The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Health Craze in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Health is something that every human being naturally desires. And we can say: This human desire for health does not stem solely from selfish feelings and wishes, but rather from a legitimate longing to work. We owe our ability to work—the opportunity to make a difference in the world—to our health. That is why we value health as a very special asset. Yet it is precisely in this way of thinking—striving for health for the sake of our ability to work—that something highly significant lies. In a certain sense, this holds the secret to the circumstances under which health is worth striving for in the first place. It might seem strange that health should be desirable only under certain circumstances. But today’s reflection is intended to show us precisely that health belongs to those goods that come to us most readily when we pursue them not for their own sake, but for the sake of something else. A glance at the world around us today can teach anyone that this is not always the case.

[ 2 ] As strange as it may seem to speak of a “health craze”—a feverish pursuit of health—many people today can certainly relate to it. By what means, through what countless paths, do most people today strive for health? Today, we find a frantic pursuit of health everywhere. We wander through regions where ancient castles and ruins tell us of those who, as monks and knights, once possessed both spiritual and physical strength. These castles now lie in ruins. Today, we find sanatoriums in those same regions. And when, at any time in the history of the world, have there been so many specialized efforts to attain health through a natural way of life, or through water or air therapies? People are herded into air and sun baths. An acquaintance of mine once came to see me in the first half of the summer; he was on his way to a sanatorium. With great difficulty, he had managed to wrangle the four weeks of vacation he intended to spend there. In his opinion, it was naturally the best thing that could happen to a person: to spend this time leading a reasonably satisfying existence at the sanatorium. That’s why I didn’t want to point out the futility of his plan and thus rob him of all hope. On his way back, he came to see me again. He brought a little booklet with him in which he had written down everything his body had had to endure during those four weeks. Once again, one couldn’t take away his joy, but the question was still on the tip of one’s tongue: “Tell me, when did you work yourself harder—throughout the entire year or during these four weeks, when you were driven from the warm into the cold, from the dry into the wet, and when you were swept away with more than a few brooms?” — And the worst part was that, after a few weeks, he told me: “This treatment has helped me just as little as any other over the past thirty years”—for he had tried something different every summer. Anyone who cared for this man could only view his obsession with health with a certain degree of regret. How many people today run to magnetizers and “spiritual healers”! How many writings are there on “harmony with the infinite” and the like. In short, the obsession with health is something that thrives in our time.

[ 3 ] Now one might raise another question: Are these people really sick? — Certainly, there must be something wrong with them; but is there any hope at all of regaining one’s health through all these things?

[ 4 ] An ancient saying has survived to this day, particularly among primitive peoples. It is often said that what the common person gains from such sayings very often contains something good. — Yes, but just as often it is also something false! And so it is with this saying: There are many diseases, but only one kind of health. — That is simply very foolish. There are as many kinds of health as there are people: for each person, their own individual health. — This already makes it clear that all general, formulaic prescriptions—that this or that is healthy for people—are nonsense. It is precisely that segment of humanity afflicted by “health mania” that suffers the most from general health prescriptions and from the belief that there is anything at all that can be universally termed “health,” leading them to think that one must do this or that because it is healthy. It is utterly unbelievable that people fail to realize that sunbathing may be healthy for one person, but that this cannot be generalized; it can be very harmful to another. In general, people admit this, but in practice they do not act accordingly. We must realize: Health is an entirely relative concept, something subject to constant change, especially for human beings, who are the most complex creatures on Earth.

[ 5 ] We must turn our attention to the humanities; then we will gain a deep insight into human nature and recognize how changeable that which we call health truly is. In practice, people usually forget entirely what is so highly valued today in material matters: they forget that human beings, too, are in a state of development.

