Healing and medicine
Healing and medicine The physical man is the expression of the harmony of the world word. The human physical body is formed by the work of the higher members (etheric body, astral body and I), as well as the work of the higher hierarchies of the angelic beings. This work of the World Word creates the healthy, healed human being. Illness and death occurs through the work of the adversary beings and the karma that arises from it. Diseases can occur through mechanical action, the action of fellow men, aging or physical illness. Illness means the occurrence of an imbalance in the human organism. The imbalance is caused by too strong luciferic or ahrimanic effects. "You see, man is so constituted in his temporal life between birth and death that he has the forces within him that continually kill him. These are the forces that solidify him, that are effective by creating the bone system, and that in their pathological formation can lead to sclerosis, gout, diabetes and so on. Man has these forces within himself, I would say, as the hardening forces. That is the one system of forces. The other system of forces that man has within him is the one that rejuvenates him continuously. It is the system of forces that is especially expressed when a person falls into pleurisy, into feverish illnesses, into everything that burns the person internally. In the anthroposophical world view I have called the strengthening forces ahrimanic forces, and the forces that lead to fever, that is, the thermal forces, the luciferic forces. Both forces must be kept in constant balance in the human being. ", (B171, 14.6.1921, evening). The illness can then be cured by balancing these imbalances and by establishing a new healthy equilibrium. Through the Fall of Man in the Lemurian period, man has come out of pure union with the gods and has come into union with Luciferian and Ahrimanic forces. Illness means that the human being does not correspond to the ideal of the gods. There is something out of balance in the human organism and the illness tries to restore the ideal and health condition. The Saviour brings the healthy balance of the imbalance between Luciferian and Ahrimanic forces. The Christ-being, the Christpowers in the world and in man himself must be found and their healing effect must be supported. "Because man, according to his own ideas, which are subject to error, exposed himself to the influences of the outside world, because he lived according to desires and passions which he did not allow to be regulated according to higher spiritual influences, the possibility of illness arose. But a special effect of the Luciferian influence was that now man could not feel his single earth life as a continuation of the bodiless existence. He now absorbed such earthly impressions which could be experienced through the inoculated astral element and which were connected with the forces that destroy the physical body. Man felt this as the dying of his life on earth. And the "death" brought about by human nature itself occurred as a result of this. This points to a significant mystery in human nature, to the connection of the human astral body with diseases and death", (B007, "The Development of the World and Man"). An astral body uninfluenced by adversaries brings the images of the star world into the human etheric body. "The physical materiality experiences a further development of its being by changing over to weaving and living in the etheric. And life depends on the organic body being taken away from the essence of the earthly and built up into it from the extraterrestrial universe", (B185, p.16). The etheric body, the astral body and the ego-organisation build up on the human organism the organs that correspond to their own organisation. The ether body works on the physical body, the astral body on the ether body and physical body, the ego-organisation on the astral body, ether body and physical body. Man does not come to consciousness through this building up activity but through a dismantling activity that starts afterwards. "Conscious thinking does not take place in processes of formation and growth, but in processes of final formation and withering, dying off, which are continuously integrated into the etheric event", (B185, p.17). ) "The astral body builds up its organs; it decomposes them again by letting the emotional activity unfold in the consciousness of the soul; the ego builds up its "ego-organisation"; it decomposes them again by letting the will activity become effective in self-consciousness", (B185, p.17). The three higher human bodily members are forming and building up the respective lower bodily members; the activity of the etheric body is limited between the physical body astral body, just as its building up activity is again limited between the etheric body and the ego-organisation. There, where each building up activity ends and dismantling activity starts, thinking, feeling and wanting can become effective. Human life is created by the influence of higher worlds through the higher members of the body. Health is present as long as the balance between the limbs is not disturbed and the processes of building up and dismantling are appropriate to the age. "Man is what he is, through body, etheric body, soul (astral body) and I (spirit). He must be seen as healthy from these limbs; he must be perceived as sick in the disturbed equilibrium of these limbs; remedies must be found for his health which restore the disturbed equilibrium", (B185, "I. True Human Being Recognition as the Basis of Medical Art"). Correctly found remedies can then have an inhibiting or strengthening effect on the activity of the etheric body, astral body or ego-organisation to help restore this balance. "One will only be able to think of remedies if one develops a knowledge