Customer Reviews

Subtle Energy : Awakening to the Unseen Forces in Our Lives

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I loved this book. It really opened my eyes to the variety of ways that energy affects our lives. Drawing from the most up to date science theories to thousands of years of mystic traditions, the author shows how all things really are tied together with energy. Everyday we have opprtunities to see and alter the exchange of energy with our fellow humans, the planet and the universe. Also by keeping the articles short, the author allowed me to pick up the book and put it down everyday, always having learned something new. A must read.

I'm a granola-crunching, chakra-balancing New Ager, and I actually threw this book away rather than pass it on to a used bookstore and some unsuspecting customer. It's ludicrously inaccurate. The author "explains" his ideas by zooming from reiki to the chakras to feng shui concepts in the space of a few paragraphs, but he never cites any of these ancient and self-contained systems accurately or with integrity. Yes, these systems are all related at a basic level, but this book reads like a bunch of new age pamphlets that got accidentally shuffled together.

He describes this therapist who felt drained after she hugged her depressed patients. He counseled her to stop hugging them because "energy flows downhill," and bam, she no longer felt drained. Amazing! Now, if he'd shown her how to shield her energy, stop the draining effect, and maybe channel some positive energy into her clients while also giving them therapeutic hugs, there might have been some useful info in that section.

But it was when I got to the line "And here is a poem by the Native American poet Starhawk..." that I started laughing so hard I dropped the book. Folks, Starhawk is a cultural and ethnic Jew, a witch, and a co-founder of some major feminist Pagan movements, and well known for all these things. He's not only misinformed, he obviously didn't fact-check anything he wrote.

Ignore this hodgepodge. Some alternative starting texts would be: The Psychic Energy Workbook by Miller and Harper, Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith (a Western perspective on the chakra system), or Reiki: the Ultimate Guide.

This book gives an excellent overview of energies and forces that are currently not recognized by the mainstream of scientific research. I share the previous reviewer's scepticism at the author's detailed knowledge of the many topics he writes about, so I would not recommend this book to someone who seeks to study a particular topic in detail. However, as an introduction or survey of the vast field of esoteric energies, it is more than adequate.

I actually bought this because I thought it might have some interesting material. Instead it's a hodge-podge of pseudoscience, whatever studies back up the author's opinions, and a pretty dopey logic line.

I immediately caught the problems with the feng shui material (only because I've studied with an authentic master for years). Because that information was riddled with errors, I began to question much of the other information.

You can't have statements like "appliances we use every day are potentially hazardous," and "our use of electric power dramatically alters our magnetic enviroment, and unnatural fields have potentially serious impact on us," then claim that feng shui uses electrically powered objects such as air conditioners (the power-hungriest electrical gadget) and televisions to stimulate "disharmonious or undesirable energy patterns." Friends, that is NOT authentic feng shui, which seeks to work with the electromagnetics of the planet!

The entire line of reasoning the author puts forth stinks; his versions contradict a lot of information on the same studies written just a few years ago, which leads me to think that he made up his own idea about the results of several of the studies. Winifred Gallagher's "The Power of Place" is much more fact-based (even with its conceptual problems with Feng Shui) and a much finer, more engrossing read than this piece of fluff.

If you are just learning about the unseen energies around us, this is the book for you. If you have studied Feng Shui, Reiki, or any of the other topics covered in this book, you will at best be bored, at worst find "inaccuracies" (most a matter of opinion or preference) and overgeneralizations. It is a wonderful starting point though, and does a fine job of tying many different but related topics together. Start here, and then graduate to more advanced and detailed texts.

I learned alot---changed my thinking and my approach to life. Cannot say the editing was what it could have been, however, a little choppy, but still a very worthy text and I have and will recommend it.

Collinge catalogs a combination of myth, magic, apocryphal stories, and dubious references. He builds these into a house of cards which purports to support a theory that forms of "energy" exist which have one thing in common - they can't be measured. Nor can the supposed effects of any of these be predicted, with repeatable experiments. No wonder they are overlooked by science!

Collinge never expresses any real doubt about these sometimes contradictory approaches. Just one egregious example - he catalogs and then expands on the so-called "Mars effect". In doing so, he completely ignores the statistical analysis which shows that this effect is non-existent. Yet, he urges the reader to take seriously all sorts of nonsense, from Feng Shui to homeopathy.

Nothing is too ridiculous or worthless for Collinge to use as an example of the reality of his specious ideas.

If you want to understand the minds of those who believe anything they read, hear, or receive in email chain letters, read this book. Better yet, read "Why People Believe Weird Things"
by Michael Shermer.

If you would rather make good use of your time, take a look at the even more amazing (but true!) stories in books such as "The Elegant Universe", or anything by Stephen Hawking.