Man or Matter Part 19

Once again it is the Solfatara which offers us a phenomenon, this time in connexion with the special role sulphur plays in its activities, which, regarded with the eye of the spirit, a.s.sumes the significance of an instance 'worth a thousand'.

In spite of the very high temperature of the sulphurous fumes emitted from various crevices on the edge of the Solfatara, it is possible, thanks to the complete dryness of the fumes, to crawl a little way into the interior of these crevices. Not far away from the opening of the crevice, where the hot fumes touch the cooler rock surface, one is met by a very beautiful spectacle - namely, the continual forming, out of nothing as it seems, of glittering yellow sulphur crystals, suspended in delicate chains from the ceiling.

In this transformation of sulphurous substance from a higher material state, nearer to levity, to that of the solid crystal, we may behold an image of the generation of matter. For every physical substance and, therefore, every chemical element, exists originally as a pure function in the dynamic processes of the universe. Wherever, as a result of the action of gravity, such a function congeals materially, there we meet it in the form of a physical-material substance. In the same sense, sulphur and phosphorus, in their real being, are pure functions, and where they occur as physical substances, there we meet these functions in their congealed state.

One of the characteristics of the volcanic regions of the earth is the healing effect of substances found there. Fango-mud, for instance, which was mentioned in the last chapter, is a much-used remedy against rheumatism. This is typical of functional sulphur. We may truly characterize the earth's volcanism as being qualitatively sulphurous.

It is the sulphur-function coming to expression through a higher degree of 'moistness' in the relations.h.i.+p between gravity and levity which distinguishes volcanic regions from the rest of the otherwise 'dry'

earth's crust.

To develop a corresponding picture of the function of phosphorus, we must try to find the macrotelluric sphere where this function operates similarly to that of sulphur in volcanism. From what has been said in the last chapter it will be evident that we must look to the atmosphere, as the site of snow-formation. It is this process which we must now examine more closely.

In the atmosphere, to begin with, we find water in a state of vapour, in which the influence of the terrestrial gravity-field is comparatively weak. Floating in this state, the vapour condenses and crystallization proceeds. Obeying the pull of gravity, more and more crystals unite in their descent and gradually form flakes of varying sizes. The nearer they come to earth, the closer they fall, until at last on the ground they form an unbroken, more or less spherical, cover.

Imagine a snow-covered field glistening in the sun on a clear, quiet winter's day. As far as we can see, there is no sign of life, no movement. Here water, which is normally fluid and, in its liquid state, serves the ever-changing life-processes, covers the earth in the form of millions of separate crystals shaped with mathematical exact.i.tude, each of which breaks and reflects in a million rays the light from the sun (Plate V). A contrast, indeed, between this quiet emergence of forms from levity into gravity, and the form-denying volcanism surging up out of gravity into levity, as shown by the ever-restless activity of the Solfatara. As we found volcanism to be a macrotelluric manifestation of functional sulphur, we find in the process of snow-formation a corresponding manifestation of functional phosphorus.

In the formation of snow, nature shows us in statu agendi a process which we otherwise meet in the earth only in its finished results, crystallization. We may, therefore, rightly look upon snow-formation as an ur-phenomenon in this sphere of nature's activities. As such it allows us to learn something concerning the origin in general of the crystalline realm of the earth; and, vice versa, our insight into the 'becoming' of this realm will enable us to see more clearly the universal function of which phosphorus is the main representative among the physical substances of the earth.

It has puzzled many an observer that crystals occur in the earth with directions of their main axes entirely independent of the direction of the earthly pull of gravity. Plate VI shows the photograph of a cl.u.s.ter of Calcite crystals as an example of this phenomenon. It tells us that gravity can have no effect on the formation of the crystal itself. This riddle is solved by the phenomenon of snow-formation provided we allow it to speak to us as an ur-phenomenon. For it then tells us that matter must be in a state of transition from lightness into heaviness if it is to appear in crystalline form. The crystals in the earth, therefore, must have originated at a time when the relation between levity and gravity on the earth was different from what it is, in this sphere, to-day.

The same language is spoken by the property of transparency which is so predominant among crystals. One of the fundamental characteristics of heavy solid matter is to resist light - in other words, to be opaque.

Exposed to heat, however, physical substance loses this feature to the extent that at the border of its ponderability all matter becomes pervious to light. Now, in the transparent crystal matter retains this kins.h.i.+p to light even in its solid state.

