You are not just an organic sack of blood and water bag full of skin, bones and organs as today’s academic science may have you believe. Understanding the nature of your energy body and spiritual core is even more important than understanding, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, nutrition and other types of anti-aging and health protocols.
Understanding that you are an energetic being, first and foremost, is the most important step you can take in your journey toward optimal health and fitness, and conveying that to others.
Energy is the building block of all matter. The same energy that composes your flesh is the same one that composes the bricks of your house and the trees outside, but it is vitalized by a spirit. The physical difference between the ‘energy of the tree’ and ‘energy of the man’ is life vibration. It is all the same atomic energy but vibrating differently. Energy is constantly at flow, changing form all the time, whether that be slow, as in evolution, or fast as in electricity.
In medicine, energy is central to everything that is perceived and performed. Like all the laws of nature, the law of energy medicine is universal in its application; and, like all the others, it is simple but not easily comprehended due to today’s indoctrination of science. Granted that there is an super-natural intelligence that controls the functions of the body in health, it follows that it is the same power or energy that fails in the case of disease. Failing to capture energy from above, it requires assistance; and that is what all therapeutic agencies administered by doctors aim to accomplish. No intelligent physician of any school claims to be able to do more than to “assist nature” to restore normal conditions of the body, already intelligent, and of divine purpose.
Science teaches us that the whole body is made up of a confederation of intelligent entities or systems – endocrine, neural, cardiovascular, etc. – each of which performs its functions with an intelligence exactly adapted to the performance of its special duties as a member of the confederacy of the embodied spirit. There is, indeed, no life without mind, from the lowest unicellular organism up to man/woman. It is, therefore, a super-natural mental energy that actuates every fiber of the body under all its conditions. That there is a central, God-like intelligence that controls each of those mindful organisms. Thus, God in each of us is self-evident.
Energy is all around us, in us, and about us. We are created from energy. There are many different forms of energy: heat, light, electrical, male, female, positive, negative and so on. There is also a Universal Energy – a divine energy – that when we tap into it and align ourselves with its flow, is life changing and healing. To align ourselves with this flow we must bring all of the different forms into harmony. When all of the bodies of energy are in harmony and balance, it is like all of the planets routinely circling the sun with timing and rhythm, aligning for us and our life energy.
Energy is about vibration and vibrational levels. If we are to capture this life giving energy, we must resonate with those things on a higher vibrational level, therefore we must first raise our own. So here you must understand the first law: energy only flows downhill, or downstream.
All of the exchanges of energy that take place inside of you (such as your many metabolic reactions), and between you and your surroundings, can be described by the same laws of physics as energy exchanges between hot and cold objects, or gas molecules, or anything else you might find in a physics textbook. Yes, they call this a law of thermodynamics that leads to “entropy”: conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
We contend that our existence is not for the purpose of “disorder” or randomness, rather it is God’s will or manifestation. Energy flows from above to down below. The traditional interpretation of this Hermetic Axiom is holistic. The Emerald tablet says: What is below is like that which is above.
We all share that there is one universal mind as individuals. Everything in the physical realm comes from the mind.
Reality is nothing more a manifestation of the psychic universal mind. Energy flows from a higher dimension, down to the physical dimension, and at every moment, it is God’s manifestation, God’s plan. It may only appear random to the small mind.
We enter this higher stream by making better choices that affect all levels and all bodies. These choices come from positive thoughts and actions. Our quest for good health and well-being has, at its heart, the quest for a good life. Being well is living well, in harmony with the energies around us, both internal and external.
From this understanding, we begin our examination of “energy.”
SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE INQUIRING MIND...
In Physics, energy is the capacity to do work; the property of a system that diminishes when the system does work on any other system, by an amount equal to the work so done; or potential (stored) energy.
In philosophy, Potentiality and Actuality are principles of an important dichotomy used extensively by Aristotle to analyze motion, causality, human ethics, and physiology. As found in his text Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics; and work on the human psyche, the works of Aristotle so dramatically influenced development of Western culture, and thus our human psyche. In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang ([yin – simplified Chinese: 阴; traditional Chinese: 陰; pinyin: yīn] [yang – simplified Chinese: 阳; traditional Chinese: 陽; pinyin: yáng] sometimes referred to in the west as yin and yang) is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. The concept lies at the origins of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, as well as being a primary guideline of traditional Chinese medicine.
