Considera

Glen Atkinson Interview

(Slightly edited and shortened version)


2:48 – The Four Bodies
6:30 – Dr Steiner and the nematodes
9:15 – adjusting the astral
14:20 – taking the preps
15:00 – what those preparations do
18:06 – plant trials
18:34 – Kale images
20:45 – The building site analogy
22:00 – Equisetum
25:30 – working with Steiner’s imagination
28:20 – BD Diagnosis
29:05 – Peach leaf curl
30:00 – Cations and the four bodies …
31:00 – … and the anions
35:17 – Results ‘speak’ …
36:40 – Best solutions strategy
37:10 – Agrohomeopathy
37:45 – A fungal panacea
40:00 – Collaboration
41:00 – 6 products
42:50 – Alcohol
44:00 – BD fertility
49:05 – BD and different market realties
50:10 – Potentised/traditional preparations
52:20 – Farmers for the future
53:45 – Success succeeds
54.35 – BD’s self-harm
58:50 – The three systems
1:01:15 – The Game
1:02:45 – Carrot root fly
1:11:30 – A way to consider 501
1:12:25 – The basic story and Wachsmuth
1:18:20 – BD potencies and agrohomoepathy
1:27:15 – Anthropop agriculture
1:31:50 – Amalgamation of agricultural and medical worldviews
1:32:20 – BD at a crossroads
1:35:55 – Understand our central document
1:39:40 – Fuzzy belief system
1:40:50 - The end
 
MM: So the the point of this in in as much as there is it needs to be a point is that obviously with a 100 years keep getting asked to do stuff as the BD college and and I thought it'd be good to interview a few greyhair people like yourself who have interesting perspectives not necessarily the mainstream one. So when I got in touch with you I was mentioning something at the end of the podcast you did with Alan Balliett about how the agriculture course and the medical course can inform each other to mutual benefit and you said that Pfeiffer had decided he had to sort of ground this impulse and he went for the safe route just to make sure it didn't scare the horses, but that you were quite keen that the esoteric side of biodynamics now could be out and proud. That resonated with me a lot so I guess that boils down to maybe we can look back at the last 100 years and think how are we doing? Bio-dynamics, now that we're 100 years old

GA: yeah it's a good it's a good image and I you know and I think we'll find that the second generation you know the Koepfs and the Konigs and those folks, they more or less carried on with Pfeiffer to try and get that scientific credibility you know through the 80s and so on and that's good and I think it is time that we bring back the sort of energetic aspects of biodynamics into Consciousness and usefulness really. And the medical lectures are the rod in the ground that we can work with and around to get a clear picture of that. Of course it really comes down to this image of four bodies in three physical systems. It's the easiest way to sort of talk about that approach really.

MM: Given that you've been saying that for a long time and people still aren't getting it would you give a brief introduction to the four bodies the three systems?

GA: It's really quite clearly stated in uh the 1924 four medical lectures called pastoral medicine and there he's talking to priests and doctors and basically in the first lecture he sort of gives this diagram of these four sheaths that we have and of course these relate back to the four astronomical spheres. When we look into our environment we've got the Earth but then we see that out of the earth and the life of the earth we have the atmosphere of the earth that supports our life processes and then we have the solar system as an energetic sphere and then of course that solar system exists within a galaxy of stars. So essentially what we get is this picture of As Above So Below and that those star activities incarnate into us as what Rudolph Steiner calls the spirit and that the planetary activities of the solar system are the astral body. And just as a sort of an image what we have in the creation of the solar system is of course a star in the middle and it's doing all of its action and pumping out all this dross and the planets are coming around and picking all that dross up. So we've got a nuclear reactor with all of these compost heaps running around it. The planets are this accumulation of the activity of the of the star - the spirit - and so this is what the astral body is. It's all the t-shirts you've got from all of the experiences you've had through all of your incarnations and so you know this is the image of this astral body. It's really a planetary body. And then of course we come to the atmosphere where these life processes support our life processes and we call that the etheric and then of course the Earth is the basis of our physical bodies.

One of the important things in looking at this is that this is all real we're not sort of asking anybody to believe anything or you know some fantasy. It's actually these energetic activities that exist in our environment and that we are a product of and so the words might seem a little strange but really all we're talking about is star forces planetary forces atmospheric forces and Earth forces.

Rudolph Steiner is saying these are the four activities that manifest in us and according to how those bodies work and interact with each other then we get all these physical expressions and so the game that he puts forward for us is that if we can align these activities, these bodies, back into their natural form then we're going to have health.

Through the agriculture course we get various images of this and the best one really is that idea where he's talking about the nematodes in the sixth lecture. It's just one sort of a little paragraph but he makes this comment: ‘Now we're going to walk on very thin ice’, and goes on to talk about the nematodes, and how we have this astral or planetary force working too strongly down into the soil. That's the energetic activity that's allowing the nematode to be there and if we take that out of there, if we change that balance, then the nematode has to go away.

The question is how do we do that?

MM: Can I can I put a question in before that? Why do you think why did you think Steiner said that was treading on thin ice?

GA: well he was talking about peppering of course at the time and he throws this little paragraph in and then he goes back to talking about peppering again. Of course that story about the nematode is not peppering: peppering is working on the fertility stream of the animal, not changing the environment of the animal. One of the things with peppering of course is that you'll get rid of that bird and another will come … you get rid of the sparrow and you'll get a finch and you get rid of the finch and you get a wax eye… There's this energetic hole here and if you don't close that hole up then you'll just get another insect. This was a pretty far out idea at the time and so I think he was putting it forward as a suggestion he hadn't proved. You know whereas they made 500 and they'd put it on plants and they knew what it did to some degree whereas I think this was a bit of a waving a flag saying well here's a potential, here's an opportunity, let's consider that .. so that that's why I think he said that as a insertion into that conversation

MM: So to pick up - thank you for going down that bye-way with me - to pick up, you were saying the nematodes are a manifestation of those four energetic bodies not in the harmony we would wish but we can correct something about it.

GA: Well this becomes for me what the biodynamic preparations are. A couple are indicated in the agriculture course as to their energetic activity and then of course Lievegoed clarifies another couple, and then when we put them into order so we can actually see all of the energetic activities of the various preparations. Of course you know we've got two ways of removing the astral out of the earth. You know - let's call it the ‘above ground astral’ that that there's going to be some level of Astral in the earth. We know that there's lots of beneficial nematodes, not just the nasty nematodes. So we can actually harmonize and pull out the astral with things like yarrow and stinging nettle. But we can also stimulate the etheric activity and push the astral out with things like 500 and the chamomile preparation. So we have these tools available to us to work with these uh energetic activities and of course we can then extend that you know. I've extended that into chemistry and identified how the chemical elements affect those four bodies’ interactions as well.

MM: If Steiner was a 100 years ahead it feels like your chemical work is another few centuries ahead.

