Page 28 - Winter2008

as those produced by certain plants. If you are a process just keeps going round and round and
thinking person, if you are truly conscious, these Ms. Smith ends up with sluggish bile flow, pain
discoveries will require you to engage in some when she eats, difficulty digesting fats and maybe
deep philosophical considerations. even gall stones. You can see how this happens.
You can see that whole process from conscious
WHAT IS ILLNESS? choice into the biochemistry into physiological
We now come to the question, “What is an consequence into pathology— that is, gall stones
illness?” According to this line of thinking, an that you can see on an ultrasound.
illness is a situation where at a particular place in Then she goes to the doctor and says, “I have
your life, you need to be reunited with something pain when I eat fat and the pain is here.” He looks
in the natural world outside yourself, say, with the and does an ultrasound and says, “You have gall
digitalis plant, for your future health and evolu- stones.” For the thinking patient, this is an unsat-
tion to progress. The disease represents an inner isfactory answer because you knew you probably
need for reunification with something that was had gall stones. The conventional solution is to
cast out of you into the world, and you need to take your gall bladder out. So the physician takes
have it brought back. So the process of healing Jane’s gall bladder out— but she’s not restored.
is a kind of reunification process, reunification There’s no reunification, there’s no learning, no
with something we prematurely lost as a human change in diet. There’s just more to the vicious
being. In this way of thinking, the world out there cycle because people who have their gall bladder
was created as a reservoir for us so that when we out have a higher incidence of cancer of the colon.
need to be reunited, it exists out there in a form That’s because the bile doesn’t flow properly. So
that we can use. That’s a really different view of taking Jane’s gall bladder out is a very unsatisfy-
medicine! ing solution for her.
Let me give you some examples of the
process of conscious choice, leading to repercus- TRUE HEALING
In this way of sions, that is illness, and ending up with a need for If you want to restore healthy bile flow, what
thinking, the reunification. In other words: see the world out do you do? There are two actions necessary. One

world out there, choose something from the world, reunite is to make different choices, which means eat-
ing healthy fats, eating healthy cholesterol, and
with it, make all better. That’s the process.
there was Let’s take the case of a Jane Smith who therefore making healthy bile acids which help
created as a makes a conscious choice to consume a lowfat digest the fats properly. The other is to look for
reservoir for diet and to use margarine instead of butter. She a substance out there in the world that represents
chooses this way of eating because she thinks bile flow.
us so that it is the proper, conscious choice for a human Steiner often described plants as three-fold,
when we being. Then, as the years go by, she becomes flipped-upside-down versions of the human be-
need to be overweight and sluggish, with sluggish thyroid ing. The human body has three main areas, the
function, and she ends up with sluggish gall blad-
head, the heart and lungs, and the belly or meta-
reunited, der function. bolic area where digestion and reproduction take
it exists out At this point we can discuss biochemistry. place. Plants are organized in the same way, only
there in We know that we make bile acids (also called bile flipped upside down. The nerve or head pole of
salts) out of cholesterol and healthy fats. If you the plant is in the roots, where the plant senses
a form lead a life of eating trans fats, if you eat processed environmental conditions and takes in nutrients;
that we can transformed fats which don’t have the right chem- the breathing is in the leaves; and the metabolic-

use. That’s a istry, you will end up with bile acids that are too reproductive pole is in the flowers.
thick and sludgy. As the years go by, the bile gets
One plant that stimulates the healthy flow
really thicker and thicker, and Jane Smith’s body gets of bile is called Chelidonium major, which has
different into a kind of negative feedback system because a bilious fluid in the roots. According to what’s
view of the bile salts digest fats. You have weird bile called the doctrine of signatures, you can see from
salts, you don’t digest the fats right. Therefore, the way a plant grows, and from what the plant
medicine! it’s harder to make healthy bile salts. The whole does differently from other plants, what this plant
28 Wise Traditions WINTER 2008