Where and How Does One Find the Spirit?

GA 57 — 17 December 1908, Berlin

Questions Regarding Nutrition in the Light of Spiritual Science

It seems strange to some when Spiritual Science speaks about what many rightly consider to be the most material, the least spiritual of all things: nutrition. There are people who want to indicate their particular idealism, indeed their particular spirituality, by saying: Oh, we only concern ourselves with what is sublime, above the questions connected with material life. Such people then also believe—and in a certain sense they may be right—that, fundamentally, it is irrelevant to the development of the ideal and the spiritual how people satisfy their physical needs. The materialistic way of thinking judges differently. A great philosopher of the nineteenth century made a statement that has been repeated many times and that causes shudders and horror in many people who are spiritually idealistic, the statement made by Feuerbach: “Man is what he eats.” Most people understand this to mean — and the materialistic mind will certainly agree — that man is a sum of the substances he feeds his body, and that this not only determines the interplay of his organic life, but also what presents itself in his spirit.

When outsiders sometimes hear this or that more or less superficially about anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, they believe that its followers are far too concerned with food and nutrition. An outsider cannot understand why anthroposophists attach so much importance to whether someone eats this or that. It cannot be denied that in some anthroposophical circles, among those who want to delve deeply into spiritual life in an easy way, there is a great deal of confusion. Some believe that they should only avoid this or that, should not eat or drink certain things, in order to attain certain higher levels of knowledge! This is just as much a mistake as the view of Feuerbach's statement, “Man is what he eats,” which has just been characterized. At the very least, it is a one-sided view.

But in a certain sense, Spiritual Science can claim this statement for itself, only in a slightly different way than the materialists mean it, and in two different ways. First of all, we have often emphasized that for Spiritual Science, everything around us is an expression of the spiritual. A mineral, a plant, or anything else in our environment is only material on the outside. Like a human limb, it is the expression, the gesture of the spirit. Behind everything material there is something spiritual, even behind food. With food, we not only take in what is materially before our eyes, but we also eat what is spiritual behind it. Through nutrition, we enter into a relationship with this or that spiritual entity behind this or that material substrate. This is a very superficial characteristic. But anyone who grasps this will, in a certain sense, be able to agree with the materialistic statement: Man is what he eats. However, the spiritual process must be understood alongside the material process.

But this is only one way in which we can orient ourselves to these questions in the spiritual-scientific sense. When Spiritual Science attaches a certain value to and investigates the nature of food, it does so because this reveals a very unique perspective on the relationship between human beings and nature. Human beings are indeed connected to nature in that they absorb their surrounding nature in a certain way, assimilating what is in it. And the question arises: by appropriating what is outside, does man become devoted to these forces that are at work outside, and can he free himself from these forces? Is there a possibility that man can free himself from his environment through his food, so that he gains a certain power and influence over his environment? Could it not be that human beings could in fact be what they eat, through a certain kind of diet — and could it not be that through a different kind of diet, human beings could free themselves from the constraints exerted on them by their diet? This raises the question for Spiritual Science: How must human nutrition be structured so that humans can free themselves from the constraints of nutrition, so that they can become more and more masters and rulers of what goes on within them?

As we pose this question today, a few things need to be said about the overall position of Spiritual Science on these issues. This question, as well as questions about health, must be understood in such a way that Spiritual Science is in no way attributed with agitation in one direction or another. Anyone who believes that what is to be said today is agitation for or against this or that food or luxury item has a highly erroneous view. No one should leave here today with the impression that we are advocating for or against abstinence, vegetarianism, or meat consumption. All these questions about dogma, about something that alone brings salvation, have nothing to do with the innermost sensibility of Spiritual Science. We do not want to agitate, we do not want to command people to do this or that; we only want to say how things really are. Then everyone can arrange their life as they wish, according to these great laws of existence. So today's lecture aims solely to describe what is really true in this area. On the other hand, I would ask you to bear in mind that I am not speaking for anthroposophical circles in the narrower sense, which want to undergo a certain development and have to observe specific conditions. Today, the question will be discussed in a general human sense. Given the vast scope of the topic, only individual aspects can be addressed, and above all, anything related to the health aspects of life must be avoided. We will hear about that in the next lecture.

