The Map of Placebo

Most of us (even homeopaths) seem to limit ourselves to a Manifested World (Yang) remaining unaware of the Inner Potential (Yin).

We provide all our attention to manifestations (thoughts/ideas + sensations), we build the whole our world out of these and we remain unaware of the numerous levels of stillness, not to mention the Silence. Here is a little vocabulary for us to start with before we proceed to the map itself:

• Manifestations (Yang) are what we perceive in the present moment — in no way we can perceive something happening in the past or future. Outside or inside makes no difference here: our “inner sensations” and even ideas are perceived in the same manner as phenomena happening in “the outer world”. Rumbling in your abdomen and cars hissing in the street, birds flying in the sky and thoughts swirling in your head – all these are equally experienced in Consciousness. You are equally aware of both “inner” and “outer”. It’s the same Awareness after all.
• Stillness (Yin) is kind of opposite to sensations. Consider it is sensations with a “-” sign. It represents a huge separate side of reality that is not-yet-manifested. In no way we can perceive it by senses. But we may become aware of its depth at the present moment: how still is our body or environment around us? (The outer and inner stillness usually match each other as ultimately they both represent the same Stillness.) Getting calm we kind of descent the staircase towards deeper and deeper stillness. So here we speak about levels of stillness. There is no end to subtlety of these. At some ultimate levels the world stops and even standing in the busy traffic or supermarket we may swear nothing is moving at all.
• Silence is absolute. Silence here and Silence there is the same Silence. My Silence and your Silence is the same Silence. Silence is the only Subject here. My Self and your Self is the same Self. Yes, Silence and Consciousness are synonyms. It has literally Nothing in it, but it also contains everything: manifestations that are happening and all the not-yet-manifested potential as well. Consciousness doesn’t ever move or change. Consider it to be “the Absolute Zero”. When it happens Oneness takes over the perception: the parts disappear and just the Totality remains. It is impossible to define It or put in on a map. It’s everywhere.

So the map (Totality) essentially covers these two sides: manifestations (Yang) and the potential or levels of stillness (Yin). But the deep dark well in the Land of manifestations and that little island in the Ocean of Yin are the ones that make the difference:

Academical approach

Most of medical doctors limit themselves to a manifested part (the big white YANG side) while completely ignoring the huge hidden Inner Potential (the big dark YIN side).

If a healing happens spontaneously from within, scientifically-minded doctors consider it to be an anomaly and call it “placebo”. They assign these strange “placebo effects” to that little dark well (Yin) on the YANG side of the map for all. The latter seems to be an exception rather than a rule. It is tricky and hard to manage in practice, so it is considered to be not worth the attention…

Natural spontaneous healing from within (Placebo) is something that should be avoided according to the understanding of medically-minded guys! They try to exclude all the means that rely on our inner healing from their practice!

Usually, doctors are so much concentrated on their active substances and means, they kind of miss the real mystery of Healing.

Placebo is like a deep dark well that receives its water from a huge Ocean of Yin (the “Inner” Potential). The trick is that this deep dark well (“placebo”) can’t be effectively explored in isolation: it is impossible to understand how that deep dark well functions without being aware of the Ocean (the source of water).

Up until today the science has no clues that the Ocean of YIN exists. Perhaps the dark matter concept could be closer to it. But even here it’s still “matter” (=manifestation), not the potential.

Homeopathic approach

Many homeopaths acknowledge (there is still huge difference between knowing and being aware) there is an inner potential to Heal from within (YIN). They try to access it through their potentiated (information) remedies (placebo-like, containing no active substances at all).

But homeopaths don’t know the mechanism, they don’t have the awareness of that YIN side, they are not aware of the Source of these potentiated remedies.

So naturally, homeopaths try to rely on and operate through manifestations (symptoms and constitutional signs are manifestations, aren’t they?) – and that makes the illusion Homeopathy belongs to that “scientific” manifested YANG side.

The chronic disease could, despite all efforts, be but little delayed in its progress by the Homœopathic physician and grew worse from year to year. […] even when these were treated in exact accordance with the Homœopathic art as hitherto known. Their beginning was promising, the continuation less favorable, the outcome hopeless.

S. Hahnemann “Chronic diseases”

Well, such an approach has been keeping homeopaths very effective dealing with the acute states (Yang in their nature), but pretty hopeless when facing the chronic ones (that are actually Yin).

