Landscapes vs. Sensations in Homeopathy

Up until now homeopaths have been using three ways of describing remedies: sensations (“symptoms”), themes and constitutional types. Paradoxically, none of these really work in Present Homeopathy, i.e. none of these really help to attain sensory perception of remedies:

You may open each of these items by pressing (+) and explore why they fail. Generally speaking there is day and night difference between practicing intellectual and perceptual Homeopathy.

Perceiving a Chronic Patient

If we want to move our practice from the head to the Heart and start practicing Homeopathy based on sensory perception rather than thinking we have to actually change the point of view and rebuild our methodology from a scratch.

It may seem like a worst nightmare for a classical homeopath, but imagine we get rid of the ideas regarding sensations, themes and constitutional types while taking a chronic case (they still work perfectly well for acute ones).

We simply welcome our patient with an open Heart (open perception, actually), we Listen and…

What do we perceive by senses?

Yes, exactly – nothing in particular – especially if patient comes in remission phase of a chronic disease. We open the door, say hello, offer a chair, maybe ask some introductory questions, etc.

But if we’ve been training our listening skills for a while we may notice that despite absence of these defined, vivid and peculiar sensations there is still something else emerging in our perception – some overall feel, some background that has not been here before, but has appeared with the patient. We may even say the patient has brought it into consultation room and into our perception as well.

It’s a faint, vague, foggy overall feel, it has very little or no details at all, no parts for our attention to cling on. It is like an undeveloped film or like a background out of which details are going to appear.

In chronic cases we usually start with a LANDSCAPE that represents totality without any parts exposed yet.

It is just the opposite situation to acute cases (like Yin is opposite to Yang) where parts (symptoms, sensations, manifestations) dominate and totality is kind of hidden. Understanding these differences is crucial for our homeopathic practice and especially for dealing with landscapes.

So we start a chronic case with a totality that is actually like a misty landscape: the Mist seems to hide the details, but nevertheless, we may recognize whether it is city, sea, forest or mountains – even if we can’t fully recognize and name these.

Classical homeopaths ignore the beauty of such landscapes somehow. They feel themselves extremely uncomfortable without vivid parts, they think details are missing here. So they try to transform a chronic case into acute one by hunting these details in the Mist.

Present Approach to Landscapes

Following these photos of misty landscapes I’ll try to explain present approach briefly. Imagine we find ourselves in one of these misty landscapes (yes, you are going to learn to experience at least several of these misty landscapes with each your patient).

1. We start with recognizing the landscape as totality without details.

We learn to recognize the landscapes of “forest”, “mountains”, “city” from a totality of these vague and hazy parts – without even trying to pick separate details, explore them, name them.

For example, we perceive the contours of buildings covered by the Mist and it becomes instantly clear it is the misty landscape of a city. It’s neither a forest nor a sea or mountains – that’s for sure.

• We do not analyze – we simply recognize by perceiving it. We take a look and instantly we know it’s a city. We bypass thinking here.
• We do not care about parts at all. We dot care about exploring the buildings in the city or naming the trees if it is the forest. We do not care about how these mountains look like. We simply recognize the totality of the landscape – as if it has no parts at all.

2. There is no need to recognize particular remedies in chronic cases.

We do not care about finding a simillimum in chronic cases anymore. How can we look for a similar remedy if we lack manifestations, parts?

Homeopaths use remedies for revealing the totality in acute cases. They think each remedy contains some totality or essence as they call it. But now in chronic cases we discover remedies are about parts. (And nevertheless both totalities and parts appear to belong to the patients and not to the remedies at all).

We get rid of that nasty habit of recognizing the remedies in our chronic patients. It’s not an acute case, details are hidden here and “recognizing a remedy” is often about our own projections that have very little to do with the patient. (Well, it still has: it is not a coincidence that this particular patient chooses that particular homeopath!)

Remedies have a very special task in our present approach to chronic diseases: they are going to guide us and to reveal the missing details for us instead of relieving symptoms like they do in acute cases.

We do not even think of prescribing in chronic cases! We are going to use remedies in a proving mode here. We will test and listen to sets of remedies and stop at the one that gives the deepest response. Again – it’s like visiting the art exhibition, walking there and spontaneously stopping at the item that catches our attention and immersing into experiencing it. That’s the most natural proving experience.

The question is about choosing “the right” exhibition to visit, i.e. choosing the remedy set that is similar to a landscape perceived. Technically speaking our only task is to narrow the choice of remedies for proving experiences somehow – usually to a specific set of remedies.

The right exhibition is the one that interests us the most. Similarly, for the remedy sets – we are guided by the present interest expressed in body reactions. Body shows no interest to the remedy sets that are not important. But it reacts like crazy when shown the right one (similar, important). Or maybe on the contrary – it sinks into deep stillness. We never know in advance.

3. We recognize the misty landscape as being similar to a particular set of remedies.

In Present Homeopathy when taking a chronic case we deal with numerous remedy sets instead of single remedies. That comes from a deep understanding of what our remedies are not (see the phases of perception).

If we learn how to listen to the remedies by senses (instead of thinking about them) we discover different remedy sets represent different totalities – little perceptual totalities. Look, each exhibition represents some kind of totality – but definitely not the Totality of Art as a whole.

In classical family/group analysis homeopaths extract symptoms/themes from a repertory thinking they represent totality of that family/group. But if we use our senses, if we listen – we discover just the opposite happens.

When remedies are put into one set as a totality, we can’t perceive any details anymore! We end up with each set of remedies representing some kind of a misty landscape that still has some overall feel but no separate sensations. I’m sorry, such totality can’t be described by words. Well, we can try to use words as pointers, but without an actual fee words make no sense at all.

