D00.003 - Systemic aspects of the study process

This is a Discussion topic page, to capture and share notes in support of an online discussion on the broad subject.

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Introduction

Problem statement:

How to get out of our intellectual thinking only, and rise to include the feeling and willing aspects of our soul .. as a way towards higher imaginative insight?

Or also: what processes can we follow in our study and group work, so as induce, or warrant, Active soul participation .. rather than just reading of doing more freeform study without clear process?

Considerations

1/ Just as the world culture the last century, the anthroposophical movement has 'intellectualized' strongly.

• See eg Communicating over spiritual science#Adelheid Petersen

2/ Spiritual science by nature however is not like intellectual information knowledge of the physical world, as in contemporary mineral science.

• wortwhile reading: Relationship between mineral and spiritual science#1913-05-01-GA152

Elements or building blocks on the table to discuss a solution approach

This discussion considers the following elements in the context of what is called 'developing imaginative insight'.

• spiritual science is about the higher worlds above the physical, and hence are to be characterized in the world of ideas. In practice this means, multiple perspectives we call on this site 'aspects' (like different viewing points, shedding light on different characteristics)
  • Rudolf Steiner's GA work and lectures always contain multiple perspectives and angles on any topic, it is always related to and linked into various contexts
  • another technique used, it to set off from a different language or story, examples are:
    • the 'language' of myths and legends
      • see Ancient history of myths and legends and the idea of Evolution Module 3 - Integrating traditions
    • the use of graphical forms, non-linear and non-textual: this starts with simple illustrations (see Blackboard Drawings) but is developed at a different level with contemplation of symbols (as in rosecrucian techniques) or artwork.
  • furthermore, as explicitly stated by Rudolf Steiner, the creation of logical schemas, must read: Notes on the study process#1915-01-09-GA161
• use of the human mind and soul to not just assimilate but also integrate aspects offered, and thereby 'rise above' to a meta-level of understanding, this is done by contemplation and meditation.
  • one can call this thinking in pictures or images, as one leaves behind now, in one's mind, any literal or textual descriptions and is free to paint assemble ponder with ideas. Must read: Study process and developing imaginations#1911-10-31-GA132

Organic or heart thinking

• for an introductory overview, see FMC00.617 (and FMC00.617A) and 1910-03-30-GA119
• 'heart thinking' (also called 'organic thinking' or the 'new thinking'), as developed by George O'Neil, Florin Lowndes, and Mark Riccio, see more info in the 'Further Reading' section below
  • Rudolf Steiner made numerous statements to the fact that 'if only people would read the books like they were intented' but seemingly nobody asked details about what was meant. Especially this was said referring to the Philosophy of Freedom (PoF) (ao 1921-04-29-GA204) George O'Neil investigated this and 'discovered' how the answer was encoded in the structure of PoF, and from there came to interesting further findings.
  • terminology used by Rudolf Steiner
    • heart thinking (1910-03-29-GA119)
    • formative (or Goethean) thinking (1919-01-01-GA187)
    • new thinking, using the etheric body (1919-06-12-GA193)
    • living thinking (1922-09-30-GA216, 1922-10-07-GA217)
    • " living sentences .. germinate during meditation .. and sprouts of knowledge grow from them and much higher content that will come from these meditative sentences" (Seven secrets#1904-12-24 letter Rudolf Steiner to Gunther Wagner)
    • see also:
      • "Hearts are beginning to have Thoughts" (1925-GA026)
      • The human heart#2000 - Ruth Haertl and The human heart#1915-05-01-GA161
      • https://en.anthro.wiki/Heart_thinking
  • for an explanation, see Thinking Feeling Willing#1917-10-08-GA177 and Schema FMC00.488 on that same topic page.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.395 is an old drawing that makes the link between available materials (see also Schema FMC00.040 on Navigating anthroposophical resources, and the study process in the mind and soul of the earnest student of spiritual science, and techniques to rise above intellectual thinking.

Schema FMC00.585: shows a few illustrations to show the organic structure that was discovered by George O'Neil in Rudolf Steiner's books, taken from Mark Riccio's book 'The logik of the heart' (2016). As described in the book, Rudolf Steiner composed his books, chapters and sentences in organic forms resembling musical notation. Implicit are the four organic laws of metamorphosis: rhythm, enhancement, polarity and inversion. The work done by George O'Neil and his students Florin Lowndes and Mark Riccio (and their work groups) has shown that practicing this study technique can transform one's faculty of thinking, exactly as Rudolf Steiner had pointed out about the effect his work 'Philosophy of Freedom' could have. Quoting from the book: "At some point one sees the whole contents as an idea in the mind's eye as a living-painting-form." and " O'Neil suggest that at some point you can see through the text content, colors and forms, and perceive the thought beings behind a chapter. "

This appears to be one of anthroposophy's well-kept secrets, though Rudolf Steiner referred to it as "heart thinking" (1910-03-29-GA119), "living thinking" (1922-09-30-GA216, 1922-10-07-GA217) or "formative (or Goethean) thinking" (1919-01-01-GA187), "thinking, using the etheric body" (1919-06-12-GA193).

Schema FMC00.617: shows the progression of the faculties of the human 'I' along the evolution of Earth and Man's bodily principles and structural make up. The current Postatlantean epoch is characterized by the faculty of thinking as part of contemporary waking consciousness. However this intellectual logic or 'head thinking' with the human brain is slowly evolving, and in the future Man will develop 'heart thinking' that will transform the faculty of memory - see stages of clairvoyance. This essence of 1910-03-30-GA119 is complemented with various quotes from other lectures below.

Schema FMC00.617A: is a simplified reduced version of Schema FMC00.617, positioning the future evolution towards so-called heart-thinking with the future clairvoyant consciousness and transformed faculty of memory, versus the contemporary brain or head-thinking with current waking consciousness.

This schema positioning and lecture is central to and connects to various perspectives covered on multiple topic pages, such as: Christ in the etheric, Past life memories, Stages of clairvoyance, Development of the chakras, and the development of the future faculty of memory, and the Transition between 4th and 14th century, the Sixth epoch, and Future Jupiter.

Lecture coverage and references

1907-02-22-GA097

Study is not ordinary learning: rather, one must realize that there is a kind of thinking possible for us that is still a fluid, real thinking—during which we exclude all the sense perceptions around us.

...

The human being must learn to forget and disregard everything that operates on the senses from the outside, yet without becoming an empty vessel. This is possible if one steeps oneself in a pure, sense-free thought content, such as what is contained in the spiritual researcher's reports, and then muses on what is developed there.

In my writings I have followed this path; I wrote them so that one thought proceeds from another organically, as one part of a living being grows forth from another. . . . Whoever wants to rise higher must read the reports of spiritual science in this way. Whoever does not want to rise higher can read them like an ordinary book.

