WHAT IS A PLANT?
All over the earth we can see one green plant grows in many differing forms.
The plant grows in differing forms in different climatic regions.
On looking to the plant we see it is rooted to, and grows out of the earth
towards the light and warmth of the sun.
The plant is part of the earth and grows towards the sun. It has its roots in the earth, springs and sprouts to above, revealing leaf and stem, then stem and flowers, and
finally dies back towards the earth from which it came.
We can experience this life cycle of the plant by carrying out a simple movement exercise
given from Heinz Grill. It is a series of 7 hand gestures, which describe the plant as it grows from seed, to leaf and stem, stem and flower, flower opens, finds its way back to the earth.
As you observe and develop a subtle feeling for the movement exercise so you experience the plant as a living thing. To practice,
This striving from the earth, towards the sun and dying back to the earth
the plant does in relation to the seasonal year.
In spring the plant springs forth, forming leaf, and stem, and flowers.
In warmer summer days plants ripen with fruits, and seed form.
In autumn life begins to leave the plants, they wither, leaves fall and seeds become visible.
In darker, colder winter days growth above ground slows, deciduous trees show their bare branches and the earth rests.
The plant grows in accordance to the rhythm of the seasonal year, to the rhythms of the cosmos, they reflect the rhythms of the cosmos. If we want to understand what a plant is, therefore, an understanding of these cosmic rhythms is needed.
The seasonal year arises as the earth rotates, and the position between sun and earth changes.
If we took an earthly standpoint and looked to the path of the sun in the annual year, we experience the sun coming closer, descending, and finding its closest point at winter solstice, from which it slowly follows a path of moving away, of ascending to the height of its path at summer solstice. The movement between earth and sun in the annual year, describes a contracting and an expanding movement.
Hence, Rudolf Steiner describes the earth as a living, breathing organism, where the plants are breathed out in spring and breathed in as they die back into the earth in winter.
The sun prayer, a movement exercise from the yoga path, relates to the rhythmical, growth process of the plants in the 12 month cycle of the year.
Just as the plants show a rhythmical growth cycle that expands and contracts, so to the individual movements in the sun prayer follow a path of contraction and expansion.
Between earth and sun the plant grows in the rhythm of the seasonal year, and as it does so it expresses itself in manifold forms.
Sheffield Park, Sussex.
Through these forms a lively, aesthetic moves and surrounds the whole earth. The atmosphere of the earth isn’t then a dead empty, sterile mineral air, but full of a life supporting substance, given into creation through the plant as it mediates between the earth organism and sun organism in the seasonal year.
