Spiritual medicine

"...This expulsion of animality in the course of evolution, is linked with another potential faculty: — it is amazing but true, that man in his organism actually produces primary light. In our upper man we really generate light independently. In the lower sphere we possess those defensive organs against complete animalisation which are necessary to enable the upper sphere to produce original light. There we have one of the profound differences between man and the animal world; the animals share the other higher spiritual processes equally with mankind; but they are not capable of generating sufficient light in their interior.
Here I must touch on what can only be called a really painful chapter of our modern natural science. However painful, this chapter cannot be concealed from you, for the simple reason that it is essential to the understanding of human relationships with the extra-human world The main obstacle to an objective assessment of the operation in the human organism of substances in general, and curative substances in particular, is the law of the so-called conservation of energy, and the law of the conservation of matter. These laws have been enunciated as universal laws of nature, but are in absolute opposition to the process of human evolution. For instance, the whole nutritive and digestive function is not what it is assumed to be in the materialist conception. This takes the view that the substances in question — let us take carbon as our example — were quite external to ourselves, before being taken in as food; this is consumed, and passed on, though modified in our organism, and re-absorbed eventually so that we carry with us, distributed though it may be, the matter taken from the world outside us. And this same matter we carry about within us. There is no difference, in this theory, between the carbon in the external world, and the carbon within our organism. But this theory is mistaken. For there is within the human organism the potentiality of completely destroying extra-human carbon through the action of the lower sphere; of expelling this substance from space and then re-creating it anew independently through reaction. Yes, it is true; within us there is a crucible for the creation of extra-human substances and at the same time a power to destroy them. Of course, the science of today will not admit this; not being able to think of the substances in any other way than as a wanderer, in microscopic amounts (restless as Ahasuerus). It knows nothing of the life of matter, of its origin, of its death, nor of how substances die and are re-born, within our human organism. This reanimation of carbon is connected with what manifests as the generation of light in normal human beings. This internal generation of light meets the operation of the light from the external world. Our upper organic sphere is designed so as to enable external light and internal light to counteract one another, to operate alternately; and it is the main factor in our human constitution that we have the power of holding these two sources of light apart, so that they only work upon each other, without being welded into one another. Let us suppose that we are standing exposed to the light from the external world, receiving it either through our eyes, or through our whole skin. There is a screen, so to speak, between the internal, inherent light within us and the light that operates from without. This external light has actually only the value of an activator for the generation of internal light; thus in letting light pour upon us from outside we activate ourselves to produce inner light..."

Rudolf Steiner 1920
Dornach, Switzerland