Understanding the term ´energy´

Dear Hari,

I am a person who not only wants to know things but one who also wants to understand them and logically follow respectively reconstruct them according to ones experience and ones - I don´t want to call it intellectual capacity since I dont have much of it, I am a more simple-minded person - but I want to comprehend and understand things in my own individual and personal way so to speak, regardless of who might say something or from whatever source that information or teaching might come from.

In this regard I have a question regarding your usage of the word energy. In what way should that term be understood when it comes to God respectively whomever or whoever the divine of my heart is? What I want to say by this is, that when I experienced or experience God, the Supreme, I experienced and experience that Divine Being as having also a personality of his/her own, fully able to reciprcate with me in a very personal manner.

Now if we say that the Divine, God, would be (just) "this infinite ocean of energy", as some use to call it, the One with no beginning and no end, that divine neutral ´energy´ that is just all-encompassing and all-embracing, than in my understanding and personal experience of things there is something missing in such an explanation. An energy has for me no personality of its own which would be able to reciprocate with me in a personal and individual manner, it just functions according to how it is determined and predestined to function respectivelly to physically flow. Let us take for example electric current, an energy, it just flows and works according to its nature. There is no way whatsoever to alter its functioning and make it more personal and individual. Okay, you can use it to power a heater or a refrigerator, two seemingly opposite functions of that energy, from heat to cold, but the inner functions or the physical flow, the characteristics, of the electric curent remains the same.

So what is your understanding in this regard Hari, or how should one understand your usage of the term energy when it comes to describe our non-physical being and that of God, the Supreme?

For example the term "energy" is used by Aristotle as per http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/energy?s=t with a sense of "force of expression." That would make sense to me as it would indirectly define me, the soul, or God, the Supersoul, as that "force of expression", or that power inherent in my phsicall body and that physical world.

Why do I often get the feeling after reading your texts that you insist on misunderstanding my descriptions of God or you maintain some conception of how I think about Radha and Krsna that usually includes an impersonal slant? Either you are stating this because this is what you truly believe, or you are not very good at expressing what you think. But because you spend a lot of time and effort to express yourself, I can only conclude that you really believe this of me. That troubles me.

This troubles me because I do not think, feel, or speak in an impersonal manner. I certainly have a very personal relationship with the deities, the devas, and with anyone I meet. I feel all living energy as personal, all the time.

Considering this, I have no interest in answering yet another one of your questions filled with false assumptions and insinuations. Indeed, the only question you asked is

how should one understand your usage of the term energy when it comes to describe our non-physical being and that of God, the Supreme?

And this is also troubling because I have discussed hundreds, or perhaps thousands of times this very topic. I might even go so far as to say this is all I discuss in various forms.

It might be helpful for you to look a little deeper within your consciousness to see if perhaps you are so afraid of something in your psyche that it mirrors in the world around you?

No Hari, it is not so that I would intentionally try to missunderstand your descriptions of God. Instead of thinking that way Hari you should try to understand the feedback which I am trying to give you regarding the usage of your language terms. My question was a an honest one therefore I am very surprised of your reaction to my honest enquiry. When you insist to view my being, me the the soul, as just a living energy than what I conclude by this I answered above. So again what is your understanding of an energy? An energy cannot be personal nor individual since it just is at is, in my opinion. What is yours, Hari, and why you consider an energy to be also or have also personal characteristics. In my experience and understanding - and like I wrote above that in truth just that really counts for me - it is not that way. Please do not think that I would be in any way aggainst that what you try to make people understand, I am not. I just try to understand it in my own way - like everyone does.

When you write " I have no interest in answering yet another one of your questions" than that I can respect, but that leaves me also with an open question of what your undertanding in this regard may be. And your usage of certain language terms involves many issues. Therefore I am asking for your clarification. And I may not be the only one in this regard.

If you think I insist that the soul is "just" a living energy, I must assume that you do not understand the concepts that I have discussed. The concepts are quite clear. The fact that I must use terms that have multiple meanings is not an issue for I define these terms clearly. Perhaps you are somewhat insulted or disturbed that I have rejected your inquiry? I thought you would be when I wrote it.

