From the book Autopathy: A Homeopathic Journey to Harmony

3. Fine-Matter Substances

The personal preparation of homeopathic potencies is an invaluable life experience. It opens up new space for reflection. At the pharmacy, homeopathic pills in glass or plastic bottles are virtually indistinguishable from other medicines. But when you come to prepare a homeopathic remedy yourself, following the same procedure as Samuel Hahnemann, who discovered homeopathy and the healing effect of highly diluted substances, you will understand that you are practically on the same ground as alchemists, yogis and shamans: you are making good magic and producing Nothing from Something. After emptying and refilling the flask three times there is already nothing left of the original few drops of plant tincture, but you continue adding distilled water and each time continue to transfer one hundredth of the volume to another bottle, maybe thirty or sixty times. And the resulting preparation works and cures where other medications have failed. Not only that, but the preparation of the highly diluted material is derived from a substance that in its original state has no effect on health whatsoever; for example gold or kitchen salt! The finer and more diluted the Something, the more effective it is. The less substance there is, the more it resembles thought—the strongest and most influential thing there is or ever has been. The substance loses its gross material form and is elevated to an ideal, fine-matter level, from where everything radiates “down” to the material world. And the further it falls the more it is devalued and the more remote it becomes from its ideal, “perfect” form. The higher it is, the closer it comes to perfection.

The term “fine-matter” comes from the Buddhist canon, in which it signifies higher levels of existence that cannot be attained by our earthly senses. Plato was one of those who remarked that the material world is merely the product, the reflection of the fine, immaterial world of the Idea. The same concepts are found in the Jewish Kabbalah, yoga, alchemy, Buddhism and the Bible, where reference is made to Paradise, a higher, subtle world from which Man was expelled as a result of his desires and wrongdoings to the gross, material world. This hierarchical system, which stretches from the subtle above to the material below, is well expressed in the shape of European church domes and Buddhist stupas. From the slender, light and often gilded summit above to the massive, corpulent base. The form of a pyramid testifies to the same process.

The idea of a higher, immaterial area which is the cause of gross material phenomena lies at the core of homeopathic philosophy. Hahnemann calls it spiritual, and it is analogous with “fine matter” in Buddhism. In paragraphs nine and ten of his Organon, the founding work of the discipline (see Bibliography), Hahnemann says that “In the state of health the spirit-like vital force (dynamis) animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty”, and “Only because of the immaterial being (vital principle, vital force), that animates it in health and in disease can it feel and maintain its vital functions”.

Hahnemann (1755–1843) was the younger contemporary of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and was undoubtedly profoundly inspired by the ideas of the Swedish philosopher. The latter based his system on knowledge that he acquired in states of higher perception, in which he visited superior, heavenly worlds, conversed with angels and was instructed in how the universe worked, structured hierarchically from the gross material sphere to the most subtle heavenly realms—of which he recounted that there were several, hierarchically superior one to another.

Swedenborg’s description of the heavenly worlds closely resembles the reports of meditating Buddhist monks and yogis, who also visited higher fine-matter worlds or higher levels of reality. There are many similar descriptions in the Pali Buddhist canon recounting the stories of the Buddha and his disciples. Swedenborg, who came from a Christian tradition (his father was a Protestant bishop and confessor to the Swedish queen), deserves extended mention here. Not only did he profoundly influence the development of European thought at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, he also stands at the philosophical origins of homeopathy and the production and use of highly-diluted, potentised substances.

