Rubik som handlar om havet

Perception and Thinking
return

Perceiving Thinking
Mineral, Etheric, Astral, Ego
Body, Soul, Spirit
Der sinnliche Trieb und Formtrieb
Thought, Feeling, Will (Cognition, Emotion, Affectation)
Bibliography

In this chapter I will seek to shed some light on a few of the key concepts established by Steiner which are particularly important when considering his ideas in education. Where ideas or concepts are directly attainable from observation I will present these without quoting Steiner, though of course they may well have been presented by Steiner. For example there would be no need to cite Newton everytime I wanted to make a statement about gravity, light, calculus or differentiation, so will I not cite Steiner if something is a readibly understandable for an educated mind. Where it appears that I am mixing my thinking with Steiner, rather than holding them distinct, I consider this valid as the ideas are not presented as dogma, but arrived at through observation. Where I do cite him and give references where I consider him to have expanded concepts, illustrated unfamiliar concepts or even presented concepts that are foreign to a type of thinking that makes physical phenomena it only object of observation. Many potential problems lie in wait for someone wishing to delve into these ideas and concepts.  Understandably so these coincide with the perception - thinking relationship identified above.     
1. THINKING : It is often very difficult for the individual to become aware of personal biases in his/her own thinking. Many of our thoughts on the world are based on assmptions which on closer inspection would reveal themselves to be in conflict with one another. Other assumptions we adhere to are simply beliefs which we have inherited from sources close to or far from us. These remain in place until we take a critical stance towards and then either reject or endorse them more strongly.
2. PERCEPTION :Linked to this first theme is the issue that due to our own dispositions there are certain experiences that we consider real and others that are somehow less than real and or purely imagined. For most people this divide goes along the senses divide and understandably so. That is to say something that comes to us via the traditional 5 senses is real whilst  experiences mediated other than by these 5 are not so. For example thinking is considered at least inferior to evidence of the senses or often mere fantasy. It is rarely considered as a sense itself.

Perceiving Thinking

Plato claimed that he saw his ideas. Nicolas of Cusana maintains in ‘docta ignorantia’ that spiritual sight was no longer available as had earlier been the case.... The spirit world was gradually distancing itself from human beings’ experience. When Schiller claimed of Goethe’s primordial plant that ‘That is not an experience, that is an idea’, Goethe famously replied ‘I am glad to have ideas without knowing it, and to see them with my very eyes.’ In Steiner’s introduction to Goethe’s scientific writings he identifies Goethe’s unusual perspective on the surrounding world as being characterised by:
 ‘Er sah mit den Augen des Geistes.’
The examples that could be given to support this notion are countless. Steiner claims also to fall into this category of people who are capable of seeing the spiritual reality underlying material reality. The first step to spiritual vision is the ability to think about thinking because thinking is essentially the means by which the human being can know this spiritual reality. According to Steiner the strengthening of soul faculties leads unerringly towards a direct perception of the spiritual world. The soul sees the spiritual world as a healthy eye sees the physical world. The further we go back in history the more we encounter the idea that there is a spiritual side to reality and that it is also possible to know this world. One way of characterising of all traditions of thinking that invoke Plato is to say that there is a spiritual reality underlying physical reality and that it is directly perceptable and consequently knowable.

