Illness

Illnesses in Man are deviations from a normal balanced or perfect functioning, caused unbalances in our bodily constitution across Man's bodily principles. Even if the illness manifests in the physical body, the origin may lie at a higher bodily principles such as the astral or etheric body, or the unbalance between the different principles.

Therefore - with the span of one human lifetime - one can distinguish illnesses ..

• [1] arising out of the Human 'I', and which have their physical manifestation in irregularities in the functioning of the blood
  • eg definite forms of chronic illnesses are connected with one or another basic soul character of the I (1908-11-10-GA107)
• [2] that originate in irregularities in the Human astral body, and manifesting in irregularities in the nervous system
• [3] that originate in the Human etheric body manifests in the glandular system
• [4] in the Human physical body, that primarily have external causes.

Furthermore there are illnesses that are the emanation of causes from previous lifetimes:

• [5] karmic illnesses

The evolutionary origin of illness has to do with the individualization of Man through the Fall or the Luciferic infection in the Lemurian epoch, the start of physical incarnation and gender, and is coined by the term 'original sin' (see 1908-12-08-GA107 on the page of Model for hereditary physical body).

Aspects

• what is illness, its evolutionary origin, and what are the main different types of illnesses
• cause of illness by the human double (1917-11-16-GA178), and the need for geographical medicine
  • organic physical illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within are all created by the ahrimanic double of Man
  • nervous illnesses (neurasthenic, neurotic) are caused by the luciferic double of Man
• cause of illness can always be traced to the metabolic subsystem: "if we study the human metabolic system in isolation we find it constantly imbued with every kind of tendency towards illness .. the origin of internal illnesse (not those caused by external injury) must always be looked for in the metabolic system" (1923-11-09-GA230)
• healing: principles of treatment
• different types of medical treatment
• origin of illness in the soul
  • A bad habit (like a particular passion) in one life is the cause of sickness in the next, whilst a good habit will of course be a cause of health. This leads to dispositions to catch certain diseases, eg he disposition to catch infections results from a highly developed egotistical acquisitive drive, a selfish desire to make material gains for oneself. (1906-03-14-GA097)
  • devastating effect caused by taking in ugly things and hideousness (1908-11-16-GA107) - re also link with Truth Beauty Good
• polio or 'infantile paralysis' (1923-10-31-GA351), explanation based on effects of soil (examples experiments potentization and plant growth)

mental diseases

• for 'mental illnesses', see: Schizophrenia#Mental diseases and Schizophrenia#Epidemic mental diseases
• on dementia (and diseases such as alzheimer)
  • a person's mental abilities can decrease during his life and brilliant people become mentally deficient in old age; this is because"the spirit is no longer able to function in the same way as it was able to in an earlier period of life, because its body has become a less suitable medium for its spirit" and "the aged body is no longer able to express what the spirit can give it". "The consciousness of our self is also dependent on the laws of our body. We are never fully conscious of our spirit, but only to the extent that the laws of our present embodiment allow. " (190X-GA034)

epidemics

• large groups of people impacted by an illness are the karmic result of earlier wrongdoing (eg lying) (1905-10-04-GA093a)
• increase in suicide epidemics (1917-11-17-GA266/3)
• the danger of spiritual death and insanity in current and future times if the etheric body loosens and Man only believes in the physical material - not realizing the realities he is experiencing (1908-04-13-GA102) - see Human etheric body#1908-04-13-GA102. See also Schizophrenia.
• leprosy in medieval times was a consequence of the fear and terror European ancestors had known with the migrations and conquests of the Huns and Mongols (late races whose astral bodies contained decomposing astral matter) .. European astral bodies were infected by this. The disease that ancestors had known in mind and spirit became physical in later generations. (1906-03-14-GA097)
• importance of proper proportion of sleeping to waking, and "tremendous significance that the abnormal attitude of the human being to waking and sleeping has for epidemics and the susceptibility to epidemic illnesses" and "There are people who, as the result of too much sleep, initiate certain processes in the human organism, processes that ought not be set in motion because waking life should not be broken up by such long periods of sleep. These people have a much stronger predisposition to epidemic illnesses and are less able to resist them." (1920-04-07-GA314)
• epidemics of insomnia, sleeplessness (1924-04-14-GA309, 1924-04-23-GA316)
  • impact of materialism, not thinking but what goes back into his feeling and will weaves in his organs, and if people do not deepen themselves spiritually they will not be able to sleep properly.

Lecture coverage and references

Overview coverage

Main courses

• GA107 of 1908-1909: Disease, Karma and Healing: Spiritual-Scientific Enquiries Into the Nature of the Human Being
• GA348 of 1922-1923: Health and illness

Epidemics - key lectures

see: Schizophrenia#Epidemic mental diseases

present causes of future epidemics

• 1906-06-02-GA094
• 1907-05-30-GA099
• 1907-06-22-GA100
• 1908-06-14-GA098

spiritual background of epidemics

• 1917-10-14-GA177
• 1918-10-20-GA185

karma and epidemics

• 1906-03-14-GA097
• 1906-10-15-GA096
• 1910-05-19/22/25/26-GA120 - see 1910-05-GA120 cycle
  • 1910-05-18-GA120 - Karma in Relation to Disease and Health
  • 1910-05-19-GA120 - The Curability and Incurability of Diseases in Relation to Karma
  • 1910-05-20-GA120 -Natural and Accidental Illness in Relationship to Karma

Reference extracts

1903-10-02-GA069C

describes the origin of suffering and inheritable diseases. It is described that inheritance of diseases is a recent phenomenum that did not always exist, these have a link with the current materialistic times. The comparison is made with an animal that has to breathe bad air, and cannot fight this condition but can only become ill. Similarly spiritual Man is weakened and cannot develop enough or be strong enough to fight the circumstances, things have developed such that the physical relations have given such a tremendous burden for the soul and

.. a soul in our days is fully powerless against the physical constitution of the body

1905-10-04-GA093A

The inner always comes later to outer expression. An illness is the karmic result of earlier wrongdoing, for instance, lying. When something of this kind becomes outer reality, it manifests as illness. Epidemics can be traced far back to the misdeeds of a people. They are something imperfect which from being inward has been exteriorised.

1906-03-14-GA097

see also: Metamorphosis#1906-03-14-GA097

A bad habit in one life is the cause of sickness in the next, whilst a good habit will of course be a cause of health.

A particular passion will mean a particular disease in the next life. Here one would be able to see how someone acquires a disposition to catch infections.

We know very well that some people can go to anyone, to any place where epidemics or infectious diseases prevail and will not be in danger of catching these diseases. Someone else picks them up from the gutter, as it were, catching them immediately. It all depends on the disposition if we catch things or not. Initiates know very well that the disposition to catch infections results from a highly developed egotistical acquisitive drive, a selfish desire to make material gains for oneself.

Anyone who wants to get rich in one life, is doing himself harm where his next incarnation is concerned. This egotistical drive for material gain and riches is a property of the ether body that will show itself as a disposition to catch infectious diseases in the next life.

Anyone wishing to know more about health and sickness will, however, have to remember that many different factors are involved. The causes of sickness need not be due to individual karma. There is also a national karma where ill-health is concerned.

This can be seen from the following observation. It concerns specific aspects in the health of races and whole nations. We all know the history of the tribal migrations in earlier times. We know that a number of tribes from the East—Huns, Mongols—migrated to Europe. They poured into the country, coming from Asia, and encountered the Germanic tribes. Those Huns, and the Mongolian race altogether, were late survivors of the Atlanteans—this is evident from the name Attila or Ath; they were remnants of that great race. The Germanic peoples, Persians and Indians were more advanced races, the Mongols Atlanteans who had remained stationary at a particular point and were now in decline.

The main body of humanity was progressing but individual lower races like these remained behind, forming enclaves. The astral bodies of those late races contained decomposing astral matter. This did, of course, also come to us in large quantities.

The Europeans faced the approaching hordes in fear and terror, and this fear and terror they felt made the decomposing astral matter thrive even more. Fear and terror are properties of the astral body that encourage such harmful influences. European astral bodies were infected, and in later generations this infection emerged as leprosy, the dreadful disease that had disastrous effects in medieval times. It was the physical consequence of the influence Mongol astral bodies had had on European astral bodies. The channel, as it were, through which this influence poured into European bodies was the fear and terror the Germanic peoples felt when those wild hordes poured across the borders into their countries.

Here we can see how diseases arise as national karma, being passed on from generation to generation. The ancestors had known the disease in mind and spirit, in later generations it became physical.

This is the meaning of the words ‘visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation’. [Exodus 20:5] We may take them quite literally, for they refer to this kind of national karma.

1908-11-10-GA107

describes four categories of illness

1908-11-16-GA107

Now we arrive at something that will not come easily to the consciousness of present-day Man. Quite terrible wrongs are being committed in this connection. Only those who can penetrate into spiritual science know the subtle ways in which health and sickness develop.

If you go through the streets of a big city and take into your soul the ugly things that are on display in windows and signs, it has a devastating effect.

Materialistic science has no conception of the extent to which the seeds of illness lie in this kind of hideousness. They seek the causes of illness in bacilli, and do not realize in what a round about way illness has its origin in the soul.

