4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

A foundation for this true self-observation is created by attempting to methodically and correctly introduce the inner will of the human being into the life of imagination. This leads to what can be called, in the true sense of the word, not in a dark, mystical sense, meditation, meditative inner life. In our ordinary everyday consciousness, we are not at all accustomed to such meditative life, since we arrange the sequence of thoughts entirely according to the course of the outer world with its impressions; we let one thought follow another, depending on how the outer impressions follow one another. The sequence of outer impressions gives us the thread along which our thoughts run. On the basis of what a person has then acquired as life experience or even wisdom, they regulate their inner life, their train of thought, so that they then come to be able to follow their thoughts from within. But all this can at most be preparation for what is meant here. This must be achieved through slow, patient, energetic work. It is achieved by first exercising caution in bringing such regularity and yet, I would say, such arbitrariness into one's thoughts that one can be sure that in what one practices in this way, nothing of mere reminiscence is at work, nothing that can arise from any more or less forgotten worlds of imagination, life experiences, and the like. Therefore, it is necessary that those who wish to engage in spiritual research familiarize themselves with such a pursuit of ideas, which they prepare for themselves in a clear manner, or which they obtain from here or there in a clear and professional manner, so that at the moment they devote themselves to this course of ideas, they can truly say: I can see how I link one idea to another, how I influence the course of ideas through my will.