Continuing our analogy, movies are powerless without attention. If we eat or have a phone talk while watching the movie that magical synchronicity may still happen, but… chances are minimized.
Similia is powerless without Attention.
Similia similibus is not about someone – be it the movie or remedy – coming and fixing something for us. And yet when it happens, it happens spontaneously – by itself. We do not have to do something with the movie – simply watching it is enough. We do not need any extra exertion. No effort is needed to get a result from the remedy. That spontaneity is amazingly beautiful.
But because of that spontaneity homeopaths have missed the role of Attention. You see, our remedies, like all other kinds of information: movies, books, music and many others including – require Attention (or you may call it Conciousness) for their potentials to get realized.
Attention is also essential in a remedy making process.
It is actually the Attention that creates, shapes, adapts and experiences the remedies simultaneously during the manufacturing process. I mean manufacturing and experiencing the remedy goes hand in hand. These are not separate processes at all.
Manufacturing techniques (whatever method is applied) are merely tools for guiding and holding the attention at a specific angle during a remedy making process. But you do not really need techniques to make remedies if you are aware of Attention Itself… Or to put it simple – techniques do not matter so much if that’s the case.
And if you approach the remedy making with Awareness already present and with Listening skills (so that you can experience the manufacturing process from within) then techniques (triturations, succussions, etc.) kind of disturb and obscure the perception of the remedy manifestation. So we start looking for the simplest techniques that disturb less.
Of course, if you’ve been manufacturing remedies by means of succussions for many years and these techniques have become your second nature – nothing’s wrong with them. But for the beginners or colleagues who come for the remedy experience we prefer dealing with the remedies made by the best manufacturers.
So we listen to the remedies we have, we find the one that makes the biggest impression, i.e. that provokes the deepest response. Then we make a copy of it while we are listening/ experiencing it. We experience a kind of journey into our selves with the remedy. That journey like all the journeys we make (including our life itself) is cyclic. We always return to the starting point after a while. Completing the cycle of making the remedy takes us back to our starting point. That takes 3-15 minutes and almost never more than that. If we wait a little we get into another cycle that is kind of echo of the first one.
Making copies of existing remedies is the best way to learn to feel the process. It is simple on the technical side, but equally rich in sensations.
Masaru Emoto’s works are a good example of simplicity. Writing down a word and gluing it to the bottle of water is definitely not a serious technique. You can’t put it into the pharmacopeia. But it works for those who imply it with Attention. It’s an act of Attention, actually.
I remember (but can’t find the exact quotation) a very beautiful answer M. Emoto gave to sceptics who complain they can’t replicate his works: “You have to have a very clear and open heart to photograph these.”
Attention and open Heart are synonyms here.
We can also refer to one of the greatest classical manufacturers of all times – Bernhardt Fincke (1821-1906). To put it straightforward, he made his fluxion potencies holding the vial under the faucet of New York’s tap water. Homeopaths speak little about him and when they do they mention his potentiation machines. Such approach is misleading, it’s like thinking that photography is about camera you use or that painting depends on a brush you have.
B. Fincke had an exceptionally deep understanding of what he was doing. I really recommend his short article dated 1905: “Paracelsus and Fluxion Potencies”. Please, also take a look at his portrait: Attention is present in it. At first it seems It’s in his eyes, but then you find out It’s everywhere.
B. Fincke was regarded as the finest remedy maker by many homeopaths: A. Lippe, St. Close and others. J.T. Kent considered Fincke’s high potency remedies to be perfect and majority of his cures were made by these: “The Fincke High Potencies never failed me; they act quickly, long and deeply.”
Fincke was, indeed, the culmination of classical homeopathic remedy manufacturing tradition. After him it went into decline, it lost its spirit, it lost Attention. There is a very peculiar prophesy B. Fincke made lying at his death bed:
“His death, relates St. Close, was peaceful. Several days before the end he began to have visions of all the bottles in his office becoming two feet high. “Most peculiar. “ he said. “Bottles with heads, all in a row, bending forward, and all going in one direction— toward the west— toward the setting sun.“
The night that would last about hundred years was approaching Homeopathy. Homeopaths gradually lost the Attention. They started to rely on scriptures and intellectual ideas rather than on actual direct experience. And they didn’t need Attention anymore, they rejected It themselves.
