Anthroposophy in Everyday Life

by Rudolf Steiner

Many people who call themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the most practical principles. But if we inquire more closely, we find that their so-called “practical thought” is often not thought at all but only the continuing pursuit of traditional opinions and habits. An entirely objective observation of the “practical” person's thought and an examination of what is usually termed “practical thinking” will reveal the fact that it generally contains little that can be called practical. What to them is known as practical thought or thinking consists in following the example of some authority whose ideas are accepted as a standard in the construction of some object. Anyone who thinks differently is considered impractical because this thought does not coincide with traditional ideas.

But the real facts of life often sweep aside the “practical,” that is to say, those who believe in their own ability to be practical. We must clearly distinguish between genuine thinking and so-called “practical thinking” that is merely reasoning in traditional ruts of thought.

True practice in thinking presupposes a right attitude and a proper feeling for thinking. How can a right attitude toward thinking be attained? Anyone who believes that thought is merely an activity that takes place within the head or the soul cannot have the right feeling for thought. Whoever harbors this idea will be constantly diverted by a false feeling from seeking right habits of thought and from making the necessary demands on thinking. A person who would acquire the right feeling for thought must say, “If I can formulate thoughts about things, and learn to understand them through thinking, then these things themselves must first have contained these thoughts. The things must have been built up according to these thoughts, and only because this is so can I in turn extract these thoughts from the things.”

The works and phenomena of nature must be viewed in a similar way. In the works of human beings it is easy to picture this to ourselves, but with the works of nature it is not so easily done. Yet these, too, are the result of spiritual activities and behind them are spiritual beings. Thus, when a person thinks about things he or she only re-thinks what is already in them. The belief that the world has been created by thought and is still ceaselessly being created in this manner is the belief that can alone fructify the actual inner practice of thought.

Considering the real practice of thought, it must be realized that thoughts can only be drawn from a world in which they already exist. Just as water can only be taken from a glass that actually contains water, so thoughts can only be extracted from things within which these thoughts are concealed. The world is built by thought, and only for this reason can thought be extracted from it. Were it otherwise, practical thought could not arise. When people can feel the full truth of these words, it will be easy for them to dispense with abstract thought. If they can confidently believe that thoughts are concealed behind the things around them, and that the actual facts of life take their course in obedience to thought—if they feel this, they will easily be converted to a practical habit of thinking based on truth and reality.

Those experimenting ought not to draw any conclusions immediately or to deduce from today's observation what kind of weather they might have tomorrow. That would corrupt their thinking. Instead, they must confidently feel that the things of outer reality are definitely related to one another and that tomorrow's events are somehow connected with those of today. But they must not speculate on these things. They must first inwardly re-think the sequence of the outer events as exactly as possible in mental pictures, and then place these images side by side, allowing them to melt into one another. This is a definite rule of thought that must be followed by those who wish to develop factual thinking. It is particularly advisable that this principle be practiced on those very things that are not yet understood and the inner connection of which has not yet been penetrated. Therefore, the experimenter must have the confidence that such events of which he or she as yet has no understanding—the weather, for instance—and which in the outer world are connected with one another, will bring about inner connections. This must be done only in pictures, while refraining from thinking.

It can be readily believed that something may take place in the invisible members of a person's nature if exact inner images of succeeding events are formed and at the same time all thinking is restrained. The vehicle of a human being's thought life is the astral body.1 As long as the human being is engaged in speculative thinking, this astral body is the slave of the ego. This conscious activity, however, does not occupy the astral body exclusively because the latter is also related in a certain manner to the whole cosmos. Now, to the extent we restrain arbitrary thinking and simply form mental pictures of successive events, to that extent do the inner thoughts of the world act within us and imprint themselves, without our being aware of it, on our astral body. To the extent we insert ourselves into the course of the world through observation of the events in the world and receive these images into our thoughts with the greatest possible clarity, allowing them to work within us, to that extent do those members of our organism that are withdrawn from our consciousness become ever more intelligent. If, in the case of inwardly connected events, we have once acquired the faculty of letting the new picture melt into the preceding one in the same way that the transition occurred in nature, it shall be found after a time that our thinking has gained considerable flexibility.

This can be done either with actions involving people or something else. Whenever something is understood, we try to form a thought picture of what in our opinion will take place. If our opinion proves correct, our thinking is justified and all is well. If, however, something different from our expectation occurs, we review our thoughts and try to discover our mistake. In this way we try to correct our erroneous thinking by calm observation and examination of our errors. An attempt is made to find the reason for things occurring as they did. If we are right, however, we must be especially careful not to boast of our prediction and say, “Oh well, I knew yesterday that this would happen!”

