Transcript of Jan Scholten interview with David Nortman (Part 4)

In the final part below, Jan Scholten shares his views on the nature of reality in light of his homeopathic discoveries:
• Western and Eastern science: embracing both the outer and the inner worlds.
• The underlying pattern of reality as revealed by the mineral and plant systems.
• Traditional religion vs. spirituality.
• Randomness vs. meaning and determinism.
• Evidence from parapsychology and its rejection by mainstream science

D:  So based on your entire experience with homeopathy, what can you say about your metaphysical beliefs or views?

J:  For me science means trying to know the world. And that’s for me both the outside world and the inner world. There is no limit for me that I want to understand: I want us to understand everything, I want to understand myself. The beauty of homeopathy for me is that I learn a lot about myself, because what I see in my patients I have more-or-less myself, too. I’ve discovered a lot about how I work, because I see those Series and Stages and Phases also inside of myself. Where it all comes from… that’s the question. But I think Buddhism is basically… they often call it a religion but that’s not true: Buddhism is a science of discovering yourself, and you do it with meditation and going inside. Because it’s so important to know who you are, because that’s the starting point of all experience. If you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what your experience is; you’re always in question. So, that’s what science is: trying to go to the core, to the essence. And you see that also in physics: there they want to make or discover the universal law that covers everything, the one and only point.

D:  And yet that law somehow excludes consciousness and the inner world entirely.

J:  That’s why they can’t find it: because they first exclude something and then they want to have everything. That is impossible.

D:  Right.

J:  And the basic advantage is that we take the inner world seriously. You know, in a lot of the sciences that we have, and also in medicine, the mind is just an extraction of the brain or something or whatever, you know, which is ridiculous in a way. When you think about it, even those people who say it don’t believe it for themselves. But it limits science so much, and in homeopathy we’re not limited with it, we take it seriously. And that’s a big advantage because then you get to know a whole new world that you can use. And I think that’s a very important world for the living creatures. To limit yourself to matter is good for physics and chemistry, but not for medicine or biology.

D:  Right, and now you’re getting a science of spirit?

J:  Yeah. The spirit is a very essential part of living creatures.

D:  Right. But even beyond this, the spirit underlies the physical universe as well, according to what we’re seeing.

J:  Because the pattern is the same.

D:  Ahm. Your claim that the evolutionary tree of the plant kingdom branches out in a mineral-like way is quite astounding and perhaps paradigm-shifting, because it claims that there is a fundamental, if you will, energetic, or spiritual relationship that ties together the mineral kingdom and the plant kingdom – that they’re not separate creations, so to speak. And also something else is that it may suggest is that, somehow, even though the evolution of the plants is seemingly an open-ended, contingent event, actually you may be suggesting, or the theory may be implying, that some of the plants filled out pre-existing niches of nature, what’s called the Principle of Plenitude – that somehow all the potentialities of existence actually get filled out by evolved beings or substances or plants. Can you talk a bit about this?

J:  How I see it is that it’s not from nothing, you know, it’s not only accidental, what Creation is doing. Of course it’s open-ended in a way, because it can also create varieties of varieties. There’s some open-endedness in it, but there is a basic background in it which is not completely free, which uses basic patterns which are already laid down, and those are giving the essences of where the plants stand for. So that’s why there is a similarity with the mineral kingdom and plant kingdom and I think in the animal kingdom you’ll find more-or-less the same, in a different form because animals are different. But I think that you can do a classification of the animal kingdom or so with Series, Stages, and Phases and maybe you need something else too, but I don’t know yet.

D:  But are you suggesting that the plants almost knew, so to speak, that there are Phases out there in nature that they had to fill out? In other words that the open-endedness somehow still follows a certain matrix?

J:  Yeah, there is a matrix. You know, even when we never know about gravity we still follow it… when we fall down we fall down even if we have never discovered gravity. You know, there are basic patterns that are there, they are laid out. That’s what Creation is doing, it’s not… there is a pattern in it, it’s logical. I believe in the logic of Creation.

