The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 25 May 1905, Berlin

Medicine and Theosophy

It is a preliminary task of theosophy to shed light comprehensively on all areas of our present spiritual life and to point out how theosophical thoughts and mental images can have a preparatory effect in every area of this modern spiritual life, if they are accepted, so that in future days there may be more and more complete understanding of what theosophy has to say in every area of our spiritual life. People today live in mental images and suggestions of public life that naturally have a strong influence on them, mental images that directly counteract our views and would gradually undermine them if the ideas of theosophy did not flow into these views. Fichte says that ideals cannot be directly applied in life, but ideals should be the driving forces of life. That is the purpose of theosophy.

The physician who has set himself the task of healing is freer than the lawyer. He is not so constrained by prejudices and authorities, and therefore it may well be that there are individual physicians who work with us. However, we do not want to get involved in the dispute between the parties, as that would be subjective behavior; we want to be completely objective and only explain what Theosophy has to say in relation to medical science. And we want to remember that Theosophy can be difficult, very difficult to understand for those who have lived under the pressure of study. Only those who are free will find no conflict between true science and what Theosophy wants. Theosophy fully recognizes the tremendous progress that natural science has made in recent centuries and especially in recent decades.

Now, in all areas of culture, there are great cyclical laws that apply equally to the dark and light sides of culture. Even though so much is uncertain in medical science today, we must be clear that the root cause of this uncertainty is deeply, deeply rooted in our habits of thought. These habits of thought are rooted deeper than any theories acquired within a science. And they cannot be easily changed, but only gradually replaced by others. The materialistic, mechanistic thinking of our time influences all these habits of thought in people today. How much contempt today's doctors have for the medical science of the Middle Ages and antiquity; and yet, aspiring physicians could learn a great deal from the history of medicine in those ancient times. They could learn many different views from those that prevail in contemporary medicine. Very few doctors today are familiar with the theories of Galen, for example, two to three centuries after Christ, or the medical scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It is wrong to look down on this ancient medical science today. If today's doctors wanted to learn about it, they would discover many valuable things. The Hippocratic doctrine, which describes the composition of the human being as consisting of the four elements earth, water, air, and fire, is met with derisive smiles today. When there is talk of black and white bile, phlegm, blood, and their relationship to the planets of our solar system, these are not theories as we understand them today, but rather theories that have enriched medical intuition, which gave ancient physicians the opportunity to practice medicine in a completely different way than today's physicians can.

The medicine men of wild tribes have a principle that is recognized by only a few insightful people. It is the same principle that underlies the art of healing in the Orient, namely, that the doctor who wants to heal must have absorbed qualities that enable him to perceive life from a completely different perspective.

An example of what I mean can be found when we look at a people who do not belong to the current civilized nations, the Hindus. Hindu doctors apply a principle that underlies immunization, vaccination as we know it, with a healing serum. It involves combating a certain form of disease by using the pathogen itself as a remedy. Hindu doctors heal snake bites by treating the wound with their saliva. Through training, the saliva is prepared, and the doctors have made themselves immune to snake bites and snake venom by allowing themselves to be bitten. It is their belief that the doctor can also have a physical effect through something he develops within himself. All healing effects from person to person are based on this principle. For Hindus, this principle is based on a certain initiation. They know that a person can be transformed through specific training. Powers that other people do not have are developed in them, just as iron develops its power when coated with a magnet.

The young doctor would have completely different feelings about healing if he immersed himself in the real history of medicine. Words that he cannot make sense of today nevertheless contain a deep meaning, even if he denies it with a scornful smile.

It is regrettable that our entire science is permeated with materialistic imponderables; thus, it is hardly conceivable that anyone can free themselves from them and learn to think independently. Our entire modern scientific foundation for anatomy and physiology is built on this materialistic way of thinking. In the 16th century, Vesalius presented the first anatomy theory and Harvey presented the theory of blood circulation in a materialistic sense; this system was taught throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. People had to think materialistically for several centuries in order to make all the great discoveries and inventions that we owe to those times. This way of thinking taught us to produce certain substances in the laboratory — we owe Liebig's epoch-making discoveries to it — but it also led us to regard the human shell as the only thing that matters. Life, what we call life, is difficult to reconcile with the concept that the materialistic physician has of it. Only those who know intuitively what life is can truly comprehend life. And such people also know that the effectiveness of chemical and physical laws in the human body is governed by something for which we ourselves lack the words, something that can only be recognized through intuition. Only when the physician himself has become a different person can he understand this. Through a certain training, he must first acquire the concepts and then the insight into the mode of action of what we call our etheric body. The ordinary mind, the ordinary human intellect, is incapable of comprehending the spiritual; as soon as it is called upon to move into higher realms, it fails. That is why, without intuition, everything in the medical field is just talk; one does not touch reality. Higher, finer powers are necessary, which must be developed by the physician; only then is a thorough healing of certain damages possible.

