Radionic Journal 46 (2) 4-21 (November 2000)
Reflections on the Ether and some Notes on the Convergence between Homoeopathy and Radionics
by Nick Franks BA, MRadA
`We analyse the normal so that we may know the difference between it and the abnormal' (Ruth Drown)
I began studying classical homoeopathy in January 1994 and starting adding radionic instruments and techniques in October 1995. As I have learned the two disciplines side by side and have found both approaches attractive, it has taken me some considerable time to decide which of the two is most appropriate for me as a practitioner. I have concluded that in spite of the genius of the homoeopathic method as set out by Hahnemann, there are often - notably in complex cases - a far wider range of problems to be addressed than can be uncovered by standard homoeopathic diagnostic means. Indeed, it could probably be argued that without the use of the radiesthetic sensibility in some form, there is currently no method available to discover some of the problems which are routinely treated by the radionic approach.
Since its beginnings about 100 years ago, the relatively obscure science of radionics has utilised various dowsing techniques1, not only for the detection of disease states but also to identify and apply appropriate therapies. Homoeopathic remedies are widely used in radionics, and some seminal personalities in the present development of homoeopathy in Britain - such as John Damonte - were also radionic practitioners. In this essay I will give a brief overview of radionics; I will also contend that homoeopathic remedies are a subset of a far wider range of healing sources which create a generalised category of vibrational remedies; and that radionics is one of the best available methods for using this therapeutic approach.
A Very Brief History of Radionics
Radionics2 was founded by Dr Albert Abrams (1863-1924), a native of San Francisco, under the original name of ERA - Electronic Reactions of Abrams. A highly-qualified conventional practitioner with an illustrious career and also the advantage of a substantial private fortune, Abrams was able to pursue his researches without reliance on outside funding. Like Hahnemann (1755-1843), the founder of homoeopathy, Abrams was a master of observation and a tireless experimenter and truth seeker, which attributes eventually led him to make discoveries which brought considerable opprobrium from the medical establishment of the day. Like so many of these outstanding figures, he was also capable of making inspired leaps of judgement.
Abrams' fundamental discovery was that under certain conditions the human nervous system will react to the energy field of external elements such as persons with disease conditions, samples of diseased tissue, and so forth. This reaction would manifest by means of a muscle reflex which could be detected by percussing the abdominal wall. Alternatively, Abrams found that drawing a glass rod across the abdomen could also be used to localise the point of response. Different diseases - or as Abrams noted, `drugs in homoeopathic dilutions can be detected and identified by the stomach reflex' - produced reactions in different parts of the abdomen, which suggested a unique diagnostic method. He then proceeded to develop a technique which placed a person with abdomen bared (known as the `subject') in series with a patient, i.e. linked by a wire which terminated on the subject's forehead. He could then diagnose by testing on the healthy subject for response to disease conditions in the patient.
Abrams later discovered that certain diseases produced reactions in the same muscle groups, which neatly threw his method off the rails until he hit upon the idea of placing a variable potentiometer (i.e. a rotary control such as might be used to adjust the volume on a hi-fi) in the middle of the cable linking the subject to the patient. Settings of the potentiometer would be found which were unique to each disease, thus making it possible to diagnose a wide range of conditions.
Eventually Abrams discovered that he could diagnose just as accurately using a blood sample from the patient, and eventually found out that he could work at a distance with the patient's sample placed next to the telephone line; such tests were performed over distances of more than 500 miles. He finally discovered that he could work without any form of linking wire between himself and the sample, but not over a distance of more than a mile.
From these basic elements:
- the reflex muscle reaction to the stimulus of an external energy field (i.e. the radiesthetic faculty, from the practitioner's point of view);
- the substitution of a sample from the patient for the patient himself;
- the creation of a unique value representing a disease or other energy factor; and
- the possibility of working at a distance
was formed radionics as we know it today.3
Dr Ruth Drown (1892-1963), a chiropractor based in Hollywood, had apparently worked in Abrams' clinic as a young woman and decided to develop his methods. From the accounts I have read she was clearly another remarkable figure, and once again, probably as a consequence of her successes and unwillingness to toe the line, the establishment persecuted her to the point of trial and eventual brief imprisonment. In fact as a result of the Drown trial in 1951, I believe that it remains basically illegal to practise radionics in the USA.
Drown redesigned the diagnostic instrument into a compact system which gave greater flexibility and extended range. The patient's blood sample was relocated into a small container in the instrument. She replaced the subject's abdomen with a small rubber membrane (known as the `stick pad'); the index finger was stroked along the pad while the potentiometers were adjusted, and when the appropriate setting was found - i.e. the circuitry came into balance, indicating a resonance or response in the practitioner - the finger would `stick' on the membrane.4 Her new designs also allowed longer sequences of numerical values to be created, which enabled her to assemble an atlas of rates which covers most of the structures in the human body, many disease types, poisons, toxins, and a range of other factors including emotional states.
