The Energy of Life

(Text Only)

Guy Brown

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780007485444
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ciencias en general

This edition does not include illustrations.

‘A book that lives up to its title – Guy Brown handles an exciting topic with the energy and expertise it deserves. A first-rate read!’ Roy Porter

Chapter 1
ORIGINS

‘In the beginning’ the meaning of energy was inseparable from the meaning of life. ‘What is life?’ was an unavoidable question for people confronted with death and the dying on a daily basis. A newly dead body may appear identical to the live one existing only moments before, but it is missing an important ingredient: life. What is this invisible thing animating the living but disappearing with death?

Important clues are given by the subtle differences between the living and the dead: movement, breath, heartbeat, pulse, warmth, growth, and (less obviously) consciousness. These differences were central to the concept of life (and death) in most early cultures, and are still important to our own modern and scientific ideas of life. But a bare list of the differences cannot give us a general theory of life or death. What is the need for a general theory? Because daily confrontation with death prompted urgent, practical questions: can death be prevented? And if not, can it be reversed? Finally, if all else failed, the ultimate questions: was death the end? What happened to the body and mind after death?

Imagine a caveman bent over his recently deceased cavewoman: with knotted brow, Rodin pose and a thought bubble full of question marks, the dawning thought: ‘What are life and death?’ Of course, no such caveman ever existed – we are merely indulging in a narrative device. But if our prehistoric sleuth can mentally capture the essence of life perhaps he can feed it back into his mate and love once more. However, he must hurry, before her still warm and lovable body rots and turns to dust. To tackle this cosmic conundrum he must decipher the differences between his loved one before and after death. The only clues he has are those he can see, hear or feel; his only evidence the body. He must read the body. The meaning of life is not some grandiose theory, but instead the rather gruesome differences between a live body and a dead one.

The most obvious difference is movement. The dead can’t dance, while the living gaily cavort. In early cultures, such as those of ancient Egypt and Greece, movement was often taken as a sign that the object in motion, even if it was the sun moving across the sky, wanted or intended to move, and thus that it had some kind of mind willing it. But there is some subtlety here: for a dead body can also move. If we lift up the arm and let go, it will fall. If we hold the body up on two feet, and wave its arm, it will stand and wave. If we push up the two ends of its mouth it may even give us a ghoulish smile (assuming rigor mortis has not set in). The essential difference between the living and the dead is not movement itself, but rather spontaneous or willed movement. Willed movement is a sign of mind, a kind of mind energy. It was this concept of self-generated motion that early cultures used to divide the world into the animate and the inanimate. If spontaneous movement was not due to living humans or animals, then it was attributed to souls, spirits, devils or gods. A stone is not living because it does not move of its own accord – even a rolling stone is not living if it has been pushed down a mountain – but an avalanche can suggest the work of an angry god or devil. The apparently spontaneous movement of wind, lightning, sun and planets was associated with spirits or gods, by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks and American Indians. Indeed the distinction between living and non-living things was not as clear or important then as it is now, because the world was full of supernatural spirits, and even inanimate objects could be seen to have intentions and desires.

We should note that the type of movement regarded as ‘self-generated’ is dependent on the theory being used. Thales, known as the ‘grandfather’ of Greek philosophy and science who was active around 600 BC, thought that a magnet had a soul because it moved iron. It may be because all things move in apparently spontaneous ways in certain circumstances (e.g. when dropped) that he famously said, ‘all things are full of gods’. Around 350 BC, Aristotle, perhaps the greatest ever philosopher and scientist, described God as the ‘unmoved mover’, the first source of free, unforced movement and change. Today we have gone to the other extreme, and many scientists believe that there are no spontaneous movements or change, even within humans (because each change is caused by a prior change via some mechanism), and thus there is no need for gods, souls, or spirits. However, the modern concept of energy has replaced gods and spirits as the source of all movement and change in the Universe.