GA: I get it. I accept that. It's quite interesting we've just done a little video on when I look at my process of getting to chemistry. It is based on Goethean observation so it really is just about looking at what's in front of us and and asking questions. And as it turns out there's sort of eight basic questions to get from what's in front of us to my chemistry and they're incredibly simple questions. So simple that I think people don't believe how simple it is.

MM: Are you happy to give us these simple questions?

GA: Well it's a bit hard to run through it without pictures and sort of a presentation but that video should be available in the near future. I’ll make it available to people at that stage. It's probably just enough to give suggestions that really it's actually very simple steps of observation and questioning that gives this very powerful tool for working with these chemical elements. And I think that's the shocking thing - that you do a couple of simple things and all of a sudden you've got this incredible incredibly powerful piece of information. Anyway, that's the chemistry and so I do I get it that it's a bit in the future. I can't do anything about that. I've just been prepared to run down the hole because I saw it.

MM: It's amazing that you do that. I'm just trying to think … with the biodynamic agriculture College we're taking people from a cold start. They're reasonably well educated young idealistic westerners usually, so we've all been taught that the only reality is matter, essentially, and that astrologers and biodynamic people … don't sit next to him on the bus because you might catch something. The slightly more troublesome thing for me is that so many people who are into biodynamics don't even take the first steps. So to sell them the energetic bodies is already …. for me it works, for you it obviously works … but how to open that door to people and actually encourage them through is the first step for now for me. I wondered if you found a good way of doing that?

GA: Well that story I just told about the basis of the bodies, as above so below, keeping it real: it is Star Force .. what is not real about what I've just said? The Galaxy, the solar system, the atmosphere of the earth, what's debatable about that as energetic activities? That's the first thing: to keep them real. And then, okay, how do we experience those bodies? And I've got to say that the best experience I've had of those bodies is when I've actually taken the biodynamic preparations.

Of course with the biodynamic preparations we can make them into homeopathic remedies. If anybody's afraid of the biology we make the tinctures of those preparations in 30% alcohol so it's killing all of the bugs so it's actually a sterile mixture. Then of course we potentize these things up in 10% alcohol so there's no bugs. It's not going to poison you!

So you know as I've just stated we have these sort of images of the preparations where the oak bark helps the etheric activity combine with the physical, the chamomile to strengthen the etheric, the yarrow opens up this etheric activity to this astral. I find the stinging nettle preparation calms down the astral and the dandelion preparation helps to integrate the spirit with the astral and push that towards the earth. And the valerian strengthens the spirit activity. So in that process we have the ability to move all these bodies around and if we take those preparations we experience the movement of the bodies.

Like other experiences like of course when we sleep you have tiredness and then you go to sleep and you wake up and you're revived. Well what's happened there? We can say that we lie down in the bed and we breathe very strongly and rhythmically so we're re oxygenating our body and in that reoxygenation we feel revitalized and then over a period of time we get tired again. So this is our etheric body moving around but if we can take some - let's call it chamomile preparation, even chamomile tea! it's sort of where are we sitting now. We drink the tea and 10 15 minutes later how are we feeling are we feeling sort of lighter and more awake. So we can identify these bodies and we can take things like silica and phosphorus, Magnesium phosphate or potassium phosphate and experience this clarity in our thinking. We're sort of muddled and you know the classic is what's called brain brain fog let's call it. A student who's been studying and studying and all of a sudden they're running around and doing everything but studying and so you take some potassium phosphate or silica and all of a sudden you're sort of clear and you're on the job again and you're getting things done. Well this is the Incarnation of the spirit. It's really about looking at these energies in ourselves and making them real, making them real experiences. Once they're real experiences then where's the argument … … so that that's been the most powerful way that I've been able to identify these bodies.

And then of course plant trials. We can use the biodynamic preparations to influence plant growth and observe the plant form changes that occur when you just spray 500 and chamomile on a cabbage for example. What happens? Or you get those ‘outer planet’ preparations – silica … dandelion … Valerian and spray them onto to a onto a plant and what happens? And in a sense this is that kale picture that I did back in the '90s .. where you can have these three plants all sitting there and you can see one go this way and one go that way.

It's those sorts of things that can actually show people these activities in a real form

MM: It's always powerful seeing those kale photos. And I think one of the - to blow your trumpet for you - I think one of the things that you do very well as an educator is you have these drawings, these schema, these things where the little bits are always in context. You're working out the whole all the time so a bit doesn't sort of drift off and just become some kind of interesting fact out of context. But as I've said to you, the creation of those drawings in front of people really opens them up. I think seeing the finished thing …

GA: Too much at one time yeah …

MM: I mean it will speak volumes to you but it'll be just confusion to them.

GA: Yeah that's right. What could I say other than it would be nice to have had the opportunity to educate people over the years, which I have never had. I've never run a one-year course or anything like that. At the best I might have had a weekend here or there. People have missed an awful lot of in between. If I did have some sort of a course then I would have people taking those remedies for a two month or 3 month period and make these things real. And we'd be running plant trials and you've got to sort of get it into your body somehow, into your experience.

And because it's, dare I say it? it's a very simple game, there's only four bodies you know. It's not hard. If we look at a building site you know the spirit is the architect, the astral body - which is the planets which move around the place - that's your master builder, and then of course the etheric is the workers, and the physical is the wood and nails and things like that. So take the architect out of the game and all of a sudden the Master Builder’s sort of got all these different ideas and plans, and take the master builder out of the game and the workers are going to sit down and do nothing. It's really that simple as a sort of an understanding, as a technology.

The etheric will blow things up but if it doesn't have a container it'll just run in all sorts of directions you know and this is cancer. The spirit is not controlling the etheric body so they just …. And there's this whole story about equisetum where we've got this silica/light process working down into the metabolism regarding to the kidneys and so on. But the problem of these small kidneys that the equisetum solves is that it's the astral coming in to get the etheric body active again because it becomes sluggish. You know these are pretty simple images and it's really just about okay. There's all these manifestations that have happen out of all these but it's not that difficult, dare I say it after 50 years.

MM: You can say it. One or two of us will believe you and - blowing your trumpet again - I thought your paper on equisetum was brilliant and interesting that you've also come to the sporangia phase of the equisetum and differentiated what it'll do from the secondary manifestation of equisetum so hats off to you again.