Drown sought to define perfect structures, to measure the degree of deviation from perfection, and then to rectify any imbalances or deficiencies. Thus - very simply - her rate for the liver is 48 5; this would be set on the instrument and the deviation from 0 tested. Any significant reading would indicate a problem either in the liver or elsewhere in the body which was affecting the liver. Her principal treatment method was to feed the `perfect' rate back to the respective diseased location in the patient, either by wires or remotely, the idea being that as new cells were created they would be healthy and would replace the diseased structures, and according to the information available, she claimed many successes. She also placed a priority on treating the endocrine system, and as radionics emerges as a system of treatment on the dynamic plane, I will show how this ties in with the analysis of the subtle anatomy which has come to dominate present-day radionics, at least in the UK.
What is also of significance is her use of the technique of treating at a distance - any distance, anywhere in the world - in the process known as radionic broadcasting. It was no longer necessary for the patient to be present. Incidentally the term `broadcasting' is descriptive but probably inaccurate, as no radio or television technology is involved. Whatever the mechanism, there is no doubt in my mind that treatment at a distance works, whether one is broadcasting homoeopathic remedies, radionic (i.e. Drown-type) rates or any other energy factor or vibrational pattern which can be represented as a radionic signature and is appropriate to the patient.
It would seem, from the present day position, that virtually anything can be represented by a radionic rate, and this of course includes the entire homoeopathic Materia Medica; it is even possible, in principle, to find rates for remedies which we do not yet have or which are too dangerous to handle, such as radioactive materials. Malcolm Rae's ever-expanding system has around 24,000 rates which are presented in the form of Ratio cards and include the whole acupuncture system of meridians, a vast range of chemicals, drugs, human organ functions, Ayurvedic concepts, I-Ching hexagrams and so forth.
The Dematerialisation of Radionics and the Influence of Alice Bailey
Drown was also very involved in esoteric studies - notably Kabala, which amongst other things attempts to understand the underlying structure of reality through the relationships between numbers; and she thus sought to find meaning in the radionic rates through kabalistic interpretation. Whatever the result of this, she also thought that energy flowed from the Universe into the human system via the brain, and that proper distribution of this energy was essential to healthy functioning - in other words, moved away from a purely physical conception of health and disease.
Just as James Tyler Kent (1849-1916), influenced by Swedenborg, switched the focus of homoeopathic diagnosis to the Mental and Emotional planes and the realms of high potency prescribing - and thus dematerialised homoeopathy - so Drown's esoteric line of thought was taken a huge step further in the work of David Tansley and Malcolm Rae 6, both men, regrettably, dying quite young. Most of their work was done in the UK between, approximately, 1965 and 1985. Tansley, a chiropractor, had spent many years studying the writings of Alice Bailey (1880-1949) and drew heavily on her concepts of esoteric anatomy and psychology to introduce a new diagnostic system which re-oriented the focus of radionic analysis away from the material plane of organ functions and pathology and towards causation within the human energy, or subtle, body. Rae, on the other hand, was the inventor who could translate Tansley's thinking into a practical and flexible diagnostic and treatment system, known as Magneto-Geometry.
Bailey's work7, drawn from various Eastern traditions and integrated into a new form, is far too vast to even begin to attempt describing here, and I will simply create a thumbnail sketch of some of what has been appropriated into radionics. I might add that as the years have gone by various of these concepts have become commonplace, but during the period the books were written, 1919-1949, they must have seemed like the last word in arcane obscurity.
Bailey proposed a model of (ultimate) reality as being comprised of seven planes of energy, each with its concomitant forms of consciousness. Each plane is comprised of seven sub-planes of increasing quality and fineness, the whole blending into a continuum. Each of these planes also manifests in us as a corresponding energy body, e.g. the Etheric Body, Astral Body, and so forth. Briefly, the 7th plane is the Physical, which is subdivided into the solid physical; then liquids; then gases; then four superior levels of etheric matter. It is the energy of the etheric plane (prana) which vitalises the physical form, and Tansley also states that the miasms reside primarily in the Etheric body; when activated by an appropriate (morbific) stimulus they will taint the energy reaching the physical body, with the results that Hahnemann described at length. I should also note that energy is also distributed through the Etheric body via a system of pathways known as Nadis, and it may be considered that these in turn externalise as the nervous system 8.
