Coronavirus: Confronting fear and suggestion strengthens immunity

Public lecture given by Heinz Grill on 1^st March 2020

By confronting evil, the negative things in the world, and all the phenomena that seem so unpleasant and contradictory, if we are prepared and courageous, we can straighten up inwardly and even strengthen our health. Alongside the purely physical question of health, it is important to take careful note of the dimension of human development. By carefully studying holistic human development, in its physical and also in its soul-spiritual aspects, and the way it happens in interconnected cycles and rhythms, we can place the various phenomena and forms of the world in a context. We can then also deal more easily with the seemingly so contradictory appearances of illness.

Development by means of a new beginning from the age of 30

A decisive developmental point in life is the period around the 28^th/29^th/30^th year. The growth curve through life ascends until around the age of 20. A very youthful period finally comes to an end with the fourth seven-year phase. A decisive turning point happens at around the age of 28/29 or even 30. In very general terms, it can be said that up until this 30^th year, which is also the time of Saturn’s return around the zodiac, individuals are placed into life according to their previous karma. Karma means all the qualities, good or bad, that they have brought with them from a previous life, and which they receive in these young years. At the latest with the 30^th year of life human beings can, and must or should, leave behind the life that has been shaped thus far, i.e. their karma. Unfortunately however the periods of life after the 30^th year are often predestined to misfortune, so that people really seem freer from fear in their youth, and perhaps even more independent than in any of the decades to come.

What are the mysterious processes that happen specifically during this section of life following the 30^th year? The teaching of yoga speaks of the so-called energy centres, the chakras. What is now taking effect is precisely the tension of transition from the fourth to the fifth centre, from the so-called anahata chakra to vishuddha chakra. Yoga teaches that the chakras develop alongside an active training and also through the natural demands of life. Vishuddha chakra is described as the “pure centre”. My book „Die 7 Lebensjahrsiebte und die 7 Chakren“ (not available in English) describes how it is imperative that this phase of life, following the 30^th year, brings a new beginning, and how human nature simultaneously creates the capacity for detachment from the past.

In normal life, both aspects belong together: the ability to free ourselves from something old, or an inherited potential that is no longer useful, and the ability to introduce something new into life, like the development of new vision with a new power to form ideas. This development of greater prospects, which transcend our genetic capacities, is the task that begins quite particularly with the 28^th/29^th/30^th year of life. It is in a sense inherent on our nature, one could say it lives in the need of every individual soul. Very conservative forms of living, and very strong, fixed attachments, which everyone knows, pull people constantly backwards and want to chain them back into the karmic situation. A degree of courage to look into the future, bold thinking, and also a mind that becomes freer to observe, become crucial the 30^th year of life. Human beings will literally grow up again, in a new way.

Young people form ideas in a different way from adults

How do people form ideas about a situation? How do they form a picture about the state of the world and about world phenomena? How do they form a view about other people? And finally we can ask how they develop an evaluation of themselves? These questions are actually significant for every human being, spiritually oriented or not. If we want to achieve a better and hopeful new beginning, and overcome our old potential for attachment with its suffering, we must train our thinking. From the age of 30, human beings are no longer gifted with things so easily.

An idea, or mental picture, can be shaped by looking at an object, or an idea can engross the mind through so-called associations, through memories, without reflecting and without our own activity of looking. In any event we will not achieve a good power to shape mental pictures with a mind taken over by subjectivity. It can, and naturally should, also happen that through looking at something for a long time, thinking consciously and logically, and forming an objective relationship, people acquire the power to come to a perception that is true to reality. On the other hand, through suggestive intuition, through insinuations made by our era, they can attain a kind of so-called opinion. Is an opinion a real idea, a mental picture actively derived through objective observation? The opinions formed through suggestion, which today govern the world, are naturally not to be confused with an ability to mentally picture. In our time opinions are far reaching and wide ranging. In the face of suggestion and opinion-forming systems, it is rare for an individual to acquire a real, independent seeing of a matter, and to dare to think it further in its logical consequences. However, this is demanded by our development precisely at the age of around 30, for human beings must detach from grasping, binding structures of the past for their positive development.

If individuals are to become independent, to develop a self-governing potential in the sense that they learn to guide their lives freely and can make decisions freely, this free creation of mental pictures through objective looking is absolutely essential. It is therefore important for their development that people carefully, indeed fundamentally, consider the period of their 28^th, 29^th, 30^th years of life and the tasks it sets.

