Our Thought Life in Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

The point is not that we merely think about the spiritual world—we must first think about it so that the content of the spiritual world can enter the soul at all—but the point is that these thoughts prove to be creatively alive. Ordinary physical earthly thoughts are abstract thoughts. Most scientific thoughts are entirely abstract thoughts that do nothing in human nature, any more than mirror images can do anything. These thoughts are only images. If you look in the mirror at the same time as someone else and receive a slap in the face, you will not attribute the slap to any of the mirror images, but to the real person standing next to you. Thoughts are just like mirror images: they do nothing, they do not actually provide any impetus. It is only the moral intuitions in thoughts that provide the impetus. And so it is that we must start from thoughts, but that thoughts about the spiritual world must act as realities act, not as thoughts.