Healing the Social Organism

HEALING THE SOCIAL ORGANISM

Healing The Social Organism

Seventeen lectures given in Dornach between

20 March and 18 July 1920

translated and introduced by

dorothy hinkle-uhlig

Rudolf Steiner

rudolf steiner press

CW 198

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

Originally published in German under the title Heilfaktoren für den sozialen Organismus (volume 198 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second revised German edition (1984), edited by Robert Friedenthal

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1984

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 670 8

eISBN 978 1 85584 654 8

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

Contents

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig

Lecture 1

Dornach, 20 March 1920

The development of medicine. Concepts of disease in ancient and modern times. Knowledge as a healing process. Mystery wisdom as medicine for the social. The Greeks were blind to the colour blue. Necessary metamorphosis of our sense of seeing, hearing, and warmth. Imagination through the eye, inspiration through the ear, intuition through the sense of warmth. The necessity of threefolding the social organism.

Lecture 2

Dornach, 21 March 1920

Victory of Michael as a spiritual event behind the scenes of world history. The birth of human imagination 300 years before Christ. The development of human intelligence since the fifteenth century. The difference in the ancient mystery schools between physical, intellectual, and spiritual knowledge. The conventional abstract intellectual life causes disease. Spirit knowledge heals. Anthroposophical spiritual knowledge as the carrier of the new healing process, which enables will-forces to move earthly evolution upwards.

Lecture 3

Dornach, 28 March 1920

The concept of death as it relates to life in the supersensible world compared with life in the sensory world. Sensory thinking as the corpse of the supersensible world. Dead thinking enlivened in the earthly life through the newly born will-forces. The organization of the head as the metamorphosis of the rest of the body from the previous incarnation. The polarity in life between the necessity of nature and morality. The problem of human freehood. The Jupiter stage. The unity of moral laws and natural laws. Sleeping souls must wake up to the lack of logic in today’s thinking.

Lecture 4

Dornach, 2 April 1920

The difference between the set date of the Christmas festival and the moving date of the Easter festival. The life of Paul. The loss of spiritual sight through the physical senses. The transition in the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. The problem of freehood. The inner mendacity of our times. The striving toward a knowledge applicable to the supersensible world. The sense-based knowledge is the grave out of which the resurrection, the striving for supersensible knowledge must come. The true Easter message.

Lecture 5

Dornach, 3 April 1920

Paul seeks to bring knowledge of the spiritual through the Christ within human beings. The blood as the carrier of spiritual perception in ancient times. The gods withdrew from human beings. The transformation of the blood and the new birth in Christ. The luciferic phenomenon of nationalism and the ahrimanic phenomenon of materialistic thinking as forms of opposition to Christianity. Easter, the celebration of warning.

Lecture 6

Dornach, 30 May 1920

The historic concept of freehood of conscience and religion in the last third of the nineteenth century. The religious belief in miracles and the scientific belief in cause and effect. The opposition to freehood through the papal encyclicals and the syllabus from 1864. The time of Albertus Magnus. Frederik II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia as the protectors of the Jesuits banned by the Pope. Local Catholic attacks on Steiner and anthroposophy and the importance of recognizing them. Wake up to what is a truth and what is a lie.

Lecture 7

Dornach, 3 June 1920

The Oath against Modernism. Modern civilization is sleeping, and the Catholic Church is awake to the coming materialism. Conceptio Immaculata, Encyclical and Syllabus of 1864, Papal Infallibility, encyclical Aeterni Patris. Preparations by the Catholic Church to counter materialism and ethical individualism. The structure of the Catholic Church as a reflection of the past, the fourth post-Atlantean age. The importance of spiritual science for the fifth post-Atlantean age. Opposition to spiritual science. The Jesuit Order and its relationship to modern times. The importance of the threefold social order.

Lecture 8

Dornach, 6 June 1920

Initiation knowledge and materialistic knowledge. Aristotle’s teaching about the soul becomes Church dogma. Immortality, pre-birth existence and reincarnation. The intention of the Catholic Church to create a bridge between radical socialism, communism, and its own hierarchy. The dulled communal consciousness and individual consciousness. The true nature and being of Jesus Christ. The Oath against Modernism. Group consciousness and individual consciousness. Humanity to fill itself with spirit. The Jesuits. Different configurations of consciousness.

