TALK : 41 ANIMAL KINGDOM - 5

Transcription

1 TALK : 41 ANIMAL KINGDOM - 5 Reptiles - 2 Snakes Hello and welcome back. In the last talk, we began with the study of Reptiles. We understood that Reptiles are cold blooded, they don t have thermo regulation and therefore their entire survival strategy is adapted to sudden attacks, unexpected attacks and we see this in lizards, in crocodiles etc. Then we started with the study of Snakes and Meghna explained last time several of the snake survival strategies. Human expressions of the Snake experience: So let s begin this time by understanding how are these survival strategies expressed in human being. How do we see them in a clinical situation? The first and the most important thing is that what we see in snake patients is that they perceive themselves to be at a disadvantage. So here is understanding from a zoological point of view, a creature that is limbless, a creature that is cold blooded, a creature that doesn t have the ability to run too far, doesn t have anything to attack with and therefore the first experience is, I am at a disadvantage. I am crawling on the ground and not for long. I am powerless and everything else is at an advantage compared to me. They don t even have hearing. So there are many things missing here. No heat regulation, no hearing, no limbs. And therefore the second feeling is: The vulnerability to be attacked. I don t have defenses. They become suspicious and always feel as if they are going to be injured. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 1

2 So one of the rubrics we have is: - Mind; SUSPICIOUSNESS, mistrustfulness: cench., crot-h., lach - Mind; DELUSIONS, imaginations; injury; injured, is being: elaps, lach., naja - Mind; DELUSIONS, imaginations; injury; injured, is being; surroundings, by his: lach., naja The fear of being injured or attacked in any form and so you have to be always guarded. And the main way to be guarded is to be not seen, to be hidden, to be camouflaged, to be concealed. And so one of the main themes what we see in Snake patients is that they conceal; they hide their own real self. Many many times in Case taking, you don t even know that it s a snake patient. They don t even reveal their Animal quality, they seem to be completely civilized, you can say culture whatever whatever and they are sitting there talking absolutely very politely, very nicely, very decently and all of a sudden without a notice, something violent is revealed. This is very typical of snake patients. This violence, this cruelty, the torture and also you notice in them a kind of unfeeling, in a way cold blooded. I remember a patient I saw recently as a LIVE case last year and she was just talking and laughing you know all the time and she was giggling like this and then I said, What happens when you are angry (laughs).. I will just go and chop off all their heads you know. (laughs) It sent a chill down the spine in most of us when we heard that because she was not joking. She had the capability of just going and chopping off a few people said without blinking an eye. That s how you could feel it that was the energy. So that s the kind of cruelty and in humanity, cold bloodness, unfeelingness that you see. Because what is interesting of course is that they experience the same unfeeling, cruelty as directed to them. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 2

3 I could give you a little glimpse of this. When I was in South Africa few years ago, this was just immediately after the Hap Thai was over and Nelson Mandela was there as the President. When I was in Johannesburg almost every other white person I met had to tell me a tale of violence that happened to him or somebody he knew. They said that even the traffic lights, when they would stop the car, the guy would come break, the window with a gun and open the door, pull the guy out, take the money and stab him. I mean it was not only, the aim was not only robbery alone. So this kind of cruelty, you can imagine also arises from the perception that one had been treated like that. So this is the two sides of a snake. So the feeling is of for example: Delusion wrong he has suffered Has snake in it - Lach, Naja and also Symptoms on reference works: Unfeeling, hard-hearted: cench, crot-c, dendro-p (black mamba), lach I remember the proving of Black mamba one of which I conducted. It was one of the most impressive provings of my entire life. I will tell you a little bit more about it later on. But it just to highlight the unfeeling quality: One of the provers he was sitting in the couch in the living room and his nephew was playing on the floor. He took his foot and just kicked him so brutally and he didn t feel a thing. The nephew was just 4 years old and the same prover when he left the house in the morning and he looked at his mother in the eye and said, I hope by the time I come back you are dead. This is the kind of experience. The other thing about the snake people, human expression, we know we have seen that the snake is very sensitive around its throat and the feeling is one of tightness and constriction. So this is another strong expression in human beings of Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 3

4 constriction, of strangulating, of tightness especially around the throat because snake kills by squeezing or constriction and snakes also die by constriction. They cannot have something pressed their throat. They become completely defenseless. The other human expression is: Venom or poison So people can talk in terms of being poisoned or poisoning other people. Very often snake patients give Hand gestures of snake movements. Sometimes I have seen one patient describing how he went from point A to point B. He says, I went from Bombay to Delhi. Like this. It s very strange but you can observe it. Along with hiding or being concealed, one of the things about the snake is to attack suddenly and unexpectedly. So they both perceive such an attack and they also do such an attack. This sudden, unexpected, violent attack is often described by snake people as an explosion. So many times we confuse this with bombs and all. It s not about the bombs but it s an expression of sudden unexpected violence and lethal, fatal. Connection with source: Often snake people connect with source either they have an aversion to snakes, fear of snakes, dreams of snakes, fascination with snakes or even other Reptiles like lizards and Crocodiles. But it s very important to know that merely with a dream of snake or a mention of snake you should not jump to a snake remedy because a lot of people even needing completely other remedies from other Kingdoms, many many people from the 2nd Row for example, from the 3rd Row for example can dream of snakes, Argentum nitricum for example; Nitrate can dream of snake. And so can Plant remedies like Solanaceae Belladonna and Stramonium will have dreams of snakes. Opium will have dreams of snakes. So dream of snake doesn t mean snake Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 4

