Chi Force & Holy Spirit:
Only One or the Same?
Only One or the Same?
Theologue by Alex Gray
In my visits to Christian mega churches and Buddhist sanghas, I've been seeking a way to reconcile the open source orientation of East with the closed platform nature of the West. And I've also tried to reconcile their fantastical claims about the supernatural from a more logical bias, choosing Scientific skepticism over definitive proclamations of faith in the miraculous favoring one over the other.
Although, I must admit that more of me is drawn to the Eastern perspective and a world view open to the infinite possibilities that sees us all scratching only the tip of an iceberg of what the human body is truly capable of. Who in the East or West, wouldn't want to live in a universe of magical potentialities, where we can posses super human powers and perform miraculous abilities we only witness in popular films like Star Wars and stories such as the Bible? Who wouldn't want to be initiated into a secret world of communion with God or beloved dead masters, to shoot energy out of your hands for immobilizing people and spontaneously combusting objects into flames at will?
I've run into a lot of people who have already made their commitment to one side or the other, offering up anecdotal evidence of their personal experience witnessing miraculous power from God or at the hands of Tai Chi masters. The closed platform response from many fundamentalist Christians will have you believe that what they experienced was unique only to their faith and that if the same phenomena is experienced through Eastern modalities, it is suspect; corrupted by Satanic powers and all because they refuse to declare Jesus Christ their lord and savior. On the other hand, the open source platform response from many practitioners of Eastern spirituality will have you believe that what they experienced is something available to every human being and we all have the potential in harnessing Chi energy to benefit our lives.
In my own personal experience, I have never been slain in the spirit at a Christian church because I would never just devote my life to Jesus Christ and not pay homage to the great things I see in other religions. I have a very visceral aversion to a closed platform theology that sees the world through a black and white lens of good vs. evil. It is easier for me to feel at home with practitioners of Eastern spirituality and religion where they reflect a more realistic reality of many shades of gray where yin and yang can connect in balance. And I also hit it off well with atheists and agnostics, seeing great value in their strict adherence to scientific skepticism.
Whenever I have come into contact with extreme woo-woo perspectives of supernatural claims by Eastern practitioners, I greet them with a great deal of skepticism. I very much love a lot of things about Buddhism, but I am also wary of supernatural claims and especially ritualistic superstition I've seen exhibited by Tibetan Buddhists and within Hindu spirituality in general. At the same time, there are also some very compelling profound possibilities existing that stretch the limits of what we understand as being the true nature of reality. The chakra / chi energy system of Tibetan, Indian and Chinese philosophy have been especially compelling to me ever since I learned more of the idea behind them from books, documentaries and teachers.
I have also experienced interesting phenomena from energy healers that would assert the validity of claims often rejected by skeptics. It is interesting though how science is trying to work with Eastern practitioners in order to understand what exactly is going on when something considered miraculous is witnessed.
Because I have chronic Lyme disease and my symptoms keep worsening even in the presence of the best of what Western science has to offer for treating them, I am compelled to look outside the box for an alternative. This has lead me to practitioners of Eastern medicine and energy healers. One most recent energy healer I was being treated by, works with pets and I decided to introduce her to my dog Murphy. After she said hello, she offered an energy healing on him. From just the light touch of her hand, she was able to drop Murphy to the ground without any resistance. It was something I've never seen before first hand, and have only heard about through second hand sources.
