ABOUT HEALTH AND DISEASE
George: I am not going to give you a lecture. I would like to communicate definite ideas to you concerning health, and I would like for you to discover homoeopathy together. Homoeopathy is a therapeutic system – one of the many systems which are outside of the orthodox ideas of medicine. What we are concerned with today is to find out what that system is. Unfortunately you cannot experience it on a purely theoretical basis.
Behind the theory of homoeopathy there is a logic which anybody can comprehend and I believe anybody can discover. So the first question that I would like to ask you is, “If you have a fever and a cough, you have a disease”. Is that correct?
Response : You have symptoms.
George: Very good. I can’t catch you. So something has gone wrong in the organism. Where? We don’t know. What are the fever and the cough? What do they represent? Can anybody tell me?
Response : Stress on the vital force.
George : I want to make it more understandable. You see, they don’t know what the vital force is. So we have fever in the body …
Response : An Alarm ?
George : Why is there an alarm ?
Response : Imbalance.
George: We don’t know yet there is an alarm. It could be either because there is afire in the next room or there are burglars in the next room and they are stealing something that belongs to us, and there is an alarm. And then what you sec is a big commotion – a big upheaval. And we say that the big upheaval is the cause of what is going on? No. The cause of what is going on is rhe burglar in the next room. We see the upheaval in the body, but there is a burglar who is going to steal something in the back room and this has caused the body to be alarmed and to produce a reaction. So in the body there was an intruder. There was a bacillus, there was a violence, there was a microbe, which entered the body? Why? Why did it enter the body ? Because the body was not guarded So the cause of the alarm, which we see through the fever, the cough, the rest of the symptoms, is because there is an intruder – a virus, etc. This is the cause. Yes, to a certain degree. If the doors were well locked and barred, the intruder could not enter. So therefore what we see is a symptom and nothing else. But the reaction of our organism to prevent something which is dangerous for the time being, at this moment, is taking place. So with this upheaval, we get up and go and fight the intruder, but the intruder is quite strong and the battle is going to demolish us. We left too many doors open and there is a lot coming in. And we need ammunition. We bring more and more and we call our friends and all of the defenses we have in our body.
The fever goes on for 3, 4 or 5 days and we bring more into action, and then there is a great perspiration which comes out in order to bring out some of the toxins of burglars which are in the body. More are produced and again the fever comes. There is more ammunition. And in this fight there are two possibilities : The one is that we shall win and knock them out, or they are going to win and we are knocked out. So, therefore, it is either death or life. Victory for the time being at least.
Let us imagine now that this symptom which this defense mechanism brought in order to fight, these very symptoms are gotten rid of instead of helping them to fight with more vigor. We suppress them. What happens?
If we have a high fever and we give an antipyretic, we don’t respect the fever. We logically say that the fever is not needed. “It is going to bum my body”. This has been the attitude all along and it is still so in the orthodox medical profession. They try to bring down the fever. The fever is absolutely necessary for this battle between the virus and the defense of the body. IT IS OUR INNER INTELLIGENCE WHICH HAS DECIDED TO CREATE THE SYMPTOMATOLOGY IN ORDER TO FIGHT IT. NOW THERE IS AN INTELLIGENCE INSIDE US WHICH IS MUCH HIGHER THAN THE NORMAL INTELLIGENCE WHICH WE USE IN OUR DAILY LIFE.
The whole body is a kind of very complicated computer which, under stress, will give the best possible answer. So the best possible answer for the body is to raise the fever , to have cough and to have mucus coming out in order to kill the bacteria. Then to have cough to bring out the mucus so that the lungs will not be congested.
There is a whole syndrome of symptomatology in the defense of the body which we should respect and if it is possible to encourage it and strengthen it in order to fight the intruder rather than to suppress it.
So in this very argument the whole difference between homoeopathy and allopathy lies. In homoeopathy we suppose that EVERY symptom … we must be careful. I shall give you a small exposition and then there will be time for you to ask me questions, for l know you have a lot of questions.