Look, there is a huge overall sensational difference whether we are in the city or in the forest. They feel completely different. But if everything is covered by a dense Mist and we hardly see any details – it becomes almost impossible to describe that difference. It appears its not in details! Well, it sounds dumb, but words appear to be extremely limited for describing the totality of sensations.

4. We look for the remedy set that represents a similar overall feel/landscape/totality without any details.

We still don’t need to deal with parts here. Yin side has no parts, they are not-yet-manifested. So we learn to recognize the landscape we experience with a patient in the present moment. And it resembles some landscape belonging to a particular set of remedies.

We find a set of remedies that is the most similar to the landscape/ totality we perceive.

5. Remedies reveal the hidden details for us.

Imagine our remedies are like different sets of postcards (event if they aren’t). So when we recognize the misty landscape as a city – we naturally refer to a set of postcards that represent panoramas of different cities. But again:

• We do not compare these images (remedies) with the landscape we perceive: it’s neither our job nor competence to decide.
• We do not analyze anything.
• We do not think.
• We leave the remedy choice to the patient’s reactions, i.e. to the Present Interest which reflects the Totality and is far beyond our understanding.

We simply test (Yang) and listen (Yin): How that misty landscape of a patient responds? That landscape represents a perceptual space/totality of the present moment.

With a similar postcard (remedy) the whole city starts to emerge from the Mist instantly! Sometimes it’s more about a particular district. Sometimes it’s about the particular house.

We can never know in advance. This is just the opposite process to what homeopaths teach:

• It’s not intellectual: we do not analyze or understand something, It’s perceptual: we suddenly start perceiving what has been hidden. Sometimes these are kinds of sensations we’ve never experienced before. And that’s how our patients (who share their impressions) and remedies (we read them – sometimes together with a patient) become our greatest teachers.
• Here we do not select the remedy. We’re surprised by the remedy instead.
• Such experience is always different. In each patient’s world the same remedy behaves differently and it’s never going to reveal the same details. But again – it all corresponds with the true nature of our remedies.

Remember, we’ve been speaking about the most natural proving experiences that happen as we visit the exhibition of some works of art. Exposition reflects some totality, we walk through different items and stop at those that catch our attention and make the deepest impression to us. So here it is.

6. Perceiving the reaction

It happens in a instant. Those who are into testing usually think the reactions to the similar remedies are subtle and need time to manifest. Well, if you train your listening skills – they aren’t.

When we arrive to the right remedy – it leaves no doubts. If we doubt, we can’t decide which remedy leads us deeper and is more appropriate – usually it means we have to look into another set…

7. Revealing what has been hidden resolves the landscape

Attention becomes free, it is no longer attached to that hidden detail and everything starts to flow freely. The whole landscape becomes not important to the Present Interest anymore and kind of dissolves. We can’t perceive it anymore by senses.

Usually here a new landscape emerges and we contuinue our journey until we become one with Totality.

The Purpose of Landscapes

• They teach us to work on a not-yet-manifested Yin side that has no details (these are hidden) and therefore has not been accessible for classical symptomatic homeopathy.
• They teach us to perceive remedy sets as misty landscapes, i.e. as totalities with no details manifested yet.
• We learn to rely on our remedies showing us the parts. So we do not search for hidden parts ourselves anymore. We don’t even ask these numerous questions about this and that anymore. We learn to keep our attention on the totality all the time and then remedies do their job dealing with the parts.

These three aspects are enough to make landscapes the essential theme of homeopathic practice and studies. Especially considering the chronic cases prevail in our daily practice.

But these 3 aspects are just the beginning. What’s the most important is that

We learn to recognize the Mist as Totality

It may seem to be not as practical as remedy sets at first, but becoming aware of that Mist appears to be more than essential: not only to the process of healing, but also to revealing the mystery of Life itself.

We start perceiving the Mist everywhere. Each our experience appears to emerge out of that Mist and then disappear in it. Actually, we get used to become one with the Mist which is Alpha and Omega.

Eventually we recognize the Mist as the Self. Our search ends here and the true practice begins.

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Our Journey through Landscapes

We’ll start our journey with the practical side that is about recognizing the landscapes. Of course, these are not going to be forests, cities, seas and mountains that we are going to be dealing with.

Technically speaking landscape is nothing but a totality of hints of sensations. Or you may consider it to be a totality of sensations that are not yet fully manifested, i.e. they have not yet fully appeared out of the Mist.

We’ll start with recognizing the so-called bodies/levels and then we’ll proceed to a more homeopathic remedy sets.

Bodies/Levels as Landscapes

Perhaps the best introduction to landscapes are the so-called bodies/levels. They’re not particularly homeopathic yet, but they help us to explore some principles that are essential when dealing with landscapes. Eventually these bodies/levels will lead us to remedy sets.

Imagine the forest in the misty photo above is a physical body, the sea is an emotional body and the city is a mental body. So even if we still can’t perceive details because of the Mist, we learn to recognize the level/body that prevails:

• Physical (body sensations),
• Etheric (perceived as “energies”)
• Emotional/astral,
• Mental (a speaking mind),
• Causal (life events),
• Buddhi (the Heart or a silent mind perceived as different levels of calmness)
• Atmanic (consider it to be the very depth of our soul or being the closest to God)

This is thee classification I’ve been given by one of my teachers. But you may use the one that you are familiar with. By the way, many systems count seven bodies/levels. Please note, these 7 levels are not limited to a “person”, but also deal with the whole Universe we perceive, the whole perception of Life, actually.

The funny thing to begin with is to note that in Reality these levels do not exist. Or we may say ideally they all exist as One. That’s the Health that we seek and hopefully arrive towards the end of consultation. If that happens, we can’t perceive any separate levels by senses then – no matter how hard we try. Everything becomes perfectly balanced.

