The Idea of the idea is a wonderful one. It is not only a new idea among the other ideas. All concepts, all ideas we have and are able to form are there to understand whatever we can perceive. They are, we could say, at our service.
We also are gifted with senses; they are there for us to perceive everything around us and within us. Perception and thinking are two different things that, when brought together, form our knowledge.

But in forming the idea of the idea something fully new happens. With which sense do we perceive thinking? How do we form the idea of this perception? It is thinking itself that works as a sense whenever we try to perceive thinking. I do not mean perceiving thoughts, that is something that we do continually, otherwise we wouldn’t know what we think. The idea of the idea is the idea of thinking as a whole. But the sense that makes this perception possible is thinking itself.

And yet this idea of thinking has never been there before. It is not a natural process that comes along with normal life on earth. It never occurs spontaneously. It is a step that has to be done with will, because we want to do it. And when we do it, we realise that something wonderful takes place: for the first time in our existence conceptual thinking views conceptual thinking. Understanding sees understanding – it sees itself. And because understanding is immediately understood by understanding – we don’t have to form concepts about it, for we view it by understanding – we have a full conscious direct intuition of thinking itself: we have found the idea of the idea.

It is not something extraneous that first is perceived and then has to be thought about. Thinking itself shows itself by thinking it. It is not a philosophical play that is played here, it is a fact that takes place. It is the most important fact that can happen and we know that it is the first fact that we have brought about ourselves and that wouldn’t have been there, if we hadn’t brought it to life by our true free will.

It is not only an act of free will, it is also a turning of our regard from the world of the physical senses to the spiritual world that is thinking itself. The ideas always exist in us because we have formed them, but the thing which is perceived and which is thought about remains outside our mind. If, however, we perceive the thinking itself, which means that we also understand it, have found the idea of it, then the thing which is perceived and which is thought is fully one and the same as our mind. It is in our mind, it is our mind.

‘When he observes thought, man penetrates the world-process. Here he has not to search for an idea of this process, for the process is the idea itself. The previously experienced unity of perception and idea is here experience of the spirituality of the world of ideas which has become perceptible. The man who perceives this self-grounded activity has the feeling of freedom.’ (R.Steiner, Goethes Weltanschaung).
 

Archangel MichaelRegarding the spirit by Mieke Mosmuller