LECTURE 11
SEPTEMBER 18, 1924
PASTORAL MEDICINE AS
WE THINK OF IT HERE will only be recognized as something from
spiritual research that has meaning when humankind once more
possesses a common consciousness of a spiritual realm containing
positive, active forces. For naturally in an age that has developed
materialism, it is inconceivable to the ordinary human being that
anyone could have seen something worthy of notice in the spiritual
world. But this really happened in the old mysteries. Individuals saw
into spiritual realms and found knowledge there that led to valuable
cures. And what we still have to say today to round off our studies
may perhaps provide a connection to that old mystery wisdom for the
medical stream that should now emanate from the Goetheanum.
Indeed this impulse is
understood most correctly in its historical connection if what is
intended here is thought of as having developed out of the research
methods (although, of course, quite different in form) and the
artistic healing practices of the old mysteries. Obviously you will
have to regard what has been offered in this short course as just a
stimulus, as in a certain sense just the first chapter, the beginning
of a pastoral medicine that will develop further through the work
that is still to be done here by Dr. Wegman and me.
So first I would like
to point out how the initiates in the old mysteries described their
path of initiation, particularly that path that was pursued at the
place where the mysteries were most involved in the secrets of
healing. Actually all the mysteries were connected with secrets of
healing, but some more than others. They were all connected with them
because healing was regarded as related to the entire evolution of
human civilization. There were deep reasons for this. People of those
ancient times said: When the human being comes down out of spiritual
worlds into the physical-earth world through conception and birth,
the soul-spiritual entity undergoes a transformation by which it is
able to form a physical human body. We have described how this
achievement takes place for the first time through the activity of
the individual during the first seven years of life. The first body
had been given through heredity, the body that in the course of the
first seven or eight years is entirely stripped off.
Thus it was conceived
very exactly in the ancient mysteries how one came out of spiritual
worlds into the world of the physical senses. But there was a
universal recognition that a person does not in the first place unite
with the physical body in the way that was originally intended by the
spiritual powers who direct humanity. It was always believed that
through some anomaly of the general evolution the forces that a human
being inherits overpower in a certain sense the forces that are
brought through the individuality from former earth-lives. This
seemed to show a lack of harmony. It was said: If there were complete
harmony between soul-and-spirit and physical body in earthly humans,
death would not have the form it now has; nor would illness come in
the way it now comes. Illness and death were regarded as the symptoms
that show that human beings indeed have more to do with the
physical-earth world than they were originally meant to. Although
today this can no longer be completely understood, still it is an
extremely profound idea in which there is very much truth. For the
moment one reaches a higher level of consciousness even to a slight
degree, one sees at once that death is quite different in character.
It appears as a metamorphosis rather than the end of a phase of
life.
Therefore for the
entire ancient consciousness the education of the human being was
related to healing. The entire educational process in very ancient
times of human evolution was thought of primarily from a medical
point of view. Connected with this was the recognition that the
mysteries united the professions of physician and priest, both of
whom should be concerned with the healing of human beings on earth.
Usually in olden times physician and priest were united in one
person. This could only happen out of the old instinctive
consciousness; today it would not be possible, at least not as an
accepted custom. This recognition of the importance of healing, which
was strong even in normally healthy persons, was related for every
human being to their knowledge that after the metamorphosis they
would undergo through death, they would be guided through their life
between death and rebirth on their path to the sun by souls who on
earth had been physicians or priests. The first need of every human
being after death was to find the sun path — because there they
would work out part of what they had to experience between death and
rebirth. And these first steps had to be shown to them by a physician
or a priest. So it was thought in ancient times. This was included in
the deepest mystery wisdom. For us today this wisdom must be regarded
differently because the old methods are no longer suitable for us.
However, at this present time they can be renewed. Indeed that
renewal is to be attempted right here.
