The Biofield
In my last piece, ‘New Age Therapy’, I referred to the US National Institutes of Health Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) classification of energy medicine into two basic categories: biofield therapies & bio-electromagnetic-based therapies. Biofield therapies are defined by the NCCAM as those therapies that affect the energy fields that “purportedly” surround and interpenetrate the human body. These therapies all involve touch or the placement of hands in or through the biofields. Reiki, Bio-energy and Qi Gung are all good examples of well known biofield therapies. 

The qualification of the body’s biofields “that purportedly surround and interpenetrate the human body” indicates the problematic nature of the concept of the biofield. The difficulty is that of specifying what ‘biofields’ actually are. This is especially so since they are clearly distinguished from bio-electromagnetic fields. The body’s bio-electromagnetic fields have been researched, especially those fields relating to the heart, and have had a wide range of conventional medical diagnostic and treatment applications developed for them. The use of the body’s bio-electromagnetic fields in conventional medicine has been usefully summarized in William Rand’s interview with James Oschman, see note 1 below. The reason that it is possible for western science to accommodate this kind of research and its technological implications is that the underlying concept, in this case electromagnetism, is fully integrated within the worldview of conventional science.

Science recognizes only four forces as being responsible for all of the observable phenomena of the universe:

Strong nuclear force
Weak nuclear force
Electromagnetic force
Gravitational force

The concept of the ‘biofield’ seems to have no clear connection to any of these accepted forms of energy. Rather than ‘biofield’ most people would more usually refer to this type of energy as ‘subtle energy’ to describe what it is that they are experiencing when they work with modalities such as Reiki, Bio-energy and Qi Gung. But even if we are to talk about 'subtle energy’ the question still arises as to which, if any, of the four recognized forces it relates to?

My feeling is that it relates to none of them; and that this is the core of the whole problem in gaining scientific acceptance for any form of biofield energy therapy. There is no consensus on what a biofield is or indeed whether such a thing even exists nor does there seem to be any way of clarifying the issue within the framework of conventional medical science at the present time. I am equally certain that this energy will eventually become visible to science and that with this fresh diagnostic and treatment approaches will be developed. But that time is not now! Why should we feel any confidence that such an energy even exists? The answer is ‘direct experience’. Anyone who takes the trouble to get acquainted with these modalities will quickly realize that they are based on a very real ‘something’ which is, as yet, difficult to define.

Fortunately many doctors in medical establishments worldwide have been prepared to listen to the personal testimony and to observe the reactions of people who have experienced the benefits of these types of therapy. The results are so universally positive that it has led many leading hospitals and specialist medical units in countries like the United States to formally incorporate modalities such as Reiki and Bio-energy into their treatment programs.

If you wish to follow up on the adoption of complementary therapies within conventional medical contexts please see my article ‘Integrative Medicine’ within the section on Conventional Medicine & Complementary Therapy on this site.

Subtle Energy
Surely if there were such a thing as ‘subtle energy’ then modern science, with all of its sophistication and investigative power, would have found it by now? Dr. William Tiller has been a professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University since 1964, and chairman of that department from 1966 to 1971. As Professor Emeritus, he has been actively involved in research at Stanford since 1992. Apart from his work within the context of conventional science he has conducted experiments in the area of ‘subtle energy’ and developed sophisticated models to integrate this understanding with advanced scientific concepts. 

“The body of experimental data regarding the probable existence of "subtle energies" is growing more appreciable as time moves on. The idea is taking shape that the four physical forces, correct within what they refer to, are not sufficient to explain all of Nature's phenomena, especially regarding mind and consciousness.”  
                                                                          Dr. William Tiller

Dr. William Tiller has set out this advanced theoretical frameworks in his books (see Note 1 below for details).

Dark Matter & Dark Energy: The ‘missing’ 95% of Reality
Advanced scientific research in Astronomy and Sub-atomic Physics have demonstrated that our commonsense view of reality is, to say the least, very limited. The most important scientific breakthrough of 2003, the confirmation of the Dark Matter Dark Energy hypothesis (see Note 2 below for some related links) was possibly also one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs for humankind since it has fundamentally altered our understanding of the nature of reality itself.

