Today we will discuss the nature of illness and disease from the point of view of spiritual science. People usually

only concern themselves with disease, or at least with one or another form of disease, when they fall ill in some way,

and then they are mostly only interested in their recovery; in the fact of being cured. How they are cured is usually of

very little interest to them, and it is even very agreeable to them not to have to concern themselves further with the

nature of this recovery. Most of our contemporaries are happy to delegate the task of curing them to the people

appointed to do so. In fact, a far more pervasive faith in authority holds sway in this field in our era than has ever

held sway in the sphere of religion. Medical papacy, irrespective of what form it assumes in one place or another, has

today become extremely prevalent and will go on taking stronger hold in the future. Laypeople are not in the least at

fault for this state of affairs and its future increase. You see, people don't give it any thought; don't concern

themselves with such things, not at least until they have first-hand experience of it—suffer an acute illness and need a

cure. And for this reason, a great majority of the population looks on with complete indifference as the medical

papacy assumes ever greater proportions, worming its way into the most diverse fields; for instance, intervening extensively in children's education in

school life and staking a claim here to a certain form of therapy. People do not worry about the deeper underlying

factors at work here; they stand by and watch as public ordinances are given some kind of legislative form. They have

no real wish to gain insight into such things. By contrast, there will always be those who, finding themselves in difficulty,

Discovering that ordinary materialistic medicine, whose foundations they have no interest in, does not answer their needs, will seek help from practitioners who

draw on an esoteric foundation; but still they will be concerned only with whether or not they can be cured.

They are blithely unconcerned as to whether all mainstream methods and knowledge are undermining and

undercutting a deeper, spiritually derived approach. Who worries if a public ordinance prohibits the practice of a

method founded on esoteric insight, or even if the practitioner is locked up? People fail to consider all such things

thoroughly enough and only wake up to them in a particular case that affects them directly. The task of an authentic

spiritual movement, though, is to awaken awareness that the egotistic quest for a cure is insufficient, but that instead

insight is needed into the deeper foundations of these things, and the dissemination of such insight in our

materialistic age. It is all too obvious to anyone who can see what is going on that medical ideas, in particular, are

most powerfully influenced by the materialistic mode of thinking. But to chase after a catch-all phrase lauding

one method or another and merely criticizing what is based on scientific foundations and is, in many respects,

useful, but is nevertheless dressed up in materialistic theories, will be just as mistaken as, on the other hand, to subsume

everything under "psychic healing," and all such one-sided approaches. Above all, modern humanity must increasingly realize that the human

being is a complex entity, and that everything relating to us is informed by such complexity. If a scientific discipline maintains that we

consist only of the physical body, it will be unable to engage in any salutary way with aspects of human health or

Disease, you see, health and illness relate to the whole human being and not just to the part of him that is the

physical body. But here again, we should not regard the matter in a superficial way. There are plenty of properly qualified physicians who certainly will

not accept that their faith is rooted in materialism, but instead will profess one religious faith or another. They would be

indignant if you approached them with having a deeply materialistic outlook. But this isn't what counts. What somebody

says and his convictions have no significance at all; that's his personal affair. In actual practice, what counts is

that one can apply realities that are not just present in the sensory world, but infuse and permeate the world of

spirit and can make practical use of them. However pious a doctor may be, and however many ideas he may have about

some kind of world of spirit, if his medical practice is based on rules founded entirely on our materialistic

worldview, and if he tries to cure, therefore, in a way that only acknowledges the body, he is still a

materialist, however theoretically spiritual his outlook. What someone says or believes does not count compared to his ability to bring the powers

underlying the visible, sense world into living movement. It is likewise of little purpose to disseminate a fickle doctrine of fourfold human nature,

prattling on about physical body, ether body, astral body, and I, even if we can in

some way define and describe these things; that, too, is not the important thing. Instead, we need to understand increasingly the

living interplay of these levels of the human being; to understand how physical body, ether body, astral body, and I are involved in human health and disease, and what acts in reciprocal connection with these aspects. For instance, if we never take account of

What spiritual science can tell us about the nature of the fourth level of the human being, the I. However much anatomy

and physiology we study, we will never gain insight into the nature of blood. It's simply impossible, and for this reason we

will never, in a million years, be able to say anything significant or useful about diseases connected with the blood and

its nature. The blood is the expression of our I-nature. There is actually a great deal of truth in the old saying

which Goethe includes in his files, that "blood is a very special fluid." Modern scientists have no

inkling that their research should attend to our physical blood in a quite different way from other aspects of

human physical corporeality, which are the expression of something quite different again. Our glands are the expression, the

physical counterpart of the etheric body, and we have to regard what constitutes such a gland—whether liver or pancreas,

say—as something quite different from what we find in the blood, as the expression of a much higher level of the

human being.  Research methods must take due account of this, showing us how we should approach these things. Now,

though I wish to say something that will really only be comprehensible to an advanced student of anthropology, but

which it is still important to state to materialistically minded academics of today: it seems quite evident that if one

makes an incision in the body, the blood that flows from this can be studied by all the available means

as they describe it. This is blood, roughly as one would describe any other substance, an acid or such like,

according to chemical research methods that govern modern procedures. But in doing so, they overlook something that is in fact not only unknown to