When our caveman-penseur presents his beautiful new hypothesis (that the difference between life and death is self-generated movement) at neighbouring caves, it is not long before some overly smart cavewoman points out the flaw in his argument, that when he is asleep or knocked unconscious, he has no self-generated movements yet is, to all appearances, alive. She may continue that anyone with any sense knows that in such circumstances the way to tell the living from the dead is from subtle, internal movements: breathing, the pulse, and the heartbeat. These internal motions are still used today in the diagnosis of life or death, and it was the investigation of them, and their associated processes, that led to our modern concepts of life and body energy.

Breath was central to ideas of life and energy in most early historical cultures. In Egypt, breath was associated with ka, a soul which separated from the body after death. Breath-energy was known as chi in ancient China, thymos and later pneuma in Greece, and prana in India, although each of these terms meant different things to the different cultures involved. The first entry and final exit of breath from the body were synonymous with life and death. In Greek legend, the first man was fashioned by Prometheus from earth and water, but the soul and life were breathed into him by the goddess Athena. If breathing is stopped, it leads to loss of consciousness and finally death, and so it would have always been obvious that life depended directly on breathing. But breathing is associated with much more than just staying alive. Changes in breath and breathing occur during most emotional states, as is recognized in phrases such as: ‘she took his breath away’; ‘panting with eagerness’; ‘gasping with astonishment’; ‘sobbing with grief’; and ‘yawning with weariness’. These emotions are associated with sounds and chest movements, which might lead us to believe that all emotions are located in the chest and expressed in sound (as in the phrase ‘get it off your chest’). We may also consider talking itself to be a kind of breath, as words appear to be carried by the breath from the chest. In pre-literate and semi-literate cultures, thought was often considered to be a kind of talking, perhaps because much thinking was done out loud. And as talking and expressions of emotion were connected with breathing, then thought and emotions could be associated with the breath in the chest.

In the pre-Classical Greece depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey, thought and emotion were seen as a kind of breath-energy known as thymos, which was stored in the lungs or chest (phrenes), and breathed forth as speech, anger or grief. The Greeks appear to have conceived thymos to have been a hot vapour, coming from the body or blood, an idea perhaps inspired by the vapour in breath visible on a cold day, or by the vapour escaping from gushing blood. Thus, we have images of the spirit and soul as a partially visible vapour, as in the soul escaping from the body in a dying man’s final breath. The root of the modern word ‘inspiration’ means both breathing in and the receipt of divine or supernatural thought and feeling. This usage may derive from Homer, where often exceptional thought, feeling, courage, strength, anger and dreams were derived from the gods, who ‘breathed’ them into humans, as thymos to be stored in the chest/lungs, before the humans exhaled them out as speech, feeling, willed action, or thought.

Breath may well have been important to conceptualizing life in another way. It is (usually) invisible, yet when we blow hard our breath can move things and we can feel it against our hands. In this respect it is like the wind, which was often conceived of as the breath and will of gods. Thus, breath was an invisible source of movement outside the body, and might therefore act as an invisible source of movement within the body, to move the limbs and vital functions.

In China breath-energy was known as chi (pronounced chee, as in cheese, and sometimes written as qi) and chi was a fundamental component of the Universe. According to the Huangdi Neijing: ‘That which was from the beginning in heaven is chi; on earth it becomes visible as form; chi and form interact giving birth to the myriad things’. There are many different types of chi, sometimes earthly and material, at other times heavenly and immaterial, and its effect can be seen in the growth of a plant, the power of thought, or the energy that activates any process. Life originates from an accumulation of chi; and death from its dissipation. Chi also means ‘air’, but air was thought to be a non-material empty space; thus chi is not a material substance, but rather a process, force, or energy. Within the body chi is known as true chi, and was derived both from air by breathing, and from food and water by ingestion. The Huangdi Neijing states: ‘True chi is a combination of what is received from the heavens and the chi of water and food. It permeates the whole body’.

True chi circulates around the body via twelve main pathways or meridians. These meridians are mapped onto the surface of the body, so that acupuncture can control the energy flows, although the meridians cannot be identified with any anatomical structures in the body. However, each meridian is also associated with a particular organ and function, and the flow of chi along the meridian actualized that function via the transforming action of chi. As the Chinese put it:

‘The meridians are the paths of the transforming action of chi in the solid and hollow organs’ (Yijiang jingyi).

