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Home » Subtle Energy Explorers: A Historical Perspective

Subtle Energy Explorers: A Historical Perspective

     Subtle Energy Explorers Have Been Investigating This Phenomena Since The Beginning Of Recorded History

    The notion of subtle energy is grounded in several centuries of thought, doctrine, literature and scientific discovery.  What follows is an overview of the subtle energy explorers that created a foundation in this field.


    Early Subtle Energy Explorers

    The concept of subtle energy has been around since the most ancient of times.  As far back as 5000 years ago, this ever-evasive energy that fills us was first described in India and was again identified in China some 2000 years later.  Around 500 BCE, in Greece, the Pythagoreans believed in a universal energy that permeates all of nature.

    Moving forward in time, it was the subtle energy explorers Boirac and Liebeault, in approximately 1100 AD, who observed that we have a healthy or unhealthy effect on other people’s health simply by being in their presence.  They also found that these energetic interactions could also occur at a distance.  By the late 1500’s, Jan Baptista von Helmont, a physician, who devoted himself to the study of chemistry, proposed the existence of a pure vital spirit that permeates all of nature, a “fluid that could not be weighted or measured.”  He called this energy or spirit “archeus.”

    By the late 1600’s, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, German philosopher, mathematician, and logician, theorized that all of the elements in the universe are centers of force with localized motion and that this movement is dependent upon the action of spirit.  Even Sir Isaac Newton was a subtle energy explorers.  While commonly remembered for his Laws of Mechanics, which propagated the view of the human body as a biochemical machine, was well aware of subtle energies.  In his book The Principia Mathematica, which was published in 1697, Newton clearly discloses, “These things which cannot be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished with that sufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination and demonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic Spirit operates.”


    Subtle Energy Explorers In The 1800’s & 1900’s

    In the latter part of the 18th century, Franz Anton Mesmer, the father of modern day hypnotherapy, announced that he had found a great universal cure for both physical and emotional problems. He believed that there was of an invisible fluid that runs throughout the body, which he called “animal magnetism”.  He proposed that this magnetism influenced the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of our lives.

    With the advent of electricity, in the 19th century, science took another leap forward in its understanding of subtle energy.  James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist in the early 1800’s, was the first to show that visible light was just a small part of the realm of electromagnetic radiation.  He predicted the existence of other electromagnetic waves that had yet to be detected.  He was right.

    By the middle of the 1800’s, Count Wilhelm von Reichenbach found that the human energy field, or aura, had many properties which were similar to the electromagnetic field described by Maxwell.  He called this field the “odic field”.  He also found that the odic field could be conducted down a wire, traveling at approximately 4meters/second.  In another study, von Reichenbach found that the human aura produces a polarity similar to that found in crystals.  When measured along the major axis of our bodies, he found one side of the body to be negative and the other positive.  Dr. Luys proved von Reichenbach’s theory of the human body being polarized, with the right side being positive, and the left side being negative at the Hospital de la Charite in France.

    After qualifying as a doctor in 1850, Ambrose August Liebeault experimented extensively with various techniques of mesmerism (hypnosis) and developed a theory regarding mental attention, associating it with a “nervous force.”  Thus when we pay attention to some part of the body, the nervous force flows toward it, increasing its activity.  Conversely, if there is a lack of attention to a part of the body, the flow of this force would be reduced and the activity of that part depressed.  Candace Pert, Ph.D. in her recent study regarding peptides and emotions, confirmed his theory.


    Subtle Energy Explorers At The Turn Of The Century

    Walter Kilner, MD, while working at St. Thomas Hospital in London around 1911, invented a special kind of screen which enabled anyone to view the aura, or as he called it, the “human atmosphere.”  With this screen, Kilner found he was able to diagnose illness, because the aura around sick or affected organ would appear noticeably weaker then the remaining organs.  In his book The Human Aura, which was at long last published in 1965, he states that the aura appears to differ from person to person depending on their physical, emotional and mental state.

    In an attempt to correlate the laws of biology with those of physics, subtle energy explorers Albert Abrams studied the subtle emanation of life forms and applied them to the diagnosis and treatment of disease.  According to Abrams, the body emanates not one, but three different energies: physical, psychical and auric energy, simultaneously.  He theorized that each disease has a specific vibratory rate, which could be detected by tapping on a patient’s abdomen or spine.  This information was published in his book New Concepts in Diagnosis and Treatment in 1916.  Continuing with Abrams work, Dr. George de la Warr and Dr. Ruth Drown developed instruments that could be used to detect radiation from living tissues.  Called “Radionics,” this device was reported to work over long distances.  WE Boyd also following the work of Albert Abrams, invented his own radionic type device called the “Emanometer.”  When put to the test by the Royal Society of Medicine, the Emanometer passes 25 separate tests with 100% accuracy.

