Homeopathy Book Reviews

Examine Your Life Through The Carpet Weaver Of The Night Basic Concepts of Dream Interpretation in the Homeopathic Practice – Dr. Luc de Schepper

In this introduction to his book, Examine Your Life Through The Carpet Weaver Of The Night, Dr. Luc de Schepper discusses the neglected concept of dream interpretation in the homeopathic practice.

Editor’s Note:  To order “The Carpet Weaver of the Night,” go to: www.drluc.com

INTRODUCTION

“I woke up in a cold sweat and was filled with rage. My dream finally told me what I so long suspected: I saw my husband seducing another woman. Upon awakening, I did not hesitate to confront him immediately, and from the surprised look on his face, I knew I had caught him in the crime of deception. The more I insisted on hearing the truth, the more flustered and confused he became, stammering that I had been caught with a whiff of insanity. The more he pleaded, the more he was signaling to me that there was no doubt! He was possessed of the spirit of the crazed Rasputin, the demonic confidant of Czar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandria in the early 1900s. Guilty as charged!”

I often wonder how such incredible stories have sown thorns in mankind’s garden of love, and to what extent disastrous results have occurred. More than likely, emotions of jealousy, suspicion, and rage have descended with tsunami-like forces on the Self of the dreamer: the Self being the center of the total personality, the total psychological being of man, conscious and unconscious, versus the ego, which can be defined as the center of the conscious personality.

And who has not shuddered in the middle of a nightmare, when feeling hurled headlong to the bottom of an abyss? During sleep, we all regularly have the same experiences as madmen do when awake—indeed sometimes even more improbable ones. Who has never dreamed of being chased by ferocious animals or gangsters? Of being lost in a city, or stranded on an island, of drowning in a pool, of being a king among paupers, or being ill-prepared for an examination?

Weird and tragic stories happen all the time at night, as if the dreamer is different from the daytime person. Sometimes there are nights of sheer terror and despair, or nights charged with the vices of life. Each night we fail to recognize the warnings and messages and say to ourselves, relieved in the morning, “It was just a dream.”

It seems that these nightly messages cannot stand the daylight, and instead fade and disappear in the splendor of the day. The day might give us cheer and peace, but the night appears to be a joker who often brings nothing but nonsense, disarray, and even cruel stories.

The human mind never stops, instead reaching in many directions—creating, musing, always engaged—and even carries on during the dream phase of sleep, never pausing, as the dance of life continues. But who really wants to understand dreams? Most people don’t want to know that most of our troubles are to be found entirely within our own nature, preferring to laugh at the dream messages because we don’t understand them. Yet they are the first step to self-awareness!

To whom, then, can one look for their explanation? To the long-trusted family physician, who speaks with dignified joviality and a trusted voice so common to family doctors (especially when they attain a certain familiarity as strong as your furniture)?

They all eventually acquire the same tone of voice, as if it’s a common biological characteristic of that professional status. He will reassure you with a wink and a gentle touch on your shoulder: “You know that these dreams are all nonsense, absurd and ludicrous!” “Trust me,” he says, with a soothing fatherly voice reinforced with the perfect, current medical knowledge of man’s bodily and mental expressions.

When you leave, you close his office door with great deference, as if the doctor, simply by touching the doorknob, has left a healing potion on it. You still hear his laughing voice, “All will be well,” when you hurry to the next savior you hope will release you from the clutches of nightmarish “fables” and morass of jumbled images.

You then are referred to the psychiatrist, the physician who deals with derangements of the mind. Certainly, the reaction of the dreamer and the created story in the dream look like the handiwork of a delusional person and the creation of an evil genius, respectively.

But after examining the state of your married life, the stress at work, and the negative influence of your extended family, he throws his hands up and declares you “sane”—yet possibly still prescribes those unnecessary, readily available allopathic “wonder” drugs to restore the out-of-balance neurotransmitters.

Most physicians use the latter handy metaphor, which is only a kind of bumper-sticker phrase to buy time, considering the patient as a self-contained rigid object, rather than as an individual who is involved in constant movement and change, called life!