Rationally such Oneness makes very little sense. “How can these levels disappear?” – you may ask. Well, everything becomes as it is with no parts “protruding”. Consciousness which experiences these “levels” becomes not attached to any of these, and returns Home to Self, to Health. When Consciousness returns to Self, everything becomes One and no parts can be found.

But when a patient comes in a diseased state, it’s just the opposite – we can’t find the Totality/Oneness. Something dominates the perception and kind of prevents being One.

• In acute case it can be pain that steals the attention and prevents the patient from Health. The beauty of homeopathic approach is in paying attention to the pain instead of trying to get rid of it. We use a similar remedy for that. With a proper remedy (attention, actually) patient’s attachment with that pain is resolved and we return to the Totality if only the patient does not cling to something else afterwards. If he does – we address that “something else” with another remedy. And continue that until Totality stops our journey.
• In case of a chronic state (it’s especially evident in a remission phase) – sensations may be almost absent, but there is still something hidden that steals the attention and prevents Health. We can’t perceive that cause clearly as it’s hidden in the Mist.

Imagine, in case of a disease (be it acute or chronic) some schism of Totality occurs and It breaks into pieces. Of course, in no way you can break the Totality, It’s always here, always clear.

Actually, disease creeps in like an illusion, like a distortion of that Ultimate Reality.

Imagine a mirror gets broken and we are left with 7 major pieces/bodies/levels that reflect the world in a different manner each.

It may sound weird, but in a diseased state we can’t perceive more more than one body/ level at a time.

Of course, we think we can. Thinking is the disease No. 1, actually. Thinking is about mental body/level domineering – so that we don’t even need to perceive. Here it is enough for us to think we perceive.

But if step out of that mental level and we dive into a simple perception we discover each body/level appears to have it’s own landscape, it’s own set of sensations.

These sets of sensations do not blend together.

Imagine these are different theatrical performances with a radically different scenographies and costumes happening on different stages. There is no way we can watch them simultaneously. And also actors and props from one performance can’t be implanted into another – they belong to separate totalities that do not blend!

Or these may be seen as different TV channels: while we may switch between them pretty quickly, we can’t watch more than one at a moment. And again, mixing history channel with sports and fashion may be a little weird.

For example, thoughts are very different beasts compare to physical sensations and to life situations. You can’t think and be aware of body sensations simultaneously, can you? Please, sit and try it for a while – it’s a very simple and funny experiment.

Again, when you think, that seems pretty easy. But when you get out of the box (head) and you really perceive what’s happening (it’s Heart) – you find your attention is either on body sensations or on thoughts. It’s never on both simultaneously.

You know, even the location of these bodies/levels seems to be different:

• Physical sensations seem to happen in our body.
• Energies that we may experience do not fit physical body and often go against our understanding of anatomy (nerves, etc.). So we speak of aura or etheric body that have different shapes and their own subtle anatomy: meridians, chakras, etc. Again, this subtle anatomy differes from system to system, e.g. Chinese meridians differ from Tibetan ones quite significantly. There are reasons for that, but we’ll not get into this now.
• Emotions definitely belong to the world of their own, don’t they? Each of us seems to know how they feel. Really???
• Thoughts appear to be happening in our minds (mental body). Somehow we do not feel them in our physical bodies and they do not feel like happening “outside”, e.g. in the sky. Where are our thoughts located? An awesome exercise would be to sit and watch: where do they happen? They do not seem to be happening in our heads, do they?
• Situations we encounter are interrelated with other levels/bodies, but do not belong to any of these in particular. They actually belong to Life itself. Calling it causal body may seem pretty weird at first, but later you’ll get to the point of what it means.
• Levels of Calmness (Buddhi or the Heart) feel almost the opposite to usual sensations, emotions, thoughts and activities we encounter and clearly seem to belong to a separate realm.
• Our deepest transcendental experiences (all these states of Samadhi) are so extraordinary they deserve a special level. Why can’t we call the landscape they emerge in “Atmanic“? Please note, they still belong to the world of manifestations/phenomena (even if they are pretty subtle). Their relationship to the Totality is the same as of seemingly simple physical body sensations though.

All these experiences when observed separately seem to belong to separate realities/ bodies/ levels/ landscapes. When we get interested in exploring one of these in detail, we forget the Totality and we tune our attention to that particular landscape. Such process itself is very much alike tuning to a particular radio station. We can’t listen to more than one radio station at a time. Here are several examples:

• When we listen to our body sensations with all the attention, we can’t think – our mental body/level is out of reach for that moment.
• Vice versa applies here: when we are absorbed into intense thinking, we loose the feel of body sensations.
• If a strong emotion dominates, we loose the ability to listen to body and also to think logically. But if we manage to return our attention back to physical body, e.g. by concentrating on breathing – emotions calm down pretty quickly.
• If we concentrate on a causal level, i.e. on life situation unfolding here and now, we do not perceive emotions or thoughts as being separate.
• If we find ourselves in a deeper levels of calmness, everything (the “outer” world including) becomes calm.
• If we get into Samadhi… Well, get there yourself so you may tell what’s there in your own words.

We may also explore the interrelationships between different bodies/levels – and that may become a very exciting “theoretical” study of a human totality. But we’ll leave that to future.

We’ll stick to practice instead. You know, bodies/levels are almost a perfect tool for everyday practice. You don’t even need remedies. Also, that does not cost you money. You just start observing and classifying your everyday experiences.

Bodies/Levels in practice

Ideally, when we wait for a patient, we should wait in Totality, Oneness. When we welcome a patient into our consultation room with a total openness, a strange thing happens. It appears it’s not a patient who comes to us. It’s we who become guests in a patient’s world as our perceptions synchronize.

