The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. How Do We Understand Illness and Death?

[ 1 ] People speak of the mysteries of the world. Essentially, human beings are, from the very beginning, surrounded by such mysteries [of existence everywhere]; [and] we can ask questions about every thing and being that lead us deep, deep into the depths of life and being. But there are certain individual, particularly towering pillars within this mystery of existence, and among them are undoubtedly those designated by the two words that are to be the subject of our consideration today: illness and death.

[ 2 ] Is life a mystery to many?—Illness and death intrude upon this life, making it quite mysterious to us: death as that which stands opposed to life, and illness as a troublemaker. And these two things are not only mysteries of life insofar as they inspire reflection; they are mysterious because they cause us worry—and for many people, fear and dread. Therefore, we should not be surprised that illness and death have, since time immemorial, challenged the investigative drive of all those who wished to reflect on existence and on the world. I would have to list a long series of profound thinkers here if I were to tell you today everything that has been said about these two concepts: illness and, in particular, death. That, of course, cannot be my task. Let us delve into these two questions from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 3 ] Just so you can see what a wonderful task lies ahead of us, let me point out a few things that have been taught by prominent figures to help us gain a deeper understanding of these matters. Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, who reflected on the suffering of life and was moved by it, said that life is a miserable affair, and that he wished to cope with it, for the time being, by reflecting on it. He had much to say about death. But if we consider it even briefly, we see that even a profound thinker can easily fall short when confronting these questions. One thing strikes us as grotesque: Schopenhauer attempted to open up a kind of emotional understanding of humanity’s relationship to death. He said: “Man fears death.” Truly, since life is such a terrible thing, he does not need to fear it, for death is a deliverer. If one perceives life as a source of suffering, then death brings comfort. One can tell oneself that it brings life to a close. — Thus Schopenhauer saw in the terrible aspects of life a consolation in the face of death, and in death a consolation in the face of the terrible reality of life.

[ 4 ] Elsewhere in his writings, he attempted to address the necessity of death in a manner that was not quite so grotesque, though not much more successful. There, he has the Earth Spirit speak. [The Earth Spirit says:] “I need space for my many living beings; therefore, I must remove them; therefore, I need death.” Thus, for the guiding Spirit of the Earth, death is merely a matter of space.

[ 5 ] Eduard von Hartmann says in his latest book: It is in the nature of living beings, [and] particularly of human beings.

[ 6 ] I would like to point out that, in the context of spiritual science, we will speak only of human beings today when discussing death and illness. For the mysteries of the world are so manifold, and only those who wish to treat everything with a one-size-fits-all approach can apply what has been researched about one thing to something else. For the true spiritual researcher, things that are even seemingly the same—such as illness and death—are so entirely different for different kinds of beings. Hartmann says that human beings are constituted in such a way that, at a certain point in their lives, they lose their understanding of their environment, and a younger generation must follow that possesses this understanding. Human beings would be strangers within the world if they were not taken away. — You see, once again, nothing of substance! What are we to make of this?

[ 7 ] One word, however, shines through the ages, a word that has offered a kind of solution to the problem of death for thousands upon thousands of people—though it is a word that today is not even understood in its literal sense; it comes from Paul and reads:

The wages of sin is death. (Rom. 6:23)

[ 8 ] It is understandable that a person with today’s concepts and ideas, who has familiarized himself so little with spiritual science, cannot come to terms with such a word. He has learned to view death and illness as natural processes, and it is entirely foreign to him to regard something [purely] natural phenomenon—one that takes place within the realm of purely natural processes—[such a thing] as an effect of something moral, of something connected to human arbitrariness and free will, namely sin. The idea that something moral could be the cause of something organic is foreign to the thinking of our time. So if the Apostle’s words were understood correctly according to their literal meaning, it would be entirely futile to discuss them with our contemporaries. But they are not even understood correctly according to their literal meaning. The Bible is indeed a strange, enigmatic book, and those who believe they understand it best are, as a rule, the ones who penetrate its spirit the least.

[ 9 ] We will find it easier to delve into our topic and be more likely to gain a sense of its spirit if we first seek to understand it entirely from the perspective of its author and from the mindset of the people from whose midst the Apostle Paul—the ancient Hebrew scholar—emerged.

