Holistic Herbal: A Safe and Practical Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies. David Hoffmann
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throughout. As we move into the New Age, a great exploration of consciousness is under way, an exploration we are all involved in. The use of herbs can be a tool of growing consciousness, to recognise holism. In healing we must take the whole being of the patient into our awareness, including the context of their life. We ask patients to look at how to make their environment, habits and activities life-supporting, and by doing this we contribute to a change of consciousness. And we realise more and more that we have the capacity to create our reality and relationships consciously. As our awareness grows we contribute to the illumination of ourselves and of our world. Our planetary companions, the plants, offer themselves in service to humanity. Perhaps through the recognition of this gift, humanity will at last start to serve our planet appropriately, to bring healing and renewal. I write The Holistic Herbal in the light of this vision.
The great work of today is the recognition of our wholeness, as individuals, as groups, as humanity and as a planetary whole. Perhaps the most exciting symbol of the birth of this vision of wholeness in the heart and mind of humanity was the first photograph of our world taken from space by the Apollo astronauts. This has been with us for over a decade now, acting as a ‘raising agent’ to leaven the consciousness of humanity.
Seeing our world as a whole helps us to recognise that we are at a turning point in humanity’s ‘groping towards the light’, as Teilhard de Chardin has described it. It is now apparent that our world is not just a passive geophysical object where things happen in random-but-fortuitous ways. In fact Planet Earth can be seen as an active participant in the creation of its own story, a living being now given the name of Gaia, a name from Greek mythology for the goddess of earth. Gaia has been described as “… a complex entity involving the earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal chemical and physical environment for life on this planet. This maintenance of relatively constant conditions by active control may be conveniently described by the term ‘homeostasis’.”*
What this description implies is that our world is acting as a whole to create and maintain optimum conditions for life to thrive and evolve. An integral part of this development is the evolution of consciousness in its many forms. The opportunity before us now is consciously to recognise and to embrace our role within the greater being of Gaia. This realisation is not new to us; it has been embraced by the mystics of all religions for as long as humanity has searched for mystical truth. However, we have reached a point in the unfoldment of human culture where these insights are becoming the stuff of science, where the ‘spiritualisation of the mundane’ is truly happening.
The revelation of our unity with Gaia provides a new context within which to view our world and our human actions. Whilst the details of our reality as such are not changing, this broadening of perspective changes everything as we become conscious of inter-relationships between parts within the whole. A parallel can be seen in what happened to physics when the theory of relativity was introduced; it did not change the laws of thermodynamics or the specifics of Newtonian physics, but these laws and world view came to be seen within a much wider and more encompassing perception of the world, the implications of which are still not fully grasped.
The very ability to perceive the earth as living, as Gaia, is an indication of the expansion of consciousness that humanity as a whole is experiencing. Until recently, the only field of human endeavour that was inclusive and holistic enough to grasp the insights that point towards our unity has been that of mysticism and spirituality. Some of these ideas have permeated the teachings of spiritually-enlightened people, or the expression of poets, artists and musicians. It is now clear that even in that most materialistic science, physics, the limits of reductionism have been reached. To explore the nature of our world further it is necessary to expand parameters to embrace the whole of any system. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts. Analysing or reducing something to its constituent parts can only tell us so much, and to find out more, these parts need to be seen in a broader picture that includes function and relationship. Whether it be an atom, a daisy, a worker in a car factory, it can only be perceived and understood when seen in relationship to the greater whole of which it is a part. This is the heart of holism.
The work of the theoretical physicist David Bohm provides a good example of the way science is starting to approach reality as a dynamic web of relationships which cannot be comprehended unless consciousness is taken as an integral part of the universe.* Bohm’s theory explores the order he believes to be inherent at a ‘non-manifest’ level in the cosmic web of relationships that make up the ‘unbroken wholeness’. This order he has called ‘implicate’ or ‘enfolded’, as opposed to the ‘explicate’ or ‘unfolded’ structure of the universe. A useful analogy is that of the hologram, a specially constructed transparent plate which, when illuminated by a laser beam, produces a three dimensional image. The extraordinary property of a hologram is that each part of the holographic plate contains the information for the entire picture. If any part of the holographic plate is illuminated by a laser, the entire image will be produced (although in less detail). The information of the whole is contained, or enfolded, in each of its parts.
This is the nature of our world and universe, an implicit unity and wholeness that is the basis and nature of creation. This perception also recognises the dynamic nature of the universe through the concept of the ‘holomovement’, by looking at the dynamic phenomena out of which all forms of the material universe flow. The focus of study has shifted from the structure of objects to the structure of movement revealing the order enfolded in the holomovement. Implicit in this perception of reality is the essential role played by consciousness. The correlation and interdependence of mind and matter is not a causal relationship. Mind and matter are mutually enfolded projections of a higher reality which are neither matter nor consciousness.
With such developments in physics and the recognition of Gaia in the life sciences, it is clear that profound changes are afoot in the world view embraced by science. This world view is becoming closely attuned to the insights given to humanity by mystics and the spiritual philosophies of the East.* The word ‘holistic’ describes integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units. Holistic attitudes and perceptions are appearing in all fields of life, from agriculture and medicine to politics. The word has its roots in the Greek holos or whole, and was used by Arthur Koestler to coin the word ‘holon’ in an attempt to grasp how systems act as wholes whilst still being parts of yet greater wholes. So we find that each holon has two opposite tendencies; an integrative tendency to function as part of a greater whole, and a self-assertive tendency to preserve its individual autonomy. The subsystems that are described as holons may be individuals, ecosystems or individual cells, showing that for health at any level of organisation these opposite but complementary tendencies must be in dynamic balance. There must be a harmony between integration and self-assertion that makes the whole system flexible and open to change.
It becomes clear that when one considers the whole topic of healing, whether medical or societal, one must view the needs of the individual, or the organ, in the context of the greater whole in which they exist. One must focus on the relationship between the individual and society, between organs and organism. This dynamic relationship between part and whole can be demonstrated as crucial in any field of endeavour and its implications for healing are explored in this book; but broader and more profound conclusions can be reached.
It is becoming apparent that a fundamental change in perspective and context is occurring. The transition into the holistic world view is but a manifestation of a profound reorientation within human consciousness. It is perhaps a response to an inner change in the very fabric of humanity. If evolution is interpreted as the unfolding story of consciousness in our planet, then the point humanity has reached is the threshold of deep and profound expansions in the content