The view, at least in the western world, that their is a spiritual reality underlying the world of physical phenomena has almost completly disappeared from human consciousness since the onset of the Enlightenment. History suggests that this has been happening since the period of ancient Greece, concisely revealed in the differences between Plato and Aristotole’s view of the world. Alternatively as has been observed Dionysus had, by the time of Aeschylus (525 - 456 B.C.), become god of the senses. That is to say the new most important god of Greece was one that relied on the physical senses. Apollo was replaced, the god of amongst other things; prophecy, self-restraint, freedom from wilder emotions, shaping energies and self-restraint by Dionysius who is associated with enchantment and drunkenness If we look for further examples we find in Nordic mythology this switch of consciousness from the spiritual to the physical is represented in the Ragnarök, twilight of the gods. The very essence of this story tells us that the gods will die for mankind for a time, but will also reappear.  Ancient sources speak time and time again about the fading of an old world, spirit world. Thinking which has educated itself in physical observation finds fantasy rather than reflections of ancient modes of perception in such stories. Where the notion of spirit survives, chiefly in religious thinking, it is generally considered as something unknowable. Viewed in these terms philosophical assumptions that the real world is unknowable can be seen as a continuation of the dogma of the unknowability of God which is prevalent in much religious thinking. The fact that detractors of the Enlightenment used exactly the same argument of unknowability should at least make us wary of invoking it again when attempting to dismiss such thoughts. Thinkers such as Plato, Goethe and Steiner don’t belong to this category.
Strict natural science considers only phenomena of the senses and in doing so implicitly denies any importance to the spiritual world. More consistent natural scientists must of course deny any existence of such a reality as they don’t see it. By relying on the senses natural science believes that it thereby excludes any subjective activity to arrive at objective insights. As we have already seen this position is no longer tenable given the role of thinking in the process of knowing. Because natural science gains its experience exclusively from the material world it naturally forms all its theories on concepts derived from this world. This is a very understandable approach in trying to piece together a picture of how things work in the universe. It is also clear how the natural world that natural science is far more accessible than any so called spiritual experiences and is therefore more easily tested. Similarly it is clear that the possibilty for error when making statements about this spirit world is far greater because it is so fleeting and unclear in comparison to the evidence of our senses.
We have seen that the curious nature of thinking should actually lead all scientific thinking to question the assumption that only sensory information, i.e. not thinking, is vaild for the scientific methodology. There are further problems with the natural science approach to experiment. Possibly the key problem is its success. The methodology of natural science, or scientism, has been so successful in shedding light and bringing understanding to the world around us that it has become blind to certain phenomena. This blindness is a result of trying to make everything mathematisable, that is to say trying to understand all  phenomena in terms of scientism most useful tool, namely mathematics. Again the reasoning for this is fully understandable given its proven usefulness. However, in scientism’s attempt to make everything quantifiable so that it can fit into mathematical equations, it imposes limitations on its scope of investigation. Qualities have no place in such a methodology. Instead in an unquestioned and unscientific manner they are transposed into quantites of atoms or molecules. By this method of reductionism scientism denudes experience of its real content and is thus unable to meet qualitative phenomena and arrive at objective underlying lawfulness derived purely from observation. Kant talked about viewing the world through green glasses and resultant effects. Scientism’s glasses are black and white and admit solely position and movement of particles as valid observable phenomena. There is of course no sound epistemological theory to support this stance as evidenced in the first chapter. So what went wrong.
Scientism is a victim of its own success. But how exactly? It has taken concepts which are valid for describing the physical world and then imposed them on other realms. Shortly we shall see what is meant by other realms. These concepts are however too weak to give a complete understanding of these realms. Because all traditional senses are mediated by the physical body it is automatically assumed through analysis we can eventually arrive at the constituent parts and therefore understanding. However, hidden in this belief is the assumption that reality exhausts itself in physical phenomena.
Currently this model of the world is so pervasive and so established that only a few people in the western world challenge this assumption. Traditions in eastern thinking have better managed to keep alive the notion that the world of the senses is Maya (illusion) whilst Brahman (truth) is of a spiritual nature. A reflection of this is intimated in such books as ‘The Tao of Physics’. It must be stressed here that this does not attempt to invalidate the findings of science, but merely reflect the one sided nature of its observation.
It would not be to unkind to maintain that science has helped mankind gain a better understanding and control of everything except himself. The uselessness of reducing thoughts, feelings, experiences etc to atomic movement is obvious. How many books have been written that have deepened understanding of for example feelings by means of mathematics? The lack of power of scientific concepts to help a human being develop or understand him/herself is strong evidence to suggest that these concepts are not sufficient for understanding the many aspects of the human being.

