Reiki focuses specifically on this aspect in emphasizing the focus, intent and emotional commitment of the practitioner. Replace "energy" with "emotion" and it begins to look legitimate.
Even better replace "energy" with "attention" or "sympathy". See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_positive_regard
Subtle energy is real though. Reiki is one of the modalities that does not require being in person.
There’s a bunch of weirder, more obscure modalities that can work with chronic pain, trauma, and the like.
To those entrusting our mainstream with authority on what's bullshit and what's not, remember that psychedelics research is still illegal most places. I'd argue that history is random, and thus the mainstream. Further, variety is a good thing: the more of it we can sustain, the healthier our society is.
None was provided, so we will have to dismiss it until some proof is provided.
Nobody is dismissing proof here. They're only dismissive of the extraordinary claims that an immeasurable energy somehow inherent to some things has any effect beyond essentially the placebo effect. After all, there hasn't been any evidence which showed differently.
If you have some studies showing actual results beyond placebo's baseline, we'd all be ecstatic for the new knowledge
The obvious rebut is that it's unpopular, because it lacks scientific method. In other words, mainstream is mainstream due to merit and can be used as source of truth. If anyone takes this view, I hope they're very conscious of it, because in my opinion this viewpoint can't last long.
And you wouldn't even notice the evidence linked to in an article like this one which suggests the effects can't simply be waved away as placebo.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31638407
Then you'd end with a restatement of the "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" saw and would retreat happy and contented that you had once again vanquished the evil dragon of irrationality with your objectively informed skepticism.
Unfortunately none of this is even remotely scientific, except in a bandwagon cargo cult sense.
Science is not about protecting the tribe against unacceptably dissident world views, but about dealing calmly and objectively with things that actually happen - especially if you don't understand them. It's not about trying to persuade yourself that they don't happen, because they can't possibly, because you already know for sure what's possible and what isn't with unshakeable 100% confidence, and therefore there can't possibly be anything to explain. QED.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/there-is-...
I took a look at the study linked and I could see some problems in experiment design. There are so many confounding factors that aren't controlled for.
[edit: An experiment like this would have to be pretty big in scope and try to randomise for control groups accordingly. I personally would like to see that to see what's genuinely resulting in these effects, no matter what it is. You might not believe that though, which is your own bias.]
No, they require the same evidence as any other claim, but none was provided.
E.g. soap kills viruses by dissolving them, some painkillers work by blocking transmission of signals along nerves, radiotherapy kills cells in the blast zone.
Other than through establishing a psychological effect around 'someone cares', there's simply no known way of positive thoughts in one person's head being transmitted down through the hands and directly doing some work on an illness.
If there were, what is it:
What kind of 'energy' do hands emit? How does the difference between Reiki hands and non-Reiki hands manifest? How does that 'energy' selectively effect diseases? How does thought modulate the diseases the 'energy' effects. E.g. how is the Reiki hand energy signature a function of the targeted disease? What's the molecular pathway by which the 'energy' improves the target ailment? If it's just regular 'energy' why can't we copy it with a machine and play it back en masse?
Use 10 people who have chronic pain who report pain relief with hands-on reiki.
As for the test: Hands-off reiki vs hands-off no reiki (person who isn't trained in reiki present) vs nothing
We should see significant reporting of gains with the hands-off reiki, and should see no gains with #2 or #3...
Just because we can't see this assumed energy doesn't mean we can't measure it somehow.
You can't ever measure it directly. Only indirect effects.
From that we build models.
And one of those models contains a quantity called "energy [physics/chemistry/etc]" which is in fact a highly abstract concept that doesn't correspond to any actual object in the world. Technically it doesn't even have a definite value in any real system.
But we take it seriously because there's a useful, strong conservation law based on strongly compelling underlying principles (e.g. Noether's theorem), and no known violation of said law, or at least, every time there is an apparent violation, it eventually leads us to an explanation. It's a very useful abstraction indeed, and we can build all sorts of useful things knowing it.
In fact, the conservation is key to making "energy [physics/chemistry/etc]" accurately measurable at all. And sometimes we even get that wrong.
The notion of "subtle energy" is another model, much less well developed and rarely if ever quantified. One can argue all day about whether it's a useful model and what it models, if anything. My view is I'd love to see serious attempts to work backwards from observed phenomena (such as mentioned in the GP), as well as other reports (people report tingling, heat, feelings like electrical currents etc - this is data even if it is subjective, and it has structure). And from that build a more coherent model than the "intuitive" explanations often produced.
