Issues of Nutrition in the Light of Spiritual Science
Berlin, 17th December 1908
It
seems strange to people when spiritual science has something to
say about that which is regarded by many with a certain logic
as the most material, as the most unspiritual subject:
nutrition. There are people who want to indicate their
particular idealism, their particular spirituality by saying:
oh, we care only about that which is above the questions that
are connected with the material life.
Such persons also believe — and in certain respects they
may be right — that it is irrelevant to one's spiritual
development how the human being satisfies his bodily needs.
The
materialistic way of thinking judges differently. A great
philosopher of the nineteenth century had a saying that has
often been repeated and that causes many who are idealistically
minded to shudder. Feuerbach (Ludwig F., 1804-1872) once said:
“The human being is what he eats.” Most people
understand it in such a way — and the materialistic sense
will absolutely agree with it — that the human being is
made up of the substances which he supplies to his body, and
from this develops not only the course of his bodily life but
also that which presents itself in his mind.
If
outsiders hear more or less cursorily about spiritual science,
they believe that anthroposophists are too concerned with
eating, with diet. An outsider cannot understand why the
anthroposophists care so much about their diet. It should not
be denied that in some anthroposophical circles whose members
want to penetrate rather deeply into the spiritual life in an
easy way, lack of clarity prevails. Some believe, nevertheless,
that they should avoid this or that, should not eat or drink
certain things in order to reach certain higher levels of
knowledge! This is also a fallacy, like that just characterised
view of Feuerbach's saying: “The human being is what he
eats.” It is a one-sided view at least.
However, in a certain sense spiritual science can agree with
this sentence, only in a rather different way than it is meant
by the materialists, differing in two respects. Firstly, we
have already stressed on occasion that everything around us is
the expression of something spiritual. A mineral, a plant or
something in our surroundings is material only with respect to
its outer form. As with the limb of a human being, the outer
form is the expression, the gesture of the spirit. Something
spiritual is behind all material, and this is true of food as
well. When we eat we absorb not only what spreads out
materially before our eyes, but also that which is spiritual
behind it. We come into relation through the material element
of the food to the spiritual which is behind it. This is a
rather superficial standpoint. However, someone who understands
this is able to admit the materialistic sentence in certain
respect: “The human being is what he eats.” Only
one has to understand that there is a spiritual process within
the material process.
This is the only way we can orient ourselves to these questions
in the spiritual-scientific sense. If spiritual science puts
emphasis on and pursues investigations regarding the nature of
the foodstuffs, a unique perspective on the relation of the
human being to nature appears. The human being comes into
relation with nature because he absorbs the surrounding nature
in a certain way and composes himself with that which is in it.
The question arises, is the human being not subject to the
external forces, because he ingests that which is external, and
can he free himself from these forces? Is there any possibility
that the human being can become free from the effects of his
diet, so that he receives a certain power from and a certain
influence on the surroundings? Could it not be that the human
being, indeed, could be what he eats, through following a
certain diet — and could it not be that by another diet
the human being gets rid of the compulsion that is exercised on
him by diet? So, the question is asked by spiritual science:
how has nutrition to be arranged that the human being gets rid
of the compulsion of diet, so that he becomes more and more the
master of the processes within himself?
When we put this question to ourselves today, something must be
said about the whole position of spiritual science in regard to
these questions. This question, also about health, must be
understood in such a way that in no way spiritual science
argues for any particular point of view. Whoever believes that
what is said today is agitating for or against this or that
diet has an extremely erroneous view. Today nobody should go
away from here with the view that I argued for or against
abstinence, vegetarianism, meat diet.
All
these questions about dogmas have nothing to do with the
innermost feeling of spiritual science. We do not want to
agitate, do not command the human being in this or that way; we
want to say only how matters are. Then everybody may organise
his life, as he wants, according to these overarching
principles of existence. Thus, this talk will solely expound
what is real in this field. On the other side, I ask you very
much to take into consideration that I do not speak for
anthroposophic circles in the narrow sense which want to go
through a certain development and have to observe special
conditions. Today, the question is discussed in the
general-human sense. Because of the vast range of the subject,
only single things can be taken out, and, above all, everything
must be avoided that is connected with general health. We shall
hear about this in the next talk.
