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JOURNAL FORANTHROPOSOPHYNEW METHODS FOR THE TESTING AND IMPROVEMENT OF DRINKING WATER Theodor Schwenk CONCERNING THE PHYSICAL BODY Alan Howard THE ROOTS OF SELF-ASSURANCE John F. Gardner THE LUCAS CLINIC Rita Leroi, M.D. A PAINTER S CONVERSATIONS WITH RUDOLF STEINER Margarita Woloschin SAGE, SAVORY AND MARJORAM Wilhelm Pelikan Also reviews by Paul Allen, Christy Barnes, Harry Blanchard, Joseph Wetzl and Nick Lyons; poems by Albert Steffen, Lesley Rosenberg, Maude Champion and Andrew Hoy. NUMBER 22 AUTUMN, 1975 Spiritual knowledge is the nourishment of the spirit. By withholding it, man lets his spirit starve and perish; thus enfeebled he grows powerless against processes in his physical and life bodies which gain the upper hand and overpower him. Rudolf Steiner Journal for Anthroposophy. Number 22, Autumn, 1975 © 1975 The Anthroposophical Society in America, Inc. New Methods for the Testing and Improvement of Drinking Water THEODOR SCHWENK Many of those who live in our great cities no longer drink the water from their faucets but prefer to buy expensive mineral water and bottled spring water. Whereas formerly it was taken for granted that people drew drinking water from a spring or well, where it begins its cycle, nowadays, for the most part, we must resort to treating polluted river water so as to make it chemically and bacterio- logically “acceptable.” This, however, ignores the fact that drinking water consists not only of the chemical element H2O — albeit with various salts and trace elements held in solution — but is actually a [Image: photograph]Pattern formed by drinking water of highest quality. 1 [Image: photograph]Pattern formed by a sample of drinkable quality from a Black Forest stream. The “leaf-forms” are a sign of vitality. food and must have its own vital quality if it is to be properly incorporated into the circulatory processes of the human organism. The Institute for Hydrological Research has set itself the task, under the direction of Dipl.-Ing. Theodor Schwenk, of searching out methods with the help of which one can, in large measure, re-enliven water that has lost its natural characteristics and restore it, as it were, to its original spring- freshness, which is essential for maintaining human health. The first step toward this goal was to establish a depend­ able method for ascertaining the water’s vitality. This proved entirely successful. Following indications given by Rudolf Steiner, the Institute for Hydrological Research developed a standardized and practical procedure, the so-called “Tropfen­ bild” (drop-pattern) method. This method has been used suc­ cessfully for many years in the research into the more subtle characteristics of liquids. In this procedure a sample of the water in question is set in motion through the impulse of drops of distilled water 2 [Image: photograph]Pattern formed by a sample from the same stream as previ­ ous picture after introduction of sewage. The “leaves” are snuffed out; the water has lost all of its formative force. which, falling onto its surface, form characteristic patterns. These finest phenomena of motion — as thousands of experi­ ments have shown — bring to exact expression the inner life configuration of the water investigated, much as the tone of a bell indicates something of its inner configuration. With the help of Schlieren optical equipment, the move­ ments are made visible and are held fast photographically. Experience teaches us to read the resulting pictures as accu­ rately as x-rays are interpreted by physicians. Examples of such pictures accompany this article. The results of this hydrological research can be practically applied by translating them into a scale which indicates their quality. This scale can be applied to any drinking water and indicates its capacity to be the carrier of life sustaining forces. The drinking water experts throughout the world are impa­ tiently waiting for such a scale. This was clearly expressed at the Conference for Water Provision held at Joenkoeping in 1972. The establishment of a map indicating the quality of 3 bodies of water still requires extensive work which needs to be carried out in the interest of public welfare. Many years of work with the inner nature of the element of water have yielded knowledge and experimental data which will enable a concentrated vitalization to be carried out — a process otherwise brought about only by nature in flowing and bubbling water. The task that faces the Institute today is to make these methods so practical that they can be incorporated into the preparation of drinking water in an economically sound way. In the future this will be an indispensable extension of the efforts to meet the needs of a wholesome water supply. [Image: photograph]Pattern[Image: formed by a sample from the upper Rhine: rigid, radiating forms typical of greatly reduced life forces. (Drink­ ing water for millions of people is drawn from the Rhine.) ---------Translated with kind permission from a short prospectus, Institut f uer Stroemingswissenschaften, Herrischried, Neue Wege zur Untersuchung und Verbesserung der Trinkwasserqualitaet, issued by the Institute for Hydro- logical Research of the Association for the Study of Movement, Inc., D-7881 Herrischried, West Germany. All rights for the photographs and text be­ long to the Institute. 