The Origin of Illnesses in the Individualisation of Man
When we gain deeper insights into the mysteries of human existence we
see that we live in a world consisting of many polarities. The most
fundamental polarity is the polarity between the spiritual and physical
worlds, each with their own laws of existence: on one side we have moral
laws, on the other physical laws. Human beings stand at the crossroad of
these two worlds – the world of morality, and the world of natural laws –
and struggling to maintain a healthy balance between them. Thus we can
designate as the universal cause of all illnesses an occurrence of an
imbalance between various spheres of human existence. Such kinds of
disharmony – if allowed to persist – will cause suffering, illness, and
sometimes even death. If you have ever wondered why we are not spared of all this suffering
then you need to understand the primordial cause behind all illnesses. Once
upon a time we lived in a 'paradise' – in a primordial state of the harmony
of spiritual and physical existence without suffering and illnesses. Then,
at a certain stage of earthly development "an entirely new impetus entered
humanity through the individualization of man. Man, as an independent being,
detached himself from the all-embracing harmony of divine-spiritual health.
In a certain respect he set himself up in his individualism against the
whole of this divine-spiritual environment. Imagine that you have a being
developing entirely under the influence of his environment. What he
expresses will be the environment. Imagine, though, that he shuts himself
off in his skin, then in addition to the characteristics of his environment
he has his own characteristics as well. And indeed, with this new impetus
men became individual and developed their own individual characteristics.
And there was contradiction between the great divine-spiritual harmony with
its health and the individualism of man. And through this individuality
continuing to work, through it becoming a really effective factor, the
possibility of becoming ill has entered into human evolution. This is the
moment when the possibility of illness first occurred in human evolution,
for it is bound up with the individualisation of man. When man was still
firmly connected with the divine-spiritual world the possibility of illness
did not exist. It came about at the same time as individualisation." [1]
This separation from the harmony of the creative world and development of
our own individuality was a necessity for the sake of the development of
human freedom, but the price for this is that we are liable to make
mistakes, to get out of healthy rhythms, and to do things which are harmful
to our own being.
Before we look at the issue of human health we need to ask: "What does
human freedom mean? Are our actions really free
or not?" The fundamental prerequisite for freedom of our actions is that we
understand the motives for them, for "it goes without saying that
an action
is not free if it is carried out without knowledge of the reason for doing
it." [2] There are manifold instances of such unfree
actions. For example, "man is unfree because he follows his strong sexual instinct, or because he is
hemmed in by the fetters of conventional morality. But one should not
maintain that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, for he is
driven to them by external powers. But there are human beings who raise
themselves above all these compelling rules, free spirits who find their own
self in the jumble of habits, regulations, religious observances, etc. They
are free insofar as they follow only themselves; unfree insofar as they
submit themselves. Which of us can say that he is really free in all that he
does? But in each of us exists a higher being in whom the free man comes to
expression. Our life is composed of free and unfree deeds. But we cannot
complete the concept of man without including the free spirit as the purest
characteristic of human nature. After all, we are truly human only insofar
as we are free." [3]
For that purpose we need to distinguish free actions based on
understanding from the behaviour guided by "the moral authority we
acknowledge – the head of the family, the state, social custom, the
authority of the church, divine revelation, and so on. A particular instance
of such moral principles is when the command announces itself to us, not
through an external authority, but through our own inner being. In this
case, we sense within ourselves the voice to which we have to submit. This
voice finds expression in conscience. It means moral progress when man does
not simply take the command of an outer or inner authority as motive for his
action, but strives to recognize the reason why a particular principle of
conduct should act as motive in him. This is the advance from morality based
on authority, to conduct based on moral insight. At this level of morality
the person will consider the needs of moral life and will let this knowledge
determine his actions." [4] So we came back to the fundamental prerequisite
of human freedom: an absolute need for an understanding of the motives
behind our actions.
Papacy of Medicine versus Responsibility for Own Health
From the above description we can already see that each human being is –
in so far as he wants to partake in the evolution of own individuality –
ultimately responsible for his own state of being, including the state of
own health. People in principle yearn for freedom, although they have
different opinions as to what this involves and how much we can be free. But what about the
issue of taking responsibility for our own health?
If we have used in the past this or that method of alternative or
complementary medicine we might came across the idea of taking
responsibility for own personal health. However, the prevalent attitude in
the domain of health is that "people are not concerned about illness – or one or another type of illness at least
– until they themselves fall sick with it, and even then their interest does
not go much beyond the cure. That is, they are only concerned about their
recovery. How this cure is accomplished is sometimes a matter of complete
indifference, and the pleasantest thing is not to have any further
responsibility for the 'how'. Most of people content themselves with the
thought that the people who carry out the job have been appointed to do so
by the authorities. In our time there exists in medical sphere a much more
rabid belief in authority than has ever existed in the religious sphere.
