Homeopathy for Farm and Garden
The Law of Similars is applicable throughout nature. Like produces like, cures like and attracts like in each and every respect. Therefore, it is easy to understand that like also imitates like and that like neutralises like. Applied to agriculture, this means that what grows naturally together will also work harmoniously in potency. Moreover, all natural predators can be used as remedies, following the same principle. The same goes for pheromones, allelopathy and allelopathic chemicals. Fungi and bacteria can also function in the same way. Thus a precise and accurate model of pest and disease control is available, without the drawbacks of resistance, pollution and added poisons or disease, or the subsequent need for stronger poisons.
The implications are that with homeopathic remedies, plants will not only be healthier and therefore increase CO2 uptake, but they will also grow more vigorously, thus increasing the CO2 uptake of the entire crop. In this way, a 100% increase may be achieved. Coupled with the reduction in fossil fuel use, the total reduction in greenhouse gases may approach 200%. This is the best solution for the reduction of CO2 levels, together with the project to green the desert mentioned below. Since we can improve the uptake of CO2 by 200% for 25% of the earth’s surface and do the same with another 25% that consists of sick forests, we have already gained a tremendous advantage.
In combination with the Greening of the Desert programme, we can increase the percentage of arable land and plant forests to sustain the arable land with sufficient rain and provide an ever larger percentage of CO2 uptake. Of course it is self-evident that we must also put an immediate stop to unsustainable logging – not only in the Amazon, but equally in Australia, the USA, Canada and South East Asia. All forests cut down must be replaced – which in the case of the Amazon will be an enormous challenge. Otherwise any project that aims at reduction of CO2 is simply an exercise in futility.
Elsewhere, we explain the need for and advantages of minimum doses of remedies suitable for the entire syndrome of symptoms before you. Here we deal with a different concept, where the whole is more important than its parts. We must go from the general to the particular, since we must first understand the whole before we can understand the functions of the parts. When we look around us in nature we see that trees will give each other space to grow – they simply develop more branches out of the way of their neighbour. Each plant provides the biome for other plants, and we can recognise relationships between plants that share similar medicinal effects, pheromones, allelochemicals, tastes or other features. From these relationships we can learn how the whole works and how each creature has its place in the cycle.
Soil improvers are known in agriculture as manure, compost and slurry, which were traditionally produced at the farm and spread over the land. It was left to the worms to work them into the soil and the soil remained healthy.
With the beginning of the so-called Agricultural Revolution, chemical fertilisers were introduced, which seemed to do away with both the smell and the flies associated with manure and compost. It also appeared that the crops fared well from the regular inputsof fertiliser, which seemingly adapted to the lifecycle of the plants.
Potassium and nitrogen during the growing phase produced larger and stronger plants. Increasing the phosphorus content during flowering and fruitsetting seemed also to produce a bigger and better-looking crop. However, this increase occurred with a simultaneous loss of taste. The food produced ceased to be healthy. As in human society, where people became overweight from fast food, the plants became simply obese.
When pests and diseases subsequently increased, requiring ever-larger doses of poison, the food produced became literally dangerous to eat. Apart from excessive amounts of nitrogen, some compounds of which are carcinogenic, large amounts of poisons like DDT and the organochlorides were also consumed. This occurred despite best practices to avoid administering the chemicals during a specified period before human consumption (“withholding periods”) and the advice to wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly before consumption.
Rudolph Steiner was the first to see that bare soil cultivation with chemical fertilisers was the wrong way to proceed. He developed several preparations from cow manure (B500) and pure silica (B501) to improve the soil without the stink and the flies. His preparations restore soil microbial life, add the necessary nutrients in a form that plants can digest and improve soil structure.
Here we would like to present some of his findings and offer the general public the possibility to do away with chemicals in the garden altogether.
Consciousness: the Missing Link
Since consciousness lies at the root of all life, from the elemental to the complex, it is with consciousness that we have to approach the growing of crops. The Puranas (ancient Hindu scripts), describe how consciousness in living beings comes in four stages:
In seed form, consciousness is found in stone and rock. Diamonds are crystals that grow and growth is impossible without consciousness.
In plants, consciousness assumes the seedling phase. Here too, growth determines the conscious aspect.
In animals, consciousness is like a fully-grown plant, before flowering sets in. Animals have personality and the ability to learn, but not to philosophise or to think abstractly.
In humans, consciousness is like a plant in the bud. If humans come to self-realisation and unconditional love, the bud begins to bloom.
To those who argue that lower life forms have no soul and thus no consciousness, we offer the following free rendering of a conversation between King Bharadwaja and Sage Bhrigu, found in the “Mahabharata (a Sanskrit epic from ancient India credited to Vyasa that includes the Bhagavad Gita). Their arguments have been adapted to include modern terminology. The two men discuss these issues on the following lines:
The Sage: “The parallels are quite a lot closer than we may think at first. I mean, what it says in the human materia medica, how can it have any bearing on plant life? By seeing the plant in a similar manner as a human being. The plant has its mouth in the ground – the roots. At the junction of root and stem, where the former becomes the latter, we find the heart and the source of the circulation, which brings nitrogen up and sugars down. Digestion, respiration, vision, urinary organs and sweat glands are all in the leaves. So the plant is like a human being in many respects and suffers from similar diseases and parasites.”
