II
THE
FEVERISH PURSUIT OF HEALTH
Health is something for which every man naturally longs. We may
say this longing for health derives indeed not only from
egotistic feelings and wishes, but also from the justified
longing for work. We owe thanks for our capacity to work, for
the possibility of becoming effective in the world, to our
health. Hence, it is that we treasure health as a quite special
beneficence. Indeed, there lies in this way of thinking about
health something of the highest significance for its pursuit.
In a certain way there is contained therein the secret of the
particular circumstances under which health becomes at all
worth pursuing. That the pursuit of health should only under
certain circumstances be worthwhile might appear unusual. Our
considerations today, however, should disclose that health
belongs to those virtues that most readily become a reality in
us if we pursue them not for their own sake, but for another's.
That this does not always happen today can be taught us if we
but look out into our present surrounding world.
However remarkable it may be when speaking of the feverish
pursuit of health, the feverish insistence upon health, yet it
is possible today for many people to make their own
observations about it. With what means, in what countless ways,
do most people today press towards health! Everywhere we find a
hurried pursuit of health. We may travel through regions in
which old castles and ruins tell us of monks and knights who
once could call strength of spirit and of body their own. Today
they have fallen into decay and replacing them in these same
regions we find sanitaria. Was there ever in any time of world
evolution such a variety of special efforts to achieve health,
to struggle through to health by natural ways of living, by
water- or aero-healing methods? People are sent for air and sun
baths.
Once an acquaintance of mine who was on his way to a sanitarium
came to me during the first half of summer. It had been with
much difficulty that he managed to get four weeks' vacation,
which he planned to spend there. Of course, it seemed to be the
best that could happen to a person, to stay for a time, more or
less satisfying, in a sanitarium. Hence I had no wish to
explain the futility of his plan and thus deprive him of all
hope. On his return journey he came again to me. He brought a
little book along in which was written all he was supposed to
have accomplished during those four weeks contemplating his
organism. Again one could not deprive him of his joy, but, on
the tip of one's tongue lay the question, “Do tell me,
when have you been more driven? During the whole year at work
or during those four weeks during which you were shoved from
warmth to cold, from dryness to dampness, and were scrubbed
with all those brushes?”
The
worst part of it was that after some weeks he said to me,
“This cure has helped me as little as all the others in
the last thirty years.” He had tried something different
each summer. Whoever cared for this person could well look upon
his feverish search for health in a somewhat sympathetic way.
How
many people today run to mesmerizers and spiritual healers? How
many writings there are on “Harmony With the
Infinite” and the like! In short, the feverish pursuit of
health is something that lives in our time. Now, one might
raise another question. “Are these people actually
sick?” Well, of course, something is probably wrong with
them, but is there a chance that they will attain health
through all these things?
Especially among ancient people an age-old saying remains even
today. One says so frequently that what the simple person gets
from such sayings often may contain something good, but just as
often it is something false. So it is with the saying,
“There are many illnesses, but only one state of
health.” This is foolish. There are as many states of
health as there are human beings. For each human being his
individual health. What this says is that all general standard
prescriptions holding that this or that is healthy for the
human being are nonsense. The very part of humanity that is
overcome by the feverish pursuit of health suffers most from
the general prescriptions for health. Among them are those who
believe that there could be something generally tagged as
health, that if one does thus and so, that it would be healthy.
It is most incredible that there is no realization that a sun
bath can be healthy for a person, but that this may not be
applied in general. It could be quite harmful for another.
Generally, this is admitted but there is no following through
in particular instances. We must make it clear to ourselves
that health is a quite relative concept, something that is
liable to a continuing process of change, especially for the
human being, who is the most complicated being on the earth. We
need but look into spiritual science. Then shall we penetrate
deeply into human nature and recognize how changeable what we
call health is. In reality, one forgets almost entirely today
that upon which so much value is laid in material aspects. One
forgets that the human being is in the throes of
development.
What is meant by, “The human being is undergoing
development?” Again it is necessary to refer to the being
of man. The physical body is only a part of the human entity.
This he has in common with all lifeless nature. But he has as
second member the etheric or life body, which he has in common
only with what is life-imbued. This member wages a continuing
battle against everything that would destroy the physical body.
