THREE
The True Purpose of Blood
The blood! How much swings forth from this word, how rich and strong are all the impressions it is able to produce, and what a never-ending source of conjecture is contained in this one significant word!
ABD-RU-SHIN, IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: THE GRAIL MESSAGE
It is generally accepted that the task of the blood is to irrigate the tissues of the body so that the cells have a constant supply of oxygen and nutrients. We also understand its role in the removal of metabolic wastes and that it conveys hormonal messages from cell to cell. We know as well that blood plays an important role in the body’s immune system. According to science the purpose of blood is to serve the body faithfully, to always be available to support it in many ways. In order of importance, the body comes first, while the blood, although indispensable, remains subordinate and therefore comes second.
But is this really the case? Is blood subordinate to the body? This question, as we shall see, goes far beyond any simple scientific or intellectual interest; it opens us to new horizons of understanding who we truly are.
The Primacy of Blood
The interdependence between the body and the blood appears to be so close that it is seemingly impossible to determine which one really comes first. However, by examining the facts, we can arrive at a definitive answer to this question.
The first hint comes from the medical procedure known as dialysis. During dialysis arterial blood passes through a specially developed filtering machine that cleanses it of waste products such as urea. The cleansed blood is then led back into the body through a vein. This means of blood cleansing is used for patients whose kidneys are too badly damaged to do it on their own. It is significant that 300 to 400 grams of urea can be filtered out during twenty-four hours of dialysis, whereas the presence of only two grams of urea per liter of blood is considered to be toxic. Since our body has only about five to seven liters of blood, one has to ask where the 300 to 400 grams of urea come from. It is obviously not contained in the blood, since the presence of only a very few grams of urea in the blood would be fatal. It turns out that the urea is taken back up by the body, or more accurately, by the tissues, and is only released into the blood during dialysis.
If the body is “sacrificed” in this way, that is, if it has to bear the toxic burden of the excess urea and thereby safeguard the normal composition of the blood, does this not mean that the blood is more important than the body? And in this case couldn’t one say that the body is in service to the blood?
That blood ranks ahead of the body also becomes evident in the opposite situation, that is, when the danger threatening the normal composition of the blood does not come from an excess of a toxic substance from within, as seen in the previous example, but from a deficiency of an external substance that is needed.
Normally, blood contains a certain number of alkaline substances (calcium, sodium, magnesium, etc.) that it uses to neutralize or buffer acids that threaten its normal pH, or its degree of acidity. When the level of acid is too high and remains so, these alkaline minerals are used up and another defense mechanism comes into play, as alkaline minerals are drawn from various tissues of the body such as the bones, nails, skin, or hair follicles, in order to restore the normal pH of the blood.
This defense mechanism is important because if the pH of the blood varies too far from its ideal value, the body can no longer function properly. It becomes ill and shows signs of disturbed consciousness. If the organism needs to continually resort to this defense mechanism, there is a risk that the body can become dangerously demineralized. And if the cause of the imbalance in pH is not soon corrected, the continued extraction of alkaline minerals robs the body of minerals necessary for its health, and it suffers severe consequences: the bones decalcify and become porous, the teeth develop cavities, become brittle, and fall out, and the skin becomes dry and cracked. Here again, the primacy of the blood is clearly illustrated, in that the body literally sacrifices itself for it. To maintain the normal content of alkaline minerals in the blood, minerals are drawn from tissues and organs, even if these tissues and organs are seriously harmed in the process.
These two examples are neither unique nor unusual. The same defense mechanisms occur with waste products other than urea and with nutrients other than alkaline minerals. It is well known from the study of physiology that the body is constantly working to provide the blood with an ideal level of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other constituents, by absorbing them from the digestive system or, if the diet does not supply them, from the body’s own tissues. The body may then become seriously ill just to save the blood.
Therefore, contrary to what is commonly believed, the blood is not secondary to the body, but rather, the body is in service to the blood, and with the help of all the resources of its organs, it stays on guard to maintain the ideal composition of the blood.
Without blood, the body can do nothing; it dies. The term lifeblood is defined by Webster’s as “blood regarded as the seat of vitality; a vital or life-giving force or component.” This definition contains much wisdom. This connection between blood and life itself is the reason for the many other striking expressions found in different languages having to do with the blood. As long as it is flowing through our veins, life flows within us. If a vessel bursts and blood gushes out, it is said that life itself departs, that the person’s “life is flowing out” of him.
“Blood is a very special juice,” said Goethe. Actually, it is a sacred juice. The chants and songs and rituals of traditional peoples that honor blood acknowledge that it is uppermost in importance. We encounter tales of blood in Homer’s Odyssey (Book XI), “As soon as he had tasted the blood he knew me, and weeping bitterly stretched out his arms to wards me to embrace me,” as well as in the Book of Exodus, “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt” (12:13). “And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words” (24:8). If blood was subordinate to the body, there would be more odes to the primacy of the body, not the blood.