Perhaps you should stop trying to define energy and simply experience your own energy? There are very specific limits to how much of this can be understood through discussing terms. Therefore I present my experience under the label of spiritual mysticism. I am not happy of what I perceive to be your desire to reduce the most important spiritual essence to an academic definition of energy. This means you have missed my point. I cannot get you to see the point in this short discussion in an open forum if you have not understood this very, very basic experience through my years of speaking about it, writing about it, leading guided mediations about it and so on. Perhaps you have a fundamental misunderstanding about mysticism that you need to correct? Might it help to go back to square one and feel who you are, what you are, and how it you relate with the world around you?

The love your express to others is an energy they feel very strongly. Is that energy impersonal or not individual, to use your terms? When you speak, your words create wave forms in the air that are heard by others. This is an energy, and it has a frequency. Is it impersonal or is it intimately connected to only you? Are these wave forms received impersonally? If you think this, I feel sad that I have failed so utterly to help you evolve.

Those who didn't get this left these forums long ago. I concluded long ago that either you get it or you don't. Either you can feel it or you cannot. I spent years helping people feel it. At one point I stopped because those who could and wanted to feel it already did and those who could not or did not want to, decided they had better things to do.

You are very concerned about my language, but your writing clearly expresses exactly what I said it did. I have indeed understood your feedback and I have replied to it appropriately. Now you have to deal with this if you want to. I am not at all worried that you are "against" what I have said. I am discussing your lack of understanding of it with the desire to agitate you enough to make a change. But if you are truly against it, then fine, so be it. You are free to be for or against anything you want. I cannot make you understand anything and neither am I obliged to engage in a sparring match with you until one of us is defeated. When I get to the point where discussion is futile, I say it. I am not happy with it, but acceptance is essential in a life lived in the present.

Obviously, if other people have something to say or to discuss about this, they are welcome to do so!

if you dont mind i can say a few words from my side.
Most of the words are the lables wich puted by people to explain some subjects of realitry we see or feel, but no word can exactly explain the object we see or feel.
Let say we are using the word stone but there are tousand of different stones and
they are all different from different chemical consistanse and frame but we all understand wath it mean when one use this word.
Same with the energy it is something that have potential and vibration but it is different in different fields /
Thecnical use of this word have one meaning but still the chracteristic of it is some potential, some vibration, some force.When Hari use this term this doesnt mean the same is technical meaning of this word but it used to show us the essence of this word the force the potential the vibration that individuals is ( the soul by the way have visibale vibration)/
Since the soul isues and spiritual isues is something out of people experianse there are
no alwayes proper words to explan the isues so that people can feel and understand it
so it is used the most understandable for modern people word /
And Harshi please dont cite the oxford dictionary or other one/
WE are mostly undrerstand each other more by feeling not by defenations of words/
Let say you using the word Germany
I understand it by my feeling/
But wath is Germany is it the land or it is people and wath kind of people, turks also live in Germany and Romans also and russians also
Does wather is also Gerrmany,?
and ants and animals also and insects also ?
The clouds and air is also,?
So wath is Germany can you say?
Nobody Harshi can realy say wath is Germany but when you use it we understand wath you mean so the same with word energy.
When Hari saying the word energy everybody understand wath he mean and by the way it is much more easier to understand then for example wath mean Germany ,at least all i know all the people dont have problem with understanding wath Hari means by this word.
It is a bit difficult by my poor English to explain wath i want but i am sure you get it Harshi

Hari wrote:The love you express to others is an energy they feel very strongly. Is that energy impersonal or not individual, to use your terms? When you speak, your words create wave forms in the air that are heard by others. This is an energy, and it has a frequency.

Dear Hari, in some way you reap the fruits, the benefits, of your teachings here on Harimedia. A few years ago I would have never thought it posible for me to to seek the viewpoint, to somewhat challenge, you directly. I would have just accepted it as that was my understanding back than, or would have given no importance to it. Nowadays being encouraged by what you have said and wrote so often I've learnt and gained courage to think for myself.

Yes the way you explain and clarified for me the word energy as an outflow of me, the soul, the consciousness or whatever term you like to use as a signboard directed at my spiritual, non-physical being, makes much sense to me. I thank you very much, Hari, you spared me by your answer of years of uncertainties about what could you mean by using that particular term when it comes to me, or God, the Supreme.

kamalamala1 wrote:When Hari (is) saying the word energy, everybody understands what he means...

