Head in the Sand or a Break of Dawn?

When we told you that we wanted to send a newsletter 3 or 4 times a year, the Covid-19 virus was still a Chinese Wuhan affair, but since then it’s become a world problem. After Newsletters 1 and 2 we received many heartwarming reactions. Thanks for that!

After Newsletter 2, several people asked us to comment on the pandemic. Hence already Newsletter 3. This letter is about a Hop – Step – Leap story. Under ‘Hop’ I describe experiences from agriculture concerning diseases in the past half-century. Under “Step”, we look at today’s pandemic from that experience. Under “Leap” we focus on the future: What next?

Hop:

Ten years ago I wrote in my book ‘Loving the Earth’:
If there is not a drastic change in mentality, that the doom and gloom in agriculture would be incalculable: BSE (mad cow disease), swine fever, and bird flu (among chickens) were occurring then. In agriculture, you work with construction and demolition forces. The fruit of this is growth and maturation processes, respectively. Agricultural craftsmanship consists of creating a harmonious transition between those two poles; A harmony between kilos and quality. Perhaps also a useful polarity for other social fields. Like economics, healthcare, or education.
Now I zoom in on the demolition forces in agriculture. Time and again it turns out that if you do not care for a plant or animal according to its own identity, a weakening occurs.

This happens when plants and/or animals are cared for from a one-sided nature-scientific, materialistic view. It is much more important for plants and animals to be cared for in what distinguishes them from the physical/material, that of which they have more than composition and photographable form.

The plant is about the life forces, the process energy and that can be summed up as the ether body. The animal also has a lot in common with the material and also the life energy of the plant, but as a unique skill, it has the power of perception with the consciousness that is completely outward, summarized in the concept of the astral body.

When plants or animals are cared for below their own level, they gradually wither away; Get weak. Then “Mother Nature” comes up and says: “That won’t develop anymore, we will clean it up”. Mother Nature can use countless instruments for this. For example: at first just a gluttonous caterpillar. When we humans start fighting that caterpillar, that caterpillar cannot be used anymore. But cleaned up it must. Mother Nature now deploys a difficult beetle.

Such a second instrument usually has to be eliminated with much more and heavier pesticides. Characteristic is: it remains a symptom control; The actual cause, the weakening is not addressed. Mother Nature, through numerous fungi and bacteria, begins to manifest viruses. But at that level, the “battle” becomes even more apparent. It seems to be the case that viruses have an increased intelligence level.

If a virus A has to be controlled, it often happens that before the pesticide comes on the market, the virus has already mutated into virus B which is insensitive to the pesticide against virus A. You don’t have to be a prophet to realize that if you genetically manipulate plants or animals so that they are resistant to certain diseases, the doom and gloom will have disastrous results.

If we continue on that path, we will end up with 3D printed plant – and animal shapes to which nutrients are added (enjoy your meal/ bon appetit).

Step:

The Corona (Covid-19) virus is now hitting humanity hard. It provides a lot of suffering, fear, and uncertainty. But why?? What does this human disaster mean to us? We want to understand.

A contribution: It is striking that the Coronavirus originated in Wuhan, a hugely intensive industrial area with a surprising amount of air pollution, incidentally, just like Northern Italy or also in North Brabant in The Netherlands; (pig industry). More exciting is the enormous spread in northeastern France. Although certainly also a lot of industry, the spread appears to have been strongly based on a few large Evangelical Church services.

This brings the concept of ‘breathlessness’ to a different level! Breathing, time, and again, proves to be the physical basis for the life of feeling. In this awakening time of consciousness and the race to achieve targets, emotional life is squeezed, or even pinched out, in current science, it should not even count. Sooner or later, in every dogmatically directed organization, from a political signature, business, economic, financial, or world view system, “breathlessness”, poverty of feeling occurs.

Recently, it was reported that 60% of the deceased patients are male. A spontaneous reaction from a scientist was: men smoke more on average and they tend to be more under stress. On the other hand, I put it: men (as an academic) are less able to give space to their emotional life.

What is it about, on one side in this individualizing, and on the other side in this globalizing, cosmopolitan world? It is not about what man has in common with the material, in common with the life processes in nature, not even with the conscious perception of the world outside as the animal has developed optimally, but with his own being human.

Central to this is the inner strength that is needed in this time of awakening consciousness;
That we have to develop ourselves. It is the Love power that resides in every person, regardless of skin color, gender, religion, or social status. It is about that power that has been sown in the hearts of all people, for all times, at the beginning of our era with the Mystery of Calvary, or the Christ impulse.

Now, in this cultural period of the awakening consciousness, also called the “New Thinking”, recognizable as the period of nature-science, that seed with its first germinating leaves has emerged. For all plants in nature with the first germinating leaves, the strength comes from the seed. The plant needs sunlight from outside for further development. That provides a workable metaphor for what matters now.

