Biodynamics and Inner Development

The Interior Compass

If biodynamics brings us into relationship with the cosmos, it also invites us into ourselves. Rudolf Steiner emphasized that agricultural renewal is inseparable from spiritual awakening. The farmer is not merely a technician but a moral and spiritual being—one who must cultivate perception, will, and inner strength to carry out their task. This means that the biodynamic path is also a path of initiation. Observation becomes reverence. Reverence becomes inner work. The cycles of the Earth mirror the cycles of the soul.

The Soul as Instrument

Biodynamics does not demand esoteric training — but it offers it. The field becomes a mirror of the inner life. Every act of care becomes a gesture of transformation. And so Steiner gave practical steps to strengthen the spiritual faculties of those working with the land.

The core of this inner work is his Six Basic (or Subsidiary) Exercises — a daily discipline that cultivates clarity, calmness, courage, balance, and self-mastery. These are not abstract virtues, but capacities needed to work consciously in the etheric world.

The Six Basic Exercises Table

These exercises sharpen our perception for the invisible realities behind physical life.
– Rudolf Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds, GA 10

Living Forces and Invisible Beings

Behind every growth process, behind every compost pile or bee swarm, Steiner identified the work of elemental beings—spiritual intelligences who shape and guide nature. These are not merely metaphors. They are part of a living cosmology that includes gnomes (earth), undines (water), sylphs (air), and fire spirits (salamanders). The more consciously we approach the land, the more the farm becomes a temple of elemental collaboration. Is it necessary to believe in beings we cannot see? No, but if we practice imagining all levels of reality as having (to one degree or another) life, we may find that we treat all of it better. 

It does not force us to believe in a realm of mysterious entities hiding within the interstices, so to speak, of the physical world. It is simply a shadow cast across the order of nature by the light of our mutual dealings.
– Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World (Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 93

And behind these: the hierarchies of the spiritual world—angelic beings, planetary spirits, cosmic rhythms—all converging in the mystery of agriculture.

The Farm as a Place of Initiation

Alex Podolinsky, a pioneer of biodynamic farming in Australia, once said: “My question today is: Which item is the most important on a farm? After many further answers and much searching [...] a woman answered: ‘The man, the farmer.’ Yes, that is the answer” (Alex Podolinsky, “Lecture 1,” in Bio-Dynamic Introductory Lectures Volume 3 (1999), 3).

And as Stewart Lundy notes: "The imagination of the farmer is the most important thing we can cultivate. Preparations without imagination are like seeds sown into concrete” (field notes, 2023).

Owen Barfield, a close acquaintance of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and one of the leading thinkers on consciousness and language, described how ancient peoples experienced nature differently from modern ones. In the Middle Ages, he writes, even the peasant "saw the world of stars as a heaven that was not only above him but also within him.” Barfield called this form of living consciousness original participation.

The world we experience through the senses is no longer the world we experienced in original participation... What is required now is final participation, in which the perceiving self consciously re-enters the phenomena it observes.
– Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957)

This echoes and supports Steiner’s view that the spiritual world is not gone—it must be re-entered through conscious spiritual development. The biodynamic farm offers such a path.

In winter, the farmer should become a meditator. During the winter he should think about the spirit. It is necessary that he knows the spirit. In summer, he lives with the physical, but in winter he must spiritualize the physical.
– Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture 8, GA 327

In a conversation, some young people expressed their lack of spiritual experience in spite of all their efforts. Dr. Steiner’s reply was: ‘This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.’
– Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, introduction to Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture Course, GA 327

As one cultivates the soil, so too the soul. A biodynamic farm is not just a place of production, but of transformation. Its seasonal tasks echo inner cycles:

• Spring: Awakening, sowing, intention
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• Summer: Growth, selflessness, openness to light
  
• Autumn: Harvest, gratitude, sacrifice
  
• Winter: Silence, reflection, inward renewal
  

Just as the moon works in rhythms unseen, so too does spiritual perception unfold subtly through repetition, devotion, and rhythm.

Beyond the Beyond

If the practice of disciplining the lower self for the sake of the life of the soul interests you, there are enormous vistas that open up for the seeker. 

➡️ Continue to: Biodynamics and the Mystery: Agriculture as Initiation

➡️ Go to Biodynamic Books

➡️ Go to Biodynamic Preparations

Suggested Further Reading

• Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, GA 9
  
• Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (aka Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path), GA 4
  
• Rudolf Steiner, How to Know Higher Worlds, GA 10
  
• Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science: An Outline, GA 13
  
• Franz Hartmann, Magic: Black and White