The 6th plane is the Astral (or Emotional), the seat of emotions, desire and illusion - and also, with the Etheric, the place of origin of the greater number of diseases. The 5th plane is the Manasic (or Mental), the plane of Mind, which ranges from concrete rational knowledge on its lower subplanes through to spiritual knowledge on its higher levels. For the purposes of this essay it is not necessary to deal with the four higher planes - Buddhic (Intuitional); Atmic (Spiritual); Monadic; and Logoic 9 - as they are not involved with the disease process. Tansley refers to them as the Transpersonal Self (or perhaps Soul), and I suppose that you could consider them as the essential being of a person, whereas as the lower vehicles are the becoming of a person and the deeper objective of life is to align the soul's purpose with that of the Personality.
The link point between the Transpersonal Self and the Personality is the Higher Ego or Causal Body; this is the vehicle, found on the Mental plane, through which the individual manifests his or her purpose in existence and it is primarily friction10 resulting from conflict between the different objectives of the Higher and Lower selves which creates illness, and hence, many11 of the illnesses of humanity. Compare this concept with §9 of The Organon - `In the healthy human state, the spirit-like life force (autocracy) that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction.... so that our indwelling, rational spirit can freely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.' Without arguing the finer points, it could be proposed that radionics and homoeopathy share a broadly similar central concept of the nature of human health.
Embedded in the subtle bodies are a number of energy transmission and circulation centres known as chakras, which have their counterpart on each plane 12, and as the individual develops and consciousness reaches a higher level, so the chakra `opens' and becomes receptive to energy flowing from higher and higher sources. Radionic analysis is principally concerned with the 7 major chakras, namely, Base, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Brow and Crown; although certain minor chakras, such as the Spleen, are often taken into consideration. Each of these chakras in turn externalises as one of the endocrine glands - e.g. Throat - thyroid; and the state of the chakra is considered to condition the functioning of the associated gland and local anatomy.
Seen in this context the physical human is a precipitation of higher energies into form and as such the quality of each structure, physical or subtle, will reflect the quality of the energy which has reached it; or, to put it another way, each structure will condition the energy flowing through it - hence for example the miasm in the Etheric body taints the energy to produce some form of illness in the physical. Energy must flow freely through all of these systems into the physical body to make for the healthy human, and any disturbances of the subtle body will tend to interrupt the flow at some point and will be reflected in mental, emotional or physical symptoms of some nature. Thus the objective of radionic diagnosis is to find the energy disturbance at its source, if possible, and treat it appropriately13. Again, this can be compared with §3 of the Organon `a physician must...clearly realise what is to be cured...in each single case of disease....(et seq.).'14 In other words we have to identify and rectify the causation; we will not deal with a polluted river (as it were) simply by cleaning it up downstream, if the source of the toxic material is in the higher reaches.
The Radionic Approach
As I have indicated, it seems that virtually anything can be represented by a radionic rate, and radionics is therefore an open-ended system which enables a vast and probably limitless range of energy qualities and relationships to be studied. Radionics combines Oriental concepts of the subtle anatomy and the relationship of the soul to its vehicles of manifestation with the Western approach to the human body as a biochemical organism. This diagnostic method is therefore concerned not only with the inner ecology of the patient but also his relationship to, as it were, Heaven and Earth. Equally the practitioner needs to cultivate a knowledge, awareness and understanding of a wide range of both esoteric and exoteric factors which in principal goes beyond anything envisaged by many other healing disciplines in use at the present time. This draws the practitioner to bear in mind - as a minimum - the following when making a diagnosis:
1. Problems resulting from the Spiritual character
Karmic and related factors such as birth circumstances and willingness to incarnate may need to be considered in some instances. In addition there may be problems resulting from the spiritual growth practices of the person, such as over-stimulation of certain chakras. The influence of such factors may only become apparent if a case is proving difficult to treat. The practitioner needs to assess to what extent it is possible or practical to deal with these problems; they may ultimately be a matter for the patient to resolve through life experience. Such cases will also teach the practitioner to accept his or her own limitations.
2. Problems resulting from the Personality
The personality is at least the sumtotal of the Mental and Astral bodies and is therefore the psychological persona through which the Higher Ego (or Causal Body) interacts with the world at large. Multiple impacts from life in general and its problems, and the conflict between aspiration and achievement, may create many difficulties in the Mental and Astral bodies which are reflected in the Etheric and Physical bodies, often via or including the chakras. Negative experiences, particularly in childhood, may become embedded in the subtle body to such an extent that they entirely colour the patient's outlook and produce deep delusional states, considered from the homoeopathic point of view.15 In effect this category would include the range of psychiatric, psychological and psychosomatic diseases accepted by orthodox medical science.
