The Vital Approach - Level 4: The Mental or Causal Body
- Anne Vervarcke,www.thewhiteroom.be ,http://walkforhomeopathy.wordpress.com/,
http://annevervarcke.com/blog/
Together with the previous level, the mental level forms the ‘mind’ part of the organism and has an individual and a collective aspect. Dominant and widespread ideas can influence individual ideas and convictions and this fact is used by advertisers of all kind, be it political or commercial.
Some people seem to suffer from individual diseases while others seem to live out the collective disturbance. The reason for this is probably not to be found on this level but on the choices of the soul. Even when we cannot give a reasonable answer to the question of why a person is the way he is nor why he suffers from a particular disturbance, the observation that the disease is an individual or respectively a collective one, might have repercussions for the treatment.
One could call Level also the psyche.
We can determine healthy psychological functioning (psychology) and unhealthy psychological functioning (psycho pathology), very much in the same way we have healthy physical functioning (physiology) and unhealthy physical functioning (physical pathology).
The psyche has further levels within itself: the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg: it’s where our rationality resides, where we think, calculate and make logical thought processes.
The subconscious, a much larger and more important layer that we want to explore during case taking, contains all our unwanted, unbearable, forbidden or too painful thoughts, desires, wishes, experiences etc. Because they are not allowed to exist or to be expressed, they are suppressed and denied and disappear under the surface. There they live an underground life and influence the person’s thoughts and acts, without him or her being aware of it. Since feeling, admitting or expressing these feelings and ideas was or is taboo and thus life threatening, it is difficult to get them to the surface. Certain psychotherapies try this in order to make them conscious and integrate them into the personality, but this is a long and painful process that is met with a lot of resistance. In the homeopathic consultation we have techniques to inquire into the subconscious level without being too invasive. Our questioning is then directed at the exploration of the areas or instances of least control: fears and phobias, dreams, intensely stressful events, fascinations, hobbies etc.
The unconscious level is similar to the collective unconscious: it contains the memory of the whole history of the human race. On that level we have symbols, myths, allegories, fairy tales, legends, and fables etc. They are universal and reflect the main themes in human life: birth and death, the after life, initiation rites, parenthood, burial, power, and love for example. In the patient they will often show up as dreams or as an unexplainable fascination.
Everybody has a mind, even a baby or a child, I don’t think there is any doubt about that, but not every case is a ‘mental case.’
We talk about a mental case when the focus of the disease expression is on the mental level and shows serious derangements. But in every patient we explore the mental level because as we go up the levels, the more individualized a person becomes. If we want to know how he perceives himself and the world, we will have to ask him.
Level is also called (Sankaran et al) the delusional level. Sankaran understood that since everybody has his own version of reality, everybody lives in his or her delusional world. A delusion is then defined as a distorted perception of reality, not being in the ‘here and now’ but living in the memories of the past or the anxieties for the future. Both reflect the actual state in the past and the future.
This is by the way, an answer to the question of whether we should prescribe on the actual state the patient is in when we see him, or if we should prescribe for his entire history. When one understands that the memory is flexible and will always rewrite the biography according to the present state and understanding, than we see that the past or the biography of the patient contains only projections of the present in the past. There is only the eternal ‘now’. We can’t prescribe on the past and we can’t prescribe on the future.
As a consequence of living in a delusion, we all make our ‘conditions OK’. In reality everybody is ‘unconditioned OK’ and perfect, but since we don’t experience it that way, we are disturbed. Part of this disturbance is expressed in our ideas about how we need to be or what we need to do. This leads to compulsive thoughts, actions and reactions and restricts our freedom.
These conditions and restrictions are excellent pointers to the remedy we have to prescribe in order to resolve them.
http://annevervarcke.com/blog/
Some people seem to suffer from individual diseases while others seem to live out the collective disturbance. The reason for this is probably not to be found on this level but on the choices of the soul. Even when we cannot give a reasonable answer to the question of why a person is the way he is nor why he suffers from a particular disturbance, the observation that the disease is an individual or respectively a collective one, might have repercussions for the treatment.
One could call Level also the psyche.
We can determine healthy psychological functioning (psychology) and unhealthy psychological functioning (psycho pathology), very much in the same way we have healthy physical functioning (physiology) and unhealthy physical functioning (physical pathology).
The psyche has further levels within itself: the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg: it’s where our rationality resides, where we think, calculate and make logical thought processes.
The subconscious, a much larger and more important layer that we want to explore during case taking, contains all our unwanted, unbearable, forbidden or too painful thoughts, desires, wishes, experiences etc. Because they are not allowed to exist or to be expressed, they are suppressed and denied and disappear under the surface. There they live an underground life and influence the person’s thoughts and acts, without him or her being aware of it. Since feeling, admitting or expressing these feelings and ideas was or is taboo and thus life threatening, it is difficult to get them to the surface. Certain psychotherapies try this in order to make them conscious and integrate them into the personality, but this is a long and painful process that is met with a lot of resistance. In the homeopathic consultation we have techniques to inquire into the subconscious level without being too invasive. Our questioning is then directed at the exploration of the areas or instances of least control: fears and phobias, dreams, intensely stressful events, fascinations, hobbies etc.
The unconscious level is similar to the collective unconscious: it contains the memory of the whole history of the human race. On that level we have symbols, myths, allegories, fairy tales, legends, and fables etc. They are universal and reflect the main themes in human life: birth and death, the after life, initiation rites, parenthood, burial, power, and love for example. In the patient they will often show up as dreams or as an unexplainable fascination.
Everybody has a mind, even a baby or a child, I don’t think there is any doubt about that, but not every case is a ‘mental case.’
We talk about a mental case when the focus of the disease expression is on the mental level and shows serious derangements. But in every patient we explore the mental level because as we go up the levels, the more individualized a person becomes. If we want to know how he perceives himself and the world, we will have to ask him.
Level is also called (Sankaran et al) the delusional level. Sankaran understood that since everybody has his own version of reality, everybody lives in his or her delusional world. A delusion is then defined as a distorted perception of reality, not being in the ‘here and now’ but living in the memories of the past or the anxieties for the future. Both reflect the actual state in the past and the future.
This is by the way, an answer to the question of whether we should prescribe on the actual state the patient is in when we see him, or if we should prescribe for his entire history. When one understands that the memory is flexible and will always rewrite the biography according to the present state and understanding, than we see that the past or the biography of the patient contains only projections of the present in the past. There is only the eternal ‘now’. We can’t prescribe on the past and we can’t prescribe on the future.
As a consequence of living in a delusion, we all make our ‘conditions OK’. In reality everybody is ‘unconditioned OK’ and perfect, but since we don’t experience it that way, we are disturbed. Part of this disturbance is expressed in our ideas about how we need to be or what we need to do. This leads to compulsive thoughts, actions and reactions and restricts our freedom.
These conditions and restrictions are excellent pointers to the remedy we have to prescribe in order to resolve them.
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