The Universe as Organism in Space and Time by Lawrence Edwards

An article from the 1994 Edition of the Golden Blade, an Anthroposophical scientific journal
https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/Golden_Blade__1994.pdf

In September 1992 a group of anthroposophical scientists gathered in Hawkwood College in Gloucestershire to share their experiences, and to debate possible fields for further exploration. As one of their number I have been asked to contribute this article describing some of the things I said there, and I am adding some further things which have arisen since then. An account of this sort is bound to rely heavily on previously published material, and only a very short resume can be given here. A detailed account of these things is in eluded in my book The Vortex of Life (Floris Books 1993), and readers must be referred to that if they find the following account to be terse and inadequate.

It was many years ago that Rudolf Steiner suggested to us that in the thought-forms of projective geometry it would be possible to find elucidation of many of the problems of the growth and development of living organisms, and years of study since then have shown this to be a most fruitful field of research. At the very heart of our geometry we find the process of Collineation. This transformation is linear and is as elementary and fundamental as can be found anywhere. Yet we have simply to apply it iteratively, that is, applying the transformation over and over again, to have our page covered with a complicated and very beautiful field of form, and many of the forms thus arising bear strong resemblance to the forms we see in living nature.

Nearly thirty years ago, when I first started to apply these things practically I realized that mere resemblance was not enough; one would have to test the forms of nature, over and over again, with the utmost rigor and mathematical precision before one could be ready to make the definite statement that out there, in the great plant garment of the earth, this kind of geometric form was really manifesting itself. And when, after many years of work, this result was achieved, I found that the work had put into our hands a powerful tool by means of which subtle variations in the plant forms could be measured and recorded, which could otherwise not have been observed. In a short article such as this, only one aspect of such subtle variations can be dealt with.

Certain specially important cases arise when one ensures that the invariant elements of one’s transformation coincide with the absolutes of Euclidian space. Prominent amongst these is a whole series of egg-like forms, covered by the possibility of infinite families of spiraling curves, and these we have to recognize as perhaps the most fundamental and archetypal forms which our geometry is able to produce. And
once one’s eye is opened to this kind of form one finds it occurring with remarkable frequency in the world around — in actual bird eggs (250 species have been studied and analysed), in pine cones and various types of seed head, in sea shells and other maritime creatures, in various microscopic organisms, in the human body in the ventricles of the heart, in the pineal gland and, in a somewhat modified form, in the uterus, and paramountly in the vast array of leaf- and flower-buds pervading the plant kingdom. It is with these latter that we are specially concerned.

The geometry of buds

When we study these buds we find ourselves particularly concerned with a parameter, λ (lambda) — a number which arises when we have made our calculations and which encodes for us vital information about the form we are dealing with. Lamda does not tell us, in the normal sense of the word, the shape of the bud, but much subtler qualities of its form. When λ is near to unity our form is rounded and relaxed, giving us an outgoing and expansive feel; it is neither very pointed at one end nor very blunt at the other. But as λ increases the form becomes increasingly sharp at one end and correspondingly blunt at the other; the sides at the bases tend to stiffen towards straightness; one gets the feeling of contraction and tension (see Figure 1.1).

It is now just over ten years since 1 started finding the λs  of the buds on a daily basis, ensuring strict comparability over a long period of time, from day to day and from week to week. 1 could never have guessed the strange — and from the point of view of our modern consciousness unlikely — realms of existence into which this investigation was going to lead. From the start it became clear that this sphere of the flower and leaf buds is one which is subject to constant change and variation, that these changes are slight and subtle, that they are cyclic in quality and display definite correlations with the inter-relationships of Moon and planets. After ten years of concentrated work on this one has to realize that one still stands only on the threshold; it would be quite impossible to include even those details which already
have been discovered in an article of this sort; the reader must be referred to The Vortex of Life and the considerable Supplement and Sequel to this which is already published.

