Understanding Healing E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Rudolf Steiner's third great lecture course to physicians has a completely different character to his previous presentations. Delivered in response to a group of young doctors – who approached Steiner with the specific request for a course that would be 'quite intimate', but should not contain anything '…which appealed only to knowledge and the intellect' – it offers unique, ground-breaking insights into the practice and art of healing. Steiner speaks about the influence of cosmic and earthly forces – the periphery and centre – on the human being. Proper understanding of these processes enables the physician to comprehend the actions of plants and minerals used in anthroposophic medicines, and thus to prescribe appropriate and individually specific remedies. Steiner paints a picture of the human being as a complex confluence of the forces of heredity, forces from the cosmos, and an individual's unique spiritual nature. The physician has to understand these relationships in order to be able to help effectively when they are out of balance. Steiner stresses the importance of personal development for physicians, and offers plentiful instructions for a meditative practice intrinsic to their work. Among a wealth of other topics, Steiner addresses inflammation and excessive growth; the nature of scarlet fever and measles; the importance of a child's food and breast milk; the functions of the liver, heart, head and skeleton; the incarnation process; karma as a guide for the physician; morality as a force streaming in from the cosmos; the cosmic trinity of Saturn, Sun and Moon in the healthy and sick human being; and the involvement of the heart in thinking. Included here are Rudolf Steiner's answers to questions, and the first newsletter from the Medical Section, with a key meditation for physicians. This volume also features 18 full colour plates of Rudolf Steiner's blackboard drawings, a comprehensive introduction, index and notes.

Leseprobe

UNDERSTANDING HEALING

MEDITATIVE REFLECTIONS ON DEEPENING MEDICINE THROUGH SPIRITUAL SCIENCE

UNDERSTANDING HEALING

MEDITATIVE REFLECTIONS ON DEEPENING MEDICINE THROUGH SPIRITUAL SCIENCE

Thirteen lectures and a meeting held in Dornach between January and April 1924 First Newsletter of the Medical Section, March 1924

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 316

The publishers acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927-2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

Originally published in German under the title Meditative Betrachtungen und Anleitungen zur Vertiefung der Heilkunst (volume 316 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on notes taken by members of the audiences not reviewed by the speaker, and edited by Hans W. Zbinden, MD. This authorized translation is based on the 5th German edition of 2008 which was overseen by Andreas Dollfuss and Eva-Gabriele Streit, MD

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach 1967, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2008

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 441 4

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction by Christian von Arnim

CHRISTMAS COURSE

LECTURE 1DORNACH, 2 JANUARY 1924

Illusion of imagining the human being as firmly outlined. The physically outlined human being. The fluid human being on which the etheric body acts; the aeriform human being in which the astral body works; the warmth human being which penetrates the human organization. The I works on the warmth human being whereas the latter acts on the rest of the organization, the I therefore does so indirectly. That provides true insight into the relationship between soul and spirit as the soul events act on the warmth ether and through the latter on the organs. The possibility of falling ill lies in the human organization. The possibility of healing in natural processes which can take over the processes in the human being: etheric body, astral body, I. Calling on higher components of the human being to aid healing. Natural science has to look at things in a different way to accord with the living-cosmic aspect; example of formic acid and the way that figs ripen and honey is produced. Necessity of developing a feeling for nature, also when using a microscope. Consideration of size which is not relative. A look at the real nature of the beehive.

LECTURE 2DORNACH, 3 JANUARY 1924

Characterization of the components of the human being. I and earthly form. I and death. Physical organism and nourishment. Relationship between etheric body and astral body and the possibility of falling ill. Prerequisite for a conscious soul life. The nature of feeling. The development of illness. Inflammation and excess growth. Illness and the soul life. Liver as the sense organ for the substances of the external world. Heart, a sense organ for the inner world. The organs as intrinsic whole. Assessment of food from the global context of the human organism.

LECTURE 3DORNACH, 4 JANUARY 1924

The forces which come from the earth and the forces which come from the periphery are balanced in the individual organ systems. The head from this perspective; its weightlessness and state of static rest. Cosmic and earthly forces in the head and skeleton. The importance of calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate. Substances as cosmic formative forces and the behaviour of the cosmic essence in that regard. Special consideration of the forces which overcome the lead process. The importance of the magnesium process, rhythmical periods in which the process has a different meaning. Antimony and the metamorphoses of the coal process studied in accordance with cosmic and etheric formative processes in time.

