Becoming free...

'People absolutely ‘unlearned’ thinking. They only think with the thoughts of people they recognise as authorities. People will have to learn to think themselves; every human being must start to think by himself. Otherwise they will be influenced by the spiritual world, precisely because they don't believe in it, and they will be influenced in a bad way. '

These words from Steiner should finally be heard and understood in our time. The problem with anthroposophy is that it seems to ask for an intellectual way of thinking, and that this way of thinking should be developed into a spiritual thinking. But that is not what Steiner asked for in the first place; actually, it is really elementary and should not be complicated at all.

Complication follows later. For the workers at the Goetheanum, who were building it, Steiner spoke in this elementary way. In fact, we can develop our thinking first, without speaking about the spiritual worlds at all.

One important basis for such an activity would be the capacity to become a silent being, not only with our voice, but also with our ever-ongoing thoughts. If we try this, we initially have no problems with our friends who don't understand us, because we keep silent about our new habit. We need to think to develop thinking, but we cannot develop thinking when we cannot be silent in thinking. And this silence means that we are beginning to think ourselves.

So how is it in everyday life? Thinking goes on and on, both in futilities and in important thoughts, in beautiful and ugly thoughts, in truth and phantasy... If we ask ourselves whether we judge such thoughts as being true always, and find that there is no possible answer, then in effect we dream our thoughts, and that means that there is no direct knowledge about the contents. Of course we know what we think in a certain way, but not in an exact and mindful way. It is therefore almost impossible to know where the thoughts come from, why we think them, and what the implications are. We have our opinions and we can be sure that they are formed by education, family, nation - and by the thoughts that come to us through the media. There is no free thinking in our everyday thoughts. Of course, there are differences, brought on by our personal likes and dislikes. But they are attracted by the general thought forms that already exist. There is a huge worldwide web - not only the www is meant here – we come to a realisation of this other worldwide web, with its tiny sticky thought threads that we are compelled to follow in our thinking. We don't perceive that we are being attracted by this ‘web’ and are thus made unfree. We are actually caught in this web.  And so what Steiner said about a hundred years ago, does indeed comes about:
'People absolutely ‘unlearned’ thinking. They only think with the thoughts of people they recognise as authorities. People will have to learn to think themselves; every human being must start to think by himself. Otherwise they will be influenced by the spiritual world, precisely because they don't believe in it, and they will be influenced in a bad way.'
But people don't recognise how their thinking is caught in this web. When listening to discussions about all sorts of themes, it becomes clear that the threads may be different, but the being caught in them is one and the same.

So we should learn to think independently. To learn this, it is necessary to unlearn a habit - thinking along the threads of the web - and to replace it with a new habit. This comprises a kind of 'program' to change our life of thinking into a completely new one.
All beginnings are difficult, but when we eventually find the starting point, we will find something that results from this new thinking: Free-ness in thinking. I know I use a word here that doesn't exist in English. But it is not freedom that we develop, it is free-ness. You would not say 'fitdom', you say: fitness. You don't say 'mindfuldom', you say mindfulness. So there exists a free-ness.

Here is a first exercise to become free from the ‘web’: 
This is the little song: Twinkle, twinkle, little star... You can sing it. Then sing it again and again, without the notes. This is still following the usual stream of thinking. Now we change the stream to the opposite; we sing from the end to the beginning - without the notes.
Of course most people will not be able to succeed, immediately. You need a bit of musical feeling. But at last you will succeed and then: feel the free-ness!

If you lack this musical feeling, you can take a long sentence from a book and speak it - and then speak it backwards; at first, of course, not the sounds, but the words.


Better, though, is the musical exercise. Next week I will continue this path...Becoming free... by Mieke Mosmuller