I've tried to catch myself in the act of carrying out the steps that Steiner mentions in connecting a sensation with its source, and it's very difficult. I hear a familiar musical clucking sound up at the greenhouse and at first pay it no mind; it's part of the general background noise of birds, bugs and frogs here at the farm. Then a feeling of irritation, accompanied by tenderness, arises in me, linked to the sound. An odd combination of feelings! I emerge from my focus on the task at hand and grasp at memory. Why do I connect this odd combination of feelings with this sound? Of course, it's the clucking that quails (a problem at our farm) use to encourage their chicks (a sound full of parental love and concern). Realizing this I'm satisfied, as Spencer says, with the explanation, and return to my work.

The sound is obviously an effect, but I didn't think of it as such. As an effect it has a cause, but I didn't think about that at first either. It wasn't until my feelings struggled against each other that I asked "why?" Then I began to search for the cause of these mixed feelings. So I must have recognized my feelings as an effect, because otherwise I wouldn't have tried to find their cause. But that wasn't my conscious experience. My conscious experience was that instantly I linked my feelings with the sound, felt bothered, and went right to memory to identify the source of the sound. So all those in-between steps Steiner mentions here happened so fast I couldn't notice them. No wonder Spencer missed them!

To learn what really happens when I add thinking to observation, it seems that I must make the net of my attention much finer and use it much more quickly! Otherwise I may know that I must have thought about effect first, cause second, but won't be able to recall actually doing so.

If a Materialistic approach shortchanges the role of thinking, maybe it's because the net of attention strains too coarsely. As in 3.1, a large part of thinking remains unobserved.

1) Steiner writes, "my reflecting makes it clear to me that I have to regard the noise as an effect." Maybe his reflecting does that for him, but mine sure doesn't for me. The only clear thought I might have is, "There must be a reason for that noise." So far I haven't managed to find the "effect" thought anywhere in my conscious mind, except as a back-formation from cause. Maybe that's good enough???

2) A certain kind of philosophy insists that concepts are nothing more than generalizations from experience (observation.) Steiner says, thinking is added to observation and transcends it. But doesn't "to generalize" mean a kind of thinking? Not the best kind, perhaps, but thinking nevertheless. So I really don't get the difference here and I've tried many times to understand it without success.

3) Thinking is being separated from observation here. A million stacked-up observations won't result in one concept without our thinking activity. So even the most materialistic, empirical scientist has to admit that thinking has to enter in at some point. And because the topic is "completely objective science," that opens the materialistic mind to the idea that thinking can be completely objective.

Almost caught the "effect" thought in the greenhouse. Glancing at a flat with several missing lettuce plants, I recalled learning not to pass such things by, because they mean something. They're caused by something. What missing lettuce usually means is a snail hiding somewhere nearby. A good thing not to pass by if I don't want to lose more lettuce!

To say that a percept is caused by something is really to define it as an effect. So it's as if "to mean something" or even "to exist" signifies, by definition, "to be part of a cause/effect relationship."

I wonder if part of the idea of these first two sections of Chapter Four is to recognize that some concepts, like Cause/Effect and Subject/Object, can't exist separately, any more than the top and bottom of a plate. When you take hold of the top you take hold of the bottom, and vice versa.

Something that always strikes me in 4.2 is how human consciousness is supposed to be both a stage for thinking and observation, and a mediator between them. How can something be both a stage and a mediator? A stage is a passive place, while a mediator is an active agent.

What does a mediator do? It moderates extremes, balances and directs energies, provides an environment where diverse things or people can unfold their characters and work in harmony.

A stage is an empty space, but it has a floor and an orientation, and can be whatever the director wants it to be, given its limitations. It comes to life when inhabited by characters and viewed by an audience.

Can consciousness evolve from being a stage to being a mediator? Is the mediator the director who uses the stage? Is normal consciousness the stage and awakened consciousness the mediator?

Sebastian wrote recently, in Sunbear's journal: "I've been reading The Incarnating Child and it puts it very clearly on p133-135.
• Sentient Soul:  sensing things
• Intellectual Soul:  amoral thinking logically about things
• Consciousness Soul:  picturing the whole with a moral dimension"

The more I look at Section 4.2, the more I feel a movement from one soul state to another. At first, consciousness is said to be the stage upon which thinking and observation meet and become linked. This reminds me of the Sentient Soul.

Then the Intellectual Soul starts to develop. A somewhat passive observation of the given gives way to active thinking, as thinking moves from mere reflection to active direction of observation. In the process, the world gets split up into subject and object.

The Consciousness Soul starts to emerge, when thinking turns upon the self and self-consciousness develops. Finally, when thinking contemplates its own activity, the subject and object become one, and there's a return to unity, but at a higher level.

I love this part: "my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking.... It is just this which constitutes the double nature of the human being. We think, and thereby embrace both ourselves and the rest of the world. But at the same time it is by means of thinking that we determine ourselves as an individual confronting the things."

Thinking gives us our loving unity with the world (we embrace it and ourselves!) but enables us to remain self-determined individuals.

Spencer describes experience quite accurately. It's ordinary experience he describes. If I hear a noise in the undergrowth I turn toward it to learn what caused it. So does my neighbor's labrador retriever, Indio. In that sense we might well be considered equals, the dog and I, except that he has better ears and quicker reflexes. But our turning toward the sound is purposeful in both cases.

