Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

250 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

would have to give a different answer to each of
these three questions; but I do not know what this
could be.^2
The answers of Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path:
The Philosophy of Freedom would have to be as fol-
lows: 1. Those who grasp only the perceptual contents
of things and take it for reality are naive realists. They
do not realize thatthose perceptual contents can be con-
sidered as persisting only as long as they are observed,
and therefore that what is before us must be thought of
as intermittent. But, as soon as we are aware that reality
is present only in thought-permeated percepts, we arrive
at the insight that the perceptual content that appears as
intermittent, if it is permeated by what is worked
through in thinking, reveals itself to be continuous.
What we must therefore consider to be continuous is the
perceptual content grasped in directly experienced
thinking, of which what is only perceived would have to
be regarded as intermittent if (as is not the case) it were
real. 2. When three people sit at a table, how many in-
stances of the table are present? There is only one table
present. Butas long as the three people want to stay
with their perceptual images, they have to acknowledge
that these perceptual images are in no way a reality. As
soon as they switch over to the table as grasped in their
thinking, theone reality of the table reveals itself to
them. They are united in that reality with their three con-
tents of consciousness. 3. If two people are alone in a

2. Ibid.