The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] Those of you who have been attending these branch lectures for years may have noticed that they are not randomly thrown together in terms of their topics, but that there is a certain progression in them. Even within a single winter, the lectures always have a certain inner connection, even if this is not immediately apparent from the outside. It is therefore of the utmost importance that consideration be given to the various courses that take place here alongside the actual branch evenings, which are intended to bring new members up to the level of these branch lectures, so to speak; many things that are said here in these branch lectures cannot be readily understood by everyone who is new to the subject. But there is something else to note here, which should gradually be taken into account in the various branches of our German section. Since there is a certain internal progression in the lectures, it is my particular responsibility to structure each lecture so that it fits into the whole. It is therefore not possible to say the things that are said in such an individual branch lecture for more advanced participants in such a way that they can also apply in the same way to those who have only been here for a short time. Of course, it would be possible to speak about the same topic in a very elementary way, but that would not be appropriate if a progressive course of development of our spiritual scientific branch life is envisaged, especially in the branch. This is again connected with the fact that the publication of lectures and the communication of lectures from one branch to another should be avoided as far as possible, especially the further we progress. For it is really a matter of the lectures I give in the branches, for example, that it is not at all the same whether one hears one lecture on one Monday and the next lecture on the following Monday. Even if it is not immediately obvious to the listener why one lecture follows another, it is nevertheless important; and if lectures are lent around in this way, it is impossible to take into account what they are about. Under certain circumstances, one lecture may be read before another, and it will then necessarily be misunderstood and cause confusion in many minds. This should be noted as something that is important to our anthroposophical life. Whether a subordinate clause is inserted here or there, whether a word is emphasized more or less, depends on the entire development of the life of the branch. And only if the publication of the lectures is strictly monitored, so that basically nothing is published that has not first been submitted to me, can anything fruitful come of this reproduction or publication of the lectures.

[ 2 ] In a certain sense, this is also a kind of introduction to the lectures that will soon be given here in our branch. There will be a certain inner connection in the course of this winter's lectures, and the preparatory material that will be gathered will ultimately, especially in this winter's lectures, be directed toward a very specific culmination, in which it will then find its conclusion. What was discussed here eight days ago has made a small beginning; what will be discussed today will be a kind of continuation. But “continuation” not in the sense of a serial novel, where the thirty-eighth installment continues the thirty-seventh, but rather everything will have an inner connection, even if seemingly different subjects are dealt with, and the connection will lie in the fact that the whole will then culminate in the last lectures. So today we will already have something sketchy to say about the nature of diseases in relation to the last of the lectures, and next Monday we will talk about the origin, historical significance, and meaning of the “Ten Commandments.” This may seem as if it does not belong together at all, but you will see in the end how everything is connected and how it should not be regarded as something that somehow constitutes a complete lecture, as might well be the case for a wider audience.

[ 3 ] Today we want to say a few words about the nature of illness and diseases from the standpoint of spiritual science. As a rule, people only concern themselves with illness, or at least with this or that form of illness, when they are afflicted by this or that disease, and then they are basically interested in little else than healing, that is, they are interested in the fact that they will be healed. How they are cured is sometimes of little concern to them, and they are quite happy not to have to worry about the “how.” That is what the people employed in the relevant fields are there for, or so most of our contemporaries think. In this area, there is a much stronger belief in authority within our current mindset than there has ever been in the religious sphere. The medical papacy, regardless of how it manifests itself here or there, is one such authority that has asserted itself in the most intense way to date and will assert itself even more in the future. But the lay people are not in the least to blame for the fact that this can be or will be the case. For people do not think about these things, do not concern themselves with them, unless they are in dire straits, unless there is an acute case where they themselves are in need of healing. And so a large part of the population looks on with great indifference as the medical papacy takes on ever greater dimensions and establishes itself in various forms, for example, when it now has a say and intervenes in an enormous way in the education of children, in school life, and in the process claims a certain therapy for itself. People do not care about the deeper things that actually lie behind it. They watch when this or that institution is established in public, whether in the form of this or that law. They do not want to gain any real insight into these things. On the other hand, there will always be people who, when they are in dire straits and cannot get by with conventional materialistic medicine, whose foundations they do not care about and only see whether they are cured or not, will turn to people who stand on the ground of occultism — and then they, too, will only care whether they can be cured or not. But they do not care whether the whole of public life, in terms of methods and knowledge of things, undermines all foundations of a deeper method coming from the spiritual realm. Who cares if, in the case of a method that has grown out of occult soil, the public prevents all healing in this field, or if the healer is imprisoned? All these things are not considered thoroughly enough; they are only considered when the case arises. But it is precisely the task of a real spiritual movement to awaken the awareness that it cannot be merely a matter of selfishly seeking healing, but of recognizing the deeper reasons for these things and spreading such knowledge.