EVERY symptom is a defense mechanism in homoeopathy. It is the result of a defense mechanism. Therefore, it is useful. And immediately you will ask me, “Do you mean to say that my anxiety which I have, my depression, is NEEDED ?” or the epileptic fit is needed? Do you need sadness? Do you need headache? Do you need a headache which comes at 11 O’clock every morning 2″
Okay, the fever we understand because the fever brings up the temperature of the body and then creates a perspiration and the toxins come out. This we can understand. But why do we need a headache? Why do I need an epileptic fit ? Why do I need the sadness and the depression ? Why do I need the anxieties and the fears? How do you say that we need them? Can anybody answer that question?
We maintain something which is a paradox almost. For a certain level, on the physical level, we may understand that. But what about our symptoms on our emotional level or on our mental level? Here you have to understand a little bit, that YES: this body needs the symptoms which appear at a certain moment because through that symptom, through this anxiety, something worse that was going to happen if the body did\ not rise up and bring forward that particular symptom, would happen.’ That means a headache may reasonably be necessary because a headache means a spasm or a relaxation of the vessels. The more that the arteries and vessels relax, we feel it as a pain. If the body did not bring about that relaxation on the artery, what would happen ? The pressure on the artery would remain high and we might have a brain episode. We might have a damaged brain permanently. So the headaches really are needed. Be-cause our body is not yet in perfect balance. It is disturbed in some way. And it produces certain symptomatology in order to prevent something which is much worse. So every symptom must be regarded as an assistance for our battling of our bodies, in order to counterbalance-in order to bring out a final balance … a final equilibrium.
Question : What about symptoms that would kill?
George: I will talk about that. So what we have as a final result is that each organism has a kind of capacity, a kind of unbalance. So put this together… the capacity, or the possibilities which he has as an organism, and the imbalance on the other hand – put these two together and it gives a symptomatology. That symptomatology can be in chronic conditions repeated every day, or a very few days, or every ten days, and it is nothing else but a constant effort of the organism to bring about a balance. Now if the organism cannot do that, then eventually there always comes a time where the organism cannot do that – cannot produce symptoms to prevent the final damage and collapse – and death ensues. But if we had a better defense, we could postpone death. So on this assumption, the whole of homoeopathy is based. What we need is not to suppress or make a symptom disappear or a group of symptoms disappear, but rather to find a way to strengthen the organism and produce a better defense for the body. Actually with homoeopathy we don’t do anything else like this. We respect every symptom which comes about in an individual and we are guided by these symptoms and we see how his defenses are working. Don’t be misled to think that everybody has the same defenses. No. Everybody has his own peculiar defenses. And then what must we do? We must strengthen it. By what means? How? And this is the big question. How can we strengthen the defense mechanism ? Can anybody tell me? We have different organisms producing different symptomatologies. Yes? And we want every organism to strengthen the defense mechanism. What should we do?
Response : Give them a little bit of the bug so they can fight it off and build up antibodies.
George : I can’t understand.
Response : Immunize it.
Response : Give them a little bit of the organism that is invading.
George: That is one idea. Buff we want to put it more precisely, what we should do, is find a way to augment, to make stronger the symptoms. The existing symptoms, the organism is trying to bring about balance, and it cannot. And every now and then he has a headache. Every now and then he has a stomach pain. Or he has diarrhoea, or he has this or he has that. There are all of these different chronic diseases which he has. Why can the body not recover finally from this chronic state in which the body finds itself? Because there is not enough strength, enough defense behind. If we find a way to strengthen that, which is to make the symptoms for the time being stronger, then actually what we are doing is strengthening the defense of the body.
The patient has a high fever of 104°F. If we can make the fever 105° or 106°F immediately, maybe this is what the body needs to recover.
Question : Isn’t that dangerously high ?
George : We will discuss that during the question time.
I want you to get the idea of what we are doing in homoeopathy – we are strengthening… We are taking a picture of the defense mechanism and we try to find a herb or a mineral or an animal product that can produce the same symptomatology. And we have tested the different drugs on the human body and we have seen that the products imitate the diseases. Each
drug imitates a certain group of diseases. So if we give that drug to the organism that we know already is producing a group of symptoms which are similar to those which the patient has, what is going to happen ? If I know that Bell. produces a pain on the right ear which extends to the back, and you come and say to me, “I have a pain on the right ear which extends to the back”, and I give you Bell. On the provers, the humans in which this remedy has been proven, it has produced this pain exactly; what is going to happen? Your headache is going to disappear, or is it going to become worse?