Allopaths would do well not to accept that sleep is a mere turning “off,” from “on” while awake, technique—a mere parting from consciousness—but rather, is a switch to a “second” consciousness, another realm, of dreams rich in adventure and wisdom.

The famed writer Edgar Allan Poe explained that the Self (in my opinion he meant the conscious) has a double that is mysterious, half-hidden, yet somehow exerts an influence over behavior and feelings (referring to the second conscious, the unconscious).

Twenty-five percent of our sleep is REM sleep during which we dream; this should not be dismissed, as it is the opportunity to learn more about ourselves.  It may be recommended for sleep problems to see a sleep specialist, who may study the levels of brain deactivation with their different stages.

Here, too, opinions will be different and quite opposite of each other. In an article in National Geographic, “Want to Fall Asleep? Read This Story,” Michael Finkel wrote:

“Many sleep experts aren’t interested in the specific images and events in our dreams … and even if dreams are imbued with emotional resonance, they are devoid of significance.” Then again, “Other sleep experts strongly disagree … where the content of dreams is part of an involved mechanism by looking at the larger significance of new memories and how they should be useful in the future.” (July, 2018, pp. 72-73)

After all, allopathic (conventional) physicians are trained to overlook individuality, focusing on the presenting disease rather than discovering the patient’s unique identity. Their first goal is recognizing the disease in a patient, called diagnosis, in order to be able to apply the corresponding protocol.

But classifying the patient with a disease name is depriving him of his identity and individuality, and in order to understand a patient’s dreams the physician must learn about him as an individual.

What about dream interpretation and alternative physicians? Chiropractors? Naturopaths? Can their art of healing explain dreams? No such luck! It is not part of their expertise. Maybe Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) physicians who have studied the ancient Chinese books have some insight; for example, the Yellow Emperor’s Spiritual Axis says, “When the Gall Bladder is deficient one dreams of fights, trials and suicide,” and an imbalance in the Heart causes “dreams of fire, volcanic eruptions and smoke” (Maciocia, 1989).

Regardless of how much I love TCM and have studied and practiced it for decades, I wonder how many of its practitioners can adequately treat clients disturbed by their dreams, as dream analysis is not taught in acupuncture schools.

Well, at least we have the homeopaths! Their modality and science certainly should be able to penetrate deep into the mind-body connection, linking diseases to unbalanced emotions.

Unlike allopathic medicine which groups patients into large categories, homeopathy recognizes and treats the individual. Homeopathy’s founder, Samuel Hahnemann, was the first physician after Hippocrates known to approach each patient as if he were the only one in the world—with great wisdom and without jargon or presuppositions. (He was also the first to advocate the humane treatment of the insane and of epileptics, who were considered insane at that time!)

While allopathic medicine treats the disease (by suppressing symptoms), homeopathy treats the individual with a disease (by going to the root of the problem). As TCM proclaims, the individual is a microcosm within a macrocosm.

But when one examines Hahnemann’s masterful treatise, Organon of Medicine, very little can be found about dreams. Throughout the six editions from 1810 to 1843, only one phrase seems to have come up: “Recurrent dreams are important.”

No further explanation and no further investigation of dream interpretation have been proposed by any homeopath since then unless they have studied the works of Carl Jung.  In his book, The Symbolic Quest, the late Edward C. Whitmont, M.D., was such an exception (Whitmont, 1969).

Although Freud, back in 1899 in The Interpretation of Dreams, produced the first breakthrough work of what was called “soul craft” (Freud, 1998) dreams for Freud were always a disguised fulfillment of a wish, which was rather a narrow interpretation, and therefore I prefer the insight of Carl Jung.

Homeopaths could use this important “other” part of the human being in healing their patients—the unconscious and its messenger, dreams! Newly proved remedies contain all kinds of dreams, but I have never seen any symbolic subjective translation of these dreams in relationship to the prover’s existing conscious situation.

Dreams are just treated like the other proving symptoms—registered as facts without depth analysis and therefore, the homeopath misses the true meaning of these valuable messages. In order to be successful in practice, the excellent homeopath must strive to possess a sensitivity that furnishes him with psychological antennae that will discover the abundant dirt and secrets at the bottom of every individual.