Potentiality and Actuality are common themes to the understanding of energy in both Eastern and Western cultures. The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any “possibility” that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same and emphasized the importance of those which will tend to become real of their own accord whenever the conditions are right and nothing stops them. Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity which represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense.
We have the same today in classical physics:
1. Potential energy is the same as stored energy. The “stored” energy is held within the gravitational field. When you lift a heavy object you exert energy which later will become kinetic energy when the object is dropped. A lift motor from a roller coaster exerts potential energy when lifting the train to the top of the hill. The higher the train is lifted by the motor the more potential energy is produced; thus, forming a greater amount if kinetic energy when the train is dropped. At the top of the hills the train has a huge amount of potential energy, but it has very little kinetic energy.
2. Kinetic Energy: the word “kinetic” is derived from the Greek word meaning to move, and the word “energy” is the ability to move. Thus, “kinetic energy” is the energy of motion –it’s ability to do work. The faster the body moves the more kinetic energy is produced. The greater the mass and speed of an object the more kinetic energy there will be. As the train accelerates down the hill the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. There is very little potential energy at the bottom of the hill, but there is a great amount of kinetic energy.
This dichotomy of Aristotle, in modified forms, remained very important into the middle ages, influencing the development of medieval theology in several ways. Going further into modern times, while the understanding of nature (and deity) implied by the dichotomy lost importance, the terminology has found new uses, developing indirectly from the old. This is most obvious in words like “energy” and “dynamic”, but also in examples such as the biological concept of an “entelechy,” a vital agent or force directing growth and life, examined in this course.
In traditional Chinese culture, qi, also spelled chi or ch’i in English, is an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as “energy flow”. Qi is often compared to Western notions of energeia or élan vital (vitalism), as well as the yogic notion of prana, meaning vital life or energy; and pranayama, meaning control of breath or energy. The literal translation of “qi” is air, breath, or gas. Compare this to the original meaning of the Latin word “spiritus”, meaning breathing; or the Koine Greek “πνεῦμα”, meaning air, breath, or spirit; and the Sanskrit term “prana”, meaning breath. All essentially conveying the same concept of entelechy.
Potentiality
Potentiality and potency are translations of the Ancient Greek word Dunamis or dynamis (δύναμις) as it is used by Aristotle to contrast with actuality. Its Latin translation is “potentia”, root of the English word potential, and used by some scholars instead of the Greek or English variants.
Dunamis is an ordinary Greek word for possibility or capability. Depending on context, it could be translated “potency”, “potential”, “capacity”, “ability”, “power”, “capability”, “strength”, “possibility”, “force” and is the root of modern English words “dynamic”, “dynamite”, and “dynamo”. Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, also used the word potency in reference to drug action.
In his philosophy, Aristotle distinguished two meanings of the word dunamis. According to his understanding of nature there was both a weak sense of potential energy, meaning simply that something “might chance to happen or not to happen” – and a stronger sense, to indicate how something could be done.
Throughout the works of Aristotle, which so heavily influenced Western culture, characteristics of things which are stable or persistent, having their own tendency to be in a particular action, rather than just a possibility of happening by chance, are clearly held distinct and treated as having a different and more real existence. “Natures which persist” are said by him to be one of the causes of all things, while natures which are not persistent “might often be slandered as not being at all by one who fixes his thinking sternly upon it as upon a criminal”.
Actuality
Actuality, is often used to translate both energeia and entelecheia (sometimes rendered in English as “entelechy”). “Actuality” comes from Latin actualitas and is a traditional translation, but its normal meaning in Latin is “anything which is currently happening”.
The two words energeia (a word based upon ergon, meaning “work”) and entelecheia (complete, full-grown) were coined by Aristotle, and he stated that their meanings were intended to converge. In practice, most commentators and translators consider the two words to be interchangeable. They both refer to something being in action or at work, as all things are when they are real in the fullest sense, and not just potentially real. For example, “to be a rock is to strain to be at the center of the universe, and thus to be in motion unless constrained otherwise”.
