Thinking Feeling Willing

Thinking, Feeling, and Willing (also denoted by the shorthand acronym TFW) are the three main activities of the human 'I' and the threefold human soul.

These activities of the threefold human soul relate to the different world of consciousness: thinking, feeling and willing relate respectively to the astral world, lower spirit world, and higher spirit world. Physiologically in Man they relate to the three subsystems in Man, respectively the head and nervous system, the rhythmic subsystem, and the metabolic-limb subsystem (see FMC00.282 below and Man as a threefold being).

The current state of development of Man's I-consciousness with contemporary waking consciousness implies that Man is 'awake' in his thinking in the head and nervous system (hence the term waking consciousness), but Man is really asleep in his feeling and willing, with a dream-life type awareness of his feelings, and really unconscious dreamless sleep of his will. (see Schema FMC00.245 below)

Evolutionary, the three faculties developed one after another as a result of the Development of the I, see the link with Walking Speaking Thinking.

• in the Lemurian epoch, as Man moved to an upright position and Walking as a result of the forces of Willing
• then in the the Atlantean epoch, Man developed the faculty of the voice and of Speaking and Feeling
• in the Current Postatlantean epoch Man developed the faculty of Thinking.
• The next, fourth human soul faculty of 'memory' will arise and develop in the next Sixth epoch.

Aspects

Evolutionary

• how the faculties of TFW relate to:
  • the development of the I in the Lemurian, Atlantean, and Current Postatlantean epoch
  • the three interventions of the Christ before the Mystery of Golgotha, that were required for a balanced development of the human soul (see Schema FMC00.246 on Three pre-MoG interventions of Christ
  • Sibyls were women whose life of soul lacked order and harmony, who allowed the revelations they received to work chaotically in their thinking, feeling and willing. Great and sublime truths were often contained in these Sibylline revelations, but wisdom was confused and chaotic, fraught with all kinds of extravagance. Sibylline ‘wisdom’ is a striking example of the birth of I-consciousness, from about the eighth century B.C. and continued right on into the Middle Ages. In the fourth cultural age, disorder would have crept into the development of I-consciousness if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place. ( 1914-02-10-GA148, more on Three pre-MoG interventions of Christ)
• for future, see 'Memory' aspect below

Thinking

• the basis for thinking is the interaction between the human astral body and the human 'I'
  • "thoughts do not originate solely in the nervous system: the process responsible for the origination of thoughts must be seen as a dynamic interaction between blood and nervous system. A thought flashes up in our soul when our blood, our inner fire, nervous system, and air cooperate in such a way." (1909-04-10-GA109)
• Thoughts in the human being are what lightning and thunder are in the macrocosm. The elements fire and air in the macrocosm correspond to blood and nerves in the human microcosm. (1909-04-10-GA109).
• moral action is gathered by the seraphim, and is the source of warmth for the whole cosmic order .. when you act and unfold the will, you are the source of warmth or fire of the seraphim (1914-12-19-GA156, see Moral ideals#1914-12-19-GA156)

Willing

• the cultivation of the will depends upon repetition and conscious repetition (1919-08-25-GA293)
  • see authority in youth and education to develop this discipline, also in initiation exercises
• evolution of the force of willing: the power of the human will has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished (1924-05-11-GA236)
  • in warmer climates it persisted with certain individuals until the 18th century (example is given of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778))
  • in ancient Egypt, Man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will
  • until the middle of the Lemurian epoch (when the primeval teachers of humanity were on the Earth before the Separation of Moon), even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will:"human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical"
• moral action is gathered by the seraphim, and is the source of warmth for the whole cosmic order .. when you act and unfold the will, you are the source of warmth or fire of the seraphim ... (1914-12-19-GA156, see Moral ideals#1914-12-19-GA156)

Harmony, linkeage and separation

• in the normally constituted human being of today, thinking, feeling and willing are in harmony, a harmony established unconsciously (1906-11-08-GA055)
• insanity is a condition in which the three soul members have separated without being ruled by a higher consciousness, eg someone is unable to link thoughts and feelings correctly; this human cannot bring his feelings into harmony with the thoughts behind them. (1906-11-08-GA055)
• in initiation, the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing are severed from one another. The initiate becomes separated into a person of feeling, a person of will and a thinking person; above these three is the ruler, the newfound individual, bringing them into harmony from a higher consciousness. (1904-GA010 Ch. 8, 1906-11-08-GA055, 1910-GA013 Ch5.)

Memory

• for an introductory overview, see FMC00.617 (and FMC00.617A) and 1910-03-30-GA119
• due to the Christ Impulse, a new fourth faculty of the I is developing, namely 'memory' (see 1914-03-07-GA152 on the Walking upright, Speaking, Thinking page and Schema FMC00.092 for a timeline overview)

Inspirational quotes

1909-01-18-GA108

the world has been created by thought and is still ceaselessly being created in this manner

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) about feelings in 'The Book of Disquiet' (Livro do Desassossego)

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd. The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

Illustrations

FMC00.282 illustrates the how the three activies of the Human I and the threefold soul activities relate to Man's threefold structure and the three subsystems in Man, see also FMC00.007

Schema FMC00.245 illustrates how the soul and spirit live in Man's bodily principles and I-organization. How the threefold soul activity and thinking feeling willing relates to the bodily organisms, and our contemporary waking consciousness is just a part of this.

Schema FMC00.515 is a BlackBoard Drawing (BBD) by Rudolf Steiner depicting how - in blue - Man’s structure with lower bodily principles of physical, etheric and astral bodies - the result of evolution in previous planetary stages of evolution upto Earth - are but a vehicle for development of consciousness and the Human I experience, which is the pivotal developmental goal for our current Earth stage of evolution. Currently, the faculties of waking consciousness are - in white - the soul faculties of Thinking Feeling Willing. As a scaffold, these lower bodies (in blue) will vanish at the end of the Earth stage of planetary evolution. The activity of the conscious human I experience (in white) however makes up the seeds taken and carried by the spiritual hierarchies into Future Jupiter (in red).

Schema FMC00.523 illustrates the inner life of the threefold soul and the faculties of Thinking, Feeling, Willing, and how Man is placed in the world, constantly taking their inner life (of thinking and feeling) into the outside world (through willing and perceiving the impact of these actions).

The lecture 1921-10-21-GA208 allows to link this TFW activity during incarnate life with the life between death and rebirth, and make the link with the Third Hierarchy.

Schema FMC00.520 shows how, whereas human thought and feeling are regulated with the Sun, the human will is left in the hands of humanity and Man contributes good or evil on Earth as a result of free choice and will, and contributes this to the cosmos when passing through the gate of death, being accounted for it through the laws of karma.

Schema FMC00.213 relate Thinking Feeling Willing (TFW) activities of the human soul to the three worlds and Truth Beauty Good (TBG).

Schema FMC00.524 illustrates how the three soul faculties of Thinking Feeling Willing come forth from the life of the Human 'I' in the structure of Man's bodily principles and threefold soul. See also Schema FMC00.523 and FMC00.515. Compare with Schema FMC00.492 on Third Hierarchy

Schema FMC00.246 shows how the evolutionary 'Development of the I' soul forces of Spirits of Form (SoF) enabling the faculties of Walking, Speaking, Thinking, were brought into harmony through Christ impulse in the three pre-MoG interventions of the Christ. See also 1914-03-07-GA152.

Schema FMC00.488 is an example of a schema that provides a synthesis to two major points from an important didactic lecture.

The first point (right, and left text boxes) is about the twofold nature of the human being as a result of the luciferic infection in the Lemurian epoch.

