Philosophical Speculations

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Jan 13, 2026 7:47 pm Yes, I read the book and appreciated it. Yet, getting what HHU - or sound common sense - really means in Steiner is not so easy. It's a thin line. For example, in this lecture (1922) it appears clearly that sound common sense refers to someone who has not developed clairvoyance. And so the question becomes: how is it possible to purify one's thinking, go through a serious schooling, practice sense-free thinking, without seeing anything, without developing any clairvoyance?

I suppose it can be said that we must meet the clairvoyant seer who communicates the spiritual content 'halfway', so to speak. This means the characteristic inner stance, perspective, and gestures should overlap with the clairvoyant, which is always a movement orthogonal to the thinking flow we have sculpted through standard physical development and education. From that orthogonal inner perspective, we know it is only a matter of intense purification of imagination, feeling, and volition before the inner volume, which we have been dimly probing with our plastic and mobile concepts, lights up as vivid and specific revelations of the wider spiritual spectrum that can be recognized as forms of 'clairvoyance'. This seems like a key vector for HHU (synonymous with "common sense" in your quote ) - the soul should be able to intuit and at least dimly imagine the inner axis along which the clairvoyant communications can be felt as reasonably continuous with its ordinary imaginative inquiries, and a potential trajectory from its current imaginative state to those higher states.

That intuition is completely lacking in ordinary logical thinking through the phenomenal facts of reality. With the latter, a higher revelation from the Akashic record, for example, like what some historic personality said or did thousands of years ago, simply cannot be placed in a living inner context from which it can be seen as "reasonable" and "persuasive". Such a context always requires the soul to attune a level deeper than the logical content of what is expressed, to how it is expressed, and how it symbolically implies reachable inner experiences that cannot be encompassed as additional mental output, additional thoughts about whatever deeper aspect of reality is being contemplated. The inner experiments in the essays, when lived through patiently and consistently, as it seems we have agreed, are great examples for how such deeper attunement is attained without first needing clairvoyance in its more purified phases. These experiments truly liberate our thinking from its physical instrument and help it begin to feel its way through sense-free terrain with lucid precision.

I think this series of quotes from Steiner (along with the one Kaje shaerd), taken from the GK book, also quite directly addresses your question. In a certain sense, we need to apply our mobile HHU to these quotes to truly grasp what is implied by HHU. I think GK did a great job structuring the book such that it allows us to approach the topic from many different thematic angles and thereby gives us an opportunity to practice the cultivation of HHU in the process of understanding 'what HHU is all about'. Ultimately, we can only orient to HHU properly by experiencing its blossoming and unfoldment within our soul life. Then we can say with the U.S. Supreme Court Justice (on what is "obscene pornography"), "I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it."

(Sorry, I wanted to add more thoughts on this as well, but I sprained my right wrist in a basketball game and therefore cannot type very much right now)


“But what does it mean, they [people] don't understand it [spiritual scientific communications]? It means nothing but this: I want to understand spiritual science using only my physical brain; I don't want to learn any other kind of thinking than the one that lazily follows the physical brain. Naturally, the anthroposophical worldview cannot be understood by this kind of thinking. It is not as if one had to be clairvoyant to understand it, but one has to exercise oneself in a kind of thinking that is not bound to the physical brain. And what is present in anthroposophical literature, what can be learned with healthy human understanding — which is not bound to the brain, only unhealthy materialistic understanding is bound to the brain — what can be learned with healthy human understanding gradually trains such thinking, feeling, and willing. And thereby thinking, feeling, and willing become able to cope with the events of the present time.”

Philosophy, Cosmology, and Religion (GA215), lecture of September 7, 1922:

“Abstract thinking, which is all people know today, is developed through the instrument of the physical body. It is experienced with the instrument of the physical body. This is the characteristic feature of what humanity has achieved in recent times when it has reached up to full consciousness. A thinking achieved with the physical body is, from the point of view of the spiritual world, actually a displaced thinking.... Because of it, thinking lives in an element that is not its primal element.”