[Synchronization is a skill of its own, but it is so natural it makes no sense to write about it. It would be as if I try to write about how to breath. Your body knows how to breathe. You know how to synchronize. Only someone has to show you that.]

So even if we’ve been waiting in Oneness, suddenly (or maybe gradually) we find ourselves in a scattered world of a patient.

How do we know it is scattered? Well, parts start to appear and dominate the Totality. Attention becomes fixed on these rather than being free/ dissolved in Totality.

• In acute case if a patient comes with, e.g., fever or fear – we deal with these in one way or another (Yang is active). We rarely perceive landscapes in acute situations – parts are too intense, they prevail and catch attention easily.
• But in chronic case (especially in its remission phase) fevers and fears are hidden in that Mist (Yin). So neither our patients nor we ourselves are aware of these. We perceive almost no parts, just a misty landscape. We can’t deal what we do not perceive.

In chronic cases hidden fevers become “miasms“. The latter is a much bigger theme than three or four classical ones. For example, in my country borreliosis (Lyme’s disease) is quite common. It hides, mimicking other disease: arthritis, neurological disorders, etc.

So if we find ourselves in the landscape of infections, we may test a set of nosodes and find out Lyme’s nosode to be a postcard that helps to identify the city. Our patient reacts to such a remedy instantaneously, in a fraction of a second – and landscapes gets resolved. We may also use different potencies to understand the depth of a lesion better. Of course, we may look at good old Syphylinum that stands for a similar neuroinfection. But why not to be more precise and use Lyme’s nosode instead?

Why not to use these huge sets of nosodes the old EAV (electro-accupuncture according to R. Voll) practitioners have been using for more than half a century? Why not to look at hidden local infections: teeth, sinuses, etc.? Why not to use Bach’s and Paterson’s bowel nosodes as well as modern ones? If we test and listen – all these nosodes have a potential to reveal something that is hidden in the landscape of infections.

But nosodes do not apply to the landscape of emotions. If fear is all that prevails, the present interest stays in the landscape of emotions. We may still get a reaction to a nosode – but it will be pale, almost negligible and we’ll have trouble in recognizing it clearly.

Emotional body/level is tricky. In chronic cases hidden fears translate into the patterns of body reactions, behavioral habits and situations we get involved into. But fears themselves remain hidden, they are masked and almost never expressed as fears. Fears that are locked inside are transformed into symptoms and find expression as illness. The symptoms patient complaints of do not resemble these fears at all.

Classical homeopaths encourage us to address these symptoms nevertheless. And that’s a pretty good advice… if only these symptoms are present!

In present Homeopathy we deal only with what is present, i.e. experienced right now. Present interest is all that matters. It’s so ultimately simple:

• If we experience, e.g. headache now, we address it with the similar remedy and in some minutes it’s gone. What is left? We’ll see.
• If there is no headache experienced right now we do not pay any attention to it – even if it has tormented our patient for several days before the consultation. We do not try to address something that’s not here and now. Why should we?

In both instances the landscape is the answer. When a headache is gone, some translocation (switch to another body/level) happens and, e.g., we may notice a vague feel of an emotional landscape that stands behind this migraine. It indicates that there is some attachment present in emotions that prevents Life to flow easily. We still have no idea of the exact emotion hidden there – we just experience some vague feel of emotional background/landscape.

We do not need to be precise (Yang). Landscape has to be misty and vague. That haziness is in its nature (Yin). Landscape narrows the choice of remedies immensely leaving us with 1-2 sets for testing.

Precision comes with remedies as they literally reveal the details:

• Perceptually: remedy provokes the patient’s reactions and something that has been hidden for so long comes to a surface and manifests
• Intellectually: we read the remedy description and find hints that help us to understand what’s been hidden.

Perceiving landscapes is a much more beginner friendly practice than trying to perceive some exact hidden details (fevers, fears, etc.).

To say the truth, even with some 20 years of practice I still can’t recognize particular hidden details while sitting with the patient, e.g., I can’t say “I see, you have that particular fear/ mortification/ anger towards this or that”. I don’t even try to.

These emotions feel so different in each person’s world: their shapes, shades, tints, locations are so different and so unique there is no way we can learn to recognize them while they’re still hidden.

But as homeopaths we do not have to recognize them and we do not have to drag them out of the Mist. We are not therapists after all. We have our remedies. And remedies do all that job for us. And each time it happens in an unique way. All that we do is simply witnessing the whole process with a great surprise.

The only job for beginners in treating chronic case is to recognize the landscape as belonging to a certain body/level. Believe me – it is much easier to recognize that vague “emotional level/body/ landscape” than to guess what particular emotion is hiding there.

These hidden things – they are truly unique. If it’s a fear – you definitely have never experienced such fear before and you are never going to experience it in future.

You know, in our present practice we experience fears of a patient as if they are our own while sitting with him/her during a consultation. Each time it’s a unique fearful experience.

Imagine you experience 100 fears with your patients: each being different, belonging to a world that is very different from yours, having its own unique sensations, roots/causes, etc. It’s not a metaphor, it’s how that really feels.

Imagine these 100 fears appear to be like 100 horror movies from different studios, directors, etc. They have something in common, but they are also extremely different. I mean these are really good horror films we’re talking about: masterpieces and not clichés or cheap remakes. Life never makes clichés.

In my daily practice that gives me a very clear understanding that “I do not know how a fear looks like“. Having an experience of these 100 horror movies being so diverse, I know that 101^st movie is also going to be different. So I don’t even try to look for fears in my patients anymore. I know that I don’t know.

And “fears” are just an example. Eventually I arrive at a deep understanding that I don’t know anything on a perceptual level. I may have some theoretical knowledge, I may have tons of previous experiences, but I know that this time it’s going to feel different. So I do not hold onto some perceptual patterns anymore.

