Potentization

From Anthroposophy

Potentization is a process to awaken non-material spiritual influences in matter, through controlled consecutive steps of of dilution and dynamization. The mineral substance we see today has passed through various stages in which an original spiritual seed got form and various layers of clothing as it solidified down to physical matter. With potentization, matter gets processed back into those earlier, higher states. Here the forces at work are not centric gravitational but peripheral etheric forces.

Potentization is the underlying principle on which Homeopathy is based, a medical treatment aimed at the Human etheric body and not directly the physical body, hence the laws of the etheric formative forces need to be considered.

Aspects

Background on potency vs dilution

A substance like salt can be diluted in water until it fully dissolves. With even greater solution, the dissolved substance keeps on expanding like a gas upto the point it can no longer be detected by taste or chemical reaction, not even with advanced methods such as spectral analysis. At a certain point, say a dilution of 1: 10^17 (1 mg of salt in 10 million liters of water) a point is reached where it can be argued there is not a single molecule left in the solution. Nevertheless homeopathy has shown the therapeutic effects on such highly diluted substances for over two centuries (say 1796-1810 to today). However such homeopathic preparations are not just dilutions, they through a process of rhythmic dynamization which is key to their functioning.

A potency is prepared by diluting a gram of a substance in 9 grammes of water, making 10 grammes of 10% solution. That solution is rhythmically shaken for a few minutes, whereby length and shaking rhythm are important. This is now the first potency. The same process is now followed by diluting the above first potency and processing it to get the second potency. And so on. A third potency would be denoted by D3, a dilution of 10^-3. Such potency however is not just a diluted solution, as shown experimentally by experiments since 1923 (see below).

Principle

Potentization is the awakening of the etheric formative forces in earthly substances through a process of dilution and dynamization.

Earthly substances have formed through an evolutionary process whereby spiritual seeds took on a form and astral and physical clothing through formative forces as they descended from higher planes down to the physical plane. Physical matter is a crystallization of a spiritual idea-substance via a macrocosmic process of densification.

When we take some physical substance, we take the mineral element. It is the fixed, rigid form of that substance, as a result of a cosmic process of formation. However the essence of any element can exist in seven forms (see the spectrum of the kingdoms and ethers). We distinguish the ponderable (material, governed by centric forces) and imponderable (etheric, governed by universal or peripheral forces). The point is that as the substance gets led back from solid to fluid to gaseous to warmth it goes into another domain, the etheric, where different types of forces are working.

Process

Potentization is a process to bring a substance back to these other and earlier stages of form appearance. As substance is a bearer of etheric forces of which the origin is peripheral (ai formative forces), the effect will be enhanced not by concentration but by expansion, for it is the rhythmic sequence of dilutions and successions or trituration which renders the potency effective.

In the potentized substances, a new force is at work which is aroused by rhythm. With increasing dilution substance disappears first physically then chemically and spectroscopically, while biological activity is increasingly enhanced through the invisible spiritual workings of the substance.

This is not an alone-standing fact that should surprise us, as earthly matter can appear and disappear in cosmic rhythms, as shown on the page on transmutation. And also in the yearly plant growth, we see a similar process of metamorphosis and a rhythmic oscillation between material condensation and etherization into an impondarable state of being.

The potentization process can be seen as an inspired emulation of the process we find in nature, as the substance is etherized by rhythmical dilution, and the physical form of the substance changed from solid to liquid to gas and passes over into more refined non-material conditions.

For further research on the particular rhythms in the etheric formative forces with other methods, see the page on formative forces.

Based on and further reading in [2], [4] and [6] below.

Experiments and results

In 1923, Lily Kolisko accomplished the first set of experiments to show the effects of potencies on the growth process of plants. Many people replicated these (or did similar) experiments, and confirmed the findings. An overview is given in reference [1] below, which also includes a copy of the original study. Amongst other sources were Theodor Schwenk in 1954 [3] as well as Wilhelm Pelikan and Georg Unger in 1965 [5].

In fact so many publications can be found that most probably no complete and exhausive overview exists, see eg the experimental results shown by Rudolf Hauscha in 'The Nature of Substance'.

Note: the infamous and much debated experiments published by Jacques Benviste in Nature in 1988 are discussed in [1]. This is put in perspective on the page on worldview wars.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.172 elaborates on the simpler FMC00.172A (see: Force substance representation). It shows how on physical Earth, coarse substance is 'Matter', and fine substance becomes 'Force', in the language of physics in mineral science. However between coarse substance (atoms) is the fine substance (ethers, force), and both form a balance that sustains itself, a bit like an extension of the phase diagram in chemistry.