Today we will deal with nutrition in the narrower sense. Therefore, the respiratory process will not be considered here. In order to sustain the life process of his organism, man must take in protein, carbohydrates, fats, and salts. You know that man satisfies the needs of his organism in this regard through what is known as a mixed diet. They obtain these main components of their diet partly from the animal kingdom and partly from the plant kingdom. Among our contemporaries today, there are many more advocates of a mixed diet than of an unbalanced diet, such as a diet consisting only of animal or only of plant products. We must ask ourselves: How do the laws of our environment, from which humans obtain their food, relate to the true forces and needs of the human organism? Today we are only talking about humans, not animals.

Humans are easily inclined to view their organism in a very materialistic way, based on the so-called scientific findings of their time. Spiritual Science must replace this with the laws of spiritual relationships. Even if not always theoretically, the approach that is taken is based, more or less unconsciously, on the idea that the human organism consists more or less only of the physical body and the chemical substances in their interaction with each other. These substances are traced back to their chemical elements, and once their effects have been identified, an attempt is made to imagine how they might continue to act chemically in the great retort that is the human being. It is not to be claimed that many have not already gone beyond the view that the human being is merely a large retort. It is not theories that matter, but habits of thought. For the true practitioner, it is not what one thinks that matters, but what effects one's thoughts have. That is what matters. Whether one is an idealist or not is not important, but what is important for life is whether one has fruitful thoughts that enable life to flourish and progress. It is important to note that spiritual science, even in this regard, has nothing to do with dogma or any kind of belief. No matter how much someone may advocate the most spiritual theories, what matters is not that, but whether these thoughts are fruitful when put into practice. So if someone says they are not a materialist, that they believe in the life force, even in a spirit, but always approaches the question of nutrition as if human beings were large retorts, then their worldview cannot be fruitful. Spiritual Science only has something to say about these concrete questions if it is able to shine light into the individual, and it can do this both in relation to nutrition and in relation to health issues.

We must once again become clear about the multi-membered human being. For the spiritual researcher, the human being is not only the physical being that can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands; rather, this physical body is only a part of the human being. This physical body does indeed consist of the same chemical substances that are found in nature. But human nature has higher members. The next part of the human being is already supersensible, has a higher reality than the physical body. It underlies the physical body and throughout life fights against the decay of the physical body. At the moment when the human being passes through the gate of death, the physical body is subject only to its own laws and decays. In life, the life body fights against decay. It gives the substances and forces different directions, different connections than they would have if they only followed themselves. For clairvoyant consciousness, this body is as visible as the physical body is to the eye. Humans share this life body or etheric body with plants.

We know from other lectures that human beings have a third member of their being, the astral body. What is it like? It is the bearer of pleasure and pain, desires, drives, and passions, of everything we call our inner soul life. All of this has its seat in the astral body. It is spiritually perceptible, just as the physical body is for physical consciousness. Humans share this astral body with animals.

The fourth member is the bearer of the ego, of self-consciousness. This makes human beings the crown of creation, enabling them to rise above the things of the earth that surround them. Thus, human beings stand before us with three invisible members and one visible member. These always work together and interact with each other. All of them affect each individual, and each individual affects all the others. Thus it comes about that the physical body – I repeat, in parentheses, that all this applies only to human beings – as it stands before us, is in all its parts also an expression of the invisible members of human nature. This physical body could not have within itself the members that serve nutrition, reproduction, and life in general, if it did not have the etheric body. All organs that serve nutrition and reproduction, the glands and so on, are the outer expression of the etheric body. They are what the etheric body builds on the physical body. Among other things, the nervous system in the physical body is the expression of the astral body. Here, the astral body is the actor, the builder. We can form the mental image that just as a clock or a machine is built by a clockmaker or a machine builder, so are the nerves built by the astral body. And the peculiarity of human blood circulation, of blood activity, is the outer physical expression of the ego carrier, the carrier of self-consciousness. In a certain sense, the human physical body is also fourfold. It is an expression of the physical members, that is, of itself, and of the three higher, invisible members. The sense organs are purely physical; the glands are the expression of the etheric body, the nervous system of the astral body, and the blood of the ego.

