V. Higher Worlds and Their Connection with Ours

If he sees a rose, for example, he recognizes in it a symbol of life and says to himself: clear green sap rises in the stem, flowing from leaf to leaf, but at the top, in the flower crowning the plant, it transforms into the red juice of the rose. Then he turns his gaze from the flower to the human being and says to himself: “When I look at the plant next to the human being, it appears to me at first glance to be much lower than he is. It has neither movement nor feelings nor consciousness. Man, too, is permeated by the red nutrient juice, but he moves freely wherever he wants, he sees the outside world and feels its impressions as pleasure and pain and is aware of his existence. However, the plant has one advantage: it cannot err like man; chaste and pure, it does no harm to anyone and lives from one moment to the next. The red blood is the expression of higher spirituality and stands above the green sap of the plant, which is symbolically colored red in the flower. The rose is indeed a subordinate being, but it is like an ideal for man. One day he will become master of himself, and his ego will rise above the everyday ego. He will ennoble and purify himself, and his blood will become chaste and pure like the green sap of plants. And it is this purified blood of the spiritualized man that I see symbolized in the red rose-blood.