“The tragedy of materialism is that it does not comprehend matter.”
Dr. Rudolf Steiner
<< These grave words were once uttered by Dr. Steiner, and they made an indelible impression on me. Materialism, which is only concerned with matter, is unable to comprehend matter. What is matter? Matter is spirit that has become visible, condensed, and materialism cannot believe in spirit. Therefore, it cannot believe in matter either.
The term matter covers everything that can be measured and weighed, whose existence can be determined physically or chemically. The chemist and physicist only recognise the “physical” as matter, which basically means they cannot get out of the solid state of aggregation with their thoughts. This may sound somewhat paradoxical, but if you think about it, you might be able to agree with me. Let us take some liquid. Is the liquid for the chemist or physicist a liquid? Something homogeneous, something new, something absolutely different from a solid body? No. You analyse the liquid and look for its components. These are imagined to be solid. The liquid is formless, it takes on the shape of the vessel, but the elements of the liquid, the atoms and molecules of H and O, are again imagined to be physical. The molecules push each other, they attract and repel each other. They are bodies that have a certain structure for chemists. The same is true of gases.
They are also not something totally different from a solid body or a liquid. They again consist of molecules and atoms that exert pressure on each other, beat and push each other, etc. So everywhere something uniform, something underlying is sought. The atom, the molecule, the ions or electrons. Something that can be physically imagined.
What is the consequence of this way of thinking? Man remains attached to the physical, to the physical-material. He cannot rise above the earth. The materialist actually does not understand the liquid as such. There is an enormous difference between a solid body and a liquid. The solid body is subject to the laws of the earth. It becomes, so to speak, a component of the earth itself. The liquid is no longer under the influence of the earth alone, but under the influence of the entire planetary system. In the second course in natural science given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, we find the following significant sentences: “The forces which assert themselves in a liquid body, in water, are not derived from the earth alone, but from the planetary system. The forces of Mercury, Mars, Venus, etc., have an effect on what is liquid. Whoever does not know this can never understand the liquid.
In pure water, the whole planetary system is effective. If we take a piece of iron, metallic iron, then we know that it owes its origin to the undisturbed effects of Mars on the earth. But as it lies before us, the metallic iron, it is subject to the forces of the earth. If we dissolve the iron, if we bring it again under the planetary influence, then in the ferruginous water we have before us a substance on which the whole planetary system can act, but especially Mars. If we take this ferruginous water and dilute it rhythmically, we find that the effects of iron are maintained and even increased.
Here we are indeed faced with the mystery of matter, if we want to grasp the concept of potency. We call the rhythmic dilution of matter a potency, that is a force. We can push the dilution so far that no chemical or physical means can detect the “matter” any more. But in plant growth, for example, we can still show the “effect” of the substance.
Man stands before the world of matter, he stands before the earth. As a human being, he has an obligation towards the material. What can man do with matter? He can either push it even deeper down into the earthly, or he can lift it up into the spiritual. It is a strange feeling that man can have towards various scientific endeavours. In ancient times, people spoke of the four elements that build up the world, of earth, water, air and fire, whereby “earth” was understood to mean everything solid. Today, there are about 90 elements, basic substances that cannot be broken down any further. Some elements are still hidden from mankind and we are trying hard to find them. Which way does science go; does it lead matter up to the spirit or does it drag matter down to the earthly? Here I would only refer to the elements whose nature is actually to dissolve into liquid or into air and which are forcibly driven into the solid state and artificially held. The gas is not supposed to be gas, one tries to “liquefy” it, the liquid is not supposed to be liquid, one freezes it into a solid body. The invisible is to be made visible and tangible. So the spiritual is to be brought down into the material.
What does a person do who potentises a substance? He loosens the solid, he takes off the garment, the wrappings of a hidden power and makes this power flow, to grow, he makes a remedy out of the dead substance. Matter, the spirit hidden in matter, bends down again to the human being and heals his illnesses. We tap into the healing powers of the substance in the potentisation process.
The process of potentisation is a rhythmic process, I have already spoken about this several times. In the lecture cycle that Dr Rudolf Steiner gave for doctors and medical students from 21 March to 9 April 1920, he also spoke about homeopathic remedies. It says: “In nature everything is based on rhythmic processes.” This is a sentence that one can ponder for a long time and whose depth is inexhaustible. The process of potentisation is also a rhythmic process, i.e. a natural process, which is carried out by man, or perhaps better expressed, is set in motion. If one wants to understand what underlies potentisation, then one must first acquire an understanding of rhythmic processes in general. Everything in nature is based on rhythmic processes; man only passes them by carelessly. In part, natural events have become so self-evident to him that he no longer thinks about them; in part, he does not recognise them in their rhythmic connections. We have cosmic rhythms, we have earthly rhythms (these are cosmic rhythms that have become earthly), we have the interplay of earthly and cosmic rhythms. If we look out into nature, we find all growth set in the rhythm of the seasons. A constant blossoming and withering. Death and resurrection, the cycle from the earthly up to the cosmic, from the cosmic back down to earthly existence.
