It is difficult to wrap up this book, because its overall information content obviously extends into other large areas of human energetic activity, especially the areas of creativity and power.
Thus, without taking a breath, it would be easy enough simply to segue into both of those topics. Like this book, the central major topic of the two has to do with the existence of invisible energetics, and which, in some sense at least, account for the amazing, but elusive, special phenomena encountered in both areas.
Those special phenomena have been left unaccounted for. There are a number of lesser societal reasons, but the larger one is simply that the science of human energetics has for a very long time been avoided and denied at the behest of powerful mainstream forces.
The exact, bigger-picture reasons that stimulate this denial are quite difficult to fathom. Whatever they are, they certainly go against the overall concept of an unbiased accumulating of enlightened knowledge on behalf of enlarging human understanding and transformative values of it.
OCCULTISM AS THE SCIENCE OF ENERGETICS
Generally, speaking, however, interest in universal, cosmic, and organic energetics has never disappeared entirely, and much along such lines has been undertaken by those interested in doing so.
Give or take a little, the entire category of occultism and occult knowledge can be thought of as the science of energetics.
Indeed, the various aspects of whatever has been assigned as occult do deal with invisible factors, and principally with energetics and how various energies are distributed in the cosmos and in organic organisms.
In this sense, “occultism” has fundamental and important roots in antiquity, and inasmuch has continuously been derived from them.
But through the centuries they have been added to at various epochs, while in some of the epochs the work was condemned and had to be conducted “underground.” Hence, the term OCCULT (meaning “hidden”) has a double meaning. The energetics studied were hidden by their essential invisibility, and hidden also to avoid mainstream condemnations.
The thread that links most of the occult work into one continuous piece is that the universe is made up of energies, and that these download in different interplaying formats, and the different formats are those subtle vital life energies from which all animated life form can manifest.
Something like this is the essential definition of Prana of ancient India, and of Ch’i of ancient China. There are many other terms for the same idea. The modern West even has one that verges on scientific authenticity. This term, as we saw in the foregoing chapter, is DYNAMISM—a theory that explains the universe in terms of forces and their interplay.
There is a strange aspect to the societal suppression of occult energetic topics.
No matter the suppression, and how trenchantly it is conducted, the topic of energetics simply reemerges again and again, under different auspices, and under different nomenclature.
The most probable reason for the reemergence is that certain individuals perceive the value and meaning of knowing something about energetics, and especially so with regard to human activity.
THE ENERGETIC NATURE OF SECRET SOVIET RESEARCH
As but one rather amusing example, in 1969, the American intelligence community had become unnerved by a surprising discovery—that since the 1930s the Soviet Union had secretly been conducting serious research into psychic phenomena.
Further, the Soviet research was big-time, and involved some nineteen major military research centers.
The whole of this constituted something of a socio-political mystery. Not only was the sheer size of the Soviet effort a shock to American analysts, but the very idea of such research was also in conflict with Communist philosophy.
As informed Westerners understood it, the political sociology of Marxist-Communist thinking ardently held Western psychic phenomena and parapsychology to consist of superstitious beliefs compiled with decadent behavior.
Thus any such phenomena must not only be avoided in the Soviet Union, but actively purged.
But far from being purged, such work was boldly underway in the Soviet Union, and so there were possible scientific and military issues involved, but also political and societal ones.
In the light of this possible ominous Soviet development, a quite large and longer-term effort was made to find out what the Soviets were doing. One of the first larger-picture discoveries was that Russia and other significant portions of the Soviet Empire were Asian in cultural background, and as such possessed deep currents of Asian ethos.
Such guiding principles had historically legitimized such activities as acupuncture, chi gong, shamanism, second-sight, and distant influencing as being energetic functions not only in nature, but as regards the human systems.
In this sense, then, the Soviet scientists did not see such energetic manifestations as arising from psychologically decadent causes, but as bio-energetic (the Soviet term) functions that could be ascertained, explored and demonstrated in laboratories.
Thus, without too much fuss and bother, the Soviet “bio-energetic” and “bio-communication” research could be incorporated into the socio-political think of the Soviet Union.
Because the distinction here may remain ambiguous at first, it needs to be clearly pointed up.
Contrary to the understanding in the West that parapsychology researched “powers of mind,” the Soviets were busily researching biological ENERGIES. Put another way, the Soviets were in the process of developing a science of human energetics.
The developing Soviet science, therefore, had no comparable counterpart in the West, so American analysts were initially unable to grasp what was involved—since they thought in terms of mental phenomena rather than biological energetic phenomena.
The modern West had established no science regarding the field of human energetics—and which field indeed had long been denied acceptance, as we have seen in this book.
THE ASIAN ENERGETIC COUNTERPART
The Soviet energetics did have a comparable counterpart in Asia, and especially in China, and a very ancient and authentic counterpart at that.