LECTURE 4DORNACH, 5 JANUARY 1924

Exoteric knowledge and the way it is acquired as the basis for the esoteric part of the course. Development of the human being: the etheric body and its relationship with the embryo which is created through heredity, its relationship with the astral body in the period immediately after birth: predisposition for knowledge. Importance of inner schooling and deepening for the physician who wants to heal. Care of the soul forces through rhythmical repetition of knowledge. Such knowledge is illustrated using the example of experiencing a plant, exoteric and esoteric knowledge put into their real context.

LECTURE 5DORNACH, 6 JANUARY 1924

About the change which has to occur in the whole attitude of the anthroposophical movement: ‘The esoteric path is a difficult one or it is none at all.’ Further description of the cosmic forces by means of the example of the relationship between the nature of plants and the human organism, particularly the head. Necessity of experiencing such knowledge. Connecting this with inner moral impulses. Description of meditative processes. The will to deepen medical studies esoterically in the same way as has happened so far only in two areas: general anthroposophy and the arts of eurythmy and speech. Description of the way the Medical Section is set up.

LECTURE 6DORNACH, 7 JANUARY 1924

Cognition through the thoughts: skeletal system; through imagination: fluid human being, muscular system. Cognition through intuition: warmth human being and the activity of the organs. The two types of warmth. Aerifom and light state. Metamorphosis of light. Water and the chemical metabolism. The earthy and life. Conceptual medical knowledge and the therapeutic element.

LECTURE 7DORNACH, 8 JANUARY 1924

Answer to a question about magnetic healing. Answer to a question about the relationship between the heart and uterus. Answer to a question about the influence of precious stones on the individual organs. Answer to a question about the effect of post-mortem decomposition processes on the deceased. Answer to a question about the effect of a post-mortem examination for a certain period after death. Answer to a question of the importance of community for the healing abilities of physicians. Answer to a question about iris diagnosis, graphology and so on. About healing and a knowledge of medicines. About the nature of the book Philosophy of Freedom and its meaning with regard to the nature of the human being. Imagination and the muscles; inspiration and the life of the inner organs. Outline of the course of study deemed necessary by Rudolf Steiner for a medicine which accords with the spirit. The nature of illness for the physician with the will to heal.

LECTURE 8DORNACH, 9 JANUARY 1924

Karma as a guide for the physician: the will that karma be fulfilled and the will to heal. Introduction to the way of viewing the human organism leading to healing as the result of cosmic forces, illustrated using the example of Saturn and moon forces. Instructions for meditative deepening.

EASTER COURSE

LECTURE 9DORNACH, 21 APRIL 1924

Participants are encouraged to ask questions about difficulties which have arisen when the physician was following an esoteric path of schooling. Answers. Emancipation of the western esoteric path from the external cosmos. Instruction for meditation; about the nature of the latter. Explanation of the incarnation process, development of a human body suitable for earth; origin of the hereditary stream and examination of the latter. The nature of scarlet fever and measles; importance of the child's food and breast milk. Importance of direct perception with regard to meditative knowledge; explanation of the same with examples. Obtaining maturity on earth. The seven-year periods as new elements. The influence of the cosmic formative forces. Meditation on the nature of the plant.

LECTURE 10DORNACH, 22 APRIL 1924

About meditating in the right way and the medical profession. Illness as an aspect of understanding healing. Knowledge about healing and the will to heal. Understanding the etheric as something sculptural. Understanding the astral as something musical. The pioneering role in a new medical course of physicians with an anthroposophical orientation. Observation of the primary cause of disease in the patient biography. Meditation.

LECTURE 11DORNACH, 23 APRIL 1924

Introduction to the meditation given in Lecture 10: the creation of form, the creation of the human being from out of cosmic forces. Moon. Ensouling the human being: the action of the sun out of the cosmos in the environment. The human being filled with spirit through the catabolic forces of Saturn action. The cosmic nature of the forces of the metals. Morality as a force streaming in from the cosmos. Spiritual truths must be repeatedly experienced meditatively. On the karmic situation of the souls born around the turn of the century which seek the spirit.

LECTURE 12DORNACH, 24 APRIL 1924

The origins of the nineteenth and twentieth century medical point of view looked at in their karmic connections. Christianity and Arabism. Instructions for a healer meditation: the cosmic trinity of Saturn, sun and moon at work in the healthy and sick human being.

Instructions for becoming aware of the karmic situation in patients: the will to heal, imbuing medicine with Christianity by becoming aware of the cosmic aspect in the human being. Involvement of the heart in the thinking: the staff of Mercury. The physician should work towards karma being able to come to expression in contemporary culture.

LECTURE 13DORNACH, 25 APRIL 1924

The nature of the components of the human being and their reciprocal relationships. General causes of falling ill, understanding the action of certain medicines. Different circumstances in physical and mental disease, the temperaments.

