On Fields and Energy

Throughout time people have used concepts drawn from what these days is called science and have then applied to the spiritual ranges of experience (or vice versa). Our time is no different from others except in the flavor of the thing. The “spiritual” is below the salt these days, disparaged, and held to be naïve and superstitious. And use of such concepts as “field” and “energy,” consequently, are used by writers on the spiritual or the psychic not because they actually communicate anything tangible or graspable—but because these words enjoy a kind of authority, the authority of Science writ large. The question arises. Is it legitimate to borrow scientific terms to describe psychic experiences? Let’s take a look.

My Dictionary of Physics defines “field” as “A region under the influence of some physical agency.” Interesting definition, when you think about it: a field is a chunk of space. A football field is therefore aptly named; it’s a piece of ground under the influence of football. But the word is actually used in another way when people write it. They use it to mean electric, magnetic, or gravitational force. Its use in New Age or “metaphysical” parlance, therefore, is simply an assertion that some kind of psychic force exists of such a nature that its influence extends over space. Telepathy or remote viewing are thus legitimately described as field phenomena in that some force conveys information between points not capable of explanation using the medium of light, sound, electrical transmission, or chemical signaling.

Let me next turn to the concept of “energy.” Here is the dictionary definition. It is “the quantity that is the measure of the capacity of a body or a system for doing work.” Work (W) turns out to be any kind of force that causes change in something else. By definition, when body A exerts force on body B, A loses W and B gains what A loses.

What I find fascinating here is that the terminology of science is pure abstraction; it is conceptual. Space may be huge (earth moon enclosure) or small (the region my little magnet affects). Force or work may be of all kinds of different kinds—my lifting of a heavy grocery sack or lightning striking a tree. These are mental constructs of generic applicability—but narrowly applied to three known physical forces by science when a field is mentioned. But they can be legitimately used anywhere else as well—wherever we perceive action, work or force exerted over any kind of space. The chief difference in using such terminology in physical science and in so-called metaphysical studies lies in the instrument used.

In studying psychic experiences, the only suitable instruments are minds. And there’s the rub. Their powers of perception are enormous, but their chief drawback is their singularity. We cannot check an individual mind from within. We cannot precisely confirm what it is perceiving. The individual may lie. The individual may misinterpret what he or she experiences. Objective knowledge is therefore very difficult to obtain. Minds are fantastic instruments but very difficult to calibrate precisely.

This difficulty—of supervision, of confirmation—has some odd side-effects. It causes us to limit the application of science to what we call the material level. But the matter-mind duality, as usually applied, may be a fiction. One way to put this may be by saying that we’re incapable of detecting mind in matter or matter in mind—and in both directions because our instruments are too coarse. What I’ve seen of reality—the patterns of things in general—persuade me that this is so. We’re drawing artificial lines based on our ability—or lack thereof—to produce hard evidence, capable of confirmation by third parties, for perhaps the most important range of reality we experience, namely the psychic. But there is really nothing wrong with using concepts like field or energy—much in the same way as science uses these for magnetic, electrical, and gravitational forces—for other forces that we can observe. What is wrong in “metaphysical” discussions is the sloppy and casual use of such concepts—or the attempt to snatch a certain phony legitimacy for our claims by appealing to authority. Scientists no more understand what an electromagnetic field is than I understand what a soul is. But we are both attempting to grasp the operation of invisible forces by some of the phenomena that they leave behind.