The God (Consciousness) Question and its Relationship to Homeopathy
By Richard PItt
Summary:
The influence of the modern scientific paradigm in our society and in medicine in particular has led to challenges on the position of traditional religion and also on the validity of homeopathy and other holistic forms of healing. This is part of a larger struggle between secular, materialistic philosophies, and religious/spiritual philosophies and homeopathy has found itself, again, stuck in the middle and in recent years has found itself under much scrutiny and attack. This article explores some of the philosophical and political influences that have led to this situation, ideally clarifying the position of homeopathy and its role in integrating spiritual and scientific ideals.
Keywords: God, Religion, Secularism, Materialism, The Enlightenment, Reason, Fundamentalism, Homeopathy, Holism.
Introduction:
The basis of modern medicine still remains largely within the realm of 19th century biology. While this has achieved extraordinary things, the challenge lies in recognizing and exploring the mind-body connection and seeing the human organism – and all of life – as a vibrant, energetic, conscious whole, constantly adapting and evolving as a living ‘being’. This cannot be recognized fully without accepting the concept of a vital force, or what Chinese Medicine calls Chi, and Indian philosophy refers to as Prana.
Before going further, it may help to clarify how some of these terms are being used throughout this discussion. When the term “God” is used here, it is not necessarily referring to religion in the conventional sense, nor to an anthropomorphic deity, but rather to the possibility of a deeper organizing intelligence or consciousness underlying life itself. Likewise, “consciousness” is not being used simply to mean ordinary self- awareness, but points toward the idea that life may contain dimensions that are not reducible to physical processes alone.
Within this framework, the “vital force” is understood not as consciousness itself, but as the dynamic expression of life acting through the organism – the animating principle through which imbalance and health are manifested.
As Samuel Hahnemann wrote in the Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 9: “In the healthy human state, the ‘spirit-like’ life force (autocracy) that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction and keeps all parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both feelings and functions, so that our indwelling, rational spirit can freely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.” (1) He continues the description up to Aphorism 19 of the qualities and purpose of the vital force to maintain health as it is the living, dynamic force that gives life to the material body and it is only an imbalance in this vital force/principle that produces symptoms within the material organism.
The discussion that follows explores these questions through the lens of homeopathy, Hahnemann’s concept of the vital force, broader philosophical traditions such as Vedanta, and the growing tension between materialist and spiritual/consciousness views of human life within modern culture.
Consciousness, Vital Force and the Vedantic Perspective
I have added the word “consciousness” to the title, to further elaborate that when the term, “God” is used here, it can mean many things and is not necessarily reduced to the anthropomorphic god of Judeo/Christian tradition. Rather, the term is being used in a broader philosophical sense, pointing toward an underlying consciousness or organizing principle within life and the universe itself. In this context, consciousness is not simply ordinary self-awareness, but something closer to a fundamental ground of being, a constant, living presence, or unchanging permanent reality that mediates all things and gives all things their appropriate order.
When using consciousness as a simile for God, what is being implied is the possibility of an unchanging yet dynamic reality underlying all manifestation – a living presence, a witnessing principle, so to speak, through which all things arise and are interconnected. This is not to say it is a static, fixed, or rigid force, which cannot be altered, but rather it is a vibrant, non-material reality expressed through life itself.
In this way, the vital force is not consciousness itself, which may be understood as the root of existence but rather the dynamic expression or movement of consciousness within living systems. In this sense, the vital force may be seen as the intermediary principle through which consciousness manifests within the material organism and through which balance and imbalance become expressed.
As it would be described in the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, this dynamic life principle bears similarity to the concept of “prana” – the dynamic, moving energetic breath of the universe, the mediator of consciousness into the material world. It is the movement from a deeper reality of unity and non-separation into the apparent world of duality, individuation, and material manifestation. While these philosophical traditions are not identical, both attempt to grapple with the relationship between consciousness, life and the living organism in ways that extend beyond a purely reductionistic material framework.
Even in the philosophy of Vedanta, there is a slightly different way of exploring this. There are described five sheaths or layers of being that need to be transcended to realize pure consciousness itself, one’s true nature. These are Annamaya (physical), Pranamaya (energy), Manomaya (mental), Vijnanamaya (intellect) and Anandamaya (bliss). In reductionistic science, only the physical, mental and intellect are recognized, and they are all aspects of a physical materialistic view. Mental/intellectual phenomena are products of the brain and essentially another physical manifestation. (Yes, this is rather oversimplified but it stands). In homeopathy, we tend to see the three phenomena as manifestations of the vital force, an energetic principle and in no way separate from them. All things express this energy. In this way, the vital force as we know it is perhaps different from Prana as we bring it all together into what can be called an “organizing principle” or as the “biological imperative.” As Hahnemann has also described in many places in the Organon (p 29, 36,37 of the introduction) the vital force is an instinctual force, a reactive dynamic that can only be seen when it is mistuned, leading to symptoms in the mind and body. Hahnemann says this force is devoid of intellect and when mistuned requires the correct vibrational similar energy in the form of the homeopathic remedy. (1)
This topic of exploring the integration of Western and Eastern thought is explored in the previous edition of the journal, Vol 20 issue 1 in an article by Kirsten McGregor entitled ‘Integrating Homeopathy and Ayurveda: A Continuum of Healing across Causal Subtle and Physical Domains.’
