The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Therapy I

[ 1 ] It is gratifying that the requests—which should be addressed first and which you have already voiced—will be taken into account, and we will begin today by addressing some of these requests. I hope we will be able to cover everything in the three hours we have available. In these few discussions, I would like to speak to you exactly as things arise from anthroposophy, so that we do not need to take into account the terminology currently used in other fields regarding these matters; rather, with regard to the requests that have been expressed, we will address the subject in the way that is possible from the perspective of anthroposophy.

[ 2 ] The first question that has been raised—and one that will likely resolve many other issues as well, at least in principle—is the question of luetic diseases. Syphilitic diseases—which we have actually discussed very little so far—are those that, first of all, must be carefully distinguished from all sorts of secondary symptoms, associated symptoms, and so on, and which, in fact, provide the most intense insight into how the organism generally behaves in a diseased state. Luetic manifestations are such a significant medical and therapeutic issue because there is undoubtedly—let us speak entirely without prejudice; you will see that we do not wish to dwell on prejudices—a specific remedy available for them in the mercury cure. However, it is precisely the consideration of the mercury cure that will lead us to understand how to address the ailment at hand in a more appropriate manner.

[ 3 ] Essentially, every illness stems from a lack of harmonious interaction among the three systems of the human organism—the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system, and the limb-metabolic system—whose consideration is far more important than is currently believed, even within medical circles. You need only consider what this harmonious interaction is based on. In the metabolic-limb system, we have an activity of the human organism that takes place primarily through the involvement of the etheric body. But the other members of the human organism also play a role in each system. One cannot therefore say that in the metabolic-limb system, the two members of the human organism—the physical organism and the etheric organism—act together; rather, they act together only primarily. The others—the astral body and the ego organization—also play a role. Whereas, for example, in the head organization—that is, in the entire nervous-sensory system—we find that the ego organization and the astral organization are the primary factors at work, with the etheric organization and the physical organization playing a more subordinate role. Above all, one must realize that the difference between the waking state and the sleeping state is that during sleep, the activities originating from the astral body and the ego organization—which are directly brought about during the waking state—continue, as it were, through a kind of inertia of the organism. In the state of sleep, these activities continue to resonate even though the astral body and the ego-organism are not present. Can you understand that? They continue to resonate, just as when I push a ball and the ball keeps moving even after I stop pushing it; in the same way, the activities of the astral body and the ego-organism continue to resonate during sleep. Therefore, one must not say that if something is derived from the ego-organism or the astral organism, it cannot be present during sleep. Sleep must cease only when there is a danger that the astral after-effects or the ego after-effects might cease. At that moment, sleep must cease again, and the waking state must set in.

[ 4 ] So these things cannot simply be taken in such a schematic way as they sometimes have to be presented in anthroposophy for the sake of laypeople's understanding.

[ 5 ] The real issue here is to correctly present the facts of the case. All this questioning about causes should not, in essence, relate to the internal organization of the organism, but rather only to external factors that trigger events. One should always be aware of these. One should always structure the diagnosis so that it constitutes a complete medical history. But this speculation about causes within the organism does not actually lead to finding the remedies in the correct way.

[ 6 ] If I now pose the question in this sense, I must ask: What exactly is involved in syphilis itself? Let us therefore distinguish syphilis from everything else that might also be classified as a sexually transmitted disease—from all cases of gonorrhea, from all chancroid-like manifestations, and so on—that is, from everything that, strictly speaking—and we will address this separately—does not belong to syphilis proper but is, in essence, a different disease. The actual syphilitic disease essentially stems from the fact that the human ego-organization is overburdened in relation to the metabolic-limb system—and thus, primarily, in relation to the metabolic system. In a sense, the human ego-organization slides down into the lower abdomen. And all the symptoms of the disease that arise stem precisely from the fact that the “I” organization slides down too far into the lower abdomen. This gives rise to precisely those processes that are expressed through the symptoms you are familiar with—those processes that cause the “I” organization to predominate over the etheric organization, which is not supposed to be present in this region of the human organism. There is simply too much ego-organization present in the sexual tract. That is the fact. One must first look at this fact, rather than at the infection and so on; one must look at this fact, for it is there. And healing must actually proceed from this fact.

