Regarding the spirit
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 […]
The Idea of the Idea
As Goethe found the ‘Uridee’ of the plant, Steiner formulated the ‘Uridee’ of thinking in the following way: ‘Goethe did indeed practise the highest mode of cognition, but he did not observe this mode of cognition in himself. Does he not himself admit: “I have been clever, for I have never thought about thought.” But […]
The singing of the truth
The singing of the truth in the Bhagavad Gita is found in the 13th chapter, 12 – 18. ‘I shall now explain the knowable, knowing which you will taste the eternal. This is beginningless, and it is subordinate to Me. It is called Brahman, the spirit, and it lies beyond the cause and effect of […]
The heart as a sense
‘If we would be only thinkers, and had nothing else in our souls than the capability of thinking concepts and combining them with logic, or analysing complicated thoughts with logic, we would really not be able ever to know whether something is true or not We would be in the state that modern philosophy says […]
Understanding
In epistemology there has been a great turnaround in the 20th century. Before there still was some kind of confidence in the capability of finding the truth. In the 20th century this belief was broken with. The human being feels itself as separated from truth, or as a being in a world where truth doesn’t […]
Love of beauty
In Plato’s Symposion Socrates speaks of this ideal of love of beauty, quoting the wise Diotima as follows: “…he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to watch beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create […]
Active Feeling
Waking up in thinking is the first thing that we should achieve, to become able to see ourselves what the angels do in our souls, and so to prevent us becoming instinctive ‘devils’. But developing a new art of thinking is not enough. The feeling capacity should also be educated, by an energetic self-education. In […]
Angels or devils
In the text of July 22th, I gave a quote about the work of the angels in our astral body, which showed how they evoke moral ideals in us. Our own task however is to learn to read these impulses, to be fully aware of them, to think clearly about them, to make them to […]
Pure Thinking
In philosophy the existence of pure thinking is being doubted for a long time. In earlier times philosophers believed that there is a ‘prima philosophia’, a possibility for the human being to think in a right and true way, completely without being influenced by personal thoughts. We could also say: it was not a belief, […]
The value of thinking
In many spiritual, esoteric movements, one thing is certain: we must do away with thinking, because it is the cause of all division, of dualism, of being mired in materialism . Through thinking, they say the human being gets absorbed in his own inner life and oversleeps present life. Thought life is going on and […]