But Hahnemann also states something interesting, which in many ways is counter to how we now see the action of the vital force. In the Introduction, p. 36, he states: “But the life force (suitable only for working in accordance with the bodily organization [constitution] of our organism, and not suitable for acting in accordance with intellect, cogitation and deliberation) was not granted to us humans:
For the purpose of assuming it to be the best possible healer of disease,
For the purpose of leading those sorry deviations from health back to their normal relationship, and still less
For physicians to slavishly imitate the life force’s imperfect, diseased efforts to rescue itself from diseases, using indisputably still more inappropriate and more aggressive arrangements than the life force is capable of, thereby a) conveniently sparing themselves the necessary expenditure of intellect, cogitation and deliberation for devising and executing the nobliest of all human arts, the true medical art, and b) passing off a bad copy of that little beneficent self-help of the crude nature-power as medical art, as rational medical art!” (1)
Here Hahnemann is expressing both the limits of the vital force to rebalance order and essentially cure itself, when imbalanced, for whatever reason, and also for physicians to attempt to do the same without the knowledge of Homeopathy and the Law of Similars. He continues:
“No!
True medical art is that cognitive pursuit which devolves upon the higher human spirit, free deliberation, and the selecting intellect which decides according to well-founded reasons.
It does so in order to differently tune the instinctual (intellect-and awareness-lacking), automatic and energic life force when the life force has been mistuned, through disease, to abnormal activity.
It differently tunes the life force by means of affection similar to that of disease, engendered by a medicine that has been homeopathically selected.
By means of this medicine, the life force is rendered medicinally sick to such a degree (in fact to a somewhat higher degree) that the natural affection can no longer work on the life force.
In this way, the life force becomes rid of the natural disease, remaining occupied solely with the so similar, somewhat stronger medicinal disease-affection against which the life force now directs its whole energy and which it soon overcomes.
The life force thereby becomes free and able again to return to the norm of health and to its actual intended purpose: that of enlivening and sustaining the healthy organism.
It can do this without having suffered painful or debilitating attacks by this transformation.
The homeopathic medical art teaches how to produce this.” (1)
Hahnemann here is really emphasizing the need for the appropriate homeopathic treatment to support bringing back the organism to health by helping reestablish equilibrium to the vital force which by itself, it cannot do and that the purpose of the vital force is to “conduct life in the most perfect way during health, not to cure disease.”
We can perhaps dispute this point from the point of view of the vital force being an expression of consciousness, but which can only be seen when in an imbalanced form, presented as signs and symptoms. This is a key point in Hahnemann’s view and a fundamental premise in homeopathy. It is only in the imbalance in body and mind that symptoms manifest, expression of the unique imbalance in the vital force at any one given time. The goal of the remedy therefore, by reflecting a similar energy/nature, is to restore the balance. It is true that the vital force has no “intellect” as in a reflective knowledge of itself. It does not. However, imbalance seen in symptoms of the intellect and of emotions (mind) are none the less also expressions of an imbalanced vital force.
The broader implications of this perspective changes everything. The term consciousness means many things to many people. From simple self awareness, “being conscious,” to the acceptance of a preconscious and unconscious model, as in Freud’s work, but which imply a non-physical reality. Taking this further, if the term God really just means a supra consciousness of all things and that all things are interconnected, not only in this planet, but the solar system and ultimately the whole universe, what is it that is the connecting link? It must be consciousness itself, an energetic force. As stated in Advaita Vedanta, the ultimate reality is that we are ONE, there is no separation and there is only this moment. There is no future, no past, there is only awareness itself. From this ultimate reality, we can now dive into its myriad manifestations, philosophies and expressions, including that of homeopathy and the concept of the vital force.
Hahnemann returns again to this central idea in Aphorism 10:
The material organism, thought of without life force, is capable of no sensibility, no activity, no self-preservation. It derives all sensibility and produces its life functions solely by means of the immaterial wesen (the life principle, the life force) that enlivens the material organism in health and in disease.
If the concept of a vital force challenges a purely material understanding of medicine, it also raises broader questions about modern society’s relationship to spirituality, religion, and the nature of consciousness itself. The increasing dominance of secular and reductionistic models of reality has not only influenced medicine, but has also profoundly altered the way Western culture understands meaning, transcendence, and the possibility of non-material dimensions to human existence. It is within this larger philosophical and cultural context that the relationship between God, religion, consciousness, and modern secular thought becomes important.
The impact of secular materialism on science, medicine and our view of the world.
In much of Western society, particularly in Europe, traditional religious institutions have steadily lost cultural authority and influence over the past century. Many view this as part of a broader movement away from inherited religious belief systems and toward increasingly secular and materialist understandings of reality. This has had particular influence in our understanding of modern medicine and much of the scientific paradigm, which by default denies the idea of a “vital principle”, or of a non-material consciousness. The impact of this profound shift in understanding from a religious view of life to a materialistic view is part of why a system of healing such as homeopathy is seen as a form of medical heresy. Even though traditional religions have seen some resurgence in recent years, especially in evangelical churches, it has led to a polarization between religious views and secular materialistic views. Even within much of modern religious expressions in Western countries, the materialistic view of the world is still intact. After all, their idea of God is a materialistic anthropomorphic being, not consciousness itself.
