Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 14 February 1910, Wiesbaden

25. On the Nature of Plants and Man's Relationship to the Plant Kingdom

[My dear friends!]

Man has a particularly intimate relationship with the plant kingdom. The plant kingdom is now the most important of the natural kingdoms for man.

What the day is for man, waking up and going to sleep, the year is for the spirit of the earth - waking up and going to sleep. Where there is winter, where winter covers the earth, the spirit of the earth actually leaves the earth with its astrality and its ego and lets the green sprout forth in other parts of the earth.

The seeds that are laid in the earth are the condensed memories of the deeds of the spirit of the earth from the previous year, and these deeds he then finds again when he goes back to these places of the earth towards spring with his astral body and with his I into the earth. It is the same as when a person returns in the morning with his astral body and his ego into his etheric body. There he finds the memories, the sensations and feelings and the experiences of the past day when he submerges again in the morning with his astral body and his ego into the etheric body. In falling asleep and waking up in the course of the day, the human being reflects the life of the earth spirit throughout the year; only that the human being does it individually, but the earth spirit is always the same throughout the millennia.

Man has an ascending and a descending in his life, the principle of the plant kingdom runs through his whole life.

[When we are here together in a small circle, I would like you] to feel and sense all that is said here today more with the soul than to grasp it with the intellect.

The principle of the etheric body is the Christ principle; it embraces growth, life, solar power.

Its ascending line (from the human being) shows the animal kingdom in an abortive form, that is, the qualities that are to develop in the first half of life can also be abortive, and this is recorded in the animal kingdom. In all of its forms, humanly misguided characteristics are evident. Example: The monkey, its upright gait, it is botched.

In a descending line, the mineral kingdom shows how man would become if he were not permeated by the life principle, by the etheric body. Man must die physically so that he can develop spiritually.

Man must regain an intimate relationship with the plant world in his outer structures. These will help to achieve this, as soon as he himself so wishes.

The earth was a being that lived in deepest longing since the time when something had gone from it at the separation of the sun, which belonged to the earth and was related to it - and which is as dear to the earth as a mother is to her son. It had to leave the earth and develop on the sun for a while. But that belongs to the earth, and therefore nothing is so related to the Christ as the plant kingdom of the earth and that which lives in man as an etheric or plant principle. The return of the Christ in the etheric body must be understood by man on earth.

The mystery of Golgotha culminates in the fact that we can say: That which was separated from the earth for so long is reunited with it. In the plant kingdom lives [the] solar principle, [the] Christ spirit!

Once humanity has understood the Christ spirit, it will also find the right relationship with the plant world again.

In the dark ages, in the Kali Yuga, humanity lost [more and more] of its relationship with plants. The good things that the spirits of nature do for people cannot be destroyed so quickly. Only the grandchildren of those who have moved from the country to the city show the harmful effects of the city.

The plant world is the expression of the spirit of Christ. (In earlier lectures it was said that on Jupiter grows as a plant or like a plant what is spiritually produced by man today, for example Cologne Cathedral. Note from Alice Kinkel.)

The whole plant world belongs to the earth organism just as human hair and nails belong to the human body. Nor should one plant be taken individually, but in such a way that we say to ourselves: It is inconceivable that there would be lilies without also autumn crocuses, that there would be lime trees without ash trees and so on.

The symbolism of the rose cross. For us, it means that we have to get beyond what is wood, what is dying mineral matter in the plant, and get a feeling and an awareness for life, for the blossom; understanding for our etheric body and for the Christ spirit will flow from it.

Wonderfully beautiful things were said about the leaves of plants, about [their life and weaving and changing from green through summer to their] colors in autumn. Dr. Steiner explained how the retained astral is expressed in the fiery red of the autumn leaves, the sunlight absorbed in the glowing gold of the same and so on (unfortunately this has not been preserved).