[ 10 ] In this context, “sin” means something entirely different from what we today call a moral transgression. And anyone who understands sin in the same way as modern church doctrine does not understand this word. We arrive at an understanding when we imagine what Paul called a “theory of development.” I would like to explain this to you not in a scholarly manner, but merely by way of suggestion. It is a superstition of modern science to believe that the word “development” was only discovered in the last few centuries. People have always spoken and thought about development—the emergence of the perfect from the imperfect. However, the esoteric scholars of the era from which Paul emerged said: Living beings represent a sequence of stages, from the most imperfect being all the way up to the most perfect being. The human organism was thus formally conceived as a goal toward which all other living beings strive. They perfect themselves more and more in order to become like the human organism.

[ 11 ] But what is the point of the human organism being structured in this particular way, and of other living beings having it as their goal? For Paul, the point is that the human body is meant to house a soul endowed with autonomy. People reasoned: If a soul is to live—one that can find within itself the impetus to act, to make decisions of its own accord, expressed in the word “freedom” or “arbitrariness” as the core of its being—then it must have precisely such a body. Therefore, the entire spectrum of living beings, under the influence of this freedom, must follow this path. Thus, the human organism is organized in such a way that a free soul can express itself autonomously within it.

[ 12 ] What is an independent soul? Consider the universe, the cosmos. Look at living beings! They are all connected to their environment; this connection becomes looser the further we ascend toward human beings. Living beings become increasingly independent, with human beings being the most independent of all. Human beings stand before the cosmos as beings capable of moving freely of their own accord. Yet even they have, after all, grown out of this universe. Can we not clarify this whole concept for ourselves through a very simple comparison? Take a glass of water; it contains many drops. Each drop is contained within this mass of water without us being able to distinguish it from the mass. But if you lift it out—if it becomes independent—then it presents itself as something independent of the whole; and if it were able to develop forces within itself, we could compare its position to that of humankind in relation to the cosmos. As long as the drop is within the body of water, it expresses the currents that emanate from the body of water. Once it has become independent, it acts back upon the body of water as an opposing force.

[ 13 ] The same is true of human beings; that is, “to be independent.” But if everything were to set itself apart as something special, that would destroy the entire harmony—and it must destroy it unless harmony is restored. Thus, human beings do indeed proceed from a standpoint of setting themselves apart from the universe, of opposing it. In other words: It is grounded in Paul’s doctrine of development that, in order to attain independence, the human being enters into a kind of hostile relationship with the universe. Paul says: Autonomy and freedom must arise out of egoism. If human beings had never been led toward egoism, [then] they could not become free. A being kept on a leash could never have become egoistic, nor could it become free.

[ 14 ] This liberation, which is thus built upon the foundation of egoism—this embrace of selfishness by a being—is what Paul calls sin. For him, self-interest is original sin. And therefore, it was connected to the nature of the human being—which developed into sin—that a body was organized throughout the entire course of development leading to this sin. Such a body, however, could not help but be mortal, due to its detachment. Thus, the human being’s essence requires a mortal body for its independence. Whoever delves into this will see that what has been said is entirely consistent with Paul’s view. And this will set the tone for what we are about to consider.

[ 15 ] Yet another person has spoken beautifully about death: Goethe. In the essay “Nature: We Are Surrounded and Enveloped by It”—the following words also appear: “Nature is alive everywhere; she invented death in order to have abundant life.” — These are meant to serve as an introduction to set the direction from which we now wish to explore our topic in the spirit of spiritual science.

[ 16 ] If we wish to understand these two important events in human life—illness and death—we must examine the essence and nature of the human being; and so please allow me to reiterate what this essence of the human being is. This can only be done very briefly. What the naturalistic [materialistic] thinker—the sensory perception—regards as the whole of the human being, namely the physical body, is, for spiritual science, only a part of the human essence. Human beings share this physical body with all the so-called inanimate beings that surround us. This physical body brings together all the substances and forces—or precisely the same forces—that are at work out there in the so-called inanimate world. It is the very same as a mineral.

[ 17 ] At the end of the eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth century, it was also considered scientific to state, in a certain vein: That which lives is not merely a combination of substances and forces; rather, that which lives possesses a special force within itself that brings the substances and forces of the inanimate world into very specific combinations, imparts inner activity to them, and kindles life within them; and this was called the life force. Thus, it was said, humans, animals, and plants possess this life force within themselves. And it is this that ensures that not only does a chemical process take place in the stomach and in the bloodstream, but that the whole organism is alive. “Vital force” became a term that one was only permitted to utter in the second half of the nineteenth century, and those who used it were regarded by certain circles as backward, as fools.