When ancient initiates
described their initiation they would say that after they had crossed
the threshold they were first made acquainted with the activity of
the elements. In olden times, “elements” was the name
given to what today would be called physical conditions. That is, the
solid, which was called “earth”; all fluids, which were
called “water”; everything gaseous, which was called
“air”; and everything to do with “warmth,”
which was ascribed to the warmth ether and which was called an
element. Modern physicists deny all this. For them these four
elements do not exist. For them there are from sixty to eighty
elements, which have qualities. Under certain conditions one is
fluid, another solid or gaseous. The condition of warmth belongs to
all. What was described as an element in olden times does not exist
today. There are now only qualities of things; the qualities have no
existence of their own. What today are called elements are actually
only “real” in the coarse, tangible physical world. And
what in olden times were called elements were understood not as
reaching down into tangible matter itself, but only to the
intangible, living activity of matter.
It was of no
particular importance to an ancient physician whether something was
this or that substance with this or that name. Naturally this is
important, but it only becomes so after one has first obtained full
view of something else, of the living, weaving activity of the
substance. Thus one can study a substance in a place where it is
exposed to weather conditions. The ancient physicians laid great
value on studying a substance while it was being exposed to the
weather, to the whole earth process. Also they took care that they
did not simply take some substance out of the mineral kingdom if it
could be obtained from the plant kingdom. In other words, they looked
at the position the substance had in the world process by virtue of
its living activity. But to understand that, one needs to accept the
concept of the four elements. For then it is of prime importance in
what temperature a substance becomes earth, for instance; in what
temperature it becomes solid, or fluid, or air. That was the
important thing in olden times, to observe what world process must
happen so that some substance or other would take on a particular
form. That was the first requirement. After that, the substance was
examined without restriction. Today one starts out from the
substance; formerly one started out from the process. And in fact any
substance is only a process suspended at a certain stage. Formerly
people were above all concerned with the whole weaving life within
the material substance. And so initiates described how they were led
to a vision of the weaving life of matter and of how it appeared to
them as a fabric woven of the four elements. That was the first
experience.
The second description
everyone gave, which presented the second step for them, was this:
they were led to a place where they could learn to know the
“upper and lower gods.” What does that mean? We have
already described that, but in a modern way. I told you that if the
soul-spiritual entity enters too deeply into the physical and etheric
bodies, these bodies overpower the soul-spiritual entity, creating a
pathological condition — an aberration of the soul-spiritual
entity in the physical-etheric organism. There is, then, this
pathological situation, that such people have descended more deeply
into the physical organism than they should in ordinary waking life,
and down below encounter nonhuman, subnatural activity. For only when
we have a normal relation between our soul and spirit and our
physical-etheric organism do we live in the natural world. The moment
we descend too deeply, too intensely into physical corporeality, we
come into relation with the subnatural. We fall to a level at which
elemental beings, beings of higher hierarchies at various stages of
their development, are all active. We come into relation with those
gods who are unfolding their activity below the level of nature.
How would ancient
initiates have spoken if they had wanted to use a more neutral
expression, veiling the facts so that no one would understand them
except other initiates? How could they have implied that they had
been led to the lower gods? An ancient initiate would have said: I
have learned to know the nature of human illnesses. For that leads to
the lower gods.
Now look in the other
direction, at the life of the saint: this also, as I have shown you,
can be at the borderline between normal and pathological. It can
happen that the soul-spiritual entity goes out farther than it
should, enhancing the sleep condition. The ancient initiates
described their introduction to this state as meeting with the upper
gods. Put schematically (see drawing), this corresponds to the facts:
nature, subnature, supernature. Visionary life, through the
clairvoyant faculty that leads an individual into the spiritual
world: the initiate called this “meeting with the upper
gods.”
| Diagram 6 Click image for large view | |
Now when we speak of
upper and lower gods someone can very easily entertain the false idea
that it concerns rank. You must think of it in this way: if I simply
say nature, subnature, supernature, illness, visionary life, then I
am tempted to think of the lower gods as being of a lower order. But
that is not true. In reality it is like the drawing below.