Instruction for a meditation to acquire imaginative consciousness. The same for the acquisition of inspirational consciousness. Feeling in knowledge, feeling in cognition. Giving the youth movement a more concrete form through help in the spirit of a medicine striving as described previously. The unobtrusive healing of the hereditary forces in education. Relationship of the physician with the patient. Appeal for an inner connection with the Goetheanum which has set itself a certain task as the centre.

FIRST NEWSLETTER 11 MARCH 1924

Published by the Medical Section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum for the anthroposophical physicians and medical students.

EVENING MEETINGDORNACH, 24 APRIL 1924

Relationship between the fluid and solid in the development of the organic. Image creation through extension (cosmic effect) and invagination (earthly effect). The therapeutically important phantom of the organs in the fluid human being. Sculptural principle for understanding the fluid, musical principle for understanding the aeriform. Listening to one another when speaking: study of the I-organization.

Meditation for the anthroposophical physicians, autumn 1923

Notes

Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Colour Plates

EDITOR'S PREFACE

At the initiative of a number of physicians who had heard Rudolf Steiner's public lecture ‘Die geistewissenschaftliche Grundlage der leiblichen und seelischen Gesundheit’ (‘The spiritual scientific foundations of physical and mental health’, in GA 334, Social Issues) in Basel on 6 January 1920, Rudolf Steiner gave a first course on medical subjects in the spring of the same year (see GA 312, Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine). A second course followed one year later (GA 313, Illness and Therapy) and in parallel a course on eurythmy therapy (GA 315, Eurythmy Therapy) which was attended by physicians and eurythmists. After a ‘Medical Week’ organized by the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute in Stuttgart in October 1922, a small group of younger physicians approached Rudolf Steiner with the request to give a course for the ‘young ones’ which should be ‘quite intimate and not [contain anything] which appealed only to knowledge and the intellect’ (Norbert Glas). As a result, the so-called ‘young physicians course’ was held at the start of 1924 and continued at Easter. These two courses form the content of the present volume. Also included is an address which Rudolf Steiner gave at the evening meeting of the course participants on 24 April 1924, the newsletter from the Medical Section which was sent to participants after the Christmas course, as well as the meditation for physicians mentioned therein.

The chronological table of medical lectures and discussions (below) offers an overview of Rudolf Steiner's lecturing activities in this field:

Date

Venue

Occasion

21 March-9 April 1920

Dornach

First medical course (

Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine

) GA 312

26 March 1920 7 April 1920

Dornach

Q&A on Psychiatry Hygiene as a social issue (both GA 314,

Physiology and Healing

)

7-9 October 1920

Dornach

Lectures on ‘Physiological and therapeutic themes based on spiritual science’ (GA 314)

11-18 April 1921

Dornach

Second medical course, GA 313 (

Illness and Therapy

)

12-18 April 1921

Dornach

Eurythmy therapy lectures for physicians and eurythmists, GA 315 (

Eurythmy Therapy

)

26-28 October 1922 28 October 1922

Stuttgart

Anthroposophical Basis for the Practice of Medicine(GA 3l4) Lecture on eurythmy therapy (GA 314)

31 December 1923/ 1 January/2 January 1924 28 August 1923-29 August 1924

Dornach (various cities)

Discussions with anthroposophical physicians on Therapy (GA 314)

The Healing Process

(GA 319)

2-9 January 1924

Dornach

GA 316 (

Understanding Healing

)

21-25 April 1924 21-23 April 1924

Dornach

Easter course, part of above (GA 316) Discussions with medical practitioners (GA 314)

25 June-7 July 1924

Dornach

GA 317 (

Education for Special Needs

)

8-18 September 1924

Dornach

GA 318 (

Broken Vessels

)

Summary of Medical Courses in English Translation (latest editions shown):

GA/CW 312

Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine

(SteinerBooks 2010)

313

Illness and Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

314

Physiology and Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

315

Eurythmy Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2009)

316

Understanding Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

317

Education for Special Needs

(Rudolf Steiner Press 1998)

318

Broken Vessels

(SteinerBooks 2003)

319

The Healing Process

(SteinerBooks 2000)

INTRODUCTION

Of all the fields in which Rudolf Steiner was active—and there were many of them—medicine is probably one of the areas in which it is hardest for the modern scientific mind to accept the basis on which anthroposophy, and Steiner's systematic research into the spirit through spiritual science, operates. As conventional medicine becomes ever more highly technologized—in one development doctors are diagnosing patients remotely via a robot, literally losing touch with them—it sees the human being physically and mentally as no more than the sum of his or her cellular and neuronal parts and processes.

