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A READER'S JOURNAL
Disease, Karma, and Healing, GA#107
Spiritual-Scientific Inquiries into the Nature of the Human Being
18 Lectures, Berlin, 1908,9
by
Rudolf Steiner
ARJ2 Chapter: Spiritual Science
Published by Rudolf Steiner Press/UK in 2013
A Book Review by Bobby Matherne ©2014
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What do disease and karma have to do with one another? Seen from the perspective of past karma, that would involve a re-balancing of some deed from a previous lifetime, which seems to make little logical sense, since disease is something that happens to oneself, or seen more appropriately, something that one does to oneself. Why would such a deed have to be re-balanced? Seen from the perspective of future karma, our future development may depend on significant events which happen to us in this lifetime.
[page xv, Matthew Barton's Introduction] While 'suffering' an illness we may of course die. But, according to Steiner, it will still have given us the strength to realize and more fully embody our karma in a subsequent life. In this view, illness is a misfortune only from a narrower and more immediate perspective. From a larger, complementary one, it offers us the opportunity for deeper healing. It is itself a 'remedy' to balance our otherwise deep immersion in sensory delights of the material world, reminding us, also, of the pain and curtailments of merely physical existence.
A large percentage of the world's population, whether claiming to be religious or not, are locked into the "prevailing paradigm of materialism" — which Barton points out, "is merely a belief", without a shred of sensory-based evidence to refute the equally plausible paradigm of a spiritual reality. These believers demand we believe materialism exists and that no spiritual world exists, but the only proof they can offer presupposes the very premise they expect us to accept without proof. They proffer only skepticism to the existence of the spiritual world, but reject any skepticism about the independent existence of a material world. A paradigm of spiritual reality would accept claims that the material world has its origins, its foundations, in the spiritual world. Rightly understood, both material and spiritual worlds exist. Rudolf Steiner accepts the premise of a material world and offers substantial evidence in thousands of ways for the premise that a spiritual world exists upon which the material world is founded.
When dealing with illness, one finds problems which appear in the physical (material) body whose origin is in the spiritual bodies of a patient.
[page xvi, Matthew Barton's Introduction] In Steiner's own metaphor, considering the physical body alone in efforts to cure illness is rather like tinkering with a train engine when the problem actually lies with the train driver.
The rantings and ravings of materialistic skeptics are enough to make one laugh or cry. They claim that we are animals, a slightly advanced primate with a slightly bigger brain and greater intelligence. But it is clearly observable that no animal can laugh or cry. If we can laugh or cry at the ludicrous claims that we are animal, how is that possible? In Lecture 17, Steiner gives simple reflections on laughing and crying, and in the other lectures gives powerful evidence to refute the prevailing and misguided paradigm of materialism. Rafts are ships without a rudder and they can be blown by the prevailing wind, but human beings have built-in rudders and creativity to produce propulsion against the prevailing winds of the materialistic paradigm, and so they can take a new tack in the direction of truth and make headway against the prevailing winds of public opinion and scientific paradigms. Navigators of old under a cloudy sky used dead-reckoning, that is, guiding their path using land-based markers. With Steiner as our navigator we can live-reckon our course through life using celestial navigation, looking with clear vision to the stars, and avoiding the dead-reckoning paradigm of physicality which ignores karma and other spiritual realities, up until now.
When someone experiences a quick shiver in the absence of any cold draft or other physical explanation, people will say, "Someone is walking over your grave." If you are walking along and one spot feels a bit colder, it means you are walking through a ghost, a spirit. With a little live-reckoning we can understand that such shivers are direct perceptions of the spiritual world which we can explain in no other way. Sayings such as these originated in a time when people could still directly perceive the spiritual world and thus simultaneously confirm that the shiver happened at the same time as some event happened in the spiritual world. Since we live in a material world filled with spirits, it would be a rather common occurrence for a spiritual being, a remnant of a deceased human, to pass through a living human, with the only physical effect being an otherwise unexplainable shiver. This process works in the other direction also, as Steiner explains in this next passage, in other words, when we have some salient feeling arise in us, it radiates out into the world as if we were attached to an astral spider web and beings of the astral world can experience the pulse we sent out on the web.