The second point (upper and lower text boxes in grey) is about the true nature of thinking: 'dead' thinking whereby our head takes in and processes living astral elementals, versus 'living' thinking whereby these thoughts are coming through the spiritual world and spiritual hierarchies, flowing through the lower part of the body and filled with feeling and willing.

For further study, this relates to:

• compare with a) Schema FMC00.428A on Human character - the I and threefold soul) about the same force field between the luciferic influence and the regular SoF, and b) the consciousness soul (see lower part of Schema FMC00.431 on Human character - the I and threefold soul).
• what Rudolf Steiner describes, with various terms used, as living/heart/organic/new/formative thinking, see D00.003 - theoretical aspects discussion regarding the study process#Heart thinking
• what is described in Enlivened images and Matter is destroyed in the brain

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

Thinking Feeling Willing

1904-GA010 Ch. 8

in 'Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment': The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training

In the course of higher development, the threads interconnecting the three fundamental forces are severed. At first this severance occurs only within the finer soul organism, but at a still higher stage the separation extends also to the physical body. It is a fact that in higher spiritual development the brain divides into three separate parts. This separation is not physically perceptible in the ordinary way, nor can it be demonstrated by the keenest instruments. Yet it occurs, and the clairvoyant has means of observing it. The brain of the higher clairvoyant divides into three independently active entities: The thought-brain, the feeling-brain, and the will-brain.

Thus the organs of thinking, feeling, and willing become individualized; their connection henceforth is not maintained by laws inherent in themselves, but must be managed by the awakened higher consciousness of the individual.

This, then, is the change which the student observes coming over him: that no connection arises of itself between an idea and a feeling or a will-impulse, unless he himself provides one. No impulse urges him from thought to action unless he himself in freedom give rise to this impulse.

He can henceforth confront, devoid of feeling, a fact which before his training would have filled him with glowing love or bitter hatred; and he can remain impassive at the thought which formerly would have spurred him on to action, as though of its own accord. He can perform actions through resolutions of the will for which there is not the slightest reason for anyone not having undergone esoteric training. The student’s great achievement is the attainment of complete mastery over the combined activity of the three soul forces; but at the same time the responsibility for this activity is placed entirely in his own hands.

1906-11-08-GA055

There are three soul forces in human beings: thinking, feeling and willing. These three forces are bound up with the physical organization. Certain thoughts and feelings will call up certain acts of will. The human organism must function correctly if the three soul forces are to act in harmony.

If the connection between them has broken down due to illness, then there is no longer consistency between thinking, feeling and willing.

• If an organ connected with the will is impaired, the human being will be unable to translate his thoughts into impulses of will; he is weak as far as action is concerned. Although a person is well able to think, he cannot decide on action.
• Another disturbance may be that someone is unable to link thoughts and feelings correctly; this human cannot bring his feelings into harmony with the thoughts behind them. Basically that is the cause of insanity.

In the normally constituted human being of today, thinking, feeling and willing are in harmony. This is right at certain stages of evolution. However, it must be born in mind that as far as a person is concerned, this harmony is established unconsciously.

[initiation]

If a person is to be initiated, if he or she is to become capable of higher perception, then thinking, feeling and willing must be severed from one another. The organs connected with feeling and will must undergo division. Consequently, even if it cannot be proved anatomically, the organism of an initiate is different from that of a non-initiate. Because the contact between thinking, feeling and willing is severed, the initiate can see someone suffering without his feelings being roused; he can stand aside and coldly observe. The reason is that nothing must occur in the initiate unconsciously. An individual is compassionate out of his own free will, not because of some external compulsion. He becomes separated into human beings of feeling, a person of will and a thinking person; above these three is the ruler, the newfound individual, bringing them into harmony from a higher consciousness.

Here too a death process, a destructive process must intervene; should this occur without a higher consciousness being attained, insanity would set in.

Insanity is in fact a condition in which the three soul members have separated without being ruled by a higher consciousness.

1909-01-18-GA108

title: 'Practical Training In Thought'

True practice in thinking presupposes a right attitude and proper feeling for thinking. How can a right attitude toward thinking be attained? Anyone who believes that thought is merely an activity that takes place within his head or in his soul cannot have the right feeling for thought. Whoever harbors this idea will be constantly diverted by a false feeling from seeking right habits of thought and from making the necessary demands on his thinking.

He who would acquire the right feeling for thought must say to himself, “If I can formulate thoughts about things, and learn to understand them through thinking, then these things themselves must first have contained these thoughts. The things must have been built up according to these thoughts, and only because this is so can I in turn extract these thoughts from the things.”

It can be imagined that this world outside and around us may be regarded in the same way as a watch. The comparison between the human organism and a watch is often used, but those who make it frequently forget the most important point. They forget the watchmaker. The fact must be kept clearly in mind that the wheels have not united and fitted themselves together of their own accord and thus made the watch “go,” but that first there was the watchmaker who put the different parts of the watch together. The watchmaker must never be forgotten. Through thoughts the watch has come into existence. Th thoughts have flowed, as it were, into the watch, into the thing.

The works and phenomena of nature must be viewed in a similar way. In the works of Man it is easy to picture this to ourselves, but with the works of nature it is not so easily done. Yet these, too, are the result of spiritual activities and behind them are spiritual beings. Thus, when a man thinks about things he only re-thinks what is already in them. The belief that the world has been created by thought and is still ceaselessly being created in this manner is the belief that can alone fructify the actual inner practice of thought.

1909-04-10-GA109

quote below about Thinking and thunder and lightning

see also Blood and nerves#1909-04-10-GA109

see: Etherization of blood#1909-04-10-GA109

.. There is a mysterious connection between the fire kindled in the external world by the elements of nature and the warmth pervading our blood. Spiritual science constantly emphasizes that man is a microcosm of the great world, the macrocosm. Truly understood, therefore, processes which take place within the human being must correspond with processes in the universe outside. We must be able to find the outer process corresponding to every inner process. To understand what this means we shall have to penetrate into deep regions of spiritual science, for we come here to the fringe of a profound secret, of a momentous truth which gives the answer to the question:

What is it in the great universe that corresponds to the mysterious origin of human thought?

In a very real sense, Man is the only thinking being on the earth. Thoughts are kindled in him in a way that applies to no other being belonging to the Earth, and through his thoughts he experiences a world which leads him beyond and above the Earth.

What is it that kindles thoughts in us, what process is taking place when the simplest or the most sublime thought flashes through us?

When thoughts flow through our soul, two forces are working together in us: our astral body and our I. The physical expression of the ‘I’ is the blood; the physical expression of the astral body is the life of the nervous system.

Thoughts would never flash through the soul if there were no interplay between I and astral body, coming to expression in the interplay between the blood and the nerves. It will seem strange to science in time to come that the science of our day should look for the origin of thought in the nervous system alone. For thought does not originate only in the nerves. It is in the living interplay between the blood and the nerves, and only there, that we have to look for the process which gives rise to thoughts. When our blood (our inner fire) and our nervous system (our inner air) are in this interplay, thought flashes through the soul.

Now the genesis of thought within the soul corresponds, in the cosmos, to the rolling thunder. When the fiery lightning is generated in the air, when fire and air interact to produce thunder, this is the macrocosmic event corresponding to the process by which the fire of the blood and the play of the nervous system discharge themselves in the inner thunder which, gently, peacefully, outwardly imperceptible, it is true, rings out in the thought.

