When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 1 - Waldorf Research Institute

Man stands within this etheric world with his etheric organization as he
stands with his physical organization within the physical world. The etheric,
however, has laws entirely different from those of the physical world.
The substances that man takes in by way of nutrition are on the path
to passing over into purely physical nature. They may be, from the outset
purely physical substances such as, for instance, table salt. But also what
man consumes from the plant or animal kingdom is on the way to becoming
purely physical. As a matter of fact, it is subjected to purely physical processes
by dissolving, cooking, and so forth. This purely physical element must
then, in man, enter on the path to revitalization. This happens as it is taken
up into the working of the etheric organization.
In the etheric organization purely physical effects cease. Growth,
nutrition, and so on, are supra-physical processes, taken care of by the
etheric or ganization.
If the etheric part of the organism is strong enough to carry out the
transformation of the physical forces to a sufficient degree, then it is healthy.
If the etheric organization is too weak, the organism becomes ill. It then
con tains substances and processes that are appropriate to extra-human
nature, but within the physical organism they represent a foreign element.
The study of pathology consists in the recognition of these foreign elements
in man.
If the organism is unable to bring about, through itself, the transformation
described, it must be supported through external means. An example
will demonstrate how this can work. Let us suppose that the etheric
organization is too weak to give to certain substances the constitution they
must have in order to incorporate themselves into bone formation in a way
that enables the bones to stand in a right relationship to the entire life
process. The bones then withdraw too strongly into their own being. They
withdraw their life from the organism. If this is correctly observed and if one
introduces lead in very small amounts into the organism, the effect will be
that the forces of the etheric organism are strengthened in the very direc tion
in which they were deficient.
The therapeutic aspect of medicine consists in the knowledge of the
ex tent to which the foreign element in man can be overcome, so that the
trans formation of the physical can take place in the proper way. One does
not yet know man completely, however, if one has grasped only the etheric
or ganization besides the physical one.
Beyond thinking, we can develop other soul forces for spiritual
perception. If one has experienced strengthened thinking leading to the
ether world, one may then suppress it by the inner force of the soul. In
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