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (GA152), lecture of May 18, 1913:

“Thinking is in every soul, but it can be used in two ways. A human being can create it within himself—can form thoughts within himself. Then this thinking is within his own activity and can fully encounter everything, even the most apparently bold claims of spiritual research. If, however, thinking does not strengthen itself, then it has to depend on the instrument of thinking, the brain, and then it produces only thoughts that can be grasped with the instrument of the brain; then the human being thinks passively, not actively.”

Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms (GA199), lecture of August 7, 1920:

“People, who today want to hold onto the sense world alone, find these anthroposophical thoughts crazy, unreal, fantastic. This is because, at the moment of thinking these thoughts, they have to apply a powerful force: they have to tear themselves free. They want to think these thoughts with their brain. But with the brain one can think only external, physical thoughts; one can think only external physicality. With such thoughts one can certainly think atoms and molecules...; but what is contained in a book like Occult Science: an Outline cannot be thought with the brain.”

[Healthy human understanding means body-free understanding — G.K.]

Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind (GA197), lecture of September 21, 1920:

“People say that these thoughts cannot be grasped, that they cannot be understood. Well, they want to think them with the brain; but these spiritual scientific thoughts have been thought by the soul-spiritual element, after it has torn itself free of the brain. Therefore we must strive by means of thoughts that have developed in this way — by thinking these thoughts for ourselves — to tear free our soul-spiritual element from the brain. People must make an effort to think these thoughts through, to avail themselves of the possibility, which still exists today, of tearing free from the matter of the brain what is soul-spiritual. For the soul-spiritual element is beginning to bind itself to the matter of the brain.... When the thoughts of anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science are transmitted to the world, we count on those people who are still capable of managing the old capacity for tearing themselves free; we count on them to actually manage this and to try to understand body-free thoughts so that their souls may become body-free.”

Kaje977 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 12:25 am

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Jan 13, 2026 7:47 pm Yes, I read the book and appreciated it. Yet, getting what HHU - or sound common sense - really means in Steiner is not so easy. It's a thin line. For example, in this lecture (1922) it appears clearly that sound common sense refers to someone who has not developed clairvoyance. And so the question becomes: how is it possible to purify one's thinking, go through a serious schooling, practice sense-free thinking, without seeing anything, without developing any clairvoyance?

By becoming a practical thinker:
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA108/En ... 18p01.html
This is what Steiner usually refers to, when he talks about "common sense". I'm 90% sure.

There is another exercise that is to be practiced especially by those to whom the right idea usually does not occur at the right time.

Such people should try above all things to stop their thinking from being forever influenced and controlled by the ordinary course of worldly events and whatever else may come with them. As a rule, when a person lies down for half an hour's rest, his thoughts are allowed to play freely in a thousand different directions, or on the other hand he may become absorbed with some trouble in his life. Before he realizes it such things will have crept into his consciousness and claimed his entire attention. If this habit persists, such a person will never experience the occasion when the right idea occurs to him at the right moment.

If he really wants this to happen, he must say to himself whenever he can spare a half hour for rest, “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.”

He need not even choose so difficult a subject as this one. The point is not at all to change one's mental process through difficult exercises, but to get away from the ordinary routine of life in one's thinking. He must think of something quite apart from what enmeshes him during the ordinary course of the day. If nothing occurs to him to think about, he might open a book at random and occupy his thoughts with whatever first catches his eye. Or he may choose to think of something he saw at a particular time that morning on his way to work and to which he would otherwise have paid no attention. The main point is that it should be something totally different from the ordinary run of daily events, something that otherwise would not have occupied his thoughts.

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.