Materialistic science may dismiss it as idiocy and fantasy, yet it is nevertheless true: the blood running in

your veins, sustaining the living body, is not at all what flows out when I make an incision and produce a red drop. The

moment blood leaves the body, it undergoes a transformation that renders it quite different. What flows out as

congealing blood, however fresh it may be, is not indicative of the whole essence within the living organism. Blood is the

expression of the I, a high aspect of the human being, even in physical terms. Blood is something whose totality you

simply cannot study physically because when you see it, it is no longer at all the same as it was when flowing in the

body. It cannot be physically observed; for the moment it is brought to view, to be studied by some method like X-ray

examination, it is no longer the blood itself at all that is being studied, but instead just the external reflection of

blood in the physical domain. People will only gradually come to understand these things. There have always been researchers who drew on esoteric

foundations and such, and said this, but they have been dismissed as fantasists, philosophers, or such like. In

states of human health or disease, everything is really connected with our fourfold human nature, with our full complexity. This is why we can only

understand a healthy or sick person by drawing on spiritual-scientific insight into the human being. There are quite

specific types of debility in the human constitution that can only be understood when we realize they are

connected with the nature of the I, and that, in a sense, though within certain limits, they are in turn revealed in the

blood as an expression of the I. Then there are certain types of debility in the human organism that can be attributed to

A malfunction of the astral body, thus affecting the astral body's outward expression, the nervous system. But in

this second instance, you will have to take note of the subtlety needed to approach such things when the human

astral body bears within it the kind of irregularity that comes to expression in the nervous system as the outward

reflection of the astral body. We initially find that the nervous system shows a certain physical, functional incapacity. If the nervous system cannot

function properly in a certain direction, this incapacity can result in all sorts of symptoms affecting the stomach, head,

and heart. Yet a disorder whose symptoms become apparent in the stomach cannot necessarily be attributed to a certain

type of nervous system malfunction and thus to its source in the astral body. It may have an entirely different cause. The

types of disease that are connected with the eye itself and thus with its outward expression, the blood, usually manifest as

chronic diseases, but only usually, since in reality things are not so neatly compartmentalized. Although sharp

demarcations can be drawn when making observations, what can generally first be observed as a particular debility is

usually a symptom. Some symptom or other can appear, but there is an underlying debility of the blood, and this has its

origin in an irregularity of the aspect of the human being we call the 'I'. I could speak to you for hours about

types of chronic disease which originated in the blood in physical terms and in the eye in spiritual terms.

These are primarily genetic diseases in the true sense, passing from one generation to the next, and it is these

diseases that can only be understood if we consider human nature from a spiritual point of view. Let's take a

patient who has a chronic condition, which basically means that he is never really well; he suffers sometimes from one thing, sometimes from another, from

one illness or another. Here we have to take a deeper look at the underlying cause and, above all, be able to take note

of the real fundamental character of the eye. What kind of person is this, really? If we know something in this field that

fully accords with life itself, we can see that quite specific types of chronic disease are connected with a particular

underlying, purely soul-related character of the eye. Certain chronic diseases will never appear in someone whose character is informed by gravity and dignity, but

they will in a person disposed to whistle and sing. I can only mention these things in passing here, as a way

marker in these preparatory lectures. But you see, if someone comes along who says, "I've had a certain condition for

years now," it is important to be generally clear, first of all, what kind of person this is.

We have to know the underlying character and nuance of his eye; otherwise, we will inevitably get the symptoms wrong, unless

guided by very lucky chance. The important thing in relation to curing these diseases, which are at the same time genetic or hereditary in the truest

sense, is to take account of the person's whole surroundings insofar as they can exert a direct or indirect influence on

The Nature of Diseases By Rudolf Steiner (Anthroposophic Medicine) By Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner Press Audio

현대 의학의 물질주의적 접근과 대중의 무관심에 대한 비판

사람들은 아플 때만 질병에 집중하고 치유 과정을 이해하는 것보다 치료에 우선순위를 둡니다.

현대에는 의학적 권위에 대한 맹목적인 믿음이 종교적 믿음을 능가합니다.

삶의 다양한 측면에서 '의료 교황권'의 영향력이 커지는 것에 대한 대중의 무관심.

대체 의학을 찾는 사람들은 근본적인 문제를 무시한 채 치료에만 집중합니다.

단순히 치료법만 찾는 것이 아니라 질병의 근원에 대한 영적 통찰이 필요합니다.

