You will have gathered from the foregoing descriptions that man's
relation to his environment is very different from what modern ideas
often conceive. It is so easy to think that what exists in man's
surroundings, what belongs to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms
and is then taken into the body, that these external material
processes which are investigated by the physicist, the chemist and so
on, simply continue on in the same way within man himself. There can,
however, be no question of this, for one must be clear that within the
human skin-processes everything is different from outside it, that the
world within differs entirely from the world without. As long as one
is not aware of this one will ever and again reach the conclusion that
what is examined in a retort, or investigated in some other way, is
continued on inside the human organism, and the human organism itself
will simply be regarded as a more complicated system of retorts.
You need only recall what I said in yesterday's lecture, that
everything mineral within man must be transformed until it reaches the
condition of warmth-ether. This means that everything of a mineral
nature which enters into the human organism must be so far
metamorphosed, so far changed, that at least for a certain period of
time, it becomes pure warmth, becomes one with the warmth which man
develops as his own individual temperature independent of the warmth
of his environment. No matter whether it is salt or something else
that we absorb, in one way or another it must assume the form of
warmth-ether, and it must do this before it is made use of in the
upbuilding of the living organism.
But something quite different is also connected with this: solid
substance loses its solid form, when it is changed in the mouth into
fluid, and is further transformed into the condition of warmth-ether.
It loses weight when it gradually passes over into the fluid form,
becomes more and more estranged from the earthly, but only when it has
ascended to the warmth-etheric form is it fully prepared to absorb
into itself the spiritual which comes from above, which comes from
world-spaces.
Thus, if you would gain an idea of how a mineral substance functions
in man, you must say the following: There is the mineral substance;
this mineral substance enters into man. Within man, passing through
the fluid conditions, and so on, it is transformed into warmth-ether.
Now it is warmth-ether. This warmth-ether has a strong disposition to
absorb into itself what radiates inwards, what streams inwards, as
forces from world-spaces. Thus it takes into itself the forces of the
universe. And these forces of the universe now form themselves as the
spiritual forces which here imbue the warmth-etherized earth-matter
with spirit. And only then, with the help of the warmth-etherized
earth-substance, does there enter into the body what the body needs
for its formation.
So you see — if in the old sense we designate warmth as fire
— we can say: What man absorbs in the way of mineral substance is
carried upwards within him until it becomes of the nature of fire. And
what is of the nature of fire has the disposition to take up into
itself the influences of the higher Hierarchies; and then this fire
streams back again into all man's internal regions, and builds up, in
that it re-solidifies, the material basis of the separate organs.
Nothing that man takes into himself remains as it is; nothing remains
earthly. Everything, for example, that comes from the mineral kingdom
is so far transformed that it can take into itself the
spiritual-cosmic, and only then, with the help of what comes from the
spiritual cosmos, does it become re-solidified into the earthly
condition.
Take from a bone, for instance, a fragment of calcium phosphate. This
is in no way the calcium phosphate which you find outside in nature,
or which, let us say, you introduce into the laboratory. It is the
calcium phosphate which, while it arose from what was absorbed from
outside, could only take part in building the human physical form,
with the help of the forces which penetrated it during the time when
it was changed into the warmth-ether condition.
This, you see, is why man needs substances of the most diverse kinds
during the course of his life in order to be able, in accordance with
the way he is organized at his particular age, to transform what is
lifeless into the condition of warmth-ether. A child is as yet quite
unable to change what is lifeless into the warmth-etheric condition;
he has not enough strength in his organism. He must drink the milk
which is still so nearly akin to the human organism in order to bring
it into the condition of warmth-ether, and apply its forces to
carrying out the full diffusion of plastic activity which is necessary
during the years of childhood for the processes of bodily formation.
One only gains insight into the nature of man when one knows that
everything which is taken in from outside must be worked upon and
basically transformed. Thus, if you take some external substance and
wish to test its value for human life you simply cannot do this by
means of ordinary chemistry. You must know how much force the human
organism must exert in order to bring some external mineral substance,
for example, to the fleeting condition of warmth-ether. If it is
unable to do this, the external mineral substance is deposited,
becoming heavy earth-matter before it has passed over into warmth, and
penetrates into the human organism as inorganic matter which remains
alien to human tissues.
An example of this kind can appear when the human being is not in a
position to bring a substance, in its origin organic but appearing in
him mineralized, namely sugar, to the tenuous condition of
warmth-ether. Then arises the condition which must result when the
whole organism has to share in the assimilation of what is thus
present within it, the very serious condition of sugar diabetes. In
the case of every substance one must therefore bear in mind to what
degree the human organism can be in a position to transmute lifeless
substance — whether its nature is already lifeless as when we eat
cooking salt, or whether it becomes so as with sugar — into
warmth-substance, whereby the organism which is rooted in the earth
finds its union with the spiritual cosmos.