It requires a fundamental shift of paradigm to see human beings, in sickness and health, embedded not just in an earthly but also a spiritual-cosmic setting. Yet that is the starting point for anthroposophic medicine, both in terms of its understanding of the structure of human beings themselves, and of the influences acting on them and the earth from out of the cosmos as planetary forces. Steiner explained the human being very specifically as consisting not just of a physical body but also of what he called the etheric body or life forces, the astral body providing sentience and consciousness, and the I-organization the self-aware, eternal spiritual part of the human being.

This also gives a different perspective on illness and disease. Rather than just being a malfunction of an organ or body part, illness can also be understood as a dislocation of the action of the various components in the human being. In such a case healing in turn involves restoring such activity to its rightful sphere. An organic illness is thus a symptom of such an underlying imbalance, an absence of the harmonious interaction of the human components in the affected organ or organ system. In this view, the physician has to have an understanding of the way in which etheric body, astral body and I-organization positively and negatively impact on one another. In order to make a full diagnosis, the physician has to look beyond just the physical body and have a sharp eye for the human soul life, says Steiner.

But in order to do that, the physician also has to work on himself or herself meditatively, in order to develop the faculties to see beyond the physical person. In these lectures Steiner therefore emphasizes that becoming a physician is not just a profession but a calling. He repeatedly refers to the will to heal as a moral quality which the physician needs to develop through meditative work, and discusses the meditations which he gave to help physicians work on their own development.

As a result of these factors, anthroposophic medicine is an individualized medicine. It is not enough to find standard solutions in response to standard diagnoses. The particular constellation of a disease has to be looked at individually in each person, which will also affect the treatment prescribed.

Steiner spends a lot of time in these lectures speaking about the influence of the cosmic and earthly forces, the periphery and the centre, on the human being. These are forces which affect both the human being and the earth itself, so if the physician understands these processes properly, it will also help him or her to understand the actions of the plants and minerals used in anthroposophic and homoeopathic medicines and to choose the appropriate medicine to treat the specific condition of the patient.

In short, in these lectures Steiner paints an extensive picture of the human being as a complex entity formed by forces of heredity from the parents in the physical body (which have to be overcome), forces from the cosmos and by a person's own spiritual individuality, whose task it is to take hold of all the other components and shape them for its own purpose. The physician has to understand these relationships before he or she can start to heal them when they get out of balance.

But what also emerges from these lectures is that Steiner did not see anthroposophic medicine as competing with or wanting to replace conventional medicine. He recognized the achievements of the latter and saw anthroposophic medicine as complementing and extending them—adding the dimension that is absent: namely a non-materialistic and comprehensive view of the human being.

That does not, however, mean that he could not be extremely scathing about aspects of the medical establishment and what he saw as its stupidities and blinkered attitudes. He was nevertheless quite clear that however unsatisfactory the medical students attending his courses in Dornach found their conventional medical studies, they should undertake and complete them. In an ideal world we might not want to start from where we are—and Steiner does indeed set out how he thinks an ideal medical course should be structured, both in its exoteric and esoteric content.

But he also understood that we are where we are, and therefore have to start from that place. The last thing he wanted was for anthroposophic medicine to be seen as dilettantish and unprofessional, and so he insisted on properly qualified physicians in the way that the world at large demands and recognizes, who would then complement their conventional medical training with the additional insights they gained through the medical courses based on the findings of spiritual science.

So Steiner maintained that while anthroposophical medical students should certainly not be embarrassed to represent the anthroposophical view of the human being—outlandish as it might appear to the conventionally trained scientific mind—it was just as necessary for them to concern themselves with orthodox science and medicine because that, too, was a requirement for healing even if, ‘it is the case that in major and significant things the truth diverges considerably from what is accepted today’, as Steiner puts it.

Christian von Arnim, July 2013

CHRISTMAS COURSE

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 2 JANUARY 1924

MY dear friends,

The first thing I would like to discuss with you is related to the study of medicine itself. Medical studies today are structured in such a way that they build on a natural scientific view of the world, or rather, a natural scientific interpretation which fails to develop a proper understanding of the human being. And so young physicians see an ill person without being able to develop any real idea about what the healthy human being is like. Because, you see, if you begin by learning about anatomy and physiology with the idea that the key parts of the human organism are the organs and organ systems which appear in firm outline, such as the bone structure and the muscular system, and if you have become used to seeing those systems in the fixed outlines in which they are normally drawn, that gives you a quite erroneous view of the human being. For the things which are drawn in this way and which we imagine as being drawn in this way, what is considered to be the real content of our knowledge, they are engaged in a constant process of development, of generation and degeneration, they are in continuous development, constant coming into being and passing away. And if we now begin to look at this coming into being and passing away, we immediately notice that we have to move away from the fixed outlines in the human organism to something that is fluid and without contours, that we have to imagine the human being as the result of a flow which persists at certain points. And we have to add the fluid human being, if I can put it like that, to that part of the human being which is the least part; we have to add the human being who is no longer subject to the laws to which sharply outlined bodies are subject.

