Finding my objective desire function
Jeff Korentayer interviewed by Paul Bowman
Transcript:
Paul Bowman
So let me introduce you to one of the senior Heilkunst practitioners and entrepreneurs, and someone that everybody around the world needs to get to know. Because you are our kind of guy, you always have some of the best ideas, and things like that. So, without further ado, Jeff, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what you do and how you do it. And we’ll just have fun from there. Talk to you later.
Jeff Korentayer
Thank you, Paul, thank you for having me on your podcast, this is actually quite a thrill for me. I love podcasting, for one — the conversations and this nice new format that we all have access to. But especially in what we’re talking about — Heilkunst — which is the best thing to talk about.
There’s all kinds of podcasts. I’ve been listening to them for many years. But I’m always thinking in the back of my mind — “Where’s the Heilkunst podcast? Where could it be?”
I’ll start a little bit with my own story, we can unfold some of the details as we go through today.
Basically, it’s a story about me finding my objective desire function.
As a young man, I didn’t even know what that concept was, or I didn’t know that that’s what I was looking for. But it’s truly what happened. It’s the old cliche about young people going off to travel the world to find themselves. Well, I guess I didn’t find myself, but Heilkunst found me. My objective desire function found me.
My beginnings in Heilkunst, or even before Heilkunst, even before homeopathy even before I was deeply interested in natural health, and nutrition, and all these other things — we’ll get to that part of my story as well.
I was in university, and I was actually studying the psychology program. And that was interesting in itself, I had gotten onto that track from a little seed that got planted in my high school days. I was actually in my high school library — imagine that — and looking at the different bookshelves, and there was this book that really grabbed my attention.
Up until then, I had been the typical math, science, and computer science student — the geek or nerd whatever you call that type of student. There in the library was Carl Jung’s book, a great, beautiful big hardcover, of Man and His Symbols. A beautiful book with all the colorful illustrations and everything.
I took that out and took it home. This was a whole new world to me. This wasn’t the math and science and computer world that I knew about. This was the world of dreams and the human unconscious — and something really awoke in me. That got me on my path to do that psychology program in university.
The reason I’m telling you all of this, is that a major life event happened for me in university. In my first attempt at taking the mandatory statistics class — even with me being a math head and everything, it still wasn’t that exciting — It was something that was a slog. All of these formulas — it was difficult to get one’s head around. “How do you do all of these equations and everything? What is the prof trying to get out of me?”
I dropped the class, and picked it up again in a following semester. The professor in that class was a visiting professor that year. He wasn’t a regular professor for the program. And he taught very differently.
In the first number of weeks of the course, he taught the philosophy of science. Before we dove into the formulas, and the equations and the graphs and everything else, he gave us several weeks on the philosophy of science, and that was really interesting. I never studied anything like that.
But little did I know, it woke up this little voice inside of me — that was my objective desire function : philosophy of science.
How do we know things and you don’t just jump into formulas and practical things, but you have to know where you’re jumping from, where you’re jumping to. What are we trying to do, and what problems are we trying to solve?
I’m just giving this as an origin in my story, even before natural health, before homeopathy, before Heilkunst — this little baby version of my objective desire function was woken up in the questions of the philosophy of science.
Paul, why don’t you pull a thread out that interests you? Or direct us in a new direction.
Paul Bowman
Jeff, why don’t you just tell us, I mean, you have a unique journey to Heilkunst. That’s what everybody else is gonna want to know. Because I remember, I was told as I was getting ready to start he says, “You do not have an opportunity. Or the opportunity that you must take is you can’t take people to a place you’ve never been before yourself.”
So how did you come about your journey to Heilkunst? Because that’s unique. It’s unique to you. And it’s very telling, of course, how in the world did you go from where you were to actually, you know, starting your journey to Heilkunst? Whether would be — see mine was treatment, general treatment and starting school at the same time, because I was told that by Jason Wood, who was the registrar at the time. He says, “Paul, you can’t take a patient to a place you’ve never been yourself.”
So that made sense to me. So I’m going to be in general treatment, I’m going to be starting school. And that’s the way it is. So it all unfolded at the same time. And I would imagine most students, that was not the case for them, and certainly older students like myself. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us — what was your your path to Heilkunst?