1910-03-29-GA119

is a full lecture introducing and discussing heart-thinking (as opposed to brain thinking) (read in full, very limited extract only)

For a comparatively long time man will need to experience in deep meditation pictures that are taken from life and speak to the heart, or certain formulae in which great world-secrets are briefly expressed. Then, first of all at the moment of waking, but also when he turns his attention away from the experiences of ordinary waking life, he will notice that something stands before his soul which arises like the inner pictures he has formed for himself but is there before him like flowers or stones seen in ordinary consciousness; he has before him actual symbols or emblems which he knows he has not himself created. During the period of preparation, and through the care he exercises in building up his symbols, he learns to distinguish between illusory and true pictures. A man who prepares himself conscientiously and above all has learned to eliminate his own personal opinions, wishes, desires and passions from his higher life, who has trained himself not to regard a thing as true simply because it pleases him but to exclude his own opinion — such a man can immediately distinguish between a symbol or picture that is true and one that is false.

An activity now begins of which it is important to take account in connection with distinguishing between true and false pictures. It can only be called thinking of the heart. This is something that comes about in the course of the development of which we spoke yesterday. In ordinary life we have the feeling that we think with the head. That of course is a pictorial expression, for we actually think with the spiritual organs underlying the brain; but it is generally accepted that we think with the head. We have a quite different feeling about the thinking that becomes possible when we have made a little progress. The feeling then is as if what had hitherto been localised in the head were now localised in the heart. This does not mean the physical heart but the spiritual organ that develops in the neighbourhood of the heart, the twelve-petalled lotus-flower. This organ becomes a kind of organ of thinking in one who achieves inner development and this thinking of the heart is very different from ordinary thinking. In ordinary thinking everyone knows that reflection is necessary in order to arrive at a particular truth. The mind moves from one concept to another and after logical deliberation and reflection reaches what is called ‘knowledge’.

It is different when we want to recognise the truth in connection with genuine symbols or emblems. They are before us like objects, but the thinking we apply to them cannot be confounded with ordinary brain-thinking.

• Whether they are true or false is directly evident without any reflection being necessary as in the case of ordinary thinking.
• What there is to say about the higher worlds is directly evident. As soon as the pictures are before us we know what we have to say about them to ourselves and to others.

This is the characteristic of heart-thinking.

...

From the moment a man has developed the thinking of the heart, he experiences something that seems like a vision; yet what he experiences is not a vision but the expression of a soul-and-spiritual reality, just as the colour of the rose is its outer manifestation, the expression of its material nature. The seer directs his gaze into the Imaginative world; there he has the impression, let us say, of something blue or violet, or he hears a sound or has a feeling of warmth or cold. He knows through the thinking of the heart that the impression was not a mere vision, a figment of the mind, but that the fleeting blue or violet was the expression of a soul-spiritual reality, just as the red of the rose is the expression of a material reality.

...

When anyone wants to communicate to other human beings what he has experienced through the thinking of the heart, he too must translate it into logical thoughts. But logical thoughts are merely the language in which, in Spiritual Science, the thinking of the heart is communicated. ...

Whatever can be communicated to mankind from the thinking of the heart must be able to be cast into clearly formulated thoughts.

1910-03-30-GA119

We have heard of the number of different standpoints from which it is possible to contemplate our own I from outside as soon as we enter the higher worlds. I should now like to continue describing things more from the inner side, in connection with what was said yesterday about the logic, or thinking, of the heart in contrast to what is known in external life as the logic, or thinking, of the head or of the intellect.

In yesterday's lecture it was made clear that the logic of the heart may be found at two stages in the process of human evolution.

1/ Firstly, it may be found at that stage of development where the thinking of the heart is not yet permeated by the logic of the head and of the intellect. Attention was called to the fact that there are still people today who would prefer not to concern themselves at all with the logic of the intellect. This state of development can no longer be said to exist in the real sense at the present time, for no matter where you were to look among the people of today, you would everywhere find at least a few concepts and ideas born of the intellect. [B]

To find a stage of evolution entirely devoid of intellect we should have to go back a very long way in the evolution of humanity, to a far-off pre-historic stage. From what has been said, therefore, it follows that our present state of development points back to an earlier one when the heart judged out of the sub-consciousness, out of a consciousness not yet permeated with intellect. [A]

Today, this original faculty of the heart is permeated with concepts, with ideas, in brief, with what we call the logic of the intellect.

2/ But bearing in mind what was said yesterday about Man's possibilities of development, we may point forward to a future stage of evolution even now striven for by a few who with their present-day consciousness already have the longing, the urge, as it were to forestall the future.

We can look towards a future humanity when the logic of the heart will again be functioning to the fullest extent, when out of direct feeling Man will behold the truth. [C]

But he will then have assimilated the fruits of the intermediate stage of development, the stage of the logic of the intellect. It may therefore be said that we are now passing through the evolutionary stage of intellectual thinking in order to regain, on a higher level, what had already been attained on a lower, namely, the logic of the heart. Whereas on the lower level it was not illumined by the intellect, on the higher level it will later on be irradiated by what Man has acquired through the logic of the intellect.

Note: this is also explained and illustrated in Schema FMC00.054A

.

continued:

Thus we can conceive of three stages of human evolution:

• [A] one preceding that of our present time,
• [B] one of today, and
• [C] one that will come in the future.

From this we can also perceive what evolution means, namely, that to what has been acquired at an earlier stage something new is added and is to live on into the future.

[clairvoyance]

We can glean still more precise information from the experiences of those who already now have reached what was described yesterday as an attainable state of higher consciousness through which it is possible to look clairvoyantly into the higher worlds. Not only is the faculty of thinking affected by such a transformation but other soul-forces too will assume new forms when the faculty of thinking changes.

When through spiritual-scientific training someone works his way upward to a higher stage of cognition from the logic of the intellect to the logic of the heart, from the thinking of the head to the thinking of the heart, do the other faculties of the soul change too?

Let us elucidate this by taking an example—the example of memory.

[see also: Memory and Thinking Feeling Willing#Memory]

Memory, like thinking, is a faculty of the soul. The character of thinking changes when from being thinking of the head it becomes, at a higher spiritual level, thinking of the heart.

What is there to be said of memory?

In the normal consciousness of everyday life we find that memory works in the following way.

Man has consciousness of what is around him in the immediate present. He sees the things around him, makes his observations, forms his ideas. He can incorporate all this in his consciousness. Then he proceeds from what his soul can experience in the present to something it experienced in the past. Through memory, Man passes out of the present into the past. When he recalls something he experienced yesterday, he is looking backwards in time. Therewith he surveys something that was once in his environment but is so no longer. Anyone who studies memory from this point of view realises that just as our consciousness of the present is connected with the space immediately around us, this memory, this extension of consciousness over the past, is connected with time. For a genuine seeker, however, the nature of this particular activity of consciousness changes completely.

[parenthesis]

Obviously there is no need for the spiritual investigator to apply his higher faculties at every moment of ordinary life; he possesses these faculties but puts them into operation only when he wishes to carry out research in the higher worlds. When he does this, head-thinking becomes heart-thinking and his ordinary memory changes into a different form of soul-activity. But for the experiences of everyday life there is no need for him to be constantly passing into his higher states of consciousness, no need to be continually using and giving evidence of the faculties of soul that have been described. When he returns to the everyday world he has a memory and a faculty of thinking just like those of anyone else. It is therefore the capacity to transpose himself from the normal into a supernormal state of consciousness that the pupil must possess. This should always be kept in mind.

