The Value of Thinking for Satisfying our Quest for Knowledge

GA 164 — 17 September 1915, Dornach

The Value of Thinking I

For the purposes of research and reflection in the physical world, it is above all, one might say, a matter close to the human heart to find one's way in the relationships of the physical world - in which one spends one's existence between birth and death - to the higher worlds to which one actually belongs. We are quite clear about the fact that, even if a person's thinking is still very vague, there is still an eminently clear feeling, a distinct sensation, that he must know something about these relationships in some form. No matter how vaguely man may think about the higher worlds, no matter how much despair he may feel for various reasons about the possibility of knowing anything about them, it is natural and appropriate for the human feeling and perception to relate to a higher world.

Of course, it can be objected that, especially in our present materialistic times, there are many people who either deny in some form or other that there is any spiritual world at all, or at least deny that man can know anything about it. But one can also say that one must first learn to have a “negative” attitude towards the spiritual world, so to speak, because it is not “natural” for a person to deny a spiritual, a supersensible world. One must first arrive at this position through all kinds of theories; one must first, one might say, be taught to deny a spiritual world with any degree of seriousness. So that when one speaks of the natural man, one can still speak in a way that is appropriate to his perception, turning the gaze of the soul in some way upwards to the spiritual worlds.

But now, if there is even the slightest possibility that there are people who want nothing whatsoever to do with the spiritual world, there must be something about human nature that makes it difficult to determine our relationship with the spiritual world. And this relationship does indeed seem difficult to grasp. For we see that in the course of history, which we can follow, a great number of all kinds of philosophies and world views have emerged that seemingly contradict each other. But I have often explained that it is only seemingly, because if it were easy for man to determine his relationship to the supersensible world, then the history of world views would not be full of seemingly contradictory world views. From this alone it is clear that it is, to a certain extent, difficult to determine the relationship to the spiritual world. And that is why the question can also be raised as to the origin of this difficulty, what it is that actually exists in the soul of man, that he has a hard time relating to the spiritual world.

Now, if we examine all the attempts that are made outside of a spiritual-scientific world view, say in mere philosophy or in external science, and ask ourselves what these attempts are actually based on, what they are based on, then we have to say: when we look at these attempts, when we see what kind of soul power men chiefly employ to fathom the relation of the physical to the spiritual world, one finds that, again and again, I might say except in isolated cases, men see in thinking above all that soul faculty, that soul activity which, rightly employed, could lead to the discovery of something, to a determination about the relation of man to the supersensible worlds. It is therefore necessary, so to speak, to consider the thinking, the thinking work of the soul, and to ask oneself: What about thinking, about making oneself thoughts, in relation to the human being who lives in the physical world and the spiritual worlds? What about this relationship of thinking to the spiritual worlds?

So the question is: what is the value of thinking for a form of knowledge that satisfies people? — I would like to consider this question today as a preliminary, and then discuss other questions in front of you afterwards. I would like us to prepare ourselves, so to speak, for a worthy discussion by considering the question of the value of thinking for knowledge.

Now, we can, as it were, get behind thinking if we proceed in the following way. In the course of the last lectures we have already indicated that certain peculiarities of thinking, or, even better, of thoughts, are to be considered. I have pointed out how there are many people who see it as a mistake of all scientific thinking when this scientific thinking is not just a mere copy, so to speak, a mental photograph of an external reality. For these people say: if thinking is to have any relationship at all to the real, to reality, then it must not bring anything to this reality from itself; for in the moment when thinking brings something to reality, one is not dealing with a copy, with a photograph of a reality, but with a fantasy, with a fantasy image. And in order to avoid dealing with such a fantasy, one must strictly ensure that no one includes in their thoughts anything that is not a mere photograph of external reality.

Now, with a slight effort of thought, you will immediately come to say to yourself: Yes, for the external physical world, for what we call the physical plane, this seems to be quite right. It seems to correspond to a quite correct perception that one must not add anything to reality through thinking if one does not want to have fantasy images instead of a reflection of reality. For the physical plane, it can truly be said that it is absolutely right to refrain from adding any ingredient of thought to what one receives from outside through perception.