[ 6 ] What does it mean to say that human beings are in the process of development? — Once again, we must point out the essence of the human being. The physical body is only one part of the human being. This it shares with all inanimate nature. But as a second component, it has the etheric or life body, which it shares with all living things. This body is a constant fighter against everything that seeks to destroy the physical body. The moment the etheric body were to leave the physical body, the physical body would become a corpse. The third component is the astral body, which humans share with animals; it is the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of every sensation and perception, of joy and pain—the so-called body of consciousness. The fourth part is his “I,” the center of his being, which makes him the crown of creation. The “I” transforms the three bodies through development radiating from the center. Let us consider an uneducated savage, an average person, and a highly educated idealist. The savage is still a slave to his passions. The average person refines his instincts. He refrains from yielding to certain instincts and replaces them with justice or lofty religious ideals. This means that, starting from the “I,” he reshapes his astral body. As a result, this body now has two parts. One part still retains the form found in the uncivilized person, but the other part has been transformed into the mental self, or Manas. Through the impressions of art or the profound impressions of the founders of religions, human beings work on their etheric body and create Buddhi. But the physical body, too, can be transformed into Atma if a person devotes themselves to certain spiritual-scientific exercises. In this way, human beings work on their three bodies, either unconsciously or consciously. If we could look far, far back into the evolution of humanity, we would find primitive cultural conditions and simple ways of life everywhere. Everything people have in the way of tools to satisfy their spiritual and physical needs—their entire way of life—is simple. Everything evolves, and with it, humanity itself evolves. That is the most important thing.

[ 7 ] Imagine very vividly a primitive person grinding grain into flour between two stones, and picture everything else that surrounds this person. Compare this person with someone from a late-stage civilization. What is all around him, what does he see from morning to night? He takes in the overwhelming impressions of the noisy big city, the streetcars, and so on. We must now understand how this development takes place. We must apply what we recognize in simple things to the process of civilization as well. Goethe once said: “The eye is formed by light for light.” — If we had no eyes, we would see neither colors nor light. Where do we get the eye? Goethe also said this: “From indifferent organs, light has drawn forth the eyes.” — Thus, the ear was formed by sound, and the sense of warmth by heat. Human beings are shaped by what spreads out all around them in the world. Just as the eyes owe their existence to light, so too do other, finer structures in the organism owe their existence to what surrounds human beings. The simple, primitive world is the darkroom that still holds back many organs. What light is to the indifferent organs from which the eye developed, the environment is to primitive human beings. It has a completely different effect on human beings as they live today. They cannot return to the primitive state of culture; rather, an ever more intense and powerful spiritual light has been at work around them, constantly bringing forth something new.

[ 8 ] We can now gain an understanding of the significance of this transformative cultural process by considering the plight of beings who are also subject to this influence but are unable to participate in the transformation. These are the animals. They are constituted differently from human beings. When we look at an animal as it appears in the physical world, it has its physical body, its etheric body, and its astral body in the physical world, but it has no “I” in the physical world. Therefore, on the physical plane, animals are incapable of transforming these three bodies and can no longer adapt to a new environment. The day before yesterday, we considered wild animals in captivity. Animals out in the wild never suffer from tuberculosis, tooth decay, and so on, but they do in captivity. Thus, they exhibit a whole range of signs of decay in captivity or under similar conditions. During the process of civilization, human beings are continually placed in different circumstances. This is what civilization consists of. Otherwise, there would be no development, no human history. What we have observed as a natural experiment in animals—in terms of its effect on the physical body—appears to us in humans as the exact opposite. Because human beings possess an “I,” they are able to process internally the cultural impressions that assail them. They are inwardly active; they first adapt their astral body to the changed conditions and restructure it. As human beings evolve, they enter higher cultures and receive ever-new impressions. These are initially expressed in feelings and sensations. If human beings were to remain passive and inactive—if no activity were stirred, no productivity—then they, too, would wither away and become ill, just like animals. But what distinguishes human beings is that they can adapt and, starting from the astral body, are able to gradually transform the etheric body and the physical body. However, human beings must be internally capable of this transformation; otherwise, no balance will be established between what approaches them from the outside and what acts against it from within. We would be crushed by external impressions, just as an animal is crushed by them in a cage because it does not develop any inner productivity. Human beings, however, possess this inner activity. Human beings must always be able to respond to the spiritual lights around them—to meet them with their own eyes, so to speak.