Dark Matter is matter that cannot be ‘seen’ (that is, detected) by any device or instrument known to humankind. Dark Energy is, correspondingly, energy that is equally invisible to us. If they are ‘dark’ how do we know that they exist? Until the 2003 experiment, we didn’t. Their existence was merely suspected, a hypothesis that made sense of the behavior of that part of the universe that we could observe. Now the big surprise lies not only in the fact that this dark ‘stuff’ has been shown to actually exist, but also in the volumes of dark matter and energy that have been calculated to exist as compared to the matter that we can ‘see’. The percentages are as follows:

Dark Energy constitutes 70% of the universe
Dark Matter constitutes 25% of the universe
Normal Matter constitutes 5% of the universe

That is, the entire observable universe, everything that we can see from the room that we are sitting in now to the furthest galaxy accounts for no more than about 5% of what is actually there! The vast bulk of the universe is simply invisible to us.

As the great atomic scientist Ernest Rutherford said, “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine it to be, it is stranger than we are capable of imagining it to be”.

Broadly speaking, most of us work with an understanding of matter and reality based upon a scientific viewpoint which is now well over 200 years old, or perhaps we should say, over 200 years out of date! I am referring, of course, to ‘modern’ atomic theory. First postulated by Democritus in the 5th century BCE almost 2,500 years ago, it was re-stated in the modern era by John Dalton 200 years ago in 1803! The concept of reality as composed of atoms has by now become a part of the familiar intellectual ‘furniture’ of most of our minds. It’s how we think about matter. We naturally assume that everything is made up of atoms and we continue to teach our children that this is so.

Alice in Wonderland: Relativity & Quantum Mechanics

A real effort is required in order to update our understanding to incorporate some of the implications of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics. Developed during the early years of the twentieth century and now over 80 years old they still retain their capacity to disturb through their puzzling and counter-intuitive description of the bizarre behavior of what can only laughingly be called ‘normality’.

Relativity Theory predicts that time itself will flow at different rates for different observers in relation to their acceleration / de-acceleration relative to each other. Time is not a fixed constant, it flows at different rates for different people. This prediction was experimentally confirmed with the first space flights in the early sixties. 

In the classic ‘Double Slit Experiment’ Quantum Mechanics asserts that a single Electron fired at a wall with only two openings or slits in it will pass through both of them at the same time! If the Electron is pictured as a particle, an ‘atomic’ style object, then this is clearly impossible, but it is nevertheless experimentally exactly what does happen. Clearly Electrons and other particles are not particles in the sense that we ordinarily think of them! For one thing a different kind of logic applies to the quantum world than we apply in our commonsense view of the everyday world. Basic commonsense logic tells us that if something is ‘here’ then it cannot also be ‘over there’, everything that there is either ‘here’ or ‘not here’. But in Quantum Mechanics there are an infinite range of possibilities corresponding to adding together some amount of “here” and some amount of “not here” to derive the location! Our minds seem to lack the equipment necessary to grasp the true state of matter as revealed to us by our own science!

Another interesting example from Quantum Mechanics is the concept of ‘quantum non-locality’ that could be of interest in the context of distance healing:‘One experiment demonstrating quantum non-locality involves atoms of calcium that are put into an unstable energy state so that they emit a pair of identical photons traveling in opposite directions at the speed of light. Since they are both moving apart at the speed of light, their velocities add, so they are actually separating at twice the speed of light.……As one of the photons passes through a polarizer that changes a property called spin, the spin of the other photon changes also. The first photon appears to send its twin a message describing what happened to it, no matter how far away they are from each other or how fast they are separating. Since relativity theory does not allow for any kind of message that is faster than the speed of light, one can only conclude that there is some means of instantaneous communication between the two photons that were once together in the original calcium atom. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.” It is as though the separation of the particles is an illusion—once particles are paired they will always be paired. Since all matter in the universe was once gathered together in one place, before the big bang, all matter in the universe continues to be in relation to all other matter.’
     
                               Interview by William Rand with James Oschman

William Rand’s interview with James Oschman is available for free download; see Note 3 below for details.

