Mention of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in recent posts has reminded me of the account he gives of a significant conversation with Rudolf Steiner. This was concerning the frustration experienced by Pfeiffer and others regarding their general “lack of spiritual experience in spite of all their efforts.” Dr Steiner’s reply was: “This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.”
If that was the situation a century ago, how much worse must our situation be today? Nearly one hundred years on, the combination of depleted soils, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and now GMOs are providing even less support for the growth of truly nutritious food than was the case in Steiner’s time. Today we still think of food as primarily a kind of fuel for our engines; and therefore we are still without a science that can distinguish the innate qualities of foods beyond their value as fuel. Conventional medicine recognises only the physical aspect of food, which mainly amounts to counting calories and identifying the material nutrients such as protein, fat, carbohydrates etc. But are foods a mere assembly of matter -or is there something more, such as an invisible life-energy, and a coherent, ordered template conveying essential information?
As regular readers of this blog will know, the anthropopper is fortunate enough to work for part of the week at Tablehurst Farm, a biodynamic and organic farm in Forest Row, East Sussex in the UK. A friend and colleague, the chiropractor David Thomas, called into the farm recently to present us with a copy of an extraordinary book by the founder and leader of a small Swiss food company, A.W (Walter) Danzer, who has investigated over 50 foods, both organic and non-organic, in his own specially designed laboratory.
Walter Danzer
The book is called The Invisible Power Within Foods and is published by Verlag Bewusstes Dasein in Switzerland (ISBN 978-3-905158-17-5). In it, the author says: “I have discovered that organic foods possess an amazingly beautiful life-energy or order force (life design principle), whereas the life-energy of non-organic foods is generally weakened, disrupted or destroyed. Since I find this important I wanted to share it with you, so that you can make informed decisions.”
So far, so underwhelming, you might think – we are used to such arguments from advocates for organic and biodynamic food – but where is the scientifically credible proof of such assertions that could convince professionals in the fields of food, nutrition, health and disease? This is where Walter Danzer has made a great breakthrough. He has developed a method of researching the life-energy in water, food and other substances so as to provide images that arise solely from the water or food-substance itself, and can be understood immediately by anyone.
Danzer pays tribute to the results of pioneering predecessors: he mentions specifically the image-generating methods inspired by Rudolf Steiner, such as crystallising drops of food on a metallic matrix of copper chloride, as well as Masaru Emoto’s experiments with frozen water, and the work of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and various naturopaths. But what Danzer was looking for was a process by which a suitable image would arise solely from the water or food substance itself, rather than from a metallic matrix that yields images that can only be interpreted by those with expert knowledge.
He appears to have triumphed. His method uses a precise standardised protocol to extract a test liquid from a particular food item, which brings to the fore the life-energy or “order force” of that food. Droplets of this liquid extract are then placed into a test tube, and dried and crystallised under specified, unchanging conditions. These dried drops are then studied and photographed under a microscope. The photos show not only the life design principle or order force of the minerals inside the food item but also in a form which can immediately be interpreted by anyone, expert and non-expert alike.
Danzer’s book contains photos resulting from his work with both organic and non-organic foods and some drinks, such as green tea and wines. He has not as yet published any photos looking at organic versus biodynamic foods, or organic versus natural Japanese cultivation, etc., but may do so in the future. He has, however, looked at the influence of a microwave oven on a herb and the effect of genetic modification on the life force of soy beans.
Walter Danzer’s photos – an organic apple is on the left, non-organic on the right
What do these photos reveal? The image of an organic apple seems to contain the figure of the entire apple tree, as well as the apple blossoms, seeds and even entire orchards of apple trees. In the non-organic apple, this natural essence is hardly visible anymore. It is blurred, lost and diffused into fragments. Startlingly, even in processed foods there are great differences between organic and non-organic ones. The structural arrangement of non-organic drinks and foods are shown to be amorphous, unorganised and without signs of life. The image of a soya drink made from GM soybeans looks like a lifeless, abandoned planet. By contrast, a drink made from organic soybeans shows what appear to be branches and even six-petalled blossoms.
An organically-grown orange on the left, a non-organic orange on the right.
Danzer suggests that when we first put food into our mouths, what happens is that the subtle energy of the food enters into our subtle body. The food first gives us its life, its wealth of information, its capacities, its knowledge, its order force (life design principle), its memories and experiences. All these are stored in the subtle body of the food. Foods are in fact highly developed information systems that sustain life. Foods are, of course, also fuels for our engine but only at the very end of the digestive process, and after our organism has first used the food in many other ways.
The droplet from a grain of rice, magnified x 400 – organic on the left, non-organic on the right.
