Homeopathy & Placebo Revolution

Approached from a present perspective Homeopathy may radically change the whole concept of placebo — offering tools and practices that lead to exceptionally deep perceptual relationship with our inner Healer.

Homeopathy isn’t supposed to outperform placebo. On the contrary — they both may become allies in the quest for Health:

• Homeopathy offers unprecedented systematic approach for exploring the PLACEBO EFFECT, i.e. the most natural healing from within by providing the updated tools science has been lacking up until now. Potentiated remedies, provings and techniques gain a very different meaning in our present approach — they lead us inward rather than performing the job from outside).
• Both Homeopathy and placebo going hand in hand may figure out their mutual mechanism of action (which is neither exactly mechanism nor action after all). See Placebo and Homeopathy as Synchronicities
• Placebo appears to be the most natural place that has been kind of reserved for Homeopathy many years ago. Accepting it feels like returning home. Here Homeopathy becomes really scientific and influential. Here the revolution of the modern medical paradigm may start taking place. See the map of Placebo.

For most people out there (medical doctors including) an invitation to explore the placebo side (= our inherent potential for natural and spontaneous healing) in the most systematic and 100% perceptual way sounds way more natural, acceptable and interesting than all that esoteric vibe that accompanies Homeopathy.

There is so much of that pseudoscientific stuff regarding potentiated remedies homeopaths have been holding onto up until now. There have been numerous attempts to explain their mechanism of action: ranging from “artificial disease” to “spiritual properties” (S. Hahnemann) and from “energies” and “vibrations” to “water memory”. It’s no coincidence that neither of these hypotheses has been proved.

Well, S. Hahnemann’s “spiritual” approach is perhaps closer than anything else — at least by meaning our potentiated remedies are kind of “inner“. But nevertheless, when approached systematically and explored in a perceptual manner this “inner” appears to be much bigger than we can imagine.

You know, modern science acknowledges only two sides in the field of healing: “scientific” and placebo. There is no place for the third “esoteric” one. Homeopaths have been claiming they are scientific. Can the “inner” be scientific? Or is it closer to placebo?

Redefining and representing placebo for both science and society is the outer purpose of Homeopathy. The inner one is about exploring and “knowing thyself” (S.H.)

Solving the mystery of placebo, defining the underlying laws, understanding how it functions is the most beautiful scientific mission one can assign to Homeopathy.

You see, being inner in its nature placebo can’t be explored by ordinary outer means. It can’t be observed from outside using microscopes, lab equipment or clinical observation tools. Remaining hidden as our inner potential to heal it can only be experienced from inside when coming into play.

Please note, that by its very definition potential refers to something that is not-yet-manifested. It can’t be defined in advance. And when it gets revealed – it is not a potential anymore, it becomes manifestations we perceive by senses.

Our potentiated remedies address the potential through synchronicities. We say our information remedies possess the revealing properties. They kind of unpack what has been hiding in us.

Opposite to raw active substances such remedies do not cause any symptoms from outside, but reveal what’s already present in us, what has been hidden, suppressed or simply not-yet-manifested, i.e. waiting as a potential.

Such remedies are inner – they are made to be experienced from within (“proved” – as homeopaths say):

• We have to establish our own inner laboratories by training our listening skills. Listening sessions proved to be the most effective format for achieving that.
• And just like in case with placebo it makes almost no sense to explore such remedies in the outer labs (no matter how fancy equipped they are) in a common scientific way.

Exploring both Homeopathy and placebo is about starting the journey inwards. They both are about our own “inner” experiences rather than exploring the properties of substances. Consider potentiation is about purification of our own aspects (experiences) rather than remedial ones.