A number of problems arise during significant social transitions. What do you put in its place when you relegate a cultural belief system to the dustbin and what does it mean here about the larger question of God itself? Is God the same as religion and if God is to go as well, then what next? A variation of the good old benign humanism, or something more radical instead? Communism and Fascism were tried and simply became another religion and then religion came back as the door on communism closed - at least in Russia. Today, in spite of all the influence of Science and secular thought in modern culture, religion seems not to be disappearing, but perhaps becoming more radicalized and influential, at least in the United States and in much of the Islamic world. However, most secular thinkers condemning religion find it easier to condemn the very idea of God as well as obsolete religion. They are attempting to supplant one religion with another – secularism and/or scientism - which fits into their own philosophical paradigm, but which denies the deeper impulses for the need for religion in the first place.
Our historical relationship to religion
This is not the first time in relatively modern history that society has turned its back on traditional religion. Perhaps most dramatically during the French Revolution, the bible was outlawed for a while and any person expressing Christian beliefs could face the death penalty. Notre Dame was dedicated to the cult of Reason and the revolution adopted a strict atheistic society. Religious freedoms were soon re-instated but still under the mandate of reason. At the same time, William Blake in England was making similar, if less violent arguments about the role of religion and church in society. Similar waves of rebellion against religious orthodoxies occurred in the 1840’s-1850’s, being influenced by many intellectuals and philosophers, perhaps most famously Marx and Engels. And again, at the turn of the 20th century, as technological advances profoundly altered society, another wave of secularism took root in European society, including the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Most recently, during the social revolution of the 1960s, many social and cultural restraints were challenged and broken down, leading to radical changes in society including the role of religious beliefs and churches. As this impulse has continued since the 1960s it has taken many turns and in Europe has more profoundly changed the formal influence of the Christian church than in the United States where the power of religion has continued to be strong, especially in the evangelical church. In Europe, while many indigenous Christians have discarded their beliefs, many immigrants have brought their own religion with them, Islam and Hinduism being the two largest religions practiced. The relationship between Islam and Christianity has been a difficult one, beginning most significantly during the 1st Crusades in the late 11th century and then erupting most recently and most devastatingly during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Muslims have felt a justifiable cause against the abuses of Christianity and, in the name of Allah, significant atrocities have been meted out to Christians and other non-believers.
In the United States, the events of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in the Middle East fueled the more evangelical movements within the Christian church, as well as the secular parts of society, despairing at the religious inspired depravity and the polarization of religious beliefs into ever increasing fundamentalisms. A growing polarization in religious and social values has been seen in the United States, with both the main political parties reflecting this widening cultural war. The “War on Terror” is part of a fundamentalist fervor, seeing an alliance between both secular and religious forces that believe in the supremacy of western cultural and religious values, serving both political and religious goals for institutions and various nation states, especially the United States.
Where do people go when they give up on religion?
In Europe, since the 1960’s and 1970’s, most people who have given up on traditional religion have moved in one of three main directions.
The belief in science, rationalism and materialism – that part of European intellectual history, beginning most significantly with Bacon, Descartes and Newton and now seeing an expression in the fields of Science, Medicine, technology and the largely secular media.
A more neutral non-partisan position of benign agnosticism or practical utilitarianism to explain things and the challenges of modern society. Neither particularly religious nor particularly partisan to the “god” of rationalism, this position tends simply toward the evolution of society through a combination of practicality, rationalism and individual freedom. For many people, religion and spirituality become less important not through hostility, but through indifference.
An exploration of alternative forms of religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions, incorporating eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as Paganism, Shamanism and other spiritual and lifestyle philosophies. Included in this would be the plethora of alternative medical therapies, forms of healing, spirit beliefs, environmentalism, alternative lifestyles, organic agriculture, nature-based spirituality, and broader forms of pantheism in which nature itself, in its pristine glory, is celebrated. A growing suspicion of scientific rationalism is often expressed here and the underlying guiding principles tend to be more holistic,usually incorporating some form of spiritual or metaphysical belief.
Of course, these categories are not rigid and people can inhabit aspects of all of them. However, there is perhaps a growing polarity between the first and third group, as seen in the growing attacks on alternative medicine by a radical group of “scientific reductionists,” who have become increasingly intolerant of any form of healing that does not conform to a narrow rationale of what they think works.
The Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age alsodescribed the struggle between the secular and the spiritual as a “three-cornered battle.” (2)
One: Secular, exclusive humanists rooted in Enlightenment values who deny transcendence and the notion of God.
Two: Anti-humanists who deny and attack the claims of the power of reason to find scientific, objective truths of reality. This is the domain of many post-modern thinkers. They challenge the Enlightenment but don’t seek meaning in religion or the transcendent.
Three: Believers in transcendence, those who have some conviction in a higher reality or transformation beyond ordinary material existence is possible, even beyond the idea of human perfection.
