The metamorphosis of thinking

The central point of the spiritual science that is called 'anthroposophy' is the metamorphosis of thinking. In public lectures Rudolf Steiner often gave a foundation for his scientific work. He then described the natural thinking capacities of the human being, going on to describe the points that can be found in it to develop a way of thinking that is able to investigate the spiritual worlds.

One could say: ‘if I only want to study the contents of spiritual science, my thinking can stay as it is, I don't have to seek this metamorphosis.’ To a certain extent, this is right. But then the student should know that he or she will remain a student and cannot become a teacher, not even in the simplest way.

After the fire had taken hold of the Goetheanum in Dornach, on the 31st of December 1922, Rudolf Steiner often spoke in lectures about the lack of development of thinking in the anthroposophical students, the students of spiritual science. But also the lectures for members were full of indications of how to transcend to a higher level of thinking. It is the core of anthroposophy, and of course this can't be worked out in a page on a blog-site. But still I will try to do so, needing a few weeks to come to a deeper insight into this metamorphosis.

One problem is that I will have to quote Steiner and I find that the most important lectures about this subject are not translated into English yet. So I will have to do this myself, but can take only samples from these important lectures...

From the lecture of February 3rd 1923, in GA 221, page 32 ff:
'Such a human being as Jakob Böhme or Gichtel said to himself: ‘When I am awake, I still sleep on. What goes on in sleep works forth while being awake.’ It was a different feeling from the one that the modern human being has, that has already come to nothing but thinking, to pure intellectual thinking. This modern human being wakes up in the morning and makes a sharp line of division between what he is while asleep and what he is now while being awake. He doesn't take anything from sleep into waking life. What he was in sleep stops completely when he wakes up.
...
'It is so for all modern people that they don't think in images any more. They see images as mythology. They think in thoughts and they sleep in nothingness. It is really very important: modern people sleep in nothingness. For Jakob Böhme it would still have been senseless to say: ‘I sleep in nothingness.’ For the modern human being it makes sense to say: ‘I sleep in nothingness. I am not nothing when I sleep, I keep my I and my astral body during sleep. I am not nothing, but I tear myself loose from the entire world that I perceive with my senses, and understand with my waking mind. I also tear myself loose when I am asleep from the world that Jakob Böhme viewed in special, abnormal conscious states with the very fine forces of the physical and etheric body that he still could take with him when he was asleep.’ The modern human being not only tears himself loose from his sensual world but also from the world that was the world of old clairvoyance. And from this world between falling asleep and waking up he can't perceive anything, because this is a future world, it is the world in which the earth will change, that I called the Jupiter / Venus / and Vulcan state in my 'An Outline of Occult Science' (GA 13). So that the modern human being who is trained for intellectual thinking - sorry for the expression - lives in nothingness while asleep.
...
'Exactly through this fact that the modern human being can sleep in nothingness, his freedom is being guaranteed; for he lives himself into a freeing from all the world, while falling asleep until waking up, into nothingness. It is very important to see that this special way of sleeping gives the modern human being the guarantee of his freedom (free-ness).

In our consciousness, while being awake in perceiving and thinking, there is no rest for the spiritual worlds. There is also no immediate force to develop a spiritual thinking. The holy forces of the night do not mingle with perception and thinking any more.

I will continue this theme next week.


Jacob BoehmeThe metamorphosis of thinking by Mieke Mosmuller