[ 9 ] Anything that creates a disharmony between external impressions and inner life is unhealthy. Especially in the big city, we can see what happens when external impressions become increasingly overwhelming. When we are forced to rush along at an ever-increasing pace, when we must let rumbling sounds and hurrying people pass us by without taking a stand against them, without counteracting them—that is unhealthy. By “taking a stand,” we do not mean an intellectual one in the least; rather, what matters is that our feelings, our soul, indeed our physical life, be able to take a stand against them. We can understand this clearly by considering a specific illness that occurs particularly in our time and that never existed before: A person who is not accustomed to taking in much, who is poor in spirit, is exposed to all manner of impressions, so that they are confronted with an external world they do not understand at all. This is particularly the case with many women: their inner life is too weak, too poorly structured, to process everything. But we find this in many men as well. The result is hysterical disorders. All these disorders can be traced back to this.

[ 10 ] Another form of illness arises when our way of life leads us to want to understand too much of what we encounter in the outside world. This is most evident in men who suffer from the “disease of causality.” One gets into the habit of always asking: Why? Why? — People even speak of man as the never-resting “causality beast.” Today, we can no longer give the useless questioners the answer that a religious founder once gave, because we are too polite. When asked, “What did God do before the creation of the world?” he replied: — “He cut rods for those who ask pointless questions.” — This is precisely the opposite condition of that found in a hysteric. Here there is an excessive, restless yearning for the solution to a mystery. It is merely an expression of an inner state of mind. Anyone who never tires of constantly asking “Why?” has a different constitution than other people; they demonstrate that their mental and physical functions operate differently than those of a person who asks “Why?” only in response to an external stimulus. This leads to all forms of hypochondria, ranging from the mildest cases to the most severe delusions of illness. This is how the cultural process affects people. Above all, a person must have an open mind in order to be able to process whatever comes their way. Now we can also explain why so many people feel the urge: Out of this culture, out of this life! They are no longer able to cope with what assails them; they strive to escape. These are always weak-willed individuals who do not know how to counter external impressions with a powerful inner life.

[ 11 ] That is why we cannot speak today of any kind of general model of health, because our lives are so diverse. One person is here, another there. And because what has developed within a person has, in a certain sense, been shaped by the external world, every person has their own unique state of health. That is why we must enable people to cope with their environment, right down to their bodily processes. For a person born into circumstances that require light muscles and light nerves, it would be foolish to build up thick muscles. Where does the standard for a person’s healthy development lie? It lies within the person themselves. Health is like money. If we strive for money in order to use it for charitable purposes, it is something wholesome, something good. The pursuit of money must not be rejected, for it is something that enables us to promote the process of civilization. If we strive for money for money’s sake, that is absurd and ridiculous. The same is true of health. If we strive for health for health’s sake, it has no meaning. If we strive for good health for the sake of what we can achieve with it, then the pursuit of health is justified. Anyone who wants to earn money should first ask themselves: How much do you need? — Then they should strive for that amount. Anyone who longs for health must consider what, in reality, can be expressed by the easily misunderstood terms “comfort,” “zest for life,” and “joy of life.” Primitive peoples possess a zest for life, life satisfaction, and a love of life. For a person whose outer and inner lives are in harmony—for a harmoniously developed person—it must be the case that if there is any discomfort anywhere, if anything causes pain, whether physical or emotional, this feeling of discomfort is a sign of some illness or disharmony. Therefore, in all education and in all public work, one must not proceed by the book, but rather draw upon the breadth of cultural perspective, so that people may experience joy and satisfaction in life.

[ 12 ] It’s strange that this should be said by a representative of the humanities! This is what the humanities—which are accused of striving for asceticism—actually say! When someone who takes great pleasure in going out to the nightclub every evening or drinking his eight Maß of beer finds people who find joy in something higher, he simply says: They’re mortifying themselves. — No, these people would be mortifying themselves if they sat down with him. Anyone who takes pleasure in nightclubs and the like belongs there, and it would be wrong to take that pleasure away from them. It would only be healthy to take away their taste for it.