[ 7 ] Now let us consider the effect of mercury therapy on this condition. What actually occurs in the human organism during any mercury treatment? As you know, mercury therapy is a very old practice, and it is sometimes extraordinarily beneficial not only for syphilis but also for other diseases. But what actually happens during mercury therapy?

[ 8 ] Mercury is, after all, one of those remedies that—in times when medicine was largely based on instinct, drawing on a certain instinctive understanding of the human organism—was considered an effective remedy. But what actually heals when one must undergo mercury treatment for syphilis? It heals exactly as much as the correct dosage of the mercury preparation introduced into the bloodstream. Exactly that much heals. Now consider what consequences this has. First of all, as far as I know, it is not very common to inject mercury for syphilitic diseases. In recent years, this practice has become more common because, as we will hear shortly, the earlier ointment treatments no longer work as well—or work too strongly; but on the whole, this partial shift has also been brought about empirically, because it was observed that there is something about the ointment treatment that leads to harm.

[ 9 ] And what exactly is happening here? When you apply the ointment, it essentially leads to a partial—indeed, general—infection. It is, after all, designed so that the entire substance enters the bloodstream. That is precisely what it is designed to do. But when you apply the ointment treatment, there are other pathways for the mercury impulse within the human organism. What is essentially healing is what enters the blood; whereas what does not enter the blood but travels through etheric pathways—carried along by these etheric pathways, which run, for example, along the nervous system and along the nerve tracts—is all part of the ailment. All of this, so to speak, spreads the “I”-organization throughout the entire organism, and essentially, the disease is simply distributed throughout the entire organism in a different form; as a result, after years of ongoing internal preparatory processes, you then develop all those symptoms that arise as sequelae of the mercury treatment.

[ 10 ] Therefore, one can say: The healing effect of mercury is already evident in the treatment of syphilitic diseases with mercury. What is the basis for this? We can already describe the factors involved in very general terms today, just as I did yesterday in my general lecture. Simply put, from a certain point onward, organic substances are no longer under the influence of earthly forces, but under the influence of cosmic forces acting peripherally—from the periphery toward the center of the Earth. And from a certain point onward, everything that enters the organism through normal digestion—once it has passed through the intestines—is also under the influence of cosmic forces, forces that round off the organism in a cosmic sense, true cosmic rounding-off forces.

[ 11 ] Well, the “I” organization thrives primarily within these cosmically harmonizing forces. If it intervenes too strongly in the metabolic system, then the ego-organization simply tends to atomize—to round off and organize individual parts of the human organism—rather than organizing the entire body in accordance with its form. And all manifestations of syphilis, all symptoms of syphilis, are the result of this partial atomization, this atomistic organization. Thus, the “I”-organization intervenes in truly very small systems of the human organism, whereas these small systems should be reserved precisely for the organization of the individual’s own etheric body, which is subject to the cosmic peripheral forces solely on its own, not through the intermediary of the “I”-organization.

[ 12 ] Now, mercury has the peculiarity that, when introduced into the human organism, it is—in earthly terms—the substance that, in and of itself, most strongly and most intensely mimics the outer form of the cosmos. The moment mercury is injected directly into the bloodstream, this partial organization—this small, atomistic organization—tends to be transferred to the mercury, and the “I”-organization is freed once again; it then acts throughout the entire organism and is thereby able to restore health through a reaction.

[ 13 ] But all of this depends on the patient never ingesting more mercury than is absolutely necessary. This is a problem that can never really be solved. For during mercury therapy, you must never run the risk of administering even a little too much mercury. You must administer exactly as much as can be absorbed into the circulation based on the specific clinical findings, because everything else remains as a residue and causes precisely those side effects that then occur and that you are familiar with.

