Homeopathy works 30% of the time ?

The 30% solution

Filed under: Cosmic Up Link — Sunder Dinesh @ 4:54 am 

MUKUL SHARMA

 
    SOME things shouldn’t work, but they do. Homeopathy is a classic example. One of the things that its originator, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, claimed was that the more a medication was diluted, the more effective it would be since the dilution process apparently ‘potentised’ the drug’s ability and enhanced its ‘spiritlike medicinal power’. But even a normal dilution of, say, 30C — one followed by 60 zeroes — means having only one molecule of the substance in a sphere of water with a diameter of 150 million kilometres. At higher dilutions that are supposed to be much more effective, there are no molecules of the medication left at all!
    Now Hahnemann, who was not a fool, knew this could sound like poppycock. So he devised a further theory maintaining that the absent molecules were irrelevant to the treatment process because the water they had originally been dissolved in retained a ‘memory’ of the substance. However, this too is bilge because if water has memory then all the water in the world should by now remember everything that has ever been dissolved in it and be the ultimate panacea for all diseases.
    Be that as it may, the fact still remains that homeopathy works about 30% of the time. Scientists attribute this to the placebo effect — the beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment with an ineffectual substance such as a sugar pill that arises from the patient’s faith in the intervention rather than from the intervention itself. But here’s another irony: no one knows how placebos work 30% of the time, either. It’s another thing, like homeopathy, that shouldn’t work but does. Yet, placebos are so important in the allopathic drug manufacturing process (for conducting double blind trials in which the identity of those receiving a test treatment is concealed from both administrators and subjects until after the study is completed) that without it no real drugs could ever be made.
    Nevertheless, the one thing that becomes clear is that expectation or belief in getting results works. In other words, faith works. It’s sort of official, too. A meta-analysis of previous studies done by the National Institute for Healthcare Research in the US, which analysed nearly 126,000 people and was published by the American Psychological Association, found that regular churchgoers were more likely to live longer by — you guessed it! — a margin of 30%.

CAM - Complimentary & Alternative Medicine is here to stay !

Mind medicine goes mainstream

Posted on February 12, 2010 | Author: Mukul Sharma | View 410

Since the second half of the 20th century — beginning in the ’50s with the beat generation and the hippies of the ’60s — we’ve seen the rise of a form of spirituality which is more independent and self-defining than traditional streams. The main difference is that, unlike Sufism, Baul or Zen for instance, it did not arise out of any existing religion and, thus, had no carryover baggage. At the same time it would be wrong to say it’s a new religion because there’s generally no subscription to a First Cause as something separate from the self. Rather, the idea of divinity is diffused into environmental concerns, individual development, transpersonal psychology and complementary & alternative medicine ( CAM).
    
CAMs are of special interest as they’ve adopted a similar language and spiritual life of their own alongside conventional medicine from which of course none of them spring. These include herbalism, acupuncture, Ayurveda, biofeedback, meditation, yoga and diet-based therapies. In developing countries various forms have always been practised but the trend now shows that it’s spreading to developed countries as well. A 2002 survey of US adults 18 years and older, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics indicated that nearly 55% used CAM in conjunction with conventional medicine. Not only that, a 2008 survey by the American Hospital Association found that more than 37% of responding hospitals said they offer one or more alternative medicine therapies.
    
Even the Harvard Medical School says that a variety of CAMs are being seriously studied in its institutions these days. “Conventional medicine,” it comments, “has been too slow to study alternative medicine treatments, some of which have won the confidence of healers and patients for thousands of years.” Also, a rising number of medical colleges there have started offering pre- and post-graduate semesters in what they call integrative studies.
    
Once again, CAM is not a new medical system. It too does not subscribe to an empirically rigorous evidence-based system. Instead, it considers the body to be a diffuse entity which is greater than the sum of its organs, tissues and cells and involves the active participation of at least a mind, if not a psyche or spirit. Its inclusion in mainstream medicine can only indicate, hopefully, a more spiritually healthy paradigm shift.

Tracing The Universe And Original Photon

Tracing The Universe And Original Photons

Filed under: The Speaking Tree — Sunder Dinesh @ 1:10 pm 

Henryk Skolimowski ( Who is he ? Do some net search yaa ! ) 

The history of the universe is the anamnesis (recollection or remembrance) of light. The universe is alive because photons are “knowing“ and “remembering“. We are the first photons, which remember everything ­ in the act of anamnesis.

The whole story is a bit complex, more than words can express. Let us, for the time being, assume that all photons are “knowing“. This assumption is not outrageous. For all acts of knowing and knowledge must necessarily have been emanations of light. For what else could there have been?

Let me now relate to you two stories of my life. One is about Gregory Bateson, a distinguished epistemologist and ecologist, whom i have known well. He was a formidable and mysterious man. In one of his lectures he said that you never allow a child or a beginning player to touch a Stradivarius violin. The point is that the instrument possesses wonderful harmonies within ­ which could be disturbed by a novice. Another point is that the instrument remembers everything that has happened to it. I thought that the idea was right. But could not understand why it was so. Only much later it has dawned on me: If the Stradivarius remembers, then every object in the universe remembers its past … although in a different sense of “remembering“ than we are used to.

Another story is concerned with my encounters with the artists to whom i would boldly declare: “Every significant piece of art is made of light.“ There would be first a reaction of disbelief, and then a big opening of the eyes, and then a flash signalling “aha“ … and immediately later a relief: “Yes, i have known it but forgotten.“ This reaction of “aha“ is most significant. How would they recognise my outrageous claim that all significant art is made of light, if the innermost layers of their being did not inform them so?

We are coming closer to the kernel of mystery. We are not saying that we can completely unveil the mystery, but we can touch upon it. We are coming back to the idea that all photons are knowing and remembering ­ because they are the repositories of all knowing and of all light. For this reason, through the alchemy of his soul, Bate son could claim that the Stradi varius remembers. As a matter of fact, the experienced musicians would not dare to deny it. Yet, none would attempt to explain it further and deeper.

We can see the analogical situation with great artists who are aware, inside themselves, that the substance out of which they create is light. This is so you have the eyes to see. But we clear if you have the eyes to see. But we really have to go down deeper, to the primordial alchemy of light.

Tentatively we could say that the whole universe is pan-photoning. It is a clumsy expression. But the meaning is clear. The whole universe is enveloped in the evolutionary cauldron of ancient photons. And these photons are stored in us. And at times we are suddenly aware that “Life“ in us is twinkling photons, transformed into amazingly new forms.

Thus we arrive at an altogether new cosmology: it is not pan-psychism, not pan-mindism, not pantheism, but pan-photonism, or pan-lightism that is at the source of everything.

Alternatively, we could say that pan-psychism and pan-evolutionism are combined and synthesised in panphotonism.

Some might suggest these are far out ideas. Indeed. But they are timid in comparison with most recent cosmological speculations about Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the like. We are truly living in a mysterious universe.