Energy Beings



""You can't beat the Drej. They're Pure Energy!""

- Korso, Titan A.E.

Creatures that dispense with the need to have a body altogether.

Energy Beings are frequently Sufficiently Advanced or Precursors; in fact, non-physicality is a common prerequisite, though they may take on A Form You Are Comfortable With. Often times this means that when they "Touch" a corporeal being it has interesting side effects. Other times they are the result of when a species Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.

Even cheaper and simpler to pull off than Rubber Forehead Aliens, which explains why Energy Beings and Human Aliens so often dominate the demographics of The Final Frontier.

Never mind that being "made of energy" makes as much sense as being "made of heavy." Their continued appearance shows the unpopularity of philosophical materialism among science fiction writers (see Transhumanism and No Transhumanism Allowed). You could also argue that Energy Beings are basically used as a materialist/secularist version of religious transfiguration or afterlife.

It is also considered nonsensical as the energy beings usually act more like floating clouds of luminescent gas than energy, pure or not. Or, they might just plain be made of stars.

Of course, Energy Beings share many characteristics with concepts such as spirits and souls, often making them an example of Sufficiently Analyzed Magic.

See Made of Magic for a more fantastic version.

See also: Evolutionary Levels and Hollywood Evolution.

Anime and Manga

 * Atomsk from FLCL is a Phoenix like energy being that several of the characters are pursuing for their own reasons.
 * The Rynax in Kurau Phantom Memory are even being used as an energy source, leading to a lot of misery for them.
 * The Getter Rays from Getter Robo are an energy being, though they rely on possessing Humongous Mecha for various reasons.
 * The Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion, despite their typically rather imposing physical presence are said to have both "waveform" & particle properties, not unlike light. This despite the fact that, genetically, they're supposedly closer to humans than chimps are. Metaphysically, some are essentially....literally, Beings made of Light or...other abstract concepts that the Human Mind cannot mathematically comprehend.
 * Some versions of Ghost in the Shell involve something akin to the typical "ascension" story, but instead of some nebulously defined "Pure Energy", they're made of computer data, which is marginally less silly.
 * Suzumiya Haruhi has something similar with the Data Entity, a non-physical being which created Yuki Nagato in order to be able to communicate with humans.
 * A fairly unusual example are the Tailed Beasts of Naruto. Each of the Beasts is a mass of chakra guided by a malevolent intelligence, but each one assumes the physical form of a massive, feral beast. When sealed into a jinchuuriki, no body is left behind as it's entirely composed of chakra.
 * What makes the Bijuu unusual is that their bodies are solid enough to interact with the world. The entire body is composed of "chakra-flesh" dense enough that mortals can interact with and even.
 * The origin story reveals . So while they are Energy Beings, they're forced to maintain a physical form.
 * Digimon can be seen as this, being sentient computer programs, though they still need physical bodies to exist in the Real World. Those bodies are assembled out of nearby elements in a process called bio-emergence. Similarly, humans and any other physical matter is automatically converted to data upon entering the Digital World.
 * In Psyren people become this when they master the  branch of PSI.
 * The Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann from Lagann-hen. It's only physical parts are the Kamina-esque shades.
 * The Anti-Spiral is also this, being the gestalt mind of a hibernating species of Well-Intentioned Extremists.
 * In Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys, Tory's Energy Being friend is eventually revealed to be a second Deoxys.
 * Several characters with Logia powers from One Piece. Namely: Ace, Kizaru, and Enel.
 * Kain from Tenchi Universe