of how an earthly substance or process on earth relates to the etheric, the astral, the ego", (B185, "I. True Human Being Recognition as the Basis of Medical Art"). The substances of the physical body are seized by the etheric body and lifted up to a higher level, transformed into a living being. The physical body cannot reach the living level through its activity alone, nor can it contribute to the healing of illness. This can only happen through the etheric body. "With this, however, health is recognized as the state that has its origin in the etheric organism. Healing must therefore consist of a treatment of the etheric organism". (B185, chap. II). With health there must be no interference of natural processes in the human organism. The activity of the etheric body lies in overcoming natural processes. But sickness is caused by the higher limbs that form the etheric body, when the astral body and the ego-organisation, in a way influenced by the effect of adversaries, have too strong an effect on the lower limbs. "... when the effect of the higher limbs becomes irregular. ... One must see in the essence of being ill an intensive connection of the astral body or the ego-organisation with the physical organism", (B185, "I. True Human Being Recognition as the Basis of Medical Art"). So, what we are dealing with here is an imbalance that hinders a healthy activity of the etheric body. The activity of the etheric body consists in lifting the substances of the physical body out of the sphere of action of the earth forces. "He is such a substance as chemistry considers him only as a component of the earth body. If it comes to life, it must cease to be a mere part of the earth. He steps out of the community with the earth. He is included in the forces which radiate from the extraterrestrial to the earth from all sides. (B185, chapter III). The etheric body seizes the substances of the physical body and transforms them into living, vegetable substances and then decomposes them again. "This results in a flow of substances. The lifeless changes into the living; the living changes into the lifeless." (B185, ch. V). This is how the plant is created. In animals, a part of this flow of substances is stopped, not transformed into finished plant substance, but transformed by the astral body and raised to animal, sentient substance. "And the animal sentient substance is a result of this forming astral body." (B185, ch. V). In human beings this flow of substance is stopped again, then it is seized by the ego-organisation and lifted up to human organisation. "A threefold substance flow is created. In it the human inner and outer form arises. Thus it becomes the carrier of the self-conscious spiritual life. Right down to the smallest parts of his substance, the human being in his formation is a result of the ego-organisation." (B185, chapter V). If man is ill, the effects of his body members are in an imbalance. The astral body and the ego have an effect on the etheric body and the physical body in a way not wanted by the good gods. These pathogenic forces also find an equivalent in the plants and minerals of the earth. Forces that have to be found by a spiritual-scientific medicine in order to be able to use them to support the healing process. "The knowledge of the effects of the remedies is based on seeing through the power developments existing in the non-human world. For, in order to initiate a healing process, substances must be introduced into the organism, which spread in it in such a way that the disease process gradually changes into a normal one. (B185, ch. XV). Illness means a process in the organism that is not in harmony with its activity. A process that is stimulated from the outside. The remedy brings external processes into the organism, which counteract the disease processes that are also stimulated from outside. For this purpose it is necessary to know the effects of disease processes and the remedies in the organism. A knowledge of remedies is therefore "to observe the effects resulting from the relationship of the inner constitution of forces of a substance in relation to the forces radiating from the earth or radiating into it", (B185, Chapter XVI). It is the responsibility of a spiritual-scientific anthroposophical medicine to bring together the useful achievements of a materialistic medicine which is generally accepted today and to continue to research a valid and true knowledge of humanity in order to expand the art of healing. To research how the spiritual and the soul work through the ego, the astral body and the etheric body into the physical body. "The spinal cord nervous system with all its branches is the one in which the astral organization excellently intervenes. It is therefore the carrier of what is soulful in man, the reflex processes, but not of what is going on in the I, in the self-conscious mind. The actual brain nerves are those which are subject to the ego-organisation. With them the activities of the etheric and astral organization recede. (B185, chapter VI). In which substances which forces intervene for which build-up or decomposition processes. "There are two different processes in the nerves: The decay of the protein substance and the flowing through of this decaying substance with etheric substance, which is fanned to its flow by acids, salts, phosphorous and sulphurous. The balance between the two processes is mediated by the fats and the water. In essence, these are the continuous processes of disease that permeate the organism. They must be balanced by equally effective healing processes. (B185, chapter VII). In which parts of the physical, which processes are expressed. "We are dealing with two systems of forces. One has its origin in nervous processes; the other in blood formation. In the nerve processes, pathogenic