Taylor also sees shifting and overlapping alliances between these three positions. Groups One and Two often align in their rejection of spirituality. Groups Two and Three share forces in their criticism of naive optimism and unquestioned faith in progress associated with Group One. At the same time, Groups One and Three both oppose the relativism and nihilism associated with Group Two. In the arena of healthcare and the attacks on many forms of holistic methods – influenced by secular society and also the tendency to increasing fundamentalism as a whole – there has been an alignment of various groups:
Medical professionals who believe that the domain of science is best served by only allowing the most conventional of medical practice to be accepted and who by default dismiss the vast majority of alternative healing from a basic philosophical position.
“Big Pharma,” and government allies. A powerful lobbying influence whose agenda is to maintain their power and profits and who seek to influence the discourse of what is acceptable in medicine and healing.
Radical secularists, who have a burning passion to dismiss anything that is seen as “non-rational” or “non-scientific.” This would include all notions of God and spirituality, as well as forms of alternative healing, astrology and other similar belief systems. People included in this group include part of the secular intellectual movement as well as traditional left wing “Marxist” groups who follow Marx’s basic materialistic doctrine, whether it is right or left wing in the ever-changing boundaries of cultural and political expression.
In this growing criticism of non-orthodox forms of healing and spiritual beliefs, one can see an increasing alignment of forces that, in other times, would be on opposite sides of the cultural and political fence. On one side are the capitalist, market-driven forces of the medical-industrial complex; on the other are secular atheists and materialists who traditionally would have been more associated with socialist circles and critics of class-based power structures and cultural authority.
In this process the values of science have been distorted and used to support not only the advance of science and medicine, but also to reinforce a broader belief system in which there is no room for God, spirituality, or any holistic understanding of life that acknowledges dimensions beyond the purely material. The “unknown” or “unknowable”, in whichever form that may take, is increasingly viewed with suspicion or dismissed altogether as unacceptable within the dominant cultural narrative.
At the same time, this also reflects a broader political and economic struggle over the authority to control access to healthcare and determine which forms of healing are considered legitimate. Orthodox medicine has sought to maintain its dominant position and authority over the availability and direction of healthcare itself. This is fueled by the ever-increasing social, political, and cultural influence of the “medical industry” in almost every aspect of modern life, creating greater dependency on the “system” while devaluing individual autonomy. This is in spite of the fact that the health care system in many countries, especially in the United States, are facing huge economic and political challenges, while the iatrogenic impact of a drug-based health system continues to take an enormous human toll.
This alignment has expressed itself most strongly in the United Kingdom, where religious indifference and a powerful secular movement, along with a sympathetic media, have seen the most virulent attacks on homeopathy and the broader “holistic” movement. These attacks have been widely supported by conservative forces in the medical profession and also by elements of the pharmaceutical industry. In the United States there has not been such an alignment, partly because secular forces have not become as dominant as they have in Europe. Another important factor is that the conventional medical paradigm still occupies a dominant economic and political position. In spite of the plethora of alternative therapies being practised throughout the United States, orthodox medicine has not felt such a burning need to condemn and threaten many of the alternative therapies practised,unless that is, one of their own steps too far outside the norms of medical practice. At the same time, the American medical system has had enough to contend with in terms of dealing with the political, economic and structural crises within the capitalistic based health care system.
The polarization between religious and secular beliefs has created a predicament for many who would ideally have affinity for the secular movement’s ideas and also the belief in science but who also feel there is room for other ways of believing and healing which cannot be explained by conventional scientific methods. The many previous attempts to dismiss religion and God tend to create another set of fundamentalisms and rigid beliefs, all expressions of the human condition and our attempt to create order out of disorder, meaning from emptiness and social forms that allow society to function harmoniously.
In the view of the philosopher Charles Taylor, secularism is not simply the opposite and rejection of religion and spirituality but challenges the historical relationship to and role of formalized religion and religious ritual, but which can still leave room for authentic spiritual enquiry. There are more options now in the secular age than preceding times and the context has changed. Personal experience and subjective relationship to spirituality have taken the place of the externalization of religious conviction in the form of God and formalized religious ritual dominated by religions. Taylor challenges the assumption that secularity has now simply replaced traditional religion, saying that it gave the opportunity to redefine individual experience and spiritual enquiry. It didn’t have to be defined only in the context of formal religion. He described the gradual transition from the Middle Ages when the world was seen as an enchanted cosmos, and the self was embedded within a social and cosmic order. Gradually this enchanted cosmos became disenchanted and in this process the world came to be seen as constituted by individuals, and nature itself as separate from human thought and experience. The Cartesian model slowly became the dominant reality, subject and object more clearly pronounced.
Taylor describes the effect of secularism in three ways. The first is Universalization, where through the influence of the Enlightenment and the power of reason, science could pursue objective truths with universal validity. The second is Psychologization, in which there develops a greater awareness of individual mental and emotional experience, increasingly separated from the older understanding of the individual as simply part of the larger cosmos. The third way is Individualization, where spiritual experience is no longer intrinsically related to society. The spiritual path becomes a personal search. This is seen both in conventional religion, especially forms of evangelical protestantism and also in the exploration of Eastern religions.
