Anthroposofische Mitteln Anhang 3
[Armin Scheffler]
(Original title: Zum Verstaendnis
der Morgen- und Abendprozesse und ihrer Anwendung in der Heilmittelherstellung.
Mitteilungen der Anthroposophischen
Gesellschaft
in Deutschland.)
In a lecture given on 25 November 1917, R.S. spoke of the need to use
morning and evening processes in pharmaceutics in the near future. He assured
his listeners that one could not go wrong if the two processes worked together.
Two other processes in the cosmic order went against this. He called
them the midday and midnight processes and characterized them as follows:
the midday processes were mainly brought to bear from the Anglo-American
sphere, the midnight processes from an eastern direction.
Morning and evening processes, which always could work only together,
represented the Christian impulse. They were opposed with a kind of Antichrist
from the West, whereas the streams coming from the East would try to prevent
true perception of the Christ impulse. R.S. also related certain cosmic
activities, designated by signs of the zodiac, with the three kinds of
processes. Morning and evening processes were said to be due to the cosmic
activity of Fishes and Virgin; noon processes were in the cosmic direction of
the Twins; and midnight processes were forces coming from the Archer.
R.S.'s actual words were:
For a regular professor of biology it is of real importance today to
have a microscope with maximum possible magnification, the best possible
laboratory methods, and so on.
In future, when science will have become spiritual, it will be a
question of whether certain processes are best done in the morning and evening
or at noon; if one lets the evening forces influence whatever has been done in
the morning or if one excludes, it paralyzes the cosmic influence from morning
to evening. Such processes will prove to
be necessary in future, and they will take place... People with
knowledge of the cosmos will fight each other, with some of them bringing
morning and evening processes to bear in the way I have indicated; in the West
preferably the noon processes, eliminating morning and evening processes, and
in the East the midnight processes.
Substances will no longer be produced merely according to chemical
attraction and repulsion, and people will know that a different substance
results if one uses morning and evening, midday or midnight processes...
Nothing can go wrong if the power coming from the Fishes and those coming from
the Virgin act together...
These words may sound strange, but they have found application within
the anthroposophic movement. Anthroposophic medicines are produced by
rhythmical methods based on R.S.'s statements. Procedures such as gentle heating,
exposure to light, or setting the mixture in motion are applied to the plant
preparations in the mornings and evenings.
If we ask ourselves if this is really in accord with what Steiner
indicated in the lecture on 25 November 1917, one objection arises that can
scarcely be invalidated: the fact that it is perfectly possible to treat a
plant preparation in the mornings only, for the method used does not make it
necessary to treat it also in the evening. R.S. made it clear, however, that
morning processes absolutely demand to be combined with evening processes and
that it is impossible to separate the two.
Joachim Schultz and Suso Vetter, who have been working extensively with
astronomical and astrological questions, carried out plant growth experiments
designed to show that differences occur if the orientation is on a particular
sign of the zodiac when working with a special apparatus (Astrostat).
This has been the second attempt to demonstrate the truth of R.S.'s
statements concerning the signs of the zodiac by means of apparatus. Extensive
experiments in this field have been done for many years, both in Dornach and at
the Engelberg, and Vetter thinks he has succeeded in showing statistically
significant differences in the behavior of plants exposed to Virgin and Archer.
This is not in accord with R.S.'s statements, however, and the objection must
be raised that nothing forces the experimenter to establish rhythmic
alternation between exposure to Fishes and exposure to Virgin. The question is:
does this change in the wording agree with what Steiner meant when he spoke of
morning and evening processes and of midnight or midday processes?
To get a clearer picture, let us consider the context of the lecture.
During World War I, Steiner frequently drew attention to the fact that people
live with the dead in a very
real way. Shortly after the passage quoted above, he said:
We can only see them (things) as they are if we are able to apply the
concepts and ideas of our anthroposophically-oriented science of the spirit to
the real world. The dead will have a major role to play for the rest of the
Earth's existence, and it will be a question of how they do this. Above all,
the big difference will be that the attitude of people who are on Earth goes in
a positive direction and the dead can then be involved at a point where the
impulse to act comes from them, where it is taken from the world of the spirit
which the dead experience after death.