3. Problems resulting from Inheritance
Genetic inheritance and predisposition are of course widely known to modern science, but the miasms are hardly acknowledged. These were identified first by Hahnemann as Psora, Sycosis and Syphilis but later researchers in homoeopathy have added Cancer and Tuberculosis (Pseudo-Psora). These taints are distortions of the Etheric Body which reflect at the cellular level, presumably via the DNA - chromosome system and are a major source of chronic disease conditions.16
4. Problems resulting from the Environment and the Planet
This is a large and, regrettably, expanding category. Alice Bailey writes of diseases inherited from imperfections in the etheric fabric of the Earth itself. As this material is incorporated into the body of the individual human so the miasms may also be acquired, as I at present understand it. In this category we could also include mass acute diseases, which may have their roots in social stresses, such as influenza, measles, mumps, etc, and which may leave their own sequelae that can have effects on the individual for years afterwards. In addition human activity has created a range of new Miasms, which at minimum may be said to include:
(a) Radiation, petrochemicals, electro-magnetic, heavy metals, etc 17
(b) Iatrogenic, from medicines, vaccinations, dental amalgam, and so forth;
Here I would suggest we also include geopathic stress in various forms, which seems to have its source in imperfections in the geological structure of the planet; and parasite diseases such as malaria and other types of infestation having their provenance in the other Kingdoms of Nature. We may even want to add cosmic influences here such as solar electromagnetic flux and even astrological influences.18
5. Problems in the Physical Body
This includes in effect the entire range of functional and pathological disturbances covered by orthodox medicine.
There are various approaches to performing the diagnosis. If the case is complex the practitioner may wish to create an overall picture of the patient's health and vitality by assessing the various levels and systems: the Mental, Emotional, and Etheric bodies, Aura, and Nadis; the chakras; the physical systems as generalities, for instance, cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, G.I. tract, and so forth. The influence or presence of miasms, effects of vaccination, poisons, toxins, geopathic stress, malignancy, infection, allergies, nutritional deficiency or malabsorption and other factors are also taken into account. The findings are marked into a chart which enables a rapid assessment of the patient's general state to be made and any areas of trouble should immediately be apparent. The type and source of the problem can be worked out either by mentally posing questions and watching the pendulum response, or by the use of the pendulum with additional charts. Again, each practitioner will tend to vary the basics according to his or her knowledge and experience; the key factor lies in knowing which questions to ask and how to interpret the responses. It should be apparent that both diagnosis and treatment are highly individualised.
On the other hand a more simple approach is to discover the most prominent symptom, its location, character and, if possible, reason for any deviation from proper function and treat that, with a step-by-step approach of always treating the remaining worst or most prominent symptom, preferably at its source. Whichever approach is used, the second job is to establish the nature of the relationship between the patient and an energy factor - for instance, a Flower, Gem, Command or homoeopathic remedy - which may be used to correct the problem. Although radionics encompasses both diagnostic and treatment techniques, there is nothing to prevent the practitioner from dowsing therapies outside of the scope of radionics to assess their appropriateness to the patient's problems.
I would note that in my experience it appears to be crucial to get the treatments in the correct order of priority, which tends towards being `worst' symptoms first. This can of course be difficult in complex cases where there are a multiplicity of confused factors some or all of which may be feeding on or playing off each other. In homoeopathic terms these would be considered multi-miasmatic or layered cases and often require a lengthy period of prescribing.
Radionic and Homoeopathic Approaches to Prescribing
I am going to suggest that the system of subtle bodies and chakras used in radionic practice in fact constitutes a model of the Dynamis - or perhaps more properly a model of what the life-force must flow through (as by analogy, electricity flows through a circuit) - in order to result in a state of health in the individual; and that the radionic method gives the practitioner much additional information which will help the diagnosis and prescription, and can even detect diseases before they manifest in the form of symptoms. 19
Homoeopaths use the word `stuck' when talking about their cases, and another way of looking at the problem is to find out where the energy is stuck. In case-taking we have the verbal description by the patient to guide us; in radionic analysis we use a structured method of dowsing to locate the points where the energy is blocked. The description of the symptom by the patient, I have to suppose, is how he verbalises the symptoms he experiences as a result of the blocks in his subtle anatomy. In my understanding of radionics, the fundamental point is that anything which impedes energy flow impedes health; the primary objective therefore is to identify and clear blocks in the subtle energy system first and foremost, whether these are caused by conflicts within the patient's personality or by external factors. Obviously in many cases there will be limitations as to what can be achieved because of complex pre-existing health conditions.
The provings, rubrics and remedy pictures of homoeopathy are records of the effect of the energy of a potentised substance on a healthy person, and the prescription is reached by a transposition of the patient's comments into the special diagnostic language of homoeopathy via a weighting system through which the practitioner attaches greater or lesser significance to the patient's symptoms, and then compares them with the rubrics in the repertory until the best possible remedy match is found. Homoeopathic prescribing is always guided by the Law of Similars, which, in brief, states that `like cures like'; or, `a substance which causes certain symptoms in a healthy person will cure them in a person sick with those symptoms' - to which we must add, with some certainty, `when administered at the appropriate potency.'