One of Swedenborg’s fundamental beliefs is that man is a multidimensional being who lives both in the gross material sphere on earth and, through his thought and feelings, in a higher sphere, in heaven. This higher, heavenly part of man he called the “Inner Man”. Something must first happen in the fine-matter, heavenly sphere before it is manifested in the gross-matter, earthly sphere, in the body. These spheres are firmly connected and the lower sphere is continually, moment by moment, generated by its higher equivalent. Swedenborg wrote that not even “the smallest hair on an animal” can move without this event having its roots in the higher sphere. The origin of any phenomenon, thing or event is always fine matter, with the influence extending downwards to the gross material sphere. The fine-matter, heavenly sphere is not however external to man but on the contrary rests inside him. The journey upwards does not mean an outer but an inner journey. A similar path of thought had already been followed by the Sufis and in the Christian tradition the Rosicrucians, who likened man to a string, stretched and vibrating between heaven and earth. Consciousness can move upwards along this string to the more subtle vibrations or downwards to the lower, material vibrations. We will return to this image of a string later.

But for the moment let’s continue with Swedenborg and in particular his followers among the ranks of homeopaths. The Americans Constantine Hering and James Tyler Kent were among the more important. Together with their pupils and families, both made regular visits to Swedenborg’s temple of his New Church. Together, they were the authors of modern homeopathic philosophy and methods of treatment using highly-diluted substances, while essentially abiding by Swedenborg’s view of the organisation of the universe. Kent wrote that man can be imagined as a point with around him three concentric circles. The point is the Inner Man, Man with a capital M, spiritual man who around him creates in the first circle the mind, in the second emotion and in the third the material physical organs. The organisation of the entire system emanates from the centre. Illness means interference to the organisation managed from the centre. Illness, disorganisation, must be remedied in the immaterial centre and replaced by newly-established organisation. Medicines in immaterial dilution act on the immaterial centre.

It is important in this respect to realise that the centre is not a perfect soul, even if it is located in the heavenly (spiritual) level of being. Individually, it may even be quite imperfect and its imperfection should be treated, because it is responsible for illness in our level of perception—in our mind and physical body. We should recall that, according to Swedenborg, there are several higher (heavenly) levels and that these are organised hierarchically according to their level of perfection. They are not entirely separate from each other, but one derives from another. The level of perfection declines downwards.

Hering had already established the rule, obtained from observing people’s reactions to homeopathic medicine in nonmaterial potency, that the first area to be cured after an accurately prescribed, holistically-acting medicine is the mind, which is closest to the immaterial centre. After that come the emotions and only then does the therapeutic wave reach the physical organs. These also are cured on a hierarchical basis, beginning with the central organs that are vital for life, such as the heart, and which are closest in the hierarchy to the individual spiritual centre (which, however, is mutable and certainly not perfect).

In the nineteenth century, America was a deeply spiritual country and the majority of its population shared a profound religiosity. Perhaps this was influenced by the tradition of the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower, and through the founders of the United States, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, who were Rosicrucians and Freemasons (it is interesting to note that Hahnemann was also a Mason). Swedenborg’s teaching also found a warmer welcome in the USA than anywhere else. Indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century homeopaths, heavily influenced by Swedenborg, were in many places more numerous than those doctors who practised normal, materialistic medicine. It was therefore entirely natural that the majority of American homeopaths should believe, in accordance with paragraph nine of Hahnemann’s Organon, that a precisely prescribed remedy in highly non-material potency has a positive effect not only on the state of the physical organs but firstly on the fine-matter part, the spiritual part of man, and thereby ultimately also on his next birth (passage of consciousness) to the heavenly realms etc. Although this was not mentioned in homeopathic medical books this was a certainty, logically stemming from homeopathic philosophy. Homeopathy and the use of highly diluted substances, the “spiritual” forces latent in the medicines (Hahnemann), is thus in essence a spiritual belief system. The holistic effect of the immaterial medicine—focused primarily on the immaterial, hierarchically organised defining sphere of man—does not only include raising the material body to a higher level of health. Its primary function is to raise consciousness (the spirit, soul, mind—whichever term you are easiest with) to a higher spiritual level, from which the dependent physical forms improve as a matter of course.

