Illness As Information

ILLNESS AS INFORMATION

In the same manner illnesses and problems which have already manifested themselves can be resolved. A therapy which looks at things in this way always begins by asking: what is the illness trying to teach the patient? What is it that this person still has to learn? A therapy always has to replace the learning process, which was originally aimed at by the illness – otherwise it cannot heal.

We shall see that this requires a homeopathic attitude. (More about the “simile” principle when we look at homeopathy in the next chapter.) Therefore it is useless to try to amuse or distract a depressive patient. He would do better to confront the Saturnian principle actively – black colour, solitude, death and so on – if he wants to be healed. But nowadays we are constantly going against this basic law. The patient is given a colourful, friendly sick-room and humorous books to read, which is as inappropriate as trying to amuse a person in mourning by cracking jokes.

In all matters we oppose the will of fate instead of supporting it. Some methods of therapy happen to obey the law of analogy, but those who use them are unsuspecting. They usually fabricate complicated theories in order to explain the effectiveness of the method which in fact merely obeys the law of analogy. The principle of Neptune signifies that which is veiled and unconscious, the dissolution of all that stands, concrete and tangible, in the foreground. Its chain of analogy contains, inter alia the following things: alcohol, drugs, poison, deception, water, the colour bottle-green, feet, dreams, visions, mysticism, esotericism. This chain explains, moreover, why on the one hand the public finds it difficult to separate deception and illusion from esotericism, and on the other hand why in esoteric circles cheating and deception, of both oneself and others, is so common.

When the Neptune principle becomes prominent in a person's life it highlights the background of experience and gives access to the unconscious. But for this to happen the foreground, with its consciousness, logic and intellect, must temporarily weaken and become permeable. This state also brings slackened concentration, day-dreaming and the like.

Faced with this unaccustomed surfacing of the unconscious the individual begins by going to his doctor, who prescribes certain drugs. These will help a little because they are “poison” and therefore belong to the same chain of analogy. At a later stage he may, perhaps go to a psychotherapist for treatment. Here, at last, he is able to do what Neptune is trying to teach him: confront the unconscious, the dream world, the irrational. But what helps him is the mere contact with these levels rather than any explanation that psychoanalytic theory can offer. A holiday by the sea or the reading of an esoteric novel would do the same thing as would footbath treatment or colour therapy with bottle-green light.

Such examples can be multiplied ad infinitum, but what should be underlined here is the importance of having a matrix of reality which enables us to recognize the structure of astrological and, in the widest sense, esoteric correlation.