Hi Kaje, thanks for your note.
Yes, I agree that an exercise such as this helps develop "sound common sense", or "healthy human understanding", since it brings consciousness and, progressively, freedom to the thought process. To notice how the thought flow is constantly tossed around by the attracting power of everyday matters and small afflictions is the very first step.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 2:44 am

Federica wrote: ↑Tue Jan 13, 2026 7:47 pm Yes, I read the book and appreciated it. Yet, getting what HHU - or sound common sense - really means in Steiner is not so easy. It's a thin line. For example, in this lecture (1922) it appears clearly that sound common sense refers to someone who has not developed clairvoyance. And so the question becomes: how is it possible to purify one's thinking, go through a serious schooling, practice sense-free thinking, without seeing anything, without developing any clairvoyance?

I suppose it can be said that we must meet the clairvoyant seer who communicates the spiritual content 'halfway', so to speak. This means the characteristic inner stance, perspective, and gestures should overlap with the clairvoyant, which is always a movement orthogonal to the thinking flow we have sculpted through standard physical development and education. From that orthogonal inner perspective, we know it is only a matter of intense purification of imagination, feeling, and volition before the inner volume, which we have been dimly probing with our plastic and mobile concepts, lights up as vivid and specific revelations of the wider spiritual spectrum that can be recognized as forms of 'clairvoyance'. This seems like a key vector for HHU (synonymous with "common sense" in your quote ) - the soul should be able to intuit and at least dimly imagine the inner axis along which the clairvoyant communications can be felt as reasonably continuous with its ordinary imaginative inquiries, and a potential trajectory from its current imaginative state to those higher states.

That intuition is completely lacking in ordinary logical thinking through the phenomenal facts of reality. With the latter, a higher revelation from the Akashic record, for example, like what some historic personality said or did thousands of years ago, simply cannot be placed in a living inner context from which it can be seen as "reasonable" and "persuasive". Such a context always requires the soul to attune a level deeper than the logical content of what is expressed, to how it is expressed, and how it symbolically implies reachable inner experiences that cannot be encompassed as additional mental output, additional thoughts about whatever deeper aspect of reality is being contemplated. The inner experiments in the essays, when lived through patiently and consistently, as it seems we have agreed, are great examples for how such deeper attunement is attained without first needing clairvoyance in its more purified phases. These experiments truly liberate our thinking from its physical instrument and help it begin to feel its way through sense-free terrain with lucid precision.

I think this series of quotes from Steiner (along with the one Kaje shaerd), taken from the GK book, also quite directly addresses your question. In a certain sense, we need to apply our mobile HHU to these quotes to truly grasp what is implied by HHU. I think GK did a great job structuring the book such that it allows us to approach the topic from many different thematic angles and thereby gives us an opportunity to practice the cultivation of HHU in the process of understanding 'what HHU is all about'. Ultimately, we can only orient to HHU properly by experiencing its blossoming and unfoldment within our soul life. Then we can say with the U.S. Supreme Court Justice (on what is "obscene pornography"), "I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it."

I completely agree. And I think too that Cleric's essays are a good meter to concretely sense what it means to develop HHU, or sound common sense. So I guess that one should also not take GK's descriptions too literally and identify HHU with fully developed "pure thinking". The paradox he described is helpful here: the point of contact, or overlap, between the upward striving ordinary consciousness and the aptly communicated beginning of the path (for example the essays) is already a token of an active HHU, as I see it. It requires not so much the completion of the purification stages GK speaks of, but the openness and willingness to listen to the phenomenological invitations, or the accounts of supersensible realities, through the orthogonal attitude, if not fully independent gestures, you speak of. Great quotes.


PS: about your wrist, sorry about that. I've just heard great comments about this app, in case you want to try it: https://wisprflow.ai/

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 11:02 am PS: about your wrist, sorry about that. I've just heard great comments about this app, in case you want to try it: https://wisprflow.ai/

Thanks! Funnily enough, most of my above comment (and this one) was written with exactly that app I do highly recommend it as well, as it is the best one I have come across so far. Very easy to use and accurate in its translation.