[ 18 ] Today, however—and this has been the case for a number of years now—one is no longer considered such a fool [in the eyes of science] for uttering this word. For those who today consider the somewhat advanced state of scientific understanding of life phenomena cannot help but say to themselves: There is more to living beings than a mere chemical-physical process. And many take the position that they speak of a life force. They know this is speculation. Spiritual science does not take this speculative stance. It takes the position that there is a higher experience, that human beings are capable of perceiving more when certain forces slumbering in their souls are awakened. Consider the comparison with the man born blind who has regained his sight: it is never the one who does not see something who can decide whether it exists, but rather the one who sees it. There is no way to speak of the limits of knowledge. For human beings discover that they have as many worlds around them as they have organs [with which] to perceive them. This is how spiritual science differs from what is called science today: it sets out to discuss the things that enter our existence as something new through the awakening of these organs.

[ 19 ] Suppose there were a piano here, a pianist playing it, and a deaf person sitting next to it; the deaf person cannot hear anything the pianist is coaxing from the strings. But there is a way to make these things that are happening perceptible to him. You place small paper tabs on the strings; as the pianist plays, they are knocked off, allowing the deaf person to gain some sense of what others are hearing. Just as the [deaf person’s] world of sounds—which he perceives only indirectly through the little paper tabs—relates to the world of those who can hear, so does what is explored within the material world relate to what can be experienced by those who have access to higher senses. And this claims nothing other than the truth that there have always been people who possessed such higher organs and saw another world. It is not through speculation but through a higher form of perception that spiritual science arrives at what it now calls the life body or etheric body—similar to the speculative concept of the life force. This is what brings lifeless matter, which is subject only to chemical and physical processes, to life, and what human beings have in common with the plant and animal worlds.

[ 20 ] The third aspect of the human being is the so-called astral body. It is the vehicle for everything we call pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, emotions, passions, instincts, and so on. Plants do not yet possess this astral body; only animals and humans do. The being that possesses it relates differently to the external world. Today, even scholars often blur the distinction between plants and animals by claiming that plants, too, have certain sensations, citing the fact that certain plants contract their leaves when stimulated. From the perspective of spiritual science, this is mere amateurish talk. If it were merely a matter of a being responding from within with a movement when stimulated, one could just as well claim that blotting paper that absorbs ink is a sentient being.

[ 21 ] These are things that, because they occur, are extremely dangerous, for they confuse the human senses when, as is the case today, they are put forward by authorities. Rather, the only truth is that sensation consists of what is a reflection of the external stimulus, not of what merely stirs and responds. It is not enough for a being to simply do something under the influence of a stimulus; rather, a reflection of the stimulus must take place within its innermost being. It is not enough for the tip of a needle to touch us and for us to ward it off; the pricking must be linked to an inner process—pain or pleasure—; that is part of it. A being that experiences such inner processes possesses an astral body. This is what humans share with animals.

[ 22 ] He has become the crown of creation because he is capable of saying “I” to himself. The “I”—that force which enables him to do so—let us call it the “I-body”—is the fourth member of the human being, so that we initially recognize four members in the human being. We can set aside the higher members for now. We will understand the circumstances that arise in the course of a human life, as well as illness and death, if we come to know the relationships between these four elements a little more closely. Both today’s lecture and tomorrow’s are based on correctly presenting the various elements of the human being. We can do this by tracing human development. Here, this can only be done in outline form; it is intended as a starting point.

[ 23 ] We begin with the physical birth of a human being and consider what this entails. Before this birth, the human embryo is sealed off from the outside world. It rests within the mother’s body; the physical human body is surrounded on all sides by other physical matter, and birth means that this enveloping matter is pushed back and that which has developed as organs within the human body is directly exposed to the external physical world. Thus, physical birth is the pushing back of the physical shell and the free emergence of the human body into the physical environment.

[ 24 ] Spiritual science speaks not only of this birth of the human being, but also of others; and this must be understood. Up until this physical birth, the physical human body is surrounded by an outer physical shell that nourishes and protects it, sending its vital fluids into it. What is true of the physical human body up to the time of physical birth is true of the etheric body up to a certain point in human development. Even after a person is physically born, the etheric body remains, for the initiate, enveloped for a long time in a protective maternal sheath of etheric matter. When a person is physically born, they are not yet etherically born.