5 remedy, not at all. But very often many snake patients do have dreams of something to do with snakes. One of the other signs I observed with the snake patients is the Flicking in and out of the tongue when they are speaking So they are talking and suddenly you will see their tongue darting quickly in and out again. And this especially can be observed in the video later on. You may not be so observant. You are writing something it s too quick. But later on when you put on the video and watch carefully, you will see this action. At a Delusion level, there are many hints in Snake patients because the world of the snake in the human being is represented by the underworld, by the mafia. Because Mafia is something that is there but not seen and when it comes out, it is sudden, unexpected and lethal. So it fulfils every human expression of snake and so a lot of snake patients will speak about the Mafia. The other big representation is terrorism. Terrorism is again in a way a perceived fight between the powerful and the disadvantaged and also hidden, sudden, unexpected, lethal attack, heartless, cruel, unfeeling. Similarly is blackmail also hidden, espionage - hidden, undercover agents, but at a more civilized level. There is a lot of this in politics, a lot of it is hidden, a lot of which has to do with competition, a lot of which has to do with sudden unexpected attack on the other people, is fuming poison. This also happens in the Corporate world. We can hear it as kidnapping, as assignation, as bombing, as hijacking, as hostage crisis, as commando actions. So these are the delusion level, the world level expressions and you can hear this very clearly in snake patients. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 5

6 Now once we understood this, the 2nd step now is to understand which snake are we talking about in that given patient and for that we have a classification. We have poisonous snakes and non poisonous snakes and among the non poisonous snakes which I believe is the majority. We have the constrictor snakes and the other non-poisonous snake. Unfortunately, in Homoeopathy we don t have too many non poisonous snakes as remedies. But we definitely do have some constrictors. So I will ask Meghna (MS) to join us once again and tell us a little bit more about constrictor snakes. MS: In the constrictor snakes there are largely the Boas and Pythons. Now the common feature amongst this group is that these snakes as we all know are: They are short, but they are very stocky. They are very heavy. Their bodies are very heavy especially what we know of Anaconda, they are like huge. The second important thing is that these snakes are non-venomous but their main form of attack is to attack suddenly and they coil around the victim. So they tend, the way they coil around the victim. It s very sudden. They just wrap around a person and they generally kill by suffocation, by asphyxiation. Normally it was thought that they crush a victim but which is not true. So it s they generally kill a patient by suffocation. So and then after doing that then they swallow the patient as a whole. That generally starts from the head following the body. Another important thing in this Boas and Python is that the difference: The Boas they lay live young ones while the Pythons they lay eggs. And in the Pythons unlike the other Reptiles, they tend to. The mother Python tends to coil around the eggs and it tends to generate this heat. This is very unlike a Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 6

7 Reptile. But while the mother is nurturing the eggs, it generates heat and it kind of produce a little shiver around the egg in order to nourish those eggs. So in the Pythons, around while they are nurturing the eggs, the mothers are protective towards them. And another important thing in these snakes is the kind of movement. Like normally we see this S shaped movement but here it s a more straight line. It s the rectilinear type of slow movement. RS: So from this we can understand a few things. That in the human expression with Pythons, you will tend to see constriction, choking as the main quality. Also swallowing or devouring whole. This constriction that happens has a specific mechanism where the snake after coiling around the victim, it waits for the victim to have an expiration. So when he breathes then it is okay if he breathes out then the snake constricts one step more and with every expiration the constrictor gets tighter and tighter and tighter and there is no more space to breathe and the victim asphyxiates. Why do we lay so much of emphasis on describing this kind of exact mechanism is because the patient tends to tell us this almost exactly. For example: a patient with asthma described to me how she feels the constriction in her chest and with each breathe that constriction gets tighter and tighter and tighter till she can breathe no more. Also in I found especially in Snake patients, they tend to describe the source almost exactly. By source, I don t mean the colour or the shape that may be; but the action, the energy pattern of the snake is almost described exactly and that gives us the clue to which snake is needed. As an example: I will like to mention a very impressive case by a student and a colleague of mine Dr Ashok Borkar, who practices in Goa in India. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 7