Speaking to the dead
One way in which Steiner showed the connection with the dead began with
a reference to the different levels of consciousness in our thinking, feeling
and will activity - waking, dreaming, and being asleep. If we consider the two
extremes of consciousness, we are citizens of two worlds. In waking
consciousness we live with the three realms of nature and with the human beings
who are born, in sleep consciousness with the spirits of the hierarchies and
with the dead. In a lecture given on 5 February 1918, he said:
Anyone who gets to know the life which the human soul has between death
and rebirth... will see that in this world, in which we move in our sleep, we
live together with the so-called dead. The dead are always present. They are
present in a supersensible world, moving within it and relating to it. We are
not separate from them in terms of being real or not, we are separate from them
only in our state of consciousness. We are separated from them exactly the way
we are separated from the objects surrounding us when we are asleep: sleeping
in a room, we do not see the chairs and other objects that may be there, though
they are definitely there. In our so-called waking state we are asleep in our
feelings and will, right in the midst of the so-called dead - only we do not
refer to it as such - just as we do not perceive the physical objects that
surround us in our sleep.
He then said with great emphasis: "This knowledge of being with the
dead will be one of the most important elements which the science of the spirit
must implant in general human culture for the future."
Surely this means that Anthroposophy has the task of making this
knowledge part of general education so that everyone will find it as natural as
eating and drinking. The question arises, however, as to how we can recognize
the real connection with our own dead. How does the nature of our experiences
change when we move from sensory awareness to awareness of the world of spirit,
that is, on crossing the threshold? Steiner described this with reference to
human dialogue. In the world of the senses, the situation is like this:
Let me be specific. If you talk to someone else here in the world of the
senses, you talk, and the other replies. You know you produce words with the
aid of your organs
of speech; the words come from your thoughts. You feel you are creating
the words you speak. You know you hear yourself speak, and when the other
person speaks you
hear him, knowing that you are silent and hearing the other person...
Dialogue with the dead is experience in the opposite way: communion with the
disembodied souls is not like this. Strange as it may seem, communion with
disembodied souls is exactly the reverse. When you communicate your own
thoughts to the disembodied soul it is not you who speaks but he. It is exactly
as if you were talking to someone, and anything you wish to think and
communicate is said not by you but by the other person.
And the replies given by the so-called dead person do not come to you
from outside but rise up inside you; you experience them as your inner life.
This is something one
must first get used to in clairvoyant consciousness.
We can get an inkling of the different quality of dialogue if we pay
real attention to the other person. A situation may then arise where we forget
ourselves and enter wholly into the individual nature and thinking of that
other person. This may also happen with objects that are part of our
professional life. Working with a medicinal plant, for instance, we may become
absorbed in careful observation of phenomena and go to sleep with reference to
ourselves, awaking in the object.
Thomas Goebel discussed the process in 1986. The exprehences described
below are, in many respects, in accord with his work but, in this case,
presented from the point of view that the search for a pharmaceutical process
that is right for the object in question calls for a form of communication with
spiritual entities who are connected with both the individual doing the work
and the object itself. I attempted to describe some of this in 1987s'9 and
intend to take it further in what follows.
Noting questions - evening processes
Processing flowering male mistletoe plants harvested in Winter to make
an aqueous preparation, we always noted a sticky, resinous material adhering to
the surfaces of the tools used to mince the mistletoe material. It could only
be removed with benzene, which is a fat solvent. Production of this resinous
matter was all the greater the more froth developed on mincing the mistletoe.
However carefully we worked, it proved impossible to prevent this resinous
material separating out. A second, similar phenomenon was the following: when
the berries, which contain gum, had to be processed to make an aqueous
preparation, they took up plenty of water, but the gum did not completely
dissolve. This was seen on filtration: a jelly-like layer formed on the filter
which only let a few more drops pass, finally clogging the filter completely.
It is easy to ignore this and carry on as before. Thus, one tolerates
the separation of the resinous substance and, in the other case, simply does
not make a full berry preparation. Yet if processing mistletoe to produce a
medicine really matters to us, the question arises: how can I prevent the loss
of this resinous material and what significance does the production of this
material have in our understanding of the mistletoe plant?
You become aware that it is not you who asks the questions but that they
arise when you consider the phenomenon with wonder and awe. It is as if you see
or hear the question. It is important to take this as seriously as a question
asked by a revered friend. Steiner always spoke of these two stages on the
schooling path: noting the question and taking it seriously. He spoke of
developing the inner life by taking the path of reverence. Elsewhere, he
referred to both steps. The first step - here described as becoming aware of
questions - was called wonder and awe" and the second step reverence,
which is taking the question seriously. Reverence is followed by the feeling
that a spiritual entity has made itself known. On the schooling path, it is
part of this stage to distinguish the important from the unimportant.