The Implicate Order & Superstrings
David Bohm was an assistant Professor at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies, where he worked closely with Albert Einstein, and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College of the University of London. He was one of the leading quantum physicists of our age. It was the bizarre characteristics of ‘quantum non-locality’ that led him in the early 1980s to formulate an explanation of this behavior. The levels of connectivity and communication displayed by particles that are moving away from each other, he argued, is explained by their sharing a deeper dimension of reality. He called this deeper level of reality the Implicate Order, the main feature of which is the "unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders" and that “the Implicate Order has to be extended into a multidimensional reality”. These ideas, especially Bohm’s holographic model of reality, were popularized by Michael Talbot in his book ‘The Holographic Universe’ (see Note 4 below).

More recently (at least since 1985) Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics have been reconciled to provide a single consistent account of reality. This model is known as Superstring Theory (see Note 5 below). Now we usually think of reality as consisting of three dimensions plus time. The simple model of Superstring Theory postulates a universe composed of no less than 9 dimensions with some versions going up to 26 dimensions including the 3 dimensions familiar to our senses. The additional dimensions are conceived as having been ‘folded into’ the visible three dimensions at the time of the universe’s creation. In such models there are plenty of places, one would think, for that 95% of the universe that we cannot see, to hide! 

As long as we can believe that the bizarre properties and behaviors of reality exposed by Relativity Theory, Quantum Mechanics and Superstring Theory cannot and do not manifest on the gross day to day level of our own lives then we can ignore these findings and go on with our commonsense view of the world. But we should never deceive ourselves that the underlying reality that ‘supports’ us is anything less than extremely complicated and very far from being the simple deterministic machine that our commonsense leads us to think that it is!

Synchronicity: The ‘Science’ of Coincidence
It was the great psychologist Carl Jung who first made a direct connection between the heightened emotional states that he encountered in his psychotherapeutic practice and strange or bizarre physical manifestations. During the course of his therapy sessions bizarre physical events happened that seemed to be symbolically linked to his patient’s personal transformation and dream states. Jung termed this phenomena Synchronicity and called it ‘an acausal connecting principle’ (see Note 6 below). Jung developed this concept over many years of correspondence with one of the worlds leading physicists, Wolfgang Pauli (see Note 7 for details). The underlying idea is that we can affect reality through strongly felt emotional states.

When we do this unconsciously we tend to have ‘accidents’ and even ‘illnesses’ that closely relate to and symbolize our unconscious emotional conflicts. When we do this consciously we are practicing the type of philosophies extolled in books like Napoleon Hill’s bestselling ‘Think and Grow Rich’. This positive application of the ‘synchronicity principle’ is often used by top performers such as business leaders and athletes. By constant repetition we can ‘plant’ positive goals and targets into our unconscious mind which then ‘tend’ to manifest themselves in actual material achievements.

Now all of this is very far removed from the conceptual models and technologies used in day to day therapies. But to suppose that science in some way ‘forbids’ or ‘disproves’ the concept of subtle energy is just plain wrong. The very best it could say was that it can neither prove nor disprove it with its current conceptual models and technology. At the ‘cutting edge’ of science, where the really fundamental research is being done, they now have their work cut out trying to find the 95% of the universe that is currently ‘missing’. My bet is that subtle energy will eventually be found in there somewhere, amongst the ‘missing’ 95% of the universe that is, for the time being, invisible to us!

Resources
1) Tiller, Dr. William  
    Conscious Acts of Creation
    Science and Human Transformation: Subtle Energies, Intentionalityand Consciousness

William Tiller’s article ‘Subtle Energy Actions and Physical Domain Correlations’ is available at several sites on the internet:
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/SubtleEnergyActions.html

2) Dark Matter Dark Energy Hypothesis Confirmation
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3330527.stm
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994314 
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/darkenergy_folo_010410.html

3) William Rand’s interview with James Oschman is available on William Rand’s Reiki web

site at www.reiki.org  select ‘Free Downloads’ on the Home Page and then select ‘Science and

the Human Energy Field’ to download the free PDF file of the interview.

4) Bohm, D ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’
Talbot, M ‘The Holographic Universe’
David Bohm Links: http://www.muc.de/~heuvel/bohm/

5) For a brief overview of Superstring Theory:
http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/GraduateAdmissions/greene/greene.html

6) Synchronicity
Jung, C.G. ‘Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle’ 
Peat, F.D. ‘Synchronicity: The bridge between matter and mind’ 

7) Meier, C.A. ed ‘Atom & Archetype: The Pauli / Jung Letters 1932-1958’