What is Qi ("Chi") Anyway?

You know, Yin & Yang, Light and Dark ... Qi (pronounced "Chi").  "May the Force be with you"???

Well, there are likely many answers to this question, but how about coming up with an answer that might actually stand up to the scrutiny of logic and reason???  Does such an answer even exist? .... Well, my brilliant, Mensa-minded, husband and I were having such a discussion just the other night at the end of a long hard day and week.  A glass of wine always seems to get our intellectual juices flowing and allows us to mesh on a common plane, for Ken is all intellect and therefore assumes I am all free-flowing spirit.  I actually, like to think I'm a pretty good balance between the two, myself, but to each his own opinion, right.  So anyway, we're sitting on the comfortable worn leather sofa, in soft the soft lighting of the living room.  As we're sipping wine my husband suddenly asks me "So what exactly is "Chi" anyway?"  My short answer:  "Qi is THE Spirit energy that drives the functions of body to 'move' into action.  It's the link between the spiritual and the physical."  Now, you have to understand,  my husband is the quintessential "Doubting Thomas" (from the Bible, the Apostle who needed to place his fingers into Jesus's five wounds before he was able to allow himself to to believe that Jesus had actually arisen from the dead).  To my husband's (Ken) way of thinking, if he can't see it, touch it, quantify or calculate something he cannot accept it as truth.  [His world is literally black and white, which is kind of funny because he's married to me:  the 'definition' of grey.]  To this end, Ken is on an insatiable search for input in an ongoing quest for knowledge  [Funny story I'll have share about this later, at the end of this post].

Image Source

Well somewhat predictably in response to my given explanation as to "what Qi is," Ken scrunches up his nose and shakes his head in disbelief.  He doesn't quite buy into things pertaining to the unexplainable, the Spirit Realm.  "So do plants and animals have "Chi", then?" Ken wonders aloud.

My reply "Absolutely.  Why wouldn't they?"

"Because, they're not human."

I have to laugh.  We could spin off onto a tangent conversation here about "what is a soul" and "what are the criteria for having a soul," but I want to keep the conversation on focus.  So I mention scientific experiments where scientist have weighed human bodies just before death and then immediately after the medical pronouncement of death.  What these scientists have found is that the body consistently loses 21 grams (these are the original experiments, but there have been more recent experiments as well).  Moreover, these researchers have attributed this 21 grams of weight difference (loss) to the "mass of the soul" which leaves the body after death.  "So perhaps the soul is the vessel which houses the Qi?"  I offer.  "When Qi leaves the body, the body becomes inanimate, what we would think of as non-living or dead."

Image Source:  Wikipedia via the link given above

Nope, Ken's not buying it.  He explains that Einstein's famous equation E = MC ^2 was actually initially written and published as  M = E / C^2, that is to say that Mass is comprised of Energy over the Speed of Light squared or in laymen's terms  it means "Energy actually has Mass."  Does that blow your mind?  Do you find it hard to wrap your mind around such a concept?  Well, check this out ... Scientists have actually done experiments where they have attempted to measure the "weight" (mass ... weight= mass x gravity) of two clocks to a high degree of atomic precision.  The first clock has power.  It is moving and actively keeping time.  The second clock has no power; it isn't moving or keeping time.  What the scientists in this instance found is that the clock with power --where clocks are comprised of the identical components, save for one clock having a charged battery and the second clock having a dead/non-functioning battery-- actually weighed more, significantly more, than the clock with the dead battery.  So Ken tries to reason, "it's a power thing, not a spirit thing" as if to imply that this alone (power vs. non-power) accounts for the difference in weight between a living body and the same later deceased body.

"Ah, my Doubting Thomas."  I laugh.  "You have just made my point for me.  What exactly do you suppose is the primal source of energy for driving the functions within the living body?  The difference between being alive and not?"  He doesn't answer, so I answer for him  "The difference is Qi, Cosmic Energy, Universal Energy, the Original Source Energy or whatever you want to call it.  Qi is the link between the spiritual and the physical, "the cosmic battery source" if you will.  "Qi is what allows our spirit to manifest itself into the realm of the physical by way of an actively functioning physical body."  Well, Ken's still not buying it, but I can tell by the look upon his face that I've planted a seed, or rather a thorn, in that brilliant mind of his.  Time will tell, if this seed begins to germinate... So, what say you?  How would you attempt to explain "What Qi is?" and do you happen to believe in the concept of souls?  Do you believe that plants and animals have a soul? Do they have Qi?  Is Qi that which connects us all?

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A funny side story on the insatiable quest for knowledge ....