The Relation between Man and Nature

The text below is a literal transcription of the spoken video text.

World events occupy us and events in our own lives take centre stage. As a result, we oversleep the perceptions every human being has with regard to the course of the year. Every day seems the same, albeit with slightly different weather and, of course, different events. But there is a possibility of becoming aware of the wisdom that lives in every human being and which, when it becomes conscious, reveals the wonder of the relationship of man and nature.Watch video on YouTube

A number of years ago I started writing blog commentaries as reflections, philosophical reflections on that which is happening so life and a number of years ago - I did that for many years - but a number of years ago we traded that in by recording videos and they certainly haven't appeared on a weekly basis, but we do our best to keep some regularity in that. I find it a lot more difficult to reflect philosophically for a video than when you write it down, especially also because there is so incredibly much to see on the YouTube channels of people who, yes I feel, are much better informed with all kinds of political and world affairs. So I like to hand over those reflections to others, and today I don't want to look at world affairs, but rather look at what each person is carrying in himself throughout the course of the year. Of course I also experience what is happening in the world, with the elections in the Netherlands for example, and you see all kinds of things happening there, especially with people who are affected by what is happening. But at the bottom I will say of every human soul live processes, where we as humanity are really one. We are really only separated there because we live in different natural places on earth. So what I am about to say, that applies to humans of the, yes let me say northern hemisphere, where it is spring now and where summer is coming. And that area where that is not the case now, for that you would have to put in another text - so that is the reservation I have. But beyond that, you can say, in all humans there is a coexistence between the spiritual and that which we call 'soul' in humans and the natural. As humans, we are also nature, which may not be as clear as with a tree or with a plant, which stands where it stands and stays there, which then maybe disappears completely in autumn, but rises again in spring. There it is clear: that is nature. And we humans, we frolic over that plant world, so you could say: we have detached ourselves from nature. But surely that is not the case at all. Our bodies do belong entirely to nature, but what is special about human beings is that in that piece of nature which is body, that individualised piece of nature, there is a soul spirit being connected to it, and that connection, that is something that takes on a very slightly different character in every human being in the course of the year. So it is the coexistence of nature and spirit that man senses in the depths of his soul. However, this perception does not usually penetrate into consciousness. That's why we don't know it at all, that we experience ourselves as a kind of continuity in nature, which started with birth and will end with death one day. But what goes on there in the course of the year in that relationship between spirit and nature that, of course, most people are not aware of at all. Now Rudolf Steiner has written a wonderful little work in his lifetime which is so, let me say, shaped that you can experience from week to week how that relationship between soul-spirit being and nature - either your own nature, or the nature around you, or the whole - how that changes a very little bit each time. And you could say if you meditate on those - he has depicted that in sayings that you can meditate on and when you do that, then that which lives in the depths of your soul, then comes into consciousness. But when you do that then you might say: yes, every week is actually the very-very most beautiful week of the year! So wonderfully beautiful are those weekly verses. You can't say: well, it's getting Easter now, we're living towards a climax and now the verses are extra special whereas between Christmas and Easter, in those weeks, those are a kind of connection from one to the other. It's definitely not like that. I have been experiencing from the beginning that each saying is a highlight and so you live from week to week, from highlight to highlight. But within all those highs, yes the greatest point of course is really in this week and the next week. This also manifests itself in the fact that this week the booklet ends with this week as the last saying and that at Easter we open the booklet again at the beginning and find there the first verse, which is given. And the great that you can experience is how at Easter a complete reversal, yes you could even say inversion takes place from the winter constitution that has gone to spring into a spring constitution that goes to summer. That is so grandiose, to experience that, that I like to draw attention to it here, now, so that a lot of people who hear and see this will run to the shop to buy a booklet. Because next week, the whole series of sayings starts all over again, with Easter. Now, of course, Easter doesn't always fall on the same date, so you always have to manage a bit of time around Easter, so that you have this proverb, which I will read in a moment, before Easter, and at Easter the first one of the booklet, which starts the whole cycle again. The thing is, in the winter time you have experienced that as a human being you live very strongly in your own spiritual world, you can also strengthen yourself in it. The wonderful thing about these sayings is that they are not so much a call to realise those things that are there, because they are in fact already realised, it lives in every human soul, so it is more an awareness of something that is always already there. And so for the winter you then have the awareness that in the interior of your being human with the light of summer you strengthen, empower and enlighten the spirit, until the moment comes in February when the lust for life in nature begins to become so strong that it becomes more difficult to maintain that brightness of winter in concentration and you are then gradually led in your soul to open up, to open up much more to the world and then to experience the beauty and the lust for becoming, which begins to emerge in nature. That has been the theme in the last few weeks and it shifts slightly each time, until it reaches the pinnacle of what man can draw from himself and also draws from himself each year, though you can very easily pass it by. This week's verses states that:

When from the depths of the soul

The spirit turns to the world being

And beauty springs from distances,

Then from afar, out of the heavens, moves

The force of life in human bodies

And unites, powerfully acting,

The spirit's being with human existence.

The spirit turns outwards and meets beauty there, and then from afar the life force enters the body and unites the being of the spirit with the being of man. You can work on this meditatively, not just by saying the words but also by trying to grasp the movement that lives in there, namely that the mind that was so internalised in winter now opens all the way out into the world being and that in response, as it were, the beauty of nature comes to us from the widths of space. That beauty wells up, as it were, and in response to that we then experience that we begin to have more life force in our bodies and that is really a fact. It's so easy to live past it and keep walking with your nose to the grindstone thinking: it's spring so I'm tired, I'm suffering from spring fatigue. That may also be completely true, but this is the moment when you could sense that something of resurrection power, of life is coming to us from the spaces and that connects with our body, because our spirit turns outwards and because the answer comes to us from the outside world there is a connection between the being of spirit and the being of man. That's a great moment, to experience that and then you think: This is the very best week of the whole year but then you move on....

You've read the booklet, meditated all year and you open it again and you come back to the beginning. And then you find the first saying of the year, which is the Easter mood. Then the whole activity is reversed and we can then feel how that which, you might say, lived in us at the end of the seasonal year, that that totally reverses itself. Now we do not say: when from the soul depths, but we say:

When from cosmic distances

The sun speaks to the human sense

And joy from the deepness of the soul

Unifies, while viewing, with the light,

Then thoughts wander from the sheath of the self

In the distances of space

And connect unclear

The human being to the being of the Spirit.

At Easter, we feel as if risen from our vague bodily thoughts. In spring, the sun shines very bright and already warm and all our senses seem to be brightened and warmed by the spring sun. The sun seems to speak to all our senses from the far reaches of the cosmos and we feel tremendous joy as a result. That joy rejoices in the depths of our souls and we can learn to feel how it rises to the rays of the sun and unites with them. I can feel myself embedded in the warm rays of the sun and I respond with great joy, which comes from me, from my perception. This joy seems to loosen thoughts, release them from the envelope of my self. They shine back into the cosmos, as it were, from my soul, my etheric body, my physical body, as if it were a choir singing Hallelujah! From my ordinary consciousness, I cannot hear the choir completely, but in the depths I can notice how the tones sound in harmony and how they connect the human being with the being of spirit. It is the physical body that is endowed with new life forces. So we can experience from week to week, in fact every week, the hallelujah of the coexistence of the human soul and spirit with nature, insofar as that nature is our own body, but also insofar as that nature lies extended in the earth and reaches into the cosmos. I think if we connect more and more with these miraculous gifts of the human being, we will also find a different relationship towards the world events that are not nature. We have to make a start, though, which is why I thought for Easter: I'll take up this little book for you once again and show you what a great gift it is, that for every week there is a saying through which you can experience your life on earth as the greatest miracle of all.

The relation between Man and Nature by Mieke Mosmuller 

The Relation between Man and Nature by Mieke Mosmuller