The Homoeopathic Times
Úna Ferguson, February 1998

Úna Ferguson talks to the 'Falafel-man,' Jeremy Sherr, in Maynooth College, where he is conducting the second year of his advanced Homoeopathic training, the Dynamis School. The group has just completed yet another dynamic proving, the noble gas, Argon.

UF: Would you like to tell me how you got involved in homoeopathy?

JS: 1977 was the first time I remember hearing about homoeopathy. It was in a bar. I was a bit drunk and I asked somebody what they were doing and they said 'studying homoeopathy'. In retrospect, I've always wondered where they were studying because there weren't any colleges at that time, but it might have been with the Thomas Maughan group or Martin Miles or Robert Davidson. Anyway, they mentioned homoeopathy. I asked what it was, they said 'like cures like' and it kind of stuck in my head. Then, in Israel, I had a motorcycle accident and was in hospital for a few months so I had a bit of time to think. I had an encyclopaedia of alternative medicines and I read through all of the therapies and the only one that made any sense was homoeopathy, and it still does. So, I decided to look into it and study.

UF: Where was the bar?

JS: London. I was squatting at the time.

UF: What had you been doing?

JS: Other than that, I had a health food shop. It was one of the first health-food shops in London, a very 'self-awareness' kind of health-food shop, one of the first. So, that's what I did..... kind of looking for a path really.

UF: And did you keep up the health-food shop while you studied?

JS: No, I'd gone back to Israel after that, so I dropped it. Really, I was doing a whole series of things. I was just bumming my way round, you know. I worked as a sound engineer. Then I bought a piece of land in Israel, which I still have, and I was working on the land planting olive trees, which are now 19 years old. That's when I was making up my mind to study and came over to England. The first college of homoeopathy had just begun - I joined in its second year, in 1980.

UF: Not so long ago!

JS: Only eighteen years........so I'm a beginner!

UF: Did you start to practise straight away?

JS: Actually, I started teaching fairly early on in college. I must have been in the second or third year. I was teaching tutorials and stuff like that, but in those days there weren't any teachers, so anybody who'd finished their first year was considered a potential teacher, which was lucky for me. I then joined David Mundy's practice in Cheltenham. I was locuming for him for a while and I started practising in that area, Cheltenham, Hereford, Gloucestershire - the west of England. I still live in Malvern, which is a beautiful place, on the hills in the countryside - very tranquil, but I do a lot of travelling and teaching, I'm a travelling teacher!

JF: When did you start the Dynamis School?

JS: In 1985 or 86. I was teaching a group called the 'Malvern Maniacs', which was code for MM potency, and another group of students called the 'Darlington Degenerates'. Then we got these two groups together to do a joint weekend with the Hydrogen and Chocolate provings. We had a couple of group meetings, and later Diane Goodwin discovered this beautiful island near Skye in Scotland called Raasay, so we had a wonderful week there. It was after that week that I decided to do a one-year course. That was 1987 and was the first Dynamis School year. So Dynamis actually grew out of those two study-groups and it's been running ever since.
The group in Ireland is in the eighth year of that course, although I have run similar courses in other countries for longer than that. I've done the full Dynamis School in Switzerland, Norway, California, Holland, Seattle. These are the places that actually finished the programme.

UF: Do you always conduct a proving as part of it?

JS: If it's a full Dynamis, there should be a proving, yes. For instance, California did the proving of Eagle, Norway did the proving of Helium, Ireland has just done the proving of Argon, Holland did the proving of Yew tree. A proving is probably the most important process that any homoeopath can go through.

UF: But who in their right mind would do it?

JS: Anyone who wants to be a real homoeopath. There's no escape. It's a wonderful thing to do. People do it once and they want to do it again and again. You heard Silvie speaking today - she must be on her 10th proving. I've done ten or more so, once you understand what it's about, you really want to do more and more - so who in their right mind wouldn't want to do it? That's the question! I certainly think that doing homoeopathy without having taken part in provings is a one-sided exercise. You're just receiving all the time, just taking, using remedies that people have proved before... it's like doing a correspondence course in shamanism. You don't really experience it. Homoeopathy is a kind of shamanism and to be part of it, you have to experience what it's about. Part of that is having treatment and treating in the clinic, but a proving is really entering the full experience.

UF: Is that 'giving' to benefit yourself, or 'giving' to benefit homoeopathy?