Only people familiar with spiritual science will know what it means to take various images into himself.

1908-12-08-GA107

talks about the effect of mineral medicines

1909-01-26-GA107

discusses illness and karma

A person does not need to know about all this, yet he will be aware of its effect. This effect appears in the form of some illness, and here lies the karmic connection between what happened in a previous life and the illness. The spiritual cause of the illness will guide the whole process in such a way that the person thereby becomes capable of carrying out the deed of compensation the next time he has the opportunity. To put it another way, in our twentieth year we are not capable of doing a particular deed. The urge is there, nevertheless, and the soul wants to do it. What does the soul do instead? It struggles, as it were, with its unusable organ, attacks it and destroys it. When the organ that should have been instrumental in carrying out the deed externally has been destroyed by these soul forces, then comes the inevitable reaction, which we call the process of healing, and the forces of the organism have to be called up to restore the organ. This organ, which was destroyed because it was unfit to perform the task, is rebuilt through the illness so as to be capable of performing it, although by the time the illness is over it might well be too late. But then the soul has now gained the strength to mould the growth and development of this organ in the course of life in such a way that in the next incarnation the deed can be carried out. Thus illness can be the very thing that makes us fit to carry out our karmic obligations in another life.

Here we have a secret karmic connection between illness and further development, for in reality illness is a process of further development. In order that the soul develops the power to form an organ in the way it needs, the unsuitable organ has to be destroyed and rebuilt again by the soul forces.

Here we come upon a law in human life that has to be described somewhat as follows: Man has to acquire his strength by overcoming obstacles in the world, one after another. Strictly speaking all our strength was acquired by the overcoming of obstacles in previous incarnations. Our present capacities are the result of our illnesses in earlier lives.

1910-05-20-GA120

If illnesses are the karmic results of spiritual or other events called forth or experienced by the soul, if they are the metamorphosis of such causes, might we not then also suppose that the result of the metamorphosis, namely, the illness, might be avoided — or do we learn nothing of this from spiritual facts? Might it not be avoided if we could replace, for the good of our education, the healing processes which are drawn from the organism to combat the disease. Could we not replace these by their spiritual counterpart, their spiritual equivalent? Should we not thus, if we were sufficiently wise, transform illness into a spiritual process and accomplish through our soul forces the self-education that would otherwise be accomplished through illness?

The feasibility of this may be demonstrated by an example. Here again we must insist that only those examples are given which have been investigated by Spiritual Science. They are not hypothetical assertions but actual ‘cases.’ A certain person contracts measles in later life, and we seek for the karmic connection in this case. We find that this case of measles appeared as the karmic effect of occurrences in a preceding life — occurrences that may be thus described: In a preceding life the individuality in question disliked concerning himself with the external world but occupied himself a great deal with himself, though not in the ordinary egotistical sense. He investigated much, meditated much, though not with regard to the facts of the external world, but confined himself to the inner soul life. We meet many people to-day who believe that through self-concentration and through brooding within themselves, they will arrive at the solution of world riddles. The person in question thought he could order his life through inner meditation how to act in one instance or another without accepting any teaching from others. The weakness of the soul resulting from this led to the formation of forces during existence between death and re-birth which exposed the organism comparatively late in life to an attack of measles.

We might now ask: if on the one hand we have the attack of measles which is the physical karmic effect of an earlier life, how is it then with the soul? For the earlier life will also result through karmic action in a certain condition of the soul.

This soul condition will prove itself to be such that the personality in question, during the life in which the attack of measles took place, was again and again subject to self-deception. Thus in the self-deception we must see the psychic karmic result of this earlier life, and in the attack of measles the physical karmic result.

Let us now assume that this personality before developing measles had succeeded in gaining such soul forces that he was no longer exposed to all kinds of self-deception, having completely corrected this failing. In this case the acquired soul force would render the attack of measles quite unnecessary, since the tendencies brought forth in this organism during its formation had been effaced through the stronger soul forces acquired by self-education. If we contemplate life as a whole and examine in detail our experiences, considering them always from this standpoint, we should invariably find that external knowledge will bear out in every detail what has here been stated. And what I have said about a case of measles can lead to an explanation why measles is one of the illnesses of child-hood. For the failings I have mentioned are present in a great many lives and especially in certain periods did they prevail in many lives. When such a personality enters existence he will be anxious to make the corresponding correction as soon as possible. In the period between birth and the general appearance of children's complaints which effect an organic self-education, there can as a rule be no question of any education of the soul.

From this we see that in a certain respect we can really speak of a disease being transformed back into a spiritual process. And it is most significant that when this process has entered the soul as a life principle, it will evoke a viewpoint that has a healing effect upon the soul. We need not be surprised that in our time we are able to influence the soul so little. Anyone regarding our present period from the standpoint of Spiritual Science will understand why so many medical men, so many doctors become materialists. For most people never occupy themselves with anything which has vital force. All the stuff produced today is devoid of vital force for the soul. That is why anyone wishing to work for Spiritual Science feels in this anthroposophical activity something extremely wholesome, for Spiritual Science can again bring to men something which enters the soul so that it is drawn away from what is acting in the physical organism. But we must not confuse what appears at the beginning of such a movement as Anthroposophy with what this movement can be in reality. Things may be brought into the Anthroposophical Movement which prevail in the physical world, for people on becoming Anthroposophists often bring to Anthroposophy exactly the same interests and also all the bad habits which they had outside. There is thus brought in much of the degeneracy of our age, and when some such degeneracy appears in the persons in question, the world says that this is the result of Anthroposophy. That is of course a cheap statement.

If we now see the karmic thread passing from one incarnation to another, we grasp only the one aspect of truth. For anyone beginning to understand this, many questions will arise which will be touched upon in the course of these lectures. First of all we must deal with the question: What difference is there between an illness due to external causes and an illness where the cause lies exclusively in the human organism itself. We are tempted to dispose of the latter illnesses by saying that they come of their own accord without any external provocation. But this is not so. In a certain sense we are justified in saying that illnesses come to us if we have a special disposition for the illness within us. A great many forms of illness, however, we shall be able to trace to external causes; not indeed everything that happens to us, but much that befalls us from outside. If we break a leg for instance, we are obliged to account for it by external causes. We must also include within external causes the effects of the weather, and numerous cases of disease which come to people living in slum dwellings. Here again we envisage a wide field. An experienced person looking on the world will find it easy to explain why the modern trend of the medical faculty is to seek the causes of illness in external influences, and especially in microbes. Of these a witty gentleman (Tröhls-Lund) said not without justice: ‘Today it is said that illnesses are provoked by microbes, just as it was formerly said that they came from God, the devil, and so forth.’ In the thirteenth century it was said that illnesses came from God; in the fifteenth it was said that they came from the devil; later it was said that illnesses came from the humours, today we say that illnesses come from microbes! Such are the views that in the course of time give place to one another.

1923-11-09-GA230

see: Working of substances and their forces#1923-11-09-GA230

1917-11-16-GA178

is about geographical medicine

And here something is disclosed that in the future must really be followed up if the human race is not to experience endless hindrances, really endless horrors.

• This double about which I have spoken is nothing more or less than the creator of all physical illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within; and to know him fully is organic medicine, illnesses that appear spontaneously from within the human being come not through outer injuries, not from the human soul, they come from this being. He is the creator of all illnesses that emerge spontaneously from within; he is the creator of all organic illnesses.
• And a brother of his, who is not composed Ahrimanically but Luciferically, is the creator of all neurasthenic and neurotic illnesses, all the illnesses that are not really illnesses but only nervous illnesses, hysterical illnesses as they are described.

Thus medicine must become spiritual in two directions. The demand for this is shown by the intrusion of views such as those of psychoanalysis and the like, where one keeps house with spiritual entities, as it were, but with inadequate means of knowledge so that one can do nothing at all with the phenomena that will intrude more and more into human life. For certain things need to happen, things that may even be harmful in a certain direction, because the human being must be exposed to what is harmful in order to overcome it and thereby gain strength.

.. this double is really the creator of all illnesses that have an organic foundation that are not merely functional. In order to understand this fully, however, one must know a great deal more .. for example, that our entire earth is not the dead product that mineralogy or geology thinks it to be, but it is a living being.

...

From this you will see further that one of the most important tasks of the future will be to foster again something that has been interrupted: geographic medicine, medical geography. With Paracelsus it was torn away from the ancient atavistic wisdom. Since then it has hardly been nurtured because of materialistic views. It must take its place again, and many things must become known again if we are to come to know the connection of the illness-producing being in man with earthly geography, with all the fusions, with all the outward radiations that emerge from the earth in the various regions. It is very important for the human being to become acquainted with these things, for his life depends on it. In a very definite way he is inserted into this earthly existence by this double, and this double has his dwelling place within, within the human being himself.

This has become so infinitely important only in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and will become especially important to human beings in the very near future.

1917-11-17-GA266/3

In the future, all human beings will constantly behold death beside them and experience death within themselves. Melancholy will be the basic mood of the soul, and suicide will increase in a frightening manner.

