BIOLUMANETICS, ATTRACTOR STATES AND REMEDY PICTURES

 by Charles Wansbrough unpublished

The purpose of this article is to try and make sense of my ongoing research into the interaction between the changing nature of the images captured in a process known as ‘biolumanetics’ and their relevance to the model of ‘classical homeopathy’.

  The technology and its relevance to the homeopathic model has been discussed in another article.  The technology has one rather unique aspect that can be validated empirically, and that is its ability to judge the potential outcomes of different homeopathic remedies and indicate the best remedy for that individual at the time of the therapeutic interaction.

The dynamic nature of the images captured, together with the shifting clarity and changing nature of the light emissions photographed, led Patrick Richards to assign a ‘modus operandi’ to the bioliminal process as he realised that clarity and high photon emission in the photographs represented: 

‘An organism’s drive towards balance or harmony’

He had inadvertently captured on photo, the ongoing process of self-organization, which communicated via photography the emerging consensus of a hitherto unseen aspect of the ‘self’.

  My own study of the process, has forced me to consider a number of ‘models’ that make sense of this phenomenon. In evaluating the changing nature of this phenomena, my main concern has been to appraise my previous understanding of Hahnemannian homeopathy and its predominance as a ‘model’ of clarity towards which most homeopaths aspire. The implicit assumption and aspiration of most homeopaths, at least  in their early years of enthusiasm, is to prescribe with the greatest degree of accuracy in terms of the best similar for each patient.

  Such an aspiration initially drove me to apply the classical model of the single remedy to a therapeutic situation with  reasonable success. The principles of classical homeopathy held to a reasonable degree, since the feedback from the photos was immediate, and enabled me to search for a similar remedy at each therapeutic encounter. This protocol has been discussed elsewhere (see article on Androctonus on website), and has shown me that the law of similars works well, because at times I have been unable to prescribe to the best clarity possible using the imagery as a visual feedback mechanism, yet even reasonable clarity elicited a good therapeutic response.

  However, it has proved difficult to evaluate the changing nature of these images and their corresponding states in terms of the classical  model of homeopathy. One of the areas of contention that has caused me to revaluate my own views has been ‘the problem of the constitutional remedy’, a construct that appears to be embedded within the parameters of the Newtonian paradigm and possibly arose out of Hahnemann’s own views of enlightened rationalism.

  One of the problems I have had in trying to evaluate remedy states with the technology was in trying to understand what the constitutional state corresponds to.  If we were to regard ourselves as self-organising systems, at what point did we stop evolving and come to rest into a constitutional state that implies a state of stasis?  How does an individual in a constitutional state - which implies some ‘final remedy state’ - ever evolve or move towards other states of further growth if he or she maintains that constitutional state?

  Classical homeopathy has evolved a particular mode of finding single remedy states and with these implications in mind,  individuals appear to be these remedy states, yet how can these states be static?

Do we only have one behavioural pattern or constitution that surfaces again and again throughout life?

Has classical homeopathy extrapolated a linear construct which corresponds to the old paradigm when in reality the situation is far more complex and non-linear ?

  Such questions were necessary to try and understand the observations made with the technology. In searching for an effective model which might correspond to my own bias in favour of classical prescribing with the central tenet of ‘the law of similars’ I have been forced to embrace ‘systems thinking’ which embodies the idea that living systems are integrated wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller parts. Such properties arise from the ‘organisational relationships between the parts’ and can be observed clinically via the bioliminal process, since any optimum remedy will generate clarity, which in turn ‘reconfigures’ the body-mind complex to a better state of health. Moreover the capture of an image seems to freeze at one moment in time, an underlying dynamic that appears in ceaseless motion, a trajectory of light and shade that has been interpreted by Patrick Richards, as the shifting shadows of ‘DNA bio-photons’ dancing to a rhythm in the key of harmony.

