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When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute

When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute

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object and through these thoughts to develop certain feelings. First, let him<br />

realize clearly what his eyes are actually seeing. Let him describe to himself<br />

the shape, color, and all other distinctive features of the seed. Then let him<br />

reflect as follows: ‘Out of this seed, if planted in the soil, there will grow<br />

a plant of complex structure.’ Let him visualize this plant, build it up in<br />

his imagination and then say to himself: ‘What I am now picturing in my<br />

imagination will later be drawn out of the seed by the forces of the earth<br />

and the light. If I had before me an artificial object which imitated the<br />

seed to such a deceptive degree that my eyes could not distinguish it from<br />

a real seed, no forces of the earth or light could call forth a plant from it.’<br />

Whoever lays hold of this thought quite clearly, so that it becomes an inner<br />

experience, will be able to unite the following thought with the right feeling.<br />

He will say to himself: ‘All that will ultimately grow out of the seed is already<br />

secretly enfolded within it as the force of the whole plant. In the artificial<br />

imitation of the seed no such force is present. And yet to my eyes both<br />

appear alike. The real seed therefore contains something invisible, which is<br />

not present in the imitation.’ It is to this invisible something that thought<br />

and feeling are now to be directed. Let the pupil picture the following to<br />

himself: “This invisible something will presently transform itself into the<br />

visible plant which I shall have before me in shape and color.’ Let him hold<br />

firmly to the thought: The invisible will become visible. If I could not think,<br />

then that which will become visible only later could not already announce<br />

its presence to me.” 6<br />

This is one of several exercises. Steiner variously endeavored to show that<br />

the laws and powers of life reveal how they work in the way an organism is<br />

an integral whole with an inherent relationship to time. Evolution, coming<br />

into being, and dying away are all a part of life. A plant reveals its inherent<br />

law of life by expanding from a seed to form shoot and leaf, contracting<br />

into the calyx, then expanding again in the flower before contracting once<br />

more into a new seed. The plant is always whole yet never finished; it is<br />

always at some stage in its cycle of development. Seemingly an entity in<br />

space it is essentially a figure in time. By entering into the time-dynamic of<br />

its development we approach what Steiner termed the ether body.<br />

These laws of wholeness, of cooperation and of metamorphosis<br />

also work in human beings. They are the second level to be considered<br />

by the anthroposophic doctor. In the plant world they appear as laws of<br />

metamorphosis which also apply, in a different form, in medical situations.<br />

An example of this are the different ways in which rheumatic fever manifests<br />

at different stages in life. It is a secondary illness that can result from a<br />

particular type of sore throat or tonsillitis.<br />

14

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