[page 3, 4] When we have some feeling or other, when joy or alarm flares in our soul, initially this is an occurrence within our soul. But it is not merely that. If one is able to examine this clairvoyantly, it becomes apparent that something like a luminous stream emanates from a person at the moment of alarm or joy, and that this enters the astral world. It does not enter it haphazardly or arbitrarily, though, but makes its way to a being within the astral world. In other words, when a feeling shimmers up in us, we enter into a connection with a being of the astral world. . . . This is the remarkable thing here: that as individuals we are not connected with just a single such being, but that we spin the most diverse threads connecting us to the most diverse beings of the astral world.
In the 1980s Jean Houston in various workshops explained that we humans have "leaky margins" and that the most intimate thoughts we have in the privacy of our bedrooms can leak out into the world and affect other people. Steiner not only agrees with Houston, but claims it is a valuable and productive ability that everyone possesses, but few realize they have it, up until now(1).
[page 7] It will become necessary for people to know what lies in the depths of the soul. You see, we would be endlessly impoverished if we were unable to produce many such streams that enter the astral world; and our nature would be very restricted if we were unable, by deepening our lives spiritually, to gain mastery over all these streams. We really must say therefore that we are not confined within our skin but extend beyond it on all sides into other worlds, which in turn penetrate into our world. A whole network of entities is spun out over the astral world.
When thoughts are shared with other people during a discussion, differing views may be expressed, but seldom do physical battles ensue after heated discussions. In the astral world, such heated battles are the rule rather than the exception.
[page 11] You see, as beings in the astral world you cannot restrain a thought within yourself since thoughts immediately become deeds, and objects immediately materialize. . . . Everything becomes deed there, and views have to battle with one another rather than discuss and argue. . . . Other opinions can happily exist alongside one's own, since battle will sort it all out.
Steiner points out that in the physical world you cannot build two different churches in one spot, but in the astral world, two churches can be built in one spot, a reality that is taken for granted there, a knowing that no argument is necessary because of the knowledge that truth will prevail, a knowing that "fruitful things will prevail".
[page 11] What has been described here, this interpenetrability, is a very important and key quality of the astral world. No being of the astral world will develop a concept of truth such as those we know here in the physical world. The beings of the astral world find debate, argument and so forth to be entirely unproductive. They agree with Goethe that "Fruitful things alone are true!" We should not come to know truth through theoretical reflections but through their productiveness, through the way in which they prove their value. One being of the astral world will therefore never dispute with another as people do, but will say: Fine, you do your thing, I'll do mine. We will see which is the more productive idea, and which will knock the other out of the ring.
"Discussion begins when knowledge ends." Steiner has said that in many places, and in this next passage he explains the difficulty of discussion with those without knowledge. In a less elegant way, a former governor, Earl K. Long, of Louisiana famously said, "When you wrestle with pigs, you can both get dirty, and the pigs love it." This can happen when an anthroposophist speaks of spiritual realities to an unprepared audience of materialists.
[page 14, 15] Whenever spiritual science collides with an entirely unprepared audience, the anthroposophist must be somewhat aware that in many respects he speaks a different language from those who have heard nothing at all or only very superficial, external things about insights that underpin the spiritual-scientific movement. It is necessary to delve a little deeper to find harmony and accord between what can so easily be presented in modern science — that is, experiences gained from research into the sensory world — and what is given us through insight gained by means of spiritual, higher, supersensible consciousness. One has to go more deeply into these things before being very gradually able to gain a real overview of this harmony. Then, however, we will see the beautiful harmony existing between what the spiritual researcher asserts and the assertions — that is, the cataloguing of facts — gained through research into physical realities. . . . Greater understanding of spiritual science can only be achieved in a broader context, therefore, by speaking from a spiritual perspective, even to an unprepared audience, in an entirely and unashamedly direct way. Then, amongst these unprepared people, there will be a large number who say: "This is all nonsense, fantasy, gobbledygook!"
At best one can hope there is an intrepid few, some thirsty souls who will take deep quaffs and learn to make sense of spiritual worlds through the unanswered questions which they allow to come to a flowering of understanding in their hearts. I attest firmly that this is possible and it began to happen to me several decades ago. I was trained to think like a physicist and questioned everything I read that Steiner wrote against my knowledge of science, often finding it lacking.
[page 15] When people say, "What you tell us does not accord with the most elementary scientific research," then the anthroposophist will reply, "I know that perfect harmony in relation to all these facts can be established by everything spiritual science can offer, even if at present it may not yet be possible for us to agree."
