The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Activities in the Human Organism. Diabetes Mellitus

[ 1 ] The human organism develops activities through all its members which can have their impulses solely within itself. What it takes in from without must either be merely the cause of its being able to develop an activity of its own; or it must act in the body in such a way that the foreign activity is indistinguishable from an internal activity of the body as soon as it has penetrated it.

[ 2 ] The necessary human food contains, for example, carbohydrates. Some of these are similar to starch. As such, they are substances that develop their activity in the plant. They enter the human body in the state that they can reach in the plant. In this state, the starch is a foreign body. The human organism does not develop any activity in the direction of what starch can develop as activity in the state in which it enters the body. For example, what is developed in the human liver as a starch-like substance (glycogen) is something different from vegetable starch. In contrast, glucose is a substance that stimulates activities that are of the same nature as activities of the human organism itself. Starch can therefore not remain starch in the human body. If it is to have an effect that plays a role in the body, it must be transformed. And it is transformed into sugar by the ptyalin of the oral cavity. Protein and fat are not changed by ptyalin. They first enter the stomach as foreign substances. In the stomach, the proteins are transformed by the pepsin secreted by it in such a way that the degradation products up to the peptones are formed. These are substances whose activity impulses coincide with those of the body. Fat, on the other hand, remains unchanged in the stomach. It is only transformed by the secretion product of the pancreas in such a way that substances are formed which result from the dead organism as glycerol and fatty acids.

[ 3 ] Now, however, the transformation of starch into sugar goes through the entire digestive process. Starch is also converted by gastric juice if this conversion has not already taken place by ptyalin.

[ 4 ] If the transformation of starch takes place through ptyalin, the process is at the limit of what takes place in the human being in the area of what was called the ego organization in Chapter II. It is in this area that the first transformation of what is taken in from outside takes place. Dextrose is a substance that can act in the area of the ego organization. It corresponds to the taste of sweetness, which has its existence in the ego organization.

[ 5 ] If sugar is produced from the starch flour through the gastric juice, this means that the ego organization penetrates into the area of the digestive system. The taste of sweetness is then not there for the conscious mind; but what goes on in the conscious mind - in the area of the ego-organization - while "sweet" is perceived, that penetrates into the unconscious regions of the human body, and the ego-organization becomes active there. In the regions that are unconscious to us, we are dealing first of all with the astral body, as described in Chapter II. The astral body is active where starch is transformed into sugar in the stomach.

[ 6 ] The human being can only be conscious through that which works in his ego organization in such a way that it is not drowned out or disturbed by anything, so that it can fully unfold. This is the case within the area in which the pepsin effects lie. In the area of pepsin effects the astral body drowns out the ego organization. The ego activity is submerged in the astral. In the material realm, therefore, the ego organization can be traced by the presence of sugar. Where there is sugar, there is ego-organization; where sugar arises, there the ego-organization appears in order to orient the subhuman (vegetative, animalistic) physicality towards the human.

[ 7 ] Sugar now appears as an excretory product in diabetes mellitus. Here we are dealing with the appearance of the ego organization in the human organism in such a form that this organization has a destructive effect. If one looks at every other region of the activity of the ego-organization, it turns out that it is submerged in the astral organization. Sugar is directly enjoyed in the ego-organization. There it becomes the inducer of the sweet taste. Starch consumed and transformed into sugar by the ptyalin or gastric juice indicates that in the oral cavity or in the stomach the astral body cooperates with the ego organization and drowns out the latter.

[ 8 ] Sugar is also present in the blood. By circulating through the whole body containing sugar, the blood carries the ego organization through it. Everywhere, however, this ego organization is kept in balance by the action of the human organism. Chapter II has shown how, in addition to the ego-organization and the astral body, the etheric and physical bodies are also present in the human being. These also absorb the ego-organization and hold it within themselves. As long as this is the case, the urine does not secrete sugar. How the ego organization, carrying the sugar, can live is shown by the processes in the organism that are bound to the sugar.

[ 9 ] In healthy people, sugar can only appear in the urine if it is consumed too abundantly, as sugar, or if alcohol, which is directly drawn into the bodily processes by bypassing transformation products, is ingested too abundantly. In both cases, the sugar process occurs independently, alongside the other processes in the human body.

[ 10 ] In diabetes mellitus, the ego organization is so weakened when immersed in the astral and etheric realm that it can no longer be effective for its activity on the sugar substance. What happens to the sugar through the astral and etheric regions is what should happen to it through the ego organization.

[ 11 ] Everything that pulls the ego-organization out of the activity that intervenes in the body promotes sugar sickness: excitements that do not occur sporadically but in repetitions; intellectual overexertion; hereditary strain that prevents a normal integration of the ego-organization into the organism as a whole. All this is at the same time connected with the fact that in the head organization such processes take place which should actually be parallel processes of the mental-spiritual activity; but which, because this activity proceeds too quickly or too slowly, fall out of parallelism. To a certain extent, the nervous system thinks independently alongside the thinking human being. But this is an activity that the nervous system should only carry out during sleep. In diabetics, a kind of sleep in the depths of the organism runs parallel to the waking state. Therefore, a degeneration of the nervous substance takes place in the course of diabetes. This is the result of the inadequate intervention of the ego organization.

[ 12 ] Another side effect is the formation of boils in diabetics. Boils are caused by an excess in the region of etheric activity. The ego organization fails where it should work. The astral activity cannot unfold because in such a place it only has power in harmony with the ego organization. The result is an excess of etheric activity, which manifests itself in the formation of boils.

[ 13 ] In all of this, one can see how a healing process for diabetes mellitus can only be initiated if the ego organization in the diabetic is able to be strengthened.