The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Why do People Fall Ill?

[ 1 ] Whoever thinks about the fact that man can be ill will, if he wants to think in purely scientific terms, come up against a contradiction that he must first assume lies in the nature of existence itself. What happens in the process of illness is, viewed from above, a natural process. But what happens in its place in a healthy state is also a natural process.

[ 2 ] Natural processes are initially only known through the observation of the non-human world and through the observation of the human being only insofar as these are approached in exactly the same way as those of external nature. Man is thought of as a part of nature; one in which the processes that can also be observed outside of it are very complicated, but nevertheless of the same kind as these external natural processes.

[ 3 ] The question arises, however, which is unanswerable from this point of view: how do natural processes arise within man - we will not speak of animals here - which are opposed to healthy ones?

[ 4 ] The healthy human organism appears to be comprehensible as a part of nature; the sick one is not. It must therefore be comprehensible by itself through something that it does not have from nature.

[ 5 ] It is well imagined that the spiritual in man has as its physical basis a complicated natural process like a continuation of the natural outside of man. But let us see whether the continuation of a natural process founded in the healthy human organism ever gives rise to the spiritual experience as such. The opposite is the case. The spiritual experience is extinguished when the natural process continues in a straight line. This happens in sleep; it happens in unconsciousness.

[ 6 ] In contrast, see how the conscious mental life is exacerbated when an organ becomes ill. Pain arises, or at least unpleasantness and discomfort. The emotional life takes on a content that it would not otherwise have. And the life of the will is impaired. A limb movement that occurs naturally in a healthy state cannot be carried out because the pain or discomfort is an obstacle.

[ 7 ] Note the transition from the pain-accompanied movement of a limb to its paralysis. The beginning of the paralyzed movement lies in the pain-accompanied movement. The active spiritual intervenes in the organism. In a healthy state this first manifests itself in the imaginative or mental life. One activates an imagination; and a limb movement follows. The imagination does not consciously enter into the organic processes that ultimately lead to limb movement. The imagination is submerged in the unconscious. In a healthy state, a feeling occurs between the imagination and the movement, which only has a mental effect. It is not clearly related to a physical organic. In a sick state, however, this is the case. The feeling that is experienced as detached from the physical organism in the healthy state is connected to it in the sick experience.

[ 8 ] The processes of healthy feeling and sick experience thus appear to be related. There must be something that is not as intensely connected with the healthy organism as with the sick organism. This reveals itself to the spiritual view as the astral body. It is a supersensible organization within the sensory. It either intervenes loosely in an organ, in which case it leads to a spiritual experience that exists in its own right and is not felt in connection with the body. Or it intervenes intensively in an organ; then it leads to the experience of being ill. One must imagine one of the forms of sickness in a seizure of the organism by the astral body, which lets the spiritual man submerge deeper into his body than is the case in a healthy state.

[ 9 ] But thinking also has its physical basis in the organism. In a healthy state, it is only more detached from it than feeling. In addition to the astral body, spiritual perception has a special ego organization that lives freely in the soul through thinking. If a person immerses himself intensively in his physical body with this ego organization, a state occurs that makes the observation of his own organism similar to that of the outside world. - If one observes a thing or a process in the outside world, the fact is that the thought in the human being and what is observed are not in living interaction, but are independent of each other. This only occurs for a human limb when it becomes paralyzed. Then it becomes the outside world. The ego organization is no longer loosely united with the limb as it is in a healthy state, so that it can connect with it in movement and immediately detach itself again; it is permanently immersed in the limb and can no longer withdraw from it.

[ 10 ] The processes of the healthy movement of a limb and paralysis are again juxtaposed in their relationship. Indeed, one sees it clearly: the healthy movement is a paralysis that has begun, which is immediately canceled in its beginning.

[ 11 ] In the nature of illness one must see an intensive connection between the astral body or the ego organization and the physical organism. But this connection is only a strengthening of that which is present in a looser way in the healthy state. The normal intervention of the astral body and the ego-organization in the human body are not related to healthy life processes, but to sick ones. When the spirit and soul are at work, they abolish the usual arrangement of the body; they transform it into an opposite one. But in doing so they set the organism on a path where illness wants to begin. In ordinary life, it is regulated by self-healing as soon as it arises.

[ 12 ] A certain form of sickness occurs when the spiritual or psychic penetrates too far into the organism, so that self-healing can either not occur at all or only slowly.

[ 13 ] The causes of illness must therefore be sought in the mental and spiritual faculties. And the healing must consist in a detachment of the spiritual or mental from the physical organization.

[ 14 ] This is one kind of sickness. There is another. The ego-organization and the astral body can be prevented from making the loose connection with the physical, which in ordinary existence determines independent feeling, thinking and willing. Then, in the organs or processes which the spirit and soul cannot approach, a continuation of the healthy processes occurs beyond that which is appropriate to the organism. And in this case the spiritual view shows that the physical organism does not merely accomplish the lifeless processes of external nature. The physical organism is interspersed with an etheric organism. The mere physical organism could never bring about a self-healing process. Such a process is kindled in the etheric organism. In this way, however, health is recognized as the state that has its origin in the etheric organism. Healing must therefore consist in a treatment of the etheric organism.^{1By comparing what is said in the first chapter with the content of the second, the understanding of what comes into consideration will emerge in particular.}