90. On Sensation and Perception

From Notebook 21, undated, around 1917

The sense impression (physical) dies away in the sense organ - meets the physical there (this is where the physical mirror image is created); this mirror image is inwardly enlivened in the image body - it then runs in the nervous system - the ether process coming from outside - this comes up against the physical body at the nerve endings – it runs in the breathing system – the astral process – this comes up against the physical body at the end of the inhalation system – the I-process runs right into the metabolism – there it is reflected.

The opposite process: the metabolic process forms and collides with the ego process – it then penetrates as a movement into the breathing – collides with the astral process – penetrates through the breathing into the nervous process, collides with the ether process.

The middle process: the inhalation brings the formless substance, which meets with the ether process - then penetrates as an astral process and encounters the physical body - is detached from the exhalation, which underlies the astral - the astral remains in the person; the etheric goes further into the nervous process - remains there - and the physical (exhaled air) goes outwards. In the nervous process, the disconnected, I would say the killed thoughts, are the only ones that can be in the human body - the spiritual researcher must represent in thoughts which have not undergone this transformation through the body.

Who knows the essence of the life of imagination?

Schopenhauer's “the world is my imagination” is as if someone were to say of a person standing before him in the fullness of life: “this person is a corpse”. —

Ordinary thinking is such that the power of imagery inherent in the sensations is taken away; if it were not, man would not be able to distinguish himself from the external world - the power of the ether must flow into thinking - in which thinking is fulfilled through imagination. -

As the sensation becomes an idea, the inner ether process paralyzes the outer one - and in the imagination, the disconnected, paralyzed ether process comes to a continuous effect in the nerves - in the nerves, the after-effects of the ethereal processes: now one can animate thought to imagination – precisely at the thought processes that lead to boundaries – such boundaries represent the attempt to approach spiritual reality; but one cannot approach it because one has dead thoughts.