The problem with working from symptoms can be that the patient may not give you all of them, or may not remember certain things, or may not consider certain things as being relevant or important enough to tell you, or, perhaps, that the practitioner misinterprets them. The result is that using homoeopathic methods alone you may never find the key to the case, or you may give any number of what you think are well-selected remedies without useful results, because you are missing a vital part of the picture. Indeed, George Vithoulkas, one of the world's leading homoeopathic practitioners, has stated that typically, only about 5% of cases are fully covered by one remedy. He has also stated that the younger a person is when manifesting serious symptoms, the more remedies are likely to be needed. In other words, long-term prescribing requires enormous skill and knowledge levels - which many practitioners may take years to attain. In addition to this there is the problem of potency selection, which in many instances results in a great deal of difficulty. Kent clearly used a vast range of potencies whereas I have heard Jan Scholten, another leading contemporary homoeopath, state that he gives the potency 1M in virtually all cases. 20
Using radionic methods, on the other hand, we have the possibility of finding the name and potency of the appropriate healing energy (remedy) by a method which does not rely on what the patient says. The radionic approach to diagnosis of the subtle energies can reach behind the patient's given symptoms to find problems and causes which he or she may not be aware of and may never be aware of, but which may nevertheless be crucial to a resolution of the problem. There is certainly little recognition of the subtle anatomy and its concepts in the homoeopathic model, whereas these are all-important in the present-day radionic paradigm. Congestion, over-stimulation, unco-ordination, damage, shock, geopathic stress, latent viruses, parasite infection, the embedded vibrational patterns of toxins and poisons, and many other factors, may cause severe disruption; they may be cleared perchance by well-selected homoeopathic remedies but quite often the remedy will only do part of the work, leaving the problems unresolved and ready to come back into play at some future time - not through any fault of either the homoeopathic practitioner or homoeopathy, but simply because they are not identified within the boundaries of the homeopathic diagnostic paradigm.
Although the Law of Similars may apply in radionic work, especially where homoeopathic remedies are selected, there does not seem to be any such clearly-stated rule behind the choice of Flower, Gem or Colour remedies, radionic rates, Commands, and so forth. The practitioner identifies the problem and asks which type of remedy or treatment will help to resolve it and the pendulum will indicate accordingly, without reference to any underlying theoretical rationale - at least at the conscious level. This does not mean that radionics is easy, of course!
There is a further test which is possible with radionic techniques, which is that the effect of the selected remedy can be checked before it is administered to the patient. Abrams discovered that `a sample of quinine gave exactly the same reactions on the subject as malaria...if he tested the blood of a malarial patient with a few grains of quinine he could obtain no reaction at all.'21 There are various easy ways in which this test can be done with radionic instruments, allowing the practitioner to check against all detected problems to see how much action the remedy is likely to have. To put it another way, the hair sample provides a link with the energy field of the patient and when the radionic rate or ratio card or sample of the remedy itself is introduced into that field the two are mixed together in some way. I presume that the remedy cancels out some distortion in the patient's field and thus rectifies it, and this is later reflected in the removal of the symptoms.22 This may of course be a rather mechanistic explanation and the answer may lie in some other area, such as a concept of the remedy as information or resonance.
I should note, finally, that in homoeopathic prescribing the remedy is given orally, whereas in radionics, broadcast treatment is the norm. Thus the patient may be on the other side of the world and may be treated with the same degree of efficacy as the patient in the next room. This phenomenon of course creates many problems when considered from the viewpoint of physics as it implies, at least to my mind, an additional dimensional layer not allowed for by present-day science.
Practitioner's Technique and some Related Considerations
Diagnosis by dowsing requires the use and interplay of both the intellectual and the intuitive faculties, or perhaps, use and interplay of both left and right brain qualities. The intellect and the concrete knowledge which supports it are used to frame questions relevant to the correct understanding of the problem. Obtaining answers via the pendulum however requires a suspension of the intellectual process and an activation of the (higher) intuition. Intellectual knowledge may presuppose the practitioner to expect a certain result, and in my experience there is nothing so dangerous as a loaded pendulum, in that it will tend tell you the answer that you expect to find. The answer obtained via objective dowsing, if such an expression can be permitted, may be completely different from what is expected and is usually, in my experience, more relevant to the patient's requirements. It is therefore necessary to have and cultivate the openness - or even emptiness - of mind required to be able to work in this way. 23
From Alice Bailey's standpoint, physical reality is the result of the precipitation of energy into form via force, force being the vector or idea, as it were, which organises energy into coherent structures. Thus the immaterial is first and the material comes afterwards. The intent behind such creative action may be characterised by the first three ray qualities of Will, Love/Wisdom and Active Intelligence, which are concepts which we can use to help us try and understand, or reason with, the immense existential questions which lie behind the problem of life and the fact of the objective Universe.