These accounts describe Tai Chi masters able to scatter people to the ground like bowling pins without them even making physical contact. And in a debate I was having with one of my friends about Chi, he was able to supply me with a video documenting this phenomena from a more skeptical source:
These accounts describe Tai Chi masters able to scatter people to the ground like bowling pins without them even making physical contact. And in a debate I was having with one of my friends about Chi, he was able to supply me with a video documenting this phenomena from a more skeptical source:
Phony Karate Master - No Touch KO Debunked
And after watching this, I was able to come across some other videos documenting chi practitioners in action:
(I thought it was interesting at the end what he says about his dead master reprimanding him. It's like Obi Wan Kanobi in Star Wars coming back from the netherworld. :-P)
Chi Energy Amazing Footage
(I thought it was interesting at the end what he says about his dead master reprimanding him. It's like Obi Wan Kanobi in Star Wars coming back from the netherworld. :-P)
No Touch Knockout with Chi
It's quite easy to find videos of Christian evangelists initiating something quite similar in their religious crusades:
Even if science is able to debunk the Chi energy / slain in the spirit phenomena as a psychological gimmick of weak minds succumbing to the powers of suggestibility, it still doesn't make sense to me how it would work on my dog, who has no concept of what's going on in the first place. And what of the strange things I've witnessed? Are they all magic tricks? I once traveled to China in 2000 and participated in a demonstration at a Chinese medicine clinic. There I saw a Chi master do the same light bulb trick done in the second video above; where he touches the bottom causing it to light up. I'm still skeptical of what went on, but at the same time, maybe there is something to this stuff. I can't explain the electrical heat like energy I felt from the hands of energy healers or what they were able to do to my dog. So what the heck is going on? Is it some elaborate deception?
In the debate I had with my friend about Chi, I can definitely relate to the good points he makes about why he is skeptical,
"Call me an arrogant Westerner, but I highly doubt that ancient peoples could have this esoteric knowledge that us moderns with our advanced science and machines haven't been able to detect. I really think the answer is something more simple than the vitalism of Chi. I think it has something to do with psychology (maybe even the psychology of animals), and is perhaps more akin to the magic tricks that talented magicians like Penn and Teller perform every day. Or, perhaps it is purely physiological, and these Chi masters are really doing something akin to the "Vulcan Nerve Pinch"? No Chi necessary, just good knowledge of the human body."
And my friend makes some other great points I agree with:
"How come this stuff is not completely, utterly, well documented, instead of the odd candid video here and there. It seems that if this stuff were true, we would be seeing it happen all the time, and there would be news reports all over the place, and scientists would have ample documentation. But no, its all just on the level of magic tricks. How come no one has ever taken James Randi's famous one million dollar challenge to prove claims of the supernatural? And don't tell me that everyone who has had this power, has a conscience about using it for public view, as the guy in the video says. SOMEONE would eventually come forward and show their power."
My reaction to what he says here reminds me of the elitist nature of those who supposedly master the material and spiritual domains. Those who master the material, represent a very small percentage of our population. And there are the conspiracy theories about how only a handful of the richest families (billionaires) on the planet, control the course of Western governments, pulling political strings like master puppeteers. And then the accounts of those who master the spiritual, are just as murky as those on their opposite side. It is almost always some story of a hermit yogi living in the Himalayas and has mastered the spiritual realm to such a degree that they can vanish from thin air, walk through walls and manifest objects to appear straight from their imagination.
And then we have the ancient religious scriptures, chalk full of miraculous stories that nobody ever witnesses in person, but must believe through blind faith.
And then we have the ancient religious scriptures, chalk full of miraculous stories that nobody ever witnesses in person, but must believe through blind faith.
And of those living people who claim super human powers, they never openly reveal their ability to the masses. As my friend alludes to, it's always revealed in the dimly lit room used by magicians or in grainy videos whose source is always in question due to easily accessible computer generated special effects.
This reality we are all too familiar with brings to mind the world George Lucas imagined in his Star Wars films. In it, the Force is a very exclusive power wielded by only an elite group of people gifted by genetic blessedness through an elevated level of Midi-Chlorians.
If you think about it, this sounds a lot like our world. In a material sense, the same can be said for the tiny percentage of our populace that controls the majority of all wealth on the planet. And most of them will bluntly tell you that they are special and the wealth they come by isn't something that everyone can have. On the other hand, in a spiritual sense, the same can be said for the tiny percentage of our populace who has the so called spiritual power, wielding the kind of miracles we usually only hear about in holy scriptures.
If you think about it, this sounds a lot like our world. In a material sense, the same can be said for the tiny percentage of our populace that controls the majority of all wealth on the planet. And most of them will bluntly tell you that they are special and the wealth they come by isn't something that everyone can have. On the other hand, in a spiritual sense, the same can be said for the tiny percentage of our populace who has the so called spiritual power, wielding the kind of miracles we usually only hear about in holy scriptures.