Jeff Korentayer
Thank you for that, Paul — first of all, for keeping us on track. I am Mr. Tangent, as we may be finding out soon enough, but I also want to thank you for bringing in this most essential point about Heilkunst therapeutics and the process of treatment. This basic idea, as you brought out that you cannot, you being the practitioner, you cannot bring your patient to a greater level of health than you yourself have attained. Or the way you said it, “you can’t bring someone somewhere that you haven’t been yourself”. If you’re going to go on a guided tour of a whatever — your famous mountain or your famous cultural piece of architecture, whatever it is — you hope and you need and you want that the guide has not only been there, but they understand what it means, right? So now when they take you, they can guide you to have a full experience of whatever that thing is. So thank you for that — that is such a central point.
Jeff Korentayer
To your encouragement, as well as to continue on with my story — on this basic point of having a deep personal understanding and knowledge of oneself on one’s own journey… even before you even think of taking somebody else on their journey, is what I was saying earlier — this idea of the objective desire function.
I think, in one way or another, I said I didn’t even know what that was when I first started having this awakening experience — “who am I, and what really lights me up in the world?” — because that’s unique. That’s very individual. Before having that experience, or even before having the concept, I was just kind of going along on my life path. You’re going over here, going over there — maybe I’ll try this, maybe I’ll try that. And that’s fair enough. That’s where we start — we start as these earthbound wanderers — we’re wandering along and “What’s over here? What’s over there?”
But sooner or later, we start to have some form of these inner experiences where that very unique inner objective desire function as I’m as I’ve named it, really starts to awaken in us. Now that can be at a very small level — a little life experiences where either we get excited by something or maybe we get irritated by something. We have these experiences which strike a charge within us – so-called positive or negative.
And it’s really about — “what’s behind that charge?” That really speaks to these core questions we’re talking about. “Who are you? What lights you up? What is that path that’s been predefined inside of you?”
This is the task of healing — this is the task of following this Heilkunst path, and this journey — it’s finding out what that is inside. So a lot of people may have that concept — “I want to discover my true self, and what am I supposed to do in the world?” but it’s a great difficulty and a frustration, because while for all various reasons, it’s kind of a buried treasure. It’s buried within us, sometimes buried so well, that it takes all kinds of life experiences — both positive and minus until we really start to unravel what that is.
So anyways, I’m talking at the conceptual level here, and it’s all true. But as far as my personal journey, I left us off at the point of being in that statistics class in my psychology program, and this great inner experience of really being lit up — like, “oh, philosophy of science… What is truth? What is knowledge? What is the method of science?” Even such a basic question as “what is measurement?”
You know, we can take that for granted and think, “Well, I don’t know. I’ll just weigh it, I’ll measure it with a ruler… we just think that’s an easy question. And it is easy on the quantitative side. But when we get deep into life energy, and you’re measuring someone’s health and their progress. If they’re on an improvement trajectory, or things getting worse, that with this idea of measurement, we have to go into new territory now in Heilkunst, because now we’re getting into qualitative measurement. And that’s possible, that is such a thing.
But as I say, to our first assumption, from the philosophy of science and from normal allopathic science, is “Oh well, I’ll just quantitatively measure it.” That’s supposed to give us clear and easy answers? There’s much confusion about science on this front, especially when we come into the life sciences that we need, as much as we need quantitative measurements — that has a role — but way beyond that, we need these qualitative measurements.
So anyways, I didn’t have this fully fleshed out in my mind, at that time, this was just waking up in me. In this course, my objective desire function raised his hand and said, “Oh, Me Pick Me! I want to follow these questions — I want to learn more about this.”
This was way before I was deep into natural health and diet. And then of course, homeopathy and Heilkunst. This was just a very first awakening that was happening in me.
Fast forward, as I come into my first class with Rudi Verspoor to study Heilkunst. Some of what he was teaching us in those very early lectures was this whole idea — you already spoke to this, Paul — this idea of taking somebody on their journey, you cannot do that. Or rather, you cannot take them to a place that you have not gone yourself.
This is a qualitative discussion we’re getting into — what is that experience of encountering your objective desire? What does it feel like? What does it feel like not to have it and the frustration in life of that?
Without having gone through that myself — encountering the objective desire and watching that process unfold over many years — well, now I am in a position to be able to see that in somebody else. Have they had an awakening to what that is in themselves? It’s their own unique content, their own unique desire, but the form of it is something that I can identify now and speak to so.
The further and further you take somebody on this Heilkunst journey — we have the timeline, we have nutrition, we have all these components, but they’re really designed to bring somebody further and further to that point where they can have that confrontation. Some people consciously know they’re looking for it. Other people have an unknown awakening,
One way or another, as I said, whatever their individual content is, my Heilkunst practice today is more and more and more attuned to this level of healing — this level of the human being really awakening to themselves. That yes, with all the technicalities of Heilkunst, as I said before, timeline and nutrition and all these other things — those are only steps to bring somebody to the point where that becomes a possibility — a very dynamic possibility.