In this domain, however, I find it quite cumbersome to express my intuitions through speech. It's really interesting to notice the gradient of difficulty between:
- thinking conducted through only the brain (inner voice)
- thinking conducted through the hands (writing, typing)
- thinking conducted through the larynx and vocal organs (speech)

Steiner also has some nice quotes on that:

“The seer experiences what is for him the content of spiritual experience outside language. This is something difficult to explain since most people think in words, but the seer thinks wordlessly and is then forced to pour what is experienced wordlessly into a language that already has a fixed form. He must accustom himself to the formal relationships of language. He need not feel this as a compulsion, for he enters into the secret of linguistic creativity. He can make himself understood by stripping away the aspect of language that deals in mental pictures. This is why it is so crucial to understand that it is more important how the seer says something than what he says. What he says is conditioned by the mental picture that everyone brings to it from without. He is forced, in order not to be looked on as a fool, to clothe what he has to say in familiar sentences and representational links.... A listener who really understands the seer realizes that the how of the expression is what matters; that the seer is careful to formulate one sentence from one standpoint, then to add another from another standpoint.... Therefore it is important to one's understanding to listen less to the mere content — which naturally, as revelation of the world of spirit, is also important — than to penetrate through the content to the way in which the content is expressed, in order to see if the speaker is only combining sentences and theories, or if he is speaking from experience. Speaking out of the world of spirit can be seen in the how of what is said — not so much in the content, as far as it has a theoretical character, but in how it comes to expression.”

Ibid., lecture of May 6, 1918:

“What is beheld [in the spiritual world] is not beheld in words and does not express itself immediately in words. Therefore, as a seer, one has difficulty in making oneself understood by the outer world since most people think in words, both theoretically and in terms of content, and cannot imagine a life of the soul that goes beyond words. For this reason, one who sensitively experiences the spirit world feels a certain coercion when he has to pour what he experiences into language as it has already been formed. But by silencing what normally lives in language (the capacity for mental images and memory), he can activate for himself the linguistically creative forces themselves, those forces that were active in the evolution of humanity when language first arose. The seer has to place himself in the state of soul whence language first arose; he must develop the double activity of inwardly forming the spiritual thing he beholds and of immersing himself in the spirit of language-formation so that he can unite the one with the other. Therefore it is important to realize that one must understand the words of the seer differently from other words. When the seer communicates, he has to make use of language, but in such a way that he allows what is active creatively in language to arise again through his emphasizing some things more and others less.... What matters is that he formulates beforehand; what matters is how he says the things, especially things about the spiritual world, not merely what he says. The seer is so hard to understand because all this is so little taken into account, and because when people hear words they remember what the words mean elsewhere.”


I can clearly tell that I am not capable of activating the linguistically creative forces with my larynx inputs at this point, and therefore, the process of transducing the wordless intuitions into that speech is experienced as mostly a cumbersome constraint.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 1:09 pm

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 11:02 am PS: about your wrist, sorry about that. I've just heard great comments about this app, in case you want to try it: https://wisprflow.ai/

Thanks! Funnily enough, most of my above comment (and this one) was written with exactly that app I do highly recommend it as well, as it is the best one I have come across so far. Very easy to use and accurate in its translation.

In this domain, however, I find it quite cumbersome to express my intuitions through speech. It's really interesting to notice the gradient of difficulty between:
- thinking conducted through only the brain (inner voice)
- thinking conducted through the hands (writing, typing)
- thinking conducted through the larynx and vocal organs (speech)

Steiner also has some nice quotes on that:

“The seer experiences what is for him the content of spiritual experience outside language. This is something difficult to explain since most people think in words, but the seer thinks wordlessly and is then forced to pour what is experienced wordlessly into a language that already has a fixed form. He must accustom himself to the formal relationships of language. He need not feel this as a compulsion, for he enters into the secret of linguistic creativity. He can make himself understood by stripping away the aspect of language that deals in mental pictures. This is why it is so crucial to understand that it is more important how the seer says something than what he says. What he says is conditioned by the mental picture that everyone brings to it from without. He is forced, in order not to be looked on as a fool, to clothe what he has to say in familiar sentences and representational links.... A listener who really understands the seer realizes that the how of the expression is what matters; that the seer is careful to formulate one sentence from one standpoint, then to add another from another standpoint.... Therefore it is important to one's understanding to listen less to the mere content — which naturally, as revelation of the world of spirit, is also important — than to penetrate through the content to the way in which the content is expressed, in order to see if the speaker is only combining sentences and theories, or if he is speaking from experience. Speaking out of the world of spirit can be seen in the how of what is said — not so much in the content, as far as it has a theoretical character, but in how it comes to expression.”

Ibid., lecture of May 6, 1918:

“What is beheld [in the spiritual world] is not beheld in words and does not express itself immediately in words. Therefore, as a seer, one has difficulty in making oneself understood by the outer world since most people think in words, both theoretically and in terms of content, and cannot imagine a life of the soul that goes beyond words. For this reason, one who sensitively experiences the spirit world feels a certain coercion when he has to pour what he experiences into language as it has already been formed. But by silencing what normally lives in language (the capacity for mental images and memory), he can activate for himself the linguistically creative forces themselves, those forces that were active in the evolution of humanity when language first arose. The seer has to place himself in the state of soul whence language first arose; he must develop the double activity of inwardly forming the spiritual thing he beholds and of immersing himself in the spirit of language-formation so that he can unite the one with the other. Therefore it is important to realize that one must understand the words of the seer differently from other words. When the seer communicates, he has to make use of language, but in such a way that he allows what is active creatively in language to arise again through his emphasizing some things more and others less.... What matters is that he formulates beforehand; what matters is how he says the things, especially things about the spiritual world, not merely what he says. The seer is so hard to understand because all this is so little taken into account, and because when people hear words they remember what the words mean elsewhere.”


I can clearly tell that I am not capable of activating the linguistically creative forces with my larynx inputs at this point, and therefore, the process of transducing the wordless intuitions into that speech is experienced as mostly a cumbersome constraint.

Okay, interesting! I've downloaded the app and I'm experimenting with replying to your post through dictating, so I can gain direct experience, and a feel for how cumbersome it turns out to be.

First regarding Steiner's quotes, I understand that when he speaks of the way in which the content is expressed, he means the way in which the original intuitions have been impressed in the sounds and in their combinations - the vowels, the consonants, and how they tell the quality of the inner experiences. In other words, activating the linguistically creative forces requires a high level of seership where the speaker deeply understands and expresses:

• the original meaning of the vowels, of the consonants - their eurythmy, we could say

• what quality of form or dynamics the sounds resonate with, by themselves and in combination with each other, within the context of a word, an expression, a sentence

• how they correlate to feelings and to sense perceptions

The (sad) consequence of this is - saying it in passing - that when we read Steiner in translation we completely miss this layer, the direct expression of the creative forces of language. We are blindfolded to all those cues (perhaps Kaye may be so kind as to tell us whether he feels differently when reading Steiner in original versus in translation).

Ashvin wrote:I can clearly tell that I am not capable of activating the linguistically creative forces with my larynx inputs at this point, and therefore, the process of transducing the wordless intuitions into that speech is experienced as mostly a cumbersome constraint.

Here I am doubtful, because I would say that the larynx gestures are rather outputs. When we use the vocal flow to dictate the post rather than typing it, we still rely on the same inner voice out of which we usually think. When we use typing or writing or reading, that's also still based on that inner voice, I would say, at least for the normal person engaged in normal activities, not when meditating or doing spiritual exercises. These are just different renditions, different ways to express the same inner voice, the same discursive thought-flow, as it condenses from the original hidden inputs into the inner voice/pictorial flow.