Comic Books

 * Stardust, one of the recent additions to Galactus' ever growing list of Heralds, already was an energy being before being imbued with the Power Cosmic. In fact, he and his kin were invisible to the naked eye.
 * The Celestials in the Marvel Universe are composed of a very intense and powerful form of energy -- which is intangible and can't do much of anything on its own. It makes a very handy source of energy for the Humongous Mecha that they essentially "wear".
 * Quite a few appear in Marvel Comics. Two notables are Living Laser, a photonic being made of light, and Klaw, who is composed of solidified sound. Both were human supervillains who got an upgrade into energy beings.
 * X-Men's Phoenix, originally just Jean Grey with a God Mode power upgrade, was famously retconned into an alien Energy Being after they wanted to bring back Jean but have her not be guilty of mass murder.
 * And Wonder Man, too (technically he's made of ionized matter, which contains a lot of energy).
 * Superman briefly became an energy being for a reason vaguely explained as overdosing on sunlight. Being Superman, his new energy powers were just as off the charts as his Flying Brick powers. He once magnetized the Moon to keep it from crashing into Earth. He could turn into a solid being though, which was handy for Clark Kent.
 * All Star Superman features a brief appearance by things that look like energy beings, but it turns out they actually have some physical presence. Their energy patterns are contained inside some kind of biogenic crystaline structure filled with a conductive gas. In layman's terms, they're living neon signs.
 * A subset of this trope, especially in comic books, is the idea of the "man in the can" -- the energy being that needs to be kept in a containment suit, lest he lose all coherency and possibly wipe out Detroit. Examples include:
 * Wildfire from The Legion of Super Heroes.
 * Captain Atom from The DCAU.
 * Fuji from Stormwatch, whose suit provides some... interesting side effects.
 * This is explicitly said to be because he is made out of plasma (ionized gas), not Pure Energy.
 * Lately it was revealed his bosses found out about the orgasms and had his suit outfitted with dampeners.
 * Johann Krauss of Hellboy spinoff BPRD (and the films of the main series) is composed of "ectoplasm" (a "spiritual energy" similar to Mana) in a containment suit.
 * Actually, at least according to the (not always internally consistent) cosmology of the Mignolaverse, Ectoplasm is a bit more than spirit energy. The spirit energy still needs a... medium, if you will, to interact with the physical world. This is achieved by combining with fluids from the channeler's own body. Herr Kraus is composed of what was once his own blood, bile, spit &... semen. Yes, that's right, he's basically a walking condom.
 * Venus Dee Milo of X-Statix is another Energy Being in a bag, though not having a body doesn't stop her from becoming an international sex symbol.
 * Negative Man from the Doom Patrol has the ability to release an energy form capable of amazing feats, but only for one minute at a time.
 * For that matter, Antibody from the New Universe title DP 7 had basically the same ability.
 * Green Lantern villain Parallax is made of... fear, anyway it acts just like an energy being as does Ion (made of Willpower) and The Predator (made of love).
 * Green Lantern Dkrtzy Rrr is described as a "bio-sentient mathematical equation". Why, yes, it's an Alan Moore creation. Why'd you ask?
 * Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen sometimes behaves as though he were an energy being, even though he has a perfectly physical body. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to need it too much, since he quickly makes himself a new one after being disintegrated again at the end of the story.
 * He can teleport, turn intangible, has telekinesis, and can manipulate his own size and color. As the page description says, the definition of "energy being" is pretty complicated, but if this guy doesn't qualify, what does?
 * E Man is about an energy being alien who comes to Earth and can turn himself into whatever he wants. Hilarity Ensues.
 * In the Doctor Who Magazine comics, the Mondas Cybermen eventually evolve into these.
 * In All Fall Down, briefly becomes one of these before the end.

Fanfics

 * The Azturi, the unique species created for Kingdom Hearts Keyblade Masters, are an entire race of energy beings. They all look like Genie from Aladdin, except different colors. They're a dying breed, with Gummi (the mentor of the Keyblade Masters) and Genie being the only two Azturi left in the physical world.

Films -- Animated

 * The evil Drej from Titan A.E. appear to be solid beings, but are actually composed of plasma-like energy. This ends up proving handy when.

Films -- Live-Action

 * The upcoming film The Darkest Hour is about invisible energy beings trying to suck all energy from planet earth.

