Thought Thinks Thought: Creative Meditation and Supersensible Thinking

GA 266II — 17 January 1911, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

In our meditation, we have, so to speak, given the technique of our esoteric life. This consists in allowing thoughts to work upon oneself and thereby awakening sensations and feelings that are not taken from the physical plane.

All thoughts are of two kinds: those that are evoked in us through the perception of the physical plane, and those that Theosophy gives us. Everything in the physical world is maya, including our physical body. What actually causes it to exist? What causes the plants, animals, and stones around us to exist? It is because higher beings conceived a thought millions and millions of years ago and then thought this thought over and over again. With these things, it is as the proverb says: constant dripping wears away the stone. The same thoughts coincide and ultimately form physical objects. The harder the stone, the longer it has been “thought.” Our physical body is also nothing more than the thoughts of many higher beings.

When we think only the ordinary thoughts of the physical plane, these are not really thoughts, but rather the reflection, the illusion of a thought. For everything that belongs to the physical world was thought long ago, and we do nothing more than repeat those thoughts—and then in an incorrect manner. For example, when someone hears a bell ringing, the sound is not something real, but rather, millions of years ago, what became the bell was thought, and what became our brain was also thought, and the collision of these two produces the sound we hear.

They cause our astral body to vibrate in a certain way, but this vibration was already placed there by higher beings. So anyone who never thinks in a non-sensory way will never bring new formations into the astral body. What happens in the astral body has an effect on the etheric body, but the etheric body is predisposed to receive new thoughts and forms. The old forms have a destructive effect on it and, from there, also on the physical strands of our nervous system. All of this must then be restored during sleep. The astral body is then temporarily connected to the higher hierarchies and thereby receives strength; the etheric body is separated from the astral body and is thereby regenerated. Without sleep, human beings could not live for long.

Non-sensory thoughts, however, have a fertilizing and constructive effect. Through them, humans join the hierarchies. In the astral body, they form new forms, the lotus flowers. That is why it is necessary to repeat a meditation hundreds of times.

The mental images we form of theosophical teachings – for thinking about them is also meditation – will not be entirely free of sensuality at first. For example, when we say that Saturn is a sphere of heat, or that the harmony of the spheres resounds in Devachan, we will initially imagine this in sensual images: like the warmth in our blood, like a beautiful symphony, and so on. But as the thought is repeated over and over, the sensory aspect that still clings to it falls away of its own accord, and the supersensible remains.

The most free of sensuality thoughts in the world are still mathematical ones; but even when modern man thinks of a triangle, he thinks of it with color and a certain thickness, not abstractly enough. However, one comes closer to supersensible thoughts when one pays attention to relationships. Remembering a sound is still the memory of something sensual; remembering a melody is already something more, something that exists in a relationship of sounds to each other, which as such does not belong to the sensual world. Or imagine a villain and another villain next to him — or even two good people — and one [villain] is an even greater villain than the other, or one good person is greater in goodness than the other: then there is something in this relationship that is not of the physical-sensory world, something that leads us up into the spiritual world. When a person thinks of or sees a villain, it will make them feel uncomfortable; but when they see two villains side by side in a play, the worst villain will always be more appealing than the less evil one, because greatness always attracts. This is the basis, for example, of the effect of various Shakespearean dramas. — That is why it is so important that we observe and study the conditions in the external world, because that leads us away from the sensual.

Another means of becoming free of sensuality [in thinking] is to reverse processes, for example, reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards or reviewing our meditation in reverse.¹

This shows how our body is a maya, thoughts of beings that are themselves thoughts. Thought thinks thought; this is a meditation sentence of the highest importance. It is not our brain that thinks, not our etheric or astral body, but thought itself thinks thoughts. This is also what clearly emerges from our saying:

The seed of my body lay in the spirit ...

Record B

Constant dripping wears away the stone. The hierarchies have periodically held fast to the same thought or further developed the same thought, thereby exerting a creative influence. Thus, our entire bodies and we ourselves are created through thinking – in fact, we are ourselves only thoughts. Thinking about what already exists is not creative, but destructive to our nerves, and also to the etheric body, which is the actual organ for progressive development. The disruptive influence of the astral body enters into this during the day. During the night, the physical and etheric bodies must be freed from the astral body (thoughts) and creatively restored, as must the astral body itself. Only when we think supersensibly do we ourselves act creatively as a human hierarchy, creating the lotus flowers through hundreds and thousands of repetitions. Then we also work into the etheric body in the sense of the higher hierarchies. Even if the meditation images are taken from the sensory world, through constant repetition and thereby deepening, they shed their sensory character. Even the relationship between sensory things and between good and bad people, even the reversal of the sequence of events when looking back on the evening, helps to achieve thinking free of the senses. Further study:

The thought thinks the thought.