Lightning in the clouds corresponds, within us, to the warmth of our blood, and the air in the universe, together with the elements it contains, corresponds to the life pervading our nervous system. And just as lightning in the action and reaction of the elements gives rise to thunder, so the action and reaction of blood and nerves produces the thought that flashes through the soul. Looking out into the world around us, we see the dashing lightning in the formations of the air, and we hear the rolling thunder ... and then, looking within the soul, we feel the inner warmth pulsating in our blood and the life pervading our nervous system; then we become aware of the thought flashing through us, and we say: “The two are one.”

The thunder rolling in the heavens is not a physical-material phenomenon only. Materialistic mythology alone regards it as such. To one who sees the spiritual weaving and surging through material existence it is truth and reality when, looking upwards, men see the lightning, hear the thunder, and say to themselves: Now the Godhead is thinking in the fire, announcing Himself to us. — This is the invisible God Who weaves and surges through the universe, Whose warmth is in the lightning, Whose nerves are in the air, Whose thoughts are in the rolling thunder. This is the God Who spoke to Moses in the burning thorn-bush and on Sinai in the fiery lightning.

Fire and air in the macrocosm are, in man the microcosm, blood and nerves. As you have lightning and thunder in the macrocosm, so you have thoughts arising within the human being. And the God seen and heard by Moses in the burning thorn-bush, Who spoke to him in the fiery lightning on Sinai, was present as the Christ in the blood of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ, descending into a human form, was manifest in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In that He thought as a man in a human body, He became the great Prototype of the future evolution of humanity.

Thus the two poles of human evolution meet: the macrocosmic God announces Himself on Sinai in the thunder and fiery lightning; and the same God, incarnate in the Man of Palestine, appears in microcosmic form. The sublime mysteries of the life of mankind are derived from the deepest wisdom. They are truth in all profundity, not invented legends. But so profound is their truth that we need all the means open to spiritual science to unveil the secrets bound up with that truth.

1910-GA013 Ch5.

During supersensible perception thinking, feeling, and willing do not remain three forces that radiate from the common I-center of the personality, but they become three independent entities, three personalities, as it were; one must now make one’s own I all the stronger, for it is not merely a matter of its bringing three forces into order, but of leading and directing three entities.

This separation, however, must only exist during supersensible perception.

Here again it becomes clear how important it is that the exercises for higher training be accompanied by those that give certainty and firmness to the power of judgment, and to the life of feeling and willing. For the person who does not bring these qualities with him into the higher world will soon see how the I proves weak and unable to act as an orderly guide for thinking, feeling, and willing. If this weakness were present, the soul would be as though torn by three personalities in as many directions and its inner unity would cease.

If, however, the development of the student proceeds in the right way the described transformation of forces signifies true progress; the I remains master of the independent entities that now form its soul.

1914-03-07-GA152

And now there is still something more to be said, as we are standing on the ground of Spiritual Science. Later epochs are always being prepared for during those that precede them. And inasmuch as we stand within the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, inasmuch as we foster Spiritual Science and have continuously more to contribute to the understanding of living thought, of the thinking which is becoming clairvoyant — we have at the same time the sixth Postatlantean cultural age.

Just as the Christ-Impulse now streams into the thoughts of life, so will it stream later into something which is indeed one of the qualities of the human soul but must not be confused with mere thinking. The child develops his capacities out of the unconscious. When he attains to I-consciousness he enters the sphere in which he can acquire, in which he must develop, all that can come to him from outside through the Christ-Impulse. When the child has learnt to walk, when he has learnt to speak, and when with learning to think, he has begun to work through to the I, we can see how the conscious Christ-Impulse, which entered through the Mystery of Golgotha, begins gradually to work upon him. At the present time there is something else among the powers of the human soul which is not yet able to take in the Christ-Impulse. It is possible to introduce the Christ-Impulse into the power of walking upright, and into speaking and thinking; these things are possible because of that which has been done for the civilization of mankind for centuries.

We have now to prepare for the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into a fourth element, a fourth human capacity, if we truly stand on the foundation of Spiritual Science. .. The soul-capacity into which the Christ-Impulse cannot yet be directed, but into which we must prepare to direct it, is the human memory. For in addition to the walking and standing upright, the speaking and thinking, the Christ-Force is now entering the memory.

We can understand the Christ when He speaks to us through the Gospels. But we are only now being prepared as human beings for His entrance also into the thoughts which live in us and which then, as remembered thoughts and ideas, live on further in us. And a time will come for humanity which is now being prepared but which will only be fulfilled in the Sixth epoch when men will look back upon that which they have lived through and experienced, upon that which lives on within them as memory. They will be able to realize that Christ Himself is present in the power of Memory. He will be able to speak through every idea. And if we make concepts and ideas alive within us Christ will be united with our memories, with that which as our memory is so closely and intimately bound up with us.

Man, looking back at his life, will realize that just as he can remember, just as the power of recollection lives within him, so in this recollection there also lives the Christ-Impulse which has streamed into it. The path which is shown to man is to make the words, “Not I, but Christ in me,” more and more true.

And the way will be made smooth through the Christ-Impulse gradually drawing into man's power of memory. The Christ-Impulse is not yet within the memory. When it actually comes, when it lives not only in the understanding of man but is poured out over the whole length and breadth of his memories, he will not have to turn to external documents to learn history, for then his whole power of memory will be extended. Christ will live in this memory. And when Christ has entered into the power of Memory, when Christ lives in that power, man will know that until the Mystery of Golgotha Christ worked outside the Earth; that He prepared for and went through that Mystery, and that He works on further as an Impulse in history. Man will be able to survey this in the same way as he now perceives facts which live in his ordinary life as Memory. He will not be able inwardly to survey the earthly evolution of humanity otherwise than by seeing the Christ-Impulse as the central point. The whole power of Memory will be penetrated, and at the same time strengthened, by the entrance into it of the Christ-Impulse. In time to come, if we grasp Christianity in a living way, the following words will also hold good for us: —

In the Primal Beginning is Memory, And the Memory lives on further, And Divine is the Memory. And the Memory is Life. And this Life is the I of Man, Which streams into Man himself, Not he alone, the Christ in him.

When he remembers the Divine Life, In his Memory is the Christ.

And as the radiant Life of Memory, Christ will pour Light, Into every Darkness of the immediate present.

We shall be able to say that Christ is in our inner soul-life. Many of us will feel it to be so if we learn to unite ourselves with the Christ-Impulse, even as the human child learns to stand upright and to speak because he has united himself with the Christ-Impulse. Looking upon our present faculty of memory as a preparatory stage, many of us also realize that it must fall into disorder in the future unless it has the will to allow itself to be permeated with the Christ-Impulse. Should there be upon the Earth a state of materialism in which the Christ is denied, the power of Memory would fall into disorder. More and more people would appear whose memory was chaotic; who would become duller and duller in their dark I-consciousness if memory were not to shine into this darkness of the I.

Our power of Memory can only develop in the right way if the Christ-Impulse is perceived aright. History will then be a living memory because a true understanding of events has entered the memory; human memory will understand the central point of world-evolution. A perceptive faculty will then arise in man and his ordinary memory, which at present is only directed to one life, will extend over former incarnations. Memory at the present time is in a preparatory stage, but it will be endowed through the Christ. Whether we look without and see how as children we have developed as yet unconsciously, or through an intensive deepening of our soul forces look within to what remains in our memory as our inner being - everywhere we behold the living force and activity of the Christ-Impulse.

The Christ-Event which is now approaching us — not in the physical but in the etheric, and connected with the first kindling of the power of Memory, with the first kindling of the Christ-permeated Memory — will be such that Christ will approach man as an Angel-like Being. For this event we must prepare ourselves.

