Meet Edward Bach
Dr. Bach, born in 1886, became a renowned surgeon, bacteriologist, immunologist and a homeopathic doctor, and also his most outstanding legacy was to discover a simple healing system, based on common herbal remedies, so that anyone could heal themselves. Making available to all people a way to find healing for the body, mind and soul through the healing power of flowers.
Story of his life:
Edward Bach was born in the city of Birmingham, in England and at the age of 20 he entered the medical career, then concluded at the University College Hospital of London, where he worked as a resident surgeon and bacteriologist.
In 1917 at the age of 31, he underwent surgery for a tumor in the spleen. Doctors give him 3 months to live. Bach, for his part, decides to work harder than ever and spend the time he has left to advance his research. With the step of the weeks feel stronger and stronger and outlive the prognosis.
During 1919, Dr. Bach worked at the London Homeopathic Hospital as a bacteriologist and pathologist, then he resigned his position to continue in his own laboratory. During this period Dr. Bach publishes several writings on the origin of diseases and their cure.
With the passage of time Bach was forming the idea that physical illness was caused by the personality and the mood of the person. This conviction was what prompted him to seek natural remedies that could balance emotional states.
His work with flowers:
1930: Discover 5 herbal remedies and include them in a report published in the magazine Homoeopathic World.
1932: Add 8 remedies to the existing ones, thus creating the Twelve Healers and publishing it in a brochure entitled Free Thyself (Break free).
1933: Twelve Great Remedies Y The Twelve Healers (The Twelve Healers). Includes 4 more remedies and publishes the book The Twelve Healers and the Four Helpers (The twelve curators and the four assistants).
1934: Discover 3 remedies and publishes the second edition of this book with the title The Twelve Healers and the Seven Helpers. (The twelve curators and the seven assistants).
1935: Finally he decides to group the 38 remedies into 7 general groups and completely restructure the book, to keep his system simple.
1936: He publishes his last book, entitled The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies (The Twelve Helpers and Other Remedies. Shortly thereafter on November 27, Dr. Edward Bach passed away due to heart failure.
The philosophy of Edward Bach:
To understand his philosophy, we start from his conception of the human being and the universe. Bach postulates the existence of a basic polarity between two instances: the soul and the personality. The soul is the permanent, the immortal, the essential energy, the transcendent; and personality is the transitory, the mortal, the accidental, and the immanent. The goal of the soul is to achieve perfection, this as equivalent in this context to the process of individuation or realization.
The path to this end consists of the journey of a process of evolution that would end with the attainment of perfection. This process of evolution goes from error to truth, from ignorance to knowledge and from defect to virtue. Our current life is nothing more than a continuation of the evolutionary process, "a school day". The man incarnates to obtain knowledge and experience and thus correct, rectify the errors, defects or faults that make him imperfect.
Living is, then, an opportunity to continue advancing, and one of the instruments that man has to make this growth in his level of consciousness possible is disease.
Bach says: "... the disease, apparently so cruel, is in itself beneficial and exists for our good and if it is interpreted correctly it will guide us to correct our essential defects".
The fundamental truths:
They are the philosophical pillars of Bach's work. The capital importance that he attributes to them is evident when he points out that "to understand the nature of the disease one must know certain fundamental truths."
The soul: Man has a soul that is his real being The soul, according to Bach, has a guiding function. She directs and orders our life. But it is also the essence that we are and her "invincible and immortal" nature is the consequence of her being a "spark of divinity". Some authors link the soul with the Higher Self. Bach calls it "our divine Self", "our real self", thus emphasizing the character of the SELF that the soul possesses.
Personality: We are personalities and we exist to gain knowledge and experience. The personality is our transitory part, the incarnation that clothes us, is torn between uncertainty and choices, it serves as a material support in this life. Bach thought that this circumstance was not arbitrary or accidental, since, if the object of our living is to learn what we do not know, develop the virtues that we lack, erase our defects and the negative that we treasure in our being, "the soul knows what environment and what circumstances will allow us to achieve it better and, therefore, places us in the most appropriate branch of life to achieve our goal ".
The conflict between soul and personality is the cause of sickness and unhappiness. The idea that the cause of the disease is a conflict is a conviction shared by some authors of the last century, among which Freud, Jung and others stand out. Bach locates this conflict between the soul and the personality because of the distance that exists between the two due to the need to strengthen our ego more and more to the detriment of the knowledge of our true essence, the true possessor of our identity.
The unity of all things: For Bach, the creative force of the universe is true love and everything "of which we are conscious is in its infinite number of forms a manifestation of that love, be it a planet or a pebble, a man or another form of life." All this world created by an infinitely superior and just energy forms a great system, in such a way that the parts that compose it cannot be separated from each other. This means that "any action against ourselves or against another affects the whole, because by causing an imperfection in one part, it is reflected in the whole."
What is the disease?
The disease is not an evil to be suppressed but a benefit to be understood. For Bach, illness is beneficial. Where does the benefit lie? In the fact that pain, suffering and discomfort serve as signals that indicate the need to learn a lesson, "that otherwise would have gone unnoticed and that cannot be eradicated until the lesson is learned."
The disease is the product of the action of personal and transpersonal factors. The personal ones are selfishness and isolation, that is, exercising a contrary or cruel action towards others and the tendency to dissociate. Among the transpersonal factors, it includes karmic action and the negative influence of our peers due to the link that unites us to them because they are part of the same network.
The disease is not material in origin. "What we know as disease is the ultimate result produced in the body, the end product of deep and lasting forces ." Diseases are defects, such as pride, cruelty, hatred, selfishness, ignorance, instability, fear and greed.