We Theosophists know, for example, from occult research that what is called vivisection has a deeply damaging effect in a certain respect. What happens in this field is deeply damaging. We Theosophists cannot have any organ for recognizing the apparent merits of those who practice vivisection. We would not be understood if we explained the reasons for our rejection of vivisection; without accepting theosophical concepts, these reasons would not be understood. Vivisection has grown out of a materialistic way of thinking that is devoid of intuition and cannot see into the workings of life. This way of thinking must view the body as a mechanical interaction of its individual parts. It is therefore natural to resort to animal experimentation, where one believes that the same interaction takes place as in humans, in order to identify and combat certain pathological processes. Only those who know nothing about real life can practice vivisection.

A time will come when people will understand the individual life of a creature in relation to the life of the entire universe. And then people will develop a reverence for life. Then they will learn to understand: every life taken, every suffering inflicted on a living being, has an effect, through the connection that exists between life and life, on the degradation of the noblest forces of our own human nature. Just as a sum of mechanical work can be converted into heat, so too does the killing of a living being transform something in humans that makes it impossible for them to have a healing and beneficial effect on their fellow human beings. This is an unbreakable law. Here, everything that is nebulous or unclear is strictly excluded. Here, mathematical clarity reigns supreme.

If people would engage with what lies at the heart of this, they would also see the influences that must be exerted in order to be able to heal, to be a healer as a doctor. If a person wants to be a doctor, if they want to be a healer, they must first refine and purify their humanity. They must develop it to the level where certain sensations and feelings can first open up to us. Here it is important to try! And first of all, one must learn to understand that the ordinary mind can be expanded and spiritualized. It is trivial to say that here and there are the limits of our methods of knowledge. There are other methods of knowledge than those used by the intellect. Unfortunately, few people realize this. And here it is important to be willing to engage with theosophical thinking. Only when we teach more than just the sensory facts of anatomy and physiology, only when we approach these subjects with the “eyes of the mind,” as Goethe says, only then will a different study of the human body emerge. And only then will all the discoveries of recent decades in medical science be seen in their proper light, enabling us, for example, to recognize certain connections between the thyroid gland and other functions.

Only when we approach things with theosophical insights will we see each thing in its true color and receive completely different values. The pursuit of knowledge in this field still lacks an understanding of the spiritual, into which the facts are woven. Certain concepts that have been gained may well be correct, but the methods of application may be wrong. Often, two of the greatest authorities in a field say exactly the opposite about the same topic, the same fact. Where do such things come from? From the fact that the thinking of each of these authorities has pushed itself in a certain one-sided direction.

Now one might ask: Would it not be possible for a person, if they always live in the right way and in a healthy manner, to develop within themselves the things that make them immune to disease, and could they not train their organism to be able to endure disease? One must direct one's thinking in a different direction, then truths in this field will emerge and one will create a different direction for research. Today's thinking has something absolute and conclusive about it, and it is permeated by a belief in its infallibility; there is a tendency toward something papal in such concepts, as some people adopt them. Research is determined by the way in which questions are posed to nature. If you ask the wrong questions, you will get the wrong answers. The experiments, the questions posed to nature, bear a peculiar mark in the 19th and 20th centuries: that of chance. In this field, there is often a downright grotesque juxtaposition of all kinds of experiments. This stems from a lack of intuition. Medical science in particular contains many things that result from this lack. However, it is indeed possible to arrive at free, beautiful thinking within medical science.

Today's doctors, who are released from university and sent out into the world to treat suffering humanity, are often in an unenviable position. Medical studies have thrown them into a jumble of concepts where they cannot form their own judgment. Then they find that their audience has a way of thinking that does not want to engage in thoroughness, but considers anything that refers to some authority to be gospel. Doctors often suffer greatly from the prejudices of their audience. The physician can only do something if he studies the subtle processes that take place in a sick body, guided by life itself; but the patient must also cooperate in this process.

Certain diseases are related to certain cyclical developments and conditions; certain diseases are based on [gap in the stenogram] and occur according to certain laws of nature. This becomes apparent to those who research certain forms of disease from a theosophical perspective. In such thinking, broad outlines are developed which are the guidelines of life itself. And they provide the security that is linked to tireless striving and filled with confidence. To those who think in this way, lawful world connections are revealed which at the same time fill the soul with deeply religious feelings. The Tübingen physician Schlegel is typical and symptomatic of all those who are seeking a way out of today's labyrinth in the field of medicine. This physician is at the beginning of a great career; he has flashes of insight in the direction of a natural method of healing, and he dares to combine religion and healing power.

A person whose thinking is spiritualistic cannot possibly participate in those attempts in the medical field that are symptomatic of our present time. For he knows that all individual efforts are only truly effective if one grasps the evil at its root, comprehends the fundamental core of the matter. No amount of polemics can bring about a radical reversal; only a completely different way of thinking can do this.

Someone trained in materialism cannot understand this. But we humans must not misunderstand each other in this world. The theosophically minded person understands that the materialistically minded person does not understand him, because he is not capable of doing so. Goethe expresses what is meant here when he says: “A false doctrine cannot be refuted, because it is based on the conviction that what is false is true.” The habits of thinking of our time must undergo a radical reversal; then a refinement of feelings and sensations up to intuition will follow quite naturally. Only when medical science achieves this will it once again have something that will have a healing effect, only then will a religious spirit inspire it once more, and only then will the physician be what he should be: the noblest philanthropist, who feels obliged to stand so high himself that, through his own perfection, he raises his profession as high as possible.