Hahnemann and a Shamanic World View
by Loretta Butehorn PhD CCH
What Is a Paradigm and How Does It Impact Our Thinking
In the 1962 Thomas Kunz wrote a significant work entitled The Structure of the Scientific Revolution in which he described how thinking in sciences changes, incorporating new findings into its body of collected wisdom. In this work, Kunz described how thinking both in science and in the general public’s acceptance of new information into day to day consensus and utilization requires numerous steps before what he called “our paradigm” changes. A paradigm is the larger view of a construct into which a specific piece of data fits or does not fit. Galileo’s construct of the sun-centered solar system was a paradigmatic shift. Darwin’s evolution of species another, as was Freud’s construct of the unconscious.
In any culture, at any time there are numerous paradigms at work. There is a dominant cultural paradigm and non-dominant one. Take any one of the three examples above and you will recall that while today each is a dominant paradigm and usually several non-dominant ones. Take any one of the three examples above and you will recall that while today each is a dominant paradigm both in science and in public understanding of how the world works, that was not always so. Galileo was imprisoned by the Catholic Church as a heretic. Darwin struggled to have the National Academy of Science accept his papers; and Freud was so challenged by his peers he altered his original theories of hysteria as originating from sexual abuse.
Within the larger scientific community, integrative medicine and 200 year old “traditional” medicine are also in the midst of a paradigm shift, - one that debates if there are non-material ways to change one’s health. In 1980, it was thought impossible for the human being to impact his/her sympathetic/parasympathetic responses or immune system by thoughts, intention or any mental process. Today some 25+ years later, there is a significant body of research that gives support in scientific language to this construct. In this case, general public opinion led science. In 1996, when Eisner asked randomly selected patients at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and asked 1) if they used any alternative approaches to healing and 2) if their physicians knew about it, he was surprised that 1/3 did and that 70% were fearful of telling their physicians. Needless to say in this culture that so highly prizes materialism in all forms especially financial, the fact that people were spending their own money made medicine, and insurance companies sit up and take notice.
Within all of integrative medicine- mental emotional approaches, herbs, energy medicine, acupuncture and other traditional systems including homeopathy, it is the latter which most challenges 21st century medicine. If one examines the roots of Hahnemann’s thinking one sees forerunners in a paradigm which saw Nature as a source of wisdom. Today, homeopathy continues to struggle to be accepted. In this quest to be fully accepted by the dominant, scientific paradigm, some in the homeopathic community seems to be distressed by anything other than a strict classical interpretation – thinking homeopathy can be more fully accepted if it adheres to what is seen as the original Hahnemannian paradigm. This paper suggests that Hahnemann had a paradigmatic worldview that fully encompassed some of the more recent innovations in case taking.
Hahnemann’s Paradigmatic Legacy
The worldview, the paradigm of Hahnemann was immersed in the romanticism of Goethe and Blake. It was a natural worldview that saw beyond construct of the body as material only. Nature and the human body had intelligence and purpose. Illness was an impairment of spirit which if imbalanced impacts our path in life and thus creates disharmony and illness. Symptoms were signals from the body’s essence asking for help.
“In the healthy human state, the spirit-like life force (autocracy) that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction and keeps all parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both feelings and functions, so that our indwelling, rational spirit can freely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.
The material organism, thought of without life force, is capable of no sensibility, no activity, no self-preservation. It derives all sensibility and produces its life functions solely by means of the immaterial Wesen (the life principle, the life force) that enlivens the material organism in health and in disease.” Aph 9 –10 (1)
Although a 19th century physician, Hahnemann’s paradigm of the Vital Force has deep roots in the indigenous tribal paradigms of people who remained close to Nature. Land based or tribal peoples hold a paradigm which emerged from the hunter gathers of all indigenous peoples, and became the originating paradigms of shamanic cultures as diverse as Shinto in the East, the Celts in the West, and all tribal peoples from Russia to South America and Africa. Theirs was a paradigmatic worldview that saw Nature as the source of all necessary supply and information, as well as a partnering with humans in expressing that wisdom.