The well-known esoteric maxim, Energy Follows Thought, also characterises this creativity and in a sense encapsulates the activity of the practitioner as a healer. The practitioner intends (Will) to heal (Love) and focusing his attention on the problem provides the basic energy required to perform the task. The selected remedy adds the required quality (Active Intelligence) to the intention and thus it can be suggested that on a microcosmic level the practitioner follows a model which may be replicated at many levels throughout what Bailey calls the Cosmic Physical Plane.
From this point of view radionics is a form of spiritual healing so-called, but using supports such as the pendulum and the radionic instruments and providing differentiated forms of healing energy. It may be that at a certain stage of the practitioner's development he or she would be able to dispense with the instrumentation and work with the required energies on the level of Higher Mind alone; through formulating the appropriate creative commands he will attract the needed energy and direct it to the patient. 24 The importance of the instruments to most practitioners is that they act as a focus for both the attention and the intention and may be set up to perform certain tasks. Otherwise the typical practitioner may run the risk of quickly exhausting his available energy and thus rendering himself unable to work.
Another view of how the practitioner may operate can be derived from studying the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake, who in his book The Presence of The Past, proposed the idea of Morphogenetic (structure-creating) fields in his Hypothesis of Formative Causation. In outline this theory proposes that
- there is an information field unique to every structure or concept, whether it is a form in one of the kingdoms of nature or the knowledge of how to speak a language;
- the field organises the basic physical material (e.g. DNA) or provides the unseen impetus or tradition which enables any new skill to be learned more easily by fresh generations of learners;
- the strength of the field is reinforced or even increased by usage;
- the field is adapted or evolves as new means of usage or different events occur;
- the field strength decreases from lack of usage;
- multiple and often nested fields exist for complex structures, such as human or animal bodies.
Although Sheldrake's theory was rejected and even ridiculed by some conventional scientists, I would suggest that the morphogenetic field is an integral part of the Etheric and other subtle energies which are addressed by the radionic practitioner. Thus the practitioner accesses the relevant field or fields as information when examining certain aspects of the patient; when treating, aspects of the field which may be considered dysfunctional are adjusted by the radionic rates; this in turn normalises or stabilises the relevant energy flow in the patient and adjusts the field to reflect the new conditions, which the practitioner can then read (dowse), often in advance of physical level results. It must also be considered that the morphogenetic field exists as an archetype, in the sense suggested by Ruth Drown in the quote at the beginning of this essay. The practitioner compares the present state of the patient with the ideal state of the archetypal form and attempts to conform the patient as far as possible to `perfection'. Ultimately, of course, all of this must be considered within the context of the Causal Body energy and the purpose, character and circumstances of the patient, which in many respects provides the driving force behind the individual incarnation and its present difficulties.
In conclusion, I would like to state that I personally consider the need to demonstrate, and perhaps even use - for the appropriate and right purposes - the existence of higher orders of reality as important.25 Human thought at the present time is dominated by the mechanistic and materialistic model of science, which has created numerous benefits but also many problems for humanity and the planet. Many incredible advances have been made by modern medical science, but the incidence of chronic disease and especially cancers is increasing. Radionic techniques and practices give us a window of insight into the higher reality, and we, although only a small group, should grasp this opportunity to increase and enhance human understanding. Radionics in my view is only at its beginnings, and if fortune favours the work many valuable advances will come in future years.
Finally, I would like to partially reproduce a quote from a lecture by the late Aubrey Westlake, given to the British Society of Dowsers at Malvern in 1972. These words seem to epitomise the situation of the man or woman with a pendulum when viewed against the colossus of modern science and technology:
`God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty....God hath chosen...things which are not, to bring to naught things that are...In the eyes of the world Radiesthesia is a thing of no account compared with, say, nuclear or astro-physics or atomic research and yet....it can, when properly understood, open to us the mysteries both in this world and the world invisible. It can reveal to us the Truth in so far as our finite minds can comprehend it.' 26
Notes:
1. Dowsing itself, sometimes known as radiesthesia, is a vast field of study predicated on the idea that everything has a unique energy signature which can be detected by a human sensitive using a means such as the divining rod or pendulum. As I see it, the technique used mainly serves to amplify the dowser's subconscious reaction which is transmitted to his or her arm muscles via the nervous system. Although it seems that the pendulum is considered to have no intrinsic power, I have noticed that some pendulums seem to work better than others. I put this down to the fact that the material from which it is made may be more or less compatible with me in some way. There have been lengthy arguments as to whether the Radiesthetic reaction is a response to magnetic or some other form of energy, which can be called `subtle' energy, for the sake of argument. This can be summarised as the physical vs. the psychic approaches, psychic, let us say, meaning some form of ESP (extra-sensory perception). It may be possible that both explanations are correct, with physical energies shading off into subtle energies as the dowser searches on `higher' energetic levels.
