XIV
I HAVE
carefully considered for some time whether or not to include
today's chapter in this lecture series, for its subject matter can
only be presented in outline. But I have decided to include it, even
if only to prove once more how greatly such things may be
misunderstood. For on the one side, some people have long endeavoured
to prove that Anthroposophy and its doctrines are muddled nonsense.
Recently, however, it appears to have dawned on some other people that
this opinion can no longer be held, but that Anthroposophy appears to
correspond with the results of additional research into the ancient
mysteries. So the attack is now from the other side: I am represented
as a betrayer of the mysteries. Thus people can always find a
possibility of accusation and attack, whether on one score or the
other. If they can no longer state that these things are false they
can at least maintain that it is extremely wrong to say them.
I must first of all repeat that the exclusively physical study of man
only surveys a part and a comparatively small part of human nature
This is for the simple reason that man contains the etheric body, the
astral body and the ego, which are constantly working upon and
moulding the physical organism, yet entirely inaccessible to external
physical judgment — I use this term with intention and reference to
what follows. At the same time it is not impossible for the human
being to educate himself and evolve (granting steadfast effort) to the
point of acquiring and assimilating a certain degree of clairvoyance
into the operation of intellect and judgment. This will not yet mean
the attainment of a proper clairvoyance associated with definite
visual images, but it will be possible to attain a type of judgment
capable of strong and reliable coincidence with the results of
clairvoyance.
Now consider this. Let us begin with the ego — as it were the
opposite extreme from the physical. The ego works upon the other human
vehicles, and at the present stage of evolution its main sphere of
action is on the physical body. In mankind today the ego has as yet
comparatively little capacity for governing the etheric body. During
childhood, it has such power strongly but unconsciously. This ceases
later on. Only in those who retain in later life a vivid imagination
or fantasy, is there a strong ego influence over the etheric body. In
general, however, in all persons who develop their intelligence as
distinct from their imagination and become dry intellectualists, there
is a strong ego-influence over the physical body and only a slight
influence over the etheric.
If you try to visualise this influence over the physical body, you
will not need to go much further in order to picture in your minds
as the work of the ego an intricate framework extending throughout the
bodily organism; a delicate, weblike scaffolding. This scaffolding in
the physical body, like a kind of phantom of man, is always present.
We human beings carry with us through life, a framework imprinted into
us through our ego-organisation; its structure is most delicate, and
indeed it is the forces of the etheric body that insert it into the
physical. But in the course of our lives, we gradually forfeit the
power of consciously contributing to this structure. Only in people
with creative imagination we find a half-conscious, dreamlike remnant
of such power.
As you will have easily conceived, this weblike framework which the
ego “timbers” into the organism of man is actually in some sense a
“foreign body.” And there is a constant tendency to resist it. Every
night during sleep, the human organism seeks to tear down this
structure. Although we remain unaware of it in everyday waking life,
do not let us forget this tendency. For this continuous tendency on
the part of the ego-framework to break up, to fall to pieces in the
organism, is the secret and permanent source of inflammatory
conditions.
The concept of this kind of phantom-structure inserted by the ego into
the human organism is of great importance, as is the realisation of
the constant organic defensive reaction against it as a “foreign
body,” and its continuous tendency to break up within the physical
organisation. You will arrive at a visualisation which helps your
judgment if you study psycho-physiologically the organisation of the
human eyes. For all that takes place as between the eye itself and the
external world, that is to say, between the soul and the external
world by means of the eye, represents par excellence the erecting of
this scaffold. There is an intimate interaction between the
ego-framework proper and the results of the interplay of the eye with
the world around it. I have often had occasion to study this
interaction of eye and ego, in blind-born persons and in those who had
lost their sight. Such cases reveal very plainly the mutual reactions
of that phantom — normal to most people — which becomes incorporated
in the organism by the mere fact of sight, and the other phantom which
is the result of the ego's activity in the organism.
Suppose that an attempt be made to represent all this in graphic form.
Through sight, through the visual process, a phantom is incorporated
into the organism: and the other ego-structure lies a little deeper
within, a little more inward.
(See
Diagram 25.
Yellow portion and white portion.)