Literature

 * The eponymous Angels in A Madness of Angels used to be these, back when they were living in the telephone wires. Then Mathew got better and they're stuck with him.
 * In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (the books, radio show, towel...), Douglas Adams makes one or two throwaway references to "super-intelligent shades of the colour blue". Color being a form of light, it makes this an "energy being" concept if anything even more bizarre than that suggested for most regular instances of the trope (which may well have been the whole point). Starfish Aliens indeed.
 * Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy features the energy-based hive mind Ly-Cilph, whose evolutionary history the author spends a few pages summarizing. The antagonists of the series,, also seem to be made of energy.
 * The eponymous character of Stephan King's IT generally is portrayed as you cannot grasp the true form. The closest the human mind can come appears in the climax, as a  When
 * In The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis, the eldils are essentially Judeo-Christian angels, or their cousins. They are imperceptible energy beings whose forms exist on a radically different wavelength than ours -- for them, gaseous matter doesn't exist, and liquids and solids are gaseous, so the planets of the Solar system are just clouds. To them, light itself is the water through which they swim, and the Sun is their wellspring. "Visiting" a planet means moving into one of those moving clouds and then keeping pace with its orbit to maintain the appearance of standing still, while using some sort of projection to interact with wispy, ephemeral creatures they cannot fully see (ie: us).
 * His Dark Materials presents its angels as something akin to Energy Beings, being made of a sentient particle known as Dust, which is analogous to RL's dark matter/energy, instead of organic materials. Needless to say that, lacking a truly solid form, they are usually very prone to die.
 * In Andrew M. Greeley's Angel trilogy, the eponymous angels are immense creatures of (mostly) energy who stand somewhere between humans and God on the evolutionary scale, and willingly act as agents for God.
 * The Precursors from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey fit into the description, having somehow woven themselves into the very fabric of space-time.
 * The eponymous homicidal Catepillar (no, not that kind) in Killdozer was possessed by an energy being.
 * Piers Anthony used a race of these in OX, mostly as an excuse to toss in references to Conway's Game of Life. No rationale for why a cluster of disembodied energy nodes would work like Conway's cellular automata is provided, but give Piers his credit: at least he tried to base his Energy Beings on something coherent, which is more than other users of this trope seem inclined to do.
 * The creature in H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space is one one of the first uses of this trope: the title entity is a bodiless something that's released from the inexplicably colored bubbles in a meteorite and possesses and gradually drains all the life from a farm and its inhabitants. Eventually, the creature gains enough strength to fire itself out of a well and back into space, appearing as a geyser of shimmering alien light as it does so. But then the hero sees a second, weaker entity trying to escape as well, only to tumble back down again. And then the abandoned farm's turned into a city reservoir...
 * Skewered in The Biology of Star Trek, which points out at least three ways in which these could not exist: their time perception would have problems due to existing at the speed of light, there wouldn't be anything that could hold any kind of genetic code, and any form of sentience would have significant difficulties because all the brains we've encountered have been material.
 * In The Dresden Files, Bob, Harry's resident arcane supercomputer and magical database, is a spiritual entity composed purely of energy and thought, to the point that simply being exposed to sunlight (which weakens magical enchantments) can kill him outright.
 * In "The Star Dwellers" and its sequel "Mission to the Heart Stars," by James Blish, humans makes contact with energy beings that are created in the births of stars and look like globes of orange light. We dub them "angels," and as the stories go on, the name feels more and more uncomfortably appropriate.
 * The Lord of Light's "Rakasha" are the prior native race of the planet that had discovered a technique for "strengthening the flames of the mind that they may burn independently of the body." They can manipulate electricity, among other abilities, and still interact with the material world.
 * Macroscope by Piers Anthony features an unusual take on the energy being. Near the end of the book, it is revealed that
 * The Isaac Asimov short story, Eyes Do More Than See, features energy beings.
 * The obscure short story "The Waveries" features probably the most realistic take on this trope, decades before Star Trek. The eponymous waveries are literally living waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, and because they are waves, they interfere with technology (making electronics impossible) and are not sentient beings.

