When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 6 - Waldorf Research Institute

Images have been considered of organs which are part of the human
organism. In respiration, inspiration is reversed to become expiration,
showing the process of reflection we also see in the blood stream when it
reaches the heart. The sense organ comes to realization in the blood stream.
Dreams as phenomena of the inner life and the rhythmic system as the
bearer of the soul being part of the class 10 curriculum, let us conclude with
an example of how great truths can be revealed in dreams.
K.F. Burdach (1776–1847), an anatomist at Dorpat and Koenigsberg
universities, was amazed when he had the following dream:
“In 1811, for instance, I took the generally accepted view of the
circulation, having never been exposed to any views to the contrary. Anyway,
I had quite other matters on my mind when I dreamt that the blood flowed
by its own power and set the heart in motion. If one considered the heart to
be the driving force in the circulation, this would be tantamount to saying
that water driving a mill was actually being driven by the mill.” 22
Burdach was unable to believe the truth he had seen in his dream. It is
our task to bring the truth which dreams in us out into the bright light of
the wide-awake mind. Paraphrasing Novalis we might say: ‘The heart is the
key to the art of education.’
Appendix
Less well-known statements by Rudolf Steiner on the heart:
“Twenty-five years ago at most, the criminal anthropologist Moritz
Benedikt, an eminent scientist in this field, with the necessary training in
mathematics, first drew attention to the extremely important fact, frequently
ignored again nowadays, that the pulses of the radial arteries on the left and
right sides of the body are not identical. This is most important for insight
into the relationship between different aspects of the human being. Another
significant fact was discovered by someone who was not the least bit famous
in this field, but a very ordinary person, Dr. Karl Schmidt. He published his
findings in the medical journal Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift in 1882 in
a paper entitled (in translation): Heart beat and sphygmograms. He made
some very important observations. These things are still in their beginnings,
but with more detailed study a start will have been made in discovering the
connection between a self-conscious ego and the blood circulation on the
one hand and between the animal spirit active in animals and the blood
circu lation of animals on the other.” (Antworten der Geisteswissenschaft auf die
grossen Fragen des Daseins [GA 60], Lecture given in Berlin on 17 November
1910.)
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