Water Circulation

It is not usually realised that water actually forms the blood circulation of the earth. Why is this not realised as a rule?

Well, you see, the blood makes a more striking impression. It is red, it contains all sorts of substances and people say to themselves that blood is in fact a peculiar substance. As to water, one simply thinks — Oh, well, it's just water! It makes less impression and the substances which it contains in addition to hydrogen and oxygen, are not present to the same extent as, for instance, the iron in the blood. So people don't consider the matter again. Nevertheless it is true that the entire water-circulation is of immense importance for the life of the earth. Just as little as the human organism could live without a circulation of blood, could the earth exist if it had no circulation of water.

The water-circulation has a distinct character — namely, it takes its start from something that is quite different from that into which it enters when it finds its outlet in the ocean. If you follow up the rivers you find that they contain no salt: the water in the rivers is fresh water. The sea contains salt and all that the sea brings to maturity is founded on this salt-content. That is of extraordinary importance: water begins to circulate on the earth in a fresh, salt-free condition and ends in the ocean in a salty condition.

The subject is generally dismissed by the statement that such a river as the Rhine rises somewhere or other, takes this course (a sketch was made) and then flows into the sea. That in fact is just what is seen externally. But what is not considered is that whereas the river, the Rhine, for example, flows externally like this from the Southern Alps to the North Sea, there is a kind of stream of force under the earth, returning from the mouth of the river to its source. And what happens there (above the earth) is that the river is fresh water, contains no salt; what returns there (under the earth) is all the time carrying salt into the earth in the direction of the river. The earth acquires salts which actually come out of the sea. It would have no salt if the stream of salt did not return under the earth from the river's mouth to its source. The so-called geology which investigates the interior of the earth should always bear in mind that wherever there are river-beds, somewhat deeper in the ground there are deposits of salt.

Now, if there were no salt-deposits in the earth, no plant-roots would grow. For plant-roots only grow in the soil by obtaining the salt for nourishment. The plant is most salty in the root, above it gets less and less salty and the blossom has little salt. And if one asks whence it comes that the ground can bring forth plants, it must be replied: because it has a water-circulation. Just as in us the blood arteries go out from the heart and the veins return, bringing back the blue blood, so in the earth the arteries of rivers and streams branch out on the one hand, while below the earth the veins of salt return. Thus there is a genuine circulation.

Is there then some special reason for the fact that the earth consists on the one hand of a fluid salt-body, on the other hand of dry land, and that salt is continuously brought in from the sea while there is none in the fresh water rivers that course through the land?

Yes, you see, if one really investigates sea-water, one discovers that this salty sea-water stands in but slight connection with the universe. Just as with us, for example, the stomach is but slightly connected with the outer world — in fact, merely through what it receives — so there is very little connection between the interior of the sea and the heavens. Land, on the contrary, has a strong connection with the heavens — land through which the rivers flow, where plants are brought forth through the salty deposits, particularly, however, where there are flowing waters....

If we view the matter in this way then we approach the mountain springs in quite a different spirit! We delight in the rippling of the springs, in their beautiful flow, their wonderfully clear waters and so on. Yes, but that is not the only thing! Springs are in fact the eyes of the earth! The earth does not see out into the universe through the sea, because the sea is salt and that gives it an interior character like our stomach. The springs with their fresh water are open to the universe, just as our eyes look freely out into space. We can say therefore that in countries where there are springs, the earth looks far out into the universe; the springs are the earth's sense organs, whereas in the salt ocean we have more the earth's lower body, its bowels. It is naturally not the same as in the human body; there are not such enclosed organs, organs that can be delineated. It would be possible to sketch them, but they are not so evident. However, the earth has its bowels in the sea and its sense organs in the land. And everything through which the earth stands in connection with the cosmos comes from fresh water, everything through which the earth has its intestinal character comes from salt water.

-Rudolf Steiner

Children Should Experience the Beautiful

We must, in our lessons, see to it that the children experience the beautiful, artistic, and aesthetic conception of the world; and their ideas and mental pictures should be permeated by a religious/moral feeling. Such feelings, when they are cultivated throughout the elementary school years, will make all the difference during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth years. For a child whose feelings for the beautiful, for the aesthetic conception of the world, have not been stimulated will during puberty easily become overly sensual, even perhaps erotic.

There is no better way of counteracting the erotic feelings than through the healthy development of the aesthetic sense for the sublime and beautiful in nature. If you succeed in making the children feel deeply the beauty, the colors, in sunrise and sunset, in the flowers, experience the sublime splendor of a thunderstorm— if, as it were, you cultivate in them the aesthetic sense —you will do more for them than is done by the often absurdly practiced sex education given to children at an ever younger age. It is the feeling for the beautiful, an aesthetic confrontation with the world, that counteracts the erotic feeling. By experiencing the world as beautiful, the human being will also attain the right, healthy relation to his or her body, will not be tormented by it, as happens in eroticism.

