The Value of Thinking II

GA 164/1915-09-18/p015 ·1915-09-18 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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It is very important that we pay attention to this feeling if we are to get an idea of imaginative knowledge; for we are in the imaginative world at the moment when the thoughts that we bring up from the subconscious begin to tingle and crawl, begin to behave in such a way that we have the feeling: down there, under the threshold, everything is actually swirling and churning. And while it is very quiet up there in the attic and thoughts can be controlled so nicely, just as machines can be controlled, down there one thought follows another, the thoughts tingle and crawl, they churn and roll, down there they suddenly become a very active world. It is important to appropriate this feeling, because at that moment, when you begin to feel the life of the world of thought, you are in the imaginative or elementary world. That is where you are! And one can enter so easily if only one follows the very simplest rules given in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, if only one refrains from trying to enter by the way of all kinds of “practices” hinted at in recent days. One can really enter so easily. Just think that one of the very first things clearly stated in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is that one should try to follow the life of a plant, for example: how it gradually grows and gradually fades away. Yes, if you really follow this, you have to go through the life of the plant in your thoughts. First you have the thought of the very small seed, and if you do not make the thought flexible, you will not be able to follow the plant as it grows. You have to make the thought flexible. And then again, when you think of the plant shedding its leaves, gradually dying, withering, you have to think of shrinking and wrinkling. As soon as you begin to think in terms of living things, you have to make the thought itself mobile. The thought must begin to acquire inner mobility through your own power.

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Cite: GA 164/1915-09-18/p015 · edition English