FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
AUTHORS: ITA WEGMAN
AND
RUDOLF STEINER
CHAPTER 1
TRUE INSIGHT INTO THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN BEING AS A FOUNDATION FOR THE ART OF MEDICINE
In this book new possibilities for medical knowledge and skills are outlined. To evaluate properly what is presented it is necessary to enter into the points of view that prevailed when the medical approach outlined here came into being.
It is not a matter of opposition to contemporary medicine, which works with the scientific principles and methods accepted today; we fully recognise its principles. And we are of the opinion that we are offering should be used only by those in medical practice, who can work as fully licensed physicians in accordance with those principles.
However, we add further insights, gained through other methods, to what can be known about the human being through today‟s recognized scientific methods, and out of this extended insight into the world and the human being we find ourselves impelled to work also for an extension of the art of medicine.
Fundamentally speaking, contemporary medicine can offer no objection to what we have to say, since we do not negate it. Only someone who not only demands that one affirm his knowledge, but also, in addition, insists that no insight be proposed going beyond the limits of his insight can reject our efforts a priori.
We find the extension of insight into the world and the human being in anthroposophy, which was founded by Rudolf Steiner. To the insight into the physical human being which can be gained alone by today‟s natural-scientific methods, anthroposophy adds that of the spiritual human being. It does not turn, through mere reflection, from insights into the physical to insights into the spiritual. On such a path one just finds oneself confronted with more or less well-conceived hypotheses, which no one can prove to correspond to anything in reality.
Before making statements about the spiritual, anthroposophy develops the methods which entitle it to make such statements. To gain an insight into these methods consider the following: all results of today‟s recognized science are fundamentally derived form human sense impressions. For even though the human being may enlarge upon that which is given through the senses in experiments or in observation with the help of instruments, nothing essentially new is added by these means to the experience of that world in which the human being lives through his senses.
But also through thinking nothing new is added to what is given by the senses, to the extent that it is active in investigating the physical world. Thinking combines, analyzes, etc. the sense impressions to discover laws (the laws of nature); yet, the researcher of the sensory world must admit: the thinking that wells up from within me does not add anything real to the reality of the sense world.
However, that immediately becomes different if one no longer stops short at the thinking which the human being initially acquires through life-experience and education. One can augment and strengthen this thinking in itself1. One can place simple, easily encompassed thoughts in the center of consciousness and, with exclusion of all other thoughts, concentrate all the force of soul on such ideas. As a muscle grows strong when exerted again and again in the directionof the same force, sot he force of soul grows strong with respect to the region which usually governs thinking, when it is exercised in the above-mentioned way. It must be emphasized that these exercises have to be based on simple, easily encompassed thoughts.. For in doing the exercises the soul must not be exposed to any kind of influences that are semiconscious or unconscious. (We can but indicate the principle of such exercises here; a detailed description and instructions on how in particular such exercises here; a detailed description and instructions on how in particular such exercises should be done can be found in Rudolf Steiner‟s books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science,2 and other Anthroposophical works.)
It lies near-at-hand to object that if someone thus gives himself up with all his strength to certain thoughts placed in the center of consciousness, he will thereby expose himself to all manner of autosuggestion and the like, and that he will simply enter the region of fantasy. But anthroposophy shows at the same time how the exercise should be done, so that this objection loses its validity altogether. It shows how to proceed in full consciousness and wide-awake while doing the exercises, as in the solving of an arithmetical or geometrical problem. As consciousness can at no point veer off into unconscious regions in doing the latter, so also not in doing the indicated exercised, provided the instructions of anthroposophy are well observed.
In the course of such practice an increase of the power of thought is attained, of which one had not the remotest idea before. The exercising of the power of thought is felt within oneself as a new content of one‟s being. And along with this new content of one‟s being, a world-content is revealed which was not known by actual experience before, though one may perhaps have divine its existence. If one has taken the occasion, in moments of introspection, to observe everyday thinking, one finds the thoughts shadowlike, pale compared to the impressions given by the senses.
What is now perceived in the strengthened force of thinking is not pale or shadowlike at all; it is full of inner content, vividly real and graphic; it is, indeed, of a reality far more intense than the content of sense impressions. A new world begins to dawn for the human being as he has thus expanded the strength of his faculty of perception.
Learning to perceive in this world where before one was only able to perceive in the world of the senses, we become aware that all the laws of nature known to us before are valid only in the physical world; the intrinsic nature of the world he has now entered is that its laws are different, in fact the very opposite of those of the physical world. In this world the law of gravity of the earth does not apply; on the contrary, a force appears, working not from the center of the earth outwards but in reverse direction, from the circumference of the universe towards the center of the earth. And the situation is similar for the other forces of the physical world.
In Anthroposophy, the faculty attained by exercise of perceiving this world is called the capacity for imaginative knowledge. Imaginative not for the reason that one is dealing with
“fantasies,” but because the content of consciousness is filled, not with thought shadows, but with pictures. And as one has the immediate experience of being in a real world through sense perception, so also in the activity of soul called imaginative knowledge. The world to which this knowledge relates is called in anthroposophy the etheric world. This is not to suggest the hypothetical either of modern physics; it is something actually beheld in spirit. The name is used in keeping with older, instinctive presentiments about that world. In the face of what can now be known with full clarity, these old presentiments no longer have a scientific value, but to designate something one needs a name.
Within this ether world an etheric bodily nature of the human being is perceptible that exists besides the physical bodily nature.
This etheric bodily nature is also to be found in its essence in the plant world. Plants have their ether body. The physical laws are indeed only valid for the world of lifeless minerals.
The plant world is possible on earth because there are substances in the earthly element which do not remain within the sphere of physical laws, but which can lay aside the whole complex of physical law and take on one which is opposite to it. Physical laws work as though streaming out from the earth; the etheric laws work as though streaming to the earth from all sides of the universe. It is only possible for world comes into being when he sees in it the working together of the earthly-physical with the cosmic-etheric.
And so it is with regard to the ether body of the human being. Through it something happens in the human being which is not a continuation of the lawful working of the forces of the physical body, but is founded on the principle that physical substances, as they stream into the etheric element, initially divest themselves of their physical forces.
These forces functioning in the ether body are active at the beginning of the human being‟s life on earth-most distinctly during the embryonic period-as the forces of formation and growth. During the course of earthly life a portion of these forces emancipates itself form this occupation with formation and growth and becomes forces of thinking, just those forces which, for the ordinary consciousness bring forth the shadowlike world of thoughts.
It is of the utmost importance to know that the human being‟s ordinary forces of thinking are refined form and growth forces. A spiritual element reveals itself in the forming and growing of the human organism. And this spiritual element then appears during the course of later life as the spiritual power of thought.
This power of thought is only one part of the human capacity for form and growth that weaves in the etheric. The other part remains true to the purpose it fulfilled in the beginning of the human being‟s life. Only because the human being continues to evolve even when his form and his growth are advanced, that is, when they are to a certain degree completed, does the etheric spiritual force, which lives and works in the organism, appear in later life as the power of thought.
To imaginative spiritual vision the sculptural3 (plastic) force from one aspect thus reveals
itself as an etheric spiritual element, and from another aspect it appears as the soul content of our thinking.
If one now pursues the substantiality of earthly matter into the ether formation one must say: wherever substances enter into this formation they assume a mode of being which alienates them from physical nature. In this state of alienation they enter into a world where the spiritual comes to meet them, converting them into its own being.
To rise to the etherically living nature of the human being in the way described here is essentially different form the unscientific postulation of a “vital force” which was customary even up to the middle of the nineteenth century in order to explain living corporealities. Here it is a matter of actually beholding-of spiritually perceiving-a reality which exists in the human being and in everything that is alive, just as the physical body exists. To bring about this perception, the ordinary way of thinking is not carried on in some indefinite manner, nor is another world invented through fantasy; rather, human cognition is extended in a very exact way, and this extension then yields the experience of an extended world.
The exercises leading to higher perception can be carried further. Just as one exerts an enhanced force in concentrating on thoughts placed deliberately in the center of consciousness, so one can now also apply such an enhanced force to suppress the attained imaginations (pictures of a spiritual-etheric reality0. One then reaches a state of completely empty consciousness. One is awake and aware, but the wakefulness has, to begin with, no content. (Further details are to be found in the above-mentioned book). But this wakefulness without content does not remain. The consciousness that is emptied of any physical or etheric pictorial impressions becomes filled with a content that pours into it from a real world of spirit, even as the impressions from the physical world pour into the physical senses.
Through imaginative knowledge one has come to know a second member of the human being; through the emptied consciousness that becomes filled with spiritual content one learns to know a third. Anthroposophy calls the insight that comes about in this way knowledge by inspiration. (One should not be confused by these terms; they are borrowed from the instinctive way of looking into spiritual worlds which belonged to primitive ages, but the sense in which they are used here is stated exactly.) And the world to which the human being gains entry by inspiration is called the astral world. When one speaks in the way explained here of an “etheric world,” the forces working actively form the circumference of the universe towards the earth are meant. When one speaks of the “astral world,” though, one proceeds in accordance with the perception of inspired consciousness from the active working of the cosmos towards certain spiritual beings which reveal themselves in the forces that radiate out from the earth. One speaks of actual spiritual beings actively working from the distant universe just as one speaks of the stars and constellations when one gazes tot he sky at nighttime with the senses. Hence the expression “astral world”.
In this astral world the human being bears the third member of his nature: his astral body.
Earthly materiality must also flow into this astral body. Through this it is further estranged from its physical nature. Just as the human being has his etheric body in common with the plant
world, so he has his astral body in common with the animal world.
The specific human essence, which raises the human being above the animal world, can be recognized through inspiration. Anthroposophy speaks here of intuition. In inspiration, a world of spiritual beings reveals itself; in intuition, the relationship of the discerning human being to this world grows more intimate. One now brings the purely spiritual to full consciousness with oneself and realizes in ones conscious experience immediately that it has nothing to do with the experience through the body. Through this, one transplants oneself into a life where one is human spirit among other spirit beings. In inspiration, the spiritual beings of the world reveal themselves; through intuition, one lives with these beings.
Thereby one comes to acknowledge the fourth member of the human being, the true “I”. Once again one becomes aware of how earthly substance, in adapting to the weaving and being of the “I”, estranges itself yet further from its physical nature. The nature which this substance assumes as “ego organization” is, to begin with, the form of earthly substance which is most estranged from its earthly physical character.
That which one thus learns to know as “astral body” and “I” is not bound to the physical body in the human organization the way the etheric body is. Inspiration and intuition show how in sleep “astral body” and “I” separate from the physical and etheric body, and that only in the waking state is there full mutual permeation of the four members of human nature to form a unified human entity.
In sleep the physical and etheric human body remain behind in the physical and etheric world. Yet they are not in the same position as the physical and the etheric body of a plantlike being. They bear within them the aftereffects of the essence of the astral and the I. Indeed, in the very moment they would no longer bear these aftereffects within them, the human being must awaken. A human physical body must never be subjected to purely physical, nor a human ether body to purely etheric influences. Through this they would disintegrate.
Now, inspiration and intuition also show something else. Physical substance experiences a further development of its nature in its transition to living and moving in the etheric. And life depends on the fact that the organic body is torn out of the earthly state to be built up by the extraterrestrial cosmos. This building up, however, leads to life, but not to consciousness, and not to self-consciousness. The astral body must build up its organization within the physical and the etheric element; the “I” must do the same with regard to the ego organization. But this upbuilding does not result in a conscious development of soul life. For this to occur, a process of breaking down must counter the process of building up. The astral body builds up its organs; it breaks them down again in that it allows the activity of felling to develop in the conscious soul; the I builds up its “ego organization”, it breaks it down again, in that will activity becomes active in self-consciousness.
The spirit does not unfold within the human being on the basis of upbuilding of substance (anabolism) , but on the basis of a breaking-down of substance. Wherever the spirit is to be active in the human being, substance must withdraw from its activity (catabolism).
Even the development of thinking in the etheric body does not depend on a continuation of etheric essence but, on the contrary, on its breaking down. Conscious thinking does not happen in processes of formation and growth, but in processes of deformation and of withering away and dying, which are continually interwoven into the etheric events.
In conscious thinking, thoughts liberate themselves from the form of the body, and, as soul forms, become human experiences.
Looking at the human being on the basis of such an insight into his nature, one becomes aware that the human being as a whole, or any single organ, can only be understood with clarity if one knows how the physical, the etheric, the astral body and the I are active in him.4There are organs in which mainly the I is active; in others the I works but little, and instead the physical organization is predominant.
Just as healthy man can only be comprehended by recognizing how the higher members of the human being take possession of earthly substance in order to compel it into their service, and also by recognizing how earthly substance changes when it enters the sphere of action of the higher members of the human being, so also can one understand the diseased human being only if one realizes the situation into which the organism as a whole, or a certain organ or series of organs enter when the mode of action of the higher members falls into irregularity. And one will only be able to think of medicines when one develops a knowledge of how an earthly substance or earthly process is related to the etheric, to the astral, to the I,. For only then will one know how to enable the higher members of the human being to unfold unhindered, by introducing an earthly substance into the human organism or by treating it with an earthly activity, or also to enable the earth substance to find, in what has been administered, the necessary support to be on the way to becoming the foundation for the earthly working of the spiritual element.
The human being is what he is by virtue of physical body, ether body, soul 9astral body) and I (spirit). He must, in health, be looked at from the viewpoint of these members; in disease he must be perceived in the disturbed equilibrium of these members; for his healing one must find medications that restore the disturbed balance.
A view of medicine built on such foundations, as included here, is outlined in this presentation.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER II
WHY DOSE THE HUMAN BEING BECOME !!! (AT ALL)
Whoever thinks about the fact that a human being can be ill, becomes involved in a paradox if he wants to think purely along the lines of science in the usual sense. To begin with, he will have to assume that this paradox lies in the nature of existence itself. What happens in the course of illness is considered superficially, a process of nature. What takes place in its stead in health, though, is also a process of nature.
Processes of nature are known first of all only through observation of the world external to thehuman being,and through observationof the human being only to the extent that one observes him in exactly the same way as one does outer nature. One conceives of the human being as a part of nature then, specifically one in which the processes, which can also be observed external to him, are very complicated, yet are of the same kind as these outer processes of nature.
However, a question arises here which cannot be answered from this point of view: How do processes of nature originate in the human being – the animal will not be spoken of here – which ran counter to healthy processes?
The healthy human organism would seem to be intelligible as a part of nature; the diseased does not. Therefore it must in some way be inherently intelligible, by virtue of something which it does not have from nature.
One may well imagine that the spiritual, nonphysical in the human being has as its physical foundation a complicated process of nature, which is like a continuation of the process of nature found outside the human being. However, has ever the continuation of a process of nature based in a healthy human organism been seen to evoke conscious, nonphysical experience as
such? The opposite is the case. Conscious, nonphysical experience is extinguished when the process of nature continues in a direct line. This is what happens in sleep and it happens in fainting.
Consider, on the other hand, how conscious spiritual life becomes intensified when an organ becomes diseased. Pain arises, or at least discomfort and displeasure. The life of feeling acquires a content which it normally does not have. In addition, the life of will is impaired. The movement of a limb, which in health happens as a matter of course, cannot be accomplished, because pain or discomfort counteract and hinder it.
Observe the transition from the painful movement of a limb to its paralysis. Movement accompanied by pain is the initial stage of paralysis. An active spiritual element intervenes in the organism. In health, it reveals itself above all in the life of mental imaging or thinking. A certain mental image is activated, and a limb movement follows. One does not consciously enter with the mental image into the organic processes which culminate in the movement. The mental
image dives into the unconscious. In the healthy state a feeling that is active only at the soul level arises between mental image and movement. It does not relate distinctly to any organic bodily process. This is the case, however, in a state of disease. The feeling, experienced in health as released from the physical organism, joins with it in the experience of illness.
Thus the relation between the processes of healthy feeling and pathological experience becomes evident. Something must be present, which, in the healthy organism, is less intensively joined with it than in the diseased organism. To spiritual perception this discloses itself to be the astral body. It is a supersensible organization within the physical-sensory organization. Either it takes hold of an organ loosely and leads to an independent soul experience which is not felt to be connected with the body, or it takes hold of an organ loosely and leads to an independent soul experience which is not felt to be connected with the body, or it takes hold of an organ intensively, and leads to the experience of illness. One form of illness must be conceived of as a seizing of the organism by the astral body, which causes the spiritual human being to submerge more deeply into his body than is the case in health.
But thinking, too, has its physical basis in the organism. In the healthy state it is even more loosened from the organism than feeling. Spiritual perception finds, in addition to the astral body, also a special ego organization thinking. If, with this ego organization, the human being submerges himself intensively into his bodily nature, a condition occurs which makes the observation of his own organism similar to that of the external world. In observing an object or process of the outer world it is a matter of fact that the thought of the human being and that which is observed are not in living interaction, but are independent of each other. In a human limb this only occurs when it becomes paralyzed. Then it becomes outer world. The ego organization is no longer loosely united with the limb as it is in health, when it can unite with it in the movement and withdraw again at once; it submerges into the limb permanently and is no longer able to withdraw from it.