[ 14 ] Therefore, when using mercury therapy, it will always turn out that while a cure is achieved, the patient may have to pay a very, very heavy price for it—with terrible side effects that may resemble syphilis but which, in reality, will gradually and irrevocably destroy the body. It is precisely the fact that mercury can bring about a certain cure that shows how extraordinarily problematic its use is.

[ 15 ] It wasn’t always problematic. You see, not exactly for syphilis, but mercury was always used for some other diseases; perhaps we can talk more about that in the next few days. Mercury actually elicited a very specific emotional reaction in patients with highly developed instincts. The patient knew when he’d had enough. He was satiated by the mercury. Today, however, those instincts have degenerated. The patient can no longer gauge what is happening to him as a result of the mercury. He is no longer satiated by the mercury; he becomes oversaturated. This is what usually happens today: The patient becomes oversaturated with mercury, and the well-known consequences then manifest in a very devastating manner, so that just as one can clearly see the effect of sulfur and phosphorus in the organism, and just as one can clearly see what happens in the organism during the dissolution of salt—though one must always pay close attention to the dosage—so too can one observe this with mercury. We simply know what the effect of mercury is based on.

[ 16 ] The question now is whether it would be possible to carry out a treatment that is harmless even if an excessive dose is administered, simply because the excess would be excreted from the body if the dose were too high. Mercury, in fact, has the peculiar property of not being excreted outward when too much is administered to the body, but rather of being excreted inward. In this regard, it was extremely important to me in my younger years to see how Hyrtl would simply take the bones from people who had undergone mercury treatment during an autopsy, break them open, and how one could then find the tiny droplets of mercury in the bones under a microscope. Thus, the entire skeletal system was saturated with mercury. That is the peculiarity of mercury: it is not excreted outward, but rather the organism absorbs it, and the entire “I”-organization of a person treated with mercury is constantly engaged in the process of integrating these tiny mercury droplets—mercury atoms—which are found throughout the organism, particularly in the calcareous parts.

[ 17 ] And so one can already say: We must try to find something in the natural world that, when applied like mercury, is absorbed by the organism in such a way that it replaces the “I” organization within the organism—that is, relieves it and sets it free. But if one ingests too much of it—which is inevitable—then it must be excreted outward rather than absorbed inward, just like anything else that is digested.

[ 18 ] The point here is to arrive at something that corresponds to the external nature of the “I” organization and that, under certain circumstances, can be prepared in such a way that it actually enters the bloodstream and, so to speak, evokes a phantom of the “I” organization within the bloodstream. It is necessary to introduce an artificial “I” into the bloodstream.

[ 19 ] And our doctors, in particular, should conduct the relevant experiments; without a doubt, you will find that you arrive at results that will certainly be surprising. Take what you can extract from those parts of the plant that are exceptionally hardened—parts that have thus transferred the plant’s root process to the rest of the plant. The plant’s root process contains an exceptionally strong imitation of the “I” organization. The flower of the plant belongs to the etheric organization. In what lies below the flower, the plant interacts with the astral organization; where the plant takes root in the soil, the “I” organization comes into play. In every heavily lignified root that is still attached to the plant—one that has not yet passed into the inorganic realm by being severed from the living plant—we find impulses of the “I” organization.

[ 20 ] Now, however, if one were to take plant roots directly and extract substances from them for injection, one would hardly be able to manage—for the reason that, although the plant’s root contains the “I” organization very strongly—it is, so to speak, a phantom of the “I” organization— but the impulses that live within it are limited to the nervous-sensory system and do not exert a strong influence downward into the rest of the organism. Therefore, one can say: If the root organization is addressed only at the root, then you will hardly be able to produce a preparation suitable for the stated purpose. In contrast, there are plants in which the root system exerts a very strong upward influence on the entire plant. And one such plant, in which the root system actually permeates the entire plant all the way to the fruit, is *Astragalus exscapus*, the tragacanth root, also known as goat’s thorn. It has fruits that look like pods, but they are rock-hard, and inside them are seeds. I am referring here to that which is, as it were, completely keratinized. Or take certain types of wood that are already in use; their efficacy is based on what I am saying.