1923-08-28-GA319

Polarities in Health, Illness and Therapy

1922-10-19-GA348

discusses causes of illnessess

1922-10-24-GA348

llnesses occurring in the different periods of life

1922-12-27-GA348

influence, hay fever, mental illness

1922-12-30-GA348

1923-01-20-GA348

diphteria and influenza

1923-01-27-GA348

jaundice, smallpox, rabies

1923-02-03-GA348

haemophilia

1924-06-26-GA317

[example of illness]

Let us now imagine, we have such a person before us in childhood. There will be a constant effort on the part of the child to come into the physical and into the etheric body, and then again, he will experience a resistance, he will be pushed back. It may very well be that owing to the predetermined conditions some of the organs are not in order.

Imagine you have here physical body and etheric body. The astral body and I want to come in. And they do come in, everywhere, but here they do not enter in a proper and orderly manner. They have to make a special effort. Every time, they want, let us say, to penetrate liver and stomach, the astral body and I have to make an effort.

And now this effort works itself out—regulates itself, as it were, in a curious way. A kind of rhythm is set up, an abnormal rhythm. At one moment the I strengthens itself, then it become feeble again.

So that we find in the child this alternation—first, a strong liver-stomach feeling, and then, before this has come to consciousness, a weakened liver-stomach feeling. The child oscillates continually between the two.

And the consequence is, he has not, as it were, time to make use of his body in the so-called normal way. For he could make use of the body only if this rhythm were not present and astral body and I were able to take possession of the several organs quietly.

The string of 1924-09-GA318 lectures

These form one whole, only shorter extracts are below after the first lecture, but these need to be studied together.

1924-09-09-GA318

Let us for a moment review the picture of a human being that anthroposophy gives us. The human being stands before us in a physical body, which has a long evolution behind it, three preparatory stages before it became an earthly body—as is described in my book An Outline of Esoteric Science.

[the human physical body as a stamp of the other Man's bodily principles - see Schema FMC00.415]

This earthly body needs to be understood much more than it is by today's anatomy and physiology. For the human physical body as it is today is a true image of the etheric body, which is in its third stage of development, and of the astral body, which is in its second stage, and even to a certain degree of the I organization that humans first received on Earth, which therefore is in its first stage of development. All of this is stamped like the stamp of a seal upon the physical body, which makes the physical body extraordinarily complicated.

[projection etheric]

Only its purely mineral and physical nature can be understood with the methods of knowledge that are brought to it today. What the etheric body impresses upon it is not to be reached at all by those methods. It has to be observed with the eye of a sculptor so that one obtains pictorial images of cosmic forces, images that can then be recognized again in the form of the entire human being and in the forms of the single organs.

[projection astral]

The physical human being is also an image of the breathing and blood circulation. But the entire dynamic activity that works and weaves through the blood circulation and breathing system can only be understood if one thinks of it in musical forms. For instance, there is a musical character to the formative forces that were poured into the skeletal system and then became active in a finer capacity in the breathing and circulation. We can perceive in eurythmy how the octave goes out from the shoulder blade and proceeds along the bones of the arm. This bone formation of the arm cannot be understood from a mechanical view of dynamics, but only from musical insight. We find the interval of the prime extending from the shoulder blade to the bone of the upper arm, the humerus, the interval of the second in the humerus, the third from the elbow to the wrist. We find two bones there because there are two thirds in music, a larger and a smaller. And so on. In short, if we want to find the impression of the astral body upon the physical body, upon the breathing and blood circulation, we are obliged to bring a musical understanding to it.

[projection I-organization]

Still more difficult to understand is the I- organization. For this one needs to grasp the meaning of the first verse of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word.” “The Word” is meant there to be understood in a concrete sense, not abstractly, as commentators of the Gospels usually present it. If this is applied concretely to the real human being, it provides an explanation of how the I-organization penetrates the human physical body.

You can see that we ought to add much more to our studies if they are to lead to a true understanding of the human being. ...

[summary]

Out of the knowledge that anthroposophy gives us, we can say that the human being stands before us in physical, etheric and astral bodies, and an I-organization. In waking life these four members of the human organization are in close connection. In sleep the physical body and etheric body are together on one side, and the I organization and astral body on the other side.

[cases of unbalance between bodily principles]

With knowledge of this fact we are then able to say that the greatest variety of irregularities can appear in the connection of I-organization and astral body with etheric body and physical body.

[case 1 - normal]

For instance, we can have: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego organization. (BBD - case 1) Then, in the waking state, the so-called normal relation prevails among these four members of the human organization.

[case 2]

But it can also happen that

• the physical body and etheric body are in some kind of normal connection and that
• the astral body sits within them comparatively normally,
• but that the I-organization is somehow not properly sitting within the astral body. (BBD - case 2)

.

Then we have an irregularity that in the first place confronts us in the waking condition.

• Such people are unable to come with their I-organization properly into their astral body; therefore their feeling life is very much disturbed.
• They can even form quite lively thoughts. For thoughts depend, in the main, upon a normal connection of the astral body with the other bodies. But whether the sense impressions will be grasped appropriately by the thoughts depends upon whether the I-organization is united with the other parts in a normal fashion. If not, the sense impressions become dim. And in the same measure that the sense impressions fade, the thoughts become livelier. Sense impressions can appear almost ghostly, not clear as we normally have them. The soul-life of such people is flowing away; their sense impressions have something misty about them, they seem to be continually vanishing. At the same time their thoughts have a lively quality and tend to become more intense, more colored, almost as if they were sense impressions themselves.
• When such people sleep, their I-organization is not properly within the astral body, so that now they have extraordinarily strong experiences, in fine detail, of the external world around them. They have experiences, with their I and astral body both outside their physical and etheric bodies, of that part of the world in which they live - for instance, the finer details of the plants or an orchard around their house. Not what they see during the day, but the delicate flavor of the apples, and so forth. That is really what they experience. And in addition, pale thoughts that are after-effects in the astral body from their waking life.

.

You see, it is difficult if you have such a person before you. And you may encounter such people in all variations in the most manifold circumstances of life. You may meet them in your vocation as physician or as priest—or the whole congregation may encounter them. You can find them in endless variety, for instance, in a town.

Today the physician who finds such a person in an early stage of life makes the diagnosis: psychopathological impairment. To modern physicians that person is a psychopathological impairment case who is at the borderline between health and illness; whose nervous system, for instance, can be considered to be on a pathological level. Priests, if they are well-schooled (let us say a Benedictine or Jesuit or Barnabite or the like; ordinary parish priests are sometimes not so well-schooled), will know from their esoteric background that the things such a person tells them can, if properly interpreted, give genuine revelations from the spiritual world, just as one can have from a really insane person. But the insane person is not able to interpret them; only someone who comprehends the whole situation can do so. Thus you can encounter such a person if you are a physician, and we will see how to regard this person medically from an anthroposophical point of view. Thus you can also encounter such a person if you are a priest—and even the entire congregation can have such an encounter.

[case 3]

But now perhaps the person develops further; then something quite special appears.

• The physical and etheric bodies still have their normal connection.
• But now there begins to be a stronger pull of the I-organization, drawing the astral body to itself, so that the I-organization and astral body are now more closely bound together.
• And neither of them enters properly into the physical and etheric bodies. (BBD case 3)

.

Then the following can take place:

• the person becomes unable to control the physical and etheric bodies properly from the astral body and I. The person is unable to push the astral body and I-organization properly into the external senses, and therefore, every now and then, becomes 'senseless'. Sense impressions in general fade away and the person falls into a kind of dizzy dream state.
• But then in the most varied way moral impulses can appear with special strength.
• The person can be confused and also extremely argumentative if the rest of the organism is as just described.

.

Now physicians find in such a case that physical and biochemical changes have taken place in the sense organs and the nerve substance. They will find, although they may take slight notice of them, great abnormalities in the ductless glands and their hormone secretion, in the adrenal glands, and the glands that are hidden in the neck as small glands within the thyroid gland. In such a case there are changes particularly in the pituitary gland and the pineal gland. These are more generally recognized than are the changes in the nervous system and in the general area of the senses.

And now the priest comes in contact with such a person. The person confesses to experiencing an especially strong feeling of sin, stronger than people normally have. The priest can learn very much from such individuals, and Catholic priests do. They learn what an extreme consciousness of sin can be like, something that is so weakly developed in most human beings. Also in such a person the love of one's neighbor can become tremendously intense, so much so that the person can get into great trouble because of it, which will then be confessed to the priest.

[case 4]

The situation can develop still further.

• The physical body can remain comparatively isolated because the etheric body - from time to time or even permanently - does not entirely penetrate it, so that now
• the astral and etheric bodies and the I-organization are closely united with one another
• and the physical organism is separate from them. (BBD case 4)

.

To use the current materialistic terms (which we are going to outgrow as the present course of study progresses), such people are in most cases said to be severely mentally retarded individuals. They are unable from their soul-spiritual individuality to control their physical limbs in any direction, not even in the direction of their own will. Such people pull their physical organism along, as it were, after themselves. A person who is in this condition in early childhood, from birth, is also diagnosed as mentally retarded.

In the present stage of Earth evolution, when all three members, I-organization, astral organization, and etheric body, are separated from the physical, and the lone physical body is dragged along after them, the person cannot perceive, cannot be active, cannot be illumined by the I-organization, astral body, and etheric body. So experiences are dim and the person goes about in a physical body as if it were anesthetized.