Highly potentised—diluted—substances act on the nonmaterial centre, the internal Man, according to the resonance principle. When you place two identically tuned tuning forks side by side, and tap one, the other also hums. When you place two differently tuned tuning forks next to each other and tap one the other doesn’t even vibrate. In the first instance there is resonance, in the second, not. We search for a medicine that has the closest possible degree of resonance to that of the patient. This then is able in non-material potency to make the patient’s non-material part reverberate in his own original (healthy) melody. This is only possible if the medicine is similarly (or identically) tuned. (There even used to be a homeopathic journal called Resonance.) The term resonance leads directly to the term frequency. The tuning forks must be tuned to an identical frequency, the number of vibrations per second. Even the slightest variance in the frequency will mean that repeated, firm taps will cause only a slight resonance in the second tuning fork. This, however, rings in its original frequency, and not in the frequency of the other tuning fork. If the frequencies are not similar there will be no resonance.

We thus have a man with his individual frequency, the frequency of his personal string stretched between heaven and earth (or rather between several degrees of heaven and earth) and we are looking for a similar frequency in nature that will resonate with him, that will be similar to him. We recognise a substance with this frequency by the fact that it causes certain symptoms, temporary changes in the mental and physical body in healthy people who take part in homeopathic provings (trials in which substances are tested on human beings). These were recorded in a series of texts collectively known as the “Homeopathic Materia Medica”. By comparing our patients’ cases with the Materia Medica, we homeopaths find that each patient’s symptoms (or the symptoms produced by his non-material organisational system—(the dynamis)) accord with a specific medicine and no other. This means that the medicine must have similar frequency characteristics as the spiritual dynamis of the patient, producing similar symptoms. Through resonance, the medicine is then able, when diluted to fine-matter level, to elevate the patient’s inner fine matter vibrational centre, the dynamis, to a higher (original) vibration level, and allow the entire, slowly collapsing and fading system to return to its original harmony. The illness, the disease, never has a local origin, but invariably signals an error, a shortcoming in the non-material organisational centre. The illness, although perceived as negligible or local, is always a problem of the centre and therefore of the whole.

A homeopathic Repertory exists that gives an alphabetically organised list of symptoms, illnesses, problems and human characteristics and for each such category/symptom (of which there are tens of thousands) provides a list of remedies that include such a symptom in its picture. This helps us find the appropriate, most similar remedy for the whole person from among the hundreds described in the Materia Medica. This has the chance to resonate in homeopathic dilution with the higher, fine-matter states of our “string”—the patient. In addition to the image of the string suggested by the Rosicrucians and the Sufis, I would propose the image of a pendulum, fixed somewhere above in the most ethereal spheres and freely vibrating downwards, with the subtlest impulse upwards causing a great change in the pendulum’s downward swing in the gross-matter sphere. Or we may employ a comparison with an electron ray in a television picture: the tiniest variation at its source causes a significant change in the picture on the screen. The cause of everything that happens in the system (organism) rests primarily in the fine-matter sphere, from which everything radiates downwards.

4. More about Vibrations

Vibrations are everything. This is the message of modern quantum physics as well as wave theory, and in the era of television it is an idea that is comprehensible to everyone. Even the most romantic or most violent, the most intelligent and the most stupid television programmes, the most popular television beauties and most sympathetic politicians are only vibrations in the television itself, waves, electric oscillations, the effect of an electron ray on the television screen. And in reality? Again, vibrations of light perceived by the eye, vibrations of sound perceived by the ear, vibrations of pressure perceived by touch… Contemporary science has arrived at the same conclusion as Taoism—that all reality is composed of vibrations, oscillations. But oscillations of what exactly? The question sometimes arouses contradictory responses. Oscillations of subatomic particles, the ether, time-space, yin and yang? Ultimately, perhaps, they can be reduced to the vibrations of consciousness, or more exactly the mind, as Buddhists have maintained for thousands of years. In the teaching of Abhidhamma Buddhists say that all reality is composed of separate segments, of “thought-moments” that are distinguished through the magnifying glass of concentrated meditation. There may be several billion such moments in a single second and between them a small gap—nothing. It recalls a window on a strip of film. A sort of quantum of the mind. Reality is made up of frequencies of the mind.

