MACROCOSMIC ORIGINS OF MOLECULES
All living organisms on the earth are composed of molecules, but the
problem is when “the modern physicist or chemist says that there are
molecules which are composed of atoms, that the atoms possess forces by
means of which they act upon each other. Now this is a conception which
simply does not accord with reality. The truth is that the minutest molecule
is acted upon by the whole starry heavens. Suppose here is a planet, here
another, here another, and so on. Then there are the fixed stars, which
transmit their forces into the molecule. All these lines of force intersect
each other in various ways. The planets also transmit their forces in the
same way, and we come to realise that the molecule is nothing but a focus of
macrocosmic forces. It is the ardent desire of modern science to
bring microscopy far enough to enable the atoms to be seen within the
molecule. This way of looking at the subject must cease. Instead of wishing
to examine the structure of the molecule microscopically, we must turn our
gaze outwards to the starry heavens, we must look at the constellations and
see copper in one, tin in another. Out there in the macrocosm we have to
behold the structure of the molecule that is only reflected in the molecule
(here on the Earth). Instead of passing into the infinitely little, we must
turn our gaze outwards to the infinitely great, for it is there we have to
look for the reality of what lives in the little. In this way (by looking
down) does the materialistic conception of things also affect other domains
of thought. The nineteenth century materialism is not overcome so long as
men still think atomically, so long as they fail to search in the great for
the form and configuration of the small.”
[1]
This new way of looking at molecules is especially necessary when we
want to understand the realm of organic life where we encounter three basic
living substances: proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
[2] The main elements which constitute these substances
are: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. However, “chemists today
actually know very little about these substances. They recognize their
external appearances when they have them in the laboratory, but they know
nothing at all about their inner significance for the world as a whole. What
we understand about these substances through today’s chemistry is actually
no greater than the knowledge we have of people who we’ve passed on the
street, people we’ve photographed perhaps, and whose external appearance we
recall with the help of the photographs. What science does with these
substances is not much more than take snapshots, and everything we learn
about them through books and lecture courses is not much better. We need to
get to know them in their essence, in their deeper nature.”
[3]
For that purpose we need to know that “the peculiarity of all that
we have on Earth is that the spiritual must always have physical
carriers. Then the materialists come, and take only the physical carrier
into account, forgetting the spiritual which it carries. And they are
always in the right – for the first thing that meets us is the physical
carrier. They only leave out of account that it is the spiritual which
must have a physical carrier everywhere.”
[4] If we want to overcome such a one-sided
approach of materialistic science we need to look at the spiritual
forces which are active behind the four elements that enable the
existence of all life on the earth.
FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS OF EARTHLY LIFE
The ‘four basic organic elements’
[5] which enable the existence of all living things on earth are
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. “Let us begin with
carbon. Carbon occurs today in nature in a
broken form, as coal or graphite owing
to certain processes which it has undergone. How different it appears,
however, when we perceive it in its living activity, passing through the
human or animal body, or building up the plant-body out of its peculiar
conditions. Carbon, in effect, is the bearer of all the creatively formative
processes in nature. Whatever in nature is formed and shaped be it the form
of the plant persisting for a comparatively short time, or the eternally
changing configuration of the animal body – carbon is everywhere the great
plastician. There is a hidden plastic artist in carbon, and this plastician
building the manifold forms that are built up in nature – makes use of
sulphur in the process. Truly to see the carbon as it works in nature, we
must behold the spirit-activity of the great universe, moistening itself
so-to-speak with sulphur, and working as a plastic artist – building with
the help of carbon the more firm and well-defined form of the plant, or
again, building the form in man. Underlying all living things is a
carbon-like scaffolding or framework – more or less rigid or fluctuating as
the case may be – and along the paths of this framework the spiritual moves
through the world.
Now whether it is man or any other living being, the living being must
always be permeated by something etheric – for the etheric is the true
bearer of life. The carbon framework of a living entity must in its turn be
permeated by an etheric principle, which will either stay still – holding
fast to the beams of the framework – or it will also be involved in more or
less fluctuating movement. In either case, the etheric must be spread out,
wherever the framework is. Now this etheric principle, if it remained alone,
could certainly not exist as such within our physical and earthly world. It
would, so to speak, always slide through into the empty void. It could not
hold what it must take hold of in the physical, earthly world, if it had not
a physical carrier. This physical element which with the help of sulphur
carries the influences of life out of the universal ether into the physical,
is none other than oxygen. It is the weaving, vibrant and pulsating essence
that moves along the paths of the oxygen. For the etheric moves with the
help of sulphur along the paths of oxygen. In reality, oxygen is the bearer
of the living ether, and the living ether holds sway in it by using
sulphur as its way of access.”
[6]
Now we have two things: the carbon framework determining the form
and the oxygen carrying the life. “These two must come together. The oxygen must somehow find
its way along the paths mapped out by the framework. Wherever any line,
or the like, is drawn by the carbon – by the spirit of the carbon –
whether in man or anywhere in nature there the etheric oxygen-principle
must somehow find its way. It must find access to the spiritual
carbon-principle. Where is the mediator in this process? The mediator is
none other than nitrogen.