Lecture 9

Dornach, 2 July 1920

The decline in Western culture. Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and its influence on the youth. The forces of decline can only be averted through initiation wisdom. The impulse of democracy and its caricature in today’s culture. The danger of Spengler’s book. The decline of the West and the path to an ascent. An active soul life as a prerequisite to an understanding of spiritual science and spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge works through the individual’s will-forces. The active soul experience.

Lecture 10

Dornach, 3 July 1920

Spiritual knowledge fructifies the life of the community. The continued presence of ancient spiritual cultural streams in the present. The sun cultus of the ancient mysteries understood today. Christ, the sun spirit. The ancient mystery rituals within the modern faith’s creeds and rituals. The laws of nature as distilled forms of wording from the Middle Ages. The Jesuits and the Freemasons. People are put to sleep. The various Masonic Orders. Confusion through occult streams. Necessity to make the spiritual truths practical. Writings by Pastor Kully and Pastor Ernst.

Lecture 11

Dornach, 4 July 1920

Older thought paradigms in today’s thinking. The effects of materialism in the present. The task to overcome materialistic thinking. The transformation of thinking, feeling, and willing. The dependency of spiritual and legal life on the economic life. Transformation of the economic life. The theologian, Overbeck. The ideas of Rodbertus and Marx. The relation of spiritual labour to manual labour. The worldview based on materialism binds the soul to the physical. The will-forces of people. Threefolding. Thinking based on materialism. Know the human being.

Lecture 12

Bern, 9 July 1920

Thinking as the inheritance of a pre-birth existence. Rejection by the traditional faiths of a pre-birth existence. Thinking as unnecessary for life in the sense world. The need to communicate one’s own thoughts to others. The child-student brings impulses from the spiritual world. The give and take between teacher and student in Waldorf pedagogy. The need for people to work together in community and in associations in the economic life. The relationship of the human head to the rest of the body. The state philosophy of Bolshevism comes out of the ideas of R. Avenarius and Harnack. The influence of Oswald Spengler. Reincarnation. The new birth of the spirit. The anthroposophical worldview.

Lecture 13

Dornach, 10 July 1920

The historic separation of the spiritual from the worldly. The world of abstract ideas and the world of imaginative pictures. The world of ideas prevents the assault of etheric surges. The experience of the I in abstract ideas and in imaginative pictures. The human being as part of the entire universe. Importance of the concept, unbornness. Memory pictures as a transformation of physical growth forces. Importance for Waldorf teachers to deepen their inner life. Each person to gain the truth and spiritual vision from out of the spirit, not from a worldly authority.

Lecture 14

Dornach, 11 July 1920

The wisdom of the ancient mystery centres and the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ as the higher self of the earth. The higher self of the human being. The anthroposophical spiritual knowledge and natural-scientific knowledge. Supersensible knowledge encompasses knowledge from the physical senses and from the spirit. Anthroposophy as the science of the higher human self. Working with anthroposophical scientific knowledge supports the ascending evolution of the human being. The danger that humanity will fall into barbarism. Anthroposophy as microcosm and Christology as macrocosm. Examples of the opposition to anthroposophy. The importance of the truth.

Lecture 15

Dornach, 16 July 1920

The difference between the primeval knowledge of the ancient mystery centres and anthroposophical spiritual science. Supersensible knowledge must be brought to all people in our times. Challenges with the public articulation of supersensible knowledge. Misuse of esoteric knowledge. The importance of the human soul’s will-forces to counter the cultural decline. Oswald Spengler’s books, The Decline of the West and Prussia and Socialism, as a reflection of modern thinking. Spengler thinks without understanding the reality of the human soul.

Lecture 16

Dornach, 17 July 1920

Life paradoxes of our time and Oswald Spengler. Materialism in thinking and its effects. Unbornness and immortality. The logic of life found in spiritual science and the logic of thoughts found in abstract intellectual thinking. The responsibility of humanity for the evolution of the earth. The loss of the individual I through materialism. Spiritual science makes people uncomfortable. Materialism cannot understand matter, the spirit of matter. Holy Communion. Knowledge, a spiritual communion. Thinking as an ahrimanic deed. Thinking as a spiritual deed that takes hold of the whole human being.

