Learning How To Access Super-sensible Realms

When I was a first year student of Heilkunst, I was very intrigued with the concept of accessing the “super-sensible” realm. The everyday or “normal” way of thinking and perceiving is not enough to produce a deep diagnosis and then treatment of the root of disease, which lays in this super-sensible realm. At this time, I only understand this concept in an intellectual way, but had no idea how I would access this realm, or if, in fact, it was accessible to me.

I kept this concept at the back of my mind throughout my studies, and was always looking for clues as to how I would be able to access it. The title of the business book “selling the invisible” really captured my imagination, not only for the literal purpose of this book, but for my ongoing project of figuring out how I would be able to access the super-sensible.

Part of disease diagnosis in Heilkunst involves discerning the “state of mind” underlying the outward, visible expression of the disease, such as symptoms and sensations. The “state of mind” actually exists in the super-sensible realm, as you cannot see it with your usual 5 senses, but nevertheless, it is discernible. Everyone has had the experience of being close with someone, and knowing what they are thinking or feeling about a situation before they have said a word about it. This is super-sensible knowledge.

One of the first practical areas a Heilkunst student studies is how to diagnosis the six different genotypes (personality types), which ultimately can be discerned through the state of mind, or super-sensible essence. Getting to know these six genotypes becomes very much like those individuals who you are very close to, and could recognize in a crowd without any effort. This first experience with the genotypes is then progressively expanded out to other dimensions of disease diagnosis within the Heilkunst system.

Classical homeopathy does not work at this super-sensible level (other than accidentally and unconsciously). They, like most other treatment modalities, have limited their work to the realm of the 5 senses, and the “computer” of our brain which our mind has been reduced to. Any sense of knowing which comes from beyond this empirical level is either shrugged off, or reluctantly admitted into the patient’s case taking.

The book “You Are Your Instrument” includes a description of an exercise where a musician performed a given piece of music, but with the specific focus in their mind on the taste and smell of lemons. Although this had not been explained to the audience, they did report that they experienced the taste and smell of lemons while hearing the piece! This is another illustration of the super-sensible realm, where our experience of a piece of music is not simply hearing the given pitches (high or low) in a given sequence, but a discernment of the underlying state of mind projected from the musician and/or composer.

Through the course of my studies as well as Heilkunst treatment, these faculties progressively opened up within me. I’ve written before about my intuitive experience (which I had to learn from the hard way) of the voice in my head at the bulk food store asking me “why don’t you wear a glove?”. Likewise, there was another experience early in my days as a student, where I had just recently cleared the first round of the ‘syphilis miasm’ as part of my own treatment, and I had a very palpable experience at a book store of suddenly recoiling from another person who I felt a very strong syphilis energy from. This was the first time that I recognized a specific disease in someone from the objective feeling, rather than any intellectual analysis of them.

Likewise, in many different ways, patients of Heilkunst come to “know” things in a way that they didn’t before, or if they did, they couldn’t explain it very well. One of the deepest roots of disease, in this sense, is the degree to which we are “ignorant”, or, in other words, but off from this realm of super-sensible knowing. The directive to “know thyself” takes on a whole new meaning when we look at disease and knowledge from this point of view. Which were your first doorways into the super-sensible realm?

• ← The Change of the Teeth at Age Seven
• A Meditation on Reich’s Concept of “Organ Sensations” (part 1 of 4) →