The Idea of Freedom 137purely spiritual content. The essence of thinking can be
grasped only through intuition.
Only when, by means of unprejudiced observation, we
have wrestled through to a recognition of this truth about
the intuitive essence of thinking can we obtain a clear
path to insight into the human organization of body and
soul. We then recognize that this organization can have
no effect on theessence of thinking, even though the facts
initiallyseem to contradict this. In normal experience, hu-
man thinking appears only in and through the organiza-
tion of body and soul. This organization makes itself felt
so strongly in thinking that its true significance can only
be seen by someone who has recognized thatnothing of
that organization plays a part in the essential nature of
thinking. But such a person will also see what a peculiar
kind of relationship exists between this human organiza-
tion and thinking. For our organization has no effect on
the essence of thinking but rather retreats when the activ-
ity of thinking appears. Our organization suspends its
own activity—it makes room—and, in the space that has
been made free, thinking appears. The effective essence
in thinking has a double function. First, it represses the
human organization’s own activity and, second, it replac-
es that activity with itself. Even the first of these, the re-
pression of the bodily organization, is a result of thinking
activity—of the part of that activity that prepares theap-
pearance of thinking. We can see from this in what sense
thinking is reflected in the bodily organization. Once we
see this, we will no longer be able to mistake the signifi-
cance of that reflection and take it for thinking itself. If we