In all times, even to the present, groups of people have lived intimately with Nature relying on it for the necessities of life—food, shelter, medicine and information. The primary source of life necessities for land-based peoples is still Nature. As recently as 2005, the land based and so called primitive tribes of Andaman Island, the Sentinelese and Poomphor peoples (2) escaped devastation and destruction by the tsunami by reading the signs of Nature and hearing her message of grave danger escaping to higher ground to safety without benefit of modern technology and meteorology. They “read” Nature and survived. The Andaman Island tribes were safer than the so-called civilized tourists who saw the water receding and went down to the beach to witness these phenomena without “hearing” the danger this event foretold.
How did these tribes experience the same warning as the tourist and yet interpret it wholly differently? The relationship with Nature was different. When one partners with the diverse forces that are active within our biofields rather than abstractly and impersonally studying them, there is a different line of communication. Stephen Harrod Buhner writes of how native people received the healing information from plants and its continuation into the present time:
“All ancient and indigenous peoples said that they learned the uses of plants as medicines from the plants themselves….Although these assertions have been disregarded by Western thinkers the past two hundred years-deemed the superstitious ramblings of unsophisticated, unchristian and unscientific peoples—it is distinctly odd that every indigenous and ancient culture on Earth, cultures geographically and temporally distinct, would say the same thing….This more ancient mode of cognition has not just disappeared just because another mode of cognition has gained dominance ….It was used by the great German poet Goethe in the early 19th century, by Luther Burbank in the early 20th century in his creation of the majority of food plants that we now take for granted. It was used by George Washington Carver in his work with and development of the peanut as food, and is now being used by Masanobu Fukuka, the great Japanese farmer in growing crops that consistently exceed the yield of farmers who use more scientific approaches…It was used by Henry David Thoreau…and even Barbara McClintock who won the Nobel prize for her work with transposition and corn genetics. The truth is that this way of gathering knowledge is inherent in the way we are structured as human beings. .This gathering of knowledge directly from the wildness of the world is called “biognosis” - meaning “knowledge from life….” (3)
21st Century Paradigm
This construct of a relationship with Nature that partners and communicates is quite different from the scientific basis of the 20-21st centuries which is inherently materialistic.
Numerous scientists, though far from a quorum, have discussed how biased science is in excluding the spiritual (that is non material) as a causal factor when investigating phenomena. It is as if we can investigate phenomena only if we acknowledge that there is some material basis to how a phenomenon operates. If we see a result, to explore it we have to explore it from a paradigm of material causality. This creates problems when a possible causal factor is thought, intention or even energy.
Our mindset seems to be that something is explainable only if we can examine it within the paradigm of material causality. The Cartesian split separating body and soul in the 16th century has impacted not just the mind body split, which is only recently beginning to heal, but also influences science itself. Something cannot even be investigated if it does not fall within the domain of the dominant cultural paradigm.
Ironically, the field of science which has the most double blind, randomized controlled studies with significant outcomes is parapsychology. Even with this data, most scientists and a large percentage of the general population have a paradigm that says it is “not possible” and so it is not. When reporting to Congress, at their request, on the research base of parapsychological data, Jessica Utts PhD a University of Cal statistician wrote:
“Using the standard applied to any other area of science it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance….There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.” - Jessica Utts PhD , 1995. (4)
Land Based Paradigms: A Shamanic View
Indigenous peoples even today partner with Nature, dialogue with Nature and expect information.
“When leaving my home with a question in mind—do I take this job, how might I handle this conflict at work—I listen for the aid the Earth and all its inhabitants provide. Which direction is the wind blowing from—is the North wind suggesting an assertive response or the South wind a gentler approach? Which animals cross my path or come to mind—is the trickster coyote recommending cunning or the squirrel industriousness? Is the morning dove suggesting peace, or the cawing crow demanding confrontation? Every aspect of Nature speaks to me and offers aid.”