Here again the processes of healthy limb movement and of paralysis stand side by side in their relatedness. Indeed, one see it clearly: healthy movement is a beginning paralysis, which at its onset is immediately neutralized again.
One must see the essence of being ill as an intensive union of the astral body or ego organization with the physical organism. Yet this union is only an intensification of what exists more loosely in health. Also the normal intervention of astral body and ego organization in the human body is not related to healthy life processes, but to pathological ones. Wherever the soul and spirit are at work, they suspend the ordinary arrangement of the body; they convert it into its opposite. In doing so they bring the organism on the way to where illness tends to set in. In normal life this is regulated by a process of self-healing as soon as it is generated.
A certain form of illness occurs when the spirit or the soul presses too far into the organism, so that the self-healing process can either not arise at all or only slowly.
Therefore, one must seek the causes of illness in the activity of soul and spirit. And healing must consist in releasing the soul or spiritual element from the physical organization.
This is one kind of illness. There is another. The ego organization and astral body maybe prevented from making the loose connection with bodily nature which is the condition for independent feeling, thinking and willing in ordinary life. Then, a continuation of the healthy processes, beyond the measure appropriate for the organism, occurs in the organs or processes which the soul and spirit are unable to approach. And in such a case it is apparent to spiritual perception that the physical organism does indeed not just carry out the lifeless processes of external nature. The physical organism is permeated by an etheric organism. The physical organism alone could never evoke a process of self-healing. This is kindled in the etheric organism. This then leads to the recognition of health as that condition which has its origin in the etheric organism. Healing must therefore consist in treating the etheric organism.*
* By comparing what was said in the first chapter with the content of the second, insight can be
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER III
THE PHENOMENA OF LIFE
One does not come to an understanding of the healthy and diseased human organism if one has the idea that the way a substance is active nature outside simply continues on into the inner organism when it is ingested with food, or injected or inhaled. It is not a matter of continuation of the action observed in the substance outside the human organism, but, on the contrary, of overcoming it.
The illusion that substances of the outer world simply continue their specific way of action inside the organism arises from the fact that to the ordinary chemical way of thinking it appears to be so. In accordance with its investigations the latter believes that hydrogen, for example, is present in the organism in the same way as in external nature, because it appears in nutrients consumed as food and drink, and then again in the excretions: air, sweat, urine, feces, and in secretions such as bile.
No necessity is felt today to ask what happens within the organism to what appears as hydrogen before entering into the organism and after leaving it.
One does not ask: What does the substance which appears as hydrogen undergo inside the organism?
When this question is raised one immediately feels the need to turn one‟s attention to the contrast between the sleeping and the waking organism. The material essence in the sleeping organism provides no foundation for the unfolding of conscious and self-conscious experiences. Yet it still provides a basis for life to unfold. In this respect the sleeping organism is different from a dead one. In the latter the material basis no longer provides for life. One will not progress any further in understanding so long as one sees the distinction only in the different composition of substances in the dead and the living organism.
Almost half a century ago the eminent physiologist, Du Bois-Reymond,5 pointed out that consciousness can never be explained from reactions of matter. Never, he declared, shall it be understood why it should not be a matter of indifference to a number of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms, how they were, how they are and how they will be arranged, or why, by altering their position, they should bring about in the human being the sensation: I see red; I smell the scent of roses. Such being the case, Du Bois-Reymond contended, the conventional scientific way of thinking can never explain the waking human being, filled with sensations but only the sleeping human being.
With this view he was under an illusion. He believed that the phenomena of consciousness indeed would not follow from the reactions of matter, but that those of life would. In reality, however, one must claim the same for the phenomena of life as Du Bois-Reymond claimed for
those of consciousness: Why should it occur to a number of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms to evoke the phenomenon of life, through the way they were, are, or will be arranged?
Observation shows, after all, that the phenomena of life have an altogether different orientation from those that run their course within the lifeless element. Of the latter one will be able to say: They show that they are dominated by forces radiating outward from the essence of matter, from the relative-center-towards the periphery. Living phenomena show that matter is dominated by forces working from without inward, toward the relative-center. In the transition to the sphere of life, substance must withdraw from the forces radiating outward and become subject to those that radiate inward.
Now it is so that every earthly substance and also earthly process derives its outward radiating forces from the earth and has these forces in common with the earth. It is a substance as seen by chemistry only in as much as it is part of the earth body. When it comes to life, then it must cease being a mere part of earth. It leaves its community with the earth. It becomes included in the extraterrestrial forces that radiate inward to the earth from all sides. Whenever one sees a substance or process unfold in forms of life then it must be conceived of as withdrawing from the forces that work upon it as from the center of the earth, and entering the sphere of other forces, which do not have a center, but a periphery.
These forces work from all sides, as if striving towards the center of the earth. They would dissolve the material nature of the earthly into complete formlessness, tear it asunder, were it not for the heavenly bodies beyond the earth which mingle their influences in the field of these forces and modify the dissolving process. In the plant one can observe what happens. The substances of the earth are lifted out of the sphere of earth influences in plants. They strive towards the formless. This transition to the formless is modified by the influences of the sun and similar effects from cosmic space. When these are no longer working, or when they are working differently, for example at night, then the forces which the substances have from their community with the earth begin to stir once more within them. And out of the cooperation of earthly forces and cosmic forces the plant being originates. If one includes in the term „physical‟ the sphere of all those functional forces which substances can unfold under the earth‟s influence, then the entirely different forces which do not radiate outward from the earth, but in toward it, shall have to be designed by a name in which this different character finds expression. Here we come, from another point of view, to that element in the organization of the human being which we had already outlined from one aspect in the previous chapter. In conformity with an older usage, which has become confused under the influence of the modern way of thinking, oriented as it is to physical phenomena, we have already designated this part of the human organism as the etheric. One shall have to say; in plantlike nature, meaning in that which appears to be living, the etheric is active; or is most dominant.
To the extent that the human being is a living being, the same etheric principle is active in him. However, indeed even with respect to the mere phenomena of life, an important difference becomes apparent in comparison to plant nature. The plant allow the physical to hold sway within it when the etheric from cosmic space no longer unfolds its activity, as is the case at night when the sun ether ceases to work. Only at death does the human being let the physical hold sway in his body. In sleep the phenomena of consciousness and self-consciousness vanish, but the phenomena of life remain, even when the sun ether is not working in cosmic space. Throughout its life the plant continually receives into itself the ether forces that ray in toward the earth. The human being, however, from the embryonic period on, carries them within in an individualized form. That which the plant receives in the described way from the universe, he draws out of himself during his life, since he received it already in the mother‟s womb for his further development. A force which originally is cosmic in nature, destined to ray its influences in towards the earth, works out of lung or liver. It has enacted a metamorphosis of its direction.
Thus one shall have to say that the human being bears the etheric within, in an individualized form. As the physical is carried in the individualized form of the physical body and its physical organs, so also is the etheric. It has its unique ether body, as it has its unique physical body. In sleep, this ether body remains united with the physical body and gives it life (anabolism); it only separates from it indefinitely at the moment of death.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER IV
ON THE NATURE OF THE SENTIENT ORGANISM
The form and organization of the plant are the exclusive results of both spheres of forces; the one which radiates outwards from the earth and the other which radiates in toward it. This exclusively is found neither in the animal nor in the human being. The leaf of a plant exists under the exclusive influence of these two spheres of forces; the lung of an animal is also subject to the same influences, but not exclusively . For the leaf, all the form-creating forces lie within these two spheres; for the lung, there are others besides these. This applies both to the form- creating forces which give the outer shape, and also to those that regulate the inner movement of substance, giving it a specific direction, combining or separating it.
One can say that for the substances which are taken up by the plant it is not a matter of indifference whether they are alive or not, because they have become part of the sphere of forces radiating in toward the earth. With the plant they are lifeless if the forces of the circumference do not work upon them; they come to life when they come under the influence of these forces.
But to the plant substance, even when alive, it is a matter of indifference how its parts were arranged, are arranged and will be arranged in relation to its own mode of activity. They give themselves up to the mode of activity of the external forces raying out and in. Animal substance comes under influences that are independent of these forces. It moves within the organism, or moves as a whole organism in such a way that these movements do not follow only the forces radiating outward and inward. Because of this, the form of the animal comes into being independently of the spheres of the forces raying outward from and inward to the earth.
In the plant, the play of forces here described results in an alternation between being connected with and disconnected from the forces that ray, in from the periphery. The plant being thus falls into two parts. One tends toward life and is fully in the sphere of the circumference; it encompasses the sprouting, the growth- and blossom-bearing organs. The other is oriented toward the lifeless; it remains in the sphere of the forces raying outward; it comprises all that hardens growth, provides support to life, etc. Between these two parts, life is enkindled and extinguished; the dying of the plant is merely the result of the forces raying out gaining the upper hand over the forces raying in.
In the animal, part of the substance is withdrawn completely from the sphere of the two field of forces. Through this a still different arrangement comes about than in the plant. Organ formations originate which stay within the sphere of the two fields of forces, and others come about which lift themselves out of these. Reciprocal relations between these two organ formations are the result. And in these reciprocal relations lies the reason for animal substance becoming the bearer of sensations. One consequence of this is the difference in appearance and in disposition between animal and plant substance.
In the animal organism there is a sphere of forces independent of those radiating outward from, and radiating inward to, the earth. The astral sphere of forces, already spoken of from another pint of view, is there in addition to the physical and etheric. One need not be troubled by the term “astral”. The forces radiating outward are the earthly, those radiating inward are those of the cosmic circumference about the earth. In the astral, something of a higher order than these two kinds of forces is present. This alone is what makes the earth into a heavenly body, a „star‟ (astrum). Through the physical forces the earth separates itself from the universe; through the etheric it allows the universe to influence it; through the astral forces it becomes an independent individuality within the universe.
In the animal organism, the astral element is an independent, self-contained part like the physical and the etheric organism. One can therefore speak of it as an “astral body”.
The animal organization can only be understood when the reciprocal relations between the physical, the etheric and the astral body are taken into account. For all three are present, independently, as parts of the animal organization, moreover, all three are different from what, beside them, exists by way of lifeless (mineral) bodies or living plantlike bodies.
True, the animal physical organism may be spoken of as lifeless; yet it is different from the lifeless nature of the mineral. At first it is alienated from mineral nature by the etheric and the astral organism, and then, by a withdrawal of etheric and astral forces, it is returned again to lifelessness. Upon this structure the mineral forces that work in the earth sphere exclusively can only act destructively. It can serve the animal organization as a whole only so long as the etheric and astral forces have the upper hand over the destructive intervention of the mineral forces.
The animal etheric organization is alive like that of the plant, but not in the same way. Life has been brought into a condition foreign to itself by the astral forces; it has been pulled away from the forces raying in toward the earth and then has been returned to their sphere. The etheric organism is a structure in which the mere plantlike forces have an existence that is too dull for the animal organization. The etheric organism can only serve the animal organism as a whole through the fact that the astral forces continually lighten up its mode of action. If its working gains the upper hand, sleep ensues; when the astral organism gains the upper hand, waking prevails.
Both sleeping and waking may not go beyond a certain boundary of functioning.
If this were to happen in the case of sleep, plant nature in the whole organism would incline towards the mineral; a hypertrophy of plant nature would be generated as a pathological condition. If it were to happen, the case of waking, plant nature would become entirely alienated from the mineral; the latter would assume forms within the organism not belonging to it, but to the external, inorganic, lifeless sphere. It would be a pathological condition due to hypertrophy of mineral nature.
Into all the three organisms, physical, etheric and astral, physical substance penetrates from outside. All three must in their own way overcome the specific nature of the physical. Through this a threefold organization of the organs comes into being. The physical organization forms
organs which have gone through the etheric and astral organizations but which are on the way back again to their sphere. They cannot have arrived there completely, for this would result in the death of the organism.
The etheric organism forms organs which have passed through the astral organization but which are ever and again striving to withdraw from it; in them is a force striving towards the dullness of sleep; they are inclined to develop just vegetative life.
The astral organism forms organs which estrange it from vegetative life. They can only exist if this vegetative life takes hold of them ever and again. Having no relationship either with the forces radiating outward from or with those radiating inward to the earth, they would fall out of the earth sphere altogether if this vegetative life did not again and again take hold of them. A rythmical interaction between animal nature and plant nature must take place in these
organs. This determines the alternating states of sleeping and waking. In sleep, the organs of the astral forces partake also in the dullness of plant life. Then they have no influence on the etheric and physical domain. They are then entirely left to the spheres of forces raying in toward and outward from the earth.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER IV
PLANT, ANIMAL, HUMAN BEING
In the astral body, animal form arises outwardly as the whole shape and inwardly as the form of the organs. And sentient animal substance is an outcome of this form-creating astral body. If this form is carried to its conclusion, then the animalic nature develops.
Within the human being it is not carried to its conclusion. At a certain point along its way, it is held up, restrained.
In the plant, substance which is converted by the forces raying in toward the earth is present. This is living substance. It is in interaction with lifeless substance. One must imagine that in plant nature this living substance is continually being separated out from what is lifeless. In it, the plant shape appears as a product of the forces raying in towards the earth. That results in a stream of substance. The lifeless changes into what lives; what is living changes into what is lifeless. In this stream the plant organs come into being.
Within the animal, sentient substance originates from the living, as for the plant living substance originates from lifeless substance. There is a twofold stream of sub-stance. Within the etheric, life does not reach the point of becoming form-creating life. It is kept in flow, and form inserts itself through the astral organization into flowing life.
Within the human being this process, too, is kept in flow. Sentient substance is drawn into the realm of a further organization. One may call this the ego organization. Sentient substance changes once again. A threefold stream of substance comes into being. In this the human being‟s inner and outer shape arises. Thereby it becomes the bearer of self-conscious spiritual life. The human being is, in his form, a result of this ego organization down to the smallest particles of his substance.
One can now pursue this form from the aspect of substance. In the transformation of substance from one level to the next, substance appears as a separation of the higher level from one level to the next, substance appears as a separation of the higher level from the lower and a building of shape out of the separated substance. Within the plant, the living is separated out of lifeless substance. The forces raying in toward the earth, the etheric forces, work in this separated substance creating form. To begin with, it is not an actual separation that takes place, but a complete transformation of physical substance by the etheric forces. However, that is only the case in seed formation. Here the complete transformation can take place, because the seed is protected by the surrounding material organization from being acted upon by physical forces. When in its development the see frees itself from the maternal organization, then the forces working in the plant arrange themselves into those,in which the formation of substance strives toward the sphere of the etheric , and into others, in which it strives again toward physical
formation. Parts of the being of the plant originate that are on the way toward life and others that tend toward dying. The latter appear as the excreted parts of the plant organism. In the bark formation of the tree one may observe a particularly characteristic example of this process of excretion.
In the animal, a twofold process of separation and also a twofold process of excretion is going on. The plant process of separation is not carried to a conclusion but kept in flow, and added to it is the conversion of living into sentient substance. This is separated from the purely living. One finds substance that is striving toward sentient existence and substance that is striving away from this to the purely living state.
Yet, in the organism a reciprocal relation between all its parts comes about. Therefore, even the excretion toward the lifeless, which in the plant closely approaches the outwardly lifeless, the mineral world, is still far removed from what is characteristically mineral. What appears in the bark formation of the plant as substance which is already on the way to mineral nature, and which detaches itself the more mineralized it becomes, appears in the animal as the excreted products of digestion. It is farther removed from mineral nature than are the elimination products of the plant.
In the human being, substance, which then becomes the bearer of the self-conscious spirit, is separated out of the sentient substance. But also a continuous elimination is brought about, in that a substance develops which strives toward a merely sentient faculty. Animal nature is thus present within the human organism as a continuous excretion.
In the waking state of the animal organism, separation and giving form to what is separated, as well as elimination of sentient substance, stand under the influence of astral activity. In the human being the activity of the ego organism is added to this. In sleep, astral and ego organism are not directly active. But substance has been taken hold of by this activity and continues it as though by inertia. A substance which has once been formed through and through internally in the way the astral and ego organization do this, will then also go on working in accord with these organizations in the sleeping state, as if tit were out of a capacity for inertia.
Thus in the sleeping human being one cannot speak of a purely vegetative mode of activity of the organism. The astral and the ego organization work further in the substance they have formed, even in this state. The difference between sleeping and waking is not such that the human-animalic mode of activity alternates with the vegetative-physical. The reality is altogether different. In waking life sentient substance and that which can act as bearer of the self-conscious spirit are lifted out of the organism as a whole and placed at the disposal of the astral body and the ego organization. The physical and the etheric organism must then work in such a way that only the forces raying outward from the earth and in toward it are active in them. In this mode of action they are taken hold of by the astral body and the ego organization only from outside. In sleep, however, they are taken hold of by the astral body and the ego organization only from outside. In sleep, however, they are taken hold of inwardly by the substances that come into existence under the influence of astral body and ego organization; while from the universe only the forces radiating outward from the earth and in toward it are working on the sleeping human being, the substance forces which are prepared by the astral body and ego organization act on him
from within.