Spiritual Science is not simply to enrich us with mere theories. It is to pour into us something which will enable us to accept that which meets us in the world, and that which we ourselves are, with new feelings and perceptions. Our life of feeling and perception can be enriched if, through Spiritual Science, we penetrate in the right way into the nature of the Christ-Impulse and its sovereignty in man, in the spiritual being of man. It is well for us to think often on the following: —

In the Primal Beginning was the power of Memory. The power of Memory shall become Divine; And a Divinity shall the power of Memory become. All that arises within the Ego shall become, Something which has arisen, Out of the Christ-permeated, God-permeated Memory.

In it shall be the Life; In it shall be the radiant Light Which, out of the Thinking which remembers, Shines into the Darkness of the present time.

May that Darkness as it is to-day, Comprehend the Light of the Memory which has become Divine!

1915-01-10-GA161

'Perception of the Nature of Thought' or 'Perceiving the Thought Being'

1916-03-15-GA174B

describes

• how the life of human thought hangs together with the ether body,
• how human thought is material for the beings of the third hierarchies, and
• how these are transformed in the etheric after death

1917-10-08-GA177

We shall not understand how human beings really relate to their thoughts unless we first consider the true nature of the world of thought.

[the elemental world - made up of thought substance, see elementals]

In reality we are always, wherever we are — whether sitting, standing or lying down — not only in the world of air and light and so on, but also in a world of surging thoughts. You will find it easiest to get an idea of this if you look at it like this: When you walk on earth as an ordinary physical human being you are also a breathing human being, walking in a space filled with air. And in more or less the same way you move in a space filled with thoughts. Thought-substance fills the space around you. It is not a vague ocean of thoughts, nor the kind of nebulous ether people sometimes like to imagine. No, this thought-substance is actually what we call the elemental world. When we speak of entities which are part of the elemental world in the widest sense of the word, they consist of thought-substance, actual thought-substance.

There is, however, a difference between

• the thoughts flitting around out there, which really are living entities,
• and the thoughts we have in our minds. ...

... [reference to book where RS covers this difference] ...

[thoughts in Man <-> elemental world or thought space]

If there is such an elemental principle out there in thought-space and if I, too, have thoughts in my head — what is the relationship between the two?

To get the right idea of how your own thoughts relate to the thought-entities out there you have to visualize the difference between a human corpse which has been left behind when someone has died and a living person who is walking about. The kind of thoughts you have to consider in this respect are the kind you gain from the world you perceive with the senses when in waking consciousness.

• Our own thoughts are actually thought-corpses. This is the essential point. The thoughts coming from the world we perceive with the senses and drag around with us when in waking consciousness are thought-corpses — thoughts that have been killed.
• Outside us they are alive, which is the difference.

We are part of the elemental world of thought in so far as we kill its living thoughts when we develop ideas on the basis of what our senses have perceived in the world around us.

Our thinking consists in having those corpses of thoughts inside us, and this makes our thoughts abstract. We have abstract thoughts because we kill living thoughts. It is really true that in our state of [waking] consciousness we walk around bearing thought corpses which we call our thoughts and ideas. This is the reality.

The rest of the human being — let us call it ‘b’ and to begin with let us simply consider it to be this elemental, airy principle — is a manifestation of the higher hierarchies, from the Spirits of Form (SoF) downwards.

[intermediate paragraph with examples]

The living thoughts in the outside world are certainly not unrelated to us; there is a living relationship.

I can demonstrate this to you, but do not be frightened by the grotesque nature of this unaccustomed idea. Imagine you are lying in bed and it is morning. You can get up in two different ways. Ordinarily, you are not aware of the difference between them because you are not in the habit of making the distinction, and anyway you do not pay attention to this particular moment of getting up. Nevertheless,

• you can get up out of habit, without thinking about it,
• or you can actually produce the thought: I am now going to get up.

There are people, however, who get themselves up out of sheer habit, and yet there is just a touch of the idea: I am going to get up now. To repeat, many people do not make the distinction, but it can be made in the abstract, and the difference is enormous.

• If you get up without giving it a thought, out of sheer habit and training, you are following impulses given by the Spirits of Form when they created human beings as dwellers on earth at the beginning of earth evolution. So you see, if you switch off your own thinking and always get up like a machine, you are not getting up without thought having gone into it, but it is not your own thought. The form of movement involved in getting up involves thoughts — objective, not subjective, inner thoughts; these are not your thoughts but those of the Spirits of Form.
• If you were a terribly lazy person who really did not want to get up at all, if it really was not in your nature to get up and you would only get up on reflection, against your nature, out of purely subjective thought, you'd be following ahrimanic tendencies; you would be following only your head, and therefore Ahriman. As I said, the distinction is not made in ordinary life.

And everything else we do is really done in the same way as our getting up.

[Head and the rest - original intent before Luciferic infection]

Human beings truly are made up of two entities which can be outwardly distinguished as the head and the rest of the body.

The human head is an extraordinarily significant instrument and much older than the rest of the body. The construction of the human head is such — I spoke about this last year [oa 1916-10-21-GA171] — that the basic shape arose during Old Moon evolution, though the head has, in fact, come down through Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon evolution. Humans would look quite different if they still had the shape they had during Old Moon evolution.

In very general terms we might say people would look like spectres, with only the form of the head emerging somewhat more clearly, which was the original intent. The rest of the body was not meant to be as visible as it is now. These things have to be considered, otherwise we cannot really understand human evolution on Earth.

The rest of the body was meant to be purely elemental by nature. In the head, everything would come into effect which has come down as Old Moon existence transformed by earth; let us call it ‘a’. But this inherited Old Moon existence transformed by earth is the actual human being, for the human being is really a head with only a very insignificant attachment.

[Man as made up of the hierarchies, SoF downwards]

The rest of the human being — let us call it ‘b’ and to begin with let us simply consider it to be this elemental, airy principle — is a manifestation of the higher hierarchies, from the Spirits of Form downwards.

The right and only way of seeing the human being is to realize that everything shown here as ‘b’ has been created by the cosmic hierarchies. The human being which has evolved from the Old Saturn stage emerged against the background of the cosmic hierarchies. If you visualize the essential nature of the parts of the human being which are not head — you must think of it as all spirit, or at least all air — then you have the body of cosmic hierarchies (drawing on the board).

However, luciferic seduction entered into the whole process of evolution. The outcome was that this whole, more elemental, body condensed to become the rest of the human body, which of course also had an effect on the head. This will give you an idea of the true nature of the human being.

[Condensation of physical matter - see cleansed phantom]

Apart from the head, which is their own, having come from earlier evolution, human beings would be an outward manifestation of the SoF if their bodies had not become sensuous flesh. It is entirely due to the temptations of Lucifer that this outward manifestation of the SoF has condensed to become flesh.

Something very strange has arisen as a result, an important secret to which I have referred a number of times.

What has happened is that the human being has become the image of the gods in the very organs which are normally called the organs of his lower nature. This image of the gods has been debased in human beings as they are on earth.

The highest principle in human beings, the spiritual principle coming from the cosmos, has become their lower nature.

Please, do not forget that this is an important secret of human nature.

Our lower nature, which is due to Lucifer's influence, was actually destined to be our higher nature. This is the contradictory element in human nature. Rightly understood, it will solve countless riddles in the world and in life.

We are thus able to say: In the course of human evolution man has, thanks to the luciferic element, made the part of him that should be constantly emerging from the cosmos into his lower nature.

[understanding ancient symbols]

Many historical phenomena will find their explanation if you consider that this was known to the leaders of the ancient Mysteries, people who were not as facetious, cynical and narrow-minded as people are today. Certain symbols taken from the lower nature and used in the past, symbols that today are merely seen as sexual symbols, are explained by the fact that the priests who used them in the ancient Mysteries did so in order to give expression to the higher reality of the lower nature of man.

