Author's note: A special thanks to Jamin Nichols, AP, whose assistance made this article possible.
When the Unknown Becomes Known
In Pensées, French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, reflected on a similar observation regarding fear [as that which was discussed in part 1 of this article]:
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
I also propose that this problem-solving species, Homo sapiens, found that without knowing who we are and where, that we deal with fear through one of two ways: power or faith. Both mitigate fear, but there is never enough power or faith to assuage the original existential fear that is perpetuated as more immediate unknowns as other color skins, other religions, other habits, and other languages. We have the original fear of the unknown displaced to more familiar unknowns.
This ceaseless drive for power, including between faiths, can only be ended when what was initially unable to be known becomes known. When the "unknown" becomes "known," the fear will dissipate and then disappear. The knowledge of the universe and its relation to our experience is now knowable.
Life on Earth, our existence, is on a continuum with the universe. Our "life force" that the Chinese call qi is the same energy as the dark energy of the expanding universe; nothing to fear as the "unknown."
There is a great deal more to this conversation, including Einstein's own doubt about his "cosmological constant" that led for him to retract it because he could not at first accept that the universe was expanding. Before he died, he reconfirmed the "cosmological constant" and the expanding universe. In recent decades the cosmological constant was measured here on Earth and confirmed to exist.
Some Day, We Will Be Able to Measure Both
Shortly after Johns Hopkins University professor and cosmologist, Adam Reiss (along with Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of dark energy and dark matter, I contacted him. I had immediately made the association between dark energy and qi, two energies that cannot be measured. I shared this thought with him, but he knew nothing of qi and also said that on Earth, dark energy would be weak.
Sooner or later the cosmologists will measure and understand dark energy. What they do not know is that they will also be understanding qi and probably how to measure it. Again, I propose that the dark energy here on Earth is what Chinese Medicine refers to as qi.
This is what I consider that the Chinese were measuring in a living being, the parameters of what we call life. They were concerned with what and how we are alive more than the hardware (organs, bones, flesh, nerves and blood vessels) that keeps us alive.
Beyond What We Can See and Touch
"In English, qi (also known as chi) is usually translated as 'vital life force,' but qi goes beyond that simple translation. According to classical Chinese Philosophy, qi is the force that makes up and binds together all things in the universe. It is paradoxically, both everything and nothing."2
"One of the more recognizable words from Confucianism, qi refers to the vital psychophysical stuff, or pneuma, present in everyone. Zhu Xi believed that everything in the world was composed of qi and li (principle). Principle governs the universe and maintains order, but is moderated by qi."3
Chinese medicine is betraying itself. It is seduced by the five percent of what we can see and touch that we call evidence-based biomedicine, also of great value, but not the essence of life which the Chinese perceived and about which it created a working medicine: Chinese medicine.
ADDENDUM
My educational background is "hard science." I attended a "scientific" high school (Stuyvesant) and graduated from Cornell U. as a chemist. I attended medical college (hard science), but by the time I graduated I leaned toward the ineffable, and chose to be a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. From near the beginning of that training, I perceived that through history, healing involved the "laying on of hands." No "hard science" here.
I set out to search for an acceptable method of combining the "talking therapy" with the "laying on of hands." I tried Wilhelm Reich's work as developed by Lowen and Pierokos. After seven years, what I experienced was an attack on what they perceived as "resistance" by the patient to insight, to perception of their psychic dilemma. ("Resistance" is a myth that I will explain elsewhere.)
To concepts of "energy" independent of concrete testable sources such as electricity, I had no training, education or exposure. I had several distinctly separate numinous experiences throughout stressful parts of my life that had no lingering influence in the daily course of living.
It was by sheer good fortune that I met Leslie Kenton, who introduced me to J.D. Van Buren near London in 1971. Knowing nothing about Chinese medicine, I had an extraordinary epiphany as I stepped one foot into his house/clinic. In a flash, I suddenly knew what I meant when I announced at the age of 2-and-a-half something that never varied since, for my entire life: that I wanted to be a doctor, a physician. Ever since I have studied, practiced, taught and written about Chinese medicine as my way of "laying on of hands."
Editor's Note: Part 1 of this article appeared in the October issue.
References
2. "What Is Qi? Definition of Qi in Traditional Chinese Medicine." Acupuncture Massage College, Feb. 4, 2021. www.amcollege.edu/blog/qi-in-traditional-chinese-medicine
3. Wilson TA. Cult of Confucius and the Temple of Culture: Key Terms and Concepts. Hamilton University, Asian Studies, 2010. https://academics.hamilton.edu/asian_studies/home/culttemp/sitepages/keyterms.html
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