Why is it that homeopathy creates so much resistance?

This question has kept me busy for many years. After almost 20 years as a
practicing homeopath I have experienced many people with a strong scepticism to
homeopathy, especially people who are scientifically trained. Naturally, this is not
surprising if we consider that these people have learnt to watch the world in a certain
way. Science pretends to be objective, but I would like to try to show in this article
that it is not. In addition, it is also true that since the creation of homeopathy (in the
same period as the emergence of the mindset that we now call science) this
resistance has called upon certain groups of people. In this article I will try to show
the historical context thereof.

Until about 15,000 years ago, generally humanity had a magical consciousness.
That magical consciousness was a form of consciousness in which there was
essentially no distinction between the individual and his environment. Man
experienced the world as a great magical unit. The earliest writings we know, for
example, the Rig-Veda, shows that 12,000 years ago in India, another form of
consciousness arose.

The Jewish Torah (the basis for the Old Testament), which was written between
three and six thousand years ago, also shows another form of consciousness
development. These two developments represent two ways of interpreting reality that
are almost polar opposite. I refer to these two interpretations of reality as the Eastern
interpretation (including India) and the Western interpretation (Judeo-Christian
tradition). These two interpretations lie exactly at the root of almost 200 years of
conflict between homeopathy on one side, and knowledge based on academic
medicine on the other. But before we look at these two interpretations of
consciousness we will consider this further.

We can only approach the world from our own consciousness, from our own
perspective. That perspective is strongly influenced by the way we are raised and
schooled in the course of our lives, and it is coloured strongly by culture. We learn
many things as a 'fait accompli', however someone from another culture may say that
we are wrong because they have learned to perceive from a different perspective. In
the 1930's and 40's the Polish-American scientist Alfred Korzybski made this
phenomenon very clear in his book called "Science and Sanity". A description of the
reality around us is always made from our personal perspective and is therefore
subjective. According to Korzybski, this is the cause of many conflicts because
people are convinced that they are right, as their perspective is the only truth. That is
exactly what constantly causes problems in our society and also plays a part in the
conflict between homeopathy and science.

The Eastern Interpretation

The way of looking at the world from the Eastern interpretation such as in India and
neighboring countries, is characterized by a number of things.

Firstly, it appears from ancient writings that the ancient Indians were very aware of
the fact that many aspects of life, such as the weather and living conditions did not
come from God, but originated from the interactions of matter and energy, or from the
interactions between people and their surroundings. Although in religion many of
these things were personified and later deified as an absolute, but the whole culture
has always been geared to the illusion of our surrounding reality. They regarded the
material world with all the trimmings as an illusion. According to them it is a world
that is real and concrete before us, but is in fact a fraud, nothing more than variations
in vibration (the Indians called this concept 'Nada Brahma' - i.e. the world is sound).
The only true reality could be found when one's own personality disappears; all
attachments to matter are let go and completely absorbed in the perpetual inner self
of now. In this state of consciousness - this so-called enlightenment - there is no
distinction between what I am and what I am not. In fact, these two concepts do not
exist anymore, there is no difference, there is only one everlasting now.

The other Asiatic countries have developed similar visions and formed variations on
the theme. The difference between India on the one hand and ancient China on the
other for example, is that people in India assume that man is in ever new
incarnations on the path to enlightenment, always learning to continually improve,
and (at least if all goes well) eventually a kind of state is reached in which people on
that wheel of reincarnation can escape. In contrast, China has the vision that only
energy exists. Thus so do we. If we die, we disappear back into a big pot of energy.
No reincarnation, no eternal existence of the deepest essence of man. There are no
emotions, psychic disorders etc, these are just symptoms of discord in the energy
balance. This Chinese view is actually very close to the materialistic viewpoint of
science - which has now also discovered that everything is energy. Thus, perhaps
Chinese medicine evokes much less resistance in western medicine.

In India there was and is the viewpoint that only in the inner being of man, reality can
be found. It is the only anchor point from which man can live. The objective world
around us is an illusion (India) or just a temporary organization of energy (China).
The actual work in the world should focus on developing and working on its own
inner subjective world.

The Western Interpretation

Our western way of interpretation actually has two sources. Firstly the Jewish-
Christian tradition (where Islam also belongs) and on the other hand thinking about
the world as it developed in Greece.