If one call the sentient substance the residue of the astral body, and that which has come into being under the influence of the ego organization its residue, then one may say: in the waking human organism the astral body and ego organization themselves are working, in the sleeping human organism their substantial residues are at work.
In waking, the human being lives in a mode of activity which connects him with the outer world through the astral body and through the ego organization; during sleep, the physical and etheric organisms live on what the residues of these two organizations have become in substance form. Therefore, a substance like oxygen, which, through breathing, is taken in both sleeping and in waking, must be distinguished in its mode of action according to these two conditions. Oxygen absorbed from without has an inherently soporific, not an awakening, effect. Increased intake of oxygen leads to abnormal drowsiness. In waking life the astral body battles continually against the soporific effect of oxygen intake. When the astral body suspends its work upon the physical, oxygen unfolds its inherent nature and sends the human being to sleep.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER VI
BLOOD AND NERVE
In a particularly striking way, the activities of the single human organisms accommodate themselves in relation to the organism as a whole in the formation of blood and nerves. Insofar as blood formation occurs in the further configuration of ingested nutriments, the whole blood- forming process happens under the influence of the ego organization. The ego organization is at work in processes accompanied by conscious sensation – in the tongue and palate, right into the unconscious and subconscious processes – in the workings of pepsin, pancreatic juice, bile, etc. Then the working of the ego organization draws back, and the astral body is primarily active in the further transformation of food substance into blood substance. This continues to the point where the blood meets the air–the oxygen-in the breathing process. At this point the ether body performs its main activity. In the carbonic acid that is exhaled, one finds before it has left the body, a substance which is primarily living-neither sentient, nor dead. (Everything that carries in itself the activity of the etheric body is living). The greater amount of this living carbonic acid leaves the organism; a small portion, however, continues to work in the organism into the processes that have their center in the head organization. This portion shows a strong tendency to become lifeless, inorganic, though it does not become entirely lifeless.
In the nervous system the opposite is the case. In the sympathetic nervous system6 which permeates the organs of digestion, the etheric body is principally active. The nerve organs which are taken into consideration here are primarily only living organs. The astral and ego organization do not organize them from within but from the outside. Therefore the influence of the astral and ego organization working in these nerve organs is strong. Emotions and passions have a deep and lasting effect on the sympathetic system. Grief and worries will gradually destroy it.
The spinal nervous system with its many ramifications is where the astral organization primarily intervenes. Thus it is the bearer of that which is of a soul-nature in the human being of the reflexes, but not of that which takes place in the “I”, in the self-conscious spirit.
The actual nerves of the brain are the ones which are subject to the ego organi-zation. Here the activities of the etheric and astral organization withdraw.
Thus one can recognize three regions coming into being in the organism as a whole. In a lower region, nerves inwardly permeated mainly by the action of the etheric organism work together with blood substance that is predominantly subject to the activity of the ego organization. In this region, during the embryonic and postembryonic period of development, lies the starting point for all organ formations that are connected with the inner enlivening of the human organism. During embryonic development, this region, being weak as yet, is supplied with forming and enlivening influences by the surrounding maternal organism. Then there is a
middle region, where nerve organs influenced by the astral organization work together with blood processes which are likewise dependent on this astral organization and, in their upper component on the etheric organization. Here, during the period of development of the human being, lies the starting point for the origin of the organs that mediate the processes of outer and inner movement, e.g., for the forming of all muscle, but also for all organs which are not muscles in the proper sense but still bring about mobility. There is an upper region, where nerves subject to the inner organizing activity of the “I”, work together with blood processes that have a strong tendency to become lifeless, mineral-like. Here lays, during the period of development of the human being, the point of departure for the forming of bones and all else that serves the human body as an organ of support.
One will understand the human brain only if one sees the bone-forming tendency in it, which is interrupted at its very inception. And one will know bone formation only when one recognizes in it the activity of the brain-impulse carried to its final conclusion and permeated from without by the impulses of the middle organism, where nerve organs, determined by the astral body, are active together with etherically determined blood substance. In bone as which remains behind with its own particular form when one subjects bones to combustion, the results of the upper region of the human organization are present. In the cartilaginous substance which remains behind when bones are subjected to dilute hydrochloric acid, one has the result of the impulses of the middle region.
The skeleton is the physical image of the ego organization. Organic human substance which tends toward the lifeless mineral in bone development is entirely subject to the ego organization. In the brain, the I is active as a spiritual being. Here, however, its capacity to create form down into the physical is overwhelmed entirely by the organizing activity of the etheric, and even by the particular forces of the physical. The organizing force of the “I” underlies the brain only minimally; this force becomes submerged in the life-processes and in inherent physical activities. That the organic physical activity there is not claimed by the ego organization, is the very reason for the brain being the bearer of the spiritual activity of the “I”; the latter is therefore able to act as such in full freedom. The bony skeleton, however, may be a perfect physical image of the ego orga-nization; but the latter exhausts itself in physical organizing activity, and nothing is left of it as spiritual activity. Therefore these processes in the bones are the most unconscious.
The carbonic acid which is expelled in the breathing process is still living substance so long as it is within the organism; it is taken hold of and excreted by the astral activity that has its seat in the middle region of the nervous system. The portion of carbonic acid which is carried up with the metabolism into the head is given the tendency there to come into the sphere of working of the ego organization by combining with calcium. Through this, calcium carbonate is driven toward bone formation under the influence of the cranial nerves, which are inwardly given impulse by the ego organization.
The substances produced out of the nutrients, myosin and myogen, tend to settle in the blood; initially they are substances controlled by the astral body that stand in reciprocal interaction with the sympathetic nervous system, which is inwardly organized by the etheric
body. These tow proteins are, however, also taken hold of to some extent by the activity of the middle nervous system which stands under the influence of the astral body. They thus come into relationship with breakdown products of protein, with fats, with sugar and substances similar to sugar. This enables them, under the influence of the middle nervous system, to find their way into muscle formation.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER VII
THE NATURE OF HEALING FUNCTIONS
The human organization as a whole is not a self-contained system of interacting processes. If it were, it could not be the bearer of the soul and spirit element. This can only have its basis in the human organism because in nerve and bone substance and in the processes in which these substances are imbedded, this organism is continually disintegrating or moving towards lifeless mineral activity.
Proteinaceous substance disintegrates in nerve tissue. Yet in this tissue, unlike what happens in the egg cell or in other structures, it is not built up again by coming within the sphere of influences radiating in toward the earth, but it simply disintegrates. The ether influences that radiate in through the senses from the objects and processes of the outer environment, as well as those that form themselves when organs of movement are used, are thereby able to utilize the nerves as organs along which they are led throughout the body.
In the nerves there are two kinds of processes: the disintegration of proteinaceous substance, and the flow of either substance through this disintegrating substance, a flow which is stimulated by acids, salts, sand phosphorous and sulfurous elements. The equilibrium between the two processes is mediated by fats and water.
In essence, these are processes of disease which continually permeate the organism. They must be balanced by equally continuous processes of healing.
This balance is brought about by the fact that blood not only contains processes that consist of growth and metabolism, but contains in addition processes to which a continual healing action can be attributed, which counter the illness-inducing nerve processes.
In its plasma substance and in fibrinogen, blood contains those forces which serve growth and metabolism in the narrower sense. In that which appears as iron content when the red blood corpuscles are examined lie the origins of the blood‟s healing function. Accordingly, iron also appears in gastric juice and as iron oxide in chyle. Thus everywhere sources are created for processes that counterbalance the nerve processes.
Upon examination of the blood, iron reveals itself as the only metal which, within the human organism, has the tendency toward crystallization. Thus it maintains forces which are in fact external, physical, mineral forces of nature. Within the human organism thy form a system of forces, oriented in terms of outer physical nature. This, however, is continually being overcome by the ego organization.
One is dealing with two systems of forces. One has its origin in nerve processes, the other in blood formation. The pathogenic processes that develop in the nerves do so only to the degree
that they can be healed continuously by blood processes which counteract them. Nerve processes are such that they are caused by the astral body in the nerve substance, and thus in the organism as a whole. Blood processes are such that in them the ego organization confronts outer physical nature within the human organism. This outer physical nature, which continues on within it, is, however, subjected to the form-giving process of the ego organization.
One can comprehend the processes of becoming ill and of healing directly through this interrelationship. If there is an increase within the organism of such processes as are found to a normal degree in what is stimulated by the nerve process, then there is illness. If one is able to counter these processes with others that represent a reinforcement of functions of outer nature within the organism, then healing can be brought about when these functions of outer nature are mastered by the ego organiszation, and counterbalance the processes which are oriented in opposition to them.
Milk contains only small quantities of iron. It is the substance which as such is the least pathogenic in its actions. Blood must continually submit itself to all that brings illness; therefore it requires organized iron, the iron taken up into the ego organization-the hem-continually acting as a medication. For a medication which is to work on a pathological condition appearing in the inner organization, also on one that is due to outer causes but which takes its course within the organism, it is essential first of all to discover to what extent the astral organization is working so that protein disintegration begins at some point in the body in the way this is normally induced by the nerve organization. Assume that one is dealing with stagnations or blockages in the lower abdomen. In the pain that occurs one can note the excessive activity of the astral body. In that case one is dealing with the situation as characterized for the intestinal organism.
The important question is now: “ how can the intensified astral function be balanced?” This can be done by introducing substances into the blood which can be taken hold of by just that part of the ego organization that works in the intestinal system. These substances are potassium and sodium. If one introduces these into the organism in some preparation or in a plant organization, e.g., anagallis arvensis, then one takes the excessive nerve function away from the astral body and effects the transition of what the astral body does too much of, to the action of the named substances which has been taken hold of by the ego organization, from our of the blood.
If mineral substance is used, care must be taken to give additional preparations, or better still to combine the potassium or sodium in the preparation with sulfur, in order that these metals are carried into the blood stream in the right way so that they hold up the metamorphosis of protein before disintegration sets in. Sulfur has the inherent property of preventing protein disintegration,; to a certain extent it holds the organizing forces of proteinaceous substance together. When it enters the blood stream in such a way that it maintains its connection with potassium or sodium, then its action will occur where potassium or sodium have a special affinity to particular organs. This is the case with the intestinal organs.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER VIII
ACTIVIES IN THE HUMAN ORGANISM: DIABETES MELLITUS
The human organism carries out, in all of its parts, activities which can have their impulses only in the organism itself. What it takes up from outside must either simply provide the opportunity for the organism to carry out its own activity, or, as soon as it has entered into the body, the foreign activity must work in such a way that it does not distinguish itself from an inner activity of the body.
The food required by the human being contains carbohydrates. These are, in part, similar to starch. As such they are substances which unfold their activity in the plant. They arrive in the human body in the state which they are able to attain in the plant. In this state, starch is a foreign body. The human organism does not develop an activity which approximates what starch can unfold as activity while in the state it is in at its entry into the body. For example, what evolves in the human liver as a sub-stance similar to starch (glycogen) is something different from plant starch. On the other hand, grape sugar is a substance which stimulates activities that are of a nature similar to activities of the human organism itself. Starch can therefore not remain starch in it. To develop a function that plays a part in the body, it must be converted. And when it is mixed with ptyalin in the mouth, it is converted to sugar.
Protein and fat are not altered by ptyalin. They enter the stomach initially as foreign substances. There, proteins are converted by the secreted pepsin, so that breakdown products right down to the peptones are generated. In these substances the impulses to activity coincide with those of the body. In contrast, fat remains unaltered even in the stomach. It is first converted by the secretions of the pancreatic gland, generating substances which, in the dead organism, appear as glycerin and fatty acids.
Now, however, the conversion of starch into sugar (glucose) continues throughout the whole digestive process. Transformation of starch also takes place through gastric juice. If it has not already happened through ptyalin.
If the transformation of starch happens through ptyalin, the process borders on what takes place in the human being in the sphere of the ego organization as it has been called in Chapter
II. In this sphere the first transformation of substance that has been taken in from the outer world takes place. Grape sugar is a substance that is able to work in the sphere of the ego organization. It corresponds to the taste of sweetness, which has its existence in the ego organization.
If sugar is formed from starch by gastric juice, then this means that the ego organization enters into the sphere of the digestive system. For conscious experience the taste of sweetness is then
absent. However, what goes on in conscious experience the taste of sweetness is then absent. However, what goes on in conscious experience – in the sphere of the ego organization – when “sweetness” is experienced makes its way into unconscious areas of the human body, and the ego organization becomes active there.
In the areas that are unconscious to us, one deals initially, in the sense of Chapter II, with the astral body. The astral body functions where starch is converted into sugar in the stomach.
The human being can only be conscious through that which works in such a way in his ego organization that the latter is not overruled or disturbed by anything, so that it is able to unfold itself to the full extent. This is the case in the sphere where ptyalin functions are located. In the sphere of pepsin functions, the astral body overrules the ego organization. Ego activity immerses in astral activity. So one can pursue the ego organization in the sphere of matter by looking for the presence of sugar. Where there is sugar, there is ego organization; where sugar is generated, the ego organization appears and orients the corporeality that is sub-human (vegetative, animalic) toward the human.
Now sugar occurs as a product of excretion in diabetes mellitus. In this instance the ego organization appears in a form in which it works destructively for the human organism. In observing every other area of action of the ego organization one becomes aware that it immerses in the astral organization. Sugar, directly consumed, is in the ego organization. There it is the cause of sweet taste. Starch consumed and converted by ptyalin or gastric juice into sugar indicates that in the mouth or in the stomach the astral body works together with the ego organization and overrules the latter.
Sugar is also present in blood, however. Insofar as blood, containing sugar, circulates through the whole body, it carries the ego organization through it . But here the ego organizationis everywhere held in balance through the working of the human organism. In Chapter II it became evident how along with the ego organization and the astral body, the etheric and the physical body are also present in the human being. These also take up the ego organization and hold it in themselves. So long as this is the case sugar is not excreted in the urine. How the ego organization can live while carrying sugar is indicated by the sugar-bound processes in the organism.
In a healthy individual, sugar can only appear in the urine if consumed too abundantly in the form of sugar, or if alcohol, which enters directly into the bodily processes skipping intermediate conversion products, is taken in too abundantly. In either case the sugar process occurs independently alongside the other processes in the human being.
It is a fact that in diabetes mellitus the ego organization becomes so weakened by immersion in the astral and etheric sphere that it is no longer effective in acting on the substance of sugar. What should have happened to it through the ego organization then happens to the sugar through the astral and etheric domains.
Diabetes is aggravated by everything that pulls the ego organization away from an engaged functioning in body activity; overexcitement occurring not as a single but as repeated
events; intellectual overexertion; a hereditary predisposition which hinders the normal incorporation of the ego organization into the organism as a whole. At the same time all of this is connected with the fact that processes take place in the head organization which should properly be parallel processes to soul and spirit activity; however, because the latter activity takes its course too fast or too slowly, they fall out of the parallelism. It is as though the nervous system were thinking independently alongside the thinking human being. But this is an activity which the nervous system should only carry out during sleep. In the diabetic, a form of sleep in the depths of the organism runs parallel to the waking state. In the further course of diabetes therefore a deterioration of nerve substance takes place. This is the consequence of deficient intervention of the ego organization.
Another concomitant symptom is the formation of boils in diabetics. Boils are generated by an excess in the area of etheric activity. The ego organization fails where it should be active. Astral activity cannot unfold because just at such a place it only has strength in unison with the ego organization. The result is an excess of etheric activity which expresses itself in the formation of boils.
From all this, one can see that a healing process for diabetes mellitus can only be initiated if one is able to strengthen the ego organization of the diabetic.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER IX
THE ROLE OF PROTEIN IN THE HUMAN BODY AND ALBUMINURIA
Protein is that substance of the living body which can be transformed in the most varied ways by the body‟s formative forces, so that the forms of the organs and of the whole organism appear as a result of the transformed proteinaceous substance. To be suited for such use, protein must have the ability, the moment it is called upon in the organism to serve a form demanded by it, to lose whatever form may come from the nature of its material constituents.
One recognizes in this that in protein the forces derived from the nature of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, nitrogen, and carbon and from their interrelationships disintegrate within themselves. In protein disintegration, the inorganic substance bonds cease and organic formative forces begin to work.
These formative forces are bound up with the etheric body. Protein is ever on the point of either being taken up into the activity of the etheric body or of falling out of it. Protein that is removed from the organism to which it belonged takes on the tendency to become a composite substance, subject to the inorganic forces of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. Protein that remains a constituent of the living organism suppresses this tendency in itself and fits into the formative forces of the etheric body.
