Page 27 - Winter2008

of partners, with my choice of houses? What is it God, and then boom, it’s all over, here’s the finished product. The other is
that I chose that has led to my butt itching? Or to the Darwinian theory of evolution, a slow evolution by chance, without
my sadness in the winter? Is it because I believed any choices, without any direction, from slime mold up to humans, step
the dermatologist who said I should never go out by step, billions of years. Those are the two models we have to choose
in the sun? Or that I believed the doctors who said from.
I should never eat animal fat because it is full of However, when you look into the world, you will find some phenomena
cholesterol? that cannot fit into either a “by chance” or an “intelligent design” model.
It turns out that vitamin D is made from Steiner proposes a third model: gradual evolution through conscious intel-
sunlight interacting with the ligent design. The premise is
cholesterol in the fat of our that life forms were created at
skin. So if you choose to be- certain times in such a way that
lieve your doctors, avoiding certain functions were actually
the sun and animal fats, you’re cast out from the human being
going to have low vitamin D into nature and exist there as
and you’re going to be season- self-contained entities that we
ally affectively sad because call an animal or a plant or a
of the consequences of that mineral. It’s like saying, “In
choice. Such an answer might the beginning was human be-
make us feel bad— like being ing,” or “In the beginning was
stood up on a date— but ulti- everything.”
mately it is the kind of answer A good analogy is a sculpture.
that satisfies us in this Age of What did Michelangelo say
Consciousness. about the creation of the statue
Unfortunately, if you in- of David? “The statue of David,
sist on answers like this from the form, exists inside the mar-
your physician, most of them ble and I took the extraneous
will be very frustrated because bits away and the form emerged
they don’t think like this. They as the statue of David.” That’s
don’t have a conception of the world that’s based exactly what Michelangelo said. Amazingly, that’s what Rudolf Steiner
on people choosing and accepting the conse- said about the evolution— a kind of reverse evolution— or the creation
quences of their choosing. Instead, they blame of the human being.
most disease on germs or genes, something we
can’t see and presumably have no control over. IN MAN, IN NATURE
Think of the digitalis plant— think of it as one chip of marble that
A FRAME OF REFERENCE falls to the ground during the creation-evolution of man and grows into
Every doctor who’s working with patients the foxglove plant. At the same time on an inner plane, the human heart
has a frame of reference that he or she uses to is formed. That’s a pretty wacky idea but that’s what Steiner said. Steiner
understand the manifestations of a person’s ill- said that we will know that the foxglove was formed in parallel with the
ness. For the vast majority today, the frame of formation of the human being because when you look into the human be-
reference is one of materialistic science, which ing, you will find the remnant or essence of digitalis still remaining there.
leads to a Latin diagnosis and treatment with a And he is correct because the human heart actually has digitalis receptors,
pharmaceutical prescription. which are like locks. Digoxin is produced in our adrenal glands. It goes
My frame of reference is inspired by the into the blood and works like a key on the locks in the heart. Amazingly,
work of Rudolf Steiner. It is a frame of reference this chemical is only otherwise produced in nature by the foxglove plant.
based on deep philosophical questions— some- This fact is a very difficult thing to explain through either natural selection
thing frowned on by conventional medicine. or intelligent design.
People living today basically have two con- Likewise our bodies produce feel-good chemicals that are also pro-
ventional philosophical views to choose from. duced in nature by plants like marijuana and the opium poppy. This is one
One is the notion of intelligent design, namely of the most amazing medical discoveries of the last twenty years. The
that plants, animals and humans were created by endorphins, the so-called feel-good chemicals in our bodies, are the same

WINTER 2008 Wise Traditions 27