An interview with Dr. Malte Hozzel and Jasmina Stojanovic, CEO of Serbian Health and Wellness Magazine “SENSA”

“When you look at the plant, the floral process comes the last. And when you look at the plant, this opening up into colors, fragrances, tridimensional shapes, vortical expression – means that a plant understands that it can be more than just few leaves, stem and a root. For me, a flower is an astral expression”. (Dr. Malte Hozzel)

“Floral means for me astral”, says Dr. Malte Hozzel, a world-renowned aromatherapist, essential oil specialist and educator, at the end of the day in his Orto de Prouvenço property in France. The room was filled with the aroma of lavender and citrus, and silence behind the stone walls of the house was comforting and embracing. “Astral world is a world of fragrance, light and colors,” continues dr Hozzel, this inspirational specialist with deep insights into medicinal plants and essential oils. “And lots of metamorphoses, lots of transformation. The astral world is a world of constant change in joy. It is definitely there. As much as the ancient rishis and yogis tell us, it is never the same. And that means that the universal law of nature is that nothing can be the same. And in the joy of changing from one level to the other, from the matter fields to the energy fields, from the material world to the astral world and so on, inside of this transformation is the game of creation”.

Every living being wants to come to its essence. In that sense, aromatherapy is trying to understand what the quintessence of the plant is and to use that essential energy of the plant for discovering our own essential energy. This is the most beautiful lesson about aromatherapy and plants I have heard, learning about the magical, cosmic life of plants. Seeing them, not only as something that co-exists on our planet, but as living beings aiming to fulfill their purpose and to evolve into more than they are in the moment, not only in matter, but also in a spiritual sense. “Life is on the move. Life is never stagnant, never the same”, dr Hozzel says. “Never identical. It`s an evolutionary process where every living entity has a tendency to go further in the desire to be more that is now. And this is what evolution means. And it is not something that comes from the dictate, from some unseen spirit, universal agencies or laws of nature. It comes from inner desire which is beyond matter, which is the main function in the material world and also partially in the non-material world – to evolve. And to evolve to the highest means what? It means, to close the circle. Because we, or every living thing, come into being by condensation of energy fields. And this concentration or condensation of this energies gives matter. And all this tends to want to go back to the unseen enigmatic field” Dr. Hozzel explains. “It is a circle. When we speak of Uroboros from the Greek mythology, we see the serpent which bites its tail. It means: I am becoming- in the closing of the circle – something else and I close another circle and then again become something else… And that is what a plant also does. We cannot say that the conifer tree was there in the beginning of time or planet. But there were kelp and the algae in the water and their possibility to go further. And when the kelp landed on the beaches, something happened and it changed structure and slowly it maybe then became moss, and moss is still very low growing, there is not yet this deeply embedded desire to go vertical. But then comes a moment when a plant inbuilds in its own structure, in its own cosmic dynamics the desire to go further, using gravitation and anti-gravitational processes on the planet, to go vertically more and more, and that is how finally after a period of time we can have bushes and trees, and all these flowers coming up. The plant wants to go further. But the plant wants not only to go further in terms of its changes of colors or fragrances, shape and other. It wants also to go further in its floral process, because florals are, so to say, the last responses of nature, biological responses of plants to reach out for more. Like us. We are also reaching out for more. We are reaching out to the level of our souls, to ourselves.”

The quintessence of the plant

The specialty of Dr. Malte Hozzel is in the relationship between plants, essential oils and mankind, and he has unique perspective into the effects that these helpers have on human health and consciousness. He was born in Germany in 1944, and received his Ph.D. in 1979 from Heidelberg University in world literature and linguistics. Since 1972 he has been giving courses on Yoga and Transcendental Meditation and has been a spokesman at numerous congresses around the world on Aroma-therapy, Yoga and meditation programs. Over the years he and his wife established a number of Meditation Centers and Retreat-Academies in Germany, France and Belgium, and published several articles and books on the collective transformation of modern society. Years of research in the field of Aromatherapy culminated in a selection of several hundred essential oils and many other herbal products and the founding of the intl. Oshadhi brand in 1990.

“In the essential oil, we link the earth element and the space/air element together and in that sense we have a polar natural medicine. We can not use linear medicine in terms of real healing. Real medicine must, in that sense, link polarities of life together. Because we are polar creatures. The word for essential oil in German is “ätherisches Öl” which means “etheric oil”. It conveys that plants in their quintessential expression are made to be linked to the etheric world – to be linked to that subtle energy level. The root is linked to the soil. And the flower is linked to the etheric world. And these two together – the grounding and the rising energies – we have very much in the essential oils. But when you say essential oils, you have to link this also to the notion of “quint-essence” of the alchemists. So that means: “I want to get from a plant that which – in a sense – is the hidden spirit in matter.” That is why some people say that essential oils are the soul of the plant. I mean, you can say it, although many plants don`t have essential oils and still have a “soul” of course. Because they are quintessential in their being, in their own way. And when you say etheric oil, you look at the connection with the ether, the space element, which is the dominant element that is behind the thing.”

Dr. Hozzel today focuses mainly on presenting the understanding of Holistic Aromatherapy globally and on helping to spread the knowledge of Yoga and meditation in the West by giving courses and lectures as well as participating in a number of humanitarian projects which have the mission to raise the level of individual and collective consciousness in the world. Malte believes that pure and unadulterated essential oils are our allies on the path to optimal physical wellbeing and happiness. “When I use essentials oils I bow down to the intelligence I feel and smell behind it. It is not a gesture of ritualistic rigidity, but more like an expression of my heart feeling connected to the plant”.