So there I was in my statistics class having this awakening experience. From the path unfolded. I did come into natural health, I did come into homeopathy and then Heilkunst. There was Rudi’s first class, and he’s saying these things that are just rocking my world. You already brought one example up — this idea of you can’t take somebody further than you’ve gone. But he also said something kind of on a similar line, which took me quite a long time to really unpack the meaning of it. He said something seemingly very counterintuitive. The structure of treatment, the purpose of it, from the practitioners point of view, is not to help the patient. But it’s to save yourself.
Well, that’s kind of strange and bizarre and well — aren’t we in the helping profession? Aren’t we trying to help people heal and restore their health and all of this? Well, in a sense at one superficial level, yes, we’re doing that. This profound statement that he made, that we’re not there for the patient — we’re there to save ourselves. I’ve spent years and years processing and unpacking the meaning of that.
That was like being struck by a lightning bolt that I didn’t even see coming.
This is a good point for me to hand it back to you, Paul. And get some of your good feedback and guidance again.
Paul Bowman
Hey, Jeff, I understand what you’re saying. It’s all good. Now, what’s the most important thing that you think people ought to know? About what you do? And how you do it? Because that’s where the rubber meets the road. So share with everybody if you would, the real Jeff Korentayer.
How do you interact with patients? I mean, what does your ideal patient look like? If someone wanted to be a patient with you, what kind of average problems or complaints would they be complaining of? … things like that.
Jeff Korentayer
That’s a good question. And of course, our life, our world, our modern experience, is very practical. Where does the rubber hit the road? And let’s keep this real and no abstract theories, no philosophies, I get that — I get the sentiment of that. In the clinical setting, people are coming for a reason — rwhatever their their symptoms are, whatever their health disturbances, they want a real, practical result. And they want to know “how long is it going to take? How many sessions? We only have so much insurance and so much budget… What are you proposing here?”
I get it – I get those questions. I’m human, too, you know, when I have a health problem, or otherwise, I want reality, I want a solution. I want it now. I get it, I get that so much. Now, and I’m not trying to diss your question, but I’m just trying to put it into our bigger framework here.
Jeff Korentayer
Yes, in my practice, there’s all kinds of complaints and symptoms and what people are bringing, and we deal with them head on. Every classic symptom — everything from skin issues, and sleep disturbances, and your mental-emotional issues, your anxieties, and other consequences of anxiety, and the whole world of all of that. That just that just fills my day to day life, right? In and out of clinic, hour by hour, day by day. These are the details of people’s health and their life. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. This is reality in that sense. I’m not putting it down. I’m not dismissing it.
But there’s really a bigger framework, a bigger question here. With the threads we’ve been weaving already in the conversation really gets to the heart of Heilkunst — I’ll say more about this in just a second.
This whole idea of what are these deeper rational principles, which make Heilkunst work on a predictable, repeatable basis? Right? Because if we only started and stayed with the questions of practicality — “keep it real, keep it practical. Let’s get a result.” That sounds good. At first, but then, the more you reflect on that and work with that — you have to start asking the bigger questions. What does it mean, to have a result? What does it mean to get rid of a symptom?
As I say, face value, it seems quite obvious what it means. But no, it’s not so obvious. Because there are millions of ways of getting rid of a symptom — look at all of Western medicine, which actually makes the patient’s state of health worse. So they’re keeping it real, keeping it practical — but they’re making the patient’s health worse. So is that very real, and is that very practical in terms of what we really want here?
We have to keep expanding our way of thinking, to really grasp the meaning and the method of Heilkunst. It’s not empirical, and it’s not practical. I mean, it is practical, it does practically get rid of people’s symptoms and, improve their health and do all these things. But it does it in a way where their deeper health and their deeper consciousness is actually progressing — it’s actually moving forward.
This idea of moving forward is deeply rooted to consciousness. When we look at the human being, they have a physical body, and all of its functions and everything. But that’s not fundamentally what a human being is. A human being — fundamentally — is a unit of consciousness. And this idea of moving forward, that phrase that I just said, is an evolutionary concept. It’s human consciousness that evolves, before anything about the human physical body changes or evolves, if we could look back at the history of the humans and all the animals on the earth and everything else. Sure, we can look at the other physical aspects of this feature of this animal changed into this feature of that animal, and so on, and so on. Fair enough, but it’s not the deepest understanding of, of the earth and of consciousness, which as I’m saying, is an evolutionary process.
