Last time, I made a case for the idea that thoughts have power. And today I would like to contradict that. I believe it’s generally healthy to contradict oneself regularly, but this time it is also necessary. I’m also responding to several reactions I received, including via email, which I always find very interesting and which truly help to shape the subject further. So I thank everyone sincerely for the responses that keep coming in – I always read them.

Thoughts have no power. Thoughts are reflections of something that once was real, but now more or less dissolve into an illusory reflection. And then you might say: Well, that’s your opinion, but who proves to me that it’s really so? Well, you can prove it to yourself. If you take a close look at what is actually real in your thoughts, then you will find – I don’t want to say absolutely nothing – but you will not find any dense, tangible, effective activity, as you do in actions, for example. That’s why someone who says, “Thoughts alone are not enough, there must also be actions,” is completely right. Because if you believe you can do everything just by thinking, then you haven’t looked closely at what thoughts actually are.

They are something like a mirror image. And then you can imagine: when you stand in front of a mirror, you see your reflection in the mirror, but you feel your reality in front of the mirror. That’s you, and you look into the mirror and see yourself there. But what you see there has, of course, no ability whatsoever to bring anything about on its own. And it’s very useful to look at thoughts in this way and to ask yourself: What, then, is the point of writing scenarios? And why does one say that scenarios written by major think tanks are also effective as thoughts, even though they have no power? There is a very clear answer to this: When several people think these almost powerless thoughts strongly enough and often enough, then they do indeed have an effect. Then they become effective.

They are mirror images, and what makes them effective is not thought-power itself, but the experience that is connected with that thought-power. Because people not only think, they also feel, they also experience. And even when they do nothing, there is still a great deal of effectiveness in their experience, and that experience then acts. Not the thoughts themselves, but the experience of the thoughts – that is the effectiveness.

And then, of course, it becomes clear why there are as many opinions as there are people. People think very differently about things, and that’s not because they think in truth, but because they have their own experiences with what they think. And they also continue to think based on those experiences.

That’s why there can be so many different currents in the world, why there can be various political parties, why some people can be wildly enthusiastic about something while others reject the very same thing with equal emotional intensity. This has to do with a particular quality in the human being that doesn’t lie in thinking. It lies in experiencing. In thinking, we usually form our thoughts based on our feeling, on our experience. That gives them a certain power. But it also makes them as subjective as anything can be.

So the problem is that when you want to give your thoughts power, you usually do so by experiencing them – and then give that thought power through your subjective experience. What Rudolf Steiner says about this is very interesting. And you can also find it in yourself. When you consider that when you deliberately form thoughts – and that’s actually the beginning of real thinking: that you don’t let your thinking be dictated by what presents itself, but that you shape your thinking entirely from yourself – when you do that, you still form reflections.

But the act of forming itself, the initial impulse you have to think something – that is powerful. The impulse to a thought has power, but the thought itself is a reflection. And the interesting thing is that there’s a way to fill these reflections with the power you always use – at the very beginning of forming thoughts.

That power – that’s what we would need in order to think scenarios – would cause a force to flow into the etheric sphere, into the astral sphere, that is active. So then the question arises: How can you mobilize that power? Each person must do this for themselves. You could mobilize it by becoming aware of the impulse you have when you begin to think. And we call that meditation.

If you take a thought, and even though it’s a reflection, you don’t just let it sit there in your being more or less unthought, but instead you begin this thought very consciously – because you want to think this thought, as an impulse – and then stay with this thought in meditation using that same power, or you continue to unfold this thought again and again, then you will notice that you develop a very different kind of thinking. That you no longer develop a kind of thinking that simply reflects. In fact, you don’t even develop it – you only have the impulse, and then it more or less happens by itself. What you then get is a kind of thinking that is truly filled with impulse-force.

Then a whole different process begins, because then you remain more or less pure, without that constant emotional overlay that otherwise always colors the thinking. You then stay more or less pure with a meditative, clear thought that should not be taken from ordinary life, but which you can draw from the reservoirs of the great initiates or, for example, from the New Testament.

If you set such thoughts in motion with impulse-force and then unfold that same impulse-force as meditative strength by wanting to remain with it, then you raise your thoughts to something that is no longer merely a reflection, but becomes a kind of effective, powerful image.

And if you were then able to think scenarios for the future with such thoughts, then you would have a real chance of changing something in the world – especially if you could do that together with several people. It doesn’t have to be at the same time, but it can involve similar content that you work on together. In that way, another element enters the thought-element, one that also has a very different quality.

Because you can be sure: the people in think tanks – the thoughts with which they brainstorm – are just as much reflections. They are not impulse-thoughts. And you can be sure that if a few people succeed in thinking impulse-thoughts, you bring an immeasurably greater power into the world than – let’s say – a thousand people with mirror-thoughts.

So I would say: Let us become aware that thoughts in themselves have no power. And that you must either act – that is, do things to change the world. You can think of all sorts of possible things you could do. But you also know how incredibly little effect it has if you – let’s say – act alone or in a small group.

You can also come to action within thinking. But then you must find that point where thinking is always action – namely, at the beginning. And only with thoughts that you truly want to think. Everything that just arises in you by itself remains a reflection.

At the moment when you carry out an impulse with full force to think something – and that is most true in meditation – then thoughts are freed from their reflective nature and return to the origin from which thinking arises.

That’s what I wanted to place alongside the question from last time. Do thoughts have power? Yes – if many people can think the same thoughts together, then they have a certain power. But you could also say: No – thoughts are reflections, and even if many people think the same thing, the power remains very small.

If we really want to bring something into the world through thoughts – for example, by thinking scenarios – then at the same time we must try to track and experience that initial impulse of thinking where the will to think is still active.

Can you connect that with thinking – yes, then thoughts have power. Then your thoughts also transcend your personal experiences, and you enter a realm where an objective world-will is active.

Can you do good with thoughts? You will always have to move into action in order to do good. But if you can connect the element in which action lives with thinking, then you can say: Yes – thoughts have power. They are immeasurably effective – provided they are filled with impulse in the right way. That’s all for now.