Landscapes introduce us to the Yin side which is about not knowing.

On the other hand, knowledge comes as remedies lead me through worlds of my patients showing me these unique details (bringing them out of a Mist as manifestations of Yang). Each time when that happens I know it’s once in a lifetime experience.

During my homeopathic career I’ve traveled multiple Universes (each patient appears to be such) with quite a limited arsenal of remedies: maybe some 500 ones I use each day. But in every new Universe these remedies take different forms: sensations are different, reading the same remedy and manufacturing it are completely different experiences.

Never mind, we’ll get to remedies soon. Meanwhile when staying with these bodies/levels we can notice several aspects about the landscapes.

I. We can’t travel through landscapes intentionally. We have no control here at all.

In chronic cases attention seems to naturally getting attached to some misty landscape rather than particular details that remain hidden.

So if a patient has something hidden in emotional landscape – at some point (maybe after addressing his physical complaint with a small or formula remedy) we find ourselves in his emotional body. Following that present interest our perception gets automatically tuned/ fixed to this level, so everything else becomes distant if not absent.

Again it’s not that we look at emotional landscape intentionally. We can’t, because

• We learn not to know where to look. We can never know in advance. It doesn’t have to be emotional landscape, it can be whatever it is. We just surrender and follow the present interest.
• Eventually we realize we don’t know how to concentrate attention on a part be it emotional landscape or whatever. That may seem weird until you find the truth about Attention. Here is a hint: observe the very process of yourself concentrating on something. What do you do for it to happen? How do you compress your attention to something particular? What algorithms do you proceed to concentrate on this text or on the view through a window? Or maybe these… happen spontaneously???

I must admit, I can’t look/test/listen to anything: be it physical or emotional landscapes or something else. I simply don’t know how to do it. Totality is doing that for me.

We may think “we know” and we may visualize “we’re tuning to patient’s emotions”, we can elaborate some rituals to get there – and that’s going to be a fake experience, just a play of imagination, actually.

True perception is all about listening with our Hearts completely open, i.e. without knowing. Then suddenly or gradually our perception changes and we recognize we’re in one of these landscapes. We can’t choose them, we simply recognize.

It’s like waking up in the morning. We always wake up into some kind of landscape: our bedroom, hotel room, at friends or parents house, etc. We wake up and recognize the landscape. There is no way we can choose it!

In our practice we sit down with our patient and recognize whether it is physical body, emotion, mental structures, life situations, etc. Then with a right remedy that landscape get resolved and disappears from our perception. Then a new landscape appears to be recognized and resolved.

Usually we travel through 3 landscapes in one consultation:

1. physical body revealed by non-symptomatic remedies
2. the cause of an illness: usually suppressed emotion or situation
3. the healthy side of disease represented by one of the levels of stillness

Then the Totality/Health takes over and transmutes what needs to be transmuted. We may need a third (grounding) remedy though to reach a perfectly natural ballance.

All these landscapes and shifts (translocations) between them happen spontaneously. Nobody is asking our own opinion here. We just listen and adapt. You know, all the process of consultation is like driving a car at a high speed through a narrow unknown tortuous road. We concentrate on our perception on the very process of driving and we have no time to think. We simply listen and react to the road, car, everything. And that’s all.

But we are not alone in that car. The patient sits beside us. And its his/her car that we drive. The road and actually the whole world belongs to our patient. We’ve never met a Universe like that before. It may happen that here even the laws of physics are different from what we are used to.

So again, thinking, analyzing, i.e. comparing with what we know is not going to help us here. Details are different here!

If we see some details resemble our own world – we should become suspicious. Probably, we are stuck in our own mental level and our mind is playing tricks with us projecting our ideas onto the patient’s world. Normally everything has to be fresh and new to us.

Having a patient besides is of much help. We never work alone. All the time we remain synchronized with the patient. So it’s never our own perception.

Patient’s perception of what’s happening should be exactly the same. Or almost the same.

That’s why we talk during consultation: we ask questions, we share our experiences. With each patient these are different. But we also learn to express them in different words – using the language of the patient. So with each patient we build the new vocabulary adapted to jis/her world and understanding. And sometimes we find words and phrases we’ve never used before.

When synchronized and not controlled by mind – talking with patient becomes spontaneous. It surprises ourselves as we spontaneously start using different communication styles with each patient adapting to his present situation. It also surprises our patients as they start to think we read their minds and senses.

Patients become our greatest teachers there. They are our companions, guides and teachers in that journey. It’s their own world after all! They know it better.

Everything we know about our worlds does not apply to our patients – except the Totality which appears to be the same everywhere!

So every time something changes in perception (and believe me, that happens dozens of times during each consultation and these are pretty radical changes by the way), we may ask the patient what has changed and get the precise answer.

For example, in case of that “hidden fear” we may find that:

• Body sensations seem not to exist anymore: it is almost impossible to feel physical body.
• Mind is more or less silent, at least it is “not interesting”.
• We can’t say anything about levels of calmness either.
• All we perceive is the landscape of Emotional body which is almost impossible to be described by words, but nevertheless has the distinct feel of emotional body.

The actual perception appears to be very different from what we think it should be.

We can’t control the perception/attention. It just happens by itself. It sticks somewhere. Or maybe it floats freely. It is spontaneous.

(We can never perceive the Self though – just the perception.)

We might think in case of “scattered reality” we see the whole Mirror broken to pieces. We think with some trained sensitivity we should perceive body, energies, emotions, thoughts, situations and maybe even calmness altogether. We think we can explore their interrelationships.