Is this subjectivism? Or the opposite? That the world isn’t created by the mind, but is an entity independent of us? The idea of an objective world, specific to so-called Cartesian science, originated from a purely religious premise posited in the seventeenth century by René Descartes, and by others before him, that the world had been created by an objective God and therefore must be entirely objective and independent of the observer. This proceeds from the wholly unfounded idea that the observer, called the “scientist”, is not an active part of the observed world, and may therefore evaluate it from a detached position. In reality, if we think about it seriously, no-one has yet proven that something exists beyond the mind. Just as it has yet to be proven that any such thing as “objective mind” exists.

Even contemporary physicists now believe that the observing subject is part of the process observed, and not a sort of “objective observer”. For example, in the theory of “superstrings”. This theory also claims that material particles are similar to oscillating mini-strings. Isn’t this an interesting terminological conjunction with Rosicrucians and Sufis? And so everything returns to the old truth of the Buddhists, Taoists and others, that everything is in the mind. And in consciousness, which is obviously part of the mind. The mind clearly also has unconscious aspects (see Freud, Jung etc.) of which we only become aware when they surface in consciousness. The only real and direct and incontrovertible truth about so-called reality is that what isn’t in consciousness cannot even be mentioned. As soon as we say that “something” does not exist this “something” already exists in consciousness or at least the unconscious. It’s a mistake to say that something is “only” in the mind, “only” in consciousness; the mind is enormous and without limits. Its component parts are the so-called “natural laws” of contemporary science. It contains all potential possibilities and may fix on something according to the “governing love” (Swedenborg) or “craving” (Buddha).

According to Buddhists the world is created by the mind and is composed of moments of thought. Or of vibrations or frequencies of consciousness. They said this two and a half thousand years before our scientists reached the same conclusions. These latter narrowed it down just to matter, one of the phenomena of the mind (Our feelings and perception—see Panca-khandhá, “The Five Groups of Clinging” of the Buddhist Pali canon.), and began to call it quantum physics.

From the accounts of highly-developed individuals it also appears that the higher a person’s consciousness reaches, the higher he focuses his attention, the finer are the vibrations and the smaller the difference between the individual and the general. In the highest spheres there exists an area of common thought and consciousness. This is where the vibrations reach their highest frequency. The feeling of individuality and separation from others increases downwards to the lower, Gross matter states, characterised by a fall in frequency. The higher one’s attention is focused the more the individual consciousness is able to fuse with the consciousness of “others”, with the universe, and the lesser ones individuality. Ultimately, strong feelings of individuality, separation and egoism, combined with great suffering, struggle, increased uncertainty etc., are qualities of these lower states.

Illness and suffering originate and flourish when our spiritual organising principle, our attention, consciousness—and with it also our organism, which is wholly dependent thereon— fall into the lower frequency states. The human body, created by high-frequency patterns in the fine-matter sphere, losing the support and sustenance of these high frequencies, is torn away from them and falls into the lower states, into entropy, and the coordination of functions and organs is lost. Cells, for example, can multiply without coordination, a state we refer to as cancer. The immune system begins to fight itself without coordination leading to auto-immune disorders such as eczema, asthma etc. At a mental level, this process is accompanied by anxiety, or the consciousness that the mind and the body are losing their sustenance from above, and becoming distanced from their ideal, the frequency pattern that exists above. And that, losing contact with it, they begin to decline.