Both Homeopathy and placebo have so much in common:

• both are about the most natural spontaneous healing from within;
• both placebo and potentiated remedies are meant to address our own potential rather than relying on some outer means;
• both homeopathic remedies and placebo are considered to contain nothing by sceptics for quite reasonable reasons;
• both equally lack clear and explainable “mechanism of action“. Never mind hypotheses (e.g. like that of “a water memory”) – they are pretty risky to rely on;
• both have so much in common with C. Jung’s synchronicities – they actually share the same “mechanism of action” (which appears to be neither mechanism, nor action after all: C. Jung himself described it as acausal!).
• both do not really depend on our thinking, suggestions, hopes and expectations!

Placebo is not what you think!

What a paradox! Everybody tends to treat placebo as a psychic phenomenon. They think it is mental, i.e. cognitive.

That’s the most primitive and limited interpretation of placebo. It has its application though: switching our attention away from suffering seemingly helps. Let’s call it FAKE placebo.

It may give some temporal relief, but is pretty unreliable and ineffective. Sooner or later attention returns to suffering.

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But the REAL placebo has nothing to do with psychic. It does not depend on our thinking, expectations or any kind of mental activity.

REAL placebo does not depend on cognitive awareness!

That’s a pretty scientific fact. Recently we get more and more proofs that it is not a mental phenomenon. A group of researchers performed the study on “Nonconscious activation of placebo and nocebo pain responses“. Using neuroimaging they have arrived to a striking conclusion – “placebo response occurs at nonconscious level“.

Think of it a little. It actually means, placebo is not something we can do or achieve. It also means placebo has nothing to do with our thinking, expectations and beliefs!!!

And that’s our starting point — REAL placebo is not a psychic phenomenon. It is not in our control! It may include mental and emotional levels, i.e. it may alter the way we think and feel — but is not happening because of that!

We can’t control REAL placebo at our will. On the contrary, our will seems to be influenced by it!

Oppositely from the fake one, Real placebo is about aiming our Attention into the suffering, i.e. into pathos. It is homeo-pathical in its nature!

• In acute cases we use the “outer” remedies for revealing the “inner” totality of the case. By finding the similimum suddenly the totality gets revealed, so chaos does not rule anymore and the healing process begins.
• In chronic cases “outer” remedies reveal the missing “inner” parts that have been hidden or suppressed before. As a rule these parts also appear to be the causes of an chronic illness. There is no single cause (except the Cause), not even 3 or 7 of them (like with a miasmatic approach) — so there is no one simillimum in a chronic case. It is about at least several remedies – each taking us deeper and deeper (unlocking certain landscapes) until the circle closes at 360°.

Just like with homeopathic remedies Real placebo requires a synchronistic event to get ignited: some synchronistic event suddenly appears similar to the suffering and reflects our Attention inwards. Again, just like with homeopathic remedies (these are also synchronistic in their nature), this shift of Attention inward does not depend on our mental efforts, but it may include them as well.

In our daily homeopathic practice Real placebo and Homeopathy merges into one as we attain the highest potency of our remedies: when they cease to exist separately from ourselves. IT is not as evident as you expect it to be, though.

• We still need remedies. Nothing really changes in our workflow.
• Perceiving remedies as our own unique inner experiences rather than some separate realities existing outside on their own leads to a extremely intimate relationship with Healing.

N.B.! We need well trained listening skills for that to happen. Remedies have to become 100% perceptual at first (180° at our circle of perception). Only then they may gradually attain that ultimate transparency becoming literally indistinguishable from placebo at 360°.

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Even if we attain the highest potency and become aware of the potential, it remains a Mystery. Totality always remains a Mystery. My Teacher once told me: “You know, a drop can never know the Ocean”.

The Journey eventually takes us to the TRUE Placebo that is more about the Totality rather than parts. All our journey, all the path from total ignorance to Homeopathy becoming Present is about achieving deeper and deeper awareness of the Totality – up until we dissolve in it completely attaining the Highest Potency (the Self).

No matter how cool it may sound, in our personal practice it is about loosing our self rather than gaining something. It is about dissolving and loosing after all.

I must warn you, it is a destructive rather than constructive process. When you dissolve a sugar globule in water it gets destructed, doesn’t it?