Nitrogen guides the life into the form or
configuration which is embodied in the carbon. Wherever nitrogen occurs,
its task is to mediate between the life and the spiritual essence which
to begin with is in the carbon-nature. Everywhere – in the animal
kingdom and in the plant and even in the earth – the bridge between
carbon and oxygen is built by nitrogen. And the spirituality which is
working thus in nitrogen – once again with the help of sulphur – is that
which we are to describe as the astral. It is the astral spirituality in
the human astral body. It is the astral spirituality working in the life
of plants and animals, and so on. Thus, spiritually speaking we have the
astral placed between the oxygen and the carbon, and this astral
impresses itself upon the physical by making use of nitrogen. Nitrogen
enables it to work physically. Wherever nitrogen is, astrality extends.
The etheric principle of life would flow away everywhere like a cloud,
it would take no account of the carbon-framework were it not for the
nitrogen. The nitrogen has an immense power of attraction for the
carbon-framework. Nitrogen is for ever dragging the living to the
spiritual principle. As you know, we have around us only a small
proportion of oxygen, which is the bearer of life, and a far larger
proportion of nitrogen – the bearer of the astral spirit. Nitrogen is
the sensitive mediator (in nature), as well as in our human nerve-sense
system it is the nitrogen which mediates for our sensation. Nitrogen is
verily the carrier of sensation.
Now, however, one thing more is necessary. There must be constant
interchange of substance, and so it must be between the Earth – with all
its creatures – and the entire Universe. All that is living in physical
forms upon the Earth must eventually be led back again into the great
universe. It must be able to be purified and cleansed, so to speak, in
the universal all. To begin with, we have the carbon-framework. Then
there is the ethereal, oxygen principle. And then there is that which
develops as the astral, as the transition between the carbon and the
oxygen principle. But now, all that is thus developed in the living
creature must eventually be able to vanish again. In all these
structures, the spiritual has become physical. After a time, however, it
no longer feels comfortable there. It wants to dissolve again. And now
once more – moistening itself with sulphur – it needs a substance
wherein it can take its leave of all structure and definition, and find
its way outward into the undefined chaos of the universal all, where
there is nothing more of this or that organisation. Now the substance
which is so near to the spiritual on the one hand and to the substantial
on the other, is hydrogen.
Hydrogen carries out again into the far
spaces of the Universe all that is formed, and alive, and astral. It is
hydrogen which dissolves everything away.
So then we have these five substances. They, to begin with,
represent what works and weaves in the living – and in the apparently
dead, which after all is only transiently dead. Sulphur, carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen: each of these elements is inwardly related
to a specific spiritual principle. They are therefore very different
from what our modern chemists would relate. Our chemists speak only of
the corpses of the substances – not of the real substances, which we
must rather learn to know”
[7] as something which contains living principles
of cosmic form, warmth, life and astrality. And while we have on the
front stage the four elements – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen –
there is always in their background active sulphur which mediates
between spiritual and material realms of existence.
[8]
DYNAMIC ‘FORMULAS’ OF LIVING SUBSTANCES
The essential difference between the approaches of natural versus
spiritual science in the fields of physics and chemistry can be summarised
with the following words: “The way of observing the world of matter that is
in vogue today describes the single substances (and compounds) according to
their attributes: density, colour, form, (composition), etc. This way may be
called a static, even death-like approach, for it describes only what a
substance is, by and for itself. For the future, we need a dynamic approach
that reckons with life and provides an understanding of what a substance
means in the realm of life, and above all in the human body.”
[9]
Here is the summary of the essential nature of the four main elements
which are involved in the creation of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats:
- Carbon carries cosmic forms (i.e., spiritual
archetypes), according to which are created physical frameworks.
[10]
- Oxygen carries cosmic life into the physical realm.
- Nitrogen carries cosmic astrality which connects cosmic life with
the carbon framework.
- Hydrogen enables the dissolution of
all living substances in the universe into the condition of ‘cosmic fire’ (warmth or
warmth ether) which pervades all the universe.
[11]
In accordance with this new dynamic approach the following ‘formulas’ for the
three basic living substances were developed: [12]
- In carbohydrates we have the dominance of
formative forces provided by carbon.
- In proteins we have the dominance of life provided by oxygen due to
the intensified activity of astral forces provided by nitrogen.
- In fats we have the dominance of warmth
processes enabled by hydrogen.
[13]
Here we need to point out the fact that carbohydrates and fats don’t contain
nitrogen. This doesn’t mean that in their case nitrogen has not performed the
role of mediator between oxygen and carbon, for – as it is stated above – “Everywhere – in the animal kingdom and in the plant and even in the earth – the
bridge between carbon and oxygen is built by nitrogen.” However, there is a crucial difference in how nitrogen works in the animal
organism (including the human) and how it works in the plant which “has only a
physical and an ether-body; unlike the animal, it has not an astral body within
it. Nevertheless, outside it the astral must be there on all sides. The plant
would never blossom if the astral did not touch it from outside. Though it does
not absorb it (as man and the animals do) nevertheless, the plant must be
touched by the astral from outside. The astral is everywhere, and nitrogen
itself – the bearer of the astral – is everywhere, moving about in the air.” [14]
Therefore carbohydrates, which are the primary substances of plants, do
not contain nitrogen in their chemical formulas because astrality works from
outside (carried by the nitrogen in the air) mediating between the life
principle and the carbon framework. Because of this, nitrogen is not
incorporated in their structures. [15] In the
household of nature things are rather complex, but we can say: Although
carbohydrates and fats also need the action of astrality to connect the
carbon framework with the oxygen, the carrier of cosmic life, they must not
allow its physical carrier (i.e. nitrogen) to connect with the carbon
framework. For if they had incorporated nitrogen into themselves they would
turn into protein substances.
