04.02 – Natural Hygiene as a New Concept of Healthful Living – Part 2

Jumping ahead thousands of years, factions of humanity realized that something was very wrong with their inner state of being, and their resulting outer difficulties in life. World-wide cultural stories, describing a previous Golden Age of humanity, seemed more and more remote, more fantastical. Those who were still gifted with somewhat advanced capabilities created ascetic practices and ritualized disciplines, in an attempt to resurrect the consciousness and abilities our ancestors once had.

Many generations came and went, people adapted as best they could. Tribal frictions developed, fear and violence increased, resources were stolen and hoarded from other tribes. Social hierarchies developed based on threats and overt violence, skirmishes became wars, small tribes assimilated together over time… and the epic Golden Age of Humanity completely disappeared. (This simplified scenario outlined above has extremely important ramifications for our species, perhaps explaining why we are as we are today. This hypothesis about the growth and loss of human potential will be explored in depth in an Advanced Course at TI.)

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Moving forward again to the ancient Greeks, Pythagoras elaborated a rather extensive philosophy of living, investigating all planes of life. Among them was perhaps the best formulated statement of Hygienic living until this time. While the Greeks, of whom Pythagoras was one, were heavy on fruitarianism, they were also heavy into practices of herbal drugging that have morphed into today’s medicine.

The philosophy of Pythagoras gave rise to Appolonius and the Essenes, an ascetic culture that was vegetarian/fruitarian in practice.

Much of the Essene philosophy and practice were preserved in the New Testament and are quoted in the teachings of Christ in the four conventional gospels, along with a number of other Nag Hammadi Library gospels and Gnostic texts. The thin thread of Hygienic philosophy survived and received a modern impetus from the greatest universal genius of all times, Leonardo daVinci, who was a vegetarian/fruitarian.

It was not until the time of Dr. Isaac Jennings in 1822 that Natural Hygiene, as a formalized philosophy of life, had its beginnings. Not until the consummate genius of Drs. Graham, Trall, Dewey, Tilden, and Shelton did the philosophy and science of health become fully elaborated.