Consider here as practitioners and healers we are making a remedy of our self: raising our potency just a little bit each day. It is the most exciting alchemical Journey of knowing Thyself!

At first it is about expanding our perception and abilities. It is really cool. At 180° our growth stalls and then we start to dissolve immersing our selves deeper and deeper into the Stillness. The deeper we immerse, the less control we have and the more spontaneous (happening as if on its own) the healing process and life become.

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What is placebo: a thing or a phenomenon?

• Is it something external that can be created, manufactured and given/ prescribed to a patient? Have you ever considered manufacturing nothing (placebo) intentionally? Have you ever tried to deprive a real drug of its properties by subsequently diluting it multiple times – up until nothing, but a pure water is left? Yes, that’s exactly what homeopaths do! Have you tried to continue diluting that water even further – up until really nothing is left? Have you ever reached the highest potency when the remedy cannot be experienced as separate anymore? How does it manifest in everyday practice?
• Or is it something internal, i.e. happening inside? If that’s the case – where does it happen? Has it anything to do with our brain? Can it be intentional? How is it triggered? Is it spontaneous? Is it kind of psychological trick performed by the mind unconsciously? Or maybe it is something else, e.g. something much more subtle and larger? (So large it incorporates the brain rather than depends on it.) What parts/levels/bodies get involved in generating the placebo effect? Again – is it generated by one of the parts or by Totality itself?
• Can it be the result of an interaction between both external and internal? What kind of combination of these two may trigger a placebo response? Can it be staged or controlled in any way? (Again, please, refer to C. Jung’ synchronicities.)

Similarly, you may ask the same questions about Homeopathy.

What is a homeopathic remedy?

1. a pill that contains something the science can’t explain yet (please, note, that modern science can’t explain what information actually is, too);
2. a phenomenon involving our patient’s natural abilities to heal;
3. a combination of these two.

Can it be something so simple (almost nothing, “placebo”) we do not even care to look at thinking it’s not worth the attention?

Or is it something else – much bigger (let’s call it Placebo) that extends far beyond our abilities to comprehend?

Totality and its Parts

• THE TRUE PLACEBO stands for our inherent ability to Heal and represents Totality which is One and Universal. It is much bigger than the totality of symptoms. It is the Totality of our Life itself, it does not even belong to individual me. All our deepest healing experiences always happen out of Totality, they come more as a Grace than our own (partial, “symptomatic”) achievements. As doctors we may become witness of the Mystery of Healing happening – and accept that with equal gratitude as our patients do. Consider the True Placebo is an ideal of a cure.
• In Homeopathy we kind of deconstruct that Totality (Placebo from a capital “P”) into parts: seeing, calling and addressing them as “remedies” Sceptics might call them “placebos” – but these are numerous REAL PLACEBOS, not fake ones. Such information remedies are not even man-made: they are not invented, but experienced through provings. Many remedies appear to be rooted deep in Life itself – reflected in folklore and mythology. Each of them provides us with unique experiences revealing our own (not “remedial”!) aspects we’ve been not aware of before. Actually, such remedies enable us to discover, explore and work with different aspects of the True Placebo.

Exploring Placebo in a Homeopathic Way

Actually, homeopaths have been extensively exploring placebo (“pure water” and “pure sugar”) for 200 years already: thousands of different kinds of placebo they have manufactured and proved with an utmost care!

From the early days of Homeopathy the best remedy manufacturers have been diluting different substances trying to achieve the highest potency. Just like today’s scientists and doctors they believed there is a certain dilution beyond which the remedy stops being the remedy anymore and becomes pure water (placebo in modern terms) instead. Whenever they tried, by far exceeding the Avogadro’s number, each time they failed and ended with just a higher potency of the same remedy. Do you get it? 

It is impossible to manufacture/achieve inert placebo in practice. You’ll always end up with multiple different placebos!

