book review of Robert Bruce's "Energy Work: the Secrets of Healing and Spiritual Growth" (2011)

 Book review of  Robert Bruce's "Energy Work: the Secrets of Healing and Spiritual Growth" (2011)

What makes this book special is Robert Bruce (infamous for his Astral Travel teaching) emphasizes what he calls "body awareness tactile imaging." I didn't read this book word for word but read the few first chapters and then speed read the rest of the book.

So when Robert Bruce established the idea of awareness as a tactile imaging then I immediately thought of proprioception as the "sixth sense." 

proprioception—the sense of the posture and movements of our body in space— and touch—the sense originating from our skin when we make contact with objects, with a specific focus on the hands.

The research that I cited back over 15 years ago was on Sony developing a holographic ultrasound technology that utilized proprioception to then transduce the other senses as mental awareness. Even the military developed this technology as the "Brain Port" so that a person can see with the tactile imaging on their tongue for example.

Of course as the decade went by more science research established that ultrasound is indeed a crucial frequency as the "sixth sense" as it activates the microtubules as a quantum coherence. 

Since Robert Bruce did not use the word proprioception - not that I noticed and it's not in the otherwise thorough index - then my guess is he didn't want to overly complicate the subject matter with fancy science jargon.

Rather he said that in Western meditation in the New Age circles the skill of visualization is overly emphasized when in fact there is rather a direct perception as "attention." Yes this is the psychic knowledge with the third eye pineal gland as a transducer.

So the book leads the reader through many different exercises mainly based on the sense of touching the body and focusing on the subtle sensations based on moving the body while not being able to see the body.

What was fascinating was Robert Bruce claiming the very interior of the body along the spine is electrical energy while the outside edge of that core is magnetic energy. And the idea being that eventually the heart as an energy center will be activated through these exercises.

I was reminded of my own piano training as science has proven that training in a music instrument from a young age will significantly increase the corpus callosum that integrates the right and left brain. Then after my senior piano concert based on memorizing classical music, I took piano lessons from an "old skool" Hungarian teacher at Smith College. I probably was her first male student now that I think about it! Maybe that's why she had me start all over with just "feeling the energy at the tip of my finger" as I pressed the key. As a first year college student I found this very fascinating (as soon as I took a big swallow of my pride of the past 12 years of piano lessons). haha.

And then my 2nd year of University I was in a paid medical study on the weekends and the nurse had to take my EEG to enter into the study. She exclaimed in shock at how strong my alpha waves were!! Again after years of research I attributed that anomaly to my music training, especially the 2nd movement of Bach's Italian Concerto in F Major. The slow middle movements at 60 bpm cause the brain to subside the 1 beat per second into 4 Hertz - and the brain and heart then are resonating and synchronized to that frequency. One fellow student was convinced I was a stoner as I was always smiling and laughing - and when we went on a road trip together across the U.S. she got stoned in Colorado. So she was shocked that I didn't get stoned. haha.

So my point being that this tactile imagine is very much tied to the internal listening as an ultrasound and ELF subharmonic. In fact when Robert Bruce mentions experiencing an "aaauuummm" sound or the Aummm Effect - as vibrating through you and around you - this is something I experienced when I did a very strong dose of DMT-based plant with an MAOI seed. So I know this is also the heart energy and what Master Nan, Huai-chin calls "converting jing to shen" - so that the life force neurohormones have been translated as a kundalini awakening into the electrical energy that Robert Bruce refers to, creating the astral travel spirit energy.

So Robert Bruce then says the energy is pumped up the body into the heart center and then out of the arms to heal the people being healed. And then through the heart center the long distance healing also occurs. Yes this is all true as well.

My only concern was the lack of emphasis on posture because in my experience as the energy fills the body then the posture should open up. As Gurdjieff emphasized, as well as Taoist master Wang, Liping, it is the lower back blockage of the spine that needs to be opened up and expanded for the real kundalini awakening - hence the Sacred Sacrum.