The founder clearly points that in his preface to “Chronic diseases”. He hoped miasms could be the key. But they were not.

One of the proofs of such failure is the simple fact that modern homeopaths rarely use miasmatic approach in their daily practice – and still they get pretty successful with chronic cases.

The paradox is that up until now homeopaths have been using mostly non-homeopathic approaches to find out the causes of chronic diseases: anamnesis, therapeutic techniques, etc. Homeopaths still think they have to reveal the causes themselves (instead of leaving that job for their remedies to accomplish) and then they start looking for the similar remedies.

In Present Homeopathy we have Listening and Misty Landscapes to specifically deal with chronic YIN side. That’s authentic homeopathic approach of implementing live proving experiences into daily clinical practice. Here remedies literally guide us to the causes of chronic diseases in each case. The revealing of the causes is the act of healing itself.

The problem is that there is no place for information remedies on that manifested YANG side. So homeopaths find themselves desperately fighting for survival on that alien YANG ground according to allopathic rules. They do their best trying to convince their medical colleagues they do not belong to the placebo ghetto there (little black Yin dot).

Homeopaths try to prove their remedies are no worse than the ones containing active substances. They try to convince their remedies are just as strong and working. They want their remedies to be causing rather than revealing.

Actually, homeopaths are so much concentrated on their remedies (no less than allopaths are on diseases) – they miss the truth about the mystery of Healing, too.

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The Place for Information Remedies

Yes, homeopathic remedies really resemble “weighted doses” – but only by simply seeming to be “outer”. Look at the picture above: information remedies are still “outer” – that little white island of Yang located on huge YIN side of the Inner Potential.

Potentiated remedies (the little white Yang dot) are an anomaly on that huge potential YIN side – in a similar manner as placebo (the little black Yin dot) is anomaly on that manifested YANG side.

I’ll try to explain that briefly. Look, Lachesis 1M contains literally nothing anymore, but nevertheless it seems to belong to that surukuku snake: not to cobra or eagle! It has to be surukuku, hasn’t it?

But how does it maintain that bond with surukuku snake when not a single molecule of a poison is left?

In reality as potencies increase and there is less and less something to grab onto – the remedy starts shifting the sides: it gradually disappears from manifested side (YANG) and slowly appears on that not-yet-manifested one (YIN) as that little white dot.

Potentiation makes a remedy to become inner – our own property, belonging to us. So Lachesis 1M (differently from the actual snake’s poison) is not about surukuku anymore.

That’s why potentiated remedies are described by our own reactions (symptoms) and not by the chemical formula of a substance. Look, these are our and not remedial reactions, aren’t they??? Again, that’s very evident on the map of the Highest Potency vs. Dosis letalis.

And yet it is not exactly inner. It still bears the remedy name (“Lachesis” is written on the bottle)! Even if no one can detect the remnants of surukuku in it! It is still kind of different from YOU, isn’t it? Not quite as different as surukuku itself is, but nevertheless. So it’s an anomaly, alien (Yang) in the inner side of YIN.

If we go even deeper, we give all our attention to the very process of perception, that little white yang dot may dissolve in the Ocean of Yin. If that happens the perception of remedy being remedy (= “outer”) dissolves completely – we become aware of the empty nature of information remedies and the True Placebo becomes evident.

The Meaning of Potencies

What does a remedy potency mean?

The higher the potency — the less of “anomalous” Yang remains in the remedy, the more it belongs to (“gets dissolved” into) that inner YIN side.

The highest potency means the whole remedy becomes “inner” – dissolving in the Ocean of YIN completely. It becomes our own property and kind of loses its connection with the substance. For example, the poison of surukuku snake is fully transformed into our own sensations. The latter are kind of our own interpretation of surukuku.

Does surukuku snake disappear? Not at all. But it becomes a part of our own perception. At least it is not “outer” anymore.

Potency belongs to us, not the Remedy

And again – the potency is more about the depth of our own perception than the remedy itself. Consider the potency belongs to a practitioner rather than is a property of a remedy.

• On the YANG side we have the dose. It really belongs to a remedy and is rightfully written on a bottle.
• But on the inner YIN side we have the potency. It reflects the depth of our own perception – it actually belongs to us and not the remedy. Writing the potency on a remedy bottle is very relative at most — consider it is for reflecting our intention rather than marking an aspect of a remedy.