Imagine we have
nature; then above, it leads to a circle; below, it leads to a
circle; and what is above joins what is below. If we draw the circle
larger and larger, and continue to draw it larger, we finally get a
straight line. A piece of circle that continues on, after it has gone
into infinity, comes back from the other side. This shows that the
terms “upper” and “lower” are not to be
understood as signs of rank, but simply as different ways that the
gods come to human beings. They have been thought of as working in
equal rank with one another, of striving to unite at a point in
infinity. Therefore everything in olden times that was either illness
or clairvoyance was thought to show that those who gained an
understanding of those two human conditions, would then see into the
spiritual world. One way to know about the spiritual world was to
become well acquainted with illness and with clairvoyance.
| Diagram 7 Click image for large view | |
When we understand
this, we are able to bring into our own modern age what was present
in human consciousness in olden times. If we ask what can be
identified in modern consciousness with the realm of the lower gods,
the answer must be — the Being whom we call the Father when we
think of the divine Trinity. The Father belongs in the most eminent
sense to subnature. How are we to think about the Father God with
truly spiritual comprehension?
Let us consider human
beings, first in day-waking consciousness, then in night-sleeping
consciousness, and let us compare the two states. We know that in
full waking consciousness individuals are living as they have been
placed to live within the order of this physical world. Just as the
earth has had earlier stages of evolution — Saturn, Sun, Moon
— and will undergo further evolution, so must humans themselves
be recognized as the result of those earlier evolutionary periods. In
this sense they belong in their waking state to the earth; by their
nature they stand within the sphere of the earth. In waking condition
they stand on a level with nature.
It is not the same
when human beings sleep. When we are asleep our physical and etheric
bodies lie on the bed, and our astral body and ego are outside them.
Let us look at the physical and etheric bodies. Of what do we
consist, lying there in our physical and etheric bodies? We have
— of course, at a more advanced stage — what we received
in the old Saturn evolution and the old Sun evolution. That is now
further evolved; we have the further development of our Saturn and
Sun existence now during sleep. We do not have our Moon existence in
what lies there on the bed. Nature has progressed from Moon existence
to Earth existence. And the fact that the sleep condition is
essential to us means that nature preserves in the sleeping human
being a nature that is now below, a nature that only existed during
the Saturn and Sun periods. That is subnature. That lies at the
foundation of all beings through the fact that there is a human race.
Humans fall during sleep into subnature, and from this fall illnesses
appear. That is the realm of the Father God. When we sleep we enter
the realm of the Father God, we enter subnature, the realm of the
Father.
Human clairvoyance
helps illuminate the members of the human being that during sleep are
outside the physical and etheric bodies: that is, the ego and astral
body. When we become conscious in them, we are in the opposite
condition, the opposite pole to illness and have entered the realm of
the Spirit with the astral body and ego.
So we can see that the
human being is organized on earth in such a way that one is able to
go out from nature in two directions, in the direction of subnature
to the Father, and in the direction of supernature to the Spirit.
Since the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ has been the mediator for both
worlds. He is the one who permeates the world of nature, the one who
permeates normal human existence. He has always to create harmony
between subnature and supernature. Subnature is always kept in
balance by the normal course of sleeping and waking. Supernature is
kept in balance by those seers who are able to return to their
ordinary human life at will. If someone is unable upon waking from
sleep to balance what is experienced in subnature, then there is
illness in the physical and etheric bodies. If someone is unable to
bring back into the full waking state, into the natural course of
earth-life, what is experienced clairvoyantly in the realm of the
spirit, then there are soul illnesses or spiritual illnesses. This is
the other pole.
Let us now consider
physical illness. What happens when the healing process starts? The
human being is led from the experience of subnature to the experience
of nature, from the Father to Christ. For Christ is the spiritual
life in nature. That is in reality what the physician does. It is the
physician's task to know how a person fallen to subnature is brought
back to Christ, after the Father has given the leadership over to
Christ the Son. That puts into modern speech what mystery wisdom
would express. After initiates have attained a Christ-consciousness
here on earth, they are led on the one side to the Father, on the
other side to the Spirit. If then they are aware how their path leads
from the Father to Christ, they will find all the healing processes
on this path.
Here the modern
mystery begins, the mystery that creates a great test for real
medical science. It is this to which I must point at the conclusion
of this pastoral medicine course, so that there shall flow from it
what should first of all bestow healing upon physicians. We can
assume that they will gradually learn the separate healing measures
that we have shown in this course by learning which are the defective
organs and then what in outer nature corresponds to them and will
work with spiritual power. Thus we introduce spirit as the healing
agent into the human body. The physicians will learn how it is done
in a given case. This will all build up for them into a complete
knowledge. This living knowledge that they attain will be different
from the current conventional knowledge. If today you open your
pathology text or a medical textbook and study it thoroughly, at the
end you are no further along than you were at the beginning. Granted,
you have digested the entire contents, but even while you worked at
it chapter after chapter, still you were making no progress in your
general human attitude. It is the nature of real knowledge that it
impels one to grow in one's entire human attitude.