J:  The beauty of it is, when you look at a classification like APG or the other ones, there is no value connected to it, there is no sense connected to it. But with Series, Stages, and Phases it all makes sense: there is a meaning in it that brings it to a different level of understanding.

D:  So what do you make of the fact that human disease states somehow correspond with states of various substances in the universe? It seems that, in other words, we somehow resonate with various things, whether or not we have it physically in our body. So what’s going on with that?

J:  That’s a good question. When you really think about it, we are connected intuitively with everything. And so we are… when you feel a plant or see a plant, then you will know from resonance that it will be something that has to do with you, too.

D:  But how come… How come we have disease states that correspond to something? How come it can’t be just the disease state does not correspond to any substance?

J:  Because we have certain patterns. You know, it’s not the plant, it’s the pattern of, the way of living, and we can get into all kinds of states – we have that possibility. And these are just patterns, ways of being, and they are also there in nature, and the plant refers to that, too. So we don’t refer to the plant, we refer to the pattern.

D:  The underlying pattern, always.

J:  Yeah. And that whole idea of Creation, of coming into life and dying again, at certain levels is the basic pattern of… When you really think about it: What is there more? Nothing! Things come and go in different forms, in different levels, but they come and go, and that’s always going on. And the cycles can be long or short or whatever.

D:  It’s reminiscent Eastern philosophies, almost, and somehow ties together.

J:  The whole idea of philosophy, that it’s just speculation, is not true. In Eastern philosophy, it’s not philosophy in the sense that we use it in the Western philosophy. Here it’s more or less speculation, whereas in Eastern philosophy it’s experiencing how the inner world is. And that’s not philosophy, that’s science.

D:  Right, so we’re comparing Eastern science and Western science, if you will?

J:  Yeah. So it’s the science of the inner world, whereas we have the science of the outer world, and they’re both good. And better is the combination.

D:  So where do you think historically does the break away from the inner world… When did it take place, under what circumstances?

J:  That’s a good question.

J:  It took place one or two centuries ago in our Western culture, because in the mainstream of the rest of the world it’s still not accepted, and even most people don’t believe in it. You know, most people are very spiritually oriented and very intuitive.

D:  OK. But it has roots that go way beyond… further back than science.

J:  Estrangement comes from making big religions, and the big religions are connected to power. And because they are connected to power they start to distort the reality of how it really is, what real religion is. They use religion to install their power, by making people fearful for Hell or pains or punishment, afterlife, etc.

D:  But why does that require estrangement from the inner world specifically?

J:  Because that’s what they want to do, because that makes you weak – it makes you dependent. Because you’re dependent on God and God is not your God, it’s their God.

D:  Whereas a person who is connected to (the spiritual world) themselves is connected and strong.

J:  Yeah. So in a way the material–scientific revolution was in one way a good thing, you know, in the sense of taking back the power and trying to find reality. But then what they did, they threw away the whole inner world.

D:  Just to simplify things, make them more amenable?

J:  Yeah, but it’s a kind of dogmatism which is – I don’t know if it’s worse – but probably it’s needed for evolution. And in a way where it has to go with humanity is that we become one humanity, like one big organism. And that means… to come to that, we need cooperation. So that’s the transition that we have to go through. And that it has to do also with the Lanthanide quality of… In the Lanthanide quality you see humanity as one.

D:  So the next step is some sort of synthesis, reintroduction of the inner world?

J:  Yeah. In a way it’s also beginning, you know, like… a lot of people in the Western world are following meditation, mindfulness, Buddhism, etc. So it’s already filtering in. But the mainstream is still not there.

D:  Right.

J:  Because people feel there is a something, you know, that… Rupert Sheldrake, for instance, has done a lot of research on this, on intuition, etc. And the majority of people have spiritual experiences, more than 80-90 percent, in the form of intuition, or telepathy, or contact with dead people, and in all kinds of forms. So it’s very common, it’s only denied. And of course they say: “Oh, it’s just fantasy!” But he has done experiments to show it’s not fantasy, you know, it’s statistically proven. And even that is denied. There’s a man, Radin, who’s done meta-analyses of all those kinds of researches. And then you get a probability of one in a trillion of a trillion…

D:  Of all those being incorrect.

