Seven levels of experience
If we want to experience more space around our patterns, have a bit more freedom from them then it’s not enough just to analyse our experiences, to explain them or find the causes for them. Of course it’s important to be able to do this – to understand, explain, find causes. It’s important and helpful to get in touch with how we feel about things. It’s important to be able to see ourselves and our reactions in the context of the past, of what’s happened in our personal and ancestral history. All this is of vital importance. But we wont make real headway with the energy of our patterns until we can really feel them, really sense them down to the deepest level. This happens when we can go beyond thoughts and feelings and explanations. If we can do this, things begin to release. The nearer we can get to a direct experience of our reactive patterns the better.
For this it’s helpful to understand the levels of your experience. It’s helpful to see what is more superficial and to see what’s secondary to your basic experience. This understanding can allow you to sense and identify your more fundamental experience, your primary experience. It can help you to know what’s most basic. I’m going to introduce a simple map here to try and make all this a bit clearer. The map is called the Seven Levels of Experience. It can help you get a handle on your experience. Is it a primary experience or a secondary experience? Is your experience coming from a more conscious and accessible level or is it rather more unconscious and inaccessible? Let’s see if we can make a bit more sense of all this.
The Seven Levels of Experience
1. Name
2. Fact, explanation and concept
3. Feelings and emotion
4. Imagination, dreams and delusions
5. Vital sensation or experience
6. Movement
7. The space/witness/audience
This map is based on the one devised by Dr. Rajan Sankaran to help both homeopathic practitioners and patients in a clinical situation. It helps practitioner and patient to navigate from the patient’s more surface descriptions of their symptoms and conditions to a deeper experience of something much more fundamental and primary, something we call the vital sensation or vital experience. Although the map was devised for use in a clinical situation it’s actually just as applicable in any life situation.
Level one, name, is just that, the name of the condition, say pneumonia or psychosis. Or if we’re looking at a life situation, it could be the name or label for that situation, work or marriage for example.
Once you’ve named it then it’s natural to start describing details, circumstances and so on. That’s level two, fact. If it’s a medical condition then that means saying more about where it is, what makes it better or worse, what caused it and so on. Same with a life situation – how it came about. Also the ideas and thoughts you have about it. Concepts and theories can come in here. If you’re talking about your health then level two would also include descriptions of local sensations – I have a headache that’s thumping; I have stiffness in this joint. These last are local sensations and experiences and hence belong to the fact level. They’re not a description of experiences or sensations that are sensed in the whole being. This is an important distinction which I’ll say more about below.
What about level three, the level of feelings? Most people when describing the facts of their health or life situation, will sooner or later start to describe feelings and emotions. You have a feeling reaction to a specific problem or life situation. You like it or dislike it. It makes you happy, sad, angry. It gives you a feeling of loss or grief, or you feel hope.
Everyone can describe name and fact, and most people can say things about their feelings (although some people are naturally feeling types and others find it more difficult to express feelings). In other words the feeling level is fairly accessible to most people, even though feelings are often at least partly unconscious. This is especially so when feelings and the energy of feelings have been repressed in the past.
Of course when people talk about themselves it doesn’t all unfold in a linear as our map might suggest. People jump around, go in circles and spirals as they move, with the practitioners help, from the more surface, more easily accessible levels of what they know to the deeper more vital and more unknown (and intrinsically hard to know)levels of their experience. But the deeper levels of experience are always there, especially if you know what to look out for. They poke through from the deeper layers of your psyche into your everyday conversation and often into your actions as well. Watch out for unguarded or throw away remarks (your own or those of others). They can often reveal a lot about the underlying terrain. Also when people are upset or angry or under stress, then everyday compensations and coping mechanisms are more likely to collapse and you really see what’s there. It’s good practice to notice these things in yourself as much as you can.
As someone continues talking, describing their symptoms, feelings and life situation, the practitioner may start to notice level four appearing – images, daydreams, situations “as if.” When people are describing their symptoms and experiences after a while they’ll start saying things like “it seemed as though the house would collapse” or “a dark cloud descended on everything” or “I felt no better than a worm” or “I was flying like a bird.” These are images or “situations-as-if” popping into someone’s conversation. They show the level of image, illusion, daydream.
These kind of remarks can seem quite throw away. They’re just there in the course of conversation. But as someone talks, and if they’re encouraged to stay connected to their experience and to their body, deeper and more intractable beliefs and images start to surface. These kinds of experience can be very fundamental and express deeply held beliefs and perceptions. We believe we’re no good or worthless. Or we’re incredibly important. We believe we’ll be attacked, or that people are taking advantage of us. Dreams often show this level in a vivid way. In my dream I must run, escape, or I wont survive. I’ve missed the train. I’ve arrived somewhere without my clothes.