[ 4 ] In our age of materialism, it is only natural for those who can see through things that the doctrine of disease should be so strongly influenced by materialistic thinking. But it would be just as wrong to chase after this or that catchphrase, to attribute something special to this or that method, as it would be to merely criticize something that, although based on scientific principles and useful in many respects, but is embellished with materialistic theories, as if, on the other hand, one wanted to subsume everything under psychic healing and the like, thereby falling into all kinds of one-sidedness. Above all, it must become increasingly clear to people today that the human being is a complex being and that everything connected with the human being has to do with this complexity of his nature. If a science believes that man consists solely of the physical body, then it cannot possibly intervene in any healing way in what has to do with healthy or sick people. For health and illness are related to the whole human being and not just to one part of it, the physical body.

[ 5 ] Now, one must not take the matter superficially. Today you can find enough doctors who are recognized physicians and who will not admit to you that they stand on materialistic ground in their beliefs, but who have this or that religious belief and who would reject it as far as possible if you accused them of being imbued with a materialistic attitude. But that is not what matters. In life, it does not matter what someone says or what they are convinced of. That is their own personal business. What matters in one's work is that one can apply those facts that are not only in the sensory world but also permeate and flow through the spiritual world, and that one knows how to make them fruitful for life. So if a doctor is a very pious man and has many ideas about this or that spiritual world, but in his work he follows rules that are entirely based on our materialistic worldview, if he treats people as if there were only the physical body, then no matter how spiritual he may be in theory, he is a materialist. For it does not matter what someone says or believes, but whether he understands how to set the forces behind the outer sensory world in living motion. Nor is it enough for anthroposophy to spread the teaching that human beings consist of a fourfold being, and for everyone to parrot that human beings consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego, even if these things can be defined and described in some way. That is not the essential thing either, but rather that the living interplay of these members of the human being is understood more and more, that it is understood how the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I are involved in the healthy and sick human being, and that which is again mutually connected with these members. For example, if you never bother to learn what spiritual science has to say about the nature of the fourth member of the human being, about the I, you will never be able to understand anything about the nature of blood, no matter how much anatomy and physiology you study. That is completely impossible. Therefore, they can never say anything significant or fruitful about diseases related to the nature of blood. Blood is the expression of the human ego nature. And when Goethe's words in Faust, “Blood is a very special juice,” have been repeated throughout the ages, this actually says quite a lot. Our present-day science has no idea that one must approach physical blood in a completely different way than any other member of the human physical body, which is the expression of something completely different. If the glands are the expression, the physical counterpart of the etheric body, then we must also see something completely different physically in what constitutes any gland, be it the liver or the spleen, than we see in blood, which is the expression of a much higher member of the human being, namely the ego. And the methods of research that show us how to deal with these things must depend on this. Now I want to say something that can really only be understood by advanced anthroposophists, but which is important to say.

