Steiner and anthroposophy
" Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, which guides the spirit in man towards the spirit of the universe. It is born in individuals as a need of the heart and of feeling and finds justification as an attempt to satisfy an inner need. It can only be understood by those who find there what they themselves feel the need to discover. Therefore, anthroposophists are those who feel an essential need of life, certain questions about human nature and the universe, just as one feels hunger and thirst "- Rudolf Steiner, Principal Thoughts of Anthroposophy, 1904.
To overcome the abstractions of modern Western philosophy, and partly referring to Goethe, a master of knowledge of nature, and partly to Madame Blavatsky's theosophy, Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the objective existence - and therefore objectively studied - of the spiritual world . His address of thought is called anthroposophy, that is "sapiential knowledge of the human being": and the human being is the organic synthesis of different levels - body, soul and spirit (which is not a level among others, but the very unity of the Whole). Furthermore, the spiritual consciousness of the individual, which is of the same nature as the divine, is enveloped in four sheaths or bodies : the physical or gross body, the etheric body, the astral or soul body and the egoic body or Io. The world of the spirit is in constant evolution, and every metamorphosis of it affects man as a limited living being but also oriented to an increasingly transpersonal and free awareness.
Steiner maintains that man is a tripartite being, composed of body (the organic set of natural and vital processes), soul (the median and mediating part, seat of imagination, emotions etc.) and spirit (the creative spark and dynamic linking the human and the divine). Precisely for this reason, any therapy that does not want to be reduced to the repair of a broken machine (the body intended as a purely material aggregate of organs and functions) must be holistic, that is, addressing man as an integral synthesis (in Greek holon ) of his three levels: hence the emphasis on healing methods that involve the senses, the aesthetic perception and the spiritual conscience as a whole (we recall in particular eurythmy, a pedagogical art in which interiority - feelings, emotions, thoughts - is translated into symbolic gestures similar to dance). That proposal is a brief smattering of anthroposophy. But what is medical anthroposophy?
Within medical anthroposophy
Also defined as 'pseudo-medicine', medical anthroposophy, a medical branch of the philosophical corpus of anthroposophy, belongs to pseudosciences, as it is not based on an experimental method, the basis of modern science. The Steiner principles, in fact, do not contain any scientific basis and are comparable to metaphysics, while the pharmacological preparations have the same scientific value as homeopathic preparations.
Traditional drugs considered harmful to health (antibiotics and vaccines) are used only in exceptional cases. The tendency of anthroposophy is to prefer, for medicaments, natural substances (taken from minerals, plants and animal organs). They are therefore drugs that can be traced back to homeopathic products even if, unlike the latter, they are produced in liquid and not solid form. Exclusive drug treatment often proves to be inadequate for treating diseases. For anthroposophy, these involve, in addition to the component component of the subject, also the psychic and spiritual component. Therefore the treatments of art therapy, eurythmy and psychology are of fundamental importance. The patient will undergo these therapies under the supervision of their doctor. In anthroposophic medicine clinics great interest is given to what is able to ensure the patient a state of general well-being, be it physical or mental. Thus, among those definable as anthroposophical therapies, there are baths, massages, special diets and walks.
No to vaccines and antibiotics. One of the controversial points of medical anthroposophy is the rejection, not always indiscriminate (and actually shared by other "natural" medicines), of typical tools of modern medicine, such as vaccinations (mandatory and recommended), antibiotics and antipyretics, which according to Rudolf Steiner violently intervene in human physiology disturbing the work of Nature, which is the true doctor of itself. Although it seems that children raised according to these principles are less vulnerable to allergies, these are positions that should not be taken literally: otherwise a dogmatism would be replaced by another.
Euritmia. Eurythmy is considered an art form of movement. It was created by Rudolf Steiner and his wife, Marie von Sivers . Eurythmy should not be confused with dance or gymnastics. In its artistic component, it is practiced by soloists or by groups as part of scenic representations whose purpose is to make the laws of speech and music visible. In addition to this intent, eurythmy is of considerable importance in the therapeutic field, as part of anthroposophical medicine . The development of therapeutic eurythmy began in 1921, when Steiner gave a course for doctors. Through a continuous reformulation and thanks also to constant medical-anthroposophical research, eurythmy becomes a fundamental component of the anthroposophic medicine treatment systems.
In conclusion, it must be said that many of the insights and prescriptions of Rudolf Steiner's medicine are found almost identical in other therapeutic traditions worthy of respect, to which conventional doctors could at least look at with curiosity and openness that suits the men of science.