Attention continued Its journey outside Homeopathy.
Look, Attention does not differ from the present moment. The only place we can find Attention is here & now. It is never in the yesterday or tomorrow. It is never in the books, but in the direct experience that is happening now.
So it is not in this text, but in the very reading process that’s happening now. And that reading process involves not only the text, but also the reader and actually everything that is happening in the surroundings.
Attention is never in the objects, but in the process itself. It’s defined by the liveliness. And all of us know that tradition and liveliness are very hard to keep together. It always starts with inspiration and liveliness and little by little consolidates into a tradition that is trying to prevent it from changing further.
All the evolution of our remedies may be seen as the journey of Attention.
Soon a new live practice of making the essences in the sunlight emerged: Cooper’s “heliostened” arborivital remedies, Bach flowers, A. Bailey’s essences, etc. – up to numerous modern essence makers and their remedy sets.
You can check a pretty good article by Peter Morell “From Cooper Club To Flower Essences: A Portrait Of British Homeopathy 1870-1930” or his great study “The Bach Flower Remedies and Homeopathy“. But please, have in mind that homeopaths have somewhat prejudiced view on essences.
Anyway, Attention has never stayed in one place for too long. Homeopathic remedies and essences were just a start. Many times Attention has discovered (created, actually) new kinds of remedies and new worlds, new realms of sensations these remedies represented. It went far beyond the essences. It was like travelling into the lands no one has visited before. These worlds have not been there before (literally non-existant in S. Hahnemann’s times), Attention brought them out of chaos, out of unmanifested.
Attention had been present at every birth of these. But when the process of Creation was ending, it started to lose its Liveliness, Interest, when it was becoming a tradition, a set of rules to follow, instead of live spontaneous experience, Attention was leaving it and travelling further, and further and further.
This journey could be infinite as the realms of sensations and remedies are infinite.
They really are. As we travel discovering new lands and worlds, all these seem really exciting at first. But when we visit several hundreds of these – each unique in its own way – we start to doubt about the purpose of such journey. Visiting another one or two new worlds doesn’t seem to make any difference anymore. Naturally, very simple questions start to arise:
- Why should I travel?
- Why should I conquer new worlds?
- Where do I come from?
- Where is my Home?
- Who am I?
These questions make us slow our tempo and stop eventually.
One day Attention finds stillness.
It stops. Travelling further makes no sense anymore. It may continue standing for a long time.
Then It glimpses into Self.
It finds It’s Home. Totality. Self. That’s the end of Journey. That can become the end of your journey as well.
This journey of Attention is real. It is experienced, not hidden from perception at all.
We are going to repeatedly experience it many many times.
- We will explore and learn the remedies this way.
- It will become the path of our Present Homeopathy.
- We will go that path ourselves up until we arrive Home.
- We’ll discover the Attention and we’ll stay with It, so that It never abandons us anymore.
- We’ll be travelling from pathos to the Health/Totality with every patient that walks into our office.
- We’ll repeat that journey every time we manufacture a remedy.
Today homeopaths try to resurrect the lost art of manufacturing remedies. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it was really lost soon after it had started. Homeopaths clearly misunderstood the role of pharmacist and Attention in the remedy manufacturing process.
Andre Saine’s article “My First Case With a 200D” is very illustrative. Carol Dunham’s story you find in it about making his famous 200Ds is one of the most fascinating descriptions of the remedy making process:
Jones wrote that “Dunham’s father assisted him in making these potencies. The ‘bottle-washing’ took them a whole week. They got done on the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Said he; ‘The stampers had fallen for the last time. After an arduous week’s work, countless bottle-emptyings and bottle fillings, there were the two-hundredths’ before us. It was all silence in the old mill. We neither spoke a word; we looked up into each others face, burst out into simultaneous laughter, peal upon upon peal, and laughing rolled upon the floor.”
