Where does energy come from and where does it go?  Seemingly difficult as it may be to grasp this concept, the law of conservation of energy implies energy doesn’t actually come from anything, nor does it go anywhere, but rather is merely transformed.  More specifically, this law states the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant.  A consequence of this law is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

Albert Einstein’s famous theory of relativity e=mc2 reinforces this law, as it shows us that energy equals mass, times the speed of light, squared.  Simplified, this means that mass and energy are not two separate units, but actually the same thing in different forms. So the law of conservation of energy and Einstein’s theory of relativity both tell us that energy can be transformed, but not created or destroyed.

When thinking about how energy works, the idea of transformation makes perfect sense; a lamp functions by converting chemical energy into heat and light, or a microphone will convert sound into electricity.  One invention still leaves some questions unanswered – the perpetual motion machine.  This machine defies the law of conservation of energy by producing energy from nothing.  That is, nothing man has given to assist it.  So the law is violated when these machines give out more energy than is put into them, and thus should slow or stop over a period of time.  So the law of conservation of energy still remains.  Nikola Tesla, a well known inventor and engineer of the late 19th – early 20th century once said, “One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheelwork of the universe [...] and the very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery.”  Was this man aware of a more vast and incalculable presence of energy?

How does any of this relate to the paranormal?  It is necessary to apply knowledge of energy to the human body and mind.  People are essentially made up of the same stuff as everything else in the universe; furniture, electricity, trees, and gases.  Molecules are made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles, which consist of no solidity but are waves or clusters of information and energy.  If we are capable of noticing the affirmations in our everyday lives of energy transformation (when we boil water, plug a fan in, or burn wood), as opposed to creation or destruction, then it becomes very understandable as to why one of the world’s most intriguing questions is, what happens to us, to our energy, when we die?

Thought processes alone raise some very interesting questions.  Research has proven even human thoughts have a measurable energy signature of their own; meaning when a person has a certain thought, their brain waves or electric energy signals will change to reflect those.  With that said, what happens to this energy once it is dispersed?  Because we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, perhaps it is distributed into the universe.  Why is it sometimes stepping into a hospital or nursing home causes an immediate and unexplainable change in mood?  Why have some felt compelled to avoid a certain room in a house which was the site of past conflicts or negative events?  What about someone whose positive attitude seemed to just “rub off” on others?  Perhaps it’s conceivable that thoughts, like all other energy in the universe, cannot be destroyed.  It is logical that the law of conservation of energy must apply to thoughts as well as it does to all energy.  Is it possible that similar and powerful thoughts, negative or positive, repeatedly occurring somewhere could be the explanation for paranormal experiences (sudden irrational feelings, unexplainable physical illness, etc.)?

Aside from these paranormal experiences, which are easily ignored or forgotten, there are others which hold more significance.  When people claim to see, hear, feel, or smell a person who is either not there or cannot be there, it is not so easily brushed off.  The people who do not consider these events to be “figments of their imaginations” will more than likely correlate their experience with the notorious question, where do we (our energy) go when we die?, and justifiably so.  For a person to agree that conservation of energy applies to all energy may be academic, due to its obscure scientific simplicity.  But when it applies to human energy this science does not appear to give people all the answers they are looking for.

It seems mysterious but the cellular makeup in almost all of our bodies is constantly changing due to the birth of new cells and the death of old ones.  It should make sense that by the time we are old, we are nearly completely different people, as almost all of our physical selves (some think even our brains) has been totally replaced from what we were born with.  Of course we look older, but the fact that we are still ourselves, despite an almost entirely new physical makeup, may suggest that our cells can be nothing more than an indication of a more imperishable energy.  Perhaps this is where the idea of a “soul” comes in?  If a person’s paranormal experience is thought to be caused by an entity existing on a different plane than ours, then it could be reasonably assumed that to be realized by a human it would need to borrow some type of energy from our plane.  Could a profound experience combined with cold spots, malfunctioning electronics, or unexplained physical discomfort be a good example of this?  This is a question we will never stop trying to answer.