There were several different types of chi associated with different organs and their functions:

‘Thus one is able to smell only if Lung chi penetrates to the nose; one can distinguish the five colours only if Liver chi penetrates to the eyes; one can taste only if Heart chi penetrates to the tongue; one can know whether one likes or dislikes food only if Spleen chi penetrates to the mouth’ (Zhongyixue gailun).

The Chinese thought of chi as flowing along the meridians, much as water flows along a riverbed. The meridians and their smaller branches irrigated the whole body, as a river and its canals irrigate the fields of a valley. If a disease arose in the body it affected these rivers of life, so that either no water flowed at all (lack of chi), or the river was blocked at a particular point, with excessive water and flooding above the block (swelling, and congestion of chi) and insufficient water below the block (atrophy, lack of chi). It was thought that the acupuncture needle removed the block, either directly or by increasing the force of the stream. In order to live a long and vital life people were encouraged to nurture their chi. And this was achieved by moderation in all things, avoiding either excess or lack in their diet, exercise, or sex. But also by avoiding external sources of ‘bad’ chi, such as cold, damp, fright, or even, sex with ghosts.

Indian concepts of breath-energy – prana – may have predated and inspired those of Europe and China. Hindus teach that in addition to the physical body, there is an astral body, occupying the same space and connected to the physical body by a thread, severed at death. The vital energy, prana, flows through this astral body within thousands of channels – nadis – connecting seven energy centres or wheels of light, known as the chakras. Health and consciousness can be controlled by regulating the flow of prana, using pranayama (breathing exercises), asanas (yoga postures), and meditation. Normally, most of our prana is carried by the Ida and Pingala nadis, which pass through the left and right nostrils respectively, and carry cooling moon energy or warming sun energy respectively. Yogis claim to control their level of consciousness by minutely regulating their breath and thus the flow of prana, by changing the depth, rhythm, and nostrils used for breathing. In one type of yoga, ‘Kundalini Yoga’, the yogi uses breathing techniques and meditation to mobilize the creative female energy (Kundalini) latent in all – men and women. This energy is symbolized by a sleeping snake coiled around the bottom chakra at the base of the spine. The yogi attempts to create an inner heat that rouses the serpent-power from its sleep, driving it up the central nadi along the spine, piercing each chakra in its path, and absorbing their energy, until finally uniting with the male energy of the crown chakra at the top of the head. Kundalini may be experienced as if a bolt of electric charge were passing up the spine, and, if successful, results in a higher level of consciousness where all illusions are dispelled.

The heart and heartbeat were associated with the soul or spirit in most early cultures, and it is not hard to see why. The heart beats rhythmically and continuously at the body’s centre from birth to death. It speeds up during strong emotions and exertion. It slows down with age and rest. Its stopping is synonymous with death. It is the only internal organ with spontaneous motion, and can be extracted from the body still beating. It is associated with the pulse and the movement of the blood. In Egypt, the heart held the power of life and the source of good and evil. According to the Book of the Dead, the heart of each human was weighed on a scale against a feather after death to determine the balance of good and evil, and thus the fate of the spirit. In many Indian and Chinese languages, the words for heart and mind are more or less synonymous. The Toltecs and Aztecs of ancient Mexico ripped the still-beating heart out of their human sacrifices to offer to their sun god. Most early cultures located consciousness and emotions in the heart (or chest/lungs). Interestingly, the soul (psyche), which survived death and produced new life, was often located elsewhere, usually the brain. However, many early cultures did not have such a strongly dualistic concept of the separation of mind and body. Thus it is not always appropriate to talk separately of the mind and body, or of locating the mind in a particular organ of the body.