We have the rhythmic change of day and night as a small rhythm, the change of seasons as a larger one, which includes the smaller one. The seasons merge into the great rhythm of the sun’s orbit around the earth and so we rise higher and higher, we come from the smallest to the largest, from the largest to the smallest back again.
We see the celestial rhythms of the planetary cycles, the influence of the celestial rhythms in the earthly, in the human, animal, vegetable, even in the mineral.
Let us look at the three-part human being. The sensory-nerve man is centralised at the top of the head, the metabolic-limb man with his centre at the bottom. Between these two polar systems is the rhythmic system, the thoracic organs of heart and lungs, circulation and respiration. There the balanced forces play up into the sensory nervous system, down into the metabolism. In the spleen we have the organ which reacts in the most subtle way to currents within the circulation system and whose task it is to intervene in a regulating way between circulation and metabolism.
We find functions in the human organism that run in longer rhythms and show us in a certain sense the dependence on cosmic rhythms. For example, menstruation. It no longer coincides with the phases of the moon, in a certain sense it has become detached from the moon, emancipated; nevertheless, in terms of time it coincides with the moon’s orbit.
Let’s take gravity, it is counted by lunar months. The human germ needs 10 lunar months for its development in the maternal organism. There we see the interplay of cosmic and earthly rhythms.
Let us look at the plant, how it is placed in the course of the seasons, in the change of day and night. Many flowers close when the sun sets and open again when the sun rises. It is a wonderful movement that you can really feel when the flower spreads out to receive the sunlight and in the evening retreats shivering, closing in on itself. Anyone who walks through the world with open eyes, who can look impartially at everything that surrounds him in nature, and who can then raise his eyes to the stars and feel and recognise how the whole starry sky bends down to the human being and takes him in, who can then finally come to find the starry sky in himself again, knows that he is embedded in the great celestial rhythm. Such a person can then also lovingly immerse himself in every small rhythmic event here on earth and seek the bridge that leads up to the cosmic.
The process of potentisation is based on a rhythmic process. If one is intensively occupied for years in showing the effects of the potencies, then many things come alive and become valuable, which the non-experimenter easily misses, indeed necessarily misses. He sees only the finished results, he cannot make the path of development, he cannot settle into the process. If one thus prepares a long series of potencies from morning till evening, always taking out a fraction of a liquid, diluting it with water, then shaking it, in order to begin again, one experiences with one’s whole body how a rhythmic happening runs through, which rises higher and higher. You get a fine feeling for the fact that it is not indifferent how long you shake and with what intensity you shake. You use, I would say, a certain basic interval, which you then increase. And just as there is a different reality in mathematics when I exponentiate the base 3 than when I exponentiate the base 4, there must also be a different result when I perform 50 shakes as a basic interval or when I shake for one minute or two minutes.
This brings us to the question, what is the significance of shaking for potentising? It is the question of what actually happens, what happens to the substance, when one prepares, for example, a homeopathic remedy. Dr. Steiner gave the following answer to this question in the above-mentioned medical course: “It is actually in the preparation. It is in the whole process of preparing that which one is doing.”
One must therefore study the whole process of preparing a homoeopathic remedy. For the time being I do not want to go into “triturations”, but only consider the “dilutions”. As I mentioned at the beginning, the transfer of the solid body into the solution is already a tremendous step. The body is again placed under the planetary influences.
That is the first thing to consider, that I connect the substance I dissolve with the cosmos. If I dissolve iron, I establish a particularly strong connection with the planet Mars, if I dissolve copper, I connect the substance with the forces of Venus, and so on.
The first process of potentisation I want to look at is shaking. What happens to the substance when I shake it? How can I make the substance itself show me what has happened through the shaking? In my writing on “the physiological and physical efficacy of the smallest entities” experiments were described which consisted of dipping strips of filter paper into potencies. The liquid rises in the strip, reaches a certain height, then stops. The effect of the different potencies could then be seen from the different heights at which the liquid rose. If you take pure water and dip a strip of filter paper into it, you can determine the height at which the water rises. Nothing more is visible on the strip than a narrow yellowish zone, which comes from the soluble substances in the filter paper. This fine line indicates the limit of the rising height.
