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