Thought

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Wassily Kandinsky: To the Unknown Voice (1916)

The thought initially appears as the more or less solidified, dead product of living thinking, whereby a clear distinction must be made between the subjective form of its appearance in consciousness, for example as an idea, and its objective content. Mentally, thoughts are mostly experienced through image and/or word conceptions. In terms of content, they consist of concepts or ordered conceptual connections. Complex thoughts that are not formed step by step through discursive thinking, but arise intuitively in our consciousness, are called ideas.

It is through thoughts that we become aware of thinking in the first place, because we do not normally observe the living thinking process, at least not in its full depth, but only the products it produces, namely thoughts. However, the observation of thinking is possible for every thinking person with the appropriate training of attention. If this succeeds, the act of thinking itself becomes a component of the experience of thought.

Mere having of thoughts, i.e. the presence of finished thoughts in consciousness, which are called up from memory as the result of earlier thinking without actively experienced insight, or which have been acquired more or less passively as knowledge without one's own deeper insight in reliance on an authority, or which consist only in factually largely unrelated associations of thoughts, is not yet thinking, but a mere perception of the thoughts passing through consciousness. Real thinking must be produced by one's own effort, i.e. by an activity of the will, and must progress self-actively to the immediate clear insight into the present ideal connections.

The thought formation process

Thoughts are reflections of a supersensible. Today, their carrier is the etheric body and their mirroring apparatus is the physical body, which, however, only pictures the living thoughts in a pale dead form shadow-like in our consciousness.

„The etheric body is the carrier of thoughts, which are also reflections. People could easily come to the conclusion that thoughts are reflections of a supersensible. Thoughts will never be able to be prepared under a microscope. Thoughts live in truth in the etheric body. They are formed by thought, and this is reflected in the physical body. From this we can see that cognition, knowledge, depends on the physical body and the etheric body. Only the impressions of the physical plan speak to the physical and etheric body. Other ideas, however, must find a place in the human soul. They must also take hold of the astral body, the whole feeling and willing and the thinking, which is not only exhausted on the physical plane. Otherwise the human being remains inwardly dead. All ideas that depict something only have meaning for the physical plane. The very question: Is an idea justified that does not represent something? - says this. But the ideas that live freely in the spirit, that live freely in the astral body and in the ego, with them one not only recognises, but lives with them. These are ideas that not only represent something, but are inwardly active, alive, that make something of themselves and of us.“ (Lit.:GA 154, p. 131f)

According to their true origin, thoughts are reflections of the spiritual, i.e. of the actual spiritual world, the devachan.

„Now, in the spirit as man has it today, thoughts live, the thoughts as I present them, for instance, in my "Philosophy of Freedom", where they are not saturated with sensory perceptions, but are freely created, pure thoughts in human consciousness. There the thoughts, according to their quality, are at first only an appearance, they are so little a full reality that they do not have an inner power. Because we do not have the mirror image, we can compare them, not entirely, but in a certain sense nevertheless, with mirror images. The image that appears in the mirror does not have force in the direction of its lines; it is entirely passive. Human thoughts have force in their unfolding, so that we can also catch this force, as I said yesterday in the esoteric lesson, and make it permeate the will. But in relation to the universe in its full being, these thoughts which man has in life actually behave like mirror images, so that we already carry the spirit in the human being, but the spirit in the mirror image.

Now, my dear friends, what we carry within us comes from the world which I have described in my "Theosophy" as spirit-land, and we actually, by thinking on earth, bring down to earth the ingredients of spirit-land in appearance, in reflection. We carry what Theosophy calls the Devachan down into the earth realm by thinking, even if it is a faint reflection. We carry these contents in us on earth, in a faint reflection the glow of heaven.“ (Lit.:GA 346, p. 199)

The experience of thoughts has changed greatly in the course of human development. Originally, thoughts were experienced directly in the I. Man felt himself carried by a world of spiritual beings. Later, their spiritual revelation was experienced in the astral body. In the heyday of Greco-Latin culture, it was still possible to experience living thoughts. Only with the dawn of the consciousness-soul age did they take on the shadowy form that we consider the only possible form today. Today it is Michael's mission to revive the shadows of thought, but in such a way that the full freedom of man is preserved.

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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