Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
PLANETARY PHYSIOGNOMY
The Seven Body Fluids
The soul, OR Astral Body, was created on Ancient Moon, the ‘Third Creation’. And so was the liquid element; or the blueprint of same, to use an apt metaphor for liquid in general, and water specifically. The incarnation of liquid into a tangible reality took place much later, on the Earth, the Fourth Creation – in the third epoch, Lemuria. Here the astral body at last bonded with matter, or to be more precise, with liquid.
The amorphous liquid began to differentiate on Lemuria and beyond under the 7-fold influence of the soul; itself particularizing under the – again 7-fold – influence of the seven astrological planets, Moon through to Saturn. These soul-liquids, or liquid-souls, were, over time, tinctured by the seven colors, those traditionally recognized as expressions of the seven planets. The increasingly materializing human being embodied the seven archetypal liquids of the visible Solar System color spectrum. These seven planets-colors are: Moon-violet; Mercury-yellow; Venus-green; Sun-white; Mars-red; Jupiter-orange; Saturn-blue. The qualitative nature of these seven holy hues directly reflects the wellbeing of the soul; under the aegis of the seven planets, as it is. This knowledge is employed in Spiritual Chemistry (the new Alchemy), as well as Color Therapy. This is especially so in Steiner circles, with watercolor painting being one of the most effective healing powers.
Here the two primary manifest soul elements, color, and liquid, join in an unrivaled cooperation; the clear water – the soul body – carrying the color, an expression of the supersensible psyche itself.
When one paints, say green, the sensitive membrane of the green – Venus – soul, living in the (thankfully concealed!) green body fluids, responds, either positively or negatively, to this artistic access. If the green is dirty and turgid on the pristine white paper (the Sun color), the soul tends to retreat. In extreme cases this can lead even to illness, primarily psychological.
However, if the painted greens have a luminous éclat, shining like emeralds, or glowing like spring meadows, the ‘green soul’ rejoices, gaining strength to face life’s demands. A study of the properties of water – or liquid (chemistry) in general – is an exploration of the macrocosmic 7-fold soul: examples of the sparkling knowledge gems to be found being that: water always strives to attain the same level; it has a laminate behavior; its natural color is blue; and so on.
A similar research profile can be applied to color; the manifold hues of nature being expressions of the world soul, as they are. The warmth element, as created on Ancient Saturn, manifests in darkness; the air element of Ancient Sun carries light; and the Moon-water element is the bearer of color itself. This is a natural dark-light-color advance. It is the mission of the Earth, the fourth planetary incarnation, to advance the so-called ‘spiritual spectrum’: ultraviolet, black, incarnadine, white, and infrared.
The liquid-color creation is the mansion of the soul forces in man; cultivation of which leads to psychic health; with neglect often resulting in the opposite, endemic anxiety, or mental illness even.
Rudolf Steiner tells us that physical maladies are usually caused by psychological (‘soul’) distress. Of course, this is not the case with invasive illnesses like sunburn. Hence it is the distress within, the soul indispositions, that generally cause, or allow to thrive, such sicknesses as cancer, arthritis, asthma – and the thousands of other physical dysfunctions that can assault our wellness throughout life.
Mental illness is the opposite; this is usually caused, not by psychological stress, but by physical; there being almost always a material reason why the soul cannot relate to its karma in the most positive way. A body dysfunction or invasion of some kind, whether withing or without, will invariably be the source of a specific mental illness. Therefore, it can be seen that most psychotherapy is fraud, with highly paid therapists erroneously peering into the soul (which, ironically, they say doesn’t exist!) for the cause of the mental illness.
In most cases a physical therapy is more efficacious in treating the mentally ill – like watercolor painting! Most pseudo-therapies indulged in by the mental ‘health’ industry rather turn the patient in upon himself, or incarcerate him, removing him from the healing power of Life, Light and Love.
This is the exact opposite from that required by most (treatable at least) mental sufferers. The most immediate access to the soul from the outer world is the sense of smell. The human soul responds directly to the intrusion of a bad odor; or conversely, to a sweet perfume. This is because, as Steiner assures us, actual soul beings – both good and ill – travel on, or live in, the scent stream. We hold our nose to prevent the ingress of negative soul beings wafting up from a corpse. Or we delight in the perfume of a rose, at the same time taking in light-filled psychic entities. These soul beings bond with our own being, nurturing and sustain it. The myriad compounds of the earth miraculously carry just as many smells, from mandarins to Manchester to … mandrills!