The shaman sees the day-to-day world as both material and spiritual in which all participants carry multiple layers of information. Viewing the Middle World, the everyday world, with this double vision requires that I ask not just what do I see, hear, and experience but also what valuable clue, information or meaning does it offer. It is almost like a Jungian dream analysis. What does each and every aspect of the dream have to say to me about the meaning it holds?
If one holds this paradigmatic world-view, how one engages in everything in daily life changes. One not only experiences the “stuff” of daily life, but one inquires into the meaning of all that “stuff.” Nothing is insignificant or meaningless. The words one uses, the gestures one makes, the various participants within a scene of life become possible sources of information.
Karen Armstrong a contemporary documenter of belief shaping paradigms writes of how paradigms, myths, belief systems:
“…taught people to see through the tangible world to a reality that seemed to embody something else. But this required no leap of faith because at this stage (Paleolithic) there seemed to be no metaphysical gulf between the sacred and the profane. When these early people looked at a stone they did not see an inert, unpromising rock. It embodied strength, perseverance, solidity and another mode of being that was quite different from the vulnerable human state. Its very otherness made it holy. A stone was a common hierophany –revelation of the sacred—in the ancient world. Again a tree which had the power to effortlessly renew itself incarnated and made visible a miraculous vitality denied the mortal men and women….Trees, stars and heavenly bodies were never objects of worship in themselves but were revered because they were epiphanies of a tremendous force that could be seen powerfully at work in all natural phenomena giving people ____of another more potent reality.” (5)
This Paleolithic view of the natural world was also the view the philosophers, and artists and even some scientists of the Romantic period (late 18th early 19th centuries) sought to revive as a response to the mind heavy approach of the Enlightenment and it was the world view Hahnemann held in great part.
“He (Hahnemann) uses the word Aeussrungen (which literally means utterances) to refer to the manifestation of disease (Aph 11) He refers to the disease ‘expressing itself’ through symptoms (Aph 12), to the ‘pure language of nature’ (Aph 144) to the physician’s articulation of the disease case (Aph 192) and to the voice of nature (Aph 262.)”(6)
Homeopathy and the Shamanic Paradigm
From this perspective then, a homeopathic interview is much more than collecting data from the client. It is the setting in which the offering is made, the entire gestalt and all of the players from nature that are attending at the moment. The pejorative comment that I have heard or read such as “He/she is not a classical homeopath, he gave cat’s milk because a cat greeted the patient.” signals a paradigmatic view that is quite literal: “How silly, he looked at such a thing that has nothing to do with a case.” The paradigm at work eliminates certain information out as non-relevant and therefore useless. It is a paradigm that narrows the field of inquiry and is a superficial understanding of the causal exploration.
The shamanic paradigm would approach this by saying, “We (all of Nature) are all interconnected and co creating reality, everything that moves into my experience as a homeopath (or a human) is a communication from Nature. It is not the answer and it is information. How might that information or clue instruct me?” The cat is not the remedy, and the appearance of the cat is part of the case, as the homeopath, the patient and the natural world co create the solution, the remedy.
Sankaran and the Inherent Shamanic Paradigm
Sankaran’s model of watching for movement, seeking basic sensation and listening for source words seem to some to be totally non-classical. The classical homeopathic paradigm emerges from a dominant northern European world-view which often does not fully articulate its indigenous roots as expressed in the view of the Vital Force. If one uses the shamanic worldview of nature communicating from a deeper place and actually speaking to us, Sankaran’s approach is not non-classical at all.
Boenninghausen’s description of the total symptoms as location, sensation and modality take us part of the way Sankaran suggests. Sankaran asks us to walk deeper down the path to that place where the patient has difficulty humanly articulating his dilemma. The homeopath and patient move into the shamanic Middle World where what one sees, hears, feels, embodies has meaning both as experienced data and meaning.
“I began to see, what we consider as disease, the totality of signs and symptoms, mental and physical, general, particular… all of this come from one basic disturbance. And that disturbance is not in the mind, not in the body, something deeper than both and at that level a person talks of language which is both mental and physical. The body and the mind can then be seen as expression of that and that language actually is not even the language of a human being.”