It is going to become worse. But at this very moment, we strengthen the defense of the body. There is more energy now to fight the disease and it is energy which we did not have for so many years because you have been suffering with chronic ailments and you have not been able to find that extra energy which you needed to fight. Now take that very energy that you need – that specific energy that produces EXACTLY the symptomatology which you have as an organism. And what happens ? There is an aggravation of the symptoms and then there is an amelioration which now lasts. We have the body brought into a state of balance.
So this idea is a bit strange. No? What do we do? Instead of cutting down symptoms by finding a remedy, when you have diarrhoea, take a drug that produces an anti-diarrhoea effect. If you have a cough, take a drug to stop the cough. If you have anxiety, take a drug to stop the anxiety. But yes, I stop anxiety, but what about my liver? “But I have a pain in the liver, and if I take this drug the pain in the liver will become much more and then I will be bloated up and I have dyspnoea.”
We don’t care about that. With homoeopathy and in general with the new approach to medicine which you all know of by now … a new medicine is coming up … this idea is not accepted any more by the majority of the individuals. But they don’t know any better. And homoeopathy, together with the other therapeutic disciplines, is bringing a new light to the medical problems of today which are enormous. Enormous!
Who can say that we have been applying a system so far that was giving us health ? We would all have been healthy by now if that was so with that existing medicine. Who is healthy? Most of you are under 30 years.
You have been led to come here to Esalen because sometimes you have had problems. You were led to find special diets because of health problems. And if we had a real curative system all along, we would have been much more balanced in our lives than we are today. We have seen a lot of imbalance these days. And we need desperately a therapeutic method, a discipline, which can give us back our lost equilibrium. And this lost equilibrium is not only on a physical level. It is not when I have a duodenal ulcer or a heart problem or a liver trouble; it is on the emotional and mental plane as well. See the anxieties, the fears, the depressions. See how sensitive we have become in our lives and our health gets upside down quickly. Why? We have lost the idea that the door is open. We did not take care of ourselves to keep in a good state, and that is why the intruders – the bacteria, the microbes can get in.
Now is there anybody who has not understood what has been said so far? Do you want to ask something?
Question : I followed you basically with regard to symptoms being a manifestation of the body’s attempt to correct an invasion. In fever there is a direct correlation between an increase in the body temperature and the demise of a virus or bacteria. I am thinking in terms of coughing as a symptom in this sense and it would seem that coughing, at least the way I imagine it, is an attempt to rid the lungs and the respiratory tract of an accumulation of mucus. Now it would seem to me that rather than … that could become very tiring to increase the coughing. It may be cheating a little bit, but it seems like it would be better if you could somehow cause the mucus to become more easily detached. And so with the same amount of coughing you could then get rid of more mucus. George : Yes. (Laughter) That is a good point.
But you must remember that we do not decide how the organism will react. When you have the symptomatology you don’t decide and say, “I want a little bit of fever, a little bit more of a cough, and maybe not so much mucus.” The body decides. So we go according to… we have to respect the reaction of the body and we have to go accordingly, together with it. It is like judo. We are using the force of the enemy – the same force-in order to counteract the enemy. By strengthening his own attack, we can do this. You see that boxing is allopathy. In judo, or akido, you are using very subtle energies to bring about the other fellow, to bring about victory.