What is more, the way in which food is grown and prepared can create foods that go far beyond the power of their organic ingredients. Most of us can sense that a meal prepared lovingly by a family member is more nourishing for us than a factory-made ready meal; the life inside us also needs subtle nourishment. Humans, farm animals and pets need naturally grown foods that are both materially and subtly wholesome, and thus able to support life. Danzer’s photos show that there are foods that fulfill this need on a fundamental level – and these are organic foods.
For many consumers, of course, organic foods cost more than they are able or prepared to pay. Yet it is a fact that conventional agriculture incurs costs that the consumer is paying for in other ways but which do not affect the prices in the supermarkets. Water pollution, toxic residues in the entire food chain, antibiotic resistance, soil erosion, soil nutrient loss, desertification, poisoning of the honey bee, etc., are just some of the consequences of our current model of industrial agriculture – all of which the consumer will have to pay for, in one way or another – not to mention the health-weakening effects of eating non-organic foods.
In a just society, the ‘polluter pays’ principle would operate here – companies such as Monsanto and Bayer and non-organic farmers would be required to meet the full external costs of industrial farming. There is an excellent organisation in the UK (the Sustainable Food Trust) that has set out the case for True Cost Accounting here.
When true cost-pricing is finally brought about, in the face of huge resistance from all the vested interests, it is likely that organic foods will have lower prices than non-organic foods. There is already one nation, Bhutan, which has decided to allow only organic agriculture within its borders by the year 2020. If Bhutan can do this, there is no reason why other countries cannot set out on a similar path.
anthropopper 
From “Agriculture of Tomorrow” to “Secrets of The Soil”, this work by this Swiss man, brings Dr. Pfeiffer’s ‘sensitive crystalization’ to meet Dr. Emoto’s crystalization and Jennifer Green’s ‘Water Drop Method’ to a clarity all may see, and not deny.
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Jeremy, you brought up a most important issue, which often escapes our attention.
In 1924 Rudolf Steiner mentioned that there is less and less „light ether“ in our food. He added that a „light root“ could be a remedy. It took decades of search and research to find this vegetable, look for the best way to cultivate it and evaluate its „light quality“. (Yams Dioscorea batatas became a bit known in the English speaking world through Usain Bolt, it seems.)
There are 3 ways of testing the quality, the „amount“ of light in the plant:
1 count the number of bio-photons
2 round-filter chromotography after E. Pfeiffer and similar technics and
3 the newly developd method of Dorian Schmidt, in the context of the Bildekrafteforschung, research on etheric forms.
In method 1 it is a machine, that produces the result and the result is a number. This is the modern scientific way which loves numbers (numbers are Ahriman s dearest child, Rudolf Steiner), where even qualitiy is measured in or turned into quantity.
In method 2 there are picture giving (or image creating) methods, like the named method of E. Pfeiffer, round filters, with or without salts added etc. Here the researcher interprets pictures, his experience is asked to make the pictures reveal its secrets. This is obviously what Walter Danzer does.
In method 3 man itself is the „testing machine“, man tries to percieve special qualities of the food. There is a lot of literature in English about methods 1 + 2, little to none about that new method (which is known to the science section at the Goetheanum, but regarded with some suspicion by some.).
In essence it is a kind of sensible/supersensible perception based on trained, highly sensitive „observations“. For example you hold the tested material in your hand or you taste it and then you try to observe the brief, light, slight … reaction on your body or feeling, say you may feel warmth or cold in different parts of the body, have the impression of weight or lightness, have the impression of colours, movements or or…
Food quality has always been in the focus of biodyn agriculture. Often they tried to show that e.g. biodyn milk has special chemical properties etc.
Here is the only English text I know that deals with this matter http://www.wirksensorik.de/en and http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0165991 As university science wouldnt accept the idea of etheric forces, a new word was invented for the testing of food: Wirksensorik.
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Dear Ottmar,
I like your remarks here about the little understood “method #3”:
“In method 3 man itself is the „testing machine“, man tries to perceive special qualities of the food.
In essence it is a kind of sensible/supersensible perception based on trained, highly sensitive „observations“. For example you hold the tested material in your hand or you taste it and then you try to observe the brief, light, slight … reaction on your body or feeling, say you may feel warmth or cold in different parts of the body, have the impression of weight or lightness, have the impression of colours, movements or or…”
RS gave a lecture on the problems of nutrition as early as January 1909, and see if he isn’t talking about a kind of “food of impressions”, wherein we can raise any nutritive value with a kind of mental alchemy based on the striving for spiritual understanding. It seems to have worked with the feeding of the five thousand with only five barley loaves and two fishes some 2000 year ago.
