LECTURE 1
My dear friends,
For this “Pastoral Medicine”
course we are bringing together for the first time the members
of two distinct circles of spiritual work. This is of quite special
importance. We must inquire, therefore, first of all into the reason
for the combination, from the intended content of the course itself.
In the first place I would like to point out that perhaps this course
will be an example of how ancient traditions must be renewed through
a particular form of spiritual activity in our time. For what has so
far developed under the name “pastoral medicine” has lost
its original content. We will see that this is so in the course of
our study. Yet out of the very foundation of this present age there
arises a most significant task that as it takes shape may be allowed
to bear the name of pastoral medicine. We have made the strict
requirement that this course be mainly for real theologians and real
physicians, including those who are training to be real physicians,
in the sense in which that title can be given them from the standpoint
of the Medical Section of the Goetheanum. How this standpoint is to be
understood will become clear during the course. We have admitted a few
individuals who are exceptions to the general requirement, and these
for reasons based on the opinion of the Medical Section of the
Goetheanum.
First and foremost, dear
friends, there must be an absolutely clear understanding in the part of
the theologians and on the part of the physicians what is now going to be
made possible by their working together: namely, a new pastoral medicine.
Their working together has indeed often been discussed; it has even
been pointed out that the anthroposophical movement should try to
bring it about. But things have come to light that must be corrected
during this course. A proper working together must certainly not be
understood to mean any dilettantish interference by one side into the
work of the other side. It certainly does not mean that the
theologians are to become physicians, or that the physicians are to
become in the slightest way theologians. It is purely a matter of the
two professions working together hand-in-hand. The course will stress
very strongly the importance of preventing any kind of confusion by,
for instance, the theologians trying to get their hands into various
medical measures that cannot possibly lie in their sphere of work. On
the other hand, physicians must be clearly aware of the position they
must always hold — in the sense just described — toward
theologians. It is tremendously important that this should be
thoroughly understood by both sides. A great deal will depend upon
it.
Apparently the thought
has even been entertained that theologians should actually acquire
medical knowledge. Well, of course, it is always good to acquire
knowledge. But the important thing here is to realize absolutely
clearly that physicians, in addition to the cultivation of their
thinking, feeling, and willing, have had specific medical training.
People should not play with the idea that they can push their way
into the world with bits and pieces of medical knowledge without this
specific medical training — even if they are theologians! On
the other hand, physicians must develop a special conception of their
profession; they must learn through pastoral medicine that something
essential is expressed when it is said: The flame of offering belongs
to the priest, the Mercury staff to the physician. And only through
the working together of the flame of offering and the Mercury staff
is a healthful cooperation possible. One must not want to heal with
the flame of offering, or to celebrate ritual with the Mercury staff.
But one must realize that both are divine service. The more fully
this is realized, the better their cooperation will be, with
physician remaining physician and priest remaining priest, and the
more healing will be their work in the world. Our anthroposophical
movement must not be allowed to become an area where everything is
thrown together in chaotic fashion: the seriousness that we should be
cultivating so strongly within our movement would suffer thereby. One
can have knowledge of the general procedure for a foot operation, but
one should certainly not think that therefore one can perform the
operation. And this holds true for all medical matters. Above all,
Anthroposophy must not become propaganda for quackery. Theologians
must not be allowed to become quacks.
The Medical Section at
the Goetheanum will handle with extreme seriousness whatever is going
to give an individual a position out in the world as an
anthroposophical physician. But the following must also become an
established procedure: that physicians who want to work with the same
impulses as the Medical Section at the Goetheanum will have their
status and their relation to the Section properly defined by the
Section. There will be no progress unless this procedure becomes a
complete reality — so complete, in fact, that in the future
someone will be acknowledged as a physician if the requirements of
the Medical Section at the Goetheanum are filled. From this point of
view also, we are justified in not having admitted to this course
healers who are not physicians. Those who are here today (with a very
few exceptions) can lay full claim in the outside world to membership
in the medical profession. Perhaps we have made ourselves clear. I
have been speaking more from the administrative angle. But the matter
will be the concern of pastoral medicine itself. When the theologians
recently raised the question of whether something of a medical nature
could be given them, I could not do otherwise than say that I would
give a course on pastoral medicine in which theologians could
participate. And so the course has been organized by the Medical
Section of the Goetheanum, and the theologians are taking part in it.