If you’re taking the journey of discovery into the deeper levels of your experience, this level is of key importance. These kinds of images and “situations-as-if”, whether arising in dreams, or spontaneous fantasy, or just in the course of conversation, when reflected on and worked with can bring valuable insight and healing. But they can also mark a kind of limit which can be quite difficult to go beyond. However they can also be a kind of doorway into deeper levels of experience. This is what I’ll come to next.
The level of dreams and images is hugely important, powerful and formative. This is the level not only of your personal dreams and fantasies but of the dreams and fantasies of culture as well. This is the level of myth and fairly tale. Its the level of the eternal and archetypal stories that get played out in all the theatres of human activity and endeavour. However this world of dreams and images still belongs to what Sankaran calls the “human specific.” It’s part of our image making capacity that’s been around for thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of years. It belongs to the world of the human unconscious and as such is still fairly accessible to many people. With a little bit of prompting many people can describe these levels of their experience.
But if you ask them to go a bit further into their experience, then things can start to become rather more inaccessible.
Say she says something like “I felt as though I was in prison” (level four). The next stage in the inquiry is to ask “what’s that like, what’s it like to be in prison?” If I ask this question she may well not understand what I mean. She may not be able to go beyond this point. She may revert to previous and more accessible levels of her experience. She will describe how she feels about being in prison – sad or angry. Or she will talk about why she’s in prison, or how she got there. Or she’ll describe the conditions in prison. In other words people will easily revert to level two, fact, or level three, feelings. Or they will stay in the level of image and illusion. It’s easier to do this. What I need to do now is gently remind him that I understand all this, the feelings, the thoughts, the facts and so on, because he’s already described them, possibly several times.
Most people are more comfortable if they stay in the realm of their story. It’s much easier to stay in the world of feelings and in the world of “why?” than it is to get in touch with the “what?”.
Going to the next level, level five, vital sensation is difficult for almost everyone. Doing this poses two challenges. First you need somehow to be more in touch with a deeper level of sensation which is more connected with the body. This experience is not in a part of the body (as in level two), it’s more in the whole body. Actually, strictly speaking it’s not really in the body either. As Sankaran himself says it’s neither in the body or mind. It’s in both and somehow deeper than both. That’s why he calls it the “vital sensation.” Its really an experience of a deeper sensation which connects us not only to the body, but to patterns and movements of nature and the earth. But the important thing to remember here is that this level, although it takes us to something beyond the body, is accessed through the body.
The other consideration that makes this deeper level so much harder to access and articulate is that it’s quite definitely pre-verbal and pre-rational. What’s described here often seems to belong to our very earliest infantile experiences, to the birth process or to intrauterine experiences. Sensations of being stuck, contracted or suffocated are quite typical of this level – as are being engulfed or of needing to get out and so on. Very often at this level people begin to describe sensations and images that don’t make sense even from the perspective of very early developmental experiences. Very often they seem to be describing sensations and activities that seem to be so primal they don’t even belong to the human world at all. They seem to have been imported from our pre-human heritage. They don’t make any sense in terms of the human unconscious. They certainly don’t make any sense to the patient as he or she describes them. They seem deeply irrational and not rooted in any kind of cause or explanation.
This level, the level of vital sensation or vital experience takes us into what Sankaran calls the “non-human specific.” The sensations and experiences encountered here can’t easily be put down to our common human experience of thoughts, feelings and images. At this level we encounter something that seems to connect us to animals, plants and minerals and to the life of the earth and even the cosmos. It’s as though our fundamental bodily sensations connect us to a bigger life, not just a “human-specific” life.
So what kind of sensations and experiences are we talking about here? I’ll give some examples in the context of the three major categories already mentioned – the three kingdoms mineral, plant and animal. Although there are seven classifications of homeopathic remedies, the most important three are these, and we’ll stick to just these here.
Mineral
At the level of vital sensation he or she may describe a sensation or experience of inner lack. What ever the problem, their symptoms, their life situation, if you follow their experience and encourage them to stay with it into the preverbal and non-rational levels, they’ll keep coming back to the same thing. I have an internal lack or weakness. I can’t sustain. My structure is failing. My structure is incomplete or broken. The issue is a structural one. The problem is a lack in their inner structure. The problem ultimately isn’t coming from outside, as in the animal kingdom. The problem will usually be simpler and more clearly defined than in the other kingdoms.