Jan Scholten in his foreword to “Secret Lanthanides” hopes symptomatology evolves to such a degree we can recreate other levels by exploring one.

I’m sorry to say, but that’s never going to happen. These are all ideas and that “limits us to our heads”, to a single mental level that has the ability to simulate sensations from other levels/bodies: so we don’t have to experience these for real, we are content of thinking about them.

And if we manage to move out of head, we find out the real world (the Heart, the perception) is very strange. It doesn’t matter how dumb it sounds – but we have to return to an analogy with a single radio station. In no way we can perceive all these scattered segments simultaneously.

While observing we may perceive one body/ level/ landscape at a moment.

When the patient comes in a diseased state (scattered Totality) one of these bodies/levels/ landscapes dominates the perception – even if it is a remission phase and no particular sensations are present. To perceive it we have to Listen. Thinking, analyzing are of no help at all here.

When we address a particular level with a remedy, the landscape gets resolved, the details appear out of the Mist. That results not in “seeing the whole picture” as you may expect, but it frees the Attention from attachment on this level.

It might lead to Freedom, but usually another level/landscape emerges marking the next attachment of Attention.

Our consultation process appears to be series of such translocations, i.e. changing the levels. We are lead by a present interest deeper and deeper (from the physical body to the deepest levels of calmness) until we are stopped by the Totality.

The dominating body/ level/ landscape shows the direction of a present interest* that leads to Health/Totality.

* – present interest is what we perceive now. It is the most boring thing for our active minds. You know, mind likes to set a goal (e.g. simillimum) to reach in the future. We seek something: some important symptom, cause of disease, “essence”, whatever. What’s happening now seems insignificant, so we try to skip to and to move to something that is more important. Welcoming our patient at the doors of a consultation room seems not as important as arriving to a mythical simillimum, doesn’t it?

But when we learn to TRUST the process of Life – we give up and we devote ourselves to a present interest completely. We stop. We have a deep understanding we’re NOW provided with everything we need. So we just listen in a present moment, we do not move out of it at all.

Bodies/Levels Represented by Remedy Sets

Once my colleague asked me how I know what remedy sets to test and listen to.

At first I’ve been taught to recognize landscapes as certain bodies/levels. Even today I consider that to be a great starting point for a beginner.

Here we look for the most similar set of remedies that could help to clear the mist from a landscape and unlock, reveal the hidden sensations – not only locally, but the whole landscape

Here each level is represented by at least several sets of remedies:

• If physical body dominated, we look for “physical” remedies: formulas and nosodes including (again, each set, each remedy creator and manufacturer has a unique landscape – so we look for the one that’s the most similar).
• If it is about emotional level, we referr to Bach flowers, Roy Martina’s Flowerplexes, huge variety of modern flower essences, etc. Again, each of these represent a particular landscape.
• Mental level is usually more about mineral remedies – crystal essences including.
• Causal level can be bit trickier, but A.E. Kudaev had made several amazing sets for that. Also, I feel I could enjoy Jan Scholtens periodic table work with each period standing for some kind of life landscape (youth, worker, ruler, magician).
• Buddhi, or Levels of Calmness being opposite to sensations are rarely accessed with classical homeopathic remedies. They usually require something else: places of power, relics, maybe quitessences by Aura Soma or some other so-called relatively positive remedies.

So in practice it may happen that patient comes, sits and talks about his/her physical complaints. But if it feels like a landscape of emotional body/level, i.e. we do not feel physical sensations the patient is talking about, but we feel the misty emotional landscape instead – even if we still can’t define the emotion that’s hidden in that Mist.

So we move to, e.g., Bach flower remedies, we test them one by one, we listen to how that landscape responds to each flower essence. With one of the remedies the whole picture suddenly comes out of that Mist – the patient starts to re-experience that emotion to a full extent.

It’s no joke when you get tears running out of nowhere or face the panic attack without any apparent cause! Then we both read the remedy description and it serves as a hint for understanding what’s going on and how to cope with that. Remedies are huge helpers here.

And then we see what is left: usually we translocate to another landscape. e.g. one of the levels of calmness that stands for Health, showing the positive side of disease, leading to the transformation.

I know, my classical homeopathic colleagues would be disappointed. They think about Homeopathy being a holistic approach, they look for totality and here we are talking about travelling through some misty separate bodies/levels/landscapes. But that’s the whole point of talking about levels:

• In a diseased state separate bodies/levels are all we perceive
• We move through these until we get to a point we’ve started at, but as if from the other side – the circle closes
• At that time the Healing happens (and it happens by itself, it’s never a product of ours) – levels disappear and Totality prevails. There is nowhere to move and the consultation is over. Except maybe we still need some grounding/ rebalancing remedy to get to a perfectly natural state.

Bodies/levels are very exciting to explore. Observing, perceiving them live leads to an exceptionally deep understanding of interrelationships between them, i.e. deep understanding of overall human structure and nature, even understanding of how Life works and how the Reality is being created in real time.

And yes, levels may be an amazingly good example of landscapes.

But nevertheless, as homeopaths we eventually find that working through these bodies/levels is something too much here. Little by little we gravitate to remedy sets that appear to be similar keys to the landscapes we perceive.

Remedy Sets as Landcapes

Remedy sets are what represents different landscapes we perceive while sitting with the patient. In a misty landscape a particular mono remedy makes no sense at all. There are no sensations yet – so we have nothing to start with! But such a lack of sensations is exactly what defines a remedy set!!!

Each set of remedies is perceived like a misty landscape, i.e. like a totality without parts.

Imagine our remedies are like transparent slides. So when you put a group of them into a pile and look through them into light all you see is blurriness. Such a blurriness makes no sense to intellectually minded homeopaths. It can’t be described, it can’t be written down and put into repertories. Words are useless here except if we use them as pointer to real experience happening here and now.