If you take a liquid in which a dye is dissolved, you get a coloured ribbon. The process is as follows: The filter paper acts like a large number of fine capillary tubes and sucks up the liquid. If you look at the process this way, you give the paper an active role and the liquid the passive role. If you look at the process in the way that the liquid is active, then you have to put it this way: the liquid rises up in the paper. The liquids rise at different speeds. The speed depends firstly on the type of liquid and secondly on the composition of the filter paper. (Experiments that you want to compare with each other must be carried out with the same paper). In the beginning, the liquid rises quite rapidly, so that you can easily follow the rise with the naked eye. After about 2 hours the limit is reached. (But again, this is quite different depending on the liquids you use). The filter paper strip is damp, but not yet coloured. The process, which proceeds from the bottom to the top, has reached its end. The liquid stands still in the paper strip and a second process begins, running from top to bottom. Formative forces become effective. The dyes are gradually deposited at the border, forming certain shapes. This process takes many hours. But again, the duration depends on the material used. We are faced here with a strange revelation by the substance itself. The liquid is formless, certain substances are dissolved in it. If this liquid rises up in a strip of paper, it leaves behind an image after hours. It is a kind of self-photography of the substance. This phenomenon has often been observed by us. It suggested to me the idea of using this possibility of expression of the substance to make visible the changes that the substance undergoes through shaking.
For the first experiments we used the extract of the coffee bean, which had been prepared as Dr. Steiner had indicated for the purpose of the remedy. In 10 jars there were strips of filter paper which were immersed in the coffee extract. Another 10 jars contained the same extract, which had been shaken gently. (It was shaken up and down 28 times by hand in the shaking funnel. The aim was to see whether the shaking caused a change in the height of the rise or in the shapes of the marginal images. After 24 hours, all the liquid had been absorbed and the paper strip had dried. There were indeed noticeable changes in the height of the riser and in the image. Many such experiments were now made, with ever increasing numbers of shakes (7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 etc.). During a visit by Dr. Steiner to the Biological Institute, I was allowed to present the pictures. He examined them in detail and found the method good. Only the shaking was still insufficient. “You have to shake until you reach a horizontal line, then the substance is homogeneous.” To my naïve question about how long the shaking had to last, Dr Steiner replied: “Yes, you’ll just have to try it out.
Now there was quite strenuous work for weeks. We first increased the shaking very slowly by counting the shaking strokes. Attentive observation always showed changes in the image between the individual shakes, but the horizontal line was not reached. The shaking was done by hand. Finally, we shook in larger intervals for ½ minute, 1-1/2 minutes, etc. up to 15 minutes. We ourselves were shaken all the way through. The arm muscles and the head were particularly affected by this procedure. Our brain was always waking up at the end. But – we found the horizontal. When Dr. Steiner came back, we were able to show him pictures that met with his approval. The material had become “homogeneous” through the shaking.
The following plate shows a photographic reproduction of the image. The top 10 strips are the unshaken coffee extract. The strips are cropped from below, each by the same amount, so that the image does not become too large. The first 10 strips show an average rise of 10.1 cm. Within the 10 strips there are variations in height. The difference between the lowest and the highest strip is 27 mm. The contours of the edges are uneven, flickering.
The second 10 strips were made from coffee extract, which was shaken 28 times. The height of the strips has been reduced to 9.9 cm. The difference in the rise height between the lowest and highest strip has also become smaller. It is only 16 mm. The contours make a somewhat calmer impression.
The third 10 strips were shaken for 2-1/2 minutes. The rise height has dropped further, to 9.0 cm. The differences between the individual strips are now only 3 mm. The images no longer flicker wildly upwards, but form a steady horizontal line. The essence of the substance has undergone a significant change. Let us compare the figures again for comparison.
| Average climbing height of the | Unshaken substance | 10.1 cm |
| Substance shaken 28 times | 9,9 | |
| Substance shaken for 2-1/2 minutes | 9,0 | |
| Difference in height for the | Unshaken substance | 2,7 |
| Substance shaken 28 times | 1,6 | |
| Substance shaken for 2-1/2 minutes | 0,3 |
We therefore see a progressive decrease in the height of climb and a decrease in the differences within the individual strips.
More will be written about these experiments. >>
An English translation from the original German text appearing in Natura, Eine Zeitschrift zur Erweiterung der Heilkunst nach geisteswissenschaftlicher Menschenkunde, July 1926, Issue 1.