It must be quite clear why we have structured it in this way.
Up to now, pastoral
medicine has not been a subject in the medical faculties, but in the
theological faculties. And the pastoral medicine that has been taught
in the theological faculties has really not contained anything
specifically medical. Or perhaps I should ask, have any physicians
here who have gone through the academic training had any pastoral
medicine in their medical courses? It is not offered in any catalogue
of a medical faculty. It hardly appears any more in Protestant
theological faculties, but it does have a role in Catholic
theological faculties — and for a good reason. Only it contains
nothing of a medical nature. In the main it contains, first, the
knowledge priests need in order to work as pastors, not only with
healthy people who are given into their care, but also with those who
are sick. There is a difference in whether one has the care of the
soul of a sick person, particularly one who is seriously sick, or of
a healthy person. With the sick, perhaps severely sick individuals,
the question is how one shapes the soul care, how one relates to it.
But I have never yet found a book on pastoral medicine that did not
stress repeatedly that the first task of the pastor is to make
certain by word and deed that a real doctor is found, and that the
pastor should refrain from all medical measures.
A second important
subject of pastoral medicine has to do with the hygienic aspects of
certain ritual measures. For instance, the healthfulness or
unhealthfulness of fasting required for ceremonial reasons is
explained for the lay person; also what medical science has to say,
for instance, about circumcision and similar matters. For priests
themselves — this, of course, has just to do with Catholic
faculties — it sets forth clearly what is to be said from a
hygienic standpoint about asceticism. This is spoken about very
fully.
A further subject has
to do with what measures should be taken, for instance, in a parish
where there is a doctor, what connection there should be between the
medical care and the sacraments. When a religious community bases its
activity on the reality of the sacraments, the priest must be
prepared to meet the medical treatment that is being given. There is,
for instance, the anointing that the priest must perform at the
sickbed by the side of the doctor. We have also to consider what
significance the earlier pastoral medicine attributed to a person's
receiving communion while recovering from a severe illness. Looking
at the spiritual aspect, one has to ponder on the working of the
sacrament in relation to the processes of healing in a human
being.
A further subject
examines how the pastor has to relate to the physician in
psychopathic cases, cases of mentally handicapped or psychically
abnormal individuals. The pastoral work is varied for such cases.
This was the principal task confronting pastoral medicine in its
earlier days, and it was taken care of through the centuries rather
extensively by calling on the authority of the Church Fathers'
writings.
That is a field of
work that cannot appear in the same light to us who are involved in a
renewal of spiritual life. Indeed, from fundamental anthroposophical
views we are aware of very important tasks in that field for a new
pastoral medicine. And we can discover the extent of such tasks if we
consider the subject from two sides.
First, let us consider
it from the medical point of view. What are we doing when we apply a
therapy? When we give a medicine or apply some healing measure to a
sick person, there is always the fact that in the healing process we
want to set in motion, whether physical or spiritual or pertaining to
the soul, we are going beyond the so-called normal relation of that
person to the surrounding world. No matter what therapy we use, in
every instance we are going beyond what the person has normally in
everyday life, whether it is taking of nourishment, or exposure to
light and air, or exposure to soul influences. In every circumstance
we are going beyond all of that in our therapy. Even if we simply
prescribe a small change of diet, we have gone a small step beyond
what the person had permitted in his or her own everyday relation to
the surrounding world.