The latter, more deep-seated structure is so
constituted as to be perceptibly tinged with physical forces. It is an
almost physical phantom that the ego inserts and erects; a real
scaffold, but what the eye transmits is still etheric. And here we
come to a striking difference between short-sighted and long-sighted
people. In people of short sight, these two frameworks approach one
another; the portion coloured white in the diagram moves inwards,
closer to the yellow. In long-sighted persons, on the other hand, the
white framework moves outwards, away from the yellow. In fact, if you
study the organisation of the eye in any human being you will have the
material for a sound judgment of the person's etheric body; the
etheric body which is so like what I have just termed a framework. You
cannot better train yourself to divine something of the nature of an
individual etheric body, than by attentive study of the organisation
of the organ of vision. Having once grasped this, you will find that
the rest will be easy. Acquire the habit of observing whether
individuals focus their gaze at a distance or near by, and let this
impression work on you; and you will cultivate a sensibility to the
perception of the etheric body. Call meditation to your aid, and it
will no longer be so difficult to ascend from a devoted attention to
the effects of the eye-organisation to the contemplation of the
etheric body itself.
This will convince you that the process linked with the eye
organisation is continuous, and it is the normal form of a process
which may appear in an abnormal form. It is normal in the life of
everyday, and it has its abnormal counterpart in cases of
inflammation, indeed in all inflammatory conditions. So that you are
justified in stating that a too vigorous development of this framework
(which in the physical body is similar to the etheric) give rise to
inflammations and to all the sequelæ of the inflammatory states.
You can confirm your convictions in this matter by the external use of an
animal product, formic acid. The best manner of studying the
application of this substance is in its highest possible dilution,
e.g., sprinkled in bath water. If the mildest dilution of formic acid
is made to work on the human being through bath water, you will cause
a consolidation of the ego-scaffold coloured yellow in the Diagram.
(See
Diagram 25).
This consolidation takes place because by means of the formic acid the
ego is forcibly compelled to approach the framework so that it becomes
penetrated with the ego. And thus it is possible to counteract the
tendency to inflammation for the framework only inclines to
disintegrate in the inflammatory process if it is not properly
permeated by the ego and restrained by it; for the ego and this
framework belong together. They may be brought together by the use of
bath fluid, but in extremely high dilution — for this stimulates the
peculiar properties of formic acid.
A certain amount of attention to symptomatology is necessary, if you
wish to enter into these matters. For instance: observe carefully in
treating inflammatory conditions, whether or not they appear in
persons with a concurrent tendency to obesity. For it is only in such
cases, where you find both sets of symptoms, the tendency to
inflammations and also to adipose deposits, that any real benefit can
accrue from the external formic acid treatment just described. You
will always attain extremely good results, if you have sound reason to
believe in the disintegration of the ego-framework — which may be
deduced from other symptoms, to be described presently — and if there
is a simultaneous tendency to excessive fat.
For Spiritual Science is aware of something that shocks and offends
contemporary mankind in its simple enunciation. It knows that what has
to happen in the human organism, in order that the eyes shall be
formed, and formed in the manner indispensable to human evolution —
of course in the long run of this evolutionary history — is really a
permanent process of inflammation, which is continually transferred
into the normal and does not break out. Think of the processes
inherent in inflammations, think of them held up, slowed down, and
telescoped together, so to speak, and you will have before you the
formative process of the human eye in the human organism. You are
even able to obtain an idea of individual tendency to inflammatory
conditions, or the reverse, by looking at the
person's eyes. It is possible to see this if one trains one's
judgment. Indeed the experiences we may meet with regard to human
sight are closely linked with the observation of the etheric body of
mankind. In referring to the existence of the etheric body and its
conscious perception, we must distinguish two methods of approach.
There is of course that inner process which leads to genuine
clairvoyance, by way of meditation. And there is also an educative
process working from outside. If we take the trouble to see and
estimate the processes of nature aright, we shall acquire a
visualisation of these things which is based on judgment. The actual
organs of clairvoyance must be developed from within; but judgment is
developed in contact with the world outside ourselves. If we develop
the finer shades of judgment in the external world, this highly
evolved judgment will come towards that more intimate process which
passes outwards from within, in meditation.
Perhaps some of you will ask — and quite justifiably ask — “Well,
but cannot all these manifestations and reactions be observed in the
animal world?” My friends, the fact is simply that the things that
concern man cannot be found through the study of animals. I have often
stressed this difference in public lectures, and should like to
emphasise it still more here. People are in the habit of thinking: an
eye is an eye, an organ is an organ, lungs are lungs, a liver is a
liver, and so forth. But that is not so, the eye in man is the organ
which also exists in the animal world as eye, but with a modification:
it is changed by the fact that in man the ego has been incorporated.