But they are both describing abstract properties in models, and measurements are indirect not direct in both cases.
I'm also a reiki master.... And the CTO of a 2 person Signals Intelligence startup. I'd like to think I'm not conflating EM with "energy"(occult). Btw I hate that word - there's a definite meaning and the occult way it's used doesn't replicate known science. Maybe we should use Mana until we can define what it is.
I have tense muscles in my back from WFH. A Reikist touches my back. What happens to relieve the tension? Does mana from their hands exert a force to directly extend the tense muscles? Does the mana stimulate the release of some chemical which relaxes the muscle? How does it work?
I think Reiki would say that "energy" assists you to heal your own back, but it doesn't specify how that healing takes place. In addition, I think Reiki distinguishes between the "energy" of the practitioner, and "energy" of the universe which flows via the practitioner, and ideally the latter assists you.
If we assume (for the sake of this discussion) the relief of tension in your back takes place and you are then looking for a mechanism, I can immediately think of numerous plausible explanations we could begin to explore, some of which we could measure, and others are beyond our capabilities to measure.
I'll give some examples of plausible:
- The tension is caused by signals in your neural system. The Reiki experience caused a change of data in your neural system due an information "covert channel" that exists between your system and the practioner, and your muscle tension is relieved.
- The tension is caused by chemistry in your muscle cells or intercellular matrix. The Reiki experience caused a change of gene expression due numerous hormonal changes that occur in your body when you are in that environment.
With both of those examples we have scientific study methods for looking into more details. E.g. for the first, it would involve looking at neural signals and the practitoner's neural signals and other factors such as position, timing etc. to detect hidden signal transfer. For the second we could monitor all the hormones we might think are relevant, or if we want to search more broadly than just markers we already know about, perhaps monitor some general molecular distribution signals such as chromatography or spectrometry.
There are numerous modern methods for looking for signal relationship, but also numerous confounding factors.
The list of plausible things to explore is vast though, so ruling out one or two doesn't rule out there being a mechanism. However as you explore mechanisms, if you find something that shows a signal relationship, then you can zoom in and look into plausible underlying mechanisms for that mechanism, and repeat. There is no bottom, but the more levels deep a signal is shown, the more people are likely to call it a mechanism rather than an effect.
Yeah, that's a problem. I'm literally asking what this mechanism is. A discipline not being able to take a clear stab at one is a serious yellow card (I appreciate the fact that you personally try below).
> The Reiki experience caused a change of data in your neural system due an information "covert channel" that exists between your system and the practioner, and your muscle tension is relieved.
So, how would this 'covert channel' work? If we can figure it out that is the beginning of scientific telepathy and would thus be a defining discovery of the 21st century.
> The Reiki experience caused a change of gene expression due numerous hormonal changes that occur in your body when you are in that environment.
This is, at least theoretically, falsifiable. Using a RCT between trained Reikists, a sports massage, random masseur, and baseline. It would be expensive.
It still leaves open the question of how the Reiki effects the gene expression. Of course, getting a regular massage or lying down for a bit is going to change your gene expression somewhat.
E.g. is the claim that the mana directly moves transcription factors to the right places so that more of certain proteins get transcribed?
Repeat with photovoltaic cells, microphones, night-vision sensors, capacitative sensors, inductive sensors, magnetism sensors, etc.
My hypothesis is that reiki is 100% placebo effect, no difference will ever be measured between otherwise identical reiki and non-reiki movements, and the most effective investigation of reiki would be measuring the brain states of patients who think they are receiving treatments.
Activating the placebo effect is good. If we can study it enough, we might even be able to do it without any bunkum.
I would make the statement that NIR up through gamma/xrays is not being generated by the human body.
With that, we're looking at around 10THz of bandwidth for a full spectrum. At 8bit IQ acquisition, we're looking at 20TB/s... And if that's assuming you have ideal transmitters and receivers for the whole set of bands.
You want to also transmit to simulate if you find an area that seems to have a response. The test subject should feel something if that's the case.
If we use every measurement device humanity has at its disposal, and find no difference, it is safe to conclude that the visible effects of reiki have no discernable cause of action beyond the placebo effect--which can be reliably generated by putting sufficient flimflammery in your bunkum.
