Vital Healing

VITAL HEALING

We have been taught that the Sun is fueled by hydrogen and its wondrous radiations keep the worlds in motion. The truth is really much simpler. For the Sun, like other stars, is a center of pure energy which builds and sustains the system that surrounds it. No wonder the Sun has been worshiped for ages as the source whence “we live and move and have our being.”

I

ENERGY! ENERGY! ENERGY!

Everything is Energy! Everything in and around us is composed of energy. We cannot escape that fact. Still, we go through life almost oblivious to that simple but very important fact.

That situation prevails because our senses are less than fully developed. Actually, we have not just to expand our present senses, but to go beyond taste, smell, touch, hearing, and vision. “You think that in order to exist one must eat, drink and go to the bathroom. There is nothing more misleading than the five senses.” (Kyriacos Markides in The Magus of Strovolos) At deeper levels of experience every cell and part of a person’s being is a center of consciousness. Further there is no separation between us and an object outside of us.

Color psychologists tell us that the ancient Greeks had no word for the color purple. That suggests that humans not all that long ago were unaware of part of the spectrum of light which we today experience and recognize. Time marches on and so do human capabilities. Humanity has come a long way, but yet has much further to advance.

How many previously unimaginable things have been discovered and verified in the course of the last few hundred years? From electricity to radioactivity, low frequency to high frequency energies, infrared to ultraviolet, and ultrasound to cosmic rays. How many are yet to be discovered and detailed? How many are yet to be recognized not just by machines but also by humans directly?

The pinnacle of science and philosophy has been thought to have been reached many times. Two hundred years ago, then a hundred years later. And right now, according to more than one writer, “all major scientific discoveries – natural selection, the double helix, the big bang, relativity and quantum theories – have been made. Only refinements are left and no more revolutions or revelations are yet to be had. Just details.” John Horgan in The End of Science

Let us dare to imagine that there are more rays and waves yet to be fathomed! That there is much more to discover and explore.

Humanity has apparently evolved to see additional colors in the course of two or three millennia. Someday, the human race will advance to sense more fully the play of energies in and around us. We will stretch the spectrum of our awareness towards that which seers and sages have accomplished in past ages.

The halos perceived and painted around holy men are facts. Though commonly discounted or ignored, such phenomena persist into the present. Yes, only a few humans have sufficient means to enjoy the view, so to speak. But, just think about that Color Purple.

Along with the advance of science and technology, we have become more and more materially oriented. We focus on the material world increasingly while forgetting or downplaying any other possible aspects of reality. Many of us dare not even imagine such things as auras.

Still in almost every time, place and climate, human beings have experienced magic and miracles, ghosts and spirits, angels and devils. None of these forces have yet to be explained or measured, collected or categorized in a scientific sense. All the while, vast numbers of men and women attest – at least on occasion – to their validity based on one experience or another.

It seems clear – at least to some observers – that animals see, sense, experience many things that most modern humans don’t. Studies show that many animals have the ability to see in the ultraviolet range and others actively sense into the infrared spectrum of light. While gaining intellect, humans appear to have lost parts of sensory or para-sensory abilities which belong to animals. One day, we will recover them while adding others.

Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics, put forth many times in many ways that, “Matter is condensed energy.” While Einstein explained the relationship between matter and energy, he also pronounced via the fundamentals of physics on the substance of life itself. That every thing is energy in one state or another. Energy (vitality), not matter, is the ultimate reality.

We might use Plato’s allegory cave in order to get a sense of the deeper reality of things. The story focuses on prisoners from birth who are shackled so that they can look in one direction and see only shadows of actions and hear merely echoes of voices. Plato’s narrative suggested that human perception of the world is essentially a shadowy approximation of true reality.

We do not have direct awareness but perceive effects. Our own senses and vibrations, constantly changing, in fact limit our full awareness of the greater reality. Everything is in motion. Our senses do not perceive fact but glimpses and hints of the truth. Science itself has proven that all “materials” are in motion. Not a cell in your body or your neighbor’s is the same as it was seven years ago. Such is the case because you and I and our worlds are constantly changing because of the energetic foundations of our being.

Physicists are now rediscovering truths which the ancient Greeks and Indians knew long ago. That the visible, tangible world is not quite as it appears to our senses.

