Torsten Arncken

For anthroposophical research work with plants, it is essential that this work be supported through meditation. Here I would like to describe one aspect of this meditative work.

Rudolf Steiner gave the following meditation verse for Michael Bauer in 1904 and explained it on October 24, 1905 (GA 267):

More radiant than the sun
Purer than the snow
Finer than the ether
Is the Self,
The Spirit in my heart.
This Self am I.
I am this Self.

For more than ten years I inwardly spoke this verse in my morning meditation. One day I bought a solar oven in order to save energy while cooking. This oven is a box with a tightly closing glass lid and is surrounded by reflective metal plates that reflect the captured sunlight into the center of the box. Inside it is a movable suspension that holds a cooking pot and keeps it balanced.

If one wants to cook with it, the opening of the oven must be aligned precisely with the sun both horizontally and vertically; otherwise it does not heat up sufficiently. Potatoes require at least one hour, and during this time the sun has already moved about 15 degrees further. One cannot simply align the box and forget it, but has to readjust it twice. During this process I must carefully aim to see from where the energy of the sun is shining, whereas at midday I would normally avoid looking directly at where the sun stands in order not to be dazzled.

Then I practiced the meditation again, and suddenly I experienced the radiant sun as an experience of force within the meditation when I spoke the first line. When I examined this more closely, I realized that I draw this experience of force from memory, yet must actively bring it forth. I remember the situation of aligning the oven, but to experience the radiation inwardly as a force requires an effort of will.

This re-creation of the experience of force does not occur in conceptual imagination but in imaginative perception. Thus in meditation, as a consequence of the first line of the verse, I experience a strong radiance of the sun. And through the first word of the line, “radiant,” my meditation is directed toward a force that grows beyond this experience of force.

In order to develop an inner perception for the line “Purer than the snow,” I then began in the following winters to observe the snow more closely. While skiing, I repeatedly stopped and tried to perceive the snow. It drifts down from above to the earth. So delicate and steadily falling, it soon covers the whole world as a crystalline blanket. When I take snow in my hand, it feels light. It melts in the mouth and tastes slightly mineral. What it covers appears radiant white.

I try to bring all this before my inner awareness in order to experience the purity mentioned by Rudolf Steiner. I experience purity as a process—from the impure toward the pure. The white color is an image for this, and Rudolf Steiner encourages us through the meditation to experience an intensification of this purity.

For the line “Finer than the ether,” I choose the blue of the sky as an approach to observing the etheric. Here one can experience subtle qualities of blue in many nuances.

Thus the meditation verse and the perception of the world become interwoven. I have enlivened the verse, and at the same time it has stimulated me to make new perceptions. I am convinced that in this way many a meditation verse can gain greater depth.

My conclusion: Bring experiences from reality—first as a concept, then as a pictorial experience of forces—into meditation, and you will experience an intensification within yourself and, wonderfully, also strengthen your connection with the world.

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