Seeing and Feeling Energy Fields

By Gus DiZerega
Some otherwise sympathetic readers will suspect my description of Sacred amounts
to wishful thinking. The world really is meaningless. Ultimately everything is simply
an object in relation to other objects. So it seems to many minds thoroughly
socialized by the modern outlook. They do not see a way out of secular nihilism.
But socialization is a kind of hypnotization; necessary, unavoidable, and at the same
time it facilitates us it blinds us. Because people normally take shared rules and
world views for granted, socialization gives people a framework within which they
can cooperate with one another more easily. They share a common frame of
reference. What does not easily fit into what we know to be true we often do not
even see. But that does not mean what we do not notice does not exist.
Two examples reported by Roger Highfield from recent research in perception are
particularly suggestive of this point. [1]
In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by
a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two men carrying a wooden door
passed between the stranger and the subjects. After the door went by, the subjects
were asked if they had noticed anything change.
Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had
been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who
sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.
Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before
the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they had
ended up speaking to a different person.
In another better known example, subjects were asked to count ball passes by one
of the teams while watching a tape of people playing basketball.
Around half failed to spot a woman dressed in a gorilla suit who walked slowly across
the scene for nine seconds, even though this hairy interloper had passed between
the players and stopped to face the camera and thump her chest.
However, if people were simply asked to view the tape, they noticed the gorilla easily.
The effect is so striking that some of them refused to accept they were looking at the
same tape and thought that it was a different version of the video, one edited to
include the ape.

Prof Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire recently repeated this

experiment before a live audience in London (as part of his Theatre of Science,
performed with the author Dr. Simon Singh) and found that only 10 per cent of the
400 or so people who saw the show managed to spot the gorilla.
In both these cases, and in many others, people did not see obvious changes in
shape, color, and even interaction, because they were so unexpected. Often we do
not see what does not fit with what we know to be true. Our conscious perceptions
are much more theory laden than we are usually aware.
This problem extends into science. For example Alfred Wegener presented his
theory of continental drift in 1912. The evidence included identical fossils from
different sides of the Atlantic and tropical fossils in currently arctic environments,
mountain ranges of the same age and rock in Africa and Brazil meeting like a jigsaw puzzle when the two continents were fitted together, provided powerful evidence
that today we know to have been accurately interpreted. Yet in the scientific
community Wegeners theory was all but universally ridiculed.
In the 1950s, discovery of continental drift explained how continents could
move. Evidence that had been in front of everyone all along was finally seen to fit
together, and that Wegener had been correct. Even in science, what people see is
predicated on what they expect to see. If they cannot imagine how it happened, it
did not happen.
For hundreds of years Western society has increasingly emphasized we exist in a
world of discrete objects whose borders are defined by with their physical
boundaries. As a society we also now relate to anything but human beings and our
pets as objects. The reality of our radical isolation in a world of objects and equally
isolated human subjects now seems obvious to most of us.
But our perceptions that this is so results from constantly reinforced socialization.
Here I will describe how to see and feel the densest of the energy fields surrounding
us, fields that continually interpenetrate with similar fields surrounding other
people and things. Seeing this energy or chi as it is known in China, does not
mean we are having a spiritual experience. The spiritual realm is a realm revealing
intrinsic value as at the core of reality. Seeing energy is more like seeing color.
However, unlike seeing color, seeing energy demonstrates we are truly
interconnected and that our bodies do not exist in isolation. When we see and feel
this field it is easier to take seriously arguments asserting our intimate relationship
with the world. It offers visual and tactile evidence that the assumption we are
radically separate is mistaken.
Not everyone can learn to see energy, at least I have been unable to teach everyone
I have tried. But I succeed far more often than I fail.
2