Everything in the natural world is built up from the chemical elements of the periodic table. The elements are arranged in seven periods or rows, going from the lightest element, hydrogen, through all the metals, non-metals, gases and so on to the very heaviest radioactive elements. So in chemistry the elements are already arranged into a table of seven rows according to the natural properties of the individual elements.
Homeopathic remedies made from the different elements of the periodic table (sometimes single elements such as sulphur, and sometimes compounds such as sodium chloride) can also be viewed according to the chemical arrangement of the elements in the seven rows of the periodic table. The pattern of chemical classification of the elements seems to be reflected in what we know of the individual homeopathic remedies derived from these sources. So when homeopaths look at the data for different remedies made from elements from the different rows of the periodic table they see a pattern or sequence running through the rows. Chemist see a sequential pattern unfolding and repeating through the elements of each subsequent row (that’s why it’s called the periodic table – the pattern goes in periods like repeating octaves). Likewise homeopaths see these patterns, but this time reflected in human psychology, behaviour and physical functioning.
So from a homeopathic perspective each row of the periodic table has a theme which is displayed in different ways in the different elements of that row (see below).
In working with a patient, once it’s established that the patient’s basic issue, their vital experience is one of inner lack or incapacity, the next question is, in which area is this lack or this incapacity experienced? The answer to this is that it will be in one or more of the seven themes mirrored in the seven rows or periods of the periodic table. Remember that these rows move from the lightest gases, hydrogen and helium, through the elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, magnesium and so on, through elements such as silicon, phosphorus and sulphur, and on through the common metals such as iron. Then come the semi precious metals such as silver, followed by the “noble” and much heavier metals such as gold. Finally we come to the rare earths and the radio active actinides (these are so heavy that they’re actually disintegrating).
So if you have a basic experience of lack or incapacity, or failure in your inner ability to sustain, in which area of human experience do you find this? Which row or period of the periodic table of the elements is relevant for you?
The seven rows or periods of the periodic table (the lanthanides and actinides are shown as a separate block at the bottom)
If we want to experience more space around our patterns, have a bit more freedom from them then it’s not enough just to analyse our experiences, to explain them or find the causes for them. Of course it’s important to be able to do this – to understand, explain, find causes. It’s important and helpful to get in touch with how we feel about things. It’s important to be able to see ourselves and our reactions in the context of the past, of what’s happened in our personal and ancestral history. All this is of vital importance. But we wont make real headway with the energy of our patterns until we can really feel them, really sense them down to the deepest level. This happens when we can go beyond thoughts and feelings and explanations. If we can do this, things begin to release. The nearer we can get to a direct experience of our reactive patterns the better.
For this it’s helpful to understand the levels of your experience. It’s helpful to see what is more superficial and to see what’s secondary to your basic experience. This understanding can allow you to sense and identify your more fundamental experience, your primary experience. It can help you to know what’s most basic. I’m going to introduce a simple map here to try and make all this a bit clearer. The map is called the Seven Levels of Experience. It can help you get a handle on your experience. Is it a primary experience or a secondary experience? Is your experience coming from a more conscious and accessible level or is it rather more unconscious and inaccessible? Let’s see if we can make a bit more sense of all this.
The Seven Levels of Experience
1. Name
2. Fact, explanation and concept
3. Feelings and emotion
4. Imagination, dreams and delusions
5. Vital sensation or experience
6. Movement
7. The space/witness/audience
This map is based on the one devised by Dr. Rajan Sankaran to help both homeopathic practitioners and patients in a clinical situation. It helps practitioner and patient to navigate from the patient’s more surface descriptions of their symptoms and conditions to a deeper experience of something much more fundamental and primary, something we call the vital sensation or vital experience. Although the map was devised for use in a clinical situation it’s actually just as applicable in any life situation.
Level one, name, is just that, the name of the condition, say pneumonia or psychosis. Or if we’re looking at a life situation, it could be the name or label for that situation, work or marriage for example.
Once you’ve named it then it’s natural to start describing details, circumstances and so on. That’s level two, fact. If it’s a medical condition then that means saying more about where it is, what makes it better or worse, what caused it and so on. Same with a life situation – how it came about. Also the ideas and thoughts you have about it. Concepts and theories can come in here. If you’re talking about your health then level two would also include descriptions of local sensations – I have a headache that’s thumping; I have stiffness in this joint. These last are local sensations and experiences and hence belong to the fact level. They’re not a description of experiences or sensations that are sensed in the whole being. This is an important distinction which I’ll say more about below.
What about level three, the level of feelings? Most people when describing the facts of their health or life situation, will sooner or later start to describe feelings and emotions. You have a feeling reaction to a specific problem or life situation. You like it or dislike it. It makes you happy, sad, angry. It gives you a feeling of loss or grief, or you feel hope.