[ 13 ] One should work in order to purify one’s pleasures and satisfactions. Theosophists do not gather together because it pains them to speak of higher worlds, but because it is their greatest joy. For them, sitting down to play “Sixty-Six” would be the most terrible sacrifice. They are full of zest for life in every aspect of it; that is why they live this way.

[ 14 ] It is not a matter of saying, even when it comes to health: “You should do this and that!” — It is a matter of ensuring joy and satisfaction. It is precisely in this regard that the spiritual scientist is a true connoisseur of life. How can this be applied to health? We must be clear that when we give someone any advice regarding health, we must specifically target what brings joy, delight, and pleasure to their astral body. For the astral body exerts an influence on the other members of the being. But that is easier said than done. Therefore, here is an example.

[ 15 ] There are even some among the Theosophists who “mortify” themselves to the point of no longer eating meat. If these were people who still had a strong craving for meat, then this would be, at most, a preparation for a later state. But there comes a stage where a person has such a relationship with their surroundings that it becomes impossible for them to eat meat. A doctor who also did not eat meat—not because he was a Theosophist, but because he considered this way of life to be healthy—was asked by a friend why he did not eat meat. He replied with a counter-question: “Why don’t you eat horse or cat meat?”—And of course, the friend had to admit that he found that repulsive, even though he ate pork, beef, and so on.—Thus, the doctor found all meat repulsive.

[ 16 ] Only when our inner, subjective state corresponds to the objective reality has the moment arrived when external reality can have a healing effect. We must be a match for external realities. This, however, is expressed by the word “well-being,” which we must not use trivially, but rather in its dignified meaning as the harmonious alignment of our inner forces. Happiness, joy, pleasure, and satisfaction—which are the foundations of a healthy life—always spring from the same source: the feeling of an inner life that is the accompaniment of productivity, of inner activity. A person is happy when they can be active. This activity should not be understood in a crude sense.

[ 17 ] Why does love make people happy? It is an activity that we sometimes do not even recognize as such. Because it is an activity that flows from the inside out, encompassing the other. In doing so, we pour out our innermost selves. That is why love is healing and brings happiness. Productivity can be the most intimate of things and need not be tumultuously visible. If someone is sitting with a book and the impressions overwhelm him, assail him, then he will gradually fall into a melancholy mood. But if images are evoked while reading the book, then there is a form of productivity at work that brings happiness. It is very similar to when one fears an event and turns pale. Then the blood rushes inward to strengthen us, so that what confronts us externally finds a counterbalance within. In the feeling of fear, inner activity is summoned to act outwardly. Becoming aware of this inner activity is what brings healing. If a person could have felt the activity of inner formation as the eye emerged from an indifferent organ, they would have experienced it as a feeling of well-being; however, they were not yet conscious of it at that time.

[ 18 ] It is much better not to send a worn-out person to a sanatorium, but rather to an environment where they can find joy—first and foremost spiritual joy, but also physical joy. Placing a person in an environment of joy, where with every step an inner sense of joy is awakened—that is what restores their health, whether they see the sun’s rays filtering through the trees or perceive the colors and scent of the flowers. But a person must be able to feel this for themselves, so that they can take charge of their own health. Every step should stimulate them to inner activity. Paracelsus made the beautiful statement: “Everyone should be best when they are themselves, true to themselves, and not someone else.” — It is already a limitation on what makes us healthy when we first have to turn to someone else. There we are already confronted with external impressions that may seem successful for a short time but ultimately lead precisely to hysteria.

[ 19 ] When you look at the matter this way, you arrive at other sound conclusions. Today there are people—and even doctors, especially lay doctors—who are waging a battle against conventional medicine. A reform of medicine is certainly necessary, but this cannot be achieved through such battles; rather, facts from the spiritual sciences must find their way into science itself. But spiritual science is not meant to promote dilettantism. There are people today who are caught up in “cure mania.” It is, after all, very easy to diagnose this or that illness in a person. Someone might notice that this or that organ does not look the same as in another person. Someone might not breathe the way the person gripped by “cure mania” thinks everyone must breathe. And then a cure is required! Horrifying, utterly horrifying! For that is not the point at all—to work toward a stereotypical concept of health. It is very easy to say that this or that does not correspond to health. Someone has lost a leg; that person is sick, certainly sicker than someone who breathes irregularly or has a lung disease. But the point is not to cure this person. It would be foolish to say: “We must see to it that this person gets his leg back!”—Well then, go ahead and make his leg grow! Rather, the point is to make his life as bearable as possible.

