Introduction

0.3 IntroductionThis book is about disease, health and healing. It presents a view developed over the past 40 years based on practical experience.
Psyche and Personalities
Official Western medicine assumes that material things are the cause of disease. This book shows that the opposite is true, namely that our psyche is the cause of illness. Psychological trauma precedes the emergence of material, physical abnormalities. Many ancient traditions speak of this, and is still the experience if one wants to look at it. It is the experience in many alternative therapies. However, the trauma itself is not the only cause, it is accompanied by a whole complex of visions, thoughts, emotions, feelings and sensations with a sensitivity to certain types of trauma. We can call such a complex a personality.
Classification of diseases/personalities
The next step is to classify these personalities. It has been shown that this can be done very well with the classes of the Periodic system, the themes of the rows and columns. What is special about this, is that it connects physics with psychology, and further with biology, evolution, religion and life philosophies. This vision makes the world a whole again.
Personalities and Self
We can treat people with methods that make them less dependent on their personalities. Personalities have capacities, but when they become dominant and gain power they create problems. But if we can treat people this way, the question arises as to whether we are actually our personalities. And if we are not our personalities, who are we? This question has been addressed in many ancient religions: we have a higher self, also called Self. It is consciousness. And we all have that. A consciousness has no desire, it needs nothing, it is just there. And it is good and loving. The picture that emerges of human beings in this way is that every human being is essentially good, but has personalities that make problems. Looking at the world and fellow human beings in this way creates much more compassion and empathy. Then, we look through the behaviours, abnormalities and diseases and so we can see the brilliant part in each human being. We can start to see and let go of our identification with our personalities, and therefore become more ourselves.
Vision
The vision that arises is that human beings are in their essence spiritual
beings that are good and wise. On the other hand human beings have
many personalities, which include talents and characteristics, defence
7mechanisms, that can create difficulties, problems and even disasters. This vision brings an understanding of the human condition as inwardly perfect, but outwardly problematic. It brings freedom, healing, and compassion for oneself and all others.
History
The views in this book have been developed over decades. To make these views more understandable it can be beneficial to know the historical development. The views have been developed mostly in the practice of homeopathic therapy. They resulted from trial and error in helping patients with their problems. As such the views have been developed during a constant interaction between theory and experience. These views though are not limited to homeopathy. The views on causes of disease, personalities, classification of diseases, diagnosis, and cure are general for all kinds of therapies. Only the Chapter "Therapy" shows differences from other forms of therapy. But also in therapy, homeopathy is very similar to other forms of healing in the sense that the healing therapies create consciousness of the underlying problem. They are paradoxical in the sense that they lead the patient to the problem and the pain instead of leading them away from it by distraction or palliation.
Homeopathy uses remedies. This means that it can easily be confused with official medications made from chemical substances. Homeopathic remedies are information carriers and have no chemical content. Homeopathy is thus an information healing.
The classification of diseases is unique and marvelous. It is also applicable to any other form of healing. The peculiar thing is that this classification can only be discovered with homeopathy, as homeopathy uses the natural forms of creation, in the forms of minerals, bacteria, plants, and animals. They form the natural patterns of disease, as forms of personalities behind the disease.
Example
Calcium carbonate is a well-known remedy in homeopathy, where it has the Latin name Calcium carbonicum. It is used for children who have recurrent colds with thick mucus discharge from the nose; the snot bubbles. It has also other symptoms like copious sweating on the head during sleep and the desire for sweets and soft-boiled eggs. Calcium carbonicum best suits fat and flabby children. They are timid, with a tendency to hide when strangers talk to them.
Personality
The timidity comes from the idea that other people can see their confusion and weakness. This idea leads to feelings of inferiority and the desire to protect themselves. This in turn leads to the behaviour of adapting and hiding, for instance whispering answers in the ear of the
8
mother instead of speaking for themselves. We can call the combination of ideas, feelings, sensations and behaviour a personality. A person with a Calcium carbonicum personality will be called a person with a timid character. This is how the term ‘personality’ is used in this book: a combination of ideas and convictions, desires and aversions, feelings and sensations, hobbies and professions that belong together. Often these personalities are stable in life. For instance, the Calcium carbonicum personality is most easily seen in children. But it will remain during the course of one’s life, and present itself in adults too, albeit in different and more compensated forms.
Cause
The remarkable effect of Calcium carbonicum as a treatment is that not only the complaints disappear in these children but that also their desires change. The sweating decreases, along with the fat and flabby quality, and their timidity diminishes.
These symptoms belong together. The psychological state is not just the background, the terrain on which the disease manifests. It is part of the disease. Or better said, the disease is part of the personality.