Live Action TV

 * In the Doctor Who serial The Mutants, the natives of the planet Solos have a very unusual cycle of evolution, or something. A year on Solos is 2000 Earth years, and each change in its seasons every half-millennium (with aid from a crystal enthused with thaesium) massively altered the Solonians. Each spring, they were akin to humanoids, while when it turned to summer, the Solonians underwent metamorphosis into energy beings.
 * So far, though, the trope has been seemingly averted in the new series. The Gelth may look like your typical Energy Beings, but at least they're made of gas.
 * It was stated in "The End of Time" that the Time Lords planned to become this.
 * Star Trek has had a bunch of these, including a few which simulated physical bodies -- like the Q, the Organians, Trelane, the Calamarain -- and at least one group who wanted to get back into physical bodies.
 * The Vorlons from Babylon 5 appear to be mostly energy beings, although they apparently still have some degree of physicality left, too. In "Mindquake", super-psychic Jason Ironheart, having undergone a Deadly Upgrade, gives up corporeal existence to become pure psychic energy. According to the episode "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars," at least part of humanity appears to be destined to go this way, too, in million years or so. Note that the far-future human seen in this episode looks like an ordinary man at first, then turns into a cloud of glowing particles which fly into a human-shaped containment suit. Similarily, precursor being Lorien is a quite physical humanoid most of the time, but can turn into a glowing cloud for travelling through space. This suggests that all these beings are basically physical creatures that have gained the ability to turn into a more or less gaseous/plasma/energy form at will.
 * On Stargate SG-1 the Sufficiently Advanced species "The Ancients" have "Ascended" to a higher plane of existence, resulting in their existing on this plane only as Energy Beings. Daniel Jackson also 'dies', but actually 'ascends' secretly.
 * His ascension was only a secret if you call "turning into a glowing ghost-octopus in front of the entire main cast" a "secret".
 * In "Legacy" Daniel suspects that some dead Goa'uld are not in fact dead but have become energy beings..
 * Ironically this later turns out to be exactly the case with Anubis.
 * In Stargate Atlantis some Replicators try to dispense with their nanite bodies and become energy in an effort to simulate ascension. It doesn't work.
 * The aliens of Tracker, or at the very least, Cole and Zin. It's never clarified for sure with the others.
 * A recurring element of Andromeda is that various celestial bodies have sentient avatars, energy beings who can manifest in humanoid form or as data.
 * Mystery Science Theater 3000 parodied this with the Observers, who repeatedly claimed to be brains without bodies... despite the fact that they used their bodies to carry around their brains.
 * Mike, Crow, Servo, & Gypsy became energy beings at the end of the series finale on its original network...then changed back again when the show was picked up by the Sci Fi Channel.
 * In "Counterweight," an episode of the 1960s Outer Limits series, an energy being from the planet Antheon spies on a group of humans who plan to colonize the planet.
 * Another Outer Limits energy being is the "vacuum cleaner monster" from "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork".
 * In Power Rangers, Zordon was this in his last two years of life as a consequence of the method he used to free himself from his can. He was still in the can, as it was all that was holding his energy body together, but at least he could have people move the can around for him, rather than being stuck broadcasting to a fixed point.
 * In Earth: Final Conflict there are the Taelons and the Kimera. The first seem to be primarily energy based but not entirely in the glowing squid squad as yet. The Kimera however look to be entirely energy - except when they feel like it and pretend to be some matter based life form. And the entire being based on energy thing is a key part of the Taelons' story line.
 * Deconstructed: The Taelons actually burn their energy like any power source in use, and the fact that they have no way of replenishing it makes them an evolutionary dead-end.
 * The angels in Supernatural. For energy beings, they do act very human, though.
 * All Ultras fall under this category.
 * In The Journey of Allen Strange, this is the title character's true form.

Radio

 * In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio ...ish, the Doctor encounters two sentient bits of language -- the Ish, which serves as a singularity of linguistic meaning so strong it warps and destroys all meaning around it, and the Omniverbum, the hypothetical longest word in the cosmos which does the same for reality itself. At one point the Omniverbum chases the Doctor down a hallway despite being fully abstract.

Tabletop Games

 * Warhammer 40000's Daemons of Chaos are Energy Beings in the Warp, where they attempt to break into spaceships traveling through it and devour the souls of everyone inside.
 * The C'Tan star gods are immense energy beings that sustain themselves by draining energy from the stars. The Necrontyr race gave them physical bodies of living metal. They proceeded to turn the Necrontyr into the robotic Necrons and wage war against all living.
 * Technically, pure-elemental creatures based on fire or electricity could qualify. Such energy elementals are found in dozens of fantasy games.
 * Mortasheen has several, including a creature made of mental energy that sucks it out of others, a semi-sentient television signal and a creature that's like Pokerus meets The Colour Out Of Space.