How, and with what degree of freedom, do people take charge of their own development? Do they govern their lives by training themselves to look at things independently, by laboriously developing their capacity for judgement through conscious observation? Or are they governed to some degree by the emotions of the time and the overwhelming forces of fear which call up their inner attachments? The insinuations of our time, with their suggestive elements, and the attachments that people carry within themselves, usually belong together like two siblings. The inquisitorial advice given by many sect advisers¹⁾ In Germany the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches use “sect commissioners” to investigate some minority religious groups and warn the public of alleged dangers from these groups. today is only possible in the context of people’s potential for attachment and its resulting irrational fear. The era of inquisitions ought to be past, yet reason is often determined by people’s fear of forfeiting their attachments. Through this link between a suggestive mechanism and people’s inner attachment structures, those who think and are oriented differently can be skilfully attacked. Marital conflicts suddenly make their way to the sect advisor and the guilt is projected onto a spiritual teacher. The potential for attachment enters into a kind of unspoken, unseen symbiosis with the insinuations topical at the time.

Human beings need to establish an observation of things, an independent capacity for judgement, using the senses, using the organs of perception, and using ordered thinking that develops into a logical idea. Only then can they quite specifically counteract their potential for attachment. Past influences from their upbringing must now no longer determine the future. It is interesting that precisely this process demands a constant, highly definitive confrontation with the so-called evil in the world. Strangely, the inclination of human beings is to want to protect themselves and to save themselves from the so-called evil, one of the most disastrous reactions there is.

The current situation with the appearance of Coronavirus

How clearly developed a form of thinking void of relationship and based on withdrawal and security already is, can be seen in the way viruses, epidemics and bacteria are dealt with. Schools are being closed and discussions are being held regarding border closures; quarantine measure are being put in place and people seem to be buying every provision possible for disinfection, sterilisation and further protection from attack by the virus. No-one looks the enemy in the eye, stands face to face with it, but filled with fear people are inclined to retreat from the enemy as if into a trench. The term virus always seems threatening. The outbreak of an epidemic of this nature seems incalculable.

Those who consider more closely the current measures proposed in the fight against the virus, cannot fail to notice that fear persists as a far greater hazard than the thing itself. Gripping fear to this extent, setting free unconscious reactions, envelops people like poisoned air. In fact the very reactions that arise mean that individuals do not bring about the courage to use their own potential and ability in order to think, picture and judge things objectively. The instinctive reaction to protect oneself in reality pushes the potential of the human mind into an abysmal depth, and truly binds it back into the world of karma, enclosing it to a greater or lesser extent in old structures.²⁾ From a physiological perspective, coronavirus can contribute significantly to lung cancer later on. Not immediately, but a few years later the weakness caused by the lung inflammation can create a predisposition towards this serious illness. The fear of the inflammation that exists today is altogether very unproductive. It is precisely the fear that prevents people from developing the real strength for healthy immunity.

The virus and it’s physiological significance

The coronavirus is a virus and must be distinguished from a bacterium. To the lay person’s understanding a virus seems far more threatening than other germs. A virus does not have its own metabolism but makes use of a host organism, and intervenes into the control systems of the host’s DNA. It is a parasite, an ingenious scrounger, which needs symbiosis with the organisms of human cells. The secret of all viruses is that they multiply in the cell system, and without this cell system they would not be capable of life. They attain a kind of foreign control over the body’s organ apparatus by bringing about their own protein processes.

Also of interest is the medical standpoint that there are fast working antibiotics against bacteria, but no effective remedies for viruses. In this sense, there is a great difference between bacterial and viral infections. It is also interesting that viruses were discovered at around the same time as foot and mouth disease. That was in around 1898/1900. This discovery however was still very enigmatic as a virus cannot simply been seen as a separate organism. It is like a phantom entity, an organism incapable of life and yet triggering a pathology. Even today, viruses are harder to detect through diagnostic methods than bacteria, as they can usually be ascertained only indirectly through reaction processes.³⁾ Viruses have been technically detectable since 1940.

If we consider the fact that a virus, which had never appeared before, occurs quite out of the blue, then the question easily arises as to whether this virus was not perhaps created from biological warfare, which is known to exist. One might be treading on the thin ice of conspiracy theory with this question. The result of spiritual research is actually that this virus was created, and experimented with, by human hand. It became active in the world and could be spread very easily as an epidemic. According to the news, it first appeared in China and from there it gradually spread. What actually are the effects on the inner, deeper situation of human existence?