If there is a difference, it should be measurable. And repeatably measurable using standardized testing devices with SI-derived units. If there is a genuine effect that can only be measured by its effect on biology, then obviously one should be able to build a measurement tool using biological cells. If reiki is real, it can be explained, one question at a time.
I probably should have explained this part better. I wrote in a different comment, but let me make this clear:
1. What I mean about "subtle energy" is not the same as the "energy" of physicists.
2. Subtle energy is experienced by some people. Not everyone is aware of how various forms of subtle energy affects people and non-living things.
3. Not all forms of subtle energy is the same
4. Subtle energy is responsive to will and intent.
5. The problem is that, what we experience as consciousness, is in turn influenced and agitated by subtle energy.
6. Subtle energy carries information: emotions, concepts, awareness, sentience. Some forms have higher "content" than others.
6. Reiki is a specific form of subtle energy, but no one actually knows where it comes from or why attunement works. Attunement is supposed to tune a consciousness to the source of reiki, but no one has luck finding out what that source is. If they have, they are not talking. My friends (I am not attuned myself) who were attuned had tried, but not luck finding out about it.
7. At best, the characteristics we found out about it is that it is universal (rather than personal), non-local, is not qi (despite the name), is not emotional, or elemental, or fluidic. It is very "light", without much substance (compared to some other forms of subtle energy). We were trying to understand this in order to distinguish it from secondary effects that _do_ have locality, or are experiences of side effects that are personal. (In other words: what are the experiences a practitioner have to know that what they are doing is working?)
As far as how it effects disease, there are a lot of literature on that. Again, not in the mainstream consensus.
It isn't just regular "energy". Some people have tried to copy subtle energy and play it back en mass. The mechanism they use is similar to that of homeopathy. How effective it is ... I have my doubts, but maybe it works. Since we (people who practices Reiki) don't actually know the Reiki source, I also have doubts we can copy it mechanistically.
There you go. This is why the idea is extraordinary. There is the energy of physicists which explains the motions of the planets, the vibrations of crystals ;), and the mechanics of your computer. In fact, it is the theory we have for everything in the universe except the phenomenon of someone touching someone else while thinking a special kind of happy thought.
> Subtle energy carries information
Regular energy carries information too. How do you think radio works? Or how cosmic background radiation yields knowledge about what happened just after the big bang?
> The problem is that, what we experience as consciousness, is in turn influenced and agitated by subtle energy.
How? What does the subtle mechanism look like? What are the corresponding subtle equations, subtle algorithms or subtle models?
There is no known form of energy that can do what the commenter is claiming it can.
So someone making a claim about the realness of reiki energy needs to either prove it and explain its properties in ways that are true of other forms of energy, or possibly more easily, they need to change their terminology.
The problem is that the reiki and homeopathy, etc practitioners deliberately abuse scientific terminology because it adds a veneer of believability to their otherwise outlandish claims. And it fools the layman into believing there is actually some science behind their claims.
If they did choose to use appropriate terminology based on the actual properties, they will find that terminology will converge to words and phrases like “placebo effect” and “emotional support” rather quickly, which cannot earn them hundreds of dollars an hour.
And by the way, the word "energy" did not originate in science and engineering.
So statements like "there is no known form of energy that can do what the commenter is claiming it can" are incorrect, because they are meaningless when applied to homonyms.
They are just artefacts of people talking past one another.
I think the commenter who explained that "subtle energy" is best understood as an atomic language term that means something different from "energy" has it about right.
It would be helpful if people would stop trying to be "scientific" while actually ignoring the meanings of things being talked about by each other.
That goes for the practitioners applying an unsupported veneer of scientific credibility to claims, but it also goes for armchair scientist types applying an unsupported veneer of knowledge about a subject they have chosen to not really study.
I use that term because it behaves a lot like physical energy. It has intensity. The more of it there is, the more things become active. It keeps being used as a term because for those who experience it, the concept of energy describes it very well.
But one of the characteristic it has that is not described by physics is that it carries information: emotions, concepts, awareness, sentience.
For example, there are two forms of subtle energy that can be described as "electric" and "magnetic". It is similar enough that people use those terms for it. The Theosophists of the early 20th century popularized that notion ... but the actual experience of the "electric" energy is more like living, liquid, luminous lightning (electric). It is not electricity.
this itself is an affirmative negation with no supporting evidence.
at best we should be ambivalent from an empirical standpoint.
side note: why do strict rationalists love using the 'royal we'
But the other is people making claims of fact based on their experience. That's something people need to be responsible about, because it imposes a burden on the rest of us, and can be actively harmful.