    French philosopher Henri Bergson looked to describe the immaterial force he called “Élan Vita” whose existence could not be scientifically verified.  He felt that it provides the vital impulse that continuously shapes all life.  In turn, German biologist and master experimenter Hans Driesch felt that the bio-chemical process found in an embryo could not account for all of the vast complexities of organic life.  He proposed that there was a energetic field influencing them.  He called this “entelechy.”

    In his work during the early 1900’s, Harold Saxton Burr Ph.D. discovered that all living things were molded and controlled by electro-dynamic fields, which could be measured with a standard voltmeter.  Calling these fields “L-fields,” he felt that they acted as a blueprint for the development of living organisms.  Dr. Burr also believed that by measuring the voltages within the L-field, physical and mental conditions could be revealed.  His work led him to conclude that through these fields we are interconnected with each other and the entire universe.

    Also in the early 1900, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, following in the work of Sigmund Freud, theorized that emotional trauma creates muscular tension in the body, which he called armoring.  This armoring inhibited the free flow of energy in the body.  He coined the term “orgone” to describe this energy and the human energy field.  Reich studied the relationship between the flow of orgone energy in the body and physical disturbances.  Using psychotherapy, he found ways in which to release these blockages (armoring) from the energetic systems in the body, thus restoring health.

    Dr. Dora Kunz, a clairvoyant and healer, observed in her work that when the human energy field is in health, it vibrates at what she called a “natural autonomous rhythm.”  With disease, the rhythm and energy levels are changed.  She also observed that when there is pathology in a specific organ, thus changing its natural autonomous rhythm, the rhythm of neighboring organs is also impacted.  In physics, this is called impedance matching.

    In 1939, Semyon D. Kirlian, an electrician and founder of Kirlian photography with his wife Valentina Kirlian, a teacher and journalist, felt that photographs taken with their specialized camera detected our life force energy.  Kirlian photography captures of film the coronal discharge around living objects.  His work also demonstrated what is called the “Phantom Leaf Effect,” in which a leaf, cut in half, shows the coronal discharge of the whole leaf as if uncut.  This effect is thought to depict the etheric growth template of the leaf.


    Subtle Energy Explorers In The Modern Era

    In Korea, in the 1960’s, the subtle energy explorer Professor Kim Bong Han, performed experiments to identify the anatomic nature of the meridian system.  His findings suggested that the meridian system was an independent vascular network within the body.  He then suggested that the meridian system formed during embryonic development and may guide the growth and development of the circulatory and lymphatic systems, forming within 15 hours of conception.

    Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama of Japan, specialist in oriental medicine, presented evidence for the existence of the chakras, the energy centers within the body.  Motoyama found that when an individual projected energy from his or her chakras, significant disturbances in the electromagnetic field in and around their chakras could be detected.  Itzhar Bentov then duplicated these findings.  In the 1970’s, Marcel Vogel found that sensitive people could attune themselves to the human energy field of others and through their field elicit responses as well as create a climate of healing.  His experiments demonstrated that the mind’s energies could be focused, received and registered in millivolts.

    According to Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., a leading scientist in the field of biology, “morphogenetic fields” act as a template for the development, growth and healing of all life forms.  He believed that these fields carry information but no energy and are available throughout time and space without any loss of intensity.  He believed that this information is used to create the patterns of physical forms.  He felt that the DNA in the genes did not carry all of the information needed to shape a system, but instead the organism taps into the morphogenetic field of an earlier form, receiving what could be called “genetic habits.”  Sheldrake also identifies the morphogenetic field as the location of stored memory and knowledge that was later called the “collective unconscious” by Carl Jung.

    Dr. Robert Becker, an orthopedic surgeon and medical research doctor, claims that most living creatures are electrical by nature and are able to assist the re-growth of bone by applying a slight electrical charge to the injured area.  He also mapped a complex electrical field on the body that was shaped like the body and the central nervous system.  He also describes what he believes to be a separate nervous systems made up of a series of channels or meridians, which are responsible for the flow of energy into the vital organs.

    Most recently, Professor Emeritus of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University and subtle energy explorer, William A. Tiller Ph.D.’s work bridges the so-called conventional and non-conventional realms of scientific inquiry.  Currently, he is devoting effort to the development of reliable instrumentation for the detection and study of “subtle energy” fields in nature.  His experiments in the field of subtle energy suggest that nature expresses itself in many other dimensions than just the physical realm and that these other dimensions interact with the physical domain.  Other experiments suggested that when human intention is applied to the unseen forces in the subtle dimensions, it could propel events in the physical domain.

    Throughout time, the idea and understanding that we are filled with an indescribable essence has persisted.  People have accepted it in the past and are rediscovering it now.  In recent years, scientists, researchers and subtle energy explorers are learning to measure this essence, document it and apply their findings to new systems of diagnostics and treatment in the realms of health and wellness.  In the words of Isaac Asimov, a biochemist and famous science fiction author, “ The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka”, but “That’s funny…”


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