From an ethical viewpoint, this process leads downwards to egoism, a focus on one’s own problems, blaming others, an unpleasant or even horrific feeling of alienation from others— but chiefly from the higher frequency sphere, where we are all much closer to each other. From the point of view of man and his health, much may depend on which frequencies he focuses his attention on. Where attention is focused on effective love (Swedenborg and Buddha), compassion, or on God, who symbolises these qualities for us, the overall frequency of the organism (the secondary, derived frequencies of body and mind) may increase. This is the source of “mysterious” healing through meditation, autosuggestion etc. The frequency of consciousness and the organism may also be increased by a potentised, highly diluted substance which is close in frequency to the relevant organism and is therefore capable at a fine matter level of resonating with it and reactivating the original or healthy frequency. In the body the frequency hierarchy corresponds to the system of chakras, which are kinds of energy vortexes in the body described by ancient Indian philosophy. These seven energy centres are related to various vibrational levels in life. The lowest chakra symbolises the relationship to matter, to the earth, to the lowest frequencies; in respect to people the symbolism is of money. The second lowest chakra is the sexual sphere. The chakra of the solar plexus has a strong relation to social success. The heart chakra expresses love; the throat chakra communication; the chakra between the eyebrows relates to higher states of mind and the chakra located above the crown of the head connects us to the highest spiritual states, from where the higher organisational frequencies from the fine-matter sphere flow to us. Some chakras can be closed, while others are active and people concentrate their attention on them and behave at a mental and physical level accordingly.

In recent times, people have focused their attention predominantly on the lower energy levels, strongly supported for example by the media, advertising or the programmes of political parties. All these social manifestations act almost exclusively at the level of the lowest chakras; they reduce people’s attention to the lowest frequency levels of existence—material goods, money, chemically-modified foodstuffs, egoism and violence. This further reduces the overall frequency of the organism, which easily declines into illness. Nowadays, people suffer from far more chronic or incurable illnesses than at any time previously. They are increasingly alienated from the higher frequency sphere from which they originate. Yang, however, inevitably induces a Yin reaction and so today more people than ever before are again seeking that relation with the high frequency sphere. That is why, despite the powerful forces of destruction acting in the lower frequencies and dragging man down, there is such interest in homeopathy, Buddhism, alternative healing and spirituality; in re-establishing a personal relationship with the higher creative sphere. The terms “new religiosity” or “New Age” are sometimes given to this unorganised movement, which nevertheless comprises very significant numbers of people in the West.

A certain frequency can create entirely specific material structures or forms. This is testified to by experiments in physics conducted by the Swiss philosopher Hans Jenny. He sprinkled fine sand on a sheet of metal and dispersed it uniformly. Then he oscillated the sheet. Certain frequencies caused specific arrangements in pictures. When the frequency was changed another picture appeared which corresponded to the altered frequency. The experiment makes it abundantly clear that a certain frequency can create corresponding shapes and forms in a particular environment (in this experiment using sand). As an analogy, we may easily imagine that the human body with all its organs is also created and maintained by certain creative, organising frequencies.

The highest hierarchical frequencies have the greatest creative influence and exist in a super-sensory sphere. Our external, physical senses are turned to the material world and are able to perceive on its gross-matter, low frequency, to which they are tuned. They can’t perceive (with the exception of the mind itself, which the Buddhists refer to as the sixth sense) fine-matter, hierarchically higher frequencies. The same applies to scientific instruments.

As has already been said, in our world the gradual descent to lower frequencies, to greater alienation, individuality and egoism, seems to be natural, widespread and unavoidable. For some people this process unfolds slowly, imperceptibly; for others it is rapid. Let us recall the Biblical story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. This symbolises the descent from the fine-matter, ethically higher and blissful sphere of higher union, where there is nothing to hide, to the gross-matter world of contradictions, personal hardship and alienation (isolation).

Illness is disorganisation originating in the lower levels of the superior creative sphere. The opposite way is possible, but only ever on the basis of concentrated effort and the overcoming of downward tendencies.

