Colourless Sap

Cork-oak on Sardegna (photo by Harry van der Zee).

Allow me to use the image of a tree as a metaphor for the miracle called human existence. Looking at each person we perceive a mix of individual manifestations in shapes, textures and colours. Depending on the season, the stage of expression, we will have different observations.

In spring our attention may be drawn to tender buds opening under the influence of rising temperature and later to fresh and tender light-green leaves that filter the rays of the sun turning, creating a mysterious ambience. Once the branches start to blossom, an abundance of colour and fragrance will force our awareness to sense the flowers.

In summer we may be impressed by thick layers of foliage offering shelter and shade to many other life forms.

In autumn fruits may be hanging from branches bending heavily under their weight, and later our eyes cannot but be in awe of the colours of turning leaves.

In winter bare branches that reach out into a cold sky and the massive trunk fixed to a frozen soil and surrounded by a thick carpet of rotten leaves may give the impression of death and decay.

All these observed expressions are very colourful. Since they so much capture our attention we tend to take them as the reality of the tree, as the reality of the human being. If, however, we look beyond all these expressions we will at some point perceive one and the same reality. Whatever the season, at whatever level we look into the tree – roots, trunk, branches, leaves, fruits or seeds – through all of them runs a colourless sap.

This colourless sap is what Hahnemann called the Life Force. It is not good or bad, but un-manifested intelligent creative energy underlying all form, all creation.

A disturbance of the natural flow of the colourless sap expresses itself as pathology. The main disturbance that will be expressed at all stages and at all levels is the identification of a human being with the wonderful form. Any identification beyond the colourless sap divides the world into me and not me, into attack and defence – duality. Where this false identification is very strong, the flow of the vital force will be disturbed more strongly and from the mind where this errant idea has settled itself the absence of life sustaining energy will seep through, ultimately manifesting itself at the physical level.

The pathology that we encounter in meeting our patients is again like a tree that expresses itself in a most colourful way. To look beyond the form, be it a healthy or a pathological one, is our quest. If we do that we can perceive the colourless sap and assist the patient to tap into that again. The problem cannot be solved at the level at which it manifests or at the level at which it has been created. It is solved automatically as soon as the flow of the colourless sap has been restored, for at that level of reality no problem ever existed, despite all the colourful ways in which we were tempted to believe the opposite.

Harry van der Zee, Editor