The opinion is commonly expressed today, on the basis of anatomical and physiological thinking, that when we drink liquid to satisfy our thirst and then drink more and more liquid, say a third or fourth glass after the first one, all the liquid we have drunk undergoes the same process in the organism. But that is not true. The first glass of water undergoes a complicated process to satisfy our thirst; but the second glass of water, when our thirst is no longer so great, passes through the organism at a much greater rate than the first one. It does not follow the complicated progression which the first one did and with the second glass of water we are dealing to a much greater extent with a kind of simple onward flow in the fluid human being, if I can broadly express it like that.

And so we have to say that a true understanding of the human being must, first, take the sharply outlined organs into account, but then also those things which are in flow in the organism. Of course reference is also made to those things which are in flow but it is done in a way which only seeks to understand the fluids, indeed the whole fluid configuration of the human organism, in greater detail on the basis of the laws of dynamics and mechanics. It is not the case that the latter apply; as soon as we consider the fluid human being, the so-called human etheric body is involved.

The human physical body is merely that aspect which relates to the anatomical drawings which you can see in the anatomical dictionaries, the books of anatomy. But you will not find the flow of the fluids in the human organism there. The flow of fluids in the human organism is not dependent on earthly forces—earthly forces are also involved but it is not dependent in its essence on earthly forces—but on those planetary forces which I spoke about in the lecture,1 so that we have to say: as long as we are dealing with organs and organ systems with a fixed contour, we are only dealing with the earthly forces. [Plate 1* left] As soon as we are dealing with what circulates, be it the circulation of the nutritional fluids themselves or the nutritional fluids that have already been transformed into blood, we are dealing with controlling forces that are not earthly but planetary. We will deal with the matter in greater detail later on, but right now we are looking at the principle.

So essentially we have the solid human being associated with the physical body, the fluid human being associated with the etheric body. Now there is also the aeriform, gaseous aspect to the human organism—and to a greater extent than some people think. In so far as the gaseous is in our organism as a constitutional, vitalizing element, it is dependent on the astral body so that, for example, human respiration must be understood in its physical manifestation as a function of the astral body.

And specifically with regard to the fourth human being, the warmth human being—I have referred to the physical human being linked with the physical body, the fluid human being linked with the etheric body, the gaseous human being, i.e. the activity of all that is gaseous or aeriform, linked with the astral body—there cannot be a moment's doubt that in the physical space occupied by the human being, and even beyond, there are different degrees of warmth. If you take someone's temperature behind the ear or in the armpit you will find a very differentiated warmth organism. The degrees of warmth are different everywhere. [Plate 1 right] Just as you can say that the liver is in a specific location in the human being, so you can say that the intestines are in a specific location. Both have quite different temperatures. The liver temperature is quite different as the liver has a very specific warmth organization. This warmth organization is originally linked with the I-organization. Only now, really, is it possible for you to picture the human being to the extent that he or she carries the substances which are otherwise present on earth within himself or herself as solid, fluid, gaseous and warmthlike substances.

The warmth element is directed by the I-organization. But if something is in a particular warmth state, this warmth state has an effect on the thing that is penetrated by the warmth; and this is where we get to the real state of the I-organization. The things which the I-organization otherwise does in the human organism happen by way of the warmth organization. Let us assume that I am walking, just walking. In walking, I act on the warmth organization of my organism with my I-organization. What the warmth does in the organism—in the same way that the legs contain fluids between the solid parts of the legs—is an indirect consequence of the I-organization; but the I-organization only acts directly on the warmth organism. We can therefore see the action of the I-organization in the whole organism—in the solid, fluid, gaseous and warmth organization—but only by way of the warmth organization. We can, in turn, see the action of the astral body on the whole organism, but directly the astral body acts only on our aeriform organization, and so on. You can work out the rest for yourself.