At the atomic level, the components of the most solid granite and the hardest steel are in constant motion. Such movement is so fast and concentrated that we recognize only a stable-appearing vision and touch.

Dark matter and dark energy are just now beginning to be recognized as mysterious invisible components of the universe which make up a vast majority of its mass and energy. Dark Matter acts as an attractive force, holding galaxies and other cosmic structures together through gravity. Dark Matter emits or reflects minimal to no light, while yet having a gravitational influence.

Dark Energy, on the other hand, is a repulsive force causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. Dark Energy is a force which counteracts gravity and pushes space outward.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy together make up about 95% of the universe. Dark matter accounts for approximately 27%, while dark energy accounts for roughly 68%. The remaining 5% is made up of ordinary matter.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy have been discovered through studies of the macrocosm – astronomy and cosmology. Yet, they offer us clues about the microcosm – the subtle energies which give us life and health. Both macrocosmic and microcosmic energies are yet to be measured, even while they are constantly active everywhere and in everything.

II
Humans are composed of
ENERGY!

It can be quite startling to realize the limited state of our consciousness: our lack of awareness of the true state of things. Here are a few more hints to expand and enlighten our understanding. To give a sense of wonder and possibility of what is yet to be revealed to each of us.

While you sit reading this book in your easy chair at 123 Main Street in Earth City, the planet is rotating on its axis at 1000 miles per hour. At the same time, Terra is racing around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour, and the whole system is hurtling around a central Sun at 100,000 miles per hour. Whew! Enough to make one’s head swim when compared to what can be a dizzying speed of 60 miles per hour which we experience when driving a car. But, all this occurs without our slightest awareness.

Internally, the heart is thumping away at around 80 beats a minute while we breathe at about 12 times a minute – all this of which we are relatively unconscious. Nerve impulses and brain actions in uncountable numbers go on constantly. Trillions of cells are about their own business in every organ and tissue midst your larger whole. Billions of microbes – more than the population of the planet – are active on our very skin at any instant. Many times that number are constantly at work in the human intestine in their needful tasks. Again, all this without a hint of our awareness.

At the ultramicroscopic level, the particles of every atom are moving at fantastic speeds. These electrons are racing at rates comparable to those of the planet and the Sun in their great orbits. Again, we are totally oblivious of this activity within our own personal space.

Yet, our energetic nature connects and eventually opens us to all. There is nothing solid about us, just energy. You and I are energy. That although we have learned to perceive ourselves as solid material entities. All the while, every bit of us is constantly in motion. No matter what appearances may suggest otherwise.

The fact of the vital, energetic nature of things, known long ago by the Greek Democritus, was resurrected by our own Einstein and his fellow quantum physicists.

The western system of medicine is the only one on planet Earth which does not recognize the vital, energetic nature of the human being. We have become lost in systems of practice, business, paperwork, etc. The substance of human patients, is almost impossible to grasp by tests and surveys. Humans are multi-dimensional beings who require much subtler approaches than generally used.

Hippocrates and Pythagoras perceived the vital energy in the luminous bodies of humans. Hippocrates called this indwelling power enormon and the restorative principle physis. “… the connecting thread in his system was the presence of an all-healing nature that directs the energies within the patient. The physician must ally himself with these internal energies to effect treatment.” John Pierrakos in Core Energetics

Hippocrates was versed and practiced in many kinds of medicine. But, historical records suggest he was also quite aware of “many able men who did not make use of bodily medicine, but did quite well with the faculties of the soul.”

It is about time for the West to tune into the practical understandings of the energies which many traditions and practitioners use with less time and expense – and often with more success. Fortunately, many of those traditions have made inroads into the western model. Limited though they are, a large percentage of the population have some familiarity with “energy work” through one avenue or another.

Homeopathy has been around for over two hundred years and prescribes remedies in which the vital property is said to be “only energy.” Acupuncture was drawn out of the darkness after President Nixon’s contacts with China in the 1970s. Thence, the idea of energy meridians and acupuncture points, which have no material basis, are at least somewhat known in the West.

The word chakra has also become part of modern language. Drawing on East Indian teachings, the chakras are understood to a modest degree as “energy centers” which channel consciousness and control body functions.