Everyone can describe name and fact, and most people can say things about their feelings (although some people are naturally feeling types and others find it more difficult to express feelings). In other words the feeling level is fairly accessible to most people, even though feelings are often at least partly unconscious. This is especially so when feelings and the energy of feelings have been repressed in the past.
Of course when people talk about themselves it doesn’t all unfold in a linear as our map might suggest. People jump around, go in circles and spirals as they move, with the practitioners help, from the more surface, more easily accessible levels of what they know to the deeper more vital and more unknown (and intrinsically hard to know)levels of their experience. But the deeper levels of experience are always there, especially if you know what to look out for. They poke through from the deeper layers of your psyche into your everyday conversation and often into your actions as well. Watch out for unguarded or throw away remarks (your own or those of others). They can often reveal a lot about the underlying terrain. Also when people are upset or angry or under stress, then everyday compensations and coping mechanisms are more likely to collapse and you really see what’s there. It’s good practice to notice these things in yourself as much as you can.
As someone continues talking, describing their symptoms, feelings and life situation, the practitioner may start to notice level four appearing – images, daydreams, situations “as if.” When people are describing their symptoms and experiences after a while they’ll start saying things like “it seemed as though the house would collapse” or “a dark cloud descended on everything” or “I felt no better than a worm” or “I was flying like a bird.” These are images or “situations-as-if” popping into someone’s conversation. They show the level of image, illusion, daydream.
These kind of remarks can seem quite throw away. They’re just there in the course of conversation. But as someone talks, and if they’re encouraged to stay connected to their experience and to their body, deeper and more intractable beliefs and images start to surface. These kinds of experience can be very fundamental and express deeply held beliefs and perceptions. We believe we’re no good or worthless. Or we’re incredibly important. We believe we’ll be attacked, or that people are taking advantage of us. Dreams often show this level in a vivid way. In my dream I must run, escape, or I wont survive. I’ve missed the train. I’ve arrived somewhere without my clothes.
If you’re taking the journey of discovery into the deeper levels of your experience, this level is of key importance. These kinds of images and “situations-as-if”, whether arising in dreams, or spontaneous fantasy, or just in the course of conversation, when reflected on and worked with can bring valuable insight and healing. But they can also mark a kind of limit which can be quite difficult to go beyond. However they can also be a kind of doorway into deeper levels of experience. This is what I’ll come to next.
The level of dreams and images is hugely important, powerful and formative. This is the level not only of your personal dreams and fantasies but of the dreams and fantasies of culture as well. This is the level of myth and fairly tale. Its the level of the eternal and archetypal stories that get played out in all the theatres of human activity and endeavour. However this world of dreams and images still belongs to what Sankaran calls the “human specific.” It’s part of our image making capacity that’s been around for thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of years. It belongs to the world of the human unconscious and as such is still fairly accessible to many people. With a little bit of prompting many people can describe these levels of their experience.
But if you ask them to go a bit further into their experience, then things can start to become rather more inaccessible.
Say she says something like “I felt as though I was in prison” (level four). The next stage in the inquiry is to ask “what’s that like, what’s it like to be in prison?” If I ask this question she may well not understand what I mean. She may not be able to go beyond this point. She may revert to previous and more accessible levels of her experience. She will describe how she feels about being in prison – sad or angry. Or she will talk about why she’s in prison, or how she got there. Or she’ll describe the conditions in prison. In other words people will easily revert to level two, fact, or level three, feelings. Or they will stay in the level of image and illusion. It’s easier to do this. What I need to do now is gently remind him that I understand all this, the feelings, the thoughts, the facts and so on, because he’s already described them, possibly several times.
Most people are more comfortable if they stay in the realm of their story. It’s much easier to stay in the world of feelings and in the world of “why?” than it is to get in touch with the “what?”.
Going to the next level, level five, vital sensation is difficult for almost everyone. Doing this poses two challenges. First you need somehow to be more in touch with a deeper level of sensation which is more connected with the body. This experience is not in a part of the body (as in level two), it’s more in the whole body. Actually, strictly speaking it’s not really in the body either. As Sankaran himself says it’s neither in the body or mind. It’s in both and somehow deeper than both. That’s why he calls it the “vital sensation.” Its really an experience of a deeper sensation which connects us not only to the body, but to patterns and movements of nature and the earth. But the important thing to remember here is that this level, although it takes us to something beyond the body, is accessed through the body.