The latter statement is pretty evident in practice. The use of lower or higher potencies appears to be very subjective among different schools and practitioners.

Theoretically we get rid of a substance at 12CH when Avogadro’s number is surpassed. Practically it happens at 8CH – that’s due to adhesion of a substance to the walls of the vial (if Korsakoff’s method is used – the molecules of a substance may be present up to 200CK or even higher). That’s proved by studies with radioactive isotopes.

• Well, lower potencies up to 8CH serve for gradually getting rid of an active substance: it really reduces both the toxicity and activity.
• Getting higher 9CH does not take us any further.

That makes the traditional French school approach pretty rational. Their go-to potency range used to be 3CH-6CH-9CH with occasional “super high” 30C prescriptions.

On the other hand, it makes all that Kentian high potency fever with 1M, 10M look pretty weird. Never mind, actually, it’s ok. Seeking the highest potency is a beautiful goal. But the trick is that it can’t be achieved mechanically. Because, it is not remedial! It is something you may achieve yourself: training your listening skills and deepening your perception of remedies.

And that kind of takes us to the old alchemical laboratories. These guys may look pretty crazy for trying to make the gold out of lead and achieve the philosophical stone by sitting at their retorts for days and watching the processes. I guess they’ve been looking for Gold which is the same highest potency I’ve found in Homeopathy. Does the latter possess the properties of the Philosophical Stone granting the Wisdom and immortality? Well, it is not far from it!

The key is in turning the attention towards Attention, i.e. it is actually about knowing Thyself like our founder has predicted:

If homeopath is are pretty crude and ignorant of thyself, no high potency remedies are going to make his approach more subtle. High potency remedies in his hands would be somewhat harsh.

On the other hand, if homeopath is subtle in his approach, then even mother tinctures are going to “act” like they are of the highest potency. Arborivital medicines in the hands of R.T. Cooper may be a good example. Follow the underlined link and try to know this outstanding practitioner better.

My dear homeopathic colleagues, don’t you find it ridiculous that we have all that sophisticated system of potencies while other similar systems of healing somehow get along without it?

Consider we have a Bach flower essence, some kind of colour, a book a painting and a movie. You may also add other examples to that batch. What about the depth of our relationship with each of these?

There is always some depth of perception we experience with a particular work of art, sport, meal, person, country, etc. At first it seems that each of them has some kind of potential (depth) that may be revealed.

The painting by a renown master costing millions should be far more potent for providing you with a deep experience almost cathartic experience, shouldn’t it? And some cheap piece of kitsch they sell in streets should be pretty far from that. But at the end it is all about our own potential, isn’t it?

Let’s start with the potency of certain books. Again – it is relative. The truth is that the book caries the depth of perception of its author. If author’s perception of a subject is shallow, the books is also shallow. The deeper the author’s perception – the more potent his book becomes. It kind of carries the legacy of its author.

• We usually start with “shallower” books and as our own perception grows we proceed to the “deeper” ones.
• Sometimes we stumble upon a really potent book (author, actually). So that we need to read it multiple times – each time increasing our perception of the subject until we reach the author’s level.
• Sometimes we may add the experience we have ending up with a perception that surpasses the one of that author. If that’s the case we may even end up with writing our own book and setting the new standard.

Anyway, the depth never belongs to a book. At some point it may seem it belongs to the author who kind of hides behind that book. You are reading this text and it seems this text belongs to it’s writer. But the trick is that in no way you can perceive it as my text. It is happening live in your perception!

I pretend to be an author, but actually, the author is you. It is all about your own perception. You read it your own way. You may even understand it differently — sometimes just the opposite to what I’ve been trying to communicate.

Up until we are ready, we can’t perceive that depth in our world — no matter how evident it is for the author. For us it exists, but only as a potential — not manifested yet. So ultimately, it doesn’t count…

Our job is to unpack it in our own world — as our own perception. It always gets unpacked as our own. We may find a new and much more effective ways of communication and sharing (like our present listening sessions and synchronization) – but we always are limited by our own perception. Such are the rules of the game.

We might get beyond personal perception though — dissolving in the Totality. But without the perception there is nothing to talk about, isn’t it?