If we look at humans in contrast to plants, we see that plants are two-part beings. Plants have a physical body and an etheric body. We now compare humans with plants by taking a comprehensive approach and considering the inner, spiritual aspect. We relate the four-part human organism to the two-part organism of plants. To support this, we can start from physical, known facts. We can point out how the plant builds up its organism. It assembles inorganic substances to form its body. It has the power to assemble its body in the most wonderful way from individual inanimate components. We need only see how the plant interacts in a remarkable way with the respiratory process. Humans breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants can absorb the carbon dioxide, which is useless to humans. They retain the carbon to build their organism and return most of the oxygen. But they need something that many people may not consider special: they need sunlight. Without sunlight, they could not build their organism. The light that streams down to us to our delight, which can also invigorate us spiritually, is at the same time a great helper in building up the plant organism. We see how a miracle is taking place, how sunlight helps to build up an organic being. What makes our eyes effective is what helps the plant to grow.

In addition to the physical and etheric bodies, humans also have an astral body. Plants do not have this. What helps sunlight to build up plants in such a wonderful way is the etheric body. On the one hand, this is oriented toward matter. Humans could not develop their physical organism if they did not do something that is in a certain sense the opposite of what plants do. Even in the process of breathing, humans do something opposite. Here, humans already go through the opposite process. We can say the same thing about all human nutrition. We can say that nutrition must take place in such a way that everything that is built up in the plant is broken down again in the human being. The process in the human being is a very peculiar one. If only the etheric body built up a physical body, consciousness and soul feeling would never arise. What the etheric body has built up must always be destroyed and broken down again internally. So although the etheric body fights against decay, a gradual decay still occurs. And what causes this decay, what always prevents human beings from being plants, is the astral body.

Sunlight and the human astral body are, in a sense, two opposite things. For those who become acquainted with the astral body through clairvoyant consciousness, the astral body is an inner light of a spiritual nature, invisible to the outer eye. This astral body is a spiritual body of light. It is the opposite of the outer, outwardly shining light. Imagine sunlight becoming weaker and weaker until it goes out, and then let it go even further in the other direction, let it become negative, and you have inner light. And this inner light has the opposite task to that of the outer light, which is to build up the plant body from inorganic substances. The inner light, which initiates the partial destruction that alone makes consciousness possible, brings human beings to a higher level than that occupied by plants, by transforming the process of plants into its opposite. Thus, through their inner light, human beings stand in a certain contrast to plants. This is the spiritual understanding of the matter, and if we were to consider it further, we would see how the destruction wrought by the astral body is continued by the ego. But we need not concern ourselves with that today.

Let us now consider the relationship between humans and plants when it becomes so real that humans take their nutrients from plants. In themselves, they form a continuation of the plant for the whole world process. What is built up by sunlight is repeatedly destroyed by the astral body, but in doing so it integrates the nervous system into the human being and thereby elevates life to a conscious one. Thus, because it is a negative light body, the astral body is the other pole, opposite to the plant. This process of building up the plant organism is based on something spiritual, for Spiritual Science shows us more and more how what appears to us as light is also only the outer expression of something spiritual. Through light, something spiritual flows to us continuously; the light of the spirits flows to us. What lies behind this physical light is what appears, divided into parts, in the astral body. Outwardly, in the sunlight, it appears in its physical form; in the astral body, it appears in an astral form. The spiritual aspect of light works within us to build up our nervous system. The plant world and human life work together in such a wonderful way.