Attention is absolutely evident there. But C. Dunham absolutely missed it, he mismatched Attention with machinery by making such conclusion:
If the ‘magnetism’ of the maker, imparted by the hand while succussing, were essential to the action of the potency, they should be good for nothing; for they were made by machinery.
And that fallacy continued for many years.
Nowadays things start to change. Homeopaths start to share their experiences they get during the remedy manufacturing process. C4 potencies, group trituration workshops are what come to mind. These are all great initiatives.
But nevertheless these are in their infancy. They start from a beginning, therefore kind of ignoring the journey Attention has already made during the last 100 years period. These years have given us the most amazing remedy creators and manufacturers who have taken the remedy making process to another level. Their insights and sensibilities provide us with astounding depth and expand our arsenal of remedies immensely. Why not to learn from them?
It all started with R.T. Cooper, but homeopaths ignored his arborivital medicine. Then there were E. Bach with flower essences. Then A. Bailey took these to another level (well, he changed the understanding of these to be more precise). V. Wall created the most amazing colorful essences and many many others.
Neither of them tried to please homeopaths. E. Bach was just smiling and asking if homeopaths want to add something extra to their remedies by means of succussions – as if the plants themselves and the Sun were not enough. Bach and others that went after him never claimed any relationship with Homeopathy.
Bringing Awareness, i.e. Attention back to Homeopathy
One of the goals of Present Homeopathy which is truly interdisciplinary, is bringing Awareness, i.e. Attention back to Homeopathy. Surprisingly to many homeopaths it does not mean returning back to S. Hahnemann’s times. It is about simply being now, right here in the present moment. Here and now everything is included. Nothing is missing.
- you experience clearly,
- you perceive it from within,
- everything is fresh and new (it never repeats itself)
- each time you are amazed and deeply touched by it.
- you share it with others.
Then you are going to recognize the real masters of remedy making by simply watching them at their work. Or simply by getting in touch with their remedies. That’s no different from watching a true artists at the moment of inspiration or exploring their works.
Attention
N.B.! The Attention we speak about is not the attention people usually think about. Our Attention from a capitol A is almost the opposite to analytical concentration onto the details. It can also be called Awareness. It is never local, it is all about the Totality, the Whole. Or you may take it as a Heart fully open to perception. If we explore It deeper, It is not even personal, it belongs to the Totality. You can’t locate it as it is everywhere.
Present Homeopathy is about working in that Attention, dissolving ourselves in it completely.
It is about full realization of the potential :
- our own,
- the one of the remedy,
- the one of the patient.
When these three happen simultaneously and now, we experience the mystery of Healing in its fullest extent.
It is actually Attention that transforms potential from its sleeping state into energy and liveliness.
Dynamis
: the state of that which is not yet fully realized : POWER, POTENTIALITY — contrasted with energeia
Merriam-Webster dictionary
All kinds of information (movies and remedies including) are about potential (therefore we have potentized remedies). S. Hahnemann also used a word Dynamis quite often (therefore dynamisation).
That’s exactly why Attention, Awareness, Listening skills become essential in Present Homeopathy.
Present Homeopathy is not about doing and controlling.
Usually homeopaths want to rival their academic medical colleagues. Homeopaths do their best to be in control: they use software that counts points for every symptom, they use word scientific at every conference or congress. And that’s ridiculous!
Look, the purpose of movies, books or other works of art is not in controlling others, i.e. making statistically significant influence. Well, we may strive to dominate and be as influential as Hollywood or we may become professional propagandists implementing NLP techniques for controlling others – but I hope we do not even consider that. I wish we choose a humble path. So that we keep our remedies as a potential for approaching our Self, i.e. the real Health.
It should happen from within, from the Heart. Spontaneously. It comes out of the Neutral.
Such movie watching may even become a life changing experience, a reconnecting with our mission (re-mission in it’s true Healthy sense). And while it may take some time to get realized in life completely, the impact of such movie is felt instantly as we watch it! We perceive that sudden change in perception immediately.
We may think it is movie that strikes us deeply, but actually it is we who discover something in ourselves, something that has been sleeping, “not yet fully realized” as Meriam-Webster dictionary describes it. We instantly feel the direction, but yes, we still do not know how it is going to be realized. And that also surprises each time.