Dear Friends,
One definition of monism: "the view that reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts".
In Steiner's A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, he points directly at two of these 'not independent' parts: Experience and Thought. In PoF, he calls these percept and concept.
In his other works he describes for our true understanding that "reality" is something that is a unity (in itself) but then goes on to explain that the consciousness of the human being divides this unity in two. Through the senses (inner and outer) we have experience (the percept), and out of thinking we come to the thought (concept).
In Steiner's discussions of the evolution of consciousness (keeping in mind that today this consciousness 'divides' reality in two), he describes that in the past human beings lived in a kind of instinctive clairvoyant relationship with the world of spirit. From this 'dreamtime' comes the Age of Myth, which modern science considers to be a fiction created by people who made up stuff in order to explain the world of experience. Science, of course, more or less assumes that consciousness is a static phenomena and remains unchanged from whatever native state evolution brought it originally into being.
Yet, humanity was destined to Fall, and out of this process we were to lose our original interconnectedness with Cosmic Beings. We were to become lost in a time of aloneness and ambiguity in order to first find our I, and then to discover from out of the resources of that I our freedom (all independent of any real knowledge of the Gods). [a member of the Northern California association of members of the Social Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science, recently told us of her travels to China and Africa. In Africa what they wanted to hear about was the ego, the I. In China, they wanted to know how to raise their children in freedom. Also in China, all those talks had to be done in secret - she had to be hid from the government.]
Again in A Theory..., Steiner writes that: "thought is the last in a series of process by which Nature is formed" (notice the past tense "formed"). This was written by Steiner in 1886 at age 25. Emerson writes, at age 33, fifty years earlier in 1836, in the essay Nature: "Nature is a thought incarnate, and turns to thought again as ice becomes water and then gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping into the state of free thought."
In other places, Steiner gives us to understand that thought is as real as matter. In a way, thought is the inside of substance, or what we experience through the inner and outer senses. Thought and experience are a unity, that only appears divided because our ego consciousness is inserted into reality in a quite specific way.
Obviously, the outer sense world of matter is only perceived - experienced (only known as a percept), to which thinking must later add the thought (the concept). What about an inner experience (those percepts of our soul life we may come to know through introspection)? This is difficult in a way, because right away we come to a peculiar problem - the pre-thought thought. We are given, for example, from our culture various 'names' for inner experience. In PoF, to make an example more concrete, we have the term desire to refer to one kind of inner experience (an inner percept).
If we look at a number of different kinds of desires through introspection, we will discover that these are all different to experience. To borrow a term from the five senses - hunger doesn't 'taste' the same as sexual desire. Nor does such a desire which is an obsession, or a desire of wanting to possess an object to the exclusion of others. The term 'desire' does provide a general category for a whole class of inner percepts (experiences), but each experience is itself different to our inner sense of 'taste'.
To appreciate this all we have to understand is the difficulty poets have of writing about these inner objects of experience. Morevoer, we tend in the beginning to be unable to separate the I from its soul percepts. The I, because it is often attached to these inner experiences, doesn't treat them as independent. So, as a pre-thought thought we have the concepts (or 'names') provided by our culture with which we describe a whole complicated class of inner percepts. We don't yet deeply enough experience the inner percept to recognize that in the soul we are in the spiritual world - in a realm of invisible Beings.
This is because we don't yet produce enough light with our thinking, so as to illuminate the soul. PoF can only take us so far, that is to the recognition that thought in discursive thinking is influenced by Beings, and that feeling is as well. Shadow Beings, higher Beings. The soul is embeded in darkness and the influence of Beings on thought and feeling can only be indirectly perceived (experienced).
Thought is of the Etheral realm, which is the nearest spiritual realm we can experience and influence. As we learn to control thoughts and master feelings, and as well to consciously express the will-in-thinking inwardly in a moral way (moral imagination, moral intuition and moral technique are also capable of being applied to our inner actions directly upon our soul life, besides just our life of social relationships) - through this inner moral activity we purify the astral body, even though we do not yet experience directly the astral body (except in such phenomena as the various kinds of desires - which is why the question: can we choose what we want is so crucial).
Thought is Ethereal Substance, or what I sometimes call: the Garment of Beings. The Ethereal, we are given to understand through Steiner, is born in the Cosmic Periphery. It is the Life or suctional force (levity, the polar opposite of gravity - see Ernst Lehrs book: Man or Matter.). This peripheral Ethereal substance we experience in intutions. At the same time, it is contentless - that is the conceptual nature of the thought only arises as a consequence of our activity. From Above we receive contact with the garment of Beings, which we then form out of the activity of the I into the earthly shaped concept. "...when someone has a thought, it is he himself who makes the thought" R.S. Human and Cosmic Thought.
Thus we receive our freedom, and as well can now better perhaps understand what Steiner writes in A Theory...: "Thought is the last in a series of processes by which Nature is formed". Thinking is an activty which unites experience with thought, or the sacrificed Ethereal Garment of Beings made by the I into the formed and shaped concepts of the sense world (and to a limited degree of the inner percepts as well).
We can actually have a small 'taste' of this as an inner experience. When we struggle to find the right concept about some riddle, we have this intense reaching experience - our thinking will (our inner limbs of soul - don't we say we "grasp" a thought?) tries to take hold of this sacrificed Etheral Garment of Beings and shape it into the thought-concept which is the true (understanding) name of the object of thought.
The human being, having entered into incarnation in an era in which consciousness divides that which is naturally a unity (a monism), the I also contains the ability through thinking to reunite that which only appears to be separate. As we develop along the lines of inner freedom, and conquor the realms of desire and feelings with the will-in-thinking, this purification of the astral body results in the ability of higher Beings to draw closer to our I. Our earthly density is reduced by this purification born in PoF, and as a result the Life forces of the Ethereal Realm more readily are able to pour into our thinking consciousness such that thinking itself become Living.
It is moral purification that grants the living thinking, in which the Beings of the Cosmos "think in us" (sacrifice their Ethereal Garments to our reaching yearning riddles and questions. Thought is Ethereal substance, but we are the artists and craftsmen of its nature and shape. That we have a specific (or even general) yearning for answers with our thinking, only means the Community of Beings varies, for they are drawn to the light and fire of our yearning in the same way we are drawn to the light and fire of each other.
joel