  The shift in image clarity together with a corresponding high photon emission represents for the individual an energetic experience towards balance and consolidated coherence. Patrick Richards realized after many years, that the dramatic shift in clarity corresponded to the optimum homeopathic remedy (or any other therapeutic intervention ) at that moment in time. Yet he also realized  that he needed to establish some ‘fixed datum’, some point in frozen time that would act as a base reading against which he could test any further interventions therapeutically. He realized that this frozen moment of information could be captured in the initial photograph; it represented the state of the ‘bioliminal matrix’, a term coined by him to represent this anomaly, (within the homeopathic model this might be called ‘the state of the vital force’). Such states are frozen moments in time and always relative to another state; nevertheless, in the process captured by Patrick Richards, he realized that at another moment, change would take place if a correct therapeutic agent acted to increase clarity and photon emission of the image captured.

  The incongruity of the observation arises from the peculiar circumstances of capturing  a fixed point in a ‘dynamic matrix’. An analogy that might make it easier to understand the process, would be to envisage a photograph capturing the  partial movement of a large wave on the ocean as an image. The movement frozen on the image represents some sort of  information about the status of that particular wave. Yet that information is subject to interpretation since we are unable from one frozen moment in time to state clearly that much about such an image. All that can be assumed is that if we matched the frozen wave in that picture with a similar wave that matched its energetic configuration, the resultant  peak resonance would change the next image of that wave to a greater more turbulent state, it might even change the entire landscape of the sea, even evolve into a tsunami; frankly we do not know what effect it will have, except that the landscape of the sea might change. If the second wave matched the first wave, we would probably be able to discern this activity by the sudden change in turbulence on the image, and this analogy may correspond to the dramatic change in clarity and photon emission that occurs in the ‘bioliminal process’ when an optimal homeopathic remedy is chosen.

In  searching for a better model that confers a closer match between the technology and homeopathy, I wish to digress for a short while to summarise a few relevant aspects of Chaos theory that might be of help to explain this process.

  CHAOS THEORY

This emerging paradigm of thought involves a different approach to systems analysis which constructs a theory around a dynamic process. This perspective of ‘process thinking’ is not new, and was recognized by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, when he observed that ‘it was not possible to step into the same river twice’. Buddhist thought and Taoist thought have developed shrewd philosophies based around the changing nature of reality. In the twentieth century, the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead[i] constructed an influential theory based on the changing nature of process. But only since the development of Cybernetics by Norbert Weiner and General Systems theory developed by Ludwig van Bertalanffy, have the subjective feelings of process been consolidated into the living texture of mathematics and science. The metaphors of mechanics and machines have failed to address the full complexity of life, and have been replaced with more organic metaphors that credit biological organisms with self-regulating processes that utilize feedback loops to maintain growth and stability.

This was further elaborated in the biological sciences by two South American biologist H.Maturana and F.Varela, who coined the term ‘autopoeisis’ which implies that a living organism dynamically recreates itself at every opportunity, thereby sustaining its identity through this process (see article Homeopathy a dialogue between Nature and Being).  But these forays into process thinking with their underlying implications for the complex networks that would arise from such interconnections, began to simultaneously stimulate new mathematical ways of conceptualising these ideas into effective and concrete perceptions.

I hope to give a very brief summary of these ideas. The essential idea behind systems theory, was the insight that the ‘whole’ was greater than the parts, and that to fully understand the entire process one had to study how the parts connected to each other, which in turn resulted in an emergent whole.

The most important insight into the theory of ‘chaos’ arose from studying weather patterns by a meteorologist called Edward Lorenz. He was the first to record a known instance of chaotic behaviour. He noted that even the minutest alteration in initial conditions in weather can produce exponentially differing results, and coined the phrase, ‘the Butterfly Effect’.[ii] Lorenz's butterfly metaphor, that the flap of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon could influence a tornado far removed from the Amazon, is a visual image of the concept of sensitivity to initial conditions. Such sensitivity to initial conditions, makes cause and effect predictions impossible in complex systems. Chaotic systems such as the weather are inherently unpredictable. Further work by Lorenz led him to realize that chaotic systems, such as weather patterns, exhibited a property that mathematicians call attractors. Attractors represent the states to which systems eventually settle into or tend to slide of their accord. Several types of attractors exist, the pendulum is the simplest type, which after set into motion, swings in ever decreasing arcs until it comes to rest. This rest state is called a static attractor, because it represents the stationary focus towards which the pendulum is brought after coming to rest.[iii]Attractors can be thought of like magnets. Any magnetic filings are pulled into alignment by the lines of force, and therefore give the system a certain direction and flow. Indeed such attractors can be thought as providing boundaries for that system.