This is extreme mental retardation, and one has to think how at this stage one can bring the other bodies down into the physical organism. Here it can be a matter of educational measures, but also to a great extent of external therapeutic measures.

But now the priest can be quite amazed at what such a person will confess.

[...]

[changes throughout life]

Our study can go further. Think what happens when a person goes through this entire sequence in the course of life.

• At some period the person is in a condition (case 2) where only the I-organization has loosened itself from the other members of the organism.
• In a later period the person advances to a condition where neither I nor astral enter the physical or etheric bodies.
• Still later, the person enters a condition where the physical body separates from the other bodies. (case 4)

The person only goes through this sequence if the first condition, perhaps in childhood, which is still normal, already shows a tendency to lose the balance of the four members of the organism. If the physician comes upon such a person destined to go through all these four stages—the first very slightly abnormal, the others as I have pictured them—the physician will find there is tremendous instability and something must be done about it. Usually nothing can be done. Sometimes the physician prescribes intensive treatment; it accomplishes nothing. Perhaps later the physician is again in contact with this person and finds that the first unstable condition has advanced to the next, as I described it with the sense impressions becoming vague and the thoughts highly colored. Eventually the physician finds the excessively strong consciousness of sin; naturally a physician does not want to take any notice of that, for now the symptoms are beginning to play over into the soul realm. Usually it is at this time that the person finally gets in touch with a priest, particularly when the fourth stage becomes apparent.

Individuals who go through these stages—it is connected with their karma, their repeated Earth lives—have purely out of their deep intuition developed a wonderful terminology for all this. Especially if they have gone through the stages in sequence, with the first stage almost normal, they are able to speak in a wonderful way about what they experience.

• They say, for instance, when they are still quite young, if the labile condition starts between seventeen and nineteen years: human beings must know themselves. And they demand complete knowledge of themselves. Now with their I-organization separated, they come of their own initiative to an active meditative life. Very often they call this “active prayer,” “active meditation,” and they are grateful when some well-schooled priest gives them instruction about prayer. Then they are entirely absorbed in prayer, and they are experiencing in it what they now begin to describe by a wonderful terminology. They look back at their first stage and call what they perceive “the first dwelling place of God,” because their I has not entirely penetrated the other members of their organism, so to a certain extent they are seeing themselves from within, not merely from without. This perception from within increases; it becomes, as it were, a larger space: “the first dwelling place of God.”
• What next appears, what I have described from another point of view, is richer; it is more inwardly detailed. They see much more from within: “the second dwelling place of God.”
• When the third stage is reached, the inner vision is extraordinarily beautiful, and such a person says, “I see the third dwelling place of God; it is tremendously magnificent, with spiritual beings moving within it.” This is inner vision, a powerful, glorious vision of a world woven by spirit: “the third dwelling place of God,” or “the House of God.” There are variations in the words used.
• When they reach the fourth stage, they no longer want advice about active meditation, for usually they have reached the view that everything will be given them through grace and they must wait. They talk about passive prayer, passive meditation, that they must not pray out of their own initiative, for it will come to them if God wants to give it to them. Here the priest must have a fine instinct for recognizing when this stage passes over into the next. For now these people speak of “rest-prayer,” during which they do nothing at all; they let God hold sway in them. That is how they experience “the fourth dwelling place of God.”

Sometimes from the descriptions they give at this stage, from what—if we speak medically—such “patients” say, priests can really learn a tremendous amount of esoteric theology. If they are good interpreters, the theological detail becomes clear to them—if they listen very carefully to what such “patients” tell them, to what they know. Much of what is taught in theology, particularly Catholic pastoral theology, is founded on what various enlightened, trained confessors have heard from certain penitents who have undergone this sequence of development.

At this point ordinary conceptions of health and illness cease to have any meaning.

If such a Man is hidden away in an office, or if such a woman becomes an housewife who must spend her days in the kitchen or something similar in bourgeois everyday life, these people become really insane, and behave outwardly in such a way that they can only be regarded as insane. If a priest notices at the right moment how things are developing and arranges for them to live in appropriate surroundings, they can develop the four stages in proper order.

...

[Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) - prominent Spanish mystic nun]

But we can think of a personality in a later time who went through these stages under the wise direction of her confessors, so that she could devote herself undisturbed to her inner visions. Something very wonderful developed for her, which indeed also remained to a certain degree pathological. Her life was not just a concern of the physician or of the priest but a concern of the entire Church. The Church pronounced her a saint after her death. This was St. Teresa This was approximately her path.

You see, one must examine such things as this if one wants to discover what will give medicine and theology a real insight into human nature. One must be prepared to go far beyond the usual category of ideas, for they lose their value. Otherwise one can no longer differentiate between a saint and a fool, between a madman and a genius, and can no longer distinguish any of the others except a normal dyed-in-the-wool average citizen.

This is a view of the human being that must first be met with understanding; then it can really lead to fundamental esoteric knowledge. But it can also be tremendously enlightening in regard to psychological abnormalities as well as to physical abnormalities and physical illnesses. Certain conditions are necessary for these stages to appear.

There has to be a certain consistency of the person's I so that it does not completely penetrate the organism. Also there must be a certain consistency of the astral body: if it is not fine, as it was in St. Teresa, if it is coarse, the result will be different. With St. Teresa, because of the delicacy of her I-organization and astral body, certain physical organs in the lower body had been formed with the same fragile quality.

But it can happen that the I-organization and astral body are quite coarse and yet they have the same characteristic as above. Such an individual can be comparatively normal and show only the physical correlation: then it is only a physical illness. One could say, on the one hand there can be a St. Teresa constitution with its visions and poetic beauty, and on the other hand its physical counterimage in diseased abdominal organs, which in the course of this second person's life is not reflected in the I and astral organization.

1924-09-10-GA318

continuation of the lecture of the previous date with the different cases and also regarding Teresa of Avila

We will obtain a deeper view of the total human being if we go a little further into the matters we have been considering. In particular, we should see from such symptoms how important the transition is from health to illness.

I therefore would like to speak further about something that lies between certain pathological trends that are developing in human evolution and a kind of natural initiation that constitutes another stream in human evolution. This phenomenon lies midway between the pathological tendencies of human nature and the stream of initiation; it relates as much to one as to the other.

Typical of such a path of development are such personalities as St. Teresa. One can observe much more than I described if one makes a study of some of these individuals. With them there is a kind of appearance of the spiritual world at the threshold of perception. Naturally this is difficult to describe, because the words one has to use to characterize these abnormal conditions do not have such meanings in our everyday speech. What appears at the threshold of perception is the first stage for such people and is called by them “entrance into the first dwelling place of God.” In the first stage this is perceived only as “a presence.” These people experience the presence of some spiritual being, but they have no precise vision of the being. If the experience comes to a definite conclusion, they have a clear feeling that the being was there with them. That is the first experience: an indefinite experience of a presence, of being together with some spiritual being. As long as they are in this stage of development, these people are even annoyed when someone else tells them of a vision, because these people think their own experience is much more inward, much more intimate, more genuine. This has been such a moving experience for them that they have the feeling: human beings are not allowed to see the super-sensible world, but I have been given this vague experience of its reality.

Then these people reach a second stage. They tell of actual, shaped perceptions of the spiritual beings that were present. First they tell of the feeling of being touched, of having spiritual hands laid upon them, even of their forehead being touched or something similar, without yet having any visual experience. Then the condition is raised to vision that is like optical perception. It can be so enhanced that they see Jesus, for instance, standing before them as a real person. That is the usual second stage. It is a peculiar fact that those advancing from the first to the second stage have only the vaguest feeling that earlier they had become angry when others told them of their own experiences in this second stage. Memory does not clearly connect the two stages. These people live very intensely in the respective single stages.

The third stage they experience is remarkable. Their description of it is highly colored in every detail. They tell how when it comes upon them they are seized by tremendous pain. And indeed it is obviously intense, for at these moments they can be heard groaning; other reactions can be observed such as occur with pain originating in the physical and etheric bodies. But the strange thing is that they want this pain. They want it because they regard it as natural that they should have it; they feel that they will only reach the subsequent experience properly if first they suffer this pain.

Then they reach the stage where they transform the pain within themselves. This is extraordinarily interesting, for actually the pain remains exactly the same, but now it is enhanced into a feeling of joy, of bliss. The pain comes, its objective condition is still there, but now the spiritual awareness goes further. If one were suddenly to pull such people out of their spiritual state, they would feel the pain as sick people feel pain—and indeed do so when they return from this highest stage of the experience. At this highest stage they no longer have the feeling that spiritual beings come to them, but that they themselves have risen into the spiritual world. At this stage the pain is transformed—one might say subjectively, but the expression is not quite exact—into a feeling of bliss. Then begins a symbolic objectifying of the pain. When they come out of this experience and have a memory of it (and in most cases there is a very clear memory of it afterward), then they describe how a seraph or a cherub stood beside them, and the seraph or cherub had a sword that he plunged into the their intestines, which caused excruciating pain. When the spiritual being pulled out the sword he pulled the intestines out too, and then there came immediately an experience of profound bliss in the presence of God.