8 Case Example: He talked about a case, he showed a case on video of 37-year-old woman, who met him on January 2009 and she had main problem of allergies and sinusitis. And she says P: With these allergies and sinusitis, I tend to get very sluggish. L: Talking about herself she says: P: I think I am very dominating, and I am the rule maker. L: She is very talkative and goes on and on without much questioning. She also says she is quite neurotic about cleanliness in the kitchen. And then she talks about her relationship with her son and with her husband that is bothering her. She says she is a very social person, also jealous and very possessive and these are very important issues for her. Now Ashok asks her: D: How does she experience in these tussles with her son, what do you feel? P: I feel Frustrated, very frustrated. I feel a bit like an elastic band that is being pulled very tight. L: Now see her description. Here she has a tussle with her son and the experience for it for her is like an elastic band that is pulled very tight. P: I feel wound up. D: Just explain this wound up. P: as if something is wound up very tight, like a ball of wool is wrapped up (HG) so tightly. D: What are you showing me with this gesture? P: It is wrapped around feeling very tight like a spring or a coil very tight and compressed. Like something is being stretched (HG) stretch ed to the limits elastic, tight, not flexible. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 8

9 L: So it s so interesting and unexpectedly this whole thing comes up here. Suddenly you go from the whole of emotions and situations to the world of experience and what a story it has to tell. Then she talks about this being wound up and wrapped tightly and then it gets tighter and tighter and tighter and it s like a spring that gets tighter and tighter. And ultimately it gets so heavy that it drags you down and then it engulfs you or swallows you because it is so strong, I feel trapped. So this is what she described about the situation and her experience of it. Then Ashok asks her: D: Describe a dream. P: I have a dream that we are in a family house and something is there and there is a door bell and suddenly I open and there some people come in. There is screaming and the chaos, and faces and bullet shots and people are being murdered. And I go up, I run up a narrow stairway. L: And then what something very interesting happens at this point. He says to the patient: D: Describe the point you run up the narrow staircase. L: Here is the energy, the movement. And she says: P: Well I me not being upright. I am actually on my fours. I am on my fours and I am pulling myself up. D: Say about this on my fours and pulling myself up? P: My body against the stairs, and then I have to pull myself up and arch myself back up and I have to push myself up a little bit more. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles - 2 9

10 L: And describes it s very slow process, I am not actually running I am crawling, I am going very slowly with my body against the stairs Arching my back and pushing myself forward and this is exactly what rectilinear motion is all about. That s exactly how the constrictor snakes move because of their bulk as Meghna explained. They don t do the side winding movements but they do a rectilinear motion. Also very interestingly, she says: P: I am uncoordinated. Spontaneously I don t know whether to go to the left or the right. And that s the reason I don t swim because I can t cordinate my left and my right. L: And this is very interesting also because there is no side movement here, in the constrictors. It s only the straight movement. It s so interesting. So any way she describes all this and he came to the idea of first Animal, then the snakes, then the constrictors and then he chose the remedy Boa and Boa helped her very very much. So this is just to give you a brief idea about the constrictor snakes. Now we pass on to the poisonous snakes because I told you we do not have too much knowledge of non-poisonous snakes. But we do have very good knowledge of the venomous snakes. And the venomous snakes are divided into two main categories: the Elapids and the Viperids. And I let Meghna describe to you what an Elapid is and what a Viperid is. What s the difference between the two? MS: In the Elapidae snake, the commonly known snakes are the Cobras, the Mambas. Like the Black mamba, the green mamba and the Elaps the coral snake. So the common feature in these Elapidae snakes one is that they are very poisonous. So they are very lethal. These snakes are very aggressive. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

11 Secondly is these snakes are the body is thin. They are very slender. So they move very fast unlike the Boideae snakes. They typically move in the side winding or the serpentine snake like movement. Also these snakes since they are poisonous, they normally they like to be in their space. They don t attack in the first instance. But if you intrude their space or their territory then in the first instance they tend to escape. But then if you keep instigating them, if you keep provoking them then they will warn, you know and every snake in this family has a typical his own special way of how it will warn like the Cobras will spread their hood or the Mamba s will show their inky mouth or say the Elaps will show their bright colours and then inspite of warning and the warning happens once twice thrice. If you don t take the signal then they come and they attack you and even after they attack bite and in these snakes they bite and they will hold on. And they will really chew the victim. They will just not leave and here with the bite in these snakes commonly the venom it affects the nerves. So it causes a kind of a respiratory paralysis. So the patient like stops breathing or it can be a cardiac paralysis and also the death is very fast you know with this kind of a venom. And there are other common features also there is a lot to do with colours. Because these snakes like they are slender, they are thin, they are also a lot of them are very colourful and they also use that as a kind of in their warning mechanisms, if they want to warn someone who is trying to attack them. And then every genus within this family has its own characteristics like the Mambas, the Najas, the Elaps snakes. So first we can study the common features of Elapidae. RS: So how does the Elapidae snake now the main thing that we need to understand in a poisonous snake is that it s either an Elapid or a Viperid. And I think this difference is something that is really very very useful in practice. How? Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