Steiner saw in Goethe’s scientific methodology an approach which led to an understanding of the world underlying the physical reality. All of his early philosophical works are an attempt to validate this methodology, whilst later works are all results of what he considers a valid scientific methodlogy. The latter can be viewed as fruits of what Steiner called Goethean science. Below I shall try to relate what appear as key concepts. I shall do this in a manner that is in accordance with this methodology. This means that rather than define concepts, I will characterise situations which lead us to develop concepts which make sense of everyday observations. In this way concepts are not imposed on observations, but rather concepts are derived from observation. Thus they stand on a sound epistemological basis and cannot be dismissed as products of fantasy as they are grounded in reality.

Mineral, Etheric, Astral, Ego

If we look at the mineral realm we find that bodies such as stones or crystals that everything is in a state of decay. In crystals we can witness evidence of certain organising forces. After time these forces no longer make their presence felt. This realm appears devoid of any inner impulses. Movement is only brought about in this realm by exterior agents. Elemental forces break down these structures. Natural laws such as gravitation hold true in this realm. This is the world described so accurately by maths, physics and chemistry. Everything in this realm can be viewed as a mechanical model to give an amply satisfactory understanding. Those subscribing to a purely mechanistic world view find all their concepts and later impose them on the rest of observable phenomena.

If we look at the plant realm we find that this charaterisation no longer fits. Initial observation reveals that in contrast to the mineral realm there is what is often referred to as growth. In the plant realm we have a certain anti-gravitational force, sometimes called levity, which strive in the opposite direction to a natural law of the physical realm. Another phenomenon not present in the physical that makes its appearance is what is commonly referred to as life and death.<< It would be incorrect to claim that one is hereby attributing concepts to the world of phenomena. This life and death is merely a description of something observed in natural phenomena. By using the words life and death one is merely trying to capture observable phenomena by using words, signifiers, that are familiar to the reader. Consequently life and death is not being defined, but instead phenomena are being described which may eventually lead to clearer concepts on the nature of life and death. >> Deriving our ideas purely from observation we witness in the plant realm that things are in a process of becoming and of decaying, often in accordance with the four seasons. The phenomenon of decay is already familiar to us from the mineral realm. The process of becoming, however, reveals itself in similar observations across the world. However, whilst the force gravity and so called elemtental forces encompass the world, it is not so obvious in the plant realm because of all the different manifestations of this process of becoming. In the same way that gravity is considered a force it is also clear from most elementary observation that some type of force is active in and throughout the plant realm. Steiner calls such forces ‘etheric’. Whenever the word etheric is used it is strictly in these terms, though of course more in depth investigation would reveal a far more complicated picture. In the same way that the accurate calculation of gravitational forces is a complicated affair with a vast array of variable factors.

Further evidence for the existence of these forces is given by the death of plants. When a plant dies we experience how these forces that were formally active in a given plant are no longer present. Elemental forces in absence of etheric forces break down the fine structures created by them. It is as if for a short space of time this life force, Nature as Goethe refers to it, rebelled against the forces of death and decay to bring forward its creations. Goethe expressed it like this:
Leben ist ihre schönste Erfindung, und der Tod ist ihr Kunstgriff, um viel leben zu haben.
Clearly these etheric forces are initially invisible, but it is open to debate as to whether they must remain unexperienceable or whether we concur with Platonic or Goethean thinking that it is possible to have direct perception of them, although at first mediated through the act of thinking as claimed by Steiner. Even without direct perception of the forces, but merely by observation of how they operate there is much that can be observed. For example it appears that water is the carrier of these forces. No water = no life. The only reason for example that NASA is so sure it is worth looking for life on Mars is because there is evidence of water being there. Numerous experiements have made it practically common knowledge that processes of growth intensify in a waxing (cf. (German) wachsen = to grow) moon and reduce when it is waning. Given the huge range of different plant species with all their different shapes, sizes, smells etc it is also clear that whilst the underlying process of growth is a useful starting point, these forces have a seemingly boundless number of possible combinations and permutations. Within the anthroposophical movement there is a number of people who are mapping out this realm in the same way that cartographers have with ever increasing accuracy mapped out the physical world.
Finally in this part we move to observations by Steiner concerning these forces. These being obtained by direct experience, in objectified thinking, can only be tested for their logical consitency in the absence of this faculty. It is of course distinctly possible that these descriptions are fabrications of fantasy that have nothing at all to do with reality. Absence of logical consistency would of course indicate that there is something untrue about them. The question as to whether or not they are accurate depictions of the spirit world is something that can only be determined by someone with spirirtual sight. In the same way that ultimately a blind person can determine the logical consistency of observations made about colour, but can only confirm or refute such observations when s/he has healthy eyesight. This same relationship applies to observations made by anybody about the spirit world. It might be decidedly uncomfortable to leave something at a merely hypothetical stage in our pursuit of knowledge. However, to do otherwise and make judgements about something beyond personal experience would be highly unscientific. The importance of an awareness and understanding of the action within the human being of these forces in education will be developed later. In the meantime I shall just list that these observations about the nature of these etheric forces are:

1. active in the human being. Whilst they are active throught a person’s lifetime they concerned chiefly with growth in the first 7 years of a childs life.
2. those by which we have memory and mental representations
3. those which regenerate the human body.
4. only perceptible to Imaginative knowledge.
5. strongly influenced by intake of different foods.
6. essentially sculpturing in nature.
7. basis for imitative learning.

In the animal realm we find that we observe phenomena that are characteristic of both the physical as well as the etheric realm. Animals have physical bodies which are subject to the laws of the physical world and they also display the processes of growth and naturally decay when the etheric forces leave the physical body. Continuing the observations we find that new phenomena arising which are unique to the animal realm. These include the ability to move the physical+etheric bodies. Furthermore animals have an inner life. What we loosely call feelings, instincts and drives which give direction to this movement. Again simple observation reveals that a new set of processes unknown to the physical and etheric kingdom are making themselves manifest, of course this happens first through thinking. Steiner calls the forces that reveal themselves in the animal realm which go beyond the two previous realms astral forces. Remaining still within the realm of observation we find that animals come into a relationship with their environment through their senses. Consequently we must attribute this capability to astral forces. All that goes beyond physical and etheric characteristics in the animal realm is attributed to astral forces.
From a Goethean perspective it would be completely unscientific to claim from intial observation that such features of the animal realm, desire etc, are merely a product of bio-chemical reactions. To do so at this stage would be unphenomenological. In a phenomenological approach it is the phenomena which must guide us in our concept building. If we were to impose our concepts on phenomena for which there is no evidence then we would violate the principle which assures us objectivity.
Bearing in mind the caveats made before in listing properties of the astral body. Astral forces are:

1. those by which man has a soul life, inner life
2. those by which he comes into contact with the outer world
3. responsible for the process of puberty
4. active in the human being. Whilst they are active throughout a person’s lifetime their period of development is between the age of 7-14.
5. those by which we have feelings, instinct and desires.
6. only perceptible to Inspirational knowledge.
7. those responsible for sympathetic and unsympathetic forces of soul.

The final consideration in this path of observation is with the difference between animals and human beings. This is more tricky to approach because human beings can often be very animal like in their behaviour. Several sociological ideas have gained their concepts from observation of anything from ants to apes.  However unprejudiced thinking reveals that it is in the ability to think that mankind differentiates itself from the animal realm. Clearly animals do what is commonly called thinking when they react to sensory phenomena. If we consider the phenomena that animals in general do not suffer from stress when removed from the source of the stress we will get an idea of how it is different from human thinking. This is not the case, however, with human beings. Human beings can move around in a life of personal experience, as stored in memory, and can think about things that are not present to the senses, that is to say they live in a created reality unique to each person. Human thinking is not bound by immediate sensory experience. It is able to take memories and re-experience something that is no longer present to the senses. As we saw in the chapter on epistemology this is a vital ingredient in the individuals ability to form concepts and come to an understanding of the world that surrounds him. Thus the human being through its own activity reveals spirit in a way that animals do not and cannot. Steiner calls the force responsible for this faculty of soul as Ego or I. His justification for this name is as follows. The concept of self or I is not observable in what is given to the senses. Only in the act of thinking can the concept of I be formed. It is not a concept that cannot be arrived at without the ability to think about ‘non-real’ experiences. In saying I to him/herself the human being gives him/herself a name that is unique and that cannot be applied to anyone else. Everyone can call a table a table, but only I can only say I to myself. Everybody calls me by a name, but cannot call me I.  I cannot call another object I and mean myself

