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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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how, with knowledge of the non-physical aspects of the human being, it is<br />

possible to achieve such profound insight into the nature of the disease that<br />

diagnosis directly tells us the medicine which should be used.<br />

“Fundamental to this is a view which recognizes the process of illness<br />

and of healing as one complete cycle. The illness begins with an irregularity<br />

in the composition of the human organism with respect to its parts, which<br />

have been described in this book. It has already reached a certain stage<br />

when the patient comes for treatment. Our object must be to bring about a<br />

reversal of all the processes which have taken place in the organism from the<br />

beginning of the illness, so that we arrive at length at the organism’s original<br />

state of health...<br />

“In estimating the evolution of the disease, consideration has to be given<br />

not only the localized pathological process, but not the changes undergone<br />

by the organism as a whole .” 7<br />

Having taken our departure from the conversation of the five<br />

physicians standing at the bedside of the recently deceased cholera patient<br />

while discussing their varying opinions as to the cause of his death, we<br />

have so far sketched two principles of the human being from the angle of<br />

anthroposophic medicine—the physical body and the ether or life body.<br />

The third physician spoke about the dead man’s “configuration of the<br />

soul.” In anthroposophy the third principle of the human being is termed the<br />

sentient or astral body. It provides the foundation for conscious awareness.<br />

The aspect added by the astral body to the life body becomes clear if we<br />

compare plant and animal. Plants are alive but their life is almost entirely<br />

dependent on external conditions in their environment. They unfold their<br />

vital processes in accordance with the nutrients available at the growing site,<br />

with heat and cold, and with light and darkness in the alternation of day<br />

and night and also summer and winter.<br />

This dependence decreases stage by stage in the animal kingdom. Animals<br />

develop muscle tissue that enables them to move about independently;<br />

using up body substance they can regulate their own temperature; their<br />

sense organs, nervous system and hormonal glands give them autonomic<br />

regulation of metabolic rates. Desires, urges and instincts arise in the<br />

active search for food and in connection with procreation, together with<br />

a tremendous variety of behavior. All this points to an individual soul life<br />

combined with an inner world of experience. The Norwegian explorer,<br />

Thor Heyerdahl, described an experience he had after sailing for weeks<br />

across the Pacific Ocean. Beside his raft, the Kon-Tiki, the breath of a whale<br />

swimming beneath him rose slowly into the air. This calmly rising stream of<br />

warm breath gave him a sense of encountering the great soul of a brother.<br />

16

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