The most famous attractors that are out of the ordinary are known as ‘chaotic’ or ‘strange attractors’. This peculiar mathematical concept represents the greatest and richest seam of insight into non-linear systems and will be of greatest use in clarifying the shifting nature of homeopathic remedies. To further elaborate on this concept, take any number of complex systems, for example the weather, the stock market or animal population cycles, and watch how they change with time; they never seem to repeat and tend to oscillate between different values endlessly. Such processes are strictly unpredictable though overall patterns may be recognised and short-term projections made of future progress, as is the case with the weather. Nevertheless such irregular rhythms have been called chaotic, and plotting the course of these rhythms generates a strange attractorv. The most famous case as shown below, is the Lorenz attractor which is made up of two lobes or wings (hence the ‘butterfly effect’) which can be produced using a set of equations and follows the weather patterns. The point about strange attractors, is the fact that chaotic or irregular systems have a focus or basin of attraction that acts as a boundary and helps to understand the chaotic nature of many  complex systems. For a system to be strictly chaotic, it must meet certain rigorous mathematical criteria, its trajectory can be highly structured and consist of many loops all very near each other. The result is that two trajectories can start out very close to each other and subsequently diverge to very different regions of the phase space. This is the property known as "sensitivity to initial conditions"[iv]. It has become obvious recently that many systems of interest follow broadly chaotic trajectories but may not fit the strict mathematical criteria.

One further idea which will also generate some profound insights into the trajectory of a remedy pattern, is the concept that some complex systems, and many of these can be seen to be working in biological systems, appear to exist ‘on the edge of chaos’. Non-linear dynamic systems studied by chaos theory are complex systems in the sense that a great many independent variables are interacting with each other in a great many ways.  Such complex systems have the ability to shift back and forth between predictable behaviour and chaotic activity. This balance point- called the edge of chaos- has many special properties, but the most salient feature of this ‘edge’ is that at this point, complex systems can undergo self-organisation spontaneously. In other words, complex systems may undergo important transformations that can produce growth or change behavioural patterns. Periods of chaotic activity can throw a biological organism out of its ordinary furrow, thereby tentatively creating the possibility to create a new attractor and a different behavioural pattern. Complex systems have the ability to relax out of their habitual patterns, and shift into different potential states, but too much chaos would lead to a loss of identity and a descent into disorder.

Another important insight into the nature of complexity came about when Benoit Mandlebrot developed the field of fractal geometry. Fractals are fascinating chaotic properties of complex systems. They are ordered patterns found within the disorder of chaotic systems. They exist as self-repeating patterns that are found at smaller scales throughout the wholeness of the system. They are repetitive and constant in the system, ‘the shape of the whole is similar to itself’[v]. They are wholes within the whole, for example, in Capra’s famous book he illustrates the point by drawing a stick drawing of a fern and by repeating this pattern endlessly he generates a complex pattern of the fern and at any point in the ferns pattern, the point resembles the whole. This fractal geometry emphasises the self-similarity of chaotic systems and can be used to understand the underlying similar patterns that repeat themselves in the broad spectrum of a homeopathic picture. It also pinpoints that essential insight that is taught throughout the homeopathic community –that one can find the correct remedy picture in taking different aspects of the patient’s case since the ‘whole is constantly reiterated in the parts’. This brief synopsis of ‘Chaos theory’ represents a rather compressed foray into a complex subject, but at least gives the outlines of some useful concepts that can be applied to biological systems.

The idea of chaos, complexity theory and attractor states has innumerable examples in nature, and has been applied across a whole gamut of complex systems. The entire theory has been applied to biological systems and represent an interesting foray into novel modalities for perceiving health and disease.