GA: well that's what's in the literature you know. I've had more time I guess in the last sort of 10 years or so where I've been able to actually go into the literature and actually accumulate it all. I have have had this process where I just put it all into a Word document, everything I can find, and then just sit down and read it and pull it together. Well this is what comes out. This is the information and this is what the story is, really. And I've done that with the energetic plant growth story, and I've done it with the physical formative forces story. So I've got a 70 page sort of document that I can then work with down into the basic stories. But it's all there you know - it's just information that's sort of lying around in bits you know after hundred years there's a whole lot of really good information lying around. But you know there's this whole thing about Farmers. There's not a lot of energy left over at the end of the day for a farmer and you know in the ‘Fundamentals of therapy’ I think with Rudolph Steiner and Ita Wegman …. I think it's the fifth chapter or something … they talk about these etheric forces that are not used up and and how they can be free then to be used in imaginative thinking and of course Farmers don't have any free etheric forces left over at the end of the day. But it's people like you and me who aren't farming every day that have those forces left over so that we can actually start sort of looking at these big pictures and sort of struggling with all those different sort of bits and making them some sort of cohesive whole. While people might complain I'm not a farmer, the gift of that is the ability to pull together all these ideas that need to be brought together because as we know Rudolph Steiner was a very imaginative fellow. He was throwing out all of these jewels and and … you know I was reading something the other day where he said you know we're going to need these very intellectual people who can come and get these stories and make them real and practical, because you know he kept leaving gaps in things and using different languages for the same story and so you've got to accumulate his basic story and then you've got to organize it and sort of and then you've got to fill in the gaps. It's like a hundred years later where we're just getting his story straight.

MM: So it's both incredibly labyrinthine and simple. What do they call it? ‘the elusive obvious’. Once you’ve done all that work you go ‘why didn't you say that?’

GA: Well that's the 1924 ‘Pastoral Medicine’ really. He's had this whole career and right at the end he's telling this incredibly simple story. In those lectures he says, ‘well back in 1911 when I was doing theosophy and so on, I had to tell the theosophical story which was all very complex. But in fact this is the story that I would have liked to have told back then. But because of the context of the time I had to tell this other complex story.’

You can see this. After 1920 his whole lectures become much more practically focused. He does the education, the medicine the Agriculture and as you go into the 20s they become clearer and clearer. Right at the end of his life, if you look at his astrology, that was one of his best times right towards the end of his life. You can see that it just gets clearer and simpler.

As I say, 100 years later and after my 50 years, it's four bodies in three physical systems. You know that's the task for us. To the young doctors at one point he said I want you to walk around with a notebook in your pocket and everything that you come across, every ailment you come across, I want you to sit down and write what is the energetic body activity of this. The young doctors said ‘oh that's too difficult’ and I was so surprised he sort of let them get away with it. RS said oh okay right we'll do something else. But that's the practice.

All we have to do is ask that question. When I have an insect on my broccoli: what is it? What's the bodies’ interaction? Just as a little image of that, the other day we were looking at curly Leaf in peaches. If we look at that we've got the flowering of the peach tree taking place at the same time that these leaves are coming out. If you look at those with curly Leaf they're getting all twisted and bent and they're getting all these different colours into them. I just had this this sort of vision of the flowering slipping into the leaf. And that it. It's this process that's out of place.

The solution that comes out of agrohomeopathy is sodium sulfate. Personally I see sodium … when we're looking at these four elements, the cations, sodium potassium magnesium and calcium, I see the magnesium as getting the etheric and dragging it into the soil, into the Earth. I see the calcium is stimulating the etheric activity because as we know every bit of calcium, mineral calcium, that's on the Earth has gone through a life process. It's come through some body of some organism. And then the potassium I see as the light carrier, the astral influencing the water - the etheric. And the sodium is the spirit, the director. And it's very interesting in a soil test that we only need one part per million of sodium, you know we need 1% sodium in the soil as opposed to 70% calcium and so on So it's this tiny little bit that has quite a large influence on things. So I'm seeing the sodium as a director as the spirit saying ‘this is where you need to be’.

And when we look at the anions we've got chlorine, sulphur and phosphorus sitting in the periodic table. The chlorine Steiner says, kills things, brings things to an end. The phosphorus is talked about as a usher in the movie: it picks up the calcium and moves it into the bone you. It moves things around. And the sulphur is the oil in the protein, it's what lets things move. So when we're looking at sodium sulfate it's actually getting that astral that's out of place and just sort of pushing it back into its place. The spirit is getting the master builder good clear instructions: get back into the flowering men, leave those bloody workers alone.

We had a fantastic success with that this spring. So anyway that's the sort of functional picture of these things.

MM: While it's very exciting I want to drag you back from 200 years in the future - sorry to be boring - I have to do the same for others! My practical head is thinking Okay 2024! Here we are. We've had a 100 years. We've got a difficult story that - through yourself and a few others – we have now managed to make into quite a simple series of headlines. I mean we could go back and look how er Marti and Wachsmuth argued and there were blockages along the way … maybe for another day. But here we are, we’ve finally got this clear image that we want to communicate to those who will listen to us, and demonstrate it well with the trials. But I love the thing that you talking about Steiner and the young doctors and their little notepads and for me this the diagnosis of peach leaf curl or the nematodes. This feels like the next step! We got the anthroposophical language. Now we need the diagnosis and then as we become good at that we become good Healers of Planet and good savers of life forms. The science of Organics comes to life at last.

So, I’ll blow my own trumpet: on the Considera forum I just started all this - borrowing very heavily from yourself - thank you kind sir - to get this going. But it feels like if those who are thinking along this way can share our understanding … you know you got a lovely picture of the leafy things getting infected by the flowery things to their detriment … on the 6th of February (earlier this month) we went to Dornach and all the wine buffs came in. Their big issue is mildew. You're very good at extracting the powdery from the downy and the other kinds of mildews and really thinking through what is the energetic story in each case, and therefore what might we use as our first shots to help these guys who are trying to avoid copper and sulphur sprays all over the place.

That seems to me to drag biodynamics towards something where any farmer will say whoopie, I want some of this. To get clarity on that diagnosis and meet them where they are. They're not coming to us and saying ‘oh I want the perfection of sulphur as manifested in potassium’. They say I’ve got mildew dude. What are you going to do?

GA: well this is the point. Results is what speaks you know and that's really the point you know and as I say that story about the curly Leaf it it's in the resolving of that Curly leaf that that people sort of go okay there's something here. It's in that finding of solutions and that's what in a sense needs to be marketed rather than the story. I've tried telling people the story and all I get back is ‘it's oh so complex’.

MM: some anti-intellectualism.


.... [continued transcript below ....] ....

GA: But in my business practice we don't really tell them what's going on or any of the story. We just sell a product that does a job. And as long as it does a job and it's effective and it's affordable then people will buy it. 90% of our clientele chemical farmers and I don't even know who my clientele are. I sell to a distributor who then sells it to a contractor who then sells it to his client. It's just these people that use it because it works. I think one of the things that we should do in biodynamics is get all of our best solutions and make one little product range which when we think about it would probably only be half a dozen products. Steiner makes this comment, I think in the sixth lecture, that you know because a plant doesn't have an astral body it doesn't get sick in the normal way of humans and therefore the remedies that we come up with can be very general and broad. They will affect a whole range of problems and a whole range of plants. In agrohomeopathy we're still looking at these individual activities you know we got this bug so we're going to get this predator and we're going to put it on there and we'll get rid of that bug. But if you get some 500 and some chamomile and spray it onto some plants you'll see that you get rid of a whole lot of bugs - all your slugs all of your grubs probably a whole lot of Beatles all go with this one remedy and it's the same you know with the fungi.