“Man can nourish himself in such fashion that he undermines his invisible independence. In so doing he makes himself an expression of what he eats. Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits. Here spiritual science can direct him. The wrong food can easily transform us into what we eat, but by permeating ourselves with knowledge of the spiritual life, we can strive to become free and independent. Then the food we eat will not hinder us from achieving the full potential of what we, as men, ought to be.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Nutrit_index.html
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I often wondered how in Zarathustra s time the farmers, priests, initiates were able to breed cereals out of wild grass within a short period of time. Now I read in http://www.bildekraefte.de/download/bk_bildekraeftebrief_2017-09.pdf on page 5 under the heading Meditative Züchtungsforschung……..Eine Behandlung von Saatgut mit Klang, Eurythmie oder Meditaion zeigt in der Pflanze wahrnehmbare Wirkungen, die sich von Pflanzen aus unbehandeltem Saatgut unterscheiden – das wurde mit bildgebenden Verfahren und anderen Methoden bereits mehrfach bestätigt….
Meditative Breeding research… A treatment of seeds with sound, eurythmy or meditation shows visible results in the plants, that differ from plants from seeds that were not treated – that was proven several times with images/pictures that were produces with different methods and also other methods. Furthermore rituallike forms of tratment were developed ….. to achieve/reach an encounter with the plant.
This is a resaerch project which has not yet reached a level were the results can be published. Many of the remain within the circle of the research society, but a lot of research papers can be obtained from the society, but unfortunately only in German so far.
I find it most interesting that new ground is broken within the anthro community.
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I live in the wilderniss in the summer for 6 month and eat mostly wild hreens i never feel hungry in okt i went to the netherlands and eat mostly organic food from the stores. And i am always humgry i eat at least 5 times more then in the wild where i nearly do not have to eat i love the plants i talk to them and walk gentel on the eath
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Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for offering this thread on the problems of nutrition. I think it will prove to be of the greatest world historical significance for the fact of what has already been given as a glimpse into what the power of etheric impressions means.
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer wrote a preface to the Agriculture Course, and it contains a very important conversation with Dr. Steiner described in the second paragraph here. I thought it would be good for everyone to hear in full what Pfeiffer asks, and then possibly contemplate what it meant for Steiner to hear such words of serious intent. Rudolf Steiner was always in a position to give more, and always hoped for the questions that would allow him to give further clues to the indications that he had already provided. He expected his students to elaborate his indications for the eventual full expression of spiritual science, but few seemed to ask such relevant questions as we see here.
“The agricultural course was held from June 7 to 16, 1924, in the hospitable home of Count and Countess Keyserlingk at Koberwitz, near Breslau. It was followed by further consultations and lectures in Breslau, among them the famous “Address to Youth.” I myself had to forgo attendance at the course, as Dr. Steiner had asked me to stay at home to help take care of someone who was seriously ill. “I’ll write and tell you what goes on at the course,” Dr. Steiner said by way of solace. He never did get round to writing, no doubt because of the heavy demands on him; this was understood and regretfully accepted. On his return to Dornach, however, there was an opportunity for discussing the general situation. When I asked him whether the new methods should be started on an experimental basis, he replied: “The most important thing is to make the benefits of our agricultural preparations available to the largest possible areas over the entire earth, so that the earth may be healed and the nutritive quality of its produce improved in every respect. That should be our first objective. The experiments can come later.” He obviously thought that the proposed methods should be applied at once.
This can be understood against the background of a conversation I had with Dr. Steiner en route from Stuttgart to Dornach shortly before the agricultural course was given. He had been speaking of the need for a deepening of esoteric life, and in this connection mentioned certain faults typically found in spiritual movements. I then asked, “How can it happen that the spiritual impulse, and especially the inner schooling, for which you are constantly providing stimulus and guidance bear so little fruit? Why do the people concerned give so little evidence of spiritual experience, in spite of all their efforts? Why, worst of all, is the will for action, for the carrying out of these spiritual impulses, so weak?” I was particularly anxious to get an answer to the question as to how one could build a bridge to active participation and the carrying out of spiritual intentions without being pulled off the right path by personal ambition, illusions and petty jealousies; for, these were the negative qualities Rudolf Steiner had named as the main inner hindrances. Then came the thought-provoking and surprising answer: “This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is to-day does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA327/English/BDA1958/Ag1958_preface.html
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Jeremy,
Thanks for sharing this. Those results are amazing. Have they been replicated by anyone else? The book has been out in German since 2014, but I couldn’t find anything on that.
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You ask an important question. In his book, Walter Danzer says that he went to the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (called in German the Bundesamt fur Gesundheit, or BAG), which is responsible for food labeling standards. He proposed to them that there should be a working group to look at the results of his research, with a view to introducing details of the “life design principle” on food labels, and presented them with large amounts of documentation.
The BAG dismissed his initiative on the grounds that “the method was not acknowledged by mainstream science.” Apparently the BAG could only work with methods taught by professors at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
From this, Danzer concluded that the experts and government officials in the field of food quality did not have a sincere interest in the subject, but that their main concern was to maintain a stable status quo in order to secure their own positions. He then decided that the only way in which he could serve the cause of improving food quality was to work directly for and with the consumers. Only consumers are able to bring about change.