So bringing it back to our more constrained health conversation — what is health? And how do you improve someone’s health? And what do you want to get as a result? It begins and ends more at this level — of human consciousness as an evolutionary process. Moving forward, from one developmental stage to another, just like when we watch our children grow up, and we’re watching for all the stages. Okay — bow, they learned to walk and now they’re saying their first word… there’s a progression and a development that we’re watching for. “My child’s doing so well. And they’re so healthy, and they’re so great.” Are they staying on course? You were watching for this development.
Now, to wrap this part of our conversation all up — back to where you set me off on this question, Paul — “what are people coming with?” As I already mentioned — the whole range of everything — hour by hour, day by day, we’re a general practice at Arcanum. So we see every possible condition you can imagine from the physical, the mental, the emotional.
The whole Heilkunst modality — not the bigger philosophy — but the modality is really built on this sequential timeline therapy. This whole idea of identifying and removing all of the shocks and the traumas that someone has engendered in their system, from car accidents, to emotional trauma to all the other things that really can disturb the course of our life and our life functioning — these big life events we all go through. Even small events — somebody takes a course of antibiotics or something else — that can often be a part of their timeline event.
All of this to say that, yes, we can talk about all the practical things. Here’s a case of eczema. Here’s a case of obstructed bowel disorder. Here’s a case of this. Here’s a case of that. Here’s how we’re going to treat it. Here’s how we’re going to get rid of the symptoms.
But whether the patient has a high or low or very low degree of consciousness about their life and about themselves… many patients are solely focused on the physical — “here’s my symptom, give me a remedy, get rid of the symptom, please”. That’s very practical and real, I get it. Some of them, or even a lot of them can have a very low consciousness. Whatever that physical symptom is, is actually speaking to a much deeper consciousness that’s impaired in their development.
So what would be an example of that? Let’s take the classic homeopathic remedy of Natrum Muriaticum — the big grief remedy, the loss and sadness remedy. One of its characteristic physical symptoms can be chronic constipation. That’s related to the that classic emotion in Nat-Mur of the grief, or that lack of letting go of the past. For them, it shows up in their physical body as chronic constipation.
To your question, “what are the common complaints?” As I said, the complaints are many and varied, they go through across the whole spectrum. But the question I’m always meditating on for each patient, you have to understand them and what’s going on and how we move them forward, is — how awake, or how asleep are they in their consciousness — about their health, about their symptom, and about all these things?
And here’s the always surprising and amazing thing. I can begin with a patient — I often do — where they’re at one level of consciousness — “I have a pain, I have a symptom, I have a physical problem.” Okay, that’s good, that that’s fair enough, that’s great.
But then over the course of time, as we’re dealing with their physical problem, constipation, whatever it is, and that’s improving — it quite often surprises me — someone who initially comes to me in quite a state of being asleep, or even semi-unconscious, this process starts to unfold. And they start to awaken to life — to consciousness to who they really are, to what we talked about in the recent video segments about the objective desire function and what someone’s real purpose is — that’s quite a sight to behold! Not only is the symptom improving, and the physical health improving, but you actually start getting an awake human being — imagine that!
Paul Bowman
Jeff, you make a great point, and you’ve opened up a can of worms here. So I’m gonna go ahead and put a worm on a hook, or a few arms on a hook and, and start fishing. So the concept of spiritual translocation, really, is the crux of the matter. So we think we’re doing a good job. But are we really, if all we’ve done is translocated a disease, and it goes someplace else? Well, okay, it’s kind of like palliation, you drive the pathology deeper into the body, and it comes back and comes back worse. And it was the same thing with these spirits, okay, that are behind these diseases, if we don’t annihilate them, if we don’t transform them, and of course, we transform them in actuality by the love of the Christ force.
So I’ll just say that if anybody’s listening this, they want to get that book, spiritual translocation by Are Thorson. I think it’s page 54, where it talks about — all the family members need to be treated, you’re not doing anybody any favors, because all that will happen with these diseases. Instead of being transformed, they’ll be translocated to other family members — to the pets, or you have a farm on the farm animals, wherever that is.
So we’ve got to take care of business. We need to annihilate these diseases which are so problematic, and not translocate them, and then we make the world a better place versus the same or worse. I’ll just leave it at that.