You can see how sensitive we have to be in dealing with these things if we are not to be facetious. Modern people slip easily into facetiousness, because they cannot even imagine that there is more to human beings than mere sensuality — which, in fact, is the luciferic element in our higher nature. Thus historical symbols are easily given entirely the wrong interpretation. It takes some nobility of spirit not to interpret the old symbols in a lower sense, even though they often can be interpreted in that way.

[real living thoughts vs today's 'dead' head thinking]

With this, you will also begin to realize that if thoughts from the elemental world come to us — they are living thoughts, not abstract, dead ones that come from the head — they must be coming out of the whole human being. Mere reflection will not achieve this.

Today the idea is that we only arrive at our thoughts by reflection. Today the idea is: If human beings will just reflect, they can think about anything, providing the things they want to think about are accessible. This is nonsense, however.

The truth is that the human race is in a process of evolution, and the thoughts developed by Copernicus, for example, or Galileo, at a particular time could not be reached by mere reflection before that time.

You see, people fabricate the thoughts they have in their heads. But when a thought which marks a real change arises in world history, this thought is given by the gods and through the whole human being. It flows through the human being, overcoming the luciferic element, and only reaches the head out of the whole human being.

[in perspective]

I think this is something you can understand. In certain ages, particular thoughts just have to be waited for and expected; then human beings are not merely reflecting, nor is something conveyed through their eyes or ears, but inspiration comes from the world of the hierarchies and it comes through the whole essential human being, which is the image of the hierarchies.

If you consider this, some of the things I said yesterday can also tell you great deal. In the present fifth post-Atlantean age, we are living much more inwardly than before — in ancient Greek times, for example, when the outer environment provided much more that was spiritual. This inwardness of life relates to the process in which thoughts come up through the whole human being. In earlier times, in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the relationship between human beings and the gods was much more of an exterior thing; today it has become much more intimate. Human beings are always associating with the gods; their heads do not normally know anything about this, however, because they only hold human thoughts, or rather the corpses of thoughts.

1918-12-29-GA187

Clifford was the first to express the opinion that the brain exudes thoughts just as the liver exudes bile. That is, Clifford saw in the formation of thoughts a purely material process: as bile comes from the liver, so thoughts come from the brain. That materialistic age saw only matter, but at least they thought about matter. They thought about matter, and we can look at this in two ways. In our time we can read the books of Clifford, of Ludwig Buchner, or if you like, August Comte, Vogt of Geneva, and so on. If we develop likes or dislikes from such reading, we may be fearfully angry that people see in the creation of thoughts only an excretion of the brain, and we may take it very much to heart. Very well, if we are not materialists, we may feel that way. But we may also look at it differently. We may say to ourselves: Nonsense! what Clifford and Comte and Vogt of Geneva, what they've all said about the world is tommyrot; I am not interested in it.

But I will look into what goes on in the thinking process itself of Vogt and Clifford and Comte. What they tell of their thoughts—for instance, that thoughts are merely exuded from the brain as bile is from the liver—that is plain tommyrot! I shall not concern myself with what Vogt says, but with the way he thinks.

If we can do that, something remarkable comes to light. We see that the kind of thinking those persons have developed is the germ of a very far-reaching spirituality. The thoughts are so terribly thin in substance because they are only reflected images, as I explained day before yesterday. They are thinner than thin because they are only images. They are so tenuous that the man must exert a tremendous spirituality to think at all, and to prevent his thoughts from sinking down and being laid hold of by the merely material element of existence. As a matter of fact, thinking is very frequently laid hold of by this material element nowadays; it does sink down.

I am even convinced that the majority of today's materially-minded people, if they had not been drilled in school, and had not crammed at the universities to pass exams, and had not swallowed materialism because their professors required it as the correct world conception—I am convinced that the majority of these people would then have been spared the thinking that must be employed for the materialistic world-view. They would much rather not think! Most of them would rather go to the duelling-grounds or to fraternity jamborees than use their minds. And they simply repeat what they have heard.

If you would once make the attempt to study all of the genuine, recognized “wisdom” relating just to matter written by the Monists—as the materialists now call themselves rather elegantly, who as members of monistic societies go about the world making long speeches—if you would study what they have actually thought, you would find it is precious little! For the most part they merely repeat what others have said. Actually only a few authorities have established materialism; the rest only repeat—for the simple reason that a vigorous effort of the spirit is necessary to sustain modern scientific thinking. The effort is a spiritual one, and is truly not exuded from the brain as bile is from the liver. It is a spiritual effort, and a good preparation for rising to spiritual things. To have thought honestly in a materialistic way, but to have done this thinking oneself, is good preparation for entrance into the spiritual world.

1919-08-25-GA293

Why, for instance, should we use the Lord's Prayer every day?

If a man nowadays were expected to read the same story daily, he simply would not do it; he would find it far too dull. The man of to-day is trained to do things once. But men of an earlier time not only said the same Lord's Prayer every day, they also had a book of stories which they read at least every week. And for this reason their wills were stronger than those produced by the present methods of education: for the cultivation of the will depends upon repetition and conscious repetition.

This must be taken into consideration. And so it is not enough to say in the abstract that the will must be educated. For then people will believe that if they have good ideas themselves for the development of the will and apply them to the child by some clever methods, they will contribute something to the cultivation of the will. But in reality this is of no use whatever.

Those who are exhorted to be good become only weak nervous men. Those become inwardly strong to whom it is said in childhood: “You do this today and you do that, and both of you do the same tomorrow and the day after.” [And they do it merely on authority because they see that one in the school must command.] Thus to assign to the child some kind of work for each day that he can do every day, sometimes even the whole year through, has a great effect upon the development of the will.

1920-12-19-GA202

title: 'The Path to Freedom and Love and Their Significance in World-Events'

This lecture is important because it develops the poles of Thinking and Willing to come to Freedom and Love.

Man stands in the world as thinking, contemplative being on the one hand, and as a doer, a being of action, on the other; with his feelings he lives within both these spheres. With his feeling he responds, on the one side, to what is presented to his observation; on the other side, feeling enters into his actions, his deeds. We need only consider how a man may be satisfied or dissatisfied with the success or lack of success of our deeds, how in truth all action is accompanied by impulses of feeling, and we shall see that feeling links the two poles of our being: the pole of thinking and the pole of deed, of action. Only through the fact that we are thinking beings are we Man in the truest sense. Consider too, how everything that gives us the consciousness of our essential manhood is connected with the fact that we can inwardly picture the world around us; we live in this world and can contemplate it. To imagine that we cannot contemplate the world would entail forfeiting our essential manhood. As doers, as men of action, we have our place in social life and fundamentally speaking, everything we accomplish between birth and death has a certain significance in this social life.

In so far as we are contemplative beings, thought operates in us; in so far as we are doers, that is to say, social beings, will operates in us. It is not the case in human nature, nor is it ever so, that things can simply be thought of intellectually side by side with one another; the truth is that whatever is an active factor in life can be characterized from one aspect or another; the forces of the world interpenetrate, flow into each other. Mentally, we can picture ourselves as beings of thought, also as beings of will. But even when we are entirely engrossed in contemplation, when the outer world is completely stilled, the will is continually active. And again, when we are performing deeds, thought is active in us. It is inconceivable that anything should proceed from us in the way of actions or deeds — which may also take effect in the realm of social life — without our identifying ourselves in thought with what thus takes place. In everything that is of the nature of will, the element of thought is contained; and in everything that is of the nature of thought, will is present. It is essential to be quite clear about what is involved here if we seriously want to build the bridge between the moral-spiritual world-order and natural-physical world-order.