I know that Robert Bruce doesn't want people to be discouraged in their training and healing practice and that the padmasana full lotus is an "advanced" posture level. So I can understand why he would not mention this. Although I would think since he talks about his own experiences then maybe he doesn't practice it either.  

Certainly the Original Human Culture, the San Bushmen, don't seem to practice the full lotus padmasana "pyramid power" posture either. So it's obviously not necessary but as the qigong masters and yoga masters of India seem to acknowledge - for the emphasis on spirit travel then the full lotus stabilizes the body to circulate and focus the energy through the heart and central channel of the lower tan tien and third eye.

Also Robert Bruce says that we all astral travel while we are dreaming and it is a kind of copy of ourselves while we retain our original self inside the body. So this makes sense and Robert Bruce then points out that for most people their astral dreaming while asleep stays subconscious. So Gurdjieff makes this same point that the astral body has to be developed and created. Of course Taoist Yoga alchemy makes this same point - that the biophoton coherent spirit energy has to be developed first for real astral travel.

I read a Western yogi book from the early 1900s of Chicago - he wrote a yoga book series - and he clarified what he called the "astral tube" versus actual "astral travel." In fact he healed my mom this way while he was talking to me on the phone! So that is a high level skill. But I know from experience that the psychic energy of the yin qi that relies on the shen as a carrier wave is right brain dominant and so requires silence. So then to talk while doing this requires switching back and forth from the right brain and left brain.

Another point that Robert Bruce details is how a healer has to then also heal their own body after they heal someone else. So even qigong master Yan Xin in his book details how a friend was staying with him and Master Yan Xin warned the friend that he would be picking up the energy blockages from the healing Yan Xin was doing! So there is a time delay between healing someone else and the healer then healing themselves. This is based on the Holographic Universe principle.

This is tied to what Robert Bruce mentions as the inner core energy creating dizziness if it is overused. I had quoted this aspect of Robert Bruce in my 2012 book as when I discovered him describing this it was a rare confirmation of what I had experienced myself. This cause of the dizziness is explained in chapter 11 of the book Taoist Yoga: alchemy and immortality. It is in fact from the astral spirit leaving the body without enough of the Cosmic Qi or Yuan Qi surrounding the spirit light. 

So even the qigong master I trained from - he mentioned that once he did too much healing too fast and so he experienced that dizziness and he had to have his advanced students teach his Level 3 class while he meditated to restore his Yuan Qi energy. In acupuncture it is believed that Yuan Qi energy is only the amount from the parents energy and once it is lost that is it. This is true to a large extent as I overused my Yuan Qi energy from too much psychic shen healing work. But meditation can and does also restore the Yuan Qi energy.

So this book on Energy Work by Robert Bruce further convinced me that he is the real deal although I would have liked to see an emphasize on the padmasana full lotus yoga posture as that physically demonstrates the body energy channels having been opened enough. Certainly some people can sit in full lotus without having any real energy healing abilities but we underestimate the power of our children to train in these skills. That is why the Kung Fu training is called "virgin kungfu" and it is best learned as a child and then continued on for the rest of the life.

When the book wrote on having intercourse that's when I stopped reading it and then just speed read the rest of the book. 

I enjoyed what I read and was impressed with this Western take on nonwestern healing abilities. The writing style was based on a very simple and friendly prose. There was a bit too much repetition of information for my liking. For example the technique of feeling the body - I can see how people would enjoy wanting to have each exercise explained. For me this was basically the same as one chapter of the book Taoist Yoga. The book essentially relies on extending the legs after sitting in full lotus - in order to get the circulate back into the legs. So the legs are then knocked against the floor. haha.

But then after the lower body channels are more open that "tactile imaging" is less needed. So with the full lotus the lower body will go totally numb as more energy goes up to the skull and then the energy cycles back down to open back up the lower body channels. Each time this happens there is a deeper blissful orgasmic energy. A good book on this energy training that is similar to Robert Bruce's book is "Tao and Longevity" by Master Nan, Huai-Chin - describing the primary energy sensations.