Body, Soul, Spirit

 

Remaining with the phenomenological approach, but this time making personal experience the object of observation we find another triad of concepts essential for understanding Steiner’s thoughts on education. It would be easier for me at this stage to define the concepts of body, soul and spirit. However, if these concepts are to have any validity they must be derived from observing reality, hence I am forced to take the longer route which leaves the individual free to enrich these concepts with ever more content and thus make them a potent force for understanding the world.

In normal everyday life the human being experiences the world through the senses of the body. As long as my eyes or ears are stimulated by the environment I can experience it. It is also clear that without the physical body I would not be able experience the world. With no eyes I would not experience light,  no ears no sounds etc. It would be false to assume that light or sound did not exist at all just because I dont possess the relevant senses. From a subjective point of view this is of course true, but is untenable when considering depersonalised experiences. Indeed the conclusion that careful thinking inevitably leads us to is that it is the world of light that shapes an organ for perceiving light, or the world of sound which shapes an organ for the perception of sound. The worlds of light, sound etc exist prior to our experience of them and they must somehow be responsible for the shaping of organs of perception. It was this insight which is the foundation of Goethe’s statement:
 Wäre das Auge nicht Sonnenhaft, würde es die Sonne nie erblicken.
The human being’s experience is not limited to mere sensory experience. Within the human being there is a faculty for preserving sensory phenomena. When we turn our senses away from experience we can continue to represent them to ourselves. Within in us there is an ability to recreate yesterday though it no longer exists for our senses. This faculty which enables the fleeting to become eternal, disengaged from the flow of time, Steiner calls the soul. The soul makes mental representations(Vorstellungen), which make the outer world into our inner world. It is a world of purely subjective experiences, which only continue to live in the individual. The content of my soul, the sum of its experiences is me.

The human being does not stop, however, at these mental representations. These representations are merely a reflection of reality. The lawfulness of sensory experience or mental representation is not evident in the perception of them. Again remembering what was established in the chapter on epistemology we know that any lawfulness is revealed through what is commonly called thinking. Through thinking we arrive at something eternal and immutable, laws that are valid from now to the end of time. This experience of the eternal has many names in many traditions of thinking. Here it is called an experience of the spirit. It is by means of our own activity that we arrive the spirit. It is our own spiritual nature that enables us to learn of the spiritual nature of the world. Using experience from past and present our spirit grasps the spirit of phenomena observed. Body and soul from the perspective of spirit are the instruments by which the spirit meets the spiritual world it lives in.

Reviewing the above we find that the soul is an inhabitant of two worlds. On the one hand it lives in the world mediated by the senses. On the other products of the spirit world, thoughts, live in the soul and are the driving force behind actions. Consequently the body reveals another aspect of its nature. Namely it is the means by which the spirit, acting through the soul, reveals itself. It is the means by which spirit can become conscious of itself. In accordance with the outline above spirit acts, it observes itself through the body and soul and rises to awareness of itself. Below we shall see the connection between these observations and Schiller’s Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen.

Der sinnliche Trieb und Formtrieb

The art historian and social philosopher Herbert Read (1893-1968) declared to a UNESCO gathering in 1953, that these Letters are ‘without comparison [the] most profound which have ever been written on education.’ Steiner maintains it is not a book which one assimilates once and for all. It is rather a book of meditation and a book which ought to follow each teacher in his professional work.
In the 12th of the 27 letters talk of two fundamental urges within the human being

1. Der sinnliche Trieb ist beschäftigt den Menschen in die Schranken der Zeit zu setzen und zur Materie zu machen. Der Mensch ist in diesem Zustand nichts als eine grosse Einheit, ein erfüllter Moment der Zeit.
2. Formtrieb ist bestrebt den Mensch in Freiheit zu setzen, Harmonie in die Verschiedenheit des Erscheinens zu bringen und bei allem Wechsel des Zustands seine Personlichkeit zu behaupten. Er entscheidet für immer wie er für jetzt entscheidet.......Er umfasst mithin die ganze Folge der Zeit.

