Spiritual Bioenergetics of Homoeopathic Materia Medica

Y. Sharma
Academy of Light Ltd London, Wembley, 2004
ISBN 1-904472-01-X, Price not stated.

It isn’t possible to experience reality directly. Every one of us brings our own particular and unique subjectivity to each experience. It isn’t possible to know the experience of another person directly either. This is perhaps the greatest difficulty for anyone who is attempting to help another person. One of the most powerful tools we have developed to help us with this problem is the metaphor. The homeopathic materia medica is a collection of metaphors.

Each remedy ‘picture’ describes common patterns of experience using a particular set of metaphors. The biomedical model of health and disease uses a different set of metaphors. There are many, many different sets of metaphors in human usage. What this book sets out to do is to collect together a number of these metaphoric sets and place them next to each other around the core set of homeopathic metaphors. The author presents insights, beliefs and statements from a large number of sources focussing primarily on the traditional homeopathic materia medica, anthroposophy, traditional Chinese medicine, cranio-sacral therapy, astrology, orthodox science and ‘spirit’ sources which have been ‘channelled’. Whilst the selection of these particular sources is highly individualistic, the basic concept is an interesting one. Each source is tapped for descriptions which overlap with, or match, the homeopathic materia medica of particular remedies.

If this concept had been worked out more rigorously then the author might have produced a work which furthered communication and understanding between people by enabling them to see how their different viewpoints, beliefs and languages, captured in their own preferred metaphors referred to certain ‘real’ and common experiences. However, Dr Sharma chooses not to tell the reader the sources of ANY of the specific statements contained within the book apart from certain headings in each chapter. The headings, however, bear little relationship to the underlying texts. For example, under the ‘Science’ heading in the remedy ‘Agaricus’ we read ‘The myth of Santa Claus is linked to this fungus, as well as flying spirits of many forms. Of note the realm of fairies functions on a different time scale to the third dimensional space–time of humans!’ and under ‘Spiritual’ in Calc carb we read ‘Much of the natural calcium carbonate and phosphate originally derives from living creatures, especially from the sea!’. Never does the author identify the source of a specific statement so statements such as ‘The common cockroach females carry egg cases containing 12–14 eggs’, and, ‘Insects are very much connected to the mental realm of thought-forms’, are all printed with no indication that the former is gained by methodical observation, the latter is achieved through channelling dead spirits from the after-world.

Instead of improved communication and understanding we end up with piles upon piles of metaphors each of which refer only to other metaphors and the relationship of any of them the real, everyday experience is lost. In homeopathic terms this means that Sharma's book could be called ‘sycotic’. In ‘sycosis’ the individual runs further and further away into fantasy as they try to escape the burdens of reality. Sycosis is represented by over-doing, over-activity and an over-growing. It's no surprise then that this is one big heavy book. It runs to nearly 800 pages and this is only ‘Volume 1’!

It is also interesting to consider this book in the light of Lacan's insights into the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘the real’. Lacan said that the ‘reality’ we each experience can only ever be partial. There is always something missing, and that something is ‘the real’. Our experience of ‘the real’ is limited by the particular sets of sensory organs we possess and their levels of sensitivity. It is also limited by our neurology. Our neuro-sensory equipment presents us with the basis of our experience of ‘reality’. We describe this reality with language. Our language is made up of words which are signs and signifiers. He points out that once we start to use these signifiers in ways where they only refer to other signifiers without any relationship to ‘the real’ then we have entered the realm of “psychosis”. That's what this book does.

In homeopathic terms, it's a sycotic book and in Lacanian terms it's a psychotic book.

But make up your own mind. The last page of the book contains a collection of quotes described as ‘Commendations from the Spirit World’. Here you can read how the book and the author are well thought of by The Buddha, Christ, Hahnemann, Kent and the Archangel Michael—all in their own words!