Every such deposit in man which remains untransmuted — as in
diabetes — signifies that the human being does not find a union
of the matter present within him and the spiritual of the cosmos. This
is only a specific application of the general axiom that whatever
approaches man from outside must be entirely worked over and
transformed within him. And if we wish to look after a person's health
it is of paramount importance to see to it that nothing enters into
him which remains as it was, nothing which cannot be dealt with by the
human organism until the least of its particles is transformed. This
is not only the case in regard to substances; it is also the case, for
instance, in regard to forces.
External warmth — the warmth we feel when we grasp things, the
external warmth in the air — this, when taken up by the human
organism, must become so transformed that the inner warmth is on a
different level from the warmth outside. The external warmth must be
transformed within us, so that this external warmth, in which we are
not present, is laid hold of by the human organism even down to the
very smallest quantity.
Now imagine that I go somewhere where it is cold, and because the cold
is too intense, or, because of moving air or draught, the temperature
fluctuates, I am not in a position to change the world warmth into my
own individual warmth quickly enough. Through this I run the danger of
being warmed by the world-warmth from outside like a piece of wood, or
a stone. This should not be. I should not be exposed to the danger of
external warmth flowing into me as though I were merely some object.
At every moment, from the boundary of my skin inwards, I must be able
to lay hold of the warmth and make it my own. If I am not in a
position to do this I catch cold.
This is the inner process of catching cold. To catch cold is a
poisoning by external warmth which is not taken possession of by the
organism.
You see, everything in the external world is poison for man, actual
poison, and it only becomes of service to him when, through his
individual forces, he lays hold of it and makes it his own. For only
from man himself do forces go up to the higher hierarchies in a human
way; whereas outside man they remain with the elemental nature-beings,
with the elemental spirits. In the case of man this wonderful
transformation must happen so that within the human organism the
elemental spirits may give over their work to the higher hierarchies.
For the mineral in man this can only occur when it is absolutely and
entirely transformed into warmth-ether.
Let us look at the plant world. Truly this plant world possesses
something which bewitches man in the most varied ways when he begins
to contemplate the plant covering of the earth with the eye of the
spirit. We go out into a meadow or a wood. We dig up, let us say, a
plant with its root. If we regard what we have dug up with the eye of
the spirit we find a wonderfully magical complex. The root shows
itself as something of which we can say that it came into existence
entirely in the sphere of the earthly. Yes, a plant root — the
more so, the coarser it appears — is really something terribly
earthly. It always reminds one — especially a root like a turnip,
for instance — of a particularly well-fed alderman. O, yes, it is
so; the root of a plant is extremely smug, and self-satisfied. It has
absorbed the salts of the earth into itself, and feels a deep sense of
gratification at having soaked up the earth. In the whole sphere of
the earthly there exists no more absolute expression of satisfaction
than such a turnip-root; it is the representative of root-nature.
On the other hand let us look at the blossom. When we observe the
blossom with the eye of the spirit we only experience it as our own
soul, when it cherishes the tenderest desires.
Only look at a spring flower; it is a sigh of longing, the embodiment
of a wish. And something wonderful streams forth over the flower world
which surrounds us, if only our soul-perception is delicate enough to
be open to it. In spring we see the violet, maybe the daffodil, the
lily-of-the-valley, or many little plants with yellow flowers, and we
are seized by the feeling that these blossoming plants of spring would
say to us: O Man, how pure and innocent can be the desires which you
direct towards the spiritual! Spiritual desire-nature, desire-nature
bathed, as it were, in piety, breathes from every blossom of spring.
And when the later flowers appear — let us at once take the other
extreme, let us take the autumn crocus — can one behold the
autumn crocus with soul-perception without having a slight feeling of
shame? Does it not warn us that our desires can tend downwards, that
our desires can be imbued with every kind of impurity? It is as though
the autumn crocuses spoke to us from all sides, as if they would
continually whisper to its: Consider the world of thy desires, O Man;
how easily you can become a sinner!
Looked at thus, the plant-world is the mirror of human conscience in
external nature. Nothing more poetical can be imagined than the
thought of this voice of conscience coming forth from some point
within us and being distributed over the myriad forms of the
blossoming plants which speak to the soul, during the season of the
year, in the most manifold ways. The plant-world reveals itself as the
wide-spread mirror of conscience if we know how to look at it aright.
