The Rudolf Steiner Archive

31. Health Issues in the Light of the Humanities

[ 1 ] For every person, the word “health” rightly signifies something that holds a profound treasure. Not only must one recognize health in and of itself as a precious gift—which, however, is merely a manifestation of self-interest—but everyone also feels that health is connected to something that flows from the depths of one’s inner being. Health is a means to external vitality, to the fulfillment of duties, to the performance of every activity, and so on. And from this perspective, health must be placed at the center as something of the highest value. However, the person who reflects on what health is comes to gloomy conclusions when he looks around the world and sees how experts and laypeople alike judge health and illness in the most diverse ways, how all manner of partisan views are voiced, and how there is debate over what this or that healing process means. When one considers all of this, it does indeed seem, in a certain sense, that one of the highest goods is at the mercy of all these partisan factions.

[ 2 ] Before I attempt to explain what spiritual science has to say about health, we must first be clear that spiritual science, or theosophy, can by no means take sides with one political party or another; we must adopt a standpoint that neither endorses nor condemns this [nor] that worldview. What will be said here will not fully satisfy the members of either party; for with political factions, one is not dealing with something that is absolutely true or false, but rather with something that is not entirely true or not entirely false. And whoever wishes to look up toward the invisible behind things will see that, with all these partisan nuances, we are not dealing with an “either/or,” but with a “both/and.”

[ 3 ] And particularly with regard to our question today, we see how one faction within medicine is fighting the other with fanaticism. There is a widespread movement that does not view favorably what is considered the official line by today’s general human thinking. This official health doctrine is frequently attacked. Spiritual science is not meant to adopt a layman’s standpoint and oppose the official view. Spiritual science will always be inclined to acknowledge how the official health doctrine is capable, in a truly magnificent way, of providing the means to arrive at a judgment. However, in this very field, official science is, in a certain sense, bound by dogma, so that the vast majority of those called upon to form a judgment have no choice but to regard what spiritual science has to say as foolish, fanciful, or even worse. But regardless of these judgments, the issue must still be discussed.

[ 4 ] First, let us consider how bias has compromised this judgment. We can only agree on the principle, on the prevailing trend—only on what is the common view in this area. It is thoroughly steeped in materialistic thinking. Much has changed in recent decades; we shall see what is being overlooked; we shall see that it will be necessary to point to the higher aspects of human nature; we shall see that there is no awareness at all of these aspects in our time. And we may say that this has only come to be the case in the course of the last few decades.

[ 5 ] I would like to cite just one example. I would like to remind you of a figure, the once truly famous anatomist Hyrtl. Not only did he write excellent books on anatomy, but he was also one of the best teachers. He lectured on the otherwise rather dry subject of anatomy; but he did so in his own unique and effective way. He had one requirement for his students: he always said he had written his books so that they would read the relevant sections before attending his lectures, so that they could most effectively skip over what they already knew. But then, when he explained the entire structure of the human organism, it was as if one could see something of creative nature at work; the composite whole came to life, and that was because this Architect truly exists, because the etheric body truly exists, because Hyrtl spoke as if from these very forces. The spirit of his presentation was interwoven with these forces. This anatomist had, so to speak, expressed the invisible aspects of human nature between the lines.

[ 6 ] A remark by Hyrtl may still be fresh in the minds of his listeners from the 1970s. He said: “Only a doctor can diagnose an illness; only the one who knows what helps can cure an illness.” — The spirit that once hovered over the whole has receded in such a way that today’s approach is focused solely on understanding the human body as it presents itself—as a sum of processes that can be examined, perhaps even more so than chemical or physical processes. The approach that views health from this perspective has yielded extraordinary results, because the physical body is what is truly there, and because it has brought forth the most wonderful remedies.

[ 7 ] If we are to establish a principle, it is this: that for every disease there are certain remedies that eliminate its causes. Thus, we speak of diseases and specific cures; we speak of the need to protect the human organism through various measures, such as water and air treatments, and so on. From this perspective, one points to the progress that has been made in recent times. And one would be mistaken to deny this outright from the standpoint of a particular school of thought; one need only point, for example, to the mortality rates in cities to see what official science has accomplished; one need only point out what has recently been added to the treasure trove of remedies. These observations are not intended, therefore, to deny the effectiveness of conventional medicine.

[ 8 ] But there is a downside to this progress. Just imagine what would be in store for humanity if it had to live according to the will of those who would exploit the fear of germs to establish social institutions! Take, for example, stiff neck. It is caused by a pathogen that does not need the sick person himself as its carrier, but only those who come into contact with the sick person. Now let’s imagine that everyone who has come into contact with a person suffering from stiff neck is subjected to screening. Think about what kind of tyranny that would lead to! Certainly, all these things are true, but it is impossible to base anything in social life on them.