[description]

Now whenever the pupil is in the state of consciousness in which he is investigating the spiritual world through a faculty analogous to that of ordinary memory, what he observes in that world presents itself not in time, but spatially. Memory is completely transformed. Whereas ordinary memory looks back in time in order to recall events of yesterday, when progress in spiritual knowledge has been made the investigator experiences the past as if, standing here, he were looking through the door into the adjacent area. He looks at something that is separated as if by space, as if yesterday's events are separated spatially from those of today. We can therefore say that for the spiritual investigator the events which usually appear to memory one after another in time, now present themselves beside one another (in the spatial sense), and he must as it were move from one event to another, pass from one entity to another.

On thinking over this carefully, you will see that this statement is entirely in accordance with what has previously been said, namely that in the spiritual world we must become one with the beings there. We must not go back along the line of time, for time is transformed into a kind of space; we must pass along this line as if it were a line in space in order to be able to unite with the beings. For the soul-faculty of memory, time changes into space as soon as we enter the spiritual world.

Memory has become an essentially new faculty. We see something belonging to the past as though it were still there in the immediate present; the length of time that has elapsed is estimated according to the distance. The past presents itself to the pupil as something placed side by side in space. When this form of memory has been attained, it is actually a reading of events that have remained. This is reading in the Akasha Chronicle; it is a world in which time has become space. Just as our own world is known as the physical, so the world in which time has become space can be termed the Akasha world. This alters the whole attitude of the true mystic, for what in everyday life is called time, no longer exists in this form in the higher world.

[see topic page: Clairvoyant research of akashic records]

We can recognise from this example how wonderfully things harmonise when viewed from the right standpoint.

What would become of Man in everyday life if he were unable to harmonise his thinking with his memory, if he were to find that his logical thinking contradicted his memory?

Suppose you had before you a document bearing the date of 26th March. That is a perception which you have in your consciousness of the present. But you were there when the recorded event occurred and going back over the days, your memory says to you: “It must have happened a day earlier.” There you have an obvious case where consciousness of the immediate present conflicts with memory. In the physical world such cases will as a rule be easily rectified, but in the spiritual world it is much more difficult. The outer conditions of the physical world of themselves correct such errors. When someone in the street forgets that he must turn left to reach home and takes a turning to the right, the mistake will soon be realised. But in the spiritual world there is no such convenient means for correcting mistakes. There it is necessary to have the inner certainty which will prevent mistakes being made so easily; the most careful preparation must be undergone in order to avoid such mistakes. In that world error might well cost dear; a single mistake might easily lead to infinite trouble. Harmony must prevail between the logic of the heart and the kind of memory that has been described.

The way in which we develop in accordance with the indications of spiritual science itself guarantees this harmony. And here we come to the principle which the pupil must take to heart, namely, that everything external and physical can only be understood if it is regarded as a symbol, an emblem of a super-sensible reality, a spiritual reality.

[heart vs brain, space and time]

For logic of the head we have an instrument in our physical brain. This is known to everyone through ordinary science.

Admittedly we cannot say in the same sense that in our physical heart we have an instrument for the logic of the heart. For that is something far more spiritual than the logic of the head, and the heart is not to the same degree the physical organ for the thinking of the heart as is the brain for the thinking of the head.

Yet the physical heart provides us with an analogy. When the thinking of the heart changes time into space, our whole being has to move about; we have to be involved in a perpetual circulation. Such is the definite experience of anyone who passes from ordinary memory to the higher form of memory possessed by the spiritual investigator.

Whereas in an act of remembrance an ordinary Man looks back to the past, the spiritual investigator has the inner experience that he is actually moving backwards in time in the same way as he otherwise moves in space. And this consciousness expresses itself outwardly in the experiencing of our blood, which must also be in perpetual movement if we are to go on living. In our blood we are involved all the time in the movement from the heart through the body and back, so that what really belongs to the heart is in perpetual movement.

Not so what belongs to the head. The several parts of the brain remain stationary, so

• the brain is in very truth a physical symbol for the consciousness of space;
• the flowing blood, the fluid of the heart is in its circulation an image of the mobility of spiritual consciousness.

Thus every physical phenomenon is a symbol for the corresponding spiritual reality. It is an extremely interesting fact that in our very blood we have an image of certain faculties of the spiritual investigator and also of the worlds in which he moves.

[clairvoyance]

In rising to a higher level of consciousness we actually gaze into a quite different kind of space, one that is unknown to ordinary experience, one that would come into being if the flow of time were, so to speak, constantly to congeal, to coagulate.

Think of it in this way. If you wanted to have before you what you experienced yesterday, one moment of yesterday would have to be as if fixed; and the immediately present moment—which has even now already passed—would have to be held as if in a snapshot, and then all these snapshots would have to be placed side by side. That will give you an inkling of what the spiritual investigator sees livingly before him. He has before him not ordinary space but space of an altogether different character from physical space, as if the world were perpetually being photographed and the photographs placed side by side. This other kind of space is essentially and fundamentally different from the space known to man in everyday life. In this latter space it is impossible to discern a picture of the spiritual space just referred to. For if one tries to draw some line in physical space, this can only be done where lines already exist. But what the spiritual investigator traverses in spiritual space cannot be inscribed at all, for there time becomes space; we pass from one point to another.

Ordinary consciousness is enclosed within space and cannot emerge from it. But the spiritual investigator does emerge from it. He knows how he has to move to events which may have taken place four or five days previously. He can draw a line along which he moves from today to five days ago. Such a line cannot be traced in ordinary space. So we arrive at a concept of space which corresponds with the memory of the spiritual investigator and in which lines may be drawn which do not belong to ordinary space. This is something that may be called Space with a new dimension, a fourth dimension. The space which the investigator thus enters has one more dimension than is ever found in ordinary space. We must therefore say that the spiritual investigator emerges from three-dimensional space the moment his higher memory begins to operate. Such a concept of four-dimensional space is not only thinkable, but there is actually a higher faculty—the higher memory—for which this four-dimensional space is absolutely real.

In a certain respect everything connected with evolution has its reverse side, and this applies also to the development of the faculty of soul just referred to—the faculty of memory. The goal before anyone who receives instruction with a view to developing consciousness of the higher worlds is to attain this new, spiritual ‘space-memory’ that is possessed by the spiritual investigator.

[transition effects - clouding and deteriorating memory]

In the course of such development it may happen that you hear people who do not understand what is happening, complaining: ‘I used to have an excellent memory, but now it has deteriorated.’ Those who really understand will not complain but will realise that this is quite natural. It is an actual experience, for it is a fact that during the process of spiritual development the ordinary memory is, at first, impaired.

Anyone who knows this will not let it trouble him; for he knows too that he receives full compensation for the loss when he is close to the point where it might become dangerous. He will have great difficulty if he has to recollect something he experienced yesterday; but he will notice that pictures come before his soul in which experiences of the past are revealed, and this is naturally a much more faithful memory than is otherwise possessed in life. Therefore we may hear such people speak of having suffered a kind of obscuration of the memory and having then acquired a new kind of memory, superior to the ordinary one, for that has one great flaw: it reveals things in a shadowy way and details are lost. But in the memory which presents pictures in space the details appear again. Faithfulness and exactitude of memory increase enormously.