Indio and I turn toward the noise for different reasons, or do we? Indio doesn't think about cause and effect. His instincts, reinforced by two years of life experience, connect certain kinds of noise with possibilities that need to be checked out. My curiosity is less intense, since this particular kind of noise doesn't connect with danger in this neighborhood, much less with food. But it could be said, and often is, that human curiosity is just a refinement of the same basic survival skills that all animals possess.

Steiner doesn't describe ordinary experience here. Instead, he lifts the curtain on reflective thinking. Spencer doesn't concern himself with the relating of concepts that goes on under the surface as I turn toward the noise. In Steiner's version, Indio and I are quite different. Steiner slows down the human process so we can understand it, just as an Olympic dive can be slowed down on film so we can appreciate all the moves that otherwise happen too rapidly to see.

Kristina Kaine wrote, in Right Understanding -- Two, (http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1497), "We cannot simply transpose our material understanding into spiritual concepts. It does not work that way. We have to do the reverse by integrating our spiritual understanding into our worldly view... If our understanding comes from the head then it is the astral body, the body of consciousness, which is at work. The astral body acts as a mirror; it reflects the outside world into our soul. Many spiritual philosophies say that whatever we perceive in the outside world, be it beautiful or ugly, it is simply a reflection for what is going on within us. This is only true for our instinctual life. If the sense world is our only reality then, yes, we won’t accept the signs from spirit, we won’t believe the higher spiritual impulses, we will only experience the physical world as it is mirrored within us."

I've been struggling to understand how the astral body, which animals and humans both possess, can be a mirror that reflects the outer world into us. To my material understanding, mirrors don't let anything through, which is why they reflect. If they let anything through, they'd be windows! Unless they're like those convex mirrors that reflect around the corner, they'd actually be in our way when we tried to look at the world.

The way Spencer describes his experience with the partridge, it seems to fit in with what Kristina is saying. Maybe we really are looking through mirrors when we look unthinkingly at the world! Vaporous mirrors that we believe are windows. Steiner's response to Spencer starts to cut through this vapor.

Steiner says:

We must now pass from thinking to the being that thinks; for it is through the thinker that thinking is combined with observation. Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet and become linked to one another. In saying this we have in fact characterized this (human) consciousness. It is the mediator between thinking and observation. In as far as we observe a thing it appears to us as given; in as far as we think, we appear to ourselves as being active. We regard the thing as object and ourselves as thinking subject. Because we direct our thinking upon our observation, we have consciousness of objects; because we direct it upon ourselves, we have consciousness of ourselves, or self-consciousness. Human consciousness must of necessity be at the same time self-consciousness because it is a consciousness which thinks. For when thinking contemplates its own activity, it makes its own essential being, as subject, into a thing, as object.

I find this an extremely tricky train of thought to follow... What on earth is he getting at?

Well, I have tried observing thinking... that is an exceptional state, as Steiner says, in which I can achieve absolute certainty that thinking is a fact.  Going on from that, I hit a limit when I try to say what a concept is (what a concept is cannot be said in words...).

Give up on concepts, so where to next... I am eager, even impatient, to apply my new discovery of the being of thinking to the world around me but... suddenly Steiner wants to talk now about the being that thinks, consciousness... wait a minute, didn't he say before that he wasn't interested in consciousness... no, not quite, he said that he didn't believe it was valid to take consciousness as his starting point. 

So now he wants to go back to... what was it? In Chapter 1 "the one who acts out of knowledge"?  Perhaps it's related to that.  It does seem that if I swing wildly back and forth between observation and thinking that I am missing this most important element in between... That is often the way with abstract thinking, for example... refer to your theory, think it through, then try and fit reality into what you have thought out.  Or not!

So, consciousness... my subject... the stage upon which concept and observation meet and become linked to one another... what an interesting characterisation, but is it true?   Well it is kind of hard to catch myself in the act of joining the concept "tree" to my observation of the tree because I'm totally focussed on "the tree" - hey, that was the point of Chapter 3 I think!  But now if I return to this fundamental experience of observing thinking... what is its relationship to "my" consciousness, "my" thinking which is both my activity and an object of observation?

And what is consciousness?  I realised I couldn't really say what a concept was in words, so how come I can say what consciousness is?  Because, as Steiner says, thinking can contemplate its own activity, make its own essential being, as subject, into a thing, as object.

So he's deliberately not saying "my thinking".  Very deliberately, in light of the next paragraph.  So it seems I am to proceed from an experience of participation in what seems to me a process (thinking) to understand my own consciousness and "subject" (i.e. little old me) and the contrasting existence of the "object" as produced by thinking:

It must, however, not be overlooked that only with the help of thinking am I able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others.

Very strange, I will have to think about this a little more...

Hi Lori,

Yes I think so - the idea of two polar opposites manifesting themselves simultaneously is powerful isn't it but also common sense.

What comes to mind for me is the contrast between purely intellectual, abstract thinking where one identifies a collection of related concepts, defines the relationship between them and derives the results - for example, in mathematics - and the thinking that weaves back and forth between two opposing limits - as here, subject and object don't really make sense  unless they are both there with human consciousness as the "stage on which they meet and become linked to one another".

The latter kind of thinking is more realistic and mobile, however it builds upon the first kind of thinking - I think!