[ 21 ] But then the point is to take these seeds from such a plant—let’s say, specifically, from tragacanth root or buckthorn—grind them finely, and then treat them with the plant’s own sap, that is, with the sap from its own flowers and leaves. In this way, one obtains a preparation that can perhaps be diluted down to the third decimal. At the third decimal, when it is injected, it will actually introduce this phantom of the “I” into the bloodstream, and under the influence of this preparation—in cases of actual syphilitic disease, which is, after all, a disease of the entire blood—one will then have exactly the same picture as with mercury therapy, and one will then have to ensure that the excess is expelled through strongly heating baths. So one will have to combine these two things: on the one hand, injection with such a preparation as has been indicated, and then expelling the excess through hot baths.

[ 22 ] But something else is also released. What is released are the harmful substances present in the blood of a person with syphilis. These must also be expelled through perspiration. So one must say: What must be expelled is expelled—and it must be expelled exclusively through perspiration. But first, it must be retained. And it can be retained through the balancing effect of the impulses contained in the buckthorn seeds. Now, you see, one can truly only cope with these matters if one closely integrates diagnosis and therapy.

[ 23 ] Medicine simply cannot function without individualization, and you can clearly observe that, particularly in cases of syphilis, the clinical picture in an obese person is entirely different from that in a thin person. In an obese person, it is exceptionally difficult to expel the syphilis toxin. I don’t know if there are any friends here who have experience with this. It is harder to eliminate the syphilis toxin from an obese person than from a thin person. A thin person excretes it relatively easily. With a thin person, you may well succeed if you proceed as I have described. However, you must be certain that a reaction occurs—that is, that there really is profuse sweating—otherwise, of course, you will develop all sorts of internal diseases as a consequence, because the healing process will not proceed. The reaction must be present. But it may be that, in order to achieve the desired effect in obese people as well, one must resort to other methods. And in that case, it would be very beneficial to turn to what has now emerged more fully in nature, even within the astral process. In certain cases where one sees that no reaction is achieved with the usual plant, one would do very well to use gall apples. I mentioned them yesterday in a different context.

[ 24 ] In the gall apples, you have already recognized the ethereal roundness; the gall apple already reveals to you the mercurial nature within the plant kingdom. If you now prepare the gall apple by grinding it on one side and, on the other side, taking the venom from the wasp that produced the gall apple and grinding it in with the gall apple in a very small dose, you will obtain a preparation with a quite significant effect, one that will elicit a reaction even where a reaction would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

[ 25 ] The fact is that we actually have far too few cases of the disease that we can observe step by step. I can well imagine that for our colleagues who are treating physicians, it’s not exactly ideal to admit patients with syphilis to the institutes. But such things actually shed light on the entire course of treatment. It is precisely from such a treatment that one truly learns something for the entire course of therapy, and I am also convinced that once someone sees how a patient—after having been injected in this way and stepping out of the bath—looks different on his skin than he did before the bath; how their skin looks—to the trained eye, perhaps even under a microscope—as if it were dotted everywhere with tiny holes, almost as if covered with small pockmarks—then one will truly understand how the organism is affected by such a condition. So I believe that this is the path we must strive toward in the treatment of syphilis.

[ 26 ] You see, with this particular illness, it is essential not only to ensure that the patient is cured and then discharged, but also to ensure that the patient can continue with the treatment in the days ahead. And this brings me to a question that was asked at the same time and that will be of great interest to most of you: Regarding meditation alongside medication, is there any standard advice on this?

