The Dynamics of Becoming Like a Plant

emulating the plant as a path of initiation

Do you seek the highest, the greatest?
The plant can be your teacher:
what it is without volition
you can be willfully—that’s it!

• Friedrich Schiller

The plant is coaxed up and out of the soil by the Sun, and its unfolding seems so effortless. But, alas, we human beings do not experience any automatic spiritual development. What a plant does on one level, we must express on another but the key ingredient is our own effort. We must strive and, on a soul level, become like the plant in our very willpower itself. Grace met by an unreceptive soul is as useless as light encountered by an uprooted plant. If a plant cannot receive the light, the same light scorches it. Likewise, the soul that does not by its own free activity photosynthesize grace, is blistered by its own inactivity. This means we must will to do what is not our inborn instinct, but rather, of our own volition, fixing our attention on our spiritual Sun until this willful striving becomes second nature to us. As Steiner suggests, we must come to think our willing and will our thinking. That one line merits much contemplation. 

As St. Paul writes, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”¹ On the contrary, our thoughts must become focused and volitional – attentive only to that which we willfully choose. This is what is elsewhere called “single-pointed” focus in meditative practice, but something carried throughout our daily waking life. Our willed actions, by contrast, must conform to spiritual concepts and living ideals. Such a person begins to live from the dynamics of the spiritual world rather than bodily prejudices.

1 of 4: Root

As individuals, the unqualified human “I” is the center of our being. It is from this dark ineffable center that we each emerge. As infants, we begin as “all sense organ”² and absorb everything and copy everything we experience. The biological process is how we become a member of our species and society, but to become free individuals, the cultural “umbilical cord” must at a certain point be cut. In anthroposophy, the fullness of the individual is born out of the soil of one’s culture and reaches the fullness of freedom by transcending the very conditions in which the individual grows. An American will still speak English, and a German will still speak German, but at the summit of free individuality, minds meet in being able to think living concepts no longer constrained to mere cultural preconceptions. This summit is more of a plateau where we can meet. It does not mean total enlightenment, but rather an ever-greater possibility of the growth of freedom. We do not ever possess absolute freedom, but we can always draw closer to it and continue to shed misinterpretations. As long as we are embodied beings, we cannot shed all preconceptions. As such, we each remain perpetual human becomings. If a plant is unable to overcome inherited geological conditions, it simply fails to be its fullest self. 

As a child develops from the head first, the root of the plant emerges first as a pip from the seed. The soul, too, is “rooted” in the physical world as long as its feelings of value are entirely drawn from the world of sensuality and how externalities stimulate emotions. When our feelings of value are not drawn from the surfaces of things (“maya”) and how they enchant our senses, but rather from the unifying spiritual ideas that provide their holistic meaning, then appearances are redeemed and our source of meaning descends from the spiritual world above. 

As Steiner says, “We find the strongest life force in the root nature, and there is a gradual process of devitalization from below upward.”³ This is a paradoxical statement because if you look at a root, it is the densest and woodiest part of a plant. “The root is rich in salts, the flower in light. People knew much more of this in the past. This is why they called the principle to be found in the flower ‘phosphorus’.”⁴ What this means is that the most voracious hunger is in the root, actively assimilating water, salts, and humus and in that activity hardening. In the soil is the greatest life potential and the plant “dies” into its form through its growth. Growth itself is a kind of kinetic energy while the ethericity accumulated in the soil is potential energy. 

In the entire process of growth, there is a dying into crystalline form. When a plant reaches its culmination, it produces a new individuality – the seed. As Alan Chadwick says, “the seed is utmost idée and least metamorphosis.”⁵ As a pure idea, the seed is pure potential. As the plant matures, this potential is used up and the plant becomes actual. To become young again, pure potential must emerge out of our crystalline actuality.

Images from Nine Lectures on Bees (GA351) by Rudolf Steiner: “Our whole life rests on this — that we are perpetually on the point of forming hexagonal crystals from the head downwards, but we do not permit it actually to come about. These hexagonal crystals always wish to take form in us, but in reality they do not do so. They are interrupted, arrested, and then we have, so to speak, the quartz fluid in the highest possible state of solution within us.”

Each time you save a seed in the garden, the seed adapts and evolves. Likewise, when our physical bodies die – assuming we have blossomed spiritually and produced a new I-seed – our individuality also has evolved. All of human life is organized like a plant towards the production of a renewed I-seed. 