He needs to see the hidden and hear what is not said except at night by his patient’s dreams. It is perplexing that looking for the truth often brings so much resistance. Is it because we live easier in a world created of fantasy, lies, and projections; a life cloaked in the folds of moral hypocrisy? Is it for this reason that dreams—revealing our other side—evoke such strong reactions as to be called nebulous philosophical distractions; because they undress us to full nakedness?

The subject of dream analysis is indeed very difficult, not only for intellectual reasons, but even more on account of personal, subjective resistance, as it demands from the homeopath (or anyone else) ruthless self-knowledge and courage—two characteristics in short demand for most.

The Delphic oracle “Know thyself” is an excellent precept but not a favorite or popular topic, as it disturbs, quite often, our seemingly peaceful abode. Yet one of the meanings of life is to find out how to meet and resolve our own difficulties! How many among us have the courage and humility to draw back the curtain to find the truth? Should we not aspire to that, in order to reach greater health and freedom, and rebel against the bonds of self-slavery?

Understanding urgent dream messages is a necessary help and a useful guide on the road to self-actualization. An attempt to reach self-awareness should become the main, if not the minimum, condition of human existence—a rope knotted to form a ladder leading from animal to Plato’s philosopher king.

The road to self-actualization is not a passage that jumps from one seven-year period to the next, but rather from day to day, even from minute to minute, as one stumbles along, often side-tracked, feeling hopeful when a new milestone is reached on the treacherous journey, as the soul remains in apprenticeship, tested anew and anew, ultimately emerging as the eternal phoenix from periods of decline and setbacks.

It is a life full of fits and starts, lacking for most the coherence and self-control much sought after. Only theater life is as such, as it is an area that connects one set of events to another. Real life is more like monologues directly from the heart, agitated and interrupted by the feelings of each moment as it passes, portraying real experience, the changeless truths of ordinary humans.

We can only hope that changes will come intentionally, from looking inward, exploring our dreams and trusting our soul to find footing again and again on this slippery road. At the end of life, we should be able to look back and digest how far we have come through a spirit of courage, determination, and creativity, rather than viewing life as a train that never left the station.

A fully functioning existence is not distorted by most sycotic and all syphilitic miasmatic traits, but produces a person who is what he can be (the highest virtue of man)—not an individual who never takes a risk, who is afraid of failure and novelty, and who, in spite of calling himself a “spiritual” person, never investigated his dark or shadow side; in other words, what Jung and many other psychologists called, “a complete individual (not perfect), trying to reach self-realization”!

If you want to live undisturbed in your fantasyland, identifying with the wise old man, even God, or the expert teacher who only preaches because he or she considers himself above everyone else, then this book is not for you. Keep on making a lot of noise, in order to not hear the truth by which you could gain self-awareness.

But when you are unprejudiced, then by all means devour this book. What awaits you is the discovery of a new Self, in which you must become a child again, ready and excited to embark on a new journey, to discover a country you never thought existed.

You have to become the lion with a brave heart, the eagle with a sharp eye, breaking through old barriers and buildings—not a ruminating cow, who avoids stepping into what you fear the most in yourself, the exploration of the vast dark continent of the unconscious. If you want to create a new world, you must oppose the old one in which you had too much light that blinded you, while never illuminating the darkness for new guidance.

Make your curiosity greater than your pride. Don’t shy away and shrink from examining anything false and fanciful that you hold dear. Discover that you are not the one and only, but one among many.

After reading this book, you will wake up with new insights that not only will benefit all your patients, but foremost, you and your loved ones. We can state that there is progress in physics and biology, and allopathy claims the same, but the latter forgets far too often to apply the progress in dynamic social psychology. T

The existence of the irrational and unconscious sector of our nature, and its messenger-dreams, is still neglected by the masses, physicians and homeopaths included. Irrationalities in dreams can be understood rationally as they are responding to laws of homeostasis, reflecting reactions to external conscious events.