JS: Both. It's giving back to homoeopathy, but it's a learning for me, it's a learning for the group, and when a group does a proving together, they reach a different level of perception. This was very clear with the Irish group, because I told them repeatedly during the first year that, once they do a proving, they won't be the same. They heard me and they kind of half believed and half didn't believe me, but the day they came back after the proving last weekend, they were totally different and they all agreed that they'll never be the same as homoeopaths. It's a different level of perception. On many levels, receiving the intricacy, the inner changes, how the remedy acts. It's more than just understanding, you feel it, you get to know what homoeopathy is. You get to know a remedy in a way that you will never know from paper or someone else's essence or opinion. It's a different level of knowing.
That's why Hahnemann says in the Organon: 'Provings are a gateway to wisdom'. Homoeopathy derives from shamanism. All the witch-doctors, all the herbal-doctors, all the alchemists throughout the ages experienced their medicines - they had to go through it, to feel it, to be it, and it's the same with homoeopathy.

UF: It seems that, to be a homoeopath, you have to see yourself coming back... is it a similar process?

JS: I think so, it's maturing into homoeopathy. There are many people, the majority of homoeopaths, who practise without having done a proving. But doing a proving, and I'm not talking about a proving you do at home or a seminar proving or a quick proving, I'm talking about a good collective proving..... here, you're very lucky because Nuala Eising is doing wonderful provings....it changes something in you. It changes your perception of homoeopathic remedies. It brings about a potentisation of the homoeopath and that is what the Dynamis School is about - it's about potentising homoeopaths. It's not about information, it is about knowledge - inner knowledge. If you ask the students if they remember anything I've taught them last year, most of them won't remember a thing. But if you ask them whether they're the same, hopefully they will say they're not at the same place that they were. It's not what we learn, it's how we potentise ourselves together. If you potentise yourself as a homoeopath, you see things from a different perspective and that's what it's about. You see a bigger totality. It's not about what you've learned, what you've memorised from a book, it's about where you are in yourself, and that's a process. It's a group process we go through in the school. How we do it is a different story.

UF: When is a good time to do your course?

JS: I think a good time to do it is anywhere between your fourth year as a student and any time as a practitioner. We're doing the Organon from Paragraph One to the end. Everybody does it in school these days, so people have studied paragraphs one, two and three, but we try to potentise the understanding. The study of homoeopathy is not linear - it's not a study of A,B,C,D,E,F,G and you can say, well this year, I'm going to go from F to H. It's a spiral study, so you come back to the same point, to the same old sulphur, to the same old paragraph one, to the same old Pulsatilla, but you come back on a different level. You come back to the same old 'Taking the Case' but you've spiralled up to another potency. And when you spiral up, you perceive the same thing differently, so we're studying the same remedies, the same information, but hopefully reaching a different level of perception, and that makes a difference to homoeopaths. I know that it makes a difference because I follow my students over the years and I see where they're at a few years after the course and what it did for them.

UF: How does it work when you have allopaths who are not homoeopaths coming on the course?

JS: If they've had a fairly good homoeopathic training, it's okay. I think with most people it's fine, because when you talk to people at a certain level honestly and openly, you transcend those levels of knowledge learned in the past. I've never had any problem with doctors on the course. People are people.

UF: Would they be qualified as homoeopaths?

JS: No, I won't qualify anybody as a homoeopath if they haven't got a degree elsewhere because I'm not teaching the whole Materia Medica, I'm not teaching pathology, anatomy etc. A doctor can practise anyway. They don't need your qualification, all they have to say is, 'I'm a doctor' and they're qualified. I won't qualify a lay homoeopath on the basis of my course. They have to produce a certificate. They can do the course anyway, but they won't get the diploma.

UF: But they derive the benefits.

JS: They do derive the benefits, I hope. It was interesting that we did have somebody join the course in the second year, and the whole group saw that it wasn't appropriate, because there are a lot of changes that happen in the first year. Every time I've tried to do that, it doesn't work. The proving can only be done once people are ready for it, once they've been potentised to a certain degree, to actually appreciate the fineness of the proving. Obviously, you could do it in the first year, but it's not so beneficial.

UF: The group gels.

JS: The group gels and the proving gels the group even more because what a proving does is it makes a group 'as if one person.' It's an artificial epidemic. So it brings a group together under a certain energy of a remedy and that makes a big difference too.

UF: So, how do you find this Irish group?