We've got the fungus coming out of the earth like told in the sixth lecture but then - oh, it's a medical lectures or one of these other stories - he starts talking about the role of cinnabar in the control of rusts and these warmth-related uh fungi which is powdery mildew and so we've basically got two types of fungus and okay so if we can uh work out the best remedy for the rotting funguses which in my understanding, following the agriculture, was equisetum, oak bark, and - I say – clay … you've got to push that cosmic silica process up so that mixture will get rid of most funguses - rotting fungus so we don't get any brown rot. The tomatoes don't rot. There's very little rot.

Then of course we you've got to look at this other process which he mentioned is cinnabar which is mercury sulphate. Now when I did that I found it sort of - because it's a metal - it starts knocking out other elements - the Boron and the zinc and other little elements seem to be not working very well. So I've made up this more complex mix to try and balance out that sort of excesses of mercury. We seem to have a very good control of powdery mildew. Put those things together and we've got a fungal product that seems to cover most bases. So as I say if we could all around the world everybody put their best remedy on the table … and and of course one of the things with homeopathy is it's quite easily stolen and you know because everything's just being repeated and so homeopaths are a pretty uh paranoid bunch and they don't really want to talk to each other very much. If we just flip that whole paradigm around and say well let's just get the best of everybody put them on the table and then everybody just market those because any value in a business is in its marketing. It's not so much in the product - it's in the marketing of that product and the world's a big place so there's plenty of room for everybody to get out there. Did I say there's only going to be half a dozen products? Well one or two pest controls, one fungalcide, maybe two if you break them up. Then you're going to have plant control you want to stimulate the light process a wee bit you might want to stimulate the rooting process and in the modern world you're wanting to stimulate the fruiting process you know so that that's pretty much covered the whole game and we've you know and we've got six products.

So you know if as I said say that would be the best way forward that I see because it's all based on results. If we can just sort of get rid of powdery mildew out of out of the grape industry therefore get rid of the sulphur and the copper and all this then that that would be mind-blowing, world-breaking you know and people would do it.

MM: have you had much - I mean you say you're at doubles arms length with your business model but do you not get people coming back up to you from the wine industry saying yeah you nailed it thank you?

GA: well I don't work with the wine industry. I work with the kiwi fruit and avocados and so yeah we're getting feedback that we're helping. We have a - it's actually a pepper product - for passion vine hopper and cicadas in Kiwi fruit. Just the other day I got a grower telling me that his place was clean of all the cicadas and all of his neighbours were just swamped with them. We get feedback but I'm one person who has an incredibly - I spend 60% of my time on research - luckily you know I'm able to do that. I'm not a marketer. I'm not that interested in being a multi multi-millionaire for the sake of it so I tend to focus on - pay the bills and then go and do the research. So I haven't really pushed into the wine industry there at all really.

And I'm in two minds about this whole wine industry and biodynamics and that alcohol pushes out the spirit and every modern illness is a is a poorly incarnated spirit so you know the solution to most illness is we got to pull the spirit in. Meanwhile we're out there encouraging alcoholism - pushing the spirit out. I'm in two minds about helping the wine industry tell you the truth.

MM: maybe I'll go out and make all those millions that if you don't want to.

GA: feel free

MM: thank you very much, you're a lovely man. I also think you know Steiner got the Waldorf school was from a tobacco Factory

GA: that's correct so you know we can only make our own personal choices and you know in in New Zealand the only biodynamic activity that's succeeding is the wine industry

MM: First 10,000 hits biodynamics on Google is wine. The most popular course on BDAC is the wine course at the moment.

GA: Dare I say it because it's a low fertility crop and my perception of biodynamics is that they're not very good at dealing with high fertility crops. You know, like dairy farms you can do biodynamically because you've got an excess of nutrition and wine you can do because they don't like a lot of nutrition. But a whole lot of you know fruiting crops like kiwi fruit and all these things, they are high fertility crops and if you don't feed them one way or another - and this is mineralization as well - then you can't meet the market standards. There are a couple of places where biodynamics works but there's a whole lot of places that it doesn't.

MM: I had the wine story slightly different: I had assumed that it was because there's a whole culture of people who are talking about quality and fine nuance in flavours etc and they've got a language, they got a tradition, it's valued. There's probably a fair amount of BS in all of that but at least there's a culture.

GA: Most definitely and you can you can taste it you know. I have no doubt that the role of 501 in wine industry is enormous, and as you say they've got the culture of identifying those differences and that's true, But it does also come down to the fact that they can grow these plants without taking a great deal of notice of nutrition. Some people can close the gate and have this agricultural individuality and get away with some compost and 500 and 501 but you try that with kiwi fruit and if you don't put on 300 kilograms of potassium sulfate a year you're not going to get a crop of kiwi fruit that's going to be marketable. There's not many or BD Vineyards that are going to be throwing that sort of mineralized activity around you know so they get away with it. That's what I'm saying. They're able to get away with this low fertility. Try it with kiwi fruit see how you go.

MM: What would happen to kiwi fruit if you didn't feed it heavily?

GA: The fruit stays very small right and you need a big fruit like that to meet the market and get the right payment. You're heavily disadvantaged if you're just coming up with these small kiwi fruit that you'll find in organic kiwi fruit shops. That's not the market. They need these decent sized kiwis and a lot of them.

MM: what's the quality of those smaller organic kiwi like?

GA: well they're probably nice and they're probably sweet and all that sort of thing but you know the Market's not going to buy them. You'll sell them to your Organic Marketplace but you're not going to sell it into the main industry. That's just one example is what I'm saying. It is about sustainability, about making a profit so you're there next year. It's not it's not about subsidized agriculture with lots of free inputs that is actually allowing you to produce something that just pays the bills. That's not the agricultural world I live in you know. We've got one person running a five thousand acre sheep farm. We don't have that free labour in our economy

MM: I hear you. Sometimes that's because the market is a bit mad and sometimes it's because it's a reality. I guess I'm a little bit resistant to thinking that you've got to super fertilize with external inputs in order to get a good healthy Farm organism. So I'm just thinking that one through as we speak

GA: Yeah, it doesn't fit the biodynamic paradigm but that's the reality that I live in you know. We don't have subsidies here. There are no Farm subsidies for organic agriculture. You get a bit of a premium in the price but that's it. And so you know we live in a particular reality and it's like are you going to cope with that or not and in New Zealand you know the biodynamics is really a third world practice. You know it works really well in India but you try and transplant that here and it's so unrealistic that we might have five Vineyards biodynamics. We've got one sheep farm that grows wheat and you know that's about it because the actual practice is 19th century Third World.

