The science of the Son

Recitation in Arnhem on 20 November 2018

Part 4

That is a development that we have to go through. But the next step, after this diving into science and the longing for the lost spirituality, is to spiritualise the intelligence that we have been given as human beings. Then we will return in a rational way to occult science, occult philosophy, occult physiology, occult chemistry and physics.

It is clear that there is a strong counter-power that does everything possible to prevent this spiritualisation and to materialise and mechanise the intelligence.

We see how, in the course of history, counter-powers are at work in Christianity itself. This creates a division between exoteric and esoteric Christianity. In addition, there are, of course, forces coming from outside Christianity that want to strip what is actually the essence of Christianity of all its values in such a way that it can no longer exist.

Nature is the realm of the Father, the realm of necessity. We are born in the Father's realm and find a necessity there, we find our destiny there. We find our family, our environment. Everything we find there belongs in the first place to the necessity of our earthly existence. We have no power to do anything against it. So you could say: what you inherit from the hereditary line of DNA, you have to deal with it in that sense.

It is, of course, well known that the DNA can be changed by certain circumstances. Medicine is also working on this in order to learn to manipulate the DNA in such a way that you can process healings by doing so, by exchanging a gene that has pathological effects for a healthy gene. But these are manipulations. In fact, the realm of nature is the realm of the Father, and we have to imagine that the DNA belongs there, in the extensive horizontal plane of the earth's existence. Although, like everything else, it must be of cosmic origin. But the configuration is, of course, largely determined by that which comes from the hereditary line. And it really will come to a point where this can be mapped out very accurately and, as a result, the processes that take place during the inheritance of certain disorders from the parents to the children and how to avoid this and what can be expected. This will become more and more known in the near future and will therefore also become useful - with all the dangers that this entails. But it is the Father's realm.

The realm of the Son is the realm of freedom that is received by the Spirit, but which in the Son's realm leads to the fact that it is still possible, and will become more and more possible, that in the realm of the necessity of nature miracles also take place.

The miracle does not actually belong to the Father. The Father gives the necessity, but the miracle comes from the Son and as a doctor you would very much like to get to know that better.

This brings us somewhat into the realm of a power other than that of DNA.

What possibilities does man himself have to connect with the Son in such a way that the power of the Son can become active in the area of the Father?

One could imagine that - while on the one hand what I have just said is happening in science with the DNA getting better and better under control - on the other hand a possibility arises there that has nothing directly to do with that science, but that has to do with a spirit force that man can develop within him, creating a mutation force.

Just as the nuclear explosion can give rise to mutations in the DNA, so one can imagine that the nuclear force of the human mind, in conjunction with the power of the Son, could lead to a self-aware mutation in Christ of hereditary disposition. I really do see this as a possibility, and as a doctor I have always thought - even though there was no concrete idea how to stimulate this - that everything is possible, that fatalism in the field of health and disease only exists when you forget Christ. If you remember Him, if you seek healing with Him, then everything becomes possible, even if it doesn't happen. That also remains the other side.

That enormous power, which is actually given to the human spirit by the Holy Spirit, the healing Spirit, which is related to man's self-awareness.

When you think of the transsubstantiation in the cult, in the church, that which, for the most part, is no longer even really believed in the Catholic Church, but which Rudolf Steiner has restored to full glory in the shaping of the Christian community - if you think of that, of the transsubstantiation, then that is actually the example in the cult of how the substance can change. So that which is given, that which comes from the realm of the Father, can carry another essence than that which is given naturally.

These are the three of faith, hope and love, which, when reconnected to them, give a holy faith in the power that man can have up to the fibres of the body up to the molecules of the cell nucleus, if we connect in the right way with the Holy Spirit and with Christ, that is faith, which gives an indescribable power of love with which you would like to live life and realise it - with all the powerlessness you also feel.

Hope, of course, is also active in the area of being sick and healthy, living and dying. It is clear, of course, that in one area at least we humans all share the same fate, and that is that one day we will die. You cannot, of course, say that you can overcome that. But medicine, as far as I am concerned, would not be - and never has been - that you feel subject to the structure of DNA.

And so I think, if we could live with that more and more, then something completely different would emerge in the human being, something that does not have to be in opposition at all. You live in that house that you have more or less built yourself, but you can become like the children again, who until the seventh year know how to rebuild that hereditary house, as good as possible according to the image of your own soul and your own self.

Your own being wants to emerge and that is actually what wants to overcome the structure of the DNA, either by possibly changing it, or by being so formative in the smallest parts of the body, that that body becomes more and more the expression of the one who lives in it. If you could find that skill again at a later age, then you would find a very different kind of medical science.

We are dealing with a natural science that is a science of the Father. It is a science that carries out research in the field of the necessity of nature. We should not forget that. We then see very clearly in the Middle Ages how this movement of the Father's science is being carried to Europe on the lines of Arabian culture and is also gaining a firm foundation in Europe. This is increasingly becoming the natural science known to us. What we still find with Agrippa von Nettesheim in the late Middle Ages is gradually becoming ridiculous, and we must increasingly concern ourselves with the hard facts of paternal natural science.

Rudolf Steiner brings the first beginning of a spiritual science that is a science of the Son, and you can see that prepared in scholasticism in the battle between Thomas Aquinas and the Arab philosopher Averroës. Perhaps that is a very clear picture of the difference between that which becomes paternal science and is based on Arab philosophy coming from Aristotle and the science of the Son, which at that time is not yet able to break through in a conscious form, but which in philosophy is already in a struggle in the readings of Thomas Aquinas in Paris and of course in his writings against Averroës, where he tries to defend a Christian philosophy with the same Aristotle - and they both have Aristotle in their hands.

I also believe not only in the hand, but really in the heart, even for Averroës it is true. When you read writings of him you notice that he really loved Aristotle, really, but he interprets the texts in a completely different way than Thomas Aquinas.

It became a model for the struggle between the paternal philosophy of necessity and the philosophy of the Son's freedom, the philosophy of faith, hope and love.

This is more or less reflected in Rudolf Steiner's life. At one point he included in his proverbs a saying, 'In dir lebt das Menschenwesen...' which he has taken from Eliphas Levi, about whom he generally does not speak very positively, but he takes up this saying and even adds vocals, and with that I want to end, because in that saying, written down in 1924, which is in the Gesamtausgabe, you can find what was discussed tonight. It expresses, quite precisely, what the power of the human being is over DNA - and over anything else.

The saying was read.

I cannot repeat it here in the philosophical reflections. I give the reference to the text in the GA, the reader should make the effort to look up these words.

GA 268, Seelenübungen Band II, Mantrische Sprüche, S. 107: In dir lebt das Menschenwesen.