Exercise 1
Hold your hand and fingers in front of you. Spread your fingers comfortably. You
want at least two of your fingers to make a wide V. Keep them in focus, but do not
stare at them. A relaxed but focused gaze is ideal. I call it permissive viewing. Keep
your hand as flat as comfortably possible. While holding your hand with fingers
spread, focus on the plane along which your hand lies, but not on your hand or
fingers separate from that plane. Your fingers will be in focus because the plane
along which they lie is in focus, but you will not be attending to any particular part
of it.
As passively as you can and with minimal expectations, allow your gaze to notice
the largest triangle of space between a V formed by your opened fingers. Move your
hand slowly and smoothly back and forth along the plane on which it lies while
keeping that plane in focus. Doing this helps reduce any attention you might pay to
the background, to what is behind your hand. Think of how you tune out the
background when you focus on drops of water on the windshield of your car. Thats
the kind of focus you need except do not stare at where your fingers are. Its as if
you focus on the windshield as a whole, not on the individual drops.
It is helpful to do this exercise with your hand in neither bright light nor deep
shade. Very bright light in particular is disruptive to what I am trying to show you
how to see because the energy field is subtle and strong light can distract us.
Now, notice the space extending out from your fingers about to , outlining
them like a glove. Again, do not stare, just pay attention to that space.
Is the texture of this space any different from the space farther from your fingers?
It might appear somewhat like a mini version of a heat wave rising off a road.
Perhaps it possesses a faint outer boundary. If so, notice whether the boundary is
lighter or darker than the space closer to your fingers. Does it have a color? For most
of you, especially initially, this effect will be very subtle, but in my experience most
people, particularly young people with fewer years of conditioning to overcome, learn
to see this field fairly quickly. The major impediment is that it often seems so faint
as to be appearing simply through the power of suggestion.
It is not.
If you can see this field, called the etheric film in some metaphysical writing, I
recommend practicing until it is relatively easy to see. This is the first best way of
demonstrating to yourself that we are not just reacting to my power of suggestion
(such as it is). Some people have seen this field all their lives, but either ignored it
or chosen not to talk about it until the subject arises. (One of my brightest university
students, a mathematics and economics major who graduated with highest honors,
told me she learned to keep my mouth shut.) Others learn to see it relatively easily.
(Thats me.) Some people, however, seem unable to see it. If you are one of them

and have read this far, continue reading as there are other ways to perceive this
energy, especially exercises 3 and 4.
Exercise 2
Go outside and look at some trees. For your initial experience the best subjects are
large trees with prominent trunks and relatively few branches for at least five to six
feet. Longer thicker trunks are better than shorter thinner ones. This exercise is
particularly easy to do in the winter, especially when there is snow on the ground,
because there are fewer distractions. The more complex the background the more
noise interferes with seeing something quite subtle.
Look at the tree trunk the same way you looked at your hand. This is often easier if
you are walking slowly on a sidewalk (so you can take your path for granted) and
the tree is far enough from you so as not to seem to be moving very much, but
nevertheless is slowly shifting vis--vis its background. That way you can notice
the plane the trunk lies on, particularly the space to either side of the trunk, without
being distracted by the background, just like when I asked you to move your hand
slowly so as to help disconnect from the background.
Notice how the field surrounding the trunk is to some degree similar to what you
saw around your hand, but also is different. In my experience it differs most
noticeably in being thicker than what surrounds the hand. If other trunks are
farther away, notice how the fields around them are smaller, as befits looking at
something farther away.
Once you are able to see these fields around trees, look at other things. Things with
well-defined physical boundaries are the easiest. Even a lamp pole has a field,
although in my experience one considerably smaller than that surrounding an
equivalently thick tree. Here is evidence what you are seeing is not simply an aspect
of our visual process.
With practice, for many people, and for some simply because of the blessings of
having the talent, you will be able to see these fields extending far beyond these
initial boundaries, but with gradually increasing subtlety until they appear to fade
away or enter into the general background network of fields within which we all live.
While walking through a forest your energy boundaries interpenetrate those of the
trees.
Exercise 3
Now try and feel this energy. Many Tai-chi and Qi-gong exercises are great for this,
but my suggestions will be separate from these and do not work as deeply with the
energy. For Tai-chi and Qi-gong, work with a qualified teacher.
4

