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

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to psychiatry lies just in this: to bring together the realm of creative spirit with an understanding of substance and metabolism. This is a challenge which has not yet fulfilled its potential although very encouraging and exciting beginnings have certainly been made. Behind this, there lies the deeper challenge of understanding the nature of matter or substance in its soul-spiritual aspect. This is, of course, the challenge of anthroposophical medicine. The part which belongs specifically to psychiatry is to see how the substances and processes which these substances undergo in the organs are connected to possible deviations or aberrations of con sciousness, which psychiatry describes and attempts to address. Steiner describes two streams of time. The one which we are aware of in our everyday consciousness goes from the present into the future. The other stream works in the opposite direction and comes from the future into the present. These two streams of time, the former connected more to the conscious astral body, the latter more to the etheric, meet within the human being. They meet in the realm of the ego, which is the only instrument of consciousness that can really integrate past and future, thereby bringing the destiny that we bring with us from former incarnations into the freedomspace from which new impulses may be born. Much mental and soul confusion arises in the encounter between these two streams of time, even some forms of mental illness may arise from this. The substance-processes taking place in our organs contain within them the seeds for our future consciousness. If these seeds are released prematurely from their etheric basis in the organic life and enter consciousness too soon, they will produce delusion, deception, hallucination, fear, anxiety, mania. All possible forms of soul aberrations may come about through the tendency for the etheric forces within the organs to rush forward into the future too soon. On the other hand, when the forces working from the past bind us too strongly to our organs, then tendencies to hardening and sclerosis take hold of the body. We become locked into our earthly personalities, and therein lies the basis for the more characteristic physical illnesses. In the healthy human being, the latter processes predominate in waking life and the former during sleep. During waking life, the etheric upbuilding processes in our organs become subordinate to the more conscious experiences of soul life and vice versa. The two streams of time also oscillate between our waking experience and our sleeping, hence the possibility for dreams with prophetic overtones. Most of us know that <strong>Waldorf</strong> education emphasizes the fact that the organic forces, which build the body during the first seven years and which also belong more to the state of sleep, become released to some extent at 40
the age of seven. In fact, they only become released from the head and nerve-sense organization, where they become available after this time for thinking and memory. The etheric substance which has formed and shaped this part of our body is the same substance through which, at a later stage of development, we are able to think. We must imagine that this is only the first of many etheric metamorphoses that may take place during the course of life. The etheric forces that release themselves for thinking belong essentially to the instrument of the brain. The brain is an organ whose development proceeds faster than any other organ; by the time we are seven, it has reached a certain completion. We call this stage neurological maturity which is witnessed, for example, in the establishment of dominance and in nerve myalination in the central nervous system through which the basic pathways of sensory integra tion are laid. We also know that the actual nerve cells in the brain, from before the time we are born, have been slowly dying and degenerating. In fact, degenerative processes accompany our brain and nerve sense system during the course of our life. This is the corollary of the fact that our brain and nerve-sense system form, for the most part, the basis of waking-day consciousness. This “slow death” of the physical body in the brain is that which allows the etheric forces, which formed and sculptured it and which contributed to its organic development, to be used for conscious thinking activity. With the other organs, however, this process does not take place to the same extent. If we consider an organ which stands in a certain polarity to the brain, namely the spleen, we find an organ which hardly appears to be a physical organ at all. In contrast to the brain it lacks internal form and structure. Also, unlike the brain, it is an organ which is continually regenerating itself. If we consider the spleen, however, we have an organ which carries within itself the basis not of our self-conscious image memory but of our substance memory. In the modern world, we call substance memory the science of immunology. In recent years, the importance of our physiological uniqueness in the form of our immunological memory has become almost general knowledge. Without it we are unable to maintain our identity against the outside world. The spleen can be removed without apparent detriment to health, although, in a child, its loss leaves some degree of compromised immunity, depending amongst other things on the age when this happens. It is an organ with a kind of peripheral sphere of activity. I am referring to the millions of smaller lymph nodes throughout the body which have a kind of satellite function in relation to the spleen itself, but which can exist independently after the foundations of immunity have been acquired. 41
Page 1: When Healing Becomes Educating Sele
Page 4 and 5: Published by: The Research Institut
Page 7 and 8: An Introduction to Anthroposophical
Page 9 and 10: II. Pathology and Therapy According
Page 11 and 12: normal life, such an inner happenin
Page 13 and 14: and where the action of the ego-org
Page 15 and 16: As the “result of analysis,” de
Page 17 and 18: emembering oneself does one experie
Page 19 and 20: animals of a species. The group-ego
Page 21 and 22: Making the gaseous, the airy elemen
Page 23 and 24: “In-Between Forms” in the Plant
Page 25 and 26: overpowering. The number of poisono
Page 27 and 28: spring from the mineral soil, so wa
Page 29 and 30: This can be illustrated by looking
Page 31 and 32: This is also shown by the fact that
Page 33 and 34: The lung shows two form tendencies
Page 35 and 36: etween those organs above and below
Page 37 and 38: (nervous system, lungs, kidneys). I
Page 39: the unconscious. He stressed, howev
Page 43 and 44: quite so clear. Ahrimanic forces ha
Page 45 and 46: which are activated only to the ext
Page 47 and 48: is stored in the gall bladder befor
Page 49 and 50: it should not meet until after deat
Page 51 and 52: securities that applied to generati
Page 53 and 54: continue. It will then become incre
Page 55 and 56: 3 There is no human spirit truly ca
Page 57 and 58: What form should the new debate tak
Page 59 and 60: the physical world, nor do they per
Page 61 and 62: useful criteria for the identificat
Page 63 and 64: as the essence of anthroposophy. In
Page 65 and 66: debate? The answer has to be: not e
Page 67 and 68: 2 In conventional physics, concepts
Page 69 and 70: anthroposophical point of view, is
Page 71 and 72: REFERENCES 1. Stœrig HJ. Kleine We
Page 73 and 74: In 1953 Watson and Crick published
Page 75 and 76: principle for the beginning, sequen
Page 77 and 78: messengers.” 3 Hormones are a par
Page 79 and 80: structures are not rigid, crystalli
Page 81 and 82: Following Kant and Popper one usual
Page 83 and 84: for genetics. Thus we will try to l
Page 85 and 86: Of course, in addition to the mutua
Page 87 and 88: REFERENCES 1. Arber, W.: Das Bakter
Page 89 and 90: Need for Rhythm Studies in Anthropo
Page 91 and 92:
The following formulations, given i
Page 93 and 94:
Rhythmic system - time organism - t
Page 95 and 96:
The part of the spectrum where wave
Page 97 and 98:
Fig. 5. Frequency distribution of 1
Page 99 and 100:
Such a clear statement does, of cou
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inner resources we build a world th
Page 103 and 104:
Scientific Hypotheses - Truth or Er
Page 105 and 106:
However there is an inherent danger
Page 107 and 108:
and analyze the data. It cannot rea
Page 109 and 110:
simply one aspect of the solution.
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Waldorf RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR E D
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