It is either author’s or ours. Similarly, the potency never belongs to a remedy.

The remedies are the ways we share our perception with both our colleagues and patients.

Edward Bach had gained some perception of illness and health. At some point he was hopelessly ill with cancer, but recovered. That definetely had an impact on his worldview.

He started more as bacteriologist and he explored intestinal flora. Together with Paterson he shared his findings through 10 (11?) bowel nosodes.

But then E. Bach found his bowel nosodes are somehow related to emotions. Soon he could predict the emotional state of his patients by simply exploring their stool and vice versa. These emotions as well as some constitutional signs became part of the bowel nosodes descriptions.

E. Bach became more and more aware of the influence emotions have on our health. Looking for the more specific and efficient ways to deal with emotions he ended with his famous 38 flower essences. Similar to homeopathic provings he experienced each of them by himself, portraying his experience in a very short, but precise way.

Isn’t it amazing that Bach flower remedies as well as other numerous modern essences do not possess any potency scale?

I know, some of my homeopathic colleagues consider essences to be more like mother tinctures. But E. Bach himself was pretty aware of a manufacturing process. He laughed at homeopaths, wondering if their succusions can add something more to the remedy than the flower of a plant and sunlight already possess.

Actually, E. Bach has been aware of a potential – much more than his homeopathic colleagues. He kind of surpassed the homeopathic potency range.

As homeopath myself I can assure you that neither of our homeopathic skills is helpful to unpack Bach flower essences. Even taking parts in numerous provings of potentiated remedies, manufacturing them, testing, listening — is not helpful.

It took me a couple of years to start unpacking Bach flowers – so different they appeared to be from the usual homeopathic approach.

Then the same happened with Aura Soma, spagyrics, different kinds of modern essences, bioresonance remedies, PC resonances, negative programs, systemic spiritual adaptants, many different sets of formula remedies, etc.

Getting used to each one of these is like learning a new language. It is true when they say that the more languages you know, the easier it gets for learning a new one. But nevertheless – these are all different languages – different perceptual landscapes as we call them.

Interestingly enough, they are not exactly remedial. Each of them is about unlocking a certain perceptual aspect of your world. With each of these landscapes a different realm opens up in your perception.

• With Bach flower remedies you learn to feel (=recognize) the realm of emotions.
• With Aura Soma essences you learn to feel the colours.
• With crystals and minerals you learn to experience different ways fo perceiving the world around you.

All that is very difficult to comprehend for my homeopathic colleagues. You see, homeopaths are thinkers looking for logical explanations. But all these thousands of intense proving experiences you go through in Present Homeopathy are going to break that nasty habit.

Our homeopathic remedies are continuously evolving together with us.

We still may say that some book has a deeper potential than another one. That may even seem pretty obvious at times. But again – we have to understand that’s extremely relative.

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Pathos vs. Health

Homeopaths have done a beautiful job of humanizing the nature: kind of attributing every plant, mineral and creature with some human qualities. All these constitutional signs and sensations have been proven and assigned much more systematically than ever before (in comparison to our folklore or even some shamanic traditions).

The only problem is that homeopaths have become so absorbed by these manifestations (recording and analyzing pathos) – they have completely missed the stillness on the other side.

Stillness (the absence of sensations) cannot be written down or put into repertory. It’s kind of opposite to symptomatology. But missing stillness is like missing health.

Manifestations (symptoms) are more or less about pathos, but stillness (potencies) brings us closer to Health.

My teacher who taught me listening,repeated me many times that Health is the absence of sensations. It doesn’t mean we get rid of the latter, though. Similar to a potentiation process, sensations start to dissolve in the Awareness — up until they become absolutely transparent. Look, they are still here, but in no way they overshadow the Awareness. Sensations become part of the Awareness, actually.

Consider True Placebo in its ideal form stands for Health. Consider it is Quintessence speaking in alchemical terms. It is ultimately pure (not connected to any part of the nature in particular, it is not a white Yang dot anymore, it represents the whole dark YIN side) and it should remind homeopaths of both transparency and inner potential in their true and ideal form.

The beauty of Placebo as such is that Placebo points directly to our True Nature, the Inner Potential, i.e. to Health inside ourselves. It is evident Placebo has nothing to do with anything “outer” – no connection to any plant, mineral or surukuku snake. If we take absolutely empty pills that are 100% “fake” and they “work” — it has to be the most natural spontaneous healing from within, hasn’t it?

