‘And there is a third objective: To make it possible for men to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit’ (Rudolf Steiner, The Work of the Angels In Man’s Astral Body).
We have reflected on the two other objectives in the recent weeks: brotherhood for the bodily life, freedom of religious life for the soul. In this last activity there is already a passing over to the thinking that will be able to experience the reality of the Spirit. This is a completely new experience. It is not an intellectual interest in spiritual contents, not merely a study of spiritual science. Although this studying is inevitably necessary, it is not yet an experience of the reality of the Spirit. Even this ‘sense-free’ thinking – a thinking that is brought on actively and lives in thoughts themselves that don’t rely on perceptions with the senses – is not an experience of the Spirit yet.
This kind of pure thinking is still coming from our own centre, we form the thoughts and know that we form them. But a true experience of the Spirit will be reached only if we grasp this inner activity of thinking by thinking. Then we have a full new content in our mind: active thinking itself. From a peripheric point of view we ‘see’ the thoughts brought on actively by our own I. This is the turning point to a conscious awareness of the Spirit in its first shape: the viewing of the spirit of the individual you are yourself. This is the experience of freedom in its purest form.
‘One can, if one wants to grasp this freedom, which is an experience that is immediately identical with the human being, not lean on something outward. One has to connect thinking itself with which one is, I would say, in the process of one’s own I.’ (Rudolf Steiner, GA 78, lecture 3).
From this view we can develop ourselves on and on – one could also say: we are being developed. The only thing a human being can do him/herself is give all the inner energy in unfolding pure thinking and try to ‘see’ this unfolding. In this first view of spirit we will experience more and more how the spiritual world weaves through the active unfolding of pure thought. But this is divine mercy – it is not possible to bring it about through human will. I described this in my book ‘The holy Grail’. The force of pure active thinking is like a grail that is filled with substance in the viewing and thinking of this spiritual stream. The substance is the true spiritual world, full of spiritual beings and their deeds.
Seal of Saturn (Rudolf Steiner)To reach the spirit through thinking by Mieke Mosmuller