processes develop to the extent that they can be continuously cured by the blood processes that counteract them". (B185, chapter VII). In the human blood, as a substance, is the carbon which is closely related to the spirituality of man, to his ego. "Blood is a very special juice." The heart as the place of etherization of blood, (see Chapter II). Where the substance of the blood dissolves, to etheric substance so moral-aesthetic impulses can flow into us. Man has his heart which can achieve this connection with the Christ impulse, and then moral intuition, moral-aesthetic impulses flow into us. In the etherization of the blood the ego is at work. "The blood is just as much an expression of the individualized etheric body as the brain and spinal cord are an expression of the individualized astral body. And through this individualization comes about that which lives out in the "I"", (B192, 25.10.1906,p.55). Through the blood the spirit can work in the human being and build up the human body. "The blood takes up the images of the outside world internalized by the brain, transforms them into living educative forces and through them forms the present human body. The blood is thus the substance that builds up the human body", (B192, 25.10.1906, p.56). "The blood has in its plasma substance and in the fibre material those forces which serve the growth and the metabolism in the narrow sense. In that which appears as iron content in the examination of the red blood cells lies the origin of the healing blood effect". (B185, chapter VII). "The protein is that substance of the living body which can be transformed by its pictorial powers in the most varied manner, so that what results from the transformed protein substance appears in the forms of the organs and the whole organism". (B185, ch. IX). Life means being, to become something from something immovable, dependent, dead, a moving being, capable of change in itself. "In doing lies the essence of the organism, not in its substances. The organization is not a matter, but an activity. The substance carries within itself the stimulus for activity. If it has lost this stimulus, it has no further meaning for the organization." (B185, ch. XVIII). Thus health and healing must be found in the action of forces. It cannot be sought in dead substances. Only the healing effect of forces that counteract the forces of illness, in the knowledge of what is healing, what is the healthy organism and what it lacks to be healthy, is the knowledge of the right medicine. A knowledge of life and human development, of the air soul process and light soul process, of waking and sleeping, of the processes of building up and dismantling their origins and meaningfulness. "The ego-organisation needs this transition of the organic substance into the lifeless state. But it needs the very process of transition, not what is then created by the transition. (B185, ch. XVI). Man is not a chemical-biological machine that produces feelings and thoughts. It is a being of physical body, soul and spirit. "Life consists basically in seeking a balance between the sober, dry, philistine and the rapturously fantastic. We are psychologically healthy when we find the balance between the rapturously fantastic and the dry philistine. Physically we are healthy when we can live in the balance between fever and sclerosis, ossification. And this can be done in an infinite number of ways, in which individuality can live", (B075, 13.12.1919). An understanding of spiritual-scientific anthroposophical medicine can be found with regard to what in earlier times, in ancient Egypt, was the temple sleep. It is something that can no longer be considered for today's man, in his much more solidified physical body. But the effect of healing through spiritual forces and the attainment of past states of a healed human body can be seen in it and gives an understanding of the healing ways of spiritual-scientific medicine. "Now we have to put the essence of temple sleep, which belonged to the remedies of the Egyptian priests, in front of the soul with a few strokes. The one who had suffered any kind of damage to his health, ... in most cases the person concerned was brought to the temple and put into a kind of sleep. But this was not an ordinary sleep, but a kind of somnambular sleep, which was so heightened that the person was able to have not only chaotic dreams, but to see real faces. ... There before the sick man lying in temple sleep stood the figure of the woman giving birth to her own kind without the fertilisation of her kind. There before him stood the woman who gave birth, the woman with the child, who is virgin there, the goddess who was a comrade of mankind in those Lemurian times and who has since vanished from the gaze of mankind. She was called the holy Isis in ancient Egypt. Mankind could normally only see this Isis when death had not yet arrived, when people in normal consciousness were comrades of such figures who floated around them and who produced their own kind in a virginal way. And when Isis was no longer the visible comrade of mankind, when she was raptured into the circle of the gods, she was still interested from the spiritual world, in the health of men, the priests said. And when people were brought to an abnormal view of those old figures, that sacred image of Isis, as in temple sleep, then the Goddess still had a healing effect, for she is the principle in man that was there before the mortal shell surrounded man. No mortal has lifted her veil, for she is the figure who was there when death had not yet come into the world at all. She is that which is rooted in the Eternal; she is the great healing entity that mankind will regain when it is again immersed in spiritual wisdom. “, (B148, 5.8.1908).
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