Now I would like to draw your attention to the views of two philosophers regarding the view expressed in what has just been said: Aristotle and Leibniz.

Aristotle, who can be seen as the summarizer of the Greek world view, is a philosopher who was no longer initiated into the secrets of the spiritual world, but who lived in the very first period after, I would say, the “age of initiation”. Whereas before all philosophers were still somehow touched by the initiation when they expressed philosophically what they knew as initiates - P/ato, for example, who was a kind of initiate to the highest degree, but expressed himself philosophically - with Aristotle one must say that he also had no trace of an initiation, but still all kinds of after-effects of an initiation were there. So this is a philosopher who only speaks philosophically, without initiation, without any kind of initiatory impulse, but who, in his philosophy, gives in a rationalized way what the initiates who were before him gave in a spiritualized way. That is Aristotle.

The sentence we now want to consider comes from Aristotle. [It was written on the board:

There is nothing in the mind that is not in the senses.

So let us take note of this sentence: there is nothing in — we can add — 'human' intelligence that is not in the senses.

This sentence of Aristotle's must not be interpreted in any kind of materialistic way, because Aristotle is far removed from any kind of materialistic worldview. This sentence is not to be taken in a worldview sense, but rather epistemologically. That is to say, Aristotle rejects the idea that one can gain knowledge about the world from within, but asserts that one can only gain knowledge by directing one's senses to the outside world, by receiving sensory impressions and then using reason to form concepts from these sensory impressions; but of course he does not deny that one receives spiritual things with the sensory impressions. He thinks of nature as permeated by the spirit; only, he thinks, one cannot arrive at the spiritual if one does not look out into nature.

Here you can see the difference to the materialist. The materialist concludes: there is only material outside, and one only forms concepts of the material. Aristotle thinks that all of nature is permeated by spirit, but the path of the human soul to reach the spirit is such that one must start from the sensory perception and process the sensory impressions into concepts. If Aristotle himself had been touched by an initiatory impulse, he would not have said that; for then he would have known that if one frees oneself from sensory perception in the way we have described, one can attain knowledge of the spiritual world from within. So he did not want to deny the spiritual world, but only to show the path that human knowledge must take.

This sentence then played a major role in the Middle Ages and has been reinterpreted in a materialistic way in the materialistic age. You only need to change a small thing in this sentence of Aristotle's - there is nothing in the world for the intellect that is not in the senses - and we have immediately formed materialism from it. Isn't it true, you just need to make what, in the sense of Aristotle, is the human path of knowledge, the principle of a world view, and then you have materialism.

Leibniz came up with a similar sentence, and we also want to look at this sentence. Leibniz is not that far behind us; in the 17th century. Let us now also take this sentence of Leibniz to heart. So Leibniz says: There is nothing in, we can say again, “human” intelligence - I just add “human” - that is not in the senses, except for intelligence itself, except for the intellect itself.

[It was written on the board]:

There is nothing in human intelligence that is not in the senses, except for intelligence itself, except for intellect itself.

Thus the intellect that man has within him, working, is not in the senses. In these two sentences you can see a real school example of how one can completely agree with the formulation of a sentence, and yet how the sentence can be incomplete.

Now I do not want to dwell on the extent to which this sentence of Leibniz's is also philosophically incomplete. Let us just note for the moment that Leibniz was of the view that the intellect itself is not somehow already grounded in the senses, but that man must bring the work of the intellect to what the senses give him. So that one can say: the intellect itself is an inner activity that has not yet passed through the senses.

If you have followed the last lectures, you know that this inner work is already free of the senses and takes place in the etheric body of the human being. In our language, we can say: There is nothing in the intelligence working in the etheric body that is not in the senses, except for the intelligence itself working in the etheric body; what works in there does not come in from the senses.