[ 6 ] It seems quite natural to the materialistically minded scholar today that when he makes an incision in the body, blood flows out, which can be examined by all available means. And now one describes: this is blood — just as one describes any other substance, an acid or something similar, according to the chemical methods of investigation that are used in such cases. But one thing is overlooked, which is not only unknown to materialistic science, but must appear to it as sheer folly and fantasy, yet which is nevertheless true: the blood that flows in the veins and sustains the living body is not at all what flows out when I make the incision and obtain a red drop. For at the moment it leaves the body, blood undergoes such a transformation that we can say it is something completely different; and what flows out as coagulated blood, however fresh it may be, is irrelevant to what constitutes the whole essence of the living organism. Blood is the expression of the I, of a high member of the human being. Blood, even as a physical substance, is something that you cannot examine physically in its totality, because when you can see it, it is no longer the blood that flows in the body, what it was. It cannot be seen physically, because the moment it is exposed, when it comes to the point where it can be examined by any method similar to X-rays, then you are no longer examining the blood, but something that is the external reflection of the blood on the physical field. These things will only be understood gradually. There have always been researchers in the world who stood on the ground of occultism and said this, but they have been called fantasists or philosophers or something else.

[ 7 ] Now, in healthy or sick people, everything is really connected with the multi-membered nature of the human being, with the complexity of the human being; and so it is only through a knowledge of the human being derived from spiritual science that we can arrive at a view of the healthy or sick human being. There are very specific damages to human nature that can only be understood if we are aware that they are connected with the nature of the ego and, in turn, manifest themselves in a certain way—but within certain limits—in the expression of the ego, in the blood. Then there are certain damages in the human organism that can be traced back to a disease of the astral body and which thereby affect the outer expression of the astral body, the nervous system. But now, when this second case is mentioned, you must become a little aware of the subtlety with which we must think here. If a person's astral body has such an irregularity within itself that it expresses itself in the nervous system, in the outer image of the astral body, then a certain inability of the nervous system to do its work first becomes apparent physically. If the nervous system cannot do its work in a certain direction, then all kinds of symptoms of illness can arise as a result of this inability: The stomach, head, and heart can become ill. However, a disease that manifests itself in the stomach, for example, does not necessarily have to be traced back to an inability of the nervous system in a certain direction and therefore to the astral body, but can come from somewhere else entirely.

[ 8 ] Those forms of illness that are connected with the ego itself and thus with its external expression, the blood, usually manifest themselves—but only usually, because things in the world are not so neatly compartmentalized, even though one can draw sharp contours when one wants to look at things—as those illnesses that occur as chronic illnesses. What can initially be perceived as this or that damage is usually a symptom. This or that symptom may occur, but the underlying cause may be damage to the blood, which has its origin in an irregularity in that part of the human being that we call the ego carrier. Now I could talk to you for hours about the forms of disease that manifest themselves chronically and which, when we speak physically, have their origin in the blood, and when we speak spiritually, in the ego. These are primarily diseases that are hereditary in the true sense of the word, passing from one generation to the next. And it is these diseases that can only be understood by those who view human nature spiritually. Someone comes along who is chronically ill, which means that they are never really healthy; they soon develop this or that symptom, and they soon feel this or that discomfort. It is a matter of looking deeper into the root of the matter and, above all, of knowing how to pay attention to the following: What is the actual basic character of the ego? What kind of person is this? Anyone who really knows something about life in this field can say that very specific forms of chronic diseases are connected with this or that purely spiritual basic character of the ego. Certain chronic illnesses will never occur in a person who is destined for seriousness and dignity, but they will occur in a person who is inclined to whistle and sing. This can only be hinted at here in order to point the way in these introductory lectures.

[ 9 ] But you see, it matters a great deal when someone comes along and says, “I've actually had this or that for years,” that one must first clarify: What kind of person is this? One must know what the basic character of their ego is, otherwise one will always miss the mark in external medicine, unless a strange coincidence leads to it. The essential thing now will be that in the case of these diseases, which are at the same time, in the most eminent sense, those that are hereditary in the true sense, the whole environment of the person must be taken into account in relation to healing, insofar as it can exert a direct or indirect influence on his ego. If one has really gotten to know the person in this way, one will sometimes have to decide that he should perhaps be placed in this or that natural environment, in this or that environment during the winter, if possible; or that he should be advised, if he is in a certain profession, to change his profession, to seek out this or that aspect of life. Here, it will be a matter of trying to do the right thing in relation to what can exert the right influence on the character of the ego. In particular, those who want to heal must have a wide range of life experience so that they can put themselves in the nature of the human being and say: In order to be healed, this person must change their profession. The point here is to emphasize what is necessary in relation to human nature. Perhaps it is precisely in this field that healing sometimes fails because this cannot be done at all; but in many cases it can be done, if only it is known. For example, much can be achieved in many people simply by having them live in the mountains instead of on the plains. These are things that relate to illnesses that manifest themselves externally as chronic diseases and are physically connected with the nature of the blood and spiritually with the nature of the ego.