The other consideration that makes this deeper level so much harder to access and articulate is that it’s quite definitely pre-verbal and pre-rational. What’s described here often seems to belong to our very earliest infantile experiences, to the birth process or to intrauterine experiences. Sensations of being stuck, contracted or suffocated are quite typical of this level – as are being engulfed or of needing to get out and so on. Very often at this level people begin to describe sensations and images that don’t make sense even from the perspective of very early developmental experiences. Very often they seem to be describing sensations and activities that seem to be so primal they don’t even belong to the human world at all. They seem to have been imported from our pre-human heritage. They don’t make any sense in terms of the human unconscious. They certainly don’t make any sense to the patient as he or she describes them. They seem deeply irrational and not rooted in any kind of cause or explanation.
This level, the level of vital sensation or vital experience takes us into what Sankaran calls the “non-human specific.” The sensations and experiences encountered here can’t easily be put down to our common human experience of thoughts, feelings and images. At this level we encounter something that seems to connect us to animals, plants and minerals and to the life of the earth and even the cosmos. It’s as though our fundamental bodily sensations connect us to a bigger life, not just a “human-specific” life.
So what kind of sensations and experiences are we talking about here? I’ll give some examples in the context of the three major categories already mentioned – the three kingdoms mineral, plant and animal. Although there are seven classifications of homeopathic remedies, the most important three are these, and we’ll stick to just these here.
Mineral
At the level of vital sensation he or she may describe a sensation or experience of inner lack. What ever the problem, their symptoms, their life situation, if you follow their experience and encourage them to stay with it into the preverbal and non-rational levels, they’ll keep coming back to the same thing. I have an internal lack or weakness. I can’t sustain. My structure is failing. My structure is incomplete or broken. The issue is a structural one. The problem is a lack in their inner structure. The problem ultimately isn’t coming from outside, as in the animal kingdom. The problem will usually be simpler and more clearly defined than in the other kingdoms.
Everything in the natural world is built up from the chemical elements of the periodic table. The elements are arranged in seven periods or rows, going from the lightest element, hydrogen, through all the metals, non-metals, gases and so on to the very heaviest radioactive elements. So in chemistry the elements are already arranged into a table of seven rows according to the natural properties of the individual elements.
Homeopathic remedies made from the different elements of the periodic table (sometimes single elements such as sulphur, and sometimes compounds such as sodium chloride) can also be viewed according to the chemical arrangement of the elements in the seven rows of the periodic table. The pattern of chemical classification of the elements seems to be reflected in what we know of the individual homeopathic remedies derived from these sources. So when homeopaths look at the data for different remedies made from elements from the different rows of the periodic table they see a pattern or sequence running through the rows. Chemist see a sequential pattern unfolding and repeating through the elements of each subsequent row (that’s why it’s called the periodic table – the pattern goes in periods like repeating octaves). Likewise homeopaths see these patterns, but this time reflected in human psychology, behaviour and physical functioning.
So from a homeopathic perspective each row of the periodic table has a theme which is displayed in different ways in the different elements of that row (see below).
In working with a patient, once it’s established that the patient’s basic issue, their vital experience is one of inner lack or incapacity, the next question is, in which area is this lack or this incapacity experienced? The answer to this is that it will be in one or more of the seven themes mirrored in the seven rows or periods of the periodic table. Remember that these rows move from the lightest gases, hydrogen and helium, through the elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, magnesium and so on, through elements such as silicon, phosphorus and sulphur, and on through the common metals such as iron. Then come the semi precious metals such as silver, followed by the “noble” and much heavier metals such as gold. Finally we come to the rare earths and the radio active actinides (these are so heavy that they’re actually disintegrating).
So if you have a basic experience of lack or incapacity, or failure in your inner ability to sustain, in which area of human experience do you find this? Which row or period of the periodic table of the elements is relevant for you?
