Physiological Processes as Supersensible Processes
In modern medical books we encounter a picture of the human being as an
extremely sophisticated machine which needs to eat to provide energy and
basic substances for renewal of itself. This is not so strange "when you
consider the human being from a material point of view, for then you can
really imagine him to be as he is pictured, namely, as nothing else than a
great big apparatus of digestion, a sort of machine that eats and digests
and builds up its body out of the substances it has received in eating and
has elaborated in all kinds of ways. As a matter of fact you find the human
being described in this way in books that are written from a materialistic
perspective; the picture they give is little more than of a great digestive
apparatus, that takes in food, works it up and distributes it to the
muscles, bones, sinews, etc." [1]
However, "human beings are not primarily a creation of the earth. From
the earth, only those forces are derived that are contained in matter
itself. They are effective outside man and then continue their effects when,
through eating and drinking, they have entered into the human being – but
there they are received by something that is of an unearthly nature. The
forces active in the foodstuffs come from the earth. Those streaming into
the human being from all corners of the universe are the
etheric forces. [2] Therefore,
the processes that take place within the human being
are by no means merely earthly ones; they are definitely something provided
for out of supersensible worlds. It is this
insight that human beings have to struggle to attain again."
[3]
The goal of spiritual science is to provide a holistic picture of the
human being and the processes of nutrition, for "whenever we consider the
world from a spiritual point of view we always have to see behind every
phenomenon of the senses a spiritual reality. What the senses can perceive
is no more than the external appearance. And so behind all these coarser
processes of the receiving and the elaboration of nourishment we have to
look for spiritual forces, and these spiritual forces are to be found in
the preponderance of the astral over the
etheric body.
This preponderance is expressed in the normal physical organic
life-processes. If you consider the human being merely from the point of
view of the receiving of nourishment, investigating what happens with the
substances from the time they are received through the mouth until the time
they are absorbed into the blood stream, then you have before you a material
process which is the ultimate physical expression of the preponderance of
the astral over the etheric body." [4]
For example, "if you put a piece of sugar into your mouth, it dissolves.
This is a continuation of what sugar is in the outer world. Sugar is hard
and white. You dissolve it, and it becomes liquid, viscous, and then
undergoes further changes. The chemist speaks of chemical changes, but that
is not relevant here. The sugar continually changes. It is worked upon and
absorbed into the whole organism. There you have another kind of activity.
This continues right into the rhythmic system, and then the rhythmic system
takes over the activity of the digestive system. The activity of
nourishment is quite different from the activity exercised when we move
outwardly or, let us say, lift a weight. This activity of nourishment cannot
proceed at all without the intervention, at every point of this activity, of
the astral nature of the human being. The astral nature of the human being
must permeate each individual part of this activity, of nourishment.
The
activity of nourishment can arise only if the astral body takes hold of
processes that otherwise we have in the test tube (in the laboratory). There
astral forces above all must be at work, and a
fact that is usually not considered is that in this process physical forces
no longer play a part. It is generally believed that in nourishment, for
example, physical forces are at work. In fact, as soon as substances enter
inside the human being [5], the physical forces cease to have their
raison d'être;
they are no longer active. In the activity of nourishment, the physical substances are worked
upon by the astral and etheric. The physical effect of a piece of sulphur or
salt outside the body has no significance within the body. Only the astral
nature of a substance is seized hold of by the astral, and then
the
etheric-astral is the really active factor in nourishment." [6]
What about the role of human 'I' in processes of nutrition?
Ego forces
are involved in these processes by the fact that "the warmth organism is paramountly
the field of the ego. The ego itself is that spirit-organization which
imbues with its own forces the warmth that is within us, and governs and
gives it configuration, not only externally but also inwardly. We cannot
understand the life and activity of the soul unless we remember that
the ego
works directly upon the warmth." [7] We know that the whole human body is
permeated by inner warmth which is to a great extent independent of the outer warmth and that
digestive, nutritional and metabolic processes are evolving inside this
inner warmth of human being. In this way, through the medium of warmth, our
ego-organization has an access to processes of nutrition. [8]
Thus we can conclude that in the processes of nutrition we never deal
only with physiological or chemical processes, but processes where are also
active – in various degrees – etheric, astral and ego forces. This is one manifestation of the old
occult principle: "Spirit is never without matter,
matter is never without spirit." [9] Or, in other words:
"All outwardly material phenomena have a soul-spiritual aspect, and all
soul-spiritual phenomena have an outward material aspect." [10]
This means that even a 'purely mineral
process' is from one side physical, and from another side a spiritual
process. For example, "let us suppose we have here a vessel filled with
water. In the water, salt is dissolved, and the water becomes quite
transparent. Because we have warmed the water, we have made a salt solution.
