Logic and principles of health XI –
Soul-spiritual development does not proceed according to mechanistic criteria

Originally posted in German on 3^rd September 2024

by Heinz Grill

If a person wants to observe development in connection with spirituality in coherent forms, this must not stay with one-sided enquiry, that only concerns the material plane and its detailed analyses. Every individual wants to discover and realise suitable steps forward in his or her personal development, also others and the world as a whole wants to come into a productive progressivity. The obstacles to a positive response to development mainly arise through one’s own subjectivity, for example through false feelings, failure to take morally good steps in life, weaknesses and one-sidedness and, in addition, there may even be influences that come from societal systems, from environmental stresses and adverse conditions of relationship and provoke illness. Doctors, alternative health practitioners, psychotherapists or general practitioners, as well as patients, must illuminate the question of development from different angles so that, amongst all the fears that accompany illness, a conscious view emerges that is objective and as free as possible. This work constitutes an activity of research that, therefore, seems relatively difficult because it requires a good knowledge of both physical, as well as, soul and ultimately even spiritual development.

How can the question of development be described in a simple and still characteristic way? If the example of a rope is taken, that is bundled and knotted together, the calm unravelling of the knots can be seen as bringing about a development. But how can the term development be understood from a soul and spiritual point of view? In that people, for example, deal with their traumas and recognise emotional, reactive patterns, resolving them through conscious behaviour and avoiding further new knots forming that creep in out of habit, they are able to form a healthy analysis of themselves and contribute towards development. Nevertheless, the human soul cannot be simply freed from the tangles like a rope, because the soul needs an inflow of new and ensuing content related possibilities. In fact, it is a very common experience that the normal attachments and falsely acquired ideas, with their many emotional patterns cannot really be dissolved unless there is a streaming in of new, spiritually imbued content. A new horizon, which is formed through the human consciousness, makes it easier to relativise and even dissolve old entanglements and emotional states of attachment. With every illness that takes hold of a person, the crucial question therefore arises of finding greater aims and perspectives and with this of a healthy activation of the inner potential of the creative forces of thinking and feeling. This consciously decided step to a new orientation or at least a next learning step should not be missing in any engagement with illness and conflict.

As a rule, illness has the particular characteristic of subjective delusion and deception. As soon as someone is taken hold of by an infection or fixated back on the body by pain in the musculoskeletal system, the thinking and the feeling starts, in a completely natural way, to become subjective and to steer the awareness within the given symptoms. Every illness throws people back on themselves, so to speak, binds them to their physical circumstances and impairs a natural, pleasant state of relationship. So what can individuals now do, when they are caught up in this circulus vitiosus, this vicious cycle?

A first step in dealing with the symptoms of an illness begins with efforts to objectively comprehend the actual circumstances that exist. For example, how severe is the illness really? Are the fears objectively appropriate for the actual symptoms or are they exaggerated? Fear of being ill is a normal reaction, this should, however, not be exaggerated and at the same time not be absent. With some cancer diagnoses and sometimes also with multiple sclerosis, there is a lack of feelings that are true to reality and therefore those affected do not take their diagnosis seriously enough. An objective view as to whether it is serious or not should always be sought in discussions with a doctor or an alternative health practitioner. They can break the first cycle of the circulus vitiosus or in general of the subjective, bound phenomenon of illness.

Out of this awareness of the objectivity towards oneself, new life forces can awaken that are no longer so caught up in the circulus vitiosus. The observation of others who are ill should also be objective and without either joining the complaining or shying away in fear. It is not meant that those who practise these objective observations should become hard on themselves or their fellow human beings, but rather that a space should be created with new thoughts and feelings that help the patient out of the various emotions and attachments and opens up new perspectives. The objectively valid mental picture even makes people more open to relationship and subsequently leads to a healthier awareness with freer feelings.

The following exercise can be practised by anyone, no matter what stage of life they are in:

Picture a geometric solid figure, for example a tetrahedron, vividly before you and remain attentive for five minutes with sustained mental alertness. The tetrahedron is a form that can be relatively easily pictured, if it has previously been recognised through sensory perception. The exercise should be done without it being forced and yet without major distraction.

Then take your own body with the illness as a corresponding observation and also remain for five minutes in the perceived and observed mental picture. After both these observations and concentration exercises you should take a break.

In a third stage, after sufficient distance has been taken from the exercise, the patient considers the difference and the quality of the two different chosen observations. The attention and concentration on the tetrahedron should have taken place for the patient with relatively neutral interest, without sympathy and without antipathy, and thus open a very free sphere, whereas, the observation of the illness situation is very strongly connected with personal feelings, for example, with the wish for health and therefore is much more likely to remain subjectively bound. Nevertheless, if the exercise is seen in relation to the former one, it can release the first objective observation processes.

The question of development is significant in these exercises and their comparison. In all the processes and different activities in which people develop a free consciousness, they can regenerate more easily and gain new energy or in other words new ether forces. In subjectivity, which signals an imprisonment of the consciousness through fears and physical attachment, the free energy that could follow cannot flow.

For this reason, it will be shown in the following considerations how the consciousness can be attuned to a new orientation in situations of illness.