He set up his family company, Soyana, and the Lifevision Lab to pursue his research, which he financed himself. He says that “when the results from the Soyana method are confirmed by further research, which we deem very likely as we have achieved these results through clean and reproducible methods, a new and holistic definition of food quality will present itself: one that includes the order force (life design principle).”
This implies that no other researchers have so far asked for, or been given, access to his methods. His apparent insistence on working with consumers rather than scientists seems to me a potential weakness in achieving wider acknowledgement of his results.
If anyone else has any further information about this, please share it with us.
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From his description of the steps he took in creating those pictures, did it sound like someone could replicate those steps who had no previous buy-in to the“life design principle” and still get the same results?
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The following sentence, which I’ve previously quoted, seems to indicate that the results can be reproduced by following his methods: “… when the results from the Soyana method are confirmed by further research, which we deem very likely as we have achieved these results through clean and reproducible methods, a new and holistic definition of food quality will present itself: one that includes the order force (life design principle).”
However, I suspect that a possible complication could be what has already been seen in quantum physics, i.e. the “observer effect”, which is to say that the consciousness of the researcher can also be a factor in what result is obtained. But I do hope that Danzer will share his method and processes with other researchers.
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If Danzer takes photos of apples, oranges, and rice grain, and the comparison is between organic and non-organic, then it really has nothing to do with whether he subscribes to a “life design principle”, or not. The photographic evidence is the proof. Danzer as the observer and recorder is not imputing his own theory into the results. Rather, he is proving that the warmth and light ethers, which trace back to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, have diminished in the progress of earth evolution. With organics, it is shown that replenishment occurs, and this is also aided by the addition of the life and chemical-tone ethers, which are of the Tree of Life.
So, we have all four ethers available today in order to advance to the knowledge of the Tree of Life. Spiritual Science represents the testimony of this truth. The conscious researcher, equipped with the “observer effect”, calls it the ‘proof of the pudding’.
Yet, this proves nothing to natural science today. Remember, it was A.A. Michaelson in 1879 who had the audacious idea to measure the speed of light, and caused the etheric realm to be considered void. Light-speed replaced the Ether as the so-called “Universal Constant”. Science still upholds this nonsense. So, Walter Danzer’s evidence is sure to be rebuked by the official authorities, but not to us here.
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This is a very good question. My opinion is that any objective investigator will find the same results. As such, no one has to buy into the so-called “life design principle “, but they will get the same results, which proves that replication can be shown. Replication is important for natural-science proofs.
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” Walter Danzer’s evidence is sure to be rebuked by the official authorities, but not to us here.”
I would imagine that a whole lot of people would have no vested stake in rebuking those photographs, assuming other people can reproduce them. They are a stunning visual analog to the kind of taste difference you sometimes experience between organic and nonorganic food. Were I doing advertsing for a chain of corporate organic food stores, to put it in bottom line terms, there is nothing I’d rather have than these kinds of photos on display– instant justification for the price differential between organic and nonorganic food.
Whether the only way to explain them is the way Danzer does would be something that would have to be argued out by people who try to replicate Danzer’s process. It’s also possible that Danzer has inadvertently put his thumb on the scale to get the outcome he wants. There’s a lot of discussion right now about how many of the articles in scientific journals report outcomes that other researchers aren’t able to replicate.
Since I haven’t read the book, I’m obviously doing a lot of winging it here.
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“It’s also possible that Danzer has inadvertently put his thumb on the scale to get the outcome he wants.”
I sensed that was part of your probing for replication, and I certainly encourage it. Yet, this is what impresses me about Danzer, from Jeremy’s post. He is funded from his own resources and sincerity of purpose in a seemingly very simple way:
“He [Walter Danzer] set up his family company, Soyana, and the Lifevision Lab to pursue his research, which he financed himself. He says that “when the results from the Soyana method are confirmed by further research, which we deem very likely as we have achieved these results through clean and reproducible methods, a new and holistic definition of food quality will present itself: one that includes the order force (life design principle).”
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Jeremy, you wrote of Walter Danzer’s recognition of Steiner’s work in image-formation, and the work of his followers. I found an extraordinary example which shows that the Tree of Life can be found in the cerebellum of the brain. This is likely due to the Mystery of Golgotha.
“Danzer pays tribute to the results of pioneering predecessors: he mentions specifically the image-generating methods inspired by Rudolf Steiner, such as crystallising drops of food on a metallic matrix of copper chloride, as well as Masaru Emoto’s experiments with frozen water, and the work of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and various naturopaths. But what Danzer was looking for was a process by which a suitable image would arise solely from the water or food substance itself, rather than from a metallic matrix that yields images that can only be interpreted by those with expert knowledge.”