This is the idea. We cannot give you the remedy and decide that the remedy is going to give you only a certain amount of cough, or bring down the cough so that you don’t suffer. But if by chance one of your symptomatologies is dangerous for the moment, and if that is increasing, then that symptom will become dangerous. Then the body has the intelligence not to aggravate that symptom but to bring it immediately down. I am answering your question now. If a symptom is dangerous, the body has the intelligence, when you strengthen it, not to aggravate that symptom, not to make it worse. Say that you have high blood pressure of 240 or 280- it is the limit. And I am going to treat you and I give you a remedy which is going to take your blood pressure to 300. Most probably you will have a brain episode. That will be the end then. If I give you the right remedy, what is going to happen? It is like a computer that decides that at that point it is very dangerous and so it brings it down immediately. And it makes an excessive urination and you run all the time because That is aggravated. Perspiration is aggravated. The headache is aggravated, because it is not dangerous. But at that point at which there was danger, the organism has the intelligence not to aggravate it but instead to relieve it immediately. And if the coughing is really going to be destructive for that particular person, then the cough will be relieved and other symptoms will be aggravated.
The human body is infinitely complicated. We do not know today even a millionth of what is going on inside the human body. Therefore it is very difficult to decide logically which is good and which is bad.
Yet the whole assumption of allopathic medicine lies on that. They tell you that anxiety and depression are not good. They will tell you to take an antidepressive or take an anti-anxiety drug. But who says that that is good? Because you are telling me, I must believe it ? There is a reason and I want to find out why I have anxiety. And either the anxiety will go away in a considerably healthy person by an inner understanding of the conditions that brought about the anxiety. And you know very well that once you will see and understand the conditions, then the anxiety will vanish. But in homoeopathy we are not talking about or concerned with symptoms which are superficial and which can go away easily. We are concerned about diseases which are chronic and permanent. Here we have another way of treating the human body in an intelligent way. The doctor who treats you homoeopethically does not interfere with your mechanisms. He does not interpret them. He does not say, This is good and this is bad”. But he takes the picture of your defense mechanism and tries to find which is the drug which has produced a similar picture. And once you give that and you strengthen the defenses, you will see an initial aggravation and then an amelioration.
So on this assumption a whole science has been developed over the last 150 years. It is a science which has remained alive, but unfortunately with a few individuals in the world. This knowledge is not a common knowledge of our medical profession today.
That is why and perhaps you know, that there are doctors from all over
America and some from Europe, who have come to listen to these lectures.
And homoeopathy is also something more than just curing a disease. Because you know what a disease involves and how we eventually become diseased by wrong doings and by wrong actions and things like that as we go along in our lives. For a person to say, “Come, l shall cure you” is a big thing. And this science is very difficult to be understood and to be thoroughly mastered at this moment by the doctors. Why? Because every disease … you sec bronchitis and it has for every individual a different expression. There is bronchitis here in this person and bronchitis in that person. A homoeopathic physician will not give the same remedy to both. They will see how the defense mechanism is acting on that person and they will give the indicated remedy for that person and then will see how it is acting on that other person and give another remedy. And there is where the difficulty comes.
In homoeopathy we have what we call the “drug picture”. In these drug pictures we have … It is late and I will give you just one drug picture. Sepia. Sepia is from the sea, from cuttlefish. This medicine is produced from that. It is interesting and I shall describe to you the psychology of the person who may need the remedy.
In the beginning the child feels happy and is okay. As it goes into the world, he starts going into different ideas, groups, cultures, etc. and he or she goes and has some relationships with people and sexual relationships. These are experiences. But this is a sensitive, excitable person. She is usually a can person who is very excitable and sensitive. So then there is a girl who is 14-15 years old and she has a relationship with somebody. And this sensitive woman comes into contact with a man of 22-23 years old who is kind of brutal. And as our culture leads her to have sexual intercourse with that man, what happens is that there is a big trauma in that woman. She is handled very badly. Then what do we see immediately after that ? That this girl cannot have sex anymore because she does not feel anything at all. Actually she develops an aversion to sex.
She continues in life and then she finds from one man to another that she cannot have a real excitement in sex. Then she goes into so-called spiritual groups. This is a usual pattern. In the spiritual group which she joins, there is a guru who is insensitive and who does not really understand the make-up of the person and he tells this person that she should do this and do that and there are very strict disciplines. The woman starts to restrict herself and tries to apply the disciplines. In the meantime,from inside, there is something which says, “No”. But she tries to apply it and more and more she applies it and then more and more she becomes dull in the mind. You sec how the symptomatology now develops.
