Is the spiritual an energy like material energies such as thermal or electrical energies?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Is the spiritual just energy that is essentially material? Like we have so many material energies. It is not gross physical matter. But could the spiritual be a material energy and not something different from matter? Answer.
Yes, the spiritual is an energy. But it is radically different from what we normally consider as energies. The word energy is used in different senses.
For example, we may say, I am tired. I have no energy. So, here we are using energy in a general or non-technical sense to refer to how much strength we feel we have.
Energy is used in a more technical sense or scientific sense in science when say thermal energy or mechanical energy or electrical energy or whatever. This energy is clearly material and it is measurable. But if you consider consciousness, which is the essence of the spiritual side of life, most people who are interested in spirituality, they want to expand their consciousness.
They want to experience new things with their consciousness. So, for such people, the consciousness, which is the essence of the spiritual side of life, what is this consciousness? It is also an energy, but it is not a quantifiable energy like the physical energies that science talks about. If somebody is angry, then how much is the level of anger? We can’t quantify that.
If somebody is in pain, medical science cannot quantify that pain. We may have some sort of pain scales, but they are inferences. There is no precise pain meter.
It is in our consciousness that we experience pain or pleasure or various emotions. And none of these are mathematically measurable the way the physical energies are measurable. So, although we may use the word energy to refer to the spiritual side of us, but that is an energy categorically different from the energies that we talk about at the material level in day-to-day life.
So, consciousness is the energy that enables us to experience all other energies. It is only because we are conscious that we may feel that this is hot or this is cold, or that I am in pain or I am not in pain. If there had been no consciousness, then we would not be able to experience any other energies at all.
So, then the question comes up that if the spiritual is the basis of our capacity to experience everything, including energy or physical matter. So, it is because we have energy, we have the energy of consciousness. So, we may say that this is heavy or this is light.
We experience matter. And then where does this conscious energy come from? It comes from our spiritual side. And that spiritual side is radically different from the material side of us.
Matter itself does not have any capacity to experience matter. But the spiritual side is with which we experience matter. So, now to summarize this answer in a more analytical way, there are four terms over here, which we will clarify.
There is matter, energy, consciousness and spirit. So, the word energy can be used to refer to something that is material, and it can also be used to refer to something that is spiritual. The difference between matter and spirit is in terms of consciousness.
Matter does not have consciousness, whereas spirit has consciousness. So, in fact, we could say that consciousness is the energy of spirit. We are at our core souls and the soul is conscious.
So, the soul is present at one place. And from there it radiates its energy of consciousness outwards all over the body. So, when we say consciousness is the energy of the soul, this is categorically different from the energies that may be there in the material level of reality.
Because those energies are themselves material and they are not having consciousness and they are measurable. Whereas consciousness is the non-material experiential aspect of our being or essence of our being, which enables us to experience everything, including matter and the energies that are also present at the material level.