[ 27 ] Well, I mention the previous case of syphilis specifically in connection with this question for the reason that it is precisely in the case of syphilis that this question can perhaps be answered most thoroughly. It will indeed depend on the fact that the syphilis patient who appears to be cured—and every syphilis patient is initially only seemingly cured, because it all depends on whether the disease can flare up again due to some later trigger, and any seemingly cured syphilis can, under certain circumstances, flare up again later—has fundamentally transformed his organism into something different from that of a person who has never had syphilis. He has a different constitution, and it must be assumed that this different constitution will actually be maintained for the rest of his life; otherwise, it will simply prove too weak in the face of certain challenges of everyday life, and syphilis may flare up again.

[ 28 ] Now, of course, we will only address the question of meditative treatment in general terms, but it can be linked precisely to this point. What occurs in syphilis is a certain degree of autonomy in the “I” organization that is not otherwise present in a normal person. Once the syphilis patient has created this phantom from his own organism—which was brought about precisely by the injection—his ego organization becomes more independent for the rest of his earthly life than that of someone who has never been afflicted with syphilis. He possesses this greater independence, and this must be taken into account. Therefore, if you wish to cure a person with syphilis permanently, you must ensure that they begin to take a keen interest in repeatedly turning over highly abstract thoughts in their mind—meditatively turning them over. You must therefore recommend that he think through, for example, geometric or mathematical problems meditatively—that is, through recurring, rhythmic repetition—so that he never ceases to actually maintain this artificial abstraction of his ego-organization. You must accustom his thinking to entering a certain inner state. Therefore, you will do him a great service if you advise him: Every morning, after you wake up, think about how a small triangle, similar to a large one, behaves. They have equal angles but different sides. Think about this very slowly at first: equal angles, different sides. Then think about it a little faster, then even faster, then so fast that you can hardly see it anymore. Then start thinking more slowly again.

[ 29 ] Thus, this kind of thinking—which varies in speed and is brought about by one’s own will—will lead him to provide appropriate support for this “I” organization that has become independent. This is one type of meditation. But wherever you see that, through some healing process, the “I”-organization has become more independent, you can try, through this kind of meditation—which must be applied particularly intensively in the case of syphilis patients—to make it possible for them to continue on their life’s path. In fact, the person with syphilis must be encouraged to consistently nourish their autonomous “I”-organization with this type of meditation, which proceeds at a varying pace. Is that clear?

[ 30 ] These points, however, lead us to consider other questions that have been raised. We’ll come back to everything eventually; I just want to establish the context required by the matter.

Question about asphodel root.

[ 31 ] They are pods. You open the pods, and inside you find the very hard seeds, which must be ground into a very fine powder.

[ 32 ] Now, another question that has been raised—one that seems unrelated, though internally these things are connected—concerns the onset of glaucoma. As far as I know, glaucoma is treated today almost exclusively through surgery, or at most by homeopaths; but homeopathy is not yet a rational approach. The point, however, is to understand what exactly underlies a condition such as glaucoma. Glaucoma is, in a certain sense—from an organic perspective, according to the four members of human nature: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I—actually the opposite phenomenon, within the organism’s overall process, of all possible ear infections. The two conditions are almost polar opposites. Ear infections are on one side; glaucoma-like conditions are on the other. If we simply consider the facts, the situation is as follows: In glaucoma, intense activity occurs that infiltrates the vitreous body of the eye and substantially constitutes it. The vitreous body becomes too intense internally in relation to its own substance. This leads to hypertrophy of vitreous activity, and glaucoma is actually rooted in this hypertrophy of vitreous activity. But what happens then?

[ 33 ] A sensory organ such as the eye is situated precisely at the point where, according to the general physical constitution, it is sufficiently independent and sufficiently objectively separated from the organism as a whole. If it becomes somewhat more separated from the organism as a whole than is the case during normal vision, then it is so diseased that the organism as a whole can no longer extend its activity to this organ.

