In anthroposophy we have a kind of confusion with regard to thinking. Thinking in our time is of course entirely abstract, and we can sometimes also have the feeling that it is also heartless. And that leads to us feeling a longing to get beyond thinking to something that is again filled with the heart. Or perhaps without noticing it, that we do not get beyond it, but that we slip back into something that belongs to the past. And that is what I would like to try to make somewhat clearer today. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, and one comes to know with the help of thinking. And that is, I believe, also something that does not make anthroposophy so popular, that we must apply our thinking strongly for it.

And we have the feeling: yes, in science, okay, there it is simply the case that knowledge is attained through thinking, but for spirituality that really is something else and should not be heartless. I first take a little piece of text by Rudolf Steiner from his book The Philosophy of Freedom. He published that in 1894; in 1918 a new edition was planned and he then wrote several additions for this new edition, and on page 142 there is an important addition that can clarify something about the relation of thinking, feeling and willing, and the misunderstanding that is felt about thinking, because we in our time are simply not capable of directly experiencing what thinking actually is in its deeper essence.

There Rudolf Steiner writes:

“The difficulty in grasping thinking in its essence through observation lies in the fact that this essence has already all too easily slipped away from the observing soul when the soul wants to bring it into the direction of its attention. Then for the soul only the dead abstract remains, the corpses of living thinking.” Here we are therefore being pointed out that it is not due to thinking itself that we experience it as abstract, but that we do not succeed in grasping thinking in its true essence. “If one looks only at this abstract, one will easily feel compelled in relation to it to enter into the living element of feeling mysticism or also of will metaphysics. One will find it peculiar when someone wants to grasp the essence of reality in mere thoughts. But whoever brings himself to truly have life in thinking, that one arrives at the insight that the inner richness and the in-itself-resting but at the same time in-itself-moving experiences within this life, cannot even be compared with the weaving in mere feelings or the beholding of the will element, let alone that these should be placed above the former. Precisely from this richness, from this inner feeling of experiencing, it originates that its counter-image in the ordinary soul disposition looks dead, abstract. No other human soul activity will be so easily misunderstood as thinking. Willing, feeling, they still warm the human soul also in the re-experiencing of their original state. Thinking all too easily leaves cold in this re-experiencing. It seems to dry out the soul life. Yet this is precisely only the strongly asserting shadow of a light-permeated reality, warm in its diving into the world phenomena. This diving happens with a force flowing along within the thinking activity itself, which is the force of love in a spiritual manner. One must not object by saying: whoever thus sees love in active thinking, he inserts a feeling, love, into it. For this objection is in truth a confirmation of what is being stated here. For whoever turns himself to essential thinking, he finds in it both feeling and also willing, the latter also in the depths of their reality. Whoever turns away from thinking and only to mere feeling and willing, he loses from these the true reality. Whoever wants to intuitively experience in thinking, that one will also do justice to feeling-like and willing-like experience. But one cannot do justice against the intuitive thinking penetration of existence, with feeling mysticism and will metaphysics.”

Yes, for me that has always been a very significant piece of text, because it is, how shall I say, once again a very clear confirmation that anthroposophy actually demands of us that we develop and learn to grasp thinking, and that we then, when we do it that way, also develop and grasp feeling and will at the same time. But the human being longs for feeling the feelings. And that is understandable. It becomes ever more difficult to bear the developing cold, abstract thinking and then still to believe that in this thinking originally the warm love is at home. And there is in the complete edition of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures a lecture cycle with the title Macrocosm and Microcosm, and in that Rudolf Steiner describes very extensively the path of development, the meditative path of development through imagination, inspiration, intuition.

When one takes that in and tries to follow, then one quickly and easily discovers how difficult that actually is. And when Rudolf Steiner then says that when we have reached intuition, that then actually the true imagination, the true inspiration and the true intuition begin, that one first develops imagination, inspiration, intuition meditatively as preliminary stages. And when one then has found the inner stage of intuition, that then only arises the possibility of certainty of knowledge in the spirit. Then he himself says: it is a path of renunciation. But when one brings the energy, courage, effectiveness, then the work on the preliminary stages is already so blessed, that it is not difficult at all to do it. And even when no content at all appears when one has come into the stage of intuition, and one must then persist, persist, persist, without those true imaginations appearing, then it is still not bad, because one feels how strong and healthy one becomes in one’s soul life.

But the interesting thing is, that then after these lectures about the true imagination, inspiration, intuition, from the attained stage of intuition, that after these lectures Rudolf Steiner begins to speak about a new thinking that will arise when one has come that far. When one has come that far that one has first done exercises for imagination, these are image meditations. Then has done exercises for inspiration, these are living thinking force meditations. Then has done exercises for intuition, these are exercises in which both image and force are more or less switched off and one comes into an inner emptiness. When one has done these exercises and one then advances further in or after the stage of the exercise intuition, if I may say it like that, when one has come that far, then the time comes that a new thinking will set in, and Rudolf Steiner then calls that heart thinking. That is therefore not at all something with which one could begin. That is rather something that, yes, I do not want to say all the way at the end of the path, but yet quite far along the path lies. And he then also sets out very clearly, that earlier in very ancient times for humanity it was the normal condition that people had a heart thinking, they did not yet at all have this thinking that for us is decisive. No intellectual thinking, but an immediate knowing of the truth with the heart. And when one then forgets a little the preceding lectures, then one could through one’s longing for such thinking suppose that Rudolf Steiner is then speaking of the new heart thinking that one could so simply have. But as said, the new heart thinking lies on the path of renunciation. And when we, for example, read in the little book, the French little book: One sees well only with the heart, then that is of course very attractive, if only that were possible. But that is not possible for us human beings. For we have the task to go through abstract intellectual thinking, through a meditative development in pure sense-free thinking.

And when we would want to skip that, then we do not go further, but then we slip back. When we then take up this piece from the Philosophy of Freedom, this addition, then we also find therein comfort, that, when we truly try to grasp thinking through observation and we have sufficient energy to take it up again and again and to try, that we then precisely in thinking itself find that which we so long for, namely the warmth of love in the light of thinking. I have known that comfort already for many years, and the comfort comes not only from the book, it comes from reality, from the practical exercising with the development of thinking. And it was a matter of the heart for me, to once express that publicly.

Rudolf Steiner of course wrote in his Michael Guidelines, that when Michaelic thinking establishes itself, that then the hearts begin to have thoughts. That I know only too well, that he writes that. But also there we must not take it too lightly, that does not go so one-two-three, that is a task of time and that one has not simply accomplished in one grasp. Let us indeed begin with pure thinking, with the trust that in this pure thinking there is a ruling force which is warmth of love. Then we have in the light of knowledge at the same time also the warmth of the heart. And then the ordinary, abstract intellectual thinking gradually transforms itself into a new thinking with the heart.