4 Poem Albert Steffen When we say eternally I for you and you for me, then the Christ goes with us twain. Fear not that the darkened day leads us from our chosen way. His holy light will never wane. Not upon the torture bed nor before the realm of dead will He leave the true to pain. When we to the grave have passed, He is with us to the last; turns coffin into heaven again. Since He sacrificed His blood, Love is in the hands of God; All the stars are His domain. Translation by John Root 5 Concerning Man ’s Physical Body ALAN HOWARD One of the basic requirements for progressive work in spiritual science is that of overcoming the illusion of matter, by which is meant that of regarding matter as something intrinsically dif­ ferent and separate from spirit. Matter is a special form of spirit itself. Rudolf Steiner has frequently pointed out that the trouble with the materialist is not so much that he is a materialist — that is something we are all more or less prone to — but that he doesn’t recognize matter for what it is. He is obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. Even if he should con­ cede the possibility of spirit as another element of the world whole, he still has the problem of how two such fundamen­ tally opposed principles could exist side by side in the same world. He is caught in an irreconcilable dualism, and monism demands that either spirit is a function of matter, or matter a form of spirit. It is the latter kind of monism that spiritual science works with; for if spirit — being the comprehending and therefore higher principle of the two — is (as the former kind of mon­ ism implies) merely a function of matter — the lower or comprehended principle — then we make of knowledge itself (by which alone we can speak of matter at all) something which we cannot know. Only by recognizing active spirit as the basic ‘stuff' of the universe together with its ability to manifest itself in various forms, of which matter is one, can we escape from this impossible position. Then it is still pos­ sible to investigate matter within its own limitations, and to 6 use the results in the field to which they belong, without tying ourselves in knots trying to extricate the knower from the thing known. Rudolf Steiner had no quarrel with scientific materialism as far as it went. The trouble was that it tried to go too far and presumed to explain the psychic and spiritual on a materialistic basis. His well-known analogy of ice and water puts the thing in a nutshell. If a man could only see ice and not the water in which it floated, he could make all kinds of acute observations about the ice, many of which might be quite correct and useful; but he would never come to a true understanding of what ice really was until he was able to see it as part of the surrounding water. Ice is not something essentially different from water. It is a special form of water; and the surrounding temperature needs only to be raised a few degrees for it all to become water again. In a similar way, we can never properly understand matter until we see it as a special form of spirit; nor shall we go very far either in the understanding of spirit itself unless we recognize this property it has, to manifest in other forms. The whole meaning and comprehension of spir­ itual science stands on this fundamental principle. Matter, in short, emerged out of spirit, it subsists within it, and it will return to it. Naturally, it requires special organs of perception, spiritual organs, to perceive spirit in its own nature. At present we only have those organs which can perceive it in its material form. This is why we can be deceived into thinking that there is nothing else but matter, that it is substantial, real; whereas, even if such a thing as spirit exists at all, it is something un­ substantial and therefore unreal. This deception is well-known to spiritual science as the work of Ahriman. “Not till we recognize that even in the smallest par­ ticle of matter there is spirit, and that the repre­ sentation of matter is a lie — not until we know that Mephistopheles (Ahriman) is the spirit who cor­ 7 rupts our representations of the world — can the outer world present itself to us in its true aspect and help mankind forward in its evolution.” Rudolf Steiner Gospel of St.

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