  One fascinating discovery recently is the fact that medical scientists now know that the heartbeat is far more complex and irregular than once supposed (viii). The signals that control a healthy heartbeat contain many different frequency components, and this leads to a highly complex pattern of intervals between beats. The gaps between heartbeats are "anti-correlated": if the heart speeds up over a short sequence of beats, it will slow down again over the next few beats. More importantly, the pattern of these speed­up / slow‑down events can be seen on both short and long timescales: it looks the same over a few beats as it does for a thousand beats. The heartbeat has a fractal pattern. In other words the heart has been noted to function within the parameters of a chaotic system, the idea that the heart rhythm revolves around a chaotic attractor, is already helping to displace the age-old view of homeostasis, which implies that when a system is pushed out of balance it will compensate to maintain equilibrium. Yet this equilibrium implies a static state in which the heart rate should stay constant, likewise the blood pressure and other physiological variables. Yet further studies seem to be indicating that a healthy organism is not static, but highly dynamic always changing and fluctuating. Such fluctuations are highly irregular but far from random. A healthy heart maintains continuous sensitivity to unpredictable demands on it from the rest of the body by continuously changing its rate so that it never gets stuck in a particular pattern of dynamic order. And it is not only in the dynamics of heartbeat that this pattern shows itself.

  The brain rhythms of a healthy sleeper have an erratic appearance that is far more complex than that of a person in a coma. Similarly, the concentration of white blood cells rises and falls irregularly and unpredictably in the blood of a healthy individual, but lapses into a regular cyclic rhythm in someone suffering from leukaemia (ix). In many cases, disease is accompanied by an increase in order and regularity. Health, on the other hand, seems to be accompanied by irregularity which could make the organism more adaptable, since a chaotic system is sensitive to small influences, thereby making it more adaptable to changes in the demands of the body.

  Another discovery has been the number of applications of chaos theory in understanding how the brain functions. It is a complex non-linear feedback system and experiments have shown that the brain has strange attractors, indeed countless strange attractors, one for each particular activity. Plots of EEG activity in the brain show one particular type of strange attractor when a person is at rest, but quite another attractor when the same person is solving a mathematical problem. A healthy brain maintains a low level of chaos, which often self-organizes into a simpler order when presented with a familiar stimulus. Some of the best-known work on chaos and the brain was done by the Berkeley neurologist Walter Freeman(x) who studied the perception of odors in rabbits. He found that when a rabbit’s cells of smell are inactive the electrical activity follows a loose chaotic pattern, but when active, this patterns explodes to a far more definite pattern of activity. It is this sudden transition to this new but chaotic attractor that seems to be the basis for odor recognition. But what was fascinating was the fact that if the rabbit learnt another odor, say that of a tomato, when the activity of the brain returned to that of a carrot, the attractor had been subtly modified, in other words experience had modified the state. The important implication here is that brain activity is constantly modified by new experiences, which is not limited to the odor of rabbits but can be applied broadly to include many states including consciousness.

  A radical model of consciousness can be metaphorically illustrated if we regard the neural networks as being related to consciousness.  Consciousness can be represented as a point moving within the infinite number of attractors that the brain is capable of producing. This point, the ego consciousness, is chaotic since we can never truly predict how people will react, nevertheless it is not random but follows a strange attractor i.e. what we call the personality. It is never fixed, but fluid and flexible, and there is no limit to the number of states that this system can generate, thus consciousness itself is limitless. Let us therefore view consciousness not simply as a system but as an attractor, a pattern to which a system is drawn according to its own nature.

Having given a cursory summary of a complex set of ideas, I will now apply these insights to the interaction between the bioliminal process and homeopathic remedies. It is obvious now from the nature of homeopathic states that we could explain the nature of their stability but the enormous variations that occur even within one remedy as a consequence of a strange attractor. Each remedy state is subtly decoded through  the activity of a proving forum and then clinically evaluated; each clinician will have his own perception of the remedy, but enough clinical data will help to clarify and delineate the subtle arena of this remedy.