Lecture 17

Dornach, 18 July 1920

Perception of an outer sense world and of a mere image of the soul within. The removal of the gods from nature. The outer world of nature as the spiritual from the past. The human body as the carrier of the creating gods and spirits, as the temple of the gods. People need to work to take up the spiritual. The danger that the earth’s mission will be lost. Waldorf pedagogy cultivates an inner life. Gravity and light. The necessary choice between ahrimanic intellectualism and the development of new spiritual knowledge as the guide for spiritual and social actions.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

Publisher’s Note

Of the seventeen lectures of this book, the first five were given at the same time as the first medical course (Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, CW 312). This is why the theme of medicine, healing arts, and therapies are often referred to in these lectures.

Rudolf Steiner gave some preliminary remarks before the first lecture which can be read below. These remarks refer to current events of the times. In Berlin in early March of 1920, the so-called ‘Kapp coup’ took place. It was an attempt by right-wing conservatives to take control of the government, which during the November Revolution was ceded to a left-leaning coalition. The coup caused the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government to leave Berlin and retreat to Dresden. The coup failed after a few days and remains one of the many events in the turbulent times of post-World War I Germany.

Rudolf Steiner sought to counter the social chaos of the times through the movement to bring about the threefold social order. He referenced the founding of the corporation, ‘Der Kommende Tag AG’ in Stuttgart, which was incorporated on 13 March 1920. The ‘comments from the last weeks’ referenced by Rudolf Steiner in the remarks are to be found in What is Necessary in these Urgent Times? (CW 196).

Rudolf Steiner’s preliminary remarks to Lecture 1

My dear friends, I greet you this evening after my trip to Stuttgart and will continue to speak about similar themes. First, I want to give you some preliminary remarks before the actual lecture. In Stuttgart we were able to at least begin a practical initiative, which is being asked to work out of a spiritual-scientific perspective and within the economic life. Perhaps it will be able to support what needs to happen in the present.

It is most important today that ideas for the social, based on the spiritual-scientific worldview and that come out of this spiritual-scientific worldview, are active within a large enough group of people. The souls of a sufficiently large group of people must take up these ideas and transform them into will-forces to do deeds. That is most important. It is essential because only when a sufficiently large group of people are prepared and able, will something be able to happen that is necessary for humanity. So, perhaps there are some things that will be able to contribute to what needs to come if one provides prototypes of initiatives that attempt to take hold in the practical realms of life, and answer the demands of spiritual science. We are trying to create a type of headquarters in Stuttgart, which will be an umbrella organization with commercial and bank-like activities. The commercial enterprises will be managed based on our worldview, and they will engage in the practical within the social structure out of this worldview. Perhaps, then, prototypes could be created that are far more convincing than words, which at present are unfortunately allowed to move forward much too slowly for the needs of our time.

The Waldorf School is moving happily along creating much enthusiasm. But this is truly far too little, and you can see how little it is when you compare it with the distorted news coming from Germany. These distortions are saying much. That which is saddest is that which is very, very noticeable under the surface of the phenomena. There is no reason, my dear friends, to say with any satisfaction that the government established in Berlin had to resign after a few days. It is irrelevant whether today in Germany, in the former Germany, a government is at the rudder for three days or as long as the other one was, which fled Berlin over Dresden and then to Stuttgart for three days. It is all the same. It doesn’t matter how long. What is important is that none of these governments can truly govern. None can be governed because the human will-forces, which should work in public affairs, seem unable to do anything fruitful. At the most, they can add new destructive forces to those of the past. Such events that are now happening in Germany simply show that people who are thrown to the top, whether in a coup or through an election, are all similar. They all carry together the responsibility of the horrors of the recent past.

And what is happening as outer events is less important than what is standing behind these events. We have to look at the helpless outer life that wants to continue with the old forces, through the sound bites of conventional politics, both from the left and the right. These are not forces to build up with. Those forces which will build up, are only to be sought today in those impulses which can come from a spiritual understanding of the human being. Therefore, even when we try to throw our strength towards social issues, it is most important to continually deepen our knowledge so that out of this deeper knowledge the necessary, for these times necessary, will-forces will follow.

Today people should say to themselves: It is not appropriate to look at what comes from here or there as old forces. Then it would be rightful to be pessimistic. This is proven every day anew. Today it is only appropriate for people to build the social with their own will-forces based on spiritual knowledge. Only with these will-forces does one have the right to hope. One does not have the right to hope; one only has the right to be pessimistic when one doesn’t want to decide to take up into one’s own will-forces the knowledge that is carrying the spirit. Therefore, it is most important, again and again, to deepen one’s spiritual knowledge. Let us today in the lecture bring before our souls spiritual knowledge that perhaps will build on the themes that we were looking at before I travelled to Stuttgart.