The sun is also needed to further develop the germinating leaves in our soul. That is the spirit- light that we develop in ourselves. That is our very own inner, moral Sun. This also gives a surprising twist to ‘common sense’. With your mind you can understand the material world, you can even become a scientist. If that mind is illuminated by that inner, moral sun, then you will get a sun-like mind. So: on to a common-sense culture!

Ever since ICT was introduced and developed, the global lifestyle has brought about mega- changes in almost all social areas. Not always for the better. In the Netherlands, for example, this is evident from a disturbing spread of “burnout” cases. Especially with young people! Think of it as a shift from ‘What do I want to do here on earth and what am I really enthusiastic about?’ to “getting targets for government services, company chiefs, or other people”.

Man can walk on his or her toes for a long time. There is nothing against that. But you have to realize that that extra energy costs life energy. The depletion of it occurs very slowly. It is the buffer you have in order to take a beating. This buffer is also called the health-body or ether body. Like 130 km / h, driving costs disproportionately more fuel than at 100 km / h.

My point of view is that a period to recover after a burnout situation takes as long as you walked on your toes. There is also something else: the weakening of our healthy body, due to the quality of the food. Just as a hacker in the IT industry unauthorizedly penetrates a protected file, in a similar way food produced as stomach-fillings creeps through the intestinal wall and gets stuck in the body. This causes obesity-like traits on many levels.

Apart from the fact that even RIVM leaders hold their hearts about the Coronavirus in the coming winter months, we estimate that if on the aforementioned roads, namely the Love impulse, the burn-out causes, and common sense, should not change something quickly an even more vicious virus rises to press mankind, even more stubbornly, with its nose on the facts that it will not go on like this. ‘Corona’ is a general scientific term for ‘Flu’!

Now think of “Mother Nature” from the “Hop” part. Chances are that after the Covid-19 virus, also the COVID-20 Virus strikes and so on !!! Every increase in numbers behind the COVID-virus will cause more misery and death. Nothing to do if nothing changes in the mentality of the individual and in society. You do not need a government or an authority to strengthen your own resilience: you have to want that yourself.

In short: work at hand! Questions you can get started with – What are you doing on planet earth?
– What is your mission, what are you enthusiastic about? – How do you ensure that you lead your own life?

– What does rest mean to you? (Do nothing or be active inside). – How do you want to support your health through food?
– How do you work to make your emotional life reliable,

so that it becomes an observation tool for discernment?
– How do you feel about the spiritual, not sensory-physical perceptible? – What about your ‘common sense’?

Leap:

The future begins now! A well-known one-liner. But no longer in your mind, no longer because it gives a nice feeling, but because you have to take action. You build the future by making choices, by doing! How do you want the world to look like? Stick to the widely spread views in the 20th century, that with the death of man it’s the ‘end of story’, and that man is a glorified animal species, and that it is all about power and economy ???

The corona pandemic offers a great opportunity for a turning point in thinking. That changing thinking can drastically change the worldview of the modern man. Because of that thinking, the so-called Combined thinking, which combines scientific factual research and explains it from spiritual research. But just as with a “Lock-down” you only cross the border with a certificate that you are “clean”, you can only do research in the spirit world if you are clean inside. Have an appropriate mindset/morality.

What was still about death at the beginning of the 21st century will have become halfway through this century: dying on earth means being born in that other, spiritual world. Themes such as Karma and Reincarnation will now provide a completely different view of life between birth and death. It turns out that these are not old Buddhist concepts but highly topical insights!

Only then will it become possible to get to know your own mission. Only then will the now idolized economy come to a second position. With Combi thinking, people will increasingly discover that the essence of man lives in a heat-body. A heat quality that appears to be many times greater than what we now determine with degrees Celsius can be determined with the thermometer. After all, warming up for something has nothing to do with elevation or fever. But with the spiritual fire that burns within you.

What are we doing with this now? Our food can only contribute to our physical and mental health if it can be increased through the metabolism process into our own humanness, that is to say in our ‘heat body’. This will also be one of the main challenges for agriculture of the (near) future. The seeds for this were sown in 1924 in a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner under the title: “Humanities foundations for the flourishing of agriculture”.
These viewpoints have developed strongly in practice and are now known as biodynamic agriculture. Not as a method but much more as a development direction. In the past, I often gave lectures entitled: Biodynamic agriculture and horticulture as a continuous Easter festival; A resurrection from materialistically oriented agriculture. With food that is produced from a purely physical production philosophy, this is not possible and food is increasingly becoming a stomach filling. But it’s up to the consumer, so it’s up to you: buying a product is supporting a production process. Do something with that! It is nice to hear that in India people can see the Himalayas again. But it includes and affects us directly when we hear that our solar collectors give 15-20% more energy through reduced air pollution. Do something with that.

Best regards, strength, and health in these mentality-changing times! Michiel Rietveld and TruuskaMaria Kemper
Copyright © 2020 Michiel Rietveld. All rights reserved.