JS: Great, I love it. I love teaching here, it's a nice group. The waters in Ireland run deep, I've found, and I can say anything - people take on any concept that we study. There's no problem in teaching or conveying the material. But I'll tell you, I teach homoeopathy all over the world and people are people. When you teach superficially, when you go through superficial experience, everybody seems different - allopaths, Norwegians, English, Americans, whatever. But when you're talking at the deepest levels that you can in homoeopathy, the soul comes out and everybody is the same, because they're all looking for the same truth, they're all coming from a similar place. So it's quite a similar experience, teaching in different places, except that in some countries people are more reserved while in others they ask more questions and talk easily.

UF: So what brought you here originally in 1991, when you taught the first group in the Burren School?

JS: Nuala! She invited me to teach and I did it happily and it was great. I still remember that group very fondly and it was nice to teach them. Somehow, it didn't carry on for one reason or another. I did a couple of conferences and then I had a large contingency of Irish people coming over to do the Dynamis course in England - Marie Doyle, Marita, Pauline and a few others. I think there were six and it was mainly Marie who got the course going here. She wanted to bring the course to Ireland and she did a lot of work and put a lot of energy into it, so it's thanks to her and Marita that it's been so successful, as well as to Sally who has done a great job of co-ordinating it all.

UF: Do you envisage it happening again?

JS: If there are enough people, it will happen again. I'm happy to do it, I enjoy coming over. I don't know if there'll be enough people next year, but if somebody comes and says they've got forty or more people together, then I'll be happy to come.

UF: Would you like to talk about the proving?

JS: Sure. Argon is a noble gas, element no. 18, third period. I've been studying the periodic table for a long time and most of my provings are elements. Every element that I've proved opens up another key to the universe. But proving a noble gas is special because the noble gases represent the whole period. When you prove Neon, and you understand Neon, you've got a key to the whole second period. We've proved Argon and, by understanding Argon and really thinking about it, we're going to have a key to the whole third period. When you understand this information, you'll be able to see more easily which period a patient belongs to. I'm not that hot on speculations. I prefer to work with precise proving information. I know what Neon does and I know what Argon does and I know what Krypton does, from the reciprocal proving we've done in England, so I'm already putting a lot of the pieces of the jigsaw together. And we have a proving of Helium too. That's four out of seven, so once you've got the cornerstones of the periodic table, you can start working the grid.

A noble gas is complete, it's complete in its outer shell. It doesn't need anybody, it doesn't need to interact, it's totally happy on it's own. That's why it's enlightened. The noble gases are used to produce light in light-bulbs, light-houses - all kinds of ways. So a noble gas is the completion of that period. All the other elements in that period are missing something from that noble gas - a particular number of electrons. Sodium, for instance, is missing seven electrons in order to be Argon; Chlorine misses one electron in order to be Argon. They all want to be Argon. All the third period want to be Argon. All the second period want to be Neon. That's their aspiration, to be complete, just like human beings want to be complete. Very few people can achieve it in themselves. Most people need to find either a partner, or money, or power, sex, food - whatever it is that will complete them. Without that, they're not complete and they need something from outside of themselves. Those are the elements along the way. Nobles are complete in themselves. When you understand the completeness of a period, you can start to look at what the incompleteness of it is.

UF: So it should be contained in the remedy.

JS: That's right. Each one of these elements is the archetype of the period. It represents the period better than any of the other elements in that period. There are seven periods altogether, seven chakras, seven lights of the rainbow... all these sevens are represented in those periods. So it's one way to get a glimpse of the periodic table. Also, the nobles are fascinating gases in their own right. The fact that they can produce light when electricity flows through them, the fact that they don't need to interact with anything, the fact that their name is noble, it's nice. Since I've started provings, I've wanted to prove as much of the periodic table as possible, because I think those are the building blocks.

UF: Is the speculation about Argon borne out by the proving?

JS: There's not much speculation about Argon, most of the speculation would be Jan Scholten's method, right? I don't think he's said much about Argon or Krypton and I haven't looked at it to be honest. For instance, his Neon is, to a large extent, based on the proving, so you can't tell if it's borne out or not. I think it is borne out to some extent . To me, a proving brings out information a hundred times more interesting than speculation about it. The speculation may be okay, but it's very one-dimensional compared to what a proving produces. A proving will bring out stuff that you would never guess, expect or speculate about in a million years. I've seen this in every proving - I've heard prior speculations about the proving, then actually done the proving, and it brings out stuff you just wouldn't believe. What you see is not what you get: a proving will bring out a different level of information. That's what Hahnemann says in the Organon. No amount of thinking about it, speculation, chemical analysis, spectrum analysis - whatever you want, can predict what comes out in a proving. Let's take Nuala's proving of Marble, for example. Who would have thought it would bring out cats? You could think about it all day and it's unlikely that you could say for sure: 'This proving will produce cats'. The same with the Chocolate proving. To say 'This proving will bring out the essence of hedgehog'. Think about it all day! You're not going to come to it, except perhaps with a major meditation effort. But a proving brings out definite information.