• Homeopaths actually proved it is practically impossible to manufacture Nothing, i.e. one neutral universal Placebo.
• Ultimately, you can’t even manufacture a distilled water that contains 0 information and is 100% neutral. You can’t attain ultimate purity! You can’t deprive water or sugar pills of their synchronistic properties. The latter do not depend on you! They happen spontaneously, as if by themselves and can’t be controlled in any way.
• Well, that Ultimate Purity may still happen. You may reach the dream of old alchemists when you dissolve into One, you may become One – and that’s the goal of our Journey, but I’m sorry, in no way it converts into the remedy making process... “Philosophical stone”, “Quintessence” speaking in old alchemical terms (call it as you wish) has no form at all!
• In our material world we always end up with something – some unique information pattern – even if not a single molecule of an active substance is left. That something may have some inert substrate: plain water, pure sugar, actually, no matter what.
• Homeopaths have actually proved a ridiculous truth: there are at least as many placebos as there are substances on Earth! Actually, there are a lot more!

Such approach should help to find our profession its true place in both society and science. It also would give some important clues to understand something about placebo and eventually – about True Placebo.

For those who are just getting started – the most important discovery is that inert placebo doesn’t exist – at least in the way it is understood nowadays. “Placebo” appears to be only a concept that can’t be achieved or implemented in practice. Well, it can – but then it takes us into the realm of information where it is not “nothing” and not “a placebo” anymore. It is always something else – and that something appears to be different in each case. And Homeopathy is the proof.

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Consider Homeopathy to be the art of manufacturing, proving and prescribing different kinds of “placebos” (and “nocebos” ).

Actually, placebo appears to be as diverse as substances and phenomena can be in our Universe. Under certain circumstances everything potentially can become a placebo – triggering our natural ability to heal. How does this triggering happen?

About 200 years ago S. Hahnemann has concluded these circumstances come into play through the similia principle (“Similia similibus curentur”). He was the first in Western medicine to begin systematic experiments for “proving” numerous medicines on healthy volunteers, i.e. exploring pure effects of different substances. That’s how his “Materia Medica Pura” emerged in 1810.

I wholeheartedly invite you to compare S. Hahnemann’s remedial approach with C. Jung’s synchronicities. They are actually built on the same principles! Consider similar remedies are triggers for synchronistic events that reveal the totality in acute cases or hidden causes in chronic ones – in both cases starting the healing from within.

Manufacturing nothing/ placebo

You see, scientists consider placebo to be “nothing“. For them pure water seems like nothing in comparison with a solution of an extremely active and even poisonous substance. But have you ever tried to produce and then prove that nothing? Have you ever tried to produce pure water? Well, many homeopaths did.

There was a time when our brightest remedy manufacturers tried to reach the highest potency, i.e. to attain ultimate dilution when remedy ceases to be a remedy and becomes pure water instead. Isn’t it amazing that no matter how hard they tried, no one could achieve that?

Please, try to make an empty remedy yourself. Normally, manufacturing nothing is extremely difficult in practice:

• Look, one of E. Bach’s flower essences is Rock water (Aqua petra) which is a pure water from a key nearby – without any flowers added. Following academical thinking it should be considered “a placebo essence”, shouldn’t it? But no, it appears to be the remedy of its own kind – just like others – with its description and usage.
• Or you may try to draw nothing. K. Malevich tried that in 1915 and his famous “Black square” started a real revolution in understanding about what the art really is. 
• Similarly, in Homeopathy we actually start with a certain substance and end up with pure water which is different from another pure water we get from diluting other substances. Actually, we end up with a huge variety of placebos – as many as we have remedies in our arsenal – each representing and addressing a different kinds of our own potential (of course, not the remedial one).

Placebo Healing

For most of us healing is something that’s performed by a healer using some method or remedies. That seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

But as we get deeper and deeper into Homeopathy, we get into higher and higher potencies, such an understanding starts to change. Remedies become less and less working and healing starts to happen from within – more and more naturally and spontaneously.