Prana, chi, ki, mana, and a host of other names drawn from non-western sources have gained respect by alternative practitioners and their patients. It is only a matter of time before orthodox medicine makes “discoveries” of things known for generations, even centuries by people in other parts of the world.

III

Humans absorb and radiate
ENERGY!

Most everyone has had one or more experiences in which they felt the vibes of others, saw ghosts or spirits, heard voices of distant beings, sensed things without the use of usual organs. Maybe you knew who was calling before the telephone rang or who was knocking at your door without warning.

We don’t take our sense organs with us when we roam away from our bodies during the hours of sleep. But, we do experience and sense nonetheless with our whole inner beings. Sometimes, we also bring back vital remembrances on waking.

In a similar manner, we sometimes “slip free” from usual awareness to “tune into” subtler aspects of life. We go deeper and connect to “energies” which are closer to the real powers and substance behind the outer aspects of life.

These powers are constantly active even though we are usually oblivious to them. Sages and yogis suggest that human beings are generally aware of only a tiny fraction of the forces and influences which touch and sway us. To be fully conscious involves “lifting the veils” to channels which are best left closed to most of us – most of the time.

Still, human beings are open systems and share numbers of invisible forces with others. As we exist ultimately as vortices of forces within and amidst oceans and rivers of energies beyond, we are subject to large numbers of influences. And know it or not, the kingdom of heaven is in fact in our very midst.

The human body, as we generally perceive it, is much like the tip of an iceberg. It is well known that an iceberg, which can appear so massive and imposing to view, is only ten percent visible. That idea bears reinforcing. Fully ninety percent of an iceberg lies under water and is practically invisible.

In a similar manner, the bulk of a human being – including our inner bodies and organs – is hidden from common view. It is “under water” so to speak, except to those few who can perceive subtle energies. Those being the clairvoyants and seers of past and present.

Most of us are like the blind men of Hindustan who could only perceive parts of an elephant by touch. While sighted people may better sense the details of a huge elephant at close range, we still miss out on the energetic nature of that beast as well as our fellow humans and the rest of the natural world.

Through spiritual practices or evolution we will come to some kind of conscious awareness of the energies in and around us. As we do, we also recognize that each of us receives, assimilates and sends forth a number of forces into our environments. One day, it will be shown scientifically that mental telepathy and emotional sensitivity result from the perception of subtle forces on the inner bodies of the human form.

Science has shied away from studying such phenomena. But eventually, the latter will become so commonly experienced that thorough study will be demanded by the public. Then we will begin to understand many things long hidden or misunderstood. One of these will be the power to deliberately influence another being toward its benefit – health or detriment – disease or worse.

IV

Ancient adepts manipulated Energy
as we do matter.

The ancients, and especially their masters, were much more aware of the forces which surrounded them then and continue so in modern times. In those bygone days, they “knew” the energies in which they lived and moved. While adepts directed invisible forces through knowledge and will, commoners watched and sometimes withered at the seeming miracles performed amongst them.

One day, modern men and women will wake up to the omnipresence of subtle energies which are constantly at play in and around us. Presently, we are largely in the dark on such things. But eventually, what we have called miracles will be understood as law-abiding events stimulated by energies originating on higher planes – dimensions of the Kingdom in our very midst.

While we moderns lag behind the ancients in conscious experience, we are beginning to intellectually understand E N E R G Y as fundamental to our daily lives. At least the concept and technology of it. ENERGY and POWER are found so frequently in our conversation because they are equally common in our daily activities – if not in our conscious awareness.

The idea and word ENERGY are hard at work today. Practically everyone in the modern world from kindergarten up understands the word. Children need to guard their energy and their personal space. Adults try to replenish their energies with vitamins, diet and exercise. Therapists suggest that patients scan their energies. It is not just nerves that worry modern people, it is their energy. People try to conserve energy for their wallet and for their health. The power company recommends that customers do energy audits on their homes. Coal energy is being replaced by petroleum energy, electrical energy, wind energy and atomic energy. Information technology uses subtle electronic energy to transfer and manipulate vast amounts of data every day and practically everywhere. Energy, force, and power are well recognized elements of the present age.