Like we saw that uh trial that was shown from Sekem about the sweet corn and the difference between the conventional preps and the homeopathic preps and you know the homeopathic prep stood up and showed that they were doing the job and producing healthy plants and so on. I think this is a reality that biodynamics is going to have to grasp in the next 100 years is that everyone's struggling with cow horns and getting the organs and the whole practicality of the method is becoming very difficult and the Homeopathy solves all of these problems.

There's no shortage of Supply I bought five sets of preparations in 1991 and and I'm still using that . I haven't bought any more. We put it in a bottle and we ship it and people put it in their their spray tanks and they spray it. So the functionality is there. The proof is there and it's the biodynamic sort of mindset that is really holding themselves back. I don't really know how to solve all those questions other than just to get on and do it myself. It's the space between the ears that's the problem.

MM: so I had a few questions. This was my little crib sheet. How old does GA think the BD Community has done in the last 100 years? we kind of touched on that. And then we've got, what might this community do given this for the future? and I think you've just gone on to that one quite nicely. The kind of issues we're facing now, probably the same for you guys: our average age for a farmer over here is they're kind of guys like us you know - wrinkles under the eyes and everything heading south. Just if you got any bright ideas about that one - how to get the next generation of farmers coming through.

GA: Well the thing that's running through my brain at the moment is ‘nothing succeeds like success’. It's when people can see success and see a pathway, that's what brings people into it. There's a whole problem of course with just land. It's a privilege to be a farmer now and in New Zealand you inherit your farm - you don't buy it. The number of people who make money somehow and then buy a farm is … I don't know … 0.001% of the farmers so it's a very privileged occupation.

MM: We've got a slightly different vibe here and that there's a lot of people who recognize the ecological storm that's happening and coming in buckets and they've given their land away to a land trust - The biodynamic land trust and the ecological Land Trust - because they want to leave this in perpetuity to be the good guys. The struggle immediately is to get farmers who are trained up to be the good guys, to be the person to do what is necessary on that land.

GA: Nothing seeds succeeds like success. It's really only by having the success will people come on board. As I say, what successes do we need? Well we need to solve powdery mildew and downy mildew and brown rot and black spot and you know all your pest problems and your soil fertility problems. That's what we need to solve and yeah what can you say ….

MM: I know you said it Glen. I mean you could say it in a different way but I think you've said it and you demonstrated it.

GA: What I'm wanting to say is, okay we've had these solutions actually sitting there for 20 years. Who's taking any notice? Who's doing the support? Who's questioning? Where's that? and this I'm talking about the biodynamic movement! Where is the biodynamic movement supporting the successes? I've done all this by myself and whilst I'm slaying these dragons and those dragons are more often than not Anthroposophists. Where's the support where's the Nurture? In 2000 I got those three bits of research from the New Zealand Hort Research proving homeopathic remedies you know - the bird control, photosynthesis - increased photosynthesis 20%, you know what would that do to the European agricultural system? It's like nothing - literally no feedback, no sort of well done, not even a ‘good on you mate.’ How can we use this, how can we incorporate this, how can we support this??? There has to be some very nefarious bloody dudes sitting there blocking all this stuff you know, is really the only logical answer.

I guess what we've all done is just get on with it, regardless of this dead center and what else can we do? Because of course it's our personal journeys that we're on and I'm doing this because this is my journey regardless of any support. It's just very disappointing I guess is all you can say.

MM: It's interesting that you've been you you've done your course at the Goetheanum. You're gradually uh being ignored less and from what you said people thought it was brilliant and some people were on fire about it. So is it just banging one's head against the wall until eventually you get through and hope there's someone who's got a cranium left to do the banging from then on.

GA: Well in that research day the first two presentations were on homeopathic preparations and if we think back I don't know when the last time I was there which might have been 10 years ago I guess we did have one session on homeopathic preparations. So it's coming. And Sekem basically said they're going to be using homeopathic preparations a lot: they'll fulfill their Demeter requirements of conventional preparations and then they'll be using homeopathics.

MM: Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so disappointed it might be just the turning circle of this big heavy thing.

GA: Well I can see you know we're slowly moving the mountain. I can look back in there and I can see you know the footprints of all the sort of pulling and bashing and slowly you know … I think there's also biodynamics is reaching a dead end and they they're going to have to do something they're going to have to make a jump. One of the things I've been the baseball bats I've been wielding is that biodynamics has to get together with the medical stream and we have to use the medical stream's frame of reference and context which is four bodies in three systems if we're going to understand agriculture course. I would say that we're at this point where we have to stop saying we don't understand the agriculture course because I do. If you want to understand it ask me, I'll tell you. It is this medical understanding. That's what's there

MM: let's give you a minute here ere because we've talked about the four bodies the spirit the astral the etheric and the physical. You haven't talked about the three system I know you've done it loads elsewhere but let's use it here's your soap box

GA: So the three systems is really just the nerve sense system the rhythmic system and the metabolic system and so we've got these four activities all working in each of these systems and if one or other of these are out of balance in that system then you'll get a problem. Like in the breathing system, asthma for example is where we've got too much of this nerve-sense astral working into the lungs and you know we can't breathe. It's locked up and so it's about how do we reinstitute the etheric activity into that process to sort of release that astral so that we can breathe. And migraines is a really lovely story: it's this disturbed metabolism that is, in a sense, too much. You've eaten something you can't digest - like my wife: pork is a real classic. Every time she eats pork she gets a migraine. What's happening is this disturbed astrality in the metabolic system is pushing right up into the head and you get this sort of bof - and so it's inflammation from the metabolism into the head. The solution to this that Rudolph Steiner put forward was silica basically. Bidor, which was a mixture of silica and sulphur and iron .. it's basically getting this nerve sense process and sort of pushing it back down into the belly again. It's this whole interplay of these four activities taking place in these three systems. It's really about balancing that out so that we maintain this harmonious middle that will then sort of keep us alive. That's it. There's anthroposophical medicine right in that sort of picture really.

MM: well done. So that's the game. Rudolph has given us these amazing gifts as you call them of the preparations, that between new and Bernard Lievegoed and Rudolph Steiner we've got a really good idea of what they do in the equalizing of them. We've got the image of the nematodes we got Peach curl.

Okay so - just what’s in my head .. the way I thought of carrots before is things that would normally happen in the flower - you don't get much flower on a carrot you know, the inflorescence isn't gawdy and lively. The colour and the flavor is down in the root so this is a flower-pattern which has - in a healthy way - gone down into the root, not as with your peach curl. What's the difference between when it's pathological as in the Leaf Peach Curl and when it's a healthy thing that's happening in the carrots?

GA: Okay, so what you're saying there is that the colouring of the carrot in particular is a flowering process that has been displaced into the root.

MM: yeah

GA: Now okay is that the picture that you're getting?