As I progressed in my study of spiritual science, I found again and again the harmony of spiritual science with the science of physics along with a great expansion of understanding of the world, its origin, humankind's origin, and our destination, of which physics provided me no clue, instead providing me only misleading and ill-founded claims. Both physics and religion, rightly understood, provide a kindergarten-like explanation of life's most important questions, intended mostly to deter further questioning, i.e., to dispel any unanswered questions from the minds of their students and believers which might lead them eventually to find fruitful and truthful answers. Once you hear a person say to a new idea, "I know that!" or "That's not right!", you can imagine they are not likely to be holding any unanswered questions, the top is left off the pressure-cooker of their minds and there can be no unanswered questions cooking up answers within. When the new idea involves concepts of spiritual science which are rejected without adequate inspection, you have signs of a person who is fully acclimatized to the material world, living entirely within matter.
[page 46] Only a being living entirely in matter believes that he will fade away by sacrificing himself. No, ever higher, richer development is connected with self-sacrifice in the service of universal evolution.
What does the gardener feel when he goes out to hoe his garden rows and his hoe is broken? He feels pain because what he could have done easily with his hoe, remove unwanted plants between his rows, he must now do by hand, on his knees what he could have done while standing with his hoe. Our body feels pain whenever something smashes a part of our body or makes the smallest cut or incision into our body. That's why we rub that part of our body which is not working fully, the part which hurts, why we like it when someone else rubs that part, why kids like Mommy to kiss it better. All these actions add etheric energy to the spot where the etheric body is working to restore itself fully and our astral body experiences pain until the etheric body has restored itself.
[page 49] If we now imagine making a small slit in our skin, thus wounding it, this incision will prevent the etheric finger from arranging the finger's different parts in the right way. The ether body is in the finger and seeks to keep the latter's parts together, while the mechanical incision we have made sunders them. Thus the ether finger cannot do what it ought. It is in the same position as we would be if, say, we had made ourselves a tool to use in the garden but someone had broken it. We would then be unable to do the work we had intended, and would be deprived of the chance to do it. This 'being unable' is best summed up by the word 'privation'. And it is this inability to act or intervene that the astral part of the finger experiences as pain.
If we chop off a hand, only the physical hand is chopped off, not the ether hand, and this ether hand is then unable to act any longer. The astral hand experiences this huge deprivation as pain. Thus, in the interplay of the etheric and astral, we acquaint ourselves with the nature of the most primitive, primal pain experiences. This is how pain arises in fact; and it lasts until the astral body has accustomed itself to the fact that this activity is no longer being carried out in this part of the body.One can understand the phenomenon of "phantom limb pain" as due to the etheric limb being unable to act and the astral limb experiencing this as a pain. Materialistic doctors use various circumlocutions to explain this phenomenon which can only be rightly understood by spiritual science concepts. If someone asks you to "scratch their leg" which has been amputated, one does best to follow the instructions and scratch where the leg used to be. That missing leg's etheric body is still there and will communicate to the astral body and reduce the phantom leg pain. I have heard of a case when the woman responded to such a request from a veteran, "But the leg's not there." And the vet replied, "Yes, but the leg doesn't know that!" Why is it possible to scratch an amputated limb? Because the etheric and astral portions of the missing physical leg are still there.
Losing a limb can be hell; losing one's entire physical body is literally hell. The pain of the loss of one's physical body is experienced in kamaloca, which occurs a few days after death and is felt all the more intensely by materialists who do not believe in the existence of a spiritual world and imagine that their body is a physical body only. Steiner gives us an easy-to-remember definition of pain:
Pain results from an inability to act.
If you have recently lost a loved one, you typically feel pain because you can no longer touch your loved one, but you yourself can be consoled, find solace, if you understand that your loved one, your wife perhaps, is alive in the spiritual world, and when you grieve for her, she is acted upon by your grief and you cause pain in her. One does best to interact in one’s mind with such a departed loved one, treating her as still alive in the spiritual world; this soothes her and helps ease the pain she feels from others who may be grieving for her.
[page 49, 50] Let us [look at] the experience of pain in kamaloca. There we are suddenly deprived of our whole body; it is no longer present and the ether forces can no longer act. The astral body senses that the whole can no longer be organized and it yearns for the activity that can only be carried out by means of the physical body, experiencing this privation as pain. Every experience of pain is a suppressed activity. Every suppressed activity in the cosmos leads to pain and, since activity must frequently be suppressed in the cosmos, pain is something necessary there.