Thus we see arising a new faculty of soul that is not like remembrance in thought of bygone time, but like vision. Between what at present corresponds to this faculty and what it can become a kind of clouding of the faculty in question takes place and then the new faculty begins to operate more and more frequently. This clouding of such a faculty intervenes as a state of the soul between the other two states.

So we have to distinguish three states of soul-faculties:

• first, that of the ordinary memory which may have a certain exactitude; [B]
• secondly, a kind of clouding;
• thirdly, the memory which lights up in a new form. [C]

The state in which such a faculty is revealed at its height is called a “manvantara” of the state in question, and when clouding sets in we speak of a “pralaya”. These are expressions drawn from oriental philosophy. We can therefore speak of a “manvantara” of the memory of ordinary consciousness, of a kind of “pralaya” of this memory of ordinary consciousness, and of a return into the “manvantara” state when the new kind of memory arises.

Reminding ourselves of what has been said about human evolution it may be affirmed that

• in earlier epochs Man already possessed a kind of logic of the heart; [A]
• at the present time he is passing through the stage of logic of the intellect [B] and
• in the future he will regain a logic of the heart in which the logic of the intellect has been absorbed and elaborated. [C]

But in the earlier stage of a logic of the heart there must have been, among Man's other faculties of soul, something similar to what will have to be acquired in the future when logic of the heart arises in a new form. Thus we are not only referred back to an ancient state of the thinking of the heart when intellectual thinking did not yet exist, but also to something, similar to the higher kind of memory described above, only then it was at a lower level; it was a kind of memory that worked in pictures, just as will be the case at the stage to be reached by mankind in the future.

[nature of a primeval Man]

And now we can really form some idea of the nature of a primeval Man. He did not think like a Man of today, for thinking in ideas and concepts was a faculty acquired much later; he had only the logic of the heart, unillumined by intellectual reasoning or scientific thinking in the modern sense. But with that logic of the heart a kind of space-memory was connected: time became space.

Nowadays, if a Man wants to look back into the past, he must exert his memory as far as it reaches. If it does not reach far enough he is obliged to turn to documents and records. You know how the past is investigated today. It is investigated through the study of evidences preserved in traditions, in stone tablets, in fossilised bones or shells or stones whose forms indicate the transformations that have taken place since earlier stages of evolution. All these things are explored in order that in this way we may have a picture of the past.

We are now looking back to an earlier stage of humanity when Man had the past before him as an immediately present reality, as a picture in space. This gives us a clue to an earlier stage of the human soul when man did not need to make investigations into his origin, for he was able actually to behold it. According to the degree of his development he could look far back or less far back into the past and see whence he himself originated. This explains the great reverence with which in ancient times Man looked back into the past and his direct knowledge of the past.

[editor: see also 'Abraham and I are one' and the faculties of the blood in earlier times]

[evolutionary perspective]

Having envisaged these three successive stages of humanity, we must now look rather more closely into the nature of Man if we want to increase our understanding of human evolution. Man was not always as he is today; he has become what he is, gradually and by degrees. He has evolved out of other states, out of other forms of existence, into his present state. In connection with the life of soul we have referred to an earlier state, because it resembles one which Man must attain in the future after having known what we in the present age call the power of head-thinking. Direct transformation from the earlier to the future state would, of course, be inconceivable; the fruits of the present have to be taken into the soul in order to rise to higher stages. Anyone who wants to reach the stage of logic of the heart must have assimilated what can be gained from logic of the intellect, although then, admittedly, it must be forgotten.

No stage of human development can be skipped; every one of them must be traversed. Thus in order that Man's development in the future should be made possible, in order that he should one day be able to approach what stands as an ideal before his soul at the present time, he had first to develop to the present stage.

Before he reaches the stage of logic of the heart, the logic of the head had to be unfolded by means of the organs of the brain and spine. Brain and spine were formed out of the forces that flowed into Man from the World of Reason [editor: higher spirit world, see FMC00.079] ; everything else was kept back. This was possible because Man had succeeded in excluding from the wonderful formation of his brain all the forces of other worlds, admitting only those of the World of Reason. Just as we must now work with the brain as a foundation, so had the work of the World of Reason formerly to be carried out.

The brain as an instrument and the work of the World of Reason presupposes the work of the world immediately below it. We are here looking back upon something that developed under the influence of the World of Spirit [editor: lower spirit world] when as yet the World of Reason was not active at all.

But we look into a future when forces will flow into us from the World of Archetypal Images, or Archetypes [editor: buddhi plane] just as we look back to a past when the foundation corresponding to an earlier stage of development was formed out of the World of Spirit. We shall find this easy to understand if we apply to it all that has been said.

Our brain is formed out of the higher spirit world [World of Reason]. We have found that an earlier logic of the heart preceded the logic of the intellect. The logic of the heart was only made possible through deeds from a spiritual realm. It thereby becomes intelligible that the present human heart was formed at a previous stage. The ordinary, unconscious logic of the heart is much more closely related to the present physical heart than is the higher logic of the heart, which is naturally much more spiritual.

But the ordinary logic of the heart actually has a kind of medium of expression in the physical heart, as intellect or reason has in the brain.

Whenever Man regards a thing as being true, beautiful, good, [editor: see Truth Beauty Good (TBG)] not through dispassionate, intellectual reflection but by a direct approach, a quickened pulse makes him conscious of the heart's assent. The heart actually beats differently in response to the beautiful than in response to the ugly or pernicious. In this original logic of the heart there is something that may be called spontaneous sympathy.

When this logic of the heart which functions in the subconscious becomes more clearly articulate, the heart shows quite plainly by the circulation of the blood that it is an expression of this logic. And a painful experience repeatedly brought before our eyes can influence our bodily nature by way of the heart to the point of causing actual illness. There can be physiological confirmation of this.

Our brain was formed out of the higher spirit world [World of Reason], and our spiritualised heart of the future will be formed out of the buddhi plane [World of Archetypal Images]; as we have heard, our present heart was formed out of the lower spirit world [World of Spirit].

[organs are at different stages of development]

Thus the heart is revealed as an organ indicating the foundation which existed in Man before the organ of thinking was formed. The brain, therefore, could only have been created at a later stage than the heart.

All this gives one a quite different conception of Man's external bodily nature. The several organs are not all equally developed; the brain is a later structure than the heart; the heart is the older organ and had to be elaborated in a certain respect before the brain could develop on that foundation.

But an organ does not cease to evolve when another is in existence. When the brain came into being and proceeded to develop, the heart too continued to evolve. The heart as it now is affords evidence of two transformations, the brain of one only.

We cannot understand the heart by equating it with the brain and regarding it as of equal development, but only by conceiving it as the older organ of the two, as an older ancestor of the brain.