UF: You wouldn't believe it anyway!

JS: That's right. The proving of diamond bringing out tigers and panthers...think about it! Difficult to come by! The proving of Argon brings out mist.

UF: Why did you choose it for Ireland?

JS: I had to choose between Krypton or Argon for England and Ireland, because these two groups are reciprocal - they're working together. During the last weekend of last year, the English group came over here to Maynooth and we had a great party. It was good 'craic'. I had to think: 'Which group will I give Krypton and which group will I give Argon?' so I used my intuition. In fact, I should have done it double-blind, but I forgot. It is double-blind, but I shouldn't have known which group got what.

UF: How was Krypton?

JS: Pretty mind-blowing! More difficult than this one. Argon seemed easier. Krypton really threw people into a spin. It threw me into a spin personally......very powerful, very disconnecting. But they fit together, I'm beginning to see what's happening here. There's a vertical line that runs through all the nobles from the bottom of the feet and out through the top of the head. If that line is straight all the way, you can be enlightened, you can be noble. That means, if a person is straight all the way from top to bottom, straight physically, morally, emotionally, truthful with themselves in all ways, that's when they've been enlightened, that's when they have nobility.

UF: And can that be achieved by homoeopathy?

JS: I think so, but it may take a long time! With the right person, I think it can. You speak to the people here who have done the proving, ask a few of them how they feel after it and they feel very, very centred; very much in their truth - you heard what people were saying.

UF: But it may be temporary, as part of the proving!

JS: That's true, but nevertheless they are glowing!

UF: They'll become Argon junkies!

JS: Maybe! Some people have felt absolutely wonderful on the proving. That's my experience with every proving, a lot of people get cured who would never have been cured otherwise. They just happen to get a great remedy - after twenty years of homoeopathic treatment, they do a proving and BOOM , they get better! Not only on nobles, I've seen it on every remedy I've ever proved. It's the luck of the draw. Sometimes you take a risk, you get the benefits, and people do! In the Krypton proving as well, some people did extremely well... centred... nearly enlightened, you could say. They're not my words, that's how people perceived them and felt about them, but it's not just the nobles. If you get your right remedy, you do pretty well.

UF: Do you think we've anything to learn from Britain in the way that homoeopathy has developed there?

JS: No, except what you've already learned, which is the structure of the Society. I think the Society in Ireland learned from the Society of Homoeopaths and that's a good lesson, because why reinvent the wheel? They've done a lot of work there. You've taken what you needed and developed it in your own way. I think homoeopaths here do pretty well but they receive less of the benefits from hearing many different international teachers. There are more seminars in England so people are more exposed to outside homoeopathy.
But I think homoeopaths here are doing great. The only thing that's good to see in Britain is the gradual melting away of that teenage stage of homoeopathy, where all the schools were in a 'We do it the best way' kind of rivalry. People have more space and time for other ways, for other people, for other schools, so that we retain our individuality while retaining our respect for everybody else. I'm not saying that has already happened in Britain, but there are signs it could be on the way.

UF: What about homoeopaths working on N.H.S. schemes or for insurance companies?

JS: To be honest, I know very little about it. I wouldn't be the right person to ask. I'm more in touch with other countries where homoeopaths work together with the equivalent of the N.H.S. or with private insurance. In Switzerland, for example, homoeopaths work in multi-disciplinary clinics for insurance companies. It's been very good, but also very difficult because usually it's some doctor at the head of each clinic who isn't totally into complementary medicine... Actually, I hate that word, I'm sorry I even said it! I don't believe in saying 'complementary' or 'alternative'. They're not really into natural medicine. There have been problems with that, especially with giving allopathic drugs, between the doctor at the centre of the clinic and the practitioners who get referrals.
But in Israel, it seems to be working very well. Israel is pretty advanced in that way - they have homoeopaths working in alternative medicine departments within hospitals, and there are no problems between the doctors and the lay practitioners. They've now started opening multi-disciplinary clinics with health insurance companies and that seems to be working quite well.

UF: So it's actually accessible to people.

JS: Very accessible. As far as England is concerned, I know some homœopaths who've worked under the N.H.S. and it's been fairly OK. That's as much as I can say about it.