Cures typically start at the psychological level, physical healing follows later. The same is true for the start of a disease: the psychological state in the form of a personality was present before the disease. The disease usually starts after a trauma, an event where the personality fails to achieve his goals. The conclusion of these phenomena is that the psychological state is primary, and is the cause of physical diseases.
Classification
It is natural and scientific to try to classify diseases. In homeopathy this is similar to classifying the remedies. We can classify all the Calcium remedies: calcium phosphate, calcium sulfate and so on. What they have in common is the idea that others will think something bad of them. Calcium phosphate, named Calcium phosphoricum, has the idea that others will think they are stupid, so they have an aversion to going to school and often get headaches and abdominal pains at school. Calcium sulfate, named Calcium sulphuricum, has the idea that others will think they are unlovable, so they become jealous of their siblings, thinking that their parents love the others more.
A patient came to me with the idea that others think that she would not be a good mother. As I had discovered that the mother theme is strongly present in chlorine, I prescribed calcium chloride, named Calcium muriaticum in homeopathy. It was an unknown remedy in homeopathy at the time, but it worked beautifully. This way of analysing made it possible to discover the qualities and symptoms that belong to each element, the atoms, as described in the Periodic system. Another example is Nitrogenium, which has qualities of enjoyment, ambition, desire to be a winner, congestion, and explosive sensations.
9
Thus calcium nitrate, named Calcium nitricum, worked well in a case of a woman who had the idea that others would think that she was enjoying life too much.
Symbolism
It is interesting that nitrogen has congestive and explosive qualities both in diseases and in physical compounds. All explosives contain high amounts of nitrogen. It can be seen as a symbolic quality of ‘more’ and ‘too much’, of compressing things together that can then explode easily. In diseases it is strongly connected to explosive states like flushes of heat, hypertension, heart infarction and apoplexy.
Periodic system
The next step in the classification of remedies was using the Periodic system. There are about 100 elements, also called atoms. They are the building blocks of all materials and living beings. They are essential. The elements are organised in rows and columns and that is why the table is periodic: the qualities of the elements are more or less repeated in each row. Comparing elements in one row leads to themes common for all elements in it. For instance: the elements in row 4 have the theme of duty and work. They want to do their job with perfection. Later it turned out that the duty aspect arises from the desire to have a good reputation in the tribe or village.
Calcium is also in row 4. For Calcium, the ‘others’ are not just everyone, but the members of the tribe or village. They fear the gossip of others in the village. Calcium has little fear of what family and friends will think of them.
Many elements of row 6, which includes gold, have the theme of being a leader or king. Platina, for instance, has the delusion that he is much taller than others and stands above normal people. Barium, though, did not seem to fit in that pattern of being the king. Barium is very timid and tends to hide behind his mother. At a certain moment, I realised that this behaviour is the opposite of Platina. They both have the theme of being a leader, but they handle it differently. Platina feels like the obvious king, whereas Barium feels much too weak to be a king and questions how he could ever be a leader. Barium is in column 2, near the start of the row, whereas Platina is in column 10, in the middle of the row. The idea was born that the columns express how a theme is handled. That is why I have named the columns Stages: they are a Stage in the development of a theme. I have named the rows Series, as they represent a theme in development: beginning, rising up to their full expression at the summit, and then declining. I have named them after the most known element in the Series.
Thus row 4 is named Iron series and row 6 is named Gold series, or Aurum series.
With this classification, one can analyse every element in the Periodic
10
system, by combining the theme of the Series with the way of handling it, the Stages. Coming back to Calcium, one can see the delusion that others will notice something about them as a combination of the Iron series, the position in a village, and the feeling of only being acceptable when one adapts, Stage 2. The other elements of the Iron series also consider what others will think of them, but they handle it differently. Nickle, at Stage 10, has the feeling that he is very central in the village. But Calcium feels weak and does not know what to do in the village, so the only thing he can do is be obedient and adapt.
Plant kingdom
The classification of the Plant kingdom was much more difficult. The reason is that there was no uniform classification like the Periodic system is for the Mineral kingdom. Several all-encompassing classifications were made in the 20th century. At the end of that century, the possibility arose to analyse the DNA of plants and with that, the Apg classification was constructed. This classification had many similarities, but also major differences. And there was a lack of a real essence to build the classification on. This is in contrast with the Periodic system, where the atomic number turned out to be essential.
Over the course of many years though, I discovered many similarities between plant families and elements. For instance, the Lamiaceae have a strong similarity with phosphor, the Oleaceae with Sulphur, the Solanaceae with chlorine and fluorine, and the Apiaceae with chlorine. The Asteraceae have a similarity with the Lanthanides, the Loganiaceae with the Silver series and the Liliaceae with the Silicium series. Studying the Apg classification, I realised that subclasses usually had around 7 orders and that each order often contained 7 families. This fitted with 7 columns of the Carbon series. For example, in the Campanulidae, the Asteraceae have a carbon quality, the Araliales have a nitrogen quality and the Apiaceae have a fluorine quality. The Campanulidae as a whole have a Lanthanide quality.