It is most important during puberty that the children have developed certain moral, religious feelings. Such feelings also strengthen the astral body and ego. They become weak if the religious, moral feelings and impulses have been neglected.

The children then turn indolent, as though physically paralyzed. This will show itself especially during the years we are now discussing. The lack of moral and ethical impulses also leads to irregularities in the sexual life.

We must consider the differences between girls and boys in our education leading up to this age. We must make the effort to develop the girls’ moral and ethical feelings in a way that they are directed toward the aesthetic life. We must take special care that the girls especially enjoy the moral, the religious, and the good in what they hear in the lessons. They should take pleasure in the knowledge that the world is permeated by the supersensible; they should be given pictures that are rich in imagination, that express the world as permeated by the divine, that show the beautiful aspects of the good and moral human being.

In regard to boys, it will be necessary to provide them with ideas and mental pictures that tend toward strength and affect the religious and ethical life. With girls, we should bring the religious and moral life to their very eyes, while with boys we should bring the religious and beautiful predominantly into the heart, the mind, stressing the feeling of strength that radiates from them. 

Naturally, we must not take these things to an extreme, should not think of making the girls into aesthetic kittens that regard everything merely aesthetically. Nor should the boys be made into mere louts, as would be the inevitable result of their egotisms being engendered through an unduly strong feeling of their strength — which we ought to awaken, but only by connecting it to the good, the beautiful, and the religious.

We must prevent the girls from becoming superficial, from becoming unhealthy, sentimental connoisseurs of beauty during their teenage years. And we must prevent the boys from turning into hooligans. These dangers do exist.

-Rudolf Steiner, Lecture 5, EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS, June 12–19, 1921

Sodium Carbonate- Rudolf Steiner

Soda is especially important for everything in us that has to do with thinking. For soda is sodium carbonate and sodium carbonate has a stimulating effect upon the head. Everything that is connected with our thinking, with our head, with our inner light, has to do with soda.

In order that a substance like soda may be present in us, we must take in the oxygen contained in the air. This we do in breathing, for the air consists of oxygen and nitrogen — of many other things too but they play a less important part. We take in the oxygen with our breathing. What about the carbon? We form carbon in ourselves out of the food we take. Carbonic acid is formed and we then get carbonate of soda. Soda is very important for our heads. We have sodium carbonate — soda — within us, and it is all the time passing into our heads. In propagation, too, it has its part to play as I once told you. So you see soda is of great importance to us........

Sodium is widely, very widely spread in the universe. If you ask yourselves, why is sodium so widespread, then you must answer: in order that this sodium carbonate, this soda, can come into existence. It is spread everywhere in order that human heads can exist. Iron is everywhere present in the universe in order that we can have free will. Sodium is everywhere in order that we can have heads. Were sodium not present in the universe, it would be quite impossible for us to have heads.

Now what must be present in order that we, as human beings, can have heads? There must be carbonic acid, that is to say, carbon and oxygen; and there must be sodium. Sodium, as I have told you, is present everywhere in the universe. Carbon we have in ourselves. It is all the time being created in us from our food; only it is transformed because we do not want to be dead carbon men, but living men, who destroy substance and then re-create it. And especially we create carbon. Thus we have the carbon ourselves, we take the oxygen from the air and the sodium from the universe. These must be present, in order that we may have heads.

-Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Workings In Earth & Man- Effects of Substances in the Cosmos & in the Human Body 

Palingenesis

“A rose resuscitated.” Palingenesis is the act (or idea) of raising a plant from its own burned ashes. Athanasius Kircher was a believer and gave his method in Mundus Subterraneu, 1665. The method is also laid out with this illustration in Curiosities of Nature and Art in Husbandry and Gardening, 1707 by Abbé de Vallemont.

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The claims of Gaffarilus — which, by the bye, appeared so preposterous in 1650 — were later corroborated by science.

He maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist, assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.* Ashes of burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their various forms. "A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took a defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes consisted of." "The earthly husk," wrote Oetinger, "remains in the retort, while the volatile essence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in form, but void of substance."†

And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of man, the inner ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once dissolved, and is no more? "At death," says the philosopher, "the one body exudes from the other, by osmose and through the brain; it is held near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual, until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given the soul can reinhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it in sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at the command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is 'full of God.'

-Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

Four ways to Truth

Here's an example:

1. We can have soul knowledge with certainty.

2. Shadow: Spiritual smog- lost in smog without self determination.

3. We can be egoically active, striving (with failure) to arrive at
valid concepts.

4. Shadow- where you think you've arrived at a true perception/qualification but your ego bound- and that's Luciferic.
Lucifer loves Lucifer - a false love.

Sometimes when arguing we only look at the others' negatives- we view
their double. The Double always gives us something to argue with.