First let me say again that I am really grateful that you're coming at this in the same spirit as I am. And I'm sorry that I can't give you better answers.

From the very beginning of my experience with Reiki I assumed that part of the effect was psychosomatic, due to the simple natural reaction to sitting calmly for ~20 minutes while someone peacefully and attentively did the hand motions. For a lot of people that's enough to be seriously mind-altering (because of our stressful and sleep-encouraging daily grind, etc...)

But there's something else, something that seems perceptually a little bit like electromagnetism, but different.

When I was first learning I would go up to friends and stand in front of them and have them put their hands up perpendicular to the ground. Then I would put my hands in front of theirs about 1-2 cm away (airgap) and "charge" or "power up" my Reiki field. Most people felt something, and many of them would jump as if from a sort of "joy buzzer" or something.

There were also times when I used Reiki without making any visible motions. My experience lead me to believe that the physical hand motions and rituals are pretty much window-dressing. It also works on animals and plants. So, yeah, not entirely psychosomatic.

> Does the spiritual energy cause the body to react in a way that wouldn't be possible for the psychosomatic effect to do alone?

It seems to me that the fact that Reiki engenders general healing, and not just physical but mental and emotional too, is very significant. The people who trained and initiated me straight out said that Reiki was intelligent. (Although, perhaps oddly, it's not a person or a god. But it's not not a person either, if you feel me...)

Are there any factors known to be universally healing? (I imagine you could mainline ATP[1] directly to your bloodstream but even that would presumably just power you up, eh?)

> If the spiritual energy gives someone more energy, then it's imaginable that we should be able to to track that. Imagine that we can very carefully track a person's weight, measure their caloric intake, and measure their caloric outtake (the amount of physical exertion the person does including muscle use and body heat, and the chemical contents of their sweat, exhalation, urine, and feces) to an accuracy level where there's no discrepancy between a normal person's intake and outtake. Now imagine we do that with someone using Reiki. If Reiki is purely a psychosomatic effect that causes the body to use the energy it has in a different way, then there should still be no discrepancy. If there is a spiritual energy component, then there should be a discrepancy, otherwise it's completely explainable by psychosomatic effect alone.

Yes, this might (I think) be pretty effective. Some of the dramatic healings I've seen would have to have been accompanied by significant caloric uptake (sorry if my terminology sounds stupid) yet no one ever feels tired afterward. You always feel refreshed and revived, both parties.

> Most of the experiments I mentioned could be changed so that the person administering the Reiki doesn't know that there's an experiment going on.

I think that would work well, provided the experimenter has "pure" or "good" intentions. I don't think there's any way to isolate or shield Reiki, so if the experimenter were working out of some sort of selfish or impure motive then that would affect the results.

There is also the problem of (what I call) "conceptual leverage". What I mean is, let's imagine that you could produce scientifically incontrovertible proof that there was a "fifth fundamental force"[2] and that it healed people. There would be a massive clashes and upheaval in world belief systems, because the meaning or significance of such a discovery would be deep and profound to so many people but it would also be different for different people. The Catholic Church has already grappled with this[3]. Now some scientists are going to tell them that God lives in Japan?

If I may be forgiven for anthropomorphizing Reiki again, it doesn't care. Reiki can heal people without scientific recognition. Therefore it is at least consistent logically that it would not "sit still" to be scientifically incontrovertibly proven. In fact the ambiguity serves Reiki's deeper purpose.

Cheers! I really appreciate the time and thought you put into this.

> What if someone funded opening a Reiki temple -- but had no other interaction with it -- with the hope that if Reiki is truly a supernatural phenomenon, then getting it more exposure would eventually attract people who would directly study it there? Would that Reiki temple automatically be less successful because of the intent than a Reiki temple in the same area created with funding from a similar hands-off person who just loved Reiki?

My prediction based on my experience is, yes, that temple would be less successful. Remember that this subthread started with questioning the distinction between supernatural and natural. Reiki could well be the effect of some kind of natural biological EM communication. (But then the implication is that there are no hard boundaries between our unconscious minds, which of course is standard Jungian doctrine, eh?)

> The idea of something reacting differently to the intention of testing at a distance seems even more untenable than the base claim.

I know. I did warn you. This is the Rabbithole of Rabbitholes.

I haven't been able to determine a distance limit for the sensitivity of the phenomenon.

As I told the other fellow, you might be better off reading up on Micheal Levin's work on thought and communication "Outside the Nervous System" than talking to me. Although I'm happy to answer any questions as best I can.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction or something less dramatic like bio-modulated EM or something.

[3] https://sites.sju.edu/icb/what-is-the-catholic-churchs-posit...