  Such an arena represents the fuzzy edges between homeopathic pictures, yet the essential threads that clearly demarcate a remedy have a nodal point, and this represents the trajectory of a strange attractor. These red threads of difference help to differentiate between remedy states, some of these may be very similar, in which case they have similar attractor landscapes, others may be distant and therefore are configured to entirely different attractor landscapes.

  As clinicians we have to match similar attractor landscapes between patient and remedy, in such a process, the fuzzy edges of the ‘law of similars’ indicates that a number of attractor states present in remedies may pull or change the patient towards another level of health representing another stable attractor state. Nevertheless, the idea of the simillimum or optimum remedy represents the closest attractor state to that of the patient, a movement of energy that results from a peak resonance match that can dramatically shift the energetic state of the patient towards another attractor landscape.

  The science of chaos theory describes states and their state transitions, in the same way that homeopathy and potentised remedies represent states of behavioral complexity and the accompanying ‘events’ that takes place when transitions occur from one remedy picture to another. Homeopathy is a study of states and their transitions, it identifies stable landscapes so as to enable such states to move towards greater states of  freedom.

  The most critical question to ask about a state is its degree of stability or resistance to change. Stability is evaluated by perturbing an object or a system.(xi) For example, an egg on a flat surface is unstable, a coffee mug stable, a  standing person holding a railing on a moving bus is stable, an individual walking in the corridor is not. If an individual regains his composure after innumerable perturbations, then his state is regarded as stable and  said to be governed by an attractor. This is a metaphor to describe  how a system or individual is ‘attracted to’ a state along a defined trajectory. To reiterate the example of a moving bus, a standing individual holding a strap may be thrown all over the place by chaotic traffic, even nearly losing his balance in a near collision, yet by holding the strap and possibly being thrown all over the place, the metaphor of the trajectory represents all the movements through time and space elicited by holding onto the strap which represents the point of stability or attractor in his particular position. If on the other hand, a perturbation is so excessive that he loses his balance and ends up breaking his arm or concussed, then the system has been displaced outside the former ‘ basin of attraction’ and another new state replaces the former, with an entirely different attractor state and landscape. This particular metaphor for shifting states and their transitions between different attractor states, also represents different degrees of well-being. The trajectory from ill health to a state of optimum well-being is then represented in this model, as changing attractor states and transition points of transformation that can both enable and disable the individual towards greater or lesser degrees of freedom.

In trying to understand ‘the bioliminal phenomena’ and elucidate the nature of information captured on the photographic medium, we need to understand that stability and coherence are relative terms, and are always relative to the time duration of observation and the criteria chosen, to be observed. When we match the optimum remedy picture to a clear body/mind symptom complex, a peak resonance effect becomes configured thereby releasing enough energy to reconfigure the health of that individual to another state of better well-being. Such observations remain one of the central tenets of complementary medicine; each discipline from homeopathy to acupuncture helps to pinpoint transition states by matching symptoms to the therapeutic intervention, thereby releasing energy for a new state to supervene with its own attractor landscape and hopefully a greater degree of freedom.

In the perspective of a lifetime, personalities seem to be highly stable states, yet within this invariance, changes are constantly at work, and this reflects the autopoetic nature of a biological organism. In the words of Steven Rose:

‘Boundaries between organism and environment are not fixed. Organisms are constantly absorbing parts of their environ­ment into themselves as food, and are constantly modifying their surroundings by working on them, by excreting waste products, or by modifying the world to suit their needs, from birds' nests to beaver dams and termite mounds. Organisms ‑ any organism, even the seemingly simplest ‑ and the environment ‑ all relevant aspects of it ‑ interpenetrate. Abstracting an organism from its environment, ignoring this dialectic of interpenetration, is a reductionist step which methodology may demand but which will always mislead. The second lesson is that organisms are not passive responders to their environ­ments. They actively choose to change them, and work to that end. The great metaphor of what Popper rightly called `passive' Darwinism, natural selection, implies that organisms are the mere playthings of fate, sandwiched as it were between their genetic endowment and an environment over which they have no control, which is constantly setting their genes and gene products challenges which they can either pass or fail. Organisms, however, are far from passive: they ‑ not just we humans, but all other living forms as well ‑ are active players in their own futures.’(xii)

