34 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
occupied with it and my gaze is turned toward it. My at-
tention is directed not toward my activity, but toward the
object of this activity. In other words, when I think, I do
not look at my thinking, which I myself am producing,
but at the object of thinking, which I am not producing.
I am in the same situation even if I allow the exception-
al state of affairs to occur and think about my thinking it-
self. I can never observe my present thinking; only after I
have thought can I take the experiences I have had during
my thinking process as the object of my thinking. If I
wanted to observe my present thinking, I would have to
split myself into two personalities, one that thinks and
one that looks on during this thinking, which I cannot do.
I can observe my present thinking only in two separate
acts. The thinking to be observed is never the one current-
ly active, but a different one. For this purpose, it does not
matter whether I make observations about my own earlier
thinking, follow the thought process of another person,
or, as with the movement of billiard balls, suppose an
imaginary thought process.
These two are therefore incompatible: active produc-
tion and contemplative confrontation. The first book of
Moses already recognizes this. In the Book of Genesis,
God produces the world in the first six days of creation;
only once it is there is it possible to contemplate it: “And
God looked at everything he had made, and behold, it was
very good.” The same holds true of our thinking. It must
first be there if we are to observe it.
It is impossible for us to observe thinking as it occurs at
each moment for the same reason that we can know our
[14]
[15]
[16]