With his nutrition, the human being ingests protein. Protein which is taken up from outside is converted by the pepsin of the stomach right into peptones which are initially soluble proteinaceous substance. This conversion process is continued by pancreatic juice. The protein ingested as food is initially a foreign body within the human organism. It comprises the aftereffects of the ether processes of the living being from which it was derived. These must be entirely removed form it. It has to be taken up into the ether activities of the human organism.
Thus one is dealing with two kinds of protein substances in the course of the human digestive process. At the beginning of this process the protein is foreign to the human organism. At the end it belongs to the organism. In between is a condition where the protein taken up as food has not yet entirely discarded its previous etheric actions, nor yet entirely assumed the new ones. In this in-between state it has become almost completely inorganic. It is only subject to influences of the human physical body there. The latter, which in its form is a product of the human ego organization, bears within itself forces with inorganic action. Therefore it has a deadening effect upon whatever is alive. Everything that enters the sphere of the ego organization dies. Thus the ego organization incorporates purely inorganic substances into the physical body for itself. In the human physical organism these do not work in the same way as in lifeless nature outside the human being; nevertheless they do still work inorganically, i.e. deadening. This deadening effect upon the protein takes place in that part of the digestive tract where trypsin, a constituent of pancreatic juice, is active.
That inorganic forces play a part in the manner of action of trypsin may also be gathered from the fact that it unfolds its activity with the help of alkaline elements.
Until it meets the trypsin in pancreatic fluid, food protein lives in a foreign mode, the mode of the organism from which it was derived. On meeting trypsin, protein becomes lifeless. One would like to say that in the human organism it becomes lifeless just for one moment. Then it is taken up in the physical body in conformity with the ego organization. The latter must now have the force to carry what has become out of the proteinaceous substance over into the sphere of the human either body. In this way the protein in food becomes building material for the human organism. The foreign etheric actions formerly belonging to it leave the human being.
Now, it is necessary for a healthy digestion of protein in food that the human being possesses an ego organiszation that is strong enough to enable all the protein which the human organism needs to make a transition into the sphere of the human ether body. If this does not happen, then a surplus of activity of this either body results. It receives insufficient protein substance prepared by the ego organization for its activity. The consequence is that activity oriented towards enlivening the protein absorbed by the ego organization take hold of the protein that still contains foreign ether actions. The human being receives in his own ether body a number of actions that do not belong in it. These must be excreted in an abnormal manner. A pathological excretion comes about.
This pathological excretion becomes noticeable in albuminuria. Protein is excreted which should have been taken up into the sphere of the ether body. It is protein which, due to weakness of the ego organization, has not been able to assume the transitional stage of being almost lifeless.
The forces which bring about excretion in the human being are bound up with the sphere of the astral body. Because in albuminuria the astral body is forced to carry out an activity for which it is not prepared, its activity withers away those areas of the organism where it should have been active. One of these areas is the renal epithelium. In damage of the renal epithelium, a phenomenon is present which shows that the activity of the astral body intended for it has been diverted.
From this connection it is clear where healing must begin in the case of albuminization. The weakened force of the ego organization in the pancreatic gland must be strengthened.
ORGANISM AND DECEPTIVE LOCAL SYMPTOM COMPLEXES
Fat is that substance of the organism which proves itself to be least a foreign body as it is taken in from outside. When taken as a food, fat makes a transition most easily from the mode it brings with it into the mode of the human organism. The eighty percent of fat contained in butter, for instance, pass unaltered through the regions of ptyalin and pepsin and are only altered by pancreatic juice, namely, converted to glycerin and fatty acids.
This way of working of fat is only possible because it carries along as little as possible of the natural essence of a foreign organism (of its etheric forces, etc.) into the human organism. The
latter can easily incorporate it into its own functioning.
That is due to the fact that fat plays its special role in the generation of inner warmth. This warmth is again the element in which the ego organization, when in the physical organism, lives especially. For the ego organization only so much of every substance found in the body is relevant, as will engender warmth through its functioning. Through its whole way of working, fat proves itself to be a substance which is only a filler for the body, is just carried by it, and for the organization in action fat is relevant only through those processes in which warmth develops. Fat, taken as food (e.g., from an animal organism) will take nothing into the human organism except its ability to develop warmth.
However, this development of warmth happens as one of the last processes of the metabolism. Fat ingested as food therefore remains intact throughout the first and middle processes of metabolism and it is absorbed in the sphere of the inner activities of the body, at the earliest by pancreatic secretions.
The occurrence of fat in human milk points to a very remarkable activity of the organism. The body does not consume this fat; it allows its transition into a product of secretion. But, along with this the ego organization goes over into this fat as well. This is what the plastic sculptural7 force of mother‟s milk is based on. The mother thereby transfers her own plastic sculptural ego organization forces to the child, and thus adds something more to the form-giving forces that were already passed on by heredity.
A healthy course is taken when, in the development of warmth, the human plastic sculptural forces consume the fat stores present in the body. In an unhealthy course, fat is not used by the ego organization in processes of warmth, but is carried unused into the organism. Such fat forms an excessive potential for generating warmth here and there in the organism. That kind of warmth is not enveloped by the ego organization and interferes misleadingly with other life processes here and there in the organism. Parasitic foci of warmth are, as it were, engendered. These bear within themselves the tendency towards inflammatory conditions. The origin of such foci must be sough in the fact that the body develops a tendency to make more fat than the ego organization requires for its life in inner warmth.
In the healthy organism, the animalic (astral) forces will generate or take up whatever fat can be transferred into warmth processes by the ego organization and, in addition, what is required to keep the mechanics of muscle and bone in order. In that case, the required warmth will be generated for the body. If the animalic forces supply the ego organization with too little fat, then the ego organization develops a hunger for warmth. It must withdraw the warmth it required from the activities of organs. The organs then become, as it were, inwardly brittle, stiff. The processes they require take place sluggishly. It will be essential to recognize whether the appearance of pathological processes that one sees here and there, may be caused by a general fat deficiency.
In the already mentioned other case, when there is an excess of fat and when parasitic foci of warmth are formed, organs will be taken hold of in such a way that they become active beyond their measure. Through that, tendencies toward excessive food intake are generated that overload
the organism. It is not at all necessary that this develops in such a way that the person in question becomes an overeater. It may be that the organism‟s metabolic activity supplies an organ of the head with too much substance, which is therefore withdrawn from organs of the lower body and from the processes of secretion. As a result, the activity in the deprived organs is reduced. Glandular secretions may become inadequate. The fluid constituents of the organism become mixed in an unhealthy, disproportionate way. Bile secretion, for example, may become too copious in relation to the secretion of the pancreatic gland. Again it will be important to recognize how a local symptoms complex is to be judged as coming from an unhealthy mode of fat activity.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XI
THE FORM OF THE HUMAN BODY AND GOUT
Protein intake is a process connected with one side of the inner activities of the human organism. This is the side which comes about on the basis of the intake of matter. Every activity of this kind results in building up form, in growth, in the creation of new substantial content. Everything connected to the unconscious actions of the organism belongs here.
These processes are the opposite of those consisting of excretions. The excretions may be outwards, they may also be such that the excretion product is further elaborated internally in the forming of, or bringing substance to, the body. These processes provide the material foundation for conscious experiences. Processes of the first kind reduce the force of consciousness if they exceed what can be held in balance by processes of the second kind.
A most remarkable excretory process is that of uric acid. The astral body is active in this excretion, which has to occur throughout the whole organism. It occurs through the urine in an especially ample measure. In a very finely distributed way it happens, for example, in the brain. Mainly the astral body is active in the secretion of uric acid in the urine; the ego organization has only a secondary part in it. In the secretion of uric acid in the brain, the ego organization is primarily the determining factor; the astral body recedes to the background.
`Now, in the organism, the astral body is the mediator of the activity of the ego organization for the etheric and the physical body. The ego organization must carry the lifeless substances and forces into the organs. Only through this impregnation of the organs with inorganic material can the human being become the conscious being that he is. Organic substance and organic force would lower human consciousness to the dim level of the animal.
Through its activity, the astral body brings the organs to the point that they are inclined to take up the inorganic deposits of the ego organization. Its function is in fact to prepare the way for them.
One may note: the activity of the astral body has the upper hand in the lower parts of the human organism. Here the uric acid substances must not be taken up by the organism. They must be amply excreted. Under the influence of this excretion the impregnation with inorganic material must be prevented there. The more uric acid is excreted, the more lively the activity of the astral body, and the less that of the ego organization and consequently the impregnating with inorganic materials.
In the brain, astral body activity is modest. Little uric acid is excreted, and all the more inorganic material is deposited in accordance with the ego organization in its stead.
The ego organization cannot master large quantities of uric acid; those must be left to the
activity of the astral body. Small quantities of uric acid pass over into the ego organization and then provide the foundation for the forming of the inorganic in accordance with this organization.
In the healthy organism an appropriate economy in the distribution of uric acid to the individual regions must prevail. For the whole nerve-sense organization, only the amount of uric acid must be provided that the ego activity can make use of. For the metabolic-limb organization this ego activity must be suppressed; astral activity must be able to unfold in ample secretion of uric acid.
Since the astral body paves the way for ego activity in the organs, a proper distribution of uric acid deposits must be seen as an essential factor in human health. For what comes to expression in it is whether the right relationship exists between ego organization and astral body in any particular organ or organ system.
Assume that in some organ, in which the ego organization should predominate over astral activity, the latter begins to gain the upper hand. This can only be an organ in which excretion of uric acid is impossible beyond a certain measure because of the organization of the organ. This organ then becomes overloaded with uric acid which cannot be mastered by the ego organization. The astral body then nevertheless begins to bring about an excretion of uric acid. And since, in the relevant places, the organs that carry it out are lacking, uric acid is deposited in the organism itself instead of outside. If it reaches places in the body where the ego organization cannot sufficiently engage, then inorganic material is present there, i.e., something that appertains only to the ego organization, but that is left by; this to astral activity. Foci originate where sub-human (animalic) processes integrate themselves into the human organism.
One is dealing with gout. When it is said that gout frequently develops on the basis of an inherited tendency, then this is simply because the astral-animalic becomes especially active when inheritance forces predominate and repress the ego organization.
One shall, however, see through the matter better if one looks for the true cause in the fact that by ingesting food, man introduces substances into the body that cannot lose their foreign nature in the organism through the body‟s activity. Because of a weak ego organization they are not transferred to the ether body, and thus they remain in the region of astral activity. An articular cartilage or connective tissue area will only become overloaded with uric acid, and thus be overburdened with inorganic material, when ego activity lags behind astral functioning in these parts of the body. Since the whole form of the human organism is a consequence of the ego organization, the characterized abnormality must cause organ deformation. Then the human organism strives.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XII
UPBUILDING (ANABOLISM) AND SECRETION IN THE HUMAN ORGANISM
The human body, like other organisms, is formed out of the semifluid state, but an influx of gaseous elements is constantly required for its formation. The most important one is oxygen, which is mediated by breathing.
Consider first a solid component, e.g., a bone structure. It is densified out of semifluid material. The ego organization is active in this process. Anyone following the development of the skeletal system can verify this. During the embryonal time and in childhood it develops to the extent that the human being receives his human form, the expression of the ego organization. The conversion of protein which underlies this development first eliminates the
foreign (astral and etheric) forces from the protein; then protein passes through the inorganic state and it must become fluid in the process. In this condition it is taken hold of by the ego
organization, which is active in the element of warmth, and is introduced into the human being‟s own ether body. It becomes human protein. It has yet to go a long way before it is converted into bone substance.
After its conversion into human protein it must mature to be able to take up and transform calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, etc. To this end it must undergo an intermediate stage. It must be influenced by the assimilation of a gaseous element. The latter carries the transformation products of carbohydrates into protein. This brings substances into being which can provide the basis for the formation of individual organs. One is not dealing here with finished organ substance, not with, for example, liver or bone substance, but with a more general substance out of which all the individual organs of the body can be built up. The ego organization is active in forming the final organ shape. In the characterized, still undifferentiated organ substance, the astral body is active. Within the animal, this astral body also takes the task upon itself of giving the final organ shape; within the human being astral body activity (and with it animalic nature) only continues to exist as a general underlying principle of the ego organization. Animal development is not carried to its conclusion in the human being; it is interrupted in its course and human nature is, as it were, superimposed upon it by the ego organization.
This ego organization lives entirely in states of warmth. It derives the individual organs from the general astral essence. It works upon the general substance provided by the astral, by either raising or lowering the state of warmth of an organ in preparation.
If it lowers the warmth state, then inorganic materials enter into the substance in a process of hardening, and the basis for bone formation is provided. Saline substances are taken up.
If it raises the warmth state, then organs are formed whose activity consists in dissolving organic substance, in bringing it into the liquid or gaseous state.
Assume now that the ego organization does not find enough warmth developed in the organism, to increase the warmth state adequately in those organs requiring it. This will bring organs that should have their proper activity in the direction of dissolving, to hardening activity. For them, the tendency which is healthy in the bones becomes pathological.
Now, bone is an organ which, once it has been formed by the ego organization, is released by it from its sphere. It comes into a state where it is no longer taken hold of by the ego organization form within, but only from without. It is removed from the sphere of growth and organization, and merely serves the ego organization in a mechanical capacity by performing body movements. Only a remainder of inner ego organization activity continues to permeate bone throughout life because, after all, it must also stay an integral part within the organism and must not be allowed to fall out of the sphere of life.
Organs that for the above-mentioned reason may go into a formative activity similar to bones are the arteries. Then the so-called calcification (sclerosis) appears in them. In a certain sense the ego organization is driven out of these organ systems.
The opposite is the case when the ego organization does not meet the bones with the required lowering of the state of warmth for the region. Bones than become similar to organs which develop dissolving activity. Due to the lack of hardening they are not capable of providing the basis for the integration of salt. Thus the final step in the development of bone structure, which belongs in the sphere of the ego organization, fails to take place. Astral activity is not stopped at the right point along the way. Tendencies towards malformation of shape must appear, for healthy formation of shape can only occur within the sphere of the ego organization.
One is dealing here with diseases like rickets. From all this it becomes evident in which way human organs are related to their activities. Bone comes into being in the sphere of the ego organization. When its formation has been concluded, then bone serves this ego organization, which from now on no longer forms it but uses it for voluntary movements. Then it is the same for what comes into being in the sphere of the astral organization. Here undifferentiated substances and forces are formed. These occur throughout the body as the basis for differentiated organ formation. Astral activity carries them up to a certain level; then it makes use of
them. The entire human organism is permeated by semifluid material, in which the astral body‟s activity is at work.
This activity expresses itself in secretions which find their use where the formation of the organism is on the way to its higher members. A secretion tending in this direction can be seen in the glandular products, which play a role in the economy of the organism‟s functioning. Then in addition to these secretions into the inner organism, there are those that are actual eliminations to the outside. One is mistaken if one regards these as nothing else but the part of the ingested nutritive substances which the organism cannot make use of and therefore discards. It is actually not important that the organism secretes substances to the outside, but rather, that it accomplishes the activities which result in excretions. Something lies in carrying out these activities that the organism needs for its continued existence. This activity is just as necessary as the one which takes up substances into the organism or stores them in it. For the essence of organic functioning lies in the healthy relationship of both activities.
The result of activities, dominated by the astral body, thus appears in excretions to the outside. And if substances, which have been driven to the inorganic state, are embedded in the excretions, then the ego organization also lives in these excretions. And this life of the ego organization is of exceptional importance. For the force that is used for such excretions creates, as it were, a counterpressure going inward. And this is necessary for the healthy existence of the organism. The uric acid which is secreted through the urine creates, in such a counter pressure going inward, the proper inclination for sleep of the organism. Too little uric acid in the urine and too much in the blood generates such a short sleep that it does not suffice for the health of the organism.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XIII
ON THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF BEING !!! AND OF HEALING
Pain occurring somewhere in the organism is an experience in the astral body and in the “I”. Both, astral body as well as I, each in their respective ways, are engaged in the physical body and the etheric body for as long as the human being is in the waking state. When sleep sets in, the physical and the etheric body perform the organic activities alone. The astral body and the I are separated from them.
In sleeping, the organism returns to those modes of activity which are present at the starting point of its development, during the embryonic time and in early infancy. In waking, those processes predominate which are present at the end of this development, during ageing and dying.
At the beginning of human development, there is a predomance of the activity of the etheric body over that of the astral; gradually the activity of the latter becomes more and more intense, and that of the etheric body recedes. Then in sleep the etheric body does not obtain the degree of intensity it had at the beginning of life. It retains the intensity it has developed in relation to the astral in the course of life.
For every organ of the human body at every age of life a certain intensity of etheric activity allotted to the organ is in conformity with a certain intensity of astral activity.