Energeia
Energeia is a word based upon ergon, meaning “work”. It is the source of the modern word “energy” but the term has evolved so much over the course of the history of science that noting the etymology of the modern term is not very helpful in understanding the original as used by Aristotle. It is notoriously difficult to translate his use of energeia into English with consistency. Joe Sachs renders it with the phrase “being–at–work” and says that “we might construct the word is-at-work-ness from Anglo-Saxon roots to translate energeia into English”. Aristotle says the word can be made clear by looking at examples rather than trying to find a definition.
Just as energeia extends to entelecheia because it is the activity which makes a thing what it is, entelecheia extends to energeia because it is the end or perfection which has being only in, through, and during activity. Taken literally, Aristotle defines motion as the actuality (entelecheia) of a potentiality (dunamis) as such.
Entelecheia in modern philosophy and biology
As discussed above, terms derived from dunamis (potentiality) and energeia (actuality) have become parts of modern scientific vocabulary with a very different meaning to Aristotle’s. The original meanings are not used by modern philosophers unless they are commenting on classical or medieval philosophy. In contrast, entelecheia, in the form of “entelechy” is a word used in technical senses in recent times. Entelechy is a realization or actuality as opposed to a potentiality.
In German Idealism, entelechy may denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment. The concept had occupied a central position in metaphysics, and is closely related to monadology in the sense that each sentient entity contains its own entire universe within it.
In the biological vitalism of Hans Driesch, living things develop by entelechy, a common purposive and organizing field. Leading vitalists like Driesch argued that many of the basic problems of biology cannot be solved by a philosophy in which the organism is simply considered a machine.
Whether, as the materialistic scientists insist, this central intelligence is merely the sum of all the cellular intelligences of the bodily organism, or is an independent entity, capable of sustaining a separate existence after the body perishes, is a question that does not concern us in the pursuance of the present inquiry of Vitalism. It is sufficient for us to know that such an intelligence exists, and that, for the time being, it is the controlling energy that normally regulates the action of the myriad cells of which the body is composed.
We posit in this School that it is, then, a mental organism that all therapeutic agencies are designed to energize, when, for any cause, it fails to perform its functions with reference to any part of the physical structure. It follows that mental therapeutic agencies are the primary and normal means of energizing the mental organism. That is to say, mental agencies operate more directly than any other, because more intelligibly, upon a mental organism; although physical agencies are by no means excluded, for all experience shows that a mental organism responds to physical as well as to mental stimuli. We are creatures of thought, but we need food to eat.
All that can be reasonably claimed is that, in therapeutics, a mental stimulus is necessarily more direct and more positive in its effects, other things being equal, than a physical stimulus can be, for the simple reason that it is intelligent on the one hand and intelligible on the other. It must be remarked, however, that it is obviously impossible to wholly eliminate mental suggestion even in the administration of material remedies. Extremists claim that the whole effect of material remedies is due to the factor of mental suggestion; but this seems to be untenable. The most that can be claimed with any degree of certainty is that Material remedies, when they are not in themselves positively injurious, are good and legitimate forms of suggestions, and, as such, are invested with a certain therapeutic potency, as in the administration of the placebo. It is also certain that, whether the remedies are material or mental, they must, directly or indirectly, energize the mental organism in control of the bodily functions. Otherwise the therapeutic effects produced cannot be permanent. If you do not “believe” in the positive action of a therapeutic agent, it will at best act only as a palliative agent. Some vitamin tablets may give you a temporary boost or immune stimulus; but it will not overcome an overwhelming mental depression.
It follows that the therapeutic value of all remedial agencies, material or mental, is proportioned to their respective powers to produce the effect of stimulating the subjective mind to a state of normal and positive activity, and directing its energies into appropriate channels of healthy function. We know that mental suggestion fills this requirement more directly and positively than any other known therapeutic agent; and this is all that needs to be done (in most cases) for the restoration of health in any case outside of the domain of surgery. It is all that can be done. No power in the universe can do more than energize the mental organism that is the seat and source of health within the body. A miracle could do no more.
