Chapter 13 

A Definite Healing Power 

The remedies are endowed with a definite healing power quite apart from faith, neither does their action depend upon the one who administers them, just as a sedative sends a patient to sleep whether given by a nurse or a doctor.³² 

Reading what Bach wrote about his work it is interesting to see how he anticipated many of the doubts that might be expressed by other people. That the Bach Flower Remedies might work on what is called the placebo effect is often suggested, at least by those who have not had the experience of using them. But there is no doubt of it, the remedies do have a definite healing power. We must inevitably address ourselves to the question then as to what is this power and how does it work. 

Bach’s answer to this question is clear enough. He says that the healing power is the gift of the The Creator, it is present in the plant and present in us. He also says that no science or knowledge is necessary in order to gain the benefit of it. Indeed we will gain more benefit from the “God-sent Gift” if we keep it pure, free from science, free from theories: “for everything in Nature is simple”. Well enough Bach foresaw the trend of science and the way that technology and scientific research would come to blind us to simple truth. 

Yet as we have grown in our knowledge through the expansion of consciousness that has developed in this century so we may better understand what the remedies are and how they work. Bach was concerned that we should not try to use the intellect (science) to understand their action and we could only agree with him. It is not the intellect that will understand their way of working, rather the heart. It has been suggested that by working with the heart we will have a direct perception of what life is through our experience of it. Therefore to think with the heart is to be in the experience (at the heart of the matter) while to think with the intellect is to distance ourselves from the experience and to try to exact a theoretical base from which to make judgements. In any event a ‘scientific’ approach will not yield much helpful information in this subject. The reason is simply that we have not as yet a science of such subtlety - that is why Bach was led to discover the remedies. They are, in themselves, a science of the metaphysical, the emotional world. 

This issue might start to be laboured but it is so fundamental that it is necessary to get it clear. People say that they cannot see how he was able to select and test the flowers that he wanted to use. Why use one form of Gentian and not another? Equally it is asked why there are thirty-eight remedy states rather than any other number. Both these questions can be answered but the answer comes from a view of life that is based upon the truth of the work of Dr Bach. So we might say there are thirty-eight remedy states because there are nineteen manifestations and there are two states for each, one generally internal and the other external. But then we just come to the question of why there are nineteen manifestations! 

Earlier it was suggested that all living things are conceived as a thought form that is filled with life force. Plants are no exception. We recognise a plant by its physical form and then by its metaphysical expression (we might recall Shakespeare: “here’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance”). 

When it comes to why Bach chose a particular plant rather than another the answer appears: because that is the plant that exactly represents that thought form. It is true that other plants could be used since they have similar qualities. That is why other researchers, following on from Dr Bach have concluded that certain other plants could have healing essences prepared from them. Of course they can. Every plant has a specific quality, uniquely itself and it is possible to discover its identity and express the thought that it carries. But we must question whether the thought that is held in that form is so universal and succinct that it is really appropriate to all people. 

For what Bach did was to describe the universal states of mind that we experience and then find the most exact equivalents of those states in the vegetable world. There are many flowers that may be quite like (Sow Thistle was one) but he wanted to make the match an exact one. It is simple as that: why should we want to make it more complicated by suggesting a lot of in between states that are appropriate to a series of flowers that carry a thought form that is not clear? 

It seems then that all flowers carry a meaning but in some cases it is clearer than in others and in some cases too it is more specifically appropriate to human patterns of behaviour. When we look at the different forms that occur in trees and plants (vegetable world) we see that some are good for food, some for use in building, some for use in medicine and healing, some for use in less practical and more aesthetic ways (we make music with bamboo pipes). Nothing in nature (or in existence one should say) is without meaning and purpose. We may not as yet know and understand its meaning but since it was conceived as a thought and brought into being and imbued with life we may be sure that it does have meaning. There are other ways of seeing our existence it is true but they begin by denying meaning and therefore can only reduce our perception of what we are. So, as Bach would express it, life is the expression of God, the Creator: 

All earthly things are but the interpretation of things spiritual. The smallest most insignificant occurrence has a Divine purpose to it.³³

The simplest explanation of the healing force that is present in these plants then is to say that they carry the purpose of the divine. And indeed they must do: such alone is meaning. 