The presence of a proper relationship determines whether the astral body can appropriately fit in with the etheric or not. If it is unable to do so because of a reduction of etheric activity, then pain originates, if the etheric body develops an activity beyond its normal measure, then the interpenetration of the astral and the etheric mode of activity becomes especially intense. Then pleasure, a feeling of comfort arises. One must simply be clear about the fact that pleasure which grows beyond a certain measure turns into pain and, vice and versa, pain into pleasure. If one does not bear this in mind then what is said here might seem in contradiction with what was elaborated earlier.
An organ becomes diseased when the etheric activity which belongs to it cannot unfold. Take for example metabolic activity, which continues from the digestive process into the whole organism. When the products of metabolism are entirely transferred into the organism‟s activity and its shaping of substance everywhere, then this is a sign that the etheric body is working appropriately. If, however, substances are deposited along metabolic pathways that do not become part of the doings of the organism, then the etheric body is reduced in its activity. Such physical processes, as serve the organism only in their own domain and which the astral body usually stimulates, reach beyond their limits into the domain of etheric activity. In this way processes originate which owe their existence to the predominance of the astral body. These processes have their proper place where aging, where breakdown of the body occurs.
Now it is essential to bring harmony between etheric and astral activity. The etheric body must be strengthened, the astral toned down. This can be made to happen by bringing the physical substances, which the etheric body is processing, into a condition in which they accommodate activity more easily than when a state of disease is present. Likewise strength must be brought to the ego organization, for the astral body, which is oriented toward the animal (astral) in its activity, will be more inhibited and on the way to human organization through the strengthening of the ego organization, than without this8.
One will find the means to see through these matters with insight by observing the functions which a particular substance displays along metabolic pathways. Take sulfur. It is present in protein. It is therefore fundamental to the whole process which happens in the assimilation of proteinaceous food. It passes from the foreign etheric mode through the inorganic state on into the etheric activity of the human organism. It is found in the fibrinogen of the organs, in the brain, in nails and hair. Thus it goes along metabolic pathways right to the periphery of the organism. In this way it proves to be a substance which plays a part in the assimilation of proteinaceous substance in the domain of the human ether body.
Now comes the question whether sulfur also has significance in the transition form the region of etheric function into that of astral function, and if it has anything to do with the ego organization. It does not noticeably combine with the inorganic substances introduced into the organism to form acids and salts. Such combination would be the basis for an assimilation of sulfur processes into the astral body and ego organization. But sulfur does not reach that far. It functions in the sphere of the physical and ether body. This is also apparent from the fact that an increased supply of sulfur evokes feelings of dizziness, suppression of consciousness in the organism. Sleep, the state of the body in which the astral body and ego organization are not at work as soul beings, also becomes more intensive when the sulfur supply is increased.
One can learn from this that sulfur, introduced as a medication, will increase the disposition of the physical activities for intervention of the organism‟s etheric activities more so than when a state of disease is present.
The matter is different for phosphorus. It is found in the human organism as phosphoric acid and phosphoric salts in protein, in fibrinogen, in the brain, in bones. It strives towards the inorganic substances, which are significant in the sphere of the ego organization. It stimulates the conscious activity of the human being. It thereby causes sleep in a way that is opposite to sulfur, namely after stimulation of conscious activity; sulfur, in contra-distinction, causes sleep by increasing unconscious physical and etheric activity. Phosphorus is present in calcium phosphate in the bones, which is in those organs that are subject to the ego organization as it employs outer mechanics to move the body, not when it works from within, in growth, regulation of metabolism, etc.
Phosphorus will therefore act as a medication when the pathological condition consists in a hypertrophy of the astral region over the ego organization and the latter needs to be strengthened so that the astral is pushed back.
Consider rickets. It was discussed earlier how it has its root in a proliferation of etheric-astral
activity and how it leads to an inadequate mode of activity of the ego organization. If it is first treated appropriately with sulfur, then etheric in relation to astral activity is strengthened; if one allows a phosphorus treatment to take place after this has happened, then what was prepared in the ether organization is led further to the organization of the “I”. One confronts the rickets form tow sides. (We are aware that phosphorus treatment for rickets is called into question, but until now attempts at treatment have not had anything to do with the method described here).
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XIV
ABOUT THE THERAPEUTIC WAY OF THINKING
Silicic acid carries out its activities along metabolic pathways right into those parts of the human organism where what is alive becomes lifeless. It is present is in the blood, through which the form-giving forces have to make their way, and it occurs in hair, where giving form outwardly comes to a close. One also finds it in the bones, where form giving ends inwardly. It appears in the urine as an excretory product.
It constitutes the physical basis of the ego organization. For this works by creating form. This ego organization needs the silicic acid process right into those regions of the organism in which shaping, giving form, borders on the outer and inner (unconscious) world. In the circumference of the organism where the hairs carry silicic acid, the human organization is connected to the unconscious outer world. In the bones, this organization is connected to the unconscious inner world, in which the will is working.
Between the two fields of action of silicic acid the physical foundation of consciousness must unfold in the healthy human organism. Silicic acid has a twofold task. Inwardly, it sets a border to processes such as growth, nutrition, etc. To the outside it closes the mere effects of nature off from the inner organism, so that it does not have to continue the workings of nature within its own sphere, but is able to unfold its own.
The human organism is most richly supplied with silicic acid in its youth wherever tissues are provided with form-giving forces. From there the silicic acid unfolds its activity towards the two border areas, creating between them the space in which the organs of conscious life can form themselves. In the healthy organism these are chiefly the sense organs. But one must bear in mind that sensory life permeates the whole human organism. The interaction of the organs is based on the fact that at all times and organ is perceiving the action of another organ. Within those organs which are not sense organs in the real meaning of the word, e.g., liver, spleen, kidneys, etc, the perception is so subtle that in ordinary waking life it stays below the threshold of consciousness. Every organ, besides serving this or that function in the organism, is also a sense organ.
But indeed, the whole human organism is, and has to be, permeated with perceptions which influence each other reciprocally so that everything in it works together in a healthy way.
All this is, however, based on the right distribution of silicic acid actions. One can actually speak of a special silicic acid organism, integrated into the organism as a whole, on which rests the basis of healthy life activity, the reciprocal sensitivity of the organs and their right relationship inwardly to the unfolding of soul and spirit, and outwardly towards the right closing off of the effects of nature.
This special organism will work properly only if silicic acid is present in the organism in such quantity that the ego organization is able to make full use of it. For the whole remaining quantity of silicic acid, the astral organization, which lies below the ego organization, must have the force to excrete it through the urine or in another way.
Excessive quantities of silicic acid which are neither excreted, nor taken hold of by the ego organization , cannot but be deposited as foreign substances in the body, interfering with the ego organization through their form-giving tendency, by means of which – in the right quantity – they precisely serve it . Too much silicic acid introduced into the organism will therefore cause gastrointestinal upsets. It is then the task of the digestive tract to eliminate the excessive formative tendency. Where the fluid element should predominate, a desiccation is caused. This is most evident, when, with excessive uptake of silicic acid, disturbances of the balance of the soul take place behind which the organic disturbances are unmistakable. One feels dizziness, is unable to keep from falling asleep, feels unable to direct the perceptive processes of hearing and sight; one may even have a feeling as though the functioning of the senses became congested where it continues into the inner nervous system. All this shows that silicic acid presses out towards the periphery of the body, but that when it gets there in excessive quantities, it disturbs normal form giving by introducing an alien form-giving tendency. Similarly, the disturbance occurs towards the inner closing off of form giving. One feels unable to direct one‟s movement system, and experiences pain in the joints. All this may progress to inflammatory processes, originating where the alien form giving of silicic acid takes hold too strongly.
One is thereby referred to the healing forces that silicic acid can develop in the human organism. Assume that an organ which is not strictly speaking a sense organ becomes over- sensitive, in its unconscious faculty of perception, to the parts of the organism external to it. Then one will observe that a disturbance occurs in the functions of this organ. If one is able to remedy the over-sensitivity by administering silicic acid then one can get somewhere with the pathological condition. But it will be a matter of influencing the organic bodily functioning in such a way that the administration of silicic acid acts directly around the diseased organ, and does not influence the whole body through a systemic effect, in the sense of what was portrayed above.
By combining silicic acid with other preparations one can have the silicic acid, when introduced into the organism, reach directly to that organ in which it is needed, and also from there have it be stimulated to excretion outward again without becoming harmful to other organs.
Another case occurs when the sensitivity of an organ for the functions of the other organs is reduced. Then one is dealing with an accumulation of silicic acid in the surrounding of the organ. Then the function of silicic acid in the whole organism needs to be influenced in such a way that the local action loses its force, or one can also stimulate the removal of silicic acid with medications that encourage excretion. The first method is to be preferred, since the accumulation of silicic acid in one place, as a rule, evokes a deficit somewhere else. Distribution of the localized silicic acid function over the whole organism may be brought about, for example, by a course of sulfur. One realizes why this is the case when one reads again, elsewhere in this book, about how sulfur functions in the organism.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XV
THE METHOD OF HEALING
Insight into how medicines work is based on an understanding of how forces become active in the world outside the human being. For, in order to allow a process of healing to begin, one has to introduce substances into the organism which distribute themselves in it in such a way that the pathological process gradually turns into a normal one. Now the nature of a pathological process gradually turns into a normal one. Now the nature of a pathological process is precisely that something is going on within the organism which does not integrate itself into the organism‟s activity as a whole. That is something which such a process has in common with a similar process in outer nature.
One could say: if a process similar to one in outer nature originates n the inner organism, then illness sets in. Such a process can take hold of the physical or the etheric organism. Then either the astral body or the “I” has to fulfil a task which they do not otherwise accomplish. In a period of life in which they should be unfolding in free activity of soul, they have to turn back to an earlier age – in many cases even the embryonic age – and have to participate in building physical and etheric forms which should already have passed over into the domain of the physical and the etheric organism, that is to say, those forms that in the first period of human life are provided by the astral body and ego organization but later are taken over by the physical and etheric organism alone. For all development of the human organism is based on the fact that originally the whole physical and etheric body form results form astral and ego organization activity; but with increasing age astral and ego activity proceed of their own accord in the physical and etheric organization. If they do not do so, then astral body and ego organization have to intervene at a stage of their development in a way for which they are no longer suited at this stage.
Assume that congestions occur in the lower abdomen. Physical and etheric organization do not then perform the activities that were transferred to them in a preceding period of life in the part of the human body in question. Astral and ego activity must intervene. This weakens them for other tasks in the organism. They are not present where they should be, e.g., in giving form to the nerves that go to the muscles. Paralytic symptoms in certain parts of the organism are the consequence. It is a matter then of introducing substances into the body which can relieve astral and ego organization of the activity that does not befit them. Now one may discover that processes which are at work in forming strong etheric oil in the plant organism, particularly in the forming of the flower, are able to effect this relief. Substances containing phosphorus can also do that. All one must do is to assure that phosphorus is mixed with other substances so that it unfolds its action within the intestine, not n the metabolism that lies beyond the intestine.
If one is dealing with symptoms of inflammation of the skin, then astral body and ego organization unfold an abnormal activity there. Then they withdraw from functions which they should perform in organs that are more internal. They lessen the sensitivity, these again cease to
perform their normal functions. For example, abnormal conditions in liver activity may arise. Consequently the digestion may be adversely influenced. If now silicic acid is introduced into the organism, then the activities of the astral and the ego organism that have been diverted to the skin are relieved. The activity of these organisms directed inwardly becomes free again, and a healing process arises.
When confronted with pathological conditions that manifest in palpitations, then one has irregular activity of the astral organism acting on the movement of the blood circulation. This astral activity then weakens in relation to brain processes. Epileptiform conditions arise, because the weakened astral activity in the head organism puts too much strain on the etheric activity belonging to this area. If the gumlike substance that can be extracted from levisticum (lovage) is introduced into the organism – perhaps in the form of a tea, or even better in a somewhat processed preparation – then the activity of the astral body that was improperly used for the blood circulation is set free and becomes strengthened for the brain organization.
In all these cases an appropriate diagnosis must determine the direction of the pathological functions. Take the last case. It could be that the cause lies in a disturbed interaction between the etheric and astral body in the blood circulation. Then the brain symptoms are the consequence. One may proceed with the treatment as was described. But the situation may also be the other way around. The irregularity may originate between astral and etheric activity in the cerebral system. Then the irregular blood circulation with abnormal cardiac activity is the consequence. In that case one must introduce, for example, sulfates into the metabolic process. These work on the etheric organization of the brain by way of evoking in it a force of attraction for the astral body. One may observe this from the fact that the thought initiative, the will sphere, and the whole integrity of the individual, experience a change for the better. In addition it will probably be necessary to support the influence of the astral forces on the circulatory system, which they have to acquire anew, with a copper salt perhaps.
One may observe that the organism as a whole returns to its regular activity when the excessive activity of the astral and ego organism caused by the physical and etheric organisms in some part of the body, is replaced by an activity caused from outside. The organism has the tendency to balance out its deficiencies. Therefore it restores itself when an irregularity can be artificially regulated for a time in such a way that the process evoked internally, which must cease, is combatted with a similar process which one brings about from ou.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XVI
INSIGHT INTO MEDICATIONS
One must first of all have insight into the substances which have to be considered for use as medication, so that one can assess the potential sphere of working of the forces they embody, outside and within the human organism. In this connection it could only to a small extent be a matter of looking into the possible reactions which ordinary chemistry investigates. The point is, on the contrary, to observe those functions which result in the context of the substance‟s inner constitution of forces in relation to the forces that radiate from the earth or stream in towards it.
Consider, for example, antimonite from this point of view. Antimony has a strong affinity for the sulfur compounds of other metals. Sulfur has a number of properties which remain constant within relatively narrow limits. It is sensitive to processes of nature such as heating, combustion, etc. This also makes it capable of playing a significant role in proteinaceous substances which completely free themselves form earth force and subject themselves to etheric functions. Since antimony has an affinity for the sulfur to which it bonds, it readily partakes in this subjection to the ether functions. Therefore it is easily introduced into the activity of protein in the human body. It helps the latter to an ether function when, due to some pathological condition, the body itself is unable to convert a proteinaceous substance introduced from outside and to integrate it into its own activity.
But antimony shows still other unique characteristics. Wherever possible it strives for sheafllike forms. It arranges itself in lines which strive away from the earth and toward the forces that work in the ether. With antimony one thus introduces something into the human organism that goes halfway to meet the function of the ether body. Also what goes on with antimony in the Seiger process9 points to this substance‟s kinship to the etheric. In this process it becomes filamentous. Now the Seiger process begins, as it were, physically from below, and above it makes a transition to the etheric. Antimony integrates itself into this transition.
Moreover antimony, which oxidizes when red-hot, gives off, in the process of combustion, a white vapor which precipitates on cold surfaces, generating the so-called “flowers of antimony”.
Furthermore antimony has a certain resistance to electrical effects. When it undergoes electrolysis in a specific way and precipitates on the cathode, it will explode on contact with a metallic needle.
All this shows that antimony has a tendency to go over easily into the ether element the moment the conditions are favorable in the slightest degree. To spiritual vision all these particulars only count as indications, for this vision directly perceives the relationship between ego activity and antimony function to be such that antimony processes introduced into the human organism function in the same way as the ego organization.
As it flows through the human organism, blood shows a tendency to coagulate. This tendency is subject to the influence of the ego organization and must be regulated by it. Blood is an intermediary organic product. What arises in blood has undergone processes which are on the way to become part of the fully human organism, i.e., of the ego organization. It still must undergo processes which adapt to the form of this organism. The nature of these processes can be gleaned from the following. Since blood coagulates when it is removed from the body, it shows that it has the inherent tendency to coagulate, but it must continually be prevented from coagulating within the human organism. The force by which it integrates itself into the human organism is what prevents the blood from coagulating. It integrates itself into the body‟s form by means of the formative forces which lie just before coagulation. If coagulation were to occur, life would be endangered.
If one therefore has a pathological condition in the organism in which there is a deficiency of these forces working toward coagulation of the blood, then antimony in one form or another works as medication.
Form giving in the organism is essentially a kind of conversion of proteinaceous substance through which it comes to work together with mineralizing forces. The latter are, for example, contained in limestone. What comes into consideration here is graphically shown in the shell formation of the oyster. The oyster must rid itself of the shell-forming element, in order to preserve the inherent nature of proteinaceous substance. Something similar is also present in the forming of the eggshell.
In the oyster calcareous constituents are secreted so as not to integrate them into protein. In the human organism this integration must take place. The pure protein working must be transformed into one in which also works what the ego organization can evoke from the calcareous as form-creating forces. This must take place within blood formation. Antimony counteracts the force that excretes calcium carbonate and guides the protein, which wants to preserve its form, through its kinship with the ether element into a formlessness which is receptive to the influences of calcareous or similar substances.
It is clear that the pathology of typhoid fever consists of an inadequate transition of proteinaceous substance into blood substance that has form-giving quality. The form of the diarrheas occurring here shows that the incapacity for this transformation already begins in the intestinal tract. The severe impairments of consciousness that take place show that the ego organization is driven out of the body and cannot be active. This is due to the situation that the proteinaceous substance cannot approach the mineralizing forces in which the ego organization is able to work. This view is also evidenced by the fact that the evacuations are contagious. In them the tendency to destruction of the form-creating forces proves to be enhanced.