12 The Elapid snakes as Meghna told you, they warn before they attack. That s the first one. And so in a Human expression, you see that the Elapid person who needs an Elapid snake gives a warning, Don t do that. Don t come close otherwise you had it. Secondly they are more seen and less hidden then the Viperid snakes and thirdly they don t bite and leave but they keep repeatedly stabbing. So these are the people in Human expression who can come out in the open and who can challenge. It s like a Cobra you know. It s standing right there you know You come close and I get you. Whereas the Viperid snakes are hidden. The Rattlesnake, the Crotalus, the Viperadeae you cannot see them. They when they will come, they will bite and they will leave. But here he will be standing and come close and you will get it and also we know that the Elapids are neurotoxic meaning they affect in the Patient s you will see they affect on the nerves and the heart. Whereas in the Viperids, it s more on the blood. You have gangrene, haemorrhages. So they are haemotoxic. So this is the main difference. Now when we study these snakes, the Elapids, the main symptom is that comes is injury. This is interesting. Almost like a Compositae family. So one of the if you read the rubric: - Delusions, imaginations; injury; injured, is being: Elaps, Naja, Dendroaspis (Black mamba) So one of the things the patient do talk of if the feeling to be injured, feeling to be injured or want to injure or want to hurt or want to stab or want to kill or want to hurt the other person. Violent impulses Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

13 Now we talk about the different geneses, different snakes within the Elapids and the snakes are the: Black mamba Naja Elaps These are the 3 main snakes within the Elapidae. So tell us a little bit about Mamba. MS: The Mamba snakes as we all know that they are one of the fastest moving, especially the Black mamba is one of the fastest moving snakes. Like they say it even has a record of meeting a human in a kind of a race and they are these snakes are especially highly strung and aggressive, very violent in their own way. And if any typical you know these snakes have black.. their inner of their mouth is like inky black, the Black mamba especially. So they used that as a kind of warning. So anyone who tries to attack them, who tries to intrude their space, they will show up the black coloration to scare off the person. So in our Materia medica, we have two remedies. One is the Black mamba and the other is the Green Mamba. The difference is just in the color like one is the green and one is the grayish black in Colour. RS: So I would like to tell you a little bit about the proving of Black Mamba which I did and this was definitely the most impressive proving that I ever did in my life and it had the biggest impact on me and the provers. So just a few features about it: One of the features is: Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

14 Expressions in the black mamba patients - I am alone, completely alone and the entire world is against me So for example, one prover had the dream that he was a student in the college, he goes in the college and the entire staff and the students in the college are all standing there and when he comes they point out a finger at him and say, You have raped or murdered that girl. And he finds everyone s finger pointing towards him. And he says, Oh God, I am alone, there is nobody along with me and I am accused of this terrible crime and I am going to be finished. I better get out of this and as soon as I can and better make a run for this. This feeling of being completely alone and surrounded also came in something really dark and black. I myself had the experience, I am entering into a tunnel and the walls are kind of surrounding me and closing in on me. And it s getting more and more isolated, more and more dark, more and more black and more and more desperate. And I can t do anything about it. I have to walk that path and I am going to be completely cut-off from the entire world and going into desperation. I call this as Black depression. And I really thought at that time that this is me, this is my state. This is who I am because in a proving sometimes it s difficult to find out who you are and what the proving is and what happened was like 2-3 weeks later when we had a proving meeting and many provers described this Black cloud, black depression, black isolation. Then it kind of diluted, it passed off and there was relief. The other thing about the proving was speed. Everybody wanted to be fast and fast cars etc. Of course none of us knew that we were proving the Black mamba. Also came was severe aggression. I told you about the prover who kicked his 2 yr old cousin very hard and insensitively. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

15 So these were some of the symptoms of Black mamba and in patients, you see all these expressions of: - Speed this is the fastest snake as Meghna told you - Extreme violence, aggression - A Desire to inflict violence or dangerous injuries to others or to one self - Feeling completely Unfeeling, cold-blooded and hard-hearted - This is the most unfeeling of all the snakes I know. In fact, if I had to think for a remedy for violence and in South Africa in those times, I would think of Black mamba. - Cornered; feeling alone vs. rest of the world And also strong themes of: Sexuality: Confusion about one s sexuality, I am male or a female I am heterosexual or homosexual. And the feeling is to be highly sexual. To be Blamed, wrongly accused And to be Pointed fingers by someone So I want to tell you about a case to illustrate this remedy. Case Example: (Case of Dendroaspis polylepis) It s a case of a woman who came to me in 2006 with a case of autoimmune hepatitis and systematic lupus and she came in and said: P: I have been very disturbed. I suddenly got this tremendous pain. My liver counts were very high. I suddenly found that my liver enzymes were very high. I rushed to Dr. The disease had attacked my liver. I was so scared, it was very dangerous, I felt. I was petrified. I have got these waves of huge allergies. And I am now with a lot of fear. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