But thinking as such is in reality, when it is properly considered in true self-knowledge, this working in the etheric body, and that is what philosophers call the intellect. This thinking is therefore a kind of work, a working, we could say. And because, for our spiritual scientific understanding, Leibniz, even if he is not absolutely right, is still more right than Aristotle, we can say: this thinking - or, better expressed, this thinking activity, this thinking work in man, which is a performance of the etheric body - that is not in the outer reality of the physical plane. For the physical plane is exhausted in what it allows us to perceive through the senses. So, by placing ourselves as human beings in the physical plane, we bring intellect into it, but this intellect itself is not in the physical world.

And here we now come to the difficulty of those philosophers who want to get behind the world riddle through the intellect. People have to say to themselves: Yes, if I think about it properly, the intellect does not belong to the sense world; but I am now in a peculiar situation. I know of no other spiritual world than just the intellect; it is a spiritual world behind sensuality. So what do I get from the intellect? It cannot receive anything, no content, if it does not inform itself through the senses from the external physical world. It only stands there for itself. — But then the philosopher stands before a rather peculiar thing. He must indeed reflect: I have an activity within me, the activity of the intellect. Through this activity of the intellect I want to get to the bottom of the secrets of the sense world. But I can only think about what is out there in the sense world; but these thoughts arise through something that does not itself belong to the sense world. So what do these thoughts have to do with the sense world? Even if I now also know that the intellect is a spiritual thing, I must still despair of being able to approach anything that is reality through the spiritual thing that I have.

Now I will try to approach the matter by way of comparison. In the last lectures we expressed the same thing in a different way. We expressed it by leading ourselves to recognize that in what we achieve through our thinking we have mirror images of reality, that these mirror images actually come in addition to reality and are not realities themselves.

You see, it is the same truth, only expressed differently here in a philosophical way. We had to say: the intellect forms mirror images. These mirror images, as an image of the reality that is being mirrored, are indifferent to reality, because the reality that is being mirrored does not need these mirror images. So that one might come to doubt reality altogether, the whole reality value of thinking, of intelligence, and ask oneself: Does thinking have any real significance? Does it not actually add something to external reality through what it is? Does any single thought have any real value if, in relation to reality, it is nothing more than a mirror image?

Let us now endeavor to properly examine the reality of thought. In other words, we want to answer the question: Is thought really just something imagined that has no real value at all? Or, we can approach the question from a different angle: Where does thought have a reality? — Now, as I said, I will try to illustrate this through a comparison. Here is a watch; I pick up the watch, now I have the watch in my hand. Everything about the watch is outside the muscles and nerves of my hand. My hand and the watch are two different things. But suppose it were dark here, I had never seen the watch and would perceive the watch only through feeling, then I would perceive something of the watch by stretching out my hand and grasping the watch. If you direct your attention to the watch, you will say to yourself, I can learn something about the reality of the watch by holding it in my hand, by grasping it. But if we hypothetically assume for a moment that I only have one hand and not two, I would not be able to grasp the first hand with the second hand as I can actually do now. I could grasp the watch with my one hand, but I could not grasp the hand itself with another hand; at most I could touch it with my nose, but let us not consider that for the moment, shall we? Yet the hand is just as real as the watch. How do I convince myself of the reality of the watch? By taking it in my hand and touching it. How do I convince myself of the reality of the hand? I could not convince myself by touching it if I did not have a second hand; but I do know with inner certainty that I have a hand, that I have what I have on me to grasp the watch just as realistically as I can guarantee the reality of the watch by touching it. Do you notice the difference between the real hand and the real watch? I have to experience the reality of the hand in a different way than the reality of the clock.