Now let us cool the water. The salt precipitates, and we see how the salt
condenses below and forms a deposit at the bottom of the vessel. That is the
process for one who sees only with physical eyes. But for a person who can
see with spiritual eyes, something else is happening. While the salt is
condensing below, the spirit of the salt streams up through the water,
filling it. The salt can condense only when the spirit of the salt has
departed from it and become diffused into the water. Those who understand
these things know that wherever condensation takes place, spiritualization
also always occurs. What thus condenses below has its counterpart above in
the spiritual, just as when the salt condenses and is precipitated below,
its spirit streams upward and disseminates." [11]
If we study materialistic descriptions of processes of digestion and
nutrition then we need to keep in mind that these are only one-sided truths.
And if we strive to acquire knowledge of the other side – the spiritual side
– of manifold nutritional processes then we can gradually gain more
comprehensive understanding of nutrition. However, this cannot be achieved
without effort, because the inclusion of etheric, astral and ego activities
makes already complex physiological processes even more complex. But if we
persist in the study of spiritual science we can gradually gain an understanding of how etheric (life), astral (soul)
and ego (spiritual) activities relate to, influence, or interpenetrate the
physiological ones.
The Aim of Supersensible 'Digestion' of Food Substances
If we take as a starting point the basic relationships presented in
NUTRITION – HEALING – EDUCATION
we can then follow the gradual metamorphosis of nutritional processes into
supersensible processes of nourishment for human soul and spirit. The
knowledge of this important secret of human nutrition existed already in ancient times.
For example, in
Upanishad we can find the following description: "Food when
eaten becomes threefold: What is coarsest in it becomes
faeces, what is
medium becomes flesh, and what is subtlest becomes mind." [12]
This is confirmed by facts discovered by means of modern spiritual
science. "The human organism is indeed such that at first in a particular
location, that roughly speaking extends from the mouth to the stomach, it
has somewhat modified processes than the outer world, but yet such that they
can still be compared to the processes of the outer world. Then he has in
all the processes that follow upon the stomach processes such processes that
are indeed strongly different than the processes that take place in the
outer world. And then he has processes in his head organization, which
represent the exact opposite of what the nature processes are in the outer
world. Thus the total organism of the human being, above all by means of the
nourishment, must be stimulated in the appropriate manner."
[13]
Now we can
ask: What is the purpose of all this? Any attempt to find an answer to this question opens to us the most
profound secrets of human existence. These cannot be understood without
serious study of spiritual science. For the first obstacle is that "There
are very many experiences which can be grasped in thought only with the
greatest difficulty. We eat and drink every day by instinct or as the result
of desire: but it takes a very long time, even for one who is undergoing
spiritual development, to relate these things too to the spiritual life. In
point of fact, everyday things are more difficult than any others to bring
into relation with the spiritual life. In the case of eating and drinking we
shall have achieved this only when we have discovered why, in order to serve
the course of the world's evolution, we have to take physical substances
into ourselves in a rhythmic process, and what connection these physical
substances have with spiritual life. We then find that metabolism is not a
physical process only, but by virtue of its rhythm also has in it something
essentially spiritual." [14]
If we follow this indication we discover how important the element of
time is in all processes related to nutrition. For example, we cannot eat
once a week for the whole week, but we need – at least – to eat once per
day. [15] "Let us say that today you have eaten your usual number of meals
in the proper sequence. Your organism demands a repetition of them tomorrow.
Not so the head. This acts according to another measure of time; it must
wait seven days before the food taken into the rest of organism has
proceeded far enough to enable the head to assimilate it. Supposing this to
be Sunday, your head would have to wait until next Sunday before it would be
in position to benefit from the fruit of today's Sunday dinner. In the
head-organization, a repetition takes place after a period of seven days of
what has been accomplished seven days before in the organism. All this the
ancients knew intuitively and expressed by saying: A week is necessary to
transmute what is physical and bodily into soul and spirit."
[16]
For that reason nobody "expects any of you to allow your dinner to
stand before you untouched, and appease your hunger merely through its
attractive appearance. Life could not be sustained in this way. No! We must
induce that process which runs its course in the 24-hour cycle, and which,
if we consider the whole man, including the upper or head-organization, only
finishes its course after seven days. But that which is assimilated
spiritually – for it has really to be assimilated and not merely
contemplated – also requires for this process a period seven times as long.
Therefore it becomes necessary first intellectually to assimilate all we
absorb. But to see it reborn again within us, we must wait seven years. Only
then has it developed into what it was intended to be." [17]
We see that things are rather complicated, for there are more rhythms
involved in the further supersensible 'digestion' of food substances within
our organism, than we are usually aware of. For that reason "it is really
extremely important that the human being arranges things so that he can
really inwardly digest everything which he takes in as nourishment. It is
especially important that one knows: the human being becomes strong if he
properly digests what he has taken in as food." [18]
The person properly digests food only when (s)he also inwardly digests what
has been taken in as nourishment with his soul and spirit. Thus we can see
that the aim of nutrition is not related just to the question of human
health, but also to the matter of human spiritual development, and
consequently to the big issues of human and cosmic evolution.
For complementary perspectives see:
♦ NUTRITION – HEALING – EDUCATION
♦ RHYTMICAL LIFE OF NUTRITION