[ 25 ] The birth of the etheric body does not take place as quickly as physical birth; it occurs gradually; little by little [the etheric body pushes the etheric sheaths away from itself, little by little] it emerges, during the time when the young person undergoes what is known as the change of teeth, around the age of seven. Just as the physical body is surrounded by the physical sheath until physical birth, so too is the etheric body surrounded by the protective etheric sheath until the birth of the etheric body. From the perspective of spiritual science, something very similar occurs during the change of teeth as is observed externally during physical birth.

[ 26 ] And when the etheric body is born, the astral body has not yet lost its protective sheath; and a third birth takes place. This third withdrawal of the protective covering occurs in a manner similar to the withdrawal of the etheric covering as the human being matures sexually—that is, upon reaching sexual maturity. It is a third birth. Just as the physical body is exposed on all sides to physical impressions, so too is the etheric body exposed to its own external world, and the astral body to its own.

[ 27 ] We must take these facts of [spiritual science] as our starting point if we are to understand human development. We will therefore come to see that the period from birth to the age of seven is of particular importance for the development of the physical body. Not because the physical body does not continue to develop afterward. But up to the age of seven, the physical body moves in a very specific direction, toward a very specific point. [And] something characteristic occurs in relation to human physical development: this is the solidification, [the] consolidation of the physical body. The human physical body is characterized by the fact that it undergoes a process of solidification. The solid parts that serve as its support are the bones. And a process of solidification takes place from the softest parts all the way to the solid bone system, and this process of solidification reaches its most significant stage by the age of seven; and the change of teeth—the emergence of permanent teeth—marks the conclusion of this solidification. At that point, the force of solidification has reached its conclusion, having brought to fruition all that it can accomplish in terms of solidification within the physical body.

[ 28 ] This is important. One must realize that this process of working into the solid framework occurs more and more, and reaches a kind of culmination with the pushing out of one’s own teeth. One’s own power works within the human being, giving him his teeth. The earlier teeth are inherited; whatever creative power lies within the person himself, within his own personality, is [ultimately] expressed in his own teeth. When this point is reached, the life force active within the human being ceases to be bound by the constraints it would otherwise have to endure. Now the etheric body pushes back the protective etheric sheath, becomes free, and works differently. Now it primarily carries out within the body alone the tasks that are its responsibility: growth, the body’s development, and so on, whereas previously it had been occupied with creating forms. Now what is predisposed is brought to full development. From this point on, until sexual maturity, the etheric body—the etheric body that has become free—is actually the dominant force in human development. It draws another line under this phase, pushing the forces of formation and growth to the point where growth transcends itself.

[ 29 ] Just as the power of solidification has developed in the teeth, so too does the power of the etheric body develop in the maturing individual, up to the point of sexual reproduction, reaching its full potential. And at that moment, the astral body is born. It is now free; it is no longer confined. Human development is, however, quite complex when we consider the four members that compose it.

[ 30 ] We must now clarify how these members [whether they are more or less bound together as] before individual births; [or whether] they are free, [as they actually function within the human being]. Let us first consider the etheric body. We see that the etheric body is that which carries within the human being the forces of growth, nutrition, and reproduction; the etheric body is the bearer of these forces.

[ 31 ] But what brings a human being into a relationship with their surroundings—[what] enables them to interact—is their astral body. While the human etheric body works primarily on the inside—enlarging the organs and functioning from the inside out in the process of reproduction—the astral body is what exists to make the outside accessible to the inside and to connect it with the inside. This happens continuously. Every ray of light, every morsel of food that a human being takes in, is an interaction between the human being’s inner world and the outside world. The astral body acts as the regulator, and essentially, this relationship is governed by needs, by pleasure and pain, and by desire. A human being acquires whatever they desire, and the capacity for desire is the expression of the astral body. [This is what a person demands from their surroundings.] You see, a person fulfills various tasks through their limbs. This now entails a significant difference regarding the limbs throughout a person’s entire life. This difference will become clear to us when we consider the nature of sleep. When a person sleeps, pleasure and pain subside, as do all interactions with the outside world—everything mediated by the astral body. No reasonable person would say that a person ceases to exist in the evening and is reborn in the morning. Their astral body is present, but not in the same way as during the day. While during the day this astral body dwells within the physical body and, through the organs of the physical body, allows the influences of the external world to flow into it and processes them, at night it is separated from the physical body and does not come into contact with it. This is not the case with the etheric body. Its activities continue throughout sleep.