“Our ordinary brain is really used only as the instrument for the lowest form of wisdom, earthly cleverness. The more we acquire wisdom, the less we depend upon our cerebrum, the more activity is withdrawn (a thing unknown to external anatomy) to our cerebellum, to that smaller brain enclosed within our skull which looks like a tree. When we have become wise, when we have become wisdom, we find ourselves in fact under a ‘tree,’ which is our cerebellum and which then especially begins to unfold its activity. Imagine how a man who has become especially wise stretches out the organs of his wisdom mightily, like the branches of a tree. They originate in the cerebellum which remains within the hard covering of the skull; but the spiritual organs stretch far out, and man is under the tree, the Bodhi tree, in spiritual reality.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GreVir_index.html
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‘…in the Italian region of Friuli, Ginzburg uncovered evidence of a pagan fertility cult that existed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The members of this small agrarian cult were known as the Benandanti, ‘good walkers’ or ‘well-farers’, and were all born with a caul, which distinguished them from ordinary folk and marked them out for their special purpose in life. On certain nights…these Benandanti would leave their bodies and travel out in spirit to protect the crops from harm by doing battle with witches (known as the Malandanti) and evil spirits who were the enemies of fertility. When the Benandanti came to the attention of the Inquisition they affirmed their belief that they were the defenders of the Church against the evil doing of witches….(From a reference to Carlo Ginzburg’s The Night Battles, Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th & 17th Centuries).
”…science is beginning…to take away the life-promoting remedies, the spiritual conception of life, which is able to fortify and which alone is able to stand up against the physical – the power which must otherwise overwhelm man.”
Rudolf Steiner (22/12/09, Berlin), on a different subject, but relevant if such things as glyphosates can be regarded as a kind of ‘condensed’ malevolence?
(ps, can anybody provide any links/references to any anthroposophist writers, or similar, who wrote on the area of wise-men/women, herbalists, etc? I once read an article by one dealing with this subject {it wasn’t specifically concerned with the herbalist Steiner knew as a young man}, but haven’t been able to find the article or writer since. Thanks)
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Yes, indeed. The occultist, G. I. Gurdjieff, took many indications from Paracelsus, the alchemist of the 16th century, in formulating a food diagram seen here for the 20th century.
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Gurdjieff/Food_Diagram.htm
As such, it designates three [actually four] levels of hydrogen activity from bottom to top. The lowest is the food hydrogen, coming out of the warmth element, i.e., Do 768, then Do 384, which is the air element, and then quickly to Do 192, the fluid element. These are the three elements involved in the mastication function; food, air, water.
Now, in looking at the diagram, there is a fourth element; the top tier. This is the place where a kind of interlude occurs at Do 96, which is the element of appreciation.
So, at the top tier we have Do 48, which is the food of impressions itself. This means that we can resolve any lower food element, whether organic or non-organic in origin, into its highest octane (hydrogen) value by the simple measure of invoking gnostic thinking, i.e, spiritual science taken into the very core of our being.
I hope this helps because the herbalist that Rudolf Steiner met on the train into Vienna, c. 1879, knew this kind of stuff right out of the retort of experimental evidence. Why else would he sell to the apothecaries there in Vienna?
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Let me be more explicit. In a recent comment, I quoted Steiner’s words as to how nutrition can be improved simply by the power of assimilating spiritually-motivated thoughts. See here:
“Man can nourish himself in such fashion that he undermines his invisible independence. In so doing he makes himself an expression of what he eats. Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits. Here spiritual science can direct him. The wrong food can easily transform us into what we eat, but by permeating ourselves with knowledge of the spiritual life, we can strive to become free and independent. Then the food we eat will not hinder us from achieving the full potential of what we, as men, ought to be.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Nutrit_index.html
This quote seems to draw attention to the “food of impressions”, as previously described. What if it can be shown that any food substance, whether organic or non-organically grown, vegetable or animal, is essentially metabolized by the power of assimilation? In the photographs provided of the external evidence of the greater light-bearing properties of organic foods vs. non-organic, it seems a compelling proposition that this is, in fact, the case.
As well, what if it were possible to measure the greater potential of food substances metabolized on a cellular level if one prayed before eating, as opposed to simply eating? How could assimilation be measured in relation to the two practices? Here. we are looking at an entirely internal process, and an outcome that likely has to be measured in terms of how life is seen, felt, encouraged, and loved in its various aspects as a great endeavour.
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Thanks!
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Thank you Steve – Important point about prayer before eating. I experienced this in visiting Camphill communities where they have some special verses they say before meals.
For more information about RS views about nutrition, worth checking out this book review. http://www.doyletics.com/arj/nutritio.shtml
The book considers writings that range from one page to fourteen pages long and cover the period from 1905 to 1925 on the subject of nutrition and stimulants. It claims to put in one place all the important things that Steiner had to say on nutrition, food intake, how various food stuffs affect the etheric, astral, and Ego bodies, what foods affect the various organs of the body, and how anthroposophy’s view of the care and feeding of the human body differs from materialistic scientists.