MM: that's what I'm working with, yeah

GA: Okay, so now let's look at the carrot worm. A displaced flowering in the root is going to be your carrot root work okay. Same impulse it's just displaced isn't it? It's an astrality process that's coming too deeply into the soil

MM: okay so the root fly or the rootworm is problematic but the nice flavoursome and that beautiful carrot smell and those amazing range of colours of carrots are the good thing how can we get bad thing but keep the good thing?

GA: well again you know it comes to this net. We've got something escaping it's like in that leaf curl where the flowering is escaping. We've got the boundary of the flower but it's breaking out and running into the leaf. Well you could almost say that about the carrot that flowering process isn't being contained in the carrot it's sort of slipping out into this other region and that's what feeds the carrot fly. So it's about incorporating that astrality back into the plant and okay it - obviously there's some etheric activity that needs to be stimulated in the soil itself and you know this may come back to the fact that there's not enough humus in the soil, that it's actually quite a mineralized soil and so it's not got that life process around it coming in the soil to maintain it. There's not enough fungi in the soil

MM: The interesting thing with carrots is they don't like any sort of reasonably fresh manure they want a 2-year composting process practically mineralized ideally in a really fairly high-silica soil yeah so to bring the etheric into there it has to be well contained for the carrots

GA: I agree so it's it's all about balance you know and you know it's still .. well in Australia for example they think 1% organic matter in the soil is actually pretty good whereas here we got 8% organic matter in our soil you know just normal. It's that sort of scale. Let's say you know for a healthy carrot we need 3% organic matter in the soil and we've only got one so it's allowing that astral process to be working in a more active manner. It also then comes down to how those life forces in the soil are working so what's disturbing that?

You've also got this picture with Rudolf Steiner about the activity of the previous season works through the Earth and comes out the next season. Now you might have had a hot dry harsh Autumn and that that activity is still lingering in the soil the next spring and that that's what's causing this disturbed astral activity. So there's you know there's all those different parameters that you've sort of got to look at you know in the context of the environment you've got but the principle is I guess what we're talking. Why is the astrality giving us a nice carrot but at the same time we've got this worm running you know so it's the same energy it's just displaced. We might get away with people are using the 500p preparation and so you're getting the harmonizing activity of all the preparations but you're still getting that sort of etheric stimulus of the manure and the solution might just be spraying that one and that that would sort of just close that net up and let the carrot get on.

MM: Interesting. You know I've often thought you know in trying to think where do we go next, how do we get more Farmers? How do we bring this picture of the four bodies in the three areas of the plant and the human? How about going to a thousand years in the future and thinking what would biodynamics look like if it were perfected or pretty damn good - a mature technology. Would planting calendars still be there or would we be thinking of that previous year and saying oh well it's looking like with the the planet's doing this it's going to be a really bad year for XYZ . Somehow I feel we'd be on top of those issues and at the moment I would be drowning in them,

GA: A thousand years in the future I think you know we're just going to be dealing with energy at that point and we're probably going to just be sitting here meditating light over our Gardens and everything will grow lovely. And I sort of get that about my chemistry and especially you know we're collecting those energies out of a circle now in water and going and spraying them around, so I do get it that this is in the future for a lot of people for their Consciousness to get that. But the reality is it's here now and my friend Peter Bacchus he does this. We looking at the planets for the next season and what's that doing and this sort of thing and I guess that Rudolph Steiner seasonal picture of how everything working through the season that I've clarified in this essay called ‘energetic plant growth’ you know I personally now see that as this sort of basic model that we in biodynamics need to be observing. The first step is to watch this through the season and you know there's this fructification event in the winter but then I can't pick your months up but I guess it's for us it's in August and you can see this Earth etheric activity come forward. Then at the Spring Equinox the light processes increase and then just halfway between Midsummer and spring you get this warmth process coming in and, by the way, that's when you get your first tack of powdery mildew - when this warmth process comes in. So the question is how much is that warmth process not being integrated ? And in the same way we've got this seasonal cycle picture that's available to us but it's not very clearly talked about or understood which I hope I've done. But with that comes this sort of image of the plant that we need to develop. It's very easy for people to say are the plants are only a physical and etheric activity but it's not! The plant has four bodies. It has an astral activity around it and it has a spirit activity below it in the earth and you know Rudolf Steiner gives us this picture of these four activities of the cosmic forces and the Earthly substance working from below upwards and the Earthly forces and Cosmic substance working from above. So when we're looking at the process of warmth we're looking at this warmth process coming from below and the warmth process coming from above. In that period between spring and summer that's when this warmth is coming in. So if these two warmths aren't joining together then we get powdery mildew. We've got to look at powdery mildew - it's dry and hot so how is this not working? How is this sort of warmth body sort of slopping out of its boundary? So you know the solution powdery mild at that time of year is how do we combine this Atmospheric warmth with the Earth warmth. In a way this is what 501 is. We've got this Earth substance of the nerve sense system that Steiner has put into the summer cycle … put into the metabolic realm, and so in many ways this is actually helping these two warmths work together.

It's do we how do we use these basic images that Rudolph Steiner has given us to solve these problems. We've got to get the story right and we actually haven't had the story right. We've been working .. you know my comments about Wachsmuth and how he's really emphasized the ethers and what I see is that got set up into the educational organizations and they're still teaching this ... that the ethers are the primary formative forces that we're working with but, of course, there's no connection of the ethers to the preparations. So you know which preparation works with which ether. And Rudolph Steiner didn't say anything about this. You know there's this dead end in in that you know and and I think the educational institutions have to be re re-educated. They have to get with the bodies and the systems. The ethers you are great for observation but you know is it the ether? What is an ether an ether is where the spirit … like the warmth ether is when the spirit, the star forces, come down and work into the atmosphere and work into that etheric sphere. The planets working into that etheric sphere gives us the light ether so the light ether is not the formative principle. The planets are the formative principle it's just that they're working in the etheric and so you know we have to sort of expand our concept to these bigger context rather than just the ethers.

MM: Ernst Marti's only just been translated into English in the last few years and up till then Wachsmuth had the floor to himself I think

GA: Most definitely but you know Lievegoed laid it out in 1951 read the introduction to that book and he lays it out clear as a bell that it is this interplay of these four bodies. Yes Marti made that comment. Popplebahm made the comment with Bockemuhl in 1981 so there's been people trying to influence this but as I say when I look back at it you know Wachsmuth was there from 1924 until 1963. He was this very dominating influence and I think that's how it got set up into the educational institutes. These few that are around have got this pattern and they just keep rolling out this same story and it's a nice story and it has application but it only goes so far. It doesn't really address all the other bodies like Wachsmuth doesn't talk about the astral or the spirit. They're not in his conversation at all. We've got to bring them back. The spirit you know as I say is this force that pushes up. It's the force that sort of wants the seed to become mature. And if that force is weak then of course we've got this whole sixth lecture story of fungus - that we've got this strong watery process coming out of the earth and allowing for fungus to occur up here. Part of that story is that this male force is weak and that's why we need clay in the resolving of fungus because we've got to push that Force right through. In a sense that's where the calcium is carried up into the into the rest of the plant and so we've got this free Earthly substance process that's just sort of running around like this. We've got to suck that back, we can push it back, but we've got to push up the cosmic silica, the cosmic forces. And this is a very real lever that we have that really isn't talked about - the role of the spirit in the growth of plants. So what we getting all the time is that the spirit in biodynamic agriculture is the farmer and that he's the one that's bringing in the ego.