2. The best history of radionics is Report on Radionics by Edward Russell, published by C. W. Daniel & Co. Essential reading, including fascinating material on agricultural radionics and the general techniques of weed and pest control without chemicals (suppressed in the USA in the 1950s by the chemical companies, according to Russell).
3. Abrams also developed electronically-based treatment procedures, but this promising line of work seems for the present to have fallen into neglect and is outside the scope of this article. It also possible that his concepts were used as a partial basis for the work of Royal Raymond Rife, the American inventor of another allegedly-suppressed healing technology. See The Cancer Cure That Worked by Barry Lynes. Abrams' work may also bear some relation to the current research of Dr Jacques Benveniste - see his website, www.digibio.com
4. Present-day practitioners tend to use a hair sample, and I think that the pendulum is now more widely used than the stick pad. It certainly gives a far greater range of responses.
5. See Drown Radio-Vision and Homo-Vibra Ray Instruments and their uses, Radionic Rate Book. This, and seminal works by Abrams and others, have been republished by Borderland Sciences Research Foundation in California, see www.borderlands.com
6. For the sake of brevity I am obliged to omit comment on important researchers such as George de la Warr (UK), T. Galen Hieronymous (USA) and Dr W. Guyon Richards (UK) - to name but three. The trend of their work, however, does not materially affect what I am describing.
7. Bailey's work covers 24 volumes and is not a religion, system or dogma. It may be considered to be a kind of gigantic cosmology within the context of which man is seen as an evolving conscious being currently manifesting through a physical plane body. The introduction to each volume basically says `take it or leave it' or even `take what you want and leave the rest'. A starting point within the context of radionic work might be Esoteric Healing (published by Lucis Press). Note that I have deliberately left out any mention of her system of Ray psychology because of space limitations.
8. There seems to be some debate about the exact nature of the relationship between the Nadis and the nervous system but Gurudas, in Flower Essences and Vibrational Healing, states that the Nadis are `an extensive ethereal nervous system just outside the physical body, and directly connected to the nervous system.'
9. The Logoic Plane is the plane of God (however we try to understand this concept); we do not have a Logoic body, although the Monad (or Spirit) is a `chip off the old block', so to speak.
In respect of the transpersonal self, I will state that on two occasions the pendulum has indicated that I should treat the Buddhic body and I have done so, with flower remedies. In both cases there was a deep level of personal insecurity with its source in some form of lack of self-confidence.
10. Perhaps this friction is what, from a philosophical point of view, we could consider to be the root of the miasm Psora as a general human phenomenon, i.e. the basic delusion of existence, which has been written about in many of the great spiritual writings. Possibly an individual who had overcome his lower nature would be free of Psora, or enlightened, as it is also called.
11. But not all. There are for instance classes of disease produced by conditions inherent in the physical and etheric structure of the planet itself, such as geopathic stress, or some of the miasms. For example see Chapter 9 of The Secret of Life by Georges Lakhovsky (English edition, 1939, republished by Borderlands), in which the author examines the statistical distribution of cancer in France against the underlying geology.
12. Which is to say, you don't have a separate chakra for each plane but the planes are present in the chakras like - to use a simple analogy - layers in a sandwich.
13. Chronic diseases are defined in homoeopathy as non-self-limiting conditions which generally have a slow onset and increasing degree of action (often spotted with acute episodes) ending in death. If it is correct that the miasms reside in the Etheric body, should they be activated by a problem at an energy level higher on the scale (e.g. Astral body impinged by shock) then it may be that you have to identify this and treat it, otherwise the maintaining cause - as it were - is still there.
14. Organon of the Medical Art by Samuel Hahnemann, Wenda Brewster O'Reilly edition.
15. Rajan Sankaran, the Indian homoeopath, proposes, in The Spirit of Homoeopathy, that disease is basically delusion. By this he means that reaction is out of all proportion to stimulus. A simple analogy is that if a man runs down the street being chased by a lion and screams that he is afraid of being killed by it, this is a reasonable reaction. On the other hand if a man runs down the street being pursued by a Yorkshire Terrier and screams that he is afraid of being killed by it, this is a delusion. The fear produced by the delusion may of course may kill him, if it strong enough.
