The idea that people give off "energy" can mean just about anything - from the kind of downer we feel when we're around a "negative Nellie" to how much we enjoy being in the presence of someone who is always upbeat and positive.
However, New Age "energy" enthusiasts do indeed believe that people give off a kind of spiritual energy that can be discerned by others. Some claim that by developing "secret intuitive powers" we can learn how to manipulate this energy to do everything from attracting our soul mate to bringing in bundles of money overnight.
Judith Orloff, M.D., who describes herself as a psychiatrist clairvoyant in the practice of Energy Psychiatry, has written books about this subject. She describes how, as a child, she was able to "sense invisible tendrils reaching out to me from a person that transmitted information about them." She believes she was sensing the body's "subtle energy system" (a type of energy categorized by the National Institute of Health as being without any scientific support). Dr. Orloff has developed programs to help people develop this intuitive sense.
"Intuition offers a direct line to your life force and also, as I experience it, to a divine intelligence," she writes. "It's the language of energy."
This isn't just New Age - it's the occult. Remember, the occult pertains to any system that claims to use or have knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies. This includes all kinds of clairvoyance, fortune telling, witchcraft, magick, channeling, mediumship, and New Age energy forces.
Deepak Chopra pushes a similar idea, but he gets so creative with his terminology that it's difficult to figure out what exactly he's talking about. He refers to "a subtler level of energy - the level where emotions, motivation, aspirations and beliefs exist." He claims that "It takes energy to keep this level of life going so when we say that someone is giving off negative energy, what we really mean is that at the subtle level of mind and body, negative beliefs are consuming energy and turning it into negative actions, words and thoughts."
His approach appears to incorporate New Age "mind body" concepts common to the human potential movement which posits that whatever the mind can conceive, a person can achieve. In essence, this is making the mind into a kind of god.
Another version of this theory concerns the presence of auras, which many New Agers mistake as proof of the existence of their much vaunted life force energy, but there is a very definite scientific explanation of this phenomenon. (See Auras and Kirlian Photography )
Because science has determined that there is no such thing as a "life force energy", it's simply not possible to discern it in another person.
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