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Of course, this is all true. A compendium of all the places that Steiner spoke about nutrition is a useful device. And yet, what if it can be shown that taking milk in the morning and combined with a grain ingredient makes the day more of a kind of feeling experience? Now, in taking fruit, like a banana into the system, while drinking coffee, it stimulates the etheric body into action. This action generates thinking. If we choose to eat a sausage on the skillet, then will-forces are generated quite readily, and the astral body extends thought-streams right into our environment. We go to work on it. Thus, feeling, thinking and willing are all inseparably related here in terns of what we ingest on a daily basis.
Now, add the factor of gnosis, i.e., mental alchemy and transmutation of substances, and then you have what gives the greater value. Here in America, we have a special celebration of this fact, although most of us only know it through the heart. Yet, that is as important as it gets. We call it “Happy Thanksgiving”, and it strives to maintain the trend in which we continue to uphold the spirit in all endeavors, whether successful or a failure.
It is all the same. Here we are in the bright light of freedom, but watch out for the easily detectable lies called propaganda. Most here know this kind of dogma, so forgive me.
Steve
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Here is some important news about a conference in early 2018 on Agriculture. It is much more convenient for those that felt that Santa Fe was too far to reach. I understand *that* challenge, and even a dilemma. As such, I hope this works for those in the European district. Steiner’s lectures on that quaint little spread in Koberwitz in June of of 1924 will always prove to be the incentive for the future course of efforts.
http://sektion-landwirtschaft.org/en/home/home/
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Some excellent links there, Steve – thank you.
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Yes, Jeremy, I thought it would be right up your line. Actually, it was Ottmar who sent me this link, and I knew it was something you needed to hear about. I only remembered Santa Fe because I feel a kind of personal connection to you for this blog, and I know it means a lot that the biodynamic agriculture movement is gaining ground in the world. 2018 could be the pivotal year in this century, just as it was in 1918 with the end of WWI. Steiner certainly felt a burden lifted, but also saw the challenge with a threefolding plan that could prevent any future kind of war, if it could be realized.
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I have hesitated to contribute to this discussion because this is one of the areas – food & spiritual development – where I find what Steiner is supposed to have said strange and obscure.
Steiner claims in ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ and ‘Esoteric Science’ that any one can make progress spiritually by following the exercises he describes there. Even someone confined in a prison cell can do this inner work. Now why did he make this claim if, in fact, success depends on eating the right foods?
I don’t see any connection between what you eat and becoming more compassionate, more understanding, kinder, more insightful, etc.
I have wondered whether this oft quoted conversation with Pfeiffer was in fact just for Pfeiffer’s edification and should not be generalised to other people’s circumstances.
I do support the effort to improve the quality of the food we eat and aspire to eat, for health and environmental reasons, i.e., for the healing of the earth – not because I imagine that better food will make me a better person.
I believe that what will make me a better person (more like to Christ) comes through the effort of my own self to change what is base and egotistical in me.
In the lessons of the First Class, in order to overcome the three ‘enemies’ of our cosmic age, we are not told to eat special food, but to purify our willing, feeling and thinking. Very specific instructions are given for how to start this process. Reference is made to courage, warm enthusiasm and creativity. No reference is made to what we should eat, or not eat.
Perhaps I have the wrong end of the stick here.
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I wish I could find the quotation now, but I can’t — I remember he says somewhere something like: you cannot eat yourself to the higher worlds.
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Alicia said:
“I wish I could find the quotation now, but I can’t — I remember he says somewhere something like: you cannot eat yourself to the higher worlds.”
I suspect that is true that Steiner never said such a seemingly idiotic remark, and yet what if it is true that we eat to get where we are going in ultimata? Thus, eating is the objective, and why we do it in order to get to both cellular regeneration, and the next level.
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Tom wrote:
“Steiner claims in ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ and ‘Esoteric Science’ that any one can make progress spiritually by following the exercises he describes there. Even someone confined in a prison cell can do this inner work. Now why did he make this claim if, in fact, success depends on eating the right foods?”
I think he is referring to the fact that people who have not even begun to do the work of spiritual development are in a position of depleted Energy due to the evidence of inferior sources of food. Steiner outlined a program of development specifically for Pfeiiffer as a young man. Thus, organic renewal became the eventual plead from Pfeiffer to Steiner for the course on agriculture. It is interesting that Pfeiffer was precluded from attending the course in Koberwitz because he was asked by RS to attend to a sick patient instead. EP remembers that RS promised to send him letters about the progress and findings of the course, but never did. He understood what it means to be busy.