[ 9 ] Now, spiritual science is not among the contemporary movements that seek to deny that there are specific remedies for certain illnesses that are “poisons.” The word “poison” exerts a kind of suggestion, and when it is said that certain medicines are poison, many feel as if a tremendously damning statement against medicine has been made. But one must realize that one should not allow oneself to be influenced by a single word.

[ 10 ] What exactly is a poison? Those who are influenced by this word’s connotations won’t be able to answer that so easily. We can form a rough idea if we keep in mind that belladonna, for example, is a poison to humans, but rabbits can eat it without any problem; similarly, hemlock does no harm to goats. This illustrates the relative nature of the term “poison.” And in this regard, spiritual science will never contradict official experience.

[ 11 ] Let us now contrast this approach with another—namely, naturopathy or homeopathy. They differ in many respects in their way of thinking about illness. One says: When a disease process is present, we must regard it as something that should not be there, and against which we must fight. — The other says: It is not a matter of fighting it directly; what we encounter as illness is the human being’s attempt to fight against the cause lying within. One must support the disease process so that nature—the symptom—can run its course. — Well, one can say that in many respects. But the very remedy that causes a disease in a healthy person can have a healing effect on a sick person.

[ 12 ] Now, however, we must say that when this view is applied theoretically, when it is advocated, those who hold it are saying something quite specific that comes close to what spiritual science must advocate, namely, that beyond the physical body lies something much more real—the actual builder, the etheric body. But in many respects, it is actually impossible for those who wish to be taken seriously within the conventional worldview to admit that there is an invisible component of the human being. Spiritual science, which does not seek to be accepted, must point out today that behind all physical processes there is a system of forces—the etheric body—permeating everything that is physically visible with its forces. It may very well be that the causes of disease lie in the etheric body.

[ 13 ] One so often hears people being compared to a machine or a mechanism. Certainly, one can view a person in this way in a certain sense; but what is a machine without the one who builds it or the one who operates it? There is no builder or operator visible to the eye within the human body, but there are, after all, invisible guides present. At death, when the etheric body separates, the physical body follows the physical and chemical processes.

[ 14 ] Just as there are injuries in the physical body, so too are there injuries in the etheric body, in the astral body, and in the “I.” It is not enough to acknowledge the spirit merely in theory, so to speak—that may suffice for soul egoism—but if one is unable to apply the spirit in one’s actual conduct, then the spirit is an empty theory. What matters is that one be able to put what occurs in the spiritual world at the service of life. We will show shortly to what extent this applies when speaking of health. When discussing this topic, one must not think of external injuries such as a broken leg; these are matters that belong to the realm of external healing methods. But there are ailments where one must say: The causes are to be found in the spiritual realm; there, too, we must seek healing methods in the spiritual realm. For such things, it is not enough to simply say that invisible forces are at work, causing the ailment.

[ 15 ] I would like to follow up on the last lecture given here on “Nutritional Issues,” in which we saw how what a person consumes as food is significant for the strength or weakness of the human organism. Today we want to make it clear that by consuming food, a person enters into a relationship with the processes of the environment. As a result, the person ceases to merely allow processes to take place within themselves. Depending on whether we consume this or that food, we are dependent on the processes they trigger within us. One must be able to process internally what one takes in from the outside. This other aspect is no less important; thus, the human being, together with his organism, is connected to the spiritual world depending on how he eats. If, on the one hand, he is devoted to the entire external world, on the other hand he withdraws into himself to devote himself to the spirit. There, the organism enters into an exchange. There, it absorbs these spiritual products just as it absorbs physical products in the physical world. If a person devotes themselves to the spiritual world in the proper way, their spiritual organs become the right tools for digesting the spirit. If they do so incorrectly, these organs become unsuited to processing what has been taken in; they are bound to fall ill.

[ 16 ] There is a very specific relationship between what a person does and what happens to the spirit. You can illustrate this by thinking of the astral body as a good and accurate barometer of what a person experiences in relation to the outside world. There are parents who consider this or that to be good and now demand that their child share the same view. This is the most misguided method of upbringing there is. When a child is still young, what arouses antipathy and sympathy in them—what brings them pleasure and pain—serves as a barometer for the development of their organism. Therefore, we should carefully examine the sympathies and antipathies of childhood.