For Schiller the inner life (das Gemüt) is subject to these urges which pull it in opposite directions. This is the same thought we arrived when considering the relationship of body to soul and soul to spirit. The resolution of these opposites was formulated in the notion of urge to play (Spieltrieb). Unfortunately few people have really understood what Schiller meant and as a consequence the profoundly enlightening insights will seldom touch a practising teacher’s life. Further discussion of this important area, although fruitful, would, however, lead us beyond the objectives of this chapter.

Thought, Feeling, Will (Cognition, Emotion, Affectation)

Here we will look at the final triad of concepts which are essential for a basic understanding of Steiner’s pedagogical ideas. Once again it is important to look at the reality of the human being to arrive at our concepts. As much as possible we must rely on perception to shape our thinking rather than imposing our thinking on perception. Consequently thinking is used in service of reality rather than illusion.
We have already considered the phenomenon commonly labelled as thinking. We are also all comfortable with the idea that there is a strong correlation between thinking and neural activity. For a long time the relationship of the nerve system to the process of thinking remained a closed book because only dead brain, ie brains that weren’t thinking, could be dissected and observed. Modern day technology has helped us move beyond this sticking point. It is now possible to observe, of course mediated by computers and monitors, thinking as it happens. This new method of observation has revised or quashed many concepts previously held to be true about the brain and its relationship to thinking. Key concepts developing in this area include neural plasticity, sensitive periods for learning, fuzzy thinking, the thinking executive (prefrontal  lobes) and thinking determining brain structure. We will look at these in more detail later. Observation also reveals that thinking is the result of a process of dying. Essentially if it weren’t for the fact that neurons are continually dying within us then we would not be able to think. It is by means of death within the nervous system that human beings are able to think consciously. Observation also reveals that the nervous system is most fully developed in the head, but also spreads itself throughout the whole human being. Given that the nervous system is the means by which thinking reveals itself to us, we must also conclude that thinking whilst concentrated in the head is an activity that spreads itself throughout the body.

The human being is not just a thinking being, it is also a feeling being. The activity of feeling is far less clear than thinking. Whilst thinking happens is full consciousness, feeling seems to well up from somewhere inside. We tend to be a lot clearer about why we think a certain thought, but are less likely to be clear about why we feel a certain feeling. Observation also reveals that inner states of calm, peace, fear, anxiety or anger is strongly related to the heart and respiratory system. Both of these are affected by fluctuations in the feeling life. Fear instinctively speeds up the heart and leads to shorter breaths. The feeling life and the activity of the heart and breathing are intimately bound up with one another. The heart seems to act as a centre for the feeling life, which like the nervous system also spreads itself throughout the body by means of veins and arteries.

The relationship between thinking and feeling is not always clear. However, if we make feelings the object of thinking we notice how feelings affects thinking quite considerably. For example an anxious person is likely to have a great deal of difficulty concentrating on quite basic thinking tasks. In his book ,Emotional Intelligence,  Daniel Goleman describes parallel phenomena as emotional hijacking. Though his examples often refer to highly destructive consequences. In most people there is an ability to use thinking to keep in check the unpredictable and sometimes violent emotional life. Usually a given perception makes its way to the thalmus, the area responsible for conscious processing of information. Goleman maintains that it is assessed for meaning and appropriate action is decided on. However, a certain portion of the original perception bypasses the thalmus and makes its way straight to the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional responses to perceptions, which are described as a type of pre-thinking which compromises accuracy for speed. Consequently the amygdala can trigger an emotional response before the cortical centres have fully understood what is happening. Sometimes the emotional response is so great that it overrrides any self restraining thoughts from mitigating action.(Apollonian-Dionysian natures Nietzsche??) It is distinctly possible that talk of soul and spirit in this dissertation may be so disturbing for the material minded that it even prevents him/her reading this text objectively, but instead emotions to stream forth at a semi-conscious level and thus prevent a rational and sympathetic reading of the text. This would be another example of emotional hijacking in a more inocuous form, but nonethless destructive in character. Thus in feelings, or emotions as Goleman calls them, a subconscious evaluation of a situation takes place. This evaluation takes place outside of consciousness and is also instrumental in determining what type of thoughts will enter the human being. Consequently in the feeling life we what have a characteristic of thinking, ie evaluation, but at a subconscious level. Steiner refers to feelings as semi-conscious thoughts. He says they are dreamlike in character and immediate in nature, whilst dreams are memories. Again of importance for later he maintains that it is the feeling life that predominates in children and that this is a crucial fact in enabling the awakening of clear thinking.