Were the etheric body to withdraw from the physical body, in
that moment the physical body would become a corpse. The third
member is the astral body, which he has in common with animals,
the bearer of desires and sorrow, of every feeling and
representation, of joy and pain, the so-called consciousness
body. The fourth part is his ego, the central point of his
being, that makes of him the crown of creation. The ego
transforms the three bodies through development out of the
central point of the human being.
Let
us consider an uneducated savage, an average man, or a highly
educated idealist. The savage is still slave to his passions.
The average man refines his urges. He denies himself the
satisfaction of certain urges and sets in their place legal
concepts or high religious ideals, that is, he remodels his
astral body from out his ego. As a result the astral body now
has two members. The one still has the form that exists in the
savage, but the other part has been transformed into spirit
self or manas. Through impressions from art or great
impressions from founders of religion man works on his ether
body and creates buddhi or life spirit. The physical body also
can be transformed into Atma, Spirit Self,
[In other lectures, Rudolf Steiner refers to
"Atma" as "Spirit-man." – e.Ed.]
if a person devotes
himself to the practice of certain spiritual-scientific
exercises. Thus, the human being works unconsciously or
consciously on his three bodies.
Were we able to look far, far back into the early development
of man, we would find everywhere primitive cultural conditions,
simple modes of life. Everything that those early people had in
the way of appliances to satisfy their spiritual and bodily
needs, their way of life, was simple. Everything, everything
evolves, and within evolution the human being develops himself.
This is most important. Imagine as vividly as you can a
primitive man who grinds his grain to flour between stones, and
picture to yourself the other things surrounding this
individual. Compare him with a man of more recent cultural
times. What surrounds this modern person, what does he see from
morning until evening? He takes in the frightful impressions of
the noisy big city, of street cars, buses and the like. We must
then understand how evolution proceeds. We must carry over the
insight we gain concerning simple things into the cultural
process.
Goethe made the following statement, “The eye was
fashioned by the light, for the light.” If we had no
eyes, we could not see colors or light. Whence have we eyes?
Goethe also said that out of undifferentiated organs the light
drew forth eyes. So also is the ear formed by tone, the sense
of warmth by warmth. The human being is formed by that which in
the whole world spreads itself around him. Just as the eyes owe
their existence to the light, so do other delicate structures
owe their existence to what surrounds man. The simple primitive
world is the dark chamber that still holds back many organs.
What light is for the undifferentiated organs out of which the
eye developed itself, the environment is for primitive
humanity. Things work quite differently upon man in his present
mode of living; he cannot turn back to the primitive conditions
of culture. Rather is it so that an ever more intense, stronger
spiritual light has been effective around him that has called
forth the new.
We
are able to realize the meaning of this transforming cultural
process if we picture to ourselves how the being fares who is
also subject to this influence but cannot go along with the
transformation. Here we have the condition of the animals. They
are differently structured from men. When we look at the animal
as it appears in the physical world, we find that it has its
physical body, its etheric body and its astral body in the
physical world, but it has no ego in the physical world. Hence,
the animals are powerless on the physical plane to undergo
transformation of the three bodies, and cannot adapt themselves
to a new environment. Two days ago we considered wild animals
in captivity, how, out in the wilderness certain animals never
have tuberculosis, tooth decay, -etc., but do in captivity. A
whole series of decadent appearances show up in captivity or
under other circumstances.
During the cultural process, men are continually subject to
other conditions. This is the nature of culture. Otherwise,
there would be no development, no history of human beings. What
we observed as experiments with animals as to the effect on the
physical body appears as the opposite in men. Man, because he
has an ego, has the capacity of inwardly digesting the
impressions that storm in upon him from our culture. He is
inwardly active, first adapts his astral body to the changed
conditions and then reorganizes it. Thus, as he keeps evolving,
he comes to higher cultures and always receives new
impressions. At first these express themselves in feelings and
perceptions. Were he now to remain passive, inactive, were
there no activity stirred up in him, no creativity, then he
would become stunted and sick as does the animal. This it is
that distinguishes the human being, that he can adapt himself
and, from out the astral body, gradually change the etheric and
physical bodies. He must be inwardly up to this transformation,
however, otherwise there is no adjustment of the balance
between what comes to him from the outside and what counters it
from within. A man would be crushed by the impressions from
outside as the animal in a cage is crushed by them because it
has no inner creativity. But man has his inner activity.
Against the spiritual lights around him, he must be able to set
something, in a sense, to counter with eyes, with seeing.