[ 32 ] When a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed. The astral body, together with the “I,” has stepped out. What does this astral body do at night? When we consider this, light is shed on the nature of the entire human activity in the world. The student of spiritual science knows that the astral body, when it remains within the physical body, could never eliminate what finds its expression in fatigue. Call it an accumulation of fatigue-inducing substances or something else—it is there and must be eliminated. Where does fatigue come from? How is it eliminated?

[ 33 ] Fatigue is a side effect of what the astral body does within the physical body. As long as the astral body is within the physical body and makes use of the physical organs, the physical body grows weary; and as long as the astral body is within the physical body, it cannot dispel this fatigue. It must step outside and work on the physical body from the outside, and this work takes place at night while the person sleeps. Then the clairvoyant sees it working on the physical body and removing the fatigue. This is the source of the restorative power of a healthy sleep. Sleep has a healing quality. Whatever is worn out in the physical body—the physical body is used by the astral body like a machine—all of that is removed. An astral body that works on the physical body from the outside performs a restorative function; an astral body within the physical body wears it down; it even destroys it within certain limits.

[ 34 ] This is connected to another phenomenon about which a man who is little known today had much to say: Paracelsus. He understood the nature of sleep, but he knew something else as well. He realized that something special happens to the astral body when it steps out. A comparison will make this clear to us. Imagine a vessel filled with water. Take a small sponge that can hold a single drop, throw it into the water, and it will soak up a drop. That drop used to be part of the whole body of water; now it is separate from it.

[ 35 ] This is indeed the case with the relationship between the astral body and the physical body. The astral body is not something that is original and separate from something greater. There is a powerful astral body, which is the astral body of our entire planet, and this astral body is like the mass of water in a vessel. The physical body is like the little sponge. When we are awake, the physical body contains the astral body; it has then set aside a drop for itself from the astral sea, and this drop of the earth spirit works separately from the rest of the earth’s astral body; and that is why it has a wearing-down effect during the day—it must wear itself down. Imagine a finger; cut it off, and in a short time it withers away. Why? Because this finger must be connected to the entire life process, the entire astral process, if it is to survive, and because the drop of astral substance that remains in the finger, as a separated drop, cannot lead a life of its own. The human astral body, however, can do this to a certain extent, but it needs to return from time to time to draw strength from the entire astral body; this happens at night.

[ 36 ] Thus, at night, every human astral body connects with the Earth’s entire astral body. That is why Paracelsus says: At night, the human being rests in the very bosom of spiritual nature and absorbs the harmony that has been destroyed within him during the day. — Thus we see that when a part is cast out of the spiritual world, it must return there to gather strength. In the state of separation, the astral body consumes the physical body.

[ 37 ] Let us consider the etheric body in this context. It is in the same situation; it, too, is a part of the general etheric mass. However, it does not return at night; it remains united with the physical body until death, and it has a wearing-down effect on the physical body. The physical body has drawn it out and made it independent, just as a sponge draws out a drop of water. But in this way, having become independent, the etheric body wears down the physical body, and this process of wear and tear is the life process of an individual being.

[ 38 ] Now we can say: From the moment this etheric body is born—the moment it emerges as an independent entity—it is entirely self-sufficient and draws sustenance from the physical body. It draws sustenance in a way that you can understand through a comparison. Imagine a piece of wood burning; without a piece of wood, there is never a flame. Just as the flame is released from the wood, so too, at the age of seven, the etheric body is released from the physical body; it glows like a flame. Just as the flame consumes the wood, just as it consumes its fuel, so does the etheric body consume the physical body.

[ 39 ] Until the etheric body has brought its own power to its culmination at sexual maturity, it replenishes, in a certain sense, what it has consumed. But at that final point, it has nothing left to add; from then on, it draws upon the physical body. And a being that could not replenish [what the etheric body consumes—which in turn could not supply the etheric body with new energy] from any other source would have to die upon reaching sexual maturity. Such beings exist in the animal kingdom. Where, then, does the fact come from in human beings that the etheric body [after sexual maturity] still receives further strength for growth? It is because the astral body is born at sexual maturity, and this body is now in a period of free growth.

