Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

240 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

action. For this, it was necessary to separate out from the
whole realm of human actions those aspects about which,
from unprejudiced self-observation, one can speak of
freedom. These are actions that realize conceptual intui-
tions. Other actions, when viewed without prejudice, can-
not be called free. Yet precisely through unprejudiced
self-observation we should consider ourselves well
equipped to progress along the path toward ethical intui-
tions and their realization. Butthis unprejudiced observa-
tion of human ethical nature cannot by itself offer a final
decision about freedom. For, if intuitive thinking itself
sprang from some other entity—if its own essence were
not self-sustaining—then the consciousness of freedom
flowing from morality would prove to be an illusion. The
second part of this book, however, finds natural support
in the first. The first presents intuitive thinking as an inner
spiritual activity of the human being that is actually expe-
rienced. But to understand thisessence of thinkingexpe-
rientially, is equivalent to knowing the freedom of
intuitive thinking. If one knows that this thinking is free,
then one also sees the region of the will to which freedom
is attributable. We will consider human acts to befree if,
on the basis of direct inner encounter, we can ascribe a
self-sustaining being to the experience of intuitive think-
ing. Those who cannot do so will also be unable to find
an incontestable path to the acceptance of freedom. The
experience emphasized here findsin consciousness the
intuitive thinking that also has reality beyond conscious-
ness. With this, it discovers freedom to be characteristic
of actions flowing from the intuitions of consciousness.