A similar message comes from the, often so mysterious, colouring of the crystals. Here again nature offers us an instance which, 'worth a thousand', reveals a secret that would otherwise remain veiled. We refer to the pink crystals of tourmaline, whose colour comes from a small admixture of lithium. This element, which belongs to the group of the alkaline metals, does not form coloured salts (a property only shown by the heavier metals). If exposed to a flame, however, it endows it with a definite colour which is the same as that of the lithium-coloured tourmaline. Read as a letter in nature's script, this fact tells us that precious stones with their flame-like colours are characterized by having kept something of the nature that was theirs before they coalesced into ponderable existence. In fact, they are 'frozen flames'.

It is this fact, known from ancient intuitive experience, which prompted man of old to attribute particular spiritual significance to the various precious stones of the earth and to use them correspondingly in his rituals.

Crystallization, seen thus in its cosmic aspect, shows a dynamic orientation which is polarically opposite to that of the earth's seismic activities. Just as in the latter we observe levity taking hold of ponderable matter and moving it in a direction opposite to the pull of gravity, so in crystallization we see imponderable matter pa.s.sing over from levity into gravity. And just as we found in volcanism and related processes a field of activity of 'functional sulphur', so we found in snow-formation and related processes a field of activity of 'functional phosphorus'. Both fields are characterized by an interaction between gravity and levity, this interaction being of opposite nature in each of them.

Here, again, sulphur and phosphorus appear as bearers of a polarity of the second order which springs from the two polarically opposite ways of interaction between the poles of the polarity of the first order: levity-gravity.

As in man there is a third system, mediating between the two polar systems of his organism, so between sulphur and phosphorus there is a third element which in all its characteristics holds a middle place between them and is the bearer of a corresponding function. This element is carbon.

To see this we need only take into consideration carbon's relations.h.i.+p to oxidation and reduction respectively. As it is natural for sulphur to be in the reduced state, and for phosphorus to be in the oxidized state, so it is in the nature of carbon to be related to both states and therefore to oscillate between them. By its readiness to change over from the oxidized to the reduced state, it can serve the plant in the a.s.similation of light, while by its readiness to make the reverse change it serves man and animal in the breathing process. We breathe in oxygen from the air; the oxygen circulates through the blood-stream and pa.s.ses out again in conjunction with carbon, as carbon dioxide, when we exhale. In the process whereby the plants reduce the carbon dioxide exhaled by man and animal, while the latter again absorb with their food the carbon produced in the form of organic matter by the plant, we see carbon moving to and fro between the oxidized and the reduced conditions.

Within the plant itself, too, carbon acts as functionary of the alternation between oxidation and reduction. During the first half of the year, when vegetation is unfolding, there is a great reduction process of oxidized carbon, while in the second half of the year, when the withering process prevails, a great deal of the previously reduced carbon pa.s.ses into the oxidized condition. As this is connected with exhaling and inhaling of oxygen through carbon, carbon can be regarded as having the function of the lung-organ of the earth. Logically enough, we find carbon playing the same role in the middle part of the threefold human organism.

Another indication of the midway position of carbon is its ability to combine as readily with hydrogen as with oxygen, and, in these polar combinations, even to combine with itself. In this latter form it provides the basis of the innumerable organic substances in nature, and serves as the 'building stones' of the body-substances of living organisms. Among these, the carbohydrates produced by the plants show clearly the double function of carbon in the way it alternates between the states of starch and sugar.

When the plant absorbs through its leaves carbonic acid from the air and condenses it into the multiple grains of starch with their peculiar structure characteristic for each plant species, we have a biological event which corresponds to the formation of snow in the meteorological realm. Here we see carbon at work in a manner functionally akin to that of phosphorus. Sugar, on the other hand, has its place in the saps of the plants which rise through the stems and carry up with them the mineral substances of the earth. Here we find carbon acting in a way akin to the function of sulphur.

This twofold nature of carbon makes itself noticeable down to the very mineral sphere of the earth. There we find it in the fact that carbon occurs both in the form of the diamond, the hardest of all mineral substances, and also in the form of the softest, graphite. Here also, in the diamond's brilliant transparency, and in the dense blackness of graphite, carbon reveals its twofold relation to light.

In Fig. 6 an attempt has been made to represent diagrammatically the function of Carbon in a way corresponding to the previous representation of the functions of Sulphur and Phosphorus.

By adding carbon to our observations on the polarity of sulphur and phosphorus we have been led to a triad of functions each of which expresses a specific interplay of levity and gravity. That we encounter three such functions is not accidental or arbitrary. Rather is it based on the fact that the interaction of forces emanating from a polarity of the first order, produces a polarity of the second order, whose poles establish between them a sphere of balance.