Now you see, this opens up quite a different possibility. Take the kind of thing that is provided in physiology and anatomy today, which people outline so nicely and take to be the whole human being. If you take that you will never have the possibility to get from the human being in this form, who cannot in reality exist, to the soul element or, indeed, the spiritual. How in all the world could anything of a soul or spiritual nature have anything to do with the human being as he or she is outlined today in physiology and anatomy? As a result all kinds of apparently well-considered theories have arisen about the reciprocal relationship between the soul and spirit and the physical. The most ingenious, because the most silly of them—the two things are often connected in our time—is the theory about psychophysical parallelism. It says that both run simultaneously and in parallel and there is no attempt to seek a bridge between them. But as soon as you rise to organized warmth differentiation, and have the intervention of the I-organization in such warmth differentiation, you will realize that it is quite feasible that the I-organization acts on the warmth ether; and that it acts on the whole human being as far down as the sharply contoured physical organization by way of the warmth organization. The only reason that the bridge between the physical and the soul elements in the human being cannot be found is that people ignore that the human being has this consecutive structure which in turn is acted on by the soul and spiritual organization. It is indeed the case that if you experience fear, for example, such a simple mental state initially has an effect on your warmth organization. You cannot of course conceive that the mental fact of experiencing fear makes your limbs shake, that is inconceivable, and so you have to look for something like psychophysical parallelism. But you can conceive that the soul organization, which is anchored in the warmth ether, is affected by fear and that such fear comes to expression in a change of your warmth state. In that way the warmth organization is transferred to the respiration, to the fluid and as far down as the solid human being. That is the only possibility of building a bridge between the physical and the soul element.

Without gaining such insight into the human being you will never be able to make the transition from the healthy human being, from an understanding of the healthy human being, to insight into the sick human being. Because, you see, if we take some component of the human organization, say the liver or kidney, which under so-called normal circumstances in some way receives its impulses from the I-organization in that these impulses from the I-organization first act on the warmth organism and then pass down into the sharply contoured liver or kidney and so on—if we look at that, then there is of course a possibility that this intervention by the I-organization through the warmth organization is intensified in the organ compared to the normal behaviour. In other words, the I-organization has too strong an effect on the warmth organization with regard to the liver or the kidney in a way that it should not. And given the configuration of the human organism so that the I-organization can work properly within it, this also provides the possibility for the human organism to fall ill if these structures appear in a wrong or, if you like, dislocated way. Because if you think of the human organism in the way that physiologists and anatomists think of it today it cannot fall ill. Where is the illness supposed to come from? There must be some possibility in the organism for the illness to arise. Now the I-organization has, for example, to act on the heart in a certain powerful way, i.e. it has to act on the heart by way of the warmth organization. If circumstances then cause what is supposed to act on the heart through the warmth organization to act on the kidney or the liver—in the external world, too, you can divert warmth states to another location in a detrimental and disharmonious way—then something happens in the organism which must happen there; the only thing is that it has been dislocated and the possibility of falling ill is given.

Only by taking these things into account can you learn to understand how it is possible for us to fall ill, not by any other means. You have to tell yourself that everything which happens in the human organism is a process of nature. But illness is also a process of nature. Where does the healthy process stop and the disease process start? Where is the transition from one to the other? These questions simply cannot be answered if we stop at what we have in anatomy and physiology. Only once you know that what is disease in the liver is healthy in the heart, and is required there if the human being is to be complete, can you learn to understand the possibility of falling ill. Because if the human organism were not able to generate from the I-organization the warmth organization that is required in the heart region then the human organism would not be able to think or feel anything, for example. But if it acts on the liver or kidney organization then it becomes necessary to drive it out of there again, to confine it to its original limits, we might say.

And you see, there are substances and substantial activities out there in nature which can take on for each organ the activity of the etheric body, the astral body and the I-organization. Say, for example, that the I-organization acts in an incorrect way on the kidney—this is all by way of an introduction today (we will talk about these things in a more technical way in the next few days)—let us say the I-organization in the kidney acts too strongly, the kidney is given the opportunity to do what the I-organization would normally do in this abnormal sick state by administering Equisetum arvense. So you have the situation that when the kidney is sick, the I-organization acts on it in such a way as it should act on the heart and not the kidney. There is activity there which should be somewhere else and which exists because the I-organization intervenes too strongly. You can only remove that activity if you artificially introduce another activity that is equivalent to this activity of the I-organization. That is what you can introduce to the kidney if you succeed in administering the function, the activity of Equisetum arvense to the kidney in the right way. The kidney has a great affinity with Equisetum arvense. In an instant its activity is transferred to the kidney and the I-organization is taken out. And once the sick organ can carry out its diseased activity by different means and something like the I-organization can return to its actual task then the I-organization has a healing effect. You can call on the so-called higher bodies for a healing action if you drive them out of the sick organ and return them to their task. Then the body concerned will indeed have a healing effect on the sick organ. But if you want to penetrate as far as the forces which exist, if you wish to learn to know the human organization in its relationship to the way that the cosmos is configured, to the way that the three realms of nature are configured which surround the human being on earth, then you have to pursue a science that is different from the science often practised today.