복잡한 실체로서의 인간과 유물론적 의학의 한계

현대 의학의 유물론적 관점은 인간의 건강과 질병의 복잡성을 다루지 못합니다.

건강과 질병은 육체뿐만 아니라 인간 전체에 영향을 미칩니다.

진정한 이해는 감각 세계 너머의 현실을 적용해야 합니다.

영적 측면에 대한 이론적 지식보다 실제 적용의 중요성을 강조합니다.

건강과 질병에서 인간의 네 가지 수준(육체, 에테르, 아스트랄, 나)의 상호 작용을 이해합니다.

혈액의 본질과 기타 신체적 측면에 대한 영적 과학의 통찰력

영적 과학은 물질 과학만으로는 얻을 수 없는 혈액의 본질에 대한 통찰력을 제공합니다.

혈액은 나-본성의 표현이며 다른 신체적 측면과는 다르게 연구되어야 합니다.

땀샘은 혈액과 본질과 중요성이 다른 에테르 신체의 물리적 대응물입니다.

몸 밖의 혈액은 변형을 겪기 때문에 분리된 상태에서의 연구는 오해의 소지가 있습니다.

혈액의 총량은 관찰에 따라 변화하기 때문에 물리적으로 연구할 수 없습니다.

능력의 유형과 사중적 인간 본성과의 연관성

연약함을 이해하려면 인간의 네 가지 본성에 대한 영적-과학적 통찰력이 필요합니다.

일부 능력은 I와 연결되어 있으며 혈액에서 나타납니다.

다른 장애는 아스트랄 바디와 관련이 있으며 신경계에 영향을 미칩니다.

만성적인 안구 질환은 종종 I와 혈액과 관련이 있습니다.

만성 질환은 종종 I에서 비롯된 근본적인 쇠약이 있습니다.

질병의 원인에 따른 치료 접근법

많은 급성 질환은 아스트랄 신체 이상 및 신경계 기능 장애와 관련이 있습니다.

증상을 직접적으로 치료하는 것은 잘못된 방법이며, 근본적인 원인을 해결하는 것이 중요합니다.

증상(열차 연착)이 아닌 원인(예: 술에 취한 기관사)을 치료하는 예시입니다.

본인이 즐기고 동화되는 음식에 초점을 맞춘 식이 치료가 필수적입니다.

다이어트와 치유에서 대우주와 소우주의 관계를 이해합니다.

통계와 화학의 경험적 법칙만으로는 질병을 이해하는 데 충분하지 않습니다.

에테르 신체 및 국가 성격과 관련된 질병

에테르 신체와 관련된 질병은 땀샘에서 나타나며 종종 국가 성격과 관련이 있습니다.

다른 집단에서 등지느러미에 대한 잘못된 평가는 국가적 특성을 고려하는 것이 중요하다는 것을 강조합니다.

에테르 체의 영향을 받는 기관은 특정 관계가 있습니다(예: 해와 달처럼 뇌와 심장).

밀교에서는 천체를 장기 관계에 대한 비유로 사용합니다.

에테르 신체 질환에는 식물과 미네랄의 특정 의약품이 필요합니다.

심리학적 방법과 치유에서의 역할

심리적 방법은 I에 뿌리를 둔 질병(예: 혈액 관련 만성 질환)에 가장 효과적입니다.

심리적 치료는 눈에 대한 외부의 영향을 대체할 수 있습니다.

눈에서 발생하는 질병에는 심리적 방법이 가장 정당화됩니다.

아스트랄 바디 관련 질병의 경우, 심리적인 방법보다는 식이요법이 선호됩니다.

외부 의약품은 주로 에테르 신체와 관련된 질병에 대해 정당화됩니다.

'적절한 질병'은 전염성이 있으며 신체와 관련된 질병입니다.

이러한 질병을 이해하려면 자연 전체에 대한 지식이 필요합니다.

업장은 질병에 영향을 미치는 다섯 번째 측면입니다.

다섯 가지 형태의 질병은 나, 아스트랄 바디, 에테르 바디, 육체 바디, 업장에서 비롯됩니다.

현대 의학이 진정으로 효과적이려면 인간 본성의 더 높은 측면에 대한 통찰력이 필요합니다.

역사적 관점: 파라셀수스의 유물론적 의학에 대한 비판

난해한 통찰력은 고대 지혜의 한 형태입니다.

의학의 물질주의로의 전환은 다른 지식 분야보다 더 두드러집니다.

파라셀수스는 수세기 전에 의학의 물질주의적 경향을 비판했습니다.

유물론적 의학에 대한 파라셀수스의 비판은 오늘날에도 여전히 유효합니다.

파라셀수스는 현대 의사들의 이해 부족과 피상적인 관행에 대한 의존에 대해 신랄하게 비판했습니다.