Through our study of levity and gravity in the matter-processes of the earth, a perspective thus opens up into a structural principle of nature which is actually not new to us. We encountered it at the very beginning of this book when we discussed the threefold psycho-physical order of man's being.

In the days of an older intuitive nature-wisdom man knew of a basic triad of functions as well as he knew of the four elementary qualities.

We hear a last echo of this in the Middle Ages, when people striving for a deeper understanding of nature spoke of the trinity of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur. What the true alchemists, as these seekers of knowledge called themselves, meant by this was precisely the same as the conception we have here reached through our own way of studying matter ('Salt' standing for 'functional phosphorus', 'Mercury' for 'functional carbon'). Only the alchemist's way was a different one.

This is not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning and value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not be confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name).

Only this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an impulse which, at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose, led to the foundation of a school for the development of an intuitive relations.h.i.+p of the soul with the world of the senses. This was to enable man to resist the effects of the division which evolution was about to set up in his soul-life - the division which was to give him, on the one hand, an abstract experience of his own self, divorced from the outer world, and on the other a mere onlooker's experience of that outer world. As a result of these endeavours, concepts were formed which in their literal meaning seemed to apply merely to outwardly perceptible substances, while in truth they stood for the spiritual functions represented by those substances, both within and outside the human organism.

Thus the alchemist who used these concepts thought of them first as referring to his own soul, and to the inner organic processes corresponding to the various activities of his soul. When speaking of Salt he meant the regulated formative activity of his thinking, based on the salt-forming process in his nervous system. When he spoke of Mercury he meant the quickly changing emotional life of the soul and the corresponding activities of the rhythmic processes of the body.

Lastly, Sulphur meant the will activities of his soul and the corresponding metabolic processes of the body. Only through studying these functions within himself, and through re-establis.h.i.+ng the harmony between them which had been theirs in the beginning, and from which, he felt, man had deviated in the course of time, did the alchemist hope to come to an understanding of their counterparts in the external cosmos.

Older alchemical writings, therefore, can be understood only if prescriptions which seem to signify certain chemical manipulations are read as instructions for certain exercises of the soul, or as advices for the redirection of corresponding processes in the body. For instance, if an alchemist gave directions for a certain treatment of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, with the a.s.sertion that by carrying out these directions properly, one would obtain Aurum (gold), he really spoke of a method to direct the thinking, feeling and willing activities of the soul in such a way as to gain true Wisdom.1

As in the case of the concepts const.i.tuting the doctrine of the four elements, we have represented here the basic alchemical concepts not only because of their historical significance, but because, as ingredients of a still functional conception of nature, they a.s.sume new significance in a science which seeks to develop, though from different starting-points, a similar conception. As will be seen in our further studies, these concepts prove a welcome enrichment of the language in which we must try to express our readings in nature.

1 Roger Bacon in the thirteenth, and Berthold Schwartz in the fourteenth century, are reputed to have carried out experiments by mixing physical salt (in the form of the chemically labile saltpetre) with physical sulphur and - after some initial attempts with various metals - with charcoal, and then exposing the mixture to the heat of physical fire. The outcome of this purely materialistic interpretation of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or, as Schwartz certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder!

CHAPTER XII

s.p.a.ce and Counter-s.p.a.ce

With the introduction, in Chapter X, of the peripheral type of force-field which appertains to levity as the usual central one does to gravity, we are compelled to revise our conception of s.p.a.ce. For in a s.p.a.ce of a kind we are accustomed to conceive, that is, the three-dimensional, Euclidean s.p.a.ce, the existence of such a field with its characteristic of increasing in strength in the outward direction is a paradox, contrary to mathematical logic.

This task, which in view of our further observations of the actions of the levity-gravity polarity in nature we must now tackle, is, however, by no means insoluble. For in modern mathematics thought-forms are already present which make it possible to develop a s.p.a.ce-concept adequate to levity. As referred to in Chapter I, it was Rudolf Steiner who first pointed to the significance in this respect of the branch of modern mathematics known as Projective Geometry. He showed that Projective Geometry, if rightly used, carries over the mind from the customary abstract to a new concrete treatment of mathematical concepts. The following example will serve to explain, to start with, what we mean by saying that mathematics has. .h.i.therto been used abstractly.