Yet some might say that to assign primacy to the blood contradicts the science of physiology, which states that it is the body that produces the blood. This means that the secondary or subordinate body produces the primary or superior blood. How could that be possible? One might be tempted to say, as French writer Paul Valéry says, that the one is equally as important as the other: “The only work of the body is to maintain the blood . . . But blood itself has no other job than to give the body which generated it whatever it needs in order to function. The body produces the blood, which produces the body, which produces the blood.”1 But this way of looking at it does not really further our understanding and just locks us into a pointless chicken-or-egg cycle.
Blood’s Relationship to Spirit
The examples provided above show what happens in extreme situations, when the organism as a whole, body and blood, is threatened: the body is sacrificed to save the integrity of the blood. It may therefore be logically concluded that the blood is the more important of the two, and the body exists to support the blood. But this leads to a fundamental question: If the body exists for the blood, then what is the purpose of the blood? If the blood really is more important than the body, then whatever the blood exists for must be even more important than the blood itself. But what exactly is that?
To answer this question, we turn once again to The Grail Message, whose spiritual approach to this subject provides a metaphysical (beyond the physical) overview, something that science, being restricted to the gross physical, cannot provide. The main purpose of human blood, says Abd-ru-shin, is to “form the bridge for the activity of the spirit on earth, i.e., in the World of Gross Matter! This sounds so simple, and yet it holds the key to all knowledge about the human blood.”2
The raison d’être of the blood is therefore to serve the spirit. The blood has to be present to form the bridge for the spirit to incarnate into the physical body. Without the blood the spirit would not be able to incarnate or to remain incarnate during its sojourn on Earth. The spirit is therefore not connected directly with the body; it is more specifically connected to the blood, and only through the blood does it then connect to the body.
Given this perspective one can understand why the body works so devotedly on behalf of the blood and even sacrifices itself for it. In other words: no blood = no bridge = no life. Furthermore, if the body lives, it is not because of the blood; the body lives because of the spirit, “the only truly living part in man,” says Abd-ru-shin, by means of its connection to spirit through the blood.
The Radiating Bridge
Though as we have demonstrated it is primarily a liaison to the spirit, the blood, like the body itself, is nevertheless material in nature and is therefore not of the same composition as the spirit. To build a bridge between the two realms, material and spiritual, there has to be an additional factor present, and this factor is the radiation of the blood. “The radiation of the blood,” asserts Abd-ru-shin, “is therefore in reality the actual bridge for the activity of the soul, and then only if this blood is of a very particular composition suitable for the soul concerned.”3
Let’s go to the dictionary definition of radiation. Webster’s says it is “the action or process of radiating; the process of emitting radiant energy in the form of waves or particles; the combined processes of emission, transmission, and absorption of radiant energy.”
Like everything material, blood radiates; it sends out invisible radiation that spreads out like waves. These waves are of a different composition than the blood itself; they are ethereal or energetic in nature. Although not exactly the same, they more closely resemble the composition of the astral body, which, apart from the physical body, is the densest of the cloaks enveloping the spirit. The astral body itself also radiates, and the coarsest of these radiations emanating from it combine with the finest radiations emanating from the blood. These two radiating energies join to forma bridge for the spirit. There is not, therefore, a direct, physical, tangible connection between the astral body and the physical body, but rather a finer bond, a radiating bridge that connects the astral body and the blood flowing within the physical body. This bridge is similar to the force that brings two magnets together. The connection between the two magnets is not visible, but the bond is nevertheless very strong.
These radiating energies not only serve the role of connecting the spirit with the body, they are also a means of communication between the two. Information received by the five senses of the physical body is collected in the brain, and then after processing and refinement is transmitted to the spirit over the radiation bridge. In the opposite direction, the will of the spirit, that is, the kind of response it chooses to make to the information it is given, is transmitted over the same radiation bridge to the physical brain, which then concerns itself with carrying out the desired activity in the plane of gross matter.
It is important that the radiation bridge is maintained in good condition so that the two-way flow of information works well. If not, it would be like a person who cannot hear a radio program clearly because the radio is not tuned to the same wavelength or frequency as the transmitting station. The result is a confused, inaudible transmission. This may be relatively unimportant in the case of someone listening to a radio program, but it is an absolute catastrophe for communication between the spirit and the brain—in other words the communication between our deepest and true self and our everyday consciousness.
To fully experience life on Earth, our spirit absolutely needs a strong and healthy blood radiation. The blood radiation must resonate with the vibrations coming from its earthly surroundings, and at the same time it must provide a reliable mechanism through which the spirit can fully express itself and experience the world of matter. And the quality of the blood radiation, as stated in The Grail Message, depends absolutely on the composition of the blood. Any change in composition brings about a change in the blood radiation and thereby a change in the spirit-body connection. As long as the body works diligently to maintain an ideal blood composition, it will be able to provide the cells with a constant supply of necessary nutrients, but more importantly it will be able to maintain the radiation bridge in the best possible condition at all times.
