What is food in relation to the nature of the human being? There are certain principles about the human being and our relationship to nature and the earth's bounty of food which are of value to remember.
The human being has two (of four) bodies or members which are primarily engaged in the absorption and use of that which we take in from nature, they are the physical body and the formative forces body or etheric body. It is the task of the etheric body to take in and change that which we eat in nature. It is the task of the Ego or "I" and soul or astral body to take up and use what is prepared. What exists in nature must be transformed within the human being, if it is not then it becomes a foreign body which can lead to illness. The etheric body transforms food into warmth and liquid forces. The closer foods resemble warmth and liquid at the moment we eat it the more one can use those same etheric or formative forces for our health and not to break it down. The forces used to "breakdown" food are the same etheric forces we need for our nutrition, life and health.
Again the closer foods resemble warmth and liquid at the time of eating it the more one can more readily take in the "forces " needed for nutrition. For example eating cooked broccoli over raw. For eating and food are not chemical nor mechanical in nature, they are "forces." Nutrition is all that stands between life and death forces. What lives as a force, once food is ingested, exists between the food substances and forces that enter into us from the cosmos. As the plant grows on the vine it does so by the forces of sun, moon, water, light, and planetary forces from Venus, Mars, Jupiter and so on. Those same forces continue to enter us if what we have ingested are still enlivened. Cosmic forces are spiritual forces and we are beings of soul and spirit.
Just as the food receives forces to grow and metamorphose into sun imbued vegetables and fruits we too continue the warmth processes in us the same cosmological forces enter into us that entered the plant. 'I eat a golden apple and it shines out of me as I transform and take up the giving of her life force' such is the way of nutrition. Foods carry force and if food becomes frozen in the field its forces leave it and it dies for it hasn't enough warmth or liquid and they cannot be revived. Frozen foods in your refrigerator freezer are no different, they too are dead. If a human being placed his hand in a freezer it would die. It is a fallacy to believe that that which is alive with forces, forces are life, can survive a severe hardening process such as being frozen.
We can identify how foods are of the realms of nature as well. Rice is of the watery realm, wheat of the firey. Seeds and fruit are the culmination of the Sun forces and enliven the human heart. Root vegetable such as carrot, not tuber like potato, grow below the earth and are imbued with earth forces which nurture our nerve system while leafy plants are health for our circulation and the blossom like broccoli are forces for our metabolic will forces.
As for meats, the first thing to identify is that the majority of animals are vegetarian, the cow, the sheep, fowl. Once the animal eats grain and grasses it becomes the animal or meat. With plant, grain and fruit human beings take in cosmologic forces, with meats we take in the soul force of the animal. Through lamb we take in its frisky soul nature, with chicken an airy earthed soul nature of the animal.
In a more deeply meaningful view foods then are either enlivened or not enlivened. How substances are treated is important. I was told a story about an experiment of two identical plants which needed water. One can of water had been microwaved the other can contained tap water at the same temperature. The microwaved watered plant died. It is vital to think of food and ourselves as beings of forces; the force of movement, the force of thought. The physical sciences such as chemistry and biology possess mechanistic, unenlivened and static views of the world. We need not name everything for when we do it dies. we cease to let it speak to us. For the kingdoms of mineral, plant, animal, man and the cosmos are never static, they are in continual evolution, in continual metamorphoses. The crystal is metamorphosing mineral to plant.
A simple table prayer speaks well of the totality of our relationship to nature: 'From the Sun to the Earth, From the Earth to Us, Blessings on the Meal'
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