As a person ages his central frequency falls relative to the intensity with which he is exposed to the lower, gross-matter environment, the sphere of low thought frequencies, fear, hatred, envy, disgust etc. The impact of the original, internal creative frequency on the associated lower frequencies that envelop it weakens; ultimately they may lose almost all contact with each other, which entails growing disharmony, disorganisation (e.g. cancer), decline and the death of these lower, derived frequencies, whose energy still has to be channelled from those above. The deteriorating lower physical frequencies have already fallen too far, have become too distant from the central frequency and can no longer resonate accordingly, thereby losing the vibrational energy source. As a result it terminates and dies. But it is precisely the lower frequencies perceived by the senses that are commonly understood as the person, or individual. In fact, however, this refers only to the “external” or “natural” man, as Swedenborg says. Man’s higher and more internal central frequency continues to exist, with attention/consciousness being focused on it once again in the moment of death, when the gross-matter frequency—the organs—succumb to the effects of entropy. In time, these central, high frequencies create a new body by interacting with the frequencies of the new environment. Here, environment should be understood to mean also its parents or generative cells. If the central frequency really is extremely high (it was not depleted during the course of life or, indeed, it was amplified through the high-frequency stimulus of love, wisdom or a precise, highly-potentised medicine) the new body is created at a higher frequency in a higher (heavenly) world with a lower level of suffering, a weaker illusion of individuality, greater love and connection with others, and tolerance. If, on the other hand, the person’s central frequency was strongly affected and therefore significantly reduced by the lower frequencies of hatred, the desire to harm others and similar motivations, the new body may come into being in the lower world full of low vibrations and generating higher levels of suffering and uncertainty than in its previous existence.

In this way, the entire world of interactions, perceived as ethical, religious, objective or subjective, may also appear merely as an impersonal world of vibrations. Buddha once revealed that in their essence these are the impersonal vibrations of the mind. Matter, substance, is also the product of the linking of the sphere of the senses with the mind; it is part of the sphere of the mind which includes everything and is the cause of everything. The ancient principle, known to all idealistic philosophical systems—the primacy of mind over matter. Matter is a vibration and is also the product of the mind. Through separation from the world of vibrations, and also therefore the mind, the world retreats, and with it, suffering. For us, this is an unimaginable state of nirvana, a state neither of existence or non-existence, a state of knowing everything. In Buddhist philosophy it is a state of absolute health.

The causal ties between phenomena, people, events and so on, are not horizontal, as understood by contemporary science and common sense, which focus only on low frequencies of matter, but rather vertical and hierarchical. Phenomena and people meet in an elevated, spiritual, fine-matter sphere of higher vibrations. If Hahnemann says that the cause of health and illness is in the higher, spiritual sphere he means exactly this. Infection is not spread by bacilli or viruses etc., but by dissonances and disharmony in the higher sphere. A bacillus is a creature, happily living off the products of diseased dissonance (toxins, waste matter) and tissues weakened by dissonance. A highly-diluted medicine resonating with the immaterial creative frequency restores order and harmony and the “disease-making” micro-organisms depart, deprived of the means necessary for their existence. Any chronic illness, from hay fever to serious heart disease or madness, means that the organism is to some degree severed from the influence of the high-frequency, fine-matter (in materialistic terminology immaterial) organisational vibrational principle of the Inner Man (Swedenborg, Kent), sustaining or actually moment by moment creating the individual material body.

Summary:

• The universe is built on the relations of relevant frequencies and resonances.
• Very high (far higher than the highest frequency detectable by a material instrument) spiritual or fine-matter frequencies are the authors of both lower thought frequencies and even lower material frequencies.
• Very high spiritual frequencies thus have a creative character.
• The organism is constantly being formed from and sustained by the fine, high-frequency creative sphere.
• The organism’s frequency falls due to interaction with the environment, in particular as a result of stress, whether psychological, social, ecological or otherwise, or simply through the passing of time, with resulting illness. The frequency can be increased through resonance with a substance tuned on a similar frequency, if this has been elevated to the high-frequency, fine-matter creative sphere through being potentised (homoeopathically diluted). A deterioration in health (even local) always involves the person’s fine-matter sphere and is generated from there as its malfunction.
• A therapeutic substance is by dilution with water elevated to the higher frequency fine-matter sphere; the more it is diluted, the higher the frequency sphere it reaches.
• The homeopath’s overriding objective is to find a substance that resonates with the relevant individual’s creative frequency, and then to provide this substance in homoeopathically diluted form. In so doing, the entire organism attains a higher frequency and a higher state of organisation, of health. It then resonates better with the higher creative frequencies that bear an ideal model or structure of the man (Swedenborg and Kent write ‘Man’).
•  The more a person’s frequency drops below the highest creative frequencies, the greater the suffering and chronic tendency to illness.
• The more a person’s frequency drops below the highest creative frequencies, the less capable the organism is of maintaining its original structure. With the fall in the central frequency this begins to disintegrate, to change into another, less organised structure corresponding to its lower frequency.
•  Each frequency creates an entirely specific structure in each specific environment. It is therefore possible for the fall in frequency to cause not only illness, mistakes or confusion in the original structure of thought and organs, but also (after death) rebirth in a lower frequency state that corresponds, for example, to the animal structure of body and mind. Lower frequency states result in states of increased suffering, uncertainty and turbulence.
• Existence in higher frequency states than those that are manifest in our world is called “heavenly”. There are frequency levels referred to in the terminology of various religions as “heaven”. According to Buddhists, Swedenborg, yoga, the Kabbalah, Islam and other systems, there are many of these, organised hierarchically “one above the other”. One derives from another, the lower from the higher. We could add: some are higher and some lower according to the frequency height of their states.
• Upon the death of the individual, the low, material frequency of the body separates from the person’s consciousness located in the highest frequency levels. The material frequency terminates and the material structure starts to disintegrate. This is described in near-death experiences that occur in states of clinical death or the first phase of dying. Where it proved possible to resuscitate the dying persons they have spoken of their experiences, in which they were able to observe their dead, separating body from afar, their consciousness no longer tied to the body. In these states they experienced a sense of lightness and relief and went through a sort of very rapid film of their life, replayed backwards, i.e. they went through the frequency states of the mind which they had experienced since birth. Issue No. 359 of the respected medical journal The Lancet, published in December 2001, contained a statistical study by the Dutch doctor Pim van Lomel, which claimed that “45ŋ of adults and more than 85ŋ of children who had undergone life-threatening illnesses had experienced near-death experiences”. He explains that most of those adults who could not claim near-death experiences had forgotten about it. So, even by the criteria of contemporary medical science, a high percentage of people passing through the first stage of death underwent and described experiences linked to the separation of the higher thought frequencies from the material body. The aforementioned study confirms (even if it doesn’t explicitly state) that man is a multi-dimensional being, existing contemporaneously in different, hierarchically connected (frequency) levels. Among other things, the article stated: “Nothing suggests that these experiences, which followed the stoppage of the heart, were caused by psychological, neuro-physiological or physiological factors.”

When considering these matters we should always bear in mind that all people who have reached high levels of spiritual insight spoke the languages of their time only so as to be understood by others. Human speech is a symbolic instrument that derives from expressions which are valid for normal daily experience. When a physicist speaks of a “field”, he doesn’t mean a field of potatoes or wheat but something else. When we speak about a vibration we imagine an ordinary, metal oscillating tuning fork, or a sort of sinusoidal curve. But people’s life experience changes and terminology and technology become outdated. It is therefore quite possible also to say: vibrations or frequencies are probably the best model (or perhaps metaphor?) by which contemporary man may understand the aforementioned effects of diluted substances on man’s higher sphere and consequently on his lower spheres. Nevertheless, it is possible to use the medicines in accordance with the outlined principles and rules of treatment without trying to understand anything—it is not essential. We shall thereby avoid terminological and ideological, if not directly religious, disputes. Buddha provides an excellent parable: On a battlefield a man is struck by a poisoned arrow. A physician is called to remove the arrow. The injured man, however, asks that before they remove the arrow they tell him who shot it, at what distance, who were the man’s brothers and sisters… Before they can tell him everything he wants to know the poison enters his body and he dies. Instead of theorising it is better to remove the arrow as quickly as possible. Some of us, however, love theory and can’t live without it.