The consequence that is not so easily seen, and which breathes in the background like a suffocating gas, is that those confronted with the event – and that is more or less everyone – are driven into a situation of separation. Just as the virus attains a foreign control over the cell organism, to the same extent people’s emotions begin to draw back into a state of strange, fearful reservation. Natural contact, plans for the future and joyful, emotional behaviour become inhibited. What kind of hidden wisdom lies in the spread of an epidemic through a virus, and the surge of endless anxiety? The causal meaning is often shown in the result, for whatever lies inside at the beginning, with time turns to face outwards. The motive cannot remain hidden forever. Human beings suffer most when there are rifts in their relationships and a lack of mutual sensitivity. The intervention into people’s relationships, which happens through the power of control systems, media and false forms of religion, is the motive at the start of this whole chain. The effects spread out unconsciously, and it is fear that castigates people. If individuals were in natural and idyllic relationships, they would need fewer dependencies, less consumerism, and would also have more time to independently realise their individual potential. By becoming more isolated and weaker, they are more reliant on aid structures, on therapeutic support and lastly on the state powers that make regulations. The virus, which is currently surging, or threatening to surge, skilfully leads people’s attention in a strange, subjective direction and consequently the far deeper-lying conditions of the times are overlooked.

The question as to whether there is a consciously thought-up action behind the phenomenon of coronavirus, in the same way that someone thinks up the invention of a machine, or whether it is a matter of intrinsic mechanisms that automatically make use of humanity, is naturally interesting. If one makes human beings responsible for the invention of the virus, one becomes a conspiracy theorist, and if one succumbs to the belief that the virus is a product of nature, one remains a well-adjusted citizen. Fundamentally, pathologies only come about when there are greater displacements in the entire ecological and humanitarian equilibrium.

An illness, therefore, does not come about through coincidence, but can be seen as a reaction commensurate with a specific situation. Whether the virus was actually spread through evil human intention, or whether it occurred as a natural consequence of present conditions, is not necessarily of the greatest importance for a more expanded judgement of the situation.

The moral and ecological imbalances that exist in humanity have been around since time immemorial, for example between the rich and the poor. There are people in the ambitious country of Germany who still have an above average workload in order to be able to survive economically. But there are also people who have become rich, seemingly by chance or through inheritance, who have not earned their money honestly. These people suffer from the illness of boredom and of complete meaninglessness. There is a kind of pathology in human beings which, because of an emptiness, needs to harm others. It is also actually true that there is a fraternity of people who, because of their own failings, take joy in watching others suffer. They carry pathological traits, if not psychopathic tendencies; they are in a sense sadistic, without being outwardly violent. However, by enjoying watching events like those of our present time, and feeling pleasure in the fate of others, they are the initiating cause of a grave situation of human suffering.

The virus controls and weakens human health via the body

Looking at the whole cycle, these people put forces into the entire cosmos and these result in entities, which in turn unleash the structure that makes politics go higgledy piggledy or topsy turvy. Particularly because of this chaos, politicians come up with all sorts of excuses and methods to lead a reality that is already lost into one that is even more lost, without people noticing. Because there are ways today of diverting people from reality and even controlling them, like for example releasing a virus as a biological weapon, a strengthening of individuals can be prevented and new dependencies can be promoted. The virus however is actually as if symptomatic. It takes over a kind of control right into the genetic structures and human beings themselves are at its mercy. These infections will attain a great magnitude in different parts of the world. They can be serious, mild or even silent. The peculiarity of coronavirus is that it has a form of transmission that can only be monitored by taking mucosal swabs from individuals even before they have a fever, and testing these with various reagents, as it can already be infectious during the incubation period.⁴⁾ Diseases are known in which people have been infected by a carrier who had as yet no visible, or only very mild symptoms. However to test everyone for the presence of the coronavirus is simply not possible. Even when measures to isolate the sick in China probably had the effect of stemming the disease, and the number of new infections reduced, isolation and mass testing would not be sufficient to prevent further spread of the virus.

The cure that a virus needs would be a form of new beginning in one’s consciousness. As long as the virus penetrates into the cells as a parasite, and takes over its regulatory processes with repercussions, the health of individuals is weakened and they consequently have to protect themselves and withdraw. One of the problems in the pathology of viral illnesses is caused by the proteins that are formed by the immune system itself. In coronavirus pneumonia the small airways become blocked by fibroplastic plugs, in other words protein with a pathological action. Patients usually remain very reluctant to create real perspectives and free mental pictures, which would be necessary for recovery and would strengthen the immune system, and this leads to additional problems. The whole process of synthesising proteins ought to be controlled significantly through the mind, so that the virus can be overcome within.

When human beings exist in such a state of boredom and emptiness that they use bank notes merely as bath water and immerse themselves in these with seeming delight, then it is not surprising if these people exert such a negative inspiration on the whole of world creation, that they trigger extremely bad political actions. Actually it is not the top politicians who are the real cause of the virus, but it is the most degenerate individuals who have completely lost their own centre and find joy in sadism.