• Anyone who puts the heart on a level with the brain is like someone who puts a person of forty by the side of a fifteen-year-old and says: These two are standing side by side, so I will study them together and form an idea of what they are simply by looking at them beside each other. That would be sheer stupidity, for in order to understand them individually the period of their development must be taken into account. To understand the one, the life-period of 15 years must be taken as a basic factor, and the life-period of 40 years in the case of the other. Perhaps the boy of 15 is the son of the 40-year-old father. It is an absurdity not to take this factor into account, yet modern anatomy has fallen into the trap. It does not know that different organs must be differently viewed because they are at different stages of development. As long as we are without a science of anatomy which studies the various organs not merely in spatial juxtaposition but according to their value as older or younger formations, we shall not understand much about the true nature of Man. Spiritual science must supply the key for understanding what is shown to us by ordinary science, if true knowledge is to be attained.

Anyone who is undergoing genuine development attains nothing at all of importance through ordinary ratiocinative thinking, for it is not possible from outside to detect which organ is older or which younger; success can be achieved only by one who enters the spiritual worlds and learns how to distinguish things there. When looking back with his space-memory he need not go so very far to find the beginnings of the brain; but to find the origin of the heart be must go much farther back. The human physical organism can be understood only when explained by spiritual science.

[clouding or darkening]

Now we will remind ourselves of what has been said, namely that between the soul-faculty belonging to normal consciousness, for example the faculty of memory which points back to an earlier memory, and the new faculty of space-memory—between these two soul-faculties there lies a kind of darkening.

The spiritual investigator finds something corresponding to this darkening, to the pralaya-state after the manvantara-state, in the process of evolution as a whole. Let us, for example, picture the heart and the brain of a Man as they co-exist today in the physical body; for a while they have developed side by side, but at an earlier stage there was not much connection between them.

We can therefore distinguish a state of Man when the highest forces flowing into his being were those of the World of Spirit, and then a state when the forces of the World of Reason also flow into him. Between the two states lies a pralaya, when human development is extinguished and then passes into a new phase.

So we look back from present-day Man, who has both heart and brain, to one who had a heart only, not yet a brain, and between the two is the state of pralaya.

[Man's bodily structure]

When some day in the future the higher state is reached, the higher state which is attained in spirit today by the clairvoyant investigator, we can understand that it will also express itself in the body, that Man will also have a quite different external appearance. The clairvoyant investigator today is not yet able to alter his bodily constitution. If a God descends he has to appear in a human body of the present age. What we have to attain through spiritual development has to be attained in the invisible members of our being; but in a future state what is attained spiritually will be expressed physically as well.

This means that we must picture a Man of the future who will have a quite different external appearance; his brain and heart will have been completely transformed and he will have developed a new organ. Just as the brain now lies above the heart, the transformed heart of the future will have a new position in relation to the brain. But between these two states there will again be a Pralaya. Man's present existence must be obliterated physically and a new state must follow.

There are therefore three successive states of humanity.

• (1) Man as heart-Man;
• (2) Present-day Man when everything is related to the brain and its activity;
• (3) Man of the future, of whose nature we can have a faint inkling.

When we contemplate Man as he is today, we are bound to say that in his present form he can be imagined only on the Earth. Anyone who contemplates Man in his connection with the whole of Earth-existence will say: Man is as the Earth is, for he is connected with the forces of the Earth; in his body the substances can be combined in no other way than they actually are.

Imagine the Earth only slightly altered, and Man in his present form simply could not live on it. The air must be constituted exactly as it is and substances combined as they are. We cannot picture present-day Man as a being with a physical body without picturing the whole Earth as it is. If, therefore, reference is made to an earlier stage of Man, to the earlier heart-Man, we must picture him connected with a different planetary condition; and if at some time in the future Man acquires the faculties which the spiritual investigator of today already possesses, we must again picture him on a different planet, not on our Earth as it is at present. If we are to find our bearings by means of a kind of Ariadne-thread, we must picture to ourselves that just as Man has evolved from an earlier state, so the whole Earth has evolved with him; that it too points to an earlier planet out of which it has evolved, to a new state in the future. Between the two lies a period of darkening.

[planetary stages]

The state out of which the Earth has evolved and whence Man derives his earlier form, is the Old Moon-stage of the Earth, and the state into which the Earth will evolve in the future, when man will have a new form, is the Future Jupiter-stage. The Earth has evolved out of an Old Moon planetary stage and will evolve into a Future Jupiter-stage.

Picture to yourselves that such transformations can only take place as a result of all conditions in the human kingdom being changed.

• During the Old Moon-state it was the forces of the World of Spirit that flowed into Man;
• during the Earth-state proper the forces flow from the World of Reason;
• in the Future Jupiter-state the forces of the World of Archetypal Images will stream in.

The influences from spiritual worlds upon these three states are in each case quite different.

...

I have shown you that the structure of Man must be in conformity with the structure of the Earth. Our present Earth is only possible at a certain distance from the Sun and in a definite relationship with the other planets. If anything whatever were to change in the solar system, Man too would be quite different; with the transformation of the Old Moon into our Earth, the whole solar system changed.

So we see that a connecting thread can be found between the transformation of the Microcosm and of the Macrocosm. Beings are active in both cases. When our Earth becomes Future Jupiter the whole solar system will change. The change will be preceded by a kind of darkening; outwardly it appears as if there were a mist or fog in which beings from the realms of spirit are perpetually at work. Before our present solar system came into existence there was an earlier system out of which beings brought forth the present one.

And so we go back and back and back, and finally we come to a condition so different, so utterly unlike that of today that in face of it ordinary questioning ceases to have meaning. We must also learn how to frame our questions differently when we come to consider other states of world-existence.

Why do we ask questions? We ask them because our intellect is constituted in a certain way. But our intellect came into existence only when the brain had been formed. Intellectual questioning therefore loses all sense when applied to states before the intellect itself was there. In the worlds which constituted only the foundation of the intellectual world, intellectual questioning no longer has any meaning. There we must resort to other means of enquiry, other means of cognition. People who see no farther than their noses believe that it is possible to pump the whole world dry with the ordinary kind of questioning. But each single thing must be explored in the way that is appropriate to it. In regard to the worlds that preceded our Earth we can find our bearings only by means of the forces which find expression in the thinking of the heart, in the logic of the heart.

1919-01-01-GA187

The second way of thinking is a totally different kind of mental process, a completely other way of thinking.

In contrast to the dismembering kind, it is a shape-forming manner of thinking. If you look more closely, if you follow what I have tried to indicate in my various books on spiritual science, you will realize that the difference does not lie so much in the content that is imparted — this can be judged from various other viewpoints; but the way of seeing the whole world and of coordinating that knowledge, the entire mode of thought representation, is a different one. This is shape-producing; it gives separate pictures, rounded totalities; it gives contours, and through contours, color. Throughout the entire presentation in the printed books you will be able to see that it has none of the dismembering character that you find in all modern science.

This difference of the “how” (the mode of thinking) must be brought out just as emphatically as the difference of the “what” (the content of subject matter). Thus there exists a formative (gestaltende) way of thinking that has been developed with the especial purpose of leading to the supersensible worlds. If you take the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, where such a path is marked out, you will find that every thought, every idea in it is based on this formative thinking.

This is something essential for the present time. For this formative thinking has a quite definite quality.