Video Games

 * The Final Fantasy series, starting with Final Fantasy VI, generally presents Ultima Weapon as an Energy Being. In VI, its self-introduction includes the phrase, "... I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form...", and its Summon Profile in Dissidia says that "[i]t neither harbors nor represents life, but is rather a manifestation of pure power."
 * The Naaru from World of Warcraft, although they do appear somewhat crystallized. They're also the closest thing in the Warcraft universe to angels.
 * The Ethereals, who are essentially goblins from space, embody this trope a bit more; their material shapes are created by wearing mummy-style wrappings and other elements of clothing.
 * The wisps in the Ultima series are composed of energy and spend their existence gathering knowledge across the various planes of reality. In Ultima Underworld I, one can give you a truly devastating spell,
 * Commander Keen 5 features a race of extragalactic energy beings called the Shikadi as the main antagonists. They want to use a quantium explosion dynamo to blow up the whole galaxy.
 * Every alien character in Mega Man Star Force is a sentient pack of radio waves. By combining with a human, the fusion also becomes a radio being. This describes the eponymous Mega Man as well as every single boss, as apparently mere waves are no match for radio humans.
 * Ditto the cyber-elves from Mega Man Zero.
 * The character Pyron from Darkstalkers seems to be made from pure energy.
 * The Thirnovans/Trinovans from Meteos somewhat count. Fine, they're only half-energy, which is also why they apparently only have one form.
 * Kheldians in City of Heroes. However, they cannot survive for more than a decade as pure energy though so they inhabit organic hosts. Peacebringers and Warshades (reformed Nictus) do this with the consent of the host, the Nictus just take over whichever body they please.
 * Kheldians (and as a result Nictus) can't take over a body unwillingly though, because the host can eventually just kick them out. However, Nictus get around this by kidnapping them and breaking their will in various ways so that they will become compliant hosts.
 * Zorthan the Irritable from Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.
 * The Zoni are also revealed to be this in a piece of Galactic Trivia that displays in A Crack Time's loading screens. The parts that seem robotic are just special suits required for them to survive outside of their home dimension.
 * The Pkunk in Star Control claim that the Ilwrath used to be perfect beings of shining light, which would seem to fit this bill, before they became too perfect and wrapped around to pure evil spider beings. It's never actually established whether this is actually true, like most of their other bizarre claims or just random Phony Psychic posturing, though.
 * The Archons and Dark Archons from Starcraft. Affectionately called blue and red balloons respectively by some players, they are made up of psionic energy and are created when two high or dark templar, powerful psychic protoss, merge together. As they lack substance, they're tragically fragile without their energy shields, meaning they may be less useful than the sum of their parts if you're facing an enemy that can deplete shields. Generic archons are made from two high templar, two dark templar make a dark archon, and, in Starcraft 2, two of either templar can come together to make a Twilight Archon regular archon. Interestingly, at least one dark templar, Ulrezaj, knows of a way to become an especially potent dark archon consisting of multiple templar. The result was probably one of the most powerful beings in the Starcraft universe.
 * Ulrezaj was a dark templar scholar who found a crystal containing the knowledge to make a powerful Dark Archon. Presumably, he destroyed the crystal after reading it.
 * According to the Metroid manuals, the eponymous creatures are energy beings, presumably made of the same Life Energy they feed on. The Chozo can also be assumed to be this after they Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence
 * Subverted in Jak and Daxter: the first time we see a Precursor, it appears to be made out of glowing blue-white fire.
 * In OtherSpace, the Riftwalkers seem to act as Orz-like 'fingers', as they're extradimensional puppets made purely of psionic energy. Fortunately, they use telekinesis to hold up a shell of dust particles so we can have A Form You Are Comfortable With.
 * A slight subversion with the Celareons in Conquest: Frontier Wars. While they are indeed energy beings, they cannot survive outside containment suits, which are crafted for them at "birth". They, essentially, spend their entire lives in metal suits. Their early stories claim that they were created by an ancient race, who also taught them how to make the containment suits.

Web Comics

 * Last Res0rt doesn't state this explicitly, but Efreet are basically Djinn who've sacrificed their bodies for the sake of gaining more elemental powers. They still like running around in their "original" bodies, though...
 * "Spontaneous Combustion" has it's main character, Brightly, as a being made of pure light.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, the Dwellers are beings of pure energy which may occasionally look vaguely like glowing overgrown spiders. They often prefer taking over host bodies from other races in order to interact in the Land of the Living, not caring whether the host body is actually alive or dead.
 * Star from the Metro City Chronicles is usually content with hurling stellar-fire at people. However, he can also temporarily go full cosmic and turn into an energy being.
 * Tech Infantry has the Caal, the disembodied souls of along-extinct alien race who possess other life forms as part of their quest to destroy all other life as revenge for their own extinction.
 * Photon of the Supreme Six, a superhero team in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is an Energy Being whose body is made of pure light. He retains human form mainly because it makes things easier to interact with his teammates.
 * The Mercury Men are apparently beings of solid light.