But Jeff, thanks for your perspectives on that. I didn’t think there was anything that I was saying that was marginal OR, or NOT respectable, but I appreciate your perspectives on just exactly what you had to say.
Jeff Korentayer
Thanks, Paul, I love that word and that concept of “spiritual translocation” — we’re talking about health and disease and where things go — the old sweeping things under the rug analogy is perfectly appropriate for health care. It’s what we don’t want to do. I want to move things out, get the dust out of the house, not under the rug.
You’re maybe inadvertently doing such a good job through our conversation — bringing me back to our core storyline. We’re talking about these great concepts — the direction of cure, and moving things out, and not suppressing, and doing all the other things we want in healthcare, and the principles of Heilkunst.
You’re bringing me back to our core storyline here, which is my personal development. There’s nothing more informative than a personal story — somebody’s life story. Has somebody learned something? How they came to point A, B, or C of their life? …so bringing us back there.
The next phase of my life — earlier, in our segments, I was talking about university and studying statistics and studying the philosophy of science. But very shortly after that, my next phase of education was partially simultaneous, it was overlapping, was working at a pretty typical health food store. All the organic foods and all the supplements, and the kind of crowd that shops at a health food store, were my next teachers. My next phase wasn’t formal education, I wasn’t getting any kind of diploma or anything like that. I was just working in a health food store.
All the people who work there, but really all the clients of the store, and how they live their life, how they came in to ask questions, what they were looking for, what kind of supplements they were looking for. The classic health food store question — “do you have something for [fill in the blank]?” — this is one of the major lines of communication in the natural health movement. It’s just the allopathic movement, dressed up in a slightly different language — so it’s still allopathic.
In other words, this is a bit of the unfortunate thing with the natural health movement — it’s still operating as allopathy. The whole allopathic medical model, but it’s just kind of dressing itself up in a different Halloween costume, so to speak.
This was my next stage of evolution. I’m learning from all these customers, and how they’re living their life, what kind of health care they’re applying to themselves — everything from nutrition and supplements, and, of course all the alternative medical modalities — from all of the body work and all of the new natural health technologies — the magnetic systems and this, that and the other thing.
So I’m absorbing all of this, but as I already alluded to you, we’re still in the realm of allopathic medicine — as pure and healthy as the natural health people think they are. They are on one level — they’re not using all the toxic pharmaceuticals and everything else. But their mind hasn’t changed from the allopathic system — they’re still in that problem of translocation that you identified. In our bigger picture here, this is not the direction we want to go in health.
So to continue into my story — here I am, and amongst all these things, this is where I get introduced to homeopathy. As a patient, as an individual, I was looking to solve some of my health issues — some seasonal allergies, and some other sensitivities, some issues were going on, with exhaustion and fatigue, connected with food and other things.
And I’m trying to sort this out, I’m a young adult, and I’m at one of my first jobs while I’m at university, and I’m learning all of these things, but for my own health, it’s the big question — how do I solve my problems? I want to get rid of these symptoms, I want to feel better, I want to have more energy — all the things that were plaguing me — as I say, homeopathy is starting to come into my awareness and I’m starting to look at some of the books and starting to try to understand that — but it’s a little bit of a complex system.
So I’m not jumping in with both feet. I just have an awareness. But meanwhile, I’m looking at supplements and some of these more typical natural modalities. There I am — and to our ongoing conversation here with translocation and everything else — I had no clue at this point that I was still behaving allopathically without knowing it. We all think we’re so smart — “I’m gonna be better than an allopathic patient and I’m gonna get away from the pharmaceuticals and look at me! I’m doing something better and I’m more advanced.” — but no, we’re still allopathic. We’re working at that level.
As I say, I’m just getting exposed to homeopathy, and it’s really what sets me up at that point in my life — to discover and then pursue the broader system of Heilkunst and actually start to study it. I had to go to the college and take the full program and do all the years of study of that. But until I had these experiences, that door couldn’t have even opened for me, because I couldn’t have seen it.
And within all of this was the first time I went to see a homeopath. A professional consultation and “take all my case and give me a remedy” and all this. And that itself became one of the most pivotal moments of my life and my development and opening doors for me — opening my consciousness was having an experience of the homeopathic remedy.
This is where so many people may abstractly criticize homeopathy — “oh, it’s just a placebo and it can’t work and blah, blah, blah. There’s no molecules left in the medicine and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.” I’ve heard it a million times — that’s why I’m being so flippant about it. In all seriousness, until somebody has an experience, and this happens so often, that the previous skeptic, for whatever reason, then they may try a remedy and have a mind-blowing experience — like mine. And boom! — now they want to know everything. “So how did that work? How does homeopathy work? How did that work for me? What’s going on here? I thought it was bogus.” But there’s something very real there.