As a rule these three stages follow in succession. We can understand them clearly through our anthroposophical knowledge.

After the preparatory condition I have described, the first stage consists of the I-organization drawing the astral body to itself, so that they are united without penetrating the physical and etheric bodies as deeply as they normally would. Something, therefore, is happening for such persons that can never happen in ordinary consciousness: in half-waking or quarter-waking or three-quarters waking condition they have conscious experience in their I-organization and astral body, while at the same time experience in their etheric and physical bodies continues with a certain independence. Thus parallel experiences are there: a spiritual experience in the I-organization and astral body, and at the same time a separate experience of the etheric and physical bodies. This is never the case in normal consciousness: there, all four members of the human being are bound closely together. In normal consciousness there is no such thing as experiences of consciousness running parallel.

In this experience I am describing, such people feel themselves, know themselves in the most eminent sense to be entirely united with what they are experiencing. They know this first of all, the inherent being-one-with the happening. When the astral body is drawn to the I-organization and experiences spiritual beings, these people experience them as simply a presence, as something that is there. They experience this as one experiences one's own body. One does not differentiate in the latter experience. One does not feel one's body as something outside: one feels it as part of oneself. That is the first stage: the experience of “a presence.”

Now let us go to the second stage. First, these people have all kinds of feelings of being touched.

...

[...]

Now you need not be surprised that this third stage is objectified. It penetrates the physical body and the physical body repels it. A physical body cannot be so seized except in regular initiation; in any other situation the physical body exerts opposition, and this causes pain. It pushes away in pain what it is experiencing. That is the first part of the experience of the third stage. The physical body exerts resistance and the resistance is experienced as pain. And what enters through the pain? The real spiritual world. It comes through the pain. The spiritual world comes from the other direction. Ordinary sense perception and ordinary thinking grasp hold of the physical world. The spiritual world is grasped in the opposite way. The way to it is through pain. The moment the physical body exerts resistance, intense pain is there. But the moment the pain is taken hold of by the spiritual world, the moment the spiritual world enters, the pain is transformed into ecstasy. It is really so. First there is pain in the organism; then the spiritual world penetrates the pain, streams through the pain: a cherub or seraph appears (this is what the imagination presents), the cherub plunges his sword in, draws it out, and draws the intestines out with it. This means that the person becomes independent of the physical body, of the ordinary connection to it. The person has no experience in the lower organs and is led beyond it to an experience of the spiritual world. The physical pain is transformed to bliss. Such people speak of the presence of God, or if they make distinctions, of the presence of the spiritual world.

This last stage is experienced by individuals who are strong enough in their etheric body to endure the entire happening. They have the foundation for it in their karma.

[Teresa of Avila]

For instance, think of St. Teresa. She had an earlier incarnation in which her soul became especially strong. She incarnates as St. Teresa. But before she incarnates in the physical body, she takes possession of her etheric body very forcefully, and this etheric body becomes inwardly stronger than is the case with the usual human being. She has brought it with her into this life, this etheric body that is inwardly strong. Then this strong etheric body leaves the physical body and unites itself firmly with the astral body and I, which are also especially strong from an earlier incarnation. And that is why illnesses then appear, at least a certain variety of illness: because the etheric body is not staying in the physical organs and providing them with its nourishing, vitalizing forces.

With the individuals I am describing, the moment they enter the third stage they become really ill. At the same time their strong etheric body enables them to overcome the illness as it is developing. The illness begins to develop and immediately an automatic therapy arises within them from the strong etheric body. The entire process is a latent illness and healing. This is one of the most interesting phenomena in the realm of human evolution.

Precisely in the case of St. Teresa you see in the final stage of her development a continual status nascendi of illness and the continual cure. This alternation, this wonderful swing of a pendulum between the beginning of illness and the caring of it, is not a natural happening in the physical world, for it is not brought about in the physical world: it takes place in the spiritual world. We know that the etheric body is formed before the earthly incarnation. And it is into that pre-earthly moment that such a person as St. Teresa returns. When the pathological condition starts, when it is in statu nascendi, she “swings” into the world where she was before birth, into the spiritual world. The pendulum swings between the physical body and the spiritual world. Spiritual world—physical world—spiritual world—physical world, but experiencing the physical world as an exact opposite—such as normally human beings only experience when they are just incarnating into it. This inner process of healing, this therapy coming from the cosmos, is so intense that its effect can spread to sick people who are in the neighborhood of such people, if their illness lies somewhat in the same direction. In fact, the most wonderful cures can take place around such a person.

Indeed the influence can extend much further. In the former, better days of the church, these things were used in a careful, esoteric way. Later this degenerated to a superstitious worship of relics and belief in magic. But it is a fact that in better times of religious evolution, vivid biographies of such individuals, including their own imaginative descriptions, were given to the faithful, so that they could live through the experiences of such people in their own imagination. And it could then happen that when thoughtful pastors had the opportunity, they would simply put such a biography into the hands of someone in ordinary life whose illness was going in a certain direction. Perhaps also they strengthened the effect by their own words, and this was able to start curative processes. Directing the sick individual's mind to the life of such a saint could have a therapeutic effect.

You can see that studies that go so deeply into the human being will always lead from health to illness, but also to states of super-sensible experience. If therefore you advise someone in some connection or other to do exercises to gain entrance into the super-sensible world, the exercises must be so oriented that they strengthen the I-organization, astral body, and etheric body.

Such a path as I described, given to individuals simply through their karma, will in fact take its course properly. What takes place in initiation itself can be learned by studying these processes, which border so closely on the pathological. Therefore it is not unimportant for physicians to take the time to study the lives of such people. Physicians will find in them what can only be called a paradox: the healthy counterpart of a complex of pathological symptoms that they are accustomed to meet here and there in everyday life. And for physicians, that is the most beneficial thing possible: to see the healthy counterpart of a pathological condition. That, more than anything else, will help physicians to make thoughtful, conscientious decisions about their therapy. Moreover if physicians have some knowledge of the substance that can be used as a remedy because of its affinity to certain etheric forces—forces that automatically become active in the self-healing of these abnormal individuals—they will know how St. Teresa's etheric body developed its forces when her illnesses appeared in statu nascendi. And if physicians learn to know the healing power to be found in the piercing activity of antimony, then they will have learned the right therapy from Nature herself.

1924-09-11-GA318

If we investigate such an individual as St. Teresa, we find that these particularly strong individualities resemble their parents very closely in the first seven years, but then in the ninth and tenth years they develop in surprising ways. Then the real individual is emerging. In the strongest sense of the word, heredity only holds good for the first life period.

1924-09-12-GA318

We must now go on from the knowledge we have gained in one direction, of individuals who, although not exactly having intuition, do develop a perception of the spiritual world and who show certain aspects of behavior that to a physician may seem to be pathological but are in fact something quite different, something more. For as you have seen, the pathological condition remains with them in statu nascendi and there is continuous healing coming from the spirit. This is the case with such personalities as St. Teresa and Mechthild of Magdeburg,⁵ as well as with male visionaries.

When we study these individuals, we find that as a first stage the ego organization separates from the rest of the human organism. It then draws the astral body closely to it, in a certain sense away from the physical-etheric organism. This is in the waking state. What is the consequence of this? You can easily see that this puts the individual into a kind of dream condition. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the ego, by drawing the astral body to itself, is not allowing it to enter the physical and etheric bodies completely, and this brings about a kind of dream condition. But because of the special karmic density, both ego and astral body are strong, and they bring into the dream condition receptivity for the perception of the spiritual world. Dream is transformed into a state in which the individual is really able to see into the spiritual world and to feel the presence of spiritual beings.

Now let us look at the extreme opposite condition. Here the ego is weak, and the astral body draws it down too strongly into the rest of the organism—again in the waking state. Then there is not illumination, as with visionaries like St. Teresa, but the opposite: a darkening, a clouding, a lowering of consciousness—in the waking state—to a dream condition.

One cannot learn to know this second type of person in the way I have indicated for the first type. Individuals who feel the presence of spiritual beings, who come to such final stages as St. Teresa or Mechthild of Magdeburg, are much more numerous than one would think. One learns to know them if one has some particular opportunity or if one has cultivated the corresponding faculties. One learns to know them best by letting them tell about their conditions. They talk more interestingly than our ordinary contemporaries. Their narratives are much more interesting; above all, they speak of things one does not encounter in everyday life. So they are already interesting in the first stage.

The opposite individuals, those whose astral body is drawing the ego down, are also interesting if one lets them talk about themselves.

...

So when the astral body draws the ego organization in, there comes about a kind of power for reproducing details of memory as though automatically. ... One also notices changes in the sphere of the will.

...

Now the following can happen: the etheric body on its part can draw the astral body and ego in too strongly, so that they snap to an excessive degree into the physical and etheric bodies—again in the waking state. Then we have the situation that, seen from within, there is too much astrality in the organs; it cannot unite properly with them. This condition is the pathological mirror-picture of a visionary state such as, for instance, that of St. Teresa, such as her “first stage” as I described it, when she felt the presence of spiritual beings. We had there the bringing of waking-sleep into clear consciousness. And now in such persons as I am describing we have the opposite: dreams are carried over into waking life, with the accompanying symptoms I have mentioned. For it really happens in waking life: dreams do not appear, but an active “dream” life that discloses itself in the kind of speech I described, and in that extreme turning inward of the will impulses. That is the pathological mirror-picture of ordinary dreaming. Activity is there instead of the passivity that is the normal condition of dreaming.