J:  … yeah, so scientifically it’s proven without any doubt.

D:  Yeah, yet it’s rejected again – this phenomenon of a rejected science.

J:  It’s very strange.

D:  Yeah, I agree.

J:  It’s very unscientific. It’s wonderful to look at how we can have certain kinds of states that we get into and get fixed into. For instance, you have two children in the same family and one is, his whole life he has problems with the father, and the other one has no problem with him. So there is something peculiar: it’s not only the father who does it, it’s also the person who does it. It’s the combination of the two. But then children who are born with an inherited disease, you know… and that’s the idea children are born innocent, without… blank. And that’s something of our culture, because you are born materially so you’re blank. But every mother and every father knows that when they have a few children they born with their own state. So it’s not true. So the experience of people is not acknowledged. And that’s because it’s excluded, that kind of way of thinking, because it doesn’t fit our paradigm. And that’s a strange way of looking at life.

D:  So what is it that… a person who is born with a serious disease: what is that person supposed to experience or why is that happening?

J:  You never know.

D:  Can’t we just look at it as an accident of genetics, for example? Sort of, a natural inadequacy in the mechanism of life?

J:  But the problem is, when you call it an accident you behave as if you have an explanation, but you say: I don’t know.

D:  Well, they might say that it’s random.

J:  Yeah, but that’s not an explanation. That’s what I’m saying: random means you don’t explain. It can be that it’s not random. But once you don’t know what is in the background, you see things as random. Not understanding makes things random.

D:  OK. So it seems to me that you have an underlying belief, or faith I guess, that there is an order to the universe that’s complete, meaning that there is no… almost, in a sense, no room for random events?

J:  Well, there is room for random events but not completely random. But I think especially those kinds of things that are very prominent have meaning. And I think the meaning is that you have to learn from it. But how and when and why, that can be so different for everyone.

D:  Right.

J:  The problem is: with random, you never know if it’s really random or not. For instance, there’s a nice experiment done: normally the decay rate of atoms, of radioactive atoms, is fixed – half a lifetime is two years or two minutes or two seconds.

D:  And it’s considered a random event within that framework.

J:  It’s a very random event. But they’ve done experiments where someone who was psychic, strong, was known for it, was influencing it, and he could diminish it or increase it 10 or 20 or 30 percent. So, what’s random?

D:  Yeah, if it’s subject to outside influence, then it’s not…

J:  And of course a lot of people say: Yeah, but it’s fake. They won’t even look at it, but they’ve measured it.

D:  Yeah, the whole parapsychological world is fascinating.

J:  But the weird thing is that in physics they know that consciousness influences the experiment – that’s what they’re showing.

D:  Right. But they are not willing to go that far.

J:  But it’s assumed that it’s completely random. But in the experiment it’s not: it’s not completely random, you can influence it. So that means that there is something happening that we don’t understand in our science.

D:  Well, Jan, thank you very, very much for taking the time today to share your thoughts and your life work. And thank you from the entire homeopathic community for all you’ve done. And I hope that you continue to come up with more ideas, test them, and expand our view of what homeopathy is and can be in future.

J:  Thank you, my pleasure.

About the author

David Nortman

David Nortman

David Nortman, Hon.B.A., M.A., N.D. is a graduate of the University of Toronto (philosophy and chemistry), Tel-Aviv University (philosophy) and the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. He has studied homeopathy with many of the world’s leading practitioners and has since worked with patients in Israel, Canada, and worldwide via his long-distance practice. He believes that in order to flourish, homeopathy must step beyond its vitalistic roots and become a modern scientific discipline, while preserving its deep spiritual insights as a gift to the world of science. He maintains an interest in philosophy of science, and is currently working on a textbook of homeopathy that will aim to address these issues in a way that transcends the mutual animosity between orthodox medicine and homeopathy. David is also a professional singer specializing in early music of the medieval, renaissance, and baroque eras.

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