Imagine that you are living for a time purely in reflection as usually understood, that you are engaging in no kind of outward activity at all, but are wholly engrossed in thought. You must realize, however, that in this life of thought, will is also active; will is then at work in your inner being, raying out its forces into the realm of thought. When we picture the thinking human being in this way, when we realize that the will is radiating all the time into his thoughts, something will certainly strike us concerning life and its realities. If we review all the thoughts we have formulated, we shall find in every case that they are linked with something in our environment, something that we ourselves have experienced. Between birth and death we have, in a certain respect, no thoughts other than those brought to us by life. If our life has been rich in experiences we have a rich thought-content; if our life experiences have been meagre, we have a meagre thought-content. The thought-content represents our inner destiny — to a certain extent. But within this life of thought there is something that is inherently our own; what is inherently our own is how we connect thoughts with one another and dissociate them again, how we elaborate them inwardly, how we arrive at judgments and draw conclusions, how we orientate ourselves in the life of thought — all this is inherently our own. The will in our life of thought is our own.

1921-10-21-GA208

synopsis: Thinking and feeling in relation to ether body and astral body, will and sensory perception in relation to the I and the physical body.

Today we'll give some consideration to the way human beings relate to the world in body, soul and spirit.

We have seen that

• experiences gained through the whole cosmos between death and rebirth become part of our inner life when we are on earth.
• experiences that were like "outside" experiences before birth, or conception, come into their own by being active in our internal organs.

Today, the intention is to consider the other side of the human being's relationship to the world, that is, how the experiences gained between birth and death are taken through the gate of death and become experiences we live through in a further life between death and rebirth.

We must distinguish between the inner life we have during life on earth and the kind of outside life which we put out into the world. In the first place, we can consider the inner life to include all the feelings and inner responses we go through between birth and death. The feelings we have about impressions gained of the outside world, about our own inner experiences, and also about the approval or objections that meet our actions, actions which arise out of the will - all this is something we more or less settle for ourselves, letting others get a glimpse, perhaps, but essentially dealing with it on our own.

Our experiences based on sensory perception do not reflect reality - this has been the subject of recent lectures; an unreal world extends all around us. It is a world which in essence is neither inner nor outer; we are involved in it and really only make it our inner world by having thoughts about it, developing feelings about it, and we are stimulated by it to take particular actions. Basically our attitude to it arises from faculties we bring with us when we are born into this world.

Our approach to the outside world, and also the place where we are, the nation into which we are born, and so on, is always determined by earlier lives lived on earth and in the spirit. These things hark back and do not take us forward.

We also need to consider another way in which we relate to the outside world. Our actions, which have their origin in the will, become part of the outside world. Every action we take changes that world. The least thing we do adds something to the outside world and therefore changes it.

Thus we are able to say that the outside world created by our own actions has its origin in our will intent. The quality of its relationship to us is therefore the same as that of events which occur during sleep. Our everyday conscious mind is no more able to gain insight into the deep-down world of the will than into the conditions that exist during sleep. The real events in the world of the will are not accessible to the conscious mind. As I have said many times before, when we move an arm, or a hand, the conscious mind has no awareness of the whole will-driven process, of the power that develops and is active in the moving arm or hand. We merely see the changes we have wrought. When we move an object from one place to another, our senses make us aware of the change we have made. We are therefore able to say that sensory perception makes us aware of the effect we have through the will. Our will impulses and their effects flow into the world we perceive with the senses, as it were.

Let us recall something we have been considering in recent lectures. We said: First of all we have the human physical body [see Schema]; and the human ether body (red). Between them is the actively moving world of thoughts, in so far as it is part of the organism. Between the ether body and the astral body (green) lies the world of our feelings, and between the astral body and the enveloping I (blue) the world of the will.

In ordinary consciousness, the world of the will cannot be distinguished from the human I, being completely bound up with it. But not everything that goes on in the I when it is acting out of the will comes to conscious awareness in a direct way. It is at a level that is below ordinary conscious awareness, as I said, like the events that occur during sleep. The sense organs in our physical body perceive anything our will brings to expression. Something arising out of the I and the world of the will is thus perceived with our eyes and ears. In this way, sensory perception, which is the most outside part of us, connects with the things we do out of will and I.

When the I makes us take just a few steps, we have no conscious awareness of the life of the will, nor of anything that goes on deep down in the human organism and makes our legs move. Yet when we have taken those steps we see the world from a different point of view. In ordinary consciousness, sensory perception provides us with an idea, an image of something that really lies in the depths of waking sleep.

Gathering up the powers of the I in an act of will, letting will impulses become actions, we know about our actions through the changes perceived with the senses, irrespective of whether these actions involve walking, taking hold of something, or some kind of work.

It is important to realize that through the will we really belong to the world which the senses perceive around us.

This is something to remember: In our will we belong to the outside world.

Developing ideas about anything we observe concerning the way the will comes to expression will not help us to enter into our true inner nature. Despite the fact that the will flows from the deepest part of the inner life, doing so continues to be an external process for the conscious mind, or rather a sum of such processes in the body.

[thinking]

In the inner life we have first of all the mobile world of thoughts. In outer terms, and of no real interest in the present context, its life consists in bringing some degree of logic and order into the things perceived through the senses. We classify objects, putting plants or animals that are similar to each other into the same class, and we look for other laws of nature. It is part of the body of knowledge which is common to all humanity, but it is not really part of our inner life.

On the other hand we cannot really say that everything we have by way of thought is outside our inner life. Just remember a magnificent landscape you may have seen, for instance, and thought about. You can recall it from memory at any time, though it may have faded a little. Thoughts developed in connection with the outside world therefore become part of your inner world. Anything that comes to us from the outside world and is transformed into thoughts thus becomes part of the inner world.

Initially these thoughts enter into the ether body but they then also connect with our feelings and the astral body. All this is inner process. This inner part of the life of thought and with it, the world of feelings, are the true inner life. We really cannot look to the outside world for any of the things we experience in the inner aspect of the life of thought and in our feelings, but only inside ourselves. As I said, we can talk to people and choose to let them see something of what lives in us, but essentially it is indeed an inner life.

We are now able to distinguish clearly between

• the outside life that develops because human beings are constantly taking their inner life into the outside world,
• and our true inner world.

If we get on a train and travel through the night from the eastern to the western part of Switzerland, we are in a completely different will environment in the morning and we are able to perceive this with the senses. We have taken our inner life with us; it is the same wherever we may be, though it may have been modified by thoughts which have touched us inwardly and become part of the inner life.

If we want to we can therefore make clear distinction between

• the inner life - which in soul is woven out of thoughts and feelings and in body is woven out of the interacting rhythms of ether body and astral body
• and the world which in a sense is "outside world". The soul aspect of this "outside" world is woven out of will content and sensory perception content, the bodily aspect out of I and physical body. For we take our physical body with us and observe it, and it enters into a different situation in the environment. We can distinguish between inner and outer in the way I have just shown.

This is most important when we come to consider the life which human beings take with them through the gate of death. Putting it briefly, the relationship of inner to outer after death is like this:

• The outer becomes inner.
• The inner becomes outer.

That is the tremendous change which comes with death. The outer becomes inner. We can bring to mind the way the inner life of the soul is made up of interweaving thoughts and feelings and that this is what we mean when we say "I". After death everything our senses have perceived with regard to our actions becomes our inner life, which is then gathered in a point or, better, a sphere: a view of everything we have done on earth. We take with us through death our whole life on earth, like an inner memory, and this becomes our inner life. There has been a complete reversal: everything the senses previously perceived to be our actions outside us will then be our inner life. Now we live in our inner responses and feelings; then we'll live in our actions, which will have become our inner life. So if you have done a kindness to someone or you have done something bad, after death you yourself will actually be the good and bad things you have done. You mustn't be abstract about this and imagine some vague I slipping through death and then being something else, or a bit different. No, we ourselves will be our past actions, in every detail. We shall be every one of our actions and experiences and call all of this "I".

