3. The Basic Needs of Man

In nature, we can observe that at least two elements are needed to make something work. If a seed is to germinate, it first needs an energy impulse to set the germination process in motion. It receives this impulse from the reaction of proteins if the right temperature, sufficient moisture and sufficient oxygen are present and the light conditions meet its specific requirements (light germinator/dark germinator). If these conditions are met, enzymes are formed that activate the stored nutrients and start the energy metabolism and the growth process.

Something similar can be seen in the human cell, which is a small chemical factory. A cell functions as a channel - like all things in nature. It is there to produce a product. Of course, it cannot produce anything on its own. The human cell needs a suitable environment, i.e. a pressure of around 1 bar and a temperature close to 37° Celsius. If the pressure is too high, the cell will be damaged, likewise the temperature may fluctuate only slightly. The cell requires raw materials, i.e. chemicals, to manufacture the product and the necessary information inside the cell. But are the processes for taking in the raw materials, i.e. breathing, drinking and eating, enough to obtain the product? No, energy in the form of electricity is also needed to convert the raw materials.

The human body as a whole also needs electricity to function. Brain waves are of great importance for this. In addition, and at the same time, it needs energy in the form of chemistry to maintain its function.

So where does the electricity in people come from? Conventional medicine describes a kind of perpetual motion machine at this point. According to conventional medicine, the cerebral cortex virtually generates the electricity it needs itself. But can a perpetual motion machine even exist? Could the human brain be something like this? Can the brain then also generate its own thoughts?

When I compared my patients' body histories with their life histories, it became clear that thoughts are crucial in people's lives. I also realized what people's thoughts are always revolving around and what kind of information they are processing. Let's look at a few examples to make this clear.

Case 2

A patient, about 70 years old, had an insulin pump with a sensor that measured her blood glucose every 20 minutes. When I asked her whether she would notice a difference in her sugar level based on events during the day, she replied: "Whenever I hear that my grandchildren are coming to visit, I am very happy and my sugar immediately starts to drop until it gets into the normal range."

What needs do this patient's grandchildren satisfy? Her need for food? No, surely this is about a spiritual need, about love, and not about physical needs. It is important to understand how this information, which was obviously positive for the patient, led to a reduction in the sugar level.

Case 3

Another, younger diabetic patient, also equipped with an insulin pump with sensor, had a similar experience, only on the negative side. During a stressful situation in court, her sugar level went up and her device reported it. After a few units of insulin, the sugar continued to rise. Even the repeated administration of insulin did not bring about the desired reduction in blood sugar. Only when the court hearing was over did this patient's sugar level fall - then well below the normal range due to the repeated insulin administration.

If man were only matter, if his thoughts had no significance for the proper functioning of the body, then something like this should not occur.¹ But the body clearly shows what a person is thinking.

Case 4

At the beginning of my practice, a man in his early fifties came to see me. He was downright angry and showed me a bag of medication. "Doctor, I've had dizzy spells for four months and I've been given all these medications, but they don't help. Why do I have this dizziness?" His dizzy spells were very interesting: the man worked hard physically all day with a chainsaw - without any problems. But whenever he came home and sat down, the dizzy spells would come on.

Four weeks before his symptoms began, the neighbor had revealed his mother-in-law's secret plans to him. It was about her house, which the patient had lavishly renovated because his wife was supposed to inherit it one day. But in the event that the father-in-law died first, the mother-in-law's son from her first marriage would get the house. This injustice upset the patient greatly. This conflict had not been resolved and was reflected in his physical reaction - every day when he came home. The man developed an illness without a physical malfunction. On medical advice, he tried to remedy the symptoms with medication, i.e. with chemicals. But as the cause lay elsewhere, the medication could not provide a lasting cure.

Let us now take a closer look at the basic human needs. What is required for a person to function properly, i.e. to be healthy?

It is easy to understand that life depends on the fulfillment of basic needs. The "law of life" controls what we need as humans. If all relevant needs are fulfilled within an optimal range, our condition moves between a borderline for "too little" and a borderline for "too much". Then everything functions normally and we are completely healthy. In this state, no illness could arise.

Whenever an illness or malfunction occurs, we find ourselves in a state of unfulfilled or over fulfilled needs - and therefore outside the optimal range. So, when a symptom occurs, the question arises as to what the patient is "missing" or what may be "too much" for them. On a physical level, it is obvious that there may be too much or too little of something, such as warmth or fluids.

In nature, there is always a tolerance range in addition to the optimum range in which the human being is "only" ill. Only when this additional tolerance is exceeded in either direction, does the malfunction lead to irreversible functional failure, and thus to the death of the person. If basic needs are not met or are under or over fulfilled, the same consequence occurs in extreme cases: the person dies.

It is therefore crucial to know in good time what the body lacks or has too much of. When it comes to physical needs, we have all learned what to do when the body "speaks" to us about physical needs. We know that we need oxygen, water, food and warmth. As soon as we reach the edge of the optimum range, our body reacts. The easiest way to observe this is with heat: we freeze when it is not warm enough or sweat when it gets too warm. We also recognize hunger, thirst and tiredness: aha, the body needs this or that. The body itself cannot lie; its signals are correct. The body explains its actual state in a simple way. We know very well, without having to look in a book, that we should eat, drink or sleep.

Now there are diseases such as tinnitus or blocked ears. There are patients with dizzy spells or cancer and many other illnesses. What do these people lack? Is it food and drink? Are we outside the optimal range according to the law of life with such illnesses, and if so, what is the need?

At first, it was completely new to me whether and how unfulfilled spiritual needs lead to physical disorders. That's why it took me a while to see for the first time and then become convinced that thinking is the "essence" of human life. People need justice, freedom, security and much more for their bodies to function well. This was not so easy for me to grasp at first because I hadn't learned anything about it in medical school.

The things you think about are, if you like, just fantasy. So why are they so crucial and able to make us ill? I fled to Germany at the age of 19 from Romania, which was still communist at the time. Why did I take the risk of being arrested? Was my escape about food and drink? There was enough to eat in Romania, even if it wasn't as varied as in the West and sometimes there were worries about it. But material things were not the decisive factor. I fled because freedom was important to me and I had a great spiritual need for it. I then came to Freiburg in Germany, which I think is a nice name for a city.

Spiritual needs such as freedom and justice cannot be over fulfilled, which is an important difference to the physical level. Spiritual needs are either 100% covered or only insufficiently fulfilled or not fulfilled at all. There is therefore no upper tolerance range for them. So, there is no such thing as "too much" justice, freedom or security.

What physical reactions do unfulfilled spiritual needs lead to? In other words, what can our thoughts do in the body? After several tens of thousands of consultations, I can recognize in the physical symptoms and illnesses a person's spiritual need, which manifests itself in the body.

I wondered how a non-physical element can cause a physical reaction. What are love, justice, freedom, security? Are they chemical substances? If they were, then we could formulate them chemically and reproduce them. If someone then came and complained that they had experienced injustice or unkindness, we could give them a dose of justice, love or freedom and everything would be fine again. But there is no such thing. We cannot prescribe and administer "love". Love is a spiritual element and therefore also spiritual information, which has no chemical formula. It can only be processed in thought. And the fact that it is an absolute human need cannot be denied. But the fact that love makes the body ill when it is not present is something we are mostly unaware of. Just as oxygen, water and food must be supplied in the specified quantities, love as a need must be satisfied 100%.

That is why thoughts are central if we want to get to the bottom of the cause of illness. To do this, we need to know what thoughts actually are. We know that they transport information. But where thoughts come from was my next question.

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1. The question of whether matter can think will be considered later. ↩