The Other Song - Review by Ken Mayne

Ken Mayne RS Hom graduated from the Irish School of Homeopathy in 1998 and practices in Northern Ireland.  He is Chair of the Northern Ireland Association of Homeopaths and Director of the Belfast School of Homeopathy. E-mail:  

The Other Song is a further development of Sankaran’s thinking as it has evolved from  The Spirit of Homoeopathy, through The Substance of Homoeopathy to  Their Sensation in Homoeopathy.  Alongwith our natural, innately human song, another song plays within us.  This other song drives our emotions, dreams, ambitions, work, relationships, illnesses and even our circumstances.  It is experienced as a constant inner sensation which has a corresponding pattern in one of the three kingdoms – animal, plant or mineral.  Awareness of this song’s theme is the way to reduce its intensity and its effect upon us.  As this happens we can come out of the fixed melody that rules our lives and have the freedom to be in the now.  In homoeopathic practice, identification of the theme of the patient’s other song guides the practitioner in the choice of remedy.

It is not clear precisely at whom or at what level the book is aimed.  It is subtitled Discovering Your Parallel Self and is presented as a guide to help the lay reader find the theme of his or her own other song, but it contains a stern warning that it is not intended for self-diagnosis, or for superficial self-classification.  Of course lay readers will do exactly that.  People just cannot resist identifying themselves in any classification system – whether it be enneagrams, astrological signs, Myers-Briggs personality types, or our old friends the constitutional types.

Much of the material in the book, especially relating to the techniques of guiding a patient to reach these deepest of themes, will be highly valued by practitioners wishing to use Sankaran’s method, but completely lost on a lay reader.  The book is visually quite appealing in its graphical presentation, but it is printed in a low-density sans-serif font which is very hard on the eyes after 400 pages.

Some will see Sankaran’s book as the latest in a series of revelations from the master – a new map of human nature with a new set of metaphors as navigational aids.  Others will see The Other Song as yet another departure from Hahnemann’s ideal of  a pure material medica, free of hypotheses and speculation. Either way, Sankaran might well say that these different responses are determined by whatever version of the ‘other song’ happens to be playing within the reader.  Play it again Sankaran !