UF: How do you envisage the future of homoeopathy? Will it become the standard medical model?

JS: I don't think so, not yet, no. It's not a matter of how many practitioners you have but how many people are ready for homoeopathy. To be ready for homoeopathy, there has to be a certain level of consciousness of what you want. If there's not that level of consciousness, people won't stick it out or they won't come to it! You know how it is, you can try to convince your brother-in-law with a million arguments about homoeopathy, he's not going to be convinced, is he? Because he's not thinking in that kind of way, from that kind of point of view. And you can give a remedy and at the first sign of aggravation, some skin eruption that comes out, he'll run a mile.
You need to be ready for homoeopathy, you need to perceive a bigger totality. You need to perceive a deeper picture to become a homoeopathic patient or practitioner, and most people aren't ready for it, they don't want it yet. People evolve into that readiness. It's a slow process. We're only at the beginning - homoeopathy is just starting in England, in Ireland, and there are a certain number of people ready for it. They're going to grab it with both hands as soon as they hear about it, one word and they're hooked. But, after that stage passes and most of the people who were ready are already patients or practitioners, then it's just a matter of waiting for all the others to slowly open up as they see things happen, as they see their relatives or friends being treated, read another book or article, as their consciousness opens up, then they'll be ready for it. It's at the end of the first stage that the boom stops - like in England at the moment. There was a big boom of colleges and practitioners and now we've reached saturation point.

UF: So you see the profession being overrun?

JS: Yeah, it happened in Britain a few years ago. It is overrun by homoeopaths. There are too many homoeopaths for people to make a living, because there are too many schools - it was something like twenty-five the last time I counted. There's a school in every village! So there are a lot of homoeopaths! It's an easy profession to choose because, number one, it's really fun to learn. There's nothing so fascinating as studying homoeopathy. You can do it on the weekends and it's a nice profession and people want to help people, so a lot of people want to study it after they've found out about it. But there aren't enough patients evolving that quickly, there aren't enough people turning to homoeopathy, so a lot of people finish college and they don't start practices. I'd say only a small percentage practise. The Society of Homoeopaths conducted a survey a couple of years ago and found that most people weren't making enough money to earn a living.

UF: And that's purely because there aren't enough patients?

JS: I would say so. If there were enough patients, they'd be doing okay. But there's another reason also. There's not much vetting of who is accepted into the colleges. Basically, the homoeopathic colleges will accept most people that come along. I've never seen people being turned away from the colleges. Part of the reason is that they're struggling for money and part of the reason is 'Who are we to tell people not to study? If they've got the intention, that's great', and I agree. But everybody's interested, everybody's fascinated, it's great to study and only a small percentage are practitioner material. It's a different thing, being a good student and being practitioner material. I've seen that many times - great students, but they're not able to be practitioners. It's not their disposition.
You need a particular disposition to sit alone behind a desk, listening to other peoples' problems. You need a particular disposition to take phone-calls late at night, to work on cases at the weekend, to face the problems of success and failure in a practice, to have the patience and the business gumption and the ability to take money and make it work. It's tough. In a way, you need certain characteristics of a doctor plus you have to be a homoeopath - which is more than being a doctor. Homoeopathic colleges don't prepare you for that. They're just teaching information, materia medica, some philosophy, repertory, the law of cure, they're not really teaching you how to be a doctor. In the hospitals, they teach you how to be a doctor. Not that I like allopathic medicine, but by the time you've ground your way through eight hospital departments, working eighty hours a week, you know if you want to be a doctor - if you're capable, if you've got what it takes. And it isn't easy!
So, to my mind, everybody should study homoeopathy. Everybody should do a one-year course, so that they can give first aid and so on. But there should be a certain place where people find out, is it just that they want to learn homoeopathy, or do they want to have a practice? And it's no bad thing for a homoeopath to finish four years and say, 'Hey, this is not for me! I really liked it. I loved studying it. I learned a lot. But I don't want to be a practitioner.' And people do it all the time. The problem is, they feel a bit guilty because they say, ' Hey, I studied all this time, my parents thought I would become a homoeopath, and my friends, and everybody else, but you know, I don't feel like doing it, it's not for me, I can't get the business off the ground, I can't make the money'....all that kind of thing. And really, if there was a bit of work on this level in the colleges, they would have perceived that two years before and known it wasn't for them.

UF: So they could be guided?