Let us now assume that human beings enter into a relationship with the animal world through food. Then the situation is different. In the creature from which they obtain their food, the process has already been completed in a certain sense. What they otherwise obtain in a virgin and fresh state from plants has already been partially transformed and prepared in animals. For the animal, too, is already incorporating an astral body and a nervous system. So humans then take in something that does not come to them in a virgin state, but has already undergone the process, has already absorbed astral forces. What lives in the animal already has developed astral forces within itself. Now one might believe that this would save humans work. But this idea is not entirely correct. Consider the following: I build a house from various materials. I take the original materials. Then I can build the house entirely according to my original intentions. But suppose three or four other people have already worked on it piece by piece, and now I am supposed to make a whole out of it. Will that make my work easier? No, certainly not. You will read in widely available literature that it makes work easier for people to take on something that has already been worked on. But it is precisely by taking on the original that people become more flexible and independent beings.

Another image: Someone has a scale with two weighing pans. Equal weights keep the balance. There may be fifty pounds on each side. But this is not always the case. I can take a scale on which the weight can be shifted. Then, at twice the distance, we only need half the weight. Here, the weight is determined by the distance. Similarly, it is not only the quantity of forces that matters, but especially the fineness of the substances. Animals process substances in a more imperfect way. What is absorbed by humans continues to have an effect through what has happened to it through the animal's astral body, and humans then have to overcome this. But because the astral body has had such an effect that a process has already taken place in a conscious being, humans absorb something into their organism that affects their nervous system.

This is the fundamental difference between food from the plant kingdom and food from the animal kingdom. Food from the animal kingdom has a very specific effect on the nervous system and thus on the astral body. But with plant-based food, the nervous system remains unaffected by anything external. However, humans must then also thank themselves for everything related to the nervous system. As a result, the effects of their nerves are not influenced by foreign products, but only by what originates within themselves. Anyone who knows how much of the human organism depends on the nervous system will understand what this means. When humans build up their own nervous system, it is fully receptive to what humans should expect of it in relation to the spiritual world. Humans owe it to their plant-based diet that they can look up to the greater connections between things, which elevate them above the prejudices that arise from the narrow limits of personal existence. Wherever people freely and carefree regulate their lives and thoughts from a broad perspective, they owe this rapid overview to their nutritional relationship with the plant world. Where people allow themselves to be carried away by anger, antipathy, and prejudice, they owe this to their food from the animal world.

However, this is not intended to be an argument in favor of a plant-based diet. On the contrary: animal-based food was necessary for humans and is still necessary in many cases today, because humans should be grounded on earth, should be anchored in the personal. Everything that has led humans to their personal interests is connected with animal-based food. The fact that there have been people who have waged wars, who have had sympathy and antipathy, sensual passions for one another, comes from animal food. But the fact that humans did not become absorbed in their narrow interests, that they can grasp general interests, is due to their relationship to the plant world in terms of food. Thus, certain peoples who prefer plant-based food have a greater predisposition toward the spiritual, while other peoples develop more bravery, courage, and boldness, which are also necessary for life. These things are inconceivable without a personal element, and this is not possible without animal-based food.

Today we are discussing these questions from a very general human standpoint. But this makes it clear to us that human beings can lean toward one side or the other, that is, they can also become absorbed in their personal interests through animal food. This clouds their sense of the big picture of existence. Most of the time, people don't see how it is rooted in food when they say: Now I don't know again how to do this or that, how did he do it? This inability to see the big picture comes from food. Compare this with someone who can see the big picture. You can then look back at the food these people ate and perhaps also at the food their ancestors ate. A person who has a virgin nervous system in their ancestral line is completely different. This person has a different sense of the big picture. Sometimes, a life cannot destroy what the ancestors have established. If, for example, a person who descends from farmers stirs up what is inside him, it is only because he was more sensitive.

Progress will consist in the fact that, insofar as the protein requirement is not prepared within him, in human nature itself, man will limit himself in animal food to that which is not yet inflamed by passions, such as milk. Plant food will occupy an ever greater place in the human diet.

