Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

Appendix I 251

room together, how many instances of them are present?
There are most certainly not six —not even in the sense
of transcendental realists—but only two. Yet initially
both have only the unreal perceptual image of them-
selves as well as of the other person. There are four of
theseimages, and through their presence in the two peo-
ple’s thinking, reality is grasped. In this thinking activi-
ty, each person reaches beyond his or her own sphere of
consciousness; in it, both one’s own and the other per-
son’s consciousness comes to life. In the moments of its
coming to life, the two people are no more enclosed
within their own consciousness than they are during
sleep. But, at other moments, the consciousness of
merging with the other reappears, so that, in the experi-
ence of thinking, the consciousness of each person
grasps both itself and the other person. I know that a
transcendental realist would call this a relapse into naive
realism. Yet, as I have already indicated in this book, na-
ive realism retains its validity in the case of thinking that
is experienced. Transcendental realists by no means ex-
perience the true state of affairs in the cognitive process;
they cut themselves off from it by a web of thoughts in
which they then become entangled. Nor should the mo-
nism appearing inIntuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path:
The Philosophy of Freedom be called “epistemologi-
cal.” Rather, if an epithet is wanted, let it be called “mo-
nism of thought.” All of this was misunderstood by
Eduard von Hartmann. He did not engage the specifics
of the presentation in my book, but claimed that I had at-
tempted to unite Hegelian universalist panlogism with