Bach: A Personal Reflection

There are many sources of information about the Bach Flower Remedies on the web, and links to some of these can be followed directly from this site.

But what is my own understanding of the significance of the Bach Flower Remedies?

As I understand it, Bach’s view of human nature is similar to that of the early Church Fathers. We are not born into original sin, but in Matthew Fox’s memorable phrase, into original blessing. We are created in the image of God, i.e. with the divine nature or divine blueprint within us.

As we grow in the world we inevitably lose the wholeness of our contact with the divine, and as our personalities develop we in a sense hide behind one particular type and imagine that that represents our totality. It does not – our totality is our divine nature.

To realize this, we need help. We need help to find out what our own particular ‘soul lesson’ is – and we then need help to work with that ‘soul lesson’ through the course of our life.

I think in any period of history, in any culture, there are a few people who are able to see beyond the limitations of their time – and to point beyond what the vast majority of people can comprehend. Some of these seers are recognised in their lifetime, but the process of recognition goes on way beyond their earthly span, and their influence spreads much further than they could have themselves imagined.

I believe that Dr Edward Bach was one of these figures – a person who saw the nature of reality in a manner and to an extent that few people ever have. He was somehow able to intuit the gesture of plants and to understand their healing significance for living creatures, in particular for human beings. He experienced a deep resonance between different layers or levels of consciousness, and was able to develop this into a clear map which people could follow in order to find their own healing. His work was so profound that there are still few people who really understand its significance.

At this time, over 70 years after Dr Bach’s death, humanity seems to be pushing the world in the direction of greed-fuelled self-destruction. What could be more important now than to understand the deep resonance between mind and matter, between the gesture of plants and the inner human movement of mental/emotional pain. The resonance between the pain of the cosmos and the beauty of the cosmos. The resonance between Death and Resurrection.

Bach’s work points beyond the individual healing in the direction of the healing of the material cosmos. The healing that comes from using the Remedies is the teaching of the soul finding its true path. And the true path of each and every soul is unique in terms of the journey, but not in terms of the destination. For the destination is nothing less than the realization of our own true nature, which is at one with the Divine. At this point, the individual personality, the individual Type, dissolves to be raised to life on a different plane.

Dr Bach observed the natural world and saw that it gives us all that we need. All we need to do is open our eyes and see, open our ears and listen, open our hearts and receive. It is easy enough to relate this to the lilies of the field in the Gospel and the injunctions to those who have ears to hear. Bach’s work has the potential to heal far more than various disparate individuals who happen to encounter the Remedies. It has the potential to heal the relationship that humanity has with the natural world, to heal the whole relationship between matter and spirit which has become so misunderstood in the contemporary world. What could be more important at this critical time in our history?

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