Now, that wasn’t exactly my situation. I wasn’t a skeptic, but I had no experience. So I had no frame of reference or anything else. So I go to this homeopath, have the consultation, get the remedy. And literally, overnight — when I was in the middle of hay fever season, next morning, I wake up — no symptoms! Of course, I had done over the counter drugs in the past, which I didn’t like to deal with the problems of hay fever and all the symptoms, everything. I was trying not to do that.
So here I take this homeopathic remedy, and, overnight — no symptoms. “What happened?” is what I’m asking myself, “what’s this? What happened? How did that work?” And of course, the whole process before the remedy — the homeopath asking me all the typical questions, and I’m trying to reverse engineer — “Okay, why is he asking me those questions?” And he gives me the remedy. I’m going to look at the Materia Medica.
“What is this remedy? Why did he pick it based on what I told him?”
I’m just trying to reverse engineer the whole thing and learn — how does this process of homeopathy work? So all this, just to give us our next chapter of my developing story. This was such a pivotal and essential moment, in my whole learning in my whole evolution was to have this direct experience of the remedy.
Now, of course, I can talk about it conceptually, I know exactly — retrospectively, looking back — exactly what happened — how does the remedy work? What is the law of similars? What are the two phases of the action — the initial action and the counter action — I can riff off about all of those concepts now, because I’ve learned it, and I’ve understood it.
But at the time, I was just living in experience — not much of a map, not much of anything other than “Wow! What happened?”
So back to your ‘translocation’ — now, I can understand that concept. I can explain it. I can explain all the things I just said about how a remedy works and everything else. At that time, and it was the perfect time, as a young adult in my early 20s, it was the time to be open to really having a brand new experience and a brand new worldview.
“I’m going to find out about this — there’s something quite amazing going on here!”
Paul Bowman
Jeff, I know what you’re saying. These are really important distinctions that you’re making. So tell me what is the most important thing that you want people to know about you and your practice? What really resonates with you?
Jeff Korentayer
The first thing that pops into my mind, Paul, when you ask that is the idea that your life, human life, all of our activities, all the things we engage in — have meaning at multiple levels. It’s sort of like the literature student, someone who studies English literature or any language — they read these classic texts, the classic novels, and this is the whole mind of literary interpretation — it’s looking for meaning at multiple levels. That’s the nature of art, right? But it’s not exclusive to art, art is just representing the structure of life. Life is multi level, multi meaning — it’s meaningful at multiple levels.
To your question — why am I saying this? Why am I talking about meaning at multiple levels? Well, similar to some of the previous parts of our conversation, the patient, somebody who’s concerned about their health wants to solve a problem. There’s an immediate level of meaning in terms of the physical body, the physical symptoms — there’s a wart on my foot, there’s this, there’s that — that’s real and true. It’s correct to say those things, it’s correct to observe those things. But that’s one level of meaning. And, as I’m saying, Paul, to your question — in my practitioner mind, my diagnostic mind, like the literary student, I’m thinking “what are the next higher levels of meaning, if we raise our view to higher and higher levels?” Like in literature, the level of the themes and the symbolism and the character development — you can break the literature apart into all these different levels of meaning.
Well, that’s where I’m going in my practitioner, diagnostic mind — is finding the next higher, and the higher and the higher levels of meaning. And not just as an abstract literary exercise, but for the true purpose of healthcare — of getting to greater and greater and greater degrees of health. You can solve the wart on the foot or whatever the physical problem is, but if somebody only stays at this level —
“Here’s my physical problem, give me the physical remedy. Let’s get rid of the problem. Let’s get on to our normally scheduled life.”
What’s that saying on television — “back to our regularly scheduled programming”? Well, okay, that’s one level — I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying it’s incomplete to stop the thinking process at that level.
Why I’m saying all this is — the more that my practice has developed, that my practitioner view in my mind, as a practitioner has developed — the more I want a bigger and a bigger and a bigger and a bigger framework of the human being and of health.
We’re not just a little wart on our foot, we’re a vast piece of consciousness. Now, again, I know, that just sounds weird to most people — “Oh, who’s the weirdo wants to talk about consciousness?”
