102. Sensation, Imagination and Feeling Process

The mineral world is the sphere of the “I” – the mineral must prevail in the organism if the “I” is to appear – but it appears with the dullest consciousness, which only comes to life when it is integrated into the equilibrium of the world; the soul prevails in the plant world – it emerges in the plant part of the organism with a dormant consciousness that participates in the movement processes of the world; in the animal part, the body has a dreaming consciousness that lives out in the images; in the human part, the body has full consciousness, which lives out in the perceptions. The “I” participates in all these levels of consciousness: it now rises into the realm of extra-bodily existence, in which it has “visionary consciousness” (imaginations); through these it penetrates beyond the surface of the perceivable perceptible into the world where the counter-images of the perceptions are the real content of the picture. Only there is the possibility of seeing the self-organization that produces the perceptions. This is identical with the formative forces of the organism. When man then enters the sphere of inspiration, he feels the external as well as the internal. Then there is the possibility of seeing the soul: its forces are those that evoke the feelings; they are identical with the forces that work in the organism in a regressive way, multiplying numbers, driving it apart. They want to incorporate it into the process of becoming of the world. Then in intuition, mineralization, which is one with destruction.

The partial process of becoming within is always counteracted by the total organic process - the formation of ideas comes about because the partial formative forces are always prevented by the total re-forming forces from forming clearly defined formations - the mineralizing forces then force their way through, reaching into the process of perception and always dissolving what is mineral. In the sense organ: effect from outside – it wants to give rise to objectivity; effect from within: objectivity is dissolved. – In the organism of imagination: effect from outside – it wants to give rise to pictoriality in the process of becoming. Effect from within: pictoriality is reduced. In the organism of feeling: inspiration wants to arise – it is silenced from within: the processes of imagination fall silent – the process of imagination spreads throughout the entire body of formative forces – from there it enters the soul, which does not enter into the process of becoming between birth and death, but remains in the supersensible world – there it lives out what is also prenatal and after-death – then one sees the 'I' as spirit; there it resists the emergence of intuitions of the will process – one lives in a being from which the content is taken – one wants one's whole destiny etc. – one also wants 'oneself' with what has been taken: when the conditions of the present being are no longer there – either because of the foreignness of these conditions or because one has seen through their transience.