Interestingly though, the spiritual world has a tradition of throwing a wrench in the gears of the material world view. Even if the reality of spiritual elitism mirrors the exclusive nature of material elitism, many on the spiritual side try to sell an idea foreign to what we are used to, and that is their power isn't unique to them, but available to everyone. And often times we will see people in our world born with elite gifts: Michael Jordan who can jump 49 inches off the ground from a stand still, Steve Jobs with the intelligence to rewrite the entire social fabric of our world with hand held machines, super models whose external beauty provokes the lust and envy of millions, idiot savants with photographic memories and capability of drawing in exact detail a scene they saw a day before.
Aren't these miraculous gifts just as remarkable as Chi masters who can throw people to the ground without touching them? And if those gifted with such remarkable power are more in tune with the spiritual side, they will try to pass these powers off as unremarkable; available to anyone serious enough to pursue them.
Within the spectrum of any kind of power, we can see that its application is neutral. As in Star Wars, the Force is available for Jedi and Sith alike to wield. The material side seems more Sith in orientation; more of a top down approach where the elites of government, finance and military power laugh at the expectation of a day near at hand where the playing field will be leveled, and every human will possess the same privileges and powers they enjoy.
The spiritual side on the other hand seems to be more Jedi in orientation with a bottom up approach. Even though the so called spiritual gifts of miraculous powers seem just as exclusively wielded by a handful of elites as the mass sums of wealth and political power that are wielded by their material counterpart, both sides seem to hold only a tiny percentage of people able to enjoy their benefits. But as a striking contrast, it is often taught in spiritual circles of an Eastern open source persuasion, that these powers are available to every human seeking them and should be used to liberate all beings. And even in closed source persuasions of the West, they have theologies imagining a day where all humanity lives in a heavenly abode of a classless divine kingdom of perfect equality, with the exception of a God running the elite government and shepherding his children to bliss.
Because the spiritual realm seems just as elitist as the material while being ineffectual turning the tables on a top down approach in our world, the skeptical assessment from my friend makes more sense.
"And don't forget that there are layers to this kind of thing...meaning how do we know that the TV producers aren't in on the ruse? It's possible. And, if you ask me, it's more probable. And James Randi, and Penn & Teller, would argue that the ability to trick people knows no limits. After all they are well experienced in these things. Look at David Copperfield."
I must admit that it is entirely possible these spiritual miracles are just slight of hand tricks. And if they are real, there may be another possibility; perhaps they are alien beings using superior technologies to wow us. I know this sounds nutty, but just as our presence toying with ants on an ant hill, would baffle and confound those small creatures living within, might not superior beings be toying around with our planet? Isn't the tendency of many humans of our past, to elevate people with special powers to Godlike status? In one of my sessions with the energy healer, I jokingly asked her if she was an alien. Of course she laughed, but to a conspiracy theorist, this would all be part of the charade.
I like what my friend had to say about finding an explanation for such things:
"My final comment is that, true, I have no explanation for these things, BUT just because I can't think of how they were done, doesn't mean that the explanations given by the people who did them are correct. Obviously, both Benny Hinn and these Chi masters can't both be right about the nature of this phenomena!"
And because Benny Hinn and Chi masters can't both be right, it seems much more likely to me that the open source, spiritual, bottom up, non dual approach of the East is far more likely even if it flies in the face of the top down, closed source, good vs. evil ways dominating our world. My friend remains skeptical and I will too, unless I experience some kind of breakthrough propelling me into the spiritual circle of elites, able to harness Chi energy for miraculous ability. At the end of his message to me, my friend expresses the same open source sentiment:
"But I must remind myself to keep an open mind. Show me REAL evidence, and I will change my worldview!"
When I shared this debate with another friend who was female, this is what she had to offer:
"That is a very interesting topic. I do not doubt that there are other types of energies that we are not completely aware of. I personally had a lot of interesting experiences with dreams and during REM periods. However, it is when these are offer for a price and to give someone power to manipulate others that I do not buy them. I believe that one has to be really in touch with the higher source in order to discover and feel these energies. The problem with this is that the more one is concern with money, material things, and fame the less this is possible. I have my reservations about anyone that offers this kind of service ($) per a pay to be honest."
I think she expresses what most of us feel about the possibility of these wondrous powers. Part of us want to live a world where this kind of thing is possible, but we shudder at the idea that it could be used for commercial and material exploitation.