Whatever turns out as a disharmony between impressions from the
outside and the inner life is unhealthy. It is in the big
cities that we can see what happens when impressions from the
outside grow ever more powerful. When we tear along faster and
faster, when we must let rumbling sounds and hurrying people go
by us without taking a stance, without countering them —
this is unhealthy. As regards this position towards the
outside, the intellect is the least important, but what is
important depends upon whether our feelings, our soul, indeed,
our living bodies, can take a position towards it. This we will
understand rightly through the consideration of a definite
illness that appears especially in our time, and that did not
occur earlier. A person not accustomed to absorb much, one poor
in soul, is brought up against all kinds of impressions so that
he finds himself standing before a quite incomprehensible outer
world. This is the case with many feminine natures. Their inner
being is too weak, too little organized to digest it all. But
we find this condition also in many masculine persons. The
consequences result in the illnesses of hysteria. Everything
connected with hysteria is derived from this imbalance.
Another form of illness takes hold when our lives bring us to
the position of wanting to understand too much of what is set
before us in the outer world. It is mostly the case with men
who suffer with causality illness. One accustoms oneself always
to ask, “Why? why? why? why?” It is even said that
the human being must be the never-resting causality animal.
Today, because we are too polite, we may no longer give the
idle questioner the answer that a founder of religion gave.
When he was asked, “What did God do before the creation
of the world” he answered, “He cut rods for those
who ask useless questions.” This is exactly the opposite
condition of the hysterical one. Here the restless longing for
the solving of enigmas is too great. This is only a symptom of
an inner attitude. The one who never wearies of always asking,
“Why?” has a different constitution from other
people. He gives signs of a different inner working of
spiritual and bodily functions from the person who asks
“Why” only on outer provocation. This leads to all
hypochondriacal conditions, from the lightest case to the
deepest illusory illness. So it is that the cultural process
affects human beings. Man must above all have an open mind in
order always to be able to digest what comes towards him. Now
we can also make it clear to ourselves why so many people have
the urge to shed this culture, to have done with this life.
They are no longer up to what presses in upon them. They strive
to get out. These are always weak natures who do not know how
to counter the outer impressions with a mighty inner response.
Thus it is that we cannot speak today in clichés as
regards health just because life itself is so manifold. The one
person stands here, the other there. Because what has developed
in the human being has developed in a certain sense through the
outer world, each has his own health. This is why we must make
the human being capable of understanding his environment, even
to the very functions of the body. For the man who is born into
circumstances in which light muscles and nerves are necessary,
it would indeed be foolish to develop heavy muscles. Where does
the gauge for the successful developing of the human being lie?
It lies within the human being. As with money, so it is with
health. When we go after money in order to have it for
benevolent purposes, then it is something wholesome, something
good. Going after money may not be condemned, for it is
something that enables us to forward the cultural process. If
we go after money for money's sake, then it is absurd,
laughable. It is the same with health. If we go after health
for health's sake, then the striving has no significance. If we
put ourselves out for health for what we can achieve through
our health, then the effort for the sake of health is
justified. Whoever would acquire money should first make it
clear to himself how much of it he needs. Then he should press
forward for it. Whoever yearns for health must look into the
easily misunderstood words like comfort, love of life,
enjoyment of life, and what could be meant with them. Joy of
life, satisfaction in life, love of life are present in
savages. In the human being in whom outer and inner life are in
harmony, in the harmoniously developed man, conditions must be
such that if there is discomfort, if there is this or that hurt
of body or of soul, this feeling of discomfort must be seen as
some sort of illness, as a disharmony. Hence it is important in
all education, in all public work, not to carry on routinely,
but rather out of the expanse of a cultural view, so that joy
and satisfaction in life are possible.
It
is curious that what has just been said has been said by a
representative of spiritual science. Yes, so says spiritual
science whom people reproach for striving for asceticism.
Someone comes along who takes great pleasure in nightly visits
to the girlie shows or in downing his eight glasses of beer.
Then he encounters people who take joy in something on a higher
level. So he remarks that they punish themselves. No, they
would punish themselves were they to sit with him in the music
hall. Whoever enjoys the girlie shows and such belongs there,
and it would be absurd to deprive him of the enjoyment. It is
healthy only to take away his taste for it.