Imagine these are several sets of slides, each representing works of a different painter. Each set taken as a whole results in blurriness that differs from set to set. Or perhaps we could say that blurriness is the same, but textures and colours are different. Sometimes they are strikingly different.

So if you compare the blurriness of different sets of stylistically similar remedies (belonging to the same creator, manufacturer, kingdom, family, group, period, whatever) – they differ and sometimes greatly. Isn’t it surprising: no details, just a haze/fog/mist/blurriness, but still strikingly different from set to set!

For example, a set of nosodes has a very different landscape from a set of Bach flower remedies. Sensory perception of these sets is strikingly different – even for beginners. We do lots of such experiments during seminars. My colleagues find it very exciting they can easily differentiate these remedies by senses!

And yet, when asked to define that difference in landscapes (sorry these are too blurry to call them sensations!) it is pretty hard to find words. That’s even for me – despite trying to do that for more than 15 years in an almost maniacal manner.

And even if we take nosodes alone – there are many different sets made by different manufacturers using different sources (both material and non-material), techniques, potency scales, philosophies, etc. All that results in different landscapes of these sets perceived. For beginners these differences do not seem huge, but as our listening skills increase, these differences become more than significant.

And peculiarly these differences appear to belong to a totality. That’s not local differences by any means. No matter what remedy sets we explore, blurriness appears to be not a local phenomenon. It’s not just here and there, it’s overall blurriness and overall difference. If we remember the analogy with the set of transparent slides – blurriness/difference refers to the whole picture. It is definitely not limited to a right upper corner!

Ideally, a full set of remedies covers a certain totality that has nothing to do with parts/locations.

For example, the set of pomanders (Aura Soma) I use daily covers 15 colours from red to violet – white, pink and magenta including. Unless we discover a new colour never known to humanity before – it’s a perfect example of totality. Well, not the Totality, but a partial totality, that covers all the visual spectrum. It is still very limited when compared to Whole, but nevertheless a totality.

We may still add some new tones (16th and 17th bottles) like they’ve done lately, we can add dozens of nuances of colours, actually – but peculiarly these additions do not affect this “totality of colours” at all.

In practice that means we start welcoming the diversity of remedies. We are not afraid of adding new remedies.

Well, you may think that the whole set (all the bottles added together) should translate to a white colour according to optical science. Rainbow translates to white colour, doesn’t it?

But we speak about sensory perception here. Mixing sensations of these 15 or 17 colours results not in a “white sensation” (by the way, the first bottle in this is White, called “Original”), but merges sensations of each colour into a perfect blurriness.

Look, each colour has its aspects. Each colour may be described similarly to a homeopathic remedy: with its peculiar sensations, locations, emotions, mentality, even constitutional type, etc. But when we mix all these different colours together:

• Their individual qualities merge into “blurriness“. Each colour of the rainbow has completely different qualities. When mixed together theses qualities do not overlap, we do not get any peaks, they kind of fill the gaps and we get a muddy, kind of washed out picture. Speaking in radio technical slang they form a white noise that has no particular properties.
• On the other hand, something that is common to each of 15 colours gets summed and therefore kind of amplified. What is common to each colour? Definitely, it has nothing to do with these peculiar sensations, locations, emotions, mentalities, constitutions, etc. – these are all different! Well, the answer might be “being a colour”. I know that sounds weird. But it results in a “landscape of colours” that is an overall feel of colours – very recognizable by senses and shareable even if it has not a single sensation, location, mentality, constitution of its own.

We talk about pomanders, because colours are a good example of a landscape. But again, as with nosodes we eventually discover there are different approaches to colours. The founder of Aura Soma Vicky Wall alone made different sets of colourful essences. For example, her quitessences (the pale colours) result in a landscape that’s very different from bright, vivid pomanders. So even having a pretty good feel of the latter it took me almost two years to start recognizing quintessences – so different they are.

Each quintessence is called by the name of one of the spiritual Teachers of humanity. For example, The Red stands for the Christ and peculiarly is the most grounding of all set. V. Wall considered quintessences to be used “for prayer and meditation”.

Eventually the “landscape of colours” we’ve been talking recently appears to be way more diverse than we could imagine, covering almost every aspect of our lives.

Anyway, in Aura Soma alone they have at least 4 different landscapes of colours: pomanders, quintessences, equilibriums, tinctures. And by no means these colourful lansdscapes end up with Aura Soma. They are… well, infinite.

Actually, the same principles apply to every set of remedies ever created.

By the way, the same principle applies to making so called “summed remedies”. For example, summed nosodes or organ remedies are made from samples taken from at least 50 individuals. In the process of summing individual information becomes washed out, and what is common is amplified. The remedies we get by using such technique are pretty amazing. We use summed umbilical cord, placenta, amniotic fluid, kidney stones, etc. They are very very different remedies from the ones made without summing technique. They are experienced very differently! They may even enable us to glimpse into the individual causes of disease.

You may notice some similarity between remedy sets and family/group analysis that lately has been quite trendy among homeopaths. But here is the difference: classical families/groups usually have pretty defined themes and sometimes contain particular symptoms that are extracted from repertories.

Classical homeopaths rely on Yang approach and naturally they try to make a pretty clear definitions of these families/groups. Again, that might have some benefit in treating acute cases on an intellectual level.

But practicing on the Yin side and relying on senses/recognition we deal with real landscapes that are almost opposite to sensations. I’m sorry, on a sensory level they are so hazy, you can’t put them into words!

Please, check the article on Sensory perception of remedy sets. It’s very important one.

