Oneness through Thinking

A forgotten practice?

A series of comments on Rudolf Steiner’s book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World” (1913, GA17).

I. Concerning the Reliance which may be placed on Thinking; the Nature of the Thinking Soul; and of Meditation

A drawing by Rudolf Steiner for the Goetheanum windows

In the living meditation group we meditate two weeks on each chapter of this book, and I try to find a condensed thought as the basis for daily meditation. For this chapter the sentence was:

“I feel myself to be one in thought with the stream of cosmic events.”

“Ich empfinde mich denkend eins mit dem Strom des Weltgeschehens”

One of the largest merits of Steiner's work is the reassessment and corresponding revaluation of what thinking means in spiritual practice but also for science in general. Unfortunately, the fruits of this merit have hardly been harvested. We still have no clear answers to what it means to think, what value we need to assign to thoughts, and what the relation between self, consciousness and thinking is. The Cartesian split into mind and matter is fully intact, and we became fully pragmatic about it: some thoughts work out fine in the physical world, which help gaining comfort, wealth and power. But we have no clear common idea about what a thought actually is and what the value of thoughts is when not applied to the physical world, for example.

Before I started to study the work of Steiner, I did not associate thinking with spiritual practice. I used thinking for work (as an academic) and for practically managing my life. During spiritual practices like meditation and yoga, thinking was something to reduce or at most observe. Already around 1900, Steiner saw the movement that would lead to giving thinking this place. Steiner’s fear became reality; the role of thinking regressed into what it had become for me (and most of us).

One of the reasons for this may be that within thinking there are two poles with seemingly opposing activities: a dividing (analytic, intellectual) thinking and a uniting (intuitive, living) thinking. Both are needed, but currently dividing thinking is what we mostly do, and uniting thinking is what we mostly need. Most importantly, we are hardly aware of these poles and the role they play. Below I will also link this to the hemisphere hypothesis of McGilchrist. So again, let’s think about thinking.

The meaning of thinking in Steiner’s earlier work

Already in his earliest epistemological work (GA2, 1886), Steiner makes clear that by understanding the world through thinking, we reunite that which initially comes to us separated into mind and matter. But also in GA1 (1884) this idea was already present:

“By taking possession of the idea, thought merges with the source of the world's existence; that which works outside enters into the spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality at its highest potency. Becoming aware of the idea in reality is the true communion of man.”

However, to understand, and thus reunite the world, a particular way of thinking is needed. Already in GA2, Steiner made the distinction between two kinds of thinking (Verstand (intellect) and Vernunft (reason):

“For a long time one saw the only task of science to be the making of exact distinctions between things … Making distinctions like this is the task of the intellect (Verstand). It has only to separate concepts and maintain them in this separation. This is a necessary preliminary stage of any higher scientific work. Above all, in fact, we need firmly established, clearly delineated concepts before we can seek their harmony. But we must not remain in this separation. For the intellect, things are separated that humanity has an essential need to see in a harmonious unity. Remaining separate for the intellect are: cause and effect, mechanism and organism, freedom and necessity, idea and reality, spirit and nature, and so on. All these distinctions are introduced by the intellect. They must be introduced, because otherwise the world would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos that would form a unity only because it would be totally undefined for us. The intellect itself is in no position to go beyond this separation. It holds firmly to the separated parts. To go beyond this is the task of reason (Vernunft). It has to allow the concepts created by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show that what the intellect keeps strictly separated is actually an inner unity. The separation is something brought about artificially, a necessary intermediary stage for our activity of knowing, not its conclusion. A person who grasps reality in a merely intellectual way distances himself from it. He sets in reality’s place—since it is in truth a unity—an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness that has nothing to do with the essential being of reality.”

Interestingly, Vernunft was an important concept for many German Idealists (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), but they all gave a slightly different meaning to it¹. Currently most Germans use Verstand and Vernunft almost interchangeably. Also Steiner stopped using these words in later work to make the distinction between these two ways of thinking. He would rather refer to them as “intellectual/ abstract thinking” vs "living thinking”.

When Steiner moved from philosophy towards esotery (around 1900), the fundamental role of thinking became less prominent. The emphasis was more towards the development of the I. Thinking can serve this development, but in order to do so, also thinking needs to be developed in a certain direction.

“For a knowledge of the “I” as an instrument whereby the human soul’s immersion in the fullest reality may be clearly perceived, we are required to distinguish most carefully between the real “I” and the “I” of ordinary consciousness. A confusion of these might lead us to assert, with the philosopher Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”; in this case, however, reality would refute us during every sleep, when we “are” though we do not “think.” Thought does not vouch for the reality of the “I.” On the other hand, it is equally true that an experience of the true “I” is not possible except by means of pure thought. As far as ordinary human consciousness is concerned, the true “I” extends into pure thought, and into pure thought alone. Mere thinking only leads us to a thought (conception) of the “I”; experience of all that may be experienced within pure thought provides our consciousness with a content of reality in which “form” and “matter” coincide.”²

Oneness through Thinking

Now in this first chapter of this book The Threshold of the Spiritual World (GA17, 1913) about which I will write a couple of articles, Steiner again presents thinking prominently, now as the way to connect to the world and feel at home in it, and as consolation in difficult times. As individuals we can feel separated from the world and each other. It is clear that some ways of thinking, and some thoughts, will only make this separation larger. So although not explicitly mentioned here, Steiner refers to a particular way of thinking that can help to reconnect.