At the last conference we have these Buddhist monks telling us about how we're going to transform the human. We're getting off into social policy and this is what half the conference was is this sort of social policy. It's lost its way. It needs to bring this back and I've written this article called ‘the spirit in biodynamics’ and indicate at every level of the game we've got the spirit active. You know in chemistry we've got all these elements that are working with the spirit ….. so yeah what can I say

MM: Thank you for trying

GA: Yeah well you know … I think biodynamics is well in New Zealand in particular it's really coming to quite a Crossroads. It's going to have to make some pretty big changes or it's just going to become an irrelevant gardeners club. We don't get invited to any of the organic conferences or anything anymore you know. It's sort of permaculture and even agrohomeopathy is becoming the thing.

I'm writing this book at moment ‘biodynamic Homeopathy because agrohomeopathy and biodynamic Homeopathy are two very very different things. We're looking at primary causes and they're looking at symptoms. We got this problem we find this solution okay that's it let's go. We're not. They're not sort of in a sense addressing the energetic cause of the problem

MM: Hahnemann was very quiet about his sources and he was quite a long time before Steiner and there was 1899 in the middle. If I think of Considera and its materia medica on the positive side it's looking for success stories and it's and it's laying them out in a systematic way. But Steiner's criticism of the homeopaths from the medical lectures is that they never have a system. it's purely empirical: - I tried this, it did that. The law of similars is a little bit of a system but you know it's not really clarifying the game. Steiner had a lot of time for the homeopaths but was well aware that there wasn't a systematic picture. There wasn't the picture - the narrative - into which it fits. Still Homeopathy doesn't know who it is and what it's doing in this sense but it works very well with precident and it's very good at sharing its stories and there's still a lot of hope and activity around. I just gave a talk to the Society of homeopaths about what biodynamics can learn from Agrohomeopathy and vice versa and it's I like to think it's not dissimilar from what you're saying - I don't know what you're writing - but to have the story … it's like having either a loads of Jigsaw pieces or having the lid. Steiner has given us the lid. This is the picture guys that little blue thing fits there, and homeopath saying I've got a blue thing they're going I've got a blue thing so let's try it

GA: that's right. It's quite a different system. Our system as we've been talking about is looking at the cause and our solutions are actually very general. My biggest problem in the garden is having enough pests so that I can do experiments. I'm only using very simple remedies and they're covering a wide base. As I said earlier on, I think that's the real big difference is that once you get the cause you sort of eliminate an awful lot of symptoms in one go. When I sit down and think about it I think half a dozen remedies would pretty much cover yeah most of the problems that all of Agriculture has.

MM: Interesting! - I'm sure loves of people would like to have that problem you have.

GA: As we know you know you feed things you know 80% of your problems can be solved if you feed your plants you know just get your soil healthy make sure they've got plenty of available stable nutrient and you're going to knock out most of your problems. Then it's really just the weather that's going to be causing the trouble - the shifts in cold and moisture and heat and these sorts of things are going to knock your plants. We've had these really beautiful Springs here - lots of bit of warmth and lots of moisture and then all of a sudden it just dries up Bang! So the plants are all growing in one environment and then the environment changes so that's your problem. it's not nutrition. It's actually the environment. That's really what we're working with is how do we make the allowances for these environmental changes that occur. Rather than a nutrition problem

MM: So who who is listening to you? I like to think I'm a bit of an ear but who else is around?

GA: Oh most definitely you are

MM: Anything in the States. You've lost Hugh Lovel.

GA: Yes I know, that's a bit of a shame. It's hard to know but at the conference just recently various people kept popping out of the crowd going ‘I really love this story or that story’ or ‘I read this here’ … so it's obviously people are finding bits that they're loving and doing and so on .. but otherwise …. I've been encouraged you know Eduardo the new co-leader you know he came up and introduced himself and said hello and you know as you know he helped me get that 10-minute talking slot at the research day and his wife was in my workshop and she's contacted me since and said that they'd like to talk further and this sort of thing. Marisol in Spain is very open and working and thinking about things that I'm talking about and you know you can sort of see it around. I don't I don't feel over encouraged or supported by the biodynamic movement as such.

It's very much to do this work for 50 years you got to do it for yourself. I've done it so I can do it. I love taking the biodynamic preparations have been my primary health care for the last 30 years and you know I like having a healthy garden and not having to spray anything. I haven't sprayed copper or sulphur for I don't know 25 years. I like it for myself is why I do it. I like understanding the agriculture course I like Steiner's uh seasonal uh picture you know so

MM: You don't fool me Glenn it's not just for yourself. You've got a strong element of service in you.

GA: Most definitely but you know yes I've given it all away you know it's all on my website. My children aren't interested. I'm not keeping it for the family. So what are you going to do with it? The best you can do and if you try and sell it you’re self-censoring you know because people have got to see the value to give you the money to get the information you know so so don't self-censor so therefore you just give it away and people can do what they want to do with it. There's all that but the basic motivation as to why I've done it in the first place is quite selfish and you know when I look at it you don't do this stuff for 50 years and not get paid for it. You don't keep doing it unless you've got some personal motivation. You want it for yourself and if it helps others great, more than happy. But ultimately as I say, I like having a healthy garden, I like not spraying copper you know that that's the real deal.

MM: I'm going to take it with a pinch of salt but I heard you

GA: Well you know thank you for recognizing the service that's behind it and yes there is service but service alone is not going to do it, That's not a good enough motivator

MM: Maybe for some boddisttva it is but maybe not for us

GA: well you know 50 years with no support you you're going to have to have a little bit of personal desire you know in the game but anyway it's irrelevant

MM: I don't know I was wondering about getting into apop-agriculture and all the Christian stuff but maybe that's just going to uh not be particularly enlightening

GA: that's right all I can really say about that is I see the way forward that I would like to break the biodynamic movement into three streams. You know anthroposophical agriculture is valid and obviously …

MM: how are you defining anthroposophical agriculture?