Today, we deal with nutrition in the narrower sense. That is
why the respiratory process is not taken into account. The
human being has to take up proteins, carbohydrates, fats and
salts in order to maintain the life process of his organism.
You know that the human being satisfies the needs of his
organism with the so-called mixed diet. He takes the main parts
of his diet partly from the animal, partly from the plant
realm. There are many more defenders of the mixed diet than of
a one-sided diet among our contemporaries. We must ask
ourselves, how do the laws of our environment dictate how the
human being takes his food to the true forces and needs of the
human organism? I speak only about the human being today, not
about the animals.
The
human being is easily inclined to understand his organism
rather materially according to the so-called scientific results
of his time. Spiritual science has to substitute this with the
laws of the spiritual connections. Even if not always stated
explicitly, the method which is adopted is based more or less
unconsciously on the idea that the human organism consists more
or less only of the physical body, and the sum of the chemical
substances in their interaction with each other. One traces
these substances back to their individual chemical elements and
attempts — after one has recognised how these substances
work — to get an idea how they could continue chemically
working in the retort which one regards as the human being.
It
is not necessary to state that many people are already beyond
the view that the human being is only a big retort. It is not a
matter of theories, but of the ways of thinking. The true
practitioner is not concerned about anybody's thoughts, but
about the effects of the thoughts. That is the point. It does
not matter so much whether one is an idealist or not, but it is
significant for life that one has fertile thoughts which are
active in such a way that life prospers and progresses. It is
important to bear in mind that spiritual science, even in this
direction, has nothing to do with dogma or any belief. Anyone
may espouse the most spiritual theories. It is not this which
is important, but rather the fact that these thoughts are
fertile if he introduces them in life. If one says that he is
not a materialist, that he believes in the vital force, even in
the spirit, but proceeds in the question of nutrition always as
if the human being is a retort, his worldview cannot become
fertile. Spiritual science has something to say about these
concrete questions only if it itself is able to illuminate the
details, and it is able to do so concerning the issues of
nutrition and of health.
We
must come again to clarity regarding the multi-membered human
being. For the spiritual researcher the human being is not only
the physical being, which one sees with the eyes, can touch
with the hands - this physical body is only one part of the
human being. This physical body consists of the same chemical
substances that are spread out in nature. However, the human
being has higher members. Already the next part of the human
being is supersensible, has a higher reality than the physical
body. It forms the basis of the physical body; it is the whole
life through a fighter against the decay of the physical body.
At the moment when the human being goes through the gate of
death, the physical body is subject only to its own principles,
and then disintegrates. In life, the life body fights against
the decay. It gives the substances other directions and forces,
other connections than they would have if they followed only
their own nature. For the clairvoyant consciousness, this body
is as visible as the physical body for the eye. The human being
has this life body or etheric body in common with the
plant.
We
know from other talks that the human being still has a third
member of his being, the astral body. What is it? It is the
bearer of joy and sorrow, of desires, impulses and passions, of
all that we call our inner soul life. All that has its seat in
the astral body. It is spiritually discernible, as the physical
body for the physical consciousness. The human being has this
astral body in common with the animals.
The
fourth member is the bearer of the ego, of self-consciousness.
The human being is thereby the crown of creation, he towers
over the things of the earth, which surround him. Thus, the
human being faces us with three invisible members and a visible
member. These always work in each other and with each other.
They all work on any single member and each single member works
on all others. Thus, the physical body — I say once again
in parenthesis that all this applies only to the human being
— as it faces us, is an expression in all its parts also
of the invisible members of human nature. This physical body
could not have in itself the members that serve the nutrition,
the reproduction, life generally if it did not have the etheric
body. All organs that serve nutrition and reproduction, the
glands and so on, are the external expressions of the etheric
body. They are that which the etheric body creates in the
physical body.
Among other things, the nervous system is, in the physical
body, the expression of the astral body. Here the astral body
is the actor, the creator. We can imagine just as a clock or a
machine is constructed by a watchmaker or by a mechanical
engineer, the nerves are constructed by the astral body.