Therefore I suspect that when you feel that dictating is cumbersome, it is not so much related to a difficulty in activating the linguistically creative forces, but perhaps simply to a sensory habit or preference for how you like to go from the inner voice to its outward expression. Could it be so? Perhaps you experience sound as distraction, even if it's the sound of your own voice, as you are used to reflecting in auditory quietness. Or perhaps you are simply not yet used to flowing through the connection 'inner to outer voice', whereas 'inner voice to touch' feels more familiar.

We collectively experienced something similar, but in reverse, when smartphones and messaging apps became popular. Before, we were used to leaving vocal messages to people. Today we quickly type in messaging apps and it feels super natural, but do you remember the first times when you typed a message on a smartphone’s screen? Pretty cumbersome, hey? It didn't take long to develop sensitivity in the fingertips but still, at the very beginning it was not fast.

I'm kind of getting confirmation of that indirectly, through this real-time experiment that I'm doing with the app, because I actually like it. I appreciate going faster and not losing some concepts while I'm laboriously typing down some other concepts. Dictating feels way more agile, perhaps simply because I am bad at typing, or for whatever combination of preferences and skills (or lack thereof). And since I know for sure that I have no mastery of the linguistically creative forces anyway (alas) I'm sure it's not because of these forces that I'm comfortable with dictating. Does it make sense?

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 4:40 pm Here I am doubtful, because I would say that the larynx gestures are rather outputs. When we use the vocal flow to dictate the post rather than typing it, we still rely on the same inner voice out of which we usually think. When we use typing or writing or reading, that's also still based on that inner voice, I would say, at least for the normal person engaged in normal activities, not when meditating or doing spiritual exercises. These are just different renditions, different ways to express the same inner voice, the same discursive thought-flow, as it condenses from the original hidden inputs into the inner voice/pictorial flow.

Therefore I suspect that when you feel that dictating is cumbersome, it is not so much related to a difficulty in activating the linguistically creative forces, but perhaps simply to a sensory habit or p reference for how you like to go from the inner voice to its outward expression. Could it be so? Perhaps you experience sound as distraction, even if it's the sound of your own voice, as you are used to reflecting in auditory quietness. Or perhaps you are simply not yet used to flowing through the connection 'inner to outer voice', and 'inner voice to touch' feels more familiar.

We collectively experienced something similar, but in reverse, when smartphones and messaging apps became popular. Before, we were used to leaving vocal messages to people. Today we quickly type in messaging apps and it feels super natural, but do you remember the first times when you typed a message on a smartphone’s screen? Pretty cumbersome, hey? It didn't take long to develop sensitivity in the fingertips but still, at the very beginning it was not fast.

I'm kind of getting confirmation of that indirectly, through this real-time experiment that I'm doing with the app, because I actually like it. I appreciate going faster and not losing some concepts while I'm laboriously writing down some other concepts. Dictating feels way more agile, perhaps simply because I am a bad typewriter, or for whatever combination of preferences and skills. And since I know for sure that I have no mastery of the linguistically creative forces anyway (alas) I'm sure it's not because of these forces that I'm comfortable with dictating. Does it make sense?

Yes, it is certainly related to our modern conditioning through technology. I can sense how my speech skills have atrophied in some ways because of that. And I imagine this varies greatly for different people. In my particular profession and field of practice, in-person communications with others are mostly transactional and unfold according to well-trodden concepts and protocols (and much of it happens through email, anyway).