When properly compounded antimony preparations are administered for typhoid symptoms, they prove to be medications. They divest the proteinaceous substance of its inherent forces and make it inclined to adapt to the form-giving forces of the ego organization.
From points of view that are frequently encountered today one could say: views like the ones outlined here about antimony are not exact, and one will instead refer to the exactitude of
customary chemical methods. But when it comes to their function within the human organism, chemical reactions of substances actually have as little significance as the chemical composition of a paint has for the handling of this substance by the painter. Surely the painter would do well to know something about the chemical starting point. But how he deals with the paints as he is painting stems from another methodology. And so it is for the therapist. He may regard chemistry to be a basis which means something to him; the mode of action of substances within the human organism, however, no longer has anything to do with this chemical aspect. Whoever sees exactitude only in the data ascertained by chemistry – its pharmaceutical branch as well – eradicates the possibility of gaining ways of looking at what takes place in processes of healing in the organism.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XVII
INSIGHT INTO SUBSTANCE AS BASIS FOR INSIGHT INTO MEDICATIONS
Whoever wants to assess the effect of medications, must have an eye for the resultant force activity in the human organism when a substance, which shows certain functions outside of the human organism, is introduced somehow into it.
One can find a classic example in formic acid. It occurs as a corrosive, inflammation- inducing substance in the body of ant. It appears there as a product of secretion. The animal organism in question must generate this if it is to carry out its activity properly. Life lies in the activity of secretion. Once the secretory product has been produced it has no further task within the organism. It must be excreted. The essence of the organism lies in the doing, not in its substances. The organization is not a conglomeration of matter, it is an activity. Matter holds the stimulus, it has no further significance for the organization.
Formic acid is also generated in the human organism. But here it has significance. It serves the ego organization. The astral body separates out form the organic substance parts that tend to become lifeless. The ego organization needs this transition of organic substance to the lifeless state. But it needs the very process of transition; not what then comes into being through the transition. Once what is becoming lifeless has been formed, it is a burden to the inner organism. It either must be excreted directly, or be dissolved to get away indirectly.
If the dissolution of something that should be dissolved does not happen, then it accumulates within the organism forming the basis for gouty or rheumatic conditions. Here the formic acid which is forming in the human organism comes into play, dissolving. If it is generated in sufficient quantity, then the organism will correctly remove the products tending to be lifeless. If the generating force is too weak, then the gouty or rheumatic conditions come about. One supports the organism by bringing formic acid to it from outside, since one then provides what it is unable to generate for itself.
One can get to know such modes of action when one compares the ongoing functioning in the human organism of one substance with another. Take oxalic acid. Under certain condition sit can turn into formic acid. The functions of the latter represent a metamorphosis of oxalic acid. As oxalic acid is a secretion of the plant world, so formic acid is of the animal world. Oxalic acid production established an activity in the plant organism which is analogous to that of formic acid production in the animal. That is to say, oxalic acid production corresponds to the domain of the etheric, formic acid production to that of the astral. Illness which comes to expression in gouty and rheumatic conditions can be ascribed to an inadequate activity of the astral body. Other conditions present in such a way that the causes, which stem from the astral organism in gout and rheumatism, lie further back in the etheric organism. Then not only force congestions towards the astral emerge, which inhibit the ego organization, but also inhibitory
effects in the etheric which cannot be mastered by the astral organization. They manifest in sluggish lower abdominal activity, in inhibited activity of liver and spleen, in stonelike deposits in the gall bladder and the like. If one gives oxalic acid in such cases, then the etheric organism is supported appropriately in its activity. Through oxalic acid the etheric body is strengthened since the force of the ego organization is converted by this acid to a force of the astral body which then works more strongly on the ether body.
Starting from such observations one can get to know the action of substances that have a healing effect on the organism. Observation may start from plant life. In the plant physical activity is permeated by etheric activity. One gets to know from the plant what etheric activity can do. In the animal-astral organism this activity is carried over to astral activity. If it is too weak as etheric activity, one may strengthen it by adding etheric activity from a plant product that is administered. Animal nature lies at the basis of the human organism. The same applies to what proceeds between the human etheric and astral body as in the animal, within certain limits.
One may restore the disturbed relation between etheric and astral activity with medications from the plant world. But one will come to nothing with such preparations when something or other in the physical, etheric and astral human organization is disturbed in its interrelation with the ego organization. The ego organization must direct its activity to processes that tend to become mineral.
Therefore only mineral substances are useful as medication in the pathological conditions in question. To get to know the medicinal function of a mineral substance it is necessary to investigate to what extent the substance can be broken down. For the mineral introduced from outside has to be broken down and then be built up again in a new form in the organism by the inherent organic forces. The medicinal function must consist in such breaking down and building up. And the result must go in the direction that an inadequate inherent activity of the organism is taken over by the activity of the introduced medicine.
Take the example of excessive menstruation. Here the force of the ego organization is weakened. It is expended one-sidedly in making blood. Too little of it is left for the blood‟s absorptive force in the organism. The path which the forces going towards the lifeless are to take in the organism is too short, because these forces work too vehemently. They exhaust themselves halfway.
One can come to their assistance by administering calcium in some compound to the organism. This joins in with blood formation. The ego activity id relieved from this domain and can turn to blood absorption.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XVIII
CURATIVE EURYTHMY
Within our therapeutic approach, the movement therapy called “curative eurythmly”10 plays a special role. It was initially developed out of anthroposophy by Dr. Rudolf Steiner as a new art form.
In its essence as an art, eurythmy has often been described by Dr. Steiner, 11 and indeed as an art form it has already found wide recognition.
It is presented on stage by the human being in movement, but is not an art of dance. This becomes apparent already form the fact that particularly the arms and hands of the human being are in movement. Groups of people in movement elevate the whole to a stage setting that has an artistic effect in itself.
All movements are based on the inner nature of the human organization. In the first years of life, speech flows from the human organization. Just as in speech the sound wrests itself from the constitution of the human being, so with the help of a true insight into this constitution one can elicit movements from the human being and from groups of human beings which represent a truly visible speech or visible song. In this the movements are no more arbitrary than speech itself. As in the spoken word an O cannot b pronounced where and belongs, so, in eurythmy only one distinct gesture can appear for an I or for a C-sharp. Eurythmy is thus a true manifestation of human nature that does not derive from it unconsciously like speech or music, but which may be developed consciously by means of a true insight into the human being.
In the performance, a person or groups of people are moving on the stage. The poem, now transposed into visible speech, is simultaneously recited. One hears the content of the poem, and sees it at the same time. Or a piece of music is offered which reappears in the moving gestures as visible music.
A sculptured movement is given in eurythmy which is an essential extension for the artistic sphere.
What has been discovered here as an artistic form can now be developed in two other directions. One of these directions is pedagogical. In the Waldorf School, which was founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and which stands under the direction of Rudolf Steiner, pedagogical eurythmy is practiced in all classes in addition to gymnastics. One has to take into consideration here that ordinary gymnastics only develops the dynamics and statics of the physical body. In eurythmy, the full human being, in body, soul and spirit, flow into the movement. The growing human being feels this and experiences these eurythmy exercises quite naturally as an expression of human nature, just as the has experienced learning to speak in earlier years.
The other direction is therapeutic. When the gestures of artistic and pedagogical eurythmy are modified, so that they from the diseased nature of the human being just as the others flow form a healthy nature, then curative eurythmy comes into being.
Movements that are done in this way work back on the diseased organs. One sees how what is done here outwardly continues inwardly into the organs, restoring health when the moving gesture is exactly adapted to an organ pathology. Since this way of working into the human being through movement address body, soul and spirit, it affects the inner nature of the diseased human being more intensely than all other movement therapy.
For this very reason, though, curative eurythmy can never become the business of lay people, and may not be regarded or treated as such.
The curative eurythmist, who must be well trained in the understanding of the human organization, can only work in association with the physician. Dilettantism in any form can only lead to problems.
A pertinent diagnosis is the only basis for the practice of curative eurythmy. The practical results of curative eurythmy are indeed such that one can altogether call it a beneficial part of the therapeutic wary of thinking presented in this book.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XIX
CHARACTERISTIC CASE HISTRORIES
this chapter we would like to describe a number of cases from the practice of the Clinical- Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim12. They will show how one can, with the help of insight into the spiritual aspect of the human being, try to gain a thorough picture of the pathological condition should be used. Fundamental to this is a view which looks at the process of illness and healing as one complete cycle. The illness begins with an irregularity in the composition of the human organism with regard to the parts that were described in this book. It has reached a certain stage when the patient comes in for treatment. Now one must see to it that all processes which have taken place in the human organism since the beginning of the disease are reversed, so that one eventually arrives at the state of health which the organism had previously. A process of this kind, reversing on itself, cannot be accomplished without the experience of a loss of growth forces n the organism as a whole, forces which are equivalent to the forces that the human organism needs during childhood to increase in size. Medications must therefor be so constituted that hey not only reverse the pathological process but also support the reducing vitality
again. Part of the latter function must be left to dietary measures. But in the more serious cases the organism is, as a rule, not in the position to develop sufficient vitality in the assimilation of food. Therefore it will be necessary to regulate the actual treatment as well in such a way that the organism is supported in this respect. In the typical medications that have been brought out by the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute13, this provision has been made altogether. Only on closer inspection will one therefore realize why a given preparation contains certain ingredients. In the course of a disease one should take into consideration not only the localized pathological process, but as well the change in the organism as a whole, and the latter is to be included in the reversal process. How this is to be thought of in detail will be made clear in specific cases, which we will now characterize. After describing them we shall continue the more general considerations.
FIEST CASE¹⁴
The patient is a twenty-six –year –old woman. The whole state of her being is extraordinary labile. It is clear from looking at the patient that the part of the organism that we have called the astral body in our book is in a state of excessive activity. One may perceive that the astral body is but inadequate controlled by the ego organization. As soon as the patient gets ready to do some work, the astral body becomes agitated. The ego organization tries to make itself felt, but is constantly pushed back. This causes the temperature to rise in such a case. A well-regulated digestion depends above all on a normal ego organization expresses itself in a persistent constipation in this patient. The disturbance is in the digestive activity has a further consequence in the migrainous conditions and vomiting from which she suffers. In sleep the impotent ego organization is seen to cause an inadequate organic activity from below upward, impairing the
outbreathing. This results in an excessive accumulation of carbonic acid in the organism during sleep and manifests organically in palpitations on awakening, and psychologically in anxiety an crying out. Physical examination could should nothing other than a lack of those forces which bring about the normal coherence of astral body, ether body and physical body. The excessive inherent activity of the astral body causes too little of its forces to flow over into the physical and etheric body. During the period of growth therefore, the latter two remained delicate in their development. This showed itself also on examination in that the patient had a graceful, weakly body and complained of frequent back pains. The latter come about because in the activity of the spinal cord it is precisely the ego organization which asserts itself most strongly. In addition the patient speaks of many dreams. This is caused by the astral body, which unfolds its excessive inherent activity when separated from the physical and ether body in sleep. One has to start from the fact that the ego organization needs to be strengthened and the activity of the astral body reduced. One achieves the first by selecting a medication that is suited to support the ego organization as it is weakened in the digestive tract. Copper can be identified as such a medication. Applied in the form of a copper ointment bandage to the lumbar region, copper has a strengthening effect on the inadequate development of warmth by the ego organization. This will be noticed in a diminution of abnormal heart activity and dissipation of the anxiety. The excessive inherent activity of the astral body is combated by exceedingly minute doses of
lead15 taken orally. Lead draws the astral body together and wakens its forces to join more strongly with the physical body and the ether body. (Lead poisoning consists of the astral connecting too strongly with the ether and physical body, so that the latter two are subject to an excessive breakdown process). The patient recovered visibly with this treatment. The labile condition was replaced by a certain inner firmness and assurance. From being chaotically fragmented the mood became inwardly contented. The constipation and back pain symptoms disappeared, likewise the migrainous conditions and headaches. The patient regained her capacity to work.
SECOND CASE¹⁶
A forty-eight-year-old male patient; he had been a robust child, a capable soul. He states that for five months during the war he was treated for nephritis and was discharged as cured. He married at the age of thirty-five, has five healthy children, a sixth child died at birth. At the age of thirty-three he becomes depressed, tired and apathetic after mental overexertion. These conditions get progressively stronger. At the same time spiritual despair arises. The patient is confronted with questions which show him the negative side of his profession – he is a teacher – and he cannot meet them with anything positive. The pathological condition demonstrates an astral body with insufficient affinity to ether and physical body and with an inherent
rigidity. Therefore the physical and ether body assert their own qualities. The experience of the either body as not being soundly connected with the physical body results in fatigue and
apathy. That the patient falls into spiritual despair has its origin in the astral body‟s impotence in making use of the physical and ether body. Connected with all this is that sleep is good, since the astral body has little connection with ether and physical body. However, for the same reason, waking up is difficult. The astral body is loath to enter the physical. Not until the evening, when
the physical and ether body are tired, does a normal connection begin with them. Therefore the patient does not really wake up until the evening. The whole condition points to the need first of all to strengthen the activity of the astral body. This one always achieves by giving arsenic in the form of a mineral water17. One will notice after some time that the particular person gains more control over his body. The cohesion of astral body and ether body is strengthened; depression, apathy and fatigue cease to exist. One must now also help the physical body, which has become sluggish in its movements through its long, inadequate connection to the astral body, by treating it with a course of phosphorus in a weak dosis18. Phosphorus supports the ego organization to overcome the resistance of the physical body. Rosemary baths will open the way for drainage of the accumulated products of metabolism. Curative eurythmy can reestablish the harmony of the individual members of the human organism (nerve-sense system, rhythmic system, metabolic- limb system), which was impaired by the inactivity of astral body. If one gives the patient elder flower tea as well, then the metabolism, which;, due to the inactivity of the astral body has gradually become sluggish, is restored back to normal again. We could witness a complete cure in this patient.
THIRD CASE¹⁹
A thirty-one-year-old male patient, musician, visiting our clinic during a concert tour, has a condition of severe inflammatory functional disturbances of the urinary tract; he has catarrhal20 symptoms, fever, is physically overtired, has generalized weakness, and is unable to work.
The past history reveals that the patient has repeatedly had the same condition. Examination of the patient‟s nonphysical state reveals a hypersensitive, worn-down astral
body. Consequently, the physical and ether body are strongly susceptible to catarrhal, the physical and ether body are strongly susceptible to catarrhal and inflammatory
conditions. Already as a child the patient had a delicate physical body, not maintained by the astral body. Therefore he had measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough and frequent sore throats; at age fourteen he had urethritis, which recurred combined with cystitis at age twenty-nine. At the age of eighteen he had pneumonia and pleurisy; at age twenty-nine pleurisy with a bout of the flu; and at the age of thirty catarrh of the frontal sinuses. There is a constant inclination to catarrh of the conjuctivae. During the two months he spent at our clinic, the
patient‟s temperature curve rose at first to 38.9oC, then it came down, only to rise again on the fourteenth day. It then fluctuated between 37o and 36o, occasionally rising above 37o or dropping to 35oC. This temperature curve gives a clear picture of the changing conditions in the ego organization. Such a curve develops when the effects of the semiconscious contents of the ego organization are expressed in warmth processes of the physical and ether body without having been reduced to a normal rhythm by the astral body. In this case the whole capacity for action of the astral body concentrates on the rhythmic system and expresses itself there in artistic
talent. Then the other systems do not get enough. An important consequence of this is the severe fatigue and insomnia during summertime. In summer considerable demands are made by the outer world on the astral body. Its inner capacity for action diminishes. The forces of the
physical and either body become predominant. In the general sense of well-being this is perceived as severe fatigue. The impaired capacity for action of the astral body hinders its separation from the physical body. Therefore insomnia sets in. The inadequate separation of the astral body from the ether body is expressed in exciting and unpleasant dreams that stem from the sensitivity of the astral body to the damages in the physical organism. Characteristically the dreams symbolize these damages of the physical body in images of human mutilations. The terrifying nature of these images is due to the accompanying quality of feelings that is so
natural. A consequence of the astral body‟s inadequate functioning in the metabolic system is the tendency to constipation. Because of the independence of the ether body, which is insufficiently influenced by the astral body, the protein consumed as food cannot be completely transformed from vegetable and animal protein into human protein. Thus protein is excreted in the urine, so that the urinalysis is positive for protein. If the astral body functions inadequately then processes will appear in the physical body which are foreign processes in the human organism. The result of those processes is the formation of pus. This represents, as it were, an extra-human process within the human being. Therefore pure pus could be found in the urinary sediment. This pus formation has a parallel process in the soul. The astral body digests life experiences in the soul as little as it digests substances physically. In the same way that extra-human substances develop in the form of pus so also soul contents of an extra-human character develop in the form of an interest in abnormal life contexts, premonitions, omens etc. For us it was now a question of exerting a balancing, purifying and strengthening effect on the astral body. Since the ego organization is very agile, its activity can be used as a carrier, as it were, for medicinal action. It is focussed on the external world and thus one can best access the ego organization by striving for effects oriented from without inward. One achieves this with poultices. We first put
melilotus21 in the poultice. This works on the astral body so that it experiences balancing of the distribution of its forces and counteracting of its one-sided disposition toward the rhythmic system. Naturally the poultices must not be applied to that part of the organism in which the rhythmic system is especially concentrated. We applied them to the organs where the metabolic and movement systems are concentrated. We avoided poultices around the head, because the changing conditions of the ego organization which proceed form the head would have paralyzed the effect.