Yet, for reasons that will become clear, it is helpful to describe it a little further. All plants are the result of the thought forms of the planet. They exist where and how they do not by chance but by the concentration of necessary purposes. Let us think why it is that an oak tree, generating many thousands of acorns will not be swamped by its offspring. It is because that position on the earth for the form of ‘tree to be’ is currently occupied by that oak: when it goes the next will grow. It is a law of existence that two different beings should not occupy the same space. 

We imagine that there is some scientific basis (chemical analysis) that reasons the way plants grow but they have a more subtle meaning in their growth that is in the nature of harmony. It is easy to see that certain plants are dominant (just as certain people are...) but these plants do not overrun the land - why? It is because, if nature is left to herself, the thought form that creates a type of plant colony is in harmony with all the other subtle forces that interplay in that locality. Observation confirms this: we see stands of Pine trees, Mimulus grows in the stony bed of streams, Impatiens with its seeds washed along by the floods lives on the river-banks, Water violet in its secret way hides in the still water courses of fenland. 

Some plants will grow in other places as well as their natural habitat. But then the thought form that creates them has not such a strong calling. Heather could be persuaded to the rockery in a town garden but its instinct is for the mountainside. Gentian or Centaury will be found among gravel and tall grasses but the pattern that is true to its nature is on the thin soils and short grass of chalk downs. Sweet Chestnut will grow on chalk and clay but its nature is for sand. It is more than geology that informs these plants and trees. On the mountainside it is bracken that is dominant but yet it does not overrun the heather. 

When men interfere with nature the harmony of plant ecology is upset, however. We decide that we will grow what we want where we want it and an altogether different process is created. This is not necessarily wrong or bad it is simply that man creates a thought form that is different to the thought form of nature. If we threw the seed down and accepted the outcome we would find some plants were accepted by the land while others were not. But we tend to work by confrontation and conflict and will it differently. 

Where plants grow by nature, however, they partake of the subtle qualities that characterise that exact place. Various names have been used to express the meaning of this. Let us say that the earth carries a pattern of life force that is expressed through the plant as a thought form. If we go to that plant we will have the possibility of contacting that pattern of life force. Just as we are drawn to certain places that are special for us or carry a healing quality that we are attracted to, so the earth carries a force pattern that is attractive for that life form: the plant. If we want to contact that quality we could touch the earth at that place, have a picture of it or somehow take into ourselves the thought form that characterises it. The flower essences work like this. 

The life force that is in the plant takes up the pattern that in physical terms we call by a botanical name. But it is more than the physical form just as we are more than the physical body. The thought form that the plant represents has an equivalence to us since all life is one. Nature in its multiplicity and variety is an expression of what man is in a united form (that is the riddle of nature). So the plant carries an exact expression of something that is a general part of mankind. If we need to contact and invoke the pattern that the plant carries we go to the plant. 

If we just contact the plant we can feel and share its thought. Bach, however, wanted to get a stronger charge than this and to concentrate the patterned life force (“power”) that the plant carried in such a way that we might take it with us wherever we go or take it to those who cannot get out into the fields. The sun method of potentising was to do just this. He saw its significance in the way that it combined the four elements: 

The earth to nurture the plant, the air from which it feeds, the sun or fire to enable it to impart its power, and water to collect and be enriched with its beneficent magnetic healing.³⁴ 

As usual we can agree that the method is simplicity itself. What happens is that the life force in the plant is given up into the water so that the water (essence) now contains the thought form, just as the flower did. Is it too much to believe? A reel of celluloid film can carry many thousands of thought forms, a family snapshot holds the pattern of a group of beings, an old shoe carries the memory of dancing, the scent of the past lingers on in life. Such things are part of daily experience.