FMC00.172.jpg

Schema FMC00.006 is to be read starting lower left. The Earth has gone through a number of Conditions of Life (CoL), and we have arrived in the current fourth (CoL) and the fourth and lowest Condition of Form (CoF) through three earlier stages CoF (above left). Each Condition of Form saw the appearance of pairs of elements and ethers. In the current physical Condition of Form we can therefore find a substance along a spectrum of seven 'form appearances'. See more on Three dimensions of evolution.

Note the physical substances considered here are part of the physical Condition of Form, as put in perspective by Schema FMC00.006A on Spectrum of elements and ethers

Schema FMC00.152 shows experimental setups for scientific research into potentization.

The experimental method consists in planting grains in a series of (eg 30 or 50) pots, watering the pots with one of a continuous series of potencies of a given substance, letting the grains germinate and grow, and measuring the seedlings in terms of leaf and root. The average heights reached with each potency are then calculated and plotted to deliver the potency curves for a given substance.

FMC00.152.jpg

Schema FMC00.012 shows several examples of potentization curves taken from different sources

FMC00.012.jpg

Lecture coverage and references

Potentization curves and their explanation

1920-03-31-GA312

As Rudolf Steiner explains in 1920-03-31-GA312, and in fact this lecture was the trigger for the consecutive experiments that confirmed this statement:

Increase potency and you will reach a zero point; beyond that point opposite effects appear. But this is not all; the further path on the negative side leads to another zero point for these opposite effects. Passing the second zero, you will come to a higher form of efficiency tending in the same direction as the first sequence, but of quite a different nature.

In the above example curves therefore, the regions delineated by the minima have been highlighted with coloured zones.

1961-11-06 - Lili Kolisko

Lili Kolisko refers to conversations with Rudolf Steiner (letter to Hans Kruger 1961-11-06) whereby he made the analogy of the different areas along the potentization axis with the effect of the metabolism, rhythmic subsystem, and nerve-sense system, saying:

  • with potencies upto the first minimum one affects the metabolic subsystem, and between the first and the second minimum the nerve-sense subsystem
  • using potences beyond second minimum does not have sense, as Man does not have further subsystems beyond the nerve-sense subsystem
  • only the first potency should be shown with an exact value (comparing this with gender ripeness around age 14), beyond this point 'the effects flow into one another'

See also Note [1] in the Discussion area below

Discussion

Note 1 - Potentization curves and Man as a threefold being

Kolisko then continues to make the analogy with the workings of the hierarchies in Man - probably remembering 1924-05-18-GA236, and how one can imagine overlapping bell-curves with the effect of the third hierarchy on Man upto age 21, followed by the second hierarchy working between ages 21 and 42, and the first hierarchy between ages 42 and 63, however with the second hierarchy already starting at age 14 and overlapping, similarly the third already starting at age 35 and overlapping. From this she puts forth the idea that there are three areas where the impact of potency is predominantly one of the three subsystems (one can imagine three overlapping bell-curves - for the three subsystems - on the potency curve).

Contemplating that upto 14 years Man develops the etheric bodily principle, and then age of puberty is when the workings of the astral body starts, we are indeed reminded of 1924-07-21-GA319:

everything that constitutes the etheric body is intimately bound up with the metabolic and limb system everything that constitutes the astral body is bound up with the rhythmic system

See also: Man as a threefold being and Threefold working in Man

Related pages

References and further reading

  • [1] - Lili Kolisko: 'Physiologischer und physikalisher Nachweis der Wirksamkeit kleinster Entitäten' (1923 -> 1997)
  • [2] - Rudolf Hauschka: 'The nature of substance' (1966, German original in 1950) - Chapter 17
  • [3] - Theodor Schwenk : 'The Basis of Potentization Research' (1988), the original 'Grundlagen der Potenzforschung' (1954 and 1972)
  • [4] - George Adams: 'Potentization and the peripheral forces of nature' (lecture, 1961) - PDF download here
  • [5] - Wilhelm Pelikan, Georg Unger: 'Die Wirkung potenzierter Substanzen' (1965)
  • [6] - Iwer Thor Lorenzen: 'Evolution through Incarnation and metamorphosis' (1969), Part III - About the Evolution of Earth and the Plant World.
    • Note: Lorenzen’s books were translated by the FMC project and are awaiting publishing.
  • [7] - Willem F. Daems: 'Was sind potenzierte Heilmittel?' (1993 revised version of original in 1972)