Therefore it was now important to stimulate astral body and ego organization, which have to be pulled together for the melilotus to take effect. This we sought to do by adding oxalic acid, derived from burdock root22. Oxalic acid works in such a way that it transforms the activity of the ego organization into one of the astral body. In addition, we gave oral medications in very weak dosage to integrate the secretions normally into the functions of the astral body. With the sulfate of potassium we tried to normalize the secretions that are under the control of the head organization. With the carbonate of potassium we sought to influence those processes that depend on the metabolic system in the narrower sense of the word. With teucrium we regulated the secretion of urine. Thus we gave a preparation, consisting of equal parts of potassium sulfate, potassium carbonate and teucrium23. The entire treatment had to reckon with a very labile balance in the whole physical, soul and spiritual organism. Thus one had to provide for physical for physical balance through complete bed rest and for physical balance through complete bed rest and for spiritual balance through mental quiet. This alone made the interaction of the various medicines possible. Movement and excitement render such a complicated therapeutic process
almost impossible. On completion of the treatment the patient was restored to bodily strength and vigor, and was mentally in a good disposition. It goes without saying that when there is such a labile state of health any external disruption may bring on a recurrence of one or another disturbance. It is part of the total healing that in such a case such events should be avoided.
FOURTH CASE²⁴
A child which was brought to our clinic twice, first at the age of four, and then at age five and a half. The mother of the child and the mother‟s sister came along. The diagnosis led us from the child‟s illness to that of both the mother and the sister. In regard to the child, we were able to ascertain the following: she is one of twins, born six weeks prematurely. The other child had died in the last stage of fetal life. At the age of six weeks, the child became ill, cried an unusual amount and was admitted to a hospital. There pyloric stenosis was diagonsed. The child was partly breastfed by a wet nurse and partly had artificial feedings. At the age of eight months she was discharged from the hospital. On the first day after her arrival home she had a convulsion, which for the next two months recurred on a daily basis. During the seizure the child would become stiff and roll her eyes. The attacks were preceded by fearfulness and crying. Before the attack began the child also would squint with the right eye and vomit. At the age of two and a half there was another attack lasting five hours. The child again became stiff and lay there as though dead. At the age of four there was an attack which lasted one-half hour. We were advised that this was the first attack which was accompanied by fever. After the convulsions, which had set in on returning from the hospital, the parents noticed a paralysis of the right arm and the right leg. At two and a half the child made her first attempt to walk, during which it turned out that only the left leg was able to step out and the right leg dragged behind. The right arm, too, remained without will. The same condition was still present when the child was brought to us. It was essential to assess the state of the members of the child‟s organization. This was attempted independently of the complex of symptoms.
A severe atrophy of the ether body became apparent and in certain parts the ether body took up only a very slight influence from the astral body. The area of the right half of the chest was as though lamed in the ether body. By comparison, the area of the stomach had sort of a hypertrophy of the astral body. Now it was a matter of reconciling the complex of symptoms with these findings. There is no doubt that the astral body makes a strong demand on the stomach in the digestion. The latter, however, is congested at the transition from the intestines to the lymph vessels due to the paralysis of the ether body. Therefore the blood is
undernourished. We therefore must consider the appearances of nausea very significant symptoms. Cramps always occur when the etheric body becomes atrophied and the astral body gains direct influence over the physical body without the ether body mediating. This was present to the highest degree in the child. When this situation becomes permanent during the period of growth as was the case here, then those processes are lacking which make the movement system suited to a normal receptivity for the will. This became apparent in the child in the right side was not usable. We now had to relate the condition of the child to that of the mother. The latter is thirty-seven years old when she comes to us. She states that at the age of thirteen she had already
reached her present size. She had bad teeth at an early age, had suffered in childhood from articular rheumatism, and maintains that she had rickets. Menstruation began comparatively early. The patient explains that at the age of sixteen she had kidney disease and she also speaks of having had cramping conditions. At the age of twenty-five she had constipation which was due to a cramp in the anal sphincter that had to be dilated. Even now she has cramping on evacuation. The directly perceived findings, before drawing any conclusions from the complex of symptoms, reveal an extraordinary similarity with those of the child. But everything appears in a much milder form. One must keep in mind that he human ether body experiences its particular development between the change of teeth and puberty. This expresses itself in the patient in the fact that the available forces of the either body, since they are not very strong, only enable her to grow until puberty. At this moment the particular development of the astral body begins, and through the latter‟s hypertrophy, the ether body is now overwhelmed and the astral body intervenes too strongly in the physical organization. This manifests in the arrested growth in the thirteenth year. At the same time the patient is by no means dwarflike but on the contrary very tall, which stems form the effect of the growth forces of the ether body which, although limited, had worked uninhibited by the astral body, bringing on a large increase in the size of the physical body. But these forces were not able to engage normally in the functions of the physical
body. This became apparent when arthritic rheumatism occurred and later cramping. The weakness of the ether body causes a particularly strong effect of the astral body on the physical body to set in. This effect is catabolic. In the normal course of development in life it is offset by regenerative forces in sleep, when the astral body is separated from the physical and ether
body. If the ether body is too weak, as is the case in our patient, then an excess of breaking down begins, which became apparent in her teeth already needing their first filling in the twelfth
year. When besides this special demands are made on the ether body as in pregnancy, then at every such instance the teeth get worse. In addition, the weakness of the ether body with respect to its connection with the astral body becomes particularly apparent in the frequency of dreams and in the sound sleep which the patient enjoys in spite of all irregularity. The weakness of the either body also becomes apparent in that foreign processes are enacted in the physical body and which are not mastered by the ether body, and which show themselves in the urine as protein, isolated hyaline casts, and salts. These disease processes in the mother were remarkably akin to those of her sister. The findings regarding the composition of the human being‟s members are almost exactly the same: a delicately functioning ether body, therefore preponderance of the astral body. The astral body itself is, however, weaker than that of her sister. Accordingly, as in the latter, menstruation begins early, but, instead of inflammations, she only has pains that stem from an irritation of the organs, e.g., the joints. In the joints the ether body must be particularly active if the vitality is to get on normally. When ether body activity is weak, then the physical body activity becomes predominant; this becomes apparent here in joint swelling and in chronic arthritis. The weakness of the astral body, which functions too little in subjective experience, is indicated by the preference for sweets, which enhance the experience of the astral body. When besides this the weak astral body is worn out oat the end of the day, the pains will increase in intensity if the weakness continues. Th patient complains of increasing pain in the evening. The correlation of the pathological conditions of the three patients points to antecedents in the generation preceding that of the two sisters, and particularly to the grandmother of the child. The real cause must be looked for in her. The disturbed equilibrium between astral and ether body in all three patients can only be based on a similar situation in the grandmother of the child. This
irregularity must be based on inadequate development of the embryonal organs of nutrition, particularly the allantois, by the astral and either body of the grandmother. This inadequate development of the allantois must be looked for in all three patients. It was assessed initially in purely spiritual-scientific way by us. The physical allantois goes through a metamorphosis, passing into the spiritual, constituting the strength and vigor of the forces of the astral body. A degenerated allantois gives rise to reduced abilities of the astral body which expresses itself particularly in all the organs for movement. All this is the case in the three patients. One actually can apprehend the constitution of the allantois by looking at that of the astral body. One can gather from this that our reference to the preceding generation was not born of a far-fetched fantastic conclusion, but of a real spiritual-scientific observation.
To whomever is irritated by this truth we would say that our elaborations do not spring at all from a bent for the paradoxical but rather from the wish not to withhold from anyone the insight that is after all available. The mystical conceptions of heredity will ever remain dark when one shrinks from recognizing the metamorphosis from the physical to the spiritual, and vice versa, in the sequence of the generations.
Therapeutically, such an insight must of course lead to the idea of where to make a start with the healing process. If one had not thus been referred to the hereditary aspect, but instead had simply observed the irregularity in the association between ether body and astral body, then one would have used medicines which affect both these members of the human being. However, these would have remained ineffective in our case, since the damage, running through the generations, is too deep-seated to be offset within the members of the human organization themselves. In a case like this one must work on the ego organization and here one must bring everything into effect which relates to the harmonizing and strengthening of the etheric and astral body. One can achieve this if one makes an impression on the ego organization with intensified sensory stimuli (sensory stimuli work on the ego organization). For the child this was attempted in the following way: a bandage was applied to the right hand with a 5 % pyrite ointment and simultaneously an embraocation was done of the left half of the head with ointment of Amanita caesarea (golden agaric). Pyrite, a compound of iron and sulfur, externally applied, has the effect of stimulating the ego organization to bring the astral body more to life and the increase its affinity with the ether body. The golden agaric substance, with its particular content of organized nitrogen, acts in such a way that an effect coming from the head makes the ether body more lively through the ego organization and increases its affinity with the astral body. He healing process was supported by curative eurythmy25, which brings the ego organization as such into lively activity. Through this what is applied externally is guided into the depths of the organization. The healing process introduced in this way was then further intensified through preparations which should make the astral and ether body particularly sensitive to the working of the ego organization. For this were used, in rhythmic daily succession, baths with a decoction of Solidago, urbs down the back with a decoction of Stellaria media26 and orally, willow bark tea (which particularly affects the receptivity of the astral body) and stannum 0.00127 (which makes the ether body particularly receptive). W also gave poppy juice28 in weak dosage to allow the
patient‟s own damaged organiztion to recede in favor of the healing actions.
The latter treatment was employed more for the mother, since the forces of inheritance had of
course worked less, being in the preceding generation. The same hods true for the sister of the mother. While the child was still in the clinic, we were able to establish that she became more easily manageable and that she came into a better state of soul. She became, for example, more obedient, and movements which she had carried out very clumsily, were now accomplished with greater skill. Subsequently the aunt reported to us that a great change had taken place in the child. She had come to resr and the excessive involuntary movements had decreased. She is dexterous enough to be able to play by herself and the earlier stubbornness has disappeared.
FIFTH CASE²⁹
A twenty-six-year-old woman came to our clinic suffering from serious consequences of a flue which she had had in 1918 connected with catarrh of the lungs. This had been preceded in 1917 by pleurisy. Since the influenza the patient has never really recovered. In 1920 she was very emaciated and weak, had a low-grade fever and night seats. Soon after the flu, lower back pains began which continually worsened until late 1920. Then a curvature of the lumbar spine became apparent which was accompanied by much pain. At the same time there was a swelling of the right index finger. A period of bed rest apparently emeliorated the back pains. When the patient came to us, she had a psoas abscess which had gravitated down to the right thigh, her abdomen was distended with moderate ascites and over the apices of the lungs there were coarse rhonchi. Digestion and appetite is good. The urine is concentrated, with a trace of
protein. Spiritual-scientific investigation showed hyper-sensitivity of the astral body and of the ego organization. In the ether body such an abnormality expresses itself, to begin with, by developing an etheric imprint of astral functions instead of true ether functions. Astral functions are catabolic. Therefore, both the vitality as well as the normal processes of the physical organs had to appear as withered. This is always connected with processes taking place in the human organism which are in a sense extra-human. From this stem the dependent abscess, the back pains, the distension of the body, the pulmonary catarrhal symptoms, and also the inadequate assimilation of protein. For therapy it will be a matter of diminishing the sensitivity of the astral body and of the ego organization. One achieves this by administering silicic acid, which always strengthens the inherent forces over and against the sensitivity. In this case we gave powdered silicic acid in the food and in the form of enemas. We also diverted the sensitivity by putting mustard plasters on the lower back. Its effect is based on the fact that it induces sensitivity itself and thereby relieves the astral body and ego organization of it. With a process which dampens down the oversensitivity of the astral body in the digestive tract, we were able to divert this astral activity to the ether body, where it normally belongs. We did this with small doses of
copper30 and Carbo animalis. By administering an extract of pancreas, we addressed the possibility that the ether body might withdraw from the normal digestive activity to which it is unaccustomed31.
The abscess was tapped several times, yielding large quantities of pus. The abscess became smaller and the abdominal distension decreased during the time that the pus formation steadily subsided and finally disappeared. During the time that the pus was still flowing we were surprised one day by a new rise in temperature. It seemed to us that this could be explained from
the constitution of the astral
body as sketched above, since in such a situation slight psychological upsets could cause such a fever. However, one must differentiate between
the fact that fever can be explained
in such cases and the strongly harmful effect it has. Such a fever is the
mediator of a fr-reaching interference of the catabolic processes in the
organism under the indicated preconditions. And
one must at once provide for a strengthening of the ether body, so that this lames the harmful effect of the astral body. We gave high potency
silver32 injections and wee able to reduce the lever. The
patient left the clinic with a twenty-pound weight gain and in a stronger condition. We are well aware
of the need for further
treatment in this case to consolidate the healing.
INTERIM REMARK
With the cases presented so far we wanted to characterize the principles according to
which we search for the medications right out of the diagnosis. For the sake of clarity
we selected cases in which it was necessary to
proceed very individually. Yet we
have prepared typical medications, too, which can be applied in typical
diseases. We will now present a few
cases where such typical medications were used.
SIXTH CASE- HAY FEVER TREATMENT
We had a male patient with severe hay fever symptoms.
He had suffered with it from
childhood. He came for treatment to us
in his fortieth year.
For this disease we have our
“Gencydo” preparation. This was used for the patient at the time
when the disease was at its worst – it was the month of May. We treated the patient by injection as
well as locally by swabbing the inside of the nose with “Gencydo” liquid. After a marked improvement had set in at a
time of the year when, in previous years, the patient had still been bothered a
lot by the hay fever, he undertook a journey and could report from it that he
felt incomparably better than in earlier years. The year after he was travelling again from America to Europe
during hay fever season, and still had a much milder attack than in the past. Repetition of the treatment produced an
entirely tolerable condition in this year. For
a total cure, treatment was also undertaken the following year, even though
there was no actual attack. A year
later the patient described his condition as follows: “In the spring of 1923, I began the treatment again, since I was
expecting new attacks. I found my
nasal mucous membranes far less sensitive than in the past. I had to spend time working among
flowering grasses and pollen-producing trees.
Also, all through the summer, I had to ride along hot and dusty roads. But with the exception of one single day,
no symptoms of hay; fever appeared at all the whole summer; actually I have every reason to believe
that on the single day I only had a cold and not an attack of hay fever. This was the first time in thirty-five years that I could spend
time and work unhindered in an environment where in former
years I experienced real hell”.
SEVENTH CASE- TREATMENT OF SCLEROSIS
A sixty-one-year-old woman appears in our clinic with sclerosis and albuminuria. The momentary condition was triggered by a
flu with a slight fever and stomach and intestinal disturbances. The patient had not felt well again since
the flu. She complains of difficulty
breathing on awakening, attacks of dizziness, a pounding sensation in the head,
ears and hands, which is particularly troublesome on awakening, but which also
happens when she walks and is going uphill. Her
sleep is good. There exists a tendency
to constipation. There is protein in
the urine. Her blood pressure is 185
mm Hg. We began our considerations with the sclerosis, which becomes
noticeable from the overactivity of the astral body. The physical body and the ether body are unable to take up
the full activity of the astral body. In such a case an excess of activity of
the astral body remains that is not
resorbed by the physical and ether body. A
normal stability of the human organization is only possible when this
resorption is complete. Otherwise, the not resorbed part will make itself felt
in dizziness and in particular in subjective sensory illusions, like pounding
etc., as in this case. The not resorbed part also takes hold of the substances that are consumed and
forces certain processes up in them before they have entered into the normal
metabolism. This becomes apparent in
the tendency to constipation and in proteinuria, also in stomach and intestinal
disorders. The blood pressure is
elevated in such a case since the overactivity of the astral body also
heightens the ego activity and this reveals itself in the raised blood
pressure. We treated the patient
mainly with our “Scleron”; we supplemented this with very small doses of
belladonna, only as a support, to counter also the attacks of dizziness in the
moment. We used elder flower tea to
help the digestion, regulated the bowels with enemas and laxative tea and ordered a salt free diet, because salts tend to enhance the sclerosis. We achieved a comparatively quick
improvement. The attacks of dizziness
decreased, likewise the
pounding. The blood pressure came down to 112 mm Hg. The subjective feeling improved
noticeably. He sclerosis did not progress further
in the subsequent year. After a year the patient came again with the same symptoms
to a lesser degree. Through a similar
treatment, a further improvement set in, and it is clearly noticeable in the
patient after a considerable lapse of time since the treatment that the
sclerosis causes no further degeneration of the organism. The external symptoms characteristic of
sclerosis are being reversed, and the rapid aging of the patient prior to
treatment is no longer present.