That although we deal with them much differently than humans did millennia ago. Our distant brethren lived on the same planet Earth, but in quite different worlds. While our lives are in so many ways powered and energized artificially, theirs were influenced by natural forces without machinery, pollution, and distractions. It was quite common then for all manner of people to sense the energies which bridge the gaps among the dimensions of life. The ancients were more open to the stimulation of all sorts of spiritual, mental, emotional and physical forces. Closer to nature, the vital world, unadulterated life. 

As civilization developed, men of power gradually took over the reins of medicine and religion as they did in other trades which became “professions.” They blended the wisdom of the times by marrying the powers of priest and physician. Then, energies flowed through the same hands in magical, medical, and religious veins, so to speak. In bygone times, Wisdom was synonymous with Magic.

The ancients had many names for the carrier of these energies. Plato and the Pythagoreans called it The Soul of the World. The Hindus referred to it as the Aether. Others named it the universal Proteus. Theurgists called it Living Fire and Spirit of Light. Finally, it was tagged as Magnes. The word being the root for both magic and magnetism.

Through deep studies of nature’s secrets, priest-physicians were able to become mages, hierophants, druids, etc. Then, they were able to produce amazing effects. Sometimes, effects were accomplished before viewers as the mages used wands and sticks. For the most part, such implements were merely pointers. A real magician-healer, in the likes of Moses, needed only to extend his finger, to direct his gaze, to say a word for his power to go forth stirring the ethers to produce marvels of all sorts.

In the case of healers, past and present, the best of them possess keen intellect and wisdom to properly apply the powers which pass through them. They also have the sense to place illness and injury in perspective with life and death, spirit and environment. Some modern professionals demonstrate these qualities, often unconsciously. “A sincere minister, a dedicated doctor – people like these are often, without knowing it themselves spiritual healers. They take a pulse, put an arm around a sufferer, and act as unconscious channels for God's healing energy.” (Olga Worrall in The Gift of Healing)

What has been missing often over recent ages has been inclusive experience and ease with Energy: an awareness of the natural forces flowing around and in and through human beings. Sadly, expertise with energy has been forgotten and ignored, denied and denigrated because it doesn’t fit with the expanding “scientific” mindset and materialistic prejudices of the western world.

Still, accounts of the wonders of past ages and diverse places can easily be gathered together for the student to consider. Believers will bask in so-called miracles. Skeptics will dismiss anything they can’t understand or categorize. But, somewhere in between lies the truth. And, understanding of vitality-energy-force-power allows the truth to be at least gradually understood.

Looking back over the centuries, it is not hard to imagine “the laying on of hands” appearing as a means to aid fellow humans in distress from the very earliest times. For ages, there were no other options. Remedies and prescriptions, medicine and physicians made their appearance much later. Thousands of years later.

Healing by hands can only be traced into recent millennia. But, the idea for this practice must have occurred instinctively in the human consciousness. As a dog licks it pups. Or as a mother naturally carries a sick child to her breast in tender and often healing care.

Mothers, then and now, do most of the magical, mystical and medical work in the world. And that often without realizing the wonders passing through themselves and into their children and others. Such actions emulate the great magician-priest-healers over the ages. Actually, it is more accurate to say that the latter have emulated the works of mothers past and present!

Images of Madonnas the world round attest to the power of healing hands. The cure of diseases by the application of the hands appears to have been well known among the nations of the Orient including China and India. Athanasius Kircher as well as Jesuit missionaries to China in the 18th century witnessed the practice of curing diseases by the imposition of the hands, breathing and other simple processes. These methods were said to have been used in China for many ages.

The Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Hebrews and much of the Eastern world were familiar with these means to healing. Carvings in rocks coming down from early Egyptian times, show healers placing a hand on the belly and another on the back. Similar practices, like the one shown above, have been recognized around the world.

Numerous reports note works performed in temples, such as those of Serapis and Aesculapius, dedicated to healing at sites surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. There, priest-healers prepared their charges not just for physical relief and healing, but also for transformations at deeper levels. Healing of the sick was said to proceed through those servants of the Deity.

The smallest hurts sometimes increase and rage
More than all art of physic [medicine] can assuage;
Sometimes the fury of the worst disease 
The hand, by gentle stroking, will appease.
Solon, 6th century B.C. Greek

“Even as there is only one nature, one life, one health,
there is, only one disease, one remedy, one healing.”
Mesmer

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