Now, some years before Steiner’s conversation with Pfeiffer about the evidence of poor nutrition, he said this, which refers to what you are saying:
“Man can nourish himself in such fashion that he undermines his invisible independence. In so doing he makes himself an expression of what he eats. Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits. Here spiritual science can direct him. The wrong food can easily transform us into what we eat, but by permeating ourselves with knowledge of the spiritual life, we can strive to become free and independent. Then the food we eat will not hinder us from achieving the full potential of what we, as men, ought to be.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Nutrit_index.html
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Thank you, Alicia and Steve. In simple terms, eating a bad diet may hinder one’s progress spiritually.
Yes, I can go with that, because one’s powers of concentration and attention may be depleted.
On the other hand people who are extremely depleted, even starving, may still display wonderful love and understanding for their fellow men and women.
But the converse is not true, i.e., that by eating ‘correctly’ one will develop spiritually.
Eating the right food may make a difference to the amount and quality of energy one may have but not to the way in which one’s soul can develop.
“Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits.” Perhaps Pfeiffer had too great a love for Bratwurst 🙂
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I wished you’d know what quote I was thinking of, and where to find it! It won’t leave me in peace now!
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I think you’ll find the quotation occurs in this lecture: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA253/English/AP1991/19150910p01.html
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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Thank you, Jeremy! That’s exactly the passage I was thinking of. Quite an entertaining lecture, too.
Best wishes,
Alicia
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Well, here is the passage for full effect:
“I have often emphasized that it is impossible to eat your way into the higher worlds, either through what you eat or through what you abstain from eating. Achieving access to spiritual worlds is a spiritual matter, and both eating and abstaining from food are physical matters. If this were not the case, people might get grotesque ideas about what would happen if they did or did not eat certain foods. It might occur to them to eat salt one week and no salt at all the next week in order to descend to the depths of the elemental world during the week when they were eating salt and come back up again in the course of the week when they were doing without. It’s quite possible for people to get stupid ideas like that. In our Society, of course, people will not get ideas that are as stupid as that, but similar things might still occur to them.”
Yes, this was a very entertaining course of lectures. The Sprengel-Goesch affair seen here with Steiner’s seemingly pompous remarks, c., GA253, would soon cave into the more serious undertones with GA254, in which he wants to warn the entire anthroposophical movement about the schism that was attempted prior, and how the occult movement works. Remember, this is where he talks in detail about the Eighth Sphere, and what it means.
Steve
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Tom, I am sitting here rubbing my eyes and wondering why you wrote such a remark as this:
“Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits.” This is from Steiner, and then you write:
Perhaps Pfeiffer had too great a love for Bratwurst 🙂
What in the ‘bleep’ world does that mean? Is Ehrenfried Pfeiffer now the target of assault by going to America in order to build the agricultural movement?
Please explain, sir Tom, because who gets it?
Steve
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Its a joke, Steve.
I am sure Pfeiffer was a fine man, but, who knows, he may well have loved Bratwurst too much, just as as I love Dark Chocolate. And Coffee. With lots of Sugar…..
Did you know that Rudolf himself smoked rather smelly little cheroots and Marie shouted at him for stubbing them out on the columns of the first Goetheanum, on his way to the rostrum to deliver lectures?
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On the topic of sausages (loved by spiritual dogs and men alike?)… Asked, in 1892, about his favourite food and drink, Rudi replied: “Frankfurter Würste und Cognac. Schwarzer Caffee.” (Steiner: Selbstzeugnisse.)
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Gautama Buddha died from eating too much pork 🙂
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Certainly spiritual men love sausages, Alicia. I have fed a number of Christian Community priests on Sausage and Mash (korv och mos) with Onion gravy. They loved it. Afterwards they preached wonderful sermons.
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More extensive in The Effect of Occult Development Upon the Self and the Sheaths of Man:
We may learn to compare milk, plants and animals as nourishment when, through theosophical or esoteric development, we become more sensitive to the effects of these foods; and it will then also be easier for us to observe the verification obtainable from a rational observation of the outer world. Etc.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0145/19130321p02.html
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Thank You, Ton. This is more understandable to me. The esoteric and theosophical development (which comes about through inner effort) enables us to be more discerning about the effect on us of what we eat, and that in turn enables us to be more objective about our perceptions of ‘the outer world’.
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Tom, let’s take another example of what is being implied here. The Act of Consecration and Transubstantiation in the Holy Mass is a rather atomic example of what it means to infuse the power of loving impressions into the nature of chemical substances. Thus, assimilation of food stuffs receives a kind of hydrogen boost when we pray before eating, or take the bread and wine in a sacrificial act as seen with the Catholic church, and Christian Community services.