[ 34 ] In the case of glaucoma in particular, it is extremely interesting to see how the etheric body—which is so extraordinarily important, especially for the eye—permeates the eyeball, permeating it to such an extent that the physical substance in the vitreous body acts quite strongly as a physical substance. If it crosses this boundary, it acts too strongly as a physical substance. The etheric body can no longer reach it or infiltrate it. One must therefore ensure that the etheric body becomes active again, or rather that the physical activity in the eye is reduced. It is, of course, a truism, but nonetheless true, to say that when something like this occurs, the entire organic activity in this part of the human organism is simply too weak, partially paralyzed. It is too weak; it must be stimulated. You can stimulate it only by making the exhalation of the human organism stronger than it is in the person with glaucoma during the time of their illness or in the course of their illness. Therefore, if you can identify the condition at the right moment—though in cases of such partial illnesses, the organism sometimes performs something extraordinarily powerful—you will bring about a spontaneous improvement in the symptoms of glaucoma through everything you teach the organism to do specifically to promote exhalation and thereby stimulate it to increase activity within the head, and you will then enable it to counteract the activity involved in the development of glaucoma. And such a result can be achieved by introducing calcium carbonate derived from bone meal into the human body and combining it with certain aerial roots of plants. This produces a preparation that effectively regulates respiratory activity in the manner required in this case.

[ 35 ] Well, what I mean is this: The point is that when we take carbonated lime from bone meal and introduce it into the human organism, we receive a correspondingly strong stimulus to exhale. But in order for the organism itself to become actively involved—so that this entire process does not proceed sluggishly, or, so to speak, independently of the organism—we must combine this carbonated lime with certain impulses that are present in the roots of trees or plants that climb rocks, roots that live out in the open air, and where what would otherwise thrive in the soil as roots is carried out into the air. As a result, these roots become such that their impulses do indeed resemble those of the respiratory process, and this makes it possible to internalize the respiratory process. You can then feel it. Otherwise, the respiratory activity is stimulated quite involuntarily by the calcium carbonate. But if you mix the carbonic lime with the sap of such “air roots,” you will find that you actually have the urge to breathe in this way as well, and from this urge to breathe in this way arises the strengthening of the entire human organism that you need to compensate for what has been taken from you through the development of glaucoma.

[ 36 ] It is precisely from such a case that one can see how necessary it is to consider the whole human being in every situation. But the physical body is, of course, never the whole body. The physical body is always only a part—the physical body is the liver, the stomach, and so on—and the individual parts are interconnected. The etheric body, in itself, already constitutes the whole human being to a relatively large extent. And in a truly magnificent sense, the whole human being is the astral body. It’s just that this astral body is structured in a very peculiar way. One might say that what constitutes the human astral body up to the diaphragm—roughly bounded externally—is something entirely different from what constitutes the astral body below the diaphragm. What functions there as the astral body, directed toward the head and the nervous-sensory system, is, in its activity, polar opposites to what functions in the metabolic-limb system. And consider metabolism in general, which essentially takes place under the influence of the astral body. What we usually call metabolism is actually an activity of the human organism in which only the activity itself matters. In metabolism, what really matters is the intake and excretion of substances. One might say: Food as such, in its substantial form, is fundamentally of no interest to metabolism at all; rather, it is concerned with overcoming the external substantial form of food and the metamorphosis—not with what the organism needs. Yet excretion begins immediately within metabolism itself. It actually transitions directly from intake to excretion. Only a small portion is secreted. And this penetrates all the way into the nervous-sensory system. The nervous-sensory system is substantively of extraordinary importance, for the nervous substance is the metabolic substance carried to its ultimate conclusion.

