Nature in communion with the soul

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

The human being is in the process of withdrawing from nature and seeing nature as an objective 'something' that is outside the human being. But nature and the earth needs the human being, just as the human being needs nature and the earth. Human life is impossible without nature, without food, oxygen and the beauty of nature. Without the human being, nature and the earth have only a frosty and empty life, then that nature would lose the power to reveal itself, to create itself again.

The interaction is seriously disturbed by our lack of interest, love, for what we live in. It would help us a lot as humans to become aware of nature with inspiration, such as its course in the seasons.Watch video on YouTube

We are facing a possible climate crisis in our time. I say possible because, of course, the evidence for this is drawn exclusively from natural science, and climate has to do not only with nature, but as far as I am concerned also very clearly with spirit. And when the spiritual side of our earth life, of the life of the earth, is not looked at, cannot be looked at, it is questionable whether that one-sided view that people currently have of the survival of the earth is correct. So I don't want to say that I deny that, that climate crisis, of course you can see for yourself that a change is happening, but what it means in reality and how you should understand it in the big cosmic whole, that's another thing. When you start looking at how the view is on how humans and earth work together, you can say that in the current mainstream views you actually see that the earth is seen as a planet that has its place in the cosmos, a planet that has a certain life in itself, in the plant realm, the human realm, but no further thought is given to what humans as spiritual beings mean to the earth. It is clear, of course, that in the whole of the coexistence of living beings on earth, the human being also plays a role, and as it is currently seen, and partly rightly so, that role is seen as destructive because we are exploiting the earth and not actually putting anything in its place, seem to be putting nothing in its place. You see that in the animal kingdom too, that there is a connection there between animals and nature. There was an article in the newspaper the other day about the return of the wolf to the Netherlands, and one of the people who takes a positive view of it is of the opinion that, because the wolf is back in the Netherlands, the forests can come up again more easily because the presence of the wolf frightens the deer, which eat young trees, so to speak, and is less concerned with that and so the young growth of the trees is not hindered so much by the presence of the wolf. You can look at it all that way, of course, and I'll be the last to say it's all nonsense. But what is of course dramatically missing is the other side of the vision and that is the side of the, shall I say, spirituality of the cosmos. And I know, of course, that people laugh at that and that that cannot be recognised by a certain scientific system, but I do recognise that and I am speaking now and so from that side I will still try to describe something of what value human beings have for the earth. Of course, when you look at CO2 emissions, you can point to different culprits and I always say: in fact, the biggest culprit is the human being, because he exhales CO2. And so is a constant producer of carbon dioxide. Of course, that has always been the case. So this is not something of recent times, except that the population has increased enormously and you could imagine that being a problem. But we have not yet reached the point where the government says: dear human beings, please breathe less! But of course all kinds of other things are imposed on us - but being allowed to breathe is still a freedom. So of course we cannot absolve ourselves from spoiling the earth, but of course we have the plant kingdom that has always captured our carbon dioxide and converted it into oxygen. You can imagine, when you think about that, or look at it, or examine it scientifically, that you say: So then there must be enough plant kingdom, and then that plant kingdom must be protected, because on the other hand, human beings are also claiming the plant kingdom for themselves - either eating it or burning it or now cutting it down again, cutting down forests to extract enough tin to make batteries on which electric cars can run. Electric cars that are so wonderfully good for the environment, on the other hand, are currently eating up our world's forests because of the tin mining necessary for the batteries. Thus, if you start delving into this - and I do so just a bit sideways - you could write books full of how humans are using up the earth and what you should therefore do as a government or as human beings themselves to put a stop to that. But what, again, is completely ignored is the necessary effect that human beings have on the earth. And that is something I would then like to discuss now.