When we leave kamaloca (hell) and enter the next level of the spiritual world devachan (heaven) we have reached a state of bliss. This is the state that religious preachers refer to as Heaven, calling it our ultimate and only goal in the after-life; lacking, as they do, a full recognition of the spiritual realities of our time between death and a new birth, they mistake a way-station for a permanent home. This next passage summarizes what happens during our time at the way-station.
[page 51] And now we can apply this to the spiritual worlds. Just as inhibited activity is privation in kamaloca — and privation is the kamaloca state — when we enter devachan all suppressed activity falls away because nothing remains there that is in any way connected with the physical plane or yearns back hungrily for physical things. Here we are given up to spiritual substantiality, which gradually builds up the form of our next incarnation. Here is the purest, most uninhibited activity, which we experience as the purest bliss. In life we continually learn from everything that surrounds us. The bodies, though, which we have now, are ones we built up in accordance with the powers of our former incarnations: we have built them up through these powers. What we encounter and acquaint ourselves with in this life is not yet in our body. During our life we change: our feelings and emotions change, our ideals grow. A great sum of inhibited urge for activity sits in us but we cannot transform our body. We have to make do with it as it was built up in line with the experiences of former incarnations. In devachan we are liberated from these constraints and in consequence our unconstrained urge for activity lives its life to the full in bliss. There we create our astral body, etheric body and physical body for the next life.
Steiner takes us in Lecture 7 into the mystery of forgetfulness. Do you remember the last time you forgot something? You might feel good about that, especially after reading this lecture in which Steiner discusses the "Blessing of Forgetting". Our etheric body remembers things, and the process of growth in a plant, whose highest body is the etheric body, uses the memory of making one leaf to create another leaf: it re-members the leaf or the section of a vertical stalk and adds it onto itself. Plants would keep doing that linear progress of growth were it not for the astral body of the Earth which soon stalls the process of re-membering and forces the leaves to be formed into flowers to culminate the growth of the plant and provide for reproduction processes of pollination and seed-formation to occur.
Our spinal cord grows much like a plant adding one section of stalk upon another and when it reaches its culmination the astral body creates an invagination of the top vertebra which forms the human skull. Our human flower, the reproductive portion, is not in the skull but at the lower end of the spinal cord; our brain is more related to the roots of the plant than the flower. In proceeding from the plant to the animal to the human kingdom, each step involves a right-angle turn. Animals have their head and reproductive organ parallel to the Earth, and humans are completely inverted from plants with our reproductive region close to the Earth and head farthest from the Earth.
The etheric body of plants is solely focused on processes of growth.
[page 65] The human ether body is different. Besides the part of it used for growth, for the same kind of development that in a sense encompasses us as it does the plant, there is another part of the ether body, you can say, that exists freely and has no prior use unless we teach the child all sorts of things in educating him, incorporating into the human soul all manner of things which this free part of the ether body makes use of and assimilates. In other words, there really is a part of the human ether body in us that nature does not use. We retain this and do not use it for growth, do not apply it to natural, biological development, but retain it within us as something intrinsically free by means of which we can assimilate the ideas and images which approach us through education.
Our astral body is like a TV receiver which can receive instantaneous signals and create visual images from them. Our etheric body is like a modern DVR (Digital Video Recorder) which can store these instantaneous signals and play them back later. In order to hold these accumulated images, the DVR needs a storage mechanism (a Hard Drive). Steiner says that our etheric body contains growth processes which only fills half of its capacity when we are born, that extra capacity available for storage during our education.
[page 65, 66] This assimilation of ideas occurs initially however by virtue of the fact that we receive impressions. We must always receive impressions since all education is also based on impressions and on collaboration between the etheric and astral bodies. To receive impressions, you see, we need the astral body. But to retain an impression so that it does not fade again, the etheric body is needed. The activity of the ether body is necessary for retaining even the least, apparently most insignificant memory. For instance, if you look at something, you need the astral body. But to retain it after turning your head away, you need the etheric body, The astral body is involved in looking at things, but the etheric body is necessary for retaining the image of it. Though very limited activity of the etheric body retains images in this way, and though it really only comes into its own in relation to lasting habits, inclinations, changes to temperament and so on, nevertheless, this is where it is needed. To retain even a simple idea in our head the etheric body has to be present, since all retention of ideas is in a sense based on memory.
Steiner explains that a person who is lethargic and makes little use of their surplus etheric body is less likely to recover from an illness than a person who has absorbed a great deal in their lifetime, making much use of the free portion of the etheric body.
