Carbon
…’There has been a lot of fruitless speculation about the Philosopher’s stone, but when the alchemists of old and such people talked about it, what they meant was carbon in all its different manifestations. They kept its identity so secret only because if they hadn’t, anyone and everyone could have possessed the philosopher’s Stone. It was in fact carbon.
… In fact, carbon is the carrier of all of nature’s formative processes. No matter what is being formed, be it the relatively short-lived form of a plant or the constantly changing figure of an animal, carbon is at work as the great sculptor…
…For we are humans rather than plants precisely because by excreting the carbon as carbon dioxide, we can immediately destroy the forms that arise within us…’
Dr R Steiner’s book ‘Agriculture’, lecture 3. Para’s 6, 7 and 8.
Oxygen
…’As soon as it (oxygen) gets inside us through our breathing, it is allowed to become alive again and promptly does so. The oxygen circulating inside us is not the same as the oxygen that surrounds us on the outside. Inside us oxygen is alive, and it becomes alive as soon as it leaves the atmosphere to enter the soil. Although it is less alive there than it is inside human beings and animals, it is alive nonetheless…’
Same lecture Para 14.
…’ Everywhere in nature the etheric oxygen principle has to be able to find its way to the spiritual carbon principle…’
Same lecture Para 16.