and developmental biology, particularly before the discovery of the genes, a variety of organisational forces were posited to account for the observations. From the time of Driesch, however, the importance of "energy-fields" began to wane and the proposed forces became more mind-like.

Sometimes, however, as in the work of Harold Saxton Burr, the electromagnetic fields of organisms have been studied precisely as the hypothetical medium of such organisational "forces".

Spiritual writers and thinkers have maintained connections to these ideas and continue to promote them as either useful allegories or even as fact, with moderate support from the scientific community.[7]

Some early advocates of these ideas were particularly attracted to the narrative history of the unification of electromagnetism and its implications for the storage, transference, and conversion of physical energy through electric and magnetic fields. The seeming mathematical construct of potentials and fields slowly became recognized after the work of James Clerk Maxwell as real physical phenomena rather than simply mathematical abstractions. Aware of this history, spiritual writers positivistically adopted much of the language of physical science and made appeals to the "force fields" and "biological energy" to explain their ideas as natural allegories or object lessons. Concepts such as the "life force", "physiological gradient", and "élan vital" that emerged from the spiritualist movement would inspire later thinkers in the modern New Age movement.[8]

Modern western psychotherapies

Main article: Psychodynamics

These are therapeutic approaches that depend on the idea of "energy". The following are mostly neo-Reichian therapies which aim to release emotional tension from the body;

There have also been attempts to align the psycho-analytic theories of C.G.Jung regarding the archetypes of the collective unconscious with the memory-like morphogenetic force-fields postulated by biologists like Hans Driesch and Rupert Sheldrake.

Energy medicine

Main article: Energy medicine

Some alternative medicine practices depend on a form of energy, whether veritable (known to science), putative (unknown to science), or pseudoscience (unfalsifiable).

Parapsychology

These pages do not cover all of parapsychology but only those that are concerned with some "energy". Some effects studied in that discipline, such telepathy and dowsing at a distance, are by nature attempting to go beyond normal time-space: these are excluded.

Dowsing

Some dowsers talk about " earth rays".

Earth energy

Chinese vitalism

Practitioners of acupuncture believe that its mode of action is by virtue of manipulating the circulation of qi energy through supposed meridians. There is no scientific evidence for such things. To the extent that acupuncture is regarded as efficacious in western medicine, its palliative effects are usually described as obtained physiologically by blocking or stimulating nerve cells and causing changes in the perception of pain in the brain.[9] However the idea of qi is not confined to medicine: it appears throughout traditional east Asian culture, for example, in the art of Feng Shui, in Chinese martial arts and spiritual tracts.

Indian vitalism

Other cultures

Scientific references

Electromagnetism and living systems.

See also

References

  1. ^ e.g. Playfair G.L. and Hill S., "The Cycles of Heaven", Pan Books 1978 p.12 "We discuss the fascinating new concept of man's "energy body" and its radiations, and how it may be interacting with its energetic surroundings.." See also ibid. Ch12 passim.
  2. ^ a b energy
  3. ^ Playfair and Hill op. cit.
  4. ^ Milton Klonsky, "William Blake: The Seer and his Visions", Orbis 1977.
  5. ^ Jonathan Locke Hart, "Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination", Routledge 1994, Kathleen Raine, "Blake and Tradition", Routledge, 2002, Plato, "The Republic", trans. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth.
  6. ^ Mead, G. R. S. (1967). "The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition". Theosophical Publishing House. Onians, Richard Broxton. (1951). "The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  7. ^ (2003 Mar-April) "Science and spiritual healing: a critical review of spiritual healing, "energy" medicine, and intentionality.". Altern-Ther-Health-Med. 9 (2): 56-61. 
  8. ^ (November 8, 2001) Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472111744. 
  9. ^ "Get the Facts, Acupuncture". National Institute of Health.. 2006. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/acupuncture/. Retrieved on 2006-03-02. 
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