Spiritual practices and ideas often equate life-energy with the breath
The term
energy has been widely used by writers and practitioners of various forms of
spirituality and
alternative medicine to mean to a variety of phenomena, often (though not always) the supposed "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". There is no scientific evidence for any such fields.
In many cases "energy" is conceived of as a universal life force: to this extent "spiritual energy" theories resemble
vitalism and may even invoke the
Luminiferous Ether of Victorian physics. 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.
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."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. 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".
Vitalism and spirituality in the age of electricity
Electro-metabograph machine
The successes of the era of the Enlightenment in the treatment of energy in natural science was intimately bound up with attempts to study the energies of life, as when
Luigi Galvani's neurological investigations led to the development of the
Voltaic cell. Many scientists continued to think that living organisms must be constituted of special materials subject to special forces - a view which became known as
vitalism.
Mesmer, for example, sought an
animal magnetism that was unique to life.
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".
The attempt to associate additional energetic properties with life has been all but abandoned in modern
research science,
[ Bechtel W, Richardson RC (1998). Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E. Craig (Ed.), London: Routledge.] but, despite this, spiritual writers and thinkers have maintained connections to these ideas and continue to promote them either as useful allegories or as fact.
Some early advocates of these ideas were particularly attracted to the history of the unification of
electromagnetism and its implications for the storage, transference, and conversion of
physical energy through
electric and
magnetic fields.
Potentials and
fields were viewed after the work of
James Clerk Maxwell as physical phenomena rather than mathematical abstractions. Aware of this history, spiritual writers
positivistically adopted much of the language of physical science, speaking of "force fields" and "biological energy". 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.
Modern western psychotherapies
These are therapeutic approaches that depend on the idea of "energy". The following are mostly
neo-Reichian therapies that aim to release emotional tension from the body;
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 as telepathy and dowsing at a distance, are by nature attempting to go beyond normal time-space: these are excluded.
Dowsing and "Earth energy"
Some dowsers talk about "earth rays".
Chinese vitalism
The traditional explanation of
acupuncture states that it works by manipulating the circulation of
qi energy through a network of
meridians. There is no scientific evidence for these so, to the extent that acupuncture is regarded as efficacious in western medicine, its effects are usually described as palliative and obtained physiologically by blocking or stimulating nerve cells and causing changes in the perception of pain in the
brain.
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
Premise of energy therapies
The various approaches known collectively as "energy therapies" vary widely in philosophy, approach, and origin. The ways in which this energy is used, modified, or manipulated to effect healing also vary. For example,
acupressure involves manual stimulation of pressure-points while some forms of yoga rely on breathing exercises. Many therapies are predicated, as regards the given explanation for their supposed efficacy, on some form of energy unknown to current science: in this case the given energy is sometimes referred to as
putative energy.
However "subtle energy" is often equated with empirically understood forces, for example, some equate the aura with
electromagnetism. Such energies are termed "veritable" as opposed to "putative". Some alternative therapies, such as
electromagnetic therapy, use veritable energy, though they may still make claims that are not supported by evidence. Many claims have been made by associating "spirit" with forms of energy poorly understood at the time. In the 1800s, electricity and magnetism were in the "borderlands" of science and
electrical quackery was rife. In the 2000s,
quantum mechanics and
grand unification theory provide similar opportunities.
Insofar as the proposed properties of "subtle energy" are not those of physical
energy there can be no physical
scientific evidence for that energy's existence.
Therapies that purport to use, modify, or manipulate unknown energies are among the most controversial of all complementary and alternative medicines.
Theories of spiritual energy not validated by the
scientific method are usually termed
non-empirical beliefs by the
scientific community. Claims related to energy therapies are most often
anecdotal, rather than being based on repeatable
empirical evidence.
Some acupuncturists say that acupuncture's mode of action is by virtue of manipulating the natural flow of energy through hypothesized meridians, scientists argue that any palliative effects are obtained physiologically by blocking or stimulating nerve cells and causing changes in the perception of pain in the brain. Movies and entertainment
Scientific references
The activity of biological systems invariably generates magnetic and electrical fields, which can be measured with sensitive instruments. It remains an open question as to whether any of the phenomena listed below bear any relation to energy therapies such as reiki, but claims to that effect continue to be made:
- Electrophysiology - the scientific study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues.
- Radiobiology (radiation biology) - the interdisciplinary field of science that studies the biological effects of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation of the whole electromagnetic spectrum, including radioactivity (alpha, beta and gamma), x-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, microwaves, radio wave, low-frequency radiation (such as alternating or pulsing fields or currents), ultrasound, thermal radiation (heat) and related modalities.
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation - a powerful electrical current produces a transient, spatially focussed magnetic field that can penetrate the scalp and skull of a subject and induce electrical activity in the neurons on the surface of the brain.
- Magnetic resonance imaging - a very powerful magnetic field is used to obtain a 3D image of the density of water molecules of the brain, revealing different anatomical structures. A related technique, functional magnetic resonance imaging, reveals the pattern of blood flow in the brain and can show which parts of the brain are involved in a particular task.
- Bioenergetics - the study of energy exchange on the molecular level of living systems.
- Bioluminescence - a marked phosphoresecence found in fungi, deep-sea creatures etc., as against Biophoton - a much weaker electromagnetic radiation, thought by Alexander Gurwitsch, its discoverer, to be a form of signalling.
- Radionics - Study of action at a distance using electronic equipment.
