Rudolf Steiner on Coffee

see Nutrition and Stimulants by Steiner for more

Coffee supports logical thinking, but doesn’t make one a logical thinker by itself. Drinking too much coffee leads to hysteria in people who don’t think much.
Trained insight perceives that everything in the activity of our nerves that has to do with logical consistency and drawing conclusions is strengthened by coffee.

Tea contains tannins and oils that are purifying for the head. Rudolf Steiner said of tea that it “impels the liberated thinking into the fantastic, the unsolid, the fluctuating,” and that tea is “the drink of diplomats, who need to be witty, scintillating and sometimes superficial.”

It is because in the black coffee there is what is called caffeine. This is a substance which contains much nitrogen. Nitrogen is contained in the air. We get it all the time. We breathe in a certain amount of oxygen and nitrogen. A person who has to dissolve brain sand needs a force which is especially found in nitrogen. From the nitrogen we get the strength to dissolve the brain sand.

More:
"Some foods have a specific effect of their own on the organism. Coffee is an example. The effect of coffee becomes manifest through its influence on the astral body. Through caffeine and the after-effects of coffee, our nervous systems automatically perform functions that we otherwise would have to produce through inner strength. It should not be claimed, however, that it is beneficial under all circumstances for a man always to act independently out of his astral body. Men are beings who are not dependent on themselves alone. Rather are they placed within the whole of life."

"Coffee is also a product of the plant kingdom that externally has raised the specific plant process up a stage. Consequently, coffee can take over a certain task of man. Trained insight perceives that everything in the activity of our nerves that has to do with logical consistency and drawing conclusions is strengthened by coffee. Thus, we can let coffee take over in making logical connections and in sticking to one thought, but this, of course, is in exchange for a weakening of our specific inner forces. What I mean can be seen in the tendency of gossips at a coffee break to cling to a subject until it is completely exhausted. This is not only a joke. It also demonstrates the effects of coffee."

"To a certain extent, too, both coffee and tea contain an acid of the kind that will help to expel the injurious agent from the astral body. Strong coffee and really good tea also have a counteracting effect upon plant poisons. We can see now that to drink black coffee with our meals is by no means a bad thing to do. Plants always contain poison in tiny quantities and when we drink black coffee we drive out of the astral body the injurious effects caused by the encroachment of the ether body. And this drinking of black coffee really means that every time we have introduced into the body something that makes it a little unhealthy, we get rid of what was contained in the food and has made too much headway into the astral body."

"The process such exercises bring about at soul level, in your thinking activity, is brought about by a particular substance in the digestive process, and that is coffee. This is no wild assumption, it is a fact that can be proved. What you do to your stomach with coffee is the same as you do to your thinking with practical exercises in logic. If you take coffee, you encourage logical consistency in your thinking. And if it is said that taking coffee enhances the activity which is needed to strengthen one’s thinking, this may well be true. But coffee only encourages consistency in one’s thinking in a way that shows dependence; it is acting as if under compulsion. You feel a certain lack of independence in you, something like an influence coming from outside. Someone who wants to be consistent in his thinking but also to remain dependent, may drink a lot of coffee. But if he wants to be independent in his thinking, he must free himself from the very things that act on his lower nature; he must develop powers in himself that come from the soul. He will then also find that his stomach functions properly again, or continues to function properly, after the exercises in question."

(Tea is pisces, coffee is virgo)
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA145/English/RSPC1945/19130321p02.html
That is the specific action of coffee. When coffee is taken, the physical body and the etheric body are felt as differentiated, but in such a way that the physical body — especially in its qualities of form — seems under the influence of coffee to radiate into the etheric body, like a sort of solid basis for what is then experienced through the latter. Truly this ought not to be considered as an agitation for the use of coffee, for it rests upon a physical basis; a person relying too much on the use of this substance would become a completely dependent being; we are only concerned with describing the influence of this food or stimulant. But as logical, consecutive thinking depends very much upon the structure and form of the physical body, so through the peculiar action of coffee, which, as it were, gives a sharper emphasis to the physical structure, logical accuracy is assisted physically. By drinking coffee logical accuracy, the arrangement of facts in logical sequence is promoted by physical means. And it can be said that even though there may be healthy doubts about drinking much coffee, yet for those who wish to ascend to the higher regions of spiritual life, it is not amiss; it may be very good, occasionally, to obtain logical accuracy by means of coffee. We might say that it seems quite natural for one whose profession necessitates a good deal of writing, and who cannot readily find the logical sequence from one sentence to another, and has to get it all out of his pen, to make use of the stimulus of coffee. This seems quite comprehensible to one who understands how to observe these things in their secret occult foundations. Though such a drink may be necessary for us for a time as citizens of the earth, according to personal and individual conditions, it must also be emphasised that the use of coffee, with all its faults, can contribute a great deal towards the acquisition of stability. Not that it is to be commended as a means of developing stability, but it must be said that it has the power of so doing, and that if, for example, a student's thoughts have a tendency to stray in the wrong direction, we need not take it amiss if he makes himself somewhat more stable by drinking coffee.

It is different in the case of tea. Tea produces a similar effect — viz., a sort of consciousness of difference between the physical nature and the etheric nature; but the structure of the physical body is disconnected in a certain way. The etheric body appears more in its own fluctuating nature. Thought becomes volatile when tea is taken, less fitted to keep to the facts; indeed, fancy is stimulated by it, very often in a way neither sympathetic to nor in conformity with truth or with sound proportion. Hence one may say that it is comprehensible that in gatherings where flashes of thought and the development of sparkling mentality are in question, the stimulus of tea might be preferred; on the other side, it is also comprehensible that when tea-drinking gets the upper hand, it gives rise to a certain indifference to the demands arising through the healthy structure of the physical earthly body. So that dreamy fancy and a certain careless, nonchalant nature, a nature that likes to overlook the demands of the sound external life, is awakened by tea-drinking. And in the case of a soul undergoing a theosophical development we feel tea less suitable, as a beverage, than coffee, since it leads more easily to shallowness. The latter tends to soundness, the former more to charlatanry, although this word applied to these things is much too severe.

"The right time to drink tea is during the taking of food because it actually works more strongly then and takes the astral body in hand. If tea is drunk during a meal it mingles with the digestive process and promotes digestion in that it frees the astral body which is occupied with the digestion. But if tea is drunk some time after a meal, it goes directly to the astral body and makes it too lively, too forceful."

"You will be able to counter injurious effects of antimony in yourself by the methods instinctively employed by people when they want to keep their own circulatory and rhythmic processes regular. They drink coffee, through which the rhythmic processes are made even and harmonious. Please note that I am stating a fact; I make no recommendation here, for it may be very harmful in other ways, to relieve the ego of the task of regulating these human rhythms. If man is not strong enough in his soul to regulate his rhythmic processes, then coffee can bring about a certain harmony. And so in cases of antimonial poisoning coffee acts in some degree an antidote, restoring the rhythms between the working of the inner organic forces and their surrounding. For there is a regular interplay through rhythm. Indeed the real reason for drinking coffee, is to establish a continuous regulation of rhythm between our internal organs and what is happening in their vicinity to the food-stuffs we have consumed."