Anthroposophy and the Riddles of the Soul

For then thinking breaks away from what the physical organization is. I know how many paradoxes are expressed for today's consciousness with such a sentence. But here again, anthroposophy, with its research, which is a vivid one, proceeds with great caution and criticism. Anthroposophy is well aware of how ordinary thinking is bound to the physical organization of the human being. It does not present itself in an amateurish or dilettantic way. It agrees with those who study the central organ of the nervous system, the brain, and show us how this or that part of the human soul abilities turns out when this or that part of the brain is removed. Anthroposophy also examines how memory and the ability to remember are connected to the physical organism. And that is why it comes to the conclusion – which some may even misunderstand as a kind of materialism – that for the whole ordinary soul, the physical body is the absolute basis. But then, when appropriate meditation and concentration exercises are done and when the thinking is strengthened, the thinking as soul life breaks away from the physical organization, only then does the soul appear as an independent entity. Then the human being knows: “I think,” and in this “I think” he knows that thinking now proceeds as an independent process, purely soul-spiritual, no longer conditioned, no longer dependent on the bodily organization.