JS: They could be guided. There could be more training in that direction, in what it takes to be a practitioner - telling students what it's really about. There should be all sorts of psychodrama, business management courses, lessons on the nitty gritty of daily practice, in addition to lots and lots of clinical time, which isn't the case in most of the colleges.
Having said all of that, I don't want to discourage anyone. If you are really determined and committed to developing your practice, you can do it.

UF: Is it within the scope of the Dynamis School to offer that training?

JS: No, I'm presuming people have been through that stage, that they are already practising and are okay. I don't have the patience or energy to deal with those sorts of issues. I'm very privileged to be able to stand up there and talk about anything I want and, thank goodness, I don't have to set exams for people or establish formal curriculums and get involved in the politics of it all. I leave that to more capable people than myself.

UF: When will we be seeing Dynamic Provings, Volume 2?

JS: I hope to do Volume 2. I've got enough remedies. It just takes a lot of time to edit every remedy, time that I don't seem to have, and it takes people who know what they're doing in terms of editing. The standard I want in terms of the editing and publication of provings is very high. Most people look at provings and they don't see what goes into it at all, the way that those provings are arranged. Each proving has probably gone through twenty or thirty editing processes by different people until it's the way I want it . Most people, if they haven't done it themselves, aren't aware of the process and what it requires. Even though it's in my book, 'The Dynamics and Methodology of Homoeopathic Provings', most people don't reach the technical section. They say, 'Hey, it's not for me, I'm not going to do a proving.' But it takes months and months to get a proving to that standard - probably a couple of years working in your spare time and during holidays. I've got about eight provings on the boil, getting ready for publication. When they're ready, I can do Volume 2. But there are new ones all the time. For me, as much as I love the provings, I hate the bloody things too because it's so much work and I don't get to write my books that I want to write.

UF: In your book 'The Dynamics and Methodology of Homoeopathic Provings' you outline how provings should be conducted. Do you really recommend any student or practitioner to take that on?

JS: Absolutely! I get people contacting me every week from all round the world about doing provings. People send me provings and discuss them, and I encourage and help as much as I can because I want to see people doing provings. When the first edition of my Methodology book came out, I made a list of the current provings from the last fifteen years. There were a hundred and fifty. In the second edition, a year and a half later, there were three hundred and seventy. So a lot has happened in the last few years. It's fascinating to read the list of provings at the back of the book and to see what's happening all over the world.

UF: Do you think it's valuable to do a small proving, even of a remedy that's already been proved?

JS: Yeah! It's absolutely valuable to do it. Why not? You gain experience and knowledge of the remedy. Some provings you just do for yourself. You're not intending to publish, you're not intending to make a whole new revelation of a remedy for the world. You just want to experience it. You want to verify it, see how it works. It's very valuable. Let's say you did a small proving of Pulsatilla. You would see if you got the same symptoms that people had two hundred years ago... it's very impressive!

UF: What about potency proving, like they've been doing in Bombay to try to establish what remedies will do in different potencies?

JS: I think it's a great idea to see what different potencies do in a proving and I tried to research that in the early days. I put the provings chronologically on a data-base and then I saw what happened at different potencies and at different times, so I could see what happened eighteen hours after the beginning of the proving in each potency. But it turned out to be too complex and dreary.

UF: How important do you feel it is for homoeopaths to get involved politically?

JS: In liberating homoeopathy from the oppressive forces of darkness? Is that what you mean? I think it's very important!

UF: I mean in terms of educating people.

JS: It's essential to educate people because 'physician' means 'educator'. We have to educate our patients. Without educating patients, it's half a therapy. We have to educate homœopaths. We have to educate the public at large and we have to educate on the political levels to make a change. It's extremely important to do that and you know, people specialise in different areas. My choice is to educate homœopaths who are already potentised and take them to a higher potency. Other people need to educate allopaths and take them from mother tincture to the 6x. Others have to educate politicians. Everybody has their own field of expertise, but we all have to educate because otherwise the world won't change. A month or two ago I had some involvement with a 'Homoeopathy For A Change' project in Honduras. There's a doctor there, Dr. Juan Almendares. Not only has he organized free homœopathic clinics for poor people in the suburbs, but he also teaches these people how to read, and about homoeopathy, and how to cultivate an organic garden - because health is on all levels. Is shows us that, the more we act in a positive way, the more positive things will happen.

UF: So if you weren't a homoeopath, what would you do?
JS: I'd have a falafel stall! They're tastier than hamburgers, cheaper than fish and chips, and healthier than pizzas. That's what I'd do!