 This homeo-dynamic metaphor of the biological organism captures an essential insight into the nature of the bioliminal images captured on photography. For the constant changes noted by Patrick Richards over twenty years of studying the phenomena , ‘recaptures an understanding of living organisms as shifting trajectories through time and space that are radically indeterminate continually constructing their own futures, albeit in circumstances not of their own choosing’(xiii)

  The point to be made, is that personalities are both invariant states of being, yet present an infinite number of variables. Health and ill-health within this dynamic perspective represent degrees of freedom and the possible range of attractor states that can be captured and fleetingly experienced without being constrained by one dominant attractor state. A healthy individual will therefore be able to reconfigure his possibilities in an endless variety of modalities, an individual shifting towards ill-health will come to rest within the basin of a more determinate attractor state. These are subtle states that represent infinite variations, yet the homeopath is actually trying to highlight and pinpoint symptom complexes that represent  autobiographical landscapes of limitation, and have through the intervention of ill-health constrained the dynamic signature of health.

  Any effective therapeutic intervention will therefore radically change the attractor landscape and shift the basin of attraction to a healthier configuration. In such a model, remedies represent points of transition, since an effective remedy which matches the optimum autobiographical landscape of the patient will effectively dissolve that basin of attraction and shift it to another state with increased possibilities. Remedies remain abstract nodal points, pinpricks in virtual reality, that become concrete rites of passage, only when they are fully embodied in a dramatic case history. These cases of dramatic change represent transitions from a more ordered and constrained landscape to a greater dynamic of freedom .

  This is not to say that the particular habit or behavioral ‘furrow’ of ill-health does not remain a potential possibility, i.e. that the attractor state cannot reoccur again.  Yet in shifting to another healthier attractor basin of health, it imbues the situation within a wider context, and therefore allows the individual to perceive his last state without falling back into those habitual autobiographical criteria that defined that particular homeopathic trajectory. The important point to realize is the degree of resistance these attractor states present when responding to homeopathic remedies, if and when the degree of freedom of the individual has been radically changed, then ill-health recedes to a potential possibility that may never be revisited in exactly the same way.

The process of trying to evaluate the ‘bioliminal process’ in terms of possible models of interaction, has led me to consider the nature of chaos theory to have profound implications for the future of complementary models of medicine. A dynamic system has a collection of attractors, each with its own basin, which forms an ‘attractor landscape’, the state of the system can jump from one attractor trajectory to another. Strange attractors capture changing ceaseless activity thereby creating novel but unpredictable patterns that can nevertheless retain the system’s history.

  Observations using the bioliminal information captured on photography, leads to the conclusions that some form of photon trajectory is being frozen at a moment in time. The correct therapeutic intervention, all be it in an innumerable range of forms, though my own observations are limited to homeopathy, causes a change in clarity of the photos and invariably a dramatic reconfiguration in their health leading to a more effective interaction with themselves and their environments. But such coherence which ensues with the correct remedy can either dissolve that state of ill-health back towards a potential habit or completely eliminate the furrowed habit, in either case, coherence is a relative state that resulted when the homeopathic intervention took place. That individual may move towards another attractor state that may not be defined as ill health, but different levels of health imbue individuals with different levels of freedom. The nature of the ‘bioliminal process’ means that we can photograph the changing nature of the bio-matrix at a more subtle level, yet observations indicate that these images capture only a fleeting moment in the transient exploration of an essentially infinite number of attractor states. Stable landscapes indicate a loss of freedom and a degree of constraint that limit the unpredictable patterns of a strange attractor, different remedy pictures represent sculpted patterns of biographical detail that correspond to these stable landscapes, the correct remedy creates a rite of passage as a transient peak of energy, that can totally change the mind/body landscape into another state of well-being. Individuals are not remedies, but may explore remedy states, the greater the health of that individual, the greater level he might have to explore a variety of remedy states within the norm of well being.