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The only “problem” with such ideal Placebo is that just like Awareness it is out of reach for the science: scientists have been simply lacking tools to explore it. How can you explore the potential to heal – something that is not-yet-manifested?

As a matter of fact, Homeopathy provides almost all the tools needed (with listening added it provides all the tools). It provides information remedies that kind of fragment that inner potential – but in an amazingly beautiful manner:

• not in an artificial way by creating concepts like they do it in psychology (“a man made science” – James Jealous, D.O.),
• but in the natural way, by experiencing, “proving” different remedies that represent parts of the nature: plants, minerals, animals, etc. and then recognizing these as certain “remedy” states arising spontaneously in us (therefore making Homeopathy not actually man-made: perceivable and yet elemental, impossible to control!)

Such a fragmented Inner Potential becomes available for being explored through the provings of potentiated remedies. (Well, present provings are much safer, deeper and much more effective, but it’s up to you). Ridiculously, homeopaths still think they deal with the remedies instead of accessing the Inner Potential.

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Imagine you have a telescope. You look into it and you see the stars. You decide these stars belong to a telescope and call them “telescope’s stars“. You find out you need to point a telescope into the dark sky to reveal stars in it. You think a dark sky is just a condition to explore the stars contained within telescope.

But when you realize the nature of telescope you start using it as a tool: you look through it instead of into it. Ideally it becomes transparent and you just enjoy exploring the night sky instead of exploring “the telescope’s stars”. You say “I’m going to look at the sky tonight” and not “I’m going to explore the telescope”.

Again, technically you see the same stars in both instances. But the overall perception and impression is very different. Awareness of the sky rather than just limiting ourselves to telescope is the most beautiful thing that may happen with your practice as homeopath.

A very ridiculous thing happened with Homeopathy:

• Early homeopaths had been exploring the manifested YANG side: they proved the substances in weighted doses and analyzed the symptoms they cause to healthy volunteers. Consider it was a individualized toxicological approach.
• But then they gradually switched to the YIN side with higher and higher potencies. They started to explore the Inner Potential (represented by placebo in modern terms) thinking they still deal with the remedies.

Actually, it has been a mistake to assign the symptoms we get through provings to potentiated remedies and not to the guys who prove them. Again, the problem is also in methodology of provings: while classical approach is almost perfect for “weighted doses”, present approach is geared towards potencies.

Transparency is the key. The more transparent the telescope (perception in our case) the less distortions we get. Of course, you must take care about that transparency: you clean, maintain, collimate your telescope regularly.

In our homeopathic practice our minds create distortions by trying to explain the reality according to some kind of paradigm. I tried to share the journey to the ultimate transparency in Phases of perception of our remedies.

Each new paradigm shift explains some aspects, but also creates new kinds of distortions (usually, more and more subtle ones). The further we advance in our understanding, the more subtle these distortions become. At some point it seems we have reached an immense clarity and there no distortions anymore.

Placebo is the Home for Homeopathy

Accepting placebo instead of resisting it points to the real place for Homeopathy in science. Staying in that little dark well of yin (“placebo”) may lead to discovering and exploring the huge not-yet manifested (YIN) side of reality, containing nothing/potential (these are synonyms, actually).

Potencies are for exploring the potential – isn’t that beautiful? And that revolutionizes both Homeopathy and science in the most amazing way.

For the first time in history Homeopathy becomes truly scientific – again, in a very different way from what homeopaths expect. 

My dear homeopathic colleagues, what if Homeopathy is all about placebo? Why are you guys so afraid of placebo (lat. “I shall please”)? Stop running. Turn around. Embrace it. Actually, you’ve been exploring it for 200 years already – without even being aware of it! 

When our homeopathy becomes perceptual (that’s just a matter of training) and eventually enlightened, present – we get rid of thinking, our perception becomes clear, transparent and we can’t perceive our remedies as something separate from ourselves anymore. We start to clearly perceive that Homeopathy is essentially an art of manufacturing and prescribing thousands kinds of placebo. And that’s fine.

Such real perceptual placebos appear to be radically different from the one we’ve been thinking of! It’s the key you are all searching for.