The seven rows or periods of the periodic table (the lanthanides and actinides are shown as a separate block at the bottom)
The issue for each row:
1. Do I exist or not? Am I incarnated in a body? 2. I’m here, I have a location, but can I survive or can I undergo birth as a separate body. A basic issue of survival. 3. I’m here, but what is my identity? What are my thoughts and feelings? Am I loved, appreciated and respected for who I am in my relationship with another? 4. I’m here, I’ve survived and have an identity. Now I need security. Can I rely on my house, my work, my financial status? Or do I loose all this support if I don't follow the rules of the society of which I’m a part? Security and adherence to the law of the land. 5. Now I’m secure, do I just have to tow the line, or can I do something different? Can I really be an individual, be unique, be different? Can I be creative? 6. Now comes the question of responsibility, duty, authority and power. Am I succeeding or failing in power, authority and duty? Do I have authority over myself? 7. Transcendence and death. Can I transcend or die to all the structures that have been established so far? Plant Plants have a structure. It’s a dynamic structure exhibiting flexibility and adaptability. Plants exhibit dynamic cycles of growth and decay. They are characterised by the rhythms of fertility and reproduction and are entirely dependent on environmental conditions and natural cycles. A plant can’t change it’s location so has to have sensitivity and adaptability in order to maximise it’s chances of survival in it’s niche. It must adapt to the availability of nutrients, water, light, warmth and so on. It must exploit the environmental resources as it finds them, since once rooted it can’t move. Plants have also increased their ability to propagate by exploiting the capacities and resources offered by animals, birds and insects. Plants have also developed ways of protecting themselves from damage or destruction through the development of poisons, thorns and so on. All this requires sensitivity and adaptability. So this is what people requiring plant remedies show. They show adaptability and changeability in their way of presenting. Their descriptions of their symptoms and concerns will meander more and be mixed with references to different situations and people. This is in contrast to the mineral person who tends to be more factual, linear and structural – problems are presented in a clearer way, almost like a list. As a plant person continues with her report her sensitivity will begin to show through when she says “it affects me…it/he/she injures me, hurts me, shocks me.” As you get deeper into their description you realise they’re describing an experience of being adversely affected by or injured by or shocked by the external world. The problem is due to an external influence rather than an inner sense of lack or incapacity, as in the mineral kingdom. If one continues to encourage the patient along this line of inquiry, helping him or her to stay in touch with felt experience, a particular general sensation or experience will begin to clarify. When they describe this sensation, they can also quite easily describe the opposite sensation. For example he might describe a sensation of feeling constricted or shrunk or as if bound. When asked he will also be able to describe the opposite – expanded or released. As is usual with the vital sensation, whatever line you follow – the patient’s symptoms, their work, their family, their stress – you always come back to the same experience. This is a hallmark of the vital sensation. All roads lead to it. In plant people you will continually come back to the same sensation, even though it may be described with slightly different words each time. This doesn’t happen so much with animals or minerals. The mineral comes back to a simpler structural problem of incapacity or internal lack. The animal person, as we shall see, more often comes back to an issue of prey or predator, and a fight between two things. Plant taxonomy groups plants into families, orders, classes and so on. Plants that can be shown to be similar on the basis of morphological similarity – similarities in flower structure and so on – are grouped together. Botanists look for the evolutionary similarity in plants. Have certain plants evolved from a common ancestor? They look for what plants have in common. This is a very complex science, and there is often disagreement amongst scientists as to where certain plants should be classified. Modern DNA analysis has brought additional information to the whole process of classification, sometimes overturning previous classifications. Like the plant world itself, plant classification is never still, but always evolving and changing. Just as plants in a single grouping such as a botanical family will be closely related and will have strong similarities in form and function, those plants belonging to a particular family will also have homeopathic similarities. And that similarity is most evident in the vital sensation. So plants in the same family have a similar vital sensation. Sometimes this is obvious and other times you have to look a bit harder to see it. Animal Animals have structure and sensitivity as in the mineral and plant kingdoms, but we also see the additional elements of competition, fight for survival and survival of the fittest. So competition, comparison and hierarchy are important for the animal kingdom. It’s a question of survival, of who is best, strongest. It’s one against another. It’ me versus you. It’s prey and predator. Who will survive? Who will kill or be killed? People who need animal remedies can be more obviously recognisable. They can be more animated and lively and exhibit their sexuality in a more obvious way through their way of dressing and so on. People who need an animal remedy will see life in terms of competition. Who is the strongest? Who will win or lose? Who will kill or be killed?. Its a competition between me and something outside me. And this competition is a fight for survival. It ends in killing or fleeing. Of course, because we’re civilised this competition or fight to the death might not be directly visible. It’s suppressed. But it could be there in the dreams of killing or of fleeing. It’s there in the language of attack, of killing and prey and predator. An animal person may well even describe his own symptoms as attacking him or “finishing him off.” So for the animal person at the level of the vital sensation or vital experience the problem is not one of internal lack or incapacity, nor is it one of sensitivity and reactivity. It