16. Psionic medicine, which is practised by doctors and uses dowsing primarily in conjunction with homoeopathy, takes treatment of miasms very strongly into account.
17. Bailey writes about the Miasms in Esoteric Healing, although I do not believe she refers to them under that name. More recently Gurudas, in Flower Essences and Vibrational Healing, has proposed that we add new environmental Miasms such as produced by petrochemical pollution, etc. Hahnemann recognised excessive medical drugging as a cause of chronic disease states.
18. Lakhovsky, op. cit., also writes about what are in effect interference patterns created by cosmic radiation striking certain mineral strata and being reflected back to create cancer-forming energy conditions on the Earth's surface.
19. In §6 of The Organon, footnote, Hahnemann states that `The medical-art practitioner can never see the....life force that creates disease, and he never needs to see it'; in fact the Dynamis is something which is only detectable in terms of the symptoms it produces. Other lines of thought, such as that employed by radionics, suggest this is not so. There are grounds to believe that we will in time be able to see the Dynamis and the subtle bodies; Drown and de la Warr developed radionic cameras which purported to be able to photograph the etheric fields of whatever the camera was tuned into, and this includes homoeopathic remedies - for instance, see de la Warr's radionic photograph of Aconitum Napellus in New Worlds Beyond The Atom (by George de la Warr and Langston Day, 1956, out of print). There are also various so-called aura cameras around which appear to depict the aura quite accurately, although whether they show the other subtle bodies is not clear to me yet. I can imagine that interesting experiments could be done where people are photographed before and after taking a radionic treatment, and so forth.
Perhaps Hahnemann's Dynamis may be considered as the life force, perhaps prana, or chi, and needs to be clearly differentiated from subtle anatomy, perhaps not. Whether one could have a perfectly functional subtle body but which is not energised is a point to consider, i.e. can the circuit be separated from the energy in any practical sense?
20. Apart from reading their books, I have attended seminars with both Vithoulkas and Scholten. Vithoulkas is a fairly strict follower of Kent and seems to disapprove of Sankaran in particular and Scholten in general - not to mention pendulum users!
21. Quoted from Report on Radionics, p. 28. Readers familiar with the story of Hahnemann's early work will recognise that he started out by testing Cinchona Officinalis (China) - from which quinine is derived - on himself and noted that the symptoms proved were similar to those of malaria.
22. In electronic terms this appears to me to be akin to the phenomenon known as phase cancellation. If two identical waveforms in inverse relationship are added together, they will cancel each other out. I do not yet know if this idea throws any light on what actually happens in radionic treatment, but it is worth considering.
23. Bailey emphasises meditation practice to purify the subtle bodies and Tansley emphasises that the best protection for the practitioner is keep his or her focus on the higher spiritual centres.
24. Bhattacharya in Teletherapy, which was in effect the first book I read on radionics, writes of creating Cure commands and treating the patient with them. He suggests you write on a piece of circular card in red ink , `Mr X, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, CURE' and broadcast it to the patient via his witness, using one the various methods set out by Bhattacharya. What Bhattacharya calls the `intelligent cosmic rays' will then be set into motion and perform the healing work, over a suitable time period. He claims to have obtained many excellent results by this simple method. Can it be so easy?
It may also be possible to contact and work with the Devic kingdoms as the builders of form, mentioned by Bailey in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire; maybe the Devas are similar to the `intelligent cosmic rays'. Bailey writes that in time to come (which may be now, as it is virtually 70 years later) the human and Devic kingdoms will begin a rapprochement. This may being happening anyway in radionic and other healing work, but unconsciously to the practitioner. I readily admit I have yet to grasp the question of the nature of the Devic kingdoms in any substantial detail, fascinating as the matter is. Otherwise radionic work may also fall under the category of magical work, as discussed at length by Bailey in A Treatise on White Magic. What is considered as magic, of course, may simply be manipulation of subtle energy on its appropriate plane to bring about results on the physical plane. Whether the magic so-called is White or Black depends upon the magician's intent and desire-nature. Analogously we manipulate physical plane energies on this plane but subscribe to the idea, supported by science, that we understand what is happening.
25. There may of course not be any `higher orders of reality'. Implicit in the radionic approach are the ideas of reincarnation, life after death and many related concepts which are hotly disputed down here on the Earth plane. If the physical world is the end product of higher energies, forces and intelligences then it possible to suppose that these existed before the manifestation of physical, or objective, reality. For example if the incarnating soul exists prior to the human form then it can exist without such a form; from that we may think that it can continue to exist after discarding that form which has served its purpose temporarily.
26. Quoted in Dimensions of Radionics by Tansley, Rae and Westlake, published by Brotherhood of Life.
Nick Franks can be contacted by e-mail at nick@nicko500.co.uk.
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