16 L: So just focus on the words that she uses sudden, unexpected, huge, terrible fear, attacked - already you are beginning to get a very good perception of her state of being. So I said: D: Describe this fear a little bit more. P: I have always been fearful in life. I have always been treated very badly. It was shock after shock. My relatives treated me, they just threw me out of the house. Everybody deceived me and my friend, my closest friend, my best friend for whom I did so much work, she deceived me. It was all deception. I wanted to punish myself for some strange reasons. I feel my cells have turned against me that s why I am getting this autoimmune problem. D: Now at this moment what are you experiencing? P: I am experiencing Deep anguish. D: Tell about this P: It is all about a situation with my friend. She is a powerful politician. I went to help her. And then suddenly things changed. She became brutal. She pulled the carpet from under my feet. It was a Total shock and horror. It Felt like an impact [HG hand coming towards her face]. It felt like an impact. It s like being put against a wall and closed in. L: And this is one thing especially a Black mamba and all other snakes don t like you to be pushed in a corner because then there is no escape, then they attack. P: Someone is cornering you completely, someone is hitting you. Someone else is in power and suddenly this woman whom I knew for 40 years as my best friend has become a monster. L: This sudden change something was unrevealed, hidden all this time suddenly comes out in a monster attacking way, cornering me, hitting me, impacting me, Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

17 killing me, pulling the carpet under my feet. This is the energy of the snake and often they can talk of this monster that comes out. P: The person suddenly changes and transformation is into a monster. L: Because she says: P: It was like a mask. L: You can see she had a mask. And then now you can see the ugly, an evil side of her. It s a façade. L: And what you want to do is P: To run away, to flee, to escape desperately escape basically. L: So the first thing as Meghna said with all snakes is to run to escape. P: I want to run away. L: and then I said: D: What is run away? L: She said: P: Run away is to be free. L: so I said to her: D: Describe this free, what is free? P: It s freedom. Freedom is like flying. L: Now here s where we have a problem. The moment she says flying, it s not a snake. A snake cannot fly, not usually and so we get confused. Is it a snake or is it a bird or it is an airplane? D: What is flying.? P: Flying is you go up. [HG hand moving upwards]. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

18 L: Now what is interesting in this case is the up only went up to here. This is very strange, I thought to myself. She says: P: Flying is to go up and I ask myself if it goes higher than this it s just goes up. I said: D: What is this going up? P: There is well you feel a part of your body is heavy and it s pinned to the down, your head can go up, your body remains on the ground. L: Can you imagine? So where is flying and what is she showing. She said: P: The head and the body are separate. The head goes up, the body remains on the ground. L: And then I said: D: Tell me about this. P: The body feels it s rotting, it s black. It s rotten flesh. It s dark blackish, dark greenish, dark. L: So amazing the words come: Dark blackish and greenish. And that s exactly what we have. We have a Black mamba and a green mamba. Where did these colors come from just don t know and then I ask her; D: What happens? P: It s an impact.. you are cornered. It s impact. It s hitting with great force and you are frozen. You are completely frozen. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

19 D: What is the opposite of this? P: The opposite of this is Flowing, is meandering [HG serpentine movement] like a river (she says) it s like this it s flowing. L: So from a situation where she was let down by a friend we go into her world and it s an entire world of energy patterns, of gestures and this is very typical of a snake. You have a completely new story with so many different actions. You have the flowing, you have the impact, you have the tightness, you have the squeezing, you have the hitting, you have everything. So you get a series of different gestures, a series of different energy patterns. But all of them indicating a survival strategy of a particular snake. And she says: P: It is this Deception this fooling duplicity this hydra-headed monster suddenly shows its face out of nowhere. L: Now what is interesting is: so far she has portrayed herself as a victim. Now my question to myself is: is that all there is? Because if she needs that remedy she not only has to be the victim but she has to have the energy of the aggressor as well because the snake is both victim and aggressor. So I asked her: D: Tell me about what kind of things you like to see or don t like to see? L: and she says. There is one scene that she remembers from a movie which she doesn t lie to watch. She says I hate violence. I hate to watch, violence against other human being and I said: D: Describe violence. P: Violence is torture, is pain. I saw this movie where the Chinese women are tied and snakes are put all over them. The snakes went into their eyes and their mouths and into other parts of their body. I found it disgusting, they all died. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

20 D: What is your experience? P: yuck, it s so inhuman. D: And what are your feeling? She closes her eyes and says: P: Its anger, I want to kill them. I want to jump on them and kill them I just want to jump on them [HG shows pouncing and then catching their throat], catch their throat and kill them. Spontaneously, I want to do it even if I die in that process, I want to do just that. L: This is one of the themes of Elapids. They are somewhat less planning, less conspiring than the Viperids. The Viperids think long. When can I do it? What s the opportunities? But Elapids they can jump into it and even if they would die, they would still do it because there is so much boiling inside of them. And so at this point, her own aggressive side, her own violence side was revealed which is almost the same which she experienced as a victim. So she got the remedy Black Mamba. The scientific name of Black mamba is Dendroaspis polylepis and I gave her. Remedy: Dendroaspis polylepis 1M And followed her up all this time and she has done very very well. Most of her problems are gone. Her steroids could stop, her Liver function test came back to normal. And she says: In herself she experienced a revolution, a complete change of being. It was very interesting and I asked her what about the friend who let you down. She said all this is past. I have nothing to do with her anymore and no more feelings of anything. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