is rather experienced as a competition with something out there. It’s me or it, me or them, me or him, me or her. Only one can win. One will be higher and one will be lower, looked down on and despised. The theme of a split is also often present in animal remedies. This is because the human being very often despises the animal inside himself. So an animal person may feel dirty and looked down upon by others. Or he despises himself and looks down on the “dirty” and “despised” part of himself. The theme of killing could of course appear in any kingdom, but in the animal kingdom it’s I kill you, or you kill me. In the plant kingdom the emphasis will be on the sensitivity and reactivity… it hurts me, it damages me. The plant experience is more passive. For the mineral facing an external threat it’s a matter of an internal failure of capacity or structure in the face of the threat, like a faulty or collapsing building in an earthquake or a high wind. Seven levels of experience and the Natural kingdoms The seven levels is a map that can be used whenever we’re looking at our experience and want to go beyond facts, feelings and imagination. In homeopathy we can’t really differentiate between the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms until we get to the level of the vital sensation. It’s at that level of deep experience that we encounter a sensation or experience that pervades the whole being. Here we find a pattern that gives shape to our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and actions. It is a general pattern that is experienced as a general sensation, and that is imprinted on an individual’s psychological and physical functioning. Of course the more experienced we become at listening to what someone says and observing what they do the more we’re able to perceive their vital sensation popping up as they talk. It underpins all that someone says and does. It’s there in their choice of words and metaphor. But often the homeopath has to go, with the patient, down to the deeper levels so that their vital experience really shows itself clearly and so that we can be sure which kingdom is speaking. What is someone’s basic issue really? How does a person perceive the world at the level of the vital experience? Is it a matter of capacity, or of sensitivity or of competition and survival? The Seven levels – levels six and seven Sankaran calls level six the energy level. I would also call it the level of movement, because energy in the human being expresses itself in movement, as in motion (and e-motion). The homeopath can see this level most in a patient’s hand gestures. Or when someone talking becomes animated or excited. These movements and expressions indicate that a person’s words and descriptions are connecting with something vital. It shows us where there is energy and movement. It shows us where the organism is most alive, or where there is something dammed up or unintegrated. When listening to someone our attention is especially alerted when what is being said is accompanied by involuntary movements or when their conversation becomes animated. When this happens we know that what’s being said is important in a person’s instinctive soul. There is an involuntary response from deep within a person’s makeup. All this is encompassed in level six, the level of energy or movement. (Of course it’s not really a “level” at all, because energy, vitality and movement permeate all aspects of a person’s life and functioning. We call it a level for ease of description and dialogue.) Sankaran originally called level seven the 7th. I believe he did this in order to underline the fact that it is beyond attributes and qualifications. But we should also think of this level as in some sense still personal. It is not yet the entirely impersonal void (the ground out of which everything comes into being, as described in Buddhist thought). It is the space in which things happen. For example it’s the empty space of a sports arena before the events take place. But as such it’s a space adapted to those particular events. It’s not any space. It’s a particular space. I believe this is an important distinction. If it were only the void or the emptiness spoken of in spiritual wisdom traditions it wouldn’t be directly applicable to what happens in the homeopathic consultation. The homeopathic consultation is much concerned with your personal experience. In this sense the consultation is different to traditional spiritual practices where the prime objective is to go beyond all notion of a personal self and beyond identification with anything personal. That’s not what’s happening in a homeopathic consultation. There the objective is to help someone become more completely who they are. This means healing personal suffering. It means the healing of physical and psychological wounds, dysfunctions and traumas. And doing this helps you to be here in this world as the unique individual that you are. So the seventh level is important because it points to something both personal and impersonal (or transpersonal). Because the seventh level is personal as well as transpersonal it has a direct influence on the homeopathic consultation. Without this level no consultation could take place. Or rather, a consultation could take place, but no real healing could occur. We might think of the seventh level as the silent witness. But it’s not just passive. It’s also the invisible hand that guides the whole meeting. When we’re blessed with insight or knowing, then its coming from that level. It’s the link between the world of our personal suffering to something that’s beyond cause and effect and beyond the wheel of suffering. Seven levels of periodic table can be applied to plant and animal kingdom We can see the periodic table as a map of human development. In homeopathy the periodic table becomes not only a systematic arrangement of the natural elements, but a map of the levels of human development from cradle to grave. When we put this periodic table map along side the very considerable amount of data arrived at through the many studies of human development we see a high degree of correlation. All the evidence suggests that the human patterns seen through the seven levels of the table are actually there. And what is seen there very much corresponds with findings from non-homeopathic avenues of research (see my book Understanding Homeopathy). If this is so it suggests that the pattern seen in the periodic table is an archetypal pattern fundamental to human life, and possibly to all life. This being so, homeopathic researchers, have started to apply the map to the plant and animal kingdoms