Energy
The term energy has been widely used by writers and practitioners of various esoteric forms of spirituality and alternative medicine to refer to a variety of phenomena, sometimes supposed to be directly perceptible to some observers, who have usually undergone some form of training or initiation. This ‘energy’ is sometimes conceived of as a universal life force running within and between all things, and in other cases it is seen as a more localized phenomenon, such as in vitalism, subtle bodies, or somatic energies such as qi, prana, or kundalini. Spiritual energy is often closely associated with the metaphor of life as breath - the words ‘qi’, ‘prana’, and ‘spirit’, for instance, are all related in their respective languages to the verb ‘to breathe’. It is also often seen as a continuum that unites body and mind. The experience of spiritual energy is described differently depending on the tradition or practice in question. Sometimes it is described as a physical sensation similar to the movement of breath in the body, sometimes as visible “auras”, “rays”, or “fields”, sometimes as audible or tactile “vibrations”. As a rule, these experiences are held to be available to anyone, but only after proper training or sensitization through practices which vary widely across different belief systems. Spiritual energy is also usually associated with feelings of bliss or contentment, as in the pleasurable sensations of kundalini, the ecstatic states of certain forms of meditation, and the ‘oceanic feeling’ discussed by western scholars such as Freud and Rolland. There is no scientific evidence of physical energies of this type.