  Provings present biographies, some provings have little effect on the prover, others are dramatic, the range of possible effects amount to a collection of positive and negative states of well being. As therapeutic engineers, we can only apply remedial change, at a point that is more a result of negative cultural and sociological parameters embedded in the western medical paradigm. The action of remedies may equally act towards a positive or developmental reconfiguration of that individual’s lifestyle. The point to be made is that an individual in a state of health, is an individual that is capable of exploring a multitude of ‘attractor states’ (which may represent remedy pictures) but the act of health enables such states to remain within the arena of transient possibility. Remedy states that are captured by therapeutic intervention, only become a reality when the degree of change or freedom is suddenly curtailed dramatically, for example, a broken leg in an accident.

  Such a model of shifting possibilities punctuated by unforeseen changes that  force an individual to ‘literally’ fall into a constrained  attractor state, is very clearly borne out by the shifting and infinite changes shown in the captured images. The ‘bioliminal image’ is essentially ‘a frozen moment in the act of recreation’, a frozen image in the stage of becoming and this can be accessed and evaluated through the process of photography. At no moment does the activity cease, such a ‘bio-matrix’ represents  a glimpse of an infinite set of attractor landscapes, which when matched with the exact peak resonance of a remedy attractor will dramatically shift the energetic attractor of the patient towards another level of health. We see within the conceptual and visual  framework of the ‘bioliminal process’ that health  does indeed represent a state of ceaseless change, a dynamic that is always on the ‘edge of chaos’ , a system that perpetuates impermanence thereby enabling organisms to take action on their own behalf.(xiv) It has been difficult for Patrick Richards, who studied and discovered the bioliminal phenomena to fully articulate ‘the changing nature of his observations’. It took many years of meticulous clinical observations to conclude that the only valid criteria of engagement that could be applied to such a dynamic phenomena was ‘an organism’s inherent drive towards coherence’. In my own exploration of the phenomena, I have noticed that correct remedies which create total clarity may shift an individual dramatically out of his behavioral pattern of ill health in a very short time, yet because we are dealing with a far more subtle level of interaction such a movement out of one attractor landscape may create a different state and a potential point of further exploration which then falls within the domain of the patient’s needs and their wish to explore further or limit their well-being to one state.

  As therapeutic engineers of change, we can only be called to act upon those points of ill health that brings the patient within our sphere of action, such points are transient rites of passage that can be decoded via remedy pictures (or other therapeutic forms). Yet the changes which can be so dramatic at times does not suddenly render the individual coherent and static, this is not borne out by the bioliminal images, instead all that can be said is that further landscapes of exploration have been introduced into the arena of that individual’s personality.

  For example, a case of a so-called  constitutional Calcarea carbonica.  The remedy when adminstered created a dramatic shift in the entire personality of an individual, insights created through this process, revealed a profound re-evaluation of the their entire life, yet on re-prescribing this remedy some 6 months later, the image captured did not become coherent, indicating that the state had dissolved and I was forced to prescribe a gem essence. The essential point is that in trying to evaluate the process of bioliminal imagery and its interface with any therapeutic modality ( homeopathy in this case) , we are forced to abandon static images of disease and enter the realms of dynamic infinity where so called constitutional states are rendered redundant and only represent habits that patient’s may repeat, but essentially once a state has been abandoned, the full potential of that individual can come into existence again.

The bioliminal phenomena and its articulation with the homeopathic model, has been an interesting experience which has not only served to reinforce a model of health as a dynamic phenomenon on the edge of chaos, but has also favours a radical reappraisal of some aspects of  ‘classical homeopathy’.

A ‘constitutional remedy’ represents a constraint in freedom which on being released , may allow an individual to explore many other possible states of being. Such states are rarely captured because homeopathy comes from a degree of ill-health.  The technology, as a more advanced tool of prognostic evaluation, allows us to observe many more degrees of freedom and therefore shifts our perspective out of the ‘ constitutional constraints’ of a classical model to greater degrees of possibility that can be explored as such technologies become part and parcel of our progress towards a greater understanding of the paradigm of subtle medicine.