Introduction

With thoughtful reading, these seventeen fascinating lectures can work deeply in our souls, bringing us healing impulses. The literal translation of the German title would be, ‘healing impulses for the social organism’ (Heilfaktoren für den Sozialen Organismus). Rudolf Steiner strives with his thoughts to awaken in our souls the consciousness of what he calls reality. Reality can be found in the conscious, simultaneous perception and acknowledgement of the existence of both the spiritual and the material. Only in a unity of the two is there reality. In understanding this reality, we form concepts that reflect both spirit and matter. In unity, they penetrate deeply into the soul where the will-forces from the spiritual world awaken and lead us in freehood to do what is needed to heal the human being and the social. And even more important, human beings are then fulfilling their collective task, their responsibility to bring an understanding of materialism to the gods. The gods only have this understanding through human beings. Human beings are supporting the rightful evolution of the earth and, beyond, the universe—or, said differently, human beings are spiritualizing matter.

This undertaking is a daunting responsibility. This is the task of human beings, and we need to wake up to it. ‘Wake up,’ calls Steiner urgently and forcefully in these lectures, as he weaves spiritual insights from seemingly diverse angles to describe this reality for our souls. Wake up to the responsibility of transforming the polarities of matter and spirit, of materialism and spirituality. They must be understood as a unity. Wake up to the need to reform the structure of our thinking, first our perceiving and then following a transformed conceiving. He describes the thinking that is a remnant of previous ages and older ways of relating to the spiritual, that only works on as a corpse in our age in empty phrases and dogmas, hindering our ability to think with the consciousness demanded by our times and destroying the potential of relevant social initiatives. He also describes the abstract materialistic thinking that forms the concepts found in modern natural science and the humanities. These concepts leave our souls empty and they slowly lose their spiritual origins.

Wake up out of the comfortable study groups and fun events where anthroposophists gather to discuss the various facts of the spiritual world and then return to their usual life and way of thinking. Wake up to the reality of eternity which includes not only immortality, life after death, but also unbornness—life before birth. Through immortality, we create our future in freehood. Through unbornness, we recognize our responsibilities for our earthly life out of the wisdom of the past. Wake up to the need to fill our empty souls with spirit content. Over and over again he calls us to wake up!

And for Steiner, it is through anthroposophy that we can wake up in our times. We can develop a different type of perception that perceives the spiritual world within the material world. This seeing is similar to the reality that primeval peoples saw atavistically in outer nature. It was a natural clairvoyance. This atavistic spirituality, which looked solely to nature to understand the spiritual world, belongs to another age. Now, people must work to find the spiritual clairvoyance within them, within their skin, and Steiner speaks exactly those words: ‘within our skin’. People who are clairvoyant in the modern sense, have an inner sight that encompasses both the existence of spiritual beings, spiritual beingness and simultaneously encompasses the existence of materialistic beings—materialistic beingness. This is inner work; this is the challenge for anthroposophists and all who are seekers today of the spiritual here on earth. It is then that the will-forces will arise within us to give us the potential to make systematic changes in our thinking, ennoble our social relationships and create the initiatives that will truly transform our society and support the rightful evolution of the earth and beyond.

As an example, Steiner refers to one anthroposophical idea, the threefold social organism. This social concept simply flows out of understanding the reality of what is needed now in our society. There are many such ideas that have flowed into the practical from anthroposophical thinking, that can be realized with will-forces permeated with spirit knowledge. Steiner would continue to bring forth concrete suggestions for the practical transformation of agriculture, the medical fields, pedagogy, banking, economic activities, and more.

It is important to note that Rudolf Steiner does not consider it necessary to be clairvoyant, to consciously experience the spiritual world. It is necessary to grasp the results of modern clairvoyant research in our souls with a healthy understanding. For those who seek to experience the spiritual world more consciously, Steiner has given many paths forward. Among these are the Calendar of the Soul, How to Know Higher Worlds, and the Lessons of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. However, most important is to fill the soul with spirit knowledge and create out of this knowledge spiritual impulses appropriate for our times. We now live in the early twenty-first century and these are our times. Each of us has a task and we must wake up to it. We are being called to do the difficult work of transcending materialism and moving into the future that is calling us—in the now.

