Why does the human being become ill?
Whoever thinks about the fact that a human being can be ill, becomes involved in a paradox if he wants to think purely along the lines of science in the usual sense. To begin with, he will have t assume that this paradox lies in the nature of existence itself. What happens in the course of illness is, considered superficially, a process of nature. What takes place in its stead in health, though, is also a process of nature.
Processes of nature are known first of all only through observation of the word external to the human being, and through observation of human being only to the extent the one observes him in exactly the same way as one does outer nature. One conceives of the human being as a part of nature then, specifically one in which the processes, which can also be observed external to him, are very complicated, yet are of the same kind as these outer processes of nature.
However, a question arises here which cannot be answered from this point of view: how do processes of nature originate in the human being—the animal will not be spoken of here ---which run counter to healthy processes?
The healthy human organism would seem to be intelligible as a part of nature; the diseased does not. Therefore it must in some way be inherently intelligible, by virtue of something which it does not have form nature.
One may well imagine that the spiritual, nonphysical in the human being has as its physical foundation a complicated process of nature, which is like a continuation of the processes of nature found outside the human being. However, has ever the continuation of a process of nature based in a healthy human organism been seen to evoke conscious, nonphysical experience as such? The opposite is the case. Conscious, nonphysical experience is extinguished when the process of nature continues in a direct line. This is what happens in sleep and it happens in fainting.
Consider, on the other hand, how conscious spiritual life becomes intensified when an organ becomes diseased. Pain arises, or at least discomfort and displeasure. The life of feeling acquires a content which it normally does not have. In addition, the life of will is impaired. The movement of a limb, which in health happens as a matter of course, cannot be accomplished, because pain or discomfort counteract and hinder it.
Observe the transition from the painful movement of a limb to its paralysis. Movement accompanied by pain is the initial stage of paralysis. An active spiritual element intervenes in the organism. In health, it reveals itself above all in the life of mental imaging or thinking. A certain mental image is activated, and a limb movement follows. One does not consciously enter with the mental image into the organic processes which culminate in the movement. The mental image dives into the unconscious. In the healthy state a feeling that is active only at the soul level arises between mental image and movement. It does not relate distinctly to any organic bodily process. This is the case, however, in a state of disease. The feeling, experienced in health as released from the physical organism, joins with it in the experience of illness.
Thus the relation between the processes of healthy feeling and pathological experience becomes evident. Something must be present, which, in the diseased organism. To spiritual perception this discloses itself to be the astral body. It is a supersensible organization within the physical-sensory organization. Either it takes hold of an organ loosely and leads to an independent soul experience which is not felt to be connected with the body, or it takes hold of an organ intensively, and leads to the experience of illness. One form of illness must be conceived of as a seizing of the organism by the astral body, which causes the spiritual human being to submerge more deeply into his body than is the case in health.
But thinking, too, has its physical basis in the organism. In the health state it is even more loosened from the organism than feeling. Spiritual perception finds, in addition to the astral body, also a special ego organization which expresses itself freely in the soul in thinking. If, with this ego organization, the human being submerges himself intensively into his bodily nature, a condition occurs which makes the observation of his own organism similar to that of the external world.—In observed are not in living interaction, but are independent of each other. In a human limb this only occurs when it becomes paralyzed. Then it becomes outer world. The ego organization is no longer loosely united with the limb as it is in health, when it can unite with it in the movement and withdraw again at once; it submerges into the limb permanently and is no longer able to withdraw from it.
Here again the processes of healthy limb movement and of paralysis stand side be side in their relatedness. Indeed, one sees it clearly: healthy movement is a beginning paralysis, which at its onset is immediately neutralized again.
One must see the essence of being ill as an intensive union of the astral body or ego organization with the physical organism. Yet this union is only an intensification of what exists more loosely in health. Also the normal intervention of astral body and ego organization in the human body is not related to healthy life processes, but to pathological ones. Wherever the soul and spirit are at work, they suspend the ordinary arrangement of the body; they convert it into its opposite. In doing so they bring the organism on the way to where illness tends to set in. In normal life this is regulated by a process of self-healing as soon as it is generated.
A certain form of illness occurs when the spirit or the soul presses too far into the organism, so that the self-healing process can either not arise at all or only slowly.
Therefore, one must seek the causes of illness in the activity of soul and spirit. And healing must consist in releasing the soul or spiritual element from the physical organization.
This is one kind of illness. There is another. The ego organization and astral body may be prevented from making the loose connection with bodily nature which is the condition for independent feeling, thinking and willing in ordinary life. Then, a continuation of the organism, occurs in the organs or processes which the soul and spirit are unable to approach. And in such a case it is apparent to spiritual perception that the physical organism does indeed not just carry out the lifeless processes of external nature. The physical organism alone could never evoke a process of self-healing. This is kindled in the etheric organism. This then leads to the recognition of health as that condition which has its origin in the etheric organism. Healing must therefore consist in treating the etheric organism.
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