[ 37 ] As grotesque as it may seem, the reality is that intestinal contents are, in fact, nervous substance that has come to a standstill halfway through its development. Nervous substance—particularly that of the head—is intestinal contents that have been processed to the very end, intestinal contents that have been transformed by the human organism, specifically by the “I” organization. The intestinal contents have come to a halt halfway through the process and are excreted halfway through. The contents of the nervous substance have been driven all the way to the end and, as something completely “consumed,” must then be processed by the organism. Thus, the astral organism performs a completely different function in the actual metabolism than the astral organism in the central nervous system. They are truly polar opposites. That is to say, one stops halfway, the other is carried through to the end, and between them lies a zero point. It is indeed the case that a complete polarity exists there. If one were to draw the etheric body, one would still draw it as egg-shaped; but the astral body can no longer be drawn as egg-shaped—it must be drawn in two parts, upper and lower, which are actually quite different from one another in their mode of action. And without understanding this, one cannot truly understand the human being, neither in a healthy nor in a sick state. One must simply be clear that the activity within metabolism is entirely different from that within the nervous system. And it is only through this understanding that the possibility arises to act appropriately on the human organism. For example, if you administer preparations derived from plant flowers—say, as essential oils—internally to a person, you are not bringing them from the lower part of the astral organism to the upper part; rather, they can only be used to induce certain processes in the lower part—that is, in the metabolic tract itself. The moment you use something derived from the root of a plant, it flows from the lower to the upper tract of the astral body, and you have it within you because it, in turn, exerts a return effect from the head back onto the organism. You have it within your entire organism.

[ 38 ] For you must understand that the common view of the composition of the human organism is actually a truly appallingly amateurish one. Isn’t that right? One would imagine that if, say, new substance has appeared in some part of the human organism after a certain period of life, it must have come about through the normal metabolic process—that is, the old substance was shed, and the new substance appeared through the normal metabolic process. That is how one imagines it, after all. I do not believe that anyone who has studied medicine in any way today has a different mental image of it than that, through the normal metabolic process, certain substances in the human body—which are, in short, different after a certain period of life—have been replaced in a way other than through metabolism.

[ 39 ] But that is not the case. If, after a certain period of life, you find a different substance in any part of the human organism, it has never been excreted through ordinary metabolism. Ordinary metabolism essentially provides only the nervous system, only the internal structure of the nervous system, only the building blocks of the nervous system. Through the activity of the nervous-sensory system, in conjunction with respiration, substances are then absorbed from the cosmic environment in an extraordinarily finely dispersed state; these are integrated into the organism by the nervous-sensory system and substantially replace everything that is lost. For the losses occur much more slowly than one might think. Thus, the human body is never built up from food. Food merely provides the activity necessary to organize the nervous system. The actual, substantial rebuilding does not occur through nutrition—that is merely an illusion—but rather comes from the cosmos itself. So when you cut a fingernail, which then grows back, the substance that grows back does not come from food—which, for its part, has no other purpose than to rebuild the nervous system—but rather, what grows back, what truly replaces the organic substance in the human being, is absorbed from the cosmos.

[ 40 ] This, of course, paints a very different picture of the human constitution than the belief that a human being is merely a tube: food enters at one end, is processed in the meantime, and what is unusable is excreted. But the human being is not this tube. What takes place in a tube-like manner occurs entirely within the human organism itself. That which enables the human being to be rebuilt anew after a certain period of life enters the human organism through breathing and even through subtle absorptions from the outside world via the senses. In this regard, the ears in particular are extraordinarily important organs of reception, as is the entire sensory system spread throughout the body. Thus, when one correctly observes the human being, one must conclude from the outset that metabolism is the internal work of the human organism. The rhythmic organism and the nervous-sensory organism are also involved in the reconstruction of the human being.

[ 41 ] Well, let’s pick up where we left off tomorrow and gradually address the other issues that have been raised. Please feel free to let me know if you’d like to take a different approach, since we have so few hours. I believe we’ll get to each of the specific issues that have been raised. If anyone has any other issues, please bring them to my attention tomorrow.