I think there are also clearly additional constraints that are added when inner inputs seek to become outputs through the inner voice or mental pictures, on the one hand, or vocal speech on the other. Some of these constraints will be physical, for example, the shape of the palette and lips may make it more or less difficult to articulate speech. Yet I think the most relevant ones will be soul constraints. For many people, there is an added anxiety when their inner inputs leave the private space of rehearsal and seek to impress into the wider shared world of experience with other beings, where they are irretrievable (of course, that is also the same with our inner voice and mental pictures, but usually we assume they are not shared with anyone else and can be 'clawed back', in a certain sense). These are also tied in with the physical constraints - for example, if we feel like our articulation is poor, we may feel more ashamed at the sound of our voice when it comes to outer expression. Even if we are dictating alone in our house, we may carry that ingrained anxiety with us to a certain extent (and with modern technology, that may be justified, because you never know who is listening ).

After all, our shared sensory life is a decohered experience of the wider spiritual world, where our inner volume can no longer remain private but is revealed as the interference of many other beings. That is why we also feel a more archetypal fear and anxiety when approaching the spiritual world with our inputting process. It is sensed that whatever we feel and think will immediately reverberate within a shared atmosphere and cannot be clawed back. I think this plays a significant role in why the speech output may feel like it puts us in a more vulnerable state than thinking with the inner voice Again, this will vary depending on the particular individuality and their disposition, experiences, skills, etc. People who are naturally more extroverted, for example, may not feel as vulnerable as those who are introverted.

When it comes to expressing intuitions of super-sensible reality, there is yet another constraint added, which is that those super-sensible experiences cannot be easily memorized and recalled as we do with our ordinary concepts drawn from sensory intuition. Thus, I find myself pausing much more often in the course of dictating when trying to express such super-sensible intuition, and more frequently going back to edit my choice of words and the order of the words. For some reason, the process of typing the ideas out feels to anchor and kindle the intuitions more smoothly for me (although it still requires much imaginative effort). I think the following quote accurately captures my general inner experience (which is not to say I am a 'seer' in the sense that Steiner is speaking of, but I still have intimations of what he is describing):

https://rsarchive.org/Articles/GA036/En ... index.html
"There are, however, two ways we can take to find the ‘Spirit’ of language to-day in all its living force. One of these ways is discovered by the soul which pushes on beyond mere conceptual thinking to that seeing which reveals the life and being of things. This kind of sight is an inner experience, an inward realisation of a spiritual actuality which must not be confounded with any vague, mystic sensation of a general ‘something.’ It is an actuality that contains nothing sensibly perceptible, but is no less ‘substantial’ in the spiritual sense.

In this kind of sight the seer travels far away from anything that can be expressed in language. What he sees cannot directly find its way to the lips. He clutches at words and has at once the feeling that the substance of his vision is changed. And—if he is bent on telling others about it—now begins his battle with the language. There is no possible form of speech that he does not press into his service to make a picture of what he has seen. Chimes and reminiscences of sounds, turns and twists of phrasing—he leaves nothing unexplored within the realms of the sayable. It is a hard inner struggle. And finally he has to say to himself: ‘This language is obstinate and has a will of its own. It says every conceivable thing in its own fashion. You will have to “give in” to it and humour it if you want it to accept your observations and receive them into itself.’ When we come to mould in speech what we have seen in spirit, then we find that we are dealing, not with a mass of soft wax that allows itself to be modeled into any form, but that we have to do with a living Spirit—the Spirit of language, the ‘Speech-Spirit.’

And, if it is honestly fought out in this manner, the battle may end excellently, indeed quite delightfully. For there comes a moment when we feel: ‘The Spirit of the language has laid hold of what I saw, has taken it up!’ The very words and turns of phrase in themselves take on something of a spiritual nature. They cease to be mere signs of what they usually ‘signify’ and slip into the very form of the thing seen. And then begins something like living intercourse with the Spirit of the language. The language takes on a personal quality. We feel that we can, as it were, discuss things with it, come to terms with it, as we should with another human being."

But with all that said, I want to be clear that I am very grateful for this app and will continue using it even when my wrist heals. As always, practice makes perfect. I think it is a great exercise to try and vocalise our deeper intuitions rather than only type them out, and it has the added benefit of not contributing to arthritis or other sclerotic conditions.