All these chemical compounds, however, are combinations of just a hundred or so pure chemical elements. Of these hundred sublime building blocks of the universe only seven have a distinctive smell; these are: iodine, fluorine, chlorine, phosphorus, bromine, arsenic, and ozone. In concentration, all are highly toxic, hence their various smells are violently pungent – can even kill in large doses.
Yet these seven disperse, in combination, throughout the manifest world, creating all the variety of scent we enjoy – or recoil from – every day. This can be compared with all the color variety in the world originating from just the seven colors of the spectrum; or all possible music being comprised of just the seven notes of the scale.
All three, smell, color, and music, are expressions of the World Soul, and in microcosm, of the soul of man. These three soul forces are expressed through smell, color, and tone, thus: seven smells sentient soul; seven colors rational soul; seven musical notes consciousness soul. Or as Rudolf Steiner so succinctly put it in a lecture in Berlin in 1907:
“The seven sounds of the scale represent the seven parts of the human being, along with the seven colors and seven aromas.”
Steiner also taught that the sense of smell was related to Scorpio.
The word smell means ‘fire’, as in to smelt metals. Hepyaestus, the forge master, was the Greek Scorpio. The smell of something burning (or cooking) is potent indeed! The Christian equivalent of Scorpio, or Aquila the Eagle as it was once called, is St. John, regent of the fire element (St. Luke water; Mark air, Matthew mineral).
The St. John summer celebration was always a fire festival.
So, color and smell join to bond, or materialize, in the liquid element, to be a vehicle for the soul. Even though they express the liquid element, they live in the air; that which carries the scents to our noses. The liquid is by far the most dominant in man of the four elements, comprising some 80% body weight: this is roughly equivalent to the proportion of soul activity man engages in each day. the other three, physical, life, and spiritual activities, based as they are on the heat, air, and mineral elements in the same order, take a relative back seat to those of the soul, or astral body. In fact, most waking activities, emotions, and concepts (will, feeling, and thinking) are based on soul; or 80% of them at least.
One of the most profound of Alchymical Mysteries is that we embody aspects of all seven soul-planetary worlds through the vehicle of the particular-colored body fluids related to them. We are all familiar with the Newtonian spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This is the nominal earthspectrum.,
The soul, or more correctly the Solar Spectrum, is different in both order and composition. This invisible-to-the-physical-eye spectrum has been taught in esoteric schools for eons; being related to the seven planets as it always is. AS it lives in a metaphysical state, the soul spectrum has never been defiled by the cold hand of physicists; being rather guarded by the spiritual scientists. It contains white, missing of course from the Newtonian; yet it has no indigo; color of the earth, of darkness, of matter. The arrangement of the soul spectrum is thus: violet; yellow; green; white; red; orange; blue.
As can be seen, this planet-color order concurs with the ancient astrological one, with Venus closest to the sun, not Mercury, as modern astronomy would have it. This changeover of Mercury and Venus occurred in the 17th Century; a mischievous (malevolent?) cosmic conjuring trick by the powers that be to discredit the old heliocentric astrologers. Using this spiritual knowledge, rather than a distorted earth science, we see a remarkable ‘coincidence’: the order of the seven colors of the soul spectrum are ranged side-by-side in three complementary pairs. This arrangement came into being long before the concept of the color wheel was born; that which displays the complementary colors of the Newtonian spectrum.
The Newtonian spectrum may not have been heard of, but it was certainly seen – in the soul world at least – by clairvoyants of every age. Moon-violet and Mercury-yellow are complements; then Venus-green (and a leap across Sun-white) is next to Mars-red; and finally, Jupiter-orange sits beside its complement, Saturn-blue.
Not only are the colors complementary (the Sun not included, white being of the Spirit), but the soul statesthey represent are as well. For instance, the quiet, inwardly creative Moon-violet soul is complemented by that of extroverted Mercury-yellow; and of course, love-and-war Venus-green and Mars-red are of course the quintessential Yin Yang couple. Jupiter-orange and Saturn-blue are (as usual) more difficult to define; the essence of Jove is power, or effective activity, of guiding events in a masterful, wisdom-filled way – of Life! All this is expressed through orange. Its complement, Saturn-blue, is anti-life. It is above all contemplative and self-absorptive, often transfixed by a vision of the far future, or locked in nostalgia for the deep past.
Language is a timeless reminder of the relationship between color and the soul. We feel ‘blue’ when in a Saturnian mood; we go ‘green’ with jealousy, expressing a poisoned – Venus – love. WE of course turn red with Mars anger – and a deep purple is evocative of the Moon mood. Now to the ‘seven body fluids’.
And speaking of Moon and mood; the particular body fluid that carries this, and all other shades of lunar activity, is that found in the nervous system; the brain ism after all, the nominal Moon organ.
