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

how, with knowledge of the non-physical aspects of the human being, it is
possible to achieve such profound insight into the nature of the disease that
diagnosis directly tells us the medicine which should be used.
“Fundamental to this is a view which recognizes the process of illness
and of healing as one complete cycle. The illness begins with an irregularity
in the composition of the human organism with respect to its parts, which
have been described in this book. It has already reached a certain stage
when the patient comes for treatment. Our object must be to bring about a
reversal of all the processes which have taken place in the organism from the
beginning of the illness, so that we arrive at length at the organism’s original
state of health...
“In estimating the evolution of the disease, consideration has to be given
not only the localized pathological process, but not the changes undergone
by the organism as a whole .” 7
Having taken our departure from the conversation of the five
physicians standing at the bedside of the recently deceased cholera patient
while discussing their varying opinions as to the cause of his death, we
have so far sketched two principles of the human being from the angle of
anthroposophic medicine—the physical body and the ether or life body.
The third physician spoke about the dead man’s “configuration of the
soul.” In anthroposophy the third principle of the human being is termed the
sentient or astral body. It provides the foundation for conscious awareness.
The aspect added by the astral body to the life body becomes clear if we
compare plant and animal. Plants are alive but their life is almost entirely
dependent on external conditions in their environment. They unfold their
vital processes in accordance with the nutrients available at the growing site,
with heat and cold, and with light and darkness in the alternation of day
and night and also summer and winter.
This dependence decreases stage by stage in the animal kingdom. Animals
develop muscle tissue that enables them to move about independently;
using up body substance they can regulate their own temperature; their
sense organs, nervous system and hormonal glands give them autonomic
regulation of metabolic rates. Desires, urges and instincts arise in the
active search for food and in connection with procreation, together with
a tremendous variety of behavior. All this points to an individual soul life
combined with an inner world of experience. The Norwegian explorer,
Thor Heyerdahl, described an experience he had after sailing for weeks
across the Pacific Ocean. Beside his raft, the Kon-Tiki, the breath of a whale
swimming beneath him rose slowly into the air. This calmly rising stream of
warm breath gave him a sense of encountering the great soul of a brother.
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