May this book stimulate the reader to devote his energies to the study of the unconscious, of which most lack even basic knowledge. And precisely because it is the beginning of its study for most, it will excite the real human being and physician to devote his interest to the topic.

Don’t fall into the common trap of longing to return to a never-ending state of inertia, fearing that you will lose the protection of the old familiar status quo! You must try to establish Tao, a very Eastern idea, to integrate your unconscious into your conscious in order to discover yourself, wherein hopefully you will find companions. Tao stands also for “The Way,” a path or road, the way to a destination; a path to be followed in life to produce wisdom, harmony, and “right conduct.”

I am out to reach lovers of the truth, inner-directed people, young and old, professionals and non-professionals, lovers of Plato’s Republic ideas and insights, and lovers of progression even when discovery of the Self puts one at risk for pain and confusion as well as abuse from others who preach their own science.

As Hahnemann showed us, the divinities you should worship are “Thought, Art, Genius, and Truth.” May you find the willingness to fill the empty pages of your existence; may light come over you and your life be spared from falling apart, little by little, like fallen ashes.

But if your life does fall apart, may you rise like the phoenix from its ashes, and begin a new life. As an ordinary fellow human being, I am so close behind you, that if you stretched out your hand I think you can reach me in what we call life, a mixture of good and bad, virtues and vices, light and darkness.

Be spurred on by the difficulty of this enterprise! You have something definite to work for. End your apprenticeship and start your real existence. Enjoy this great collective enterprise which will release you from the bonds of boredom and loneliness.

May your soul fly out the window for new adventures, as new life always starts with the death of the old one. Why would the phoenix not show disposition to rise from its ashes? Why would the phoenix be reluctant, dragging its talons, resisting all new goings?

Putting your house in order at last is one of the most exciting activities you’ll ever engage in, and the benefits for everyone around you, and for yourself in the first place, are incalculable. We now seem to live in a society that has almost forgotten the decency of what it means to be human. Progress and healing are always needed yet remain to be in short supply.

My intention is to stir thought, disturb your peaceful fantasyland and provide some introspection into the Self, hopefully helping you grow and move towards the person you are meant to be. Be an adventurer and discoverer filled with courage and curiosity.

Reclaim your life by understanding the clear messages of the unconscious, and no longer be ruled by repetitious misfortunes—a collective task for humankind—and follow a path that you most likely have never trod before. I challenge you not so much to agree or disagree as to grow. To quote Aristotle in the opening sentence of his Metaphysics, “No desire is more natural than the desire for knowledge.” Quotes from Jung in this book are not a substitute for studying all of Jung; my ambition is to lure others on to that undertaking! May you grow old and always continue to learn!

Press release of “The Carpet Weaver of the Night.” (700 pages)

It was always my goal to give the aspiring homeopath a full education in the Art and science of Classical Homeopathy and beyond. This book, the fifth of a series completes that lofty goal. In the following order, I wrote Hahnemann Revisited (translated in 8 different languages), Achieving and Maintaining the Simillimum (translated in 3 different languages), Advanced Guide for Professional Homeopaths, Discovering Life: Homeopathic Portraitsthe new in-depth Materia Medicaand now a book about the other kind of human life, unknown to Hahnemann and most homeopaths around the world: the actions of the unconscious communicated by dreams. These series of books, offers the aspiring homeopath an education far beyond any other existing school.

To order “the Carpet Weaver of the Night,” go to www.drluc.com (books-book store) and read more about this new book on my website under Books-Forward/Epilogue. This book is only available from my website.

Dr Luc de Schepper

About the author

Luc De Schepper

Luc De Schepper, M.D., Ph.D., Lic.Ac., C.Hom., is a licensed physician and acupuncturist in Europe (since 1971) and the US. (since 1982). He studied and practiced homeopathy extensively for many years, wrote 15 textbooks of homeopathy, alternative medicine and acupuncture and has the largest school of homeopathy in the US. He spends part of his time helping the poor in South Africa, Kenya and Sri Lanka and teaches all around the world, lately bringing homeopathy to China. For more information visit www.drluc.com

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