The
characteristic of the human blood circulation, the blood
activity, is the external physical expression of the
ego-bearer, the bearer of the self-consciousness. Thus, the
human physical body is also four-membered in certain ways. It
is an expression of the physical members and of three higher,
invisible members. The senses are pure physical; the glands are
the expression of the etheric body, the nervous system of the
astral body and the blood of the ego.
If
we look at the human being in contrast to the plant, the plant
faces us as a two-membered being. The plant has a physical body
and an etheric body. Now we compare the human being to the
plant, while we proceed universally and take the inner, the
spiritual, into consideration. We relate the human
four-membered organism with the two-membered organism of the
plants. In order to support our view we may start from
physical, known facts.
We
can show how the plant builds up its organism. It builds up its
body from inorganic substances. It has the strength to compose
its body from single inorganic components in the most wonderful
way. We need to see only how the plant is in a special
interaction with the respiratory process. The human being
inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic acid. The plant can absorb
what is useless to the human being. It holds the carbon back
for the construction of its organism and returns the oxygen for
the most part. However, it requires something that is not
regarded by many people as something particular: it needs the
sunlight. Without sunlight, it could not build up its organism.
The light that flows to us and delights us, that can animate us
also emotionally, is at the same time the great assistant of
the construction of the plant organism. We see how there a
marvel takes place, how the sunlight helps to construct an
organic being. What makes our eyes effective helps the plant to
construct itself.
The
human being also has the astral body beyond the physical one
and the etheric body. The plant does not have it. That which
helps the sunlight to build up the plants so marvellously is
the etheric body. This is turned on one side towards the
substances. The human being could not develop his physical
organism if he did not do anything that is in certain ways in
the opposite way that which the plant does. Already in the
respiratory process, the human being does something contrary.
The human being already goes through the contrary process. We
can say the same concerning the complete nutrition of the human
being. We can say, nutrition must take place in such a way that
everything that is built up in the plant is destroyed in the
human being again. The process in the human being is very
peculiar. If it were only the etheric body that built up a
physical body, consciousness or soul sensation would never
appear. What the etheric body has built up must be destroyed
internally over and over again, must be destroyed. Indeed, the
etheric body is a fighter against decay, but, nevertheless,
always some decay occurs. The astral body causes the decay that
keeps the human being from becoming a plant.
The
sunlight and the human astral body are two opposite things in
certain ways. For one who gets to know the human astral body
with clairvoyant consciousness the astral body is an internal
spiritual light, invisible to the external eye. A spiritual
light body is this astral body. It is the contrast to the
external luminous light. Imagine once the sunlight becoming
weaker and weaker, until it expires, and let it go even farther
to the other side, let it become negative, then you have an
inner light. This inner light has the opposite task of the
external light that would build up the plant body from
inorganic substances. The inner light which initiates the
partial destruction, only by which process consciousness is
possible, brings the human being to a higher level than the
plant, because the process of the plant is transformed into its
opposite. Thus, the human being is in a certain contrast to the
plant because of his inner light. This is to understand the
matter spiritually, and we would see on closer consideration
how the destruction caused by the astral body is then continued
by the ego. However, today this does not need to occupy us
further.
We
now take the relationship of the human being to the plant,
which becomes so real that the human being takes up his
nutrients from the plant. He continues within himself what is
for the plant a whole world process. What is built up by the
sunlight is destroyed by the astral body, indeed, over and over
again, but it thereby integrates the nervous system into the
human being and makes the human life a conscious one. Thus, the
astral body being a negative light body is the other pole that
is opposed to the plant. Something spiritual forms the basis of
this process of building up the plant organism; spiritual
science shows us more and more how that which appears as light
to us is only the external expression of something
spiritual.
Something spiritual shines, through the light, perpetually
towards us, the light of the spirits shines towards us. What is
hidden behind this physical light, but is separated in parts
appears also in our astral body. It appears externally in its
physical form, astrally in the astral body. The spiritual light
works in us internally on the construction of our nervous
system. So wonderfully do the plant and the human life work
together.
We
now examine the human being's relationship with the animal
realm as food. Here matters are different. In the animal from
which he takes his foodstuffs, the process is already carried
out in certain ways. What man takes usually from the plant is
partially transformed by the animal, already prepared, Since
the animal has an astral body and a nervous system, too.
