Homeopathy takes a different approach to health and healing. When I give a talk on homeopathy I now begin by sharing some facts about the human body. Here are a few:
We like to believe that we are solid – it hurts if you bang into a table, after all. In fact we are fluid, flowing through space and time. If you doubt this look at a picture of yourself when you were young!
And when the time comes – as it must – that we die, the physical body decomposes back to the elements from which it was made.
It amuses me when folk say their hip has worn out. The X-ray does not lie, of course. But the truth is that it is the ability to repair that has failed. Your bones are not like those in the grave – like everything else in the body they are in a state of continuous flux – were it not so broken bones could not heal.
Modern medicine has advanced our knowledge of our physical existance remarkably in the last 150 years or so. Like most – if not all – scientific endeavours medicine has its focus on the material world. It started with disection in the 19th century leading to a riskly if profitable trade in dead bodies by the likes of the infamous Burke and Hare with the notable Gray’s Anatomy being published in 1858. Just over a century later (1962) Crick, Watson and Wilkins win the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA. And less than a half century thereafter (2003) the human genome project concludes. Impressive – I’ll say!
But for all that – as I wrote back in July – we still are pretty clueless as to how life works. And back in January my reflection was on the man as machine model which distilled down is rather how modern medicine perceives our being.
It was I think biologist Rupert Sheldrake who made the analogy with the news reader on the television. Seen by someone unfamiliar with the device, they would conclude that the news reader is inside the television and set about trying to find him or her. A reasonable hypothesis in the absence of greater knowledge. And so science continues its search to explain the origin of life inside us. But maybe … just maybe … it is not.
Today science is all powerful, but not so long past it was religion that held sway. This is the non-material world of spirit and soul. Religious thought continues to have many adherents though somewhat fragmented according to ones tribe. Much in early herbalism stemmed from religious communities as notable figures such as Hildegard of Bingen.
The late Stephen Jay Gould (a paleontologist) once said that religion and science were two nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) separating fact from values, establishing a sort of cease-fire between the respective parties. Good effort but perhaps a bit optimistic, if not naive.
Jean-Yves Le Loup sums up the problem rather nicely in his commentary to Logion 29 of the Gospel of Thomas, one of the gnostic texts discovered by chance in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, which coincidentally I happened to read this morning.
In Logion 29 Yeshua (Jesus) says this:
“If flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of flesh, it is a wonder of wonders. Yet the greatest of wonders is this: How is it that this Being, which Is, inhabits this nothingness.”
Le Loup then comments:
“For spiritualists, matter is a devolved, frozen form of spirit. Spirit is the fundamental reality vibrating at different frequencies, one of the slowest of which produces the phenomenon of matter.
For materialists, on the contrary, spirit and mind are merely products of the increasing complexity of matter. Only chance and necessity rule the behaviour of our synapses and dance of particles that compose us.”
These opposites have their own logic and reason….“but the real marvel is that there is something instead of nothing!”
I give a brief introduction to homeopathy on this website. There are four governing principles:
Importantly, Homeopathy perceives disease as a disturbance to the life force. Here are Hahnemann’s words again (see my July blog).
“In the state of health the spirit-like vital force animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and activities of all the parts of the living organsim in a harmony that obliges wonderment. The reasoning spirit who inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy living instrument to reach the lofty goal of human existence.“
There remains much huffing and puffing by materialists over the nature of homeopathic medicines.
That they cannot work biochemically (like orthodox drugs) is not in question. But experience over 200 years indicates an effect. By analogy, this appears to be informational in quality. Why not? This is the age of information after all.
Pictorially I suggest something like the picture below
Homeopathy is usually defined as complementary or alternative medicine. This is fair enough if there was not a pejorative undertone. There is, needless to say, a vast research budget on the right hand side of the diagram and a paltry amount on the left. The consequence is to deny the true potential of homeopathy. The patents problem does not help.
In India they have two government departments for health: the modern and the traditional. That would be a good start, but power and money rule the day. So don’t hold your breath.
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Should you care to explore whether homeopathy can help with your health please book a free 30 minute Discovery Call via this button.
And if you are in an organisation that would be interested a short talk (usually free) – tailored to your needs – please email me.
Disclaimer: I am a qualified professional homeopath and not a medical doctor. The NHS has many resources, and seeking the opinion of your GP is always of value.
Dibden Purlieu, Southampton