[ 40 ] What is this astral body? It is the store of forces that a person brings with them from a previous incarnation. To the extent that a person has accumulated reserves, to that extent does he now have something to contribute; and to the extent that he brings with him strength for his astral body, so long will his ascending life path endure. The astral body ascends; the period that finds its outward moral expression in a person’s life begins at sexual maturity. At that point, the person is full of ideals, and their longing exceeds the bounds of their prudence. All of this is a sign that there is excess energy within them. This is the excess energy of their astral body.

[ 41 ] Just as the physical body grows until the teeth change, and the etheric body grows until sexual maturity, so does the astral body grow until middle age. If, as a clairvoyant, you could measure the power contained within the astral body and distribute over the years the amount of such power that this astral body releases, then you would be able to calculate the midpoint of life. For at that moment, when the astral body has separated and developed everything that was within it, the midpoint of life has been reached. That is when the astral body begins to consume itself. It consumes its own substance. Now comes the time when ideals fade, when a person is no longer brimming with hope, when prudence sets in, when the astral body focuses more on its surroundings and on experiences, whereas before, in the ascending current, it drew from within itself. The ideals of youth, born from within, often do not harmonize with the external world. Then comes the time when harmony is established, and now the astral body follows a descending trajectory. What the astral body previously produced is gradually depleted, and then, when the astral body has exhausted itself, it begins to draw upon the etheric body, drawing its strength from it.

[ 42 ] You may know that the etheric body, in addition to being the seat of the forces of growth and so on, is also the seat of memory, habits, and temperaments. You see, just as, from a certain point in life onward, the astral body draws upon the forces of the etheric body, it later consumes the qualities we have just described. Memory begins to weaken and so on, and once the forces of the etheric body are exhausted, what then? Then it turns to the physical body. The physical body is then no longer able to work on itself; it ceases to kindle the life process within itself.

[ 43 ] As long as the physical body can still draw upon the forces of the etheric body, it processes whatever comes to it from the outside to strengthen itself. When the etheric body can no longer do this, substances are still taken in from the outside, but they are no longer organically integrated. Now the opposite of what happened before takes place. Whereas the substances that were previously absorbed were integrated into the body, they are now merely deposited as physical ballast in the tendons and soft tissues of the human body, causing them to harden; the bones become harder and harder. The physical body is indeed consumed in the course of its downward life. Just as the astral body can be born through the etheric body—like a flame from wood—so the astral body first consumes itself, like the flame consumes the wood, then the etheric body, and finally the physical body. What life has brought forth, what life has brought to the fore, is at the same time [that] which this life consumes. Just as the flame would not exist without the wood, so the life of the astral body would not exist—nor would consciousness, nor pleasure, nor suffering—without the etheric and physical bodies. But just as the flame consumes the wood, so does independent life consume its foundation, the physical body. Therefore, death is not a process that stands outside of life; rather, it is generated by life itself. This is the essential point we must realize: that we could not have life at all if this life did not give birth to death from within itself.

[ 44 ] Another point is this: The astral body is the mediator of everything that can enter from the outside. For this to happen, it must be assimilated by the physical body through the life process. What does that mean? Light reaches us; if there were no light, [then] we would have no eyes. So it is with everything that arises from the interaction of the physical body with its surroundings. The physical body assimilates the external environment and transforms it into organs. We transform the elements into organs when the life process is ascending.

[ 45 ] We must consider the following fact. A certain tribe in Africa that hunts needs certain dogs for hunting. Now, there is a poisonous fly that lives there, the tsetse fly; it bites the hunting dogs, and they then perish. Now, as is so often the case, the “savages” have devised something extraordinarily clever—spiritual science is familiar with these processes. This “savage” tribe takes its female hunting dog into the areas where the poisonous fly is found, precisely at the time when the dog can give birth to her pups, before she dies from the bite. The puppies are now immune; they can be bitten and yet do not die. This is an example of the incorporation of an external factor into the inner life process along the ascending line of life. Where life is rekindled, where it continues until it shines from within, where the life process is reborn, it absorbs the poison, integrates it, and makes the organism resistant to the poison.

[ 46 ] Essentially, this is how our organs actually came into being within the body. In ancient times, there was no eye; a ray of sunlight fell on the skin, and something like a slight pain was felt. The light had to become integrated, and the life process assimilated the light, adapted it, and transformed it into an eye, so that the human being had an eye with which to confront the light.

