Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

46 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

in feeling or perceiving.” This objection fails to take into
account that it isonly in the act of thinking that the “I”
knows itself as one being with what is active in all aspects
of the activity. With no other activity of the soul is this
completely so. For example, when pleasure is felt, subtler
observation can easily distinguish to what degree the “I”
knows itself as one with what is active, and to what degree
something passive is present within it, with the result that
the pleasure simply arises for the “I.” And the same is true
of the other activities of the soul as well. But we must not
confuse “having thought-pictures” with working out
thoughts by means of thinking. Thought-pictures can
emerge dreamily in the soul, like vague suggestions. But
this is notthinking.
To be sure, someone could now point out that, if think-
ing is meant in this way, then there is willing hidden in the
thinking, so that not just thinking but also the willing of
thinking is involved. But this would only justify our say-
ing that real thinking must always be willed. Yet this is ir-
relevant to our previous characterization of thinking. It
may be that the essence of thinking requires that it always
bewilled. But the point is that in this case nothing is
willed that, in its execution, does not appear to the “I” as
wholly its own, self-supervised activity. We must even
acknowledge that it is preciselybecause of the essential
nature of thinking put forward here that thinking appears
to the observer as completely willed. Anyone who makes
the effort really to see into all that is relevant to an assess-
ment of thinking cannot but notice that the special char-
acteristic discussed here does indeed belong to this