Western Animation

 * As an Alien trope, you know there is a Ben 10 example: the Anodites. It's discovered that can become an Anodite in Ben 10 Alien Force.
 * Ben 10 Ultimate Alien has a radioactive Energy Being in P'andor. But considering he apparently has DNA to scan (where Anodites don't), it's called into question whether he's really "Pure Energy" or not.
 * Diagon may look like a Cthulhu-expy, but he's actually an Energy Being.
 * In Futurama Amy Wong once tried to set up Leela with M-5438, an entity of pure energy from another dimension that, according to Bender, is "big on musical theater, if you know what I mean".
 * Another Futurama episode had Melllvar (yes, that's spelled correctly), an energy being who was the living embodiment of the Star Trek Fan Boy stereotype, and was keeping the original cast alive on its planet. Melllvar borrows mostly from the energy being in the Original Series episode "Metamorphosis", who had fallen in love with Zefram Cochrane and was keeping him alive and young on its planet.
 * In "A Clockwork Origin", nano-bots planted in a lifeless planet by the Professor undergo Mechanical Evolution overnight, each day being a different level. And the stage right after the "20th Century human civilization" analogue is this.
 * The members (read: entire species) of the evil Brotherhood of Makuta from Bionicle have evolved past the need of physical bodies. They still need a shell or armor of some kind however, or said energy will disperse, killing them. Still, being made of energy gives them plenty of abilities, like being able to move into other bodies; and mind-control people with their energies. They have also padded their armor with Protosteel, since there's no body that needs space anymore. This made a painful experience for the Makuta Icarax, as he
 * One of the latest books mentions the Avohkah, basically sentient lightning living in the universe's core. The Toa Mata drive these things out shortly after being created.
 * Primus and Unicron from the various Transformers series were originally Energy Beings before being sealed into planets, which they later took on as bodies. As the Transformers themselves are descended of Primus, they could be also considered such, but their bodies are usually much more important to them.
 * The Vok from Beast Wars also qualify.
 * In one episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot, an "energy vampire" called Gigawatt threatens to absorb all of the electricity on Earth. He claims to be a lifeform of pure energy, but after Jenny shorts him out with water from a fire hydrant, he shrinks down until all that's left is his lightbulb-shaped head.
 * The Meekrob from Invader Zim may be energy beings...when they're not manifesting themselves as giant shoes.
 * Teen Titans villain Overload is an electric monster controlled by a circuit board. In the final battle, Killowat absorbs the energy and the chip is frozen.
 * Jonny Quest TOS episode "The Invisible Monster". The title creature was "a mass of energy that somehow came alive".
 * Star Trek the Animated Series. In "Beyond The Farthest Star" a being made out of magnetic energy tried to take over the Enterprise. In "Bem" one of these was protecting a primitive species from outside interference.
 * The New Adventures of Superman episode "The Wisp Of Wickedness". A demon has a laboratory accident that results in a tremendous explosion. As a result he's reduced to a ball of energy with the ability to possess other creatures and make them do evil deeds.
 * In one of the Zan-and-Jayna episodes of Superfriends, alien bad guys report to their boss, over interstellar picturephone, that the Super Friends are foiling their plans. Their boss casually replies, "I'll teleport you an energy creature." (Said energy creature is less like an Organian and more like a walking molten lava monster, however.)

Real Life

 * Many in the UFO community believe that UFOs and aliens are physical manifestations of interdimensional energy beings.
 * All of us are Energy Beings. It's just that said energy is locked up in the form of matter. (Thank you, Einstein).
 * Technically not energy, but it's possible that living things can be composed of the next best thing: plasma. Under certain conditions, plasma can form cell-like structures that can reproduce via fission and communicate electromagnetically, potentially allowing these cells to evolve into living things.
 * While human bodies are corporeal structures, human consciousness is a manifestation of electric signals and information-processing in the brain. Permanently eliminate the energy there, and what's left over is a witless, inert organ bank, not an individual.