Of course, you could say: If human beings were not on earth, they would flourish, because then there would be no consumers and everything would be able to go its way, you might want to have a small group to keep things in order a bit, but otherwise the earth would thrive. Well, that's not true. The earth cannot thrive without human beings. And what human beings have to do at the moment, to ensure that the earth does indeed not perish, that task is totally unknown and I may well say there, where it is known, it is still unloved. And I have made it my life's task to point out time and again what potential lies hidden in human beings that is not being used, and which actually doesn't want to be used, that's the sad thing. I have made that my life's task and now that I have the opportunity to record a video every now and then, and sometimes more often, I will talk about that from time to time. What is the task of human beings in our time, to ensure, to help ensure, that the earth does not perish? So even if you were to implement all the measures enshrined in the United Nations programme, if you were to implement them all and succeed, you would still be faced with the fact that the earth is going to ruin. And why? Because the role of the human being is not known and does not want to be known. Because it demands something of us and this 'it demands something of us', we have no appetite for that at all. Look we do still want to try to separate the dirt we produce and we do also want to try to eat organic and be more frugal and not waste so much, we can all still do that, but that is a task we have to save what can be saved. But healing the earth, we could. We as humans, we are the only creature on earth as human beings, have the spirit with us. Thanks to being human beings, spirit lives on earth. And when that spirit becomes active in human beings in a consciously active way, it has a healing resurrection effect on nature. So what should we as human beings do? I have here a booklet, recently published by Occident publishers, which is a series of week's sayings, sayings for each week of the year, published by Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of the 19th century, 1912 I believe, a booklet in which one can experience from week to week how the seasons gradually metamorphose into the next season. So how the workings in nature take place, what changes, but especially how man interacts with nature. And when you then look at where we are now in that calendar for the soul, in which people can experience the metamorphosis of nature, now - I am recording this video on 21 November, it may be broadcast much later - but in this week and also in the next week still and again a very little bit advanced in the season, it is reflected that if humans would not live with their souls creatively, intensively, thinking, feeling, acting, with nature, then nature would only have in itself a frosty, cold, empty, life. Nature exists, nature can germinate again in the spring, thanks to the fact that we as humans are now living with nature with our whole soul the intensity of it, with everything we have in our soul in terms of experiencing power, thinking with it, feeling with it, and then next week the focus is then a bit more on acting with it. That is a summoning to us, or actually an observation it is, and through that observation we are called to be more actively present in nature. Not cloaked in your own personal thoughts walking from here to there, while maybe your children frolic ahead of you and you just trudge along because you have to and you are further inside yourself. No, you open your eyes, open your ears, open your mind, you see your children, you see nature, you see the autumn, you see the colours, you feel how nature has gradually lost its summer forces and entered an autumnal state, which is now becoming more and more apparent, but it is also becoming more and more clear that when nature becomes silent, then human beings have the possibility to become active within themselves. And if we did that, the earth would not languish so much. The earth is not languishing because of nitrogen or carbon dioxide, the earth is languishing because of human beings' selfishness. And not the selfishness of wanting to have and wanting to use and wanting to eat and wanting to throw away to one's heart's desire, that too, but that is secondary. The main thing is that we human beings go through existence sleeping and we sleep within ourselves. We lie in the bed of our own bodies. Even when you walk in nature, you think: I am not lying in bed - yes, you are lying in bed. You lie in the more or less comfortable cot of your body and you sleep and dream away. And if we were to wake up, if we were to do what we have to do and which would also be normal human nature, that you are awake and that you also enjoy what you see and that you think along with what is going on in nature - not about wolves and about deer and about plants that can't germinate, because they can't germinate because we are sleeping, that's why they don't germinate, not because that deer is coming there because they were always there and that's also part of forestry, shall I say, that there are deer. So let's turn our attention away from that a bit and shine the light on ourselves, see that we need to radically change our attitude towards nature. But for that, you have to overcome your selfishness. You really have to. Because you prefer to sleep and you struggle to be constantly awake and not only see things but also experience and become aware of where that nature is in its development through the year at the moment. And for that, the calendar for the soul is an indispensable aid. So really you should say: environmentalists, buy that calendar for the soul and think those sayings every week, daily and realise what you have to do as a human being, you don't just have to do that you think about nature. You have to be in it, and you have to bring into that plant kingdom, into that animal kingdom, into that human kingdom your human powers of sensibility. Calendar for the soul, a maxim every week. And several years ago, when I was writing blog entries, I wrote a small really very small weekly introduction to such a verse, and those introductions are now in that booklet by the spells, and I will then read this week's spell, that is, the week in which I am speaking this.

 

Thus I feel at last the world

That without the communion with my soul

In itself could only find frostily empty life

And revealing itself without power

Creating itself in souls anew,

Could find only death in itself.

 

That is to say, now in this week we as human beings, just now, have the opportunity to really feel the world and nature. If we didn't, then that nature in itself would have only frostily empty life.

 

Then that nature would lose the power to reveal itself and be able to recreate itself in souls as it desires and also needs. If it cannot do so, then in the end it will only be able to find death. And then the text says here: In August, we feel how our own being, if it were confined to a solitary existence, would have to find death within itself. The soul needs the existence of the world to exist itself. So there the relationship was inverted. There it was that you had to feel that as a soul you need the world to exist. Now, in November, we feel the opposite. We feel how the world could not exist, how it would have to die, if the human soul did not sympathise with the world. The world must be able to recreate itself in the human soul. And without this power to reveal itself in souls, it would find death in itself. That is what human beings are doing, withdrawing from nature. And seeing nature as an objective thing outside human beings. Of course, you do know that your body belongs to it to some extent. But the earth is something other than the human being. No, the earth is the human itself. The earth needs the human being, just as the human being needs the earth. We can do that by immersing ourselves weekly in such a saying, which in itself is not simple, but which when you think about it daily starts to gain meaning, helped a little by what I have described with it, when you do that weekly, you end up waking up to the course of nature, the metamorphosis of nature in the course of the year. And then the relationship of the human soul to the development of nature of the earth also becomes clear.

If we do that, we will save the earth. Really.Nature in communion with the soul by Mieke Mosmuller