Then we have the second stage, the drawing down of the ego and astral organization by the etheric body. The individual snaps too strongly with the ego, astral body, and etheric body into the physical organism, and the physical organism is not able to receive them into its single organs. Every possible organ has excess astrality that could not unite properly with the organ. Now we have the pathological mirror-picture of what we learned was the second stage for the individuals in whom sense impressions were in a certain sense stimulated from within. The direction was from within out to the senses. Now in this mirror-picture the direction is the opposite: it goes inward to the organs, it takes hold of the physical organism. And conditions appear that always appear when a physical or etheric organ is flooded by the astral body and ego organization and they cannot unite so that it could be called a proper saturation of the physical body by the etheric and astral bodies. Something is left over in the physical organs from the higher members of the organism. What in the other type of individuals poured into visions similar to a sense perception, with colors like a sense perception, visions that revealed the spiritual world, is in this case pouring itself inward, wanting to seize a physical organ. In the former situation there was a reaching out more externally, to the spiritual world beyond the sense world. In this case there is a reaching inward to a physical organ, manifesting in so-called “seizures,” all the different forms of real epilepsy or epileptoid symptoms (“temporal lobe seizures”). It can be explained as the snapping down of the ego and astral organization too strongly into the physical organism, which then succeeds in drawing the etheric body to itself. We see how the first condition advances to this second condition.

...

So we have seen the progression in the case of the saint from feeling the presence of spiritual beings to a third stage, being present in the spiritual world. And we have seen the opposite pathological states: first, psychopathological impairment as the first stage. We can be particularly aware of this stage when we encounter an abnormal wanderlust, as I described, connected with a memory that lacks logic. We see this progress to states of insanity, of which the early stage will still allow a person to pursue certain activities in external life. Then we see this progress to the third stage—which could also have been present in early childhood in statu nascendi.

1924-09-13-GA318

[specific case example: Ferdinand Raimund (1790-1836), Austrian playwright]

Therefore I would like to describe a concrete case. It should reveal to you the deeper connections to be found in this matter of human health. A certain person lived in the nineteenth century. I'll speak of him presently as he was in the nineteenth century, but first I want to take you back to one of his earlier incarnations that had important consequences for his life in the nineteenth century. This person was incarnated in a southeastern region of Asia where the people were extraordinarily fond of animals. You know that oriental teachings include a great reverence and love for animals; they extend what they call love of humanity and love of things, particularly to love of animals. In ancient times it was natural for people in this region to love animals intensely and to take very good care of them. But the man of whom I am speaking was no friend of animals. There in the midst of an animal-loving people was a man who treated them cruelly. Even as a boy he tormented them, he was mean to them; in later life he tortured domestic animals in every possible way to an incredible degree. This aroused violent anger in the people among whom he lived. He also experienced a deep conflict between this compulsive mania (today, in materialistic terms, we would call it perversion of the will) and on the other hand the spiritual teachings of the people. He took these up with great fervor. He was able to relate himself to them completely; he had a fine sense for everything the religion of that area taught. But he became involved in violent conflicts with the most religious individuals around him because of his torture of animals. It was especially the animals in his own house that he tortured, first among his relatives, and later when he became a kind of farmhand. Orientals lavish particularly good care on domestic animals, considering them as part of the family. These were the ones he tortured most shockingly.

This man lived again in our age, in the first half of the nineteenth century, and in this incarnation (which in a wider sense belongs to our own time) he was born as an extremely fearful person, so that he chained dogs to himself. One could say this was now a symptom of illness, this abnormal relation to animals. It did have an aspect of disease about it through the fact that he did not develop any special love for the dogs, only a feeling that he had to have them near him. It is clearly fantastic, the way he related himself to them. It reveals an inner karmic compulsion from an earlier life.

At the same time in this incarnation the man is extremely talented, carrying over from his earlier life everything he had experienced of the oriental spiritual teachings, as well as his own religious devotion. This is not just a feeling in him: it becomes his life practice. In the course of this life he develops not only an astonishing capacity for spiritual fantasy, but the ability to put into poetic form correct visionary images that come to him in a matter-of-fact way. His poetry is about ordinary physical human life into which elemental spiritual beings constantly play. He is a distinguished poet. Moreover one may truly say he is the dramatist whom we Europeans would compare most seriously with Shakespeare. He is Ferdinand Raimund —with his fantastic personality, his giant talent—whose dramatic poems show how he has brought from earlier incarnations his ability to portray spiritual things, to put spiritual happenings into human life.

...

So now, first, we have seen that there are individuals whose ego, astral body, and etheric body develop, either suddenly or by stages, in such a way that they break into the spiritual world with a visionary capacity: St. Teresa, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and many others. There are such individuals who show an abnormality in one direction, the direction of spiritual awareness. They have been given some karmic gift—which we are only considering from the aspect of this particular earth-life. With these individuals we do not need to enter into karmic details. Naturally it is a fulfillment of karma. But one can understand the case from a single earth-life.

Then there are the individuals turned in the other direction. They develop abnormally in their physical-etheric organism; they sink down into their physical body and become pathological cases, as I showed you, in three stages. Their pathological condition is induced by their karma. But one only needs to look at the general picture. With such personalities as St. Teresa the individual became especially strong in earlier earth-lives, while in the pathological cases the individual became especially weak, causing the higher being to be drawn down into the lower organism. Again one needs only to look at a few general characteristics of an individual, one need not examine the karma in detail.

But now in Ferdinand Raimund we have an unusual personality. He developed not only in the visionary direction but in the opposite direction also, and at the same time. We have the two opposites constantly pitted against each other throughout his life. Both the genius and the psychopath are in his personality; they play into each other, wonderfully and tragically. Thus this case obliges us to study the concrete details of his karma. We have to perceive how his karma works to create the two extremes, how it holds them apart, sometimes letting them work into each other. You will find countless places in Raimund's dramas where you can say his spiritual vision is active and at the same time something is working in from the anxiety demons. Sometimes you see it in the structure of the drama itself.

Cancer

1920-04-02-GA312

short comment: tumors occur when certain processes in the physical body counteract the action of the etheric body, causing the etheric body to stop working in certain regions, and this disharmony leads to uncontrolled cell proliferation.

We can hardly hope to reach the understanding of tumorous growths, with their culmination in cancer, by means of merely physical methods, unless the insight given by spiritual science serves at least as a guidance. And contemporary psychiatry is in such a sorry state, mainly because there is no conscious bridge between it and the usual pathology and therapeutics—though such bridges abound everywhere in nature—that it is probable that these two special fields will be the first to approach the standpoint of spiritual science. They will need to mark all that spiritual science can tell them, and even now you have only to refer to my publications, to realise that spiritual science has already told them a good deal. It will be necessary, in fact, to talk of the intervention of the etheric body, within the physical organism.

For indeed no one should merely assert that clairvoyance is needed in order to show how the etheric body acts within the organism. It is possible to see that the etheric body is not active in a certain way—or is not adequately active—through the observation of very many processes which are opposed to the action of the etheric body. In order to obtain valid representations here, we must take into consideration all the manifestations associated with inflammation or developing out of inflammation, and also all that is associated with the formation of tumours, and spreads its destructive activity through the human body. In the case of tumorous growths there is today a very justifiable effort to dispense with the surgeon's knife in the treatment of tumours. This endeavour is, however, blocked and often frustrated by social, especially hygienic, conditions which should, and must, be changed. But we must find a substitute for surgery: both for what it certainly achieves in some respects, and again fails to achieve in others. Doubtless there are many persons who at present advocate operative surgery, for the simple reason that they know of no alternative, but who would be converted immediately if and when the alternative were available.

There is no need for me to analyse the whole nature of inflammatory processes, in their specific forms as affecting the different human organs. All that I can take as already familiar to you. But the unifying process, which is common to all inflammations, is not a matter of familiar knowledge. This unifying common process is perhaps best characterised as follows: in all cases of inflammation, whether very slight or very acute, and leading possibly to ulcers, spiritual science finds that the etheric body of the patient remains as a whole in working order. Thus we may be sure of being able to do something to restore the full efficiency of this etheric body, which has become impaired or impeded in a particular direction; to redistribute its workings, so as to make it a healing source. Our aim is to direct the activity of the etheric body in definite directions, whereas the healthy etheric body acts throughout the organism and permeates it in all directions. It is possible to set up reactive processes—we shall deal with them presently—which have power to stimulate the etheric body in regard to a system of organs in which its activity has become slack; so that, provided the etheric body as a whole retains a certain measure of health, it resumes its universal efficiency in this special direction.

But tumorous formations of every kind are a different matter. They arise primarily from the actual enmity of certain processes within the physical body, against the action of the etheric body; these processes rebel as it were, so that the etheric body ceases to act in certain regions of the physical body.