The same is the case with all other organs. And for the occurrences
within the organs, especially in cases of disease, the permeation by
the ego is of much greater importance than what happens in the
animal's organs, where there is no such permeation. This essential
difference is still far too little regarded and men persist in
off-hand pronouncements of this sort: “here I have a knife; well, a
knife's a knife, isn't it? One knife is the same as another, so both,
being knives, must have the same origin.” But suppose that one of
these “identical” knives is a table knife, the other a razor. In that
case the simple proposition that “a knife's a knife” becomes
untenable. It is making the same mistake to explain the human eye and
the animal eye by the same methods and terms. It is simply nonsense to
seek for the explanation of anything in its mere external aspect;
moreover such an approach is entirely barren as a foundation for
study. Study founded on animal “material” simply hinders the adequate
study of certain conditions in mankind; for it is only possible to
form a just estimate of the dissimilarity here, by realising that in
man it is precisely the peripheral organs which are the most permeated
by the ego and moulded by it.
In a completely different way is the human ear formed. It is possible
to train oneself to a discriminative grasp of the human ear, just as
in the case of the eye. And in this manner we then approach the
clairvoyant apprehension of the etheric body. We can train ourselves
to understand the fact that the ear is incorporated into man as it is
in animals, but that its structure is permeated by the human ego. If
with this faculty we study the formation of the ear we shall find that
it is connected with a process in the deeper interior of the human
organism, in the same manner as the eye formation of the etheric body
is connected with some more peripheral process. Thus we arrive at the
insight that the ego is concerned in the formative process of the ear,
just as in that of the eyes. The ego incorporates yet another
framework into the organism, differing somewhat from that already
described; and akin to this framework is the whole process lying at
the base of the ear formation. In order to keep these separate
frameworks distinct, I will colour the one just mentioned blue; it
lies more inward than the yellow, and it extends less into the limbs,
so that if it could be extracted and revealed to the light of day, it
would have only stumps in the place of arms and legs. Thus we might
say that this framework in its formation has remained at the stage of
childhood. It is also much less differentiated towards the head than
is the other one. But we shall find that it corresponds to the basic
principle underlying the formative forces of the human ear and the
whole process of hearing. This latter principle I will color violet in
the Diagram.
(See
Diagram 25).
This framework has also its specific characteristic in
the human organism. It can become abnormal if the ego works too
strongly; i.e., if its activity works too much internally. We have
already touched on the reverse case, when the ego's activity is too
strong in the periphery.
The following suggestions may be of use, in the study of the problem
before us. Again take the external symptoms as a starting point:
consider cases where the tendency is to become more or less thin, and
never put on fat. In these cases you see before you human beings in
whom the ego works too strongly internally, and intensifies this
latter framework. This framework, however, has a different tendency
from the other one: the tendency to internal exuberance. The first
framework inclines to disintegrate or to splinter itself; the last to
exuberate internally.
The treatment of this scaffold can proceed on two lines. Firstly, it
can be so developed that exuberance does not ensue, because the ego as
it were, shimmers out of it. For both exuberance and disintegration of
the scaffolds always arise from the inadequate permeation by the ego,
from it shimmering away from it. If the ego does this and at the same
time is strong enough to keep itself at work within the organism,
there arise certain consequences for the soul and the body. The
consequence for the soul is hypochondria; for the body, constipation
and similar phenomena.
This is the one aspect. On the other hand it may be that the ego is
too feeble to hold itself together when it glitters away from the
scaffold, that it collapses in its essential quality as ego; and not
owing to the faults in its physical vehicle, the scaffold, but to its
own. Consider how strange this is: the ego is so feeble that its
debris as it were become embedded in the organism. And this occurs
because individuals of this particular constitution, when they fall
asleep, are not able to take with them the whole of what shimmers and
glitters away. Thus the debris remains within the body and
proliferates as a sort of soul-like ego. And this type of individual
constitution with these exuberations of the soul-like ego, which
develop especially during sleep, is one that inclines to tumorous
formations. This process is of infinite significance. Persons with
tumorous tendencies are those who do not sleep properly, for the
reason that remnants of the ego remain after they fall asleep. These
remnants and debris are the real excitants of tumours, including
malignant growths, and these growths are linked up with the whole
complex of symptoms which I have just enumerated. It is a fact that we
are faced on the one hand by hypochondria and constipation, and on the
other hand, if the organism cannot help itself by making the
individual suffer from hypochondria and constipation, it exuberates
inwards and the most malignant growths appear. We shall deal with this
subject further, but for the moment we are considering merely the
general principle.