Therefore, the human being takes up something that does not
come to him unchanged, but that has already gone through a
process that has taken up astral forces. What lives in the
animal has already developed astral forces in itself. One could
now believe that thereby the human being saves work. However,
this thought is not quite correct. Imagine once the following:
I build up a house with the help of various pieces of
equipment. I take the original equipment. There I can construct
the house completely by my original intentions. However, let us
assume that three or four other persons have already worked on
it bit by bit and now I have to complete it. Does this make my
work easier? No, surely not. You read in a widespread
literature that work is made easier for the human being if
someone has already worked on it. However, human being becomes
a more versatile, more independent being just by taking up the
original.
Another picture: somebody has a balance with two scale pans.
The identical weights keep the balance. On both sides there may
be fifty pounds. However, that is not always the case. I can
take a balance on which the arms are different lengths. Then we
only need half the weight at twice the distance. Here the
weight is defined by distance. It depends not only on the
amount of the forces but also on the delicacy of the materials
in particular. The animal processes the materials in a more
imperfect sense. What the human being takes up continues to
have an effect by that which the astral body of the animal
caused in it, and then the human being has to overcome this
first.
However, because an astral body has worked so that a process
has already taken place in a sentient being, the human being
gets something in his organism that has an effect on his
nervous system. This is the basic difference between food from
the plant realm and food from the animal realm. The food from
the animal realm works in particular on the nervous system and
with it on the astral body. In contrast, with plant food the
nervous system is left untouched by anything external. Then,
however, the human being has also to create everything
concerning the nervous system by himself. Thereby only that
which originates in him flow through his nerves. He who knows
how much in the human organism depends on the nervous system
understands what that is. If the human being builds up his
nervous system himself, it is fully receptive to that which the
human being has to expect of it in relation to the spiritual
world. The human being owes to the plant foods the ability to
look up at the greater connections of things that raise him
above the prejudices that arise from the narrow borders of the
personal being. Where the human being regulates life, and
thinking freely from the great viewpoints, this he owes to the
plant foods. Where the human being lets himself get carried
away by rage, antipathy, by prejudices, he owes this to his
meat-based food.
I
do not agitate for plant foods. On the contrary: the animal
food was necessary for the human being and still today it is
often necessary because the human being should be firm on
earth, should be hemmed in the personal. Everything that
brought him to his personal interests is connected with the
animal food. The fact that there were human beings who waged
wars, who had sympathy and antipathy, sensuous passions for
each other originates from the animal food. However, the human
being owes to the plant foods that he is not limited to these
narrow interests, that he can grasp universal interests. That
is why the talents of certain peoples who prefer plant foods
are more spiritual, while other people develop more bravery,
courage, boldness that are also necessary to life. These
qualities are not to be developed without the personal element,
and this is not possible without animal food.
We
speak about these questions from a general human viewpoint
today. However, this brings to our mind that the human being
can go in this or that direction, can immerse himself also in
his personal interests with the animal food. His sense is
thereby clouded concerning the larger overview of existence.
One mostly does not see how it is founded in the diet when the
human being says: now I do not know how I should do this or
that, how has he done it?
This impossibility of surveying these connections comes from
the food. Compare this to someone who can see the larger
connections. You can look back at the food of these human
beings and maybe at the food of the ancestors. A person who has
a virginal nervous system given to him by his ancestry is
completely different. This person has a different sense of the
larger connections. Sometimes, abuses in one life cannot
destroy what the ancestors have founded. Even if such a person,
descended from peasants, for instance, stirs up what he has in
himself, it has only been stimulated by the consumption of meat
because he was more sensitive.
Progress is made when the human being, as far as the
requirement for protein that is not prepared in the human
nature itself, confines himself to the animal foods that are
not yet set aglow by passions, such as milk. The plant food
will take up more and more room in the human diet.
Concerning single foodstuffs, we can emphasise certain
advantages of the vegetable foodstuffs. If the human being gets
his protein from vegetable foodstuffs, he has to work harder,
but he develops the forces that make his nervous system
fresher. A lot of that which humanity would face if the
consumption of meat got out of control would be avoided if
vegetable foodstuffs would be preferred. We can see in the
vegetarian and meat-based food the different effects they have.