The King: “Next you are going to tell me a plant has consciousness too. Trees have life, but they must be blind, deaf, without smell, taste and touch.”
In response to the King’s comments about the senses and the elements that belong to them, the Sage continued: “You talk about the aggregate of the five Great Creatures, which create the material world and govern the senses that appertain to it. In the Mahabharata there is a nice story that illustrates why plants are more like us than you think.”
King Bharadwaja was asking the Sage Bhrigu about the senses and the elements that belong to them.
The Sage: “The ear partakes of the element of space, the nose of earth, the tongue of water, the touch of air or wind and the eyes of light or fire. All creatures, both mobile and immobile, are composed of these five Great Creatures.”
Bharadwaja had his doubts about the veracity of this statement and asked why these five elements are not visible in immobile creatures.
The King: “Trees don’t have any heat in their bodies. They have no motion and are made of dense particles. The five elements are not visible in them. Trees don’t see, don’t hear, have no smell or taste organs and cannot touch anything.”
The Sage: “Exactly. That’s what I think too. But you know as well as I do that trees do have a lot of space in them in the inter- and intra-cellular spaces. They always produce leaves, fruits and flowers and as a consequence they have heat in them too, causing the leaves to drop. They also get sick, wither and dry, showing they have a sense of touch, for how else can disease touch them? From the sound of wind, thunder and fire, fruits and leaves drop down, so the trees can hear and must have ears. What else is there to say about this? There is even a book, ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, which describes this consciousness.”
Bhrigu had a few things more to say too:
“A creeper winds its way around a tree, up and up, even if it has grown a distance away from the tree. It will seek out the tree without fail and then climb up its trunk. Blind things cannot find their way, thus proving that plants have eyes. Also, the leaves and flowers are held so that they follow the sun, catching as much light as they can throughout the day, proving trees have sight and movement. They bring forth flowers in due season as a reaction to certain scents, such as the burning of incense. They drink water by their roots and catch diseases, which can be cured by diverse means. This proves they have taste. They are susceptible to pleasure and pain, caused by weather and man, in cutting and breaking them; and they will grow anew, showing they have life. They suck up water and grow and become humid. If there were no water in trees, then why does green wood generally not burn? So you see that the immobile creatures also partake of all the properties of all other creatures. Therefore, I say they are not too much different from humans, although similar states may look very different.”
Modern findings, such as the ideas on the consciousness of plants expressed in Thompson and Bird’s “The Secret Life of Plants” (1973), can be seen as an extension of such discussions. While Bhrigu may have used terms not acceptable to modern science, his exposition is rather scientific in my view. Similarly, we do not accuse Newton of using unscientific terms, although a modern formulation of the law of gravity may sound very different from his. Scientific language has also developed over the ages. We only have to look in “Black’s Medical Dictionary”, to see how terms have changed in the last fifty years. That this is due to more refined observational techniques, rather than to a better understanding, is of course conveniently forgotten. Yet in the same way that we have brought observational accuracy to the highest possible degree, the Vedic seers (Indian priests in the tradition of the Veda) calculated time from the atom and came up with an accuracy we have not even matched.
Consciousness may be seen as the unifying factor, in that it is common to everything, even to what you and I designate as dead and inert matter. For even dead matter is the product of consciousness. A car is also the product of consciousness, like a table and a chair.
If we prepare an elemental or vegetable substance according to either the homeopathic method or the Steiner method, we discover a liberation of this consciousness, available in that element or vegetable matter. By adding these preparations to the soil, it becomes a harmonious living organism, which conveys this harmony to the plants that grow in it. The fruits we may harvest from such plants will add to our own harmony as well.
Healthy living is not just buying and eating good food. It is a complete and total concept, which includes the way we live and use the land. Whether for living, growing food or letting the plants remain wild, harmonious use of the land is of prime importance to our own survival. With these preparations we can create optimum conditions for growing food and living harmonious healthy lives. This frees up the time for us to contemplate the purpose we were put on earth for and to put this into practice.
According to Steiner, “the biodynamic preparations have the function of strengthening the plant’s constitution.’’ He seems to have considered the plant constitution to be an entity of its own, applying to all plants, in an equal manner. This perhaps resembles the level of consciousness – seedling stage – that influences the general constitution. After all, we see the same in humans and animals, where the level of consciousness determines also the diseases these constitutions are prone to. However, within this general conscious constitution, there are further subdivisions, obvious from the enormous differentiation we find in the vegetable kingdom as well as the animal kingdom.
2. Introduction to the Second Edition
The enthusiasm with which the first edition of this book was received by the public – orders came in before the book was even printed – inspired us to excel ourselves to develop the book’s underlying ideas into more than just a simple homeopath’s dream. We were very happy to present the first edition of “Homeopathy for Farm and Garden”. We felt it was a very satisfying achievement to present this revolution in agriculture to the general public, for we felt there was definitely an unmet need for this type of approach.
Having used the original version while teaching and researching at the Similicure School of Homoeopathy Research Department in India, we wanted to make the book more user-friendly. The alphabetical arrangement was somewhat cumbersome to use and we wanted to make it easier to find the correct remedy for each problem. The alphabetical arrangement is in some ways impractical, since it requires a great deal of searching in the book for the correct remedy for each problem.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!
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