[ 20 ] That’s the general idea; in more detail, however, it’s the same thing. After all, you could find a small flaw in every person somewhere. Here, too, it’s sometimes not even a matter of correcting the flaw, but rather of making life as bearable as possible for the person despite the flaw. Imagine a wound on the trunk of a plant. The tissue and bark grow around the wound. It’s similar with human beings. The forces of nature sustain life by growing around the flaw. It is mainly lay doctors who fall into the trap of trying to cure everything. They want to instill a single standard of health in everyone. But there is no such thing as a single standard of health, just as there is no such thing as a single “normal” person. Not only are illnesses individual, but so is health. The best thing we can give a person—whether as a doctor or as an advisor—is to instill in them the firm conviction that they feel comfortable when they are healthy and uncomfortable when they are sick. That is not at all easy today, given our circumstances. Above all, someone who understands the matter will fear those illnesses that do not manifest themselves through fatigue and pain. That is why it is so harmful to rely on morphine for relief. It is healthy when health brings pleasure and illness brings discomfort. We can only acquire this healthy way of life when we strengthen ourselves internally. We do this by countering complex circumstances with a strong inner resolve. The obsession with health will only cease when people no longer strive for health as an end in itself. People must learn to sense and feel whether they are healthy, and that a lack of well-being can be easily endured. This is possible only through a strong worldview that extends into the physical body. It creates harmony. Such a worldview, however, does not depend on external impressions. The spiritual-scientific worldview leads people into realms they can reach only if they are active inwardly. One cannot read a book on spiritual science the way one reads other books. It must be written in such a way that it evokes active engagement on the part of the reader. The more effort one must exert, the more that lies between the lines, the healthier it is. This applies only to the theoretical realm. Spiritual science, however, has an effect in all areas.

[ 21 ] What we call spiritual science is intended to act as a powerful spiritual movement that gives rise to concepts endowed with the strongest driving forces, so that people can take a stand on what meets their eyes. Spiritual science aims to provide an inner life that extends into the limbs and into the blood circulation. Then every person will experience their health through their sense of joy, their sense of pleasure, and their sense of satisfaction. Dietary rules are also mostly worthless. The fact that someone else tells me that this or that is good for me makes no difference. What matters is that I feel satisfaction when I eat. A person must understand their relationship to these or those foods. We should know what kind of spiritual process is taking place between nature and us. To spiritualize everything—that is what brings healing.

[ 22 ] One might think today, especially of the scholar of the humanities, that food is something he regards with indifference, something he shovels down without understanding. Becoming aware of what it means to take into oneself a part of the cosmos that is radiant with sunlight, to know the spiritual context in which our environment exists, and to enjoy it not only physically but also spiritually—this frees us from all disease-causing revulsion and from all disease-causing overload. Thus we see that steering the pursuit of health in the right direction places great demands on humanity. But spiritual science will make people strong. It will increasingly make every person who devotes themselves to it the standard of their own being. This is at the same time the noble striving for freedom that springs from spiritual science and makes the human being the master of themselves. Every human being is an individual entity in terms of both their characteristics and their health and illness. We are placed within the lawful context of the world and must come to understand our relationship to it. No external power can help us. Only when we find this strong inner anchor do we become whole human beings from whom nothing can be taken away. But neither can anyone give us anything. We will, however, find our way in both health and illness because we possess this strong inner anchor within ourselves. This secret of all healthy striving has once again been expressed by a spirit—a spirit of eminently healthy thought and feeling. He tells us how the harmonized human being walks his path unwaveringly. It is Goethe who tells us in his poem “Urworte orphisch”:

Just as on the day you were born into this world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
And so you flourished immediately and ever onward
According to the law by which you came into being.
Thus you must be; you cannot escape yourself
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets;
And no time, no power can fragment
A formed shape that develops while alive.