The Polarity of Sympathy and Antipathy in the Life of Our Soul
The basic tenet of the holistic approach to the human being is that he
consists of body, soul and spirit. In this triad the soul occupies the
central position and in this way is linking itself to both the physical and
the spiritual part of the human being. Consequently, "if we want to examine
the human being effectively from any point of view we must return again and
again to the separation of man's soul activities into cognition – which
takes place in thought – and into feeling and willing." [1] In accordance
with this, "when you trace the element of feeling on the one hand in
cognition, in mental picturing, and on the other hand in willing, then you
will say: feeling stands as a soul activity midway between cognition and
willing, and radiates its nature out in both directions." [2]
In addition to this "there is one thing that we must be clear about. We
cannot put the soul powers pedantically side by side, separate from each
other, thus: thinking, feeling, willing, because in the living soul, in its
entirety, one activity is always merging into another. If you consider the
Will [3]
you will realise that you cannot bring your Will to bear on anything
that you do not represent to yourself as a mental picture that you do not
permeate with the activity of cognition. Try in self-contemplation,
even superficially, to concentrate on your willing, you will find that in
every act of Will the mental picture is present in some form. You could not
be a human being at all if mental picturing were not involved in your acts
of Will. And your willing would proceed from a dull instinctive activity, if
you did not permeate the action which springs forth from the Will with the
activity of thought, of mental picturing.
Just as thought is present in every act of Will, so Will is to be found
in all thinking. Again, even a purely superficial contemplation of your own
self will show you that in thinking you always let your Will stream into the
formation of your thoughts. In the forming of your own thoughts, in the
uniting of one thought with another, or passing over to judgments and
conclusions – in all this there streams a delicate current of Will.
Thus actually we can only say that Will activity is chiefly Will activity
and has an undercurrent of thought within it; and thought activity is
chiefly thought activity and has an undercurrent of Will. Thus, in
considering the separate faculties of soul, it is impossible to place them
side-by-side in a pedantic way, because one flows into the other."
[4] With this in mind we can make the following structure of the soul activities:
- Activity of the soul within the spirit: cognition –
thinking
- Activity of the soul within itself: inner sensing –
feeling
- Activity of the soul within the body: movement –
willing [5]
Now we need to ask: What is the nature of forces in our soul which enable
us to sense, to feel something? "If we consider the human being from the
point of view of the soul, we lay chief stress on discovering antipathies
and sympathies within the laws which govern the world." [6] There is no
doubt for any observer without prejudices that "we can only speak truly of
the soul if we show how it lives between sympathy and antipathy."
[7]
The two basic forces in our soul are therefore "sympathy and antipathy.
According to the way in which these basic forces work in any soul-formation,
its nature is decided. The force with which one soul-formation attracts
others, seeks to fuse with them, to make its affinity with them effectual,
must be designated as sympathy.
Antipathy, on the other hand, is the force
with which soul-formations repel, exclude each other in the soul-world, with
which they assert their separate identity." [8]
This is not only happening inside the purely psychological domain,
because "the soul is the connecting link between the spirit of man and his
body. Its forces of sympathy and antipathy which, owing to their mutual
relationship, bring about soul-manifestations such as desire,
susceptibility, wish, liking, aversion, etc., are therefore not only active
between soul-formations and soul-formations, but they manifest themselves
also in relation to the things of the other worlds, the physical and the
spiritual. While the soul lives in the body it participates to a certain
extent in all that takes place in the body. When the physical functions of
the body proceed with regularity, pleasure and comfort arise in the soul; if
these functions are disturbed, aversion and pain arise. And the soul has its
share in the activities of the spirit also; one thought fills it with joy,
another with abhorrence; a correct judgment has the approval of the soul, a
false one its disapproval." [9]
In this manner the soul is permeating the whole human organism, its
"forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly through our vital organs.
Just consider how much of our whole life depends on sympathy and antipathy –
on which things we accept and take up and which we reject"
[10] – and you
will grasp the great significance of soul forces for our whole life.