The etheric body, however, has very great powers of regeneration and the methods of spiritual science reveal that if it is possible to remove the hindrance and to expel the inimical action, the tumour can be overcome. We may lay down the rule that in cases of tumour, it will be necessary to simulate through the forces of nature, the removal of the counteracting physical processes which oppose the etheric body, so that the etheric body may once more extend its working to the region where it had temporarily receded.

This principle is particularly important, let us say, in the treatment of carcinomatous growths. Carcinoma, if objectively studied, shows plainly, in spite of its great diversity of form, that it is essentially a revolt of certain physical forces against the forces of the etheric body. For instance, the characteristic indurations, which are so perceptible in the case of deep-seated carcinomatous growths, and though less perceptible still present when the growths are nearer the surface of the body—these reveal the preponderance and the encroachments, so to speak, of the physical structure over the etheric structure, which should be there in the particular region. Careful study of their contrasting characteristics will lead us to the conclusion that inflammations, abscesses, and ulcers on the one hand and tumours on the other, are polar opposites. Of course, I must remind you that it is quite possible to take a carcinoma situated on or near the surface of the body, for an ulcer, at least in some features. As the similarity may be misleading, we must study more closely the essence of this polarity.

Certain not precisely old but somewhat medieval technical terms are misleading and unhelpful in this respect—and when I use the phrase medieval, I refer not to the Middle Ages but to those times which we have only just passed through. It is not quite correct to refer to tumours as neoplasms. They are “new” only in the trivial sense of not having been there before, but they are not “neoplasms” in the sense of sprouting on the actual soil of the organism, i.e., on its boundary, the skin. But owing to the vehement opposition developing in some special process of the physical body, as against the etheric, the body of man becomes subjected to the outer nature inimical to man; the formation of a tumour provides an easy passage for all manner of external influences; and thus we should not neglect the study of the complementary opposite of this whole phenomenon. For this I refer you to the study of the extra-human world, let us say, to the formation of the mistletoe to begin with.

First of all we must observe the precise manner in which the varieties of mistletoe (viscum) develop on the soil of other plants. But this is not the main factor under consideration. For the botanist, of course, the parasitism of such plants as mistletoe is the essential point. But for the study of the inter-relationships of extra-human nature to man, it is far more significant that the mistletoe as it grows on trees is compelled to follow a different yearly rhythm from that of other plants, its blossoms have been formed before the trees which are its hosts, begin to put forth their leaves in spring. Thus the mistletoe is a kind of winter blooming plant, protecting itself under the shelter of alien foliage, from the extremes of the summer sun's rays, or better, from the light workings of summer; there is something of an aristocratic attitude about the mistletoe. (See Diagram 24). The sun must be taken—in the sense of the XI lecture—as being the representative only of the light workings: but this subject forms a chapter of physics and does not interest us here; it is unfortunately impossible to avoid phrases introduced into our language by an incorrect conception of nature. The whole manner in which the mistletoe attaches itself to other plants in order to grow and thrive is the essential point: it acquires and appropriates particular forces which may be described as follows. Its nature is to oppose all the tendencies of the straight course taken by the organic forces, and to urge towards all that to which the straight course taken by the organic forces is opposed. Let us try to elucidate this by means of a rough sketch, (see Diagram 24) representing an area in the physical body of man which revolts against the whole access of the etheric forces, so that the latter are, as it were, dammed up and stopped and thus what appears to be a “neoplasm” is formed; and the mistletoe counteracts this “pocketing” which has been formed and draws the forces again to the area which they do not want to enter.

You may corroborate this statement by means of a test which can only take place as occasion offers. You can study the tendency of the mistletoe against the straight-lined organising forces, by its effect on the after birth. Mistletoe prevents or delays the emergence of the after birth from the human body, that is to say, it opposes the straight course of the organic process. And that is its most characteristic and significant property, to prevent the normal course of organic forces. But quite the same tendency of opposition is to be found in the mistletoe-effect in general.

The counteraction of mistletoe against the etheric body's refusal to take hold of the physical body may lead one to a certain administration of viscum; it may happen, then, that the physical body is taken hold of too strongly by the etheric body, and convulsions may result. Other cases, on being treated with mistletoe, have the peculiar sensation of falling (vertigo.) And these symptoms are in line with a further pharmaceutical effect of mistletoe, i.e., its stimulation of seminal pollutions.

Thus in all its manifestations, e.g., in connection with epilepsy also, mistletoe works “against the stream” in the organism of man. And this is due, not so much to its parasitism, as to its inherent contrariety: it claims always special indulgencies from nature as a whole. This plant, for instance, will not thrive in the normal course of the seasons, blossoming towards the spring and then bearing its fruit, but during an unusual time, in winter. By so doing, it conserves those forces which counteract the normal course of events. If it were not giving too much offense, one might say that nature had “gone mad” and did everything at the wrong time, in reference to the mistletoe. But this is just what must be made use of, if on the other hand the human organism becomes physically mad, i.e., in formation. Here the need arises to cultivate the understanding of precisely these connections.

Mistletoe provides, beyond question, a means which—when given in potencies—should enable us to dispense with the surgical removal of tumours. The point is only to find out how to treat the mistletoe fruit in combining it with other forces of the mistletoe plant, in order to arrive at a remedy. The peculiar “madness” of this plant is shown in its method of fertilisation, which depends on transport by birds from one tree to another. The plant would become extinct were it not for this service of the birds. In a curious way, the fertilising elements of the mistletoe choose the path through the birds, and are excreted on another tree trunk or branch, where they “take root” anew. All these peculiarities illuminate the whole formative process of the mistletoe. The task is to blend the glutinous substance of the mistletoe in the right way with the triturating medium, and so increase gradually the potency of the viscum substance to a very high degree. Having ascertained the main formula, we should vary it, specialising according to the requirements of this or that organ; and also bearing in mind the particular tree on which the mistletoe grew; I shall make further suggestions in that matter. Another important point will be to arrive at a co-operation of this glutinous substance with certain metallic substances this effect can of course be arrived at also by the metallic ingredients of other plants. But the co-operation, for instance, of mistletoe from an apple-tree, with triturated silver salts, could produce something eminently capable of counteracting all cancers in the hypogastric regions.

These things must be brought forward with caution at the present time. The trend of which they are manifestations is correct, beyond question, and based on well-established research in spiritual science. But on the practical side, we are dependent on the actual blending and preparation of the mistletoe substance, and have not yet sufficient knowledge for successful carrying out. Here spiritual science can only work to our full benefit if it is in continuous contact with clinical experience. And this interrelationship of spiritual science and medicine is made very difficult, for the opportunities for clinical observation and the investigations of spiritual science are kept widely apart by our contemporary social institutions. But just this can show that we can only succeed in these matters if and when both lines of procedure co-operate. Thus it is urgently desirable to collect experience in this direction, for it will hardly be possible to convince general public opinion in these matters, unless you can provide at least verification by external reports from clinics, etc. It is not so much an internal necessity to obtain such evidence; but it is an imperative external necessity.

It is quite possible to prove that the therapeutic effect of the mistletoe is really based on the fact just put before you. It will only be necessary to proceed methodically. For, as I have already pointed out the trunk formations of trees are really practically outgrowths of the proper substance of the earth; they are only little mounds containing still the vegetable element and from them the other essential parts of all trees sprout forth. Now, suppose a mistletoe grows on the tree trunk, it sends its roots earthward, although it takes root on the tree. Now consider those plants which share the mad “aristocraticism” of mistletoe without sharing its “bohemianism” of living parasitically. One can expect to make similar experiences when testing such plants. This is bound to be so. Examine and test winter flowering plants with reference to their contrariety, their anti-tendency against the normal tendencies of the human organism, including, of course, the normal tendency to discase. We must expect the plants which flower “out of season” to have effects similar to that of the mistletoe. Extend the experiments to Helleborus niger, the hellebore, and similar effects will be found. It is, however, necessary to take notice of the contrast, already outlined, between the male and female respectively, Helleborus niger will hardly produce any effect—or any visible effect—if administered to women. But on men it will show appreciable influence in the case of tumours, if it is applied in a higher potency arrived at in the way already suggested for mistletoe.

1924-04-22-GA314

Dr. Köller: I had a conversation with a lay doctor about carcinoma treatment. I told him that I believe Viscum is a cure for this. He replied that this would be the case, but that one would have to take something else, namely Quendel; otherwise one would not have the possibility to get to the disease with Viscum. Quendel is what provides the possibility.

Did the man know this on his own initiative?

Dr. Köller: I got to know him because he had performed a remarkable healing. A girl who was almost blind came to see him. He is an eye diagnostician. It is not clear how he does it. He has 750 kinds of tea. It is so difficult to have a conversation with these people. They are all very optimistic. He said that everything can be cured, even cancer. He didn't ask how we do it, he just said it was through mistletoe. He told me that he and a few friends had once been walking through a landscape and had come across a cherry tree with mistletoe on it; the tree was stunted and had cancer. The man said to himself that there was a great healing power in mistletoe.

Viscum is the specific for carcinoma. There is nothing to be done about it. Of course, because basically every disease is treated differently, since every organism is in a certain condition, the remedies are sometimes supported by the addition of something else. It is possible that he has cured with mistletoe. He does not use it as an injection. In that case, it is possible that something else would be needed as an addition. But when Viscum is used as an injection, it is the specific remedy.