I get that. But what I’m saying is — the more I understand health — and even when we were talking just before about translocation — you don’t want to shift the problem on to another place and not actually solve the problem. We’re seeing something similar here. You don’t just want to get rid of one symptom or a set of symptoms, even a chronic health physical problem, whatever it is — you want to see in the patient an expansion of their consciousness.
Now, as I say, I can’t force somebody to have an expansion of consciousness, right? I get in there and ride side by side with them. And okay, here’s your homeopathic for the wart on the foot. And here’s this and I deal with them at the level that they’re coming to me at. If somebody comes and speaks to me in English, I’m going to answer them in English. If someone speaks to me in Spanish, I’ll answer them in Spanish. You meet somebody where they’re at.
So if somebody speaks to me in the language of physical symptoms, I respond in the language of physical symptoms, and I give the remedy — so I’m not ignoring that level.
All I’m saying is that it’s one of the greatest moments — and I never know when it’s going to happen, exactly — but you can get a clue with somebody. Somebody who comes in at that pure physical level – ‘Here’s my health… here’s the problem. Here’s the symptom.’ I meet them exactly at that level.
Now, the point of all this that the amazing thing is — and it often can surprise me of — when it happens in the process, when that person starts to have an awakening — either alongside the improvement in their physical symptom or — other parallel processes are happening, you can start to see the shift in human consciousness.
So as I mentioned a moment ago, we are a much vaster and bigger, larger consciousness than whatever is contained in our skin. Here’s my physical symptom, here’s this, here’s that — we have a very small physical body, as it were. But in comparison, we have a very vast… as big as the whole cosmos is our consciousness.
So when these moments of awakening happen — as the old expression goes — that’s why I get out of bed in the morning… that’s what motivates me to show up in the clinic, and treat another patient.
That’s not the most exciting work in a sense…it’s exciting when people feel better, and their symptoms go away. I like that. They like that. We all like feeling better, and getting rid of symptoms. But as I say, the real motivation for me, is this idea of what gets me out of bed in the morning — it’s these moments, these expansions of human consciousness.
“Oh, I’m not just the wart on my foot, I’m something else… something bigger. I’m different levels of meaning and consciousness. And I’m a human being unfolding through different developmental stages.”
I can’t force that. It doesn’t work if you try to force it on somebody. Yet, when somebody has that spontaneous awakening — and I know how the remedies work, I know how they open the doors to those expanding states of consciousness.
But who is going to go through those doors? I don’t really know. I often get surprised, with a given patient who is so dense and mired in the physical — I can never imagine it’s going to happen. But then it does.
They come in one day, they may talk about some of the physical symptoms, as we always have those discussions — they kind of continue that story and how things have changed or improved or whatever. But then there’s this whole other level to their conversation — a consciousness that wasn’t there before.
What I always say to myself, and sometimes I’ll say to them “oh, you’re in a bigger consciousness. You never would have talked about this when I first met you. And you notice that your awareness is now going into these areas.”
So from my point of view as a practitioner — this is why I continue to study. I study the Giants.
We have Hahnemann, who gave us Heilkunst, and all these medicines and other remedies.
We also have Rudolf Steiner.
We have Wilhelm Reich.
If you want big, big consciousness, those are your sources. Go to Steiner, go to Reich. This is what I do every day — I keep going back to the well, and expanding on all of this. Far from being just some kind of abstract philosophy, these are the most real areas of life and reality that you can get into.
Reality is the vastness of the human being — the vastness of the mind and consciousness — the vastness of the human spirit.
It’s like that old party game — when someone’s doing the limbo, they keep lowering the bar — “How low can you go?” — Well, we’re doing the opposite — “How high, and how expanded can you go?”
That’s the reality of the human being, of human health, and of human consciousness. The more you go into it, it gets bigger, and bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, as I say, you can’t force it on anyone. You can’t expect that anyone is going to follow that path. But this is the natural progression of healing and health care. People find a bigger version of themselves — a bigger version of their mind, a bigger version of their consciousness, and that’s what lights me up. That’s where you’ll find the resonance in my practice — in that dimension.
Now, as I said, Don’t ignore the wart on the foot and all of that — we dive right in to all of that. But there’s a bigger game that’s really being played here.
Paul Bowman
Jeff, whenever I communicate with you, you always expand my vision of what’s really going on and I appreciate that. And I’m sure others will too. As you say, that’s really the name of the game.
So let’s transition to our last part. Why don’t you tell everybody what you’re doing now? Because with these shifts and expansions in your consciousness, obviously your physical world will change. Even in your practice and how you conduct yourself. And Jeff, of course, why don’t you go and tell everybody how they can get in touch with you, because, man, these are amazing things that we’re talking about. And we’ll go from there.