So if somebody sees funny lights in the skies, great! I would like to hear about their experience. But suppose somebody uses that to claim that aliens are real and are coming to probe people's anuses and the government is covering that all up. That's not a neutral act! As we can see with the recent rise in conspiracism and a lot of specific wacko beliefs like Flat Earth theories, bad thinking is contagious. And when we look at antivax hysteria, it becomes obviously dangerous.
A comment like "subtle energy is real" is for me in the realm of irresponsible behavior. It's an unevidenced assertion of fact about the nature of the universe. And here, it's placed in contradiction to somebody being open-minded about the experience and trying to find a way to fit it into more useful frameworks of fact. So the "subtle energy is real" person is actually the one being dismissive here. I'd say the downvotes are reasonable.
It's ok if you feel that what I said was irresponsible. I know that is the mainstream view of things, and I expected a lot of backlash for posting a comment on this.
I usually hang out with the crowd where the experience and reality of subtle energy is not in doubt. Among them are the people for whom ... let's just say, something in then turns on (or something), and they are experiencing a number of phenomenas which includes subtle energy. Some of it are triggered by psychedelics, and some of it is not. For them, they experience what you feel: cognitive dissonance, anxiety, fear, anger. They freak out.
Among them are both people who actively sought it out ... and people who are open-minded skeptics. At that point, they are lost. The responsible thing at that point is to provide a framework to help them make sense of it. The ones who are skeptical appreciate it. They have the opportunity to explore and test out the claims for themselves.
Material reductionism has really done a number on Western civilization. The notion that existence is limited to what can be measured, and all claims to the contrary get painted with the brush of pseudoscience, to me, embodies the hubris that is holding science back. Not to diminish the achievements of science and academia – they just have one eye covered.
See the work of Dean Radin for a series of studies on nonmaterial phenomena, that I hope are the start of a wave of discovery.
One is that there are always Dean Radins. In the 1970s we had a wave of interest in ESP and other paranormal phenomena. In the 1920s it was spiritualism and seances. And there are many other, smaller excitements. We're always at the start of a wave of discovery around the mystical. Somehow it never comes! Anybody suggesting it will be different this time really needs to grapple with the other waves.
The other is that overliteral reductionism, definitely a force in science [1], has quite regularly been beaten back. When that happens, it comes through data. Look at the rise of quantum mechanics, which seemed so weird that Einstein talked about "spooky action at a distance". Eventually everybody was like, "Yes, turns out reality is just that weird," and now we're building things with it.
Like any force, reductionism can be harmful when overapplied. But it's a useful balance to other forces. The human mind is an extremely fertile place, where ideas rapidly grow and branch and flower. But all gardens need pruning, so we must assiduously apply Occam's razor lest we be overwhelmed with nonsense.
[1] To the point where it's a joke: https://xkcd.com/793/
The thing is, there are a lot of phenomena that are difficult to show evidence, even in a laboratory setting. There was one parapsychology experiment that was interesting: a skeptic and a non-skeptic both collaborated and created an experimental protocol. They then watched each other conduct the experiment. The idea being that, each of them have a vested interest in proving or disproving the hypothesis.
Somehow, the skeptic had experimental results showing nothing beyond chance, and the non-skeptic had experimental results showing there is a statistical significance beyond random chance for the phenomena under study.
That can be taken as that, there were some bias that were missing. But what if, for example, it could be as simple as, neither experimenters were truly neutral, and it affected what happened?
Anyways, I'm in the point of my life that I simply don't care enough to try to convince people to believe in one way or another. That emotions behave more than "just" emotion is not something that is special or extraordinary for me. Sometimes, I encounter people for whom they start experiencing this. I help them when I do.
With that, to your question:
> What if there are some things where scientific objectivity and scientific method breaks down, and is incapable of exploring?
Then that's a thing you can demonstrate. People are quite regularly proving that existing methods break down. Look at relativity, for example. The Michelson–Morley experiments started in the 1880s. Einstein didn't publish key work until 1905, and the revolution he started took a long time to play out.
You can find similar things happening with germ theory, which forced a revolution in medical practice. Or more recently, with figuring out the true cause of ulcers. Sure, there were a lot of nominally objective jerks who pushed back against these things, defending a failed orthodoxy. That approach does break down. But that's not the only thing going on. If it were, Einstein and the ulcer guy wouldn't have ended up with Nobel prizes.