If one day we attain the highest potency, we lose the sense of remedies being something separate from ourselves. It becomes obvious there is nothing external in real healing that’s happening from within.

But then we discover it contains nothing internal as well! Look, there is no Healer inside. Tissues heal, but we can’t find the Healer. Healing just happens not from parts, but out of Totality! It is not performed by anyone externally or internally.

I know, you think placebo is somehow performed from within by a patient himself. Nope. If that would be true, everyone would be using this mechanism to heal ourselves.

You may say it is happening subconsciously. But look, if that’s the case — there is nothing we can do with it.

Ok, Dr. Dispenza is doing a really interesting and nice work here. Really worth the attention. But anyway, we can’t control placebo. We can only assist it. Or to be more precise – not to resist it. That’s the “quantum consciousness” Dr. Dispenza is referring to!

Placebo appears to stand for the most natural spontaneous healing experience we are all looking for. It is… that divine Healing, actually. It happens from within and “is the rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of health: that is, the lifting and annihilation of the disease in its entire extent in the shortest, most reliable, and least disadvantageous way, according to clearly realizable [in-seeable] principles” (S. Hahnemann’s Organon, §2)

In practice real placebo is so striking and impressive it leaves us in great surprise when experienced.

Look, we tend to attribute that Healing to our actions and remedies. But prejudices aside, it happens as if by itself… Not exactly because of the remedy, although the remedy still plays some role in targeting the attention to the right spot. Again – very much like in Jung’s synchronicities.

When we start perceiving our remedies as synchronicities happening in the present moment, gradually remedies become ACAUSAL speaking in G. Jung’s terms. In no way we can trace the healing process to the remedy anymore. At least not on a perceptual level.

We experience the inner effect clearly, but can’t attribute it to the external remedy anymore. Yes, the remedy and the healing are “connected in time” (just like G. Jung’s synchronicities are), but that’s all. No other correspondence can be traced. It remains kind of a mystery anyway.

What was the role of an apple in Sir I. Newton’s case of discovering the theory of gravity? It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? But could it be a pear instead? Would a pear falling from a tree provide with different insights? Where is the logic of that event? Could it be planed and staged in advance?

Please, try to ask similar questions about a homeopathic remedies you’ve prescribed recently with a great success.

1. Most homeopaths are limited to intellectual perception of their remedies. When we think, remedies seem to perform their job fluently – just like weighted doses do.
2. But then we start training and practicing – our remedies become more and more perceptual. We start experiencing them by our senses. And the harder we train and practice, the more subtle (that’s just the opposite to “stronger”) our remedies become.
3. At some point they become non-local: they lose any material form and they have nothing to do with any sorts of energies anymore. You see, energies should have their location (e.g., lightning or radio transmitter), but our remedies become deprived of that quality.
4. Ultimately they become absolutely transparent – so that we can’t perceive them as separate anymore. They become acausal, they do not cause symptoms and they do not heal them. And just because of that they get a very special place in our practice!

Can you imagine remedies becoming acausal, i.e. not causing symptoms and not performing the healing anymore? They actually become just like placebo. They are still present as is the mystery of Healing – but these two remain kind of parallel, they never touch each other.

• We still manufacture, prove and use our remedies with utmost care and attention.
• We also get the results with our patients. With some practice we get them more and more consistent and deeper.

But nevertheless we arrive to a point where we clearly see there is no causal relationship between these two.

Homeopathic remedies, placebo and synchronicities – all three of them share the same mechanism of action. Which again – appears to be neither mechanism, nor action.

As our Homeopathy becomes perceptual through special training and practice, we become witnesses rather than producers of Healing. 

Ultimately, our job becomes not to resist the Healing. My teacher who taught me how to listen, has told me numerous times: “The job of a doctor is about not preventing the patient from healing“. I heard these words at least a hundred times until I started to see it myself. By the way, our not-working information remedies appear to serve that purpose perfectly well. 