Steiner says of the plant: “if we take account not only the dynamics of warmth and light and of light conditions in the year when the plant is growing, but starting from the root base ourselves on the dynamics of light and warmth at least in the year before…”⁶ And, similarly, “That which spreads out through the brain is a highly advanced heap of manure.”⁷ What forms the brain (or the root) is drawn directly from the world by means of nourishment. Beyond the root “brain” the plant becomes more and more refined until it is predominantly composed of air and light. “[I]n the head we have cosmic forces; while in the system of metabolism and limbs we have to do with earthly forces — cosmic substances and earthly forces.”⁸ This is simply that the root is composed most of the physical material it absorbs directly, whereas the leaves and flowers of a plant are “inhaled” from the cosmos – air, light, and subtle substantiality. Steiner extends this image to our organs: the brain being our root and the other organs being centers of “breathing” by which we assimilate substantiality. Much in the way that a plant breathes in the air in combination with light to build its form, our organs assimilate what they need from their surrounding atmosphere in combination with the radiant energy contained in our food. Likewise, within the human being, we are rooted in the sensual world but unfold to spiritual heights within.

A sprawled leaf, many-fingered, its radial
ridges limber, green — but curled,
tattered, pocked, the brown palm

nibbled by insects, nestled in by worms:
One leaf of a tree that’s one tree of a forest,
that’s the branch of the vein of a leaf

of a tree. Perpetual worlds
within, upon, above the world, the world
a leaf within a wilderness of worlds

— May Swenson, “Flying Home from Utah”

2 of 4: Leaf

If we are overnourished, we languish spiritually. This would be an adult still acting childishly, fixated on childhood games rather than productive expression. As Steiner says, “Just as I, as a man, can pass unnoticed before some dull fellow, so can everything in the soil and above it pass unnoticed before a dull plant.”⁹ Overindulgence in the material world dulls us to the light of the spiritual world. When the soul is overstimulated by sensory stimuli, it becomes unable to photosynthesize grace. As Goethe observes in The Metamorphosis of Plants:

“It has been found that frequent nourishment hampers the flowering of a plant, whereas scant nourishment accelerates it. This is an even clearer indication of the effect of the stem leaves discussed above. As long as it remains necessary to draw off coarser juices, the potential organs of the plant must continue to develop as instruments for this need. With excessive nourishment this process must be repeated over and over; flowering is rendered impossible, as it were. When the plant is deprived of nourishment, nature can affect it more quickly and easily: the organs of the nodes are refined, the uncontaminated juices work with greater purity and strength, the transformation of the parts becomes possible, and the process takes place unhindered.”¹⁰

This little book, which is brilliant in its insight into plant life, also works as a manual of soul life when our inner experience is seen to be analogous to the unfolding of a plant. If we consume too much food, our health is harmed. If we habitually overindulge sensory stimuli – what is known as an “arousal addiction” – the physical body becomes exaggerated in its proportions while the soul body becomes inhibited, preventing our inner blossoming. 

A person with an overdeveloped vitality suppresses consciousness, and even conscience. In such a state, the individual repeats destructive behaviors and fails to learn from their mistakes. “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.”¹¹ We can understand better why the ancient text of Orthodox wisdom, the Philokalia, remarks that gluttony is the root of all other spiritual errors (“sins”). 

This is not a new idea. Maoshing Ni, the Yellow Emperor, writes in 2600BC: 

“In the past, people practiced the Tao, the Way of Life. They understood the principle of balance as represented by the transformations of the energies of the universe. They formulated exercises to promote energy flow to harmonize themselves within the universe. They ate a balanced diet at regular times, arose and retired at regular hours, avoided over stressing their bodies and minds, and refrained from overindulgence of all kinds. They maintained well-being of body and mind; thus, it is not surprising that they lived over one hundred years. These days, people have changed their way of life. They drink wine as though it were water, indulge excessively in destructive activities, drain their jing – the body’s essence that is stored in the Kidneys – and deplete their qi. They do not know the secret of conserving their energy and vitality. Seeking emotional excitement and momentary pleasures, people disregard the natural rhythm of the universe. They fail to regulate their lifestyle and diet, and sleep improperly.”¹²

Anthroposophy would likely agree with the Yellow Emperor’s general assessment in terms of abstract health but human freedom suggests that there are often things more important than bodily longevity, other things worth sacrificing our energy for, and perhaps a few even things worth dying for. Anthroposophy emphasizes first and foremost freedom, which means freedom from the undue influence of evolutionary prejudices in particular. If we are freed from bodily obsessions, the root of most errors, then anything we do is luminous. As St. Augustine writes, “Love and do what you will” – but in that order. Without charitable love, everything we do is unworthy of the human being. If I treat people as anything less than another I or allow their individuality to be erased under a general category then it is myself who is rendered unfree. To love each individual I encounter as another I is the heart of freedom. 

“‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’”¹³

Because the human I is unqualified, so too must the love between I and Thou be bodiless, without race, and ungendered. What the loving individual should do is left open for each to determine for themselves. Each individual human I is irreducible to this or that. Because the I is non-objectifiable, it appears as a kind of divine nothingness to ordinary subjective consciousness. The only living bridge between two people that reduces neither to a mere object is the generosity of love.

If I take too much for myself, I not only rob someone else of what they need, but I also poison myself. Steiner says, “Through the food, the organism is stretched and thereby enabled to take in more of what it needs from the atmosphere. This may even lead to hypertrophy if too much food is taken in. This has to be paid for by a shortened life span. The middle course must be found between the maximum and minimum.”¹⁴ When I visited the famous gardener John Jeavons in January 2024, he emphasized the importance of caloric reduction from the recommended 2400 calories per day to 1800 per day for health benefits and longevity. Judging by his vigor at age 80, he’s onto something. This is not asceticism, but rather making sure not to “overfeed” our organism with things that would weigh it down too much.

Paramahansa Yogananda writes, “A man who is mentally negative, or neutral, or identified with sex thoughts or other sensory preoccupations, finds his consciousness operating outwardly through the three lower centers of the spine. He is said to be ‘living on the skin surface’ because his consciousness is bounded by the periphery of his own small body.”¹⁵ It is only with a degree of detachment – equanimity – and no longer depending on whether sensory stimuli are merely pleasant or unpleasant that real inner life of the soul no longer vegetates but grows. If the soul is oversaturated with materialistic consciousness or an obsession with the body, it becomes host to all sorts of pathogenic processes – all of which are healthy in the proper place, but become unhealthy when they occur in the wrong place. Instead of being a refined airy quality, the soul becomes too much like soil in which it grows, and on it grow all sorts of fungaloid parasites.

Steiner speaks to the results of excessive nourishment in his Agriculture Course, where he says, “Now the Moon-influences in the soil can also become too strong. This can happen in a very simple way. You need only call to mind a thoroughly wet winter, followed by a thoroughly wet spring. Then the Moon-forces will enter the earth too strongly. The earth will become too much alive.”¹⁶ The surplus of life potential in the soil gives rise to so-called fire diseases like rust and corn smut. Fungus, which naturally would grow in the earth, migrates up with the excessive moon forces, grows on leaves, and even corrupts the seed-forming process.

Ustilago maydis, aka huitlacoche, aka “corn smut” in which the ears of corn grow fungus (left) and quite literally create soil out of the plant (right) at my farm.

What is known as “corn smut” in English is called huitlacoche in Mexico, where it is considered a delicacy. You can see how too much growth force rises into the ear, and the seeds fail to crystallize properly. The seeds cannot contain this watery energy and stay too alive when they should go dormant. The ideas offered by Steiner and Goethe combined with this image almost give us a “recipe” for how to create huitlacoche because this is precisely what we usually do not want to see in the garden (or the soul). 

When reproductive forces are too strong, the lower desires discolor the pure world of thought: ideas tinged by base impulses are rendered fruitless. Agitating the physical body excessively with stimulants is like fungus growing on the seeds of our thoughts; they become too full of reproductive vitality and, though they seem to grow bigger, are rendered unviable. As Steiner says, “the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth.”¹⁷

Fortunately, there is no such thing as a purely materialistic idea because ideas as such are spiritual. Even what claims to be materialism does so by means of spiritual thinking. As such, materialism contains flecks of spiritual gold in spite of itself. Materialism itself does not need to be opposed, for it is self-negating. Materialistic thinking is like a house divided against itself, producing impotent seeds. All we need to patiently pursue is the good, the beautiful, and the true in all our work. As Goethe says, “Only that which is fruitful is true.” You will know a tree by its fruits.