Confronting evil and strengthening the immune system

From these reflections it becomes clear that confronting negative structures, evil intentions, can lead people to stand upright. The immune system needs confrontation with the negative, and must learn to rally its forces to the extent that it has something which can oppose these psychological forces of the time. Individuals should summon up the courage to practise observing for a longer period of time, for example with the question: “What really is the whole fear factory in this world?”. If they begin to assimilate what they have observed into concepts from different perspectives, then they acquire the ability to exteriorise whatever streams in onto them daily, i.e. the whole suggestive potential that wants to inundate and alienate them. They can move it from inside them to the outside. Forming good mental pictures and confronting the negative forces can lead to the proverb “A danger foreseen is half avoided”. By forming good mental pictures, by developing the skill of looking, and by training proper recognition with a most detailed perceptive capacity, the things that unconsciously absorb and possess people will be moved from inside to the outside. Immune reactions follow the same path. The intolerable psychological potential that people take on, the lies of the time and the indigestible suggestions, no longer occupy them, but are only breathed in momentarily and, with the forming of a judgement and the capacity for insight, are freely breathed out.

How does the immune system work? Practically speaking, the immune system always works to preserve the maximum integrity of the human being. This human integrity means that individuals are never controlled by something foreign, but that they learn to integrate something appropriate for their development into life.⁵⁾ In contrast to this, the conventional definition of a cure is “recovery or relief from a disease” (see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cure ). The idea of development does not appear to be taken into account. The concept of integrity is very appropriate for the immune system. One could make the mistake of saying that integrity is a kind of conservation, in which human beings return to old and seemingly secure structures. For their development they always need to establish a healthy skill in observing, and actively shed subjective traits. They learn to develop judgements and insights which they cannot create based on their genetic make-up, but which they develop by virtue of their confrontation with the various phenomena of reality. They are then better able to fight off a pathogen or stand up to it. How do human beings form their ideas, their mental pictures? Do they form them on the basis of real observation, or do they adopt the suggestions that are insinuated to them, and think that these are their own thoughts?

To cure a viral infection, the capacity that begins to develop at the age of 30 must be used.⁶⁾ There are a number of viruses that can only affect people in later years. Individuals learn to put their various circumstances in order independently. In esoteric language, one would say they learn to order their astral body. When the astral body is ordered, then what does not belong inside moves outside, and what should, in a healthy arrangement, enter from outside is brought inside, and in this way people develop a healthy integrity. As long as the virus is reactive via the body, it is difficult for people to develop a free vision of the future. They need a greatly expanded activity of thinking and picturing, which is not formed from the bodily fears and emotions, but from a free activity of the mind itself.

In this sense, confronting evil, examining the adversary powers, is an important prerequisite, for through healthy observation, what does not belong inside is directed outwards, and what does in fact belong inside becomes reorganised and internalised. To achieve healthy integrity, inside and outside must learn to meet in the right relationship.

Evil should not take possession of people. They should promptly bring the immorality, lies and the malice of materialism back outside. When they succeed in independently and autonomously bringing out the evil by looking at it, the evil begins to flounder. Lies have their particular, insidious character of determining people when they are unconsciously accepted. Pure self-governance, directed with a good and objective mental picture, strengthens the activity of the immune system. This activity applies not only to pathogens. Lies that are made outwardly visible through recognition also begin to flounder. It is like putting ice in the sun. Just as a virus works internally, insidiously like a parasite, and when the person is weak produces foreign protein, which takes the upper hand with toxic consequences, to the same degree human beings today become swamped by suggestions, and led into a situation of dependency. A lie cannot tolerate an objective glance, for when such a glance with its sovereignty approaches it, the insidious reaction is prevented. What does it mean to look at something? Looking is only ever possible when the object being observed is positioned face to face, in an objective form, and this means it has to be brought from inside to the outside.

Confronting so-called evil, immorality, on the one hand presents a very great challenge to human beings, but on the other hand it holds the potential to boost the phagocytic immune system intensively. When human beings succeed in forming ideas or mental pictures based on objective looking, they transcend the boundaries of their own bodies, and slowly but surely develop the qualities they need for an autonomously determined and free life. Over-reaction of the immune system, which has a destructive effect on the organs, is also then less likely to occur, as is passive exhaustion of the cellular defence mechanisms. It is not viruses that should control human cells, but the mature, trained and free human mind. This kind of healing potential ought to be promoted widely for the future.

For more on this topic, see also the lecture Strengthening the immune system by confronting evil.