There is an aversion to sex which is an already established situation. Already there is one big system which is connected with the hormonal system of the person. Then we have the spiritual practices which the person tries to force herself to do properly, but she does not REALLY want it.
Then the mind becomes more and more dull. Then the woman finds herself losing the natural joy that there is in life. Eventually then she goes out and walks in the streets. She sees the trees and the ocean and nothing affects her anymore! The emotions become dull. She is not interested anymore. She thinks, “I am interested in getting a …….. and that is all. In the meantime she loses more and more life, more and more the touch of life. And she becomes dull, sitting there and wondering, “Oh, what is this lecture ? I don’t understand”. And within that dullness, which she understands she has, she develops a talent for telling people something which really hurts them. Why ? Because she was a very sensitive woman and was very observant in the beginning. Now she has no life at all – she has no sex life, no real life, no communications, no emotions, and this is a kind of negative nirvana. In that negative nirvana, the mind is really quiet. Why? Because it does not work any more. In such a person it is strange that she understands very well the weakness of other persons.
And there she develops a knack for telling, something which REALLY hurts the other person. And there we have Sep. and say that it is”spiteful:’ You see how the psychology of Sep. is slowly produced. Then we see that the menses is minimized in quantity and eventually it will disappear. And in the place of menses there is a Ieucorrhoea. It is a discharge from the vagina which is yellowish, whitish, but there is no menses because the hormonal system has been destroyed completely. And there the person develops colitis.
She comes now to the doctor and says, “Now I have colitis”. The homoeopaths will take the WHOLE history. They will not give a remedy for colitis. They will give a remedy for this whole person. This is an expression of disease. She says, “I am a very spiritual person”, but instead of joy and enjoying what she is doing, she has been reduced into a half individual. And there is depression – TREMENDOUS depression – which is relieved only as the day passes and the night conies. She is relieved during the night from the depression, but come the daytime again, then again there is the depression and the dullness, the lack of emotions, and the emotions are different. She sees somebody there and she is indifferent because she does not feel anything. Now all this is a picture of a diseased individual who will need Sep. and ONLY Sep. You can call that depression. You can call that indifference. You can call that a menstrual.
This is a touch of homoeopathy. Homoeopathy is something which really is needed at this moment of evolution in the human race. It is going to spread definitely and it is going to attain more and more momentum in the field of medicine. But it needs persons who are VERY dedicated. There are hundreds of such drug pictures. And the difficulty between discriminating between one and the other is tremendous. But I believe that we will have today enough individuals who will take up the matter and attain this knowledge and then give it to their students.disorder. You can call that a colitis. It does not matter. The remedy which will bring life back into that individual is Sep. Sep. has produced a similar state of mind -a similar state of emotions- and such physical ailments.
Here at Esalen, you have a very excellent person. You are very fortunate to have this person.
Do you want to ask something?
Question : You were talking about the body being able to discriminate between the very dangerous, life-taking symptoms, and less dangerous symptoms and stopping the very dangerous symptoms; what if the symptom is not life-threatening, but it threatens to disable a limb or something like that?
Would you ever consider using an acute kind of remedy as opposed to a constitutional kind of a remedy to reverse that process, which may not be life threatening, but which may be maiming or disabling in the long run?
George : Sure, yes, of course. While you are treating a person constitutionally for his chronic ailment, he may develop a bronchitis or a pneumonia. So what are you going to do? Are you going to treat it? Yes. We are going to treat it as an acute exacerbation of that organism at a certain period and you are going to give a remedy to reduce that. Definitely.
Question : Would that lie in the potency given ?
George : There are big questions. In order to understand, one needs to attend many many seminars. This is not even a seminar, we have only touched the rudiments.
Question : Do you advise meditation or something like that?
George : No, we do not direct that. B ut fasting, yes. In certain cases, yes. Not meditation, because a homoeopathic doctor has nothing to do with the spiritual elements of the person. If he is spiritual, all the better. If he knows in depth the human mind and soul, it is all for the best. But he is not supposed to be a spiritual teacher at all.
We do not decide whether a particular symptom will be aggravated, but the organism decides. If the organism decides, then it is good
for the system. You don’t oppose. You go together and become friends with the system. And you give support. So the intelligence of the organism decides to augment or aggravate a symptom, and then this is good for the organism.