You can transfer this comparison entirely to human thinking, to the intellect. You can never grasp that which the intellect comprehends so directly through the intellect itself; just as little as you can grasp the hand itself with a hand. The intellect cannot perceive itself as it perceives the other things; but it is nevertheless convinced of its reality through inner certainty. It is an inner certainty that convinces the intellect of its reality. But then one must understand this intellect, this working of the intellect, as an activity of the human subject; one must realize that the intellect, spiritually speaking, is only a hand that is stretched out to grasp something. All this is figuratively speaking, but they are very real images. And just as, on the one hand, my hand is able to convince me of the reality of the watch – namely, by being able, for example, to feel the weight of the watch, the smoothness of the watch, that is, by being able to experience through the nature of my hand everything that is real about the clock – on the other hand, through the real of the intellect, I am able to experience other things about things than what the senses experience. The intellect is therefore a grasping organ in the spiritual sense, which we must perceive in #»s, not in the outside world.

And you see, here lies the difficulty for philosophers. They believe that if they have thoughts about the world, then these thoughts must come from outside, and then they realize that they do not come from outside at all, but that the intellect produces these thoughts. And since they regard the intellect as alien to external reality, they must actually regard all thoughts as fantasy images. But one must ascribe a subjective reality to the intellect, a reality that is experienced internally. Then one has the realm of reality in which the intellect is perceived. Thus, by examining the actual nature of the intellect, we come to be able to say: Yes, everything that the intellect accomplishes may or need only be a reflection of external reality, but this reflection has been created by the work of real intellect. This is a human activity. Its reality consists in the fact that man works by acquiring knowledge of the reality of the intellect through the intellect. So we can say that man's intellectual activity, which works in man, but it works in such a way that it is quite justified to say that what this intellect works out has no significance for the world in which it works - just as the hand has no significance for the clock; for the clock it is of no importance whether it is grasped by the hand or not – it is something that exists for and in man, that he forms images of things through the intellect. But with regard to the things of the physical plane, everything that this intellect works out is unreal, a mirror image, dead, nothing alive. We can say that the images of the physical world that are worked out in the intellect are lifeless, dead images.

[It was written on the board]:

Intellectual activity - dead images.

Thus, the images that man forms of the physical world are also dead images. One misunderstands the actual nature of this content of the intellect if one ascribes to it something other than the fact that it can be a copy of the physical world.

But the matter becomes quite different when man comes to live with the experiences of his existence in time. When we face the things of the external world and form images of them through the intellect, we get dead concepts; but if we allow these concepts to be present in our soul, then after some time, when the experience of which we have formed an image is long gone, we can, through memory, as we say, bring up the image of that experience from memory. We can say: Yes, now I know nothing of the experience; but when I remember, it comes up. It was not in my consciousness before I remembered, but it is there, somewhere in the depths of my soul, unconsciously, I just have to bring it up from the unconscious.

So the image of a past experience that I have seen in the past is down there in the unconscious. Fine, there it is, I'll bring it up. But down there it is not so meaningless. You just need to take the very ordinary difference between an idea that we receive from an experience in such a way that it gives us joy, lifts us up, and an idea of some experience that has not given us joy. We can now push an idea that has given us joy down into the unconscious, and can push an idea that has not given us joy into the unconscious. Few people reflect on what is to be said about the difference between an idea that gives pleasure and one that causes grief or pain. But there is an enormous difference. And this difference becomes particularly apparent when one tries to ascertain the reality value of such ideas, which have actually already faded from normal memory.

So let us consider an idea that a person may have enjoyed but had no reason to think back to in later life, or an idea that caused him pain and to which he also had little reason to think back. They do not come to his consciousness, but they play a role in the unconscious soul life. If only people would recognize from spiritual science what ideas stored up in the soul mean, even if they are completely forgotten. We are actually always the result of our experiences. The expression on our face, especially in more intimate gestures, is really a reflection of what we have experienced in our present incarnation. You can see this in the faces of people who experienced something sad in their childhood. So what goes on down there, in other words, is involved in the processes of human life. What is repressed into oblivion, into the unconscious, in the form of inhibiting, sad images, consumes us, it cuts off our life force. What we have experienced that is joyful and uplifting revives us. And when you study the fate of our imaginative life in the unconscious, you find how tremendously dependent the present mood, the whole constitution of a person, is on what lies in his subconscious.