The question now arises: What is the relationship of forces of antipathy
and sympathy to the activities of thinking and willing? From the above
descriptions we have seen that we have "within us all the world of feeling,
which is a continual alternation – expansion and contraction of the heart – between sympathy and
antipathy. We create the seed of the soul life as a rhythm of sympathy and
antipathy. This alternation is continually within us. It is impossible for
you to comprehend the being of man unless you understand the difference
between the elements of sympathy and antipathy in man." [11] However, "one
has to distinguish, in the first place, between three kinds of
soul-formations according to the manner in which sympathy and antipathy work
in them. These kinds differ from each other in that sympathy and antipathy
have in them definitely fixed mutual relationships. In all three, both basic
forces are present." [12]
1. Predominant antipathy repels – Undercurrent of sympathy produces insatiable desire
A soul "formation of the first kind attracts other formations in its
neighbourhood by means of the sympathy active in it; but besides this
sympathy there is at the same time present in it antipathy, through which it
repels certain things in its surroundings. From the outside such a formation
appears to be endowed with the forces of antipathy only. That, however, is
not the case. There is sympathy and antipathy in it, but the latter
predominates; it has the upper hand over the former. Such formations play a
self-seeking role in 'soul-space'. They repel much that is around them, and
lovingly attract only little to themselves. They therefore move through
'soul-space' as unchangeable forms. The underlying force of sympathy in them
makes them appear avaricious, with a greed that seems insatiable, as though
it could never be satisfied. That is because the predominating antipathy
repels so much of what approaches, that no satisfaction is possible."
[13]
Due to the dominant force of antipathy these soul-formations outwardly
reject most of what approaches them, but on the other hand due to an
undercurrent of sympathy they are trying greedily to satiate themselves with
selected soul formations.
2. Antipathy and sympathy in a balanced proportion: Constant interactions
"The second kind of soul-formation is that in which the two basic forces
preserve a balance, in which, accordingly, antipathy and sympathy act with
equal strength. They approach other formations with a certain neutrality;
they act on them as if related, but without especially attracting or
repelling. They erect no solid barrier, as it were, between themselves and
their surroundings. They constantly allow other formations in their
surroundings to act on them." [14] These soul-formations allow free flow and
exchange between various domains of our soul life.
3. Predominant sympathy attracts – Undercurrent of antipathy produces selfishness
"The third degree of soul-formation is that in which sympathy has the
upper hand over antipathy. Antipathy produces the self-seeking,
self-assertion; this, however, retires into the background when inclination
towards the things around takes its place. Such a formation appears within
'soul-space' as a centre of an attracting sphere which spreads over the
objects around it. Such formations must be specially designated as
wish-substance. This designation appears to be the right one, for although
antipathy, relatively weaker than the sympathy, is there, the attraction
works in such a way as to bring the attracted objects within the
soul-formation's own sphere. The sympathy thus receives an underlying tone
of selfishness." [15] These soul-formations outwardly
attract whatever approaches them due to the dominant force of sympathy, but
within is active an undercurrent of antipathy which is stimulating a selfish
fulfilment of own wishes.
These descriptions demonstrate that things are not as simple as one
would like them to be, even when one starts with the simple distinction of
soul life into forces of sympathy and antipathy. But this is not yet the end
of complexity. If we want to understand our soul life in its relation to the
spiritual and physical domains we need to add the following discovery of
spiritual science: "In cognition, in mental picturing lives antipathy.
However strange it may seem, everything connected with mental picturing,
with thought, is permeated with antipathy." [16] In opposition to this,
"when we Will to do something, we always develop sympathy for what we wish
to do." [17] Or in other words, "antipathy on the one hand changes our soul
life into picture image; sympathy, which goes in the other direction,
changes our soul life into what we know as our Will for action."
[18] As a
rule we are not conscious of this: "Just as it is only in exceptional
circumstances that our antipathy to the environment may become conscious in
cognition, so our sympathy with the environment – which is always present –
may only become conscious in exceptional circumstances, namely, when we act
with enthusiasm and loving devotion." [19]
Here we need to clarify that we feel, of course, both sympathy and
antipathy towards various perceptions, thoughts, and deeds. This doesn't
contradict the fact that "just as our thinking depends upon antipathy, so
our willing depends on sympathy" [20] because
this refers to the activities in our organism which form the basis for the
activities of cognition and voluntary movement. If we observe how we
perceive and think, then we find that both activities demand an act of
withdrawal which is enabled by the force of antipathy. For example, we
cannot think properly if we are fully surrendered to the physical activity,
but we need to stop, take a rest and assume the role of observer. And our
perception is always based on the fact that our sense organs create a mirror
for what streams towards us from the outside world. And as the mirror
rejects what streams towards it, so our senses reject what streams towards
us by the help of forces of antipathy and then these 'mirror pictures' are
reflected in our consciousness. In opposition to this, when we observe our voluntary activities where
the power of Will is holding sway, then we see sympathy as its underlying
force. Any deed is an action of involvement with the outside world and this
creates an intrinsic link between sympathy and willing.