One of the reasons why the world-picture developed by Einstein in his Theory of Relativity deserves to be acknowledged as a step forward in comparison with the picture drawn by cla.s.sical physics, lies in the fact that the old conception of three-dimensional s.p.a.ce as a kind of 'cosmic container', extending in all directions into infinity and filled, as it were, with the content of the physical universe, is replaced by a conception in which the structure of s.p.a.ce results from the laws interrelating this content. Our further discussion will show that this indeed is the way along which, to-day, mathematical thought must move in order to cope with universal reality.

However, for reasons discussed earlier, Einstein was forced to conceive all events in the universe after the model of gravity as observable on the earth. In this way he arrived at a s.p.a.ce-structure which possesses neither the three-dimensionality nor the rectilinear character of so-called Euclidean s.p.a.ce - a s.p.a.ce-picture which, though mathematically consistent, is incomprehensible by the human mind. For nothing exists in our mind that could enable us to experience as a reality a s.p.a.ce-time continuum of three dimensions which is curved within a further dimension.

This outcome of Einstein's endeavours results from the fact that he tried by means of gravity-bound thought to comprehend universal happenings of which the true causes are non-gravitational. A thinking that has learnt to acknowledge the existence of levity must indeed pursue precisely the opposite direction. Instead of freezing time down into spatial dimension, in order to make it fit into a world ruled by nothing but gravity, we must develop a conception of s.p.a.ce sufficiently fluid to let true time have its place therein. We shall see how such a procedure will lead us to a s.p.a.ce-concept thoroughly conceivable by human common sense, provided we are prepared to overcome the onlooker-standpoint in mathematics also.

Einstein owed the possibility of establis.h.i.+ng his s.p.a.ce-picture to a certain achievement of mathematical thinking in modern times. As we have seen, one of the peculiarities of the onlooker-consciousness consists in its being devoid of all connexion with reality. The process of thinking thereby gained a degree of freedom which did not exist in former ages. In consequence, mathematicians were enabled in the course of the nineteenth century to conceive the most varied s.p.a.ce-systems which were all mathematically consistent and yet lacked all relation to external existence. A considerable number of s.p.a.ce-systems have thus become established among which there is the system that served Einstein to derive his s.p.a.ce-time concept. Some of them have been more or less fully worked out, while in certain instances all that has been done is to show that they are mathematically conceivable. Among these there is one which in all its characteristics is polarically opposite to the Euclidean system, and which is destined for this reason to become the s.p.a.ce-system of levity. It is symptomatic of the remoteness from reality of mathematical thinking in the onlooker-age that precisely this system has so far received no special attention.1

For the purpose of this book it is not necessary to expound in detail why modern mathematical thinking has been led to look for thought-forms other than those of cla.s.sical geometry. It is enough to remark that for quite a long time there had been an awareness of the fact that the consistency of Euclid's definitions and proofs fails as soon as one has no longer to do with finite geometrical ent.i.ties, but with figures which extend into infinity, as for instance when the properties of parallel straight lines come into question. For the concept of infinity was foreign to cla.s.sical geometrical thinking. Problems of the kind which had defeated Euclidean thinking became soluble directly human thinking was able to handle the concept of infinity.

We shall now indicate some of the lines of geometrical thought which follow from this.

Let us consider a straight line extending without limits in either direction. Projective geometry is able to state that a point moving along this line in one direction will eventually return from the other.

To see this, we imagine two straight lines a and b intersecting at P.

One of these lines is fixed (a); the other (b) rotates uniformly about C. Fig. 7 indicates the rotation of b by showing it in a number of positions with the respective positions of its point of intersection with a (P1, P2. . .). We observe this point moving along a, as a result of the rotation of b, until, when both lines are parallel, it reaches infinity. As a result of the continued rotation of b, however, P does not remain in infinity, but returns along a from the other side. We find here two forms of movement linked together - the rotational movement of a line (b) on a point (C), and the progressive movement of a point (P) along a line (a). The first movement is continuous, and observable throughout within finite s.p.a.ce. Therefore the second movement must be continuous as well, even though it partly escapes our observation. Hence, when P disappears into infinity on one side of our own point of observation, it is at the same time in infinity on the other side. In order words, an unlimited straight line has only one point at infinity.

It is clear that, in order to become familiar with this aspect of geometry, one must grow together in inward activity with the happening which is contained in the above description. What we therefore intend by giving such a description is to provide an opportunity for a particular mental exercise, just as when we introduced Goethe's botany by describing a number of successive leaf-formations. Here, as much as there, it is the act of 're-creating' that matters.