If you take up
medicine in this sense and as it was meant in this pastoral medicine
course, you will advance step by step. And the result will be nothing
less than that you can say to yourselves: Now that I have my medical
training behind me, I understand all that transpired at the Mystery
of Golgotha, up to the moment when Christ went through the gate of
death. You will understand the passage of Christ from the Father to
the death on Golgotha. That is the mystery. One may not believe at
first that medicine is related to this mystery, but it is. It is so
truly related that through your understanding of the processes of
healing, you will grasp what happened in the cosmos when the Father
sent the Son to undergo the death on Golgotha. You will see in the
death on Golgotha not death but the working together of all that
happened at the death. That was not a death but the overcoming of
death and the healing of all mankind. That is the path of the
physician, from Father to Son until the Son dies on Golgotha. All
separate pieces of medical knowledge bring one a step further toward
the final comprehension of this Mystery.
Pastoral medicine is
not only what the pastor and the physician are to practice together,
it is what is to be brought together so that first through the
physician one part of the Mystery of Golgotha can be really
understood. That is the high point, the ultimate achievement of
medicine: to comprehend all human illness in such a way that one sees
the Mystery of Golgotha up to the death as a tremendous healing
process. The pathology of evolving humanity and the therapy, the
dying on the cross — these will be seen in their true
connection when we have real medicine.
The priest has to
follow all that is experienced by human beings when they leave their
body and enter the other world, the world of the spirit. Thereby
priests become more and more aware of the relation of a human being
to the Spirit, to the spiritus sanctus,
the Holy Spirit. And their path is that of mediation
between the Spirit and the Son, the Christ, of developing theology so
it will find the way from Christ to the Spirit, from the Spirit to
Christ. A great sum of knowledge and life experience can be acquired
on this path along which one has to lead one's fellow humans from the
Spirit to Christ, from Christ to the Spirit. Its highest service must
be that the successive stages of theology are able to clarify the
meaning of Christ's path after the death on Golgotha. For his going
through the death on Golgotha was the great healing event. Then the
question arises: what faculty does this healing event create in human
beings that will help them to enter the spiritual world? Theology
must have for its crowning endeavor the comprehension of what is
happening to the Christ individuality since He went through the death
on Golgotha.
Christ's path to
Golgotha: the peak of the physician's path.
Christ's path after Golgotha: the peak of the priest's path.
For many contemporary
theologians, the two paths seem to have no connection whatever. There
are theologians today who do not want to know anything about the
risen Spirit and the further activity of the Christ. But if we speak
in the sense of a renewal of the mysteries, then the event of
Golgotha, the Mystery of Golgotha belongs to it. And then we can say
that the path by which the ancient initiate came to initiation could
be described in this way: I was led through the elements to the lower
and higher gods. The modern initiate would describe it as follows: I
have been led through what dissolves the elements into their active
processes — the elements are now the chemical elements, eighty
of them, that dissolve when they enter into any process — and I
am led further, to the Father below and the Spirit above. I perceive
the activity of Christ on both paths.
If you would like to
take a summary of this course with you for your esoteric study, then
take these words:
I will follow the path
That dissolves the elements into activity,
And leads me down to the Father
Who sends illness to work out karma,
And leads me up to the Spirit
Who guides the erring soul toward freedom.
The Christ leads downward and upward,
Creating Spirit-Man in earth humanity
In harmonious union.
Ich
werde gehen den Weg,
Der die Elemente in Geschehen löst
Und mich führt nach unten zum Vater
Der die Krankheit schickt zum Ausgleich des Karma
Und mich führt nach oben zum Geiste
Der die Seele in Irrtum zum Erwerb der Freiheit leitet
Christus führt nach unten und nach oben
Harmonisch Geistesmensch in Erdenmenschen zeugend.
When you have become
completely permeated by the content of this brief meditation, you
will have taken livingly into your spirit what I wanted to give in
this course.
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