21 So it s a very interesting story afterwards. So after we spoke a little bit about Black mamba. Family Elapidae Genus: Naja (Cobra) Naja tripudians or Naja naja (Naja) Common name: Indian cobra, Spectacled cobra Now we come to our friend, the Indian cobra Naja. Now Meghna will tell you a little bit about Naja and then I will explain to you the human expression and the proving because I also did a proving of Naja and how we see it in patients. MS: It s actually real but it s behaving well. Now as we saw this case of Black mamba, also one thing about the snake is that for some reason it s one of the most feared snake. In human wherever like specially found in parts of Africa, people are really like just scared. Now we move on to Naja the Cobra. This family now we have a variety of remedies from this particular group. The one that we commonly know is the Indian Cobra. Then we have a couple of more. There is one which is named the Spitting cobra which is the particular snake, it spits the venom straight into onlookers eyes. The commonest feature in this snake is this whole ability that if you intrude their space. They assume this kind of threatening posture like they stand really straight and spread their hood and which is really to scare an onlooker. And the most rightful of this whole posture is seen in the King Cobra which is also one of the most longest snakes in this group and also that this particular snake also kind of guards it s eggs which is unlike the other snakes. So apart from that also, in this snake is seen hissing. It s like when it spreads it s hood, it really hisses loudly to scare the person who is trying to attack him. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

22 And a little difference between the Elaps and this snake is that there is also the thing with colour. Like in the Coral snakes, we see the 3 main colours red, black and yellow whereas in the Naja, it s mainly to do with the hood. And the warning which these snakes do is much more then the Coral snakes. Also as we know in the Indian Cobra, there is this characteristic, this spectacle like mark on the back of its head. We see these two rings. Now this differs in some snakes. It s just one ring which is called the Monocled snake or in some it s two ringed. Now we can study some of the excerpts from the provings, the themes. RS: The Naja is the commonest snake in India. It s the Indian cobra and when my dear friend from Freiburg, by Germany Dr Juergen Becker, he visited India and I requested him to give a joint seminar with me here. We decided to do in this seminar, a proving of Naja and this was done with more than 500 people who were sent the dose a week or 10 days before the seminar and asked to note the symptoms and describe it during the seminar. I am very indented to Juergen Becker for introducing me to this kind of provings. One of the provings that stands out in my memory and with which I understand Naja the best, I will tell you. Excerpts from a proving of Naja conducted by Rajan Sankaran and Juergen Becker (mentioned in The Substance of Homoeopathy ): It was a woman prover who had a dream that she went to a place and she got a place to live. And she rented this place from the old woman, the owner and she was staying there at the place and she was okay. Everything was fine. Suddenly one night without a warning, the owner comes to her and she says, Get out. Now you have to get out. She says, Why? Because I say so. Just get out right now. In the middle of the night and this is the woman here and what she does is, she takes her luggage and just chucks them down the stairs and says Get out. Now Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

23 just get out from here, right now. Everybody just leaves her alone. Nobody comes to help her. and she says, How can she do that? How can she throw me out? but the woman gave her so much trouble. She ultimately started packing whatever things were left. And that point the old lady, the owner just falls down the stairs and gets hurt, inured and she says to her, don t go, don t go out. Help me give a medicine. You are a Doctor. Help me out. And she says, I refuse I don t want. Why should I help you? and she says, No no please help me. Please help me. I need your help. And she says, Okay, I will help you. So now in this dream, her experience was one of duality, two sidedness on one side she felt terribly wrong, injustice was done to her. She was treated cruelly and brutality. There was no one to help her. She was alone. Now there s one thing I really forgot to say may be Meghna will enlighten us later on but one of the main differences between Elapid and Viperdeae is usually the Elapids are alone and the viperids operate in groups. So the mafia is the great story for Viperids because there is a whole group and the feeling to be alone is an Elapid feeling which we saw in black mamba and now we see this in Naja. They say I am all alone. So here is the division in her mind between a sense of being wronged and treated so cruelly and on the other side a sense of duty and responsibility since she is a doctor and she is called for help and she wakes up with kind of conflict or duality. And this is very well represented in our traditional Repertories in the Rubric: Delusion, wrong he has suffered Delusion, neglected her duty Means, she has neglected her duty, strong sense of duty on one hand and a strong sense to be wronged on the other hand and so you have the symptom: Sensation of duality So these 3 symptoms: Duality The wrong And the duty Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

