Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 13 August 1914, Dornach

64. Samaritan Course Lecture I

The Mystery of the Wound The Spirit as a Working Power

It is quite possible that some of us may find ourselves in the position of helping this or that person. Sometimes, when we were together in large numbers on a train, I had to think that it would be nice if our members could do something to help with injuries and the like. Not true, we are often together with many of us, and there could be some kind of accident where our members, if they had the necessary knowledge, could provide help. Now we must be clear about the fact that the first principle that comes into consideration for a spiritual movement must also be to place the spiritual understanding of the matter in the foreground. Anyone who is a layman in the world with regard to this kind of help will not have much opportunity to be called upon to take significant action; only in the case of injuries is it often important to get to know the very first thing that can be done.

We must realize that the human organism is something extraordinarily complicated in many respects, but it can be summarized under different aspects for the various tasks of life.

If the human being has a wound on him that has been caused by something, then more comes into consideration for the human organism than comes into consideration for the healthy organism; then we need the realization that the most important thing is to care for the methods existing in the context of being itself: to come to the aid of the healing powers lying in the organism of being, that is the most important thing. If the human being carries a wound in the organism, then we are no longer dealing with normal conditions, but with a life process that falls out of the special life process that pulsates through the organism in its normal state. A wound sets in motion the general life that pulsates through the world. And everything that has to happen at the wound happens because a general life that occurs everywhere takes hold of the organism in the area of the wound. The small organisms that appear when there is a wound are only the external symptoms of what has just been expressed: They are, after all, enemies of the human organism, but they attach themselves to a wound for the same reason that flies attach themselves when the conditions are present in a room that allow them to live. The general life process will still be of great importance in human development in the future.

In addition to this, we have the intensifying counter-process of the normal organism itself when there is a wound. In addition to the red blood corpuscles, we have the so-called white blood corpuscles in the organism; they really do move to the injured area to do their work there. This is the expression of the effectiveness of the same forces that lie in the higher development of our consciousness; today they are the germs for later earth forces of the human organism. Today they have their hidden task where our consciousness comes into being in the normal organism. When there is a wound, they gather there and bring about a healing process that we can basically only support.

The human consciousness process enters into a battle with the general life process - and we can support what emerges as a kind of battle. Above all, this struggle must encourage us to realize what we have been able to acquire as our deepest awareness that the spirit is an active force and that faith in it is what must benefit external material help.

What I have just said can be summarized in this thought: A life that is otherwise not in activity is activity on a bleeding or healing wound, and in this life there is at the same time the healing power within for the wound. As the wounding occurs, this counterforce, which is healing power, is called up at the same time. It emerges when something has been wounded in a human body. What fights against each other in these forces will be much more powerful in the future, and people will learn to control it. Man himself will be able to bring these forces into interaction. That which today works around a wound will then be able to be called up by human consciousness itself. Today we say: The good spirits send us healing power. And today the human being must be wounded if these forces are to take effect; what will be normal in the future must be called upon today through such a wound. But when we receive the power of the spirit within us, then we will be able to call upon these powers ourselves.

If we are allowed to intervene helpfully in the events that are now taking place outside, then, my dear friends, do not lose faith in the Spirit, keep it even in your actions. We face the wound strengthened in our minds by faith in the Spirit and with the words in our hearts:

Spring blood
In the spring work
Stimulate the muscle
Stimulate the germs
Loving care
Warming heart
Be a healing breath!

These lines contain everything that can be called the secret of a wound. And it is much better than all abstract knowledge: to have in thought that which is effective in the spiritual context of the world.