It’s a language that is coming from a source that is different from human being. If we start hearing that language, deeper and deeper, if we focus on those words and those gestures, which are not human, therefore they are very peculiar, what we call as peculiar in homoeopathy, very strange. Then we start hearing a different language, other than the human language.” (7)
When the patient spontaneously discusses source materials of the remedy especially with energetic movement which enlivens the body in a new way, is this not information of the nature of the remedy which the homeopath might find useful. The shaman would say yes, be attentive to all.
A further consideration comes from Sankaran when he writes:
“…the disease, the totality of the signs and symptoms, mental and physical, general and particular all of this comes from our basic disturbance and that disturbance is not in the mind, nor in the body; it is something deeper than both. At that level the person talks a language which is both mental and physical. The body and the mind can then be seen as an expression of that level (sensation) and that language actually is not even the language of the human being. It is a language that comes from a source that is different from the human being: a plant, a mineral or an animal.” (8)
“That which is non human in a human, the basis of stress, that is what I understood to be disease. Disease is the non-human song playing within us, the melody from another substance from nature….This pattern or sensation, from which our delusion arises, seems almost to be the voice of the sprit within us. It rules a part of our human life and colors our experience….It is a language that is coming from a source that is different from a human being: a plant, a mineral or an animal….it can be said that each one of us lives two lives at the same time….This other world, the spirit of this other substance within us, this energy pattern that confers individuality to each of us has its appropriate place in nature and not in us. But we have borrowed the energy pattern so that we can cope with the way we perceive reality….This energy pattern is not innate to us but to the “source” from which we have borrowed it in nature….…a remedy is selected which is prepared from a substance whose song is similar to the patient’s non human song.” (9)
“….the voice of the spirit of something within us… a remedy is selected which is prepared from a substance whose song is similar to the patient’s non-human song. Such a remedy in time has the effect of diminishing the non-human song so that the cacophony or conflict or stress ceases and one melody, the human melody, is heard distinctly.” (10)
Paradigms and Homeopathy
To examine the varied approaches of contemporary homeopathy, one needs first of all to become aware of the paradigms we consciously and unconsciously embrace, and be cognizant of those paradigms we screen out, sometimes because of prejudice, sometimes because of oversight, sometimes because we are each deeply rooted in a preferred model of thinking. Hahnemann was an explorer who challenged the dominant paradigm and religiously defended the alternative model he established.
“This individualising examination of a disease case, for which I am giving only general instructions here, demands nothing of the practitioner except freedom from bias and healthy senses, attention while observing, and fidelity in recording….” (11)
This is the aspect of case-receiving that Sankaran has refined. By observing and fully accepting all that is being observed, within the entire biofield of the patient-practitioner; by staying with the patient in all his/her expressions, and by following the body language of the total organism into the experienced sensations, always asking the patient to reveal in human language its essential nature, one receives the full homeopathic case true to Hahnemann and true to the nature of the patient with all his/her relationship to Nature herself.
Bibliography
1. O’Reilly WB. Organon of the Medical Art by Samuel Hahnemann. Redmond: 1996: Aph 9-10
2. CBS news report and Associated Press, Jan 14, 2004
3. Bruhner,S.H. The Secret Teaching of Plants. Rochester: Bear and Co, 2004: pp2-3
4. Dossey L. The dark side of consciousness and the therapeutic relationship. Alternative Therapies 2002: 8: p. 17
5. Armstrong, Karen A Brief History of Myth. New York: Cannongate, 2005: pp.16-17
6. O’Reilly, WB Organon of the Medical Art by Samuel Hahnemann, Redmond,Washinton, 1996
7. Sankaran R. Lecture at Florida seminar, Oct 2005
8. Sankaran,R. The Sensation in Homeopathy, Mumbai, India.: Homeopathic Medical Publishers, 2004: p.6
9. Ibid: p. 7
10. Ibid: p. 7
11. O’Reilly WB. Organon of the Medical Art by Samuel Hahnemann. Redmond: 1996: Aph 85
Kunz,T The Structure of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1962.