• When you dissect with your thinking, like a present-day scientist, you are thinking just the way certain spirits of the ahrimanic world think and you are making it possible for them to enter your soul.
• If on the other hand you exercise creative, formative thinking (gestaltendes Denken), thinking that allows for metamorphosis, I could also say Goethean thinking — represented, for instance, in the shaping of our pillars and capitals; used too in all the books I have tried to give to spiritual science — this thinking is closely bound up with the human being.

Only the beings connected with the normal evolution of mankind can work creatively, sculpturally as a human being works within himself with thinking. This is the amazing thing about it. You can never go astray on a wrong path if through spiritual science you engage in formative thinking. You can never lose yourself in the various spiritual beings who want to gain an influence over you. It is natural for them to permeate your being.

As soon, however, as you practice formative thinking, as soon as you refrain from mere musing or from dissecting, and strive to think in the way modern spiritual science thinks, you retain possession of yourself and cannot then have the feeling of complete emptiness. This is the reason why from the standpoint of spiritual science we are always placing such great emphasis on the Christ Impulse. For the Christ Impulse stands in the direct line of formative thinking.

Even the Gospels cannot be understood if they are simply dismembered. The result of that treatment is shown in modern Protestant theology, which has been pulling them to pieces: the result is that everything has fallen away; absolutely nothing has remained. The lecture cycles on the Gospels follow the opposite path. They build up and shape something so that through these new forms an understanding of the old Gospels is brought about. Actually, what people need today — and this is not exaggerating in the least — is to exercise the spiritual scientific mode of thinking: then those demonic beings who are the accompanying phenomena of the Spirits of Personality on the new incoming wave will not be able to do the people harm. You see how much mankind loses by fighting against the spiritual scientific way of thinking.

1919-06-12-GA193

The old ways of thought, the old ways of regarding world-events, came to full expression in the terrible catastrophe of the world-war. Its infinitely significant warning signs are nothing but a call to re-model our ways of thinking, to try a new way of regarding the world, for the old way can only lead again and again to chaos and confusion. It is time we realised this. It is time we realised that the leading statesmen in 1914 had come to a point at which nothing more could be achieved with the old methods of thought. Because of this they led humanity into misfortune. People must impress this fact strongly upon themselves, or they will not form a strong resolution really to meet the spirit and the life of the spirit in freedom and inwardness of soul.

The lamentable thing about the time in which we are living is that we see things being revealed everywhere which cannot be understood with previous points of view and previous conceptions of life; yet people cling firmly to these old points of view and conceptions of life and simply do not want to come to new modes of conception. The anthroposophic view of the world wanted to prepare mankind for such new modes. Fundamentally, the anthroposophic view of the world had no real opponents except inner comfort and laziness of soul. People cannot rouse themselves to bring the inner forces of their souls to meet the spiritual wave invading our life so powerfully to-day.

I have just said that people are no longer accustomed to use anything but their physical bodies for thinking. It is this that had led to the materialistic view of the world. Now there is one thing that simply must be understood today.

Nature, as studied by natural science today, that science which has achieved so many triumphs, can be understood with the instrument of the physical brain or of the physical body in general. But one cannot understand human life with this instrument of the physical body. We can only understand human life if we can rise to a thinking that is not produced by the physical body alone. It is this thinking that should be cultivated through the anthroposophic view of the world.

Of course people say they do not understand the anthroposophic outlook, what is given in our books or presented in lectures. And we can quite believe them. But what does this mean? It only means that they want to use their physical brains for understanding. They do not want to learn another kind of thinking than that which can lazily find support in the physical brain. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot, of course, be understood with such thinking. It is not that one would have to be clairvoyant in order to understand it. But one must train oneself to a thinking that is not bound to the physical brain. What is to be found in anthroposophic literature and can be acquired with the healthy human understanding — for the healthy human understanding is not bound to the brain — gradually develops a thinking, a feeling and a willing that are adequate to the needs of today. It is a fact that what the present requires of us cannot be understood by the instrument of the physical body; it must be apprehended, through the instrument of the etheric body, i.e., with the body of formative forces underlying the physical body.

...

Behind this lies the fact that men, in accordance with the will on the part of the spiritual world to reveal itself to them, ought to have striven to take seriously certain things which cannot be grasped through the instrumentality of the physical body, but only through “imaginative” forces — just as art itself can only be grasped by “imaginative” forces. Man's physical body is built up like a natural product; it is a work of nature. Man's etheric body is built up like a work of art; it is a real work of plastic art — only, it is in constant motion. And what man receives (for his enjoyment) from understanding a work of art, must be intensified and clarified, must become perception which he takes seriously, i.e., “Imagination,” “Inspiration” and “Intuition.” Man then understands what is willing to reveal itself to him today. For behind present events waits concealed what can only be understood spiritually. One should feel deeply that the spiritual revelation trying to enter our present world can only be grasped through spiritual science itself i.e., through that thinking and feeling, through those inner impulses of will which can be trained by spiritual science and belong to the same region of soul as artistic perceptions — though these are not taken seriously and remain mere mirror-images.

...

This is what man should really consider thoroughly today. The anthroposophic view of the world cannot consist in a number of abstract concepts which we receive, studying them and resting content that we have a different view of the world from that of others. No; our whole thinking and our whole feeling must become different, so that we realise that we must let our life be penetrated by the light of the spirit. Humanity's present misfortunes have come from its refusal to entertain the spiritual — an attitude that has been cultivated to the utmost. The catastrophe of the world-war has, more than any previous event, arisen from external, purely material causes. It has therefore been the most terrible catastrophe of all. Man should learn from it that he was driven into it by his previous thinking, feeling and willing; he will not come out of it — though it will assume other forms — until he boldly determines to undertake the inner transformation of his soul.

...

These things which are being made known today ... [..] are spiritual revelations clothed in external forms. They are what men need; they alone offer men a real basis and a real possibility for learning anew to transform their thinking. It is this that is so necessary for mankind today.

1920-02-08-GA196

If, for example, you were to look at my Outline of Esoteric Science, you could simply read what you find there; you could take up the content that appears on those pages. If you take up the content of that book in such a way that you are able to repeat everything in it from memory, then I would find it far more useful if you were to read a cookbook instead—or, if you did not happen to be a woman, then some sort of treatise on tariff agreements. That would be more useful than read­ing my Outline of Esoteric Science.

The true meaning of this Outline of Esoteric Science only comes through when the particular form of the thoughts therein—which annoys people enough that they have dismissed it as "poorly written"—when the particular manner of writing and thinking in the book works instructively on the whole constitution of your soul; when the "how" and not the "what" gives form to the soul.

If you read An Outline of Esoteric Science (it could also be another book) and allow it to affect you in this way, you will find that your inner sight actually grows much stronger, such that it eventually develops into true knowledge of the human being. Something entirely different than a simple memorization of the information in a book results when you read it in this way.

Today, people imagine that when they read a book, they have done the most important task when they have taken up the content enough to pass an exam on it. Spiritual-scientific books are never intended to be read in this fashion. The most essential task has not been completed if you are simply able to list all the major points on your fingers. Rather, the truly essential task has only been completed when the things in the book have crossed over into the whole of your soul constitution, into the whole of your soul make-up—when you have used the book to develop soul forces intended for use in life itself.