If we bear this in mind it becomes of special significance for us to
look at the flowering plants and picture how the blossom is really a
longing for the light-being of the universe, and how the form of the
blossom grows upwards in order to enable the desires of the earth to
stream towards this light-being of the universe, and how on the other
hand the substantial root fetters the plant to the earth, how it is
the root which continually wrests the plant away from its celestial
desires, wishing to re-establish it in the substantiality of the
earth.
And we learn to understand why this is so when, in the evolutionary
history of the earth, we meet the fact that what is present in the
root of a plant has invariably been laid down in the time when the
moon was still together with the earth.
In the time when the moon was still together with the earth the forces
anchored in the moon within the body of the earth worked so strongly
that they hardly allowed the plant to become anything but root. When
the moon was still with the earth and the earth still had quite
another substance, the root element spread itself out and worked
downwards with great power. This can be pictured in such a way that
one says: The downward thrust of the plant's root-nature spread out
powerfully, while up above the plant only peeped out into the cosmos.
We could say that the plants sent their shoots out into the cosmos
like delicate little hairs. We feel that, while the moon was still
with the earth, this moon element, these moon-forces, contained in the
earth-body itself, fettered plant-nature to the earthly. And what was
then transmitted to the being of the plant remains on as
predisposition in the nature of the root.
After the moon left the earth, however, there unfolded in what had
previously existed only as tiny little shoots peeping out into the
world a longing for the wide light-filled spaces of the cosmos; and
now the blossom-nature arose. So that the departure of the moon was a
kind of liberation, a real liberation for the plants.
But here we must also bear in mind that everything earthly was
grounded in the spiritual. During the old Saturn period — you
need only take the description which I gave in my
“Occult Science”
— the earth was entirely spiritual; it existed only in the
warmth-etheric element, it was entirely spiritual. It was out of the
spiritual that the earthly was first formed.
And now let us contemplate the plant. In its form it bears the living
memory of evolution. It bears in its root-nature the process of
becoming earthly, of assuming the physical-material. If we look at the
root of a plant we discern that it says something further to us,
namely that its existence only became possible because the
earthly-material evolved out of the spiritual. Scarcely, however, was
the earth relieved of its moon-element than the plant again strove
back to the spaces of the light.
And when we consume the plant as nourishment we give it the
opportunity of carrying further in the right way what it began outside
in nature, the striving back not only to the light-spaces, but to the
spirit-spaces of the cosmos. This is why, as I have already said, we
must deal with the plant-substance within us until it becomes
aeriform, or gaseous, so that the plant may follow its longing for the
wide spaces of light and spirit.
I go out into a meadow. I see how the flowers, the blossoms of the
plants, strive towards the light. Man consumes the plant, but within
him he has a world entirely different from the one outside. Within
him he can bring to fulfillment the longing which, outside, the plant
expresses in its blossoms. Spread abroad in nature we see the
desire-world of the plants. We eat the plants. Within ourselves we
drive this longing towards the spiritual world. We must therefore
raise the plants into the sphere of the air so that in this lighter
realm they may be enabled to strive towards the spiritual.
The plant here undergoes a remarkable process. When man eats plant
food the following occurs: If we depict the root below, and above what
strives through the leaf to the blossom, then, in this inner
transference to the airy condition, we have to experience a total
reversal of the plant. The root, which is fettered to the earth, just
for the very reason that it is so rooted, strives upwards; it strives
upwards towards the spiritual with such power that it leaves the
striving of the blossom behind it. It is actually as if you were to
picture the plant unfolding in such a way that the upper is pushed
down below and the lower up above. The plant reverses itself
completely. The part which has already won its way to the blossom has
had enjoyment in its material striving towards the light, has brought
the material up into the sphere of the light. For this it must now
suffer the punishment of remaining below. The root has been the slave
of the earthly; but, as you can see from Goethe's theory of the
metamorphosis of plants, it bears the whole plant-nature within it. It
now strives upwards.
If a man is a really stiff-necked sinner, he is likely to remain so.
But the root of a plant, which as long as it is earth-bound makes the
impression of a well-fed alderman, immediately it has been eaten by
man becomes transformed and strives upwards; whereas that which has
brought the material into the sphere of the light, the blossom, must
remain down below. Hence in what belongs to the root-element of the
plant we have something which, when it is eaten, strives upwards
towards man's head out of its inherent nature, while what lies in the
direction of the blossom remains in the lower regions, and, in the
general process of digestion, does not reach up to forming the head.
Thus we have the remarkable, the wonderful drama that when man
consumes something of plant-nature — he need not eat the whole
plant, because in each single part the whole plant is inherent (I
refer you again to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis) — when man
consumes a plant, it transforms itself within him into air, into air
which develops plant-wise from above downwards, which grows and
blossoms in a downward direction.