You can reach the conviction that this is how things stand from a
study of the external side, in indications given in a preceding
lecture. As I have already remarked, it is possible to deal with the
formative tendencies to inflammation by the use of very highly
dispersed animal formic acid, in bath water. That is an external
application; now try the same substance, suitably diluted, internally,
and observe the effects it will have on thin people. It will disperse
the tumorous tendencies in thin persons, and counteract the formation
of growths.
These matters must be observed macroscopically and they afford
striking proof of the need to acquire this macroscopical view. One
must learn to have a comprehensive vision of the whole stature and
physique of a man, and the many marks of his individual constitutional
type, and combine this with all the phenomena emerging in sickness.
Thus we shall acquire also a sense of how to divide the treatment into
external and internal respectively. To test and trace the effects of
the same substance by the two different routes, will furnish most
interesting information. Here again, spiritual science reveals
something extremely enlightening in respect of these two parts of the
organism. It knows that all the formative forces of the human ear are
at an early stage on the same path of development as those forces
which, finally, when they are allowed to go too far lead to the
formation of internal tumours.
The fact that we have a human auditory organ, is due to a process
which is kept normal because the tumour-forming force has emerged in
the right place. The ear is an internal tumour extended into the
region of the normal. Just as the evolutionary process of the eye's
formation is akin to the process of inflammation, so that of the ear's
formation is allied to the tumorous. It is indeed a wonderful
relationship between disease and health in man; for the processes are
the same in both, only in the case of normal health they proceed at
the right rate, and in the case of disease at an abnormal rate. If the
inflammatory process were abolished in nature, no living creature
would be able to see. Living creatures have the power of sight only
because the inflammatory process is inserted into the whole of nature.
But it has a certain velocity, a definite tempo. If it proceeds at a
wrong speed then the abnormal process of inflammation results.
Similarly, the process of tumorous formation has its significance in
nature, at the right rate of development. If it were abolished no
being in the world would be able to hear. If the rate is wrong, there
results all that happens in cases of myoma, carcinoma, sarcoma. We
will deal with this later.
Those who are not in a position to find and recognise the healthy
counterpart of every morbid process, cannot understand its place
within the human organisation. For the human organisation is founded
on the fact that certain processes dispersed throughout the periphery
of nature become interiorised and centralised in man.
Many things are discussed in our physiological text books: we should
fix our attention elsewhere, on subjects whose existence is admitted
but whose significance is constantly under-rated. Here is one
instance. You are able to observe — quite macroscopically and as it were
in a commonplace way — that the epidermis covers the human body, and
has various inward folds or pockets; and its continuing membrane lines
the parts situated to the interior. This is very important — the
reversal of functions, as, e.g., we find it in passing from the cheeks
and the external parts of the face, over the edge of the lips to the
interior. There indeed one finds, in the external formation of man,
the vestige of the process which where all development really proceeds
by means of folding inwards and invaginations. In following up the
differences in the reaction of the upper epidermis and the internal
mucous membrane to preparations of formic acid, and fully realising
the delicate differences in these results, one would reach tremendous
results. For all the facts I here set before you are really nothing
but specialisations of the elementary structural principle indicated.
The study of these facts will bring before you the whole polar
opposition of that external lining (also etherically) of the human
organism and that which goes inside and becomes central in the same
organism.
This is of importance in the following. To what corresponds the second
phantom indicated in the rough sketch?
(See
Diagram 25).
The blue phantom is that
physical framework within the organism, which tends to exuberate
unduly. Its normal form is associated with the formation of the ear.
Educate yourselves, train yourselves in the study of man so far as to
have regard to this ear organisation and especially its
interiorisation, and at the same time to the characteristics of the
organ of sight. Then remember that the process of sight occurs in the
etheric, the process of hearing in the air. This is a considerable
difference. All that lies comparatively low in the ascending scale of
ponderable and imponderable is associated and linked with the more
deep-seated organs and functions in the interior of man's organism.
All that is more akin to the etheric and imponderable, is situated
towards the surface and periphery.
The outlines coloured violet
(See
Diagram 25)
define nothing less than that which
lives in the human astral body. If you train your power of judgment,
through the study of the ear, for the observation of man, you get a
kind of substitute or preliminary apperception for the clairvoyant
vision of the astral body. To learn to observe sight is training for
the observation of the etheric body. To learn to observe hearing is
training for the observation of the astral body.
The most interesting observations can be made in persons who have been
deaf from birth or have lost their sense of hearing; deeper
connections of nature are then revealed. I suggest that you should try
to study children who have been born deaf: if they had not been born
with that defect, they would develop the most terrible tumours even at
that early age. We stand here before outlets supplied by nature
itself, and they are rooted not only in the single individual
organisation between birth and death; but they reach out into and must
be understood from the repeated earth lives in which the compensation
is brought about. If we follow up these phenomena beyond a certain
point, we shall arrive at some apprehension of repeated lives on
earth.