Steiner's book "Theosophy” can help to make clear how we can understand these two ways of thinking. In the first chapter³, a division is made between

Body

The body connects us to the physical world. It provides us with the basis to be in this world and interact with it through our physical sense organs.

Soul

In the soul live our individual experiences of the world: our taste and distaste, likes and dislikes, opinions about truth and untruth. It separates us from the world and from each other: This is me, that is not me. It is where the feeling of individuality (the I) is located.

Spirit

In spirit the essence of the world is revealed. By connecting to the spirit inside us we find our own essence. By connecting to the spirit outside us we find the essence of the world.

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The soul lives in the body

The I lives in the soul

The spirit lives in the I

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The sentient soul serves the body

The intellectual soul serves the I (ego, lower self)

The consciousness soul serves the spirit (higher self)

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Material thinking serves the body and the sentient soul

Intellectual thinking serves the individual and the intellectual soul

Living thinking serves the spirit and the consciousness soul

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Material thinking is the kind of thinking needed to keep the body safe and alive. It helps in connecting the physical body with the physical world. These are the brain processes we share with animals.

Intellectual thinking gives rise to the individual. It is a separating thinking: I think that this is true and that is false. It helps in understanding yourself as individual and individual facts and objects.

In Living thinking we try to raise above individual views and opinions. Like the higher self raises above the lower self. We acknowledge that for functioning in the material world we need to take a position as lower self with certain views and opinions. But we also know that “That which until now has seemed to me to be my surest truth, I must now, on the other side of the threshold of the supersensible world, be able to consider as my deepest error.”⁴. By becoming aware of our own lower self, and of its necessity, we can also see the necessity of the lower self and corresponding opinions, of others. We understand and connect to their inner being (wesen), their spirit (expanding into the spirit world), not only to their individual thoughts, soul and body. We can lovingly forgive ourselves and others for the limited capacity of the lower self.

A physiological basis for two ways of thinking?

In recent decades, Iain McGilchrist has argued that the left and right brain hemispheres are both involved in the same tasks, but they differ in how they perform these tasks. Roughly we can say that the left hemisphere is good in separating objects from each other, and the right hemisphere is good at uniting individual concepts in a single comprehensive view. There is a striking similarity with how Steiner defined Verstand (a dividing thinking) and Vernunft (a uniting thinking) in GA2, as I quoted above. The hemisphere findings of McGilchrist give the division and tension between these two poles in thinking, but also in human development and human culture, a physiological basis, and confirms the fundamental nature of these two poles. According to McGilchrist, the right hemisphere is currently dominated by the left hemisphere, leading to a unbalanced cold, abstract, material worldview. This is in line with Steiner's call to move from a world and mind dominated by intellectual thinking towards a world where living thinking and intellectual thinking find the right balance.

1. Output of the question to chatgpt: “give the definition and difference between verstand and vernunft in 1) current use of German 2) the most important german idealists (make distinctions if needed):

1) Current use of Verstand and Vernunft in German

In contemporary, everyday German the distinction is weak and mostly stylistic, not systematic.

Verstand

• Means intellect, understanding, common sense

• Emphasis on practical, analytical, problem-solving ability

• Often used in fixed expressions:

  • gesunder Menschenverstand (common sense)

  • Verstand haben (to be sensible)

Vernunft

• Means reason, especially in a normative or reflective sense

• Carries connotations of:

  • rational judgment

  • moderation

  • ethical or long-term thinking

• Often contrasted with emotion or impulse:

  • Hör auf deine Vernunft! (Listen to your reason!)

Difference today

• Verstand → practical intelligence, mental sharpness

• Vernunft → mature, reflective, often moral rationality

Most native speakers do not treat them as distinct cognitive faculties anymore — that distinction survives mainly in philosophy.

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2) German Idealism (with key distinctions)

Here the difference becomes structural and foundational, especially in Kant, then modified by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

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Immanuel Kant (critical philosophy)

This is the canonical distinction.

Verstand (Understanding)

• Faculty of concepts and categories

• Organizes sensory intuition (Anschauung)

• Deals with phenomena, not things-in-themselves

• Applies rules to experience

👉 Without Verstand, experience would be chaotic.

Vernunft (Reason)

• Faculty of ideas (Ideen)

• Seeks the unconditioned (totality, God, soul, freedom)

• Produces regulative principles, not knowledge of objects

• Generates metaphysical illusions if misused

👉 Vernunft asks questions that cannot be answered empirically.

Kantian contrast (very sharp):

• Verstand = constitutive for experience

• Vernunft = regulative, guiding but not knowing

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Fichte

• Softens the Kantian restriction

• Vernunft becomes more productive and self-grounding

• Knowledge arises from the activity of the I

• Verstand is derivative and analytic

• Vernunft is practical, ethical, and self-positing

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Schelling

• Moves further toward unity

• Verstand = separating, analytical

• Vernunft = synthetic, intuitive

• In later work, Vernunft approaches intellectual intuition

• Nature and spirit grasped through Vernunft, not Verstand

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Hegel

• Radically revalues the pair

Verstand

• Fixes distinctions

• Thinks in rigid oppositions

• Necessary but limited and abstract

Vernunft

• Speculative reason

• Overcomes oppositions dialectically

• Grasps reality as a living totality

• Not subjective but immanent in reality itself

Hegel’s famous move:

Verstand separates; Vernunft reconciles.

2. GA35, Philosophy and Anthroposophy, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19080818p01.html.

3. https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA009/English/AP1971/GA009_c01.html

4. https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA016/English/AP1956/GA016_c04.html?#:~:text=soul%20must%20be-,able,-to%20say%20to