Thus we can summarise the activities of our inner world in the following
way: Everything we experience and inwardly sense by means of the capacities
of our soul is permeated with sympathy and antipathy, with forces of
attraction and repulsion, with feelings of liking and disliking, with
experiences of comfort and discomfort, and with various degrees of
acceptance and rejection.
Acceptance and Rejection in the Double Polarity of Eating Disorders
In NUTRITION FOR BODY AND SOUL there is given an explanation of the great significance of our
subjective relationship to food. This includes the way we perceive and think
about food, our emotional relationship – our likes and dislikes of foods –
and the life of our Will which is expressed in our eating habits. In the description of the links between FOOD AND SOUL MOOD
we can see that the soul is placed in the middle between influences coming
from the upper and lower parts of our organism. An essential part of these
influences belongs to food which enters through the mouth and it is
accompanied with senses of vision, sound, smell, taste, touch and warmth.
After entrance of nutrients into the blood and lymph circulation we have
another set of sense organs – among them the liver and the heart – which are
sensing the inner quality of what we consume. In this manner the soul is
capable of sensing the quality of the broad spectrum of influences arising
from the food we consume.
Another set of influences is coming through activities of learning. We
learn about the attributes of various foods and diets from books, TV
programmes, magazines, etc. In the modern world we are daily exposed to
information about nutrition and its relation to health and disease. All this
has an impact on the state of our soul and on our relation to nutrition.
If we now explore the origins of eating disorders we can place them in
the four main groups.
1. The Psychological Disorders of Emotional Rejection of Food
These disorders are the manifestation of such strong
forces of antipathy that they compel a person to reject food as something
dangerous for his own existence. This is not just an ordinary dislike of food, for it is a fact
that every food is a poison until properly digested by the human being (see
FOOD AS 'POISON'). There are a few reasons why someone feels such strong
antipathy towards food:
- The soul cannot 'digest' the big quantity and
low quality of modern information about food, nutrition and human body,
and tries to avoid this stressful situation by rejecting this issue to
such extent that it leads even to the rejection of eating itself.
- The soul senses the extremely bad quality of junk food which the
person eats and with good reason rejects it, even if a person might not be
aware of this.
- The person might have weak digestive forces, or (s)he cannot
digest specific foods properly; in both cases eating will really cause
delicate poisoning (see FOOD AS 'POISON').
In all cases there is present an underlying desire for proper
food which cannot be satisfied with the food consumed by the person who is
suffering from this condition. The typical example of this group of eating disorders is
anorexia.
2. The Psychological Disorders of Emotional Overeating
These disorders are the manifestation of such strong
forces of sympathy that they compel a person to consume food in excess. This
is evidently not just an ordinary need for food, for the person becomes
obsessed with eating to such degree that (s)he has the permanent feeling
that (s)he doesn't obtain what is craving for. Among them are the following
possibilities:
- The person is craving for the stimulative
effects of modern food due to the high amount of sugar which lifts
up the soul mood whenever she or he consumes it (see
FOOD VERSUS
STIMULANTS). But the inner activities of the organism are not
stimulated in a suitable manner which makes one feel hunger again
and again (see FOOD AS REMEDY FOR HUNGER).
- The soul is craving for real food and not for modern imitations of
food which cannot stimulate life processes which are continually renewing
the body (see FOOD AS SOURCE OF ENERGY).
- The soul is longing for the healing effect of natural mineral
substances in our food which stimulate our rhythmic system (see
NUTRITION AND 'INNER HEALER'). The industrial food with added minerals
cannot provide healing stimulus of the same quality. This holds true
also for white sugar and other refined foods, food supplements,
artificial additives, etc.
In all cases we see the gap between the real needs of the
soul and the body and the improper satisfaction of them. The typical example of
this group of eating disorders is binge eating.