With regard to individual foods, we can highlight certain advantages of plant-based nutrition. When humans obtain their protein from plant-based foods, which admittedly requires harder work, they develop strengths that refresh their nervous system. Much of what humanity would face if meat-based nutrition became predominant can be avoided by giving preference to plant-based foods. We can see how contradictory the effects of vegetarian and animal-based foods are. To illustrate this, we can say the following: Let us look at the physical process under the influence of meat-based foods. The red blood cells become heavy and darker, and the blood has a greater tendency to clot. Salts and phosphates are more easily deposited. With a predominantly plant-based diet, the blood cells' tendency to settle is much lower. It becomes possible for humans to prevent their blood from becoming too dark in color. This enables them to control the connection between their thoughts from their ego, whereas heavy blood is an expression of their slavish devotion to what is incorporated into their astral body through animal food. This image shows us, as an external expression of truth, what we wanted to say. Human beings become stronger internally through their relationship with the plant world. Through meat-based nutrition, they incorporate something that gradually becomes foreign matter, which goes its own way within them. This can be avoided if the diet consists primarily of plants. When the substances within us go their own way, they exert forces that cause hysterical and epileptic states. Because the nervous system receives these impregnations from outside, it succumbs to various nervous disorders. Thus we see how, in a certain sense, “man is what he eats.”

Much more could be proven in detail, but two examples show us that we must not be one-sided. A one-sided vegetarian might say, “We must not enjoy milk, butter, and cheese.” But milk is a product in which the etheric body is primarily involved in its production in animals. The astral body is involved to a lesser extent. In the early stages of life, as an infant, a person can only live on milk. It contains everything they need. In the production of milk, the astral body is only involved to a limited extent. If, at an older age, one enjoys mainly milk, or possibly exclusively milk, this has a very special effect. Because the person then consumes nothing that has already been processed externally and that could influence their astral body, and because, on the other hand, they consume something in the milk that has already been prepared, they are able to develop within themselves special powers of their etheric body that can have healing effects on their fellow human beings. Healers who want to have a healing effect on their fellow human beings have a special aid in the exclusive consumption of milk.

On the other hand, we want to describe the influence of a stimulant taken from the plant world, the influence of alcohol. This has a very special significance. It only arises when the actual plant process, that which happens through the wonderful effect of light, of which the astral body is the opposite, has ceased. Then a process begins that takes place on a lower level and affects humans even more than animal food. Human beings bring the substances to the astral body and, through the astral body, bring them into a special structure. But when what is to be brought to the astral body decomposes in the way that alcohol does, what would otherwise happen through the astral body happens without the astral body, namely the effect on the ego and the blood. The effect of alcohol is that what should otherwise happen through the free decision of the ego happens through alcohol. In a certain sense, it is true that a person who enjoys alcohol needs less food. They allow their blood to be permeated by the forces of alcohol; they give to the foreign substance what they themselves should do. In a certain sense, one can say that in such a person, alcohol thinks, feels, and senses. By surrendering to alcohol what should be subject to his ego, the person places himself under the compulsion of an external force. He acquires a material ego. The person may say: I feel a revitalization of my ego as a result. Certainly, but it is not he, but something else to which he has banished his ego. We could show in many ways how a person can become more and more what he eats. But Spiritual Science also shows us how a person can become free from the forces of food.

So today I wanted to describe to you in broad strokes the relationship of the human being to his environment, how he stands in relation to food and the realms surrounding him. Those who continue to attend this or that lecture here will see that individual questions can also be addressed on other occasions. This lecture will also have shown you that Spiritual Science is something that also has an effect on the most material needs of life. Spiritual Science is something that can be an ideal for the future of humanity. Today, when we see how substances combine and separate in the human being, we often say: it is like in a retort, and we believe that we can find something healing for human beings in it. But a time will come when what has been said about light and the astral body will also be evident to those who conduct research in the laboratory. Can't someone also make the usual chemical observations when they tell themselves that here, in the smallest detail, the greatest thing is at work, which permeates the external physical sunlight and shines into the spiritual realm of human consciousness? Thus, these things will be investigated in the light that gives us an overview of the whole.

Everything in our environment is born of the spirit. The spirit is the source of everything. If we want to arrive at the truth, the spirit must also stand behind us in our research. Then we will recognize the truth that is necessary for human beings in both the big and the small.