In the introduction to a book on the work of Ivan Illich, called “The Rivers North of the Future – The Testament of Ivan Illich”, as told to David Cayley, the author writes: “With the failure of all secular utopias, religion is now often the fault line along which societies divide, both domestically and internationally. But the terms in which this discussion is discussed often presume a neat cleavage between the religious and the secular, with the secular conceived as a space from which religion has simply been removed and relegated to the realm of private choice. I believe this is an untenable distinction, but not for the reasons sometimes given by the religious who try to abolish it by claiming that whatever is believed is a religion by definition and therefore the secular is no more than a cover for a materialistic or humanist ‘religion.’ I think Illich makes a much more convincing evisceration of the myth of the secular when he claims that contemporary western societies are in no-sense post-Christian but rather constitute a perverted form of Christianity.” (3)
Ivan Illich, although a devout Catholic, was also a profound critic of the “institutionalization” of life, including the role of the Christian church when it began to mandate belief and action – a kind of “forced salvation”. He was equally critical of modern secular institutions seeking ever increasing control of the very sanctity of life itself, often at the expense of individual experience, autonomy, and freedom of choice. Ultimately, for Illich, there is little difference in the underlying impulses that drive the institutions of the Church and secular bodies in the modern era.
One other important result of the process of modernity, and especially the evolution of modern science, reiterating what Charles Taylor has described, is humanity’s separation from nature – the gradual reduction of nature from an “enchanted cosmos” to one of alienation, fragmentation, and separation. Illich traces the beginnings of this movement to the 12th century, long before Copernicus and Galileo, although it only truly took hold of the imagination of the masses in the 17th and 18th century when the stirrings of modern science and medicine were taking place. To quote Illich from a book he references called The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant, “One thing was certain in antiquity: nature was alive… that nature is a concept, an idea, an experience derived from birth-giving. Therefore, if we say of things that they are ‘natural’, we say they are ‘born’. This idea is deeply affected in the 12th century by the sense of contingency. The whole of nature lay in God’s hands, where it acquired its aliveness through God’s constant, creative support… Once nature was taken out of the hands of God, it could also lose its most essential quality, which is its aliveness. If therefore, we look into the rise of natural science, and science altogether, in the 17th and 18th centuries, we are faced with research on a nature which not only lies outside of the hands of God, but has lost that basic characteristic of aliveness, which it had all through antiquity in our tradition.” (3) Many homeopaths, other natural therapists and those involved in more holistic philosophies would say this alienation from nature and the idea of the death of nature has established itself firmly in the mechanistic model of the world which dominates much of medical thought and also secular thinking.
Another perspective – and a secular one at that - has been put forward by the Philosopher John Gray, in his book Black Mass, Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. (4) In this book he is exploring the history of Utopian philosophies, often noting they have a millenarianism/millennialism character about them, where some form of more perfected world will arise from the ashes of ignorance, evil and human fallibility. He traces these impulses back through early Christianity and the influence of Manichean religion, where the forces of light and dark would be a permanent struggle. In contrast to Christ’s teaching which saw Good prevail over Evil this desire for perfection and transcendence has motivated much of religion and also many secular movements for two thousand years.
In the 20th century, however, they took a distinct secular turn with the religious political movements of Nazism and Communism, where the quest for a more perfected humanity – now justified through science instead of religion – sanctioned some of the most brutal and depraved behavior toward their fellow human beings. Similar behavior was seen during the French revolution. Therefore, whether it is defined as secular or religious, the underlying ideas remain the same. A more recent manifestation of this, where both religious and secular (modern scientific) values merged together, is in America and parts of Europe with the neo-conservative agenda of the far right and their desire to export American democracy, capitalism and values to many countries (with a focus on Muslim ones), and in so doing to rid the world of some more perceived “evil”.
What is common to many Utopian ideologies, Gray states, is the concept of progress and human evolution. For some it would be expressed in a millennial form (an end time with a new world being born) and for many others it would be simply the idea of human progress and gradual evolution. This latter idea is much more prevalent in more humanistic circles, new age philosophies and “evolutionary” thinkers, both secular and religious in nature. Gray is challenging this one fundamental idea in his writings.
Gray also states that contemporary atheism is no more than a Christian heresy and criticizes the ideas of modern thinkers such as Richard Dawkins (author of the Selfish Gene), as being versions of Christian concepts. It is only in Christianity that the religious and secular life has been so separated. Most other religions and cultures entwine the two in daily life and ritual. Therefore, in attempting a radical secularism and dismissal of religion, most atheists deny the deeper mythic impulses that allow religions to exist and have no answer to the human need for these impulses. However, they adopt the same “religious” zeal in their condemnation for religion and everything “non-scientific”, including homeopathy.
The first modern scientists and their relationship to God
In the face of the growing development and power of science and medicine, it is perhaps not as easy as it was in Newton’s time to span both religious belief and a deep conviction in scientific materialism. Also, as God has been dominated by the more rigid orthodoxies of traditional religion, especially in the Abrahamic religions, the blanket dismissal of God is perhaps the inevitable conclusion to the challenge of religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism. What began over 500 years ago, when the first scientific explorations of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler challenged the religious orthodoxies of the day, with the implications that we were not the centre of the known universe, but just swimming in the mix, can lead to the conclusion that there cannot be any God at all as seen by traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs. This conclusion is the result of 500 years of scientific and philosophical enquiry and for many makes total sense. Ultimately the universe is random. However, even at this point, one does not have to go down the reductionistic path of materialistic science or the dead end of social Darwinism, even if that is where much of modern secular thinking goes. There perhaps can still be some order in the seeming randomness of the universe.