This is the cerebro-spinal fluid, with a nether equivalent being the uterine fluids – generated as they are by the Moon region. These, unlike most body fluids, are particularly effective due to being still.
The nervous system is that through which the soul or astral body primarily expresses through both animal and man. The more complex the nervous system, the richer the soul life – compare a mosquito with a whale! So, the foundation of the whole soul world, the archetype indeed, is the Moon itself, or by extension, Ancient Moon, birthplace of the soul. The most all-encompassing soul fluids are therefore those of the nervous-sexual systems; especially the nervous These are a pale violet, deepening to grey where they materialize into substance such as the ‘grey matter’ of the brain.
The active element of these magic smell fluids is violet iodine; one intimately connected with selfhood. The lovely Io (from which the word ‘iodine’ derives) of Greek mythology was the eponymous goddess of the Self; or the I – of the individual Ego. Purple is the nominal color of the Ego; its element being the mineral.
Io journeyed across the Sea of Ionia to Egypt, where she became Isis! To do this she was turned into a heifer, the cow being the classic Moon symbol. Io crossed from Europe to Asia at the Bosporus – ‘ox crossing’! She it was who inspired a wholesome fertility in earth and man. She it is who abandons, or has been exiled from, the soul of the person who descends, through salaciousness, to all those mental states collectively knowns as sexual deviation. This of course takes many forms, with even (or especially) psychologists endlessly debating what is and what isn’t deviant sexual behavior.
The sexually sick person is one whose life is dominated by all-pervasive lewd fantasy, or worse still, by actual nefarious sexual practices. This is evidence that in some ways s/he has an iodine-cerebral-ulertine fluid imbalance. This amazing Moon-purple fluid is the first of the seven smell elements. Iodine influences the thyroid gland, its deficiency being responsible for a range of anti-Self diseases, like cretinism. Purple is traditionally the color of kings, described in limeless allegories (like the purple robe of Jesus, ‘King of the Jews’) or the incarnate Ego.
Violet’s complement, the yellow body fluid, is urine; the yellowing agent being golden fluorine. This remarkable Mercury-yellow substance, the second smell element, inspires us tin our extroverted, quicksilver way.
It is literally the flux of life; a purpose for which fluorine – aptly meaning ‘to flow’ – was employed by the old alchemists. Like most body fluids they smell terrible when not actually in the body. In excess, fluorine is a fragmenter.
The capacity of this most metamorphic of all elements to bond with, or to be most reactive with, more compounds than any other is actually creating problems today in stodgy old Saturn’s ozone layer.
Here trillions of chloro fluoro carbons are darting about in the high ether dispensing the infinitely important blue ozone envelope, creating continent-sized holes over the world’s frigid zones.
Clear straw-colored urine (not cloudy or orange), comprising some 90% water, is a sign of Mercury soul health, of vivacity. This can become, with a fluorine imbalance, unhealthy eccentricity; if descending even further, into full-blown schizophrenia even.
This terrifying disease, in all its manifestations, is one of distorted reality. In fact, the emphatic Mercury soul often has a problem with reality-recognition; however, with the schizophrenic (meaning ‘cut mind’), this becomes extreme. Even the ‘pink elephants’ of the drunkard, or the crazed delusions of the malaria sufferer, are essentially brought on by a fluorine imbalance.
The Venus body fluids are in the green color range; these include pus, phlegm, green bile, and so on. They all play, in spite of their unsavory connotations, important roles in the body. This is generically one of sacrifice. Venus is of course the planet of ‘sacrificial love’. When an incursion of hatred, envy or fear occurs, the Venus fluids rush to surround it, usually killing themselves in the process. Pus is really comprised of dead lymphocytes, which have previously isolated some offending bacteria or other micro-organisms. Themselves most often induce by some soul condition of the body’s owner. This cleansing process is a mirroring, in a higher way, of the third smell element, Chlorine, a clear, green (the world means green, as in ‘chlorophyll’) substance used to often for sterilizing purposes, like swimming pools and tow water supplies.
If purple iodine is the archetypal ‘still’ substance, and its complement, yellow fluorine, the most ‘motive’, then chlorine is somewhere in between – sluggish perhaps? Chlorine is the principal negative ion in ocean water, which is the main reason the seaside is such a healthy environment. In concentration, however, it is the most poisonous of substances, being a component of the terrible chlorine poison gas; this military use is a particularly reprehensible betrayal of its ‘loving sacrifice role’. Compounds of chlorine are also highly corrosive, as in hydrochloric acid. When there is a chlorine imbalance, one is in danger of descending into some kind of unhealthy habitual state; an even further descent being into the dark pit of mental obsessions. A teenage girl – the classic Venus type – may have an unhealthy fascination with her split ends, as she one-by-one pulls every hair out of her head!
