Two Views--the healer and the earth

1. Dr Olaf Koob is a medical doctor in Germany who has lectured and written extensively on health and illness from an anthroposophical approach. Here a recent quote from the magazine Info3, September 2007, translated for this blog:

"The perspective on health is very much reduced if regarded solely as a mechanical/physical phenomenon. There is so much more to it than simply taking a pill. For me it is too one-sided if healthy thoughts and feelings about man and the world, destiny and the essence of illness are lacking. Sometimes I tell my patients: "As far as I'm concerned, the meeting between patient and physician is like a kind of soup. We both cook it, but you, the patient, do most of the cooking. And the medicine is added like salt or spice.
"There is a saying by Rudolf Steiner, from 1922, that in future human life forces will have become so 'woody' that remedies, even if they are the right ones, will be less effective because the body can no longer react to them. So we must develop totally different modalities, for example by prescribing art so patients can become alive in their feelings and progress from a fixed to a more flexible way of thinking. This can then work back on their symptoms.

"I am always preoccupied with the question: how can we arrive at a view of life that is healing for us? And that includes the physician. If I imagine I were bound exclusively to a materialistic world view and had only chemical substances at my disposal, I would become impoverished in soul and spirit."

2. In 1924 Rudolf Steiner was asked by a group of farmers to give a course on agriculture which introduced a new approach to farming. Coming back to Dornach, Switzerland, he reported on the course, and said the following, among other remarks:
"We began by discussing the basic principles and relationships, which are especially relevant nowadays because, under the influence of our modern philosophy of materialism, it is agriculture--believe it or not--that has deviated furthest from any truly rational principles. Indeed, not many people know that during the last few decades the agricultural products on which our life depends have degenerated extremely rapidly...This degeneration can be confirmed statistically and is the subject of discussion in agricultural organizations, and yet it seems that nothing can be done about it. Even (regular) farmers...can calculate in approximately how many decades their products will have degenerated to such an extent that they can no longer serve as human nourishment. It will certainly be within this century. This is a cosmic issue as well as an earthly issue. Precisely from the example of agriculture, we can see how necessary it is to derive forces from the spirit, forces that are as yet quite unknown. This is necessary not only for the sake of improving agriculture, but so that human life on Earth can continue at all, since as physical beings we depend on what the earth provides..."

We are now in the new century and food has been 'propped up' by agrichemical means, with genetic engineering as another crutch. So it is still feeding us albeit how nourishing it is can be questioned. As far as we know, no one in agribusiness circles has managed to look to the influences and interconnectedness of the cosmos, or if they have they don't talk about it.

Meanwhile biodynamic farmers have gone to the corners of the earth, showing how to renew the land and grow living vegetables. If you look, you will find them, and if you step into their farms and gardens you will immediately see a difference and experience the incredible healthy atmosphere there. So here are two instances of 'woody' thinking being refocused and made flexible.