The findings of these early scientists were not attempts to overthrow the power of religion or God and in fact to begin with, these insights were seen in specifically religious contexts. To quote the American philosopher Richard Tarnas in his book “Cosmos and Psyche”:
“After the discovery of the heliocentric theory… the deep mysteries of the universe were suddenly unfolding within the awestruck minds of the new scientists through the grace of a sovereign deity whose glory was now dramatically unveiled. The stunning mathematical harmony and aesthetic perfection of the new cosmos disclosed the workings of a transcendental intelligence of unimaginable power and splendour. In that epiphany, the human intelligence that could grasp such workings was itself profoundly altered and empowered.” (5)
Before that time, stated Tarnas:
“The true nature of life had come to be seen as fundamentally beyond the capacity of the human intellect to understand. Concerning heavenly and divine matters, it seemed only the Bible could reveal the truth.”
Copernicus was well aware that the possible consequences of these revelations could upset the traditional order, creating a wave of reaction, not only from the religious but also from secular intelligentsia. However, Copernicus and those that followed did not dismiss God, and not just for political reasons. They were able to make their revelations understood within the context of the “workings of a transcendent intelligence of unimaginable power and splendour.” However, as the full consequence of the heliocentric theory unfolded over decades and centuries, the result became a fundamental revision of man’s relationship to the world around him. Instead of being seen as part of the whole, a connected interplay in which man was merely the smallest part, immersed in the whole stream of life; all meaning and intelligence in the world now belongs to man, which is separate and distinct from the “objective, non human world.”
Move forward five hundred years and we now have science standing on a threshold. On one level, we have tremendous breakthroughs in knowledge in many fields of scientific research, from the basic research into matter in physics to an ever more nuanced understanding of human physiology and our ability to manipulate it, reaching into the very foundations of DNA construction. At the same time, we have a science that still often sees itself as abstract from nature, separate from that which it is observing and manipulating, as part of a larger cultural mindset in western society that still maintains that as humans we have dominion over the planet, a premise established from biblical time. This profound conclusion in which man separates himself from and has dominion over nature ironically lays the foundation for the development of the modern scientific method even if many espousing the value of this method deny religion, which makes a similar conclusion. There is also the presumption that humans are different from other animals, again a Christian inspired concept, one that justifies not just our attitude to all other animals on the planet but to our very idea of the uniqueness of the human agenda on the planet.
As the scientific method developed and refined its ideas, the classic mechanistic-reductionist model of the world took hold, one in which the only reality is that which we can see and understand with our technology and in which all meaning is reduced to a bio-chemical analysis of the human “machine.” The concept of other levels of reality or consciousness whether one calls it Vitalism, Chi, Prana or some form of energy recognized as being the substrata of biological function is fundamentally denied. What is also implicitly denied is the concept that ALL things are somehow connected; that the human organism is a cohesive whole and that our relationship to the planet in which we live is a symbiotic one, where energetic threads weave a coherent whole, and which includes the whole cosmos. By default, the mechanistic model reduces things to their smallest component, seeking understanding of the whole through the smallest detail of biological function. This model also denies (as it cannot see it) any other level of reality that simply exists in the form of consciousness. This consciousness or energy infuses matter but science can’t see it so it can’t exist, the same as God can’t exist.
The question is whether there is room in the current scientific paradigm to incorporate a more holistic worldview, together with methodologies capable of supporting such an approach, and how long the conservative forces in science and medicine, as well as secular elites can continue to resist the challenges these views represent. Both believe they are defending the essence of Enlightenment values – reason, rationality, and scientific objectivity – against the superstition of medieval ideas and impulses.
The Enlightenment and its modern adherents
In Dan Hind’s book, The Threat to Reason,(6) Hind questions the allegiance of secular/atheistic thinking and the “religion” of modern science and traces some of its impulses to people who believe that in attacking God, religion, alternative medicine, environmentalism and the whole post-modern movement, they are defending the true spirit of the Enlightenment and Rationalism. He discusses how this can take place, and why by putting science at the peak of human development, it allows them to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit within its narrow analysis of life. However, his critique is that the powers of modern capitalism and neo-liberalism have captured the ideas of the Enlightenment and are a much greater threat to society than such “new-age” ideas and philosophies as homeopathy and astrology, as well as the blanket dismissal of religion. Without really defending the latter, he is asking the question that those who are part of the modern rationalist movement are actually defending values which are not truly representative of the Enlightenment. They have reduced the ideas of the Enlightenment to the narrow values of materialism, rationalism and neo-liberal capitalism. This is exampled in the most reductionistic and somewhat “irrational” way in a book by New Yorker staff writer, Michael Spector, entitled - ‘Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens our Lives.’ (7)If the world was blown up tomorrow in a nuclear war, he would likely blame astrology and homeopathy more than the insanity of political leaders.
The value of Hind’s book is in seeing how some of these modern critics of holistic ideas really believe that they represent a true scientific philosophy but in so doing seem more concerned about the damage that astrology is doing than in the abuses of “Big Pharma” when it covers up its abuses with drugs such as Vioxx, (see Note 1 for further discussion)) along with the broader iatrogenic crisis within modern medicine.