The inner on the other hand will become the outer. The whole world of our thoughts and feelings becomes something outside us. Here and now we have the sun and the clouds around us, or the starry heavens and their movements during the night. After death our present thoughts and inner responses will be our external environment. Things that are in our innermost heart will become part of the outside world after death and appear in mighty images. The heavens, where now the sun is shining, will then be shining with the inner life that we have here and now.

1924-05-11-GA236

see: Spiritual guidance of mankind#1924-05-11-GA236

I have already told you that the forming of karma is connected with those beings who in very ancient times of evolution were actually present on the earth and who departed from the earth at the time of the separation of the moon, taking up their abode in the cosmos as Moon-inhabitants, Moon beings. What we call Moon—of which the physical part as ordinarily described is no more than an indication—must be regarded as the bearer of certain spiritual beings, the most important of whom once lived on Earth as the great primeval teachers. It was they who established among men on Earth that ancient wisdom of which I have so often spoken. These beings were on the earth before the separation of the moon. In those times they infused the primeval wisdom into man who acquired it through a kind of inner illumination. And the way in which these Beings worked was altogether different from the way in which men can work on the earth today.

[human will]

The activity of these ancient, primeval teachers among men must in truth be described as a kind of magic, taking effect inasmuch as the influence of the human will upon happenings in the external world was infinitely greater than is possible today.

Nowadays the will can work on the external world only through physical means of transmission. If we want to push some object we must put our will into operation through the arms and hands.

But in the days of the primeval Teachers the human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical.

But in point of fact the last vestiges of this power of the human will persisted until comparatively recent times.

• Rousseau, for example, tells us that in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyse and even kill toads which came near him, simply by fixing them with his gaze. [editor: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)]
• This power of the human will which in warmer climates persisted until the 18th century, has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished.
• But in ancient Egypt man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will.
• And when the primeval teachers were on the earth, even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will.

These things of course depended upon a true, instinctive insight into the connections of world-existence which remain completely hidden from the crude, material science of modern times. It is evident, however, that the influence of warmth upon the working of the human will must be taken thoroughly into account, for Rousseau, who was able, in warmer regions, to kill toads with his gaze, subsequently tried in Lyons to stare at a toad in the same way, supposing that it would at least be paralysed. But the toad was not paralysed; on the contrary it fixed its eyes upon him and he himself became partially paralysed and had to be restored to life by snake-poison administered by a doctor.

This way of activating the will is of course dependent upon an instinctive knowledge of the whole environment of Man.

Discussion

Note 1 - Human faculties

see also:

• Walking Speaking Thinking
• Speech
• Alphabet

Writing

1913-10-14-GA152

quote A

We have not yet reached the point when religious teaching is no longer given in schools, but already there are demands that only what is authenticated by science shall be taught. The demands made by people of this mentality will become so powerful an influence in outer life that very soon mankind will become dangerously superficial.

Human beings today still learn to write, but in a future not far distant people will have to remind themselves of the fact that once upon a time hand-writing was a custom! A kind of mechanical stenography will become general — executed, furthermore, on machines. Mechanisation of life! I will indicate it by just one symptom. Think of a civilisation at its prime, when the historic truth will be unearthed that once upon a time there were human beings who wrote by hand. This historic truth will be unearthed just as we today unearth the contents of the Egyptian temples. Handwritten texts will be excavated as we excavate the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians.

But a reaction of the life of soul against mechanisation will also take place. True as it is that in future times our handwriting will be no less a wonder than the Egyptian hieroglyphs are a wonder to us, it is also true that the souls of men will long once again for the direct revelations of the spirit. Outer life will become more and more superficial but the inner life will claim its rights.

People may scoff today at spiritualscience but the materialists will eventually be forced to retreat before man’s cry of longing for the spiritual world. And so a real understanding of Christ will begin in times when the doors are open for spirituality, although admittedly through reaction against the conditions prevailing in external life.

...

Have no illusion about the future. We are not giving way to illusion when we picture what outer, material life will be like in a future when handwriting will be spoken of in the same sense as we today speak of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The last vestiges of a spiritual culture still survive, even today, for writing still expresses characteristics of the soul; but the traces of soul will soon have disappeared from external culture as completely as Egyptian culture has vanished from our ken. People will speak of many things which in our time are still imbued with soul, as of something belonging to a far distant past. But the same voice that will proclaim the existence in the past age of a kind of hand-writing, will proclaim out of spiritual knowledge that in the spirit the living Christ is again moving among humanity. Men will have to exchange the spirit of mere intellectual conjecture for the spirit of direct vision, of direct feeling and experience of the Living Christ moving as a reality in the spirit by the side of the souls of men.

alternate translation

Today, people are still learning to write. In the not too distant future, we will only remember that people wrote in earlier centuries. There will be a kind of mechanical shorthand that will also be written on a machine. Mechanization of life! I will only hint at it through one symptom: imagine the height of a civilization in which the historical truth that there were once people who had manuscripts will be excavated, just as we excavate what is found in the Egyptian temples. Manuscripts will be excavated just as we excavate the monuments of the Egyptians. But there will also be a reaction of the soul against it. And as true as it is that our handwriting will be for the future as the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians are for us, something to be marveled at, so true is it that alongside it the souls of men will urge to receive again the direct revelations of the spirit. The outer life will be externalized, but the inner life will claim its right.

1920-04-26-GA301

We have, of course, the task of teaching the children to write, but today writing is a kind of artificial product of culture. It has arisen in the course of human development out of a pictorial writing and has become what we now have today, a purely conventional and abstract writing. If we try to gain a feeling for older writing, for instance Egyptian hieroglyphics, and to understand their basic character, we will see how people originally tended to reproduce the external world in their writing through drawing.

Writing and drawing things in the world are, in a way, also the basis of human speech development. Many theories have been put forward about the development of speech. There is, for instance— I am not making this up, they are called this in the technical papers — there is the so-called Ding-Dong Theory that assumes speech is a kind of model of some inner tonal qualities of our surroundings. Then there is the Bow-Wow Theory3 which assumes that speech is based upon sounds produced by other beings in our surroundings. None of these theories, however, begin with a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of human nature. A sufficient comprehension of human nature, particularly one based upon a trained observation of children’s speech, shows that human feeling is engaged in a much different way when learning the vowels. They are learned through feeling. If we train our own powers of observation, we will see how all vowels arise from certain human inner experiences that are like simple or more complicated interjections, expressions of feeling. Inwardly, we as human beings live in the vowels. People express external events in consonants. People copy external events through their own organs; nevertheless they reproduce them. Speech itself is a reproduction of external events through consonants, and vowels provide the color. Thus, writing is, in its origins, a pictorial reproduction.

If, as is done today, we teach conventionalized writing to children, it can affect only the intellect. For that reason, we should not actually begin with learning to write, but with an artistic comprehension of those forms that are then expressed through writing or printing.

If you are not very clever, you can proceed by taking Egyptian hieroglyphics or some other pictorial writing, then developing certain forms out of it in order to arrive at today’s conventional letter forms. But that is not necessary. We do not need to hold ourselves to such strict realism. We can try to discover for ourselves such lines in modern letter forms that make it possible for us to give the children some exercises in movements of the hands or fingers. If we have the children draw one line or another without regard to the fact that they should become letters, or allow them to gain an understanding throughout their entire being for round or angular forms, horizontal or vertical lines, we will bring the children a dexterity directed toward the world.