If you attempt to stimulate the peripheral areas in man, you will
reinforce what has been dealt with in explaining the relationship of
the ego to its framework. If you find it necessary to reinforce the
human ego, there is a choice of methods; therapeutic or educational.
Wherever it is possible to observe a tendency to inflammation, you
will find that it will be necessary to re-invigorate the ego's
activity in the individual. If this be done, the ego will insert
itself in the proper way into its phantom, its framework; for this
framework will not disintegrate where the ego adequately takes hold of
it.
An appreciable reinforcement and stimulus to this activity of the ego
may be obtained, e.g., by baths containing a very finely distributed
solution of rosemary — that is, of the juices extracted from the leaves
of the rosemary. This solution stimulates the periphery to such a
degree that the ego can act and function better in that which
approaches man through the finely distributed rosemary juice. The
results are quite remarkable.
Now let us consider the human eye, and its specific insertion into the
human organism. The process of sight depends on the power of the human
ego to penetrate this isolated part in our organism. There is very
little of the animal process in the eye, the sense of sight depends on
the fact that man with his soul and spirit nature penetrates a region
which has ceased to be animal; so that man can identify himself with
the external world, not only with his internal processes. If you
identify yourself with a muscle, you identify yourselves from inside,
with the formative process of man. But if you identify yourself with
the eyes, you really identify yourself with the external world. For
this reason, I have already called this organ a gulf which the
external extends physiology to neglect the facts, thereby engendering
those foolish fairy stories of “subjectivity” and so forth. For it is
the fashion today to ignore the fact that “objectivity” is intruded
upon us and that within this “objectivity” we share in a part of the
processes of the external world. For the last century and a half,
every sort of sensory physiology has been founded upon subjectivity
because there has been no inkling of the entry of the external world
into these organic gulfs, by which we participate, through our senses,
in the processes outside ourselves. To understand this rightly means
also to understand the action of some foreign substance in this fine
dispersal.
Take the human skin, and its pores and all the processes linked with
the pores.
(See
Diagram 26).
Sprinkle very mild dilutions of rosemary
juice in a bath, immerse the patient in it and you will not be
surprised to know that a sensory interaction is set in train between
the skin and the minute drops of the Rosemary juice. Through this
stimulation, an effect is produced upon the sensory process. This
stimulation of the sensory process works on the human ego and it
becomes more closely inserted into its framework. A further benefit
may accrue from the same method, if it is used in time and not
postponed till too late. If the skin of the head is exposed to the
stimulation of diluted rosemary juice, you may be able to arrest the
peripheral process of loss of hair. Only, of course, it must be
applied in the correct manner. Well, there again you have something
active on the surface and periphery of the human organism.
Let us suppose now, that the collaboration of the ego with the human
organisation suffers a rupture from the outside world. The ego is, of
course, not only a point, but a point active around itself; and this
working abroad signifies the formative force of the whole human
organisation; the ego-organising force spreads throughout the human
organisation, permeating it throughout. Let us suppose that an
external injury is inflicted on some area, interrupting this mutual
action of ego and human organisation; in such cases it will be
necessary to attract to this place something springing from the astral
organisation (which stands a step below the ego-organisation);
something which, working from out of the astral organisation, may so
permeate the human organism as to enable the ego to develop its
curative forces at the seat of the external injury. The astral body as
I have indicated
(See
Diagram 25)
lies nearer the centre of the total organism. Call
it to your aid; not this time by means of immersion in any bath, but
by a compress of arnica in woolen cloths — a proper arnica compress.
The application of arnica compresses to any sprain or dislocation or
similar lesion ‘ wherever the injury may have been inflicted — which
impairs the efficiency of the ego's function, summons the astral body
from inside; calls to it to come to the aid of the ego, and has a
compensating effect on the peripheral area.
In these phenomena we have a standard for comparison of the different
substances available in the external world. They may have a great
tendency towards expansion, and thus be of benefit to the peripheral
regions, if administered in baths, for the support of the ego's
action. Or again, they may belong to the group which includes
especially arnica and are thus indicated when we wish to summon the
astral body and draw on its power for the indirect support of the ego.
It is impossible to understand the operation of such substances except
as summoners of help from the ego and astral body. To recognise this
principle must be indeed fundamental for a theory of therapeutics.
both for internal and external treatment.
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