The papacy of medicine, irrespective of its various forms, still makes
itself felt with great intensity and will do so to an even greater extent in
the future. Laymen are in no way to blame for the fact that this can and
will be like this. For they do not think about these matters or care in the
least about them unless it affects them personally and they suffer from an
acute case that requires treatment.
Thus a large section of the population
calmly looks on whilst the papacy of medicine assumes greater and greater
dimensions and insinuates itself into things in all manner of ways. People
do not care about the deeper significance that is actually behind all this.
They look on whilst one or another law is instituted. People do not want to
have any insight into these matters. On the other hand there will always be
people who are personally affected and cannot manage with ordinary
materialistic medicine – the basis of which does not concern them, but only
the fact of whether they can be cured or not – and then they will apply to
the people who work out of occultism
– and there again they only care about
whether they can be cured or not. These things are not taken seriously
enough except when people are personally affected. However it is just the
task of a really spiritual movement to awaken a consciousness of the fact
that there has to be more than an egoistic desire for recovery;
in fact
there has to be knowledge of the deeper foundations in these matters, and
this knowledge has to be made known." [5]
In the present time there is plenty of evidence that the majority of
people don't want to be responsible for own health. [6]
This is one of the key causes of the escalating numbers of diseases in affluent
societies where one would expect the opposite development due to the general
wealth and the highly professional health services. [7]
But such a situation is
not surprising if we compare modern life with life in the past when people
still belonged to the various ethnic groups with regulations on almost all
aspects of life, including their moral codes of behaviour and their food
cultures. But compare such, from our perspective, quite authoritarian
traditional life-styles with the life-styles of people living in the modern
city. Now people have many more choices than they had in the past, such as
choice of vocation, partner, place of living, personal moral values, diet,
etc. This makes us more free, but at the same time more exposed to mistakes,
self-deceptions, and wrong-doings. Thus we can see why the level of our
freedom ultimately depends on the level of understanding of the motives for
our choices.
Nutrition belongs to those influences which are crucial in regard to the
maintenance of human health. But the impacts of various foods cannot be
grasped by a solely materialistic perspective; for this we need an
all-encompassing holistic perspective. Now you might object: "How on earth
one can understand the true nature of human being and all possible
influences on human health from a holistic perspective? How can we ever hope
to become free, when from the start we soon confront the immense complexity
of world existence?" It might look a hopeless case, but there is a way out.
The solution is possible when we recognise that we don't need to
know everything about education, or medicine, or nutrition, with the aim
to choose the right educational method, or medical therapy, or diet for
ourselves or for our family. However, if we want to make right
decisions, we need to know what is essential! And what we need to know
about health and the origin of illnesses is contained in the form of
wide pictures presented by the spiritual science. Each of these pictures
serves as a kind of navigation map inside which one can place specific
details and in this way understand the consequences of specific type of
treatments for our wellbeing and overall personal development. In this
way we are capable of seeing something that those who have great
knowledge inside specialised medical fields cannot see if they don't
develop such wide holistic insights.
This approach does not exclude the role of doctors and other medical
specialists or any type of complementary or alternative therapists. On
the contrary, it enables us to appreciate any expert knowledge that is
capable of helping when we get ill. But the person who must be in
control of the process of healing is I, myself. For "what lives within
us is truly a higher, divine human being. We feel ourselves pervaded by
this being as by living presence of whom we can say: This is my inner guide in me. All that we
can produce in the way of ideals and artistic creativity – as also the
natural healing forces in our body, which continuously compensate for
the injuries life inflicts – originate not in our ordinary, rational
minds but in the deeper forces at work in us. People sometimes say of
the damages and injuries we sustain in life that external forces will
not be of any help and that our organism must develop its own inherent
healing powers. What they are talking about is a wise, benevolent
influence working upon us. From this same source also arise the best
forces that enable us to perceive the spiritual world." [8]
When I become aware that the question of health and
choice of eventual therapies is simultaneously also part of my spiritual
development, then I need to have a basic understanding of the
consequences of my choices. This is my real responsibility. Otherwise I
might choose the path I would never choose if I knew all long-term
consequences of my choice.
This website came into existence with the aim to help those who want
to be responsible for their own health. The website offers insights
which form the basis for truly free decisions in the domain of health
and spiritual development. The fundamental principles of nutrition
enable an understanding of the essential archetypal relationships
between man and nutrition in relation to a wide range of human activities
– not just to the maintenance of healthy body. And this is what really
enables us to make the right decisions in this very complex field of our
existence.