The closeness of thinking and feeling can be established also from the other direction. It is amazing, but nonetheless real that even the most ardent of feelings can completely transform themselves when confronted by conscious thinking. Feelings of extreme joy can in the time it takes to utter a sentence be transformed beyond recognition.

Further to the activities of thinking and feeling one also observes in human beings a tendency to do. Something in the human being causes and enables the human being to act in the physical world. These are commonly called acts of will. What exactly it is that transforms a thought or feeling into an action escapes consciousness. We only become aware of the will indirectly through its deeds. A thought of raising the arm for example may live consciously within us, but quite how the body transforms the thought so that muscles, blood etc cause a raising of the arm lies beyond consciousness. The will is intimately connected with our thoughts and feelings. If we look at the body we find that the physical expression for the will life is in the limb and metabolic system.
The above can be summarised as follows:

Activity	Thinking	Feeling	Willing
Level	Consciousness	Semi-consciousness	Sub-consciouness
Comparable States	Wakefulness	Dreaming	Sleep

That is to say thinking is to feeling as wakefulness is to dreaming etc. Feeling occupies a middle position and contains elements of will and thought. Because will and thought are crossed by feeling we gain a subjective view of our thoughts and deeds. This perspective on human activity is crititcal in understanding some of the apparently non-sensical Waldorf teaching practices and ideas. In view of the above the Waldorf teacher is concerned to gradually awaken a child to thinking by activiating his/her will and feeling life, depending on which level it tends to operate. To awaken thinking in a child by forcing it to think before the inclination arises in the child has long term detrimental effects, particularly arterial sclerosis, says Steiner. Again this will be dealt with in greater detail when considering curriculum.

Bibliography

 

Nobel, Agnes, Educating through Art: The Steiner School Approach, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1996

Lehrs, Ernst, Man or Matter: Introduction to a spiritual understanding of nature on the basis of Goethe’s method of training observation and thought,  Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1985

Steiner, Rudolf, G.A. 1, Einleitungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften, Rudolf Steiner - Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach 1987

Steiner, Rudolf, G.A. 45, Anthroposophy (A Fragment) , Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1996

Steiner, Rudolf, G.A. 293, Allmän Människokunskap som grundval för pedagogiken, Telleby Bokförlag, Järna, 1981

Capra, Fritjof,  The Tao of Physics, Penguin????????

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, I - VI, Goethes Werke in sechs Bänden, Im Insel - Verlag zu Leipzig, Leipzig, 1914

Lieber A.L. & Agel, J, Måneffekten: Biologisk Tidvatten och Mänskliga Emotioner, Berghs Förlag AB, 1982

Aeschylus (translated by Robert Fagles), The Oresteia, Penguin Classics, USA, 1979

Schiller, Friedrich, Schriften zur Philosophie und Kunst, Goldmanns Gelbe Taschenbücher (Band 524), München, 1964

Das Goetheanum: Wochenschrift für Anthroposophie, Allgemeine Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, Dornach, Schweiz

Healy, Jane M, Endangered Minds: Why our Children don’t think and what we can do about it, Touchstone, New York, 1990

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Die Geburt der Tragödie (Werke in drei Bänden), Carl Hanser Verlag, München, 1966