You just have to pay attention to the differences in the individual case, whether you have the mistletoe from an oak tree, a cherry tree or another tree, such as an apple tree. The essential thing is that the use of mistletoe juice really depends on the fact that we actually have to enhance its effect. I don't know if you have seen that we are not seeking to use Viscum in such a simple way, but that we need an apparatus to do so. First we bring the mistletoe juices into a vertical movement, and then we let a horizontally rotating movement penetrate them. The aim is to make the mistletoe juice drip and to circulate it in drops, combining it again with mistletoe juice in horizontal circles, so that a special structure is created right down to the smallest circles. This is actually only the healing effect of the viscum, which arises. Of course, it is an effective remedy in itself; but the absolutely specific remedy only arises in this complicated way. The only thing that can be said is that when the disease occurs in a complicated way, quendel is used. Because the pure carcinoma, which is a self-contained disease, is not like influenza or flu, for example, where all sorts of things can be added. It is a self-contained disease that is treated with a self-contained remedy.

It is interesting that a person comes up with something like this just because of what he has told you and what you have said, but it is only a mask, not a mask known to him; because the knowledge can only come to such a person in his sleep. The Lord gives to his own in his sleep, truly. There is a prophetic foresight in his sleep that he is looking for mistletoe. Then he remembers this unconscious prophetic experience just as he comes to the mistletoe. A conversation takes place that is quite insignificant for the matter itself. It must be clear that a certain foreknowledge is possible, especially in cases of illness. You can rely on that. I remind you of the case of Schleichs: the person concerned knew that he would die the next night.

Dr. Köller: Basically, it turned out that he also cures in other ways. He said that he had not been at rest; he did not believe that I would get anywhere.

He does not inject. If you give the remedy mistletoe as an internal medicine, you cannot hit the cancer. You hit more of his soul. But you are hitting a malformation in the etheric body, which expresses itself through an impairment of the sensory. You cannot heal internally with mistletoe, only through injection. I understand what he is saying to you; he doesn't dare to approach the matter.

Is the cause of cancer the same in women and men? Is the cause different in the upper and lower human being? I believe I have noticed that the remedy satisfied in the case of stomach cancer but did not satisfy in the case of uterine cancer. Success was clear in the case of stomach cancer in men. In contrast, the matter drags on in the case of uterine cancer. In some cases we cannot get at it; we always injected into the periphery, even in the case of uterine cancer.

It is of course the case that you have to decide whether to inject further away from the site of the cancer or to get very close. If you can get very close to the site, you will achieve results more quickly than if the cancer is in a place where you cannot get close.

With the uterus, you can get close all around, while with stomach cancer you are much further away.

That is quite right. But on the other hand, there is much more communication between the surface and the stomach than between the surface and the uterus. The uterus is a more internal organ. However, the different success is not justified by the fact that there is a difference between men and women. There must be other conditions. All sources of error must be excluded. It is definitely the case that some of our remedies have gained a reputation for being less effective because the remedies in the way they used to be prepared were not as stable. Now, I believe, this no longer occurs in the same way; when they have aged, they will no longer work less well.

For some of the remedies, we are still in the experimental stage.

It has become much more apparent to me that the carcinoma remedy, as it has been manufactured so far, loses a great deal when it is one year old, while it is absolutely effective when it is not particularly old. So this matter would also have to be excluded, excluded as a source of error, and included. Possibly a considerably larger dose would also have to be used for uterine cancer.

1924-08-28-GA319

One may now ask, what is to be one's attitude towards cancer! We have seen how the etheric body is able to develop over-strong forces from itself in some particular organ.

Spiritual investigation has led to the adoption of the former course—that which relates to the astral body. In order to cure cancer, the forces of the astral body must be made stronger. And it may now be admitted that the remedy has really been discovered in the plant kingdom.

When the mistletoe is prepared in such a way that this superabundant etheric quality which it has taken from the tree is administered to a person under certain conditions, by injection (and, since we are observing all these facts in a spiritual manner), we gain the following information: that the mistletoe, as an external substance, absorbs what is manifest in the human body as the rampant etheric forces in cancer.

Mental illnesses

190X-GA034

from 'Essays on Anthroposophy from the Journals “Lucifer” and “Lucifer-Gnosis” 1903-1908'

Question: “Does it not contradict the doctrine of reincarnation that a person's mental abilities decrease during his life? It does happen that brilliant people become mentally deficient in old age. Which spirit then incarnates again: the highly developed one of their mature age, or the mentally deficient one of their old age?”

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The answer to this question presupposes that one has a correct idea of the relationship between the physical (sensory) and the supersensible essence of man. The physical essence is subject to physical laws. During its embodiment, the human spirit can only accomplish that which these physical laws allow.

If, due to the laws of the body, the spirit is no longer able to function in the same way as it was able to in an earlier period of life, this is because its body has become a less suitable medium for its spirit.

Let us assume that we are dealing with a brilliant teacher. He teaches a very talented boy. He will probably achieve a result that will astonish the world. Later, an ungifted boy will be entrusted to him. The same ingenious art of education will only achieve an effect that is far below the first. And this decrease in effect can also occur if the first boy is later no longer able to absorb what his teacher has to offer in the same way as before due to an illness. Does this mean that the teacher's pedagogical art has become less? Will he not, as soon as he has the opportunity, be able to reach the full height of his work again?

It is no different with the human spirit in relation to the body. It is the body that ages; and only the aged body is no longer able to express what the spirit has given it. As soon as this spirit has the opportunity to do so again in a subsequent incarnation, it will also be at the height of its powers.

Now, our questioner will say: but the old man who has become feeble-minded would then at least have his former powers within him, even if he cannot express them. This too need not be the case. For the consciousness of our self is also dependent on the laws of our body.

We are never fully conscious of our spirit, but only to the extent that the laws of our present embodiment allow.

One must clearly distinguish between what one is and what one recognizes of oneself at any given time.

What one is is one eternally; what one recognizes of oneself at any given time depends just as much on the (temporal) laws of embodiment as what one recognizes of the outside world. If, due to the deterioration of my body, I no longer have the ability to control the outside world as I used to, then I also no longer have the other ability to control myself in the same way. But because this ability is only taken from me by facts that are not in my mind but outside of it, I will have it again as soon as I no longer live in unsuitable but in suitable external laws in a new embodiment.

The contradiction that is to be interpreted by the above question does not lie in the field of spiritual facts themselves, but only in the prejudices that materialism brings to bear against theosophy.

Related pages

• Medicine
• Man - the human being
• Worldview spiritual science
• The double
• Metamorphosis

References and further reading

• Rudolf Treichler (1909-1994)
  • Soulways: Development, Crises, and Illnesses of the Soul: The Developing Soul-Life Phases, Thresholds and Biography (1990 in EN, in FR 2006 as
  • 'Troubles Psychiques Au Cours De La Vie', original in DE 1981 as ''Die Entwicklung der Seele im Lebenslauf')
  • Seelische Entwicklung und Sucht (1988)
  • Vom Wesen der Nervenkrankheiten (1956); probably the same as 'Vom Wesen der Nervenkrankheiten und ihrer Behandlung : unter Berücksichtigung der Multiplen Sklerose' (1956)
  • Vom Wesen der Epilepsie (1962, 1991)
  • Vom Wesen der Hysterie (1964)
  • 'Der schizophrene Prozess : Beiträge zu einer erweiterten Pathologie und Therapie' (1967, 1981; in FR 1995 as 'Dynamique De La Schizophrenie. Pour Une Psychiatrie Differente')
• Norbert Glas:
  • Adolescence and Diseases of Puberty (1945)
  • How to look at illness (1951)
  • Geistige Urgründe körperlicher Krankheiten: Dargestellt am Leben berühmter Persönlichkeiten (1986)
• Otto Julius Hartmann
  • 'Sünde, Krankheit und Heilung' (1953), later as 'Schicksal, Krankheit und Heilung' (1972)
  • 'Zivilisationsschäden machen uns krank' (1958)
• 28th Medical Professions Conference: "Illness and Healing in the Light of the Metamorphosis Theory" (04.06.1982 - 06.06.1982; o.a. with Walther Buehler,Wolfgang Schad)
• Leendert F.C. Mees: 'Krankheit als Segen. Heilung als Aufgabe.' (1984)
• Rita Leroi (1913-1988): 'Illness and healing in the context of cosmic evolution' (1988)
• Zivilisationskrankheiten : Ursachen, Vorbeugung und Heilung ; Nervosität, Zeitnot, Depression ; Meditation als Heilkraft der Seele (1989)
• Klaus Raschen: 'Krankheit und Ekstase : dargestellt am Leben der Teresa von Avila : Beitrag zu einer Zeiterscheinung : eine pastoralmedizinische Studie' (1992)
• Boris Krause: 'Das Ich und sein Spiegel - Seelische Erkrankungen aus anthroposophischer Sicht' (2021)
• Judith von Halle: 'Illness and healing and the mystery language of the gospels' (2007, original in DE: 'Von Krankheiten und Heilungen und von der Mysteriensprache in den Evangelien')

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see also:

• Aspects of human behaviour#Nervousness 2
• Schizophrenia#References and further reading