A homeopath came to me with problems in her work as a homeopath. She was too sensitive and empathetic to suit a mineral remedy: a plant remedy was indicated. She had strong Lanthanide qualities like being a homeopath, and a desire for freedom, spirituality and philosophy. I considered a remedy from the Asteraceae, but she was too soft for that. She was a bit childish and irresolute, which indicated Boron instead of the Carbon quality of the Asteraceae, so I sought a remedy near the Asteraceae, in the subclass Campanulidae. There we find the bellflower family, the Campanulaceae, which have hanging flowers, a quality of Boron. I tried Campanula rapunculus from this family, with great success.
11
Phases
The next thing I realised was that the connection of families was not with the elements of one Series, but of two: the Carbon series and the Silicium series. Lamiaceae have a strong similarity with phosphor and nitrogen, Oleaceae with sulphur and oxygen, Solanaceae with chlorine and fluorine. Each have a connection with the elements in the same column of those two Series. The Carbon series and Silicium series have 8 columns, in contrast to the later ones that have 18 columns. But these 2 Series are very basic, especially for life. Carbon is the most central element for life, from which all life molecules are built.
This discovery led to the term ‘Phases’. Phases are the columns of the Carbon series and Silicium series. They are similar to the Stages, but there are only eight of them. Phases also have a beginning, rise, summit, and decline. But they represent more a feeling than a way of handling a situation. Phases show a development in belonging: to a family, to a friend, to a peer group, to a village and the people of the village, to a country of culture, or whatever. Phase 4 is central, it is the goal, where one feels totally accepted and belonging. In practice, only 7 Phases are represented in the Plant kingdom. Phase 8 or Phase 0 is like the noble gasses, they do not connect to anything. Plants do connect though, so Phase 8 is not present in the Plant kingdom.
Remedy code
The Plant theory differs from the Apg classification. The first difference is that all levels have a meaning: the orders and families are connected to Phases, with the theme of belonging. Each order belongs to a certain Phase. Each family belongs to a certain Phase. The Phases represent steps in the process of belonging to a certain group; the group that they belong to is represented by the Series. The Phylum, Class, and Subclass levels are connected to the Series with their level of development.
In order to express that in a simple way, I developed the Remedy code. The Remedy code is a sequence of 7 digits: 1 for the Kingdom, 3 for Series, 2 for Phases and 1 for the Stage. This is a convenient way to know the place in the hierarchy and at the same time understand the qualities of the plant.
In principle, the Plant theory classifies down to the level of genus. Assumed is that all species of a specific genus have the same state of being. One can say that they have the same personality, with minor, irrelevant differences, as they will have the same effect and cure. In practice, this classification down to the level of genus is not always the case, as some genera are very large and have to be split into subgenera, whereas others have to be fused in one genus.
12
Example
I will give the example of Belladonna, officially Atropa belladonna. Belladonna is a member of the Angiospermae, the flowering plants, which form the majority of the plants on earth during our time period. Angiospermae have the capacity to reflect on themselves, a Lanthanide quality. Belladonna is in the class Asteranae, which has a strong Lanthanide quality and thus wants to be autonomous and free. Belladonna is in the subclass Lamiidae, which has the theme of the Silver series; this shows that the problem is at the level of culture. Belladonna is in the order of Solanales, which is in Phase 7; this expresses the feeling of being an outcast and being persecuted. Beladonna is in the family, or subfamily, of Atropoideae, which is in Subphase 1; this shows the impulsive naïve quality, of someone not belonging to a group yet. Belladonna is in Stage 6, showing that he is courageous, and proving that he can fight.
The Remedy code for Belladonna is thus: 3-665.71.06.
Animal kingdom
A similar classification to the Plant kingdom can be made for the Animal kingdom. The principles are the same, the classes are the same, and the Remedy code is similar.
Science
The classifications of the Mineral, Plant and Animal kingdoms have raised the scientific level of homeopathy enormously, and with that the level of medicine. Many remedies have been added to homeopathy. It has also deepened the level of the knowledge of these remedies, and the essence in the form of the classes they belong to.
Switch
In my experience, the biggest problem in understanding the ideas and views in this book is not rational, but emotional. It is the switch from looking at the problem from the outside, to looking at it from the inside. Seeing that the source of diseases and problems lies in the psyche raises resistance in many people. It is easily confused with guilt and failure. But this makes one not only responsible but also capable and autonomous. It gives the possibility for a cure instead of remaining a victim of circumstances. It brings one more in contact with the Self instead of with one’s personalities.