We should submerge ourselves in the things and enter into their inner thought activity. If this is done, we gradually become aware of the fact that we are growing together with things. We no longer feel that they are outside us and we are here inside our shell thinking about them. Instead we come to feel as if our own thinking occurred within the things themselves. When a person has succeeded to a high degree in doing this, many things will become clear.

“Whenever I can spare the time, I will think about something I myself have chosen and I will bring it into my consciousness arbitrarily of my own free will. For example, I will think of something that occurred two years ago during a walk. I will deliberately recall what occurred then and I will think about it if only for five minutes. During these five minutes I will banish everything else from my mind and will myself choose the subject about which I wish to think.”

If such exercises are practiced systematically again and again, it will soon be noticed that ideas come at the right moments, and the right thoughts occur when needed. Through these exercises thinking will become activated and mobile—something of immense importance in practical life.

The following exercise must be systematically practiced, saying to oneself, “I shall recall exactly the person I saw yesterday, also the street corner where I met him, and what happened to be in his vicinity. I shall draw the whole picture as exactly as possible and shall even imagine the color and cut of his coat and vest.” Most people will find themselves utterly incapable of doing this and will quickly see how much is lacking in their recollections to produce a really lifelike, graphic picture of what they met and experienced only yesterday.

Whenever it is possible, action should be deferred until the next day, and the two possibilities considered again at that time. You will find that in the interim conditions have changed and that the next day you will be able to form a different, or at least a more thorough decision than could have been reached the day before. An inner necessity is hidden in things and if we do not act with arbitrary impatience but allow this inner necessity to work in us—and it will—we shall find the next day that it has enriched our thinking, thus making possible a wiser decision. This is exceedingly valuable.

To sleep over it is not enough, however. It is necessary to consider two or, better still, several possibilities that will continue to work within us when our ego is not consciously occupied with them. Later on, when we return again to the matter in question, it will be found that certain thought forces have been stirred up within us in this manner, and that as a result our thinking has become more factual and practical.

It is thus possible to invert completely cause and effect. In this instance the error is evident, but often they are not so easily discernible. The frequency with which such errors in thinking occur is amazing. Indeed, it must be said that in the field of science conclusions in which this confusion of cause and effect is permitted are being drawn every day. Most people do not grasp this fact, however, because they are not acquainted with the possibilities of thinking.

For anyone capable of thinking correctly a large part of modern literature (especially that of the sciences) becomes a source of unpleasant experience. The distorted and misguided thinking expressed in it can cause even physical pain in a person who has to work through it. It should be understood, however, that this is not said with any intent to slight the wealth of observation and discovery that has been accumulated by modern natural science and its objective methods of research.

Today it can generally be said that people are not prompted by reasons when making statements but rather by the thinking habits behind these reasons. They have acquired habits of thought that influence all their feelings and sensations, and when reasons are put forth, they are simply the mask of the habitual thinking that screens these feelings and sensations. Not only is the wish often the father of the thought, but it can also be said that all our feelings and mental habits are the parents of our thoughts. Someone who knows life knows how difficult it is to convince another person by means of logical reasoning. What really decides and convinces lies much deeper in the human soul.

We must understand that our thoughts derive their coloring from far greater depths than are generally imagined. It is our feelings that frequently impel us to hold certain opinions. The logical reasons that are put forward are often a mere screen or mask for our deeper feelings and habits of thinking.

True practicality is born of objective thinking, that is, thinking that flows into us from the things themselves. It is only by practicing such exercises as have just been described that we learn to take our thoughts from things. To do these exercises properly we should choose to work with sound and wholesome subjects that are least affected by our culture. These are the objects of nature.

That spiritual science should penetrate our souls, thereby stimulating us to inner soul activity and expanding our vision, is of far more importance than merely theorizing about what extends beyond the things of the senses into the spiritual. In this, anthroposophy is truly practical.

What Freud attempted to do in psychoanalysis, Steiner achieved in anthroposophy from quite the opposite direction. Unlike Freud, who would conquer “neurosis” (a term that smells of formaldehyde and the hospital) by transforming the lower animal urges into higher egoic reflectivity, Steiner sought to expel “nervousness” (the lived experience of a misled life) by reorienting the soul to its divine origin.

is alive. Its description cannot be pieced together from a finite number of component parts; its evolution cannot be accomplished or even delineated by a finite number of precepts. Its depths, as well as its heights, bristle with infinities. Therefore, whoever speaks from the psyche's own sources cannot offer limited viewpoints. We may taste, in Steiner's overabundance, something of the living water Christ offered to the Samaritan woman. And we may ask in wonder, as she did, “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?”