Now compare the memories, the images that have already entered the unconscious soul life, with the images that we currently have in our consciousness. Then you will say to yourself: the images that we currently have in our consciousness are dead. Dead images do not participate in our life process. Only when they descend into the unconscious do they begin to participate in the process of life and then become life-promoting or life-inhibiting ideas. So that the ideas, by being pushed down into the deeper layers of the soul, only really begin to live. I have always pointed this out in the lectures I have given in various places on the hidden foundations of the soul's life. Thus, the ideas, which are initially dead ideas, begin to live when they are implanted in our soul life; but they live all the more the more unconscious we become.

If you now follow the process with spiritual scientific knowledge, something very peculiar happens, which I can only describe as [a drawing is begun]:

Let us assume that this is the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious; that this line, this stroke, is the boundary between “conscious”, which is above, and “unconscious”, which is below. And now we have formed all kinds of ideas in our consciousness. I will denote them schematically with all kinds of figures. We have formed these ideas; let us assume that these ideas go down into the unconscious. They go down there [the arrows were drawn].

Yes, you see, when these images that go down there are followed with spiritual-scientific knowledge, then they transform themselves. Outwardly we have recognized that they become life-promoting or life-inhibiting; inwardly it shows through spiritual-scientific knowledge that they become imaginations by sliding down below the surface, as it were. In the unconscious or subconscious, everything that goes down becomes imagination, everything becomes an image. You can have the most abstract ideas in your ordinary day-to-day consciousness: when you go below the threshold of ordinary day-to-day consciousness, everything becomes imagination. That is to say, there is a process in man, a sum of processes, which is always endeavoring — through the dead ideas of the earthly, ordinary, materialistic consciousness passing into the subconscious — to transform all the ideas of consciousness in the subconscious into images, into imaginations, before man comes to imaginative knowledge.

If we want to describe what we have in our unconscious of our imaginative life, if we want to get to know it, then we must actually say: all this consists of unconscious imaginations, and all the ideas that we can in turn raise from the unconscious into the conscious, we must bring them up through an activity that also remains unconscious to us. We must bring them back into consciousness, but we must strip them of their pictorial character, transform them back into abstract, non-pictorial ideas. And when you are in the process of reflecting, “Oh, I experienced something; what was it? and you make an effort – you all know the process – to remember something, then it is the effort that you have to devote to stripping the image that is sitting there of its pictorial character and transforming it back into the imaginative form of consciousness.

From this, however, you will see that the ideas become more spiritual when we push them down into the unconscious. We must therefore say: When we take what the intellect offers us and absorb it into the unconscious, then we must characterize the world of ideas that is there in us and that we have pushed down as a higher, more spiritual world. We must therefore say: the world of possible memories – please note that I say the world of possible memories; not all the images that go down there need to be remembered again, but they are all there below in the unconscious soul life – the world of possible memories actually consists of imaginations, of unconscious imaginations.

[It was written on the board:

World of possible memories – imaginations.

Now, there are times when it is possible for a person's normal consciousness – and perhaps we will be able to talk about other such possibilities in the next few days – to conjure up these images, which would otherwise never pass from the realm of possible memories into the realm of actual memories, into consciousness. Take the experiences sometimes had by people who are drowning! And if you could compare them with the experiences of those who have passed through the gate of death, you would find that even there, some images, where the effort in ordinary physical life is not enough to bring them up again, then arise as if by themselves. But episodes, parts of them, also arise in the ordinary dream world. Even the dream as it presents itself to us is a complicated reality, because what is actually experienced is in many ways hidden behind it. But the ideas that we cover up are taken from memory. So the dream, the experiences of those struggling with death, like drowning people and the like, and experiences that occur immediately after passing through the gate of death, show this world of imagination, which is a more spiritual world than the world of ordinary human intelligence on the physical plane.

