Hermetic/alchemical meditation

12. The processes of Nature - fruiting

This meditation exercise follows on the work with the processes of Nature, and is concerned with an inner encounter with the fruiting process, which is in harmony with the late summer and beginning of the autumn months.
Back to alchemical meditation page.

The processes of Nature - fruiting

The meditative technique used here is the same as the previous two exercises, that is, the meditation is divided into two phases, a period when one focusses one's attention outwardly upon some phenomenon, letting one's consciousness fully immerse itself in the phenomenon through the senses, then this is followed by a period, when closing the eyes and withdrawing inward, one bears the essence of the outer experience into the inner world as a subject for meditation. The period of inner digestion through meditation on the outer experience should be followed by a further out-turning of the consciousness into the outer world, and this cycle should be repeated a number of times.

We should seek some phenomenon of the fruiting process easily accessible in the world around us, and which attracts us and holds our interest. We will not directly be concerned with the form or colour of fruits but will try to empathise in our meditation with the essence of the fruiting process.

When we have found the phenomenon, the particular tree, bush or plant, that we wish to work with, we begin by contemplating the whole plant on which the fruit is found. Meditate on the forces that work through that plant. Once one has a clear outer picture of the plant, its form, the shape of its leaves, the nature of the stem, its habits of growth, try to bear this inwardly through the meditation and build an inner picture of the essence, the being of the plant. When this has been achieved, even to a small degree, begin to examine the fruit, first outwardly, in the first phase of the meditation, examining its form, and then in the inner phase of the exercise trying to relate it to its parent plant.

If one continues to work with this phenomenon of fruiting, one will begin to feel that the fruit is no longer a part of the plant forces, not like a leaf or stem. The fruit has an inner essence of its own independent of the parent plane, and if we pursue this inner picture further, we should begin to experience the fruiting process, seeing how the forces of the plant, that we meditated on firstly, have become pressed out from its centre and taken on an independent life in the fruit. This can be seen physically in the formation of the fruit, but it also has an inner etheric counterpart, which is more important for our work. Through meditating upon this process of making an independent fruit body, we should touch upon the experience of the etheric essence of the fruit, the separation of etheric energies. If we remove the fruit from the tree or bush, we can meditate further upon this independence of inner forces.

Inwardly we should also try to encounter the fruiting process in the soul, which we experience when we nourish and develop some facet of our soul, an impulse or interest which we enliven with our inner energies, and eventually see this fruit and become separate and independent from our inner centre of being. Indeed, one of the important results of these exercises should be in experiencing the soul life as being like to a plant - the inner energies of the soul, live grow and develop like the plant in Nature.

We are only dealing here with the formation of fruits, and not their subsequent decay and the germination of new growth. What we are trying to grasp in this meditation is the archetypal fruiting process, the separation and making independent of currents of life forces, both in the soul and in a physically incarnated form in nature.