Perception with the senses and truth

What role does perception with the senses play in finding the meaning of a micro-organism? Perception of a bacterium and perception of a virus. The definition of the human being by Plato. Facilitating the people to make them feel how serious the situation is, i.e. communication technology.Watch video on YouTube

Yes, for me it is a completely new way of expressing myself and of course I am used to speak for an hour at a lecture, and then I think I can succeed in bringing a comprehensive content. But I know from experience that when you watch a video in this form, you don't really feel like watching for an hour, so I make these recordings shorter. But this then also has the consequence that afterwards I always have a feeling that I didn't say what I actually wanted to say. So now I would like to add what I couldn't say the previous time.

And that is the question we have: what is really the case with this virus - which of course is not so easy to answer. I don't even want to say that this virus is really bad, or that it is really not bad at all. I have the impression that we first have to go back a little further to the question of what is a virus in the first place.

I worked as a general practitioner for many years, and it was so that when a patient came in with symptoms that indicated that maybe there was a urinary tract infection, then we had learned that you examine a bit of urine after it has been turned in a centrifuge, then you get a sediment, the sediment goes under a glass, on a glass, and then under a light microscope. And when the patient is healthy, all you see is water, maybe with some crystal forms in it, and maybe a cell here and there. But if there is an infection, you will find a lot of white blood cells, leucocytes. And in between there are large numbers of moving little creatures, sticks mostly. And those are the bacteria, you can really see them. And if you let them grow further, they will become more and more, for example, if you keep urine as a sample, they will become more and more and more and then when you examine it again it can be full of them. But you can see the bacteria. And that is a clear and definite diagnosis that you then have.

Later it became clear that examining a sediment was too much work, and it was found that these bacteria also secrete substances, which you can then find with a simple stick. The bacteria excrete nitrite, and you can find that just by dipping a stick into the urine, and then you know that there is a high probability of a urinary tract infection, but it is no longer as certain as when you see with your own eyes that the bacteria are there. It is already one step further away.

And it has always been the case that, of course, we have always had a lot to do with infections caused by viruses, but we had got the impression that this was how we were taught that you cannot make a virus visible, not like a bacterium. When you diagnose a viral infection, you have to do it more or less on the symptom complex and not so much so that you can really see the viruses.

Sometimes it is possible to check the antibodies and then you know that the defence is active and you know that this virus has caused an infection in this patient. So that's pretty much what older doctors remember. Bacteria are visible to the eye, viruses are not.

But of course there are modern techniques and so you can make the viruses visible and you can do that with an electron microscope.

But it is important, and that is why I am telling this whole story, it is important that we are aware that an electron microscope does not make things directly visible, like a light microscope does. The light microscope magnifies and we can then see with our eyes what we cannot see with the naked eye. But an electron microscope magnifies much, much, much, much more, but the image that appears is not a direct image, it is an image that is created by measures that have been taken, so that something that is very small can be imaged and it is actually a kind of translation. And so what you see then is not what is originally there, because you really can't see that, but you see something that is a translation of it. And although one must of course then trust that this translation is a true one, a correct one, there remains a kind of dark abyss, between reality and between what we are finally looking at.

I always have the impression that we as human beings overestimate ourselves to some extent. This was actually made clear in antiquity in a very funny way and it is described by Diogenes Laertius. Diogenes Laertius describes a lecture by Plato, who in this lecture comes to give a definition of what a human being actually is. And then they came to say that a human being walks on two legs and has no feathers. And the audience was very enthusiastic about it, they even applauded. And yes, that was actually the definition of a human being. But the next day, a student came in, who was also called Diogenes, but that's not the same one, as the one who wrote it later, Diogenes came and said, look what I have here! And he showed a plucked chicken and said, this is the human being.

Yes, this is how you can be wrong when you want to represent something very complicated in two characteristics. And what did they do then? Diogenes Laertius writes, they then added And has wide nails. And that completes the definition.

That is hilarious, of course. But I think that our science also makes comparisons like that, but doesn't notice it, not a clever Diogenes comes in and shows, look how you were wrong. The definition remains the same. And of course, as human beings, we are then so credulous that we adopt it. Only sometimes you can feel such a similarity with the definition of the human being by Plato, who is also not the first, the best.

So that is, what for me is a big question, what is actually a virus? And if we try to investigate into the spiritual science, whether there are perhaps statements, what a virus is, then we do not find this statement, we only find certain insights into the nature of bacteria and one can imagine that there is some similarity, but a virus is still something completely different than a bacterium, that is clear.

And I think that if you would like to get a little deeper insight into this problem we are now involved in, with this COVID-19 virus, that it is important that we once again ask ourselves very intensively the question, what is a virus anyway. Because if we want to understand what a virus can do to us, then we have to understand. And of course I am no virologist, you can hear them talking a lot, but I mean something else. I don't mean the physical science about viruses, but I mean the essence of a virus infection, what are we actually dealing with. That is really my first question. And an answer is of course not so easy to find. But I would like so much that many people would get the idea that we don't really know what we are talking about. That should be an awareness that we are moving beyond this first question. You can say, yes, a virus does not exist, it is all nonsense, I read that in certain articles. That is one side of the coin. And the other side is that you can say that this virus is really a very dangerous virus. Both views assume that you know what you are actually dealing with. And the World Health Organization has also said time and again that we do not really know. But then it is all about not really knowing what this virus really is. But the first question is what viruses in general really are.

That is the one thing that more or less got stuck last time. And the other one, that's then, of course, that one watches a lot of videos and listens to interviews, and reads newspapers and tries to keep up to date with the information, from all sides, which is not always so pleasant to do, and every now and then something comes along that is really astonishing.

Last time I talked about the figures and the forecasts for the autumn. This time I want to say that I listened to a radio interview with a scholar, and this scholar, it was a lady and she was talking about communication technology. She advises the Minister of Health in the Netherlands about the measures, she is one of the many advisors. And she came with a method that was completely new to me. You would say that when you are in a crisis, when you are dealing with a serious situation, which is still questionable, but we assume, she assumes it, then you really have to make sure that the citizens, the people understand how serious the situation is. And through this understanding they must be prepared to accept and comply with the strict measures. I would say that is an honest invitation.

But now she came with a very different approach to the situation and said that the people must also be facilitated, they must be made to understand that the situation is serious. And how do you do that, not by arguing how serious it is, but by announcing the toughest measures, insisting that they be implemented and then expecting that this will finally make people realise that the situation is serious.

I do not know how you feel when you hear something like this. Human understanding is actually completely eliminated and you are no longer a responsible citizen, but a child who must be brought up to be obedient by having the strictest measures imposed on him and thereby simply learning how serious the situation is. In practical terms this means, and we have of course heard a lot about this in recent months, that compulsory masks are also useful when you know that there is no point in it, because by introducing compulsory masks you are educating the people so that they finally realise how serious the situation is.

I am really outraged by such a thing. We are no longer responsible citizens, but we have become children and in the Netherlands they say that if you don't want to listen, you have to feel.

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