For decades, I have been saying this in a wide variety of ways. But still, in a large number of circles, people consider it to be the most important thing to know: The human being is composed of this and that; we live through multiple incarnations on the Earth; and so on. This is not the most important thing. Rather, the most important thing is that, by means of this whole way of thinking I have just described, human beings grasp something that cannot be grasped by any other means.

1921-04-29-GA204

It is necessary to realize that living thinking exists.

For what is it that people know since the fifteenth century? They know only logical thinking, not living thinking. This, too, I have pointed out repeatedly.

What is living thinking?

I shall take an example close at hand. In 1892, I wrote the The Philosophy of Freedom. This book has a certain content. In 1903, I wrote Theosophy; again, it has a certain content. In Theosophy, mention is made of the etheric body, the astral body, and so on. In Philosophy of Freedom, there is no mention of that. Now those who are only familiar with the logical, dead thinking come and say, Yes, I read the Philosophy of Freedom; from it, I cannot extract any concept of the etheric and astral body; it is impossible; I cannot find these concepts from the concepts contained in the book. But this is the same as if I were to take a small, five-year-old boy and fashioned him into a man of sixty by pulling him upwards and sideways to make him taller and wider!

I cannot put a mechanical, lifeless process in place of something living.

But picture the Philosophy of Freedom as something alive—which indeed it is—and then imagine it growing.

From it, then develops what only a person who tries to cull or pick out something from concepts will not figure out. All objections concerning contradictions are based on just this, namely, that people cannot understand the nature of living thinking as opposed to the dead thinking that dominates the whole world and all of civilization today.

In the world of living things, everything develops from within.

A formerly black-haired person who has white hair has acquired the latter not because the hair has been painted white; it has turned white from within. Things that grow and wane develop from within, and so it is also in the case of living thinking. Yet, today, people sit down and merely try to form conclusions, try to sense outward logic. What is logic? Logic is the anatomy of thinking, and one studies anatomy by means of corpses. Logic is acquired through the study of the corpse of thinking. It is certainly justified to study anatomy by means of corpses. It is just as justified to study logic through the corpses of thinking. But one will never comprehend life by means of what has been observed on the corpse!

1922-10-07-GA217

is about the concept of moral intuition

Only by active thinking, does the thinking go over into the willing .. the living thinking stands in the same relationship to the living thinking as the dead body to the living person.

The moral intuition in PoF is the beginning of living thinking, that is possible to grasp the spiritual again.

Also in other lectures, 12 and 13 Oct, Steiner continues on this.

1988 - Georg Kuhlewind

Kuhlewind (1924-2006) in 'From Normal to Healthy', page 165

The species or spiritual form is therefore an idea, but a living, life-giving idea. It is “fixed” to the extent that a plant species can be said to be fixed, containing a multiplicity of possible forms of appearance. This form is not a normal image, and therefore is not to be mentally represented after the pattern of our mental pictures of perceptions.

Anyone who has worked through the text of The Philosophy of Freedom will sense the relationship between all this and the newly perceivable pictoriality described above.

The new pictoriality that comes about through observation of thinking is suited to grasp the life body's spirit form.

Man can observe various species of plants in this way, that is, various spirit forms.

And this suggests that he has, or can develop, the ability to “think” living ideas, to “perceive” the spiritual life-forms. This can only be the case if the essential energy of such life-forms is freely accessible to him. In principle, he can think anything, any idea, at will, while any given species has a specific idea.

The formative energies that fashion a specific spirit form are present in Man not only in his own particular etheric body, but in free, formless excess: this, among other things, makes him man. Living or present “thinking” is an activity in and with life energies. If such energies are bound to a form, we speak of an etheric body; if they are free, they can momentarily assume any form, during the act of knowing, at which time they may be called energies of cognition. In all cases (in contrast to physical energies), they tend to make forms.

1980 - Herbert Witzenmann

'The Philosophy of Freedom As a Conceptional Work of Art' (2024 in EN), original in DE 'Die Philosophie der Freiheit als Grundlage künstlerischen Schaffens' (1980) by Herbert Witzenmann (1905-1988)

The fore-going has examined the structure of The Philosophy of Freedom in its three main compositional directions:

• the corresponding arrangement of the chapters,
• their sequence and
• the anthropological design principle.

[so]

• The thematic symmetrical arrangement of the chapters with simultaneous reversal or inversion of their contentual basic direction in both main parts,
• the sequence of the chapters in both different directions of volitional unfoldment, the two volitional streams that permeate the human being, and
• the implementation of the anthropological principle as the holistic stature of the work

... these three morphological conceptional art features have clearly become apparent for psychical observation in their mutual condition and intertwining.

This functional threefoldness of the formal elements corresponds to the threefoldness of Man in body, soul and spirit (mind). If one looks at the threefoldness of the textual formation, much information about the nature of Man can be gleaned from the presentation that goes beyond what is expressed content-wise.

No less impressive than this formal richness however is the complete correspondence between form and content: created from the content is the form, its aesthetic dimension, its ideational sculpture and dynamics, but likewise as well, reacting to the latter its aesthetic logic creates the content out of the form, determining the manner in which it assumes literary appearance.

Whoever does not shy away from the observant perseverance needed for pursuing this conceptual web created by an artist has a unique aesthetic experience. The Philosophy of Freedom appears to him among the masterpieces of world literature of a characteristic quality second to none.

For the mere receptive reader it certainly remains pallid, dumb and formless. In order for it to reveal color, sound and spiritual stature, it must be lived, enlivened, done in the imitation of the conscious awareness whose creation it is.

That the aesthetic analysis demanded quite a considerable effort of cognitive scientific explanation is conditioned by the merging and meshing of the formal and material contents. If it were otherwise, the artistic unity would be lacking. However, this artistically active energy as well as, in general, weaving thinking in its everyday diligence belongs to the unobserved and unconsidered elements of our normal mental life. Only in the superwakefulness of psychical observation can be brought to light what creative performance was achieved here. Once one becomes aware of this, this aesthetic experience is transformed into a religious one. After all, what was equally described in form and content here signifies nothing less than the communion of the human spiritual forces with the creative forces of the world, with the archetype of humanness in the divine and the primordial disposition of a new divinity in the human being. If this religious experience of beauty is spread over a greater number of people, then its purifying power, through which it elevates the individual soul, irradiates a community of knowers with its peacefulness. This experience is conveyed by the inquisitive mindset to those willpowers that refuse to be crippled by any “naturalness” or “matter of course”, but, departing from the seclusion of the monologue, enter into dialogue with the spirit. It fructifies however also social life, not only through the spirit of tolerance that it implants in the latter, but also through the fulfillment of meaning that it gives to a working life. This obtains its dignity through the certainty inferred from the thinking gaze that its meaning lies on a much higher plane than merely the saturation of material needs, namely there where the overcoming of a resistant outwardness gives rise to a new inwardness. In order to achieve this, not only for one’s own soul but for the world, we go to the “School of Duress” so that from an anti-spirit a new spirit may emerge: this is the consolation given by the epistemic-aesthetic experiences of The Philosophy of Freedom.