[ 47 ] This is how the interaction between a human being and their environment takes place. This is meant to indicate that, through external influences mediated by the astral body, the human physical body is organized as a receptive being that integrates the external world; and the extent to which one can integrate the external world is determined by pleasure, joy, and desire. When joy and desire are healthy, they are nothing other than the expression of a need, and this is the most reliable aspect of the life process. This is evident in a child. If the child’s original nutritional instincts are corrupted, the child has no instinct for what is good for it. For example, if you overfeed a child with eggs from early childhood onward, you will notice that this child loses the security of the nutritional instinct. If not, then the child is always ready to reject what harms it and to desire precisely what is beneficial to it. Such a child is far less susceptible to damage to the body. Too much protein is harmful.

[ 48 ] Thus you can see how desire is the measure of the life process itself. The life process is entirely under the influence of desire. But this also enables human beings to go beyond the measure of pleasure and need. For life to be sustained, need must arise. Without hunger, life could not be sustained. Pleasure is the byproduct of satiety. This is always the case when the external world is appropriated.

[ 49 ] Because enjoyment is an accompaniment to the life process, it can extend beyond the assimilation of external substances. And so what he appropriates—because it exceeds the proper measure—becomes a destructive force; and there you have what, through the activity of the astral body, predisposes the process of illness. Of course, one must not believe that this simply happens in such a way that it finds expression in the life between birth and death. Certainly, every excess has a destructive effect even within a single life; and all moderation has a restorative effect; but to an even greater extent, this extends beyond death. Here we must once again turn to the idea of reincarnation. The destructive forces that do not yet have such a harmful effect in this life are carried over into the next, so that excess in one life leads to a predisposition to illness in the next.

[ 50 ] These are the most important fundamentals regarding illness. From this, you can see how things are connected, but you can also see that what are actually internal causes of illness are necessarily linked to the life process—that they truly arise from it. And now you will see that we strengthen our body when, within the ascending life process, we bring it into such interaction with the outside world that it assimilates something. This makes it resilient against disease. We need not investigate other causes of disease. These are the ones that are of lesser significance to life.

[ 51 ] You know that today the “germ epidemic” consists not only in being infected by germs, but [also] in looking for germs everywhere. From the perspective of the spiritual sciences, this “germ epidemic” is actually only of secondary importance. When the organism is attacked by germs, it is no different from being shot through the body with a bullet. In that case, the organism is destroyed to such an extent that the etheric body can no longer compensate for the destruction. As long as it is not destroyed, this etheric body also acts as the balancing force. The more it is connected to the [universal] ether, the greater its power to balance. You can cut a polyp into pieces, and a new polyp will grow from each piece, because the polyp’s etheric body is still connected to the whole—[from which it can draw strength, since every drop of the etheric body contains the same force as the whole]—and the connection still exists. To the extent that the etheric body becomes independent, it must lose this power. So if this autonomy simultaneously constitutes a growth in terms of the inability to overcome disturbances within the organism, then you have the Pauline maxim in modern form: Selfishness is the cause of destruction and death, and the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). It is to be understood only in this sense. Now, [however], someone might say: Yes, but is this compatible with the wise process of the universe? Yes, if there were no possibility of illness, then the great impetus for the etheric organism to strengthen itself—in order to grow through the very act of overcoming illness—would be lacking; indeed, it grows when it has something to overcome. The etheric body emerges strengthened from every illness it has overcome. When germs attack us, it is essential that we have a strong etheric body to overcome them. And is it not precisely because the etheric body is forced to become a conqueror in the face of illness that higher structures of the etheric body come to the fore? Yes, it develops itself upward through this process. Therefore, one can say: Illness is like the pearl oyster and the pearl; from an illness of the oyster, the precious pearl emerges. Much in the world has come into being as a higher form precisely because it has built itself up on the basis of a process of destruction.

[ 52 ] All of this gives us, in a certain profound way, an understanding of illness and death. We can understand that we could not have life as we know it if this life did not itself bring about death—just as one could not have a flame if the fuel were not consumed. Certain elevations and intensifications are not possible without the possibility of illness. Sometimes robust health is the result of illness. Perhaps you will say: Nature is healthy in all its parts, and even when it produces illness, it does so in order to have abundant and vigorous life. In any case, it follows that nature is everywhere—[and life is everywhere]—and it has, it is true, invented death in order to have abundant life, to have vigorous life, to have [autonomous] life. For this can only exist if it creates death as its antithesis.