Through this approach, we can also achieve something that is extraordinarily important psychologically. At first we do not even teach writing but guide the children into a kind of artistic drawing that we can develop even further into painting, as we do at the Waldorf School. That way the children also develop a living relationship to color and harmony in youth, something they are very receptive to at the age of seven or eight. If we allow children to enjoy this artistically taught instruction in drawing, aside from the fact that it also leads to writing, we will see how they need to move their fingers or perhaps the entire arm in a certain way that begins not simply from thinking, but from a kind of dexterity. Thereby the I begins to allow the intellect to develop as a consequence of the entire human being. The less we train the intellect and the more we work with the entire human being so that the dexterity of the intellect arises out of the movements of the limbs, the better it is.

If you visit the handwork classes at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, you will perhaps find it somewhat paradoxical when you see that both boys and girls sit together and knit and crochet, and further, that everyone not only does “women’s work” but also “men’s work.” Why is that? The success of this approach can be seen in the fact that boys, when they are not artificially restricted from doing the work, take the same joy in these activities as the girls. Why is that? If we know that we do not develop our intellect by simply going directly to some intellectual education, if we know that someone who moves their fingers in a clumsy way also has a clumsy intellect, has inflexible ideas and thoughts, and those who know how to properly move their fingers also have flexible thoughts and ideas and can enter into the real nature of things, then we will not underestimate the importance of developing external capabilities. The goal is to develop the intellect to a large extent from how we work externally as human beings.

Educationally, it is an enormously important moment when we allow the written forms that are the basis of reading to spring out of what we have created artistically. Thus instruction in the Waldorf School begins from a purely artistic point of view. We develop writing from art and then reading from writing. In that way, we completely develop the children in relation to those forces that slowly want to develop out of their nature. In truth we bring nothing foreign into the child. As a matter of course, around the age of nine the children are able to write from what they have learned in drawing and then go on to reading. This is particularly important, because when people work against rather than with the forces of human nature, they damage children for the rest of their lives. If, however, we do exactly what the child’s nature wants, we can help human beings develop something fruitful for the rest of their lives.

1921-06-15-GA302

When we now teach the various subjects expected of a school — reading, the thought processes in arithmetic, those in the natural sciences, everything that is of a cognitive nature — we give the children ideas and mental pictures. The ideas and mental images are for the child’s organism an activity that is quite different from physical/corporeal instruction — which, although it participates in the education of the thought processes, is also carried out independently. Physical/corporeal instruction is carried out quite independently in eurythmy, in physical education, and in instrumental music, but no longer in singing. Everything is, of course, relative. But there is a great difference, a polarity, between what the children are asked to do in these subjects — and also when they are learning reading and writing, when we strongly appeal to the physical activity — and what they are asked to do in subjects such as arithmetic, in which case the physical activity plays a subordinate role. In handwriting, on the other hand, physical activity plays a predominant part.

We should really go into details. Let me single out the subject of writing and show you the role physical activity plays.

There are two types of people in regard to writing. (I believe I have already mentioned this to those of you who have attended previous lectures.)

• There are those who write as though the writing is flowing from their wrists. The forming of the letters is carried out from the wrist. Future business people are actually trained to write in this way. Their writing flows from their wrists, and this is all there is to it. That is one of the two types of people in regard to writing.
• The other type is disposed to looking at the letters. These people always contemplate what they write, deriving an almost aesthetic pleasure from it. These are the painter type, and they do not so much write from the wrist. Those of the first type do not paint.

I actually got to know the special training for people who are prepared for business. They are encouraged to put a kind of flourish to the letters. Their writing is characterized by continuous flourishes emanating from a certain swinging motion of the wrist. Taken to an extreme, this kind of writing will lead to something that is really quite awful. I know people who carry out all sorts of swinging motions with their pens in the air before they begin to write — a quite terrible thing when taken to an extreme.

We really ought to get people to write in a way that is akin to painting. Writing in that way is far more hygienic. When writing is accompanied by an aesthetic pleasure, the mechanical aspect is pushed into the body. It is the inner organism rather than the wrist that is writing. And this is most important, because the mechanical aspect is then diverted from the periphery to the whole of the human being. You will notice that when you teach children to write in this painting way, they will also be able to write with their toes. This would, in fact, constitute a triumph, a success — when a child is able to hold a pencil between the toes and form adequate letters. I do not say that this ability should be developed artistically. But we do have in such an instance a shifting of the mechanical activity to the whole human being. You will agree that in this regard most of us are extremely clumsy. Can you think of anyone who is able to pick up a piece of soap from the floor with his or her toes? To do this at least should be possible. It sounds grotesque, but it points to something of great significance.

We should cultivate this painting-like writing. It pushes the actual mechanical activity into the body, and the writer’s connection to the writing is brought to and beyond the surface. The human being is imparted into his or her environment. We should really get used to seeing everything we do, rather than doing things thoughtlessly, mechanically. Most people do write mechanically, thoughtlessly. Because writing is thus a manysided activity, we can, in a certain way, consider it as a significant aspect in our lessons. In arithmetic, on the other hand, the actual writing has a subordinate position, because with that subject it is the thinking that preoccupies the student.

We must now be quite clear about the processes taking place during reading. The activity of reading is initially spiritual and then continues into the physical body. It is especially the activities that are of a cognitive, mental/spiritual nature that considerably tax the delicate parts of the physical organization. You can picture, physiologically, the deeper parts of the brain, the white matter. The white matter is the actual, the more perfectly organized part of the brain. It is organized toward the more functional tasks, whereas the gray matter at the surface — which is especially well developed in humans — provides the brain’s nourishment. The gray matter has remained behind, in a very early stage of evolution. In regard to evolution, it is the deeper part of the brain that is more perfect.

If we teach a child to observe well, as in reading, we greatly tax the gray matter, engendering a very delicate metabolic process. And this delicate metabolic process then spreads throughout the organism. It is especially when we believe ourselves to be occupying the children mentally and spiritually that we affect their physical organism most strongly. The observation and comprehension during the reading of and listening to stories engender metabolic processes that tax the children to an inordinately strong degree. We could call what is happening the impression of the spiritual into the physical. A kind of incorporation of what we observe and comprehend during a story is necessary. Something akin to a physical phantom must develop and then impart itself into the whole organism. The organism is filled with delicate salt deposits. Not coarsely, of course. A salt phantom is imparted into the whole organism, and the necessity arises to dissolve it again through the metabolism.

This process takes place when the children read or listen to stories. When we believe ourselves to be occupying the mind and spirit in our lessons, we really evoke metabolic processes. And this must be considered. We cannot do anything else but to see to it that our stories and reading material are faultless in two respects.

First, the children must be interested in the subject. Genuine interest is connected with a delicate feeling of pleasure that must always be present. That feeling expresses itself physically in very subtle glandular secretions that absorb the salt deposits caused during reading and listening. We must endeavor never to bore the children. Lack of interest, boredom, leads to all sorts of metabolic problems. This is especially the case with girls. Migraine-like conditions are the result of a one-sided stuffing of material that must be learned without pleasure. The children are then filled with tiny spikes that do not get dissolved. They tend toward developing such spikes. We must be aware of these problems.

1923-08-13-GA307

Lecture in 'Education' cycle, called: 'Reading, Writing and Nature Study'

Related pages

• Man - the human being
• Human 'I'
• Human character - the I and threefold soul
• Development of the I

References and further reading

• Carl Unger: 'Prüfungen des Denkens, Fühlens, Wollens' (1929)