It is found elucidated, among other sources, as one of the doctrines of TAO, variously translated as “The Way,” or “The Supreme Path of Nature”—which constitutes a philosophy that has permeated the whole structure of Chinese thought and society for over 2,500 years.
As referred to earlier, a rather neat synopsis of the “Supreme Path” is contained in Reay Tannahill’s fascinating book, entitled SEX IN HISTORY (revised and updated edition, 1992).
As noted by Tannahill, within the Supreme Path of Nature, Existence appeared as a dynamic, “energetic movement of change, a kind of space-time continuum of fluid energies in which man, beast, trees, mountains, cloud, river and sea were all indissolubly merged.”
Weaving and powering an erratic trail through all of these is the force (energy) known as CH’I, the vital essence, the breath of life—and whose path is the Supreme Path of Nature.
In the sense of this vital force (energy) as the fundamental essence of EXISTENCE, the ancient Chinese viewed CH’I as THE primary factor of all that exists. So the primary factor of whatever exists is first ENERGETIC, and only then do the realms of the phenomenal, including those physical and mental, manifest.
In her book examining sex in history, Reay Tannahill was obliged to make the important connection between Eastern knowledge of CH’I energetics and sexualizing energetics, a connection that has gone missing in the West.
Beyond that connection, however, Eastern knowledge of CH’I resulted in the formulations of acupuncture, ch’i gong (energy healing), cognitive extensions of CH’I force as a basis for many of the martial arts, and for various kinds of shamanism and divination.
Developmental CH’I also led to empowerment of various states of exceptional experiencing easily comparable to certain kinds of energetic PSI phenomena in the West.
In the West, however, such energetic functions were mistaken as psychological powers of mind, not as basic powers of energetics. (Quite a number of the astonishing energetic functions derived from the practice of CH’I gong are described in a recent (1997) book by Paul Dong and Thomas E. Raffill, entitled CHINA’S SUPER PSYCHICS.)
A CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC OF WESTERN PSI RESEARCH
The study of the sociological implications of PSI also revealed a number of things about the West—where the occurrence of energetic phenomena did not enjoy the traditional background as found in Asia and much of Eastern Europe.
To help explain this, Asia had always considered the body-energy-mind as three primary factors of human existence. But the West utilized only the two-part body-mind model. In the West, therefore, all human phenomena had to be attributed to the body or to the mind.
The three-part Asian model, however, was in keeping with most pre-modern societies the world over. Indeed, as established via archaeology and anthropology, most pre-modern societies made allowance for the three-part idea of the human in which the energy part was conceptualized as distinct from, but interrelated with, the other two parts.
In the West, as the modern age condensed and solidified its philosophical and scientific identity, a departure was made from the pre-modern triune of body-energy-mind.
Although energies were still referred to in the philosophies and sciences of the modern West, they were thought of not as things-in-themselves, but only as subsidiary elements of the body or mind.
Another way of putting this is that energy was considered only as amorphous potential until it was manifested either as physical or mental energy.
This resulted in the broad Western understanding that the human entity indeed possessed energies, but that these were internal to and commensurate with the dualism of body-mind, and thus having no separate substance.
In their biological sense, the body energies could simply be thought of as mechanistic in nature. The mental energies were a little more difficult to conceptualize in terms of psychology.
And in that regard a number of fatiguing problems ultimately arose which began serving as background for a number of enigmas, paradoxes, and conundrums. These paradoxes have never really been resolved.
Even so, the philosophies and sciences of the Modern Age moved dynamically forward, deservedly triumphant in very many aspects. But the same philosophies and sciences became increasingly weak regarding such problems—identified as, for example, the body-mind relationship, the body-mind interface, etc. None of these problems could be, and have not yet been, convincingly resolved in the absence of human energetics.
SOME HISTORICAL NOTES REGARDING THE DENIAL
OF ENERGETICS IN THE WEST
In terms of its history, the blow-by-blow developments that led to the Western denial of energetics are complicated. But it is quite easy to recognize one of the most important fall-outs from the denial.
The fall-out is that the phenomena of energies, or energetics, that could not be directly attributed to body or mind gradually collated into the area earlier known as the “occult sciences,” but which category was stigmatized as unscientific in its fundamental nature.
In not only the philosophic or scientific sense, but in the broad societal sense, this development demarcating the scientific from the unscientific can clearly be seen as a denial of the major substance of the occult sciences—VITAL ENERGIES.
Since the later psychical and subsequent parapsychological research arose out of the discredited occult sciences, the mainstream sciences needed to be intolerant of them as well.
While it is true that the so-called occult sciences came to consist of many intellectual confusions, their major substance consisted of studies of energetic phenomena as, so to speak, things in themselves—and as having real and natural cosmic existence before they become interactive with subsequent human energy dynamics.
