139. Thoughts, Memory and Imagination

Only an unfinished product enters into perception; one could not worry about perception if it produced a finished impression - man describes the unfinished remainder as matter.

Memory contains more than thought; we would have no memories if a physical process did not follow thinking. We speak of consciousness as we speak of a mirror. We mean something through which one cannot see and which yet reflects only the transformed memories like mirror images.

Anthroposophy seeks to understand matter in the human mind; and that of consciousness in the outside world.

An anthroposophical researcher can only be someone who is protected by healthy, realistic, vigorous thinking from falling into dreaming, hallucinating, hysterically indulging in their own physicality; and whose interest in the sensual outside world, cultivated through Goethe, prevents them from tearing shreds out of this outside world to patch together a natural philosophy with them.

[missing part of the manuscript] One is in pictorial-uniformity with heightened experience of one's own self. One experiences a reality that was hidden before. One has one's own self with its part of the world before consciousness. And this self is free of the body, i.e. free of the physical body. One experiences oneself in a reality in which the physical body is not. One experiences oneself in etheric reality. It becomes clear to consciousness that an etheric body underlies the physical body. One has broken through to etheric reality through abstract thinking. One now knows that thinking is rooted in this etheric reality and that ordinary thinking is the imprint of an etheric event in the physical body.

It is important to realize that one should not tap into the ether any more than one should into the dimensions and weight ratios of physical existence. For the latter, external instruments are required. To perceive in the ether, it requires a breakthrough to a reality that is measured, counted and weighed with inner forces. Thinking about the external world is only beneficial if it creates the conditions under which the world reveals itself through measure, number and weight. Likewise, thinking inwardly must be the mediator, not the dogmatist.

Through the development of the ability just described, the whole person becomes a sense organ. One must be completely clear about this fact. One experiences a great deal through the awakening of the imaginative power. But this is not the objective world. In relation to this objective world, everything is only an image. But as an image, it has reality. This reality can only be evaluated through vigorous thinking. Through orientation in the world of images, the inwardly effective and the outward are separated. One cannot keep the outward from the images, but one can distinguish between the inward and the outward through vigorous thinking.

Of the outer world, only the spiritual-soul remains in the human and animal kingdoms; the plants and minerals are lost from the field of vision that now exists. The latter two kingdoms of nature are still there as results of the etheric. The moon ceases to be a reality in the world now being viewed. By contrast, the sun appears to have been transformed. It becomes a force permeating the world.

[missing part of the manuscript]

The impression that a person makes is much more than what is captured by the senses. Think of someone who claims to have seen Bismarck. What is at work there, besides the image, and from within. Interest is aroused. Desires assert themselves. The memory is not caused by the power of the image, but by the power of the impression and by the interest from within.

The development of the imaginative faculty depends on the formation of that which leads to remembering apart from the sensory image. This points to forces of the human soul that lie fallow in ordinary life. They are stimulated by the external world, but not by the power of the will itself. The power of interest, which when heightened to the highest degree appears as love, and the power of allowing oneself to be stimulated by a content, can be aroused by one's own will.

In this way, one develops the ability on which remembering is based; but without remembering itself coming about. But something else comes about. The power arises in the soul to live in images, without external stimulus. This image-forming power must be developed for anthroposophical research.