Thoughts for the day, Aug 4, 2002
I read a lot about energy lately: energy work, healing energy, life energy; the human energy field, the universal energy field. "Spiritual" types constantly use energy as their analogy for what they experience and what they seek. Comparisons are made between electricity and other, 'higher' forms of energy, and science teaches us that all of the material universe is made of energy at the most basic level we now know. Matter, it's said, is merely energy at a lower vibration, or longer wavelength (the Celestine Prophecy contains a nice description of the continuum of energy vibration as it pertains to our participation in the material world). From this, it can be extrapolated that all the universe, including ourselves, exists as a continuum of energy. Seperation and contradiction (matter/energy, light/dark, etc) exist only in our minds, in our perception of the All.
This is very helpful in understanding ourselves and how we function in relation to the rest of the All, and I could talk about the implications of it all day. But the point I want to make here is that energy, as we now understand it, is a word, a metaphor, and as such it is limited. Energy is our highest understanding at the moment, at least the highest understanding that the combined technologies of material science and spiritual experience can agree on, but the fact that we have not yet imagined the next step does not mean that there isn't one.
Not so long ago, certainly within the last thousand years, (I'd have to check on the dates), scientist-philosophers posited an invisible, universal fluid that existed within and between all objects and which regulated the interactions and effects that objects have on each other. This was based on their highest knowledge at the time, which didn't include much about gasses and nothing about energy. Later thinkers hypothesized about a gas that filled the universe, again invisible and unmeasureable. These ideas, which seem somewhat silly now, were based on what they could observe around them. If you have two objects floating in water, the movement of one creates a ripple that affects the other: simple - and why would the movement of planets not be regulated by a similar effect? Likewise for the gas theory. At each stage, the unpredictable, mysterious universe is explained in terms of another mysterious substance for which we have discovered some predictable behaviours. Since the discovery of electricity and other forms of energy, our ideas about the world have been strongly influenced by what we can observe about the interactions of subatomic particles. We see the universe as a mass of energy, reacting within itself, causing the phenomena we observe, and even our consciousness. Field theory, relativity and quantum physics have taken those concepts a long way, and have strongly influenced and reinforced the way that 'spritual thinkers' have described the universe (see Gary Zukav's "The Dancing Wu Li Masters", for example. I should add that those who are strictly materialist, including most of the scientific establishment, do not see the connections between the spiritual and scientific truths.). Life itself is sometimes described as a kind of energy, and the power of God is seen variously as the manifesting or causative energy of the universe, or as the sum total of all energy. I read an acupuncture text from the 1970's that refers to Qi as the body's 'electromagnetic energy'; but acupuncturists or Qi Gong practitioners today would not use the same metaphor. Are we really much beyond the kind of thinking that came up with the 'universal fluid' theory?
Electricity has been studied in depth, and most children have a basic understanding of it by the time they leave highschool. We all know that atoms are surrounded by electrons that exist in a fine balance; if you add an electron to an atom, another must leave. If you add an electron to one end of a row of atoms, one will leave the other end. The more you add, the more are pushed out the other side. That's a gross simplification (I never did pay very close attention in high school), but that's the essence of it. Is that the same thing as the energy that passes when two people touch, the healing energy of Reiki or the flow of Qi? We know that it is not.
A more recent energy analogy is that of light (As in Barbara Brennan's "Hands of Light", a textbook for hands-on healing). Quantum physics tells us that light functions as both a particle and a waveform (that in itself tells us that there's a dialectical form that we have not yet discovered). It is governed by certain laws (such as it's constant velocity) and is affected by gravity and other forces. There is invisible light - waves at rates of vibration that we cannot percieve. It is a definite, measurable phenomenon, much researched by modern science. The light/body energy analogy probably springs from the fact that healers and sensitives 'see' energy, or light, around and within people and objects, and flowing between them. Research supports the theory that what the healers experience is energy moving in very high cycles of vibration (up to 2000 Hz, per Dr. Valorie, UCLA, 1988). But to think that the phenomena they see actually is light would be incorrect. Likewise, the use of the word energy. These experiments and the terminology they engender give us tools to analyse, describe, and discuss our experience. They can never fully describe the experience, however. Observation and words keep us constantly at a distance from experience (and I should know - look how many words I just put between myself and a momentary insight that occured two hours ago).
Lao Tzu said "That which can be called the Tao is not the Tao." This is the essence of my point. All our analogies, whether of fluids or light or energy, are ways to help us think about things that we do not fully understand, or things we do not experience moment to moment and wish to signify in words. Their benefit is that they push us to think beyond our current confines, to seek beyond our past experience for our deepest truth. They are like the Buddhist metaphor of the finger pointing at the moon: "If one raises a finger to point at the moon, only a fool looks at the finger." The danger (at least me) lies in thinking that we've got it figured out. Energy is a good analogy, it pushes our minds toward the deeper truth, the more profound experience. But as our collective experience deepens, the analogy will be discarded, and a better one will replace it. Eventually, there will be no need for analogies to describe self-apparent truths. Our thinking and our experience move from the fragmentary and limited toward the complete and the infinite, toward the Source, the nameless, limitless essence of what we are.