Let us put these lectures in an historical context. Steiner was speaking just after the horrific First World War. Western society, and especially Central Europe, was truly in chaos. Steiner used the word catastrophe to refer to the times. The war devasted Europe, and the casualties were enormous. Germany was especially crippled. The Versailles Treaty had just been signed. Germany lost significant land and was seriously weakened economically. Germans deeply resented that they were given sole responsibility for the war. Inflation, hunger, and homelessness raged. Extreme feelings of anger and pessimism filled the German psyche. Many different political ideologies were rising and fighting each other in the streets, and coups were happening in the government. At this time and in these lectures, Steiner was calling on people to think differently, to think beyond materialism in order to encompass spirit in thinking, in feeling, and in will-forces. Anthroposophy was giving people the means to transform the catastrophe of the times through their actions, yet most people seemed to be asleep. Steiner was trying at least to wake up the anthroposophists, but most were content to just learn about the spiritual world. Action was needed: the practical.

Steiner was warning people that the catastrophe they were experiencing in Germany would only worsen if people did not awaken to a reality that brings spirit knowledge into practical human impulses and actions. These are harrowing consequences for the individual human being, for civilized society, and for the evolution of the earth and the universe. Engage with anthroposophy, he stated. It can bring the spiritual knowledge necessary for the times. Study deeply the lectures, the writings, and let them work into the soul and awaken the will-forces. These will-forces will bring the necessary practical skills into doing.

Know thyself, the ancient mystery wisdom cried. Steiner cries out from a more modern perspective. All knowledge, all healing, and most especially the evolution of the earth, must now come from the agency of each human being. Know thyself today. This is not the knowledge of the human being, who is the highest being of the animal world. This materialistic way of knowing only comprehends the physical of the human being and all that will die at the being’s physical death. Nor is it the knowledge of the human being who lives with empty religious phrases from the past and then expects to die into a vague, heavenly world, forever without any responsibilities. In these cases, the soul cannot live on after death and just dissolves into the spirit world. The I is lost. When a sufficient number of people work with spiritual concepts and relate to each other as ethical individuals, as characterized in Steiner’s book The Philosophy of Freedom, and when they work out of their inner spiritual agency and not from outer authority, catastrophe will be averted, and the rightful evolution of the earth can continue.

Steiner often expresses frustration, anger and shock as he speaks in these lectures. He asks: How can people not be frustrated, angry, and shocked at what is happening? Now, over a hundred years have passed since Steiner gave these talks. Are we frustrated, angry and shocked as we see the catastrophe of our times? Enough to impel us to do something? There is still the polarity between a prevailing materialism and an inarticulate spirituality to be transformed into the third, unified way, an articulate spirituality that permeates materialism. Today, there is still the need to transform the structures of thinking and feeling that are based on materialism, and to birth the will-forces that can then arise in our souls. These lectures can stir us today. Most importantly, they encourage us to understand more deeply and to act out of deep wisdom to address the needs of today. We must create the relevant concepts. We must found the healing impulses to do what needs to be done.

There are many examples of the hindering forces active at the times of these lectures. What social forces today are hindering us from being more effective and more awake in our world? What thinking structures based on materialism do we continue to fall back on? What religious beliefs are clouding our ability to perceive spiritual truths? Where are we retreating into old structures of thinking that separate and create hierarchies that do not belong to our times? How can anthroposophists not only gather together to comfortably learn in study groups and events, but also catalyze the need for action based on their anthroposophical knowledge?

We need to wake up to the specifics of the challenges in our times. Anthroposophy and spiritual science live in the dynamics within each of us, the dynamic of striving to know more of reality and then transforming this knowledge into practical doing; striving to not simply recognize the spirit in outer nature but to seek this all-encompassing reality within each of us, ‘within our skin’. This is striving that recognizes place and time as important and also recognizes the great arc of the evolving universe, holding us all in unity in all of space and time. It is knowing that each and every human being is a carrier of spirit knowledge who has a responsibility to work to create a healthy social organism and bring knowledge of matter to the gods. It is learning, through spirit wisdom, how to bridge knowing and then being willing to make the necessary, great systematic changes in concert with others. Said differently, it is recognizing the need for a new birth of the spirit, and Steiner emphasizes that this is not a rebirth, not a renaissance, but a naissance. Anthroposophy shows us a clear way to live our lives with articulate spirit knowledge and together to fulfil spirit deeds.