3. Eating 'Right' Foods as the Disorders of Reason
At the present time there is more than a justified need to improve our
understanding of nutrition. This whole website is aimed to satisfy this need
of modern people. The great majority of people nowadays rely on a scientific
approach to the research of nutrition. This approach has penetrated all
spheres of modern research of human being – in anatomy, medicine, nutrition,
psychology, sociology, history, etc. One of the consequences of this state
is that we are daily flooded with new information about a new scientific
discovery of a specific substance in a specific food and about its specific
– either harmful or beneficial – effects on human health.
This ongoing stream of information about nutrition and health has very
negative effects. First, the conclusions about the impacts of these
substances are not as absolute as they seem to be. For "modern
Western science and medicine operate within the mental prison, or paradigm,
which makes it impossible to see the obvious facts outside it. For many
reasons, we now operate under a paradigm that looks for truth only in the
smallest details, while entirely ignoring the big picture… The fancy word
for this obsession with minutiae is reductionism. And
reductionism comes
with its own seductive logic, so that people labouring under its spell can't
even see that there's another way to look at the world." [21]
For that reason, in nutritional literature scientific facts and
conclusions are misleading. Besides, the authors don't even present all
scientific discoveries in regard to a specific topic, not to mention
alternative views on the relationship of food and health. At least one would
expect a common sense warning that the human organism is very complex and
therefore we cannot know for sure what is affecting what. [22] In spite of
these deficiencies many people who are reading these scientific reports
decide about their diets on the basis of one-sided explanations of the
chemical composition of a specific ingredient and the metabolic pathways
affected by it. These readers are evidently anxious about the quality of
what they eat – which can be seen in their effort to provide their body with
enough 'right' nutrients on the basis of available scientific evidence.
However, such intellectual approach leads to eating disorders which are
caused by the decision to eliminate a specific food or group of foods before
they really understand all consequences of such a decision. The typical
example of this group of eating disorders is orthorexia nervosa.
4. Bad Eating Habits as the Disorders of Will
The mainstream science of nutrition doesn't mention this most common form
of eating disorders. For then it would have to admit that there is something
seriously wrong with its one-sided approach to the investigation of
nutrition, and with the modern fast food culture which is the offspring of
the scientific-industrial revolution. There are many proofs that we are in
real trouble in the domain of nutrition. Among them is also the enormous
rise of modern illnesses in the affluent societies which can be traced to
modern eating habits and the bad quality of cheap food.
This type of disorder belongs to the human Will, because habits are
repetitive activities which don't need much thinking about when we perform
them. When one has established eating habits, it is very comfortable to
continue with them, even if there is plenty of evidence that many modern
eating habits will sooner or later bring a worsening of our health. Even in
the case when a person wants to change his or her eating habits it is not an
easy task to do so, because we are dealing here with an eating disorder when
the sympathy towards food one eats is so strong that it is permeating the
whole organism. For that reason the person in question needs to counteract
the forces of sympathy with the equally strong forces of antipathy towards
their own eating habits. This is possible only through observation of one's
own self by means of thinking. In this task great assistance can be obtained
by the new method of thinking enabled and stimulated by spiritual science.
From the above examples it is evident that the spiritual-scientific
explanations are capable of shedding light on scientific descriptions of
eating disorders. We can see how the map of the soul activities described by
spiritual science corresponds to the 'map of eating disorders' given by
science – with the exception of bad eating habits which modern science don't
place among eating disorders. With the help of spiritual science we can even
understand the cases where people swing between compulsive overeating and
rejection of food. [23] This moving from one extreme to another is possible
only because in both, in sympathy and in antipathy, there exists the hidden
presence of the opposite soul force.
In comparison to this, modern science admits that "the cause of eating
disorders is not clear." [24] This
is not so surprising when we realize that modern science with its abstract
thinking is the main cause of one amongst the four groups of eating
disorders (see Eating 'Right' Foods as the Disorders of Reason). Modern
science with its inability to recognise that the human being is not only a
physical being, but also a being of soul and spirit, greatly contributes to
the spread of eating disorders in the present time. For modern theoretical
thoughts have a chilling effect on the whole life of our soul, a paralyzing
effect on our understanding of reality, and a partial deadening effect on
our living organism. [25]
For complementary perspectives see:
♦ NUTRITION FOR BODY AND SOUL
♦ FOOD AND SOUL MOOD