[ 17 ] This is not to say that the child’s misbehavior should not be corrected; one must simply choose the right approach. First and foremost, it is a matter of creating desire—that is, one must first influence the astral body. Through the detour of pleasure and displeasure, we arrive at what can now be appropriately absorbed by us. You see, anyone who observes our social life today knows that countless pathological conditions are connected to it. When we consider the human organism, we have the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego. Let’s assume a person has a task to perform that becomes habitual for them. What happens then? The physical body and the etheric body are involved in such work. When something becomes a habit for a person—when they do it, so to speak, because they have to—then the astral body is not involved in the matter. Consider the countless people sitting here and there, working, who have barely engaged their astral bodies—at most through annoyance or reluctance. Under the influence of such activities, a process takes place that we can call a process of ossification of the astral body. The astral body is in a healthy state when it can intervene actively in the physical and etheric bodies. If you have made the astral body rigid and hardened, it is as if you were facing a machine that you cannot control. When the etheric body and the physical body shut out the astral body—preventing it from participating in activities—the astral body encounters resistance. The result is that such a person not only experiences this resistance as an illness but actually suffers from this or that specific illness.

[ 18 ] The root cause lies simply in the failure to take the astral body into account or involve it in countless contemporary disease processes. These are not being addressed in the proper way. Certainly, importance is placed on all sorts of quite useful activities, such as gymnastics, for example. But the way it is practiced in our time does not promote intensive health care. Too much attention is paid to the physical body; the focus is on how a particular limb must move, or how a person must perform a certain exercise, because this benefits the physical body. One will come to understand that if one bears in mind that every exercise must be linked to a very specific feeling of pleasure, one is, so to speak, doing gymnastics in the astral body. Then harmony is established with the astral body. I knew a gymnastics instructor who was a prime example of how not to teach gymnastics. He was a man who took pride in his understanding of anatomy. The man himself could not do gymnastics; he could only explain how things should be done. His explanations revealed that he viewed people only from the outside, merely as a composition of bones and muscles.

[ 19 ] Gymnastics is to be spiritualized, so to speak. The time will come when every gymnastic exercise will have a very specific name, so that one feels one is imitating something very specific. You perform an exercise—for example, a “little boat”—and you feel that you are imitating something. That is spiritualized gymnastics. This also has the side effect, when practiced in youth, that a person will never suffer from a weak memory in old age. Thus, if one views spiritual science in this way, one could work extremely fruitfully.

[ 20 ] Everything we have just mentioned shows how spiritual science can influence healthcare practice. If you consider that people today lead, as it were, two lives—that they live in the outer world and then in the inner world, amid feelings of pleasure and displeasure—you will see the full extent of the disharmony between the inner and outer human beings. Harmony can only be achieved when one knows how the astral and etheric bodies function healthily. If the instincts and desires are guided in a certain way—let us say, according to the general laws of the world—then the astral body will find within itself the strong power to control the etheric body and the physical body. If a person is gloomy within, if pain constantly touches the soul, then the astral body will be weak. A rich life of imagination and emotion exerts a healthy influence on the astral body under all circumstances.

[ 21 ] It is remarkable how human culture has always strived to shape all means toward the goal of having a healing effect on human nature. Aristotle already stated that drama should depict a series of actions that evoke fear and pity. Thus, emotional processes are to be evoked within us, but they should be such that they bring about a catharsis, a purification of the passions. In this way, he shows that he sees a healing process in the emotional process that is stimulated within a person. Yes, the astral body is strengthened by this. From this we see that it is not irrelevant how the entire process unfolds in the astral body. Depending on whether we alternate between stimulating and calming emotions—between storm and calm—we will have a reciprocal effect on the etheric body and the physical body, provided it is done in the right way. For a certain class of people, one of the most delightful stimulations of the human astral body is the very ordinary circus acts featuring the clown. There is something extraordinarily healthy about the delight with which people watch the clown’s antics. That “feeling of superiority”—the experience of seeing something taken to the point of absurdity—is what makes it healthy. It is precisely such things—which are suited to counteracting destruction—that have been unconsciously utilized in human natural processes. One might say that events in which obvious nonsense is performed are just as effective as telling someone to drink this or that water, or to breathe this or that air.

[ 22 ] Furthermore, what constitutes the “I” plays an extraordinarily significant role in how a person copes with the external world. If we see that these functions are not operating properly—because they cannot tolerate this or that—and a person’s interests are misdirected, then we may find disturbances in digestion, etc., as a result. If one understands this connection with interests and the direction of attention, what is already there could also be brought into play.

[ 23 ] Humans express their feelings through two actions that you do not find in animals, namely laughter and crying. True, the monkey has a certain kind of grin, but it is not human laughter, because the animal simply does not have a sense of self. You also know that just as slowly as a child develops a sense of self, so too do laughter and crying emerge—only starting around the 40th day. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that when a human laughs, a relationship is established in which the astral body expands. There we see how the “I” places itself in a superior relationship to what is happening in the environment. Just as one breathes, one must have this sense of superiority. When crying, the entire “I” contracts. Therefore, crying is a kind of pleasure; it is, in essence, an antidote to what one has experienced. Thus we see how the “I” transforms the organism, affecting it. In the flow of tears—an excretion of blood—we see a very material effect on a psychological process. Thus, the spiritual realm is constantly at work in all manner of details.