Eating disorders, like anorexia (‘no appetite’) nervosa, and bulimia (‘ox appetite’!), again afflicting mainly teen girls, can be devastating. Here the obsession is with ‘body perception’; in fact, the whole Western world seems to be obsessed with food and diet to some degree. Thankfully not so those Venus people par excellence, the Polynesians, who regard fat as beautiful; happily stuffing their (Venus) queens with copious quantities of poi till they look like jolly giant whales. Of course, there are many less threatening, but still distressing, obsessions, such as compulsive hand washing and the like. If the Moon illness, sexual deviation, has a relationships dimension, and that of Mercury one related more to the outside world, then the Venus condition is usually of a bodily nature.
All three, however, are conscious, the sufferer most often being well aware of this/her unhealthy state – but curiously still incapable of controlling it.
Not so with the Sun sickness, the complexes.
Here it is subliminal urges that dominate one’s life, especially in the social realm. Whether one’s complex is oedipal, narcissistic, an inferiority complex, whatever, it impacts negatively on the community in which it thrives. The ideal role model of an individual free of complexes is Jesus himself; or on a higher plane, the Christ; aptly the Sun God. The three sacred Sun fluids are detailed in the gospels with great poignancy – sweat, tears and spittle.
Jesus sweated on the Cross, he wept bitter tears, and he healed with spit. These clear (Sun-white) fluids all have a spiritual as well as a soul dimension; one energized by the Sun substance itself, the fourth smell element, pure white phosphorus – aptly meaning ‘light bearer’. The word complex means ‘to braid’; in this Sun indisposition, the soul is inextricably ‘braided’, or woven, into the body matter, hence its psychic mysteries are concealed even from the long-suffering owner The truly sinister – Ahrimanic even – aspect of the many complexes that bedevil humanity is that they’re largely unconscious. One is therefore mentally ill without knowing it.
The complexes are often associated with a morbid condition in one or more of the three ‘water’ fluids, tears, sweat and spit. These include sweaty hands, involuntary weeping, wet 0or over-dry) lips and mouth … and so forth.
Phosphorus is so unstable that it spontaneously combusts in air, requiring it be stored under water. This is an indication of its desire to return to its solar-spirit home. A phosphorus deficiency if often associated with bone disease like rickets; visited upon hapless innocents by a lack of sun exposure.
The three higher, or outer planets, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, express their lofty natures through just one body fluid, the most sublime al all – blood. Blood is the most complex of the body fluids, dividing, in the first instance, into three specific components: hemoglobin, plasma, and platelets. It is the red, oxygenated, especially arterial, iron-rich blood, that which is hemoglobin-dominant, that expresses the Mars soul. The element which, on a more supersensible level, is the psychic generating force is Bromine; the fifth smelling fluid. This dark, blood-red substance, the name meaning ‘bad smell’, carries the soul qualities of courage in man.
Actually, bromine manifests in three colors, according to its different ‘changes of states’. It is an amber gas, a red liquid, and a black solid. Its lower manifestation is aggression, or paranoia, and its mental illness is the phobias, meaning ‘fear’. Perhaps fear can be experienced in three ever-descending levels; amber anxiety, red fear – and black terror! Virtually all the seven elements (certainly not iodine) were unknown before the 17th Century; the ancients perceiving them clairvoyantly, perhaps? Even today one would find it difficult to buy them off the pharmacist shelf.
A bromine imbalance creates, through an anemic soul disposition, irrational fears, whether of cats, heights, open or closed spaced, authority – or the thousands of other perceived threats surrounding us every day. The phobias are, however, true mental illnesses. When the acrophobic owner-builder (me!) steps too far out on the scaffold, he freezes in terror, exhibiting a range of dire physical responses which, if he doesn’t master them, can make of him the victim of the very things he fears – a self-fulfilling illness indeed! With a phobia, it’s usually a case of only because you’re afraid of it does it kill you. One effective fear-neutralizing tactic is to actually us the Mars power itself to ‘speak its name’. In my paralyzing fear on the scaffold, I would strongly apostrophize something to the effect of – “I am not afraid of falling!”