A slight chain of interest links the human soul kernel with what people take in.

for the whole human being there is hardly anything worse than being far away in the soul, with one's heart, from what the head must perform. This not only goes against the nature of a finer, more sensitive person, but also influences the strength and energy of the human etheric body to the highest degree—precisely of the etheric body. The ether, or life, body becomes ever weaker from such activity, because of the slight connection that exists between the human soul kernel and what the person is doing. The more people have to do what does not interest them, the weaker they makes their ether body.

the human being is healthy in relation to the fullness of its being only if everything that it does is subordinate to the will of the astral body.

Let us assume that in teaching children to write, we first teach them a certain style of writing, and then, after a few years, we simply change the writing style without any other reason than to do so. Then the change in handwriting and the strengthening of the attention that would have to come about during the change would have an enormously strengthening influence on the developing ether body, and many of the nervous conditions people have would not come up.

As things stand, people are less and less able to suppress something habitual at will, or to do something differently. But one of the greatest achievements of the human being is the ability to do what one does differently at times.

Strengthening the human being in the way offered by spiritual scientific insight is something that should be brought to our culture through the spread of spiritual science.

nervousness expresses itself precisely in the confusion people often feel today about how to set about doing what they really wish to do or actually should wish to do. They draw back from carrying out what they have undertaken; they don't bring it off, and so on. This can be formulated as a certain weakness of the will, and it is caused by a lack of control of the astral body by the I. There is always insufficient control of the astral body by the I when this kind of weakness of will appears; it is as if people simultaneously want something and don't want it, or at least don't manage to really carry out what they want. Many do not even manage to earnestly want what they want to want. Now, there is a simple means to strengthen the will for the outer life. The means is this: to suppress wishes that are doubtless there, not to act on them, if non-action on the wishes is not harmful and is possible. For if we examine ourselves in life, we find from morning to night countless things that we want, which it would be nice to have, but we also find many such wishes that we can forego, without harming someone else and without neglecting our own responsibilities: wishes whose satisfaction would give a certain pleasure, but which could also remain unsatisfied. If, then, one proceeds systematically, one can find among one's many wishes those of which it can be said, No,

now I will not fulfill that wish. This is not to be done in the wrong way, but only with something that leads to no harm, whose fulfillment would bring nothing but comfort, happiness, pleasure. If one systematically suppresses wishes of this kind, then every suppression of a kind of wish means an increase in strength of will, in the strength of the I over the astral body. And if in later life we submit ourselves to such a procedure, then we will be able to make up, in this regard, for much that education currently neglects in many ways.

But there is a very simple way to introduce it: One refuses the wishes, not to the young person, but to oneself, but in such a way that the young person is aware that one has foregone this or that. Now, in the first seven years of life, but even later as an aftereffect, a strong imitative drive is in effect, and we

shall see, if we forego this or that in the presence of those we have to educate, that they imitate this, they see it as something worth striving for; and with this we will be doing something enormously significant.

If you test how people position themselves in life in terms of their souls, you will see that generally when people have to act or think, they actually only say what can be said either for or against a thing. That is the norm. But there is nothing in life that cannot be handled in such a way that there is both a pro and a con—nothing at all. There is a pro and a con for everything, and it is good if we accustom ourselves always to take into account not only the one but also the other, not only the pro or the con, but also the pro and the con. Even for things that we then actually do, it is good to present to oneself why we would do better under certain circumstances not to do it or simply, if it is better to do it, to make clear to oneself that there are also reasons against doing it.

So if I pose a choice to myself inwardly, I allow a strength to conquer a weakness. And this is enormously important, because this again strengthens the control of the I over the astral body tremendously. Now we should not regard this as something unpleasant, —to really honestly test the pros and cons in every individual case, wherever possible—and if we attempt to carry out what we have been describing, we will then see that a great deal has been achieved toward the strengthening the will.

In pursuing the laws of karma, we shall discover that the underlying reasons for suffering are similar to what can be described by the following example relating to ordinary life. Let us assume that a boy has lived until his eighteenth year at the expense of his father. Then the father loses all his wealth and goes into bankruptcy. The young man must now learn something worthwhile and make an effort to support himself. As a result, life hits him with pain and privation. It is quite understandable that he does not react sympathetically to the pain that he has to go through.