Question : I wanted to talk about antidoting a remedy.
George : What antidotes a remedy ?
Question : How does that happen and is it possible to do just a little bit of it if you are conscious of how much you can handle?
George: We will talk a little bit about that. Anything which excites the organism can antidote or depress the organism and the remedy. That is why you are not allowed coffee. Coffee with cafeine if it is taken for a few days, depending on the strength of the individual, is going to antidote his treatment. It is going to bring about a relapse of what they had before the remedy. Also taking drugs as marijuana, LSD, hashish – all of these drugs antidote the homoeopathic treatment. There is no possibility that you may be taking a constitutional homoeopathic remedy in order to bring about the balance in your body and at the same time, or even after the homoepathic treatment, to take other drugs as well.
Once you decide, “I want to fix up my health” and “I want to be healthy”, then you have to make some arrangements with yourself and establish some kind of contractor promise.
Question: What about alcohol?
George : Alcohol can be taken. Of course, do not become an alcoholic, but to have a glass of wine or a glass of beer a day means nothing, because this is a kind of food. In Greece they used to take wine as a supplement of food. It is a kind of food, any kind of food can be taken.
Question: What constitutes the difference between a food and a herb and a drug?
George : I still have to see the person who has been existing on drugs only, without taking anything else. If there was no difference, then you could exist on drugs. I say there is a difference. If you say there is no difference, then do it. If there is no discrimination between food and drugs, then do it, and see what happens.
Response: Well, I don’t know anybody who could exist on ANY one thing.
George: We see from experience and we definitely know the difference between drugs and food.
Question : Assuming someone took a bit of an hallucinogenic and potentized it, it would theoretically deaden the person. If you took something that deadened the body such as Thorazine or Navacaine, and potentized it, would it possibly produce an hallucinogenic effect ?
George : No, you may antidote the effect of the drug. If you are having the effects of the drug. You may antidote the effects by taking a high potency of the same drug. Say for instance that you have taken Cocain for a certain time and you now find yourself unable to think and there is some damage to the arteries, and you feel very depressed. You have a symptomatology. You may antidote this symptomatologyby taking a high potency of that particular drug that you have been using in material quantities. That does not always work. You need to have a doctor who will decide what you need actually. In order to antidote that, do you need Cocain in high potency, or Sep. in high potency or Cale. in high potency ? It will depend. You will need an expert to decide.
I am sorry that the lectures ended with such a depressing statement (Laughter). I have to tell you the truth.
I know that you are very experimenting individuals, but one must be careful behind these words experimental and experimenting and all that, that there is not some kind of weakness which is really going to have a permanent damage to your system.
Question : I would like to know who the first person was who squeezed the cuttlefish and got Sep.?
George : Hahnemann was the originator. He was a German doctor who was the originator of that.
Question: When we were in Europe, my daughter contracted spinal meningitis. When we were in the hospital getting Penicillin I wondered what you would have done.
George : I had a similar case with the child of a doctor. I just related that case to my pupils when I first came here. The child did beautifuly with homoeopathic medicines. In 3 days, the child was out of the hospital.
Question : What did you give ?
George : What I gave does not matter. I gave Phos. but in another meningitis case it may need Sep., or it may need Sulph., or Lye. Don’t go and give Phos. to every case of meningitis.
Question : Would you go through another remedy picture ?
George : I think there are certain people over 30 here who are tired. (Laughter).
We have to take into consideration that l have been speaking continuously today from 10 O’clock on.
Who is an astrologer here ? A good astrologer ?
Who can tell my sign ?
Dick Price : Leo with Sulph . rising (Laughter).
George : A very good student in both homoeopathy and astrology.
Question: Would you be willing to speak with us another time before you leave?
George : Are you really interested ?
Response: Yes.
George : Sure. You don’t of course think that you are going to learn homoeopathy by listening to a lecture. I am sure this can be arranged. I am feeling some strain with the program and my voice. If we could do it on a Saturday or Sunday where I shall be more free and rested. I need more relaxation before I speak so I can do justice to the interest.