The Ilongot, a society of headhunters with relatively little contact with the modern world, living in the Philippines, have a word liget which means something like energy and anger. This force arises in the heart, because for them ‘motions of the heart are emotions’ – a belief not far removed from modern, psychological theories of emotion. However, the word liget is also used by the Ilongot in ways that we might regard as metaphorical. For example, chili gives liget to a stew, ginger revitalizes liget in a killer, and winds have more liget when obstructed. Liget is also revealed in people when they pant and sweat, flowing inwardly and generating redness in the self. It is dynamic, organic, chaotic violence, and also the stuff of life.

Early cultures often did not distinguish between the literal (or concrete) and metaphorical (or abstract) use of a concept – the concept of metaphor was only invented by Aristotle in the fourth century BC. So the ancient Greeks used a word such as psyche to refer to both a substance in the body and the behaviour of the soul. The temptation is to say that the ancient Greeks and other early cultures were more literal minded and their thought was less abstract. Yet, most modern discourse also fails to distinguish between literal and metaphorical uses of words. The word ‘energy’ is popularly used to describe everything from the charge supplied by electricity wires, to the intensity of an artistic performance. One manifestation of literal mindedness is the tendency to explain a property of something as due to a discrete substance within the thing (an unfortunate tendency known as ‘reification’). For example, Dr Pangloss, in Molière’s Candide, explained falling asleep as due to a ‘dormative principle’ within the body or mind. Similarly ‘living’, which is essentially a state or way of being, has been explained in terms of substance: life or vis viva (the life-force). Doing things intensely or passionately has been explained in terms of the possession of ‘energy’, the energizing substance swirling around the body or mind. In some cases, thinking of a property or behaviour as a ‘thing’ can be helpful, but more usually scientific or intellectual progress has been made by explaining ‘things’ in terms of processes. Thus most scientists no longer think of life or energy as things to be explained by separate substances, rather they are particular arrangements or processes of matter. However, in popular culture, life and energy still have mixed literal and metaphorical meanings, which partly reflect those of much earlier times.

In early cultures the heart’s beating was associated with the movement of blood in the body, which was indicated by the pulse and by the rhythmic spurting of blood from severed arteries. The pulse was used in the diagnosis of health and illness, vigour and death in the medicine of ancient Greece, India and China. The violent colour of blood, its dramatic eruption from wounds, its ability to rapidly congeal once outside the body, and the fact that its loss was associated with death, all contributed to the idea that it was intimately connected with life. Indeed for some cultures, blood was seen as the substance of life itself. Many stone-age burials have been discovered where the bones have been covered with a red ochre probably representing blood, which would suggest that the connection between blood and life (or death) was very early indeed. The drinking of blood, either literally or symbolically (as in the Christian Eucharist), was a means of transferring the soul/energy of the human, animal or god to the drinker.

Our caveman has now got some theories, but it does not seem to be doing his cavewoman any good. She has gone cold. The caveman now needs to add one more item to his list of differences between living and dead: body heat. The body temperature of living mammals and birds is normally higher than their surroundings, cooling to that of their environment at death. If our body temperature is lowered by more than a few degrees, if for example we fall into freezing water, then we rapidly die. Clearly heat has an important connection to life. In pre-industrial times, the only significant producers of heat were animals, fire and the sun. Aristotle, for example, thought of the life-force partly as a kind of fire inside the body. And the association between heat (and movement) and the life-force, may well explain the widespread belief that the sun was a god, and the use of fire in religious rituals. In fact there are a number of other important similarities between life and fire: both are produced by the burning of organic matter (fuel/food) with air (supplied by a bellows or breathing), which generates heat, movement, and residual waste (ash/faeces). This analogy was important both in ancient Greece and in much more modern times. For it was the key concept in the development of the modern scientific idea of body energy, although the theory could not be used productively until chemical concepts of burning were developed by Lavoisier in the eighteenth century.

Back with our caveman, things are looking bleak. The cavewoman’s body has started to decay. First the flesh rots away, leaving the skeleton, then the bones themselves disintegrate to dust. Although the process is slow, its effect is dramatic: we start with a highly organized human body and end with a pile of dust, which merges into the soil. There is obviously little hope of reversing this process, and nowhere for the soul to hide afterwards. This is clearly the great disaster of the human condition. Many cultures have expended immense efforts trying to either prevent...