The Energy myth

What exactly is this new age energy?

There are numerous people who claim they can harness their bodies ‘energy’ to use as healing power/psychic power etc. - there are numerous occasions when people say that the energy in a room is negative, in seances people hold hands and are told to let their energy flow around the circle, hey - I can even remember being told that a white energy surrounding me would protect me from evil and a blue energy surrounding me would heal whatever aches or pains I was suffering from - but where exactly does this energy come from?’

It all seems a little far fetched to me, in all my years surrounded by woo theories it has never been explained to me what this secret energy actually is or what it is created by. It has always just been something people claim they are able to summon up from within them or around them, or even from one another but to my knowledge something has to provide the energy we use.

I always paid attention in Science and like most people know the equation written by Einstein; E=mc2 which translates as Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

Basically mass can be expressed in grams, and speed can be expressed in meters per second which simply means an object’s energy equals the amount of work it takes to move a few grams a few meters in a few seconds. 

If I lift a rock, I’m inputting enough potential energy to dent the surface of the table one centimeter when I drop it, the calories of chemical potential energy that my bloodstream absorbs when I eat a sandwich charge up my muscles enough to dig a huge percentage of my back garden. Thus the energy I use to pick up the rock and the energy I use to dig the garden have a source - the food I eat, and the energy I used is transferred into the rock (and then the table and so on…) and the tool I use to dig the ground.

This is proven and is easy to understand once you get your head around the basic concept of energy transference.This new age energy however seems to not have a source that has been proven to exist, so where does it come from? Where does it go to? and, why can’t all humans tap into it?

My understanding of evolution is standard but good enough (good old secondary school scienece lessons!) but I would have thought that if humans had evolved to allow them to tap into some sort of energy source, all humans would have been able to do so, not just a chosen few? I mean sure, if there were some huge wall seperating humans into two civilisations for hundreds and hundreds of years; for generations and generations, then I could maybe believe that the people on one side of the wall might evolve to be slightly different than those on the other side of the wall (but not so different though that they would have super human powers such as psychic ability or mediumistic ability, just slight changes to adapt to their surroundings) - but superpowers for some humans and not for others who all live in the same civilisation, the same community etc. - I’m having a hard time believing it to be honest.

The use of the word ‘energy’ by spiritualists and the many people who peddle woo woo theories (psychics/mediums/healers/rieke etc.) can be very misleading and shouldn’t just be blindly accepted as correct, we have all learnt about energy at school, it is a very scientific sounding word and therefor when the word is used by woo-woos it can sound like they know what they are talking about, unless that is, you know better.

Remember energy itself is not the thing being measured: energy is the measurement of work performed or of potential. So “there is a high level of negative energy here” or “Let us all hold hands in this seance and build the energy level up to aid spirit communication” make no sense whatsoever…and that’s a fact!

If you want some energy eat a sandwich, don’t pretend to draw it from one another or the air around you - it’s not going to work.

Unethical consequences.

One wonders how many times paranormal exploiters stop to think about what consequences their actions could have upon the people around them. An example would be a recently aired television show ‘Living with the dead’  - a show that is very similar to Haunted homes, the idea being that two alleged spirit mediums enter the homes of the public who believe they are living with ghosts and “help” get rid of them.

I happened to watch the first episode and have to say I was quite appauled at the effect the whole thing seemed to have on members of the family involved, at one point it seemed the daughter was bordering on hysterical and yet the mediums continued to pretend to channel the spirits of the dead, why? because it got them screen time, got them he fame they so desperately seeked. Does anyone else see this as unmoral and unethical? I certainly do.

There is also potentially a risk that paranormal investigation teams may deal with people of an unstable mental balance, reports of seeing things or hearing voices are obvious signs of potential mental health issues, yet it is doubtful that many teams out there who conduct paranormal investigations actually have a process in place to deal with this sort of issue, this again is ethically and morally irresponsible.

There is also the common risk that paranormal investigation teams may conduct an investigation at a location and may leave the owners more terrified than when they arrived. This is more a risk with teams who tend to use more woo-woo methods on investigation such as table tipping, seances and promote the use of mediums and invesigations.

The role of a paranormal investigator is to enter a location and look for rational causes for what has been witnessed and reported - instead many teams seem to enter a location and simply try and prove that their beliefs are right thorugh seances and glass divination, that’s not paranormal investigation, that’s ghost hunting and thrill seeking. It may be good fun to the team members but they never seen to think what the consequences could be once they have left the location. The psychological damage and fear that teams who practice woo-woo methods leave the families and owners with is unethical and irresponsible.