Steiner gave a special emphasis here with his course to the Priests about what this Act of the Consecration of Man means, and it was the course that exhausted him to the limit in late September of 1924.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA346/English/UNK1995/Apocal_index.html
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Has anyone heard of the case study that was published in German under a title that translates to: “The Mystery of the Fatal Illness of Rudolf Steiner”? I have a copy however I do not read German. I’m seeking a German-speaking individual who is interested enough in the subject matter to donate an English translation. chef@thesetruths.com
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DID STEINER DIE OF PORK POISONING?
Based on recent remarks concerning the intake of bratwurst, and succulent sausages off of the pork-hind, and how the last meal of the Buddha was of such a kind as to give him extreme abdominal upset, including a bleeding bowel, it might be interesting to make a comparison of such note with how Rudolf Steiner’s last illness began at the luncheon on 1 January 1924. Many comments from the last thread on Steiner’s fatal illness indicate that it was a kind of “spiritual poisoning” that occurred, and therefore a karmic condition due to his mission on earth to spread esoteric knowledge, much in the same way as the Buddha spread the “Eightfold Path of Enlightenment” after receiving his true mission under the Bodhi Tree at age 29 years.
Now, what if it can be shown that when Rudolf Steiner went to Weimar in 1890, at age 29 years, it began for him, as well, to live under the Bodhi Tree? Let’s look at these two extracts, which indicate that “pork poisoning” is a metaphor for esoteric knowledge communicated to a kind of final capacity, which then leads to death.
“The life of Buddha is not rightly understood when we read that Buddha perished through the enjoyment of too much pork; this must not be taken literally. It is rightly objected from the standpoint of Christian esotericism that people who understand something trivial from this understand nothing about it at all; this is only an image, and shows the position in which Buddha stood to his contemporaries. He had imparted too many of’ the sacred Brahmanical secrets to the outer world. He was ruined through having given out that which was hidden, as is everyone else who imparts what is hidden.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA105/English/HC1931/19080816p01.html
“When people allege that it is an inferior way of thinking on the part of orientalists to say that the Buddha died from eating too much pork […] and it is explained that this actually has a deep meaning, namely that the Buddha imparted to those immediately around him too much of the esoteric wisdom, so that this over-abundance caused the onset of a kind of karma — then we agree that it is so; we say: certainly there lie behind it the deeper esoteric truths as stated by you who are eastern esotericists!”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA107/English/AP1954/19090322p01.html
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I wonder if the state of mind / soul prior to eating has any effect on whether and to what extent the food one eats gives nourishment to ourselves, or even other entities, elementals who are associated with us.
If one has a reverent attitude, respecting the role that the cosmic forces and beings, farmers and the cooks played in bringing the food to the table, then would that be different to wolfing the same food down in front of the TV without thinking about it ?
Seeing as we are getting into details about what esteemed leaders like to eat, here is some insight into what the current leader of the free world has on his menu !
http://www.ladbible.com/news/celebrity-interesting-food-us-president-donald-trumps-standard-mcdonalds-order-is-immense-20171203
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Concerning Steiner’s last illness and his being alienated from his physical body since the fire:
“When a person suffers from a gastric disorder, the symptoms can be diagnosed physically; but as a result of his gastric condition he is more able to share in the life of the dead immediately after their death. Of course a physical diagnosis is made before therapeutic treatment can begin. From the spiritual standpoint we would say that such a person feels impelled to preserve, after their death, his spiritual link with the souls he has known on Earth.” Etc. GA0243/19240814
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He [The Buddha] had imparted too many of’ the sacred Brahmanical secrets to the outer world [the Pork]. He was ruined through having given out that which was hidden [the succulent sausage], as is everyone else who imparts what is hidden [Steiner’s portion] . GA105, 16 August 1908.
So, the specific detection of a gastric disorder in the lecture from August 14, 1924, only serves to alert Rudolf Steiner that his affiliation with the dead is now much more acute. He sees his own oncoming approach to the threshold.
He is also signifying that he may have to change his schedule some time soon; certain physical treatments are forthwith. Thanks, Ton, for a very perceptive indication coming from the last appearance in England in August 1924.
The last assault would take place in Dornach, Switzerland. September 1924.
Kind regards,
Steve
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I do not know much, nor do I have much of an opinion of how what we eat may or may not aid spiritual growth. But elsewhere on this blog has been discussed how this current age is on its way out i.e. we are preparing for the next age.
I purchased the book The Invisible Power Within Foods and I highly recommend it. It is a testament to the current decline in human culture of this current age. “Man” has destroyed the world around him. He has become addicted to the illusion that he has mastered the physical realm. To build a house, however, many trees must die. This is not mastery IMHO. We must live to learn, of course. To sustain life we must have food and shelter. But must we destroy that on which we depend?
If you purchase the book and look at the images of how pure, whole food appears at this level, you see the beauty and magnificence of the universe. To myself, this is where food and the spiritual intertwine.
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Good reading yourr post
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