In times when such things were known through instinctive clairvoyance,
people looked at the external constitution of plants in order to see
whether they were such as could be beneficial to man's head, whether
they showed a strong root-development, and in consequence a longing
for the spiritual. For, when digestion is completed, what we have
eaten of such a plant will seek out the head and penetrate it, so that
it may there strive upwards towards the spiritual cosmos and enter
into the necessary connection with it.
In the case of plants which are strongly imbued with astrality, for
example, in the pod-bearing plants, their products remain in man's
lower organism, and are unwilling to rise up to the head, with the
result that they produce a heavy sleep, and dull the brain on waking.
The Pythagoreans wished to be clear thinkers and not introduce
digestion into the functions of the head. This is why they forbade the
eating of beans.
You see, therefore, that from what happens in nature we can divine
something of nature's relation to man, and to what happens in man. If
one possesses spiritual initiation-science, one simply cannot imagine
how materialistic science comes to grips with human digestion.
(Certainly matters are different in regard to a cow's digestion; about
this, too, we shall have something further to say later.)
Materialistic science states that plants are assimilated just as they
are. They are not assimilated just as they are, but are completely
spiritualized. The plant is so constituted in itself that in digestion
the lower turns into the upper and the upper into the lower. No
greater transposition can be imagined. And man immediately becomes ill
if he eats even the smallest quantity of a plant where the lowest is
not changed into the uppermost, and the uppermost into the lowest.
From this you will realize that man bears nothing in himself which is
not produced by the spirit; he must first give to what he assimilates
as substance a form which will enable the spirit to influence it.
Turning now to the animal world, we must be clear that the animal has
a digestion, and mostly consumes plants. Let us take the herbivorous
animal. The animal world takes the plant world into itself. This again
is a very complicated process, for when the animal eats the plant it
does not possess human processes to set against the plant. Within the
animal the plant cannot turn the above into the below and the below
into the above. The animal has its vertebral column parallel with the
surface of the earth. This means that in the case of the animal what
should happen in digestion is brought into complete disorder. What is
below strives upwards, and what is above strives downwards, but the
whole process gets dammed up in itself, so that animal digestion is
something essentially different from human digestion. In animal
digestion, what lives in the plant dams itself up. And the result of
this is that with the animal the being of the plant is given the
promise: “Thou mayest indulge thy longing for world-spaces”
— but the promise is not kept. The plant is thrown back again to
earth.
Through the fact, however, that in the animal organism the plant is
thrown back to earth, there immediately penetrate into the plant
— not, as with man in whom the reversal takes place, cosmic
spirits with their forces, but certain elemental spirits in their
place. And these elemental spirits are fear-spirits, bearers of fear.
Thus spiritual perception can follow this remarkable process: The
animal itself enjoys its nourishment, enjoys it with inner
satisfaction; and while the stream of nourishment goes in one
direction, a stream of fear from elemental spirits of fear goes in the
other. Through the animal's digestive tract there continually flows
along the path of digestion the satisfaction felt in the assimilation
of nourishment, and in opposition to this there flows a terrible
stream of elemental spirits of fear.
This is what animals leave behind them when they die. When animals die
— not those species, perhaps, which I have already described in
another way, but including such as belong, for instance, to the
four-footed mammals — when these animals die there also dies, or
rather comes to life in their dying, a being which is entirely
composed of the element of fear. With the animal's death, fear dies,
that is to say fear comes to life. In the case of beasts of prey this
fear is actually assimilated with their food. The beast of prey, which
tears its booty to pieces, devours the flesh with satisfaction. And
towards this satisfaction in the consumption of flesh there streams
fear, the fear which the plant-eating animal only gives off from
itself when it dies, but which already streams out from the beast of
prey during its life-time. Through this the astral bodies of such
animals as lions and tigers are riddled with fear which they do not as
yet detect during their lifetime, but which after death these animals
drive back because it goes in opposition to their feeling of
satisfaction. Thus carnivorous animals really have an after life in
their group soul, an after life which must be said to present a much
more terrible Kamaloka than anything which can be experienced by man,
and this simply on account of their essential nature.
Naturally you must regard these things as being experienced in quite a
different consciousness. If you were suddenly to become materialistic,
and began to imagine what the beast of prey must experience by putting
yourself in its place, thinking: What would such a Kamaloka be like
for me? and were then to judge the beast of prey according to what
such a Kamaloka might be for you, then certainly you are
materialistic, indeed animalistic, for you transpose yourself into
animal nature. These things must of course be understood if one is to
comprehend the world; but we must not put ourselves into their
category, as when the materialistic puts the whole world into the
category of lifeless matter.