Science isn't some incomprehensible activity. It's just a formalization of what we do every day, which is come up with ideas about how the world works and then put those ideas to the test.
In fact, you're doing it now. If you want to propose a framework that makes sense of phenomena, as you're doing here, then you don't get to stop half way. "Subtle energy" is one way to explain it. It's clearly useful to people in certain contexts. But there are all sorts of things like that. For example, people naively expect light things to fall slower than heavy things. Feathers fall slower than bowling balls, for example. There are all sorts of principles in naive physics [1] that are honestly not that bad. The same is true for folk medicine. An apple a day doesn't keep all doctors away, but it isn't a bad place to start.
So my issue with what you said isn't that you talk about "subtle energy". It's that you are casting a locally useful approximation as a universal truth. And you're doing that without acknowledging the gap or being willing to do the work. Our understanding of, say, thermal energy is the result of many lifetimes of dedicated, thoughtful work. If you want the power of objective fact, you have to earn it.
>We conclude that for both data sets that there is a small, but significant effect. This result corresponds to the recent findings of studies on distant healing and the ‘feeling of being stared at’. Therefore, the existence of some anomaly related to distant intentions cannot be ruled out. The lack of methodological rigour in the existing database prohibits final conclusions and calls for further research, especially for independent replications on larger data sets. There is no specific theoretical conception we know of that can incorporate this phenomenon into the current body of scientific knowledge. Thus, theoretical research allowing for and describing plausible mechanisms for such effects is necessary.
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Schmidt_DMILS_BJP.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228455060_The_feeli...
Radin has many similarly compelling studies with "small, but significant effects" that suggest the conventional understanding of reality needs to be expanded.
In a material reductionist paradigm, this makes zero sense; people simply cannot "feel" other people watching them, especially from different locations, and if they think they do then there must be some trick at play.
This paradigm's emergence hierarchy looks like this: (from) Physics (emerges) -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Consciousness
Radin suggests that the true order of emergence is: Consciousness -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Mind
Consciousness is fundamental and pervasive, like a quantum field. This offers, in my opinion, a satisfactory explanation for all nonmaterial/nonlocal phenomena, including intuition, reiki, transcendence, remote viewing, psychedelics, etc.
That some people incorrectly think they are channeling God's will is not evidence against these ideas.
edit: oops, just saw your reply to my other comment. sorry to split the threads apart.
Neurotypical humans anthropomorphize things excessively. So much so that whole societies get built around perception of pervasive mind, from the Greek gods and the Hindu pantheon to Christian and Muslim single pervasive intelligences to Mesmer's magnetism and the Jedi force. A lot of minds just like the idea that minds are fundamental
The obvious explanation for Radin's work is what's behind a lot of other fringe science: people looking for the thing they want until they find it. Over time any particular fad fades away due to lack of corroborating evidence and results. And then we get a new one, and another new one.
So personally, having spent a bunch of time digging into previous waves, I'm not going to invest a lot of time in this one. That a lot of minds like to think that mind is fundamental isn't surprising. But at this point neither do I think it's very interesting.
For example, the Chicxulub hypothesis was ridiculed until they found the crater. A more modern example is the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, which is even starting to sway previously-outspoken "skeptics" like Michael Shermer. These are geology examples, but the principle applies to all fields.
I don't think we have found the nonmaterial crater yet. But I do think that Radin and those before him have found something that warrants taking a serious look at. Not to mention that in the past, we didn't have access to the technology that powers the potential and scale of these studies. Scientific progress is nonlinear, and I think it's worth shaking the snowglobe even if (especially if?) positive results would constitute a paradigm shift.
It's clear you've thought about this a lot too. If you feel so inclined, I'd urge you to check out a Dean Radin talk. Here are a couple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sc0vlDmris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-9BxI0zk-M
Another thing that has faded away is the 1970s notion of ESP. E.g,, consider the history of Zener cards, which had at least two waves of popularity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards
In the 1970s ESP got a lot of attention. As did things like remote viewing. There was a definite fad for those concepts, and there was significant academic interest and funding. But nobody had any replicable results, so it all faded away, just like the UFO craze did.
