31. Health Issues in the Light of Humanities

This is not to say that the child should not be disturbed by the naughtiness; you should only choose the right way. First of all, it is a matter of creating pleasure, that is, one should first act on the astral body. By the indirect route of pleasure and pain, we come to what can now be absorbed by us in the appropriate way. You see, anyone who looks at our social life today knows that countless pathological conditions are connected with it. When we look at the human organism, we see the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. Let us assume that a person has a task to perform that becomes habitual for him. What happens then? The physical body and the etheric body are involved in such work. When something becomes habitual for a person, when he does it, so to speak, because he has to do it, then the astral body is not involved. Observe the countless people sitting and working here or there, who hardly involve the astral body at all, except at most through annoyance and displeasure. Under the influence of such activities, a process takes place that we can call a process of solidification of the astral body. The astral body is in a healthy state when it can actively engage with the physical and etheric bodies. If you have made the astral body rigid and hardened, it is as if you have a machine in front of you that you cannot control. When the etheric body and the physical body switch off the astral body, it is not present during activities. The fact that it encounters resistance means that such a person feels the resistance not only as an illness, but as having this or that illness.