In Jewish-Christian history, we can see that around 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia
an absolute faith in God started to develop. It was from within this culture that man
saw the world working, identifying natural powers in the external world. Thus thinking
about the world and what lies beyond the physical world, identified in an image where
there is "something" that stands over matter. That 'something' we have learned to call
'God'. 'God' is seen to be capable of forming matter into the world as we know it - but
'God' in fact is itself unknowable, indefinable and outside the limits of our
consciousness. The only condition in which man is able to know and master is the
surrounding physical world. There became a strong emphasis placed on our
'nothingness', the insignificance as an individual. We serve a God that is
unknowable in its severity and / or mildness for the best. But we will never be able to
comprehend what he (God) has in store for us. The only possibility we have is "in
the sweat of our respect to earn our bread".

From about 1000 BC, the Greek culture has gone through a development in which
people increasingly came to see that the world of gods was an illusion. Instead of
looking inwards as happened in India, man explored and learned about the
surrounding physical world. Man began philosophizing about everything that can be
experienced and seen, and later went on to research. This ultimately delivered an
image as described in the works of Aristotle. He formulated that everything is made
out of matter and form and that anything consists and complies with one or more of
his 10 formulated categories:

 Substance
  Quantity

 Quality

 Relation

 Place

 Time

 Position

 Condition

 Action

 Experience

Thereby something has already become or has the potential to be, something is true
or not, something is concrete, substantial or incidental, and that is underpinned by
one or more of the four perceptible standard causes of 'being' (idea, movement,
matter and end result).

And thus he has made a systematic tool in which everything in the perceptible
material world can be classified. Everything outside of this is unimportant. Therefore
he laid the foundation for a materialist view of the world from which science could
later evolve.

These two interpretations from the Middle Ages in Western Europe come together in
a movement that we know as 'humanism' and developed in the 18th century into
'Enlightenment philosophy'. The summary of this whole development could be
described as the only real thing in the objective perceptible world around us. The
internal subjective world is deceitful and untrustworthy. Only something that "is
measurable and ponderable" (Descartes) is true. Therefore it completely ignores our
fundamental subjective state.

Thus I have described the two contrasting views of life. The Eastern interpretation
sees the objective world as an illusion, as unreliable and misleading with only the
inner, pure, subjective reality being true. The western interpretation sees everything
that comes from the inner being of man to be vague, unreliable and misleading. Only
the carefully charted, strictly regulated, research of objective reality around us is true.

Modern science evolved from this latter viewpoint, and indeed in many respects
reigns supreme as 'knowledge' in the material world. The disadvantage of only
seeing and thinking in this way, is that everything becomes disassembled to be
analyzed, and in this manner the 'dead' physical world can become understood and
known. To examine the 'living' world, the experience of each individual person with
distinctive inner elements such as: love, anger, grief, ecstasy, fear, religion and so on
have little place in this analytical world. Although we know that a number of
disciplines within science are concerned with the study of living organisms, such as
biology or behavioral sciences, these studies must always meet the criteria derived
from the examination of the 'dead' material world. Thus excluding all of the living
processes e.g. emotions and energy.

From a medical science that evolves from 'Enlightenment philosophy' one can hardly
expect this to consider the subjective world of the individual. These medicines
employ only that which is objectively observable, researchable, can be describable
and manipulated.

If scientists do investigate the inner being of man, this raises the remarkable
phenomenon that almost always only pathological people become researched. The
major influential researchers, behavioral scientists and psychologists or psychiatrists
have, with few exceptions, such as Abraham Maslow, have always been occupied
with troubled and mentally ill people and not with healthy and successful people.
And it is from this sick picture of man that our vision of inner man originated.

Homeopathy as a scientific method

While homeopathy emerged in the same way as conventional science from

'Enlightenment Philosophy' and had a foundation in science as developed by the
thinking of Goethe and Schiller that we know today as phenomenology. In which the
phenomena in the world that surrounds us are viewed, and whereby for as long as
possible, one stays away from weighing and measuring, so long as possible delays
the interpretation of phenomena, and as long as possible observes what is outside of
oneself and perceives oneself. Where one tries to investigate the relationship
between ones inner experiences and beliefs and what one observes. In this way, the
subjectivity of the east is linked with the research of the west.

Although the scientific method of homeopathy is different, there are clear similarities.
The foundation of homeopathy is formed around three important factors. The first of
these is the remedy proving. In this proving a number of volunteers take a
homeopathic medicine in accordance with an established methodology. Experienced
homeopaths then carefully note down the volunteers' experiences and perceptions
(subjectivity of the volunteer / subject) from the ingested remedy. After all the
experiences are collated, the characteristics of the action of the remedy become
visible. This brings us to the second important factor: the law of similars.