Next Steiner explains the importance of forgetting, how an instantaneously received image can not enter the free portion of our etheric body until we have let go of the received image! What we forget goes to work inside of us.
[page 67, 68] So let us consider an image formed in response to an external impression, which is now living in our awareness. Then let us cast our eye of soul on the way it gradually disappears, is gradually forgotten. It is still present though within our whole spiritual organism. What is it doing there? What is the "forgotten image" preoccupied with? It has its own very important role. You see, it only begins to work upon this free part of the ether body which I described, and to render this free part of the ether body of use to us once it has been forgotten. It is as if this image or idea has only then been properly assimilated.
My experience with doing crossword puzzles confirms this phenomenon to be the case. So long as I hold the image of the word with missing letters in my mind, I usually cannot fill in the blanks to create the right word. This can happen for many words. But, if I put it aside for an hour or so, or better yet, overnight, the next time I come to the puzzle, each of the half dozen or so missing words pop into my mind as if by magic, and soon the puzzle which formerly stumped me has now been completed. My putting the puzzle away caused me to forget the blank-filled words and allowed them to work in my mind which soon found the words without my conscious effort, a conscious effort which can get in the way of solving the puzzle. Who does this work for me out of my awareness?
[page 68] The laborers are our forgotten ideas. That is the great blessing of forgetting!
Forgetting something is a benefit of our mind, not a defect of our mind! Forgetting is like putting money in a saving account — we forget about the money for a time, and when we draw it out we find it has grown bigger — drawn interest is the metaphor we use. As if what we forget draws interest to it and provides us with a later dividend when we need it. Forgetting a slight or insult from someone works in a similar way; it is the very essence of forgiving.
[page 69] If someone has done harm to us and, having absorbed the impression of what he did to us we repeatedly return to it whenever we see him, then we relate this idea of harm to the person concerned, and allow it to stream out from us. But if the next time we see this person, we manage to shake his hand as if nothing has happened, this is actually healing — not just in a metaphorical sense but in reality. . . . Forgetting is not a mere deficiency in us but is intrinsic to the most beneficial aspects of human life. . . . We owe our capacity for development to forgetting.
The ideas on these pages inspired me to write a poem about the blessing of forgetting. I modeled its title after the famous play by Oscar Wilde called "The Importance of Being Earnest".
The Importance of Being Forgetful
Did I ever tell you about the blessing of forgetting?
OW! I forget.Who wrote "The Importance of Being Earnest"?
OW! I forget.Who wrote "The Importance of Being Forgetful"?
OW! I just did.
I was just testing the Blessing of Forgetting.OW! I forgot!
You want to know the Blessing of Forgetting!OK, what is the Power of an Unanswered Question?
OW! You forget you asked it,
and later an answer pops up!Having trouble due to forgetting things?
OW! Forget it!
Remember the Blessing of Forgetting!What if I can’t forgive someone?
OW! Forgiving requires forgetting! Forget it!
What if I can’t forget what they did?
OW! Forgiving allows forgetting. Forgive them.But I worry when I forget things!
OK, 95% of the things we worry about never happen.
OW! Forget them!
Remember the Blessing of Forgetting!I still find forgetting upsetting.
OW! Forgetting something
puts it to work inside of you.
That's the Blessing of Forgetting!Remember this, next time you’re fretting about something:
Fretting is not forgetting;
It is remembering and re-remembering indefinitely.
OW! Forget you read this
and put it to work inside of you.Remember the Blessing of Forgetting!
When we are in kamaloca, early during our time between death and a new birth, we must release the ties which bind us to our home, the Earth, before we can enter devachan and begin our work on our next life on Earth. During my childhood, the most popular deck of cards was the Bulldog Squeezers and the image on the back of the cards haunted me for some inexplicable reason. You can see the image at right. Two bulldogs are chained near their doghouses while the Man in the Moon grins down on them. The words at the bottom were most puzzling, "There is a tie that binds us to our Homes." The chains represent the linked together "instincts, drives, desires, passions, feelings, emotions, and pleasures" of our astral body which must be dissolved before we can release the ties to our physical existence on Earth and progress into the spiritual world of devachan.