That may be so, Kamalamala. I know also what an energy means. My question to Hari was meant to get some clarification from him in order to find out whether he is refering in this conection to me, the spiritual being, when he speaks and writes of an energy. As far as I understood him he rather means by using that term my outgoing vibrations, love, natural flow of lifelike feelings, spirit, mood, etc. that emits - from me - as the source of that particular energy, feeling, mood etc.


Picture from 4.bp.blogspot.com-Acupuncture: Energy Medicine & Energy Fields

Another way to look at this issue, Kamalamala, I don´t know if Hari would agree to this, is viewing energy (shakti in Sanskrit terms) as a symptom of the presence of a so called generator or an energetic person, Shaktiman. Thus all that exists would be ultimately 'reducible' to the dynamic and creative relationship between `prakriti´ and ´purusha, adi shakti and shaktiman, you may know the meaning of this Sanskrit terms. This is why the great bhakti traditions have at their core what is called Bridal Mysticism. The Love of the divine lover and beloved as beeing the dynamic `cause` of all spiritual and 'material' worlds.

Dear Harshi
The whole meaning for using that or this terms is that that people realy feel it and understand.
We are in modern time know well wath is energy at least most of us.
Using the sanscrit terms shakti and ahktiman it is more hardly to feel and understand for modern people,
since first of all it is old (very powerful but still)and for explain people wath means shakti you should
use the term energy.

Feeling is again such a term which involves many issues. It is not the same to feel some sensual pleasures while having sex with your dear partner or spouse or sensing, detect, perceive, the presence of you, the living force, or feel as you say the presence of the divine in certain circumstances of your life or in some places of worship. My experience over the years is that it is not so much a feeling, as it is one of beeing aware and detect or perceive a presence of yourself, the so called life force or soul if you will, beyond this outer body shell and the thought streams or emotions evoked and intensified by your mind.

But that awareness you can experience just when you are also able to calm down or stop the stream of though by the force of your will, at your comand so to speak, even if it takes just short moments. This moments will in due course get longer and longer. Thus your mind will over the years get used of your presence and comand and this encourages your awarenes, your sensing or feeling if you will, of your spiritual non physical presence. I find that to sense, feel or detect the presence of the Supreme in your life is in my experience a much more complex endeavour I like to concern myself also every now and than. What is your experience on this Kamalamala?

Maybe it might help to clarify the term, "feeling?" Feeling is the same act whether you feel physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Feeling is intimately related to spiritual consciousness. What you feel, on the other hand, can be labelled (if you want) as spiritual, material, or a mixture of the two. The same feeling process that allows you to love another person is the same process that allows you to love to divine. Who you love is what counts, not how you love. Love is a natural feeling that can be expressed in a variety of ways. So discussing the term "feeling" is not really the issue. What counts more is what that feeling relates to! "Awareness" is a similar term. How you are aware is less important than what you are aware of, for awareness is our natural state.

What I just understood when reading your last comment Harsi, was that you are using words in a different context than Kamalamala, but your intention is quite the same. You seem to categorize feeling and awareness according to your capacity to calm your consciousness when it is agitated by interactions with the world around you. Feelings are not as spiritually significant when they are a product of "the material existence," whereas feelings associated with spiritual experiences are good. This makes sense and I doubt anyone is arguing this point.

I have been attempting to teach a system of yogic discipline that uses awareness of feeling to skip the dissonant noise of this world and directly connect to essence. If you can feel your self, your own living energy, and you are aware that this energy is not different than the energy of the divine, then you can become aware of the ever existent connection between you and the divine beings, Radha and Krsna. The yoga depends on being able to feel. It does not require you to do anything else than relax totally, as we did in the meditations. By relaxing totally, one is able to feel the self. But this you know from my book and everything else said around here.

Hari wrote:Maybe it might help to clarify the term, "feeling?" Feeling is the same act whether you feel physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Feeling is intimately related to spiritual consciousness.

Yes, Hari, it helped to clarify that term, feeling , in order to understand also how you view this issue. It makes sense that the "how" is more important in this regard than the "what you feel". On the other hand people who are still captive in their egoic self instead of beeing aware also of their true self, their true identity, can hardhy make that fine didtinction between the two. When I would "feel" a certain aversion about what you are talking or writing, in the sense that I would think, or say to you or others around, that who are you that you write or say that, than that would be a clear indication that I would be in my mind captive of my ego, the false or imagined one, instead of my true self. People who are thus not in their "right mind" or fixed in their true identity see and react differently that those who are. Thats at least my experience. They also "feel" differently and react differently to their emotions or inner, spiritual, impulses.