We should use the present period of time to ascend; time does not always offer such an opportunity.

Record C

The hierarchies have periodically recorded the same thought over and over again (permanent thoughts that reinforce what lives in fluctuating appearance), and they continue to elaborate on the same thought. In this way, they have a creative effect. Thus, our various bodies and the spiritual-soul nature dwelling in these bodies are created by this divine thinking—actually, they are themselves only thoughts of the gods.

Our thinking, which we carry out with the help of the brain, is not creative, but destructive, both for our nerves and for our etheric body. This is the actual organ for progressive development. During the day, it is damaged by the destructive effect of the astral body. During the night, the physical and etheric bodies must be freed from this destructive influence of the astral body and restored by creative thoughts. The same applies to the astral body itself. Only when we feel ourselves to be part of the human hierarchy, i.e., when we think world thoughts, do we ourselves act creatively rather than destructively. Through the thousandfold repetition of such world thoughts, we create content such as that given to us in meditation—first of all, the lotus flowers. In this way, we also work into the etheric body in the sense of the hierarchies. The images and words of the meditation content are taken from the sensory world, but through constant repetition and deepening, which penetrates into the essence hidden behind the words and images, the words and images shed their sensory nature. And when one advances so far as to rest in the essence hidden in the depths of words and images, then one enters another world through meditation. Deepening oneself in thought: the thought thinks the thought helps to achieve this. Knowledge is always referred to as light; wisdom as a kind of fluid element, water (occult).

Additional note by the editors:

What is meant by the last sentence: “Wisdom under a kind of liquid element, water (occult)” is explained in more detail in notes from the lecture given on May 24, 1905, in Berlin (GA 323a). It states:

"Anyone who wants to acquire a real view of four-dimensional space must perform very specific visual exercises. First, they form a very clear, deep view of water. Such a perception cannot be obtained easily; one must delve very deeply into the nature of water; one must, so to speak, crawl into the water. The second thing is to gain a perception of the nature of light; light is something that human beings know, but only insofar as they receive it from outside; Through meditation, one can obtain the inner counterpart of light, know where light comes from, and thus produce light oneself. This is possible for those who allow pure concepts to truly meditate on their soul, who have a way of thinking free of sensuality. Then the whole environment appears to them as flooding light, and now they must, as it were, chemically combine the mental image they have formed of water with that of light. This water, completely permeated by light, is a substance that alchemists called “mercury.” However, alchemical mercury is not ordinary mercury. First, one must awaken within oneself the ability to produce mercury from the concept of light. Mercury, light-permeated water power, is what one then possesses. This is the one element of the astral world.

The second arises when you form a vivid mental image of air, then suck out the power of the air through a spiritual process, connect it with your feelings, and thus ignite the concept of ‘heat’, ‘fire’, and then you get ‘fire air’. So one element is sucked out, the other is produced by yourself. The alchemists called these two elements, air and fire, ‘sulfur,’ luminous fire air. In the watery element, you have in truth that matter of which it is said, ‘and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.’

This may be related to the fact that a “Rosicrucian water saying” circulated among members of the esoteric school. The wording is taken from the Rosicrucian text “Secret Figures of the Rosicrucians from the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Altona 1785, reprinted in Berlin in 1919 (the saying is headed “Aqua Philosophorum h.e. Mercurius Primaterialis Catholicus”). Facsimile of Rudolf Steiner's handwritten copy (NZ Archive No. 3019) see p. 140:

Water is water and remains water.
From the sky of the wise rains water
The stone of the wise weeps tears of water
Yet the world does not respect such water,
Their fire burns in water
And lives in water Make water out of fire
And boil the fire in water
Then fiery water will become
Like sharply salted sea water
Be living water for your children!
Consume body and soul with water —
Become stinking, green, rotten, blue like sky water
Digest, calcine, dissolve, and putrefy the water;
Seek the philosophers' fourfold water,
And when it is best made,
The art will become water.

See also the esoteric lesson of March 14, 1908, on the “Rosicrucian Fire Spell” (GA 266/1, pp. 340-361 and 589f.).