[ 10 ] Then we come to those illnesses which originally have their seat in irregularities of the astral body and which manifest themselves in certain incapacities of the nervous system in this or that direction. Now, a large part of the widespread acute illnesses are connected with what has just been discussed; in fact, most acute illnesses are connected with this. For it is a superstition to believe, as is often the case, that if someone suffers from stomach or heart problems, or even if they have this or that clearly perceptible irregularity here or there, that they will be properly cured by attacking this symptom of the disease directly. The essential factor may be that this symptom of the disease is present because the nervous system is unable to function. For example, the heart may be diseased because the nervous system has simply become incapable of functioning in the way it should to support the heart in its movement. In such cases, it is completely unnecessary to mistreat the heart or, in other cases, the stomach, which is not actually directly affected, but where only the nerves that are supposed to supply it are unable to do their job. If, in such a case of stomach disease, the stomach is treated with hydrochloric acid, the same mistake is made as with a locomotive that is always late, where one says that there must be something wrong with the locomotive and hammers away at it—but it still does not arrive on time. In reality, if one got to the bottom of the matter, one would find that the locomotive driver gets drunk every time before he starts driving; one would therefore do the right thing by starting with the locomotive driver, because otherwise the locomotive would arrive at the right time. So it may well be that in cases of stomach disorders, instead of starting with the stomach, one has to intervene in the nerves that supply the stomach. You may also find various remarks of this kind in materialistic medicine. But it does not matter if someone says that when the stomach shows a symptom of illness, one must first turn to the nerve. For that achieves nothing. Something is only achieved when one knows that the nerve is the expression of the astral body, that one can go back to the structure of the astral body and seek the causes in the irregularities of the astral body. The question then arises: What is important here?

[ 11 ] First of all, in such illnesses, the healing method will involve what is called diet, that is, finding the right combination of foods and what the person enjoys eating. So it depends on the way of life, not in relation to the external, but in relation to what is to be digested and processed by the human being, and no one can ever know anything about this on the basis of a purely materialistic science. We must be clear that everything around us in the wide world as the macrocosm has a connection to our complex inner world, the microcosm, and that every food that can be found has a very specific connection to what is in our organism. We have learned enough about how human beings have undergone a long evolution, how the entire external nature has been formed as an outgrowth of the human being. We have repeatedly gone back in our various considerations to the ancient Saturn era. There we found that on the ancient Saturn there was nothing else but human beings, and that human beings, human evolution, so to speak, expelled the other kingdoms of nature, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and so on. In this evolution, human beings formed their organs in accordance with what was cast out through them. Even in the casting out of the mineral kingdom, very specific internal organs arose. The heart could not have come into being if certain plants, minerals, and mineral possibilities had not formed externally over the course of time. Now, what has arisen externally stands in a certain relationship to what has formed internally. And only those who know how the external relates to the internal can say in each individual case how the external, the macrocosmic, can be used for the microcosmic; otherwise, people will experience in a certain way that they are stuffing something into themselves that does not suit them at all. So it is in spiritual science that we must seek the real reasons that can guide our judgment. It is always a superficial judgment when, in the case of illness, a person's diet is to be determined according to purely external laws taken from statistics or chemistry. There are completely different reasons at work here. We see how spiritual knowledge must permeate and inflame everything that has to do with healthy and sick people.