Say we prescribe a
medicine. If it's a physical substance, its effect will be that a
different process takes place than would take place if the patient
were merely eating food. And it is the same with other therapeutic
measures. In using any therapeutic measure we are intervening in the
life of the patient in a way that is different from the way life
usually works upon that person. For what is the normal intervention
in human life? How does a person take hold of his or her own life? We
can distinguish three kinds of processes that intervene, or can
intervene, in human life. First, the process that is active in the
person in the same way that physical-chemical forces are active in
outer nature. Second, the process that is active in the realm of a
person's life forces, in life itself. Third, the process that takes
immediate hold of the person in the sphere of consciousness:
- Physical-chemical
- Life
- Consciousness
Here we must grasp an
important concept. In ordinary life there are three states of
consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. The moment we apply an
active therapeutic measure, we are intervening in the sphere of
consciousness to a greater or lesser degree depending on what the
measure is. Such intervention never occurs in such a direct way in
the so-called normal course of life. A person who is eating, for
instance, is surrendering to the usual process of taking nourishment;
then, if this has proceeded normally, waking, dreaming, and sleeping
follow in normal fashion. At the most, we might vary a diet for the
purpose of bringing about better sleep, but there the boundary is
already shifted. Therapy has already begun.
It is quite another
matter if you intervene with some therapy when, for instance, a
patient has a fever. If you were to apply the same therapy to a
healthy person you would alter the person's condition of
consciousness. Thus a physician has to work fundamentally with the
various states of consciousness. A human being's ordinary relation to
the outer world has to do with life forces, but in medical work one
is intervening in the states of consciousness. You will find this is
so in every single therapeutic measure. And it is the specific
characteristic of a therapeutic measure that it does enter into what
has to do in some way or other with the variability of consciousness.
In fact the only effective therapy is one that takes such deep hold
of our human constitution that it penetrates to the source from which
our various states of consciousness come. But thereby you are
intervening as physician, as therapist, directly in the ordering of
the spiritual world. Your alteration of someone's condition of
consciousness means that you are intervening directly in the ordering
of the spiritual world. And when you have a really active cure,
through this penetration into the state of consciousness, even though
it may be into subconsciousness, you are always drawing the soul of
the person into the therapeutic process. You do not remain in the
physical sphere. Ordinary consumption of food, ordinary breathing,
and other ordinary processes remain in the physical sphere, and the
higher members work indirectly through the physical sphere. Higher
forces are active through the physical organism. In contrast, when
you are working as a physician or therapist you draw the patient's
soul directly into his or her physical body. Indeed we can say if
physicians understand their profession properly, they realize that
they enter directly into the realm of the spiritual. It only seems
that therapy is merely a physical or biological process. True
therapeutic measures always involve the patient's soul, even though
at first this may remain unknown to the ordinary consciousness. You
should observe what actually takes place in a patient when, let us
say, a fever is suddenly lowered by some therapeutic means. In this
event processes are introduced into the innermost depth of the
patient's being — just as the illness itself had worked into
this depth — beyond the merely physical and biological realm.
So we have looked at the picture from the medical point of view. We
have seen how doctoring, healing, by its very nature leads from the
physical realm into the spiritual.
Now let us examine the
priest's profession just as carefully. Priests whose calling is not
one of teaching, if they are truly active priests, then they are
connected with the ritual, and the ritual includes the sacraments.
But the sacraments are not symbols. What are they? They consist of
the fact that external events take place, which are not exhausted, in
chemical or biological processes. They contain orientations which are
embodied in the physical-biological sphere, but which have their
origin in the spiritual world. Sense-perceptible actions are
performed, and spirit streams into the actions. Spiritual reality is
present in the ritual on the level of sense perception. And what
takes place there in front of the congregation takes place first of
all before their conscious observation. Nothing is permitted to take
place except what does take place in that way. Otherwise it would not
be ritual, not sacrament, but suggestion. The sacraments — if
they are done right — are never allowed to contain any element
of suggestion. All the more, therefore, they are able to contain what
is spiritual. They take place before the waking consciousness of the
participants, but they work into the sphere of the life forces.