Homeopaths speak and think about Totality a lot. But in classical practice a transition from parts to Totality appears to be almost impossible for at least two reasons:

It is impossible intellectually. Jan Scholten is foreword to “Secrets Lanthanides” hopes that symptomatology will figure out the links between different levels. I’m sorry, in no way that may happen. It simply does not work that way.

On a perceptual side that is not going to happen either. It’s because our local/human perception works through these little totalities: bodies/ levels, remedy sets, landscapes. We can’t perceive details belonging to separate realms and then merge them into one Totality we experience. That’s technically impossible!

But we may explore different landscapes perceptually. And in our homeopathic practice that becomes available through revealing properties of our remedies. So we have these “proving experiences” together with our patients, we resolve these landscapes, we move, travel through these into levels of Calmness until our journey ends in Totality.

We can’t perceive the Totality. We can’t reach it no metter what kind of magic we use. Again, it’s technically impossible. My Teacher once told me: “A drop can never understand the Ocean.”

But we may become the Totality by dissolving in It. It is the Totality that comes, meets us and dissolves us. James Jealous calls it the Tide. It is mystical, because it is all about Oneness. We can’t survive as practitioners here. Practitioner dies here, but Listening remains.

It’s because the link between parts and Totality is missing.

Bodies/levels and remedy sets introduce us into work with

Practicing in Landscapes

Anyway, all our talk seems to confuse my homeopathic colleagues. Landscapes that contain no defined sensations? Remedy sets? How does all that make sense?

Well, don’t forget we are speaking about practicing on the Yin side while dealing with chronic cases. Methodology here has to be just the opposite to classical one that has been elaborated 200 years ago for dealing with acute diseases.

1. We start with misty landscapes (Yin) rather than defined sensations (Yang).
2. We look for the remedy sets that have no sensations, just the landscape (Yin) as particular remedies with defined sensations (Yang) make no sense here.
3. Then we test/listen to the remedies from that set one by one – up until we find one that resolves the landscape in seconds by revealing what has been hidden (Yin becomes Yang).
4. When we have found the hidden cause and the sensory perception of a patient has changed radically, we may address it further with similar remedies if needed – up until all that is left is Totality.

Testing/listening to the remedies is completely misunderstood in homeopathic community though:

• yes, testing is mechanical Yang – it is for learning and also for a convenience as it calms down the mind and makes consulting a lot easier. Also, testing complete sets (like that of pomanders) is about keeping in touch with totality constantly.
• listening stands for Yin – it is inner, passive. When it becomes Listening it transforms testing into a deepest spiritual practice you can imagine. It’s not only about Totality being perceived, but it is also about discovering that Listening is happening out of that Totality, it is not personal at all.
• We also never listen “for remedies”, but what else can I say about the practice? We start with listening to ourselves, then our colleagues and then eventually patients. Then little by little we discover that patients aren’t separate from Life, so we start to perceive just Life itself reacting to the remedies. (It’s a little strange to perceive the liveliness of the whole Universe reacting and not individual patient in front of you, isn’t it?) But then as we look for a source of that Life, we eventually arrive to Self which does not belong to the world of manifestations and therefore never reacts to anything. The circle closes and talking and writing about practice makes no sense anymore. That’s exactly why I’m doing it!

Writing about landscapes has been quite a challenge.

My teachers taught me how to sense, they showed me techniques and introduced me to various sets of remedies. Then they’ve been pointing to what I am doing too much, what is extra and should be get rid off.

Up until now homeopaths saw no point in that haziness. So they tried to do their best at using various non-homeopathic techniques.

When a mind meets something unknown, it tries to draw the missing parts relying on experience previous experience. When we meet a patient we try to refer to prervious cases.

But there is something even more important than techniques. It is our relationship with the Mist itself.

The Mist

• Are you aware of that Mist?
• Is that awareness constant or fragmentary?
• Is that awareness limited to a professional field or does it extend into your everyday life?

• How much do you understand about Life?
• Do you know who you really are?
• Where have you come from?
• Where are you going?
• What do you know about patients and remedies?
• What do you know about Homeopathy as a whole?
• What about everyday things happening?

If we know the answers, if we feel confident and we seem to be in control of things happening in our lives – it means we are completely unaware of that Mist and our True Nature.

If we want to get in touch with the Totality, to experience It at full extent without any compromises and also to find our Self and true Healing (these are all synonyms) – the path leads through accepting our ignorance and limits. There is no other way.

The whole essence of Present Homeopathy is about practicing while relying on that flow of “the Holy River of Life” that knows the direction (what and when has to be healed). We certainly do not.

We might say the Mist (which is also a synonym for that Holy River of Life) is highly intelligent. We might even say it is absolutely magical. But actually, it has not a single attribute, no features at all, it cannot be attained by any kind of perception as it feels like… nothing! It’s not even “nothing”, by the way: “nothing” itself appears out of that Mist just as everything else.

When we feel and perceive nothing (like in deep sleep without any dreams) – it’s 100% Mist. When a patient comes to us and we know nothing about him/her, we have no preconceptions and almost no details, no sensations to cling onto – that Mist (i.e. Nothing) dominates. “Not knowing” is the most natural state to meet a patient. What about staying in it throughout all the process of consultation?

The Mist is always here. It has no beginning and no end. If something appears, it appears out of that Mist. If something disappears, it disappears into that Mist.

They call it the Great Emptiness in Buddhist tradition. Everything takes existence from that Emptiness and disappears into It eventually. Perception itself emanates from It. The whole Universe emerges with that perception.

We may call it Consciousness from a capital C. Consciousness itself is radically different from objects/sensations that appear in it. Experiences appear in Consciousness and disappear in it – just like our dreams do. Consciousness remains untouched: it’s like a huge mirror that reflects the dynamics of Life. Mirror always remains clear. Awareness of that fact changes our relationship with practice radically.