XV. The Therapeutic Process

We may say: If there arises within the organism a process similar to one of external nature, illness ensues. Such a process may take hold of the physical or the etheric organism. Either the astral body or the ego will then have to complete a task they do not normally fulfil. In a period of life when they should be unfolding in free activity of soul, they must revert to an earlier stage—even in many cases as far back as the embryonic period—and then have to assist in creating physical and etheric formations which should already have passed into the domain of the physical and etheric organism, for in the earliest periods of human life these formations are in fact provided for by the astral body and ego-organization; only afterwards are they taken over by the unaided physical and etheric bodies. The whole development of the human organism is based upon this principle; originally the entire form and configuration of the physical and etheric body proceed from the activity of the astral body and ego-organization; then, with increasing age, the astral and ego-activities within the physical and etheric organization go on their own accord. But if they fail to do so, the astral body and ego-organization will have to intervene at a later stage of their development in a way for which they are no longer properly adapted.