as well. Taxonomy tells us that plants also go through evolutionary phases of development from simpler less evolved to more complex and more evolved organisms. The same is true of the animal kingdom. The periodic table with its horizontal levels (called levels or rows or periods) and its vertical stages can simply be taken as a very fundamental and accurate map of the development of the human psyche from infancy onwards. We can then take this framework and see if it makes any sense when applied to the plant or animal kingdom. It turns out that it does. A close study of known homeopathic data on the plant kingdom again reveals patterns of symptoms in individual plant species and plant families that correspond to the basic issues revealed in the periods of the periodic table. This allows homeopaths to achieve an understanding of large numbers of plant species used in homeopathy which wasn’t possible before. The same is true of the animal kingdom. By allocating plant families and orders to different human developmental stages (based on the correspondence of the homeopathic data of the species and families with the human issues revealed in the periodic table) it’s possible for homeopaths to search in the right area for the most suited homeopathic remedy for a particular individual. This is a very important step forward. Homeopaths Jan Scholten and Michal Yakir have done pioneering research on this kind of use of the plant kingdom in homeopathy. This is ongoing research. Homeopaths such as Shachindra and Bhawisha Joshi are also researching the animal kingdom to reveal evolutionary patterns that can be related through the periodic table to human developmental patterns. The seven realms of homeopathic remedies To recap we have the seven levels (or modes) of experience, going from fact through feeling, images and vital sensation, all the way to the seventh level. This is not to be confused with the seven levels or periods of the periodic table which move from the issues of existence, survival and identity all the way to disintegration and death. Any of these levels or periods can be experienced from the perspective of any one of the seven levels of experience. For example if we take row two (the second level or period) of the periodic table, which is the row/issue of birth and separation and of survival as a separate entity, then we can approach that through the lens of fact (the facts of what happened), or feeling (what I feel about it), or image and delusion (the stories, images and “fairy tales” that arise in my mind around those experiences). I may also be able to go to a deeper lens of experience. I may be able to experience the issue of birth and separation as an actual sensation in my body. I may sense the whole experience and the feeling of lack of structure or support. I may even start to go into involuntary movements or gestures reminiscent of my actual birth or what it was like being held by my mother. Thus we can see that any level of development (the issues of the seven levels or periods of the periodic table) can be experienced through the lens of any of the seven levels or modes of experience. There is one more “seven” map to be mentioned here. Earlier I spoke of the three kingdoms of homeopathic remedies – mineral, plant and animal. Although these kingdoms are the source of the majority of homeopathic remedies, the full inventory of remedies are drawn from seven domains. These are: 1. Electromagnetic (traditionaly called imponderables in homeopathy) These are made from exposing the potentising medium to electromagnetic radiations such as sunlight, magnets, positron emissions and so on. 2. Nosodes These remedies are prepared from diseased or infected human tissue or discharge. Thus they represent the defeated part of the organism (such as puss or necrotic tissue) in the organism’s fight with an infectious agent (a bacteria or virus). So we can view these remedies as deriving from the primitive organisms (prokaryotes or DNA material) that infect the human organism, or as deriving from the compromised human tissue. 3. Mineral kingdom (see above). 4. Fungi The fungi form a separate kingdom. They can’t photosynthesise like plants, or move like animals. We can regard them as coming between the mineral kingdom and the plant and animal kingdoms. 5. Plants (see above) 6. Animals (see above) 7. Sarcodes These remedies are derived from healthy human tissue, products or hormones. For example human milk, ovarian tissue or thyroid tissue. Again it’s possible to see a developmental sequence through these domains which is reflected in human development. Electromagnetic remedies derive from something that’s not even matter. The minerals represent fundamental structure. Fungi can’t synthesise their own carbohydrates. They must get them from host organisms (living or dead). Plants are independent in the sense that they can synthesise their own tissues from water and sunlight. In animals the sense of an individual becomes stronger, and thus the issue of me versus you. In the human sarcode lac human we see the human issue of conflict between “higher” human qualities and the “lower” animal nature. Will I be a good person or a selfish animal driven by my own base urges? As I’ve shown elsewhere becoming human means being able to integrate all the functions and characteristics found in the other kingdoms (such as specific forms of structural integrity, specific forms of sensitivity and specific abilities to make your way in the world) in a way that serves humanness. When we’re well we’re not chained to patterns of reaction and survival found in the natural kingdoms. But we still have the sensitivity and capacities that enabled those other organisms to evolve their capabilities in the first place. But these sensitivities and capacities find a new level of expression in the human soul. To give one small example of what I mean here: someone who needs a snake remedy may show striking capacities of intuition and insight, but these may be tarnished by jealousy and feelings of being manipulated. If a snake remedy is given on the basis of physical symptoms and psychological characteristics the person becomes more relaxed, less suspicious and less threatened. Now their qualities of insight and intuition are better able to flower and will be less limited by the previously associated snake survival pattern. But without the snake somewhere in our genetic history we might never have developed the alertness and attunement to the environment that forms the basis of the human capacity to see and understand through “reading” the environment. |
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