I heard that Steiner was a Vegetarian. Do you know anything about that? Also, Can you tell me anything about how vegetarianism relates to the kingdoms of nature? Rudolf Steiner saw man primarily as a fourfold being. To understand this concept we need to consider Steiner’s views on the human being in relation to the kingdoms of nature: Firstly consider the mineral kingdom. It is dead, inanimate – a stone does not move unless an external force is applied to it. It is physical structure only, without life of its own. Steiner called this the “physical body”. In the human body the skeleton is the most mineralized, “stone-like” part and can be likened to the mineral kingdom. Then there is the plant kingdom. Clearly the plant has a physical body, but equally unlike a stone it possesses a life force which enables it to grow, to have shape, to live. Steiner named this the “etheric body”. Next the animal kingdom. An animal has a physical body and an etheric body, like the plant. Animals differ from plants, however, in that they achieve a certain level of conscious awareness. They have feelings which express themselves through drives, desires, pain and pleasure. We can say, then, that animals are not only living beings, but “ensouled beings” with feelings. Steiner called this the “astral body”. Human beings share with all three kingdoms of nature with the “physical body”, the “etheric body” and the “astral body “- but the human being is unique. Humans differ from animals in that they have self awareness. Humans, unlike other living beings, possess an “ego”. The power of this individual ego enables humans to walk erect, to speak and think, to be creative, to develop (and also to destroy) civilizations. It also enables them to enter into the spirit of things in a way that is unique among living beings. We see evidence of this in the artistic and social achievements of humanity. The human being has certain capacities which animals lack. Animals do not have a creative culture. Wasps build their nests the way they have always done, and nothing new has been consciously developed by them over the centuries. Foxes use the same technique as their ancestors did for catching chickens. They do not look back upon their history and apply what they have learned to developing new and more effective techniques. They do not participate consciously in the process of their own development and evolution. Knowledge of man in the true sense must be sought in the way we have indicated. Starting from the processes of nutrition, it must be followed through the processes of healing to the processes of human and world education in … the widest sense. Or we can put it thus: from nutrition, through healing, to civilization and culture.” This line of thinking leads to the logical conclusion that it is not possible to understand the human being by means of the scientific methodology employed today. Anytime we open up the human being by means of tissue samples, doing blood analysis, etc., we simply do not have any reality before us; what we have is an artifact abstracted from the context in which it naturally exists, and so whatever we find out about the artifact has no reality with regard to the living tissue itself in the context of its functioning within the human organism. This has necessarily lead to tremendous confusion and chaos in the world because it is based on ignorance about what we are as human beings. The following is a greatly simplified description of the constitution of the human being; for a more detailed description of the complexities of the human being I refer you to the book “Theosophy” by Rudolf Steiner, (Anthroposophic Press). Therefore, the human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm. If we take this statement as our starting point, we can build up a picture of the human being by observing nature, and in nature we find there are three major kingdoms: The Mineral Kingdom.The Plant Kingdom.The Animal Kingdom. The human being’s relationship to the mineral kingdom is that the substances which are used by the human organism for the maintenance of its physical body are mineral/chemical substances. From the perspective of the human observer, the mineral kingdom is inanimate, it is dead. Therefore, if we were constituted of nothing but mineral/chemical substances we would be dead, we could not exist as human beings. So: Mineral Kingdom / Physical Body / Unconscious. Plants are alive; they germinate in the soil, grow, develop, mature, produce flowers, fruits and seeds and die. They thus have a ‘body’ which is invisible to physical sight which takes up the mineral substances of the soil, along with water and light, which gives form to the plant and is responsible for its growth, development etc. This is called the etheric, life or formative body in the Western Tradition and I think the concept of ‘chi’ , ‘ki’ and ‘prana’ in the Eastern Tradition is the Eastern equivalent of etheric. The consciousness of the plant is more of a dream-like consciousness. The plant is therefore constituted of both mineral body and etheric body. So: Plant Kingdom / Etheric Body / Dream-like consciousness. Animals are distinguished from plants by being able to move around, they show patterns of behavior which indicate they respond to whatever is going on around them; they fight, run away from danger, look for food and water, mate, take care of their young, mark out territory and guard it etc., etc. They thus have an additional ‘body’ to the physical and etheric body, and this is called the astral body or soul, which, like the etheric body, is also invisible to physical sight. So: Animal Kingdom /Astral Body / Instinctive consciousness. The major difference between animals and human beings is that in the case of animals, if we know the behavioral patterns of a single individual of a species, we know the behavioral patterns of all the individuals of the same species. This is because each species of animal has a ‘group soul’. This is not the case with the human being, because no two human individuals behave in an identical manner in the same set of circumstances. The major distinction between human beings and animals is the ability of the human being to think as an individual. This ability is due to an additional spiritual constituent of the human being, called the Ego, which can simply be stated as that aspect of the human being which gives each one of us our identity. When we say, I , we can only be referring to ourselves as individuals, not to anyone else.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 16:00:08 +0000
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