This means that the symptoms that a remedy can cause in a "healthy" volunteer can
also cure someone who has the same symptoms in a disease process. Hahnemann
describes this as a principle in which the drug is the cause of an artificial disease.
This remedy sickness can thus only cure disease in a sick person if they have similar
symptoms to that which the remedy can create in a well person.

The third factor is the homeopathic consultation that is not studied or measurable, but
is subjectively experienced. The issue is not whether the patient is properly
diagnosed of flu, but what the patient experiences, what perceptions / experiences he
has about his condition. Thus, often a typical diagnosis of flu with symptoms like
runny nose, cough, fever and pain in the bones is for the patient and homeopath of
no importance. What is important is how the variation of symptoms are expressed in
this particular person, as this leads us to finding a remedy that is similar to the
individual person's complaints. Thus, this process is focused on the inner
subjectivity, and not on which bacteria or virus or poison is involved. The road to
healing is shaped by the individual perceptions and reactions of the patient.
Therefore homeopathy as a therapeutic is more 'Eastern' orientated.

The discrepancy

Homeopathy thus connects with the subjective reality of the individual, and as a
therapeutic aims at freeing the constraints of the individual. Not that homeopathy
considers objective reality as an illusion, we take the objectively observed symptoms
into the whole diagnosis i.e. 'totality of symptoms'. Of great importance, however is
how the patient will describe his pain, when he suffers, what improves the complaint
and what aggravates it and so on. Indeed two people can live in the same
conditions, have the same violent father, and one has a chronic trauma and the other
develops - perhaps because of it - a powerful personality. These differences in
perception and experience lead us to the appropriate remedy for this specific patient,
and not a clinical diagnosis of blepharitis, borderline or post-traumatic stress.

Because university medicine is in line with Western science, it is materialistically

based and object orientated. It appears that the science and medicine paradigms on
the one hand and homeopathy on the other are so fundamentally different, that it is
very difficult for them to come together. Maybe even impossible. As long as science
in our society is considered sacred and absolutely true, even as the only possible
truth, homeopathy loved by its representatives shall fight tooth and nail. Because
homeopathy represents a form of knowledge and experience accumulated on a
totally different principle it is viewed by representatives of the establishment as
threatening, dangerous and so on.

One of the things that surprised me for many years, is that I regularly hear scientists
produce sentences such as: "homeopathy can not work" and "it is diluted so far that it
cannot possibly function". In my view this is a serious scientific error. After all, many
hundreds and thousands of people benefit from homeopathic medicine. In
homeopathic literature there is an enormous amount of case studies available that
show the effect of homeopathic medicines. By denying this denies the scientist,
because it does not fit the paradigm, a part of reality. The genuine scientific attitude
would be: I'll take phenomena that I cannot understand or explain, and that I can not
prove with my available methods.

Only when the representatives of western science are able to see that there are other
valid methods for work in the service of human welfare and that these views are
possibly equally valid towards a way to cure, with there be room for dialogue.

Conversely and of course equally, homeopaths must also see that science and the
search for the resultant medicine is for the good of mankind, even though in the eyes
of homeopaths this is not generally considered a beneficial way. Within the world of
homeopathy, however, I regularly meet and understand the vision of Western
science. Here I more frequently find an openness to dialogue. But it is fair to say
that even within this world there is an equal inflexibility and people are convinced of
knowing they are right.

The difficulty is that homeopathy is not universally accepted and dominant in the
western world. Therefore, the media tends to be on the side of science and choose
to let go their attempt for journalistic objectivity. I notice that even here there is the
same fear, to acknowledge that homeopathy might work, or to report fairly, for fear of
ridicule. Therefore, it is possible that homeopathy is often put in the corner, and
ridiculed.

I think all attempts to prove homeopathy within science are doomed to fail. Even if we
find at micro level or by nano-technology evidence of the way homeopathic
medicines work, the fact remains that various scientists will do new research and
reject these findings. Whether the evidence is true or not does not really matter.
Much more fundamental is the fact that homeopathy is based on a methodology that
is alien to science. Therefore, homeopathy has always done well to remain true to its
own principles, its own scientific paradigm. Thus, if we want homeopathy to sit on
the map, then we must fight for recognition of this methodology and its scientific
paradigm. Where there is no recognition, there is also no recognition for
homeopathy.

Franc Müller – homeopath and educator.