The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On the trust one can have in thinking and on the nature of the thinking soul. About meditation

[ 1 ] Human thinking is like an island for the waking daytime consciousness amidst the floods of the soul's life of impressions, sensations, feelings, etc. One has to a certain extent come to terms with an impression, with a sensation, when one has grasped it, that is, when one has conceived a thought that illuminates the impression, the sensation. Even in the storm of passions and affects, a certain calm can occur when the ship of the soul has worked its way to the island of thought.

[ 2 ] The soul has a natural trust in thinking. It feels that it would have to lose all security in life if it could not have this trust. The healthy life of the soul ceases when doubt in thinking begins. If one cannot come to a clear understanding of something in one's thinking, one must be able to take comfort in the fact that clarity would result if one could only summon up sufficient strength and sharpness of thought. One can be reassured about one's own inability to bring something to clarity through thinking; but one cannot bear the thought that thinking itself could not bring satisfaction if one were to penetrate its field in the way that is necessary for a particular situation in life to attain full light.

[ 3 ] This mood of the soul towards thinking underlies all humanity's striving for knowledge. It can be dampened by certain states of mind; it will always be detectable in the dark feelings of souls. Those thinkers who doubt the validity and power of thinking itself are deceiving themselves about the basic mood of their soul. After all, it is often their sharpness of thought that creates their doubts and puzzles due to a certain overstimulation. If they really did not trust thinking, they would not torment themselves with these doubts and puzzles, which are only the results of thinking.

[ 4 ] Whoever develops in himself the feeling indicated here in relation to thinking, feels in this not only something that he develops in himself as a power of the human soul, but also something that carries a world entity in itself quite independently of him and his soul. A world entity to which he must work his way through if he wants to live in something that belongs to him and to the world independent of him at the same time.

[ 5 ] There is something deeply reassuring about being able to devote oneself to the life of thought. The soul feels that it can get away from itself in this life. But the soul needs this feeling just as much as the opposite, that of being able to be completely in itself. In both feelings lies the necessary pendulum swing of its healthy life. Basically, waking and sleeping are only the most extreme expressions of this pendulum swing. In waking, the soul is in itself, lives its own life; in sleep, it loses itself to the general experience of the world, and is thus to a certain extent detached from itself. - Both swings of the soul's pendulum manifest themselves through various other states of inner experience. And life in thought is a detachment of the soul from itself, just as feeling, sensation, affect, etc. are a being-in-itself.

[ 6 ] So viewed, thinking offers the soul the consolation it needs in the face of the feeling of being abandoned by the world. One can justifiably come to the conclusion: What am I in the stream of general world events, which runs from infinity to infinity, with my feelings, with my wishes and desires, which only have meaning for me? As soon as one has experienced life in thought, one contrasts this feeling with the other: Thinking, which has to do with this world event, absorbs you with your soul; you live in this event if you allow its essence to flow into you thinking. You can then feel accepted by the world, justified in it. From this mood of the soul then follows a strengthening for it, which it feels as if it had come to it from the world powers themselves according to wise laws.

[ 7 ] It is then not far from this feeling to the step according to which the soul says: I do not merely think, but it thinks in me; the becoming-world expresses itself in me; my soul merely provides the arena on which the world lives itself out as thought.

[ 8 ] This feeling can be rejected by this or that philosophy. It can be made seemingly quite plausible with the most diverse reasons that the idea just expressed of the "thinking of the world in the human soul" is completely erroneous. On the other hand, it must be recognized that this idea is one that is worked out through inner experience. Only those who have worked it out in this way fully understand its validity and know that all "refutations" cannot shake its validity. Those who have worked it out for themselves can clearly see from it what many "refutations" and "proofs" are really worth. They often seem quite infallible as long as one can still have an erroneous idea of the probative force of their content. It is then difficult to communicate with people who find such "proofs" authoritative for themselves. They must believe the other person in error because they have not yet done the inner work within themselves that led them to recognize what seems erroneous, perhaps even foolish to them.

[ 9 ] For those who want to find their way into spiritual science, meditations such as the one just presented on thinking are useful. For such a person it is a matter of bringing his soul into a state that opens access to the spiritual world. This access can remain closed to the most acute thinking, to the most accomplished scientificity, if the soul has nothing to offer to the spiritual facts or their communication that want to penetrate it. - It can be a good preparation for grasping spiritual knowledge if one has often felt the strengthening that lies in the mood of the soul: "Thinking, I feel myself to be one with the stream of world events." -It is much less a question of the abstract cognitive value of this thought than of having often felt in the soul the strengthening effect that one experiences when such a thought flows powerfully through the inner life, when it spreads like spiritual air of life in the life of the soul. It is not just a matter of recognizing what lies in such a thought, but of experiencing it. It is recognized when it has once been present in the soul with sufficient power of conviction; if it is to bear fruit for the understanding of the spiritual world, its essences and facts, it must, after it has been understood, be revived again and again in the soul. The soul must again and again be completely filled with it, allowing only it to be present in it, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, sensations, memories, etc. - Such repeated concentration on a fully penetrated thought draws together forces in the soul which are, so to speak, scattered in ordinary life; it strengthens them within itself. These concentrated forces become the organs of perception for the spiritual world and its truths.

[ 10 ] You can recognize the correct process of meditation from the above. First you work your way through to a thought that you can see with the means that ordinary life and cognition provide. Then you repeatedly immerse yourself in this thought, making yourself completely one with it. The strengthening of the soul comes through living with such a recognized thought. - A thought taken from the nature of thought itself has been chosen as an example here. It was chosen as an example because it is particularly fruitful for meditation. However, with regard to meditation, what has been said here applies to every thought that is obtained in the way described. - It is only particularly fruitful for the meditator if he knows the mood of the soul that results from the pendulum swing of the soul life indicated above. This is the surest way to achieve the feeling of having been directly touched by the spiritual world in his meditation.

[ 11 ] And this feeling is a healthy result of meditation. - This feeling should radiate its power to the content of the rest of waking daily life. And not in such a way that there is always something there, like a present impression of the meditation mood, but in such a way that one can always say to oneself that a strengthening flows into the whole of life through the meditation experience. If the meditation mood runs through daily life like an ever-present impression, it pours out something over it that disturbs the impartiality of this life. It will then not be strong enough or pure enough in the times of meditation itself. Meditation bears the right fruit precisely because its mood sets it apart from the rest of life. It also has the best effect on this life when it is perceived as something special and elevated.