But homeopaths still try to approach their remedies as “strengths of 12C, 30cH, 200cH and 1000cH” (M.Z. Texeira “Homeopathy Is Not Placebo Effect”, p. 13). Why don’t we open the vocabulary to find out the meaning of Hahnemann’s dynamis “: the state of that which is not yet fully realized : POWER, POTENTIALITY — contrasted with energeia” (Meriam Webster’s dictionary)?

How can it be that dynamis and potentiality are just the opposites of energy? 

It is very hard to find intellectual answers to such a question without getting lost in philosophical debris. Again, I wholeheartedly invite you to Homeopathy on a perceptual level – i.e. through multiple daily proving experiences.

On the other hand, placebo is actually the weakest spot in allopathic approach. It is what makes the evidence based medicine vulnerable. It is what scientists actually avoid exploring: no one want s to enter the territory of unpredictable and paradoxical effects that small doses and potencies provide us! Again, you can’t control or stage synchronicities. That’s why up until today we have almost no scientific explanation of placebo. 

Isn’t it ridiculous that homeopaths have been exploring placebo territory for more than 200 years… without being aware of it! They managed to write plenty of volumes of Materia Medica thinking they describe the remedies. But actually they have been exploring and cataloguing multiple placebo scenarios.

I know, technically, provings are more about “nocebo”, but essentially healing-provings, placebo-nocebo are just representing the two sides Yang-Yin, acute-chronic of the same process.

Well, they started with “weighted doses” and mostly toxicological experiences. I mean Hahnemann’s insights on primary and secondary actions were perfectly fine when applied to raw active substances.

But then a very gradual transition to potentiated remedies happened. Ridiculously, up until now no one seems to spot the difference. Yes, in both instances we seem to get “symptoms”. But look 

• In case of active substances (toxicology) they really act and produce their own “symptoms”. We really get so called remedy symptoms here. All these primary and secondary actions apply.
• But potentiated remedies (information) only reveal what’s in ourselves. So these are our own symptoms that may have been hiding somewhere for quite a long time. Remedies just like books or movies bring our old stuff from deep within up to the surface. And that’s part of the healing process, actually.  

At the end the truth about a placebo makes both allopaths and homeopaths to look like fools. Evidence based medicine looks absurd without an “inert” placebo. And most of homeopaths will instantly reject the opportunity of embracing placebo – continuing looking for “the strongest remedies on Earth”.  

It’s a pity, because in the field of healing there is nothing more beautiful and real than Placebo. Potentially it can become a uniting factor for lots of practitioners of different methods. 

Scientific Homeopathy

Homeopathy may become a part of scientific approach: not by pretending to be strong and acting (Yang), but revealing it’s true nature which is all about importance (that’s the quality of information which is neither weak nor strong) and passiveness, stillness (Yin). 

Can you imagine the relief when you realize you do not have to pretend to be someone else anymore? I bet deep in our hearts most of us feel something’s wrong with such attempts to validate Homeopathy through all these placebo-controlled studies. Even if they might look pretty cool from a scientific point of view. 

By the way, real Science by embracing Homeopathy could regain its hidden and forgotten YIN side and also become whole. You know, true Science is divine. It is risky. It is about raising hypotheses about the seemingly most evident phenomena and checking if they correspond to reality.

For us as homeopaths Science is not about validating Homeopathy in the eyes of others. It is about raising the most inconvenient questions and searching for answers. I must warn you though: not a single idea you have about Homeopathy is true. Homeopathy is so much more beautiful and so much more effective… without any ideas! In each case it surprises ourselves and our patients.

For most of you it seems a little bit unreal, doesn’t it? Well, that’s not exactly the case in Kaunas where we have Present Homeopathy Club in our oldest homeopathic pharmacy “Parapharm”: we come together, we communicate and we explore ourselves through remedies together. We meet with our holistic colleagues, we experiment together sharing our experiences.