EIGHTH CASE- TREATMENT OF GOITER
A female patient came to us in the thirty-fourth year of her life. She represents the type of person who is
strongly influenced in her whole frame of mind by a certain heaviness and inner
brittleness of the physical body. Every
word she speaks seems to take an effort. The
concavity in the whole shape of her face is exceptionally characteristic; the root of the nose is as if held back
within the organism. The patient
indicates that she has been delicate and sickly already since her school time. As far as actual diseases she only had a
mild case of the measles. She always had a pale complexion, a lot of fatigue and a poor appetite. She was sent from one doctor
to another, and in the process the following were diagnosed successively: catarrh of the lung apices, gastritis, anemia. In her own mind the patient
felt that she was not so much physically ill,
but rather psychologically ill.
After this part of the history,
we now want to indicate
the spiritual-scientific finding,
in order to check against it
all that follows.
A highly
atonic state of the astral body is apparent in the patient. Through this the ego organization is held back from the physical and ether body. The whole life of consciousness is as
if permeated by a subtle, dull drowsiness. The
physical body is exposed to the processes that originate from the substances
that are taken in. Therefore these
substances become transformed into parts of the human organization.
The ether body‟s coherent vitality
is excessively dampened
down by the I and astral
body. Therefore inner sensations, namely the general
sense of well-being and proprioception
become far too vivid, and the liveliness of the external senses becomes too
dull. All body functions thus have to
take a course through which they come into disharmony with one
another. Inevitably the feeling
arises in the patient that she cannot
hold the functions of her body together with her I. This appears to her as an impotence of the
soul. Therefore she says she is more
psychologically than physically ill. As
the impotence of the I and astral body increases, disease conditions must
appear in various parts of the body, as also the various diagnoses indicate. Impotence of the I expresses itself in
irregularities of glands like the thyroid and the adrenals, and also in irregularities of the gastro-intestinal system. All this is to be expected
in the patient and can in fact
be found. He goiter and the
disposition of the gastrointestinal system correspond entirely with the
spiritual-scientific findings. Most
characteristic is the
following: Due to the impotence of the I and the astral body the need for
sleep is partly absolved during waking and therefore the sleep is much less deep than in a normal person.
This appears to the patient as refractory insomnia. With this is associated the feeling that
she falls asleep easily and wakes up easily.
Also associated with this is her belief that she has many dreams, which are, however, not true
dreams but mixtures of dreams and impressions while awake. Because the strength of the stimulus is toned
down they do not stay in the memory and are not very stimulating. In the inner organs the impotence of the I expresses itself first in the lungs. Catarrhs
of the apices of the lungs are in reality always a manifestation of a weak ego
organization. The metabolism that
does not happen through the I reveals itself in rheumatism. The whole comes to expression subjectively
in general fatigue. Menstruation
began at the age of fourteen; the
weak ego organization cannot furnish sufficiently activated forces to scale
down the menstrual process again once it has gotten underway. The labor of the I in this scaling down
comes to consciousness as a sensation by means of those nerves that reach the
spinal cord in the region of the scrum. Nerves
through which the currents of the ego organization and the astral body do not
go sufficiently are painful. The
patient complains of lower back pain during menstruation. All this
leads in the following way to the treatment. We have found
that Colchicum autumnale exerts a powerful stimulus on the astral
body, namely on that part that corresponds to the organization of neck and head. Thus we give Colchicum
autumnale for all those diseases which have their most important symptom in
goiter. We gave the patient three
times daily five drops of our colchicum preparation, by which the goiter
swelling diminished and the patient felt
relieved. When one has thus strengthened the astral body, then it also
mediates a better functioning of the ego-organism, so that preparations which can work on the organs of digestion
and reproduction keep their
strength in the organism. As such a
preparation we have used wormwood enemas, which we have mixed with oil, since
oil stimulates the digestive tract. With this preparation we obtained
a significant improvement. We believe
that this treatment can develop its particularly favorable effect at about the
thirty-fifth year of life of the human being, since at this age the ego
organization has a strong affinity with the rest of the organism and can easily be stimulated, even when it is weak. The patient
was thirty-four years
old when she came
to us.
NINTH CASE- MIGRAINOUS CONDITIONS IN MENOPAUSE
This patient came to us at the age of fifty-five. She
states, that she had been a weak and delicate child, in childhood she had
measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough and mumps. Menstruation started at age fourteen to
fifteen. Bleeding was very strong and
painful from the outset. Due to a
tumor in the lower abdomen a total hysterectomy was done in the fortieth year. The patient also states that since the age
of thirty-five she has suffered from a migrainous headache every three to four
weeks lasting three days, which in her forty-sixth year intensified to a
three-day –long cerebral syndrome combined with unconsciousness. The present spiritual-scientific finding
is: generalized weakness of the ego
organization, which is expressed in the ether
body‟s activity not being sufficiently suppressed by the ego organization. Therefore the vegetative organic
activities start to spread out to the head and nerve-sense system
to a degree that is not present out to the head and nerve-sense
system to a degree that is not present when the ego organization is normal. Certain symptoms are congruous with this
finding. The first is urinary
frequency. This stems from the fact
that the normally developed astral body, which regulates the secretion of the
kidneys, is not confronted by an ego organization with sufficient strength,
which would normally restrain it. A
second symptom is falling asleep late and being tired on waking up. The astral body leaves the physical
and ether body with difficulty, since the I does
not draw it out strongly
enough. When waking
has occurred, then the vital
activity, which is an aftereffect of sleep, is perceived
as tiredness on account of the weakness of the I. A third symptomis having few dreams. The ego organization impresses nothing on the astral body but
weak images, which cannot express themselves in vivid dreams. These insights lead us to the following treatment: we
had to pave the way for the ego organization to the physical and ether body. We did this with 2 % sorrel salt
compresses on the forehead in the evening, wraps
in the morning with a 7 % solution of Urtica
dioica on the lower abdomen, and
at midday with a 20 % solution of linden blossoms on the feet. The goal of this treatment was to weaken
the vital activity during the night; this was accomplished by the sorrel salt,
which has the function of suppressing excessive vital activity in the organism. In the morning we had to provide for the
ego organization to find its way into the physical body. This can be done by stimulating the blood circulation. The iron effect of the stinging nettle was made use of for this purpose. What was
left to do was to promote the permeation of the physical body by the ego organization in the course of the day. This was done with the help of the diverting drawing effect of linden blossoms at midday. Now, the portrayed headaches
in the patient were intensified in the forty-sixth year of life. We had to associate these headaches with
losing the period after the hysterectomy and their intensification with unconsciousness as a compensatory symptom of menopause. We tried at first to realize a change for the better with antimony. This should have brought recovery if the general metabolism, subject to regulation by the ego organization, had been under consideration. The change for the better was not realized. This was proof of the fact that the relatively independent part of the ego organization, that
primarily regulates the organs of reproduction is the focus of concern. For that, we consider the root of Potentilla tormentilla in a very high dilution as a specific medication, and indeed this was effective.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THERAPY
CHAPTER XX
TYPICAL MEDICATION
1. THE PREPARATION “SCLERON”
This consists of metallic lead, honey and sugar. Lead works on the organism by promoting the catabolic function of the ego organization. When lead is introduced into an organism which has insufficient catabolic function of the ego organization, then this is promoted if the dosage that is taken has sufficient strength. If the dosage is too strong, then hypertrophy of the ego organization sets in. The body breaks down more than it can build up and must disintegrate. In sclerosis the ego organization becomes too weak; it does not sufficiently catabolize. Therefore catabolism is only supported by the astral body. The breakdown products fallout of the organism and provide reinforcement to those organs that consist of salt substances. In the right dosage lead draws the catabolic process back into the ego organization again. The products of catabolism do not remain in the body as hardened areas, but are discharged. Any healing of sclerosis can only consist in opening the way out of the organism for salt-forming processes, which otherwise would remain in the body. Through lead the direction of the processes of the ego organization is determined. Furthermore, to a certain extent these processes need to remain transitory in their course. This happens by mixing in honey. Honey enables the ego organization to exert the necessary control over the astral body. Therefore it takes away the astral body‟s relative autonomy in sclerosis. Sugar works directlly on the ego organization. It strengthens this in itself. Our medication thus brings about the following: lead works in catabolism like the ego organization, not like the astral body. Honey transfers the catabolic function from the astral body to the ego organization and sugar puts the ego organization in a position to fulfil its specific task. One may have noticed that the initial stages of sclerosis express themselves in a loss of the efficiency of thinking and the exact control over the memory. If our medication is applied in this stage of the disease, then advanced stages of sclerosis may be prevented. It proves effective, however, in these later stages, too. (The indications are included with the preparation on the package insert).
2. THE PREPARATION FOR MIGRAIEN. “BIDOR ” OR “KEPHALODORON ”
The head organization has the property that the grayish-whitish portion of the brain, which lies more internally, is physically the most highly advanced part of the human organization. It embodies a sensory activity which combines all other senses, and into which the I and the astral
body work. It participates in the rhythmic system of the organism, into which the astral body and the ether body work, and it also participates, though to a very small extent, in the metabolic-limb system, into which the physical and ether body work. This part of the brain differentiates itself from the peripheral brain, which encloses it. The peripheral brain embodies much more the metabolic-limb system in its physical organization, somewhat more the rhythmic system, but least of all the nerve-sense system. If now the central brain becomes poorer in nerve-sense system. If now the central brain becomes poorer in nerve-sense activity and richer in metabolic activity because the activity of the ego organization is pushed back, i.e., it becomes more like the peripheral brain than in the normal state, then migraine comes about. Its cure will therefore depend: 1. On a stimulation of nerve-sense activity; 2. On a transformation of rhythmic activity from one that inclines to metabolism, into one that inclines to breathing; 3. On a limiting of purely vital metabolic activity which lacks regulation by the ego organization. The first is achieved by silicic acid. Silica in combination with oxygen embodies the processes that are equivalent to those in the organism located at the transition from breathing to nerve-sense activity. The second is achieved by sulfur. It embodies that process by which rhythm inclined to the digestive system is transformed to one that inclines to breathing. The third is achieved through iron, which transfers the metabolism immediately after the digestive process to the process of the rhythm of the blood, and that suppresses the metabolic process itself. Iron, sulfur and silicic acid processed in an appropriate way must therefore be a preparation for migraine.
We have seen this confirmed in countless cases.
3. THE PREPARATION FOR TRACHEITIS AND BRONCHITIS. PYRITE
We now want to discuss a preparation that owes its existence to insight which can connect the processes of substances in the right way to processes in the human organism. One has to keep in mind with this that a substance is in actual fact a process brought to rest, in a certain sense a frozen process. One should actually not say pyrite, but pyrite process. This process, which is captured as if frozen in the mineral pyrite, corresponds to what can come into being when the iron process and the sulfur process work together. Iron, as was shown in the previous section, stimulates the circulation of the blood, sulfur mediates the connection between blood circulation and breathing. Just there, where blood circulation and breathing come into relation with each other, lies the origin of tracheitis and bronchitis, as well as of certain kinds of stuttering. When this process between blood circulation and breathing, which is at the same time the process out of which in the embryonal period the corresponding organs are formed and out of which they again and again renew themselves in the course of life, is not working normally in the organism, it can be taken over by iron-sulfur substance introduced into the body. Out of this insight we prepare a medication from pyrite for the above disease form, thereby transforming the mineral into a preparation in such a way, that, when indicated, its forces can find their way into the diseased organs. Of course, one has to know the course that certain substance processes take in the organism. The iron process is led from the metabolism right into the blood circulation. The sulfur process makes the step from the blood circulation over into the process of breathing.
4. EFFECTS OF ANTIMONY COMPOUNDS
Antimony has an extraordinarily strong affinity with other substances, for example with sulfur. It thus shows that it can readily accompany sulfur on the course which the latter takes through the organism, e.g., into all the breathing processes. A further property of antimony is its inclination for sheaflike crystal formations. Here it shows that it readily follows certain force radiations in the earth‟s environment. This property comes even more to the fore when antimony is subjected to the Seiger process33. Through this it becomes filamentous. This manifests even more so when antimony is converted in the process of combustion to a white vapor. This vapor precipitates on cold surfaces and forms the characteristic “flowers of antimony”. Just as antimony follows the forces that work upon it when outside the human organism, so within the human organism it follows the form-giving forces. Now, in the blood, one has in a certain sense a state of equilibrium between the form-giving and the form-dissolving forces. On account of its described properties, antimony can transfer the form-giving forces of the human organism to the blood, if the way is prepared for this by combining it with sulfur. The forces of antimony are therefore the very forces that work in the coagulation of the blood. To spiritual science it becomes apparent that the astral body is strengthened in those forces that lead to the coagulation of the blood. One must recognize forces in the astral body similar to those of antimony, working from within outward, centrifugally, in the human organism. These antimonizing forces oppose the forces directed from without inward, which liquefy the blood and place the liquefied blood plastically in the service of the formation of the body. Protein forces also work in the same direction. The forces embodied in the protein process continuously prevent the coagulation of the blood. Take the case of typhoid fever; it is based on a preponderance of the albuminizing forces. If antimony is administered to the organism in minutest dosage, then the forces that bring about typhoid fever are counteracted. It must, however, be taken into consideration that the function of antimony is quite different depending on whether it is administered internally or externally. Administered externally in ointments and the like, it weakens the centrifugal forces of the astral body which express themselves, for example, in the formation of eczema; administered internally it counteracts the forces which work too strongly centripetally, as they appear in typhoid fever.
Antimony is an important medicine in all illnesses in which there arises a dangerous diminution of consciousness (somnolence). The formative, centrifugal forces of the astral body, and thus the processes of the brain and senses, are partially disconnected in this case. If one introduces antimony into the organism, then the failing astral forces are created artificially. One will always notice that intake of antimony strengthens the memory, enhances the creative powers of the soul, improves the inner cohesiveness of the soul disposition. The organism is regenerated by the strengthened soul. This was felt by earlier medical practitioners. Antimony was therefore a universal preparation for them. Even if we do not take it to such an extreme, still, as follows from the above, we must see in antimony a many-sided medication.
5. CINNABAR
We were able to identify in cinnabar an important medication. An opportunity presents itself, especially in this substance, to study the much defended and much attacked relationship of quicksilver to the human organism. Quicksilver is the frozen process that stands in the midst of reproductive processes which, within the organism, almost entirely separate the organism‟s being from itself. The forces of quicksilver have the peculiar property that they can bring these separated forces to resorption again into the whole organism. Quicksilver, therefore, (it must be used in minutest quantities) can be used therapeutically wherever processes of separation establish themselves in the organism, processes which need to be brought under the control of the organism as a whole again. These are all the catarrhal processes. They come into existence when one or the other tract of the organism is torn away from the control of the whole organism by some external influence. This is the case with tracheal catarrh and all other catarrhal symptoms in the proximity. If one brings mercury forces there, they have a healing effect. The characteristic property of sulfur, which has been mentioned before, is that sulfur proves its efficacy in the area of the organism where circulation and breathing border on each other, thus with everything that comes from the lung. Cinnabar is a compound of mercury and sulfur; it is an efficacious medication for all catarrhal processes in the indicated areas of the human organism.
6. THE PREPARATION FOR HAY FEVER “GENCYDO”
The pathological symptoms of hay fever are inflammatory phenomena of the mucous membranes of eyes, nose, throat and of the upper respiratory tract. And the history of the patient suffering from hay fever frequently indicates that in childhood, too, there were pathological processes which may be included in the term “exudative diathesis”34. Thus we are referred to the ether body and to the way the astral body functions. The forces of the ether body prevail, and the astral body withdraws, having the inclination not to take proper hold of the etheric and physical body. And the catarrhal phenomena result from the fact that in the diseased parts, the orderly influence of the astral body and therefore also of the ego organization is disturbed. Astral body and ego organization become hypersensitive and account in this way also for the cramplike and paroxysma occurrence of reactions to sense impressions like light, heat, cold, dust and similar things. A healing process must therefore come to meet the astral body and help it to intervene properly in the etheric body. This can be done with the use of juices of fruits that have a leathery rind. In such fruits it becomes visible how form-giving forces that work from without inwards, are active in a particularly strong way. And by giving the juices of such fruits externally and internally, one can stimulate the astral body to be inclined toward the ether body; the mineral content of the juices, e.g., potassium, calcium and silicic acid, at the same time brings about a support from the side of the ego organization (cf. Chapter XVII), so that a real cure of hay fever is realized. Further indications for directions for use are enclosed with the preparation.