24 Forms for me the trio of Naja. And this is what I prescribe it on in many cases. This is one aspect of it. But the 2nd aspect of it is that very often the Naja person is all the snakes qualities and all the Animal qualities. The Elapid qualities and specific symptoms of Naja like the hood. Many times they will say, I have dreams of snakes and from Naja people have Dreams of black snakes. When you ask them to describe the black snake, they usually show the hood. Another symptom of Naja people is that they are very sensitive to draft of air and they are cold. Now there is one case that stands out in my mind which I remember about Naja is a case of a man with Cardiomyopathy whose Ejection fraction was very low may be 17 or 18 something like that and he was in like for heart transplant because there was not really much treatment in modern medicine for Cardiomyopathy and he was a young guy like in his 30 s who could hardly walk. He was breathless even on slight exertion and the main thing he said is that he is very sensitive to injustice. When he is traveling by a bus and he sees some people fighting against one guy especially when he sees they ganged up against one guy when one guy is alone. This he is very sensitive to. He get down and fights for this fellow and his method of fighting often is threatened you know. He will say, You come near me and I will kill you. You touch my machine and I will break your hands. And so people wear really scared of him because from his eyes they could make out that s exactly what he means. So, he could face the entire crowd with just one threat and very simple understated threat. And the way he spoke was so calm and cool. He said, I would just tell them and they would leave. I said, What would you tell them? Ya I would just tell them that I will break your hands and the way he said it was so chilling. And you could imagine the look on his face which can keep an entire violent mob away from him. One snake I say if enough to scare a whole crowd. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

25 Case Example (Case of Naja naja) So I want to talk about this another case of a A 35-year-old woman who is a theatre artist and she came with polyarthritis. This was a great case. It s on video and it s really great to watch this case and she says: P: I just can t tolerate cold weather. I am feeling so chilly. L: Interestingly many of snake patients cannot tolerate extreme of heat or extreme of cold and usually they cannot bear cold. Very often you have the impression that Lachesis. For example: is a hot patient because she gets hot flushes and this intolerance of hot drinks and she wants cold drinks and that s the difference between Lachesis and say Lycopodium in throat complaints. Lycopodium is better by warmth Lachesis is better by cold and it gives the impression that Lachesis is a very hot patient. This is not true. If you see the rubric: Extremes of heat and cold aggravation You find Lachesis and infact I found that Lachesis patients are intolerant of both extremes. They are not only hot. So if a patient says, I am worse from cold. It does not rule out Lachesis at all. So anyway she was very very sensitive to cold. She would get all kinds of chilliness and goose flesh from cold and also arthritis would be worse.and then she talks about very less energy. And she starts about her headache and when I ask her about the headache and she says: Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

26 P: The headache is stretching and squeezing, stretching and squeezing and it s all closing tightly. (HG: when she says stretching her fist opens slowly but with force and when she says squeezing she slowly closes her fist). Something hot is inside and it s boiling and it s going to come out and it s going to explode and it s squeezing. There is much strength is there, it s very pressured, (HG: tightly closing the fist) L: This squeezing movement like this and she showed with her hands like this and it s like this. ( Hg moves her hands and pulling away from her) and she even took her upper cloth and showed how it squeezes or tightens. And then she says: That she is very aggressive and says: Somebody I see is harassing the person, I will protest, I will go and jump into the trouble. And I will keep hitting the other person, no matter what happens to me, I will just hold the Other person like this and I will kick him and when she said it there was hardly any emotion to be seen on her face. This is very interesting with snake patients. They can say the most terrible things with hardly any emotion showing on their faces at all. She says: P: I will simply catch him and I will kick him. L: Once she said: One person I was walking on the street. It was a bit crowded and I saw this oldish man coming opposite to me and when he passed me, he touched me inappropriately. I turned around and I looked at him and he looked at me and I called him and said, Hey you, why did you do that? and instead of apologizing, he actually abused me. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

27 And she said: P: What I did then was I just pushed him under the bus. Now what is interesting here is the warning. She says: I always warned before I strike. I tell them, I look at them. She says and she shows her hand like this ( hg) and says, I look a t them very closely what is your intention? Is your intention good or bad? If it is good then go away from here. If it is bad come towards me and I will get you. It s an amazing video and she actually shows this hand, something looking at something else. And then of course she has dreams of snakes and she says: Not only dreams, I talk to snakes and snakes like me. I sit next to them, I stand next to one and we even had a conversation. He saw me and I saw him and we could understand each other. It was a beautiful snake. And so many many actions. It s just unbelievable how clearly she described all these things and she did very very well under the remedy Naja because also what was interesting in her was that she had married and she had gone and lived with her in laws and she said her mother in law really tortured the hell out of her. And she said, Very often I would feel like taking my mother in law and just killing her. But she says it was my duty after all she was mother of my husband and I had a duty to look after. So I didn t do anything, not at all. So I understood the whole story, the squeezing, the neck thing, the tightness, the hitting, the explosion, the injustice, the injury. It was so unbelievable and the dreams, the fascination with the snakes and what is interesting and she spoke a lot. Another quality of snakes, many snakes not all. I will show you some snakes which don t talk at all. But some of them do talk a lot and they are very descriptive, very dramatic. They just take her attention. You know you can t look anywhere else and you get really frightened. Many of them do give an impression, you don t want to meet them on a dark street alone at night, its dangerous. There was one LIVE case in my November workshop where I did a LIVE case in front of a group of about 80 experienced Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