Let me give you an example. You all know what an ant heap is like. You know that you get formic acid from ants. Chemists or, indeed, pharmaceutical chemists, talk about formic acid in the way they do but they are not aware of the following. They do not know, for example, that a forest in which ants do not do their work produces terrible harm through what rots away in the roots and so on, produces terrible harm with regard to earth development. We might say that the earth perishes from its rotting organic residues. But imagine wood—and I speak here in broad terms by way of introduction—from which the vegetation has been removed, which has gone over into a kind of mineral state, has become pulverized, rotten. The activity of the ants means that there is always formic acid in an exceptionally high potency in the ground and the air in forests. The formic acid penetrates the rotten wood and as a result future development is safeguarded so that the dust does not dissipate into space but can provide material for the further development of the earth. Thus such substances which appear to be nothing more than excretions of insects or other animals actually safeguard the further development of the earth if their function is properly understood.

You see, examining substances in the way that chemists do today never leads to an understanding of the cosmic tasks of the substances. But without understanding the cosmic tasks of the substances it is impossible to understand the tasks of the substances which are administered internally to human beings. The thing which happens quite unobtrusively with formic acid outside in nature also happens continuously with formic acid within the human organization. As I already emphasized in another lecture,2 the human organism is dependent on having a certain amount of formic acid within it as the formic acid restores the human substance which otherwise falls prey to the ageing process. We might note in certain circumstances that a person has too little formic acid in his or her organism. But what you have to know is that the various organs have different quantities of formic acid in them. Now it is a matter of discovering that a person has too little formic acid in an organ and then administering formic acid to that organ. You will find cases in which formic acid is administered in which it does not help at all, other cases where it helps a great deal. It can happen that the organism directly resists the administration of formic acid but that it is quite willing to make formic acid from oxalic acid if the oxalic acid content is raised. In cases where the administration of formic acid does not help it is often advisable to give oxalic acid because oxalic acid turns into formic acid in the human organism. That is just an indication of the necessity to be familiar not only with the firmly contoured organs but also in detail with the fluid process—and not just in the human organism but also in the cosmos.

You see with regard to certain processes in nature caused by human beings we can observe them but their full meaning cannot be understood through a natural scientific interpretation.

Let me illustrate a very simple phenomenon. There are fig trees in southern regions. There are fig trees which in the first instance produce wild figs and fig trees which produce particularly cultivated figs which are sweet. The people are very sophisticated in the way they produce the sweet figs. They do the following: they cause a certain type of wasp3 to lay its eggs in the fig, in a normally grown fig. The egg turns into a grub which pupates. Now this process is interrupted by these people and in a second run the young wasp generation is induced to lay eggs. In this way, by a second lot of eggs being laid by the generation which was produced in the same year, a considerable sweetness is produced in the fig in which the eggs from the second generation were laid. The people in the south do this by taking general figs which are almost ripe and tying two together with raffia so that they hang from the branch. The fig is tapped by the wasps, considerably speeding up the ripening of the fruit because it has already been cut off. As a result the first wasp generation also develops very fast, goes over to the other fig, which has not been picked, and it is made significantly sweeter as a result.

This process is very important, my dear friends, because in nature itself, in the developing substance of the fig, the same thing is happening in a compressed form which happens in an extended form when the wasp or, indeed, a bee takes the nectar from the flower, carries it to the nest or hive and produces honey. The extended process from the flower, whose nectar the bee collects and takes to the hive, to the production of honey in the hive takes place in the fig itself. The people in southern regions trigger the honey producing process in the fig by making the young wasp generation tap the fruit. This fig, which has been injected by the young generation, gets a honey-producing process in it. You have here the metamorphosis of two processes of nature, one of which is extended in that the bee takes nectar from distant flowers and produces honey from it in the hive. The other one takes place on the same tree on which the two figs are suspended which ripen more quickly, where the wasp generation develops more quickly and injects another fig. Because other figs are injected, sweet figs appear everywhere. Such processes should really be studied because those are the processes of nature which are important. Processes take place in human beings of which physiologists and anatomists today simply have no idea because they do not extend their observations to such processes of nature as I have just described. It is important to observe particularly the finer processes in nature because that is the way to achieve a real understanding of the human being.