But if you take what I have just described, that these ideas, which have passed into the region of memory, work to promote or inhibit life, you will say to yourself: There is some life in it. While the ideas of the ordinary intellect are dead, there is some life in them, but it is not particularly strong. But even here ordinary experience can offer something that can show you that what happens to these images as they descend into the subconscious region can signify an even stronger life.

I have already emphasized the very common fact that people who have to learn something by heart in order to recite it, learn and sleep on it, and that this sleep is necessary to make the memory more capable. This is, however, only a slight hint at something that spiritual science shows much more clearly, indeed completely clearly, namely that our entire world of ideas, as we develop it and push it down into the subconscious, becomes more and more alive in the subconscious, while in consciousness it is dead.

Now, the ideas that come up again are not even those that are most involved in promoting or inhibiting life, but rather those that connect with us much more intimately. Ideas that we often absorb only incidentally, without even paying much attention to them in life, connect with our life-promoting or life-inhibiting powers to a much greater extent. Let us assume that someone is involved in spiritual science. He first takes in this spiritual science as it is worked out by the physical intellect. He has to start from there. We have to tie in with what the physical intellect perceives through the senses. Otherwise I could not speak about the spiritual world at all, because language is for the physical world. But there is a difference in how we, let me say, clothed in life, take in such a world of ideas.

Suppose a person takes the truths of spiritual science seriously and with dignity, so to speak, so that he feels: there is seriousness, deep seriousness. Another person takes in the ideas of spiritual science in such a way that he actually only listens to them theoretically and does not take them very seriously. The one takes them, as it were, in an atmosphere of superficiality, the other in an atmosphere of seriousness. We do not need to be very aware of how we take them in; it has more to do with how we go through life without always thinking about it. Those who are predisposed or accustomed to taking things seriously, and not frivolously or cynically, do not always think about how to take them; they behave seriously and naturally. In the same way, those who are only superficially predisposed take them in superficially; they cannot help it. Thus we accompany our life of imagination with something that we do not imagine, that really is something that goes along with what we are aware of. But what goes along with what we are aware of goes much deeper into the unconscious than what we consciously think. The way we form our ideas goes much deeper into the unconscious than what we consciously think. And when a person is asleep and his astral body and I am out of the physical and etheric body, then this way of forming ideas plays an infinitely important role in the astral body and I. One can say: Anyone who takes on any ideas with the necessary seriousness has these ideas in his astral body and in his I in such a way that they are there like invigorating solar power for the plant. They are truly the most invigorating of forces. And he incorporates into these ideas that which is invigorating, invigorating and going beyond the present incarnation, and creating the preconditions for the next incarnation. It is already evident from the creative soul that you have something in the subconscious that is more spiritual than what can be brought up through the dream.

There we have a world of unconscious mental life, connected with the whole core of the human being. This way of taking life, as it were, penetrates into our spiritual life forces, and it is quite the same as unconscious inspiration.

[It was written on the board]:

World of the unconscious life of imagination – inspirations.

I will then explain to you – today is no longer the time for this – how even ordinary life shows that these unconscious inspirations unconsciously have an effect in the person already in the incarnation in which they are formed, but unconsciously. Then I will show you further that there is still a higher world for the human being. But you can see from what has been presented today that the human soul life has an inner movement, that what is experienced on the physical plane through physical intelligence is experienced further down, that it then ascends into more spiritual regions, into even more spiritual regions at last than we experience on the physical plane. [The arrows were drawn.] So the life of imagination is in inner movement, in ascending movement. And now you remember what I drew for you yesterday: how certain processes in man were shown in a descending movement. So that you can say to yourself: When I have the human being in front of me, there is a descending current and an ascending current in the human being, and they work together. We will discuss tomorrow how they work together.

[Diagram on the board]:

World of unconscious mental life: inspirations
World of memory: imaginations
Intellectual activity: dead images