Originally posted in German on 19th June 2023
by Heinz Grill
The practical development of the warmth ether
Painting by Alice Luedge
The best and most certain way to train this fine cosmic dimension of fire in the human consciousness and lead it to a radiating efficacy, happens when, on their spiritual path, students comprehend a good and clear idea with spiritual authenticity, develop this to mental pictures by thinking it and in the last instance lead it into practical application in life. Esoteric truths should become exoteric. Spiritual thoughts with true and overarching validity gain integration into life through conscious active thinking and creative action.
The idea, however, that individuals follow on their spiritual paths, needs a definite and very exact validity. Ideas must not stay fantastical, nor confused with needs or wishes, that are tied very much to physical wellbeing. Those, for example, who elevate the statement by the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach “People are what they eat” to the whole truth, cannot build a correct mental picture on this basis, as this sentence is only valid under very one-sided conditions.
Consider this sentence as a form of idea very carefully: “People are what they eat”. According to this, if someone were only to eat carrots, they would soon be condemned to become a carrot. If they drink goat’s milk and eat mainly goat’s cheese they would start to become like a goat and would soon say “Maa”! It could be easier to understand that those who eat a vegetarian diet live at least a little more peacefully than those who only eat meat. Nevertheless, in reality only a few observations can be made demonstrating a law that could actually state that what a human being represents in his or her being depends on food.
A correct mental picture could be gained more easily if those who want to approach a founded idea, that they can put into practice, include in the question of nutrition the soul or more simply said, the whole make-up of the consciousness – the thinking, feeling and willing. The way people are in their soul corresponds to the way they develop a relationship to food, to eating, to the method of farming, even to animals if they eat meat, and essentially to nature and to their fellows. They do not portray in their being a representative of the substance that they take into themselves but they shape a certain relationship to the various substances, manifestations of nature and to their whole environment and in this they live actually with the subtle feelings of their soul. People are therefore not what they eat, they are rather how they enter into relationship, how they shape their relationships in terms of content.
False mental pictures that are very materialistic and tend to affirm the dependency that people can be determined in their being by matter, ultimately exclude the essential question about development of the spiritual self and the resulting freedom. In order to learn to generate fire ether, aspirants must turn to the right ideas and ideals and work them out on their path. If they were to start from the idea that their souls are totally dependent on what they eat and they cannot determine their own relationships to freedom, they deny within themselves the possibility of becoming and being determined by a self. The false mental picture slowly creates coldness in the organism and repels the warmth that a correct perception would bring. For this reason, very dogmatic advocates of nutritional science are often narrow-minded and it is not unusual that they are afflicted by constraints. They live in an ideological idea that is materialistic but does not really encompass the whole.
So that the flowing of the warmth or fire ether can enter the interior of the body, the individual must not tolerate any materialistic ideologies, principles, no unlogical mental pictures or emotionally coloured, apparent esoteric realities. The spirit wants to unfold harmoniously into soulful subtle feelings and these can ultimately be integrated into life in a simple and natural way. A harmonious order between the world of ideas, that are spiritual in nature, the resulting ideals and meaningful mental pictures, the strengthening and growing subtle feelings and finally the harmoniously chosen actions enable the cosmic sun forces to enter more deeply into the body. The thought, if it is true, is ultimately reflected through the active creative work of the consciousness right into the cellular system. The fire force of the sun wants to rise up in human beings through the spirit or the thoughts. The truer, clearer and purer this thought is, the more it can penetrate the human body with spirit and conquer it.
False esoteric teachings or misconceived spiritual disciplines cause a growing disharmony in the relationship of a spiritual upper reality, named the self, to the lower world of existence and the body. The consciousness that mediates between an upper and a lower world, has to be disturbed through false esoteric teachings, obsessive religious views, dogmatic interpretations of beliefs and all kinds of falsely acquired judgements. These disturbances in the consciousness eventually spill over into the unconscious and they cause what is called disharmony in the astral body. However, the microcosm in human beings and the macrocosm work together through a subtle flow of warmth, and through false thinking disturbing influences come into being with a screening character, so that the forces of the sun can no longer enter and conquer the body. A great possibility for strengthening the capacity to heal lies therefore in the ability to replace false mental pictures, half-finished ideas and warped ideals with careful, clear pictures and content, and to guide life starting from these.
This work requires a good basis for dialogue. The patients need a wide variety of conversations so that they learn to eliminate false ideas through mutual awareness and can ultimately dissolve the shields they have built up within themselves against the warmth-building healing forces.
Further examples
A person cannot tolerate grains, because she read that she was a different nutritional type and grains are not good for her. The fear of eating grains increased immeasurably and she started to react against them with the most violent allergic reactions. After the mental fixation could be corrected with a conversation and this false ideology was highlighted, within a week the person could eat what she naturally desired. She was able to incorporate a real force of warmth because she was able to move freely and without fear in the way she related to food.
Another person developed a carcinoma although she ate a very healthy diet, did many purification rituals and in addition was extremely religiously inclined. However, she was expecting God’s help through prayer and for this reason became more and more ill. In a few conversations we worked out the difference between a passive devotion to an accepted God and active, spiritual enquiry. After this person gained more and more joy in the knowledge-based work, her immune system started to intervene better in the body. Her radiance became more formed, her perceptions more objective and warmth took hold of her body. For this reason, her power of self-healing considerably improved. However, as soon as she fell back into the passive expectation of God, which is nothing other than a false religious idea, she started to immediately deteriorate with lymphatic metastases. Daily, persistent and purposeful work for true mental pictures and even their practical implementation in action, can ultimately lead to a balance in life and an improvement in the immune system again.
Drawing by Johanna Wunderlich
The following small episode can illustrate a third example, that happens very often. A doctor says to a patient, that he should definitely take care of himself and should do what he finds easy and above all enjoyable. The patient had a wound that wouldn’t heal, suffered from exhaustion and frequently had an irregular and unphysiological fever. When he came to a study course in the Spiritual University, here in Naone he was given the challenge of slowly increasing his activity. After some resistance the patient started sensibly carrying out the activity. After only six days an extraordinary strengthening was noticed. His stature straightened, his physiognomy gained form and structure, his self-confidence overcame the painful stages of the trepidation in exhaustion and his temperature regulation started to occur naturally. The patient realised that he had been totally insufficiently challenged and not overworked. The false gestures of self-protection, withdrawal and holding back didn’t allow a natural harmony between the spirit, the soul life and the body. The warmth regulation could not come into force. False ideas about the ways of strengthening, and the resulting fixation on the body in the illness, had to be overcome, so that an inner bodily order, which can revive the fire element to again come into its sovereign strength.
Alongside the correction of false mental pictures there are still a number of things that individuals can do in order to strengthen the fire ether and develop its healing effect. These will be described in the next article.