But all of these things require a real feeling for nature, being able to see the connection between warmth, air currents, air warming up and cooling down, the action of the sun's rays on warming or cooling air, moisture in the atmosphere, the wonderful play of the dew in the morning on flowers and plants, the wonderful processes which take place in an oak apple, let us say, which also arises as the result of a wasp sting and the deposit of an egg. You do have to be able to observe these things with a macroscopic eye. That requires a feeling for nature. And there is most certainly no feeling for nature present if everything is made dependent, as happens in today's observations, on the exclusive focus on the preparation that comes with use of the microscope. You simply remove the whole thing from nature. You see, a terrible illusion exists in this respect. What do we actually want to achieve when we use a microscope? We want to see what we cannot see with the naked eye. By magnifying the object, we think it will have the effect it has when it is tiny. But we are looking at a quite false object, an untrue object. Using a microscope only makes sense if you have enough of a feeling for nature for you to be able to modify the object inwardly to its correct small size after having looked at it in the microscope. Then it is a different matter; you see something quite different. If you see something that has been magnified, you must be able to reduce it in size again within yourself simply through your inwardness. Most people do not do that. People mostly do not have any idea that the magnitudes of natural objects are by no means relative. The theory of relativity4 is something beautiful and magnificent and beyond dispute for most areas—except the human organism! Three years ago I took part in an academic discussion. Those people did not have the faintest idea when they were told that the human organism cannot, for example, be twice the size it is, it would not be able to exist. The size it has is determined by the cosmos in a way that is not relative for it but absolute. And if it is too large, as in gigantism, or too small, as in dwarfism, we are dealing with medical conditions. And so we have to say that when you see something under the microscope you are in the first instance looking at a lie and you must be able to reduce it to the truth. But you can only reduce it to the truth if you have a feeling for nature, for what is happening in nature.

Under those circumstances it is important to be able to look at a beehive and learn that the individual bee is stupid. It has instincts but it is stupid. But the beehive as a whole is exceptionally wise. We recently had quite an interesting discussion up there with the workers for whom I give a lecture twice a week. We had discussed the realm of the bees5 and in that connection a question arose which is very interesting. Beekeepers know its importance very well. If a beekeeper who is well liked by his bee colony falls ill or dies the whole of the colony really does descend into disorder. That is so. Well, one person whose thinking was right in line with current views said: ‘But bees cannot see that well, they have no idea about the beekeeper. How is some sort of common bond supposed to arise? What's more, let us assume the beekeeper looks after the beehive in one year and the next year there is a completely different bee colony in it, it is completely new apart from the queen, there are lots of young bees. How is the common bond supposed to arise in that situation?’ I answered as follows: ‘Anyone who knows anything about the human organism knows that it replaces all its substances within a specific period. Let us assume someone gets to know another person who goes to America and comes back ten years later. It will be a completely different person to the one whom he knew ten years ago. All the substances are different, the assembly is completely different. That is no different to what happens in a beehive in which the bees have been replaced but the common bond between the beehive and the beekeeper is maintained. Such a common bond is based on the enormous wisdom which exists in the beehive. It is not just a heap of individual bees but the beehive really does have a concrete soul of its own.’

That is something which in turn has to be included in our feeling for nature, the view that the beehive has a soul. We will then be able to transfer such views, which are supported by a real feeling for nature, to all kinds of other things. And only such knowledge, which is supported by a feeling for nature which not only knows how to use a microscope but also a macroscope, if I may use such a term, will allow us to penetrate as far as the healthy and sick human being. That is what we will do in the next few days, and in doing so we will take account in particular of those things which I refer to as morality in medical studies and medical science. That is what we will do in the next few days.

* See NOTES regarding the blackboard drawings.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 3 JANUARY 1924

MY dear friends,

As we are now considering using the eight hours after all, I can proceed a bit more slowly than I could have done if we had been in a hurry. That is undoubtedly of benefit.

Now today I would like to continue the material from yesterday in such a form that I tell you about the specific characteristics of the individual components of the human being. As you know, I drew your attention yesterday to the fact that we can only look at the whole human being in such a way that we distinguish the physical body and connect it with all those things which have fixed contours in the human being. Then we have what I would like to call the fluid organism. This fluid organism is permeated by the forces of the etheric body which, however, connect with the physical body as some kind of original components. The fluid human being is permeated by the etheric forces. These are the peripherally acting forces, the forces which are active from everywhere. Then we have the astral body, which we have to consider in such a way that a spatial way of looking at it is completely insufficient. We have to be clear that we have to look at the astral body in purely qualitative terms; a quantitative view is no use at all. We have to think of it as residing in a world which is not a spatial world as we know it but which lies outside this spatial world.