And sorry, but as I said, I have no interest in Radin's work. As I said, you haven't grappled at all with the long history of fringe-science failure and the many commonalities between the failures. If you can't do that, you can't say why Radin might be different from all the similar guys I wasted time on in the past.
>In the 1970s ESP got a lot of attention. As did things like remote viewing. There was a definite fad for those concepts, and there was significant academic interest and funding. But nobody had any replicable results, so it all faded away
I don't think so. Here's a list of peer-reviewed journal articles from 1964 onwards, including some replication studies: http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm. It's fine though, you're clearly not interested in changing your mind.
I'm sure the same is true for you. Are you busily looking into each of the latest QAnon theories? Are you carefully investigating every alternative remedy somebody is selling? Have you carefully listened to somebody from every sect of every religion? Nah. It's not even possible to be as open-minded to everything as you want me to be to your personal pet thing.
I'll note that you aren't willing to put in any work learning enough about past paranormal fads to explain why your personal fave is any different than previous ones. It seems odd that you expect me to do a bunch more work than you're willing to do yourself.
> Then that's a thing you can demonstrate.
Then you are more clever than I am. I have no idea how to test some of this stuff, let alone do it with double-blind study.
It isn't as if science is incomprehensible to me. I understand and apply the scientific method, have run experiments. I also know its limits.
Part of it is that the most reliable instrument for this stuff is the consciousness itself. What is under observation changes when it is observed, and more troublesome (from the perspective of trying explore this scientifically), is that the observer is also changed by the observed.
Some of the phenomena won't happen if there is too much disbelief in it.
Do you have any ideas on how to experiment with stuff like this?
About the only time that gets interesting is when a life-long skeptic have some parts of their consciousness wake up, and now they are trying to figure out what is wrong with them. They were not looking for this stuff -- far from it. And here they are, finding themselves with these phenomena, inducing a lot of cognitive dissonance. When I have encountered someone like that, I point out resources for them to read. They are free to test and verify it for themselves. It works for them because they are capable of verifying it for themselves.
Everyone else have to start from scratch with things like meditation and yoga. And that is going to depend upon the teacher, quality of teaching, the transmission, and how you practice.
A good example is the standing meditation from Taoist traditions. One of the early stages of the phenomena are spontaneous movements in the bowels, or spontaneous movements of the limbs triggered from the early stages of movement of subtle energy. It tends to freak people out, because it is not something that is so easily attributable to internal experience.
The problem is that reliably being able to get to that point to experience for yourself requires dedicated training. A lot of groups might think 1 hr standing meditation is a kind of holy grail of practice ... but I know of one group that drops beginners into 6 hr sessions. It is a huge investment of time, for both student and teacher. Complicating that even further is that there is quite a bit of fraud and abuse aimed at conning people.
> Some of the phenomena won't happen if there is too much disbelief in it. Do you have any ideas on how to experiment with stuff like this?
That right there is a testable proposition. Put somebody in a soundproof, lightproof room who can reliably experience the phenomenon. Randomly surround them with groups of believers, disbelievers, or nobody at all. Repeat until you have a large N. If the phenomenon happening is truly sensitive to disbelievers, you should see clear correlations.
More broadly, there's a long, long history of people making claims of mental phenomena and constructing tests of those claims. So it's not me you should be asking. It's the broader literature. And the rise of things like EKGs, fMRIs,and TMS means we're opening up all sorts of new ways to test claims about mind.
If you're serious about claiming these are objective phenomena and that your model for them has more explanatory power, then you should jump in and start doing that work. And if not, maybe just stick to being honest by using phrases like "I once experienced" and "I believe".
>Do they really not deserve a second thought?
People do deserve a second thought, as do enduring ideas, but not always a third. For some of us, on some matters, this is our third thought, or thirtieth thought, or more.
I am happy to put a name to my downvote, and to explain.
After many grumpy years becoming increasingly more despondent about people (friends, even partners) who would carry on about this "energy" nonsense, I became equally intolerable myself. The topic would elicit angry, knee-jerk reactions and loud denouncements, if only because I was so sick and tired of it.
At some point, seven years ago, give or take, I had a revelation vis-à-vis the linguistics of it all.