In communion a person
is not just eating the material substance; in that case it would not
be a sacrament. Nor is it a matter of symbols. Rather it has to do
with reaching into a person's life, because a sacrament is enacted,
is celebrated, through an orientation toward the spiritual world.
Therefore one can say therapy leads from life to consciousness; the
ritual with its sacraments leads from consciousness to life.
Therapy: life to
consciousness
Ritual (sacraments): consciousness to life
There you have the two
activities in polarity: therapeutic activity and the celebration of
the sacraments. In therapeutic measures, the course leads from life
to consciousness, and consciousness becomes a helper, at least (in
ordinary consciousness) an unconscious helper, in the healing
process. In the celebration of the sacraments life is made a helper
for what is enacted before the consciousness. Both of these
activities have to be grasped spiritually in deep inwardness —
not merely diagrammatically as it is now being presented to you. They
require the involvement of the total human being if that individual
wants to make one or the other a vocation. In our present
civilization therapy has left behind the spiritual element, and
theology has left behind the concrete world. In our present
civilization therapy has taken a false path into materialism and
theology a false path into abstraction. For these reasons their true
relationship has become completely veiled. This true relationship
must be reestablished. It must become active again.
Again it must become
clear that for diagnosis physicians need a trained observation that
enables them to see a biological or physical process in the human
organism as a spiritual process. For all processes in the human
organism are spiritual. For diagnosing, and still more for treatment,
physicians need an observation that is trained to see the lighting up
of the spirit within the physical. Priests need an observation that
is trained to see the lighting up of the physical reflection of a
spiritual event. There is a polarity again. But there must always be
polarities working together in this world, and these are no
exception.
To see how they are to
work together will be a task within the sphere of Anthroposophy and
based on Anthroposophy, a task also to be fulfilled within
anthroposophical spheres of activity. So one can think that out of
this gathering for a pastoral medicine course there may actually be
created future anthroposophical physicians — physicians who
will hold the right relation to priests because of their own relation
to the spiritual world. The priests themselves will have come out of
the Movement for Religious Renewal. Something quite special will
develop out of this course for the physician and the priest so that
they will work together in a true way.
For what in this case
can it mean that they work together? Surely not that the priest does
dilettantish doctoring and that the doctor is a dilettante priest! If
their working together were to consist of priests knowing a few
medical facts and physicians vesting themselves as priests, then I'd
like to know why they should work together. Why should an experienced
physician be interested in half priest-half doctor dilettantism? It
makes no sense. And why should a priest want to interfere in medical
matters except when the physician asks for a pastor? On the other
hand, if the physician is a good physician standing squarely within
the medical profession, and if the priest is a real priest, they can
work together. It means that one offers help to the other out of
professional abilities, not that one pushes into the other's
professional domain.
Such an association
will bring about a profoundly important result for our culture. The
physician will truly understand the priest, and the priest the
physician. The priest will know as much about being a doctor as is
needed to know and the physician as much about the vocation of the
priest as is needed to know. And then in time we will see to what
extent physician and priest can work with the teacher to accomplish
something beneficial to humanity.
In that area, too,
people will have to work together — and in the most manifold
ways, because education is also something that must be looked at from
a fresh point of view. The priest cannot be a physician, nor the
physician a priest, but they can both in a certain sense be teachers.
But all the details of these new associations will have to be thought
out quite concretely. Therefore I would like to ask you from the very
beginning to count this earnest request as part of all that this
pastoral medicine course is going to present: that everything be
worked out on a professional and expert basis. Priests will truly
help actual physicians if they reject all thought of medical
dilettantism. That will be one of their responsibilities. And
physicians will be able to do very much at the sickbed to bring the
mission of the priests to proper fulfillment — precisely at the
sickbed, where often a priest has to intervene in life in a really
essential way.
We will continue
tomorrow.
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