[ 12 ] Then there are certain forms of illness, some of which are more chronic, some more acute, but which are connected with the human etheric body and therefore find expression in the human glandular organs. These diseases generally have nothing to do with what we call heredity, generational inheritance, but they have a lot to do with the social context, with the racial and tribal context that exists in the human world. So when we consider diseases that originate in the etheric body and manifest as glandular disorders, we must always ask ourselves: Does a Russian have this disease, or an Italian, a Norwegian, or a Frenchman? For these diseases are connected with the character of the people and therefore express themselves in very different ways. For example, a great mistake is made in the field of medicine: throughout Western Europe, a completely false view is held about tabes, or spinal tuberculosis. Although it is correctly assessed for the Western European population, it is completely wrong for the Eastern European population, because it has a completely different origin there; for even today, these things still vary in the most diverse ways. Now you will understand that this requires a certain amount of insight when it comes to mixed populations. Only those who understand how to distinguish between the inner aspects of human nature can form an opinion on this matter. Today, these diseases are simply treated externally, lumped together with acute diseases, whereas they belong to a completely different field. Above all, one thing must be known: that the organs of the human being, which are under the influence of the etheric body and can become diseased through irregularities in the etheric body, are in very specific relationships to one another. For example, there is a very specific relationship between the heart and the brain of a human being, and this can be expressed, somewhat figuratively, in such a way that one can say: this mutual relationship between the heart and the brain corresponds to the relationship between the sun and the moon — but here the heart is the sun and the brain is the moon. This brings us to the conclusion that we must be clear that when, for example, a disease occurs in the heart, insofar as it has its roots in the etheric body, it must have a retroactive effect on the brain, just as when something happens on the sun, for example an eclipse, it must have a retroactive effect on the moon. It is no different, because things are directly connected.

[ 13 ] In occult medicine, these things are also described by applying the images of the heavenly bodies to the constellation of the various organs of the human being: the heart as the sun, the brain as the moon, the spleen as Saturn, the liver as Jupiter, the gallbladder as Mars, the kidneys as Venus, and the lungs as Mercury. If you study the mutual relationships of the stars, you have a picture of the mutual relationships of the organs of the human being, insofar as they lie in the etheric body. It is impossible for the gall to become diseased — which is to be found spiritually in the etheric body — without this disease affecting the organs just mentioned in some way, and if the gall has been designated as Mars, it will have the same effect as Mars has in our planetary system. Thus, one must know the connections between the organs when dealing with a disease of the etheric body, and yet these are primarily the diseases—and you will see that any one-sidedness in the occult field must be avoided—for which specific remedies must be used. This is where the remedies that you find outside in plants and minerals come in. For what belongs to plants and minerals has a profound meaning for what belongs to the human etheric body. So when we know that a disease has its origin in the etheric body and therefore expresses itself in a certain way in the glandular system, we must find the remedy that can repair the complex of interactions in the right way. Preferably in the case of these diseases, where one must first consider what is obviously the main thing, namely that they originate in the etheric body, then that they are related to the national character, that the organs regularly interact in them, it is only in these cases that specific remedies can be used.

[ 14 ] Now you may have formed the idea that if a person has to be sent here or there, then as a rule, if he is tied to a profession and cannot carry out the treatment, he cannot be helped. In such cases, the psychic method is indeed effective in every case. What is called the psychic method is most effective when the disease has to be sought in the actual ego of the person. So when such a chronic illness occurs, which is rooted in the blood in some way, then psychic remedies are the appropriate remedy. And if they are administered in the right way, then through their effect on the ego they can be a complete substitute for what flows into the person from outside. You will be able to see a subtle, intimate connection everywhere if you observe what the human soul can experience when it is otherwise bound, for example, to a vice, and can now enjoy the country air for a brief moment. Thus, the joy that the soul raises with feelings is something that we can call a psychic method in the broadest sense. Now, if the healer practises his method correctly, he can gradually replace this through his personal influence, and psychic methods have their strongest justification in this form of illness, and this cannot be ignored for the simple reason that the majority of illnesses are based on an irregularity in the ego part of the human being.

[ 15 ] Then we come to illnesses that arise from irregularities in the astral body. Here, however, purely psychological methods, although applicable, lose their great value; therefore, these methods are also less common for these illnesses. This is where dietary healing methods come in. Only in the case of the diseases we have described as the third type is it actually justified to support the healing process with external medical remedies. So when we consider the human being in all his complexity, the method of healing must also be comprehensive, and we cannot fall into one-sidedness.