John Gray, in Black Mass, also explores the question of who “owns” the Enlightenment, and how many various ideological movements – both religious and secular, Right and Left – believe they are adhering to these ideas. Central to many of these movements is the belief that, through the inherent goodness of humanity, together with the power of reason as expressed in art, culture and most clearly, science, the inexorable development of human evolution will unfold. The danger, as Gray points out, is when these ideas are put into an Utopian philosophy, whether religious or secular, and how in such times, all forms of means to justify the ends occur. But as Gray points out there is little difference between religious and secular identities in such situations. The underlying philosophy is the same. He uses the example of the Neo-Conservative agenda of the Far Right in the war in Iraq as a classic example of the Utopian agenda being used to justify the war based on the idea of the supremacy of western cultural liberal values. We are now seeing this twisted Utopian agenda and narrative manipulation justify yet more wars, especially in the Middle East. In the context of our discussion here, we are seeing how those who have a “fundamentalist” belief in Science are willing to condemn anything they see as not fitting into this paradigm, which they see as obstacles to true progress.
For those practitioners of methods of healing such as homeopathy, acupuncture, psychotherapy and all kinds of “energy” based therapies, as well as practitioners of astrology and eastern philosophies and religion, there is more in common with some religious beliefs than in the materialism and reductionism of the atheistically inclined rationalists. While many of the so called “new-age” type therapies may not have much in common with the tenets of traditional religion and its rigid orthodoxies, they are somehow forced into an alignment based if on nothing other than the idea that there will always be some kind of mystery to life (Transcendence) and that there is some form of supra consciousness pervading all things, and that another world of “spirit” may exist, in whichever form it may take.
Further, there is a commonly held conviction that blind adoration to “scientism” is a great error and lacks the imagination of the human spirit and reduces everything to an empty, disconnected, detached void of nothingness, a universe without intrinsic order or meaning. Even if that is true, belief in the “idea of meaning” may serve to maintain a greater harmony on the planet, if nothing else.
Eastern and Western Perspectives on Consciousness and the Vital Force: What are the implications for the future of Science?
Many of those who practice alternative medicine would say that their methods are scientific and that if only the reductionists would widen the goalposts, and in the true spirit of science which is the pursuit of knowledge and not just the pursuit of preordained belief, it would allow many other therapies and ideas to be included.
It could also begin to embrace the idea of interconnectedness, of synchronicity, of consciousness itself and that the mystery of life can be experienced more directly, not trying to simply fit it into a test tube. Instead of relying on a narrowly defined “evidence based medicine” which is often being used to support only “evidence” deemed acceptable from a materialistic view, a radical empiricism could take place where all systems of thought and therapies can be tested by direct experience and this evidence can be collated and reviewed in whichever way is acceptable. Of course this doesn’t exclude all forms of scientific investigation but it doesn’t start from the prejudiced position of denial.
To do this, funds would have to be made available for much more research into holistic models of healing, and scientific and medical journals would have to be much more open to publishing this research. In the last few years, The Lancet, one of the most respectable medical journals in the U.K., has taken a virulent anti-homeopathy position, even heading one of its editorials, ”The Death of Homeopathy”. This happened when publishing the “Shang et al” report, (Lancet 366), which purportedly showed that in 110 homeopathic trials, compared with allopathic trials, homeopathy did not work, attributing any homeopathic effect to merely placebo. However, the conclusions were drawn from only 8 of the 105 papers studied. Whatever the disputes of the agenda and methodology of the report’s authors, the fact that the Lancet would follow it with such a dramatic editorial comment makes it clear where they stand and their willingness to believe reports on homeopathy, even if the “Shang et al” study brought up as many questions as answers.
The implications of opening up the field of research into all forms of holistic thinking would also include a “scientific” exploration of all forms of belief, including the concept of God. From a holistic view, God may not be limited to a traditional Judeo-Christian model but could simply mean that there is a “universal consciousness” in which all things are connected and in which there is an inherent order to all things – even in the midst of chaos and apparent randomness. Order and chaos are not necessarily contradictions. This type of holism could then be used to explore the human body in a much more integrated way, recognizing that all functions of mind and body are connected and are a reflection of an “energetic” life force. We do not need to fall into familiar traps of religious, new age, or other spiritual philosophy to explain this, simply to accept the reality that there is some form of energy or consciousness that is impacting human beings and all matter. The implications of this kind of research could help bridge more religious/spiritual impulses with a scientific perspective, opening up the boundaries of science and also challenging limited views of the concept of God.
This brings us back to how the foundations of much of Eastern religions and cultural norms, including that of Buddhistic and Hindu thought - expressed most lucidly in the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta - can add a more complete picture to our understanding of consciousness and the intrinsic order to the universe. Hahnemann’s descriptions of a “vital principle” which is stated so lucidly in Aphorism 9 is worth repeating here: “In the healthy human state, the ‘spirit-like’ life force (autocracy) that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction and keeps all parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both feelings and functions, so that our indwelling, rational spirit can freely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.” Hahnemann was a western rationalist, but one steeped in the foundation of an enchanted interconnected world, a truly holistic view. This realization of a fundamental interconnectedness is also expressed most lucidly in the Hindu Vedantic texts of the famous 8th century Indian scholar/monk, Shankara, and elucidated by many spiritual authorities in India, including Ramana Maharshi, the famous sage who lived in Tiruvannamali in Tamil Nadu. In the book by Arthur Osbourne: The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Ramana describes his understanding of Shankara’s teaching from his own experience, exploring the fundamental tenet of “Oneness”:
“Question: When the Upanishads (Sanskrit texts of the late Vedic period) say that all is Brahman (the supreme force of the universe), how can we agree with Shankara that this world is illusory?