Everyone may make many such observations in the course of a day, and
they may show themselves to be questions when we do our nightly review. As a
rule, however, we tend to go to sleep over them. In the lecture of 5 February
1918,6 Steiner said that as we go to sleep we put hundreds of questions to the
older people among the dead with whom we have a connection. They have had a
long life in the world of the senses and now experience the soul aspect of its
situations. This makes them open to questions. Steiner put it like this:
The strange thing is that the moment of going to sleep is particularly
good for putting questions to the dead, thai is, for hearing the question we
put to the dead person come from him... The older souls among the dead draw us
more to themselves, whereas the souls of those who died young tend to draw
nearer to us. Because of this we have much to say to the older souls, and we
can create a bond with the world of the spirit by addressing ourselves to the
older souls among the dead at the moment of going to sleep. Human beings can
readily do quite a bit in this direction.
Experiencing answers ~ morning
processes
It has already been said in this quote that we receive the answers from
different dead persons, from younger ones, who give us impulses as we wake up.
We tend not to notice this very much for the life of the senses, which is then
beginning, tends to blot those answers out. Another reason why people do not
find it easy to enter into communion with the dead is that if we perceive the
answers at all, we take them to be something that comes from ourselves and not
something for which the dead have given the impulses. Again, let me quote
Steiner:
When we lose children, when young people leave this world, it is
essentially true that they do not really leave us but remain with us. This is
apparent to clairvoyant consciousness from the fact that the messages which come
to us as we wake up are very lively if the dead are children or young people
who have died. A connection exists between those who remain behind and the
dead, and it would be fair to say that a child or young person is not really
lost to us; they actually remain. They remain mainly because, after death, they
have a lively need to influence our waking up, sending messages as we are in
the process. It is truly strange, but it is true, that someone who has died
young has an extraordinarily great deal to do with everything connected with
the waking up process.
It seems Goethe had some idea of this. The words spoken by Father
Seraphicus in his Faust II show how children who died young are able to be with
people who are seekers and provide them with impulses:
Children! Midnight-born, Halfgrown
yet in mind and spirit, Lost so early to their parents, Yet angelic spirits'
gain...
Goethe had five brothers and sisters, almost all of whom died in
infancy.
We can get a feeling for the reasons why Goethe considered inspirations
that came in the morning so important. Anyone who has seen his study in Weimar,
with his bed in
the left-hand comer, and read the description of how he would go to his
desk still half asleep in the mornings and write down a poem, can see the source
of some of his works. He wrote that he preferred pencil to pen because, on some
occasions, the "rattle and splutter of the pen" would wake him and
"stifle the product before it came to birth." He always felt great
reverence towards this kind of composition.
The following example may be said to come close to those experiences.
Working with mistletoe - its morphology, biology and material qualities -and
realizing that the gums, being hydrophilic and dissolving easily in water, are
the opposite of the hydrophobic, water-repellent, resinous substances, which
are more inclined to relate to air, we decided temporarily to abandon our
attempts to process extracts of flowering and berry-bearing mistletoe
separately and, instead, process the two together. The experience (of deciding)
had been as if someone looking over one's shoulder were saying: "Simply
try using the berries together with the flowering mistletoe and its resinous
material." Everyday routine would, however, prevail and the suggestion be forgotten.
Yet when we noted resinous matter separating out once again, the challenge came
again: "Go on, try; make the experiment..." Four months later, the
experiment was made, adding different proportions of berries to flowering male
Winter mistletoe material.
The 25% addition gave the most convincing results. No resinous matter
was deposited on our tools as we minced the mistletoe and incorporated it in
the aqueous solution.
To everyone's surprise, the extract was much easier to filter than any
we had worked with before. No fat layer remained on the filter, and the
filtered extract was a deep, dark green, indicating that a good proportion of
fatty types of substances had also been taken up into the aqueous solution.
Chlorophyll, the green leaf pigment, is fat soluble and embedded in fat-like
membranes. These now became part of the extract and could be seen as a fine,
milky clouding if a bright light shone on the extract from the side.
The outcome of the experiment revealed the character, or idea, of
mistletoe in a way that moved us deeply. Years of intensive botanical work had
shown one major character trait of mistletoe to be that it always allows
opposites to interact to the effect of producing an embryonic, inhibited state.