The second blood factor is the orange plasma, the base fluid of the blood itself, that which provides the bulk. This is the Jupiter fluid; one which, again on a higher level, is a manifestation of one of the seven smell elements, the sixth, Arsenic. This word from the Arabic meaning ‘orange’ or ‘gold’ (or Gk. ‘male’ or ‘virile’), is associated with power, the Jupiter-Zeus factor! Arsenic, which refuses to manifest as a liquid, is a very powerful orange substance, one that has been, though a deadly poison, effectively employed in traditional medicine and homeopathy for generations. Its main functions to empower, to fortify the diminishing life forces of the patient. Power, or in its loftier expression, wisdom, is the positive Jupiter property; that which leads to character development. One of the most ringing aphorisms of the 20th Century was Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream”, which included: “I want my children to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”. ‘Wisdom’ indeed!
Jupiter’s nether counterpart, that which becomes evident when there is an arsenic-plasma imbalance, is weakness of character. In the extreme, this becomes moral decadence or psychopathy, one of the most pernicious mental illnesses of all. The psychopath is the person who may appear quite sane, reasonable even, but who is capable of heinous sins; showing no remorse and remaining disturbingly guilt free. This Jupiter-orange, which is so sullied in the psychopathic soul – deadly ‘poisonous’ even! – is also found in the lymph fluids, and in their congealed excretions, like earwax, and the golden crystals that form around some wounds or other skin excretions, like scalp oils. It is these that create the gold-yellow color in the inner surface of the eyelids; a sure sign of certain liver diseases, like hepatitis; the liver of course being the organ of Jupiter. Many psychopaths who have lost their Jupiter moral compass, that which enables wholesome character to develop, seem beyond redemption. They appear to be possessed by a clever, cold-hearted Ahrimanic counter-part; an anti-‘virile’ but virulent being, one that is never happier than when indulging in enterprises that result in pain and conflict. It is a brave would who attempts to heal members of this amoral gallery of rogues; one that includes an unholy assembly of offenders beginning with the office bully, to Judas-like betrayers of various kinds.
The element in the blood that is subject to the contractive forces, that which coagulates, is the Platelets. This fluid, blue in essence, hance found mainly in the ‘blue’ venous blood, is broadly responsible for the ailments associated with hardening – a Saturn disposition – in the circulatory system; diseases like cholesterol build up, arteriosclerosis, and so forth. Obversely, when it is weak, it can lead to hemophilia, a lack of blood coagulation capacity; a disease suffered more often than not by, ironically, bluebloods!
Saturn blue blood carries, in its positive form, the seventh of the sepitismell elements, Ozone. This, the most common of all elements, is a pale-blue liquid or gas; the same that is responsible for the day-sky being blue. AN ozone (aptly meaning ‘sharp aroma’) imbalance can lead from the Elysian heights of a sublime contemplative state to the depths of the, again aptly names, ‘blues’, or melancholia.
As a mental disease, this can even plummet into clinical or manic depression. Here the sufferer often yearns for death; Saturn being the grim guardian of the threshold to the Beyond. The Saturn psychology is the deepest of soul reams; the taciturn owner often being submerged in an abyssal sea of profound contemplation. In fact, all the soul elements above, planet, color, fluid, etc., embody keys for healing the mentally ill. For the Saturn souls we may explore the nature of the color blue to help the depressed and disconcerted.
Or we might consider the ozone factor – or even the venous blood condition. Most important of all, we may attempt to reverse the direction from a former suicidal state by encouraging the sufferer to turn his well-deep concerns to the outer world – to the bright, blue sky even! IN that insightful 1970s film, One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the exposure to light-filled life in the form of a fishing trip on a boat is just what the radical ‘Red’ (Jack Nicholson) did for his critically moribund fellow mental hospital patients.
However, we treat the psychically ill, we must be vigilant that, with such constant contact we don’t ourselves succumb to our own particular planet-based Achilles heel. Whatever we do in our mental health endeavors, we must recognize that Life is the greatest healer of all. In our psychically troubled world, one is which Rudolf Steiner correctly predicted a quantum increase in nervous disorders at the end of the 20th Century, it’s high time life started imitating art!
FROM: Sacred Faces: A Study of the Human Being in Light of Steiner’s Spiritual Science
Four Kingdoms Companion volume to: Sacred Places Minerals & Land; Sacred Fauna Botany; Sacred Fauna Zoology
Important Earthschooling Notes
Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss.
END NOTE
Alan has presented dialogue in his writings in an expressive form, where he tries to capture the accent of the person he was with to give his writing more authenticity and to allow the reader to “be with him” in his experience. In no place in his writings is he using expressive language to make fun of or demean the speaker. So, as a person with a linguistics and anthropology degree I find this enriching and informative to me as the reader. Thus, we have made the decision to leave all expressive writing in its original form.
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