Jeff Korentayer
Well, thanks again. Thanks so much, Paul.
To put a frame around what’s going on in my practice — what am I working on — in a sense, my practice looks exactly the same as it always has.
Now, of course, I’m being a little tongue in cheek at one level, but But it’s true at another level, like you’re still doing the same Heilkunst process, the timeline treatments, and all the diet and the regimen and all the practical things we do for improving health and getting rid of chronic symptoms and treating the sequential timeline. We have a very systematic approach.
And my practice looks the way it always has — people come in with specific physical symptoms and other health challenges with all these things going on. And I just deal with that exactly as they present it.
There’s nothing up my sleeves, and there’s no magic tricks. It’s just the same thing as you would expect. But at the other level, as you sense, as we’ve gone through this conversation — EVERYTHING is different underneath the surface. On the surface, it’s exactly the same.
When you dig down, we’ve gotten good hints as we’ve gone through this conversation. There are so many concepts, so much philosophical depth to understanding the human being.
I just keep studying more and more and more. So now, when I’m facing the patient, and doing this very practical work, I can now see things, and hear things that they say, and how they express themselves — I see these different states of consciousness.
I’m getting better and better at this — I can see exactly when a patient is ready for me to suggest opening a certain door — “let’s go down into this concept; let’s go into this zone of your consciousness” — whether that’s an emotional side, or a change in worldview — we can start to open that door. This idea of ‘what’s under the hood?’, is more and more ripening in terms of what I see in the patient, and the best way to lead them forward.
So at one level, it’s all the same. Nothing’s changed here. And at another level, everything is new, everything is changed. All these new threads are possible to open up now. So that’s just an overview.
My studies keeps going down into these rabbit trails. Further and further. To some degree, I’ve documented this on my social media channels, and my blogs and things like that.
This is my goal. In the next number of years, to keep developing all these forms of education, so that it benefits whoever is interested. You never know when someone is ready for those doors to open; but when they are, I want to make sure we have all the resources, all the teaching materials — whether that’s blogs, videos, podcasts, what have you — those doors are available for people who are ready to go through them.
The simple way to find me online is to go to my bio on my clinic website – https://arcanum.ca/about/jeff-korentayer/
There, you can find my blog posts, my social media accounts, as well as the podcast I do with my spouse, Allyson McQuinn. We have some very similar conversations on our podcast, going into this deeper philosophy behind the healthcare concepts behind Heilkunst.
I’m hoping that by the end of 2024, I’ll publish my book on the homeopathic remedy Staphysagria (which is a really big Heilkunst remedy). It’s a book which will outline some of these deeper philosophies and frameworks behind Heilkunst.
I’ve also recently started a Substack channel. Going into the future, that’s where I’m going to develop a lot of this educational material. It’s a fresh, modern kind of platform. And it just appeals to me, that is a good place which is accessible for a lot of people to come when they’re interested in learning more of this.
I’m happy to chat about any of this with anyone who wants to pursue any particular concept we’ve we raised in this conversation, or to get more of an overview of some of the concepts of Heilkuhst.
Again, thank you, Paul, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing this pocast up in the wild and seeing what kind of conversations it serves.
Paul Bowman
Well, Jeff, it sure has been exciting and informative to be on here with you. And so many people are gonna find this to be such a blessing. And I hope they get in touch with you as soon as they can.
But until then, I want everybody be thinking that now, you know, as well as I do that you’re nowhere near as well as you can be. It was once said that there’s no fool like an old fool. So the older you get, if you haven’t figured it out, well guess what you probably aren’t. And it isn’t about figuring something out, it’s about being in there and hang in there until you can learn what you need to learn. So that’s what this is about.
You need to find your healthcare hero, latch on to them, to help you to feel physically better. But to feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually better.
So, in your minds, I want you to think of this. We are creating community around love, and trust. And of course, the truth. Because if it’s not truthful, then it’s just another belief, another mere notion, and of course, it’s not going to help you.
So you can become well, against all odds. And we’re just putting it out there to you. So not only like and share this, this podcast, but start asking people about their health. And when you see someone who’s in a real pickle, just ask them this question. Whatever they say their situation is, say, “Is that really true? Or is that just what you want to believe?”
Because that question is powerful. And if their mind is open for just a minute, then that’s the perfect time to refer them to your healthcare hero. And let’s go from there. Love you guys. Talk to you later. Bye.