Every bridge, of whatever kind, has at least two points of support, one on each end. It is exactly the same here. The blood radiation bridge depends on two factors or two anchor points: the radiation of the blood and the radiation emanating from the spirit.
A Short History of Blood
As the nature of any form of radiation depends on the nature of the object from which it originates (i.e., its source), it follows that every individual spirit has its own unique radiation. Indeed we are all unique, and we differ in a multitude of ways: our character traits, our qualities and our shortcomings, our abilities either latent or expressed, and so on. And just as every spirit radiates in a unique way, it needs a distinctive blood radiation that is appropriate for it and that matches the characteristics of its own radiation. But a distinctive blood radiation also implies a distinctive blood composition. It is therefore only logical that we should each have a different blood composition.
Does this information, which rests on spiritual understanding, conflict in any way with the facts? Can it be verified by the findings of physiology? To answer this question, we first have to look at the history of discoveries concerning the blood and its composition.
Knowledge about the blood was absent for a very long time. For Hippocrates, in the fourth century BCE, the veins contained nothing but air. For the second-century Greek doctor Galen, the arteries as well as the veins contained blood but it did not circulate; it had, rather, a slow reciprocating motion. One has to go forward another 1,500 years until an English doctor, William Harvey, discovered in 1623 that blood circulates and that this circulation takes place from the heart to the organs and from the organs back to the heart, which acts as a pump.
In the distant past, knowledge about the composition of blood progressed only barely. The existence of red blood cells was not discovered until the seventeenth century, and the other principal components of blood, white blood cells and platelets, was only discovered in the nineteenth century. Despite the limited knowledge of the actual composition of blood, its importance has been recognized from earliest times. But throughout the ages until relatively recently, people could only dream about replacing lost or diseased blood with new blood.
Before the first attempts at blood transfusion, patients drank fresh blood from sacrificed or slaughtered animals to try to improve or replace their own blood. At different times blood was dried and added as a powder to various foods, such as sausages, biscuits, bread, or sauces. Powdered animal blood was an ingredient in pharmaceutical products and was also used in medicinal baths. The first known attempts at blood transfusions took place in the seventeenth century. Animal blood was transfused into humans, but since animal blood is not the same as human blood, these transfusions ended in failure—the death of the patient—with the result that such practices came to a swift end.
The practice of blood transfusion resumed in the nineteenth century. This time transfusions were undertaken directly from one person’s arm to another person, to avoid the problem of blood clotting, a problem that had not yet been resolved at that time. The blood of the donor flowed directly into the vein of the recipient by way of a tube connecting the two circulatory systems. Sometimes the vein of the donor was actually sewn to that of the recipient. And although human blood was used this time, numerous fatalities occurred, as one can well imagine. The blood of the donor was not always compatible with that of the recipient. Investigations into the cause of these failures led to the discovery that despite the apparent similarity in blood composition from one person to the next, everyone’s blood is different and unique. The content of red cells, platelets, and so on might be the same, but the characteristics were different.
The first of these differences was discovered in the year 1900 by the Viennese doctor Karl Landsteiner. He noted four different types of red blood cells, which he divided into four groups: A, B, AB, and O. With this the modern conception of four human blood types was discovered, and the first step had been taken toward recognizing the individuality of a person’s blood.
Transfusions that respected the laws of compatibility between the blood types had a high rate of success, but despite this knowledge there were deaths due to blood transfusions. The number of deaths declined, however, beginning in 1940, when Landsteiner discovered an additional property of blood, the Rhesus factor, or Rh factor, which permitted an even greater personalization of blood for transfusions. Later on, other blood groups were discovered (for instance the Kell, Duffy, and Kidd systems), leading to further decreases in the number of transfusion deaths.
The year 1952 saw a significant new step forward toward the further differentiation of blood types. The French scientist Jean Dausset discovered the existence of new markers on the membranes of white blood cells, the human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, system. Later on, other markers were discovered on blood platelets—in the serum, on the immune globulins and proteins, and even on certain enzymes of blood cells.
The more research on blood progressed, the more ways to determine the differences between the various kinds of blood entered the knowledgebase. As of this writing more than thirty systems of markers have been recognized, permitting an almost infinite number of possible combinations. Still, the chances of finding a biological double are at best a billion to one.
With the current state of knowledge, science has confirmed that everyone’s blood is completely unique. Its composition is always different from one person to another. This fact confirms the spiritual understanding, as revealed in The Grail Message, that the blood radiation is different from one person to the next because it must be distinctly appropriate to the soul in question in order to serve as a bridge for its activity.