Warmth Is Balance

In nature and throughout the Earth organism, we find balancing processes expressed in the image and substance of warmth. The physical, soul, and spiritual aspects of human beings also require balancing, but we must maintain this balance ourselves. Warmth is the goal.

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We are surrounded by warmth. The organism of the Earth, which we’re a part of, has a differentiated, living, and mobile warmth-body that is organized in a similar way to the human organism: a cold nerve-sense pole at the northern and southern extremes, a warm metabolic pole around the equator, and a balancing rhythmic system where we experience four distinct seasons in the temperate zones. However, everywhere on Earth, in each distinct climate zone, there is a unique warmth cycle of the year, with specific fluctuations and specific rhythms in the changes of temperature.

Life on Earth has developed within certain boundaries, as has life in relation to the whole cosmos. If the Earth were just 5 percent closer to the Sun, all the water would evaporate and life would cease. If, on the other hand, the Earth were just 1 percent further away, all the water would freeze. If, say, the Earth were as small as the Moon, it couldn’t sustain an atmosphere—the gravitational field would be too weak. The Earth would then have no protection from the destructive radiation coming from the cosmos. The speed of the Earth’s rotation and the tilt of its axis also contribute to the unfolding of life in all its diversity and dynamism. So, life on Earth follows cosmic-terrestrial rhythms and takes place within certain boundary conditions—one of which involves warmth.

The Thermal Envelope

Plants, animals, and humans are embedded in the thermal envelope of the Earth. In considering the evolution of living beings, we can detect a gradual internalization of external warmth. The world of plants is still almost entirely open to the cosmos and the Earth. Only the most highly developed plants, the angiosperms, have internalized ovules in their ovaries. Plants germinate, grow, flower, bear fruit, and die completely in accord with external rhythms, including those related to temperature. However, perennial plants are able to overwinter, and there are even plants in which metabolic processes cause an increase in warmth above that of the external environment. Some, such as the jack-in-the-pulpit (Arum maculatum), can achieve an increase of several degrees above the external temperature. This occurs through secondary metabolic processes in the plant, not via photosynthesis and the upbuilding processes. The Christmas rose (Helleborus niger), for example, pushes its flower bud-bearing stems through the snow and blooms in winter. These secondary metabolic processes are actually conversion and decomposition processes which lead to the formation of various healing substances (essential oils, tannins, saponins, mucilage, etc.). Additional warmth generation is accompanied by the formation of specific plant toxins, such as alkaloids and special toxic glycosides. In these cases, we can recognize a kind of approximation of an outer soul aspect to the plant, a kind of attempt to internalize the astral in the still innocent green plant being.

Internalization of Warmth

In animals, the astral-soul sphere penetrates more deeply into the organism; it is taken up and internalized by the animal. The internalization of warmth, together with the transformation of respiration in higher organisms, leads to the development of the inner soul space of living beings. Cold-blooded animals are still heavily dependent on external warmth, and their activities are bound up with this necessity. Certain metabolic processes can lead to the formation of toxins, for example, in snakes, with venom glands located at the very front of their heads in the nervous system. Snakes can, nevertheless, be kept as pets and caressed—there is a soul quality to their expression. In insects—bees, for example—we find creatures that cannot develop a stable body heat of their own, but, as a community, can create a stable warmth atmosphere of around 37°C [98.6°F], equivalent to the average temperature of a human being. In this way, they create a “collective organism” connected with communication, task distribution, and more.

Evolution then progresses toward autonomy and the self-regulation of heat, leading to the development of warm-blooded organisms. Through regulating their own heat, these organisms develop ever greater autonomy and, through herd formation, brood care, etc., become increasingly “soulful” and diverse in their social behavior.

The Crown of Creation

The increasing capacity for self-heating culminated in the human physical basis for the unfolding of the ‘I’. Our human warmth-body is differentiated—the temperature of the liver is a high 40°C [104°F], and the head and periphery of the body are slightly cooler. Our body temperature also has a subtle daily rhythm, which means that it’s not the same throughout the day. It fluctuates slightly because life is never static.

But rather than being the crown of creation, let’s consider human beings as the starting point of evolution. This corresponds to anthroposophical spiritual science, which sees human beings not only as fixed, physical beings on today’s Earth but traces them back to their spiritual origins, where they were first formed from warmth and then became physical. From that perspective, we can recognize the fixed qualities in other living beings that human beings had to “cast off”, so to speak, in the process of earthly evolution in order to retain their universality. Human beings can be imagined as a whole universe, having internalized all natural processes on their path from the macrocosm to the microcosm. But this means that they must master all these processes within themselves, keeping them in balance, in the right place, and in the right temporal dynamics.

Warmth Therapy

Taking images of two community endothermic organisms, we can envision a polarity on the physical plane. At one pole, in the honeybee (Apis mellifica), we see an image for balancing the heat processes in human beings when they have fallen out of balance and experience fever, inflammation, dissolution, redness, and chaos. Bees manage warmth in a highly orderly, ‘I’-like manner. They are a model of ordering and keeping warmth processes in the physical realm within certain limits. They can significantly reduce heat loss, and in this way, they offer a remedy for humans.

At the other pole, the red wood ant (Formica rufa) is also a social species with a division of labor and communication. Here we find a castle-like labyrinth formation built in the damp, cool forest floor—not in a warm, airy region like with the bees. Ants play an essential role in the forest because they aerate and warm the soil by forming mounds, loosening up the soil, and clearing away decaying debris in and on the ground. Without forest ants and other small creatures, the forest floor would only be subject to deposition and anaerobic decomposition processes. Ants are a model of healing sclerotic processes in humans—in contrast to bees and their relation to inflammatory processes. We can use the ant “products,” for example, where something cools down and solidifies in the bloodstream or joints.

Balance Between Warm and Cold

Since human beings have been endowed with a soul and an ‘I’, we are tasked with bringing our soul nature into balance. It is not easy to maintain a stable balance, this quality of the middle. We all practice balance between warm and cold in our feeling life. Everything in nature that displays an excess of warmth—as in the image of sulfur or of a long, hot summer, or in an above-ground, luxuriantly flowering plant like the fire lily (Lilium bulbiferum)—can be experienced as a certain quality in our human soul experience. With an image of salt or of a plant that emphasizes the cool underground region, like the great yellow mountain gentian (Gentiana lutea), or simply with the image of cold, dark winter, we can take the experience of coolness, heaviness, and condensation and incorporate it into our practice of soul balance.

There is a complete parallel between our lived experience within our souls and the formative forces of nature, the formative principles of nature in the outer world. . . . We need to point out these parallels to show that what is present in the outer world as formative principles is fundamentally the same as what lies within the human organism, which has then been extracted by the human being and become our inner soul and spiritual life.¹

Human beings must practice maintaining balance in the spiritual realm, too—between our spiritual tasks and our everyday worldly obligations. In relation to warmth, it is a question of how we form, realize, and pursue our ideas and ideals in life. This, too, we must learn to master. Life without creative ideas and guiding ideals is empty, cold, and meaningless. But conversely, burning for certain ideas and ideals can easily lead to a destructive ideology, to aggression, even to war. We need to nurture and keep healthy our enthusiasm, our warmth, in the spiritual realm.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman
Illustration Design team of the Weekly

1. Rudolf Steiner, Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, CW 312 (Hudson, NY: SteinerBooks, 2010), lecture in Dornach, March 23, 1920.