Here, we had the gesture: the fat-soluble, resinous matter, wanting to escape
from the water into the air, combined with the heavy gum from the berries that
would not dissolve properly and a slightly cloudy, milky solution was obtained.
We might call it a resin/gum colloid (Greek colla = glue). It was as if
mistletoe nature itself had provided the answer.
R.S. spoke of two more steps that follow wonder and reverence: “Feeling
at one with the laws of the world and devotion." The first is necessary to
prevent us from acting on anything that comes into our heads, the second to
enable us to work selflessly for the object. Wonder and reverence are, thus,
connected with putting the question, being at one with cosmic laws; and
devotion with receiving the answer and acting on it.
What does this have to do with morning and evening processes? Is it not
a matter of crossing the threshold in two ways, hearing the question as we go
from the world of the senses to that of the spirit and experiencing the answers
as we return from world of spirit to world of senses? Rhythmic alternation of
the two processes is a necessary consequence for we cannot go to sleep several
times without waking up in between, nor can we wake up several times without
going to sleep in between. Morning and evening processes, therefore, always go
together.
Midnight processes
The next question is: are there corresponding midday and midnight
processes? We find these in the different attitudes the seeking human being has
to the two worlds. To seek, for instance, is to develop an interest in which
the soul connects with something outside it. In the world of the senses we have
to give ourselves completely to the object, leaving self aside as we direct our
attention to it. This ideal of genuine science may also be called selfless
love, a love which has its origin in the beloved nature of something that is
utterly different. Ouf seeking is, however, entirely different where the world
of the spirit is concerned; but this love for things of the spirit must - it is
not a question of may - be on our own account. Our roots are in the world of
the spirit. It behooves us to make ourselves as perfect as possible. We must
love the world of the spirit for ourselves, bringing as many powers as we
possibly can from that world into our own essential being, m our love of the
spirit this personal, individual element - we might call it an element of
egotistical love - is fully justified for it tears us away from the world of
the senses, taking us up into the world of the spirit. It helps us to do what
is necessary, which is to make ourselves more and more perfect.
R.S.: it was most important to master the process of moving to and fro
between the two worlds. The danger that the change does not take an orderly
course may take two forms. On one hand, the seeker may achieve transition to
the world of the spirit without first cleansing himself of affects and
passions. Luciferic spirits may, then, take hold of him causing his inner life
of feeling to be torn away from the world of the senses so that he develops his
own illusory world. Such people tend to have pet ideas and rapturous idealisms;
they become philosophizing eccentrics. Vanity, ambition and the desire for
power are particular qualities that tend to be overlooked when human beings
should have come to know themselves before crossing the threshold. A feeling
may develop that the state of soul they have known in the world of the spirit
should continue forever.
Another, even greater danger is connected with this. The circumstances
of life in our time are such that they prevent knowledge of the higher world.
If someone nevertheless has desire for higher knowledge, then, according to
Steiner, the following may happen:
If he (the human being) brings impulses into the world of the senses
which, in the world of the spirit, may take him to the most sublime
experiences, they may have the most abominable effect... the kind of love that
is justifiable only in the world of the spirit then enters into sensual drives,
passions, desires, and so on, making them perverse.
The perversities of sensual drives, all the abominable abnormalities of
those drives, are the counter image of sublime virtues that could be achieved
in the world of the spirit if the powers, which now pour into the physical
work, were to be used in the world of the spirit.
The reason for this human attitude is that validity is given only to an
attitude that belongs to the world of the spirit. This is the world of sleep,
and processes of this kind may, therefore, be said to be midnight processes.
Midday processes
Steiner described the second great danger in his lecture on 25 August
1913. The attitude of mind which belongs to the world of the senses is also
applied where images from the world of the spirit are concerned. He referred to
this as "nibbling at goodies in the world of the spirit":
It is possible, therefore, to nibble at goodies in the world of the
spirit; it then frequently happens that something experienced in that world is
taken into the world of the senses. There, however, it condenses and contracts.
A clairvoyant who, thus, does not follow the laws of the general order of the
universe will then return to the physical world of the senses with condensed
images and impressions of the higher worlds so that he is not merely seeing and
thinking things in the physical world but has the after effects of the other
world before him in images as he lives in his physical body. These are very
similar to the images perceived through the senses but do not relate to
reality; they are illusions, hallucinations and daydreams.