Much of the work already done has been with respect to the leaf buds of our great deciduous trees. These present to us a remarkable phenomenon. Next season’s buds appear on their branch in the late summer and by the end of September they seem to be almost completely formed; and there after they hang on their branch apparently passive and dormant for something like six months, until in the following
Spring they come to their great apotheosis when they open to the light and air of the great world around them. And this opening, this gesture of relaxation, of, as it were, the giving of themselves to the great world, is signaled for us, in our mathematics, in a dramatic fall in the λ of the form, a fall right down into the negative numbers when the enclosed and enclosing egg-like form of the bud transforms into the open chalice-like form of the spreading leaves.

A link with the planets

Figure 1.2 is a graph of the λ, of the buds on a Beech tree measured between December 1989 and March 1990; it is typical of hundreds of such observations that have been made on this and other species during the last ten years. We see a rhythmic fall in λ roughly every fourteen days, and this is a constant feature found in many different species. But further investigation proved that the matter is more complicated than this. The periodicity for the Beech, averaged over a long period of time, turned out to be about 13.6 days, while that for the Oak was found to be slightly over 14 days, and that of the Birch was found to be as much as 14.7 days. The strange complexity of this matter can to some extent be
cleared up when one realizes that these are in fact astronomical rhythms. It has been found over many years that the dips in the curve for the Beech are timed by the moments when Moon and Saturn move into straight line with the Earth — a phenomenon which we call an alignment. When the bodies concerned are Moon and Mars it is the Oaks which respond and when it is Moon and Venus, it is the Birch. Somewhat similar phenomena have been found to hold for a number of species of flower buds during the summer months. Here it is the Primroses which have been found to respond to lunar alignments with the Sun, the Buttercups with Jupiter and the Geraniums with Mars, (see Figure 1.3).

 

The greater organism

At this point it would be well to consider two essential properties which we must see as belonging to any truly living organism. The first is the remarkable inter-relationship and the inter-dependence of all its parts. The quality of the whole overshadows the separate parts so overwhelmingly that it knits tiiem together into one single organism. No single part can move, or act, without all the others being affected; no
single part can suffer any injury without all the others suffering, in some way, also. This why we call the musical instruments in our churches, an organ. A large one will consist of ten thousand separate pipes, but when the organist plays (if he is a real organist!) it will sound like a single instrument. The second is that the virtue of the whole is so over-riding that something of its quality is stamped indelibly on to each
of its parts. We see this agziin and again when studying living organisms. Each separate part, each in its own special way, becomes an image of the whole.

 

 

The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm which needed it, fashioned it and gave birth to it Pick a branch from a tree, and see how the separate twigs on it branch off to left and right, just as the branches them selves ray out from the main trunk; you have in your hand a whole tree in miniature. In more subtle ways a similar case holds for the human body; over and over again, in head and limb we see the various parts displaying the three-fold nature of the whole organism.

The things we have been describing here bear upon our whole perception and concept of the world around us, in which we live. Did we believe that we live in a dual world, the solar system wheeling mechanically through space whilst the plants sprout in isolation from us under our feet? But now, not so. We begin to see this world around us as a mighty living organism, in which the movement and activity of planet
and plant are deeply integrated one with another in the most complex ways. The inter-relationships of the heavens come to meet us again in the great plant garment of the earth on which we walk. No star can move, but a plant responds.

Yet we must go further than this. In our search for the whole reality of the plant we must respect its integrity in time as well as in space. The plant we see today is different from the one we had before us yesterday, and different again from the one we will have tomorrow; yet it is still the same plant. We must learn to see the plant as a whole being, existing in time. These millions of little buds, hanging on their branch
all through the long winter months, what are they doing? They are waiting, waiting for the wonderful moment of their culmination, when in the Spring they will open themselves to the light and air of the universe around them. But during those long dark months it is not just waiting. Every fourteen days they experience a little Spring, a little Easter. Their λ drops slightly, they make a little gesture towards opening,
towards relaxation, a little smile shall we say, but then — the time is not yet ripe, not yet — and they close tight shut again until the next two weeks shall have elapsed. In this moment, are they experiencing in advance just a foretaste of the bliss which lies ahead of them, or is it the tree remembering that of the previous Spring? Who can tell? But what we do know is that this whole winter’s activity bears the mark of a living organism, an Organism in Time. Each little part of it mirrors the character of the whole, and the whole is knit into a frame, every part of which proclaims the nature of the essential being.