[ 16 ] What is still missing is what the actual diseases are that originated in the physical body itself and relate to the physical body, and these are the actual infectious diseases. This is an important chapter, and we will look at it in more detail in one of the next lectures, once we have considered the real, true origin of the “Ten Commandments.” For you will see that it is all connected. Today, I can therefore only point out that this fourth form of disease exists and that its deep foundation depends on an understanding of the whole of nature with which the human physical body is connected. It is not the physical that is the basis here, but rather the spiritual. Once we have considered this fourth form of disease, we will still not have exhausted all essential diseases, but we will see that human karma also plays a role here. This is a fifth factor that must be taken into account.

[ 17 ] So we will say: Little by little, something will be revealed to us about the five different forms of human disease, diseases that originate in the field of the ego, in the field of the astral body, the etheric body, or the physical body, and what is to be regarded as the karmic element in these diseases. Only then can healing occur in relation to the medical way of thinking, only then can the entire medical way of thinking be permeated with the knowledge of the higher members of human nature. Before that, one is not dealing with a medicine that can truly intervene in what is really at stake. Although these things, like many of our occult insights, must be brought up to the level of the times and put into a modern form, you must not believe that this is not also, in a certain sense, an ancient wisdom.

[ 18 ] Medicine originated from spiritual knowledge and has become increasingly materialistic. Perhaps in no other science can one see how materialism has invaded humanity as clearly as in medicine. In earlier times, there was at least an awareness that an understanding of the fourfold nature of human beings was necessary if one wanted to look into it. Of course, materialism had also manifested itself earlier, so that clairvoyant people in this field had already seen before the last four centuries how everything around them was beginning to think materialistically, and Paracelsus, who is not understood today and is considered a fantasist or dreamer, pointed out, for example, that all around him, medical science, as it originated in Salerno, Montpellier, Paris, but also in certain German regions, was materialistic or at least increasingly becoming materialistic. And it was precisely Paracelsus' view of the world that made it necessary for him—as it is becoming necessary again today—to draw attention to how a spiritual approach to medicine contrasts with what is gained in the purely materialistic field. Today, it is perhaps even more difficult than it was for Paracelsus to gain acceptance with a Paracelsian way of thinking. For at that time, the materialistic thinking of medicine was not as harshly opposed to Paracelsus' thinking as materialistic science today is opposed to an insight into the truly spiritual nature of man, without any understanding whatsoever. Therefore, what Paracelsus said in this regard still applies today, although its validity is less recognized today. When one sees how things are thought of today by those who work at the dissecting table or in the laboratory, and how research is used to understand healthy and sick people, then one could, in a certain sense, turn against this materialistic way of thinking in much the same way as Paracelsus did. Only, one may not be able to quote a few words with any hope of understanding, and perhaps even forgiveness, as Paracelsus said about the physicians living around him—really with the hope of forgiveness, for Paracelsus himself said that he was not a refined and subtle man who had lived at the tables of the upper classes, that he was coarse, raised on cheese, milk, and barley bread; and therefore you will forgive me if these things do not always sound very refined. Paracelsus says about the Italian doctors, but also about the German doctors, when he discusses the different natures of diseases:

[ 19 ] “For it is a great error and a bad thing that so many Italian doctors, especially in Montpellier, Salerno, and Paris, want to have the crown above all others and despise everyone else, yet know nothing themselves and can do nothing, but it is publicly known that their mouths and their pomp are all their art, that is their chatter. They are not ashamed of enemas and purgatives; even if it leads to death, everything must turn out well. And they boast of great anatomy, which they have and use, and yet they have never seen that tartar hangs in teeth, let alone anything else. They are good eye doctors, they don't need a mirror on their noses. What is your vision and anatomy? You can't do a damn thing with it, and you don't have enough eyes to see what is there. Such is the pursuit of the German peeping doctors and thieves and the like, and young, half-baked fools; when they have seen everything, they know less than before. So they suffocate in filth and carrion, and then the rags go to the requiem—they should go to the people instead!