Sit quietly, with a clear relaxed mind. Do not use alcohol or other
substances. Having a good but relaxed posture is important. Once you are
comfortable, with an erect but not military-stiff spine, breathe in, visualizing a
beautiful clear blue light going through your nostrils into your heart. Do this for a
while until the visualization is pretty solid in your heart or center of your chest. It
helps if you visualize it as having qualities of peace, harmony, perhaps love.
As you exhale, visualize the energy spreading from your heart down your
arms. Breath in being in the blue light to your heart. Breathe out, and as you do,
send it down your arms. Send it slowly. Perhaps you can feel it moving down.
When you can feel it in the palms of your hands, usually as warmth or tingling,
perhaps even an involuntary moving of your fingers, let your palms cross over one
another, palm in front of palm. Move them side by side so as to minimize feeling
any heat that also radiates from them. Keep them 2 or 3 inches apart. See whether
you can feel when they cross. If you feel nothing, rub your palms together briskly,
to stimulate and enliven them, and repeat this exercise.
Try it in different directions and at gradually increasing distances, to try and get a
better sense of how this is not simply body heat, and of what this energy feels like.
Exercise 4
Ask a friend to sit in a chair. Stand behind them and raise one palm until it is a
foot or two above your partners head, and off to one side, a bit beyond their
shoulder. Rub your hands together briskly, as in Exercise 3. Hold your hand out
with your palm facing the floor. Ask your partner to close his or her eyes.
Now pass your palm slowly over the top of your partners head, perhaps a foot or
two above it. No closer! You do not want to be distracted by body heat. See whether
you feel a distinct difference when it crosses directly over their crown. Ask your
partner whether they can feel when your hand has passed over the crown of their
head. They will feel a kind of interference with the energy rising out of their crown,
perhaps as a faint pressure. In my experience many people can feel this exercise
even if they are sitting below the moving hand. But some others cannot.
Exercise 5
If you can see energy, as I described it in my earlier exercises, allow the fields to
touch one another, one from each hand. See whether you can feel when that
happens. Finger tips are good for this because they minimize noise from body heat.

You can also try this exercise with a friend, touching his or her densest part of their
field with your own, but not touching their physical body. See whether you both
can feel it. Even if your friend cannot see the field, he or she may be able to feel
their contact.
Implications
The point of these exercises is to introduce you to the actual perception that we are
immersed in fields, that we are not truly isolated individuals and that this claim is
experientially based. We can see and feel energy fields, and these fields
interpenetrate. Once we are aware of this immersion, the secular modern ideal of
isolated individuals engaged in a promethean quest to impose their vision and
meaning on a neutral world can begin to dissolve, not through argument, but
through something stronger: our personal experience.
These experiences shed light on some intriguing findings in other fields of
knowledge.
Immersing ourselves in Nature is good for us in ways that science can actually
measure. In the late 1990s, Frances Kuo, director of the University of Illinois
Landscape and Human Health Laboratory, measured two groups within the same
massive housing development. One group could see a courtyard with trees, grass,
and flowers out their windows. The other saw parking lots and basketball
courts. The former group performed better on many standardized tests[2]. Nor were
these findings alone.
Gary Snyder has observed that the spirit of place is the total of all the energy fields
present in a place. Those of rocks and water, soil and air, plants, animals, fungi,
people the whole ensemble. I think he has it about right.
In the natural world we are immersed within a energetically richer environment than
in artificially simplified environments. We evolved in these fields, and our DNA
carries a probable awareness of them over a billion years of development. Of course
we can choose to deaden our awareness, and the modern Western world does an
excellent job in doing so. But deadening our awareness of other senses is certainly
a loss, and so is this. Perhaps this is why we are now discovering that the health
benefits of being in Nature are not trivial and can be measured.
Many non-Western healing traditions know these fields are influenced by our minds
and so use them plus focused attention to help others who are sick or injured. In
the United States the best known approach using this awareness is Dorothea HoverKramers work.[3]

[1] Roger Highfield, Did You See the Gorilla? www.telegraph.co.uk, May
2004, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3
322642/Did-you-see-the-gorilla.html
[2] The science suggests access to nature is essential to human health, Lab Spaces,
Feb
17,
2009.
http://www.labspaces.net/95646/The_science_suggests_access_to_nature_is_esse
ntial_to_human_health
[3] Dorothea Hover-Kramer, Healing Touch: Essential Energy Medicine for Yourself
and Others, (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc., 2011).

http://dizerega.com/faultlines/appendices/seeing-and-feeling-energy-fields/