The streams of time

From the start it must be clear to us that thought of this kind do not come easily to the modem mind. The world is not going to believe the things written above, readily — and quite rightly so. In a sphere such as this there is only one valid reason for belief — that we have really firm evidence for such belief. I myself have been slow to allow myself to be persuaded. Almost more often than I can remember I have
said: ‘This once, this twice, this three times the phenomenon has been present, and the response has been seen, and duly measured; but what about the fourth, and the fifth time? I must see it again … and again … This development into a long-running search, over years, for greater and greater certainty about things which I thought I already knew. But soon the name of the search began to change. The results showed me how little I in fact knew, and how much more complex and rich in mysteries the world is than anything which I expected or could possibly have imagined.

Suffice it to say here that whereas over the last ten years the rhythms of the plants have mn almost exactly parallel with those of their corresponding planets, the actual timing of the events soon began to vary, very slightly but consistently through the months and years. The discrepancy, if such we may call it, is always small in any one year, but it is consistent, and cumulative. It is always in the direction that the response by the plant comes a little earlier, and yet again earlier still, than the planetary alignment to which it is responding. It seems to be cyclic, with a period of just about seven years. And it seems to have the strange quality that it applies identically to all planets and all species growing, as far as can be found at the moment, in any part of the country.

We call this the phenomenon of the changing Phase-shift, because the planetary rhythms stay constant, but it is just the phase at which they are occurring which varies. I can give no explanation for this strange phenomenon; I did not expect it nor did I seek it; you may say that I did not want it (life would be simpler without it!); but it is there and I cannot ignore it. Over-riding as it does all choice of planet or species it would seem that it is something connected with the whole streaming of Time itself. It is as though we have two streams of time, one going slightly faster than the other, with this faster one carrying the realm of the plants in its embrace. And the difference between their speeds reduces to zero once in every seven years.

The human being as image

This picture of our universe as a unified living organism, permeated through and through by these twin streams of time, imperfect and inadequate as it is, is perhaps as far as opportunity will allow us to go in an article such as this. But it is only half of the picture as long as we exclude ourselves from it. For within us is another world, the world of the wonders of the human breast. And here again we meet with this egg-like form in the ventricles of the heart, woven over with the curves of the muscle fibers. And when we come to study this wonderful organ, specially with regard to the manner of its beating, we immediately find ourselves immersed in an inner world of interpenetrating rhythms bearing strange resemblances to those of the great outer world of planets and plants. But here everything is inverted, and
introverted — inside out. Just as, when we turn our gaze to the stars and to the planets we must say: ‘As above, so below’ so as we look at Man and his world we must say: ‘As without, so within’. We humans are intricately and inevitably inter woven with the world in which we live, and within which, as parts of the whole we each of us mirror forth the qualities of that whole.

It is interesting to note that as long ago as 1920 Rudolf Steiner in his lecture cycle Man — Hieroglyph of the Universe spoke of two opposing streams of time flowing through and past one another at different speeds of flow, and how, out of the difference between these speeds of flow one would be able to calculate the silhouette of the human heart. On that occasion he said he would not give the calculation, partly through lack of time but also because his audience would not have understood it. So, the moment passed, and this crucial calculation was not given to the world. Crucial, because until its rediscovery by George Adams some quarter of a century later none of the work described here could
have been done. The difference between these speeds of flow (technically it is a ratio of their logarithms) appears in our calculations as the parameter λ, and with this to our hand we can begin to penetrate not only the inner qualities of the form of the heart, but also the remarkable way in which its seven-fold rhythms mirror those of the great cosmos without. We can start with the concept of these inter-penetrating
streams of time within, and from here be led to the world of stars and plants, where, in the mysteries of the changing phase-shift we again meet the idea of these two streams of flow. The fact that we are not yet able to see, with complete clarity, all the connections between them simply shows how much more wonderful this world is than the best ideas which we can bring to meet it. Gratias Deo.

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