The Most Valuable Thing Is When Thoughts Have a Heart

Jun 21 / Rudolf Steiner

It is certainly valuable when man also has a heart and not just thoughts

The originally still very lively head thinking came more and more under the rule of Ahriman and thus dried up to an unfeeling dead mechanistic thinking, which is omnipresent today and cuts man off from his spiritual roots.

“The second stage of development is where man begins to think. More and more today are those people who begin to go out of the original feeling and reflect on the things into which they were born. This is why today we see so much criticism of ancient sacred traditions and creeds. This is the reaction of the mind and intellect towards what has been accepted unchecked by the mind out of feeling, out of sensation. The same ability of the human soul, which criticizes what has been brought up or is innate, we see prevailing in what we call science. Science in today’s sense is essentially a work of the same soul forces which have just been characterized.

The outer experiences, the outer perceptions, whether they are gained directly through the senses or through those refinements of the senses, such as those offered by the telescope, the microscope or the like, are combined into laws with the help of the intellect, and from this arises intellectual science. So you see these two moments of development of the human soul. With regard to the pro-truth of certain things, man stands on such a stage where an original, undeveloped feeling speaks, a feeling that is innate or inherent in him through education.

On the second stage, besides the feeling, the intellect, the intelligence, speaks. Now, however, everyone who keeps a little introspection in the soul knows that this intelligence has a very definite quality. It must have this quality, which has a killing, extinguishing effect on the feeling. Who would not know, with a good observation of the soul, that all mere activity of intelligence, all mere activity of understanding, kills the feeling, the sensation.” (Lit.:GA 119, p. 221f)

Thoughts should not be so weak that they remain sitting up in the head

Through the increasing influence of Ahriman, thinking has become pale and weak-willed. The thoughts, which only circle in the head now, have lost the sure sense of truth and it doesn’t have the power to pulsate the will morally.

“Basically, in the course of the nineteenth century, we as Central European mankind have gradually become quite weak-willed, weak-willed in the sense that thought no longer gains the power to steel the will in such a way that man, who is after all a being of thought, is able to shape the world out of his thoughts. When it is said that thoughts are pale, one should not draw the conclusion that one does not need thoughts to live as a human being. The thoughts should not be so weak that they remain sitting up in the head.

They should be so strong that they flow through the heart and through the whole man down to the feet; for it is truly better if, instead of mere red and white globules of blood, thoughts also pulse through our blood. It is certainly valuable when man also has a heart and not just thoughts. But the most valuable thing is when thoughts have a heart. However, we have lost that completely. We can no longer discard the thoughts which the last four to five centuries have brought; but these thoughts must also get a heart.” (Lit.:GA 217, p. 20f)

In the future intellectuality should flow through the hearts

In contrast to Ahriman, Michael has never appropriated the cosmic intelligence, but only registers it. The connection of forces with the spiritual beings, from which it originates, is thereby never lost. Ahriman, on the other hand, has torn it loose from its cosmic origin and has assimilated it without being able to internalize it mentally. The Ahrimanic head-thinking therefore remains cold and heartless and cannot change into the spiritual reality.

“Michael unfolded the intellectuality through the cosmos in the past. There he did this as a servant of the divine-spiritual powers, which gave the origin both to himself and to man. And with this relation to the intellectuality he wants to remain. When he detached himself from the divine-spiritual powers in order to find the way into the inner being of man, he decided to place himself henceforth in the right way to mankind in order to find his relationship to intellectuality. But he wanted to do all this only in the sense of the divine-spiritual powers as their servant, the powers with which he is connected from his and the human origins. Thus his intention is that in the future intellectuality should flow through the hearts of men, but as the same power that it was emanating from the divine-spiritual powers in the beginning.

It is completely different with Ahriman. This being has long since detached itself from the evolutionary current to which the divine-spiritual powers belong. In the distant past it stood beside them as an independent cosmic power. Now in the present it stands spatially within the world to which man belongs, but it does not develop a power connection with the beings rightfully belonging to this world.

Only since the intellectuality, detached from the divine-spiritual beings, approaches this world, Ahriman finds himself so related to this intellectuality that he can connect himself in his way through it with mankind, for he has already united with himself in primeval time what man receives in the present like a gift from the cosmos. Ahriman would, if he succeeded in what lies in his intention, make the intellect given to mankind similar to his own.
Now Ahriman appropriated intellectuality at a time when he could not internalize it in himself. It remains a force in his being, which has nothing to do with heart and soul, as a cold-frosty, soulless cosmic impulse intellectuality streams out from Ahriman. And the people, who are seized by this impulse, develop a logic, which seems to speak for itself in a pitiless and loveless way – in truth Ahriman speaks in it -, in which nothing shows itself, which is right, inner, heart-soul connection of the human being with what he thinks, speaks, does.

Michael, however, never appropriated intellectuality. He registers it as a divine-spiritual power by feeling connected with the divine-spiritual powers. Thus also, by penetrating the intellectuality, the possibility shows itself to be an expression of the heart, of the soul as well as such of the head, of the spirit. For Michael carries in himself all the original powers of his gods and those of man. Thus he does not transmit to intellectuality anything cold-cold, soulless, but stands with it in a warm-intimate, soulful way.” (Lit.:GA 26, p. 114f)

About the Author

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian-born philosopher, social reformer, and esotericist. He founded anthroposophy, a spiritual movement, and is known for his contributions to education (Waldorf schools), agriculture (biodynamic farming), medicine, and architecture. Steiner's work is rooted in a belief that there is a spiritual world accessible through higher faculties of mental knowledge.
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