28 Homoeopaths. I used to do that earlier. And we got a patient whom ultimately I gave Black mamba and the way the interaction happened in that LIVE case scenario. It was so scary and the man looked as if he could kill without darting an eye and not only me..i was scared stiff but the entire room the audience, my colleagues were praying for me that I should come out of the room alive and I am not joking one bit. The man has done beautifully on Black mamba and I am still alive. That s okay no problem. But this is the experience. Also I had the experience this theater person, a sweet looking young woman and then comes out all this violence and what is interesting as a theatre person and she is also acting in a movie. She says, Once I got an award for the best actress. I said, What was your role? She said that was of a terrorist. I said, Describe this role to me. She said, Well I was a terrorist suicide bomber in the role. And my role was so that I was disguised as a student and I had to go and live in the house of somebody else like a paying guest or something and externally I was a student but internally I knew my true identity as a terrorist as a suicide bomber or something like this. And I had to play this double role and constantly be vigilant. That s what this Naja patient said and she said that everytime a door bell would ring I would be cautious and I was like I shouldn t show it. So this is the role that I had to play and she got the best actress award for it. Uncanny. I am sure she could do this role to perfection. They choose the right actor. The other thing about her which I will just remark which I can t be sure about may be Meghna can say something was her extraordinary devotion or loyalty or a sense of attachment towards her husband and the situation was so that her husband was having an extra marital relationship and ultimately abandoned her for the other woman and she knew about it. But yet it was so as if she really was very attached to this guy. I want to ask Meghna is it anything in Naja, in it s original in the source that says that Naja is like monogamous and attached to the same partner for life. Is it life this? Or is it just my understanding do you know. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

29 MS: The King Cobra, King Cobra they are monogamous that they mate with one partner for life that s a feature in them. RS: Okay that s good to know. But not the normal Cobra, no okay. But this was what I found in her but anyway I gave her Naja, one dose of 1M. And we repeated it sometimes and she did so beautifully both physically and emotionally, she could separate from her husband. She could find her own life, she could find her arthritis was going. Her cold sensitivity was going and she was so much more peaceful and she almost reinvented herself, her poetry, her singing. Infact in her follow up she sang us a very beautiful song which was so much more peaceful then she originally was. So that s a bit of a story of Naja, I can t tell you everything at the moment. There s not much time but what I am trying to do here is I give you an idea, not just information, information is okay. But the idea is, I can demonstrate to you what I saw and how these patients look, react, fed expressed and give you an experience rather than just facts. So the next genus, we want to take is the Elaps the real Elaps snake, the Coral snake which is called the genus Micrurus. So Meghna will tell us little bit about this. MS: This Genus Micrurus, it has these coral snake which is a new terminology, they have given to this new group of snakes and a common thing in these snakes is the colour bands which they have and the common colours are the red black and the white. Now there is another group of snakes which form the Corrupedia snakes. This group they are the non-poisonous snakes and we do have few remedies which we have not covered in today s lecture. But the main difference between them is the arrangement of the bands between. There is a Milk snake which is a non Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles

30 poisonous snakes with the same number of bands and the Elaps corallinus which is the poisonous variety with the same number of bands, it s just the way it is arranged. So here it s there is a little phrase which says that red, black, yellow which is the poison fellow and red, black, white which mean the poison Lac. So these are the main they use these colours to warn a prey or like to scare away somebody who is trying to attack. Another thing about these snakes is that these snakes are known to be a little shy and they tend to dig or live in some burrows or small cavities and also which is also seen in a lot of snakes is that they generally tend to like when it rains, it s you know that s the time when which affects them. RS: So here one of the symptom of Elaps in Fear of rain. But anyway I want to tell you something of the indications which I use in practice to select the remedy Elaps over other snakes. One of all the patient must have all the Animal features, all the Reptiles, all the snakes, all the Elapids features and then how do I know its Elaps. I usually depend upon certain physical and mental symptoms and characteristics that are available and I find this as confirmatory in Elaps in almost all cases of Elaps corallinus. One of them is: Family Elapidae Genus: Micrurus (coral snakes) (Elaps) [coral snakes] From The Soul of Remedies : Strong physical cravings and aversions for bananas, oranges, salads and butter milk, ice, sweet, sour and milk. In India, we have a yoghurt drink. They just take a yoghurt, add some water and salt or sugar and prepare a drink called lassi. Talk 41 Animal Kingdom 5 : Reptiles