Hari wrote:I have been attempting to teach a system of yogic discipline that uses awareness of feeling to skip the dissonant noise of this world and directly connect to essence.

Like I wrote above I personally cannot view the process of becoming aware of my true self as beeing in any way related to feeling in the way I understand that term. Feeling is for me something I can personally perceive as beeing a sensation or a particular subjective impression I am aware of in my being, my soul. So when I am aware of my true self I am also the one who is aware of my particular sensations or emotions. Is it that what you mean as beeing an (my) "awareness of feeling", Hari?

What I miss in the meditations offered by you, Hari, as well as in the meditations offered by many spiritually inclined, is the reference that true meditation has also something to do with focusing, centre, ones attention, ones aware consciousness, on something outside ones mind, on a particular part inside ones physical body, the way I do it when I meditate, or on a sound vibration the way mantra meditation is truely performed, otherwise that so called meditation becomes just a process of calming down ones mind, or surge of emotion, without so much spiritual significance of getting or becoming aware also of ones state of being beyond the mind, and the one who is, can be, become, also aware and perceive the particular emotions or feelings.

I personaly am not used to view the energy or vitality to use another word which emanates from my being or my self as beeing the same as that which emanates from the Supreme or from Radha Krishna as you say. Why should I do that, Hari, or on what grounds, on what basis, should I realise, detect, that spiritual connection?

My slow reply to you is not accidental. Your questions seem to request me to repeat everything I have given in my lectures and meditations. My problem is simple: If you did not previously get it from these materials, little I can say now will change that. Unless I hit the lottery jackpot and happen to say the exact thing that makes the light bulb go off in your head during an "Aha!" moment, I shall only be able to repeat what I already stated hundreds of times.

I suspect that you might read this answer and feel disappointed or worse. Although I rarely say this, in your case it seems appropriate -- sometime, later on, when you realize the difference between experiences filtered by the mind and direct experience, you will suddenly understand. Until then, your mind may shackle you.

I do not wish to be provocative, but when I consider what is best for you, I feel you are seeking assistance in your spiritual evolution in the wrong place. It is quite possible that I am the wrong facilitator for you and that I cannot offer you the help you truly require. I feel you might find it advantageous for your spiritual advancement to concentrate on another discipline or teacher. I apologize for my insufficiency, but I am aware of my limitations regarding assisting certain individuals. I think a wall has been reached that cannot be scaled without the help of some radical catalyst to spark your realization.

I offer this advice in love and respect, with the desire that you should become the best you can be.

I am very sorry that interfiaring again
Since i alwready was engeged in this discusion if you dont mind i will write few words.
Harshi
Everything and evrybody is energy this is a fact.
you in you coment wrote
"I personaly am not used to view the energy or vitality to use another word which emanates from my being or my self as beeing the same as that which emanates from the Supreme or from Radha Krishna as you say. Why should I do that," ....
It very strange ,since who is forcing you to do anything ?nobody? you can think as you like/
when you writing such a strange coments it is realy hard to continue, since there are no sence ,nobody forcing anybody anything and it is not possible.
Only you can force yourself and its sound that you are arguing with yourself.
As far about maditation without calming down ones mind, nobody can maditate it is writen in all vedic litarature and in Patanjali sutras also.
After calming down one can much better meditate on LOrd on Radha and Krishna wich was alwayes done on Haris lectures and his meditations,.
He is not teaching to just calm down ,but how to feel Lords presence and his energy.
Without calming down one cannot meditate at all.
Afcourse there are also other kinds of meditations, let say chanting but again if as a result of chanting mind didnt calm down one will not come to the state of meditation
Maditation finally bring you to the stage when you FEEL the presence of LOrd is nt it.,?
Feeling( in spiritual sence ) much better then just thinking.
Dhyana better then gyana.
Meditations without spiritual feeling is not so usefull
Be like a chlidren said Crist
childrens not think much they feel more/
Sorry for my interaption in your descussion