Later in that same lecture he said:
Those nibbled goodies from the world of the spirit are the special prey
of Ahriman. Ordinary human thoughts provide him only with airy shadows; but - to
put it in ordinary words - he gets rich, dense phantom shadows by squeezing, to
the best of his ability, from individual human bodies the false, illusory
images that have arisen through nibbling at the goodies of the other world. The
result is that the physical world is filled in an ahrimanic way with spiritual
phantom shadows that go disastrously against the general laws of the general
order of the universe.
Many of the ideas people have today concerning electricity and magnetism
and also physiological processes are such phantom shadows. These enable people
to intervene in the physical world to a degree that has never before been
possible. The evil that goes against the order of the universe lies not in
knowing the world of matter but in such knowledge becoming tainted with
egotistical drives and desire for power.
The tendency to make spiritual contents materialistic even applies to
important human ideals. Three such ideals have been ours for centuries. Goethe
called them "god, virtue and immortality."1 If we are able to see and
admire the divine element in the whole of creation, we are, in the Goethean
sense, monists. In Christian terms, this is "God the Father." The
second ideal, that of virtue, points to an attitude of lovingly encompassing anything
"other," seeing the process of becoming in all that has come into
existence. The third ideal, that of immortality, means knowing of repeated
lives on earth, knowing that the spiritual core of the human being moves
rhythmically to and fro between the physical and the non-physical worlds.
Today, those three ideals have become materialistic, which is only too
evident if we read the greetings sent to people on their birthdays. It is hoped
they'll have riches and prosperity, gold, in short, and also good health and a
long life. God thus becomes gold, virtue health, and immortality long life.
Spiritual contents have been made part of the world of the senses. The inner
attitude is particularly common in our western world, and we may equate it with
the midday processes.
Consequences in pharmaceutical research
Our inner attitudes are a major influence in the world for they change
the realm of matter. Environmental problems are one example, but the
manufacture of medicines is also affected. Above, an attempt was made to show,
from the example of mistletoe processing, that the application of morning and
evening processes influences even the way in which substances combine.
If "midnight processes," or pet ideas, are used at fantasy
level, correction is missing that can be made if our observation and perception
include wonder and awe, that is, the experience of questions. Other qualities
are abstracted. The conviction that one is doing the best thing possible
prevents objective perception of the consequences of one's actions.
"Midday processes," on the other hand, will only allow
materialistic ideals to have validity. A typical example can be given from
recent mistletoe research. The isolation and description of mistletoe lectins,
the most important group of mistletoe poisons, has caused many scientists to
believe the antitumor activity of mistletoe to be due to those lectins. This
does, of course, have an effect on the manufacture of mistletoe preparations,
and preparations of isolated mistletoe lectins are now available and put to
clinical use.(16)
Ahriman is the spirit who wants to tie human beings to the world of the
senses and who always speaks the truth but brings falsehood into the order of
the universe by presenting only part of the truth. It is only part of the truth
to say that lectins are important active principles. Mistletoe can only be a
cancer medicine if those lectins are combined with the other substances in a
way that is not possible for the plant itself but which is entirely in accord
with its general developmental gesture.(17)
For this, we must enter into "real dialogue" with the plant so
that, as pharmacists, we become mediators between the two worlds. Polar worlds
come alive in us in regular rhythm if we hear the older, dead souls communicate
the questions that have arisen in the course of the day as we go to sleep and
experience the answers as impulses to act coming from the younger dead on
waking in the morning. This may well be the way the morning and evening
processes of which we have spoken may be understood.
The inner questions and answers may also be connected with astrological
terms, as Steiner did in his lecture on 25 November 1917. This would not be a
matter of external, physical influences from parts of the cosmos being brought
to bear on the pharmaceutical process without involvement of the human being.
Quite the contrary, it suggests that the activities of the cosmos must be
looked for in the spiritual and in the sensory experiences of the human beings
who take an active part in the process. This throws light on Steiner's
statement that physical and chemical laws are mainly operative when substances
are combined or separated today. In future, however, human activity will
increasingly influence the way in which substances are combined or separated.18
To emphasize the importance of this human involvement, with all the need for
constant practice and exercises, we conclude with a warning Steiner gave in his
lecture on 25 November 1917:
Today, no more can be done than to talk of these things until people have
sufficiently understood, that is, people who are prepared to accept them in a
selfless way. Many think they can do this; but there are many factors in life
today which prevent it, factors that can only be properly overcome if, first of
all, we gain increasingly deeper understanding and actually refrain, at least
for the time being, from immediately applying these truths on a relatively
large scale.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum