Our Thought Life in Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

Only then do we enter into the real anthroposophical view when we perceive thoughts as realities and also experience them as realities. This is also where we encounter the objection that is often raised. Superficial people also say: This whole anthroposophical worldview can also be based on imagination; human beings are subject to self-suggestion. As an example, it is said that people are sometimes so sensitive that the mere thought of drinking lemonade fills them with the sensation that one might have when actually drinking lemonade. It is true that there are people who are so sensitive that they only have to think of lemonade and they have the taste of lemonade in their mouths. If this is raised as an objection, it is correct, but let someone say whether they have quenched their thirst by merely thinking about lemonade! They have not done so. Mere thoughts do not become reality. However, as long as anthroposophy remains merely a thought, it is similar to what one experiences with an imagined lemonade. But it does not need to remain so, because it is drawn from spiritual reality. It does not merely act like a thought, but acts like the external reality of substances acts on the physical body. It permeates and pulsates through the will and emotional life of human beings. It becomes reality in human beings. That is what matters.