Ramana: Shankara also said that this world is Brahman or the Self. What he objected to is one’s imagining that the Self is limited by the names and forms that constitute the world. He only said that the world has no reality apart from Brahman. Brahman or the Self is like a cinema screen and the world like the pictures on it. You can see the picture only so long as there is a screen. But when the observer himself becomes the screen only the Self remains. Shankara has been criticized for his philosophy of Maya (illusion) without understanding his meaning. He made three statements: that Brahman is real, that the universe is unreal, and that Brahman is the universe. He did not stop with the second. The third statement explains the first two; it signifies that when the Universe is perceived apart from Brahman, that perception is false and illusory. What it amounts to is that phenomena are real when experienced as the Self and illusory when seen apart from the self. The Self alone exists and is real. The world, the individual and God are, like the illusory appearance of silver in the mother-of-pearl, imaginary creations in the Self. They appear and disappear simultaneously. Actually, the Self alone is the world, the ‘I’ and God. All that exists is only a manifestation of the supreme.” (8)
The value of this perspective is the realization of the essential “oneness” of the universe and for the Western mind which is steeped in the dualism of being separate from nature and the materialistic reductionism of the body, it offers an alternative holistic context. The Vedantic ‘sheath’ of Prana, as mentioned at the beginning, is one aspect of a non-material force, an energetic vibration that Hahnemann describes as the Vital Force, and which is an expression of consciousness itself. This view may seem paradoxical to the Western materialistic mind and yet is one of the central tenets of Vedantic thought. The only thing which is real is that which does not change, which is consciousness itself. To quote from a book called Paradoxes by Swami Tattvavidananda, ‘Reality pervades both the inner and outer, which are states of Reality alone, but Reality is not a state of anything. It is uncaused, independent and transcends the divisions of in and out.’ (9)
The practice of meditation techniques like Vipassana, which originates from Buddhistic/Hindu traditions have been analyzed in more recent years from a Western, scientific view and there is more and more cross-fertilization of the Western and Eastern perspectives to the many ways in which consciousness can be experienced and researched into, from personal enlightenment experiences to using mental powers to control physiological processes. There are many other similar bridges being explored, in which the implications of homeopathic and other holistic perspectives are being vindicated in the post-modern era.
Also, in the ancient South Indian system of medicine, called Siddha, which is part of the Indian government’s AYUSH indigenous medicines, which also includes homeopathy, one of the fundamental concepts is the understanding of the human body as a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm (universe) governed by the five elements (earth, air, water, fire and space) and by the three humours (Vatham, Pitham and Kabam).
Evolution in thought occurs when new ideas challenge the old ways of being and it is important that room be given for these new ideas to develop. This is vital in the field of healthcare and also in the understanding of our relationship to the planet, where the tendency to manipulate and exploit the planet for narrow interests simply cannot work much longer. We are at a crossroads and the overlapping areas of concern may come down to our understanding that “it” is all connected. We are not separate from nature or from each other and we are not superior to other animals. We cannot simply exploit nature for very narrow self-interests if we are to survive. Science and much of conventional religion has believed in this separation but the existential, political and environmental crises of the modern age are forcing us to redefine these ideas as we ideally come to a greater understanding of our relationship to the planet and the fact that actually, Nature is alive and we are that nature. There is no separation.
Notes:
Vioxx was the anti-inflammatory drug made by Merck and Co, which was withdrawn because of serious side effects, including heart disease. However, Merck withheld information it had about these side effects for five years, leading to up to 60,000 deaths worldwide. However, Merck by then had made over $2.5 billion in sales revenue from the drug.
Book References:
Hahnemann, S. (1996). Organon of the Medical Art. Edited and Annotated by Wenda Brewster O’Reilly PhD Birdcage Books.
Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Harvard University Press.
Cayley, D. (2005). The Rivers North of the Future, The Testament of Ivan Illich. House of Anansi Press.
Gray, J. (2007). Black Mass, Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. Penguin Books.
Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche. Plume.
Hind, D. (2007). The Threat to Reason. Verso Books.
Specter, M. (2009). Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens our Lives. Penguin Press.
Osbourne, A. (2024-17th edition). The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi. Venkat S. Ramanan, Sri Ramanasramam.
Tattvavidananda, S. (n.d.). Paradoxes. Brahma Vidya Kuteer.
Richard Pitt
He studied and practiced homeopathy originally in the UK graduating in 1984 and then
practiced for 20 years in the U.S. Since then he has lived for eight years in four African countries including five years in Kenya working on a EU funded public health project and Education Director of the Kenya School for Integrated Medicine. He is still involved in three African projects and is the author of eight homeopathy books. He can be found at richardpitthomeopathy.com