One
should work to ennoble one's pleasures, one's gratifications in
life. It is not so that anthroposophists come together because
they suffer when talking about higher worlds, but rather
because it is their heart's deepest enjoyment. It would be the
most terrible deprivation for them to sit down and play poker.
They are completely full of the joy of life in every fiber of
their beings.
There is no point in saying, even concerning health, that one
should do thus and so. The point is to provide joy and
satisfaction in life. Indeed, the spiritual scientist in this
case is quite the epicure of life. How is this to be conferred
upon health? We must be clear about this, that when we give
someone a rule about health, we must aim at what gives joy,
bliss and pleasure to his astral body. For by the astral body
the other members are affected. This is more easily said than
done.
There are, for example, even those among the theosophists who
mortify their flesh by no longer eating any meat. Should these
be people who still hanker for meat, then must this
mortification be seen at best as a preparation for a later
condition. There comes, however, a point at which a person may
have such a relation with his environment that it becomes
impossible for him to eat meat. A physician who was also of
those who ate no meat, not because he was a theosophist, but
because he considered this way of life healthy, was asked by a
friend why he partook of no meat. He countered with the
question, “Why don't you eat horse or cat meat?” Of
course, the friend had to say that they disgusted him, although
he ate meat of pig or cow, etc. To the physician all meat was
disgusting.
Only then, when the inner subjective conditions correspond to
the objective fact, has the moment come when the outer fact has
a healthy effect. We must be inwardly up to the outer facts.
This is expressed by the words, “comfortable
feeling,” which we may not use lightly, but rather in its
dignified meaning of harmonious concordance of our inner
forces. Happiness and joy and delight and satisfaction, which
are the foundation for a healthy life, always spring from the
same foundation, from the feelings of an inner life that attend
creativity, inner activity. Happy is the human being when he
can be active. Of course, this activity is not to be understood
as coarse activity.
Why
does love make the human being happy? It is an activity we
often do not see as such because it moves from within out,
embracing the other one. With it we let our inner being flow
out. Hence love's healing and blessing of life. Creativity may
be of the most intimate nature; it does not have to become
tumultuously visible. When someone is hunched over a book and
the impressions from it depress him, overwhelm him, he will
gradually become depressed. When, however, the reading of a
book brings pictures to mind, then there is a creative activity
that makes for happiness. It is something quite similar to
becoming pale when one is anxious about coming events. Then the
blood flows inwards in order to strengthen us so that what
comes at us from the outside can find a counter-balance within.
With the feeling of anxiety inner activity is alerted to outer
activity. Becoming aware of an inner activity is healing. Had
the human being been able to feel the activity of the inner
formation in the arising of the eyes out of the undifferentiated
basic organ, then he would have perceived a feeling of well-being.
He was not conscious, however, of that happening.
Instead of bringing a worn-out human being to a sanitarium, it
were far better to bring him into an environment where he would
be happy, at first soul-happy, but also physically happy. When
you put a human being into an environment of joy, in which with
each step he takes an inner feeling of joy awakes, that it is
which will make him healthy, when, for example, he sees
sunbeams streaming through the trees and perceives the colors
and scents of flowers. This, however, a person must himself be
able to feel, so that he himself can take the problem of his
health in hand. Every step should stir him to inner activity.
Paracelsus gave us the beautiful saying, “It is best that
everyone should be himself, by himself, and no one else.”
It is already a limitation of what makes us healthy if we must
first go to another person. Here we are confronted with outer
impressions that for a short while appear to help, but finally
lead to hysteria.
When one considers the problem so, one comes upon other healthy
thoughts. There are people and doctors today, especially
“lay doctors,” who battle against doctors. Medicine
does, indeed, need to be reformed, but this cannot come about
through these battles. Rather must facts of spiritual science
themselves reach into science. Spiritual science exists, but
not to further dilettantism. There are people today who have
the itch to cure others. It is, of course, easy to find this or
that illness in a person. So somebody finds this or that organ
in a person different from the way it appears in another. Or a
person does not breathe as the one possessed with the curing
fever thinks all people should breathe. So for this a cure gets
invented. Shocking, most shocking! For it is not at all a
matter of directing one's efforts at a routine concept of
health. It is easy to say that this and that do not make for
health. Consider someone who has lost one of his legs. He is
sick, certainly sicker than one who breathes irregularly, whose
lungs are affected. It is not a question of healing this
person. It would be foolish to say, “One must see to it
that this person gets a leg again!” Just try to get him
to grow another leg! What really matters is that life for his
person be made as bearable as possible.