To illustrate this, we can say the following: look at the
physical process under the influence of meat-based food. The
red blood cells become heavy, darker; the blood tends to
coagulate. Impacts of salts, of phosphates originate easier. If
plant food is absorbed, the blood sedimentation is much lower.
It becomes possible for the human being not to let the blood
take on the darkest colouring. Just thereby is he able to
control the coherence of his thoughts from his ego, while heavy
blood is an expression of the fact that he is given away
slavishly to that which is integrated in his astral body by the
animal food. This picture is definitely an external expression
of truth. The human being becomes internally stronger by the
relation to the plant realm. By meat-based food he integrates
something that gradually becomes foreign matter which goes its
own way in him. This is avoided if the food consists mostly of
plants. If the materials in us go their own ways, they
strengthen the forces which cause hysterical, epileptic states.
Because the nervous system receives these impregnations from
the outside, it becomes susceptible to heterogeneous nervous
diseases. Thus, we see how in certain respects “the human
being is what he eats.”
In
details it would be still even more provable, but through two
examples we can show that one must not be one-sided. A
one-sided vegetarian may say, we are not allowed to enjoy milk,
butter and cheese. However, milk is a product in which the
etheric body of the animals is advantageously involved. The
astral body is involved in it to the least extent. The human
being can live in the first times of his life as a baby only on
milk. There everything is contained in it that he needs. With
the preparation of milk, the astral body comes into
consideration only rudimentarily. If one enjoys milk primarily
at later age, if possible only milk, one achieves a particular
effect with it. Because the person ingests nothing that is
processed externally and can influence his astral body, and
because he absorbs something in the milk that is already
prepared, he is able to develop particular forces of his
etheric body in himself, which can exercise curative effects on
the fellow men. The healers who want to have a curative effect
on their fellow men have a particular aid in the consumption of
milk.
On
the other hand, we want to describe the influence of a luxury
that is taken from the plant realm, the influence of alcohol.
This has a particular significance. It originates only when the
real plant process, the effect of the sunlight, has stopped,
namely the opposite that the astral body carries out. Then a
process begins in the assimilation of alcohol that takes place
on a lower level and impairs the human being even more than
animal food. The human being brings the substances up to the
astral body, gives them a particular structure with the astral
body. However, if that which should be brought to the astral
body disintegrates in the way as it is the case with the
alcohol, then that happens without the astral body, hat which
should happen under the influence of the astral body, namely
the effect on the ego and the blood. The effect of the alcohol
is to take over that which should happen, otherwise, from the
free decision of the ego, by the alcohol. In certain respects,
it is correct that a person who enjoys alcohol needs less food.
He lets the forces of alcohol penetrate the blood. He provides
what he himself should do with something external. One can say
in certain ways that in such a person the alcohol thinks and
feels. Because the human being provides to the alcohol what his
ego should be subject to, the human being places himself under
the constraint of something external. He gets a material ego.
The human being can say, I just feel a stimulation of my ego
thereby. Indeed, but now he is not experiencing the ego, but
something else with which he has banished his ego. Thus, we
could still show by various things how the human being can get
around to being more and more what he eats. However, spiritual
science also shows us how he is able to become free from the
forces of food.
Thus, I wanted only to describe the relation of the human being
to his surroundings along general lines today, how he relates
to the realms of nature through the processes of nutrition. Who
visits this or that talk further on will see that individual
questions can also be answered on other occasions. This talk
will have shown you that spiritual science is something that
has its effect also on the most material needs of life.
Spiritual science is something that can be an ideal for the
human future. Today one still says often if one sees the
substances combining and separating in the human being: it is
like in a retort, and one believes that one can find something
salutary in it for the human beings. However, a time is coming
when someone who does research in the laboratory will also keep
in sight what I have said about the light and the astral body.
Is not anybody able to make the usual chemical observations if
he says to himself, that here the larger elements have an
effect on the smallest things which are penetrated by the
external physical sunlight, and those which shine up to the
spiritual in the human consciousness? One will explore these
things in a light that gives us an overview of the whole.
By
the spirit, everything is born that is in our surroundings. The
spirit is the primal ground of all. If we want to come to
truth, the spirit has also to stand with us as we conduct the
research. Then we recognise that truth which the human beings
need both on the macro cosmic and on the microcosmic scale.
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