The yoga of herbs

During his lectures, Dr. Hozzel quotes the famous Indian author and Ayurvedic physician Vasant Lad, professor and director of the Ayurvedic Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico – and his famous book “The Yoga of Herbs”. “I like to quote some of his sayings”, Dr. Hozzel says, “because they are very much in connection with the spirit of plants and men. Vasant Lad points out in this book that we owe a lot to the plants. This is not enough seen or enough expressed – but plants are our “ancestors” on this planet, they have prepared life here on Earth, they offer us food and shelter, beauty and medicine. In that sense it is right to say “yoga of herbs” which means we are able to connect since “yoga” means “union”. We are able to unite with the plants, the plant kingdom and then with ourselves, going deeper and seeing that we are not so different from the plants. The plants have lots of capacities, which have been discovered only recently – the plants have all types of behavioral patterns, unifying patterns, helping each other out, even. In that sense, they use the same principles are on our planet – principles of life, principles of support, principles of defense, principles of emotion, even principles of unity and polarity. Everything is all there – in plants as well as in human beings.”

Dr. Hozzel studied essential oils, immersing himself in the works of prominent experts, and incorporating the use of the oils into his daily life. “Looking at a plant we see intelligence of the universe. How is it possible that a plant can be so beautiful? So magically built in its expression. The looking and the adoration of plant is more like uniting yourself with the universal spirit. And that means with yourself. That is the yoga. Yoga means: Looking at everything in terms of myself. But not egoistically, more unifying. I am part of that. I adore being part of that and I can bow down to that. The more we evolve, the more we unify ourselves with the core of our being. We are adoration”.

Drunk with light

Aromatherapy is becoming increasingly popular, not only in the realm of personal wellbeing, but also in scientific communities worldwide. “We are beings of light and we need to heal ourselves with light, and essential oils are highly biophotonic”, Dr. Hozzel emphasizes. “Plants are drunk, we can say, with cosmic radiations all the time. They bathe in cosmic radiation – not only sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and all the invisible frequencies of cosmic light – larger spectrums of light. We can open our souls with the help of our allies, the plants, to be more connected. We can use essential oils as liquid nutrients full of that light.”

Despite aromatherapy being an ancient practice, it is also modern and very much relevant in today`s society. Rudolf Steiner said that “Man is a plant turned upside down”. “It is so beautiful”, Malte comments. “We are, in our innermost being, rooted in heaven, as Rigveda says: “The root of this tree grows in Heaven.” That is very true. Human beings are centered not through their feet to the ground, but they are grounded to the energies that we radiate from our heart and brain, together. That is what Rigveda calls “heaven” : The world of light and of wonderful universal intelligence which we may contact in so many ways. And essential oils are one of them, besides yoga, meditation – to feel that we are really connected. And we need that light definitely for health. If we are not having high levels of light, biophotonic light, as professor F.A. Popp from Germany said, then we have a high risk of getting sick. Much of the chronic diseases today are due to a breakdown of coherent light emission on the cellular level, loss of biophotonic energy which happens due to wrong food, wrong diet, wrong medicine, wrong behavior, wrong thinking, and all this together. Light is not abstract. It really has a physical existence. It feeds our body and our cells. We have discovered during the last decades how much our cell system is dependent on light and emitting “ultra-weak coherent light”, as Prof. Popp explains.

Plants store that light in their cellular system. When we take essential oils, we may take them for some symptom, for something we are going through and we want to heal that, but we are healing on a much deeper level. When we use essential oils we absorb molecules of intense energy, frequency and light. And they are effective very fast”.

Lessons of Nature

Essential oils are linked to “cumulated vital energy”. We are experiencing today a new era of natural medicine as an answer to the failures of the modern allopathic approach and of modern life style. “Many of these ancient principles of healing are based in shamanic wisdom. In that sense, we are getting back to our shamanic roots. Many of these plants have tremendous power on our consciousness or are important for spirituality. In the final analysis it is the healing of our soul, healing that which is missing and making us remember where we have to go, where we want to go”. Essential oils are the expression of the highest intelligence of Nature, and the aromatic plants can help us to rise in strength, to recover health and to make our lives more comfortable. “We can enlighten our brain definitely; our central nervous system with essential oils, and become even more creative. I am 100% sure; I have noticed that in myself”.

What is the most important lesson that plants have taught you, I asked Dr. Hozzel, while the evening was going into the darkness of the night, and our conversation about cosmic life of plants was slowly coming to its end. “For me, it is a feeling that we are more united with Nature, the kingdom of plants, with the beauty, with the wonderful energies which are hiding behind and the discovery that they are a form of yoga themselves. They help us for transcending so many things. The feeling that nature is a lively field of existence, vibration, light, emotions, beauty, gratitude, love… For me, not in a religious way : when you look at the plants, when you stand in front of the plant or tree, when you look into a little plant in the field to take a photo, there is a moment when you feel breathless and just say: “Thank you”. It is like a prayer, but praying in a sense of admiration. How is it possible that such a thing exists? How much is there a probability that such a thing exists out of nothing, out of coincidental nothingness. I think it is not possible. And we as human beings want to know what is behind. Some people speak of God, of this or that. That research has made our western science – to understand what is behind the things. And the eastern science – what is behind me. When you touch or smell or look at the plant you see – oh, my goodness, there is really a lot behind”.