Wake up, dear friends, and grasp your responsibilities. In you and with you the gods are creating. May these lectures help you move forward on your path in freehood, more than one hundred years after they were originally given. Bring the impulses of healing from these lectures into your thinking and doing. Transform these impulses for our time and place. Deal rightfully with the catastrophe we are living with. Wake up to the now!

A Note on the Translation:

Translations are never quite right. Words in one language do not equal words in another language, and one must struggle to bring the ideas, the style, and the force of the wording into the other language. In GA 186, The Challenge of Our Times, Rudolf Steiner tell us that the soul knows the origin of each word and how it evolved into its contemporary meaning. This is important to hold. Out of this context I use the word ‘freehood’ and not freedom. I realize this is a made-up word, but it is understandable and addresses the problem Steiner had with the word freedom. Steiner recognizes in the German word Freiheit, the freehood of the individual (suffix heit/hood equates to an individual), whereas the word freedom recognizes the freedom of a group (suffix tum/dom equates to a group). There are selfhood and knighthood, concepts that relate to an individual consciousness. Then there are kingdom and serfdom, concepts that relate to a group consciousness.

Translators of Steiner have gone to awkward twists to deal with this problem, most notably in the translation of Die Philosophie der Freiheit into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I also avoided translating the German adjective, göttlich, with the word divine, which is a vague English adjective referring to something supersensible. Instead, I translated literally the word as ‘godly’, to differentiate it from spiritual. There is a challenge for all of us in understanding the difference between the gods and spirits. Lastly, it is important to understand the words, spiritual science, translated from the German words, geistige Wissenschaft. Spiritual science, as a science, encompasses all realms of free, disciplined scholarship and learning. It is not limited to the hard sciences. This is more readily understood in the German wording than in the English.

I close with deep thankfulness to Rudolf Steiner Press for giving me the opportunity to translate these lectures, lectures of healing. I thank Nelson Fredsell for his meticulous editing of each lecture, and Ulrich Albrecht, John Bloom, Krystyna Jurzykowski, Frank Uhlig, and Anne Weise, each who helped in important ways. And most importantly I thank those beings who hovered over me as I sat at my computer and continually gave me very concrete support—when I asked.

Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig

Auburn, Alabama

May 2024

Lecture 1

DORNACH, 20 MARCH 1920

Science is often considered an undisputed authority, particularly in the way that it is practised in universities and other learning centres. We have often spoken about the validity of this science and how human beings must now challenge the authority of conventional science. Today I want to point out that for the scientific community it has become a characteristic phenomenon in the last three to four hundred years to consider that only one field has the right and authority to study medicine. The medical field of today is simply one field of science among other fields of science and when pursued should lead to healing, to healing sick human beings. However, we don’t realize that this relationship of medicine to the other scientific fields has only developed in these last three to four hundred years. If we were to look back in human evolution, we would see that everything the human being developed at that time as science, as knowledge, could be understood as having a relationship to medicine. When the esoteric sciences were being developed in ancient times, all scientific concepts in all the learning centres always had a connection with the concept of healing. Spiritual knowledge and spiritual science have always had a connection with healing. Thus, one would not say in the ancient times that the medical field was one science among many. In these ancient times, when purely intellectual knowledge was not considered occult, all science, all knowledge must be pursued with the purpose of healing the whole human being. It was within this context that all thoughts were brought before the soul.

Now we must ask ourselves: What should be healed and what was there to heal? In our time of materialism, we speak of sickness when we notice something abnormal in the outer material process of the human body or in the abnormal behaviour of the senses. This is a material concept of sickness and basically a product of recent human evolution, a product of post-Grecian times. In ancient Greece, where a people lived who were more awake and more receptive to the world than later peoples, there was still basically that concept of sickness and especially the tendency toward sickness that was characteristic of the times before the second and third centuries before Christ. We must be forthright and radical. These things need to be understood and their actual importance not ignored. In ancient times it was understood that all humanity has the predisposition to be continually sick. Simply stated all of humanity continually went around predisposed to being sick. This was generally understood. Everyone needed at least some preventative healing, and people realized that humanity continually needed to be healed. This was basically the opinion of the time.

Perhaps we will understand this opinion more clearly when we compare it with one that often confronts us today in our social relationships and social challenges. We see many people coming forward who feel called to rile others up by speaking about what is needed to bring on a