3 of 4: Flower

A flower emerges as a leap in nature. Leaf unfolds after leaf, and then, suddenly, a blossom appears as a surprise. For the leaves, the blossom signals a kind of loss, but for the plant, the blossom is a great triumph. Steiner says: “Were only the etheric body to work, then the plant would unfold endlessly leaf by leaf; this is brought to a conclusion by the astral body. The etheric body is muted by the astral.”¹⁸ Likewise, the possibility of spiritual consciousness is only possible by limiting vitality. A brain constantly saturated with excessive nutrients, intoxicants, or sensory stimuli does not allow our delicate soul flowers to unfold. As John Ruskin says, “A flower is to the vegetable substance what a crystal is to the mineral.”¹⁹

Quartz crystal (left) and Diphylleia grayi (right)

Once the dynamics of life have crystalized, inner blossoms unfold. Anthroposophy does not advance the idea of starving oneself to force open these interior flowers. Anthroposophy is not asceticism. On the contrary, anthroposophy seeks something closer to the middle path. But as the human heart is not squarely in the center of the chest, the spiritual heart of anthroposophy is significantly closer to the world of pure spirit than the world of materialism. 

We want plants to grow well in our gardens, but they must also experience “running out” of resources to flower. Alan Chadwick describes this as the “law of the vision of the end,” which stimulates the impulse to reproduce. This happens biologically, but it also happens spiritually. Biologically, the urge to reproduce makes more human animals. But the spiritual version of the urge to reproduce is the desire for the unique human “I” to be born again. 

4 of 4: Seed

What emerges as a new seed out of the plant belongs to the root process from below, and yet, it has passed through the experience of living as a plant through the year. The new seed is not the same as the old seed: it is informed by experience and has a new potentiality that is nonetheless contiguous with the old seed. In the seed’s unformed chaos, we have pure potentiality. In the seed, we see something that belongs to the cosmos yet carries the ability to take root in the earth. “These dynamics taken from the soil can be traced as far as the ovary, as far as seed development…”²⁰ Everything from the beginning of our life to the production of the new I-seed belongs to a singular process. Sometimes, a seed (of no fault of its own) falls on rocky soil. Sometimes, a seed falls on good soil (also of no merit of its own). But each seed grows to the best of its abilities wherever it finds itself. It doesn't complain. It simply grows. 

But each new seed is not a new species. No, each new seed unfolds a new possibility for its own species. As individuals, we are each so unique that we are our own species, and it is that which we produce again in our own blossoming: a new seed of our own individuality. This is the principle known as reincarnation. The soul plant blooms, is fertilized by the bees of the invisible world, and produces a new seed. 

May we all grow to new life and may all our deeds bear abundant fruit for others.

1. Ephesians 4:14-19

2. R. Steiner, The Younger Generation (GA217, 13 October 1922, Dornach)

3. R. Steiner, Cosmic Workings in Earth and Man (GA349, Dornach, 17th February, 1923)

4. R. Steiner, February 9, 1924, GA325.

5. Alan Chadwick, “Seed: Utmost Idee and Least Metamorphosis,” Green Gulch Farm, CA 11 Feb 1980,  https://chadwickarchive.org/ca-0302/ 

6. Rudolf Steiner, Physiology and Healing, pp. 85-86 CW314.

7. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course (GA327, 16 June, 1924, Koberwitz)

8. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course (GA327, 16 June, 1924, Koberwitz)

9. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, (GA327, 14 June, 1924 Koberwitz)

10. Goethe, Metamorphosis of Plants, P30

11. Proverbs 26:11

12. Maoshing Ni, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine: A New Translation of the Neijing Suwen with Commentary

13. Matthew 22:36-40

14. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, (GA327, 14 June, 1924 Koberwitz)

15. Paramahansa Yogananda, God Talks with Arjuna, Chapter 2, verse 3 commentary

16. R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, (GA327, 14 June, 1924 Koberwitz)

17. R. Steiner, Anthroposophical Ethics, (GA155, 30 May 1912, Norrköping)

18. R. Steiner, Stuttgart, February 8, 1909, GA98

19. John Ruskin, Works of John Ruskin, Proserpina, (University of California, 1885)  pg. 49.

20. R. Steiner, Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine (GA314, Stuttgart, 27 October, 1922)