Ridiculously, up until now no one has been able to explain what placebo really is. Science hasn’t even got a clear definition of placebo. Please note: up until now science hasn’t got any definition of what information is either. There are at least 6 hypotheses about what is information. One of them accepts that information is omnipresent – all the information may be accessed instantly from whatever location in space. It does not even depend on speed of the light. And neither of these hypotheses is proved to be correct. 

Homeopaths have been exploring that something through numerous provings and extensive clinical practice. They started with “weighted doses” and slowly progressed into higher and higher potencies. Because of such a gradual transition (it took almost 40 years for S. Hahnemann to switch from mother tinctures to 30C) no one saw the real difference. That’s why, Marcus, today you claim that ultra-diluted remedies (that pure water or pure sugar) act “in a manner analogous to weighted doses” (p.13) In no way I can agree with you on that. Actually, the difference is staggering:

• “Weighted doses” (outer, active, working) cause symptoms. They do their job by themselves (side-effects including). All these “primary and secondary reactions”, “rebounds”, etc. are about weighted doses. Substances in “weighted doses” can be proved in a classical homeopathic way: different kinds of laxatives cause certain types of diarrhea, sedatives induce sleep in different ways, etc. That’s scientifically proven. Also, you do not need special training to take part in such provings: e.g., a sufficient dose of laxatives is going to do its job anyway.
• Potencies (information, passive, inner) are for revealing the potential that’s already within. They never cause anything. They can’t be even proved – no matter how ridiculous it may sound for homeopaths. I mean each time we take a potentiated remedy we are exploring ourselves through the remedy. Potencies are tools for us to glimpse inwards. Achieving the highest potency is about the remedy reaching the highest degree of transparency. Imagine you look through an absolutely transparent glass!

Yes, there are some widely accepted “themes” that seemingly belong to a information remedy. That applies to any kind of information as well, e.g. the comedy is supposed to induce laughter.

But eventually these are our own themes revealed by that information (be it the remedy, movie or colour). Ultimately they are about us. So by taking potencies we can’t say we explore the substance. They are very different.

Potencies do not work or “rebounce“. They rely on our own inner abilities to heal. They are information that reveals something important and leaves the job for ourselves to accomplish. Consider potentiated remedies to be different kinds of placebos that can be matched to each case in the most individualized manner.

Potencies may also be proved in healthy volunteers, but these guys should preferably be trained in listening:

• It is easy to point the effect of a large dose, e.g. that of a laxative.
• It is pretty tricky to point the effect that some music, painting, crystal, colour or homeopathic remedy has on us: on our body, emotions, thinking and overall perception of reality. Well, sometimes these effects are quite pronounced and not subtle at all, but anyway, at least some observation (listening) skills are preferred.

By the way, information is qualitative only and cannot be expressed in quantitative values – look, changing the size of the font of this text does not alter its meaning in any way. So homeopathic potencies have nothing to do with making our remedies weaker or stronger.

If some quantitative value is about to be applied to information – it’s not about how big and strong, but about how important it is. Strangely enough, that importance does not belong to information (remedy) itself, but marks our relationship with that information. And that means writing the potency number on a remedy bottle is very very relative.

Consider the marked potency is more like intention of pointing to a certain depth of a process than something real. Believe me, at some point you are going to understand potency as a certain depth of the healing process that’s happening naturally, by itself. That potency seems to be hidden in the remedy, but when it gets to the action – it is about the Life itself. It never belongs to a bottle of sugar globules.

Primitively, we can imagine potency as the font size of the text:

• Huge text like big letters of the names of the brands you see on buildings are supposed to make an impression on you. Even when we say that information does not work by itself – these huge signs and writings tend to leave some impression and that’s why they are pretty expensive.
• But the writings in tiny letters (or some simple text like this one) rely on your own interest to read them. The smaller the font, the less marketing – the more it relies on your own efforts. You have to possess a huge interest to read such a text! And if you are spending your precious time reading such an insignificant text – it means it may become life-changing to you.

Anyway, it would be an absurd to measure the potency of different items in advance depicting their abilities to cause synchronicities. Once the apple fell onto the head of Sir Isaak Newton resulting into a theory of Gravity. You see, apples are extremely potent. They even may cause the Primary Sin in Adam’s and Eve’s story! I repeat it again – no one can control synchronicities.

Well, this text might be potent enough. But it all depends on you.