The greatest experience that one owes to The Philosophy of Freedom is not only an artistic one, it is the unification of scientific, religious and social experience. In this experience, the letters are transformed into spoken words, the lines into the breathing of the spirit, the chapters into a strengthening of vital forces. A feeling of liberating happiness can be gained from living with this book, since it is after all valid proof for the fact that Man is allowed to play the freest game also with the highest of things and that this beautiful passion is aware in all seriousness of its greatest responsibility, because the game converts into destiny, destiny into freedom. Through this conscious awareness discarding all coercion, its aesthetic self-sufficiency and its free pace the idea’s become vital forces. The sentence that was already cited at the beginning of this book can be vindicated in the process of reaching an aesthetic understanding of this work: “We then have not merely knowledge about things, but have turned knowledge into a real, self-governing organism; our actuated consciousness has risen above the level of mere passive reception of truth.

Discussion

Note 1 - relationship with living sentences

Rudolf Steiner states that (quotes from Book of Revelation)

• certain texts, such as the Gospel of John as an initiation document, Book of Revelation, orother sentences such as the ones given in Meditation texts do not just consist of flat characters and words, but are "living sentences that germinate during meditation, and sprouts of knowledge grow from them". (1903-12-24-GA088 letter)
• also, that the way to study Revelation or the Gospels is 1) take in every word in a kind of naieve but true belief, 2) look for allegoric meaning by contemplation and meditation 3) take everything literally (1904-11-14-GA090A)

Note 2 - Organic or Heart thinking

• The laws are rhythm, enhancement, polarity, inversion. These laws exist for all living processes.
• for an illustration of the etheric 'rhythm' in the plant, see Schema FMC00.379 on Formative forces
• In heart thinking, the steps are: 'learn the contents, look at the form, practice with the form, then meditate on the meaning, and apply'.
  • Besides just reading the meaning of the text, one analyses the text by looking at the structure, and than use the form layout of that structure to 'take in' into one's soul the chunks of meaning in their interrelationships.
  • By going back and forth this way, one 'massages around' with the meaning in one's mind, one does away with the fact that the meaning is hard-coded in sequential texts, and one moves into the domain of the ideas contained in the text. The structure or form helps to add feeling, and by entertaining this in one's mind actively, one adds willing.
• Draft note on diagram 1.1 on page 2 in the Riccio 2016 book: 'Goethe’s archetypal plant'
  • When we consider the plant in our soul this way, we go from physical object to object+process, as the diagram shows. However it’s plain to see that the dynamic up and down is the etheric, and the astral is the level where it halts .. those are purely the laws of the etheric and astral. Hence, when one conceives this in one’s mind, it’s kind of obvious that from here we come to the idea in the spirit world which is the true world of our soul, it is the willing level.

Note 3 - FMC wiki's Schemas and Aspects

- This is a draft section - Imagine you look at a schema. The schema encodes some meaning, using graphical dimensions.

If you contemplate it, something happens in your mind, you process it, but you don’t process it with natural language such as english.

Now this can be used as a step ladder to the higher meaning, because it helps you to get loose of the text meaning which is intellectually ‘spun yarn’ (in NL language: 'garen spinnen'). One needs to get away from the purely 'dead' thinking .. soak off the stamp from a letter, like a plane lifts off from the ground and goes from wheeling to flying mode, leaving the resistance of the tarmac to its rubber wheels behind.

If we have a higher meaning idea, that has, say, four various perspectives we choose to consider and contemplate together .. we'd like to integrate these to have a more comprehensive understanding or insight.

A first way can be to read the sequential texts about each of the four perspectives.

A second way is to view a schema which also induces some dimensionality of logical meaning by its structure, and use that implicit structure in contemplation and meditation.

See further:

• the two quotes on: FMC enrichment
• about the limitations of diagrams and the need for active soul participation in the Study process and developing imaginations
• examples, see commentary notes on FMC00.583 and also on the blending of schemas in contemplating meta-schemas

Related pages

• Notes on the study process
• Active soul participation
• Developing narratives

References and further reading

Organic or heart thinking

• Florin Lowndes: 'Das Erwecken des Herzdenkens' (1998) (Wesen und Leben des sinnlichkeitsfreien Denkens in der Darstellung Rudolf Steiners. Umriß einer Methodik) (2002)
  • review from amazon:

    Florin Lowndes offers the more advanced reader of Rudolf Steiner's works a completely new, hitherto unnoticed but very profitable perspective on how to analyze these texts, experience them internally and meditate. Unlike most exegetes or critics Rudolf Steiner's, Lowndes does not superficially consider the directly given conceptual content of Steiner's works, but rather seeks to discover a meta-level in Steiner's work, roughly comparable to an energetic structure, a form of thought, by means of the qualities of the content and to lead the reader to the viewing experience of these mental forms hidden behind the texts. As a result, the reader not only learns about the structure and operating principle of the thought forms that Steiner uses in all his works, but he also gets the tools to gain his own view of these forms. Gradually, the original, effective and life-giving force in Steiner's work, the essentials behind his statements, enters the reader's consciousness as an inner experience, and the reader notices that this purely spiritual content, the lively, “intuitive” thoughts in Steiner's work, are becoming aware of can actually only “pronounce” through the characterised thought forms, that is, these forms need to be “effective” in the reader's inner experience. The reader who has stepped through such experiences will then also want to give his own thinking the shape of the living, even in artistic-meditative activity, in order to express his own spirit as an effective, living force corresponding to the world. A path of initiation into spiritual worlds hidden in Rudolf Steiner's writings and its effectiveness is thus clearly demonstrated by Lowndes work.

• Ruth Haertl: Auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit der Erkenntnis im Denken des Herzens aus Anthropos-Sophia im Lichte des Heiligen Gral (2001)
• Mark Riccio:
  • 'A study guide for Rudolf Steiner's heart-thinking' (2006)
  • 'The Logik of the Heart' (2016) (The organic templates of spiritual writers, Rudolf Steiner, and The Philosophy of Freedom)
  • Compositional Style and Meditation on Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom: Some tips from the O'Neils (PDF download)
  • papers on independent.academia.edu/MarkDominickRiccio

websites

• The George O’Neil Group
  • www.organicthinking.org
  • newsletters: organicthinking.jimdo.com
• www.denken-der-zukunft.de

related

• Frank Teichmann: 'Auferstehung im Denken. Der Christusimpuls in der 'Philosophie der Freiheit' und in der Bewusstseinsgeschichte' (1996)
• Wolfgang Findeisen: 'Mit dem Herzen sehen lernen. Das Herz als Grundlage einer spirituellen Entwicklung. Die sechs Nebenübungen Rudolf Steiners' (2012)
• Martina Maria Sam (publisher): 'Rudolf Steiner Herzdenken: Über inspiratives Erkennen' (2014)
• Florin Lowndes: 'Die Belebung des Herzchakra: Ein Leitfaden zu den Nebenübungen Rudolf Steiners' (2017)
• Andreas Neider: Denken mit dem Herzen: Wie wir unsere Gedanken aus dem Kopf befreien können (2019)