This is so in gross, but also in more subtle conditions. It is
a fact that one can find a small flaw in each human being.
Also, what often matters here is not to clear up the flaw, but
rather, despite the human being's flaw, to make his life as
bearable as possible. Think of a plant, the stem of which is
wounded. The tissues and the bark grow around the wound. So is
it also with human beings. The forces of nature maintain life
as they grow around the flaw. Especially lay doctors fall
victim to the error of wanting to cure everything. They would
like to cultivate one kind of health for all human beings.
There is as little of the one kind of health as there is one
kind of normal human being. Not only are illnesses individual,
but also healths. The best we can give to the human being, be
we physician or counselor, is, to give him the firm frame of
mind that he feels himself comfortable when he is healthy,
uncomfortable when he is sick. Today this is not at all so easy
in our circumstances. He who understands the matter of health
will mostly fear such sicknesses as do not come to expression
through fatigue and pain. It is, therefore, detrimental to
sedate oneself with morphium. It is healthy when health brings
zest. Illness brings apathy. This healthy way of living we can
acquire only when we make ourselves inwardly strong. This we do
when we oppose our complicated conditions with strong, inner
activity. The feverish search for health will cease only then
when human beings no longer strive for health as such. The
human being must learn to feel and perceive whether he is
healthy and to know that he can easily put up with a flaw in
health. This is only possible through a strong world conception
that is effective right down into the physical body. This world
outlook makes for harmony. This, however, is only possible
through a world concept that is not dependent upon outer
impressions. The spiritual scientific world concept leads man
into regions that he can only reach if he is inwardly active.
One cannot read a spiritual scientific book as one reads other
books. It must be so written that it evokes one's own activity.
The more one must struggle, the more there is between the
lines, the healthier it is. This is so only in the theoretical
matters, but spiritual science can be effective in all areas.
What we call spiritual science exists in order to become
effective as a strong spiritual movement. It calls forth
concepts that are provided with the most powerful energies so
that human beings can take a stance against what faces one.
Spiritual science would like to give an inner life that extends
right into the limbs, into the blood circulation. Then will
every individual perceive his health in his feeling of joy, in
his feeling of zest and satisfaction. Almost every dietary
regime is worthless. That the other fellow tells me that this
and that are good for me is of no consequence. What matters is
that I find satisfaction when taking my food. The human being
must have understanding for his relation to this or that food.
We should know what the spiritual process is that goes on
between nature and us. To spiritualize everything
— that's what becoming healthy means.
Perhaps it is currently thought that for the spiritual
scientist eating is something to which he is indifferent, that
he gorges himself, devoid of understanding for it. To become
aware of what it means to partake of a part of the cosmos, a
part that has been drenched with sunlight; to know of the
complete spiritual relationship in which our environment
stands, to savor it not only physically, but also spiritually,
frees us from all sickening disgust, from all sickening
encumbrances. Thus we see that to direct this striving for
health onto the right tracks sets humanity a great challenge.
But spiritual science will be strong. It will transform every
human being who dedicates himself to it, bringing him to the
attainment of what, for himself, is the normal pattern. This is
at the same time a noble striving toward freedom that comes out
of spiritual science and makes man his own master. Every man is
an individual being from the standpoint of his characteristics
as well as of his states of health and illness. We are placed
in lawful relation to the world and must learn to know our
situation therein. No outer power can help us. When we find
this strong inner stance, then only are we complete human
beings from whom nothing can be taken. But it also holds that
nobody can give us anything. Nevertheless, we shall find our
way in health and in illness because we have a strong, inner
stance within ourselves. This secret, too, of all healthy
striving has been expressed by a spirit, an eminently healthy
thinking and healthy feeling spirit. He tells us how the
harmonized human being unerringly goes his way. It was Goethe
who, in his poem, Orphic Primal Words, says:
As
on the day that to the world bestowed thee
The sun stood high to greet the planet's sphere,
Thou didst thenceforth thrive ever on and on,
According to the law that brought thee here.
So must thou be, canst not from thee escape
The Sibyls and the Prophets spoke thy fate;
Not time nor power can destroy the mould
When form once cast doth livingly unfold.
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