The importance of forgetting sheds new light on our loved ones who lose their memories while still in their physical bodies. Who knows but that this forgetting is an advance preparation stage for their eventual total forgetting which must occur before they can enter Heaven?[page 70] The astral body is the bearer of all instincts, drives, desires, passions, feelings, emotions and pleasures. Now in kamaloca the astral body would be unable to become aware of the torments of privation if it were not continually able to recall, through its ongoing connection with the residues of the ether body, what it has enjoyed and desired in life. The shedding of these habits is basically nothing other than a gradual forgetting of what chains us to the physical world. And so, when a person wishes to enter devachan, he must first learn to forget what chains him to the physical world. Here too therefore we see that we are tormented by retaining our memory of the physical world. Just as anxieties can become a torment when they refuse to be dislodged from our memory, inclinations and instincts that remain after death are likewise a torment; and this tormenting memory of our connection with life comes to expression in everything we have to undergo during our kamaloca period. The moment we have succeeded in forgetting all desires and wishes connected with the physical world — and only then — the achievements and fruits of our previous life appear in the way necessary for them to take effect in devachan. There they create and craft the shape of our forthcoming life.
How can we recall our previous life if we have cast off our etheric body? Steiner asks and answers this question for us. We are familiar with the concept of cloud computing, where the data is not stored in our local computer, but in some remote computer we know not where, but our data is available for recall when we wish it. Our etheric body is like a local hard drive which stores and feeds up impressions (memory) when we are in the physical world. When we die the impressions stored by the etheric body are fed into a "cloud memory" which is known as the akashic record.
[page 71] Naturally, memory and forgetting acquire a somewhat different form after death. A transformation occurs so that in place of ordinary recall we read in the akashic record. Whatever has happened in the world does not vanish but exists objectively. As memory of our connection with physical life fades during kamaloca, these same occurrences surface in a quite different way, becoming apparent to us in the akashic record.
In Lecture 8 Steiner focuses on the theme of disease and talks about a "medical papacy" with ominous foresight of our 21st Century medical juggernaut which threatens to consume most of our national resources unless its thrust is blunted by common sense and spiritual science insights. People today want the best of care, no matter the cost, and expect, for example, to be prescribed antibiotics at the slightest sniffle.
[page 74, 75, italics added] People usually only concern themselves with disease, or at least with one or other forms of disease, when they fall ill in some way; and then they are mostly only interested in their recovery, in the fact of being cured. How they are cured is usually of very little interest to them, and it is even very agreeable to them not to have to concern themselves further with the nature of this recovery. Most of our contemporaries are happy to delegate the task of curing them to the people appointed to do so. In fact, a far more pervasive faith in authority holds sway in this field in our era than has ever held sway in the sphere of religion. Medical papacy, irrespective of what form it assumes in one place or another, has today become extremely prevalent and will go on taking stronger hold in future. Lay people are not in the least at fault for this state of affairs and its future increase. You see, people don't give it any thought, don't concern themselves with such things — not, at least, until they have first-hand experience of it, suffer an acute illness and need a cure. And for this reason a great majority of the population looks on with complete indifference as the medical papacy assumes ever greater proportions, worming its way into the most diverse fields — for instance, intervening extensively in children's education, in school life, and staking a claim here to a certain form of therapy. People do not worry about the deeper underlying factors at work here. They stand by and watch as public ordinances are given some kind of legislative form. They have no real wish to gain insight into such things. By contrast there will always be those who, finding themselves in difficulty and discovering that ordinary, materialistic medicine — whose foundations they have no interest in — does not answer their needs, will seek help from practitioners who draw on an esoteric foundation.
Our current medical papacy resembles the religious papacy which burnt Giordano Bruno at the stake and threatened the life of Galileo for daring to explain spiritual realities with physical and mathematical concepts. The world has come full circle now with a medical papacy focusing solely on the material aspects of the human being while belittling spiritual science which focuses on soulful healing of the human being. The medical papacy insists we heal ourselves with the half-loaf approach of materialistic science, while the full loaf is available to all of us, if we but seek anthroposophically trained and oriented medical doctors.
[page 76] If a scientific discipline maintains that we consist only of the physical body, it will be unable to engage in any salutary way with aspects of human health or disease. You see, health and illness relate to the whole human being, and not just to the part of him that is the physical body. . . . However pious a doctor may be, and however many ideas he may have about some kind of world of spirit, if his medical practice is based on rules founded entirely on our materialistic world-view, and if he tried to cure, therefore, in a way that only acknowledges the body, he still a materialist, however theoretically spiritual his outlook.