[ 24 ] I want to use an example to show just how immensely enlightening spiritual science will be. There is a certain rhythm, a rhythm that encompasses many things. Take the human “I”; it follows a very specific rhythm over the course of 24 hours. When you wake up, you experience the same thing exactly 24 hours later. Thus, the “I” remains in a state of rhythmic activity. Just as the “I” follows a rhythm over 24 hours, so does the astral body over 7 days. Just as the “I” returns to its starting point after 24 hours, the astral body does so after 7 days. And finally, the etheric body completes such a rhythm in 28 days. So you see once again that the human being is a very complex being. We can compare these rhythms to the hands of a clock: the rhythm of the “I” to the rotation of the second hand; the rhythm of the astral body to the rotation of the minute hand, which moves more slowly; and the rhythm of the etheric body to the even slower rotation of the hour hand. Just as the minute hand stands above the hour hand at a certain time, so it is with the movements—the rhythmic movements—of the human etheric and astral bodies. The etheric body has completed only a quarter of the astral body’s entire rotation.

[ 25 ] The position of the etheric body relative to the astral body varies accordingly; therefore, much depends on the state a person is in when a particular event occurs. For example, if a fever sets in when the etheric and astral bodies are in a very specific alignment, and if the etheric and astral bodies converge after seven days, the etheric body can then combat the fever once again. From this you can see that it is related to this behavior of the etheric and astral bodies that, in the case of pneumonia, the fever subsides after seven days.

[ 26 ] This phenomenon we are encountering here is a very specific effect of human nature as a whole and its rhythms. And such behaviors exist for every individual system, whether it be the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, or any other. If this is recognized as a truth, it will exert an immense influence, and that groping in the dark will cease. Of course, this requires a vivid awareness that one can also influence the spirit. When people speak of the influence of this or that light, they have only the physical processes in mind and not the spiritual effects.

[ 27 ] A start has just been made here in Munich by our dear member, Dr. Peipers. This is important because it involves taking into account the higher bodies within the human being—that blue or red affects them in one way or another. One must realize that the situation here is such that this therapy must not be compared to just any color theory; rather, healing processes are triggered through the perception of colors, thereby producing a healing effect. And this approach assumes the existence of a spiritual world and integrates it into human life.

[ 28 ] Just as colors are used for human healing, so too are sounds and very specific complexes of thought, for they evoke very specific processes within the human being. For example, it has a very specific influence on a person whether they give themselves over to ideas that are rooted in reality. Today, people are instructed to use, as much as possible, ideas that are merely a photographic image of reality. These are the most unhealthy. Ideas in the realm of the natural sciences stifle the human spirit all the more the more central they are, and the result is that a person cannot infuse the physical body with vitality, and the further consequence is that this or that illness is bound to occur. In contrast, the images produced by the spirit itself have a revitalizing effect. When imaginative visualization occurs in a lawful manner, it is healing. The proper direction of attention is healing. This is of immense importance, for no one, for example, can suffer from a digestive disorder if they are filled with such interest. And such interest can only be aroused when the entire world unfolds before us, guided and directed by the spiritual.

[ 29 ] When humanity finally comes to realize that seeking enlightenment regarding the mysteries of existence infuses our souls with all the vitality of life and brings such joy and delight that no storm can alter, then people will understand that spiritual science itself is the primordial remedy for all ills. Those who do not wish to turn to it will rush from one sensation to the next and grow bored. Nothing is more unhealthy than this rushing about. When one’s properly directed interest in life is centered within, there is neither boredom in the world nor this rushing from one sensory impression to the next. Those guided by spiritual science find something in even the smallest things that always seems interesting to them. One then does not need to constantly implore the external world: “Please interest me.”—For one finds within oneself a source that creates interest. And this is what makes a person healthy.

[ 30 ] Spiritual science must not be accused of alienating people from life; on the contrary, it contains the very elixir of life. It has a positive effect on everyone because it leads to the center of the world; it is a source of health. However, we may say that human beings, through a misguided inner life, create the cause of the illness that leads them furthest away from their goal. Therefore, only spiritual science will be able to answer the question of what helps, because it encompasses the whole human being. And so spiritual science will provide us with a form of health care that makes human beings masters of their own organism. Even if dogmatic medicine is upheld where dogma has always prevailed, people cannot be forced to maintain their health. Therefore, in the near future, it will be important to answer the question: How do we maintain our health? And this will be possible for those who are able to correct what may be disrupted by the causes of illness. They know that inner strength accomplishes more than what can be done from the outside. And so Theosophy is able to give people health in such a way that they acquire the capacity to shape their lives and the confidence to fulfill their tasks and duties in life.