I would let hosh speak for themselves, but for many people I have known the "energy" isn't real (or fake!) in any physical sense. They are not trying to express a strong ontological opinion about a human's ability to control a specific-yet-ill-defined force of nature. They are using the word as an all-encompassing metaphor for a large, flexible, ever-changing collection of experiences, both sensory and internal: sometimes your subtle body language, or emotional cues (intentional or unintentional), or their own projections of your mental state. There's probably a more precise vocabulary for any specific instance or combination of sensations, but many people are satisfied by sorting their experiences into just "feels good" and "feels bad", or the slightly-better-sounding "positive energy" and "negative energy".
I still remember someone who befriended me recounting the why. They had taken the initiative to walk through a large gathering, and seek me out because they "felt the energy I was sending them". I definitely was not in control of any energy, never mind sending it. It took time to pry out the specifics, but ultimately what they meant was that I looked friendly and seemed engaged in the conversation I was having.
I don't doubt that most people making statements about energy that they feel (or are "sending"), are genuinely having some internal experience and are describing it. But they aren't producing vibrations from their energy gland and evoking energy particles towards my energy gland. At least thus far that is not a thing we know humans to have and do.
Even after realizing this, and becoming more contained in my reactions, I still find the term imprecise at best, and an enabler of harm at worst. I will continue to discourage it whenever I can.
To directly address hosh's phrasing, the closest I could come to agreeing-to-disagree on "Subtle energy is real though", would be to phrase it as "The idea of a 'subtle energy' is a useful metaphor that sometimes helps some people reason about their experiences". Saying it "is real" in a definitive physical manner is ridiculous, by the precise dictionary definition: "deserving or inviting derision or mockery; absurd".
I agree with you, subtle energy is not physical. I have written about it in other comments ... and like you, I feel fatigued about having to explain this all the time.
Since you took the time to write about it, I will try my best to write it here too:
I do not mean that the idea of subtle energy is a useful metaphor. Subtle energy is real. Subtle energy is not the same as the physical energy described in physics.
What I mean by "real" is not the same "real" as in a definitive, physical manner. That gets into the areas beyond "extraordinary". If you already find the idea of "subtle energy is real" is ridiculous, I don't really see the point in continuing down this line of discussion.
One of the characteristics about subtle energy that is not described by physical energy is that subtle energy carries information, among them, emotions, concepts, awareness, sentience, etc. It will move and change based upon the information it carries.
Consciousness (another problematic term) can experience and sense subtle energy, but it is in turn, affected by it.
In other words, the physical description of science is a useful metaphor for describing subtle energy. Unfortunately, you are right in that many people would borrow from authority implied by using scientific terms to lend validity to these claims. That is harmful, not just in the sense that people will take action on it and do stupid things. It is also harmful in the sense that it assumes the scientific method can describe everything ... and I don't think it is capable of the adequately exploring subtle energy or consciousness. (But there are people who are trying; more props to them).
There is no "energy gland". I get annoyed when I read up claims like that. Rather, consciousness is generating and receiving subtle energy. There may be such a thing as subtle anatomy -- non-physical structures that can transceive subtle energy; but they are a part of the makeup of consciousness. "Gland" is not really a useful metaphor to describe them, because it is more useful the distinguish the physical gland, and the consciousness of that particular gland.
I have serious doubts that this stuff can ever by objectively explored. I doubt any mechanistic form of technology can really measure it.
I started qualifying the term "energy" with "subtle energy". People are then free to agree or disagree, even reject the whole notion of "subtle energy".
Do you actually understand what the word "energy" means? What form of energy is it? Can you demonstrate with a controlled scientific test this energy?
Subtle energy is something that can be experienced. Among those who do experience it, if it is a hallucination, it's a shared hallucination.
It has something to do with consciousness. I have severe doubts it can ever be describable or disprovable with a controlled scientific test. That is, I thiknk there are limits to what the scientific method can determine. I don't think it is measurable, at least not with the technology we can construct. It is not electromagnetic, though some forms may be experienced as having electric or magnetic properties. But one property that is not described by physical description is that it carries information: emotion, awareness, sentience, in varying degrees.
However, I know of people who have tried, though I haven't seen what they published about it.
It is replicable: do the correct set of practices long enough, and you can experience it. (And this is why people freak out when those practices actually works). However, I don't think it can ever be objectively measured.
Psychedelics can sometimes trigger the experience of it. With the use of microdosing and clinical applications of psychedelics becoming mainstream, I expect more people will start encountering this.
So yes, people experience love, fill inspired, or feel exuberance, and those are subtle energy in different forms. But it also has substance. Someone skilled in its use can intensify it, purify it, project it, and influence someone else's mood with it.