Now we come to a subject about which I can only speak on a soul level;
for anthroposophy should never come forward to agitate for anything,
should never advocate either one thing or another, but should only put
forward the truth. The consequences which a person attracts to himself
by his manner of living, this is his personal affair. Anthroposophy
presents no dogmas, but puts forward truths. For this reason I shall
never, even for fanatics, lay down any kind of law as to the
consequences of what an animal makes of its plant nourishment. No
dogmatic rulings shall be given in regard to vegetarianism,
meat-eating and so on, for these things must be relegated to the
sphere of individual judgment and it is really only in the sphere of
individual experience that they have value. I mention this in order to
avoid giving rise to the opinion that anthroposophy entails standing
for this or that kind of diet, whereas what it actually does is to
make every diet comprehensible.
What I really wished to say was that we must work upon the mineral
until it becomes warmth-ether in order that it may absorb the
spiritual; then, after the mineral has absorbed the spiritual, man can
be built up by it. I mentioned that when the human being is still
quite young he has not as yet the strength to work upon what is
entirely mineral until it becomes warmth-ether. It has already been
worked upon for him in that he drinks milk. Milk has already undergone
a preliminary change, whereby the process of transformation to
warmth-ether has become easier. Hence in a child the milk with its
forces flows up quickly into the head, and can there develop the
form-building forces in the way in which the child needs them. For the
whole organization of the child proceeds from the head.
If at a later age man wishes to receive these form-building forces, it
is not good to promote them by the drinking of milk. In the case of
the child what ascends into the head, and is able by means of the
forces of the head, which are present until the change of teeth, to
ray out formatively into the whole body — this is no longer
present in an older person. In later age the whole of the rest of the
organism must ray out the formative forces. And these formative forces
for the whole organism are particularly strengthened in their impulses
when one eats something which works in quite another way than is the
case with the head.
You see, the head is entirely enclosed. Within this head are the
impulses used in childhood for the formation of the body. In the rest
of the body we have bones within, and the formative forces outside.
Here, then, the form-building forces must be stimulated from outside.
While we are children these form-building forces are stimulated when
we bring milk into the head. When we are no longer children these
forces are no longer there. What should we now do in order that these
formative forces may be stimulated more from outside?
It would obviously be a good thing to be able to have in outer form
what is accomplished within by the head, enclosed as it is inside
skull. It would be good if what the head does inside itself could
somehow be accomplished in outer form from outside. The forces which
are there within the head are suited to the consumption of milk; when
the milk is there in its etheric transformation it provides a good
basis for the development of these head forces. We must, therefore,
have something which acts like milk, which, however, is not fabricated
within the human being, but is fabricated in outer nature.
Well, there is something existing outside in nature which is a head
without an enclosing skull, and which therefore activates from outside
those very forces which work inside the head in children who need the
milk, and must indeed create it anew; for the child must first bring
the milk into the warmth-etheric condition and so create it anew.
Now a stock of bees is really a head which is open on all sides. What
the bees carry out is actually the same as what the head carries out
within itself. The hive we give them is at most a support. The bees
activity, however, is not enclosed, but produced from outside. In a
stock of bees, under external spiritual influence, we have the same
thing as we have under spiritual influence inside the head. The stock
of bees produces its honey, and when we eat and enjoy honey it gives
us the up-building forces, which must now be provided more from
outside, with the same strength and power which milk gives us for our
head during the years of childhood.
Thus, while we are still children we strengthen through the
consumption of milk the formative forces working from the head
outwards; if at a later age we still need formative forces we must eat
honey. Nor do we need to eat it in tremendous quantities — it is
only a question of absorbing its forces.
Thus one learns from external nature how strengthening forces must be
brought into human life, if only this external nature is fully
understood. And if we would conceive a land where there are beautiful
children and beautiful old people, what kind of a land would this be?
It would be “a land flowing with milk and honey”. So you see
ancient instinctive vision was in no way wrong when it said about
lands of promise that they are such as flow with milk and honey.
Many such simple sayings contain the profoundest wisdom, and there is
really no more beautiful experience than first to make every possible
effort to experience the truth, and then to find some ancient holy
saying abounding in deep wisdom such as “a land flowing with milk
and honey”. That is indeed a rare land, for in it there are only
beautiful children and beautiful old people.
You see, to understand man presupposes the understanding of nature. To
understand nature provides the basis for the understanding of man. And
here the lowest spheres of the material always lead up to the highest
spheres of the spiritual: the kingdoms of nature — mineral, animal,
vegetable — at the one, the lowest pole; above, at the other pole, the
hierarchies themselves.
|