0.5 Provings
Signal and noise
Provings are sometimes seen as fully reliable. This is partially due to Hahnemann who stated that all symptoms during a proving should be attributed to the remedy. And it is an easy way to do so as one does not have to doubt and sort out which are the symptoms belonging to the rmedy and which not.
The experience though is different. A lot of the symptoms in provings are not belonging to the remedy but to other aspects like the state of the prover, the surroundings and so on. This is the “noise” as compared to the signal. It can be compared to a radio receiver which can receive a signal and noise. One one like to have mostly signal and as little noise as possible. This can be done by tuning precisely to the sender, the remedy in this case. The tuning has to be done by the provers and the better they can do so. the better the result. And the noise should be reduced as much as possible, which can be done by avoiding distractions.
In homeopathy the practice of provings is often pointing to procedures and formalities. But they are much less important than the inner state of the provers. Doing a proving is an inner world experience, it is experiencing the symptoms in oneself. The formalities are an outside world aspect. Of course they can enhance the inner state of observation, but the inner state is pure observing what is needed. And that can be independent of the circumstances. One can also say the mode of doing provings is more dependent on the prover than the remedy or theory or organisations.
These considerations and experiences has let me to sense provings: a proving where the prover sees, smells, tastes and feels the remedy. This kind of proving is very much adapted to plants. And is a kind of proving that can be done in a short time with little investment, which is a big advantage. And one can do sense provings on one’s own or with a group, which is another advantage. The idea is that with a group the symptoms can be compared and thus become more reliable. And that is true. But one sensitive, good tuning prover can also give reliable symptoms.
But provings are never fully reliable. In the proving it can hardly be ascertained what is really reliable or not, although the provers van have a feeling of that quality. But in reality the emerging picture has to be tested in practice, the patients. Only cured cases are a reliable source to build a remedy picture on, in my experience. But one one has no clue what a remedy can do and there are no cases, then a proving can give a first step, an in initiating idea of what the remedy can be and cover.
The above considerations made us decide to do sense provings of the mosses, each moss by one prover. Each prover could make a choice out of the available mosses, according to their own feeling. But we started with one proving together, Polytrichum commune by chance. Each prover was doing the proving without verbal exchange and write down their impressions before we started discussing. The beauty was that common themes came out of Phase 3, Phase 7 and Stage 9. Not by all, but by some. They came out in different kind of stories, with the same themes. This shows that Phase, Stages and Series can be seen as a more general kind of theme, a background on which different kind of stories can be build. It became more confirmed when one of the provers told that she had a case treated with Polytrichum commune where the same Phase and Stages where present. A nice confirmation that we were on the right track, at least partly. And a nice confirmation of the usefulness of sense provings in general. The details can found in the chapter about Polytrichum commune.