GA: well I guess the best way is to define what energetic biodynamics is and you know that's what I see I'm talking about. Keep it real. We're going to look at the stars and the planets and the atmosphere and the Earth, whereas anthroposophical agriculture will start talking about all the hierarchy of beings that are there and all the spirit beings and the big Christ story and Lucifer and Ahriman, and all this Evolution, and we're christianizing the Elementals, and you know they've got this big picture going on and …. and it's okay that's fine they can have that story. But we actually don't need it. We can talk about the stars and the planets and the atmosphere and the Earth as the primary sources of these four bodies. We can work within that nerve-sense metabolic. It's not materialism but it's you know it's a a rational realistic energetic approach to Rudolph Steiner's work. We can use that as a functional methodology and modality to solve problems whilst keeping it in an energetic reality.

But then there's this stream of biodynamics which we sort of see in the research SE group that we were in that day where these guys are working with the bugs and they want to see the bugs in the preparations and look the bugs are actually infecting the soil we've proven that, you know, and we had that sort of picture of the Sekem with the sweet corn picture and they're going well the bugs are less in the homeopathic realm and it's like well why is that? And they're sort of asking this question maybe there something more you know at which point I sort of jump into them and sort of go you know and I look back at that now you know whole Wild Colonial boy image you know this wild bastard from the periphery jumping in and yelling at them you know… But the point is you know they they're quite materialistic, and they and they want that, and it's important you know Pfeiffer and Koepf and all them you know it's a real important stream to get all of this energetic biodynamics earthed and what is the practical structures of these things. So I see those three streams that we have this very materialistic biodynamics which is fine and that's where people can enter you know, and look at all the science and all that. Then we have this energetic biodynamics where we're just dealing with the physical reality of the energetic bodies of the earth and then we have anthroposophical agriculture that can take us off into Rudolph Steiner's anthroposophy. So we've got to honour all streams you know. We need those three streams and so that's what I would do is clarify that. The anthroposophical agriculture it's like let's give them their space but let's not scare the natives. Let's not sort of make that the primary sort of story that we're giving to modern Humanity.

MM: I'm glad I asked you really now because that is a useful threefolding there. And it doesn't make anyone the baddy unless it's in the wrong place. So that's all good stuff.

GA: The incorporation of the medical world view is the obvious step. That's all I'm trying to bring. I'm not bringing Glenn Atkinson biodynamics I'm bringing anthroposophical medicine into biodynamics. That's all I want to do is sort of lead them to the door and poof here have it. Biodynamics is that are Crossroads. if they keep going down this anthroposophical agriculture, social policy road, they're lost.

MM: I see that social policy stuff which frustrates the crap out of me and made me fall asleep in almost every lecture, I see that as part of the material thing. I don't see it as part of the a’pop stuff.

GA: Well they've got they've lost their way . They've got 500 501 and CPP. That's it. That's their preparations that everyone's using. At that research day the French have made 500p so it's come down to 500p and silica! That's it. And we just spray that and then oh what are we going to do? We don't understand the agriculture course so we can't really talk about that. The ethers is a nice story but we can't really do anything with that. We can observe the ethers but we can't actually do anything with them uh so we can't actually solve our pest and disease problem. so we just use sulphur and copper and you know so we become Organics plus 500p in silica. So what are we going to do now? We've got this big section, we've got all these associations, we've got all this stuff … well let's talk about other cultures. So got the Maoris and we've got the Indians and we've got these people who are sort of talking about the same stuff but really they're not giving us anything dynamic, so what are we going to do now? Oh well we better start talking about the social relationships in the communities that we're trying to build with all this free labour. So we better start talking about that you know … so they're filling up a gap. They're filling up a hole that they've got and it's not biodynamics.

Look at all those main lectures at the conference recently. Where was the biodynamics in any of it? You've got a bit in the workshops but otherwise you know…

MM: See why you and maybe one or two others are … rare beasties there's hardly anyone's looking under the bonnet. They're just thinking uh we'll drive this, I don't know which is reverse, which is forward, which is the indicators. It's a thing Steiner gave it it must be perfect and conversation closed! This is why I think it's really important even if it's only one or two people ever listen to this highly edited little chat we're having, if people start looking under the bonnet and asking those questions that are almost taboo. In a way it's simple and it's an elusive obvious but I think part of the reason is because no one has understood the agriculture course. No one reads it. It's suspicious activity that you think you've understood it Glen you egotistical loony.

MM: Oh well that's right, no one believes me if I say I've understood it. But at the same time no one's asking me. Call me mate. Call my bluff. Come on call my bluff. … How are you expecting to be taken seriously if you sit there and say you don't understand your central document. But we can then go forward and start making up all sorts of stories about it we don't understand it but we can go forward and start making up stories about it. How un-credible is that as a stance. I'm coming along saying I do understand it. You know call my bluff. Come on. So that's one thing I would love to change at the 100 year mark is that we do understand the document. The mere fact that I can do what I do shows that I understand the document. What question can't I answer?

MM: So for me this is the crucial thing about this 100 year. The challenge … looking back and looking forward - this seems like the issue. If it's an ineffable document okay there's 90% of the apops all sort of lined up in that place: ‘You can't understand it, it's far too much. Only you know people who know God personally who can understand this.’ Then there's this tiny little dribble of people who are having a go, trying to talk about it, showing their working saying ‘this is what I think. I don't get this bit! Do you have this piece of the puzzle? Oh thank you, brilliant, now I can crack on.’

I was saying that to Christina Henatsch. We were getting down to a little bit of a conversation there with Benjamin and co where they were talking about the clay and what this was doing, and I was sort of hungry ... Where do you meet? What pub do we go to, to have this ongoing conversation?’ and they said well this is it! So it's just as bad in Germany.

GA: Oh most definitely. It's a chronic thing all the way through. And as I say if Enzo and I are the only two people prepared to stand up and say we understand this thing then you know if you don't actually talk to us and take it seriously you're not going to hear it. So …. how bad can you stand it? is really all we can say at the moment. Because it's outrageously obvious that we're walking down a dead-end path and we're just filling it up with glitter. There's a very small number of people who buy the glitter really.

MM: You clarified that one. That's what we need to do for the next 50 years of Our Lives

GA: Well give me seven. I reckon we could make a pretty big change you know in the next seven years. The education the biodynamic education institutes have to be re-educated we need to retool them. They've got a really good basis you know the ether's story is okay we can we can work from that but we need to sort of put it into a bigger context and show practical application. You know when people leave these courses they need to be able to make their own remedy that's going to solve their problem you know not have some fuzzy belief system that they're working with. You know they have real tools …

MM: Well we've been moaning and chatting and stuff for two hours here Glen

GA: Oh really! Amazing … but I guess it's about positivity really isn't it? Just try and keep it positive really.

MM: Well there's a very good note to finish on. I like that one. Well, well done Glen for 50 years and thank you for this.

GA: Lucky we don't have much memory isn't it … because all of a sudden it's 50 years you know … but anyway I'm happy to have been the person to do what I've done. lucky me.

MM: Well good on you yeah thanks

GA: And you too, you know, Considera is a great thing making it all available it's brilliant.