The nexus of all of this had to do with the fact that human energetic organisms can often sense such supernal energies, even if only ambiguously so. Most pre-modern societies made some kind of socio-cultural allowance for this type of sensing. The theoretical strictures of the modern body-mind dualism did not.
The reasons for the modern strictures are not easily identified or explained. But it was quite easy to trace the evolution of the strictures.
It can be said, with historical justification, that the sciences of the Renaissance were focused on positive distinctions regarding the “influences” of cosmic, natural and biological “energetics.” Within these energies, the triune concept of body-energy-mind had a correct and authentic place.
But at some early point during the post-Renaissance decades, this important trinity almost invisibly passed from mainstream consideration, and this produced two results:
1. that the human was increasingly explained as body-mind only;
2. that the Renaissance concepts of energetics increasingly were stigmatized as “occult” and hence unscientific
The chronology established that the Western strictures against energetics had surfaced after the Renaissance, roughly between 1680 and 1730 during which period the negative distinction of the so-called occult sciences was formalized.
This anti-occult trend conditioned societal responses away from occult matters and phenomena—and increasing ratios of mainstream social intolerance against them began manifesting.
It was also easy to establish that roughly by 1850 or earlier, the strictures themselves came to constitute the accepted societal, mainstream parameters of knowledge, while practically no consideration was any longer given to actual human experiencing that did not fit into the strictures.
Roughly between 1680 and 1880, the problems regarding the conflicts between occult and scientific knowledge had accumulated to an enormous degree. By 1880, the mainstream sciences had become entirely resistive regarding the issues involved.
Recognizing the existence of this situation, leading thinkers, including many eminent scientists, organized research societies to study the forbidden energetic phenomena independently of the mainstream sciences.
The first and most dynamic of those societies emerged in London 1882 under the rubric of “psychical research.”
As we have seen in the text, the early psychical researchers were clearly examining energetic phenomena that were most astonishing. However, many (but not all) early psychical researchers themselves had accepted the assumed authenticity of the body-mind dualism.
And so, between about 1882 and the 1930s, the principle parapsychological concepts advanced ESP, psychokinesis and telepathy, etc., as being exclusively involved with unknown components of mind.
Throughout the whole of this convoluted saga, the existence of energies per se was not denied.
But the energies were associated in secondary ways with body and/or mind, and no discrete science of primary energetics evolved to consider the energies as factors independent of the body-mind dualism.
It is to be noted that the body-mind dualism IS an ism—ISM always referring to a distinct doctrine or theory, as compared, for example, to distinctly observable phenomena or facts.
During the Progressive Age of Western science and psychology (roughly 1905-1955), thinkers had expended a great deal of activity and funding in an effort to identify what the “normal” human consisted of.
This effort basically consisted of attempts, in the form of wholesale “testing” of individuals, to ascertain various psychological and intelligence criteria that would identify the “normal” from the “abnormal”—but which criteria more or less had already been decided upon theoretically and philosophically.
By tracing the history of this period, it could be seen that distinctions between normal and abnormal were undertaken in the name of science and psychology theory—not in the name of actual human experiencing. (I.e., anything that tasted of the occult was abnormal.)
But more in fact, the guiding principles of this effort were sociological in conceptualization—in that any results obtained by the effort were ultimately geared toward utilization in sociological management.
THE UNACKNOWLEDGED NECESSITY OF THE ENERGETIC COMPONENT
Whatever else might be said about psychical phenomena, an “energetic” component is necessary to begin any significant understanding of them.
Without this component, such phenomena more or less have to be shunted to the unscientific fringes—since neither the body as such, or the mind as such, can convincingly explain them.
After the disappearance of Renaissance “energetics,” and until the Soviet introduction of “bio-energetics,” no comparable, official concept really existed in the modern scientific and philosophical West. Although human energies could be talked of in popular, layman terms, no official scientific or philosophical substance existed for them.
It was only by tracing the Western sociological treatment of psychical phenomena that not only the avoidance, but ultimately the denial, of human energetics became identifiable. In fact, however, there are no real scientific grounds for such a wholesale avoiding of energetic phenomena. And so this “avoiding” now stood out like a red flag in a sea of white ones.
ENERGETICS—THE BRIDGE TO UNDERSTANDING
SEXUAL AND CREATIVE ENERGIES
It is, of course, a great leap from Soviet and Chinese energetics to the topics of human sexuality and creativity. But those two topics are among the most commonly and frequently experienced and sensed as being energetic in nature—with the advantage that they are always sensed as energies much before anything else.
In any event, it can be said that nothing happens unless some kind of energetics is involved. It would seem, then, that establishing and enlarging studies of human energetics would contribute to empowerment in many areas.